Wynchcombe Friars without Mark was no place to tarry in, but there seemed no end to the delays; and Keith turned even these to good account by teaching Sheila to drive the Forsyth-Macnair car. Two drivers with one orderly would get through twice the work.
It was near the middle of October when, at last, they found themselves speeding towards Folkestone. Keith, who had laid aside philosophy ‘for the duration of the war,’ delighted in his own small ark of salvation as a captain delights in his ship. From ‘stem to stern’ she was perfect as skill and money could make her; fitted up with four stretchers and bedding; crammed to the limit of her capacity with first-aid appliances and a minimum of luggage.
Here and there autumn had laid a fiery finger on the woods. Birches and elms were tipped with gold. Otherwise the October sun, riding in a cloudless heaven, suggested high summer. Mark had been gone nearly a fortnight. Two brief cheerful letters assured his mother he was alive and well. Till she could see him again, those simple facts were all that vitally concerned herself; though pessimists prophesied invasion by Zeppelin and transport; and over there across the Channel, Belgium continued her heroic stand against the all-devouring, all-defiling German Army.
The fall of Antwerp had resounded through Europe like the knell of doom. For a time, even the bravest were shaken with dismay, and the stream of refugees increased daily. The streets of Folkestone overflowed with that pitiful flotsam of wrecked cities. Some wept; some cursed; some prayed; but the prevailing expression was a terrible stunned indifference, as though shock on shock had hammered them into automata that could move and eat and sleep, but could no longer feel.
In Boulogne—when they reached it—the flotsam of wrecked battalions was more in evidence. Things were still primitive here as regards organisation, but already the place was an English colony. The British Red Cross Society was beginning to make things move and owners of private cars were doing splendid service. To these were now added the unrelated trio from Wynchcombe Friars. But their first objective was Rouen, where a young Stuart nephew lay badly wounded, craving for the sight of a face from home. His invalid mother could not get to him; so Lady Forsyth went in her stead, only to find on arrival that the boy had been dead an hour. For the sake of that far-away mother she asked to see him, though privately she dreaded the ordeal. She was aware, suddenly, of a very unheroic shrinking from close contact with the awful actualities of war. But that shrinking in no way affected her zeal for the work in hand.
News that a train-load of casualties was expected that evening sent them full speed to the station. It was dusk when they arrived to find the train in and the process of unloading begun. At the entrance, a group of Red Cross officials stood talking and laughing, hardened by habit to the painful scene. As the car drew up they crowded round, admiring it and questioning Macnair, while tragic burdens were carried past them in the half light.
Helen, too overwrought to make allowances, wondered how Keith had the patience to answer them.
Presently, her attention was caught by a number of black shadows, like wheelbarrows abnormally large and high.
‘What are those?’ she asked a porter, and discovered that they were severely wounded men, on wheeled stretchers, either too brave or too exhausted to utter a sound of complaint.