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

From Antwerp Aimée was able to communicate with both her mother and father, and a fortnight after her arrival there she received, with intense satisfaction, the joyful news that they had both met at Ostend, and had gone to London, Brussels being, of course, in the hands of the enemy.

The Baroness wrote several times, urging her daughter to come to London – to the Langham Hotel, where they had taken up their temporary quarters – but the girl replied that she would not leave Edmond’s side, she having volunteered as a Red Cross nurse at the St. Elizabeth Hospital.

For over a month Edmond Valentin, eager to return to the front and to still bear his part in the fighting, lay in his narrow bed in the long ward now filled to overflowing with wounded. His shoulder had been shattered, and more than one medical consultation had been held regarding it.

Aimée, in her neat uniform as nurse, with the big scarlet cross upon the breast of her white apron, had learned the sad truth – that, in all probability, Edmond might never be able to use his right arm again, though no one had told him the painful fact.

As he lay there he was ever dreaming of going back to again work that innocent-looking little machine-gun of his, which had sent to their deaths so many of the Huns of the Kaiser.

The bitter truth was, however, told to him one day. The enemy, under General von Bäseler, were advancing upon Antwerp. They had destroyed Malines, and were almost at the gates of Belgium’s principal port. It was the third day in October, and British troops had now arrived to assist in the defence of Antwerp. All the wounded who could walk were ordered to leave.

And so it happened that Edmond Valentin, accompanied by Aimée, resolved at last to escape to London, where the girl could rejoin her parents.

With a huge crowd of refugees of all classes, the pair, ever faithful to each other – yet, be it said, greatly to Edmond’s regret – crossed one grey wintry afternoon to Dover, where, on the pier, the pair woe met by the Baron and Baroness, and carried with delight to that haven of the stricken – that sanctuary of the war – London.

The gallant conduct of the Sous-officier of Belgian Chasseurs, in a shabby blue military great-coat, worn and torn, and with the right arm bandaged across his chest, had reached England through the Press long before. In the papers there had been brief accounts of his fearless penetration into the enemy’s lines, and the gallant rescue of the woman he so dearly loved. King Albert had bestowed upon him the Cross of the Order of Leopold, and his photograph – together with that of Aimée – had been published in many of the newspapers.

Little wonder was it, therefore, that a little over a month later – on that well-remembered day in November when the British monitors from the sea assisted the Belgians and our own troops in the splendid defence of the Straits of Dover – newspaper reporters and photographers stood so eagerly upon that long flight of stone steps which lead up to the entrance of St. Martin’s Church, in Trafalgar Square, where a wedding of Belgian refugees was to take place.

The happy couple emerged from the church at last man and wife, and Edmond Valentin, still in his shabby dark-blue great-coat, and with his arm bandaged, did not escape the ubiquitous photographers any more than did Aimée de Neuville – now little Madame Valentin.

But both were modest in the happy dénouement of the great human drama, preferring to remain blissful in each other’s love, rather than to court any further publicity.

True, most of the newspapers next day, – and especially the illustrated ones, – reported that the wedding had taken place, but there was only the vaguest hint of the real and actual romance which I have – perhaps somewhat indiscreetly – attempted to describe in the foregoing pages – the romance of those terribly dramatic happenings at the Sign of the Sword.

The End