At the Sign of the Sword: A Story of Love and War in Belgium

The city was agog with excitement. In that hot, blazing noontide, everyone seemed outside discussing the grave peril in which Belgium was now placed by daring to stem the overwhelming tide of Teutons.

“If they come they will not hurt us,” a man in the tram had laughed. “They will simply march through Belgium – that is all. What on earth have we to fear?”

Edmond had overheard those words. They represented the opinion of the populace, who had been frightened by the bogey of threatened war so many times, until now they had grown to regard the regularly rising cloud over Europe as part of the German policy, the brag and swagger of the great War Lord.

Edmond was alone. His one clerk was still away at his déjeuner as usual, from noon till two o’clock. From the open window of the small, dingy room he watched the animated scene below – watched like a man in a dream.

At the moment he was not thinking of the threatened war, but of the man Arnaud Rigaux.

An imprecation escaped his set teeth, as his face assumed a dark, threatening expression, his strong hands clenched, as they always did when certain thoughts arose.

“One day ere long,” he murmured, “we will settle the account between us, m’sieur. With us it is an eye for an eye, but you little dream what form my revenge will take. The hour is now fast approaching – depend upon it!”

Turning suddenly from the window, he lit a cigarette, for, like most Belgians, he was an inveterate smoker as well as something of a dandy in his attire, and seating himself at his big writing-table he began to scribble hastily memorandum after memorandum. For fully two hours he continued.

Old André, his clerk, returned, and placed a copy of a newspaper containing the report of the Affaire of the Rue du Trône at his elbow, saying:

“The Press are full of your praise, m’sieur. Is it not splendid – magnificent!”

But his master took no heed, so intent was he upon his writing, referring to various bundles of legal papers before him, as he scribbled on.

Then, at last, just before four o’clock, he put on his hat and went forth again, walking to the Palais de Justice, where, after searching through the courts, he found, in the dark panelled Court of Appeal, a confrère of his – a tall, thin man, with a bushy black beard. His friend congratulated him heartily upon his success in the cause célèbre that morning, after which they both went out into the atrium and sat upon a bench, while Edmond Valentin gave him a number of instructions.

Afterwards, just before five, Edmond emerged again, crossed into the wide, leafy Avenue Louise, and boarding a tram, rode straight up that splendid boulevard of fine private residences, to the gates of the pretty natural park of which Bruxellois are so proud, the Bois de la Cambre. Upon a seat in one of the secluded paths, not far from the entrance, he found Aimée, dressed in white embroidered muslin, awaiting him.

“Ah, Edmond!” she cried, springing up. “Terrible, is it not? There will be war! You were right – quite right – dearest. Germany intends to encroach upon our land?”

“Yes, darling,” he replied, bending over her little gloved hand with deep apology at being late. “I fear that it is so, and that we shall be compelled to defend ourselves,” he sighed. “The terror of war is upon us.”

“But there will not be fighting in Belgium – surely?” the girl declared. “Colonel Maclean, the British military attaché, was at lunch with us to-day, and he told my father that England did not anticipate war. It is only the German nature to be aggressive against Russia.”

“Ah! no. Do not believe the optimists, my darling,” the man said, seating himself at her side. “Do not believe in the soft words and the self-styled culture of the Germans. They are the natural enemies of Europe, and the camarilla of Potsdam intends now to fight for world-power.”

She was silent, tracing a semicircle on the gravel with the ferrule of her white silk sunshade.

It was a pretty, leafy nook where they were sitting – a spot where it was often their habit to meet in secret when she was in Brussels. That big white mansion of the Baron Henri de Neuville he had passed half-way up the Avenue Louise was one of the largest and most handsome private residences in Brussels, with its imposing gates of ornamental ironwork surmounted by a gilt coronet, and huge glass-covered winter-garden – a place pointed out to messieurs, the tourists of the Agence Cook, who passed daily in the motor char-à-banc, as the “town-house of the Baron de Neuville, the great Belgian millionaire,” as the uniformed guide put it each morning in his parrot-like English, when he conducted his charges on their way to the field of Waterloo.

“Do you know, Aimée,” exclaimed her companion seriously at last, “I have decided to return to my old regiment, and to act my part – the part of a true Belgian. I can at once return as sous-officier.”

“What?” gasped the girl in quick alarm. “But, Edmond – you – you – you might be wounded if war really broke out! You might even be killed! No! For my sake, dear, don’t go,” she implored, placing her trembling little hand upon his arm and looking up appealingly into his eyes.

“War will be upon us, if not to-day, then to-morrow. My place is in the ranks of the defenders,” he said firmly. “I have no money-bags to protect, as your father the Baron has. My profession will be at an end with war, hence I have decided. I have made all arrangements for my friend Verbruggen to take my cases in the Courts.”

“And you will really rejoin the Chasseurs-à-pied?” she asked anxiously.

“I shall. It is only my duty, dearest. Against the great Germany our little Belgium will require every man who can hold a rifle,” replied her lover. “The German Kaiser means war – and war means the shedding of blood in our land.”

“But think – if you were killed, Edmond!” she gasped, staring at him.

