Part 13 (1/2)

St. Quentin! Then the Germans were on our soil! The Belgians were right--they were evidently advancing rapidly. But why worry? We were safe as long as we had the French army between us and them.

Thought as yet the day was but a couple of hours old, I was weary. This business of hotel-keeping on so large it scale with so little a.s.sistance was beginning to tell on my strength. I opened the gate and told George and Leon to welcome any who wished to come in, and then repairing to the kitchen, I sat down and began helping the others prepare vegetables. The discovery that in spite of all their good will guests had necessarily left many traces of their pa.s.sage, brought me to my feet again, and we were all hard at work when a haggard female face looked in at the kitchen window.

”Is there a doctor here?”

”No,--but--”

The woman burst into tears. Madame Guix and I hurried out into the court. ”My baby--I can't seem to warm her,” moaned the poor mother.

”She hasn't eaten anything since yesterday.”

And stretching out her arms, the woman showed us an infant that she had been carrying in her ap.r.o.n. It was dead.

I had difficulty in overcoming my emotion, but Madame Guix took the poor little corpse into her arms, and I helped the mother to an arm chair in the refectory.

A cup of strong coffee brought back a little color to her wan cheeks and she told us she was from Charleville. The Taubes had got in their sinister work to good advantage among the civil population but they were merely the forerunners of another and heavier bombardment. The townspeople had fled in their night clothes.

”Are you alone?”

”Yes--I'm not a native of Charleville. My husband and I have only been married a year. He left the second of August and the baby was born the tenth. She's only three weeks old.”

No wonder the mother looked haggard--one hundred and fifty miles on foot, with a newborn infant in her arms, fleeing for her life before the barbarous hordes!

I pressed another cup of coffee with a drop of brandy in it upon her.

She looked appealingly at both of us and then drank.

”Was your husband good to you?” asked Madame Guix.

”Ah, yes, Madame.”

”Do you love him well enough to endure another sacrifice like a true wife and mother that you are?”

”Yes.”

And then we told her that her baby bad gone--gone to a brighter Country where war is unknown. She looked at us in amazement, and burying her head on her arm, sobbed silently but submissively.

”Come, come, you must sleep--and when you are rested we will help you to find room in a cart which will take you towards your parents.”

She cast a long, loving look at her first born, and let herself be led away.

All we could do was to make an official declaration of the death at the town hall. A small linen sheet served as shroud, a clean, flower-lined soap box formed that baby's coffin, and Greorge and I were the grave diggers and chief mourners, who laid the tiny body at rest in the little vine-grown churchyard. War willed it thus.

When I got back from the cemetery I found another load of refugees installed in the courtyard. This time they proved to be a hotel keeper and her servants from the Ardennes. They, however, had foreseen that flight was imminent and had carefully packed a greater part of their household belongings and valuables onto several wagons, taking care that all were well balanced and properly loaded so as to carry the maximum weight without tiring the horses. They needed less attention than the others had required, for when I explained that the house was theirs, they went about their work swiftly and silently, getting in no one's way and attending to every want of their mistress, who sat in her coupe and gave orders.

Later on they were joined by the occupants of numerous other equipages, all from the same district--but with whom I had but little intercourse.

From one poor woman, however, I learned that her two daughters, aged sixteen and seventeen, had been lost from the party for two days. They were in the cart with the curate who had stopped to water his horse, thus losing his place in line. When they had reached the spot where the road forked, which direction had he taken? What had become of them? She pinned her name and route on the refectory wall, begging me to give it to them if they ever inquired for her. To my knowledge they never pa.s.sed.

At luncheon Madame Guix announced that Yvonne was better. Far from well, but better. That was a load off my mind.

The mother of the poor little infant we had buried was peacefully slumbering on a cot in the hospital, and presently Leon came in to say that old Cesar had put his hoof on the ground for the first time in four days. Bravo! I felt much relieved.

And still the carts rolled down the valley, their noise echoing between the hills. To-day there was no respite: right on through the heat of noon they rumbled past, thicker and faster it seemed to me.