Читать книгу The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere - M. A. Stobart - Страница 14

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Meantime, Nurse Ferriss, also ill with typhoid, became worse, and, to the great sorrow of all the camp, on Sunday, July 4th, heart weakness proved fatal, and she died. She, almost alone of all the nurses, had not been content with the "Dobro" dumb show language, but had troubled to learn Serbian, and had made excellent progress. She was engaged to be married, as soon as her work in Serbia was ended. How little we guessed that it was not an earthly marriage which would await her at the end of her camp life.

During the afternoon of her death, a violent thunderstorm, with torrential rain, fell upon us—the worst of many storms we had experienced. The heavens seemed to corroborate our sense of tragedy. The whole sky became black like night, and over the eastern hills, messages were flashed in hieroglyphics of zig-zag lightning, up and down the blackness. In the west, blood-red clouds spread themselves crudely over a dark grey sky; and on the northern side, in curious opportuneness, a rainbow—in the mythology of our Scandinavian ancestors, the bridge which led heroes, fallen in battle, to their heavenly Valhalla—shone, as an inspiration of the Life beyond.

I was glad of the fierceness of the storm, because it distracted the attention of the Unit; they were obliged to watch carefully their tautened tent ropes, if they did not want to see their tents whirled across the plain. Tent ropes are awkward customers when rain and wind are combined, for until you get used to such conundrums, it is difficult to see how you can simultaneously obey the rule—to loosen them during rain, and tighten them during wind.

Nurse Ferriss had died in a large ward tent in which other nurses, her friends, were also lying ill. From them it was necessary to keep the news that she was dead. We told them that we had moved her to a quieter tent. Quite true. On the funeral day, at the time when most of the members of the Unit were collecting, to join the procession, a member of another unit, who chanced to be staying with us for a couple of nights, thoughtfully suggested that he should keep the ears and eyes of the patients occupied, by singing and playing to them on his banjo. For ten minutes before I started, as chief mourner, I sat on Nurse Ferriss's empty bed and listened, with outward ears, to nonsense about a cat that wouldn't come home at night, and a needle in a hay stack that wouldn't let itself be found. Then, when the time came for the procession to start, I said I was busy, and left the banjo party sitting up in their beds, shouting with laughter at the latest caprices of the cat.

I then marched with our Unit, to the little chapel attached to Major Protitch's hospital, for here our dead was lying.

The Kragujevatz authorities, to show their sympathy, had decided to give a public military funeral, and though I think that funerals and marriages are occasions which should be sacred to the chief mourners, it was impossible not to appreciate this testimony of a very real public sympathy. Colonels Guentchitch, and Popovitch, and Major Protitch, and Colonel Harrison went with us to the chapel. There were already assembled the British, French, Italian and Russian Attachés, medical and military officials, and representatives of the Crown Prince and of the town, members of other units, and friends of the hospital, etc. The brass band of the Crown Prince played funeral music as the coffin was brought from the chapel, and placed for a few minutes on trestles whilst Dr. Dearmer said a short prayer. Then appeared a hearse-carriage, drawn by a pair of terribly lean bay horses. More music whilst the coffin and many beautiful wreaths were placed in the carriage; and the procession started, to slow music—the same melancholy bars played over and over again—for the cathedral.

First walked a Serbian soldier carrying a cross, on which was written the name of the dead, also a wreath, with flaring pink ribbons; then Dr. Dearmer, carrying his Prayer Book in one hand, and a brown, lighted candle—given him by a Serbian official—in the other. Candles play an important part in Serbian death ceremonies. Next I followed as chief mourner, and our British Military Attaché, who kindly offered to stay by me, Dr. Coxon, who had attended Nurse Ferriss, then the other doctors, and Captain Yovannovitch, the Unit, officers, representatives of the town and general sympathisers.

This was the first walk that I had taken since my illness. The sun was scorching—at three in the afternoon—and the walk, at snail's pace, on the rough cobbled streets, seemed interminable. But the streets were lined with townsfolk, and I felt it was necessary to look stoical. I thought how it might easily have been myself, instead of poor Ferriss, inside that ugly nailed-down box. But I would have changed places if I could. Then I thought of Ferriss's mother, and of her fiancé; perhaps they were writing to her at this moment, planning all kinds of future happiness; and there she was, lying, just in front of me, in a Serbian coffin, indifferent to it all.

