Even before they began to return, the engineers were at work repairing the bridges as far as Chalons, and the day I wrote to you last week, when Amélie went down the hill to mail your letter, she brought back the news that the English engineers were sitting astride the telegraph poles, pipes in mouth, putting up the wires they cut down a fortnight ago. The next day our post-office opened, and then I got newspapers. I can tell you I devoured them. I read Joffre's order of the day. What puzzled me was that it was dated on the morning of September 6, yet we, with our own eyes, saw the battle begin at noon on the 5th,—a battle which only stopped at nine that night, to begin again at four the next morning. But I suppose history will sometime explain that.
Brief as the news was in the papers, it was exciting to know that the battle we had seen and heard was really a decisive fight, and that it was considered won by the English and French—in a rainstorm—as long ago as the 10th, and that the fighting to the east of us had been far more terrible than here.
I suppose long before this our myriads of "special telegraph" men have sent you over details and anecdotes such as we shall never see. We get a meagre "communiqué official" and have to be content with that. It is now and then hard for me, who have been accustomed to something different.
None of our shops is open yet. Indeed almost no one has returned to Couilly; and Meaux, they say, is still deserted. Yet I cannot honestly say that I have suffered for anything. I have an abundance of fruit. We have plenty of vegetables in Père's garden. We have milk and eggs. Rabbits and chickens run about in the roads simply asking to be potted. There is no petrol, but I, luckily, had a stock of candles, and I love candlelight—it suits my house better than lamps. It is over a fortnight since we had sugar or butter or coffee. I have tea. I never would have supposed that I could have got along so well and not felt deprived. I suppose we always have too much—I've had the proof. Perhaps had there been anyone with me I should have felt it more. Being alone I did not give it a thought.
Sunday afternoon, the weather being still fine and the distant booming of the cannon making reading or writing impossible—I am not yet habituated to it—I went for a walk. I took the road down the hill in the direction of the Marne. It is a pretty walk—not a house all the way.
It leads along what is called the Pavé du Roi, dropping down into the plain of the valley, through the woods, until the wheat fields are reached, and then rising from the plain, gently, to the high suspension bridge which crosses the canal, two minutes beyond which lies the river, here very broad and sluggish.
This part of the canal, which is perfectly straight from Condé to Meaux, is unusually pretty. The banks are steep, and "tall poplar trees" cast long shadows across grass-edged footpaths, above which the high bridge is swung. There is no bridge here across the Marne; the nearest in one direction is at the Iles-lès-Villenoy, and in the other at Meaux. So, as the Germans could not have crossed the Marne here, the canal bridge was not destroyed, though it was mined. The barricades of loose stones which the English built three weeks ago, both at the bridgehead and at a bend in the road just before it is reached, where the road to Mareuil sur Marne turns off, were still there.
The road along the canal and through Mareuil is the one over which the German cavalry would have advanced had von Kluck's army succeeded in crossing the Marne at Meaux, and it was patrolled and guarded by the Yorkshire boys on September 2, and the Bedfords from the night of the 3d to the morning of the 5th.
The road from the canal to the river, separated here by only a few yards, leads through a wide avenue, across a private estate belonging to the proprietor of the plaster quarries at Mareuil, to a ferry, beside which was the lavoir. There is a sunken and terraced fruit garden below the road, and an extensive enclosure for fancy fowl.
The bank of the river showed me a sad sight. The wash-houses were sunk. They lay under water, with their chimneys sticking out. The little river piers and all the row-boats had been smashed and most of them sunk. A few of them, drawn up on the bank, were splintered into kindling wood. This work of destruction had been done, most effectively, by the English. They had not left a stick anywhere that could have served the invaders. It was an ugly sight, and the only consolation was to say, "If the Boches had passed, it would have been worse!" This was only ugly. That would have been tragic.