Chapter III: Part 3

I sit inside that armoured car, balancing myself dexterously on the top of my suit-case and begin to speculate as to how long I have to live. The soldiers are clustered together at one end of the strong grey vehicle; I am mercifully alone. Supporting myself on the top of my box I peer over the sides and watch the advancing army as we pass. Mile after mile flies by and still we are confronted by that endless sea of faces. On either side of the road are wide devastated spaces where the troops have encamped the night before. Once, in the centre of a wide plateau, we see a biplane, her white wings gleaming in the morning sun.

“Mine,” says the Lieutenant, indicating the machine as he turns to me with pride. We pull up and he gives an order to some soldiers near. Men are being told off to guard the aeroplane. Spy mania seems rampant. Perhaps they think I have the evil eye!

For seventy miles we drive on, now crawling to allow some soldier’s frightened horse to get out of our way, now spinning along at a pace that makes me dance about like a parched pea in the interior of that steel-sided vehicle. During all that long, tortuous drive we pass troops. I become obsessed with faces, jeering, smiling. I get used to their peculiar brand of verbal humour. I try to look away from them and prove myself complacent, superior. But escape is impossible. The entire country seems to be merged in one huge, irrepressible Teutonic grin!

I long for an earthquake to swallow us all up, so deadening becomes the effect of these continually marching troops. On they come, cavalry, infantry, artillery, baggage waggons, Red Cross ambulances, caissons, pontoons, on they come in a never-ending orderly procession. Every now and again we pass the still steaming field-kitchens, mounted in carts, each drawn by two horses, ready to supply the hot meal which every soldier expects and gets. The men are fully equipped and fresh-looking. They for the most part have not yet been shot over. At times a car filled with officers dashes past. They direct quizzical glances at my escort, as if enquiring what kind of cargo they have on board.

One incongruity in this well-drilled, magnificently equipped, steadily advancing army. Behind a troop of cavalry, heading a mile or so of well-filled baggage waggons, comes an old black “growler” drawn by two seedy-looking horses. It might almost be a draper’s brougham taking round millinery samples in a London street. The blinds of the carriage are modestly drawn down. It may enshrine the Kaiser or the latest patterns in soldier’s socks. History is silent.

We are going through Vielsalm, a frontier town. The pace is such that I have a momentary impression of a steep street and curious silent people. We are out once more in the open country. Germany, I suppose.

I feel, with the Brandenburger, that the cord is tightening round my neck each minute. Fool that I was not to tear up my papers. A Russian passport, an unsent telegram to an editor, some journalistic notes about the war—enough evidence surely to warrant my immediate death. I set my teeth and prepare my method of defence. I say to myself sternly, “Keep your head and who knows if you may not still escape.” But in my heart I have no hope.

We are approaching a town of size. The foot-paths are seething with townsfolk who generously feast the soldiers as they pass through. Vacant spaces on the paths are piled with a medley of eatables. The housewives seem to have emptied the contents of their larders on the pavements, even in the roads, for the troops to help themselves. We nearly drive over an enormous pot of gooseberry jam. Many girls are buttering tartines and offering the soldiers huge glasses of milk or lemonade. Others have ready buckets filled with water for the heated men to enjoy a cooling splash over face and arms. Some are ladling out wine into thin-stemmed glasses. Flowers are thrown but not in quantity. The troops need something more practical at a time like this.

We draw up at the station. I am delivered into the hands of the Bahnhof Commandant, Colonel ——. He takes me to a café and sends for the Bourgmestre. Across a red-clothed table I answer question after question until my brain begins to reel.

I am frankly communicative. I admit that I am a journalist, that I have a telegram, papers, etc. The Commandant will find them, anyway. It is safer to confess first. He assures me that if my documents are in order and I can give the address of friends in Germany to whom to wire, matters may be arranged.

Friends in Germany. My heart sinks. I have none.

The Bourgmestre arrives at this moment. The Commandant draws him away to a distant corner. They whisper together.

The owner of the café, a pretty, fair-haired woman, approaches.

“Mademoiselle is English and alone?” she asks.

“I am arrested as a spy,” I say.

“Espion? Pauvre Mademoiselle. Espion? Oh, la, la, la.” She wrings her hands. The Bourgmestre beckons me to follow him. My sympathiser slips away. I am led towards the town-hall by the Commandant, followed by a large crowd. We enter and go upstairs to the Bourgmestre’s private rooms. Someone brings in my suit-case. The contents are turned out on the floor. The Bourgmestre and his companion rummage through them. They secure much treasure-trove in the way of papers, including the telegram. The Bourgmestre’s wife, a fine-looking, fair-haired woman, takes me to an inner room. I am searched. “Es ist unsere pflicht,” she says calmly when I protest. She finds my jewellery, some visiting cards and a letter and takes them to her husband in an inner room. The jewellery is returned to me before I leave.

