The Romantic Part 27

"Pretty bad going though. Hadn't we better go on and strike the main road?"

"Yes, if you want to go miles round and get held up by the transport."

"All right--if we can get through."

"You'll get through all right." His voice had the tone of finality.

"I'm to go by myself then?"

"Well--if I've got to drive Mrs. Rankin--"

She thought: It's going to be dangerous.

"By the way, I haven't told her I'm sending you. You don't want her b.u.t.ting in and going with you."

"No. I certainly don't want Trixie.... And look here, I don't particularly want those men. Much better leave them here where they're safe and send in again for them."

"I don't know that I _can_ send in again. We're supposed to have finished this job. The cars may be wanted for anything. _They'll_ be all right."

"I don't _like_ taking them."

"You're making difficulties," he said. He was irritable and hurried; he had kept on turning and looking up the street as though he thought the lieutenant might appear again at any minute.

"When _will_ you learn that you've simply got to obey orders?"

"All right."

She hadn't a chance with him. Whatever she said and did he could always bring it round to that, her orders. She thought she knew what _his_ orders had been.

He cranked up the engine. She could see him stooping and rising to it, a rhythmic, elastic movement; he was cranking energetically, with a sort of furious, flushed enjoyment of his power.

She backed and turned and he ran forward with her as she started. He shouted "Don't think about the main road. Get through.... And hurry _up_.

You haven't got too much time."

She knew. It was going to be dangerous and he funked it. He hadn't got to drive Trixie into Ghent. When the worst came to the worst Trixie could drive herself. She thought: He didn't tell her because he daren't. He knew she wouldn't let him send me by myself. She'd _make_ him go. She'd stand over him and bully him till he had to.

Still, she could do it. She could get through. Going by herself was better than going with a man who funked it. Only she would have liked it better without the two wounded men. She thought of them, jostled, falling against each other, falling forward and recovering, shaken by the jolting of the car, and perhaps brought back into danger. She suspected that not having too much time might be the essence of the risk.

Everything was quiet as they ran along the open road from the village to the hamlet that sat low and humble on the edge of the fields. A few houses and the long wall of the barn still stood; but by this time the house she had brought the guns from had the whole of its roof knocked in, and the stripped gable at the end of the row no longer p.r.i.c.ked up its point against the sky; the front of the hollow sh.e.l.l had fallen forward and flung itself across the road.

For a moment she thought the way was blocked. She thought: If I can't get round I must get over. She backed, charged, and the car, rocking a little, struggled through. And there, where the road swerved slightly, the high wall of a barn, undermined, bulged forward, toppling. It answered the vibration of the car with a visible tremor. So soon as she pa.s.sed it fell with a great crash and rumbling and sprawled in a smoky heap that blocked her way behind her.

After that they went through quiet country for a time, but further east, near the town, the sh.e.l.ling began. The road here was opened up into great holes with ragged, hollow edges; she had to skirt them carefully, and sometimes there would not be enough clear ground to move in, and one wheel of the car would go unsupported, hanging over s.p.a.ce.

Yet she had got through.

As she came into Zele she met the last straggling line of the refugees.

They cried out to her not to go on. She thought: I must get those men before the retreat begins.

Returning with her heavy load of wounded, on the pitch-black road, half way to Ghent she was halted. She had come up with the tail end of the retreat.

Trixie Rankin stood on the hospital steps looking out. The car turned in and swung up the rubber incline, but instead of stopping before the porch it ran on towards the downward slope. Charlotte jammed on the brakes with a hard jerk and backed to the level.

She couldn't think how she had let the car do that. She couldn't think why she was slipping from the edge of it into Trixie's arms. And stumbling in that ignominious way on the steps with Trixie holding her up on one side.... It didn't last. After she had drunk the hot black coffee that Alice Bartrum gave her she was all right.

The men had gone out of the messroom, leaving them alone.

"I'm all right, Trixie, only a bit tired."

"Tired? I should think you _were_ tired. That Conway man's a perfect devil. Fancy scooting back himself on a safe trip and sending you out to Zele. _Zele_!"

"McClane doesn't care much where he sends _you_."

"Oh, Mac--As if he could stop us. But he'd draw the line at Zele, with the Germans coming into it."

"Rot. They weren't coming in for hours and hours."

"Well, anyhow he thought they were."

"He didn't think anything about it. I wanted to go and I went. He--he couldn't stop me."

"It's no good lying to me, Charlotte. I know too much. I know he had orders to go to Zele himself and the d.a.m.ned coward funked it. I've a good mind to report him to Head Quarters."

"No. You won't do that. You wouldn't be such a putrid beast."

"If I don't, Charlotte, it's because I like you. You're the pluckiest little blighter in the world. But I'll tell you what I _shall_ do. Next time your Mr. Conway's ordered on a job he doesn't fancy I'll go with him and hold his nose down to it by the scruff of his neck. If he was _my_ man I'd b.l.o.o.d.y well tell him what I thought of him."

"It doesn't matter what you think of him. You were pretty well gone on him yourself once."

"When? When?"

"When you wanted to turn Mac out and make him commandant."

"Oh, _then_--I was a jolly fool to be taken in by him. So were you."

She stopped on her way to the door. "I admit he _looks_ everything he isn't. But that only shows what a beastly humbug the man is."

"No. He isn't a humbug. He really likes going out even if he can't stand it when he gets there."

"I've no use for that sort of courage."

"It isn't courage. But it isn't humbug."

"I've no use for your fine distinctions either."