Though none of the three in the wagon might even hazard a guess at the tremendous facts, the German wolf had already made his spring and been foiled. Not only had he missed his real quarry, France, he had also broken his fangs on the tough armour of Liège. These things Dalroy and Irene Beresford were to learn soon. The first intimation that the Belgian army had met and actually fought some portion of the invading host came before dawn.
The road to Visé ran nearly parallel with, but some miles north of, the main artery between Aix-la-Chapelle and Liège. During the small hours of the night it held a locust flight of German cavalry. Squadron after squadron, mostly Uhlans, trotted past the slow-moving cart; but Joos’s man, Maertz, if stolid and heavy-witted, had the sense to pull well out of the way of these hurrying troopers; beyond evoking an occasional curse, he was not molested. The brilliant moon, though waning, helped the riders to avoid him.
Dalroy and the girl were comfortably seated, and almost hidden, among the sacks of oats; they were free to talk as they listed.
Naturally, a soldier’s eyes took in details atonce which would escape a woman; but Irene Beresford soon noted signs of the erratic fighting which had taken place along that very road.
“Surely we are in Belgium now?” she whispered, after an awed glance at the lights and bustling activity of a field hospital established near the hamlet of Aubel.
“Yes,” said Dalroy quietly, “we have been in Belgium fully an hour.”
“And have the Germans actually attacked this dear little country?”
“So it would seem.”
“But why? I have always understood that Belgium was absolutely safe. All the great nations of the world have guaranteed her integrity.”
“That has been the main argument of every spouter at International Peace Congresses for many a year,” said Dalroy bitterly. “If Belgium and Holland can be preserved by agreement, they contended, why should not all other vexed questions be settled by arbitration? Yet one of our chaps in the Berlin Embassy, the man whose ticket you travelled with, told me that the Kaiser could be bluntly outspoken when that very question was raised during the autumn manœuvres last year. ‘I shall sweep through Belgium thus,’ he said, swinging his arm as though brushing aside a feeble old crone who barred his way. And he was talking to a British officer too.”
“What a crime! These poor, inoffensive people! Have they resisted, do you think?”
“That field hospital looked pretty busy,” was the grim answer.
A little farther on, at a cross-road, there could no longer be any doubt as to what had happened. The remains of a barricade littered the ditches. Broken carts, ploughs, harrows, and hurdles lay in heaps. The carcasses of scores of dead horses had been hastily thrust aside so as to clear a passage. In a meadow, working by the light of lanterns, gangs of soldiers and peasants were digging long pits, while row after row of prone figures could be glimpsed when the light carried by those directing the operations chanced to fall on them.
Dalroy knew, of course, that all the indications pointed to a successful, if costly, German advance, which was the last thing he had counted on in this remote countryside. If the tide of war was rolling into Belgium it should, by his reckoning, have passed to the south-west, engulfing the upper valley of the Meuse and the two Luxembourgs perhaps, but leaving untouched the placid land on the frontier of Holland. For a time he feared that Holland, too, was being attacked. Understanding something of German pride, though far as yet from plumbing the depths of German infamy, he imagined that the Teutonic host had burst all barriers, and was bent on making the Rhine a German river from source to sea.
Naturally he did not fail to realise that the lumbering wagon was taking him into a country already securely held by the assailants. There were no guards at the cross-roads, no indications of military precautions. The hospital, the grave-diggers, the successive troops of cavalry, felt themselves safe even in the semi-darkness, and this was the prerogative of a conquering army. In the conditions, he did not regard his life as worth much more than an hour’s purchase, and he tortured his wits in vain for some means of freeing the girl, who reposed such implicit confidence in him, from the meshes of a net which he felt to be tightening every minute. He simply dreaded the coming of daylight, heralded already by tints of heliotrope and pink in the eastern sky. Certain undulating contours were becoming suspiciously clear in that part of the horizon. It might be only what Hafiz describes as the false dawn; but, false or true, the new day was at hand. He was on the verge of advising Irene to seek shelter in some remote hovel which their guide could surely recommend when Fate took control of affairs.
Maertz had now pulled up in obedience to an unusually threatening order from a Uhlan officer whose horse had been incommoded in passing. Above the clatter of hoofs and accoutrements Dalroy’s trained ear had detected the sounds of a heavy and continuous cannonade toward the south-west.
“How far are we from Visé?” he asked the driver.
The man pointed with his whip. “You see that black knob over there?” he said.
“Yes.”
“That’s a clump of trees just above the Meuse. Visé lies below it.”
“But how far?”
“Not more than two kilomètres.”
Two kilomètres! About a mile and a half! Dalroy was tortured by indecision. “Shall we be there by daybreak?”
“With luck. I don’t know what’s been happening here. These damned Germans are swarming all over the place. They must be making for the bridge.”
“What bridge?”
“The bridge across the Meuse, of course. Don’t you know these parts?”
“Not very well.”
“I wish I were safe at home; I’d get indoors and stop there,” growled the driver, chirping his team into motion again.
Dalroy’s doubts were stilled. Better leave this rustic philosopher to work out their common salvation.
A few hundred yards ahead the road bifurcated. One branch led to Visé, the other to Argenteau. Here was stationed a picket, evidently intended as a guide for the cavalry.
Most fortunately Dalroy read aright the intention of an officer who came forward withan electric torch. “Lie as flat as you can!” he whispered to Irene. “If they find us, pretend to be asleep.”
“Hi, you!” cried the officer to Maertz, “where the devil do you think you’re going?”
“To Joos’s mill at Visé,” said the gruff Walloon.
“What’s in the cart?”
“Oats.”
“Almächtig!Where from?”
“Aachen.”
“You just pull ahead into that road there. I’ll attend to you and your oats in a minute or two.”
“But can’t I push on?”
The officer called to a soldier. “See that this fellow halts twenty yards up the road,” he said. “If he stirs then, put your bayonet through him. These Belgian swine don’t seem to understand that they are Germans now, and must obey orders.”
The officer, of course, spoke in German, the Walloon in the mixture of Flemish and Low Dutch which forms thepatoisof the district. But each could follow the other’s meaning, and the quaking listeners in the middle of the wagon had no difficulty at all in comprehending the gravity of this new peril.
Maertz was swearing softly to himself; they heard him address a question to the sentry when the wagon stopped again. “Why won’t your officer let us go to Visé?” he growled.
“Sheep’s-head! do as you’re told, or it will be bad for you,” was the reply.
The words were hardly out of the soldier’s mouth before a string of motor lorries, heavy vehicles with very powerful engines, thundered up from the rear. The leaders passed without difficulty, as there was plenty of room. But their broad flat tires sucked up clouds of dust, and the moon had sunk behind a wooded height. One of the hindermost transports, taking too wide a bend, crashed into the wagon. The startled horses plunged, pulled Maertz off his perch, and dragged the wagon into a deep ditch. It fell on its side, and Dalroy and his companion were thrown into a field amid a swirl of laden sacks, some of which burst.
