THE MARNE--AND AFTER
"That's awkward, sir," said the corporal, as the detachment moved off
into the night, leaving the motor-car's acetylene lamps still blazing
merrily.
"Why 'awkward'?" demanded Dalroy.
"Because, when we fellows met in a wood near Monze, we agreed that we'd
stick together, and fight to a finish; but if any man strayed by
accident, or got hit so badly that he couldn't march, he took his
chances, and the rest went on."
"Quite right. How does that affect the present situation?"
"Well, sir," said Bates, after a pause, "there's you an' the lady. Our
chaps are interested, if I may say it. You ought to have heard their
langwidge, even in whispers, when that--well, I can't call him anything
much worse than what he was, a German officer--when he was telling you
off, sir."
"What did the German officer say, sergeant?" put in Irene innocently.
"Corporal, your ladyship. Corporal Bates, of the 2nd Buffs."
"I'm sorry to have to interrupt," said Dalroy. "You must give Lady Irene
a full account some other time. If you are planning to cross the
Schelde to-night there is a long march before you. We part company at
the lane you spoke of. I leave her ladyship in the care of you and your
men with the greatest confidence. I make for Oosterzeele. If Jan Maertz
is a prisoner, I must do what lies in my power to rescue him. If I fail,
I'll follow on and report at Gand in the morning."
For a little while none spoke. The other men marched in silence, a
safeguard which they had made a rigid rule while piercing their way by
night through an unknown country held by an enemy who would not have
given quarter to any English soldier.
Bates was really a very sharp fellow. He had sense enough to know that
he had said enough already. Dalroy's use of Irene's title conveyed a
hint of complications rather beyond the ken of one whose acquaintance
with the facts was limited to an overheard conversation between
strangers. Moreover, soldier that he was, the corporal realised that one
of his own officers was not only deliberately risking his life in order
to save that of a Belgian peasant, but felt in honour bound to do no
less.
So Irene was left to tread the narrow path unaided. To her lasting
credit, she neither flinched nor faltered.
"We may find it difficult to reach Gand, so I'll wait for you in Ostend,
Arthur," she said composedly.
Now, these two young people had just been snatched from death, or worse,
in a manner which, a few weeks earlier, the least critical reader of
romantic fiction would have denounced as so wildly improbable that
imagination boggled at it. Irene, too, had unmistakably told the man who
had never uttered a word of the love that was consuming him that neither
rank nor wealth could interpose any barrier between them. It was hard,
almost unbearable, that they should be parted in the very hour when
freedom might truly come with the dawn.
Dalroy trudged a good twenty paces before he dared trust his voice. Even
then, he blurted out, not the measured agreement which his brain
dictated, but a prayer from his very heart. "May God bless and guard
you, dear!" was what he said, and Irene's response was choked by a
pitiful little sob.
Suddenly Dalroy, whose hearing was quickened by the training of Indian
_shikar_, touched the corporal's arm, and stood fast. Bates gave a
peculiar click in his throat, and the squad halted, each man's feet
remaining in whatever position they happened to be at the moment.
"Horses coming this way," breathed Dalroy.
"Right, sir. This'll be your two, with Jan wot's-his-name, I hope. Leave
them to us, sir.--Smithy, Macdonald, and Shiner--forward!"
Three shapes materialised close to the trio in front. The rain was still
pelting down, and the trees nearly met overhead, so the road was
discernible only by a strip of skyline, itself merely a less dense
blackness.
"Them two Yewlans," explained the corporal, "probably bringing a
prisoner. Mind you don't hurt him."
No more explicit instructions were given or needed. Of such material
were the First Hundred Thousand.
"Take her ladyship back a few yards, sir," gurgled Bates. "The horses
may bolt. If they do we must stop 'em before they gallop over us."
Every other consideration was banished instantly by the thrill of
approaching combat. By this time, Dalroy was steeped in admiration for
his escort's methods, and he awaited developments now with keen
professional curiosity. And this is what he saw, after a breathless
interval. A flash in the gloom, and the vague silhouettes of two hussars
on horseback. One horse reared, the other swerved. One man never spoke.
The other rapped out an oath which merged into a frantic squeal. By an
odd trick of memory, Dalroy recalled old Joos's description of the death
of Busch: "He squealed like a pig."
