On our way back to the E.s' house we met the Commandant and told him
what had happened. I said I thought it was the worst thing that had
happened yet. It wasn't the smallest consolation when he said it was the
most sensible solution.
And when Mrs. ---- for fifteen consecutive seconds took the view that I
had decoyed Miss Ashley-Smith out on to that accursed road in order to
send her to Ghent, and deliberately persuaded her to go back to the
"Flandria" instead of me, for fifteen consecutive seconds I believed
that this diabolical thing was what I had actually done.
Mrs. ----'s indignation never blazes away for more than fifteen seconds;
but while the conflagration lasts it is terrific. And on circumstantial
evidence the case was black against me. When last seen, Miss
Ashley-Smith was entirely willing to be saved. She goes out for a walk
with me along a quiet country road, and the next thing you hear is that
she has gone back to Ghent. And since, actually and really, it was my
obsession that had passed into her, I felt that if I had taken Miss
Ashley-Smith down that road and murdered her in a dyke my responsibility
wouldn't have been a bit worse, if as bad.
And it seemed to me that all the people scattered among the blankets in
that strange room, those that still lay snuggling down amiably in the
warmth, and those that had started to their feet in dismay, and those
that sat on chairs upright and apart, were hostile with a just and
righteous hostility, that they had an intimate knowledge of my crime,
and had risen up in abhorrence of the thing I was.
And somewhere, as if they were far off in some blessed place on the
other side of this nightmare, I was aware of the merciful and pitiful
faces of Mrs. Lambert and Janet McNeil.
Then, close beside me, there was a sudden heaving of the Chaplain's
broad shoulders as he faced the room.
And I heard him saying, in the same voice in which he had declared that
he was going to hold Matins, that it wasn't my fault at all--that it was
_he_ who had persuaded Miss Ashley-Smith to go back to Ghent.[36]
The Chaplain has a moral nerve that never fails him.
Then Mrs. Torrence says that she is going back to protect Miss
Ashley-Smith, and Ursula Dearmer says that she is going back to protect
Mrs. Torrence, and somebody down in the blankets remarks that the thing
was settled last night, and that all this going back is simply rotten.
I can only repeat that it is all my fault, and that therefore, if Mrs.
Torrence goes back, nobody is going back with her but me.
And there can be no doubt that three motor ambulances, with possibly the
entire Corps inside them, certainly with the five women and the Chaplain
and the Commandant, would presently have been seen tearing along the
road to Ghent, one in violent pursuit of the other, if we had not
telephoned and received news of Miss Ashley-Smith's safe arrival at the
"Flandria," and orders that no more women were to return to Ghent.
Among all the variously assorted anguish of that halt at Ecloo the
figures and the behaviour of Mrs. E. and her husband and their children
are beautiful to remember--their courtesy, their serenity, their gentle
and absolving wonder that anybody should see anything in the least
frightful or distressing, or even disconcerting and unusual, in the
situation; the little girl who sat beside me, showing me her
picture-book of animals, accepting gravely and earnestly all that you
had to tell her about the ways of squirrels, of kangaroos and opossums,
while we waited for the ambulance cars to take us to Bruges; the boy who
ran after us as we went, and stood looking after us and waving to us in
the lane; the aspect of that Flemish house and garden as we left
them--there is no word that embraces all these things but beauty.
We stopped in the village to take up our wounded from the Convent. The
nuns brought us through a long passage and across a little court to the
refectory, which had been turned into a ward. Bowls steaming with the
morning meal for the patients stood on narrow tables between the two
rows of beds. Each bed was hung round and littered with haversacks,
boots, rifles, bandoliers and uniforms bloody and begrimed. Except for
the figures of the nuns and the aspect of its white-washed walls and its
atmosphere of incorruptible peace, the place might have been a barracks
or the dormitory in a night lodging, rather than a convent ward.
When we had found and dressed our men, we led them out as we had come.
As we went we saw, framed through some open doorway, sunlight and vivid
green, and the high walls and clipped alleys of the Convent garden.
Of all our sad contacts and separations, these leave-takings at the
convents were the saddest. And it was not only that this place had the
same poignant and unbearable beauty as the place we had just left, but
its beauty was unique. You felt that if the friends you had just left
were turned out of their house and garden to-morrow, they might still
return some day. But here you saw a carefully guarded and fragile
loveliness on the very eve of its dissolution. The place was fairly
saturated with holiness, and the beauty of holiness was in the faces and
in every gesture of the nuns. And you felt that they and their faces and
their gestures were impermanent, that this highly specialized form of
holiness had continued with difficulty until now, that it hung by a
single thread to a world that had departed very far from it.
Yet, for the moment while you looked at it, it maintained itself in
perfection.
We shall never know all that the War has annihilated. But for that
moment of time while it lasted, the Convent at Ecloo annihilated the
nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, every century between now and the
fifteenth. What you saw was a piece of life cut straight out of the
Middle Ages. What you felt was the guarded and hidden beauty of the
Middle Ages, the beauty of obedience, simplicity and chastity, of souls
set apart and dedicated, the whole insoluble secret charm of the
cloistered life. The very horror of the invasion that threatened it at
this hour of the twentieth century was a horror of the Middle Ages.
But these devoted women did not seem aware of it. The little high-bred
English nun who conducted us talked politely and placidly of England and
of English things as of things remembered with a certain mortal
affection but left behind without regret. It was as if she contemplated
the eternal continuance of the Convent at Ecloo with no break in its
divine tranquillity. One sister went so far as to express the hope that
their Convent would be spared. It was as if she were uttering some
merely perfunctory piety. The rest, without ceasing from their
ministrations, looked up at us and smiled.
