A FRIENDLY CHAT.A Friendly Chat.
We had gone a long way when we were brought to a standstill at a little place called Heyst-op den Berg, where the sentinels leaned into our car and had a long friendly chat with us.
"You cannot go any further," they said. "The Germans are in the next town ahead; they are only a few kilometres away."
"What town is it?" I asked.
"Aerschot," they replied.
"That is on the way to Louvain, is it not?" I asked. "I have been trying for a long time to get to Louvain!"
"You can never get to Louvain, Madam," the sentinels told me smilingly. "Between here and Louvain lies the bulk of the German Army."
Just then, achasseur, mounted on a beautiful fiery little brown Ardennes horse, came galloping along, shouting as he passed, "The Germans have been turned out of Aerschot; we have driven them out,les sales cochons!"
He jumped off his horse, gave the reins to a soldier and leapt into a train that was standing at the station.
A sudden inspiration flashed into my head. Without a word I jumped out of the motor car, ran through the station, and got into that train just as it was moving off, leaving my old Belgian to look after the car.
Next moment I found myself being carried along through unknown regions, and as I looked from the windows I soon discovered that I had entered now into the very heart of German ruin and pillage and destructiveness. Pangs of horror attacked me at the sight of those blackened roofless houses, standing lonely and deserted among green, thriving fields. I saw one little farm after another reduced to a heap of blackened ashes, with some lonely animals gazing terrifiedly into space. Sometimes just one wall would be standing of what was once a home, sometimes only the front of the house had been blown out by shells, and you could see right inside,—see the rooms spread out before you like a panorama, see the children's toys and frocks lying about, and the pots and pans, even the remains of dinner still on the table, and all the homely little things that made you feel so intensely the difference between this chill, deathly desolation and the happy domestic life that had gone on in such peaceful streams before the Huns set their faces Belgium-wards.
Mile after mile the train passed through these ravaged areas, and I stood at the window with misty eyes and quickened breath? looking up and down the lonely roads, and over the deserted fields where never a soul was to be seen, and in my mind's eye, I could follow those peasants, fleeing, fleeing, ever fleeing from one village to another, from one town to another, hunted and followed by the cruel menace of War which they, poor innocent ones, had done so little to deserve.
The only comfort was to think of them getting safely across to England, and as I looked at those little black and ruined homes, I could follow the refugees in their flight and see them streaming out of the trains at Victoria and Charing Cross, and being taken to warm, comfortable homes and clothed and fed by gentle-voiced English people. And then, waking perhaps in the depths of the night to find themselves in a strange land, how their thoughts would fly, with what awful yearning, back to those little blackened homes, back to the memories of the cow and the horse and the faithful dogs, and the corn in the meadows, and the purple cabbages uncut and the apples ungarnered! Yes, I could see it all, and my heart ached as it had never ached before.
When I roused myself from these sad thoughts, I looked about me and discovered that I was in a train full of nothing but soldiers and priests. I sat very still in my corner. I asked no questions, and spoke to no one. I knew by instinct that this train was going to take me to a place that I never should have arrived at otherwise, and I was right. The train took me to Aerschot, and I may say now that only one other War-Correspondent arrived there.
Alighting at the station at Aerschot, I looked about me, scarcely believing that what I saw was real.
The railway station appeared to have fallen victim to an earthquake.
I think until that day I had always cherished a lurking hope that the Huns were not as black as they were painted.
I had been used to think of the German race, as tinged with a certain golden glamour, because to it belonged the man who wrote the Fifth Symphony; the man who wrote the divine first part of "Faust," and still more that other, whose mocking but sublime laughter would be a fitting accompaniment of the horrors at Aerschot.
Oh, Beethoven, Goethe, Heine! Not even out of respect for your undying genius can I hide the truth about the Germans any longer.
What I have seen, I must believe!
In the pouring rain, wearing a Belgian officer's great-coat, I trudged along through a city that might well have been Pompeii or Herculaneum; it was a city that existed no longer; it was absolutelythe shell of a town. The long streets were full of hollow, blackened skeletons of what had once been houses—street upon street of them, and street upon street. The brain reeled before the spectacle. And each of those houses once a home. A place of thought, of rest, of happiness, of work, of love.
All the inhabitants have fled, leaving their lares and penates just as the people of Pompeii and Herculaneum sought to flee when the lava came down on them.
Here a wall stands, there a pillar and a few bricks.
But between the ruins, strange, touching, unbelievable, gleaming from the background, are the scarlet and white of dahlias and roses in the gardens behind, that have somehow miraculously escaped the ruin that has fallen on the solid walls and ceilings and floors so carefully constructed by the brain of man, and so easily ruined by man's brutality.
It is as though the flowers had some miraculous power of self-preservation, some secret unknown to bricks and mortar, some strange magic, that keeps the sweet blossoms laughing and defiant under the Hun's shell-fire. And the red and the pure white of them, and the green, intensify, with a tremendous potency, the black horrors of the town!
In every street I observed always the same thing; hundreds of empty bottles. "Toujoursles bouteilles," one of my companions kept saying—a brilliant young Brussels lawyer who was now in this regiment. The other officer was also aBruxellois, and I was told afterwards that these two had formerly been the "Nuts" of Brussels, the two smartest young men of the town. To see them that day gave little idea of their smartness; they both were black with grime and smoke, with beards that had no right to be there, creeping over their faces, boots caked with mud to the knees, and a general air of having seen activities at very close quarters.
They took me to the church, and there the little old brown-faced sacristan joined us, punctuating our way with groans and sobs of horror.
This is what I see.
Before me stretches a great dim interior lit with little bunches of yellow candles. It is in a way a church. But what has happened to it? What horror has seized upon it, turning it into the most hideous travesty of a church that the world has ever known?
On the high altar stand empty champagne bottles, empty rum bottles, a broken bottle of Bordeaux, and five bottles of beer.
In the confessionals stand empty champagne bottles, empty brandy bottles, empty beer bottles.
In the Holy Water fonts are empty brandy bottles.
Stacks of bottles are under the pews, or on the seats themselves.
Beer, brandy, rum, champagne, bordeaux, burgundy; and again beer, brandy, rum, champagne, bordeaux, burgundy.
Everywhere, everywhere, in whatever part of the church one looks, there are bottles—hundreds of them, thousands of them, perhaps—everywhere, bottles, bottles, bottles.
