Chapter Ten.
The Hôtel de L’Épée.
The quaint, old-world little town of Dinant, with its crooked cobbled streets—the resort of painters and dreamers—lay in a narrow ravine on both sides of the winding Meuse, connected by a long iron bridge. High limestone cliffs towered above the town, crowned by a good-sized but out-of-date citadel—a fort which dominated the whole country. Across the river lay the railway station, and some modern hotels, while the modern town was built upon the pleasant wooded slopes behind.
It was here that Edmond Valentin found himself with the Sixth Brigade. Five days ago they had arrived, after a forced march under the hot sun, from Gembloux, beyond Namur, and, having joined the French force which had crossed the frontier between Sedan and Givet, they were occupying the heights above the town. Indeed, from where Edmond stood on that bright, sunny morning, he could look down upon the tiny little white village of Anseremme, just beyond Dinant, the place where he had, on that memorable day before the war, lunched with Aimée so happily on the long rose-embowered terrasse beside the river, now sparkling in the sun.
Had the red tide of war yet reached high-up Sévérac, he wondered? It was not far off—perhaps fifteen miles or so beyond those blue hills. Daily—nay, hourly—he thought of her, wondering how she fared in those hot, breathless days when Belgium was fighting so desperately for her very existence as a nation.
The Sixth Brigade, under General Thalmann—the fine, grey-moustached, well-set-up man, who had been so grossly calumnified by Rigaux for his own crafty purposes—had been in the very thick of the fighting ever since that day when they had so suddenly arrived in Liège and found themselves in the firing-line. They had helped to repulse the German cavalry at Haelen, and had then fought their way desperately up to Tirlemont, to Gembloux, and back to the Meuse again. With scarce any sleep they had been in touch with the enemy practically the whole time, and were, indeed, “The Flying Column” of the Belgian army. Their losses around Charleroi had been considerable, and though so weary, dusty, and worn, not a man among them was dismayed. The spirit of the men was admirable.
General Joffré had already held council with the Belgian Commander-in-Chief, a council at which General Thalmann had been present, and from information they had gathered it was well known that the Germans intended to make an assault upon the town of Dinant, and take the citadel as one of the important and strategic points on the Meuse.
The peaceful inhabitants of the place—which, besides being a tourist centre, possessed a thriving trade in beaten brass-ware, and the making of those grotesquely-shaped cakes of honey and flour called conques, two industries which had survived in the place ever since the Middle Ages—were, of course, in ignorance, and the authorities did not deem it expedient to express their fears, in order, if possible, to avoid panic.
Edmond knew that the French army, on its way up the Meuse Valley, must have passed beneath the great old château of Sévérac. If so, Aimée must have watched those long, interminable lines of red-trousered infantry, trudging on with their piled-up haversacks, the squadrons of heavily-booted cavalry, and the snake-like processions of lumbering field-guns, motor transport wagons, and drab vans marked with the red cross.
Away across those blue hills, in the direction of France, Aimée was probably watching and waiting in patience. He longed to write to her, to send her words of hope and courage. But it was all utterly impossible. No letter could ever reach her now, unless he could find means to deliver it himself.
There was fighting in progress behind them—fierce fighting at Charleroi—for they had learnt, only an hour ago over the field-telephone, that the Germans were attacking the place, and that a big battle had already opened.
The first few hours of that hot, breathless day were hours of inactivity, welcome indeed to the hard-pressed Sixth Brigade.
Edmond’s company had piled their arms, and were lying about on the sun-scorched grass behind the citadel, smoking cigarettes and laughing as gaily as though they were at manoeuvres, when of a sudden a German Taube aeroplane, distinguishable by its shape, was seen crossing them at a great altitude, whereupon many rifles were raised at it. But it was far beyond range, and circled round and round over their camp, taking observations.
“The enemy must be near,” remarked a thin, little, dust-covered lieutenant to a brother-officer. “They intend to attack, without a doubt.”
Hardly had he spoken when the aeroplane dropped two smoke-balls, indicating the position of the defenders, and then sailed away across the hills and was lost to view.
The old fortress in front of Edmond was occupied by Belgian artillery ready for a desperate defence; but the force, though a gallant one, was, unfortunately, not large.
Another hour went by. The men were still at ease, for perhaps, after all, the enemy, with the strongly fortified town of Namur before them lower down the river, might not think Dinant worth attack.
Suddenly, however, the truth became revealed.
Somewhere over in the direction of Sévérac the enemy had taken up positions, and without warning a shell fell unexpectedly upon the railway station, narrowly missing the dock, crashing through the roof, and exploding with a crash which reverberated along the whole valley.
In a moment bugles sounded and the defenders were instantly on the alert. A second shell tore out part of the front of the Hôtel des Postes, opposite the station, and then, from the citadel the guns thundered in reply, sending shells in the direction where the grey masses of the enemy were seen to be.
To watch the battle from that height was fascinating to Edmond. Below, a French captain and a squad of couriers on motor-cycles crossed the bridge rapidly and disappeared on the road to Namur, while, in the town, a few French troops of the line regiments were marching. The inhabitants were all indoors with closed doors and shutters, most of them crowding into the cellars in fear.
Soon the cliffs resounded with rifle and gun fire, while away in the east could be heard the continual rumble of the field howitzers of the enemy. The Germans had, it seemed, also brought up several mountain-batteries along the hills.
The enemy were advancing rapidly.
