"Contemptible" Part 18

Left alone in the silence of the night, the Subaltern felt the horror of the situation take hold of him. He was alone with his pain and his paralysis. There was no hope of alleviation until morning. What time was it then? he asked himself. Seven, at the latest. That meant eight long hours of agony, before anything _happened_! That is what the wounded love and long for--something to happen--something to distract the attention from the slow, insistent pain--something to liven drooping spirits, and raise falling hopes.

Slowly and surely he began to take stock of the situation. First of all came his head. The pain of the wound was an ache, a dull ache that sharpened into shooting pains if he moved. Still, he told himself that it might be worse. There was much worse pain in the world. It could not be called unbearable or excruciating.

His spine seemed in some way twisted. It ached with an insistence and annoyance only second to the wound. All his most determined efforts to wriggle it straight failed lamentably. Indeed, he almost fancied that they made matters worse.

As for the paralysed limbs, theirs was a negative trouble. He did not know where his right hand was. He had to grope about with his left hand under coats to find it. And when found, it was as if he had grasped somebody else's hand. The situation was weird, and in an uncanny way it amused and pleased him to take hold of the inert fingers. They were so soft and cold. The hand of a dead man, heavy, heavy--impossible to describe the dragging, inert weight of it.

But what frightened him more than anything was his face. One side was drawn up, and was as impossible to move as the arm. The lower jaw seemed clamped to the upper, and it, too, ached. A horrible fear crept into his head.

"Teta.n.u.s!"

He recalled tales of the terrible end of those who were marked down by this terrible disease. How they died in awful agony, the spine bent backwards like a bridge!

In spite of the coats, the cold seemed to eat into his very heart.

He started the night bravely enough, and fought against his troubles until his nerve collapsed hopelessly. The night was too long: it was too much to bear. He groaned aloud in his agony, and discovered that it was an immense relief.

The men near him began to open fire. If it were really an attack, it was soon beaten down, and he began to shriek at them for wasting precious ammunition that they might want when it was too late. He used words that he never even knew that he knew. Great bursts of anger, he found, distracted his attention from the pain, if only for a few moments. To this end he worked himself into such a transport that the bleeding re-commenced, and he was forced to cease, exhausted. In another hour his nervous downfall was completed. He began to cry.

Each second of the interminable night dragged slowly by, as if it gloated over his pain. In the end it became too much for him and he fainted away, peacefully and thankfully.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE FIELD HOSPITAL

When he came to, it was daylight, and two Stretcher Bearers were tugging at his feet. The weight of him seemed terrific, but eventually they hoisted him on to the stretcher.

Some of his men gathered round, and told him that "they'd soon put him straight at the hospital."

He smiled, rather wryly, but still he smiled, and mumbled: "Well, good luck, No. 5 Platoon."

And so they carried him away, feet foremost.

They plunged along the muddy paths. He was convulsed with fear that they would overturn him. And the jolting sent red-hot pains through his head, and twisted his back terribly.

A Company came straggling up the path, led by no other than the Major, who had been his Company Commander at the beginning of the war.

"Well, young feller, how are you? You'll be all right in a day or two."

Reply was impossible for him, and the Major hurried on.

The men who followed seemed shy of him. They looked at him covertly, and then turned their eyes quickly away, as if he were some horrible object. It annoyed him not a little.

That journey was the most painful thing that happened to him. But each sickening jolt had the compensation of landing him a yard nearer the hospital, and the hope of easing his pains buoyed him up somehow.

When they arrived at the Gunner's Cave, the Stretcher Bearers put him resolutely down, and intimated that it was not "up to them" to take him any further. The Ambulance, they said, ought to be there to "take over"

from them. But there was no sign of an Ambulance, and meantime he was literally thirsting for the attentions and comforts of a hospital. His natural reserve broke completely down. He begged, and entreated, and prayed them to take him on.

After a little hesitation, they set out once more with a little excusable cursing and grumbling.

It was about seven o'clock when at last they laid him down in the hall of the hospital, and departed with unfeigned gladness.

Two Hospital Orderlies carried him along a pa.s.sage and into the identical billiard-room that he had seen from the garden.

