Six Women And The Invasion Part 24

The commandant of every village was ordered to eject so many persons.

The number for Morny was fixed at twenty. There were two volunteers besides ourselves, an elderly lady, Mme. Charvon, and her granddaughter; both wanted to go back to Paris. Thirteen reluctant emigrants were then to be picked up among the people. Bubenpech chose at random a woman from Braye, her five small children, and her old father, then three orphan boys, and a family including an invalid father, a mother, and two little girls.

These had two sons, sixteen and eighteen years old, who would stay behind if the parents went. They raised an outcry.

"My poor boys!" the mother moaned; "am I going to abandon them like that? We beg nothing of the Germans! We want only to be left together."

She went to the "bureau," threw herself at the feet of Bubenpech, who scouted her demand with disdain, and had her kicked out of doors. The morning we were to start she pretended to be ill, and kept to her bed.

The lieutenant despatched four men who took her out of bed, heedless of her resistance, and made her get into the cart, with a blanket as sole wrapper. We heard the poor woman sob while she put on her stays and petticoats in the jolting cart that took us to Laon. And the folly of it was that another woman of Cerny wished for nothing better than to go.

"Since my sister and father are sent away," she said, "I choose rather to go with them; I have no mind to stay here alone with my two babies."

It was not to be. Three persons eager to stay were forced to go; three others, nothing loath to go, were bidden to stay. Thus had our leaders settled the matter.

In other villages it was still worse. A man of Barenton set his house on fire and hanged himself rather than leave. Some persons were sent away because the Germans coveted their houses for one purpose or another. At Vivaise the wife of an adjutant was compelled to leave her well-furnished house for the reason that it pleased those gentlemen. So a blind woman and her invalid husband, both aged seventy-five, were banished from Verneuil. In tears they left their small house where they had lived happily for many a year, their garden, whose fruits were sufficient for their scanty needs. Besides, they had a few fowls and a little money, and so they were not in the least a charge upon the Germans. Of course they expected everything to be plundered and destroyed, and, weak and old as they were, they saw no hope that they would ever come back.

We were volunteers, at one moment distressed at the thought that we left three of our own people in the lurch, at another mad with joy that we should soon be at liberty, or trembling with fear lest we should hear bad news of those whose fate was hidden from us.

About the end of March, after many tears had been shed, embraces and kisses exchanged, after the very dogs had been hugged, we found ourselves in front of the "bureau" with the other departing travellers.

We all got into two big carts, and sat down on our luggage. The departures were somewhat delayed. We had to wait for the woman who did not want to go away.

At ten the carts set out.

"Good-bye, we shall see you later in Paris," Bubenpech cried.

It was the parting kick of the a.s.s.

"Then you will come as a prisoner," replied Antoinette, laying aside all prudence. The officer broke out laughing and turned a deaf ear. With a great deal of jolting, the carts took us away, and we soon lost sight of the pale faces of Mme. Valaine and her daughters. Two gendarmes on horseback accompanied us. Thus we were enrolled among the emigrants. We alighted in Laon, and were shown into a huge hall adjoining the station.

The little emigrants of Cerny were still screaming, the refractory woman had not left off crying. Pierrot felt uneasy, and hung on my arm; we dragged our luggage along with a great deal of trouble. The hall we were taken to was already crowded with hundreds of persons. From early morning the refugees had been arriving in great numbers. Long rough boards nailed upon four upright pieces of wood served as tables and benches. Besides the picture of the emperor the walls were chiefly decorated with vast inscriptions. "G.o.d with us" was not absent; nor was "G.o.d punish England," in letters three feet high. The shrieking of the urchins, their mothers' scolding overtopped the general noise. The old people looked scared, and did not know what to do. On the rough tables soldiers put platters of a sticky, greyish soup; a smell of burnt grease floated in the air. We were waiting for our turn to go to a small room where three nurses of the Red Cross were busy feeling, searching, undressing the emigrants as they pleased.

"No papers, no letters?"

At two every one had filed off before these searchers, and we were ordered to start again. So through the streets of Vaux the pitiful crowd wended its way to the station, about twelve hundred emigrants surrounded by soldiers. From their thresholds the inhabitants stared at us. Truly a more miserable herd never was seen. The Germans had chosen to send away the poorest among the poor of our villages--bareheaded women, ragged children, beggarly men, sick people, cripples, idiots. All were laden and overladen with parcels, baskets, and bundles. There were two or three carts to convey the heaviest luggage, but every one preferred keeping what was dearest to him.

We, too, were overladen. We made what haste we could among the grey crowd. We had walked a mile, I could hardly carry my bag any longer. At one moment it even dropped from my hands. I approached an officer, stiff and stout, who seemed to be the manager of the caravan.

