Read Ebook: Where the Path Breaks by Williamson A M Alice Muriel Williamson C N Charles Norris

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Ebook has 429 lines and 50365 words, and 9 pages

t her face--and those eyes. Those eyes! His interest in past and present abruptly ceased. He let himself slide away into blank oblivion.

Hours or years later he waked up with a start, and stared at the light. It was daylight, and he was in an immense room. It seemed big enough for a theater. Perhaps it was a theater. The walls had red panels painted on them, and on each panel one or two cupids danced and threw flowers: repulsive, stout cupids. The ceiling was very far up above his eyes, and there was a dome in the center. From this dome depended a huge crystal chandelier like a bulbous stalactite. There were a great many high windows, with panes here and there opened for ventilation. The windows had no curtains, and the room had no furniture except beds--beds--endless rows of beds, surely hundreds of beds.

He lay in one of these. All were occupied. He could see heads of men whose bodies looked extraordinarily flat. On some of the heads were bandages. Others were shaved, so that they appeared quite bald. They were very pale heads in the bleak, grayish light filtering dimly through the high windows. A number of bunks were hidden by screens. He wished dully that he had this privacy, but his narrow bed had been given no such protection.

A man was slowly walking down an aisle between rows of narrow cots all exactly alike. Beside the man, who had a remarkably large head with a shock of rough, straw-colored hair, was a woman dressed as a nurse. The newly awakened one knew she was a nurse, though she was not dressed in the costume familiar to him in some vague past. There were many in the room wearing the same sort of cap and apron and prim gown that she wore: young women, middle-aged women, old women. They had kind faces, but the watcher saw no beautiful ones. Not that he cared for that, or anything.

He had not been awake long when a big girl came towards him, paused, peered, and went away again. She stopped the nurse who walked with the shock-headed man, and spoke to her. The woman's cap and the man's tousled hair turned from the direction they had been taking, and approached his bed. They bent over it, and he gazed up stupidly at their faces. The shock-headed man had a beard even lighter than his hair. He smoothed it with a white, strong-looking hand, a capable hand, the hand of the born surgeon. The woman had hard features, but soft eyes, wistful, and pathetic.

"You see, he is getting along finely," she said to her companion. "I think we shall have no more trouble with him now."

The man in bed remembered that he had heard her voice before, and that she had spoken German then, as now. He did not wonder this time why he understood what she said, though the language was not his own. He remembered that he had learned German when he was a boy, and had hated learning it because of the verbs.

"How do you feel?" the surgeon enquired, in English.

The man in bed tried to answer. His voice came in a weak whisper. This surprised him, and made him ashamed. "Very--well," he heard himself say, as he had seemed to hear himself speak in the dream which was gone now, far away, out of reach.

"Good!" said the surgeon. "Can you tell me your name?"

The sick man thought for a moment, and the question went echoing through his brain as a voice calling one who is absent echoes through a deserted house. Knowledge of his helplessness brought a sense of physical disintegration, as if the marrow of his bones was melting.

How long his lethargy of mind and body lasted, he did not know. Days faded grayly into nights, and nights brightened grayly into days. Neither the surgeon nor the two nurses who had charge of him asked further questions. He took no real interest in anything except the effort to find his way back into the lost dream, which he could never do; and sometimes even the beloved face was blotted out. But at last, the objective began to dominate the subjective in the man. He gave a little thought to his surroundings. He noticed his neighbors who occupied the beds near him, and listened dully when they talked to the nurses. They were all Germans. One day he asked the nurse with the patient eyes, if there were any other Englishmen besides himself in her charge. And as he spoke the word, with confidence which he could not analyze, it sent a faint thrill through his veins, a sense of unity with something. "Englishmen!" He was an Englishman.

He had to speak in German, for the nurse had no other language. Oddly enough, it seemed easy to make her understand.

"We had four Englishmen with you when you came," she replied. "They are--gone now."

He understood that they were dead, and that she did not like to tell him so. He smiled faintly, but asked no more questions then.

Next, he wanted to know where the hospital was, and how long he had been in it.

