So at last that dread mysterious darksome quantity known as "les Allemands," ever moving hither and thither across Belgium, always talked of on the other side of the Belgian lines, but never seen, had materialised right under my very eyes!
The beautiful rich Brabant orchard country stretched away on either side of the road, and behind us, along the road, ran like a wash of indigo, the brilliant Prussian blue of the moving German cavalcade making now towards Enghien and Grammont.
And now the old professor from Liège drew all attention towards himself.
He was shaking and quivering like a jelly.
"J'ai peur!" he said simply.
"Mais non, Monsieur!" cried Jean. "It's all over now."
"Courage! courage! Pas de danger," cried everyone, encouragingly.
"It was only a ruse of the enemy, letting us go," whispered the Professor. "They will follow and shoot us from behind!"
Plaintively, as a child, he asked the fat Brussels banker to allow him to change places, and sit in front, instead of behind.
In a sudden rebound of spirits, the Red Cross lady and I laughingly sat on the back seat, and opened our parasols behind us, while the old Brussels banker, when the two fat men had exchanged seats not without difficulty, whispered to us:
"And all the while there are a hundred letters sewn up inside the cushion of the seat our friend from Liège is sitting onnow!"
On we drove, on and on.
All the road to Brussels was patrolled now. At the gates of villa gardens, on the side paths, grey German sentries were posted, bayonets fixed. We drove through Germans all the way. They looked at us quietly. Once only were we stopped again, and this time it was only the driver's passport that was looked at.
At last we arrived at Hall, an old-world Brabant town containing a "miracle." As far as I can remember, it was a bomb from some bygone War that came through the church wall and was caught in the skirts of the Madonna!
"Hall," said Jean, "is now the headquarters of the German Army in Belgium! The État-Majeur has been moved here from Brussels. He is in residence at the Hôtel de Ville. Voilà! See the Germans. They always pose themselves like that on the steps where there are any steps to pose on. Ah, mais c'est triste n'est-ce-pas? Mon pauvre Belgique!"
We clattered up the main street and stopped at a little café, facing the Hotel de Ville.
Stiffly we alighted from our waggonette, and entering the café quenched our thirst in lemonade, watching the Germans through the window as we rested.
Nervous as I was myself, I admired the Belgians' sangfroid. They manifested not the slightest signs of nervousness. Scorn was their leading characteristic. Then a sad little story reached my ears. An old peasant was telling Jean that an English aviator had been shot down at Hall the day before, and was buried somewhere near.
How I longed to look for my brave countryman's grave! But that was impossible. Instead, I breathed a prayer for his soul, and thought of him and his great courage with tenderness and respect.
It was all I could do.
Finally, after a wild and breathless drive of thirty-five miles through rich orchard-country all the way, and always between German patrols, we entered Brussels. Crowds of German officers and men were dashing about in motor cars in all directions, while the populace moved by them as though they were ghosts, taking not the slightest notice of their presence. The sunlight had faded now, and the lights were being lit in Brussels, and I gazed about me, filled with an inordinate curiosity. At first I thought the people seemed to be moving about just as usual, but soon I discovered an immense difference between these Brussels crowds, and those of normal times and conditions. It was as though all the red roses and carnations had been picked out of the garden. The smart world had completely disappeared. Those daintily-dressed, exquisite women, and elegant young and old men, that made such persuasive notes among the streets and shops of Brussels in ordinary times, had vanished completely under the German occupation. In their place was now a rambling, roaming crowd of the lower middle-classes, dashed with a big sprinkling of wide-eyed wrinkled peasants from the Brabant country outside, who had come into the big city for the protection of the lights and the houses and the companionship, even though the dreaded "Allemands" were there. Listlessly people strolled about. They looked in the shop windows, but nobody bought. No business seemed to be done at all, except in the provision shops, where I saw groups of German officers and soldiers buying sausages, cheese and eggs.
Crowds gathered before the German notices, pasted on the walls so continuously that Brussels was half covered beneath these great black and white printed declarations, which, as they were always printed in three languages—German, French and Flemish—took up an enormous amount of wall space. Here and there Dutch journalists stood hastily copying these "affiches" into their note-books. Now and then, from the crowd reading, a low voice would mutter languidly "Les sales cochons!" But more often the Brussels sense of humour would see something funny in those absurd proclamations, and people were often to be seen grinning ironically at the German official war news specially concocted for the people of Brussels. It was all the Direct Opposite of the news in Belgian and English papers.We, the Allies, had just announced that Austria had broken down, and was on the verge of a revolution.They, the Germans, announced precisely the same thing—only of Servia! And the Brussels people coolly read the news and passed on, believing none of it.
And all the time, while the Belgians moved dawdlingly up and down, and round about their favourite streets and arcades, the Germans kept up one swift everlasting rush, flying past in motors, or striding quickly by, with their firm, long tread. They always seemed to be going somewhere in a hurry, or doing something extraordinarily definite. After I had been five minutes in Brussels, I became aware of this curious sense of immense and unceasing German activity, flowing like some loud, swift, resistless current through the dull, depleted stream of Brussels life. All day long it went without ceasing, and all night, too. In and out of the city, in and out of the city, in and out of the city. Past the deserted lace shops, with their exquisite delicate contents; past the many closed hotels; past the great white beauties of Brussels architecture; past the proud but yellowing avenues of trees along the heights; past those sculptured monuments of Belgians who fell in bygone battles, and now, in the light of 1914, leapt afresh into life again, galvanised back into reality by the shriek of a thousandobus, and the blood poured warm on the blackened fields of Belgium.
We drove to an old hotel in a quiet street, and our driver jumped down and rang the courtyard bell.
Then the door opened, and an old Belgian porter stood and looked at us with sad eyes, saying in a low voice, "Come in quickly!"
We all got down and went through the gateway.
We found ourselves in a big old yellow stone courtyard, chilly and deserted.
The driver ran out and returned, carrying in his arms the long flat seat-cushion from the carriage.
Then the old porter locked the gate and we all gathered round the brave little Flemish driver who was down on his knees now, over the cushion, doing something with a knife.
Next minute he held up a bundle of letters, and then another and then another,—
"And here is your English passport, Madame," Jean said to me.
Unknown to most of us, the driver and Jean, while we waited at Enghien, had made a slit in the cushion, had taken out some stuffing, and put in instead a great mass of letters and papers for Brussels, then they had wired up the slit, turned the cushion upside down, and let us sit on it.
It was rather like sitting on a mine.
Only, like the heroine of the song: "We didn't care, we didn't KNOW!"
The hotel is closed to the public.
"We shut it up so that we should not have Germans coming in," says the little Bruxellois widow who owns it. "But if Madame likes to stay here for the night we can arrange,—only—there is no cooking!"
