MID-STREAM
The morning paper had been brought in to Dodo with her letters, and she
opened it quickly at the middle page. The German assault on Verdun was
being pressed ever more fiercely; it seemed impossible that the town
could hold out much longer. A second of the protecting forts had fallen,
smashed and pulverised under the hail of devastating steel....
Dodo read no more than the summary of the news. It was bad everywhere;
there was not a single gleam of sun shining through that impenetrable
black cloud that had risen out of Central Europe nearly two years ago,
and still poured its torrents on to broken lands. On the Eastern front
of Germany the Russian armies were being pushed back; the British
garrison in Kut was completely surrounded, and even the sturdiest of
optimists could do no more than affirm that the fall of that town would
not have any real bearing on the war generally. They had said precisely
the same when, a few months ago, Gallipoli had been evacuated, just as
when in the first stupendous advance of the enemy across France and
Flanders, they had slapped their silly legs, and shouted that the
German lines of communication were lengthening daily and presently the
Allies would snip them through, so that all the armies of the Hun would
drop neatly off like a thistle-head when you sever its stalk with a
stick. At this rate how many and how grave disasters were sufficient to
have any bearing on the war? Perhaps the fall of Verdun would be a
blessing in disguise. The disguise certainly seemed impenetrable, but
the optimists would pierce it....
Dodo pulled herself together, and remembered that she was an optimist
too, though not quite of that order, and that it was not consistent with
her creed to meditate upon irretrievable misfortunes, or indeed to
meditate upon anything at all when there were a dozen private letters of
her own to be opened at once, and probably some thirty or forty more
connected with hospital work, waiting for her in the office. It
certainly was not conducive to efficiency to think too much in these
days, especially if nothing but depression was to be the result of
thinking; and if all she could do was to see to the affairs of her
hospital, it was surely better to do that than to speculate on present
data about the result of the fall of Verdun.
A tap at her door, and David's voice demanding admittance reminded her
that after she had attended to the immediate requirements of the
hospital, she was to have a holiday to-day, as David was going to school
for the first time to-morrow, and this day was dedicated to him. Thus
there was another reason for liveliness; it would never do to cast
shadows over David's festival.
"Yes, darling, come in," she said. "I'm still in bed like a lazy-bones."
"Oh, get up at once, mummie," said David. "It's my day. Shall I fill
your bath?"
"Yes, do. While it's filling I shall open my letters."
"But not answer them," said David. "You can do that to-morrow after I
have gone. Isn't it funny? I don't want to go to school a bit, but I
should be rather disappointed if I wasn't going."
"I know, darling. I'm rather like that, too. I hate your going, but I'm
sending you all the same."
"Anyhow, I shan't cry," announced David.
Dodo glanced through her letters while David was busy with her bath.
There was one from Jack, announcing that he would be here for the
Sunday, and that was good. There was one from Edith, and that made her
laugh, for it informed her that she would arrive to-night bringing her
typewriter with her. The speed at which she was getting efficient
appeared to be quite miraculous, if her machine had not been away being
repaired, she would have typed this letter instead of writing it. She
had knocked it over yesterday, and the bell wouldn't ring at the end of
a line. She was learning shorthand as well, and it would be good
practice for her to take down Dodo's business letters from dictation,
and type them for her afterwards....
"Ready!" shouted David from the bathroom next door. "And I've put in a
whole bottle of something for a treat."
From the thick steam that was pouring through the open door it seemed
certain that David had treated her to a bottle of verbena salts.
"Darling, that is kind of you," said Dodo cordially. "Now you must go
downstairs, and say we'll have breakfast in half an hour."
"Less," said David firmly.
"Well, twenty-five minutes. You can begin if I'm late."
The rule on these festivals, such as birthdays and last days of the
holidays, was that David should, with his mother as companion, do
exactly what he liked from morning till night within reason, Dodo being
the final court of appeal as to whether anything was reasonable or not.
She was allowed to be reasonable too (not having to run, for instance,
if she really was tired) and so when he had gone downstairs, she emptied
the bath-water out and began again, since it was really unreasonable to
expect her to get into the fragrant soup which David had treated her to.
But she was nearly up to time, and in the interval he had learned the
exciting news that the keeper's wife had given birth to twins. This led
to questions on the abstruse subject of generation which appalled the
parlour-maid. Dodo adhered to the gooseberry bush theory, and would not
budge from her position.