Now that she was dead, she was saluted by passing officers and soldiers. I wondered if she wasn't a little pleased at the posthumous honour, and whether it would always be necessary to reserve honours for women till after they are dead.

I looked at Dr. Dearmer, walking steadily, his candle still alight, ahead of me, and the thought flashed across my mind—how awful if—but she, Mrs. Dearmer, was better now. It was impossible that she should die.

When we arrived at the cathedral, half-a-dozen great brutal bells, hanging by themselves, in a frame in the churchyard, began to flop clumsily, and, as we entered the cathedral gates, they suddenly, all together, higgledy-piggledy, on different notes, broke into a deafening jangle, proclaiming in fiendish discord, "Here's the end of all things; you can't understand life; you can't understand death; there is no time, or rhyme, or reason anywhere; it's just a jumble, and the end is death."

The brass band, with its attempt at tune, persisted bravely for a minute or two, and the disharmony was complete; it reminded me of the bells during that "last night" at Tongres.

Permission to hold an English service in the Serbian Church, had been specially obtained from the Archbishop at Belgrade. Never before in the history of the Church, has the Anglican ritual been performed in the Church of the Greek orthodox faith. I hoped this was significant of a future when political alliances would mean unity, not only in worldly, but in spiritual policy. It testified, however, to a considerable breadth of view on the part of the Serbian Archbishop, and of the local chief priest at Kragujevatz.

At the end of the service the representative of the Crown Prince came up to me and expressed—in French—in graceful phrases the gracious sympathy of his Royal Master. And the procession formed once more, and started for the cemetery. Here a temporary resting-place had been provided; the town had the generous intention of erecting, when the war was ended, a permanent memorial to the British nurses, and doctors who had given their lives for Serbia; and this intention will, I am sure, one day be fulfilled. The final prayers were spoken; all was over; and we returned to camp.

We found Mrs. Dearmer not so well; temperature 105°. But one of the nurses, thinking to cheer me, told me that one of the patients—a consumptive tubercular soldier—had died. This should be a great relief, she said, as now we had had our three deaths (including the baby) and according to superstition we needn't have any more. Besides, Mrs. Dearmer was better again. "Ah, yes; she's all right now," said one of her nurses to me; "she has sneezed three times, and no invalid ever sneezes unless getting better." I mentioned this to Dr. Dearmer, and he reminded me that the child whom Elisha cured had also sneezed.

But on July 9th, after various ups and downs, Mrs. Dearmer grew seriously worse. Oxygen and other available expedients were tried without success. Our doctors, also Major Protitch, myself, and Dr. Inglis (chief of the Scottish Women's Hospital Unit in Kragujevatz), who was throughout most kind and helpful, sat up all that night, outside the double-lined ridge tent; I, tramping backwards and forwards, glad to be occupied, arranging for the continuous supply of oxygen bags from the arsenal, which was kindly supplying us. While there's life, there's hope; and all the next day Mrs. Dearmer was still with us. But when night came, we knew it must be her last. Another long vigil—now without hope. We sat outside her tent, speaking only rarely, and in whispers, when something needed to be done, or fetched. At one time the sky threatened a thunderstorm, but this passed. All Nature was hushed, waiting—with us. She had loved the wind, and several times, as she lay ill, she had told me what a joy it was to her to feel the air blowing through the tent; she couldn't have borne, she said, to have been ill within closed walls. But to-night there was no wind; it, too, was waiting, hushed.

The camp was asleep; and silence was only broken by the croaking of bull-frogs in a mud pond, half a mile away. There was no moon, and dark clouds hid the stars. For those who kept watch, the whole world was in darkness, except that at intervals, almost as regular as pulse-beats, flashes of summer lightning illumined the inside of the death tent; the camp bed, with its still and silent occupant; the figure bending low, and whispering in prayer, snatches of "Our Father," his hand in hers—companions since boy and girlhood, now to part for ever? Oh, no! Their sons were at the front (one of them has now joined his mother). Could they, I wondered, feel that this was happening?

