Part 7

And when the Boches became enraged at their failure in locating the French batteries which roared nightly defiance they would deliberately turn their guns upon the defenseless civilian villages in between, abandoned by all save a few old people and poor families who had nowhere else to go; and perhaps they would kill an old woman or mangle a child playing in the deserted streets; after which sport, encouraged and refreshed, they would go after the French batteries again. Jean, a village boy, had explained all this to Marthe. His entire family had been killed in an explosion, and since then he had turned into a wild, moody character, following the army or roaming the countryside.

Marthe listened to the distant struggle of artillery and then she shrugged her shoulders and said calmly: “It is not near. To-day it is not as near as yesterday. I do not think they will bother us any more. For yesterday Jean and I went through the village and counted, and every single house had been hit. They have finished with us, _maman_! If the guns do not come after us this afternoon may I take Emile and gather flowers for the shrines?”

Her mother shook her head. The frugal breakfast of soup over she was fastening on her apron of coarse ticking to go to work in her field. It was for the sake of that precious plot of five hectares of wheat that she had stayed on in the village, taking fearsome chances, after the enemy had started to gas the entire district and the French orders of evacuation had come.

“You would let little Emile be gassed,” she murmured reproachfully, “while you run off to gather flowers!”

“_Zut!_ They have not gassed us for ten days. And it is cold down here, _maman_. Even in the middle of the day it is cold--and dark. Emile sneezes all the time. And he is getting as white as plaster.”

Her mother sighed. “Very well,” she consented grudgingly, “you may go. But for an hour only. I do not like it, though. Tie Emile’s mask behind his back where he cannot find it.”

“Yes, _maman_. But they are not going to gas us any more. Jean said so.”

“That Jean!” cried her mother angrily. “What does he know about it? Even the good God Himself does not know any more what they will do! And I will not have you playing with that scamp, that _jeune sauvage_. He is not respectable. Chasing all over the country! Following the soldiers! _Hélas!_ What is our poor country coming to? A fine crop of young vagabonds we shall have after the war!”

She thrust into her pocket a hunk of dark sour bread and a fragment of cheese, kissed Emile and Marthe, caught up from the mattress a pallid, somber-eyed girl baby, and went out to the field.

Left to herself, Marthe took Emile, climbed the few steps leading up from her cave home and sat watching the German aëroplanes. They passed, singly or in groups, frequently. The thin drone of their motors coming from the north could be heard long before even Marthe’s keen eyes could pick out the black speck far up in the pale-blue ether. The thunder of artillery had grown fainter and died away. Certainly Jean was right. What was the fun of shooting at houses that were already knocked down?

That afternoon, with Emile clinging to her fingers and every now and then looking up with a delighted smile into her eyes, Marthe led the way to the ruined church. From the leather belt which secured the boy’s diminutive black cotton apron dangled the gas mask. According to orders Marthe had tied it behind his back, and at every step it bobbed up and down like an absurd little antiquated bustle. The sun shone brilliantly. It was an ideal day in which to be out of the cellar. Arrived at the church, with its small inclosed garden of silent inhabitants, Marthe ensconced Emile, always obedient, smiling and tender, upon a grave close under the wall of the old stone chapel, and then rambled off to gather bouquets for the shrines.

How long she remained away, how far she wandered, she did not know; but when she returned little Emile had mysteriously vanished. In her absence the old stone church had altered also. One entire side had fallen out and lay prone, a chaos of tumbled broken granite, upon the mossy ground. And now Marthe recalled having heard an explosion, but so accustomed were her ears to the sound that at the time she had but vaguely marked it. That accounted for the church certainly.

But Emile--where was Emile, obedient, tender little Emile? She ran about, peering behind gravestones, calling shrilly, and at length, smitten by a nameless anguish of horror, scared in every atom of her small being without knowing why, she fled, sobbing wildly, to her mother and poured out her story.