An hour in her business-room after breakfast was sufficient to set in
order the things that she must personally attend to, and she came out on
to the lawn, where David had decreed that croquet should form the first
diversion of the day. It was deliciously warm, for the spring which was
bursting into young leaf and apple-blossom on the day that Dodo had gone
up to town three weeks ago was now, in these last days of April,
trembling on the verge of summer. A mild south-westerly wind drove
scattered clouds, white and luminous, across the intense blue, and their
shadows bowled swiftly along beneath them, islands of moving shade
surrounded by the living sea of sunlight. Below the garden the
beech-wood stood in full vesture of milky green, and the elms still only
in leaf-bud, shed showers of minute sequin-like blossoms on the grass.
The silver flush of daisies in the fields was beginning to be gilded
with buttercups, the pink thorn-trees, after these weeks of mellow
weather were decking themselves with bloom, and the early magnolias
against the house were covered with full-orbed wax-like stars. Thrushes
were singing in the bushes, the fragrance of growing things loaded the
air, and David from sheer exuberance of youth and energy was hopping
over the croquet-hoops till his mother was ready. Sight, smell and
hearing were glutted with the sense of the ever-lasting youth of the
re-awakening earth, and as she stepped out on to the terrace, Dodo
recaptured in body and soul and spirit, for just one moment, the
immortal glee of springtime. The next moment, she saw a few yards down
the terrace, a bath-chair being slowly wheeled along. Two boys on
crutches walked by it, its occupant had his whole face as far as his
mouth, swathed in bandages.... And before she knew it, a whole gallery
of pictures was flashed on to her mind. Hospital ships were moving out
of port, and putting into port again, if they escaped the deadly menace
of the seas; long trains with the mark of the Red Cross on them were
rolling along the railways, and discharging their burdens of pain. Down
the thousand miles of front the pitiless rain of shells was falling,
Verdun tottered, in Kut....
Dodo pulled herself together, and overtook the bath-chair.
"Why, what a nice day you've ordered to come out on for the first time,
Trowle," she said. "Drink in the sun and the wind: doesn't it feel good
after that beastly old house? Ashley, if you go that pace already on
your crutches, you'll be taken up for exceeding the speed-limit in a
week's time. As for you, Richmond, you're a perfect fraud; nobody could
possibly be as well as you look. Isn't it lovely for me? I've got a
whole holiday, because my boy is going to school to-morrow and we're
going to play games together from morning till night. He's waiting for
me now. If any of you want to be useful--not otherwise--you might
stroll down to the lodge across there, and tell them I shall come in to
see the keeper's wife sometime to-day. She's had twins. I never did.
Yes, David, I'm coming."
David had never forgotten that remarkable game of croquet he once
witnessed when Prince Albert Hun, as he was now called, and Miss
Grantham both cheated, and this morning as a reasonable diversion, he
chose to impersonate him and cheat too. Naturally he announced this
intention to his mother, who therefore impersonated Miss Grantham, as a
defensive measure, and the game became extremely curious. David, of
course, imitated the Albert Hun mode of play, but, having adjusted his
ball with his foot so as to be precisely opposite his hoop, and having
bent down in the correct attitude to observe his line, he found that
Dodo had taken the hoop up, and so there was nothing to go through.
"Oh, I've finished being a Hun," he said, when he made this depressing
discovery. "Let's play properly again. What made him so fat?"
"Eating," said Dodo. "You'll get fat, too, if you go on as you did at
breakfast."
"But I was hungry. I could have eaten a croquet-ball. Should I have been
sick?"
"Probably. Get on! Hit it!"
"All right. And why did Princess Hun always creak so when she bent down.
Do you remember? Did she ever have twins like Mrs. Reeves? Can I have
twins?"
"Yes, darling, I hope you'll have quantities some time," said Dodo.
"Can I have them to-day?" asked David. "Let's go to the kitchen-garden,
and look among the gooseberry bushes."
"No, there's not time for you to have them to-day."
"Then I shall wait till I go to school. Ow! I've hit you," screamed
David suddenly losing interest in other matters. "Now I shall send you
away to the corner, and I shall go through a hoop, and I shall----"
David careering after the ball, tripped over a hoop which he had not
observed, and fell down.
