Part 45 (1/2)

His thoughts ran in leaping waves of half-consciousness from one picture of recollection to another... Yes, it was Helen who had been to see him last... What a ninny she had made him appear when he proposed to her by mistake under the tree!... How the mischief would leap out of her eyes!... How many kinds of Helen were there?

Sometimes he had thought that she suffered because she was plain. No, all she cared for was to make drawings. How would she and Peter get along? They would be a pair! She would be certain to cartoon him...

The terrace at Mervaux! That last night when the three had walked up and down together in the dusk. White slippers moving in unison with his own steps--odd that he should remember that! Two voices were so alike that either girl might have been speaking. Why, it was quite the same as if he had his hearing back and could not see...

Henriette smiling from her easel at him--how good she was to look at!

Helen with her quips as she was drawing the cartoons! Helen in her intensity as she made the real drawing! Henriette silent, smiling, her lips parted as if she were speaking and Helen's words seeming to be here! Oh, afternoon of afternoons! Air sweet to the nostrils and genial sunlight! All the senses in tranquil enjoyment!...

And Henriette! Oh, he had been hard hit that day. It was enough for any woman to be as beautiful as she was! But how little he realised her worth then! Her beauty had dimmed her other qualities. She was all of Helen and Henriette, too... That glorious courage of Henriette in face of the sh.e.l.ls! The woman who had waited had not been afraid.

When she had only to raise her finger to bring the strong and the well to pay her court, her loyalty had not faltered when he was too horrible to remain alive. If he had not been wounded he would never have known her true worth...

How had such luck come to him? Silence, you pain devils! It had--it had! The messages of her st.u.r.dy determination that had fortified him and of the nonsense that cheers which she had written on his arm were recalled. Now he was imagining the touch of her fingers on his arm writing good news. Any minute he might feel her hand-clasp announcing her return. For he had no idea of time; her comings and goings set his calendar. This Henriette made the other seem only a doll. She said that he would get well. He should. It was too good a world for his sight not to come back in order that he might feed it on the beautiful vision of her--now that suffering had taught him how to appreciate her.

”You are very eerie this afternoon,” whispered the Fiend General Commanding, beaten down to a grumbling complaint. ”If we could only stop you from thinking of her we'd soon have you.”

”You never will!” Phil replied. ”She has the measure of such imps of h.e.l.l as you.”

And he slept.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

LIGHT

Either Helen or Phil had given the eye expert the name of Mr. Eyes and the ear expert that of Mr. Ears, which these great men who had honourific alphabetical court trains to their names did not mind. As guardian of the nerve which enables us to know whether the tenor is in good voice or not and to tell the notes of the lark from those of the nightingale or, what was more important in the latest European operations, the cough of the _soixante-quinze_ from the rattle of a machine-gun, Mr. Ears was champion of silence in the hospital, which might have been as noisy as a boiler factory without disturbing Phil.

The ambulances ran softly up to the door; the nurses spoke low; they did not rattle the dishes when they brought food from the diet kitchens. After Phil's nurse had placed his tray in front of him preparatory to feeding him, she was called to the other end of the room for something, when she heard a crash behind her. She turned to see broken gla.s.s and crockery scattered on the floor. Extraordinary! This had never happened before to him. As she bent over to wipe up the small delta of milk she saw Phil's foot wiggling energetically, demanding his pad--a rare request unless he knew that Helen was present.

”Did it make a noise?” he asked.

”Of course, and an awful mess!” she replied. ”How did it happen?”

”Experiment!” he wrote.

Experiment? It was a plain case of being out of his head. She hoped that Helen would come soon, as she always brought him around if he gave signs of delirium. Meanwhile, she must be on the watch lest he tear off his bandages, as other of Bricktop's patients had done, but her apprehensions were quite groundless.

The downfall of the tray was a test after vague intimations that sound was entering Phil's silent world. It was as loud to his ears as the crackling of a sheet of newspaper. His elation over the discovery was so great that he had a reaction when the nerve-devils began plying him with their scepticism.

”Well-known psychological illusion!” they said, using professional language which they had picked up from long a.s.sociation with hospitals.

”Imagination played you a trick. You knew it was going to cras.h.!.+”

Very likely they were right. Hadn't he imagined that he could see the interior of the ward and how Henriette looked when she bent over him to write on his arm? Hadn't he sometimes heard her steps in imagination around his chair? He set all his mind into his ears, straining for some other sound. There was none.

”This torture is called hope unfilled!” chirruped the nerve-devils.

”Oh, what a dance we shall give you to-morrow after the operation! The operation is to-morrow, isn't it?”

Of course the nurse related the whole affair to Helen when she arrived.

”'Experiment,' he said. How extraordinary!” exclaimed the nurse, who was still more astounded when Helen gave an outcry of joy and, leaning over, puckered her lips and uttered a sharp whistle--which was one of her accomplishments--in Phil's ear.