The bridge was being defended strongly by the French troops, while, very soon, members of the Volunteer Hospital Corps began hurrying along the streets in search of the wounded.
In half an hour the quiet, prosperous little town where, from the bulgy slate-covered steeple of the church the bells had, for centuries, sent their sweet carillon over the river, became swept by lead. Beneath the pitiless shell-fire the houses in the narrow Rue Grande were suffering severely and, at certain spots the street were covered with falling débris, a rubble of stones and mortar mixed with articles of furniture.
Half-way down that long, narrow street, so well known to summer visitors to the Ardennes, there stood, on the left, a quaint old-fashioned little inn called the Hôtel de l’Epée—the Hotel of the Sword—one of the most ancient houses in Dinant, for it dated from the fifteenth century, and had then been part of a Franciscan Monastery. The rooms were small, with their original old oaten panelling; the floors were of great stone slabs hollowed by the feet of many generations, and though the little place was typical of the Ardennes, there was a curious medieval air about it which was genuine.
The Hotel of the Sword was kept by a stout, prosperous, red-faced old Belgian named François Mazy, who usually wore the blue linen blouse of the Ardennois. “Uncle François” was known to all Dinant, on account of his cheery good-nature and charitable disposition. And to his homely inn, each summer, went many well-known people of Brussels, because there they fared exceedingly well—Uncle François doing the cooking himself, and charging his visitors, in each of whom he took a real personal interest, only very modestly as compared with the more modern houses.
To Uncle François’ hundreds of the townspeople, men, women, and terrified children, now fled, because beneath the house, and running far under the cobbled street, were huge vaulted cellars hewn in the limestone rock—the cellars of the ancient monastery, the entrance to which had, only a few years before, been discovered behind a walled-up archway.
There, lit by flickering candles and one or two evil-smelling lamps, the great cavernous vaults of the monks of old, were filled by those poor excited and terrified people, who had taken refuge from the sudden horrors of war.
Many of them were women, anxious for their husbands’ safety, and little children with big wide-open wondering eyes, while Uncle François himself, with Marie, his stout, middle-aged daughter, moved among the crowd in that hot, stifling atmosphere, uttering cheering words in his native Walloon, and trying to comfort them.
“All will be well soon, my friends,” he declared. “It is only a skirmish.”
Meanwhile, the fight was growing hotter every moment. Edmond, with his ever-ready Maxim, had found cover behind a piece of thick, broken wall, one of the ancient earthworks of the citadel, and from there he and his men kept up a terrible rain of lead upon the oncoming Germans, who were now fighting in the Place below.
Of a sudden, a shell struck the spire of the church, blowing off part of the pumpkin-shaped top which fell into the Place with a heavy crash and clouds of dust, the beautiful bells, which had rung out there so musically for ages, coming down also.
On the long bridge, terrible fighting was now in progress. The defenders were in cover under the abutment wings of the bridge, which were about three feet high. Edmond could witness it all from where he was, three hundred feet or so above. Suddenly there was a red flash over the river, a great roar, and the air was filled with smoke and débris.
The defenders had retired suddenly and blown up the bridge across the Meuse, to prevent the enemy’s advance.
It was magnificent—yet it was terrible. On every side the town seemed to be now attacked by the enemy, who had sprung from nowhere. In the position they had taken up, the Belgian Chausseurs were barely two companies strong, and though they fought so bravely, they could see that the enemy were surely, if slowly, advancing upon the citadel.
For another hour the fearful fight went on. From behind the débris of the bridge the red-breeched French were replying gallantly to the enemy. One could hear nothing save the irregular explosions of rifles, the machine-like splutterings of the mitrailleuse punctuated by the shock of shell-fire, and now and then, on explosion which caused the earth to tremble.
Owing to the heavy firing, clouds now obscured the sun. The heavens darkened, and it began to rain, but the firing in no way abated. From where Edmond crouched behind his gun he could see what was happening below in the Place, and across beyond the blown-up bridge, which lay a mass of wreckage and twisted girders across the stream.
A sudden increase in the firing told that reinforcements had arrived, and he saw a half-company of a line regiment hurriedly enter the hotel opposite the station, expecting to find there a good field of fire. They brought with them a dozen terrified, shrieking women, whom they had found hiding in the waiting-room at the railway station.
An hour after noon the fire slackened, and the rain ceased. A few limping figures, the French in blue coats and red trousers—that unfortunately flamboyant uniform which always drew fire—staggered into the hotel, while, during the lull, a hatless woman in black calmly crossed the little Place and, quite unconcerned, dropped a card into the letter-box!
At that moment Edmond’s company heard the order to retire. Retire! Every man held his breath. Their spirits fell. Dinant had fallen, after all, notwithstanding the defence of the combined French and Belgian forces. It was hopeless. The Germans meant to crush them and to swarm over Belgium.
In perfect order the Sixth Brigade retired back, down the steep, grassy slopes behind the citadel, and within half an hour the hated German flag was, even as Edmond stood watching through his glasses a couple of miles away, hoisted over the captured citadel.
He uttered a malediction beneath his breath, and turned to hand his glasses to one of his men.
Sight of that flag was a signal for renewed fighting. Two French batteries had, happily, arrived, and having taken up a position close to them, opened fire upon the citadel from the rear. The enemy’s flag had roused the defenders to fury, and one of the first shots from the French field-guns cut the German flag right across, at which the Belgians cheered wildly to the echo. The French batteries threw their sheik upon the ancient citadel with marvellous accuracy, and the fire was heavy and incessant.
