Chapter II: Part 2

We are all suffering from Prussian eye. We see Uhlans everywhere. Behind the hedges, under the shade of the trees, popping out of cottage doors, springing Jack-in-the-box-like from beneath a bridge. We dream Uhlan, we talk Uhlan, we taste Uhlan. I think a fine should be inflicted on any villager who mentions the hated word more than once in twenty-four hours.

A peasant deserter has been discovered in an adjacent village. He ought to have joined the 13th Classe by rights when it was called up. Poor fellow! He has a wife and three young delicate children and is, I fancy, none too strong himself. What torture to remain there in disgrace among the old men and young boys. And the penalty for him at the end is death....

Heroic M. le Directeur and his wife. I often think of them in their little country house near by. The vicinal railway which has opened up this exquisite corner of the world is due to his initiative. The peasants look to him as to a father.

His wife goes quietly about her business during this dreadful time as though there were no such thing as war. “Il faut feindre” (one must make-believe), she says to me. She does it well. No one would guess that her mother is in the burning village of Visé and the rest of their relations shut up in Liège. How hard it is for them to possess their souls in patience when loved ones are suffering so few—so very few miles away.

Like Madame Job they are thirsting for news. But unlike her they keep the longing to themselves. Madame Job has, I believe, a sneaking hope that Albert may turn up one day outside the little white-washed inn. I suspect she would rather have her beloved Albert a live coward than a dead hero.

A wire has come from Erezée, ten miles away, to say that packets of letters have arrived. A system of hand-messengers has been successful in bringing them through from Namur without mishap. Who will volunteer to rush them to Manhay through our Uhlan-infested country?

The postmen refuse because of the trouncing their comrades received yesterday. M. A—— and I agree to have a try. He harnesses the hotel horse and we start off in the light spring dog-cart. Behind we have two refugees from Gouvy. They own no luggage beyond a bird-cage, so we are not over-loaded.

Gouvy is a frontier town which the Germans are fortifying in case of their enforced retreat. They have installed several regiments there and made the inhabitants’ lives unbearable. The station-master, postmaster and other civilians have been sent off as prisoners of war to Berlin after the pleasant Teuton fashion. These poor refugees are going to their parents at Barvaux, near Namur. May they find peace there as they expect. Personally I doubt it!

The drive to Erezée is uneventful. We suspect a Uhlan behind every tree-trunk but none appears. No living soul is on the road. As we enter the village street the peasants run out of the houses to welcome us. It is almost a royal progress. We realise how isolated these villages now are from one another.

A tiny Belgian flag is flying from the church at the top of the hill. Evidently the best the village could provide; it must have taken the choir, the Curé and all his merry, merry men to hoist it to its present height. As a decorative item that flag is beneath contempt. Its slender flag-pole is of such curved dimensions as to make it stick out from the belfry quite lop-sidedly. But as a moral factor it is beyond all praise....

We alight by the picturesque old pump. A crowd, including the gypsies from a travelling caravan, gathers round us anxious to hear the news.

In return they tell us theirs. One story interests me. At Hotton, near Melreux, a few miles away, the Colonel of an invading troop called on the doctor’s wife and politely asked her for the address of the Bourgmestre.

The doctor’s wife, not to be outdone in civility, sent her little girl along to show him.

In a short while the Colonel returned with the Bourgmestre in tow as prisoner.

“Where is your husband?” he demanded of the doctor’s wife.

“Out visiting patients,” she replied.

“Out when I ask for him!” shrieked the infuriated officer, “I will have him shot for disobeying orders!”

This gross piece of injustice was happily not perpetrated. The Colonel graciously forgave the doctor, for, when the soldiers went to fetch him, he was found tending the German wounded with tender care....

RUSHING THE MAILS THROUGH

Conventionality dies an easy death in time of war. Erezée is new to me, but in less than half an hour I have talked to more people than I do in England in a twelve-month. They all have the same tale to tell of sleepless nights, of ever-present horror at what may be at any moment. But so far they have been spared atrocities.

There is a sudden scuttle of every able-bodied person in the direction of the post office. The long-awaited post is in. An enterprising postman, “_en vélo_,” who has rushed them through is congratulated on every side. A crowd surges round the open window, stretching out eager hands to the clerks who are swiftly sorting the numerous piles of letters. The counter has long been appropriated by wrinkled peasants whose one anxiety is for news of the husbands and brothers who are so gallantly fighting for their rights at Liège.

Someone tears off a wrapper. The thin broad sheets of a Brussels evening paper flutter in the breeze. Old men and women, young boys and girls gather round the owner with uplifted, expectant faces. Some do not know how to read, others have their eyes too full of tears. Besides, good news is so much more convincing when read aloud. The audience listens entranced. The gallantry of these Belgian troops—peasants like themselves—their valour is almost past belief! The work-worn, tired, rough-hewn faces turn to meet each other transfigured into beauty by their mutual look of pride....

We cannot, dare not wait to hear it all. The Uhlans may be here at any moment. I climb into the high dog-cart. The _dépêches_ are put under the seat, even under my feet. I sit on a heap of them.... So does my companion. They are for Vaux Chavannes, Grand-Mesnil, all the little villages around, extending to Aywaille, twenty kilomètres away.

Carefully masking every sign of paper with a thick blue rug, we start off on the homeward journey. Not without tremors, for if we fall into the Uhlan hands anything may happen.

When we pass the last of the little cottages, and the last watching peasant has waved us farewell, I begin to fear.