That night there was a hurried exodus. Marthe’s mother, broken by the death of her small son--for if his disappearance was a mystery to the girl it was not to her mother after one glance at the high-piled broken granite--decided to give up her field; but it was like wrenching her heart out of her body. Jean, chancing by that way at dusk, offered his company as far as the next village, for Marthe’s mother, a true peasant, had never in her life traveled more than a dozen kilometers from her own doorstep, and knew less of the outside world than she knew of heaven. So Jean had taken charge. And now he walked beside the refugees, carrying a huge blanketful of their possessions strapped across his shoulders and holding by the hand Marthe, who still wept bitterly at the thought of abandoning her little Emile to the cold and the dark of the deserted churchyard. She pictured him sobbing and stumbling among the mossy stones, and calling in sweet, plaintive tones for his sister. That the fall of the church wall had anything to do with the vanishing of Emile did not once enter her head. The two were separate catastrophes--the one, familiar, ordinary; the other, mystifying, terrible. She, too, bore a sack of household goods upon her back, and from her free hand dangled a small, battered bird cage.

Behind them trudged Marthe’s mother, harnessed to the shafts of a dump cart piled high with mattresses and bedding, and bearing on top the small slumbering Georgette, cozy and warm, nested deep in pillows. Since viewing the fallen wreck of the church not one sound had the mother uttered. If she had marked Jean’s opportune appearance on the scene she did not betray any sign of his presence. And now she plodded forward, shoulders bent, gripping the shafts, dry-eyed, stolid, mute. What were her thoughts upon that twilight road?

Ahead of her Marthe and Jean held low-voiced conversation as to the probable whereabouts of Emile. The boy, who upon hearing her tale had instantly divined the truth, declared it was his opinion that the sacred Mother Marie, looking out through the window from her shrine in the church, had seen Emile, and noting what a gentle and gay little kid he was had borrowed him for a time to play in the sky with her own small Son, who without doubt must be horribly bored among all those solemn, grown-up saints and angels. And this idea of the _jeune sauvage_, the vagabond of the fields, comforted Marthe greatly.

In time they arrived at a village which thus far had escaped shelling. A shelter was found for them. And for a month the peasant mother remained in her new, strange surroundings. But her heart was so heavy that she could not sleep or eat or speak. She suffered as an animal suffers, dumbly. A stranger would have called her sullen--a clod. For hours on end she sat in the same chair, heavy, immobile, and stared out upon a field of grain and poppies and thought of her own plot lying untended in the sun. And finally the tug of the soil became too strong. She returned.

Established once more in the damp cellar of their wrecked home she became herself again, and the first night she chatted volubly with Marthe, to whom she had scarcely addressed a word since their flight; she even sang as she hushed the small Georgette to sleep.

“Listen, _petite_!” she said to Marthe after supper. “I am going down the street a moment to see Madame Barrois. She tends the field next mine. Perhaps also I can get some goat’s milk for the _bébé_. _Ne bouge pas! Sois sage--hein?_” And Marthe had promised soberly not to budge and to be good. She felt lonely the first night, and she wished that Mother Marie would see fit to return Emile. There was such a thing as keeping a borrowed article too long!

Half an hour later her mother burst into the cellar, tears upon her cheek and a strange light in her eye. In her arms she bore a child who bit and wailed and kicked and screamed without cessation: “_Maman! Maman! Maman!_”

“_Ça y est! Tais-toi, mon petit gosse!_” (Enough! Enough! Keep still, my little boy!) murmured Marthe’s mother, pressing the small head close to her bosom. “Thy _maman_ is gone, _pauvre enfant_!”

She placed the sobbing child in Marthe’s arms. “Listen to me,” she said. “Emile was taken from us----”

“I know. The Mother Marie borrowed him to play with the infant Jesus. Jean said so.”

“Very good. For once that Jean was not so far off. And now the good Mother Marie has given us this poor little one to nourish in Emile’s stead.”

