The Romantic

by May Sinclair

She ran after him and asked him what had happened to John. He turned, dreamy and deliberate, utterly unperturbed. John, he said, had gone on to look for a wounded man who was said to have been taken into one of those houses there, on the right, in the lane. She went down the lane with her stretcher and McClane waited for them at the top. The doors of the houses were open; Flemish women stood outside, looking up to the street. There was one house with a shut door, a tall green door; she thought that would be the one that John had gone into. She rapped and he opened the door and came striding out, holding his head high. He shut the door quietly and looked at her, an odd look, piercing and grave.

"Dead," he said.

And when McClane met them he said it again, "Dead."

The wounded were being brought down from Lokeren in trams that ran on to a siding behind a little fir plantation outside the village. At the wide top of the street a table of boards and trestles stood by the foot track, and the stretchers were laid on it as they came in, and the wounded had their first bandaging and dressings there. McClane took up his place by this table, and the stretcher bearers went backwards and forwards between the village and the plantation.

Beyond the plantation the flagged road stretched flat and grey, then bent in a deep curve, and on the wider sweep of the curve a row of tall, slender trees stood up like a screen.

It would be round the turn of the road under the trees that the Germans would come when they came. You couldn't lose this sense of them, coming on behind there, not yet seen, but behind, coming on, pursuing the retreat of the batteries. Every now and then they found themselves looking up towards the turn. The grey, bending sweep and the screen of tall trees had a fascination for them, a glamour; and above the movements of their hands and feet their minds watched, intent, excited, but without fear. There was no fear in the village. The women came out of their houses carrying cups of water for the men's thirst; they seemed to be concerned, not with the coming of the Germans, but with the bringing in of the wounded and the presence of the English ambulance in their street.

And the four stretcher bearers came and went, from house to house and between the village and the plantation, working, working steadily. Yet they were aware, all the time, of the pursuing terror, behind the turn of the road; they were held still in their intentness. Over all of them was a quiet, fixed serenity. McClane's body had lost its eager, bustling energy and was still; his face was grave, preoccupied and still; only Trixie Rankin went rushing, and calling out to her quiet man in a fierce, dominating excitement.

And in John's face and in his alert body there was happiness, happiness that was almost ecstasy; it ran through and shone from him, firm and still, like a flame that couldn't go out. It penetrated her and made her happy and satisfied and sure of him. She had seen it leap up in him as he swung himself into the seat beside her when they started. He was restless, restless every day until they were sent out; he couldn't wait in peace before they had set off on the adventure, as if he were afraid that at the last minute something would happen to dash his chance from him. She couldn't find this passionate uneasiness in herself; she waited with a stolid trust in the event; but she had something of his feeling. After all, it was there, the romance, the fascination, the glamour; you couldn't deny it any more than you could deny the beating of the blood in your veins. It was their life.

They had been in the village three quarters of an hour. John and Charlotte waited while McClane at his table was putting the last bandage on the last wound. In another minute they would be gone. It was then that the Belgian Red Cross man came running to them. Had they taken a man with a wound in his back? A bad wound? As big as that? No? Then he was still here, and he had got to take him to the ambulance. No, he didn't know where he was. He might be in one of those houses where they took in the wounded, or he might be up there by the tramway in the plantation. Would they take a stretcher and find him? He had to go back to the tramway. The last tram was coming in from Lokeren. He ran back, fussy and a little frightened.

John shouted out, "Hold on, McClane, there's another tram coming," and set off up the street. They had taken all the men out of the houses; therefore the man with the bad wound must have been left somewhere by the plantation. They went there, carrying their stretcher, going, going up to the last minute, in delight, in the undying thrill of the danger.