"Oh ... I thought.... H'm, that's a pity. Don't you like revues?"
"Oh, yes...."
"I thought you'd take me to a _matinée_ one afternoon."
"Oh, charming! I can't get leave in the afternoons, though."
"You often have a day off."
"Yes, but it's too soon to ask for another."
"Well, how about Wednesday, then?"
"Too soon. Think of the new Sister, and her opinion of me! That has yet
to be won."
"Well, let me know, anyway...."
(Staved off!)
The new Sister is coming quite soon: she has a medal.
Now that I know _my_ Sister must go I don't talk to her much; I almost
avoid her. That's true hospital philosophy.
I must put down the beauty of the night and the woman's laugh in the
shadowy hedge....
I walked up from the hospital late to-night, half-past eight, and hungry
... in the cold, brilliant moonlight; a fine moon, very low, throwing
long, pointed shadows across the road from the trees and hedges.
As one climbs up there is a wood on the right, the remains of the old
wooded hill; sparse trees, very tall; and to-night a star between every
branch, and a fierce moon beating down on the mud and grass.
I had on my white cap and long blue coat, very visible. The moon swept
the road from side to side: lovers, acting as though it were night, were
lit as though it was day.
I turned into the wood to take a message to a house set back from the
road, and the moonlight and the night vapour rising from the marshy
ground were all tangled together so that I could hardly see hedge from
field or path.
I saw a lit cigarette-end, and a woman's laugh came across the field as
naturally as if a sheep had bleated in the swampy grass. It struck me
that the dark countryside was built to surround and hide a laugh like
hers--the laugh of a lover, animal and protesting.
I saw the glowing end of the cigarette dance in a curve and fall to the
ground, and she laughed again more faintly.
Walking on in the middle of the moonlight, I reached the gate I was
looking for, ran up the pebbly drive to the dining-room window, gave my
message, and returned.
I slipped my cap off my hair and pushed it into my pocket, keeping under
the shadow of the hedge and into the quiet field.
They were whispering: "Do you?" "I do...." "Are you?" "I am...."
crushed into the set branches of the hedge.
The Mess went vilely to-night. Sister adds up on her fingers, and that's
fatal, so all the numbers were out, and the _chef_ sent in forty-five
meats instead of fifty-one. I blushed with horror and responsibility,
standing there watching six hungry men pretending to be philosophers.
The sergeant wolfed the cheese too. He got it out from under my very
eyes while I was clearing the tables and ate it, standing up to it in
the pantry with his back to me when I went in to fetch a tray.
Whenever I see that broad khaki back, the knickered legs astride, the
flexed elbow-tips, I know that his digestion is laying up more trouble
for him.
Benks, the Mess orderly, overeats himself too. He comes to the bunk and
thrusts his little smile round the door: "Sister, I got another of them
sick 'eadaches," very cheerfully, as though he had got something worth
having. She actually retorted, "Benks, you eat too much!" one day, but
he only swung on one leg and smiled more cheerfully than ever.
The new Sister has come. That should mean a lot. What about one's
habits of life...?
The new Sister has come, and at present she is absolutely without
personality, beyond her medal. She appears to be deaf.
I went along to-night to see and ask after the man who has his nose
blown off.
After the long walk down the corridor in almost total darkness, the
vapour of the rain floating through every open door and window, the
sudden brilliancy of the ward was like a haven.
The man lay on my right on entering--the screen removed from him.
Far up the ward the Sister was working by a bed. Ryan, the man with his
nose gone, was lying high on five or six pillows, slung in his position
by tapes and webbing passed under his arms and attached to the bedposts.
He lay with his profile to me--only he has no profile, as we know a
man's. Like an ape, he has only his bumpy forehead and his protruding
lips--the nose, the left eye, gone.
He was breathing heavily. They don't know yet whether he will live.
When a man dies they fetch him with a stretcher, just as he came in;
only he enters with a blanket over him, and a flag covers him as he
goes out. When he came in he was one of a convoy, but every man who can
stand rises to his feet as he goes out. Then they play him to his
funeral, to a grass mound at the back of the hospital.
It takes all sorts to make a hospital.
For instance, the Visitors....
There is the lady who comes in to tea and wants to be introduced to
every one as though it was a school-treat.
She jokes about the cake, its scarcity or its quantity, and makes a lot
of "fun" about two lumps of sugar.
When she is at her best the table assumes a perfect and listening
silence--not the silence of the critic, but the silence of the absorbed
child treasuring every item of talk for future use. After she goes the
joy of her will last them all the evening.
