Read the book: «At the Sign of the Sword: A Story of Love and War in Belgium», page 7

And as night fell, Edmond Valentin, who had flung aside his shako, flung himself upon the ground near his gun, and fell to wondering – wondering as he always did – how Aimée, his dearly beloved, was faring now that the enemy had advanced up the valley, from the misty hills of the German frontier.

The men about him were smoking, laughing, and joking, but he heard them not. One thought alone filled his mind – that of Aimée, always Aimée.

Chapter Eleven.
This Word of the Uhlan

The German tidal-wave was steadily advancing. Prussia had set her heel upon Belgium.

A perfect horde of jack-booted Uhlans had swarmed over the country, and had already made themselves hated by their mad, murderous acts of cruelty and pillage. They were – as the blasphemous Kaiser had intended they should be when making his plans at Potsdam – agents of the Terror. Of the nineteen regiments of them in the German army, no fewer than fourteen were being employed to terrorise the inoffensive villagers of poor little Belgium; yet so bravely did the Belgian army fight that within twelve days the larger part of this force, in their gaily-braided uniforms and carrying their ready lances – upon which they sometimes impaled children – were either killed, wounded, or held prisoners. These brutes, who had boasted of their “kultur,” and commanded by noblemen, had been sent out to live upon the country; but they had been entrapped everywhere, and revenged themselves by acts of the most fiendish and horrible cruelty unequalled in modern history.

The Uhlans! As in the war of 1870, so now in Belgium, their very name struck terror into the hearts of the hard-working, thrifty people of Eastern Belgium.

Therefore it was hardly surprising when, one evening a week after Dinant had been stormed, Aimée, who had just ascended to her room to tidy her hair prior to sitting down to dinner with her mother, should stand white-faced and aghast when Mélanie, her dark, good-looking femme-de-chambre, burst in, crying:

“Ah, Mademoiselle, it is terrible —terrible! The Uhlans are here! They are already in the château, asking for M’sieur le Baron!”

“The Uhlans here!” she gasped, in an instant pale to the lips. “What can they want?”

“Mon Dieu! Who knows? I hope they will not kill us all?” cried the trembling maid, her face pale and scared. “I have just seen Gustave talking excitedly with two soldiers down in the great hall, while outside, in the outer courtyard, there are a lot of horses.”

Aimée dashed from her pretty chintz-hung room, across to a spare room at the rear of the château, and looking down, saw, in the falling twilight, a number of horses champing their bits in the big, paved courtyard, while heavily-booted and spurred Uhlans, in their grey service uniforms, were standing astride in groups, talking and laughing.

She held her breath. She and her mother were alone and defenceless, the Baron being in Brussels. What could they do? How should they act?

War was suddenly at their doors!

Without a moment’s hesitation she ran quickly down to the great salle-à-manger, the walls of which were hung with rare tapestries, and where, on the table already laid with fine old silver and flowers, candles were burning in their handsome silver candelabra.

The Baroness, grey-haired and stately, sitting in an ancient high-backed chair, looked up in surprise from her book when Aimée rushed in, and exclaimed in reproof:

“My dear child, whatever has happened? Are you mad?”

“Ah! mother,” cried the girl in frantic apprehension, “the Uhlans are here! They are asking below for father. The Germans are upon us at last!”

“The Germans!” echoed the Baroness, quite unperturbed, looking eagerly over her gold-rimmed glasses. “What can they want with us? We are doing them no harm.”

“They are demanding to see father.”

At that moment the liveried footman entered, trembling and pale-faced, saying:

“A German officer is demanding to see the Baron, Madame. He refuses to believe that the master is absent in Brussels. He therefore demands to see you, Madame.”

The Baroness knit her brows and drew herself up with hauteur, preserving a wonderful calm in their defenceless circumstances.

“Very well,” she sighed, “I suppose I had really better see him.”

A moment later a big, broad-shouldered Uhlan officer, a fair-haired Saxon, not bad-looking save for the ugly sabre-scar of his student days upon his left cheek, strode into the handsome apartment, and halting before the two ladies, clicked his spurred heels together and saluted.

In his long military boots and his Uhlan helmet this officer of the War Lord of Germany looked taller and more forbidding than he really was, yet his politeness to the Baroness and her daughter was at once reassuring.

“I sincerely regret this intrusion, Madame,” he said, in almost perfect French. “I am extremely sorry I am unable to respect the privacy of your home, but, alas! it is war – the quarrel of nations.”

And taking from within his grey tunic a card, he handed it to her. The Baroness glanced at it, and saw that the name was “Baron Wernher von Meyeren.”

