On the Edge of the War Zone | Page 5

to be dropped in the box in front of the post-office, where I am very much afraid it may find that of last week, for we have had no letters yet nor have I seen or heard anything of the promised automobile postale. However, once a stamped letter is out of my hand, I always feel at least as if it had started, though in all probability this may rest indefinitely in that box in the "deserted village."

II
September 25, 1914
IT is over a week since I wrote you. But I have really been very busy, and not had a moment.
To begin with, the very day after I wrote to you, Am��lie came down with one of her sick headaches, and she has the most complete sort I ever met.
She crawled upstairs that morning to open my blinds. I gave one look at her, and ordered her back to bed. If there is anything that can make one look worse than a first-class bilious attack I have never met it. One can walk round and do things when one is suffering all sorts of pain, or when one is trembling in every nerve, or when one is dying of consumption, but I defy anyone to be useful when one has an active sick headache.
Am��lie protested, of course; "the work must be done." I did not see why it had to be. She argued that I was the mistress, "had a right to be attended to--had a right to expect it." I did not see that either. I told her that her logic was false. She clinched it, as she thought, by declaring that I looked as if I needed to be taken care of.
I was indignant. I demanded the handglass, gave one look at myself, and I was inclined to let it slide off the bed to the floor, �� la Camille, only Am��lie would not have seen the joke. I did look old and seedy. But what of that? Of course Am��lie does not know yet that I am like the "Deacon's One Hoss Shay"--I may look dilapidated, but so long as I do not absolutely drop apart, I can go.
So I told Am��lie that if I were the mistress, I had a right to be obeyed, and that there were times when there was no question of mistress and maid, that this was one of those times, that she had been a trump and a brick, and other nice things, and that the one thing I needed was to work with my own hands. She finally yielded, but not to my arguments--to Nature.
Perhaps owing to the excitement of three weeks, perhaps to the fact that she had worked too hard in the sun, and also, it may be, owing to the long run she took, of which I wrote you in my letter of last week, it is the worst attack I ever saw. I can tell you I wished for a doctor, and she is even now only a little better.
However, I have had what we used to call "a real nice time playing house." Having nothing else to do, I really enjoyed it. I have swept and dusted, and handled all my little treasures, touching everything with a queer sensation--it had all become so very precious. All the time my thoughts flew back to the past. That is the prettiest thing about housework--one can think of such nice things when one is working with one's hands, and is alone. I don't wonder Burns wrote verses as he followed the plough--if he really did.
I think I forgot to tell you in my letter of last week that the people-- drummed out of the towns on the other side of the Marne, that is to say, the near-by towns, like those in the plain, and on the hilltops from which the Germans were driven before the 10th--began to return on that night; less than a fortnight after they fled. It was unbelievable to me when I saw them coming back.
When they were drummed out, they took a roundabout route, to leave the main roads free for the army. They came back over the route nationale. They fled en masse. They are coming back slowly, in family groups. Day after day, and night after night the flocks of sheep, droves of cattle, carts with pigs in them, people in carts leading now and then a cow, families on foot, carrying cats in baskets, and leading dogs and goats and children, climb the long hill from Couilly, or thread the footpaths on the canal.
They fled in silence. I remember as remarkable that no one talked. I cannot say that they are coming back exactly gaily, but, at any rate, they have found their tongues. The slow procession has been passing for