I went along to-night to see and ask after the man who has his nose blown off.
After the long walk down the corridor in almost total darkness, the vapour of the rain floating through every open door and window, the sudden brilliancy of the ward was like a haven.
The man lay on my right on entering--the screen removed from him.
Far up the ward the Sister was working by a bed. Ryan, the man with his nose gone, was lying high on five or six pillows, slung in his position by tapes and webbing pa.s.sed under his arms and attached to the bedposts.
He lay with his profile to me--only he has no profile, as we know a man"s. Like an ape, he has only his b.u.mpy forehead and his protruding lips--the nose, the left eye, gone.
He was breathing heavily. They don"t know yet whether he will live.
When a man dies they fetch him with a stretcher, just as he came in; only he enters with a blanket over him, and a flag covers him as he goes out. When he came in he was one of a convoy, but every man who can stand rises to his feet as he goes out. Then they play him to his funeral, to a gra.s.s mound at the back of the hospital.
It takes all sorts to make a hospital.
For instance, the Visitors....
There is the lady who comes in to tea and wants to be introduced to every one as though it was a school-treat.
She jokes about the cake, its scarcity or its quant.i.ty, and makes a lot of "fun" about two lumps of sugar.
When she is at her best the table a.s.sumes a perfect and listening silence--not the silence of the critic, but the silence of the absorbed child treasuring every item of talk for future use. After she goes the joy of her will last them all the evening.
There is the lady who comes in to tea and, sitting down at the only unlaid table, cries, "Nurse! I have no knife or plate or cup; and I prefer a gla.s.s of boiling water to tea. And would you mind sewing this b.u.t.ton on my glove?"
There is the lady who comes in and asks the table at large: "I wonder if any one knows General Biggens? I once met him...."
Or: "You"ve been in Gallipoli? Did you run across my young cousin, a lieutenant in the...? Well, he was only there two days or so, I suppose...." exactly as though she was talking about Cairo in the season.
To-day there was the Limit.
She sat two paces away from where I sit to pour out tea. Her face was kind, but inquisitive, with that brown liver-look round the eyes and a large rakish hat. She comes often, having heard of him through the _padre_, to see a Canadian whom she doesn"t know and who doesn"t want to see her.
From two places away I heard her voice piping up: "Nurse, excuse my asking, but is your cap a regulation one, like all the others?"
I looked up, and all the tea I was pouring poured over the edge. Mr.
Pett.i.tt and Captain Matthew, between us, looked down at their plates.
I put my hand to my cap. "Is anything wrong? It ought to be like the others."
She leant towards me, nodding and smiling with bonhomie, and said flatteringly, "It"s so prettily put on, I thought it was different."
And then (horror): "Don"t you think nurse puts her cap on well?" she asked Captain Matthew, who, looking harder than ever at his plate and reddening to the ears, mumbled something which did not particularly commit him since it couldn"t be heard.
The usual delighted silence began to creep round the table, and I tried wildly to divert her attention before our end became a stage and the rest of the table an audience.
"I think it"s so nice to see you sitting down with them all," she cooed; "it"s so cosy for them."
"Is your cup empty?" I said furiously, and held out my hand for it. But it wasn"t, of course; she couldn"t even do that for me.
She shook hands with me when she went away and said she hoped to come again. And she will.
There was once a lady who asked me very loudly whether I "saw many horrible sights," and "did the V.A.D."s have to go to the funerals?"
And another who cried out with emotion when she saw the first officer limp in to Mess, "And can some of them _walk_, then!" Perhaps she thought they came in to tea on stretchers, with field-bandages on. She quivered all over, too, as she looked from one to the other, and I feel sure she went home and broke down, crying, "What an experience ... the actual wounds!"
Shuffle, shuffle, up the corridor to-night, as I was laying my trays.
Captain Matthew appeared in the circle of light, his arm and hand bound up and his pipe in his mouth.
He paused by me. "Well...." he said companionably, and lolled against a pillar.
"You"ve done well at tea in the way of visitors," I remarked. "Six, wasn"t it?"
"Yes," he said, "and now I"ve got rid of "em all, except one."
"Where"s the one?"
"In there." He pointed with his pipe to the empty Mess-Room. "He"s the father of a subaltern of mine who was killed."
"He"s come to talk to you about it?"
"Yes."
But he seemed in no hurry to go in, waiting against the pillar and staring at the moving cutlery.
He waited almost three minutes, then he sighed and went in.
Biscuits to put out, cheese to put out. How wet this new cheese is, and fresh and good the little bits that fall off the edge! I never eat cheese at home, but here the breakings are like manna.
And pears, with the old shopman"s trick, little, bitten ones at the bottom, fine ones at the top. Soft sugar, lump sugar, coffee. As one stirs the coffee round in the tin the whole room smells of it, that brown, burnt smell.
And then to click the light on, let down the blind, stir the fire, close the door of the little bunk, and, looking round it, think what exhilaration of liberty I have here.
Let them pile on the rules, invent and insist; yet behind them, beneath them, I have that strong, secret liberty of an inst.i.tution that runs like a wind in me and lifts my mind like a leaf.
So long as I conform absolutely, not a soul will glance at my thoughts--few at my face. I have only to be silent and conform, and I might be in so far a land that even the eye of G.o.d had lost me.
I took the plate of biscuits, the two plates of cheese, one in each hand and one balanced with a new skill on my arm, and carried them into the dining-room, where the tables were already laid and only one light kept on as yet for economy"s sake.
Low voices.... There in the dimmest corner sat Captain Matthew, his chin dug deep in his grey dressing-gown, and beside him a little elderly man, his hat on his knees, his anxious, ordinary face turned towards the light.
A citizen ... a baker or a brewer, tinker, tailor, or candlestick-maker...?
There had been the buying of the uniform, the visits to the camp in England, the parcels to send out--always the parcels--week by week. And now nothing; no more parcels, no more letters, silence.
Only the last hungry pickings from Captain Matthew"s tired memory and nervous speech.