Chapter 2
About 10 P. M. we were violently awakened by furious sounds of shots in the distance which must have been rifle fire and which grew more and more distinct, gradually becoming incessant like a long, uninterrupted drum roll--the machine guns, I suppose. These frightful noises, increased in volume by the minute and coming on and on in our direction, were shortly right over the hill above us. The bullets rained like hail and shells shrieked and split the universe from end to end. We lay in our beds, trembling, while utter terror seized us as the fracas would subside a little and then roll nearer and nearer in a perfect deluge of horrible sounds. Suddenly in the middle of it all a terrific blast rent the air; the forts had entered into this hideous contest! Oh the joy of it! I hardly breathed between their shots which seemed centuries apart and in reality were only a few minutes, for I thought, now, surely the struggle must end; no enemy can long withstand their mighty will. But the battle lasted all night with increasing fury. The roar and din were beyond words, the concerted effort of four forts, the giant field cannon, machine guns and rifles. My heart stands still when I remember the thundering of those forts, the premeditated destruction, the finality which each boom! bespoke, and the thousands of human beings up there fighting like madmen. The latter, in the wild confusion of fire, battle and the blackness of the night, finished by shooting into each other by mistake as their officers were cut down in their midst.
About 2 A. M. we all gathered in Madame X.'s sitting-room. Suddenly, quite unconscious of any definite purpose, I remember pulling on the light. Monsieur X., aghast, said, "Mademoiselle, put it out quickly. They might see it through the dark and aim for it."
What a night! and what visions we conjured up of the invincible Prussians, drunk with blood and battle ready for any atrocity, plunging down the hill into our own garden. The sound of the guns was so near that Monsieur X. thought the battle must be in the open on his own property just above the hill. As a matter of fact it was only three kilometres away, on the plain of Sartilmont.
_August 6th, Thursday._
Rain came with the light. That gentle pattering on the sod, after the tumult of the night, was the sweetest sound I ever heard. It was just as if Nature had put out Her mother's hand over the earth to soothe its troubled breast. Was she pleading for that mercy which drops as Her own gentle tears from Heaven?
During the morning the road in front of the château was filled with Belgian troops, bedraggled with mud, trying to regain order. And there they halted for hours and hours in the rain--an absolute picture of dejection. Even the horses imbibed the general despair as they stood there, heads drooping, their manes stirring in the wind. That must be the hard part of it--waiting for orders; but they did it well, no impatience nor fretting, just obeying the command, their very immobility carving them a niche in the landscape. These men had been fighting for several days and, bowed down as they were with the wet and misery of it all, made a shocking contrast to fresh troops of cavalry which passed at the same time, brandishing long, dramatic looking lances. And Felix, the second gardener, who is one of these "_lanciers_," came to say good-bye in the elegant uniform of his regiment and looking very smart in white trousers and short blue jacket--in fact, a man transformed.
I had always seen him in wooden sabots and blue apron coaxing this flower and that into bloom, but he had never been a great success at it. When his elder brother died, he had wished, so much, to replace him as head-gardener, so his master let him try for a little and he had failed, indifferently. But here was a soldier-man, stout heart and valiant sword, eager to serve his King. This time he will not fail but will meet his opportunity more than half way.[1] All day Red Cross ambulances and every kind of vehicle were hurrying by, bringing the wounded from the battlefield. Madame X.'s family physician stopped in on one of his trips for a moment's respite from the awfulness up there--his description of those scenes is too terrible to write about. The carnage was awful--pieces of bodies scattered about everywhere, the wounded writhing in their death agony and the dead standing up straight against masses of dead.
In the evening, indistinct sounds of a far off battle could be heard as the struggle moved on to another quarter. Nearer, we heard the trailing of heavy artillery down the mountain and against our will the thought formulated itself, "Will that wave of terror roll back to us?" Our ears have developed an abnormal acuteness, so that almost a pin falling will make taut nerves scream, though in reality nobody moves--a glance is enough to both ask and answer a question. A marvelous new self-possession seems to have come to everybody which bridges over a natural despair and forms, at least, a skeleton framework by which we keep each other up.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Not heard of again.
_August 7th, Friday._
More or less booming from the forts all day. As communications of every kind have been cut off, we cannot know what is happening. But where is the assistance so direfully needed, promised by both France and England to poor little Belgium with the great German army moving on Liége? Everybody has faith, however, in the Allies, and in the streets it is pathetic to hear people assuring each other, "_O, oui, les Français viennent ce soir_" (Oh, yes, the French are coming to-night). There are many German troops in town already, who somehow have pushed their way in between the firing, but the city will not cede the forts, so the bombardment may begin at any moment. I cannot define my impressions--some day I may be able to, but just now I do not know what they are. Happily the château is on the edge of the city and there is a certain quiet at present, but in town pandemonium reigns. Men, women and children are fleeing in all directions with their few most precious possessions tied up in a bundle. And where are they going to, the poor things, with all roads in the country choked up, soldiers and trenches everywhere?
