THREATENED WITH DEATH
“Sauvez-vous, sauvez-vous!” This warning yelled in strident, horrified tones is not the most cheerful awakener on a hot summer’s morning.
I hastily throw on some clothes. With my hair scruntled up in a little bun I rush to the window.
A German officer is standing before the house opposite, pointing a revolver at M. Job’s head. He issues orders in a harsh voice.
As he turns away to address his men, M. Job leaps across the road like a hare, his little sun-dried face pale as death.
“Save yourselves, my children. They are going to shoot us all down and set fire to the village. We have only a moment to escape. Sauvez-vous, sauvez-vous.”
He dashes headlong into the house. A second later the entire Job family are scuttling in and out of the inn back door, in a concerted arrangement to convey some of their things to a safe hiding-place in the fields before it is too late.
I rush back to my room, secrete my jewellery anda treasured letter or two under my dress, make a small packet of soap, toothbrush and other necessaries. Then I go to the front window and peer through.
The officer is still in the same position, revolver in hand, addressing his men in rather angry tones. He has begun no violence as yet.
They are outside the door of a poor old woman who is quite alone. She understands no German and must be dying of fear.
I lean from the dining-room window and say with what firmness I can muster:
“What are you doing?”
“Go indoors,” says a soldier, motioning me imperiously back.
“The peasants have fired on us, so we shall shoot most of you and burn the village,” says the officer, covering me with his revolver.
“Our orders,” adds a soldier nonchalantly.
“But we have no——” (I cannot for the life of me remember “weapon” in German, so I act the word in dumb show, one clenched hand to my shoulder, the other in a straight line but further away. I shut one eye and look along my fists to be more convincing.) “There is not one in the village,” I assure him.
I wish my voice wouldn’t tremble so. It sounds cowardly.
He turns away and calls to the inhabitants of the little cottage before which he stands to come out. The old lady is alone there and I would bet my life she is hiding under the bed at this moment. So I run into the street and the sunshine and, quite beside myself, almost implore the officer not to do this thing.
Disregarding my entreaties he stands with uplifted revolver before the cottage door.
“Come out,” he says again.
No answer.
Before I can move, he lifts his weapon once more. With the gestures of a chef d’orchestre in the opening bars of his favourite orchestra, he strikes the glass panes of the door this way and that with the cold steel. The glass shatters in a thousand fragments on the square stone step. There is something so cruel and calculating in the expression of his hard face. With a smile of satisfaction the officer fires once, twice, thrice into the recesses of the room. One would think a mouse could not escape.
He throws something which must be a hand grenade into the midst of the mysterious still gloom. In an instant smoke and flames seem torise from the very ground before my horrified eyes. Then he calmly shoots once—twice again into the seething darkness to make sure that he has missed nothing. He turns away to look for the next victim.
I can’t help the tears running down my cheeks, but I say again:
“Indeed, indeed we have never fired. If you search the village through you will find we have nothing to fire with.”
“I heard them,” he says sternly.
In the distance a woman is scuttling along, trying to reach a neighbour’s house in safety. She is so terror-stricken, her progress is like the gait of a sick fowl. A living example is to hand. I point towards her. “Look at that,” I say. “The poor women are so frightened they cry all day long. Besides the women there are only old men and boys. Their one wish is to get the harvest in in peace. Is that a crime?”
A conference takes place between the soldiers I gather that our fate is in the balance. We must be born under a lucky star. We are saved again. The officer remounts his horse. He and his troop ride off briskly in the direction of Grand-Mesnil.
They are scarcely round the corner before the entire population of the village has rushed out carrying every bucket and jug they can lay their hands on. The old lady, not dead as I expected, but considerably stupefied by smoke, is saved from the burning house and set under the hedge to recover. The rest of us form a line and pass bucket after bucket of water from the pump, in the best workmanlike, fireman style.
The flames have got a good hold and the smoke is stifling, but we all work with a will and soon subdue them.
A young Belgian, just arrived on a motor-bicycle, says “salle cochons” under his breath, but does not help in the work of rescue. Later he confides to me that he is a Belgian spy carrying dispatches. Two days ago he was at Louvain talking with an officer of the “men in skirts.” My heart leaps to think they are so near.
“This morning I have come from Liège,” he says. “The German dead were piled up each side of my path, ghastly lolling corpses, one on the top of each other.” He puts his hand up higher than his head. “It was the most awful sight I have ever seen, and then the odour....” And the poor spy is literally sick in the village street.
I go back to the burnt cottage. Already willing hands have pulled out odds and ends of still smouldering furniture. The old lady’s cat, disturbed in early morning slumber, has once more resumed its accustomed position on the blackened doorstep. Its expression is cynical and its back arched in a definite anti-Prussian hump. I have no reason whatever to doubt the accuracy of its language when the next Uhlan comes along. The young Job-Lepouses who have been foremost in helping to extinguish the fire, return with me to breakfast. I have leisure to study their appearance.
Yesterday they were of reasonable size. To-day they look as though they had undergone a sudden fattening process which has taken effect in the most unlikely places. For instance,MdlleRosa’s right shoulder appears to be afflicted with a monstrous and most unsightly hump. Madame Job’s instep almost equals in size the girth of her waist. M. Floribert has a forearm which would not disgrace a Hackenschmidt. The secret is soon explained.
“Ha-ha, j’ai mes petites économies,” criesMlleLouisa, dragging a fat leather bag from under her skirt.
M. Floribert smiles anxiously. He has numerous treasures up his sleeves, including his Sunday ties.
Madame Job lets down her stocking with the utmost sang-froid and displays a leg bound with Belgian paper money and bandaged with some nice old lace.
The house was stripped bare in those few minutes of pregnant danger. Linen, books and even bread were transferred to the most remote and sheltered corner of the vegetable garden. Here they were deposited in the camion or hooded cart in which M. Albert in the happy days, now gone, used to distribute the crisp, round loaves to the countryside. Here, too, hid Mdme la Précepteur, the children and Mdme Job until the danger had passed by....