Six solid miles of thick woods stretch before us rolling down to the roadside on either hand. Here it was they caught the _facteur_ yesterday. I suddenly loathe the sight of those green, feathery branches; they may cover up so much.

I glance at M. A——. His round happy face is rounder and happier than usual. He is even lighting a cigarette, though he finds it difficult, as he is trying to hold the reins and watch the horse and the woods at the same time.

Never have I seen an Ardennois without a pipe or cigarette in his mouth. I think a true son of the soil would start to light one with the death-rattle in his throat!

I imagine a dreaded Prussian behind every tree-trunk and under every bush for some miles. Then I clear my throat and ask mildly as we jog along (it would look suspicious to increase our pace):

“Supposing, just supposing we _did_ happen to run across any Germans, and they _did_ threaten to shoot us unless we delivered up the letters, which would you do?”

“Deliver up the letters, of course,” he says matter-of-factly, puffing at his cigarette.

I breathe a sigh of relief. After all, a whole skin is a more precious possession than much fine writing!

Providence watches over us again. As we near the beautiful avenue of fir trees which connects the Bomale road with Manhay, a peasant scout rushes out to warn us that Uhlans are ahead. We have just time to escape into a little lane.

More peasants come running up presently to tell us the road is clear. There is always the danger of being covered by field-glasses from some wooded hill, with its sequence of surprise attack, so we jog slowly along and drive into the yard instead of drawing up at the post office. Three minutes later a company of Hussars passes through without drawing rein. They are in high good humour, chattering, laughing, quite unsuspicious that the peasants they despise have been quick-witted enough to get the mails through under their very eyes!

Willing men are posted at intervals round the street and even in the fields to prevent an attack. M. le Précepteur saunters over from the post office and sets to work sorting letters in the back kitchen. It is safer there....

The dining-room blinds are drawn down, and we all collect by the little French window leading into the yard. The papers are taken round, and unfolded. An enormous headline sweeps the page from end to end:

LA GUERRE VA DE MIEUX EN MIEUX.

Like most newspapers the contents are optimistic as regards their own side.

Mlle Irma reads the news aloud. She begins with the heroic defence of Liège.

As she reads, we hear the cannon booming, booming across the distant wooded hills.

To judge from the printed page, the gallant little Belgians have defeated the entire German army to a man. Several regiments have already covered themselves with imperishable glory, notably the 11th and 14th Foot. Albert is in the 14th.

A man named Desmoulins has rushed out of a fort and slain four Germans with his own hands before darting back safely to shelter. The enemy’s losses are enormous. I notice that in war they usually are. The Belgian casualties are described as so small that they are, seemingly, scarce worth mentioning.

“The chief losses,” reads Mlle Irma in her clear, pretty voice, “were sustained by the 11th” ... a slight pause quickly slurred over, “and the 32nd.”

“And the names!”

“There are no names as yet,” she returns quietly and goes on with the notes of a speech, “ce cher monsieur Askveeth,” had delivered in the English parliament only yesterday.

But Madame Job is not to be deceived. “It was the 14th which has been so cut up,” she says, putting up her apron to her eyes and beginning to cry again. “I know Albert is dead. Mon pauvre Albert in that terrible Liège!”

“Don’t fuss, Maman,” says M. Alfred the peacemaker. “It will be all right now the men in skirts are there....”

A TEUTON FEAST

_Friday._—Two men of the Brandenburger Cuirassiers come into the inn before breakfast. I am brought forward, as usual, to interpret. The shorter of the two, a square-jawed, swashbuckling kind of fellow, demands hay. I reply with superb mendacity, “We have no hay.” He follows this up with enquiries as to the disposition of the enemy. My face becomes vacant, my German resolves itself into a fluent mass of unintelligible sounds.

Woe is me! At that moment the door into the yard opens, and M. Alfred is seen crossing the clean wide space, bearing stablewards half a hayrick on a long pitchfork.

The Cuirassier gives a growl, thrusts his pug-nosed, underbred face almost into mine, and lands me a blow that knocks me up against the wall.

“Isn’t that hay?” he asks fiercely, pointing.

“Hay, but for us,” I answer calmly.

“You lie!” He prods at my left shoulder with his bayonet, but he either fears to strike hard or the padded arrangement worn under my dress with a view to such contingencies does its work well. My wound is nothing but an abrasion of the skin.

The swashbuckler swaggers into the yard and coolly appropriates the hayrick. His friend, a gentle-faced, blond giant looks down at me with regret.

“You need not fear. I will see that you come to no harm. My friend there is a wild fellow,” he murmurs apologetically.

“Fear. Ich bin Engländerin,” I answer simply.

He laughs. “You are as brave as your brave little army. But—such a mere handful of men. How can it stand up against us!”

The swashbuckler returns. They leave the inn together and later appear before the Gendarmerie with the weird medley of weapons which every cavalryman seems to carry. They hammer at the stable door. It is smashed and their horses feeding in the empty stalls in less time than it takes to relate. Their next step is to batter at the door of the Gendarmerie itself. I go to the back of the house whence a narrow window commands a view of the place. Perfidious people! They have no respect for the sanctity of home. The Commandant’s little treasures are quickly found. They run from room to room, opening drawers and rummaging through the contents, even overturning furniture. One man gets hold of a pile of letters, tied with ribbon. Love-letters perhaps.