* * * * *
On the way up to Bruges we passed whole regiments of the Belgian Army in
retreat. They trooped along in straggling disorder, their rifles at
trail; behind them the standard-bearers trudged, carrying the standard
furled and covered with black. The speed of our cars as we overtook them
was more insufferable than ever.
[_Bruges._]
We thought that the Belgian Army would be quartered in Bruges, and that
we should find a hospital there and serve the Army from that base.
We took our wounded to the Convent, and set out to find quarters for
ourselves in the town. We had orders to meet at the Convent again at a
certain hour.
Most of the Corps were being put up at the Convent. The rest of us had
to look for rooms.
In the search I got separated from the Corps, and wandered about the
streets of Bruges with much interest and a sense of great intimacy and
leisure. By the time I had found a _pension_ in a narrow street behind
the market-place, I felt it to be quite certain that we should stay in
Bruges at least as long as we had stayed in Ghent, and what moments I
could spare from the obsession of Ghent I spent in contemplating the
Belfry. Very soon it was time to go back to the Convent. The way to the
Convent was through many tortuous streets, but I was going in the right
direction, accompanied by a kind Flamand and her husband, when at the
turn by the canal bridge I was nearly run over by one of our own
ambulance cars. It was Bert's car, and he was driving with fury and
perturbation away from the Convent and towards the town. Janet McNeil
was with him. They stopped to tell me that we had orders to clear out of
Bruges. The Germans had taken Ghent and were coming on to Bruges. We had
orders to go on to Ostend.
We found the rest of the cars drawn up in a street near the Convent. We
had not been two hours in Bruges, and we left it, if anything, quicker
than we had come in. The flat land fairly dropped away before our speed.
I sat on the back step of the leading car, and I shall never forget the
look of those ambulances, three in a line, as they came into sight
scooting round the turns on the road to Ostend.
Besides the wounded we had brought from Ghent, we took with us three
footsore Tommies whom we had picked up in Bruges. They had had a long
march. The stoutest, biggest and most robust of these three fainted just
as we drew up in the courtyard of the _Kursaal_ at Ostend.
[_Ostend._]
The _Kursaal_ had been taken by some English and American women and
turned into a Hospital. It was filled already to overflowing, but they
found room for our wounded for the night. Ostend was to be evacuated in
the morning. In fact, we were considered to be running things rather
fine by staying here instead of going on straight to Dunkirk. It was
supposed that if the Germans were not yet in Bruges they might be there
any minute.
But we had had so many premature orders to clear out, and the Germans
had always been hours behind time, and we judged it a safe risk.
Besides, there were forty-seven Belgian wounded in Bruges, and three of
our ambulance cars were going back to fetch them.
There was some agitation as to who would and who wouldn't be allowed to
go back to Bruges. The Commandant was at first inclined to reject his
Secretary as unfit. But if you take him the right way he is fairly
tractable, and I managed to convince him that nothing but going back to
Bruges could make up for my failure to go back to Ghent. He earned my
everlasting gratitude by giving me leave. As for Mrs. Torrence, she had
no difficulty. She was obviously competent.
Then, just as I was congratulating myself that the shame of Ecloo was to
be wiped out (to say nothing of that ignominious overthrow at Melle),
there occurred a _contretemps_ that made our ambulance conspicuous among
the many ambulances in the courtyard of the Hospital.
We had reckoned without the mistimed chivalry of our chauffeurs.
They had all, even Tom, been quite pathetically kind and gentle during
and ever since the flight from Ghent. (I remember poor Newlands coming
up with his bottle of formamint just as we were preparing to leave
Ecloo.) It never occurred to us that there was anything ominous in this
mood.
Mrs. Torrence and I were just going to get into (I think) Newlands' car,
when we were aware of Newlands standing fixed on the steps of the
Hospital, looking like Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in khaki, and flatly
refusing to drive his car into Bruges, not only if we were in his car,
but if one woman went with the expedition in any other car.
He stood there, very upright, on the steps of the Hospital, and rather
pale, while the Commandant and Mrs. Torrence surged up to him in fury.
The Commandant told him he would be sacked for insubordination, and Mrs.
Torrence, in a wild flight of fancy, threatened to expose him "in the
papers."
But Newlands stood his ground. He was even more like Lord Kitchener than
Tom. He simply could not get over the idea that women were to be
protected. And to take the women into Bruges when the Germans were, for
all we knew, _in_ Bruges, was an impossibility to Newlands, as it would
have been to Lord Kitchener. So he went on refusing to take his car into
Bruges if one woman went with the expedition. In retort to a charge of
cold feet, he intimated that he was ready to drive into any hell you
pleased, provided he hadn't got to take any women with him. He didn't
care if he _was_ sacked. He didn't care if Mrs. Torrence _did_ report
him in the papers. He wouldn't drive his car into Bruges if one woman--
Here, in his utter disregard of all discipline, the likeness between
Newlands and Lord Kitchener ends. Enough that he drove his car into
Bruges on his own terms, and Mrs. Torrence and I were left behind.
The expedition to Bruges returned safely with the forty-seven Belgian
wounded.
We found rooms in a large hotel on the Digue, overlooking the sea.
Before evening I went round to the Hospital to see Miss Ashley-Smith's
three wounded men. The _Kursaal_ is built in terraces and galleries
going all round the front and side of it. I took the wrong turning round
one of them and found myself in the doorway of an immense ward. From
somewhere inside there came loud and lacerating screams, high-pitched
but appallingly monotonous and without intervals. I thought it was a man
in delirium; I even thought it might be poor Fisher, of whose attacks we
had been warned. I went in.
I had barely got a yard inside the ward before a kind little rosy-faced
English nurse ran up to me. I told her what I wanted.