Chapter Thirteen.
Before the Storm.
“Aimée?” he gasped. “You!”
“Dieu! Edmond. You!—fancy you here, just at the moment when—”
“When—what?” he echoed. “Tell me, why are you here—in this place? Why are you not in Brussels? It is not safe for you here, my darling!”
And he placed his hand tenderly upon her shoulder and, in the dim light of the lantern, looked straight into her dear face.
She gazed at him. He was in his heavy military overcoat, with a rifle slung upon his shoulder, for he had come down into the town from the fortress above, where his machine-gun was posted, in order to take a message from his captain to the captain of infantry holding the head of the wrecked bridge close by.
A few brief, hasty words sufficed to explain the terrible scene at Sévérac; how she and her mother had fled, and the reason of her long tramp to Dinant. There, in that dark, silent little square before the ruined church, with the high ruined old fortress on the cliff above, he drew her weary head down upon his breast, imprinting upon her white brow a long, passionate kiss, and murmuring:
“Ah! my darling, I have prayed to God that I might be spared to see you once again—if only just once—for the last time!”
“No, no,” she cried, lifting her lips to his, and kissing him long and fervently. “No. We shall win, Edmond, and you will live. Right and justice are, surely, upon our side, and we shall vanquish this German enemy of civilisation. Brute force can never win in the face of Providence and God’s good-will.”
“True, darling. But you must save yourself,” he urged. And, hastily, he told her of the attack upon Liège, the retreat to the Meuse, the bombardment of Dinant, and the valiant manner in which the defenders had fought and retaken the citadel.
In those five minutes in which the devoted pair stood together in the dim, flickering light, he held her in his strong embrace. Their affection was a fierce and passionate devotion, the fire of a love unquenchable. He repeated in her ear his fervent love for her, and then he added in a hard voice:
“Aimée, if in this terrible fight for life I fall, and we do not meet again, I want you to promise me one thing. Will you, darling?”
“Of course, Edmond. What is it?”
“That you will never consent to marry that man, Arnaud Rigaux—our enemy?”
“I will never marry him, Edmond. I would rather die first?”
“You promise me that?” he asked eagerly.
“I promise you. Before I consent I would rather take my own life. I swear to you that I will never be the wife of Arnaud Rigaux.”
“Bien! Remember always that he is our mutual enemy—yours and mine,” he said in a hard, determined tone. Then he again kissed her, reassured by her fervent promise.
As they stood beneath the lamplight, a sentry passed them, his bayonet gleaming beneath the fitful light. But they were both in ignorance that, away in the shadow of a doorway, a man who had just entered the square had withdrawn to watch the affectionate pair—out of curiosity perhaps.
Lovers are always interesting to the curious, yet this man who had hitherto walked very briskly, had suddenly stopped and withdrawn to the shadow, so suddenly indeed, that the heavy-footed sentry had not detected his light steps.
Had Edmond Valentin known that he was being spied upon, then woe-betide the watcher! The Belgians were again in occupation of the town, and any suspicious character was at once arrested as a German spy, of whom there were so many hundreds swarming all over the country.
As it was, the pair stood in utter ignorance of the sharp watchful eyes upon them, and in the silence of the night, continued in low undertones their assurances of affection.
Away across the river—beyond the ruins of the old Château of Crève-Coeur—a fierce red light rose until it glared in the night sky, the toll of war paid by the poor defenceless peasantry, to those barbaric hordes of “kultur” who were sweeping across Belgium with rapine, fire, and sword. At no crime or outrage, torture or desecration, were those hirelings of the Master Criminal of Earth now hesitating. The modern Judas, who had stretched out the hand of friendship to Great Britain, to Russia, to France and to Belgium, falsely proclaiming himself the Apostle of Peace, and endeavouring to blind the world to his true intentions, had now revealed himself as the world’s bitterest, most dastardly, and most low-down enemy, who was making what he was pleased to term “frightful examples” in an endeavour to terrify and to stagger humanity.
“I fear that you will not be able to telephone to your father, darling,” Edmond was saying. “Only an hour ago communication was again interrupted. Some Uhlans have cut the wires, I suppose. They do so every day. Your only chance will be to try and get through to Brussels yourself—only it is so far away, now that there is no rail or motors—sixty miles, or more.”
“But what shall I do?” she asked. “What do you advise, Edmond?”
What could he advise? He stood before her, unable to reply.
So engrossed were they in their conversation that they did not notice that, after the sentry had passed across the square to the corner of the narrow Rue Grande, up which Aimée had trudged, the dark civilian figure in the doorway had slipped across the Grand Place, and was again engulfed in the shadows.
“You can go no further to-night, dearest,” he said. “You know this place—Dinant. Why not go to the Hôtel de l’Epée yonder, up the street, and remain there till morning? Then I will get permission to come and see you, and we can decide upon some plan.”