The sacred marble floors are covered everywhere with piles of straw, and bottles, and heaps of refuse and filth, and horse-dung.
"Mais Madame," cries the burning, trembling voice of the distracted sacristan, "look at this."
And he leads me to the white marble bas-relief of the Madonna.
The Madonna's head has been cut right off!
Then, even as I stand there trying to believe that I am really looking at such nightmares, I feel the little sacristan's fingers trembling on my arm, turning me towards a sight that makes me cold with horror.
They have set fire to the Christ, to the beautiful wood-carving of our Saviour, and burnt the sacred figure all up one side, and on the face and breast.
And as they finished the work I can imagine them, with a hiccup slitting up the priceless brocade on the altar with a bayonet, then turning and slashing at the great old oil paintings on the Cathedral walls, chopping them right out of their frames, but leaving the empty frames there, with a German's sense of humour that will presently make Germany laugh on the wrong side of its face.
A dead pig lies in the little chapel to the right, a dead white pig with a pink snout.
Very still and pathetic is that dead pig, and yet it seems to speak.
It seems to realise the sacrilege of its presence here in God's House.
It seems to say, "Let not the name of pig be given to the Germans. We pigs have done nothing to deserve it."
"And here, Madame, voyez vous! Here the floor is chipped and smashed where they stabled their horses, these barbarians!" says the young Lieutenant on my left.
And now we come to the Gate of Shame.
It is the door of a small praying-room.
Still pinned outside, on the door, is a piece of white paper, with this message in German, "This room is private. Keep away."
And inside?
Inside are women's garments, a pile of them tossed hastily on the floor, torn perhaps from the wearers....
A pile of women's garments!
In silence we stand there. In silence we go out. It is a long time before anyone can speak again, though the little sacristan keeps on moaning to himself.
As we step out of the horrors of that church some German prisoners that have just been brought in, are being marched by.
And then rage overcomes one of the young Lieutenants. White, trembling, beside himself, he rushes forward. He shouts. He raves. He is thinking of that room; they were of Belgium, those girls and women; he is of Belgium too; and he flings his scorn and hatred at the Uhlans marching past, he lashes and whips them with his agony of rage until the cowering prisoners are out of hearing.
The other Lieutenant at last succeeds in silencing him.
"What is the use, mon ami!" he says. "What is the use?"
Perhaps this outburst is reported to headquarters by somebody. For that night at the Officers' Mess, the Captain of the regiment has a few words to say against shewing anger towards prisoners, and very gently and tactfully he says them.
He is a Belgian, and all Belgians are careful to a point that is almost beyond human comprehension in their criticisms of their enemies.
"Let us be careful never to demean ourselves by humiliating prisoners," says the Captain, looking round the long roughly-set table. "You see, my friends, these poor German fellows that we take are not all typical of the crimes that the Germans commit; lots of them are only peasants, or men that would prefer to stay by their own fireside!"
"What about Aerschot and the church?" cry a score of irritated young voices.
The Captain draws his kindly lips together, and attacks his black bread and tinned mackerel.
"Ah," he says, "we must remember they were all drunk!"
And as he utters these words there flash across my mind those old, old words that will never die:
"Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
As I stood in the rain, down there in the ruined blackened piazza of Aerschot, someone drew my attention to the hole in the back-window of the Burgomaster's house.
In cold blood, the Germans had shot the Burgomaster.
And they had shot two of his children.
And as they could not find the Burgomaster's wife, who had fled into the country, they had offered 4,000 francs reward for her.
A hoarse voice whispered that in that room with the broken window, the German Colonel who had ordered the murder of the good, kind, beloved Burgomaster, had met his own fate.
Yes! In the room of the dead Burgomaster's maidservant, the German colonel had fallen dead from a shot fired from without.
By whose hand was it fired, that shot that laid the monster at his victim's feet?
"By the hand of an inferieur!" someone whispers.
And I put together the story, and understand that the girl's village sweetheart avenged her.
They are both dead now—the girl and her village swain—shot down instantly by the howling Germans.
But their memory will never die; for they stand—that martyred boy and girl,—for Belgium's fight for its women's honour and the manliness of its men.
Besides myself, I discover only one woman in the whole of Aerschot—a little fair-haired Fleming, with a lion's heart. She is the bravest woman in the world. I love the delightful way she drops her wee six-weeks-old baby into my arms, and goes off to serve a hundred hungry Belgians with black bread and coffee, confident that her little treasure will be quite safe in the lap of the "Anglaise."
Smiling and running about between the kitchen, the officers' mess, and the bar, this brave, good soul finds time to tell us how she remained all alone in Aerschot for three whole weeks, all the while the Germans were in possession of the town.
"I knew that cooking they must have," she says, "and food and drink, and for that I knew I was safe. So I remained here, and kept the hotel of my little husband from being burned to the ground! But I slept always with my baby in my arms, and the revolver beside the pillow. In the night sometimes I heard them knocking at my door. Yes, they would knock, knock, knock! And I would lie there, the revolver ready, if needs be, for myself and the petite both! But they never forced that door. They would go away as stealthily as they had come! Ah! they knew that if they had got in they would have found a dead woman, not a live one!"
And I quite believed her.
As the weeks went on a strange thing happened to me.
At first vaguely, faintly, and then with an ever-deepening intensity, there sprang to life within me a sense of irritation at having to depend on newspapers, or hearsay, for one's knowledge of the chief item in this War,—the Enemy.
An overwhelming desire seized upon me to discover for myself what a certain darksome unknown quantity was like; that darksome, unknown quantity that we were always hearing about but never saw; that we were always moving away from if we heard it was anywhere near; that was making all the difference to everything; that was at the back of everything; that mattered so tremendously; and yet could never be visualized.
The habit of a lifetime of groping for realities began to assert itself, and I found myself chafing at not being able to find things out for myself.
In the descriptions I gleaned from men and newspapers I was gradually discovering many puzzling incongruities.
There are thinkers whose conclusions one honours, and attends to: but these thinkers were not out here, looking at the War with their own eyes. Maeterlinck, for instance, whose deductions would have been invaluable, was in France. Tolstoi was dead. Mr. Wells was in England writing.
To believe what people tell you, you must first believe in the people.
If you can find one person to believe in in a lifetime, and that one person is yourself, you are lucky!
One day, towards the end of September, I heard an old professor from Liège University talking to a young Bruxellois with a black moustache and piercing black eyes, who had arrived that day at our hotel.