Then came a cockney voice, "Cheer-o, mitey! We're friends, ammies! Damn
it all, you ain't tikin' us for Boshes, are yer?"
"_Hola!_ Jan Maertz!" shouted Dalroy.
"_Monsieur!_"
Irene laughed--yes, laughed, though two men had died before her
eyes!--at the amazement conveyed by the Walloon's gruff yelp.
"Don't be alarmed! These are friends, British soldiers," went on Dalroy.
"I thought they were devils from hell," was the candid answer.
Jan was unquestionably frightened. For one thing, his hands were tied
behind his back, and he was being led by a halter fashioned out of a
heel-rope, a plight in which the Chevalier Bayard himself might have
quaked. For another, he had been plodding along at the side of one of
the horses, thinking bitterly of the fair Leontine, whose buxom waist he
would never squeeze again, when a beam of dazzling light revealed a
crouching, nondescript being which flung itself upward in a panther-like
spring, and buried a bayonet to the socket in the body of the nearest
trooper. No wonder Jan was scared.
The soldiers had caught both horses. Dalroy, a cavalryman, had abandoned
the earlier remounts with a twinge of regret. He thought now there was
no reason why he and Irene should not ride, as the day's tramp, not to
speak of the strain of the past hour, might prove a drawback before
morning.
"Can you sit a horse astride?" he asked her.
"I prefer it," she said promptly.
Bates offered no objection, as long as they followed in rear. The
hussar's cloaks came in useful, and Dalroy buckled on a sword-belt. Jan
announced that he was good for another twenty miles provided he could
win clear of those _sales Alboches_. He was eager to relate his
adventures, but Dalroy quieted him by the downright statement that if
his tongue wagged he might soon be either a prisoner again or dead.
A night so rife with hazard could hardly close tamely. The rain cleared
off, and the stars came out ere they reached the ferry on the Schelde,
and a scout sent ahead came back with the disquieting news that a strong
cavalry picket, evidently on the alert, held the right bank. But the
thirteen had made a specialty of disposing of German pickets in the
dark. In those early days of the war, and particularly in Flanders,
Teuton nerves were notoriously jumpy, so the little band crept forward
resolutely, dodging from tree to tree, and into and out of ditches,
until they could see the stars reflected in the river. Dalroy and Irene
had dismounted at the first tidings of the enemy, turning a pair of
contented horses into a meadow. They and Maertz, of course, had to keep
well behind the main body.
The troopers, veritable Uhlans this time, had posted neither sentry nor
vedette in the lane. Behind them, they thought, lay Germany. In front,
across the river, the small army of Belgium held the last strip of
Belgian territory, which then ran in an irregular line from Antwerp
through Gand to Nieuport. So the picket watched the black smudge of the
opposite bank, and talked of the Kron-Prinz's stalwarts hacking their
way into Paris, and never dreamed of being assailed from the rear, until
a number of sturdy demons pounced on them, and did some pretty
bayonet-work.
Fight there was none. Those Uhlans able to run ran for their lives. One
fellow, who happened to be mounted, clapped spurs to his charger, and
would have got away had not Dalroy delivered a most satisfactory lunge
with the hussar sabre.
No sooner had Bates collected and counted sixteen people than the
tactics were changed. Five rounds rapid rattled up the road and along
the banks.
"I find that a bit of noise always helps after we get the windup with
the bayonet, sir," he explained to Dalroy. "If any of 'em think of
stopping they move on again when they hear a hefty row."
A Belgian picket, guarding the ferry, and, what was of vast importance
to the fugitives, the ferry-boat, wondered, no doubt, what was causing
such a commotion among the enemy. Luckily, the officer in charge
recognised a new ring in the rifles. He could not identify it, but was
certain it came from neither a Belgian nor a German weapon.
Thus, in a sense, he was prepared for Jan Maertz's hail, and was even
more reassured by Irene's clear voice urging him to send the boat.
Two volunteers manned the oars. In a couple of minutes the unwieldy
craft bumped into a pontoon, and was soon crowded with passengers. Never
was sweeter music in the ears of a little company of Britons than the
placid lap of the current, followed by the sharp challenge of a sentry:
"_Qui va la?_"
"A party of English soldiers, a Belgian, and an English lady," answered
Dalroy.