The old professor from Liège asks in his pitiful childlike way if he can get a room there too. He would be glad, so glad, to be in a hotel that was not open to the public, or the Germans.
Leaving my companions with many expressions of friendliness, I now rush off to the Hotel de Ville, accompanied by the faithful Jean.
Just as we reach our destination, we run into the man I have come all this way to see.
I see a short, dark man, with an alert military bearing. It seems to me that this idol of Brussels is by no means good-looking. Certainly, there is nothing of the hero in his piquant, even somewhat droll appearance. But his eyes! They are truly extraordinary! They bulge right out of their sockets. They have the sharpness and alertness of a terrier's. They are brilliant, humorous, stern, merry, tender, audacious, glistening, bright, all at once. His beard is clipped. His moustaches are large and upstanding. His immaculate dress and careful grooming give him a dandified air, as befitting the most popular bachelor in Europe, who is also an orphan to boot. His forehead is high and broad. His general appearance is immediately arresting, one scarcely knows why. Quite unlike the conventional Burgomaster type is he.
M. Max briefly explains that he is on his way to an important meeting. But he will see me at eleven o'clock next morning if I will come to the Hotel de Ville. Then he hurries off, his queer dark face lighting up with a singularly brilliant smile as he bids us "Au revoir!" An historic moment that. For M. Max has never been seen in Brussels since!
Of itself, M. Max's face is neither particularly loveable, nor particularly attractive.
Therefore, this man's great hold over hearts is all the more remarkable.
It must, of course, be attributed in part to the deep, warm audacious personality that dwells behind his looks.
But, in truth, M. Max's enormous popularity owes itself not only to his electric personality, his daring, and sangfroid, but also to hiscommon-sense, which steered poor bewildered Brussels through those terribly difficult first weeks of the German occupation.
Nothing in history is more touching, more glorious, than the sudden starting up in time of danger of some quiet unknown man who stamps his personality on the world, becomes the prop and comfort of his nation, is believed in as Christians believe in God, and makes manifest again the truth that War so furiously and jealously attempts to crush and darken—the power of mind over matter, the mastery of good over evil.
From this War three such men stand out immortally—King Albert, Max of Brussels, Mercier of Malines.
And Belgium has produced all three!
Thrice fortunate Belgium!
Each stone that crumbles from her ruined homes seems, to the watching world, to fly into the Heavens, and glow there like a star!
On foot, swinging my big yellow furs closer round me in the true Belgian manner, I walked along at Jean's side, trying to convince myself that this was all real, this Brussels full of grey-clad and blue-clad Prussians, Saxons, and Baverois, with here and there the white uniform of the Imperial Guard. Suddenly I started. Horribly conscious as I was that I was an English authoress and with no excuse to offer for my presence there, I felt distinctly nervous when I saw a queer young man in a bulky brown coat move slowly along at my side with a curious sidling movement, whispering something under his breath.
I was not sure whether to hurry on, or to stand still.
Jean chose the latter course.
Whereupon the stranger flicked a look up and down the street, then put his hand in his inner breast pocket.
"Le Temps," he whispered hoarsely, flashing looks up and down the street.
"How much?" asked Jean.
"Five francs," he answered. "Put it away toute suite, vous savez c'est dangereux."
Then quickly he added, walking along beside us still, and speaking still in that hoarse, melodramatic voice (which pleased him a little, I couldn't help thinking), "Les Allemands will give me a year in prison if they catch me, so I have to make it pay, n'est-ce-pas? But the Brussels peoplemusthave their newspapers. They've got to know the truth about the war, n'est-ce-pas? and the English papers tell the truth!"
"How do you get the newspapers," I whispered, like a conspirator myself.
"I sneak in and out of Brussels in a peasant's cart, all the way to Sottegem," he whispered back. "Every week they catch one of us. But still we go on—n'est-ce-pas? We don't know what fear is in Brussels. That's because we've got M. Max at the head of us! Ah, there's a man for you, M. Max!"
A look of pride and tenderness flashed across his dark, crafty face, then he was gone, and I found myself longing for the morning, when I should talk with M. Max myself.
But Sunday I was awakened by the loud booming of cannon, proceeding from the direction of Malines.
"What is happening?" I asked the maid who brought my coffee "Isn't that firing very near?"
"Oui, Madam! On dit that in a few days now the Belgian Army will re-enter Brussels, and the Germans will be driven out. That will be splendid, Madam, will it not?"
"Splendid," I answered mechanically.
This optimism was now becoming a familiar phrase to me.
I found it everywhere. But alas! I found it alongside what was continually being revealed as pathetic ignorance of the true state of affairs.
And the nearer one was to actual events the greater appeared one's ignorance.
This very day, when we were saying, "In a few days now the Germans will be driven out of Brussels," they were commencing their colossal attack upon Antwerp, and we knew nothing about it.
The faithful Jean called for me at half-past ten, and hurrying through the rain-wet streets to meet M. Max at the Hotel de Ville, we became suddenly aware that something extraordinary was happening. A sense of agitation was in the air. People were hurrying about, talking quickly and angrily. And then our eyes were confronted by the following startling notice, pasted on the walls, printed in German, French and Flemish, and flaming over Brussels in all directions:—
"AVIS."Le Bourgmestre Max ayant fait default auxengagements encourus envers le GouvernementAllemand je me suis vu force de le suspendrede ses fonctions. Monsieur Max se trouve endetention honourable dans une forteresse."Le Gouverneur Allemande,"VON DER GOLTZ."Bruxelles,26th Septembre, 1914.
Cries of grief and rage kept bursting from those broken-hearted Belgians.
Not a man or woman in the city was there who did not worship the very ground Max walked on. The blow was sharp and terrible; it was utterly unexpected too. Crowds kept on gathering. Presently, with that never-ceasing accompaniment of distant cannon, the anger of the populace found vent in groans and hisses as a body of Uhlans made its appearance, conducting two Belgian prisoners towards the Town Hall. And then, all in a moment, Brussels was in an uproar. Prudence and fear were flung to the wind. Like mad creatures the seething crowds of men, women, and children went tearing along towards the Hotel de Ville, groaning and hooting at every German they saw, and shouting aloud the name of "Max," while to add to the indescribable tumult, hundreds of little boys ran shrieking at the tops of their voices, "Voici le photographie ed Monsieur Max, dix centimes!"
The Civic Guard, composed now mostly of elderly enrolled Brussels civilians, dashed in and out among the infuriated mob, waving their sticks, and imploring the population to restrain itself, or the consequences might be fatal for one and all.
Meanwhile the Aldermen were busy preparing a newaffichewhich was soon being posted up in all directions.
