XVIII
Noon!... The hospital is as still as a great mortuary.
Noon!... The grasshopper is chirping. The African woman is singing in her thin voice her vague and drowsy song. Upon the whole expanse of the desert plains of Senegal the sun darts down its perpendicular rays of torrid light, which the vast horizon reflects in shimmer and glitter.
Noon!... The hospital is as still as a great mortuary. The long, white galleries, the long corridors are deserted. Half way up the high, bare wall, lime-washed a dazzling white, hangs a clock, pointing to noon with it slow-moving hands of steel. The grey-lettered, mournful inscription around the dial is fading in the sun, Vitæ fugaces exhibet horas. The twelve strokes ring out painfully, with that feeble tone that the dying know; that tone, heard in feverish, wakeful hours, by those who have come hither to die; that tone like a knell, tolled in an atmosphere too heavy with heat to conduct the sounds.
Noon!... The mournful hour, when sick men die. The air of this hospital is heavy with fever, the indefinable emanations, as it were, of death.
Above, in an open ward, are voices that whispered softly; little, scarcely perceptible sounds; the good sister’s cautious footsteps, as she moves carefully over the mats. She comes and goes with a troubled air, Sister Pacôme, with her pale, sallow face under her nurse’s cap. Doctor and priest are there, too, seated beside a bed, which is curtained with a white mosquito net.
Out-of-door, through the open window, are sun and sand, sand and sun, and far away, blue outlines and shimmering light.
Will he pass away, poor spahi?...
Is this the moment when Jean’s soul will take its flight thither into that overwhelming noontide air?... So far from home, where will it find a resting place in all these desert plains?... Whither will it vanish?...
No. The doctor, who had remained there a long time, expecting the final departure, has quietly withdrawn.
The cooler hours of evening have come, and the breeze off the sea brings relief to the dying. To-morrow, perhaps! But Jean is more tranquil, and his head does not burn so terribly.
Down below in the street, outside the door, a small negro girl sat crouching on the sand, playing at knucklebones with white pebbles to keep herself in countenance when any one went past. She had been there since morning, endeavouring to avoid notice, playing her little part, for fear of being driven away. She did not venture to question any one, but she knew very well that if the spahi were to die, he would be carried through this door on his way to the cemetery of Sorr.