The Desert Islander | Page 4

hundred miles-over the worst
roads you ever saw."
Constantine's heart gave a sickening lurch. "Why to hospital? You
think my leg is dangerous?"
"If I know anything of legs," said Mr. White rather brutally, "the doctor
won't let you keep that one an hour longer than he has to."
Constantine's mouth began instantly to tremble so much that he could
scarcely speak. He thought, "I shall die--I shall die like this--of a stupid
black leg--this valuable lonely me will die."
He glared at Mr. White, hungry for consolation. "He isn't valuable--he's
one of many ... of course he could easily be brave."
Mr. White, once more indolent and indifferent, led the little Russian to
the attic and left him there. As soon as Constantine saw the white

sheets neatly folded back, the pleasant blue rugs squarely set upon the
floor, the open wardrobe fringed with hangers, he doubted whether,
after all, he did value himself so much. For in this neat room he felt
betrayed by this body of his--this unwashed, unshaven, tired body,
encased in coarse dirty clothes, propped on an offensive, festering leg.
He decided to take all his clothes off, even though he had no other
garment with him to put on; he would feel more appropriate to the
shiny linen in his own shiny skin, he thought. He would have washed,
but his attention was diverted as be pulled his clothes off by the wound
on his leg. Though it was not very painful, it made him nearly sick with
disgust now. Every nerve in his body seemed on tiptoe, alert to feel
agony, as he studied the wound. He saw that a new sore place was
beginning, well above the knee. With only his shirt on, he rushed
downstairs, and in at the only lighted doorway. "Look--look," he cried.
"A new sore place.... Does this mean the danger is greater even than we
thought?"
Mr. White, in neat blue-and-white pyjamas, was carefully pressing a tie
in a tie-press. Constantine had never felt so far away from a human
being in his life as he felt on seeing the tie-press, those pyjamas, those
monogrammed silver brushes, that elastic apparatus for reducing
exercises that hung upon the door.
"Oh, go to bed," said Mr. White irascibly. "For God's sake, show a little
sense."
Constantine was back in his attic before he thought, "I ought to have
said, 'For God's sake, show a little nonsense yourself.' Sense is so
vulgar."
Sense, however, was to drive him three hundred miles to safety, next
day.
All night the exhausted Constantine, sleeping only for a few minutes at
a time, dreamed trivial, broken dreams about establishing his own
superiority, finding, for instance, that he had after all managed to bring
with him a suitcase full of clean, fashionable clothes, or noticing that
his host was wearing a filthy bandage round his neck instead of a tie.

Constantine was asleep when Mr. White, fully dressed, woke him next
morning. A clear, steely light was slanting in at the window.
Constantine was always fully conscious at the second of waking, and
he was immediately horrified to see Mr. White looking
expressionlessly at the disorderly heap of dirty clothes that he had
thrown in disgust on the floor the night before. Trying to divert his
host's attention, Constantine put on a merry and courageous manner.
"Well, how is the weather for our motor-car jaunt?"
"It could hardly be worse," said Mr. White placidly. "Sheets of rain.
God knows what the roads will be like."
"Well, we are lucky to have roads at all, in this benighted China."
"I don't know about that. If there weren't any roads we shouldn't be
setting off on this beastly trip."
"I shall be ready in two jiffies," said Constantine, springing naked out
of bed and shuffling his dreadful clothes out of Mr. White's sight. "But
just tell me," he added as his host went through the door, "why do you
drive three hundred miles on a horrible wet day just to take a perfect
stranger--a beggar too--to hospital?" (He thought, "Now he must say
something showing that he recognizes my value.")
"Because I can't cut off your leg myself," said Mr. White gloomily.
Constantine did not press his question because this new reference to the
Cutting off of legs set his nerves jangling again; his hands trembled so
that he could scarcely button his clothes. Service in the Foreign Legion,
though it was certainly no suitable adventure for a rare and sensitive
man, had never obliged him to face anything more frightening than
non-appreciation, coarse food, and stupid treatment. None of these
things could humiliate him--on the contrary, all confirmed him in his
persuasion of his own value. Only the thought of being at the mercy of
his body could