The doctor says, perfectly cheerfully and as though it were really not a
matter of vital importance, that there is no doubt that I have got IT. He
remarks that IT is all over the place, and that he has a couple of hundred
other cases at the present time.
I resent his attitude as far as I have strength to do anything at all. I
did not give permission for him to be called in just to have my sufferings
brushed aside like this. He only stays about three minutes altogether,
during which time he relates two funny stories (at least I suppose they are
funny, because my nurse laughs; I can't see any point in them myself), and
makes several futile remarks about the War. As though the War were a matter
of importance by comparison! Then he goes, talking breezily all the way
down the stairs.
Well, I think darkly, they will be sorry presently. I have no intention or
expectation of getting better, and when they see me a fair young corpse
then they'll know.
Already I loathe the Two Hundred. Not that I believe for a minute the story
of my own disease being the same as their miserable little complaints. In
recurring periods of conscious thought I go through the list of things I
know for a fact I have got--rheumatic fever, sciatica, lumbago, toothache,
neuritis, bronchitis, laryngitis, tonsilitis, neuralgia, gastritis, catarrh
of several kinds, heart disease and inflammation (or possibly congestion)
of the lungs. I shall think of some more presently, if my nurse will let me
alone and not keep on worrying me with her "Just drink this." Bother the
woman! Why doesn't she get off the earth? What's the use of my swallowing
that man's filthy medicine when he doesn't know what's the matter with me?
I hate everybody and everything, especially the eider-down quilt, which
rises in slow billows in front of my eyes and threatens to engulf me. When
in a paroxysm of fury I suddenly cast it on the floor, it lies there still
billowing, and seems to leer at me. There is something fat and sinister and
German about that eiderdown. I never noticed it before. _Two Hundred German
eider-downs!_
The firelight flickers weirdly about the room and I try to count the
shadows. But before I begin I know the answer--TWO HUNDRED.
I drift into a nightmare of Two Hundred elusive cabbages which I am
endeavouring to plant in my new allotment, where a harsh fate forces me to
dig and _dig_ and DIG, and, as a natural consequence, also to ache and
_ache_ and ACHE.