Downstairs they go and bring up a ham, bread, some wine. A “_pique-nique_” in war-time is huge fun. They thoroughly enjoy their impromptu meal in the back bedroom. The remains of food are left scattered about the uncarpeted floors; some of it is trodden carelessly under the soldiers’ feet.

Everything is tossed about as green hay in the harvest field. The very sheets are torn from the beds and lie in little white ghostly heaps on the dark-stained boards. The Brandenburgers come out into the street where a row of stalwart bayoneting Cuirassiers are keeping order. My nice blond giant has a huge cigar between his teeth, the Commandant’s cigar, so has my swashbuckling bully.

They both lunch at the inn and fall to as if they had had nothing to eat for the last ten months. I am made to translate and can scarcely speak for anger. I suspect them of every crime.

_Saturday._—The blond giant comes in at all hours. Everyone in the village likes him now in spite of his behaviour at the Gendarmerie. He seems gentle, mild-eyed and very courteous. We have been used to different treatment. He arranges everything so nicely, too. For instance, he begs us all not to put our noses out of the houses after twilight, under any pretext. “I can’t bear to think of your being frightened; my sentries might make a mistake,” he says, smiling pleasantly. The poor literal peasants don’t see that this is an euphuism for shooting us on sight. Orders, no doubt.

_Sunday._—I get up early and go to Mass with Mlle Irma, having first obtained permission from the soldiers. We walk along the sides of the road, under the shadow of the trees, a wise precaution these days. Osterre chapel is packed to the doors. I have a curious feeling that those paint and plaster saints high up on their little pedestals are alive. St. Antoine’s nose looks longer and more pinched than ever, and he is gazing down as though ashamed to be of so little use to us in our hour of need. St. Christopher is mild, so is St. Joseph; the Madonna seems to smile at us with a modest kind of shrinking sympathy across pots of flaming geraniums.

Osterre chapel is packed. The sheep-and-goats division of the sexes appears to obtain in the Ardennes. The women’s side is over-crowded. We could hang out “standing room only” and be merely truthful. The men’s scarcely less so. All the women are as scrupulously neat in their Sunday silk blouses and flower-trimmed hats as though they had never heard of such a thing as war. One or two of the black-bonneted old peasants are making their rosaries damp with tears. I can see the beads, so brightly reflected against the polished wooden seats, shaking a little. At the end of the service, a box like a newly opened sardine tin, at the end of a long pole, is thrust before me by a tiny acolyte. Then we rise and go home comforted. We have shifted the burden of our troubles to other—wiser shoulders.

COALS OF FIRE

The Tax-collector is resting here for a few hours on his way home. He has brought with him his son, who looks dead tired with his twenty-mile walk. The lad’s luggage has all been left behind. But Aywaille was too near Liège to be safe. The Tax-collector will be glad to reach his journey’s end.

“All day long yesterday I watched the German troops march through the town,” he tells me. “It was pitiable to see those columns of splendidly equipped men, simply dropping from fatigue. Some could scarcely put one foot before the other.”

“They are our enemies.”

“My sister stood in the street for hours, refilling buckets of water from which the exhausted men swilled their necks and arms. She cut them tartine after tartine until all our bread was gone and she could hardly stand herself.”

“They are probably going down to shoot the peasants’ fathers, sons and brothers in Liège,” I remark coldly.

“From my sister’s point of view, they are suffering and they are men. That is enough....”

Compassion is evidently a Belgian vice!

Even Madame Job is breaking out in an unexpected quarter. She is satisfied for the moment as to Albert’s safety, so I am surprised to find her this evening occupying her favourite position on the lowest step of the kitchen stairs with her blue check apron over her head.

Spasmodic snuffles under the cotton screen warn me what to expect. I gently pull down the covering and stroke her face.

“We shall win,” I say consolingly.

At this Madame breaks down completely.

“Win? The poor, poor Prussians will be killed, all killed. There was one so young to-night, with eyes so sad.” (Snort and snuffle.) “Have they not also wives and mothers who will mourn their loss?”

I find no words in which to confute this obvious truth.

Madame soon revives. In her careful Walloon brain she has conceived what she calls “_un plan_.”

“If I care for the Prussians” (I know she is hoping that heaps and heaps will be brought in from the battlefield to test her word), “perhaps they will care for my Albert should he be wounded in the forts there below....”

I do not dare to tell her that the Belgians have themselves blown up the Chaudfontaine forts and that her beloved Albert is doubtless numbered with the dead....

IN DANGER

One of the Uhlans is quite communicative to-day. He shows us how the patrols are worked. It is very interesting, but far too red-tapey. “In twenty minutes,” he says, “I can summon a hundred and twenty Uhlans to my aid.” To get them, however, he has to write on his cross-barred paper his name, position, date, hour, regiment and extra details. This human document he places in an envelope which also has to be addressed and endorsed with date, hour, name, etc. Business-like but slightly superfluous when the enemy’s patrols are almost on you. I pity the Uhlan deputed to take the message.

The Cuirassier is in a soft mood this morning. He comforts Madame Job with the assurance that no great battle can take place in the Ardennes, where the wooded hills and valleys are ill-suited to such a scheme. He ridicules our idea of hiding in the woods as being a fatal plan for escaping the Germans. “You would be found and dragged out in a moment,” is his reassuring statement. Later he turns to me.

“You do not fear the Germans, Fräulein?”

All the Uhlans ask me that. They seem so amazed that we do not scuttle like rabbits at their approach.

