The Belgian Twins Page 7

  VII

  THE TIDAL WAVE OF GERMANS

  The next morning dawned bright and clear, and Mother Van Hove and theTwins went about their work as usual. The sunshine was so bright, andthe whole countryside looked so peaceful and fair, it was impossible tobelieve that the terrors of the night could be true.

  "To-day we must begin to gather the potatoes," said Mother Van Hoveafter breakfast. "Jan, you get the fork and hoe and put them in thewagon, while I milk the cow and Marie puts up some bread and cheese forus to take to the field." She started across the road to the pasture,with Fidel at her heels, as she spoke. In an instant she was backagain, her eyes wide with horror. "Look! Look!" she cried.

  The dazed children looked toward the east as she pointed. There in thedistance, advancing like a great tidal wave, was a long gray line ofsoldiers on horseback. Already they could hear the sound of music andthe throb of drums; already the sun glistened upon the shining helmetsand the cruel points of bayonets. The host stretched away across theplain as far as the eye could reach, and behind them the sky was thickwith the smoke of fires.

  "The church! the church!" cried Mother Van Hove. "No, there is nottime. Hide in here, my darlings. Quickly! Quickly!"

  She tore open the door of the earth-covered vegetable cellar as shespoke, and thrust Jan and Marie inside. Fidel bolted in after them. "Donot move or make a sound until all is quiet again," she cried as sheclosed the door.

  There was not room for her too, in the cellar, and if there had been,Mother Van Hove would not have taken it, for it was necessary to closethe door from the outside. This she did, hastily, throwing some strawbefore it. Then she rushed into the house and, snatching up her shiningmilk-pans, flung them upon the straw, as if they were placed there tobe sweetened by the sun. No one would think to look under a pile ofpans for hidden Belgians, she felt sure.

  Nearer and nearer came the hosts, and now she could hear the sound ofsinging as from ten thousand brazen throats, "Deutschland, Deutschlanduber Alles," roared the mighty chorus, and in another moment the littlevillage of Meer was submerged in the terrible gray flood.

  At last, after what seemed to the imprisoned children like a year ofdarkness and dread, and of strange, terrifying noises of all kinds, thesound of horses' hoofs and marching feet died away in the distance, andJan ventured to push open the door of the cavern a crack, justintending to peep out. Immediately there was a crash of fallingtinware. Jan quickly drew back again into the safe darkness and waited.As nothing further happened, he peeped out again. This time Fidel,springing forward, flung the doors wide open, and dashed out into thesunshine with a joyous bark.

  In a moment more Jan and Marie also crawled out of their hiding-placeafter him. For an instant, as they came out into the daylight, itseemed to the children as if they had awakened from a dreadful dream.There stood the farmhouse just as before, with the kitchen door wideopen and the sun streaming in upon the sanded floor. There were onlythe marks of many feet in the soft earth of the farmyard, an emptypigpen, and a few chicken feathers blowing about the hen house, to showwhere the invaders had been and what they had carried away with them.Jan and Marie, followed by Fidel, ran through the house. From the frontdoor, which opened on the road; they could see the long gray linesweeping across the fields toward Malines.

  "The storm has passed," cried Marie, sobbing with grief, "just asMynheer Pastoor said it would! Mother! Mother, where are you?" They ranfrom kitchen to bedroom and back again, their terror increasing atevery step, as no voice answered their call. They searched the cellarand the loft; they looked in the stable and barn, and even in thedog-house. Their mother was nowhere to be found!

  "I know where she must be," cried Jan, at last. "You know MynheerPastoor said, if anything happened, we should hide in the church." Ledby this hope, the two children sped, hand in hand, toward the village."Bel is gone!" gasped Jan, as they passed the pasture bars. "Pier,too," sobbed Marie. Down the whole length of the deserted villagestreet they flew, with Fidel following close at their heels. When theycame to the little church, they burst open the door and looked in. Thecheerful sun streamed through the windows, falling in brilliant patchesof light upon the floor, but the church was silent and empty. It wassome time before they could realize that there was not a human beingbut themselves in the entire village; all the others had been drivenaway like sheep, before the invading army. When at last the terribletruth dawned upon them, the two frightened children sat down upon thechurch steps in the silence, and clung, weeping, to each other. Fidelwhined and licked their hands, as though he, too, understood and felttheir loneliness.

  "What shall we do? What shall we do?" moaned Marie.

  "There's nobody to tell us what to do," sobbed Jan. "We must just dothe best we can by ourselves."

  "We can't stay here alone!" said Marie.

  "But where can we go?" cried Jan. "There's no place for us to go to!"

  For a few minutes the two children wept their hearts out in utterdespair, but hope always comes when it is most needed, and soon Marieraised her head and wiped her eyes.

