The French troops are being massed at Courtrai.
Suddenly it strikes me that I have done an injustice to the Commandant.
It is all very well to say that he brought me out here against my will.
But did he? He said it would interest me to see the siege of Antwerp,
and I said it wouldn't. I said with the most perfect sincerity that I'd
die rather than go anywhere near the siege of Antwerp, or of any other
place. And now the siege-guns from Namur are battering the forts of
Antwerp, and down there the armies are gathering towards the second
Waterloo, and the Commandant was right. I am extremely interested. I
would die rather than go back to England.
Is it possible that he knew me better than I knew myself?
When I think that it is possible I feel a slight revulsion of justice
towards the Commandant. After all, he brought me here. We may disagree
about the present state of Alost and Termonde, considered as
health-resorts for English girls, but it is pretty certain that without
him we would none of us have got here. Where, indeed, should we have
been and how should we have got our motor ambulances, but for his
intrepid handling of Providence and of the Belgian Red Cross and the
Belgian Legation? There is genius in a man who can go out without one
car, or the least little nut or cog of a _chassis_ to his name, and
impose himself upon a Government as the Commandant of a Motor Field
Ambulance.
Still, though I am not going back to England as a protest, I _am_ going
to leave the Hospital Hotel for a little while. That bright idea has
come to me just now while we are waiting for the Commandant to tear
himself from the War Correspondents and come away. I shall get a room
here in the Hotel de la Poste for a week, and, while we wait for
Waterloo, I shall write some articles. The War Correspondents will tell
me what is being done, and what has been overdone and what remains to
do. I shall at least hear things if I can't see them. And I shall cut
the obsession of responsibility. It'll be worse than ever if there
really is going to be a second Waterloo.
Waterloo with Ursula Dearmer and Janet in the thick of it, and Mrs.
Torrence driving the Colonel's scouting-car!
There are moments of bitterness and distortion when I see the Commandant
as a curious psychic monster bringing up his women with him to the
siege-guns because of some uncanny satisfaction he finds in their
presence there. There are moods, only less perverted, when I see him
pursuing his course because it is his course, through sheer Highland
Celtic obstinacy; lucid flashes when he appears, blinded by the glamour
of his dream, and innocently regardless of actuality. Is it uncanniness?
Is it obstinacy? Is it dreamy innocence? Or is it some gorgeous streak
of Feminism? Is it the New Chivalry, that refuses to keep women back,
even from the firing-line? The New Romance, that gives them their share
of divine danger? Or, since nothing can be more absurd than to suppose
that any person acts at all times and in all circumstances on one
ground, or necessarily on any grounds, is it a little bit of all these
things? I am not sure that Feminism, or at any rate the New Chivalry,
doesn't presuppose them all.
The New Chivalry sees the point of its reporter's retirement to the
Hotel de la Poste, since it has decided that journalism is my work, and
journalism cannot flourish at the "Flandria." So we interview the nice
fat _proprietaire_, and the _proprietaire's_ nice fat wife, and between
them they find a room for me, a back room on the fourth floor, the only
one vacant in the hotel; it looks out on the white-tiled walls and the
windows of the enclosing wings. The space shut in is deep and narrow as
a well. The view from that room is more like a prison than any view from
the "Flandria," but I take it. I am not deceived by appearances, and I
recognize that the peace of God is there.
It is a relief to think that poor Max will have one less to work for.
At the "Flandria" we find that the Military Power has put its foot down.
The General--he cannot have a spark of the New Chivalry in his brutal
breast--has ordered Mrs. Torrence off her chauffeur's job. You see the
grizzled Colonel as the image of protest and desolation, helpless in the
hands of the implacable Power. You are sorry for Mrs. Torrence (she has
seen practically no service with the ambulance as yet), but she, at any
rate, has had her fling. No power can take from her the memory of those
two days.
Still, something is going to be done to-morrow, and this time, even the
miserable Reporter is to have a look in. The Commandant has another
scheme for a temporary hospital or a dressing-station or something, and
to-morrow he is going with Car 1 to Courtrai to reconnoitre for a
position and incidentally to see the French troops. A God-sent
opportunity for the Reporter; and Janet McNeil is going, too. We are to
get up at six o'clock in the morning and start before seven.
[_Friday, October 2nd._]
We get up at six.
