The Day of Wrath: A Story of 1914

“Grand Dieu! you’re English, without doubt.”

Joos turned the pail upside down, appraising it critically. “Yes,” he said, “it’s one of Dupont’s. I remember her buying it. She gave him fifty kilos of potatoes for it. She stuck him, he said. Half the potatoes were black. A rare hand at a bargain, the Veuve Jaquinot. And she’s dead you tell me. A bayonet thrust?”

“Two.”

Madame Joos burst into hysterical sobbing. Her husband whisked round on her with that singular alertness of movement which was one of his most marked characteristics.

“Peace, wife!” he snapped. “Isn’t that what we’re all coming to? What matter to Dupont now whether the potatoes were black or sound?”

Dalroy guessed that Dupont was the iron-monger of Visé. He was gaining a glimpse, too, of the indomitable soul of Belgium. Though itching for information, he checked the impulse, because time pressed horribly.

“Well,” he said, “will you do what you can for the lady? The Germans have spared you. You have fed them. They may treat you decently. I’ll make it worth while. I have plenty of money – ”

Irene stood up. “Monsieur,” she said, and her voice was sweet as the song of a robin, “it is idle to speak of saving one without the other. Where Monsieur Dalroy goes I go. If he dies, I die.”

For the first time since entering the mill Dalroy dared to look at her. In the sharp, crisp light of advancing day her blue eyes held a tint of violet. Tear-drops glistened in the long lashes; but she smiled wistfully, as though pleading for forgiveness.

“That is sheer nonsense,” he cried in English, making a miserable failure of the anger he tried to assume. “You ought to be reasonably safe here. By insisting on remaining with me you deliberately sacrifice both our lives. That is, I mean,” he added hastily, aware of a slip, “you prevent me too from taking the chance of escape that offers.”

“If that were so I would not thrust myself on you,” she answered. “But I know the Germans. I know how they mean to wage war. They make no secret of it. They intend to strike terror into every heart at the outset. They are not men, but super-brutes. You saw Von Halwig at Berlin, and again at Aix-la-Chapelle. If a titled Prussian can change his superficial manners – not his nature, which remains invariably bestial – to that extent in a day, before he has even the excuse of actual war, what will the same man become when roused to fury by resistance? But we must not talk English.” She turned to Joos. “Tell us, then, monsieur,” she said, grave and serious as Pallas Athena questioning Perseus, “have not the Prussians already ravaged and destroyed Visé?”

The old man’s face suddenly lost its bronze, and became ivory white. His features grew convulsed. He resembled one of those grotesque masks carved by Japanese artists to simulate a demon. “Curse them!” he shrilled. “Curse them in life and in death – man, woman, and child! What has Belgium done that she should be harried by a pack of wolves? Who can say what wolves will do?”

Joos was aboil with vitriolic passion. There was no knowing how long this tirade might have gone on had not a speckled hen stalked firmly in through the open door with obvious and settled intent to breakfast on crumbs.

“Ciel!” cackled the orator. “Not a fowl was fed overnight!”

In real life, as on the stage, comedy and tragedy oft go hand in hand. But the speckled hen deserved a good meal. Her entrance undoubtedly stemmed the floodtide of her owner’s patriotic wrath, and thus enabled the five people in the kitchen to overhear a hoarse cry from the roadway: “Hi, there, dummer Esel! whither goest thou? This is Joos’s mill.”

“Quick, Léontine!” cried Joos. “To the second loft with them! Sharp, now!”

In this unexpected crisis, Dalroy could neither protest nor refuse to accompany the girl, who led him and Irene up a back stair and through a well-stored granary to a ladder which communicated with a trap-door.

“I’ll bring you some coffee and eggs as soon as I can,” she whispered. “Draw up the ladder, and close the door. It’s not so bad up there. There’s a window, but take care you aren’t seen. Maybe,” she added tremulously, “you are safer than we now.”

Dalroy realised that it was best to obey.

“Courage, mademoiselle!” he said. “God is still in heaven, and all will be well with the world.”

“Please, monsieur, what became of Jan Maertz?” she inquired timidly.

“I’m not quite certain, but I think he fell clear of the wagon. The Germans should not have ill-treated him. The collision was not his fault.”

The girl sobbed, and left them. Probably the gruff Walloon was her lover.

Irene climbed first. Dalroy followed, raised the ladder noiselessly, and lowered the trap. His brow was seamed with foreboding, as, despite his desire to leave his companion in the care of the miller’s household, he had an instinctive feeling that he was acting unwisely. Moreover, like every free man, he preferred to seek the open when in peril. Now he felt himself caged.

Therefore was he amazed when Irene laughed softly. “How readily you translate Browning into French!” she said.

He gazed at her in wonderment. Less than an hour ago she had fainted under the stress of hunger and dread, yet here was she talking as though they had met in the breakfast-room of an English country house. He would have said something, but the ancient mill trembled under the sudden crash of artillery. The roof creaked, the panes of glass in the dormer window rattled, and fragments of mortar fell from the walls. Unmindful, for the moment, of Léontine Joos’s warning, Dalroy went to the window, which commanded a fine view of the town, river, and opposite heights.

The pontoon bridge was broken. Several pontoons were in splinters. The others were swinging with the current toward each bank. Six Belgian field-pieces had undone the night’s labour, and a lively rat-tat of rifles, mixed with the stutter of machine guns, proved that the defenders were busy among the Germans trapped on the north bank. The heavier ordnance brought to the front by the enemy soon took up the challenge; troops occupying the town, which, for the most part, lies on the south bank, began to cover the efforts of the engineers, instantly renewed. History was being written in blood that morning on both sides of the Meuse. The splendid defence offered by a small Belgian force was thwarting the advance of the 9th German Army Corps. Similarly, the 10th and 7th were being held up at Verviers and on the direct road from Aix to Liège respectively. All this meant that General Leman, the heroic commander-in-chief at Liège, was given most precious time to garrison that strong fortress, construct wire entanglements, lay mines, and destroy roads and railways, which again meant that Von Emmich’s sledge-hammer blows with three army corps failed to overwhelm Liège in accordance with the dastardly plan drawn up by the German staff.