The Parts Men Play Part 37

'"_The_"'----

'Oo'----

Really, men, you must control yourselves. We are all glad and sustained by any victory, however slight, but you must not give way to unmeaning boisterousness. "_This morning, on a front of three miles, after an intense artillery preparation, the Australians_"'----

There was a medley of submerged, prolonged snores. The chaplain looked up indignantly. With the exception of Selwyn and the two Australians, every one had followed the lead of the c.o.c.kney and disappeared underneath the bed-clothes.

'This,' said the good man--'this frivolity at such a harrowing moment in our country's destiny is neither seemly nor respectful. Cheerfulness is admirable, until it descends to horseplay.'

With which parting salvo the worthy chaplain, who had never been to France, and who was doing the best he could according to his clerical upbringing, left his unruly flock, taking the _communique_ with him.

A little later the doctor made his rounds, p.r.o.nouncing Selwyn's wound as not dangerous, but a.s.suring him he was lucky to be alive. Another inch either way and---- Pa.s.sing on to the Scotsman, he stayed a considerable length of time; but as the screen was set for the examination, the American had no way of knowing its nature.

And so, with constant badinage, seldom brilliant, but never unkind, the morning wore on. It was nearly noon when Selwyn saw a wheeled stretcher brought into the ward and the Highlander lifted on to it.

'Jock,' said the little c.o.c.kney, 'I 'opes as 'ow everythink will come out orlright.'

'By Gar, Scoachie!' cried the French-Canadian, 'I am sorree. You are one dam fine feller, Scoachie.'

'Dinna worry yersel's,' said the man from the North. 'I'm rare an' lucky that it's to be ma richt leg an' no the left, for that richt shank o'

mine was aye a wee thing crookit at the knee, and didna dae credit tae the airchitecture o' t.i.ther ane.'

Thus, amid the rough encouragement of his fellows, and by no means unconscious of the dignity of his position, the Highland soldier was taken away to the operating-room.

The French-Canadian made a remark to Selwyn, but it was not until the second repet.i.tion that he heard him.

III.

About three o'clock that afternoon a little stream of visitors began to arrive, and Thomas Atkins, with his extraordinary adaptability, gravely, if somewhat inaccurately, answered the catechism of well-meaning old ladies, and flirted heartily and openly with giggling 'flappers.'

To the visitors, however, Austin Selwyn paid no heed. He was enduring the la.s.situde which follows a fever. He knew that the crisis had come, the hour when he must face fairly the crash and ruin of his work; but he put it off as something to which his brain was unequal. Like slow drifting wisps of cloud, different phrases and incidents floated across his mind, shadows of things that had left a clear imprint upon his senses. With the odd vagrancy of an undirected mind, he found himself recalling a few of Hamlet's lines, and smiled wanly to think how, after all those years, the immortal Shakespeare could still give words to his own thoughts: 'This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, . . . this brave overhanging firmament--this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.'

The wings of memory bore him back to Harvard, where once in a scene from _Hamlet_ he had mouthed those very words, little dreaming that in a few short years he would lose the sense of euphony in the cruel realisation of their meaning.

Then, before he saw her or heard her step, he knew that SHE had come.

His heart quickened, and his breathing was tremulous with mingled emotions.

'Well,' she said, coming to his bedside and offering her hand, 'how is the invalid?'

'Elise,' he said, 'it is wonderful of you to come.' He looked at her khaki uniform, at the driver's cap which imprisoned her hair. 'Now,' he went on dreamily, 'it all comes back to me. It was you who brought me here.'

'Had you forgotten that already?' she said, bringing a chair to the bedside.

'I couldn't remember,' he answered weakly. 'All I know is that I was walking alone--and there came a blank. When I woke up I was here with a head that didn't feel quite like my own. But I knew, somehow, that you had been with me.'

'What does the doctor say about your wound?'

'It is not serious.'

'You have heard since what happened?'

'Yes.'

'It was absolutely topping the way you fought for that child's life.'

He made a deprecatory gesture, and for a moment conversation ceased. He was wondering at her voice. A subtle change had come over it. Her words were just as uncomfortably rapid as in the first days of their friends.h.i.+p, but there was a hidden quality caught by his ear which he could not a.n.a.lyse. Looking at her with eyes that had waited so long for her coming, he felt once more the affinity she held with things of nature. Her presence obliterated everything else. They were alone--the two of them. The hospital, London, the world, were dimmed to a distant background.

'After such a night,' he said, 'it is very kind of you to make this effort.'

'Not at all. We're cousins, you know.'

'I--I don't'----

'The Americans and the English, I mean. Relatives always go to each others' funerals, so I thought I might stretch a point and take in the hospital.'

'Oh! That was all?'

'Goodness, no! You automatically became a protege of mine when I picked you up last night. Isn't that a horrid expression?--but frightfully fas.h.i.+onable these unmoral days.'

'You must excuse me,' he said slowly, 'but I was foolish enough to think you came here because--well, because you wanted to.'

'So I did. An air-raid casualty is ever so much more romantic than a wounded soldier. If he lives through it, he always proposes the very next day either to the nurse or to the ambulance-driver, whereas a Tommy, after his third wound, becomes so _blase_.'

'You shouldn't torture me,' he said, wincing noticeably under the incision of her words.

Just for a fleeting instant her eyes were softened with a tender look of self-reproach. His heart warmed at the sight, but before he could convince himself that it was not a creation of his own fancy, it had pa.s.sed, and once more she was holding him at bay with her impersonal abruptness.

'Will you tell me about yourself?' he urged. 'Please.'

'What do you want to know?'

'Everything--everything!' he blurted out, impetuously leaning forward.

'My heavens! Don't you know how I've longed and waited for this moment ever since that night at your flat? I want to hear all about you--what you've done, where you've been, and--and in what mysterious way you've changed.'

'Have I changed?'

'Of course you have. You're trying to appear just as you were when we first met, but you can't do it. Even if I hadn't noticed the difference in you, I should have known that no one could live through these times and remain the same.'

'Why not? Haven't you?'

He laughed grimly, and his head sank back on the pillows. 'I want to know all about you, Elise,' he repeated dully.

'Very well.' She smoothed her skirt with her hands, and folded them Quakeress-fas.h.i.+on.

'As you know, I once had a flat in Park Walk--which I shared with various and variegated female patriots, also engaged in guiding the destinies of motor-cars. Edna was the first one to follow Marian, after she and I quarrelled; but Edna couldn't break herself of the habit of wandering into the Ritz for luncheon every second day with only a s.h.i.+lling in her pocket.'

'But I don't see how'----