"Sir," I besought, "please order a moment's rest.... I can't go any farther."

"No, no, no halt. If you can't carry your things, ask some one else."

Some one else! That was easy to say. I looked around me despairingly; the people were all as weary as I.

Pierrot stuck to my arm, Antoinette was somewhere in front, Genevieve was spent with fatigue. Near us a soldier seemed touched with pity.

"I am sorry I can't help you, but it is forbidden."

At length I caught sight of a big fellow who carried his fortune in a handkerchief. He was one-eyed, one-armed, but he was willing to take charge of my bag. I was then able to help Genevieve with hers. We were saved, we stopped every other minute, put down our common load, and taking it up again ran forward to fall into place.

Where were we going to? We went on, tramping through the mud, with the noise of a flock of sheep, and, to crown all, there came on a heavy rain, which the poor crying children received on their dirty little noses. We had left the suburbs, and the road now pa.s.sed through the open country. At about three miles from the station we perceived an immense train of third-cla.s.s carriages that was waiting for us. It was carried by storm. Each one settled himself. We were but six persons in one carriage, we and two ladies of Morny, the grandmother and the granddaughter.

We exchanged congratulations. We had been told that the journey might be difficult: one of the hardest stages was pa.s.sed. We sat down to recover our breath, stretched our stiff limbs, and then looked around us. The carriages we were in had been used to convey troops; they were bedecked with inscriptions in pencil. Some without much expense of thought merely wished that "G.o.d should punish England!" Others clamoured for "the death to those pigs of Frenchmen!" Or stated that "French blood is good."

Pierrot conscientiously rubbed out with his handkerchief as much as he could. After many manoeuvres, marches, and counter-marches the train decided to start. It was about four o'clock. Oh, memorable hour! We saw the gate of our prison open a little! Was it possible that we were going away? Was it true? Could we say in our turn, "within four days, Parisse!"

We were made with joy; we kissed one another; then we thought it wise to put our things in order. This carriage would doubtless serve us as a shelter as far as the Swiss frontier, perhaps for two or three days. The first thing, then, was to make ourselves comfortable. Our feet were cold. Suppose we put on our slippers? No sooner said than done.

When our first joy had somewhat cooled down, and we were properly installed, we watched the landscape. The train went slowly through a dull country; the clouds seemed to crawl along the ground, and the mist moistened the panes of the windows. We had hardly gone an hour when the train stopped, and left half of its carriages in the station. Then we resumed our journey, and soon made a second halt. We could not read the name of the station we were at; we did not know even what line we were on. The engine was reversed, then stopped some time after with a loud whistle.

Soldiers went along the carriages and threw the doors open.

"Get down, all, bags and baggage."

Sudden change! In great haste we put on our shoes, tied our shawls and cloaks together, gathered our bags, and jumped out on the line. Many cries and calls were heard. At last the train emptied itself; there was a whistle, and off it moved. There we were, about six hundred of us standing on a steep bank, and wondering what was going to happen next.

No station was to be seen, the country seemed deserted, pasture-land on the left, hills stripped by the winter on the right. The emigrants, uneasy in their minds, bustled about; women fell a-weeping; relations sought one another; an old man bent with age, and walking awry like a crab, moved to and fro. "My wife, I have lost my wife." Thus he moaned to himself, looking for the weak arm that would hold up his greater debility.

The babies cried with cold. A sharp wind pierced us to the marrow, the rain cut our faces, and our hearts thrilled with fear, while the night fell on the anxiety of the miserable herd moving in the fog.

CHAPTER XI

Under the bridge of the railway was a high-road. The soldiers directed the crowd towards it. "Get down, get down," they cried, gesticulating all the while. Narrow steps had been cut in the dark slippery ground.

The bank was very steep, yet every one ventured down; the young people held the old ones; the nimblest carried luggage and infants; the children tumbled forwards upon all fours. On getting to the road we saw a few carts waiting for bags and bundles. We abandoned ours into the hands of the soldiers. Happen what might to our things, our courage failed us to take charge of them again. Who knew how many miles we were to walk?

"Go on, go on," our guardians cried.

And the sorry band, so much the more lamentable as they were drenched to the skin, bent their bodies, and trudged off again. "What does this unexpected halt mean?" we asked one another with a mixture of curiosity and dismay. The road with hedges on each side, after we had met with a bridge and a crossing, took us to a village. Standing in front of their houses, the people, moved with pity, watched our beggarly crowd go by in the twilight, dabbling in the mud, and not knowing where they were being taken to. We did not even know the place we were in. The name we read on a finger-post did not say anything to us. At the top of the street two gendarmes on horseback divided the herd into two parts, so many heads to the right, so many to the left. We were pushed on to the right, we went to the right. We had left the village, and went down a road bordered with high trees that led into the open country.

