The Day of Wrath Part 29

"You'll dine with us, Arthur," she said simply. "I'll not tell them a word of our adventures till you are present."

"You could have heard a pin drop," was the excited comment of the flapper sister when endeavouring subsequently to thrill another girl with the sensation created by Irene's quiet words. Literally, this trope was not accurate, because the station was noisier than usual.

Figuratively, it met the case exactly.

Lady Glas...o...b..ry, a gray-haired woman with wise eyes, promptly emulated the action of the British army during the retreat from Mons, and "saved the situation."

"Of course you'll stay with us, too, Captain Dalroy," she said with pleasant insistence. "Like Irene, you must have lost everything, and need time to refit."

Dalroy murmured some plat.i.tude, lifted his hat, and only regained his composure after two narrow escapes from being run over by taxis while crossing Northumberland Avenue.

A newsboy tore past, shouting in the vernacular, "Great Stand by Sir John French."

Dalroy was reminded of Smithy, and Shiney, and Corporal Bates. He saw again Jan Maertz waving a farewell from the quai at Ostend. He wondered how old Joos was faring, and Leontine, and Monsieur Pochard, and the cure of Verviers.

Another boy scampered by. He carried a contents bill. Heavy black type announced that the British were "holding" Von Kluck on the Marne.

Dalroy's eyes kindled. _His_ work lay _there_. When the soldier's task was ended he would come back to Irene.

CHAPTER XV

"CARRY ON!"

After a few delightful days in London, Dalroy walked down Whitehall one fine morning to call at the War Office for orders. Irene went with him.

He expected to be packed off to France that very evening, so the two meant making the utmost of the fast-speeding hours. The Intelligence Department had a.s.similated all the information Dalroy could give, had found it good, and had complimented him. As a Bengal Lancer, whose regiment was presumably in India, he would probably be attached to some cavalry unit of the Expeditionary Force; from being an hunted outlaw, with a price on his head, he would be quietly absorbed by the military machine. Very smart he looked in his khaki and brown leather; Irene, who one short week earlier deemed _sabots en cuir_ the height of luxury, was dressed _de rigueur_ for luncheon at the Savoy.

Many eyes followed them as they crossed Trafalgar Square and dodged the traffic flowing around the base of King Charles's statue. An alert recruiting-sergeant, clinching the argument, pointed out the tall, well-groomed officer to a lanky youth whose soul was almost afire with martial decision.

"There y'are," he said, with emphatic thumb-jerk, "that's wot the British army will make of you in a couple of months. An' just twig the sort o' girl you can sort out of the bunch. c.o.c.k yer eye at _that_, will you?"

Thus, all unconsciously, Irene started the great adventure for one of Kitchener's first half-million.

She was not kept waiting many minutes in an ante-room. Dalroy reappeared, smiling mysteriously, yet, as Irene quickly saw, not quite so content with life as when he entered those magic portals, wherein a man wrestles with an algebraical formula before he finds the department he wants.

"Well," she inquired, "having picked your brains, are they going to court-martial you for being absent without leave?"

"I cross to-night," he said, leading her toward the Horse Guards'

Parade. "It's Belgium, not France. I'm on the staff. My appointment will appear in the gazette to-morrow. That's fine, but I'd rather----"

Irene stopped, almost in the middle of the road.

"And you'll wear a cap with a red band and a golden lion, and those ducky little red tabs on the collar! Come at once, and buy them! I refuse to lunch with you otherwise."

"A man must not wear the staff insignia until he is gazetted," he reminded her.

"Oh!" She was pathetically disappointed.

"But, in my case," he went on, "I am specifically ordered to travel in staff uniform, so, as I leave London at seven o'clock----"

"You can certainly lunch in all your glory," she vowed. "There's an empty taxi!"

Of course, it was pleasant to be on the staff, and thus become even more admired by Irene, if there is a degree surpa.s.sing that which is already superlative; but the fly in the ointment of Dalroy's new career lay in the fact that the battle of the Aisne was just beginning, and every British heart throbbed with the hope that the Teuton hordes might be chased back to the frontier as speedily as they had rushed on Paris.

Dalroy himself, an experienced soldier, though he had watched those grim columns pouring through the valley of the Meuse, yielded momentarily to the vision splendid. He longed to be there, taking part in the drive.

Instead, he was being sent to Belgium, some shrewd head in the War Office having decided that his linguistic powers, joined to a recent first-hand knowledge of local conditions, would be far more profitably employed in Flanders than as a squadron leader in France.

Thus, when that day of mellow autumn had sped all too swiftly, and he had said his last good-bye to Irene, it was to Dover he went, being ferried thence to Ostend in a destroyer.

In those early weeks of the war all England was agog with the belief that Antwerp would prove a rankling thorn in the ribs of the Germans, while men in high places cherished the delusion that a flank attack was possible along the Ostend-Bruges-Brussels line.

But Dalroy was an eminently sane person. Two hours of clear thinking in the train re-established his poise. When the Lieutenant-Commander in charge of the destroyer took him below in mid-Channel for a smoke and a drink, and the talk turned on strategy, the soldier dispelled an alluring mirage with a breath of common sense.

"The scheme is nothing short of rank lunacy," he said. "We haven't the men, France can spare none of hers, and Belgium must be crushed when the big battalions meet. Germany has at least three millions in the field already. Paris has been saved by a miracle. By some other miracle we may check the on-rush in France, but, if we start dividing our forces, even Heaven won't help us."

