And now Jules was gone and could not defend it. But she was there.
She ran back into the shop, calling for her little maid, in a loud, clear voice such as had not issued from her throat since Jules had gone away. "Simone! Simone!"
The maid came running down the stairs and at the first sight of her mistress expected to hear that her master had returned or that the French troops were there, so like herself did Madeleine seem, no longer stooping and shivering and paper-white, but upright, with hard, bright eyes. But it was no good news which she brought out in the new ringing voice. She said: "The Germans will be here in two hours. Help me quickly hide the things in the cellar ... you know, the further room ... and we can put the hanging shelves over the door so they won't know there is another part to the cellar. Bring down the two big trays from the kitchen. We can carry more that way. Then light two or three candles up and down the cellar stairs. It won't do for me to fall, these last days."
She was gathering the big jars together as she spoke, and taking out the innumerable big and little drawers.
In a moment the two women, one who had been hardly strong enough to walk, the other scarcely more than a child, were going slowly down the cellar stairs, their arms aching with the weight of the trays and then running back upstairs in feverish haste. Shelf after shelf was cleared of the precious remedies that meant health, that might mean life, in the days to come. The minutes slipped past. An hour had gone.
From her attic windows from where she could see the road leading to Lorat-en-Multien, a neighbor called down shrilly that dust was rising up in thick clouds at the lower end. And even as she called, silently, composedly, there pedaled into the long main street five or six men in gray uniforms on bicycles, quite calm and sure of themselves, evidently knowing very well that the place had no defenders. Madeleine saw the white hair of M. le Curé and the white beard of M. le Maire advance to meet the invaders.
"We can't do any more here," she said. "Down to the cellar now, to mask the door. No, I'll do it alone. Somebody must be here to warn us. We mustn't be caught down there." She turned to go, and came back. "But I can't move the hanging shelves alone!"
Simone ventured, "Mlle. Sylvie? Could she watch and tell us?"
Madeleine hesitated a fraction. Sylvie, like her mother, had been asked to do very little with herself except to be a nice person.
Then, "Sylvie! Sylvie!" called her mother with decision.