in an eternity of dread. On the morning of the third day the sound of
clumsily clattering hoofs in the deserted street brought Madeleine
rushing downstairs to the door of the pharmacy. An old farmer, mounted
on a sweating plow horse, drew rein for an instant in the sun and,
breathing hard, gave the news to the little cluster of white-faced women
and old men who gathered about him. Madeleine pressed in beside her
poorer neighbors, closer to them than at any time in her life, straining
up to the messenger, like them, to hear the stroke of fate. Its menacing
note boomed hollowly in their ears. The Germans were in the next town,
Larot-en-Multien, only eight miles away. The vanguard had stopped there
to drink and eat, but behind them was an ant-like gray horde which
pressed steadily forward with incredible haste and would be in Mandrine
within two hours.
He gathered up his reins to go on, but paused to add a brief suggestion
as to what they might expect. The Germans were too hurried to burn or to
destroy houses; they were only taking everything which was easily
portable. They had robbed the church, had taken all the flour from the
mill, all the contents of all the shops, and when he left (the sight of
the shining plate-glass windows of the pharmacy reminded him) they were
just in the act of looting systematically the pharmacy of Larot, taking
down all the contents of the shelves and packing them carefully into a
big camion.
He rode on. The women dispersed, scurrying rapidly each to her
dependents, children, or sick women, or old men. The Mayor hurried away
to carry a few more of his priceless town records to the hiding-place.
The priest went back to his church. For an instant Madeleine was left
alone in the empty street, echoing to disaster impending. She looked at
the pharmacy, shining, well ordered, well stocked, useful, _as Jules had
left it_.
At the call to action her sickness vanished like a mere passing
giddiness. Her knees stiffened in anger. They should not carry off
everything from the Mandrine pharmacy! What could the town _do_ without
remedies for its sick? The mere first breath from the approaching
tornado annihilating all in its path crashed through the wall which had
sheltered her small, comfortably arranged life. Through the breach in
the wall she had a passing glimpse of what the pharmacy was; not merely
a convenient way for Jules to earn enough for her and the children to
live agreeably, but one of the vital necessities of the community life,
a very important trust which Jules held.
And now Jules was gone and could not defend it. But she was there.
She ran back into the shop, calling for her little maid, in a loud,
clear voice such as had not issued from her throat since Jules had gone
away. "Simone! Simone!"
The maid came running down the stairs and at the first sight of her
mistress expected to hear that her master had returned or that the
French troops were there, so like herself did Madeleine seem, no longer
stooping and shivering and paper-white, but upright, with hard, bright
eyes. But it was no good news which she brought out in the new ringing
voice. She said: "The Germans will be here in two hours. Help me quickly
hide the things in the cellar ... you know, the further room ... and we
can put the hanging shelves over the door so they won't know there is
another part to the cellar. Bring down the two big trays from the
kitchen. We can carry more that way. Then light two or three candles up
and down the cellar stairs. It won't do for me to fall, these last
days."
She was gathering the big jars together as she spoke, and taking out the
innumerable big and little drawers.
In a moment the two women, one who had been hardly strong enough to
walk, the other scarcely more than a child, were going slowly down the
cellar stairs, their arms aching with the weight of the trays and then
running back upstairs in feverish haste. Shelf after shelf was cleared
of the precious remedies that meant health, that might mean life, in the
days to come. The minutes slipped past. An hour had gone.
From her attic windows from where she could see the road leading to
Lorat-en-Multien, a neighbor called down shrilly that dust was rising
up in thick clouds at the lower end. And even as she called, silently,
composedly, there pedaled into the long main street five or six men in
gray uniforms on bicycles, quite calm and sure of themselves, evidently
knowing very well that the place had no defenders. Madeleine saw the
white hair of M. le Cure and the white beard of M. le Maire advance to
meet the invaders.
"We can't do any more here," she said. "Down to the cellar now, to mask
the door. No, I'll do it alone. Somebody must be here to warn us. We
mustn't be caught down there." She turned to go, and came back. "But I
can't move the hanging shelves alone!"
Simone ventured, "Mlle. Sylvie? Could she watch and tell us?"
