Louis Tracy

“ You have no soldiers, they tell us, and their fleet is nearly as strong as yours. They think they have caught you napping, and that is why they are coming through Belgium. Paris first, then the coast, and they’ve got you. For the love of Heaven, monsieur, is it true that you have no army?”
Dalroy was stung into putting Britain’s case in the best possible light. “Not only have we an army, every man of which is worth three Germans at a fair estimate; but if England has come into this war she will not cease fighting until Prussia grovels in the mud at her feet. ”

“ The present Emperor has welded his people into one tremendous machine, partly by playing upon their vanity, partly by banging the German drum during his travels, but mainly by dangling before their eyes the reward that men have always found irresistible—the spoliation of other lands, the prospect of sudden enrichment. Every soldier marching past this house at the present moment hopes to rob Belgium and France. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During five long minutes Dalroy reviewed the situation. Probably he would be executed as a spy. At best, he could not avoid internment in a fortress till the end of the war. He preferred to die in a struggle for life and liberty. Men had escaped in conditions quite as desperate. Why not he? The surge of impotent anger subsided in his veins, and he took thought.
Outside the open door stood the sentry, holding his rifle, with fixed bayonet, in the attitude of a sportsman who expects a covey of partridges to rise from the stubble. A window of plain glass gave on to the platform. ”

“ When “the thunder of the captains and the shouting” is stilled, when time has healed the wounds of victor and vanquished, the memories of Visé, of Louvain, of Aershot, of nearly every town and hamlet in Belgium and Northern France once occupied by the savages from beyond the Rhine, will remain imperishable in their horror. German Kultur was a highly polished veneer. Exposed to the hot blast of war it peeled and shrivelled, leaving bare a diseased, worm-eaten structure, in which the honest fibre of humanity had been rotted by vile influences, both social and political. ”

“ Where are our friends? Is there a path? Can you guide me?”
“Take my hand,” she replied. “We turn by a big tree in the corner. I think Jan Maertz followed me a little way when he saw I was determined to go back.”
“I suppose I had unconscious faith in you, Irene,” he whispered, “and that is why I cried your name. But no more talking now. Rapid, silent movement alone can save us.”
They had not gone twenty yards beneath the trees when some one hissed, “Visé!”
“Liège, you lump!” retorted Dalroy. ”

“ Somehow, Dalroy knew that Irene would not free the hand which was now closing on her mouth. The two Walloons carried short forks with four prongs—Joos had taken to heart the Englishman’s comment on the disadvantage of a pitchfork for close fighting—and Jan Maertz might be trusted to deal with the ruffian who was nearly strangling Léontine. There remained the gallant lieutenant whose sense of humour permitted the belief that the best way to force onward a terrified elderly woman was to plant a knee against the small of her back. ”

“ 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 armies of the Fatherland are ordered to practise “frightfulness,” and so terrorise the civil population that the inhabitants of the stricken country will compel their rulers to sue for peace on any terms. But woe to that same civil population if some small section of its members resists or avenges any act of “frightfulness.” Soldiers might murder the Widow Jaquinot and ravish her granddaughter, officers might plan a bestial orgy in the miller’s house; but Dalroy and Joos and Maertz, in punishing the one set of crimes and preventing another, had placed themselves outside the law. ”

“ Von Halwig stooped, and placed the torch on the broken ladder. Its radiance illumined an oval of the rough, square stones with which the barn was paved. Thenceforth, the vivid glare remained stationary. The two men, facing each other at a distance of about six feet, were in shadow. They could see each other quite well, however, in the dim borrowed light, and the Guardsman flicked the ash from his cigarette.
“You’re English, I’m German,” he said. “We represent the positive and negative poles of thought. If it hurts your feelings that I should speak of Lady Irene, let’s forget her. ”

“ Dalroy did not attempt to stop him. These men must die. They had come to the mill to destroy; it was just retribution that they themselves should be destroyed. His coolness in this crisis was not the least important factor in a situation rife with peril. His method of attack had converted a fight against heavy odds into a speedy and most effectual slaughter. But that was only the beginning. Even while the frenzied yelling of the squirming Busch was subsiding into a frothy gurgle he went to the door and listened. ”

“ The warring tiger does not move slowly. Half-a-minute after his would-be captor had crashed headlong to the hard cobbles of Aix-la-Chapelle, Dalroy was creeping between two wagons, completing a hasty toilet by tearing off collar and tie, and smearing his face and hands with oil and grease from lamp and cap. Even as he went he heard a window of the waiting-room being flung open, and the excited cries which announced the discovery of a half-naked body lying beneath in the gloom. ”

“ In fact, barely half-a-mile to the right of the wood, a battery of four 5.9’s was posted on high ground, in the hope that the Belgian guns of smaller calibre might be located and crushed at once. Even while the two stood looking down into the valley, a sputtering rifle-fire broke out across the river, three hundred yards wide at the bridge, and the volume of musketry steadily increased. Men, horses, wagons, and motors swarmed on the roadway or sheltered behind warehouses on the quays.
As a soldier, Dalroy was amazed at the speed and annihilating completeness of the German mobilisation. ”

