“This morning I have come from Liège,” he says. “The German dead were piled up each side of my path, ghastly lolling corpses, one on the top of each other.” He puts his hand up higher than his head. “It was the most awful sight I have ever seen, and then the odour....” And the poor spy is literally sick in the village street.
I go back to the burnt cottage. Already willing hands have pulled out odds and ends of still smouldering furniture. The old lady’s cat, disturbed in early morning slumber, has once more resumed its accustomed position on the blackened doorstep. Its expression is cynical and its back arched in a definite anti-Prussian hump. I have no reason whatever to doubt the accuracy of its language when the next Uhlan comes along. The young Job-Lepouses who have been foremost in helping to extinguish the fire, return with me to breakfast. I have leisure to study their appearance.
Yesterday they were of reasonable size. To-day they look as though they had undergone a sudden fattening process which has taken effect in the most unlikely places. For instance, Mdlle Rosa’s right shoulder appears to be afflicted with a monstrous and most unsightly hump. Madame Job’s instep almost equals in size the girth of her waist. M. Floribert has a forearm which would not disgrace a Hackenschmidt. The secret is soon explained.
“Ha-ha, j’ai mes petites économies,” cries Mlle Louisa, dragging a fat leather bag from under her skirt.
M. Floribert smiles anxiously. He has numerous treasures up his sleeves, including his Sunday ties.
Madame Job lets down her stocking with the utmost sang-froid and displays a leg bound with Belgian paper money and bandaged with some nice old lace.
The house was stripped bare in those few minutes of pregnant danger. Linen, books and even bread were transferred to the most remote and sheltered corner of the vegetable garden. Here they were deposited in the camion or hooded cart in which M. Albert in the happy days, now gone, used to distribute the crisp, round loaves to the countryside. Here, too, hid Mdme la Précepteur, the children and Mdme Job until the danger had passed by....
TO LEAVE OR NOT TO LEAVE
People are leaving the village in ones and twos. It is pathetic to watch them come out of their houses, gently turn the key in the lock and then, with slow, sad step, walk quietly away along the high road, turning their backs for ever on their little world. They carry their most cherished possessions in a square cotton sack-bag of enormous check design slung from their shoulders. In their hands are little parcels or perhaps a straw basket packed with a medley of quaint treasures. Small, sturdy, brown-faced children run at their heels.
The peasants visualise mentally the awful atrocities at Visé and tremble at the knowledge that many men have been shot in the surrounding countryside. They say to themselves, “What happens there will happen here to-morrow.” They are afraid. They leave. If they stay it will be in a famine-stricken, Uhlan-haunted country. As they go ... well, I hope they have somewhere to go to!