At the Sign of the Sword: A Story of Love and War in Belgium

“Don’t alarm the women. But the situation outside is fearful.” He was a young doctor, and well known in Dinant. “About sixty workmen at the cotton-mill, together with our friend Himmer, the manager, have just been found in hiding under a culvert,” he added. “They have all been shot – everyone of them. The soldiers are using bombs to set fire to the houses everywhere. It is a raging furnace outside?”

“Dieu!” gasped the old man. “What shall we do?”

“Heaven help us! I do not know,” replied the young doctor. “I only just managed to escape with my life. I saw, only a minute or two ago, in the Place d’Armes, quite two hundred men and boys – old men of seventy-five and boys of twelve, many of whom I knew – drawn up, and then shot down by a machine-gun. Père Jules, our old friend, was among them – and surely he was fully eighty!”

“Holy Jesu! May God place His curse upon these Germans?” cried the old fellow fervently. “As surely as there is a God in heaven, so assuredly shall we be avenged by a Hand which is stronger and more relentless than the Kaiser’s in wreaking vengeance. What else do you know?” he inquired eagerly.

“Xavier Wasseige, manager of the Banque de la Meuse, has been shot, together with his two sons, and Camille Finette and his little boy of twelve have also been murdered. They are wiping out the whole, district of Saint Médart, between the station and the bridge. All is in flames. The soldiers are worse than African savages. The new post-office has been burnt and blown up. It is only a heap of ruins.”

Uncle François knit his grey brows, and gazed steadily into his nephew’s eyes.

“Look here! Are you lying, Pierre?” he asked. “Have you really seen all this?”

“Yes. I have seen it with my own eyes.”

“I don’t believe you,” declared the old man bluntly. “I will go out and see for myself what these German fiends are doing.”

“Oh! In the name of God, don’t!” cried his nephew in quick apprehension. “You will certainly be killed. The whole of the Rue Sax, along by the river-bank, is burning. Not a single house has escaped. They intend, it seems, to destroy all our town, on both sides of the river, now that they have repaired their pontoon. Think that we have lived in Dinant to witness this!”

“But what shall we do?” gasped the poor old fellow. “How can we save these poor women?” His words were overheard by Aimée, who rose quickly and came forward, asking:

“What has happened?” and, indicating the young man, she asked, “What has this gentleman been telling you?”

“Oh – well – nothing very important, Mademoiselle,” François answered with hesitation. “This is Doctor Pierre Fiévet, my nephew, and he has just brought me a message. There is no real danger, Mademoiselle,” he assured her. “Our splendid troops are still close by, and will drive the invaders out, as before. The brigand, Von Emmich, will meet his deserts before long, depend upon it, my dear Mademoiselle.”

The girl, thus assured, withdrew to allow the two men to continue their conversation, which she believed to be of a private character.

“Don’t alarm these women, Pierre,” whispered old François. “Poor creatures, they are suffering enough already,” “But what will you do? What can you do? At any moment they may burn down this place – and you will all be suffocated like rats in a hole.”

“And, surely, that will be a far better fate for the women, than if the soldiers seize them,” was the old man’s hard response. “I, and your cousin Marie, will die with them here – if it is necessary. I, for one, am not afraid to die. I have made my peace with God. I am too old and feeble to handle a rifle, but when I was young I was a soldier of Belgium. Our little country has shown the world that she can fight. If the great wave of Germany sweeps further upon us we must necessarily be crushed out of existence. But the Powers, France, England, and Russia, will see that our memory – our grave – is avenged. I still believe, Pierre, in our country, and in our good King Albert!”

“Forty men over at the brewery of Nicaise Frères, who were found in the cellars an hour ago, were brought out and shot,” the young man said. “But ah! mon oncle, you should have witnessed the scene in the Place d’Armes – how they placed our poor, innocent townspeople against the wall – ranging them in rows, under pretence that the German Colonel was to address them. A miserable spy, who spoke Walloon as fluently as I do myself, shouted that Colonel Beeger wished to speak to them, and to urge them to bow to the inevitable, and become German subjects. They were all attention, ready to listen, and little dreaming the awful fate in store for them. They never foresaw the German treachery until a little grey machine-gun at the corner, with the four men behind it, suddenly rattled out, and in a few moments the whole of them were wallowing in their own life-blood. Ah! it was fearful, cruel, inhuman —ghastly! And this is in our civilised age!”

