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diff --git a/31124.txt b/31124.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..58cd346 --- /dev/null +++ b/31124.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4194 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Diary Without Dates, by Enid Bagnold + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Diary Without Dates + +Author: Enid Bagnold + +Release Date: January 30, 2010 [EBook #31124] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DIARY WITHOUT DATES *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + +A DIARY WITHOUT DATES + + * * * * * + +SOLDIERS' TALES OF THE GREAT WAR + + MY '75. From the French of PAUL LINTIER. 3s. 6d. net. + + ON TWO FRONTS. By Major H. M. ALEXANDER, D.S.O. 3s. 6d. net. + + NURSING ADVENTURES. (ANON.) Illustrated. 3s. 6d. net. + + FORCED TO FIGHT. By ERICH ERICHSEN. 2s. 6d. net. + + IN GERMAN HANDS. By CHARLES HENNEBOIS. 3s. 6d. net. + + "CONTEMPTIBLE." By "CASUALTY." 3s. 6d. net. + + ON THE ANZAC TRAIL. By "ANZAC." 3s. 6d. net. + + UNCENSORED LETTERS FROM THE DARDANELLES. Notes of a French Army + Doctor. Illustrated. 3s. 6d. net. + + PRISONER OF WAR. By ANDRE WARNOD. Illustrated. 3s. 6d. net. + + IN THE FIELD (1914-15). The Impressions of an Officer of Light + Cavalry. 3s. 6d. net. + + DIXMUDE. A Chapter in the History of the Naval Brigade, Oct.-Nov. + 1914. By CHARLES LE GOFFIC. Illustrated. 3s. 6d. net. + + WITH MY REGIMENT. By "PLATOON COMMANDER." 3s. 6d. net. + + +LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN + + * * * * * + +UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME + +THE LOVERS + +BY ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL + +"It is one of the most charming little books among the many that owe +their genesis to the war. The letters might be described as a lyric of +married love; and their beauty and passion are enhanced by the exquisite +setting which Mrs. Pennell has given them."--_Yorkshire Post._ + + +LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN + + + + +A DIARY WITHOUT DATES + +BY + +ENID BAGNOLD + +[Illustration: Logo] + +LONDON + +WILLIAM HEINEMANN + + +_First printed January 1918_ + +_Second Impression February 1918_ + + +_London: William Heinemann, 1918_ + + + TO + THAT FRIEND OF MINE + WHO, WHEN I WROTE HIM + ENDLESS LETTERS, + SAID COLDLY, + "WHY NOT KEEP SOMETHING + FOR YOURSELF!" + + +_I apologize to those whom I may hurt._ + +_Can I soothe them by pleading that one may only write what is true for +oneself?_ + +_E. B._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + I + +OUTSIDE THE GLASS DOORS + + II + +INSIDE THE GLASS DOORS + + III + +"THE BOYS ..." + + + + +I + +OUTSIDE THE GLASS DOORS + + +I like discipline. I like to be part of an institution. It gives one +more liberty than is possible among three or four observant friends. + + +It is always cool and wonderful after the monotone of the dim hospital, +its half-lit corridors stretching as far as one can see, to come out +into the dazzling starlight and climb the hill, up into the trees and +shrubberies here. + +The wind was terrible to-night. I had to battle up, and the leaves were +driven down the hill so fast that once I thought it was a motor-bicycle. + +Madeleine's garden next door is all deserted now: they have gone up to +London. The green asphalt tennis-court is shining with rain, the blue +pond brown with slime; the little statues and bowls are lying on their +sides to keep the wind from putting them forcibly there; and all over +the house are white draperies and ghost chairs. + +When I walk in the garden I feel like a ghost left over from the summer +too. + + +I became aware to-night of one face detaching itself from the rest. It +is not a more pleasing face than the others, but it is becoming +conspicuous to me. + +Twice a week, when there is a concert in the big hall, the officers and +the V.A.D.'s are divided, by some unspoken rule--the officers sitting at +one side of the room, the V.A.D.'s in a white row on the other. + +When my eyes rest for a moment on the motley of dressing-gowns, +mackintoshes, uniforms, I inevitably see in the line one face set on a +slant, one pair of eyes forsaking the stage and fixed on me in a steady, +inoffensive beam. + +This irritates me. The very lack of offence irritates me. But one grows +to look for everything. + +Afterwards in the dining-room during Mess he will ask politely: "What +did you think of the concert, Sister? Good show...." + +How wonderful to be called Sister! Every time the uncommon name is used +towards me I feel the glow of an implied relationship, something which +links me to the speaker. + +My Sister remarked: "If it's only a matter of that, we can provide +thrills for you here very easily." + +The name of my ... admirer ... is, after all, Pettitt. The other nurse +in the Mess, who is very grand and insists on pronouncing his name in +the French way, says he is "of humble origin." + +He seems to have no relations and no visitors. + + +Out in the corridor I meditate on love. + +Laying trays soothes the activity of the body, and the mind works +softly. + +I meditate on love. I say to myself that Mr. Pettitt is to be envied. I +am still the wonder of the unknown to him: I exist, walk, talk, every +day beneath the beam of his eye, impenetrable. + +He fell down again yesterday, and his foot won't heal. He has time +before him. + + +But in a hospital one has never time, one is never sure. He has perhaps +been here long enough to learn that--to feel the insecurity, the +impermanency. + +At any moment he may be forced to disappear into the secondary stage of +convalescent homes. + +Yes, the impermanency of life in a hospital! An everlasting dislocation +of combinations. + +Like nuns, one must learn to do with no nearer friend than God. + +Bolts, in the shape of sudden, whimsical orders, are flung by an +Almighty whom one does not see. + +The Sister who is over me, the only Sister who can laugh at things other +than jokes, is going in the first week of next month. Why? Where? She +doesn't know, but only smiles at my impatience. She knows life--hospital +life. + +It unsettles me as I lay my spoons and forks. Sixty-five trays. It takes +an hour to do. Thirteen pieces on each tray. Thirteen times sixty-five +... eight hundred and forty-five things to collect, lay, square up +symmetrically. I make little absurd reflections and arrangements--taking +a dislike to the knives because they will not lie still on the polished +metal of the tray, but pivot on their shafts, and swing out at angles +after my fingers have left them. + +I love the long, the dim and lonely, corridor; the light centred in the +gleam of the trays, salt-cellars, yellow butters, cylinders of glass.... + +Impermanency.... I don't wonder the Sisters grow so secret, so uneager. +How often stifled! How often torn apart! + +It's heaven to me to be one of such a number of faces. + +To see them pass into Mess like ghosts--gentleman, tinker, and tailor; +each having shuffled home from death; each having known his life rock on +its base ... not talking much--for what is there to say?--not laughing +much for they have been here too long--is a nightly pleasure to me. + +Creatures of habit! All the coloured dressing-gowns range themselves +round the two long tables--this man in this seat, that man by the +gas-fire; this man with his wheel-chair drawn up at the end, that man at +the corner where no one will jostle his arm. + +Curious how these officers leave the hospital, so silently. +Disappearances.... One face after another slips out of the picture, the +unknown heart behind the face fixed intently on some other centre of +life. + +I went into a soldiers' ward to-night to inquire about a man who has +pneumonia. + +Round his bed there stood three red screens, and the busy, white-capped +heads of two Sisters bobbed above the rampart. + +It suddenly shocked me. What were they doing there? Why the screens? Why +the look of strain in the eyes of the man in the next bed who could see +behind the screens? + +I went cold and stood rooted, waiting till one of them could come out +and speak to me. + +Soon they took away the screen nearest to me; they had done with it. + +The man I was to inquire for has no nostrils; they were blown away, and +he breathes through two pieces of red rubber tubing: it gave a more +horrible look to his face than I have ever seen. + +The Sister came out and told me she thought he was "not up to much." I +think she means he is dying. + +I wonder if he thinks it better to die.... But he was nearly well before +he got pneumonia, had begun to take up the little habits of living. He +had been out to tea. + +Inexplicable, what he thinks of, lying behind the screen. + + +To-night I was laying my trays in the corridor, the dim corridor that I +am likely often to mention--the occasional blue gas-lamps hanging at +intervals down the roof in a dwindling perspective. + +The only unshaded light in the corridor hangs above my head, making the +cutlery gleam in my hands. + +The swish-swish of a lame foot approached down the stone tiling with the +tapping, soft and dull, of a rubber-tipped walking-stick. + +He paused by the pillar, as I knew he would, and I busied myself with an +added rush and hurry, an added irritating noise of spoons flung down. + +He waited patiently, shyly. I didn't look up, but I knew his face was +half smiling and suppliant. + +"We shall miss you," he said. + +"But I shall be back in a week!" + +"We shall miss you ... laying the trays out here." + +"Everything passes," I said gaily. + +He whistled a little and balanced himself against his stick. + +"You are like me, Sister," he said earnestly; and I saw that he took me +for a philosopher. + +He shuffled on almost beyond the circle of light, paused while my lips +moved in a vague smile of response, then moved on into the shadow. The +low, deep quiet of the corridor resumed its hold on me. The patter of +reflection in my brain proceeded undisturbed. + +"You are like me!" The deepest flattery one creature pays its fellow ... +the cry which is uttered when another enters "our country." + + +Far down the corridor a slim figure in white approaches, dwarfed by the +smoky distance; her nun-like cap floating, her scarlet cape, the "cape +of pride," slipped round her narrow shoulders. + +How intent and silent They are! + +I watched this one pass with a look half-reverence, half-envy. One +should never aspire to know a Sister intimately. They are disappointing +people; without candour, without imagination. Yet what a look of +personality hangs about them.... + + +To-night ... Mr. Pettitt: "Sister!" + +"Yes, Mr. Pettitt." + +"Do you ever go to theatres? Do you like them?" + +At the risk of appearing unnatural, I said, "Not much." + +"Oh ... I thought.... H'm, that's a pity. Don't you like revues?" + +"Oh, yes...." + +"I thought you'd take me to a _matinee_ one afternoon." + +"Oh, charming! I can't get leave in the afternoons, though." + +"You often have a day off." + +"Yes, but it's too soon to ask for another." + +"Well, how about Wednesday, then?" + +"Too soon. Think of the new Sister, and her opinion of me! That has yet +to be won." + +"Well, let me know, anyway...." + +(Staved off!) + + +The new Sister is coming quite soon: she has a medal. + +Now that I know _my_ Sister must go I don't talk to her much; I almost +avoid her. That's true hospital philosophy. + + +I must put down the beauty of the night and the woman's laugh in the +shadowy hedge.... + +I walked up from the hospital late to-night, half-past eight, and hungry +... in the cold, brilliant moonlight; a fine moon, very low, throwing +long, pointed shadows across the road from the trees and hedges. + +As one climbs up there is a wood on the right, the remains of the old +wooded hill; sparse trees, very tall; and to-night a star between every +branch, and a fierce moon beating down on the mud and grass. + +I had on my white cap and long blue coat, very visible. The moon swept +the road from side to side: lovers, acting as though it were night, were +lit as though it was day. + +I turned into the wood to take a message to a house set back from the +road, and the moonlight and the night vapour rising from the marshy +ground were all tangled together so that I could hardly see hedge from +field or path. + +I saw a lit cigarette-end, and a woman's laugh came across the field as +naturally as if a sheep had bleated in the swampy grass. It struck me +that the dark countryside was built to surround and hide a laugh like +hers--the laugh of a lover, animal and protesting. + +I saw the glowing end of the cigarette dance in a curve and fall to the +ground, and she laughed again more faintly. + +Walking on in the middle of the moonlight, I reached the gate I was +looking for, ran up the pebbly drive to the dining-room window, gave my +message, and returned. + +I slipped my cap off my hair and pushed it into my pocket, keeping under +the shadow of the hedge and into the quiet field. + +They were whispering: "Do you?" "I do...." "Are you?" "I am...." +crushed into the set branches of the hedge. + + +The Mess went vilely to-night. Sister adds up on her fingers, and that's +fatal, so all the numbers were out, and the _chef_ sent in forty-five +meats instead of fifty-one. I blushed with horror and responsibility, +standing there watching six hungry men pretending to be philosophers. + +The sergeant wolfed the cheese too. He got it out from under my very +eyes while I was clearing the tables and ate it, standing up to it in +the pantry with his back to me when I went in to fetch a tray. + +Whenever I see that broad khaki back, the knickered legs astride, the +flexed elbow-tips, I know that his digestion is laying up more trouble +for him. + +Benks, the Mess orderly, overeats himself too. He comes to the bunk and +thrusts his little smile round the door: "Sister, I got another of them +sick 'eadaches," very cheerfully, as though he had got something worth +having. She actually retorted, "Benks, you eat too much!" one day, but +he only swung on one leg and smiled more cheerfully than ever. + +The new Sister has come. That should mean a lot. What about one's +habits of life...? + +The new Sister has come, and at present she is absolutely without +personality, beyond her medal. She appears to be deaf. + +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 passed 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 bumpy 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 grass 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 quantity, and makes a lot +of "fun" about two lumps of sugar. + +When she is at her best the table assumes 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 glass of boiling water to tea. And would you mind sewing this +button 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. +Pettitt 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 institution 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 God 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. + +I turned away with a great shrinking. + +In a very few minutes the citizen went past my bunk door, his hat in his +hand, his black coat buttoned; taking back to his home and his family +the last facts that he might ever learn. + +At the end of the passage he almost collided with that stretcher which +bears a flag. + +Of the two, the stretcher moved me least. + + +_My_ Sister is afraid of death. She told me so. And not the less afraid, +she said, after all she has seen of it. That is terrible. + +But the new Sister is afraid of life. She is shorter-sighted. + +The rain has been pouring all day. + +To-night it has stopped, and all the hill is steam and drizzle and black +with the blackness that war has thrust upon the countryside. + +_My_ Sister has gone. + +Two nights ago I went up to a dinner at Madeleine's and to stay the +night. My Sister said, "Go and enjoy yourself!" And I did. It is very +amusing, the change into rooms full of talk and light; I feel a glow of +pleasure as I climb to the room Madeleine calls mine and find the +reflection of the fire on the blue wall-paper. + +The