I don't mind saying that I hated this adventure. It was one thing to go into Antwerp when the Germans were so busy storming it that they couldn't attend to you, and quite another thing to be alone with Jimmy on that horrid grey road with the Germans coming every minute round the turn of it.
Jimmy explained that there was a wounded man hiding in a ditch about a mile from Lokeren, and he'd got to fetch him.
We fetched him and another car-load without any misadventure.
When we got back to our village we found a Field Ambulance there. Jimmy said, "I believe that's my Field Ambulance." Presently he gave a start that made the car swerve as if he had run over a dog.
"Well, I'm damned if there isn't Viola."
Yes, there she was. She had come out with the Field Ambulance. And it was Jimmy's Field Ambulance, the one that had been sent out without him. It had come on into Ghent from Antwerp yesterday, and Viola had found it.
"This is too bad," said Jevons. "You ought to be looking after Charlie.
Why aren't you looking after him?"
"Charlie," she said, "died three hours ago—at twelve o'clock."
It wasn't five hours since we had left her with him in the nun's cell under the crucifix. I don't think I had realized it before, but now it came over me as a new and strange thing, how little he had mattered. Then it struck me that Jevons must have known it all the time.
"I've done everything," she said, "that had to be done. And I've written to Aunt Matty and Uncle George—and Mildred."