A Journal of Impressions in Belgium Part 2

Yet he himself has margins about him and a mysterious hinterland not to be confined or accounted for by any scheme. He alone of us has the air, buoyant, restless, and a little vague, of being in for some tremendous but wholly visionary adventure.

When I look at him I wonder again what this particular adventure is going to do to him, and whether he has, even now, any vivid sense of the things that are about to happen. I remember that evening in my scullery, and how he talked about the German siege-guns as if they were details in some unreal scene, the most interesting part, say, of a successful cinematograph show.

But they are really bringing up those siege-guns from Namur.

And the Commandant has brought four women with him besides me. I confess I was appalled when I first knew that they would be brought.

Mrs. Torrence, perhaps--for she is in love with danger,[1] and she is of the kind whom no power, military or otherwise, can keep back from their desired destiny.

But why little Janet McNeil?[2] She is the youngest of us, an eighteen-year-old child who has followed Mrs. Torrence, and will follow her if she walks straight into the German trenches. She sits beside me on my right, ready for anything, all her delicate Highland beauty bundled up in the kit of a little Arctic explorer, utterly determined, utterly impa.s.sive. Her small face, under the woolly cap that defies the North Pole, is nearly always grave; but it has a sudden smile that is adorable.

And the youngest but one, Ursula Dearmer, who can't be so much older--Mr. Riley's gloom and the Commandant's hinterland are nothing to the mystery of this young girl. She looks as if she were not yet perfectly awake, as if it would take considerably more than the siege-guns of Namur to rouse her. She moves about slowly, as if she were in no sort of hurry for the adventure. She has slow-moving eyes, with sleepy, drooping eyelids that blink at you. She has a rather sleepy, rather drooping nose. Her shoulders droop; her small head droops, slightly, half the time. If she were not so slender she would be rather like a pretty dormouse half-recovering from its torpor. You insist on the determination of her little thrust-out underlip, only to be contradicted by her gentle and delicately-retreating chin.

In our committee-room, among a band of turbulent female volunteers, all clamouring for the firing-line, Ursula Dearmer, dressed very simply, rather like a senior school-girl, and accompanied by her mother, had a most engaging air of submission and docility. If anybody breaks out into bravura it will not be Ursula Dearmer.

This thought consoles me when I think of the last solemn scenes in that committee-room and of the pledges, the frightfully sacred pledges, I gave to Ursula Dearmer's mother. As a result of this responsibility I see myself told off to the dreary duty of conducting Ursula Dearmer back to Dover at the moment when things begin to be really thick and thrilling. And I deplore the Commandant's indiscriminate hospitality to volunteers.

Mrs. Lambert (she must surely be the next youngest) you can think of with less agitation, in spite of her youth, her charming eyes and the recklessly extravagant quant.i.ty of her golden hair. For she is an American citizen, and she has a husband (also an American citizen) in Ghent, and her husband has a high-speed motor-car, and if the Germans should ever advance upon this city he can be relied upon to take her out of it before they can possibly get in. Besides, even in the German lines American citizens are safe.

We are all suffering a slight tension. The men, who can see no reason why the ambulance should not have been sent out last night, are restless and abstracted and impatient for the order to get up and go. No wonder.

They have been waiting five weeks for their chance.

There is Dr. Haynes, whose large dark head and heavy shoulders look as if they sustained the whole weight of an intolerable world. His features, designed for sensuous composure, brood in a sad and sulky resignation to the boredom of delay.

His friend, Dr. Bird, the young man with the head of an enormous cherub and the hair of a blond baby, hair that _will_ fall in a shining lock on his pink forehead, Dr. Bird has an air of boisterous preparation, as if the ambulance were a picnic party and he was responsible for the champagne.

Mr. Foster, the inquiring tourist, looks a little anxious, as if he were preoccupied with the train he's got to catch.

