CHAPTER XXX

WEDNESDAY

Last night the moon was so bright that my two pets, rescued from the ruins of Lierre, woke up and began to talk.

Or was it the big guns that woke them, the canary, and the grey Congo parrot?

It might have been!

For sometimes the city seemed to shake all over, and as I lay in bed I wondered who was firing: Germans, Belgians, English, which?

About three o'clock, between dozing and listening to the cannon, I heard a new sound, a strange sound, something so awful that I almost felt my hair creep with horror.

It was a man crying in the room under mine.

Through the blackness of the hour before dawn a cry came stealing:

"_Mon fils! Mon fils!_"

Out of the night it came, that sudden terrific revelation of what is going on everywhere beneath the outward calm of this nation of heroes.

And one had not realised it because one had seen so few tears.

One had almost failed to understand, in the outer calm of the Belgians, what agony went on beneath.

And now, in the midnight, the veil is torn aside, and I see a human heart in extremis, writhing with agony, groaning as the wounded never groan, stricken, bleeding, prostrate, overwhelmed with the enormity of its sorrow.

"_Mon fils! Mon fils!_"

Since I heard that old man weeping I want to creep to the feet of Christ and the Mother of Christ, and implore Their healing for these poor innocent broken hearts, trodden under the brutal feet of another race of human beings.

* * * * *

At four, unable to sleep, I rose and dressed and went downstairs.

In the dim, unswept palm court I saw a bearded man with two umbrellas walking feverishly up and down, while the sleepy night porter leaned against a pillar yawning, watching for the cab that the _chass_ had gone to look for. It came at last, and the bearded gentleman, with a sigh, stepped in, and drove away into the dusky dawn, a look of unutterable sadness seeming to cloak his face and form as he disappeared.

"_Il est triste, ce monsieur là_," commented our voluble little Flemish porter. "He is a Minister of the Government, and he must leave Antwerp, he must depart for Ostend. His boat leaves at five o'clock this morning."

"So the Government is really moving out," I think to myself mechanically.

A little boy runs in from the chill dawn-lit streets.

It is only half-past four, but a Flemish paper has just come out.--_Het Laatste Nieuws._

The boy throws it on the table where I sit writing to my sister in England, who is anxious for my safety.

I struggle to find out what message lies behind those queer Flemish words.

_De Toestand Te Antwerpen Is Zeer Ernstig._

What does it mean?

_Zeer Ernstig?_

Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know the word.

I call to the night porter, and he comes out and translates to me, and as I glean the significance of the news I admire that peasant boy's calm.

"_La situation à Anvers est grave_" he says. "The Burgomaster announces to the population that the bombardment of Antwerp and its environs is imminent. It is understood, of course" (translating literally), "that neither the threat nor the actual bombardment will have any effect on the strength of our resistance, which will continue to the very last extremity!"

So we know the worst now.

Antwerp is not to hand herself over to the Germans. She is going to fight to the death. Well, we are glad of it! We know it is the only thing she could have done!

* * * * *

And now the hotel wakes right up, and dozens of sleepy, worn, hollow-cheeked officers and soldiers in dirty boots come down the red-carpeted stairs clamouring for their _café-au-lait_.

The morning is very cold, and they shiver sometimes, but they are better after the coffee and I watch them all go off smoking cigarettes.

Poor souls! Poor souls!

After the coffee, smoking cigarettes, they hurry away, to....

The day is past sunrise now, and floods of golden light stream over the city, where already great crowds are moving backwards and forwards.

Cabs drive up continually to the great railway station opposite with piles of luggage, and I think dreamily how very like they are to London four-wheelers, taking the family away to the seaside!

And still the city remains marvellously calm, in spite of the ever-increasing movements. People are going away in hundreds, in thousands. But they are going quietly, calmly. Processions of black-robed nuns file along the avenues under the fading trees. Long lines of Belgian cyclists flash by in an opposite direction in their gay yellow and green uniforms. The blue and red of the French and English banners never looked brighter as the wind plays with them, and the sunlight sparkles on them, while the great black and red and gold Belgian flags lend that curious note of sombre dignity to the crowded streets.

But not a word of regret from anyone. That is the Belgian way.

Belgians all, to-day I kneel at your feet.

Oh God, what those people are going through!

God, what they are suffering and to suffer! How can they bear it? Where do they get their heroism? Is it--it must be--from Above!