Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/314

beauty of George's face, what a commonplace secret it concealed!

The writing was not George's, but that of an unlettered French soldier. Campton, glancing at the signature, recalled it as that of his son's orderly, who had been slightly wounded in the same attack as George, and sent for twenty-four hours to the same hospital at Doullens. He had been at George's side when he fell, and with the simple directness often natural to his class in France he told the tale of his lieutenant's wounding, in circumstances which appeared to have given George great glory in the eyes of his men. They thought the wound mortal; but the orderly and a stretcher-bearer had managed to get the young man into the shelter of a little wood. The stretcher-bearer, it turned out, was a priest. He had at once applied the consecrated oil, and George, still conscious, had received it "with a beautiful smile"; then the orderly, thinking all was over, had hurried back to the fighting, and been wounded. The next day he too had been carried to Doullens; and there, after many enquiries, he had found his lieutenant in the same hospital, alive, but too ill to see him.

He had contrived, however, to see the nurse, and had learned from her that the doctors had not given up hope. With that he had to be content; but before returning to his base he had hastened to fulfill his lieutenant's instructions (given "many months earlier")