A great, long, old-fashioned room with a rather low ceiling, across
which ran black oaken-beams, around were lancet windows, high and
narrow, with ancient leaded panes and green glass, the walls panelled
with rare but faded tapestries, the carpet dull and also faded, and the
heavy furniture genuinely Flemish of the sixteenth century.
On a long, padded seat in the recess of the central window, the depth of
which showed the great strength of the walls, Aimee de Neuville sat, her
white pointed chin resting upon her hand, gazing away over a marvellous
panorama of winding river and wooded slopes, the deep beautiful valley
of the Meuse, which lay far below that high-up chateau, once the
fortress of the robber-knights of Hauteroche.
The splendid old Chateau de Severac, standing as it did half-way between
quaint old-world Dinant, the resent of British tourists, and the French
frontier at Givet, commanded a wide sweep of the beautiful valley with
the blue, misty high-lands towards Luxembourg. The great place with its
ponderous three-foot-thick walls, its round towers with slated roofs,
and its deep, cavernous dungeons with inscribed stones, dated from the
twelfth century, a fine feudal castle, which had played a leading part
in the history of the Meuse valley--indeed, in the history of Europe.
Built high upon its steep limestone cliff, around which the river swept
suddenly in a semicircle, it had, in the days of its builders, been a
fortress impregnable. Its private chapel bore the arms of the
Knights-Templars, and in that very room, where the pale-faced young girl
sat, the Emperor Charles V had sat, after the capture of Metz in 1552.
A place full of historic memories, for the very walls spoke mutely of
those turbulent times, when that valley was the chief theatre of all the
fierce wars in Western Europe.
But the Knights of Hauteroche had defended it always from the attack of
their bitterest foes, until, in 1772, it had passed from their hands,
and having fallen to ruin, had, in the last days of the nineteenth
century, been acquired by the rich Baron de Neuville, who was reputed to
have spent half a million sterling upon its restoration, and a similar
sum in furnishing it just as it had been in the sixteenth century.
Few such splendid strongholds existed in Europe. For years the Baron's
agents had travelled up and down the Continent with open commissions to
purchase antique furniture, tapestry, and armour of the period, with the
result that the castle was now unique. Inside its courtyard one was at
once back in the days of the Emperor Charles V, the illusion being
complete, even to the great kitchen of the robber-knights, where, upon
the huge spit, an ox could be turned and roasted whole, so that the
retainers--the bowmen of the forest--could be regaled and rewarded after
their doughty exploits.
From every corner of the world, tourists--many of them loud-speaking
Americans with their red-bound Baedekers--craved of the Baron's
major-domo, a vinegar-faced Frenchman, permission to pass through the
splendid apartments, and when "the family" were not in residence,
permission was generally accorded, for--as with all financiers, from
Twickenham to Timbuctoo--the Baron, in secret, liked to be talked about.
Indeed, the late King Leopold, who had on several occasions stretched
his long legs in that room wherein Aimee now sat, had declared that the
view from the window up the river to be one of the finest in all Europe.
Looking up the peaceful valley, where the Meuse wound far below in the
August sunshine, there lay on the right bank grey rugged rocks
descending sheer into the water green and deep, making a sudden bend;
while on the left lay green pastures and spreading woodlands, with range
upon range of hills away to the blue haze of the frontier of France.
Beside the river, the road followed like a white ribbon along its bank,
and upon it the dusty old post-diligence, with its four weedy horses and
its jingling bells, was travelling, just as it had travelled for two
centuries past. Truly that reach of the Meuse was the most rural,
peaceful, and picturesque spot in all the Ardennes, and little wonder
was it, indeed, that the Baron de Neuville, when the great ruined castle
had been offered for sale, had immediately purchased it, and renovated
it to its present perfect state.
"I can't think why father should have made us come here just in these
troublous times," the girl exclaimed petulantly to her mother, a grave,
white-haired, well-preserved lady in black, who, seated at the farther
end of the room, was busy with her fancy needlework. And then the girl
beat an impatient tattoo upon one of the small leaded window-panes with
the tips of her slim white fingers.
"Your father thinks it is more pleasant for us here than in Brussels
just now, with all the silly excitement in progress, my dear," the
Baroness replied. "I have just had a telegram. He will be here
to-night."
"Does he give any further news of the situation?"
"None."
"But when we left in the car yesterday, it was believed that we might be
at war at any moment," the girl said.
