Chapter X: Book IV: WAR (1)

chapter 1

It was six months later that Sebastian Levinne had a note from Joe.

_St. George's Hotel, Soho._

Dear Sebastian: I'm over in England for a few days. I should love
to see you. Yours, Joe.

Sebastian read and reread the brief note. He was at his mother's house on a few days' leave, so it had reached him with no delay. Across the breakfast table he was conscious of his mother's eyes watching him, and he marvelled as he had often done before, at the quickness of her maternal apprehension. She read his face, which most people found so inscrutable, as easily as he read the note in his hand.

When she spoke it was in ordinary commonplace tones.

"Some more marmalade, dear?" she said.

"No, thanks, Mother." He answered the spoken question first, then went on to the unspoken one of which he was so keenly conscious. "It's from Joe."

"Joe," said Mrs. Levinne. Her voice expressed nothing.

"She's in London."

There was a pause.

"I see," said Mrs. Levinne.

Still her voice expressed nothing. But Sebastian was aware of a whole tumult of feeling. It was the same to him as though his mother had burst out: "My son, my son! And you were just beginning to forget her! Why does she come back like this? Why can't she leave you alone? This girl who has nothing to do with us or our race? This girl who was never the right wife for you and never will be."

Sebastian rose.

"I think I must go round and see her."

His mother answered in the same voice: "I suppose so."

They said no more. They understood each other. Each respected the other's point of view.

As he swung along the street it suddenly occurred to Sebastian that Joe had given him no clues as to what name she was staying under at the hotel. Did she call herself Miss Waite or Madame de la Marre? Unimportant, of course, but one of those silly conventional absurdities that made one feel awkward. He must ask for her under one or the other. How like Joe it was to have completely overlooked the point!

But as it happened there was no awkwardness, for the first person he saw as he passed through the swing doors was Joe herself. She greeted him with a glad cry of surprise.

"Sebastian! I'd no idea you could possibly have got my letter so soon!"

She led the way to a retired corner of the lounge and he followed her.

His first feeling was that she had changed--she had gone so far away that she was almost a stranger. It was partly, he thought, her clothes. They were ultra-French clothes. Very quiet and dark and discreet, but utterly un-English. Her face, too, was very much made up. Its creamy pallor was enhanced by art, her lips were impossibly red, and she had done something to the corners of her eyes.

He thought: "She's a stranger--and yet she's Joe! She's the same Joe but she's gone a long way away--so far away that one can only just get in touch with her."

But they talked together easily enough, each, as it were, putting out little feelers, as though sounding the distance that separated them. And suddenly the distance itself lessened and the elegant Parisian stranger melted into Joe.

They talked of Vernon. Where was he? He never wrote or told one anything.

"He's on Salisbury Plain, near Wiltsbury. He may be going out to France any minute."

"And Nell married him after all! Sebastian, I feel I was rather a beast about Nell. I didn't think she had it in her. I don't think she _would_ have had it in her if it hadn't been for the war. Sebastian, isn't the war wonderful? What it's doing for people, I mean."

Sebastian said dryly that he supposed it was very much like any other war. Joe flew out at him vehemently.

"It isn't! It isn't! That's just where you're wrong. There's going to be a new world after it. People are beginning to see things--things they never saw before. All the cruelty and the wickedness and the waste of war. And they'll stand together so that such a thing shall never happen again."

Her face was flushed and exalted. Sebastian perceived that the war had, as he phrased it, "got" Joe. The war did get people. He had discussed it and deplored it with Jane. It made him sick to read the things that were printed and said about the war: "A world fit for heroes." "The war to end war." "The fight for democracy." And really, all the time it was the same old bloody business it always had been. Why couldn't people speak the truth about it?

Jane had disagreed with him. She maintained that the claptrap (for she agreed it _was_ claptrap) which was written about war was inevitable, a kind of accompanying phenomenon inseparable from it. It was Nature's way of providing a way of escape--you had to have that wall of illusion and lies to help you to endure the solid facts. It was, to her, pitiable and almost beautiful--these things that we wanted to believe and told ourselves so speciously.

Sebastian had said: "I dare say, but it's going to play hell with the nation afterward."

He was saddened and a little depressed by Joe's fiery enthusiasm. And yet, after all, it was typical of Joe. Her enthusiasm always was red-hot. It was a toss-up which camp he found her in, that was all. She might just as easily have been a white-hot pacifist, embracing martyrdom with fervour.

She said now accusingly to Sebastian: "You don't agree! You think everything's going to be just the same."

"There have always been wars, and they have never made any great difference."

"Yes, but this is a different kind of war altogether."

He smiled. He could not help it.

"My dear Joe, the things that happen to us personally are always different."

"Oh! I've no patience with you. It's people like you----"

She stopped.

"Yes," said Sebastian encouragingly. "People like me----"

"You usen't to be like that. You used to have ideas. Now----"

"Now," said Sebastian gravely, "I am sunk in money. I'm a capitalist. Everyone knows what a hoggish creature the capitalist is."

"Don't be absurd. But I do think that money is rather--well, stifling."

"Yes," said Sebastian. "That's true enough. But that's a question of effect on an individual. I will quite agree with you that poverty is a blessed state. Talking in terms of art, it's probably as valuable as manure in a garden. But it's nonsense to say that because I've got money I'm unfit to make prognostications as to the future, and especially as to the state obtaining after the war. Just because I've got money I'm all the more likely to be a good judge. Money has got a lot to do with war."

"Yes, but because you think of everything in terms of money, you say that there always will be wars."

