I was about to solve the problem for myself by lugging my lady to the railway station, when Ursula Dearmer took us over too, in her stride, as inconsiderable items of the business before her. I have nothing but admiration for her handling of it.
We halted in the main street of Dunkirk while Mr. Riley and the chauffeurs unearthed from the baggage-car my hold-all and suit-case and the British Red Cross lady"s hold-all and trunk and Mr. Foster"s kit-bag and Dr. Hanson"s suit-case with her best clothes and her surgical instruments and the tin--No, not the tin box, for the Commandant, now possessed by a violent demon of hurry, resisted our efforts to drag it from its lair.[38]
All these things were piled on Ursula Dearmer"s military scouting-car.
The British Red Cross lady (almost incredulous of her good luck) and I got inside it, and Ursula Dearmer and Mr. Riley drove us to the railway station.
By the mercy of Heaven a train was to leave for Boulogne either a little before or a little after one, and we had time to catch it.
There was a long line of refugee _bourgeois_ drawn up before the station doors, and I noticed that every one of them carried in his hand a slip of paper.
Ursula Dearmer hailed a porter, who, she said, would look after us like a father. With a matchless celerity he and Mr. Riley tore down the pile of luggage. The porter put them on a barrow and disappeared with them very swiftly through the station doors.
At least I suppose it was through the doors. All we knew was that he disappeared.
Then Ursula Dearmer handed over to me three cables to be sent from Dunkirk. I said good-bye to her and Mr. Riley. They got back into the motor-car, and they, too, very swiftly disappeared.
Mr. Riley went away bearing with him the baffling mystery of his personality. After nearly three weeks" a.s.sociation with him I know that Mr. Riley"s whole heart is in his job of carrying the wounded. Beyond that I know no more of him than on the day when he first turned up before our Committee.
But with Ursula Dearmer it is different. Before the Committee she appeared as a very young girl, docile, diffident, only half-awake, and of dubious efficiency. I remember my solemn pledges to her mother that Ursula Dearmer should not be allowed to go into danger, and how, if danger insisted on coming to her, she should be violently packed up and sent home. I remember thinking what a nuisance Ursula Dearmer will be, and how, when things are just beginning to get interesting, I shall be told off to see her home.
And Ursula Dearmer, the youngest but one, has gone, not at all docilely and diffidently, into the greatest possible danger, and come out of it.
And here she is, wide awake and in full command of the Ostend-Dunkirk expedition. And instead of my seeing her off and all the way home, she is very thoroughly and competently seeing _me_ off.
At least this was her beautiful intention.
But getting out of France in war-time is not a simple matter.
When we tried to follow the flight of our luggage through the station door we were stopped by a sentry with a rifle. We produced our pa.s.sports. They were not enough.
At the sight of us brought to halt there, all the refugees began to agitate their slips of paper. And on the slips we read the words "_Laissez-pa.s.ser_."
My British Red Cross lady had no "_laissez-pa.s.ser_." I had only my sixteenth part in the "_laissez-pa.s.ser_" of the Corps, and that, hidden away in the Commandant"s breast-pocket, was a part either of the luncheon-party or of the interview with the Belgian Minister of War.
We couldn"t get military pa.s.ses, for military pa.s.ses take time; and the train was due in about fifteen minutes.
And the fatherly porter had vanished, taking with him the secret of our luggage.
It was a fatherly old French gentleman who advised us to go to the British _Consulat_. And it was a fatherly old French _cocher_ who drove us there, or rather who drove us through interminable twisted streets and into blind alleys and out of them till we got there.
As for our luggage, we renounced it and Mr. Foster"s and Dr. Hanson"s luggage in the interests of our own safety.
At last we got to the British _Consulat_. Only I think the _cocher_ took us to the Town Hall and the Hospital and the British Emba.s.sy and the Admiralty offices first.
