We had some difficulty in finding quarters and Viola insisted on our
staying in the Station Hotel, which had been bombarded by an aeroplane
the night before. She pointed out that it was almost entirely empty. "And
so," she said, "there won't be anybody to see us."

It was as if she wished to remind me by how thin a thread _my_ reputation
hung.

The business of our passports kept us in Ostend the next morning. I had
made up my mind there would be difficulty about Viola's military pass, I
was even contemplating the possibility of her being sent back to England
by the next boat; but no; she had forestalled obstruction, and the pocket
of her khaki coat was stuffed with letters from the War Office, the
British Red Cross, and the French and Belgian Embassies. In fact, there
was one horrid moment at the depot when it looked as if the Special
Correspondent would be smuggled through under Viola's protection.

"You see, Furny," she said, "nobody's going to stop me. Nobody wants to
stop me."

At last we got off, and early in the afternoon we were in Bruges.

We had run into the Market-Place before we knew where we were; and yonder
in the street at the back of it was Viola's _pension_, and here on our
right hand was Jimmy's hotel, and there, towering before us, was the
Belfry. We looked at each other. And through the war and across nine
years, it all came back to us.

"The Belfry's still there," I said.

"It always was." She said it a little sternly. But she had smiled at the
allusion, all the same--the smile that had never been denied to it.

We stayed an hour in Bruges and lunched there in Jimmy's hotel. The fat
proprietor and his wife were still there and they remembered us. They
remembered Jimmy. And they had seen him three days ago. Mr. Chevons had
passed through Bruges in his Red Cross motor-car. They seemed uncertain
whether Viola was Mrs. Chevons or Mrs. Furnival, and they addressed her
indifferently as either. An awful indifference had come to them. Of the
war they said, _"C'est triste, nest-ce pas?"_ We left them, sitting
pallid and depressed behind the barricade of their bureau, gazing after
us with the saddest of smiles.

That hour in Bruges was a mistake; so was our lunching at Jimmy's hotel.
It was too much for Viola. It brought Jimmy so horribly near to her. I
don't know what she was thinking, but I am convinced that from the moment
of our entering Bruges the poor child had made up her mind that Jimmy had
been killed. The smile she had given to the Belfry was the last flicker
of her self-control, and halfway through lunch the grey melancholy that
Bruges had absorbed from Jimmy nine years ago came down on her, as nine
years ago it had come down on me, and it swallowed her up. By the time
the waiter brought the coffee she was done for. Her eyes stared, hard and
hot, over the cup she tried to drink from. She couldn't drink because of
the spasm in her throat.

"Come," I said, "we must clear out of this."

We cleared out.

I too was invaded by the grey melancholy as we came to the bridge by the
eastern gate where I had found Jevons that night leaning over and looking
into the Canal. It was the sentry's sudden springing up to challenge us
that saved me. I hoped that it would save Viola. She enjoyed the
sentries.

But not this time. Her nerves were all on edge and she showed some
irritation at the delay. I felt then that I had to take her in hand.

"My dear child," I said (we were running out on the road to Ghent now),
"do you realize that there's a war?"

She answered, "Yes, Wally, yes, I know there is."

"Do you know that Antwerp's over there, a little way to the north? And
that they've dragged up the big guns from Namur for the siege of
Antwerp?"

"Oh, Wally--_have_ they?"

She turned her face to the north as if she thought she could see or hear
the siege-guns.

"But you _said_ Jimmy was in Ghent."

"Jimmy," I said, "is probably in Ghent. If he isn't, he's in Antwerp. Do
you know that the battlefields are down there--no--there--to the south,
where I'm pointing? There's fighting going on there _now_."

She said, "Yes, dear, I know, I know," very gently; and she put her hand
on my knee, as if she recognized the war as my private tragedy and was
sorry for me. Then she fell back to her brooding.

Somewhere on the great flagged road between Bruges and Ecloo we met a
straggling train of refugees--old men and women and children, bent double
under their enormous bundles, making for Bruges and Ostend. They stared,
not at us, but at the road in front of them, with a dreadful apathy, as
we passed.

"This," I said, "is what finishes _me_--every time I see it."

She said nothing.

"Do you realize," I said, "that those women and those little children are
flying for their lives? That they've come, doubled up like that, for
miles--from Termonde or Alost? That they've lost everything they ever
had?" (I can hear my own voice beating out the horror of it in hard,
cruel jerks.) "That their homes--their _homes_--are burned to ashes
somewhere down there?"

At my last jerk she turned.

"No," she said. "I'm cold and hard and stupid, and I do _not_ realize it.
Neither do you. If either of us realized it for two seconds we should be
either cutting our throats in that ditch or going back to Ostend now with
a load of those women and children, instead of tearing past them like
devils in this damned car.

"I can't realize anything till I know whether Jimmy's all right or not. I
can't see anything, or feel anything, or think of anything but Jimmy.
Bruges is Jimmy and Belgium is Jimmy and the whole war is Jimmy--to me.
I don't care if you _are_ horrified. I can't help it if I _am_ callous.
It is so. And you can't make it different."

I remember saying quite abjectly that I was sorry--that I was only trying
to turn her mind to other things as a relief.

"I'm to turn my mind to _that_--as a relief!"

She showed me a woman I was trying not to see, a woman who carried the
bedding of her household on her back and dragged a four-year-old child by
the hand. The child slipped to its knees at every other yard, and at
every other yard was pulled up whimpering and dragged again--not with
anger or any emotion whatever, but with a sickening repetition, as if its
mother's arm was a mechanism set going to pull and drag.

