'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 IV - The Retreat
But Ghent did not long remain a refuge; well before the
middle of the month earnest warnings to evacuate it were given. The way in
which the final summons came was dramatic. Mairi was in bed, sleeping with her
usual heart-whole earnestness, when she was awakened suddenly, and saw standing
by her one of the doctors attached to the ambulance, telling her the Germans
were upon them and they must fly. Then followed a scramble. The first thing was
to save the wounded soldiers, who must not be left to fall into the hands of
the foe. Alas! the order had come through the day before that all the kits
belonging to these men were to be sent to Ostend as a measure of precaution.
One of those "decisions in blinkers" which cause such infinite
suffering. The patients were mostly in thin cotton pyjamas; the night was foggy
and bitterly cold; the only conveyance was an open transport waggon with a
scanty layer of straw on the boards. Gipsy and Mairi rummaged for all the
blankets they could find, and wrapped the poor fellows up in them; but it must
have been a terrible journey for many of them. They were drawn by horses, and
could only go at a walking pace on account of the direful roads, the quantity
of traffic already occupying them, and the darkness of the night. And they had
to cover fifty miles to gain safety! When they were finally sent off the
members of the corps had to think of themselves.
There was none too much room in the cars, and they had to
pack in like sardines. As Gipsy had been sitting up with a wounded officer when
the summons came, and since then, having been occupied with the soldiers, had
not been able to change the cotton hospital dress she happened to be wearing,
she suffered frightfully from the cold. The cars crawled along to Eccloo, where
they stopped at the house of an Englishwoman, a friend of Dr. Munro's. Although
this lady and her husband were themselves preparing to fly, they received the
rather forlorn party with the utmost kindness, and spread abundance of blankets
on the floor of the drawing-room, where they made up a-roaring fire. There they
all waited till daybreak. A strangely assorted party they were, lying about in
all directions, some on the window-seats, some on the floor, and the two chauffeurs
betrayed their qualifications by falling sound asleep with their mouths open,
sitting bolt upright on two stiff-backed chairs, a feat that filled some of the
others with admiration.
After breakfast next morning they all followed the wounded,
and reached Bruges in time to get them into the convent hospital by midday. The
stiff cold men had been unpacked, and fed, and laid in comfortable beds, and
were beginning to recover a little from their awful night, when like a
thunderbolt came the news that the Germans had entered Ghent at seven that
morning, and that twelve thousand of them, ruthless men, without pity or
consideration for the fallen, were hastening forward to Bruges; so all the poor
tired soldiers had to be carried down again, and sent onward once more. It was
heart-rending work.
This time the objective was Ostend, and along that
poplar-lined road, which had seemed so peaceful when they ran the other way in
high hopes about three weeks ago, back the Munro ambulance people went with
heavy hearts. The nearer they drew to Ostend, the greater grew the crush. It
seemed as if the whole population of Belgium must be converging on the port,
the last link of the chain which England held. Hospital ambulances, troops,
refugees, guns, transport, carts, were surging together and every now and then
jammed. There was much cursing and swearing in a variety of tongues. In the
town, streets, shops, houses, were packed with people; it seemed as if they
must all be welded into a jelly, and unable to extricate themselves until the
Germans arrived. The mental harassment of seeing to the wounded added tenfold
to the strain on those responsible, and the relief was great when, at last,
they were got on to a boat going across to England, which carried no less than
seven thousand wounded men!
With the lifting of this terrible load the personal troubles
of the ambulance were by no means ended, only now they had time to think of
themselves. So desperate was the situation considered that no baggage was
allowed to be taken off the cars. Still in her cotton dress, now soiled and
crushed in a way to depress the heart of the most careless of women, Gipsy had
to pass another night; and all night long consciousness was beating at the back
of her half-awake brain that any moment the summons to continue the weary
flight might sound. Rumours flew fast. The advance of the Germans was at a
terrible pace. They would be here before morning! Already they were here! Their
numbers swelled to hundreds of thousands— all was over! Though the worst of
these forebodings proved untrue, yet the situation was bad enough. The work
seemed smashed across the middle, past possibility of recovery, and there was a
horrid knell of defeat to deaden and depress energies already heavily
overtaxed.
