“Those cursed Prussians have made Belgium a shambles,” he added bitterly. “Look at ourriver. It isn’t our dear, muddy Meuse. It’s a stream in the infernal regions.”
“Yes,” gasped his wife. “And listen to those guns, Henri! They beat a sort ofroulade, like drums in hell!”
This stout Walloon matron had never heard of Milton. Her ears were not tuned to the music of Parnassus. She would have gazed in mild wonder at one who told of “noises loud and ruinous,”
When Bellona stormsWith all her battering engines, bent to razeSome capital city.
When Bellona stormsWith all her battering engines, bent to razeSome capital city.
But in her distress of body and soul she had coined a phrase which two, at least, of her hearers would never forget. The siege of Liège did, indeed, roar and rumble with the din of a demoniac orchestra. Its clamour mounted to the firmament. It was as though the nether fiends, following Moloch’s advice, were striving,
Arm’d with Hell flames and fury, all at once,O’er Heaven’s high towers to force resistless way.
Arm’d with Hell flames and fury, all at once,O’er Heaven’s high towers to force resistless way.
Dalroy himself yielded to the spell of the moment. Here was red war such as the soldier dreams of. His warrior spirit did not quail. He longed only for the hour, if ever the privilege was vouchsafed, when he would stand shoulder to shoulder with the men of his own race, and watch with unflinching eye those same dread tokens of a far-flung battle line.
Irene Beresford seemed to read his passing mood. “War has some elements of greatness,” she said quietly. “The pity is that while it ennobles a few it degrades the multitude.”
With a woman’s intuition, she had gone straight to the heart of the problem propounded by Teutonism to an amazed world. The “degradation” of a whole people was already Germany’s greatest and unforgivable offence. Few, even the most cynical, among the students of European politics could have believed that the Kaiser’s troops would sully their country’s repute by the inhuman excesses committed during those first days in Belgium. At the best, “war is hell”; but the great American leader who summed up its attributes in that pithy phrase thought only of the mangled men, the ruined homesteads, the bereaved families which mark its devastating trail. He had seen nothing of German “frightfulness.” The men he led would have scorned to ravage peaceful villages, impale babies on bayonets and lances, set fire to houses containing old and bedridden people, murder hostages, rape every woman in a community, torture wounded enemies, and shoot harmless citizens in drunken sport. Yet the German armies did all these things before they were a fortnight in the field. They are not impeached on isolated counts, attributable, perhaps, to the criminal instincts of a small minority. They carried out bestial orgies in battalionsand brigades acting under word of command. The jolly, good-humoured fellows who used to tramp in droves through the Swiss passes every summer, each man with a rucksack on his back, and beguiling the road in lusty song, seemed to cast aside all their cheerful camaraderie, all their exuberant kindliness of nature, when garbed in the “field gray” livery of the State, and let loose among the pleasant vales and well-tilled fields of Flanders. That will ever remain Germany’s gravest sin. When “the thunder of the captains and the shouting” is stilled, when time has healed the wounds of victor and vanquished, the memories of Visé, of Louvain, of Aershot, of nearly every town and hamlet in Belgium and Northern France once occupied by the savages from beyond the Rhine, will remain imperishable in their horror. GermanKulturwas a highly polished veneer. Exposed to the hot blast of war it peeled and shrivelled, leaving bare a diseased, worm-eaten structure, in which the honest fibre of humanity had been rotted by vile influences, both social and political.
Women seldom err when they sum up the characteristics of the men of a race, and the women of every other civilised nation were united in their dislike of German men long before the first week in August, 1914. Irene Beresford had yet to peer into the foulest depths of Teutonic “degradation”; but she had sensed it as a latent menace, and found in itsstark records only the fulfilment of her vague fears.
Dalroy read into her words much that she had left unsaid. “At best it’s a terrible necessity,” he replied; “at worst it’s what we have seen and heard of during the past twenty-four hours. I shall never understand why a people which prided itself on being above all else intellectual should imagine that atrocity is a means toward conquest. Such a theory is so untrue historically that Germany might have learnt its folly.”
Joos grew uneasy when his English friends spoke in their own language. The suspicious temperament of the peasant is always doubtful of things outside its comprehension. He would have been astounded if told they were discussing the ethics of warfare.
“Well, have you two settled where we’re to go?” he demanded gruffly. “In my opinion, the Meuse is the best place for the lot of us.”
“In with you, then,” agreed Dalroy, “but hand over your money to madame before you take the dip. Léontine and Jan may need it later to start the mill running.”
Maertz laughed. The joke appealed strongly.
Madame Joos turned on her husband. “How you do chatter, Henri!” she said. “We all owe our lives to this gentleman, yet you aren’t satisfied. The Meuse indeed! What will you be saying next?”
“How far is Argenteau?” put in Dalroy.
“That’s it, where the house is on fire,” said the miller, pointing.
