CHAPTER ELEVEN.
THIS WORD OF THE UHLAN.
The German tidal-wave was steadily advancing. Prussia had set her heel upon Belgium.
A perfect horde of jack-booted Uhlans had swarmed over the country, and had already made themselves hated by their mad, murderous acts of cruelty and pillage. They were--as the blasphemous Kaiser had intended they should be when making his plans at Potsdam--agents of the Terror.
Of the nineteen regiments of them in the German army, no fewer than fourteen were being employed to terrorise the inoffensive villagers of poor little Belgium; yet so bravely did the Belgian army fight that within twelve days the larger part of this force, in their gaily-braided uniforms and carrying their ready lances--upon which they sometimes impaled children--were either killed, wounded, or held prisoners. These brutes, who had boasted of their "kultur," and commanded by n.o.blemen, had been sent out to live upon the country; but they had been entrapped everywhere, and revenged themselves by acts of the most fiendish and horrible cruelty unequalled in modern history.
The Uhlans! As in the war of 1870, so now in Belgium, their very name struck terror into the hearts of the hard-working, thrifty people of Eastern Belgium.
Therefore it was hardly surprising when, one evening a week after Dinant had been stormed, Aimee, who had just ascended to her room to tidy her hair prior to sitting down to dinner with her mother, should stand white-faced and aghast when Melanie, her dark, good-looking _femme-de-chambre_, burst in, crying:
"Ah, Mademoiselle, it is terrible--_terrible_! The Uhlans are here!
They are already in the chateau, asking for M"sieur le Baron!"
"The Uhlans _here_!" she gasped, in an instant pale to the lips. "What can they want?"
"_Mon Dieu_! Who knows? I hope they will not kill us all?" cried the trembling maid, her face pale and scared. "I have just seen Gustave talking excitedly with two soldiers down in the great hall, while outside, in the outer courtyard, there are a lot of horses."
Aimee dashed from her pretty chintz-hung room, across to a spare room at the rear of the chateau, and looking down, saw, in the falling twilight, a number of horses champing their bits in the big, paved courtyard, while heavily-booted and spurred Uhlans, in their grey service uniforms, were standing astride in groups, talking and laughing.
She held her breath. She and her mother were alone and defenceless, the Baron being in Brussels. What could they do? How should they act?
War was suddenly at their doors!
Without a moment"s hesitation she ran quickly down to the great _salle-a-manger_, the walls of which were hung with rare tapestries, and where, on the table already laid with fine old silver and flowers, candles were burning in their handsome silver candelabra.
The Baroness, grey-haired and stately, sitting in an ancient high-backed chair, looked up in surprise from her book when Aimee rushed in, and exclaimed in reproof:
"My dear child, whatever has happened? Are you mad?"
"Ah! mother," cried the girl in frantic apprehension, "the Uhlans are here! They are asking below for father. The Germans are upon us at last!"
"_The Germans_!" echoed the Baroness, quite unperturbed, looking eagerly over her gold-rimmed gla.s.ses. "What can they want with us? We are doing them no harm."
"They are demanding to see father."
At that moment the liveried footman entered, trembling and pale-faced, saying:
"A German officer is demanding to see the Baron, Madame. He refuses to believe that the master is absent in Brussels. He therefore demands to see you, Madame."
The Baroness knit her brows and drew herself up with hauteur, preserving a wonderful calm in their defenceless circ.u.mstances.
"Very well," she sighed, "I suppose I had really better see him."
A moment later a big, broad-shouldered Uhlan officer, a fair-haired Saxon, not bad-looking save for the ugly sabre-scar of his student days upon his left cheek, strode into the handsome apartment, and halting before the two ladies, clicked his spurred heels together and saluted.
In his long military boots and his Uhlan helmet this officer of the War Lord of Germany looked taller and more forbidding than he really was, yet his politeness to the Baroness and her daughter was at once rea.s.suring.
"I sincerely regret this intrusion, Madame," he said, in almost perfect French. "I am extremely sorry I am unable to respect the privacy of your home, but, alas! it is war--the quarrel of nations."
And taking from within his grey tunic a card, he handed it to her. The Baroness glanced at it, and saw that the name was "Baron Wernher von Meyeren."