“No, I am not afraid,” I answer.

“But you are in more danger here than my brother who is a prisoner in Russia,” he persists.

I translate this to the family of Job, who all tearfully implore me, as they have done a hundred times in the last week, to disguise myself as a peasant and pretend to be one of them....

It seems a skulking thing for a Britisher to do. I can’t face it.

“You see, Fräulein, there are many spies. They have shot women as well as men before Liège. There is short shrift for spies in war-time. You are alone too. So much the more suspicious.”

“I must take my chance.”

“Stay in your room then.”

Stay in my room, indeed, when ten, twenty times a day my help is sought in smoothing over difficulties, interpreting orders for the enemy or the peasants. A likely plan!

A Cuirassier speaks of himself and the family he never expects to see again.

“My five brothers are all serving in the army,” he says, “the sixth is a prisoner in Russia. My two sisters’ husbands are soldiers too. My father an engineer, aged sixty-five and in weak health, has also been compelled to come forward and serve his country. My mother was like that when we came away,” he passes the back of his hand across his eyes.

I begin to pity the German women nearly as much as I pity the Belgian peasants. But then the former have suffered no atrocities—as yet.

MAPS AND MINES

One day I ask the Cuirassier why he has no markings on his shoulder straps. He coughs, blushes, then unbuttons one and turns it back to show a large N. surmounted by an Imperial crown embroidered in blood red.

“The Czar was our Colonel, Fräulein,” he says, in the horrified accents usually reserved for the mention of the Prince of Darkness.

The fact does not seem to me so awful. I hide a smile.

“Many of the men tore the straps off their uniforms before they would go on active service,” he says seriously.

I ask him why he is such friends with the swashbuckler.

“One does not choose one’s comrades in war-time, Fräulein.”

He brings out a map which seems to have every fir tree and blade of grass in the country accurately described on it and draws his finger along the page until he comes to Namur.

“The French have blown up every bridge over the Meuse.” He indicates the length of the river between Namur and Liège. “We shall build them again.” He goes on to tell me facts about the countryside which I thought only the peasants knew.

The network of patrols with which Germans enmesh the country so far in advance of the body of the army, seems to have done its work well.

I translate to the Job family, who listen amazed.

The Cuirassier tries to pump me, very deftly, very innocently.

“Have you heard anything of the number of French in Namur. Have they been strengthening the defences there during the last two weeks. Is it true that their food supply is inadequate to the needs of the town?”

It is amazing how obtuse I suddenly become. I forgot that the Job-Lepouses have dinned into my brain for the past fortnight the pleasing legend that a hundred and forty thousand Frenchmen, not to speak of Belgians, are defending Namur, and that every other tree in the country side has been cut down to pile up barricades. I swear I have no knowledge of the (possibly true) assertion that the _avant-garde_ of the French troops, two hundred men and officers, are at Laroche. I am duller witted all of a sudden than the village idiot who has, by the way, refuted the charge of idiotcy by keeping mostly to the fields since the Germans came.

IN THE BAR

Some infantry, I think they were Landwehr, on guard here to-day, were quite distressed at the sight of weeping women and children. Later in the day a little deputation of them waited upon me at the inn. “Would you please go round the village, Fräulein,” they said, “and tell the women and children that we mean them no harm? Have we not wives and children too?” One of them opened his wallet or pocket-book and showed me the photo of a pretty curly-headed German child. Needless to say, I did go round and reassure the people. The result was that the Landwehr were the richer that evening by the peasants’ last pots of appetising home-made jam.

I have to go into the bar and translate in my bad German for the soldiers. Yesterday some of the Uhlans’ horses, picketed in the village street, put their heads through a front window of the inn. I was called in by both sides to assess the damage. It was rather embarrassing, especially as I had to make out the account in greasy German coin! The Uhlans paid up at once, as usual, but the tender-hearted hotel-keeper refused to ask anything approaching the value of the window. The soldiers are annoyed with me sometimes for not being able to procure them special kinds of German beer. Cognac is the drink they love, but the officers have particularly ordered they shall not be served with it.

This business of barter and exchange is often very trying. I had a terrible transaction to-day with a Prussian non-commissioned officer over a box of cigars. It nearly turned my hair grey! We ultimately sold it him for a franc. Anyway, I feel proud to have done my share towards the annihilation of the enemy. A few drops of Prussic acid would have been wholesome by comparison!

IN THE WOODS

_Monday_—Notices have now been posted up in all the Belgian villages that, since the Belgian civilians, both men and women, have shot at the Germans and even killed their wounded, anyone who offers the slightest resistance will be at once shot down. The house to house search for arms is rigorously prosecuted. A man in the village is shot to-day. He was working in the fields and ran away instead of facing round and throwing up his arms when challenged.

In one village, so the Germans themselves tell me, they have shot twenty-nine men out of thirty-four. They assert that their soldiers were fired on as they entered the street.

The Kaiserliche regiment is encamped at Malempré, a mile away. They have taken an ox and one or two sheep and roasted them whole. They have also forced the peasants to dig up their own fields of potatoes for the soldiers and stood over them to ensure the order being carried out at once. The Germans give a bit of paper, in exchange, a governmental I.O.U. redeemable at the end of the war ... if there is an end and the peasants are alive to see it!

“All will be paid,” says an orderly complacently, as he triumphantly carries off our last fresh eggs. But what is the use of German money or governmental I.O.U.’s when one cannot reach the town for fresh supplies.

