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, Aimee, 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 Melanie, 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 chateau, 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."
Aimee dashed from her pretty chintz-hung room, across to a spare room at
the rear of the chateau, 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-a-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 Aimee 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 chateau. 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 Aimee, 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 Aimee 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 Aimee, 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 chateau, 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 Aimee, 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 Melanie, 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?"