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 breasts 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 collégien who has broken loose and got into this Military Hospital by mistake.
I do not know whether intuition is a French or Belgian gift. Jean and Max are not Belgian but French, and they have it to a marvellous degree. They seemed to know in an instant what was the matter with the English lady; and they set about curing the malady. I have seldom seen such perfect tact and gentleness as was then displayed by those two hospital orderlies, Max and Jean. They had been wounded not so very long ago. But they think nothing of that. They intimate that if I insist on helping them with their plates and dishes they will be wounded, and more severely, in their honour.
We converse.