There is the lady who comes in to tea and, sitting down at the only
unlaid table, cries, "Nurse! I have no knife or plate or cup; and I
prefer a glass of boiling water to tea. And would you mind sewing this
button on my glove?"
There is the lady who comes in and asks the table at large: "I wonder if
any one knows General Biggens? I once met him...."
Or: "You've been in Gallipoli? Did you run across my young cousin, a
lieutenant in the...? Well, he was only there two days or so, I
suppose...." exactly as though she was talking about Cairo in the
season.
To-day there was the Limit.
She sat two paces away from where I sit to pour out tea. Her face was
kind, but inquisitive, with that brown liver-look round the eyes and a
large rakish hat. She comes often, having heard of him through the
_padre_, to see a Canadian whom she doesn't know and who doesn't want to
see her.
From two places away I heard her voice piping up: "Nurse, excuse my
asking, but is your cap a regulation one, like all the others?"
I looked up, and all the tea I was pouring poured over the edge. Mr.
Pettitt and Captain Matthew, between us, looked down at their plates.
I put my hand to my cap. "Is anything wrong? It ought to be like the
others."
She leant towards me, nodding and smiling with bonhomie, and said
flatteringly, "It's so prettily put on, I thought it was different."
And then (horror): "Don't you think nurse puts her cap on well?" she
asked Captain Matthew, who, looking harder than ever at his plate and
reddening to the ears, mumbled something which did not particularly
commit him since it couldn't be heard.
The usual delighted silence began to creep round the table, and I tried
wildly to divert her attention before our end became a stage and the
rest of the table an audience.
"I think it's so nice to see you sitting down with them all," she cooed;
"it's so cosy for them."
"Is your cup empty?" I said furiously, and held out my hand for it. But
it wasn't, of course; she couldn't even do that for me.
She shook hands with me when she went away and said she hoped to come
again. And she will.
There was once a lady who asked me very loudly whether I "saw many
horrible sights," and "did the V.A.D.'s have to go to the funerals?"
And another who cried out with emotion when she saw the first officer
limp in to Mess, "And can some of them _walk_, then!" Perhaps she
thought they came in to tea on stretchers, with field-bandages on. She
quivered all over, too, as she looked from one to the other, and I feel
sure she went home and broke down, crying, "What an experience ... the
actual wounds!"
Shuffle, shuffle, up the corridor to-night, as I was laying my trays.
Captain Matthew appeared in the circle of light, his arm and hand bound
up and his pipe in his mouth.
He paused by me. "Well...." he said companionably, and lolled against a
pillar.
"You've done well at tea in the way of visitors," I remarked. "Six,
wasn't it?"
"Yes," he said, "and now I've got rid of 'em all, except one."
"Where's the one?"
"In there." He pointed with his pipe to the empty Mess-Room. "He's the
father of a subaltern of mine who was killed."
"He's come to talk to you about it?"
"Yes."
But he seemed in no hurry to go in, waiting against the pillar and
staring at the moving cutlery.
He waited almost three minutes, then he sighed and went in.
Biscuits to put out, cheese to put out. How wet this new cheese is, and
fresh and good the little bits that fall off the edge! I never eat
cheese at home, but here the breakings are like manna.
And pears, with the old shopman's trick, little, bitten ones at the
bottom, fine ones at the top. Soft sugar, lump sugar, coffee. As one
stirs the coffee round in the tin the whole room smells of it, that
brown, burnt smell.
And then to click the light on, let down the blind, stir the fire, close
the door of the little bunk, and, looking round it, think what
exhilaration of liberty I have here.
Let them pile on the rules, invent and insist; yet behind them, beneath
them, I have that strong, secret liberty of an institution that runs
like a wind in me and lifts my mind like a leaf.
So long as I conform absolutely, not a soul will glance at my
thoughts--few at my face. I have only to be silent and conform, and I
might be in so far a land that even the eye of God had lost me.
I took the plate of biscuits, the two plates of cheese, one in each hand
and one balanced with a new skill on my arm, and carried them into the
dining-room, where the tables were already laid and only one light kept
on as yet for economy's sake.
Low voices.... There in the dimmest corner sat Captain Matthew, his
chin dug deep in his grey dressing-gown, and beside him a little elderly
man, his hat on his knees, his anxious, ordinary face turned towards the
light.
A citizen ... a baker or a brewer, tinker, tailor, or
candlestick-maker...?
There had been the buying of the uniform, the visits to the camp in
England, the parcels to send out--always the parcels--week by week. And
now nothing; no more parcels, no more letters, silence.
Only the last hungry pickings from Captain Matthew's tired memory and
nervous speech.