“Of course you can’t, so don’t try, for you see you got it in the head, a bit of shell; and a nice operation, or rather operations, they had over you. If it wasn’t for that clever surgeon—but there, never mind.”
“Shall I recover?”
“Of course you will. We have had no doubt about that for the last week; you have been here nearly three, you know; only, you see, we thought you might be blind, something to do with the nerves of the eyes. But it appears that isn’t so. Now be quiet, for I can’t stop talking to you with two dying just outside, and another whom I hope to save.”
“One thing, Nurse—about the war. Have the Germans got Paris?”
“That’s a silly question, Major, which makes me think you ain’t so right as I believed. If those brutes had Paris do you think you would be at Versailles? Or, at any rate, that I should? Don’t you bother about the war. It’s all right, or as right as it is likely to be for many a long day.”
Then she went.
A week later Godfrey was allowed to get out of bed and was even carried to sit in the autumn sunshine among other shattered men. Now he learned all there was to know; that the German rush had been stayed, that they had been headed off from Calais, and that the armies were entrenching opposite to each other and preparing for the winter, the Allied cause having been saved, as it were, by a miracle, at any rate for the while. He was still very weak, with great pain in his head, and could not read at all, which grieved him.
So the time went by, till at last he was told that he was to be sent to England, as his bed was wanted and he could recover there as well as in France. Two days later he started in a hospital train and suffered much upon the journey, although it was broken for a night at Boulogne. Still he came safely to London, and was taken to a central hospital where next day several doctors held a consultation over him. When it was over they asked him if he had friends in London and wished to stay there. He replied that he had no friends except an old nurse at Hampstead, if she were still there, and that he did not like London. Then there was talk among them, and the word Torquay was mentioned. The head doctor seemed to agree, but as he was leaving, changed his mind.
“Too long a journey,” he said, “it would knock him up. Give me that list. Here, this place will do; quite close and got up regardless, I am told, for she’s very rich. That’s what he wants—comfort and first-class food,” and with a nod to Godfrey, who was listening in an idle fashion, quite indifferent as to his destination, he was gone.
Next day they carried him off in an ambulance through the crowded Strand, and presently he found himself at Liverpool Street, where he was put into an invalid carriage. He asked the orderly where he was going, but the man did not seem to know, or had forgotten the name. So troubling no more about it he took a dose of medicine as he had been ordered, and presently went to sleep, as no doubt it was intended that he should do. When he woke up again it was to find himself being lifted from another ambulance into a house which was very dark, perhaps because of the lighting orders, for now night had fallen. He was carried in a chair up some stairs into a very nice bedroom, and there put to bed by two men. They went away, leaving him alone.