Between flowered borders we pick our way, pause here
and there for directions and at last halt. Again the stretcher-bearers!
As I am carried in I catch a glimpse of a low bungalow-building, with
others like it dotted about beneath trees. There are red shaded lamps.
Every one tiptoes in silence. Only the lips move when people speak;
there is scarcely any sound. As the stretchers are borne down the ward
men shift their heads to gaze after them. It's past ten o'clock and
patients are supposed to be sleeping now. I'm put to bed. There's no
news of my brother; he hasn't 'phoned and hasn't called. I persuade
one of the orderlies to ring up the hotel at which I know he was
staying. The man is a long while gone. Through the dim length of the
ward I watch the door into the garden, momentarily expecting the
familiar figure in the blue uniform and gold buttons to enter. He
doesn't. Then at length the orderly returns to tell me that the naval
lieutenant who was staying at the hotel, had to set out for his ship
that evening, as there was no train that he could catch on Sunday. So
he was steaming out of London for the North at the moment I was
entering. Disappointed? Yes. One shrugs his shoulders. _C'est la
guerre_, as we say in the trenches. You can't have everything when
Europe's at war.
I can hardly keep awake long enough for the sister to dress my
arm. The roses that the flower-girls had thrown me are in water and
within handstretch. They seem almost persons and curiously
sacred--symbols of all the heroism and kindness that has ministered to
me every step of the journey.
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