_August 8th, Saturday._
This morning we walked through the garden to service in the little village church. For a short moment a welcome calm stole over us in the quiet of those walls, but how sinister to hear the eternal boom of cannon between the words of the Mass. All the bridges of the city are mined and guarded. The five days given Liége by the Prussians to surrender are up tonight. What will tomorrow bring forth? The Belgians have blown up the tunnel at Trois Ponts, near the German frontier, as well as the railroad in many places, which will impede the enemy's advance considerably, and great trees have been cut down across the roads in all the country roundabout.
Mère Gavin came hobbling down the path from the top of the hill this evening to tell us of the astonishing experience she had this afternoon when a peasant came to her old hut and offered to buy her cow. Now as her cow is her most precious possession and her sole support she refused at once, tho' frightened at her own boldness. The stranger, however, was rather insistent and asked if she would rent the cow, then, for fifty francs an hour? Was there ever a queerer offer? Of course fifty francs was a gold-mine to Mère Gavin, so she accepted, and was fairly overcome when the man laid down three hundred francs on the table and told her to keep them for him. Then he drove the cow away over the hills while Mère G. sat staring stupidly at her gold. After a time he came back (with the cow) and said, "Old One, three hours after I have gone, you can tell your people that the red _pantalons_ (French soldiers) will be here in forty-eight hours." Was that not a clever way for a French Scout to find out the lie of the land?
_August 9th, Sunday._
Some of the Prussians have succeeded in penetrating into the city, tho' the forts have not surrendered, and are already establishing martial rule. Aeroplanes, with the wings turned back, _Taubes_, have been flying about all the morning. In the afternoon we went up over the hill to the plain of Sartilmont, the battlefield of Wednesday night. All along the road were heaps of uniforms, some quite new, probably taken from the dead. Those horrid limp things made me shiver with their lifelessness, and the spirit of death, everywhere, seemed to close us in. Countless numbers of haversacks were strewn about, doubtless cast away by the soldiers to disencumber themselves in falling quickly back from one position to another. In them, generally, was a change of underwear, light boots, hard biscuit, canned meats and confiture. Already a flock of human ravens was collected about the piles of débris, sorting out what was good to take and collecting fragments of bread for a happy repast. It was sickening to see, when possibly some of those brave, dead soldiers were lying, yet unburied, in the nearby hedges and ravines. Arrived at the little village we saw destruction a plenty. The inhabitants all had terror-stricken countenances and yet in their desire to please, literally fell over each other in haste to tell and show. Some of the buildings were entirely demolished, others with doors hacked up and windows broken, while everywhere houses and trees were riddled with bullets. One old peasant woman told me that she and fifty others were imprisoned for twenty-four hours by the Germans in a tiny stable, without food or drink, and for no apparent reason.
The battlefield on the top of a ridge of hills between the Ourthe and the Meuse is a large plain, around the edges of which lay scores of magnificent trees cut down in haste to give unobstructed range. Their branches had been previously soaked in _pétrole_ and set on fire. The effect of those prostrate, charred monsters added to the desolation all around. Across the end of the plain were those famous open trenches of "two stories," that is, with about a two-foot elevation of earth in the bottom against the front wall of the ditch, forming a kind of platform for the soldiers when taking aim.
These were dug by the soldiers and men from the factories of Liége. In front of the trenches were constructed those marvellous, barbed wire fences, about one and one half metres apart and perhaps five rows deep, with the wire twisted and wound in every conceivable fashion. Thirty feet in front of this barrier was buried a string of mines, connected with the trenches by an electric wire, to be exploded at a given moment. Dark as the night was, the enemy found and severed some of these communications so that most of the mines were rendered ineffective. We saw the cut wire in several places. What hope can those poor soldiers have, enemy or no, the advance guard of the besiegers, who are pushed forward often at the point of the bayonet, armed only with huge scissors to cut through such an almost impenetrable defense?
A most touching sight was the graves of thirty Belgians in one end of these trenches. Does that not seem a terrible irony to be buried in one's own trenches? A few common, wayside flowers were strewn on the graves, in front of which was an old prayer-stool and a wooden cross surmounted with a Belgian _képi_ (military cap). This cap seemed a living thing almost and reminded me of the red fez so often seen on the Moslem tombs in the cemeteries of Constantinople, which seemingly strives to evoke a vital spirit from the frigid marble. Nailed to the cross was a fragment of those well-known lines of the Immortal Cæsar, "Of all the peoples of Gaul, the Belgians are the bravest." You see, the old warrior knew that long ago.
