On this October day, for example, there was no sign of surprise on the part of the buxom lady behind the guichet of the booking-office when I asked for a ticket to Béthune, although there had been heavy fighting in that district only a few hours before, at the end of a great battle extending over several days.
In the train itself were several commercial gentlemen, on their way to Lille, by way of the junction at Arques, where they had to change; and with two or three French soldiers, and a lady entirely calm and self- possessed, they discussed the possibility of getting into a city round which the German cavalry were reported to be sweeping in a great tide. Another man who entered into conversation with me was going to Béthune. He had a wife and family there and hoped they were safe. It was only by a sudden thoughtfulness in his eyes that I could guess that behind that hope was a secret fear, which he did not express even to himself. We might have been a little party of people travelling, say, between Surbiton and Weybridge on an autumn afternoon, when the golf-ball flies across the links. Not one of them showed the least sign of anxiety, the least consciousness of peril close at hand.
Looking out of the carriage window I saw that trenches had been dug in all the adjacent fields, and that new trenches were being made hastily but efficiently by gangs of soldiers, who had taken off their blue coats for once, and were toiling cheerily at their task. In all the villages we passed were battalions of infantry guarding the railway bridges and level crossings. Patrols of cavalry rode slowly down the roads. Here and there some of them were dismounted, with their horses tethered, and from behind the cover of farmhouses or haystacks, looked across the country, with their carbines slung across their shoulders, as though waiting for any Uhlans that might appear that way.
All around us was the noise of guns, firing in great salvoes across the hills, ten miles or more away. Suddenly, as we approached the junction at Arques, there was an explosion which sounded very close to us; and the train came to a dead stop on grinding brakes.
"What's that?" asked a man in the carriage, sharply.
I thrust my head out of the carriage window and saw that all along the train other faces were staring out. The guard was running down the platform. The station-master was shouting to the engine-driver. In a moment or two we began to back, and kept travelling backwards until we were out of the station… The line had just been blown up beyond Arques by a party of Uhlans, and we were able to thank our stars that we had stopped in time. We could get no nearer to Béthune, over which next day the tide of war had rolled. I wondered what had happened to the wife and children of the man who was in the carriage with me.
At Aire-sur-Lys there were groups of women and children who, like so many others in those days, had abandoned their houses and left all they had in the world save a few bundles of clothes and baskets of food. I asked them what they would do when the food was finished.
"There will always be a little charity, m'sieur," said one woman, "and at least my children are safe."
After the first terror of the invasion those women were calm and showed astounding courage and resignation.
It was more than pitiful to see the refugees on the roads from Hazebrouck. There was a constant stream of them in those two cross-currents, and they came driving slowly along in bakers' carts and butchers' carts, with covered hoods, in farm carts loaded up with several families or trudging along with perambulators and wheelbarrows. The women were weary. Many of them had babies in their arms. The elder children held on to their mother's skirts or tramped along together, hand in hand. But there was no trace of tears. I heard no wailing cry. Some of them seemed utterly indifferent to this retreat from home. They had gone beyond the need of tears.