Part 32 (2/2)
”I'm afraid something's--happened.”
”Who to?”
”We-ell--”
The m.u.f.fled drawl irritated her. Why couldn't he speak out?
”Is John hurt?”
”I'm afraid so.”
”Is he killed?”
”Well--I don't know that he can live. A German's put a bullet into him.”
”Where is he?”
She jumped down off the car.
McClane laid his hand on her arm. ”Don't. We shall bring him in--”
”He's dead then?”
”I think so--You'd better not go to him.”
”Of course I'm going to him. Where _is_ he?”
He steered her very quickly and carefully across the street, then led her with his arm in hers, pressing her back to the dark shelter of the houses. They heard the barking of machine guns from the battlefield at the top and the rattle of the bullets on the causeway. These sounds seemed to her to have no significance. As if they had existed only in some unique relation to John Conway, his death robbed them of vitality.
The door of the house opened a little way; they slipped into the long narrow room lighted by a few oil lamps at one end. At the other John's body lay on a stretcher set up on a trestle table, his feet turned outwards to the door, ready. The corners at this end were so dark that the body seemed to stretch across the whole width of the room. A soldier came forward with a lighted candle and gave it to McClane. And she saw John's face; the bridge of his nose, with its winged nostrils lifted. His head was tilted upwards at the chin; that gave it a n.o.ble look. His mouth was open, ever so slightly open ... McClane s.h.i.+fted the light so that it fell on his forehead.... Black eyebrows curling up like little moustaches.... The half-dropped eyelids guarded the dead eyes.
She thought of how he used to dream. All his dream was in his dead face; his dead face was cold and beautiful like his dream.
As she looked at him her breast closed down on her heart as though it would never lift again; her breath shuddered there under her tightened throat. She could feel McClane's hand pressing heavily on her shoulder.
She had no strength to shake it off; she was even glad of it. She felt small and weak and afraid; afraid, not of the beautiful thing that lay there, but of something terrible and secret that it hid, something that any minute she would have to know about.
”Where was he hit?”
”In the back.”
She trembled and McClane's hand pressed closer. ”The bullet pa.s.sed clean through his heart. He didn't suffer.”
”He was getting in Germans?”
”I don't--quite--know--” McClane measured his words out one by one, ”what--he was doing. Sutton was with him. He knows.”
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