The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 11 - The End of 1914

'The Cellar-House of Pervyse'

A Tale of Uncommon Things from The Journals and Letters of the Baroness t'Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm

A Story of Two British Volunteer Nurses on the Yser Front

Chapter XI - The End of 1914

The piano in the new house proved better than the old one. There was also room for a double bed, a food cupboard, and other luxuries; after the cellar it seemed Paradise. At nights, wooden shutters had to be put up to hide the light, as the Two were now above ground. The glass in the windows had long been smashed. They had no idea yet of abandoning the cellar-house; they intended to keep that as a poste, for it was nearer to the trenches, but they themselves lived in the genie house. This, of course, entailed continual passing to and fro over the quarter of a mile or so that separated the two, and in the weeks that followed they grew used to ruined Pervyse in all its aspects. By the bright moonlight, with the black shadows lying in the corners, it suggested in a ghastly way a horribly decayed mouth with missing and broken teeth. By day it was very like one of the pit villages of the North, left to fall to pieces when the coal has run out, and abandoned by the whole population in a body; only in Pervyse there were more signs of violence than in such a melancholy village. Some of the houses were unrecognizable—just a heap of stones—and others had had a slice taken cleanly off the front, so that the whole interior lay revealed in naked intimacy. In some of these the furniture was still intact, and in others smashed and riddled with holes. In many cases, where it had been spared by the shells, it had been wantonly split up for firewood by the troops and good polished mahogany and walnut lay in splinters. It was the furniture that made the place so pitiful. In the colliery villages the inhabitants take their household goods with them when they remove, and there is no evidence of occupation cut suddenly short and left like an unhealed wound. To peep into one of the Pervyse houses, to see the pictures hanging all askew, the carpets or rugs mouldy and stained, the china ornaments in atoms, the easy-chairs rotted and fallen, conveyed an awful sense of desolation. In one room, where the upper floor had been cut in two, a baby's cot balanced precariously by one of the rockers, and the coverlets were hanging down. Where was the baby occupant? 

One day, as Gipsy passed along, she stopped, and started at hearing a sound of digging at the back of one of these houses. There was no shelling at the moment, and in the unusual stillness such a sound needed explanation. She passed round among the ruins, and came upon a very old woman, tall but bowed, with eyes like red pits, so inflamed were they with weeping. She was groping in the fallen débris, and had evidently found what she sought, for she stood up trying to hide beneath her shawl a cheap painted timepiece with a penthouse wooden roof and gaudy flowers smeared on the wood. 

By one of those strange chinks in the general danger the clock-face had slipped through the bombardments and was unbroken. As the old woman gazed at it her weather-hardened face looked quite beautiful; she smiled at Gipsy, and without a word started to walk back again to Furnes, her sabots clanking on the cobbles. She had come out with one object, and had attained it. That clock had probably been a wedding gift, and was associated with the only days of pride and joy she had ever known. It was at least likely that she had lived out her span of life entirely in Pervyse, and never been elsewhere until torn up by the roots and flung out. For her there was nothing more to do but fade away; she could never take root again. Gipsy had nodded and smiled and tried to speak to her, but she found it impossible to make her understand, and as she stood there watching the bent figure hobble away, a sense of pity welled up in her so strongly that the tears came to her eyes. She shook them impatiently away. What use to drivel? There was work to be done. No wonder she writes: "I don't think I shall ever forget my life at Pervyse; it was all so strange at times, so pathetic, and yet there were moments when we giggled like children." 

Continually terrible cases called for attention. Some of these were of men who had been sent out as scouts toward the German lines, and who had been seen and shot at. One night Alexandre, who slept in the kitchen of the génie house, came in saying that there was a wounded man somewhere down the road. Taking a lantern, Gipsy started out to find him; as usual, it was wet and very cold. She groped along, calling softly now and again, bracing herself for the sentry's challenge any moment. It came sharp and clear, "Halte là!" but when she explained the man knew her and let her go on. Presently a faint groan drew her in the right direction. Wheeling toward it, she nearly went headlong into a huge shell-pit; then she discovered that the groans came from there. The man was at the bottom, lying in a foot of black water. She slipped and slithered down beside him, and found the poor fellow had an awful cut right across the head which had penetrated the skull. It was amazing that he lived, and still more so that he had managed to struggle so far as this in the direction of the poste before he fell into the pit. She bandaged him up first, and then, calling some passing soldiers for assistance, carried him into safety, and eventually he recovered sufficiently to go into Furnes. 

Both women were much touched by the gratitude of the soldiers; however badly hurt, so long as they retained consciousness at all, they were never too far gone to try to express their thanks for what was done for them. And some of them were grievously hurt. One was shot in both shoulders by mitrailleuse bullets, and another had a bullet through the lung. A sergeant came in with a badly fractured leg and arm, and bullet wounds in his feet —"a terrible case, and just one of the pluckiest men I have ever seen. He smiled all the time, and was so brave and cheery—a fine soldier with a fine character." He died the next day. 

The bravery of the men was indeed almost beyond belief. One day one of the soldiers appeared with a fearful wound. His right hand had been shot to bits while he was wearing a woollen glove. "I have never had such a disagreeable job as taking off that glove," Gipsy writes. "I could see every finger was blown to pieces, and the bits of glove mixed up everywhere, and the hand smashed; I expected every moment to pull off a finger with the glove. I cut as much as I could away, but it was all such a mess and muddle that I was afraid the scissors might do more harm than good." It must indeed have been a loathsome task, enough to try the nerves of the strongest. 

One day, when some of the members of the corps came out in a car, seeing how white and worn Gipsy looked, one of them offered to stay for a night and let her have a rest, which she gladly accepted; but she had hardly made her preparations to go into the town, and had not got clear of the village, before a quite extraordinary number of wounded came in, and the lady sent after her begging her to come back, as it needed great experience to cope with such an influx. 

A cheery crowd of naval officers turned up unexpectedly in a car from Dunkirk to see for themselves what the Two were doing. Among them was Mairi's friend the "Spaniard," as she, with her readiness at nicknames, had christened him. They were amazed at the sight of the village, and freely expressed their opinion that no ladies should be allowed to live there. They had seen many bad places since this war began, but this—you know—why, it was absurd, and they might be killed any time too! What were the authorities doing to allow it? Etc., etc., lot of old muddlers. 

"The whole British Army objects to our being here," said Mairi; "but it can't do anything." 

"Well, if I were one of the red-hats, I'd soon have you out of it! Why, you'd be safer on board. You might get killed—killed, you know, any time." 

"Yes, we know all about that." 

"But then it's ridiculous," the "Spaniard" protested feebly. "Really, Mairi, you'd much better marry me." 

"So that you'd have power to keep me away, you think? Well, of course, if you are only proposing it on humanitarian grounds, I can tell you it wouldn't answer, because if ever I did such a mad thing, I'd come here just the same." 

"You're doing a much madder one now," he said promptly. 

"It's quite safe." 

"Oh, rot! I say, how did the place get like this if there hasn't been shelling, and big shelling too?" 

"Perhaps the Germans did it when they were here." 

"Do you mean to tell me that shells don't drop in here now and again?" 

"Perhaps they do. What are they like? Describe one." 

He looked at her, but she met him with the perfectly candid expression of a simple desire for information. 

"Well, I'm-----" he began, and then there was a long hiss and a scream and a crash, so near that they both instinctively leaped for the shelter of the genie house. 

"That's punctured a hole in your terminological inexactitude," he said reproachfully. But before he finished speaking another came, and another. They were in for a bad bout. They continued to scream and crash, and presently the Belgian batteries near took up the antiphon and there was a real hullabaloo. This upset the naval men altogether. They absolutely buzzed in their anxiety. 

"Do you mean to say you get this often? It's shameful! Someone ought to make you come away." 

"Write to The Times about it," suggested Gipsy pleasantly. "And, meantime, don't you think we might have luncheon?" 

"Luncheon? Oh, we brought a few things for you. We knew you couldn't buy much up here." 

They hastened out, and unpacked from the car a royal supply, which, with the invariable consideration of men of the sea, they had carried up with them. They lunched royally off excellent ham, and tinned fruit, and other luxuries, but all the while the officers grumbled: they seemed to feel a personal enmity against the military who permitted such things. And finally they insisted on leaving behind one of the two cars in which they had come. "Then you can make tracks, if ever the time comes when you must," one of them said. This certainly was considerate, because frequently the car they used was away, taking wounded to Furnes, and in case of a sudden evacuation the Two would have been stranded. 

"Dear fellows," said Gipsy, watching them bump off down the road in the other car. 

"Very young," said Mairi, with an old-world air—"such boys!" As for her familiarity with shells, which Mairi had so innocently repudiated, this was the kind of thing that constantly happened: she was walking between the génie and the cellar-house, when she heard the shrill warning whistle, and sprang to one side, though really the broken ruins afforded no protection; then, as she went on, a small shell burst about fifty yards on the right. She concluded it was silly as well as useless to mind, so very deliberately strolled on down the middle of the street with her hands in the pockets of her tunic. Just as she reached the poste, another burst in front, sending the mud spurting up in all directions. 

Gipsy had been watching her. 

"Why on earth didn't you run?" she inquired rather breathlessly, for it is much worse to watch another person in danger than to be in it yourself. 

"It's not dignified when you are in khaki," answered Mairi gravely. 

In her journal she constantly records some such remark as this: "Very little doing, except a few shrapnel coming in." 

