The Commandant, who went out to Melle in Tom's car, has not come back
yet.
I think Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Lambert have gone to bed. They are not
taking the Germans very seriously.
There is nobody in the mess-room but the other three chauffeurs, Bert,
Tom and Newlands. Newlands has just come back from Ostend. They have had
no supper. We bustle about to find some.
We all know the Germans are coming into Ghent. But we do not speak of
it. We are all very polite, almost supernaturally gentle, and very kind
to each other. The beautiful manners of Newlands are conspicuous in this
hour, the tragedy of which we are affecting to ignore. I behave as if
there was nothing so important in the world as cutting bread for
Newlands. Newlands behaves as if there were nothing so important as
fetching a bottle of formamint, which he has with him, to cure my cough.
(It has burst out again worse than ever after the unnatural repression
of last night.)
When the chauffeurs are provided with supper I go into the Commandant's
room and finish his packing. The ties, the pocket-handkerchiefs and the
collars are all safe in the Gladstone bag. Only the underclothing and
the suits remain and there is any amount of room for them in the
hold-all.
I roll up the blue serge coat, and the trousers, and the waistcoat very
smooth and tight, also the underclothes. It seems very simple. I have
only got to put them in the hold-all and then roll it up, smooth and
tight, too--
It would have been simple, if the hold-all had been a simple hold-all
and if it had been nothing more. But it was also a sleeping-bag and a
field-tent. As sleeping-bag, it was provided with a thick blanket which
took up most of the room inside, and a waterproof sheet which was part
of itself. As field-tent, it had large protruding flanges, shaped like
jib-sails, and a complicated system of ropes.
First of all I tucked in the jib-sails and ropes and laid them as flat
as might be on the bottom of the sleeping-bag, with the blanket on the
top of them. Then I packed the clothes on the top of the blanket and
turned it over them to make all snug; I buttoned up the waterproof sheet
over everything, rolled up the hold-all and secured it with its straps.
This was only done by much stratagem and strength, by desperate tugging
and pushing, and by lying flat on my waist on the rolled-up half to keep
it quiet while I brought the loose half over. No sooner had I secured
the hold-all by its straps than I realized that it was no more a
hold-all than it was a sleeping-bag and a field tent, and that its
contents were exposed to the weather down one side, where they bulged
through the spaces that yawned between the buttons, strained almost to
bursting.
I still believed in the genius that had devised this trinity. Clearly
the jib-sails which made it a field-tent were intended to serve also as
the pockets of the hold-all. I had done wrong to flatten them out and
tuck them in, frustrating the fulfilment of their function. It was not
acting fairly by the inventor.