“Pierre,” exclaimed the good-natured old fellow softly, so that the women in that dank Dantesque vault should not overhear. “Our God is the God of justice and of righteousness. These murderers may wreck and desecrate our churches; they may kill our dear devoted priests; they may ridicule our religion, yet the great God who watches over us will, most assuredly, grind in His mill the arrogant nation that has sought to crush the world beneath Prussian despotism. We may die to-day in our good cause, but the Kaiser to-morrow will be hurled down and die accursed by humanity, and damned to hell by his Creator!”

“True, our poor people are falling beneath German bullets – though they have committed no offence against the German nation – yet what can you do here? You seem to be caught in a trap. What shall you do with these women?”

“Heaven knows?” gasped the honest old fellow. “What can I do? What do you suggest?” and he wrung his hands.

At that moment a white-haired old man, nearly eighty years of age, staggered down the broken steps, shrieking:

“Ah! Let me die! Let me die! The brutes are shooting men and boys in the Place, and now the soldiers are here —to kill us all!”

A terrible panic ensued at those significant words. The women huddled together, shrieked and screamed, for there, sure enough, came down the stone steps a grey-coated German soldier in spiked canvas-covered helmet, shouting roughly some command in German, and carrying his gleaming bayonet fixed before him.

“You women must all come up out of here!” cried a stern voice in bad French, as several other soldiers followed the first who had descended, until a dozen stood in the cellar.

The poor frightened creatures shrieked, wailed, and prayed for protection.

But the brutal soldiers, led by a swaggering young lieutenant of the Brandenburg infantry, were obdurate and commenced to roughly ill-treat the women, and cuff them towards the steps.

Uncle François raised his voice in loud protest, but next second a shot rang sharply out, and he fell dead upon the stones, a bullet through his heart, while the brute who had shot him roughly kicked his body aside with a German oath.

Such an action cowed them all.

A silence fell – the grim, terrible silence of those caught in a death-trap, for the women were now held by the enemy, and they knew, alas! too well, what their fate would now be – either dishonour or death.

Chapter Fifteen.

Betrays the Traitor

The few moments that followed were indeed full of grim horror.

An old peasant woman, standing by Aimée, in her frenzy, spat at one of the German soldiers, whereupon he struck her in the breast with his bayonet, and, with a piercing shriek, the poor thing fell, her thin, bony hands clutching at the stones in her death agony.

“Come! no loitering!” shouted the young officer brutally, in French. “We must have you cellar-rats out above ground.” Then, catching sight of Aimée, he approached her, and spoke some words in German. She knew the language well, but did not reply, pretending that she did not understand.

At that moment there was a struggle on the stone stairway, which was narrow and winding, and his attention became diverted from her, whereupon the big, grey-coated infantryman, who had shot poor Uncle François, strode up to her and leered in her face.

She turned her head.

He placed his heavy hand upon her shoulder, saying, in his bad French:

“My girl, you are young and very pretty – to be sure?”

And then she saw, by his flushed face and bright eyes, that he had been drinking. The Germans drank up whatever they could loot – spirits, wine, beer, liqueurs, aperitifs – all the contents of the cafés.

The girl, though defenceless, drew herself up quickly, and replied in German, with the words:

“I see no reason why you should insult me?”

“Insult!” he laughed roughly. “Ah, you will see. We shall teach you rats, who live down here in holes, a lesson. Get along – and quickly.”

And he prodded her with his bayonet towards where the others, driven like sheep, were stumbling up the dark, slippery steps of the ancient vault.

She went forward without a murmur. The fate of the others was to be hers also.

Where was Edmond? If he were there he would certainly teach those brutes a severe lesson. But alas! he was not there. The Belgians had been driven out, and they, weak and defenceless, were held by a fierce relentless set of savages. The whole world was now learning the vanity of attempting to distinguish between the Germany of “culture” and the panoplied brutality of Prussian arrogance.

With the others, Aimée had ascended the steps and had gained the big ancient kitchen of the inn.