If ever there was a weathercock it was my sister-in-law. Without even
pretending to consult me, she made Colville, the chauffeur, turn the car
round. (He was _her_ chauffeur, after all, she said.)

"I don't know," she said, "whether I realize that woman or not, or
whether you do. But I'm going to take her into Bruges."

And we took her. (Viola nursed the four-year-old child all the way.) We
also took an old man and a young woman with a baby at her breast, and two
small children. It was the only thing to be done, Viola said.

It was nearly half-past five when we left Bruges the second time.

"God only knows," I groaned, "what time we'll get to Ghent!"

"He does," she said. "He knows perfectly well we shall get there by
half-past seven."

And we did.

It was dark when we turned into the Place d'Armes and drew up before the
long, grey HГґtel de la Poste. I jumped out and stood by the kerb to give
Viola my hand.

"But--" she said, "I _know_ this place."

"You ought to."

I don't know where she expected us to go. She still sat in the car as if
held there by the shock of recognition. She ignored my outstretched hand.

"You'd better take your things," she said at last, "if you want to get
out here. I'm going on to look for Jimmy."

I had then my first full sense of what I was in for. I saw that she was
perfectly prepared to throw me over, to dump me down here or anywhere
else and go on by herself with the car and the chauffeur that were, or
ought to have been, mine.

She didn't care if I was Special Correspondent to the _Morning Standard_,
and she had that beastly chauffeur in her pocket all the time. (I
discovered afterwards that she'd laid in food for him and hidden it in
the locker under the front seat, so that they might be ready for any
sort of adventure.) And yet in the very moment that I realized her
disastrous obstinacy I found her intolerably pathetic.

"If you want to look for Jimmy," I said, "you'd better get out too. He'll
be here if he's anywhere in Ghent."

But she was already on the kerb, brushing me aside. She had seen behind
my back the approach of the concierge and she made for him.

"Is Mr. Jevons in this hotel--Mr. Tasker Jevons?"

Yes, Mr. Chevons was in the hotel. Madame would find him in the lounge.

She had swept past him to the stair of the lounge, and I was following
her discreetly when the proprietor dashed out of his bureau to intercept
us. The lounge, he said, was reserved from seven till nine o'clock for
the officers of the General Staff.

Viola had paid no attention to the proprietor and was sweeping up the
stair. I gave Jevons's name and explained that the lady was Mrs. Jevons.

The proprietor, a portly and pompous Belgian, positively dissolved in
smiles and bows and apologetic gestures. _Mille pardons, monsieur, mille
pardons._ It would be _all_ right. Monsieur Chevons was dining with the
officers of the General Staff.

He did not know that Madame was expected. He was to reserve a room for
Monsieur?

I told him to reserve rooms for me and the chauffeur, and to consult Mr.
Jevons about Madame. And I hurried up the stair after Viola.

She was waiting for me at the turn, on the landing, by the wide archway
of the lounge, where the great glass screen began that shut off the
staircase. She stood back from the entrance, looking in, and smiling at
what she saw. It was clear by her attitude and her absorption that
something was happening in there.

As I approached she made a sign to me and withdrew farther back and up
the stair.

"He's there," she whispered. "Over there. In that corner."

For a moment we stood together on the stair, looking down through the
glass screen into the lounge.

The far end of the lounge had been turned into a dining-place for the
officers of the Belgian General Staff. Most of the tables were cleared
now and deserted. But from our place on the stair we had a clear view
slantwise of one small table in the corner. And we saw Jimmy seated at
that table.

At least we made him out.

All but Jimmy's head was hidden by the figures of a Belgian General and
two Colonels. They had closed in on him (they were evidently all four at
the end of their dinner); they had closed in on him in an access of
emotion and enthusiasm. The General (the one who sat beside him) had his
arm round Jimmy's shoulder; the two who sat facing him leaned towards
Jimmy over half the table, and one grasped Jimmy's right hand in his; the
other was making some sort of competitive demonstration. The disengaged
arms of the three held up the glasses in which they were about to pledge
him. And at the other end of the room a scattered group of soldiers rose
to their feet and looked on smiling and signalling applause.

What was happening down there was public homage to Jimmy.

And in between the two dark Belgian uniforms that obscured him you could
just see a bit of Jimmy's khaki, and from among the white and grizzled
heads that pressed on him you saw Jimmy's face and Jimmy's flush and
Jimmy's twinkle; his incredible, irrepressible twinkle. You could even
see the tips of Jimmy's little front teeth trying to bite down his lip
into some sort of composure. You could see that he was very shy and very
modest; you could see that in spite of his shyness and his modesty he
was frightfully pleased; but more than anything you could see that he was
amused.

Positively, positively, he had the air of not taking his Belgian officers
very seriously.

"We mustn't go down yet," said Viola, "or we'll spoil it."

So we waited, looking at Jimmy through the screen, while the officers
clinked their glasses and drank to him and called his name; and the group
that looked on echoed it; and the waiters who had come in to see what was
happening, repeated it among themselves.

"_Vive l'Angleterre! Vive les Anglais! Vive Chevons! Chevons! Chevons!_"

"I wonder," said Viola, "what Jimmy has been up to? You can take me to
him."

When we got to the table we found Jimmy trying to explain to the General
and the two Colonels in execrable French that he didn't know what it was
all about. _He_ hadn't done anything.

