Chapter M: C---- is now glad that we went on to Melle (1)

We helped the four other wounded men in. They sat in a row alongside the stretcher.

I sat on the edge of the ambulance, at the feet of the dying man, by the handles of the stretcher.

At the last minute the Chaplain jumped on to the step. So did the little eager Englishman. Hanging on to the hood and swaying with the rush of the car, he talked continually. He talked from the moment we left Melle to the moment when we landed him at his street in Ghent; explaining over and over again the qualifications that justified him in attaching himself to ambulances. He had lived fourteen years in Ghent. He could speak French and Flemish.

I longed for the eager little Englishman to stop. I longed for his street to come and swallow him up. He had lived in Ghent fourteen years. He could speak Flemish and French. I felt that I couldn't bear it if he went on a minute longer. I wanted to think. The dying man lay close behind me, very straight and stiff; his poor feet stuck out close under my hand.

But I couldn't think. The little eager Englishman went on swaying and talking.

He had lived fourteen years in Ghent.

He could speak French and Flemish.

* * * * *

The dying man was still alive when he was lifted out of the ambulance.

He died that evening.

* * * * *

The Commandant is pleased with his new ambulances. He is not altogether displeased with me.

We must have been very quick. For it was the Commandant's car that we passed at the fork of the road. And either he arrived a few minutes after we got back or we arrived just as he had got in. Anyhow, we met in the porch.

He and Ursula Dearmer and I went back to Melle again at once, in the new car. It was nearly dark when we got there.

We found Mrs. Torrence and little Janet in the village. They and Dr. Wilson had been working all day long picking up wounded off the field outside it. The German lines are not far off--at the bottom of the field. I think only a small number of their guns could rake the main street of the village where we were. Their shell went over our heads and over the roofs of the houses towards the French batteries on this side of the village. There must have been a rush from the German lines across this field, and the French batteries have done their work well, for Mrs. Torrence said the German dead are lying thick there among the turnips. She and Janet and Dr. Wilson had been under fire for eight hours on end, lifting men and carrying stretchers. I don't know whether their figures (the two girls in khaki tunics and breeches) could be seen from the German lines, but they just trudged on between the furrows, and over the turnip-tops, serenely regardless of the enemy, carefully sorting the wounded from the dead, with the bullets whizzing past their noses.

Of bullets Mrs. Torrence said, indeed, that eight hours of them were rather more than she cared for; and of carrying stretchers over a turnip-field, that it was as much as she and Janet could do. But they came back from it without turning a hair. I have seen women more dishevelled after tramping a turnip-field in a day's partridge-shooting.

They went off somewhere to find Dr. Wilson; and we--Ursula Dearmer, the Commandant and I--hung about the village waiting for the wounded to be brought in. The village was crowded with French and Belgian troops when we came into it. Then they gathered together and went on towards the field, and we followed them up the street. They called to us to stay under cover, or, if we _must_ walk up the street, to keep close under the houses, as the bullets might come flying at us any minute.

No bullets came, however. It was like Baerlaere--it was like Lokeren--it was like every place I've been in, so far. Nothing came as long as there was a chance of its getting me.

After that we drove down to the station. While we were hanging about there, a shell was hurled over this side of the village from the German batteries. It careered over the roofs, with a track that was luminous in the dusk, like a curved sheet of lightning. I don't know where it fell and burst.

We were told to stand out from under the station building for fear it should be struck.

When we got back into the village we went into the inn and waited there in a long, narrow room, lit by a few small oil-lamps and crammed with soldiers. They were eating and drinking in vehement haste. Wherever the light from the lamps fell on them, you saw faces flushed and scarred under a blur of smoke and grime. Here and there a bandage showed up, violently white. On the tables enormous quantities of bread appeared and disappeared.

These soldiers, with all their vehemence and violence, were exceedingly lovable. One man brought me a chair; another brought bread and offered it. Charming smiles flashed through the grime.

At last, when we had found one man with a wounded hand, we got into the ambulance and went back to Ghent.

[_Saturday, 10th._]

I have got something to do again--at last!

I am to help to look after Mr. ----. He has the pick of the Belgian Red Cross women to nurse him, and they are angelically kind and very skilful, but he is not very happy with them. He says: "These dear people are so good to me, but I can't make out what they say. I can't tell them what I want." He is pathetically glad to have any English people with him. (Even I am a little better than a Belgian whom he cannot understand.)

I sat with him all morning. The French boy has gone and he is alone in his room now. It seems that the kind Chaplain sat up with him all last night after his hard day at Melle. (I wish now I had stood by the Chaplain with his Matins. He has never tried to have them again--given us up as an unholy crew, all except Mr. Foster, whom he clings to.)

