spies and traitors have done their work too well. The spies are waiting
for them inside our walls. They know every nook in every fort, every
weak spot better than we do ourselves.”
That was mid September, and we put his opinion down to a very natural
pessimism. No one knew then of the concrete platform under the gay
little villa outside the walls, built by the amiable German family who
was so well known and respected at Antwerp; and we have since heard,
too, of the shells supplied by Krupp and filled with sand; and the last
Krupp guns made of soft iron, which crumpled up after the first shot.
Alas, he was justified in his gloomy prophecy! But we do not think
that it was as much the sense of national calamity that overwhelmed
him as the acute family anxiety. Yet, honest, good, severe, ugly
little man--worth a hundred plausible, handsome, lying scamps such as
Mérino--he was a patriot before all else! He would have had a very
good excuse, we think, for delaying another twelve hours to place his
volatile spouse in safety with the elderly relations at Eastbourne--but
he had given his word. Had he arrived at the Villino only to find that
she had tripped off to London, with that chance acquaintance of cafés,
Monsieur Mérino (to whose care he had in a distraught moment committed
her); had he thereafter been assailed by the most hideous doubts;
had he believed, as we did, that she meant to abandon husband and
babes at this moment of all others; or had he--scarcely less agonizing
surmise!--trembled for her, innocent and lost in London, the prey of a
villain, we yet believe that he would have kept his word.
“_J’ai donné ma parole d’honneur!_”
What a horrible, tragic story it might have been, fit for the pen of a
Maupassant! We shall never cease to be thankful that it did not happen.
That is why we are glad to have received Madame Koelen at the Villino.
* * * * *
Our next refugees came to us quite by accident, and then only for a
meal. A home had already been prepared for them in the village, but the
excellent Westminster Canon, who seemed to be the channel through which
the stream of refugees was pouring to us, announced five, and casually
added a sixth at the last minute, with the result that the party were
not recognized at the station. The name of the Villino having become
unaccountably associated with every refugee that arrives in this part
of the world, the Van Heysts landed _en masse_ at our doors, demanded
to have their cab paid, and walked in.
We all happened to be out, and Juvenal, our eccentric butler,
acquiesced. Standing on one leg afterwards, he explained that, being
aware of our ways, he didn’t know, he was sure, but what we might have
meant to put them somewhere.
Weary, tragic creatures, we weren’t sorry, after all, to speed
them on their road! The three fair-haired children were fed with
bread-and-butter, and the young mother talked plaintively in broken
French, while the old grandfather nodded his head corroboratively.
But the father: he was like a creature cast in bronze--would neither
eat nor speak. He sat staring, his chin on his hand, absorbed in the
contemplation of outrage and disaster.
They were from Malines.
“And then, mademoiselle, it was all on fire, and the cannon were
sending great bombs; and we fled as quick as we could, _n’est-ce pas?_
I with the littlest one in my arms, and the other two running beside
me. For five hours we walked. Yes, mademoiselle, the two little girls,
they went the whole way on foot, and that one there always crying,
‘_Plus vite, maman! plus vite, maman!_’ and pulling at my apron.”
The young husband sat staring. Was he for ever beholding his little
house in flames, or what other vision of irredeemable misery? He
remains inconsolable. Poor fellow! he has heart disease; he thinks he
will never see his native land again. And there is yet another little
one expected. Alas! alas!
* * * * *
Of quite another calibre are the Van Sonderdoncks; a very lively,
cheery family this! There are, of course, a grandpapa, a maiden aunt,
a couple of cousins, as well as the bustling materfamilias, the quaint
wizened papa, the well-brought-up Jeanne, who can embroider so nicely,
and the four little pasty boys with red hair and eyes like black beads.
They are comfortably established in a very charming house lent by a
benevolent lady, who also feeds them.
On the Signorina’s first visit she found Madame Van Sonderdonck in a
violent state of excitement. She had received such extraordinary things
in the way of provisions “_de cette dame_.” If mademoiselle would
permit it, she would like to show her something--but something--she
could not describe it; it was _trop singulier_. “One moment,
mademoiselle.”
She fled out of the room and returned with--a vegetable marrow!