Dalroy was unhurt, and he could only hope that the girl also had escaped injury. Ere he rose he clasped her around the neck and clapped a hand over her mouth lest she should scream. “Not a word!” he breathed into her ear. “Can you manage to crawl on all-fours straight on by the side of the hedge? Never mind thorns or nettles. It’s our only chance.”
In a few seconds they were free of the hubbub which sprang up around the overturned wagon and the transport, the latter having shattered a wheel. Soon they were able to rise, crouching behind the hedge as they ran. They turned at an angle, and struck off into the country, following the line of another hedge which trended slightly uphill. At a gateway they turnedagain, moving, as Dalroy calculated, on the general line of the Visé road. A low-roofed shanty loomed up suddenly against the sky. It was just the place to house an outpost, and Dalroy was minded to avoid it when the lowing of a cow in pain revealed to his trained intelligence the practical certainty that the animal had been left there unattended, and needed milking. Still, he took no unnecessary risks.
“Remain here,” he murmured. “I’ll go ahead and investigate, and return in a minute or so.”
He did not notice that the girl sank beneath the hedge with a suspicious alacrity. He was a man, a fighter, with the hot breath of war in his nostrils. Not yet had he sensed the cruel strain which war places on women. Moreover, his faculties were centred in the task of the moment. The soldier is warned not to take his eyes off the enemy while reloading his rifle lest the target be lost; similarly, Dalroy knew that concentration was the prime essential of scout-craft.
Thus he was deaf to the distant thunder of guns, but alive to the least rustle inside the building; blind to certain ominous gleams on the horizon, but quick to detect any moving object close at hand. He made out that a door stood open; so, after a few seconds’ pause, he slipped rapidly within, and stood near the wall on the side opposite the hinges. An animal stirred uneasily, and the plaintive lowingceased. He had dropped the sabots long since, and the lamp was lost in the spill out of the wagon, but most fortunately he had matches in his pocket. He closed the door softly, struck a match, guarding the flame with both hands, and looked round. He found himself in a ramshackle shed, half-barn, half-stable. In a stall was tethered a black-and-white cow, her udder distended with milk. Huddled up against the wall was the corpse of a woman, an old peasant, whose wizened features had that waxen tint ofcamailleu griswith which, in their illuminated missals of the Middle Ages, the monks loved to portray the sufferings of the early Christian martyrs. She had been stabbed twice through the breast. An overturned pail and milking-stool showed how and where death had surprised her.
The match flickered out, and Dalroy was left in the darkness of the tomb. He had a second match in his hand, and was on the verge of striking it when he heard a man’s voice and the swish of feet through the grass of the pasture without.
“This is the place, Heinrich,” came the words in guttural German, and breathlessly. Then, with certain foulnesses of expression, the speaker added, “I’m puffed. That girl fought like a wild cat.”
“She’s pretty, too, for a Belgian,” agreed another voice.
“So. But I couldn’t put up with her screechingwhen you told her that a bayonet had stopped her grandam’s nagging tongue.”
“Ach, was!What matter, at eighty?”
Dalroy had pulled the door open. Stooping, he sought for and found the milking-stool, a solid article of sound oak. Through a chink he saw two dark forms; glints of the dawn on fixed bayonets showed that the men were carrying their rifles slung. At the door the foremost switched on an electric torch.
“You milk, Heinrich,” he said, “while I show a glim.”
He advanced a pace, as Dalroy expected he would, so the swing of the stool caught him on the right side of the head, partly on the ear and partly on the rim of hisPickel-haube. But his skull was fractured for all that. Heinrich fared no better, though the torch was shattered on the rough paving of the stable. A thrust floored him, and he fell with a fearsome clatter of accoutrements. A second blow on the temple stilled the startled oath on his lips. Dalroy divested him of the rifle, and stuffed a few clips of cartridges into his own pockets.
Then, ready for any others of a cut-throat crew, he listened. One of the pair on the ground was gasping for breath. The cow began lowing again. That was all. There was neither sight nor sound of Irene, though she must have heard enough to frighten her badly.
“Miss Beresford!” he said, in a sibilant hiss which would carry easily to the point where hehad left her. No answer. Nature was still. It was as though inanimate things were awake, but quaking. The breathing of the unnamed German changed abruptly into a gurgling croak. Heinrich had traversed that stage swiftly under the second blow. From the roads came the sharp rattle of horses’ feet, the panting of motors. The thud of gun-fire smote the air incessantly. It suggested the monstrous pulse-beat of an alarmed world. Over a hilltop the beam of a searchlight hovered for an instant, and vanished. Belgium, little Belgium, was in a death-grapple with mighty Germany. Even in her agony she was crying, “What of England? Will England help?” Well, one Englishman had lessened by two the swarm of her enemies that night.
Dalroy was only vaguely conscious of the scope and magnitude of events in which he was bearing so small a part. He knew enough of German methods in his immediate surroundings, however, to reck as little of having killed two men as though they were rats. His sole and very real concern was for the girl who answered not. Before going in search of her he was tempted to don aPickel-haube, which, with the rifle and bayonet, would, in the misty light, deceive any new-comers. But the field appeared to be untenanted, and it occurred to him that his companion might actually endeavour to hide if she took him for a German soldier. So he did not even carry the weapon.
He found Irene at once. She had simply fainted, and the man who now lifted her limp form tenderly in his arms was vexed at his own forgetfulness. The girl had slept but little during two nights. Meals were irregular and scanty. She had lived in a constant and increasing strain, while the real danger and great physical exertion of the past few minutes had provided a climax beyond her powers.
Like the mass of young officers in the British army, Dalroy kept himself fit, even during furlough, by long walks, daily exercises, and systematic abstention from sleep, food, and drink. If a bed was too comfortable he changed it. If an undertaking could be accomplished equally well in conditions of hardship or luxury he chose hardship. Soldiering was his profession, and he held the theory that a soldier must always be ready to withstand the severest tax on brain and physique. Therefore the minor privations of the journey from Berlin, with its decidedly strenuous sequel at Aix-la-Chapelle, and this D’Artagnan episode in the neighbourhood of Visé, had made no material drain on his resources.
A girl like Irene Beresford, swept into the sirocco of war from the ordered and sheltered life of a young Englishwoman of the middle-classes, was an altogether different case. He believed her one of the small army of British-born women who find independence and fair remuneration for their services by acting asgovernesses and ladies’ companions on the Continent. Nearly every German family of wealth and social pretensions counted theEnglische Fräuleinas a member of the household; even in autocratic Prussia,Kulturis not always spelt with a “K.” She was well-dressed, and supplied with ample means for travelling; but plenty of such girls owned secured incomes, treating a salary as an “extra.” Moreover, she spoke German like a native, had a small sister in Brussels, and had evidently met Von Halwig in one of the great houses of the capital. Undoubtedly, she was a superior type of governess, or, it might be, English mistress in a girls’ high school.
