The Day of Wrath Part 19

Irene, who saw all that had pa.s.sed with an extraordinary vividness, was the only one who understood why the order which undoubtedly saved five lives was given. A stout staff officer, wearing a blue uniform with red facings, rode with the Uhlans, and she was certain that he was in a state of abject terror. His funk was probably explained by an irregular volley lower down the street, though, in the event, the shooting proved to be that of his own men. Two miles away, at Solayn, these same Uhlans had been badly bitten by a Belgian patrol, and the fat man, prospecting the Namur road with a cavalry escort, wanted no more unpleasant surprises that evening. Ostensibly, of course, he was anxious to report to a brigade headquarters at Huy. At any rate, the Uhlans swept on.

They were gone when Dalroy regained his feet. A riderless horse was clattering after them; another with a broken leg was vainly trying to rise. Close at hand lay two Uhlans, one dead and one insensible. Joos and Leontine were bending over the dying woman in the cart, making frantic efforts to stanch the blood welling forth from mouth and breast.

The lance had pierced her lungs, but she was conscious for a minute or so, and actually smiled the farewell she could not utter.

Maertz was swearing horribly, with the incoherence of a man just aroused from drunken sleep. Irene moved a few steps to meet Dalroy. Her face was marble white, her eyes strangely dilated.

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

"No. And you?"

"Untouched, thanks to you. But those brutes have killed poor Madame Joos!"

The wounded Uhlan was stretched between them. He stirred convulsively, and groaned. Dalroy looked at the sword which he still held. He resisted a great temptation, and sprang over the prostrate body. He was about to say something when a ghastly object staggered past. It was the man who received the sabre-cut, which had gashed his shoulder deeply.

"_Oh, mon Dieu!_" he screamed. "_Oh, mon Dieu!_"

He may have been making for some burrow. They never knew. He wailed that frenzied appeal as he shambled on--always the same words. He could think of nothing else but the last cry of despairing humanity to the All-Powerful.

Owing to the flight of the cavalry, Dalroy imagined that some body of allied troops, Belgian or French, was advancing from Namur, so he did not obey his first impulse, which was to enter the nearest house and endeavour to get away through the gardens or other enclosures in rear.

He glanced at the hapless body on the cart, and saw by the eyes that life had departed. Leontine was sobbing pitifully. Maertz, having recovered his senses, was striving to calm her. But Joos remained silent; he held his wife's limp hand, and it was as though he awaited some rea.s.suring clasp which should tell him that she still lived.

Dalroy had no words to console the bereaved old man. He turned aside, and a mist obscured his vision for a little while. Then he heard the wounded German hiccoughing, and he looked again at the sword, because this was the a.s.sa.s.sin who had foully murdered a gentle, kind-hearted, and inoffensive woman. But he could not demean himself by becoming an executioner. Richly as the criminal deserved to be sent with his victim to the bar of Eternal Justice, the Englishman decided to leave him to the avengers coming through the town.

The shooting drew nearer. A number of women and children, with a few men, appeared. They were running and screaming. The first batch fled past; but an elderly dame, spent with even a brief flurry, halted for a few seconds when she saw the group near the dog-team.

"Henri Joos!" she gasped. "And Leontine! What, in Heaven's name, are you doing here?"

It was Madame Stauwaert, the Andenne cousin with whom they hoped to find sanctuary.

The miller gazed at her in a curiously abstracted way. "Is that you, Margot?" he said. "We were coming to you. But they have wounded Lise.

See! Here she is!"

Madame Stauwaert looked at the corpse as though she did not understand at first. Then she burst out hysterically, "She's dead, Henri! They've killed her! They're killing all of us! They pulled Alphonse out of the house and stabbed him with a bayonet. They're firing through the openings into the cellars and into the ground-floor rooms of every house. If they see a face at a bedroom window they shoot. Two Germans, so drunk that they could hardly stand, shot at me as I ran. Ah, dear G.o.d!"

She swayed and sank in a faint. The flying crowd increased in numbers.

Some one shouted, "Fools! Be off, for your lives! Make for the quarries."

Dalroy decided to take this unknown friend's advice. The terrified people of Andenne had, at least, some definite goal in view, whereas he had none. He lifted Madame Stauwaert and placed her beside the dead body on the cart.

