Mrs. Warren's Daughter Part 22

I think I will have to take this room for my writing, for my work. I see you have telephone here. _Gut_!"

Leaving Mrs. Warren still seated, but a little less stertorous in breathing, a little rea.s.sured, Vivie and Oberst von Giesselin then went over the Villa, apportioning the rooms. The Colonel and his orderly would be lodged in two of the bedrooms. Vivie and her mother would share Mrs. Warren's large bedroom and retain the salon for their exclusive occupation. They would use the dining-room in common with their guest.

Vivie looking out of the windows occasionally, as they pa.s.sed from room to room, saw the remainder of the soldiery strolling off to be lodged at their nearest neighbour's, the farmer who had driven them in to Brussels that morning. There were perhaps thirty, accompanying a young lieutenant. How would he find room for them, poor man? They were more fortunate in being asked only to lodge six or seven in addition to the Colonel's orderly and soldier-clerk. Before sunset, the Villa Beau-sejour was clear of soldiers, except the few that had gone to the barn and the outhouses. The morning room had been fitted up with a typewriter at which the military clerk sat tapping. The Colonel's personal luggage had been placed in his bedroom. A soldier was even sweeping up all traces of the invasion of armed men and making everything tidy. It all seemed like a horrid dream that was going to end up happily after all. Presently Vivie would wake up completely and there would even be no Oberst, no orderly; only the peaceful life of the farm that was going on yesterday. Here a sound of angry voices interrupted her musings. The cows returning by themselves from the pasture were being intercepted by soldiers who were trying to secure them. Vivie in her indignation ran out and ordered the soldiers off, in English. To her surprise they obeyed silently, but as they sauntered away to their quarters she was saddened at seeing them carrying the bodies of most of the turkeys and fowls and even the corpse of the poor tailless peac.o.c.k. They had waited for sundown to rob the hen-roosts.

Very much disillusioned she ran to the morning room and burst in on the Colonel's dictation to his clerk. "Excuse me, but if you don't keep your soldiers in better order you will have very little to eat whilst you are here. They are killing and carrying off all our poultry."

The Colonel flushed a little at the peremptory way in which she spoke, but without replying went out and shouted a lot of orders in German. His orderly summoned soldiers from the barn and together they drove the cows into the cow-sheds. All the Flemish servants having disappeared in a panic, the Germans had to milk the cows that evening; and Vivie, a.s.sisted by the orderly, cooked the evening meal in the kitchen. He was, like his Colonel, a Saxon, a pleasant-featured, domesticated man, who explained civilly in the Thuringian dialect--though to Vivie there could be no discrimination between varieties of High German--that the Sachsen folk were "Eines gutes leute" and that all would go smoothly in time.

Nevertheless the next morning when she could take stock she found nearly all the poultry except the pigeons had disappeared; and most of the apples, ripe and unripe, had vanished from the orchard trees.

The female servants of the farm, however, came back; and finding no violence was offered took up their work again. Two days afterwards, von Giesselin sent Vivie into Brussels in his motor, with his orderly to escort her, so that she might deposit her valuables at a bank. She found Brussels, suburbs and city alike, swarming with grey-uniformed soldiers, most of whom looked tired and despondent.

Those who were on the march, thinking Vivie must be the wife of some German officer of high rank, struck up a dismal chant from dry throats with a refrain of "Gloria, Viktoria, Hoch! Deutschland, Hoch!" At the bank the Belgian officials received her with deference. Apart from being the daughter of the well-to-do Mrs.

Warren, she was English, and seemed to impose respect even on the Germans. They took over her valuables, made out a receipt, and cashed a fairly large cheque in ready money. Vivie then ventured to ask the bank clerk who had seen to her business if he had any news.

Looking cautiously round, he said the rumours going through the town were that the Queen of Holland, enraged that her Prince Consort should have facilitated the crossing of Limburg by German armies, had shot him dead with a revolver; that the Crown Prince of Germany, despairing of a successful end of the War, had committed suicide at his father's feet; that the American Consul General in Brussels--to whom, by the bye, Vivie ought to report herself and her mother, in order to come under his protection--had notified General Sixt von Arnim, commanding the army in Brussels, that, _unless he vacated the Belgian capital immediately_, England would bombard Hamburg and the United States would declare war on the Kaiser. Alluring stories like these flitted through despairing Brussels during the first two months of German occupation, though Vivie, in her solitude at Tervueren, seldom heard them.