“Ah! yes!” she cried. “Uncle François! I know the dear old fellow. His son was in our service as chauffeur two years ago. What an excellent idea! Yes. I will go at once. But without money will he take me in?” she queried with hesitancy.
“Never fear, darling?” he laughed. “The daughter of the Baron de Neuville has unlimited credit in any town in Belgium. But alas?” he added, “I must go, sweetheart, for I have to deliver an immediate message, and obtain a reply. I may be too late if I do not hurry.”
“Yes—go, Edmond,” she said, just a little reluctantly. “Carry out your duty. I know my way to Uncle François’ quite well. Au revoir!”
“Till to-morrow, my own darling,” he said, and holding her again in his strong embrace for a few seconds, he imprinted upon her white, open brow, fond passionate caresses in all the ecstasy of their mutual love.
As he held her in his arms, in the dark silent Grand Place, the sharp sound of a bugle broke upon their ears. It was blown from the citadel above.
“The alarm!” gasped her lover breathlessly. “Dieu! What can have happened?” In a moment the call was repeated, and echoed across the river, while next second there was the rattle of rifle-shots in the darkness, and from the rock, above where they stood, opened out long white beams of intense light which slowly swept the valley up and down.
Suddenly the quick pom-pom-pom of a Maxim—Edmond’s Maxim—broke the quiet, followed by a red flash and a terrific explosion above them.
The Belgians had discovered that the enemy, under cover of darkness, were making another attack upon the town!
“You cannot stay here, darling,” Edmond cried, in frantic haste. “Run along to Uncle François’. He has big cellars there. Remain below in them until the storm has passed. I must get back to my gun.” And he kissed her again breathlessly, saying, “Good-bye, darling—till to-morrow.”
Once more the heavy guns upon the citadel flashed and roared. No time was now to be lost.
“We are attacked again?” cried Valentin. “Run along to the Epée! You will be safe there. Run quickly!”—and he kissed her in hasty farewell. Then they parted.
She had only a couple of hundred yards to go to gain the old-fashioned inn. He watched her disappear around the corner, then, as fast as his legs could carry him, he ascended the hill-side to where his men, posted with their machine-gun, were already firing.
By this time, however, the whole town was agog. The alarm signals had aroused everyone. It was, indeed, an awful nightmare. The barbaric enemy were again upon them for a second time!
A German armoured motor-car had suddenly swept down the Rue St. Jacques—which ran behind the Rue Grande—and was firing with its machine-gun into the windows of houses without warning or provocation.
Behind it, rode a large body of Uhlans, who at once ran through, with their lances, those of the peaceful inhabitants who opened their doors to ascertain the cause of the firing.
Aimée succeeded in gaining the door of the ancient inn only just in time, knocking frantically, and obtaining admittance, while Uncle François, recognising her, was at once eager for information as to what had happened to the Baron. At the moment the girl entered the shelter of the house, bullets were already sweeping up the streets.
Dinant had been attacked suddenly by a force under Lieutenant-Colond Beeger, one of the most arrogant Huns of the Kaiser—a monster, who dealt death upon defenceless women and children, and who had been sent by his superiors to repeat the “frightful examples” of Aerschot and of Visé. The sharp, relentless talons of the Prussian eagle had, alas! been set into the little place, peaceful, quiet, and unoffending as it had always been throughout the ages.
Within five minutes the town arose from its silence to a pandemonium of noise. Edmond, who had climbed up the four hundred steps leading to the citadel to his machine-gun, saw but little of the Dantean scene below. His pom-pom was now spitting death down into the Grand Place, but suddenly he slackened the fire in fear lest he might be sending to the grave any of those brave Dinantais, whom he could not distinguish from the enemy in the darkness.
Meanwhile, Aimée stood in the great cellars of the Hotel of the Sword, huddled with a hundred others of all ages and all classes, and fearing for her lover in that violent storm which had so suddenly burst upon them.
How would it end? What could the end be?
Chapter Fourteen.
Held by the Enemy.
The long, narrow street was being swept by a hail of lead. Once again was Dinant stricken.
The Germans—ordered by the assassin who led them—were firing indiscriminately into the houses as they rode along.
A woman sleeping in the top room of the hotel was killed, while, in the next house, a poor little child was mortally wounded, and died in its mother’s arms. Those who opened their doors, startled at the commotion, were all ruthlessly shot down. The marauders, more savage than the warriors of the Khalifa, spared nobody.
Aimée, seated upon a mouldy wine-barrel in the stuffy cellar amid that crowd of terrified women, listened to the firing, keenly apprehensive of Edmond’s fate. That sudden and unexpected meeting now seemed to her like some strange dream.
Hiding there, she knew not the savage, awful acts that were being committed by the Kaiser’s assassins, acts which were but the prelude of a reign of terror.