That evening in Ostend, Mairi came across an elderly man in
civilian clothes, much too small for him, standing at a street-corner, with
tears running down his cheeks. She remembered having noticed him a few hours
earlier in a garde civique uniform, and greeting him in the informal way that
necessity teaches, she learnt his tale of woe. It was poured out on her in a
flood of mingled French and Flemish, in that half-whimsical, half-serious way
that told her he was sorely hurt; and as her French had already improved, she
gathered the gist of it even before she was helped out by a Cockney Tommy who
stood beside him.
' 'E sys, lydy, that orders is froo for 'em to put off of
them clothes; he ain't a soldier, and them Boches, if they cetch 'im, why,
they'll 'eng him I seen 'im done it. 'E's pitched 'em in the sea, all them noo
clothes. Gord! I wish I had had 'em on a Sunday morning in the East End! I'd
'ev got more'n a quid for 'em! 'E's right-down sore, 'e is, pore old blighter!
And thet's what 'tis all about. Na, I not speak his lingo—for why? 'Tain't
necessary; I can understand these chaps wifout, and that's for why."
Mairi left them with a mingled feeling of laughing and
crying; it seemed so preposterous that the great stout citizen who had given up
his spare time and trained in peace should now have this awful humiliation
forced upon him, the knowledge that he was only a play- soldier and no use at
all. To be held in disdain; to be forced, by his own action in throwing away
his beloved uniform, to confess it was all make-believe and no use when real
war came—this was worse than being wounded. And there were hundreds of his kind
doing the same thing. In Ghent the canals were choked with the heavy coats and
belts flung away at the fierce threat of a shameful and ignominious end. It
seemed, after all, as if the plight of the Gardes Civiques was more pitiable
than that of the ambulance corps.
By nine the next morning a greatly swelled procession was
marshalled out of the town on the road to Dunkirk; everyone had to keep in
position and go at one pace, which was necessarily a crawl. There were about
three hundred and fifty cars in the line, including those of two Belgian
Generals and others belonging to Ministers. Most depressing of all was the
news—which turned out after all to be untrue—that the Diplomats accredited to
Belgium had gone to England. That horrible morning left its mark on the Two.
Each hour, spun to extremity by the tension within, had upon them the effect of
three in power of exhaustion, and yet they really got to Dunkirk not much after
midday. Here again was the inextricable confusion, the crush and push. In
contemplating war one looks at it usually in the light of history, when events
are clear-cut and told with precision. Of the horrible uncertainties, the
dubious outlook, the impossibility of reliable information, the difficulty of
correct judgment on the spot, only those who are in the midst of it are aware.
Even at Dunkirk there was no room; men were sleeping on the
billiard-tables in the hotels. So the two friends went out to a little
bathing-place on the coast called Malo-les-Bains. But they were now in Belgium
no longer, and the feeling that they had been forced to leave the country they
had come to help weighed heavily on them. "I think I never felt so truly
miserable," says Gipsy, "as the moment when we passed the frontier
line between Belgium and France. I have left my heart behind me in that brave,
honest little country. I shall always think of Belgium as the first country in
the world for bravery, honesty, chivalry, and patriotism, and it will be my
fervent prayer that they may some day get their country back again. There is
something about Belgium that no other country has. I think my heart will always
feel more Belgian than British in future"—which embodied an unconscious
prophecy.
It was probably the first time Malo-les-Bains had ever had
any visitors so late in October, and it must have been puzzled and overwhelmed
by this strange honour. Inexpressibly dreary was Malo, with its long level
plage and straight sea-line, seen through a curtain of steadily pouring rain.
The rows of empty bathing-sheds faced the sea like sentry-boxes, and the
little, cold, inadequate fringes of foam crept hesitatingly to their doors as
if they hardly knew what to make of it all. There were still a few
fishing-boats about, and a few men shrimping, mostly very old men, who
"must eat."
