"That's panic," she said, nodding towards the deserted table.
Room by room they explored the house; the kitchen with its vast open fireplace, the queer uneven stairs, the tiny bedrooms, so tempting with their carved bedsteads and spotless linen and scarlet wadded quilts ("je tiens à mes lits"—poor Madame!), their white-washed walls and deep-set lattices framed in jasmine; the round tower, dark save for the swords of sunshine that pierced its western loopholes, and rustling with fowls; the well-filled storeroom. Everything was there but the owners. They had heard a bruit and a rumor, and they had fled; had stampeded in abject terror before the advance of Germany. And so lonely was the farm, hidden in woods and served only by a cart track, that neither ravager nor refugee had found it. The wanderers sank into its deep peace and slept.
It could not hope to escape permanently, however, for Germans work by the map; so on Dorothea's advice the first thing they did next morning was to make a cache of provisions in the orchard. Well for them they thought of it, for that very afternoon they were visited by a wandering party of Uhlans. Dorothea, washing her skirt in the yard, heard them coming, and had just time to escape with Lettice to the woods. There being nobody to kill, the visitors had to content themselves with sacking the house, which they did with zest. It was odd to see chairs and mirrors come hurtling out of the bedroom windows, odder still to see a drunken Uhlan parading about in Madame's voluminous best chemise. They wrung the necks of the fowls; they drove off the two mild cows; they set fire to the ricks, and tried to burn the house as well, but luckily they had no petrol, this being a private venture not a military operation, and its massy walls defied them. It was not the first time they had stood fire. Finally, they killed the sandy cat, who was misguided enough to greet them as she greeted Dorothea. She had been a lean, hard-flanked, and indiscriminatingly amiable creature, with a vulgar loud purr; still, it was distressing to see her tied to a tree and shot to death with table-knives.
After this they rode off, singing the inevitable Deutschland über Alles with more noise than melody, and the girls came out of hiding to take stock of the damage. It was extensive. The German soldier had by that time learned to loot effectually, and what they had not stolen they had smashed. The poor pretty garden was trampled into mire. The kitchen was ankle-deep in broken crockery. A half-killed pig was squealing its life out in the passage. The mattresses had been slit open and spread with filth from the stable. They had wiped their boots on the tablecloth; they had used the coffee-pot as a spittoon; they had covered the white-washed walls with what the expressive French idiom calls des saletés; they had done other things which need not be described. In fine, they had contrived, within the space of a summer afternoon, to be so ingeniously filthy and destructive that not a corner of the house was habitable.
Lettice and Dorothea camped that night in the barn. Next day, while trying to cleanse their pigsty, they were surprised by a fresh party of visitors; but these were sober, and the officer in command was the same comparatively humane person who had burned the Bellevue. His mission now was not to strike terror, but to make an inventory of all domestic animals; and he did not look pleased when he fell over the dead porker in the passage. Hastily suppressing Lettice, who remained impracticably hostile, Dorothea made her appeal to the honor of the German army. She used her tongue and her beautiful eyes so well that, after listening to her tale, the officer gave her what she wanted—a sort of permis de séjour, exempting the farm from further requisitions. Indeed there was little left to take.
After this they had peace, and settled down to a strange, precarious, isolated life. For some weeks they hardly set foot outside the farm. This extreme seclusion was not really necessary; for times had changed and the policy of the conquerors now was not to scare the country folk away, but to coax them back to their homes and their ordinary work. The German reign of terror in Belgium seems to have been based on the theory that one German soldier is worth x Belgian civilians. Therefore when sniping took place (or when they fancied it had taken place, or feared it might take place, or thought a locality needed a lesson to teach them what to expect if it did take place) the order went out to kill. "Without distinction of persons, the innocent will suffer with the guilty." Much of the ravaging was done deliberately, by order: as at the sack of Rochehaut. Much was done by an equally deliberate relaxation of orders: as at the cottage in the woods. In part the German plan succeeded, for it certainly stamped out sniping. In part it recoiled upon itself. To strike terror is a very fine thing, but the results may be embarrassing to an army of occupation. Besides, it really looked so very bad to neutrals!
Lettice and Dorothea, however, did not concern themselves with this change of policy. The cottage in the woods had cured them of any wish to wander. Even Dorothea had had her fill of adventures. It was long before she ventured as far as Poupehan, to ask for news; and when she did, she wished she had stayed at home. The fall of Namur, the fall of Brussels, the coming fall of Paris—how long before they heard of the capitulation of London?