“All will be paid.” What a mockery! Stay. They are right. All will be paid. With more than money. With blood and treachery and women’s tears....

I sat up all last night as usual. Paraffin and candles have long given out, but luckily there was a thrice-blessed moon. In the queer half-light, the sentries looked like so many demons pursued by their own shadows. Soldiers were sleeping all about the hard cobblestone street as though lying quietly in their beds at home. Only the Cuirassiers under my window kept up a constant noise. Their horses, too, were stamping and moving continually in the stables as though anxious to get away.

This morning I ask one of the more kindly-disposed soldiers if he is not afraid of death.

“I must do my duty,” he says simply. “But I feel the cord tightening round my neck each day.”

He looks pale and pinched, as though disease, not rifle fire, would be his end.

“I was out scouting in the woods last night, Fräulein,” he tells me later. “It is so cold, so eerie, and then one only gets a couple of hours’ sleep when the dawn comes. There are horrible things in the woods, Fräulein—shapes and monstrosities. The pine dust powders under the horse’s feet and the green boughs go “swish” in one’s face just as one turns on the electric torch, thinking to have spotted a rascally Frenchman——”

“—And you did?” I asked breathlessly.

He rubs a hand over his convict-cropped head and looks modestly triumphant.

“Two, Fräulein. Both dead. Straight, clean shots. Couldn’t miss.”

I start up, trying to recall to an elusive memory my amateurish knowledge of first aid.

The Cuirassier smiles. “Really dead, Fräulein. We could only find one. I buried him very near the top because the ground was hard. Here is his number.”

He compares it with his metal one, slung from his neck by a cord. A brown leather purse is attached by the same means.

“Wer spärrt in der zeit,
Hat etwas in der noth”
(Who saves in time,
Has something in adversity [need])

is written on it in German characters.

Mlles Irma, Louisa and Rosa are all sitting round agape with interest.

“It’s quite like being at home,” says the blond giant smiling at us complacently.

“This is the first time I have seen a German soldier unarmed,” I remark sarcastically.

“What need when one is among friends,” says the German with emphasis.

Madame Job suddenly begins to grind the coffee-mill in the kitchen.

The peaceful Cuirassier instantly applies the now familiar revolver to my forehead. The noise makes his expression change from mild melancholy to fierce anger. He is capable of any villainy since he thinks we have arranged an ambush of the French and that he is at last betrayed.

A speedy explanation frees me from my uncomfortable position. More Uhlans ride up. At their head is a scholarly looking officer with a pointed grey beard.

“The Prince of Meiningen,” whispers a soldier in a soft round cap, who is passing by the door.

PRISONERS OF WAR

“Everything is bearable so long as there is bread,” said Sancho Panza. I begin to feel I could reckon with the Uhlans if only we had enough to eat. Between the closely-drawn shutters of the little village shop can be discerned packets of chocolate in small, neat, silver wrapped rows. I would sell my chances of seeing England again for two good sticks or twenty centimes in solid nickel coin with which to purchase them.

For lunch to-day I have a tiny piece of black bread. I eat it lingeringly, carefully putting in the Gladstonian forty bites. Yeastless, heavy as lead, it seems the most delicious food. I am compunctious for having eaten so much when I think that there are only three more such loaves. These are carefully hidden behind the cellar door. They will last us some time, and the Uhlans will not find them easily. But so beautiful is the Belgian nature, I am sure Mdme Job and the others would willingly starve themselves that I—and even the Germans—might have enough.

A hush is on the village since the word is passed round that the Duke of Meiningen has entered the Gendarmerie beneath the shadow of the still waving flag. No doubt it will presently be pulled down, “by order of the Kaiser,” and replaced by the Imperial Eagle. We shall see!

In the meantime all documents and money are taken possession of by the Prince. He comes out and speaks to the soldiers with some show of anger. I gather that the upheaval the interior of the Gendarmerie has undergone is set down to our account.

We shall be punished unless I interfere. In crudest German I explain that none of us has been within the doors, that the disturbance and looting are the work of German soldiers, that we should not dream of interfering with a Belgian Governmental office. My excuses are met with grunts. But I can see that they believe me. We shall pay no penalty for this. I breathe again.

A tin case containing documents and money is set in the roadway by the Gendarmerie door. The street is as full of soldiers with bayonets as of cobblestones. The Prince stalks over to the post office, his scholarly face grave with thought. Prince Ernst, his brother, mounted on a splendid horse, guards the door.

The family of Job is behind fast-shut windows. So is the rest of the village. Tragedy stalks in the air. We wonder what M. le Précepteur is doing and what is going forward inside his house.

Suddenly shriek upon shriek ascends. Madame la Précepteur is in hysterics. Her husband is being killed without doubt. The shrieks intensify to yells. They are joined by a sturdy howl from M. Victor and a whimpering cry, more pathetic than either, from the little baby Germaine.

Madame Job puts her handkerchief to her face and begins to cry. Monsieur puts his fingers in his ears. Messieurs Alfred and Floribert have disappeared. I stand irresolute.

The owner of the café next door ventures into the open, and gazes across that phalanx of impassive, well-armed men.

“Mademoiselle,” she calls. I go to the door and slip back the bolt. I am ashamed to say I still hesitate. It is not exactly fear, but what can I do, of what use am I, even if murder is being done; I, a woman, defenceless, alone?

“I must go if you will not,” she says, gazing at me like a piteous sheep. I am startled into action. Across the road I slip, in front of the truculent-looking soldiers and seize Prince Ernst’s horse by the bridle.

