It was all I could do to keep from flying towards them.
An awful longing came over me to speak to them, to sympathise, to do something, anything to help them, there alone among the Germans. It was the call of one's race, of one's blood, of one's country. But it was madness. I must stand still. To speak to them might mean bad things for all of us.
And even as I thought of that, the group vanished round the corner, towards the station.
As we walked along we examined the City. Ah, how shocking was the change! People are wont to say of Antwerp that it was very little damaged. But in truth it suffered horribly, far beyond what anyone who has not seen it can believe. The burning streets were still on fire. The water supply was still cut off. The burning had continued ever since the bombardment. I looked at the Hotel St. Antoine and shivered. A few days ago Sir Frederick Greville and Lady Greville of the British Embassy had been installed in that hotel and countless Belgian Ministers. The Germans had tried hard to shell it, but their shells had fallen across the road instead. All the opposite side of the street lay flat on the ground, smouldering, and smoking, in heaps of spread-out burning ruins.
At last we reached the house for which I had the key.
From the outside it was dignified, handsome, thoroughly Belgian, standing in a street of many ruined houses.
Trembling, I put the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed open the door. Then I gasped. "Open Sesame" indeed! For there, stretching before me, was a magnificent hall, richly carpeted, with broad, low marble stairs leading upwards on either side to strangely-constructed open apartments lined with rare books, and china, and silver. We crept in, and shut the door behind us. Moving about the luxurious rooms and corridors, with bated breath, on tip-toe we explored. No fairy tale could reveal greater wonders. Here was a superb mansion stocked for six months' siege! In the cellars were huge cases of white wines, and red wines, and mineral waters galore. In the pantries we found hundreds of tins of sardines, salmon, herrings, beef, mutton, asparagus, corn, and huge bags of flour, boxes of biscuits, boxes of salt, sugar, pepper, porridge, jams, potatoes. At the back was a garden, full of great trees, and grass, and flowers, with white roses on the rose-bush.
Agreeable as was the sight, there was yet something infinitely touching in this beautiful silent home, deserted by its owners, who, secure in the impregnability of Antwerp, had provided themselves for a six months' siege, and then, at the last moment, their hopes crushed, had fled, leaving furniture, clothes, food, wines, everything, just for dear life's sake.
Tender-hearted Ada wept continually as she moved about.
"Oh, the poor thing!" she sighed every now and then. And forgetting herself and her own grief, her angel heart would overflow with compassion for these people whom she had never seen, never heard of until now.