"You are in Brussels," the nurse told him. "This used to be a restaurant. All the hospitals were full. You have been here only a few weeks, but we had heard of you, for yours was a wonderful case. Many doctors have talked about it. Just before your operation, you came to us. You were brought to Herr Doctor Schwarz for that. He is a great man for the brain. You were lucky to have him to operate. It was thought you might be an officer, because you spoke both German and French, when you didn't know what you were saying. A bit of bone pressed on the brain. Your head had been hurt. And you had many other wounds, which another great surgeon had cured, when every one else said you would surely die. That was why they waited so long before operating on your brain. You had suffered so much already. You had to grow strong after what you had gone through, and get over the nerve-shock, which was worst of all."

"Let me see, how long did Dr. Schwarz tell me it was, before they operated?" he asked.

"Eight months," the nurse answered reluctantly, as if she feared to excite him, yet saw no real reason why, now that he was getting well, he might not hear all the truth about himself. Besides, it might help him to remember the past. She knew that Dr. Schwarz was anxious for him to do so now. He had always been an extremely interesting and rather mysterious "case," sent from a distance by a brother surgeon to Schwarz, and specially recommended to his attention. "Eight months," the woman repeated. "I think you were wounded in some battle early in August. We have the record that came from the first hospital where you were. Now it is the 15th of April."

"Eight months," the man counted dreamily with his fingers. "Why don't they know whether or not I was an officer?"

"It was like this," the nurse explained, with her stolid yet kindly and truthful look; "it was like this: Your cavalry and our cavalry fought. That is the account we have, though it is not very clear. You were getting the better of us, but our artillery came up and our Uhlans were ordered to retreat. When they were safely out of the way, your lancers were shelled. I think they were cut to pieces. Nobody on either side could get at the dead and wounded for days. When they did go to help the living, it was our Germans who went. Most of the English were killed. You and the others who lived , were brought to a hospital of ours, in the north of France. Our soldiers would not do such a thing, so it must have been prowling people--thieves--who stripped off your clothes. One reason why our doctors thought you might be an officer, even before you spoke, was because the little finger of your left hand had been partly cut off. It had been done with a knife. That seemed as if you must have worn a valuable ring, so tight it couldn't be got off in a hurry."

"My mother's ring," muttered the man. The words spoke themselves. Again, it was not he who remembered, but something which seemed to be separate and independent, hiding inside him, though not in his brain. It knew all about him, but would not give up the secret. Impishly, it threw out a sop of knowledge now and then, just as it pleased. The nurse tried to encourage this Something to go on, but it would not be coaxed. When she repeated the conversation to Schwarz afterwards, however, he said, "That's encouraging. Don't press him too much. Let body and brain recover tone. Then we'll try more suggestions. It's the most interesting case we've had. What is it to me that he's friend or enemy? Nothing. He's a man. I shall think of a way to set up the right vibrations."

The way he thought of was to commandeer a bundle of English papers which had been passing from hand to hand in Brussels. These papers had been smuggled into the town by a German who had escaped from a concentration camp in England. He was a doctor, and had got into Belgium through Holland. Such newspapers as he had were very old ones, but that did not matter, because the man in whom Schwarz, the surgeon, was interested had lost touch with the world since a day soon after the breaking out of war. He must have been among the first troops sent over from England to France, and rushed straight to the front.

"English," she said, and saw that his eyes brightened.

His left hand, with the tell-tale mutilated finger, began painfully to open out the heavy roll. He could not help much with the other hand, for his right arm had been so injured that it had been strapped to his side for weeks, and the muscles had withered. They would recover tone, and the arm its strength, Schwarz prophesied, but he was only just beginning again to use his right hand.

September 10th. September 11th. September 13th.

A photograph in the middle of the page seemed to tear itself from the paper and jump at his eyes. It was larger than the others grouped round it.... "Good God!" broke from his lips.

He glanced around, startled. He was afraid that he had screamed the words. But evidently he had not made any sound. No one was noticing him. Most of the men near by, all surgical cases, were resting quietly. Several nurses were talking at a distance, their broad, reliable backs turned his way.

"Killed in action, on the night of August 18th, Sir John Denin, 16th baronet, Captain --th Lancers, aged 32. See paragraph on following page."

