Once again the siege. They were going to bury Vane. A file of little
Goorkhas were picking the grave, and he was working at it too with the
shot whistling overhead. Never was grave so hard to dig. They toiled,
it seemed to him, for years, and still the stones rolled back into the
hole and all was to begin again. Then suddenly it was ready: they were
lowering the stiff figure, rolled in a cerement of tent canvas, into the
shallow ditch. And a flap of the cloth fell back from over the face of
the dead. It was not the face of Vane, but the face of Harry English.
Then, with the awful knowledge of the dreamer, Bethune knew that Harry
was not dead. But when he tried to call out to the others to stop,
again he had no voice. He saw a little brown Goorkha twist the cloth
over the livid countenance. They began shovelling the stony earth upon
his friend; and while he felt in his own lungs the suffocation of him
that is buried alive, a voice said in his ear: "What is it to you? You,
who should have died that he might live!"
The suffocation continued so intense as to drown in physical torture
even the workings of the over-active brain. Then, out of the blank,
dream-consciousness struggled back to him. And again it was the siege.
He was on his hard and narrow couch; it was the middle of the night,
there was a great anxious rumour about him; sentries were calling; the
enemy were upon them. In spite of anguished struggle, Bethune remained
bound, hand and foot, while never had his spirit been more vividly
awake. He could hear the running footsteps of the men in the passages,
the thud, thud of the soft-shod Easterns. He could hear some one break
into his room, hear himself called: "Raymond, Raymond!" And with the
curious double personality of the sleeper, he told himself that it was
years since any one had called him by that name—long and forlorn years
of solitary life.
"Raymond!" called the voice, and the red light as of a torch burned
through his closed eyelids. "Wake, Raymond!"
He knew who it was. It was Harry; his comrade who wanted him in the
danger. What shame to be sleeping at such a moment!
Bethune wrenched himself from his pillow and sat upright. The room was
full of light to his dazzled eyes; and the voice, the voice of Harry
English, was still ringing in his ears.
Muhammed Saif-u-din, who had been bending over the bed, one hand on the
sleeper’s shoulder, withdrew his touch and straightened himself. In his
left hand he held a candle. The light flickered upon his dense black
beard. But he was turbanless, and the tossed crisp hair was boyishly
loose over his brow. His eyes were fixed upon Bethune, and Bethune
stared back. Then Muhammed spoke:
"Raymond," he said.
For a moment that was heavier in the scales of time than most hours of
men’s lives, the two plunged their gaze into each other.
"My God," said Bethune, in a whisper then, "you!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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