On the Edge of the War Zone | Page 4

proposition that I should harness Ninette and go with her out to the battlefield, where, she said, they were sadly in need of help.
I asked her how she knew, and she replied that one of our old men had been across the river and brought back the news that the field ambulance at Neufmortier was short of nurses, and that it was thought that there were still many wounded men in the woods who had not yet been picked up.
I asked her if any official call for help had come. She said "No," but she presented so strong a case in favor of volunteering that, at first, it seemed to me that there was nothing to do but go, and go quickly.
But before she got outside the gate I rushed after her to tell her that it seemed impossible,--that I knew they didn't want an old lady like me, however willing, an old lady very unsteady on her feet, absolutely ignorant of the simplest rules of "first aid to the wounded," that they needed skilled and tried people, that we not only could not lend efficient aid, but should be a nuisance, even if, which I doubted, we were allowed to cross the Marne.
All the time I was explaining myself, with that diabolical dual consciousness which makes us spectator and listener to ourselves, in the back of my brain--or my soul--was running this query: "I wonder what a raw battlefield looks like? I have a chance to see if I want to-- perhaps." I suppose that was an attack of involuntary, unpremeditated curiosity. I did not want to go.
I wonder if that was not the sort of thing which, if told in the confessional in ancient times, got one convicted of being "possessed of the devil"?
Of course Mlle. Henriette was terribly disappointed. Her mother would not let her go without me. I imagine the wise lady knew that I would not go. She tried to insist, but my mind was made up.
She argued that we could "hunt for the dead," and "carry consolation to the dying." I shook my head. I even had to cut the argument short by going into the house. I felt an imperative need to get the door closed between us. The habit I have--you know it well, it is often enough disconcerting to me--of getting an ill-timed comic picture in my mind, made me afraid that I was going to laugh at the wrong moment. If I had, I should never have been able to explain to her, and hope to be understood.
The truth was that I had a sudden, cinematographical vision of my chubby self--me, who cannot walk half a mile, nor bend over without getting palpitation--stumbling in my high-heeled shoes over the fields ploughed by cavalry and shell--breathlessly bent on carrying consolation to the dying. I knew that I should surely have to be picked up with the dead and dying, or, worse still, usurp a place in an ambulance, unless eternal justice--in spite of my age, my sex, and my white hairs--left me lying where I fell--and serve me good and right!
I know now that if the need and opportunity had come to my gate--as it might--I should, instinctively, have known what to do, and have done it. But for me to drive deliberately nine miles--we should have had to make a wide detour to cross the Marne on the pontoons-- behind a donkey who travels two miles an hour, to seek such an experience, and with several hours to think it over en route, and the conviction that I would be an unwelcome intruder--that was another matter.
I am afraid Mlle. Henriette will never forgive me. She will soon be walking around in a hospital, looking so pretty in her nurse's dress and veil. But she will always think that she lost a great opportunity that day--and a picturesque one.
By the way, I have a new inmate in my house--a kitten. He was evidently lost during the emigration. Am��lie says he is three months old. He arrived at her door crying with hunger the other morning. Am��lie loves beasties better than humans. She took him in and fed him. But as she has six cats already, she seemed to think that it was my duty to take this one. She cloaked that idea in the statement that it was "good for me" to have "something alive" moving about me in the silent little house. So she put him in my lap. He settled himself down, went to sleep, and showed no inclination to leave me.
At the end of two hours he owned me--the very first cat I ever knew, except by sight.
So you may dismiss that idea which torments you--I am no longer alone.
I am going to send this letter at once