Mr. L. looks at you as much as to say that is what he has had up his
sleeve all the time. The word comes from him as casually as if he spoke
of the London and South-Western terminus. But he is alive to the power
of its evocation, to the unsurpassable thrill. So are you. It starts the
current in that wireless system of vibrations that travel unperishing,
undiminished, from the dead to the living. There are not many kilometres
between Ghent and Waterloo; you are not only within the radius of the
psychic shock, you are close to the central batteries, and ninety-nine
years are no more than one pulse of their vibration. Through I don't
know how many kilometres and ninety-nine years it has tracked you down
and found you in your one moment of response.
It has a sudden steadying effect. Your brain clears. The things that
loomed so large, the "Flandria," and the English Field Ambulance and its
miseries, and the terrifying recklessness of its Commandant, are reduced
suddenly to invisibility. You can see nothing but the second Waterloo.
You forget that you have ever been a prisoner in an Hotel-Hospital. You
understand the mystic fascination of the road under your windows, going
south-east from Ghent to Brussels, somewhere towards Waterloo. You are
reconciled to the incomprehensible lassitude of events. That is what we
have all been waiting for--the second Waterloo. And we have only waited
five days.