TO LEAVE OR NOT TO LEAVE
Peopleare leaving the village in ones and twos. It is pathetic to watch them come out of their houses, gently turn the key in the lock and then, with slow, sad step, walk quietly away along the high road, turning their backs for ever on their little world. They carry their most cherished possessions in a square cotton sack-bag of enormous check design slung from their shoulders. In their hands are little parcels or perhaps a straw basket packed with a medley of quaint treasures. Small, sturdy, brown-faced children run at their heels.
The peasants visualise mentally the awful atrocities at Visé and tremble at the knowledge that many men have been shot in the surrounding countryside. They say to themselves, “What happens there will happen here to-morrow.” They are afraid. They leave. If they stay it will be in a famine-stricken, Uhlan-haunted country. As they go ... well, I hope they have somewhere to go to!
As refugees they will earn the sympathy of all.But charity, compensation, re-instatement, will never make them amends for the loss of lands and relatives and the dreadful agony of mind they have endured.
The lady of therosierhas fled. The watering-can is thrown carelessly in a corner and therosieris already beginning to fade. The curtains are drawn and the doors locked at the red house opposite. The old maids of Manhay are suspected of planning a similar flight or their pig is very out-of-hand. He has been caught executing weird manœuvres in the street village, including the charging of ten tired Uhlans who coldly rebuffed him at the point of the lance.
Stragglers have come in from the frontier on their way from here to nowhere. They have the weary, listless air of people who have lost all interest in their lives. They carry their possessions in a small brown parcel and have the inevitable children dragging behind them. One can only offer them food and drink (we have not too much to spare) and speed them on their way.
Refugeeing seems in the air. I am amazed to find the house of Job-Lepouse, at least the feminine portion, is now thinking of retreat. I come upon Madame Job, the two little girls and MessieursAlfred and Floribert, all busy packing things in the backyard. A hugemalle-postewith two horses is drawn up near the stables, a large, wide-mouthed washing-basket on the roof, lashed to the sides by stout cords, is being filled with an extraordinary medley of food, clothes, linen, books and articles of all kinds.
Madame Job, ever tearful, informs me that they are leaving for a retired little farm in the country, near Esneux, where they will be away from this dreadful high road and comparatively safe.
“You will come too, Mademoiselle?” she implores.
I demur. Any change will only mean out of the frying-pan into the fire. We may be slaughtered en route or arrested as spies. While I hesitate Madame la Précepteur rushes over attired as for a journey, carrying the little Germaine in cloak and bonnet. She is followed by Victor, dressed in sailor clothes. Their belongings are tied up in a large bag.
“The inn will have to be kept open or it will be sacked,” I say. “I think I will stay here, Madame.”
MdlleIrma links her arm in mine and voices her determination to stay too.
The others are just about to take their seats in the great rambling vehicle when M. le Précepteur comes running across the road, white faced and agitated.
“They have caught a postman,” he says, “and torn up and scattered his letters over the forest.”
No need to ask who “they” are!
“Another postman has escaped by throwing his bicycle down by the roadside and plunging into the heart of the woods.”
No one seems to know whether the first man was killed, though rumour surmises he is injured. The point is, these encounters take place on the very road themalle-postehas to traverse.
Afraid to stay, afraid to go, poor Madame Job is in a sad plight. Finally the huge washing-basket with its moorings of cord is safely transferred to the cemented kitchen floor. The Précepteur, his wife and children, the Job-Lepouses and numerous villagers who had turned in to bid them good-bye, have a kind of second breakfast of black bread and coffee round that inevitable big black stove which I always, in my own mind, call “the peasants’” friend.