"I didn't say anything of the kind. I think war will eventually be abolished. I'd give it roughly another two hundred years."

"Ah! you do admit that by then we may have purer ideals."

"I don't think it's got anything to do with ideals. It's probably a question of transport. Once get flying going on a commercial scale and you fuse countries together. Air charabancs to the Sahara Wednesdays and Saturdays--that kind of thing. Countries getting mixed up and matey. Trade revolutionized. For all practical purposes, you make the world smaller. You reduce it in time to the level of a nation with counties in it. I don't think what's always alluded to as the Brotherhood of Man will ever develop from fine ideas--it will be a simple matter of common sense."

"Oh, Sebastian!"

"I'm annoying you. I'm sorry, Joe dear."

"You don't believe in anything."

"Well, it's you who are the atheist, you know. Though, as a matter of fact, that word has gone out of fashion. We say nowadays that we believe in _Something_! Personally, I'm quite satisfied with Jehovah. But I know what you meant when you said that, and you're wrong. I believe in beauty, in creation, in things like Vernon's music. I can't see any real defence for them economically, and yet I'm perfectly sure that they matter more than anything else in the world. I'm even prepared (sometimes) to drop money over them. That's a lot for a Jew!"

Joe laughed in spite of herself. Then she asked: "What was _The Princess in the Tower_ really like? Honestly, Sebastian."

"Oh! rather like a giant toddling--an unconvincing performance, and yet a performance on a different scale from anything else."

"You think that some day----"

"I'm sure of it. There's nothing I'm so sure of as that. If only he isn't killed in this bloody war."

Joe shivered.

"It's so awful," she murmured. "I've been working in the hospitals in Paris. Some of the things one sees!"

"I know. If he's only maimed it doesn't matter--not like a violinist who is finished if he loses his right hand. No, they can mess up his body any way they like, so long as his brain is left untouched. That sounds brutal, but you know what I mean."

"I know. But sometimes--even then----" She broke off and then went on, speaking in a new tone of voice: "Sebastian, I'm married."

If something in him winced he didn't show it.

"Are you, my dear? Did La Marre get a divorce?"

"No. I left him. He was a beast--a beast, Sebastian."

"I can imagine he might be."

"Not that I regret anything. One has to live one's life--to gain experience. Anything is better than shrinking from life. That's just what people like Aunt Myra can't understand. I'm not going near them at Birmingham. I'm not ashamed or repentant of anything I've done."

She gazed at him defiantly and his mind went back to Joe in the woods at Abbots Puissants. He thought: "She's just the same. Wrong-headed, rebellious, adorable. One might have known then that she'd do this sort of thing."

He said gently: "I'm only sorry that you've been unhappy. Because you've been unhappy, haven't you?"

"Horribly. But I've found my real life now. There was a boy in hospital--terribly badly wounded. They gave him morphia.--He's been discharged now--cured, though of course he isn't fit for service. But the morphia--it's got hold of him. That's why we were married. A fortnight ago. We're going to fight it together."

Sebastian did not trust himself to speak. Joe all over. But why, in the name of fortune, couldn't she have been content with physical disabilities? Morphia. A ghastly business.

And suddenly a pang shot through him. It was as though he resigned his last hope of her. Their ways led in opposite directions--Joe amongst her lost causes and her lame dogs, and he on an upward route. He might, of course, be killed in the war, but somehow he didn't think he would be. He was almost certain that he wouldn't even be picturesquely wounded. He felt a kind of certitude that he would come through safely, probably with moderate distinction; that he would come back to his enterprises, reorganizing and revitalizing them; that he would be successful, notably successful, in a world that did not tolerate failures. And the higher he climbed the farther he would be separated from Joe.

He thought bitterly: "There's always some woman to pull you out of a pit, but nobody will come and keep you company on a mountain peak, and yet you may be damned lonely there."

He didn't quite know what to say to Joe. No good depressing her, poor child. He said rather weakly:

"What's your name now?"

"Valnière. You must meet François some time, I've just come over to settle up some legal bothers. Father died about a month ago, you know."

Sebastian nodded. He remembered hearing of Major Waite's death.

Joe went on.

"I want to see Jane. And I want to see Vernon and Nell."

It was settled that he should motor her down to Wiltsbury on the following day.

_2_

Nell and Vernon had rooms in a small prim house about a mile out of Wiltsbury. Vernon, looking well and brown, fell upon Joe and hugged her with enthusiasm.

They all went into a room full of antimacassars and lunched off boiled mutton and caper sauce.

"Vernon, you look splendid--and almost good-looking, doesn't he, Nell?"

"That's the uniform," said Nell demurely.

She had changed, Sebastian thought, looking at her. He had not seen her since her marriage. To him she had always fallen into a class--a certain type of charming young girl. Now he saw her as an individual--the real Nell bursting out of her chrysalis.

There was a subdued radiance about her. She was quieter than she used to be, and yet she was more alive. They were happy together--no one who looked at them could doubt it. They seldom looked at each other, but when they did you felt it. Something passed between them--delicate, evanescent, but unmistakable.

It was a happy meal. They talked of old days--of Abbots Puissants.

"And here we are, all four of us together again," said Joe.

A warm feeling fastened round Nell's heart. Joe had included her. All _four_ of us, she had said. Nell remembered how once Vernon had said, "We three," and the words had hurt her. But that was over now. She was one of them. That was her reward--one of her rewards. Life seemed full of rewards at the moment.