The whole of this place was transformed by war, and the
overflow from Dunkirk more than sufficed to overcrowd it as it had never been
overcrowded in its gayest season. It was here that the party were joined by the
authoress, the late Miss Macnaughtan, who afterwards established a soup-kitchen
in Furnes, and did excellent work there at the railway-station among the hungry
and bewildered soldiers.
Malo was crammed with troops. There were the British with
the strong unmistakable Manchester accent of self-confidence; the French in
their heavy and clumsy-looking overcoats; Senegalese shivering and wilted by a
climate which spoilt the delightful game of war; and, of course, plenty of
Belgians. Now and again a Taube hovered overhead, fiercely hawk-like, and got
well shot at; and once a British aeroplane descended hurriedly, emitting
sulphurous language, because it had been unrecognized and included in the too
cordial welcome. At night all lights were out save the great searchlights
which, like the Flaming Swords of the Angel of Eden, pierced the flatness of
the forsaken sands.
On October 20 began what resulted in the tremendous fight
for Ypres, when the Germans were thrust back, and those who had thought Belgium
all lost took heart again. The mixed population on the coast thinned down
again. Those who had given up heart went on further into France, the soldiers
were moved, the refugees absorbed elsewhere. The place in these circumstances
looked more dreary than ever, and, to add to their woes, the friends had a
personal grief.
Gilbert was missing—Gilbert, who had so endeared himself to
the corps that they felt for him as for a lifelong friend. They had seen
nothing of him after the hasty summons to leave Ghent, and they greatly feared
he had fallen, and was lost in the great swathes of the nameless and unburied.
Dr. Munro had gone over to England to get help to start the work anew, and
Mairi and Gipsy spent the few uncertain days at Malo wandering about, walking
into Dunkirk on the pretence of shopping, and trying to make the best of the
contradictory news that filtered in. One day they suddenly saw a familiar green
uniform on a straight, slim young figure, with the head held proudly and
lightly as ever. There was no mistaking that gait and that gay insouciance;
even before they had caught a glimpse of his face they had flown toward him
with outstretched hands. Gilbert laughed and seemed pleased at their
solicitude. Oh, he was all right. He had stayed with his regiment to hold up
the German vanguard and allow time for the evacuation of Ghent; but he had got off
all right, scot-free not even a wound. "You won't have the pleasure of
nursing me; I believe you're really disappointed," he chaffed in his quick
French, and Mairi's shrewd eyes saw the tender, quizzical look he gave her
friend. Instantly it darted into her mind that there was something behind all
this. Gipsy's white face and worried, preoccupied manner had not been only for
a surface friend. Mairi was clever beyond her years, and a loyal little soul;
she led the way to the sea-shore, indicating the road back to Malo, and then
quietly absented herself, and they did not miss her!
As she turned rather sadly by herself to go back into the
town she was hailed by one of the British naval officers she knew. He caught
sight of her at once, for the streets were comparatively empty; every kind of
vehicle had been requisitioned for the flight. There was a hideous, dead-alive
look settling down on Dunkirk.
"Come along and have a joy-ride in the last taxi-cab
left in Dunkirk," he cried out cheerily. "An experience to
record!" She assented readily, feeling rather lost without her almost
inseparable companion. Her mind, indeed, was busily at work as she sat there
beside this clean frank boy, who looked like a Spaniard, so dark was his
colouring. Of course, it was inevitable that Gipsy would marry again some time.
She was so good-looking, so high-spirited, so charming, that many, many men
would want to marry her; and oh, she did so love to be loved! Therein lay the
danger! Was Gilbert good enough? After all, they knew very little about him. He
was attractive enough personally, but he was not of their race. Mairi would, of
course, never spoil sport; if Gipsy was glad to walk alone with him, walk alone
with him she should Î If she wanted to marry him, marry him she must; only she
could decide. But then she was impulsive, her enthusiasm could be caught at the
high tide, and what if such a match were not for her happiness? In some ways
Mairi often felt older than her friend. "The dear kid!" she said half
aloud.
