'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 VI - Gipsy and the Major
BY this time the resources of food at the hospital had run
out—even porridge was not available—but fortunately one small butcher's shop in
the town was discovered open, and at the back was a kind of little café where
the workers could get something to eat. Through the streets of Fumes they went
night by night in the pitch darkness, occasionally brightened by an odd gleam
that seemed to come from nowhere until you were right on the top of it and
looked down into a cellar opening off the pavement, where some of the few
inhabitants who had not fled were crouching together talking in awestruck tones
by the gleam of a candle or a few sticks. All lights were strictly suppressed
of course, and at first, when there was still a certain amount of meat in the
butcher's shop, they had to grope their way out, knocking their faces against
the cold, still carcasses that hung suspended stiffly from their hooks.
As for the provender they got, Mairi remarks caustically of
the soup: "One tomato in fifteen pints of water, but it was hot."
In desperation she and Gipsy at last descended to the
cellars of the house they were in, and found some potatoes, jam, beer, and
bottled waters, and carried them back for all to share alike. They had
certainly earned their keep by the work they were doing for the Belgians.
Dixmude was being steadily shelled, and day by day they went
on that long, dangerous road to bring in all the survivors they could. But the
day's work was not unrelieved tragedy; a note of high comedy was struck the day
Gipsy happened to be out in Oostkerke, about four miles west of Dixmude, just
off the more direct and northerly road between that place and Furnes. She had
made friends with a very odd-looking Belgian Major who, if he had been a little
larger, would have done, without any making-up, for the figure of the giant in
the old nursery tales, for he had a rubicund face, brilliant red hair, and a
flaming moustache and bristly eyebrows of the same hue — therefore the word
that fitly describes him is "scarlet." He was on observation duty.
The only possible places in this flat country from which any extent of ground
can be surveyed are the tall steeples of the churches, or, rather, perhaps they
were the only places, for as both sides made the same discovery, and used them for
the identical purpose whenever they came across them, they were naturally
shelled persistently, and few indeed survive. The stout Major knew no English,
but he was greatly impressed by this good- looking, fearless Englishwoman in
her war-stained khaki suit, and so, with expressive gestures, he invited her to
climb up the church steeple and see for herself where it was that he spent his
days surveying. Gipsy never refused an offer like that, especially when the
church tower might any moment be crumpled up by a shell. As Miss May Sinclair
has said, "she had an irresistible inclination toward the greatest
possible danger."
Up they climbed, and as they mounted each ladder became
steeper and narrower than the last. When they gained the summit and peered out of
the tiny observation hole, shells were bursting around in a way to satisfy the
most ardent lover of danger! As they descended, in a very steep and narrow
place, the Major stopped, completely barring the way, and drawing from his
pocket a little crumpled French-English dictionary, laboriously turned the
pages with his thick moistened thumb until he had found what he wanted. Then,
looking up, he spluttered out: "Si je n'étais pas marié. Je voudrais dire,
'I luv you.' "
A sense of her own appalling loss must have made Gipsy
nearly fall from her perch; it certainly required every bit of her self-control
to enable her to keep her countenance and insist on his proceeding. But she had
plenty of dignity, and the descent, perilous in more ways than one, was safely
accomplished. They descended again, to find at the church door a sight which
straightway sent the matter flying from her head. A French officer lay there
with his foot in "a lovely mess." He had been scouting along the
railway line which runs through Oostkerke, between Furnes and Dixmude, and a
bullet had gone clean through his leg low down. He dropped on the ground to
apply his first-aid bandage, and suddenly a "Black Maria" burst
within ten yards of him, throwing earth all over his bleeding wound. He knew
the great danger of the microbes in the soil getting into an open wound, and,
having nothing else handy, he used the contents of his flask, which happened to
be coffee, to wash it out. But as he told the story he was concerned, not with
the pain of the wound, or with the terribly narrow escape he had had of his
life, but with indignation that the shell should have dared to spatter him and
make him waste his precious coffee! Such is human naturel He had dragged
himself back to shelter with his mind full of this detestable outrage, and he
poured it forth to a most sympathetic listener. Gipsy attended to him
skilfully, and helped him into the little dug-out occupied by the Major. But
directly she had entered it she was filled with anxiety to get out in a hurry;
such a smell of stale tobacco, burnt fat, and other worse odours, permeated the
place that it might be imagined even a shell would rebound harmlessly off the
solidity of the atmosphere! However, nothing would satisfy the Major but that
she must sit down and have a plate of soup. In whatever circumstances, soup did
sound inviting on this bitter day to someone chronically under-fed and
over-tired, so she assented.
A plate was promptly produced containing soup of a pale
yellow colour, with a layer of grease about half an inch thick on the top. It
was accompanied by a spoon which had most obviously been used to "sup
soup" by someone else a very short time before. However, Gipsy
philosophically remarks, "It looked a little cleaner when it had been in
my soup!"
While she was struggling with the mess heroically, unwilling
to hurt the feelings of her well-meaning host, his face lit as a happy thought
struck him, and, fumbling in his pocket, he produced a little silver- paper
pill, which he crushed between his fingers, burying it gaily and firmly in the
midst of the plate of soup. The awful thought that it might be some sort of
love-potion—nothing seemed too weird for belief in the strange life she now
led—seized on Gipsy, and her quick mind visioned a sort of "Midsummer
Night's Dream," with the Major in the part of Bottom! Seeing that he was
delighted with his own performance, and totally unaware of the feelings he was
arousing in her, even while she watched the soup grow darker under the
influence of the pill, she nobly swallowed more of the nauseous compound. The
taste assured her that the addition must have been some sort of Liebig, and the
worst consequences would not result!
In came just then a doctor belonging to the corps, and he
was straightway supplied with a similar plate; and as he looked at it
wonderingly, and Gipsy thrust hers from her, having had all that human nature
could endure, the little Major thereupon crowned his achievements by snatching
at the spoon and picking up by its aid what was left of the silver pill—mainly
paper by this time— and conveying it and the spoon together into the soup of
the new-comer!
The second course of this appetizing meal was a stale and
decrepit- looking piece of steak that had evidently won through with its life
after a fierce assault by someone. This was too much; good intention carries
far, but beyond a point flesh revolts. Gipsy shook her head as pleasantly as
she could, but with a decision that was unmistakable, whereupon, the little
man, dancing round her in the confined space, hauled out his precious
dictionary, and after a mad hunt found the elusive words he was searching for,
and with flaming face and eyes thrust them under her nose:
"I am stung to the quick!"
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