The Worn Doorstep

by Margaret Pollock Sherwood

I did succeed in telling her that this was probably not as good as Belgian coffee; she sipped it gratefully and nibbled her toast, putting her hand on mine and saying that it was "delicious, Mademoiselle, but delicious."

My fugitive is still here; she was in bed two days, and then I let her get up. She is wearing one of my gowns, and she spends much of her time in the garden in the grapevine arbour, sitting very still, with the shadow of the leaves upon her face. Don stays with her much of the time, and she seems to like this; and the country smell of the garden comforts her a little, I think,—the odour of the red apples ripening in the sun and of grapes that will not quite ripen. She rarely moves, except when a drifting autumn leaf falls on lap or shoulder; it is as if body, mind, and soul were exhausted by the awful shock of her experience, and she could not gather up her vital forces. I can only dumbly wonder what terrors she has gone through, what unspeakable things she has seen.

Her name is Marie Lepont; father and mother she has not, but she lived with an aunt in a little villa near Brussels,—with a garden like this, only plus grand, and she had a lover; oh, yes, for two years she had been betrothed. I could not understand all that she said, but she told of their awful suspense in waiting for the Germans and of their taking refuge in the cellar,—the French for cellar I had never learned, so she showed me my own. Then came the flight, of old men, women, children, and pitiful animals; sickness, and falling by the way. Her aunt died from sheer exhaustion in a peasant's hut and was hastily buried at night. She could hardly tell what had happened, only that she was quite lost and separated from everybody she had ever known. Her lover was not in Brussels when the crisis came, and she had had no tidings from him. Evidently she had been swept over in a great wave of terrified humanity and had found herself on a steamer crowded with refugees. She can remember very little about the voyage, but with many others she reached a receiving camp near London, half ill and quite dazed. She searched vainly for her lover, and, not being able to discover any trace of him, stole away from the camp in a state of mental bewilderment to try to find him. For days she walked, growing more and more spent and hungry, for she was shy about asking for food, and the country people did not understand her, evidently mistook her for a gypsy, and treated her somewhat churlishly. When she reached the forest she was happy, it was so cool and shady there, but she had little to eat save mushrooms. If I had tried to pluck mushrooms for my sustenance, it would have ended all my troubles! When I found her, she had had nothing to eat for more than twenty-four hours.

I watch her as she sits in the sunshine, and I multiply her by hundreds and thousands, innocent people, old folk and babies, old men and women lying down by the roadside to die, and the horror comes like a great tidal wave, sweeping all things before it, drowning all the joy of life and the old sweet ways of living. It breaks on the brick wall of my garden and is driven back; I will not be overwhelmed by any anguish of human fate, my own, or that of any one else. Until some wandering star strikes the earth and shivers it to atoms, there is hope somewhere, and there are things to do! And Marie Lepont shall not be overwhelmed either, in spite of the terrible things she sees, waking or sleeping, for she starts up and cries out in the night; Don gives a little comforting, reassuring bark, and she goes to sleep again. I've got to find her lover for her, and how shall I begin?

I'll go and ask the pony!

October 14. My fugitive fits quietly into our life in the little red house, saying little, trying to do much, and smiling more and more. I do not talk to her, but now and then I sit and sew with her; I know that she is most domestic, and that this will make her feel at home, but I should hate to have her examine my seams and hems, for I am no seamstress. I leave her much alone with the animals, and that seems to help more than anything else; the Atom spends much of its time on her shoulder. She has begged to be allowed to feed the chickens, for Madge has insisted on our having chickens, and Peter has constructed a yard for them, with a little house for winter, a bit down the stream. Sea gulls come sailing on wide beautiful white wings and descend to the chicken yard, walk about and steal food, to the helpless wrath of our fowls. Even Hengist and Horsa retreat; they are two twin stately cocks, and William the Conqueror is a bigger one, with spurs. He is quite the greatest coward in the yard, and entirely in awe of his Matildas. It is thus that I am making history concrete for Madge; my long line of British queens does credit to the dynasty, though they are a bit miscellaneous in ancestry. Boadicea is a dark beauty, wild and fierce; my vainest, long-necked, red-brown hen is Queen Elizabeth; oh, the cackling when she lays an egg! The large, fat, rather stupid one is Queen Anne; I let Madge choose and name Queen Victoria herself, and she selected a plump and comely grey fowl, rather diminutive, with an imperative and yet appealing cluck, who will make, I know, an excellent wife and mother. It is all very well to keep hens and to eat their eggs, but I have given notice to Madge that not one of these companions of my daily life shall be sold to the butcher or served upon my table. The gingerbread baby comes giggling through the gate at least once a day, and it has taken a great fancy to Marie. It proves to be the eleventh and youngest child of my friend the blacksmith, and it has early developed, probably from constant association with so many swift feet, an abnormal talent for running away.

From morning until night I am busy with a thousand and one things, commonplace things mostly, in the house, or the village, or beyond. And wherever I go, you seem near, with your long, thin stride, and your preoccupied face, as if your feet had a bit of difficulty in keeping up with your mind. There is a strange sense always, when I walk in the forest, or along the highway, even when I go to Farmer Wilde's to see about butter and vegetables, that you are walking by my side.

Peter is very solicitous about the welfare of my guest, and I have seen him looking at her with vast pity in his eyes.

"Peter," I reminded him, "you can no longer say that you have not seen a Belgian refugee."

"No, Miss," was his only answer. He digs and prunes, still arguing his country's lack of need of him in this pretence of war.