There were days of the passing through of their own troops. For days the valley was one deep, endlessly drawn-out trail of dust, from which came unceasingly the turmoil of hoofs and wheels and men's shouting, the horns and rush of motors, bugle-calls, the hot beating of drums.
Night after night the village took in the men billeted upon it, lodged them somehow, fed them somehow. The château received the officers, and did what it could for them.
Those were days of great enthusiasm. Trains passed full of flowers, of men laughing and singing. Trainloads of great dust-coloured cannon passed, covered with flowers.
Claire started a canteen at the station, the little country station by the river, in the fields of August wheat and poppies.
Those were exalted, wonderful days for her. She knew how agonizing they were for Rémy, and she felt about him very tenderly.
She was a beautiful, strong creature, her beauty and strength for years now had annoyed and been a grievance to him. But now he seemed to have need of her strength and quietness. She pitied him for what she meant to him in those days.
But when bad news came, everything changed for him.
There were so many things for him to do. He was maire of the village—the village counted on him, he was not useless any more. He had been really ill with grieving, but now that he was of use, he was as well as she had ever seen him before. All his small nervous ways fell from him; she did not understand him any more than if he had been a child grown up suddenly beyond her; but she was immensely pleased with him. She was so glad to be able to feel him stronger than she. It was very good to be able to turn to him now for help and comfort.
Her canteen at the station served trains that were full of wounded. Some of the wounded were so bad that they had to be taken out of the trains. She got a hospital arranged as well as she could in the château. For days it was so full that the wounded and dying lay on beds of straw on the floor of the great salons, not a scrap of linen in the château but was used for dressings and bandages.
Then the refugees from the villages of the north and the east began to pour through, telling of ghastly things. And then came the troops in retreat.