An officer hurried forward. He dared not use a light, and, in the
semi-obscurity of the river bank, found himself confronted by a
sinister-looking crew. He was cautious, and exceedingly sceptical when
told briefly the exact truth. His demand that all arms and ammunition
should be surrendered before he would agree to send them under escort to
the village of Aspen was met by a blank refusal from Bates and his
myrmidons. Dalroy toned down this cartel into a graceful plea that
thirteen soldiers, belonging to eight different regiments of the British
army, ought not to be disarmed by their gallant Belgian allies, after
having fought all the way from Mons to the Schelde.
Irene joined in, but Jan Maertz's rugged speech probably carried greater
conviction. After a prolonged argument, which the infuriated Germans
might easily have interrupted by close-range volleys, the difficulty was
adjusted by the unfixing of bayonets and the slinging of rifles. A
strong guard took them to Aspen, where they arrived about eleven
o'clock. They were marshalled in the kitchen of a comfortable inn, and
interviewed by a colonel and a major.
Oddly enough, Corporal Bates was the first to gain credence by producing
his map, and describing the villages he and his mates had passed
through, the woods in which they hid for days together, and the cures
who had helped them. Bates's story was an epic in itself. His men
crowded around, and grinned approvingly when he rounded off each curt
account of a "scrap" by saying, "Then the Yewlans did a bunk, an' we
pushed on."
Dalroy, acting as interpreter, happened to glance at the circle of
cheerful faces during a burst of merriment aroused by a reference to
Smithy's ingenuity in stealing a box of hand grenades from an ammunition
wagon, and destroying a General's motor-car by fixing an infernal
machine in the gear-box. The mere cranking-up of the engine, it
appeared, exploded the detonator.
"Is that what you were doing under the car outside the barn?" he
inquired, catching Smithy's eye.
"Yes, sir. I've on'y one left aht o' six," said Smithy, producing an
ominous-looking object from a pocket.
"Is the detonator in position?"
"Yus, sir."
"Will you kindly take it out, and lay it gently on the table?"
Smithy obeyed, with reassuring deftness.
Dalroy was about to comment on the phenomenal risk of carrying such a
destructive bomb so carelessly when he happened to notice the roll
collar of a khaki tunic beneath Smithy's blue linen blouse.
"Have you still retained part of your uniform?" he inquired.
"Oh, yus, sir. We all 'ave. We weren't goin' to strip fer fear of any
bally Germans--beg pawdon, miss--an' if it kime to a reel show-dahn we
meant ter see it through in reggelation kit."
Every man of twelve had retained his tunic, trousers, and puttees, which
were completely covered by the loose-fitting garments supplied by the
priest of a hamlet near Louvignies, who concealed them in a loft during
four days until the mass of German troops had surged over the French
frontier. The thirteenth, a Highlander, actually wore his kilt!
The Belgian officers grew enthused. They insisted on providing a _vin
d'honneur_, which Irene escaped by pleading utter fatigue, and retiring
to rest.
Dalroy opened his eyes next morning on a bright and sunlit world. It
might reasonably be expected that his thoughts would dwell on the
astounding incidents of the past month. They did nothing of the sort. He
tumbled out of a comfortable bed, interviewed the proprietor of the
"_Trois Couronnes_," and asked that worthy man if he understood the
significance of a Bank of England five-pound note. During his many and
varied 'scapes, Dalroy's store of money, carried in an inner pocket of
his waistcoat, had never been touched. _Monsieur le Patron_ knew all
that was necessary about five-pound notes. Very quickly a serviceable
cloth suit, a pair of boots, some clean linen, a tin bath, and a razor
were staged in the bedroom, while the proprietor's wife was instructed
to attend to mademoiselle's requirements.
Dalroy was shaving, for the first time in thirty-three days, when voices
reached him through the open window. He listened.
Smithy had cornered Shiney Black in the hotel yard, and, in his own
phrase, was puttin' 'im through the 'oop.
