'The Cellar-House of Pervyse'
Chapter XII - Waiting for Attack
After having seen death around in so many guises, it seems natural for Mairi Chisholm to open her New Year's diary with the terse and unaffected words: "What will 1915 bring to us? Death, I suppose, to many—I wonder which ones!" Fortunately they were both spared; not a scratch did they get, though they worked the whole year through in the thick of the danger.
For women, especially women unaccustomed to continuous physical exertion, the difficulty is to keep on doing the same thing, as many heads of canteens have found. A woman in her own home may do a little housework, but there is nothing to prevent her knocking off and resting when she feels it too much; to "keep on keeping on," as Mr. J. C. Snaith has it, is the test. There are hundreds of women willing to do a day a week in canteens, handing out food to munition workers or soldiers, but even the one continuous day, always the same day, seems more than many are able to manage, and it is the units among the tens who hold on regularly. But to go on as the Two did, day in, day out, while months ran into years, with every nerve on the alert, under a strain both physical and mental, is a wonderful feat.
The New Year made them both very busy, as the fighting continued active, and the urgency of the work compelled Gipsy to break off her journal, which does not begin again until September; but sturdy Mairi continued hers, and Gipsy's letters home fill the gap.
In the very beginning of the year, she took over a party of six soldiers to England; they were going to convalesce in a little house which had been given by friends. That journey was a nightmare. The men were very ill—they were not merely slight cases; three of them were on stretchers. The crossing was rough as it could be; all the half-dozen were sea-sick, and, as some of the poor fellows were stomach cases, and ought never to have had this added strain, their cone on became pitiable. Each separate one needed a nurse to himself, and in the close quarters, with the violent motion of the ship, Gipsy had to do everything for them all, with only the help of anyone who might happen to be there. The responsibility for those poor racked bodies was hers. When they drew near Dover, it was so rough no pilot would come out, and they tossed about three weary hours outside, until by desperate signalling as to the condition of the wounded on board a pilot was obtained. They got into Dover at nine at night instead of five o'clock, as expected, and the additional hours of tossing about seemed spun out into eternity for each suffering man. The last train up to town had gone, and as arrangements had been made on the supposition that they would be in London that night, there was no accommodation ready at the town. Mr. G-----, one of the ambulance corps, had fortunately come to meet the boat, and had got some ambulances. From the pier Gipsy telephoned to the military hospital to ask that her patients might be taken in, but there was no room. Then she tried the King's Head Hotel, and was able to get them in there. Naturally they were all frightfully ill with pain and exhaustion, and all night long she had to run from one to the other, helped by an R.A.M.C. officer who fortunately happened to be staying there. She must have been feeling very bad herself, but she never mentions this in her account of the incident; all she says is, "They were splendid."
This was on a Saturday. The men were taken up by train to London next day and across to Euston, and here, owing to the scarcity of Sunday trains, it was impossible to avoid a delay of five hours. Out of the six sufferers, four were really in a very precarious state and one in particular very nearly died. It was an immense relief when at last they reached their goal and were handed over to the willing helpers waiting for them. But the experience was enough to turn anyone's hair grey, and it is easily understood that Gipsy found it v actually "restful" to get back to Pervyse. She was knocked up by the experience, and looked forward to a decent night's rest, but instead of that the guns split the air all night long.
