The Romantic Part 13

"I wish you'd let me drive. You know I like driving."

"Not this time."

At the dressing-station, a deserted store, they found a Belgian Army Medical officer engaged with a tired and flushed and dirty soldier. He was bandaging his left hand which had made a trail of blood splashes from the street to the counter. The right hand hung straight down from a nick in the dropped wrist where a tendon had been severed. He told them that they had grasped the situation. Seven men waited there for transport.

The best thing--perhaps--He looked doubtfully at Charlotte--would be for them to take these men back at once. (The tired soldier murmured something: a protest or an entreaty.) Though they were not exactly urgent cases. They could wait.

Charlotte suspected a serious reservation. "You mean you have others more urgent?"

The soldier got in his word. "Much more." His lips and eyes moved excitedly in the flush and grime.

"Well yes," the doctor admitted that they had. Not in the village, but in a hamlet about a mile outside of it. An outpost. This man and three others had been holding it with two machine guns. He had had a finger shot away and his wrist cut open by a sh.e.l.l-burst; the other three were left there, badly wounded.

"All right, we'll go and fetch them."

"Monsieur, the place is being sh.e.l.led. You have no orders."

"We've no orders not to."

The doctor spread out helpless palms, palms that disclaimed responsibility.

"If you go, you go at your own risk. I will not send you."

"That's all right."

"Oh well--But certainly Mademoiselle must be left behind."

"Mademoiselle is much too useful."

Frantic gestures of eyebrows and palms.

"You must not stay there more than three minutes. _Three minutes_."

He turned to the cut tendon with an air of integrity, his conscience appeased by laying down this time limit.

John released the clutch, and the soldier shouted out something, they couldn't make out what, that ended with "mitrailleuses."

As they ran down the street the solemn Boom--Boom came right and left; they were now straight between the two batteries.

"Are you all right, Sharlie?"

"Rather."

The little Belgian by her side muttered, protesting.

"We're not really in any danger. It's all going on over our heads."

"Do you suppose," she said, "they'll get our range?"

"Rather not. Why should they? They've got their range and they'll stick to it."

The firing on their right ceased.

"They're quiet enough now," she said.

The little Belgian informed her that if they were quiet so much the worse. They were finding their range.

She thought: We were safe enough before, but--

"Supposing," she said, "they alter their range?"

"They won't alter it just for the fun of killing us. They haven't spotted the batteries yet. It's the batteries they're trying for, not the street."

But the little Belgian went on protesting.

"What's the matter with him?"

"He's getting a bit jumpy," she said, "that's all."

"Tell him to buck up. Tell him it's all right."

She translated. The little Belgian shook his head, mournfully persistent.

"Monsieur," he said, "didn't know."

"Oh yes, he does know."

It was absurd of the little man to suppose you didn't know, when the noise of the French guns told them how near they were to the enemy's target.

She tried not to listen to him. His mutterings broke up the queer stillness that held her after she had heard the guns. It was only by keeping still that you felt, wave by wave, the rising thrill of the adventure. Only by keeping still she was aware of what was pa.s.sing in John's mind. He knew. He knew. They were one in the almost palpable excitement that they shared; locked close, closer than their bodies could have joined them, in the strange and poignant ecstasy of danger.

There was the sound of an explosion somewhere in front of them beyond the houses.

"Did you hear that, Mademoiselle?"

"I did."

"Miles away," said John.

She knew it wasn't. She thought: He doesn't want me to know. He thinks I'll be frightened. I mustn't tell him.

But the Belgian had none of John's scruples. The sh.e.l.l was near, he said; very near. It had fallen in the place they were going to.

"But that's the place where the wounded men are."

He admitted that it was the place where the wounded men were.

They were out of the village now. Their road ran through flat open country, a causeway raised a little above the level of the fields. No cover anywhere from the fire if it came. The Belgian had begun again.

"What's that he's saying now?"