“About a kilomètre, I take it?”
“Something like that.”
“Have you friends there?”
“Ay, scores, if they’re alive.”
“I hear no shooting in that direction. Moreover, an army corps is passing through. Let us go there. Something may turn up. We shall be safer among thousands of Germans than here.”
They walked on. The Englishman’s air of decision was a tonic in itself.
The fire on the promontory was now at its height, but a curve in the river hid the fugitives from possible observation. Dalroy was confident as to two favourable factors—the men of the marching column would not search far along the way they had come, and their commander would recall them when the wood yielded no trace of its supposed occupants.
There had been fighting along the right bank of the Meuse during the previous day. German helmets, red and yellow Belgian caps, portions of accoutrements and broken weapons, littered the tow-path. But no bodies were in evidence. The river had claimed the dead and the wounded Belgians; the enemy’s wounded had been transferred to Aix-la-Chapelle.
Nearing Argenteau they heard a feeble cry. They stopped, and listened. Again it came, clearly this time: “Elsa! Elsa!”
It was a man’s voice, and the name was thatof a German woman. Maertz searched in a thicket, and found a young German officer lying there. He was delirious, calling for the help of one powerless to aid.
He seemed to become aware of the presence of some human being. Perhaps his atrophied senses retained enough vitality to hear the passing footsteps.
“Elsa!” he moaned again, “give me water, for God’s sake!”
“He’s done for,” reported Maertz to the waiting group. “He’s covered with blood.”
“For all that he may prove our salvation,” said Dalroy quickly. “Sharp, now! Pitch our firearms and ammunition into the river. We must lift a gate off its hinges, and carry that fellow into Argenteau.”
Joos grinned. He saw the astuteness of the scheme. A number of Belgian peasants bringing a wounded officer to the ambulance would probably be allowed to proceed scot-free. But he was loath to part with the precious fork on which the blood of “that fat Busch” was congealing. He thrust it into a ditch, and if ever he was able to retrieve it no more valued souvenir of the great war will adorn his dwelling. They possessed neither wine nor water; but a tiny rivulet flowing into the Meuse under a neighbouring bridge supplied the latter, and the wounded man gulped down great mouthfuls out of aPickel-haube. It partially cleared his wits.
“Where am I?” he asked faintly.
Dalroy nodded to Joos, who answered, “On the Meuse bank, near Argenteau.”
“Ah, I remember. Those cursed——” Some dim perception of his surroundings choked the word on his lips. “I was hit,” he went on, “and crawled among the bushes.”
“Was there fighting here this morning?”
“Yes. To-day is Tuesday, isn’t it?”
“No, Wednesday midnight.”
“Ach, Gott!Thatverdammtambulance missed me! I have lain here two days!”
This time he swore without hesitation, since he was cursing his own men.
Jan came with a hurdle. “This is lighter than a gate, monsieur,” he explained.
Dalroy nudged Joos sharply, and the miller took the cue. “Right,” he said. “Now, you two, handle him carefully.”
The German groaned piteously, and fainted.
“Oh, he’s dead!” gasped Irene, when she saw his head drop.
“No, he will recover. But don’t speak English.—As for you, Jan Maertz, no more of your ‘monsieur’ and ‘madame.’ I am Pierre, and this lady is Clementine. You understand?”
Dalroy spoke emphatically. Had the German retained his wits their project might be undone. In the event, the pain of movement on the hurdle revived the wounded man, and he asked for more water. They were then entering the outskirts of Argenteau, so they kept on.Soon they gained the main road, and Joos inquired of an officer the whereabouts of a field hospital. He directed them quite civilly, and offered to detail men to act as bearers. But the miller was now his own shrewd self again.
“No,” he said bluntly, “I and my family have rescued your officer, and we want a safe conduct.”
Off they went with their living passport. The field hospital was established in the village school, and here the patient was turned over to a surgeon. As it happened, the latter recognised a friend, and was grateful. He sent an orderly with them to find the major in charge of the lines of communication, and they had not been in Argenteau five minutes before they were supplied with alaisser passer, in which they figured as Wilhelm Schultz, farmer, and wife, Clementine and Léontine, daughters, and the said daughters’ fiancés, Pierre Dampier and Georges Lambert; residence Aubel; destination Andenne.
There was not the least hitch in the matter. The major was, in his way, courteous. Joos gave his own Christian name as “Guillaume,” but the German laughed.
“You’re a good citizen of the Fatherland now, my friend,” he guffawed, “so we’ll make it ‘Wilhelm.’ As for this pair of doves,” and he eyed the two girls, “warn off any of our lads. Tell them that I, Major von Arnheim,said so. They’re a warm lot where a pretty woman is concerned.”
Von Arnheim was a stout man, a not uncommon quality in German majors. Perhaps he wondered why Joos looked fixedly at the pit of his stomach.