I sat a little apart from the other watchers, and prayed—not now that she should live—life seemed too small a thing to pray for, but that our souls should be illumined to see the meaning of death. Another flash of lightning, and I saw that there is no such thing as death. Death is a misunderstanding of the mind. The body does not die, for the body has never lived; the body is matter, and inert. Life is a force, and forces do not die. The body is the habitation of the life-force, but the quitting by the life-force of the body, is not death. Nothing has died, since nothing has ceased to live. The life-force cannot die, or it would not be a life-force. The body cannot die—it has never lived; yes, yes—death is a misnomer. The word death, together with the sister words, sunrise and sunset, all perpetuate ancient ignorance. The sun does not rise, the sun does not set, and—the body does not die. Why then talk of death as though it were an ending? It is a transference of life-force from the seen to the unseen. As soon as matter begins to disintegrate, the life-force passes on—that's all. I understood.

In the early morning, as a gust of wind swept through the tent—her tent—the life-force passed; in our stupid, misleading, blundering language, Mrs. Dearmer—mother, wife, poet, artist, dramatist, and last, but not least, camp orderly—was dead. But I knew that the life-force had carried with it all that was real; it had taken to the Beyond Land the idea, the logos, the norm, the soul, of which the body that was left, was only a graven image.

Again a public funeral, but this time—a graceful compliment by Dr. Dearmer—the service was to be conducted by the priests of the Greek Church, officiating in their own cathedral. A chapel in which to lay her, with altar, was improvised in the doctors' reading tent, and was filled with wreaths and crosses of beautiful flowers, sent by friends and sympathisers.

The military attachés, medical and military officials, public representatives, members of other units, and general sympathisers, assembled at the chapel tent at 5 p.m. Four priests, with long hair and gorgeously embroidered robes, three of blue and one of red, said preliminary prayers round the altar. Strange that when men symbolise religion they adopt the garb of women?

The Crown Prince's band played whilst the coffin was lifted to a hearse-carriage—generally reserved for dead officers—and the procession, in the same order as before, moved slowly across the racecourse to the road, and on to the cathedral. Alternately with the music of the band, a choir of men and women from Kragujevatz, sang beautiful funeral anthems. We had persuaded Dr. Dearmer to evade the procession and the cathedral service, and, with Dr. Marsden, to join us at the grave-side.

Again the same frenzied clanging of discordant bells greeted our arrival at the cathedral; but inside God's house, harmony and reverence reigned.

The coffin was placed on trestles in the centre of the nave; the mourners, as before, standing at a little distance all around. In Greek churches it is the custom always to stand, at all services; there are no chairs, no kneeling cushions, no compromises with comfort.

The service lasted an hour; the heat was terrific, and I was thankful we were not mid-Victorian women, or we should have had sensational fainting scenes. These would have spoilt the service, which was extremely beautiful; more sympathetic and compassionate than the cold, callous, burial prayers of our English ritual, with its theories of dust and ashes.

The priests stood in line behind the coffin, facing the altar, and chanted their prayers in the old Slavonic language, common to Serbia, Bulgaria and Russia, and the trained choir of men and women in the gallery behind, sang exquisite responses. The music—a great surprise—was enchanting; it produced that atmosphere of faith and divine love, of which the best music is a revelation, and bad music the negation. Better no music than bad music in churches.

Again the representative of the Crown Prince expressed to me his condolences; and, as we emerged from the cathedral into the material world once more, the bells jangled forth their discordant message, in shocking disharmony with the brass band. But I didn't mind them now, their message had no terrors for me; I was fortified, and knew I could hold up. We marched slowly forward, now to face the worst part of the ceremony. For outside the graveyard Dr. Dearmer was awaiting us. It was a dreadful moment as we drew near, and the band announced to him that she was there, coming to meet him for the last time. I tried to interest myself in the fine view of distant hills, showing purple against the field of ripening Indian corn, near which he stood awaiting us; but I saw only one figure; I thought my heart would burst. He joined us, and we entered the cemetery, and moved to the grave-side. The coffin, before being lowered, was placed inside a wooden case, to lessen—at Dr. Dearmer's request—the harsh sound of clods of earth upon the metal. The final prayers were spoken by the Rev. J. Little, chauffeur of one of our ambulance cars; dust to dust; ashes to ashes; all was over; the last terrible moment came; we turned, and left her lying in her Serbian grave alone.