We hang about till eight-thirty or nine. A fine rain begins to fall. An
ominous rain. Car 1 and Car 2 are drawn up at the far end of the
Hospital yard. The rain falls ominously over the yellow-brown, trodden
clay of the yard. There is an ominous look of preparation about the
cars. There is also an ominous light in the blue eyes of the chauffeur
Tom.
The chauffeur Tom appears as one inspired by hatred of the whole human
race. You would say that he was also hostile to the entire female sex.
For Woman in her right place he may, he probably does, feel tenderness
and reverence. Woman in a field ambulance he despises and abhors. I
really think it was the sight of us that accounted for his depression at
Ostend. I have gathered from Mrs. Torrence that the chauffeur Tom has
none of the New Chivalry about him. He is the mean and brutal male, the
crass obstructionist who grudges women their laurels in the equal field.
I know the dreadful, blasphemous and abominable things that Tom is
probably thinking about me as I climb on to his car. He is visibly
disgusted with his orders. That he, a Red Cross Field Ambulance
chauffeur, should be told to drive four--or is it all five?--women to
look at the massing of the French troops at Courtrai! He is not deceived
by the specious pretext of the temporary hospital. Hospitals be blowed.
It's a bloomin' joy-ride, with about as much Red Cross in it as there is
in my hat. He is glad that it is raining.
Yes, I know what Tom is thinking. And all the time I have a sneaking
sympathy with Tom. I want to go to Courtrai more than I ever wanted
anything in my life, but I see the expedition plainly from Tom's point
of view. A field ambulance is a field ambulance and not a motor touring
car.
And to-day Tom is justified. We have hardly got upon his car than we
were told to get off it. We are not going to Courtrai. We are not going
anywhere. From somewhere in those mysterious regions where it abides,
the Military Power has come down.
Even as I get off the car and return to the Hospital-prison, in
melancholy retreat over the yellow-brown clay of the yard, through the
rain, I acknowledge the essential righteousness of the point of view.
And, to the everlasting honour of the Old Chivalry, it should be stated
that the chauffeur Tom repressed all open and visible expression of his
joy.
The morning passes, as the other mornings passed, in unspeakable
inactivity. Except that I make up the accounts and hand them over to Mr.
Grierson. It seems incredible, but I have balanced them to the last
franc.
I pack. Am surprised in packing by Max and Jean. They both want to know
the reason why. This is the terrible part of the business--leaving Max
and Jean.
I try to explain. Prosper Panne, who "writes for the Paris papers,"
understands me. He can see that the Hotel de la Poste may be a better
base for an attack upon the London papers. But Max does not understand.
He perceives that I have a scruple about occupying my room. And he takes
me into _his_ room to show me how nice it is--every bit as good as mine.
The implication being that if the Hospital can afford to lodge one of
its orderlies so well, it can perfectly well afford to lodge me. (This
is one of the prettiest things that Max has done yet! As long as I live
I shall see him standing in his room and showing me how nice it is.)
Still you can always appeal from Max to Prosper Panne. He understands
these journalistic tempers and caprices. He knows on how thin a thread
an article can hang. We have a brief discussion on the comparative
difficulties of the _roman_ and the _conte_, and he promises me to
cherish and protect the hat I must leave behind me as if it were his
bride.
But Jean--Jean does not understand at all. He thinks that I am not
satisfied with the service of our incomparable mess; that I prefer the
flesh-pots of the "Poste" and the manners of its waiters. He has no
other thought but this, and it is abominable; it is the worst of all.
The explanation thickens. I struggle gloriously with the French
language; one moment it has me by the throat and I am strangled; the
next I writhe forth triumphant. Strange gestures are given to me; I
plunge into the darkest pits of memory for the words that have escaped
me; I find them (or others just as good); it is really quite easy to say
that I am coming back again in a week.
Interview with Madame F. and M. G., the President.
Interview with the Commandant. Final assault on the defences of the New
Chivalry (the Commandant's mind is an impregnable fortress).
And, by way of afterthought, I inquire whether, in the event of a sudden
scoot before the Germans, a reporter quartered at the Hotel de la Poste
will be cut off from the base of communications and left to his or her
ingenuity in flight?
The Commandant, vague and imperturbable, replies that in all probability
it will be so.
And I (if possible more imperturbable than he) observe that the War
Correspondents will make quite a nice flying-party.