She was happy--so terribly happy. And she might so easily not have been happy. She might have been actually married to George when the war broke out. How could she ever have been so incredibly foolish as to think that anything mattered except marrying Vernon? How extraordinarily happy they were and how right he had been to say poverty didn't matter.

It wasn't as though she were the only one. Lots of girls were doing it--flinging up everything, marrying the man they cared for no matter how poor he was. After the war something would turn up. That was the attitude. And behind it lay that awful secret fear that you never took out and looked at properly. The nearest you ever got to it was saying defiantly: "And no matter _what_ happens, we'll have had _something_."

She thought: "The world's changing. Everything's different now. It always will be. We'll never go back...."

She looked across the table at Joe. Joe looked different somehow--very _queer_. What you would have called before the war--well, "_not quite_." What had Joe been doing with herself? That nasty man, La Marre.... Oh! well, better not think about it. Nothing mattered nowadays.

Joe was very nice to her--so different from what she used to be in the old days when Nell had always felt uncomfortable that Joe despised her. Perhaps she had cause. She _had_ been a little coward.

The war was awful, of course, but it had simplified things. Her mother, for instance, had come round almost at once. She was disappointed, naturally, about George Chetwynd (poor George, he really _was_ a dear and she'd been a beast to him), but Mrs. Vereker proceeded to make the best of things with admirable common sense.

"These war marriages!" she used that phrase with a tiny shrug of the shoulders. "Poor children--you can't blame them. Not wise, perhaps--but what is wisdom at a time like this?" Mrs. Vereker needed all her skill and all her wit to deal with her creditors and she had come off pretty well. Some of them even felt sympathy for her.

If she and Vernon didn't really like each other, they concealed the fact quite creditably, and as a matter of fact had met only once since the marriage. It had all been very easy.

Perhaps, if you had courage, things were always easy. Perhaps that was the great secret of life.

Nell pondered, then waking from her reverie plunged once more into the conversation.

Sebastian was speaking.

"We're going to look Jane up when we get back to town. I've not so much as heard of her for ages. Have you, Vernon?"

Vernon shook his head.

"No," he said, "I haven't."

He tried to speak naturally but didn't quite succeed.

"She's very nice," said Nell. "But--well, rather difficult, isn't she? I mean, you never quite know what she's thinking about."

"She might be occasionally disconcerting," Sebastian allowed.

"She's an angel," said Joe with vehemence.

Nell was watching Vernon. She thought: "I wish he'd say something ... anything. I'm afraid of Jane. I always have been. She's a devil...."

"Probably," said Sebastian, "she's gone to Russia or Timbuctoo or Mozambique. One would never be surprised with Jane."

"How long is it since you've seen her?" asked Joe.

"Exactly? Oh, about three weeks."

"Is that all? I thought you meant really ages."

"It seems like it," said Sebastian.

They began to talk of Joe's hospital in Paris. Then they talked of Myra and Uncle Sydney. Myra was very well and making an incredible quantity of swabs and also did duty twice a week at a canteen. Uncle Sydney was well on the way to making a second fortune, having started the manufacture of explosives.

"He's got off the mark early," said Sebastian appreciatively. "This war's not going to be over for three years at least."

They argued the point. The days of an "optimistic six months" were over, but three years were regarded as too gloomy a view. Sebastian talked about explosives, the state of Russia, the food question, and submarines. He was a little dictatorial, since he was perfectly sure that he was right.

At five o'clock Sebastian and Joe got into the car and drove back to London. Vernon and Nell stood in the road waving.

"Well," said Nell, "that's that." She slipped her arm through Vernon's. "I'm glad you were able to get off to-day. Joe would have been awfully disappointed not to see you."

"Do you think she's changed?"

"A little. Don't you?"

They were strolling along the road and they turned off where a track led over the downs.

"Yes," said Vernon, with a sigh. "I suppose it was inevitable."

"I'm glad she's married. I think it's very fine of her. Don't you?"

"Oh, yes. Joe was always warm-hearted, bless her!"

He spoke abstractedly. Nell glanced up at him. She realized now that he had been rather silent all day. The others had done most of the talking.

"I'm glad they came," she said again.

Vernon didn't answer. She pressed her arm against his and felt him press it against his side. But his silence persisted.

It was getting dark and the air came sharp and cold, but they did not turn back, walked on and on without speaking. So they had often walked before--silent and happy. But this silence was different. There was weight in it and menace.

Suddenly Nell knew.

"Vernon! It's come! You've got to go...."

He pressed her hand closer still but did not speak.

"Vernon ... when?"

"Next Thursday."

"Oh!" she stood still. Agony shot through her. It had come. She had known it was bound to come, but she hadn't known--quite--what it was going to feel like.

"Nell, Nell.... Don't mind so much. Please don't mind so much." The words came tumbling out now. "It'll be all right. I _know_ it'll be all right. I'm not going to get killed. I couldn't now that you love me--now that we're so happy. Some fellows feel their number's up when they go out--but I don't. I've a kind of certainty that I'm going to come through. I want you to feel that too."

She stood there frozen. This was what war was really. It took the heart out of your body, the blood out of your veins. She clung to him with a sob. He held her to him.

"It's all right, Nell. We knew it was coming soon. And I'm really frightfully keen to go--at least I would be if it wasn't for leaving you. You wouldn't like me to have spent the whole war guarding a bridge in England, would you? And there will be the leaves to look forward to--we'll have the most frightfully jolly leaves. There will be lots of money, and we'll simply blow it. Oh! Nell darling, I just know that nothing can happen to me now that you care for me."

