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Updated: June 27, 2025
I put this question to myself plainly, and I perceived all the horror of the situation. On whatever side I turned I was confronted with intolerable misery. That things should remain as they were I could not endure. I saw my mother approach M. Termonde, as she often did, and touch his forehead caressingly with her hand or her lips. That she should do this to the murderer of my father!
Edmond Termonde had heard me with extreme attention; a gleam of hope, succeeded by a singular look of suspicion, had passed over his face. "Make your conditions," said he. "If I had intended to kill you," I resumed, so as to convince him of my sincerity by the evidence of his senses, "you would be dead already." I raised the revolver.
It was strange this sentence did not immediately produce the impression which my look at her had led my aunt to expect. I had thought from the tone of her voice, that she was going to tell me of my mother's illness or death. My sensitive imagination readily conjured up such fears. I asked calmly: "Whom?" "You do not guess?" "M. Termonde?" I cried.
As an English officer in Antwerp put it, "If the French did not use the church tower they are d fools." By way of guide and for sake of likely comparison I can state what I know did happen in two other cities: Termonde and Antwerp. I told how staff officers, entering with a scouting party at the head of a German column, mounted the only remaining spire in the town.
We did travel, and it would have taken a smart marksman to hit us at fifty miles an hour; but we felt much happier when we passed under the railway bridge of a loop line at Briel and placed it between ourselves and the enemy. The entrance to Termonde was blocked by a rough barricade of bricks and branches guarded by a squad of soldiers.
"The Belgians fought with the courage of despair. Their battle-cry was 'Louvain! and 'Termonde! Highlanders, Indians, Sikhs, Ghurkas, Zouaves, Turkos, Canadians, Belgians, French and English were thrown into the line, and ever-new regiments landed at Calais. Houses and villages were taken and re-taken at the point of the bayonet, as many as seven times.
"Who does not know the charming Nur-el-Din?" he replied. "No!" Nur-el-Din commanded with flashing eyes, "no, not that name! I am Madame Le Bon, you, understand, a Belgian refugee, from Termonde!" Rather taken aback by her imperious manner, Desmond bowed again but said nothing. "I received your letter," the dancer resumed, "but I did not answer it as I did not require your assistance.
We could hear the creak of a lazy windmill, and, coming somewhere from the smoking piles, the hideous howl of starving hounds. Of other human sounds there were none except the voice of Verhagen. Ten days before Termonde had been a thriving town; that day it was a heap of smouldering ashes. America had heard a good deal about Tirlemont and Louvain, but not much of Termonde.
It lay on the very edge of the Belgian front, and would have been unapproachable had there been any activity in this section of the line. Fortunately for us, the Germans were concentrating their energies around Termonde, and the mitrailleuse standing on the path amongst the trees at the end of the garden seemed to have gone asleep.
The entire block of houses was destroyed by fire in the Commune; but during my childhood I frequently begged Julie to take me to the spot, that I might gaze, with an aching heart, upon the handsome courtyard adorned with green shrubs, the wide, carpeted staircase, and the slab of black marble, encrusted with gold, that marked the entrance to the place whither my father wended his way, while my mother was talking with M. Termonde, and I was playing in the room with them.
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