Madeleine hesitated a fraction. Sylvie, like her mother, had been asked
to do very little with herself except to be a nice person.
Then, "Sylvie! Sylvie!" called her mother with decision.
The little girl came running docilely, her clear eyes wide in candid
wonder.
Madeleine bent on her a white, stern face of command. "The Germans are
almost here. Simone and I have been hiding papa's drugs in the cellar
and we've not finished. Stay here ... pretend to be playing ... and call
to us the moment you see the soldiers coming. _Do you understand?_"
Sylvie received her small baptism of fire with courage. Her chin began
to tremble and she grew very white. This was not because she was afraid
of the Germans. Madeleine had protected her from all the horrid stories
which filled the town, and she had only the vaguest baby notions of what
the Germans were. It was her mother's aspect, awful to the child, which
terrified her. But it also braced her to effort. She folded her little
white lips hard and nodded. Madeleine and the maid went down the cellar
stairs for the last time.
When they came back, the troops were still not there, although one could
see beyond the river the cloud of white dust raised by their myriad
feet. The two women were covered with earth and cobwebs, and were
breathing heavily. Their knees shook under them. Taking the child with
them, they went up the stairs to the defenseless home. They found
five-year-old Raoul just finishing the house-and-farmyard which he and
Sylvie were beginning when she was called down. "If only I had three
more blocks to do this corner!" he lamented.
* * * * *
Twenty minutes from that time they heard heavy, rapid footsteps enter
the shop below and storm up the stairs. There was a loud knocking, and
the sound of men's voices in a strange language.
Madeleine went herself to open the door. This was not an act of bravery
but of dire necessity. There was no one else to do it. She had already
sent the children to the most remote of the rooms, and at the sound of
those trampling feet and hoarse voices Simone had run away, screaming.
Madeleine's fingers shook as she pushed back the bolt. A queer pulse
began to beat very fast in the back of her dry throat.
The first Germans she had ever seen were there before her. Four or five
tall, broad, red-faced men, very hot, very dusty, in gray, wrinkled
uniforms and big boots, pushed into the room past her. One of them said
to her in broken French: "Eat! Eat! Drink! Very thirsty. Quick!" The
others had already seized the bottles on the sideboard and were drinking
from them.
Madeleine went into the kitchen and brought back on a big tray
everything ready-cooked which was there: a dish of stew, cold and
unappetizing in its congealed fat, a long loaf of bread, a big piece of
cheese, a platter of cooked beans.... The men drinking at the sideboard
cried aloud hoarsely and fell upon the contents of the tray, clutching,
cramming food into their mouths, into their pockets, gulping down the
cold stew in huge mouthfuls, shoveling the beans up in their dirty hands
and plastering them into their mouths, already full....
Some one called, warningly, from below. The men snatched up what bottles
were at hand, thrust them into their pockets, and still tearing off huge
mouthfuls from the cheese, the bread, the meat, they held, and
masticating them with animal noises, turned and clattered down the
stairs again, having paid no more attention to Madeleine than if she had
been a piece of the furniture.
They had come and gone so rapidly that she had the impression of a
vivid, passing hallucination. For an instant she continued to see them
there still, in lightning flashes. Everywhere she looked, she saw yellow
teeth, gnawing and tearing at food; bulging jaw-muscles straining; dirty
foreheads streaked with perspiration, wrinkled like those of eating
dogs; bloodshot eyes glaring in physical greed.
"Oh, les sales betes!" she cried out loud. "The dirty beasts!"
Her fear left her, never to come back, swept away by a bitter contempt.
She went, her lip curling, her knees quite strong under her, to reassure
Simone and the children.
The house shook, the windows rattled, the glasses danced on the
sideboard to the thunder of the innumerable marching feet outside, to
the endless rumble of the camions and artillery. The volume of this wild
din, and the hurried pulse of straining haste which was its rhythm,
staggered the imagination. Madeleine scorned to look out of the window,
although Simone and the children called to her from behind the curtains:
"There are millions and millions of them! They are like flies! You
couldn't cross the street, not even running fast, they are so close
together! And how they hurry!"