She was rather disappointed to find that mademoiselle was intimately
acquainted with this freak of nature, which she surveyed from every
angle with intense suspicion and curiosity. Politeness kept her from
expressing her real feelings when she was assured of its excellence
cooked with cheese and onion and a little tomato in a flat dish, but
her countenance expressed very plainly that she was not going to risk
herself or her family.
Having failed to impress with the marrow, she repeated the effect with
sago. She had eaten it raw. Naturally, having thus become aware of its
real taste, she could not be expected to believe it would be palatable
in any guise. Nevertheless, she was indulgent to our eccentricities. If
anyone remembers the kind of amused, condescending interest that London
society took in the pigmies, when those unfortunate little creatures
were on show at parties a few years ago, they can form some idea of
Madame Van Sonderdonck’s attitude of mind towards England.
Good humour reigned in the family as we found it.
Though papa Sonderdonck had a bayonet thrust through his neck--he had
been in the Garde Civique--and they had already had a battle-royal with
the Belgian family who shared the house, they seemed to view the whole
situation as a joke. As they had routed their fellow refugees--the
latter only spoke Flemish, Madame Van Sonderdonck only French, and an
interpreter had to be found to convey mutual abuse--and furthermore
obtained in their place the sister-in-law and the two cousins,
unaccountably left out of the batch, they had some substantial reasons
for satisfaction.
* * * * *
Monsieur and Madame Deens are once more of the heart-rending order.
She, a pathetic creature always balanced between tears and smiles, with
pale blue eyes under her braided soft brown hair, looks extraordinarily
young to be the mother of two strapping children. He is the typical
Belgian husband, devoted but grinding.
Our first visit there was painful. Madame Deens was like a bewildered
child, and the husband, a stalwart handsome fellow, who had been chief
engineer on the railway at Malines, was torn between a very natural
indignation at finding himself beggared after years of honest hard
work, and bitter anxiety about his wife, who was in the same condition
as Madame Van Heyst.
He beckoned us outside the cottage to tell us in a tragic whisper that
he had good reason to believe that “all, all the family of my wife,”
her father, mother, and the invalid sister, had been murdered by the
Germans; and their farm burned.
“How can I tell her, and she as she is? It will kill her too! And she
keeps asking me and asking me! I shall have to tell her!”
The tears rolled down his cheeks. Yet he was a hard man; it galled
him to the quick to be employed as a common labourer and receive only
seventeen shillings a week.
They had been given a gardener’s house: the most charming, quaint
abode. It had an enormous kitchen, with a raftered ceiling, and one
long window running the whole length of the room, opening delightfully
on the orchard. The walls were all snowy white. He might have made
himself very happy in such surroundings for the months of exile, with
the consciousness of friends about him, the knowledge of safety and
care for the wife in her coming trial, and the splendid healthy air for
the children. But Deens was not satisfied.
“I had just passed my examinations, _n’est-ce pas?_ monsieur, madame,
and had received my advancement, and we had just got into the little
house I had built with my savings. Now it is burnt--burnt to the
ground. And these wages, for a man like me, mademoiselle, it is
something I cannot bring myself to. _Je ne puis pas m’y faire, savez
vous._”
“But Madame Deens is so well here, and we will look after her,” said
Mademoiselle.
“Ah, but I could earn more money elsewhere! I might have something to
bring back to my own country.”
Of course he has had his way. A bustling lady got him into a motor
factory, and he dragged his weeping but resistless spouse to a townlet,
where they are lodged in one room; where the only person we could
think of to interest in their favour was the old parish priest, who
turned out to be queer in his head, but where Deens is in receipt of
thirty-two shillings a week. We are sure that what can be saved is
being saved for the _retour au pays_, and meanwhile the poor little
woman’s hour of trouble is approaching, and she must get through it as
best she can, unbefriended. We feel anxious.
Before she left, with many tears, she gave the Signorina, who had
sympathized with her, the only gift she could contrive out of her
destitution. It was the youngest child’s little pair of wooden shoes!
III
OUR MINISTERING ANGELS
“Chi poco sa, presto lo dice!”
_Wisdom of Nations._
Of course we are not behindhand in our village in the Red Cross
movement.