“May I go in?” I ask, hating to be forced to appeal to the enemy in this way.

Instead of ordering me back or insulting me as I expect, a look of immense relief flashes over his face.

“Pray do, Mademoiselle,” he says in French. “The poor woman is in great distress. At nothing, nothing at all.”

“She naturally doesn’t like soldiers entering her house and taking the post office papers and money,” I say, noting the large tin box on the pavement, matching in appearance the one outside the Gendarmerie door.

“That is not the reason,” returns the Prince, looking a little uncomfortable this time, “she is troubled because he is taken as prisoner.”

“Prisoner,” I say, stupefied.

“C’est la guerre,” he answers a little cynically, a little sullenly.

I turn away and stumble over the threshold.

In the sitting-room are the Prince, two officers, M. le Précepteur, looking hot and sticky yet deathly white, holding Germaine in his arms. Mme la Précepteur in a morning wrapper is yelling in accents which make pig-killing seem gentle by comparison. Hanging to her skirts is M. Victor, decidedly unwashed, but, mercifully, by now too short of breath to cry effectively.

“Mon pauvre mari, mes pauvres enfants,” sobs Madame. Her face is purple with emotion, the tears are coursing down her cheeks. She is a piteous spectacle of unrestrained grief.

The Prince of Meiningen says to me in quiet tones the words every German seems to use when in a tight corner.

“Es ist unsere pflicht” (It is our duty).

In front of M. le Précepteur is a little travelling-bag with a shirt and a few collars. I think he would go on packing if Madame would not insist on half-throttling him with her embraces every other minute.

“It will only be for a short time,” I say comfortingly to Monsieur le Précepteur.

“Only for the duration of the war,” says the Prince.

“The duration of the war!” But I am determined to look on the bright side.

“He will have nothing to eat,” moans Madame between her sobs.

“He will live well,” asserts the Prince patiently. He would take his prisoner off at once, only he does not wish to precipitate more scenes.

Live well! What a mockery. The German soldiers have themselves told me that the civilian prisoners only get bread and water during the term of their imprisonment.

I remember the words of my Belgian friend, the Tax-collector, when I asked him if they ever killed civilian prisoners.

“Kill them? No, indeed,” he said nonchalantly. “They give them too little to eat. That is all.”

I go into the little kitchen at the back and grope in the cupboard for bread and for butter to make tartines for M. le Précepteur.

An officer comes in and coolly appropriates some eggs in a wire-work basket.

“Fresh eggs,” he says appreciatively.

“Will you leave the poor woman nothing?” I ask fiercely.

He sets them on the table one by one and slinks back to the outer room.

“Come,” says the Prince.

Half fainting, Madame flings her arms round her husband’s neck for a last embrace, then falls back moaning into a chair. He kisses Germaine and Victor, then walks out into the sunlight and looks round him, half dazed. We shake hands, but with such a lump in my throat I cannot say a word.

The postmaster, carrying the little brown bag, walks off in the direction of Malempré between the Prince and his brother. The soldiers form up behind. The procession is soon lost to sight behind the tree trunks....

The Germans have quite a lust for prisoners to-day. After lunch the word goes round that the Bourgmestre is being sought for. At first they cannot find him. Perhaps he is hiding ... in a cellar ... somewhere.

Presently he is brought along. He looks shrunken and very white. Poor man, I am afraid he has heard rumours of the bread-and-water diet. He, too, is led off under military escort in the direction of Malempré....

At Grand-Mesnil they have already secured 12,000 francs from the Caisse Communale. Gold-thirsty brutes!

There is a panic-stricken cry in the village. The worst has happened. The beloved Curés are here, jogging along in a little armoured tumbril such as those in which one pictured folk passing bravely to the guillotine in revolution time of old. They suffer no indignity of bound hands or bandaged limbs. The swarming lines of troops remove all need for that.

A squad of soldiers march stolidly behind. Through the forest of notched bayonets one catches a glimpse of weeping women. There are other ways of fighting than with swords. The Curé makes the Sign of the Cross and smiles down on the scared faces of the villagers. If his voice would only carry he would say, like his divine forerunner, “Be not afraid.”

We run weeping after the tumbril. It seems sacrilege to take the Curé. Poor things! They have no seats, but are dexterously balancing themselves on the top of the Gendarmerie tin boxes. To the lay mind their attitude savours of the undignified. But in the good peasants’ eyes their Curé cannot be ridiculous....

A DISTURBED NIGHT

_Monday_.—It will be my turn next. The position is scarcely an enviable one. We seem so unprotected in this little lonely Belgian village between Liège, Namur, and the German frontier. Our few houses extend along the high road too; we have no cover. The Gendarmerie is next my bedroom window, its truculent-looking flag still floating out in the summer breeze. It acts as a red rag to a bull to every Uhlan who comes into the village. And the army, a great army, many army corps are passing by to-morrow.

Often and often when things have looked black for us, I have longed to suggest to the peasants that they should stow their danger-signal flag tidily away in a drawer. But there are some things one does not say. I am not sure, but I think, if I happened to have a Union Jack it would be up alongside....

It is midnight. We are in the usual inky darkness, since paraffin and candles have given out. A troop of soldiers ride up and hammer on the door. No answer. The street is lined with sleeping men; but these too make no sign. The soldiers are getting what sleep they can before their onslaught on Namur.

