Max is going to rejoin his regiment.
It is sheer nervous excitement that gave him that wild, white face.
Max is confident that we shall meet again; and I have a horrid vision of Max carried on a bloody stretcher, a brutally wounded Max.
He has given me his address in Brussels, which will not find him there for long enough: if ever.
Jean also is to rejoin his regiment.
Marie, the bonne, stands at the door of the service room and watches us with frightened eyes. She follows me into the mess-room and shuts the door. The poor thing has been seized with panic, and her one idea is to get away from Ghent. Can I find a place for her on one of our ambulance cars? She will squeeze in anywhere, she will stand outside on the step. Will I take her back to England? She will do any sort of work, no matter what, and she won't ask for wages if only I will take her there. I tell her we are not going to England. We are going to Bruges. We have to follow the Belgian Army wherever it is sent.
Then will I take her to Bruges? She has a mother there.
It is ghastly. I have to tell her that it is impossible; that there will be no place for her in the ambulance cars, that they will be crammed with wounded, that we will have to stand on the steps ourselves, that I do not know how many we shall have to take from the Convent, or how many from the hospitals; that I can do nothing without the Commandant's orders, and that the Commandant is not here. And she pleads and implores. She cannot believe that we can be so cruel, and I find my voice growing hard and stern with sheer, wrenching pity. At last I tell her that if there is room I will see what can be done, but that I am afraid that there will not be room. She stays, she clings, trying to extort through pity a more certain promise, and I have to tell her to go. She goes, looking at me with the dull resentment of a helpless creature whom I have hurt. The fact that she has left me sick with pity will not do her any good. Nothing can do her any good but that place on the ambulance which I have no power to give her.
For Marie is not the only one.
I see all the servants in the "Flandria" coming to me before the night is over, and clinging and pleading for a place in the ambulance cars.