“I am in command of my platoon of the Tenth Uhlans, and we are compelled to billet upon you,” he explained. “I did not wish to disturb you, ladies, but I find that the Baron himself is absent, hence I have to intrude myself upon you.”

“My husband is in Brussels, at a council meeting at the Ministry of Finance,” replied the Baroness de Neuville. “He gave me to understand, however, that here we should be quite safe from molestation.”

The German officer, his strong hand upon the hilt of his sword, smiled grimly. He looked worn and dusty, and had the appearance of a man who had ridden far at the bidding of his superiors.

“I fear, Baronne, that nobody is now safe from molestation, here, in Belgium. I am no politician, only a soldier, but it seems that your gallant little country has decided to defend itself – a mouse against a lion – with unfortunate and very regrettable results. I have with me forty-five men, upon whom I have imposed the strictest orders to behave with proper decorum in your beautiful château. If you will please order your servants to give them food – of which they are sorely in need – they will make themselves comfortable for the night in any corner they may find.” Then, turning to Aimée, he added politely: “Mademoiselle need have no fear. It is but the fortunes of war.”

The Baroness, still quite cool, looked at him steadily for a few seconds. Then she asked: “Cannot you billet your men upon the villagers below, in the valley?”

“Ah, I regret, Baronne, that that is impossible. Some of the villagers, though non-combatants, have fired at my men and killed them; therefore, in accordance with international law, their houses have been set on fire. The peaceful villages are all occupied by troops to-night, so we have been compelled to come up here.”

“We have M’sieur Rigaux to thank for this?” cried Aimée to her mother. “He told us we should be quite safe here?”

The big Uhlan officer shrugged his shoulders, and glancing at the table already set, said:

“The unfortunate situation need not, I think, be discussed, Mademoiselle. I merely ask if I, with my two subordinate officers, may be permitted to join you at table this evening?”

The Baroness hesitated, still holding the Uhlan’s card in her hand. His rank equalled that of her husband, and though they were strangers, she foresaw that any resistance might have unpleasant results for them. The German tide was undoubtedly advancing.

“Baron von Meyeren,” she said at last, with considerable dignity, “this indignity you place upon us, two defenceless women, compelled as we are to entertain our enemies, is, I suppose, but the fortune of war. You and your officers are quite welcome here at my table, but I would ask you to order your men to behave with decency, for I heard – only yesterday – some terrible stories of the conduct of Uhlans further up the valley.”

The officer bowed.

“Madame,” he said, “I assure you that you need not have the slightest apprehension. In the German Army we punish disobedience by death. My men know that – by examples already set them.”

“My daughter and I have your word, m’sieur – eh?” asked the Baroness.

“Madame,” he replied, “you certainly have my solemn word. To-morrow morning we shall, I hope, relieve you of this incubus, and I trust that you will, by that time, have discovered that we are not the bloodthirsty savages which the world reports us to be.”

The Baroness then called the footman and gave certain orders that the troopers below should be entertained, while half an hour later Baron von Meyeren, who had suddenly betrayed a sabre-rattling overbearing towards the ladies, sat down at the dinner table with his two younger officers, apparently young fops from Berlin.

The Baroness and her daughter refused to sit at table with their enemies.

The swaggering German Baron did not ask for what he wanted. He simply ordered it from his orderly who stood behind him.

The wine served did not exactly suit his palate, whereupon he told the orderly to go down into the cellars and ascertain what they contained.

“Bring us up some good wine,” he added in German. “The best these people have. They are sure to have something worth drinking. And give the men some also. It will keep up their spirits.”

The two women were sitting at the further end of the long room, watching the weird scene, the three men laughing and eating beneath the zone of light shed by the dozen or so lighted candles.

Soon the orderly returned with six bottles of Baron de Neuville’s choicest champagne. These they opened themselves, and in loud, harsh voices, brutally drank the health of their hostess and her daughter.

Beneath a veneer of polish and culture which that trio of the enemy wore, was a coarseness and brutality which were at once revealed, for they laughed uproariously, gossiping together in German, with coarse remarks, which only Aimée, sitting in silence, understood.

They swallowed the wine in tumblers – the choice wine of Belgium’s great millionaire – and very soon they demanded that the Baroness and her daughter should sit with them at table.

Again they refused, but both women discerned the drunken leers in the eyes of the men, yet believing the assurance of the Uhlan commander, the word of a German nobleman, they were not frightened. Nevertheless the swords those men wore at their sides bore the blood of the innocent people massacred to provide the “frightful examples” which the Kaiser had laughingly given to their brave little nation, which had no quarrel with the bombastic and treacherous monarch who had self-styled himself the War Lord of Europe.

