Short stories, English; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
"And how do you like Brussels, dearest?" his ringing voice asked.
Brussels? Of course! As though a veil had fallen from her eyes she
saw that they were in the middle of the Grand' Place, lights playing,
Rembrandtesque, on the carved stonework of the ancient buildings. She
recognised it at once--how accurate the picture postcards had been!
Brussels--the honeymoon journey! She thrilled with happiness, leaning
on his strong arm.
The dream continued----.
* * * * *
All through the next day its vividness haunted her. At times she had
to will herself to live in the actual world. She scarcely spoke. The
Medical Officer in charge of her ward stopped her, asked her if she
were all right, his eyes searching her face. He sympathised with her in
her loss so kindly and gently that she loved him for it.
Number Ten was still the great preoccupation. He claimed incessant
care. But he was in the faint beginnings of good progress. Strangely,
it seemed that when she tended him there was a conflict in some obscure
part of her. There seemed to be an inarticulate voice, immensely
remote, vaguely minatory, not explicit. Captain Lavering insisted that
she was his rescuer, his eyes more eloquent than his words. It made
her feel awkward, curiously shame-faced. His reiteration threw her out
of that smile-armoured impersonal professional relation to the patient
which alone makes continuous hospital work possible. She masked her
face with a gentle severity. When he slept she was unreasonably glad.
But she liked tending him. The contact with actual life, pain-stricken
though it was, obliterated to some extent the haunting memory of that
dream world from which she shrank, vaguely frightened.
She forced herself to live only in the long, quiet, bright ward; in the
chattering society of the Sisters' messroom when off duty.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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