evening wasn't remarkable, but I came back full of descriptions to +the bunk and Sister next day. + +I was running on, inventing this and that, making her laugh, when +suddenly I looked up, and she had tears in her eyes. + +I wavered and came to a stop. She got up suddenly and moved about the +room, and then with a muttered "Wash my hands," disappeared into the +corridor. + +I sat and thought: "Is it that she has her life settled, quietly +continuous, and one breaks in...? Does the wind from outside hurt?" + +I regretted it all the evening. + +Yesterday I arrived at the hospital and couldn't find the +store-cupboard keys, then ran across to her room and tapped at the door. +Her voice called "Come in!" and I found her huddled in an arm-chair, +unnerved and white. I asked her for the keys, and when she gave them to +me she held out her hand and said: "I'm going away to-morrow. They are +sending me home; they say I'm ill." + +I muttered something with a feeling of shock, and going back to my bunk +I brooded. + +The new Sister came in, and a new V.A.D. too, explaining that my former +companion was now going into a ward. + +A sense of desolation was in the air, a ruthlessness on the part of some +one unknown. "Shuffle, shuffle ... they shuffle us like cards!" + +I rose and began to teach the new V.A.D. the subtle art of laying trays. +She seemed stupid. + +I didn't want to share my trays with her. I love them; they are my +recreation. I hung over them idly, hardly laying down the spoons I held +in my hand, but, standing with them, chivied the new V.A.D. until her +movements became flustered and her eye distraught. + +She was very ugly. I thought: "In a day or two I shall get to like her, +and then I shan't be able to chivy her." + +Out in the corridor came a tremendous tramping, boots and jingling +metal. Two armed men with fixed bayonets arrived, headed by a sergeant. +The sergeant paused and looked uncertainly this way and that, and then +at me. + +I guessed their destination. "In there," I nodded, pointing through a +closed glass door, and the sergeant marched his men in and beyond the +door. + +An officer had been brought back under arrest; I had seen him pass with +his escort. The rumour at tea had been that he had extended his two +days' leave into three weeks. + +The V.A.D. looked at me questioningly but she didn't dare, and I +couldn't bear, to start any elucidations on the subject. + +I couldn't think; she worried me. Her odds and ends of conversation +pecked at me like a small bird. She told me a riddle which filled me +with nausea, and finally a limerick which I had heard three times in the +Mess. + +I left her and went into the bunk. + +Here the new Sister had installed herself, gentle and pink and full of +quiet murmurs. + +The rain, half snow, half sleet, dabbled against the window-pane, and I +lifted the blind to watch the flakes stick and melt on the glass. + +The V.A.D., her trays finished, appeared in the doorway. The little room +seemed full of people. + +"There's a concert," I said, looking at the V.A.D. with distaste. + +She looked at me uncertainly: "Aren't you coming?" + +"No," I said, "I've a note to write," forgetting that the new Sister +might not allow such infringements. She gave no sign. + +The V.A.D. gave in and disappeared concertwards. + +The Sister rose too and went out into the kitchen to consult with the +_chef_. + +I slipped out behind her and down the steps into the garden--into the +wet, dark garden, down the channels that were garden-paths, and felt my +way over to the Sisters' quarters. + +My Sister hadn't moved. There by the gas-fire, her thin hand to her +face, she sat as she had two hours before. + +"Come in," she offered, "and talk to me." + +Her collar, which was open, she tried to do up. It made a painful +impression on me of weakness and the effort to be normal. + +I remembered that she had once told me she was so afraid of death, and I +guessed that she was suffering now from that terror. + +But when the specialist is afraid, what can ignorance say...? + + +Life in the bunk is wretched (except that the new V.A.D. tells fortunes +by hands). + +The new Sister is at the same time timid and dogged. She looks at me +with a sidelong look and gives me little flips with her hand, as though +(_a_) she thought I might break something and (_b_) that she might stave +it off by playfulness. + + +Pain.... + +To stand up straight on one's feet, strong, easy, without the surging of +any physical sensation, by a bedside whose coverings are flung here and +there by the quivering nerves beneath it ... there is a sort of shame in +such strength. + +"What can I do for you?" my eyes cry dumbly into his clouded brown +pupils. + +I was told to carry trays from a ward where I had never been +before--just to carry trays, orderly's work, no more. + +No. 22 was lying flat on his back, his knees drawn up under him, the +sheets up to his chin; his flat, chalk-white face tilted at the ceiling. +As I bent over to get his untouched tray his tortured brown eyes fell on +me. + +"I'm in pain, Sister," he said. + +No one has ever said that to me before in that tone. + +He gave me the look that a dog gives, and his words had the character of +an unformed cry. + +He was quite alone at the end of the ward. The Sister was in her bunk. +My white cap attracted his desperate senses. + +As he spoke his knees shot out from under him with his restless pain. +His right arm was stretched from the bed in a narrow iron frame, +reminding me of a hand laid along a harp to play the chords, the fingers +with their swollen green flesh extended across the strings; but of this +harp his fingers were the slave, not the master. + +"Shall I call your Sister?" I whispered to him. + +He shook his head. "She can't do anything. I must just stick it out. +They're going to operate on the elbow, but they must wait three days +first." + +His head turned from side to side, but his eyes never left my face. I +stood by him, helpless, overwhelmed by his horrible loneliness. + +Then I carried his tray down the long ward and past the Sister's bunk. +Within, by the fire, she was laughing with the M.O. and drinking a cup +of tea--a harmless amusement. + +"The officer in No. 22 says he's in great pain," I said doubtfully. (It +wasn't my ward, and Sisters are funny.) + +"I know," she said quite decently, "but I can't do anything. He must +stick it out." + +I looked through the ward door once or twice during the evening, and +still his knees, at the far end of the room, were moving up and down. + + +It must happen to the men in France that, living so near the edge of +death, they are more aware of life than we are. + +When they come back, when the postwar days set in, will they keep that +vision, letting it play on life ... or must it fade? + +And some become so careless of life, so careless of all the whims and +personalities and desires that go to make up existence, that one wrote +to me: + +"The only real waste is the waste of metal. The earth will be covered +again and again with Us. The corn will grow again; the bread and meat +can be repeated. But this metal that has lain in the earth for +centuries, the formation of the beginning, that men have sweated and +grubbed for ... that is the waste." + +What carelessness of worldly success they should bring back with them! + + +Orderlies come and go up and down the corridor. Often they carry +stretchers--now and then a stretcher with the empty folds of a flag +flung across it. + +Then I pause from laying my trays, and with a bunch of forks in my hand +I stand still. + +They take the stretcher into a ward, and while I wait I know what they +are doing behind the screens which stand around a bed against the wall. +I hear the shuffle of feet as the men stand to attention, and the +orderlies come out again, and the folds of the flag have ballooned up to +receive and embrace a man's body. + +Where is he going? + +To the mortuary. + +Yes ... but where else...? + + +Perhaps there is nothing better than the ecstasy and unappeasement of +life? + + + + +II + +INSIDE THE GLASS DOORS + + +My feet ache, ache, ache...! + +End of the first day. + + +Life in a ward is all scurry and rush. I don't reflect; I'm putting on +my cap anyhow, and my hands are going to the dogs. + +I shall never get to understand Sisters; they are so strange, so tricky, +uncertain as collies. Deep down they have an ineradicable axiom: that +any visitor, any one in an old musquash coat, in a high-boned collar, in +a spotted veil tied up at the sides, any one with whom one shakes hands +or takes tea, is more important than the most charming patient (except, +of course, a warded M.O.). + +For this reason the "mouths" of the pillow-cases are all turned to face +up the ward, away from the door. + +I think plants in a ward are a barbarism, for as they are always +arranged on the table by the door, it is again obvious that they are +intended only to minister to the eye of the visitor, that race of gods. + +In our ward there are eighteen fern-pots, some in copper, some in pink +china, three in mauve paper, and one hanging basket of ferns. All of +these have to be taken out on the landing at night and in again in the +morning, and they have to be soaked under the tap. + +The Sisters' minds are as yet too difficult for me, but in the minds of +the V.A.D.'s I see certain salient features. I see already manifested in +them the ardent longing to be alike. I know and remember this longing; +it was present through all my early years in a large boarding-school; +but there it was naturally corrected by the changes of growth and the +inexpertness of youth. Here I see for the first time grown women trying +with all the concentration of their fuller years to be as like one +another as it is possible to be. + +There is a certain dreadful innocence about them too, as though each +would protest, "In spite of our tasks, our often immodest tasks, our +minds are white as snow." + +And, as far as I can see, their conception of a white female mind is +the silliest, most mulish, incurious, unresponsive, condemning kind of +an ideal that a human creature could set before it. + +At present I am so humble that I am content to do all the labour and +take none of the temperatures, but I can see very well that it is when I +reach a higher plane that all the trouble will begin. + +The ranklings, the heart-burnings, the gross injustices.... Who is to +make the only poultice? Who is to paint the very septic throat of Mr. +Mullins, Army Service Corps? Who is to--dizzy splendour--go round with +the M.O. should the Sister be off for a half-day? + +These and other questions will form the pride and anguish of my inner +life. + + +It is wonderful to go up to London and dine and stay the night with +Madeleine after the hospital. + +The hospital--a sort of monotone, a place of whispers and wheels moving +on rubber tyres, long corridors, and strangely unsexed women moving in +them. Unsexed not in any real sense, but the white clothes, the hidden +hair, the stern white collar just below the chin, give them an air of +school-girlishness, an air and a look women don't wear in the world. +They seem unexpectant. + +Then at Madeleine's ... the light, the talk, the deep bath got ready for +me by a maid, instead of my getting it ready for a patient.... + +Not that I mind getting it ready; I like it. Only the change! It's like +being turn and turn about maid and mistress. + + +There is the first snow here, scanty and frozen on the doorstep. + +I came home last night in the dark to dinner and found its faint traces +on the road and in the gutter as I climbed the hill. I couldn't see +well; there were stars, but no moon. Higher up it was unmistakable; long +white tracks frozen in the dried mud of the road, and a branch under a +lamp thickened with frozen snow. + +Shall I ever grow out of that excitement over the first bit of snow...? + +I felt a glow of pride in the hill, thinking: + +"In London it's all slush and mud. They don't suspect what we've got +here. A suburb is a wonderful place!" + +After a wet and muddy day in London I've seen the trains pull into +Charing Cross with snow piled on the roofs of the carriages, and felt a +foot taller for joy that I was one of those fortunates who might step +into a train and go down into a white countryside. + +It is the same excitement to wake up early to an overnight fall and see +down the Dover Road for miles no foot of man printed, but only the +birds' feet. Considering the Dover Road has been a highway since the +Romans, it really is a fine moment when you realize its surface has +suddenly become untrodden and unexplored as any jungle. + + +Alas, the amount of snow that has set me writing!... two bucketfuls in +the whole garden! + + +When a Medical Officer goes sick, or, in other words, when an M.O. is +warded, a very special and almost cynical expression settles on his +face. Also the bedside manner of the Visiting Officer is discarded as he +reaches the bed of the sick M.O. + +"My knees are very painful," says the sick M.O., but it is a despondent +statement, not a plea for aid. + +The Visiting Officer nods, but he does not suggest that they will soon +be better. + +They look at each other as weak human beings look, and: + +"We might try...?" says the Visiting Officer questioningly. + +The M.O. agrees without conviction, and settles back on his pillows. Not +for him the comfortable trust in the divine knowledge of specialists. He +can endure like a dog, but without its faith in its master. + +The particular M.O. whose knees are painful is, as a matter of fact, +better now. He got up yesterday. + +Mooning about the ward in a dressing-gown, he stared first out of one +window into the fog and then out of another. + +Finally, just before he got back into bed, he made an epigram. + +"Nurse," he said, "the difference between being in bed and getting up is +that in bed you do nothing, but when you get up there's nothing to +do...." + +I tucked him up and put the cradle over his knees, and he added, "One +gets accustomed to everything," and settled back happily with his +reading-lamp, his French novel, and his dictionary. + +The fog developed all day yesterday, piling up white and motionless +against the window-panes. As night fell a little air of excitement ran +here and there amongst the V.A.D.'s. + +"How shall we get home...?" "Are the buses running?" "Oh no, the last +one is stuck against the railings outside!" "My torch has run out...." + +By seven o'clock even the long corridor was as dim as the alley outside. +No one thought of shutting the windows--I doubt whether they will shut +... and the fog rolled over the sill in banks and round the open glass +doors, till even the white cap of a Sister could hardly be seen as she +passed. + +I am pleased with any atmospheric exaggeration; the adventure of going +home was before me.... + +At eight I felt my way down over the steps into the alley; the torch, +held low on the ground, lighted but a small, pale circle round my shoes. +Outside it was black and solid and strangely quiet. + +In the yard a man here and there raised his voice in a shout; feet +strayed near mine and edged away. + +At the cross-roads I came on a lantern standing upon the ground, and by +it drooped the nose of a benighted horse; the spurt of a match lit the +face of its owner. + +Up the hill, the torch held low against the kerbstone, the sudden +looming of a black giant made me start back as I nearly ran my head into +a telegraph-post.... + +I was at the bottom of the sea; fathoms and fathoms of fog must stand +above my head. + +Suddenly a dozen lights showed about me, then the whole sky alight with +stars, and naked trees with the rime on them, bristling; the long road +ran up the hill its accustomed steel colour, the post office was there +with its red window, the lean old lamp-post with its broken arm.... + +I had walked out of the fog as one walks out of the sea on to a beach! + +Looking back, I could see the pit behind me; the fog standing on the +road like a solid wall, straight up and down. Again I felt a pride in +the hill. "Down