“Sie schreiben furchtbar viel, Fräulein” (You write a fearful lot), says the Bourgmestre, when I am brought back. He wishes he understood English. So do I. Perhaps if he did he would let me free.

The Commandant understands a “leetle English.” Neither he nor the Bourgmestre seem very shocked at my “incriminating documents.”

The editorial wire and some journalistic notes are fluttered in my face. I explain away what I can and confess the rest! I do not confess that, though no spy, I have a diary about the war concealed in my hair. Thank goodness they have not found that yet.

Two more inquisitors arrive. If there exist such beings as Military Governors of this German town they are “it.” Their close-cropped hair, fierce mustachios and fiercer questions play havoc with my fortitude. The third degree torture of America is child’s play by comparison. They frown at me. They shout, jeer and yell. They thrust their fists in my face and cry “Sie lügen, sie lügen” whenever I make some (as I consider) specially apposite rejoinder. They question me for dreary donkey’s hours, until question and answer seem to jig in my brain to the tune of the soldiers’ feet as they march by outside.

“Where were you born?”

“I can’t remember.” (For the life of me I can’t.)

I am caught in a grey mist with the cannon booming in my ears again. I feel faint. I am silent. Presently words detach themselves. I can still answer my tormentors.

“Do you write?” they ask me maliciously.

“Yes.” What else can I say with that damning pile of foolscap before me.

“Why do you write?”

I try to evade a question which my conscience, my kinsfolk and even some editors have often asked me.

“Have you a mother?” snaps one.

“Yes.”

“Why aren’t you with her?”

With this “have-you-left-off-beating-your-wife” kind of question I am quite incompetent to deal. A holiday visit to a country inn is a form of enjoyment no German could be made to understand.

The inquisitors fiercely smoothe out a map in front of me.

“Show us!”

I pass a trembling hand over that network of lines and names. To my accusers, the second’s indecision spells conclusive guilt.

“La Roche. Here,” I say gently.

“Luxemburg. Ah!” They nod sapiently.

I draw my finger slowly along an infinitesimal space of map. “Then I took the vicinal train to Melreux ... so ... and up to Manhay ... so.”

“Belgium!” They are shouting again, this time in tones of raucous triumph.

For a moment I am at a loss to understand. “Manhay is in Luxemburg,” I say.

They prod the map with the tips of their ill-manicured fingers. They gesticulate. They rage. “Sie lügen, sie lügen,” they cry again.

“Luxemburg is written up on the wall in our little village street,” I cry, trembling. So it is, but I forget that there is a Belgian Luxemburg too.

“She is undoubtedly a spy,” says the fiercer of the two, twisting on his heels and peremptorily addressing the Bourgmestre. His colleague echoes sternly, “Undoubtedly a spy.” A look I do not like creeps into the Bourgmestre’s eyes. The prison walls seem closing in on me. I see myself already blindfolded, led out. I make one last effort.

“In England ladies do not spy,” I say.

My enemies glare at me with looks of such bitter cold contempt that something seems to give way in my poor little overwrought brain. I seize a handful of my papers, crumple them up and fling them full in the face of my tormentor-in-chief. “England über alles,” I cry in a voice that surprises myself. Then I sit down abruptly and listen to the stertorous conversation which ensues between my foes. I single out the word “gefangene” (prisoner) and gather that while the inquisitors counsel my instant annihilation, the Bourgmestre has other plans in view. I stagger to my feet. In a glass opposite I scarcely recognise myself. I am white-lipped, haggard. There are great blue lines under my eyes. I look the personification of guilt. Suddenly the two men are in the corridor. I hear the Bourgmestre assuring them he will take me under custody to Cologne and deliver me up as a prisoner of war to the authorities. The door is closed, the key turned in the lock. I am alone....

The Bourgmestre returns and bids me follow him. I meekly obey. Presently I am having coffee at a table with his wife and a lady who speaks a little English. My heart sinks again. It seems like a ruse. They bombard me with questions. How impossible to explain a bachelor woman’s point of view to the average German _haus-frau_!

The Bourgmestre turns briskly to his wife. “You have not looked under her hat,” he says severely. I suddenly remember my diary and talk on at random. I must think. I must gain time. My only chance is to feign illness. I push away my cup and sink back in my chair. I am already white.

“It’s nothing,” I blurt out as the Bourgmestre starts up. “Give me a few minutes in my room.”