Nearly every woman, whatever her views, fancies herself nowadays
in the rôle of ministering angel. It may be doubted whether an
existence devoted to the Tango and its concomitants has been a useful
preparation for a task which demands the extreme of self-devotion;
and we have heard odd little tales of how a whole body of charming
and distinguished amateurs rushed into the cellars at the whiz of a
shell, abandoning their helpless patients; and how the fair chief of a
volunteer ambulance staff fainted at the sight of the first wounded man.
Yet there may be many, even among what is odiously called “the smart
set,” who only find their true vocation at such a moment as this, when
unsuspected qualities, heroic capacities spring into life at the
test. It is not enough to say that times of great calamity sift the
good from the bad, the strong from the futile: they give the wasters
in every class of life their chance of self-redemption--in numberless
instances not in vain. While freely admitting, however, that there may
be a good proportion of society women who are drawn to work among the
wounded by a genuine desire to help, and have therefore taken care to
qualify themselves for the task, who can deny that with others nursing
is merely a new form of excitement, the last fashionable craze? It was
the same in the South African War. Indeed, the episode of the wounded
soldier who put up a little placard with the inscription, “Much too ill
to be nursed to-day,” has, we see, been revived in connection with the
present conflict. It may be taken as the classic expression of Tommy’s
feelings towards this particular form of attention. We do not suppose,
however, that the case of the tender-hearted but unenlightened lady who
went about Johannesburg feeding the enteric patients with buns will
be allowed to repeat itself at Boulogne or Calais. We well remember
reading her letter to the papers, in which she innocently vaunted her
fatal ministrations, inveighing against the monstrous fashion in which
“our poor sick soldiers” were being starved. We believe eleven victims
of her charity died.
A late distinguished general had a genial little anecdote anent the
energies of a batch of fair nurses who landed in Egypt during the last
campaign. Happening to go round the hospital one morning shortly after
their arrival, he saw one of these enchanting beings, clad in the most
coquettish of nursing garbs, bending over a patient.
“Wouldn’t it refresh you if I were to sponge your face and hands, my
man?” she inquired, in dulcet tones.
The patient, who was pretty bad, rolled a resigned but exhausted glance
at her.
“If you like, mum. It’s the tenth time it’s been done this morning!”
Perhaps, like the war itself, everything is on too tremendous a scale
now to permit of such light-hearted playing with the dread sequels of
combat. We can no more afford to make a game of nursing than a game of
fighting in this world struggle. It is possible that only such of our
_mondaines_ as have the necessary knowledge and devotion are permitted
to have charge of those precious lives, and that the others confine
themselves to post-cards and coffee-stalls, and dashing little raids
into the firing-lines with chocolates and socks. We trust it may be so.
We confess that what we ourselves beheld of the local amateur Red Cross
fills us with some misgiving.
Of course, as has been said, being a very enlightened community, we
were not going to be left behind. A special series of lectures was
announced almost within a week of the declaration of war. The daughter
of the household determined to join.
On her arrival, a little late, at the village hall, she was met by
the secretary of the undertaking; a charming and capable young lady,
looking, however, at this particular moment distraught to the verge of
collapse.
“Oh, _do_ you know anything about home nursing? _Do_ you think you
could teach a little class how to take temperatures? You could easily
pick up what you want to learn afterwards, couldn’t you? There are such
a lot of them, and they’re all so, so----” She substituted “difficult
to teach” for the word trembling on her lips. “Nurse Blacker doesn’t
know which way to turn.”
“Oh, I can certainly teach them to take temperatures,” said the
Signorina. Nurses, like poets, are born, not made; and she is of those
who have the instinct how to help. Besides this she has had experience.
She was disappointed, however. She had come to learn, not to teach. It
seemed to her, moreover, almost inconceivable that any female who had
arrived at years of discretion and was of normal intellect should not
be able to take a temperature; but she swallowed her feelings, after
the example of the secretary, and went briskly in to begin her task.
She was provided with a jug of warm water, several thermometers, and
a row of various women, ranging from the spinster of past sixty to
the red-cheeked sixteen-year old daughter of the local vet--who ought
to have known how to take a temperature, if it was only a dog’s!
There were also two fluttering beribboned summer visitors from the
neighbouring hotel; these were doing the simple life, with long motor
veils and short skirts and a general condescending enthusiasm towards
our wild moorland scenery, which they were fond of qualifying as “too
sweet!”
“Perhaps,” said the secretary to the Signorina as she hurried away,
“you could teach them to take a pulse also. They can practise on each
other. It would be _such_ a help.”
The Signorina felt a little shy. It did seem somewhat presuming for
anything so young as she was to be instructing people who were all,
with the exception of the vet’s daughter, considerably older, and,
therefore, obviously considerably richer in experience than herself.
It added to her embarrassment that the summer visitors should fix two
pairs of rapt eyes upon her with the expression of devotees listening
to their favourite preacher.
However, she summoned her wits and her courage, and gave a brief
exposition of the mysteries of thermometer and pulse, patiently
repeating herself, while the students took copious notes. Certainly
there was something touching in this humble ardour for useful
knowledge. Then the thrilling moment of practice began.
The spinster first monopolized the instructress’s attention. Her white
hairs and her years entitled her to precedence.
“Of course,” she remarked, with the air of one whose scientific
education has not been altogether neglected, as she balanced her
thermometer over the jug, “the water won’t really make it go up, will
it, no matter how hot it is?”
The Signorina did not think she could have understood.
“I mean,” said the maiden lady, waving the little tube, “it’s not heat
that will ever make the thermometer go up. It’s fever, isn’t it?”
“But fever is heat,” mildly asserted the “home-nurse.”
“Oh no, I don’t mean _that_” said the spinster loftily. “Of course, I
know you’re hot with fever; but it’s something _in_ you, isn’t it, that
affects the thermometer? It wouldn’t go up, even if I put it on the
stove, would it?”
“Put it into the jug and try,” said the Signorina, who did not believe
that language would be much use here.
“Oh, I think,” interpolated a summer guest who was much impressed by
the spinster’s grasp of the situation, “I’d rather try my thermometer
on my cousin, please! I think one would learn better. It would be more
like hospital practice, wouldn’t it?”
The spinster turned from the jug with alacrity.
“I’m sure you are right,” she cried. Then wheeling on her neighbour:
“Oh, would you mind?” she pleaded.
The neighbour, a tailor-made lady with a walking-stick, who looked
on with a twisted smile--we suspect she was a suffragette, pandering
to the weakness of a world distracted from the real business of
life--submitted to be made useful. Her smile became accentuated.
“Shouldn’t mind if it was a cigarette,” she remarked in a deep bass,
and thereafter was silent, while the spinster laboriously prepared to
take two minutes on her watch.
“Please, dear child,” cried one of the motor-veiled ladies in her
impassioned tone of interest, “will you explain to me again, what is
normal? _I’d better take it out, dear! There’s no use doing it wrong,
is there?_ You said something about a little red line--or is that for
fever? How silly I am--red would be for fever, wouldn’t it? No? _Red
is normal, darling. Oh, I do hope you’re normal!_ What did you say,
ninety-eight, point four? I never could do arithmetic and I’m so
stupid. My husband always says--_doesn’t he, Angela?_--‘You won’t do
much adding up, Birdie’--he calls me ‘Birdie,’--‘but I can trust you to
subtract all right,’ dear, naughty fellow! He loves me to spend, you
know, _doesn’t he, Angela?_ Oh dear, it hasn’t moved at all! Is that
very bad? _Angela, darling!_”
“But you didn’t leave it in two minutes,” said the persevering teacher.
“Supposing you were to put it in your mouth now, and your cousin were
to take you?”
“Will you, Angela?” The summer visitor’s eyes became pathetic. “I’m
sure I’ve been feeling quite dreadful with all this anxiety.”
“Your temperature,” said the spinster triumphantly to the suffragette,
“is a hundred and twenty-eight.”
The Signorina started.
“But that’s quite impossible! Look here, let me show you. It won’t mark
over a hundred and ten.”
For the first time the spinster was flustered.
“Oh, perhaps I read it wrong! Let me look again.”
After much fumbling and peering she became apologetic.
“I see I did make a mistake. It’s twenty-six.”
“Perhaps,” said the little lecturer hopelessly, “if I just went over
the readings of the thermometer with you all once more----”
But she was interrupted.