there," I thought, "those groping feet and shouting +voices; that man and that horse ... they don't guess!" + +I walked briskly up the hill, and presently stepped on to the pavement; +but at the edge of the asphalt, where tufted grass should grow, +something crackled and hissed under my feet. Under the torchlight the +unnatural grass was white and brittle with rime, fanciful as a stage +fairy scene, and the railings beyond it glittered too. + +I slid in the road as I turned down the drive; a sheet of ice was spread +where the leaky pipe is, and the steps up to the house door were +slippery. + +But oh, the honeysuckle and the rose-trees...! Bush, plant, leaf, stem, +rimed from end to end. The garden was a Bond Street jeweller's! + + +Perhaps the final chapter on Mr. Pettitt.... + +In the excitement of the ward I had almost forgotten him; he is buried +in the Mess, in the days when I lived on the floor below. + +To-night, as I was waiting by the open hatch of the kitchen for my tray +to be filled with little castles of lemon jelly, the hot blast from the +kitchen drawing stray wisps of hair from beneath my cap, I saw the +familiar limping figure--a figure bound up with my first days at the +hospital, evoking a hundred evenings at the concerts, in the +dining-room. I felt he had been away, but I didn't dare risk a "So +you're back!" + +He smiled, blushed, and limped past me. + +Upstairs in the ward, as I was serving out my jellies, he arrived in the +doorway, but, avoiding me, hobbled round the ward, visiting every bed +but the one I was at at the moment. Then he went downstairs again. + +I passed him on the stairs. He can't say he didn't have his opportunity, +for I even stopped with my heavy tray and spoke to him. + +Half an hour later he was back in the ward again (not his ward), and +this time he found the courage of hysteria. There in the middle of the +ward, under the glaring Christmas lights, with the eyes of every +interested man in every bed glued upon us, he presented me with a fan +wrapped in white paper: "A little present I bought you, nurse." I took +it, eyes sizzling and burning holes in my shoulders, and stammered my +frantic thanks. + +"You do like it, nurse?" he said rapidly, three times in succession. + +And I: "I do, I do, I do...." + +"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 butter for the marmalade +and too much marmalade for the butter. + +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 pass ... and voices, bodyless, talking intimately while +their feet fall without a stir on the grass 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 +God 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 God 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 +hitched 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 +glass doors hung the rows of expectant stockings. + + +Final and despairing postscript on Mr. Pettitt. + +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 passages, +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. Pettitt (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 grass.... Mr. Wicks, who will never put his foot on +grass 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!" + +But he wasn't, it was part of his language--little clicks and ticks. He +comes from somewhere in Central Africa, and one of the T.B.'s told me, +"He's only got one wife, nurse." + +He is very proud of his austerity, for he has somehow discovered that he +has hit on a country where it is the nutty thing only to have one wife. + +No one can speak a word of his language, no one knows exactly where he +comes from; but he can say in English, "Good morning, Sister!" and +"Christmas Box!" and "One!" + +Directly one takes any notice of him he laughs and clicks, holding up +one finger, crying, "One!" + +Then a proud T.B. (they regard him as the Creator might regard a +humming-bird) explains: "He means he's only got one wife, nurse." + +Then he did his second trick. He came to me with outstretched black hand +and took my apron, fingering it. Its whiteness slipped between his +fingers. He dropped it and, holding up the hand with its fellow, ducked +his head to watch me with his glinting eyes. + +"He means," explained the versatile T.B., "that he has ten piccaninnies +in his village and they're all dressed in white." + +It took my breath away; I looked at Henry for corroboration. He nodded +earnestly, coughed and whispered, "Ten!" + +"How do you know he means that?" I asked. "How can you possibly have +found out?" + +"We got pictures, nurse. We showed 'im kids, and 'e said 'e got ten--six +girls and four boys. We showed 'im pictures of kids." + +I had never seen Henry before, never knew he existed. But in the ward +opposite the poor T.B.'s had been holding conversations with him in +window-seats, showing him pictures, painfully establishing a communion +with him ... Henry, with his hair done up in hairpins! + +Although they showed him off with conscious pride, I don't think he +really appeared strange to them, beyond his colour. I believe they +imagine his wife as appearing much as their own wives, his children as +the little children who run about their own doorsteps. They do not +stretch their imaginations to conceive any strangeness about his home +surroundings to correspond with his own strangeness. + +To them Henry has the dignity of a man and a householder, possibly a +rate-payer. + +He seems quite happy and amused. I see him carrying a bucket sometimes, +sharing its handle with a flushed T.B. They carry on animated +conversations as they go downstairs, the T.B. talking the most. It +reminds me of a child and a dog. + +What strange machinery is there for getting him back? Part of the cargo +of a ship ... one day ... "a nigger for Central Africa...." + +"Where's his unit?" + +"Who knows! One nigger and his bundle ... for Central Africa!" + +The ward has put Mr. Wicks to Coventry because he has been abusive and +violent-tempered for three days. + +He lies flat in his bed and frowns; no more jokes over the lemonade, no +wilfulness over the thermometer. + +It is in these days that Mr. Wicks faces the truth. + +I lingered by his bed last night, after I had put his tea-tray on his +table, and looked down at him; he pretended to be inanimate, his open +eyes fixed upon the white rail of the bed. His bedclothes were stretched +about him as though he had not moved since his bed was made, hours +before. + +His worldly pleasures were beside him--his reading-lamp, his Christmas +box of cigars, his _Star_--but his eyes, disregarding them, were upon +that sober vision that hung around the bedrail. + +He began a bitter conversation: + +"Nurse, I'm only a ranker, but I had a bit saved. I went to a private +doctor and paid for myself. And I went to a specialist, and he told me I +should never get this. I paid for it myself out of what I had saved." + +We might have been alone in the world, he and I. Far down at the other +end of the room the men sat crouched about the fire, their trays before +them on chairs. The sheet of window behind Mr. Wicks's head was flecked +with the morsels of snow which, hunted by the gale, obtained a second's +refuge before oblivion. + +"I'd sooner be dead than lying here; I would, reely." You hear that +often in the world. "I'd sooner be dead than----" But Mr. Wicks meant +it; he would sooner be dead than lying there. And death is a horror, an +end. Yet he says lying there is worse. + +"You see, I paid for a specialist myself, and he told me I should never +be like this." + +There was nothing to be said.... One must have one's tea. I went down +the ward to the bunk, and we cut the pink iced cake left over from +Christmas.... + + +I did not mean to forget him, but I forgot him. From birth to death we +are alone.... + + +But one of the Sisters remembered him. + +"Mr. Wicks is still in the dumps," she remarked. + +"What is really the matter with him, Sister?" + +"Locomotor ataxy." And she added as she drank her tea, "It's his own +fault." + +"Oh, hush, hush!" my heart cried soundlessly to her, "You can't judge +the bitterness of this, nun, from your convent...!" + +Alas, Mr. Wicks!... No wonder you saved your money to spend upon +specialists! How many years have you walked in fear of this? He took +your money, the gentleman in Harley Street, and told you that you might +go in peace. He blessed you and gave you salvation. + +And the bitterest thing of all is that you paid for him like an officer +and he was wrong. + + +How the blinds blew and the windows shook to-night...! I walked out of +the hospital into a gale, clouds driving to the sea, trees bending back +and fore across the moon. + +I walked till I was warm, and then I walked for happiness. + +The maddening shine of the moon held my eyes, and I walked in the road +like a fool, watching her--till at last, bringing my eyes down, the +telegraph-posts were small as blades of grass on the hill-side and the +shining ribbon tracks in the mud on the road ran up the hill for ever. +They go to Dover, and Dover is France--and France leads anywhere. + +To what a lost enchantment am I recalled by the sight of a branch +across the moon? Something in childhood, something which escapes yet +does not wither.... + +As I passed the public-house on the crest of the hill, all black and +white in the cold moonlight, a heavy door swung open and, with a cough +and a deep, satisfied snuffle, a man coming out let a stream of gaslight +across the road. If I were a man I should certainly go to public-houses. +All that polished brass and glass boxed up away from the moon and the +shadows would call to me. And to drink must be a happy thing when you +have climbed the hill. + + +The T.B. ward is a melancholy place. There is a man in a bed near the +door who lies with his mouth open; his head is like a bird-cage beneath +a muslin cloth. I saw him behind his screens when I took them over a +little lukewarm chicken left from our dinner. + +There was a dark red moon to-night, and frost. Our orderly said, "You +can tell it's freezing, nurse, by the breath," as he watched mine curl +up in smoke in the icy corridor. I like people who notice things.... + +Out in the road in front of the hospital I couldn't get the +motor-bicycle to work, and sat crouched in the dark fiddling with +spanners. + +The charwomen came out of the big gate in the dark talking and laughing, +all in a bunch. One of them stepped off the pavement near me and stopped +to put her toe through the ice in the gutter. + +"Nah, come on, Mrs. Toms!" + +"I always 'ave to break it, it's ser nice an' stiff," she said as she +ran after them. + + +To be a Sister is to have a nationality. + +As there are Icelanders urbane, witty, lazy ... and yet they are all +Icelanders ... so there are cold, uproarious, observant, subservient, +slangy, sympathetic, indifferent, and Scotch Sisters, and yet.... + + +Sister said of a patient to-day, "He was a funny man." + +A funny man is a man who is a dark horse: who is neither friendly nor +antagonistic; who is witty; who is preoccupied; who is whimsical or +erratic--funny qualities, unsafe qualities. + +No Sister could like a funny man. + +In our ward there are three sorts of men: "Nothing much," "nice boys," +and Mr. Wicks. + +The last looms even to the mind of the Sister as a Biblical figure, a +pillar of salt, a witness to God's wrath. + +The Sister is a past-mistress of such phrases as "Indeed!" "That is a +matter of opinion," "We shall see..." "It is possible." + +I have discovered a new and (for me) charming game which I play with my +Sister. It is the game of telling the truth about the contents of my +mind when asked. + +Yesterday Sister was trying to get some coal out of the coal-bin with a +shovel that turned round and round on its handle; she was unsuccessful. + +I said, "Let me, Sister!" + +She said, "Why?" + +And I: "Because I think I can do it better." + +"Why should you think that?" + +"Because all human beings do," I said, and, luckily, she smiled. + +She was washing her caps out in a bowl in the afternoon when I came on. + +"Good afternoon, Sister," I said. "Ironing?" + +"I am obviously only washing as yet," she said. + +"It's because I think so quickly, Sister," I said; "I knew you would +iron next." + + +I dined with Irene last night after the hospital. + +I refused to believe what she told me about the last bus passing at +half-past nine, and so at a quarter to ten I stood outside "The Green +Lamp" and waited. + +Ten minutes passed and no bus. + +With me were two women waiting too--one holding a baby; the other, +younger, smarter, dangling a purse. + +At last I communicated my growing fears: "I believe the last has +gone...." + +We fixed our six eyes on the far corner of the road, waiting for the +yellow lights to round it, but only the gas-lamps stood firm in their +perspective. + +"Oh my, Elsie!" said the woman with the baby, "you can't never walk up +to the cross-roads in the dark alone!" + +"I wouldn't make the attempt, not for anything!" replied the younger one +firmly. + +Without waiting for more I stepped into the middle of the road and +started on my walk home; the very next sentence would have suggested +that Elsie and I should walk together. + +She wouldn't "make the attempt...." Her words trailed through my mind, +conjuring up some adventure, some act of bravery and daring. + +The road was the high road, the channel of tarmac and pavements that she +probably walked along every day; and now it was the selfsame high road, +the same flagstones, hedges, railings, but with the cloak of night upon +them. + +It wasn't man she feared; even in the dark I knew she wasn't that kind. +She would be awfully capable--with man. No, it was the darkness, the +spooky jungle of darkness: she feared the trees would move.... + +"I wouldn't make the attempt, not for anything"; and the other woman had +quite agreed with her. + +I knew where I was by the smells and the sounds on the road--the smell +of the lines of picketed horses behind the railings, the sharp and +sudden stamp of the sick ones in the wooden stables, and, later on, the +glitter of water in the horse-troughs. + +I thought: "I am not afraid.... Is it because I am more educated, or +have less imagination?" + +"Halt! Who goes there?" + +"Friend," I said, thrilling tremendously. + +He approached me and said something which I couldn't make anything of. +Presently I disentangled, "You should never dread the baynit, miss." + +"But I'm not dreading," I said, annoyed, "I ... I love it." + +He said he was cold, and added: "I bin wounded. If you come to that lamp +you can see me stripe." + +We went to the lamp. "It's them buses," he complained, "they won't stop +when I halt 'em." + +"But why do you want to stop them? They can't poison the horse-troughs." + +"It's me duty," he said. "There's one comin'." + +A bus, coming the opposite way, bore down upon us with an unwieldy rush +and roar--the last bus, in a hurry to get to bed. + +"You'll see," he said pessimistically. + +"'Alt! 