Another French line regiment arrived to reinforce the Belgians, marching gaily in those fatal red trousers of theirs, and then so smothering was their fire that, through his glasses, Edmond could see the heads of the Germans, dotting the ramparts of the fort, begin to gradually disappear.
For four long hot hours the desperate struggle continued without a moment’s cessation. The Belgians were determined to drive the enemy from their position, while the enemy were equally determined to hold it, and the slaughter on all sides became terrible. One of Edmond’s men fell forward, dead, with a bullet in his brow.
Suddenly heavier firing was heard from across the river. The French were shelling the citadel from the other side of the Meuse, and this they continued to do until, at six o’clock, a long pontoon bridge, just completed by the Germans a little higher up the river, was suddenly swept by a hail of shell and destroyed. A regiment of German infantry, who were at that moment upon it, in the act of crossing, were shattered and swept into the river, the clear waters of which became tinged with their blood. The French had waited until that moment, allowing the Germans to construct the pontoon, and had then wiped it out.
So heavy had now become the attack of the Allies upon the citadel, that not a living thing was to be seen upon the ramparts. Shell after shell fell upon them, exploding, shattering the thick masonry everywhere, and sending up columns of dense black smoke which hovered in the still evening air.
Then, of a sudden, there was a roar, and a terrific explosion of greater force than all the others before, which completely tore out one angle of the fortress, some of the heavy masonry falling with a huge crash down the hill-side into the Place below, which was already thick with dead and dying.
A great cheer sounded somewhere in French, for another fresh regiment had suddenly arrived.
Orders were swiftly given to the Sixth Brigade to re-advance, and in half an hour Edmond found that victory was theirs after all—they had retaken the fort! The German flag was hauled down and, in wrath, destroyed, and amid vociferous cheering, the Belgian red, black, and yellow tricolour was hoisted again in its place, Edmond at last regaining the position he had held in the early morning.
Looking down upon the stricken town once again, he saw at what frightful cost the fort had been retaken. That morning peace had reigned—but alas, now?
The streets and the river-banks were dotted with the dead, French, Belgian and German, lying in all sorts of contorted attitudes, the blue coats of the French infantry splashed with red, and their red trousers, alas! stained a deeper hue.
The Germans had retired away towards Namur, it was said. The fire had ceased, and some Belgian infantry—in their round caps and blue greatcoats—moving down the narrow street from the Place, were cheered lustily. But the yells of triumph died from their lips as they saw the ambulances eagerly and silently at work, and they paused at that grim, awful testimony of what war really meant.
A big grey armoured car of the French, with the muzzle of a machine-gun pointing out, tried to pass out of the town, but was unable to do so because of the bodies heaped in the streets, for the fronts of several houses were lying across the roadway. Then, at that moment, there was heard in the air, the whirr of a scouting aeroplane which, at a second’s glance, was seen to be French, observing what positions the enemy were taking up for the night.
The sun had set, and the red afterglow—that crimson light of war—was showing in the west over where lay Great Britain, the chief objective of the Kaiser and his barbaric hordes of brigands, hangmen, executioners, and fire-bugs—the men doing the bidding of that blasphemous antichrist who was daily lifting his hands to Heaven and invoking God’s blessing upon his hell-hound impieties.
In the twilight, sparks of fire were beginning to show in the shadows across the river, where the French were encamped, while below, in the town, after that thirteen hours of fierce bombardment, the Dinantais, much relieved, came forth from every cellar and every shelter to assemble in animated groups and discuss the terrible events of that never-to-be-forgotten day—a day unequalled since Charles the Bold reduced the old tower of Crève-Coeur—the Tower of the Broken Heart—opposite at Bouvignes, and the streets of the town had run with blood.
Slowly—very slowly—the twilight faded and night crept on. The quiet of death spread over the historic little town. The streets were not lit, because the electric plant had been wrecked. The great vaulted cellars of the Hotel of the Sword had disgorged its crowd of terrified refugees, and all, thankful that they had survived that fierce attack, returned to their fire-swept homes again, while the Allies holding the town prepared their evening meal and tended their wounded, of whom, alas! there were so very many.
And as night fell, Edmond Valentin, who had flung aside his shako, flung himself upon the ground near his gun, and fell to wondering—wondering as he always did—how Aimée, his dearly beloved, was faring now that the enemy had advanced up the valley, from the misty hills of the German frontier.
The men about him were smoking, laughing, and joking, but he heard them not. One thought alone filled his mind—that of Aimée, always Aimée.
Chapter Eleven.
This Word of the Uhlan.
The German tidal-wave was steadily advancing. Prussia had set her heel upon Belgium.
A perfect horde of jack-booted Uhlans had swarmed over the country, and had already made themselves hated by their mad, murderous acts of cruelty and pillage. They were—as the blasphemous Kaiser had intended they should be when making his plans at Potsdam—agents of the Terror. Of the nineteen regiments of them in the German army, no fewer than fourteen were being employed to terrorise the inoffensive villagers of poor little Belgium; yet so bravely did the Belgian army fight that within twelve days the larger part of this force, in their gaily-braided uniforms and carrying their ready lances—upon which they sometimes impaled children—were either killed, wounded, or held prisoners. These brutes, who had boasted of their “kultur,” and commanded by noblemen, had been sent out to live upon the country; but they had been entrapped everywhere, and revenged themselves by acts of the most fiendish and horrible cruelty unequalled in modern history.
