"I quite agree with you." Sutton had found his case. His face was hidden
by the raised lid as he peered, examining his instruments. He spoke
abstractly. "Magnificent."
When he left the room Charlotte followed him.
"Billy--"
"Well--"
He stopped in his noiseless course down the corridor.
"What was it?" she said. "What happened?"
He didn't pretend not to understand her.
"Oh, nothing. Conway and Mrs. Rankin didn't hit it off very well
together."
They spoke in low, rapid tones, conscious, always, of the wards behind
the shut doors. Her feet went fast and noiseless beside his as he hurried
to the operating theatre. They came out on to the wide landing and waited
there by the brass lattice of the lift.
"How do you mean, hit it off?"
"Oh well, she thought he didn't come up quick enough with a stretcher,
and she pitched into him."
"But he was dead beat. Done. Couldn't she see that?"
"No. I don't suppose she could. She was a bit excited."
"She was horrible." Now that Mrs. Rankin was back safe she hated her. She
knew she hated her.
"A bit cruel, perhaps. All the same," he said, "she was magnif--"
The lift had come hissing and wailing up behind him. The orderly stood in
it, staring at Sutton's back, obsequious, yet impatient. She thought of
the wounded men in the theatre downstairs.
"You mustn't keep them waiting," she said.
He stepped back into the lift. It lowered him rapidly. His chin was on a
level with the floor when his mouth tried again and succeeded:
"Magnificent."
And she knew that she had followed him out to near him say that John had
been magnificent, too.
Gwinnie was looking in at the messroom door and saying "Do you know where
Charlotte is?" Mrs. Rankin's voice called out, "I think you'll find her
in _Mr. Conway's_ bedroom." One of the chauffeurs laughed. Charlotte knew
what they were thinking.
Gwinnie failed to retort. She was excited, shaken out of her stolidity.
"Oh, there you are! I've got something ripping to tell you. Not in here."
They slouched, with their arms slung affectionately round each other's
waists, into their own room. Behind the shut door Gwinnie began.
"The Colonel's most frightfully pleased about Berlaere."
"Does he think they'll hold it?"
"It isn't that. He's pleased about you."
"Me?"
"You and John. What you did there. And your bringing back the guns."
"Who told you that?"
"Mac. The old boy was going on to him like anything about you last
night. It means you'll be sent out every time. Every time there's
anything big on."
"Oh-h! Let's go and tell John.... I suppose," she added, "that's what was
the matter with Mrs. Rankin."
She wondered whether it had been the matter with Billy Sutton too; if he
too were jealous and afraid.
That night Mrs. Rankin told her what the Colonel really had said: "'C'est
magnifique, mais ce n'est pas--la Croix Rouge.' If you're all sent home
to-morrow it'll serve you jolly well right," she said.
But somehow she couldn't make it sound as if he had been angry.
X
She waited.
John had told her to stay there with the wounded man up the turn of the
stable yard while he went for the stretcher. His car, packed with
wounded, stood a little way up the street, headed for Ghent. Sutton's
car, with one of McClane's chauffeurs, was in front of it, ready; she
could hear the engine purring.
Instead of going at once for the stretcher John had followed Sutton into
the house opposite, the house with the narrow grey shutters. And he had
called to her again across the road to wait for him.
Behind her in the yard the wounded man sat on the cobblestones, his back
propped against the stable wall. He was safe there, safer than he would
have been outside in the ambulance.
It was awful to think that he would have been left behind if they had not
found him at the last minute among the straw.
She went and stood by the yard entrance to see whether John were coming
with the stretcher. A soldier came out of the house with the narrow
shutters, wounded, limping, his foot bound to a splint. Then Sutton came,
hurrying to help him. He shouted to her, "Come on, Charlotte, hurry up!"
and she called back, "I've got to wait here for John."
She watched them go on slowly up the road to Sutton's car; she saw them
get in; she saw the car draw out and rush away.
Then she saw John come out of the door of the house and stand there,
looking up and down the street. Once she saw him glance back over his
shoulder at something behind him in the room. The same instant she heard
the explosion and saw the shell burst in the middle of the street, not
fifty yards from the ambulance. Half a minute after she saw John dash
from the doorway and run, run at an incredible pace, towards his car. She
heard him crank up the engine.
She supposed that he was going to back towards the yard, and she wondered
whether she could lift up the Belgian and carry him out. She stooped over
him, put her hands under his armpits, raising him and wondering. Better
not. He had a bad wound. Better wait for the stretcher.
She turned, suddenly, arrested. The noise she heard was not the grating
noise of a car backing, it was the scream of a car getting away; it
dropped to a heavy whirr and diminished.
She looked out. Up the road she saw John's car rushing furiously
towards Ghent.
