Part 20 (1/2)
Edith forgot to move the machine, and began writing very quickly over the finished line.
”Nonsense!” she said. ”You must be fierce and strong and young with all the lights on. I mustn't talk. Something's happened. But all that concerns us now is to be as efficient as we possibly can. We can't afford to make mistakes. We must----”
She pulled out the sheet she had been working on, and gazed at it blankly.
”Dear Sir,” she repeated, ”'The Marchioness--' is it spelled like March or Marsh, Dodo? Oh, March; yes. I'll correct that. 'Aspirin in graceful conjuring trick,' that should be grains, and then four large Qs in a row. Oh, that was when I made a mistake with the erasing key. Very stupid of me. And what's happened to the last line? It's written over twice. Have you got any purple ink, Dodo? I always like correcting in the same coloured ink as the type; it looks neater. Well, if you have only got black that will have to do.”
Edith shook the stylograph Dodo gave her to make it write, and a fountain of pure black ink poured on to the page.
”Blotting-paper,” she said in a strangled voice.
Dodo began to laugh.
”Oh, Edith, you are a tonic,” she said, ”and I want it this morning. My dear, don't waste any more time over that, but tell me if you never feel in crumbs as I do. I think it's reaction from yesterday. I escaped. I played with David all day, and forgot about cripples and Kut and Verdun, and now I'm back in the cage again, and David's gone, and--and I'm a worm. If I followed my inclination, I should lie down on the floor and roar for the very disquietness of my heart, as the other David says.”
”I shouldn't,” said Edith loudly. ”I want to dance and sing because I am helping to destroy those putrid Huns. Every letter I typewrite--I'll copy this one out again by the way, as no one in the world could read it--is another nail in their odious coffin. I don't care whether Verdun is lost or Kut or anything else. It's not my business. And it's not your's either, Dodo. You mustn't think; there's too much to do; there's no time for thinking. But what has happened to you is that you're overtired. I shall speak to Jack about it.”
”My dear, you will do nothing of the kind,” said Dodo. ”It would be quite useless to begin with, for I should do exactly as I pleased, and it would only make Jack anxious.”
Edith ran an arpeggio scale up her typewriter.
”When I feel tired or despondent,” she said, ”which isn't often, I read about German atrocities. Then I get on the boil from morning till night.”
Dodo shook her head.
”No,” she said. ”Living surrounded by the wounded doesn't have that effect on me or anyone else. If you allow yourself to think, it simply makes you sick at heart. Two days ago a convoy of men who had been ga.s.sed came in, and instead of feeling on the boil, I simply ached. We are beginning to use gas too, and ... my heart aches when I think of German boys being carried back into hospitals in the state ours are in.
I suppose I ought to be pleased that they are being ga.s.sed too. But I'm not. And I began so well. I was simply consumed with fury, and thought that that was the way to wage war. So it is no doubt. But what do you prove by it? Was anything ever so senseless? The world has gone mad.”
Edith fitted a new sheet into her machine.
”I know it has, and the best thing to do is to go mad too, until the world is sane again,” she said. ”You haven't had your house knocked to bits by a bomb. Now I'm going to begin the aspirin letter once again. I don't want to think and you had better not, either.”
Dodo laughed.
”I know,” she said. ”And will the aspirin letter be ready for the post?
It goes in a quarter of an hour.”
”It will have to be,” said Edith. ”After that I insist on your coming out to play a few holes at golf before lunch. I shall work all afternoon. Give me a sheaf of letters to write, Dodo.”
This time something quite unprecedented happened to Edith's machine, for six of the keys including the useful ”e” would not act at all, and Dodo, already much behindhand with her morning's work, left her furiously tinkering with it. The aspirin letter was in consequence indefinitely delayed, and Dodo had to telegraph instead. Later in the day, the machine being still quite unuseable, Edith put it into its box and despatched it for repair to London, with a letter of blistering indignation. A day or two must elapse before it came back, and she devoted herself to shorthand, and gave a little series of concerts consisting of her own music to the astonished patients.
David wrote happily from school, Trowle's temperature went down, Verdun held out, and the convoy of ga.s.sed men did well. Under this stimulus, Dodo roused herself for the effort of not thinking. She did not even think how odd it was for her, to whom activity was so natural, to be obliged to make efforts. The days mounted into weeks and the weeks into months, and she ceased looking forward and looking back. It was enough to get through the day's work, and every day it was a little too much for her. So too was the effort to keep her mind absorbed in the actual work which lay to hand. That perhaps tired her more than the work itself.
CHAPTER X
THE SILVER BOW