Yet the time came when they had to take notice. They were all at the cellar-house, and had just decided it was too much trouble to go back down the village for lunch. So Mairi cut up some potatoes and put them on to fry, saying that would stave off the pangs of hunger till tea-time, and then, in an instant, with no sort of warning, a shell really did land almost on the top of the house. It struck it somewhere, though, mercifully for them, not square, and for the moment it seemed as if the whole building was coming bodily to the ground. Each, catching her breath, thought instantaneously, "Is this really the end?" 

Bricks and mortar flew, but when the noise subsided they found they were still alive and quite unhurt, though the explosion had carried away a corner of the house; one of the men in the cellar opposite had been wounded by a splinter which flew in, and the Daimler car, which stood in a ruined outhouse, had been peppered. They counted twenty-eight holes in the bonnet, besides other damage. 

When they had attended to the wounded man, they went on to the génie house, naturally feeling a little shaken, in spite of their nerve, and there they found the two doctors from the British Field Hospital to which the ambulance had been attached. These men had heard the explosion and seen part of the cellar-house collapse, and were dreadfully upset at the idea of women being in such peril. They couldn't get used to it. One of the soldier servants standing by looked at them open-mouthed, and exclaimed: 

"Vous n'avez pas peur?" 

What could they reply but, "Pas du tout," though limbs were still trembling and hearts palpitating? He was a cheery soul, and encouraged them by remarking complacently, "Les Boches bombardera encore cette maison-ci." 

Reinforcements were being hurried up. The fighting at Nieuport was furious, and the whole line was being attacked with unusual vigour; all around there was stir and menace. What had preceded seemed almost peaceful in comparison; anything might happen these days. Coming out of the génie house in the afternoon Gipsy passed a couple of the great patient mitrailleuse dogs who had been struck by a splinter of shell; their shaggy paws were being bound up by the gunners. She went over to help, regardless of the risk and exposure, and had them brought into the kitchen, and one of them licked her hand with his rough tongue, for all the world as if he were trying to express gratitude like his masters. 

Seeing that the bombardment continued to be pretty furious for days, it was natural that the naval men should turn up again to see how the Two were getting on; they seemed to think it a sort of personal slur that they should be under fire while they themselves were not. The "Spaniard" got no chance that night, for Mairi was surrounded. Her type appealed peculiarly to the men of the sea; they saw in her all that they adored in the vision of a "fresh British girl," and her cheery aloofness and lack of susceptibility heightened the flame. "You'll have to marry some time," one of them told her, with a touch of maliciousness in his tone. 

"No use meeting evils half-way," she retorted gaily. 

In spite of their anxiety, the officers were full of hope and expectancy; everywhere it was said that the offensive would soon be begun, and that the Germans would be driven back. The Taubes certainly had an idea also that something was afoot, for their visits were persistent, and hardly a day passed that one or more did not soar above, to be tackled by the French airmen. One day the Two watched with intense eagerness a fight between aviators in which neither eventually got the better of the other, though the manœuvres and dodges were splendid to watch. The Frenchman at last daringly dropped headlong on to his antagonist, endeavouring to smash one of his wings, missed by inches, as it appeared to the rapt onlookers, and fell too far to recover himself before his adversary flew away. 

Another time, seeing a Taube overhead, they ran out to look at it, and heard the firing of a mitrailleuse somewhere near. They could not make out where the firing came from. It couldn't be from the Germans, who were too far off; it couldn't be from their own men, because the bullets were beginning to splash around. Nearer came the deadly splashes until they realized they must beat a quick retreat into shelter of some kind, and it was only then they grasped the fact that the Taube man was leaning over his machine deliberately potting them with a quick-firing gun! 

At the very top of the village, near the railway line and the trenches, stood the church, with its high rectangular tower, which had for some time been used as an observation station by Captain de Wilde, and was now unsafe. It had parted company with the nave and leaned forward at an angle, and the military men decided it must come down. They sent a message to the poste inviting them to attend the ceremony, so they walked out along the stretch of melancholy street that they traversed so often in a day and were growing to hate. The first violent explosion under the church tower produced apparently no result at all. It was followed by another, but though the tower looked as if the push of a hand must send it over, it never stirred, and then there was a long interval, possibly five minutes, which seemed like fifteen to the spectators. "It's not going at all," said Mairi, as the third explosion rang out, but it was! Very slowly and with dignity the tower seemed to turn on its axis, revealing a gaping wound all down its side, and then it subsided almost gently. It was a melancholy sight, as if some living thing had received the coup de grâce. The huge clock-face, rescued from the débris, was sent down as a present to the poste; they found they couldn't take this rather unwieldy souvenir inside, so propped it up against the wall. 

It was a sad day when the 9th Regiment, which had been at Pervyse from the first, had orders to move elsewhere, saddest of all because their good friend Dr. Van der Ghinst had to go too. Pervyse was the most coveted position in the whole Belgian line by this time; every man in the army had heard the story of the wonderful ladies who were there to tend and sympathize. The incoming regiment proved itself quite as appreciative and grateful as the last, but one day the Two were amused to receive a note from the 9th, saying that if the poste wasn't happy at Pervyse with their successors, they had better come along and join them in their new quarters! 

It had been decided that Gipsy must be spared at Christmas to pay a brief visit home to see her little boy Kenneth, and in the meantime others must carry on the work as best they could. As she was the moving spirit and originator of the whole scheme, and she alone had made it feasible by her personality and capability, it was like losing the soul when she went. But Mairi by this time was a skilled assistant, and far beyond the average girl of her age in steadiness and sense. She was the first to see that her friend's highly strung nature was worn by the incessant noise and calls upon her sympathy, and by the burden of wearing responsibility, and must have relaxation. For though indomitable in spirit, Gipsy was built in a delicate mould. The way was made easier because Lady Dorothie Feilding agreed to come to live with Mairi in Pervyse while Gipsy was away. 

The farewells were touching, including letters of God-speed from the officers, loving good wishes and evidences of a wealth of devotion from the men which she warmly appreciated. 

She ran into Furnes in a car, and while there went to see Miss Macnaughtan, who was then working at her soup kitchen. The station was lit only by a dim swinging lamp, and through it there defiled a procession of weird figures that might be the vision of a nightmare or a page from Dante's "Inferno." Many of them came straight from the trenches wearing their torn and motley clothes, and they were bandaged so that their outlines were distorted or their faces were invisible, while many lacked limbs. The humped-up look of the stretcher cases added a depressing touch of its own. And there was a curious silence pervading the waiting train. Gipsy walked down beside it, saying a quiet word of encouragement here and there, and suddenly from among the disguised crowd one stepped out, and grasping her hand in his left, the only one available, poured out on her a stammering tale of recognition, reminding her she had tended him at Dixmude. Since then he had been back again to the front, and a second time been wounded. By the light of this it seemed more miraculous than ever that she, who had been under continual firing, should have escaped. Among the men was one German, white and terrified, expecting nothing less than torture or death; wild-eyed, he refused even a cigarette, lest it should be poisoned! 

The weather was bitterly cold; mud and rain all the way—a horrid crossing. 

What a contrast to be awakened on Christmas morning by the glad cries of her little son, who had discovered the joys of his full stocking! She could hardly realize where she was. The softness of the yielding bed, the white sheets, the perfect stillness and comfort and cleanliness of everything, seemed to sink into her very bones. How little people who took these things as a matter of course every day of their lives knew of the hell out there! 

Meantime, Mairi was helped by Lady Dorothie Feilding, who was fully seasoned to danger by many a ghastly experience. These two girls, for there were not very many years between them, carried on the work successfully. In one of her private letters home Gipsy says of Mairi: "She has never shirked a day or night; always cheerful and bright, and absolutely to be depended on." 

In spite of all her wisdom, she was youthful enough to feel the glamour of Christmas. "Only one Christmas card and a bunch of mistletoe," she remarks. 

She began her day by the good "tidy-up" which her soul loved, and after having washed up the dishes, she and her companion began to give out some socks which had been sent for the soldiers, when "Crash came a shell! Crash! Crash! Crash! Nothing but falling bricks and the whistle of arriving shells for half an hour. One hit the house opposite us, brought all the tiles down; two hit our house and came through the wall; shrapnel burst just at our door, hitting the soldiers sheltering in our passage. The clock-dial standing against the door was riddled with holes, and all the smoke and smell of powder blew in at the door! A nice Christmas present to send us!" 

She attended to the slightly wounded men, talked to the old priest who had turned up to beg a shirt for himself, and then, helped by the Lady Dorothie, hung up little flags to make the room gay for the Christmas dinner. Even the candle had a paper lantern round it. 

The dinner itself was a triumph. Ox-tail soup, cold fowl, fried potatoes, plum pudding, mince pies, sweets, chocolate biscuits, nuts, and even crackers! The guests at this feast were Dr. Munro, Captain Robert de Wilde, and another man, and one of them supplied champagne. 

A raging gale the next day blew down everything that hung tottering in Pervyse; the floods rose, streams of water came through the roof of the génie house where the shrapnel had burst it, and in the midst of all this Mairi received distinguished callers—the Colonel of the Chasseurs and General Melis, Chief of the Belgian Army Medical Service. The fame of the poste was growing! 

On the last day of 1914 Gipsy returned. 

