But once in their new quarters, with the long days stretching out ahead and the dark night behind, in wretchedness, in bitter poverty, ah! then Thoughts, Memories, Regrets and Infinite Lonelinesses throng upon them, and little by little realisation comes and at last they KNOW.
Know that the broken threads of life can never be taken up again in the old good way. "On était si heureux là-bas."[5] How often I have heard that said! "On vivait tout doucement. On n'était pas riche, ma fois, but we had enough!" Poignant words those, in Refugee-land.
Added to the haunting dread of the future there is always the ghost-filled dream of the past. Women who have spoken with steady composure of the loss of thousands of francs, of the ruin of businesses built up through years of patient industry and hard work, of farms—rich, productive, well-stocked—- laid waste and bare, have broken down and sobbed pitifully when speaking of some trivial intrinsically-valueless possession. How our hearts twine themselves round these ridiculous little things, what colour, what meaning they lend to life!
To lose them, ah, yes! that is bad enough; but to know that hands stained with blood will snatch at them and turn them over, and that eyes still bestial with lust will appraise their value.... That is where the sharpest sting lies. The man or woman whose house is effaced by a shell is happy indeed compared with those who have seen the Germans come, who have watched the pillage and the looting and the sacrilege of all they hold most dear.
But the émigré's cup must hold even greater sorrows and anxieties than these. "C'est un vrai Calvaire que nous souffrons, Mademoiselle." So they will tell you, and it is heartbreakingly true. Crucified upon the iron cross of German ambition, they pray daily that the cup may be taken from them, but the mocking god of War still holds it to their lips. They must drink it even to the very dregs.
For not always could all the members of a family get away together. It has been the fate of many to remain behind, to become prisoners in the shadowed land behind the trenches, at the mercy of a merciless foe. Between them and their relatives in uninvaded France no direct communication can be established. An impenetrable shutter is drawn down between. Only at rare intervals news can come, and that is when a soldier son or father or other near relative becomes a prisoner of war in Germany. A French woman in the pays envahi may write to a prisoner in Germany, and he to her. He may also write to his friends in the free world beyond. And so it sometimes happens that news trickles through, but very rarely. The risk is tremendous, detection heavily punished. Only oblique reference can be indulged in, and when one has heard nothing for months, perhaps years, how meagre and unsatisfying that must be. Do we in England realise what it means? I know I did not before I met Madame Lassanne, and only very inadequately as I sat in the kitchen of the Ferme du Popey and listened to her story.
II
She was the daughter of one farmer, the wife of another and successful one, the richest in their district, so people said. When the war broke out her husband was mobilised, she with her three children, a girl of four, a boy of two and a month-old baby, remaining at the farm with her father and mother. A few days, perhaps a week or two passed, then danger threatened. Harnessing their horses to the big farm wagons, she and the old man packed them with literie, duvets, furniture, food, clothes, everything they could find room for, and prepared to leave the village. But the gendarmes forbade it. I suppose the road was needed for military purposes: heavy farm wagons might delay the passage of the troops. Throughout the whole of one day they waited. Still the barrier was not withdrawn. Shells began to rain on the village; first one house, then another caught fire.
"You may go." The order came at last. The children, with their grandmother and an aunt of the Lassannes, were placed in the wagons and the little procession set out; but they were not destined to go far that day. At the next village the barrier fell again. Believing that the Germans were following close behind, they held hasty consultation, as the result of which the old women decided to walk on with the children, leaving M. Breda and Madame to follow as soon as the way was clear.
So the horses and wagons were put into a stable, and Madame and her father sat down to wait. The slow hours ticked away, a shell screamed overhead, another, then another. Soon they were falling in torrents on the little street. Houses began to crash down, the stable caught fire, the four horses and the wagons were burned to a cinder. Then the house in which the refugees had sheltered was struck. They escaped by a miracle, crawling on hands and knees. So terrific was the bombardment they dared not go down the road. A barrage of shell-fire played over it. With some dozens of others as miserable as themselves they lay all night in a furrow in a beet-field, Madame trembling in her father's arms, for shells were falling incessantly on the field and all around them. At dawn the hurricane ceased, and they crept away. The road was open now, they were on foot. They walked fast, then faster, hoping every minute to overtake the children. The old women surely could not have gone very far. But mile after mile was conquered and no news of them could be found. No sentries had seen them, no gendarme had watched them go by. They asked every one they met on the road, at first hopefully, then, as fear grew, with clutching hands and fevered eyes. But the answer was always the same. They had not passed that way. Chance, Fate, call it what you will, brought Madame and the old man to Bar-le-Duc, and there, soon after her arrival, she heard that her husband had been wounded in the earliest of the fighting and was now a prisoner in Germany. A prisoner and ill. Day after day dragged by. She found employment on the farm near the town, she made inquiries, exhausted every channel of information, but no trace of the children could be found.