'Alt, there!" The bus, with three soldiers hanging on the step, +rushed past us, and seemed to slow a little. The sentry ran a few paces +towards it, crying "'Alt!" But it gathered speed and boomed on again, +buzzing away between the gas-lamps. He returned to me sadly. + +"I don't believe they can hear," I said, and gave him some chocolates +and went on. + +As I passed the hospital gates it seemed there was a faint, a very +faint, sweet smell of chloroform.... + + +I was down at the hospital to-night when the factory blew up over the +river. + +The lights went out, and as they sank I reached the kitchen hatchway +with my tray. At the bottom of the stairs I could see through the garden +door the sky grown sulphur and the bushes glowing, while all the panes +of glass turned incandescent. + +Then the explosion came; it sounded as though it was just behind the +hospital. Two hundred panes of glass fell out, and they made a noise +too. + +Standing in the dark with a tray in my hand I heard a man's voice saying +gleefully, "I haven't been out of bed this two months!" + +Some one lit a candle, and by its light I saw all the charwomen from the +kitchen bending about like broken weeds, and every officer was saying, +"There, there now!" + +We watched the fires till midnight from the hill. + + +I went over this morning early. We were thirty-two in a +carriage--Lascars, Chinese, children, Jews, niggers from the docks. + +Lascars and children and Jews and I, we fought to get off the station +platform; sometimes there wasn't room on the ground for both my feet at +once. + +The fires were still burning and smouldering there at midday, but a +shower of rime fell on it, so that it looked like an old ruin, something +done long ago. + +At Pompeii, some one told me, one looked into the rooms and they were as +they had been left--tables laid.... Here, too, I saw a table laid for +the evening meal with a bedstead fallen from the upper floor astraddle +across it. The insides of the houses were coughed into their windows, +basket-chairs hanging to the sills, and fire-irons. + +Outside, the soil of the earth turned up; a workman's tin mug stuck and +roasted and hardened into what looks like solid rock--a fossil, as +though it had been there for ever. + +London is only skin-deep. Beneath lies the body of the world. + + +The hump under the blankets rolls over and a man's solemn face appears +upon the pillow. + +"Can you get me a book, nurse?" + +"Yes. What kind do you like?" + +"Nothing fanciful; something that might be true." + +"All right!" + +"Oh--and nurse...?" + +"Yes?" + +"Not sentimental and not funny, I like a practical story." + +I got him "Lord Jim."... + +Another voice: "Nurse, is there any modern French poetry in that +bookcase?" + +"Good heavens, no! Who would have brought it here?" + +(Who are they all ... these men with their differing tastes?) + +Perhaps the angels feel like this as they trail about in heaven with +their wings flapping on their thin white legs.... + +"Who were you, angel?" + +"I was a beggar outside San Marco." + +"Were you? How odd! I was an Englishman." + + +The concerts that we give in the ward touch me with some curious +emotion. I think it is because I am for once at rest in the ward and +have time to think and wonder. + +There is Captain Thomson finishing his song. He doesn't know what to do +with his hands; they swing. He is tall and dark, with soft eyes--and +staff badges. + +Could one guess what he is? Never in a dozen years.... But I _know_! + +He said to me last night, "Nurse, I'm going out to-morrow." + +I leant across the table to listen to him. + +"Nurse, if you ever want any _crepe de Chine_ ... for nightgowns ... +mind, at wholesale prices...." + +"I have bought some at a sale." + +"May I ask at what price?" + +"Four-and-eleven a yard." + +"Pity! You could have had it from me at three!" + +He gave me his business card. "That's it, nurse," he said, as he wrote +on the back of it. "Drop me a line to that address and you'll get any +material for underwear at trade prices." + +He booked one or two orders the night he went away--not laughingly, not +as a joke, but with deep seriousness, and gravely pleased that he was +able to do what he could for us. He was a traveller in ladies' +underwear. I have seldom met any one so little a snob.... + + +Watch Mr. Gray singing.... + +One hand on the piano, one on his hip: + +"I love every mouse in that old-fashioned house." + +"That fellow can sing!" whispers the man beside me. + +"Is he a professional?" I asked as, finishing, the singer made the +faintest of bows and walked back to his chair. + +"I think he must be." + +"He is, he is!" whispered Mr. Matthews, "I've heard him before." + +They know so little about each other, and they don't ask. It is only I +who wonder--I, a woman, and therefore of the old, burnt-out world. These +men watch without curiosity, speak no personalities, form no sets, +express no likings, analyse nothing. They are new-born; they have as yet +no standards and do not look for any. + +Ah, to have had that experience too!... I am of the old world. + +Again and again I realize, "A nation in arms...." + +Watchmakers, jewellers, station-masters, dress-designers, actors, +travellers in underwear, bank clerks ... they come here in uniforms and +we put them into pyjamas and nurse them; and they lie in bed or hobble +about the ward, watching us as we move, accepting each other with the +unquestioning faith of children. + + +The outside world has faded since I have been in the hospital. Their +world is often near me--their mud and trenches, things they say when +they come in wounded. + +The worst of it is it almost bores me to go to London, and London was +always my Mecca. It is this garden at home, I think. It is so easy not +to leave it. + +When you wake up the window is full of branches, and last thing at night +the moon is on the snow on the lawn and you can see the pheasants' +footmarks. + +Then one goes to the hospital.... + +When Madeleine telephones to me, "I'm living in a whirl...." it disturbs +me. Suddenly I want to too, but it dies down again. + +Not that it is their world, those trenches. When they come in wounded or +sick they say at once, "What shows are on?" + + +Mr. Wicks has ceased to read those magazines his sister sends him; he +now stares all day at his white bedrail. + +I only pass him on my way to the towel-cupboard, twice an evening, and +then as I glance at him I am set wondering all down the ward of what he +thinks, or if he thinks.... + +I may be quite wrong about him; it is possible he doesn't think at all, +but stares himself into some happier dream. + +One day when he is dead, when he is as totally dead as he tells me he +hopes to be, that bed with its haunted bedrail will bend under another +man's weight. Surely it must be haunted? The weight of thought, dream or +nightmare, that hangs about it now is almost visible to me. + +Mr. Wicks is an uneducated and ordinary man. In what manner does his +dream run? Since he has ceased to read he has begun to drop away a +little from my living understanding. + +He reflects deeply at times. + +To-night, as I went quickly past him with my load of bath-towels, his +blind flapped a little, and I saw the moon, shaped like a horn, behind +it. + +Dropping my towels, I pulled his blind back: + +"Mr. Wicks, look at the moon." + +Obedient as one who receives an order, he reached up to his supporting +handle and pulled his shoulders half round in bed to look with me +through the pane. + +The young moon, freed from the trees, was rising over the hill. + +I dropped the blind again and took up my towels and left him. + +After that he seemed to fall into one of his trances, and lay immovable +an hour or more. When I took his dinner to him he lifted his large, +sandy head and said: + +"Seems a queer thing that if you hadn't said 'Look at the moon' I might +have bin dead without seeing her." + +"But don't you ever look out of the window?" + +The obstinate man shook his head. + + +There was a long silence in the ward to-night. It was so cold that no +one spoke. It is a gloomy ward, I think; the pink silk on the electric +lights is so much too thick, and the fire smokes dreadfully. The +patients sat round the fire with their "British warms" over their +dressing-gowns and the collars turned up. + +Through the two glass doors and over the landing you can see the T.B.'s +moving like little cinema figures backwards and forwards across the +lighted entrance. + +Suddenly--a hesitating touch--an ancient polka struck up, a tune +remembered at children's parties. Then a waltz, a very old one too. The +T.B.'s were playing dance music. + +I crept to their door and looked. One man alone was taking any notice, +and he was the player; the others sat round coughing or staring at +nothing in particular, and those in bed had their heads turned away from +the music. + +The man whose face is like a bird-cage has now more than ever a look of +... an empty cage. He allows his mouth to hang open: that way the bird +will fly. + + +What is there so rapturous about the moon? + +The radiance of a floating moon is unbelievable. It is a figment of +dream. The metal-silver ball that hung at the top of the Christmas tree, +or, earlier still, the shining thing, necklace or spoon, the thing the +baby leans to catch ... the magpie in us.... + + +Mr. Beecher is to be allowed to sleep till eight. He sleeps so badly, he +says. He woke up crying this morning, for he has neurasthenia. + +That is what Sister says. + +He should have been in bed all yesterday, but instead he got up and +through the door watched the dead T.B. ride away on his stretcher (for +the bird flew in the night). + +"How morbid of him!" Sister says. + +He has seen many dead in France and snapped his fingers at them, but I +agree with him that to die of tuberculosis in the backwaters of the war +isn't the same thing. + +It's dreary; he thought how dreary it was as he lay awake in the night. + +But then he has neurasthenia.... + + +Pity is exhaustible. What a terrible discovery! If one ceases for one +instant to pity Mr. Wicks he becomes an awful bore. Some days, when the +sun is shining, I hear his grieving tenor voice all over the ward, his +legendary tale of a wrong done him in his promotion. The men are kind to +him and say "Old man," but Mr. Gray, who lies in the next bed to him, is +drained of everything except resignation. I heard him say yesterday, +"You told me that before...." + + +We had a convoy last night. + +There was a rumour at tea-time, and suddenly I came round a corner on an +orderly full of such definite information as: + +"There's thirty officers, nurse; an 'undred an' eighty men." + +I flew back to the bunk with the news, and we sat down to our tea +wondering and discussing how many each ward would get. + +Presently the haughty Sister from downstairs came to the door: she held +her thin, white face high, and her rimless glasses gleamed, as she +remarked, overcasually, after asking for a hot-water bottle that had +been loaned to us: + +"Have you many beds?" + +"Have they many beds?" The one question that starts up among the +competing wards. + +And, "I don't want any; I've enough to do as it is!" is the false, +cloaking answer that each Sister gives to the other. + +But my Sisters are frank women; they laughed at my +excitement--themselves not unstirred. It's so long since we've had a +convoy. + + +The gallants of the ward showed annoyance. New men, new interests.... +They drew together and played bridge. + + +A little flying boy with bright eyes said in his high, piping voice to +me across the ward: + +"So there are soldiers coming into the ward to-night!" + +I paused, struck by his accusing eyes. + +"What do you mean? Soldiers...?" + +"I mean men who have been to the front, nurse." + +The gallants raised their eyebrows and grew uproarious. + + +The gallants have been saying unprofessional things to me, and I haven't +minded. The convoy will arm me against them. "Soldiers are coming into +the ward." + +Eight o'clock, nine o'clock.... If only one could eat something! I took +a sponge-finger out of a tin, resolving to pay it back out of my tea +next day, and stole round to the dark corner near the German ward to eat +it. The Germans were in bed; I could see two of them. At last, freed +from their uniform, the dark blue with the scarlet soup-plates, they +looked--how strange!--like other men. + +One was asleep. The other, I met his eyes so close; but I was in the +dark, and he under the light of a lamp. + +I knew what was happening down at the station two miles away; I had been +on station duty so often. The rickety country station lit by one large +lamp; the thirteen waiting V.A.D.'s; the long wooden table loaded with +mugs of every size; kettles boiling; the white clock ticking on; that +frowsy booking clerk.... + +Then the sharp bell, the tramp of the stretcher-bearers through the +station, and at last the two engines drawing gravely across the lighted +doorway, and carriage windows filled with eager faces, other carriage +windows with beds slung across them, a vast Red Cross, a chemist's shop, +a theatre, more windows, more faces.... + +The stretcher-men are lined up; the M.O. meets the M.O. with the train; +the train Sisters drift in to the coffee-table. + +"Here they come! Walkers first...." + +The station entrance is full of men crowding in and taking the steaming +mugs of tea and coffee; men on pickaback with bandaged feet; men with +only a nose and one eye showing, with stumbling legs, bound arms. The +station, for five minutes, is full of jokes and witticisms; then they +pass out and into the waiting chars-a-bancs. + +A long pause. + +"Stretchers!" + +The first stretchers are laid on the floor. + +There I have stood so often, pouring the tea behind the table, watching +that littered floor, the single gas-lamp ever revolving on its chain, +turning the shadows about the room like a wheel--my mind filled with +pictures, emptied of thoughts, hypnotized. + + +But last night, for the first time, I was in the ward. For the first +time I should follow them beyond the glass door, see what became of +them, how they changed from soldiers into patients.... + +The gallants in the ward don't like a convoy; it unsexes us. + +Nine o'clock ... ten o'clock.... Another biscuit. Both Germans are +asleep now. + +At last a noise in the corridor, a tramp on the stairs.... Only walkers? +No, there's a stretcher--and another...! + +Now reflection ends, my feet begin to move, my hands to undo bootlaces, +flick down thermometers, wash and fetch and carry. + +The gallants play bridge without looking up. I am tremendously fortified +against them: for one moment I fiercely condemn and then forget them. +For I am without convictions, antipathies, prejudices, reflections. I +only work and watch, watch.... + +Our ward is divided: half of it is neat and white and orderly; the +other half has khaki tumbled all over it--"Sam Brownes," boots, caps, +mud, the caked mud from the "other side." + +But the neat beds are empty; the occupants out talking to the +new-comers, asking questions. Only the gallants play their bridge +unmoved. They are on their mettle, showing off. Their turn will come +some day. + + +Now it only remains to walk home, hungry, under a heavy moon. + +The snow is running down the gutters. What a strange and penetrating +smell of spring! February ... can it be yet? + +The running snow is uncovering something that has been delayed. In the +garden a blackbird made a sudden cry in the hedge. I did smell spring, +and I'm starving.... + + +I thought last night that a hospital ward is, above all, a serene place, +in spite of pain and blood and dressings. Gravity rules it and order and +a quiet procession of duties. + +Last night I made beds with the eldest Sister. The eldest Sister is good +company to make beds with; she is quiet unless I rouse her, and when I +talk she smiles with her eyes. I like to walk slowly round the ward, +stooping and rising over the white beds, flicking the sheets +mechanically from the mattress, and finally turning the mattress with an +ease which gives me pleasure because I am strong. + +In life nothing is too small to please.... + +Once during the evening the eldest Sister said to me: + +"I am worried about your throat. Is it no better?" + +And from the pang of pleasure and gratitude that went through me I have +learnt the value of such remarks. + +In every bed there is some one whose throat is at least more sore than +mine.... + +Though I am not one of those fierce V.A.D.'s who scoff at sore throats +and look for wounds, yet I didn't know it was so easy to give pleasure. + + +The strange, disarming ways of men and women! + +I stood in the bunk to-night beside the youngest Sister, and she looked +up suddenly with her absent stare and said, "You're not so nice as you +used to be!" + +I was dumbfounded. Had I been "nice"? And now different.... + +What a maddening sentence, for I felt she was going to refuse me any +spoken explanation. + +But one should not listen to what people say, only to what they mean, +and she was one of those persons whose minds one must read for oneself, +since her words so often deformed her thoughts. + +The familiarity and equality of her tone seemed