She agreed with him.

"It can't--it can't. God couldn't be so cruel."

But the thought came to her that God was letting a lot of cruel things happen.

She said valiantly, forcing back her tears: "It'll be all right, darling. I know it too."

"And even--even if it isn't, you must remember--how perfect this has been.... Darling, you have been happy, haven't you?"

She lifted her lips to his. They clung together, dumb, agonizing, the shadow of their first parting hanging over them.

How long they stood there they hardly knew.

_3_

When they went back to the antimacassars they talked cheerfully of ordinary things. Vernon touched only once on the future.

"Nell, when I'm gone will you go to your mother, or what?"

"No. I'd rather stay down here. There are lots of things to do in Wiltsbury--hospital, canteen."

"Yes, but I don't want you to do anything. I think you'd be better distracted in London. There will still be theatres and things like that."

"No, Vernon, I must do something--work, I mean."

"Well, if you want to work you can knit me socks. I hate all this nursing business. I suppose it's necessary, but I don't like it. You wouldn't care to go to Birmingham?"

Nell said very decidedly that she would _not_ like to go to Birmingham.

The actual parting when it came was less strenuous. Vernon kissed her almost off-handedly.

"Well, so long. Cheer up. Everything's going to be all right. I'll write as much as I can, though I expect we're not allowed to say much that's interesting. Take care of yourself, Nell darling."

One almost involuntary tightening of his arms round her, and then he almost pushed her from him.

He was gone.

She thought: "I shall never sleep to-night ... never...."

But she did. A deep heavy sleep. She went down into it as into an abyss. A haunted sleep--full of terror and apprehension that gradually faded into the unconsciousness of exhaustion.

She woke with a keen sword of pain piercing her heart.

She thought: "Vernon's gone to the war. I must get something to do."

chapter 2

Nell went to see Mrs. Curtis, the Red Cross commandant. Mrs. Curtis was benign and affable. She was enjoying her importance and was convinced that she was a born organizer. Actually, she was a very bad one. But everyone said she had a wonderful manner. She condescended graciously to Nell.

"Let me see, Mrs.--ah! Deyre. You've got your V.A.D. and nursing certificates?"

"Yes."

"But you don't belong to any of the local detachments?"

Nell's exact standing was discussed at some length.

"Well, we must see what we can do for you," said Mrs. Curtis. "The hospital is fully staffed at present, but of course they are always falling out. Two days after the first convoy came in, we had seventeen resignations. All women of a certain age. They didn't like the way the Sisters spoke to them. I myself think the Sisters were perhaps a little unnecessarily brutal, but of course there's a great deal of jealousy of the Red Cross. And these were well-to-do women who didn't like being 'spoken to.' You are not sensitive in that way, Mrs. Deyre?"

Nell said that she didn't mind anything.

"That is the spirit," said Mrs. Curtis approvingly. "I myself," she continued, "consider it in the light of good discipline. And where should we all be without discipline?"

It shot through Nell's mind that Mrs. Curtis had not had to endure any discipline, which robbed her pronouncement of some of its impressiveness. But she continued to stand there looking attentive and impressed.

"I have a list of girls on the reserve," continued Mrs. Curtis. "I will add your name. Two days a week you will attend at the Out Patient Ward at the Town Hospital, and thereby gain a little experience. They are short-handed there and are willing to accept our help. Then you and Miss--" she consulted a list--"I think Miss Cardner--yes, Miss Cardner--will go with the district nurse on her rounds on Tuesdays and Fridays. You've got your uniform, of course? Then that is all right."

Mary Cardner was a pleasant plump girl whose father was a retired butcher. She was very friendly to Nell, explained that the days were Wednesday and Saturday and not Tuesday and Friday, "but old Curtis always gets something wrong," that the district nurse was a dear and never jumped on you, and that Sister Margaret at the hospital was a holy terror.

On the following Wednesday Nell did her first round with the district nurse, a little bustling woman very much overworked. At the end of the day she patted Nell kindly on the shoulder.

"I'm glad to see you have a head on your shoulders, my dear. Really some of the girls who come seem to be half-witted--they do indeed. And such fine ladies, you wouldn't believe--Not by birth--I don't mean that. But half-educated girls who think nursing is all smoothing a pillow and feeding the patient with grapes. You'll know your way about in no time."

Heartened by this, Nell presented herself at the Out Patient Department at the given time without too much trepidation. She was received by a tall gaunt Sister with a malevolent eye.

"Another raw beginner," she grumbled. "Mrs. Curtis sent you, I suppose? I'm sick of that woman. Takes me more time and trouble teaching silly girls who think they know everything than it would to do everything myself."

"I'm sorry," said Nell meekly.

"Get a couple of certificates, attend a dozen lectures, and think you know everything," said Sister Margaret bitterly. "Here they come. Don't get in my way more than you can help."

A typical batch of patients was assembled: a young boy with legs riddled with ulcers, a child with scalded legs from an overturned kettle, a girl with a needle in her finger, various sufferers with "bad ears," "bad legs," "bad arms."

Sister Margaret said sharply to Nell: "Know how to syringe an ear? I thought not. Watch me."

Nell watched.

"You can do it next time," said Sister Margaret. "Get the bandage off that boy's finger, and let him soak it in hot boracic water till I'm ready for him."

Nell felt nervous and clumsy. Sister Margaret was paralyzing her. Almost immediately, it seemed, Sister was by her side.

