More thousands than there is room for in the straw are fed three times a day in the inner hall, leading out of this dreadful dormitory. All round the inner hall and on the upper story off the gallery are rooms for washing and dressing the children and for bandaging sore feet and attending to the wounded. For there are many wounded among the refugees. This part of the Palais is also a hospital, with separate wards for men, for women and children and for special cases.
Late in the evening M. P—— took the whole Corps to see the Palais des Fêtes, and I went again. By night I suppose it is even more "triste" than it was by day. In the darkness the gardens have taken on some malign mystery and have given it to the multitudes that move there, that turn in the winding paths among ghostly flowers and bushes, that approach and recede and approach in the darkness of the lawns. Blurred by the darkness and diminished to the barest indications of humanity, their forms are more piteous and forlorn than ever; their faces, thrown up by the darkness, more awful in their blankness and their pallor. The scene, drenched in darkness, is unearthly and unintelligible. You cannot account for it in saying to yourself that these are the refugees, and everybody knows what a refugee is; that there is War—and everybody knows what war is—in Belgium; and that these people have been shelled out of their homes and are here at the Palais des Fêtes, because there is no other place for them, and the kind citizens of Ghent have undertaken to house and feed them here. That doesn't make it one bit more credible or bring you nearer to the secret of these forms. You who are compelled to move with them in the sinister darkness are more than ever under the spell that forbids you and them to feel. You are deadened now to the touch of the incarnate.
On the edge of the lawn, near the door of the Palais, some ghostly roses are growing on a ghostly tree. Your guide, M. P——, pauses to tell you their names and kind. It seems that they are rare.
Several hundred more refugees have come into the Palais since the afternoon. They have had to pack them a little closer in the straw. Eight thousand were fed this evening in the inner hall.
In the crush I get separated from M. P—— and from the Corps. I see some of them in the distance, the Commandant and Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Lambert and M. P——. I do not feel as if I belonged to them any more. I belong so much to the stunned sleepers in the straw who cannot feel.
Nice Dr. Wilson comes across to me and we go round together, looking at the sleepers. He says that nothing he has seen of the War has moved him so much as this sight. He wishes that the Kaiser could be brought here to see what he has done. And I find myself clenching my hands tight till it hurts, not to suppress my feelings—for I feel nothing—but because I am afraid that kind Dr. Wilson is going to talk. At the same time, I would rather he didn't leave me just yet. There is a sort of comfort and protection in being with somebody who isn't callous, who can really feel.
But Dr. Wilson isn't very fluent, and presently he leaves off talking, too.
Near the door we pass the family with the little yellow-brown dog. All day the little dog slept in their place. And now that they are trying to sleep he will not let them. The little dog is wide awake and walking all over them. And when you think what it must have cost to bring him—
C'est triste, n'est-ce pas?
As we left the gardens M. P—— gathered two ghostly roses, the last left on their tree, and gave one to Mrs. Lambert and one to me. I felt something rather like a pang then. Heaven knows why, for such a little thing.