Alexis leaped forward, his tricky eyes blazing, his moustaches stiff with anger. These patriotic outbursts were no new thing to me, yet I was astonished at him. He trembled with honest emotion. “Madame! You are no Belgian, you are no Christian, you are no woman!” he shouted. “You have no sense of honour, you have no patriotism, you have no decency. Bah! you would have us handed over to the Boches!” He stopped his tirade abruptly and addressed me in French, “Monsieur, the car is ready in a moment, if you please. This woman—this woman——” He raised his arm as if he would strike her. All this time she had stood watching and listening, still smiling heavily and making no move. “This woman is a peasant, she is not human, she is a beast.... Here!” he called to the innkeeper, who had reappeared, “give me the matches. Hold the basin there.” He jumped back to his place and pressed the self-starter. The motor hummed with curious coughs and gasps from the jury-rigged cylinder. “It will march until we reach home,” called Alexis, his voice still keyed high with anger. “Monsieur is ready?”
I paid the modest reckoning and climbed into the tonneau. The woman stared past me at Alexis; even my “good day” was unheard or at any rate unnoticed. The motor roared and the frightened swallows flew. The innkeeper flung open the double gates, removing his cap and bowing low, and we rolled slowly into the square.
There was a patter of slippers on the cobblestones behind us, a gasp and a choking cry, and madame was hanging to the running-board beside Alexis, pouring forth a torrent of passionate Flemish. The German sentries before the Stadthuis across the square stared anxiously, passersby stopped as if thunder-struck, I looked back and saw the old innkeeper standing open-mouthed and motionless in the doorway.
“Mon Dieu, monsieur, she wants to go with me!” muttered Alexis, mechanically stopping the car. The woman flung her arms toward me with a piteous gesture. Her heavy, ugly face streamed tears. All her reserve, her self-control were gone. She had chosen at last, and she had chosen this!
“Wants what, you fool?” I exclaimed, appalled. “Drive on, Alexis. Make her go back. You know the Germans would arrest us at the first sentry-post. Damn you, anyway!” I roared, my anger mounting to outraged brutality to think that a chauffeur’s cheap amour might land us both in a German jail. “What have you done to get us into this mess?”
He thrust his fist into the pleading face. “Go back, go back,” he grunted, apparently without a trace of feeling for her.
“You must go back, madame,” I exclaimed. “You must go back!”
She ignored me and again burst into a storm of entreaty, all aimed at Alexis. “No, no, no, no,” he shouted in answer to her pleas. “Go back to your husband! Go, you—animal!”
At that word she dropped from the car. “Go on, Alexis, quick!” I exclaimed.