Part 14

I, who have seen her Château, pray that death may come to close those bright eyes, so that they may never look upon the destruction of her home, for it is a desolate sight, even though the sky was blue and the leaves glistened in the sun on the morning when, two years ago, I tramped up the winding drive.

The lodge was nothing more than a tumbled pile of broken bricks, but, by some odd chance, the Château itself had never suffered a direct hit. In front of the big white house there had once been an asphalt tennis court--there was now a plain pitted at every few yards by huge shell holes. The summer-house at the edge of the wood--once the scene of delightful little flirtations in between the games of tennis--was now a weird wreck, consisting of three tottering walls and a broken seat. Oddest of all, there lay near the white marble steps an old, tyreless De Dion motor-car.

I have often wondered what the history of that battered thing could be. One can almost see the owner packing herself in it with her most precious belongings, to flee from the oncoming Germans. The engine refuses to start, there is no time for repairs, there is the hurried flight on foot, and the car is left to the mercy of the invading troops. Perhaps, again, it belonged to the staff of some army, and was left at the Château when it had run its last possible mile. At all events, there it stood, half-way between Ypres and the Germans, with everything of any possible value stripped off it as thoroughly as though it had been left to the white ants.

By the side of the tennis court, where had once been flower beds, there was now a row of little, rough wooden crosses, and here and there the narcissi and daffodils had sprung up. What a strange little cemetery! Here a khaki cap and a bunch of dead flowers, there a cross erected to "An unknown British hero, found near Verbrandenmolen and buried here on March 3rd, 1915," there an empty shell case balanced at a comical angle on a grave, and everywhere between the mounds waved the flowers in the fresh breeze of the morning, while away in the distance loomed the tower of the Cloth Hall of Ypres, like a gigantic arm pointing one finger up to heaven.

The Château itself, I have said, had never had a direct hit; but do you think the hand of war had passed it by, and that the little old lady would find in it something of home?

Every window on the ground floor had been choked by sandbags, and no glass remained in those upstairs. In a room that had once been a kitchen and was now labelled in chalk "Officers' Mess" were an old bedstead, two mattresses, a wooden table, and three rickety chairs; but for these, and a piano in the dining-room upstairs, the house was absolutely devoid of furniture. Even the piano, which must have twanged out the tunes of at least three nations since the war began, had sacrificed its cover for firewood.

Rooms where once ladies had powdered and perfumed themselves to attract the fickle male were now bare and empty, and pungent with the smell of chloride of lime. In the dining-hall, where fine old wines had circulated, were a hundred weary, dirty men. In the kitchen, where the fat cuisinière had prepared her dinners, were now a dozen officers, some sprawling asleep on the floor, some squatting round the table playing "vingt-et-un."

For this is war.

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There is one more memory of Ypres--a very different one--that comes back to me. It is the recollection of our regimental dinner.

The first thing that I heard of it came from Lytton's servant.

"Please, sir," he said one morning, "Mr. Lytton sends his compliments, and can you tell 'im where the Hôtel Delepiroyle is?"

"The Hôtel de what?"

"The Hôtel Delepiroyle, sir. That's what 'e said."

"Ask Mr. Lytton to write it down--no, wait a minute. Tell him I'm coming over to see him about it." So I strolled across to the other side of the infantry barracks to find him.

"What, haven't you heard about it?" asked Lytton. "The new C.O., Major Eadie, is giving a dinner to-night to all the officers of the regiment as a farewell to Major Barton before he goes off to take command of his new crowd. It's at the Hôtel de l'Epée Royale, wherever that may be. Let's go and track it down."

So we wandered down the Rue de Lille, as yet relatively free from the ravages of war, for the shops were open and the inhabitants stood talking and gossiping at the doors of their houses. Here and there rubble lay across the pavement, and what had once been a home was now an amorphous pile of bricks and beams. Just by the church was a ruined restaurant, and a host of little children played hide and seek behind the remnants of its walls.

On our way down the street we came across Reynolds, who had only joined the regiment the night before, while we, who had been nearly three weeks at the front, felt ourselves war-beaten veterans compared to him. He was standing on the pavement, gazing excitedly up at an aeroplane, around which were bursting little white puffs of smoke.

"Come along with us," said Lytton. "You'll get sick to death of seeing aeroplanes shelled when you've been out here as long as we have. Come and discover the scene of to-night's orgy."

In the Grande Place, at the side of the Cloth Hall, we discovered the Hôtel de l'Epée Royale. A "Jack Johnson" had made an enormous hole in the pavement just in front of it, and a large corner of the building had gone.

"By Jove," said Reynolds in an awed voice. "What a hole! It must have taken some shell to do that."

Lytton smiled patronisingly. "My dear fellow," he said, "that's nothing at all. It's hardly any bigger than the hole that a spent bullet makes. Let's go inside and get some lunch to see what sort of a place it is."

But Reynolds and I were firm. "Rot!" we said. "Let's go home and fast. Otherwise we shall be no good for this evening; we've got our duty to do to the dinner."

So we went back to the Company Mess in the infantry barracks, past a house that had been destroyed that morning. Hunting in and out of the ruins were a man and a woman, and another woman, very old, with eyes swollen by weeping, sat on what was left of the wall of her house, a broken photograph frame in her hands.

There are many fellows who have laid down their lives since that little dinner in the Hôtel de l'Epée Royale; he who gave it died of wounds six weeks later, as gallant a commanding officer as one could wish to have. If the dinner were to take place again, there would be many gaps round the table, and even the building must long since have been pounded to dust.

If this should meet the eyes of any of you that were there, let your minds run back for a moment, and smile at your recollections. Do you remember how we dosed Wilson's glass so that he left us before the sweets were on the table? Do you remember how we found him later sitting on the stairs, poor fellow, clasping his head in a vain effort to stop the world from whirling round? Do you remember the toasts that we drank, and the plans we made for that dim period, "after the war"? I confess that I have completely forgotten everything that we ate--beyond the whisky, I forget even what we drank; but I know that the daintiest little dinner in London could not have pleased us nearly so much. And then, when it was all over and we broke up to go home to bed, do you remember how young Carter stood in the middle of the Grande Place and made rhapsodies to the moon--though, to the rest of us, it seemed much like any other moon--until we took him up and carried him home by force?

It does you good to look back sometimes. You may find it sad because so many are gone that were our companions then. But this is the way of war; they must die sooner or later, and they could not have chosen better graves. If one must die, why not die fighting for England and Ypres?

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