At the turn of the road they heard the guns: a solemn Boom--Boom coming
up out of hushed spaces; they saw white puffs of smoke rising in the blue
sky. The French guns somewhere back of them. The German guns in front
southwards beyond the river.
Charlotte looked at John; he was brilliantly happy. They smiled at each
other as if they said "_Now_ it's beginning."
Outside the village of Berlaere they were held up by two sentries with
rifles. (Thrilling, that.) Their Belgian guide leaned out and whispered
the password; John showed their passports and they slipped through.
Where the road turned on their left into the street they saw a group of
soldiers standing at the door of a house. Three of them, a Belgian
lieutenant and two non-commissioned officers, advanced hurriedly and
stopped the car. The lieutenant forbade them to go on.
"But," John said, "we've got orders to go on."
A shrug intimated that their orders were not the lieutenant's affair.
They couldn't go on.
"But we _must_ go on. We've got to fetch some wounded."
"There aren't any wounded," said the lieutenant.
Charlotte had an inspiration. "You tell us that tale every time," she
said, "and there are always wounded."
The Belgian guide and the lieutenant exchanged glances.
"I've told you there aren't any," the lieutenant said. "You must go
back."
"Here--You explain."
But instead of explaining the little Belgian backed up the lieutenant by
a refusal on his own part to go on.
"He can please himself. _We're_ going on."
"You don't imagine," Charlotte said, "by any chance that we're _afraid_?"
The lieutenant smiled, a smile that lifted his ferocious, upturned
moustache: first sign that he was yielding. He looked at the sergeant and
the corporal, and they nodded.
John had his foot on the clutch. "We're due," he said, "at the dressing
station by three o'clock."
She thought: He's magnificent. She could see that the lieutenant and the
soldiers thought he was magnificent. Supposing she had gone out with some
meek fool who would have gone back when they told him!
The lieutenant skipped aside before the advancing car. "You can go," he
said, "to the dressing-station."
"They always do that as a matter of form--sort of warning us that it's
our own risk. They won't be responsible."
She didn't answer. She was thinking that when they turned John's driving
place would be towards the German guns.
"I wish you'd let me drive. You know I like driving."
"Not this time."
At the dressing-station, a deserted store, they found a Belgian Army
Medical officer engaged with a tired and flushed and dirty soldier. He
was bandaging his left hand which had made a trail of blood splashes from
the street to the counter. The right hand hung straight down from a nick
in the dropped wrist where a tendon had been severed. He told them that
they had grasped the situation. Seven men waited there for transport.
The best thing--perhaps--He looked doubtfully at Charlotte--would be for
them to take these men back at once. (The tired soldier murmured
something: a protest or an entreaty.) Though they were not exactly urgent
cases. They could wait.
Charlotte suspected a serious reservation. "You mean you have others
more urgent?"
The soldier got in his word. "Much more." His lips and eyes moved
excitedly in the flush and grime.
"Well yes," the doctor admitted that they had. Not in the village, but in
a hamlet about a mile outside of it. An outpost. This man and three
others had been holding it with two machine guns. He had had a finger
shot away and his wrist cut open by a shell-burst; the other three were
left there, badly wounded.
"All right, we'll go and fetch them."
"Monsieur, the place is being shelled. You have no orders."
"We've no orders not to."
The doctor spread out helpless palms, palms that disclaimed
responsibility.
"If you go, you go at your own risk. I will not send you."
"That's all right."
"Oh well--But certainly Mademoiselle must be left behind."
"Mademoiselle is much too useful."
Frantic gestures of eyebrows and palms.
"You must not stay there more than three minutes. _Three minutes_."
He turned to the cut tendon with an air of integrity, his conscience
appeased by laying down this time limit.
John released the clutch, and the soldier shouted out something, they
couldn't make out what, that ended with "mitrailleuses."
As they ran down the street the solemn Boom--Boom came right and left;
they were now straight between the two batteries.
"Are you all right, Sharlie?"
"Rather."
The little Belgian by her side muttered, protesting.
"We're not really in any danger. It's all going on over our heads."
"Do you suppose," she said, "they'll get our range?"
"Rather not. Why should they? They've got their range and they'll
stick to it."
The firing on their right ceased.
"They're quiet enough now," she said.
The little Belgian informed her that if they were quiet so much the
worse. They were finding their range.