Madeleine heard some one come up the stairs and enter the hall without
knocking. She found there a well-dressed man with slightly gray hair who
informed her in correct French, pronounced with a strong accent, that he
would return in one hour bringing with him four other officers and that
he would expect to find food and drink ready for them. Having said this
in the detached, casual tone of command of a man giving an order to a
servant, he went away down the stairs, unfolding a map.
Madeleine had all but cried an angry refusal after him, but, as brutally
as on a gag in her mouth, she choked on the sense of her absolute
defenselessness in the face of physical force. This is a sensation which
moderns have blessedly forgotten, like the old primitive fear of
darkness or of thunder. To feel it again is to be bitterly shamed.
Madeleine was all one crimson flame of humiliation as she called Simone
and went into the kitchen.
They cooked the meal and served it an hour later to five excited, elated
officers, spreading out maps as they ate, laughing, drinking
prodigiously and eating, with inconceivable rapidity, such vast
quantities of food that Simone was sure she was serving demons and not
human beings and crossed herself repeatedly as she waited on table. In
spite of all their haste they had not time to finish. Another officer
came up the stairs, thrust his head in through the door, and called a
summons to them. They sprang up, in high feather at what he had said,
snatching at the fruit which Simone had just set on the table. Madeleine
saw one of her guests crowd a whole peach, as big as an apple, into his
mouth at once, and depart, choking and chewing, leaning over so that the
stream of juice which ran from his mouth should not fall on his
uniform.
Simone shrieked from the kitchen, "Oh, madame! The garden! The garden!"
Madeleine ran to a window, looked down, and saw long rows of horses
picketed in the garden. Two German soldiers were throwing down hay from
the gable end of the Mandrine livery-stable which overlooked the wall.
The horses ate with hungry zest, stamping vigorously in the flowerbeds
to keep off the flies. When they had finished on the hay, they began on
the vines, the little, carefully tended fruit-trees, the bushes, the
flowers. A swarm of locusts could not have done the work more
thoroughly.
As she stood there, gazing down on this, there was always in Madeleine's
ears the incessant thundering rumble of the passing artillery....
Through the din there reached her ears a summons roared out from below:
"Cellar! Cellar! Key!"
She was at white heat. She ran downstairs, forgetting all fear, and,
raising her voice to make herself heard above the uproar outside, she
shouted with a passionate wrath which knew no prudence: "You low, vile
thieves! I will not give you one thing more!"
Her puny defiance to the whirlwind passed unnoticed. The men did not
even take the time to strike her, to curse her. With one movement they
turned from her to the cellar door, and, all kicking at it together,
burst it open, trooped downstairs, returning with their arms full of
bottles and ran out into the street.
And all the time the very air shook, in almost visible waves, to the
incessant thundering rumble of the artillery passing.
Madeleine went upstairs, gripping the railing hard, her head whirling.
She had scarcely closed the door behind her when it was burst open and
five soldiers stormed in, cocked revolvers in their fists. They did not
give her a look, but tore through the apartment, searching in every
corner, in every closet, pulling out the drawers of the bureaus,
tumbling the contents on the floor, sweeping the cupboard shelves clear
in one movement of their great hands, with the insane haste which
characterized everything done that day. When they had finished they
clattered out, chalking up something unintelligible on the door. Raoul
and Sylvie began to cry wildly, their nerves undone, and to clutch at
their mother's skirts.
Madeleine took them back into their own little room, undressed them and
put them to bed, where she gave them each a bowl of bread and milk. All
this she did with a quiet air of confidence which comforted the
children. They had scarcely finished eating when they fell asleep, worn
out. Madeleine heard Simone calling for her and went out in the hall. A
German soldier, desperately drunk, held out a note which stated that
four Herr-Lieutenants and a Herr-Captain would eat and sleep there that
night, dinner to be sharp at seven, and the beds ready.
After delivering this he tried to put his arm around Simone and to drag
her into the next room. Simone struggled and screamed, shriek after
shriek, horribly. Madeleine screamed too, and snatching up the poker,
flung herself on the man. He released his hold, too uncertain on his
feet to resist. Both women threw themselves against him, pushing him to
the door and shoving him out on the narrow landing, where he lost his
balance and fell heavily, rolling over and over, down the stairs.