The floods at this time were terrible; it looked almost as if Pervyse itself might be inundated. The ground was saturated, and the water rose a foot high in the cellar, so that it could not be used at all. In the génie house they were dry underfoot, but in spite of all they could do to stop it the rain dripped through the cracked and battered roof into the living-room. The Two lived in oil-skins and rubber boots as they paddled to and fro on necessary errands. The men in the trenches were knee-deep in water, and agonizing cases of cramp, rheumatism, and neuritis, came in daily. To add to all these joys, the Two discovered a new form of danger which had so far escaped their notice; this was the risk from their own shrapnel when the empty cases fell in the village. "We were watching some aeroplanes when we heard a most quaint sound—an indistinct low whistle, like a shell, and yet different from any kind of shell we had met. We heard it for some time, and were puzzled by it, but came to the conclusion it certainly was getting nearer, and quite suddenly, with one impulse, we both fled like rabbits into our hole, and an empty shrapnel case pitched on the side of the road exactly where we had been. It was from our own shrapnel. We had never thought of that." A brief record of some of the cases dealt with from day to day is given by Mairi. A sergeant was brought in on a stretcher, but he was already dead, half his head having been blown off. Another man had gone out of his mind with the noise and horror; another had his hand badly scalded; several had severe internal pains brought on by inflammation in the cold, and one morning at 3.30 they were woke up to tend a man in supreme agony who had had the bad luck to blow off his own hand with his rifle. He had somehow managed to shoot off his right thumb, and the same bullet had gone on and penetrated his left arm. How he had done it remained for ever a conundrum—there seemed to be no sort of attitude that even a contortionist could take to manufacture that particular damage.
All this time the Two had paid for their own food, and had never asked a penny from the Belgians. They lived precariously on whatever they happened to get. "We had a ham to boil, and I made the breadcrumbs," said Mairi, showing that they did not neglect any amenities within their reach. Another day "An officer shot eight sparrows, which he gave us, and I started in and plucked the little jossers. Quite a job!"
The occasional runs into Furnes to fetch stores were a pleasant break in lives which, though full of incident, tended to become monotonous. In Pervyse they had to spend most of their days in "two dingy, smelly, little postes," the only alternative being that depressing street with its brooding death. The rattling drive into the town was over roads pock-marked with shell-holes, varied by an occasional bump when the car ran off the pave and landed in the mud. On these occasions they had to get out and heave her back; once they had even to use a jack, and, as shells were flying about and they were well within the radius, it required some nerve. When they arrived in Furnes, "we had a mad rush round the shops and grabbed all the stores we could find; it all seemed so new and interesting after a desolate village. Then a mad rush back again over the same old bumpy, holey road, and home to our tumbled- down cottage. Yet you have no idea what a great treat it all seems to us."
The first time they did this in January, though they were only away two hours, they found that it was just that scrap of time in which the Queen of the Belgians had chosen to pay them a visit. They could have wept with disappointment at having missed her. "We were as sick as death," says Mairi in her expressive slang, "and it will take us some time to get over it."
There were other visitors of much less consequence who had found them at home, and that she, the heroine Queen who had been the inspiration of Belgium in these its darkest days, should have missed them caused them acute chagrin. The Mayor of Paris was among their visitors one day, and Gipsy remarks ironically: "There never is a wounded man here when these great folks arrive. I think I shall have to get a tame blessé and keep him permanently bandaged on a stretcher on the floor, and when I see them coming get busy and look interesting with hot chocolate and bandages."
They had grown to be quite expert in the matter of judging the different kinds of shells, and even their size, from the noise they made, and by now they were accustomed to the crash of the naval guns from the coast, which pitched huge shells right over Pervyse. One day, when the bombardment was very bad, a priest and some soldiers ran into the genie house to recover their breath and shelter before going on. The shells from the German lines seemed to be dropping all round that particular spot. "They must be passing over the cellar-house, anyhow," Gipsy remarked; "they can't be in two places at once."
But they could, and were, for some of them at any rate fell close by one poste, and some near the other, exactly as if those two houses had been the only objectives. The cellar-house itself was not hit, but it escaped by a miracle, for, judging from the destruction around, at least a hundred shells must have pitched close by it, and the first line of trenches just behind was churned up into mud. Luckily there did not happen to be any soldiers there on that particular day, and the damage done was trifling. The total bag was the priest slightly, and one soldier badly, wounded, for all that expenditure of shell- power. But it was obvious that the cellar-house was untenable, and sadly they decided to give it up altogether. The shelling now came very close to it constantly, and what with the wet and the danger, it seemed foolish to try to hold on to it, especially now that they had got the other poste where the necessary work could be carried on.
