Almost at once Beany returned with some of the officers. They came down and with tender hands lifted the sufferer out of the chilly dampness of the cellar, and laid her on a pile of coats and cushions. Some one carefully fed her a few drops of the hot coffee still left in the thermos bottles. It was very evident, however, that her moments were numbered.
One of the French officers in the party knelt beside her. Softly, tenderly, pityingly, he spoke to her in her native tongue.
The weary eyes opened, and rested on his face.
CHAPTER III
A VEXING PROBLEM
The boys, who had attained a good working knowledge of the French language, listened breathlessly. The gentle questions of the officer were easy to follow, but without pressing too close to the sad group they were unable to hear the whispered, broken replies of the woman. That the story was a sad one, one of the uncounted tragedies of the invasion of a cruel and heartless enemy, they could easily guess by the break in the French officer’s voice and the unashamed and manly tears that filled his eyes. Slowly, painfully she told her story, the two tiny children clutching her closely the while. Fainter and fainter grew the feeble voice. Porky and Beany knew instinctively that they were standing in the presence of death; not the glorious and gallant passing that the soldier finds on the battlefield, but the coming of release from a long and undeserved agony. As the little group watched, one bloodless hand reached up and drew the thin shawl away from her breast. There was a wound there; a cruel death wound that she had stanched as best she could and had covered from the eyes of the two babies. As though her story was all ended, the pitiful eyes fixed themselves on the face of the officer who held her. Rapidly he made the sign of the cross, then with his hand held high, he spoke to the dying woman. It was enough. A smile of peace lighted the worn face, one long look she bent on the two children, and turning her head as if for protection toward the blue tunic against which she rested, she closed her eyes, sighed, and was still.
Reverently laying down his burden, the officer rose to his feet. And while the group stood with bared heads, he told the story as he had just heard it.
The dead woman’s name was Marie Duval. For two hundred years her people had lived in simple ease and comfort on the well-tilled farm.
In rapid, thrilling sentences, he sketched the story of their happy, blameless lives, through Marie’s innocent childhood, her girlhood, and up to the time of her meeting with young Pierre Duval. Pierre had a good farm of his own down the valley, and there they lived in simple happiness and prosperity. Three children were born, the two little creatures crouching before them and one a little older, now dead.
When the war broke out, Pierre put on his uniform and went away. For a while, like other heroic women, she tilled the little farm until one night when a small scouting party of Huns swept down, burning and destroying all that lay in their path. She escaped with her children under cover of the darkness and made her way back to her father’s house. For a long time they escaped the tide of war, and lived on and on from day to day, the old, old father and mother and the young mother waiting for news from Pierre. It came at last.... He was dead.
“Then,” said the French officer, “then her heart seemed to die too, but she knew that she must live for the sake of the little ones. Already she could see that the agony and terror of it all was killing the aged parents. Four sons were fighting, and one by one they followed Pierre to death.