Such was the official name of Jackdaw"s Leg. A silence followed, then the owner of the voice seemed to grow impatient.
"Kolb ... Kolb ... Kolb...."
No answer came. The uproarious fellow bellowed:
"Kolb ... Koooolb...."
I bounced out of bed, still drowsy.
"This man will wake up the whole street," I murmured. "I believe we had better answer."
"Lieutenant Kolb is at the casino," I cried from behind the shutter.
"What?" asked the voice.
I thought my interlocutor fifteen yards from thence, in front of the gate. My hand leaning against the fastening unconsciously turned it; all of a sudden it was wrenched from my grasp and the shutters flew wide open. As quick as lightning I shut the window, stuck to the wall, and slipped behind the piano. Genevieve had started to her feet and stretched herself at full length along the bed. We saw the man produce an electric lamp from his pocket, and, with his nose flattened against the window-pane, try to catch a glimpse of the inside of the room. The curtains prevented him from seeing clearly anything, but we got a full view of his person.
He was a captain, colossus-like, thick-featured, and red-bearded; he had a helmet and a grey coat on. He sat on the window-sill, and muttered in a clammy, drunken voice:
"Mademoiselle, mademoiselle, open the window.... I want to wish you a good morning ... shake hands with me.... Mademoiselle, open the window."
We held our breaths, we dared not stir a finger.
Then the officer got up, stepped backwards, took a survey of the house, and made for the next window. He shook the shutters, which did not give way, and went to try the others. How eagerly we wished the orderly had shut up everything at his master"s! The first window held out, the second too, but the fastening of the third one yielded, and we heard the man jump into the room. As if he knew the ins and outs, he swiftly crossed both rooms and the pa.s.sage, and stopped at our door.
"Open...."
He gave a knock ... then made an endeavour to open the door.
We were struck with dismay.
With a shove of his shoulders he might have forced the lock. With naked feet and nothing but a nightgown on, how should we have been able to stand up against this booted, armed giant if he had broken in?
Noiselessly Genevieve sprang towards me. I softly opened the window overlooking the garden, and we jumped out, careless of the pebbles that bruised our feet, ran along the house with all possible speed, and stopped at my mother-in-law"s window.
"Mother, mother, open the window."
Our voices were low, but so anxious that the shutters immediately flew open. We climbed in like cats and hastily closed the window. With strained ears we listened to the intruder"s goings and comings, but he soon jumped out of the window, and after renewed calling and knocking we heard his carriage roll away.
We prudently waited some time before venturing out, then we poked our noses into the pa.s.sage, and, making sure the enemy had really withdrawn, we took once more possession of our own room. But, alas, our emotion had destroyed all chance of sleep.
Day after day, night after night, alarm upon alarm, the summer glided by. Then came the harvest-time. The farmers were much agitated, for the Germans had declared that they would gather in the harvest.
They did so.
Ah, the birds will long remember the summer of 1915!
The harvest lasted three months, and all that time the grain strewed the ground. Every overripe sheaf lost in transport half its wealth.
"They are but lazy-bones, the whole pack of them," M. Lantois muttered between his teeth. "When we gather in the harvest, we get up at three o"clock and work till eight or nine, and we hurry over our meals. But those fellows! they get up at six, leave off work from eleven to one, and have done with it at five!"
If the soldiers did not tire themselves out, the civilians they employed showed no eager haste to do things properly.
The peasants were full of indignation.
"If those idiots had allowed us to gather in the harvest on the condition that we gave them half or even a third of it, they would have had more corn than they have now, and we should have been provided for the whole year!"
However, the Prussians at last understood that more speed was necessary.
And since all the able-bodied men were requisitioned, it was the turn of the women. The rural constable announced one evening that women who would work in the fields would receive two francs a day. This aroused a great deal of wonder. In the times we lived in two francs were looked upon as a large sum, and many women hired themselves out willingly. A week after, there was a sudden fall in the tariff. The women heard they would be paid only fourpence a day, and the female workers dwindled to zero. The soldiers, in a rage, tried to enlist the women in their very houses. But they did not succeed. One had a bad headache, another was in bed, a third was nursing her baby, a fourth was sitting up by her sick mother, and so on.
This state of things did not last long. The military authorities issued an order, which enjoined all women from sixteen to fifty to be on the _place_ of the village at such an hour, to be enrolled as day-labourers.
Mothers of young children alone were exempt. We looked at one another in bewilderment. Why, then, we had to go too! But if we can wield the pen and the needle, and on occasion the broom, we are not trained to handle the sickle, the spade, and the rake. Besides Genevieve was hardly recovered. Colette is as slender as a reed, and if Yvonne and I are far from being viragoes in times of peace, we were still weaker after a year of privation and trouble.