One morning they agreed to go together to the cellar-house to bring up the few things that remained there. At the moment there was, as Mairi phrases it, "nothing doing," and they walked along light- heartedly. Close by the cellar-house half a dozen of the soldiers' horses were stabled in a dilapidated outhouse, and Gipsy, who was a good horsewoman and passionately fond of horses, went in to pet them. She and Mairi stood there a minute or two stroking the soft noses of their friends and feeding them with bits, and then went on. It did not take ten minutes to pick up what they wanted in the cellar, and they had just started homewards when "out of the blue" there came a most appalling explosion and then the smashing and falling of bricks. The noise was quite different from that of a shell bursting on the roadway, and they knew that something had happened. Wheeling round, they saw clouds of mortar and smoke and dust rolling about, and found that the room above the cellar was smashed to pieces, the last remnants had gone. Worse still, the stable had suffered too, and regardless of the fact that usually three shells pitch in quick succession about the same place, they ran back to see what had occurred. The cellar-house had only caught a little of the explosion, but it was obvious a large shell must have plumped right into the stable, for three of the horses lay dead, and the other three, badly hurt, struggled feebly. It was an agonizing sight, like a slaughter-house, with the crazy walls and damp straw splashed red with blood. It was, perhaps, more like "War," as seen in the imagination, than anything they had yet come across. One of the soldiers came to take the three surviving horses to L'Espérance, and led them up the village. When Gipsy saw the miserable procession, she realized at once that the poor animals were too severely injured to walk all that way, so she stopped them at the poste and had them put in the garage shed.
All that day she spent in alternately trying to do what she could and "annoying every officer I saw, from a General to a Lieutenant," to send a vet. At length, at nine that evening, a vet came. He shot two of the remaining horses, saying their case was hopeless, while the Two stood beside him holding the lantern, with the wind and rain moaning round, and the only survivor looking on with patient eyes, as if he understood all about it. But alas, he had to go too! The vet took immense pains, and dug bits of shell out of him all over, but his case was hopeless, and the next day he shared the fate of his fellows. Both girls felt this deeply. Animals had a tremendous hold on their hearts, and it seemed a pitiable filiale to the little cellar- house, now finally abandoned.
From henceforth a new chapter of the story was opened, and they lived in the génie house altogether and tended the men there. A notice was put up outside the cellar-house directing all who needed aid to come on farther. The genie was in reality not so safe as the cellar-house had been, because it was entirely above ground, but it was a little further from the guns, and one terror that had haunted both of the friends, though they had never confessed it in words, was laid to rest. At least, whatever happened, they would be always together. It had been secret agony to think that, with the coming and going from one poste to the other, one might be caught and smashed while the other was not there. More than ever they determined to cling to each other, always and everywhere, so that in death they should not be divided.
In the midst of all this a painter came to paint their portraits. And in the words of the irrepressible Mairi, "We had to stand at fearful angles for unknown times." Tension was still growing, in spite of these frivolous incidents. Before the end of the month Furnes, having been heavily bombarded, was evacuated by the British hospital, which had so far "stuck it out," and though their connection with the hospital, or indeed any practical association with the ambulance corps, had long ceased, this cutting of the thread made them feel more than ever that they stood alone in their little shell- swept village.
Custom breeds contempt, and so many times had they heard that the Germans might make a big attack and break through that they had grown to smile inquiringly at such rumours and pass on, forgetting all about it in five minutes. But now the rumour grew and gathered force, and was backed up by authorities there was no gainsaying; yet, as no orders had come through from headquarters about evacuating their post, they stayed where they were. On the evening of January 25 some of the officers whom they had not seen for a little while came in, and seemed surprised to find them still there. They obviously did not want to be alarming, and yet their grave looks and general air of tension indicated that something unusual was expected. The girls questioned them, and made them admit that they had every reason to expect a terrific onslaught before the morning. However, it was too late now to take any steps toward evacuation, even had they wished to; there was nothing for it but to see it out. It was the waiting in inaction that was most trying. Again and again both of them say in their journals, "I don't mind the shells while I am busy with the wounded; I forget all about them." But to sit and wait for this unknown terror, that was indeed a strain on nerve power. For the time all was quiet—-an uncanny stillness that was saturated with suspense!