"Come," he said to Maertz, "get the dogs into a trot.--Leontine, look after your father, and don't lose sight of us!"

He grasped Irene by the arm. The tiny vehicle was flat and narrow, and he was so intent on preventing the unconscious woman from falling off into the road that he did not miss Joos and his daughter until Irene called on Maertz to stop. "Where are the others?" she cried. "We must not desert them."

In the midst of a scattered mob came the laggards. Joos was not hurrying at all. He was smiling horribly. In his hand he held a large pocket-knife open. "It was all I had," he explained calmly. "But Margot said Lise was dead, so it did his business."

"I'm glad," said Dalroy. "It was your privilege. But you must run now, for Leontine's sake, as she will not leave you, and the Germans may be on us at any moment."

Luckily, the stream of people swerved into a by-road; the "quarries"

of which some man had spoken opened up in the hillside close at hand.

On top were woods, and a cart-track led that way at a sharp gradient.

Dalroy a.s.sisted the dogs by pus.h.i.+ng the cart, and they reached the summit. Pausing there, while Irene and the weeping Leontine endeavoured to revive Madame Stauwaert, to whom they must look for some sort of guidance as to their next move, he went to the lip of the excavation, and surveyed the scene.

Dusk was creeping over the picturesque valley, but the light still sufficed to reveal distances. The railway station, with all the houses in the vicinity, was on fire. Nearly every dwelling along the Namur road was ablaze; while the trim little farms which rise, one above the other, on the terraced heights of the right bank of the Meuse seemed to have burst into flame spontaneously. Seilles, too, on the opposite bank, was undergoing the same process of wanton destruction; but, a puzzling thing, rifles and machine-guns were busy on both sides of the river, and the flashes showed that a sharp engagement was taking place.

A man, carrying a child in his arms, who had come with them, was standing at Dalroy's elbow. He appeared self-possessed enough, so the Englishman sought information.

"Are those Belgian troops in Seilles?" he inquired.

The man snorted. "Belgians? No! They retreated to Namur this morning.

That is a Bavarian regiment shooting at Brandenburgers in Andenne. They are all mad drunk, officers and men. They've been here since eleven o'clock, first Uhlans, then infantry. The burgomaster met them fairly, not a shot was fired, and we thought we were over the worst. Then, as you see, h.e.l.l broke loose!"

Such was the refuge Andenne provided on Monday, 20th August. h.e.l.l--by order!

CHAPTER XI

A TRAMP ACROSS BELGIUM

The stranger, a Monsieur Jules Pochard, proved a most useful friend. In the first instance, he was a cool-headed person, who did not allow imagination to run riot. "No," he said, when questioned as to the chance of reaching Namur by a forced march along country lanes, "every road in that section of the province is closed by cavalry patrols. You cannot avoid them, monsieur. Come with me to Huy, and you'll be reasonably safe."

"Why safer in Huy than here, or anywhere else where these brutes may be?"

"Huy has been occupied by the Germans since the 12th, and is their temporary headquarters. From what I gather, they usually spare such towns. That is why we never dreamed of Andenne being sacked."

Dalroy remembered the aged cure's exposition of _Kultur_ as a policy.

"Is this sort of thing going on generally, then?" he asked.

Monsieur Pochard was a Frenchman. He raised his eyebrows. "Where can you have been, monsieur, not to know what has happened at Liege, Vise, Flemelle Grande, Blagny Trembleur, and a score of other places?"

"Vise!" broke in the cracked, piping voice of Joos. "What's that about Vise?"

"It is burnt to the ground, and nearly all the inhabitants killed."

"Is anything said of a fat major named Busch, whom Henri Joos the miller stuck with a fork?"

"A Prussian, do you mean?"

"Ay. One of the same breed--a Westphalian."

"I haven't heard."

"He tried to a.s.sault my daughter, so I got him. The second one, a Uhlan, killed my wife, and I got _him_ too. I cut his throat down there in the main street. It's easy to kill Germans. They're soft, like pigs."

Though Joos's half-demented boasting was highly injudicious, Dalroy did not interfere. He was in a mood to let matters drift. They could not well be worse. He had tried to control the course of events in so far as they affected his own and Irene Beresford's fortunes, but had failed lamentably. Now, fate must take charge.