* * * * *
The steamer glided up the dock of the French harbour. The dusk had fallen, but Bridget was conscious of a misty town dimly sprinkled with lights, and crowned with a domed church; of chalk downs, white and ghostly, to right and left; and close by, of quays crowded with soldiers, motors, and officials. Carrying her small suit-case, she emerged upon the quay, and almost immediately was accosted by the official of the Red Cross who had been told off to look after her.
'Let me carry your suit-case. There is a motor here, which will take you to X——. There will be two nurses going with you.'
Up the long hill leading southwards out of the town, sped the motor, stopping once to show its pass to the sentries—khaki and grey, on either side of the road, and so on into the open country, where an autumn mist lay over the uplands, beneath a faintly starlit sky. Soon it was quite dark. Bridget listened vaguely to the half-whispered talk of the nurses opposite, who were young probationers going back to work after a holiday, full of spirits and merry gossip about 'Matron' and 'Sister,' and their favourite surgeons. Bridget was quite silent. Everything was strange and dreamlike. Yet she was sharply conscious that she was nearing—perhaps—some great experience, some act—some decision—which she would have to make for herself, with no one to advise her. Well, she had never been a great hand at asking advice. People must decide things for themselves.
She wondered whether they would let her see 'the man' that same night. Hardly—unless he were worse—in danger. Otherwise, they would be sure to think it better for her to see him first in daylight. She too would be glad to have a night's rest before the interview. She had a curiously bruised and battered feeling, as of someone who had been going through an evil experience.
Pale stretches of what seemed like water to the right, and across it a lighthouse. And now to the left, a sudden spectacle of lines of light in a great semicircle radiating up the side of a hill.
The nurses exclaimed—
'There's the Camp! Isn't it pretty at night?'
The officer sitting in front beside the driver turned to ask—
'Where shall I put you down?'