The Belgian had heard it. His eyes moved. Black hare's eyes, terrified.
It was not possible, he said, that they had been left behind?
No, it was not possible. John had forgotten them; but he would
remember; he would come back. In five minutes. Seven minutes. She had
waited fifteen.
The Belgian was muttering something. He complained of being left there.
He said he was not anxious about himself, but about Mademoiselle.
Mademoiselle ought not to have been left. She was sitting on the ground
now, beside him.
"It'll be all right," she said. "He'll come back." When he remembered he
would come back.
She had waited half an hour.
Another shell. It had burst over there at the backs of the houses, beyond
the stable.
She wondered whether it would be safer to drag her man across the street
under the wall of the Town Hall. They would be sure to aim at it and miss
it, whereas any minute they might hit the stable.
At the moment while she wondered there was a third tremendous explosion,
the crash and roar of brickwork falling like coal down an enormous chute.
It came from the other side of the street a little way down. It couldn't
be far from the Town Hall. That settled it. Much better stay where they
were. The Belgian had put his arm round her, drawing her to him, away
from the noise and shock of the shell.
It was clear now that John was not coming back. He had forgotten them.
The Belgian's hold slackened; he dozed, falling against her and
recovering himself with a jerk and begging her pardon. She drew down his
head on to her shoulder and let it rest there. Her mind was soaked in the
smell of his rank breath, of the warm sweat that oozed through his tunic,
the hot, fetid smell that came through his unlaced boots. She didn't
care; she was too sorry for him. She could feel nothing but the helpless
pressure of his body against hers, nothing but her pity that hurt her and
was exquisite like love. Yesterday she had thought it would be good to
die with John. Now she thought it would be good to die with the wounded
Belgian, since John had left her there to die.
And again, she had a vehement desire for life, a horror of the unjust
death John was bringing on them.
But of course there wouldn't be any death. If nobody came she would walk
back to Ghent and bring out the ambulance.
If only he had shouted to her to carry the wounded man and come. In the
minute between the concussion of the shell and the cranking of the
engine. But she could see him rushing. If only she knew _why_ he had left
them.... She wanted to get back to Ghent, to see John, to know. To know
if John--if John really _was_--Nothing could be worse than not knowing.
It didn't matter so much his forgetting her. The awful thing was his
forgetting the wounded man. How could you forget a wounded man? When she
remembered the Belgian's terrified hare's eyes she hated John.
And, as she sat there supporting his head with her shoulder, she thought
again. There must have been a wounded man in the house John had come out
of. Was it possible that he had forgotten him, too?... He hadn't
forgotten. She could see him looking back over his shoulder; looking at
something that was lying there, that couldn't be anything but a wounded
man. Or a dead man. Whatever it was, it had been the last thing he had
seen; the last thing he had thought of before he made his dash. It
wasn't possible that he had left a wounded man in there, alive. It was
not possible.
And all the time while she kept on telling herself that it was not
possible she saw a wounded man in the room John had left; she saw his
head turning to the doorway, and his eyes, frightened; she felt his
anguish in the moment that he knew himself abandoned. Not forgotten.
Abandoned.
She would have to go over to the house and see. She must know whether the
man was there or not there. She raised the Belgian's head, gently, from
her shoulder. She would have to wake him and tell him what she was going
to do, so that he mightn't think she had left him and be frightened.
But the Belgian roused himself to a sudden virile determination.
Mademoiselle must _not_ cross the road. It was too dangerous.
Mademoiselle would be hit. He played on her pity with an innocent,
cunning cajolery. "Mademoiselle must not leave me. I do not want
to be left."
"Only for one minute. One little minute. I think there's a wounded man,
like you, Monsieur, in that house."
"Ah--h--A wounded man?" He seemed to acknowledge the integrity of her
purpose. "If only I were not wounded, if only I could crawl an inch, I
would go instead of Mademoiselle."
* * * * *
The wounded man lay on the floor of the room in his corner by the
fireplace where John had left him. His coat was rolled up under his head
for a pillow. He lay on his side, with humped hips and knees drawn up,
and one hand, half clenched, half relaxed, on his breast under the
drooped chin; so that at first she thought he was alive, sleeping. She
knelt down beside him and clasped his wrist; she unbuttoned his tunic
and put in her hand under his shirt above the point of his heart. He was
certainly dead. No pulse; no beat; no sign of breathing. Yet his body
was warm still, and limp as if with sleep. He couldn't have been dead
very long.
And he was young. A boy. Not more than sixteen. John couldn't have left
him.
She wasn't certain. She was no nearer certainty so long as she didn't
know when the boy had died. If only she knew--
They hadn't unfastened his tunic and shirt to feel over his heart if he
were dead. So he couldn't have been dead when they left him.... But there
was Sutton. Billy wouldn't have left him unless he had been dead. Her
mind worked rapidly, jumping from point to point, trying to find some
endurable resting place.... He was so young, so small, so light. Light.
