Chapter 6

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 anæsthetist 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.