The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 10 - Varied Life in Pervyse

 'The Cellar-House of Pervyse'

A Tale of Uncommon Things from The Journals and Letters of the Baroness t'Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm

A Story of Two British Volunteer Nurses on the Yser Front

Chapter X - Varied Life in Pervyse

In any society in the world two such attractive women would excite a good deal of admiration, but out here, where the raw edge of life was so apparent and recreation of any sort was so scarce, they shone brilliantly. Gipsy is by nature very outspoken, and in her dealings with headquarters she had made everyone she met understand very clearly just what she wanted and how it was to be done, and done it generally was. Her excessive frankness did not always make for friendship, and some people were even offended by her outspokenness. She was so quick and efficient herself that she had not much of that patience which "suffers fools gladly," though she could be patience itself with suffering. Like all natures which have a touch, or more than a touch, of genius in them, she was very original, up and down, and full of facets, showing first one side and then another, until some people thought they would never be able to understand her. Her stern determination to get through against opposition, her rapier strokes at those who stood in the way, showed an entirely different side of her character from that she displayed in off-times, when she was as much a child as the best Belgian among them. She threw off cares and concentrated herself entirely on the moment, and being an excellent mimic and very versatile, she could entertain anyone until they too forgot the sadness of the world around and were completely absorbed in her. 

The wonderful position in which she found herself had been entirely due to her own brilliant idea and quick grasp of what was necessary in the first instance, and her wonderful perseverance in the second; she never spared herself, and never rested till she had put through what she had set her mind on. But she hated detail; in developing the large outline of a scheme lay her strength—the detail must be carried out by others. Like many another of the same temperament, she "could not be bothered with small businesses," as the Indian fortune-teller said. She needed someone behind who would pick up what she dropped and see that she did not kill herself with excess of energy, and Mairi was exactly the person required. Mairi is eminently sane and steady. She cannot bear to sit down in an untidy room; she must know where to lay hands on anything that might be needed at a moment's notice; she is free from any trace of egotism, and has a large capacity for hero-worship, yet, withal, the shrewdness not to offer it at unworthy shrines. She is keen, competent, and trustworthy, and the two together at Pervyse made a perfect combination. 

The officers who surrounded them adored them, as was only natural, and were equally divided in their admiration of "Madame" and "Miss." 

Dr. Van der Ghinst, through whose frank cheeriness there ran a deeper undercurrent of observation and perception, was a constant friend and adviser. He very nearly fulfilled the highest ideal of manhood, one who could have bestowed the most patient attention on the wounded finger of someone else, even though he himself was bleeding to death from something much more serious. Since the Two had arrived in Pervyse, he had always been ready to listen and to enter into any plan for the welfare and comfort of the soldiers. He was an unfailing inspiration in the work. He was more fortunate than many, for his wife was safe, and even paid a visit to Pervyse. 

 Another of the Belgian officers of whom the Two had seen a good deal in Furnes was Captain Robert de Wilde, and when he turned up and became observation officer in Pervyse they were delighted. He was a perfect companion; "he never needed entertaining, but it always seemed it was just right for him to be there." What higher tribute could mortal man desire? 

He got into the way of dropping in most evenings, and then there was patience, or jig-saw puzzles, or, best of all, discussions on those deep questions which must lie below the surface in the hearts of all thoughtful men and women, and which are revealed at times when the bare facts of human existence lie starkly uncovered and all spurious sentiment falls away. These discussions meant much to Gipsy, who needed mental stimulation; they left both her and Mairi refreshed and brightened. "The nearer to the trenches, the gayer we are!" she exclaimed one day, and indeed, it is not only at Pervyse this truth is apparent. It is in the intervals of great crises that men let themselves go with light-heartedness; the heights are proportionate to the depths. Into no humdrum life has ever entered the utter abandonment of gaiety felt at times by those who have faced incredible danger and hardship. All happiness lies in contrast. 

One morning Gipsy was alone in the cellar for a marvel; she was reading a very dirty old magazine in a rare interval of leisure, for there was no call for her services. Someone knocked and came slowly down the steps. She saw in a moment, in spite of the dim light, that this was a new-comer, and not any of the officers she had yet met. He was very tall, so tall that he could not stand upright in the cellar, though he tried more than once; and he wore the smart uniform of the Guides, with crimson breeches, shining boots, green tunic, and peaked cap. Somehow she felt unaccountably embarrassed, and suddenly aware that she was in soiled clothes, sitting on a heap of straw in a most unbecoming way. What was it in the presence of this young man—he was only a Lieutenant—that should shed such a brilliant illumination on things? It was very remarkable, and she felt inclined to laugh, not knowing that with him had entered her Fate! 

Courteously saluting, he handed her a message from his Colonel, and turned to retrace his steps; and as he went he smiled, a smile that lit up his face and indeed the whole cellar. That smile seemed positively to linger and irradiate everything in a remarkable way! 

She felt unusually shy about mentioning the incident to Mairi, and it was not until they passed him one day on his way to the trenches, when he smiled again as he saluted, and Mairi asked casually, "Who's that?" that Gipsy owned having met him at all. 

"I don't know his name; he came with a message from the Colonel," she said, and felt, to her dismay, that she was growing very red as she spoke. 

It was less than a week after that the young Lieutenant once again appeared, this time bearing a box of marrons glacés as a present from the Colonel. A very welcome sight it was, for they both loved sweets; indeed, Gipsy once plaintively remarks in one of her home letters, "There is no more chocolate in the whole of Belgium, and none in Dunkirk, so I feel horribly lonely." 

Whether it was the marrons glacés or the smile she could not tell, but from that date she had a feeling of security and comfort so long as the young Lieutenant was in the trenches, though they saw very little of him. Pervyse seemed in a miraculous way to have become a safe and singularly happy place. And when, a couple of months later, he was suddenly transferred elsewhere, and went without a good-bye, though she saw him march off, it seemed as if the whole side of Pervyse had been laid bare, and the Germans might sweep in at any moment! 

One day a little later she found it impossible to get a necessary matter attended to. "I will go myself, and speak to Headquarters about it," she said; "it's the only way to get anything done." So she mounted her motor-cycle and went off, intending to let Headquarters see how very unpleasant she could make herself when they would not attend to her wishes. She had been feeling like that lately, as if she rather wanted to blow someone up. "Nerves," she called it to herself. 

Now as she ran out on the long, raised road she had to stop for a moment to attend to her cycle, and a car which was careering along from the opposite direction stopped just beside her while the occupants showed the sentries their papers. With a start which thrilled right through her, Gipsy saw that young Lieutenant de T'Serclaes, whose name she had now learned, was in the car, and that he was in a new uniform with the wings of an aviator on his sleeve. Again that happy smile seemed to strike through her, but no word passed between them. 

She mounted her cycle, and involuntarily looked back as the car spun on its way. It was a most curious coincidence, but the Lieutenant looked back too, at precisely the same moment! Somehow the feeling of annoyance and "nerves" fell from Gipsy; she suddenly felt herself again, and noticed how the larks were singing in the battered fields around. She changed her mind, after all, she wasn't going to bully Headquarters, she didn't feel she wanted to bully anyone to-day, and she rode back again to Pervyse in a state of serene bliss. 

Supplying soup and chocolate was not the whole reason for the settlement at Pervyse, or indeed the chief one—there were casualties to be attended to and much suffering saved. The word "casualties" by no means implies only actual wounds caused by weapons, but all those terrible hurts due to the exposure of men's bodies in circumstances of hardship and want. The intense cold and the lack of proper clothing had their share in bringing about misery and suffering, which in a minor degree, but still quite appreciably, affected the fighting power of Belgium. Bare toes met the frost through burst boots, and pneumonia and bronchitis supervened upon nights of shivering, soaked bodies. 

Gipsy wrote home urgently for clothes, clothes of any description; they were not particular. At that time the Belgian Army was not clad in khaki, and the soldiers were ready enough to snatch up any warm garment they could find; a motley crowd they looked sometimes, but they were units whose individualism would have stood a stronger test than a lack of uniformity in garments, which might have imperilled the cohesion of a German regiment. "I wish I could get hold of some society that has heaps and heaps of soldiers' clothing," Gipsy says. "Helmets, scarves, boots, and socks." 

From the first the poste was on an organized and systematic footing. There were to be no casual loiterers playing at stomach- ache to secure the comforts it offered; every man who came to ask for the ladies' assistance had to bring a letter from his commanding officer warranting that he was in need of it. 

Such varying needs, too! One had caught his hand on a nail, and the wound was festering; another was in agony with swollen, inflamed feet; a third was quite done up, nothing to show except that he was incapable of the smallest exertion. Him they fed and put into what they called the "blessé bed" in the corner, because it was devoted to the soldiers. They piled up hot-water bottles round him, and let him sleep the clock round, after which he arose a new man. 

Every morning one or other of the Two was up at six to see Alexandre did not neglect his duties in getting the fire alight. Mairi sometimes went foraging, and though she generally started alone, she was seldom allowed to return so. To the Belgian officers her roguish smile and the dimple in her sweet face were like sunlight, and she never lacked admirers, but through them all she passed unscathed. Her heart was not easy to reach. She was charming to all, with a frank independence that was like that of a delightful boy, and was new to most of them in a woman. She made use of them and listened to their chaff or their compliments with just the same manner, and the humour she shared in common with most of her countrymen, despite the gross libel kept alive by those who wouldn't know a Scot if they met one, was constantly in play. Her nerve was unassailable; she went to dig up potatoes and came back laden through a shower of shrapnel, which she apparently regarded much as she would a shower of rain. 

Here is an account of one such incident in her own words: "We found some potatoes up the road past the trenches. Then we went right to the other side of the village to get some cabbages. When we had cut them we wanted to wash them, and were shown a well. This done, we started back. Just behind the church we were warned it was impossible to get back, as the Germans were plumping shrapnel across the road. We decided to take our chance, so went on. Immediately the shrapnel came whistling along and burst just over us, so we ducked in under a house. Then we went on again and got in safely. The shrapnel continued all the morning." 

And with this life, so full and rich in the most life-giving element of all, the knowledge that one's presence is almost indispensable to the well-being and happiness of many, a great peace descended on the Two. Shell-fire, the desolation of that curved street with gaping wounds, and the lack of all amenities, had not power to affect them. They quickly grew to love their little cellar-house, and to feel that it was a true home. 

