Читать книгу At the Sign of the Sword - William Le Queux - Страница 9

A fortnight later—the second day of August, to be exact.

The Taverne Joseph, that popular restaurant in the Boulevard d’Anspach, in Brussels, where, beneath the shadow of the Bourse, the business-man gets such delicious plâts du jour, was crowded, as it always is each day at noon. The many little tables set out upon the pavement, along which the life of the bright little Belgian capital ebbed and flowed, were filled by men who daily, year in and year out, ate their midday meal, gossiped, and drank long glasses of iced bock.

At one table, in a corner by the glass screen which divided the pavement before Joseph’s establishment from that belonging to a restaurant next door, Edmond Valentin sat alone.

He had every reason to congratulate himself most heartily. An hour ago, after making a most brilliant and impassioned speech for the defence in the Assize Court, the trial of the Affaire of the Rue du Trône had at last ended. The chemist’s assistant, Sigart, a cruel-hearted assassin who had killed his young wife by administering gelsiminium—as the prosecution had alleged—had been acquitted, and upon Edmond’s remarkable success he had been everywhere congratulated by his confrères in the great atrium of the Courts.

As he sat alone, idly watching the passers-by, he was wondering what Aimée would think. She would read in the Petit Bleu that night the account of the trial, which she was so closely following, he knew. What would she say when she saw that he had been successful—that he had made a name in the legal world at last!

He was in the act of lighting a cigarette, one of a special brand of Egyptians which were sold only at the little Mosque in the courtyard of the Grand Hotel opposite, when a strident voice reached his ear, and next second a perspiring young vendor of newspapers, in a peaked cap, thrust under his nose a newspaper, crying in French, “German Ultimatum to Belgium!—V’la Le Journal!” He paid his sou, and eagerly opened the thin damp sheet.

His quick eyes scanned the sinister news which the paper contained, to the effect that the German Minister in Brussels had, at seven o’clock on the previous evening, offered Belgium an entente with Germany in return for her facilitating German military operations. A pistol was held at Belgium’s head. She had been given till seven o’clock that morning to reply. A Council Meeting had been held which had lasted till midnight, after which Messieurs Hymans and Van den Heuvel had drafted a reply, which for three hours further had been discussed. Belgium relied upon the treaty to which Germany herself had been signatory, guaranteeing her neutrality, and had therefore replied that she could not accept the proposal.

Edmond Valentin held his breath as he read those significant lines of print.

Half the men in the restaurant eagerly bought papers, were silent for a moment, and then the greatest excitement was apparent everywhere.

“War with Germany!” yelled the newsvendors in strident tones as they rushed along the Boulevard, and even the police—the most correct in Europe—were so dumbfounded that they did not raise a voice in protest at this unseemly breach of the regulation which prohibits the crying of news.

Belgium had defied the great and terrible machine of Prussian militarism. She had told the Kaiser, openly and plainly, that she would, like Holland, remain neutral, in accordance with the solemn treaty to which the Powers had put their signatures.

“Well, my friend,” remarked a fat stockbroker, to whom Valentin was known as having his lunch daily at the Joseph. “This is defiance—eh? We have held up our hand to stop the great War Lord of Germany. We have no quarrel with our neighbours. This is only newspaper gossip. There will be no war, I assure you. A Bourse canard—perhaps.”

“But if Germany attacks us?” queried the young lawyer, placing his newspaper on the table.

“Bah! that she will never do. We know the Kaiser and his mailed fist of old. If Russia has mobilised, surely it cannot concern us?”

“But France and Great Britain are Russia’s allies, remember.”

“Exactly. Germany will never dare to face Europe with only Austria, an effete nation, as an ally. Your agreement supports mine, my dear friend,” laughed the fat over-dressed man, who wore a large diamond in his cravat.

“But are there not already violations of the French frontier, and also in Luxembourg? The Germans have also occupied frontier towns in Russia,” Edmond argued.

“Bien! But it is only a menace on the part of Germany—and menace is not war. Do not forget the Agadir incident. No, no, m’sieur. The coming war is not yet—not yet, although I quite admit that we have felt the unrest on the Bourse this morning.”

“Unrest?” echoed Edmond. “I tell you that to-day there is war in the air, m’sieur! The German Emperor has created, by his clever chicanery, a diplomatic position in Europe which is impossible. The preparations of Prussia are complete. That the Emperor means war is apparent to those who have studied events, as I have, ever since the deplorable assassinations in Sarajevo.”

“Ah! mon ami, I see you are pessimistic,” laughed the stockbroker, draining his glass of Benedictine. “It would be bad for Belgium if all her sons were alarmists like yourself.”

“No, m’sieur, pardon?” was Edmond Valentin’s quick response. “If all were like yourself, we should be lulled to deep by the assurances of our bitter enemy—the enemy who intends to march through this capital of ours to Antwerp, and the sea.”

“Bah! The old story told to us for so many years!” laughed the man at the next table as he rose slowly and took his straw hat. “We shall meet here again—say this day week, and then you will be forced to admit the truth of my argument.”