It wouldn't take two to carry him. She could have picked him up and
carried him herself. Billy had had the lame man to look after. He had
left the boy to John. She saw John looking back over his shoulder.
She got up and went through the house, through all the rooms, to see if
there were any more of them that John had left there. She felt tired out
and weak, sick with her belief, her fear of what John had done. The dead
boy was alone in the house. She covered his face with her handkerchief
and went back.
The Belgian waited for her at the entrance to the yard. He had
dragged himself there, crawling on his hands and knees. He smiled
when he saw her.
"I was coming to look for you, Mademoiselle."
She had him safe beside her against the stable wall. He let his head rest
on her shoulder now, glad of the protecting contact. She tried not to
think about John. Something closed down between them. Black. Black;
shutting him off, closing her heart against him, leaving her heart hard
and sick. The light went slowly out of the street, out of the sky. The
dark came, the dark sounding with the "Boom--Boom" of the guns, lit with
spiked diamond flashes like falling stars.
The Belgian had gone to sleep again when she heard the ambulance coming
down the street.
* * * * *
"Is that you, Charlotte?"
"Billy--! What made you come?"
"Conway. He's in a frantic funk. Said he'd lost you. He thought you'd
gone on with me."
How awful it would be if Billy knew.
"It was my fault," she lied. "He told me to go on with you." She could
hear him telling her to wait for him in the stable yard.
"I'd have come before only I didn't see him soon enough. I had an
operation.... Is that a wounded man you've got there? I suppose he lost
him, too?"
"He didn't know he was here."
"I see."
Then she remembered. Billy would know. Billy would tell her.
"Billy--was that boy dead when you left him! The boy in the house
over there."
He was stooping to the Belgian, examining his bandages, and he didn't
answer all at once. He seemed to be meditating.
"Was he?" she repeated.
It struck her that Billy was surprised.
"Because--" She stopped there. She couldn't say to him, "I want to know
whether John left him dead or alive."
"He was dead all right." Sutton's voice came up slow and muffled out of
his meditation.
It was all right. She might have known. She might have known. Vaguely for
a moment she wondered why Billy had come for her and not John; then she
was frightened.
"Billy--John isn't hurt, is he?"
"No. Rather not. A bit done up. I made him go and lie down.... Look here,
we must get out of this."
* * * * *
The McClane Corps were gathered on their side of the messroom. They
greeted her with shouts of joy, but their eyes looked at her queerly, as
if they knew something dreadful had happened to her.
"You should have stood in with us, Charlotte," Mrs. Rankin was saying.
"Then you wouldn't get mislaid among the shells." She was whispering.
"Dr. McClane, if you took Charlotte out among the shells, would you run
away and leave her there?"
"I'd try not to."
Oh yes. He wouldn't run away and leave her. But he wouldn't care where he
took her. He wouldn't care whether a shell got her or not. But John
cared. If only she knew _why_.... Their queer faces sobered her and
suddenly she knew. She saw Sutton coming out of the house with the narrow
shutters; she heard him shouting to her, "Come on, Charlotte, hurry up!"
John must have heard him. He must really have thought that she had
gone with him.
But he must have known, too, that she wouldn't go. He must have known
that if he told her to wait for him she would wait. So that--
The voices of the McClane women ceased abruptly. One of them turned
round. Charlotte saw John standing between the glasses of the two doors.
He came in and she heard Mrs. Rankin calling out in her hard, insolent
voice, "Well, Mr. Conway, so you've got in safe."
She was always like that, hard and insolent, with her damned courage. As
if courage were ever anything more than just being decent, and as if
other people couldn't be decent too. She hated John because she couldn't
make him come to her, couldn't make him look with pleasure at her
beautiful, arrogant face. She disliked Sutton and McClane for the same
reason, but she hated John. He treated her face with a hardness and
insolence like her own. You could see her waiting for her revenge,
watching every minute for a chance to stick her blade into him. He was
pretending that he hadn't heard her.
His hair stood up in pointed tufts, rumpled from his pillow. His eyes had
a dazed, stupid look as if he were not perfectly awake. But at the sound
of the rasping voice his mouth had tightened; it was pinched and sharp
with pain. He didn't look at Mrs. Rankin. He came to her, Charlotte
Redhead, straight; straight as if she had drawn him from his sleep.
The McClane people got up, one after another, and went out.
"Charlotte," he said, "did you really think I'd left you?"
"I thought you'd left me. But I knew you hadn't."
"You _knew_ it wasn't possible?"
"Yes. Inside me I knew."
"I'm awfully sorry. Sutton told me you were going on with him, and I
thought you'd gone."