One morning they awoke to a perfect fusillade of rifle-fire, and for the first grave moment thought the Germans had really broken through and were charging up the village street. They climbed up out of their shelter and gazed down the street, for, as Gipsy said, "Curiosity beat fear." They saw no Germans, so they scampered along in the direction of the trenches, determined at all costs to satisfy their curiosity, and there they met a dismal procession. One or two men were being helped along as they stumbled and stayed, leaving heavy red drops on the road; others were being carried on stretchers; and the cause was that one of the trenches had caught fire, and a quantity of ammunition had given a demonstration on its own account, with the result that no less than six soldiers suffered. They were tenderly cared for, for by this time Mairi was a most efficient assistant, far better after her practical experience than many who have spent months in bandaging imaginary patients. But all this was done under great difficulties. There was no clean running water; no sinks and other appliances—only a dim, dark cellar, so small that one could hardly turn round; no room to store anything; constant curtailment of everything that a medical man would have looked upon as indispensable. The shortage of water was a great bother. There had been numerous pumps and wells, but most of them were choked or smashed. It was a great triumph when the genius Alexandre, poking about by himself in the dusty heaps of bricks and great fallen beams that now represented Pervyse, actually discovered a pump in working order. With that phlegm which was his most valuable quality, he annexed the top part of the pump, so that no one else could use it, and so exhaust the supply. As water even for drinking or cooking purposes was scarce, it may be deduced that water for baths was unobtainable. It was so at first, and as the Two slept night after night in their clothes—a proceeding which exhausts a woman far more than a man—a bath became a thing to sigh for. Of all the luxuries in England, the wide rooms, the dainty food and accessories, the soft sheets, the thought of a hot bath was the most alluring. The best they could do was to get a bucket of hot water occasionally, but the difficulty was to know when to make use of it, for the cellar-house was never free from intrusion any moment, night or day. It might be that Mairi had stationed herself on the topmost rung of the ladder to scare away all comers while Gipsy had a delicious wash below; but who was to foretell whether at that very moment when the bather was most helpless before convention, a desperate wounded man needing immediate succour might not materialize? 

At last a bath was discovered, a real porcelain bath of the latest kind—a most unusual thing to be in a Belgian village at all. It was unearthed in one of the tumble-down houses, and carted bodily into one of the ruined rooms above the cellar, where, by disregarding the risk of being shelled at any minute, one could have a bath with the strictly minimum amount of privacy necessary for decency. But before this great find was made Gipsy, getting desperate, borrowed a beautiful horse belonging to one of the officers and rode into L'Espérance, the little place where Dr. Van der Ghinst and other officers were now quartered, where was a tiny inn and the possibility of a wholesale wash. Just as she arrived there she met an Englishman. She looked at him keenly and he at her, and for a moment they paused, not knowing whether the flash of familiarity that passed between them was merely due to the magnetic attraction of a countryman and woman in a strange land, or the result of real acquaintance somewhere in that old, almost-forgotten life lived once, centuries ago, before the war. Gipsy recovered first, as the woman invariably does. She leaned down over her horse's silky neck, and said softly: "It was hard luck that you couldn't manage that last rise at Leith Hill! You would have beaten me!" 

Quick as a flash the new-comer retorted, laughing, "My own fault for having let the beastly thing leak; all the petrol had run out." Then they plunged into delightful reminiscences of the day of the motor- cycle contest and hill-climbing test, but all at once Gipsy sat up straight, and her delicate eyebrows drew together with an expression of anxiety as she looked back the way she had come. 

"Firing," he said, following her glance. "They say the Boches are shelling Pervyse." 

"Pervyse!" She sat straighter. "Oh yes, a few shells, Pervyse often gets those, but this is a storm!" 

"So they say," he answered, waving indifferently toward two officers who had come out and were standing at the entrance of the inn. 

"I must go back instantly." All thoughts of her bath were merged in the remembrance that Mairi was there alone in that tornado, far worse than anything they had yet been subjected to at the poste. 

The Englishman caught her rein. "Go back? Good lord! Why? You're well out of it!" 

She only laughed, flicked her rein from his hand, and with a cool nod trotted off hard toward the ominous sound. Dismounting on the outskirts of Pervyse, she hitched the horse up in one of the broken- down barns and went on on foot. But the firing was terrific. Shells began to burst around, and involuntarily she sprang to the meagre shelter of some broken walls. Then Woffington came round the corner driving a car as hard as he could go, with that curious silence they had already noticed, which made it seem like an object in a cinematograph. She stepped out and shouted to him to stop, and Woffington, who always had his wits about him, obeyed coolly. He said Miss Chisholm had sent him post-haste for the doctor, as a lot of wounded had been brought in. However, he turned without cavil and carried Mrs. Knocker back into the deadly fire-zone, setting her down at the cellar, before once more he reversed his car and ran out on his errand; and to his credit it may be noted his hand did not shake, nor had his colour in any way abated. 

The wounded were, as he had said, crowded in the cellar, with Mairi and the old priest kneeling by them; there was hardly room to get in beside them. One of the men over whom Gipsy bent had had his arm nearly severed, and with a quick contraction of the heart she recollected having met him on his way to the trenches as she rode out to L'Espérance only an hour before. Then he had given her a royal salute, and now never again would he be able to salute with that poor arm. 

After hard work, the wounded were patched up sufficiently to be sent down to Furnes. 

A day or so before this they had had a great excitement, for word had come that King Albert, the hero-King whom they were serving, was in the village. He did not come to the cellar, for which they were thankful, as he is so very tall. Mairi was certain he would have bumped his head "every minute," which would have been awful; but he spoke kindly to them both, with that absence of conventionality which characterizes him. 

With all the stern, and many times ghastly, scenes that they went through, there were bright intervals of enjoyment that stood out like beacons by the way. One of these was when an invitation came from the Engineer officers stationed at the bottom of the village for the two British ladies to go to dinner with them. They had lived so sparsely and simply on biscuits, chocolate, bully-beef, and cheese, and spent so little time or thought on preparing their own meals, that this came as a glad surprise. They had not realized until then how tired they were of the coarse, monotonous fare. They spent a whole hour beforehand trying to work themselves up to a due standard of attractiveness for the great occasion; but some stains on their worn clothes were impossible to remove. Exactly at six o'clock, as arranged, a couple of officers came to escort them on foot, and they passed down that wide, curved street, with the rows of shattered houses and the heaps of barbed wire, among which were one or two scanty, leafless trees sticking up perkily, not yet splintered or blasted by the firing. 

The officers were waiting to greet them with éclat. The house in which they were quartered was in better condition than most of the others in the village, and they had made it still more habitable. A round table was set out in the middle, though their utmost efforts had been unable to produce a cloth! Mairi says, "When the menu was presented to us, we nearly had a fit!" so surprising was the fare. She knew well their hosts must have worked for days beforehand to get such a menu together in this wilderness. 

 

MENU

Anchois d'Ecosse. 

Potage tomates. 

Asperges Irlandaises.Pré salé. 

Haricots verts. 

Poulets. 

Petits pois. 

Saucisson. 

Salade. 

Desserts variés. 

WlNE. Château Grand Puech. 

Haut Médoc and Champagne. 

 

"If that isn't fine, I don't know what is!" 

But this was not all. Music was also provided, and one of the soldiers, a born musician, played to them Liszt's Rhapsodies and other pieces out of his head during dinner, for the officers of the génie had also managed to procure a piano. 

The Two passed a gay and charming evening, and about 10.30 were safely escorted home again, a very necessary precaution, as the sentries in the village were apt to let off their rifles on very small provocation after dark. 

They had hardly got to sleep, feeling well fed and comforted in mind and body, when Gipsy was awakened by stealthy footsteps coming cautiously down the stairs. She turned on the electric torch she carried for emergencies, and, as the door was thrust back, saw two Belgian soldiers carrying another. The poor man was in agony, with a leg smashed by shrapnel and hanging by a thread. It was too bad a case for even a skilful nurse to manage, and, after examining it, she decided to have a doctor. But the chauffeur was away in Furnes, so she had to turn out herself and walk down the village to find the doctor, who slept with the soldiers. He came at once and did what he could willingly and cheerfully, but the poor fellow was too far gone to be saved. There was no more sleep, however, for the soldier's friend, who lay awake and constantly got up to ease him or minister to him as he moved and groaned. He was sent down to the hospital at Furnes the next day, but he died shortly after. 

It was quite obvious that, in spite of its advantage in being comparatively safe, the cellar was very unsuitable in many ways for the work, and the picture of that poor wretch with his trailing leg coming down the steep ladder, developed an idea that had been germinating in Gipsy's head. She discussed with Dr. Van der Ghinst and her friends, the Engineer officers, if it were possible to make a room in the house itself—say, on the ground floor—habitable, so that at least it could be used throughout the day and save the brave fellows much pain. The idea was accepted enthusiastically; everything that was feasible should be done at once. The house outside was just like any little straight up-and-down English cottage. The roof had been broken to pieces, but the passage on the ground floor was weather-tight, and out of this there opened a room on the right that, by a little shoring-up and roofing-in, could be made habitable. This was accomplished without delay, and, when it was finished, Gipsy says with delight, "It was lovely." To her impressionable nature surroundings meant much, and the mere fact of being able to have an open fire and to be above-ground made her very happy. 