Thereafter came an expedition to the trout-stream, and since their
efforts to throw a fly only resulted in the most amazing tangles and the
hooking of tough bushes, it was necessary to suborn a gardener to supply
them with worms, and to promise to say nothing about it, for fear Jack
should have a fit. With this wriggling lure, so much more sensible if
the object of their fishing was to entrap fish (which it undoubtedly
was) David caught two trout and the corpse of an old boot which gave him
a great deal of trouble before it could be landed, since, unlike trout,
boots seemed to be absolutely indefatigable and could pull forever. Then
David distinctly saw a kingfisher come out of a hole in the bank
(naturally the other side of the stream) and had to take off his shoes
and stockings and wade across, as there was a firm legend that the
British Museum would give you a thousand pounds for an intact
kingfisher's nest. He dropped a stocking into the water, and this was
irrevocably lost, but on the other hand he found a thrush's nest, though
no kingfisher's. But as he was totally indifferent as to whether he had
two stockings or one or none, the fact of finding a thrush's nest
contributed a gain on balance. After that, it was certainly time to have
lunch, as was apparent when they got back to the house and found it
close on half-past three. So they decided to miss out tea, or rather
combine it with supper, and continue looking for birds' nests.
Dodo was the least envious of mankind, but she was inclined that day,
when the sunset began to flame in the west and kindle the racing clouds,
to be jealous of Joshua, and if she had thought that any peremptory
commands to the sun and moon would have had the smallest effect on their
appointed orbits, she would certainly have told them to remain precisely
where they were until further notice. All day she had been playing
truant; she had slipped her collar, and gone larking in the spring time.
With none other except David, could she have done that; there was no one
intimately dear to her who would not have shoo'd her back into the
environment of the war. Jack even, the friend of her heart, must have
asked about the hospital, and told her about the remount camp, and given
her the latest War Office news about Verdun and Kut. But Dodo could lose
herself in love with David, and all day he had never brought her up
gasping to the surface again. The most tragic of his recollections
concerned his going to school to-morrow, and knit up with that was the
joy of new adventures, and the grandeur of leaving home quite alone with
trousers and a ticket of his own. His world all day had been the real
world to her, and it was with the sense of an intolerable burden to be
shouldered again that she saw the evening begin to close in. Often had
the complete childish unconsciousness of any terrific tragedy going on
enabled her to slip the collar to get a drop of water from this boyish
Lazarus, who alone was able to cross for her the "great gulf fixed," and
now the giver of a little water was off to embark on other adventures.
With an intuition wholly without bitterness Dodo knew that in a week's
time she would be getting ecstatic letters from him on the joys of
school and the excitement of friendship with other boys. She loved the
thought of those letters coming to her; she would have been miserable if
she had pictured David really missing her. She had no doubt that he
would be glad beyond words to see her again, but in the interval there
would be cricket to play, and friends to make, and cakes to share and
stag beetles to keep. It was intensely right that a new life should
absorb him, for that was the way in which young things grew to boyhood
and manhood and learnt the part they were to play in the world. But as
far as she herself went (leaving the consideration of the big affairs
outside) she imaged herself as a raven croaking on a decayed bough....
Jack would come and croak too; Edith would croak; everybody except those
delicious beings aged twelve or under, croaked, unless they were too
busy to croak. But to David the war, that aching interminable business
was just a pleasant excitement, like the kitchen chimney being on fire,
or a water-pipe bursting. There were a quantity of agreeable soldiers in
the house, who sometimes told him about shrapnel and heavy stuff and
snipers, and to him the war was just that; an exciting set of stories
connected with the smashing up of the Hun. He had a world of his own, of
the things that truly and rightly concerned him. The most thrilling at
the moment was the fact of going to school to-morrow, after that came
the lost stocking and the other diversions of the day. Since morning he
had wiled Dodo from herself, and as they sat down with great grandeur to
a splendid combination of tea and supper, which included treacle
pudding, the two trout and bananas, reasonably chosen by David for the
last debauch, Dodo's jealousy of Joshua surged within her. In an hour
from now, David would have gone to bed, and then she would go upstairs
to say good-night to him, and come down again to welcome Edith and her
typewriter and slide back into the old heart-breaking topics.
Dodo had made a glorious pretence of being greedy about treacle pudding,
in order to show how much she appreciated David's housekeeping. Thus,
when the hour for bed-time came, he got up, rather serious.
"Oh, Mummie," he said, "I shall never forget to-day, if I live to be
twenty."
"My darling, have you enjoyed it? Have you enjoyed it just as much as
you can enjoy anything?" said Dodo, feeling the shades of the
prison-house closing round. "_I_ have."
"To-morrow at this time," said David solemnly, "you'll be here and I
shan't."