A number of the elder women had been pushed forward out into the street, where some screamed in sudden madness at seeing the bodies of men lying in the roadway. But Aimée, with half a dozen or so of the younger women, were detained by the officer, who had just given a sharp order to his men.

Suddenly the young elegant in command went outside, leaving the women to suffer the indignities of a dozen or so soldiers left to guard them. The big infantryman again approached Aimée, but the would speak no further word.

Suddenly, in the doorway, there appeared the figure of a major, at whose word the men quickly drew up to attention.

Aimée looked at him, scarce believing her own eyes.

Was she dreaming?

She stood staring at him. Though his uniform was strange, his face was only too familiar.

It was Arnaud Rigaux.

“M’sieur Rigaux! You!” she gasped. “You – a German!”

“Yes, Mademoiselle,” he laughed. “I have been searching everywhere for you. It is indeed fortunate that I am here in time. This, surely, is no place for you.”

“Searching for me?” she echoed. “How did you know I was here – in Dinant? And, tell me – why are you, a Belgian – wearing the Prussian uniform?”

Truly the meeting was a dramatic one.

He laughed lightly, replying hastily:

“My dear Aimée, I will explain all that later. Come. Get away with me, while there is yet time.” Then, whispering in her ear, he added: “These men are mostly drunk. Quick! Come with me, and I will place you in safety.”

“But I cannot understand,” the girl cried, still in hesitation. “Why are you here – with the enemy, and in the enemy’s uniform?”

“This is surely no time for questions or explanations,” he urged. And, turning to the soldiers, he gave an order to march the remaining women out of the house. “Let me save you, Aimée,” he added in French, turning to her.

“How? How can you save me?” she inquired, instinctively mistrusting him. The very fact that he was dressed as a German officer had aroused grave suspicion in her mind.

“I have my car in waiting, away beyond the German lines. Come with me. Don’t hesitate. Trust yourself in my care, I beg of you, Mademoiselle.”

“I want to get to my father,” she said, still hesitating.

“He is in Brussels. I will take you to him – on one condition,” and he placed his hand upon her arm and looked earnestly into her pale, agitated countenance.

“What condition?” she inquired, starting quickly at his touch. He made conditions, even in that hour of direst peril! Dinant was aflame, and hundreds of innocent people were now being murdered by the Kaiser’s Huns.

“The condition, Aimée,” he said, looking straight into her eyes very seriously, “is that you will become my wife.”

“Your wife, M’sieur Rigaux —never!”

“You refuse?” he cried, a brutal note in his hard voice. “You refuse, Mademoiselle,” he added threateningly – “and so you prefer to remain here, in the hands of the soldiery. They will have but little respect for the daughter of the Baron de Neuville, I assure you.”

She turned upon him fiercely, like a tigress, retorting:

“Those men, assassins as they have proved themselves to be, will have just as much respect for me as you yourself have – you, a traitor who, though a Belgian, are now wearing a Prussian uniform?”

The man laughed in her face, and she saw in his countenance a fierce, fiendish, even terrible expression such as she had never seen there before. Gradually it was beginning to dawn upon her that this man who could move backwards and forwards through the opposing lines, dressed as a German officer, must be a spy.

“Very well,” he said. “If you so desire, I will leave you to your fate – the wretched fate of those women who have just been driven out from here. The enemy has set his hand heavily upon you at last,” he laughed. “And you Belgians may expect neither pity nor respect.”

“Ah, then I know you?” she cried. “You are not Belgian – but German – you, who have posed so long as my father’s intimate friend – you, who thought to mislead us – who schemed to bring the enemy into our midst. Though you have uttered words of love to me, I see you now, exposed as a spy – as an enemy – as one who should be tried and shot as a traitor?”

She did not spare her words in the mad frenzy of the moment.

“You speak harshly,” he growled. “If you do not have a care, you shall pay for this?”

“I will. I would rather die here now, than become the wife of a low, cunning spy, who has posed as one of ourselves while he has been in secret relation with the enemy all the time. I hate you, Arnaud Rigaux —I hate you!” shrieked the girl. “Do your worst to me! The worst cannot be worse than death – and even that I prefer, to further association with one who wears the Prussian uniform, and who is leading the enemy into our country. Your cultured friends have burned and sacked Sévérac. Let them sack the whole of Belgium if they will, but our men have still the spirit to defend themselves, just as I have to-day. I defy you, clever, cunning spy that you are. Hear me?” she cried, her white teeth set, her head low upon her shoulders, and her hands clenched as she stood before him, half crouched as a hunted animal ready to spring. “You men who make war upon women may try and crush us, but you will never crush me. Go, and escape in your car if you will. Pass through the Belgian lines back to Brussels. But, though only a defenceless girl, I am safer even in the hands of this barbarian enemy than in the hands of a traitor like you?”

