The Desert Islander | Page 8

road is particularly hot, and the bridges are all destroyed. The
enemy have reached the opposite side of the river, and they've been
bombarding the city all day. I told the general about your case; he
suggests you go by river in a sampan down to Lao-chow to-morrow.
You may be fired on just as you leave the city, but nothing to matter, I
dare say. After that, you'd be all right--the river makes a stiff bend
south here, and gets right away from the country they're fighting over.
It would take you only about eighteen hours to Lao-chow, going down
stream. I've already got a sampan for you.... Oh, Lord, isn't this
disgusting?" he added, looking round the dreadful room and wrinkling
his nose. "How I loathe this kind of thing."

"I can't help it. I can't help it." Constantine began first to moan and then
to cry. He was by now in great pain, and he did not try to control his
distress. It passed through his mind that crying was the last thing a
stupid Englishman would expect of a légionnaire; so far so good,
therefore--he was a desert islander even in his degradation. Yet he
loathed himself; all his morbid fears of being offensive were upon him,
and the unaccustomed exercise of crying, combined with the fever,
nauseated him. Mr. White, still wearing his expression of repugnance,
came to his help, loosened that greasy collar, lent a handkerchief,
ordered some refreshing hot Chinese tea.
"You should have known me in Odessa," gasped Constantine in an
interval between his paroxysms. "Three of the prettiest women in the
town were madly in love with me. You know me only at my worst."
Mr. White, soaking a folded silk handkerchief in cold water, before
laying it on Constantine's burning forehead, did not answer. He
unrolled the pillow from his camp-bed and put it under Constantine's
head. As he did so, he recoiled a little, but after a second's hesitation, he
pushed the immaculate little pillow into place with a heroic firmness.
"I wore only silk next the skin then," snuffled Constantine. The fever
rose in a wave in his brain, and he shouted curses upon his cruelly
perfect friend.
Mr. White lay only intermittently on his camp-bed that night. He was
kept busy making use of his past experience as a member of an
ambulance unit. Only at daylight he slept for an hour or so.
Constantine, awakened from a short sleep by the sound of firing outside,
lay on his side and watched Mr. White's relaxed, sleeping face. The
fever had left Constantine, and he was now sunk in cold, limp
depression and fear. Luckily, he thought, there was no need to stir, for
certainly he could not be expected--a sick man--to set forth in a sampan
through such dangers as the persistent firing suggested. At least in this
inn he knew the worst, he thought wearily, and his companion knew the
worst too. "I will not leave him," Constantine vowed, "until I have
somehow cured him of these frightful memories of me--somehow

amputated his memory of me...." He lay watching his companion's
face--hating it--obscurely wishing that those eyes, which had seen the
worst during this loathsome night, might remain for ever shut.
Mr. White woke up quite suddenly. "Good Lord!" he said, peering at
his watch. "Nearly seven. I told the sampan man to be at the foot of the
steps at daylight."
"Are you mad?" asked Constantine shrilly. "Listen to the firing--quite
near. Besides--I'm a very sick man, as you should know by now. I
couldn't even walk--much less dodge through a crowd of Chinese
assassins."
Mr. White, faintly whistling Chopin, laboriously keeping his temper,
left the room, and could presently be heard hee-hawing in the Chinese
language on the verandah to the hee-hawing innkeeper.
When he came back, he said, "The sampaneer's there, waiting--only too
anxious to get away from the bombing they're expecting to-day. He's
tied up only about a hundred yards away. You'll be beyond the reach of
the firing as soon as you're round the bend. Hurry up, man; the sooner
you get down to hospital, and I get off on the road home, the better for
us both."
Constantine, genuinely exhausted after his miserable night, did not
speak, but lay with his eyes shut and his face obstinately turned to the
wall. He certainly felt too ill to be brave or to face the crackling
dangers of the battle-ridden streets, but he was conscious of no plan
except a determination to be as obstructive as he could--to assert at
least this ignoble power over his tyrant.
"Get up, you damn fool," shouted Mr. White, suddenly plucking the
pillow from under the sick man's head, "or I'll drag you down to the
river by