  "Don't you remember what Mother said when she put the locket on myneck, Jan?" she asked. "She said that she would find us, even if shehad to swim the sea! She said no matter what happened we should neverdespair, and here we are despairing as hard as ever we can."

  Jan threw up his chin, and straightened his back. "Yes," he said,swallowing his sobs, "and she said I was now a man and must take careof myself and you."

  "What shall we do, then?" asked Marie.

  Jan thought hard for a moment. Then he said: "Eat! It must be late, andwe have not had a mouthful to-day."

  Marie stood up. "Yes," said she; "we must eat. Let us go back home."

  The clock in the steeple struck eleven as the two children ran oncemore through the deserted street and began a search for food in theirempty house.

  They found that the invaders had been as thorough within the house aswithout. Not only had they carried away the grain which their motherhad worked so hard to thresh, but they had cleaned the cupboard aswell. The hungry children found nothing but a few crusts of bread, abit of cheese, and some milk in the cellar, but with these and twoeggs, which Jan knew where to look for in the straw in the barn, theymade an excellent breakfast. They gave Fidel the last of the milk, andthen, much refreshed, made ready to start upon a strange and lonelyjourney the end of which they did not know. They tied their bestclothes in a bundle, which Jan hung upon a stick over his shoulder, andwere just about to leave the house, when Marie cried out, "SupposeMother should come back and find us gone!"

  "We must leave word where we have gone, so she will know where to lookfor us, of course," Jan answered capably.

  "Yes, but how?" persisted Marie. "There's no one to leave word with!"

  This was a hard puzzle, but Jan soon found a way out. "We must write anote and pin it up where she would be sure to find it," he said.

  "The very thing," said Marie.

  They found a bit of charcoal and a piece of wrapping-paper, and Jan wasall ready to write when a new difficulty presented itself. "What shallI say?" he said to Marie. "We don't know where we are going!"

  "We don't know the way to any place but Malines," said Marie; "so we'llhave to go there, I suppose."

  "How do you spell Malines?" asked Jan, charcoal in hand.

  "Oh, you stupid boy!" cried Marie. "M-a-l-i-n-e-s, of course!"

  Jan put the paper down on the kitchen floor and got down before it onhis hands and knees. He had not yet learned to write, but he managed toprint upon it in great staggering letters:--

  "DEAR MOTHER

  WE HAVE GONE TO MALINES TO FIND YOU.

  JAN AND MARIE."

  This note they pinned upon the inside of the kitchen door.

  "Now we are ready to start," said Jan; and, calling Fidel, the twochildren set forth. They took a short cut from the house across thepasture to the potato-field. Here they dug a few potatoes, which theyput in their bundle, and then, avoiding the road, slipped
down to theriver, and, following the stream, made their way toward Malines.

  It was fortunate for them that, screened by the bushes and trees whichfringed the bank of the river, they saw but little of the ruin anddevastation left in the wake of the German hosts. There were farmerswho had tried to defend their families and homes from the invaders.Burning houses and barns marked the places where they had lived anddied. But the children, thinking only of their lost mother, and ofkeeping themselves as much out of sight as possible in their search forher, were spared most of these horrors. Their progress was slow, forthe bundle was heavy, and the river path less direct than the road, andit was nightfall before the two little waifs, with Fidel at theirheels, reached the well-remembered Brussels gate.

  Their hearts almost stopped beating when they found it guarded by aGerman soldier. "Who goes there?" demanded the guard gruffly, as hecaught sight of the little figures.

  "If you please, sir, it's Jan and Marie," said Jan, shaking in hisboots.

  "And Fidel, too," said Marie.

  The soldier bent down and looked closely at the two tear-stained littlefaces. It may be that some remembrance of other little faces stirredwithin him, for he only said stiffly, "Pass, Jan and Marie, and you,too, Fidel." And the two children and the dog hurried through the gateand up the first street they came to, their bundle bumping along behindthem as they ran.

  The city seemed strangely silent and deserted, except for the gray-cladsoldiers, and armed guards blocked the way at intervals. Taught byfear, Jan and Marie soon learned to slip quietly along under cover ofthe gathering darkness, and to dodge into a doorway or round a corner,when they came too near one of the stiff, helmeted figures.

  At last, after an hour of aimless wandering, they found themselves in alarge, open square, looking up at the tall cathedral spires. A Germansoldier came suddenly out of the shadows, and the frightened children,scarcely knowing what they did, ran up the cathedral steps and flungthemselves against the door. When the soldier had passed by, theyreached cautiously up, and by dint of pulling with their unitedstrength succeeded at last in getting the door open. They thrust theirbundle inside, pushed Fidel in after it, and then slipped throughthemselves. The great door closed behind them on silent hinges and theywere alone in the vast stillness of the cathedral. Timidly they crepttoward the lights of the altar, and, utterly exhausted, slept thatnight on the floor near the statue of the Madonna, with their headspillowed on Fidel's shaggy side.