"AVIS IMPORTANT."Pendant l'absence de M. Max le marche desaffaires Communales et le Maintenance del'ordre seront assurés par le College Echevinal.Dans l'interêt de la cité nous faisons un suprêmeappel au calme et sangfroid de nos concitoyens.Nous comptons sur le concours de tous pourassurer le maintien de la tranquilité publique.Bruxelles. "LE COLLEGE ECHEVINAL."
Accompanied by Jean, I hurried on to the Hotel de Ville.
"Voyez vous!" says Jean under his breath. "Voici les Allemands dans l'Hôtel de Ville! Quel chose n'est-ce-pas!"
And I hear a sharp note in the poor fellow's voice that told of bitter emotion.
It was an ordeal to walk through that beautiful classic courtyard, patrolled by grey-clad German sentinels armed to the teeth. The only thing to do was to pass them without either looking or not looking. But once inside I felt safer. The Germans kept to their side of the Town Hall, leaving the Belgian Municipality alone. We went up the wide stairs, hung with magnificent pictures and found a sad group of Belgians gathered in a long corridor, the windows of which looked down into the courtyard below where the Germans were unloading waggons, or striding up and down with bayonets fixed.
Looking down from that window, while we waited to be received by M. le Meunier, the Acting-Burgomaster who had promptly taken M. Max's place, I interested myself in studying the famous German leg. A greater part of it was boot. These boots looked as though immense attention had been given to them. In fact there was nothing they didn't have, iron heels, waterproof uppers, patent soles an immense thickness, with metal intermingled, an infinite capacity for not wearing out. I watched these giant boots standing in the gateway of the exquisite Hotel de Ville, fair monument of Belgium's genius for the Gothic! I could see nothing of the upper part of the Germans, only their legs, and it was forced upon my observation that those legs were of great strength and massive, yet with a curious flinging freedom of gait, that was the direct result of goose-stepping.
Then I saw two officers goose-stepping into the courtway. I saw their feet first! then their knees. The effect was curious. They appeared to kick out contemptuously at the world, then pranced in after the kick. The conceit of the performance defies all words.
Then Jean's card was taken into the acting Burgomaster, and next moment a Belgian Échevin said to us, "Entrez, s'il vous plaît," and we passed into the room habitually occupied by M. Max.
We found ourselves in a palatial chamber, the walls covered thickly with splendid tapestries and portraits. From the high gilded ceiling hung enormous chandeliers, glittering and pageantesque. Under one of these giant chandeliers stood an imposing desk covered with papers. An elderly gentleman with a grey wide beard was seated there. We advanced over the thick soft carpets.
M. le Meunier received us with great courtesy.
"Nous avons perdu notre tête!" he murmured sadly.—"Without M. Max we are lost!"
The air was full of agitation.
Here was a scene the like of which might well have been presented by the stage, so spectacular was it, so dramatic—the lofty chamber with its superb appointments and hangings, and these elderly, grey-bearded men of state who had just been dealt the bitterest blow that had yet fallen on their poor tortured shoulders.
But this was no stage scene. This was real. If ever anything on earth was alive and real it was this scene in the Burgomaster's room in Brussels, on the first day of Max's imprisonment. Throbbing and palpitating through it was human agony, human grief, human despair, as these grey-bearded Belgians stared with dull heavy eyes at the empty space where their heroic chief no longer was. Tragic beyond the words of any historian was that scene, which at last however, by sheer intensity of concentrated and concealed emotion, seemed to summon again into that chamber the imprisoned body, the blazing, dauntless personality of the absent one, until his prison bonds were broken, and he was here, seated at this desk, cool, fearless, imperturbable, directing the helm of his storm-tossed bark with his splendid sanity, and saying to all:
"Fear nothing, mes enfants! There is no such thing as fear!"
The story of Max's arrest was characteristic.
He was busy at the Hotel de Ville with his colleagues when a peremptory message arrived from Von der Goltz, bidding him come at once to an interview.
"I cannot come at once!" said Max, "I am occupied in an important conference with my colleagues. I'll come at half-past four o'clock."
Presently the messenger returned.
"Monsieur Max, will you come at once!" he said in a worried manner. "Von der Goltz is angry!"
"I am busy with my work!" replied Max imperturbably. "As I said before, I shall be with Von der Goltz at four-thirty."
At four-thirty he went off, accompanied by his colleagues, and a dramatic conference took place between the Germans and Belgians.
Max now fearlessly informed the Germans that he considered it would be unfair for Brussels to pay any more at present of the indemnity put upon it by Germany.
One reason he gave was very simple.
The Germans had posted up notices in the city, declaring that in future they would not pay for anything required for the service of the German Army, but would take whatever they wanted, free.
"You must wait for your indemnity," said Max. "You can't get blood from a stone."
"Then we arrest you all as hostages for the money," was the German's answer.
At first Max and all his Échevins were arrested.
Two hours later the aldermen were released.
But not Max.
He was sent to hishonorable detentionin a German fortress.
The months have passed.
He is still there!
By degrees Brussels calmed down. But the Germans wore startled expressions all that grey wet Sunday, as though realising that within that pent-up city was a terribly dangerous force, a force that had been restrained and kept in order all this time by the very man they had been foolish enough to imprison because Brussels found herself unable to pay up her cruelly-imposed millions.
Later, on that Sunday afternoon, I fulfilled my promise and went to call on General Thys, the father of one of my Aerschot acquaintances.
I found the old General in that beautiful house of his in the Chaussée de Charleroi, sitting by the fireside in his library reading the Old Testament.
"The only book I can read now!" the General said, in a voice that shook a little, as if with some burning secret agitation.
I remember so well that interview. It was a grey Sunday afternoon, with a touch of autumn in the air, and no sunlight. Through the great glass windows at the end of the library I could see that Brussels garden, with some trees green, and some turning palely gold, already on their way towards decay.
Seated on one side of the fire was the beautiful young unmarried daughter of the house, sharing her father's terrible loneliness, while on the other side sat the handsome melancholy old Belgian hero, whose trembling voice began presently to tell the story of his beloved nation, its suffering, its heroism, its love of home, its bygone struggles for liberty.
And outside in the streets Germans strode up and down, Germans stood on the steps of the Palais de Justice, Germans everywhere.
Mademoiselle Thys, a tall, fair, very beautiful young girl, chats away brightly, trying to cheer her father. Presently she talks of M. Max. Brussels can talk of nothing else to-day. She shows him to me in a different aspect. Now I see him in society, witty, delightful, charming, débonnaire.