The man turned the leaf over. There was the paragraph.

He turned the page, but for a moment it was a blank, blurred surface, as if everything on it had been blocked out by order of the censor. He found himself counting his own heart-beats, and it was only as they slowed down that the page cleared, and the eyes he had seen in the lost dream looked up at him from the paper.

They gave him back himself. A thousand details of the past rushed upon him in a galloping army.

"Lady Denin, widow of Captain Sir John Denin," he read. "She is shown in this photograph in her presentation dress, as Miss Barbara Fay."

Barbara had disliked the photograph. He could see it now, in a silver frame on her mother's writing desk, in the drawing-room of the little furnished house taken for the season in London. He had been shown into that room when he made his first call. Mrs. Fay had asked him to come, just when he was wondering how to get the invitation. And Mrs. Fay had given him one of those photographs. It occurred to him that she must also have given one to the newspaper. Barbara would not have wished it to be published. But he had thought it beautiful, and he thought it more than ever beautiful now.

His wife--no, his widow! That was what the paper said: "Lady Denin, widow of Captain Sir John Denin." What would she do, what would she say, if she could see the wreck of John Denin, in a German hospital in Belgium, staring hungrily at her picture?

He asked himself this, and answered almost without hesitation. She was so loyal, so fine, that she would not grudge him his life. She would even try, perhaps, to think she was glad that he lived. Yet she could not in her secret heart, be glad. Such gladness would not be natural to human nature. She had been hurried into marrying him, partly because he loved her and was going away to fight, partly because her mother urged it as the best solution of her difficulties. Now, all things Mrs. Fay had wanted for the girl were hers without the one drawback; the plain, dull fellow who had to be taken with them--the fly in the ointment, the pill in the jam. Barbara had dearly loved the old black and white house. She had said so a dozen times. She had never once said that she loved John Denin. She had only smiled and been kind, and looked at him in a baffling way, with that mysterious message in her eyes which he had been too stupid to read. Mrs. Fay had loved the house too, and the whole place; and it was hard to believe in looking back, that she had not loved the money, and the idea of a title for her beautiful girl.

John Denin, who ought to have died and had not died, asked himself what was now the next best thing to do. Also he asked the eyes in the photograph, but they seemed gently to evade his eyes, just as they had often evaded them in life.

Next on the page to Barbara's picture was the portrait of her cousin, Captain d'Arcy, of whom she had spoken more than once, the "hero and knight" of her childhood. He looked a handsome enough fellow in his uniform, though hardly of the "hero and knight" type. He was too full-fleshed for that: a big, low-browed, thick-lipped man of thirty-six or seven, who would think a great deal of himself and his own pleasure. Evidently he had changed since the days when he was the ideal hero of a sixteen-year-old girl. Denin, scarred and wrecked, a bit of human driftwood, was dimly shocked at the mean pleasure had in this thought. Barbara--wife or widow--was unlikely to feel her old love rekindle at sight of her cousin, and Denin was glad--glad. Barbara was not a girl to fall in love easily. But, if she believed herself free, she might some day....

A spurt of fire darting up his spine seemed to burn the base of his brain. It struck him almost with horror that the question he had been asking a few minutes ago had answered itself. No matter how undesirable he might be as a husband, he must for Barbara's own sake force the fact of his continued existence upon her.

"As soon as I can control my hand enough to hold a pencil, I'll write to her--or her mother. Or perhaps I'll try to telegraph, if that's possible from here," he thought. Poor Barbara! Poor Mrs. Fay! It would be a blow to them, and--yes, by Jove, to Frank Denin, his cousin. Poor Frank, too! He had got the Denin estates and the money which ought to have gone with the baronetcy, and then by an extra stroke of luck the title had fallen to him, on top of all the rest. It would be a wrench for him to give it up after more than eight months of enjoyment. Then there was that pretty American girl, Miss VanKortland, to whom poor old Frank had proposed time after time. All his money and the two big places had made no difference to her. She had plenty of money of her own. She had seemed to like Frank Denin, but she was a desperate flirt and had always said that if she ever married out of her own country, it would be a man with a title. It was Kathryn VanKortland who had introduced Sir John Denin to Barbara Fay at a dance, not long after Barbara's presentation. John had felt grateful to Kathryn for that, and indirectly grateful to Frank because if it hadn't been for him he would not have been invited to Miss VanKortland's dance. How strangely, vividly, yet dreamily those days and everything that had happened in them came back to him, while the people whose faces he called up thought of him in his grave! He wondered how it was that Eric Mantell had escaped, and how Eric came to believe that he had identified John Denin's body. He wondered also whether, now that Frank Denin was "Sir Frank," Kathryn VanKortland had changed her mind.

