Sylvia & Michael Part 32

When Miss Potberry heard of her chief's arrival in Nish she insisted upon going to see him.

"But, my dear woman, he may be dying. What's the good of bothering him now? I'll find out whatever he can tell me. You must get ready to leave Nish. Pack up your things."

"He may be glad to dictate something," Miss Potberry argued. "Please let me come. I am anxious to report to Captain Hazlewood. I'm sure if you had told him that I was here he would have wished to see me."

Sylvia did not feel that she could contest anything; with Miss Potberry's help she burned the few papers that remained in the safe, together with the cipher, which glowed and smoldered in the basin for what seemed an interminable time. When not a single record of Hazlewood's presence in Serbia remained, Sylvia and Miss Potberry went back to the hospital.

"You've burned everything?" he asked.

Sylvia nodded.

"Is that a nurse? I can't see in this infernal candle-light, and I'm chockful of morphia, which makes my eye-lids twitch."

"It's I, Captain Hazlewood--Miss Potberry. I had instructions from the War Office to report to you. I was unfortunately delayed upon my journey, and when I arrived from Salonika you had left. Is there anything you would like done?"

"Oh, my G.o.d!" he half groaned, half laughed. "I see that even my death-bed is going to be haunted by departmental imbecility. Who on earth sent you to Nish from Salonika?"

"Colonel Bullingham-Jones, to whom I reported in Salonika, knew nothing about me and advised me to come on here as soon as possible."

"Officious a.s.s!" Hazlewood muttered. "Why didn't you go back when you found I wasn't here?" he added to his secretary.

"There was no way of getting back, Captain Hazlewood. I believe that the enemy has cut the line."

"I'm sorry you've had all this trouble for nothing," he said. "However, you and Miss Scarlett must settle between you how to get away. You'd better hang on to one of the Red Cross units."

"I'm afraid I may have to leave my typewriter behind," said Miss Potberry. "Have I your permission?"

"You have," he said, smiling with his eyes through the glaze of the drug.

"You couldn't give me a written authorization?" asked Miss Potberry.

"Being government property--"

"No, I can only give you verbal instructions. Both my arms have been shot away, or as nearly shot away as doesn't make it possible to write."

"Oh, I beg your pardon. Then to whom should I report next?"

"I don't know. It might be St. Peter, with winter coming on and Albania to be crossed. No, no, don't you bother about reporting. Just follow the crowd and you'll be all right. Good-by, Miss Potberry. Sorry you've had such a long journey for nothing. Sorry about everything."

He beckoned Sylvia close to him with his eyes.

"For Christ's sake get rid of her or I shall have another hemorrhage."

Sylvia asked Miss Potberry to go back to the hotel and get packed. When the secretary had gone, she knelt by Hazlewood.

"Michael Fane arrived yet?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"I had something to give him."

The wounded man's face became more definitely lined with pain in the new worry of Fane's non-appearance.

"I want you to give him a letter. It's under my pillow. If by chance he doesn't come, perhaps you'd be good enough to post it when you get an opportunity. Miss Pauline Grey, Wychford Rectory, Oxfordshire."

Sylvia found the letter, which was still unaddressed.

"If Michael comes, I'd like him to take it to her himself when he gets to England. Thanks awfully. Give him my love. He was a great friend of mine. Yes, a great friend. Thanks awfully for helping me. I don't like to worry the poor devils here. They've got such a lot to worry them.

Ant.i.tch died while you were burning my papers."

Sylvia looked at the m.u.f.fled figure whose eyes no longer stared with troubled imperception.

"Of course I may last for two or three days," he went on. "And in that case I may see Michael. Mind you bring him if he comes in time. Great friend of mine, and I'd like him to explain something to somebody. By the way, don't take all my talk the other night too seriously. I often talk like that. I don't mean half I say. England's all right, really.

Perhaps you'll look me up in the morning if I'm still here? Good-by.

Thanks very much. I'm sorry I can't shake hands."

"Would you like a priest?" Sylvia asked.

"A priest?" he repeated, in a puzzled voice. "Oh no, thanks very much; priests have always bored me. I'm going to lie here and think. The annoying thing is, you know, that I've not the slightest desire to die.

Some people say that you have at the end, but I feel as if I was missing a train. Perhaps I'll see you in the morning. So long."

But she did not see him in the morning, because he died in the night, and his bed was wanted immediately for another wounded man.

"What a dreadful thing war is!" sighed Miss Potberry. "I've lost two first cousins and four second cousins, and my brother is soon going to France."