Without making a tour of inspection I am pretty sure Madame Job and family are in the fields, or the sheltering hooded _camion_. The Germans bang on the door again and cry in rather tipsy voices, “Bier, bier.”

I quietly prop a little furniture against the door and wait events.

They go away. At two in the morning another lot arrive. A half-hearted crew, or with insufficient weapons, for the stout, barred door refuses to give way under their stalwart blows.

Some Brandenburgers sally out of the Gendarmerie and ask in colloquial but expressive German, “Why the ... something they are making such a row.”

The intruders sulkily reply they want cognac, “and quickly too.”

The officers came to the inn yesterday and ordered that the soldiers should not be served with cognac. It seems the spirit makes them mad.

There is plenty of cognac in the bar. They have only got to break in and help themselves. I don’t propose to do a Joan-of-Arc turn and drive them away from the enticing bottles.

But the Brandenburgers order them off.

“We have tried ourselves. There is no cognac in the inn,” they say. “Only a Fräulein who is very tired.”

The soldiers ride grumbling away. Kind Brandenburgers!

Hardly has the noise of the horses’ hoofs died down than the ear is assailed by new and more terrifying sounds. At first it is a mere rumbling noise as of great carts creaking heavily along the high road from Vielsalm. Nearer it comes. It might be a procession of traction engines. Now it is like one continuous clap of thunder. As it rounds the bend from Malempré the noise is positively deafening.

I put my head out of the window. I can see nothing but vast grey, indeterminate forms, heralded by what I imagine are rows of innumerable horses. If only the darkness would lift and one could see a little. These awful cargoes turn off by the Gendarmerie in the direction of Namur. The noise is like hell let loose. It does not require much imagination to picture them as great siege guns being slipped through to Namur under cover of the night....

THE PLOT THICKENS

At four o’clock in the morning I hear the familiar cry of “Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle.” I am ready dressed in my Connemara tweed suit. I rush out. The Job-Lepouses are hanging out of a back bedroom window. They are bordering on frenzy at the sight of some Hussars endeavouring to seize their horse and cart.

They implore me to stop the Germans committing such a theft. How can I prevent these armed men from stealing the entire village if they wish? Rather a thankless task from my point of view. However, I go into the yard and translate the wishes of the Job-Lepouse family into very careful German, adding a bitter comment of my own.

“It’s only for a quarter of an hour, Fräulein,” they say sullenly, still harnessing the horse.

“Have you orders?”

Silence. Obviously they have no orders....

More soldiers are heard in the street. An orderly rushes into the yard. “The army is coming,” he says.

The men leave the horse and cart and hasten away. The orderly turns to us and asks for food. We bring out a few vegetables. He pays with German money and the usual parrot cry of satisfied complacency, “Alles wird bezahlt.”

He repeats again, “The army is coming.”

I ask, “Who are commanding?”

He replies, “All are here, all, all.” Then as an afterthought—“Except the Crown Prince. He is at Belfort.”

“Wounded?” I ask. The rumour has even reached us here.

“No more than you nor me,” says the orderly as he goes smiling away.

This is quite a morning of excitements. We now have a General with his aide-de-camp “drying” in the kitchen. They have been caught in an early morning downpour. I wish the raindrops had been bullets! Every now and again as the door opens I see him, standing by the stove, one hand covering Madame Job with his revolver, the other applied to his back to see his clothes don’t scorch.

Poor Madame Job. I know Albert, fried eggs, generals and revolvers are playing a dreadful, fire-worky, Catherine-wheel dance in her tired, frightened brain. For one second I have a sneaking, naughty sympathy with the red-faced General. I know from experience he will have a very watery breakfast....

THE MARCH PAST

Manhay seems alive with soldiers. Generals, colonels of cavalry regiments and all kinds of magnificently uniformed beings whose precise rank in the military scale I am too ignorant to determine, are riding or driving up in motor-cars, some from Vaux Chavannes, others from the direction of Vielsalm. They look so spruce and smart, especially a colonel of Hussars in a head-dress resembling a diminutive brown busby, who calls out orders in a deep, bass voice.

A whole team of horses is picketed in the village street, splendid horses too. They are pawing the ground and neighing, longing to be off. They will get their fill of battle soon enough, poor beasts! Their pastors and masters confer at the street corner. They look picturesque in their long blue military coats. A protective guard of honour is massed in front of the Gendarmerie door.

Waves of excitement pass over us. A great personage is here. He drives up in a beautiful car with an attaché whose banded grey-blue coat fits to perfection. The horses are brought along. The mysterious General (the soldiers speak of him with bated breath) mounts. His long blue cloak, with its scarlet facings, falls gracefully round him. He holds the reins in his well-gloved hands.

The entire staff, headed by the General, takes up its position in a semicircular sweep at the corner of the street opposite the Gendarmerie. The officers look the picture of arrogance. How I hate them! We all crane our necks out of the window. The army is advancing!

Already they are coming round the bend of the road. We can see them as they pass the corner by the château. At first the soldiers scarcely detach themselves from the firwoods. Then they seem to be marching on us in one solid block.

Few civilians get the chance to see an army, alien or otherwise, marching down to battle. The sight is piteous, thrilling. The imaginative must visualise ahead so many rotting corpses instead of those lithe, strong men. Personality seems lacking in that endless procession which comes streaming down the road with faces grey as their dust-laden clothes, mechanical in their movements as so many clock-work figures. Yet they look efficient, happy, fit.

