Her mind looked the other way, frightened. She was tired out, finished; she could have gone to sleep now, sitting up there on the car. It would be disgraceful if she went to sleep....
She mustn't think about the battlefield. She couldn't think; she could only look on at things coming up in her mind. Hoeing turnips at Barrow Hill Farm. Supposing you found dead men lying out on the fields at Stow? You would mind that more; it would be more horrible.... She saw herself coming over the fields carrying a lamb that she had taken from its dead mother. Then she saw John coming up the field to their seat in the beech ring. That hurt her; she couldn't bear it; she mustn't think about that.
John was all right; he wasn't shirking. They had been away so long now that she knew they must have gone far down the battlefield, deep into it; the edges and all the nearer places had been gleaned. It would be dark before they came back.
It was getting dark now, and she was afraid that when the light went she would go to sleep. If only she wasn't so tired.
She was so drowsy that at first she didn't hear McClane speaking, she hadn't seen him come to the step of the car.
McClane's voice sounded soft and unnatural and a little mysterious.
"I'm afraid something's--happened."
"Who to?"
"We-ell--"
The muffled drawl irritated her. Why couldn't he speak out?
"Is John hurt?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Is he killed?"
"Well--I don't know that he can live. A German's put a bullet into him."
"Where is he?"
She jumped down off the car.
McClane laid his hand on her arm. "Don't. We shall bring him in--"
"He's dead then?"
"I think so--You'd better not go to him."
"Of course I'm going to him. Where is he?"
He steered her very quickly and carefully across the street, then led her with his arm in hers, pressing her back to the dark shelter of the houses. They heard the barking of machine guns from the battlefield at the top and the rattle of the bullets on the causeway. These sounds seemed to her to have no significance. As if they had existed only in some unique relation to John Conway, his death robbed them of vitality.
The door of the house opened a little way; they slipped into the long narrow room lighted by a few oil lamps at one end. At the other John's body lay on a stretcher set up on a trestle table, his feet turned outwards to the door, ready. The corners at this end were so dark that the body seemed to stretch across the whole width of the room. A soldier came forward with a lighted candle and gave it to McClane. And she saw John's face; the bridge of his nose, with its winged nostrils lifted. His head was tilted upwards at the chin; that gave it a noble look. His mouth was open, ever so slightly open ... McClane shifted the light so that it fell on his forehead.... Black eyebrows curling up like little moustaches.... The half-dropped eyelids guarded the dead eyes.