People are 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 the _rosier_ has fled. The watering-can is thrown
carelessly in a corner and the _rosier_ is 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 Messieurs
Alfred and Floribert, all busy packing things in the backyard. A huge
_malle-poste_ with 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.”
Mdlle Irma 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 the _malle-poste_ has 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.