The morning went like half an hour, while it was going; but when it was over I felt as if I had been nursing for weeks on end. There were so many little things to be done, and so much that you mustn't do, and the anxiety was appalling. I don't suppose there is a worse case in the Hospital. He is perhaps a shade better to-day, but none of the medical staff think that he can live.

Madame E---- and Dr. Bird have shown me what to do, and what not to do. I must keep him all the time in the same position. I must give him sips of iced broth, and little pieces of ice to suck every now and then. I must not let him try to raise himself in bed. I must not try to lift him myself. If we do lift him we must keep his body tilted at the same angle. I must not give him any hot drinks and not too much cold drink.

And he is six foot high, so tall that his feet come through the blankets at the bottom of the bed; and he keeps sinking down in it all the time and wanting to raise himself up again. And his fever makes him restless. And he is always thirsty and he longs for hot tea more than iced water, and for more iced water than is good for him. The iced broth that is his only nourishment he does not want at all.

And then he must be kept very quiet. I must not let him talk more than is necessary to tell me what he wants, or he will die of exhaustion. And what he wants is to talk every minute that he is awake.

He drops off to sleep, breathing in jerks and with a terrible rapidity. And I think it will be all right as long as he sleeps. But his sleep only lasts for a few minutes. I hear the rhythm of his breathing alter; it slackens and goes slow; then it jerks again, and I know that he is awake.

And then he begins. He says things that tear at your heart. He has looks and gestures that break it--the adorable, wilful smile of a child that knows that it is being watched when you find his hand groping too often for the glass of iced water that stands beside his bed; a still more adorable and utterly gentle submission when you take the glass from him; when you tell him not to say anything more just yet but to go to sleep again. You feel as if you were guilty of act after act of nameless and abominable cruelty.

He sticks to it that he has seen me before, that he has heard of me, that his people know me. And he wants to know what I do and where I live and where it was that he saw me. Once, when I thought he had gone to sleep, I heard him begin again: "Where did you say you lived?"

I tell him. And I tell him to go to sleep again.

He closes his eyes obediently and opens them the next instant.

"I say, may I come and call on you when we get back to England?"

You can only say: "Yes. Of course," and tell him to go to sleep.

His voice is so strong and clear that I could almost believe that he will get back and that some day I shall look up and see him standing at my garden gate.

Mercifully, when I tell him to go to sleep again, he does go to sleep. And his voice is a little clearer and stronger every time he wakes.

And so the morning goes on. The only thing he wants you to do for him is to sponge his hands and face with iced water and to give him little bits of ice to suck. Over and over again I do these things. And over and over again he asks me, "Do you mind?"

* * * * *

He wears a little grey woollen cord round his neck. Something has gone from it. Whatever he has lost, they have left him his little woollen cord, as if some immense importance attached to it.

* * * * *

He has fallen into a long doze. And at the end of the morning I left him sleeping.

Some of the Corps have brought in trophies from the battle-field--a fine grey cloak with a scarlet collar, a spiked helmet, a cuff with three buttons cut from the coat of a dead German.

These things make me sick. I see the body under the cloak, the head under the helmet, and the dead hand under the cuff.

[_Afternoon._]

Saw Mr. Foster. He is to be sent back to England for an operation. Dr. Wilson is to take him. He asked me if I thought the Commandant would take him back again when he is better.

Saw the President about Mr. Foster. He will not hear of his going back to England. He wants him to stay in the Hospital and be operated on here. He promises the utmost care and attention. He is most distressed to think that he should go.

It doesn't occur to him in his kindness that it would be much more distressing if the Germans came into Ghent and interrupted the operation.

Cabled Miss F. about her Glasgow ambulance, asking her to pay her staff if her funds ran to it. Cabled British Red Cross to send Mr. Gould and his scouting-car here instead of to France. Cabled Mr. Gould to get the British Red Cross to send him here.

Mr. Lambert has been ill with malaria. He has gone back to England to get well again and to repair the car that broke down at Lokeren.[22]

Somebody else is to look after Mr. ---- this afternoon.

I have been given leave rather reluctantly to sit up with him at night.

The Commandant is going to take me in Tom's Daimler (Car 1) to the British lines to look for a base for that temporary hospital which is still running in his head like a splendid dream. I do not see how, with the Germans at Melle, only four and a half miles off, any sort of hospital is to be established on this side of Ghent.

Tom, the chauffeur, does not look with favour on the expedition. I have had to point out to him that a Field Ambulance is _not_, as he would say, the House of Commons, and that there is a certain propriety binding even on a chauffeur and a limit to the freedom of the speech you may apply to your Commandant. This afternoon Tom has exceeded all the limits. The worst of Tom is that while his tongue rages on the confines of revolt, he himself is punctilious to excess on the point of orders. Either he has orders or he hasn't them. If he has them he obeys them with a punctuality that puts everybody else in the wrong. If he hasn't them, an earthquake wouldn't make him move. Such is his devotion to orders that he will insist on any one order holding good for an unlimited time after it has been given.