“Well—let us hope so, m’sieur. We shall see,” Valentin replied with a gesture of apprehension, which showed him to be concerned.

The fat man wished him a merry “bon jour,” and passed out upon the sun-baked pavement, where the excited crowds were now hurrying, eagerly discussing the alarming news.

“War! War! WAR!”

The word was upon everyone’s lips throughout the length and breadth of the animated little capital of les braves Belges—the people so long sneered at by their superiors in Paris until the very expression had become synonymous of a populace actuated by timid arrogance, and who merely aped all the culture and most of the vices of the Parisians.

When the optimistical stockbroker had gone, Edmond again took up his paper and read how Sir Edward Grey had made a statement in the House of Commons, in London, regarding the obligations of honour, and of national security involved in the maintenance by Great Britain of Belgian neutrality. France and Russia were already in a state of war with Germany. Would Great Britain stand by Belgium?

Upon the terrasse of the crowded restaurant and within, the sole topic of the excited conversation was the seriousness of the situation. Old men who had been scared times without number by the war-clouds which had risen over Europe, laughed to scorn the idea of a great conflict.

“My dear Jules?” shouted a thin-faced, white-bearded man—the head of a great commercial house—across the restaurant. “Do not give it another thought. There will be no war. The Germans are not yet ready, and the diplomats will arrange it all, as they always do. They are paid for it. The Kaiser’s bark is worse than his bite.”

Whereat many laughed.

But not so Edmond Valentin. He had been a close student of international politics, and in order to supplement his income at the criminal bar, he had often written articles upon international politics for the Indépendance Belge, and the Matin of Antwerp. What he had feared and predicted was, alas! coming rapidly true.

Germany, with her horde of spies everywhere in Belgium, France, and England, and her closely guarded military and naval secrets had deceived Europe. She was fully prepared—and her Emperor intended to make war, and to crush civilisation beneath the despotic heel of Prussian militarism. The cross of Christ was to be overthrown by the brutal agnosticism of Nietzsche, the blasphemous “philosopher” who died in a madhouse.

Edmond Valentin held his breath, and replacing the paper again upon the table, while the buzz of dispute and argument was still in his ears, stared straight before him into the busy, glaring thoroughfare.

War! War! WAR!

At length he rose, and making his way blindly to the Bourse, only a few steps away, he boarded one of the open-air trains, and ascended the steep, winding streets, the narrow Marche aux Herbes, and the Rue de la Madeline, until he reached the broad Rue de la Régence, which led straight up to the great façade of the domed Palais de Justice. Half-way up the street he alighted and, entering a block of offices, ascended to his bureau.

The city was agog with excitement. In that hot, blazing noontide, everyone seemed outside discussing the grave peril in which Belgium was now placed by daring to stem the overwhelming tide of Teutons.

“If they come they will not hurt us,” a man in the tram had laughed. “They will simply march through Belgium—that is all. What on earth have we to fear?”

Edmond had overheard those words. They represented the opinion of the populace, who had been frightened by the bogey of threatened war so many times, until now they had grown to regard the regularly rising cloud over Europe as part of the German policy, the brag and swagger of the great War Lord.

Edmond was alone. His one clerk was still away at his déjeuner as usual, from noon till two o’clock. From the open window of the small, dingy room he watched the animated scene below—watched like a man in a dream.

At the moment he was not thinking of the threatened war, but of the man Arnaud Rigaux.

An imprecation escaped his set teeth, as his face assumed a dark, threatening expression, his strong hands clenched, as they always did when certain thoughts arose.

“One day ere long,” he murmured, “we will settle the account between us, m’sieur. With us it is an eye for an eye, but you little dream what form my revenge will take. The hour is now fast approaching—depend upon it!”

Turning suddenly from the window, he lit a cigarette, for, like most Belgians, he was an inveterate smoker as well as something of a dandy in his attire, and seating himself at his big writing-table he began to scribble hastily memorandum after memorandum. For fully two hours he continued.

Old André, his clerk, returned, and placed a copy of a newspaper containing the report of the Affaire of the Rue du Trône at his elbow, saying:

“The Press are full of your praise, m’sieur. Is it not splendid—magnificent!”

But his master took no heed, so intent was he upon his writing, referring to various bundles of legal papers before him, as he scribbled on.

Then, at last, just before four o’clock, he put on his hat and went forth again, walking to the Palais de Justice, where, after searching through the courts, he found, in the dark panelled Court of Appeal, a confrère of his—a tall, thin man, with a bushy black beard. His friend congratulated him heartily upon his success in the cause célèbre that morning, after which they both went out into the atrium and sat upon a bench, while Edmond Valentin gave him a number of instructions.

Afterwards, just before five, Edmond emerged again, crossed into the wide, leafy Avenue Louise, and boarding a tram, rode straight up that splendid boulevard of fine private residences, to the gates of the pretty natural park of which Bruxellois are so proud, the Bois de la Cambre. Upon a seat in one of the secluded paths, not far from the entrance, he found Aimée, dressed in white embroidered muslin, awaiting him.