At intervals during this transit the British Red Cross lady explained again that she was doing the right thing in leaving Ostend. It wasn"t as if she was leaving her post, she was going on a hospital ship. She was sure she had done the right thing.
It was not for me to be unsympathetic to an obsession produced by a retreat, so I a.s.sured her again and again that if there ever was a right thing she had done it. My heart bled for this poor lady, abandoned by the organization that had brought her out.
In the courtyard of the _Consulat_ we met a stalwart man in khaki, who smiled as a G.o.d might smile at our trouble, and asked us why on earth we hadn"t got a pa.s.sage on the naval transport _Victoria_, sailing at three o"clock. We said nothing would have pleased us better, only we had never heard of the _Victoria_ and her sailing. And he took us to the Consul, and the Consul--who must have been buried alive in detail--gave us a letter to Captain King of the _Victoria_, and the _cocher_ drove us to the dock.
Captain King was an angel. He was the head of a whole hierarchy of angels who called themselves ship"s officers.
There is no difficulty about our transport. But we must be at the docks by half-past two.
We have an hour before us; so we drive back to the station to see if, after all, we can find that luggage. Not that we in the least expected to find it, for we had been told that it had gone on by the train to Boulogne.
Now the British Red Cross lady declared many times that but for me and my mastery of the French language she would never have got out of Dunkirk. And it was true that I looked on her more as a sacred charge than as a valuable ally in the struggle with French sentries, porters and officials. As for the _cocher_, I didn"t consider him valuable at all, even as the driver of an ancient _fiacre_. And yet it was the lady and the _cocher_ who found the luggage. It seems that the station hall is open between trains, and they had simply gone into the hall and seen it there, withdrawn bashfully into a corner. The _cocher"s_ face as he announces his discovery makes the War seem a monstrous illusion. It is incredible that anything so joyous should exist in a country under German invasion.
We drive again to the _Victoria_ in her dock. The stewards run about and do things for us. They give us lunch. They give us tea. And the other officers come in and make large, simple jokes about bombs and mines and submarines. We have the ship all to ourselves except for a few British soldiers, recruits sent out to Antwerp too soon and sent back again for more training.
They looked, poor boys, far sadder than the Belgian Army.
And I walk the decks; I walk the decks till we get to Dover. My sacred charge appears and disappears. Every now and then I see her engaged in earnest conversation with the ship"s officers; and I wonder whether she is telling them that she has not really left her post and that she is sure she has done right. I am no longer concerned about my own post, for I feel so sure that I am going back to it.
To-morrow I shall get the money from our Committee; and on Thursday I shall go back.
And yet--and yet--I must have had a premonition. We are approaching England. I can see the white cliffs.
And I hate the white cliffs. I hate them with a sudden and mysterious hatred.
More especially I hate the cliffs of Dover. For it is there that we must land. I should not have thought it possible to hate the white coast of my own country when she is at war.
And now I know that I hate it because it is not the coast of Flanders.
Which would be absurd if I were really going back again.
Yes, I must have had a premonition.
[_Dover._]
We have landed now. I have said good-bye to Captain King and all the ship"s officers and thanked them for their kindness. I have said good-bye to the British Red Cross lady, who is not going to London.
And I go to the station telegraph-office to send off five wires.
I am sending off the five wires when I hear feet returning through the station hall. The Red Cross lady is back again. She is saying this time that she is _really_ sure she has done the right thing.
And again I a.s.sure her that she has.
Well--there are obsessions and obsessions. I do not know whether I have done the right thing or not in leaving Flanders (or, for that matter, in leaving Ghent). All that I know is that I love it and that I have left it. And that I want to go back.
POSTSCRIPT
There have been changes in that Motor Field Ambulance Corps that set out for Flanders on the 25th of September, 1914.
Its Commandant has gone from it to join the Royal Army Medical Corps. A few of the original volunteers have dropped out and others have taken their places, and it is larger now than it was, and better organized.