Then he saw Viola.

For one second, while he stared at her across the room, he appeared to be
suffering from a violent shock. He was so visibly hit that the two men
who had their backs to us turned round to see what it was that had
affected him. His flush had gone suddenly and he was breathing hard, with
his mouth a little open.

I heard him saying something in French about his wife.

He recovered, however, in a second, and disentangled himself from the
General and the Colonels and from the dinner-table, and came forward.

And as he came, I noticed something odd about him. He limped slightly.
His khaki had a battered look; it was soiled and torn in places, and the
Red Cross brassard on his sleeve was simply filthy.

And he had only been out three days, mind you. He was only three days
ahead of us. But he had lost no time.

As they strolled up to each other and met midway in the big public room,
in the fraction of time that passed before their hands touched I heard
him draw a hard, quivering breath and let it out in a long sigh. That
breath was a suppressed cry of trouble and of acquiescence.

Then (I could have blessed him for it) he twinkled.

Viola said, "What _have_ you been up to?"

And Jimmy, "I say, I like that! What are _you_ doing here? Have you come
to look at the Belfry?"

"No. I've come to look at _you_!" She put her hand on his shoulder.

He said, "That's a jolly rig-out you've got," and that was all.

The General and the two Colonels came forward and were presented to Mrs.
Jevons; and Mr. Walter Furnival ("one of our war-correspondents") was
presented to the General and the two Colonels. They saluted Madame; they
begged Madame to accept their profoundest congratulations; they regretted
that Madame had not been present just now when they were drinking her
husband's health.

And the old General (the one with the white hair and imperial) informed
her that Monsieur her husband had a very poor opinion of the Belgian
Army.

"He has saved the lives of three Belgian officers and I do not know _how_
many Belgian soldiers--and he says that it is nothing!"

And the stout, florid Colonel, who had been trying to look young and
rakish ever since he had turned and caught sight of Viola, suggested that
"Perhaps, if he had saved your British, he would not have said that it
was nothing."

And the lean, iron-grey Colonel with the ferocious moustache remarked in
an austere, guttural voice, "_Il est impayable--lui!_"

Jimmy had been offering cigarettes to them as if he thought that was the
only thing that would stop them. Then the old white-haired General sat
between Viola and him with his arm round Jimmy's shoulder and began
again, so loudly that everybody in the room could hear him.

"Your husband, Madame, is a man who does not know what fear is--who
does not care what death is. For two nights and three days, Madame,
he has been down there--at Alost and Termonde--under shell-fire.
_Mais--un enfer, Madame!_ You would have thought he had been born under
fire, your husband. _Ce n'est pas un homme, c'est un salamandre_.
Bullets--mitrailleuse--shrapnel--it is no more to him than to go out in a
shower of rain. When our men were scuttling, and shouted to him to get
under shelter, what do you think he said?--'_Ouvrir une parapluie--Г§a ne
vaut pas la peine_."

There was a shout of laughter.

"That," said Viola, "is the sort of thing he _would_ say. And please, I
want to know what's the matter with his leg."

I can see her now, sitting on that crimson velvet seat in the lounge and
looking past the gesticulations of the General to Jevons, who was shaking
his head at her as much as to say, "Don't you believe the old boy, he's a
shocking story-teller."

The old General seemed aware of her preoccupation, for he rose, murmuring
affectionately, "_Mon petit Chevons_. I will not praise him to you,
Madame. No doubt you know what he is."

I can see her standing up there and giving her hand to the old General
and trying to stiffen her face to say, "I know."

Evidently she thought General Roubaix was too voluble to be entirely
trustworthy, for, when he left us and Jimmy had gone out to see about our
dinner, she addressed herself to the two Colonels.

"Please tell me what my husband _really_ did."

Both the Colonels tried to tell her; but it was the younger one with the
moustache (the one who had said that Jimmy was _"impayable"_) who
satisfied her.

It was true, every bit of it. Jevons, it seemed, had been in the thick of
the bombardment of Alost and in the fighting for the bridge at Termonde.
His practice was to leave Kendal and the motor-car behind him in some
place of shelter while he walked into the fire. Sometimes he took his
Belgian stretcher-bearers with him, sometimes, when they didn't like the
look of it, he went by himself. He didn't care, the Colonel said, _where_
he went or how. If it was through rifle-fire or mitrailleuse he went on
his hands and knees--he wriggled on his stomach. If it was shrapnel he
took his chance. He had saved one of his three officers by carrying him
straight out of his own battery, when the German guns had found its
range; and he had driven his car, by himself, across a five-mile-long
field, under a hailstorm of shrapnel, to get the other two.

"You see," the Colonel expounded, "your husband has chosen the most
dangerous of all field ambulance work. Those high-speed scouting cars,
running low on the ground, can go where a big ambulance cannot. It is
magnificent what he has done."

When Jevons came back they could still hardly keep their eyes off him;
they could hardly tear themselves away. It was "_ГЂ demain, Monsieur_,"
and "_ГЂ demain, Colonel_" as if they had arranged another deadly tryst.

"Well," said Jimmy, "how do you like them?"

"Oh--they're dears," said Viola, "especially the one with the moustache.
Do you know, they've told me everything except what's the matter with
leg."

"My leg?" said Jimmy. "A bit of shell barked it. I'm jolly glad it's my
leg and not my hand."

I was a little frightened when Viola left us alone after dinner. I
thought he would pitch into me for bringing her. But he only said sadly,
"You oughtn't to have brought her, Furny. But I suppose you couldn't stop
her."