"I did so love to be taken into dinner by M. Max!" exclaims the bright young belle. "He was so interesting, so amusing. And so nice to flirt with. He did not dance, but he went to all the balls, and walked about chatting and amusing himself, and everyone else. Before one big fancy dress ball—it was the last in Brussels before the war—M. Max announced that he could not be present. Everyone was sorry. His presence always made things brighter, livelier. Suddenly, in the midst of the ball a policeman was seen coming up the stairs, his stick in his hand. Gravely, without speaking to anyone he moved down the corridors. 'The Police,' whispered everyone. 'What can it mean?' And then one of the hosts went up to the policeman, determined to take the bull by the horns, as you say in Angleterre, and find out what is wrong. And voilà! It is no policeman at all. It is M. Max!"
Undoubtedly, the hatred and terror of Germany at this time was all for Russia.
In Russia, Germany saw her deadliest foe. Every Belgian man or woman that I talked with in Brussels asserted the same thing. "The Germans are terrified of Russia," said the old General. "They see in Russia the greatest enemy to their plans in Asia Minor. They fear Russian civilisation—or so they say! Civilisation indeed! What they fear is Russian numbers!"
It was highly interesting to observe as I was forced to do a little later, how completely that hatred for Russia was passed on to England.
The passing on occurredafter English troops were sent to the assistance of Antwerp!
From then on, the blaze of hatred in Germany's heart was all for England, deepening and intensifying with extraordinary ferocity ever since October 4th, 1914.
And why? The reason is obvious now.
Our effort to save Antwerp, unsuccessful as it was, yet by delaying 200,000 Germans, enabled those highly important arrangements to be carried out on the Allies' western front that frustrated Germany's hopes in France, and stopped her dash for Calais!
In their attitude to the Germans, theBruxelloisundoubtedly take their tone from M. Max.
For his sake they suppressed themselves as quickly as possible that famous Sunday and soon went on their usual way. Their attitude towards the Germans revealed itself as a truly remarkable one. It was perfect in every sense. They were never rude, never sullen, never afraid, and until this particular Sunday and afterwards again, they always behaved as though the Germans did not exist at all. They walked past them as though they were air.
No one ever speaks to the Huns in Brussels. They sit there alone in the restaurants, or in groups, eating, eating, eating. Hour after hour they sit there. You pass at seven and they are eating and drinking. You pass at nine, they are still eating and drinking. Their red faces grow redder and redder. Their gold wedding rings grow tighter and tighter on their fingers.
The Belgians wait on them with an admirable air of not noticing their presence, never looking at them, never speaking to them, the waiters bringing them their food with an admirable detached air as though they are placing viands before a set of invisible spectres.
Always alone are the Germans in Brussels, and sometimes they look extremely bored. I can't help noticing that.
They do their best to win a little friendliness from the Belgians. But in vain. At the restaurants they always pay for their food. They also make a point of sometimes ostentatiously dropping money into the boxes for collecting funds for the Belgians. But theBruxelloisnever for one moment let down the barriers between themselves and "les Allemands," although they do occasionally allow themselves the joy of "getting a rise" out of the Landsturm when possible,—an amusement which the Germans apparently find it impolite to resent!
I sat in a tram in Brussels when two Germans in mufti entered and quite politely excused themselves from paying their fares, explaining that they were "military" and travel free.
"But how do I know that you are really German soldiers!" says the plucky little tram guard, while all the passengers crane forward to listen. "You're not in uniform. I don't know who you are. You must pay your fares, Messieurs, or you must get out."
With red annoyed faces the Germans pull out their soldiers' medals, gaudy ornate affairs on blue ribbons round their necks.
"I don't recognise these," says the tram guard, examining them solemnly. "They're not what our soldiers carry. I can't let you go free on these."
"But we have no money!" splutter the Germans.
"Then I must ask you to get out," says the guard gravely.
And the two Germans, looking very foolish, actually get out of the tram, whereupon the passengers all burst into uncontrollable laughter, which gives them a vast amount of satisfaction, while the two Germans, very red in the face, march away down the street.
As for the street urchins, they flourish under the German occupation, adopting exactly the same attitude towards their conquerors as that manifested by their elders and M. Max.
Dressed up in paper uniforms, with a carrot for the point of their imitation German helmet they march right under the noses of the Germans, headed by an old dog.
Round the old dog's neck is an inscription:
"The war is taking place for the aggrandisement of Belgium!"
The truth is—the beautiful truth—that the spirit of M. Max hangs over Brussels, steals through it, pervades it. It is his ego that possesses the town. It is Max who is really in occupation there. It is Max who is the true conqueror. It is Max who holds Brussels, and will hold it through all time to come. For all that the Germans are going about the streets, and for all that Max is detained in his "honorable" fortress, the man's spirit is so indomitable, so ardent, that he makes himself felt through his prison walls, and the population of Brussels is able to say, with magnificent sangfroid, and a confidence that is absolutely real:—
"They may keep M. Max in a fortress! But even les alboches will never dare to hurt a hair of his head!"
In my empty hotel the profoundest melancholy reigns.
The inherent sadness of the occupied city seems to have full sway here. The palm court, with its high glassed roof, is swept with ghostly echoes, especially when the day wanes towards dusk, the great deserted dining-salon, with its polished tables and its rows of chairs is like a mausoleum for dead revellers, the writing-rooms with their desks always so pitifully tidy, the smoking-rooms, the drawing-rooms, the floor upon floor of empty, guestless bedrooms, with the beds rolled back and the blinds down; they ache with their ghastly silences and seem to languish away towards decay.
The only servant is Antoine, the bent little old faithful white-haired porter, who has passed his lifetime in the service of the house.
Madame la Patronne, in heavy mourning, with her two small boys clinging to either arm, sometimes moves across the palm court to her own little sitting-room.
And sometimes some Belgian woman friend, always in black, drops in, and she and la Patronne and the old porter all talk together, dully, guardedly, relating to each other the gossip of Brussels, and wondering always how things are going with "les petits Belges" outside in the world beyond.
In front, the great doors are locked and barred.
One tiny door, cut in the wooden gate at the side, is one's sole means of exit and entrance.
But it is almost too small for the Liège professor, and he tells me plaintively that he will be glad to move on to Liège.
"I get broken to pieces squeezing in and out of that little door," he says. "And I am always afraid I will stick in the middle, and the Germans in the restaurant will see me, and ask who I am, and what I am doing here!"
"I can get through the door easily enough," I answer. "But I suffer agonies as I stand there on the street waiting for old Antoine to come and unlock it."
"And then there is no food here, no lunch, no dinner, and I do not like to go in the restaurants alone; I am afraid the Germans will notice me. I am so big, you see, everybody notices me. Do you think I will ever get to Liège?"
"Of course you will."