"The blue eyes are very clouded to-day," remarked
Lieutenant N---, turning his own black ones on his companion.
He said it very nicely and not offensively, but Mairi sat
up, on her dignity at once.
That sort of thing was all right for Gipsy, who had been
married already and could put up with it; but as for her, she had other things
to do than marry— at present, at all events. In the far future, of course, it
would be all right, but when it came in her case it would be a very serious,
for-ever-and-a-day business.
"Do you believe in mixed marriages?" she asked,
refusing to respond to the personality.
"Depends what sort of 'mixed,' " the naval man
replied briskly, making an opening for himself out of the most unpromising
material, as is the way of the navy. "Old and young? Rich and poor? Fair
and dark? Land and sea?" The last two very significantly, bending his own
close-cropped, dark head down toward the girl's fair hair. "I believe in
the last two all the time!"
Mairi looked at him quite candidly and fearlessly, without a
trace of coquetry. "I haven't any use for that sort of thing," she
announced simply; "I'm a Scot," and she wondered why he laughed so
merrily.
Dr. Munro returned next day with the news that all was well,
and that they were to have headquarters at Furnes, in Belgium, and continue the
work. The party was to be reorganized, and M. de Broqueville, one of the sons
of the Belgian War Minister, was to command one division of it. This was a
great help, as naturally, with all the good-will in the world, an ambulance
party, which has to go into the most secret places and which can't help poking
into matters that must be kept secret, is on delicate ground when run entirely
by another race, even though they be the closest of allies. This addition would
put them on an unassailable footing. The British Field Hospital was also to be
re-established at Furnes and work in connection with the corps.
Gilbert also was to be attached to the party, and was to
drive one of the cars and take some sort of command.
Even in the three weeks that she had been with the corps
Gipsy had already been dissatisfied with her own position; she felt that so
much energy and usefulness was being run to waste for want of proper grip and
organization. Nevertheless, she and Mairi knew one thing, for lack of which
knowledge so many well-intentioned women fall by the way when they attempt to
do hard public work. They knew how to wait. In all work of world importance
there are dreary intervals of waiting, and, as Mairi said, "patience is
necessary beyond everything." A great many women live on a kind of
spurious excitement; they must be rushing from one thing to another, and if
this stimulant fails them they collapse altogether. It is the woman who knows
how to wait who can take the opportunity when it comes. Therefore, though the
first start had not been auspicious, yet Gipsy was willing to wait, for with
the additions to the party, and the knowledge born of experience, she was
hopeful of better things for the future. It was a new start.
She and Mairi went through their clothes, and discovered
that many things that had been considered absolute necessities on leaving were
merely encumbrances; so they sent back to England all but the strictest
minimum, or what they now considered so. They had passed one milestone on the
way, but there were others ahead! Three of the ladies of the party were to work
with the forward ambulances in future, collecting the wounded, and the other
two, at first, were to remain at the hospital. Naturally there was great competition
for the danger-line. Mrs. Knocker, it was unanimously acknowledged, must be a
"forward" as, owing to her expert knowledge of cars, she was
invaluable. "My driving was much more use than my nursing," she
remarked, in speaking of these days; but there were difficulties in placing the
rest of the party. It eventually fell to Mairi and the American lady to toss
for the last place at the front, and Mairi, to her great joy, won.
Furnes is south of Nieuport, about a third of the way
between it and Dunkirk, but further inland than either. It is not a coast town,
and is a meeting-place for many canals. Like all these quiet old Belgian towns,
it has a Grand Place, and to this day Furnes still embodies something of the
restful Sunday-afternoon feeling which was a characteristic of so many of these
little towns before they were rudely awakened out of their sleep to be
mutilated and smashed. There are two great churches in the Place, and a
beautiful Hôtel de Ville with a verandah or balcony in front.