To Marthe this exchange seemed only simple justice and she did not trouble her head with the details of the transaction. Nor did her mother explain that on arriving at the dugout of her friend she had knocked repeatedly without receiving a response and was on the point of leaving when from out of the darkness behind the door had sounded a shrill, angry, sobbing little voice: “_Maman! Maman! J’ai froid! J’ai froid!_”

Hastily Marthe’s mother forced the door, made a light, and discovered her friend lying upon the floor, the victim of a shell, and the child beating the still, inanimate figure with his puny fists and crying: “_Maman!_ Wake up! I’m cold!”

After this Marthe’s mother tended her own and her neighbor’s field, and Marthe joyfully tended little Emile’s substitute.

One afternoon shortly afterward she took her new acquisition out to wash him in the canal and see what kind of bargain Mother Marie had made with her anyhow. And while she was thus employed, down on her knees scrubbing absorbedly, there drew up quietly behind her a large, military-gray automobile, from which two men descended. It was, in fact, Prefect Mirman with an American friend. M. Mirman was prefect of the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, a portion of the country bordering on Alsace, which included a large area of the battling frontier of France. The prefect himself held a position comparable in importance to the governorship of New York, and he had in his heart a deep overflowing love for his suffering people which resembled that of Lincoln’s.

But Marthe could not know that. She sprang to her feet, terribly startled, staring behind the men at the big, gray, snorting, quivering, smoking beast--the first she had ever laid eyes on--and instinctively threw her new little brother behind her. The prefect, reading her intention of flight, laid a restraining grasp on her shoulders. Marthe faced him, pale, hostile, her pupils steadily enlarging.

“Poor unfortunates!” said the American. “Why are they permitted to remain?”

The prefect smiled slightly. “They are not. They stay without permission. It is impossible for you Americans, who are always traveling about, to conceive the love, the passion with which our poor people cling to the nourishing soil. Transplant them rudely, scientifically as you may say, and they pine, they die. That is the simple truth. Well, what are we to do? For example, take this situation. All throughout this northern-frontier district the civilian population was ordered to evacuate when the enemy started its deliberate bombarding and gassing of defenseless open towns.

“Some of these little villages lie directly in the line of attack. It is conceivable that, given a temporary reverse of our army, they might fall into Prussian hands. And should that unfortunate event occur I do not want left in those villages any women, any young maids, any half-grown lads or any infants! The majority of the population, of course, get out instantly when the evacuation orders come. But there is always left a residue of those who cannot or will not go, poor people in villages or farmers who have never traveled farther than twenty kilometers in their lives, and whom it is as hard to uproot, even in this time of stress, as it is to uproot a hardy old tree. Simply they prefer to remain here and take their chances. But that must not be!

“So for the past two months, since the evacuation orders became effective, I have driven from one end to another of my department, searching out those who remain behind. And I explain, I beg, I urge, I entreat. I promise that they shall not go far from home; that their children shall remain with them; that as soon as it is safe they shall return; and if they have crops in the ground they may go certain days to tend them, leaving the children in safety. It has defects, of course, this plan of mine, for often our shelters are bombed, but just at present it is the best I can do.”

And here the prefect, one of the most romantic and truly great figures in France, looked down at the reluctant young person he had been holding fast while he discoursed, and said: “Well, little mother! How goes it, eh?”

Silence. Marthe simply stared at him, clutching tightly behind her the substitute Emile, naked save for a pair of diminutive trousers.

“Where is _maman_?”

Silence.

“Who is that you are hiding behind you?”

“Nobody. There’s nobody behind me!” At this mendacious statement the prefect, father of his district, laughed. “Ha! ’Tis a little angel then? I’m going to see!”

He bent over her shoulder. But Marthe, who had been edging out from under the restraining hand, suddenly whirled, caught up the boy, scudded to her cellar across the way, and shut and barricaded the door. She was not going to risk a second disappearance!

