There is nobody in the mess-room but the other three chauffeurs, Bert, Tom and Newlands. Newlands has just come back from Ostend. They have had no supper. We bustle about to find some.
We all know the Germans are coming into Ghent. But we do not speak of it. We are all very polite, almost supernaturally gentle, and very kind to each other. The beautiful manners of Newlands are conspicuous in this hour, the tragedy of which we are affecting to ignore. I behave as if there was nothing so important in the world as cutting bread for Newlands. Newlands behaves as if there were nothing so important as fetching a bottle of formamint, which he has with him, to cure my cough. (It has burst out again worse than ever after the unnatural repression of last night.)
When the chauffeurs are provided with supper I go into the Commandant's room and finish his packing. The ties, the pocket-handkerchiefs and the collars are all safe in the Gladstone bag. Only the underclothing and the suits remain and there is any amount of room for them in the hold-all.
I roll up the blue serge coat, and the trousers, and the waistcoat very smooth and tight, also the underclothes. It seems very simple. I have only got to put them in the hold-all and then roll it up, smooth and tight, too—
It would have been simple, if the hold-all had been a simple hold-all and if it had been nothing more. But it was also a sleeping-bag and a field-tent. As sleeping-bag, it was provided with a thick blanket which took up most of the room inside, and a waterproof sheet which was part of itself. As field-tent, it had large protruding flanges, shaped like jib-sails, and a complicated system of ropes.
First of all I tucked in the jib-sails and ropes and laid them as flat as might be on the bottom of the sleeping-bag, with the blanket on the top of them. Then I packed the clothes on the top of the blanket and turned it over them to make all snug; I buttoned up the waterproof sheet over everything, rolled up the hold-all and secured it with its straps. This was only done by much stratagem and strength, by desperate tugging and pushing, and by lying flat on my waist on the rolled-up half to keep it quiet while I brought the loose half over. No sooner had I secured the hold-all by its straps than I realized that it was no more a hold-all than it was a sleeping-bag and a field tent, and that its contents were exposed to the weather down one side, where they bulged through the spaces that yawned between the buttons, strained almost to bursting.
I still believed in the genius that had devised this trinity. Clearly the jib-sails which made it a field-tent were intended to serve also as the pockets of the hold-all. I had done wrong to flatten them out and tuck them in, frustrating the fulfilment of their function. It was not acting fairly by the inventor.
I unpacked the hold-all, I mean the field-tent.
Then, with the Commandant's clothes again lying round me on the floor, I grappled with the mystery of the jib-sails and their cords. The jib-sails and their cords were, so to speak, the heart of this infernal triple entity.
They were treacherous. They had all the appearance of pockets, but owing to the intricate and malign relations of their cords, it was impossible to deal faithfully with them on this footing. When the contents had been packed inside them, the field-tent asserted itself as against the hold-all and refused to roll up. And I am sure that if the field-tent had had to be set up in a field in a hurry, the hold-all and the sleeping-bag would have arisen and insisted on their consubstantial rights.