In one corner of the Square are some quaint old Spanish
houses with crow-stepped gables and red roofs, in contrast with the grey stone
of the other buildings. As the cars rolled in on October 21 the red light of
the autumn sun caught these roofs and showed up between the flying buttresses
of St. Walburga. The little groups of soldiery standing about gave the
impression of terriers with their ears pricked. They wore an air of expectancy;
yet Dixmude was held, and while Dixmude remained Furnes was safe.
Year by year on the last Sunday in July the inhabitants of
Furnes have turned out in holiday garb to watch, with mingled awe and
excitement, the strange procession organized by the “Confrérie de la
Sodalité". Weird men covered by dark brown robes which came over their
heads like palls, leaving only two slits for their bright narrowed eyes to peep
out, walked solemnly through the streets; they bent beneath burdens of heavy
crosses, and their bare feet struck the uneven stones. Yes, and there were
women too, thus disguised, doing penance for sins of which their own
consciences accused them. They were followed by other oddly dressed characters,
which seemed to the startled children, who kept one hand on their mother's
gown, to have marched straight out of the Bible. There was Abraham flourishing
the very sword with which he prepared to kill Isaac, and Aaron with his snaky
rod. Then the hot grip relaxed a little, for there came next a real babe, one
that they knew was like themselves. But the awe and the mystery gathered again
as they saw Jesus crowned with thorns, stately though in agony, with the sharp
points actually pressing into his flesh, and the same Christ bending beneath
the cross. Then, as the evening darkened, and the serious mummers, doing their
part with intense earnestness and solemnity, paraded round the Square, there
appeared the Host, most mysterious of all, with flaming torches and shadowy
figures beside it. All these sights were of the nature of a mystery-play, and
were reverently carried out by the people themselves: they were not done for
purposes of gain or to attract tourists, for very few tourists ever discovered
Furnes. With this annual ceremony and the remembrance of the Inquisition in
their midst, of which dread stories were whispered, while the very house where
those awful torturers sat in conclave is still standing in their sight, the
people of Furnes grew up with more of seriousness in their nature than their
fellow-subjects.
And now reality had come upon them. What need any more to
represent these things in mummery when the via crucis was on every high-road in
Belgium; when strings of weary men and women, parched with thirst and nearly
dead with fear, bowed beneath their loads, trudged solemnly along they knew not
whither; when these very churches, so sacred and so grand, St. Walburga with
its high steeple and St. Nicholas with its tall, blunt tower, were packed with
dying and agonized men suffering from tortures as real as any dealt by the
Inquisition? The remembrance of those garbed figures peeping through the slits
in their hoods became almost friendly in comparison with the ruddy-faced,
brutal German soldier in the hated grey-green uniform. When Furnes revives her
Passion-play, it will seem a play indeed against the background of reality.
The convent close up against St. Nicholas is now a hospital,
and it was into this courtyard that the cars of the ambulance party turned when
they reached their destination. The battle of Dixmude had filled the little
rooms with wounded, and even the reading-rooms and the chapel were
requisitioned. The courtyard was crowded with the ambulances, and every ten
minutes a fresh load of wounded was brought in.
No words can describe the horror of the scene that unrolled
before them in the wards. There was so much to be done and so few to do it. The
great influx of the wounded had swamped all attempts at order. Those who had
just been attended to were lying side by side with the dead, and all the
loathsome sights and smells of an operating-theatre were mingled with those of a
charnel-house. Some men lay dying silently, the perspiration standing in beads
on their foreheads as they gasped for each difficult breath that might be the
last; others were hideous spectacles, with smashed faces or lack of limbs. They
twisted and groaned in irrepressible agony, uttering low, heartrending moans
that would not be suppressed. Valiantly the whole party of the new-comers set
to work to separate the living from the dead, and carry out the bodies to the
room set apart for them opposite.