“Very well, girl – choose your own fate,” laughed the man roughly. “You refuse to go with me – eh?”

“Yes,” she said. “I refuse. I hate the sight of your treacherous face. Already I have told my father so.”

“Your father is no longer a person to be regarded,” the man declared. “He is already ruined financially. I have seen to that, never fear. You are no longer the daughter of Baron de Neuville, but the daughter of a man whom this war has brought to ruin and to bankruptcy. It should be an honour to you, daughter of a ruined man, that I should offer you marriage.”

“I am engaged to marry Edmond Valentin,” she replied.

“Bah! a mere soldier. If he is not already dead he soon will be. Germany flicks away the Belgian army like so many grains of sawdust before the wind.”

“No. Edmond is honest and just. He will live,” she cried. “And you, the spy and traitor, will die an ignoble death!”

“Well,” he laughed defiantly. “We shall see all about that, Mademoiselle. We have been long preparing for this coup– for the destruction of your snug little kingdom, and now we are here we shall follow Bismarck’s plan, and not leave your country even their eyes to weep with. It will be swept from end to end – and swept still again and again, until it is Belgian no longer, but German – part of the world-empire of our great Kaiser.”

The fellow did not further disguise that he was a German agent – he who had posed as a patriotic Belgian, was there in Dinant, dressed in Prussian uniform.

The trembling girl stood amazed. The ghastly truth was, to her, one horrible, awful nightmare.

“Your great Kaiser, as you call him, does not intimidate me,” she replied boldly. “Go, Arnaud Rigaux, and leave me to my fate, whatever you decide it to be. I will never accept the friendly offices of a man who is a traitor and a spy.”

Rigaux bit his lip. Those were the hardest words that had ever been spoken to him. He had been on a mission into the German lines, and only by pure chance had he recognised her with Valentin, standing in the Place on the previous night.

His cunning brain was already working out a swift yet subtle revenge. Aimée had attracted him, and he had marked her down as his victim by fair means or by foul. But her defiance had now upset all his calculations. To his surprise she preferred death itself, to the renunciation of her vow to Edmond Valentin.

He hesitated. He held her in his relentless hands. That she knew. Death was to be her fate, and she stood, with pale face, bold and defiant – prepared to meet it.

Chapter Sixteen.

The Fire of Fate

Outside in the streets could be heard the sound of rifle-fire, while the air was filled with the pungent odour of powder, and of burning wood.

The whole town had, by that time, become a veritable hell. Not far along the street, indeed in sight of the Hotel of the Sword, forty or so innocent men – honest workers at a neighbouring factory – had been drawn up against a wall. The front row was ordered to kneel, with their hands up, the others remaining standing behind them. A platoon of soldiers suddenly drew up in face of these unhappy men, with their rifles ready. In vain did the frantic women beg for mercy for their sons, husbands, and brothers. But the officer, grinning, ordered his men to fire. Some fell forward, dead, others were only slightly wounded. But the soldiers, to make sure, fired three volleys into that heap of men in their death throes. Such fell, hellish work had been ordered “as examples” by the glittering War Lord – the man who declared that God was his guide in his arrogant desire to rule the world. Those poor fellows were, even while their bodies were still warm, thrown into a pit dug in a neighbouring garden.

Further up the same street, a poor old paralytic was shot in his invalid-chair, together with a bright little boy of twelve, and their bodies were kicked aside into a doorway, while, at the same time, a man of sixty-five, his wife, his son and his daughter, were set up against the wall of their burning house and shot. And none of them had committed any crime!

Here and there were loud explosions. The soldiers, who had pillaged the cafés and drunk indiscriminately all they could find, were blowing open the safes of merchants and shopkeepers with dynamite, and stealing all they could discover. They were mere brigands.