"So you are going back at once to Brussels, Monsieur?" said the old professor in his shaky voice.
"Yes, Monsieur! Why don't you come with me?"
"I have not the courage!"
"Courage! But there is nothing to fear! You come along with me, and I'll see you through all right. I assure you the trains run right into Brussels now. The Germans leave us Bruxellois alone. They're trying to win our favour. They never interfere with us. There is not the slightest danger. And there is not half so much trouble and difficulty to get in and out of Brussels as there is to get in and out Antwerp. You get into a train at Ghent, go to Grammont, and there change into a little train that takes you straight to Brussels. They never ask us for our passports now. For myself, I have come backwards and forwards from Brussels half a dozen times this last fortnight on special missions for our Government. I have never been stopped once. If you'll trust yourself to me, I'll see you safely through!"
"I desire to go very much!" muttered the old man. "There are things in Liège that I must attend to. But to get to Liège I must go through Brussels. It seems to me there is a great risk, a very great risk."
"No risk at all!" said the young Bruxellois cheerfully.
That evening at dinner, the young man aforesaid was introduced to me by Mr. Frank Fox, of theMorning Post, who knew him well.
It was not long before I said to him: "Do you think it would be possible for an Englishwoman to get into Brussels? I should like very much to go. I want to get an interview with M. Max for my newspaper."
He was an extremely optimistic and cheerful young man.
He said, "Quite easy! I know M. Max very well. If you come with me, I'll see you safely through, and take you to see him. As a matter of fact I've got a little party travelling with me on Friday, and I shall be delighted if you will join us."
"I'll come," I said.
Extraordinary how easy it is to make up one's mind about big things.
That decision, which was the most important one I ever made in my life, gave me less trouble than I have sometimes been caused by such trifles as how to do one's hair or what frock to wear.
Next day, I told everyone I was going to try to get into Brussels.
"You'll be taken prisoner!"
"You're mad!"
"You'll be shot!"
"You will be taken for a spy!"
"You will never get there!"
All these things, and hosts of others, were said, but perhaps the most potent of all the arguments was that put up by the sweet little lady from Liège, the black-eyed mother with two adorable little boys, and a delightful big husband—the gallant chevalier, in yellow bags of trousers, whom I have already referred to in an earlier chapter.
This little Liègeoise and I were now great friends; I shall speak of her as Alice. She had a gaiety and insouciance, and a natural childlike merriment that all her terrible disasters could not overcloud. What laughs we used to have together, she and I, what talks, what walks! And sometimes the big husband would give Alice a delightful little dinner at the Criterium Restaurant in the Avenue de Kaiser, where we ate such delicious things, it was impossible to believe oneself in a Belgian city, with War going on at the gates.
When I told Alice that I was going to Brussels, she set to work with all her womanly powers of persuasion to make me give up my project.
There was nothing she did not urge.
The worst of all was that we might never see each other again.
"But I don't feel like that," I told her. "I feel that I must go! It's a funny feeling, I can't describe it, because it isn't exactly real. I don't feel exactly that I must go. Even when I am telling you that, it isn't exactly true."
"I am afraid this is too complicated for me," said Alice gravely.
"I admit it sounds complicated! I suppose what it really mean is that I want to go, and I am going!"
"But my husband says we may be in Brussels ourselves in three weeks' time: Why not wait and come in in safety with the Belgian Army!"
Other people gathered round us, there in the dimly-lit palm court of the big Antwerp Hotel, and a lively discussion went on.
A big dark man, with a melancholy face, said wistfully, "I wish I could make up my mind to go too!"
This was Cherry Kearton, the famous naturalist and photographer. He was out at the front looking for pictures, and in his mind's eye, doubtless, he saw the pictures he would get in Brussels, pictures sneakingly and stealthily taken from windows at the risk of one's life, glorious pictures, pictures a photographer would naturally see in his mind's eye when he thought of getting into Brussels during the German occupation.
Mr. Kearton's interpreter, a little fair-haired man, however, put in a couple of sharp words that were intended to act as an antidote to the great photographer's uncertain longings.
"You'll be shot for a dead certainty, Cherry?" he said. "You get into Brussels with your photographic apparatus! Why, you might as well walk straight out to the Germans and ask them to finish you off!"
"Cherry" had his old enemy, malaria, hanging about him at that time, or I quite believe he would have risked it and come.
But as events turned out it was lucky for him he didn't! For his King and his Country have called him since then in a voice he could not resist, and he has gone to his beloved Africa again, in Colonel Driscoll's League of Frontiersmen.
When I met him out there in Antwerp, he had just returned from his famous journey across Central Africa. His thoughts were all of lions, giraffes, monkeys, rhinoceros. He would talk on and on, quite carried away. He made noises like baboons, boars, lions, monkeys. He was great fun. I was always listening to him, and gradually I would forget the War, forget I was in Antwerp, and be carried right away into the jungle watching a crowd of giraffes coming down to drink.
Indeed the vividness of Cherry's stories was such, that, when I think of Antwerp now, I hear the roar of lions, the pad pad of wild beasts, the gutteral uncouthness of monkeys—all the sounds in fact that so excellently represent Antwerp's present occupiers! But the faces of Cherry's wild beasts were kinder, humaner faces than the faces that haunt Antwerp now.
It was on Friday afternoon, September 24th, that I ran down the stairs of the Hotel Terminus, with a little brown bag in my hand.
Without saying good-bye to anybody, I hurried out, and jumped into a cab at the door, accompanied by the old professor from Liège, and the young Brussels lawyer.
It was a gorgeous day, about four o'clock in the afternoon, with brilliant sunlight flooding the city; and a feeling of intense elation came over me as our cab went rattling along over the old flagged streets.
Overhead, in the bright blue sky, aeroplanes were scouting. The wind blew sweet from the Scheldt, and the flat green lands beyond. All the banners stirred and waved. French, English, Belgian and Russian. And I felt contented, and glad I had started.
"First we call for Madame Julie!" said the young lawyer.
We drove along the quay, and stopped at a big white house.
To my surprise, I found myself now suddenly precipitated into the midst of a huge Belgian party,—mamma, papa, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, friends, officers, little girls, little boys, servants gathered in a great high-ceiled and be-windowed drawing-room crowded to the full. I was introduced to everybody, and a lot of hand-shaking went on.