Dodo heard her heart-cords thrumming; joy was the loudest because the
child she had brought into the world, flesh of her flesh and bone of her
bone was a boy already, and with the flicking round of the swift years
would soon be a man, and for the same reason there was regret and aching
there because never again would she see one who was part of herself, her
life, swelling into bud, and thereafter blossoming....
"Oh, David," she said, "your darling body will be there, and I shall be
here, but that's nothing at all. There's love between us, isn't there,
and what on earth can part that? You'll understand that some day. Hasn't
to-day been delicious? Well, it was only delicious because you were you
and I was I. Just think of that for a second! You wouldn't have cared
about catching boots with Albert Hun."
He opened his eyes very wide.
"Why, I should have hated it!" he said. "It was the boot and you,
Mummie, that made it lovely. Is that it?"
"It's it and all of it," said she. "Off you go. I shall come to say
good-night before dinner."
David wrinkled up his nose.
"Dinner after treacle-pudding and bananas!" he shouted. "Who'll be fat?"
"I shall have to make a pretence to keep Mrs. Arbuthnot from feeling
awkward," said Dodo.
"I see. _Now_ you've promised to come to say good-night? It's a
con--something."
"Tract," said Dodo.
Dodo kept her part of the contract. But there was never anyone so
deliciously fast asleep as was David when she went to perform it. He lay
with his cheek on his hand, and his hair all over his forehead, and his
mouth a little open with breath coming long and evenly. His clothes lay
out ready for packing in the morning, and the immortal warless day was
over.
She went downstairs again, smiling to herself that David slept so well,
back into the cage. The evening papers had been brought by Edith who was
singing in the bathroom. Verdun still held out, and the news of the fall
of the second defensive fort was unconfirmed. On the other hand, Trowle,
the boy with the bandaged face, who had taken his first outing to-day,
had a high temperature, and the matron had asked Dr. Ashe to come and
see him. So there was David asleep and Edith singing, and Verdun
untaken, and Trowle with a high temperature. Dodo felt that, on
balance, she ought to have been very gay. But Trowle, one of a hundred
patients, had a high temperature. She was worried at that in a way she
wouldn't have been worried a year ago. If only they would stop maiming
and gassing each other for a few days, or if only the hospital could be
empty for a week!
By the middle of next morning, David had set off without tears according
to promise. Trowle's temperature much abated, only indicated a slight
chill, and Verdun still held out. Dodo had dictated a couple of letters
to Edith, who with swoops and dashes of her pencil took them down on a
block of quarto paper, and while Dodo opened the rest of her
correspondence was transferring them on to her typewriter. She worked
with a high staccato action, as if playing a red-hot piano. As she
clicked her keys, she conversed loudly and confidently.
"Go on talking, Dodo," she said. "All I am doing is purely mechanical,
and I can attend perfectly. There! when the bell rings like that, I know
it is the end of a line, and I just switch the board across, and it
clicks and makes a new empty line for itself. You should learn to
typewrite; it is mere child's play. I shall never write a letter in my
own hand again. We ought all to be able to use a typewriter; you can
dash things off in no time. I think the work you have been doing here is
glorious, but you ought to type. Let me see, you said something in this
letter about aspirin. I've got 'aspirin' mixed up with the next word in
my shorthand notes. Just refer back, and tell me what you said about
aspirin."
Dodo turned up a letter which she thought was done with. "We want
aspirin tabloids containing two grains," she said.
"That was it!" said Edith triumphantly. "You said 'grains,' and it
looked like 'graceful' on my copy. Are you sure you didn't say
'graceful'? Now that's all right. I move the line back and erase
'graceful.' No, that stop only makes capitals instead of small letters.
I'll correct it when the sheet is finished. Let me see; oh, yes, that
curve there means 'as before.' It's all extraordinarily simple if you
once concentrate upon it. The whole of this transcribing which looks
like a conjuring trick--oh, I began writing 'conjuring trick'--is really
like the explanation of a conjuring trick, which--did I type 'before,'
or didn't I? Do go on talking. I work better when there is talking going
on. I shan't answer, but the fact that there is some distraction makes
me determined not to be distracted. Conscious effort, you know...."
"Jack comes to-night," said Dodo, continuing the opening of her letters,
"and we'll play quiet aged lawn-tennis to-morrow afternoon."
Edith paused with her hands in the air.
"Why quiet and aged?" she said, plunging them on to the keys again. The
bell rang.
"Because the lights are low and I'm very old," said Dodo.
Edith forgot to move the machine, and began writing very quickly over
the finished line.
