Chapter 6

After a week of it you will not be likely to look with crystal clarity on other people's lapses from precaution.

But it would be absurd to tell him this. Ten to one he wouldn't believe it. He thinks I am funking all the time.

* * * * *

I am still very angry with him. He must know that I am very angry. I think that somewhere inside him he is rather angry too.

* * * * *

All the same he has come to me and asked me to give him my soap. He says Max has taken his.

I give him my soap, but--

These oppressions and obsessions, the deadly anxiety, the futile responsibility and the boredom are too much for me. I am thinking seriously of going home.

* * * * *

In the evening we--the Commandant and Janet McNeil and I--went down to the Hotel de la Poste, to see the War Correspondents and hear the War news. Mr. G. L. and Mr. M. and Mr. P. were there. And there among them, to my astonishment, I found Mr. Davidson, the American sculptor.

The last time I saw Mr. Davidson it was in Mr. Joseph Simpson's studio, the one under mine in Edwardes Square. He was making a bust of Rabindranath Tagore; and as the great mystic poet disconcerted him by continually lapsing into meditation under this process, thereby emptying his beautiful face of all expression whatever, I had been called down from my studio to talk to him, so as to lure him, if possible, from meditation and keep his features in play. Mr. Davidson made a very fine bust of Rabindranath Tagore. And here he is, imperfectly disguised by the shortest of short beards, drawing caricatures of G. L.--G. L. explaining the plan of campaign to the Belgian General Staff; G. L. very straight and tall, the Belgian General Staff looking up to him with innocent, deferential faces, earnestly anxious to be taught. I am not more surprised at seeing Mr. Davidson here than he is at seeing me. In the world that makes war we have both entirely forgotten the world where people make busts and pictures and books. But we accept each other's presence. It is only a small part of the fantastic dislocation of war.

Nothing could be more different from the Flandria Palace Hotel, our Military Hospital, than the Hotel de la Poste. It is packed with War Correspondents and Belgian officers. After the surgeons and the Red Cross nurses and their wounded, and the mysterious officials hanging about the porch and the hall, apparently doing nothing, after the English Ambulance and the melancholy inactivity of half its Corps, this place seems alive with a rich and virile life. It is full of live, exultant fighters, and of men who have their business not with the wounded and the dying but with live men and live things, and they have live words to tell about them. At least so it seems.

You listen with all your ears, and presently Termonde and Alost and Quatrecht and Courtrai cease to be mere names for you and become realities. It is as if you had been taken from your prison and had been let loose into the world again.

They are saying that there is no fighting at Saint Nicolas (the Commandant has been feeling about again for his visionary base hospital), but that the French troops are at Courtrai in great force. They have turned their left [?] wing round to the north-east and will probably sweep towards Brussels to cut off the German advance on Antwerp. The siege of Antwerp will then be raised. And a great battle will be fought outside Brussels, probably at Waterloo.

WATERLOO!

Mr. L. looks at you as much as to say that is what he has had up his sleeve all the time. The word comes from him as casually as if he spoke of the London and South-Western terminus. But he is alive to the power of its evocation, to the unsurpassable thrill. So are you. It starts the current in that wireless system of vibrations that travel unperishing, undiminished, from the dead to the living. There are not many kilometres between Ghent and Waterloo; you are not only within the radius of the psychic shock, you are close to the central batteries, and ninety-nine years are no more than one pulse of their vibration. Through I don't know how many kilometres and ninety-nine years it has tracked you down and found you in your one moment of response.

It has a sudden steadying effect. Your brain clears. The things that loomed so large, the "Flandria," and the English Field Ambulance and its miseries, and the terrifying recklessness of its Commandant, are reduced suddenly to invisibility. You can see nothing but the second Waterloo. You forget that you have ever been a prisoner in an Hotel-Hospital. You understand the mystic fascination of the road under your windows, going south-east from Ghent to Brussels, somewhere towards Waterloo. You are reconciled to the incomprehensible lassitude of events. That is what we have all been waiting for--the second Waterloo. And we have only waited five days.

I am certainly not going back to England.

The French troops are being massed at Courtrai.

Suddenly it strikes me that I have done an injustice to the Commandant. It is all very well to say that he brought me out here against my will. But did he? He said it would interest me to see the siege of Antwerp, and I said it wouldn't. I said with the most perfect sincerity that I'd die rather than go anywhere near the siege of Antwerp, or of any other place. And now the siege-guns from Namur are battering the forts of Antwerp, and down there the armies are gathering towards the second Waterloo, and the Commandant was right. I am extremely interested. I would die rather than go back to England.

Is it possible that he knew me better than I knew myself?