In a little open carriage--the taxis have long ago all gone to the
War--in an absurd little open carriage, exactly like a Cheltenham "rat,"
I depart like a lady of Cheltenham, for the Hotel de la Poste. The
appearance and the odour of this little carriage give you an odd sense
of security and peace. The Germans may be advancing on Ghent at this
moment, but for all the taste of war there is in it, you might be that
lady, going from one hotel to the other, down the Cheltenham Promenade.
The further you go from the Military Hospital and the Railway Station
the more it is so. The War does not seem yet to have shaken the
essential peace of the _bourgeois_ city. The Hotel de la Poste is in the
old quarter of the town, where the Cathedrals are. Instead of the long,
black railway lines and the red-brick facade of the Station and Post
Office; instead of the wooded fields beyond and the white street that
leads to the battle-places south and east; instead of the great Square
with its mustering troops and swarms of refugees, you have the quiet
Place d'Armes, shut in by trees, and all round it are the hotels and
cafes where the officers and the War Correspondents come and go. Through
all that coming and going you get the sense of the old foreign town that
was dreaming yesterday. People are sitting outside the restaurants all
round the Place, drinking coffee and liqueurs as if nothing had
happened, as if Antwerp were far-off in another country, and as if it
were still yesterday. Mosquitoes come up from the drowsy canal water
and swarm into the hotels and bite you. I found any number of mosquitoes
clinging drowsily to my bedroom walls.
But there are very few women among those crowds outside the restaurants.
There are not many women except refugees in the streets, and fewer still
in the shops.
I have blundered across a little cafe with an affectionately smiling and
reassuringly fat proprietress, where they give you _brioches_ and China
tea, which, as it were in sheer affection, they call English. It is not
as happy a find as you might think. It is not, in the circumstances,
happy at all. In fact, if you have never known what melancholy is and
would like to know it, I can recommend two courses. Go down the Grand
Canal in Venice in the grey spring of the year, in a gondola, all by
yourself. Or get mixed up with a field ambulance which is not only doing
noble work but running thrilling risks, in neither of which you have a
share, or the ghost of a chance of a share; cut yourself off from your
comrades, if it is only for a week, and go into a Belgian cafe in
war-time and try to eat _brioches_ and drink English tea all by yourself.
This is the more successful course. You may see hope beyond the gondola
and the Grand Canal. But you will see no hope beyond the _brioche_ and
the English tea.
I walk about again till it is time to go back to the Hotel. So far, my
emancipation has not been agreeable.
[_Evening. Hotel de la Poste._]
I dined in the crowded restaurant, avoiding the War Correspondents,
choosing a table where I hoped I might be unobserved. Somewhere through
a glass screen I caught a sight of Mr. L.'s head. I was careful to avoid
the glass screen and Mr. L.'s head. He shall not say, if I can possibly
help it, that I am an infernal nuisance. For I know I haven't any
business to be here, and if Belgium had a Kitchener I shouldn't be here.
However you look at me, I am here on false pretences. In the eyes of Mr.
L. I would have no more right to be a War Correspondent (if I were one)
than I have to be on a field ambulance. It is with the game of war as it
was with the game of football I used to play with my big brothers in the
garden. The women may play it if they're fit enough, up to a certain
point, very much as I played football in the garden. The big brothers
let their little sister kick off; they let her run away with the ball;
they stood back and let her make goal after goal; but when it came to
the scrimmage they took hold of her and gently but firmly moved her to
one side. If she persisted she became an infernal nuisance. And if those
big brothers over there only knew what I was after they would make
arrangements for my immediate removal from the seat of war.
The Commandant has turned up with Ursula Dearmer. He is drawn to these
War Correspondents who appear to know more than he does. On the other
hand, an ambulance that can get into the firing-line has an irresistible
attraction for a War Correspondent. It may at any moment constitute his
only means of getting there himself.
One of our cars has been sent out to Antwerp with dispatches and
surgical appliances.
The sight of the Commandant reminds me that I have got all the funds of
the Ambulance upstairs in my suit-case in that leather purse-belt--and
if the Ambulance does fly from Ghent without me, and without that belt,
it will find itself in considerable embarrassment before it has
retreated very far.
It is quite certain that I shall have to take my chance. I have asked
the Commandant again (either this evening or earlier) so that there may
be no possible doubt about it: "If we do have to scoot from Ghent in a
hurry I shall have nothing but my wits to trust to?"