"It's monstrous," he said, "all the red tape! Because I belong to a volunteer ambulance the officers wanted to know by what infernal impudence I dared to touch the wounded. I had to drive forty miles to get official permission, and could not get it then… And the wounded were lying about everywhere, and it was utterly impossible to cope with the numbers of them… They stand on etiquette when men are crying out in agony! The Prussian caste isn't worse than that."
I turned and looked out of the window again. But I saw nothing of the crowd below. I saw only a great tide of blood rising higher and higher, and I heard, not the squawking of motor-horns, but the moans of men in innumerable sheds, where they lie on straw waiting for the surgeon's knife and crying out for morphia. I saw and heard, because I had seen and heard these things before in France and Belgium.
In the room there was the touch of quiet fingers on a piano not too bad. It was the music of deep, soft chords. A woman's voice spoke quickly, excitedly.
"Oh! Some one can play. Ask him to play! It seems a thousand years since I heard some music. I'm thirsty for it!"
A friend of mine who had struck the chords while standing before the piano, sat down, and smiled a little over the notes.
"What shall it be?" he asked, and then, without waiting for the answer, played. It was a reverie by Chopin, I think, and somehow it seemed to cleanse our souls a little of things seen and smelt. It was so pitiful that something broke inside my heart a moment. I thought of the last time I had heard some music. It was in a Flemish cottage, where a young lieutenant, a little drunk, sang a love-song among his comrades, while a little way off men were being maimed and killed by bursting shells.
The music stopped with a slur of notes. Somebody asked, "What was that?"
There was the echo of a dull explosion and the noise of breaking glass. I looked out into the square again from the open window, and saw people running in all directions.
Presently a man came into the room and spoke to one of the doctors, without excitement.
"Another Taube. Three bombs, as usual, and several people wounded. You'd better come. It's only round the corner."