Part 17 (1/2)

That night I went for a journey in a train of tragedy I was glad to get into the train. Here, travelling through the clean air of a quiet night, I might forget for a little while the senseless cruelties of this war, and turn my eyes away from the suffering of individuals smashed by its monstrous injustice.

But the long train was packed tight with refugees. There was only room for me in the corridor if I kept my elbows close, tightly wedged against the door. Others tried to clamber in, implored piteously for a little s.p.a.ce, when there was no s.p.a.ce. The train jerked forward on uneasy brakes, leaving a crowd behind.

Turning my head and half my body round, I could see into two of the lighted carriages behind me, as I stood in the corridor. They were overfilled with various types of these Belgian people whom I had been watching all day--the fugitives of a ravaged country. For a little while in this French train they were out of the hurly-burly of their flight. For the first time since the sh.e.l.ls burst over Antwerp they had a little quietude and rest.

I glanced at their faces, as they sat back with their eyes closed. There was a young Belgian priest there, with a fair, clean-shaven face. He wore top boots splashed with mud, and only a silver cross at his breast showed his office. He had fallen asleep with a smile about his lips. But presently he awakened with a start, and suddenly there came into his eyes a look of indescribable horror... He had remembered.

There was an old lady next to him. The light from the carriage lamp glinted upon her silver hair, and gave a Rembrandt touch to a fair old Flemish face. She was looking at the priest, and her lips moved as though in pity. Once or twice she glanced at her dirty hands, at her draggled dress, and then sighed, before bending her head, and dozing into forgetfulness.

A young Flemish mother cuddled close to a small boy with flaxen hair, whose blue eyes stared solemnly in front of him with an old man's gravity of vision. She touched the child's hair with her lips, pressed him closer, seemed eager to feel his living form, as though nothing mattered now that she had him safe.

On the opposite seat were two Belgian officers--an elderly man with a white moustache and grizzled eyebrows under his high kepi and a young man in a ta.s.selled forage cap, like a boy-student. They both sat in a limp, dejected way. There was defeat and despair in their att.i.tude It was only when the younger man s.h.i.+fted his right leg with a sudden grimace of pain that I saw he was wounded.

Here in these two carriages through which I could glimpse were a few souls holding in their memory all the sorrow and suffering of poor, stricken Belgium. Upon this long train were a thousand other men and women in the same plight and with the same grief.

Next to me in the corridor was a young man with a pale beard and moustache and fine delicate features. He had an air of distinction, and his clothes suggested a man of some wealth and standing. I spoke to him, a few commonplace sentences, and found, as I had guessed, that he was a Belgian refugee.

”Where are you going?” I asked.

He smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders slightly.

”Anywhere. What does it matter? I have lost everything. One place is as good as another for a ruined man.”

He did not speak emotionally. There was no thrill of despair in his voice. It was as though he were telling me that he had lost his watch.

”That is my mother over there,” he said presently, glancing towards the old lady with the silver hair. ”Our house has been burnt by the Germans and all our property was destroyed. We have nothing left.

May I have a light for this cigarette?”

One young soldier explained the reasons for the Belgian debacle.

They seemed convincing:

”I fought all the way from Liege to Antwerp. But it was always the same. When we killed one German, five appeared in his place. When we killed a hundred, a thousand followed. It was all no use. We had to retreat and retreat. That is demoralizing.”

”England is very kind to the refugees,” said another man. ”We shall never forget these things.”

The train stopped at wayside stations. Sometimes we got down to stamp our feet. Always there were crowds of Belgian refugees on the platforms--shadow figures in the darkness or silhouetted in the light of the station lamps. They were encamped there with their bundles and their babies.

On the railway lines were many trains, shunted into sidings. They belonged to the Belgian State Railways, and had been brought over the frontier away from German hands--hundreds of them. In their carriages little families of refugees had made their homes. They are still living in them, hanging their was.h.i.+ng from the windows, cooking their meals in these narrow rooms. They have settled down as though the rest of their lives is to be spent in a siding. We heard their voices, speaking Flemish, as our train pa.s.sed on. One woman was singing her child to sleep with a sweet old lullaby. In my train there was singing also. A party of four young Frenchmen came in, forcing their way hilariously into a corridor which seemed packed to the last inch of s.p.a.ce. I learnt the words of the refrain which they sang at every station:

A bas Guillaume!

C'est un filou II faut le pendre Il faut le pendre La corde a son cou!

The young Fleming with a pale beard and moustache smiled as he glanced at the Frenchmen.

”They have had better luck,” he said. ”We bore the first brunt.”