{"product_id":"2940013740778","title":"The Refugees","description":"On the 8th of September, 1914, Charlie Durand stood hopelessly blinking\u003cbr\u003ethrough his spectacles at the throng of fugitives which the Folkestone\u003cbr\u003etrain had just poured out upon the platform of Charing Cross.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was aware of a faint haze on the spectacles which he usually kept\u003cbr\u003eclear of the slightest smirch. It had been too prolonged, too abominable,\u003cbr\u003etoo soul-searching, the slow torture of his hours of travel with the\u003cbr\u003estricken multitude in which he had found himself entangled on the pier at\u003cbr\u003eBoulogne.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCharlie Durand, Professor of Romance Languages in a western University,\u003cbr\u003ehad been spending the first weeks of a hard-earned Sabbatical holiday in\u003cbr\u003ewandering through Flanders and Belgium, and on the fatal second of August\u003cbr\u003ehad found himself at Louvain, whose University, a year or two previously,\u003cbr\u003ehad honoured him with a degree.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the advice of the American consul he had left Belgium at once, and,\u003cbr\u003edeeply disturbed by the dislocation of his plans, had carried his shaken\u003cbr\u003enerves to a lost corner of Normandy, where he had spent the ensuing weeks\u003cbr\u003ein trying to think the war would soon be over.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was not that he was naturally hard or aloof about it, or wanted to be;\u003cbr\u003ebut the whole business was so contrary to his conception of the universe,\u003cbr\u003eand his fagged mind, at the moment, was so incapable of prompt\u003cbr\u003ereadjustment, that he needed time to steady himself. Besides, his\u003cbr\u003econscience told him that his first duty was to get back unimpaired to the\u003cbr\u003etask which just enabled him to keep a mother and two sisters above want.\u003cbr\u003eHis few weeks on the continent had cost much more than he had expected,\u003cbr\u003eand most of his remaining francs had gone to the various appeals for\u003cbr\u003efunds that penetrated even to his lost corner; and he decided that the\u003cbr\u003eprudent course (now that everybody said the war was certainly going to\u003cbr\u003elast till November) would be to slip over to cheap lodgings in London,\u003cbr\u003eand bury his nose in the British Museum.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis decision, as it chanced, had coincided with the annihilation of\u003cbr\u003eLouvain and Malines. News of the rapid German advance had not reached\u003cbr\u003ehim; but at Boulogne he found himself caught in the central eddy of\u003cbr\u003efugitives, tossed about among them like one of themselves, pitched on the\u003cbr\u003eboat with them, dealt with compassionately but firmly by the fagged\u003cbr\u003eofficials at Folkestone, jammed into a cranny of the endless train, had\u003cbr\u003echocolate and buns thrust on him by ministering angels with high heels\u003cbr\u003eand powdered noses, and shyly passed these refreshments on to the fifteen\u003cbr\u003edazed fellow-travellers packed into his compartment.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070245912816,"sku":"2940013740778","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013740778_p0.jpg?v=1763589626","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013740778","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}