Mrs. Warren's Daughter Part 29

German soldiers, still limping from their wounds, saluted her in the street, remembering her kindness in hospital, and the letters she unweariedly wrote at their dictation to their wives and families--for she had become quite a scholar in German. The scanty remains of the British Colony and the great ladies among the patriotic Belgians now realized how false were the stories that had circulated about her in the first year of the War; and extended to her their friends.h.i.+p. And the Spanish Minister who had taken the place of the American as protector of British subjects, invited her to all the fetes he gave for Belgian charities and Red Cross funds.

Through his Legation she endeavoured to send information to the Y.M.C.A. and to Bertie's widow that Albert Adams of the Y.M.C.A.

"had died in Brussels from the consequences of the War."

I dare say in the autumn of 1917, if Vivien Warren had applied through the Spanish Minister for a pa.s.sport to leave Belgium for some neutral country, it would have been accorded to her: the German authorities would have been thankful to see her no more. She reminded them of one of the cruellest acts of their administration.

But she preferred to stay for the historical revenge of seeing the Germans driven out of Belgium, and Belgian independence restored.

And she could not go lest Bertie's grave should be forgotten. In common with Edith Cavell, Gabrielle Pet.i.t, Philippe Bauck, and the other forty or fifty victims of von Bissing's "Terror," he had been buried in the gra.s.sy slopes of the amphitheatre of the Rifle range, near where he had been executed. Every Sunday, wet or fine, Vivien went there with fresh flowers. She had marked the actual grave with a small wooden cross bearing his name, till the time should come when she could have his remains transferred to English soil.

One day, as she was leaving the hospital in the autumn of 1917, a shabby man pushed into her hand a soiled, way-worn copy of the _Times_, a fortnight old. "Three francs," he whispered. She paid him. It was no uncommon thing for her or one of her English or Belgian acquaintances to buy the _Times_ or some other English daily at a price ranging from one franc to ten, and then pa.s.s it round the friendly circle of subscribers who apportioned the cost. On this occasion she opened her _Times_ in the tram, going home, and glanced at its columns. In any one but "Mees Varennes" in these days of 1917, 1918, this would have been a punishable offence; but in her case no spy or policeman noted the infringement of regulations about the enemy press. On one of the pages she read the account of a bad air-raid on Portland Place, and a reference--with a short obituary notice elsewhere--to the death of one of the victims of the German bombs. This was "Linda, Lady Rossiter, the dearly loved wife of Sir Michael Rossiter, whose discoveries in the way of bone grafting and other forms of curative surgery had been among the outstanding achievements in etc., etc."

"Dear me!" said Vivien to herself, as the tram coursed on beyond her usual stopping place and the conductor obstinately looked the other way, "I'm glad she lived to be _Lady_ Rossiter. It must have given her such pleasure. Poor thing! And to think the knowledge that he's a widower hardly stirs my pulses one extra beat. And how I _loved_ that man, seven years, six years, five years ago! Hullo! Where am I?

Miles from the Rue Haute! Conducteur! Arretez, s'il vous plait."

CHAPTER XX

AFTER THE ARMISTICE

The Bruxellois felt very disheartened in the closing months of 1917.

The Russian revolution had brought about the collapse of Russia as an enemy of Germany; and the Germans were enabled to transport most of their troops on the Russian frontier to the west and to the Italian frontier. Italy had lost half Venetia and enormous quant.i.ties of guns in the breach of her defences at Caporetto. It seemed indeed at any moment, when the ice and snow of that dreadful winter of 1917-18 melted, as though Italy would share the fate of Rumania. Though the British army had had a grand success with their Tanks, they had, ere 1917 ended, lost nearly all the ground gained round Cambrai. Besides, the submarine menace was imperilling the British food supplies and connections with America. As to the United States: was their intervention going to be more than money loans and supplies of material? Would they really supply the fighting men, the one thing at this crisis necessary to defeat Germany?

Belgium had been divided administratively into two distinct portions, north and south of the Meuse. North of the Meuse she was to be a Dutch-speaking country either part of Germany eventually, or given to Holland to compensate her for her very benevolent neutrality towards Germany during the War. A handful of Flemish adventurers appeared at Brussels to form the Council of Flanders, and sickened the Bruxellois by their lavish praise of the German administration and servile concurrence with all German measures.

The events of the spring of 1918 accentuated the despair in the Belgian capital. When the Germans broke through the defences of the new lines which ran through Picardy and Champagne, reached the vicinity of Amiens, retook Soissons, and recrossed the Marne, it seemed as though Belgian independence had been lost; the utmost she could hope for would be the self-government of a German province.

