Poor girl! Her life in Namur had been so tragic, it was extraordinary she had the courage to undertake alone a long journey, in the depth of winter, through enemy country, going voluntarily into exile for an indefinite period, with no one to turn to in case of trouble or sickness, entirely dependent on her meager Red Cross pay, frcs 2.50 (50 cents) a day—board and lodging alone being provided by the hospital.
She remained a number of months in Val Fleuri as our guest, and little by little, as her reserve wore off, the tale of the actual horror of her life under the German yoke came out, and I was able to understand the motive which drove her, a beautiful girl of twenty-seven, into France, facing an unknown future and a hard present, rather than remain a day longer than was necessary under German rule.
The only daughter of a rich and indulgent widow, until the fatal summer of 1914, she had lived a luxurious idle life; petted by society in Belgium for her charm and her beauty; welcomed at house parties and balls; sought for cotillions, dinners, race-meetings; with all that wealth and rank in the old nobility could offer to a girl of her position, the sudden transition to the horrors of German invasion and occupation was terrific.
When the war broke out in 1914, her mother and she were entertaining a large house-party of fashionable young people in their chateau, some miles out from Namur. The sudden crashing of guns broke in upon their country pleasures, their guests fled, the shells boomed over the park and buildings, old friends advised them, two defenseless women, to abandon the chateau and take refuge in their large town house at Namur.
Their hearts were heavy with grief and foreboding, that August morning, when they looked their last on their ancestral home; its huge towers and wide terraces framed in great oaks and chestnuts, sleeping tranquilly beneath a radiant blue sky. Ten days later their home had been gutted from tower to basement, flames had destroyed their furniture, pictures, family heirlooms, household treasures—all scattered, burnt or carried off by the Huns—and, crowning insult, German dead buried in the rose-gardens beneath the marble terrace. *
*Note. She seemed to feel this more bitterly than anything else.
