Chapter Sixteen. The Fire of Fate.

Outside in the streets could be heard the sound of rifle-fire, while the air was filled with the pungent odour of powder, and of burning wood.

The whole town had, by that time, become a veritable hell. Not far along the street, indeed in sight of the Hotel of the Sword, forty or so innocent men—honest workers at a neighbouring factory—had been drawn up against a wall. The front row was ordered to kneel, with their hands up, the others remaining standing behind them. A platoon of soldiers suddenly drew up in face of these unhappy men, with their rifles ready. In vain did the frantic women beg for mercy for their sons, husbands, and brothers. But the officer, grinning, ordered his men to fire. Some fell forward, dead, others were only slightly wounded. But the soldiers, to make sure, fired three volleys into that heap of men in their death throes. Such fell, hellish work had been ordered “as examples” by the glittering War Lord—the man who declared that God was his guide in his arrogant desire to rule the world. Those poor fellows were, even while their bodies were still warm, thrown into a pit dug in a neighbouring garden.

Further up the same street, a poor old paralytic was shot in his invalid-chair, together with a bright little boy of twelve, and their bodies were kicked aside into a doorway, while, at the same time, a man of sixty-five, his wife, his son and his daughter, were set up against the wall of their burning house and shot. And none of them had committed any crime!

Here and there were loud explosions. The soldiers, who had pillaged the cafés and drunk indiscriminately all they could find, were blowing open the safes of merchants and shopkeepers with dynamite, and stealing all they could discover. They were mere brigands.

The Faubourg de Leffe, near the broken viaduct of the railway, was already in flames. Soldiers were using their inflammable confetti provided them by the Fatherland, which they were sprinkling everywhere, for the monster in command had given the order that Dinant, after being sacked, and its people massacred, should be burnt.

As the slim, pale-faced girl stood facing her father’s false friend, she could hear the wild shrieks of the defenceless women outside—those poor creatures dragged forth to witness the heartless murder of those dearest to them.

“Well,” Rigaux asked again, with an evil grin upon his face. “So you are quite decided—eh?”

“I am quite decided, m’sieur, that you are my bitterest enemy,” was her hard, defiant answer. “I have been caught here, helpless. But I have no hope, therefore I have no fear. To whatever fate you, as spy of the accursed Kaiser of Germany, may condemn me, I am quite prepared.”

For a few seconds he remained silent. Her coolness and bold defiance, in face of that awful scene, absolutely staggered him. He never credited her with such nerve.

“But will you not accept my offer, and escape with me?”

“No. I will not accept the assistance of one who has openly confessed himself to be a traitor,” she responded.

“But you cannot remain here—you will be killed—perhaps even meet with a worse fate. You do not know what awful scenes are in progress in Dinant at this moment,” he said. “The soldiers are collecting up the people, men, women, and children, and mowing them down with their machine-guns. You cannot remain here while this awful work of destruction, theft, and incendiarism is in progress!”

“And whose work, pray, is this? It is men such as you who are responsible—men who have sold Belgium into her enemy’s hands,” she cried bitterly, her big eyes glaring at him in her woman’s undisguised hatred.

“Merely the fortunes of war, Mademoiselle,” he replied with a smile, as he shrugged his shoulders, quite unperturbed by her violent denunciation.

“Then go, and leave me to face this terrible fate to which I have been consigned. Shoot me with that revolver I see you have in your belt,” she cried wildly. “Shoot me, if you will. I am quite ready.”

But he grinned horribly in her face—the grin of a man who intended a demoniacal revenge.

She knew herself to be defenceless—utterly helpless in his hands. Men and women of Dinant, known to her from childhood, lay stiffening in death in that narrow street wherein hell had been let loose by the orders of the arrogant War Lord—that pinchbeck Napoleon who dangled his tin crosses before his troops to incite them to deeds of barbarism, which were afterwards magnified and distorted into those of valour.

“No,” the man laughed. “If you, as daughter of the Baron de Neuville, still disregard my well-meant efforts to rescue you from this awful abyss of dishonour and death, then I have no more to say. I can only leave you to the same fate as that of the women of the town.”

“No!” shrieked the girl. “Shoot me.” And she stood before him ready to fall beneath the bullet of his revolver. “Shoot me—have mercy upon me and shoot me!”

She felt his hot, foetid breath once again upon her cheek; she heard the report of the rifles outside, the loud, piercing shrieks of defenceless women, the exultant shouts and laughter of the Germans, and the rapid crackling of a machine-gun in the immediate vicinity.

She struggled violently to free herself, but he was the stronger. His sensuous lips were upon hers, his big eyes looked fiercely into hers, while her slim figure was held within his strong, desperate grasp. She saw the evil, wicked look in his eyes.

“Let me go, you brute—you spy of Germany!” she shrieked in French. “Let me go, I say!”

“No, no,” he laughed in triumph. “You are mine—mine! I have brought ruin upon your miserable little country, upon your father, upon your fine château, and now, because you still defy me—I bring it upon you!”

“Bien! And what do you intend?” she asked.