These considerations did not crowd in on Dalroy while he was holding her in close embrace in a field near Visé at dawn on the morning of Wednesday, 5th August. They were the outcome of nebulous ideas formed in the train. At present, his one thought was the welfare of a hapless woman of his own race, be she a peer’s daughter or a postman’s.
Now, skilled leader of men though he was, he had little knowledge of the orthodox remedies for a fainting woman. Like most people, he was aware that a loosening of bodices and corsets, a chafing of hands, a vigorous massage of the feet and ankles, tended to restore circulation, and therefore consciousness. But none of these simple methods was practicable when a party of German soldiers might be hunting forboth of them, while another batch might be minded to follow “Heinrich” and his fellow-butcher. So he carried her to the stable and laid her on a truss of straw noted during that first vivid glimpse of the interior.
Then, greatly daring, he milked the cow.
Not only did the poor creature’s suffering make an irresistible appeal, but in relieving her distress he was providing the best of nourishment for Irene and himself. The cow gave no trouble. Soon the milk was flowing steadily into the pail. The darkness was abysmal. On one hand lay a dead woman, on the other an unconscious one, and two dead men guarded the doorway. Once, in Paris, Dalroy had seen one of the lurid playlets staged at the Grand Guignol, wherein a woman served a meal for a friend and chatted cheerfully during its progress, though the body of her murdered husband was stowed behind a couch and a window-curtain. He recalled the horrid little tragedy now; but that was make-believe, this was grim reality.
Yet he had ever an eye for the rectangle of the doorway. When a quality of grayness sharpened its outlines he knew it was high time to be on the move. Happily, at that instant, Irene sighed deeply and stirred. Ere she had any definite sense of her surroundings she was yielding to Dalroy’s earnest appeal, and allowing him to guide her faltering steps. He carried the pail and the rifle in his left hand. With theright he gripped the girl’s arm, and literally forced her into a walk.
The wood indicated by Maertz was plainly visible now, and close at hand, and the first rays of daylight gave colour to the landscape. The hour, as Dalroy ascertained later, was about a quarter to four.
It was vitally essential that they should reach cover within the next five minutes; but his companion was so manifestly unequal to sustained effort that he was on the point of carrying her in order to gain the protection of the first hedgerow when he noticed that a slight depression in the hillside curved in the direction of the wood. Here, too, were shrubs and tufts of long grass. Indeed, the shallow trough proved to be one of the many heads of a ravine. The discovery of a hidden way at that moment contributed as greatly as any other circumstance to their escape. They soon learnt that the German hell-hounds were in full cry on their track.
At the first bend Dalroy called a halt. He told Irene to sit down, and she obeyed so willingly that, rendered wiser by events, he feared lest she should faint again.
When travelling he made it a habit to carry two handkerchiefs, one for use and one in case of emergency, such as a bandage being in sudden demand, so he was able to produce a square of clean cambric, which he folded cup-shape and partly filled with milk. It was the bestsubstitute he could devise for a strainer, and it served admirably. By this means they drank nearly all the milk he had secured, and, with each mouthful, Irene felt a new eichor in her veins. For the first time she gave heed to the rifle.
“How did you get that?” she asked, wide-eyed with wonder.
“I picked it up at the door of the shed,” he answered.
“I remember now,” she murmured. “You left me under a hedge while you crept forward to investigate, and I was silly enough to go off in a dead faint. Did you carry me to the shed?”
“Yes.”
“What a bother I must have been. But the finding of a rifle doesn’t explain a can of milk.”
“The really important factor was the cow,” he said lightly. “Now, young lady, if you can talk you can walk. We have a little farther to go.”
“Have we?” she retorted, bravely emulating his self-control. “I am glad you have fixed on our destination. It’s quite a relief to be in charge of a man who really knows what he wants, and sees that he gets it.”
He led the way, she followed. He had an eye for all quarters, because daylight was coming now with the flying feet of Aurora. But this tiny section of Belgium was free from Germans, for the very good reason that theircohorts already held the right bank of the Meuse at many points, and their engineers were throwing pontoon bridges across the river at Visé and Argenteau.
From the edge of the wood Dalroy looked down on the river, the railway, and the little town itself. He saw instantly that the whole district south of the Meuse was strongly held by the invaders. Three arches of a fine stone bridge had been destroyed, evidently by the retreating Belgians; but pontoons were in position to take its place. Twice already had Belgian artillery destroyed the enemy’s work, and not even a professional soldier could guess that the guns of the defence were only awaiting a better light to smash the pontoons a third time. In fact, barely half-a-mile to the right of the wood, a battery of four 5.9’s was posted on high ground, in the hope that the Belgian guns of smaller calibre might be located and crushed at once. Even while the two stood looking down into the valley, a sputtering rifle-fire broke out across the river, three hundred yards wide at the bridge, and the volume of musketry steadily increased. Men, horses, wagons, and motors swarmed on the roadway or sheltered behind warehouses on the quays.
As a soldier, Dalroy was amazed at the speed and annihilating completeness of the German mobilisation. Indeed, he was chagrined by it, it seemed so admirable, so thoroughly thought-out in each detail, so unapproachable by anyother nation in its pitiless efficiency. He did not know then that the vaunted Prussian-made military machine depended for its motive-power largely on treachery and espionage. Toward the close of July, many days before war was declared, Germany had secretly massed nine hundred thousand men on the frontiers of Belgium and the Duchy of Luxembourg. Her armies, therefore, had gathered like felons, and were led by master-thieves in the persons of thousands of German officers domiciled in both countries in the guise of peaceful traders.
Single-minded person that he was, Dalroy at once focused his thoughts on the immediate problem. A small stream leaped down from the wood to the Meuse. Short of a main road bridge its turbulent course was checked by a mill-dam, and there was some reason to believe that the mill might be Joos’s. The building seemed a prosperous place, with its two giant wheels on different levels, its ample granaries, and a substantial house. It was intact, too, and somewhat apart from the actual line of battle. At any rate, though the transition was the time-honoured one from the frying-pan to the fire, in that direction lay food, shelter, and human beings other than Germans, so he determined to go there without further delay. His main purpose now was to lodge his companion with some Belgian family until the tide of war had swept far to the west. For himself, he meantto cross the enemy’s lines by hook or by crook, or lose his life in the attempt.
“One more effort,” he said, smiling confidently into Irene’s somewhat pallid face. “Your uncle lives below there, I fancy. We’re about to claim his hospitality.”