Near by was a small, shrapnel gun carriage, by which stood a toothless, old man who told, in that excruciating _Wallon_ tongue, a pathetic story of one of the dogs which had probably drawn it. His mate doubtless was killed in battle, but he returned three days later, lay down beside the broken wheels and defied anyone to approach.
_Monday, August 10th._
Monsieur S. came home to-day laden down with bags of gold like Ali Baba. How he is going to do away with it so that the ferret eyes of the enemy will not spy it out, is a problem to me. And I do not want it explained for I am sure I should look right into the forbidden corner at the wrong moment and give the secret away.
Although there are thousands of German soldiers who have come into the city and who control it, they are like rats in a trap. On account of the twelve surrounding forts they cannot leave it and for the same reason no one can come to their aid. So they have mounted machine guns in corner houses of many streets and it is horrible to see those deadly mouths gaping out of the windows. In case of an uprising among the civilians the soldiers' revenge will be to kill the women and children. But no! that is not possible in these days, from men who are neither savages nor Turks.
A heavy cannonading began at 4.30 A. M.--it literally tore us from sleep, for it seemed as if the very house were tumbling down about our ears and the singing and whizzing of those big shells was _bizarre_, to put it mildly. One did not know whether to get up or efface one's self in the blankets. I remember having the utmost confidence in the headboard of my bed, which was toward the window. But that did not obliterate the siren whistle of those big shells and the moment of suspense between the lightning and the thunder. After each deafening burst I kept reiterating to myself, "Saved again," as one would repeat a chronological table of something important. About 8.00 A. M. we straggled into the breakfast room--all of us rather lifeless and with very white faces and little appetite for either eating or talking. There seemed to be only one thing to say, which was, "Did you hear that?" It was the same sensation again of the thread between heaven and earth. I wonder if it will break!
This afternoon we took a little walk into the city along the river, Madame X., her two sons--Monsieur S. and Monsieur J., her daughter, Baronne de H., and myself. We passed several Prussian guards on the bridges and Monsieur S. talked with one of them. It appears that the men are very disheartened. This man said he had started with a company of seven hundred soldiers and entered Liége with sixty four. That's what it means to "take cities without difficulty"--and nobody remembers the seven hundred mothers, or wives, or children that are left. The burgomaster has received some most sensational news from Brussels, but it is too ridiculous to be believed.
Tonight is still and Nature is beautiful in the moonlight. Is it the calm before the storm? Here in the château we are comfortable with plenty to eat and faithful servants. In town one is not so lucky as a cousin of Madame X. is quartering forty soldiers and ten officers at table who are not--or rather, who are a little argumentative, and we have heard of some instances where the "host" and "hostess" have had to sleep in the garret or the cellar or wherever they could, while the best rooms are appropriated by the _militaires_. Blankets, etc., are also being requisitioned from many houses.
It is reported that Général Léman narrowly escaped being captured recently when he was lunching in the court of the Café ---- in town. His companions-in-arms suddenly became aware of four men in strange uniform who were approaching, and gave the alarm. Général Léman succeeded in getting over the wall of the garden while the others engaged the spies in a hand-to-hand fight and overcame them.
_August 11th, Tuesday._
Invincible Liége! People are still firm in their faith, encouraged by the peace of the morning. The day was quiet until 6.00 _P. M._, when furious shooting into the valley began. We saw the great shells bursting in the air and between the clouds of smoke we could distinguish an old monastery on the other side of the valley which was being shot to pieces by the enemy's field-cannon. The structure changed shape half a dozen times before our eyes and the setting sun concentrated, as if purposely, all its rays on the windows which made them blaze forth through all that fury like the veritable Hand of God, writing in fire. It seemed almost like a premonition.
Pressure from those tremendous guns could remodel mountains, and Nature herself, sometimes, cannot hold out against the fiendish ingenuity of man. And the city, itself! Can it hold out?
In the garden, very near the foot of the mountain, is the old farmhouse, in one corner of which is a little chapel whose door stands open the year round. It is of particular interest to the peasants, being the last relic of a certain superstitious legend of the countryside. The people come from miles around, crossing the fields by a little path which they themselves have beaten down, to kneel before this tiny altar; and on the last Sunday in May, the annual fête, the priests, leading a religious procession which starts from the church, say Mass there. This year, May 31st, 1914, the head gardener, who is the indisputable authority on floral subjects in the village, borrowed everything from the conservatory and gardens that he could lay his hands on in the way of decoration. He arranged the semi-circle in front of the little chapel very artistically with branches of leaves, palms and hundreds of pansies which the day before had been uprooted from the terraces of the château to make room for the red, summer geraniums.
