The Romantic Part 11

"Doesn't he?"

"Don't ask me what he _means_."

She shrugged her shoulders violently. "Come over here and sit by me. I want to talk to you. Seriously."

She had s.h.i.+fted her seat and made a place for him beside her on the bench. Her flushed, handsome face covered him with its smile. You could see she was used to being obeyed when she smiled like that; when she sent that light out of her eyes men did what she wanted. All her life the men she knew had obeyed her, all except McClane. She didn't know John.

He raised his head and looked at her with cool, concentrated dislike.

"I'd rather stay where I am if you don't mind. I want to talk to Miss Redhead."

"Oh--" Mrs. Rankin's flush went out like a blown flame. Her lips made one pale, tight thread above the set square of her chin. All her light was in her eyes. They stared before her at the gla.s.s door where McClane was entering.

He came swaggering and slipped into his place between her and Alice Bartrum with his air of not seeing Mrs. Rankin, of not seeing Charlotte and John, of not seeing anything he didn't want to see. Presently he bobbed round in his seat so as to see Sutton, and began talking to him excitedly.

At the end of it Charlotte and Sutton found themselves alone, smiling into each other's faces.

"Do you like him?" she said.

"I'm not sure. All the same that isn't a bad idea of Mrs. Rankin's."

It was Sutton who tried to work it the next morning, sounding McClane.

Charlotte was in the s.p.a.ce between the gla.s.s doors, arranging their stores in their own cupboard. McClane's stores had overflowed into it on the lower shelves. She could hear the two men talking in the room, Sutton's low, persuasive voice; she couldn't hear what he was saying.

Suddenly McClane brought his fist down on the table.

"I'll take you. And I'll take your women. And I'll take your ambulances.

I could do with two more ambulances. But I won't take Conway."

"You can't tell him that."

"Can't I!"

"What can you say?"

"I can say--"

She pushed open the gla.s.s door and went in. McClane was whispering furtively. She saw Sutton stop him with a look. They turned to her and Sutton spoke.

"Come in, Miss Redhead. This concerns you. Dr. McClane wants you and Miss Denning and me to join his corps."

"And how about Mr. Conway?"

"Well--" McClane was trying to look innocent. "Mr. Conway's just the difficulty. There can't be two commandants in one corps and he says he won't take orders from me."

(Mrs. Rankin must have talked about it, then.)

"Is that what you told Dr. Sutton?"

"Yes."

His cold, innocent blue eyes supported him. He was lying; she knew he was lying; that was not what he had said when he had whispered.

"You don't suppose," she said, "I should leave Mr. Conway? And if I stick to him Gwinnie'll stick."

"And Dr. Sutton?"

"He can please himself."

"If Miss Redhead stays I shall stay."

"John will let you off like a shot, if you don't want to."

She turned to go and McClane called after her, "My offer remains open to you three."

Through the gla.s.s door she heard Sutton saying, "If you're right, McClane, I can't very well leave her with him, can I?"

Sutton was stupid. He didn't understand. Lying on her bed that night Charlotte made it out.

"Gwinnie--you know why McClane won't have John?"

"I suppose because Mrs. Rankin's keen on him."

"McClane isn't keen on Mrs. Rankin.... Can't you see he's trying to hoof John out of Belgium, because he wants all the glory to himself? We wouldn't do that to one of them, even if we were mean enough not to want them in it."

"He wanted Sutton."

"Oh, Sutton--He wasn't afraid of _him_.... When you think of the war--and think of people being like that. Jealous. Hating each other--"

You mightn't like Mrs. Rankin, Mrs. Rankin and McClane; but you couldn't say they weren't splendid.

Five days had pa.s.sed. On the third day the McClane Corps had been sent out. (Mrs. Rankin had not dined with the Colonel for nothing.)

It went again and again. By the fifth day they knew that it had distinguished itself at Alost and Termonde and Quatrecht. The names sounded in their brains like a song with an exciting, maddening refrain.

October stretched before them, golden and blank, a volume of tense, vibrating time.

Nothing for it but to wait and wait. The summons might come any minute.

Charlotte and Gwinnie had begun by sitting on their drivers' seats in the ambulances standing in the yard, ready to start the very instant it came.

Their orders were to hold themselves in readiness. They held themselves in readiness and saw McClane's cars swing out from the rubbered sweep in front of the Hospital three and four times a day. They stood on their balcony and watched them rush along the road that led to the battlefields southeast of the city. The sight of the flat Flemish land and the sadness of lovely days oppressed them. She felt that it must be partly that. The incredible loveliness of the days. They sat brooding over the map of Belgium, marking down the names of the places, Alost, Termonde and Quatrecht, that McClane had gone to, that he would talk about on his return, when an awful interest would impel them to listen. He and Mrs.

Rankin would come in about tea-time, swaggering and excited, telling everybody that they had been in the line of fire; and Alice Bartrum would move about the room, quiet and sweet, cutting bread and b.u.t.ter and pretending to be unconcerned in the narration. And in the evening, after dinner, the discussion went on and on in John's bedroom. He raged against his infernal luck. If they thought he was going to take it lying down--

"McClane can keep me out of my messroom, but he can't keep me out of my job. There's room in 'the line of fire' for both of us."

"How are you going to get into it?" said Sutton.