Lay Down Your Arms 48

Lay Down Your Arms 48

It was late at night when I got to Königinhof. My travelling companions

had been obliged to get out at an earlier station. I was alone, in fear

and anxiety. How if Dr. Bresser were prevented from coming? What step

could I then take in this place? Besides I was, so to speak, broken on

the wheel by the journey, quite unnerved by all the experiences of grief

and terror that I had passed through. If it had not been for my longing

for Frederick I should have wished now for nothing but death. To be able

to lie down, go to sleep, and never wake again in a world where things

go on so horribly and so madly! But preserve me from one thing at least,

to live on and know that Frederick is among the “missing”!

 

The train stopped. Tired and trembling, I alighted and took out my

hand-baggage. I had taken with me a hand-basket, with some linen for

myself and charpie and bandages for the wounded, and also my travelling

dressing-case. This I had taken quite mechanically, in the belief in

which I was brought up that one could not exist without the silver cases

and baskets, the soaps and essences, the brushes and combs. Cleanliness,

that virtue of the body, corresponding to honour in the soul, that

second nature of educated humanity, what a lesson had I now to learn,

that there can be no thought of it at such times as these! That,

however, is only consistent--war is the negation of education, and

therefore all the triumphs of education must be annihilated by it; it is

a step backwards into barbarism and must therefore have everything that

is barbarous in its train, and amongst others that thing which to the

cultured man is so utterly abominable--dirt.

 

The chest with materials for the hospitals, which I had looked out for

Dr. Bresser in Vienna, had been given over with the other chests to the

care of the Aid Committee, and who could tell when and where they would

be delivered? I had nothing with me except my two pieces of

hand-baggage, and a bag of money round my neck containing a few hundred

florin notes. With a tottering step I crossed the rails to the platform.

There, in spite of the lateness of the hour, the same confusion

prevailed as at the other stations, and the same picture was always

repeated. Wounded men--wounded men. No, not the same picture, one still

worse. Königinhof was a place which was over-full of these unfortunates,

there was not an unoccupied room in the whole village, and now they had

brought the sick in crowds to the railway station, where, hastily

bandaged up, they were lying about everywhere--on the ground--on the

stones.

 

It was a dark, moonless night, the scene was illuminated only by three

or four lamps on the pillars. Exhausted and thirsting for sleep, almost

for the sleep of death, I sank on the unoccupied corner of a bench and

put my luggage on the ground in front of me.

 

At first I had not the courage to look about me and see whether amongst

the number of men who were busy passing to and fro here one might be Dr.

Bresser. I was almost persuaded that I should not meet him. It was at

least ten chances to one that he would be prevented from coming, or that

he would get here at another hour than the one fixed, for there was no

longer any regularity in the service, my train had certainly arrived

much later than was fixed by the railway regulations. Regulations--another

civilised conception, and so it was now set aside along with the rest.

 

My undertaking seemed to me now a perfect lunacy. This fancied call from

Frederick--could I then believe in mystical things of that sort? It

certainly had no foundation whatever. Who knows? Frederick was perhaps

on his way home, perhaps he was dead; why was I seeking for him here?

Another voice began now to call upon me, other arms were stretched out

to meet me. Rudolf, my son, how he would have been asking for “mamma”

and not been able to get to sleep without his mother’s kiss when he bade

“good-night”. Whither should I turn here if I did not find Bresser? And

the hope of finding him had of a sudden become as small as the hope of

the lucky number among 100,000 lots. Luckily I had my bag of money--the

possession of bank notes affords always a means of getting out of

difficulties. Mechanically I felt the place where the bag should have

been hanging. Good God! the strap by which it had been fastened had been

torn off, and the bag was gone--was lost! What a blow! And yet I had not

recourse to any complaint against my destiny. I could not lament: “How

hard fortune is hitting me!” for, at a time when misfortune was falling

in floods on all sides, to complain about a little misfortune of one’s

own would have made one blush for one’s own selfishness. And besides,

for me there was only one possibility which could alarm me--Frederick’s

death; all the rest was nothing.

 

I began to look at all the people present. No Dr. Bresser. What to do

now? To whom to address myself? I stopped one of the men passing----

 

“Where can I find the stationmaster?”

 

“You mean the director of the Sick Depôt--Staff-surgeon S----. He is

standing there.”

 

He was not the person I meant, but perhaps he would be able to give me

information about Dr. Bresser. I approached the place he pointed out.