“Do not be distressed, Mademoiselle,” urged old Uncle François, placing his big, heavy hand kindly upon the girl’s shoulder. “You are safe here, and besides, our soldiers will soon drive out the enemy, as they did before.”
As he spoke, the earth shook beneath the roar of a big field-gun.
“Hark! They are firing upon them from the citadel?” he added.
That night proved one of breathless suspense. The sound of intermittent firing could be heard, even down in that vaulted cellar, together with the heavier explosions which, ever and anon, shook the ancient place to its very foundations.
Uncle François and his daughter busied themselves in making coffee for the refugees, poor, frantic women, who dreaded what fate might befall their husbands and brothers. Many of them knelt piously and aloud besought the protection of the Almighty against the barbarians.
Dawn came at last, and with it large masses of German troops swept into the town. Some sharp fighting had occurred along the heights above the Meuse, but during the night the gallant defenders had been driven out of the town, being compelled to fall back along the wide valley towards Namur.
Edmond Valentin worked his gun valiantly, with a fierce, dogged determination not to leave Aimée in the hands of the brutal soldiery.
But it was all to no purpose. The order was given to retire, and he was compelled to withdraw with his comrades under cover of darkness.
“The pigs shall die?” he muttered fiercely to himself. He clenched his teeth, and, even after the order to “cease fire,” he still worked his Maxim, mowing down a squad of twenty or so German infantrymen who had just entered the Place below, at the spot where he and Aimée had stood together only a short time before.
Aimée was down there, in that stricken town! Could he thus abandon her to her fate!
He blamed himself for advising her to go to the house of Uncle François. She should have kept on the road towards Namur, for had she done so, she would have now been beyond the danger zone.
A shrapnel bullet had grazed his left wrist, and around it he had hastily wrapped a piece of dirty rag, which was now already saturated with blood. But in his chagrin at their compulsory retreat, he heeded not his injury. The welfare of the sweet girl, whom he loved more dearly than his own life, was his only thought.
His brigade, thus driven from their position, withdrew in the darkness over the hills to behind the village of Houx, where the long railway-bridge crossing the Meuse, destroyed a few days ago by the defenders, was now lying a wreck of twisted ironwork in the stream. There they took up a second defensive position.
But meanwhile in Dinant the Germans, filled with the blood-lust of triumph, and urged on by their cultured “darlings” of Berlin drawing-rooms—those degenerate elegants who were receiving tin crosses from their Kaiser because of the “frightful examples” they were making—were now committing atrocities more abominable even than those once committed in Bulgaria, and denounced by the whole civilised world.
Into the big, ill-lit cellar descended a terrified woman who told an awful story. German soldiers were smashing in the doors of every house, and murdering everybody found within.
“My poor husband has just been killed before my very eyes!” shrieked the poor, half-demented creature. “My two children also! The Imites! They stabbed them with their bayonets! I flew, and they did not catch me. They are arresting all women, and taking them up to the Monastery. They will be here soon.”
“Here!” gasped Aimée, her face suddenly white as death. “Surely they will not come here?” she cried.
“They will?” shouted the frantic, half-crazed woman, who had seen her beloved husband fall beneath the bullets of the soldiers ere they, laughingly, set fire to her house. “They will?”
Scarcely had she spoken before a young man, Pierre Fiévet, a nephew of Uncle François, limped down the broken steps into the cellar, wounded in the foot, and, calling the old man aside, said in a low voice in his native Walloon dialect:
“Don’t alarm the women. But the situation outside is fearful.” He was a young doctor, and well known in Dinant. “About sixty workmen at the cotton-mill, together with our friend Himmer, the manager, have just been found in hiding under a culvert,” he added. “They have all been shot—everyone of them. The soldiers are using bombs to set fire to the houses everywhere. It is a raging furnace outside?”
“Dieu!” gasped the old man. “What shall we do?”
“Heaven help us! I do not know,” replied the young doctor. “I only just managed to escape with my life. I saw, only a minute or two ago, in the Place d’Armes, quite two hundred men and boys—old men of seventy-five and boys of twelve, many of whom I knew—drawn up, and then shot down by a machine-gun. Père Jules, our old friend, was among them—and surely he was fully eighty!”
“Holy Jesu! May God place His curse upon these Germans?” cried the old fellow fervently. “As surely as there is a God in heaven, so assuredly shall we be avenged by a Hand which is stronger and more relentless than the Kaiser’s in wreaking vengeance. What else do you know?” he inquired eagerly.
“Xavier Wasseige, manager of the Banque de la Meuse, has been shot, together with his two sons, and Camille Finette and his little boy of twelve have also been murdered. They are wiping out the whole, district of Saint Médart, between the station and the bridge. All is in flames. The soldiers are worse than African savages. The new post-office has been burnt and blown up. It is only a heap of ruins.”