But Vivie was not among the pessimists. She discerned a smouldering discontent among the German soldiers, even when Germany seemed near to a sweeping victory over France and Britain.

The brutality of the soldiers, their deliberate, nasty dirtiness during the first two years of the War seemed due rather to their officers' orders than to an anti-human disposition of their own.

Many of the soldiers in Belgium, in Brussels, turned round--so to speak--and conceived a horror of what they had done, of what they had been told to do. Men who on the instigation of their officers--and these last, especially the Prussians, seemed fiends incarnate--had offered violence to young Belgian women, ended by offering to marry them, even showed themselves kind husbands, only too willing to become domesticated, groaning at having to leave their temporary homes and return to the terrible fighting on the Yser or in France.

There were, for example, the soldiers stationed at the Villa Beau-sejour and at the Oudekens' farm. Vivie had a growing desire to find out what had happened to her mother's property. One day, late in February, 1918, when there was a premature breath and feeling of Spring in the air, she called on her friend--as he had become--the Directeur of the Prison of Saint-Gilles, and asked him--since she herself could not deign to ask any favour or concession of the German authorities--to obtain for her a permit to proceed to Tervueren, the railway service between Brussels and that place having been reopened. She walked over--with what reminiscences the roads and paths were filled--to the Villa, and showing her pa.s.s was received, not uncivilly, by the sergeant-major in charge.

Fortunately the officers had all gone, voting it very dull, with Brussels so near and yet so far. After their departure the sergeant-major and his reduced guard of men had begun to make the place more homelike. The usual German thrift had shown itself. They had rea.s.sembled the remains of Mrs. Warren's herd of cows. These had calves and were giving milk. There were once more the beginnings of a poultry yard. The rooms had been cleaned at any rate of their unspeakable filth, though the dilapidations and the ruined furniture made tears of vexation stand in Vivie's eyes. However she kept her temper and told the sergeant that it was _her_ property now; that she intended to reclaim it at the end of the War, and that if he saw to it that the place was handed back to her with no further damage, she would take care that he was duly rewarded; and as an instalment she gave him a good tip. He replied with a laugh and a shrug "That may well come about." ("Das konnte wohl geschehen.")

He had already heard of the Englanderin whom the Kommandantur was afraid to touch, and opened his heart to her; even offering to prepare her a little meal in her own _salle a manger_. With what strange sensations she sat down to it. The sergeant as he brought in the _oeufs au plat_ said the soldiers were already sick of the War. Most wanted to go back to Germany, but a few were so much in love with Belgium that they hoped they might be allowed to settle down there; especially those who spoke Platt-deutsch, to whom Flemish came so easy.

From Villa Beau-sejour, Vivien Warren pa.s.sed on to the Oudekens'

farm, wondering what she would see--Some fresh horror? But on the contrary, Mme. Oudekens looked years younger; indeed when Vivien first stood outside the house door, she had heard really hearty laughter coming from the orchard where the farmer's widow was pinning up clothes to dry. Yet it was here that the woman's husband had been shot and buried, as the result of a field-court's sentence.

But when she answered Vivien's questions, after plying her with innumerable enquiries, she admitted with a blush that Heinrich, the German sergeant, with whom she had first cohabited by constraint, had recently married her at the Mairie, though the Cure had refused to perform the religious service. Heinrich was now invariably kind and worked hard on the farm. He hoped by diligently supplying the officers' messes in Brussels with poultry and vegetables that he and his a.s.sistants--two corporals--might be overlooked and not sent back into the fighting ranks. As to her daughters, after a few months of promiscuity--a terrible time that Mme. Oudekens wanted to forget--they had been a.s.signed to the two corporals as their exclusive property. They were both of them about to become mothers, and if no one interfered, as soon as this accursed War was over their men would marry them. "But," said Vivie, "suppose your husband and these corporals are married already, in Germany?" "Qu'est-ce-que ca fait?" said Mme. Oudekens. "C'est si loin." By making these little concessions she had already saved her youngest son from deportation to Germany.

The enormous demands for food in Brussels, which in 1918 had a floating population of over a million and where the Germans were turning large dogs into pemmican, had tripled the value of all productive farms so near the capital as those round Tervueren, especially now the railway service was reopened. Many of the peasants were making huge fortunes in complicity with some German soldier-partner.

In Brussels itself, soldiers often sided with the people against the odious "polizei," the intolerable German spies and police agents.