After her business at the bank she walked about the town. No one took any notice of her or annoyed her in any way. The restaurants seemed crowded with Belgians as well as Germans, and the Belgians did not seem to have lost their appet.i.tes. The Palace Hotel had become a German officers' club. On all the public buildings the German Imperial flag hung alongside the Belgian. Only a few of the trams were running. Yet you could still buy, without much difficulty at the kiosques, Belgian and even French and British newspapers.

From these she gathered that the German forces were in imminent peril between the Belgian Antwerp army on the north and the British army advancing from the south; and that in the plains of Alsace the French had given the first public exhibition of the new "Turpin"

explosive. The results had been _foudroyant_ ... and simple.

Complete regiments of German soldiers had been destroyed in _one minute_. It seemed curious, she thought, that with such an arm as this the French command did not at once come irresistibly to the rescue of Brussels....

However, it was four o'clock, and there was her friend the enemy's automobile drawn up outside the bank, awaiting her. She got in, and the soldier chauffeur whirled her away to the Villa Beau-sejour, beyond Tervueren.

On her return she found her mother prostrate with bad news. Their nearest neighbour, Farmer Oudekens who had driven them into Brussels the preceding day had been executed in his own orchard only an hour ago. It seemed that the lieutenant in charge of the soldiers billeted there had disappeared in the night, leaving his uniform and watch and chain behind him. The farmer's story was that in the night the lieutenant had appeared in his room with a revolver and had threatened to shoot him unless he produced a suit of civilian clothes. Thus coerced he had given him his eldest son's Sunday clothes left behind when the said son went off to join the Belgian army. The lieutenant, grateful for the a.s.sistance, had given him as a present his watch and chain.

On the other hand the German non-commissioned officers insisted their lieutenant had been made away with in the night. The farmer's allegation that he had deserted (as in fact he had) only enhanced his crime. The finding of the court after a very summary trial was "guilty," and despite the frantic appeals of the wife, reinforced later on by Mrs. Warren, the farmer had been taken out and shot.

The evening meal consequently was one of strained relations. Colonel von Giesselin came to supper punctually and was very spruce in appearance. But he was gravely polite and uncommunicative. And after dessert the two ladies asked permission to retire. They lay long awake afterwards, debating in whispers what terror might be in store for them. Mrs. Warren cried a good deal and lamented futilely her indolent languor of a few days previously. _Why_ had she not, while there was yet time, cleared out of Brussels, gone to Holland, and thence regained England with Vivie, and from England the south of France? Vivie, more stoical, pointed out it was no use crying over lost opportunities. Here they were, and they must sharpen their wits to get away at the first opportunity. Perhaps the American Consul might help them?

The next morning, however, their guest, who had insensibly turned host, told Vivie the tram service to Brussels, like the train service, was suspended indefinitely, and that he feared they must resign themselves to staying where they were. Under his protection they had nothing to fear. He was sorry the soldiers had helped themselves so freely to the livestock; but everything had now settled down. Henceforth they would be sure of something to eat, as he himself had got to be fed. And all he asked of them was their agreeable society.

Two months went by of this strange life. Two months, in which Vivie only saw German newspapers--which she read with the aid of von Giesselin. Their contents filled her with despair. They made very little of the Marne rebuff, much of the capture of Antwerp and Ostende, and the occupation of all Belgium (as they put it). Vivie noted that the German Emperor's heart had bled for the punishment inflicted on Louvain. (She wondered how that strange personality, her father, had fared in the destruction of monastic buildings.) But she had then no true idea of what had taken place, and the far-reaching harm this crime had done to the German reputation. She noted that the German Press expressed disappointment that the cause of Germany, the crusade against Albion, had received no support from the Irish Nationalists, or from the "revolting" women, the Suffragettes, who had been so cruelly maltreated by the administration of Asquith and Sir Grey.

This point was discussed by the Colonel, but Vivie found herself speaking as a patriot. How _could_ the Germans expect British women to turn against their own country in its hour of danger?

"Then you would not," said von Giesselin, "consent to write some letters to your friends, if I said I could have them sent safely to their destination?--only letters," he added hastily, seeing her nostrils quiver and a look come into her eyes--"to ask your Suffrage friends to bring pressure to bear on their Government to bring this d-r-r-eadful War to a just peace. That is all we ask." But Vivie said "with all her own private grudge against the present ministry she felt _au fond_ she was _British_; she must range herself in time of war with her own people."

Mrs. Warren went much farther. She was not very voluble nowadays.