"I am in command of my platoon of the Tenth Uhlans, and we are compelled to billet upon you," he explained. "I did not wish to disturb you, ladies, but I find that the Baron himself is absent, hence I have to intrude myself upon you."
"My husband is in Brussels, at a council meeting at the Ministry of Finance," replied the Baroness de Neuville. "He gave me to understand, however, that here we should be quite safe from molestation."
The German officer, his strong hand upon the hilt of his sword, smiled grimly. He looked worn and dusty, and had the appearance of a man who had ridden far at the bidding of his superiors.
"I fear, Baronne, that n.o.body is now safe from molestation, here, in Belgium. I am no politician, only a soldier, but it seems that your gallant little country has decided to defend itself--a mouse against a lion--with unfortunate and very regrettable results. I have with me forty-five men, upon whom I have imposed the strictest orders to behave with proper decorum in your beautiful chateau. If you will please order your servants to give them food--of which they are sorely in need--they will make themselves comfortable for the night in any corner they may find." Then, turning to Aimee, he added politely: "Mademoiselle need have no fear. It is but the fortunes of war."
The Baroness, still quite cool, looked at him steadily for a few seconds. Then she asked: "Cannot you billet your men upon the villagers below, in the valley?"
"Ah, I regret, Baronne, that that is impossible. Some of the villagers, though non-combatants, have fired at my men and killed them; therefore, in accordance with international law, their houses have been set on fire. The peaceful villages are all occupied by troops to-night, so we have been compelled to come up here."
"We have M"sieur Rigaux to thank for this?" cried Aimee to her mother.
"He told us we should be quite safe here?"
The big Uhlan officer shrugged his shoulders, and glancing at the table already set, said:
"The unfortunate situation need not, I think, be discussed, Mademoiselle. I merely ask if I, with my two subordinate officers, may be permitted to join you at table this evening?"
The Baroness hesitated, still holding the Uhlan"s card in her hand. His rank equalled that of her husband, and though they were strangers, she foresaw that any resistance might have unpleasant results for them. The German tide was undoubtedly advancing.
"Baron von Meyeren," she said at last, with considerable dignity, "this indignity you place upon us, two defenceless women, compelled as we are to entertain our enemies, is, I suppose, but the fortune of war. You and your officers are quite welcome here at my table, but I would ask you to order your men to behave with decency, for I heard--only yesterday--some terrible stories of the conduct of Uhlans further up the valley."
The officer bowed.
"Madame," he said, "I a.s.sure you that you need not have the slightest apprehension. In the German Army we punish disobedience by death. My men know that--by examples already set them."
"My daughter and I have your word, m"sieur--eh?" asked the Baroness.
"Madame," he replied, "you certainly have my solemn word. To-morrow morning we shall, I hope, relieve you of this incubus, and I trust that you will, by that time, have discovered that we are not the bloodthirsty savages which the world reports us to be."
The Baroness then called the footman and gave certain orders that the troopers below should be entertained, while half an hour later Baron von Meyeren, who had suddenly betrayed a sabre-rattling overbearing towards the ladies, sat down at the dinner table with his two younger officers, apparently young fops from Berlin.
The Baroness and her daughter refused to sit at table with their enemies.
The swaggering German Baron did not ask for what he wanted. He simply ordered it from his orderly who stood behind him.
The wine served did not exactly suit his palate, whereupon he told the orderly to go down into the cellars and ascertain what they contained.
"Bring us up some good wine," he added in German. "The best these people have. They are sure to have something worth drinking. And give the men some also. It will keep up their spirits."
The two women were sitting at the further end of the long room, watching the weird scene, the three men laughing and eating beneath the zone of light shed by the dozen or so lighted candles.
Soon the orderly returned with six bottles of Baron de Neuville"s choicest champagne. These they opened themselves, and in loud, harsh voices, brutally drank the health of their hostess and her daughter.
Beneath a veneer of polish and culture which that trio of the enemy wore, was a coa.r.s.eness and brutality which were at once revealed, for they laughed uproariously, gossiping together in German, with coa.r.s.e remarks, which only Aimee, sitting in silence, understood.