to come from some mood +removed from the hospital, where her mistrustful mind was hovering about +a trouble personal to herself. + +She did not mean "You are not so nice...." but "You don't like me so +much...." + +She was so young, it was all so new to her, she wanted so to be "liked"! +But there was this question of her authority.... + +How was she to live among her fellows? + +Can one afford to disdain them? Can one steer happily with indifference? +Must one, to be "liked," bend one's spirit to theirs? And, most +disturbing question of all, is to be "liked" the final standard? + +Whether to wear, or not to wear, a mask towards one's world? For there +is so much that is not ripe to show--change and uncertainty.... + +As she sat there, unfolding to me the fogs of her situation, her fresh +pink face clouded, her grand cap and red cape adding burdens of +authority to the toil of growth, I could readily have looked into the +glass to see if my hair was grey! + + +"Then there is nothing you condemn?" said the youngest Sister finally, +at the close of a conversation. + +I have to-day come up against the bedrock of her integrity; it is +terrible. She has eternal youth, eternal fair hair, cold and ignorant +judgments. On things relating to the world I can't further soften her; a +man must do the rest. + + +"A gentleman ... a gentleman...." I am so tired of this cry for a +"gentleman." + +Why can't they do very well with what they've got! + +Here in the wards the Sisters have the stuff the world is made of laid +out, bedded, before their eyes; the ups and downs of man from the four +corners of the Empire and the hundred corners of social life, helpless +and in pyjamas--and they're not satisfied, but must cry for a +"gentleman"! + +"I couldn't make a friend of that man!" the youngest Sister loves to add +to her criticism of a patient. + +It isn't my part as a V.A.D. to cry, "Who wants you to?" + +"I couldn't trust that man!" the youngest Sister will say equally often. + +This goes deeper.... + +But whom need one trust? Brother, lover, friend ... no more. Why wish to +trust all the world?... + +"They are not real men," she says, "not men through and through." + +That's where she goes wrong; they are men through and through--patchy, +ordinary, human. She means they are not men after her pattern. + +Something will happen in the ward. Once I have touched this bedrock in +her I shall be for ever touching it till it gets sore! + +One should seek for no response. They are not elastic, these nuns.... + + +In all honesty the hospital is a convent, and the men in it my brothers. + +This for months on end.... + +For all that, now and then some one raises his eyes and looks at me; one +day follows another and the glance deepens. + +"Charme de l'amour qui pourrait vous peindre!" + +Women are left behind when one goes into hospital. Such women as are in +a hospital should be cool, gentle; anything else becomes a torment to +the "prisoner." + +For me, too, it is bad; it brings the world back into my eyes; duties +are neglected, discomforts unobserved. + +But there are things one doesn't fight. + +"Charme de l'amour...." The ward is changed! The eldest Sister and the +youngest Sister are my enemies; the patients are my enemies--even Mr. +Wicks, who lies on his back with his large head turned fixedly my way to +see how often I stop at the bed whose number is 11. + +Last night he dared to say, "It's not like you, nurse, staying so much +with that rowdy crew...." The gallants ... I know! But one among them +has grown quieter, and his bed is No. 11. + +Even Mr. Wicks is my enemy. + +He watches and guards. Who knows what he might say to the eldest Sister? +He has nothing to do all day but watch and guard. + +In the bunk at tea I sit among thoughts of my own. The Sisters are my +enemies.... + + +I am alive, delirious, but not happy. + +I am at any one's mercy; I have lost thirty friends in a day. The +thirty-first is in bed No. 11. + + +This is bad: hospital cannot shelter this life we lead, No. 11 and I. He +is a prisoner, and I have my honour, my responsibility towards him; he +has come into this room to be cured, not tormented. + +Even my hand must not meet his--no, not even in a careless touch, not +even in its "duty"; or, if it does, what risk! + +I am conspired against: it is not I who make his bed, hand him what he +wishes; some accident defeats me every time. + + +Now that I come to think of it, it seems strange that the Sisters should +be my enemies. Don't we deserve sympathy and pity, No. 11 and I? From +women, too.... + +Isn't there a charm hanging about us? Aren't we leading magic days? Do +they feel it and dislike it? Why? + +I feel that the little love we have created is a hare whose natural fate +is to be run by every hound. But I don't see the reason. + +We can't speak, No. 11 and I, only a whispered word or two that seems to +shout itself into every ear. We don't know each other. + +Last night it was stronger than I. I let him stand near me and talk. I +saw the youngest Sister at the far end of the ward by the door, but I +didn't move; she was watching. The moment I took my eyes from her I +forgot her.... That is how one feels when one is desperate; that is how +trouble comes. + + +Later, I stood down by the hatch waiting for the tray of fish, and as I +stood there, the youngest Sister beside me, he came down, for he was up +and dressed yesterday, and offered to carry the tray. For he is +reckless, too.... + +She told him to go back, and said to me, looking from her young, +condemning eyes, "I suppose he thinks he can make up for being the cause +of all the lateness to-night." + +"Sister...." and then I stopped short. I hated her. Were we late? I +looked at the other trays. We were not late; it was untrue. She had said +that because she had had to wrap her barb in something and hadn't the +courage to reprove me officially. I resented that and her air of +equality. Since I am under her authority and agree to it, why dare she +not use it? + +As for me, I dared not speak to her all the evening. She would have no +weapons against me. If I am to remember she is my Sister I must hold my +hand over my mouth. + +She would not speak to me, either. That was wrong of her: she is in +authority, not I. + +It is difficult for her because she is so young; but I have no room for +sympathy. + +At moments I forget her position and, burning with resentment, I +reflect, " ... this schoolgirl...." + + +To-day I walked down to the hospital thinking: "I must be stronger. It +is I who, in the inverted position of things, should be the stronger. He +is being tortured, and he has no release. He cannot even be alone a +moment." + +But at the hospital gates I thought of nothing but that I should see +him. + + +In the bunk sat the eldest Sister, writing in a book. It passed through +my head that the two Sisters had probably "sat" on my affairs together. +I wondered without interest what the other had told her. Putting on my +cap, I walked into the ward. + +Surely his bed had had a pink eiderdown! + +I walked up the ward and looked at it; but I knew without need of a +second glance what had happened. + +His bed was made in the fashion in which we make an empty bed, a bed +that waits for a new patient. His locker was empty and stood open, +already scrubbed. I smiled as I noticed they hadn't even left me that to +do. + +No one volunteered a word of explanation, no one took the trouble to say +he had gone. + +These women.... I smiled again. Only the comic phrase rang in my head +"They've properly done me in! Properly done me in...." + +I went downstairs and fetched the trays, and all the time the smile was +on my lips. These women.... Somehow I had the better of the Sister. It +is better to be in the wrong than in the right. + +His friends looked at me a little, but apparently he had left no message +for me. + +Later I learnt that he had been taken to another hospital at two, while +I came on at three. + +Once during the evening the eldest Sister mentioned vaguely, "So-and-so +has gone." + +And I said aloud, after a little reflection, "Yes ... in the nick of +time, Sister." + +During the evening I realized that I should never see him again. It was +here in this ward the thing had grown. The hare we had started wouldn't +bear the strain of any other life. He might write, but I shouldn't go +and see him. + +"He must be wild," I thought with pity. + +The feeling between us would die anyhow; better throw in my strength +with the Sister's and help her hurl it now towards its death. I looked +at her bent head with a secret triumph. + + +Then, slowly: "How ... permanently am I in disgrace?" + +And she: "Not at all ... now." + + +Behind the stone pillar of the gateway is one dirty little patch of +snow; I saw it even in the moonless darkness. + +The crown of the hill here holds the last snows, but for all that the +spring smell is steaming among the trees and up and down the bracken +slopes in the garden next door. + +There is no moon, there are no stars, no promise to the eye, but in the +dense, vapouring darkness the bulbs are moving. I can smell what is not +earth or rain or bark. + + +The curtain has been drawn over No. 11; the Sister holds the corners +tightly against the window-frame. He is outside, somewhere in the world, +and I am here moving among my thirty friends; and since it isn't spring +yet, the lights are lit to hide the twilight. The Sister's eyes talk to +me again as we make beds--yes, even bed No. 11 with a little jaundice +boy in it. They let me make it now! + + +Last night we had another concert in the ward. + +A concert demoralizes me. By reason of sitting on the beds and talking +to whom one wills, I regain my old manners, and forget that a patient +may be washed, fed, dressed but not talked to. My old manners were more +gracious, but less docile. + +Afterwards we wheeled the beds back into their positions. I bumped Mr. +Lambert's as I wheeled it, and apologized. + +"I'm not grumbling," he smiled from his pillow. + +"You never do," I answered. + +"You don't know me, nurse!" + +And I thought as I looked down at him "I shall never know him better or +so well again...." + +Indeed a Sister is a curious creature. She is like a fortress, +unassailable, and whose sleeping guns may fire at any minute. + +I was struck with a bit of knowledge last night that will serve me +through life, i.e. that to justify oneself is the inexcusable fault. It +is better to be in the wrong than in the right. + + +A Sister has an "intimate life." + +It occurs when she goes off duty; that is to say, it lies between 8.45, +when she finishes her supper, and 10 o'clock, when she finishes +undressing. + +That is why one Sister said to me, "If I hadn't taken up nursing I +should have gone in for culture." + +I don't laugh at that.... To have an intimate life one must have a +little time. + +Who am I that I can step in from outside to criticize? The hospital is +not my life. I am expectant.... + +But for them here and now is the business of life. + + +As the weeks go by I recognize the difficulty of keeping the life of the +Sisters and the V.A.D.'s out of the circle of my thoughts. Their +vigorous and symmetrical vision of the ward attacks me; their attitude +towards the patients, which began by offending me, ends by overtaking +me. + +On the whole the Sisters loathe relations. They look into the ward and +see the mothers and sisters and wives camped round the beds, and go back +into the bunk feeling that the ward doesn't belong to them. + +The eldest Sister said to me yesterday: "Shut the door, nurse; there's +Captain Fellows's father. I don't want him fussing round." + +On that we discussed relations, and it seemed to me that it was +inevitable that a Sister should be the only buffer between them and +their pressing anxieties. + +"No, a relation is the last straw.... You don't understand!" she said. + +I don't understand, but I am not specialized. + + +Long ago in the Mess I said to _my_ Sister, laughing: "I would go +through the four years' training just to wear that cap and cape!" + +And she: "You couldn't go through it and come out as you are...." + + +Mr. Wicks has set his heart on crutches. + +"If you won't try me on them I'll buy me own and walk out of here!" + +Then I realize the vanity of his threat and the completeness of his +imprisonment, and hurry to suggest a new idea before he sees it too.... + +We set him on crutches.... + +He is brave. He said with anger, "I can't stand on these, they're too +long. You go and ask for some shorter ones...." + +And thus together we slurred over the fact of that pendulous, nerveless +body which had hung from the crutches like an old stocking. + +But all the evening he was buried in his own silence, and I suppose he +was looking at the vision on the bedrail. + + +A boy of seventeen was brought in yesterday with pneumonia. + +He was so ill that he couldn't speak, and we put screens round his bed. +All the other patients in the ward immediately became convalescents. + +I helped Sister to wash him, holding him on his side while he groaned +with pain; and Sister, no longer cynical, said, "There you are Sonnie, +it's almost finished...." + +When I rolled back the blanket it gave me a shock to see how young his +feet were--clean and thin, with the big toe curling up and the little +toes curling back. + +"Will you brush my hair?" he managed to say to me, and when I had +finished: "This is a pretty ward...." + +It isn't, but I am glad it seems so to him. + + +The boy is at his worst. Whenever we come near him he lifts his eyes and +asks, "What are you going to do now?" + +But to whatever we do he submits with a terrible docility. + +Lying there propped on his pillow, with his small yellow face staring +down the ward, he is all the centre of my thoughts; I am preoccupied +with the mystery that is in his lungs. + +Five days ago he was walking on his legs: five days, and he is on the +edge of the world--to-night looking over the edge. + +There is no shell, no mark, no tear.... The attack comes from within. + +The others in the ward are like phantoms. + +When I say to-morrow, "How is the boy?" what will they say? + + +The sun on the cobwebs lights them as it lights the telephone-wires +above. The cocks scream from every garden. + +To-day the sky is like a pale egg-shell, and aeroplanes from the two +aerodromes are droning round the hill. + +I think from time to time, "Is he alive?" + + +Can one grow used to death? It is unsafe to think of this.... + +For if death becomes cheap it is the watcher, not the dying, who is +poisoned. + + +His mother buys a cake every day and brings it at tea-time, saying, "For +the Sisters' tea...." + +It is a bribe, dumbly offered, more to be on the safe side of every bit +of chance than because she really believes it can make the slightest +difference. + +Now that I have time to think of it, her little action hurts me, but +yesterday I helped to eat it with pleasure because one is hungry and the +margarine not the best. + + +Aches and pains.... + Pains and aches.... + + +I don't know how to get home up the long hill.... + + +Measles.... + + + (Unposted.) + +"DEAR SISTER,--Four more days before they will let me out of bed.... +Whatever I promise to a patient in future I shall do, if I have to wear +a notebook hanging on my belt. + +"By which you will see that I am making discoveries! + +"The quality of _expectation_ in a person lying horizontally is wrought +up to a high pitch. One is always expecting something. Generally it is +food; three times a day it is the post; oftener it is the performance of +some promise. The things that one asks from one's bed are so small: 'Can +you get me a book?' 'Can you move that vase of flowers?' 