“Come, Mademoiselle!” cried von Meyeren. “Do not sit over there. We are enemies, but we will not hurt you. And you, Baroness!” he cried, rising and going across to them, “I insist upon your having dinner. It is not fair, is it, Heinrich?” he asked, addressing the elder of the pair.

“No. The Baroness must join us. She must,” he said.

The two women refused, but with their heads elevated by wine the three men insisted, and at last, in order to pacify them, the mother and daughter consented to sit at the further end of the table, though they would eat nothing.

“Here’s health to the Fatherland?” cried the younger of the three, getting up unsteadily and spilling his wine as he raised it to his lips amid the “Hochs” of his two companions.

The scene was surely as disgraceful as it was unexpected. Baron de Neuville’s wife and daughter left there, alone and unprotected, in that great mediaeval château, had accepted the word of honour of a Saxon nobleman. They had never expected to witness such a scene of drunkenness as that!

Suddenly, from somewhere below, sounded men’s shouts and women’s screams. Were the men below drunk, like their officers? Again and again was the uproar repeated.

The Baroness rang the bell, but there was no response.

“Whatever can be happening below?” asked Aimée, full of fear. Now that the officers were drunk, what hope was there for the Kaiser’s barbaric savages in the servants’ hall?

Again the bell was rung, when Mélanie, in her cap and apron, dashed into the room, crying:

“Ah! Madame! It is terrible —terrible! The soldiers are wrecking the salon. They are ripping the furniture with their swords. They are all drunk, Madame – the beasts are all drunk?”

The girl was flushed and dishevelled. Her hair was down, and she was panting, having, truth to tell, just escaped the embraces of a too amorous German in his cups.

The cultured Baron Wernher von Meyeren heard the maid’s complaint to her mistress, and laughed heartily.

“Our men are evidently enjoying themselves,” he remarked in German to his two brother-officers. “This Baron de Neuville is the richest man in Belgium. It is fun to be in his house – is it not? And his daughter is pretty too. What do you think – eh?”

Aimée overheard the words of the “blonde beast.”

She stood boldly before him, and turned upon him like a tiger.

“You Uhlan?” cried her mother. “Your very regiment is synonymous of all that is treacherous and ill-begotten. If you do not respect women, then I believe all that is told of you. Let your God-cursed Emperor let loose his hordes upon us, but the day will come, and is not far distant, when the finger of God will be placed upon you, and you, a nobleman of Saxony, will be withered and die as a stickleback will die beneath the sun.”

“Oh, mother! Do be careful what you say. Pray be careful!” urged Aimée, clinging to her beseechingly.

The gallant Baron, with crimson face, rose unsteadily, gripping the edge of the table to prevent himself from falling, and in fierce anger cried:

“For those words to us, woman, your house shall suffer,” and drawing his sword, he swept from the table the beautiful épergnes of flowers and china baskets of fruit, and, staggering to the wall, he slashed viciously the fine old tapestries, in his frantic drunken rage.

“Ernst,” he hiccoughed to one of the officers, “tell the men below that this Belgian woman has insulted us while we are her guests, and let them make an example of this fine Baron’s castle.”

“No, no?” shrieked Aimée. “No, I beg of you, Baron – I beg of you to spare our home. Remember your word to us!” cried the girl frantically in German.

But he only laughed triumphantly in her face, and the man he addressed as Ernst, having left to do his bidding, he with the other officer and two grey-coated orderlies, gleefully commenced to wreck the splendid room, while the two terrified women, clinging to each other, stood in a corner watching how they vented their mad ire upon all on which they could lay their hands.

In a few moments they were slashing the upholstery with their swords, tearing down and destroying the ancient Flemish tapestries, while the Baron himself paid particular attention to the pictures – all valuable old masters – defacing and destroying them one by one.

“See, woman! what we will now do with this snug home of yours?” he said in his drunken frenzy as, taking up an iron poker from the big open grate, he attacked the beautiful old chandelier of Venetian glass suspended in the centre of the room, smashing it to fragments.

The yells of the men in the adjoining apartments mingled with the smashing of furniture and loud, drunken laughter, reached them where they stood. They told their own tale. Everywhere in that splendid old château destruction was being carried on at the express orders of the cultured Baron von Meyeren, one of Germany’s noblemen.

“Wreck the place?” he yelled to half a dozen burly Uhlans who burst in, two of them holding bottles in their hands. “And we will make a bonfire afterwards. This woman has cursed us, and we, as German soldiers, will teach her a lesson she will not easily forget!”