When I think that it is possible I feel a slight revulsion of justice towards the Commandant. After all, he brought me here. We may disagree about the present state of Alost and Termonde, considered as health-resorts for English girls, but it is pretty certain that without him we would none of us have got here. Where, indeed, should we have been and how should we have got our motor ambulances, but for his intrepid handling of Providence and of the Belgian Red Cross and the Belgian Legation? There is genius in a man who can go out without one car, or the least little nut or cog of a _chassis_ to his name, and impose himself upon a Government as the Commandant of a Motor Field Ambulance.

Still, though I am not going back to England as a protest, I _am_ going to leave the Hospital Hotel for a little while. That bright idea has come to me just now while we are waiting for the Commandant to tear himself from the War Correspondents and come away. I shall get a room here in the Hotel de la Poste for a week, and, while we wait for Waterloo, I shall write some articles. The War Correspondents will tell me what is being done, and what has been overdone and what remains to do. I shall at least hear things if I can't see them. And I shall cut the obsession of responsibility. It'll be worse than ever if there really is going to be a second Waterloo.

Waterloo with Ursula Dearmer and Janet in the thick of it, and Mrs. Torrence driving the Colonel's scouting-car!

There are moments of bitterness and distortion when I see the Commandant as a curious psychic monster bringing up his women with him to the siege-guns because of some uncanny satisfaction he finds in their presence there. There are moods, only less perverted, when I see him pursuing his course because it is his course, through sheer Highland Celtic obstinacy; lucid flashes when he appears, blinded by the glamour of his dream, and innocently regardless of actuality. Is it uncanniness? Is it obstinacy? Is it dreamy innocence? Or is it some gorgeous streak of Feminism? Is it the New Chivalry, that refuses to keep women back, even from the firing-line? The New Romance, that gives them their share of divine danger? Or, since nothing can be more absurd than to suppose that any person acts at all times and in all circumstances on one ground, or necessarily on any grounds, is it a little bit of all these things? I am not sure that Feminism, or at any rate the New Chivalry, doesn't presuppose them all.

The New Chivalry sees the point of its reporter's retirement to the Hotel de la Poste, since it has decided that journalism is my work, and journalism cannot flourish at the "Flandria." So we interview the nice fat _proprietaire_, and the _proprietaire's_ nice fat wife, and between them they find a room for me, a back room on the fourth floor, the only one vacant in the hotel; it looks out on the white-tiled walls and the windows of the enclosing wings. The space shut in is deep and narrow as a well. The view from that room is more like a prison than any view from the "Flandria," but I take it. I am not deceived by appearances, and I recognize that the peace of God is there.

It is a relief to think that poor Max will have one less to work for.

At the "Flandria" we find that the Military Power has put its foot down. The General--he cannot have a spark of the New Chivalry in his brutal breast--has ordered Mrs. Torrence off her chauffeur's job. You see the grizzled Colonel as the image of protest and desolation, helpless in the hands of the implacable Power. You are sorry for Mrs. Torrence (she has seen practically no service with the ambulance as yet), but she, at any rate, has had her fling. No power can take from her the memory of those two days.

Still, something is going to be done to-morrow, and this time, even the miserable Reporter is to have a look in. The Commandant has another scheme for a temporary hospital or a dressing-station or something, and to-morrow he is going with Car 1 to Courtrai to reconnoitre for a position and incidentally to see the French troops. A God-sent opportunity for the Reporter; and Janet McNeil is going, too. We are to get up at six o'clock in the morning and start before seven.

[_Friday, October 2nd._]

We get up at six.

We hang about till eight-thirty or nine. A fine rain begins to fall. An ominous rain. Car 1 and Car 2 are drawn up at the far end of the Hospital yard. The rain falls ominously over the yellow-brown, trodden clay of the yard. There is an ominous look of preparation about the cars. There is also an ominous light in the blue eyes of the chauffeur Tom.

The chauffeur Tom appears as one inspired by hatred of the whole human race. You would say that he was also hostile to the entire female sex. For Woman in her right place he may, he probably does, feel tenderness and reverence. Woman in a field ambulance he despises and abhors. I really think it was the sight of us that accounted for his depression at Ostend. I have gathered from Mrs. Torrence that the chauffeur Tom has none of the New Chivalry about him. He is the mean and brutal male, the crass obstructionist who grudges women their laurels in the equal field.

I know the dreadful, blasphemous and abominable things that Tom is probably thinking about me as I climb on to his car. He is visibly disgusted with his orders. That he, a Red Cross Field Ambulance chauffeur, should be told to drive four--or is it all five?--women to look at the massing of the French troops at Courtrai! He is not deceived by the specious pretext of the temporary hospital. Hospitals be blowed. It's a bloomin' joy-ride, with about as much Red Cross in it as there is in my hat. He is glad that it is raining.

