“Only, please, do let me have a poor woman with a baby,” she said. “I’d love to have something to play with our little Delia.”
Another, a widow lady, with a large house and staff of servants to match, and unlimited means, was horrified at the idea of admitting peasants anywhere within her precincts; and as to a small child—“I might be having the visit of a grand-nephew, and he might catch something,” she declared down the telephone, in the tone of one who considers her reason beyond dispute.
About five-thirty the Villino opened its portals to its first refugees. The two ladies with the seven children were fed, and half the party conveyed farther on, we undertaking a mother and three children, under three, and a sprightly little bonne. The Villino is a small house, and we had prepared for peasant women. A bachelor’s room and a gay, double-bedded attic—it has a paper sprawling with roses and big windows looking across the valley—were what we had permanently destined for the sufferers. Matters were not facilitated by discovering that our guests belonged to what is called in their own land the high-burgherdom; and that they, on their side, had been told to expect in us the keepers of a “family pension.”
We do not know whether the unknown Church dignitary, the mysterious Lady Abbess, or the nameless wirer from Hammersmith were responsible for the mistake. We do not think it can have been our high-minded but harassed friend of the Aldwych, as some six weeks later we received a secretarial document from that centre of activity, asking whether it was true that we had offered to receive Belgians, and if so: what number and what class would we prefer to attend to? By that time, we may mention, we had been instrumental in establishing about sixty of every variety in the environs.
However, we had reason not to regret the misunderstanding which brought Madame Koelen under our roof.
It was “Miss Marie,” the Villino’s Signorina, who went down to meet her, accompanied by those kindly neighbours. Madame Koelen descended from the railway-carriage in tears.
“Poor young thing,” we said, “it is only natural she must be heart-broken—flying from her home with her poor little children!”
The first bombardment of Antwerp had been the signal for a great exodus from that doomed city.
“We were living in cellars, n’est-ce pas? and it was not good for the children, vous savez, so my husband said: ‘You must go, vite, vite; the last boats are departing.’ We had not half an hour to pack up.”