The German occupation of her villa had given her a mental and physical shock from which she never recovered. She often sat quite silent and rather huddled at meal times and looked the old woman now. In such a conversation as this she roused herself and her voice took an aggressive tone. "My daughter write to her friends to ask them to obstruct the government at such a time as this? _Never!_ I'd disown her if she did, I'd repudiate her! She may have had her own turn-up with 'em. I was quite with her there. But that, so to speak, was only a domestic quarrel. We're British all through, and don't you forget it--sir--(she added deprecatingly): British _all through_ and we're goin' to beat Germany yet, _you'll_ see. The British navy never _has_ been licked nor won't be, this time."

Colonel von Giesselin did not insist. He seemed depressed himself at times, and far from elated at the victories announced in his own newspapers. He would in the dreary autumn evenings show them the photographs of his wife--a sweet-looking woman--and his two solid-looking, handsome children, and talk with rapture of his home life. Why, indeed, was there this War! His heart like his Emperor's bled for these unhappy Belgians. But it was all due to the Macchiavellian policy of "Sir Grey and Asquiss." If Germany had not felt herself surrounded and barred from all future expansion of trade and influence she would not have felt forced to attack France and invade Belgium. Why, see! All the time they were talking, barbarous Russia, egged on by England, was ravaging East Prussia!

Then, in other moods, he would lament the war and the policy of Prussia. How he had loved England in the days when he was military attache there. He had once wanted to marry an Englishwoman, a Miss Fraser, a so handsome daughter of a Court Physician.

"Why, that must have been Honoria, my former partner," said Vivie, finding an intense joy in this link of memory. And she told much of her history to the sentimental Colonel, who was conceiving for her a sincere friendship and camaraderie. They opened up other veins of memory, talked of Lady Feenix, of the musical parties at the Parrys, of Emily Daymond's playing, of this, that and the other hostess, of such-and-such an actress or singer.

The Colonel of course was often absent all day on military duties.

He advised Vivie strongly on such occasions not to go far from Mrs.

Warren's little domain. "I am obliged to remind you, dear young lady, that you and your mother are my prisoners in a sense. Many bad things are going on--things we cannot help in war--outside this quiet place..."

In November, however, there was a change of scene, which in many ways came to Vivie and her mother with a sense of great relief.

Colonel von Giesselin told them one morning he had been appointed Secretary to the German Governor of Brussels, and must reside in the town not far from the Rue de la Loi. He proposed that the ladies should move into Brussels likewise; in fact he delicately insisted on it. Their pleasant relations could thus continue--perhaps--who knows?--to the end of this War, "to that peace which will make us friends once more?" It would in any case be most unsafe if, without his protection, they continued to reside at this secluded farm, on the edge of the great woods. In fact it could not be thought of, and another officer was coming here in his place with a considerable suite. Eventually compensation would be paid to Mrs. Warren for any damage done to her property.

The two women readily agreed. In the curtailment of their movements and the absence of normal means of communication their life at Villa Beau-sejour was belying its name. Their supply of money was coming to an end; attempts must be made to regularize that position by drawing on Mrs. Warren's German investments and the capital she still had in Belgian stock--if that were negotiable at all.

Where should they go? Mrs. Warren still had some lien on the Hotel edouard-Sept (the name, out of deference to the Germans, had been changed to Hotel Imperial). With the influence of the Government Secretary behind her she might turn out some of its occupants and regain the use of the old "appartement." This would accommodate Vivie too. And there was no reason why their friend should not place his own lodging and office at the same hotel, which was situated conveniently on the Rue Royale not far from the Governor's residence in the Rue de la Loi.

So this plan was carried out. And in December, 1914, Mrs. Warren had some brief flicker of happiness once more, and even Vivie felt the nightmare had lifted a little. It was life again. Residence at the Villa Beau-sejour had almost seemed an entombment of the living.

Here, in the heart of Brussels, at any rate, you got some news every day, even if much of it was false. The food supply was more certain, there were 700,000 people all about you. True, the streets were very badly lit at night and fuel was scarce and dear. But you were in contact with people.

In January, Vivie tried to get into touch with the American Legation, not only to send news of their condition to England but to ascertain whether permission might not be obtained for them to leave Belgium for Holland. But this last plea was said by the American representative to be unsustainable. For various reasons, the German Government would not permit it, and he was afraid neither Vivie nor her mother would get enough backing from the British authorities to strengthen the American demand. She must stop on in Brussels till the War came to an end.