But a motor cyclist dashed up with a despatch, and he forgot all about “Schultz” and his family. As it happened, he was a man of some ability, and the hopeless block at Aix caused by the stubborn defence of Liège had brought about the summary dismissal of a General by the wrathful Kaiser. Hence, the Argenteau major was promoted and recalled to the base. His next in rank, summoned to the post an hour later, knew nothing of thelaisser passergranted to a party which closely resembled the much-wanted miller of Visé and his companions; he read an “urgent general order” for their arrest without the least suspicion that they had slipped through the net in that very place.
Meanwhile these things were in the lap of the gods. For the moment, the six people were free, and actually under German protection.
Three large and powerful automobiles stood at rest in the tiny square of Argenteau. Nearly every little town in Belgium and France possesses itsplace, the hub of social and business life, the centre where roads converge and markets are held. In the roadway, near the cars, were several officers, deep in conversation.
“Look,” murmured Irene to Dalroy, “the high-shouldered, broadly-built man, facing this way, is General von Emmich!”
By this time Dalroy was acquainted with the name of the German commander-in-chief. He found a fleeting interest in watching him now, while Joos and the others loitered irresolutely on the pavement outside the improvised office of theKommandantur.
Though the moon was high and clear, there was no other light, and the diffused brilliance of the “orbèd maiden, with white fire laden,” is not favourable to close observation. But Von Emmich’s bearing and gestures were significant. He put an abrupt end to the conclave by an emphatic sweep of his right arm, and the larger number of his staff disposed themselves in two of the cars, in which the chauffeurs and armed escorts were already seated. They madeoff in the direction of Aix. It was easy to guess their errand. More cannon, more cannon-fodder!
The generalissimo himself remained apart from the colonel and captain who apparently formed his personal suite. He strode to and fro, evidently in deep thought. Once he halted quite close to the little company of peasants, and Dalroy believed he saw tears in his eyes, tears instantly brushed away by an angry hand. Whatever the cause of this emotion, the General quickly mastered a momentary weakness. Indeed, that spasmodic yielding seemed to have braced his will to a fixed purpose, because he walked to the waiting car, wrote something by the light of an electric torch, and said to the younger of the staff officers, “Take that to the field telegraph. It must have priority.”
Somehow, Dalroy sensed the actual text of the message. Von Emmich was making the humiliating admission that Liège, far from having fallen, as he had announced during the first hours of the advance, was still an immovable barrier against a living torrent of men. So the heart of this middle-aged warrior, whose repute was good when measured by the Prussian standard, had not melted because of the misery and desolation he and his armed ruffians had brought into one of the most peaceful, industrious, and law-abiding communities in the world. His tears flowed because of failure, not of regret. His withers were wrung by mortification,not pity. He would have waded knee-deep in the blood of Belgium if only he could have gained his ends and substantiated by literal fact that first vainglorious telegram to the War Lord of Potsdam. Now he had to ask for time, reinforcements, siege guns, while the clock ticked inexorably, and England, France, and Russia were mobilising. Perhaps it was in that hour that his morbid thoughts first turned to a suicide’s death as the only reparation for what he conceived to be a personal blunder. Yet his generalship was marked by no grave strategical fault. If aught erred, it was the German State machine, which counted only on mankind having a body and a brain, but denied it a soul.
Von Emmich’s troubles were no concern of Dalroy’s, save in their reaction on his own difficulties. He was conscious of a certain surprise that Irene Beresford should recognise one of the leaders of modern Germany so promptly; but this feeling, in its turn, yielded to the vital things of the moment. “Let us be moving,” he said quietly, and led the way with Joos.
“Why did you give Andenne as your destination?” he inquired.
“My wife’s cousin lives there, monsieur. She is married to a man named Alphonse Stauwaert. Ihadto say something. I remembered Madame Stauwaert in the nick of time.”
“But Andenne lies beyond Liège. To get there we shall have to traverse the whole Germanline, and pass some of the outlying forts, which is impossible.”
“We must go somewhere.”
“True. But why not make for a place that is attainable? Heaven—or Purgatory, at any rate—is far more easily reached to-night than Andenne.”
“I didn’t say we were going there at once,” snapped the miller. “It’s more than twenty-five kilomètres from here, and is far enough away to be safe when I’m asked where I am bound for. My wife couldn’t walk it to-morrow, let alone to-night.”
“Andenne lies down the valley of the Meuse too, doesn’t it?”
“Ay.”
“Well, isn’t that simply falling off a rock into a whirlpool? The Germans must pass that way to France, and it is France they are aiming at, not Belgium.”
“They talk mostly about England,” said Joos sapiently.
“Yes, because they fear her. But let us avoid politics, my friend. Our present problem is how and where to bestow these women for the night. After that, the sooner we three men leave them the better. I, at least, must go. I may be detected any minute, and then—God help you others!”
