They took cover in an orchard and, pulling down the hedges frantically, soon saw, descending from the hill on their right, the batteries and remains of their own much-tested regiments.
Stretchers were taken up to the woods on the left, and soon came down again with the wounded. Edmond"s "Flying Column" was protecting the transport of these "braves," but an order was shouted that they had to withdraw away up on to the plateaux. Then they rushed to the fort of Flemalle, where they took up fighting positions. But the Germans did not want to make another attempt. The mission of the Eighth Cha.s.seurs was over. Three hours later they moved forward again. The forts would now defend their position in the campaigning army.
Such was a typical night of the defence of Liege.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
THE DOUBLE FACE.
At the Chateau de Severac the hot, fevered days were pa.s.sing but slowly.
Aimee and the Baroness were still there, and now they had been joined by the Baron, who had in Brussels been a.s.sured that the enemy would respect the houses of the rich, and that at his splendid home, perched high on that rock above the Meuse, they would have nothing to fear. Rigaux, indeed, had declared to his friend that at the chateau they would be far safer than in any of the towns, which might be invested or bombarded-- safer even than in Brussels itself.
Hence they had remained there, full of hourly anxiety as to what really would be the outcome of it all.
The Baron de Neuville had suggested that his wife and Aimee should flee to England. But while Aimee felt that so long as she remained in Belgium she might at least have a chance of seeing Edmond very soon, the Baroness, on her part, refused to leave her husband"s side, while he, in his responsible position as financial adviser to the Government, could not leave Belgium.
From time to time they received sc.r.a.ps of terrifying news over the telephone from Brussels. Aimee, indeed, each hour rang up her father"s secretary in Brussels, and listened to the latest news from the scene of the fighting.
But, alas! it was a tale of repeated disaster, until she became sick at heart. Of the whereabouts of the Eighth Cha.s.seurs she could glean nothing. She had heard nothing whatsoever of them since they pa.s.sed through Liege on their way to the front. For aught she knew, they might have shared the same fate as that of other regiments, or been swept out of existence by the terrible fire of the enemy"s machine-guns.
Often she would step out upon the balcony which led from her own room and gave such a wonderful panorama of river and woods, and there she would listen attentively.
Sometimes she fancied she could hear the far-distant booming of the guns. And yet the world about her, warm and sunlit, without a cloud in the brilliant summer sky, seemed so very peaceful. The birds sang merrily, and the peasants, undisturbed after the first days of war, were now garnering in the yellow corn.
The first panic of war had pa.s.sed, and the dull-eyed Walloons, who composed the major part of the population in that district, clattered along in their wooden sabots and declared that the enemy were going straight on towards Brussels. They would never come near them.
They were unaware as yet of the frightful deeds being done beyond Liege in those warm summer days, acts of merciless savagery and every refinement of cruelty which degenerate minds, filled with the blood-l.u.s.t of war, could conceive. They knew not of the dastardly practice, made by the Kaiser"s "cultured" troops, of placing before them innocent women and children to act as a living screen, in the hope that the Allies would not, from motives of humanity, fire upon them.
The whole world was being thrilled and shocked by the unspeakable acts of these blonde beasts who, at the behest of their arrogant Kaiser, had simply become hordes of savages, and whose atrocious acts could only be compared with those of the troops of African wilds. But in Belgium little was known of it all, save in the devastated villages themselves, and by Monsieur Carton de Wiart, the Minister of Justice in Brussels, who was preparing an official report to present to the Powers.
The hideous atrocities perpetrated during that b.l.o.o.d.y fortnight, from August 6th to the 20th, during which the country north of Liege was being swept by fire and sword, were being hidden from the gallant little nation.
In the great high-up Chateau de Severac they only knew of them by rumour, and whenever Aimee told what she had heard over the telephone to her father sitting there so grave and morose, he always shook his head and declared that they were only wild rumours.
"The German soldiers are civilised. They do not shoot women, my dear girl," he would always declare. The true stories of the Kaiser"s "frightful examples"--which his b.l.o.o.d.y Majesty himself admitted--had not yet been told. The Baron and his family did not know how, at Aerschot, the male inhabitants who crossed their thresholds were seized and shot under the eyes of their wives and children; how poor Monsieur Thielemans, the Burgomaster, and his fifteen-year-old son, with a dozen prominent citizens, were set up against a wall and shot, and their bodies cast unceremoniously into a hole. They knew not how young girls, and even little children, had been raped at Orsmael; how wounded Belgian soldiers were tied to telegraph poles and shot; how, constantly, Red Cross waggons bearing doctors and wounded were deliberately fired upon; or how these Teuton apostles of "kultur" had actually mounted machine-guns in their own Red Cross vans and fired at the unsuspecting!
Of the awful scenes in St Trond, Velm, and Haelen, rumour only gave the faintest outline, which was dismissed as imaginary and without foundation.
Alas! however, it was the bitter and terrible truth. Abominable deeds were committed not only in those places, but at Sempst men had their arms and hands cut off; at Corbeek Loo women and girls were bayoneted; at Seraing the blood-guilty ruffians ma.s.sacred several hundred people, and in more than one village terrified women were made to pa.s.s in front of machine-guns amid the laughter of the drunken German soldiers and their threats to blow them out of existence at any moment.
Was it any wonder that many poor wretches went stark mad with terror?