"We haven't got all day here to do things in," she remarked. "Here, leave it to me. You seem to be all thumbs. Soak the bandages off that kid's legs. Tepid water."

Nell got a basin of tepid water and knelt down before the child, a mere mite of three. She was badly burnt and the bandages had stuck to the tiny legs. Nell sponged and soaked very gently, but the baby screamed. It was a loud long-drawn yell of terror and agony, and it defeated Nell utterly.

She felt suddenly sick and faint. She couldn't do this work--she simply couldn't do it. She drew back, and as she did so she glanced up to find Sister Margaret watching her, a gleam of malicious pleasure showing in her eye.

"I thought you couldn't stick it," that eye said.

It rallied Nell as nothing else would have done. She bent her head, and setting her teeth, went on with her job, trying to avert her mind from the child's shrieks. It was done at last, and Nell stood up, white and trembling and feeling deathly sick.

Sister Margaret came along. She seemed disappointed.

"Oh! you've done it," she said. She spoke to the child's mother. "I'd be a bit more careful how you let the child get at the kettle in future, Mrs. Somers," she said.

Mrs. Somers complained that you couldn't be everywhere at once.

Nell was ordered off to foment a poisoned finger. Next, she assisted Sister to syringe the ulcerated leg, and after that stood by while a young doctor extracted the needle from the girl's finger. As he probed and cut, the girl winced and shrank and he spoke to her sharply.

"Keep quiet, can't you?"

Nell thought: "One never sees this side of things. One is only used to a doctor with a bedside manner. _I'm afraid this will hurt a little. Be as still as you can._"

The young doctor proceeded to extract a couple of teeth, flinging them carelessly on the floor, then he treated a smashed hand that had just come in from an accident.

It was not, Nell reflected, that he was unskillful. It was the absence of manner that was so disturbing to one's preconceived ideas. Whatever he did, Sister Margaret accompanied him, tittering in a sycophantic manner at any joke he was pleased to make. Of Nell he took no notice.

At last the hour was over. Nell was thankful. She said good-bye timidly to Sister Margaret.

"Like it?" asked Sister with a demoniac grin.

"I'm afraid I'm very stupid," said Nell.

"How can you be anything else?" said Sister Margaret. "A lot of amateurs like you Red Cross people. And thinking you know everything on earth. Well, perhaps, you'll be a little less clumsy next time!"

Such was Nell's encouraging début at the hospital.

It grew less terrible as time went on, however. Sister Margaret softened and relaxed her attitude of fierce defensiveness. She even permitted herself to answer questions.

"You're not so stuck-up as most," she allowed graciously.

Nell, in her turn, was impressed by the enormous amount of competent work Sister Margaret managed to put in in a very short time. And she understood a little her soreness on the subject of amateurs.

What struck Nell most was the enormous number of "bad legs" and their prototypes, most of them evidently old friends. She asked Sister Margaret timidly about them.

"Nothing much to be done about it," Sister Margaret replied. "Hereditary, most of them. Bad blood. You can't cure it."

Another thing that impressed Nell was the uncomplaining heroism of the poor. They came and were treated, suffered great pain, and went off to walk several miles home without a thought.

She saw it too in their homes. She and Mary Cardner had taken over a certain amount of the district nurse's round. They washed bedridden old women, tended "bad legs," occasionally washed and tended babies whose mothers were too ill to do anything. The cottages were small, the windows usually hermetically sealed, and the places littered with treasures dear to the hearts of the owners. The stuffiness was often unbearable.

The worst shock was about two weeks after beginning work, when they found a bedridden old man dead in his bed and had to lay him out. But for Mary Cardner's matter-of-fact cheerfulness Nell felt she could not have done it.

The district nurse praised them.

"You're good girls. And you're being a real help."

They went home glowing with satisfaction. Never in her life had Nell so appreciated a hot bath and a lavish allowance of bath salts.

She had had two postcards from Vernon. Mere scrawls saying he was all right and everything was splendid. She wrote to him every day, describing her adventures, trying to make them sound as amusing as possible. He wrote back:

_Somewhere in France_

Darling Nell:

I'm all right. Feeling splendidly fit. It's all a great adventure,
but I do long to see you. I do wish you wouldn't go into these
beastly cottages and places and mess about with diseased people.
I'm sure you'll catch something. Why you want to, I can't think.
I'm sure it isn't necessary. Do give up.

We think mostly about our food out here, and the Tommies think of
nothing but their tea. They'll risk being blown to bits any time
for a cup of 'ot tea. I have to censor their letters. One man
always ends "Yours till hell freezes," so I'll say the same.

Yours, Vernon.

One morning Nell received a telephone call from Mrs. Curtis.

"There is a vacancy for a ward maid, Mrs. Deyre. Afternoon duty. Be at the hospital at two-thirty."

The Town Hall of Wiltsbury had been turned into a hospital. It was a big new building standing in the cathedral square and overshadowed by the tall spire of the cathedral. A handsome being in uniform with a game leg and medals received her kindly at the front entrance.

"You've come to the wrong door, missie. Staff through the quartermaster's stores. Here, the scout will show you the way."

A diminutive scout conducted her down steps, through a kind of gloomy crypt where an elderly lady in Red Cross uniform sat surrounded with bales of hospital shirts--wearing several shawls and shivering a good deal--then along stone-flagged passages, and finally into a gloomy underground chamber where she was received by Miss Curtain, the chief of the ward maids, a tall thin lady with a face like a dreaming duchess and charming gentle manners.

