In one of the poorest of the small houses in the village lived a
young woman. She had been beautiful, as women in villages often are, a
radiant figure of health and strength, with the perfume and sweetness
of the fields and their sunshine on her lips and in her eyes. She
seemed to be about half-way through her twenties. But now her face was
drawn and pale, and she dragged herself wearily about as if she were
ill.
I remember her home distinctly. It had been a little six-windowed
thatched house near the end of the village. Two of the windows belonged
to a room with an alcove and the kitchen. The other part of the house
had been allotted to the cow, the pigs, and the hens.
It was now almost in ruins. The roof was gone, the woodwork charred,
and the walls had tumbled down in a crumbling heap where the animals
had been. Only the little room with the alcove and the kitchen were
intact, but the window-panes were smashed, the door battered in, and
rags had been stuck in here and there as a slight protection against
wind and weather.
Behind the house there was a small, down-trodden garden, hedged about
with a dyke of willows and elders.
On the day when the Russians entered the village they ravaged it with
fire and sword in their savage exultation. It was said that many of
them were drunk. However that may have been, they forced their way
into farmsteads and houses, took what there was of cattle and fodder,
smashed everything to bits here and set on fire there, and did not deal
gently with the women in the houses.
The little house at the end of the village was also visited by a
soldier. He stormed and raged and shouted and spared nothing of the
little that could be spared. Finally he threw himself upon the young
wife and tried to take her by force.
Then the husband rushed upon him to save his wife's honour. He did not
succeed, and it cost him his life. He fell within the room, killed by
the blow of a sword on his head.
The soldier's savagery increased, and at last it completely mastered
him. He kicked the young woman till she was nearly beside herself with
terror, and stabbed her little boy, who was lying in the bed, with a
bayonet thrust.
Then only, and not till then, was he satisfied with his achievements.
The poor woman buried her husband and child the next day in a corner of
the garden and covered the little mound with flowers.
There was no one who could have helped her to give them Christian
burial. It then became clear to everyone that she had lost her reason.
She went about muttering continually, with a remote and strange look
in her tearworn eyes, that sometimes looked as if they were blind. She
would often sit for hours on the garden dyke beside the grave of her
husband and child.
It was extremely sad and pathetic, and heart-rending to see her sitting
there, sometimes till late at night, as if she were waiting for the two
to come back.
Sometimes she would lie down on the grave, pressing one cheek against
the ground, and she would lie a long time like that--sometimes until
she fell asleep. If anyone asked her why she lay there she stared
vacantly with a pair of bewildered, tear-bright eyes and answered
through her sobs that she could hear her little boy crying and calling
to her.