I said, No, I couldn't stop her. But I hadn't brought her. She had
brought me.

We sat on till the lounge was open to the guests of the hotel. And when
the war-correspondents began to drop in I saw that Jevons was uneasy.

"D'you mind if I turn in, old man?" he said.

I asked him if his wound was hurting him.

He stooped and caressed it pensively.

"No," he said. "Not a bit. I like my wound. It--it makes me feel manly."

Presently he said good night and left me.

I thought--yes, I certainly thought--that he exaggerated his limp a
little as he crossed the room, and for a moment I wondered, "Is he
playing up to the correspondents?"

Then I saw that Viola stood in the doorway waiting for him and that she
gave him her arm.

And then through the glass screen I saw them going together up the stair.
And I remembered the tale that he had told me nine years ago, how he had
seen her standing there and looking down at him--half frightened--through
the glass screen, and how he had said to me, "I couldn't. She was so
helpless somehow--and so pretty--that for the life of me I couldn't."

It was the same room and the same glass screen and the same stair. And it
was the same man. I knew him. I knew him. I had always known him. (Was
there ever any risk he hadn't taken?) I had never, really, for one
moment misunderstood.

I certainly knew why he "liked" his wound.




XIV


We had breakfast very early the next morning, for Jevons was under orders
to start at eight o'clock for Termonde. We had a table reserved for us in
a corner of the restaurant. The hotel was full of Belgian officers, and
I found I was infinitely better off in attaching myself to Jevons than if
I had joined the war-correspondents.

Viola (I may say that her rig-out which Jevons had admired so much, the
khaki tunic and breeches, made us terribly conspicuous) had come down in
a contrite mood. I heard her telling Jevons that he must be kind to me,
for I had had an awful time with her and I had been an angel.

Well, I had had an awful time; I don't think I remember ever having had a
worse time than the hours I had spent in her company since she had laid
into me on Tuesday evening.

But I had not been an angel; far from it. Looking back on those hours, I
can see that I behaved to her like a perfect brute.

She had her revenge. One of those revenges that are the more
triumphant because they are unpremeditated. She had dished me as a
war-correspondent.

For I declare that from the moment when we found Jevons and his General
in the hotel I became the victim of her miserable point of view. I could
only see the war through Jevons, and as a part of Jevons; I might have
said, like Viola, that to me Ghent was Jevons, and Belgium was Jevons,
and the war was Jevons. I suppose I saw as much of the War from first to
last as any Special Correspondent at the front, and I know, that, barring
the Siege of Antwerp, the three weeks when Jimmy was in it were by no
means the most important or the most thrilling weeks in the war; and of
the one event, the Siege of Antwerp, I didn't see as much as I ought to
have seen, being most terribly handicapped by Viola. And yet--perhaps
a little because of Viola, but infinitely more because of Jevons--those
three weeks stand out in my memory before the battles of the Aisne and
Marne and the long fight for Calais. Because of Jevons I have made them
figure, in the columns of the _Morning Standard_ and elsewhere, with a
superior vividness; even now when I recall them I seem to have lived with
Jevons in Flanders through long periods of time.

I have the proof of my obsession before me in a letter from the editor of
the _Morning Standard_, dated October the twelfth. He says, "We are
interested, of course, in anything relating to Mr. Tasker Jevons, and his
performances seem to have been remarkable. You have written a very fine
account of Melle, which I understand is a small village four and a-half
miles from Ghent. But there are other events--the Fall of Antwerp, for
instance."

Well, we got the story of the Fall of Antwerp all right. But Jimmy wrote
it for me. It was the last thing he did write.

Yes: he had only three weeks of it, all told. He went out on Tuesday,
September the twenty-second, and he came back on Tuesday, October the
thirteenth. It was his infernal luck that he should have had no more of
it.

And yet, I don't know. I don't see how he could have held out much longer
at his pitch of intensity. Three weeks would have been nothing to any
other man. But Jevons could do more with three weeks than another man
could do with a three years' campaign, and he contrived to crowd into his
term the maximum of glory and of risk. And when it was all over it was
less as if Fate had foiled him than as if he had "given" himself three
weeks.

But Jimmy was discontented, and every morning at breakfast we listened to
the most extraordinary lamentations. His job, he said, wasn't at all the
jolly thing it looked. For he was under orders the whole blessed time.
He'd no more freedom, hadn't Jimmy, than that poor devil of a waiter.
He'd got to go or to stay where a fussy old ram of a Colonel sent him. So
here he was in Ghent, an open city, when he wanted to be in Antwerp. He
hadn't been anywhere--anywhere at all. As for what he'd done, he couldn't
see what the fuss was all about. He hadn't done anything. He'd seen a
little fight in a turnip-field, and a little squabble for a bridge you
could blow up to-day and build again to-morrow, and a little tin-pot town
peppered. And look at the war! Just look at the war!

And when we tried to cheer him up with the prospect of a second Waterloo,
the Waterloo that all the war-correspondents said was coming off next
week, he refused to listen to what he called our putrid gabble. There
wouldn't be any Waterloo next week or the week after, he said. "There
won't be any Waterloo for another two years, if then."

He wasn't always lugubrious. It was only when he thought that he was
missing the Siege of Antwerp that his happiness was incomplete.

It was on our third morning, when he rushed off joyously (to Quatrecht, I
think), that I said to Viola, "You thought it would hurt him more than
other people. You needn't have come out after him. You see how much it's
hurting him."