Uncle François knit his grey brows, and gazed steadily into his nephew’s eyes.
“Look here! Are you lying, Pierre?” he asked. “Have you really seen all this?”
“Yes. I have seen it with my own eyes.”
“I don’t believe you,” declared the old man bluntly. “I will go out and see for myself what these German fiends are doing.”
“Oh! In the name of God, don’t!” cried his nephew in quick apprehension. “You will certainly be killed. The whole of the Rue Sax, along by the river-bank, is burning. Not a single house has escaped. They intend, it seems, to destroy all our town, on both sides of the river, now that they have repaired their pontoon. Think that we have lived in Dinant to witness this!”
“But what shall we do?” gasped the poor old fellow. “How can we save these poor women?” His words were overheard by Aimée, who rose quickly and came forward, asking:
“What has happened?” and, indicating the young man, she asked, “What has this gentleman been telling you?”
“Oh—well—nothing very important, Mademoiselle,” François answered with hesitation. “This is Doctor Pierre Fiévet, my nephew, and he has just brought me a message. There is no real danger, Mademoiselle,” he assured her. “Our splendid troops are still close by, and will drive the invaders out, as before. The brigand, Von Emmich, will meet his deserts before long, depend upon it, my dear Mademoiselle.”
The girl, thus assured, withdrew to allow the two men to continue their conversation, which she believed to be of a private character.
“Don’t alarm these women, Pierre,” whispered old François. “Poor creatures, they are suffering enough already,” “But what will you do? What can you do? At any moment they may burn down this place—and you will all be suffocated like rats in a hole.”
“And, surely, that will be a far better fate for the women, than if the soldiers seize them,” was the old man’s hard response. “I, and your cousin Marie, will die with them here—if it is necessary. I, for one, am not afraid to die. I have made my peace with God. I am too old and feeble to handle a rifle, but when I was young I was a soldier of Belgium. Our little country has shown the world that she can fight. If the great wave of Germany sweeps further upon us we must necessarily be crushed out of existence. But the Powers, France, England, and Russia, will see that our memory—our grave—is avenged. I still believe, Pierre, in our country, and in our good King Albert!”
“Forty men over at the brewery of Nicaise Frères, who were found in the cellars an hour ago, were brought out and shot,” the young man said. “But ah! mon oncle, you should have witnessed the scene in the Place d’Armes—how they placed our poor, innocent townspeople against the wall—ranging them in rows, under pretence that the German Colonel was to address them. A miserable spy, who spoke Walloon as fluently as I do myself, shouted that Colonel Beeger wished to speak to them, and to urge them to bow to the inevitable, and become German subjects. They were all attention, ready to listen, and little dreaming the awful fate in store for them. They never foresaw the German treachery until a little grey machine-gun at the corner, with the four men behind it, suddenly rattled out, and in a few moments the whole of them were wallowing in their own life-blood. Ah! it was fearful, cruel, inhuman—ghastly! And this is in our civilised age!”
“Pierre,” exclaimed the good-natured old fellow softly, so that the women in that dank Dantesque vault should not overhear. “Our God is the God of justice and of righteousness. These murderers may wreck and desecrate our churches; they may kill our dear devoted priests; they may ridicule our religion, yet the great God who watches over us will, most assuredly, grind in His mill the arrogant nation that has sought to crush the world beneath Prussian despotism. We may die to-day in our good cause, but the Kaiser to-morrow will be hurled down and die accursed by humanity, and damned to hell by his Creator!”
“True, our poor people are falling beneath German bullets—though they have committed no offence against the German nation—yet what can you do here? You seem to be caught in a trap. What shall you do with these women?”
“Heaven knows?” gasped the honest old fellow. “What can I do? What do you suggest?” and he wrung his hands.
At that moment a white-haired old man, nearly eighty years of age, staggered down the broken steps, shrieking:
“Ah! Let me die! Let me die! The brutes are shooting men and boys in the Place, and now the soldiers are here—to kill us all!”
A terrible panic ensued at those significant words. The women huddled together, shrieked and screamed, for there, sure enough, came down the stone steps a grey-coated German soldier in spiked canvas-covered helmet, shouting roughly some command in German, and carrying his gleaming bayonet fixed before him.
“You women must all come up out of here!” cried a stern voice in bad French, as several other soldiers followed the first who had descended, until a dozen stood in the cellar.
The poor frightened creatures shrieked, wailed, and prayed for protection.
But the brutal soldiers, led by a swaggering young lieutenant of the Brandenburg infantry, were obdurate and commenced to roughly ill-treat the women, and cuff them towards the steps.
Uncle François raised his voice in loud protest, but next second a shot rang sharply out, and he fell dead upon the stones, a bullet through his heart, while the brute who had shot him roughly kicked his body aside with a German oath.
Such an action cowed them all.
