For the first convoy of wounded from the Front had reached the Hospital. These unwashed, begrimed, hairy brigands, these limping tramps in tattered khaki, these bandaged cripples leading blind comrades, were our Guards, our Gunners, our Highlanders, Kents, Middlesex men and Munsters, our Rifles and Northamptons, our Welsh and Gloucesters, our Scots Greys and Lancers, our immortals of those red-hot days of August, and their compeers, the terrible fighters of the Marne and the Aisne....
They were back, full of cross-nicked, nickel-coated Mauser bullets, bits of shell and lumps of shrapnel, cheap jokes, music-hall choruses, vermin, and spunk. The reek of lysol and carbolic, the sickly whiff of dysentery and the ghastly stench of gangrene, brought back to Saxham the Hospital at Gueldersdorp, as he passed back and forth between the stretchers, issuing swift orders, briefly wording directions, marshalling his trained forces with the generalship that had distinguished him of old.
"Doctor!"
"What is it, Ironside?" Saxham turned to speak to the Resident Medical Officer. "You look off-colour, man!"
"I feel off, sir. They're so damned full of grit, and cheerful! Not only the cases from the Base Hospitals, but those casualties they've sent us direct from the trenches.... Two days in the train getting to Calais—and Lord! the straw and filthiness in their wounds! And we've been told our next War'd be carried out on an absolutely Aseptic Basis, and here we are back in 1900!"
"Not quite," said Saxham. "Wounds like these were never made by Boer shrapnel. Human bodies shattered beyond imagination by High Explosive, rank among the triumphs of Modern Science. After the Stone Age and the Iron Age, the Golden Age and the Age of Shoddy has come the Age of Militant Chemistry. Martianism, in a word."
"It's an ugly word.... Doctor, that man over there," the speaker indicated a pair of hollow eyes staring hungrily over a huge iodine-smeared gauze muffler, "wants to know if we can save his lower jaw? Not that there's much left of it. His pal, who interprets for him, says a wounded German officer shot him in the face with his revolver, 'cos he went to give the blankety blank a drink out of his water-bottle. One of the Gunners—and not long married, according to the pal."
"All right, tell him! Name him for one of my beds," Saxham said brusquely, and nodded to the owner of the desperate eyes, saying, as they flared back their gratitude: "Even if it had been 1821 in the cattle-truck, we're in the Twentieth Century here. Warn Burland," he named the anæsthetist, "for duty at once. Gaynor Gaynes and Frost to be ready with the X Ray on Flat I. Mr. Whitchett and Mr. Pridd to act as Assistant Surgeons. We'll take the worst cases straight away——"
"But, my God, sir! most of these men are beyond Surgery," groaned Ironside, cracking his finger-joints. "Broken and mashed and rent as they are, what they need is to be re-created! ... If Christ were to look in here just now," the Medical Resident cried in his bitterness, "there'd be plenty of work in His line. New tissues to make, bony structures to re-build. Organs to replace where organs have been destroyed. He'd have done it by mixing earth with His saliva and anointing. We might as well spit on twenty per cent. of these fellows—for all the good we can do!"
"Give them liquid nourishment—brandy where necessary, and send those I've tagged up to the theatre. No waiting to wash—in their cases. And remember my Gunner gets the first look-in!"
Saxham turned and ran at speed, making for the nearest elevator, found it just going up full of stretcher-cases lying close packed as sardines, turned and shot up the stone staircase three steps at a time to the first floor, glittering with white enamel, polished oak, brass fittings and cleanliness, under the discreet radiance of shaded electric lights. The centre space was occupied by the tribune engirdling the domed Sanctuary of the Chapel. Short corridors tastefully adorned with red-enamelled buckets, blue glass bombs of chemical fire-extinguisher, and snaky coils of brass-fitted hose, led to long wards running east, west, north, and south.
"Eh, Doctor!"
A fair-faced, gentle-eyed Sister of Mercy, in the wide-winged starched linen cap and guimpe, and white twill nursing-habit with the black Cross, stood near the lift, talking to a tall, raw-boned, white-haired Surgeon-General of the R.A.M.C. She greeted Saxham's appearance with a little womanly cry:
"Eh, Doctor! Never it rains buddit pours." There was a hint of Lancashire in her dialect. "The R.A.M.C. have sent us ten more cases. Dear, dear!—but we'll have our hands full."
"Then you'll be happy, Sister-Superintendent. I've never known you so beamingly contented as when you were regularly run off your feet, and hadn't a minute to say your Rosary. Anything specially interesting, Sir Duncan?"
"Aweel!" The broad Scots tongue of Taggart droned the bagpipe-note as of old. "Aweel! There's an abdawminal or twa I'd like ye to throw your 'ee over—an' a G.P. that ye will find in your line. Fracture o' the lumbar vairtebra from shrapnel—received ten o'clock yesterday morr'ning!—an' some cases o' shellitis, wi' intermittent accesses o' raging mania an' intervals o' mild delusions—an' ane will gar you draw on the Medical Officer's Emergency List o' Abbreviated Observations I supplied ye wi' a guid few years agone."