The Uhlans! As in the war of 1870, so now in Belgium, their very name struck terror into the hearts of the hard-working, thrifty people of Eastern Belgium.
Therefore it was hardly surprising when, one evening a week after Dinant had been stormed, Aimée, who had just ascended to her room to tidy her hair prior to sitting down to dinner with her mother, should stand white-faced and aghast when Mélanie, her dark, good-looking femme-de-chambre, burst in, crying:
“Ah, Mademoiselle, it is terrible—terrible! The Uhlans are here! They are already in the château, asking for M’sieur le Baron!”
“The Uhlans here!” she gasped, in an instant pale to the lips. “What can they want?”
“Mon Dieu! Who knows? I hope they will not kill us all?” cried the trembling maid, her face pale and scared. “I have just seen Gustave talking excitedly with two soldiers down in the great hall, while outside, in the outer courtyard, there are a lot of horses.”
Aimée dashed from her pretty chintz-hung room, across to a spare room at the rear of the château, and looking down, saw, in the falling twilight, a number of horses champing their bits in the big, paved courtyard, while heavily-booted and spurred Uhlans, in their grey service uniforms, were standing astride in groups, talking and laughing.
She held her breath. She and her mother were alone and defenceless, the Baron being in Brussels. What could they do? How should they act?
War was suddenly at their doors!
Without a moment’s hesitation she ran quickly down to the great salle-à-manger, the walls of which were hung with rare tapestries, and where, on the table already laid with fine old silver and flowers, candles were burning in their handsome silver candelabra.
The Baroness, grey-haired and stately, sitting in an ancient high-backed chair, looked up in surprise from her book when Aimée rushed in, and exclaimed in reproof:
“My dear child, whatever has happened? Are you mad?”
“Ah! mother,” cried the girl in frantic apprehension, “the Uhlans are here! They are asking below for father. The Germans are upon us at last!”
“The Germans!” echoed the Baroness, quite unperturbed, looking eagerly over her gold-rimmed glasses. “What can they want with us? We are doing them no harm.”
“They are demanding to see father.”
At that moment the liveried footman entered, trembling and pale-faced, saying:
“A German officer is demanding to see the Baron, Madame. He refuses to believe that the master is absent in Brussels. He therefore demands to see you, Madame.”
The Baroness knit her brows and drew herself up with hauteur, preserving a wonderful calm in their defenceless circumstances.
“Very well,” she sighed, “I suppose I had really better see him.”
A moment later a big, broad-shouldered Uhlan officer, a fair-haired Saxon, not bad-looking save for the ugly sabre-scar of his student days upon his left cheek, strode into the handsome apartment, and halting before the two ladies, clicked his spurred heels together and saluted.
In his long military boots and his Uhlan helmet this officer of the War Lord of Germany looked taller and more forbidding than he really was, yet his politeness to the Baroness and her daughter was at once reassuring.
“I sincerely regret this intrusion, Madame,” he said, in almost perfect French. “I am extremely sorry I am unable to respect the privacy of your home, but, alas! it is war—the quarrel of nations.”
And taking from within his grey tunic a card, he handed it to her. The Baroness glanced at it, and saw that the name was “Baron Wernher von Meyeren.”
“I am in command of my platoon of the Tenth Uhlans, and we are compelled to billet upon you,” he explained. “I did not wish to disturb you, ladies, but I find that the Baron himself is absent, hence I have to intrude myself upon you.”
“My husband is in Brussels, at a council meeting at the Ministry of Finance,” replied the Baroness de Neuville. “He gave me to understand, however, that here we should be quite safe from molestation.”
The German officer, his strong hand upon the hilt of his sword, smiled grimly. He looked worn and dusty, and had the appearance of a man who had ridden far at the bidding of his superiors.
“I fear, Baronne, that nobody is now safe from molestation, here, in Belgium. I am no politician, only a soldier, but it seems that your gallant little country has decided to defend itself—a mouse against a lion—with unfortunate and very regrettable results. I have with me forty-five men, upon whom I have imposed the strictest orders to behave with proper decorum in your beautiful château. If you will please order your servants to give them food—of which they are sorely in need—they will make themselves comfortable for the night in any corner they may find.” Then, turning to Aimée, he added politely: “Mademoiselle need have no fear. It is but the fortunes of war.”
The Baroness, still quite cool, looked at him steadily for a few seconds. Then she asked: “Cannot you billet your men upon the villagers below, in the valley?”
“Ah, I regret, Baronne, that that is impossible. Some of the villagers, though non-combatants, have fired at my men and killed them; therefore, in accordance with international law, their houses have been set on fire. The peaceful villages are all occupied by troops to-night, so we have been compelled to come up here.”
“We have M’sieur Rigaux to thank for this?” cried Aimée to her mother. “He told us we should be quite safe here?”
The big Uhlan officer shrugged his shoulders, and glancing at the table already set, said:
“The unfortunate situation need not, I think, be discussed, Mademoiselle. I merely ask if I, with my two subordinate officers, may be permitted to join you at table this evening?”
The Baroness hesitated, still holding the Uhlan’s card in her hand. His rank equalled that of her husband, and though they were strangers, she foresaw that any resistance might have unpleasant results for them. The German tide was undoubtedly advancing.
