Almost reluctantly he pursued: "Got "er photograph "ere." But he did not get up at once, and we turned to the fountain-pens. "Any nib," he said, "crossed ever so, _I_ could mend it. Kep" the books too; we was always stocktaking."
Now I think of it, fountain-pen shops always _are_ stocktaking. They do it all down the Strand, with big red labels across the front.
He rose suddenly and crossed to his locker to look for her photograph, returning after a few minutes with a bundle of little cardboards. The first I turned over was that of a pretty fair-haired girl. "Is that her?" I asked. "She"s pretty!" "That"s "er young sister," he answered. I turned over the rest, and he pointed out his family one by one--last of all his girl.
There are some men who are not taken in by a bit of fair hair.
One knows what these cheap photographs are, how they distort and blacken. The girl who looked at me from this one appeared to be a monster.
She had an enormous face, enormous spectacles, bands of galvanized iron drawn across her forehead for hair....
"Ther"s just them two, "er an "er sister. "Er sister ain"t got a feller yet."
I praised his girl to Pinker, and praised Pinker to myself.
"A girl friend," he said, "keeps yer straighter than a man. Makes yer punctual."
"So she won"t wait for you when you are late?"
"Not a minute over time," he said with pride. "I used to be a terror when I first knew "er; kep" "er waitin" abaht. She soon cured me, did F.
Steel."
"You are a funny little bird, Pinker," said the Sister, pa.s.sing.
"Lil bird, am I?" He tucked his cardboards carefully into his locker and followed her up the ward firing repartee.
I sewed my splint. In all walks of life men keep one waiting. I should like to ask the huge and terrible girl about her cure.
Monk is the ugliest man I have ever seen. He has a squint and a leer, his mouth drops at both sides, he has no forehead, and his straight, combed hair meets his eyebrows--or rather, his left eyebrow, since that one is raised by a cut. He has the expression of a cut-throat, and yet he is quite young, good-tempered, and shy.
When Monk was working at a woollen belt Pinker said: "Workin" that for yer girl?... You got a girl, Monk?"
Monk squinted sidelong at Pinker and rubbed his hands together like a large ape.
""E ain"t got no girl," shrilled Pinker. "Monk ain"t got no girl. You don" know what a girl is, do yer, Monk?"
Although they do much more to help each other than I ever saw done in the officers" ward, yet one is always saying things that I find myself praying the other hasn"t heard.
In the next bed to Monk lies Gayner, six foot two, of the Expeditionary Force. Wounded at Mons, he was brought home to England, and since then he has made the round of the hospitals. He is a good-looking, sullen man who will not read or write or sew, who will not play draughts or cards or speak to his neighbour. He sits up, attentive, while the ulcers on his leg are being dressed, but if one asks him something of the history of his wound his tone holds such a volume of bitterness and exasperation that one feels that at any moment the locks of his spirit might cease to hold.
" ... ever since Mons, these ulcers, on and off?"
"Yes."
"Oh well, we must cure them now."
Her light tone is what he cannot endure. He does not believe in cure and will not believe in cure. It has become an article of faith: his ulcers will never be cured. He has a silent scorn of hospitals. He can wind a perfect bandage and he knows the rules; beyond that he pays as little attention as possible to what goes on.
When his dressing is over he tilts his thin, intelligent face at the ceiling. "Don"t you ever read?" I asked him.
"I haven"t the patience," he replied. But he has the patience to lie like that with his thin lips compressed and a frown on his face for hours, for days ... since Mons....
I have come to the conclusion that he has a violent soul, that he dare not talk. It is no life for a man.
I said to Pinker this morning, "I wish you"d hurry up over your bath; I"ve got to get it scrubbed out by nine."
"Don"t you hurry me, nurse," said Pinker, "it"s the on"y time I can think, in me bath."
I should like to have parried with Pinker (only my language is so much more complicated than it ought to be) that thinking in one"s bath is a self-deception. I lay in my own bath last night and thought very deep thoughts, but often when we think our thoughts are deep they are only vague. Bath thoughts are wonderful, but there"s nothing "to" them.
We had a heated discussion to-day as to whether the old lady who leaves a tract beneath a single rose by each bedside could longer be tolerated.
"She is a nuisance," said the Sister; "the men make more noise afterwards because they set her hymns to ragtime."
"What good does it do them?" said the V.A.D., " ... and I have to put the roses in water!"
I rode the highest horse of all: "Her inquiries about their souls are an impertinence. Why should they be bothered?"
These are the sort of things they say in debating societies. But Life talks differently....
Pinker said, "Makes the po"r ole lady "appy!"
As one bends one"s head low over the splint one sits unnoticed, a part of the furniture of the ward. The sounds of the ward rise and fill the ears; it is like listening to a kettle humming, bees round a bush of flowers, the ticking of a clock, the pa.s.sing of life....
Now and then there are incidents, as just now. Two orderlies came in with a stretcher to fetch Mr. Smith (an older man than Smiff and a more dignified) away to a convalescent home. Mr. Smith has never been to France, but walked into our ward one day with a sore on his foot which had to be cut. He was up and dressed in his bedraggled khaki uniform when the stretcher-bearers came for him.
He looked down his nose at the stretcher. "I don"t much like the look of that," he said. The stretcher-bearers waited for him.
He stood irresolute. "I never bin in one of them, and I don"t want to make a start."
"Its bad luck to be our name," called out Smiff, waving his amputated ankle. "Better get your hand in!"
Mr. Smith got in slowly and departed from the ward, sitting bolt upright, gripping the sides with his hands.
Some of the wards and the Sisters" bunks are charming at this time of the year, now that larkspur and rambler-roses are cheap in the market.
But the love of decoration is not woman"s alone. Through the dispensary hatchway I saw three empty poison-bottles, each with a poppy stuck in its neck.
Everything in the dispensary is beautiful--its gla.s.ses, its flames, its bra.s.s weights, its jars and globes; but much more beautiful because it is half a floor higher than the corridor in which we stand and look up into it, through a hatchway in the wall. There is something in that: one feels like Gulliver.
No woman has ever been into this bachelors" temple.
On tapping at a small square panel set in the wall of the corridor the panel flies up and a bachelor is seen from the waist to the knees. If he feels well and my smile is humble he will stoop, and I see looking down at me a small worn face and bushy eyebrows, or a long ascetic face and bleached hair, or a beard and a pair of bearded nostrils.