“Saperlotte!That isn’t the way you English are treating us. No, monsieur, we sink or swim together.”
That ready disavowal of any clash of interests was cheering. The little man’s heart was sound, though his temper might be short. Good faith, however, was not such a prime essential now as good judgment, and Dalroy halted again at a corner of the square. To stay in Argenteau was madness. But—there were three roads. One led to Visé, one to Liège, and one to the German frontier! The first two were closed hopelessly. The third, open in a sense, was fantastic when regarded as a possible avenue of escape. Yet that third road offered the only path toward comparative security and rest.
“I wish you wouldn’t look so dejected,” whispered Irene, peeping up into Dalroy’s downcast face with the winsome smile which had so taken his fancy during the long journey from Berlin. “I’ve been counting our gains and losses. Surely the balance is heavy on our side. We—you, that is—have defeated the whole German army. We’ve lost some sleep and some clothes, but have secured a safe-conduct from our enemies, after knocking a good many of them on the head. Some men, I know, look miserable when most successful; but I don’t put you in that category.”
She was careful to talk German, not that there was much chance of being actually overheard, but to prevent the sibilant accents of English speech reaching suspicious ears. Britons who have no language but their ownare often surprised when abroad at hearing children mimicking them by hissing. Curiously enough, such is the effect of our island tongue on foreign ears. Monosyllables like “yes,” “this,” “it’s,” and scores of others in constant use, no less than the almost invariable plural form of nouns, lead to the illusion, which Irene was aware of, and guarded against.
Yet, despite the uncouth, harsh-sounding words on her lips, and the coarse Flemish garments she wore, she was adorably English. Léontine Joos was a pretty girl; but, in true feminine parlance, “lumpy.” Some three inches less in height than her “sister,” she probably weighed a stone more. Léontine trudged when she walked, Irene moved with a grace which not even a pair of clumsy sabots could hide. Luckily they were alike in one important particular. Their faces and hands were soiled, their hair untidy, and the passage through the wood had scratched foreheads and cheeks until the skin was broken, and little patches of congealed blood disfigured them.
“I may look more dejected than I feel,” Dalroy reassured her. “I’m playing a part, remember. I’ve kept my head down and my knees bent until my joints ache.”
“Oh, is that it?” she cooed, with a relieved air. How could he know then that the sabots were chafing her ankles until the pain had become well-nigh unbearable. If she could have gratified her own wishes she would have creptto the nearest hedge and flung herself down in utter weariness.
Joos, having pondered the Englishman’s views on Andenne as an unattainable refuge, scratched his head perplexedly. “I think we had better go toward Herve,” he said at last. “This is the road,” and he pointed to the left. “On the way we can branch off to a farm I know of, if it happens to be clear of soldiers.”
Any goal was preferable to none. They entered the eastward-bound road, but had not advanced twenty yards along it before the way was blocked by a mass of commissariat wagons and scores of Uhlans standing by their horses.
Two officers, heedless who heard, were wrangling loudly.
“There is nothing else for it,Herr Hauptmann,” said one. “It doesn’t matter who is actually to blame. You have taken the wrong road, and must turn back. Every yard farther in this direction puts you deeper in the mire.”
“But I was misdirected as far away as Bleyberg,” protested the other. “Some never-to-be-forgotten hound of hell told me that this was the Verviers road.Gott in himmel!and Imustbe there by dawn!”
Dalroy was gazing at the wagons. They seemed oddly familiar. The painted legend on the tarpaulins placed the matter beyond doubt. These were the very vehicles he had seen in the station-yard at Aix-la-Chapelle!
At this crisis Jan Maertz’s sluggish brainevolved a really clever notion. The Germans wanted a guide, and who so well qualified for the post as a carter to whom each turn and twist in every road in the province was familiar? Without consulting any one, he pushed forward. “Pardon,Herr General,” he said in his offhand way. “Give me and my friends a lift, and I’ll have you and your wagons in Verviers in three hours.”
Brutality is so engrained in the Prussian that an offer which a man of another race would have accepted civilly was treated almost as an insult by the angry leader of the convoy.
“You’ll guide me with the point of a lance close to your liver, you Belgian swine-dog,” was the ungracious answer.
“Not me!” retorted Maertz. “Here, papa!” he cried to Joos, “show this gentleman your paper. He can’t go about sticking people as he likes, even in war-time.”
Joos went forward. Moved by contemptuous curiosity, the two officers examined the miller’slaisser passerby the light of an electric torch.
The commissariat officer changed his tone when he saw the signature. The virtue of military obedience becomes a grovelling servitude in the German army, and a man who was ready to act with the utmost unfairness if left to his own instincts grew almost courteous at sight of the communications officer’s name. “Your case is different,” he admitted grudgingly.“Is this your party? The old man is Herr Schultz, I suppose. Which are you?”
“I’m Georges Lambert,Herr General.”
“And what do you want?”