I thought to myself, "This is a new way to get to Brussels!"
Servants were going round with trays laden with glasses of foaming champagne, and little sweet biscuits.
"We shall drink to the health of Julie!" said someone.
And we drank to Julie.
The sun poured in through the windows, and the genial affectionate Belgian family all gathered closer round the beloved daughter, who was going bravely back to-day to Brussels to join her husband there at his post.
It was a touching scene.
But as I think of it now, it becomes poignant with the tragedy hidden beneath the glittering sunlight and foaming champagne. That fine old man, with the dignified grey head and beard, was a distinguished Belgian minister, who has since met with a sad death. He was Julie's father, a father any woman might have been proud of. He said to me, "Je suis content that a lady is going too in this little company. It is hard for my daughter to be travelling about alone. Yet she is brave; she does not lack courage; she came alone all the way from Brussels three days ago in order to bring her little girl to Antwerp and leave her in our care. And now she feels it is her duty to go back to her husband in Brussels, though we, of course, long to have her remain with us."
Then at last the parting came, and tall, brown-eyed, buxom Julie kissed and was kissed by everybody, and everybody shook hands with me, and wished me luck, and I felt as if I was one with them, although I had never seen them in my life before, and never saw them in my life again.
We ran down the steps. And now, instead of getting into the old ricketty fiacre, we entered a handsome motor car belonging to the Belgian Ministry, and drove quickly to the quay. The father came with us, his daughter clinging to his arm. At the quay we went on board the big river steamer, and Julie bade her father farewell. She flung herself into his arms, and he clasped her tight. He held her in silence for a long minute. Then they parted.
They never met again.
As we moved away from the quay, it seemed to me that our steamer was steering straight for the Hesperides.
All the west was one great blazing field of red and gold, and the sun was low on the broad water's edge, while behind us the fair city of Antwerp lit sparkling lights in all her windows, and the old Cathedral rose high into the sunlight, with the Belgian banner fluttering from a pinnacle; and that is how I shall always see Antwerp, fair, and stately, and sun-wreathed, as she was that golden September afternoon.
When I think of her, I refuse to see her any other way!
I refuse to see her as she was when I came back to her.
Or as when I left her again for the Last Time.
I don't know why we were all in such high spirits, for we had nothing but discomfort to endure.
And yet, out of that very discomfort itself, some peculiar psychic force seemed to spring to life and thrive, until we became as merry as crickets.
A more inherently melancholy type than the old Liège professor could scarcely be imagined.
Poor old soul!
He had lost his wife a week before the war, and in the siege of Liège one of his sons had fallen, and he had lost his home, and everything he held dear. He was an enormous man, dressed in deep black, the most pronounced mourning you can possibly imagine, with a great black pot-hat coming well down on his huge face. His big frame quivered like a jelly, as he sat in the corner of the train, and was shaken by the rough movements and the frequent stoppages. Yet he became cheerful, just as cheerful as any of us.
Strange as it seems in the telling, this cheerfulness is a normal condition of the people nearest the front. There is only one thing that kills it, loss of freedom when loss of freedom means loss of companionship. Ruin, danger, cold, hunger, heat, dirt, discomfort, wounds, suffering, death, are all dashed with glory, and become acceptable as part of the greatest adventure in the world. But loss of freedom wrings the colour from the brain, and shuts out this world and the next when it entails loss of comradeship.
When I first realised this strange phenomenon I thought it would take a volume of psychology to explain it.
And then, all suddenly, with no effort of thought, I found the explanation revealing itself in one magic blessed word,—Companionship.
Out here in the danger-zones, the irksome isolation of ordinary lives has vanished.
We are no longer alone; there are no such things as strangers; we are all together wherever we are; in the trenches, on the roads, in the trams, in the cities, in the villages, we all talk to each other, we all know each other's histories, we pour out our hopes and fears, we receive the warm, sweet stimulus of human comradeship multiplied out of all proportion to anything that life has ever offered any single one of us before, till even pain and death take on more gentle semblance seen with the eyes of a million people all holding hands.
Young men who have not gone, go now! Find out for yourselves whether this wonderful thing that I tell you is not true, that the battle-field, apart from its terrific and glorious qualities, holds also that secret of gaiety of heart that mankind is ever searching for!
We were at St. Nicolla now, and it was nearly dark, and our train was at a standstill.
"I'll get out and see what's the matter," said the young lawyer, whom I shall refer to hereafter as Jean.
He came back in a minute looking serious.
"The train doesn't go any further!" he said. "There's no train for Ghent to-night."
We all got out, clutching our bags, and stood there on the platform in the reddened dusk that was fast passing into night.
A Pontonnier, who had been in the train with us, came up and said he was expecting an automobile to meet him here, and perhaps he could give some of us a lift as far as Ghent.
However, his automobile didn't turn up, and that little plan fell through.
Jean began to bite his moustache and walk up and down, smiling intermittently, a queer distracted-looking smile that showed his white teeth.
He always did that when he was thinking how to circumvent the authorities. He had a word here with an officer, and a word there with a gendarme. Then he came back to us:
"We shall all go and interview the stationmaster, and see what can be done!"
So we went to the stationmaster, and Jean produced his papers, and Julie produced hers, and the old professor from Liège produced his, and I produced my English passport.
Jean talked a great deal, and the stationmaster shook his head a great deal, and there was an endless colloquy, such as Belgians dearly love; and just as I thought everything was lost, the stationmaster hastened off into the dark with a little lantern and told us to follow him right across the train lines, and we came to a bewildering mass of lights, and at last we reached a spot in the middle of many train lines which seemed extremely dangerous, when the stationmaster said, "Stand there! And when train 57 comes along get immediately into the guard's van! There is only one."
We waited a long time, and the night grew cold and dark before 57 came along.
When it puffed itself into a possible position we all performed miracles in the way of climbing up an enormous step, and then we found ourselves in a little wooden van, with one dim light burning, and one wooden seat, and in we got, seating ourselves in a row on the hard seat, and off we started through the night for Ghent.
Looking through a peep-hole, I suddenly stifled an exclamation.
Pointing straight at me were the muzzles of guns.
"Mais oui," said Jean. "That is what this train is doing. It is taking guns to Ghent. There are big movements of troops going on."
We were shaken nearly to pieces.
And we went so slowly that we scarcely moved at all.
