CHAPTER X
ANDENNE
Madame Joos was old for her fifty years, and heavy withal. Hers was not the finer quality of human clay which hardens in the fire of adversity. She became ill, almost seriously ill, and had to be nursed back into good health again during nine long days. And long these days were, the longest Dalroy had ever known. To a man of his temperament, enforced inactivity was anathema in any conditions; a gnawing doubt that he was not justified in remaining in Verviers at all did not improve matters. Monsieur Garnier, the curé, was a frequent though unobtrusive visitor. He doctored the invalid, and brought scraps of accurate information which filtered through the far-flung screen of Uhlans and the dense lines of German infantry and guns. Thus the fugitives knew when and where the British Expeditionary Force actually landed on the Continent. They heard of the gradual sapping of the defences of Liège, until Fort Loncin fell, and, with it, as events were to prove, the shield which had protected Belgium for nearly a fortnight. The respite did not avail King Albert and his heroic people in so far as the occupation and ravaging of their beautiful country was concerned; but calm-eyed historians in years to come will appraise at its true value the breathing-space, slight though it was, thus secured for France and England.
Dalroy found it extraordinarily difficult to sift the true from the false in the crop of conflicting rumours. In the first instance, German legends had to be discounted. From the outset of the campaign the Kaiser’s armies were steadily regaled with accounts of phenomenal successes elsewhere. Thus, when four army corps, commanded now by Von Kluck, were nearly demoralised by the steadfast valour of General Leman and his stalwarts, the men were rallied by being told that the Crown Prince was smashing his way to Paris through Nancy and Verdun. Prodigies were being performed in Poland and the North Sea, and London was burnt by Zeppelins almost daily. Nor did Belgian imagination lag far behind in this contest of unveracity. British and French troops were marching to the Meuse by a dozen roads; the French raid into Alsace was magnified into a great military feat; the British fleet had squelched the German navy by sinking nineteen battleships; the Kaiser, haggard and blear-eyed, was alternately degrading and shooting Generals and issuing flamboyant proclamations. Finally, Russia was flattening out East Prussia and Galicia with the slow crunching of a steam roller.
Out of this maelström of “news” a level-headed soldier might, and did, extract certain hard facts. The landing of Sir John French’s force took place exactly at the time and place and in the numbers Dalroy himself had estimated. To throw a small army into Flanders would have been folly. Obviously, the British must join hands with the French before offering battle. For the rest—though he went out very little, and alone, as being less risky—he recognised the hour when the German machine recovered its momentum after the first unexpected collapse. He saw order replace chaos. He watched the dragon crawling ever onward, and understood then that no act of man could save Belgium. Verviers was the best possible site for an observer who knew how to use his eyes. He assumed that what was occurring there was going on with equal precision in Luxembourg and along the line of the Vosges Mountains.
Gradually, too, he reconciled his conscience to these days of waiting. He believed now that his services would be immensely more useful to the British commander-in-chief in the field if he could cross the French frontier rather than reach London and the War Office by way of the Belgian coast. This decision lightened his heart. He was beginning to fear that the welfare of Irene Beresford was conflicting with duty. It was cheering to feel convinced that the odds and ends of information picked up in Verviers might prove of inestimable value to the allied cause. For instance, Liège was being laid low by eleven-inch howitzers, but he had seen seventeen-inch howitzers, each in three parts, each part drawn by forty horses or a dozen traction-engines, moving slowly toward the south-west. There lay Namur and France. No need to doubt now where the chief theatre of the war would find its habitat. The German staff had blundered in its initial strategy, but the defect was being repaired. All that had gone before was a mere prelude to the grim business which would be transacted beyond the Meuse.
During that period of quiescence, certain minor and personal elements affecting the future passed from a nebulous stage to a state of quasi-acceptance. There was not, there could not be, any pronounced love-making between two people so situated as Dalroy and Irene Beresford. But eyes can exchange messages which the lips dare not utter, and these two began to realise that they were designed the one for the other by a wise Providence. As that is precisely the right sentiment of young folk in love, romance throve finely in Madame Béranger’s little auberge in the Rue de Nivers at Verviers. A tender glance, a touch of the hand, a lighting of a troubled face when the dear one appears—these things are excellent substitutes for the spoken word.
Irene was “Irene” to Dalroy ever since that night in the wood at Argenteau, and the girl herself accepted the development with the deftness which is every woman’s legacy from Mother Eve.
“If you make free with my Christian name I must retort by using yours,” she said one day on coming down to breakfast. “So, ‘Good-morning, Arthur.’ Where did you get that hat?”