When the Two moved into this palatial apartment there was a great merry-making. While they were all enjoying themselves, they heard the steady tramp of the "dear little soldiers" outside collecting to replace those who had had their turn in the trenches. There was not a man of them who did not look at the little house, marked by drooping flags, with a softened feeling in his heart, for that battered house to nearly all of them for the moment represented "home." It must be remembered that these men had, in the great majority of cases, lost sight of parents, wives, or children They did not know if they would ever see them again. They were up against a foe with enormous resources and crushing strength. All their country, except one tiny strip, was in the hands of that enemy; their conditions were most miserable. They lacked everything. The trenches were sodden and often actually under water, the weather was bitter; yet they were still cheerful, and though not by nature a fighting race, the brutal outrage of their giant neighbour had aroused in them a spirit equal to that of the most dour Scot. Also they had to uphold them the example of their noble King and Queen, whose fortitude is beyond anything that has ever been recorded of' Sovereigns. They had never left Belgian soil, and behind them was Britain, which had never yet been beaten. As a sign of it, here were these two British ladies, who had come to share the hardships and dangers of the rough soldiers, and live actually among them, to make for them a little bit of home in the wilderness. Some of these men were really clever in a variety of odd ways. Two of them played well and musically on two lengths of lead piping they had picked up and twisted into shape. 

An account of an ordinary day is given by Mairi about this time. "Our job is to get up at six, make chocolate or something hot, and keep it served all the day." No light job, either! From twelve to three some days without ceasing, except to snatch a biscuit, they served out chocolate, and as they had to go out late to the outposts, and were often disturbed in the night, it did not leave much time for rest. 

One day, Mairi, coming back with a pail full of potatoes, found a very young Lieutenant—a mere infant—standing outside the shattered house, but not daring to set his foot therein. He looked younger than he was, because his hair was of the soft downy kind seen on all very young things. She knew quite well he cherished an adoration for Gipsy so deep that it almost tore him in two, and that his appetite for bully-beef had been so seriously impaired that it had provoked comment. He flushed a pretty pink all over his chubby little face when he saw her, and saluted, but did not move. 

"Are you going on duty?" she asked, for Mairi, whose French had been of the schoolroom variety when she arrived, now rushed headlong into it on all occasions. 

"Non, Mamselle." 

"Are you going off duty?" 

"Non, Mamselle." 

"Are you going to do anything?" 

"Non, Mamselle." 

"What are you standing there for, then?" 

"Rien du tout, Mamselle." 

She burst out laughing and ran into the room. "Oh, you infant- catcher," she addressed the astonished Gipsy, "go and see your handiwork, and think scorn of yourself!" 

Gipsy put her head out of the door, but this was too much for the youth. His feelings were altogether beyond him; the sight of the adored one overcame him, and he turned on his heel and walked briskly away. We are told that in the fourth highest heaven of the Buddhists a touch of the hand satisfies love, in the fifth lovers simply gaze upon each other, and in the sixth existence in the same place is enough. Here was an example of it. 

At nights there was sometimes a terrific noise from the guns, and though she might well have been inured to it by this time, Gipsy often lay awake listening, trying to distinguish between the Belgian or French guns which were behind and the German shells which came from the front. The Belgian batteries were so well concealed that even she and Mairi did not know where they were, though they could occasionally hear the "ping" of the telephone by which the results were communicated, possibly by their friend Captain de Wilde, who was observation officer. The departing shells had a sort of finished swish about them that sounded as if they said, "Now I'm off," and with a rush and report that shook the building they went; but those that arrived made a kind of despairing burst that shouted, "I've done my worst, and I've not killed you." 

So long as no military orders to evacuate the poste were given, the Two stuck to it, however bad the bombardment, but they knew the summons might come at any moment. One night, when hopeless wakefulness possessed her, Gipsy lit the lamp, and saw that even the imperturbable Woffington was awake, chewing a piece of straw between his teeth, though Mairi slept soundly through the vibrating, ear-splitting crashes. In the intervals between these Mrs. Knocker said, "We may have to go, Woffy." 

He nodded. 

"Supposing the order came, and I said I wouldn't go, what would you do? Leave me?" 

He considered the situation. 

"I'd get a hold of you by the shoulder and give you a good un, and say, ' 'Ere, Knocker, up and 'op it!' " he decided at last. 

At that second came the most appalling bang; the very house danced, for the lamp was shaken out! And Mairi, sitting up in the darkness amid her straw, cried out, "What is it? What has happened?”' 

Though often there was comparatively little shelling in the daytime, it was impossible to make up a lost night's rest then, for people were in and out all day; if it wasn't the wounded needing attention, it was members of the ambulance corps flying out in their cars, perhaps bringing sightseers as to a show. Among the people who visited Pervyse from time to time were Ramsay Macdonald, Madame Curie, and Maxine Elliott, a grotesquely incongruous trio, within which every variety of nature and occupation incidental to civilized human nature might be fitted! 

The poste was unique; such a thing had not only never been heard of, but never been thought of, before. There was even a certain amount of jealousy about it; others doing various kinds of work in Belgium pictured themselves in similar surroundings, but they never saw the gruesome side of the work there, the aching back and splitting head, and the constant anxiety. They only saw a singularly dramatic situation like the scene on a stage, with a singularly beautiful and inspiring couple of women in it, and it was not in human nature that they should not contemplate the possibility of making a similar setting for themselves. What Gipsy thought of all this, especially of the reporters who hunted her out, may be gathered from the following private letter to a near relative: 

"You tell me in your letters that you often see our names mentioned in the papers. I hope mine is not often there. I'm afraid I have fallen out with many reporters, but I hate all this penny-a-line business. I realize now that many decorations are not worth anything, and one sees, on the other hand, so many really fine things done without a word of recognition, because they are done so quietly that they never get into the papers. I have a Belgian friend, a Dr. Van der Ghinst, who has probably never been heard of in England, and certainly does not wish to be—a quiet, splendid character. He was in Dixmude seven days and seven nights, absolutely alone, just keeping together the wounded men and civilians, and getting them out gradually from that veritable hell." 

But if the visitors ignored the dangers in connection with that attractive setting, they were well known to the military. For some time Dr. Van der Ghinst had been uneasy as the German guns grew fiercer, and one day the good priest, who rode about on a fat white mare as round in the barrel as the variety on which the statues of our Stuart Kings are usually set, added his voice to the doctor's, telling the ladies that a terrible bombardment was expected, and they had better leave for safer quarters while there was time. 

That same night, when everyone had gone, after —as the poste said—inconsiderately stirring up their feelings, Gipsy began to wonder if, after all, they ought not to go also; at any rate, the responsibility lay with her. Mairi would do whatever she was told, for among her great charms was one not usually associated with so young a girl—a loyal obedience to anyone whom she trusted. They began to discuss the question together, and finally, both being rather worked up, they decided to go down the village to the génie house, as they called it, and ask the advice of the Engineers. 

It was a wild night, and the wind caught the rain and slung it this way and that, until it became as sharp as hail. Also it was very dark, so, clutching each other's hands and groping with their feet, the Two crept step by step along the ruined street, followed by the faithful Woffington. 

They found the Engineer officers at supper, and were cordially welcomed. It was, indeed, an unexpected picture when Mrs. Knocker, with her brilliant eyes shining, peered in at the door, and Mairi peeped past her, with her fair hair uncovered, as she dashed the wet from her helmet cap. 

The officers promptly suggested that they should pass the night there, as, being at the far end of the village from the front, the génie house was less likely to be shelled than the cellar. One of the younger men, whom they had nicknamed "Lieutenant Shrapnel," gallantly vacated his room, and so the Two slept there, with Woffington on a stretcher at their feet. 

At five o'clock next morning a hideous alarum-clock went off with a scurry and shriek, and there was almost immediately cheery laughter and much scraping of feet, and some snatches of song that for the moment bewildered the two guests, who had forgotten where they were. At 6.30 came breakfast, consisting of toast, cream-cheese, fresh butter, and strawberry jam! In the middle of it an orderly arrived with orders for the officers to evacuate and go to Yprés. The Major waved the letter above his head. "Dieu vous a bénit!" he exclaimed, pointing out that Providence had evidently designed this order for the express purpose of allowing the poste to take up its quarters in this house instead of their own. This seemed to be the general opinion, and against fate there is no fighting. So when the last officer clattered off, Mairi with a deep sigh of satisfaction, set to work and scrubbed and cleaned and wiped and dusted, and made the place a little more presentable. 

After all, the officers came back, but not the meanest man among them would have disturbed the ladies; so they fixed themselves up in another half-ruined house elsewhere. 

The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 9 - The Cellar-House

 

'The Cellar-House of Pervyse'

A Tale of Uncommon Things from The Journals and Letters of the Baroness t'Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm

A Story of Two British Volunteer Nurses on the Yser Front

Chapter IX -The Cellar-House

By the third week in November, 1914, the Two were established in Pervyse. 

A vast area of flood-water, lying flat and white in the cold light, covered acres upon acres of submerged land north of a line between Nieuport and Dixmude. The Belgians had opened the sea- sluices, and those salt waters which had ever lapped hungrily at their small country now proved a strength and protection in enabling them to keep at bay a far more dangerous foe. Reaching up to the margin of the water was a hideous huddle of gaunt stone houses which had once been the peaceful little village of Pervyse. 

Gipsy had said with decision that there was not a house to lodge in, and she was right; but there was a cellar—two, in fact—and in one of these the two friends were domiciled for living and sleeping both. It was reached by a rough stairway leading from the battered shell above, which had once been the house it belonged to. The dim project had taken shape. 

When the two friends had returned to their work after being a few days in England, unfortunate Mairi had been taken ill, and was unable to go at once to the cellar-house; but now she was all right again, and they were installed in surely the very oddest circumstances two women had ever managed to get themselves into before. In the other remaining cellar across the road were the officers of the Mitrailleuse Third Division, to which Dr. Van der Ghinst was attached. 

