The Day of Wrath: A Story of 1914

“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 crept to 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 I must be 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 brain evolved 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’s laisser passer by 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, and we 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 had everything ready 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 at déjeuner, 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 night and 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 little auberge was 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 the Kommandantur had 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 a petit 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 troops are 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 the Germans 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 Belgian soil, 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 most efficient 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 collieries were installing German plant under German supervisors. Your banks – ”

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 was verboten. 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 heavy guns 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!

CHAPTER X

ANDENNE

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; but calm-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 successes elsewhere. 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-headed soldier 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 being laid 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 little auberge in 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 deftness which 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 wearing sabots 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 little salon for a supper of stewed veal.

Naturally the war was discussed first; but the priest was learning to agree with his English friend 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.