At ten o'clock this Sunday morning the usual fusillade and tolling of bells announced the departure of the procession from the church. It passed slowly along by the highroad and presently we heard a chorus of young voices singing hymns--the girls and boys of the village: the music was soft and illusive in the distance, developing a sweet crescendo as they turned into the pasture, fairly plowing their way through a sea of daisies. Behind them came two little acolytes, fair as angels, swinging their golden incense lamps; then followed six choir boys, chanting the Mass, like veritable della Robbias, in their red soutanes and exquisite, white, lace surplices. Next were the clergy, in robes of cloth of gold and rare Flemish lace, carrying the Host under a purple velvet canopy. The village people followed on in quiet devoutness and, arrived at the chapel, placed lighted candles in the sconces at each side of the grille door. When the Mass was said and the last plaintive notes had died away, little children came forward and heaped their thousand-colored bouquets before the altar. It was an impressive ceremony and must, by its charming simplicity, leave a mark on many a worldly heart.
Today, August 11th, 1914, at dusk, as the cannon had ceased firing, we took a little recreation, following the paths on the mountainside; looking down from a height of perhaps one hundred feet through the trees, we saw the little chapel gleaming like a beacon in the dark, dozens of blinking candles pinioned against the black walls. The grille door was woven with nosegays, making a curtain of flowers which partially concealed the altar beyond.
Before it, stretching up supplicating hands, many women knelt, bowed down with grief and despair, and children, awed by recent memories, stood immovable in their places. Poor, poor people! Some of them in spite of their unwavering faith must drink the bitter cup so near at hand.
_August 13th, Thursday._
It is true that one gets inured to danger (particularly if one has not so far been hit) and after a week of the bombardment, we have a distinct feeling of annoyance at being disturbed at an unearthly hour every morning by the screeching and bursting of shells.
About four A. M. we were awakened by another terrifying whizzing and exploding of bombs as if we were in the very midst of a battlefield. This lasted about three hours and all we could do was wait. I often wonder if it's as hard for the men to go off to war as it is for the women to stay. The battle was inconceivably furious this morning. If you could imagine five hundred of the worst thunderstorms, shaken up together, that you ever experienced, you would arrive at a mild notion of the tumult, not counting the apprehension, the danger and that terrifying voice in the whistling trail of every shell which sings, "This time I'll get you." At four this afternoon the Fort of Chaudefontaine fell, blown up by the Prussians. Between four and six o'clock the firing ceased.
It was an evening of ineffable beauty and the garden looked so lovely in its mantle of roses, the little lake at the foot with its white swans and the wooded mountain rising up almost from its waters--a picture of calm and contentment. We were there taking a long breath after the nightmare of the day, when the young gardener rushed in from the village with the news that thirty of the soldiers in the fort, wounded and burned beyond recognition, were being brought into the Sisters' Convent, which had been turned into a Red Cross Ambulance hospital.
The shells from the great field pieces of the enemy falling upon the forts had shattered the cupolas and had caused them to fall in upon the Belgians who were thus imprisoned and barely escaped suffocation from the poisonous gases of the exploding shells. The electric wires were cut immediately so that the poor things who were entrapped three stories underground groped about in the dark some time before they at last found the stairs which led them up through shot and flame and gas to the air.
Gathering some old linen together we fairly flew across the field to the convent and stopped short, staggered by what we saw. Never on this earth could one imagine so horrible a sight as those thirty charred bodies with no suggestion of faces--just a flat, swollen, black surface, with no eyes, nose nor mouth. Some of the wounded lay on beds, others in the middle of the floor or wherever there was space, and each was holding up hands burned to the bone. The room was dimly lighted, a hushed quiet reigned except for an occasional stifled groan of pain or a sigh of concern from the villagers or the swish of the black garments of those ministering angels, the nuns, as they fluttered about among the suffering; their white coifs, like a halo, contrasting them with that other Angel, whose black wings, indeed visible, already shadowed his chosen.
_August 14th, Friday._
One has hoped against hope, but the worst has happened and the people are despondent. Liége is certainly in the hands of the Prussians. They have been pouring into the city all day and most of the forts have either been destroyed by the German field artillery or been blown up by their defenders rather than surrender. We nursed the soldiers all day--if last night was horrible I could not find the words to describe what the daylight revealed, or the awful odor of burned flesh when the wounds were redressed. It was pitiful to see the courage of the poor men--the Belgians are brave not only on the battle field. With lips too seared to articulate, they would try to speak and one could occasionally catch an indistinct "_de l'eau_," or a half-formed "_Merci, chère Soeur_," but never a moan or a groan.
At night, as we were wearily returning home, the young footman, with ashen face, met us half-way down the steps and announced that there would be Prussian officers at dinner who were already quartered in the château. We were nearly too tired to be impressed at this as one naturally would, at least, be moved in one sense or another, but we did inwardly wonder what the keynote might be at table.