"You don't know it, Shiney, but you're reely a verdamd Henglishman," he
said, with an accurate reproduction of Von Halwig's manner if not his
accent. "The grite German nytion is abart ter roll yer in the mud, an'
wipe its big feet on yer tummy. You've awsked fer it long enough, an'
nah yer goin' ter git it in the neck. Blood an' sausage! The cheek o' a
silly little josser like you tellin' the Lord-'Igh-Cock-a-doodle-doo
that 'e can't boss everybody as 'e dam well likes! Shiney, you're done
in! The Keyser sez so, an' 'e ought ter know. W'y? That shows yer
miserable hignorance! The Keyser sez so, I tell yer, so none o' yer lip,
or I, Von Schmit, o' the Dirty 'Alf-Hundredth, will biff you on the
boko. But no! I must keep me 'air on. As you an' hevery hother verdamd
Henglishman will be snuffed aht before closin'-time, I shall grashiously
tell thee wot's wot an' 'oo's 'oo. Germany, the friend o' peace--no, you
blighter, not Chawlie Peace, the burglar, but the lydy in a nightie, wiv
a dove in one 'and an' a holive-branch in the other--Germany will wide
knee-deep in Belgian an' French ber-lud so as to 'and you the double
Nelson. By land an' sea an' pawcels post she'll rine fire an' brimstone
on your pore thick 'ead. What 'ave _you_ done, you'd like ter know? Wot
_'aven't_ you done? Aren't you alive? Wot crime can ekal that when the
Keyser said, 'Puff! aht--tallow-candle!' _Ach_, pig-dorg, I shpit on
yer!"
"You go an' wash yer fice once more, Smithy," said Shiney, forcing a
word in edgeways. "It'll improve your looks, per'aps. I dunno."
"That's done it," yelped Smithy, warming to his theme. "That's just yer
narsty, scoffin' British w'y o' speakin' to quiet, respectable Germans.
That's wot gets us mad. I'm surprised at yer, Shiney! Yer hattitude
brings tears to me heyes. Time an' agine you've 'eard ahr bee-utiful
langwidge----"
"I 'ave, indeed," interrupted Shiney. "But none o' it 'ere, me lad.
There's a reel born lydy in one o' them bedrooms."
"I'm not torkin' o' the kind of tosh _you_ hunderstand," retorted
Smithy. "I'm alludin' to the sweet-sahndin' langwidge o' our conquerors.
You've 'eard it hoffen enuf from the sorft mowves o' Yewlans. On'y larst
night you 'eard it spoke by that stawr hactor, Von 'Allwig, of the
Potsdam Busters. Yet you can git nothink orf yer chest but a low-dahn
cockney wheeze w'en a benefactor's givin' yer the strite tip. Pore
Shiney! Ye think yer goin' back to Hengland, 'ome, an' beauty--to the
barrick-square, bully-beef an' booze, an' plenty o' it. Dontcher believe
it! Wot you're in fer is a dose o' German _Kultur_. W'en yer ship's
been torpedoed fourteen times between Hostend an' Dover, w'en yer
sarth-eastern trine 'as bumped inter a biker's dozen o' different sorts
o' mines, w'en you're Zepped the minnit you crorse the Strend to the
nearest pub, you'll begin ter twig wot the Hemperor of All the 'Uns is
ackshally a-doin' of. It's hall hup wiv yer, Shiney! You've ether got
ter lie dahn an' doi, er learn German. Nah, w'ich is it ter be? Go west
wiv yer benighted country, or go nap on the Keyser?"
"Torkin' o' pubs reminds me," yawned Shiney. "I couldn't get any
forrarder on that ginger-pop the Belgian horficers gev us. In one o'
them Yewlans' pawket-books there was five French quid. Wot abart a
bottle o' beer?"
"What abart it?" agreed Smithy instantly.
The soap was drying on Dalroy's face, but he thrust his head out of the
window to look at two of Britain's first line swaggering through the
gateway of the inn, and whistling, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary."
Smith and Shiney were true types of the somewhat cynical but ever
ready-witted and laughter-loving Londoner, who makes such a first-rate
fighting man. They were just a couple of ordinary "Tommies." The deadly
fury of Mons, the daily and nightly peril of the march through a land
stricken by a brutal enemy, the score of little battles which they
had conducted with an amazing skill and hardihood--these phases of
immortality troubled them not at all. An eye-rolling and sabre-rattling
emperor might rock the social foundations of half the world, his
braggart henchmen destroy that which they could never rebuild,
his frantic gang of poets and professors indite Hymns of Hate and
blasphemous catch-words like "Gott strafe England"; but the Smithies
and Shinies of the British army would never fail to cock a humorous
eye at the vapourers, and say sarcastically, "Well, an' wot abart it?"