"But do you think I will ever get back from Liège to Antwerp?"
"Of course you will."
"J'ai peur!"
"Moi aussi!"
And indeed, sitting there in the dusk, in the eerie silences of the deserted hotel, with the German guns booming away in the distance towards Malines, there creeps over me a shuddering sensation that is very like fear at the ever-deepening realization of what Belgium has suffered, and may have to suffer yet; and I find it almost intolerable—the thought of this poor brave old trembling Belgian, weighted with years and flesh, struggling so manfully to get back to Liège, and gauge for himself the extent of the damage done to his house and properties, to see his servants and help them make arrangements for the future. Like all the rest of the Belgian fugitives, he knows nothingdefiniteabout the destruction of his town. It may be that his home has been razed to the ground. It may be that it has been spared. He is sure of nothing, and that is why he has set out on this long and dangerous journey, which is not by any means over yet.
Then the old porter approaches, gentle, sorrowful.
"Monsieur, good news! there is a train for Liège to-morrow morning at five o'clock!"
"Merci bien," says the old professor. "Mais, j'ai peur!"
I rise at four next morning and come down to see him off. We two, who have never seen each other before, seem now like the only relics of some bygone far-off event. To see his fat, old, enormous face gives me a positive thrill of joy. I feel as if I have known him all my life, and when he has gone I feel curiously alone. The melancholy old fat man's presence had lent a semblance of life to the hotel, which how seems given over to ghosts and echoes. Unable to bear it, I moved into the Métropole.
It was very strange to be there, very strange indeed! This was the Métropole and yet not the Métropole! Sometimes I could not believe it was the Métropole at all—the gay, bright, lively, friendly, companionable Métropole—so sad was this big red-carpeted hotel, so full of gloomy echoing silences, and with never a soul to arrive or leave, to ask for a room or a time-table.
There were Italians in charge of the hotel, for which I was profoundly thankful.
How nice they were to me, those kindly sons of the South.
They allowed me to look in their visitors' book, and as I expected, I found that the dry hotel register had suddenly become transformed into a vital human document, of surpassing interest, of intense historic value.
As I glanced through the crowded pages I came at last upon an ominous date in August upon which there were no names entered.
It was the day on which Brussels surrendered to the Germans.
On that day the register was blank, entirely blank.
And next day also, and the next, and the next, and the next, were those white empty sheets, with never a name inscribed upon them.
For weeks this blankness continued. It was stifling in its significance. It clutched at one's heart-strings. It shouted aloud of the agony of those days when all who could do so left Brussels, and only those who were obliged to remained. It told its desolate tale of the visitors that had fled, or ceased to come.
Only, here and there after a long interval, appeared a German name or two.
Frau Schmidt arrived; Herr Lemberg; Fräulein Gottmituns.
There was a subdued little group of occupants when I was there; Mr. Morse, the American pill-maker, Mr. Williams, another American, an ex-Portuguese Minister and his wife and son (exiles these from Portugal), a little Dutch Baroness who was said to be a great friend of Gyp's, half a dozen English nurses and two wounded German officers.
I made friends quickly with the nurses and the Americans, and to look into English eyes again gave me a peculiarly soothing sense of relief that taught me (if I needed teaching) how alone I was in all these dangers and agitations.
Mr. Williams had a queer experience. I have often wondered why America did not resent it on his account.
He was arrested and taken prisoner for talking about the horrors of Louvain in a train. He was released while I was there. I saw him dashing into the hotel one evening, a brown paper parcel under his arm. There was quite a little scene in the waiting-room; everyone came round him asking what had happened. It seemed that as he stepped out of the tram he was confronted by German officers, who promptly conducted him into a "detention honorable."
There he was stripped and searched, and in the meanwhile private detectives visited his room at the Métropole and went through all his belongings.
Nothing of a compromising nature being found, Mr. Williams was allowed to go free after twenty-four hours, having first to give his word that in future he would not express himself in public.
When I invited him to describe to me what happened in his "detention honorable," he answered with a strained smile, "No more talking for me!"
Surely this insult to a free-born American must have been a bitter dose for the American Consulate to swallow.
But perhaps they were too busy to notice it!
When I called at the Consulate the place was crowded with English nurses begging to be helped away from Brussels. I found that Mr. Richards had already put in a word on my behalf.
This is what they gave me at the American Consulate in Brussels as a safeguard against the Germans. I shouldn't have cared to show it to the enemy! It seemed to me to deliver me straight into their hands. I hid it in the lining of my hat with my passport.
THE AMERICAN SAFEGUARD.The American Safeguard.
Chilly and wet to-day in Brussels.
And oh, so triste, so triste!
Never before have I known a sadness like to this.
Not in cemetery, not in ruined town, not among wounded, coming broken from the battle, as on that red day at Heyst-op-den-Berg.
A brooding soul—mist is in the air of Brussels. It creeps, it creeps. It gets into the bones, into the brain, into the heart. Even when one laughs one feels the ghostly visitant. All the joy has gone from life. The vision is clouded. To look at anything you must see Germans first.
Oh, horrible, horrible it is!
And hourly it grows more horrible.
Its very quietness takes on some clammy quality associated with graves.
Movement and life go on all round. People walk, talk, eat, drink, take the trams, shop. But all the while the Germans are there, the Germans are in their hotels, their houses, their palaces, their public buildings, Town Hall, Post Office, Palais de Justice, in their trams, in their cafés, in their restaurants—
At last I find a simile.
It is like being at home, in one's beloved home with one's beloved family all around one, and every room fullof cockroaches!
Repellant, unforgettable, was the spectacle of the Germans strutting and posing on the steps of the beautiful Palais de Justice.
So ill did they fit the beauty of their background, that all the artist in one writhed with pain. Like some horrible vandal attempt at decoration upon pure and flawless architecture these coarse, brutish figures stood with legs apart, their flat round caps upon their solemn yokel faces giving them the aspect of a body of convicts, while behind them reared those noble pillars, yellow and dreamlike, suffering in horror, but with chaste dignity, the polluting nearness of the Hun.
The more one studies Hun physiognomy and physique, the more predominant grow those first impressions of the Cult of the Brute. Brutish is the clear blue eye, with the burning excited brain revealing itself in flashes such as one might see in the eye of a rhinoceros on the attack. Brutish is the head, so round and close cropped, resembling no other animal save German. Brutish are the ears flapping out so redly. The thick necks and incredibly thick legs have the tenacious look of elephants.
And oh, their little ways, their little ways!
In the Salle Du Tribunal de Commerce they put up clothes-lines, and hung their shirts and handkerchiefs there, while a bucket stood in the middle of the beautiful tesselated floor. And then, in exquisite taste, to give the Belgians a treat, this interior has been photographed and forced into an extraordinary little newspaper published in Brussels, printed in French but secretly controlled by the Germans, who splatter it with their photographs in every conceivable (and inconceivable) style.
