Part 37 (1/2)

'”_The_”'----

'Oo'----

Really, men, you must control yourselves. We are all glad and sustained by any victory, however slight, but you must not give way to unmeaning boisterousness. ”_This morning, on a front of three miles, after an intense artillery preparation, the Australians_”'----

There was a medley of submerged, prolonged snores. The chaplain looked up indignantly. With the exception of Selwyn and the two Australians, every one had followed the lead of the c.o.c.kney and disappeared underneath the bed-clothes.

'This,' said the good man--'this frivolity at such a harrowing moment in our country's destiny is neither seemly nor respectful. Cheerfulness is admirable, until it descends to horseplay.'

With which parting salvo the worthy chaplain, who had never been to France, and who was doing the best he could according to his clerical upbringing, left his unruly flock, taking the _communique_ with him.

A little later the doctor made his rounds, p.r.o.nouncing Selwyn's wound as not dangerous, but a.s.suring him he was lucky to be alive. Another inch either way and---- Pa.s.sing on to the Scotsman, he stayed a considerable length of time; but as the screen was set for the examination, the American had no way of knowing its nature.

And so, with constant badinage, seldom brilliant, but never unkind, the morning wore on. It was nearly noon when Selwyn saw a wheeled stretcher brought into the ward and the Highlander lifted on to it.

'Jock,' said the little c.o.c.kney, 'I 'opes as 'ow everythink will come out orlright.'

'By Gar, Scoachie!' cried the French-Canadian, 'I am sorree. You are one dam fine feller, Scoachie.'

'Dinna worry yersel's,' said the man from the North. 'I'm rare an' lucky that it's to be ma richt leg an' no the left, for that richt shank o'

mine was aye a wee thing crookit at the knee, and didna dae credit tae the airchitecture o' t.i.ther ane.'

Thus, amid the rough encouragement of his fellows, and by no means unconscious of the dignity of his position, the Highland soldier was taken away to the operating-room.

The French-Canadian made a remark to Selwyn, but it was not until the second repet.i.tion that he heard him.

III.

About three o'clock that afternoon a little stream of visitors began to arrive, and Thomas Atkins, with his extraordinary adaptability, gravely, if somewhat inaccurately, answered the catechism of well-meaning old ladies, and flirted heartily and openly with giggling 'flappers.'

To the visitors, however, Austin Selwyn paid no heed. He was enduring the la.s.situde which follows a fever. He knew that the crisis had come, the hour when he must face fairly the crash and ruin of his work; but he put it off as something to which his brain was unequal. Like slow drifting wisps of cloud, different phrases and incidents floated across his mind, shadows of things that had left a clear imprint upon his senses. With the odd vagrancy of an undirected mind, he found himself recalling a few of Hamlet's lines, and smiled wanly to think how, after all those years, the immortal Shakespeare could still give words to his own thoughts: 'This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, . . . this brave overhanging firmament--this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.'

The wings of memory bore him back to Harvard, where once in a scene from _Hamlet_ he had mouthed those very words, little dreaming that in a few short years he would lose the sense of euphony in the cruel realisation of their meaning.

Then, before he saw her or heard her step, he knew that SHE had come.

His heart quickened, and his breathing was tremulous with mingled emotions.

'Well,' she said, coming to his bedside and offering her hand, 'how is the invalid?'

'Elise,' he said, 'it is wonderful of you to come.' He looked at her khaki uniform, at the driver's cap which imprisoned her hair. 'Now,' he went on dreamily, 'it all comes back to me. It was you who brought me here.'

'Had you forgotten that already?' she said, bringing a chair to the bedside.

'I couldn't remember,' he answered weakly. 'All I know is that I was walking alone--and there came a blank. When I woke up I was here with a head that didn't feel quite like my own. But I knew, somehow, that you had been with me.'

'What does the doctor say about your wound?'

'It is not serious.'