"I'm glad I came," she said. "I don't mind as long as I can see."

"Do you remember him telling Reggie that he wouldn't be in the war
because he was a coward? Don't you wish Reggie could see him now?"

She didn't answer, and I saw that there was still a sting for her in
Reggie's name. The war might have made her forgive him, but there were
things that the war couldn't wipe out from her memory. And there was her
own rather appalling injustice to Jimmy. I wondered whether she was
thinking of how she had tried to stop his going to the front, and how she
had said he didn't want to go.

But I had to own that she had done the best thing for her peace of mind
by coming out.

_My_ peace of mind, I was told quite frankly, didn't matter. Jevons,
though he admitted that I couldn't have stopped her coming out, made me
responsible for her presence at the seat of war. The trouble was that she
insisted on following him wherever he went. And as it wasn't to be
expected that he would take her with him into the tight places that he
managed to get into in his own car, I had to have her in mine. Not that
Viola consented to my putting it that way. It was clear that she made
herself mistress of the situation when she obtained possession of that
car and manoeuvred (as I am convinced she did manoeuvre) for my own
failure with the firm that supplied it. On our first morning in Ghent we
came to what she called an understanding, when she rubbed it well into me
that it was her own car and her own chauffeur that she had brought out,
and that the man was under her orders, not mine. If I liked to come with
her, why, of course I could. Otherwise, I could go halves with one of the
other correspondents in one of their cars. But she pointed out that I
could hardly do better than come with her, for by simply following Jimmy
I should get nearer to the firing-line than anybody else. (She had
assumed that the firing-line was the goal of every war-correspondent's
ambition.) I would find, she said, that it would work quite well.

It did. It worked better than if I had gone halves with the other
correspondents. For at this time war-correspondents were not greatly
loved by the military authorities, and they were having considerable
difficulty in getting near anything, and the time, Jimmy said, was
coming when they would be cleared neck and crop out of Belgium. My astute
sister-in-law had calculated on all this and on her own part in it.

"If you'll only trust me, Wally," she said the first day we started, when
all the correspondents in the hotel had turned out to see us off, "you'll
find that I'm your Providence and not your curse. I can get you through
where you'd never get yourself. Just look at those men how sick they
are."

I said I thought it would be only decent to take two or three of them
with us. We had room.

But Viola was firm. She said it would be most indecent. We should want
all the room we had for our wounded.

"Do you suppose I'm going to chivy Jimmy about without doing anything to
help him? As for you, you've only to sit tight and do what you're told.
You'll be all right as long as we follow Jimmy."

And so we followed him. My God, what a chase! But Viola's little
chauffeur was game and we followed. Though Jimmy had made elaborate
arrangements for stopping his wife's progress at least two miles outside
the danger-zone she always managed to get through. Sentries, colonels,
army medical officers--she twisted them into coils round her little
finger, and cast them from her and got through. And once through, we were
really quite useful in transporting wounded. Jevons and I between us
managed to keep her out of the actual firing-line by telling her she was
in all of it there was; and when we were loaded up with wounded there was
no difficulty in getting her away.

And certainly it served my turn well enough. Though I was compelled to
see the war through Jimmy, I saw the war.

By the end of our first week Jimmy seemed to get used to being followed
as a matter of course. We had followed him to Alost and Termonde and
Quatrecht and Zele. When we weren't following him we were near him
somewhere, working at the dressing-stations or among the refugees.

Then he did a mean thing. He managed to get himself sent to Antwerp for
three days. He sneaked off there by himself on the Sunday, and when we
tried to follow him we were turned back at Saint Nicolas, just too late
to see the British go through. He had worked it this time.

When he got back from Antwerp at the end of his three days we knew that
something had happened, something that he was keeping from us. It wasn't
only the fate of Antwerp that was hanging over him, as it hung over all
of us in that awful second week. It was as if he had seen something
intimate and terrible that he couldn't talk about.

That night after Viola had gone to her room he told me what had happened.
He had seen Charlie Thesiger's regiment at Saint Nicolas on Sunday. And
to-day--which was Tuesday--he had seen Charlie Thesiger. He had found him
lying dangerously wounded in the British Hospital at Antwerp. That, he
said, was what had kept him there. And he had brought him back with him
to Ghent. He was in the Couvent de Saint Pierre.

He thought, perhaps, it would be better not to tell Viola just yet.
Charlie didn't know, he said, that she was here.

The war was beginning to close round us.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next day (Wednesday) he announced that he was going to Zele; but he
didn't, he really didn't want me to take Viola there. I could go by
myself, of course, if I liked, though he didn't care about her being
left.

But we did go. Viola's blood was up, after what she called Jimmy's
meanness, and there was no keeping her back.

We were a little uncertain of our way, for following Jimmy as we did, or
rather, following the direction Colville swore he had seen him start in,
took us much too far to the north. We found ourselves on the Antwerp
road, jammed in the traffic, and caught by a stream of refugees. We were
obliged to turn back to Ghent to get our bearings, but the business of
transporting women and children kept us on the Antwerp road all morning,
and it was past two o'clock before we started for Zele.

I remember this particular chase after Jimmy for many reasons. First, we
lost our way and never got to Zele at all.

Down in the south-east on the sky-line we saw a fleet of little clouds
that seemed to be anchored to the earth, and every cloud of the fleet was
the smoke from a burning village. West of the fleet was an enormous cloud
blown by the wind across miles of sky.