'When you come +up next time could you bring me an envelope?' + +"But if one cannot get them life might as well stop. + + +"The wonder to me is how they stood me! + +"I was always cheerful--I thought it a merit; I find instead it is an +exasperation. + + +"I make a hundred reflections since my eyes are too bad to read. I stare +at the ceiling, and if a moth comes on it--and just now that happened, +or I would not have thought of mentioning it--I watch the pair of them, +the moth and its leaping shadow, as they whirl from square to square of +the smoke-ripened ceiling. This keeps my thoughts quiet. + +"Then in the daytime there is the garden, the dog that crosses the lawn, +the gardener talking to himself, the girl who goes to feed the hens.... + +"I don't say that in any of these things I find a substitute for +reading, but since I can't and mayn't read.... + +"I am thinking, you know, of the beds down the right-hand side of the +ward. + +"There's Mr. Wicks, now: he has his back to the road with the trams on +it. + +"Do you see anything in that? + +"I do. But then I have the advantage of you; my position is horizontal. + +"Mr. Wicks's position is also ... strictly ... horizontal. It seems to +me that if he could see those trams, mark Saturdays and Sundays by the +increase of passengers, make little games to himself involving the +number of persons to get on and off (for the stopping-place is within +view: I know, for I looked) it might be possible to draw him back from +that apathy which I too, as well as you, was ceasing to notice. + +"Mr. Wicks, Sister, not only has his back to the road with trams on it, +but for eleven months he has had his eyes on the yellow stone of the +wall of the German ward; that is, when they are not on his own +bedrail.... + +"But if his bed were turned round to range alongside the window...? For +he is a man with two eyes; not one who can write upon a stone wall with +his thoughts. + +"And yet ... it would be impossible! There's not a ward in the hospital +whose symmetry is so spoilt. + +"And that, you know, is a difficulty for you to weigh. How far are you a +dictator? + + +"I have been thinking of my role and yours. + +"In the long run, however 'capable' I become, my soul should be given to +the smoothing of pillows. + +"You are barred from so many kinds of sympathy: you must not sympathize +over the deficiencies of the hospital, over the food, over the M.O.'s +lack of imagination, over the intolerable habits of the man in the next +bed; you must not sigh 'I know ...' to any of these plaints. + +"Yours is the running of the ward. Yours the isolation of a crowned +head. + +"One day you said a penetrating thing to me: + +"'He's not very ill, but he's feeling wretched. Run along and do the +sympathetic V.A.D. touch!' + +"For a moment I, just able to do a poultice or a fomentation, resented +it. + +"But you were right.... One has one's _metier_." + + + + +III + +"THE BOYS ..." + + +So now one steps down from chintz covers and lemonade to the Main Army +and lemon-water. + +And to show how little one has one's eye upon the larger issues, the +thing that upset me most on coming into a "Tommies'" ward was the fact +that instead of twenty-six lemons twice a day for the making of lemonade +I now squeeze two into an old jug and hope for the best about the sugar. + +Smiff said to-day, "Give us a drop of lemon, nurse...." And the Sister: +"Go on with you! I won't have the new nurse making a pet of you...." + +I suppose I'm new to it, and one can't carry on the work that way, but, +God knows, the water one can add to a lemon is cheap enough! + +Smiff had a flash of temper to-night. He said: "Keepin' me here starin' +at green walls this way! Nothing but green, nine blessed months!" + +His foot is off, and to-night for the first time the doctor had promised +that he should be wheeled into the corridor. But it was forgotten, and I +am too new to jog the memory of the gods. + +It's a queer place, a "Tommies'" ward. It makes me nervous. I'm not +simple enough; they make me shy. I can't think of them like the others +do, as "the boys"; they seem to me full-grown men. + + +I suffer awfully from my language in this ward. I seem to be the only +V.A.D. of whom they continually ask, "What's say, nurse?" It isn't that +I use long words, but my sentences seem to be inverted. + +An opportunity for learning to speak simple Saxon.... + + +"An antitetanic injection for Corrigan," said Sister. And I went to the +dispensary to fetch the syringe and the needles. + +"But has he any symptoms?" I asked. (In a Tommies' ward one dare ask +anything; there isn't that mystery which used to surround the officers' +illnesses.) + +"Oh no," she said, "it's just that he hasn't had his full amount in +France." + +So I hunted up the spirit-lamp and we prepared it, talking of it. + +But we forgot to talk of it to Corrigan. The needle was into his +shoulder before he knew why his shirt was held up. + +His wrath came like an avalanche; the discipline of two years was +forgotten, his Irish tongue was loosened. Sister shrugged her shoulders +and laughed; I listened to him as I cleaned the syringe. + +I gathered that it was the indignity that had shocked his sense of +individual pride. "Treating me like a cow...." I heard him say to +Smiff--who laughed, since it wasn't his shoulder that carried the serum. +Smiff laughed: he has been in hospital nine months, and his theory is +that a Sister may do anything at any moment; his theory is that nothing +does any good--that if you don't fuss you don't get worse. + +Corrigan was angry all day; the idea that "a bloomin' woman should come +an' shove something into me systim" was too much for him. But he forgets +himself: there are no individualists now; his "system" belongs to us. + +Sister said, laughing, to Smiff the other day, "Your leg is mine." + +"Wrong again; it's the Governmint's!" said Smiff. But Corrigan is Irish +and doesn't like that joke. + + +There are times when my heart fails me; when my eyes, my ears, my +tongue, and my understanding fail me; when pain means nothing to me.... + +In the bus yesterday I came down from London sitting beside a Sister +from another ward, who held her hand to her ear and shifted in her seat. + +She told me she had earache, and I felt sorry for her. + +As she had earache we didn't talk, and I sat huddled in my corner and +watched the names of the shops, thinking, as I was more or less forced +to do by her movements, of her earache. + +What struck me was her own angry bewilderment before the fact of her +pain. "But it hurts.... You've no idea how it hurts!" She was surprised. + +Many times a day she hears the words, "Sister, you're hurtin' me.... +Couldn't you shift my heel? It's like a toothache," and similar +sentences. I hear them in our ward all the time. One can't pass down the +ward without some such request falling on one's ears. + +She is astonished at her earache; she is astonished at what pain can +be; it is unexpected. She is ready to be angry with herself, with her +pain, with her ear. It is monstrous, she thinks.... + +The pain of one creature cannot continue to have a meaning for another. +It is almost impossible to nurse a man well whose pain you do not +imagine. A deadlock! + + +One has illuminations all the time! + +There is an old lady who visits in our ward, at whom, for one or two +unimportant reasons, it is the custom to laugh. The men, who fall in +with our moods with a docility which I am beginning to suspect is a +mask, admit too that she is comic. + +This afternoon, when she was sitting by Corrigan's bed and talking to +him I saw where her treatment of him differed from ours. She treats him +as though he were an individual; but there is more in it than that.... +She treats him as though he had a wife and children, a house and a back +garden and responsibilities: in some manner she treats him as though he +had dignity. + +I thought of yesterday's injection. That is the difference: that is what +the Sisters mean when they say "the boys."... + +The story of Rees is not yet ended in either of the two ways in which +stories end in a hospital. His arm does not get worse, but his courage +is ebbing. This morning I wheeled him out to the awful sleep again--for +the third time. + +They will take nearly anything from each other. The only thing that +cheered Rees up as he was wheeled away was the voice of Pinker crying, +"Jer want white flowers on yer coffin? We'll see to the brass 'andles!" + +From Pinker, a little boy from the Mile End Road, they will stand +anything. He is the servant of the ward (he says), partly through his +good nature and a little because he has two good arms and legs. "I ain't +no skivvy," he protests all the time, but every little odd job gets +done. + +Rees, when he wakes, wakes sobbing and says, "Don' go away, nurse...." +He holds my hand in a fierce clutch, then releases it to point in the +air, crying "There's the pain!" as though the pain filled the air and +rose to the rafters. As he wakes it centralizes, until at last comes the +moment when he says, "Me arm aches cruel," and points to it. Then one +can leave him. + + +It was the first time I had heard a man sing at his dressing. I was +standing at the sterilizer when Rees's song began to mount over the +screen that hid him from me. ("Whatever is that?" "Rees's tubes going +in.") + +It was like this: "Ah ... ee ... oo, Sister!" and again: "Sister ... oo +... ee ... ah!" Then a little scream and his song again. + +I heard her voice: "Now then, Rees, I don't call that much of a song." +She called me to make his bed, and I saw his left ear was full of tears. + +O visitors, who come into the ward in the calm of the long afternoon, +when the beds are neat and clean and the flowers out on the tables and +the V.A.D.'s sit sewing at splints and sandbags, when the men look like +men again and smoke and talk and read ... if you could see what lies +beneath the dressings! + +When one shoots at a wooden figure it makes a hole. When one shoots at a +man it makes a hole, and the doctor must make seven others. + + +I heard a blackbird sing in the middle of the night last night--two +bars, and then another. I thought at first it might be a burglar +whistling to his mate in the black and rustling garden. + +But it was a blackbird in a nightmare. + + +Those distant guns again to-night.... + +Now a lull and now a bombardment; again a lull, and then batter, batter, +and the windows tremble. Is the lull when _they_ go over the top? + +I can only think of death to-night. I tried to think just now, "What is +it, after all! Death comes anyway; this only hastens it." But that won't +do; no philosophy helps the pain of death. It is pity, pity, pity, that +I feel, and sometimes a sort of shame that I am here to write at all. + +Summer.... Can it be summer through whose hot air the guns shake and +tremble? The honeysuckle, whose little stalks twinkled and shone that +January night, has broken at each woody end into its crumbled flower. + +Where is the frost, the snow?... Where are the dead? + +Where is my trouble and my longing, and the other troubles, and the +happiness in other summers? + +Alas, the long history of life! There is that in death that makes the +throat contract and the heart catch: everything is written in water. + +We talk of tablets to the dead. There can be none but in the heart, and +the heart fades. + + +There are only ten men left in bed in the ward. Sometimes I think, "Will +there never be another convoy?" + +And then: "Is not one man alone sufficient matter on which to reflect?" +"One can find God in a herring's head...." says a Japanese proverb. + + +When there is not much to do in the ward and no sound comes from behind +the screens, when there has not been a convoy for weeks, when the little +rubber tubes lie in the trolley-drawer and the syringe gives place to +the dry dressing--then they set one of us aside from the work of the +ward to sit at a table and pad splints. + +It isn't supposed to be a job we care for, and I am keeping up the +delusion, but all the time I run my seams straight, pull the horsehair +out to the last fine shred, turn in my corners as the corners of a +leather book are turned, so that I may be kept at it, although out of +cunning I appear to grumble and long to be released. + +One does not wash up when one makes splints, one does not change the +pillow-cases--forcing the resentful pillow down, down till the corners +of the case are filled--nor walk the ward in search of odd jobs. + +But these are not the reasons.... + +Just as I liked the unending laying of the trays in the corridor, so +making splints appears to me a gentle work in which one has time to look +at and listen to the ward with more penetrating eyes, with wider ears--a +work varied by long conversations with Pinker about his girl and the +fountain-pen trade. + +But I ought not to have asked if she were pretty. + +At first he didn't answer and appeared to be thinking very seriously--of +a way out, perhaps. + +"Does fer me all right," he presently said. + +The defence of his girl occupied his attention, for after a few minutes +he returned to it: "Sensible sort of girl. She ain't soft. Can cook an' +all that." + +I went on sewing my splint. + +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, passing. + +"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 passing 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 glasses, its flames, its +brass 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. + +Between them the three old things, priests in their way, measure and +weigh and mix and scold and let up the panel and bang it down through +the long day, filling the hospital with their coloured bottles, sealed +packets of pills, jars and vaccines, and precious syringes in boxes +marked "To be returned at once" (I never knew a Sister fail to toss her +head when she saw this message). + +It is a very social spot outside the panel of the dispensary: each +V.A.D. goes there each morning as one might do one's marketing, and, +meeting there, puts down her straw basket, taps at the panel, and +listens to the scolding of the old men with only half an ear. + +For the bachelors amuse themselves when they are not mixing and weighing +by inventing odd rules and codes of their own, and, reaching a skinny +arm through the hatchway, they pin them on, little scraps of paper which +fall down and are swept to heaven in the charwomen's pails. + +And the V.A.D.'s, who are not at all afraid, because one cannot be +afraid of a man of whom one has never seen more than half, turn a blind +eye to the slips and a deaf ear to the voices, bringing their bottles +and their jars just in the manner they were taught to do when first they +entered the hospital. And they gossip! They have just seen the morning +papers on all the beds; they have just heard about the half-days for the +week; they have collected little rags and ends of news as they came +along the corridor. + +They gossip. And once a bearded bachelor thumped the panel down almost +on my finger, leaving three startled faces staring at a piece of painted +wood. But a little dark girl worked the panel up an inch with her nails +and cajoled through the crack. + +I have said before that the long corridor is wonderful. In the winter +afternoons and evenings, when the mist rolled up and down over the tiles +like the smoke in a tunnel, when one walked almost in darkness and +peered into the then forbidden wards, when dwarfs coming from the G +block grew larger and larger till the A block turned them into beings of +one's own size, the corridor always made a special impression on me. + +But in the summer mornings it is remarkable too. Then regiments of +charwomen occupy it, working in close mass formation. Seven will work +abreast upon their knees, flanked by their pails, their hands moving +backwards and forwards in so complicated a system that there appears to +be no system at all. + +Patches of the corridor are thick with soapsuds; patches are dry. The +art of walking the corridor in the morning can be learnt, and for a year +and five months I have done it with no more than a slip and a slide. + +But yesterday I stepped on a charwoman's hand. It was worse than +stepping on a puppy: one knows that sickening lift of the heart, as +though the will could undo the weight of the foot.... + +The stagger, the sense of one's unpardonable heaviness.... I slipped on +her hand as on a piece of orange-peel, and, jumping like a chamois, sent +the next pail all over the heels of the front rank. + +It was the sort of situation with which one can do nothing. + + +I met a friend yesterday, one of the old Chelsea people. He has followed +his natural development. Although he talks war, war, war, it is from his +old angle, it wears the old hall-mark. + +He belongs to a movement which believes it "feels the war." Personal +injury or personal loss does not enter the question; the heart of this +movement of his bleeds perpetually, but impersonally. He claims for it +that this heart is able to bleed more profusely than any other heart, +individual or collective, in ... let us limit it to England! + +In fact it is the only blood he has noticed. + +When the taxes go up he says, "Well, now perhaps it will make people +feel the war!" For he longs that every one should lose their money so +that at last they may "feel the war," "stop the war" (interchangeable!) + +He forgets that even in England a great many quite stupid people would +rather lose their money than their sons. + +How strange that these people should still picture the minds of soldiers +as filled with the glitter of bright bayonets and the glory of war! They +think we need a vision of blood and ravage and death to turn us from our +bright thoughts, to still the noise of the drum in our ears. The drums +don't beat, the flags don't fly.... + +He should come down the left-hand side of the ward and hear what the +dairyman says. + +"I 'ates it, nurse; I 'ates it. Them 'orses'll kill me; them drills.... +It's no life for a man, nurse." + +The dairyman hasn't been to the Front; you needn't go to the Front to +hate the war. Sometimes I get a glimpse from him of what it means to the +weaklings, the last-joined, feeble creatures. + +"Me 'ead's that queer, nurse; it seems to get queerer every day. I can't +'elp worryin'. I keep thinkin' of them 'orses." + +Always the horses.... + +I said to Sister, "Is No. 24 really ill?" + +"There's a chance of his being mental," she said. "He is being watched." + +Was he mental before the war took him, before the sergeant used to whip +the horses as they got to the jumps, before the sergeant cried out +"Cross your stirrups!"