So now, in defence of his manners, he urges that what with orders and counter-orders, the provocation is more than flesh and blood can stand. Tom himself is protest clothed in flesh and blood.

To-day at two o'clock Tom's orders are that his car is to be ready at two-thirty. My orders are to be ready in twenty minutes. I _am_ ready in twenty minutes. The Commandant thinks that he has transacted all his business and is ready in twenty minutes too. Tom and his car are nowhere to be seen. I go to look for Tom. Tom is reported as being last seen riding on a motor-lorry towards the British lines in the company of a detachment of British infantry.

The chauffeur Tom is considered to have disgraced himself everlastingly.

Punctually at two-thirty he appears with his car at the door of the "Flandria."

The Commandant is nowhere to be seen. He has gone to look for Tom.

I reprove Tom for the sin of unpunctuality, and he has me.

His orders were to be ready at two-thirty and he is ready at two-thirty. And it is nobody's business what he did with himself ten minutes before. He wants to know where the Commandant is.

I go to look for the Commandant.

The Commandant is reported to have been last seen going through the Hospital on his way to the garage. I go round to the garage through the Hospital; and the Commandant goes out of the garage by the street. He was last seen _in_ the garage.

He appears suddenly from some quarter where you wouldn't expect him in the least. He reproves Tom.

Tom with considerable violence declares his righteousness. He has gathered to himself a friend, a Belgian Red Cross man, whose language he does not understand. But they exchange winks that surpass all language.

Then the Commandant remembers that he has several cables to send off. He is seen disappearing in the direction of the Post and Telegraph Office.

Tom swallows words that would be curses if I were not there.

I keep my eyes fixed on the doors of the Post Office. Ages pass.

I go to the Post Office to look for the Commandant. He is not in the Telegraph Office. He is not in the Post Office. Tom keeps his eyes on the doors of both.

More ages pass. Finally, the Commandant appears from inside the Hospital, which he has not been seen to enter.

The chauffeur Tom dismounts and draws from his car's mysterious being sounds that express the savage fury of his resentment.

You would think we were off now. But we only get as far as a street somewhere near the Hotel de la Poste. Here we wait for apparently no reason in such tension that you can hear the ages pass.

The Commandant disappears.

Tom says something about there being no room for the wounded at this rate.

It seems his orders are to go first to the British lines at a place whose name I forget, and then on to Melle.

I remember Tom's views on the subject of field-women. And suddenly I seem to understand them. Tom is very like Lord Kitchener. He knows nothing about the aims and wants of modern womanhood and he cares less. The modern woman does not ask to be protected, does not want to be protected, and Tom, like Lord Kitchener, will go on protecting. You cannot elevate men like Lord Kitchener and Tom above the primitive plane of chivalry. Tom in the danger zone with a woman by his side feels about as peaceful and comfortable as a woman in the danger zone with a two-year-old baby in her lap. A bomb in his bedroom is one thing and a band of drunken Uhlans making for his women is another. Tom's nerves are racked with problems: How the dickens is he to steer his car and protect his women at the same time? And if it comes to a toss-up between his women and his wounded? You've got to stow the silly things somewhere, and every one of them takes up the place of a wounded man.

I get out of the car and tell the Commandant that I would rather not go than take up the place of a wounded man.

He orders me back to the car again. Tom seems inclined to regard me as a woman who has done her best.

We go on a little way and stop again. And there springs out of the pavement a curious figure that I have seen somewhere before in Ghent, I cannot remember when or where. The figure wears a check suit of extreme horsyness and carries a kodak in its hand. It is excited.

There is something about it that reminds me now of the eager little Englishman at Melle. These figures spring up everywhere in the track of a field ambulance.

When Tom sees it he groans in despair.

The Commandant gets out and appears to be offering it the hospitality of the car. I am introduced.

To my horror the figure skips round in front of the car, levels its kodak at my head and implores me to sit still.

I am very rude. I tell it sternly to take that beastly thing away and go away itself.

It goes, rather startled.

And we get off, somehow, without it, and arrive at the end of the street.

Here Tom has orders to stop at the first hat-shop he comes to.

The Commandant has lost his hat at Melle (he has been wearing little Janet's Arctic cap, to the delight of everybody). He has just remembered that he wants a hat and he thinks that he will get it now.

At this point I break down. I hear myself say "Damn" five times, softly but distinctly. (This after reproving Tom for unfettered speech and potential insubordination.)

Tom stops at a hat-shop. The Commandant to his doom enters, and presently returns wearing a soft felt hat of a vivid green. He asks me what I think of it.

I tell him all I think of it, and he says that if I feel like that about it he'll go in again and get another one.

