Hospital, Friday, October 15th
Just these days the people of several of the men have been coming from far to see them.
Way off, in some little town of Brittany or the Béarn, or Provence, there had arrived word that the soldier this or that had been wounded thus or so, and was at the hospital. Upon months and months of waiting in dreadful, helpless ignorance, the shock had come as a relief almost.
But how strange and terrible a thing the journey was to people who could understand so little what they must do. Where to go, what to do. Perhaps they were people who had never ventured beyond the town where the diligence stopped, who never had taken a train. They did not know what the Champagne meant. They did not know where Paris was. The departure was a tremendous thing. A tearing up of roots and cutting with a knife. Then the journey, confused and terrifying. Then the great city, and the great hospital.
There is a moment when it seems as if it were a stranger, the boy lying there, in the bed that is one of such a long row of beds. His people stand, a little dazed, down by the door. The long ward, the two long rows of beds against its walls, the stretcher-beds down the middle of it; and all those boys who lie so still—how strange it seems to them! And their boy, who does not wave his hand or shout to them, who scarcely lifts his head—his smile has changed, has come to be quite a different smile.
Hospital, Sunday, October 17th
Number 24
Number twenty-four is dying. I am very glad. It is much better for him that he should die. But it takes so long. It is terrible that it should take so long to die.
He calls me, "Ma petite dame."
"My little lady, what time is it?"
Strange, how they ask that, so many of them, when they are dying.
There is a clock on the wall opposite his bed. They tell me that for three weeks he has not been able to see it. He says the room is full of mist.
He says, "My little lady, can you see the clock?"
I always answer, "No, I cannot see the clock."
He says, "You cannot see it because of the mist."
And I say, "I cannot see it, because of the mist."