Viola was certain that the big cloud was Zele being burned to the ground,
and that Jimmy would be burned with it.

When I told her that it wasn't likely that Jimmy would stay in Zele when
it was burning she said that I didn't know Jimmy, and anyhow it was there
that she was going.

Suddenly Viola sat up very straight.

"Furny, is that guns I hear, or thunder?"

I said it was guns. A deep and solemn booming came from before and behind
us and on either side, east and west. We had rushed bang between the
French and German batteries.

The big cloud turned out to be smoke from a factory that the Belgians had
set fire to themselves, and in following it we had gone miles from Zele.
Now we followed the guns.

We turned east and struck off south and found ourselves in the village of
Baerlere. The lines of fire seemed suddenly to narrow in on us here.

There was a clean path down the centre of the street, for men and horses
stood back close under the housewalls on each side. The place was full of
soldiers. One of them told us that we could get to Zele by going east
through the village, but as the road was being shelled, he didn't advise
us to try.

We went down that clean middle of the street. We were safe enough as long
as we ran between the houses; but the village very soon came to an end,
and then, in the open road, we were in for it.

The fields dropped away from us on each side, leaving us as naked to the
German batteries as if we were running on a raised causeway. At the
bottom of the fields to our right there was a line of willows, beyond the
willows there was the river, and behind the river bank, on the further
side, were the German lines.

The grey smoke of their fire was still tangled in the willow-tops.

Colville drew up under the lee of the last house in the village. He
didn't like the look of that open road. Neither did I.

"Go on," said Viola. "What are you stopping for?"

The guns ceased firing for a moment and we rushed it.

"I do wish," said Viola, "you'd tuck your arm in, Furny. It's your right
arm and you're on the wrong side of the car."

I asked her what made her think of my right arm just then.

"Because it's the only part of himself that Jimmy ever thinks of," she
said.

There was about three-quarters of a mile of causeway and it ended in a
little hamlet. And the hamlet--it had been knocked to bits before we got
into it--the hamlet ended in a hillock of bricks and mortar.

The road to Zele was completely blocked.

"Well--" said Colville, "I _am_ blowed."

"You've got to take it," said Viola.

"Sorry, m'm. It can't be done. You want a motor traction with caterpillar
wheels for this business."

He was backing the car when a shell burst and buried itself in the place
where we had stood.

To my horror I saw that Viola had opened the door of the car and was
getting out.

"What on earth are you doing?" I said.

"I'm going to walk to Zele."

I pulled her back and held her down in her seat by main force. She was
horribly strong. And as she struggled with me she said quietly, "It's all
right. You two _must_ go back and I must go to Jimmy."

I shouted to Colville, "Turn her round, can't you, and get out of this."

He turned her. He drew up deftly under the shelter of a barn that still
stood intact. Then he spoke.

"Are you quite sure, sir, that Mr. Jevons is in that place? Because, sir,
I heard Kendal say something this morning about their going to Antwerp."

"Then why the devil didn't you say so?"

"I didn't think of it, sir, until I saw Mrs. Jevons getting out."

He added by way of afterthought, "Besides, I promised Kendal. You and
Mrs. Jevons wasn't to know he was going on to Antwerp."

Viola and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.

Somewhere behind us from beyond the river a gun boomed and we took no
notice of it. We went on laughing.

"He's had us again," she said.

"Yes. We've been done this time. Well--we'd better scoot."

We made a rush for it between guns and got to Baerlere. Once we were out
of the village and heading for the Ghent road we were safe.

We were hardly out of sound of the guns when I heard Viola saying, "You
know it really _was_ funny of Jimmy."

I said, "He won't think it quite so funny when he hears what we've done."

He didn't think it funny at all. He was furious when he heard what we'd
done. He forbade Viola to follow him again. He threatened to sack
Colville. He said he'd have me sent home to-morrow and kept there, and
Viola should go with me.

And when he'd finished he told us that Antwerp had fallen.

That was how Jevons came to write the story of the Fall of Antwerp
instead of me.

Well, he didn't sack Colville; and he didn't get me packed off with the
other war-correspondents who left Ghent in a body the next day. And he
said nothing about sending Viola away. He did better than that. He told
her he had brought Charlie Thesiger from Antwerp yesterday, and that her
cousin was dying in the Couvent de Saint Pierre, and that perhaps it
would be a bit easier for him if she were with him.

We took her to the convent that morning. On the way there she asked Jimmy
why he hadn't told her about Charlie yesterday. He said that up till
midnight we weren't absolutely certain that Charlie wouldn't recover, and
that she was safer with us in the hotel than she would be away from us in
the convent.

"My safety is to be considered before everything?" she said.

He answered that it was surely enough for her if he risked it now.

I can't think why she didn't see through him. I and Kendal and Colville
knew perfectly well that he was taking her to the convent to be safe. I
think he argued that if she had poor Charlie to look after it would keep
her quiet, and she would be out of mischief till it was time for the
Germans to march into Ghent.

So we took her to him.

We found him in a little whitewashed cell that one of the sisters had
given up to him. He lay under a crucifix on the nun's narrow bed, which
was too short for him, so that his naked feet showed through the blankets
at the bottom. The naked feet of the Christ pointed downwards to his
head.

He had been shot through the lungs and was dying of pneumonia, sending
out his breath in fierce, rapid jerks.

He lay on his side with his back towards us, and his face was hidden from
us as we came in.

