The Commandant, vague and imperturbable, replies that in all probability it will be so.
And I (if possible more imperturbable than he) observe that the War Correspondents will make quite a nice flying-party.
In a little open carriage—the taxis have long ago all gone to the War—in an absurd little open carriage, exactly like a Cheltenham "rat," I depart like a lady of Cheltenham, for the Hôtel de la Poste. The appearance and the odour of this little carriage give you an odd sense of security and peace. The Germans may be advancing on Ghent at this moment, but for all the taste of war there is in it, you might be that lady, going from one hotel to the other, down the Cheltenham Promenade.
The further you go from the Military Hospital and the Railway Station the more it is so. The War does not seem yet to have shaken the essential peace of the bourgeois city. The Hôtel de la Poste is in the old quarter of the town, where the Cathedrals are. Instead of the long, black railway lines and the red-brick façade of the Station and Post Office; instead of the wooded fields beyond and the white street that leads to the battle-places south and east; instead of the great Square with its mustering troops and swarms of refugees, you have the quiet Place d'Armes, shut in by trees, and all round it are the hotels and cafés where the officers and the War Correspondents come and go. Through all that coming and going you get the sense of the old foreign town that was dreaming yesterday. People are sitting outside the restaurants all round the Place, drinking coffee and liqueurs as if nothing had happened, as if Antwerp were far-off in another country, and as if it were still yesterday. Mosquitoes come up from the drowsy canal water and swarm into the hotels and bite you. I found any number of mosquitoes clinging drowsily to my bedroom walls.
But there are very few women among those crowds outside the restaurants. There are not many women except refugees in the streets, and fewer still in the shops.
I have blundered across a little café with an affectionately smiling and reassuringly fat proprietress, where they give you brioches and China tea, which, as it were in sheer affection, they call English. It is not as happy a find as you might think. It is not, in the circumstances, happy at all. In fact, if you have never known what melancholy is and would like to know it, I can recommend two courses. Go down the Grand Canal in Venice in the grey spring of the year, in a gondola, all by yourself. Or get mixed up with a field ambulance which is not only doing noble work but running thrilling risks, in neither of which you have a share, or the ghost of a chance of a share; cut yourself off from your comrades, if it is only for a week, and go into a Belgian café in war-time and try to eat briochesand drink English tea all by yourself. This is the more successful course. You may see hope beyond the gondola and the Grand Canal. But you will see no hope beyond the brioche and the English tea.
I walk about again till it is time to go back to the Hotel. So far, my emancipation has not been agreeable.
[Evening. Hôtel de la Poste.]
I dined in the crowded restaurant, avoiding the War Correspondents, choosing a table where I hoped I might be unobserved. Somewhere through a glass screen I caught a sight of Mr. L.'s head. I was careful to avoid the glass screen and Mr. L.'s head. He shall not say, if I can possibly help it, that I am an infernal nuisance. For I know I haven't any business to be here, and if Belgium had a Kitchener I shouldn't be here. However you look at me, I am here on false pretences. In the eyes of Mr. L. I would have no more right to be a War Correspondent (if I were one) than I have to be on a field ambulance. It is with the game of war as it was with the game of football I used to play with my big brothers in the garden. The women may play it if they're fit enough, up to a certain point, very much as I played football in the garden. The big brothers let their little sister kick off; they let her run away with the ball; they stood back and let her make goal after goal; but when it came to the scrimmage they took hold of her and gently but firmly moved her to one side. If she persisted she became an infernal nuisance. And if those big brothers over there only knew what I was after they would make arrangements for my immediate removal from the seat of war.
The Commandant has turned up with Ursula Dearmer. He is drawn to these War Correspondents who appear to know more than he does. On the other hand, an ambulance that can get into the firing-line has an irresistible attraction for a War Correspondent. It may at any moment constitute his only means of getting there himself.