We cut across country, rejoined the column, and rode with it to Vinantes, passing on the way a lost motor-lorry. The driver was tearing his hair in an absolute panic. We told him the Germans were just a few miles along the road; but we wished we hadn't when, in hurriedly reversing to escape, he sent a couple of us into the ditch.
At Vinantes we "requisitioned" a car, [Pg 69]some chickens, and a pair of boots. There was a fusty little tavern down the street, full of laughing soldiers. In the corner a fat, middle-aged woman sat weeping quietly on a sack. The host, sullen and phlegmatic, answered every question with a shake of the head and a muttered "N'importe." The money he threw contemptuously on the counter. The soldiers thought they were spies. "As speaking the langwidge," I asked him what the matter was.
"They say, sir, that this village will be shelled by the cursed Germans, and the order has gone out to evacuate."
Then, suddenly his face became animated, and he told me volubly how he had been born in the village, how he had been married there, how he had kept the estaminet for twenty years, how all the leading men of the village came of an evening and talked over the things that were happening in Paris.
He started shouting, as men will—
"What does it matter what I sell, what I receive? What does it matter, for have I not to leave all this?"
Then his wife came up and put her hand on his arm—
"Now, now; give the gentlemen their beer."
I bought some cherry brandy and came away.