"I thought you would. You do like it?"
"Oh, just what I wanted!"
"That"s all right, then. Just a little Christmas present."
We couldn"t stop. It was like taking too much b.u.t.ter for the marmalade and too much marmalade for the b.u.t.ter.
He leaves the hospital in a day or two.
The fog is still thick. To-night at the station after a day off I found it white and silent. Touching the arm of a man, I asked him the all-important question: "Are the buses running?"
"Oh no...."
And the cabs all gone home to bed, and I was hungry!
What ghosts pa.s.s ... and voices, bodyless, talking intimately while their feet fall without a stir on the gra.s.s of the open Heath.
I was excited by the strange silent fog.
But my left shoe began to hurt me, and stopping at the house of a girl I knew, I borrowed a country pair of hers: no taller than I, she takes two sizes larger; they were like boats.
I started to trudge the three miles home in the boats: the slightest flick of the foot would have sent one of them flying beyond the eye of G.o.d or man. After a couple of miles the shoes began to tell, and I stood still and lifted up one foot behind me, craning over my shoulder to see if I could catch sight of the glimmer of skin through the heel of the stocking. The fog was too thick for that.
Another half-mile and I put my finger down to my heel and felt the wet blood through a large hole in my stocking, so I took off the shoes and tied them together ... and, more silent than ever in the tomb of fog, padded along as G.o.d had first supposed that woman would walk, on the wet surface of the road.
A warded M.O. is pathetic. He knows he can"t get well quicker than time will let him. He has no faith.
To-morrow I have to take down all the decorations that I put up for Christmas. When I put them up I never thought I should be the one to take them down. When I was born no one thought I should be old.
While I was untying a piece of holly from the electric-light cords on the ceiling and a patient was holding the ladder for me, a young _padre_ came and pretended to help us, but while he stood with us he whispered to the patient, "Are you a communicant?" I felt a wave of heat and anger; I could have dropped the holly on him.
They hung up their stockings on Christmas night on walking-sticks. .h.i.tched over the ends of the beds and under the mattresses. Such big stockings! Many of them must have played Father Christmas in their own homes, to their own children, on other Christmases.
On Christmas Eve I didn"t leave the hospital till long after the Day-Sisters had gone and the Night-Sisters came on. The wards were all quiet as I walked down the corridor, and to left and right through the gla.s.s doors hung the rows of expectant stockings.
Final and despairing postscript on Mr. Pett.i.tt.
When a woman says she cannot come to lunch it is because she doesn"t want to.
Let this serve as an axiom to every lover: A woman who refuses lunch refuses everything.
The hospital is alive; I feel it like a living being.
The hospital is like a dream. I am afraid of waking up and finding it commonplace.
The white Sisters, the ceaselessly-changing patients, the long pa.s.sages, the sudden plunges into the brilliant wards ... their scenery hypnotizes me.
Sometimes in the late evening one walks busily up and down the ward doing this and that, forgetting that there is anything beyond the drawn blinds, engrossed in the patients, one"s tasks--bed-making, washing, one errand and another--and then suddenly a blind will blow out and almost up to the ceiling, and through it you will catch a glimpse that makes you gasp, of a black night crossed with bladed searchlights, of a moon behind a crooked tree.
The lifting of the blind is a miracle; I do not believe in the wind.
A new Sister on to-night ... very severe. We had to make the beds like white cardboard. I wonder what she thinks of me.
Mr. Pett.i.tt (who really is going to-morrow) wandered up into the ward and limped near me. "Sister...." he began. He _will_ call me "Sister." I frowned at him. The new Sister glanced at him and blinked.
He was very persistent. "Sister," he said again, "do you think I can have a word with you?"
"Not now," I whispered as I hurried past him.
"Oh, is that so?" he said, as though I had made an interesting statement, and limped away, looking backwards at me. I suppose he wants to say good-bye.
He sat beside Mr. Wicks"s bed (Mr. Wicks who is paralysed) and looked at me from time to time with that stare of his which contains so little offence.
It is curious to think that I once saw Mr. Wicks on a tennis-lawn, walking across the gra.s.s.... Mr. Wicks, who will never put his foot on gra.s.s again, but, lying in his bed, continues to say, as all Tommies say, "I feel well in meself."
So he does; he feels well in himself. But he isn"t going to live, all the same.
Still his routine goes on: he plays his game of cards, he has his joke: "Lemonade, please, nurse; but it"s not from choice!"
When I go to clear his ash-tray at night I always say, "Well, now I"ve got something worth clearing at last!"
And he chuckles and answers, "Thought you"d be pleased. It"s the others gets round my bed and leaves their bits."
He was once a sergeant: he got his commission a year ago.
My ruined charms cry aloud for help.
The cap wears away my front hair; my feet are widening from the everlasting boards; my hands won"t take my rings.
I was advised last night on the telephone to marry immediately before it was too late.
A desperate remedy. I will try cold cream and hair tonics first.
There is a tuberculosis ward across the landing. They call it the T.B.
ward.
It is a den of coughs and harrowing noises.
One night I saw a negro standing in the doorway with his long hair done up in hairpins. He is the pet of the T.B. ward; they call him Henry.
Henry came in to help us with our Christmas decorations on Christmas Eve, and as he cleverly made wreaths my Sister whispered to me, "He"s never spitting ... in the ward!"