Conflicts would sometimes occur in the trams and the streets when the German police endeavoured to arrest citizens for reading the _Times_ or _La Libre Belgique_, or for saying disrespectful things about the Emperor.

The tremendous rush of the German offensive onward to the Marne, Somme, and Ypres salient in March-June, 1918, was received by the s.h.i.+fting garrison of Brussels with little enthusiasm. Would it not tend to prolong the War? The German advance into France was spectacular, but it was paid for by an appalling death-roll. The hospitals at Brussels were filled to overflowing with wounded and dying men. The Austrians who were brought from the Italian front to replenish the depleted battalions, quarrelled openly with the Prussians, and in some cases had to be surrounded in a barrack square and shot down.

The first real check to the German Army in its second march on Paris--that which followed its crossing of the Marne near Dormans--was prophetically greeted by the Bruxellois as the turning of the tide. The Emperor had gone thither from the Hotel Imperial in order to witness and follow the culminating march on Paris. But Foch now struck with his reserves, and the head of the tortoise was nipped off. The driving back of the Germans over the Marne coincided with the Belgian National Fete of July 21. Not since 1914 had this fete been openly observed. But on this day in 1918, the German police made no protest when a huge crowd celebrated the fete day in every church and every street. Vivien herself, smiling and laughing as she had not done since Bertie's death, attended the service in Sainte-Gudule and joined in singing _La Brabanconne_ in place of _Te Deum, laudamus_. In the streets and houses of Brussels every piano, every gramophone was enrolled to play the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_, _Vers l'Avenir_, and _La Brabanconne_, the Belgian national anthem (uninspiring words and dreary tune). From this date onwards--July 21--the German _debacle_ proceeded, with scarcely one day's intermission, with never a German regain of lost ground.

When the Americans had retaken St. Mihiel on September 14, then did Belgians boldly predict that their King would be back in Brussels by Christmas. But their prophecies were outstripped by events. Already, in the beginning of October, the accredited German Press in Belgium was adjuring the Belgians not to be impatient, but to let them evacuate Belgium quietly. At the end of October, Minna von Stachelberg told Vivien that she and the other units of the German Red Cross had received instructions to leave and hand over their charges to the Belgian doctors and nurses. The two women took an affectionate farewell of each other, vowing they would meet again--somewhere--when the War was over. British wounded now began to cease coming into Brussels, so Vivie was free to attend to her own affairs.

Enormous quant.i.ties of German plunder were streaming out of Belgium by train, by motor, in military lorries, in carts and waggons.

Nearly all this belonged to the officers, and the already-rebellious soldiers broke out in protestations. "Why should they who had done all the fighting have none of the loot?" So they won over the Belgian engine-drivers--delighted to see this quarrel between the hyenas--and held up the trains in the suburban stations north of Brussels. There were pitched battles which ended always in the soldiers' victory.

The soldiers then would hold auctions and markets of the plunder captured in the trains and lorries. They were in a hurry to get a little money to take back with them to Germany. Vivie, who had laid her plans now as to what to do after the German evacuation of Brussels, attended these auctions. She was nearly always civilly treated, because so many German soldiers had known her as a friend in hospital and told other soldiers. At one such sale she bought a serviceable motor-car for 750 francs; at another drums of petrol.

She had provided herself with funds by going to her mother's bank and reopening the question of the deposited jewels and plate. Now that the victory of the Allies seemed certain, the bank manager was more inclined to make things easy for her. He had the jewels and plate valued--roughly--at 3,000; and although he would not surrender them till the will could be proved and she could show letters of administration, he consented on behalf of the bank to make her a loan of 30,000 francs.

On November 10th, a German soldier who followed Vivien about with humble fidelity since she had cured him of a bad whitlow--and also because, as he said, it was a joy to speak English once more--for he had been a waiter at the Savoy Hotel--came to her in the Boulevard d'Ans.p.a.ch and said "The Red flag, lady, he fly from Kommandantur.

With us I think it is Kaput." This was what Vivien had been waiting for. Asking the man to follow her, she first stopped outside a shop of military equipment, and after a brief inspection of its goods entered and purchased a short, not too flexible riding-whip, with a heavy handle. Then as the trams were densely crowded, she walked at a rapid pace--glancing round ever and again to see that her German soldier was following--up the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique and along the Rue Royale until she came to the Hotel Imperial. Here she halted for a minute to have the soldier close behind her; then gave the revolving door a turn and found herself and him in the marble hall once built for Mrs. Warren's florid taste. "Call the Manager,"

she said--trying not to pant--to two Belgian servants who came up, a porter and a lift man. The Manager--he who had ejected her and her mother in 1915--was fortunately a little while in appearing. He was really packing up with energy so as to depart with all the plunder he could transport before the way of escape was closed. This little delay enabled Vivien to get her breath and resume an impressive calm.