The evacuation of Nish was desperately hastened by the news of the swift advance of the enemy on three sides. Sylvia, with the help of Colonel Michailovitch, managed to establish her rights over Hazlewood's horse, and Miss Potberry, fired with the urgency of reporting to somebody else and of explaining why she had abandoned her typewriter, was persuaded to attach herself to a particularly efflorescent branch of Dorothy Perkins that had wound itself round Harry Vereker to be trained into safety on the other side of the mountains. The last that Sylvia saw of her was when she drove out of Nish in a bullock-cart, still pink and prim, because the jolting had not yet really begun. The last Sylvia heard of Harry Vereker was his unruffled voice leaving instructions that if some white corduroy riding-breeches which he had been expecting by special courier from Athens should by chance arrive before the Bulgarians, they were to follow him. One had the impression of his messenger and his breeches as equally important ent.i.ties marching arm in arm toward the Black Drin in obedience to his instructions. The next day came news of the fall of Kragujevatz, following upon that of Pirot, and the fever of flight was aggravated to panic.

In the evening when Sylvia was watching the tormented square, listening to the abuse and blasphemy that was roused by the scarcity of transport, and trying to accept in spite of the disappointment the irremediable fact of Michael's failure to arrive, she suddenly caught sight of his sister pushing her way through the mob below. Her appearance alone like this could only mean that Michael had been killed; Sylvia cursed the flattering lamp of fortune, which had lighted her to Nish only to extinguish itself in this moment of confusion and horror. How pale that sister looked, how deeply ringed her eyes, how torn and splashed her dress: she must have heard the news of her brother and fled in despair before the memory. All Sylvia's late indifference to suffering in the actual presence of war was rekindled to a fury of resentment against the unreasonable forces that the world had let loose upon itself; even the envelope that Hazlewood had given to her now burned her heart with what it inclosed of eternally unquenched regret, of eternal unfulfilment. She hurried down-stairs and out into the mad, screaming, weeping mob and bathed herself in the stench of wet and filthy rags and in the miasma of sick, starved, and verminous bodies. A child was sucking the raw head of a hen; it happened that Sylvia knocked against it in her hurry, whereupon the child grabbed the morsel of blood and mud, snarling at her like a famished hound. Wherever she looked there were children searching on all-fours among the filth lodged in the cracks of the rough paving-stones; it was an existence where nothing counted except the ability to trample over one's neighbor to reach food or safety; and she herself was searching for Michael's sister in the fetid swarm, just as these children were shrieking and scratching for the cabbage-stalks they found among the dung. At last the two women met, and Sylvia caught hold of Mrs. Merivale's arm.

"What do you want? What do you want?" she cried. "Can I help you?"

The other turned and looked at Sylvia without recognizing her.

"You're Mrs. Merivale--Michael's sister," Sylvia went on. "Don't you remember me? Sylvia Scarlett. What has happened to him?"

"Can't we get out of this crowd?" Mrs. Merivale replied. "I'm trying to find an English officer--Captain Hazlewood."

Before Sylvia could tell her what had happened a cart drawn by a donkey covered with sores interposed between them; it was impossible for either woman to ask or answer anything in this abomination of humanity that oozed and writhed like a bunch of earthworms on a spade. Somehow they emerged from it all, and Sylvia brought her up-stairs to her room.

"Is Michael dead?" she asked.

"No, but he's practically dying. I've got him into a deserted house. He fell ill with typhus in Kragujevatz. The enemy was advancing terribly fast, and I got him here, Heaven knows how, in a bullock-cart--I've probably killed him in doing so; he certainly can't be moved again. I must find this friend of ours--Guy Hazlewood. He'll be able to tell me how long we can stay in Nish."

Sylvia broke the news of Hazlewood's death and was momentarily astonished to see how casually she took it. Then she remembered that she had already lost her husband, that her brother was dying, and that probably she had heard such tidings of many friends. This was a woman who was beholding the society in which she had lived falling to pieces round her every day; she was not, like herself, cloistered in vagrancy, one for whom life and death had waved at each other from every platform and every quay in partings that were not less final. There occurred to Sylvia the last utterance of Hazlewood about missing a train; he perhaps had found existence to be a destructive business; but, even so, she could not think that he had loved it more charily.

"Everybody is dying," said Mrs. Merivale. "Those who survive this war will really have been granted a second life and will have to begin all over again like children--or lunatics," she added to herself.

"Could I come with you to see him?" Sylvia asked. "I had typhus myself last year in Petrograd and I could nurse him."

"I don't think it's any longer a matter for nursing," the other answered, hopelessly. "It's just leaving him alone and not worrying him any more. Oh, I wonder how long we can count on Nish not being attacked."