The Romantic Part 33

"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, b.u.t.toning 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?"