"He's dead then?"
"I think so--You'd better not go to him."
"Of course I'm going to him. Where _is_ he?"
He steered her very quickly and carefully across the street, then led her
with his arm in hers, pressing her back to the dark shelter of the
houses. They heard the barking of machine guns from the battlefield at
the top and the rattle of the bullets on the causeway. These sounds
seemed to her to have no significance. As if they had existed only in
some unique relation to John Conway, his death robbed them of vitality.
The door of the house opened a little way; they slipped into the long
narrow room lighted by a few oil lamps at one end. At the other John's
body lay on a stretcher set up on a trestle table, his feet turned
outwards to the door, ready. The corners at this end were so dark that
the body seemed to stretch across the whole width of the room. A soldier
came forward with a lighted candle and gave it to McClane. And she saw
John's face; the bridge of his nose, with its winged nostrils lifted. His
head was tilted upwards at the chin; that gave it a noble look. His mouth
was open, ever so slightly open ... McClane shifted the light so that it
fell on his forehead.... Black eyebrows curling up like little
moustaches.... The half-dropped eyelids guarded the dead eyes.
She thought of how he used to dream. All his dream was in his dead face;
his dead face was cold and beautiful like his dream.
As she looked at him her breast closed down on her heart as though it
would never lift again; her breath shuddered there under her tightened
throat. She could feel McClane's hand pressing heavily on her shoulder.
She had no strength to shake it off; she was even glad of it. She felt
small and weak and afraid; afraid, not of the beautiful thing that lay
there, but of something terrible and secret that it hid, something that
any minute she would have to know about.
"Where was he hit?"
"In the back."
She trembled and McClane's hand pressed closer. "The bullet passed clean
through his heart. He didn't suffer."
"He was getting in Germans?"
"I don't--quite--know--" McClane measured his words out one by one,
"what--he was doing. Sutton was with him. He knows."
"Where _is_ Billy?"
"Over there. Do you want him?"
"Not yet."
A soldier brought a chair for her. She sat down with her back to the
trestle table. At the lighted end of the room she saw Sutton stooping
over a young Belgian captain, buttoning his tunic under the sling he had
adjusted. The captain's face showed pure and handsome, like a girl's,
like a young nun's, bound round and chin-wrapped in the white bandages.
He sat on the floor in front of Sutton's table with his legs stretched
out flat. His back was propped against the thigh of a Belgian soldier
seated on an upturned barrel. Her hurt eyes saw them very plain and with
detail in the light of Sutton's lamp.
That part of the room was full of soldiers. She noticed that they kept
clear of the trestle table as they went in and out. Only one of them, the
soldier who supported the young captain, kept on looking, raising his
head and looking there as if he couldn't turn his eyes away. He faced
her. His rifle stood steadied by his knees, the bayonet pointing up
between his eyes.
She found herself thinking. It was Sutton's back that made her think.
John must have been stooping over the German like that. John's wound
was in his back. But if he was stooping it couldn't have come that
way. The bullet would have gone through his chest.... Perhaps he had
turned to pick up his stretcher. Billy was there. He would tell her
how it had happened.
She thought: No. I've had enough. I shall give it up. I won't ask him.
But she knew that she would ask him. Once started, having gone so far,
flash by flash and step by step, she couldn't give it up; she would go
on, even now, till her knowledge was complete. Then she was aware again
of the soldier's eyes.
They were very large and bright and black in his smooth boy's face; he
had a small innocent boy's mouth that seemed to move, restless and
fascinated, like his eyes. Presently she saw that he was looking at her,
that his eyes returned to her again and again, as if he were aware of
some connection between her and the thing that fascinated him, as if _he_
were somehow connected.
He was listening to her now as Sutton spoke to her.
"We must get him away quick."
"Yes. Do let's get him away."
Sutton shook his head. He was thinking of the wounded captain.
"We can't yet. I'll come back for him."
"Then I'll wait with him here."
"Oh no--I think--"
"I can't leave him."
"It isn't safe. The place may be taken."
"I won't leave him." Sutton hesitated. "I won't, Billy."
"McClane, she says she won't leave him."
"Then," McClane said, "we must take him now. We'll have to make
room somehow."
(To make room for him--somehow.)
Sutton and the soldier carried the captain out and came back for John's
body. The Belgian sprang forward with eager, subservient alacrity to put
himself at the head of the stretcher, but Sutton thrust him aside.
The Belgian shrugged his shoulders and picked up his rifle with an air of
exaggerated unconcern. Sutton and McClane carried out the stretcher.
Charlotte was following them when the soldier stopped her.
"Mademoiselle--"
He had propped his rifle against the trestles and stood there, groping in
his pocket. A dirty handkerchief, dragged up by his fumbling, hung out by
its corner. All along the sharp crease there was a slender smear of
blood. He looked down at it and pushed it back out of her sight.
He had taken something out of his pocket.
"I will give you this. I found it on the battlefield."
He handed her a small leather pocketbook that was John's. It had her
photograph in it and his, taken together.
* * * * *
They were putting him out of sight, under the hood of the ambulance, and
she waited there when the war correspondent came up.
"_Can_ you tell me the name of the volunteer who's been killed?"
"Conway. John Roden Conway."
"What? _That_ man? The man who raced the Germans into Zele?"
"Yes," she said, "that man."
* * * * *
She was in John's room, packing, gathering together the things she would
have to take to his father. Sutton came to her there.
They had orders to be ready for the retreat any time that night.
Billy had brought her John's wrist watch and cigarette case.
"Billy," she said, "that soldier gave me this."
She showed him the pocketbook.
"What soldier?"
"The one who was with the captain."
"_He_ gave it you?"
"Yes. He said he found it on the battlefield. It must have dropped out of
John's pocket."
"It couldn't have dropped.... I wonder why he kept that."
"But he didn't keep it. He gave it to me."
"He was going to keep it, or he'd have handed it over to me with the
other things."
"Does it matter?"
"Well--"
She thought: "Why can't he leave it alone? They _had_ all his things, his
poor things."