Bert, the chauffeur, sits tight with the grim a.s.surance of a man who knows that the expedition cannot start without him. The chauffeur Tom has an expressive face. Every minute it becomes more vivid with humorous, contemptuous, indignant protest. It says plainly: "Well, this is about the rottenest show I ever was let in for. Bar none. Call yourself a field ambulance? Garn! And if you _are_ a field ambulance, who but a blanky fool would have hit upon this old blankety haunt of peace. It'll be the 'Ague Conference next!"

But it is on the Chaplain, Mr. Grierson, that the strain is telling most. It shows in his pale and prominent blue eyes, and in a slight whiteness about his high cheek-bones. In his valiant khaki he has more than any of us the air of being on the eve. He is visibly bracing himself to a stupendous effort. He smokes a cigarette with ostentatious nonchalance. We all think we know these symptoms. We turn our eyes away, considerately, from Mr. Grierson. Which of us can say that when our turn comes the thought of danger will not spoil our breakfast?

The poor boy squares his shoulders. He is white now round the edges of his lips. But he is going through with it.

Suddenly he speaks.

"I shall hold Matins in this room at ten o'clock every Sunday morning.

If any of you like to attend you may."

There is a terrible silence. None of us look at each other. None of us look at Mr. Grierson.

Presently Mrs. Torrence is heard protesting that we haven't come here for Matins; that this is a mess-room and not a private chapel; and that Matins are against all military discipline.

"I shall hold Matins all the same," says Mr. Grierson. His voice is thick and jerky. "And if anybody likes to attend, they can. That's all I've got to say."

He gets up. He faces the batteries of unholy and unsympathetic eyes. He throws away the end of his cigarette with a gesture of superb defiance.

He has gone through with it. He has faced the fire. He has come out, not quite victorious, but with his hero's honour unstained.

It seemed to me awful that none of us should want his Matins. I should like, personally, to see him through with them. I could face the hostile eyes. But what I cannot face is the ceremony itself. My _moral_ was spoiled with too many ceremonies in my youth; ceremonies that lacked all beauty and sincerity and dignity. And though I am convinced of the beauty and sincerity and dignity of Mr. Grierson's soul I cannot kneel down with him and take part in the performance of his prayer. Prayer is either the Supreme Illusion, or the Supreme Act, the pure and naked surrender to Reality, and attended by such sacredness and shyness that you can accomplish it only when alone or lost in a mult.i.tude that prays.

But why is there no Victoria Cross for moral courage?

(Dr. Wilson has come. He looks clever and nice.)

Our restlessness increases.

[_11 a.m._]

I have seen one of them. As I went downstairs this morning, two men carrying a stretcher crossed the landing below. I saw the outline of the wounded body under the blanket, and the head laid back on the pillow.

It is impossible, it is inconceivable, that I should have been afraid of seeing this. It is as if the wounded man himself absolved me from the memory and the reproach of fear.

I stood by the stair-rail to let them pa.s.s. There was some difficulty about turning at the stair-head. Mr. Riley was there. He came forward and took one end of the stretcher and turned it. He was very quiet and very gentle. You could see that he did the right thing by instinct. And I saw his face, and knew what had brought him here.

And here on the first landing is another wounded. His face is deformed by an abscess from a bullet in his mouth. It gives him a terrible look, half savage, wholly suffering. He sits there and cannot speak.

Mr. Riley is the only one of us who has found anything to do. So presently we go out to get our military pa.s.ses. We stroll miserably about the town, oppressed with a sense of our futility. We buy cigarettes for the convalescents.

And at noon no orders have come for us.

They come just as we are sitting down to lunch. Our ambulance car is to go to Alost at once. The Commandant is arrested in the act of cutting bread. Dr. Bird is arrested in the act of eating it. We are all arrested in our several acts. As if they had been criminal acts, we desist suddenly. The men get up and look at each other. It is clear that they cannot all go. Mr. Grierson looks at the Commandant. His face is a little white and strained, as it was this morning when he announced Matins for ten o'clock.

