FIRST BLOOD
Though none of the three in the wagon might even hazard a guess at the
tremendous facts, the German wolf had already made his spring and been
foiled. Not only had he missed his real quarry, France, he had also
broken his fangs on the tough armour of Liege. These things Dalroy and
Irene Beresford were to learn soon. The first intimation that the
Belgian army had met and actually fought some portion of the invading
host came before dawn.
The road to Vise ran nearly parallel with, but some miles north of, the
main artery between Aix-la-Chapelle and Liege. During the small hours of
the night it held a locust flight of German cavalry. Squadron after
squadron, mostly Uhlans, trotted past the slow-moving cart; but Joos's
man, Maertz, if stolid and heavy-witted, had the sense to pull well out
of the way of these hurrying troopers; beyond evoking an occasional
curse, he was not molested. The brilliant moon, though waning, helped
the riders to avoid him.
Dalroy and the girl were comfortably seated, and almost hidden, among
the sacks of oats; they were free to talk as they listed.
Naturally, a soldier's eyes took in details at once which would escape
a woman; but Irene Beresford soon noted signs of the erratic fighting
which had taken place along that very road.
"Surely we are in Belgium now?" she whispered, after an awed glance at
the lights and bustling activity of a field hospital established near
the hamlet of Aubel.
"Yes," said Dalroy quietly, "we have been in Belgium fully an hour."
"And have the Germans actually attacked this dear little country?"
"So it would seem."
"But why? I have always understood that Belgium was absolutely safe. All
the great nations of the world have guaranteed her integrity."
"That has been the main argument of every spouter at International Peace
Congresses for many a year," said Dalroy bitterly. "If Belgium and
Holland can be preserved by agreement, they contended, why should not
all other vexed questions be settled by arbitration? Yet one of our
chaps in the Berlin Embassy, the man whose ticket you travelled with,
told me that the Kaiser could be bluntly outspoken when that very
question was raised during the autumn manoeuvres last year. 'I shall
sweep through Belgium thus,' he said, swinging his arm as though
brushing aside a feeble old crone who barred his way. And he was talking
to a British officer too."
"What a crime! These poor, inoffensive people! Have they resisted, do
you think?"
"That field hospital looked pretty busy," was the grim answer.
A little farther on, at a cross-road, there could no longer be any doubt
as to what had happened. The remains of a barricade littered the
ditches. Broken carts, ploughs, harrows, and hurdles lay in heaps. The
carcasses of scores of dead horses had been hastily thrust aside so as
to clear a passage. In a meadow, working by the light of lanterns, gangs
of soldiers and peasants were digging long pits, while row after row of
prone figures could be glimpsed when the light carried by those
directing the operations chanced to fall on them.
Dalroy knew, of course, that all the indications pointed to a
successful, if costly, German advance, which was the last thing he had
counted on in this remote countryside. If the tide of war was rolling
into Belgium it should, by his reckoning, have passed to the south-west,
engulfing the upper valley of the Meuse and the two Luxembourgs perhaps,
but leaving untouched the placid land on the frontier of Holland. For a
time he feared that Holland, too, was being attacked. Understanding
something of German pride, though far as yet from plumbing the depths of
German infamy, he imagined that the Teutonic host had burst all
barriers, and was bent on making the Rhine a German river from source to
sea.
Naturally he did not fail to realise that the lumbering wagon was taking
him into a country already securely held by the assailants. There were
no guards at the cross-roads, no indications of military precautions.
The hospital, the grave-diggers, the successive troops of cavalry, felt
themselves safe even in the semi-darkness, and this was the prerogative
of a conquering army. In the conditions, he did not regard his life as
worth much more than an hour's purchase, and he tortured his wits in
vain for some means of freeing the girl, who reposed such implicit
confidence in him, from the meshes of a net which he felt to be
tightening every minute. He simply dreaded the coming of daylight,
heralded already by tints of heliotrope and pink in the eastern sky.
Certain undulating contours were becoming suspiciously clear in that
part of the horizon. It might be only what Hafiz describes as the false
dawn; but, false or true, the new day was at hand. He was on the verge
of advising Irene to seek shelter in some remote hovel which their guide
could surely recommend when Fate took control of affairs.
Maertz had now pulled up in obedience to an unusually threatening order
from a Uhlan officer whose horse had been incommoded in passing. Above
the clatter of hoofs and accoutrements Dalroy's trained ear had detected
the sounds of a heavy and continuous cannonade toward the south-west.
"How far are we from Vise?" he asked the driver.
The man pointed with his whip. "You see that black knob over there?" he
said.
"Yes."
"That's a clump of trees just above the Meuse. Vise lies below it."
"But how far?"
"Not more than two kilometres."
Two kilometres! About a mile and a half! Dalroy was tortured by
indecision. "Shall we be there by daybreak?"
"With luck. I don't know what's been happening here. These damned
Germans are swarming all over the place. They must be making for the
bridge."
"What bridge?"
"The bridge across the Meuse, of course. Don't you know these parts?"
"Not very well."
"I wish I were safe at home; I'd get indoors and stop there," growled
the driver, chirping his team into motion again.
Dalroy's doubts were stilled. Better leave this rustic philosopher to
work out their common salvation.
A few hundred yards ahead the road bifurcated. One branch led to Vise,
the other to Argenteau. Here was stationed a picket, evidently intended
as a guide for the cavalry.
Most fortunately Dalroy read aright the intention of an officer who came
forward with an electric torch. "Lie as flat as you can!" he whispered
to Irene. "If they find us, pretend to be asleep."
"Hi, you!" cried the officer to Maertz, "where the devil do you think
you're going?"
"To Joos's mill at Vise," said the gruff Walloon.
"What's in the cart?"
"Oats."
"_Almaechtig!_ Where from?"
"Aachen."
"You just pull ahead into that road there. I'll attend to you and your
oats in a minute or two."
"But can't I push on?"
The officer called to a soldier. "See that this fellow halts twenty
yards up the road," he said. "If he stirs then, put your bayonet through
him. These Belgian swine don't seem to understand that they are Germans
now, and must obey orders."
The officer, of course, spoke in German, the Walloon in the mixture of
Flemish and Low Dutch which forms the _patois_ of the district. But each
could follow the other's meaning, and the quaking listeners in the
middle of the wagon had no difficulty at all in comprehending the
gravity of this new peril.
Maertz was swearing softly to himself; they heard him address a question
to the sentry when the wagon stopped again. "Why won't your officer let
us go to Vise?" he growled.
"Sheep's-head! do as you're told, or it will be bad for you," was the
reply.
The words were hardly out of the soldier's mouth before a string of
motor lorries, heavy vehicles with very powerful engines, thundered up
from the rear. The leaders passed without difficulty, as there was
plenty of room. But their broad flat tires sucked up clouds of dust, and
the moon had sunk behind a wooded height. One of the hindermost
transports, taking too wide a bend, crashed into the wagon. The startled
horses plunged, pulled Maertz off his perch, and dragged the wagon into
a deep ditch. It fell on its side, and Dalroy and his companion were
thrown into a field amid a swirl of laden sacks, some of which burst.
Dalroy was unhurt, and he could only hope that the girl also had escaped
injury. Ere he rose he clasped her around the neck and clapped a hand
over her mouth lest she should scream. "Not a word!" he breathed into
her ear. "Can you manage to crawl on all-fours straight on by the side
of the hedge? Never mind thorns or nettles. It's our only chance."
In a few seconds they were free of the hubbub which sprang up around the
overturned wagon and the transport, the latter having shattered a wheel.
Soon they were able to rise, crouching behind the hedge as they ran.
They turned at an angle, and struck off into the country, following the
line of another hedge which trended slightly uphill. At a gateway they
turned again, moving, as Dalroy calculated, on the general line of the
Vise road. A low-roofed shanty loomed up suddenly against the sky. It
was just the place to house an outpost, and Dalroy was minded to avoid
it when the lowing of a cow in pain revealed to his trained intelligence
the practical certainty that the animal had been left there unattended,
and needed milking. Still, he took no unnecessary risks.
"Remain here," he murmured. "I'll go ahead and investigate, and return
in a minute or so."
He did not notice that the girl sank beneath the hedge with a suspicious
alacrity. He was a man, a fighter, with the hot breath of war in his
nostrils. Not yet had he sensed the cruel strain which war places on
women. Moreover, his faculties were centred in the task of the moment.
The soldier is warned not to take his eyes off the enemy while reloading
his rifle lest the target be lost; similarly, Dalroy knew that
concentration was the prime essential of scout-craft.
Thus he was deaf to the distant thunder of guns, but alive to the least
rustle inside the building; blind to certain ominous gleams on the
horizon, but quick to detect any moving object close at hand. He made
out that a door stood open; so, after a few seconds' pause, he slipped
rapidly within, and stood near the wall on the side opposite the hinges.
An animal stirred uneasily, and the plaintive lowing ceased. He had
dropped the sabots long since, and the lamp was lost in the spill out of
the wagon, but most fortunately he had matches in his pocket. He closed
the door softly, struck a match, guarding the flame with both hands, and
looked round. He found himself in a ramshackle shed, half-barn,
half-stable. In a stall was tethered a black-and-white cow, her udder
distended with milk. Huddled up against the wall was the corpse of a
woman, an old peasant, whose wizened features had that waxen tint of
_camailleu gris_ with which, in their illuminated missals of the Middle
Ages, the monks loved to portray the sufferings of the early Christian
martyrs. She had been stabbed twice through the breast. An overturned
pail and milking-stool showed how and where death had surprised her.
The match flickered out, and Dalroy was left in the darkness of the
tomb. He had a second match in his hand, and was on the verge of
striking it when he heard a man's voice and the swish of feet through
the grass of the pasture without.
"This is the place, Heinrich," came the words in guttural German, and
breathlessly. Then, with certain foulnesses of expression, the speaker
added, "I'm puffed. That girl fought like a wild cat."
"She's pretty, too, for a Belgian," agreed another voice.
"So. But I couldn't put up with her screeching when you told her that a
bayonet had stopped her grandam's nagging tongue."
"_Ach, was!_ What matter, at eighty?"
Dalroy had pulled the door open. Stooping, he sought for and found the
milking-stool, a solid article of sound oak. Through a chink he saw two
dark forms; glints of the dawn on fixed bayonets showed that the men
were carrying their rifles slung. At the door the foremost switched on
an electric torch.
"You milk, Heinrich," he said, "while I show a glim."
He advanced a pace, as Dalroy expected he would, so the swing of the
stool caught him on the right side of the head, partly on the ear and
partly on the rim of his _Pickel-haube_. But his skull was fractured for
all that. Heinrich fared no better, though the torch was shattered on
the rough paving of the stable. A thrust floored him, and he fell with a
fearsome clatter of accoutrements. A second blow on the temple stilled
the startled oath on his lips. Dalroy divested him of the rifle, and
stuffed a few clips of cartridges into his own pockets.
Then, ready for any others of a cut-throat crew, he listened. One of the
pair on the ground was gasping for breath. The cow began lowing again.
That was all. There was neither sight nor sound of Irene, though she
must have heard enough to frighten her badly.
"Miss Beresford!" he said, in a sibilant hiss which would carry easily
to the point where he had left her. No answer. Nature was still. It was
as though inanimate things were awake, but quaking. The breathing of the
unnamed German changed abruptly into a gurgling croak. Heinrich had
traversed that stage swiftly under the second blow. From the roads came
the sharp rattle of horses' feet, the panting of motors. The thud of
gun-fire smote the air incessantly. It suggested the monstrous
pulse-beat of an alarmed world. Over a hilltop the beam of a searchlight
hovered for an instant, and vanished. Belgium, little Belgium, was in a
death-grapple with mighty Germany. Even in her agony she was crying,
"What of England? Will England help?" Well, one Englishman had lessened
by two the swarm of her enemies that night.
Dalroy was only vaguely conscious of the scope and magnitude of events
in which he was bearing so small a part. He knew enough of German
methods in his immediate surroundings, however, to reck as little of
having killed two men as though they were rats. His sole and very real
concern was for the girl who answered not. Before going in search of her
he was tempted to don a _Pickel-haube_, which, with the rifle and
bayonet, would, in the misty light, deceive any new-comers. But the
field appeared to be untenanted, and it occurred to him that his
companion might actually endeavour to hide if she took him for a German
soldier. So he did not even carry the weapon.
He found Irene at once. She had simply fainted, and the man who now
lifted her limp form tenderly in his arms was vexed at his own
forgetfulness. The girl had slept but little during two nights. Meals
were irregular and scanty. She had lived in a constant and increasing
strain, while the real danger and great physical exertion of the past
few minutes had provided a climax beyond her powers.
Like the mass of young officers in the British army, Dalroy kept himself
fit, even during furlough, by long walks, daily exercises, and
systematic abstention from sleep, food, and drink. If a bed was too
comfortable he changed it. If an undertaking could be accomplished
equally well in conditions of hardship or luxury he chose hardship.
Soldiering was his profession, and he held the theory that a soldier
must always be ready to withstand the severest tax on brain and
physique. Therefore the minor privations of the journey from Berlin,
with its decidedly strenuous sequel at Aix-la-Chapelle, and this
D'Artagnan episode in the neighbourhood of Vise, had made no material
drain on his resources.
A girl like Irene Beresford, swept into the sirocco of war from
the ordered and sheltered life of a young Englishwoman of the
middle-classes, was an altogether different case. He believed her one
of the small army of British-born women who find independence and fair
remuneration for their services by acting as governesses and ladies'
companions on the Continent. Nearly every German family of wealth and
social pretensions counted the _Englische Fraeulein_ as a member of the
household; even in autocratic Prussia, _Kultur_ is not always spelt
with a "K." She was well-dressed, and supplied with ample means for
travelling; but plenty of such girls owned secured incomes, treating
a salary as an "extra." Moreover, she spoke German like a native, had
small sister in Brussels, and had evidently met Von Halwig in one of the
great houses of the capital. Undoubtedly, she was a superior type of
governess, or, it might be, English mistress in a girls' high school.
These considerations did not crowd in on Dalroy while he was holding her
in close embrace in a field near Vise at dawn on the morning of
Wednesday, 5th August. They were the outcome of nebulous ideas formed in
the train. At present, his one thought was the welfare of a hapless
woman of his own race, be she a peer's daughter or a postman's.
Now, skilled leader of men though he was, he had little knowledge of the
orthodox remedies for a fainting woman. Like most people, he was aware
that a loosening of bodices and corsets, a chafing of hands, a vigorous
massage of the feet and ankles, tended to restore circulation, and
therefore consciousness. But none of these simple methods was
practicable when a party of German soldiers might be hunting for both
of them, while another batch might be minded to follow "Heinrich" and
his fellow-butcher. So he carried her to the stable and laid her on a
truss of straw noted during that first vivid glimpse of the interior.
Then, greatly daring, he milked the cow.
Not only did the poor creature's suffering make an irresistible appeal,
but in relieving her distress he was providing the best of nourishment
for Irene and himself. The cow gave no trouble. Soon the milk was
flowing steadily into the pail. The darkness was abysmal. On one hand
lay a dead woman, on the other an unconscious one, and two dead men
guarded the doorway. Once, in Paris, Dalroy had seen one of the lurid
playlets staged at the Grand Guignol, wherein a woman served a meal for
a friend and chatted cheerfully during its progress, though the body of
her murdered husband was stowed behind a couch and a window-curtain. He
recalled the horrid little tragedy now; but that was make-believe, this
was grim reality.
Yet he had ever an eye for the rectangle of the doorway. When a quality
of grayness sharpened its outlines he knew it was high time to be on the
move. Happily, at that instant, Irene sighed deeply and stirred. Ere she
had any definite sense of her surroundings she was yielding to Dalroy's
earnest appeal, and allowing him to guide her faltering steps. He
carried the pail and the rifle in his left hand. With the right he
gripped the girl's arm, and literally forced her into a walk.
The wood indicated by Maertz was plainly visible now, and close at hand,
and the first rays of daylight gave colour to the landscape. The hour,
as Dalroy ascertained later, was about a quarter to four.
It was vitally essential that they should reach cover within the next
five minutes; but his companion was so manifestly unequal to sustained
effort that he was on the point of carrying her in order to gain the
protection of the first hedgerow when he noticed that a slight
depression in the hillside curved in the direction of the wood. Here,
too, were shrubs and tufts of long grass. Indeed, the shallow trough
proved to be one of the many heads of a ravine. The discovery of a
hidden way at that moment contributed as greatly as any other
circumstance to their escape. They soon learnt that the German
hell-hounds were in full cry on their track.
At the first bend Dalroy called a halt. He told Irene to sit down, and
she obeyed so willingly that, rendered wiser by events, he feared lest
she should faint again.