To get a clear idea of Pervyse, it is necessary to enter it from the direction of Furnes, where the road makes several curves, and at the last goes quite straight and gives evidence that it comes well within the range of the German shells. The village which once lay along the sides of this road was rather like a Scotch village, for the houses were built of stone, and stood right on to the edge of the road, so they had that bare, unfinished appearance which is so disappointing to the stranger first visiting Scotland, who is accustomed to the bright little flower-gardens of the south-country villages of England. Every one of these houses had been smashed up by the continual rain of missiles. Houses without man are the most melancholy sight, it is the soul without the body, though, oddly enough, it is when they are broken up that they bear most resemblance to the body, showing a series of distorted faces. 

At the top of the village stood the church, which had originally had a dumpy spire; but the top of this had been shot away, so that it was left square. Of this church the late Miss Macnaughtan wrote: "A haggard-looking church, like a sentinel with both eyes shot out. Nothing was left but a blind face. The tower had great holes in it, and the aisles had fallen. The churchyard looked as though some devil had stalked through it tearing up crosses and digging up graves." 

This churchyard is as thickly crowded with bodies as the old London city churchyards before they were cleared out. Not only Belgians, but hundreds of Germans have been buried there. The remnants of tombstones had been hurled this way and that, graves gaped, giving up their dead, and the scrubby trees were withered and stripped by the fiery blasts. The two cellars were at the church end of the village, the dangerous end, nearest to the German guns. Water was scarce, and when they first went there the Two had to use the flood-water in the ditch, so it is probably true, as one paper remarked, that they drank water which had filtered down from the graveyard, where lay scores of dead Germans! 

At right angles to the main road run both the railway line and the Nieuport-Dixmude road, which crosses the other just on the Pervyse side of the line, and all along by the railway line are the Belgian trenches commanding the flooded area beyond. It must be remembered that in Belgian flood-areas trenches are not exactly what one usually understands by that term. Instead of being "dug- outs," they are "throw-ups." It would be obviously impossible in that saturated soil to make any trench which did not immediately become a ditch, and therefore earth-works are thrown up, which serve the same purpose, and even then the men are most of their time in water, in spite of much pumping. Many of them constantly trudged through the village carrying great bundles of straw, which they threw down to give them for a short time a dry standing space. Their little shelters are built along by the earth-work, then roofed over and filled with straw, and at night comes a faint glow through the insufficient roofs, telling of dim lights and smoky fires within, where the men lie huddled upon their primitive cribs. 

The Furnes road does not end at the line, but goes on across it, and runs out into the great waste of water like a pointing finger. It is raised, as nearly all main Belgian roads are, and forms a sort of pier or bund, so has to be strongly guarded. The Belgian outposts are established far out upon it. Behind the wide belt of water is still preserved the "very small remnant" of their fertile land left to King and people; small as it is, it forms a well-spring of hope and good omen for the future. 

The blessed belt encircling such a priceless territory is comparatively shallow, but very unequal in depth, and therein lies its value. Even if the German infantry could start knee-deep to march across it, they might any minute find themselves up to their necks in ditch or hole, and at the best the heavy guns of the artillery would stick in the plastic paste beneath. In the shroud of the shallow grey water are buried German guns which had to be left in the headlong flight when the sluices were opened, and the invaders fled pell-mell, to escape the fate which overtook so many. An uncertain grey hump floating here and there suggesting a water-turtle, betrays the drowned bodies. Simple as it seems, this stretch of shallow water is at once the slightest and most permanent barrier that could be found. On that grey November day, when Gipsy and Mairi wandered out to get some idea of their surroundings, great bars of yellow drifted through the pervading fog, and made spots of colour on the water, where the dead fish, killed by the effects of the salt water, were floating dismally, with their white undersides turned to the sky. 

The sides of that raised road were sprinkled with dead animals. Twenty-seven cows, five sheep, eight pigs, and three horses could be counted before the outpost was reached. Standing on the Belgian side, and looking out from an observation-post across the water, it seemed like a shallow sea, broken here and there by islands. On one of them was a picturesque ruin which had once been a pleasant château; on another, nearer, was a farmhouse in a clump of trees. It was not often that the moisture-laden atmosphere permitted a glimpse of the far side, but when it could be seen it showed itself as a low line of trees, behind which were the German guns, from which ever and again at stated times tongues of fire belched forth and missiles leaped across the water, sometimes falling short of their objective and generating huge geysers, sometimes pitching well into the village, and with a thunderous roar shattering into a heap one more of the tottering walls. 

It was here the Two settled down in a crumbling house, with every pane of glass shattered to splinters and the walls gaping. A musty smell of the dust of ancient bricks and mortar, compounded with dirt and damp, hung over it all. There was no comfort, no convenience of any kind. To have to sleep there one night would have been considered a hardship by most people. The light was always dim, for the cellar was lit only by gratings in the pavement above. It was, perhaps, ten feet by about twelve feet, and so low that Gipsy, who is not much above medium height, could just stand upright in it. Mairi, of course, found plenty of space for her lesser inches, also it suited most of the little Belgian soldiers well enough, but there came a day when a King----- But that must be told in its own place! 

Yet they set to work at once to make it cheery. They marked it outside by a Union Jack and the Belgian and French flags, and it was not long before they were joined by the Lion of Scotland, for a Scot is never so Scottish as when away from his, or her, own land. 

The first need was some sort of a fire to cook by. They found a stove, which they humoured like the family cat, for it had all the attributes of that animal, taking everything for granted and immovably refusing to do what was required of it in return, and behaving generally as if the cellar had been built for its convenience. Two soldiers had been sleeping in the cellar on some straw when the new tenants arrived. They were good, willing lads, called Alphonse and Desire, and they at once set themselves to be useful, and helped to loot a few necessary bits of furniture from the deserted houses round. When all was done there was not very much; a table, a few chairs, and some straw held in its place by a board, were the principal items, and even then there was hardly room to move. Here the Two settled down. At night they lay down as they were in their clothes; as Mairi explains, "To dress, that means to brush one's hair and put on one's boots." They were seldom alone; the Cockney chauffeur, Woffington, slept in one corner, and the little cook, Alexandre, in another. This was of necessity also, for the cellar was the only place in Pervyse which provided even a measure of safety from the shells. If other members of the ambulance party turned up, as they sometimes did, they generally went back to Furnes the same day, but if any of them stayed they had to sleep there too. The first night the American lady and Dr. van der Ghinst were both there. How they all fitted in is a puzzle. Certainly one could not have set a boot on the ground between them. 

The details of settling in and finding household requisites were work after Mairi's own heart. She was never so satisfied as when she was giving everything a "good turn-out" and ma-king all comfortable! Aided by some of the Belgian Engineer officers, quartered in a ruined house at the other end of the village, she climbed by means of a plank over to a farm-house on an island which had been left desolate. Here they found spoons, forks, plates, knives, and other necessaries. A few cabbages and potatoes might still be scraped up in the gardens and patches of ground, and these were most welcome for the soldiers' soup. A little lean-to outhouse, in which there was, most fortunately, a copper in working order, had been made into a kitchen, and here the soup for the weary, frozen men in the trenches was made. 

Alexandre, the cook, was a cheery little Belgian lad of seventeen; he had a bullet head and a seriocomic expression that made one laugh to look at him. He had been through all the fighting, and considered this relegation to the kitchen as a "soft thing." He had an immense sense of his own importance, and very quickly let people know that, in spite of his lack of inches and years, he was master of his own quarter-deck; even the officers who hung around, drawn by the savoury whiffs that came forth, were quickly sent about their business. Alexandre was no longer a private, but a chef! It was the difference between an ordinary seaman in the Navy and the captain of a merchant ship. He soon became known far and wide as "le magnifique petit cuisinier." He and the other two worked of their own accord, for at this time the military authorities gave no countenance to this astounding project. 

Alphonse and Desire were Walloons, and manifested all the striking divergencies which lie between Walloon and Fleming, countrymen though they be. The Walloon is excitable, talkative, and inclined to be frivolous. It is true that when he works he generally puts his whole heart into it, but he is only too ready to knock off and have a chat with anyone who will oblige him. He is very intelligent and fond of mechanical inventions; he readily grasps the idea of new machinery, and makes a good chauffeur. He has a great deal in common with the Frenchman, which is hardly wonderful. Youth seems his most characteristic feature; the simplest things amuse him, and he runs eagerly, like the Athenians, after "any new thing." He is up and down, extravagant, careless, attractive—all by turns. He wins your heart and hurts you, and brings you round again, so that you forgive him and would do anything for him; but you are left with a conviction, after all, that he does not much care. It is hardly to be supposed that with all this the Walloon is going to submit easily to discipline, and as most of the chauffeurs which the Two had from time to time were Walloons, there was frequent trouble. As Mairi explains, "If you say to him, 'Do that,' he will immediately not do it! If you say, ‘Will you please do that’ he will think about it. You must lead them, not drive them, or you'll never get a thing done." About their courage, however, there cannot be two opinions. And it was something to have a couple of men who could do heavy lifting when it got beyond women's strength. The atmosphere in the cellar naturally got a little dense after a night, and it was very early in the morning when Gipsy climbed the ladder, and, putting her head out, indulged in a long in-drawn breath of the sharp morning air. It was keenly cold, everything was frozen hard, and the white cat-ice snapped on the puddles in the road. She had hardly been there a second when she was joined by Mairi. 

