THE TRENCH DAYS: The Collected War Tales of William Le Queux (WW1 Adventure Sagas, Espionage Thrillers & Action Classics). William Le Queux
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little kingdom had fallen beneath the fire and sword of a relentless barbarian.
On every hand great holes showed in the walls, torn open by the British shells, many houses were completely demolished, and in some places only rubble heaps remained to show the site where houses had stood. In others, walls stood gaunt and blackened where the fire had gutted them, causing roofs and windows to fall in.
Wandering pigs were grunting in the long street, and big-eyed little children, now that the roar of war had ceased, were playing merrily among the ruins and finding all sorts of oddments half burned in the débris. One, evidently a humourist, had put on the spiked helmet of a dead German, and was striking comic attitudes, to the delight of his playfellows. His head being completely buried in the canvas-covered helmet, he presented a most ludicrous appearance.
“Let us find M’sieur Labarre, mother,” suggested Aimée, for she knew the place well, as they had often been her uncle’s guests at the now ruined château.
“Yes,” murmured the Baronne. “I feel so very faint, dear, that I really can go no farther?” And, indeed, the poor woman, refined and cultured, having tramped all through that terrible night in her thin shoes, and having been challenged so constantly by soldiers in the darkness — each challenge being a fright lest it be that of the enemy — she was entirely exhausted and unnerved.
Labarre was a farmer, who held some land belonging to Aimée’s unde, and it was not long before they entered his modest house — a long, ugly, grey-slated place surrounded by haystacks and outhouses.
Labarre, a stout, ruddy-faced man, of middle age, in a blue linen blouse, typical of the Walloon farmer, welcomed the poor ladies warmly and in great surprise, and soon they were in the hands of his stout wife, Elise, and were drinking cups of hot bouillon, for, in the farms of the Ardennes, the stock-pot is usually simmering upon the fire.
The long, old-fashioned room, with its heavy beams, its stone-paving, its row of copper cooking-utensils shining in the sun, and its wide chimney and wooden chairs was, indeed, a haven of rest after the terrors of that night.
And while they drank the bouillon, the fat farmer lifted his hands as he told them the story of the German occupation.
“Ah! Baronne! It was terrible — very terrible,” he cried in his Walloon dialect. “Those pigs of Germans came here, took all the corn I had, smashed my piano and thieved two of my horses. But the brave English drove them out. We fled when the English shells began to fall, but, fortunately, not one did any damage to our house, though the big barn was set on fire with two haystacks, and destroyed.”
Having remained under the farmer’s hospitable roof for a day, Aimée, who had now completely recovered, resolved to leave her mother in Madame Labarre’s charge, and endeavour to reach Dinant where, it was said, the telephone with Brussels had been repaired. By that means she could, she hoped, communicate with her father, and ascertain what they should do.
The British soldiers in khaki were now in possession of Bourseigne, and that communication was open from Dinant to Brussels, Aimée had learnt from a lieutenant of the Gloucesters, a good-looking young fellow named Dick Fortescue, whom she had met in the little Place having some trouble with the Walloon language in a purchase of fodder he was making, and had offered to interpret.
What Fortescue had told her caused her to decide, therefore, two hours later, there being no trains nor any conveyance available, she set out alone, a slim, pathetic little figure in dusty black, wearing a black shawl borrowed from the farmer’s wife, and turned her face westward along that white road so familiar to her, a highway which ran over green hills and along deep valleys, and which was the main road over which the lumbering, old-fashioned post diligences, with their jingling bells, still passed, in peace time, between Sedan and Dinant.
With her face to the deep glow of the sunset she trudged forward, her thoughts reverting, as they always did, to Edmond — her Edmond!
“Where is he?” she murmured, as her white, hard-set lips moved. “What can have happened to him?”
Was he lying still and dead — buried perhaps in a nameless grave — or was he still fighting valiantly in defence of his country and his King?
If he were, he would, wherever he might be, still be thinking of her. Of that she was confident, for they loved each other with a firm, all-absorbing and eternal love, a love that could never be shaken, and that could never die.
The light of the fading day darkened into the blood-red afterglow, and before her there rose the lowering clouds of night, as alone and unprotected she still bent forward, with sixteen miles to cover ere she reached the narrow, cobbled streets of Dinant. Ten miles away on her left stood Sévérac, now, alas! but a smouldering ruin, and over in that direction she could hear the distant booming of heavy guns, for that evening the British, acquitting themselves so bravely, were fighting Von Kluck all along the line from Mons, through Charleroi, to near Mézieres. They were stemming the German invasion, and while the flower of the German Army was being hurled against them, they swept them off even though the Kaiser, in his insane arrogance, had issued as his “Imperial command” that General French’s “contemptible little army” should be crushed out of existence.
In her torn and dusty black gown, and patent leather shoes, worn badly down by the long tramp from Sévérac, Aimée, though weary and footsore, did not lose heart. She was gratified that her mother was in a place of safety, and now, if she could only communicate with her father, they would, no doubt, be able to get to Ostend, and perhaps over to England. So she went forward with the distant rumble of artillery ever in her ears, while as darkness fell, she turned aside to notice a fierce red glare in the sky far away across the Meuse, in the direction of Phillipeville. Over there another town had no doubt been given to the flames.
At the village of Malvoisin she met several thousands of refugees coming towards France, raising clouds of suffocating dust. They were peasants driven by the enemy out of the peaceful valley of the winding Ourthe, and were hoping to find shelter across the frontier in France. Now and then there passed clattering squadrons of Belgian cavalry, the little yellow tassels hanging gaily from the front of their caps, while ever and anon there lumbered past, in the dim light, great grey-painted siege-guns, long trains of ammunition-wagons, Red Cross motor-ambulances, and endless lines of transports of all sorts.
Squads of infantry marched gaily to martial airs, or the men sang the latest popular songs of the café-chantant, while there also passed several machine-guns drawn by their dog-teams.
Presently Aimée joined three tearful, homeless women, one of whom trundled an old rickety perambulator filled with her household goods. They had come from Rossignol, forty miles distant, which had been sacked and burned by a Uhlan patrol, and they described to her the terrible scene. Therefore, in company, the trio pushed forward until at length they entered a long dark street of shattered houses, which Aimée recognised, to her amazement, as that of Anseremme. Yes! There was the little Hôtel Beau Séjour where she and Edmond had spent so many sunny hours in secret together, but alas! its walls were now gaunt and roofless. It had been gutted by fire, while the pleasant little terrasse beside the river was heaped with the débris of fallen walls.
She sighed as she passed the place which held for her so many fond memories, and again pressed forward with blistered feet, on past that great high split rock, through which the road runs beside the river, known as the Roche Bayard, until at length she found herself in the long dark street of half-ruined houses that led straight into the little Place at Dinant.
Arrived there, she halted aghast. The long bridge had fallen, a wreck, into the river, and there were signs everywhere of the ruthless bombardment a week before, when happily the Germans had been driven out and had retired. But at that hour, about half-past ten o’clock, the place was as silent as the grave. Everywhere was ruin and desolation, while in the air was still the pungent odour of burnt wood, the woodwork of houses set on fire by the German shells.
There being neither gas nor electricity, an oil lamp had been hung upon a nail on a wall, and it was near this that the girl was standing. She was well known in Dinant as daughter of the Baron who held the purse-strings