A silence fell—the grim, terrible silence of those caught in a death-trap, for the women were now held by the enemy, and they knew, alas! too well, what their fate would now be—either dishonour or death.
Chapter Fifteen.
Betrays the Traitor.
The few moments that followed were indeed full of grim horror.
An old peasant woman, standing by Aimée, in her frenzy, spat at one of the German soldiers, whereupon he struck her in the breast with his bayonet, and, with a piercing shriek, the poor thing fell, her thin, bony hands clutching at the stones in her death agony.
“Come! no loitering!” shouted the young officer brutally, in French. “We must have you cellar-rats out above ground.” Then, catching sight of Aimée, he approached her, and spoke some words in German. She knew the language well, but did not reply, pretending that she did not understand.
At that moment there was a struggle on the stone stairway, which was narrow and winding, and his attention became diverted from her, whereupon the big, grey-coated infantryman, who had shot poor Uncle François, strode up to her and leered in her face.
She turned her head.
He placed his heavy hand upon her shoulder, saying, in his bad French:
“My girl, you are young and very pretty—to be sure?”
And then she saw, by his flushed face and bright eyes, that he had been drinking. The Germans drank up whatever they could loot—spirits, wine, beer, liqueurs, aperitifs—all the contents of the cafés.
The girl, though defenceless, drew herself up quickly, and replied in German, with the words:
“I see no reason why you should insult me?”
“Insult!” he laughed roughly. “Ah, you will see. We shall teach you rats, who live down here in holes, a lesson. Get along—and quickly.”
And he prodded her with his bayonet towards where the others, driven like sheep, were stumbling up the dark, slippery steps of the ancient vault.
She went forward without a murmur. The fate of the others was to be hers also.
Where was Edmond? If he were there he would certainly teach those brutes a severe lesson. But alas! he was not there. The Belgians had been driven out, and they, weak and defenceless, were held by a fierce relentless set of savages. The whole world was now learning the vanity of attempting to distinguish between the Germany of “culture” and the panoplied brutality of Prussian arrogance.
With the others, Aimée had ascended the steps and had gained the big ancient kitchen of the inn.
A number of the elder women had been pushed forward out into the street, where some screamed in sudden madness at seeing the bodies of men lying in the roadway. But Aimée, with half a dozen or so of the younger women, were detained by the officer, who had just given a sharp order to his men.
Suddenly the young elegant in command went outside, leaving the women to suffer the indignities of a dozen or so soldiers left to guard them. The big infantryman again approached Aimée, but the would speak no further word.
Suddenly, in the doorway, there appeared the figure of a major, at whose word the men quickly drew up to attention.
Aimée looked at him, scarce believing her own eyes.
Was she dreaming?
She stood staring at him. Though his uniform was strange, his face was only too familiar.
It was Arnaud Rigaux.
“M’sieur Rigaux! You!” she gasped. “You—a German!”
“Yes, Mademoiselle,” he laughed. “I have been searching everywhere for you. It is indeed fortunate that I am here in time. This, surely, is no place for you.”
“Searching for me?” she echoed. “How did you know I was here—in Dinant? And, tell me—why are you, a Belgian—wearing the Prussian uniform?”
Truly the meeting was a dramatic one.
He laughed lightly, replying hastily:
“My dear Aimée, I will explain all that later. Come. Get away with me, while there is yet time.” Then, whispering in her ear, he added: “These men are mostly drunk. Quick! Come with me, and I will place you in safety.”
“But I cannot understand,” the girl cried, still in hesitation. “Why are you here—with the enemy, and in the enemy’s uniform?”
“This is surely no time for questions or explanations,” he urged. And, turning to the soldiers, he gave an order to march the remaining women out of the house. “Let me save you, Aimée,” he added in French, turning to her.
“How? How can you save me?” she inquired, instinctively mistrusting him. The very fact that he was dressed as a German officer had aroused grave suspicion in her mind.
“I have my car in waiting, away beyond the German lines. Come with me. Don’t hesitate. Trust yourself in my care, I beg of you, Mademoiselle.”
“I want to get to my father,” she said, still hesitating.
“He is in Brussels. I will take you to him—on one condition,” and he placed his hand upon her arm and looked earnestly into her pale, agitated countenance.
“What condition?” she inquired, starting quickly at his touch. He made conditions, even in that hour of direst peril! Dinant was aflame, and hundreds of innocent people were now being murdered by the Kaiser’s Huns.
“The condition, Aimée,” he said, looking straight into her eyes very seriously, “is that you will become my wife.”
“Your wife, M’sieur Rigaux—never!”
“You refuse?” he cried, a brutal note in his hard voice. “You refuse, Mademoiselle,” he added threateningly—“and so you prefer to remain here, in the hands of the soldiery. They will have but little respect for the daughter of the Baron de Neuville, I assure you.”
