At the Sign of the Sword Part 17

They swallowed the wine in tumblers--the choice wine of Belgium's great millionaire--and very soon they demanded that the Baroness and her daughter should sit with them at table.

Again they refused, but both women discerned the drunken leers in the eyes of the men, yet believing the a.s.surance of the Uhlan commander, the word of a German n.o.bleman, they were not frightened. Nevertheless the swords those men wore at their sides bore the blood of the innocent people ma.s.sacred to provide the "frightful examples" which the Kaiser had laughingly given to their brave little nation, which had no quarrel with the bombastic and treacherous monarch who had self-styled himself the War Lord of Europe.

"Come, Mademoiselle!" cried von Meyeren. "Do not sit over there. We are enemies, but we will not hurt you. And you, Baroness!" he cried, rising and going across to them, "I insist upon your having dinner. It is not fair, is it, Heinrich?" he asked, addressing the elder of the pair.

"No. The Baroness must join us. She must," he said.

The two women refused, but with their heads elevated by wine the three men insisted, and at last, in order to pacify them, the mother and daughter consented to sit at the further end of the table, though they would eat nothing.

"Here's health to the Fatherland?" cried the younger of the three, getting up unsteadily and spilling his wine as he raised it to his lips amid the "Hochs" of his two companions.

The scene was surely as disgraceful as it was unexpected. Baron de Neuville's wife and daughter left there, alone and unprotected, in that great mediaeval chateau, had accepted the word of honour of a Saxon n.o.bleman. They had never expected to witness such a scene of drunkenness as that!

Suddenly, from somewhere below, sounded men's shouts and women's screams. Were the men below drunk, like their officers? Again and again was the uproar repeated.

The Baroness rang the bell, but there was no response.

"Whatever can be happening below?" asked Aimee, full of fear. Now that the officers were drunk, what hope was there for the Kaiser's barbaric savages in the servants' hall?

Again the bell was rung, when Melanie, in her cap and ap.r.o.n, dashed into the room, crying:

"Ah! Madame! It is terrible--_terrible_! The soldiers are wrecking the _salon_. They are ripping the furniture with their swords. They are all drunk, Madame--the beasts are all drunk?"

The girl was flushed and dishevelled. Her hair was down, and she was panting, having, truth to tell, just escaped the embraces of a too amorous German in his cups.

The cultured Baron Wernher von Meyeren heard the maid's complaint to her mistress, and laughed heartily.

"Our men are evidently enjoying themselves," he remarked in German to his two brother-officers. "This Baron de Neuville is the richest man in Belgium. It is fun to be in his house--is it not? And his daughter is pretty too. What do you think--eh?"

Aimee overheard the words of the "blonde beast."

She stood boldly before him, and turned upon him like a tiger.

"You Uhlan?" cried her mother. "Your very regiment is synonymous of all that is treacherous and ill-begotten. If you do not respect women, then I believe all that is told of you. Let your G.o.d-cursed Emperor let loose his hordes upon us, but the day will come, and is not far distant, when the finger of G.o.d will be placed upon you, and you, a n.o.bleman of Saxony, will be withered and die as a stickleback will die beneath the sun."

"Oh, mother! Do be careful what you say. Pray be careful!" urged Aimee, clinging to her beseechingly.

The gallant Baron, with crimson face, rose unsteadily, gripping the edge of the table to prevent himself from falling, and in fierce anger cried:

"For those words to us, woman, your house shall suffer," and drawing his sword, he swept from the table the beautiful epergnes of flowers and china baskets of fruit, and, staggering to the wall, he slashed viciously the fine old tapestries, in his frantic drunken rage.

"Ernst," he hiccoughed to one of the officers, "tell the men below that this Belgian woman has insulted us while we are her guests, and let them make an example of this fine Baron's castle."

"No, no?" shrieked Aimee. "No, I beg of you, Baron--I beg of you to spare our home. Remember your word to us!" cried the girl frantically in German.

But he only laughed triumphantly in her face, and the man he addressed as Ernst, having left to do his bidding, he with the other officer and two grey-coated orderlies, gleefully commenced to wreck the splendid room, while the two terrified women, clinging to each other, stood in a corner watching how they vented their mad ire upon all on which they could lay their hands.

In a few moments they were slashing the upholstery with their swords, tearing down and destroying the ancient Flemish tapestries, while the Baron himself paid particular attention to the pictures--all valuable old masters--defacing and destroying them one by one.

"See, woman! what we will now do with this snug home of yours?" he said in his drunken frenzy as, taking up an iron poker from the big open grate, he attacked the beautiful old chandelier of Venetian gla.s.s suspended in the centre of the room, smashing it to fragments.

The yells of the men in the adjoining apartments mingled with the smashing of furniture and loud, drunken laughter, reached them where they stood. They told their own tale. Everywhere in that splendid old chateau destruction was being carried on at the express orders of the cultured Baron von Meyeren, one of Germany's n.o.blemen.