I forget what I said then except that I wanted to get on to Melle. That Melle was the place of all places where I most wished to be.

Then, lest he might feel unhappy in his green hat, I said that if he would leave it out all night in the rain and then sit on it no doubt time and weather and God would do something for it.

This time we were off, and when I realized it I said "Hurray!"[23]

Tom had not said anything for some considerable time.

We found the British lines in a little village just outside of Ghent. No place there for a base hospital.

We hung about here for twenty minutes, and the women and children came out to stare at us with innocent, pathetic faces.

Somebody had stowed away one of the trophies--the spiked German helmet--in the ambulance car, and the chauffeur Tom stuck it on a stick and held it up before the British lines. It was greeted with cheers and a great shout of laughter from the troops; and the villagers came running out of their houses to look; they uttered little sharp and guttural cries of satisfaction. The whole thing was a bit savage and barbaric and horribly impressive.

Finally we left the British lines and set out towards Melle by a cross-road.

We got through all right. A thousand accidents may delay his going, but once off, no barriers exist for the Commandant. Seated in the front of the car, utterly unperturbed by the chauffeur Tom's sarcastic comments on men, things and women, wrapped (apparently) in a beautiful dream, he looks straight ahead with eyes whose vagueness veils a deadly simplicity of purpose. I marvel at the transfiguration of the Commandant. Before the War he was a fairly complex personality. Now he has ceased to exist as a separate individual. He is merged, vaguely and vastly, in his adventure. He is the Motor Ambulance Field Corps; he is the ambulance car; he is the electric spark and the continuous explosion that drives the thing along. It is useless to talk to him about anything that happened before the War or about anything that exists outside it. He would not admit that anything did exist outside it. He is capable of forgetting the day of the week and the precise number of female units in his company and the amount standing to his credit at his banker's, but, once off, he is cock-sure of the shortest cut to the firing-line within a radius of fifty kilometres.

Some of us who have never seen a human phenomenon of this sort are ready to deny him an identity. They complain of his inveterate and deplorable lack of any sense of detail. This is absurd. You might as well insist on a faithful representation of the household furniture of the burgomaster of Zoetenaeg, which is the smallest village in Belgium, in drawing the map of Europe to scale. At the critical moment this more than continental vastness gathers to a wedge-like determination that goes home. He means to get through.

We ran into Melle about an hour before sunset.

There had been a great slaughter of Germans on the field outside the village where the Germans were still firing when the Corps left it. We found two of our cars drawn up by the side of the village street, close under the houses. The Chaplain, Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Lambert were waiting in one of them, the new Daimler, with the chauffeur Newlands. Dr. Wilson was in Bert's car with three wounded Germans. He was sitting in front with one of them beside him. They say that the enemy's wounded sometimes fire on our surgeons and Red Cross men, and Dr. Wilson had a revolver about him when he went on the battle-field yesterday. He said he wasn't taking any risks. The man he had got beside him to-day was only wounded in the foot, and had his hands entirely free to do what he liked with. He looked rather a low type, and at the first sight of him I thought I shouldn't have cared to be alone with him anywhere on a dark night.

And then I saw the look on his face. He was purely pathetic. He didn't look at you. He stared in front of him down the road towards Ghent, in a dull, helpless misery. These unhappy German Tommies are afraid of us. They are told that we shall treat them badly, and some of them believe it. I wanted Dr. Wilson to let me get up and go with the poor fellow, but he wouldn't. He was sorry for him and very gentle. He is always sorry for people and very gentle. So I knew that the German would be all right with him. But I should have liked to have gone.

We found Mrs. Torrence and Janet with M. ---- on the other side of the street, left behind by Dr. Wilson. They have been working all day yesterday and half the night and all this morning and afternoon on that hideous turnip-field. They have seen things and combinations of things that no forewarning imagination could have devised. Last night the car was fired on where it stood waiting for them in the village, and they had to race back to it under a shower of bullets.

They were as fresh as paint and very cheerful. Mrs. Torrence was wearing a large silver order on a broad blue ribbon pinned to her khaki overcoat. It was given to her to-day as the reward of valour by the Belgian General in command here. Somebody took it from the breast of a Prussian officer. She had covered it up with her khaki scarf so that she might not seem to swank.

Little Janet was with her. She always is with her. She looked younger than ever, more impassive than ever, more adorable than ever. I have got used to Mrs. Torrence and to Ursula Dearmer; but I cannot get used to Janet. It always seems appalling to me that she should be here, strolling about the seat of War with her hands in her pockets, as if a battle were a cricket-match at which you looked on between your innings. And yet there isn't a man in the Corps who does his work better, and with more courage and endurance, than this eighteen-year-old child.