Madeleine bolted the door, took a long knife from the kitchen table, and
waited, her ear at the keyhole, to see if he tried to come back.
This was the woman, you must remember, who less than a month before had
been sitting in the garden sewing on fine linen, safe in an unfathomable
security.
The man did not attempt to return. Madeleine relaxed her tense crouching
attitude and laid the knife down on the table. The perspiration was
streaming down her white cheeks. It came over her with piercing horror
that their screams had not received the slightest response from the
outside world. No one was responsible for their safety. No one cared
what became of them. It made no difference to any one whether they had
repelled that man, or whether he had triumphed over their resistance....
And now she must command her shaking knees and trembling hands to
prepare food for those who had sent him there. Of all the violent
efforts Madeleine had been forced to make none was more racking than to
stoop to the servility of this submission. She had an instant of frenzy
when she thought of locking the door and defying them to enter, but the
recollection of the assault on the thick oaken planks of the cellar
door, and of its splintering collapse before those huge hobnailed boots,
sent her to the kitchen, her teeth set in her lower lip. "I never will
forgive them this, never, never, never!" she said aloud passionately,
more passionately than she had ever said anything in her life, and she
knew as she spoke that it was not of the slightest consequence to any
one whether she would or not.
At seven the meal was ready. At half-past seven the four officers
entered, laughing, talking loudly, jubilant. One of them spoke in good
French to Madeleine, complimenting her on her soup and on the wine. "I
told my friends I knew we would find good cheer and good beds with
Madame Brismantier," he told her affably.
Astonished to hear her name, Madeleine looked at him hard, and
recognized, in spite of his uniform, a well-to-do man, reputed a Swiss,
who had rented a house for the season, several summers back, on a
hillside not far from Mandrine. He had professed a great interest in the
geology of the region and was always taking long walks and collecting
fossils. Jules had an amateur interest in fossils also, and this,
together with the admirably trained voice of the Swiss, had afforded
several occasions of social contact. The foreigner had spent an evening
or two with them, singing to Madeleine's accompaniment. And once, having
some valuable papers left on his hands, he had asked the use of the
Brismantier safe for a night. He had been very fond of children, and
had had always a jolly greeting for little Raoul, who was then only a
baby of two. Madeleine looked at him now, too stupefied with wonder to
open her lips. A phrase from "An die ferne Geliebte," which he had sung
very beautifully, rang in her ears, sounding faint and thin but clear,
through the infernal din in the street.
She turned abruptly and went back into the kitchen. Standing there,
before the stove, she said suddenly, as though she had but just known
it, "Why, he was a spy, all the time!" She had not thought there were
such people as spies outside of cheap books.
She was just putting the roast on the table when some one called loudly
from the street. The men at the table jumped up, went to the window,
leaned out, exchanged noisy exultant words, cursed jovially, and turned
back in haste to tighten the belts and fasten the buttons and hooks
which they had loosened in anticipation of the feast. The spy said
laughingly to Madeleine: "Your French army runs away so fast, madame,
that we cannot eat or sleep for chasing it! Our advance guard is always
sending back word to hurry faster, faster!"
One of the others swept the roast from the table into a brown sack, all
crammed their pockets full of bread and took a bottle under each arm. At
the door the spy called over his shoulder: "Sorry to be in such a hurry!
I will drop you a card from Paris as soon as the mails begin again."
They clattered down the stairs.
Madeleine bolted the door and sank down on a chair, her teeth chattering
loudly. After a time during which she vainly strove to master a mounting
tide of pain and sickness, she said: "Simone, you must go for Sister
Ste. Lucie. My time has come. Go by our back door, through the alley,
and knock at the side door of the Hospice ... you needn't be gone more
than three minutes."
