And Miss Ashley-Smith says if only she had a horse.
If she had a horse she would be in Ghent in no time. Perhaps, if none of the chauffeurs will take her back, she can find a horse in the village.
She keeps on saying very quietly and simply that she is going, and explaining the reasons why she should go rather than anybody else. And I bring forward every reason I can think of why she should do nothing of the sort.
I abhor the possibility of her going back instead of me; but I am not yet afraid of it. I do not yet think seriously that she will do it. I do not see how she is going to, if the chauffeurs refuse to take her. (I do not see how, in this case, I am to go myself.) And I do not imagine for one moment that she will find a horse. Still, I am vaguely uneasy. And the Chaplain doesn't make it any better by backing her up and declaring that as she will be more good than either of us when she gets there, her going is the best thing that in the circumstances can be done.
And in the end, with an extreme quietness and simplicity, she went.
We had not yet found the ambulance cars, and it seemed pretty certain that Miss Ashley-Smith would not get her horse any more than the Chaplain could get his cassock.
And then, just when we thought the difficulties of transport were insuperable, we came straight on the railway lines and the station, where a train had pulled up on its way to Ghent. Miss Ashley-Smith got on to the train. I got on too, to go with her, and the Chaplain, who is abominably strong, put his arms round my waist and pulled me off.
I have never ceased to wish that I had hung on to that train.
On our way back to the E.s' house we met the Commandant and told him what had happened. I said I thought it was the worst thing that had happened yet. It wasn't the smallest consolation when he said it was the most sensible solution.
And when Mrs. —— for fifteen consecutive seconds took the view that I had decoyed Miss Ashley-Smith out on to that accursed road in order to send her to Ghent, and deliberately persuaded her to go back to the "Flandria" instead of me, for fifteen consecutive seconds I believed that this diabolical thing was what I had actually done.