The prefect approached, knocked, and addressed gentle, persuasive words to the invisible occupants. There was no response.

“We shall have to wait,” he said, returning to the automobile. “Of course we could use violence--but there’s been enough of that!”

And wait they did for more than two hours, the prefect calm, patient, determined. In the interval he related some of his experiences as prefect in connection with the German capture of French towns at the commencement of the war. That the iron had entered the soul of this strong, tender governor of his people was evident, for with all his manifold duties he had taken time to compile a book of officially vouched-for cases of outrages occurring within his own department, for the benefit of those who pooh-poohed the idea of German atrocities. The first sentence of that poignant little book reads: “_Voici un livre d’horreurs; c’est, hélas! un livre de vérité_.” (This is a book of horrors; it is, alas, a book of truth!)

And those Americans who hold that the Germans are really very fine fellows, but simply misled by their overlords, should have a confidential chat with Prefect Mirman, the great-hearted governor of that frontier section of France.

It was deep twilight before Marthe’s mother returned from her work. With two fields under bombardment to tend instead of one, life was no joke. To her the prefect explained the object of his visit. Since the fathers of France were away fighting, he, the prefect, was trying to be father to all the children in his department, to watch over them, to keep them decent boys and girls, in church and in school, to teach them trades and safeguard them until their parents’ return.

Marthe’s mother listened, pondered, put a few practical questions. The place to which he would take them--it was far? No, close at hand; in effect, just behind that hill. And her children, they would be with her? But surely! And she could return when necessary to care for her fields? The prefect gave her his word. Whereupon Marthe’s mother, so sparing of emotion, suddenly burst into tears and consented.

Three days later saw the entire family transported to Toul and safely installed in a temporary barracks provided by Prefect Mirman. It was a big, bare, uncomfortable, insanitary affair, and it seemed as if all the young ragamuffins of France had been collected there in one sorry regiment. The story of Marthe might serve as a type for most. But there were some whose histories, written in their small peaked faces and sullen gaze, had a more sinister cast; some had lost an eye; some had lost a hand; some had lost parents; and most of them had lost their childhood gayety. Gathered up from miles along the frontier where the artillery fire was hottest, out of dank, dirty cellars or unspeakably foul dugouts and caves, living without air, baths, change of garments or the simplest sanitary arrangements, they were a dismal, pallid, vermin-infested, scarecrow little crew--and yet they were the budding hope of France, as nobody knew better than the prefect.

But what to do with them after he had got them together? It was a sore question. For what these small unfortunates needed beyond everything were baths, doctors, nurses, teachers, someone to teach them to smile again--and always more and more baths. Out of the three hundred and fifty, twenty-one were babies under one year; many of them had contagious skin diseases; a few had tuberculosis; and all, sick and well, were crowded together without discrimination.

Food and shelter were all the prefect could be sure of, for these the French Government furnished, but more in the present stress it could not promise, for all the French doctors and nurses were already occupied with the war. And the worst of it was that more and more children and mothers would be arriving as the wave of battle swept toward other villages or wholesale gassing set in. It was a thoroughly bad piece of business all round--a kind of vicious circle with no visible outlet. But not for one moment did these difficulties stump the prefect of the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle. He had rescued these children and got them together--that was his job. Now somebody had to take care of them; he couldn’t, the French Government couldn’t. Therefore--somebody else had to!

And it is exactly at this point, at that “somebody,” that the American Red Cross enters the story. For in the acute and immediate need the prefect telegraphed for aid to a well-known American woman in Paris. She brought the telegram to Major Murphy, Commissioner for Europe of the American Red Cross, and he at once got into action. Within a few hours eight workers were on their way to Toul--a doctor, a nurse, two aids, and women to take charge of the administration. At the same time there started a camionette loaded with clothing and food.

Thus began the first activity of the American Red Cross for the civil population of France--and it began very appropriately with the children.