* * * * *
Somehow, on 7th September 1914, there was a hitch in the naval programme
devised by the _Deutscher Marineamt_. The Belgian packet-boat, _Princess
Clementine_, steamed from Ostend to Dover through a smiling sea unvexed
by Krupp or any other form of _Kultur_. Warships, big and little, were
there in squadrons; but gaunt super-Dreadnought and perky destroyer
alike was aggressively British.
England, too, looked strangely unperturbed. There had been sad scenes on
the quay at the Belgian port, but a policeman on duty at the shore end
of the gangway at Dover seemed to indicate by a majestic calm that any
person causing an uproar would be given the alternative of paying ten
shillings and costs or "doing" seven days.
The boat was crowded with refugees; but Dalroy, knowing the wiliness
of stewards, had experienced slight difficulty in securing two chairs
already loaded with portmanteaus and wraps. He heard then, for the first
time, why Irene fled so precipitately from Berlin. She was a guest
in the house of a Minister of State, and one of the Hohenzollern
princelings came there to luncheon on that fateful Monday, 3rd August.
He had invited himself, though he must have been aware that his presence
was an insult and an annoyance to the English girl, whom he had pestered
with his attentions many times already. He was excited, drank heavily,
and talked much. Irene had arranged to travel home next day, but the
wholly unforeseen and swift developments in international affairs, no
less than the thinly-veiled threats of a royal admirer, alarmed her into
an immediate departure. At the twelfth hour she found that her host,
father of two girls of her own age--the school friends, in fact, to whom
she was returning a visit--was actually in league with her persecutor to
keep her in Berlin.
She ran in panic, her one thought being to join her sister in Brussels,
and reach home.
"So you see, dear," she said, with one of those delightfully shy glances
which Dalroy loved to provoke, "I was quite as much sought after as you,
and I would certainly have been stopped on the Dutch frontier had I
travelled by any other train."
The two were packed into a carriage filled to excess. They had no
luggage other than a small parcel apiece, containing certain articles of
clothing which might fetch sixpence in a rag-shop, but were of great and
lasting value to the present owners.
At Charing Cross, while they were walking side by side down the
platform, Irene shrieked, "There they are!" She darted forward and flung
herself into the arms of two elderly people, a brother in khaki, with
the badges of a Guard regiment, and a sister of the flapper order.
Dalroy had been told at Dover to report at once to the War Office, as he
carried much valuable information in his head and Von Halwig's
well-filled note-book in his pocket. He hung back while the embracing
was in progress. Then Irene introduced him to her family.
"You'll dine with us, Arthur," she said simply. "I'll not tell them a
word of our adventures till you are present."
"You could have heard a pin drop," was the excited comment of the
flapper sister when endeavouring subsequently to thrill another girl
with the sensation created by Irene's quiet words. Literally, this trope
was not accurate, because the station was noisier than usual.
Figuratively, it met the case exactly.
Lady Glastonbury, a gray-haired woman with wise eyes, promptly emulated
the action of the British army during the retreat from Mons, and "saved
the situation."
"Of course you'll stay with us, too, Captain Dalroy," she said with
pleasant insistence. "Like Irene, you must have lost everything, and
need time to refit."
Dalroy murmured some platitude, lifted his hat, and only regained his
composure after two narrow escapes from being run over by taxis while
crossing Northumberland Avenue.
A newsboy tore past, shouting in the vernacular, "Great Stand by Sir
John French."
Dalroy was reminded of Smithy, and Shiney, and Corporal Bates. He saw
again Jan Maertz waving a farewell from the quai at Ostend. He wondered
how old Joos was faring, and Leontine, and Monsieur Pochard, and the
cure of Verviers.
Another boy scampered by. He carried a contents bill. Heavy black type
announced that the British were "holding" Von Kluck on the Marne.
Dalroy's eyes kindled. _His_ work lay _there_. When the soldier's task
was ended he would come back to Irene.