The Romantic Part 15

She had drawn up the ambulance in the Square before the Hospital and sat in her driver's seat, waiting. Sutton came to her there. When he saw her he stood still.

"_You_ going?"

"Rather. Do you mind?"

Sutton didn't answer. All the way out to Berlaere he sat stolid and silent, not looking at anything they pa.s.sed and taking no more notice of the firing than if he hadn't heard it. As the car swung into Berlaere she was aware of his voice, low under the noise of the engine.

"What did you say?"

"Conway told me it was you who saved the guns."

Suddenly she was humbled.

"It was the men who saved them. We just brought them away."

"Conway told me what you did," he said quietly.

Going out with Sutton was a quiet affair.

"You know," he said presently, "it was against the Hague Convention."

"Good heavens, so it was! I never thought of it."

"You must think of it. You gave the Germans the right to fire on all our ambulances.... You see, this isn't just a romantic adventure; it's a disagreeable, necessary, rather dangerous job."

"I didn't do it for sw.a.n.k. I knew the guns were wanted, and I couldn't bear to leave them."

"I know, it would have been splendid if you'd been a combatant. But," he said sadly, "this is a field ambulance, not an armoured car."

IX

She was glad they had been sent out with the McClane Corps to Melle. She wanted McClane to see the stuff that John was made of. She knew what had been going on in the commandant's mind. He had been trying to persuade himself that John was no good, because, from the minute he had seen him with his ambulance on the wharf at Ostend, from the minute he had known his destination, he had been jealous of him and afraid. Why, he must have raced them all the way from Ostend, to get in first. Afraid and jealous, afraid of John's youth with its secret of triumph and of courage; jealous of John's face and body that men and women turned back to look at as they pa.s.sed; even the soldiers going up to the battlefields, going up to wounds and death, turned to look at this creature of superb and brilliant life. Even on the boat he must have had a dreadful wonder whether John was bound for Ghent; he must have known from the beginning that wherever Conway placed himself he would stand out and make other men look small and insignificant. If he wasn't jealous and afraid of Sutton she supposed it was because John had had that rather diminishing effect on poor Billy.

If Billy Sutton distinguished himself that would open McClane's eyes a little wider, too.

She wondered why Billy kept on saying that McClane was a great psychologist. If it was true that would be very awful for McClane; he would see everything going on inside people, then, all the things he didn't want to see; he wouldn't miss anything, and he would know all the time what John was like. The little man was wilfully shutting his eyes because he was so mean that he couldn't bear to see John as he really was. Now he would have to see.

The thought of McClane's illumination consoled her for her own inferior place in the adventure. This time the chauffeurs would have to stay at the end of the village with their cars. The three were drawn up at the street side, close under the house walls, McClane's first. Then Sutton's, with Gwinnie. Then hers; behind it the short straight road where the firing would come down.

John stood in the roadway waiting for the others. He had his hand beside her hand, grasping the arm of the driver's seat.

"I wish you could take me with you," she said.

"Can't. The orders are, all chauffeurs to stand by the cars."

... His eyebrows knotted and twitched in sudden anxiety.

"You know, Sharlie, you'll be fired on."

"I know. I don't mind, John, I don't really. I shall be all right."

"Yes. You'll be all right." But by the way he kept on glancing up and down the road she could see he was uneasy. "If you could have stood in front of those cars. _You're_ in the most dangerous place here."

"Somebody's got to be in it."

He looked at her and smiled. "Jeanne," he said, "in her armour."

"Rot."

And they were silent.

"I say, John--my car _does_ cover Gwinnie's a bit, doesn't it?"

"Yes," he said abruptly.

"_That's_ all right. You must go now. They're coming for the stretchers."

His face quivered. He thrust out his hand quickly, and as she took it she thought: He thinks he isn't coming back. She was aware of Mrs. Rankin and two of the McClane men with stretchers, pa.s.sing; she could see Mrs.

Rankin looking at them as she came on, smiling over her shoulder, drawing the men's attention to their leave-taking.

She thought: _They_ don't shake hands when they're going out. They don't think whether they're coming back or not.... They don't think at all. But then, none of them were lovers as she and John were lovers.

"John, you'd better go and carry Mrs. Rankin's stretcher for her."

He went.

She watched them as they walked together up the short straight road to the battlefield at the top. Sutton followed with Alice Bartrum; then the McClane men; they nodded to her and smiled. Then McClane, late, running, trying to overtake John and Mrs. Rankin, to get to the head of his unit.

Perhaps he was afraid that John, in his khaki, would be mistaken for the commandant.

How childish he was with his fear and jealousy. Childish. She thought of his petulant refusal to let John come in with them. As if he could really keep him out. When it came to action they _were_ one corps; they couldn't very well be divided, since McClane had more men than stretchers and John had more stretchers than men. They would all be infinitely happier, working together like that, instead of standing stupidly apart, glaring and hating.

Yet she knew what McClane and Mrs. Rankin had been playing for. McClane, if he could, would have taken their fine Roden cars from them; he would have taken Sutton. She knew that Mrs. Rankin would have taken John from her, Charlotte Redhead, if she could.

And when she thought of the beautiful, arrogant woman, marching up to the battlefield with John, she wondered whether, after all, she didn't hate her.... No. No. It was horrible to hate a woman who at any minute might be killed. They said McClane didn't look after his women. He didn't care how they exposed themselves to the firing; he took them into unnecessary danger. He didn't care. He was utterly cold, utterly indifferent to everybody and everything except his work of getting in the wounded.... Well, perhaps, if he had been decent to John, she wouldn't have believed a word of it, and anyhow they hadn't come out there to be protected.

She had a vision of John and McClane carrying Mrs. Rankin between them on a stretcher. That was what would happen if you hated. Hate could kill.

Then John and she were safe. They were lovers. Lovers. Neither of them had ever said a word, but they owned the wonderful, immaterial fact in secret to each other; the thought of it moved in secret behind all their other thoughts. From the moment, just pa.s.sed, when they held each other's hands she knew that John loved her, not in a dream, not in coldness, but with a queer unearthly ardour. He had her in his incredible, immaterial way, a way that none of them would understand.

From the Barrow Hill Farm time? Or from yesterday? She didn't know.

Perhaps it had gone on all the time; but it would be only since yesterday that he really knew it.

A line of soldiers marched by, going up to the battlefield. They looked at her and smiled, a flashing of bright eyes and teeth all down the line.

When they had pa.s.sed the street was deserted.