The Faubourg de Leffe, near the broken viaduct of the railway, was already in flames. Soldiers were using their inflammable confetti provided them by the Fatherland, which they were sprinkling everywhere, for the monster in command had given the order that Dinant, after being sacked, and its people massacred, should be burnt.

As the slim, pale-faced girl stood facing her father’s false friend, she could hear the wild shrieks of the defenceless women outside – those poor creatures dragged forth to witness the heartless murder of those dearest to them.

“Well,” Rigaux asked again, with an evil grin upon his face. “So you are quite decided – eh?”

“I am quite decided, m’sieur, that you are my bitterest enemy,” was her hard, defiant answer. “I have been caught here, helpless. But I have no hope, therefore I have no fear. To whatever fate you, as spy of the accursed Kaiser of Germany, may condemn me, I am quite prepared.”

For a few seconds he remained silent. Her coolness and bold defiance, in face of that awful scene, absolutely staggered him. He never credited her with such nerve.

“But will you not accept my offer, and escape with me?”

“No. I will not accept the assistance of one who has openly confessed himself to be a traitor,” she responded.

“But you cannot remain here – you will be killed – perhaps even meet with a worse fate. You do not know what awful scenes are in progress in Dinant at this moment,” he said. “The soldiers are collecting up the people, men, women, and children, and mowing them down with their machine-guns. You cannot remain here while this awful work of destruction, theft, and incendiarism is in progress!”

“And whose work, pray, is this? It is men such as you who are responsible – men who have sold Belgium into her enemy’s hands,” she cried bitterly, her big eyes glaring at him in her woman’s undisguised hatred.

“Merely the fortunes of war, Mademoiselle,” he replied with a smile, as he shrugged his shoulders, quite unperturbed by her violent denunciation.

“Then go, and leave me to face this terrible fate to which I have been consigned. Shoot me with that revolver I see you have in your belt,” she cried wildly. “Shoot me, if you will. I am quite ready.”

But he grinned horribly in her face – the grin of a man who intended a demoniacal revenge.

She knew herself to be defenceless – utterly helpless in his hands. Men and women of Dinant, known to her from childhood, lay stiffening in death in that narrow street wherein hell had been let loose by the orders of the arrogant War Lord – that pinchbeck Napoleon who dangled his tin crosses before his troops to incite them to deeds of barbarism, which were afterwards magnified and distorted into those of valour.

“No,” the man laughed. “If you, as daughter of the Baron de Neuville, still disregard my well-meant efforts to rescue you from this awful abyss of dishonour and death, then I have no more to say. I can only leave you to the same fate as that of the women of the town.”

“No!” shrieked the girl. “Shoot me.” And she stood before him ready to fall beneath the bullet of his revolver. “Shoot me – have mercy upon me and shoot me!”

She felt his hot, foetid breath once again upon her cheek; she heard the report of the rifles outside, the loud, piercing shrieks of defenceless women, the exultant shouts and laughter of the Germans, and the rapid crackling of a machine-gun in the immediate vicinity.

She struggled violently to free herself, but he was the stronger. His sensuous lips were upon hers, his big eyes looked fiercely into hers, while her slim figure was held within his strong, desperate grasp. She saw the evil, wicked look in his eyes.

“Let me go, you brute – you spy of Germany!” she shrieked in French. “Let me go, I say!”

“No, no,” he laughed in triumph. “You are mine —mine! I have brought ruin upon your miserable little country, upon your father, upon your fine château, and now, because you still defy me – I bring it upon you!”

“Bien! And what do you intend?” she asked.

“I intend to take you out yonder, into the street, and to hand you over to the tender mercies of those most unpolite troops of Germany – the Bavarians. There are three thousand in the town, and they are having a really reckless time – I can assure you.”

“You hell-scoundrel!” cried the poor girl in her frantic, almost insane terror. “You – you who have sat at our table and eaten with us – you, whom my father has trusted, and to whom my mother has sent presents at Noël. Ah! I now see you unmasked, yet you – ”

“Enough!” cried the fellow, springing upon her and putting his thick, loose lips to hers. “A last kiss, and then you go to the late which every Belgian woman goes to-day where our Kaiser and his troops are victorious,” and he kissed her though she still struggled fiercely to evade his grasp.