"Twice we were called into the operating-room with our
stretcher, and twice I received the full weight of a man off the
operating-table. I supported the head-end of the stretcher, as I was the
stronger," said Mairi. The doctors had not a second to lose, or life might
be wasted; if a man died, he must be tumbled off hastily to make way for one
for whom there might be a chance. The dead were laid out in rows together, some
wrapped in winding-sheets; but here and there the uniformity of the still lines
was broken by a homely, mud-stained uniform, just as if a soldier had lain down
to sleep among them.
For five hours these noble women worked at this terrible
task. As fast as the beds in the wards were emptied of their inert burdens they
were re-occupied by others, for the ambulances brought in fresh cases
continually, and it might be that the next man also died, and was in his turn
carried out within the next few moments. Meantime, two small boys with a
hand-cart were all the transport available for transferring the bodies from the
ever-filling mortuary to the place of burial. The lads took hold of the
stretcher, tilted it up a little, slid the dead man into the cart, and when
they had as many bodies as they could manage they went off with their load.
Thus the men who had stood up for honour and right against an overwhelming foe,
who had preferred that their country might for a while be overrun in order that
her soul might live for ever, were huddled into nameless graves.
There was no room in the already overflowing convent for any
of the party to lodge, and so they were told to hunt up quarters for themselves
anywhere in the town. Many of the houses were empty, as the inhabitants had
fled. A Belgian gentleman who had lost everything he possessed by the war had
attached himself to the ambulance corps as chauffeur, and when at last Gipsy
and Mairi, feeling as if they had been bruised all over, body and soul, with
the body-breaking and heartrending work, were free to think of themselves, they
found him waiting.
"You will want somewhere to live; I can show you a
house that belonged to my cousin," he said in French. "It has, at all
events, a good pianola and is clean."
They followed him gratefully, for to start house-hunting in
an unknown town at that hour of the night was a pastime that had no attractions
to offer. When they reached the house, he gave them the key and told them to go
in and take possession, and himself vanished.
It might have been one of those houses in Pompeii where
everyone was eating and drinking and going on with their ordinary avocations
when swift death descended on them from the sky. On the table in the
dining-room was the horrible débris of what had been the last meal, scraps of
food lying on the dirty plates where the dust had hardly had time to settle.
Flowers still unwilted were in the vases, and the promised pianola was open. As
the two tired women penetrated from one room to another they became very silent,
and ceased to remark on the familiar evidences of life. It was as if the house
were tenanted with ghosts; it was almost impossible to believe that these
people who had lived and loved in that place were not there silently resenting
the intrusion. The evacuation must have been in the night, for the beds had
obviously been used, and the coverings were hastily flung aside as by those who
rise in haste. In the largest bedroom, that of the lady of the house, clothes
were lying about on chair-backs and on the floor—dainty delicate garments, in
accordance with the dressing-table appointments, and the violet-scented sachet
carelessly dropped among them. It was horrible to think of the occupant of that
room as a homeless wanderer, possibly dependent on charity!
They could picture the scene. The scepticism as the tale of
the oncoming Germans became more insistent; the refusal to go. "They will
never come to Fumes," and then the cry ringing through the silence of the
night: "Dixmude is fallen; the Germans are almost here." No matter
whether the cry were true or false, it pierced like truth into those startled
ears, and almost stopped the beating of the heart for an agonized second. Then
the thoughts of husband and wife simultaneously leapt to the nursery. "The
children!"
This was on the next storey, and the toys of the children
proved their presence. They lay on the floor in a pathetic little row. Near the
door were a furry bear, a doll without a head, and a cart. It was as if the
little ones had snatched up their treasures, and had had them pulled away from
them one by one by the frightened nurse. Would they ever return? And what would
be their future, torn up by the roots like this? Lucky for them, indeed, if
their parents clung tightly to them in that modern Exodus, for if not, it might
be that those very children, whose soft little fingers had clung so
determinedly to the beloved bear, might be hopelessly lost, as thousands of
Belgian children have been, to be brought up in one great group, not knowing
their own names or the names of their forbears, forlorn waifs, in spite of all
that human kindness could do.
