They were in a town, and the motor had turned into the court of a great barrack-like building. Before them stood a line of empty stretchers such as Campton had seen at Châlons. A young doctor in a cotton blouse was lighting a cigarette and laughing with a nurse—laughing! At regular intervals the cannonade shook the windows; it seemed the heart-beat of the place. Campton noticed that many of the window-panes had been broken, and patched with paper.
Inside they found another official, who called to another nurse as she passed by laden with fresh towels. She disappeared into a room where heaps of bloody linen were being stacked into baskets, returned, looked at Campton and nodded. He looked back at her blunt tired features and kindly eyes, and said to himself that they had perhaps been his son’s last sight on earth.
The nurse smiled.
“It’s three flights up,” she said; “he’ll be glad.”
Glad! He was not dead, then; he could even be glad! In the staggering rush of relief the father turned instinctively to Mr. Brant; he felt that there was enough joy to be shared. But Mr. Brant, though he must have heard what the nurse had said, was moving away; he did not seem to understand.
“This way——” Campton called after him, pointing to the nurse, who was already on the first step of the stairs.
Mr. Brant looked slightly puzzled; then, as the other’s meaning reached him, he coloured a little, bent his head stiffly, and waved his stick toward the door.
“Thanks,” he said, “I think I’ll take a stroll first ... stretch my legs....” and Campton, with a rush of gratitude, understood that he was to be left alone with his son.
XXV
He followed his guide up the steep flights, which seemed to become buoyant and lift him like waves. It was as if the muscle that always dragged back his lame leg had suddenly regained its elasticity. He floated up as one mounts stairs in a dream. A smell of disinfectants hung in the cold air, and once, through a half-open door, a sickening odour came: he remembered it at Châlons, and Fortin’s murmured: “Gangrene—ah, if only we could get them sooner!”