“If I learn it, it may save me many a trip.”
“Here, you two,” growled Jan Maertz, “talk a language a fellow can understand.”
The road was deserted save for themselves, and the others had unconsciously spoken English. Dalroy turned to apologise to their rough but trusty friend, and thus missed the quizzical and affectionate glance which Irene darted at him. She was still smiling when next he caught her eye.
“What is it now?” he asked.
“I was thinking how difficult it is to see a wood for the trees,” she replied.
Maertz took her literally.
“I’ll be glad when we’re in the open country again, mademoiselle,” he said. “I don’t like this forest. One can’t guess what may be hiding round the corner.”
Yet they stopped that night at Brainé le Comte, and crossed Enghien next day without incident. It is a pity that such a glorious ramble should be described so baldly. In happier times, when Robert Louis Stevenson took that blithe journey through the Cevennes with a donkey, a similar excursion produced a book which will be read when the German madness has long been relegated to a detested oblivion. But Uhlan pickets and “square-head” sentries supply wretched sign-posts in a land of romance, and the wanderers were now in a region where each kilomètre had to be surveyed with caution.
Maertz owned an aunt in every village, and careful inquiry had, of course, located one of these numerous relatives in Lierde, a hamlet on the Grammont-Gand road. Oudenarde was strongly held by the enemy, but the roads leading to Gand were the scene of magnificent exploits by the armoured cars of the Belgian army. Certain Belgian motorists had become national heroes during the past fortnight. An innkeeper in Grammont told with bated breath how one famous driver, helped by a machine-gun crew, was accounting for scores of marauding cavalrymen. “The English and French are beaten, but our fellows are holding them,” he said with a fine air. “When you boys get through you’ll enjoy life. My nephew, who used to be a great chasseur, says there is no sport like chasing mounted Boches.”
This frank recognition of Dalroy as one of the innumerable young Belgians then engaged in crossing the enemy’s lines in order to serve with their brothers was an unwitting compliment to a student who had picked up the colloquial phrases and Walloon words in Maertz’s uncouth speech. A man who looked like an unkempt peasant should speak like one, and Dalroy was an apt scholar. He never trod on doubtful ground. Strangers regarded him as a taciturn person, solely because of this linguistic restraint. Maertz made nearly all inquiries, and never erred in selecting an informant. The truth was that German spies were rare in this district. They were common as crows in the cities, and on the frontiers of Belgium and France, but rural Brabant harboured few, and that simple fact accounts for the comparatively slow progress of the invaders as they neared the coast.