They got out, knocked at the door and knocked again. The place seemed not so much empty and deserted as enveloped in one of those encompassing noises that only sort themselves out on investigation. Too deep for a separator, too near for an aeroplane, Dormer diagnosed it: “They’ve got the Government thrasher in the back pasture, next the rye!” (He had a good memory and could tell pretty well how most of the people distributed crops and work.)
They recrossed the bridge of the moat and skirting the latter entered the back pasture. There against the gate that gave on to the arable “plain,” as it was called in those parts, was the Government thrasher, the women labourers, and right on the top of the stack, old Vanderlynden.
Dormer shouted! Vanderlynden paid not the slightest heed. Perhaps he was deaf, no doubt the thrasher buzzed loud enough; but above all he was one of those old peasants whose only reply to this unheard-of War in which all had been plunged was to work harder and more continuously, and to show less and less consciousness of what went on round about them. There he stood, black against that shy and tender blue of Flemish sky, the motions of his body mechanical, his face between collarless shirt and high-crowned, peaked cap, expressionless. Finally, Dormer took one of the short stout girls that were employed in raking the straw away from the travelling band, and shook her roughly by the arm.
She was, of course, a refugee Belgian. No one else would work like that, not even a Chinese woman. Like a clockwork figure, she began to speak in “English”:
“No bon offizer billet all full you go Mairie!” without stopping for one moment her raking.
Dormer held her forearm rigid, and stopped her.
“Saagte patron heer t’kom!”
That reached her consciousness. Throwing down her implement, she put both hands to her mouth and began shouting “Hoi!” at old Vanderlynden, and might have gone on shouting indefinitely if Dormer had not gone round to the French Army mechanic who drove the machine and given him an English canteen cigarette. That would have stopped an offensive. It soon stopped the thrasher and Vanderlynden looked down at his visitors.
“Good day, Patron!” called Dormer; “can we see Mademoiselle?”
The old man got down with unexpected agility. “Good day, my officer, what is it that there is?”