In my journeying I discovered a pretty way of learning whose army occupied a particular village—I looked for the first small boy to see which soldier’s cap he proudly wore. Thus at Opbrakel, tho it was late afternoon when I arrived, there were children still playing in the street, and the boys jauntily wearing the horizontal blue announced to me that the French were there. These small boys, and later the soldiers themselves, examined my mud-splashed car with much curiosity, as it drew up in front of the convent door.
My visit was quite unannounced, but the sisters held out their hands in welcome, and drew me in out of the rain, speaking, as they did so, words I had almost forgotten, “Hot milk; you must drink a cup of hot milk at once, Madame, and your chauffeur also; this is a cruel day for journeying.” They led me to a little room, where I found another unaccustomed comfort, a tiny fire burning brightly. As I sat before it, sipping the sweet milk, the first I had had since leaving America, I remembered the gratitude of travelers in the middle ages toward the convents and abbeys whose doors they found open. The war had brought a return of many of the difficulties and perils that beset them, with the comfortable hostelries of pre-war days pillaged and ruined, the little restaurants or cafés that could do business filled to overflowing with soldiers (I have spent hours in the wind and rain at night vainly trying to find a bed, or a place for my car), with roads wrecked, neither post nor telegraph, nor train, and natural accompaniment of all this disorganization, the necessity of being ever on guard against thieves—in the midst of conditions like these we can appreciate the meaning of the cheering hospitality the convent offers.
While we sat before the fire the Mother Superior had one of the sisters show me a treasure of the school, a framed exhibit, illustrating in miniature all the processes employed in the making of the needle laces, which they had prepared for the last International Exposition at Brussels. Then she recounted for me a little of the history of her lace-making convent, which celebrates its centenary this year, this free year of 1919. I could imagine what it would have meant to try to be joyful over such an anniversary with the enemy heel still on one’s back.