"Wreck the place?" he yelled to half a dozen burly Uhlans who burst in, two of them holding bottles in their hands. "And we will make a bonfire afterwards. This woman has cursed us, and we, as German soldiers, will teach her a lesson she will not easily forget!"

Poor Melanie had disappeared, but above the terrible disorder and wild shouting were the shrieks of the female servants below, while a smell of fire suddenly greeted their nostrils.

"Look, mother! there's smoke!" gasped Aimee in terror. "They have set the chateau on fire?"

As she spoke, two of the Uhlans had torn down a huge picture--part of an altar-piece from a church at Antwerp--which occupied the whole of the end wall of the room, and were kicking their big boots through the priceless canvas. It was a picture attributed to Rubens.

"Come, child, let us go," whispered the Baroness, her eyes dimmed with tears, and her face pale and set.

They turned to leave, but as they did so, the Baron caught Aimee roughly by the shoulder, and leering at her, patted her beneath the chin.

In an instant the girl, resenting such familiarity, turned upon him like a tigress and slapped his flabby face so heavily that he drew back in surprise, while the others witnessing the rebuff, laughed at his discomfiture. He raised his sword with an oath, and would have cut her down had not the man called Ernst rushed forth and stayed his hand.

"Go, ladies," urged the man in French. "Escape, while there is yet time."

"Hold that girl!" shouted von Meyeren, fiercely struggling to get free from his brother-officer. But the latter held him, and barred his pa.s.sage while the two terrified women dashed down the stairs, up which the black smoke was already slowly curling.

Darkness had fallen, and only here and there had the lamps been lit.

Therefore the Baroness and her daughter were enabled to obtain hats and wraps and to creep down a steep, winding back staircase which was seldom used, and which the Uhlans had, fortunately, not yet discovered.

The scene was a terrible one of wholesale, wanton destruction. Some of the men were busy getting together the plate and valuables, while, just as they left, they caught sight of one man who emerged into the courtyard with the Baroness' jewel-case beneath his arm.

The thieves and murderers of the Kaiser were repeating in the beautiful Chateau of Severac, the same disgraceful methods which they had pursued in the villages of the Meuse. They respected neither G.o.d nor man, neither old age nor youth. They made war upon women, and shot down the unarmed and defenceless. Indeed, this great army of "kultur" was, in reality, but a disciplined horde of barbarians.

The Baroness and her daughter, with wraps hastily thrown about them, succeeded in escaping from the house by the postern gate, which gave entrance to a wood, but ere they left, a red glare from one of the lower rooms, shining away across the river, told only too plainly that the dastardly Uhlans had used some of their famous inflammable "confetti,"

and were burning the place.

The fierce, exultant yells of the drunken soldiery fell upon their ears as they plunged into the dark wood, part of the Baron's wide domain, the intricate by-paths of which were well known to Aimee.

Breathlessly they hastened on, until in the darkness beneath the trees they were compelled to slowly grope their way. Their fear was lest the woods be searched, and they might be captured, for the brutes--inflamed as they were with wine--were now in the mood for torture and for murder.

Woe-betide them if they fell into their hands.

Mother and daughter pushed eagerly, breathlessly on, terrified at the fearful orgie of destruction they had just witnessed. For a full half-hour they walked, Aimee leading the way through the narrow, winding shooting-paths, until at last they came forth into the open fields.

Then they paused, scarce daring to look behind them. Alas! at the bend of the valley, high upon its rock, Severac stood out vividly with flames belching fiercely from the windows of its high, round towers, and casting a blood-red glare upon the waters and across to the woods on the opposite bank.

"_Dieu_!" gasped the Baroness--"the fiends!--those h.e.l.l-fiends of the Emperor?"

"Mother," exclaimed Aimee, quite calm again now that they had escaped from the hands of that brigandish band, "remember there is a G.o.d of Justice, with whom vengeance lies for wrong, and most a.s.suredly will He, if we place our trust in Him, mete out the dread fate of death and obscurity to the arrogant Kaiser, and to all his dastardly barbarians.

Let us get back to Brussels somehow. There, at least, we shall be safe."

And as they stood watching the fierce flames leap up around those ancient towers which had withstood the wars of Charles the Bold, they knew not the awful scene taking place in the courtyard, where Gustave, Melanie, and seven other of the servants, male and female, were shot one after the other in cold blood, as they emerged in terror from the burning place. Appearance of each was being hailed by the drunken laughter of the a.s.sembled soldiers, and in escaping the fire they fell victims of the blood-l.u.s.t of the brutes.

"The Red c.o.c.k is crowing all over Belgium!" shouted the Baron von Meyeren thickly, alluding to the incendiary acts of Germans being committed everywhere. "We shall make a bonfire of Namur, to-morrow, my men! Hurrah! for G.o.d and the Fatherland."