''Contemptible'' by - (ebooks online reader .TXT) 📖

surroundings occupied his mind. The bed was soft, and his spine ceased to ache. A feeling almost akin to contentment stole over him, as they left him in the clean, cool bed. His companion without the throat had been put in another room. There was only one more bed in this one, and the occupant was sleeping peacefully.

About four o'clock in the afternoon he heard the faint ring of spurred boots in the hall.

"This is an Officer's Ward, sir," a voice was saying.

The Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, followed by another Officer only less distinguished than himself, came slowly in.

"Poor boys!" he said. "How are you getting on?"

"All right, thank you, sir," he answered, smiling with pride.

"Here's the latest news from England," added the great man, as he dropped a paper on the bed. The Subaltern's left hand almost shot out of bed to grasp it. He looked up just in time to see them disappearing through the doorway.

He tried to read the paper, but the effort brought the very worst pains back again to his head, so he concealed it under the coverlet of the bed. He was determined to keep that paper. It was already growing dark, when the young Doctor of the Ward came to his bedside, smiling.

"We are going to operate on you at eight o'clock," he said. "It will be all right. We'll soon put you straight."

"Straight?" he echoed. "Yes, I dare say you will!"

CHAPTER XXXII OPERATION

The news came as a distinct shock to him. He had not even entertained the possibility of undergoing an operation. Years ago he had had his adenoids removed, and the memory was by no means pleasant. All along he had told himself he would recover in time—that was all he wanted. To have an operation was, he thought, to run another and unnecessary risk.

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