Yes, I know what Tom is thinking. And all the time I have a sneaking sympathy with Tom. I want to go to Courtrai more than I ever wanted anything in my life, but I see the expedition plainly from Tom's point of view. A field ambulance is a field ambulance and not a motor touring car.

And to-day Tom is justified. We have hardly got upon his car than we were told to get off it. We are not going to Courtrai. We are not going anywhere. From somewhere in those mysterious regions where it abides, the Military Power has come down.

Even as I get off the car and return to the Hospital-prison, in melancholy retreat over the yellow-brown clay of the yard, through the rain, I acknowledge the essential righteousness of the point of view. And, to the everlasting honour of the Old Chivalry, it should be stated that the chauffeur Tom repressed all open and visible expression of his joy.

The morning passes, as the other mornings passed, in unspeakable inactivity. Except that I make up the accounts and hand them over to Mr. Grierson. It seems incredible, but I have balanced them to the last franc.

I pack. Am surprised in packing by Max and Jean. They both want to know the reason why. This is the terrible part of the business--leaving Max and Jean.

I try to explain. Prosper Panne, who "writes for the Paris papers," understands me. He can see that the Hotel de la Poste may be a better base for an attack upon the London papers. But Max does not understand. He perceives that I have a scruple about occupying my room. And he takes me into _his_ room to show me how nice it is--every bit as good as mine. The implication being that if the Hospital can afford to lodge one of its orderlies so well, it can perfectly well afford to lodge me. (This is one of the prettiest things that Max has done yet! As long as I live I shall see him standing in his room and showing me how nice it is.)

Still you can always appeal from Max to Prosper Panne. He understands these journalistic tempers and caprices. He knows on how thin a thread an article can hang. We have a brief discussion on the comparative difficulties of the _roman_ and the _conte_, and he promises me to cherish and protect the hat I must leave behind me as if it were his bride.

But Jean--Jean does not understand at all. He thinks that I am not satisfied with the service of our incomparable mess; that I prefer the flesh-pots of the "Poste" and the manners of its waiters. He has no other thought but this, and it is abominable; it is the worst of all. The explanation thickens. I struggle gloriously with the French language; one moment it has me by the throat and I am strangled; the next I writhe forth triumphant. Strange gestures are given to me; I plunge into the darkest pits of memory for the words that have escaped me; I find them (or others just as good); it is really quite easy to say that I am coming back again in a week.

Interview with Madame F. and M. G., the President.

Interview with the Commandant. Final assault on the defences of the New Chivalry (the Commandant's mind is an impregnable fortress).

And, by way of afterthought, I inquire whether, in the event of a sudden scoot before the Germans, a reporter quartered at the Hotel de la Poste will be cut off from the base of communications and left to his or her ingenuity in flight?

The Commandant, vague and imperturbable, replies that in all probability it will be so.

And I (if possible more imperturbable than he) observe that the War Correspondents will make quite a nice flying-party.

In a little open carriage--the taxis have long ago all gone to the War--in an absurd little open carriage, exactly like a Cheltenham "rat," I depart like a lady of Cheltenham, for the Hotel de la Poste. The appearance and the odour of this little carriage give you an odd sense of security and peace. The Germans may be advancing on Ghent at this moment, but for all the taste of war there is in it, you might be that lady, going from one hotel to the other, down the Cheltenham Promenade.

The further you go from the Military Hospital and the Railway Station the more it is so. The War does not seem yet to have shaken the essential peace of the _bourgeois_ city. The Hotel de la Poste is in the old quarter of the town, where the Cathedrals are. Instead of the long, black railway lines and the red-brick facade of the Station and Post Office; instead of the wooded fields beyond and the white street that leads to the battle-places south and east; instead of the great Square with its mustering troops and swarms of refugees, you have the quiet Place d'Armes, shut in by trees, and all round it are the hotels and cafes where the officers and the War Correspondents come and go. Through all that coming and going you get the sense of the old foreign town that was dreaming yesterday. People are sitting outside the restaurants all round the Place, drinking coffee and liqueurs as if nothing had happened, as if Antwerp were far-off in another country, and as if it were still yesterday. Mosquitoes come up from the drowsy canal water and swarm into the hotels and bite you. I found any number of mosquitoes clinging drowsily to my bedroom walls.

But there are very few women among those crowds outside the restaurants. There are not many women except refugees in the streets, and fewer still in the shops.

