September 8, 1914.
You can get some idea of how exhausted I was on that night of Wednesday,
September 2, when I tell you that I waked the next morning to find that
I had a picket at my gate. I did not know until Amelie came to get my
coffee ready the next morning--that was Thursday, September 3--can it be
that it is only five days ago! She also brought me news that they were
preparing to blow up the bridges on the Marne; that the post-office had
gone; that the English were cutting the telegraph wires.
While I was taking my coffee, quietly, as if it were an everyday
occurrence, she said: "Well, madame, I imagine that we are going to see
the Germans. Pere is breaking an opening into the underground passage
under the stable, and we are going to put all we can out of sight.
Will you please gather up what you wish to save, and it can be hidden
there?"
I don't know that I ever told you that all the hill is honeycombed with
those old subterranean passages, like the one we saw at Provins. They
say that they go as far as Crecy-en-Brie, and used to connect the royal
palace there with one on this hill.
Naturally I gave a decided refusal to any move of that sort, so far as I
was concerned. My books and portraits are the only things I should be
eternally hurt to survive. To her argument that the books could be put
there,--there was room enough,--I refused to listen. I had no idea of
putting my books underground to be mildewed. Besides, if it had been
possible I would not have attempted it--and it distinctly was
impossible. I felt a good deal like the Belgian refugies I had
seen,--all so well dressed; if my house was going up, it was going up in
its best clothes. I had just been uprooted once--a horrid
operation--and I did not propose to do it again so soon. To that my
mind was made up.
Luckily for me--for Amelie was as set as I was--the argument was cut
short by a knock at the front door. I opened it to find standing there
a pretty French girl whom I had been seeing every day, as, morning and
evening, she passed my gate to and from the railway station. Sooner or
later I should have told you about her if all this excitement had not
put it out of my mind and my letters. I did not know her name. I had
never got to asking Amelie who she was, though I was a bit surprised to
find any one of her type here where I had supposed there were only
farmers and peasants.
She apologized for presenting herself so informally: said she had come,
"de la parte de maman," to ask me what I proposed to do. I replied at
once, "I am staying."
She looked a little surprised: said her mother wished to do the same,
but that her only brother was with the colors; that he had confided his
young wife and two babies to her, and that the Germans were so brutal to
children that she did not dare risk it.
"Of course, you know," she added, "that every one has left Couilly; all
the shops are closed, and nearly every one has gone from Voisins and
Quincy. The mayor's wife left last night. Before going she came to us
and advised us to escape at once, and even found us a horse and
cart--the trains are not running. So mother thought that, as you were a
foreigner, and all alone, we ought not to go without at least offering
you a place in the wagon--the chance to go with us."
I was really touched, and told her so, but explained that I should stay.
She was rather insistent--said her mother would be so distressed at
leaving me alone with only a little group of women and children about
me, who might, at the last moment, be panic-stricken.
I explained to her as well as I could that I was alone in the world,
poor myself, and that I could not see myself leaving all that I
valued,--my home; to have which I had made a supreme effort, and for
which I had already a deep affection,--to join the band of refugies,
shelterless, on the road, or to look for safety in a city, which, if the
Germans passed here, was likely to be besieged and bombarded. I finally
convinced her that my mind was made up. I had decided to keep my face
turned toward Fate rather than run away from it. To me it seemed the
only way to escape a panic--a thing of which I have always had a horror.
Seeing that nothing could make me change my mind, we shook hands, wished
each other luck, and, as she turned away, she said, in her pretty
French: "I am sorry it is disaster that brought us together, but I hope
to know you better when days are happier"; and she went down the hill.
When I returned to the dining-room I found that, in spite of my orders,
Amelie was busy putting my few pieces of silver, and such bits of china
from the buffet as seemed to her valuable,--her ideas and mine on that
point do not jibe,--into the waste-paper baskets to be hidden
underground.
I was too tired to argue. While I stood watching her there was a
tremendous explosion. I rushed into the garden. The picket, his gun on
his shoulder, was at the gate.
"What was that?" I called out to him.
"Bridge," he replied. "The English divisions are destroying the bridges
on the Marne behind them as they cross. That means that another
division is over."
I asked him which bridge it was, but of course he did not know. While I
was standing there, trying to locate it by the smoke, an English
officer, who looked of middle age, tall, clean-cut, rode down the road
on a chestnut horse, as slight, as clean-cut, and well groomed as
himself. He rose in his stirrups to look off at the plain before he saw
me. Then he looked at me, then up at the flags flying over the
gate,--saw the Stars and Stripes,--smiled, and dismounted.
"American, I see," he said.