To Paulette, the fourth of August meant the sudden ending of all her
happy anticipations, for, shortly after the declaration of war,
Maurice had been taken prisoner.
When the news came to the château, she refused to believe it; such a
thing was impossible! Maurice was to fare forth and fight for
France, he was to fly her colors from his helmet as did the knights
of old! But he had been obliged to fight the invaders of his own
country. The Germans had come! The Germans had conquered! Maurice
was a prisoner!
Paulette had never known in all her short life what denial meant. To
her parents, her word and whim was law, and her brother idolized her.
Her every wish had been gratified. She insisted now that they demand
her lover's freedom. She could not be made to understand the
futility of even asking. It was impossible that what she wanted so
ardently, should be kept from her.
There came a letter, meagre, bloodless, sternly emasculated by the
Teuton censor, but it contained one word that sent the blood from her
lips--"Wounded." Other letters followed, but they were pitifully
empty, so lacking in everything that she wanted to know, that they
were more a source of grief than comfort. After awhile, even these
stopped.
Old Nanine, the Breton woman, who had nursed Paulette and her
brother, shook her head over the shadows under her eyes, the listless
droop of her mouth, the hollows in the delicate oval of her cheeks.
The girl was filled with a flame of deep, bitter rage that consumed
her day and night. The tears that came to the relief of other women,
were denied her. Hate, that most terrible of the children of War,
was born in her breast.
"Now dearie," crooned Nanine, "don't take it like that! It can't be
long before the French will have driven the _Boches_ away, and the
young Monsieur will be back again. Come, calm yourself! What a
picture you will be for him to see when he comes, if you go on so."
But Paulette refused to be comforted. The sunniness of her nature
changed into a brooding sullenness. She grew to hate the very name
of the Germans, and little by little her resentment fastened itself
on Marie, her Austrian sister-in-law.
In the midst of her grief and despair, one day one of her school
friends, a girl of her own age, came to the château. She wore the
white coif of the trained nurse with its little red cross of mercy
bound about her forehead. She was filled with wonderful tales of
bravery and suffering, and in a flash Paulette knew that this was the
work which would fill her time and her heart while waiting for
Maurice, and perhaps enable her to help him. She began to dream that
it might be her hands that would nurse him back to health. She must
make those hands as skillful as possible. She threw herself into the
necessary studies with feverish energy.
Though the General had passed the retiring age, he had been recalled
to active service and was absent most of the time. When he did come
home, it was only for hurried visits. The household was completely
changed. One by one, those of the men servants who were young
enough, had been called to the colors and had marched away. Old
Nanine had seen her two eldest sons go, big, strapping fellows of
whom she was justly proud. In company with so many other French
mothers, she had said good-bye to them for the last time. Jean had
fallen in one of the first skirmishes and Pierre had received his
death wound a few weeks later. Now the youngest, Jacques, had just
left for the front. Her heart was very heavy, but she stifled her
own sorrow to comfort the grieving Paulette.
Madame de la Motte busied herself from early morning to night,
gathering supplies and looking after the families of those who had
gone with the army.
Of the men about the château, none were left excepting Joseph, the
gardener, stooping under his sixty heavy years, and the new butler.
This man was tall and thin, perhaps forty-five, his hair graying at
the temples, his dark, watchful eyes looking out steadily from under
heavy brows. He was so well spoken of in the letters of
recommendation which he presented, that Madame de la Motte considered
herself fortunate to have found him.
Antoine--this was his name--and old Nanine, did not agree very well.
The Breton peasant distrusted and disliked every one whose ancestry
she did not know. Her broad, good-humored face would set in wooden
lines when she and Antoine encountered one another, and if he took
her to task about even the smallest thing, she would shower upon him
a volley of sturdy Breton abuse. So usually the mild and
quiet-spoken Antoine avoided her as much as possible.
Nanine was a privileged character. She came and went as she pleased
in the household, although her own home was the gate house just at
the entrance to the château grounds. Here she lived, with an orphan
girl named Angéle, who was to marry Jacques when he came back from
the war.
To this cottage of Nanine's, Paulette came nearly every day. She
brought her letters as she received them from Maurice, and the two
girls would read them over and over, Angéle pointing out where the
censor had blotted out a phrase, Paulette, through her tears, trying
to supply it. And Jacques' letters were gone over in the same way.
When the news came that he, too, was taken prisoner and sent to
Belgium, they spent much of their time hoping that he would be near
Maurice, and so these two girls, one at each end of the social scale,
bridged the gap that separated them and became one in a sorrow common
to both. For grief, as well as war, knows no caste.
Old Nanine, her wide Breton skirts billowing about her, the huge
wings of her great white Breton cap framing her broad face, trudged
back and forth with Paulette on her errands among the peasants, her
heart heavy with the sorrow that comes to every mother of men, when
men are waging war. She would not trust the girl alone on her own
familiar roads, for the armies were nearing their quiet village.
So the days went by, those dreadful August days. Into almost every
household about them came the sad news that some loved son who had
marched away so bravely, would never return. The faces of the women
grew wan and sad. Joy had gone from the world.
And now the air began to tremble with an ominous intonation, a sound
filled with grim menace that continued day and night, a harbinger of
death and destruction, of devastation and terror. A sound that was
never to cease in the long months that followed, sometimes swelling
into a deep, distant roar, sometimes dying away in a dull,
intermittent muttering.
It was the voice of the guns!