Her mother, a calm-faced, rather stout woman, and typically Belgian,
sighed deeply.
"What will happen we cannot tell, my girl."
"But if the Germans come, what shall we do?" queried Aimee, for she was
thinking of Edmond, from whom she had had a hastily scribbled letter
that morning. He had rejoined his regiment as _sous-officier_, and he
said they expected to leave that day for the frontier.
"Do?" echoed the Baroness. "Why, nothing. They will simply march along
the valley down yonder, and we shall be quite safe up here. The Germans
are, after all, men of culture. They are gentlemen."
As she spoke, Melanie, Aimee's French maid, entered the room, saying:
"A gentleman wishes to speak to M'sieur le Baron on the telephone. Will
you speak, Mademoiselle?" she asked.
"Who is he?"
"The name he gave was Huart, Mademoiselle."
"Huart," exclaimed the Baroness. "That is surely the name of the
manager of the Sirault Ironworks at Liege. Go and speak to him, Aimee."
The girl descended to her father's small business-room situated in the
base of one of the round-slated turrets of the castle, and took up the
telephone-receiver from the table.
"Hello?" she asked.
"Is the Baron there?" demanded a man's rough voice.
"No, m'sieur. But I am Mademoiselle de Neuville. Can I give him any
message? He is in Brussels, and will, I think, be here this evening."
"I am Huart, speaking from the works at Liege. War has broken out."
"War?" gasped the girl, holding her breath.
"Yes. Eighty thousand Germans are advancing towards the river, and we
are already defending Liege against them. Terrible fighting is taking
place. Hark! Listen to our forts! Can you hear?"
The girl listened, and for the first time heard the thunder of war--a
dull, low roar in the receiver.
"That was one of the big guns in Fort Loncin, General Leman is defending
the city, but the Germans are burning all the villages around. From my
window here I can see the smoke across the river."
"Oh! this is awful!" the girl cried. "I will telephone to my father and
tell him--if I can find him."
"Yes, Mademoiselle--tell him that I fear the worst. The first reports
of the enemy reached here at dawn, and Liege seems to swarm with German
spies. A dozen or so were caught signalling to the enemy with flags
from the tops of high houses. They have all been shot--outside here,
against the wall."
"They were not Belgians."
"They posed as such. One of them was one of my foremen. I always
believed him to be a Belgian. It is a revelation, Mademoiselle."
"But can the Germans enter the city?"
"No, Mademoiselle. Last night all the bridges over the river were
destroyed."
And then, even as she listened, a dull roar fell upon her ear. It was
Fort Loncin speaking again with its steel throat.
"Please tell the Baron that I shall remain here pending further
instructions from the company. We shall hold out here. Soldiers are
pouring into the town. The first regiment of the Guides, and the
second, fourth, and eighth Chasseurs-a-pied passed here early this
morning, having come poste-haste from Brussels. They have gone along
the river-bank. Liege will not suffer much, but the country around is
already in flames. It is terrible, Mademoiselle--_terrible_!"
The eighth regiment of Chasseurs-a-pied! Then Edmond Valentin was
already at the front! He was with them, along the river-bank!
"But are they killing people?" asked the girl, in frantic excitement.
"I fear they are, Mademoiselle," replied the voice, dying away slowly,
and being succeeded by a loud electrical buzzing. "Reports have just
come in that at Vise and Argenteau some townspeople fired at the
soldiers, and in consequence the Germans are killing them, and burning
down the houses. It is awful."
"But that can't really be true," she cried, "The Germans are surely not
savages like that!"
"I fear that the reports are only too true, Mademoiselle. One came over
the telephone from the Burgomaster of Cheratte, close to Argenteau. As
an eye-witness of fearful atrocities, he reported them to the Prefect,
with a request that they be immediately transmitted to the Minister of
Justice, in Brussels."
"But it seems utterly incredible," the girl declared. "As incredible as
the swarms of spies here in the town. To-day, one does not know enemy
from friend! But please tell your father that I will speak to him this
evening--if the wires are not cut. They are already cut to Maastricht,
Verviers, and Aix."
"Yes, do ring us up, m'sieur, and tell us what is happening," implored
the girl. "Tell me what the Eighth Chasseurs are doing, and where they
are. Will you, please? I have a friend in them--an officer."
"Certainly, Mademoiselle, I will do what I can, and--_Mon Dieu_!"
The voice broke off short.