"I've not forgotten."
"I'm no' dootin' but ye have found it unco' useful." Taggart's frosty eyelashes twinkled. "It has saved my ain face from shame mair times than I daur tell." He quoted, relishingly: "M.B.A.—Might Be Anything! G.O.K.—Guid Only Knows! L.F.A.—Luik for Alcohol. A.D.T.—Any Damned Thing! 'Toch, Sister, I beg your parr-don! The word slipped oot—I have nae other excuse! But my case o' shell-shock, Saxham. What say ye to an involuntary simuleetion o' rigor mortis? A man sane an' sound an' hale—clampit by his relentless imagination into the shape o' a Polwheal Air-Course Finder, or a pair o' dividers. Half open, ye ken. Ye may stand him on the ground upo' his feet, an' his neb is pointing at the daisies—or ye may lie him o' his back in bed—an' his taes are tickling the stars. Am thinking it long till I'm bringing ye thegither! But ye are busied. I'll no' keep ye the noo."
Racing for the second lift, just emptied of its sorrowful burden, the big shirt-sleeved Doctor checked in his stride and touched the handle of a sliding door. The door shot back noiselessly in its grooving. Saxham was in a cushioned tribune high above the level of the chapel Altar. The scent of flowers and the perfume of incense hung like a benison on the still air of the sacred place.
In one of the carved stalls of the nave the figure of a priest in cassock and biretta sat reading from a breviary. It was the Chaplain, waiting in readiness to be called to administer Holy Unction and Viaticum to some Catholic soul about to depart. In the choir behind the high Altar a slight girl, in the frilled cap and prim black gown of the Novitiate, knelt on a rush-bottomed prie-dieu absorbed in meditation, her black Rosary twisted round her clasped hands. Prayers that are most earnest are frequently incoherent. Saxham formulated no petition as he knelt there in the tribune, but the cry of his heart to the Divine Hearer might have been construed into words like these:
"If Thou wert here in the visible Body as when of old Thou didst walk on earth with Thy Disciples, Thou wouldst heal these broken sons of Thine with Thy look. Thy Touch, Thy Word! Yet art Thou here—for Thou hast said it, ever present for Thy Faithful in Spirit, Flesh, and Blood. Help O Helper! Heal O Healer! Lord Jesus, present in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, give power and wisdom to Thy servant. Aid me, working in the dark by my little flame of hard-won knowledge, to preserve life, Thou Giver of Life! Amen."
So having prayed, the Dop Doctor went up to the theatre and wrought mightily, doing wonderful things in the way of patching and botching the broken bodies of men. Later, as he sat in the Harley Street dining-room playing the courteous, attentive host to sad-eyed, wistful Madame van der Heuvel and her two pretty daughters—for Lynette had dined earlier on account of the Suffrage Meeting—he heard a latch-key in the front-door and Patrine's well-known step in the hall.
He excused himself, rose and went out, and spoke to his niece. She made a croaking sound in answer, as unlike the voice of Patrine as the pinched and sunken face revealed by the hall electroliers, resembled the face of dead David's handsome girl. The mouth hung lax. The cheeks had fallen. The eyes stared blank and tearless, from hollow caves under the broad black eyebrows. He said with a pricking of foreboding:
"You have had a long day! ..."
"Not long enough to tire me. I am made of india-rubber, I think, and steel."
He considered her a moment with grave, keen eyes that had no gleam of curiosity.
"Sherbrand is well? He returned from France in safety?"
"He was quite in the pink when he arrived—and ditto when he left. Not that he had much time. A wireless came, ordering him to replace an aviator of the Royal Flying Corps, killed on observation-duty—or whatever it is they call it—with our fellows on the new Front. Rough on him, but he took it smiling. No, thanks! I'm not keen on dinner.... You won't mind if I go to my room?"
"One moment. Have you had food to-day?" he asked her.
"I forget.... Yes, of course! There was luncheon at one o'clock. The people at the Air Station did us tremendously well." Her mouth twisted. "I think it better to tell you and Lynette that Alan Sherbrand and I have said ta-ta!" She tried to smile. "I'm back on your hands like a bad penny!" Her eyes seemed all black between their narrowed lids.
They were quite alone, no servant within hearing, and the dining-room door was shut. Came the Doctor's low-toned question:
"Has any—third person made mischief between you two?"
"No, nobody has blabbed to him about anything. But—he's wise enough now, as regards this child. Particularly wide-O!" The black, glittering eyes looked dry and hard as enamel. Her teeth again showed in that mirthless grin. "I don't suppose he has the ghost of an illusion left.... Women—most women would say I was a howling fool to make a clean breast of it. I never meant to—I can swear!—when first we got engaged. I used to call his goodness stodgy. I think I despised him for it in certain moods of mine. You've never realised the kind of beast I can be. But more and more, I got to respect him! And suddenly—I knew that if I married him under false colours—letting him believe me to be what I amn't—even though he never found me out—I'd—never have been able to shake hands with myself again!"
