CHAPTER XVII

BRUSSELS

Finally, after a wild and breathless drive of thirty-five miles through rich orchard-country all the way, and always between German patrols, we entered Brussels. Crowds of German officers and men were dashing about in motor cars in all directions, while the populace moved by them as though they were ghosts, taking not the slightest notice of their presence. The sunlight had faded now, and the lights were being lit in Brussels, and I gazed about me, filled with an inordinate curiosity. At first I thought the people seemed to be moving about just as usual, but soon I discovered an immense difference between these Brussels crowds, and those of normal times and conditions. It was as though all the red roses and carnations had been picked out of the garden. The smart world had completely disappeared. Those daintily-dressed, exquisite women, and elegant young and old men, that made such persuasive notes among the streets and shops of Brussels in ordinary times, had vanished completely under the German occupation. In their place was now a rambling, roaming crowd of the lower middle-classes, dashed with a big sprinkling of wide-eyed wrinkled peasants from the Brabant country outside, who had come into the big city for the protection of the lights and the houses and the companionship, even though the dreaded "Allemands" were there. Listlessly people strolled about. They looked in the shop windows, but nobody bought. No business seemed to be done at all, except in the provision shops, where I saw groups of German officers and soldiers buying sausages, cheese and eggs.

Crowds gathered before the German notices, pasted on the walls so continuously that Brussels was half covered beneath these great black and white printed declarations, which, as they were always printed in three languages--German, French and Flemish--took up an enormous amount of wall space. Here and there Dutch journalists stood hastily copying these "_affiches_" into their note-books. Now and then, from the crowd reading, a low voice would mutter languidly "Les sales cochons!" But more often the Brussels sense of humour would see something funny in those absurd proclamations, and people were often to be seen grinning ironically at the German official war news specially concocted for the people of Brussels. It was all the Direct Opposite of the news in Belgian and English papers. _We_, the Allies, had just announced that Austria had broken down, and was on the verge of a revolution. _They_, the Germans, announced precisely the same thing--only of Servia! And the Brussels people coolly read the news and passed on, believing none of it.

And all the time, while the Belgians moved dawdlingly up and down, and round about their favourite streets and arcades, the Germans kept up one swift everlasting rush, flying past in motors, or striding quickly by, with their firm, long tread. They always seemed to be going somewhere in a hurry, or doing something extraordinarily definite. After I had been five minutes in Brussels, I became aware of this curious sense of immense and unceasing German activity, flowing like some loud, swift, resistless current through the dull, depleted stream of Brussels life. All day long it went without ceasing, and all night, too. In and out of the city, in and out of the city, in and out of the city. Past the deserted lace shops, with their exquisite delicate contents; past the many closed hotels; past the great white beauties of Brussels architecture; past the proud but yellowing avenues of trees along the heights; past those sculptured monuments of Belgians who fell in bygone battles, and now, in the light of 1914, leapt afresh into life again, galvanised back into reality by the shriek of a thousand _obus_, and the blood poured warm on the blackened fields of Belgium.

We drove to an old hotel in a quiet street, and our driver jumped down and rang the courtyard bell.

Then the door opened, and an old Belgian porter stood and looked at us with sad eyes, saying in a low voice, "Come in quickly!"

We all got down and went through the gateway.

We found ourselves in a big old yellow stone courtyard, chilly and deserted.

The driver ran out and returned, carrying in his arms the long flat seat-cushion from the carriage.

Then the old porter locked the gate and we all gathered round the brave little Flemish driver who was down on his knees now, over the cushion, doing something with a knife.

Next minute he held up a bundle of letters, and then another and then another,--

"And here is your English passport, Madame," Jean said to me.

Unknown to most of us, the driver and Jean, while we waited at Enghien, had made a slit in the cushion, had taken out some stuffing, and put in instead a great mass of letters and papers for Brussels, then they had wired up the slit, turned the cushion upside down, and let us sit on it.

It was rather like sitting on a mine.

Only, like the heroine of the song: "We didn't care, we didn't KNOW!"