“ Irene Beresford’s Hanoverian German was perfect, so Dalroy did not air his less accurate accent, and the presence of the sentry was helpful at this crisis. Though sharp-eyed and rabbit-eared, the man was quite civil.
At last the Prussian officers returned. He who had been chatty overnight was now brusque, even overbearing. “You have no right here!” he vociferated at Dalroy. “Why should a damned Englishman travel with Germans? Your country is perfidious as ever. How do I know that you are not a spy?” ”

“ The landing of Sir John French’s force took place exactly at the time and place and in the numbers Dalroy himself had estimated. To throw a small army into Flanders would have been folly. Obviously, the British must join hands with the French before offering battle. For the rest—though he went out very little, and alone, as being less risky—he recognised the hour when the German machine recovered its momentum after the first unexpected collapse. He saw order replace chaos. He watched the dragon crawling ever onward, and understood then that no act of man could save Belgium. ”

“ The Intelligence Department had assimilated all the information Dalroy could give, had found it good, and had complimented him. As a Bengal Lancer, whose regiment was presumably in India, he would probably be attached to some cavalry unit of the Expeditionary Force; from being an hunted outlaw, with a price on his head, he would be quietly absorbed by the military machine. Very smart he looked in his khaki and brown leather; Irene, who one short week earlier deemed sabots en cuir the height of luxury, was dressed de rigueur for luncheon at the Savoy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You don’t begin to estimate the peculiarities of the German character. We Belgians, living, so to speak, within arm’s-length of Germany, have long seen the danger, and feared it. Every German is taught that the world is his for the taking. Every German is encouraged in the belief that the national virtue of organised effort is the one and only means of commanding success. ”

“ Maertz, too, jubilant in the certainty that the Belgian outposts were hardly six miles distant, advocated the bold policy of a daylight march. Still, there was no excuse for Dalroy, who knew that patrols in an enemy’s country are content to stand fast by night, and scout during the day. Unluckily, Irene was eager as their Belgian friend to rush the last stage. She was infected by the prevalent spirit of the people. Throughout the whole of September these valiant folk in the real Flanders held the Germans rather cheap. ”

“ 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. ”

“ CHAPTER IX AN EXPOSITION OF GERMAN METHODS Three large and powerful automobiles stood at rest in the tiny square of Argenteau. Nearly every little town in Belgium and France possesses its place, the hub of social and business life, the centre where roads converge and markets are held. In the roadway, near the cars, were several officers, deep in conversation.
“Look,” murmured Irene to Dalroy, “the high-shouldered, broadly-built man, facing this way, is General von Emmich!” ”

“ By this time Dalroy was acquainted with the name of the German commander-in-chief. He found a fleeting interest in watching him now, while Joos and the others loitered irresolutely on the pavement outside the improvised office of the Kommandantur.
Though the moon was high and clear, there was no other light, and the diffused brilliance of the “orbèd maiden, with white fire laden,” is not favourable to close observation. But Von Emmich’s bearing and gestures were significant. ”

“ But Dalroy was an eminently sane person. Two hours of clear thinking in the train re-established his poise. When the Lieutenant-Commander in charge of the destroyer took him below in mid-Channel for a smoke and a drink, and the talk turned on strategy, the soldier dispelled an alluring mirage with a breath of common sense.
“The scheme is nothing short of rank lunacy,” he said. “We haven’t the men, France can spare none of hers, and Belgium must be crushed when the big battalions meet. Germany has at least three millions in the field already. Paris has been saved by a miracle. ”

“ He’s just the sort of chap who will worship Irene all his life, and he has in him the makings of a future commander-in-chief, or I’m a Dutchman!”
As his lordship is certainly not a Dutchman, but unmistakably English, aristocratic, and county, it is permissible to hope that his prophecy may be fulfilled. Let us hope, too, if Dalroy ever leads the armed manhood of Britain, it will be a cohort formed to render aggressive war impossible. That, at least, is no idle dream. It should be the sure and only outcome of the world’s greatest agony. ”

“ His perfect command of English was not proof against the guttural clank and crash of German. He became a veritable German talking English, rather than an accomplished linguist using a foreign tongue. Oddly enough, his next tirade showed that he was half-aware of the change. “Old England is done, Captain Dalroy,” he chanted. “Young Germany is about to take her place. The world must learn to speak German, not English. ”

“ That cry of despair, so subdued yet piercing in its intensity, reached Arthur Dalroy as he pressed close on the heels of an all-powerful escort in Lieutenant Karl von Halwig, of the Prussian Imperial Guard, at the ticket-barrier of the Friedrich Strasse Station on the night of Monday, 3rd August 1914.
An officer’s uniform is a passe-partout in Germany; the showy uniform of the Imperial Guard adds awe to authority. ”

“ I belong to an irresistible army. War steadies a man. But when we reach Oombergen you will be paraded before a crusty old General, and even I, Von Halwig of the staff, and a friend of the Emperor, may not converse with a spy and a murderer. ”

“ To Dalroy’s great relief, the incoming tram from Zeebrugge brought the British hospital. There were four doctors, eight nurses, and fifty-three wounded men, including a sergeant and ten privates of the Gordon Highlanders, who, like Bates, Smithy, and the rest, had scrambled across Belgium after Mons.
The train offered an extraordinary spectacle. Soldiers and civilians were packed in it and on it. Men and women sat precariously on the roofs of the ramshackle carriages, stood on the buffers and couplings, or clung to door-handles. ”