"Listen!" she said gently. "The doctor will only give you enough to
make you sleep for two or three hours, and then I shall have time to
come and talk to you. Will that do!"
The unmoving eyes answered "No" again, and the doctor stood up.
"If he can bear it, Sister," he said, "we may as well leave him. I
can't understand it, though. I know how those wounds must hurt."
They left him then, and he lay for another couple of hours, his eyes
set on the canvas roof above his head, dropped for an instant to any
passing figure, lifting again to their fixed position. The eyes and the
mute appeal in them haunted the Sister, and half a dozen times, as she
moved about the beds, she flitted over to him, just to drop a word that
she had not forgotten and she was coming presently.
"You want me to talk to you, don't you?" she said. "There is something
you want me to find out?"
"Yes--yes--yes," said the quickly flickering eyelids.
The Sister read the label that was tied to him when he was brought in.
She asked questions round the ward of those who were able to answer
them, and sent an orderly to make inquiries in the other tents. He came
back presently and reported the finding of another man who belonged to
Ruthven's regiment and who knew him. So presently, when she was
relieved from duty--the first relief for thirty-six solid hours of
physical stress and heart-tearing strain--she went straight to the
other tent and questioned the man who knew Private Ruthven. He had a
hopelessly shattered arm, but appeared mightily content and amazingly
cheerful. He knew Wally, he said, was in the same platoon with him;
didn't know much about him except that he was a very decent sort; no,
knew nothing about his people or his home, although he remembered--yes,
there was a girl. Wally had shown him her photograph once, "and a real
ripper she is too." Didn't know if Wally was engaged to her, or
anything more about her, and certainly not her name.
The Sister went back to Wally. His wrinkled brow cleared at the sight
of her, but she could see that the eyes were sunk more deeply in his
head, that they were dulled, no doubt with his suffering.
"I'm going to ask you a lot of questions," she said, "and you'll just
close your eyes again if I speak of what you want to tell me. You do
want to tell me something, don't you?"
To her surprise, the "Yes" was not signaled back to her. She was
puzzled a moment. "You want to ask me something?" she said.
"Yes," the eyelids flicked back.
"Is it about a girl?" she asked. ("No.")
"Is it about money of any sort?" ("No.")
"Is it about your mother, or your people, or your home? Is it about
yourself?"
She had paused after each question and went on to the next, but seeing
no sign of answering "Yes" she was baffled for a moment. But she felt
that she could not go to her own bed to which she had been dismissed,
could not go to the sleep she so badly needed, until she had found and
answered the question in those pitiful eyes. She tried again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account