UNDER GERMAN OCCUPATION
In my empty hotel the profoundest melancholy reigns.
The inherent sadness of the occupied city seems to have full sway here.
The palm court, with its high glassed roof, is swept with ghostly
echoes, especially when the day wanes towards dusk, the great deserted
dining-salon, with its polished tables and its rows of chairs is like a
mausoleum for dead revellers, the writing-rooms with their desks always
so pitifully tidy, the smoking-rooms, the drawing-rooms, the floor upon
floor of empty, guestless bedrooms, with the beds rolled back and the
blinds down; they ache with their ghastly silences and seem to languish
away towards decay.
The only servant is Antoine, the bent little old faithful white-haired
porter, who has passed his lifetime in the service of the house.
Madame la Patronne, in heavy mourning, with her two small boys clinging
to either arm, sometimes moves across the palm court to her own little
sitting-room.
And sometimes some Belgian woman friend, always in black, drops in, and
she and la Patronne and the old porter all talk together, dully,
guardedly, relating to each other the gossip of Brussels, and wondering
always how things are going with "les petits Belges" outside in the
world beyond.
In front, the great doors are locked and barred.
One tiny door, cut in the wooden gate at the side, is one's sole means
of exit and entrance.
But it is almost too small for the Liège professor, and he tells me
plaintively that he will be glad to move on to Liège.
"I get broken to pieces squeezing in and out of that little door," he
says. "And I am always afraid I will stick in the middle, and the
Germans in the restaurant will see me, and ask who I am, and what I am
doing here!"
"I can get through the door easily enough," I answer. "But I suffer
agonies as I stand there on the street waiting for old Antoine to come
and unlock it."
"And then there is no food here, no lunch, no dinner, and I do not like
to go in the restaurants alone; I am afraid the Germans will notice me.
I am so big, you see, everybody notices me. Do you think I will ever get
to Liège?"
"Of course you will."
"But do you think I will ever get back from Liège to Antwerp?"
"Of course you will."
"J'ai peur!"
"Moi aussi!"
And indeed, sitting there in the dusk, in the eerie silences of the
deserted hotel, with the German guns booming away in the distance
towards Malines, there creeps over me a shuddering sensation that is
very like fear at the ever-deepening realization of what Belgium has
suffered, and may have to suffer yet; and I find it almost
intolerable--the thought of this poor brave old trembling Belgian,
weighted with years and flesh, struggling so manfully to get back to
Liège, and gauge for himself the extent of the damage done to his house
and properties, to see his servants and help them make arrangements for
the future. Like all the rest of the Belgian fugitives, he knows nothing
_definite_ about the destruction of his town. It may be that his home
has been razed to the ground. It may be that it has been spared. He is
sure of nothing, and that is why he has set out on this long and
dangerous journey, which is not by any means over yet.
Then the old porter approaches, gentle, sorrowful.
"Monsieur, good news! there is a train for Liège to-morrow morning at
five o'clock!"
"Merci bien," says the old professor. "Mais, j'ai peur!"
I rise at four next morning and come down to see him off. We two, who
have never seen each other before, seem now like the only relics of some
bygone far-off event. To see his fat, old, enormous face gives me a
positive thrill of joy. I feel as if I have known him all my life, and
when he has gone I feel curiously alone. The melancholy old fat man's
presence had lent a semblance of life to the hotel, which how seems
given over to ghosts and echoes. Unable to bear it, I moved into the
Métropole.
It was very strange to be there, very strange indeed! This was the
Métropole and yet not the Métropole! Sometimes I could not believe it
was the Métropole at all--the gay, bright, lively, friendly,
companionable Métropole--so sad was this big red-carpeted hotel, so full
of gloomy echoing silences, and with never a soul to arrive or leave, to
ask for a room or a time-table.
There were Italians in charge of the hotel, for which I was profoundly
thankful.
How nice they were to me, those kindly sons of the South.
They allowed me to look in their visitors' book, and as I expected, I
found that the dry hotel register had suddenly become transformed into a
vital human document, of surpassing interest, of intense historic value.
As I glanced through the crowded pages I came at last upon an ominous
date in August upon which there were no names entered.
It was the day on which Brussels surrendered to the Germans.
On that day the register was blank, entirely blank.
And next day also, and the next, and the next, and the next, were those
white empty sheets, with never a name inscribed upon them.
For weeks this blankness continued. It was stifling in its
significance. It clutched at one's heart-strings. It shouted aloud of
the agony of those days when all who could do so left Brussels, and only
those who were obliged to remained. It told its desolate tale of the
visitors that had fled, or ceased to come.
Only, here and there after a long interval, appeared a German name or
two.
Frau Schmidt arrived; Herr Lemberg; Fräulein Gottmituns.
There was a subdued little group of occupants when I was there; Mr.
Morse, the American pill-maker, Mr. Williams, another American, an
ex-Portuguese Minister and his wife and son (exiles these from
Portugal), a little Dutch Baroness who was said to be a great friend of
Gyp's, half a dozen English nurses and two wounded German officers.
I made friends quickly with the nurses and the Americans, and to look
into English eyes again gave me a peculiarly soothing sense of relief
that taught me (if I needed teaching) how alone I was in all these
dangers and agitations.
Mr. Williams had a queer experience. I have often wondered why America
did not resent it on his account.
He was arrested and taken prisoner for talking about the horrors of
Louvain in a train. He was released while I was there. I saw him dashing
into the hotel one evening, a brown paper parcel under his arm. There
was quite a little scene in the waiting-room; everyone came round him
asking what had happened. It seemed that as he stepped out of the tram
he was confronted by German officers, who promptly conducted him into a
"detention honorable."
There he was stripped and searched, and in the meanwhile private
detectives visited his room at the Métropole and went through all his
belongings.
Nothing of a compromising nature being found, Mr. Williams was allowed
to go free after twenty-four hours, having first to give his word that
in future he would not express himself in public.
When I invited him to describe to me what happened in his "detention
honorable," he answered with a strained smile, "No more talking for me!"
Surely this insult to a free-born American must have been a bitter dose
for the American Consulate to swallow.
But perhaps they were too busy to notice it!
When I called at the Consulate the place was crowded with English nurses
begging to be helped away from Brussels. I found that Mr. Richards had
already put in a word on my behalf.
This is what they gave me at the American Consulate in Brussels as a
safeguard against the Germans. I shouldn't have cared to show it to the
enemy! It seemed to me to deliver me straight into their hands. I hid it
in the lining of my hat with my passport.
[Illustration: THE AMERICAN SAFEGUARD.]