Part 18 (2/2)

from them. But there was no sign of an Ambulance, and meantime he was literally thirsting for the attentions and comforts of a hospital. His natural reserve broke completely down. He begged, and entreated, and prayed them to take him on.

After a little hesitation, they set out once more with a little excusable cursing and grumbling.

It was about seven o'clock when at last they laid him down in the hall of the hospital, and departed with unfeigned gladness.

Two Hospital Orderlies carried him along a pa.s.sage and into the identical billiard-room that he had seen from the garden.

A Doctor undid the soiled bandages with quick, strong fingers, and bent down to examine the wound with an expression of concentrated ferocity on his face. An Orderly brought a bowl, and the Doctor began to wash the place.

It was a painful business, but nothing to be compared to the pain produced by the ”prober.” They even tried to shave the hair from the affected spot. He bore it as long as he could. But it was too much. His left side shook and trembled. It was too terrible to begin to describe.

”It's no good,” he said, ”it's more than you can expect any one to put up with. You'll have to stop it.”

So they tied his head up once more, and he was carried upstairs into a bedroom. They lifted him on to the bed, managed at length to divest him of his jacket, turned some clothes over him, and left him.

In an hour a raging fever had taken hold of him.

Only intermittently, during the next three or four days, did he so much as touch the world of realities. The only improvement was his face, which had to a great extent relaxed. Otherwise the pain and the paralysis were the same, and all the time the fever raged within him.

Somehow, when he awoke from his horrible dreams it was always dark. And the remarkable thing was that the same nightmares seemed to haunt him with persistent regularity. Always he lay down upon a hillside--nebulous black, and furry. Always too, he had been ”left,” and the enemy was swooping quickly down upon him. He would wake up to find himself once more inert upon the bed, would curse himself for a fool, and vow that never again would he allow his mind to drift towards that terrible thought again.

J.O. double F.R.E? What was it? A Name? Whose? When and Why? He would catch himself worrying about this many times. He would awake with a start, and realise that the solution was a perfectly easy matter. Then he would straightway fall asleep, to worry once again.

There was a big vase on a table near the bedside. He took an implacable dislike to it, and longed to shatter it into atoms. ”Horrible pretentious affair,” he would mutter.

When he awoke from his fever, he would always make frantic efforts to hang on to consciousness. To this end he would always call the Orderly, ask the time, demand water or Bovril--anything to keep him a little longer in touch with the world.

Sometimes he would see bleared faces looking down upon him out of the dizzy greyness. He remembers being told that ”the Colonel” was coming to see him. He never knew whether it was his own Colonel or some A.D.M.S.

The thought did indeed come to him that he was going mad. But he had not the power to worry about the discovery, and insensibility would claim him once more before he could realise the terrors of insanity.

All this time he lay on his back. It was impossible to move him, but he longed to lie comfortably on his side, as he had always been accustomed to do. He was sure he could sleep then--ordinary sound sleep, free from worry, phantomless, refres.h.i.+ng. How he longed for it!

One evening a Doctor came to him and told him that they were going to move him away. The news was by no means a relief. He did not feel equal to the exertion of being carried about. He wanted to be allowed just to lie quietly where he was, and live or die, just as Fate decreed. For anything more, he had no energy; and the prospect of another journey appalled him.

In the dead of night four silent Orderlies heaved him on to a stretcher, carried him downstairs, and out of the chateau. His stretcher was then slid into an ambulance, and he awaited impatiently the filling of the others.

Another stretcher was slipped in by his side. It was too dark to see the man upon it, but he was apparently suffering from the last stages of thirst. He had been shot through the roof of the mouth and the throat, and could not swallow. He was dying of thirst and hunger. He begged and entreated them for water. He pleaded with them, tried to bribe them, tried to order them, tried to bully them. It was pitiable to hear a strong man brought so low. And if they gave him a drop of water in a teaspoon, he would cough and choke to such a degree that it was obvious that too frequent doses would be the end of him. He would gurgle, and moan, and pine. It was awful.

They were journeying to the Clearing Hospital. The road, bad at the best of times, was now pitted with sh.e.l.l holes, and was truly abominable. ”Is a country,” he said to himself, ”that will not allow its wounded pneumatic tyres to ride upon, worth fighting for?”

They jolted on through the remaining part of the night. At dawn they were disembarked, and put to rest in a little farm-house, where they gave them soup and milk. But there were only mattresses thrown on a stone floor, and the pain in his spine was so acute that he almost forgot about his head.

His companion on the journey was placed in the same room. At the beginning of the night he had pitied the poor fellow immensely. But his prayers and entreaties were too pitiful to bear. What he must have been suffering! It added an extra weight to his own burden. Thank G.o.d, he had never been very thirsty!

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