The village is parched for news. Only the black, yellow and red flag
floating majestically above the Gendarmerie wall and the dull boom-boom
of the cannon which, night and day, still comes from the direction
of Liège, remind us that we are in Belgium, an integral part of that
gallant little land. We have been without letters and papers for a
week. We know nothing. Scarcely a living soul dares to find his way
along the Uhlan-infested roads.
The engines of the little vicinal train are still packed away in their
sheds in tidy rows. The ticket office is deserted. The workmen sit
quietly at home, watching the starvation ghoul tread nearer day by day.
The two-horsed _malle-postes_ which feed the surrounding villages with
letters from our central Manhay office have ceased running.
We are athirst for truth. Most would give all they possess (it is not
worth much!) for just one word of encouragement about the campaign.
It is terrible to hear the cannon dealing out slaughter to your loved
ones, to know that your houses, your food, your very lives are in
hourly jeopardy, to be “in” the war and yet more ignorant of its events
and trend than the people of India in all likelihood.
Yet the peasants never curse the enemy. That is the most wonderful
thing. This very day I have seen a very poor villager give all the
drink he had in his little house to some Uhlans whom he thought looked
tired. He refused payment with indignation. It was a gift.
We are all suffering from Prussian eye. We see Uhlans everywhere.
Behind the hedges, under the shade of the trees, popping out of cottage
doors, springing Jack-in-the-box-like from beneath a bridge. We
dream Uhlan, we talk Uhlan, we taste Uhlan. I think a fine should be
inflicted on any villager who mentions the hated word more than once in
twenty-four hours.
A peasant deserter has been discovered in an adjacent village. He
ought to have joined the 13th Classe by rights when it was called up.
Poor fellow! He has a wife and three young delicate children and is,
I fancy, none too strong himself. What torture to remain there in
disgrace among the old men and young boys. And the penalty for him at
the end is death....
Heroic M. le Directeur and his wife. I often think of them in their
little country house near by. The vicinal railway which has opened
up this exquisite corner of the world is due to his initiative. The
peasants look to him as to a father.
His wife goes quietly about her business during this dreadful time as
though there were no such thing as war. “Il faut feindre” (one must
make-believe), she says to me. She does it well. No one would guess
that her mother is in the burning village of Visé and the rest of their
relations shut up in Liège. How hard it is for them to possess their
souls in patience when loved ones are suffering so few—so very few
miles away.
Like Madame Job they are thirsting for news. But unlike her they keep
the longing to themselves. Madame Job has, I believe, a sneaking hope
that Albert may turn up one day outside the little white-washed inn. I
suspect she would rather have her beloved Albert a live coward than a
dead hero.
A wire has come from Erezée, ten miles away, to say that packets of
letters have arrived. A system of hand-messengers has been successful
in bringing them through from Namur without mishap. Who will volunteer
to rush them to Manhay through our Uhlan-infested country?
The postmen refuse because of the trouncing their comrades received
yesterday. M. A—— and I agree to have a try. He harnesses the hotel
horse and we start off in the light spring dog-cart. Behind we have two
refugees from Gouvy. They own no luggage beyond a bird-cage, so we are
not over-loaded.
Gouvy is a frontier town which the Germans are fortifying in case of
their enforced retreat. They have installed several regiments there and
made the inhabitants’ lives unbearable. The station-master, postmaster
and other civilians have been sent off as prisoners of war to Berlin
after the pleasant Teuton fashion. These poor refugees are going to
their parents at Barvaux, near Namur. May they find peace there as they
expect. Personally I doubt it!
The drive to Erezée is uneventful. We suspect a Uhlan behind every
tree-trunk but none appears. No living soul is on the road. As we enter
the village street the peasants run out of the houses to welcome us. It
is almost a royal progress. We realise how isolated these villages now
are from one another.
A tiny Belgian flag is flying from the church at the top of the hill.
Evidently the best the village could provide; it must have taken the
choir, the Curé and all his merry, merry men to hoist it to its present
height. As a decorative item that flag is beneath contempt. Its slender
flag-pole is of such curved dimensions as to make it stick out from
the belfry quite lop-sidedly. But as a moral factor it is beyond all
praise....
We alight by the picturesque old pump. A crowd, including the gypsies
from a travelling caravan, gathers round us anxious to hear the news.
In return they tell us theirs. One story interests me. At Hotton, near
Melreux, a few miles away, the Colonel of an invading troop called
on the doctor’s wife and politely asked her for the address of the
Bourgmestre.
The doctor’s wife, not to be outdone in civility, sent her little girl
along to show him.
In a short while the Colonel returned with the Bourgmestre in tow as
prisoner.
“Where is your husband?” he demanded of the doctor’s wife.
“Out visiting patients,” she replied.
“Out when I ask for him!” shrieked the infuriated officer, “I will
have him shot for disobeying orders!”
This gross piece of injustice was happily not perpetrated. The Colonel
graciously forgave the doctor, for, when the soldiers went to fetch
him, he was found tending the German wounded with tender care....