Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short StoriesNesbit, E. (Edith)
General
Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories
Nesbit, E. (Edith)
Short stories
'They had to,' she returned. 'Mr. Grenville had to get on with his
dispatches, an' it was the last chance the professor an' his wife had of
gettin' through to their child. An' the other lady--Well, she couldn't
do nothin' but scream anyhow. By the time I was comin' back from the
creek the car was just pullin' out of sight. Somehow, to see it go like
that gave me a kind of funny feelin'. I was scared, I reckon, but all
the same I felt kind of still too. It seemed like for the last few weeks
I'd been hustled along in a wild kind of a torrent, but now I'd touched
bottom an' got my feet under me. I reckon a woman does touch bottom when
there's anything she can do--anyhow, one raised to work like I've been
does. But, oh, my Lord!' she cried suddenly, dropping her face to her
hands, 'I wish I could keep from seein' it all still--an' hearin' it
too! Did you ever hear a _man_ scream?' she demanded. 'Not just groan,
but shriek, an' scream?'
'In hospitals,' I said, uncertainly, 'I've heard people screaming when
they were coming out of ether.'
She shook her head. 'That's different. You knew there were people,
nurses and doctors, to do things for 'em; but out there there wasn't
anything but the trampled wheat, an' the big empty sky. There was plenty
of 'em who wanted water, an' begged an' cried for it; but I just said,
"I'll be back to you all presently," an' went on to the first one. He
was kind of delirious, but he could drink the water, an' was mighty glad
to get it. I brushed the flies all away, an' spread a clean handkerchief
over his wound,--he was too far gone to try an' do anything else for
him,--an' went on back to the creek. Water, that was the main thing they
wanted. The most of 'em that could be were bandaged already. Some of the
medical outfit had been around an' got 'em tied up, but after that, I
reckon the fightin' must of changed an' cut 'em off from their friends,
for the stretcher-bearers didn't come, an' didn't come.
'It was all so strange an' kind of shut away there, like destruction had
lit for a spell an' then flown on to the next place. The wheat was all
laid over an' tramped, and lumpy with khaki bodies, an' with caps an'
guns an' things flung around in it, an' the red sun sailin' down an'
down in the West, an' every here an' there awful splatters of blood in
the wheat. But I didn't have time to look an' think too much--an' it was
mighty lucky I didn't have. They were all English an' had run upon a
German battery an' been shot to pieces 'fore they hardly knew what was
happenin.' I guess some of 'em must have got away, but there was a
plenty that didn't. They'd been layin' there since dawn, an'--an' they
were _hungry_--' her voice broke. 'An' I didn't have anything to give
'em,' she whispered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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