Book: Contemptible

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Later in the evening the Sister came in with a large phial, and injected
the contents into his arm.

"Morphine," she explained.

In a moment or so he felt that he did not care what happened. The
morphine made him gloriously drunk.

"Sister," he confided. "I'm drunk. It isn't fair to go and kill a fellow
when he's drunk, you know. It isn't playing the game. You ought to
suspend hostilities till I'm sober!"

He felt ridiculously proud of himself for these inanities.

"I know you," he strutted with laughter. "After it's all over, you'll
write home to my people and say, 'The operation was successfully
performed, but the patient died soon afterwards!'"

By this time they had stripped him of all but his shirt.

"Where's my bier? Where's my bier? Is a gentleman to be kept waiting all
night for his bier?" he exclaimed, with mock impatience.

They lifted him on to a stretcher, and began to push it through the open
window into the street.

"Farewell, Ophelia!" he cried to the Sister, as his head disappeared.

He was too drunk to feel afraid.

They carried him into the room that had been turned into a theatre. He
found that the same young Doctor was to operate on him. He was alarmed
at his youth.

"I like a fellow to have white hair if he's to operate on me," he said
to himself.

Another Doctor began to adjust the ether apparatus.

"Look here," he mumbled, "how do you know my heart's strong enough for
this sort of thing?"

"Don't be a fool; it's your only chance."

"Oh, all right. Have it your own way, only don't say I did not warn
you!" he replied.

"Rather a character," said one of the Doctors, as he placed the sodden
wool firmly over his nose and mouth.

"Yes," replied the Sister; "he said just now that the operation would be
unsuccessful and that he would die!"

Drat the woman, she had spoiled his last joke!

He strove to explain. But the fumes were clutching at his senses, and he
could not. The white walls of the room swam and bounced before his eyes.
Rivers were pouring into his ears. Everything was grey and vibrating. He
made a frantic effort to turn his thoughts towards God and home, "in
case." But he failed to think of anything.

With a jerk his senses left him.

* * * * *

When he recovered his senses it was still dark, but he realised that he
was in another room.

And in that room he stayed for nearly a fortnight before the Doctor
would allow him to proceed to the Base.

As regards the paralysis, there was little or no improvement, although
he thought at one time that he was succeeding in wagging his big toe.
The Doctor would come in and say with mock petulance, "Surely you can
move that finger now. Pull yourself together! Make an effort!"

He used to make tremendous efforts. Even his left hand used to twitch
with the effort of trying to move the right.

"No, not your left; the right," the Doctor would say.

Then he would laugh, and go away saying that it would be all right in
time.

His chief difficulty, not counting, of course, the perpetual headache,
was his inability to sleep. The nights seemed interminable, and he
dreaded them. The days were only less so because of the excitement of
meals and being talked to by the Sister. They became fast friends, and
she would tell him all about her work, her troubles with the Doctors and
with refractory Orderlies. They used to laugh together over the short
temper of a patient below, whom she used to call "Old Fiddlesticks," and
who seemed to be the most impatient of patients. Then she would wander
on about her home, how she nursed half the year, and spent the remainder
with her married sister in Fondborough Manor.

One day one of the Orderlies shaved him, and every one was surprised "to
see how much better he looked!"

They used to give him aspirin, and though it generally failed to bring
sleep, his pains would be relieved almost instantly, and his spirits
would rise to tremendous heights. The only time he was able to sleep
seemed to be between six and ten. He was nearly always awakened by the
lusty voice of a peasant entering the room beneath. He complained to the
Orderly, with the result that the next night the lusty voice was
suddenly silenced.

"Shut yer mouth, or I'll knock yer blinking face in!" And Lusty Voice
understood.

* * * * *

At last the Doctor gave his consent for removal to the Base Hospital,
and the Subaltern found himself being once more hauled on to a stretcher
and heaved into the Ambulance.

They dragged him out at the station, and he saw the long train, each
carriage brilliantly lit. The sight seemed so civilised that it cheered
him not a little.

The carriage was an ordinary "wagon-lit" converted with considerable
ingenuity into a Hospital Train. He shared his compartment with a young
Guardee, "a sitting case."

He had no sooner settled down than a voice was heard calling for
"Second-Lieutenant Hackett."

"Here," replied the Guardee, without any enthusiasm.

A dapper Staff Officer, so tall that he had to stoop to enter the
compartment, drew a paper from his pocket.

"You?" he asked. "Well, Hackett, this is a great evening in your life,
and I congratulate you." He shook the Guardee's left hand. "You have
been given the D.S.O.," he added hurriedly, for the train had already
begun to move. With that he disappeared.