She moved to the stairs, the sleeve of her coat brushing the Doctor's great shoulder.
"Don't you suppose God had it all his own way," she said in that odd, strangled voice that wasn't like Patrine's. "There were minutes when the World, and the Flesh, and the Devil were jolly well to the fore. Alan would marry me to-morrow if I used the power I could use. But I won't! I won't! It'd not be playing the decent, straight game. So I let him call me heartless, and piffle like that, and then the game seemed hardly worth playing. I'd have thrown up my cards—only the Recall came. And we said good-bye, and I saw him fly away like a great white bird, over the water. And I'm so strong—so horribly strong—that I stood it and didn't die.... Even if Alan's killed at the Front I shan't die.... Ah-h! ... You mustn't touch me!" Her hands plucked themselves violently from Saxham's that would have enfolded them. "I could stand anything better than pity. Being pitied would kill me—though I'm so awfully strong!"
"Then trust us not to pity you—only to love you. That I look upon you as a daughter is no secret to you, I think?"
"No, dear!" She stroked his sleeve, not lifting her pitifully reddened eyelids, and then he felt her start. "Uncle Owen!" Her hand clenched upon his arm, and her tear-blurred eyes sought his. "I must tell you.... He had news to give me to-day—of Bawne!"
"Nothing worse, thank God!—than what I know already," Saxham commented when she had told. He stood in silence a moment, mastering himself, and the electric hall-light showed in his harsh square visage the ravages that grief had wrought.
"How you have suffered! If only I could do something to comfort you!" she muttered. "And Lynette. Do you know—there are days"—a sob caught her breath—"when I daren't even look at Lynette."
"It is so with me!" His voice was deep and quiet and sorrowful. "Old Webster probed deep with his Elizabethan goose-quill, when he wrote of the
"Greyfe that wastyth a faire woman Even as wax doth waste yn flame."
Pray for us both, my dear, and believe that you are a comfort to us."
She said with a laugh that was half a sob: "I might have made a hole in the water at Seasheere, or jumped out of the train on the way back, I daresay, but for the thought of you both. Or, if it wasn't that stopped me, my joss was on the job."
"I had rather say your Guardian Angel."
"Do you think any self-respecting Guardian Angel could possibly bother about a regular bad egg like me?"
"Mine did—when my wife married me and I was a peculiarly bad egg."
"You, you dear!" She suddenly caught him round the neck and hugged him strenuously. "Do you think I don't know—haven't always known how my father and mother treated you!"
"Time heals wounds of that kind," said Saxham, as they turned together from the foot of the staircase, and, still keeping a protecting arm about David's daughter, he reached his hat and stick from the hall-stand, "though you may doubt the statement now."
"I can't. I'd only have to look at mother to——"
"To remember that she is your mother!"
His tone was final in its closure of the subject. But in his heart he thanked frail Mildred once again for her ancient treachery, as he went out to the waiting car, and sped through London's murky streets to the North-West suburb where stands the Hospital.
Patrine went upstairs, holding by the balusters and feeling chilly and old. In the prettily furnished sitting-room, communicating with her chintzy bedroom, were her letters, and a deep cardboard box stood upon a table. It had been sent on to Harley Street from the Club, and bore the address of a Regent Street florist, whose showy establishment boasted a German name.
The fragrance of roses with a musky after-tang in their sweetness permeated the atmosphere. There were no roses amongst the flowers on the chimney-shelf and cabinets. It occurred to Patrine that there must be roses in the box.
Her head was throbbing and her eyes smarted. She threw off her hat and coat, pitched them down upon the chintzy sofa, switched off the electric lights, let up the blinds, pulled a chair close to the open window, and sat down, resting her folded arms on the clean, dustless sill.
Sitting there, staring out into the semi-obscurity of Harley Street, with the late cabs and motors sliding past and the distant roar of Oxford Street in her ears, she asked herself:
"Have I behaved like an honourable woman or—a blithering idiot? That's what I want to know?"
She waited. Not one pat on the back was vouchsafed by an approving Conscience. The indicator of the dial slowly travelled in the direction of the blitherer. Patrine shut her hot, dry eyes, and began to conjure up the day that had gone over. Its sweetness was rendered infinitely sweeter, its bitterness a hundredfold more poignant by the knowledge that it was the last, the very last.
If she lived to be old, old, old, she knew she would never live to forget Seasheere. The smell of the hot thyme and sun-baked grasses of the cliffs, the rhythmic frrsh! of the salt waves upon its shingle, the shrill piping of its gulls, and pale blue of its skies would never fade, never cease, never be silent, never alter.... For on Seasheere cliffs her Wind of Joy had blown for the last time.