CHAPTER XLVI

THE FLIGHT INTO HOLLAND

For five wild incredible days I remained in Antwerp, watching the German occupation; and then at last, I found my opportunity to escape over the borders into Holland.

There came the great day when François managed to borrow a motor car and took me out through the Breda Gate to Putte in Holland.

Good-bye to Ada, good-bye to Henri, good-bye to Lenore, Jeanette and la grandmère!

I knew now that Madame X. could be trusted to the death. She had proved it in an unmistakable way. In my bag I had her Belgian passport and her German one also. I was passing now as François' wife. The photograph of Lenore stamped on the passport was sufficiently like myself to enable me to pass the German sentinels, and Lenore, dear, sweet, lovable Lenore, had coached me diligently in the pronunciation of her queer Flemish name--which was _not_ Lenore, of course.

As for my own English passport, Monsieur X. went several times to the young Danish Doctor asking for it on my behalf.

The Dane refused to give it up. "How do I know," said he, "that you will restore it to the lady?"

Finally Monsieur X. suggested that he should leave it for me at the American Consulate.

Eventually, long after it came to me in London from the American Consulate, with a note from the Dane asking them to see that I got it safely.

When I think of it now, I feel sad to have so mistrusted that friendly Dane. What did he think, I wonder, to find me suddenly flown? Perhaps he will read this some day, and understand, and forgive.

Ah, how mournful, how heart-breaking was the almost incredible change that had taken place in the free, happy country of former days and this ruined desolate land of to-day. As we flashed along towards Holland we passed endless burnt-out villages and farms, magnificent old châteaux shelled to the ground, churches lying tumbled forward upon their graveyards, tombstones uprooted and graves riven open. A cold wind blew; the sky was grey and sad; in all the melancholy and chill there was one thought and one alone that made these sights endurable. It was that the poor victims of these horrors were being cared for and comforted in England's and Holland's big warm hearts.

I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw on the Dutch borders those sweet green Dutch pine-woods of Putte stretching away under the peaceful golden evening skies. Trees! _Trees!_ Were there really such things left in the world? It seemed impossible that any beauty could be still in existence; and I gazed at the woods with ravenous eyes, drinking in their beauty and peace like a perishing man slaking his thirst in clear cold water.

Then, suddenly, out of the depths of those dim Dutch woods, I discerned white faces peering, and presently I became aware that the woods were alive with human beings. White gaunt faces looked out from behind the tree-trunks, faces of little frightened children, peeping, peering, wondering, faces of sad, hopeless men, gazing stonily, faces of hollow-eyed women who had turned grey with anguish when that cruel hail of shells began to burst upon their little homes in Antwerp, drawing them in their terror out into the unknown.

Right through the woods of Putte ran the road to the city of Berg-op-Zoom, and along this road I saw a huge military car come flying, manned by half a dozen Dutch Officers and laden with thousands of loaves of bread. Instantly, out of the woods, out of their secret lairs, the poor homeless fugitives rushed forward, gathering round the car, holding out their hands in a passion of supplication, and whispering hoarsely, "Du pain! Du pain!" Bread! Bread!

It was like a scene from Dante, the white faces, the outstretched arms, the sunset above the wood, and the red camp fires between the trees.