And so we see them in their kitchen installed at the foot of the Monument, wearing aprons over their middle-aged tummies, blucher boots, and round flat caps. A pretty picture that!
They posed themselves for it; alone they did it. And this is how. They tipped up a big basket, and let it lie in the foreground on its side. Two Germans seized a table, lifting it off the ground. One man seated himself on a wooden bench with a tin of kerosene. Half a dozen others leaned up against the portable stoves, with folded arms, looking as if they were going to burst into Moody and Sankey hymns. All food, all bottles, were hidden. The dustbin was brought forward instead. And then the photographer said "gut!" And there they were! It was the Hunnish idea of a superb photograph of Army Cooks. Contrast it with Tommy's! How do you see Tommy when a war photographer gets him? His first thought is for an effect of "Cheer-oh!" He doesn't hide bottles and glasses. He brings them out, and lets you look at them. He doesn't, in the act of being photographed, lift a table. He lifts a tea-pot or a bottle if he has one handy. Give us Tommy all the time. Yes. All the time!
Another photograph shews the Huns in the Auditoire of the Cour de Cassation! More funny effects! They've brought forward all their knap-sacks, and piled them on a desk for decoration. They themselves lie on the carpeted steps at full length. But they don't lounge. They can't. No man can lounge who doesn't know what to do with his hands. And Germans never know what to do with theirs.
When I saw that picture, showing the Hun idea of how a photograph should be taken, I felt a suffocation in my larynx. Then there was a gem called Un Coin de la Cour de Cassation. This shewed dried fish and sausages hanging on an easel! cheeses on the floor; and washing on the clothes-line.
And opposite this, on the other page was a photo of General Leman and his now famous letters to King Albert, the most touching human documents chat were ever written to a King.
SIRE,
Après des combats honorables livrés les 4, 5, et 6 août par la 3ème division d'armée renforcée, a partir du 5, par la 15ème brigade, j'ai estimé que les forts de Liège ne pouvaient plus jouer que le rôle de forts d'arrêt. J'ai néanmoins conservé le gouvernement militaire de la place afin d'en coordonner la défense autant qu'il m'était possible et afin d'exercer une action morale sur les garnisons des forts.
Le bien-fondé de ces résolutions à reçu par la suite des preuves sérieuses.
Votre Majesté n'ignore du reste pas que je m'étais installé au fort de Loncin, à partir du 6 août, vers midi.
SIRE,
Vous apprendrez avec douleur que ce fort a sauté bier à 17 h. 20 environ, ensevelissant sous ses ruines la majeure partie de la garnison, peut-être les huit-dixièmes.
Si je n'ai pas perdu la vie dans cette catastrophe, c'est parce que mon escorte, composée comme suit: captaine commandant Collard, un sous-officier d'infanterie, qui n'a sans doute pas survécu, le gendarme Thevénin et mes deux ordonnances (Ch. Vandenbossche et Jos. Lecocq) m'a tiré d'un endroit du fort ou j'allais être asphyxié par les gaz de la poudre. J'ai été porté dans le fossé où je suis tombé. Un captaine allemand, du nom de Gruson, m'a donné à boire, mais j'ai été fait prisonnier, puis emmené à Liège dans une ambulance.
Je suis certain d'avoir soutenu l'honneur de nos armes. Je n'ai rendu ni la forteresse, ni les forts.
Daignez me pardonner, Sire, la négligeance de cette lettre je suis physiquement très abimé par l'explosion de Loncin.
En Allemagne, où je vais être dirigé, mes pensées seront ce qu'elles ont toujours été: la Belgique et son Roi. J'aurais volontiers donné ma vie pour les mieux servir, mais la mort n'a pas voulu de moi.
G. LEMAN.
What is it I've been saying about gaiety?
How could one ever use such a word?
Here in the heart of Brussels one cannot recall even a memory of what it was like to be joyful!
I am in a city under German occupation; and I see around me death in life, and life in death. I see men, women, and children, with eyes that are looking into tombs. Oh those eyes, those eyes! Ah, here is the agony of Belgium—here in this fair white capital set like a snowflake on her hillside. Here is grief concentrated and dread accumulated, and the days go by, and the weeks come and pass, and then months—then months!—and still the agony endures, the Germans remain, the Belgians wake to fresh morrows, with that weight that is more bitter and heavier than Death, flinging itself upon their weary shoulders the moment they return to consciousness.
Yes. Waking in Brussels is grim as waking on the morn of execution!
Out of sleep, with its mercy of dream and forgetfulness, theBruxelloiscomes back each morning to a sense of brooding tragedy. Swiftly this deepens into realization. The Germans are here. They are still here. The day must be gone through, the sad long day. There is no escaping it. The Belgian must see the grey figures striding through his beloved streets, shopping in his shops, walking and motoring in his parks and squares. He must meet the murderers in his churches, in his cafés. He must hear their laughter in his ears, and their loud arrogant speech. He must see them in possession of his Post Offices, his Banks, his Museums, his Libraries, his Theatres, his Palaces, his Hotels.
He must remain in ignorance of the world outside. Worst of all! When his poor tortured thoughts turn to one thought of his Deliverance, he must confront a terror sharper than all the rest. Then, he sees in clear vision, the ghastly fate that may fall upon the unarmed Brussels population the day the Germans are driven out. The whole beautiful city may be in flames, the whole population murdered. There is no one who can stop the Germans if they decide to ruin Brussels before evacuating it. One can only trust in their common-sense—and their mercy!
And at thought of mercy theBruxelloisgazes away down the flat, dusty road—away towards Louvain!
The peasants are going backwards and forwards to Louvain.
Little carts, filled with beshawled women and children, keep trundling along the road. A mud-splashed rickety waggonette is drawn up in front of a third-rate café. "Louvain" is marked on it in white chalk. On a black board, in the café window, is a notice that the waggonette will start when full. The day is desperately wet. There is a canvas roof to the waggonette, but the rain dashes through, sideways, and backwards and forwards. Under cover of the rain as it were, I step into the waggonette, and seat myself quietly among a group of peasants. Two more get in shortly after. Then off we start. In silence, all crouching together, we drive through the city, out through the northern gateway; soon we are galloping along the drear flat country-road that leads to the greatest tragedy of the War. It is ten o'clock when we start. At half-past eleven we are in Louvain. On the way we meet only peasants and little shop-keepers going to and from Brussels.