When, one morning several weeks later, I visited this refugee center high up on a sunshiny hill, a general transformation had taken place. The children, numbering by this time about five hundred, with sixty mothers, had been moved into a newly constructed barracks of brick and cement furnished by the French Government, which also supplied heat, light, rations, cooks, unskilled labor and camion service for transportation. This plant, in its bare elements, was then turned over to the American Red Cross to supplement and run as it pleased. And when I arrived the American administration was in full swing. To me the children looked surprisingly well and happy--almost too happy, in fact, in view of their grim past! And I remarked upon this fact to the director.

“Well,” he laughed, “if you are after local color you should have seen them--and smelled them!--when we first took hold. The very first thing we did was to establish louse clinics--‘de-lousing’ is the technical term. Don’t shudder! They’re about clean now, but in the beginning we had some horrible little heads. The soldiers in the winter trenches had nothing on those children in the way of vermin and filth. And at the same time we inaugurated the good old American institution of shower baths.”

“And what did the mothers think of these?”

The doctor chuckled. “Scandalous! Immoral! Indelicate! Designed to murder their poor children outright! Some of these peasant women, you know, have never taken a bath in the altogether in their lives. They still continue the customs handed down to them since the time of Louis XI. They bathe little boys in their trousers--put ’em in the tub with their trousers on; indelicate to remove ’em, you see! They bathe little girls with their chemises on. And babies they don’t bathe at all. Yes, the shower bath was a novelty. But I may add that it was a novelty which took with the children from the start. Now they fight for a chance at it!

“Come here, Marthe, and say ‘_Bonjour_’ to the lady.” He caught by the hand a passing little girl with great bright dark eyes and dark curls neatly twined. Beside her trotted a small boy, decked in his Sunday best. Thus I had my introduction to Marthe and the substitute brother whom the Mother Marie had sent down to replace the borrowed Emile.

“She is never without that boy,” continued the director. “She seems to be afraid somebody is going to steal him.” And then he told me her story, narrated above. “Here is her mother,” he added as a woman approached along the path. “She has walked all the way from her home to spend a few days with her children. These peasant mothers come and go as they will; they visit with us a few days and then return to their fields. _Bonjour, madame_,” he said, turning to her. “How goes that crop of wheat?”

“Not bad, monsieur. But yesterday--what a misfortune! An _obus_ fell right in the middle of the field where the grain is highest and dug a crater wide as this.” She extended her two arms. “_Sale brute!_” (Dirty brute!) “_Grâce à Dieu!_ I was off in another corner of the field.”

“You are very courageous,” I said, “to work like that for your children in those bombarded fields.”

“But no! But no! It is not for the infants. It is that the soldiers of France may have food.”

“There you are!” exclaimed the director in English. “That’s what they all say--and just as unselfconsciously. They don’t know what a magnificent piece of work they’re pulling off!”

At this moment Marthe interrupted to show me her sewing and the mother passed on to her baby, the little Georgette. Later I saw this tiny, woeful creature, born in a cellar, under sound of heavy guns. Frail, transparent, pale as a snowdrop, she lay in her mother’s arms. Not once in her two years had she been seen to smile. I did not blame her. Such a world was not worth smiling on! She showed a rare judgment beyond her age. Nevertheless, for five minutes I held her in my arms, hating the Germans, and trying by all arts to bring a flash of mirth to that solemn, drooping little mouth. Vain enterprise. I might as well have tried to make the Sphinx laugh.

After that, accompanied by the director, I made a tour of the buildings, built after the usual fashion of military cantonments, in the form of a hollow square. Everything was scrupulously clean, the floors scrubbed, the windows flung wide open, and fresh sunshine flooded the dormitories, where the mothers sat chatting together, their babies at their breasts.

“This beats caves as a summer resort!” I said.

The director nodded rather grimly. In company with M. Mirman he had made rescues from some of those caves.