“I intend to take you out yonder, into the street, and to hand you over to the tender mercies of those most unpolite troops of Germany—the Bavarians. There are three thousand in the town, and they are having a really reckless time—I can assure you.”

“You hell-scoundrel!” cried the poor girl in her frantic, almost insane terror. “You—you who have sat at our table and eaten with us—you, whom my father has trusted, and to whom my mother has sent presents at Noël. Ah! I now see you unmasked, yet you—”

“Enough!” cried the fellow, springing upon her and putting his thick, loose lips to hers. “A last kiss, and then you go to the late which every Belgian woman goes to-day where our Kaiser and his troops are victorious,” and he kissed her though she still struggled fiercely to evade his grasp.

Suddenly both started, for in the room sounded a loud deafening report.

Aimée started and drew back, breathless and shocked, for from that hated face thrust into hers, before her, one eye disappeared. The hateful face receded, the body reeled and suddenly falling backward, rolled over the stone flags of the kitchen.

A bullet had entered the eye of Arnaud Rigaux, and, passing through his brain, had taken away a portion of his skull, causing instant death. That left eye, as he reeled and fell backwards, was blotted out, for it was only a clot of blood.

“Aimée!” shouted a voice.

The girl, startled, turned to encounter a man in a grey uniform—a German infantryman! He wore a small round grey cap, and in its front the little circular cockade of blue and white—the mark of the Bavarian.

“Aimée!”

The girl stared into the face of her rescuer.

It was Edmond—Edmond—her own dear Edmond—and dressed as a Bavarian!

“The infernal spy!” he cried in a hard, rough voice. “I caught the fellow just in time, my darling. For two years past I have known the truth—that in addition to being our worst enemy—he has also been a traitor to our King and country, and your father’s false friend.”

“But Edmond?” gasped the girl, staring at him like one in a dream. “Why are you here—dressed as a German?”

“Hush!” he whispered. “If I am caught I shall be shot as a spy! I must not talk, or I may betray myself. Come with me. We must get back at once to the Belgian line.”

“But—but how?” she gasped, for now the truth had dawned upon her—the truth of the great risk her lover ran in penetrating to the invested town.

“Come with me. Have no fear, my darling. If God wills that we die, we will at least die together. Come,” he whispered, “appear as though you go with me unwillingly, or somebody may suspect us. Come along now,” he shouted, and taking her wrist roughly pretended to drag her forth into the street, where dead men and women were lying about in the roadway, and the houses only a few yards away were already ablaze.

He dragged her along that narrow street, so full of haunting horrors, urging her beneath his breath to pretend a deadly hatred of him. They passed crowds of drunken Germans. Some were smashing in windows with the butt ends of their rifles, and pouring petrol into the rooms from cans which others carried. Others were dragging along women and girls, or forcing them to march before them at the points of bayonets, and laughing immoderately at the terror such proceeding caused.

A swaggering young officer of the Seventieth Regiment of the Rhine staggered past them with a champagne bottle in his hand. He addressed some command to Edmond Valentin.

For a second Aimée’s heart stood still. But Edmond, seeing that the lieutenant was intoxicated, merely saluted and passed on, hurrying round the corner into the square where, against the wall near the church, they saw a line of bodies—the bodies of those innocent townspeople whom the bloodthirsty horde had swept out of existence with their machine-guns.

On every side ugly stains of blood showed upon the stones. A dark red stream trickled slowly into the gutters, so awful had been the massacre an hour before.

As they crossed the square they witnessed a frightful scene. Some men and women, who had hidden in a cellar, were driven out upon the pavement ruthlessly, and shot down. The officer who gave the order, smoking a cigarette and laughing the while.

Aimée stood for a second with closed eyes, not bearing to witness such a fearful sight. Those shrill cries of despair from the terrified women and children rang in her ears for a moment. Then the rifles crackled, and there were no more cries—only a huddled heap of dead humanity.

Edmond dragged her forward. German soldiers whom they passed laughed merrily at the conquest apparently made by one of their comrades.

And as they went by the ruined church, and out upon the road towards Leffe, the scene of pillage and drunkenness that met their eyes, was indeed revolting.

Though the Belgian Government has since issued an official report to the Powers concerning the wild orgies of that awful day in Dinant, the story, in all its true hideousness, will, perhaps, never be known. Those seven hundred or so poor creatures who could testify to the fiendish torture practised upon them: how some were mutilated, outraged, bound, covered with straw and burned alive, and even buried alive, are all in their graves, their lips, alas! sealed for ever.

Another officer, a major of the Seventeenth Uhlans, rode past, and Edmond saluted. They were, indeed, treading dangerous ground.

If Edmond were discovered, both he and she would be shot as spies against the nearest wall.

How she refrained from fainting she knew not. But she bore that terrible ordeal bravely, her spirit sustained by her great, boundless love for the man at her side.

The road they had taken led by the river-bank, and just as a body of Uhlans had clattered past, raising a cloud of dust, they saw across the hills at Bouvigne, a heliograph at work, signalling towards Namur.

Above them a Taube aeroplane was slowly circling.