He hid the rifle, bayonet, and cartridges in a thicket. The milk-pail he took with him. If they met a German patrol the pail might serve as an excuse for being out and about, whereas the weapons would have been a sure passport to the next world.
It was broad daylight when they entered the miller’s yard. They saw the name Henri Joos on a cart.
“Good egg!” cried Dalroy confidently. “I’m glad Joos spells his Christian name in the French way. It shows that he means well, anyhow!”
Early as was the hour, a door leading to the dwelling-house stood open. The sound of feet on the cobbled pavement of the mill-yard brought a squat, beetle-browed old man to the threshold. He surveyed the strangers with a curiously haphazard yet piercing underlook. His black eyes held a glint of red. Here was one in a subdued torment of rage, or, it might be, of ill-controlled panic.
“What now?” he grunted, using the local argot.
Dalroy, quick to read character, decided that this crabbed old Walloon was to be won at once or not at all.
“Shall I speak French or German?” he said quietly. The other spat.
“Qu’est-ce que tu veux que je te dise, moi?” he demanded. Now, the plain English of that question is, “What do you wish me to say?” But the expectoration, no less than the biting tone, lent the words a far deeper meaning.
Dalroy was reassured. “Are you Monsieur Henri Joos?” he said.
“Ay.”
“This lady and I have come from Aix-la-Chapelle with your man, Maertz.”
“Oh, he’s alive, then?”
“I hope so. But may we not enter?”
Joos eyed the engine-cleaner’s official cap and soiled clothes, and his suspicious gaze travelled to Dalroy’s well-fitting and expensive boots.
“Who the deuce are you?” he snapped.
“I’ll tell you if you let us come in.”
“I can’t hinder you. It is an order, all doors must be left open.”
Still, he made way, though ungraciously. The refugees found themselves in a spacious kitchen, a comfortable and cleanly place, Dutch in its colourings and generally spick and span aspect. A comely woman of middle age, and a plump, good-looking girl about as old as Irene, were seated on an oak bench beneath a window. They were clinging to each other, and had evidently listened fearfully to the brief conversation without.
The only signs of disorder in the room were supplied by a quantity of empty wine-bottles, drinking-mugs, soiled plates, and cutlery, spread on a broad table. Irene sank into one of half-a-dozen chairs which had apparently been used by the feasters.
Joos chuckled. His laugh had an ugly sound. “Pity you weren’t twenty minutes sooner,” he guffawed. “You’d have had company, pleasant company, visitors from across the frontier.”
“I, too, have crossed the frontier,” said Irene, a wan smile lending pathos to her beauty.“I travelled with Germans from Berlin. If I saw a German now I think I should die.”
At that, Madame Joos rose. “Calm thyself, Henri,” she said. “These people are friends.”
“Maybe,” retorted her husband. He turned on Dalroy with surprising energy, seeing that he was some twenty years older than his wife. “You say that you came with Maertz,” he went on. “Where is he? He has been absent four days.”
By this time Dalroy thought he had taken the measure of his man. No matter what the outcome to himself personally, Miss Beresford must be helped. She could go no farther without food and rest. He risked everything on the spin of a coin. “We are English,” he said, speaking very slowly and distinctly, so that each syllable should penetrate the combined brains of the Joos family. “We were only trying to leave Germany, meaning harm to none, but were arrested as spies at Aix-la-Chapelle. We escaped by a ruse. I knocked a man silly, and took some of his clothes. Then we happened on Maertz at a corner of Franz Strasse, and persuaded him to give us a lift. We jogged along all right until we reached the cross-roads beyond the hill there,” and he pointed in the direction of the wood. “A German officer refused to allow us to pass, but a motor transport knocked the wagon over, and this lady and I were thrown into a field. We got away in the confusion, and made for a cowshed lying wellback from the road and on the slope of the hill. At that point my friend fainted, luckily for herself, because, when I examined the shed, I found the corpse of an old woman there. She had evidently been about to milk a black-and-white cow when she was bayoneted by a German soldier——”
He was interrupted by a choking sob from Madame Joos, who leaned a hand on the table for support. In pose and features she would have served as a model for Hans Memling’s “portrait” of Saint Elizabeth, which in happier days used to adorn the hospital at Bruges. “The Widow Jaquinot,” she gasped.
“Of course, madame, I don’t know the poor creature’s name. I was wondering how to act for the best when two soldiers came to the stable. I heard what they were saying. One of them admitted that he had stabbed the old woman; his words also implied that he and his comrade had violated her granddaughter. So I picked up a milking-stool and killed both of them. I took one of their rifles, which, with its bayonet and a number of cartridges, I hid at the top of the ravine. This is the pail which I found in the shed. No doubt it belongs to the Jaquinot household. Now, I have told you the actual truth. I ask nothing for myself. If I stay here, even though you permit it, my presence will certainly bring ruin on you. So I shall go at once. But Idoask you, as Christian people, to safeguard this young English lady,and, when conditions permit, and she has recovered her strength, to guide her into Holland, unless, that is, these German beasts are attacking the Dutch too.”
For a brief space there was silence. Dalroy looked fixedly at Joos, trying to read Irene Beresford’s fate in those black, glowing eyes. The womenfolk were won already; but well he knew that in this Belgian nook the patriarchal principle that a man is lord and master in his own house would find unquestioned acceptance. He was aware that Irene’s gaze was riveted on him in a strangely magnetic way. It was one thing that he should say calmly, “So I picked up a milking-stool, and killed both of them,” but quite another that Irene should visualise in the light of her rare intelligence the epic force of the tragedy enacted while she lay unconscious in the depths of a hedgerow. Dalroy could tell, Heaven knows how, that her very soul was peering at him. In that tense moment he knew that he was her man for ever. But—surgit amari aliquid! A wave of bitterness welled up from heart to brain because of the conviction that if he would, indeed, be her true knight he must leave her within the next few seconds. Yet his resolution did not waver. Not once did his glance swerve from Joos’s wizened face.
It was the miller himself who first broke the spell cast on the curiously assorted group by Dalroy’s story. He stretched out a hand andtook the pail. “This is fresh milk,” he said, examining the dregs.
“Yes. I milked the cow. The poor animal was in pain, and my friend and I wanted the milk.”
“You milked the cow—before?”
“No. After.”
“Grand Dieu!you’re English, without doubt.”
Joos turned the pail upside down, appraising it critically. “Yes,” he said, “it’s one of Dupont’s. I remember her buying it. She gave him fifty kilos of potatoes for it. She stuck him, he said. Half the potatoes were black. A rare hand at a bargain, the Veuve Jaquinot. And she’s dead you tell me. A bayonet thrust?”
“Two.”
Madame Joos burst into hysterical sobbing. Her husband whisked round on her with that singular alertness of movement which was one of his most marked characteristics.
“Peace, wife!” he snapped. “Isn’t that what we’re all coming to? What matter to Dupont now whether the potatoes were black or sound?”