“Baron von Meyeren,” she said at last, with considerable dignity, “this indignity you place upon us, two defenceless women, compelled as we are to entertain our enemies, is, I suppose, but the fortune of war. You and your officers are quite welcome here at my table, but I would ask you to order your men to behave with decency, for I heard—only yesterday—some terrible stories of the conduct of Uhlans further up the valley.”
The officer bowed.
“Madame,” he said, “I assure you that you need not have the slightest apprehension. In the German Army we punish disobedience by death. My men know that—by examples already set them.”
“My daughter and I have your word, m’sieur—eh?” asked the Baroness.
“Madame,” he replied, “you certainly have my solemn word. To-morrow morning we shall, I hope, relieve you of this incubus, and I trust that you will, by that time, have discovered that we are not the bloodthirsty savages which the world reports us to be.”
The Baroness then called the footman and gave certain orders that the troopers below should be entertained, while half an hour later Baron von Meyeren, who had suddenly betrayed a sabre-rattling overbearing towards the ladies, sat down at the dinner table with his two younger officers, apparently young fops from Berlin.
The Baroness and her daughter refused to sit at table with their enemies.
The swaggering German Baron did not ask for what he wanted. He simply ordered it from his orderly who stood behind him.
The wine served did not exactly suit his palate, whereupon he told the orderly to go down into the cellars and ascertain what they contained.
“Bring us up some good wine,” he added in German. “The best these people have. They are sure to have something worth drinking. And give the men some also. It will keep up their spirits.”
The two women were sitting at the further end of the long room, watching the weird scene, the three men laughing and eating beneath the zone of light shed by the dozen or so lighted candles.
Soon the orderly returned with six bottles of Baron de Neuville’s choicest champagne. These they opened themselves, and in loud, harsh voices, brutally drank the health of their hostess and her daughter.
Beneath a veneer of polish and culture which that trio of the enemy wore, was a coarseness and brutality which were at once revealed, for they laughed uproariously, gossiping together in German, with coarse remarks, which only Aimée, sitting in silence, understood.
They swallowed the wine in tumblers—the choice wine of Belgium’s great millionaire—and very soon they demanded that the Baroness and her daughter should sit with them at table.
Again they refused, but both women discerned the drunken leers in the eyes of the men, yet believing the assurance of the Uhlan commander, the word of a German nobleman, they were not frightened. Nevertheless the swords those men wore at their sides bore the blood of the innocent people massacred to provide the “frightful examples” which the Kaiser had laughingly given to their brave little nation, which had no quarrel with the bombastic and treacherous monarch who had self-styled himself the War Lord of Europe.
“Come, Mademoiselle!” cried von Meyeren. “Do not sit over there. We are enemies, but we will not hurt you. And you, Baroness!” he cried, rising and going across to them, “I insist upon your having dinner. It is not fair, is it, Heinrich?” he asked, addressing the elder of the pair.
“No. The Baroness must join us. She must,” he said.
The two women refused, but with their heads elevated by wine the three men insisted, and at last, in order to pacify them, the mother and daughter consented to sit at the further end of the table, though they would eat nothing.
“Here’s health to the Fatherland?” cried the younger of the three, getting up unsteadily and spilling his wine as he raised it to his lips amid the “Hochs” of his two companions.
The scene was surely as disgraceful as it was unexpected. Baron de Neuville’s wife and daughter left there, alone and unprotected, in that great mediaeval château, had accepted the word of honour of a Saxon nobleman. They had never expected to witness such a scene of drunkenness as that!
Suddenly, from somewhere below, sounded men’s shouts and women’s screams. Were the men below drunk, like their officers? Again and again was the uproar repeated.
The Baroness rang the bell, but there was no response.
“Whatever can be happening below?” asked Aimée, full of fear. Now that the officers were drunk, what hope was there for the Kaiser’s barbaric savages in the servants’ hall?
Again the bell was rung, when Mélanie, in her cap and apron, dashed into the room, crying:
“Ah! Madame! It is terrible—terrible! The soldiers are wrecking the salon. They are ripping the furniture with their swords. They are all drunk, Madame—the beasts are all drunk?”
The girl was flushed and dishevelled. Her hair was down, and she was panting, having, truth to tell, just escaped the embraces of a too amorous German in his cups.
The cultured Baron Wernher von Meyeren heard the maid’s complaint to her mistress, and laughed heartily.
“Our men are evidently enjoying themselves,” he remarked in German to his two brother-officers. “This Baron de Neuville is the richest man in Belgium. It is fun to be in his house—is it not? And his daughter is pretty too. What do you think—eh?”
Aimée overheard the words of the “blonde beast.”
She stood boldly before him, and turned upon him like a tiger.
“You Uhlan?” cried her mother. “Your very regiment is synonymous of all that is treacherous and ill-begotten. If you do not respect women, then I believe all that is told of you. Let your God-cursed Emperor let loose his hordes upon us, but the day will come, and is not far distant, when the finger of God will be placed upon you, and you, a nobleman of Saxony, will be withered and die as a stickleback will die beneath the sun.”
“Oh, mother! Do be careful what you say. Pray be careful!” urged Aimée, clinging to her beseechingly.
The gallant Baron, with crimson face, rose unsteadily, gripping the edge of the table to prevent himself from falling, and in fierce anger cried:
“For those words to us, woman, your house shall suffer,” and drawing his sword, he swept from the table the beautiful épergnes of flowers and china baskets of fruit, and, staggering to the wall, he slashed viciously the fine old tapestries, in his frantic drunken rage.
