VII

"Nothing," Charlotte said, "is going to be worse than this."

It seemed to her that they had waited hours in the huge grey hall of the
Hotel-Hospital, she and Sutton and Gwinnie, while John talked to the
President of the Red Cross in his bureau. Everybody looked at them: the
door-keeper, the lift orderly; the ward men and nurses hurrying past;
wide stares and sharp glances falling on her and Gwinnie, slanting
downward to their breeches and puttees, then darting upwards to their
English faces.

Sutton moved, putting his broad body between them and the batteries of
amused and interested eyes.

They stood close together at the foot of the staircase. Above them the
gigantic Flora leaned forward, holding out her flowers to preoccupied
people who wouldn't look at her; she smiled foolishly; too stupid to know
that the Flandria was no longer an hotel but a military hospital.

John came out of the President's bureau. He looked disgusted and
depressed.

"They can put us up," he said; "but I've got to break it to you that
we're not the only Field Ambulance in Ghent."

Charlotte said, "Oh, well, we'd no business to suppose we were."

"We've got to share our quarters with the other one.... It calls itself
the McClane Corps."

"Shall we have to sleep with it?" Sutton said.

"We shall have to have it in our messroom. I believe it's up there now."

"Well, that won't hurt us."

"What'll hurt us is this. It'll be sent out before we are. McClane was
here hours ago. He's been to Head Quarters."

Sutton's gloom deepened. "How do you know?"

"President says so."

They went, following the matron, up the grey, tessellated stairs; at each
landing the long, grey corridors were tunnels for the passage of strange
smells, ether and iodine and carbolic and the faint odour of drains,
seeking their outlet at the well of the staircase.

On the third floor, at the turn of the corridor, a small vestibule
between two glass doors led to a room flooded with a blond light from the
south. Beyond the glass doors, their figures softened by the deep,
doubled shimmer of the panes, they saw the little man in shabby tweeds,
the two women, and the seven other men. This, Madame explained, was Dr.
Donald McClane's Field Ambulance Corps. You could see it had thought it
was the only one. As they entered they met the swoop of two beautiful,
indignant eyes, a slow turning and abrupt stiffening of shoulders; the
movement of the group was