I go to the Post Office to look for the Commandant. He is not in the
Telegraph Office. He is not in the Post Office. Tom keeps his eyes on
the doors of both.
More ages pass. Finally, the Commandant appears from inside the
Hospital, which he has not been seen to enter.
The chauffeur Tom dismounts and draws from his car's mysterious being
sounds that express the savage fury of his resentment.
You would think we were off now. But we only get as far as a street
somewhere near the Hotel de la Poste. Here we wait for apparently no
reason in such tension that you can hear the ages pass.
The Commandant disappears.
Tom says something about there being no room for the wounded at this
rate.
It seems his orders are to go first to the British lines at a place
whose name I forget, and then on to Melle.
I remember Tom's views on the subject of field-women. And suddenly I
seem to understand them. Tom is very like Lord Kitchener. He knows
nothing about the aims and wants of modern womanhood and he cares less.
The modern woman does not ask to be protected, does not want to be
protected, and Tom, like Lord Kitchener, will go on protecting. You
cannot elevate men like Lord Kitchener and Tom above the primitive plane
of chivalry. Tom in the danger zone with a woman by his side feels about
as peaceful and comfortable as a woman in the danger zone with a
two-year-old baby in her lap. A bomb in his bedroom is one thing and a
band of drunken Uhlans making for his women is another. Tom's nerves are
racked with problems: How the dickens is he to steer his car and protect
his women at the same time? And if it comes to a toss-up between his
women and his wounded? You've got to stow the silly things somewhere,
and every one of them takes up the place of a wounded man.
I get out of the car and tell the Commandant that I would rather not go
than take up the place of a wounded man.
He orders me back to the car again. Tom seems inclined to regard me as a
woman who has done her best.
We go on a little way and stop again. And there springs out of the
pavement a curious figure that I have seen somewhere before in Ghent, I
cannot remember when or where. The figure wears a check suit of extreme
horsyness and carries a kodak in its hand. It is excited.
There is something about it that reminds me now of the eager little
Englishman at Melle. These figures spring up everywhere in the track of
a field ambulance.
When Tom sees it he groans in despair.
The Commandant gets out and appears to be offering it the hospitality of
the car. I am introduced.
To my horror the figure skips round in front of the car, levels its
kodak at my head and implores me to sit still.
I am very rude. I tell it sternly to take that beastly thing away and go
away itself.
It goes, rather startled.
And we get off, somehow, without it, and arrive at the end of the
street.
Here Tom has orders to stop at the first hat-shop he comes to.
The Commandant has lost his hat at Melle (he has been wearing little
Janet's Arctic cap, to the delight of everybody). He has just remembered
that he wants a hat and he thinks that he will get it now.
At this point I break down. I hear myself say "Damn" five times, softly
but distinctly. (This after reproving Tom for unfettered speech and
potential insubordination.)
Tom stops at a hat-shop. The Commandant to his doom enters, and
presently returns wearing a soft felt hat of a vivid green. He asks me
what I think of it.
I tell him all I think of it, and he says that if I feel like that about
it he'll go in again and get another one.
I forget what I said then except that I wanted to get on to Melle. That
Melle was the place of all places where I most wished to be.
Then, lest he might feel unhappy in his green hat, I said that if he
would leave it out all night in the rain and then sit on it no doubt
time and weather and God would do something for it.