“Ernst,” he hiccoughed to one of the officers, “tell the men below that this Belgian woman has insulted us while we are her guests, and let them make an example of this fine Baron’s castle.”
“No, no?” shrieked Aimée. “No, I beg of you, Baron—I beg of you to spare our home. Remember your word to us!” cried the girl frantically in German.
But he only laughed triumphantly in her face, and the man he addressed as Ernst, having left to do his bidding, he with the other officer and two grey-coated orderlies, gleefully commenced to wreck the splendid room, while the two terrified women, clinging to each other, stood in a corner watching how they vented their mad ire upon all on which they could lay their hands.
In a few moments they were slashing the upholstery with their swords, tearing down and destroying the ancient Flemish tapestries, while the Baron himself paid particular attention to the pictures—all valuable old masters—defacing and destroying them one by one.
“See, woman! what we will now do with this snug home of yours?” he said in his drunken frenzy as, taking up an iron poker from the big open grate, he attacked the beautiful old chandelier of Venetian glass suspended in the centre of the room, smashing it to fragments.
The yells of the men in the adjoining apartments mingled with the smashing of furniture and loud, drunken laughter, reached them where they stood. They told their own tale. Everywhere in that splendid old château destruction was being carried on at the express orders of the cultured Baron von Meyeren, one of Germany’s noblemen.
“Wreck the place?” he yelled to half a dozen burly Uhlans who burst in, two of them holding bottles in their hands. “And we will make a bonfire afterwards. This woman has cursed us, and we, as German soldiers, will teach her a lesson she will not easily forget!”
Poor Mélanie had disappeared, but above the terrible disorder and wild shouting were the shrieks of the female servants below, while a smell of fire suddenly greeted their nostrils.
“Look, mother! there’s smoke!” gasped Aimée in terror. “They have set the château on fire?”
As she spoke, two of the Uhlans had torn down a huge picture—part of an altar-piece from a church at Antwerp—which occupied the whole of the end wall of the room, and were kicking their big boots through the priceless canvas. It was a picture attributed to Rubens.
“Come, child, let us go,” whispered the Baroness, her eyes dimmed with tears, and her face pale and set.
They turned to leave, but as they did so, the Baron caught Aimée roughly by the shoulder, and leering at her, patted her beneath the chin.
In an instant the girl, resenting such familiarity, turned upon him like a tigress and slapped his flabby face so heavily that he drew back in surprise, while the others witnessing the rebuff, laughed at his discomfiture. He raised his sword with an oath, and would have cut her down had not the man called Ernst rushed forth and stayed his hand.
“Go, ladies,” urged the man in French. “Escape, while there is yet time.”
“Hold that girl!” shouted von Meyeren, fiercely struggling to get free from his brother-officer. But the latter held him, and barred his passage while the two terrified women dashed down the stairs, up which the black smoke was already slowly curling.
Darkness had fallen, and only here and there had the lamps been lit. Therefore the Baroness and her daughter were enabled to obtain hats and wraps and to creep down a steep, winding back staircase which was seldom used, and which the Uhlans had, fortunately, not yet discovered.
The scene was a terrible one of wholesale, wanton destruction. Some of the men were busy getting together the plate and valuables, while, just as they left, they caught sight of one man who emerged into the courtyard with the Baroness’ jewel-case beneath his arm.
The thieves and murderers of the Kaiser were repeating in the beautiful Château of Sévérac, the same disgraceful methods which they had pursued in the villages of the Meuse. They respected neither God nor man, neither old age nor youth. They made war upon women, and shot down the unarmed and defenceless. Indeed, this great army of “kultur” was, in reality, but a disciplined horde of barbarians.
The Baroness and her daughter, with wraps hastily thrown about them, succeeded in escaping from the house by the postern gate, which gave entrance to a wood, but ere they left, a red glare from one of the lower rooms, shining away across the river, told only too plainly that the dastardly Uhlans had used some of their famous inflammable “confetti,” and were burning the place.
The fierce, exultant yells of the drunken soldiery fell upon their ears as they plunged into the dark wood, part of the Baron’s wide domain, the intricate by-paths of which were well known to Aimée.
Breathlessly they hastened on, until in the darkness beneath the trees they were compelled to slowly grope their way. Their fear was lest the woods be searched, and they might be captured, for the brutes—inflamed as they were with wine—were now in the mood for torture and for murder. Woe-betide them if they fell into their hands.
Mother and daughter pushed eagerly, breathlessly on, terrified at the fearful orgie of destruction they had just witnessed. For a full half-hour they walked, Aimée leading the way through the narrow, winding shooting-paths, until at last they came forth into the open fields.
Then they paused, scarce daring to look behind them. Alas! at the bend of the valley, high upon its rock, Sévérac stood out vividly with flames belching fiercely from the windows of its high, round towers, and casting a blood-red glare upon the waters and across to the woods on the opposite bank.
“Dieu!” gasped the Baroness—“the fiends!—those hell-fiends of the Emperor?”
“Mother,” exclaimed Aimée, quite calm again now that they had escaped from the hands of that brigandish band, “remember there is a God of Justice, with whom vengeance lies for wrong, and most assuredly will He, if we place our trust in Him, mete out the dread fate of death and obscurity to the arrogant Kaiser, and to all his dastardly barbarians. Let us get back to Brussels somehow. There, at least, we shall be safe.”