“We’re all going to Andenne. It’s on the paper. This infernal fighting has smashed up our place at Aubel, and the women are footsore and frightened. So is papa. Put them in a wagon. Dampier and I can leg it.”
The Prussian was becoming more civil each moment. He realised, too, that this gruff fellow who moved about the country under such powerful protection was a veritable godsend to him and his tired men.
“No, no,” he cried, grown suddenly complaisant, “we can do better than that. I’ll dump a few trusses of hay, and put you all in the same wagon, which can then take the lead.”
Thus, by a mere turn of fortune’s wheel, the enemy was changed into a friend, and a dangerous road made safe and comfort-giving. Jan sat in front with the driver, and cracked jokes with him, while the others nestled into a load of sweet-smelling hay.
“For the first time in my life,” whispered Dalroy to Irene, “I understand the precise significance of Samson’s riddle about the honey extracted from the lion’s mouth. Our heavy-witted Jan has saved the situation. We enter Verviers in triumph, and reach the left of the German lines. Just another slice of luck, andwe cross the Meuse at Andenne or elsewhere—it doesn’t matter where.”
Irene had kicked off those cruel sabots. She bit her lip in the darkness to stifle a sob before answering coolly, “Shall we be clear of the Germans then?”
“I—hope so. Their armies dare not advance so long as we hear those guns.”
The girl could not reason in the soldier’s way. She thought she would “hear those guns” during the rest of her life. Never had she dreamed of anything so horrific as that drumming of cannon. She believed, as women do, that every shell tore hundreds of human beings limb from limb. In silent revolt against the frenzy which seemed to possess the world, she closed her eyes and buried her head in the hay; and once again exhausted nature was its own best healer. When the convoy rumbled into Verviers in the early morning, having followed a by-road through Julemont and Herve, Irene had to be awaked out of deep sleep. Yet the boom of the guns continued! Liège was still holding out, a paranoiac despot was frantic with wrath, and civilised Europe had yet another day to prepare for the caging of the beast which threatened its very existence.
The leader of the convoy was greeted by a furious staff officer in such terms that Dalroy judged it expedient he and the others should slip away quietly. This they contrived to do. Maertz recommended an inn in a side street,where they would be welcomed if accommodation were available. And it was. There were no troops billeted in Verviers. Every available man was being hurried to the front. Dalroy watched two infantry regiments passing while Maertz and Joos were securing rooms. Though the soldiers were sturdy fellows, and they could not have made an excessively long march, many of them limped badly, and only maintained their places in the ranks by force of an iron discipline. He was puzzled to account for their jaded aspect. An hour later, while lying awake in a fairly comfortable bed, and trying to frame some definite programme for the day which had already dawned, he solved the mystery. The soldiers were wearing new boots! Germany hadeverythingready for her millions. He learnt subsequently that when the German armies entered the field they were followed by ammunition trains carrying four thousand million rounds of small-arm cartridges alone!
He met Joos and Maertz atdéjeuner, a rough but satisfying meal, and was faced by the disquieting fact that neither Madame Joos nor Irene could leave the bedroom which they shared with Léontine. Madame was done up;cette course l’a excédé, her husband put it; while mademoiselle’s ankles were swollen and painful.
These misfortunes were, perhaps, a blessing in disguise. An enforced rest was better than no rest at all, and the constant vigil by nightand day was telling even on the apple-cheeked Léontine.
Joos wanted to wander about the town and pick up news, but Dalroy dissuaded him. The woman who kept the littleaubergewas thoroughly trustworthy, and hardly another soul in Verviers knew of their presence in the town. News they could do without, whereas recognition might be fatal.
Irene put in an appearance late in the day. She had borrowed a pair of slippers, and the landlady had promised to buy her a pair of strong boots. Sabots she would never wear again, she vowed. They might be comfortable and watertight when one was accustomed to them, but life was too strenuous in Belgium just then to permit of experiments in footgear.
When night fell Joos could not be kept in. It was understood that theKommandanturhad ordered all inhabitants to remain indoors after nine o’clock, so the old man had hardly an hour at his disposal for what he called apetit tour. But he was not long absent. He had encountered a friend, a curé whose church near Aubel had been blown to atoms by German artillery during a frontier fight on the Monday afternoon.
This gentleman, a venerable ecclesiastic, discovered Dalroy’s nationality after five minutes’ chat. He had in his possession a copy of a proclamation issued by Von Emmich. It began: “I regret very much to find that German troopsare compelled to cross the frontier of Belgium. They are constrained to do so by sheer necessity, the neutrality of Belgium having already been violated by French officers, who, in disguise, have passed through Belgian territory in an automobile in order to penetrate Germany.”