The staff-surgeon was speaking to a gentleman standing near him.

 

“It is a pity,” I heard him say. “Here and at Turnau depôts have been

founded for all the hospitals of the theatre of war. Gifts are flowing

in in masses--linen, food, bandages as much as you can wish, but what is

to be done with them? How are they to be unpacked? how sorted? how sent

out? We have no hands. We could occupy a hundred active officers.”

 

I was just going to speak to the staff-surgeon when I saw a man hurrying

towards him in whom--O joy!--I recognised Dr. Bresser. In my excitement

I fell on the neck of my old family friend.

 

“You! you! Baroness Tilling! Whatever are you doing here?”

 

“I am come to help--to nurse. Is not Frederick in one of your

hospitals?”

 

“I have seen nothing of him.”

 

Was this a disappointment or a relief? I do not know. He was not there,

and therefore either dead or unhurt ... besides, Bresser could not

possibly know all the wounded in the neighbourhood. I must search

through all the hospitals myself.

 

“And Frau Simon?” I asked next.

 

“She has been here now some hours. A splendid woman! quick in decision,

prudent. Just now she is busied in getting the wounded who are lying

here carried into empty railway trucks. She has discovered that in a

village near, at Horonewos, the need is the greatest. She is going

there, and I am to accompany her.”

 

“And I also, Dr. Bresser, let me go with you.”

 

“Baroness Martha, where are you thinking of going? You, so delicate and

unaccustomed to such hard, bitterly hard work as this?”

 

“What else have I got to do here?” I said, interrupting him. “If you are

my friend, doctor, help me to carry out my purpose. I will really do

anything, perform any service. Introduce me to Frau Simon as a volunteer

nurse; but take me with you--for mercy’s sake take me with you.”

 

“Very well; your will shall be done. The brave lady is there. Come.”

 

* * * * *

 

When Dr. Bresser brought me to Frau Simon and introduced me to her as a

sick nurse she nodded, but turned away at once to give some order. I was

not able to see her features in the dubious light.

 

Five minutes later we were on our journey to Horonewos. A country

waggon which had just brought some wounded from that place served as our

conveyance. We sat upon the straw which was perhaps still bloody from

its former freight. The soldier who sat by the driver held a lantern

which threw a flickering light on our road. “An evil dream--an evil

dream.” Such was more and more the impression of what I was going

through. The only thing which brought to my mind the reality of my

situation, and which at the same time gave me repose, was Dr. Bresser’s

company. I had placed my hand in his, and his other arm supported me.

 

“Lean on me, Baroness Martha, my poor child,” he said softly.

 

I did lean on him as well as I could, but what a position of torture it

was! When one has been accustomed during the whole of one’s life to

repose upon cushioned seats, carriages on well-hung springs, and soft

beds, how heavy it falls on one all at once, after an exhausting day’s

travel, to be sitting on a jolting country cart, the hard planks of

which are cushioned only by a layer of bloody straw. And yet I was

uninjured. What then must those have felt who were hurried over stock

and stone in such a conveyance as that with shattered limbs and their

bones sticking out of their skin?

 

My eyelids closed with a leaden weight. A painful feeling of sleepiness

tortured me. Sleep was indeed impossible from the discomfort of my

position--every limb was aching--and from the excitement of my nerves,

but the somnolence which I could not shake off had the more terrible

effect on me. Thoughts and images, as confused as the visions of fever,

whirled through my brain. All the scenes of horror which the regimental

surgeon had described repeated themselves before my spirit, partly in

the very words of the narrator, partly as delusions of sight and

hearing, called up by those words. I kept seeing the gravediggers

shovelling in the dead, saw the hyenas sneaking up, heard the shrieks of

those who were being sacrificed in the burning lazaretto, and between

whiles words came in as if they were pronounced aloud in the accents of

the regimental surgeon, such as carrion crows, market folks, sanitary

patrols. That, however, did not prevent me from hearing the conversation

that was being carried on half aloud by my companions in the cart.

 

“A part of the routed army fled to Königgrätz,” Dr. Bresser said; “but

the fortress was closed and the fugitives were fired on from the

walls--especially the Saxons, who in the twilight were mistaken for

Prussians. Hundreds plunged into the ditches of the fort and were

drowned. The flight was checked by the Elbe, and the disorder reached

its height. The bridges were so overcrowded by horses and cannon that

the infantry could find no room. Thousands flung themselves into the Elbe--even the wounded.”