CHAPTER XIII

THE LUNCH AT ENGHIEN

Dear little Enghien! I shall always remember you.

It was so utterly-out-of-the-ordinary to drive to the railway station, and have one's lunch cooked by the stationmaster.

A dear old man he was, that old grey-bearded Belgian.

A hero too!

His trains were stopped; his lines were cut; he was ever in the midst of the Germans, but he kept his bright spirits happy, and when Jean ushered us all in to his little house that formed part of the railway station, he received us as if we were old friends, shook us all by the hand, and told us, with great gusto, exactly what he would give us.

And he rolled the words out too, almost as though he was an Italian, as he promised us a _bonne omelette,_ followed by a _bon bif-steak_, and fried potatoes, and cheese, and fruit and a _bon café_!

Then he hurried away into the kitchen, and we heard him cracking the eggs, while his old sister set the table in the little dining-room.

We travellers all sat on a seat out in front of the railway line, under the sweet blue sky, facing green fields, and refreshed ourselves with little glasses of red, tonic-like Byrrh.

It was characteristic of those dear Belgian souls that they one and all raised their little glasses before they drank, and looking towards me said, "_Vive l'Angleterre!_"

To which I responded with my tiny glass, "_Léve la Belgique!_"

And we all added, "_A bas le Kaiser!_"

And from across the fields the noise of the battle round Ninove came towards us, louder and louder every moment.

As we sat there we discussed the cannonading that now seemed very near.

So loud and so close to us were the angry growlings of the guns that I felt amazed at not being able to see any smoke.

It was evident that some big encounter was going on, but the fields were green and still, and nothing at all was to be seen.

By now I had lost all sense of reality.

I was merely a figure in an extraordinary dream, in which the great guns pounded on my right hand, and the old stationmaster's omelette fried loudly on my left.

Jean strolled off alone, while two of the ladies of the party went away to buy some butter.

In Brussels, they said, it was impossible to get good butter under exorbitant prices, so they paid a visit to a little farm a few steps away, and came back presently laden with butter enough to keep them going for several weeks, for which they had paid only one franc each.

And now the old stationmaster comes out and summons us all in to lunch.

He wishes us "_bon appétit_" and we seat ourselves round the table under the portraits of King Albert and "_la petite reine_" in his little sitting-room.

A merrier lunch than that was never eaten. The vast omelette melted away in a twinkling before the terrific onslaught made upon it, chiefly by the Liège professor and the Brussels banker, who by now had got up their appetites.

The Red Cross lady, who took it upon herself to help out the food, kept up a cheerful little commentary of running compliments which included us all, and the beef-steak, and the omelette, and the potatoes, and the stationmaster, until we could hardly tell one from the other, so agreeable did we all seem!

The old stationmaster produced some good Burgundy, sun-kissed, purply red of a most respectable age.

When everything was on the table he brought his chair and joined in with us, asking questions about Antwerp, and Ghent, and Ostend, and giving us in return vivid sketches of what the Germans had been doing in his part of the world. The extraordinary part of all this was that though we were in a region inhabited by the Germans there was no sign of destruction. The absence of ruin and pillage seems to conceal the fact that this was invested country.

After our _bon café_ we all shook hands with the stationmaster, wished him good luck, and hurried back to the village, where we climbed into our vehicle again.

This time I took a place in the inside of the carriage, leaving Jean and another man to hang on to that perilous back seat.

At two o'clock we were off.

The horses, freshened by food and water, galloped along now at a great pace, and the day developed into an afternoon as cloudless and glittering as the morning.

But almost immediately after leaving Enghien an ominous note began to be struck.

Whenever we shouted out our query:

"_Il y a des Allemands?_" the passers-by coming from the opposite direction shouted back,

"_Oui, oui, beaucoup d'Allemands!_"

And suddenly there they were!