Dalroy guessed that Dupont was the iron-monger of Visé. He was gaining a glimpse, too, of the indomitable soul of Belgium. Though itching for information, he checked the impulse, because time pressed horribly.
“Well,” he said, “will you do what you canfor the lady? The Germans have spared you. You have fed them. They may treat you decently. I’ll make it worth while. I have plenty ofmoney——”
Irene stood up. “Monsieur,” she said, and her voice was sweet as the song of a robin, “it is idle to speak of saving one without the other. Where Monsieur Dalroy goes I go. If he dies, I die.”
For the first time since entering the mill Dalroy dared to look at her. In the sharp, crisp light of advancing day her blue eyes held a tint of violet. Tear-drops glistened in the long lashes; but she smiled wistfully, as though pleading for forgiveness.
“That is sheer nonsense,” he cried in English, making a miserable failure of the anger he tried to assume. “You ought to be reasonably safe here. By insisting on remaining with me you deliberately sacrifice both our lives. That is, I mean,” he added hastily, aware of a slip, “you prevent me too from taking the chance of escape that offers.”
“If that were so I would not thrust myself on you,” she answered. “But I know the Germans. I know how they mean to wage war. They make no secret of it. They intend to strike terror into every heart at the outset. They are not men, but super-brutes. You saw Von Halwig at Berlin, and again at Aix-la-Chapelle. If a titled Prussian can change his superficial manners—not his nature, whichremains invariably bestial—to that extent in a day, before he has even the excuse of actual war, what will the same man become when roused to fury by resistance? But we must not talk English.” She turned to Joos. “Tell us, then, monsieur,” she said, grave and serious as Pallas Athena questioning Perseus, “have not the Prussians already ravaged and destroyed Visé?”
The old man’s face suddenly lost its bronze, and became ivory white. His features grew convulsed. He resembled one of those grotesque masks carved by Japanese artists to simulate a demon. “Curse them!” he shrilled. “Curse them in life and in death—man, woman, and child! What has Belgium done that she should be harried by a pack of wolves? Who can say what wolves will do?”
Joos was aboil with vitriolic passion. There was no knowing how long this tirade might have gone on had not a speckled hen stalked firmly in through the open door with obvious and settled intent to breakfast on crumbs.
“Ciel!” cackled the orator. “Not a fowl was fed overnight!”
In real life, as on the stage, comedy and tragedy oft go hand in hand. But the speckled hen deserved a good meal. Her entrance undoubtedly stemmed the floodtide of her owner’s patriotic wrath, and thus enabled the five people in the kitchen to overhear a hoarse cryfrom the roadway: “Hi, there,dummer Esel! whither goest thou? This is Joos’s mill.”
“Quick, Léontine!” cried Joos. “To the second loft with them! Sharp, now!”
In this unexpected crisis, Dalroy could neither protest nor refuse to accompany the girl, who led him and Irene up a back stair and through a well-stored granary to a ladder which communicated with a trap-door.
“I’ll bring you some coffee and eggs as soon as I can,” she whispered. “Draw up the ladder, and close the door. It’s not so bad up there. There’s a window, but take care you aren’t seen. Maybe,” she added tremulously, “you are safer than we now.”
Dalroy realised that it was best to obey.
“Courage, mademoiselle!” he said. “God is still in heaven, and all will be well with the world.”
“Please, monsieur, what became of Jan Maertz?” she inquired timidly.
“I’m not quite certain, but I think he fell clear of the wagon. The Germans should not have ill-treated him. The collision was not his fault.”
The girl sobbed, and left them. Probably the gruff Walloon was her lover.
Irene climbed first. Dalroy followed, raised the ladder noiselessly, and lowered the trap. His brow was seamed with foreboding, as, despite his desire to leave his companion in the care of the miller’s household, he had an instinctivefeeling that he was acting unwisely. Moreover, like every free man, he preferred to seek the open when in peril. Now he felt himself caged.
Therefore was he amazed when Irene laughed softly. “How readily you translate Browning into French!” she said.
He gazed at her in wonderment. Less than an hour ago she had fainted under the stress of hunger and dread, yet here was she talking as though they had met in the breakfast-room of an English country house. He would have said something, but the ancient mill trembled under the sudden crash of artillery. The roof creaked, the panes of glass in the dormer window rattled, and fragments of mortar fell from the walls. Unmindful, for the moment, of Léontine Joos’s warning, Dalroy went to the window, which commanded a fine view of the town, river, and opposite heights.
The pontoon bridge was broken. Several pontoons were in splinters. The others were swinging with the current toward each bank. Six Belgian field-pieces had undone the night’s labour, and a lively rat-tat of rifles, mixed with the stutter of machine guns, proved that the defenders were busy among the Germans trapped on the north bank. The heavier ordnance brought to the front by the enemy soon took up the challenge; troops occupying the town, which, for the most part, lies on the south bank, began to cover the efforts of theengineers, instantly renewed. History was being written in blood that morning on both sides of the Meuse. The splendid defence offered by a small Belgian force was thwarting the advance of the 9th German Army Corps. Similarly, the 10th and 7th were being held up at Verviers and on the direct road from Aix to Liège respectively. All this meant that General Leman, the heroic commander-in-chief at Liège, was given most precious time to garrison that strong fortress, construct wire entanglements, lay mines, and destroy roads and railways, which again meant that Von Emmich’s sledge-hammer blows with three army corps failed to overwhelm Liège in accordance with the dastardly plan drawn up by the German staff.
Dalroy, though he might not realise the marvellous fact then, was in truth a spectator of a serious German defeat. Even in the conditions, he was aglow with admiration for the pluck of the Belgians in standing up so valiantly against the merciless might of Germany. The window was dust-laden as the outcome of earlier gun-fire, and he was actually on the point of opening it when Irene stopped him.
“Those men below may catch sight of you,” she said.
He stepped back hurriedly. Two forage-carts had been brought into the yard, and preparations were being made to load themwith oats and hay. A truculent-looking sergeant actually lifted his eyes to that particular window. But he could not see through the dimmed panes, and was only estimating the mill’s probable contents.
Dalroy laughed constrainedly. “You are the better soldier of the two,” he said. “I nearly blundered. Still, I wish the window was open. I want to size up the chances of the Belgians. Those are bigger guns which are answering, and a duel between big guns and little ones can have only one result.”
Seemingly, the German battery of quick-firers had located its opponents, because the din now became terrific. As though in response to Dalroy’s desire, three panes of glass fell out owing to atmospheric concussion, and the watchers in the loft could follow with ease the central phase of the struggle. The noise of the battle was redoubled by the accident to the window, and the air-splitting snarl of the high-explosive shells fired by the 5.9’s in the effort to destroy the Belgian guns was specially deafening. That sound, more than any other, seemed to affect Irene’s nerves. Involuntarily she clung to Dalroy’s arm, and he, with no other intent than to reassure her, drew her trembling form close.