"Nonsense!" she said. "You must be fierce and strong and young with all
the lights on. I mustn't talk. Something's happened. But all that
concerns us now is to be as efficient as we possibly can. We can't
afford to make mistakes. We must----"
She pulled out the sheet she had been working on, and gazed at it
blankly.
"Dear Sir," she repeated, "'The Marchioness--' is it spelled like March
or Marsh, Dodo? Oh, March; yes. I'll correct that. 'Aspirin in graceful
conjuring trick,' that should be grains, and then four large Qs in a
row. Oh, that was when I made a mistake with the erasing key. Very
stupid of me. And what's happened to the last line? It's written over
twice. Have you got any purple ink, Dodo? I always like correcting in
the same coloured ink as the type; it looks neater. Well, if you have
only got black that will have to do."
Edith shook the stylograph Dodo gave her to make it write, and a
fountain of pure black ink poured on to the page.
"Blotting-paper," she said in a strangled voice.
Dodo began to laugh.
"Oh, Edith, you are a tonic," she said, "and I want it this morning. My
dear, don't waste any more time over that, but tell me if you never feel
in crumbs as I do. I think it's reaction from yesterday. I escaped. I
played with David all day, and forgot about cripples and Kut and Verdun,
and now I'm back in the cage again, and David's gone, and--and I'm a
worm. If I followed my inclination, I should lie down on the floor and
roar for the very disquietness of my heart, as the other David says."
"I shouldn't," said Edith loudly. "I want to dance and sing because I am
helping to destroy those putrid Huns. Every letter I typewrite--I'll
copy this one out again by the way, as no one in the world could read
it--is another nail in their odious coffin. I don't care whether Verdun
is lost or Kut or anything else. It's not my business. And it's not
your's either, Dodo. You mustn't think; there's too much to do; there's
no time for thinking. But what has happened to you is that you're
overtired. I shall speak to Jack about it."
"My dear, you will do nothing of the kind," said Dodo. "It would be
quite useless to begin with, for I should do exactly as I pleased, and
it would only make Jack anxious."
Edith ran an arpeggio scale up her typewriter.
"When I feel tired or despondent," she said, "which isn't often, I read
about German atrocities. Then I get on the boil from morning till
night."
Dodo shook her head.
"No," she said. "Living surrounded by the wounded doesn't have that
effect on me or anyone else. If you allow yourself to think, it simply
makes you sick at heart. Two days ago a convoy of men who had been
gassed came in, and instead of feeling on the boil, I simply ached. We
are beginning to use gas too, and ... my heart aches when I think of
German boys being carried back into hospitals in the state ours are in.
I suppose I ought to be pleased that they are being gassed too. But I'm
not. And I began so well. I was simply consumed with fury, and thought
that that was the way to wage war. So it is no doubt. But what do you
prove by it? Was anything ever so senseless? The world has gone mad."
Edith fitted a new sheet into her machine.
"I know it has, and the best thing to do is to go mad too, until the
world is sane again," she said. "You haven't had your house knocked to
bits by a bomb. Now I'm going to begin the aspirin letter once again. I
don't want to think and you had better not, either."
Dodo laughed.
"I know," she said. "And will the aspirin letter be ready for the post?
It goes in a quarter of an hour."
"It will have to be," said Edith. "After that I insist on your coming
out to play a few holes at golf before lunch. I shall work all
afternoon. Give me a sheaf of letters to write, Dodo."
This time something quite unprecedented happened to Edith's machine, for
six of the keys including the useful "e" would not act at all, and
Dodo, already much behindhand with her morning's work, left her
furiously tinkering with it. The aspirin letter was in consequence
indefinitely delayed, and Dodo had to telegraph instead. Later in the
day, the machine being still quite unuseable, Edith put it into its box
and despatched it for repair to London, with a letter of blistering
indignation. A day or two must elapse before it came back, and she
devoted herself to shorthand, and gave a little series of concerts
consisting of her own music to the astonished patients.
David wrote happily from school, Trowle's temperature went down, Verdun
held out, and the convoy of gassed men did well. Under this stimulus,
Dodo roused herself for the effort of not thinking. She did not even
think how odd it was for her, to whom activity was so natural, to be
obliged to make efforts. The days mounted into weeks and the weeks into
months, and she ceased looking forward and looking back. It was enough
to get through the day's work, and every day it was a little too much
for her. So too was the effort to keep her mind absorbed in the actual
work which lay to hand. That perhaps tired her more than the work
itself.