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At Termonde, Alost, Balière, and a dozen other points in the Ghent sector, and, later, at Dixmude, Ramscappelle, Pervyse, Caeskerke, and the rest of the line of the Yser, my sight of Belgians has been that of troops as gallant as any. The cowards have been occasional, the brave men many. I still have flashes of them as when I knew them.
Among the latter were several from M. Termonde himself, which bore testimony to the friendship that had formerly subsisted between my mother's first husband and her second. Had I not known this always? Why should I suffer from the knowledge? And still there was nothing, no indication whatever to put me on the track of a suspicion.
It was with Rochdale that my father had the appointment of which he spoke before he left my mother, M. Termonde, and myself, after breakfast, on the last fatal morning. The Instruction had no difficulty in establishing this fact. The appointed place of meeting was the Imperial Hotel, a large building, with a long facade, in the Rue de Rivoli, not far from the Ministere de la Marine.
I had been surprised by my stepfather's having expressed a wish to see me during his illness; but I was far more surprised when, a fortnight later, my servant announced M. Termonde in person, at my abode. I was in my study, and occupied in arranging some papers of my father's which I had brought up from Compiegne.
A courier who knew Termonde as a flourishing town with fine shops, an ancient town hall of singular beauty and a number of churches of historic interest, found the place on September 11 a smoldering ruin, except for the town hall and one church, on a stone of which he saw the inscription "1311." These two structures were left intact, without so much as a broken window.
In my wanderings through Termonde, Liege, and Louvain, I heard tales unspeakable and on their face utterly unbelievable of which this kind of thing must have been the foundation. When the body of this woman was found, let us say, by French peasants returning to their ruined homes, think how the horrible fact would be seized, without whatsoever there was of justification!
Of that very man who was destined to fill his place at our fireside, to give a new name to her who had been Madame Cornelis; of the man with cat-like ways, with pale eyes, whom my childish instinct had taught me to regard with so precocious and so fixed a hate. He was jealous of Jacques Termonde.
But even though the rest of the interview were now to go against me, that could not alter the certainty which I had acquired. I had wanted to know whether Edmond Termonde was the man who had called himself Rochdale, and I had secured undeniable proof of the fact.
We called, as was our custom, at the Croix Rouge stations we passed, and at one of them we were told that there were some wounded in Termonde, and that, as the Germans were attacking it, they were in great danger. So we turned off to the right, and jolted for the next twenty minutes over a deplorable paved road.
The assertion that the Belgians are lacking in courage is as untruthful as it is cruel. Ask the Germans who charged up the fire-swept slopes of Liége those of them left alive if the Belgians are cowards. Ask those who saw the fields of Aerschot and Vilvorde and Termonde and Malines strewn with Belgian dead.
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