But we arrived at Ghent at last, arrived of course, as usual in war time, at a station one had never seen or heard of before, in a remote, far-off portion of the town, and then we had to find our way back to the town proper, a long, long walk. It was twelve o'clock when we got into the beautiful old dreamlike town.
First we went to the Hotel Ganda.
"Full up!" said the fat, white-faced porter rudely. "No room even on the floor to sleep."
"Can you give us something to eat?" we pleaded.
"Impossible! The kitchens are shut up."
He was a brute of a porter, an extraordinary man who never slept, and was on duty all night and all day.
He was hand in glove with the Germans all the time, his face did not belie him; he looked the ugliest, stealthiest creature, shewing a covert rudeness towards all English-speaking people, that many of us remember now and understand.
In the pitch darkness we set out again, clattering about the flagged streets of Ghent, a determined little party now, with our high spirits quite unchecked by hunger and fatigue, to try to find some sleeping place for the night.
From hotel to hotel we wandered; everyone was full; evidently a vast body of troops had arrived at Ghent that day. But, finally, at one o'clock we went last of all to the hotel we should have gone to first.
That was the Hôtel de la Poste. It being the chief hotel at Ghent, we had felt certain it would be impossible to get accommodation there. But other people had evidently thought so too, and the result was we all got a room.
From the outside, the hotel appeared to be in pitch darkness, but when we got within we found lights burning, and great companies of Belgian cavalry officers gathered in the lounge, and halls, finishing their supper.
"There are great movements of troops going on," said Jean. "This is the first time I have seen our army in Ghent."
To my delight I recognised my two friends from Aerschot, the "Brussels nuts."
On hearing that I was going to Brussels one of them begged me to go and see his father and sister, if I got safely there. And I gladly promised to do so.
After that (about two o'clock in the morning it was then) we crawled down some steps into the cellar, where the most welcome supper I have ever eaten soon pulled us all round again. Cold fowl, red wine, delicious bread and butter. Then we went up to our rooms, giving strict injunctions to be called at six o'clock, and for four hours we slept the sleep of the thoroughly tired out.
Next morning at half-past six, we were all down, and had our café-au-lait in the restaurant, and then started off cheerfully to the principal railway station.
So far so good!
All we had to do now was to get into a train and be carried straight to Brussels.
Why, then, did Jean look so agitated when we Went to the ticket office and asked for our tickets?
He turned to us with a shrug.
"Ah! Ces allemands! One never knows what the cochons are going to do! The stationmaster here says that the trains may not run into Brussels to-day. He won't book us further than Grammont! He believes the lines are cut from there on!"
I was so absorbed in watching the enormous ever-increasing crowds on the Ghent station that the seriousness of that statement passed me by. I did not realise where Grammont was. And it did not occur to me to wonder by what means I was going to get from Grammont to Brussels. I only urged that we should go on.
The old Professor and Madame Julie argued as to whether it would not be better to abandon their plans and return to Antwerp.
That seemed to me a tedious idea, so I did my best to push on.
Jean agreed.
"At any rate," he said, "we will go as far as Grammont and see what happens there. Perhaps by the time we get there we shall find everything alright again."
So at seven o'clock we steamed away from Ghent, out into the fresh bright countryside.
Now we were in the region of danger. We were outside thedernière ligneof the Belgian Army. If one came this way one came at one's risk. But as I looked from the train windows everything seemed so peaceful that I could scarcely imagine there was danger. There were no ruins here, there was no sign of War at all, only little farms and villages bathed in the blue September sunlight, with the peasants working in the fields.
As I tried to push my window higher, someone who was leaning from the next window, spoke to me in English, and I met a pair of blue English-looking eyes.
"May I fix that window for you? I guess you're English, aren't you, ma'am?"
I gave him one quick hard look.
It was the War Look that raked a face with a lightning glance.
By now, I had come to depend absolutely on the result of my glance.
"Yes!" I said, "and you are American."
He admitted that was so.
Almost immediately we fell into talk about the War.
"How long do you think it will last?" asked the American.
"I don't know, what do you think?"
"I give it six weeks. I'll be over then."
And he assured me that was the general opinion of those he knew—six weeks or less.
"But what are you doing in this train?" he added interestedly.
"Going to Brussels!"
"Brussels!"
He looked at me with amazed eyes.
"Pardon me! Did you say going to Brussels?"
"Yes."
"Pardon me! But how are you going to get to Brussels?"
"I am going there."
"But you are English?"
"Yes."
"Then you can't have a German passport to get into Brussels if you are English."
"No. I haven't got one."
"But, don't you realise, ma'am, that to get into Brussels you have got to go through the German lines?"
We began to discuss the question.
He was an American who had friends in Brussels, and was going there on business. His name was Richards. He was a kindly nice man. He could speak neither French nor Flemish, and had a Belgian with him to interpret.
"What do you think I ought to do?" I asked.
"Go back," he promptly said. "If the Germans stop you, they'll take you prisoner. And even if you do get in," he added, "you will never get out! It is even harder to get out of Brussels than it is to get in."
"I'm going to chance it!"
"Well, if that's so, the only thing I can suggest is that if you do manage to get into Brussels safely, you go to the American Consulate, and shew them your papers, and they may give you a paper that'll help you to get out."
PASSPORT FROM THE AUSTRALIAN HIGH COMMISSIONER.Passport from the Australian High Commissioner.
"But would the Americans do that for a British subject?"
"Sure! We're a neutral country. As a little American boy said, 'I'm neutral! I don't care which country whips the Germans!'"
Then another idea occurred to Mr. Richards.
"But you mustn't go into Brussels with an English passport about you. You'll have to hide that somehow!"
"I shall give it to Monsieur Jean to hide," I said. "He's the conductor of the little Belgian party there!"
"Well, let me see your passport! Then, in case you have to part with it, and you arrive in Brussels without it, I can satisfy our Consul that I have seen it, and that you are an English subject, and that will make things easier for you at the American Consulate."
I showed him my passport, and he examined it carefully and promised to do what he could to help me in Brussels.
Then we arrived at Grammont.
And there the worst happened.
The train lines were cut, and we could go no further by rail.
To get to Brussels we must drive by the roads all the way.
It was like a chapter out of quite another story to leave the train at Grammont, and find ourselves in the flagged old Brabant square in front of the station, that hot glittering end-o'-summer morning, while on the ear rose a deafening babel of voices from the hundreds of little Belgian carts and carriages of all shapes and sizes and descriptions, that stood there, with their drivers leaning forward over their skinny horses yelling for fares.