They told us that there were no French or Belgian wounded left, but that two wounded Germans were still lying over there among the turnips. They were waiting for our car to come out and take these men up. The car was now drawn up close under some building that looked like a town hall, on the other side of the street. We were in the middle of the village. The village itself was the extreme fringe of the danger zone. Where the houses ended, a stretch of white road ran up for about [?] a hundred yards to the turnip-field. Standing in the village street, we could see the turnip-field, but not all of it. The road goes straight up to the edge of it and turns there with a sweep to the left and runs alongside for about a mile and a half.

On the other side of the turnip-field were the German lines. The first that had raked the village street also raked the fields and the mile and a half of road alongside.

It was along that road that the car would have to go.

M. ---- told our Ambulance that it might as well go back. There were no more wounded. Only two Germans lying in a turnip-field. The three of us--Mrs. Torrence and Janet and I--tried to bring pressure to bear on M. ----. We meant to go and get those Germans.

But M. ---- was impervious to pressure. He refused either to go with the car himself or to let us go. He said we were too late and it was too far and there wouldn't be light enough. He said that for two Belgians, or two French, or two British, it would be worth while taking risks. But for two Germans under German fire it wasn't good enough.

But Mrs. Torrence and Janet and I didn't agree with him. Wounded were wounded. We said we were going if he wasn't.

Then the chauffeur Tom joined in. He refused to offer his car as a target for the enemy.[24] Our firm Belgian was equally determined. The Commandant, as if roused from his beautiful dream to a sudden realization of the horrors of war, absolutely forbade the expedition.

It took place all the same.

Tom's car, planted there on our side of the street, hugging the wall, with its hood over its eyes, preserved its attitude of obstinate immobility. Newlands' car, hugging the wall on the other side of the street, stood discreetly apart from the discussion. But a Belgian military ambulance car ran up, smaller and more alert than ours. And a Belgian Army Medical Officer strolled up to see what was happening.

We three advanced on that Army Medical Officer, Mrs. Torrence and Janet on his left and I on his right.

I shall always be grateful to that righteous man. He gave Mrs. Torrence and Janet leave to go, and he gave me leave to go with them; he gave us the military ambulance to go in and a Belgian soldier with a rifle to protect us. And he didn't waste a second over it. He just looked at us, and smiled, and let us go.

Mrs. Torrence got on to the ambulance beside the driver, Janet jumped on to one step and I on to the other, while the Commandant came up, trying to look stern, and told me to get down.

I hung on all the tighter.

And then----

What happened then was so ignominious, so sickening, that, if I were not sworn to the utmost possible realism in this record, I should suppress it in the interests of human dignity.

Mrs. Torrence, having the advantage of me in weight, height, muscle and position, got up and tried to push me off the step. As she did this she said: "You can't come. You'll take up the place of a wounded man."

And I found myself standing in the village street, while the car rushed out of it, with Janet clinging on to the hood, like a little sailor to his shrouds. She was on the side next the German guns.

It was the most revolting thing that had happened to me yet, in a life filled with incidents that I have no desire to repeat. And it made me turn on the Commandant in a way that I do not like to think of. I believe I asked him how he could bear to let that kid go into the German lines, which was exactly what the poor man hadn't done.[25]

Then we waited, Mrs. Lambert and I in Tom's car; and the Commandant in the car with Ursula Dearmer and the Chaplain on the other side of the street.

We were dreadfully silent now. We stared at objects that had no earthly interest for us as if our lives depended on mastering their detail. We were thus aware of a beautiful little Belgian house standing back from the village street down a short turning, a cream-coloured house with green shutters and a roof of rose-red tiles, and a very small poplar tree mounting guard beside it. This house and its tree were vivid and very still. They stood back in an atmosphere of their own, an atmosphere of perfect but utterly unreal peace. And as long as our memories endure, that house which we never saw before, and shall probably never see again, is bound up with the fate of Mrs. Torrence and Janet McNeil.

We thought we should have an hour to wait before they came back, if they ever did come. We waited for them during a whole dreadful lifetime.

* * * * *

In something less than half an hour the military ambulance came swinging round the turn of the road, with Mrs. Torrence and the Kid, and the two German wounded with them on the stretchers.

Those Germans never thought that they were going to be saved. They couldn't get over it--that two Englishwomen should have gone through their fire, for them! As they were being carried through the fire they said: "We shall never forget what you've done for us. God will bless you for it."

Mrs. Torrence asked them, "What will you do for us if we are taken prisoner?"

And they said: "We will do all we can to save you."

* * * * *

Antwerp is said to have fallen.

Antwerp is said to be holding its own well.[26]

All evening the watching Taube has been hanging over Ghent.

Mrs. Torrence and Janet have gone back with the ambulance to Melle.

[_Night._]

Sat up all night with Mr. ----.