At first it was very difficult to get accustomed to the perpetual feeling of dirt and being tumbled. After a day or two camping out anyone knows how "lived in" one's clothes feel; but the clean, natural surroundings of woods are Paradise compared with a dank cellar. The sense of discomfort was very great, but there was nothing for it but to grin and bear it; and there was so much to do, it was forgotten after a while. The very first morning job was to see that Alexandre did his duty in getting the fire under the copper alight and the appetizing soup heated. It was soon bubbling away, with cabbage, turnips, and potatoes and other ingredients in, and was poured out still scalding hot into pans, which the orderlies carried to the trenches, following the Two. The trenches were only fifty yards away, and the men who had been on watch or trying to sleep in their icy little shelters, insufficiently clad, were thankful to see this vision of Paradise, and greeted these wonderful English ladies with enthusiasm, holding out their little mugs in stiff, frozen fingers. Oh, the joy of being able to do it! It was worth while to have gone through all the weary days of waiting and the disagreeables for this! But, alas! though there seemed quantities of soup when they started, it was never enough—they could have done with much more. 

The difficulty of dealing it out into the small mugs was considerable, and the Two usually came back to their own breakfast splashed with soup but glowing with pleasure. 

In the days that followed, the grand success of the soup was almost eclipsed by the charms of the chocolate which succeeded it later in the day. Cauldron after cauldron of this was emptied as quickly as it could be made. When the men were relieved in the trenches they came over to the little cellar-house, and swarmed around it like bees, waiting patiently for their turn, and holding out those endless mugs which became like a nightmare to the fillers. Hour after hour chocolate was scooped up and poured in, and the stains of dirty brown formed a pattern with the stains of greasy soup on the khaki suits of the two patient workers, whose backs ached after this really hard manual toil. Yet there was nowhere to rest; it was impossible, even had there been time, to go and lie down on the dank straw in the cellar, with people coming in and out, and there was nowhere else to go. 

What the perpetual dirt and cold and discomfort meant to these Two can hardly be put into words. There was no privacy and no possibility of a good wash: their hands quickly became engrained with scrubbing, potato-peeling, and other rough work. To keep the place habitable at all, with the continual incursion of wet and wounded men, was difficult. To get rid of soiled, stained bandages was difficult. There was a constant smell of disinfectants and stagnant or rotting things. Continual wet penetrated everywhere, and in those early days they had not learned, as they did later, the best way to equip themselves against this. 

The news of this extraordinary little centre of light and comfort right up in the actual firing-line spread like wild-fire, and every Belgian officer discovered that urgent business took him to Pervyse at one time or another in the next few weeks. They appreciated the chocolate just as much as the soldiers did, and also the English way of making tea, "the four o'clock," and the tiny cellar was generally packed about that hour, while Mairi, with a flushed face, hastened to and fro, wondering if the supply would last out for all these guests. The very fact that the ladies were there in the midst of them, English ladies, backing them up and believing in them, sent the spirits of the whole Division up degrees higher. It was the 9th Regiment that was then stationed at Pervyse, and they began to look upon the ladies as their particular property, and crowed over the other unfortunates who had no such luck. 

In the ruin of the house above the cellar was a half-buried piano, and one day one of the officers, being unable at that moment to squeeze into the cellar, try he never so hard, cleared away the stones and rubbish that had fallen on it, and discovered that though it missed a part of the keyboard in the treble, the rest went all right, so he sat down and played a waltz to fill up the time. Immediately those of the rank and file who were hanging about outside started dancing, their heavy boots clashing on the frosty road, until the party in the cellar emerged to see what was going on. As the ladder disgorged man after man it seemed a miracle where so many had managed to pack themselves. 

Mairi, flourishing the immense kitchen spoon with which the soup was stirred, beat time for the dancers. The rattling piano, with its occasional lapses, wheezed gaily away in the wind-swept ruin, the ruddy-faced men and the two handsome women laughed helplessly, while the hidden death waited ready to pounce. It was like laughing in a lions' den; it was all right for the moment, but anything might happen. 

A strange life, indeed! 

There was even a worse job to be faced than that of carrying the soup to the trenches in the morning. This was to visit the sentries and outposts at night, over the railway line, towards l'Yser, and carry the warm comfort to feed their bodies, and the cheery thought, they were remembered, to brace up their minds. 

After tea this hung ominously over the girls; it was the worst bit of the day, but it had to be faced. It could not be done until it got dark, and then, as often as not, the shelling began. So they took their lives in their hands, and never knew when they started out if they would come back. 

They were always accompanied by an officer, who had the password, and the mission had to be carried out in perfect silence, so as not to attract the enemy's unwelcome attentions. Sometimes there was a gleam from the stars if it were frosty, but generally, frosty or not, the damp from the ground rose in a white winding- sheet and shut out all such light. Their feet rang on the iron-bound road in spite of all their care; they carried the heavy jugs of scalding liquid, and the sudden challenge, "Halte là!" ringing out in the night, always made them jump, though they knew, or perhaps because they knew, it would come. "Officier Belge," was the reply. "Un homme en avance," commanded the voice of the unseen sentry, and the officer moved slowly forward within five paces of him, while the others waited till the password and countersign had been softly given and received. 

Three times this ceremony had to be repeated as they went out and three times on their return, but on the outward journey each grateful sentry received a cup of hot chocolate as a delightful reward. 

Out across the bleak raised road, with the water lapping at its sides, or with the thin crackle of ice settling down, they went. There was a pale line of radiance from their own side where the trenches lay, and sometimes the flashes of the German artillery shone out across the water, or occasionally a star-shell, making a radiance more glorious than the heart of the lightning. Then they had to catch their steps at once and stand still as stocks, jug in hand, until the star burst and faded. The air was full of portent and menace. Once as a doctor advanced on this very road to meet Gipsy a shell caught him, so that he died. "Why was it he, and not I?" Any sensitive mind must ask that question. 

The men of the mitrailleuse who guarded the outpost lived in a hole in the ground. In pitch darkness a hand groped for the jug and drew it in, and then, their work accomplished, the little party started back again on their eerie journey. 

Back across the railway line night after night, with the woolly fog touching damp faces like unearthly fingers, then good-night to the officer, and the stumble down into the little "cave," where the stove was perhaps giving off a warm glow, reflected on the red blankets and the slumbering form of Woffington. They crawled into their sleeping-sacks, and slept the dead sleep of those whose whole being has endured to the utmost during the run of daylight. 

The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 8 - The Great Idea

'The Cellar-House of Pervyse'

A Tale of Uncommon Things from The Journals and Letters of the Baroness t'Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm

A Story of Two British Volunteer Nurses on the Yser Front

Chapter VIII - The Great Idea

The brilliant idea which Gipsy had conceived the day she met Dr. Van der Ghinst grew like Jack's beanstalk, one night at Oudecappelle, when for the first time the two friends together slept among the soldiers in the fire-zone. They had been up and down, up and down, under the direction of Gilbert, almost all day, and when they heard their services would possibly be required at night too, it seemed the obvious thing to do to sleep at this tiny village instead of going back that long, weary way to Fumes. The French marines were occupying a wee café, and as one of them advanced to ask the ladies to share it with them, they thought for the moment he was suffering from some new and horrible kind of wound, because he never looked the same for two seconds together; as a matter of fact, he had a face of the gutta-percha variety, and in his civilian days had earned many a penny by displaying this eccentricity, of which he was obviously proud. He did not want to let his talent rust for want of use, and so as he came forward he displayed one moment a large, flat, vacant-looking visage, with two tiny eyes like currants, and the next it was shrunk and wizened up as if he had lived to the end of all time. They watched, fascinated, until he turned and led the way to shelter. This was a very low, dirty little Flemish house with a filthy stained wooden table, greasy soiled chairs, and a floor which might have belonged to a cow-byre. Two chairs were pulled out and put in a corner, and here the two friends sat together, while, as dusk gathered, the gloom was lightened by a guttering candle stuck in a wine-bottle. Just behind them was a Belgian battery, and the heavy guns sent out a roar every few seconds which shook the tumble-down place, so that it was marvellous it did not fall in a heap. Every scrap of glass in the small window-panes had long since vanished. The French soldiers were sitting in the filthy damp straw on the ground, smoking and chatting, spitting, and playing cards with a pack on which the stains looked like a weird new variety of suits. The place was fairly stuffy, but every now and then the door opened to let in an icy draught. "Rubber Face," as they had christened him, noticed that his guests had nothing with them in the way of food, and in his large-hearted generosity immediately did his best to provide for them. He produced an egg from his pocket with the air of doing a conjuring trick-as indeed it was, for Heaven alone knew how he had managed to keep that egg unbroken since he had obtained it. One would have thought the concussion of the guns would have been enough to shatter it. He promised an omelette, and finding an old tin plate, which he assured them had "déjà de la graisse," he broke the egg on to it, holding it over an improvised fire. He would have probably died of a broken heart if they had refused it, and being out to heal and not to break, they had to go through with it. 

They wondered what would happen when sleeping-time came. It would be a weary performance to sit upright all night, and yet to fall upon that wet and fetid straw, among the French soldiers, many of whom were heartily asleep already, seemed equally impossible. But Gilbert, by exploring, discovered a small inner room and managed to procure a certain amount of fairly clean straw, and there they retired. It was indeed to Mairi not the first experience of such a kind, because a night or two before, when Gipsy had gone over to Dunkirk, she had slept here alone among the men with the fearless freedom of a child. She had had her own pile of straw in the corner, and was hedged in by Gilbert and Tom, the trustworthy chauffeur. They had had some cushions from the car as pillows, and a couple of rugs, and she says, "I was well protected, for Gilbert had his revolver under his pillow, and lay between me and the soldiers." 