A Doctor undid the soiled bandages with quick, strong fingers, and bent down to examine the wound with an expression of concentrated ferocity on his face. An Orderly brought a bowl, and the Doctor began to wash the place.

It was a painful business, but nothing to be compared to the pain produced by the "prober." They even tried to shave the hair from the affected spot. He bore it as long as he could. But it was too much. His left side shook and trembled. It was too terrible to begin to describe.

"It's no good," he said, "it's more than you can expect any one to put up with. You'll have to stop it."

So they tied his head up once more, and he was carried upstairs into a bedroom. They lifted him on to the bed, managed at length to divest him of his jacket, turned some clothes over him, and left him.

In an hour a raging fever had taken hold of him.

Only intermittently, during the next three or four days, did he so much as touch the world of realities. The only improvement was his face, which had to a great extent relaxed. Otherwise the pain and the paralysis were the same, and all the time the fever raged within him.

Somehow, when he awoke from his horrible dreams it was always dark. And the remarkable thing was that the same nightmares seemed to haunt him with persistent regularity. Always he lay down upon a hillside--nebulous black, and furry. Always too, he had been "left," and the enemy was swooping quickly down upon him. He would wake up to find himself once more inert upon the bed, would curse himself for a fool, and vow that never again would he allow his mind to drift towards that terrible thought again.

J.O. double F.R.E? What was it? A Name? Whose? When and Why? He would catch himself worrying about this many times. He would awake with a start, and realise that the solution was a perfectly easy matter. Then he would straightway fall asleep, to worry once again.

There was a big vase on a table near the bedside. He took an implacable dislike to it, and longed to shatter it into atoms. "Horrible pretentious affair," he would mutter.

When he awoke from his fever, he would always make frantic efforts to hang on to consciousness. To this end he would always call the Orderly, ask the time, demand water or Bovril--anything to keep him a little longer in touch with the world.

Sometimes he would see bleared faces looking down upon him out of the dizzy greyness. He remembers being told that "the Colonel" was coming to see him. He never knew whether it was his own Colonel or some A.D.M.S.

The thought did indeed come to him that he was going mad. But he had not the power to worry about the discovery, and insensibility would claim him once more before he could realise the terrors of insanity.

All this time he lay on his back. It was impossible to move him, but he longed to lie comfortably on his side, as he had always been accustomed to do. He was sure he could sleep then--ordinary sound sleep, free from worry, phantomless, refreshing. How he longed for it!

One evening a Doctor came to him and told him that they were going to move him away. The news was by no means a relief. He did not feel equal to the exertion of being carried about. He wanted to be allowed just to lie quietly where he was, and live or die, just as Fate decreed. For anything more, he had no energy; and the prospect of another journey appalled him.

In the dead of night four silent Orderlies heaved him on to a stretcher, carried him downstairs, and out of the chateau. His stretcher was then slid into an ambulance, and he awaited impatiently the filling of the others.

Another stretcher was slipped in by his side. It was too dark to see the man upon it, but he was apparently suffering from the last stages of thirst. He had been shot through the roof of the mouth and the throat, and could not swallow. He was dying of thirst and hunger. He begged and entreated them for water. He pleaded with them, tried to bribe them, tried to order them, tried to bully them. It was pitiable to hear a strong man brought so low. And if they gave him a drop of water in a teaspoon, he would cough and choke to such a degree that it was obvious that too frequent doses would be the end of him. He would gurgle, and moan, and pine. It was awful.

They were journeying to the Clearing Hospital. The road, bad at the best of times, was now pitted with sh.e.l.l holes, and was truly abominable. "Is a country," he said to himself, "that will not allow its wounded pneumatic tyres to ride upon, worth fighting for?"

They jolted on through the remaining part of the night. At dawn they were disembarked, and put to rest in a little farm-house, where they gave them soup and milk. But there were only mattresses thrown on a stone floor, and the pain in his spine was so acute that he almost forgot about his head.

His companion on the journey was placed in the same room. At the beginning of the night he had pitied the poor fellow immensely. But his prayers and entreaties were too pitiful to bear. What he must have been suffering! It added an extra weight to his own burden. Thank G.o.d, he had never been very thirsty!