Over the flat bare country, through the grey atmosphere comes an impression of whiteness. My heart beats suffocatingly as I climb out of the waggonette and stand in the narrow Rue de la Station, looking along the tram-line. The heaps of débris nearly meet across the street.
The rain is falling in Louvain; it beats through the ruined spaces; it does its best to wash out the blood-stains of those terrific days in August. And the people, oh, the brave people. They are actually making a pretence of life. A few shops are opened, a café opposite the ruined theatre is full of pale, trembling old men, sipping their byrrh or coffee; Louvain is just alive enough to whisper the word "Death!"
But with that word it whispers also "Immortality."
In its ruin Louvain seems to me to have taken on a beauty that could never have belonged to it in other days. Those great fair buildings with gaps in their sides, speak now with a voice that the whole world listens to. The Germans have smashed and flattened them, burnt and destroyed them. But the glory of immortality that Death alone can confer rests upon them now. Out of those ruins has sprung the strongest factor in the War. Louvain, despoiled and desolate, has had given into her keeping the greatest power at work against Germany. Louvain, in her waste and mourning, has caused the world to pause and think. She has made hearts bleed that were cold before; she has opened the world's eyes to Germany's brutality!
Actually, in Africa, Louvain it was that decided a terribly critical situation. Because of Louvain, many, many hesitating partisans of Germany threw in their cause with the Allies.
Ah, Louvain! Take heart! In your destruction you are indestructible. You faced your day of carnage. Your civilians bravely opposed the enemy. It was all written down in Destiny's white book. The priests that were shot in your streets, the innocent women and children who were butchered, they have all achieved great things for Belgium, and they will achieve still greater things yet. Louvain, proud glorious Louvain, it is because of you that Germany can never win. Your ruins stand for Germany's destruction. It is not you who are ruined. It is Germany!
I wander about. I am utterly indifferent to-day. If a German officer took it in his head to suspect me I would not care. Such is my state of mind wandering among the ruins of Louvain.
I am surprised to find that in the actual matter of ruins Louvain is less destroyed than I expected.
Compared with Aerschot, the town has not been as ruthlessly destroyed. Aerschot no longer exists. Louvain is still here. Among the ruined monuments, houses and shops are occupied. An attempt at business goes on. The heaps of masonry in the streets are being cleared away. With her interior torn out, the old theatre still stands upright. The train runs in and out among the ruins.
The University is like a beautiful skeleton, with the wind and rain dashing through the interstices between her white frail bones.
Where there are walls intact, and even over the ruins, the Germans have pasted their proclamations.
Veuve D. for insulting an official was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Jean D. for opposing an official, was shot.
And in flaunting placards the Germans beg the citizens of Louvain to understand that they will meet with nothing but kindness and consideration from Das Deutsche Heer, as long as they behave themselves.
I step into a little shop as a motor car full of German officers dashes by.
"How brave you are to keep on," I say to the little old woman behind the counter. "It must be terribly sad and difficult."
"If we had more salt," she says, "we shouldn't mind! But one must have salt. And there is none left in Louvain. We go to Brussels for it, but it grows more and more difficult to obtain, even there."
"And food?"
"Oh, the English will never let us starve," she says. "Mon Mari, he says so, and he knows. He was in England forty years ago. He was in the household of Baron D., the Belgian Ambassador in London. Would you like to see Mon Mari."
I went into the room behind the shop.
Mon Mari was sitting in a big chair by the window, looking out over some rain-drenched purple cabbages.
He was a little old Belgian, shrivelled and trembling. He had been shot in the thigh on that appalling August day when Louvain attempted to defend herself against the murderers. He was lame, broken, useless, aged. But his sense of humour survived. It flamed up till I felt a red glow in that chilly room looking over the rain-wet cabbages, and laughter warmed us all three among the ruins, myself, and the little old woman, and Mon Mari.
"Yesterday," he said, "an American Consul was coming in my shop. He was walking with a German Colonel. The American says: 'How could you Germans destroy a beautiful city like Louvain?' And the Alboche answered, 'We didn't know it was beautiful'!"
And the old woman echoes ponderingly:
"Didn't know it was beautiful!"
From Brussels to Ninove, from Ninove to Sottegem, from Sottegem to Ghent, from Ghent to Antwerp; that was how I got back!
At the outskirts of Brussels, on a certain windy corner, I stood, waiting my chance of a vehicle going towards Ghent.
The train-lines were still cut, and the only way of getting out of Brussels was to drive, unless one went on foot.
At the windy corner, accompanied by Jean and his two sisters, I stood, watching a wonderful drama.
There were people creeping in, as well as creeping out, peasants on foot, women and children who had fled in terror and were now returning to their little homes. It seemed to me as if the Germans must purposely have left this corner unwatched, unhindered, probably in the hope of getting more and more to return.
Little carts and big carts clattered up and came to a standstill alongside an old white inn, and Jean bargained and argued on my behalf for a seat.
There was one tiny cart, drawn by a donkey, with five young men in it.
The driver wanted six passengers, and began appealing to me in Flemish to come in.
"I will drive you all the way to Ghent if you like," he said.
"How much?"
"Ten francs."
Suddenly a hand pulled at my sleeve, and a hoarse voice whispered in my ear:
"Non, non, Madam. You mustn't go with them. Don't you know who they are?"
It was a rough-faced little peasant, and his blue eyes were full of distress.
I felt startled and impressed, and wondered if the five young men were murderers.
"They are the Newspaper Sellers!" muttered the blue-eyed peasant under his breath.
If he had said they were madmen his tone could not have been more awestruck.
After a while I found a little cart with two seats facing each other, two hard wooden seats. One bony horse stood in the shafts. But I liked the look of the three Belgian women who were getting in, and one of them had a wee baby. That decided me. I felt that the terrors of the long drive before me would be curiously lightened by that baby's presence. Its very tininess seemed to make things easier. Its little indifferent sleeping face, soft and calm and fragrant among its white wool dainties, seemed to give the lie to dread and terror; seemed to hearten one swiftly and sweetly, seemed to say: "Look at me, I'm only a month old. But I'm not frightened of anything!"
And now I must say good-bye to Jean, and good-bye to his two plump young sisters.
They are the dearest friends I have in the world—or so it seems to me as I bid them good-bye.
"Bonne chance, Madam!" they whisper.
I should like to have kissed Jean, but I kissed the sisters instead, then feeling as if I were being cut in halves, I climbed, lonely and full of sinister dread, into the little cart, and the driver cracked his whip, shouting, "Allons, Fritz!" to his bony horse and off we started, a party of eight all told. The three Belgian women sat opposite me; two middle-aged men were beside me, and the driver and another man were on the front seat.
Hour after hour we drove, hour after hour there was no sun. The land looked flat and melancholy under this grey sky, and we were at our old game now.