I stagger to the door, across the passage, into the little back bed-chamber. The door is closed, the key grates in the lock. I remove my hat, take down my hair and throw my diary in the jug of water. Having pulped it well, I tear it quickly into small pieces. These I hastily cram into my mouth and masticate and swallow as best I may. The pulpy mixture has a horrible flavour, but it goes down—that is the main point. I twist up my hair again and put on my hat. None too soon, for the door opens and the Bourgmestre’s wife and her friend appear.

“Take off your hat,” they say.

I comply. I even graciously ask them to feel my hair. They both do so. They are satisfied.

I show some notes to the English-speaking lady and fervently hope their unspeakable stupidity will convince her of my innocence.

The Bourgmestre’s wife looks pleased. I admire her beauty, her fine air of courage. If they only hadn’t such a dreadful sense of duty, these Teutons.

“Es ist unsere pflicht,” they say.

She would have shot me herself, without a tremor, but she will be glad, I believe, if my innocence is proved.

HOMEWARD BOUND

A little procession of housewives arrives at the town hall late at night. I see them through the chinks of the door from the room where I lie. “We have given our all to the troops,” they say, “we have nothing to eat.”

“Nothing to eat.” So the German _haus-frau_ can be just as compassionate as the Belgian peasant. I go to sleep in a comfortable bed, locked-in prisoner though I am, and dream sweeter dreams than I ever enjoyed in the little Ardennois village.

At four in the morning I am told to get up. My door is unlocked and I am taken to the dining-room where the kind Bourgmestre’s wife gives me breakfast. Her husband is in uniform. After surrendering me to the authorities at Cologne he will rejoin his regiment. The wife speaks to me with tears running down her cheeks as if I were an old friend. “It is so hard, so very hard, Fräulein, that he must go. What will happen to me and my three little ones?”

On the just or the unjust side, in war as in life, it is always the woman who pays....

The twelve-hour journey to Cologne is uneventful. The Bourgmestre’s manner has quite changed to me to-day. He is almost friendly. He puts me on my _parole d’honneur_ if he leaves the carriage for a moment. Needless to say I do not run away. Many people travel with us, mostly men. They talk of brutal treatment accorded them by the French when escaping from that country at the beginning of the war. Some speak scornfully of the English. The Bourgmestre leans across and says quietly: “I think you do not notice that we have an English lady in the carriage.” There are instant apologies and smiles all round. I begin to feel safe.

Cologne at last! The Bourgmestre delivers me up, suit-case and all, to the Bahnhof Commandant. I say good-bye, thank him gratefully and wish him luck. My escape from death is entirely due to his and Col. ——’s kind influence. The Cologne Commandant questions me a little; another official asks me if I know a friend of his at “Tweekenham.” I am delivered up into the hands of a brow-beating policeman who makes me follow him through the traffic like a little dog. Finally he stalks majestically into the hall of the Hôtel Kron Prinz, and, with a parting “you are free,” leaves me to my own devices.

Free! Glorious word. I have not had a bath for three weeks, nor a good square meal for the same period. I toss up which shall come first. Bath wins. It is followed by a delicious dinner. The waiter brings me the _Koelnische Zeitung_ and points out an illuminating article on the iniquities of England headed: “Das Perfide Albion.”

After dinner I walk through the streets to the _Polizei_. Cologne is a place you can get into with luck. But it owns a governor to be propitiated if you wish to escape therefrom. I arrange for papers to be signed. As I return late editions announcing German victories are being sold by little girls all down the street.

The hotel manager tells me several English families lately staying at the hotel have expressed their indignation with England for having declared war!

I am up at an early hour and off to the _Polizei_, then the American Consulate and back again. I feel I must get away before they rearrest me. The Consulate is brusque. A young man in a khaki-coloured coat says impressively that he is not sure about the passport. They have had a wire this morning.... Something sticks in my throat and forbids me to ask the wording of that wire. I hold out my Lloyd’s bank-book and my visiting-card and I say I will wait until I see the Consul. Days, weeks, months, are nothing to me. I can remain there for ever with perfect equanimity. They begin to fear that I will. Presently I am shown to the Consul’s room. He looks at me severely as I open my little nest of papers.

“Very well,” he says; “but how am I to know you are the person you claim to be?”

Apparently the only successful way to establish identity is to have one’s name branded on one’s forehead.

For the first time, I burst into tears. England seems slipping away. I can hear the Tax-collector once more, as he leans across the table and says in his kindly, serious way, “You will never see England again, Mademoiselle, make up your mind to that,” following on the words of the Brandenburger Cuirassier, “You are in more danger than my brother in Russia.”

The Consul ultimately accepts my word. He is kindness itself, and even says he will come to my aid in the event of my being rearrested on the homeward journey.