"M'sieur! M'sieur Huart! Hello!--hello?" cried the girl in wonder and
apprehension.
There was no response, only a slight buzz. She replaced the receiver
upon the Instrument, and turned the handle quickly. Then she listened
again. All was silence.
"Hello! hello?" she called. "Hello, Liege! Hello, Liege!"
The wire was dead--cut, perhaps by a German shell!
Again and yet again she tried to obtain response to her call.
Their nearest exchange was that at Dinant.
"Hello, Dinant! _Dinant_!" she kept repeating. "_Hello, Dinant_!"
But from Dinant there was no reply.
Upon her the blow had fallen. Edmond, so manly and brave, was already
at the front--one of the first to go forth against the giant invader of
their gallant little nation. Those words from her father's employe in
Liege had conveyed volumes to her.
War was no longer an eventuality. It was a fact. Already the Kaiser
was hurling his legions of Pikelhauben westwards towards the sea. The
Teutons had burst their bonds, and Edmond's prophesy had, alas! proved
only to be true. The ambitious Kaiser meant war--war at all hazards and
at all costs, in order to retain his imperial crown, and in order to
justify, with his clamorous people, his title of the great War Lord of
the twentieth century and ruler of the world.
But there had been many War Lords in the world ages before him--Rameses,
Herod, Caesar, Attila, and Napoleon. After all, the Kaiser, surrounded
by his disgracefully degenerate camarilla, was but a pinchbeck edition
of Bonaparte; a monarch who, while holding the outstretched hand of
friendship to Great Britain, had been hourly plotting to conquer her.
The quintessence of treachery, the zenith of personal egotism existed,
with the wildest dreams of avarice, in the heart of that deformed
monarch, who was as warped in his brain as in his body. In his gaudy
tinsel, and in all his panoply of uniform, and his tin crosses which he
believed to be iron, he was but the pliable puppet of the degenerates of
Potsdam. He believed himself to be the Sword of God--as he had insanely
declared to his troops--and stood as the idol of the people of "kultur"
yet tottering upon his pedestal.
His fierce antagonism towards civilisation, as opposed to the Prussian
militarism, had been betrayed by his undying words, which would live in
history through the ages. The fierce War Lord, in his pitiable
arrogance, had actually incited his troops to murder and debauchery by
the words he had spoken--words that would be for ever registered against
him upon his downfall:
"When you meet the foe you will defeat him," he had said. "No quarter
will be given, no prisoners will be taken. Let all who fall into your
hands be at your mercy. Gain a reputation like the Huns under Attila."
That reputation was, apparently, what his hordes were achieving in the
burning of Vise and Argenteau. Attila, in his expedition across Greece,
reduced seventy of the finest cities to smoking ruins and shambles. He
was the black demon of ruin and destruction, and this modern
murder-Monarch of the Huns, if that report over the telephone be true,
was emulating the blood-guilty ruffian.
Pale and breathless, Aimee de Neuville rushed up the great staircase to
relate to her mother the appalling news that Germany had, at last, swept
down upon peaceful little Belgium with fire and sword.
The war-cloud had burst! The Kaiser, in his eagerness to plunge Europe
into blood, had not waited for Great Britain's reply. His lustful,
grey-coated hordes of braided Uhlans, infantry and artillery, with all
their endless streams of lumbering guns, heavy waggons, motor-cars, and
loaded motor-lorries, had crossed the frontier, and with the fierceness
of hell-hounds let loose, were already sweeping the valley of that
peaceful-flowing river which wound below the great Chateau de Severac.
War! _War_! WAR!
The girl, pale and excited, held her breath as she placed her thin,
trembling fingers upon the handle of the door of that room wherein her
mother sat in calm ignorance of the awful truth.
War! _War_! WAR!
And Edmond, the man whom she loved, the man whose last final kiss she
still felt upon her brow, had marched into Liege with his regiment, to
face the treacherous Germans, to fight for home and freedom, and to stem
the great oncoming Teuton tide.
Should she tell the Baroness the truth?
For a second the girl, pale with agitation, hesitated. The awfulness of
such sudden news might unnerve her. She had a weak heart.
No. She would conceal her knowledge of the awful fact.
She drew a deep breath and, opening the door, entered smiling, as she
exclaimed with a wonderfully careless and nonchalant air:
"Oh! the man only wants to talk to father on business, I told him he
would be here to-night to dinner."