Nell was instructed in her duties, which were simple enough to understand. They entailed hard work, but no difficulty. A certain area of stone passages and steps to scrub. Then the nurses' tea to lay, wait on, and finally clear away. Then the ward maids had their own tea. Then the same routine for supper.

Nell soon got the hang of things. The salient points of the new life were: one, war with the kitchen; two, the difficulty of providing the Sisters with the right kind of tea.

There was a long table where the V.A.D. nurses sat, pouring down in a stream, frantically hungry, and always the food seemed to fail before the last three were seated. You then applied to the kitchen through a tube and got a biting rejoinder. The right amount of bread and butter had been sent up, three pieces for each. Somebody must have eaten more than her share. Loud disclaimers from the V.A.D.'s. They chatted to each other amiably and freely, addressing each other by their surnames.

"I didn't eat your slice of bread, Jones. I wouldn't do such a mean thing!" "They always send it up wrong." "Look here, Catford's got to have something to eat. She's got an op. in half an hour." "Hurry up, Bulgy [an affectionate nickname, this]. We've got all those mackintoshes to scrub."

Very different the behaviour at the Sisters' table at the other side of the room. Conversation there went on genteelly in frosty whispers. Before each Sister was a small brown pot of tea. It was Nell's business to know exactly how strong each Sister liked it. It was never a question of how weak! To bring "washy" tea to a Sister was to fall from grace for ever.

The whispers went on incessantly.

"I said to her: 'Naturally the surgical cases receive the first attention.'" "I only passed the remark, so to speak." "Pushing herself forward. Always the same thing." "Would you believe it, she forgot to hold the towel for the doctor's hands." "I said to doctor this morning...." "I passed the remark to Nurse...."

Again and again that one phrase recurred: "I passed the remark." Nell grew to listen for it. When she approached the table the whispers became lower and the Sisters looked at her suspiciously. Their conversation was secretive and shrouded in dignity. With enormous formality, they offered each other tea.

"Some of mine, Sister Westhaven? There's plenty in the pot." "Would you oblige me with the sugar, Sister Carr?" "Pardon me."

Nell had just begun to realize the hospital atmosphere, the feuds, the jealousies, the cabals, and the hundred-and-one undercurrents, when she was promoted to the ward, one of the nurses having gone sick.

She had a row of twelve beds to attend to, mostly surgical cases. Her companion was Gladys Potts, a small giggling creature, intelligent but lazy. The ward was under the charge of Sister Westhaven, a tall thin acid woman with a look of permanent disapproval. Nell's heart sank when she saw her, but later she congratulated herself. Sister Westhaven was far the pleasantest nurse in the hospital to work under.

There were five Sisters in all. Sister Carr, round and good-tempered looking. The men liked her and she giggled and joked with them a good deal, and was then late over her dressings and hurried over them. She called the V.A.D.'s "dear," and patted them affectionately, but her temper was uncertain. She herself was so unpunctual that everything went wrong and the "dear" was blamed for it. She was maddening to work under.

Sister Barnes was impossible. Everyone said so. She ranted and scolded from morning to night. She hated V.A.D.'s and let them know it. "I'll teach them to come here thinking they know everything," was her constant declaration. Apart from her biting sarcasm, she was a good nurse, and some of the girls liked working under her in spite of her lashing tongue.

Sister Dunlop was a dug-out. She was kindly and placid, but thoroughly lazy. She drank a great deal of tea and did as little work as possible.

Sister Norris was Theatre Sister. She was competent at her job, rouged her lips, and was cattish to her underlings.

Sister Westhaven was by far the best nurse in the hospital. She was enthusiastic over work and was a good judge of those under her. If they showed promise she was reasonably amiable to them. If she judged them fools they led a miserable life.

On the fourth day she said to Nell: "I thought you weren't worth much at first, Nurse. But you've got a good lot of work in you."

So much imbued by now was Nell by the hospital spirit that she went home in the seventh heaven.

Little by little she sank into the hospital rut. At first she had suffered a heart-rending pang at the sight of the wounded. The first dressing of wounds at which she assisted was almost more than she could bear. Those who "longed to nurse" usually brought a certain amount of emotionalism to the task. But they were soon purged of it. Blood, wounds, suffering were everyday matters.

Nell was popular with the men. In the slack hour after tea she wrote letters for them, fetched books she thought they would like from the shelves at the end of the ward, heard stories of their families and sweethearts. She became, in common with the other nurses, zealous to defend them from the cruelties and stupidities of the would-be kind.

On visitors' days streams of elderly ladies arrived. They sat down by beds and did their best to "cheer our brave soldier." Certain things were conventions. "You're longing to get back, I suppose?" And "Yes, ma'am," was always the answer given. Descriptions were sought of the Angels at Mons.

There were also concerts. Some were well organized and were thoroughly enjoyed. Others----! They were summed up by the nurse on the next row to Nell, Phillis Deacon:

"Anybody who thinks they can sing, but has never been allowed to by their families, has got their chance now!"

There were also clergymen. Never, Nell thought, had she seen so many clergymen. One or two were appreciated. They were fine men, with sympathy and understanding, and they knew the right things to say and did not stress the religious side of their duties unduly. But there were many others.

"Nurse."

Nell paused in a hurried progress along the ward, having just been told sharply by Sister: "Nurse, your beds are crooked, No. 7's sticking out."

"Yes."

"Couldn't you wash me now, Nurse?"

Nell stared at the unusual request.

"It's not nearly half-past seven."

"It's the parson. He's at me to be confirmed. He's coming in now."