The Commandant looks at Dr. Bird and tells him that he may go if he likes. His tone is admirably casual; it conveys no sense of the magnificence of his renunciation. He looks also at Mr. Grierson and Mr.

Foster. The lot of honour falls upon these three.

They set out, still with their air of a youthful picnic party. Dr. Bird is more than ever the boisterous young man in charge of the champagne.

I am contented so long as Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Lambert and Mrs.

Torrence and Janet McNeil and the Commandant do not go yet. To anybody who knows the Commandant he is bound to be a prominent figure in the terrible moving pictures made by fear. Smitten by some great idea, he dashes out of cover as the shrapnel is falling. He wanders, wrapped in a happy dream, into the enemies' trenches. He mingles with their lines of communication as I have seen him mingle with the traffic at the junction of Chandos Street and the Strand. If you were to inform him of a patrol of Uhlans coming down the road, he would only say, "I see no Uhlans,"

and continue in their direction. It is inconceivable to his optimism that he should encounter Uhlans in a world so obviously made for peace and righteousness.

So that it is a relief to see somebody else (whom I do not know quite so well) going first. Time enough to be jumpy when the Commandant and the women go forth on the perilous adventure.

That is all very well. But I am jumpy all the same. By the mere fact that they are going out first Mr. Grierson and Mr. Foster have suddenly become dear and sacred. Their lives, their persons, their very clothes--Dr. Bird's cheerful face, which is so like an overgrown cherub's, his blond, gold lock of infantile hair, Mr. Grierson's pale eyes that foresee danger, his not too well fitting khaki coat--have acquired suddenly a priceless value, the value of things long seen and long admired. It is as if I had known them all my life; as if life will be unendurable if they do not come back safe.

It is not very endurable now. Of all the things that can happen to a woman on a field ambulance, the worst is to stay behind. To stay behind with nothing in the world to do but to devise a variety of dreadful deaths for Tom, the chauffeur, and Dr. Bird and Mr. Grierson and Mr.

Foster. To know nothing except that Alost is being bombarded and that it is to Alost that they are going.

And the others who have been left behind are hanging about in gloom, disgusted with their fate. Mrs. Torrence and Janet McNeil are beginning to ask themselves what they are here for. To go through the wards is only to be in the way of the angelic beings with red crosses on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and foreheads who are already somewhat in each other's way.

Mrs. Torrence and the others do, however, go into the wards and talk to the wounded and cheer them up. I sit in the deserted mess-room, and look at the lunch that Tom and Dr. Bird and Mr. Grierson should have eaten and were obliged to leave behind. I would give anything to be able to go round the wards and cheer the wounded up. I wonder whether there is anything I could conceivably do for the wounded that would not bore them inexpressibly if I were to do it. I frame sentence after sentence in strange and abominable French, and each, apart from its own inherent absurdity, seems a mockery of the wounded. You cannot go to an immortal hero and grin at him and say _Comment allez-vous?_ and expect him to be cheered up, especially when you know yourself to be one of a long procession of women who have done the same.

I abandon myself to my malady of self-distrust.

It is at its worst when Jean and Max, the convalescent orderlies, come in to remove the ruins of our mess. They are pathetic and adorable with their close-cropped heads in the pallor of their convalescence (Jean is attired in a suit of yellowish linen and Max in striped flannels).

Jean's pallor is decorated (there is no other word for it) with blue-grey eyes, black eyebrows, black eyelashes and a little black moustache. He is martial and ardent and alert. But the pallor of Max is unredeemed; it is morbid and profound. It has invaded his whole being.

His eyelids and his small sensitive mouth are involved; and his round dark eyes have the queer grey look of some lamentable wonder and amazement. But neither horror nor discipline have spoiled his engaging air--the air of a very young _collegien_ who has broken loose and got into this Military Hospital by mistake.