I leave the Hôtel Kron Prinz and wait outside the station for two hours before the train is due to leave. I fight literally and fearfully for—not a seat—but just standing-room. My first-class ticket procures me a few inches of space in a first-class corridor where the squash is so great that the surrounding faces touch mine and I cannot move hand or foot. There are fifteen people in each compartment. The corridors even are so full that men and women are standing in the lavatories. The order is given to close the windows while we go over the Rhine. I remember nothing more until I come to with my back against the wall and my mouth sweet with the delicious odour and purifying feel of peppermint. A kind German is popping little peppermint comfits into my mouth. Blessed Teuton! We travel like that for hours. It seems days. We have leisure to study the methods of the army of men working at the fortifications outside Cologne. The express pants along at a walking pace for a few miles, stops at a wayside station and fat market women fight their way in and stick their bulging baskets—_faute de mieux_—on our heads. One woman gets wedged in the lavatory door, adding suffocation to the other trials of the poor souls within. We arrive at Duisburg. The train will stop here seven hours. Seven minutes I had understood previously. I alight. The peppermint-providing Teuton and a charming German girl who has been already forty-seven hours on the journey, take me in tow. We wander through the town, we enjoy cream-laden chocolate, ice in a café, we speak of anything and everything except the war.

At the station we admire the wonderful organisation of the Red Cross. Then we dine together. An obsequious waiter brings the menu—in French. A storm-cloud gathers on the faces of my two companions.

“Take it away. We don’t speak French any more,” he says roughly. We are reduced to Wienerschnitzel and beer. I dislike both. The train comes in bringing German wounded, all pale and very silent except one who is able to stand on the platform and becomes instantly the centre of a thrilled audience.

I offer my fruit to the silent, white-faced men who are making shift to find comfort on the hard cushions. “Why not?” says one indifferently reaching out his hand for the purple grapes. The others stare at me but are seemingly past interest.

The train starts. Our first-class compartment is as full as before, but instead of the beating sun, a blessed coolness has come to us with the darkness. My German friend meets her mother at Wesel. They all implore me to stay the night with them ... as many nights as I like. I am touched but must get on. I may yet be stopped on the frontier. Two soldiers, bayonets fixed, descend on me and demand papers. For the moment I have mislaid them. A crowd collects. Spy-baiting is always fun.

There is decided depression when I produce my passport and the Commandant’s papers. They let me pass. I enter the train for Goch and a talkative guard comes to keep me company. He was in charge of the train which has brought many prisoners through—thousands of French and only two English so far. “And very glad the French are to be here out of the fighting. They were all laughing as they came by,” he says.

At Goch I fall out. I can afford to sleep here, since I am in safety. And sleep I do in a small wayside hotel.

Little old ladies regale me at breakfast with tales of “hideous Belgian atrocities.” I catch a train to Flushing.

I hold in my lap all the way a French lady of eighty-six, who has already been seven days in the train. I am desperately afraid she will die in my arms. The rest of the carriage is filled with Japanese fleeing from Germany after their declaration of war. For once I bless their smallness of stature. They curl themselves up on the floor, in corners, on hand-bags. I am sure if need be they would travel quite contented in the rack. I notice their only European language is German. When I address them in French and English they cannot understand.

I get on the boat at Flushing. It all seems too good to be true. Two ladies plump down beside me and tell of their “terrible adventures,” in leaving Germany. These harrowing tales resolve themselves into the loss of some pretty frocks. It suddenly occurs to me that I too have lost all my clothes.

Somehow the war had seemed more important!

The deck is a struggling mass of complacent Americans. The Japanese are so small as to be overlooked. I am the only Britisher.

The Yankees survey our greyhound cruisers through their lorgnettes with disrespectful enthusiasm and guess they’re “just sweet.” They are enjoying the war with a delightful air of detachment. I envy them. Even the thought of mines does not disturb their equanimity. American subjects exploded by a mine. Impossible!

We arrive at Folkestone. Passports must be shown. Well-dressed Americans crowd the companion-ways into the saloon. Men and women, dressing-cases, floating veils. In between lurk the Japanese like faithful little dogs. Meekly I wait last.

A stentorian voice roars out from the saloon.

“British subjects first.” My paltry triumph comes. I step briskly forward and lay my passport before the purser’s critical eyes.

A moment later I fall ashore, almost into the arms of a stalwart British bobby. Dear sweet soul. I could have kissed him.

London again. A hot bath, a good meal, a deep, sound sleep to the hum of Piccadilly traffic, and I am ready to help. War is barbarous, horrible, but there is a sturdy realism about it which is lacking in our slug-slim, civilised life.

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH