Part 25 (1/2)

I slept peaceably on this prospect of a usefulness that seemed to justify my existence at a moment when it most needed vindication.

[_Tuesday, 13th._]

I got up at six. Last thing at night I had said to myself that I must wake early and go round to the Hospital with the money.

With my first sleep the obsession of Ghent had slackened its hold. And though it came back again after I had got up, dressed and had realized my surroundings, its returns were at longer and longer intervals.

The first thing I did was to go round to the _Kursaal_. The Hospital was being evacuated, the wounded were lying about everywhere on the terraces and galleries, waiting for the ambulances. Williams and Fisher and the other man were nowhere to be seen. I was told that their ward had been cleared out first, and that the three were now safe on their way to England.

I went away very grieved that they had not got their money.

At the Hotel I find the Commandant very cheerful. He has made Miss ---- his Secretary and Reporter till my return.[37]

He goes down to the quay to make arrangements for my transport and returns after some considerable time. There have been difficulties about this detail. And the Commandant has an abhorrence of details, even of easy ones.

He comes back. He looks abstracted. I inquire, a little too anxiously, perhaps, about my transport. It is all right, all perfectly right. He has arranged with Dr. Beavis of the British Field Hospital to take me on his s.h.i.+p.

He looks a little spent with his exertions, and as he has again become abstracted I forbear to press for more information at the moment.

We breakfasted. Presently I ask him the name of Dr. Beavis's s.h.i.+p.

Oh, the _name_ of the s.h.i.+p is the _Dresden_.

Time pa.s.ses. And presently, just as he is going, I suggest that it would be as well for me to know what time the _Dresden_ sails.

This detail either he never knew or has forgotten. And there is something about it, about the nature of stated times, as about all things conventional and mechanical and precise, that peculiarly exasperates him.

He waves both hands in a fury of nescience and cries, ”Ask me another!”

By a sort of mutual consent we a.s.sume that the _Dresden_ will sail with Dr. Beavis at ten o'clock. After all, it is a very likely hour.

More time pa.s.ses. Finally we go into the street that runs along the Digue. And there we find Dr. Beavis sitting in a motor-car. We approach him. I thank him for his kindness in giving me transport. I say I'm sure his s.h.i.+p will be crowded with his own people, but that I don't in the least mind standing in the stoke-hole, if _he_ doesn't mind taking me over.

He looks at me with a dreamy benevolence mixed with amazement. He would take me over with pleasure if he knew how he was to get away himself.

”But,” I say to the Commandant, ”I thought you had arranged with Dr.

Beavis to take me on the _Dresden_.”

The Commandant says nothing. And Dr. Beavis smiles again. A smile of melancholy knowledge.

”The _Dresden_,” he says, ”sailed two hours ago.”

So it is decided that I am to proceed with the Ambulance to Dunkirk, thence by train to Boulogne, thence to Folkestone. It sounds so simple that I wonder why we didn't think of it before.

But it was not by any means so simple as it sounded.

First of all we had to collect ourselves. Then we had to collect Dr.

Hanson's luggage. Dr. Hanson was one of Mrs. St. Clair Stobart's women surgeons, and she had left her luggage for Miss ---- to carry from Ostend to England. There was a yellow tin box and a suit-case. Dr.

Hanson's best clothes and her cases of surgical instruments were in the suit-case and all the things she didn't particularly care about in the tin box. Or else the best clothes and the surgical instruments were in the tin box, and the things she didn't particularly care about in the suit-case. As we were certainly going to take both boxes, it didn't seem to matter much which way round it was.