? + +It isn't his fault; there are strong and feeble men. + +A dairyman's is a gentle job; he could have scraped through life all +right. He sleeps in the afternoon, and stirs and murmurs: "Drop your +reins.... Them 'orses, sergeant! I'm comin', sergeant; don't touch 'im +this time!" And then in a shriller voice, "Don't touch 'im...." Then he +wakes. + +Poor mass of nerves.... He nods and smiles every time one looks at him, +frantic to please. + +There are men and men. Scutts has eleven wounds, but he doesn't "mind" +the war. God made many brands of men, that is all; one must accept them. + +But war finds few excuses; and there are strange minnows in the +fishing-net. Sometimes, looking into the T.B. ward, I think: "It almost +comes to this: one must spit blood or fight...." + + +"Why don't you refuse?" my friend would say to the dairyman. "Why should +you fight because another man tells you to?" + +It isn't so simple as that, is it, dairyman? It isn't even a question +of the immense, vague machinery behind the sergeant, but just the +sergeant himself; it isn't a question of generals or politicians of +great wrongs or fierce beliefs ... but of the bugle which calls you in +the morning and the bugle which puts you to bed at night. + +Well, well.... The dairyman is in hospital, and that is the best that he +can hope for. + + +I read a book once about a prison. They too, the prisoners, sought after +the prison hospital, as one seeks after one's heaven. + + +It is so puffed up of my friend to think that his and his "movement's" +are the only eyes to see the vision of horror. Why, these others _are_ +the vision! + + +This afternoon I was put at splints again. + +I only had an inch or two to finish and I spun it out, very happy. + +Presently the foot of a bed near me began to catch my attention: the toe +beneath the sheets became more and more agitated, then the toes of the +other foot joined the first foot, beating a frenzied tattoo beneath the +coverings. I looked up. + +Facing me a pair of blue eyes were bulging above an open mouth, the +nostrils were quivering, the fingers were wrung together. It was Gayner, +surely seeing a ghost. + +I rose and went to his bed. + +"My jaws want to close," he muttered. "I can't keep them open." + +I jumped and went for Sister, who took the news in a leisurely fashion, +which reproved me for my excitement. Feeling a fool, I went and sat down +again, taking up my splint. But there was no forgetting Gayner. + +I tried to keep my eyes on my work, but first his toes and then his +hands filled all my mind, till at last I had to look up and meet the +eyes again. + +Still looking as though he had seen a ghost--a beast of a ghost...! In +hospital since Mons.... "I wonder how many men he has seen die of +tetanus?" I thought. + +"He's got the jumps," I thought. + +So had I. Suppose Sister was wrong! Suppose the precious minutes were +passing! Suppose...! She was only the junior Sister. + +"Shall I get you some water?" I said at last. He nodded, and gulped in a +horrible fashion. I got him the mug, and while he drank I longed, but +did not dare, to say, "Are you afraid of ... that?" I thought if one +could say the word it might break down that dumb fright, draw the flesh +up again over those bulging eyes, give him a sort of anchor, a +confessional, even if it was only me. But I didn't dare. Gayner is one +of those men so pent up, so rigid with some inner indignation, one +cannot tamper with the locks. + +Again I went and sat down. + +When next I looked up he was sweating. He beckoned to me: "Ask Sister to +send for the doctor. I can't stand this." + +I went and asked her. + +She sucked her little finger thoughtfully. + +"Give him the thermometer," she said. He couldn't take it in his mouth, +" ... for if I shut my lips they'll never open." I put it under his arm +and waited while his feet kicked and his hands twisted. He was normal. +Sister smiled. + +But by a coincidence the doctor came, gimlet-eyed. + +"Hysteria...." he said to Sister in the bunk. + +"Is no one going to reassure Gayner?" I wondered. And no one did. + +Isn't the fear of pain next brother to pain itself? Tetanus or the fear +of tetanus--a choice between two nightmares. Don't they admit that? + +So, forbidden to speak to him, I finished my splint till tea-time. But I +couldn't bring myself to sit down to it, for fear that the too placid +resumption of my duties should outrage him. I stood up. + +Which helped me, not him. + + +After the dressings are over we scrub the dishes and basins in the +annexe. + +In the annexe, except that there is nothing to sit on, there is leisure +and an invitation to reflection. + +Beneath the windows legions of white butterflies attack the +cabbage-patch which divides us from the road; beyond the road there is a +camp from which the dust flows all day. + +When the wind is from the north the dust is worse than ever and breaks +like a surf over the cabbages, while the butterflies try to rise above +it; but they never succeed, and dimly one can see the white wings +beating in the whirlpool. + +I shall never look at white butterflies again without hearing the sounds +from the camp, without seeing the ring of riders, without thinking, +perhaps, of the dairyman and of the other "dairymen." + +The butterflies do not care for noise. When, standing beside the +cabbage-patch, the bugler blows the dinner-bugle, they race in a cloud +to the far corner and hover there until the last note is sounded. + + +I think it is I who am wrong when I consider the men as citizens, as +persons of responsibility, and the Sister right when she says "the +boys." + +Taken from their women, from their establishments, as monks or boys or +even sheep are housed, they do not want, perhaps, to be reminded of an +existence to which they cannot return; until a limb is off, or the war +ends. + +To what a point they leave their private lives behind them! To what a +point their lives are suspended.... + +On the whole, I find that in hospital they do not think of the future or +of the past, nor think much at all. As far as life and growth goes it is +a hold-up! + +There is really not much to hope for; the leave is so short, the +home-life so disrupted that it cannot be taken up with content. Perhaps +it isn't possible to let one's thoughts play round a life about which +one can make no plans. + +They are adaptable, living for the minute--their present hope for the +cup of tea, for the visiting day, for the concert; their future hope for +the drying of the wound, for the day when the Sister's fingers may +press, but no drop be wrung from the long scar. + +Isn't it curious to wish so passionately for the day which may place +them near to death again? + +But the longing for health is a simple instinct, undarkened by logic. + + +Yet some of them have plans. Scutts has plans. + +For a fortnight now he has watched for the post. "Parcel come for me, +Sister? Small parcel?" + +Or he will meet the postman in the corridor. "Got my eye yet?" he asks. + +"What will it be like, Scutts?" we ask. "Can you move it? Can you sleep +in it? Did he match your other carefully?" + +"You'll see," he says confidently. "It's grand." + +"When I get my eye...." he says, almost with the same longing with +which he says "When I get into civies...." + +Scutts is not one of those whose life is stopped; he has made plans. +"When I get into civies and walk out of here...." His plans for six +months' holiday "are all writ down in me notebook." + +"But what shall you do, Scutts? Go to London?" + +"London!... No towns fer me!" + +He will not tell us what he is going to do. Secretly I believe it is +something he wanted to do as a boy but thought himself a fool to carry +out when he was a man: perhaps it is a sort of walking tour. + +Among his eleven wounds he has two crippled arms. "I'm safe enough from +death," he says (meaning France), "till it fetches me in a proper way." + +Perhaps he means to live as though life were really a respite from +death. + + +I had a day on the river yesterday. + +"_I_ seed yer with yer bit of erdy-furdy roun' yer neck an' yer little +attachy-case," said Pinker. + +"A nurse's life is one roun' of pleasure," said Pinker to the ward. + +We had two operations yesterday--one on a sergeant who has won the +D.C.M. and has a certificate written in gold which hangs above his bed, +telling of his courage and of one particular deed; the other on a Welsh +private. + +I wonder what the sergeant was like before he won his D.C.M.... + +There is something unreal about him; he is like a stage hero. He has a +way of saying, "Now, my men, who is going to volunteer to fetch the +dinners?" which is like an invitation to go over the top. + +The men gape when he says that, then go on with their cards. It is like +a joke. + +Before his operation he was full of partially concealed boastings as to +how he would bear it, how he would "come to" saying, "Let me get up! I +can walk...." + +I felt a sneaking wish that he should be undone and show unusual +weakness. + +When the moment came he did as he had said he would do--he laughed and +waved good-bye as he was wheeled away; and in the afternoon when I came +on duty I found him lying in his bed, conscious, looking brown and +strong and unconcerned. + +But he can't let well alone.... + +As I passed up the ward to the bedside of the Welsh private I was +called by the sergeant, and when I stood by his bed he whispered, "Is +that chap making a fuss over there?" + +"Evan?" + +"Chap as has had an operation the same as me...." + +"He's very bad." + +"You don't find me making a fuss and my leg isn't half giving me +something." + +"We're not all alike, sergeant." + +"Why should one make a fuss and another say nothing?" + +"Is your leg hurting you a lot?" + +"Yes, it is," and he screwed up his face into a grimace. + +After all, he was a child. "Try to go to sleep," I said, knowing that it +was his jealousy that was hurting him most. + +I went to Evan. + +He could do nothing with his pain, but in its tightest embraces, and +crying, he lay with his large red handkerchief over his eyes. + +"Oh, Evan...!" I said. I couldn't do anything either. + +"Oh dear, dear, dear, dear, dear...." he wailed in his plaintive Welsh +voice. "Oh, my dear leg, my poor leg...." He looked about nineteen. +"Couldn't I lie on my side?" + +"No, it would make it bleed." + +"Would it?" He was so docile and so unhappy. The tears had run down and +marked his pillow; I turned it, although the sergeant couldn't see. + +"Will they give me something to make me sleep to-night?" + +"Yes, Evan, at eight o'clock." + +I said that because I was so sure of it, I had always seen it done. But +oh, I should have made more sure...! + +He built on it, he leant all his hopes upon it; his little clenched +hands seemed to be holding my promise as firmly as though it had been my +hand. + +And Sister said, "No, no ... it would be better not." "Oh, Sister, why +not...?" (I, the least of mortals, had made a promise belonging only to +the gods....) + +"Oh, Sister, why not?" + +Her reason was a good one: "He will want it more later in the night, and +he can't have it twice." + +I ran back to tell him so quickly--but one can't run back into the past. + + +It is wonderful to talk to men affectionately without exciting or +implying love. The Utopian dreams of sixteen seem almost to be realized! + +When I sew splints they come and talk to me. Scutts will sometimes talk +for an hour. At first I was so proud that I dared hardly stir a finger +for fear that I should frighten him away; now I am more sure of him. He +never says "What?" to me, nor any longer jumps when I speak to him as +though my every word must carry some command. When I sew splints and +listen to Scutts or the old Scotch grocer or Monk--that squinting child +of whom Pinker said, "Monk got a girl! He don' know what a girl is!"