The Romantic Part 34

"Well--"

She thought: "Why can't he leave it alone? They _had_ all his things, his poor things."

But Sutton was still thoughtful. "I wonder why he gave it you."

"I think he was sorry."

"_Was_ he!"

"Sorry for me, I mean."

Sutton said nothing. He was absorbed in contemplating the photograph.

They had been taken standing by the hurdle of the sheepfold, she with the young lamb in her arms and John looking down at her.

"That was taken at Barrow Hill Farm," she said, "where we were together.

He looked just like that.... Oh, Billy, do you think the past's really past?... Isn't there some way he could go on being what he _was_?"

"I don't know, Sharlie, I don't know."

"Why couldn't he have stayed there! Then he'd always have been like that.

We should never have known."

"You're not going to be unhappy about him?"

"No. I think I'm glad. It's a sort of relief. I shan't ever have that awful feeling of wondering what he'll do next.... Billy--you were with him, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"Was he all right?"

"Would it make you happier to think that he was or to know that he wasn't?"

"Oh--just to _know_."

"Well, I'm afraid he wasn't, quite.... He paid for it, Sharlie. If he hadn't turned his back he wouldn't have been shot."

She nodded.

"What? You knew?"

"No. No. I wasn't sure."

She was possessed of this craving to know, to know everything. Short of that she would be still bound to him; she could never get free.

"Billy--what did happen, really? Did he _leave_ the German?"

"The German?"

"Yes. Was that why he shot him?"

"The German didn't shoot him. He was too far gone, poor devil, to shoot anybody.... It was the Belgian captain that he left.... He was lying there, horribly wounded. His servant was with him; they were calling out to Conway--"

"_Calling_ to him?"

"Yes. And he was going all right when some shrapnel fell--a regular shower bath, quite near, like it did with you and me. That scared him and he just turned and ran. The servant shouted to him to stop, and when he wouldn't he went after him and put a bullet through his back."

"That Belgian boy?"

"Yes. I couldn't do anything. I had the German. It was all over in a second.... When I got there I found the Belgian standing up over him, wiping his bayonet with his pockethandkerchief. He _said_ his rifle went off by accident."

"Couldn't it? Rifles do."

"Bayonets don't.... I suppose I could get him court martialed if I tried.

But I shan't. After all, it was his captain. I don't blame him, Charlotte."

"No.... It was really you and me, Billy. We brought him back to be killed."

"I don't know that we did bring him--that he wasn't coming by himself. He couldn't keep off it. Even if we did, you wouldn't be sorry for that, would you?"

"No. It was the best thing we could do for him."

But at night, lying awake in her bed, she cried. For then she remembered what he had been. On Barrow Hill, on their seat in the beech ring, through the Sunday evenings, when feeding time and milking time were done.

At four o'clock in the morning she was waked by Sutton, standing beside her bed. The orders had come through to evacuate the hospital. Three hours later the ambulances had joined the great retreat.

XVI

They had halted in Bruges, and there their wounded had been taken into the Convent wards to rest.

Charlotte and Sutton were sitting out, alone together on the flagged terrace in the closed garden. The nuns had brought out the two chairs again, and set again the little table, covered with the white cloth.

Again the silver mist was in the garden, but thinned now to the clearness of still water.

They had been silent after the nuns had left them. Sutton's sad, short-sighted eyes stared out at the garden without seeing it. He was lost in melancholy. Presently he came to himself with a long sigh--

"Charlotte, what are we going to do now? Do you know?"

"_I_ know. I'm going into Mac's corps."

"So am I. That isn't what I meant."

For a moment she didn't stop to wonder what he did mean. She was too full of what she was going to do.