The curé, whose name was Garnier, laughed sarcastically at the childishness of the pretext put forward by the commander-in-chief of the Army of the Meuse. “Was war waged for such a flimsy reason ever before in the history of the world?” he said. “What fire-eaters these ‘disguised’ French officers must have been! Imagine the hardihood of the braves who would ‘penetrate’ mighty Germany in one automobile! This silly lie bears the date of 4th August, yet my beloved church was then in ruins, and a large part of the village in flames!”
“Verviers seems to have escaped punishment. How do you account for it?” inquired Dalroy.
“It seems to be a deliberate policy on the part of the Germans to spare one town and destroy another. Both serve as examples, the one as typical of the excellent treatment meted out to those communities which welcome the invaders, the other as a warning of the fate attending resistance. Both instances are absolutely untrue. Every burgomaster in Belgium has issued notices calling on non-combatants to avoid hostile acts, and Verviers is exactly on a par with the other unfortified towns in this part of the country. The truth is, monsieur, that theGermans are furious because of the delay our gallant soldiers have imposed on them. It is bearing fruit too. I hear that England has already landed an army at Ostend.”
Dalroy shook his head. “I wish I might credit that,” he said sadly. “I am a soldier, monsieur, and you may take it from me that such a feat is quite impossible in the time. We might send twenty or thirty thousand men by the end of this week, and another similar contingent by the end of next week. But months must elapse before we can put in the field an army big enough to make headway against the swarms of Germans I have seen with my own eyes.”
“Months!” gasped the curé. “Then what will become of my unhappy country? Even to-day we are living on hope. Liège still holds out, and the people are saying, ‘The English are coming, all will be well!’ A man was shot to-day in this very town for making that statement.”
“He must have been a fool to voice his views in the presence of German troops.”
The priest spread wide his hands in sorrowful gesture. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Belgium is overrun with spies. It is positively dangerous to utter an opinion in any mixed company. One or two of the bystanders will certainly be in the pay of the enemy.”
Though the curé was now on surer ground than when he spoke of a British army on Belgiansoil, Dalroy egged him on to talk. “My chief difficulty is to know how the money was raised to support all these agencies,” he said. “Consider, monsieur. Germany maintains an enormous army. She has a fleet second only to that of Britain. She finances her traders and subsidises her merchant ships as no other nation does. How is it credible that she should also find means to keep up a secret service which must have cost millions sterling a year?”
“Yes, you are certainly English,” said the priest, with a sad smile. “You don’t begin to estimate the peculiarities of the German character. We Belgians, living, so to speak, within arm’s-length of Germany, have long seen the danger, and feared it. Every German is taught that the world is his for the taking. Every German is encouraged in the belief that the national virtue of organised effort is the one and only means of commanding success. Thus, the State is everything, the individual nothing. But the State rewards the individual for services rendered. The German dotes on titles and decorations, and what easier way of earning both than to supply information deemed valuable by the various State departments? Plenty of wealthy Germans in Belgium paid their own spies, and used the knowledge so gained for their private ends as well as for the benefit of the State. During the past twenty years the whole German race has become a mostefficient secret society, its members being banded together for their common good, and leagued against the rest of the world. The German never loses his nationality, no matter how long he may dwell in a foreign country. My own church claims to be Catholic and universal, yet I would not trust a German colleague in any matter where the interests of his country were at stake. The Germans are a race apart, and believe themselves superior to all others. There was a time, in my youth, when Prussia was distinct from Saxony, or Würtemberg, or Bavaria. That feeling is dead. The present Emperor has welded his people into one tremendous machine, partly by playing upon their vanity, partly by banging the German drum during his travels, but mainly by dangling before their eyes the reward that men have always found irresistible—the spoliation of other lands, the prospect of sudden enrichment. Every soldier marching past this house at the present moment hopes to rob Belgium and France. And now England is added to the enticing list of well-stocked properties that may be lawfully burgled. I am no prophet, monsieur. I am only an old man who has watched the upspringing of a new and terrible force in European politics. I may live an hour or ten years; but if God spares me for the latter period I shall see Germany either laid in the dust by an enraged world or dominating the earth by brutal conquest.”
But for the outbreak of the war Dalroy would have passed the “interpreter” test in German some few weeks later. He had spent his “language leave” in Berlin, and was necessarily familiar with German thought and literature. Often had he smiled at Teutonic boastfulness. Now the simple words of an aged village curé had given a far-reaching and sinister meaning to much that had seemed the mere froth of a vigorous race fermenting in successful trade.
“Do you believe that the German colony in England pursues the same methods?” he asked, and his heart sank as he recalled the wealth and social standing of the horde of Germans in the British Isles.
“Can the leopard change his spots?” quoted the other. “A year ago one of my friends, a maker of automobiles, thought I needed a holiday. He took me to England. God has been good to Britain, monsieur! He has given you riches and power. But you are grown careless. I stayed in five big hotels, two in London and three in the provinces. They were all run by Germans. I made inquiries, thinking I might benefit some of my village lads; but the German managers would employ none save German waiters, German cooks, German reception clerks. Your hall porters were Germans. You never cared to reflect, I suppose, that hotels are the main arteries of a country’s life. But the canker did not end there. Your mills and collierieswere installing German plant under German supervisors. Yourbanks——”
The speaker paused dramatically.