The sister who sat with him made a sign that said, "Oh yes, you can come
in, all of you; it will make no difference."

The cell was so small that Jevons and I had to draw back and let Viola go
in by herself. We two stood in the doorway and looked in. After the first
glance at the bed--it was enough for me--I looked, I couldn't help
looking, at Viola, (Jevons, I noticed, kept his eyes fixed on the body of
the dying man.) I heard her catch her breath in a sob before she could
have seen him.

He had slipped his blankets from his shoulder, and it was the sight of
his back--under the half-open hospital shirt which showed the bandages
and dressings of his wound--that upset her; his back that might have been
any man's back, the innocent back that she had no memory of, that
disguised and hid him from her and made him strange to her and utterly
pathetic. And then, there was the back of his head, sunk like lead into
his pillow. The cropped hair had begun to grow. You could see a little
greyish tuft. You wouldn't have known that it was Charlie's head.

She went slowly round the bed, taking care not to graze the feet that
were stretched out to her. And then she saw him.

She saw a deep purplish flush and glazed eyes that couldn't see her, and
a greyish beard pointing on an unshaved jaw; and a mouth half open,
jerking out its breath. She laid her left hand on his shoulder and with
her right she held the limp hand that hung over the mattress.

I heard her say in French, "If only he knew me--"

And the nun, "Perhaps--at the end--he will know you."

And we left her there with his hand in her right hand and her left hand
on his shoulder. She was on her honour to stay with him till the end; but
her eyes were fixed on Jevons, and they followed him as he went through
the doorway of the cell.

       *       *       *       *       *

The very minute he had left her Jimmy made his bolt for Lokeren. He said
he didn't want me; but I had seen Viola's eyes, and I said it would be
safer. If I took Viola's car and Colville, she couldn't follow us.

"She won't follow us," he said. "She can't leave him."

We made the first bolt into Lokeren together; and we got out, each with a
load of wounded, just as the Germans were coming in. He made his second
bolt by himself and secretly, while Colville and I were lunching. We
followed, and were stopped in a village two miles from Lokeren.

A Belgian Red Cross man met us here and told us that Jevons had got
through in spite of them, and they didn't in the least expect him to come
back again. He shrugged his shoulders and seemed to be disgusted and
annoyed with Jimmy rather than to admire him.

We hung about in that village an interminable time. I do not remember its
name, if I ever knew it; but I know and remember every house in it and
every tree in the avenue at the turn of the grey road that led to
Lokeren, and even now, in my worst dreams, I find myself in the little
plantation at the end of the village on the left where the railway siding
is, and where the trains came in loaded with wounded. I am always waiting
for Jimmy and looking for Jimmy and not finding him. And at one point I
always stumble over Viola's body. I find her lying wounded in a ditch
that runs through the plantation. And when I find her I know that Jimmy
is dead. And that frightens me--Jimmy's death, I mean, not Viola's body.
I take Viola's body as a matter of course.

It is an abominable dream.

But even that dream is not more astonishing, and it is far less
improbable than what I was to see. We were at the end of the village.
Colville had drawn our car up in the middle of the street, and I was
standing by him, when two Belgian soldiers rushed up to us, pointing up
the road, and shouting to Colville to clear out of the way.

I turned. Round the bend of the road where the avenue of trees was I saw
a train of horses and gun-carriages careening with the curve, and a
battery of Belgian artillery came charging down in full retreat. And now
in the middle of the battery as if he were part of it and informed it
with his energy and speed, and now in front of it as if he led it, and
joyous as if he had turned its retreat into a victory, came Jimmy driving
his car.

The inside of the car was packed with wounded men; and, wedged up against
Jimmy, and standing on the steps, and sitting on the bonnet, and hanging
on wherever they could find a foothold and hang, were seven officers and
soldiers of the Belgian Army.

Kendal--bleeding profusely from a flesh wound on his forehead, but
otherwise unhurt--sat inside among the wounded.

It _had_ been a victory for Jimmy. He had advanced within fifty yards of
the German lines, he had picked up two of his wounded from under their
sentry's fire, and the rest of the men and the officers he had gathered
on his way.

We sent them all to Ghent with Colville.

Before he left, Kendal implored us just to look at Mr. Jevons's car.

Mr. Jevons's car was worth looking at. It had a hole in the back of it
where a bullet had gone clean through and buried itself in the cushions.
There were five bullet-holes in its hood. Its flank was scraped by a
flying fragment of shell, the same that had tilted its right rear
splash-board. Inside, its canvas covers and its rubber mat were stained
with blood.

Drawn up motionless in that village street and stared at, Jimmy's car had
something of its old self-conscious air. It looked pleased, and at the
same time surprised at itself.

And while Jevons was dressing and bandaging his flesh-wound for him an
idea struck Kendal and he grinned.

"D'you remember the time, sir, when you wouldn't let her out if there was
a spot of rain?"

"I do," said Jevons.

"And look at her now--not three weeks. What a life she's 'ad!"

And when Kendal (he was as pleased as Punch with his bandage) when Kendal
had climbed into Colville's car, Jimmy turned his round again; though the
officers implored him to come on, for the Germans were on our backs. But
Jimmy only jerked his thumb in the direction of Lokeren and made his
third bolt. I scrambled in beside him as he started.

I don't mind saying that I hated this adventure. It was one thing to go
into Antwerp when the Germans were so busy storming it that they couldn't
attend to you, and quite another thing to be alone with Jimmy on that
horrid grey road with the Germans coming every minute round the turn of
it.