The American hurried to me, as I stood watching with deep interest this vivacious scene, which reminded me of some old piazza in Italy, and quite took away the sharp edge of the adventure—the sharp edge being the Germans, who now were not very far away, judging by the dull roar of cannon that was here distinctly audible.
The American said: "Ma'am, I have found this little trap that will take us to Brussels for fourteen francs—right into Brussels, and there is a seat for you in that trap if you'd care to come. I'd be very pleased and happy to have you come along with me!"
"It is awfully good of you!" I said.
I knew he was running great risks in taking me with him, and I deeply appreciated his kindness.
But Jean remonstrated, a little hurt at the suggestion.
"Madame, you are of our party! We must stick together. I've just found a trap here that will take us all. There are four other people already in it, and that will make eight altogether. The driver will take us to Brussels for twelve francs each, with an extra five francs, if we get there safely!"
So I waved good-bye to the little cart with the friendly American, who waved back, as he drove away into the sunlight, shouting, "Good luck!"
"Good luck!"
As I heard that deep-sounding English word come ringing across the flagged old Brabant village, it was as though I realised its meaning for the first time.
"Good luck!"
And my heart clutched at it, and clung to it, searching for strength, as the heart of women—and men too—will do in war time!
The task of arranging that party in the waggonette was anything but easy.
The old Liège professor, in his sombre black, sat on the back seat, while in front sat an equally enormous old banker from Brussels, also in black, and those two huge men seemed to stick up out of the carriage like vast black pillars.
They moved their seats afterwards, but it did not make any difference. Wherever they sat, they stuck up like huge black pillars, calling attention to us in what seemed to me a distinctly undesirable way.
Two horses we had for our long drive to Brussels, and uncommonly bony horses they were.
Our carriage was a species of long-drawn-out victoria.
It had an extra seat behind, with its back to the horses, a horrid, tilting little seat, as I soon discovered, for it was there that I found myself sitting, with Jean beside me, as we started off through the golden Saturday morning.
Jean and I had each to curl an arm round the back of the seat; otherwise we should have been tipped out; for a tremendously steep white hill-road, lined with poplars, began to rise before us, and we were in constant danger of falling forward on our noses.
But the only thing I cared about by then, was to sit next to Jean.
He seemed to be my only safeguard, my only hope of getting through this risky adventure.
And in low voices we discussed what I should do, if we did indeed meet the enemy, a contingency which began to grow more and more probable every moment.
All sorts of schemes were discussed between us, sitting there at the back of that jolting carriage.
But it was quite evident to both, that, though we might make up a plausible story as to why I was going to Brussels, although I might call myself an American, or an Italian, or a Spaniard (seeing that I could speak those languages well enough to deceive the Germans, and seeing also that I had the letter to the Spanish minister in my bag from the Vice-Consul at Antwerp), still, neither I nor Jean could do the one thing necessary; we could not produce any papers of mine that would satisfy the Germans if I fell into their hands.
"But we're not going to meet them!" said Jean.
He lit a cigarette.
"You had better give me all your papers," he added airily.
"What will you do with them?"
He smoked and thought.
"If we meet the Germans, I'll throw them away somewhere."
"But how on earth shall I ever get them again? And suppose the Germans see you throwing them away."
I did not like the phrase, "throw them away."
It seemed like taking from me the most precious thing in the world, the one thing that I had firmly determined never to part with—my passport!
But I now discovered that Jean had a thoughtful mood upon him, and did not want to talk. He wanted to think. He told me so.
He said, "It is necessary that I think out many little things now! Pardon!"
And he tapped his brow.
So I left him to it!
Along the white sun-bathed road, as we drove, we met a continual procession of carts, waggons, fiacres, and vehicles of all shapes, kinds, and descriptions, full of peasants or bourgeoisie, all travelling in the direction of Ghent. Every now and then a private motor car would flash past us, flying the red, white and blue flag of Holland, or the Stars and Stripes of America. They had an almost impudent insouciance with them, those lucky neutral motor cars, as they rushed along the sunny Brabant road to Brussels, joyously confident that there would be no trouble for them if they met the Germans!
How I envied them! How I longed to be able by some magic to prove myself American or Dutch!
Every ten minutes or so we used to shout to people on the road, coming from the opposite direction.
"Il y a des Allemands?" or
"Il y a de danger?"
The answer would come back:
"Pas des Allemands!" or
"Oui, les Allemands sont là," pointing to the right. Or
"Les Allemands sont là," pointing to the left.
I would feel horribly uncomfortable then.
Although apparently I was not frightened in the least, there was one thing that undeceived me about myself.
I had lost the power to think as clearly as usual.
I found that my brain refused to consider what I should do if the worst came to the worst. Whenever I got to that point my thoughts jibbed. Vagueness seized upon me.
I only knew that I was in for it now: that I was seated there in that old rickety carriage; that I was well inside the German lines; and that it was too late to turn back.
In a way it was a relief to feel incapable of dealing with the situation, because it set my mind free to observe the exquisite beauty of the country we were travelling through, and the golden sweetness of that never-to-be-forgotten September day.
Up and up that long steep white hill our carriage climbed, with rows of wonderful high poplars waving in the breeze on either side of us, and gracious grey Belgian châteaux shewing their beautiful lines through vistas of flower-filled gardens, and green undulating woods, of such richness, and fertility, and calm happy opulence, that the sound of the cannon growing ever louder across the valleys almost lost its meaning in such a fair enchanted country. But the breeze blew round us, a soft and gentle breeze, laden with the scent of flowers and green things. Red pears of great size and mellowness hung on the orchard trees. The purple cabbage that the Brabant peasants cultivate made bright spots along the ground. In the villages, at the doors of the little white cottages I saw old wrinkled Belgian women sitting. Little fair-haired, blue-eyed children, with peculiarly small, sweet faces, stood looking up and down the long roads with an expression that often brought the tears to my eyes as I realised the fears that those poor little baby hearts must be filled with in those desperate days.
And yet the prevailing note of the people we met along that road was still gaiety, rather than sadness or terror.
"Il y a des Allemands?"
"Il y a de danger?"
We went on perpetually with our questions, and the answers would come back laughingly with shakings of the head.
"No! Not met any Germans!" or:
"They are fighting round Ninove. We've been making détours all the morning to try and get out of their way!"
