Non-combatants and Others Part 9

Alix and Nonie went across the ward to nine, where Mr. Doye, in a brown dressing-gown, sat in a wheeled chair, smoking a cigarette and talking to the super, who was rather nice-looking and had auburn hair. In the next bed lay the singer, with fixed blue eyes and flushed cheeks and a capeline bandage round his head, carolling German songs in a high, monotonous voice.

'Quite delirious, poor thing,' the super explained to the visitors. 'His nerves are all to bits. He was a prisoner, till he got exchanged. And would you believe it, they'd never taken the shrapnel out of his head; he went under operation for it here last week.' She moved away, whispering first to Nonie behind the patient's back, 'He has to be kept pretty quiet, please; the pain gets bad on and off.'

'Hullo,' said Basil Doye, smiling at them. 'This is great.'

He had a soft, rather quick way of speaking; to-day he was huskier than usual, perhaps because he was ill. He was long and slim; he had used, in pre-war days, to lounge and slouch, but possibly did that no more.

Anyhow to-day he merely lay limply in a chair, so they could not judge.

His long pale face and flexible mouth and dark eyebrows were always moving and changing; so were his rather bright eyes, that kept shading and glinting from green to hazel. His forehead and rumpled hair were damp just now, either from the heat or from some other cause. His bandaged right hand was raised in a sling.

'You do look an old wreck,' said Nonie frankly. 'What did you go and do it for? A silly way of getting wounded, I call it, playing ball with bombs.'

'Rotten, wasn't it? But it would have played ball with me if I hadn't.

It was bound to go off in a moment, you see, and I naturally tried to house it with the foe first; one often can. My mistake, I know. These little things will happen.... I say, you're the first people I've seen from the shop. How's it going? Who are the good people this year?'

They began to tell him. He listened, fidgeting, with restless eyes.

'Have a smoke?' he broke in. 'No, I suppose you mustn't here. Sorry; didn't mean to interrupt....'

They were talking about the exhibition in Grafton Street.

'I must get round there,' he said, 'when I'm not so tied by the leg.'

'How long will they keep you here, d'you imagine?'

'Haven't an earthly. They may be depriving me of a finger or two in a few days. Or not. They don't seem to know their own minds about it.'

'Good Lord!' murmured Nonie, taken aback. 'I say, don't let them.

You--you'd miss them so.'

'Halli, hallo, halli, hallo!

Bei uns geht's immer so!'

shrilled number eight.

Doye moved impatiently. 'He ought to be taken away, poor beggar.... I loathe hospitals. People who are ill oughtn't to be with other people in the same miserable condition; it's too depressing. One wants the undamaged, as an antidote. That's why visitors are so jolly.' His restless eyes glanced at Nonie's dark, glowing brilliance in her yellow frock, and at Alix, pale and cool and thin in green.

'Above all,' he added, 'one wants sanity and normalness and cheeriness, not people with their nerves in rags, like that poor chap.'

Eight broke out again, half singing, half humming some students'

chorus--

'Tra la la, in die Nacht Quartier!'

The auburn-haired nurse came and stood by him for a moment, quieting him.

'Come now, come now, you must be quiet, you know.'

'Rather a pleasant person, that nurse,' said Doye when she had gone.

'Jolly hair, hasn't she?... Alix,' he added, 'do you know, you don't look up to much. Is it overwork, or merely the air of London in June?'

'It's the air of hospitals, I expect,' Nonie answered for her. 'She turned white directly we got into the ward.'

'Beastly places,' Basil agreed.

Alix began to talk, rather fast. She told stories of the other people at the art school; Nonie joined in, and they made Basil laugh. He talked too, also fast. His unhurt hand drummed on the arm of his chair; his forehead grew damper, his eyes s.h.i.+fted about under his black brows. He talked nonsense, absurdly; they all did. They all laughed, but Basil laughed most; he laughed too much. He said it was a horrible bore out there; funny, of course, in parts, but for the most part irredeemably tedious. And no reason to think it would ever end, except by both sides just getting too tired of it to go on.... Idiotic business, chucking bombs over into trenches full of chaps you had no grudge against and who wished you no ill ... and they chucking bombs at you, much more idiotic still. The whole thing hopelessly silly....

'Heil'ge Nacht, Heil'ge Nacht,' trilled Eight, with a nightmare of Christmas on him.

'Oh, d.a.m.n,' muttered Basil, and got scarlet and then white.

The staff-nurse came to them. She was not auburn-haired, but efficient and good-looking and dark, with a clear, sharp voice.

'I think your visitors had better go now, Mr. Doye.'

She made signs to them that he was in pain, which they knew before. They went; he joked as he said good-bye, and they joked back. As they left the ward, Eight's wild voice rose, in a sad air they knew:

'Mein Bi-er und Wei-ein ist fri-isch und klar; Mein Tochterlein liegt auf der To-otenbahr....'

'Come now, come now,' admonished Staff.

3

On the stairs they met a tall woman with a long pale face and black hair, and eyes full of green light. She stopped and said to Alix, 'How do you do? Basil told me you were going to see him to-day, so I left you a little time. He mustn't have too many at once. He has a lot of pain, for so slight a thing.... I shall be glad when I can get him away for a change.'

Her eyes, looking at Alix's pale face, were kind and friendly. She liked Alix, who was Basil's friend and had stayed with them last summer in the country. She thought her clever and attractive, if selfish. She hurried on through the gla.s.s door into Albert Edward.

'Mrs. Doye, isn't it?' said Nonie. 'Must have been just like him twenty years ago.... I say, how sickening, isn't it, people getting smashed up like that. Poor old Basil. All on edge, I thought, didn't you? What rot he talked.... I _say_, if he loses those fingers it will be all U. P.

with his career.... I don't expect he will.' She shot a glance at Alix, whom she suspected of feeling faint. 'Let's come and find Peggy. I haven't an earthly where her ward is. It's called after some man of science.' But there are so many of these, and all so much alike.

'If it was painters,' said Nonie presently, 'I might have remembered.

Who _are_ the men of science?'

'Darwin,' suggested Alix intelligently. 'Galileo. Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Oliver Lodge. Lots more.'

'Well, let's try this pa.s.sage.'

They tried it. It led them on and on. It looked wrong, but might be right, in such a strange world as a hospital, where anything may be right or wrong and you never know till you try.

They saw at last ahead of them a closed door--not a gla.s.s door but a baize one. From behind it screaming came, wild, shrill, desperate, as if some one was being hurt to death.

'O Lord!' said Nonie, 'it's the theatre. Look, it's written on the door.

Come away quick. There must be an operation on.'

Beyond the door there was a shuffling and scuffling; it was pushed open, and two figures m.u.f.fled in white, like the stretcher-women, dragged out a Red Cross girl in a faint.

'Fetch her some water,' said one. 'Idiot, why didn't she come out before she went off? These Red Cross girls--All right, she 's coming round....

I _say_, you know, you mustn't do that again. People are supposed to come out of the theatre _before_ they faint, not after. It's an awful crime.... Is it your first operation? Well, it was silly of them to send you down to such a bad one. I expect the screaming upset you. She didn't _feel_ anything, you know.... Here, drink this. You're all right now, aren't you? I must get back. You'd better go up to your ward and ask your Sister if you can lie down for a bit.'