There is one night nurse for all the wards on this floor, and she has a serious case to watch in another room. But I can call her if I want help. And there is the chemist who sleeps in the room next door, who will come if I go in and wake him up. And there are our own four doctors upstairs. And the _infirmiers_. It ought to be all right.

As a matter of fact it was the most terrible night I have ever spent in my life; and I have lived through a good many terrible nights in sick-rooms. But no amount of amateur nursing can take the place of training or of the self-confidence of knowing you are trained. And even if you _are_ trained, no amount of medical nursing will prepare you for a bad surgical case. To begin with, I had never nursed a patient so tall and heavy that I couldn't lift him by sheer strength and a sort of amateur knack.

And though in theory it was reassuring to know that you could call the night nurse and the chemist and the four doctors and the _infirmiers_, in practice it didn't work out quite so easily as it sounded. When the night nurse came she couldn't lift any more than I could; and she had a greater command of discouraging criticism than of useful, practical suggestion. And the chemist knew no more about lifting than the night nurse. (Luckily none of us pretended for an instant that we knew!) When I had called up two of our hard-worked surgeons each once out of his bed, I had some scruples about waking them again. And it took four Belgian _infirmiers_ to do in five minutes what one surgeon could do in as many seconds. And when the chemist went to look for the _infirmiers_ he was gone for ages--he must have had to round them up from every floor in the Hospital. Whenever any of them went to look for anything, it took them ages. It was as if for every article needed in the wards of that Hospital there was a separate and inaccessible central depot.[27]

At one moment a small pillow had to be placed in the hollow of my patient's back if he was to be kept in that position on which I had been told his life depended. When I sent the night nurse to look for something that would serve, she was gone a quarter of an hour, in which I realized that my case was not the only case in the Hospital. For a quarter of an hour I had to kneel by his bed with my two arms thrust together under the hollow of his back, supporting it. I had nothing at hand that was small enough or firm enough but my arms.

That night I would have given everything I possess, and everything I have ever done, to have been a trained nurse.

To make matters worse, I had an atrocious cough, acquired at the Hotel de la Poste. The chemist had made up some medicine for it, but the poor busy dispensary clerk had forgotten to send it to my room. I had to stop it by an expenditure of will when I wanted every atom of will to keep my patient quiet and send him to sleep, if possible, without his morphia _piqures_. He is only to have one if he is restless or in pain.

And to-night he wanted more than ever to talk when he woke. And his conversation in the night is even more lacerating than his conversation in the day. For all the time, often in pain, always in extreme discomfort, he is thinking of other people.

First of all he asked me if I had any books, and I thought that he wanted me to read to him. I told him I was afraid he mustn't be read to, he must go to sleep. And he said: "I mean for you to read yourself--to pass the time."

He is afraid that I shall be bored by sitting up with him, that I shall tire myself, that I shall make my cough worse. He asks me if I think he will ever be well enough to play games. That is what he has always wanted to do most.

And then he begins to tell me about his mother.

He tells me things that I have no right to put down here.

There is nothing that I can do for him but to will. And I will hard, or I pray--I don't know which it is; your acutest willing and your intensest prayer are indistinguishable. And it seems to work. I will--or I pray--that he shall lie still without morphia, and that he shall have no pain. And he lies still, without pain. I will--or I pray--that he shall sleep without morphia. And he sleeps (I think that in spite of his extreme discomfort, he must have slept the best part of the night). And because it seems to work, I will--or I pray--that he shall get well.

There are many things that obstruct this process as fast as it is begun: your sensation of sight and touch; the swarms and streams of images that your brain throws out; and the crushing obsession of your fear. This last is like a dead weight that you hold off you with your arms stretched out. Your arms sink and drop under it perpetually and have to be raised again. At last the weight goes. And the sensations go, and the swarms and streams of images go, and there is nothing before you and around you but a clear blank darkness where your will vibrates.

Only one avenue of sense is left open. You are lost to the very memories of touch and sight, but you are intensely conscious of every sound from the bed, every movement of the sleeper. And while one half of you only lives in that pure and effortless vibration, the other half is aware of the least change in the rhythm of his breathing.

It is by this rhythm that I can tell whether he is asleep or awake. This rhythm of his breathing, and the rhythm of his sleeping and his waking measure out the night for me. It goes like one hour.

And yet I have spent months of nights watching in this room. Its blond walls are as familiar to me as the walls of rooms where I have lived a long time; I know with a profound and intimate knowledge every crinkle in the red shade of the electric bulb that hangs on the inner wall between the two beds, the shape and position of every object on the night table in the little white-tiled dressing-room; I know every trick of the inner and outer doors leading to the corridor, and the long grey lane of the corridor, and the room that I must go through to find ice, and the face of the little ward-maid who sleeps there, who wants to get up and break the ice for me every time. I have known the little ward-maid all my life; I have known the night nurse all my life, with her white face and sharp black eyes, and all my life I have not cared for her. All my life I have known and cared only for the wounded man on the bed.