“But our God is not a German God!” he cried, and his sunken eyes seemed to shoot fire. “Last night, listening to the guns that were murdering Belgium, I asked myself, why does Heaven permit this crime? And the answer came swiftly: German influences were poisoning the world. They had to be eradicated, or mankind would sink into the bottomless pit. So God has sent this war. Be of good heart. Remember the words of Saint Paul: ‘So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.’”
The curé’s voice had unconsciously attained the pulpit pitch. The clear, incisive accents reached other ears.
The landlady crept in, with a face of scare. “Monsieur!” she whispered, “the doors are wide open. It is an order!”
Dalroy went rapidly into the street. No loiterer was visible. Not even a crowd of five persons might gather to watch the military pageant; it wasverboten. And ever the dim shapes flitted by in the night—horse, foot, and artillery, automobiles, ambulance and transport wagons. There seemed no end to this flux of gray-green gnomes. The air was tremulous with the unceasing hammer-strokes of heavyguns on the anvil of Liège. Staid old Europe might be dissolving even then in a cloud of high-explosive gas.
The scheme of things was all awry. One Englishman gave up the riddle. He turned on his heel, and lit one of the cheap cigars purchased in Aix-la-Chapelle less than forty-eight hours ago!
Madame Joos was old for her fifty years, and heavy withal. Hers was not the finer quality of human clay which hardens in the fire of adversity. She became ill, almost seriously ill, and had to be nursed back into good health again during nine long days. And long these days were, the longest Dalroy had ever known. To a man of his temperament, enforced inactivity was anathema in any conditions; a gnawing doubt that he was not justified in remaining in Verviers at all did not improve matters. Monsieur Garnier, the curé, was a frequent though unobtrusive visitor. He doctored the invalid, and brought scraps of accurate information which filtered through the far-flung screen of Uhlans and the dense lines of German infantry and guns. Thus the fugitives knew when and where the British Expeditionary Force actually landed on the Continent. They heard of the gradual sapping of the defences of Liège, until Fort Loncin fell, and, with it, as events were to prove, the shield which had protected Belgium for nearly a fortnight. The respite did not avail King Albert and his heroic people in so far as the occupation and ravaging of their beautiful country was concerned; butcalm-eyed historians in years to come will appraise at its true value the breathing-space, slight though it was, thus secured for France and England.
Dalroy found it extraordinarily difficult to sift the true from the false in the crop of conflicting rumours. In the first instance, German legends had to be discounted. From the outset of the campaign the Kaiser’s armies were steadily regaled with accounts of phenomenal successeselsewhere. Thus, when four army corps, commanded now by Von Kluck, were nearly demoralised by the steadfast valour of General Leman and his stalwarts, the men were rallied by being told that the Crown Prince was smashing his way to Paris through Nancy and Verdun. Prodigies were being performed in Poland and the North Sea, and London was burnt by Zeppelins almost daily. Nor did Belgian imagination lag far behind in this contest of unveracity. British and French troops were marching to the Meuse by a dozen roads; the French raid into Alsace was magnified into a great military feat; the British fleet had squelched the German navy by sinking nineteen battleships; the Kaiser, haggard and blear-eyed, was alternately degrading and shooting Generals and issuing flamboyant proclamations. Finally, Russia was flattening out East Prussia and Galicia with the slow crunching of a steam roller.
Out of this maelström of “news” a level-headedsoldier might, and did, extract certain hard facts. The landing of Sir John French’s force took place exactly at the time and place and in the numbers Dalroy himself had estimated. To throw a small army into Flanders would have been folly. Obviously, the British must join hands with the French before offering battle. For the rest—though he went out very little, and alone, as being less risky—he recognised the hour when the German machine recovered its momentum after the first unexpected collapse. He saw order replace chaos. He watched the dragon crawling ever onward, and understood then that no act of man could save Belgium. Verviers was the best possible site for an observer who knew how to use his eyes. He assumed that what was occurring there was going on with equal precision in Luxembourg and along the line of the Vosges Mountains.
Gradually, too, he reconciled his conscience to these days of waiting. He believed now that his services would be immensely more useful to the British commander-in-chief in the field if he could cross the French frontier rather than reach London and the War Office by way of the Belgian coast. This decision lightened his heart. He was beginning to fear that the welfare of Irene Beresford was conflicting with duty. It was cheering to feel convinced that the odds and ends of information picked up in Verviers might prove of inestimable value to the allied cause. For instance, Liège was beinglaid low by eleven-inch howitzers, but he had seen seventeen-inch howitzers, each in three parts, each part drawn by forty horses or a dozen traction-engines, moving slowly toward the south-west. There lay Namur and France. No need to doubt now where the chief theatre of the war would find its habitat. The German staff had blundered in its initial strategy, but the defect was being repaired. All that had gone before was a mere prelude to the grim business which would be transacted beyond the Meuse.
