A soldier, mud-stained, down from the trenches, comes to look for his wife; a tall girl in a black straw cart-wheel hat, plentifully adorned with enormous white daisies, flits here and there; a coarse, burly man who has looked on the wine when it is red and who is wearing a peau-de-bicque (goat-skin coat), which I regard with every suspicion, tries to thrust half-a-franc into my hand. Then comes an alarm. The refugees are not told of it, but thirty Taubes are said to be approaching the town. The meal goes on a little more breathlessly, and we carry soup and meat wondering what will happen if the sickening crash comes. But the French avions chase the Germans away.... Late that night I saw the half-witted old woman asleep on the floor, sitting up, her back propped against a child's body, her knees drawn up to her mouth.
III
"There are refugees at the Ferme du Popey too."
Surely there are refugees everywhere! The quarters at the market have long since proved grotesquely inadequate, for not even the "Serrez-vous, serrez-vous" of the garde could pack three people upon floor space for one, so schoolrooms and barrack-rooms were requisitioned elsewhere, and now even the resources of the farm are being drawn upon. The procession of broken, despairing people seemed never-ending. We met them in every street, trailing pitifully through the mire, or leading farm wagons piled high with household goods. Those at the farm had all come down in carts, it was said, many being days on the road, so, thinking we might be of use, we waded out to find the extensive basse-cour a scene of strange confusion.
Soldiers in horizon-blue were cooking food in their regimental kitchens for famished women and children, others were watering horses at the pond; through the archway at the end we could see yet others hanging socks and underlinen upon the fence; beyond ran the canal guarded by its sentinel trees. Wagons filled the yard, men were shouting and talking, officials moved busily here and there. We climbed a glorified ladder to a long, low, straw-strewn loft which was murkily dark, the windows unglazed, being covered by coarse matting which flapped in the wind. Here a number of women were lying or talking in subdued groups while children scrambled restlessly about, the squalor and misery being heartrending. They were leaving immediately, there was nothing to be done, so, having chatted with a few, we went away, telling a harassed official that we were at his service if he had need of us.
A day or two later this offer had strange fruit, for a horde of excited people descended upon the Boulevard, rang at our door, swarmed into the hall and demanded sabots. Now it happened that a short time before a case of sabots had been sent to us by the American Relief Committee (always generous supporters, supplying many a need)—a case so vast that both wings of our front door had to be opened to admit it—so we were able to invite the horde to satisfy its needs. Instantly the hall became a pandemonium. They flung themselves upon the box, they snatched, they grabbed, they chattered in high, shrill voices—Meusienne women of the working-classes generally talk in a strident scream—they tried on sabots, they flung sabots back into the box; in short, they behaved very much as people do behave when their cupidity is aroused and their nervous systems exhausted by an almost unendurable strain.
The commotion, rising in a steady crescendo, had risen forte, fortissimo, when bo-o-om! thud! bo-o-om! bombs began to fall on the town. The clamour in the hall died away, sabots dropped from nerveless fingers. Bo-o-om! The cellar? Où est-ce? Some one leads the way, and then, while clamour of another kind seizes the skies, in the icy cellar the mob of half-distraught creatures fall on their knees and chant the Rosary.
As a mist is wiped from a mirror by the passage over it of a cloth, angers, passions, greeds were wiped from their eyes, their voices sank to a quiet murmur. Like children they prayed, and the Holy Spirit brooded for one brief moment over hearts that yearned to God.
Then the raid ended, silence fell on the town, but round the sabot-box, like gulls that scream above a shoal of fish, rapacity swooped and dived, and its voice, sea-gull shrill, bit through the air.