"The little of health and life we have left would be lost in the fields," said Yvonne.
"I won"t risk it," said Genevieve. "I had rather go to prison. Let them take me to Chalandry!"
It was at Chalandry that the Germans had installed a prison for women.
Jackdaw"s Leg good-humouredly rea.s.sured us in his most Teutonic accents:
"The measures in hand concern but the peasants," he said.
It is worth while remarking that the officers did their best to be on tolerable terms with their hosts, and when the inhabitants were ill-treated, the head of the house was sure to be away.
Now, Jackdaw"s Leg had been feeling very poorly for some weeks. Was it due to home-sickness and to a longing for sauerkraut and sausages? Or might it not rather come from too many merry parties? In short, the commandant seemed to languish, and ten times a day lay down on his couch. As he had two bedrooms at his disposal, he slept in one bed by night, and--for variety"s sake--in the other by day, unmindful of the fact that he thus requisitioned two pairs of sheets a week, that soap was scarcely to be had, and that the poor washerwoman had to whiten the linen with wood ashes. Jackdaw"s Leg, being ill, got a month"s leave of absence, and disappeared in the background. His place was filled up by the young linguist who had put up at Mme. Lantois".
He would gladly have seen us dead.
Calling on his brother-in-arms, lingering without a motive, or for a wrong motive, in our garden, in our lobby or on our threshold, peeping through the keyholes--we once detected him in this occupation--he had discovered that our souls were not unworthy of a.s.sociating with his, mad for music and philology, enamoured of art and culture. Notwithstanding that we had the reputation of hating the Germans, this nice Prussian, who produced in tippling-houses a list of at least one thousand and three names--the list of his conquests in France--this nice Prussian then gave us to understand that he would condescend to enter into relations with us, relations based on philosophy, science, and literature. Why not on politics?
We responded in such a manner to his advances as to convince even a Prussian. And since then the fellow had borne us a dangerous grudge.
Two days after the departure of Jackdaw"s Leg we heard a beat of the rural constable"s drum ... women from sixteen to fifty ... one o"clock ... market-place.... We hardly listened to it. It was no concern of ours. But at one o"clock Mme. Lantois ran up breathless: "Do you know that the lieutenant just said that _everybody_ must go to the market-place? He even told us that if you didn"t go, he would send four soldiers to fetch you, and take you off to Chalandry."
Consternation! Alarm! It was twelve o"clock according to German time.
Without waiting for luncheon we ran out in all directions to look for subst.i.tutes. At one we arrived on the _place_, attended by four old women, still hale and hearty, and well pleased to fill our places, for of course to the scanty pay of the Germans we had agreed to add the usual price of a day"s work. The sight of the place suggested a picture of the slave-market. Women, wearing light blouses and coa.r.s.e linen ap.r.o.ns, had gathered on both sides. To shield themselves from the glare of the sun, the most of them wore a handkerchief tied under the chin; a few of them laughing, tossed their sunburnt hair, and many with weary faces leant against the tools they had brought. There were gloomy-eyed women, who up to that time had never done any work but housekeeping; there were young girls, carefully looked after by their mothers, who did not know what to do with themselves; there were sedate, stern-looking workers, and at last the usual set of soldiers" wenches, laughing at and making fun of the others, noisier than the rest of the company, and thinking that they might do what they liked.
Under the shade of the plane-trees was seated Jacob--such was the Christian name of the lieutenant, and no one gave him another--busy calling the names over. Ours was among the last; we answered without wincing, and then presented our subst.i.tutes. Thus did we baffle the trick which Jacob wanted to play us.
This enforced service brought about many troubles between the invaders and the inhabitants, so the Germans had prudently turned the sugar-mill of Aulnois into a prison for male culprits, and converted a house at Chalandry into a jail for women. And if you showed the least disposition to disobedience, you were immediately taken into custody. Did you call a private soldier such names as he had deserved a hundred times? To prison with you. Had you kept back any goods from the perquisitioners?
To prison with you. Were you unwilling to comply with the requisitioners" orders? To prison with you. Were you penniless when liable to a fine? To prison with you, to prison, to prison!
Half a dozen men from Morny were for ever ruralising at Aulnois. Of course it is no disgrace to be put into prison by the Germans, but it is a well-known fact that the diet of the Prussian jails is anything but engaging.
A girl of sixteen coming back one evening from the fields threw her pickaxe on her threshold, and cried out in tears:
"I won"t work any longer for those barbarians!"
An indiscreet ear overheard the sentence, which was repeated in high quarters.