I have blundered across a little cafe with an affectionately smiling and reassuringly fat proprietress, where they give you _brioches_ and China tea, which, as it were in sheer affection, they call English. It is not as happy a find as you might think. It is not, in the circumstances, happy at all. In fact, if you have never known what melancholy is and would like to know it, I can recommend two courses. Go down the Grand Canal in Venice in the grey spring of the year, in a gondola, all by yourself. Or get mixed up with a field ambulance which is not only doing noble work but running thrilling risks, in neither of which you have a share, or the ghost of a chance of a share; cut yourself off from your comrades, if it is only for a week, and go into a Belgian cafe in war-time and try to eat _brioches_ and drink English tea all by yourself. This is the more successful course. You may see hope beyond the gondola and the Grand Canal. But you will see no hope beyond the _brioche_ and the English tea.

I walk about again till it is time to go back to the Hotel. So far, my emancipation has not been agreeable.

[_Evening. Hotel de la Poste._]

I dined in the crowded restaurant, avoiding the War Correspondents, choosing a table where I hoped I might be unobserved. Somewhere through a glass screen I caught a sight of Mr. L.'s head. I was careful to avoid the glass screen and Mr. L.'s head. He shall not say, if I can possibly help it, that I am an infernal nuisance. For I know I haven't any business to be here, and if Belgium had a Kitchener I shouldn't be here. However you look at me, I am here on false pretences. In the eyes of Mr. L. I would have no more right to be a War Correspondent (if I were one) than I have to be on a field ambulance. It is with the game of war as it was with the game of football I used to play with my big brothers in the garden. The women may play it if they're fit enough, up to a certain point, very much as I played football in the garden. The big brothers let their little sister kick off; they let her run away with the ball; they stood back and let her make goal after goal; but when it came to the scrimmage they took hold of her and gently but firmly moved her to one side. If she persisted she became an infernal nuisance. And if those big brothers over there only knew what I was after they would make arrangements for my immediate removal from the seat of war.

The Commandant has turned up with Ursula Dearmer. He is drawn to these War Correspondents who appear to know more than he does. On the other hand, an ambulance that can get into the firing-line has an irresistible attraction for a War Correspondent. It may at any moment constitute his only means of getting there himself.

One of our cars has been sent out to Antwerp with dispatches and surgical appliances.

The sight of the Commandant reminds me that I have got all the funds of the Ambulance upstairs in my suit-case in that leather purse-belt--and if the Ambulance does fly from Ghent without me, and without that belt, it will find itself in considerable embarrassment before it has retreated very far.

It is quite certain that I shall have to take my chance. I have asked the Commandant again (either this evening or earlier) so that there may be no possible doubt about it: "If we do have to scoot from Ghent in a hurry I shall have nothing but my wits to trust to?"

And he says, "True for you."

And he looks as if he meant it.[3]

These remarkable words have a remarkable effect on the new War Correspondent. It is as if the coolness and the courage and the strength of a hundred War Correspondents and of fifty Red Cross Ambulances had been suddenly discharged into my soul. This absurd accession of power and valour[4] is accompanied by a sudden immense lucidity. It is as if my soul had never really belonged to me until now, as if it had been either drugged or drunk and had never known what it was to be sober until now. The sensation is distinctly agreeable. And on the top of it all there is a peace which I distinctly recognize as the peace of God.

So, while the Commandant talks to the War Correspondents as if nothing had happened, I go upstairs and unlock my suit-case and take from it the leather purse-belt with the Ambulance funds in it, and I bring it to the Commandant and lay it before him and compel him to put it on. As I do this I feel considerable compunction, as if I were launching a three-year-old child in a cockle-shell on the perilous ocean of finance. I remind him that fifteen pounds of the money in the belt is his (he would be as likely as not to forget it). As for the accounts, they are so clear that a three-year-old child could understand them. I notice with a diabolical satisfaction which persists through the all-pervading peace by no means as incongruously as you might imagine--I notice particularly that the Commandant doesn't like this part of it a bit. There is not anybody in the Corps who wants to be responsible for its funds or enjoys wearing that belt. But it is obvious that if the Ambulance can bear to be separated from its Treasurer-Secretary-Reporter, in the flight from Ghent, it cannot possibly bear to be separated from its funds.

I am alone with the Commandant while this happens, standing by one of the writing-tables in the lounge. Ursula Dearmer (she grows more mature every day) and the War Correspondents and a few Generals have melted somewhere into the background. The long, lithe pigskin belt lies between us on the table--between my friend and me--like a pale snake. It exerts some malign and poisonous influence. It makes me say things, things that I should not have thought it possible to say. And it is all about the shells at Alost.

He is astonished.

And I do not care.

I am sustained, exalted by that sense of righteousness you feel when you are insanely pounding somebody who thinks that in perfect sanity and integrity he has pounded you.

[_Saturday, 3rd._]