What happened then was so ignominious, so sickening, that, if I were not
sworn to the utmost possible realism in this record, I should suppress
it in the interests of human dignity.
Mrs. Torrence, having the advantage of me in weight, height, muscle and
position, got up and tried to push me off the step. As she did this she
said: "You can't come. You'll take up the place of a wounded man."
And I found myself standing in the village street, while the car rushed
out of it, with Janet clinging on to the hood, like a little sailor to
his shrouds. She was on the side next the German guns.
It was the most revolting thing that had happened to me yet, in a life
filled with incidents that I have no desire to repeat. And it made me
turn on the Commandant in a way that I do not like to think of. I
believe I asked him how he could bear to let that kid go into the German
lines, which was exactly what the poor man hadn't done.[25]
Then we waited, Mrs. Lambert and I in Tom's car; and the Commandant in
the car with Ursula Dearmer and the Chaplain on the other side of the
street.
We were dreadfully silent now. We stared at objects that had no earthly
interest for us as if our lives depended on mastering their detail. We
were thus aware of a beautiful little Belgian house standing back from
the village street down a short turning, a cream-coloured house with
green shutters and a roof of rose-red tiles, and a very small poplar
tree mounting guard beside it. This house and its tree were vivid and
very still. They stood back in an atmosphere of their own, an atmosphere
of perfect but utterly unreal peace. And as long as our memories endure,
that house which we never saw before, and shall probably never see
again, is bound up with the fate of Mrs. Torrence and Janet McNeil.
We thought we should have an hour to wait before they came back, if they
ever did come. We waited for them during a whole dreadful lifetime.
* * * * *
In something less than half an hour the military ambulance came swinging
round the turn of the road, with Mrs. Torrence and the Kid, and the two
German wounded with them on the stretchers.
Those Germans never thought that they were going to be saved. They
couldn't get over it--that two Englishwomen should have gone through
their fire, for them! As they were being carried through the fire they
said: "We shall never forget what you've done for us. God will bless you
for it."
Mrs. Torrence asked them, "What will you do for us if we are taken
prisoner?"