ON THE ROAD
Thevillage is parched for news. Only the black, yellow and red flag floating majestically above the Gendarmerie wall and the dull boom-boom of the cannon which, night and day, still comes from the direction of Liège, remind us that we are in Belgium, an integral part of that gallant little land. We have been without letters and papers for a week. We know nothing. Scarcely a living soul dares to find his way along the Uhlan-infested roads.
The engines of the little vicinal train are still packed away in their sheds in tidy rows. The ticket office is deserted. The workmen sit quietly at home, watching the starvation ghoul tread nearer day by day. The two-horsedmalle-posteswhich feed the surrounding villages with letters from our central Manhay office have ceased running.
We are athirst for truth. Most would give all they possess (it is not worth much!) for just one word of encouragement about the campaign.It is terrible to hear the cannon dealing out slaughter to your loved ones, to know that your houses, your food, your very lives are in hourly jeopardy, to be “in” the war and yet more ignorant of its events and trend than the people of India in all likelihood.
Yet the peasants never curse the enemy. That is the most wonderful thing. This very day I have seen a very poor villager give all the drink he had in his little house to some Uhlans whom he thought looked tired. He refused payment with indignation. It was a gift.
We are all suffering from Prussian eye. We see Uhlans everywhere. Behind the hedges, under the shade of the trees, popping out of cottage doors, springing Jack-in-the-box-like from beneath a bridge. We dream Uhlan, we talk Uhlan, we taste Uhlan. I think a fine should be inflicted on any villager who mentions the hated word more than once in twenty-four hours.
A peasant deserter has been discovered in an adjacent village. He ought to have joined the 13th Classe by rights when it was called up. Poor fellow! He has a wife and three young delicate children and is, I fancy, none too strong himself. What torture to remain there in disgrace amongthe old men and young boys. And the penalty for him at the end is death....
Heroic M. le Directeur and his wife. I often think of them in their little country house near by. The vicinal railway which has opened up this exquisite corner of the world is due to his initiative. The peasants look to him as to a father.
His wife goes quietly about her business during this dreadful time as though there were no such thing as war. “Il faut feindre” (one must make-believe), she says to me. She does it well. No one would guess that her mother is in the burning village of Visé and the rest of their relations shut up in Liège. How hard it is for them to possess their souls in patience when loved ones are suffering so few—so very few miles away.
Like Madame Job they are thirsting for news. But unlike her they keep the longing to themselves. Madame Job has, I believe, a sneaking hope that Albert may turn up one day outside the little white-washed inn. I suspect she would rather have her beloved Albert a live coward than a dead hero.
A wire has come from Erezée, ten miles away, to say that packets of letters have arrived. A system of hand-messengers has been successful in bringing them through from Namur withoutmishap. Who will volunteer to rush them to Manhay through our Uhlan-infested country?
The postmen refuse because of the trouncing their comrades received yesterday. M. A—— and I agree to have a try. He harnesses the hotel horse and we start off in the light spring dog-cart. Behind we have two refugees from Gouvy. They own no luggage beyond a bird-cage, so we are not over-loaded.
Gouvy is a frontier town which the Germans are fortifying in case of their enforced retreat. They have installed several regiments there and made the inhabitants’ lives unbearable. The station-master, postmaster and other civilians have been sent off as prisoners of war to Berlin after the pleasant Teuton fashion. These poor refugees are going to their parents at Barvaux, near Namur. May they find peace there as they expect. Personally I doubt it!
The drive to Erezée is uneventful. We suspect a Uhlan behind every tree-trunk but none appears. No living soul is on the road. As we enter the village street the peasants run out of the houses to welcome us. It is almost a royal progress. We realise how isolated these villages now are from one another.
A tiny Belgian flag is flying from the church at the top of the hill. Evidently the best the village could provide; it must have taken the choir, the Curé and all his merry, merry men to hoist it to its present height. As a decorative item that flag is beneath contempt. Its slender flag-pole is of such curved dimensions as to make it stick out from the belfry quite lop-sidedly. But as a moral factor it is beyond all praise....
We alight by the picturesque old pump. A crowd, including the gypsies from a travelling caravan, gathers round us anxious to hear the news.
In return they tell us theirs. One story interests me. At Hotton, near Melreux, a few miles away, the Colonel of an invading troop called on the doctor’s wife and politely asked her for the address of the Bourgmestre.
The doctor’s wife, not to be outdone in civility, sent her little girl along to show him.
In a short while the Colonel returned with the Bourgmestre in tow as prisoner.
“Where is your husband?” he demanded of the doctor’s wife.
“Out visiting patients,” she replied.
“Out when I ask for him!” shrieked theinfuriated officer, “I will have him shot for disobeying orders!”
This gross piece of injustice was happily not perpetrated. The Colonel graciously forgave the doctor, for, when the soldiers went to fetch him, he was found tending the German wounded with tender care....