Vivie: "Yes, but not so handsomely. I was requested to go away from England for a time, so here I am, about to join my mother in Brussels—or in a little country place near Brussels."
Hawk: "Well, I've been Secretary of Legation there. I'm just going back to—to—well I'm just going back."
At Bruges they were told that the train would not leave for Ghent and Brussels for another two hours—some mobilization delay; so Hawk proposed they should go and see the Memlings and then have some dinner.
"Don't you think they're perfectly wonderful?"—àpropos of the pictures in the Hospital of St. Jean.
Vivie: "It depends on what you mean by 'wonderful.' If you admire the fidelity of the reproduction in colour and texture of the Flemish costumes of the fifteenth century, I agree with you. It is also interesting to see the revelations of their domestic architecture and furniture of that time, and the types of domestic dog, cow and horse. But if you admire them as being true pictures of life in Palestine in the time of Christ, or in the Rhineland of the fifth century, then I think they—like most Old Masters—are perfectly rotten. And have you ever remarked another thing about all paintings prior to the seventeenth century: how plain, how ugly all the people are? You never see a single good-looking man or woman. Do let's go and have that dinner you spoke of. I've got a prison appetite."
At Ghent another delay and a few uneasy rumours. The Court was said to be removing from Brussels and establishing itself at Antwerp. The train at last drew into the main station at Brussels half an hour after midnight. Vivie's mother was nowhere to be seen. She had evidently gone back to the Villa Beau-séjour while she could. It was too late for any tram in the direction of Tervueren. There were no taxis owing to the drivers being called up. Leaving most of her luggage at the cloak-room—it took her about three-quarters of an hour even to approach the receiving counter—Vivie walked across to the Palace Hotel and asked the night porter to get her a room. But every room was occupied, they said—Americans, British, wealthy war refugees from southern Belgium, military officers of the Allies. The only concession made to her—for the porter could hold out little hope of any neighbouring hotel having an empty room—was to allow her to sit and sleep in one of the comfortable basket chairs in the long atrium. At six o'clock a compassionate waiter who knew the name of Mrs. Warren gave her daughter some coffee and milk and a brioche. At seven she managed to get her luggage taken to one of the trams at the corner of the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique. The train service to Tervueren was suspended—and at the Porte de Namur she would be transferred to the No. 45 tram which would take her out to Tervueren.
Even at an early hour Brussels seemed crowded and as the tram passed along the handsome boulevards the shops were being opened and tourists were on their way to Waterloo in brakes. Every one seemed to think in mid-August, 1914, that Germany was destined to receive her coup-de-grâce on the field of Waterloo. It would be so appropriate. And no one—at any rate of those who spoke their thoughts aloud—seemed to consider that Brussels was menaced.
Leaving her luggage at the tram terminus, Vivie sped on foot through forest roads, where the dew still glistened, to the Villa Beau-séjour. Mrs. Warren was not yet dressed, but was rapturous in her greeting. Her chauffeur had been called up, so the auto could not go out, but a farm cart would be sent for the luggage.
"I believe, mother, I'm going to enjoy myself enormously," said Vivie as she sat in the verandah in the morning sunshine, making a delicious petit déjeuner out of fresh rolls, the butter of the farm, a few slices of sausage, and a big cup of frothing chocolate topped with whipped cream. The scene that spread before her was idyllic, from a bucolic point of view. The beech woods of Tervueren shut out any horizon of town activity; black and white cows were being driven out to pasture, a flock of geese with necks raised vertically waggled sedately along their own chosen path, a little disturbed and querulous over the arrival of a stranger; turkey hens and their half-grown poults and a swelling, strutting turkey cock, a peacock that had already lost nearly all his tail and therefore declined combat with the turkey and was, moreover, an isolated bachelor; guinea-fowls scratching and running about alternately; and plump cocks and hens of mixed breed covered most of the ground in the adjacent farm yard and the turf of an apple orchard, where the fruit was already reddening under the August sun. Pigeons circled against the sky with the distinct musical notes struck out by their wings, or cooed and cooed round the dove cots. The dairy women of the farm laughed and sang and called out to one another in Flemish and Wallon rough chaff about their men-folk who were called to the Colours. There was nothing suggestive here of any coming tragedy.
This was the morning of the 13th of August. For three more days Vivie lived deliriously, isolated from the world. She took new books to the shade of the forest, and a rug on which she could repose, and read there with avidity, read also all the newspapers her mother had brought over from England, tried to master the events which had so rapidly and irresistibly plunged Europe into War. Were the Germans to blame, she asked herself? Of course they were, technically, in invading Belgium and in forcing this war on France. But were they not being surrounded by a hostile Alliance? Was not this hostility on the part of Servia towards Austria stimulated by Russia in order to forestal the Central Powers by a Russian occupation of Constantinople? Why should the Russian Empire be allowed to stretch for nine millions of square miles over half Asia, much of Persia, and now claim to control the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor? If England might claim a large section of Persia as her sphere of influence, and Egypt likewise and a fourth part of Africa, much of Arabia, and Cyprus in the Mediterranean, why might not Germany and Austria expect to have their little spheres of influence in the Balkans, in Asia Minor, in Mesopotamia? We had helped France to Morocco and Italy to Tripoli; why should we bother about Servia? It might be unkind, but then were we not unkind towards her father's country, Ireland? Were we very tender towards national independence in Egypt, in Persia?