And as they stood watching the fierce flames leap up around those ancient towers which had withstood the wars of Charles the Bold, they knew not the awful scene taking place in the courtyard, where Gustave, Mélanie, and seven other of the servants, male and female, were shot one after the other in cold blood, as they emerged in terror from the burning place. Appearance of each was being hailed by the drunken laughter of the assembled soldiers, and in escaping the fire they fell victims of the blood-lust of the brutes.
“The Red Cock is crowing all over Belgium!” shouted the Baron von Meyeren thickly, alluding to the incendiary acts of Germans being committed everywhere. “We shall make a bonfire of Namur, to-morrow, my men! Hurrah! for God and the Fatherland.”
And as he passed across the courtyard, for the atmosphere had now become hot and stifling, he savagely kicked aside the body of one of the young female servants who, poor thing, had been sabred in her attempt to escape.
Chapter Twelve.
The Fugitives.
That flight proved indeed a hideous nightmare.
Throughout those hot, stifling hours of oppressive darkness, the Baroness de Neuville—as homeless as those hundreds of poor people on the roads, even though wife of a millionaire—wandered on, Aimée taking her arm tenderly. On, and still on they went, along the straight, open road which, leaving the Meuse, led over the hills to the straggling little whitewashed village of Winenne, which they at last reached.
There they joined a hustling crowd of terror-stricken fugitives of all classes, sad-eyed men, frightened women, and wondering children, some stern, some crying bitterly, but all carrying bundles, or pushing wheelbarrows or perambulators containing all they had saved from their lowly homes. From Winenne, the Baroness and her daughter, after trudging on with the crowd for some distance, left the high road and took a by-way, which Aimée knew by motoring frequently over it, led due south across the hill, for ten miles or so, to Bourseigne, where lived the Baronne’s brother, a large landed proprietor. In his house they had decided to seek protection. The red flush of dawn had given place to the light of day ere they came in sight of the little place, lying deep in its hollow, but as they looked eagerly upon “The Château”—as the long, white, old-fashioned house was termed—their spirits fell, for it was roofless, and its grim, blackened walls, alas! told their own tale.
A peasant on the road told them the story.
Three days ago the Germans had arrived and occupied the place, which was only three miles from the French frontier. Monsieur Hannaerts, the seigneur of the place, had been arrested as hostage for the good behaviour of the village, but, because a half-witted youth had discharged a toy-pistol at a German soldier, the unhappy gentleman had been bound to a telegraph pole at the roadside, and shot in the presence of the villagers.
An hour later the British, under General Sir John French, who had arrived at Charleroi and had extended their line towards Mézieres, began to shell the village, with the result that it had been partially destroyed, the Château, which had been the enemy’s headquarters, suffering most severely.
The tide of war, however, had now passed by, and when the two weary, footsore women entered the village, they found life proceeding almost as usual. Those who had not been killed had returned to their wrecked and shattered homes, and were full of stories of the fierce brutality of the invader, which the gallant “Anglais” in khaki had so swiftly driven out.
Naturally, much distressed at the news of her brother’s murder, the Baronne entered the place with fixed, terror-stricken eyes, that same set expression of woe and hopelessness which was seen everywhere in Belgium, now that the gallant little kingdom had fallen beneath the fire and sword of a relentless barbarian.
On every hand great holes showed in the walls, torn open by the British shells, many houses were completely demolished, and in some places only rubble heaps remained to show the site where houses had stood. In others, walls stood gaunt and blackened where the fire had gutted them, causing roofs and windows to fall in.
Wandering pigs were grunting in the long street, and big-eyed little children, now that the roar of war had ceased, were playing merrily among the ruins and finding all sorts of oddments half burned in the débris. One, evidently a humourist, had put on the spiked helmet of a dead German, and was striking comic attitudes, to the delight of his playfellows. His head being completely buried in the canvas-covered helmet, he presented a most ludicrous appearance.
“Let us find M’sieur Labarre, mother,” suggested Aimée, for she knew the place well, as they had often been her uncle’s guests at the now ruined château.
“Yes,” murmured the Baronne. “I feel so very faint, dear, that I really can go no farther?” And, indeed, the poor woman, refined and cultured, having tramped all through that terrible night in her thin shoes, and having been challenged so constantly by soldiers in the darkness—each challenge being a fright lest it be that of the enemy—she was entirely exhausted and unnerved.
Labarre was a farmer, who held some land belonging to Aimée’s unde, and it was not long before they entered his modest house—a long, ugly, grey-slated place surrounded by haystacks and outhouses.
Labarre, a stout, ruddy-faced man, of middle age, in a blue linen blouse, typical of the Walloon farmer, welcomed the poor ladies warmly and in great surprise, and soon they were in the hands of his stout wife, Elise, and were drinking cups of hot bouillon, for, in the farms of the Ardennes, the stock-pot is usually simmering upon the fire.
The long, old-fashioned room, with its heavy beams, its stone-paving, its row of copper cooking-utensils shining in the sun, and its wide chimney and wooden chairs was, indeed, a haven of rest after the terrors of that night.
And while they drank the bouillon, the fat farmer lifted his hands as he told them the story of the German occupation.