"I wish I could make the title over to Frank," the man in the hospital cot said to himself. "God knows I don't value it for myself, and I don't believe Barbara does. But it can't be. And there's just one thing to be done."

There seemed to the weary brain of the invalid, however, no great hurry about doing the one thing. Barbara was certainly not grieving for him. There was no one else to care very much except some of the old servants, and he had remembered all of them in his will before going to the front. As for Frank, in a way it would be a good thing for him if he could secure Kathryn before the news came bereaving him of the baronetcy. The girl could not leave him if they were married, or even throw him over with decency if they were engaged. Besides, Denin wanted to write the letter himself. He would not trust the task to one of the nurses, and had confided to no one yet the fact that memory of his past had come back. He was only just beginning to use his right hand for a few minutes at a time. It would be a week at the least, before he could write even a short letter without help.

Two days went by, and the surgeon's orders to "let him alone," so that he might "come round of his own accord," were still observed. Nobody questioned the invalid about himself, though the nurses said to each other that he had "begun to think."

On the third day, a wounded British aviator was brought into his ward. The news ran about like wildfire, and Denin soon learned that a fellow countryman of his had arrived. The aviator, it seemed, had been in the act of dropping bombs on some railway bridge which meant the cutting of important communications, when he had been brought down with his monoplane, by German guns. Both his legs were broken, but otherwise he was not seriously hurt.

Denin enquired of a nurse who the man was, and heard that he was Flight Commander Walter Severne.

They were more or less in the same set, in the normal days of peace which seemed so long ago. He asked permission, when he was got up for his hour out of bed, to talk to the wounded Englishman, and was told that he might do so, provided that an English-speaking nurse was near enough to hear everything they said to each other.

Denin's progress along the ward was slow. He had not been an invalid eight months for nothing, and the mending of his splintered bones and torn muscles was hardly short of a miracle, as surgeons and nurses reminded him frequently, with glee. He moved with a crutch, and one foot could not yet be allowed to touch ground, though Schwarz gaily assured him that some fine day he might be as much of a man as ever again, thanks to his enemies' skill and care. Severne had been told that an Englishman who had lost his memory through injuries to the head, and forgotten his own name, was coming to talk to him. Lying flat on his back with both legs in plaster-of-Paris, the aviator looked up expectantly; but no light of recognition shone in his eyes when the tall form in hospital pajamas hobbled into his range of vision.

Denin did not know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Certainly he was not surprised, for he had asked for a mirror that morning, and had studied his marred face during a long, grim moment. From temple to jaw on the left side it was scarred with a permanent red scar. A white seam where stitches had been, ran through the right eyebrow. A glancing bit of shrapnel had cleft his square chin precisely in the center, giving a queer effect as of a deep dimple which had not been there before August 18th; and his thick black hair was threaded with gray at both temples.

A chair was given to him, in which to sit by the newcomer's bedside. Severne was very young and, it seemed to Denin in contrast with that new vision of himself, as beautiful as a girl. Warned that the other man had lost his memory, the wounded aviator was pityingly careful not to ask questions. He talked cheerfully about his own adventures, and said that he had been "at home" on leave only a week ago.

"At home!" Denin echoed. "What was it like--over there?"

"Awfully jolly," said Severne. "Not that they don't care, or aren't thinking about us, every minute, night and day. But you know how our people are. They make the best of things; they have their own kind of humor--and we understand. Fact is, I--went over to get married. I suppose--er--you never knew the Lacy-Wilmots of Devonshire? They're neighbors of ours. I married the second daughter, Evelyn. I--we had two days together."

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