“It never rains but it pours,” is as true of the Ardennes as of more
distant lands. It has been pouring all night. It is pouring now. In the
silence between the pitiless showers, we can hear the roar of the siege
guns already bombarding Liège.
More trees have been cut down during the dark hours. A great wall of
wood bars the road opposite the Gendarmerie leading to Vaux Chavannes.
Numberless recumbent tree-trunks are making great dark tracks across
the long and tortuous route towards the frontier. We have done our
share. We can but wait events.
Everything is curiously quiet this morning ... in the village. For
rustic sounds one only hears the Manhay pig grunting as he wallows with
a furious enjoyment in the churned-up mud of a distant field, and the
yapping of the miserable imprisoned dog from his box-kennel chained to
an old wall. I sit out on the _terrasse_ and begin to sew. Germaine is
brought along in her nurse’s arms and looks at me nervously. It is
ironing day, and her mother is busy collecting the washing from the
garden hedge. Victor plays the good old game of follow-my-leader up and
down the street with little René.
Madame Job comes out of the inn and leans one hand for a moment on the
back of my chair. The other steals up to her eyes.
“I can’t help thinking of Albert,” she says apologetically, “my Albert
in the forts there below.” She gazes in the direction of Liège, which
is hidden behind the distant wooded hills.
“Why fear for him?” I ask. “Is he not lucky to be in the forts, the
forts-which-are-so-strong.”