"Well: what you want?" the Manager said insolently, recollecting her.

"This first," she said, seizing him suddenly by his coat collar.

"I want--to--give--you--the--soundest--thras.h.i.+ng you have ever had..."

And before he could offer any effective resistance she had lashed him well with the riding _cravache_ about the shoulders, hands, back and face. He wrenched himself free and crouched ready for a counter attack. But the Belgian servants intervened and tripped him up; and the German soldier--the ex-waiter from the Savoy--said that Madame was by nature so kind that there must be some good reason for this chastis.e.m.e.nt.

"There is," she replied, now she had got her breath and was inwardly feeling ashamed at her resort to such violent methods.

"Three years ago, this creature turned my mother and myself out of this hotel with such violence that my mother died of it a few minutes afterwards. He stole our money and much of our property. I have inherited from my mother, to whom this hotel once belonged, a right over certain rooms which she used to occupy. I resume that right from to-day. I shall go to them now. As to this wretch, throw him out on to the pavement. He can afterwards send for his luggage, and what really is his he shall have."

Her orders were executed.

She then sent a message to Mme. Walcker and to the kind tea-shop woman, Mme. Trouessart, close by, explaining what she had done and why. "I shall take control of this hotel in the name of the Belgian Company that owns it, a Company in which, through my mother, I possess shares. I shall stay here till responsible persons take it over and I shall resume possession of the _appartement_ that belonged to my mother." Meantime, would Madame Trouessart engage a few stout wenches to eke out the scanty hotel staff, most of which being German had already commenced its flight back to the fatherland with all the plunder it could carry off. The soldier-ex-hotel-waiter was provisionally engaged to remain, as long as the Belgian Government allowed him, and three stalwart British soldiers, until the day before prisoners-of-war, were enlisted in her service and armed with revolvers to repel any ordinary act of brigandage.

By the end of November she had the Hotel edouard-Sept--with the old name restored--running smoothly and ready for the new guests--British, French officers and civilians who would follow the King of the Belgians on his return to his capital. The re-established Belgian authorities soon put her into possession of the Villa Beau-sejour. The German sergeant-major here had kept faith with her, and in return for handing over everything intact, including the herd of cows, received a _douceur_ which amply rewarded him for this belated honesty before he, too, set his face towards Germany with the rest of the evacuating army. The motor-car she had bought enabled her to fetch supplies of food from farm to hotel and to perform many little services to Belgians who were returning to their old homes. Madame Trouessart, not as yet having any stock of tea with which to reopen her tea-shop to the first incoming of curious tourists, agreed to live with Miss Warren at the hotel and act as her deputy, if affairs took her away from Brussels.

It was at the Hotel edouard-Sept, the place where she had been born, that Rossiter met her when he arrived in Brussels after the Armistice. She felt a little tremulous when his card was sent up to her, and kept him waiting quite five minutes while she saw that her hair was tidy and estimated before the gla.s.s the extent to which it had gone grey. She had let it grow of late years--the days of David Williams and Mr. Michaelis seemed very remote--and spent some time and consideration in arranging it. Her costume was workmanlike and that of an hotel manageress in the morning; yet distinctly set off her figure and suited her character of an able-bodied, intellectual woman.

"Vivie!"

"Michael!"

"My _dear_! You're handsomer than ever!"

"Michael! Your khaki uniform becomes you; and I'm _so_ glad you've got rid of that beard. _Now_ we can see your well-shaped chin. But still: we mustn't stand here, paying one another compliments, though this meeting is _too_ wonderful: I never thought I should see you again. Let's come to realities. I suppose the real heart-felt question at the back of your mind is: _can_ I let you have a room? I can, but not a bath-room suite; they're all taken..."

_Michael_: "Nonsense! I'm going to be put up at the Palace Hotel.

Jenkins--you remember the butler of old time?--Jenkins, and my batman, a refined brigand, a polished robber, have already been there and commandeered something....

"No. I came here, firstly to find out if you were living; secondly to ask you to marry me" ... (a pause) ... "and thirdly to find out what happened to Bertie Adams. A message came through the Spanish Legation here, a year and a half ago, to the effect that he had died at Brussels from the consequences of the War. However, unless you can tell me at once this is all a mistake, we can go into his affairs later. My first question is--Oh! Bother all this cackle....

_Will_ you marry me?"