It was evident that the assailants were suffering heavy losses. Scores of men fell every few minutes among the bridge-builders, while casualties were frequent among the troops liningthe quays. Events on the Belgian side of the river were not so marked; but even Irene could make out the precise moment when the defenders’ fire slackened, and the line of pontoons began to reach out again toward the farther shore.
“Are the poor Belgians beaten, then?” she asked, with a tender sympathy which showed how lightly she estimated her own troubles in comparison with the agony of a whole nation.
“I think not,” said Dalroy. “I imagine they have changed the position of some, at least, of their guns, and will knock that bridge to smithereens again just as soon as it nears completion.”
The forage-carts rumbled out of the yard. Dalroy noticed that the soldiers wore linen covers over the somewhat showyPickel-hauben, though the regiments he had seen in Aix-la-Chapelle swaggered through the streets in their ordinary helmets. This was another instance of German thoroughness. The invisibility of the gray-green uniform was not so patent when thePickel-haubelent its glint, but no sooner had the troops crossed the frontier than the linen cover was adjusted, and the masses of men became almost merged in the browns and greens of the landscape.
The two were so absorbed in the drama being fought out before their eyes that they were quite startled by a series of knocks on the boarded floor. Dalroy crept to the trap doorand listened. Then, during an interval between the salvoes of artillery, he heard Léontine’s voice, “Monsieur! Mademoiselle!”
He pulled up the trap. Beneath stood Léontine, with a long pole in her hands. Beside her, on the floor, was a laden tray.
“I’ve brought you something to eat,” she said. “Father thinks you had better remain there at present. The Germans say they will soon cross the river, as they intend taking Liège to-night.”
Not until they had eaten some excellent rolls and butter, with boiled eggs, and drank two cups of hot coffee, did they realise how ravenously hungry they were. Then Dalroy persuaded Irene to lie down on a pile of sacks, and, amid all the racket of a fierce engagement, she slept the sleep of sheer exhaustion. Thus he was left on guard, as it were, and saw the pontoons once more demolished.
After that he, too, curled up against the wall and slept. The sound of rifle shots close at hand awoke him. His first care was for the girl, but she lay motionless. Then he looked out. There was renewed excitement in the main road, but only a few feet of it was visible from the attic. A number of women and children ran past, all screaming, and evidently in a state of terror. Several houses in the town were on fire, and the smoke hung over the river in such clouds as to obscure the north bank.
Old Henri Joos came hurriedly into the yard.He was gesticulating wildly, and Dalroy heard a door bang as he vanished. Refusing to be penned up any longer without news of what was happening, Dalroy lowered the ladder, and, after ascertaining that Irene was still asleep, descended. He made his way to the kitchen, pausing only to find out whether or not it held any German soldiers.
Joos’s shrill voice, raised in malediction of all Prussians, soon decided that fact. He spoke in the localpatois, but straightway branched off into French interlarded with German when Dalroy appeared.
“Those hogs!” he almost screamed. “Those swine-dogs! They can’t beat our brave boys of the 3rd Regiment, so what do you think they’re doing now? Murdering men, women, and children out of mere spite. The devils from hell pretended that the townsfolk were shooting at them, so they began to stab, and shoot, and burn in all directions. The officers are worse than the men. Three came here in an automobile, and marked on the gate that the mill was not to be burnt—they want my grain, you see—and, as they were driving off again, young Jan Smit ran by. Poor lad, he was breathless with fear. They asked him if he had seen another car like theirs, but he could only stutter. One of them laughed, and said, ‘I’ll work a miracle, and cure him.’ Then he whipped out a revolver and shot the boy dead. Some soldiers with badges on their arms sawthis. One of them yelled, ‘Man hat geschossen’ (‘The people have been shooting’), though it was their own officer who fired, and he and the others threw little bombs into the nearest cottages, and squirted petrol in through the windows. Madame Didier, who has been bedridden for years, was burnt alive in that way. They have a regular corps of men for the job. Then, ‘to punish the town,’ as they said, they took twenty of our chief citizens, lined them up in the market-place, and fired volleys at them. There was Dupont, and the Abbé Courvoisier, and Monsieur Philippe the notary, and—ah, mon Dieu, I don’t know—all my old friends. The Prussian beasts will come here soon.—Wife! Léontine! how can I save you? They are devils—devils, I tell you—devils mad with drink and anger. A few scratches in chalk on our gate won’t hold them back. They may be here any moment. You, mademoiselle, had better go with Léontine here and drown yourselves in the mill dam. Heaven help me, that is the only advice a father can give!”
Dalroy turned. Irene stood close behind. She knew when he left the garret, and had followed swiftly. She confessed afterwards that she thought he meant to carry out his self-denying project, and leave her.
“You are mistaken, Monsieur Joos,” she said now, speaking with an aristocratic calm which had an immediate effect on the miller and his distraught womenfolk. “You do notknow the German soldier. He is a machine that obeys orders. He will kill, or not kill, exactly as he is bidden. If your house has been excepted it is absolutely safe.”
She was right. The mill was one of the places in Visé spared by German malice that day. A well-defined section of the little town was given up to murder, and loot, and fire, and rapine. Scenes were enacted which are indescribable. A brutal soldiery glutted its worst passions on an unarmed and defenceless population. The hour was near when some hysterical folk would tell of the apparition of angels at Mons; but old Henri Joos was unquestionably right when he spoke of the presence of devils in Visé.
The miller’s volcanic outburst seemed to have exhausted itself; he subsided to the oaken bench, leaned forward, elbows on knees, and thrust his clenched fists against his ears as though he would shut out the deafening clamour of the guns. This attitude of dejection evidently alarmed Madame Joos. She forgot her own fears in solicitude for her husband. Bending over him, she patted his shoulder with a maternal hand, since every woman is at heart a mother—a mother first and essentially.
“Maybe the lady is right, Henri,” she said tenderly. “Young as she is, she may understand these things better than countryfolk like us.”
“Ah, Lise,” he moaned, “you would have dropped dead had you seen poor Dupont. He wriggled for a long minute after he fell. And the Abbé, with his white hair! Some animal of a Prussian fired at his face.”
“Don’t talk about it,” urged his wife. “It is bad for you to get so excited. Remember, the doctor warnedyou——”
“The doctor! Dr. Lafarge! A soldier hammered on the surgery door with the butt of his rifle, and, when the doctor came out, twirledthe rifle and stabbed him right through the body. I saw it. It was like a conjuring trick. I was giving an officer some figures about the contents of the mill. The doctor screamed, and clutched at the bayonet with both hands. And who do you think the murderer was?”