--I +think, "We cannot all be efficient, but ... this serves some end." + +For they are complaining that I am not efficient. At first it hurt my +pride; but it depends upon the point of view. Does one go into a ward +primarily to help the patients or to help the Sister? It is not always +the same thing, but one must not question discipline.... + +To-day nine of the patients "went convalescent." They departed, hobbling +and on stretchers, at two o'clock, with bursts of song, plastered hair, +bright buttons, and not a regret. "You'll be able to hear a pin fall +to-night, nurse," said one of them. + +"I know we shall. And a tear too," I added. + +But they won't listen to any such nonsense. They are going off to the +little convalescent hospitals, they are going away to be treated like +men; and I must laugh and shake hands and not dream of adding, "Perhaps +we shall see you back again." + +"No more route-marching...!" was the last cry I heard from the Nine. + +How they hate route-marching--especially the City men, most especially +Pinker! "March down the silly road," he grumbles, "sit on the silly +grass and get heat-bumps." + + +Sometimes I think that sewing splints will be my undoing. If I listen +much longer I shall see crooked. + + +To-day they had some small bottles of stout to help us say good-bye to +the Nine. + +Happiness is cheap. Last night at dinner a man said as he refilled his +glass with champagne, "It makes me sad to think how much happiness there +is in a bottle...." + + +The attack has begun. + +"At 3.15 this morning ... on a front of two miles...." + +So that is why the ward is so empty and the ambulances have been +hurrying out of the yard all day. We shall get that convoy for which I +longed. + +When the ward is empty and there is, as now, so little work to do, how +we, the women, watch each other over the heads of the men! And because +we do not care to watch, nor are much satisfied with what we see, we +want more work. At what a price we shall get it.... + +Scutts and Monk talk to me while I sew, but what about the Monks, +Scutts, Gayners, whose wounds will never need a dressing or a tube--who +lie along a front of two miles, one on his face, another on his back? + +Since 3.15 this morning a lot of men have died. Thank God one cannot go +on realizing death. + +But one need not think of it. This is a ward; here are lucky ones. Even +when I look at Rees, even when I look at the grocer, even when I look at +the T.B. ward, I know that anything, _anything_ is better than death. +But I have known a man here and there who did not think so--and these +men, close on death it is true, were like strangers in the ward. + +For one can be close on death and remain familiar, friendly, +comprehensible. + +I used to think, "It is awful to die." But who knows what compliance the +years will bring? What is awful is to die _young_. + + +A new V.A.D. came into the ward yesterday--a girl straight from home, +who has never been in a hospital before. + +Rees told me, "She turned her head away when she saw me arm." + +"I did once, Rees." + +He looked down at the almost unrecognizable twelve inches which we call +"Rees's wound," and considered how this red inch had paled and the lips +of that incision were drawing together. "'Tisn' no more me arm," he said +at length, "than...." he paused for a simile. "'Tisn' me arm, it's me +wound," he finally explained. + +His arm is stretched out at right angles from his bed in an iron cradle, +and has been for six months. + +"Last night," he said, "I felt me arm layin' down by me side, an' I felt +the fingers an' tried to scratch me knee. It's a feeling that's bin +comin' on for some time, but last night it seemed real." + +The pain of the dressing forces Rees's reason to lay some claim to his +arm, but when it ceases to hurt him he detaches himself from it to such +a point that the ghost-arm familiar to all amputations has arrived, as +it were, by mistake. + +The new V.A.D. doesn't talk much at present, being shy, but to-night I +can believe she will write in her diary as I wrote in mine: "My feet +ache, ache, ache...." Add to that that she is hungry because she hasn't +yet learnt how to break the long stretches with hurried gnawings behind +a door, that she is sick because the philosophy of Rees is not yet her +philosophy, that her hands and feet grow cold and her body turns to warm +milk, that she longs so to sit on a bed that she can almost visualize +the depression her body would make on its counterpane, and I get a +glimpse of the passage of time and of the effect of custom. + +With me the sickness and the hunger and the ache are barely remembered. +It makes me wonder what else is left behind.... The old battle is again +in my mind--the struggle to feel pain, to repel the invading +familiarity. + +Here they come! + +One convoy last night and another this morning. There is one great burly +man, a sort of bear, whose dried blood has squeezed through bandages +applied in seven places, and who for all that mumbles "I'm well" if one +asks him how he feels. + +Long before those wounds are healed he will diagnose himself better than +that! + +"I'm well...." That's to say: "I'm alive, and I have reached this bed, +and this bit of meat, and this pudding in a tin!" He answers by his +standards. + +But in a few days he will think, "I am alive, but I might be better..."; +and in a few weeks, "Is this, after all, happiness?" + +How they sleep, the convoy men! Watching their wounds as we dress them, +almost with a grave pleasure--the passports to this wonderful sleep. + +Then when the last safety-pin is in they lie back without making +themselves in the least comfortable, without drawing up a sheet or +turning once upon the pillow, and sleep just as the head falls. + + +How little women can stand! Even the convoy cannot mend the pains of the +new V.A.D. I dare not speak to her: she seems, poor camel, to be +waiting for the last straw. + + +But when we wash the bowls together we must talk. She and I together +this morning washed and scrubbed, rinsed, dried, and piled basins into +little heaps, and while we washed we examined each other. + +She is a born slave; in fact, I almost think she is born to be tortured. +Her manner with the Sisters invites and entices them to "put upon" her. +Her spiritual back is already covered with sores. + +I suppose she is hungry for sympathy, but it isn't really a case in +which sympathy can do as much as custom. I showed her the white +butterflies, without supposing them to be very solid food. + +She reminds me of the man of whom the Sister said, "He must stick it +out." I might have pointed to the convoy and suggested comparisons; but +one cannot rub a sore back. + + +Some one has applied the last straw in the night. + +When I came on duty a brisk little war-hardened V.A.D. was brushing a +pile of dust along the long boards to the door. The poor camel whose +back is broken is as though she had never existed; either she is ill or +she is banished. + +Such is the secret diplomacy of these establishments that nothing is +known of her except her disappearance--at least among those whom one can +ask. Matron knows, Sister knows.... But these are the inscrutable, +smiling gods. + + +There is only one man in the ward I don't much care for--a tall boy with +a lock of fair hair and broken teeth. He was a sullen boy whose bad +temper made his mouth repulsive. I say "was," for he is different now. + +Now he is feeble, gentle, grateful, and he smiles as often as one looks +at him. + +Yesterday he went for his operation in the morning, and in the afternoon +when I came on duty he was stirring and beginning to groan. Sister told +me to sit beside him. + +I went up to the little room of screens in which he lay, and taking a +wooden chair, I slipped it in between the screen and the bed and sat +down. + +Is it the ether which rushes up from between his broken teeth?--is it +the red glare of the turkey-twill screens?--but in ten minutes I am +altered, mesmerized. Even the size of my surroundings is changed. The +screens, high enough to blot out a man's head, are high enough to blot +out the world. The narrow bed becomes a field of whiteness. The naked +arm stretched towards me is more wonderful than any that could have +belonged to a boy with dirty fair hair and broken teeth; it has +sea-green veins rising along it, and the bright hairs are more silver +than golden. + +The life of the ward goes on, the clatter of cups for supper, the +shuffling of feet clad in loose carpet-slippers, but here within he and +I are living together a concentrated life. + +"Oh, me back!" + +"I know, I know...." + +Do I know? I am getting to know. For while the men are drinking their +cocoa I am drinking ether. I know how the waves of the pain come up and +recede; how a little sleep just brushes the spirit, but never absorbs +it; how the arms will struggle up to the air, only to be covered and +enmeshed again in heat and blankets. + +"Was it in me lung?" (He pronounces the "g"--a Lancashire boy....) + +"The shrapnel?" + +He nods. I hold up the piece of metal which has lain buried in him these +past three weeks. It has the number 20 engraved on it. That satisfies +him. The blood which has come from between his lips is in a bowl placed +too high for him to see. + +Through the crack in the screens the man in the bed opposite watches us +unwinkingly. + +Eight o'clock.... Here is Sister with the syringe: he will sleep now and +I can go home. + +If one did not forget the hospital when one leaves it, life wouldn't be +very nice. + + +From pillar to post.... + +The dairyman, who has been gone to another hospital these five weeks, +returned to-day, saying miserably as he walked into the ward, "Me 'ead's +queerer than ever." His eyes, I think, are larger too, and he has still +that manner of looking as though he thought some one could do something +for him. + +I can't--beyond raising the smallest of tablets to him with the +inscription, "Another farthing spent...." + + +Waker had a birthday yesterday and got ten post cards and a telegram. +But that is as nothing to another anniversary. + +"A year to-morrow I got my wound--two o'clock to-morrow morning." + +"Shall you be awake, Waker?" + +"Yes." + +How will he celebrate it? I would give a lot to know what will pass in +his mind. For I don't yet understand this importance they attach to such +an anniversary. One and all, they know the exact hour and minute on +which their bit of metal turned them for home. + +Sometimes a man will whisper, "Nurse...." as I go by the bed; and when I +stop I hear, "In ten minutes it will be a twelvemonth!" and he fixes his +eyes on me. + +What does he want me to respond? I don't know whether I should be glad +or sorry that he got it. I can't imagine what he thinks of as the minute +ticks. For I can see by his words that the scene is blurred and no +longer brings back any picture. "Did you crawl back or walk?" + +"I ... walked." He is hardly sure. + +I know that for some of them, for Waker, that moment at two o'clock in +the morning changed his whole career. From that moment his arm was +paralysed, the nerves severed; from that moment football was off, and +with it his particular ambition. And football, governing a kingdom, or +painting a picture--a man's ambition is his ambition, and when it is +wiped out his life is changed. + +But he knows all that, he has had time to think of all that. What, +then, does this particular minute bring him? + +They think I know; for when they tell me in that earnest voice that the +minute is approaching they take for granted that I too will share some +sacrament with them. + + +Waker is not everything a man should be: he isn't clever. But he is so +very brave. + +After his tenth operation two days ago there was a question as to +whether he should have his pluggings changed under gas or not. The +discussion went on between the doctors over his bed. + +But the anaesthetist couldn't be found. + +He didn't take any part in the discussion such as saying, "Yes, I will +stand it...." but waited with interest showing on his bony face, and +when they glanced down at him and said, "Let's get it through now!" he +rolled over to undo his safety-pin that I might take off his sling. + +It was all very fine for the theatre people to fill his shoulder +chockful of pluggings while he lay unconscious on the table; they had +packed it as you might stuff linen into a bag: it was another matter to +get it out. + +I did not dare touch his hand with that too-easy compassion which I +have noticed here, or whisper to him "It's nearly over...." as the +forceps pulled at the stiffened gauze. It wasn't nearly over. + +Six inches deep the gauze stuck, crackling under the pull of the +forceps, blood and puss leaping forward from the cavities as the steady +hand of the doctor pulled inch after inch of the gauze to the light. And +when one hole was emptied there was another, five in all. + +Sometimes, when your mind has a grip like iron, your stomach will undo +you; sometimes, when you could say "To-day is Tuesday, the fifth of +August," you faint. There are so many parts of the body to look after, +one of the flock may slip your control while you are holding the other +by the neck. But Waker had his whole being in his hands, without so much +as clenching them. + +When we had finished and Sister told me to wipe the sweat on his +forehead, I did so reluctantly, as though one were being too exacting in +drawing attention to so small a sign. + + +I must say that the dairyman seems to me quite mad, and I only wonder +how little it is noticed. He will sit in a chair beside Palmer for +hours, raising and lowering his eyebrows and fitting imaginary gloves on +to his fingers. + +An inspecting general, pausing at his bed this morning, said: "A +dairyman, are you? Frightened of horses, are you? Then what do you do +about the cows?" + +He was pleased with his own joke, and the dairyman smiled too, +uncomprehendingly, his eyebrows shooting up and down like swallows' +wings. Such jokes mean nothing to him; he is where no joke but his own +will ever please him any more.... + +Palmer doesn't like sitting near him, but since it is too much trouble +to move he allows it--poor Palmer, who has a piece of metal somewhere in +his brain and is never seen without one long hand to his aching head. He +said to me yesterday when I asked him which convalescent home he was +going to, "It doesn't matter. We both go to the same kind before +long...." jerking his thumb at the dairyman. As for the latter, there +surely can be no escape, but for Palmer.... + +"They won't take it out; too risky. Seen my X-ray picture?" + +"No." + +"You look at it. Right in the middle of the brain. Seems funny that if +I say I'm willing to risk it, why they shouldn't be." + +"You're willing to risk it?" + +"I'm only nineteen! What's the good of my head to me! I can't remember +the name of the last hospital I was at...." + +Ah, these hurried conversations sandwiched between my duties, when in +four sentences the distilled essence of bitterness is dropped into my +ear! + + +"Sister, what will they do with Palmer?" + +"They are going to discharge him. They won't operate." + +"But what will happen to him?" + +"I don't know." + +"But if he is willing to risk his life to save his brain, can they still +refuse?" + +"They won't operate." + + +Pinker is full of grains of knowledge. He has just discovered a +wonderful justification for not getting up directly he is told off for a +job. + +"I never refuse a nurse," he said, as he thoughtfully picked over the +potatoes ("Li'l men, li'l spuds!" he says, to excuse himself for taking +all the sought-after small ones).... "I never refuse a nurse. But I like +to finish me game of draughts first--like Drake." + +Pinker notices everything. He took the grocer for a ride on the tram +yesterday. "'E got so excited he got singing 'Tipperary,' an' the +blood-vessels on his neck goin' fit to burst. Weren't he, Bill?" + +He appealed to Monk, whose name is George. + +(By the way, I wonder when people will stop calling them "Tommy" and +call them "Bill." I never heard the word "Tommy" in a soldier's mouth: +he was a red-coated man. "But every mate's called 'Bill,' ain't 'e, +Bill?") + + +From the camp across the road the words of command float in through the +ward window. + +"Halt!" and "Left wheel!" and "Right wheel!..." + +They float into the ward bearing the sense of heat and dust, and of the +bumping of the saddle. The dairyman has perhaps put me a bit against the +camp across the road. + +When the dressings are finished and we scrub the enamel bowls in the +annexe, one can see all the dairymen and all the plumbers, _chefs_ and +shopwalkers bumping up and down in a ring amid a cloud of dust, while +the voice of the sergeant cries out those things that my dairyman used +to think of in his sleep. + +Then the jumps go up. "Left wheel!" "Right wheel!..." And now, "Cross +your stirrups!" One out of every four of them is clinging, grabbing, +swaying. + +The seventh is off! It was a long fight.... He went almost round the +horse's neck before he fell. + + +We must win the war, win the war, win the war! + +Every sort of price must be paid, every Mud of curious coinage--the +pennies and farthings of fear and despair in odd places, as well as the +golden coin of life which is spent across the water. + + +All day long the words of command come over the ward window-sills. All +day long they bump and shout and sweat and play that charade of theirs +behind the guns. + +All day long little men training to fill just such another hospital as +ours with other little men. + +But one does not say any longer, "What a strange thing is life!" for +only in rare moments does the divine astonishment return. + + +PRINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRESS +WEST NORWOOD +LONDON + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Diary Without Dates, by Enid Bagnold + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DIARY WITHOUT DATES *** + +***** This file should be named 31124.txt or 31124.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/1/2/31124/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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