Great Britain. Army -- Fiction; Military education -- Fiction; Military engineers -- Fiction
"She's called Lucille. A nice old thing, and seems to have looked after
you well. When I came in she was singing you to sleep. Voice all gone, of
course, but I'd like to write down the song. It sounded like the genuine
article."
"What do you mean by the 'genuine article'?"
"Well, I think it was one of the plantation lullabies they used to sing
before the war; not the imitation trash fourth-rate composers turned out
in floods some years ago. That, of course, has no meaning, but the other
expressed the spirit of the race. Words quaint coon-English with a touch
of real feeling; air something after the style of a camp-meeting hymn,
and yet somehow African. In fact, it's unique music, but it's good."
"Hadn't I another nurse?" Dick asked.
Jake laughed. "I ought to have remembered that you're not musical. There
was a nursing sister of some religious order."
"I don't mean a nun," Dick persisted. "A girl came in now and then."
"It's quite possible. Some of them are sympathetic and some are curious.
No doubt, you were an interesting patient; anyhow, you gave the Spanish
doctor plenty trouble. He was rather anxious for a time; the fever you
had before the dago stabbed you complicated things." Jake paused and
looked at his watch. "Now I've got to quit. I had orders not to stay
long, but I'll come back soon to see how you're getting on."
Dick let him go and lay still, thinking drowsily. Jake had apparently not
meant to answer his questions. He wanted to know where he was and had not
been told. It looked as if his comrade had been warned not to enlighten
him; but there was no reason for this. Above all, he wanted to know who
was the girl with the sweet voice and light step. Jake, who had admitted
that she might have been in his room, had, no doubt, seen her, and Dick
could not understand why he should refuse to speak of her. While he
puzzled about it he went to sleep again.
It was dark when he awoke, and perhaps he was feverish or his brain was
weakened by illness, for it reproduced past scenes that were mysteriously
connected with the present. He was in a strange house in Santa Brigida,
for he remarked the shadowy creeper on the wall and a pool of moonlight
on the dark floor of his room. Yet the cornfields in an English valley,
through which he drove his motor bicycle, seemed more real, and he could
see the rows of stocked sheaves stretch back from the hedgerows he sped
past. Something sinister and threatening awaited him at the end of the
journey, but he could not tell what it was. Then the cornfields vanished
and he was crossing a quiet, walled garden with a girl at his side. He
remembered how the moonlight shone through the branches of a tree and
fell in silver, splashes on her white dress. Her face was in the shadow,
but he knew it well.
After a time he felt thirsty, and moving his head looked feebly about the
room. A slender, white figure sat near the wall, and he started, because
this must be the girl he had heard singing.
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.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account