"Wilkie Collins - The New Magdalen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Collins Wilkie)

"The moon has risen," she said. "The Germans are shelling the village."
Grace rose, and ran to her for protection.
"Take me away!" she cried. "We shall be killed if we stay here." She stopped,
looking in astonishment at the tall black figure of the nurse, standing
immovably by the window. "Are you made of iron?" she exclaimed. "Will nothing
frighten you?"
Mercy smiled sadly. "Why should I be afraid of losing my life?" she answered. "I
have nothing worth living for!"
The roar of the cannon shook the cottage for the second time. A second shell
exploded in the courtyard, on the opposite side of the building.
Bewildered by the noise, panic-stricken as the danger from the shells threatened
the cottage more and more nearly, Grace threw her arms round the nurse, and
clung, in the abject familiarity of terror, to the woman whose hand she had
shrunk from touching not five minutes since. "Where is it safest?" she cried.
"Where can I hide myself?"
"How can I tell where the next shell will fall?" Mercy answered, quietly.
The steady composure of the one woman seemed to madden the other. Releasing the
nurse, Grace looked wildly round for a way of escape from the cottage. Making
first for the kitchen, she was driven back by the clamor and confusion attending
the removal of those among the wounded who were strong enough to be placed in
the wagon. A second look round showed her the door leading into the yard. She
rushed to it with a cry of relief. She had just laid her hand on the lock when
the third report of cannon burst over the place.
Starting back a step, Grace lifted her hands mechanically to her ears. At the
same moment the third shell burst through the roof of the cottage, and exploded
in the room, just inside the door. Mercy sprang forward, unhurt, from her place
at the window. The burning fragments of the shell were already firing the dry
wooden floor, and in the midst of them, dimly seen through the smoke, lay the
insensible body of her companion in the room. Even at that dreadful moment the
nurse's presence of mind did not fail her. Hurrying back to the place that she
had just left, near which she had already noticed the miller's empty sacks lying
in a heap, she seized two of them, and, throwing them on the smoldering floor,
trampled out the fire. That done, she knelt by the senseless woman, and lifted
her head.
Was she wounded? or dead?
Mercy raised one helpless hand, and laid her fingers on the wrist. While she was
still vainly trying to feel for the beating of the pulse, Surgeon Surville
(alarmed for the ladies) hurried in to inquire if any harm had been done.
Mercy called to him to approach. "I am afraid the shell has struck her," she
said, yielding her place to him. "See if she is badly hurt."
The surgeon's anxiety for his charming patient expressed itself briefly in an
oath, with a prodigious emphasis laid on one of the letters in it--the letter R.
"Take off her cloak," he cried, raising his hand to her neck. "Poor angel! She
has turned in falling; the string is twisted round her throat."
Mercy removed the cloak. It dropped on the floor as the surgeon lifted Grace in
his arms. "Get a candle," he said, impatiently; "they will give you one in the
kitchen." He tried to feel the pulse: his hand trembled, the noise and confusion
in the kitchen bewildered him. "Just Heaven!" he exclaimed. "My emotions
overpower me!" Mercy approached him with the candle. The light disclosed the
frightful injury which a fragment of the shell had inflicted on the