"But how are we to live?" asked Vivie, with a catch in her throat.

"Our supply of Belgian money is coming to an end. My mother has considerable funds invested in England. These she can't touch. She has other sums in German securities, but soon after the War they stopped sending her the interest on the plea that she was an 'enemy.' As to the money we have in Belgium, the bank in Brussels can tell me nothing. What are we to do?" The rather cold-mannered American diplomatist--it was one of the Secretaries of Legation and he knew all about Mrs. Warren's past, and regarded Vivie as an outlaw--said he would try to communicate with her friends in England and see if through the American Relief organization, funds could be transmitted for their maintenance. She gave him the addresses of Rossiter, Praed, and her mother's London bankers.

Vivie now tried to settle down to a life of usefulness. To increase their resources she gave lessons in English to Belgians and even to German officers. She offered herself to various groups of Belgian ladies who had taken up such charities as the Germans permitted. She also asked to be taken on as a Red Cross helper. But in all these directions she had many snubs to meet and little encouragement.

Scandal had been busy with her name--the unhappy reputation of her mother, the peculiar circ.u.mstances under which she had left England, the two or three months shut up at Tervueren with Colonel von Giesselin, and the very protection he now accorded her and her mother at the Hotel Imperial. She felt herself looked upon almost as a pariah, except among the poor of Brussels in the Quartier des Marolles. Here she was only regarded as a kind Englishwoman, unwearied in her efforts to alleviate suffering, mental and bodily.

And meantime, silence, a wall of silence as regarded England--England which she was beginning to look upon as the paradise from which she had been chased. Not a word had come through from Rossiter, from Honoria, Bertie Adams, or any of her Suffrage friends. I can supply briefly what she did not know.

Rossiter at the very outbreak of War had offered his services as one deeply versed in anatomy and in physiology to the Army Medical Service, and especially to a great person at the War Office; but had been told quite cavalierly that they had no need of him. As he persisted, he had been asked--in the hope that it might get rid of him--to go over to the United States in company with a writer of comic stories, a retired actor and a music-hall singer, and lecture on the causes of the War in the hope of bringing America in. This he had declined to do, and being rich and happening to know personally General Armstrong (Honoria's husband) he had been allowed to accompany him to the vicinity of the front and there put his theories of grafting flesh and bone to the test; with the ultimate results that his work became of enormous beneficial importance and he was given rank in the R.A.M.C. Honoria, racked with anxiety about her dear "Army," and very sad as to Vivie's disappearance, slaved at War work as much as her children's demands on her permitted; or even put her children on one side to help the sick and wounded. Vivie's Suffrage friends forgot she had ever existed and turned their attention to propaganda, to recruiting for the Voluntary Army which our ministers still hoped might suffice to win the War, to the making of munitions, or aeroplane parts, to land work and to any other work which might help their country in its need.

And Bertie Adams?

When he realized that his beloved and revered Miss Warren was shut off from escape in Belgium, could not be heard of, could not be got at and rescued, he went nearly off his nut.... He reviewed during a succession of sleepless nights what course he might best pursue. His age was about thirty-two. He might of course enlist in the army. But though very patriotic, his allegiance lay first at the feet of Vivie Warren. If he entered the army, he might be sent anywhere but to the Belgian frontier; and even if he got near Belgium he could not dart off to rescue Vivie without becoming a deserter. So he came speedily to the conclusion that the most promising career he could adopt, having regard to his position in life and lack of resources, was to volunteer for foreign service under the Y.M.C.A., and express the strongest possible wish to be employed as near Belgium as was practicable. So that by the end of September, 1914, Bertie was serving out cocoa and biscuits, writing paper and cigarettes, hot coffee and sausages and cups of bovril to exhausted or resting soldiers in the huts of the Y.M.C.A., near Ypres. Alternating with these services, he was, like other Y.M.C.A. men in the same district and at the same time, acting as stretcher bearer to bring in the wounded, as amateur chaplain with the dying, as amateur surgeon with the wounded, as secretary to some distraught officer in high command whose clerks had all been killed; and in any other capacity if called upon. But always with the stedfast hope and purpose that he might somehow reach and rescue Vivie Warren.