I have known every sound of his voice and every line of his face and hands (the face and hands that he asks me to wash, over and over again, if I don't mind), and the strong springing of his dark hair from his forehead and every little feathery tuft of beard on his chin. And I have known no other measure of time than the rhythm of his breathing, no mark or sign of time than the black crescent of his eyelashes when the lids are closed, and the curling blue of his eyes when they open. His eyes always smile as they open, as if he apologized for waking when he knows that I want him to sleep. And I have known these things so long that each one of them is already like a separate wound in my memory.[28] He sums up for me all the heroism and the agony and waste of the defence of Antwerp, all the heroism and agony and waste of war.

About midnight [?] he wakes and tells me he has had a jolly dream. He dreamed that he was running in a field in England, running in a big race, that he led the race and won it.

[_Sunday, 11th._]

One bad symptom is disappearing. Towards dawn it has almost gone. He really does seem stronger.

[_5 a.m._]

He has had no return of pain or restlessness. But he was to have a morphia _piqure_ at five o'clock, and they have given it to him to make sure.

[_8 a.m._]

The night has not been so terrible, after all. It has gone like an hour and I have left him sleeping.

I am not in the least bit tired; I never felt drowsy once, and my cough has nearly gone.

* * * * *

Antwerp has fallen.

Taube over Ghent in the night.

Six doctors have seen Mr. ----. They all say he is ever so much better. They even say he may live--that he has a good chance.

Dr. Wilson is taking Mr. Foster to England this morning.

Went back to the Hotel Cecil to sleep for an hour or two. An enormous oval table-top is leaning flat against the wall; but by no possibility can it be set up. Still, the landlord said he would find a table, and he has found one.

Went back to the "Flandria" for lunch. In the mess-room Janet tells me that Mr. ----'s case has been taken out of my hands. I am not to try to do any more nursing.

Little Janet looks as if she were trying to soften a blow. But it isn't a blow. Far from it. It is the end of an intolerable responsibility.

The Commandant and the Chaplain started about nine or ten this morning for Melle, and are not back yet.

We expect that we may have to clear out of Ghent before to-morrow.

Mr. Riley, Mrs. Lambert and Janet have gone in the second car to Melle.

I waited in all afternoon on the chance of being taken when the Commandant comes and goes out again.

[_4.45._]

He is not back yet. I am very anxious. The Germans may be in Melle by now.

One of the old officials in peaked caps has called on me solemnly this afternoon. He is the most mysterious of them all, an old man with a white moustache, who never seems to do anything but hang about. He is certainly not an _infirmier_. He called ostensibly to ask some question and remained to talk. I think he thought he would pump me. He began by asking if we women enjoyed going out with the Field Ambulance; he supposed we felt very daring and looked on the whole thing as an adventure. I detected some sinister intention, and replied that that was not exactly the idea; that our women went out to help to save the lives of the wounded soldiers, and that they had succeeded in this object over and over again; and that I didn't imagine they thought of anything much except their duty. We certainly were not out for amusement.

Then he took another line. He told me that the reason why our Ambulance is to be put under the charge of the British General here (we had heard that the whole of the Belgian Army was shortly to be under the control of the British, and the whole of the Belgian Red Cross with it)--the reason is that its behaviour in going into the firing-line has been criticized. And when I ask him on what grounds, it turns out that somebody thinks there is a risk of our Ambulance drawing down the fire on the lines it serves. I told him that in all the time I had been with the Ambulance it had never placed itself in any position that could possibly have drawn down fire on the Belgians, and that I had never heard of any single instance of this danger; and I made him confess that there was no proof or even rumour of any single instance when it had occurred. I further told the old gentleman very plainly that these things ought not to be said or repeated, and that every man and woman in the English Ambulance would rather lose their own life than risk that of one Belgian soldier.

The old gentleman was somewhat flattened out before he left me; having "_parfaitement compris_."

It is a delicious idea that Kitchener and Joffre should be reorganizing the Allied Armies because of the behaviour of our Ambulance.

There are Gordon Highlanders in Ghent.[29]

* * * * *

Went over to the Couvent de Saint Pierre, where Miss Ashley-Smith is with her British wounded. I had to warn her that the Germans may come in to-night. I had told the Commandant about her yesterday, and arranged with him that we should take her and her British away in our Ambulance if we have to go. I had to find out how many there would be to take.

The Convent is a little way beyond the _Place_ on the boulevard. I knew it by the Red Cross hanging from the upper windows. Everything is as happy and peaceful here as if Ghent were not on the eve of an invasion. The nuns took me to Miss Ashley-Smith in her ward. I hardly knew her, for she had changed the uniform of the British Field Hospital[30] for the white linen of the Belgian Red Cross. I found her in charge of the ward. Absolutely unperturbed by the news, she went on superintending the disposal of a table of surgical instruments. She would not consent to come with us at first. But the nuns persuaded her that she would do no good by remaining.