Madame Joos’s healthy red cheeks had turned a ghastly yellow, but she contrived to stammer, “Dieu!The poor doctor! But how should I know?”
“The barber, Karl Schwartz.”
“Karl a soldier!”
“More, a sergeant. He lived and worked among us ten years—a spy. It was the doctor who got him fined for beating his wife. No wonder Monsieur Lafarge used to say there were too many Germans in Belgium. The officer I was talking to watched the whole thing. He was a fat man, and wore spectacles for writing. He lifted them, and screwed up his eyes, so, like a pig, to read the letters on the brass door-plate. ‘Almächtig!’ he said, grinning, ‘a successful operation on a doctor by a patient.’ I saw red. I felt in my pocket for a knife. I meant to rip open his paunch. Then one of our shells burst near us, and he scuttled. The wind of the explosion knocked me over, so I came home.”
The two, to some extent, were using the localpatois; but their English hearers understood nearly every word, because these residents on the Belgian border mingle French, German,and a Low Dutch dialect almost indiscriminately. Dalroy at once endeavoured to divert the old man’s thoughts. The massacre which had been actually permitted, or even organised, in the town by daylight would probably develop into an orgy that night. Not one woman now, but three, required protection. He must evolve some definite plan which could be carried out during the day, because the hordes of cavalry pressing toward the Meuse would soon deplete Joos’s mill; and when the place ceased to be of value to the commissariat the protecting order would almost certainly be revoked. Moreover, Léontine Joos was young and fairly attractive.
In a word, Dalroy was beginning to understand the psychology of the German soldier in war-time.
“Let us think of the immediate future,” he struck in boldly. “You have a wife and daughter to safeguard, Monsieur Joos, while I have Mademoiselle Beresford on my hands. Your mill is on the outskirts of the town. Is there no village to the west, somewhere out of the direct line, to which they could be taken for safety?”
“The west!” growled Joos, springing up again, “isn’t that where these savages are going? That is the way to Liège. I asked the officer. He said they would be in Liège to-night, and in Paris in three weeks.”
“Is it true that England has declared war?”
“So they say. But the Prussians laugh. You have no soldiers, they tell us, and their fleet is nearly as strong as yours. They think they have caught you napping, and that is why they are coming through Belgium. Paris first, then the coast, and they’ve got you. For the love of Heaven, monsieur, is it true that you have no army?”
Dalroy was stung into putting Britain’s case in the best possible light. “Not only have we an army, every man of which is worth three Germans at a fair estimate; but if England has come into this war she will not cease fighting until Prussia grovels in the mud at her feet. How can you, a Belgian, doubt England’s good faith? Hasn’t England maintained your nation in freedom for eighty years?”
“True, true! But the Prussians are sure of victory, and one’s heart aches when one sees them sweep over the land like a pestilence. I haven’t told youone-tenth——”
“Why frighten these ladies needlessly? The gun-fire is bad enough. You and I are men, Monsieur Joos. We must try and save our women.”
The miller was spirited, and the implied taunt struck home.
“It’s all very well talking in that way,” he cried; “but what’s going to happen to you if a German sees you?Que diable!You look like an Aachen carriage-cleaner, don’t you, with your officer air and commanding voice, and yourdandy boots, and your fine clothes showing when the workman’s smock opens! The lady, too, in a cheap shawl, wearing a blouse and skirt that cost hundreds of francs!—Léontine, takemonsieur——”
“Dalroy.”
“Take Monsieur Dalroy to Jan Maertz’s room, and let him put on Jan’s oldest clothes and a pair of sabots. Jan’s clogs will just about fit him. And give mademoiselle one of your old dresses.”
He whirled round on Dalroy. “What became of Jan Maertz? Did the Germans really kill him? Tell us the truth. Léontine, there, had better know.”
“I think he is safe,” said Dalroy. “I have already explained to your daughter how the accident came about which separated us. Maertz was pulled out of the driver’s seat by the reins when the horses plunged and upset the wagon. He may arrive any hour.”
“The Germans didn’t know, then, that you and the lady were in the cart?”
“No.”
“I hope Jan hasn’t told them. That would be awkward. But what matter? You talk like a true man, and I’ll do my best for you. It’s nothing but nonsense to think of getting away from Visé yet. You’re a Liègeois whom I hired to do Jan’s work while he went to Aix. Everybody in Visé knows he went there four days ago. I can’t lift heavy sacks of grain at myage, and I must have a man’s help. You see? Sharp, now. When that fat fellow gets his puff again he’ll be here for more supplies. And mind you don’t wash your face and hands. You’re far too much of a gentleman as it is.”
“One moment,” interrupted Irene. “I want your promise, Captain Dalroy, that you will not go away without telling me.”
She could not guess how completely old Joos’s broken story of the day’s events in Visé had changed Dalroy’s intent.
“I would as soon think of cutting off my right hand,” he said.
Their eyes met and clashed. It was dark in the mill’s kitchen, even at midday; but the girl felt that the tan of travel and exposure on her face was yielding to a deep crimson. “Come, Léontine,” she cried almost gaily, “show me how to wear one of your frocks. I’ll do as much for you some day in London.”
“You be off, too,” growled Joos to Dalroy. “When the Germans come they must see you about the place.”
The old man was shrewd in his way. The sooner these strangers became members of the household the less likely were they to attract attention.
Thus it came about that both Dalroy and Irene were back in the kitchen, and clothed in garments fully in keeping with their new rôles, when a commissariat wagon entered the yard. A Bavarian corporal did not trouble to open thedoor in the ordinary way. He smashed the latch with his shoulder. “Why is this door closed?” he demanded fiercely.
“Monsieur——” began Joos.
“Speak German, you swine!”
“I forgot the order, Herr Kaporal. As you see, it was only on the latch.”
“Don’t let it happen again. Load the first wagon with hay and the second with flour. While you’re at it, these women can cook us a meal. Where do you keep your wine?”
“Everything will be put on the table,mons—Herr Kaporal.”
“None of your lip!—Here, you, the pretty one, show me the wine-cupboard. I’ll make my own selection. We Bavarians are famous judges of good wine and pretty women, let me tell you.”
The corporal’s wit was highly appreciated by the squad of four men who accompanied him. They had all been drinking. It is a notable fact that during the early days of the invasion of Belgium and France—in effect, while wine and brandy were procurable by theft—the army which boasts the strictest discipline of any in the world was unquestionably the most drunken that has ever waged successful war.
Irene was “the pretty one” chosen as guide by this hulking connoisseur, but she knew how to handle boors of his type.
“You must not talk in that style to a girl from Berlin,” she said icily. “You and yourmen will take what is given you, or I’ll find youroberleutnant, and hear what he has to say about it.”
She spoke purposely in perfect German, and the corporal was vastly surprised.
“Pardon,gnädiges Fräulein,” he mumbled with a clumsy bow. “I no offence meant. We will within come when the meal is ready. About—turn!” The enemy was routed.