“Ah! Baronne! It was terrible—very terrible,” he cried in his Walloon dialect. “Those pigs of Germans came here, took all the corn I had, smashed my piano and thieved two of my horses. But the brave English drove them out. We fled when the English shells began to fall, but, fortunately, not one did any damage to our house, though the big barn was set on fire with two haystacks, and destroyed.”
Having remained under the farmer’s hospitable roof for a day, Aimée, who had now completely recovered, resolved to leave her mother in Madame Labarre’s charge, and endeavour to reach Dinant where, it was said, the telephone with Brussels had been repaired. By that means she could, she hoped, communicate with her father, and ascertain what they should do.
The British soldiers in khaki were now in possession of Bourseigne, and that communication was open from Dinant to Brussels, Aimée had learnt from a lieutenant of the Gloucesters, a good-looking young fellow named Dick Fortescue, whom she had met in the little Place having some trouble with the Walloon language in a purchase of fodder he was making, and had offered to interpret.
What Fortescue had told her caused her to decide, therefore, two hours later, there being no trains nor any conveyance available, she set out alone, a slim, pathetic little figure in dusty black, wearing a black shawl borrowed from the farmer’s wife, and turned her face westward along that white road so familiar to her, a highway which ran over green hills and along deep valleys, and which was the main road over which the lumbering, old-fashioned post diligences, with their jingling bells, still passed, in peace time, between Sedan and Dinant.
With her face to the deep glow of the sunset she trudged forward, her thoughts reverting, as they always did, to Edmond—her Edmond!
“Where is he?” she murmured, as her white, hard-set lips moved. “What can have happened to him?”
Was he lying still and dead—buried perhaps in a nameless grave—or was he still fighting valiantly in defence of his country and his King?
If he were, he would, wherever he might be, still be thinking of her. Of that she was confident, for they loved each other with a firm, all-absorbing and eternal love, a love that could never be shaken, and that could never die.
The light of the fading day darkened into the blood-red afterglow, and before her there rose the lowering clouds of night, as alone and unprotected she still bent forward, with sixteen miles to cover ere she reached the narrow, cobbled streets of Dinant. Ten miles away on her left stood Sévérac, now, alas! but a smouldering ruin, and over in that direction she could hear the distant booming of heavy guns, for that evening the British, acquitting themselves so bravely, were fighting Von Kluck all along the line from Mons, through Charleroi, to near Mézieres. They were stemming the German invasion, and while the flower of the German Army was being hurled against them, they swept them off even though the Kaiser, in his insane arrogance, had issued as his “Imperial command” that General French’s “contemptible little army” should be crushed out of existence.
In her torn and dusty black gown, and patent leather shoes, worn badly down by the long tramp from Sévérac, Aimée, though weary and footsore, did not lose heart. She was gratified that her mother was in a place of safety, and now, if she could only communicate with her father, they would, no doubt, be able to get to Ostend, and perhaps over to England. So she went forward with the distant rumble of artillery ever in her ears, while as darkness fell, she turned aside to notice a fierce red glare in the sky far away across the Meuse, in the direction of Phillipeville. Over there another town had no doubt been given to the flames.
At the village of Malvoisin she met several thousands of refugees coming towards France, raising clouds of suffocating dust. They were peasants driven by the enemy out of the peaceful valley of the winding Ourthe, and were hoping to find shelter across the frontier in France. Now and then there passed clattering squadrons of Belgian cavalry, the little yellow tassels hanging gaily from the front of their caps, while ever and anon there lumbered past, in the dim light, great grey-painted siege-guns, long trains of ammunition-wagons, Red Cross motor-ambulances, and endless lines of transports of all sorts.
Squads of infantry marched gaily to martial airs, or the men sang the latest popular songs of the café-chantant, while there also passed several machine-guns drawn by their dog-teams.
Presently Aimée joined three tearful, homeless women, one of whom trundled an old rickety perambulator filled with her household goods. They had come from Rossignol, forty miles distant, which had been sacked and burned by a Uhlan patrol, and they described to her the terrible scene. Therefore, in company, the trio pushed forward until at length they entered a long dark street of shattered houses, which Aimée recognised, to her amazement, as that of Anseremme. Yes! There was the little Hôtel Beau Séjour where she and Edmond had spent so many sunny hours in secret together, but alas! its walls were now gaunt and roofless. It had been gutted by fire, while the pleasant little terrasse beside the river was heaped with the débris of fallen walls.
She sighed as she passed the place which held for her so many fond memories, and again pressed forward with blistered feet, on past that great high split rock, through which the road runs beside the river, known as the Roche Bayard, until at length she found herself in the long dark street of half-ruined houses that led straight into the little Place at Dinant.
Arrived there, she halted aghast. The long bridge had fallen, a wreck, into the river, and there were signs everywhere of the ruthless bombardment a week before, when happily the Germans had been driven out and had retired. But at that hour, about half-past ten o’clock, the place was as silent as the grave. Everywhere was ruin and desolation, while in the air was still the pungent odour of burnt wood, the woodwork of houses set on fire by the German shells.
There being neither gas nor electricity, an oil lamp had been hung upon a nail on a wall, and it was near this that the girl was standing. She was well known in Dinant as daughter of the Baron who held the purse-strings of Belgium, and, with her mother, frequently came to the little town in their car.
She stood hesitating as to whom she should ask a favour and allow her to telephone to Brussels, when she was suddenly startled by a familiar voice behind her, and holding her breath, she faced the man who had addressed her.
It was a Belgian soldier.
It was Edmond Valentin!