But all things end; and finally their train started too, panting and puffing out of the Gare du Nord towards Louvain, Tirlemont, and Liège.
It was utterly dark by the time they reached Liège; and when they left the Gare Guillemin the soft summer night had swathed the valley of the Ourthe with tenebrous draperies. Little Mireille fell asleep with a pale smudgy face resting against Frieda's arm. Chérie lay back in her corner dozing and dreaming of Westende's blue sea; but Frieda's eyes were wide open staring out into the darkness as the train rumbled in and out of the tunnels, clattered over bridges following the gleaming blackness of the river.
Where the Ourthe meets its younger brother the Aisne, the train slowed down, trembled, hissed, and stopped.
"Bomal," announced the guard.
"Here we are! Mireille, wake up!" cried Chérie, looking out of the window. Then she put Mireille's bergère hat very crookedly on the child's towzled head, while Frieda hurriedly collected the books, the tennis-rackets and the parasols.
"Ah! there he is," and Chérie waved her hand out of the window to a tall figure on the platform. "Claude! Claude! Nous voici."
Claude Brandès, a handsome man, fifteen years older than his sister Chérie, opened the carriage door with an exclamation of relief. "Thank goodness you are here," he said, lifting his dazed, weary little daughter in his arms as if she were a baby and hoisting her on to his shoulder. "Are you all right? Have you got everything? Come along!" And he started down the platform, Chérie and Frieda trotting quickly after him. "Mademoiselle," he said, turning to Frieda, "give the check for your trunks to Fritz."
"Oui, Monsieur le Docteur," she replied, fumbling for it in her hand-bag. Then she looked round for the man-servant, whom she had as yet not caught sight of. Fritz Hollander ("Hollander by name and Hollander by nationality," he always said of himself when making new acquaintances) stepped out of the shadow and took the paper from Frieda's hand. She murmured a greeting to him, but he did not reply nor did he seem to notice her questioning glance. He turned on his heel, and his massive figure was soon swallowed up in the shadows at the end of the station.
The little party had just reached the exit and the train, with a parting whistle, was curving away into the darkness, when Mireille suddenly raised her face from her father's shoulder and gave a shriek. "Amour! We have forgotten Amour!"
It was true. Amour, cramped and disgusted in his creaky luncheon basket, was travelling away in the darkness to the heart of the Ardennes.
After the first moment of dismay everybody was cross with everybody else.
"It's all his own fault," said Chérie, who was tired and hungry. "He might have barked. He knew perfectly well that we were getting out."
"Haven't we taught him to pretend he is sandwiches when we're travelling?" sobbed Mireille indignantly. "How can you be so unjust?"
"Never mind, Mirette," said her father; "don't cry. We will telegraph to Marché to have him stopped and sent back. You will see him turn up safe and tail-wagging in the morning."
And the telegram was sent.
As they walked through the silent, sleeping village of Bomal Chérie inquired, "Why is Loulou not here? She might have come in the motor."
Her brother hesitated a moment. "I have sent away the car," he said.
"Sent it away? What for?" exclaimed Chérie.
"I have … I have lent it," said Dr. Brandès.
"To whom?" inquired Mireille, trotting beside her father and hanging on to his arm.
He gave a little laugh. "To the King," he said.
"Oh!" cried Mireille. "Not much of a car to lend to a king! Surely he has better ones himself."
"We all give what we have in time of war," said her father. "Come, I will carry you, my little bird," he said, and lifted her up again.
"What is the matter? Why are you so affectionate?" asked Mireille, nestling comfortably in his arms and patting his broad back with her small hand.
Chérie laughed and looked up adoringly at her big brother. "Is he not always affectionate?" she asked.
"Not so dreadfully," replied Mireille, in her matter-of-fact tones; and then they all three laughed.
Frieda, hurrying behind them in the dark with the books, the parasols, and the tennis-rackets, hated them for their laughter.
Louise Brandès, a slim white figure in the moonlight, awaited them at the door. She kissed Mireille and Chérie and greeted Frieda kindly; then she made them all drink hot milk and sent them to bed.
"But I want to tell papa about how I can almost swim and nearly ride a bicycle," said Mireille, sidling up to her father.
"You shall tell him tomorrow, my darling," said Louise.
But the morrow was not as they dreamed it.
When early next morning Frieda and the girls came down to the breakfast-room they found Louise, still in her white dress of the evening before, sitting on the sofa with red eyes and a pale face. In answer to their anxious questioning she told them that Claude had been called away. Two officers had come for him close upon midnight; he had scarcely had time to pack a few things. He had taken his surgical outfit; then they had hurried him away with short words and anxious faces.
"But where—where has he gone to?" asked Chérie.
"I don't know," said her sister-in-law, and the tears gathered in her dark eyes. "They said something about his being sent to a field ambulance, or to … to the Dépôt Central...."
"What is that?" asked Mireille; but as nobody knew, nobody answered.
Mariette the maid brought in the breakfast, followed by her mother, Marie the cook; and they both had red eyes and were weeping. Marie said that her two sons had come to the house at dawn to bid her and Mariette good-bye; the eldest, Toinot, belonged to the 9th line regiment and had been sent off to Stavelot; and Charles, the youngest, had volunteered and was being sent off heaven knows where.
"Of course there is nothing to cry about," added Marie, with large round tears rolling down her ruddy face. "There is no danger for our country. But still—to see one's boys—going away like that—s-s-singing the B-b-brabançonne—" she broke into sobs.
"Of course, my good Marie," echoed Louise, "there is nothing to cry about...."
And then they all wept bitterly. Even Frieda, with her face in her handkerchief, sobbed—on general principles, and also because Weltschmerz gnawed at her treacherous, sentimental German heart.
At breakfast every one felt a little better. As nearly all the men had left Bomal or were about to leave, it was a comfort to reflect that Fritz Hollander, the doctor's confidential servant, being a Dutchman, was not obliged to go. True, he was a somewhat sulky, taciturn person, but he had been with them two years and, as Loulou remarked while she poured out the coffee, one felt that one could trust him.
"I always trust people who are silent and look straight at you when you speak," said the wise Louise, who was twenty-eight years old, and admired Georges Ohnet.
"I don't like Fritz," remarked Mireille. "I hate the shape of his head—and especially his ears," she added.
"Don't be silly," said Chérie.
Frieda, who was just dipping a fresh roll into her coffee, looked up. "He has the ears God gave him," she remarked, with pinched and somewhat tremulous lips.
Every one looked at her wonderingly, and she flushed scarlet as she bent her head and dipped her roll into her cup again.
After breakfast Louise went to rest for a few hours; Frieda said she had some letters to write, and the two girls went out to call on their friends and make plans as to what they would do on Chérie's birthday, the 4th of