At the turn of the road they heard the guns: a solemn Boom--Boom coming up out of hushed spaces; they saw white puffs of smoke rising in the blue sky. The French guns somewhere back of them. The German guns in front southwards beyond the river.
Charlotte looked at John; he was brilliantly happy. They smiled at each other as if they said "Now it's beginning."
Outside the village of Berlaere they were held up by two sentries with rifles. (Thrilling, that.) Their Belgian guide leaned out and whispered the password; John showed their passports and they slipped through.
Where the road turned on their left into the street they saw a group of soldiers standing at the door of a house. Three of them, a Belgian lieutenant and two non-commissioned officers, advanced hurriedly and stopped the car. The lieutenant forbade them to go on.
"But," John said, "we've got orders to go on."
A shrug intimated that their orders were not the lieutenant's affair. They couldn't go on.
"But we must go on. We've got to fetch some wounded."
"There aren't any wounded," said the lieutenant.
Charlotte had an inspiration. "You tell us that tale every time," she said, "and there are always wounded."
The Belgian guide and the lieutenant exchanged glances.
"I've told you there aren't any," the lieutenant said. "You must go back."
"Here--You explain."
But instead of explaining the little Belgian backed up the lieutenant by a refusal on his own part to go on.
"He can please himself. We're going on."
"You don't imagine," Charlotte said, "by any chance that we're afraid?"
The lieutenant smiled, a smile that lifted his ferocious, upturned moustache: first sign that he was yielding. He looked at the sergeant and the corporal, and they nodded.
John had his foot on the clutch. "We're due," he said, "at the dressing station by three o'clock."
She thought: He's magnificent. She could see that the lieutenant and the soldiers thought he was magnificent. Supposing she had gone out with some meek fool who would have gone back when they told him!
The lieutenant skipped aside before the advancing car. "You can go," he said, "to the dressing-station."
"They always do that as a matter of form--sort of warning us that it's our own risk. They won't be responsible."
She didn't answer. She was thinking that when they turned John's driving place would be towards the German guns.