The Dark Tower Part 35

"You can call yourself what you like," said Lionel at last. "I know what you are, that's enough for me, and she knew it; that's one reason I got to caring for her.

"I dare say that seems a rummy thing to you, to care for a woman because she cares for another man. But it's a fact."

Winn moved uneasily. Then he said abruptly, "Look here, young 'un, I was wrong before when I asked you to step in instead of me, but I'm not wrong now. You can take it from me she'll marry you in the end. She's young; be patient. I dare say she'll think for a time she's had enough, but she hasn't. There's no good living a lonely life. We may both get done in, of course. But I don't fancy we shall. I want you to promise me not to get killed if you can help it.

"Keep away from me if you think I'm getting into trouble, because I sha'n't be getting into trouble, I shall be getting out of it, d'you see?"

The guns sounded nearer, a machine gun rattled sharply in their ears, as if it had been let off in their dug-out.

"I sha'n't care for anybody else," said Lionel, quietly, "and I shall wait all my life for her. As for not being killed--you don't want me to shirk my job, of course; bar that, I sha'n't ask for trouble."

Winn said, "All right--then that's that! I'm going to sleep."

They neither of them slept.

It came very quickly and confusedly toward dawn. The silence was rent across like a piece of torn silk. The crash of bombs, the peppery, sharp detonation of rifles broke up the sullen air. Out of the dark, vague shapes loomed, the trench filled with the sound of deep breathing and scuffling, and the shriek of sudden pain.

Death and mud and darkness closed together.

It was all over in half an hour, the attack was driven out, and the men moved uncertainly about, trying to discover their dead, and relieve their wounded.

The dawn was gray and in the half light, Winn saw Lionel's eyes open and shut; the blood was pouring from a hideous wound in his side.

"You've got to live," Winn said grimly, bending over him. "No d.a.m.ned nonsense about it! You've got to live." Lionel's eyes closed again and he knew nothing more of the rough bandaging, the endless waiting in the sodden trench while Winn sat motionless beside him, watching his flickering breath. In the hours of the interminable journey, Lionel roused himself sometimes and heard again like a perpetual refrain, "You've got to live." The motor ambulance jarred and b.u.mped it, the wheels of the train echoed it through the fever in his brain. He woke in England knowing that he was going to live.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You've got to live," said Winn, bending grimly over him; "You've got to live!"]

A few hours later Winn went to see the general of his division. "I want you to let me have another twenty-four in, sir," he explained. "They won't expect an attack so soon. I know my men are not very fresh, but it'll wake them up. They've stood a good lot. I've been talking to 'em.

They want to get a bit of their own back. That trench of theirs is too near us in any case. They'd be better pushed back."

The general hesitated, but Winn's fiery sunken eyes held and shook him.

"Well, Staines," he said, "you know what you can do with your men, of course. Have it your own way. When do you want to attack?"

"Soon as they've settled off to sleep," said Winn, "just to give 'em a night-cap."

"Don't lose too many men," said the general, "and above all come back yourself."

"That's as may be," said Winn. "If I can get the men over quietly in a bit of mist, I sha'n't lose too many of 'em. I've told them if they're too f.a.gged to stand, they'd better fight. They quite agree about it."

Winn led the attack with the last of his strength, and in the fierceness of his rage with life.

A white fog hung over the fields like the shadow of a valley filled with snow.

The men fought like demons--strange shapes in the fog, with here and there as the flames shot up, the flash of their black faces, set to kill.

Winn's voice rallied and held them above the racket of the spitting rifles, and the incessant coughing of the guns. It was the Staines voice let out on a last voyage. To have gone back against it would have been more dangerous than to go on against the guns.

They seized the trench and held it, there were no prisoners taken in the dark, and after the first light they ceased to hear Winn's voice.

The sun came out and showed them all they had won, and what they had lost.

Winn lay peacefully between the old trench and the new, beyond resentment, beyond confusion, in the direct simplicity of death.

THE END