The Day of Wrath: A Story of 1914

Dalroy, still holding Irene’s arm, pressed forward.

“Are we near the tow-path?” he asked.

“Oh, is that you, Monsieur l’Anglais?” chuckled the miller. “Name of a pipe, I was positive those sales Alboches had got you twenty minutes since. Yes, if you trip in the next few yards you’ll find yourself on the tow-path after falling sixty feet.”

“Go on, Léontine!” commanded Dalroy. “What you and your friend did for amusement we can surely do to save our lives. But there should be moonlight on this side. Have any clouds come up?”

“These are firs in front, monsieur. Once clear of them, we can see.”

“Very well. Don’t lose another second. Only, before beginning the descent, make certain that the river bank holds no Germans.”

Joos grumbled, but his wife silenced him. That good lady, it appeared, had given up hope when the struggle broke out in the kitchen. She had been snatched from the jaws of death by a seeming miracle, and regarded Dalroy as a very Paladin. She attributed her rescue entirely to him, and was almost inclined to be sceptical of Joos’s sensational story about the killing of Busch. “There never was such a man for arguing,” she said sharply. “I do believe you’d contradict an archbishop. Do as the gentleman bids you. He knows best.”

Now, seeing that madame herself, after one look, had refused point-blank to tackle the supposed path, and had even insisted on retreating to the cover of the wood, Joos was entitled to protest. Being a choleric little man, he would assuredly have done so fully and freely had not a red light illumined the tree-tops, while the crackle of a fire was distinctly audible. The Germans had reached the top of the quarry, and, in order to dissipate the impenetrable gloom, had converted the hut into a beacon.

“Miséricorde!” he muttered. “They are burning our provisions, and may set the forest ablaze!”

And that is what actually happened. The vegetation was dry, as no rain had fallen for many a day. The shavings and store of logs in the hut burned like tinder, promptly creating a raging furnace wholly beyond the control of the unthinking dolts who started it. The breeze which had sprung up earlier became a roaring tornado among the trees, and some acres of woodland were soon in flames. The light of that fire was seen over an area of hundreds of miles. Spectators in Holland wrongly attributed it to the burning of Visé, which was, however, only an intelligent anticipation of events, because the delightful old town was completely destroyed a week later in revenge for the defeats inflicted on the invaders at Tirlemont and St. Trond during the first advance on Antwerp.

Once embarked on a somewhat perilous descent, the fugitives gave eyes or thought to naught else. Jules, the pioneer quoted by Léontine, who was the owner of the hut and maker of sabots, had rough-hewed a sort of stairway out of a narrow cleft in the rock face. To young people, steady in nerve and sure of foot, the passage was dangerous enough, but to Joos and his wife it offered real hazard. However, they were allowed no time for hesitancy. With Léontine in front, guiding her father, and Maertz next, telling Madame Joos where to put her feet, while Dalroy grasped her broad shoulders and gave an occasional eye to Irene, they all reached the level tow-path without the least accident. Irene, by the way, carried the rifle, so that Dalroy should have both hands at liberty.

Without a moment’s delay he took the weapon and readjusted the magazine, which he had removed for the climb. Bidding the others follow at such a distance that they would not lose sight of him, yet be able to retire if he found the way disputed by soldiers, he set off in the direction of Argenteau.

In his opinion the next ten minutes would decide whether or not they had even a remote chance of winning through to a place of comparative safety. He had made up his own mind what to do if he met any Germans. He would advise the Joos family and Maertz to hide in the cleft they had just descended, while he would take to the Meuse with Irene – provided, that is, she agreed to dare the long swim by night. Happily there was no need to adopt this counsel of despair. The fire, instead of assisting the flanking party on the western side, only delayed them. Sheer curiosity as to what was happening in the wood drew all eyes there rather than to the river bank, so the three men and three women passed along the tow-path unseen and unchallenged.

After a half-mile of rapid progress Dalroy judged that they were safe for the time, and allowed Madame Joos to take a much-needed rest. Though breathless and nearly spent, she, like the others, found an irresistible fascination in the scene lighted by the burning trees. The whole countryside was resplendent in crimson and silver, because the landscape was now steeped in moonshine, and the deep glow of the fire was most perceptible in the patches where ordinarily there would be black shadows. The Meuse resembled a river of blood, the movement of its sluggish current suggesting the onward roll of some fluid denser than water. Old Joos, whose tongue was seldom at rest, used that very simile.

“Those cursed Prussians have made Belgium a shambles,” he added bitterly. “Look at our river. 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 of roulade, 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.

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.

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 battalions and 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. German Kultur was 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 its stark 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 that of 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 a Pickel-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! That verdammt ambulance 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 a laisser 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 the laisser passer granted 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.

CHAPTER IX

AN EXPOSITION OF GERMAN METHODS

Three large and powerful automobiles stood at rest in the tiny square of Argenteau. Nearly every little town in Belgium and France possesses its place, 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 the Kommandantur.

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 made off 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. I had to 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 German line, 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 own are 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.”