And it seemed that Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Lambert had gone to bed,
regardless of the retreat from Ghent.
Somewhere in the small hours of the morning the Commandant came back
from Melle.[32]
* * * * *
It is nearly two o'clock. Downstairs, in the great silent hall two
British wounded are waiting for some ambulance to take them to the
Station. They are sitting bolt upright on chairs near the doorway, their
heads nodding with drowsiness. One or two Belgian Red Cross men wait
beside them. Opposite them, on three other chairs, the three doctors,
Dr. Haynes, Dr. Bird and Dr. ---- sit waiting for our own ambulance to
take them. They have been up all night and are utterly exhausted. They
sit, fast asleep, with their heads bowed on their breasts.
Outside, the darkness has mist and a raw cold sting in it.
A wretched ambulance wagon drawn by two horses is driven up to the door.
It had a hood once, but the hood has disappeared and only the naked
hoops remain. The British wounded from two [?] other hospitals are
packed in it in two rows. They sit bolt upright under the hoops, exposed
to mist and to the raw cold sting of the night; some of them wear their
blankets like shawls over their shoulders as they were taken from their
beds. The shawls and the head bandages give these British a strange,
foreign look, infinitely helpless, infinitely pitiful.
Nobody seems to be out there but Mrs. Torrence and one or two Belgian
Red Cross men. She and I help to get our two men taken gently out of the
hall and stowed away in the ambulance wagon. There are not enough
blankets. We try to find some.
At the last minute two bearers come forward, carrying a third. He is
tall and thin; he is wrapped in a coat flung loosely over his
sleeping-jacket; he wears a turban of bandages; his long bare feet stick
out as he is carried along. It is Cameron, my poor Highlander, who was
shot through the brain.
They lift him, very gently, into the wagon.
Then, very gently, they lift him out again.
This attempt to save him is desperate. He is dying.
They carry him up the steps and stand him there with his naked feet on
the stone. It is anguish to see those thin white feet on the stone; I
take off my coat and put it under them.
It is all I can do for him.
Presently they carry him back into the Hospital.
They can't find any blankets. I run over to the Hotel Cecil for my
thick, warm travelling-rug to wrap round the knees of the wounded,
shivering in the wagon.
It is all I can do for them.
And presently the wagon is turned round, slowly, almost solemnly, and
driven off into the darkness and the cold mist, with its load of weird
and piteous figures, wrapped in blankets like shawls. Their bandages
show blurred white spots in the mist, and they are gone.
It is horrible.
* * * * *
I am reminded that I have not packed yet, nor dressed for the journey. I
go over and pack and dress. I leave behind what I don't need and it
takes seven minutes. There is something sad and terrible about the
little hotel, and its proprietors and their daughter, who has waited on
me. They have so much the air of waiting, of being on the eve. They hang
about doing nothing. They sit mournfully in a corner of the
half-darkened restaurant. As I come and go they smile at me with the
patient Belgian smile that says, "_C'est triste, n'est-ce pas?_" and no
more.
The landlord puts on his soft brown felt hat and carries my luggage over
to the "Flandria." He stays there, hanging about the porch, fascinated
by these preparations for departure. There is the same terrible
half-darkness here, the same expectant stillness. Now and then the
servants of the hospital look at each other and there are whisperings,
mutterings. They sound sinister somehow and inimical. Or perhaps I
imagine this because I do not take kindly to retreating. Anyhow I am
only aware of them afterwards. For now it is time to go and fetch Miss
Ashley-Smith and her three wounded men from the Convent.
Tom has come up with his first ambulance car. He is waiting for orders
in the porch. His enormous motor goggles are pushed up over the peak of
his cap. They make it look like some formidable helmet. They give an air
of mastership to Tom's face. At this last hour it wears its expression
of righteous protest, of volcanic patience, of exasperated discipline.
The Commandant is nowhere to be seen. And every minute of his delay
increases Tom's sense of tortured integrity.
I tell Tom that he is to drive me at once to the Couvent de Saint
Pierre. He wants to know what for.