I stand over him and with savage and violent determination I say:
"You've got them _now_!"
And, actually, Tom obeys. He says, "_All_ right, all right, all right,"
very fast, and humps his shoulders and slouches off to his car. He
cranks it up with less vehemence than I have yet known him bring to the
starting of any car.
We get in. Then, and not till then, I am placable. I say: "You see, Tom,
it wouldn't do to leave that lady and three British wounded behind,
would it?"
What he says about orders then is purely by way of apology.
Regardless of my instructions, he does what I did and dashes up the
wrong boulevard as if the Germans were even now marching into the
_Place_ behind him. But he works round somehow and we arrive.
They are all there, ready and waiting. And the Mother Superior and two
of her nuns are in the corridor. They bring out glasses of hot milk for
everybody. They are so gentle and so kind that I recall with agony my
impatience when I rang at their gate. Even familiar French words desert
me in this crisis, and I implore Miss Ashley-Smith to convey my regrets
for my rudeness. Their only answer is to smile and press hot milk on me.
I am glad of it, for I have been so absorbed in the drama of preparation
that I have entirely forgotten to eat anything since lunch.
The wounded are brought along the passage. We help them into the
ambulance. Two, Williams and ----, are only slightly wounded; they can
sit up all the way. But the third, Fisher, is wounded in the head.
Sometimes he is delirious and must be looked after. A fourth man is
dying and must be left behind.
Then we say good-bye to the nuns.
The other ambulance cars are drawn up in the _Place_ before the
"Flandria," waiting. For the first time I hate the sight of them. This
feeling is inexplicable but profound.
We arrange for the final disposal of the wounded in one of the new
Daimlers, where they can all lie down. Mrs. Torrence comes out and helps
us. The Commandant is not there yet. Dr. Haynes and Dr. Bird pack Dr.
---- away well inside the car. They are very quiet and very firm and
refuse to travel otherwise than together. Mrs. Torrence goes with the
wounded.
I go into the Hospital and upstairs to our quarters to see if anything
has been left behind. If I can find Marie we must take her. There is
room, after all.
But Marie is nowhere to be seen.
Nobody is to be seen but the Belgian night nurses on duty, watching, one
on each landing at the entrance to her corridor. They smile at me
gravely and sadly as they say good-bye.
I have left many places, many houses, many people behind me, knowing
that I shall never see them again. But of all leave-takings this seems
to me the worst. For those others I have been something, done something
that absolves me. But for these and for this place I have not done
anything, and now there is not anything to be done.
I go slowly downstairs. Each flight is a more abominable descent. At
each flight I stand still and pull myself together to face the next
nurse on the next landing. At the second story I go past without
looking. I know every stain on the floor of the corridor there as you
turn to the right. The number of the door and the names on the card
beside it have made a pattern on my brain.
* * * * *
It is quarter to three.
They are all ready now. The Commandant is there giving the final orders
and stowing away the nine wounded he has brought from Melle. The hall of
the Hospital is utterly deserted. So is the _Place_ outside it. And in
the stillness and desolation our going has an air of intolerable
secrecy, of furtive avoidance of fate. This Field Ambulance of ours
abhors retreat.
It is dark with the black darkness before dawn.
And the Belgian Red Cross guides have all gone. There is nobody to show
us the roads.
At the last minute we find a Belgian soldier who will take us as far as
Ecloo.
The Commandant has arranged to stay at Ecloo for a few hours. Some
friends there have offered him their house. The wounded are to be put up
at the Convent. Ecloo is about half-way between Ghent and Bruges.
We start. Tom's car goes first with the Belgian soldier in front. Ursula
Dearmer, Mrs. Lambert, Miss Ashley-Smith and Mr. Riley and I are inside.
The Commandant sits, silent, wrapped in meditation, on the step.
We are not going so very fast, not faster than the three cars behind us,
and the slowest of the three (the Fiat with the hard tyres, carrying the
baggage) sets the pace. We must keep within their sight or they may lose
their way. But though we are not really going fast, the speed seems
intolerable, especially the speed that swings us out of sight of the
"Flandria." You think that is the worst. But it isn't. The speed with
its steady acceleration grows more intolerable with every mile. Your
sense of safety grows intolerable.
You never knew that safety could hurt like this.
Somewhere on this road the Belgian Army has gone before us. We have got
to go with it. We have had our orders.
That thought consoles you, but not for long. You may call it following
the Belgian Army. But the Belgian Army is retreating, and you are
retreating with it. There is nothing else you can do; but that does not
make it any better. And this speed of the motor over the flat roads,
this speed that cuts the air, driving its furrow so fast that the wind
rushes by you like strong water, this speed that so inspired and exalted
you when it brought you into Flanders, when it took you to Antwerp and
Baerlaere and Lokeren and Melle, this vehement and frightful and
relentless speed is the thing that beats you down and tortures you. For
several hours, ever since you had your orders to pack up and go, you
have been working with no other purpose than this going; you have
contemplated it many times with equanimity, with indifference; you knew
all along that it was not possible to stay in Ghent for ever; and when
you were helping to get the wounded into the ambulances you thought it
would be the easiest thing in the world to get in yourself and go with
them; when you had time to think about it you were even aware of looking
forward with pleasure to the thrill of a clean run before the Germans.
You never thought, and nobody could possibly have told you, that it
would be like this.
I never thought, and nobody could possibly have told me, that I was
going to behave as I did then.
The thing began with the first turn of the road that hid the "Flandria."
Up till that moment, whatever I may have felt about the people we had to
leave behind us, as long as none of our field-women were left behind, I
had not the smallest objection to being saved myself. And if it had
occurred to me to stay behind for the sake of one man who couldn't be
moved and who had the best surgeon in the Hospital and the pick of the
nursing-staff to look after him, I think I should have disposed of the
idea as sheer sentimentalism. When I was with him to-night I could think
of nothing but the wounded in the Couvent de Saint Pierre. And
afterwards there had been so much to do.
And now that there was nothing more to do, I couldn't think of anything
but that one man.
The night before came back to me in a vision, or rather an obsession,
infinitely more present, more visible and palpable than this night that
we were living in. The light with the red shade hung just over my head
on my right hand; the blond walls were round me; they shut me in alone
with the wounded man who lay stretched before me on the bed. And the
moments were measured by the rhythm of his breathing, and by the
closing and opening of his eyes.
I thought, he will open his eyes to-night and look for me and I shall
not be there. He will know that he has been left to the Belgians, who
cannot understand him, whom he cannot understand. And he will think that
I have betrayed him.