“Ah, Edmond!” she cried, springing up. “Terrible, is it not? There will be war! You were right—quite right—dearest. Germany intends to encroach upon our land?”

“Yes, darling,” he replied, bending over her little gloved hand with deep apology at being late. “I fear that it is so, and that we shall be compelled to defend ourselves,” he sighed. “The terror of war is upon us.”

“But there will not be fighting in Belgium—surely?” the girl declared. “Colonel Maclean, the British military attaché, was at lunch with us to-day, and he told my father that England did not anticipate war. It is only the German nature to be aggressive against Russia.”

“Ah! no. Do not believe the optimists, my darling,” the man said, seating himself at her side. “Do not believe in the soft words and the self-styled culture of the Germans. They are the natural enemies of Europe, and the camarilla of Potsdam intends now to fight for world-power.”

She was silent, tracing a semicircle on the gravel with the ferrule of her white silk sunshade.

It was a pretty, leafy nook where they were sitting—a spot where it was often their habit to meet in secret when she was in Brussels. That big white mansion of the Baron Henri de Neuville he had passed half-way up the Avenue Louise was one of the largest and most handsome private residences in Brussels, with its imposing gates of ornamental ironwork surmounted by a gilt coronet, and huge glass-covered winter-garden—a place pointed out to messieurs, the tourists of the Agence Cook, who passed daily in the motor char-à-banc, as the “town-house of the Baron de Neuville, the great Belgian millionaire,” as the uniformed guide put it each morning in his parrot-like English, when he conducted his charges on their way to the field of Waterloo.

“Do you know, Aimée,” exclaimed her companion seriously at last, “I have decided to return to my old regiment, and to act my part—the part of a true Belgian. I can at once return as sous-officier.”

“What?” gasped the girl in quick alarm. “But, Edmond—you—you—you might be wounded if war really broke out! You might even be killed! No! For my sake, dear, don’t go,” she implored, placing her trembling little hand upon his arm and looking up appealingly into his eyes.

“War will be upon us, if not to-day, then to-morrow. My place is in the ranks of the defenders,” he said firmly. “I have no money-bags to protect, as your father the Baron has. My profession will be at an end with war, hence I have decided. I have made all arrangements for my friend Verbruggen to take my cases in the Courts.”

“And you will really rejoin the Chasseurs-à-pied?” she asked anxiously.

“I shall. It is only my duty, dearest. Against the great Germany our little Belgium will require every man who can hold a rifle,” replied her lover. “The German Kaiser means war—and war means the shedding of blood in our land.”

“But think—if you were killed, Edmond!” she gasped, staring at him.

“I should at least die knowing that we loved each other, darling,” he answered, taking her hand tenderly in his own and raising it to his lips. “You are mine, and I am yours; only death can part us.”

He glanced up and down. They were alone in that narrow, leafy way, with the birds twittering gaily above them, and the hot sunshine filtering through the branches; for the charm of the Bois was its rural picturesqueness, near as it was to the centre of the gay, vivacious little capital.

His arm stole very slowly around her waist, and she fell back into his embrace in the supreme ecstasy of that moment.

“Though the barrier between us—the barrier of money—is insurmountable, Aimée, I love you better—ah! better than my own life, sweetheart. To-day, though the sun still shines over our dear Belgium, it is, alas! the darkest day of our history. The terror of the Uhlan is already over our land. Your father, the Baron, will, I know, endeavour to snatch you from me, and marry you to the man whom I have so just a cause to hate—enemy as he is of my own race, my name, my country. But, darling, I refuse, in this hour of deadly peril, to remain inactive. I love you, and, my darling, I know that you love me. Our dear country is threatened by the invader, who intends to smash and to crush us, to sweep our smiling, peaceful land with fire and sword; to stamp out our national life, and to grind us beneath the millstones of a blasphemous autocracy. And, as an officer of the Belgian army, my place is with my regiment—to defend our country; to defend our innocent women—to defend you, my own beloved.”

Tears welled in her great dark eyes as she listened to his words, and he bent until his lips pressed hers.

His argument was complete. How could she protest further? Her secret lover was a fine, manly man—far more manly than any she had ever met in her own select circle of that vain bejewelled society, where mammon was god, and where finance daily juggled with the destiny of nations.

To rejoin his regiment was, after all, her lover’s duty. She knew it in her innermost consciousness. Yes, he was right. Though a lieutenant, he could rejoin as sous-officier. The war-cloud, so black and lowering, must burst within a few hours.

As a true daughter of Belgium she was at heart a patriot, even though, in her own home, the only patriotism ever taught her had been the love of self-esteem.

He was silent, not daring to utter further word; and she, looking into his dark, thoughtful, serious eyes, in silence, wept.

Yet in the ears of both of them rang that single word of such awful and such fatal significance:

War! War! WAR!