A great ceremonial follows. The General of this vast army shakes hands with the colonel of each regiment, salutes the captains and lieutenants, and says some kindly word or two to each line of on-marching men. It is wonderful to see the spirit his cheery phrases put into their tired frames. They are no longer the envy of admiring women on Potsdam parade, these men with sweating faces and stiff limbs, but they are in good fettle none the less. One company has half a cigarette and the men pass it from hand to hand along the line so that each may have a whiff.

The soldiers are all jabbering away, odds and ends of Teuton witticisms, too colloquial for me to understand, interspersed with a fire of pleasantry at the expense of the peasants. They break out at intervals into snatches of song, winding up with the inevitable “Wacht am Rhein” and “Deutschland über alles.”

Although they do not march in step, “_les Prussiens_” advance in such close formation that each little company looks like one huge Falstaffian figure. The solidity of their Wellington boots is in good contrast to the colossal blunder of the pickelhauben, the spiky metal helmets covering their close-cropped heads.

The Kaiserliche regiment is here, dapper Hussars, regiment upon regiment of infantry, also the Brandenburgers, well-mounted, grim of feature, with their shoulder straps buttoned over to hide the Imperial crown and embroidered N. of their Colonel-Czar. Here are some of the Landwehr, too, homely, honest men who would far rather be working at their civilian tasks.

The troops greet the General as they pass him by with great bursts of “hoch” or “grüsz” rising in tempestuous outcries from myriads of dust-dried throats. They are irrepressibly gay and certain of themselves, but I think they are putting a good deal of faith in those devastating guns which went through in the silence of the night....

ARRESTED!

I hear an imperious voice say, “Come down, Fräulein.” The blue-coated attaché is standing beneath my window, backed by a guard of soldiers, not in their spiked helmets, as usual, but in their soft round caps.

Needless to say, I hasten to go down. The moment I had feared all along has come at last.

“Who are you?” he says, looking straight into my eyes as though trying to read my very soul.

“I am an Englishwoman,” I answer.

“Dasz sieht mann gerade aus” (That is self-evident), he replies sternly.

“Do you speak English?” I ask, just to gain time.

“I know all languages,” he says stiffly, “but now we will talk German.”

“Very well.”

“What are you doing in Manhay?”

“I am here for pleasure.” Such an imbecile reply makes the attaché glance at me even more suspiciously.

“Have you papers?”

“Yes.” I fly up to my room, fetch out a visiting card and a Lloyd’s bank-book and take them down to him.

He turns them over. “This bank, I have never even heard of it,” he says. “You come from London?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know the German bank——”

Here he utters some unpronounceable name.

“I have never heard of it,” I say in my turn.

His suspicions increase. I have to answer every conceivable question until I flatter myself I convince him, by my extremely naïve replies, that I am not even intelligent enough to be a spy.

He dismisses the soldiers, but continues talking to me.

“If only the English had stood in with us,” he says regretfully, “we could have swept the world together.”

I am silent.

He glances at my tweed suit. “I had ordered an Irish frieze just like that,” he says in English. “I was starting for a holiday in the Dolomites when the war came. Do you know who he is?” The attaché points to the cloaked General with the scarlet facings. The suddenness of the question takes me off my guard.

“Is it the Kaiser?” I ask.

“I shall not tell you,” he answers quietly.

“Then I may consider myself free?” I say presently.

He hesitates.

“Can’t you see I’m no spy?”

“I am not so sure, Fräulein. If you value safety you will keep within doors while the army passes.”

For a time I obey this order. Then some cavalry come by. There is excitement, a horse has bolted, someone is hurt. I put my head out of the window for a moment.

Five minutes later the attaché returns.

“Es thut mir leid, Fräulein. I am sorry, but you are under arrest. My Chief orders it so.”

My knees feel as if they were giving way. I give a horrified gasp.

“You have ten minutes to pack a few things, then you will be sent over to Germany under escort.”

I run into the house and tell the Job-Lepouses. They instantly fear the worst and are dissolved in tears.

It is the affair of a minute to stow a few necessaries in a suit-case. Unfortunately I stupidly pack papers too. I have a mouthful of black bread. Madame la Précepteur cries over me, so do the Job-Lepouses. I shall never forget their kindness. Then the attaché returns with a young officer.

I am placed in the charge of this man, an aviator it seems, by name Lieutenant von ——. He, with an escort, will convey me seventy miles along the main road to Germany.

“And then?” I ask with uplifted brows.

“If your papers are in order you will be free to remain in Germany until the end of the war.”

“But I have no money, or scarcely any.”

A whispered consultation takes place.

The attaché turns to me. “If your papers are right the Lieutenant may be able to arrange that you are immured in his Schloss.”

The magnanimity of the offer is lost upon me.

“I would rather scrub a doorstep,” I say, and bounce out into the street.

It is rather alarming to advance under arrest in the face of a hostile army. The officers at the corner by the Gendarmerie salute me as I pass. I am too angry to bow. Neither have I the courage to look round and settle the thrilling point as to whether the General with the red facings is the Kaiser after all.

I climb with some awkwardness over the high sides of an armoured car which is waiting in readiness with its soldier chauffeur some little distance up the street. My escort get in and take their seats. The infantry halting by the side of the road are almost falling over themselves in their excitement to see a spy, a real spy. We are off at a speed which would set a London policeman’s hair on end, in a wild rush into the unknown.

“IT’S A LONG, LONG WAY——”