During that period of quiescence, certain minor and personal elements affecting the future passed from a nebulous stage to a state of quasi-acceptance. There was not, there could not be, any pronounced love-making between two people so situated as Dalroy and Irene Beresford. But eyes can exchange messages which the lips dare not utter, and these two began to realise that they were designed the one for the other by a wise Providence. As that is precisely the right sentiment of young folk in love, romance throve finely in Madame Béranger’s littleaubergein the Rue de Nivers at Verviers. A tender glance, a touch of the hand, a lighting of a troubled face when the dear one appears—these things are excellent substitutes for the spoken word.
Irene was “Irene” to Dalroy ever since that night in the wood at Argenteau, and the girl herself accepted the development with the deftnesswhich is every woman’s legacy from Mother Eve.
“If you make free with my Christian name I must retort by using yours,” she said one day on coming down to breakfast. “So, ‘Good-morning, Arthur.’ Where did you get that hat?”
The hat in question was a purchase, a wide-brimmed felt such as is common in Flanders. Its Apache slouch, in conjunction with Jan Maertz’s oldest clothes and a week’s stubble of beard, made Dalroy quite villainous-looking. Except in the details of height and physique, it would, indeed, be difficult for any stranger to associate this loose-limbed Belgian labourer with the well-groomed cavalry officer who entered the Friedrich Strasse Station in Berlin on the night of 3rd August. That was as it should be, though the alteration was none the less displeasing to its victim. Irene adopted a huge sun-bonnet, and compromised as to boots by wearingsabots en cuir, or clogs.
Singularly enough, white-haired Monsieur Garnier nearly brought matters to a climax as between these two.
On the Wednesday evening, when the last forts of Liège were crumbling, Madame Joos was reported convalescent and asleep, so both girls came to the littlesalonfor a supper of stewed veal.
Naturally the war was discussed first; but the priest was learning to agree with his Englishfriend about its main features. In sheer dismay at the black outlook before his country, he suddenly turned the talk into a more intimate channel.
“What plans have you youngsters made?” he asked. “Monsieur Joos and I can only look back through the years. The places we know and love are abodes of ghosts. The milestones are tombstones. We can surely count more friends dead than living. For you it is different. The world will go on, war or no war; but Verviers will not become your residence, I take it.”
“Jan and I mean to join our respective armies as soon as Monsieur Joos and the ladies are taken care of, and that means, I suppose, safely lodged in England,” said Dalroy.
“If Léontine likes to marry me first, I’m agreeable,” put in Maertz promptly.
It was a naïve confession, and every one laughed except Joos.
“Léontine marries neither you nor any other hulking loafer while there is one German hoof left in Belgium,” vowed the little man warmly.
The priest smiled. He knew where the shoe pinched. Maertz, if no loafer, was not what is vulgarly described as “a good catch.”
“I’ve lost my parish,” he said jestingly, “and, being an inveterate match-maker, am on thequi vivefor a job. But if father says ‘No’ we must wait till mother has a word. Now for the other pair.—What of you?”
Irene blushed scarlet, and dropped her serviette; Dalroy, though flabbergasted, happily hit on a way out.
“I’m surprised at you, monsieur!” he cried. “Look at mademoiselle, and then run your eye over me. Did ever pretty maid wed such a scarecrow?”
“I must refer that point to mademoiselle,” retorted the priest. “I don’t think either of you would choose a book by the cover.”
“Ah. At last I know the worst,” laughed Dalroy. “Who would believe that I once posed as the Discobulus in atableau vivant?”
“What’s that?” demanded Joos.
Dalroy hesitated. Neither his French nor German was equal to the translation.
“A quoit-thrower,” suggested Irene.
“Quoits!” sniffed the miller. “I’ll take you on at that game any day you like for twenty francs every ringer.”
It was a safe offer. Old Joos was a noted player. He gave details of his prowess. Dalroy, though modestly declining a contest, led him on, and steered the conversation clear of rocks.
Thenceforth, for a whole day, Irene’s manner stiffened perceptibly, and Dalroy was miserable. Inexperienced in the ways of the sex, he little dreamed that Irene felt she had been literally thrown at his head.
But graver issues soon dispersed that small cloud. On Saturday, 15th August, the thunderof the guns lessened and died down, being replaced by the far more distant and fitful barking of field batteries. But the rumble on the cobbles of the main road continued. What need to ask what had happened? Around Liège lay the silence of death.
Late that afternoon a woman brought a note to Dalroy. It bore no address. She merely handed it to him, and hurried off, with the furtive air of one afraid of being asked for an explanation. It ran: