THE WOODMAN'S HUT
The miller was cunning as a fox. He argued, subtly enough, that if a man
just arrived from Argenteau was the first to discover the dead
Prussians, the neighbourhood of Argenteau itself might be the last to
undergo close search for the "criminals" who had dared punish these
demi-gods. Following a cattle-path through a series of fields, he
entered a country lane about a mile from Vise. It was a narrow,
deep-rutted, winding way--a shallow trench cut into the soil by many
generations of pack animals and heavy carts. The long interregnum
between the solid pavement of Rome and the broken rubble of Macadam
covered Europe with a network of such roads. An unchecked growth of
briars, brambles, and every species of prolific weed made this
particular track an ideal hiding-place.
Gathering the party under the two irregular lines of pollard oaks which
marked the otherwise hardly discernible hedgerows, Joos explained that,
at a point nearly half-a-mile distant, the lane joined the main road
which winds along the right bank of the Meuse.
"That is our only real difficulty--the crossing of the road," he said.
"It is sure to be full of Germans; but if we watch our chance we should
contrive to scurry from one side to the other without being seen."
Such confidence was unquestionably cheering. Even Dalroy, though he put
a somewhat sceptical question, did not really doubt that the old man was
adopting what might, in the circumstances, prove the best plan.
"What happens when we do reach the other side, Monsieur Joos?" he
inquired.
"Then we enter a disused quarry in the depths of a wood. The Meuse
nearly surrounds the wood, and there is barely room for a tow-path
between the river's edge and a steep cliff. The quarry forms the
landward face, as one may say, and among the trees is a woodman's hut. I
shall be surprised if we find any Germans there."
"From your description it seems to be a suitable post for a strong
picket watching the river."
"No, monsieur. The slope falls away from the river, while the opposite
bank is flat and open. I have been a soldier in my time, and I
understand these things. It would be all right for observation purposes
if these pigs hadn't seized the bridge-heads at Vise and Argenteau; but
I saw their cursed Uhlans on the left bank many hours ago."
"Lead on, friend," said Dalroy simply. "When we come within a hundred
metres of the main road let me do the scouting. I'll tell you when and
how to advance."
"Is monsieur a soldier then?"
"Yes."
"An officer perhaps?"
"Yes."
"Ah, a thousand pardons if I presumed to lecture you. Yet I am certainly
in the right about the wood."
"I have never doubted you, Monsieur Joos. Do you know what time the moon
rises?"
"Late. Eleven o'clock at the earliest."
"All the better, if you are sure of the way."
"I could find it blindfolded. So could Leontine. She goes there to pick
bilberries."
The homely phrase was unconsciously dramatic. From the highroad came the
raucous singing of German soldiers, the falsetto of drunkards with an
ear for music. In the distance heavy artillery was growling, and high
explosive shells were bursting with a violence that seemed to rend the
sky. Over an area of many miles to the west the sharp tapping of
musketry and the staccato splutter of machine guns told of hundreds of
thousands of men engaged in a fierce struggle for supremacy. On every
hand the horizon was red with the glare of burning houses. The thought
of a village girl picking bilberries in a land so scarred by war and
rapine produced an effect at once striking and fantastic. It was as
though a ray of pure white light had pierced the lurid depths of a
volcano.
Dalroy advised the women to take off their linen aprons, and Madame Joos
to remove as well a coif of the same material. He unfastened and threw
away the stump of the bayonet. Then they moved on in Indian file, the
miller leading.
A definite quality of blackness loomed above the low-lying shroud of
mist which at night in still weather always marks the course of a great
river.
"The wood!" whispered Joos. "We are near the road now."
Dalroy went forward to spy out the conditions. A column of infantry was
passing. These fellows were silent, and therefore sinister. They marched
like tired men, and their shuffling feet raised a cloud of dust.
An officer lighted a cigarette. "Those guzzling Prussians would empty
the Meuse if it ran with wine," he growled, evidently in response to a
remark from a companion.
"Our brigadier was very angry about the broken bottles in the streets of
Argenteau," said the other. "Two tires were ruined before the chauffeur
realised that the place was littered with glass."
These were Saxons, cleaner-minded, manlier fellows than the Prussians.
Behind them Dalroy heard the rumble of commissariat wagons. He failed
utterly to understand the why and wherefore of the direction the troops
were taking. According to his reckoning, they should have been going the
opposite way. But that was no concern of his at the moment. He knew the
Saxon by repute, and hurried back to the two men and three women
crouching under a hedge, having already noted a little mound on the left
of the cross-roads where cover was available. He explained what they
were to do--steal forward, one by one, hide behind the mound, and dart
across when a longer space than usual separated one wagon from another,
as the mounted escort would probably be grouped in front and in rear of
the convoy.
"Ah, that is the cavalry," said Joos. "It stands on a rock by the
roadside."
"It is hard to distinguish anything owing to mist and dust," said
Dalroy. "Of course, the darkness is all to the good.--If you ladies do
not scream, whatever happens, and you run quickly when I give the word,
I don't think there will be any real danger."
In the event, they were able to cross the road in a body, and without
needless haste. A horse stumbled and fell, and had to be unharnessed
before being got on to its feet again. The incident held up the column
during some minutes, so Dalroy was not compelled to abandon the rifle,
which it would have been foolish in the extreme to carry if there was
the slightest chance of being seen.
Thenceforth progress was safe, though slow and difficult, because the
gloom beneath the trees was that of a vault. Even the miller perforce
yielded place to Leontine's young eyes and sureness of foot. There were
times, during the ascent of one side of the quarry, when whispered
directions were necessary, while Madame Joos had to be hauled up a few
awkward places bodily.
Still, they reached the hut, a mere logger's shed, but a veritable haven
for people so manifestly in peril. They were weary, too. No member of
the Joos household had slept throughout the whole of Tuesday night, and
the women especially were flagging under the strain.
The little cabin held an abundant store of shavings, because its normal
tenant rough-hewed his logs into sabots. Here, then, was a soft, warm,
and fragrant resting-place. Dalroy took command. He forbade talking,
even in whispers. Maertz, who promised to keep awake, was put on guard
outside till the moon rose.
The wisdom of preventing excited conversation was shown by the fact that
the five people huddled together on the shavings were soon asleep. There
was nothing strange in this. Humanity, when surfeited with emotion,
becomes calm, almost phlegmatic. Were it otherwise, after a week of war
soldiers would not be sane men, but maniacs.
Dalroy resolved to sleep for two hours. About eleven o'clock he got up,
went quietly to the door, and found Maertz seated on the ground, his
back propped against the wall, and his head sunk on his breast. As a
consequence, he was snoring melodiously.
He woke quickly enough when the Englishman's hand was clapped over his
mouth and held there until his torpid wits were sufficiently clear that
he should understand the stern words muttered in his ear.
"Pardon, monsieur," he said shamefacedly. "I thought there was no harm
in sitting down. I listened to the guns, and began counting them. I
counted one hundred and ninety-nine shots, I think, and then----"
"And then you risked six lives, Leontine's among them!"
"Monsieur, I have no excuse."
"Yet you have been a soldier, I suppose? And you gabble of serving your
country?"
"It will not happen again, monsieur."
Dalroy pretended an anger he did not really feel. He wanted this stolid
Walloon to remain awake now, at any rate, so turned away with an
ejaculation of contempt.
Maertz rose. He endured an eloquent silence for nearly a minute. Then he
murmured, "Monsieur, I shall not offend a second time. Counting guns is
worse than watching sheep jumping a fence."
The moon had risen, revealing a cleared space in front of the hut. A
dozen yards away a thin fringe of brushwood and small trees marked the
edge of the quarry, while the woodcutter's path was discernible on the
left. A slight breeze had called into being the myriad tongues of the
wood, and Dalroy realised that the unceasing cannonade, joined to the
rustling of the leaves, would drown any sound of an approaching enemy
until it was too late to retreat. He knew that Von Halwig, not to
mention the military authorities at Vise, would spare no effort to hunt
out and destroy the man who had dared to flout the might of Germany, so
he was far from satisfied with the apparent safety of even this secluded
refuge.
"Have you a piece of string in your pockets?" he demanded gruffly.
Trust a carter to carry string, strong stuff warranted to mend
temporarily a broken strap. Maertz gave him a quantity.
"I am going to the cross-road," he continued. "Keep a close watch till I
return. When you hear any movement, or see any one, say clearly 'Vise.'
If it is I, I shall answer 'Liege.' Do you understand?"
"Perfectly, monsieur. A challenge and a countersign."
Dalroy believed the man might be trusted now. Taking the rifle, he made
off along the path, treading as softly as the cumbrous sabots would
permit. He was tempted to go bare-footed, but dreaded the lameness which
might result from a thorn or a sharp rock. At a suitable place,
half-way down the steep path by the side of the quarry, he tied a pistol
to a stout sapling, and, having fastened a cord to the trigger, arranged
it in such fashion that it must catch the feet of any one coming that
way. The weapon was at full cock, and in all likelihood the unwary
passer-by would get a bullet in his body.
It was dark under the trees, of course, but the moon was momentarily
increasing its light, and the way was not hard to find. He memorised
each awkward turn and twist in case he had to retreat in a hurry. Once
the lower level was reached there was no difficulty, and, with due
precautions, he gained the shelter of a hedge close to the main road.
The stream of troops still continued. Few things could be more ominous
than this unending torrent of armed men. By how many similar roads, he
wondered, was Germany pouring her legions into tiny Belgium? Was she
forcing the French frontier in the same remorseless way? And what of
Russia? When he left Berlin the talk was only of marching against the
two great allies. If Germany could spare such a host of horse, foot, and
artillery for the overrunning of Belgium, while moving the enormous
forces needed on both flanks, what millions of men she must have placed
under arms long before the mobilisation order was announced publicly!
And what was England doing and saying? England! the home of liberty and
a free press, where demagogues spouted platitudes about the "curse of
militarism," and encouraged that very monster by leaving the richest
country in the world open to just such a sudden and merciless attack as
Belgium was undergoing before his eyes!
Lying there among the undergrowth, listening to the tramp of an
army corps, and watching the flicker of countless rifle-barrels in
the moonlight, he forgot his own plight, and thought only of the
unpreparedness of Britain. He was a soldier by training and inclination.
He harboured no delusions. Man for man, the alert, intelligent, and
chivalrous British army was far superior to the cannon-fodder of the
German machine. But of what avail was the hundred thousand Britain could
put in the field in the west of Europe against the four millions of
Germany? Here was no combat of a David and a Goliath, but of one man
against forty. Naturally, France and Russia came into the picture, yet
he feared that France would break at the outset of the campaign, while
Austria might hold Russia in check long enough to enable Germany to work
her murderous design. Be it remembered, he could not possibly estimate
the fine and fierce valour of the resistance offered by Belgium. It
seemed to him that the Teuton hordes must already be hacking their way
to the coast, leaving sufficient men and guns to contain the Belgian
fortresses, and halting only when the white cliffs of England were
visible across the Channel.
If his anxious thoughts wandered, however, and a gnawing doubt ate into
his soul lest the British fleet might, as the Germans in Vise claimed,
have been taken at a disadvantage, he did not allow his eyes and ears to
neglect the duties of the hour.
A fall in the temperature had condensed the river mist, and the air near
the ground was much clearer now than at eight o'clock. The breeze, too,
gathered the dust into wraiths and scurrying wisps through which
glimpses of the sloping uplands toward Aix were obtainable. During one
of these unhampered moments he caught sight of something so weird and
uncanny that he was positively startled.
A sorrow-laden, waxen-hued face seemed to peer at him for an instant,
and then vanish. But there could be no face so high in the air,
twenty feet or more above the heads of a Prussian regiment bawling
"_Deutschland, Deutschland, ueber alles_." The land was level XXXX
thereabouts. The apparition, consequently, must be a mere trick of the
imagination. Yet he saw, or fancied he saw, that same spectral face
twice again at intervals of a few seconds, and was vexed with himself
for allowing his bemused senses to yield to some supernatural influence.
Then the vision came a fourth time, and a thrill ran through every fibre
in his body.
Because there could be no mistake now. The face, so mournful, so
benign, so pitying, bore on the forehead a crown of thorns! Even while
the blood coursed in Dalroy's veins with the awe of it, he knew that he
was looking at the figure of Christ on the Cross. This, then, was the
calvary spoken of by Joos, and invisible in the earlier murk. The beams
of the risen moon etched the painted carving in most realistic lights
and shadows. The pallid skin glistened as though in agony. The big,
piercing eyes gazed down at the passing soldiers as the Man of Sorrows
might have looked at the heedless legionaries of Rome.
The travelled Briton, to whom the wayside calvary is a familiar object
in many a continental landscape, can seldom pass the twisted, tortured
figure on the Cross without a feeling of awe, tempered by insular
non-comprehension of the religious motive which thrusts into prominence
the most solemn emblem of Christianity in unexpected and often
incongruous places. Seen as Dalroy saw it, a hunted fugitive crouching
in a ditch, while the Huns who would again destroy Europe were lurching
past in thousands within a few feet of where he lay, the image of Christ
crucified had a new and overwhelming significance. It induced a vague
uneasiness of spirit, almost a doubt. That very day he had killed four
men and gravely wounded a fifth, and there was no shred of compunction
in his soul. Yet, in body and mind, he was worthy of his class, and this
gray old world has failed to evolve any finer human type than that
which is summed up in the phrase, an officer and a gentleman. For the
foulest of crimes, either committed or contemplated, he had been forced
to use both the scales and the sword of justice; but there was something
wholly disturbing and abhorrent in the knowledge that two thousand years
after the Great Atonement men professedly Christian should so wantonly
disregard every principle that Christ taught and practised and died for.
He reflected bitterly that the German soldier, whether officer or
private, is enjoined to keep a diary. What sort of record would
"Heinrich," or Busch, or the three Westphalian lieutenants have left of
that day's doings if they had lived and told the truth?
The answer to these vexed questionings came with the swift clarity of a
lightning flash. Another rift in the dust-clouds revealed the upper part
of the Cross, and the moonbeams shone on a gilded scroll. Dalroy knew
his Bible. "And a superscription also was written over Him in letters of
Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew: 'This is the King of the Jews.' And one of
the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him, saying, 'If Thou be
Christ, save Thyself and us.'"
From that instant one God-fearing Briton, at least, never again allowed
the shadow of a doubt to darken his faith in the divine if inscrutable
purpose. He had passed already through dark and deadly hours, while
others were then near at hand; but he was steadfast in doing what he
conceived his duty without seeking to interpret the ways of Providence.
"If Thou be Christ?" It was the last taunt of the unbeliever, though the
veil of the temple would be rent in twain, and the earth would quake,
and the graves be opened, and the bodies of the saints arise and be seen
by many!
A harsh command silenced the singing. An officer had reined in his
horse, and was demanding the nature of the errand which brought a squad
of men from Vise.
"Sergeant Karl Schwartz, _Herr Hauptmann_," reported the leader of the
party. "An Englishman, assisted by a miller named Joos and his man,
Maertz, has killed three of our officers. He also wounded Herr Leutnant
von Huntzel, of the 7th Westphalian regiment, who has recovered
sufficiently to say what happened. The general-major has ordered a
strict search. I, being acquainted with the district, am bringing these
men to a wood where the rascals may be hiding."
"Killed three, you say? The fiend take all such _schwein-hunds_ and
their helpers! Good luck to you.--_Vorwaerts!_"
The column moved on. Schwartz, the treacherous barber of Vise, led his
men into the lane. There were eleven, all told--hopeless odds--because
this gang of hunters was ready for a fight and itching to capture a
_verdammt Englaender_. And Joos's "safe retreat" had been guessed by the
spy who knew what every inhabitant of Vise did, who had watched and
noted even such a harmless occupation as Leontine's bilberry-picking,
who was acquainted with each footpath for miles around, from whose
crafty eyes not a cow-byre on any remote farm in the whole countryside
was concealed.
This misfortune marked the end, Dalroy thought. But there was a chance
of escape, if only for the few remaining hours of the night, and he took
it with the same high courage he displayed in going back to the rescue
of Irene Beresford in the railway station at Aix. He had a rifle with
five rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. At the worst, he
might be able to add another couple of casualties to the formidable
total already piled up during the German advance on Liege.
The sabots offered a serious handicap to rapid and silent movement, but
he dared not dispense with them, and made shift to follow Schwartz and
the others as quietly as might be. He was helped, of course, by the din
of the guns and the rustling of the leaves; but there was an open space
in the narrow road before it merged in the wood which he could not cross
until the Germans were among the trees, and precisely in that locality
Schwartz halted his men to explain his project. Try as he might, Dalroy,
crouched behind a pollard oak, could not overhear the spy's words. But
he smiled when the party went on in Indian file, Schwartz leading,
because the enemy was acting just as he hoped the enemy would act.
He did not press close on their heels now, but remained deliberately at
the foot of the hill and on the edge of the quarry. Standing erect, with
the rifle at the ready, he waited. He could hear nothing, but judged
time and distance by counting fifty slow steps. He was right to a fifth
of a second. A shot rang out, and was followed instantly by a yell of
agony. He saw the flash, and, taking aim somewhat below it, fired six
rounds rapidly. A fusillade broke out in the wood, the Germans, like
himself, firing at the one flash above and the six beneath. A bullet cut
through his blouse on the left shoulder and scorched his skin; but when
the magazine was empty he ran straight on for a few yards, turned to the
right, stepping with great caution, and threw himself flat behind a
rock. As he ran, he had refilled the magazine, but now meant using the
rifle as a last resource only.
In effect, matters had fallen out exactly as he calculated. Schwartz had
blundered into the man-trap set on the path half-way up the cliff, and
was shot. The others, lacking a leader, and stupefied by the firing and
the darkness, bolted like so many rabbits to the open road and the
moonlight as soon as the seeming attack from the rear ceased.
Uncommon grit was needed to press on through a strange wood at night,
up a difficult path bordering a precipice when each tree might vomit the
flame of a gunshot. And these fellows were not cast in heroic mould.
Their one thought was to get back the way they came. They were received
warmly, too. The passing regiment, hearing the hubbub and seeing the
flashes, very reasonably supposed they were being taken in flank by a
Belgian force, and blazed away merrily at the first moving objects in
sight in that direction.
Dalroy does not know to this day exactly how the battle ended in rear,
nor did he care then. He had routed the enemy in his own neighbourhood,
and that must suffice. Regaining the path, he sped upward, pausing only
to retrieve the pistol which had proved so efficient a sentinel. Judging
by the groans and the stertorous breathing which came from among the
undergrowth close to the path, Karl Schwartz's services as a spy and
guide were lost to the great cause of _Kultur_. Dalroy did not bother
about the wretch. He pressed on, and reached the plateau above the
quarry. The clearing was now flooded with moonlight, and the doorway of
the hut was plainly visible. Jan Maertz was not at his post, but this
was not surprising, as he would surely have joined old Joos and the
terrified women at the first sounds of the firing.
"Liege!" said Dalroy, speaking loudly enough for any one in the hut to
hear. There was no answer. "Liege!" he cried again, with a certain
foreboding that things had gone awry, and dreading lest the precious
respite he had secured might be wasted irretrievably.
But the hut was empty, and he realised that he might grope like a blind
man for hours in the depths of the wood. The one-sided battle which had
broken out in the front of the calvary had died down. He guessed what
had happened, the blunder, the frenzied explanations, and their sequel
in a quick decision to detach a company and surround the wood.
In his exasperation he forgot the silent figure surveying the scene at
the cross-roads, and swore like a very natural man, for he was now
utterly at a loss what to do or where to go.