She turned upon him fiercely, like a tigress, retorting:
“Those men, assassins as they have proved themselves to be, will have just as much respect for me as you yourself have—you, a traitor who, though a Belgian, are now wearing a Prussian uniform?”
The man laughed in her face, and she saw in his countenance a fierce, fiendish, even terrible expression such as she had never seen there before. Gradually it was beginning to dawn upon her that this man who could move backwards and forwards through the opposing lines, dressed as a German officer, must be a spy.
“Very well,” he said. “If you so desire, I will leave you to your fate—the wretched fate of those women who have just been driven out from here. The enemy has set his hand heavily upon you at last,” he laughed. “And you Belgians may expect neither pity nor respect.”
“Ah, then I know you?” she cried. “You are not Belgian—but German—you, who have posed so long as my father’s intimate friend—you, who thought to mislead us—who schemed to bring the enemy into our midst. Though you have uttered words of love to me, I see you now, exposed as a spy—as an enemy—as one who should be tried and shot as a traitor?”
She did not spare her words in the mad frenzy of the moment.
“You speak harshly,” he growled. “If you do not have a care, you shall pay for this?”
“I will. I would rather die here now, than become the wife of a low, cunning spy, who has posed as one of ourselves while he has been in secret relation with the enemy all the time. I hate you, Arnaud Rigaux—I hate you!” shrieked the girl. “Do your worst to me! The worst cannot be worse than death—and even that I prefer, to further association with one who wears the Prussian uniform, and who is leading the enemy into our country. Your cultured friends have burned and sacked Sévérac. Let them sack the whole of Belgium if they will, but our men have still the spirit to defend themselves, just as I have to-day. I defy you, clever, cunning spy that you are. Hear me?” she cried, her white teeth set, her head low upon her shoulders, and her hands clenched as she stood before him, half crouched as a hunted animal ready to spring. “You men who make war upon women may try and crush us, but you will never crush me. Go, and escape in your car if you will. Pass through the Belgian lines back to Brussels. But, though only a defenceless girl, I am safer even in the hands of this barbarian enemy than in the hands of a traitor like you?”
“Very well, girl—choose your own fate,” laughed the man roughly. “You refuse to go with me—eh?”
“Yes,” she said. “I refuse. I hate the sight of your treacherous face. Already I have told my father so.”
“Your father is no longer a person to be regarded,” the man declared. “He is already ruined financially. I have seen to that, never fear. You are no longer the daughter of Baron de Neuville, but the daughter of a man whom this war has brought to ruin and to bankruptcy. It should be an honour to you, daughter of a ruined man, that I should offer you marriage.”
“I am engaged to marry Edmond Valentin,” she replied.
“Bah! a mere soldier. If he is not already dead he soon will be. Germany flicks away the Belgian army like so many grains of sawdust before the wind.”
“No. Edmond is honest and just. He will live,” she cried. “And you, the spy and traitor, will die an ignoble death!”
“Well,” he laughed defiantly. “We shall see all about that, Mademoiselle. We have been long preparing for this coup—for the destruction of your snug little kingdom, and now we are here we shall follow Bismarck’s plan, and not leave your country even their eyes to weep with. It will be swept from end to end—and swept still again and again, until it is Belgian no longer, but German—part of the world-empire of our great Kaiser.”
The fellow did not further disguise that he was a German agent—he who had posed as a patriotic Belgian, was there in Dinant, dressed in Prussian uniform.
The trembling girl stood amazed. The ghastly truth was, to her, one horrible, awful nightmare.
“Your great Kaiser, as you call him, does not intimidate me,” she replied boldly. “Go, Arnaud Rigaux, and leave me to my fate, whatever you decide it to be. I will never accept the friendly offices of a man who is a traitor and a spy.”
Rigaux bit his lip. Those were the hardest words that had ever been spoken to him. He had been on a mission into the German lines, and only by pure chance had he recognised her with Valentin, standing in the Place on the previous night.
His cunning brain was already working out a swift yet subtle revenge. Aimée had attracted him, and he had marked her down as his victim by fair means or by foul. But her defiance had now upset all his calculations. To his surprise she preferred death itself, to the renunciation of her vow to Edmond Valentin.
He hesitated. He held her in his relentless hands. That she knew. Death was to be her fate, and she stood, with pale face, bold and defiant—prepared to meet it.
Chapter Sixteen.
The Fire of Fate.
Outside in the streets could be heard the sound of rifle-fire, while the air was filled with the pungent odour of powder, and of burning wood.