Poor Mélanie had disappeared, but above the terrible disorder and wild shouting were the shrieks of the female servants below, while a smell of fire suddenly greeted their nostrils.

“Look, mother! there’s smoke!” gasped Aimée in terror. “They have set the château on fire?”

As she spoke, two of the Uhlans had torn down a huge picture – part of an altar-piece from a church at Antwerp – which occupied the whole of the end wall of the room, and were kicking their big boots through the priceless canvas. It was a picture attributed to Rubens.

“Come, child, let us go,” whispered the Baroness, her eyes dimmed with tears, and her face pale and set.

They turned to leave, but as they did so, the Baron caught Aimée roughly by the shoulder, and leering at her, patted her beneath the chin.

In an instant the girl, resenting such familiarity, turned upon him like a tigress and slapped his flabby face so heavily that he drew back in surprise, while the others witnessing the rebuff, laughed at his discomfiture. He raised his sword with an oath, and would have cut her down had not the man called Ernst rushed forth and stayed his hand.

“Go, ladies,” urged the man in French. “Escape, while there is yet time.”

“Hold that girl!” shouted von Meyeren, fiercely struggling to get free from his brother-officer. But the latter held him, and barred his passage while the two terrified women dashed down the stairs, up which the black smoke was already slowly curling.

Darkness had fallen, and only here and there had the lamps been lit. Therefore the Baroness and her daughter were enabled to obtain hats and wraps and to creep down a steep, winding back staircase which was seldom used, and which the Uhlans had, fortunately, not yet discovered.

The scene was a terrible one of wholesale, wanton destruction. Some of the men were busy getting together the plate and valuables, while, just as they left, they caught sight of one man who emerged into the courtyard with the Baroness’ jewel-case beneath his arm.

The thieves and murderers of the Kaiser were repeating in the beautiful Château of Sévérac, the same disgraceful methods which they had pursued in the villages of the Meuse. They respected neither God nor man, neither old age nor youth. They made war upon women, and shot down the unarmed and defenceless. Indeed, this great army of “kultur” was, in reality, but a disciplined horde of barbarians.

The Baroness and her daughter, with wraps hastily thrown about them, succeeded in escaping from the house by the postern gate, which gave entrance to a wood, but ere they left, a red glare from one of the lower rooms, shining away across the river, told only too plainly that the dastardly Uhlans had used some of their famous inflammable “confetti,” and were burning the place.

The fierce, exultant yells of the drunken soldiery fell upon their ears as they plunged into the dark wood, part of the Baron’s wide domain, the intricate by-paths of which were well known to Aimée.

Breathlessly they hastened on, until in the darkness beneath the trees they were compelled to slowly grope their way. Their fear was lest the woods be searched, and they might be captured, for the brutes – inflamed as they were with wine – were now in the mood for torture and for murder. Woe-betide them if they fell into their hands.

Mother and daughter pushed eagerly, breathlessly on, terrified at the fearful orgie of destruction they had just witnessed. For a full half-hour they walked, Aimée leading the way through the narrow, winding shooting-paths, until at last they came forth into the open fields.

Then they paused, scarce daring to look behind them. Alas! at the bend of the valley, high upon its rock, Sévérac stood out vividly with flames belching fiercely from the windows of its high, round towers, and casting a blood-red glare upon the waters and across to the woods on the opposite bank.

“Dieu!” gasped the Baroness – “the fiends! – those hell-fiends of the Emperor?”

“Mother,” exclaimed Aimée, quite calm again now that they had escaped from the hands of that brigandish band, “remember there is a God of Justice, with whom vengeance lies for wrong, and most assuredly will He, if we place our trust in Him, mete out the dread fate of death and obscurity to the arrogant Kaiser, and to all his dastardly barbarians. Let us get back to Brussels somehow. There, at least, we shall be safe.”

And as they stood watching the fierce flames leap up around those ancient towers which had withstood the wars of Charles the Bold, they knew not the awful scene taking place in the courtyard, where Gustave, Mélanie, and seven other of the servants, male and female, were shot one after the other in cold blood, as they emerged in terror from the burning place. Appearance of each was being hailed by the drunken laughter of the assembled soldiers, and in escaping the fire they fell victims of the blood-lust of the brutes.

“The Red Cock is crowing all over Belgium!” shouted the Baron von Meyeren thickly, alluding to the incendiary acts of Germans being committed everywhere. “We shall make a bonfire of Namur, to-morrow, my men! Hurrah! for God and the Fatherland.”

And as he passed across the courtyard, for the atmosphere had now become hot and stifling, he savagely kicked aside the body of one of the young female servants who, poor thing, had been sabred in her attempt to escape.