The officers continued to come in and out, going away to see to this or that item of supply, and returning again graver than before.
Man after man got up and went out to hold mysterious whispered colloquies in the passage with despatch-riders; the atmosphere grew more tense with portent. Visions of the grey-clad Germans, lust-mad, bestial, pouring in like a herd of wild beasts, haunted the women.
The room in which they sat has been described by Mary Rinehart, an American writer, who visited them here. "What a strange room it was, furnished with odds and ends from the shattered houses about! A bed in the corner, a mattress-bed on the floor, a piano in front of the shell-holed windows—a piano so badly cracked by shrapnel that panels of the woodwork were missing and keys gone—two or three odd chairs, and what had once been a book- case, and in the centre a pine table laid for a meal. Every opening of the door into the corridor brought a gale of wind through the ruined house—hardly a foot of the plaster interior of that room was whole. The ceiling was riddled, so were the walls; in the centre of the former was a great bulge.”
One of the other ladies happened by an unlucky incident to be at the poste that night; it was the American, whose forte was piano- playing. Presently she sat down and began to play on the hacked and battered piano, that had once been used only for hymn-tunes strummed out on Sunday evenings by a respectable bourgeois family. The melody that was its soul now found utterance and streamed out from her finger-tips, and floating away through the chinks in the rough improvised shutters, carried the souls of her hearers up into the world of great spaces lit by stars. Even the men who brought those fateful messages paused for a moment at the shot-battered entrance outside as the music drifted round them.
On and on she played, until one o'clock came, and still no guns were heard. One by one the officers slipped away, all except one who was on picket duty. As Mrs. G----- paused, letting the notes die away, a far-distant sound of mitrailleuses came over from the trenches. All the party were now very white, and it was long since anyone had uttered a word.
Soon after a quick step was heard on the road, and there was a little stir of expectancy while Corporal Delmotte of the Mitrailleurs came in. They had not seen him for a day or two, as he had been on leave. He saluted the Captain, explaining that all the reserve mitrailleuse men on leave had been called back and centred in Pervyse, as a big attack was expected at earliest dawn. Even now, he suggested, there was time for the ladies to go back to Furnes. His proposal was no sooner understood than dismissed: they had had no orders— unanswerable reply. But to back it up, woman-like, they added: what better would they be if they did go? Supposing that accursed host burst through, would they be any better in deserted Furnes than here?
"So we passed this strange, strange night." But the strangest incident of all was to come.
Mrs. G----- had flung herself face downward on one of the beds and fallen asleep. Gipsy and Mairi linked arms and stole quietly to the door, with the Captain and corporal behind. They felt the street as vibrant as an electric wire, though all the sounds were muffled and any orders were in whispers. They had stood there only two minutes, when behind them on the side remote from the German lines they saw an electric torch flash out— once, twice, dot, dash, dot, stop! It was away out in the fields, and even though they could not read the message, there could be no doubt of its purport: it was telling the Germans what reinforcements were being brought up. A bright blue light from the German side sprang out in reply.
The man beside them gave a deep hiss in his throat, "S-s-sacré!" There was a hurried whisper, then a quick scuffle and rush as the corporal with a detachment of three swept past to nail the traitor in his lair. They did not get him, needless to say— traitors are far too wily to remain where bayonets may pin them to the door-post.
By five o'clock the two friends had fallen peacefully asleep, utterly unable to keep their eyes open any longer, and when they reopened them in broad daylight everything was as usual, and the Germans had not materialized, but all day long came in an avalanche of wounded, which showed what the cost of holding them up had been!
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