The whole town had, by that time, become a veritable hell. Not far along the street, indeed in sight of the Hotel of the Sword, forty or so innocent men—honest workers at a neighbouring factory—had been drawn up against a wall. The front row was ordered to kneel, with their hands up, the others remaining standing behind them. A platoon of soldiers suddenly drew up in face of these unhappy men, with their rifles ready. In vain did the frantic women beg for mercy for their sons, husbands, and brothers. But the officer, grinning, ordered his men to fire. Some fell forward, dead, others were only slightly wounded. But the soldiers, to make sure, fired three volleys into that heap of men in their death throes. Such fell, hellish work had been ordered “as examples” by the glittering War Lord—the man who declared that God was his guide in his arrogant desire to rule the world. Those poor fellows were, even while their bodies were still warm, thrown into a pit dug in a neighbouring garden.
Further up the same street, a poor old paralytic was shot in his invalid-chair, together with a bright little boy of twelve, and their bodies were kicked aside into a doorway, while, at the same time, a man of sixty-five, his wife, his son and his daughter, were set up against the wall of their burning house and shot. And none of them had committed any crime!
Here and there were loud explosions. The soldiers, who had pillaged the cafés and drunk indiscriminately all they could find, were blowing open the safes of merchants and shopkeepers with dynamite, and stealing all they could discover. They were mere brigands.
The Faubourg de Leffe, near the broken viaduct of the railway, was already in flames. Soldiers were using their inflammable confetti provided them by the Fatherland, which they were sprinkling everywhere, for the monster in command had given the order that Dinant, after being sacked, and its people massacred, should be burnt.
As the slim, pale-faced girl stood facing her father’s false friend, she could hear the wild shrieks of the defenceless women outside—those poor creatures dragged forth to witness the heartless murder of those dearest to them.
“Well,” Rigaux asked again, with an evil grin upon his face. “So you are quite decided—eh?”
“I am quite decided, m’sieur, that you are my bitterest enemy,” was her hard, defiant answer. “I have been caught here, helpless. But I have no hope, therefore I have no fear. To whatever fate you, as spy of the accursed Kaiser of Germany, may condemn me, I am quite prepared.”
For a few seconds he remained silent. Her coolness and bold defiance, in face of that awful scene, absolutely staggered him. He never credited her with such nerve.
“But will you not accept my offer, and escape with me?”
“No. I will not accept the assistance of one who has openly confessed himself to be a traitor,” she responded.
“But you cannot remain here—you will be killed—perhaps even meet with a worse fate. You do not know what awful scenes are in progress in Dinant at this moment,” he said. “The soldiers are collecting up the people, men, women, and children, and mowing them down with their machine-guns. You cannot remain here while this awful work of destruction, theft, and incendiarism is in progress!”
“And whose work, pray, is this? It is men such as you who are responsible—men who have sold Belgium into her enemy’s hands,” she cried bitterly, her big eyes glaring at him in her woman’s undisguised hatred.
“Merely the fortunes of war, Mademoiselle,” he replied with a smile, as he shrugged his shoulders, quite unperturbed by her violent denunciation.
“Then go, and leave me to face this terrible fate to which I have been consigned. Shoot me with that revolver I see you have in your belt,” she cried wildly. “Shoot me, if you will. I am quite ready.”
But he grinned horribly in her face—the grin of a man who intended a demoniacal revenge.
She knew herself to be defenceless—utterly helpless in his hands. Men and women of Dinant, known to her from childhood, lay stiffening in death in that narrow street wherein hell had been let loose by the orders of the arrogant War Lord—that pinchbeck Napoleon who dangled his tin crosses before his troops to incite them to deeds of barbarism, which were afterwards magnified and distorted into those of valour.
“No,” the man laughed. “If you, as daughter of the Baron de Neuville, still disregard my well-meant efforts to rescue you from this awful abyss of dishonour and death, then I have no more to say. I can only leave you to the same fate as that of the women of the town.”
“No!” shrieked the girl. “Shoot me.” And she stood before him ready to fall beneath the bullet of his revolver. “Shoot me—have mercy upon me and shoot me!”
She felt his hot, foetid breath once again upon her cheek; she heard the report of the rifles outside, the loud, piercing shrieks of defenceless women, the exultant shouts and laughter of the Germans, and the rapid crackling of a machine-gun in the immediate vicinity.
She struggled violently to free herself, but he was the stronger. His sensuous lips were upon hers, his big eyes looked fiercely into hers, while her slim figure was held within his strong, desperate grasp. She saw the evil, wicked look in his eyes.
“Let me go, you brute—you spy of Germany!” she shrieked in French. “Let me go, I say!”
“No, no,” he laughed in triumph. “You are mine—mine! I have brought ruin upon your miserable little country, upon your father, upon your fine château, and now, because you still defy me—I bring it upon you!”
“Bien! And what do you intend?” she asked.
“I intend to take you out yonder, into the street, and to hand you over to the tender mercies of those most unpolite troops of Germany—the Bavarians. There are three thousand in the town, and they are having a really reckless time—I can assure you.”