Nell took pity on him. The Reverend Canon Edgerton found his prospective convert barred from him by screens and basins of water.

"Thank yer, Nurse," said the patient hoarsely. "It seems a bit hard to go on nagging at a feller when he can't get away from yer, doesn't it?"

Washing--interminable washing. The patients were washed, the ward was washed, and at every hour of the day there were mackintoshes to scrub.

And eternal tidiness.

"Nurse--your beds. The bedclothes are hanging down on No. 9. No. 2 has pushed his bed sideways. What will Doctor think?"

Doctor--Doctor--Doctor. Morning, noon, and night, Doctor! Doctor was a god. For a mere V.A.D. to speak to Doctor was _lèse majesté_ and brought down the vials of wrath on your head from Sister. Some of the V.A.D.'s offended innocently. They were Wiltsbury girls and they knew the doctors--knew them as ordinary human beings. They said good-morning blithely. Soon they knew better--knew they had been guilty of that awful sin, "pushing yourself forward." Mary Cardner "pushed herself forward." Doctor asked for some scissors and, unthinkingly, she handed him the pair she wore. Sister explained her crime to her at length. She ended thus:

"I don't say you mightn't have done this. Seeing you had the exact thing that was wanted, you might have said to me--in a whisper, that is--'Is this what is needed, Sister?' And I would have taken them from you and handed them to Doctor. No one could have objected to that."

You got tired of the word "Doctor." Every remark Sister made was punctuated with it, even when speaking to him.

"Yes, Doctor ... 102 this morning, Doctor.... I don't think so, Doctor.... Pardon, Doctor? I didn't quite catch.... Nurse, hold the towel for Doctor's hands."

And you held the towel meekly, standing like a glorified towel horse. And Doctor, having wiped his sacred hands, flung the towel on the floor where you meekly picked it up. You poured water for Doctor, you handed soap to Doctor, and finally you received the command:

"Nurse, open the door for Doctor."

"And what I'm afraid is, we shan't be able to grow out of it afterward," said Phillis Deacon wrathfully. "I shall never feel the same about doctors again. Even the scrubbiest little doctors I shall be subservient to, and when they come to dine I shall find myself rushing to open the door for them. I know I shall."

There was a great freemasonry in the hospital. Class distinctions were a thing of the past. The dean's daughter, the butcher's daughter, Mrs. Manfred who was the wife of a draper's assistant, Phillis Deacon who was the daughter of a baronet--they all called each other by their surname and shared the common interest of "what would there be for supper, and would it go round?" Undoubtedly there was cheating. Gladys Potts, the giggler, was discovered to go down early and surreptitiously to filch an extra piece of bread and butter or an unfair helping of rice.

"You know," said Phillis Deacon, "I do sympathize with servants now. One always thinks they mind so much about their food--and here are we getting just the same. It's having nothing else to look forward to. I could have cried when the scrambled eggs didn't go round last night."

"They oughtn't to have scrambled eggs," said Mary Cardner angrily. "The eggs ought to be separate, poached or boiled. Scrambled gives too much opportunity to unscrupulous people."

And she looked with significance at Gladys Potts, who giggled nervously and moved away.

"That girl's a slacker," said Phillis Deacon. "She's always got something else to do when it's screens. And she sucks up to Sister. It doesn't matter with Westhaven. Westhaven's fair. But she flattered little Carr till she got all the soft jobs."

Little Potts was unpopular. Strenuous efforts were made to force her to do the more disagreeable work sometimes, but Potts was wily. Only the resourceful Deacon was a match for her.

There were also the jealousies amongst the doctors themselves. Naturally they all wanted the more interesting surgical cases. The allotting of cases to different wards gave rise to feeling.

Nell soon knew all the doctors and their various attributes. There was Dr. Lang, tall, untidy, slouching, with long nervous fingers. He was the cleverest surgeon of the lot. He had a sarcastic tongue, and was ruthless in his treatments but he was clever. All the Sisters adored him.

Then there was Dr. Wilbraham, who had the fashionable practice of Wiltsbury. A big florid man, genial in temper when things went well, and the manners of a spoilt child when he was put out. If he was tired and cross he was unnecessarily rough and Nell hated him.

There was Dr. Meadows, a quiet efficient G. P. He was content not to do operations and he gave every case unfailing attention. He always spoke politely to the V.A.D.'s and omitted to throw towels on the floor.

Then there was Dr. Bury, who was not supposed to be much good and who was himself convinced that he knew everything. He was always wishing to try extraordinary new methods and he never continued one treatment for more than a couple of days. If one of his patients died, it was the fashion to say: "Do you wonder, with Dr. Bury?"

Then there was young Dr. Keen, who had been invalided home from the front. He was little more than a medical student but he was full of importance. He even demeaned himself to chat with the V.A.D.'s, explaining the importance of an operation that had just taken place. Nell said to Sister Westhaven: "I didn't know Dr. Keen was operating. I thought it was Dr. Lang." Sister replied grimly: "Dr. Keen held the leg. That's all."

Operations had been a nightmare to Nell at first. At the first one she attended, the floor rose at her and a nurse led her out. She hardly dared to face Sister, but Sister was unexpectedly kind.

"It's partly the lack of air and the smell of the ether, Nurse," she said kindly. "Go into a short one next. You'll get used to it."

Next time Nell felt faint but did not have to go out, the time after she felt sick only, and the time after that she didn't feel sick at all.

Once or twice she was lent to help the theatre nurse clear up the operating theatre after an unusually big op. The place was like a shambles, blood everywhere. The theatre nurse was only eighteen, a determined slip of a thing. She owned to Nell that she had hated it at first.

