The Hills of Desire

by Richard Aumerle Maher

But she did not go down under despair.

Jimmie was gone. She would never be near him again. She did not say it. But she had no strength to deny it. She was dumb. She was defeated. There was nothing to live for, and, apparently, nothing to die for.

But her heart held on, beaten, unhoping, but living.

And today, not an hour ago, a wonderful thing had happened. A miracle had stolen upon her unawares. She could not now say just where she was or what she was doing at the time. She had heard nothing, seen nothing. But she found that she was suddenly, and unaccountably, certain that Jimmie was not dead.

She did not try to think what might have brought this intelligence to her. Perhaps he had come back to consciousness and his heart had answered her. She did not care. She did not want to think. Her dream had sprung back to life again and was once more carrying her, happy but still trembling and fearful, up again through the heights from which she had fallen.

She had told the doctor the exact truth. It was not anything that she had seen or heard. But she knew that somehow a message had come to her heart from Jimmie. God had not mocked her faith. She knew. And she waited.

It was a long, long summer afternoon through which she worked and waited, her spirit quivering to the sense of a great wonder hovering near at hand. She did not feel or recognize any premonition that Wardwell was physically near her. She had schooled herself well since those terrible early days, back in the base hospital, when she had fearfully crept near to and studied every long bundle of a broken man that was brought in, praying that it might be, and that it might not be, Jimmie. She did not do those things now, for she had learned the heavy cost of them upon her strength and her nerves. And now, too, she was still living upon that sight of Jimmie lying out in the open at the foot of a bank, and, curiously, she did not think of him as having been moved from there.

When Wardwell awoke again it was because his throat was hurting abominably. His mind seemed to clear instantly, and he could not remember to have felt so wide awake in a long time. He supposed that this meant that he was going to get well again. He was not pleased with the prospect, for the weeks of monotonous endurance just ahead were too well known to be welcome; but he guessed that he would have to go through with it. This confounded pain in his throat was about the worst thing he had ever experienced. His mouth was all hard and cracked inside and the big bandage above his shoulders seemed to be set on purpose to choke him. He would like to put up his hand and see if he couldn't ease it a little, but he was sure that as soon as he made a move someone would notice him, and they would begin the business of poking at him. He would rather stand this as long as he could if only he were left to himself.

It was night now—he knew the shaded lights, the enforced quiet, the restless murmurings of men asleep and half asleep, the feeling of a hospital ward at night, as well as he knew the sound of his own breathing—and he had been moved since that last time when he had been awake. Maybe they had been obliged to clear him out of the receiving ward—probably that was where he had been that last time—without operating on him. Maybe the boys were coming down from the stations pretty fast. He had seen hospitals when the surgeons couldn't begin to keep up with the work as the men were brought in. In fact he had seen everything. He had seen the whole blasted wreck of war from beginning to end, and he didn't want to see any more of it.

His head was propped a little, so that he could just see over the roll of bandage on his neck. A wardmaster was coming softly down the lane between the two rows of cots. "I know his kind," Wardwell muttered mentally, while he shut his eyes and waited, perfectly quiet, for the wardmaster to pass, "their idea of a good time is to pop a fellow out of a sound sleep right bang onto an operating table."