It speaks highly indeed for the men that her confidence was justified. And in all the most difficult circumstances arising out of the crude conditions these two women encountered, there is never once a hint that they were annoyed in any way. Main had lain down now with her knitted khaki wool cap pulled well down to prevent the straw from tickling her ears, and she was asleep within five minutes. Like the soldiers, she had become so much accustomed to the thunder of the guns that she hardly heard it. But Gipsy was more highly strung, and she found sleep impossible. There was a faint gleam from the candle, which burnt all night, and though she tried hard to sleep, at first she found it out of the question; her imagination was too active. 

"The place was so eerie and small, and the rats worried me. I thought of all sorts of stories of rats eating one's nose and nibbling one's finger-nails. The men through the doorway snored, too, horribly. I wondered what would happen if the Germans came suddenly, as they might quite easily do. The springing to life of those slumbering men, and the awful carnage there would be in that tiny space!" It was only when there was a lull in the firing for a moment that the snores could be heard; they were ordinarily drowned in the hullabaloo. When there was a louder crash than usual, so that Gipsy started up thinking the whole house was coming down to bury them, not one of the sleepers stirred. So she sat up and wrote her diary, the little green book that accompanied her everywhere, and was stained and soiled with the weather, matching the red one that Mairi faithfully carried and looked upon as an inestimable confidant. To have the privilege of seeing those two diaries is to get a peep into two uncommonly fine souls, of very different and in many ways complementary characteristics. 

At 2.30 Gipsy got up to creep outside to see if anything was happening, and as she moved her girl companion stirred, turned, and flung back the cap from her fair hair and opened her sleepy eyes; so they crept out together. There they stood, feeling very, very small under the arch of that immense plain, with the flashes on the horizon, the red glare over devastated Dixmude, and a bitter wind sweeping around. It was impossible not to recall the solemn words of the prophet Isaiah: "Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence." 

The solemnity of the night, with Death stalking close at hand ready to spring upon them at any second, impressed them. What was going to happen in the future? Were they prepared to go on with this work in spite of all the dirt and rats and smells? Were they able to say to each other fearlessly and confidently, "I will go through with it; I will devote myself to helping the little soldier in the trenches, whatever comes. No more will I think of myself. I will sleep whenever and wherever I can. I will live, if need be, under fire as he lives. I will carry my life lightly if I can succour, help, and comfort him." The glamour had all evaporated; they knew what such a vow involved, but quite steadily they both agreed to take it. There were no heroics; there was no romance; there, in that bitter wind, standing in front of the poor little house full of snoring soldiers, with that horrible glare in their eyes, and the thunder of the guns shaking the ground they stood on, they held each other's hands, and determined to thrust away all idea of fears, nerves, or feminine weaknesses. In the early grey light of the morning they consummated that heroic resolve with a real sacrifice. They saw it must be; there was no escaping it. So, with a pair of surgical scissors, Mairi cut and hacked and chopped until she had shorn her friend's dark silky hair to a length of about two inches all round, and then Gipsy did the same for the strong fair crop so unlike her own. They looked at it, laughing queerly, the fair and the dark, before they knotted the tresses together and sent them floating down the canal. When one is grown up, hair completely cut off can never grow quite the same again. Later on, recounting how little one member of the party had really done for the cause, Mairi remarks significantly, "She never cut off her hair." 

They pulled down their woolly caps well over their shorn heads, so that the men should not notice anything, and returned to the hut. Gipsy says, "With that little bundle of hair went all our nervousness, all our fear of rats, our dislike of dirty food, and our ideas of home comforts. We became soldiers from that hour." 

It was very shortly after this that they met Dr. Van der Ghinst again. He had stuck to his wounded in Dixmude until the Germans actually came into the town and took him prisoner; but he was allowed to continue his work, which he did for three days, and then, when he went out to the German trenches under escort to collect the wounded, he managed to give his captors the slip, and, after it was dark, got clear away. 

During the many hours of waiting since they had first met him, Mrs. Knocker had thought out many things. It seemed to her that a great deal of the ambulance work was running to waste; there was too much careering backwards and forwards, with too little result. Huge ambulances, consuming a great deal of petrol, were sent on trivial errands. One night she and Main had been ordered miles away with a great car merely to carry a bundle of bandages. At another time she had actually been asked to take out "sight-seers" from England in one of the cars! 

It was after the wounded were collected that the shaking up over the vile roads, and the long interval before they could be properly attended to, often resulted in death. There must surely be some way of preventing this. It seemed to Gipsy that a poste de secours right up as near to the firing-line as possible, where the men could be treated for shock, and restored somewhat before they had to undergo the awful journey, would be the means of saving many. The question was whether such a poste was feasible. Dr. Van der Ghinst warmly approved the idea, but he stood alone, for when it was mooted to the rest of the Corps it met with disapproval all round. Dr. Munro, indeed, told Mrs. Knocker plainly that if she did this she would do it in disobedience to his orders, and all funds would cease—she must finance herself. Ambulance work had the cachet of respectability; everyone knew what it was, and approved of it; but this other— whoever in their senses had heard of women living right up among the actual fighting soldiers, miles from any hospital? It had never been done, and therefore, of course, it was useless to try it—so argued the official mind. The other members of the Corps had had the same experiences as Gipsy, but though they saw they did not perceive as she did. 

Yet Gipsy never wavered for one moment in her determination. She had the sense and foresight to see that in this original idea lay a field of mighty usefulness; she had the courage to look out over the edge of the rut of custom and convention. She knew instinctively where her own strength lay; she could put through a big thing where others might fail. Opposition only hardened her determination. She began to piece out this great idea, to fit it together. Practical points must be considered. In the first place, she could not run the poste herself, and who so suitable to help her as Mairi, the brave little assistant who had been her right hand all along? It was not because Mairi had been her friend in that far-away, almost forgotten life in England that she chose her, but because she had proved herself the possessor of the right kind of qualities, and in spite of her age had a steadiness far removed from that excitable feminine love of rushing about which many women think displays their enthusiasm. It was tolerably certain that she and Mairi together could do more for the lives of the Belgian soldiers than had heretofore been done by all the ambulances together. 

A night or two later (November 7) Furnes was shelled in earnest, forty or fifty shells falling into the town. Gipsy and Mairi were still in their disused house, and slept peacefully through it all. One doctor, who occupied the room above them, had a cheerful habit of walking about on the parquet flooring in his thick boots at unearthly hours, so when Gipsy heard of the shelling she expressed surprise at not having been wakened by it; but added: "Though, to be sure, I should never have known the difference between the shells and the doctor's boots, even if I had!" So are the small, near things and the great, far-away things merged into one size by our human limitations. 

As the German advance seemed imminent, the time was ripe for the new experiment, and the place chosen must, of course, be approved by the military authorities. Dr. Van der Ghinst was himself now established at Pervyse, which he considered suitable. A road from Dixmude runs westward, and bifurcates at Pervyse. From here the roads form a sort of isosceles triangle, with the base on the sea- coast, one branch running through Furnes and the other to Nieuport. Pervyse therefore lies roughly about half-way between Dixmude and either Furnes or Nieuport. Gipsy, who never let go of anything which she had determined to carry through, one day took out Dr. Van der Ghinst in a car to Pervyse to survey the place and to consider its suitability. 

It was obvious that this part of the country was being bludgeoned to death. A week earlier there had been some houses still standing at the sides of the road, but now there was little, not even an upright ruin, only heaps of stones; while the road, which had once boasted a shell-pit here and there, was now pock-marked with them, converted into black cauldrons filled with water by the incessant rain. Driving a car resolved itself into a perpetual gamble, with the odds against one. 

All along the road were abandoned motor-cars dashed to pieces even as they ran along, or smashed by a collision with a heavier waggon, which had sent them hurtling into the deep ditch. The prodigal waste of it all was appalling! There was plenty of evidence that the passengers had not always escaped the fate of the cars. In one of them the charred body of the chauffeur was mixed up in grisly fashion with the wrenched and distorted wheel. The air was tainted by the revolting charnel smell, not to be imagined by those who have not experienced it, nor to be forgotten by those who have. The first challenge of it is unmistakable, carrying certainty as to its origin, and it seems to curdle the very blood with its loathsomeness. 

Bloated cows like inflated balloons, humped sheep, and horses looking terribly clumsy in grotesque attitudes, lay in the fields; and when they drove into Pervyse, Gipsy exclaimed with conviction: "There is not a house one could even pig it in!" 

She little foresaw how long it would be her home! 

Dr. Van der Ghinst promised to look out and find, if possible, a shelter for her head among the ruined houses. He advised her, however, to take a rest and go over to England before starting on this new work, as she and Mairi had now been under almost continuous strain, in very trying conditions, for over six weeks. She agreed, and resolved to arrange it. When she returned to the house in Furnes, which she had now grown to look upon as quite her own, to tell her comrade and pack a few clothes, she found Mairi standing speechless before a furiously enraged bonne, who was pouring out upon her, in the dialect of her particular native part of France, what she thought of thieves and robbers in general, and of these Two in particular. Even Gipsy's French, which was better than the average Englishwoman's, was unequal to the situation. The woman flew at them like a hornet, and refused to admit them. She had cautiously returned to collect some clothes for her mistress, and the first glad surprise at finding Furnes still standing, had turned to wrath in her frugal soul when she found evidences of occupation; and they were bound to admit that she was not unjustified from her point of view. They had to fetch the Belgian on whose authority they had established themselves, to explain and set matters right before they could collect their things. 

Then away to that glad, strange England, which seemed almost like a foreign country after such amazing experiences. It is hardly to be wondered at that fair-haired Mairi, in her well-worn khaki and knitted soldier's cap, carrying part of a Uhlan's lance given to her as a trophy, created quite a sensation in Waterloo Station.