A Journal of Impressions in Belgium Part 10

"No," I said, "we're not. She won't come."

But we have got off with Dr. ----.

Mrs. Stobart has refused the Commandant's offer of one of our best surgeons in exchange. He is a man. And this hospital is a Feminist Show.

We dined in a great hurry in a big restaurant in one of the main streets. The restaurant was nearly empty and funereal black cloths were hung over the windows to obscure the lights.

Mr. Davidson (this cheerful presence was with us in our dream-like career through Antwerp)--Mr. Davidson and I amused ourselves by planning how we will behave when we are taken prisoner by the Germans. He is safe, because he is an American citizen. The unfortunate thing about me is my pa.s.sport, otherwise, by means of a well-simulated nasal tw.a.n.g I might get through as an American novelist. I've been mistaken for one often enough in my own country. But, as I don't mean to be taken prisoner, and perhaps murdered or have my hands chopped off, without a struggle, my plan is to deliver a speech in German, as follows: "_Ich bin eine beruhmte Schriftstellerin_" (on these occasions you stick at nothing), "_beruhmt in England, aber viel beruhmter in den Vereinigten Staaten, und mein Schicksal will den Presidenten Wilson nicht gleichgultig sein_." I added by way of rhetorical flourish as the language went to my head: "_Er will mein Tod zu vertheidigen gut wissen_;" but I was aware that this was overdoing it.

Mr. Davidson thought it would be better on the whole if he were to pa.s.s me off as his wife. Perhaps it would, but it seems a pity that so much good German should be wasted.

We got up from that dinner with even more haste than we had sat down.

All lights in the town were put out at eight-thirty, and we didn't want to go crawling and blundering about in the dark with our ambulance car.

There was a general feeling that the faster we ran back to Ghent the better.

We left Mr. Davidson and Dr. Wilson in Antwerp. They were staying over-night for the fun of the thing.

Another awful struggle on the downward slope from the quay to the bridge of boats. A bad jam at the turn. A sudden loosening and letting go of the traffic, and we were over.

We ran back to Ghent so fast that at Saint Nicolas (where we stopped to pick up our poor little Belgian professor) we took the wrong turn at the fork of the road and dashed with considerable _elan_ over the Dutch frontier. We only realized it when a sentry in an unfamiliar uniform raised his rifle and prepared to fire, not with the cheerful, perfunctory vigilance of our Belgians, but in a determined, business-like manner, and the word "Achille," imparted in a burst of confidence, produced no sympathy whatever. On the contrary, this absurd sentry (who had come out of a straw sentry-box that was like an enormous beehive) went on pointing his rifle at us with most unnecessary persistence. I was so interested in seeing what he would do next that I missed the very pleasing behaviour of the little Belgian professor, who sat next to me, wrapped in his brown shawl. He still imagined himself to be on the road to Ghent, and when he saw that sentry continuing to prepare to fire in spite of our pa.s.sword, he concluded that we and the road to Ghent were in the hands of the Germans. So he instantly ducked behind me for cover and collapsed on the floor of the ambulance in his shawl.

Then somebody said "We're in Holland!" and there were shouts of laughter from everybody in the car except the little Belgian. Then shouts of laughter from the Dutch sentries and Customs officers, who enjoyed this excellent joke as much as we did.

We were now out of our course by I don't know how many miles and short of petrol. But one of the Customs officers gave us all we wanted.

It's heart-breaking the way these dear Belgians take the British. They have waited so long for our army, believing that it would come, till they could believe no more. In Ghent, in Antwerp, you wouldn't know that Belgium had any allies; you never see the British flag, or the French either, hanging from the windows. The black, yellow and red standard flies everywhere alone. Now that we _have_ come, their belief in us is almost unbearable. They really think we are going to save Antwerp.

Somewhere between Antwerp and Saint Nicolas the population of a whole village turned out to meet us with cries of "_Les Anglais! Les Anglaises!_" and laughed for joy. Terrible for us, who had heard Belgians say reproachfully: "We thought that the British would come to our help. But they never came!" They said it more in sorrow than in anger; but you couldn't persuade them that the British fought for Belgium at Mons.

We got into Ghent about midnight.

Dr. ---- is to stay at the Hotel de la Poste to-night.

[_Monday, 5th._]

The mosquitoes from the ca.n.a.l have come up and bitten me. I was ill all night with something that felt like malarial fever, if it isn't influenza. Couldn't get up--too drowsy.

Mr. L. came in to see me first thing in the morning. He also came to hear at first hand the story of our run into Antwerp. He was extremely kind. He sat and looked at me sorrowfully, as if he had been the family doctor, and gave me some of his very own China tea (in Belgium in war-time this is one of the most devoted things that man can do for his brother). He was so gentle and so sympathetic that my heart went out to him, and I forgot all about poor Mr. Davidson, and gave up to him the whole splendid "scoop" of the British troops at Saint Nicolas.

I couldn't tell him much about the run into Antwerp. No doubt it was a thrilling performance--through all the languor of malaria it thrills me now when I think of it--but it wasn't much to offer a War Correspondent, since it took us nowhere near the bombardment. It had nothing for the psychologist or for the amateur of strange sensations, and nothing for the pure and ardent Spirit of Adventure, and nothing for that insatiable and implacable Self, that drives you to the abhorred experiment, determined to know how you will come out of it. For there was no more danger in the excursion than in a run down to Brighton and back; and I know no more of fear or courage than I did before I started.