“Would you mind”--the harassed secretary seized her by the elbow--“would
you mind coming to superintend the bed-making? I’ve got to take the
bandage class, and Nurse Blacker can’t really manage more than twenty
with the compresses.”
The whole room was full of the clapper of excited female tongues.
The Signorina was not sorry to leave the jug of warm water and the
extraordinary fluctuating temperatures. She was followed by the summer
visitors, motor veils and ribbons flying.
As she left, a cheerful, red-faced lady was heard to announce casually,
as she dropped the fat wrist of the veterinary’s daughter, that there
was no use her trying to take that pulse, as the girl hadn’t got any.
The clamorous group surrounded the camp-bed, upon which was stretched
a sardonic boy-scout, fully clothed, down to his clumping boots. He
was aged about twelve, and assisted in the education of the “lidies”
by commenting from time to time on their efforts in hoarse tones of
cynicism. After one impulsive neophyte had seemed to be practising
tossing him in a blanket, he remarked into space: “Nurses are not
suppowsed to move the pytient.”
And to another who jerked his heels up: “Down’t you forget, miss, I’m a
bad caise!”
The Signorina had never been taught how to make beds in the true
hospital fashion before, and was painstakingly absorbed in the
intricacies of rolling sheets without churning the “bad caise,” when
she was seized upon by one of the flutterers from the hotel.
“We’re going now; it’s been _so_ interesting, we _have_ enjoyed it. I
shan’t forget all you told me about temperatures. I feel quite able to
look after our dear fellows already. Oh! I _must_ tell you. You’ve got
such a sympathetic face. I’m sure you will understand. I had a most
_wonderful_ revelation the other day, in church--in London, you know.
I had such an extraordinary feeling--just as if something came over
me--and I thought the church was full of dead soldiers; and a voice
seemed to say to me: ‘Pray.’ I felt quite uplifted. And then in a
minute it was all gone. Wasn’t it wonderful? That kind of thing makes
one feel so _strong_, doesn’t it? Oh, I knew you would understand.
The last news is _very_ disquieting, isn’t it? What a darling little
fellow!”
The “bad caise” scowled at her horribly; but the sweetness of her smile
was quite unimpaired, as she fluttered out of the hall.
* * * * *
“It is very important,” said Nurse Blacker to the compress class, “that
the nurse should wash her hands before touching the patient’s wounds.”
“Now, tell me, Sister,” interposed a meek voice, “is that precaution
for the nurse’s sake or for the patient’s? I mean, I suppose it’s in
case the nurse should incur any infection from the wound?”
This point of view--that of the White Queen in “Alice Through the
Looking-Glass”--had not apparently struck Nurse Blacker before.
It all seems too ridiculous to be true, but yet the facts are here set
down as they actually occurred.
We think there are a good many women about the world of the type of the
spinster and her sisters, and we are also convinced that it would be
quite impossible to succeed in impressing upon such minds even the most
rudimentary notions of nursing; yet it is likely enough they may all
have been granted certificates eventually. Professionals are dreadfully
bored in dealing with amateurs, and are often glad to take the shortest
road to deliverance.
We were once witness, in pre-war days, of the examination of a Red
Cross class in the north of England. There was a weary doctor on the
platform with a bag of bones; and a retired hospital nurse, very
anxious to be on good terms with the delightful family who were the
chief organizers of the movement, had charge of the “show.”
The doctor gave a brief address upon dislocation. It ran somewhat in
this fashion.
“Dislocation is the misplacement of a joint. It is indicated by the
symptoms of swelling, redness, pain, and inability to move the limb.
There is no crepitation as in a fracture. As to treatment: my advice to
you, ladies, when you meet a case of this kind, is--ahem--to leave it
severely alone and to send for a medical man.”
The class took copious notes. The doctor dropped the two bones with
which he had been demonstrating into the bag again, leant back in his
chair and closed his eyes. His part of the transaction was concluded.
It had been most illuminating, the ladies agreed, and the Signorina’s
chauffeur, who has a yearning towards general self-improvement,
remarked to her on the way home:
“Ow”--like the boy scout, he has a theatrically cockney accent--“I
am glad to know what to do for discollation. I’d never studied that,
loike, before.”