That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day

by Richard Dehan

Worn and spent with fierce exertion, hard fighting, and loss of blood, delirious with the rising fever of his wounds, he was conscious in whiffs and snatches. The conscious intervals made fiery streaks across broad belts of murky shadow, a No Man's Land wherein Franky wandered, meeting things both beautiful and hideous, knowing nothing real except thirst, racking cramps, and stabbing pain.

The second day passed. At sun-high a distant fury of guns broke out. Through the terrible drum-fire of Prussian Artillery he fancied he could hear the British field-guns, hammering out Death in return for Death. Suffering agonies for lack of water, he sustained life with scraps of chocolate broken from a half-cake carried in a breast-pocket. To move one hand and carry it to his mouth was possible at cost of ugly pain. Night fell, a night that was rainy, and windy, full of cool drippings that wet Franky's clothes without visiting his baked lips, and still the cannonade went on ceaselessly—so that the crazy walls that sheltered him shuddered and the earth vibrated, and the eeriness was made more eerie with the sliding of tiles from broken rafters, and the creaking and banging of broken doors, slammed by ghostly, invisible hands. Pale splashes of light,—reflected stabs of fire from the muzzles of those unsleeping guns in the south and west, made the darkness yet more dreary. Rats scrambled and squeaked, close to him in the obscurity, evoking horrible suggestions of being gnawed and bitten as one lay helpless there.... He gritted his teeth to keep back the cry that nearly broke from him as one rodent crossed him, its hooked claws rattling against his straps and buttons, its cold hairless tail sliding snakily over his hand. He fancied that he saw its eyes shining in the darkness—he was certain that it had moved and lopped round behind him—he felt its whiskered snout cautiously approaching the throbbing artery beneath his ear.... Then his nerve left him, and he croaked out feebly, though it seemed to him that he shouted:

"S'cat, you brute! Get, you beggar! Halloa; Halloa! Belges au secours! Ici un Anglais, grievement blessé! Is anybody there?"

But there came no answer save the muffled thunder of guns in the distance, the crackle of fire in houses that were burning, the gurgling of a broken water-main, and the distressed miaowing of a cat. It came nearer. There was a rustling sound, and the light descent of a furry body on padded feet; Pussy had jumped in where the window had been, alighting not far from Franky. He could see a pair of green eyes lamping in the darkness, and called, seductively:

"Pussy, pussy! Come here, old girl!"

The purr came near. Franky, with infinite torment reached out a hand, felt and stroked a warm, furry body. He said, cautiously feeling for the appreciative, sensitive places at the nape of a cat's neck, and under the jaws:

"Good old girl. Don't know what they call cats in Flemish, but Pussy seems to be good enough for you. Stop and scare the rats away, give 'em fits, eh, Pussy? You're agreeable? Good egg! Oh—I say!"

For Pussy had walked, loudly purring, on to the chest that heaved so painfully, and proceeded to knead the surface scientifically, preparatory to curling down. Franky set his teeth, and bore the ordeal. Thus they kept company until morning, when Pussy, who proved to be a lean white Tom with patches of sandy tortoiseshell on flanks and shoulders, withdrew by the fanged opening where the window had been. A moment later Franky heard his late companion lapping noisily from a street-puddle and knew envy, in the anguish of his own unrelieved thirst.

He wandered then for a space of hours or instants, in the days of his own lost childhood. He was in the night-nursery at Whins, suffering from some feverish ill. He felt the prickling as of innumerable ants running up his limbs and the sweat upon his forehead, and called meaningly to Nurse for drink. But it was his mother in her dinner-dress, with shining jewels crowning her dark hair, and wreathing her neck and starring her bosom, who came to the bedside and leaned over him, put the rumpled hair from his hot forehead, and held to his lips the cup of milk. Then a droning sound made the room vibrate, and he was back with his company in the hastily-dug trench across the mouth of the west-running thoroughfare, and church-bells were clanging and the telephone-buzzer was calling for the reserve to double out and reinforce the men in the trench enfilading the bridge....

Then he was awake and the sun was high. Those guns in the west were silent now, though from the south and south-east came heavy thuds and long vibrations. Through the rents in the flooring above him by which the rain had dripped upon him in the night, he was looking at the blue sky. A big white bird hovered there. Not a bird—a Taube. The Taube, and he had not dreamed the buzzing after all.