But now that I realize what the insatiable and implacable Self is after, how it worked in me against all decency and all pity, how it actually made me feel as if I wanted to see Antwerp under siege, and how the spirit of adventure backed it up, I can forgive the Commandant. I still think that he sinned when he took Ursula Dearmer to Termonde and to Alost. But the temptation that a.s.sailed him at Alost and Termonde was not to be measured by anybody who was not there.

It must have been irresistible.

Besides, it is not certain that he did take Ursula Dearmer into danger; it is every bit as likely that she took him; more likely still that they were both victims of _force majeure_, fascinated by the lure of the greatest possible danger. And, oh, how I did pitch into him!

I am ashamed of the things I said in that access of insulting and indignant virtue.

Can it be that I was jealous of Ursula Dearmer, that innocent girl, because she saw a sh.e.l.l burst and I didn't? I know this is what was the matter with Mrs. Torrence the other day. She even seemed to imply that there was some feminine perfidy in Ursula Dearmer's power of drawing sh.e.l.ls to her. (She, poor dear, can't attract even a bullet within a mile of her.)[15]

Lying there, in that mosquito-haunted room, I dissolved into a blessed state, a beautiful, drowsy tenderness to everybody, a drowsy, beautiful forgiveness of the Commandant. I forgot that he intimated, sternly, that no ambulance would be at my disposal in the flight from Ghent--I remember only that he took me into Antwerp yesterday, and that he couldn't help it if the outer forts _were_ thirty kilometres away, and I forgive him, beautifully and drowsily.

But when he came running up in great haste to see me, and rushed down into the kitchens of the Hotel to order soup for me, and into the chemist's shop in the Place d'Armes to get my medicine, and ran back again to give it me, before I knew where I was (such is the debilitating influence of malaria), instead of forgiving him, I found myself, in abject contrition, actually asking him to forgive _me_.

It was all wrong, of course; but the mosquitoes had bitten me rather badly.

Mrs. Torrence and Janet McNeil have got to work at last. All afternoon and all night yesterday they were busy between the Station and the hospitals removing the wounded from the Antwerp trains.

And Car 1 had no sooner got into the yard of the "Flandria" to rest after its trip to Antwerp and back than it was ordered out again with the Commandant and Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Torrence to meet the last ambulance train. The chauffeur Tom was nowhere to be seen when the order came. He was, however, found after much search, in the Park, in the company of the Cricklewood bus and a whole regiment of Tommies.

One of these ambulance trains had been sh.e.l.led by the Germans (they couldn't have been very far from us in our run from Antwerp--it was their nearness, in fact, that accounted for our prodigious haste!), and many of the men came in worse wounded than they went out.

We are all tremendously excited over the arrival of the Tommies and the Cricklewood bus. We can think of nothing else but the relief of Antwerp.

Ursula Dearmer came to see me. She understands that I have forgiven her that sh.e.l.l--and why. She wore the clothes--the rather heart-rending school-girl clothes--she wore when she came to see the Committee. But oh, how the youngest but one has grown up since then!

Mrs. Torrence came to see me also, and Janet McNeil. Mrs. Torrence, though that sh.e.l.l still rankles, is greatly appeased by the labours of last night. So is Janet.

They told rather a nice story.

A train full of British troops from Ostend came into the station yesterday at the same time as the ambulance train from Antwerp. The two were drawn up one on each side of the same platform. When the wounded Belgians saw the British they struggled to their feet. At every window of the ambulance train bandaged heads were thrust out and bandaged hands waved. And the Belgians shouted.

But the British stood dumb, stolid and impa.s.sive before their enthusiasm.

Mrs. Torrence called out, "Give them a cheer, boys. They're the bravest little soldiers in the world."

Then the Tommies let themselves go, and the Station roof nearly flew off with the explosion.

The Corps worked till four in the morning clearing out those ambulance trains. The wards are nearly full. And this is only the beginning.

[_Tuesday, 6th._]

Malaria gone.

The Commandant called to give his report of the ambulance work. He, Mrs.

Torrence, Janet McNeil, Ursula Dearmer and the men were working all yesterday afternoon and evening till long past dark at Termonde. It's the finest thing they've done yet. The men and the women crawled on their hands and knees in the trenches [? under the river bank] under fire. Ursula Dearmer (that girl's luck is simply staggering!)--Ursula Dearmer, wandering adventurously apart, after dark, on the battle-field, found a young Belgian officer, badly wounded, lying out under a tree.

She couldn't carry him, but she went for two stretchers and three men; and they put the young officer on one stretcher, and she trotted off with his sword, his cap and the rest of his accoutrements on the other.

He owes his life to this manifestation of her luck.

Dr. Wilson has come back from Antwerp.

It looks as if Dr. Haynes and Dr. Bird would go. At any rate, I think they will give up working on the Field Ambulance. There aren't enough cars for four surgeons _and_ four field-women, and they have seen hardly any service. This is rather hard luck on them, as they gave up their practice to come out with us. Naturally, they don't want to waste any more time.

I managed to get some work done to-day. Wrote a paragraph about the Ambulance for Mr. L., who will publish it in the _Westminster_ under his name, to raise funds for us. He is more than ever certain that it (the Ambulance) is the real thing.