Jimmy explained that there was a wounded man hiding in a ditch about a
mile from Lokeren, and he'd got to fetch him.

We fetched him and another car-load without any misadventure.

When we got back to our village we found a Field Ambulance there. Jimmy
said, "I believe that's _my_ Field Ambulance." Presently he gave a start
that made the car swerve as if he had run over a dog.

"Well, I'm damned if there isn't Viola."

Yes, there she was. She had come out with the Field Ambulance. And it
_was_ Jimmy's Field Ambulance, the one that had been sent out without
him. It had come on into Ghent from Antwerp yesterday, and Viola had
found it.

"This is too bad," said Jevons. "You ought to be looking after Charlie.
Why _aren't_ you looking after him?"

"Charlie," she said, "died three hours ago--at twelve o'clock."

It wasn't five hours since we had left her with him in the nun's cell
under the crucifix. I don't think I had realized it before, but now it
came over me as a new and strange thing, how little he had mattered. Then
it struck me that Jevons must have known it all the time.

"I've done everything," she said, "that had to be done. And I've written
to Aunt Matty and Uncle George--and Mildred."

"Mildred?" I wondered.

"Well--_yes_."

Jevons and I had forgotten Mildred. We had forgotten her engagement to
Charlie, though I suppose nobody knew better than we did why it had been
broken off.

To his father and mother and Mildred he _did_ matter.

And perhaps he mattered to Viola, in a way; for she said she would have
given anything to have saved him. He must have mattered to Jevons when he
brought him from Antwerp and when we buried him in Ghent.

And the cross on his grave reproves me, reminding me that to his country
he mattered supremely, after all.

       *       *       *       *       *

After Lokeren Jevons and I tried to come to terms with Viola.

The conference took place upstairs in their bedroom, where we had
withdrawn for greater privacy. Viola sat on the one chair and Jimmy and
I on the bed. Jimmy did most of the talking.

He said, "Look here, my dear child, if there wasn't a war on, I wouldn't
stand in the way of your amusement for the world. And there's a great
deal to be said for you. _I_ think you adorable in a tunic and breeches,
and General Roubaix agrees with me, if Furny doesn't. We all think you
heroic, and you are sometimes useful. But there isn't a thing you've done
yet that a man can't do better--except getting Furny through the lines,
and nobody wants Furny _in_ the lines. And when _you're_ in them you've a
moral effect equal to about ten seventeen-inch guns. If the men see you
hovering round their trenches they're so jumpy they can hardly hold their
rifles. If Kendal sees you he's so jumpy he can hardly steer. Colville
says he'd rather hang himself than go through another day like Baerlere.
Furny all but lost his job on the _Morning Standard_ because he was told
off to look after you when he ought to have gone to Antwerp--he _would_
have lost it if I hadn't done his work for him. And you don't make things
easier for _me_. Good God!--sometimes I don't know what I'm doing.

"It isn't fair on us. It isn't fair."

"It isn't fair on _me_," she said. "_I_'m jumpy when I'm kept back. You
don't know what it's like, Jimmy. _Don't_ turn me back."

And the poor child began to talk about her duty to the wounded, and that
made him burst out again.

"The wounded? If you think you're any more comfort to the wounded than
you are to Furny and me I can tell you you're mistaken. There was a poor
devil at Lokeren the other day with a bullet in his stomach who told me
he didn't mind his wounds and he didn't mind the Germans; what worried
him was the lady being there when he wasn't able to defend her."

She tilted her chin at that and said she didn't want anybody to defend
her.

"Perhaps you don't, but what would you think of a man who didn't want to
defend you? What would you think of Furny and me if we wanted you to be
here?"

"I should like you to want me," she said.

"No, my dear child, you wouldn't. You don't know what you're saying."

And then he said, "I know better than you do what you want. Men aren't
made like that--if they _are_ men. You can't have it both ways." And he
said something about chivalry that drove her back in sheer self-defence
on a Feminist line. She said that nowadays women had chivalry too.

"And _our_ chivalry is to go down before yours?"

"Can't you have both?"

"Not in war-time. _Your_ chivalry is to keep back and not make yourself a
danger and a nuisance."

"Come," she said, "what about Joan of Arc?" And that was too much for
Jimmy. He jumped up off the bed and walked away from her and sat on the
table as if it gave him some advantage.

"No, no," he said. "I can't stand that rot. When you're a saint--or I'm a
saint--you can talk about Joan of Arc. If you want to be Joan of Arc go
and be it with some man who isn't your husband--who isn't in love with
you. Perhaps _he_ won't mind. Go with Furny if you like, though it's
rather hard on him."

I said I thought he was rather hard on Viola--if he'd seen the poor child
at Baerlere, flinging herself out of the car and proposing to climb over
the ruins of several houses and walk by herself--under shell-fire--to
Zele, because she thought he was there--

Jimmy looked at her; and he did what he had done that night when he
saw her coming towards him in the lounge. He sighed a long sigh of
complicated anguish and satisfaction.

She heard it and she understood it, and she said, "I can't help it if I
am like that. You'll have to take the risk of me. Please go away, Furny."

And I went.

       *       *       *       *       *

Norah has been reading what I've just written, and she tells me that
there's a great deal about Jimmy's "joy" and his "adventure" and all
that; and not one word about his duty and devotion and self-sacrifice.
She says I don't give a serious impression of him. He might have gone
out to the war just for fun, and that it isn't fair to him.