And now the road was so steep, that Jean and I jumped down from our sloping seat at the back and walked up the hill to save the bony horses.
Every now and then, we would pause to look back at that wide dreamlike view, which grew more and more magnificent the higher we ascended, until at last fair Brabant lay stretched out behind us, bathed in a glittering sunlight that had in it, that day, some exquisitely poignant quality as though it were more golden than gold, just because, across that great plain to the left, the fierce detonations of heavy artillery told of the terrific struggles that were going on there for life and death.
Presently we met a couple of black-robed Belgian priests walking down the hill, and mopping their pale faces under their black felt hats.
"The Germans are all over the place to-day," they told us. "And yesterday they arrested a train-full of people between Enghien and Hall. They suspected them of carrying letters into Brussels. So they cut the train lines last night, and marched the people off to be searched. The young men have been sent into Germany to-day. Or so rumour says. That may or may not be true. But anyway it is quite true that the train-load of passengers was arrested wholesale, and that every single one of them was searched, and those who were found carrying letters were taken prisoners. Perhaps to be shot."
"C'est ça!" said Jean coolly.
We bade the priests good-bye, and trudged on.
Jean presently under his breath, said:
"I've got a hundred letters in, my pockets. I'm taking them from Antwerp people into Brussels. I suppose I shall have to leave them somewhere!"
He smiled, his queer high-up smile, showing all his white teeth, and I felt sure that he was planning something, I felt certain he was not going to be baulked.
At the top of the hill we got into our trap again, and off we started, travelling at a great rate.
We dashed along, and vehicles dashed past us in the opposite direction, and I had the feeling that I was going for a picnic, so bright was the day, so beautiful the surroundings, so quick the movements along the road.
"At Enghien," said Jean, turning round and addressing the other people in the carriage (by now they had all made friends with each other, and were chattering nineteen to the dozen), "at Enghien we shall get lunch!"
"But there is nowhere that one finds lunch at Enghien," protested the fat Brussels banker.
"I promise you as good a lunch as ever you have eaten, and good wine to wash it down!" was Jean's reply.
At last we arrived at Enghien, and found ourselves in a little brown straggling picturesque village on a hillside, full of peasants, who were gathered in a dense crowd in the "grand place," which was here the village common.
They had come in out of the fields, these peasants, stained with mud and all the discolourations of the soil. Their innocent faces spoke of the calm sweet things of nature. But mixed with the innocence was a great wonder and bewilderment now.
All this time, ever since we left Ghent, we had never seen a Belgianmilitaire.
That of itself told its own story of how completely we were outside the last chance of Belgian protection.—outsidela dernière ligne.
Dear little Enghien! I shall always remember you.
It was so utterly-out-of-the-ordinary to drive to the railway station, and have one's lunch cooked by the stationmaster.
A dear old man he was, that old grey-bearded Belgian.
A hero too!
His trains were stopped; his lines were cut; he was ever in the midst of the Germans, but he kept his bright spirits happy, and when Jean ushered us all in to his little house that formed part of the railway station, he received us as if we were old friends, shook us all by the hand, and told us, with great gusto, exactly what he would give us.
And he rolled the words out too, almost as though he was an Italian, as he promised us abonne omelette,followed by abon bif-steak, and fried potatoes, and cheese, and fruit and abon café!
Then he hurried away into the kitchen, and we heard him cracking the eggs, while his old sister set the table in the little dining-room.
We travellers all sat on a seat out in front of the railway line, under the sweet blue sky, facing green fields, and refreshed ourselves with little glasses of red, tonic-like Byrrh.
It was characteristic of those dear Belgian souls that they one and all raised their little glasses before they drank, and looking towards me said, "Vive l'Angleterre!"
To which I responded with my tiny glass, "Léve la Belgique!"
And we all added, "A bas le Kaiser!"
And from across the fields the noise of the battle round Ninove came towards us, louder and louder every moment.
As we sat there we discussed the cannonading that now seemed very near.
So loud and so close to us were the angry growlings of the guns that I felt amazed at not being able to see any smoke.
It was evident that some big encounter was going on, but the fields were green and still, and nothing at all was to be seen.
By now I had lost all sense of reality.
I was merely a figure in an extraordinary dream, in which the great guns pounded on my right hand, and the old stationmaster's omelette fried loudly on my left.
Jean strolled off alone, while two of the ladies of the party went away to buy some butter.
In Brussels, they said, it was impossible to get good butter under exorbitant prices, so they paid a visit to a little farm a few steps away, and came back presently laden with butter enough to keep them going for several weeks, for which they had paid only one franc each.
And now the old stationmaster comes out and summons us all in to lunch.
He wishes us "bon appétit" and we seat ourselves round the table under the portraits of King Albert and "la petite reine" in his little sitting-room.
A merrier lunch than that was never eaten. The vast omelette melted away in a twinkling before the terrific onslaught made upon it, chiefly by the Liège professor and the Brussels banker, who by now had got up their appetites.
The Red Cross lady, who took it upon herself to help out the food, kept up a cheerful little commentary of running compliments which included us all, and the beef-steak, and the omelette, and the potatoes, and the stationmaster, until we could hardly tell one from the other, so agreeable did we all seem!
The old stationmaster produced some good Burgundy, sun-kissed, purply red of a most respectable age.
When everything was on the table he brought his chair and joined in with us, asking questions about Antwerp, and Ghent, and Ostend, and giving us in return vivid sketches of what the Germans had been doing in his part of the world. The extraordinary part of all this was that though we were in a region inhabited by the Germans there was no sign of destruction. The absence of ruin and pillage seems to conceal the fact that this was invested country.
After ourbon caféwe all shook hands with the stationmaster, wished him good luck, and hurried back to the village, where we climbed into our vehicle again.
This time I took a place in the inside of the carriage, leaving Jean and another man to hang on to that perilous back seat.
At two o'clock we were off.
The horses, freshened by food and water, galloped along now at a great pace, and the day developed into an afternoon as cloudless and glittering as the morning.
But almost immediately after leaving Enghien an ominous note began to be struck.
Whenever we shouted out our query:
"Il y a des Allemands?" the passers-by coming from the opposite direction shouted back,
"Oui, oui, beaucoup d'Allemands!"
And suddenly there they were!
My first sight of the German Army was just one, man.
He was a motor cyclist dressed in grey, with his weapons slung across his back, and he flashed past us like lightning.