“You hell-scoundrel!” cried the poor girl in her frantic, almost insane terror. “You—you who have sat at our table and eaten with us—you, whom my father has trusted, and to whom my mother has sent presents at Noël. Ah! I now see you unmasked, yet you—”
“Enough!” cried the fellow, springing upon her and putting his thick, loose lips to hers. “A last kiss, and then you go to the late which every Belgian woman goes to-day where our Kaiser and his troops are victorious,” and he kissed her though she still struggled fiercely to evade his grasp.
Suddenly both started, for in the room sounded a loud deafening report.
Aimée started and drew back, breathless and shocked, for from that hated face thrust into hers, before her, one eye disappeared. The hateful face receded, the body reeled and suddenly falling backward, rolled over the stone flags of the kitchen.
A bullet had entered the eye of Arnaud Rigaux, and, passing through his brain, had taken away a portion of his skull, causing instant death. That left eye, as he reeled and fell backwards, was blotted out, for it was only a clot of blood.
“Aimée!” shouted a voice.
The girl, startled, turned to encounter a man in a grey uniform—a German infantryman! He wore a small round grey cap, and in its front the little circular cockade of blue and white—the mark of the Bavarian.
“Aimée!”
The girl stared into the face of her rescuer.
It was Edmond—Edmond—her own dear Edmond—and dressed as a Bavarian!
“The infernal spy!” he cried in a hard, rough voice. “I caught the fellow just in time, my darling. For two years past I have known the truth—that in addition to being our worst enemy—he has also been a traitor to our King and country, and your father’s false friend.”
“But Edmond?” gasped the girl, staring at him like one in a dream. “Why are you here—dressed as a German?”
“Hush!” he whispered. “If I am caught I shall be shot as a spy! I must not talk, or I may betray myself. Come with me. We must get back at once to the Belgian line.”
“But—but how?” she gasped, for now the truth had dawned upon her—the truth of the great risk her lover ran in penetrating to the invested town.
“Come with me. Have no fear, my darling. If God wills that we die, we will at least die together. Come,” he whispered, “appear as though you go with me unwillingly, or somebody may suspect us. Come along now,” he shouted, and taking her wrist roughly pretended to drag her forth into the street, where dead men and women were lying about in the roadway, and the houses only a few yards away were already ablaze.
He dragged her along that narrow street, so full of haunting horrors, urging her beneath his breath to pretend a deadly hatred of him. They passed crowds of drunken Germans. Some were smashing in windows with the butt ends of their rifles, and pouring petrol into the rooms from cans which others carried. Others were dragging along women and girls, or forcing them to march before them at the points of bayonets, and laughing immoderately at the terror such proceeding caused.
A swaggering young officer of the Seventieth Regiment of the Rhine staggered past them with a champagne bottle in his hand. He addressed some command to Edmond Valentin.
For a second Aimée’s heart stood still. But Edmond, seeing that the lieutenant was intoxicated, merely saluted and passed on, hurrying round the corner into the square where, against the wall near the church, they saw a line of bodies—the bodies of those innocent townspeople whom the bloodthirsty horde had swept out of existence with their machine-guns.
On every side ugly stains of blood showed upon the stones. A dark red stream trickled slowly into the gutters, so awful had been the massacre an hour before.
As they crossed the square they witnessed a frightful scene. Some men and women, who had hidden in a cellar, were driven out upon the pavement ruthlessly, and shot down. The officer who gave the order, smoking a cigarette and laughing the while.
Aimée stood for a second with closed eyes, not bearing to witness such a fearful sight. Those shrill cries of despair from the terrified women and children rang in her ears for a moment. Then the rifles crackled, and there were no more cries—only a huddled heap of dead humanity.
Edmond dragged her forward. German soldiers whom they passed laughed merrily at the conquest apparently made by one of their comrades.
And as they went by the ruined church, and out upon the road towards Leffe, the scene of pillage and drunkenness that met their eyes, was indeed revolting.
Though the Belgian Government has since issued an official report to the Powers concerning the wild orgies of that awful day in Dinant, the story, in all its true hideousness, will, perhaps, never be known. Those seven hundred or so poor creatures who could testify to the fiendish torture practised upon them: how some were mutilated, outraged, bound, covered with straw and burned alive, and even buried alive, are all in their graves, their lips, alas! sealed for ever.
Another officer, a major of the Seventeenth Uhlans, rode past, and Edmond saluted. They were, indeed, treading dangerous ground.
If Edmond were discovered, both he and she would be shot as spies against the nearest wall.
How she refrained from fainting she knew not. But she bore that terrible ordeal bravely, her spirit sustained by her great, boundless love for the man at her side.
The road they had taken led by the river-bank, and just as a body of Uhlans had clattered past, raising a cloud of dust, they saw across the hills at Bouvigne, a heliograph at work, signalling towards Namur.
Above them a Taube aeroplane was slowly circling.