CHAPTER XVII

THE GERMANS IN BRUSSELS: 1915-1916

In the early spring of 1915, Vivie, anxious not to see her mother in utter penury, and despairing of any effective a.s.sistance from the Americans (very much prejudiced against her for the reasons already mentioned), took her mother's German and Belgian securities of a face value amounting to about 18,000 and sold them at her Belgian bank for a hundred thousand francs (4,000) in Belgian or German bank notes. She consulted no one, except her mother. Who was there to consult? She did not like to confide too much to Colonel von Giesselin, a little too p.r.o.ne in any case to "protect" them. But as she argued with Mrs. Warren, what else were they to do in their cruel situation? If the Allies were eventually victorious, Mrs.

Warren could return to England. There at least she had in safe investments 40,000, ample for the remainder of their lives. If Germany lost the War, the German securities nominally worth two hundred thousand marks might become simply waste paper; even now they were only computed by the bank at a purchase value of about one fifth what they had stood at before the War. If Germany were victorious or agreed to a compromise peace, her mother's shares in Belgian companies might be unsaleable. Better to secure now a lump sum of four thousand pounds in bank notes that would be legal currency, at any rate as long as the German occupation lasted. And as one never knew what might happen, it was safer still to have all this money (equivalent to a hundred thousand francs), in their own keeping. They could live even in war time, on such a sum as this for four, perhaps five years, as they would be very economical and Vivie would try to earn all she could by teaching. It was useless to hope they would be able to return to Villa Beau-sejour so long as the German occupation lasted, or during that time receive a penny in compensation for the sequestration of the property.

The notes for the hundred thousand francs therefore were carefully concealed in Mrs. Warren's bedroom at the Hotel Imperial and Vivie for a few months afterwards felt slightly easier in her mind as to the immediate future; for, as a further resource, there were also the jewels and plate at the bank.

They dared hope for nothing from Villa Beau-sejour. Von Giesselin, after more entreaty than Vivie cared to make, had allowed them with a special pa.s.s and his orderly as escort to go in a military motor to the Villa in the month of April in order that they might bring away the rest of their clothes and personal effects of an easily transportable nature. But the visit was a heart-breaking disappointment. Their reception was surly; the place was little else than a barrack of disorderly soldiers and insolent officers. Any search for clothes or books was a mockery. Nothing was to be found in the chests of drawers that belonged to them; only stale food and unnameable horrors or military equipment articles. The garden was trampled out of recognition. There had been a beautiful vine in the greenhouse. It was still there, but the first foliage of spring hung withered and russet coloured. The soldiers, grinning when Vivie noticed this, pointed to the base of the far spreading branches. It had been sawn through, and much of the gla.s.s of the greenhouse deliberately smashed.

On their way back, Mrs. Warren, who was constantly in tears, descried waiting by the side of the road the widow of their farmer-neighbour, Madame Oudekens. She asked the orderly that they might stop and greet her. She approached. Mrs. Warren got out of the car so that she might more privately talk to her in Flemish. Since her husband's execution, the woman said, she had had to become the mistress of the sergeant-major who resided with her as the only means, seemingly, of saving her one remaining young son from exile in Germany and her daughters from unbearably brutal treatment; though she added, "As to their virtue, _that_ has long since vanished; all I ask is that they be not half-killed whenever the soldiers get drunk. Oh Madame! If you could only say a word to that Colonel with whom you are living?"

Mrs. Warren dared not translate this last sentence to Vivie, for fear her daughter forced her at all costs to leave the Hotel Imperial. Where, if she did, were they to go?

The winter of 1914 had witnessed an appalling degree of frightfulness in eastern Belgium, the Wallon or French-speaking part of the country more especially. The Germans seemed to bear a special grudge against this region, regarding it as doggedly opposed to absorption into a Greater Germany; whereas they hoped the Flemish half of the country would receive them as fellow Teutons and even as deliverers from their former French oppressors. Thousands of old men and youths, of women and children in the provinces south of the Meuse had been shot in cold blood; village after village had been burnt. Scenes of nearly equal horror had taken place between Brussels and Antwerp, especially around Malines. Von Bissing's arrival as Governor General was soon signalized by those dreaded Red Placards on the walls of Brussels, announcing the verdicts of courts-martial, the condemnation to death of men and women who had contravened some military regulation.

Yet in spite of this, life went on in Brussels once more--by von Bissing's stern command--as though the country were not under the heel of the invader. The theatres opened their doors; the cinemas had continuous performances; there was Grand Opera; there were exhibitions of toys, or pictures, and charitable bazaars. Ten days after the fall of Antwerp _char-a-bancs_ packed with Belgians drove out of Brussels to visit the scenes of the battles and those shattered forts, so fatuously deemed impregnable, so feeble in their resistance to German artillery.