"Have you seen the Germans?"
"Yes, yes, the Germans are there," pointing to the right.
And we would turn to the left, tacking like a boat in the storm.
Terrific firing was going on. But the baby, whose name the mother told me was Solange, slept profoundly, the three women chattered like parrots, and the driver shouted incessantly, "Allons, Fritz, allez-Komm!" and Fritz, throwing back his head, plodded bravely on, dragging his heavy load with a superb nonchalance that led him into cantering up the hills, and breaking into gallops when he got on the flat road again. Hour after hour Fritz cantered, and galloped and trotted, dragging eight people along as though they were so many pods.
Ce 10. 12. 14.
MADAME CREED,
Le passage à Londres, je me permets de me rappeler à votre bon souvenir. En effet, rappelez-vous votre retour de Bruxelles, en octobre dernier: dans la carriole se trouvaient 2 messieurs et 3 dames (l'une avec un bébé que vous avez tenu dans les bras) dont 2 institutrices. J'en suis une des deux, Mme. Stoefs. J'ai été à Gand espérant vous revoir, mais vous étiez repartie déjà. Peut être ici à Londres, amais-je ce plaisir. J'y suis encore jusqu'à la fin de cette semaine, donc soyez assez aimable de me dire où et quand nous pourrions nous rencontrer. Voici mon adresse: Mme. Stoefs: Verstegen, 53, Maple Street, W. Au plaisir de vous revoir, je vous présente mes cordiales salutations.
CHARLOTTE STOEFS.
Institutrice à Bruxelles.
One bleak December day in London there came to me this letter, and by it alone I know that Fritz and the baby Solange, and the eight of us are no myth, no figment of my imagination. We really did, all together, drive all day long through the German-infected country, to east, to west, to north, to south, through fields and byways, and strange little villages, over hills and along valleys, with the cannon always booming, the baby always sleeping and old Fritz always going merry and bright.
By noon, we might have known each other a thousand years. I had the baby on my knee, the three men cracked walnuts for us all, and everyone talked at once; strange talk, the strangest in all the world.
"So they killed the priest!"
"She hid for two days in the water-closet."
"She doesn't know what has happened to her five children."
"They were stood in a row and every third one wasfusillé."
"They found his body in the garden!"
"Il est tout-à-fait ruiné."
Then suddenly one of the ladies, who knew a little English, said with a friendly smile:
"I have liked very much the English novel—how do you call it—something about a lamp. Everyone reads it. It is our favourite English book. It is splendid. We read it in French too."
And every now and then for hours she and I would try guessing the name of that something-about-a-lamp book. But we never got it. It was weeks later when I remembered "The Lamplighter."
At last we crossed the border from Brabant into Flanders, and galloping up a long hill we found ourselves in Ninove. It was in a terrific state of excitement. Here we saw the results of the fighting I had heard at Enghien on the Saturday. The Germans had pillaged and destroyed. Houses lay tumbled on the streets, the peasants stood grouped in terror, the air was full of the smell of burning. At a house where we bought some apples we saw a sitting-room after the Huns had finished it. Every bit of glass and china in the room was smashed, tumblers, wine-glasses, jugs, plates, cups, saucers lay in heaps all over the floor. All the pictures were cut from the frames, all the chairs and tables were broken to bits. The cushions were torn open, the bookshelves toppled forward, the books lay dripping wet on the grey carpet as if buckets of water had been poured over them. Jam tins, sardine tins, rubbish and filth were all over the carpet, and bottles were everywhere. It was a low, degrading sight.
I am back in Antwerp and the unexpected has happened.
We are besieged.
The siege began on Thursday.
The mental excitement of these last days passes all description.
And yet Antwerp is calm outwardly, and but for the crowds of peasants, pouring into the city with their cows and their bundles, one would hardly know that the Germans were really attacking us at last.
The Government has issued an order that anyone who likes may leave Antwerp; but once having done so no one will be permitted to return; and that quite decides us; we will remain.
All day long the cannon are booming and pounding; sometimes they sound so near that one imagines a shell must have burst in Antwerp itself; and sometimes they grow fainter, they are obviously receding.
Or so we tell ourselves hopefully.
We are always hopeful; we are always telling each other that things are going better.
Everyone is talking, talking, talking.
Everyone is asking, "What do you think? Have you heard any news?"
Everyone is saying, "But of course it will be all right!"
"The Germans have been driven back five kilometres," says one civilian.
"Have you heard the news? The Germans have been driven back six kilometres!" says another.
And again: "Haveyouheard the good news? Germans driven back seven kilometres!"
And at last a curious mental condition sets in.
We lose interest in the cannon, and we go about our business, just as if those noises were not ringing in our ears, even as we sit at dinner in our hotel.
There is one little notice pasted up about the hotel that, simply as it reads, fills one with a new and more active terror than shell-fire:—
"Il n'y a pas d'eau!"
This is because the German shells have smashed the Waterworks at Wavre S. Catherine. And so, in the meantime, Antwerp's hotels are flooded with carbolic, and we drink only mineral waters, and wait (hopeful as ever) for the great day when the bathrooms will be opened again.
These nights are stiflingly hot. And the mosquitoes still linger. Indeed they are so bad sometimes that I put eucalyptus oil on my pillow to keep them away. How strange that all this terrific firing should not have frightened them off! I come to the conclusion that mosquitoes are deaf.
The curious thing is, no one can tell, by looking at Antwerp, that she is going through the greatest page in all her varied history. Her shops are open. People sit at crowded cafés sipping their coffee or beer. A magnificent calm prevails. There is no sense of active danger. The lights go out at seven instead of eight. By ten o'clock the city is asleep, save for the coming and going of clattering troops over the rough-flagged streets and avenues. Grapes and pears and peaches are displayed in luxuriant profusion, at extraordinarily low prices. Fish and meat are dearer, but chickens are still very cheap. The "Anversois" still take as much trouble over their cooking, which is uncommonly good, even for Belgium.
And then on Saturday, with the sharpness and suddenness of lightning, the terrible rumour goes round that Antwerp is going tosurrender,—yes, surrender—rather than run the risk of being destroyed like Louvain, and Termonde, and Aerschot.
The Legation has received orders that the Government is about to be moved to Ostend. Crowds of people begin to hurry out of Antwerp in motor cars, until the city looks somewhat like London on a Sunday afternoon, half-empty, and full of bare spaces, instead of crowded and animated as Antwerp has been ever since the Government moved here from Brussels.
And then, on Sunday, comes a change.
The news spreads like wild-fire that the Legations have had their orders countermanded early in the morning.
They are to wait further instructions. Something has happened.THE ENGLISH ARE COMING!