The Romantic Part 18

John had told her to stay there with the wounded man up the turn of the stable yard while he went for the stretcher. His car, packed with wounded, stood a little way up the street, headed for Ghent. Sutton's car, with one of McClane's chauffeurs, was in front of it, ready; she could hear the engine purring.

Instead of going at once for the stretcher John had followed Sutton into the house opposite, the house with the narrow grey shutters. And he had called to her again across the road to wait for him.

Behind her in the yard the wounded man sat on the cobblestones, his back propped against the stable wall. He was safe there, safer than he would have been outside in the ambulance.

It was awful to think that he would have been left behind if they had not found him at the last minute among the straw.

She went and stood by the yard entrance to see whether John were coming with the stretcher. A soldier came out of the house with the narrow shutters, wounded, limping, his foot bound to a splint. Then Sutton came, hurrying to help him. He shouted to her, "Come on, Charlotte, hurry up!"

and she called back, "I've got to wait here for John."

She watched them go on slowly up the road to Sutton's car; she saw them get in; she saw the car draw out and rush away.

Then she saw John come out of the door of the house and stand there, looking up and down the street. Once she saw him glance back over his shoulder at something behind him in the room. The same instant she heard the explosion and saw the sh.e.l.l burst in the middle of the street, not fifty yards from the ambulance. Half a minute after she saw John dash from the doorway and run, run at an incredible pace, towards his car. She heard him crank up the engine.

She supposed that he was going to back towards the yard, and she wondered whether she could lift up the Belgian and carry him out. She stooped over him, put her hands under his armpits, raising him and wondering. Better not. He had a bad wound. Better wait for the stretcher.

She turned, suddenly, arrested. The noise she heard was not the grating noise of a car backing, it was the scream of a car getting away; it dropped to a heavy whirr and diminished.

She looked out. Up the road she saw John's car rus.h.i.+ng furiously towards Ghent.

The Belgian had heard it. His eyes moved. Black hare's eyes, terrified.

It was not possible, he said, that they had been left behind?

No, it was not possible. John had forgotten them; but he would remember; he would come back. In five minutes. Seven minutes. She had waited fifteen.

The Belgian was muttering something. He complained of being left there.

He said he was not anxious about himself, but about Mademoiselle.

Mademoiselle ought not to have been left. She was sitting on the ground now, beside him.

"It'll be all right," she said. "He'll come back." When he remembered he would come back.

She had waited half an hour.

Another sh.e.l.l. It had burst over there at the backs of the houses, beyond the stable.

She wondered whether it would be safer to drag her man across the street under the wall of the Town Hall. They would be sure to aim at it and miss it, whereas any minute they might hit the stable.

At the moment while she wondered there was a third tremendous explosion, the crash and roar of brickwork falling like coal down an enormous chute.

It came from the other side of the street a little way down. It couldn't be far from the Town Hall. That settled it. Much better stay where they were. The Belgian had put his arm round her, drawing her to him, away from the noise and shock of the sh.e.l.l.

It was clear now that John was not coming back. He had forgotten them.

The Belgian's hold slackened; he dozed, falling against her and recovering himself with a jerk and begging her pardon. She drew down his head on to her shoulder and let it rest there. Her mind was soaked in the smell of his rank breath, of the warm sweat that oozed through his tunic, the hot, fetid smell that came through his unlaced boots. She didn't care; she was too sorry for him. She could feel nothing but the helpless pressure of his body against hers, nothing but her pity that hurt her and was exquisite like love. Yesterday she had thought it would be good to die with John. Now she thought it would be good to die with the wounded Belgian, since John had left her there to die.

And again, she had a vehement desire for life, a horror of the unjust death John was bringing on them.

But of course there wouldn't be any death. If n.o.body came she would walk back to Ghent and bring out the ambulance.

If only he had shouted to her to carry the wounded man and come. In the minute between the concussion of the sh.e.l.l and the cranking of the engine. But she could see him rus.h.i.+ng. If only she knew _why_ he had left them.... She wanted to get back to Ghent, to see John, to know. To know if John--if John really _was_--Nothing could be worse than not knowing.