I am to come again and tell her what time to be ready with her wounded, when we know whether we are going and when.

Came back to the "Flandria" and finished entries in my Day-Book.

[_Evening._]

The Commandant has come back from Melle; but he is going there again almost directly. He has been to the British lines, and heard for certain that the Germans will be in Ghent before morning. We have orders to clear out before two in the morning. I am to have all his things packed by midnight.

The British Consul has left Ghent.

The news spread through the "Flandria."

Max has gone about all day with a scared, white face. They say he is suffering from cold feet. But I will not believe it. He has just appeared in the mess-room and summoned me mysteriously. He takes me along the corridor to that room of his which he is so proud of. There is a brand-new uniform lying on the bed, the uniform of a French soldier of the line. Max handles it with love and holy adoration, as a priest handles his sacred vestments. He takes it in his arms, he spreads before me the grey-blue coat, the grey-blue trousers, and his queer eyes are in their solemnity large and quiet as dark moons.

Max is going to rejoin his regiment.

It is sheer nervous excitement that gave him that wild, white face.

Max is confident that we shall meet again; and I have a horrid vision of Max carried on a bloody stretcher, a brutally wounded Max.

He has given me his address in Brussels, which will not find him there for long enough: if ever.

Jean also is to rejoin his regiment.

Marie, the _bonne_, stands at the door of the service room and watches us with frightened eyes. She follows me into the mess-room and shuts the door. The poor thing has been seized with panic, and her one idea is to get away from Ghent. Can I find a place for her on one of our ambulance cars? She will squeeze in anywhere, she will stand outside on the step. Will I take her back to England? She will do any sort of work, no matter what, and she won't ask for wages if only I will take her there. I tell her we are not going to England. We are going to Bruges. We have to follow the Belgian Army wherever it is sent.

Then will I take her to Bruges? She has a mother there.

It is ghastly. I have to tell her that it is impossible; that there will be no place for her in the ambulance cars, that they will be crammed with wounded, that we will have to stand on the steps ourselves, that I do not know how many we shall have to take from the Convent, or how many from the hospitals; that I can do nothing without the Commandant's orders, and that the Commandant is not here. And she pleads and implores. She cannot believe that we can be so cruel, and I find my voice growing hard and stern with sheer, wrenching pity. At last I tell her that if there is room I will see what can be done, but that I am afraid that there will not be room. She stays, she clings, trying to extort through pity a more certain promise, and I have to tell her to go. She goes, looking at me with the dull resentment of a helpless creature whom I have hurt. The fact that she has left me sick with pity will not do her any good. Nothing can do her any good but that place on the ambulance which I have no power to give her.

For Marie is not the only one.

I see all the servants in the "Flandria" coming to me before the night is over, and clinging and pleading for a place in the ambulance cars.

And this is only the beginning. After Marie comes Janet McNeil. She, poor child, has surrendered to the overpowering assault on her feelings and has pledged herself to smuggle the four young children of Madame ---- into the ambulance somehow. I don't see how it was possible for her to endure the agony of refusing this request. But what we are to do with four young children in cars packed with wounded soldiers, through all the stages of the Belgian Army's retreat--!

The next problem that faced me was the Commandant's packing--how to get all the things he had brought with him into one small Gladstone bag and a sleeping-sack. There was a blue serge suit, two sleeping-suits, a large Burberry, a great many pocket-handkerchiefs, socks and stockings, an assortment of neckties, a quantity of small miscellaneous objects whose fugitive tendencies he proposed to frustrate by confinement in a large tin biscuit-box; there was the biscuit-box itself, a tobacco tin, a packet of Gillette razors, a pipe, a leather case containing some electric apparatus, and a fat scarlet volume: Freud's "Psychopathology of Everyday Life." All these things he had pointed out to me as they lay flung on the bed or strewn about the room. He had impressed on me the absolute necessity of packing every one of them, and by the pathetic grouping around the Gladstone bag of the biscuit-box, the tobacco-tin, the case of instruments and Freud, I gathered that he believed that they would all enter the bag placably and be contained in it with ease.

The night is still young.

I pack the Gladstone bag. By alternate coaxing and coercion Freud and the tobacco-tin and the biscuit-box occupy it amicably enough; but the case of instruments offers an unconquerable resistance.

The night is not quite so young as it has been, and I think I must have left off packing to run over to the Hotel Cecil and pay my bill; for I remember going out into the _Place_ and seeing a crowd drawn up in the middle of it before the "Flandria." An official was addressing this crowd, ordering them to give up their revolvers and any arms they had on them.

The fate of Ghent depends on absolute obedience to this order.