When travelling he made it a habit to carry two handkerchiefs, one for
use and one in case of emergency, such as a bandage being in sudden
demand, so he was able to produce a square of clean cambric, which he
folded cup-shape and partly filled with milk. It was the best
substitute he could devise for a strainer, and it served admirably. By
this means they drank nearly all the milk he had secured, and, with each
mouthful, Irene felt a new eichor in her veins. For the first time she
gave heed to the rifle.
"How did you get that?" she asked, wide-eyed with wonder.
"I picked it up at the door of the shed," he answered.
"I remember now," she murmured. "You left me under a hedge while you
crept forward to investigate, and I was silly enough to go off in a dead
faint. Did you carry me to the shed?"
"Yes."
"What a bother I must have been. But the finding of a rifle doesn't
explain a can of milk."
"The really important factor was the cow," he said lightly. "Now, young
lady, if you can talk you can walk. We have a little farther to go."
"Have we?" she retorted, bravely emulating his self-control. "I am glad
you have fixed on our destination. It's quite a relief to be in charge
of a man who really knows what he wants, and sees that he gets it."
He led the way, she followed. He had an eye for all quarters, because
daylight was coming now with the flying feet of Aurora. But this tiny
section of Belgium was free from Germans, for the very good reason that
their cohorts already held the right bank of the Meuse at many points,
and their engineers were throwing pontoon bridges across the river at
Vise and Argenteau.
From the edge of the wood Dalroy looked down on the river, the railway,
and the little town itself. He saw instantly that the whole district
south of the Meuse was strongly held by the invaders. Three arches of a
fine stone bridge had been destroyed, evidently by the retreating
Belgians; but pontoons were in position to take its place. Twice already
had Belgian artillery destroyed the enemy's work, and not even a
professional soldier could guess that the guns of the defence were only
awaiting a better light to smash the pontoons a third time. In fact,
barely half-a-mile to the right of the wood, a battery of four 5.9's was
posted on high ground, in the hope that the Belgian guns of smaller
calibre might be located and crushed at once. Even while the two stood
looking down into the valley, a sputtering rifle-fire broke out across
the river, three hundred yards wide at the bridge, and the volume of
musketry steadily increased. Men, horses, wagons, and motors swarmed on
the roadway or sheltered behind warehouses on the quays.
As a soldier, Dalroy was amazed at the speed and annihilating
completeness of the German mobilisation. Indeed, he was chagrined by it,
it seemed so admirable, so thoroughly thought-out in each detail, so
unapproachable by any other nation in its pitiless efficiency. He did
not know then that the vaunted Prussian-made military machine depended
for its motive-power largely on treachery and espionage. Toward the
close of July, many days before war was declared, Germany had secretly
massed nine hundred thousand men on the frontiers of Belgium and the
Duchy of Luxembourg. Her armies, therefore, had gathered like felons,
and were led by master-thieves in the persons of thousands of German
officers domiciled in both countries in the guise of peaceful traders.
Single-minded person that he was, Dalroy at once focused his thoughts on
the immediate problem. A small stream leaped down from the wood to the
Meuse. Short of a main road bridge its turbulent course was checked by a
mill-dam, and there was some reason to believe that the mill might be
Joos's. The building seemed a prosperous place, with its two giant
wheels on different levels, its ample granaries, and a substantial
house. It was intact, too, and somewhat apart from the actual line of
battle. At any rate, though the transition was the time-honoured one
from the frying-pan to the fire, in that direction lay food, shelter,
and human beings other than Germans, so he determined to go there
without further delay. His main purpose now was to lodge his companion
with some Belgian family until the tide of war had swept far to the
west. For himself, he meant to cross the enemy's lines by hook or by
crook, or lose his life in the attempt.
"One more effort," he said, smiling confidently into Irene's somewhat
pallid face. "Your uncle lives below there, I fancy. We're about to
claim his hospitality."
He hid the rifle, bayonet, and cartridges in a thicket. The milk-pail he
took with him. If they met a German patrol the pail might serve as an
excuse for being out and about, whereas the weapons would have been a
sure passport to the next world.
It was broad daylight when they entered the miller's yard. They saw the
name Henri Joos on a cart.
"Good egg!" cried Dalroy confidently. "I'm glad Joos spells his
Christian name in the French way. It shows that he means well, anyhow!"