“You must come,” she continued, laying her hand on his arm (her imperatives were always in italics). “Just a step from here—to my hospital. There’s someone asking for you.”
“For me? Someone wounded?” What if it were Benny Upsher? A cold fear broke over Campton.
“Someone dying,” Mrs. Talkett said. “Oh, nobody you know—a poor young French soldier. He was brought here two days ago ... and he keeps on repeating your name....”
“My name? Why my name?”
“We don’t know. We don’t think he knows you ... but he’s shot to pieces and half delirious. He’s a painter, and he’s seen pictures of yours, and keeps talking about them, and saying he wants you to look at his.... You will come? It’s just next door, you know.”
He did not know—having carefully avoided all knowledge of hospitals in his dread of being drawn into war-work, and his horror of coming as a mere spectator to gaze on agony he could neither comfort nor relieve. Hospitals were for surgeons and women; if he had been rich he would have given big sums to aid them; being unable to do even that, he preferred to keep aloof.
He followed Mrs. Talkett out of the hotel and around the corner. The door of another hotel, with a big Red Cross above it, admitted them to a marble vestibule full of the cold smell of disinfectants. An orderly sat reading a newspaper behind the desk, and nurses whisked backward and forward with trays and pails. A lady with a bunch of flowers came down the stairs drying her eyes.
Campton’s whole being recoiled from what awaited him. Since the poor youth was delirious, what was the use of seeing him? But women took a morbid pleasure in making one do things that were useless!
On an upper floor they paused at a door where there was a moment’s parleying.
“Come,” Mrs. Talkett said; “he’s a little better.”