It was when Viola began to bother me about her passport that the fight began.
First of all, she asked me what I was doing about a motor-car? I told her she needn't worry herself about my motor-car. It wasn't any concern of hers. She grinned at that and said, All right. What she really wanted was to consult me about her passport.
And when I refused to be consulted about her passport, to hear a word about her passport or about her going, she walked straight out of the house into a passing taxi that took her to the Belgian Legation, where she saw that weak-minded secretary that Jevons had handled; and she came back in time for tea, very cheerful and dressed in a sort of khaki uniform she had ordered, with a tunic and knee-breeches and puttees and a Red Cross brassard on her right arm.
She said it had been a very tight squeeze, but she'd worked it, down to her uniform, and it was all right, and if I'd had any difficulty with my motor people (I had had awful difficulty, but how she knew it I haven't to this day found out. Sometimes I think she'd worked that too; she knew the firm, and she wasn't Mrs. Tasker Jevons for nothing)—if I'd had any difficulty she could put that straight for me. She'd got her car—Jimmy'd ordered it for Amershott and forgotten about it—and her chauffeur, and I could go in it with her if I liked.
It was a better car than the one I'd had in Belgium before or, she said significantly, than the one I was going to take out with me. It was true that I didn't know anything about cars.
Then Norah, my wife, stood up beside her sister, flagrantly partisan, and said, Couldn't I see it wasn't any use trying to stop her? She had me at every point. If I wouldn't take her she'd go by herself with the chauffeur.
And when I said, How about my promises—my word of honour? Viola laughed.
"Your honour's all right, Wally," she said. "You're not taking me out;
I'm taking you."
And very early in the morning we motored down to Folkestone to catch the midday boat for Ostend. And Norah came with us to see us off. If I'd given her the smallest encouragement she'd have come too. I might take her, she said; it was beastly being left behind.
I said, like a savage, that Belgium was no place for women. I'd take my sister-in-law there, but not my wife.