XIV

It was Sat.u.r.day, the tenth of October, the day after the fall of Antwerp.

The Germans were pressing closer round Ghent; they might march in any day. She had been in Belgium a hundred years; she had lived a hundred years under this doom.

But at last she was free of John. Utterly free. His mind would have no power over her any more. Nor yet his body. She was glad that he had not been her lover. Supposing her body had been bound to him so that it couldn't get away? The struggle had been hard enough when her first flash came to her; and when she had fought against her knowledge and denied it, unable to face the truth that did violence to her pa.s.sion; and when she had given him up and was left with just that, the beauty of his body, and it had hurt her to look at him.

Oh well, nothing could hurt her now. And anyhow she would get through to-day without being afraid of what might happen. John couldn't do anything awful; he had been ordered on an absolutely safe expedition, taking medical stores to the convent hospital at Bruges and convoying Gurney, the sick chauffeur, to Ostend for England. Charlotte was to go out with Sutton, and Gwinnie was to take poor Gurney's place. She was glad she was going with Billy. Whatever happened Billy would go through it without caring, his mind fixed on the solid work.

And John, for an hour before he started, had been going about in gloom, talking of death. _His_ death.

They were looking over the last letter from his father which he had asked her to answer for him. It seemed that John had told him the chances were he would be killed and had asked him whether in this case he would allow the Roden ambulances to be handed over to McClane. And the old man had given his consent.

"Isn't it a pity to frighten him?" she said.

"He's no business to be frightened. It's _my_ death. If I can face it, he can. I'm simply making necessary arrangements."

She could see that. At the same time it struck her that he wanted you to see that he exposed himself to all the risks of death, to see how he faced it. She had no patience with that talk about death; that pitiful bolstering up of his romance.

"If McClane says much more you can tell him."

He was counting on this transfer of the ambulances to get credit with McClane; to silence him.

There were other letters which he had told her to answer. As soon as he had started she went into his room to look for them. If they were not on the chimneypiece they would be in the drawer with his razors and pockethandkerchiefs.

It was John's room, after she had gone through it, that showed her what he was doing.

Sutton looked in before she had finished. She called to him, "Billy, you might come here a minute."

He came in, eyebrows lifted at the inquisition.

"What's up?"

"I'm afraid John isn't coming back."

"Not coming back? Of course he's coming back."

"No. I think he's--got off."

"You mean he's--"

"Yes. Bolted."

"What on earth makes you think that?"

"He's taken all sorts of things--pyjamas, razors, all his pockethandkerchiefs... I _had_ to look through his drawers to find those letters he told me to answer."

Sutton had gone through into the slip of white tiled lavatory beyond. She followed him.

"My G.o.d," he said, "yes. He's taken his toothbrush and his sleeping draught.... You know he tried to get leave yesterday and they wouldn't give it him?"

"No. That makes it simply awful."

"Pretty awful."

"Billy--we must get him back."

"I--I don't know about that. He isn't much good, is he? I think we'd better let him go."

"Don't you see how awful it'll be for the Corps?"

"The Corps? Does that matter? McClane would take us all on to-morrow."

"I mean for _us_. You and me and Gwinnie. He's our Corps, and we're it."

"Sharlie--with the Germans coming into Ghent do you honestly believe anybody'll remember what he did or didn't do?"

"Yes. We're going to stick on with the Belgian Army. It'll be remembered against _us_. Besides, it'll kill his father."

"He'll do that any way. He's rotten through and through."

"No. He was splendid in the beginning. He might be splendid some day again. But if we let him go off and do this he's done for."

"He's done for anyhow. Isn't it better to recognize that he's rotten?

McClane wouldn't have him. He saw what he was."

"He didn't see him at Berlaere. He _was_ splendid there."

"My dear child, don't you know why? He didn't see there was any danger.

He was too stupid to see it."

"I saw it."

"You're not stupid."

"He did see it at the end."

"At the end, yes--When he let you go back for the guns."

She remembered. She remembered his face, the little beads of sweat glittering. He couldn't help that.

"Look here, from the time he realised the danger, did he go out or did he stay under cover?"

She didn't answer.

"There," he said, "you see."