Simone went downstairs, terribly afraid to venture out, even more afraid
to be left alone with her mistress. Madeleine managed to get into the
spare bedroom, away from the children's room, and began to undress, in
an anguish of mind and body such as she had not thought she could endure
and live. But even now she did not know what was before her. In a short
time Simone came back, crying and wringing her hands. A sentry guarded
the street and another the alley. They had thrust her back into the
house, their bayonets glittering, and one had said in French,
"Forbidden; no go out till daylight." She had tried to insist, to
explain, but he had struck her back with the butt end of his rifle. Oh,
he had hurt her awfully! She cried and cried, looking over her shoulder,
tearing at her apron. It was evident that if there had been any
possibility for her to run away, she would have done it, anywhere,
anywhere....
* * * * *
Madeleine's little boy was born that night. She, who of course must
needs have her mother to take all the responsibility, and the nurse
whose voice was agreeable to her, went through her fiery trial alone,
with no help but the foolish little Simone, shivering and gasping in
hysteria. She was nothing but a pair of hands and feet to be animated by
Madeleine's will-power and intelligence. In those dreadful hours
Madeleine descended to the black depths of her agony but dared never
abandon herself even to suffer. At every moment she needed to shock
Simone out of her panic by a stern, well-considered command.
She needed, and found, strange, unguessed stores of strength and
resolution. She felt herself alone, pitted against a malign universe
which wished to injure her baby, to prevent her baby from having the
right birth and care. But she felt herself to be stronger than all the
malignity of the universe. Once, in a moment's lull during the fight,
she remembered, seeing the words, zig-zag like lightning on a black
sky,--a sentence in the first little history-book she had studied as a
child,--"The ancient Gauls said they feared nothing, not enemies, not
tempest, not death. Until the skies fell upon their heads, they would
never submit." ... "They were my ancestors!" said the little Gaulish
woman, fighting alone in the darkness. She clenched her teeth to repress
a scream of pain and a moment later told Simone, quite clearly, in a
quiet tone of authority, just what to do, again.
Outside, all night long, there thundered the rumbling passage of the
artillery and camions.
In the morning, when Sylvie and Raoul awoke, they found Simone crouched
in a corner of their mother's room, sobbing endlessly tears of sheer
nervous exhaustion. But out from their mother's white, white face on the
pillow looked triumphant eyes. She drew the covers down a little and
lifted her arm. "See, children, a little new brother."
As she spoke she thrust out of her mind, with a violence like that with
which she had expelled the ruffian from the door, the thought that the
little brother would probably never see his father. It was no moment to
allow herself the weakness of a personal sorrow. She must marshal her
little forces. "Come, Sylvie dear. Simone is all tired out; you must get
us something to eat, and then you and Simone must bring in all you can
of what is left in the kitchen and hide it here under mother's bed." She
had thought out her plan in the night.
During the next days Madeleine was wholly unable to stand on her feet.
From her bed she gave her orders--desperate, last-resort orders to a
defeated garrison. The apartment was constantly invaded by ravenously
hungry and thirsty men, but her room was not entered. The first morning
the door to her room had been opened brusquely, and a gray-haired
under-officer entered hastily. He stopped short when he saw Madeleine's
drawn white face on the pillow, with the little red, bald head beside
her. He went out as abruptly as he had gone in and chalked something on
the door. Thereafter no one came in; although not infrequently, as
though to see if the chalked notice were true, the door was opened
suddenly and a head with a spiked helmet thrust in. This inspection of a
sick woman's room could and did continually happen without the slightest
warning. Madeleine was buffeted by an angry shame which she put aside
sternly, lest it make her unfit to nurse her baby.
They lived during this time on what happened to be left in the kitchen,
after that first day of pillage, some packages of macaroni, tapioca, and
cornstarch, part of a little cheese, some salt fish, two or three boxes
of biscuits, a little sugar, a little flour. They did unsavory cooking
over the open fire till their small supply of wood gave out. The
children submitted docilely to this regime, cowed by their mother's
fierce command not for an instant to go out of her sight. But the little
maid, volatile and childish, could not endure life without bread. She
begged to be allowed to go out, to slip along the alley to the Hospice
and beg a loaf from Sister Ste. Lucie. There must be bread somewhere in
town, she argued, unable to conceive of a world without bread. And in
the daytime the sentries would let her pass.