The miller and his man worked hard until dusk. The fat officer turned up, and lost no opportunity of ogling the two girls. He handed Joos a payment docket, which, he explained grandiloquently, would be honoured by the military authorities in due course. Joos pocketed the document with a sardonic grin. There was some fifteen thousand francs’ worth of grain and forage stored on the premises, and he did not expect to see a centime of hard cash from the Germans, unless, as he whispered grimly to Dalroy, they were forced to pay double after the war. Meanwhile the place was gutted. Wagon after wagon came empty and went away loaded.
Driblets of news were received. The passage of the Meuse had been achieved, thanks to a flanking movement from Argenteau. Liège had fallen at the first attack. The German High Sea Fleet was escorting an army in transports to invade England, where, meanwhile, Zeppelins were destroying London. Visé, having been sufficiently “punished” for a first offence,would now be spared so long as the inhabitants “behaved themselves.” If a second “lesson” were needed it would be something to remember.
The first and last of these items were correct, inasmuch as they represented events and definite orders affecting the immediate neighbourhood. Otherwise, the budget consisted of ever more daring flights of Teutonic imagination, the crescendo swelling by distance. Liège was so far from having fallen that the 7th Division, deprived of the support of the 9th and 10th Divisions, had been beaten back disastrously from the shallow trenches in front of the outer girdle of forts. The 10th was about to share the same fate; and the 9th, after being delayed nearly three days by the glorious resistance offered by the Belgians at Visé, was destined to fare likewise. But rumour as to the instant “capture” of Liège was not rife among the lower ranks alone of the German army. The commander-in-chief actually telegraphed the news to the All-Highest at Aix; when the All-Highest discovered the truth the commander-in-chief decided that he had better blow his brains out, and did.
The fact was that the overwhelming horde of invaders could not be kept out of the city of Liège by the hastily mobilised Belgian army; but the heroic governor, General Leman, held the ring of forts intact until they were pulverised by the heavy ordnance of which Dalroy hadseen two specimens during the journey to Cologne. Many days were destined to elapse before the last of the strongholds, Fort Loncin, crumbled into ruins by the explosion of its own magazine; and until that was achieved the mighty army of Germany dared not advance another kilomètre to the west.
When the Bavarian corporal had gone through every part of the house and outbuildings, and satisfied himself that the only stores left were some potatoes and a half-bag of flour, he informed the miller that he and his squad would be billeted there that evening.
“Your pantry is bare,” he said, “but the wine is all right, so we’ll bring a joint which we ‘planted’ this morning. Be decent about the wine, and your folk can have a cut in, too.”
Possibly he meant to be civil, and there was a chance that the night might pass without incident. Visé itself was certainly quiet save for the unceasing stream of troops making for the pontoon bridge. The fighting seemed to have shifted to the west and south-west, and Joos put an unerring finger on the situation when he said pithily, “Liège is making a deuce of a row after being taken.”
“How many forts are there around the city?” inquired Dalroy.
“Twelve, big and little. Pontisse and Barchon cover the Meuse on this side, and Fleron and Evegnée bar the direct road from Aix. Unless I am greatly in error, monsieur, the Germanwolf is breaking his teeth on some of them at this minute.”
Liège itself was ten miles distant; Pontisse, the nearest fort, though on the left bank of the river, barely six. The evening was still, there being only a slight breeze from the south-west, which brought the loud thunder of the guns and the crackle of rifle-fire. It was the voice of Belgium proclaiming to the high gods that she was worthy of life.
The Bavarians came with their “joint,” a noble piece of beef hacked off a whole side looted from a butcher’s shop. Madame Joos cut off an ample quantity, some ten pounds, and put it in the oven. The girls peeled potatoes and prepared cabbages. In half-an-hour the kitchen had an appetising smell of food being cooked, the men were smoking, and a casual visitor would never have resolved the gathering into its constituent elements of irreconcilable national hatreds.
The corporal even tried to make amends for having damaged the door. He examined the broken latch. “It’s a small matter,” he said apologetically. “You can repair it for a trifle; and, in any case, you will sleep all the better that we are here.”
Though somewhat maudlin with liquor, he was very much afraid of the “girl from Berlin.” He could not sum her up, but meant to behave himself; while his men, of course, followed his lead unquestioningly.
Dalroy kept in the background. He listened, but said hardly anything. The turn of fortune’s wheel was distinctly favourable. If the night ended as it had begun there was a chance that he and Irene might slip away to the Dutch frontier next morning, since he had ascertained definitely that Holland was secure for the time, and was impartially interning all combatants, either Germans or Belgians, who crossed the border. At this time he was inclined to abandon his own project of striving to steal through the German lines. He was somewhat weary, too, after the unusual labour of carrying heavy sacks of grain and flour down steep ladders or lowering them by a pulley. Thus, he dozed off in a corner, but was aroused suddenly by the entry of the commissariat officer and three subalterns. With them came an orderly, who dumped a laden basket and a case of champagne on the floor.
The corporal and his satellites sprang to attention.
The fat man took the salute, and glanced around the kitchen. Then he sniffed. “What! roast beef?” he said. “The men fare better than the officers, it would seem.—Be off, you!”
“Herr Major, we are herein billeted,” stuttered the corporal.
“Be off, I tell you, and take these Belgian swine with you! I make my quarters here to-night.”
Joos, of course, he recognised; and the millersaid, with some dignity, that the gentlemen would be made as comfortable as his resources permitted, but he must remain in his own house.
The fat man stared at him, as though such insolence were unheard-of. “Here,” he roared to the corporal, “pitch this old hog into the Meuse. He annoys me.”
Meanwhile, one of the younger officers, a strapping Westphalian, lurched toward Irene. She did not try to avoid him, thinking, perhaps, that a passive attitude was advisable. He caught her by the waist, and guffawed to his companions, “Didn’t I offer to bet you fellows that Busch never made a mistake about a woman? Who’d have dreamed of finding a beauty like this one in a rotten old mill?”
The Bavarians had collected their rifles and sidearms, and were going out sullenly. Each of the officers carried a sword and revolver.
Irene saw that Dalroy had risen in his corner. She wrenched herself free. “How am I to prepare supper for you gentlemen if you bother me in this way?” she demanded tartly.
“Behave yourself, Fritz,” puffed the major. “Is that your idea of keeping your word?Mama, if she is discreet, will go to bed, and the young ones will eat with us.—Open that case of wine, orderly. I’m thirsty.—The girls will have a drink too. Cooking is warm work.—Hallo! What the devil! Kaporal, didn’t you hear my order?”
Dalroy grabbed Joos, who was livid withrage. The two girls were safe for the hour, and must endure the leering of four tipsy scoundrels. A row at the moment would be the wildest folly.