It was not until the following morning that the Sister came in to dress
his wound.

"What strong teeth you've got, boy!" she said.

Nobody knew better than he did that his teeth were large and tended to
protrude, but it is always annoying to have one's defects admired.

The Orderly was, in his way, an artist. He was light-handed, quick,
deferential, and soothing--a prince among Orderlies. He produced
wonderful tit-bits--amongst other things tinned chicken, sardines,
chocolate, and, for the Guardee, stout! Three minutes after the Sister
had strictly forbidden him to read, the Orderly smuggled into his hand
the Paris _Daily Mail_ of the day before. Von Moltke had been dismissed.
"The first of the great failures," he said to himself. But the Sister
was right; it was too painful to read.

"What are we stopping here for?" the Guardee asked once.

"To unload the dead, sir," replied the Orderly, with serious suavity.

The journey took over two days. They touched at Versailles and Le Mans,
the Advanced Base, swept slowly down the broad valley of the Loire, past
the busy town of Nantes, followed by the side of the estuary, oddly
mixed up with the shipping, and eventually came to rest in the town of
St. Nazaire, at that time the Base of the British Army.




CHAPTER XXXIII

ST. NAZAIRE


His next home was a comfortable little bed in a white-painted cubicle of
a boys' school that had been turned into a Base Hospital. When at length
he found himself at rest in his new bed, he sighed with contentment.
Everything was so quiet, and clean, and orderly. After the dirty
estaminet, and the feverish hurry of the Clearing Hospital, this was
indeed Peace. They gave him real broth to drink and real chicken to eat.
And that night, as he sank almost for the first time into real sleep, he
felt that heaven had been achieved.

Life began to creep slowly into his paralysed limbs. With infinite
labour he could force his first finger and thumb to meet and separate
again. His toes wagged freely. The only fly in the ointment was that the
"stuff they did their dressings with" was of a fiercer nature and hurt
more than the previous ones. Also, the dressings became more frequent.

He made great friends with the Doctor and the Sisters. One of them used
to talk of an old Major in his Regiment with a tenderness that led him
to suspect a veiled romance. He was now growing better daily, and was
assailed with the insatiable hunger that follows fever. No sooner had he
bolted down one meal than he counted the hours to the next.

One day they left a meal-tray on his chest, and apparently forgot it. At
the end of half-an-hour his patience abandoned him. He deliberately
reached out and threw everything upon the floor. The Sister came running
up to see what was the matter. He maintained a haughty silence. She
picked up the aluminium plates and cups. Her starched dress crinkled.

"Oh, you naughty boy!" she said, smiling entrancingly.

There was nothing for it: he burst out laughing.

Soon afterwards it occurred to him that, as all he had got to do was to
lie in bed and wait, this could be done just as easily in a London
hospital.

"As soon as you are well enough to travel, you shall go to England. Your
case can be better treated there," the Doctor promised him.




CHAPTER XXXIV

SOMEWHERE IN MAYFAIR


The speed of the train astounded him. Such tremendous things had
happened to him since he had last travelled in an express train. He
loved every English field as it passed, every hedge and tree.

He was at peace with the world. The only blemish was that the awful war
was still dragging on its awful course--still exacting its awful toll.
He was rushing Londonwards--towards his "people" and everything he
wanted. The pains had gone from his head, except for occasional
headaches. And, wonder of wonders, he could move his whole leg and arm!
Contentment stole over him. He was on perfectly good terms with himself
and the world in general. Life, after all, was delightful.

* * * * *

The voyage had been wonderful. Not for one moment of the forty-eight
hours that it took to reach Southampton did the wavelets upset the
equilibrium of the vessel. Only the faintest vibration showed him that
she was moving at all. The food had been good and plentiful, the
attendance matchless. All things seemed to be "working together for
good."

While engrossed in this reverie, he awoke to the fact that well-known
landscapes were rolling past his window.

Tidshot! There was the familiar landmark--the tree-crested hill and the
church. The station flashed by, and then the well-known training areas.

"Just as if I were going up to town for the week-end!" he told himself.

The familiar suburbs whizzed past. Clapham Junction, Vauxhall, the
grinding of brakes, and the train was gliding quietly along Waterloo
platform.

An Officer boarded the train, and, in spite of a great deal of
discussion and requests, succeeded in thrusting scraps of paper into
every one's hand.

"The Something Hospital, Chester Square," some one read.

"What? Oh, I thought you said 'The Empire Hospital, Leicester Square!'"
yelled half-a-dozen wits almost simultaneously.

He was carried out on his stretcher, slid into a St. John Ambulance, and
driven to the address on the piece of paper, which was "not a hundred
miles from Berkeley Square," as the Gossip writers put it.

The Ambulance Stretcher Bearers carried him into the hall of what was
evidently a private house "turned" into a hospital. A great many ladies
were standing about, all in Red Cross uniform. A man was there, too.
Curiously enough, he was wearing just the coat and hat that his father
would wear. Could it be possible? He turned round; lo and behold, it
_was_ his father!

"Hallo, Father!" he said.

The man came up.

Both of them seemed at a loss for words. It was neither emotion nor
sentimentality; it was just the lack of something to say. Taking
advantage of the pause, the crowd bore down upon him, and by reason of
their superior numbers drove him away, offering promises about "the day
after to-morrow."

They carried the Subaltern upstairs, and placed him in a room where two
other Officers who had arrived on the same boat were already
established.

The Hospital was "run" by the Hon. Mrs. Blank, who was placing her
entire house at the disposal of the War Office. She did everything
herself: the feeding, equipping, providing the staff. The expense must
have been huge. She worked night and day as general manageress of the
establishment. There ought to be some special honour and knighthood for
such women on this earth, and a special heaven in the next. The
Subaltern used to feel positively ashamed of himself when he thought of
the money, kindness and care that she was lavishing upon them.

The whole Hospital was a glorious, pulsating, human organisation. What
was wanted was done, not what was "laid down" in some schedule. Indeed,
their wishes were gratified before they had time to form in the mind. It
was a fairyland, and of course the fairies were the nurses. The
Subaltern and his two companions held a conference on their respective
merits.

"I like the little pale brown one; she's like a mouse."

"There's no comparison. Ours is the star turn."

"Which _is_ ours?"

"The one who dashes about?"

"The one who upset the dinner-trays?"

"Yes. Wasn't it funny? I thought I should have died!"

The Doctors, this time civilians, used to come to him twice a day. They
were quiet, reserved men, positively glowing with efficiency.

They dressed his wound, tested the reflex actions of his nerves, gazed
through holes in bright mirrors at his eyes, and made him watch
perpendicular pencils moving horizontally across his line of vision.

But life was racing back into his limbs. Hourly his strength was
returning. He no longer lay staring listlessly in the bottom of the bed.
He liked now to work himself up, to lose nothing of what was going on
around, to share in the talk, and, until the next headache came, to
_live_.

He wallowed in the joy of reaching harbour.

Such rapid progress did he make that they began, in a few days, to treat
him as a rational human being. They allowed him meat, and once, owing
to a mistake on the part of the young Hurrier, a whisky-and-soda. They
allowed him to smoke a restricted number of cigarettes, and to read as
often as he liked. But aspirin they barred.

He had not many friends in London, so during visiting hours he was left
in comparative peace.

One morning his mother came. As the door opened and she hurried into the
room with her quick, bird-like grace, he felt that she was a stranger to
him. Somehow their old intimacy seemed dissolved, and would have, piece
by piece, to be built up again. Her round, appealing eyes of palest
brown stirred him as no other eyes--even her own--had ever done before.

Her slim shoulders delighted him.

"Waddles!" he said; "you're priceless!"

He loved to call her "Waddles."

They asked the Doctor when he would be likely to be able to go home.

"As soon as the wound is covered over," he replied, "there is no reason
why he should not go home. Providing he could get massage and proper
treatment."

* * * * *

The gas darkly illuminated the sombre red of the walls and glimmered on
the polished mahogany. The fire, too, glowed red. Outside, the wind was
sighing softly in the pine-trees.

The bed seemed huge and its capacity for comfort enormous. The cool
sheets seemed to caress his legs. His whole nervous system was
delightfully wearied with the achievement of reaching home.

The local Doctor had promised that he could treat him perfectly well,
and he had been allowed to leave the Hospital.

He could hear the paws of his spaniel padding softly on the carpet in
the landing. He could hear the voices of his father and sister in the
hall....

Peace after the storm! The harbour reached at last.

"It seems to be impossible to believe it's true," he murmured to
himself.

"Are you quite ready?" asked his mother.

She was standing beneath the gas-bracket, one hand raised to the handle.
The light silhouetted her impertinent little nose and glimmered in her
dusky hair.

Then with a jerk she turned out the light.


THE END


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[Transcriber's Note: There are numerous typographical errors and
spelling inconsistencies in the original text which have not been
corrected, e.g., etiez for etiez, Grand Marmier for Marnier,
Castelnau/Castlenau, Villiers-Cotterets/Villiers Cotterets, fourty
for forty, etc.]

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