"The very first op. was a leg," she said. "Amputation. And Sister went off afterward and left me to clear up, and I had to take the leg down to the furnace myself. It was awful."

On her days out Nell went to tea with friends. Some of them were kindly old ladies and sentimentalized over her and told her she was splendid.

"You don't work on Sundays, do you, dear? Really? Oh! but that isn't right. Sunday should be a day of rest."

Nell pointed out gently that the soldiers had to be washed and fed on Sundays just as any other day, and the old ladies admitted this but seemed to think that the matter should have been better organized. They were also very distressed at Nell's having to walk home alone at midnight.

Others were even more difficult.

"I hear these hospital nurses give themselves great airs, ordering everyone about. I shouldn't stand that kind of thing myself. I am willing to do anything I can to help in this dreadful war, but impertinence I will not stand. I told Mrs. Curtis so, and she agreed it would be better for me not to do hospital work."

To these ladies Nell made no reply at all.

The rumour of "the Russians" was sweeping through England at this time. Everyone had seen them--or if not actually seen them, their cook's second cousin had, which was practically the same thing. The rumour died hard--it was so pleasing and so exciting.

A very old lady who came to the hospital took Nell aside.

"My dear," she said, "don't believe that story. It's true, but not in the way we think."

Nell looked inquiringly at her.

"Eggs!" said the old lady in a poignant whisper. "Russian eggs! Several millions of them--to keep us from starving."

Nell wrote all these things to Vernon. She felt terribly cut off from him. His letters were naturally terse and constrained and he seemed to dislike the idea of her working in hospital. He urged her again and again to go to London--enjoy herself.

How queer men were, Nell thought. They didn't seem to understand. She would hate to be one of the "keeping themselves bright for the boys" brigade. How soon you drifted apart when you were doing different things! She couldn't share Vernon's life and he couldn't share hers.

The first agony of parting, when she had felt sure he would be killed, was over. She had fallen into the routine of wives. Four months had passed and he hadn't been even wounded. He wouldn't be. Everything was all right.

Five months after he had gone out he wired that he had got leave. Nell's heart almost stopped beating. She was so excited! She went off to Matron and was granted leave of absence.

She travelled to London feeling strange and unusual in ordinary clothes. Their first leave!

_2_

It was true--really true! The leave train came in and disgorged its multitudes. She saw him. He was actually there. They met. Neither could speak. He squeezed her hand frantically. She knew then how afraid she had been....

That five days went by in a flash. It was like some queer delirious dream. She adored Vernon and he adored her, but they were in some ways like strangers to each other. He was offhand when she spoke about France. It was all right--everything was all right. One made jokes about it and refused to treat it seriously. "For goodness' sake, Nell, don't sentimentalize. It's awful to come home and find everyone with long faces. And don't talk slush about our brave soldiers laying down their lives, _etc._ That sort of stuff makes me sick. Let's get tickets for another show."

Something in his absolute callousness perturbed her--it seemed somehow rather dreadful to treat everything so lightly. When he asked her what she had been doing she could only give him hospital news, and that he didn't like. He begged her again to give it up.

"It's a filthy job, nursing. I hate to think of your doing it."

She felt chilled, rebuffed, then rebuked herself. They were together again. What did anything else matter?

They had a wild delightful time. They went to a show and danced every night. In the daytime they went shopping. Vernon bought her everything that took his fancy. They went to a Paris firm of dressmakers and sat there whilst airy young duchesses floated past in wisps of chiffon and Vernon chose the most expensive model. They felt horribly wicked but dreadfully happy when Nell wore it that night.

Then Nell told him he ought to go and see his mother. Vernon rebelled.

"Oh! darling, I don't want to! Our little short precious time. I can't miss a minute of it."

Nell pleaded. Myra would be terribly hurt and disappointed.

"Well, then, you've got to come with me."

"No, that wouldn't do at all."

In the end, he went down to Birmingham for a flying visit. His mother made a tremendous fuss over him--greeted him with floods of what she called "glad proud tears," and trotted him round to see the Bents. Vernon came back seething with conscious virtue.

"You are a hard-hearted devil, Nell. We've missed a whole day! God, how I've been slobbered over."

He felt ashamed as soon as he had said it. Why couldn't he love his mother better? Why did she always manage to rub him up the wrong way, no matter how good his resolutions were? He gave Nell a hug.

"I didn't mean it. I'm glad you made me go. You're so sweet, Nell. You never think of yourself. It's so wonderful being with you again. You don't know...."

And she put on the French model gown and they went out to dine with a ridiculous feeling of having been model children and deserving a reward.

They had nearly finished dinner when Nell saw Vernon's face change. It stiffened and grew anxious.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," he said hastily.

But she turned and looked behind her. At a small table against the wall was Jane.

Something cold seemed for a moment to rest on Nell's heart. Then she said easily:

"Why, it's Jane! Let's go and speak to her."

"No, I'd rather not." She was a little surprised by the vehemence of his tone. He saw that and went on: "I'm stupid, darling. I want to have you and nothing but you--not other people butting in. Have you finished? Let's go. I don't want to miss the beginning of the play."

They paid the bill and went. Jane nodded to them carelessly and Nell waved her hand to her. They arrived at the theatre ten minutes early.

Later, as Nell was slipping the gown from her white shoulders, Vernon said suddenly: "Nell, do you think I shall ever write music again?"

"Of course. Why not?"