Clearly it was impossible for them to reach Montargis. The road went on and on; by his reckoning they had come about five miles from where they had left the bus. There were still ten miles or so ahead of them, and night was coming on. The children were weary. Ronnie and Sheila were inclined to quarrel with each other; the old man felt that Sheila would burst into tears of temper and fatigue before so very long. Rose was not so buoyant as she had been and her flow of chatter to the little boy had ceased; she slipped along on her bare feet in silence, leading him by the hand. The little boy, Pierre, went on with her, white-faced and silent, stumbling a little now and then, the whistle held tight in his little hand.
It was time for them to find a lodging for the night.
The choice was limited. There was a farm on the right of the road, and half a mile farther on he could see a farm on the left of the road; farther than that the children could not walk. He turned into the first one. A placard nailed on a post, CHIEN MECHANT, warned him, but did not warn the children. The dog, an enormous brindled creature, leaped out at them to the limit of his chain, raising a terrific clamour. The children scattered back, Sheila let out a roar of fright and tears, and Rose began to whimper. It was in the din of dog and children competing with each other that Howard presented himself at the door of the farm and asked for a bed for the children.
The gnarled old woman said: 'There are no beds here. Do you take this for a hotel?'
A buxom, younger woman behind her said: 'They could sleep in the barn, ma mère.'
The old dame said: 'Eh? the barn?' She looked Howard up and down. 'The soldiers sleep in the barn when we billet them. Have you any money?'
He said: 'I have enough to pay for a good bed for these children, madame.'
'Ten francs.'
'I have ten francs. May I see the barn?'
She led him through the cow-house to the barn behind. It was a large, bare apartment with a threshing floor at one end, empty and comfortless. The younger woman followed behind them.
He shook his head. 'I am desolated, madame, but the children must have a bed. I must look somewhere else.'
He heard the younger woman whisper something about the hay-loft. He heard the older woman protest angrily. He heard the young one say: 'Ils sont fatigués, les petits...' Then they turned aside and conferred together.
The hay-loft proved to be quite possible. It was a shelter, anyway, and somewhere where the children could sleep. He made a bargain for them to sleep there for fifteen francs. He found that the women had milk to spare, but little food. He left the children in the loft and went and brought the pram in past the dog; he broke his bread in two and gave half of it to the younger woman, who would make bread and milk for the children.
Half an hour later he was doing what he could to make the children comfortable on the hay. The younger woman came in and stood watching for a moment. 'You have no blankets, then?' she said.
He shook his head, bitterly regretful that he had left his blanket in the bus. 'It was necessary to leave everything, madame,' he said quietly.
She did not speak, but presently she went away. Ten minutes later she returned with two coarse blankets of the sort used for horses. 'Do not tell ma mère,' she said gruffly.
He thanked her, and busied himself making a bed for the children. She stood there watching him, silent and bovine. Presently the children were comfortable and settled for the night. He left them and walked to the door of the barn and stood looking out.
The woman by him said: 'You are tired yourself, monsieur.'
He was deadly tired. Now that his responsibilities were over for a while, he had suddenly become slack and faint. 'A little tired,' he said. 'I shall have supper and then I shall sleep with the children. Bonne nuit, madame.'
She went back to the farmhouse, and he turned to the pram, to find the other portion of the loaf of bread. Behind him the old woman called sharply from the door across the yard.
'You can come and have a bowl of soup with us, if you like.'
He went into the kitchen gratefully. They had a stock-pot simmering on a charcoal stove; the old woman helped him to a large bowl of steaming broth and gave him a spoon. He sat down gratefully at the bare, scrubbed table to consume it with his bread.
The woman said suddenly: 'Are you from Alsace? You speak like a German.'
He shook his head. 'I'm an Englishman.'
'Ah - an Englishman!' They looked at him with renewed interest. 'But the children, they are not English.'
The younger woman said: 'The bigger boy and the smaller girl are English. They were not talking French.'
With some difficulty he explained the position to them. They listened to him in silence, only half believing what he said. In all her life the old woman had never had a holiday; only very occasionally had she been beyond the market town. It was difficult for them to comprehend a world where people travelled to another country, far away from home, merely to catch fish. And as for an old man who took care of other people's children for them, it simply did not make sense at all.
Presently they stopped bothering him with their questions, and he finished the soup in silence.
He felt better after that, much better. He thanked them with grave courtesy and went out into the yard. Already it was dusk. On the road the lorries still rumbled past at intervals, but firing seemed to have ceased altogether.
The old woman followed him to the door. 'They do not stop tonight,' she said, indicating the road. 'The night before last the barn was full. Twenty-two francs for sleeping soldiers - all in one night.' She turned and went indoors again.
He went up to the loft. The children were all asleep, curled up together in odd attitudes; the little boy Pierre twitched and whimpered in his sleep.. He still had the whistle clutched in one hand. Howard withdrew it gently and put it on the chopping machine, then spread the blanket more evenly over the sleeping forms. Finally he trod down a little of the hay into a bed and lay down himself, pulling his jacket round him.
Before sleep came to him he suffered a bad quarter of an hour. Here was a pretty kettle offish, indeed. It had been a mistake ever to have left Joigny, but it had not seemed so at the time. He should have gone straight back to Dijon when he found he could not get to Paris, back to Switzerland, even. His effort to get through by bus to Chartres had failed most dismally, and here he was! Sleeping in a hay-loft, with four children utterly dependent on him, straight in the path of the invading German Army!
He turned uneasily in the hay. Things might not be so bad. The Germans, after all, could hardly get past Paris; that lay to the north of him, a sure shield the farther west he got. Tomorrow he would reach Montargis, even if it meant walking the whole way; the children could do ten miles in a day if they went at a slow pace and if the younger two had rides occasionally in the pram. At Montargis he would hand the little boy in grey over to the sisters, and report the death of his parents to the police. At Montargis, at a town like that, there would be a bus to Pithiviers, perhaps even all the way to Chartres.
All night these matters rolled round in his mind, in the intervals of cold, uneasy slumber. He did not sleep well. Dawn came at about four, a thin grey light that stole into the loft, pointing the cobwebs strung between the rafters. He dozed and slept again; at about six he got up and went down the ladder and sluiced his face under the pump. The growth of thin stubble on his chin offended him, but he shrank from trying to shave beneath the pump. In Montargis there would be a hotel; he would wait till then.