“I should at least die knowing that we loved each other, darling,” he answered, taking her hand tenderly in his own and raising it to his lips. “You are mine, and I am yours; only death can part us.”

He glanced up and down. They were alone in that narrow, leafy way, with the birds twittering gaily above them, and the hot sunshine filtering through the branches; for the charm of the Bois was its rural picturesqueness, near as it was to the centre of the gay, vivacious little capital.

His arm stole very slowly around her waist, and she fell back into his embrace in the supreme ecstasy of that moment.

“Though the barrier between us – the barrier of money – is insurmountable, Aimée, I love you better – ah! better than my own life, sweetheart. To-day, though the sun still shines over our dear Belgium, it is, alas! the darkest day of our history. The terror of the Uhlan is already over our land. Your father, the Baron, will, I know, endeavour to snatch you from me, and marry you to the man whom I have so just a cause to hate – enemy as he is of my own race, my name, my country. But, darling, I refuse, in this hour of deadly peril, to remain inactive. I love you, and, my darling, I know that you love me. Our dear country is threatened by the invader, who intends to smash and to crush us, to sweep our smiling, peaceful land with fire and sword; to stamp out our national life, and to grind us beneath the millstones of a blasphemous autocracy. And, as an officer of the Belgian army, my place is with my regiment – to defend our country; to defend our innocent women – to defend you, my own beloved.”

Tears welled in her great dark eyes as she listened to his words, and he bent until his lips pressed hers.

His argument was complete. How could she protest further? Her secret lover was a fine, manly man – far more manly than any she had ever met in her own select circle of that vain bejewelled society, where mammon was god, and where finance daily juggled with the destiny of nations.

To rejoin his regiment was, after all, her lover’s duty. She knew it in her innermost consciousness. Yes, he was right. Though a lieutenant, he could rejoin as sous-officier. The war-cloud, so black and lowering, must burst within a few hours.

As a true daughter of Belgium she was at heart a patriot, even though, in her own home, the only patriotism ever taught her had been the love of self-esteem.

He was silent, not daring to utter further word; and she, looking into his dark, thoughtful, serious eyes, in silence, wept.

Yet in the ears of both of them rang that single word of such awful and such fatal significance:

War! War! WAR!

Chapter Three.

The Heart’s Desire

At ten o’clock on the same evening the Baron Henri de Neuville sat smoking a cigar in a small, luxuriously furnished room in the great white mansion in the Avenue Louise.

A broad-shouldered, grey-haired, slightly bald man, whose heavy jaws were fringed by short grey side-whiskers, and whose deep-set eyes were rendered darker by the natural pallor of his complexion. His hair was well brushed to hide his baldness, and in his well-cut evening clothes he looked younger than he really was. He had been commanded to the Palace earlier in the evening, for the King had consulted him in connection with some secret financial transaction affecting the nation, and therefore at his throat he wore the ribbon and cross of the Order of Leopold.

With him sat his friend, Arnaud Rigaux, a dandified thin-faced man, a few years his junior, with black hair plastered down upon his head, a pair of narrow-set beady eyes, a countenance of distinctly Hebrew cast, and a small pointed black moustache, unmistakably dyed. The shrivelled thinness of his hands was certainly not in keeping with the artificial youth of his face, and, on second glance, the most casual observer would have realised that he was one of those men who, by reason of a fast life, have aged prematurely, and who endeavour to remain young, and believe themselves still attractive to the fair sex.

He had, in years past, been a rather handsome man. But the life he had led had left its mark indelibly upon him, for he looked what he was, a roué who had run the whole gamut of the gaieties of Europe, from the Casino at Aix to the Villa Regala at Bucharest, and from the haunts of the demi-monde on the Riviera to the night-cafés of Berlin and the cabarets of the Montmarte.

As he lounged back in the big, soft, saddle-bag chair, the fine diamond glistening in his shirt, he presented a picture of the affluent parvenu, that type of wealthy financier of Hebrew strain, which is so familiar the world over.

The Baron was certainly of a refined and gentlemanly type, though there was in his face that shrewd, hard expression which seems inseparable from the financial mind. Yet his companion was of an entirely different stamp – coarse, unsympathetic, with sensuality stamped upon his loose lips.

He removed the cigar from his mouth, and lifting his narrow eyes to his companion, remarked:

“I am relieved to hear your opinion, my dear Henri. It agrees entirely with mine. Though the Bourses show signs of panic, I cannot but think that war is impossible.”

“The Minister Orts was at the Palace, and I had a few words with him,” the Baron said. “They had, at the Ministry, a telegram from our Minister in London only an hour ago. War is not anticipated there.”

“Nor here – only by the ignorant,” laughed Rigaux. “Germany cannot – nay, she dare not – attack Europe.”

“It is whispered that the King has appealed to King George of England to uphold our neutrality. But in one or two quarters I hear it alleged that the fixed purpose to provoke a general war has underlain Germany’s policy for many years, and now, with Austria as her ally, she has wantonly flung down the gauntlet to all Europe.”

“I don’t believe it at all,” declared the other. “The Kaiser cannot commit such an outrage on all justice and all public right. Our neutrality was guaranteed by Germany herself. How can she dishonour her own signature?”