Over this stricken country, between Liege and Louvain, towards Brussels, the "Flying Column" were fighting--struggling along bravely from day to day against the most fearful odds.
While Aimee sat, hour after hour in silence, watching and wondering, Edmond with his Maxim was doing terrible execution. Yet of what use was it all? They were being gradually driven back towards Brussels, compelled to leave the villagers to their fate.
The roads were crowded by homeless men, women, and children, poor wretched people who had watched their homes sacked and burnt. For years they had been thrifty, and saved until they could live in quiet comfort, still working hard. Yet in one short fortnight all had gone from them; all they now possessed was piled into a wheelbarrow, perambulator, or cart, or else carried in a sack upon their backs.
The scenes on that wide, open main road leading through Louvain and Tirlemont to Brussels, a well-kept highway, lined in places by tall poplars, were enough to cause one"s heart to bleed.
Edmond looked upon them with a sigh. Beneath the pitiless sun the never-ceasing crowd moved westward, driven on by the advancing German army. All sorts of ramshackle vehicles were mixed up in the slowly moving ma.s.s of humanity who were tramping their way, day and night, on and on to some place of safety--where, they knew not--Brussels, Antwerp, or to Ghent, Ostend, or perhaps the sea. The iron of despair was in their souls.
Such a human tide as this, naturally, hampered the Belgian army severely. Weary, footsore, and sad-eyed, many old persons fainted by the wayside, and those who were friendless were left there to die.
Everybody was thinking of his or her own family. They had no time for sympathy with others. Most of them were dressed in their best clothes-- in order to save them--and all had fearful tales to tell of the behaviour of the Uhlans. Many of those poor, red-eyed, hatless women in black had seen their husbands, brothers, sons, or lovers shot down before their eyes. Some had been falsely accused of firing at the troops; some had simply been seized by drunken, laughing soldiers; some had been questioned by swaggering German officers, others had not. With all, trial or no trial, the end was the same--death.
And their corpses had been left to rot where they fell, and the village fired by those little black cubes of a highly inflammable chemical substance, which the brutes carried with them for that one purpose.
The fog of war was over everything.
"It is not warfare, father," declared Aimee one evening, as she sat with her parents in a big, handsome salon, wherein the last blood-red light of the fiery afterglow was fast fading. "It is ma.s.sacre. They have just told me, over the telephone, of fearful things that have happened in Aerschot. The Germans have wrecked the beautiful church, smashed the holy statues, desecrated the crucifix, and stabled their horses there.
And these are the troops upon whom the Kaiser is beseeching G.o.d"s blessing. It is all too awful for words!"
"Yes, child," replied the grey-haired Baroness, looking up from her embroidery--for in these days of excitement she tried to occupy her mind with her needlework. "The Kaiser respects neither the laws of nations, nor the laws of Almighty G.o.d, Whose aid he asks. His evil deeds cry aloud to Heaven, and to us who, horror-struck, are watching."
"The Emperor is carrying out the policy, which I read yesterday in the _Independance_, advocated by Bismarck," said the Baron. "The Iron Chancellor laid it down, as a maxim, that true strategy consisted in hitting the enemy hard, and in inflicting on the inhabitants of invaded towns the maximum of suffering, so that they might bring pressure upon their Government to discontinue it. He is declared to have said: `You must leave the people through whom you march only their eyes to weep with.""
"The inhuman brute!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Baroness. "But our dear Belgium will never sue for peace."
"Never," declared the Baron fiercely, rising and pa.s.sing to the window, an erect, refined figure. "We have the British on our side. They will quickly wipe the Germans from the seas, and then come here to our a.s.sistance. The speech of Asquith in the House of Commons shows their intentions. Besides, have we not Russia--a colossal power in Europe when she commences to move? So we may rest a.s.sured that for every evil and unwarrantable act committed upon our soil, ample vengeance will be exacted when the Cossacks are let loose upon our friends of Berlin."
"They say that at Liege and in other places, German spies have been discovered," Aimee remarked. "I hear that at the entrance to Liege, the German soldiers were actually met by spies--hitherto respectable inhabitants of the place--who acted as their guides through the city, and pointed out the princ.i.p.al buildings and the residences of the rich."
"Exaggerated stories," declared the Baron. "I do not believe in the existence of German spies in Belgium."
"But they have arrested many both in Brussels and Antwerp."
"Spy-mania seems to arise in every war," was his reply.
"But Germany has been long preparing. Her spies are said to be everywhere," declared the girl with emphasis. "No game is too low or despicable for the enemy to play, it seems."
At that moment the liveried footman entered and, bowing, announced to the Baron:
"Monsieur Rigaux has arrived."
"Ah! show him in. He may have news," cried his master, eagerly.
Next moment the thin-faced, dark-haired man, wearing a smart grey suit and yellow gloves, came forward all smiles and graces, as he bowed low over the Baroness"s hand and then over Aimee"s.
"Well, my dear Arnaud?" the Baron commenced anxiously. "What is the latest from the front? Have you motored from Brussels?"
"Yes. And the news is disquieting--distinctly disquieting. Max, the Burgomaster, is already taking precautions in antic.i.p.ation of the occupation of the capital by the enemy. Our troops are evacuating the city."
Mother and daughter exchanged glances, both pale-faced and startled at such a turn of events.
"Then we have again been defeated," exclaimed the Baron in a hard voice.
"It seems so. The news is out that Liege has fallen at last. The forts are silent--reduced to rubbish-heaps."