"Surely you'll admit that we should strengthen the defence of Antwerp?"

argued the sailor.

"I think it impracticable. Liege only held out until the new siege howitzers arrived. Namur fell at once. Why should we expect Antwerp to be impregnable?"

The navy deemed the army pessimistic, but, exactly a month later, the Lieutenant-Commander remembered that conversation, and remarked to a friend that about the middle of September he took to Ostend "a chap on the Staff who seemed to know a bit."

It is now a matter of historical fact when Von Kluck and Sir John French began their famous race to the north, the Belgian army only escaped from Antwerp by the skin of its teeth. The city itself was occupied by the Germans on October 9th, Bruges was entered on the 13th, Von Bessler's army reached the coast on the 15th, and the British and Belgians were attacked on the line of the Yser next day.

Thus, fate decreed that Dalroy should witness the beginning and the end of Germany's shameless outrage on a peaceful and peace-loving country.

On August 2nd, 1914, King Albert ruled over the most prosperous and contented small kingdom in Europe. Within eleven weeks he had become, as Emile Cammaerts finely puts it, "lord of a hundred fields and a few spires."

Though Dalroy should live far beyond the alloted span of man's life, he will never forget the strain, the misery, the sheer hopelessness of the second month he spent in Belgium. The climax came when he found himself literally overwhelmed by the host of refugees, wounded men, and scattered military units which sought succour in, and, as the iron ring of _Kultur_ drew close, transport from Ostend.

With the retreat of the Belgian army towards Dunkirk, and the return to England of such portion of the ill-fated Naval Division as was not interned in Holland, his military duties ceased. In his own and the country's interests he ought to have made certain of a berth on the last pa.s.senger steamer to leave Ostend for England. He, at least, could have done so, though there were sixty thousand frenzied people crowding the quays, and hundreds, if not thousands, of comparatively wealthy men offering fabulous sums for the use of any type of vessel which would take them and their families to safety.

But, at the eleventh hour, Dalroy heard that a British Red Cross Hospital party, which had extricated itself from the clutch of the mailed fist, was even then _en route_ from Bruges to Ostend by way of Zeebrugge. Knowing they would be in dire need of help, he resolved to stay, though his action was quixotic, since no mercy would be shown him if he fell into the hands of the Germans. He took one precaution, therefore. Some service rendered to a tradesman had enabled him to buy a reliable and speedy motor bicycle, on which, as a last resource, he might scurry to Dunkirk. His field service baggage was reposing in a small hotel near the harbour. For all he can tell, it is reposing there yet; he never saw it again after he leaped into the saddle of the Ariel, and sped through the cobbled streets which led to the north road along the coast. The hour was then about six o'clock on the evening of October 13th.

A Belgian staff officer had a.s.sured him that the Germans could not possibly occupy Ostend until late next day. The Belgian army, though hopelessly outnumbered, had never been either disorganised nor outmanoeuvred. The retreat to the Yser, if swift, was orderly, and the rearguard could be trusted to follow its time-table.

Hence, before it was dark, Dalroy determined to cover the sixteen miles to Zeebrugge. The Hospital, which was convoying British and Belgian wounded, would travel thence by the quaint steam-tramway which links up the towns on the littoral. It might experience almost insuperable difficulties at Zeebrugge or Ostend, and he was one of the few aware of the actual time-limit at disposal, while a field hospital bereft of transport is a peculiarly impotent organisation.

Road and rail ran almost parallel among the sand dunes. At various crossings he could ascertain whether or not any train had pa.s.sed recently in the direction of Ostend, thus making a.s.surance doubly sure, though the station-master at the town terminus was positive that the next tram would not arrive until half-past seven. Dalroy meant intercepting that tram at Blankenberge.

Naturally, the train was late in reaching the latter place, but the only practicable course was to wait there, rather than risk missing it. A crowd of terrified people gathered around the calm-eyed, quiet-mannered Briton, and appealed for advice. Poor creatures! they imposed a cruel dilemma. On the one hand, it was monstrous to send a whole community flying for their lives along the Ostend road; on the other, he had witnessed the fate of Vise and Huy. Yet, by remaining in their homes, they had some prospect of life and ultimate liberty, while their lot would be far worse the instant they were plunged into the panic and miseries of Ostend. So he comforted the unhappy folk as best he might, though his heart was wrung with pity at sight of the common faith in the Red Cross bra.s.sard. Men, women, and children wore the badge indiscriminately. They regarded it as a shield against the Uhlan's lance! Most fortunately for that strip of Belgium, the policy of "frightfulness" was moderated once the country was overrun. So far as local occurrences have been permitted to become known, the coast towns have been spared the fate of those in the interior.

To Dalroy's great relief, the incoming tram from Zeebrugge brought the British hospital. There were four doctors, eight nurses, and fifty-three wounded men, including a sergeant and ten privates of the Gordon Highlanders, who, like Bates, Smithy, and the rest, had scrambled across Belgium after Mons.

The train offered an extraordinary spectacle. Soldiers and civilians were packed in it and on it. Men and women sat precariously on the roofs of the ramshackle carriages, stood on the buffers and couplings, or clung to door-handles. Not even foothold was to be had for love or money on that train at Blankenberge.

Dalroy, who dared not let go his machine, contrived to get a word with the Medical Officer in charge.

As ever, the Briton made light of past troubles.