"They were right all the same, those who said we would be landed in the fields," moaned a woman. Then we took a short cut between two banks. We were all over mud. At length, on the slope of the hill, we caught sight of a dark ma.s.s, a very large farm with vast outhouses. We had reached the goal. The lower windows glimmered; a few guards were seen in a room of the ground floor. We entered the kitchen, where whole beams blazed on the hearth. The soldiers bustled about. It was no light matter to settle in a short time--350 persons crowded in together in the courtyard. And they hurried over the job: so many emigrants in the house, in the barns, in the stables, in the attics.

"Straw is to be had everywhere; do as you can."

The people did as they could. Moving about kept them warm; it was their only means. We were among the privileged; we had been presented with a small room at the angle of the house, on the first story. It was very scantily furnished: a spring mattress in an iron frame, a child's bedstead, two trusses of straw.

"Pierrot, your couch would be fit for a king."

We buried him in the straw with his clothes on, and heaped clothes upon him. He was not cold; he fell asleep.

But we lay, dying with cold, all three on the narrow spring mattress, and the draught chilled us to the bone. In vain we wrapped ourselves in shawls and cloaks; we could get neither warmth nor sleep. We had brought with us a candle, and we let it burn, not without remorse, since we expected many another night of the same kind. A change of weather happened opportunely; the wind suddenly rose and swept away the clouds; we thought there would be a frost. A cold, bleak wind was howling round the house; the weatherc.o.c.ks creaked, the boards in the half-ruined sheds cracked, and the 350 emigrants shuddered with cold in the freezing rooms of the farm and in the draughty barns. A mile and a half away, at the sugar-mill, 360 others were shivering in halls and cellars. In the guard-room downstairs the soldiers gave a straw mattress to a poor old man who had terrible pains in the back, and who did not cease to wail the whole night long. Upstairs, in the attic, there were forty persons, among them fifteen children of charity. There was no rest to their weeping, nor to the patter of their feet. These small refugees, rather than go down the steep, black steps into a colder, blacker place, relieved themselves at the angles of the beams, and we saw with horror a trickle come from between the joists and run down our walls. Twice heavy steps shook the lobby, the door opened, a voice counted us: "One, two, three, four...." The soldiers were going their round. Half-frozen, we ventured downstairs to go and warm ourselves in the kitchen. But it was already crowded with about forty women with their babies, either in front of the fire or squeezed together on the benches. The air was unbreathable, so we went back to our icy chamber. Benumbed with cold, our limbs gathered up together, our chins on our knees, our feet stuck in our m.u.f.fs, with a sore throat and a giddy head we made up our minds to wait for the morning, to take stock of our situation, and to find out in what place fate and the Germans had deposited us.

In the whole Thierache, teeming with lovely hamlets, I warrant that there is no other so pretty as Jouville. It is perched half-way up the hill on the high-road to Guise, and its houses, first set in a straight row along the road, soon take a short-cut, and then descend the vale, where they meet with the purling Serre. They dawdle there in small knots, and storm a second hill, topped by a white steeple-crowned church. This building is not in the least handsome, yet it sowed dissension among the inhabitants. Jouville-East-Hill laid claim to the pious edifice; Jouville-West-Hill got it. Jouville-East-Hill forthwith took to free-thinking, flung itself into the socialist party, and swore it would never cross the Serre to gratify the spiritual needs of its souls. On the other hand, Jouville-West-Hill took a most serious turn, swore only by holy-water sprinklers and stoles, and sang nothing but vespers and matins. Jouville, in ordinary times, gives itself wholly up to cultivation of apples, to cattle-breeding, and to wicker-weaving.

Each occupation adds a feature to the village. The apple trees fill the well-kept orchards that hem it all around; those meadows that stretch afar off feed the cows, and the willows, which will presently be converted into baskets, form thick hedges and make a draught-board pattern in the fields. The village, indeed, is packed with osiers, cut, tied in bundles, placed upright along the streets, and watered by the brook. So they grow green, and are covered with catkins, just like their brothers that have not been cut. The houses of Jouville are small, red and white, beneath a slate hood; their windows laugh a roguish laugh. On their roofs are fantastic weatherc.o.c.ks, and in front of them small gardens, in which box-trees flourish, cut into shapes. In short, Jouville looks at once simple and smart, modest and satisfied, and its mere aspect should cheer up the way-worn wanderer. Though this rustic Eden pleased us, we had no mind to take up our abode in it. The day after our arrival, we managed to ask an officer:

"What is the matter? What are we doing here?"

"Oh, the departure has been postponed, the organisers of the convoy are not in agreement."

"But how long are we going to stay here?"