It didn't matter so much his forgetting her. The awful thing was his forgetting the wounded man. How could you forget a wounded man? When she remembered the Belgian's terrified hare's eyes she hated John.

And, as she sat there supporting his head with her shoulder, she thought again. There must have been a wounded man in the house John had come out of. Was it possible that he had forgotten him, too?... He hadn't forgotten. She could see him looking back over his shoulder; looking at something that was lying there, that couldn't be anything but a wounded man. Or a dead man. Whatever it was, it had been the last thing he had seen; the last thing he had thought of before he made his dash. It wasn't possible that he had left a wounded man in there, alive. It was not possible.

And all the time while she kept on telling herself that it was not possible she saw a wounded man in the room John had left; she saw his head turning to the doorway, and his eyes, frightened; she felt his anguish in the moment that he knew himself abandoned. Not forgotten.

Abandoned.

She would have to go over to the house and see. She must know whether the man was there or not there. She raised the Belgian's head, gently, from her shoulder. She would have to wake him and tell him what she was going to do, so that he mightn't think she had left him and be frightened.

But the Belgian roused himself to a sudden virile determination.

Mademoiselle must _not_ cross the road. It was too dangerous.

Mademoiselle would be hit. He played on her pity with an innocent, cunning cajolery. "Mademoiselle must not leave me. I do not want to be left."

"Only for one minute. One little minute. I think there's a wounded man, like you, Monsieur, in that house."

"Ah--h--A wounded man?" He seemed to acknowledge the integrity of her purpose. "If only I were not wounded, if only I could crawl an inch, I would go instead of Mademoiselle."

The wounded man lay on the floor of the room in his corner by the fireplace where John had left him. His coat was rolled up under his head for a pillow. He lay on his side, with humped hips and knees drawn up, and one hand, half clenched, half relaxed, on his breast under the drooped chin; so that at first she thought he was alive, sleeping. She knelt down beside him and clasped his wrist; she unb.u.t.toned his tunic and put in her hand under his s.h.i.+rt above the point of his heart. He was certainly dead. No pulse; no beat; no sign of breathing. Yet his body was warm still, and limp as if with sleep. He couldn't have been dead very long.

And he was young. A boy. Not more than sixteen. John couldn't have left him.

She wasn't certain. She was no nearer certainty so long as she didn't know when the boy had died. If only she knew--

They hadn't unfastened his tunic and s.h.i.+rt to feel over his heart if he were dead. So he couldn't have been dead when they left him.... But there was Sutton. Billy wouldn't have left him unless he had been dead. Her mind worked rapidly, jumping from point to point, trying to find some endurable resting place.... He was so young, so small, so light. Light.

It wouldn't take two to carry him. She could have picked him up and carried him herself. Billy had had the lame man to look after. He had left the boy to John. She saw John looking back over his shoulder.

She got up and went through the house, through all the rooms, to see if there were any more of them that John had left there. She felt tired out and weak, sick with her belief, her fear of what John had done. The dead boy was alone in the house. She covered his face with her handkerchief and went back.

The Belgian waited for her at the entrance to the yard. He had dragged himself there, crawling on his hands and knees. He smiled when he saw her.

"I was coming to look for you, Mademoiselle."

She had him safe beside her against the stable wall. He let his head rest on her shoulder now, glad of the protecting contact. She tried not to think about John. Something closed down between them. Black. Black; shutting him off, closing her heart against him, leaving her heart hard and sick. The light went slowly out of the street, out of the sky. The dark came, the dark sounding with the "Boom--Boom" of the guns, lit with spiked diamond flashes like falling stars.

The Belgian had gone to sleep again when she heard the ambulance coming down the street.

"Is that you, Charlotte?"

"Billy--! What made you come?"

"Conway. He's in a frantic funk. Said he'd lost you. He thought you'd gone on with me."

How awful it would be if Billy knew.

"It was my fault," she lied. "He told me to go on with you." She could hear him telling her to wait for him in the stable yard.