Everyone in the carriage uttered a deep "Oh!"
It seemed to me an incredible thing that one German should be all alone like that among enemies. I said so to my companions.
"The others are coming!" they said with an air of certainty that turned me cold all over.
But it was at least two miles further on before we met the rest of his corps.
Then we discovered fifty German motor cyclists, in grey uniforms, and flat caps, flying smoothly along the side path in one long grey line.
Their accoutrements looked perfect and trim, their general appearance was strikingly smart, natty, and workmanlike in the extreme.
Just before they reached us Jean got down and walked on foot along the road at the edge of the side path where they were riding.
And as they passed quite near him Jean turned his glance towards me and gave me an enormous wink.
I don't know whether that was Jean's sense of humour.
I always forgot afterwards to ask him what it meant.
I only know that it had a peculiarly cheering effect on me to see that great black eye winking and then turning itself with a quiet, careless gaze on the faces of the fifty German cyclists.
They passed without doing more than casting a look at us, and were lost to sight in a moment flashing onwards with tremendous speed towards Enghien.
We were now on the brow of a hill, and as we reached it, and began to descend, we were confronted with a spectacle that fairly took away my breath.
The long white road before us was literally lined with Germans.
Yes, there they were! And when I found myself face to face with those five hundred advancing Germans, about two kilometres out of Enghien, I quite believed I was about to lose my chance of getting to Brussels and of seeing the man I was so anxious to see. Little did I dream at that moment, out there on the sunny Brabant hillside, seated in the old voiture, with that long, never-ending line of Germans filling the tree-lined white dusty highway far and wide with their infantry and artillery, their cannon, and the prancing horses of their officers, and their gleaming blue and scarlet uniforms, and glittering appointments, that it was not I who was going to be taken prisoner by "les Allemands" that brilliant Saturday afternoon, but Max of Brussels himself.
Up and down the long steep white road to Brussels the Germans halted, shouting in stentorian voices that we were to do likewise.
Our driver quickly brought his two bony horses to a standstill, and in the open carriage with me our queer haphazard party sat as if turned to stone.
The Red Cross Belgian lady had already hidden her Red Cross in her stocking, so that the Germans, if we met them, should not seize her and oblige: her to perform Red Cross duties in their hated service.
The guttural voice of an erect old blue-and-scarlet German colonel fell on my ears like a bad dream, as he brought his big prancing grey horse alongside our driver and demanded roughly what we were doing there, while in the same bad dream, as I sat there in my corner of the voiture, I watched the expressions written all over those hundreds of fierce, fair, arrogant faces, staring at us from every direction.
In a blaze of hatred, I told myself that if ever the brute could be seen rampant in human beings' faces there it was, rampant, uncontrolled, unashamed, only just escaping from being degraded by the accompanying expressions of burning arrogance, and indomitable determination that blazed out of those hundreds of blue Teutonic eyes. The set of their lips was firm and grim beyond all words. Often a peculiar ironic smirk, caused by the upturning of the corners of their otherwise straight lips, seemed to add to their demoniac suggestiveness. But their physique was magnificent, and there was not a man among them who did not look every inch a soldier, from his iron-heeled blucher boots upwards.
As I studied them, drinking in the unforgettable picture, it gave me a certain amount of satisfaction to know that I was setting my own small womanly daring up against that great mass of unbridled cruelty and conceit, and I sat very still, very still indeed, stiller than any mouse, allowing myself the supreme luxury of a contemptuous curl of my lips. Picture after picture of the ruined cities I had seen in Belgium flashed like lightning over my memory out there on the sunny Brabant hillside. Again I saw before me the horrors that I had seen with my own eyes at Aerschot, Termonde, and Louvain, and then, instead of feeling frightened I experienced nothing but a red-hot scorn that entirely lifted me above the terrible stress of the encounter; and whether I lived or died mattered not the least bit in the world, beside the satisfaction of sitting there, an English subject looking down at the German Army, with that contemptuous curl of my lips, and that blaze of hatred in my heart.
Meanwhile our driver's passport with his photograph was being examined.
"Who is this?" shouted the silly old German Colonel, pointing to the photograph.
"C'est moi," replied the driver, and his expression seemed to say, "Who on earth did you think it was?"
The fat Colonel, who obviously did not understand a word of French, kept roaring away for one "Schultz," who seemed to be some distance off.
The roaring and shouting went on for several minutes.
It was a curious manifestation of German lack of dignity and I tried in vain to imagine an English Colonel roaring at his men like that.
Then "Schultz" came galloping up. He acted as interpreter, and an amusing dialogue went on between the roaring Colonel and the young dashing "Baverois," who was obviously a less brutal type than his interrogator.
The old banker from Brussels was next questioned, and his passport to come in and out of Brussels being correctly made out in German and French, the Germans seized upon Jean and demanded what he was doing there, why he was going to Brussels, and why he had been to Grammont. Jean's answer was that he lived in Brussels and had been to Grammont to see his relations, and "Schultz's" explanations rendered this so convincing that the lawyer's passport was handed back to him.
"You are sure none of you have no correspondence, no newspapers?" roared the Colonel. "What is in that bag?"
Leaning into the carriage a soldier prodded atmybag.
I dared not attempt to speak. My English origin might betray me in my French. I sat silent. I made no reply. I tried to look entirely uninterested. But I was really almost unconscious with dread.
But the Red Cross lady replied with quiet dignity that there was nothing in her bag but requisites for the journey.
Next moment, as in a dream, I heard that roaring voice shout:
"Gut! Get on!"
Our driver whipped lightly, the carriage moved forward, and we proceeded on our way, filled with queer thoughts that sprang from nerves over-strained and hearts over-quickly beating.
Only Jean remained imperturbable.
"Quel Chance! They were nearly all Baverois! Did you see the dragon embroidered on their pouches? The Baverois are always plus gentilles than any of the others."
This was something I had heard over and over again. According to the Belgians, these Baverois had all through the War, manifested a better spirit towards the Belgians than any other German Regiment, the accredited reason being, that the Belgian Queen is of Bavarian nationality. When the Uhlans slashed up the Queen's portrait in the Royal Palace at Brussels the "Baverois" lost their tempers, and a fierce brawl ensued, in which seven men were killed. All the Belgians in our old ramshackle carriage were loud in their expressions of thankfulness that we had encountered Baverois instead of Uhlans.