Chapter XVI: In the Rue Des Beguines

'Everyone has a romance in their life,' Dalton had said to Goring one day referring, no doubt, to the romance that formed a part of his own; 'to some it comes early, to others late.'

Goring thought of that remark when he found that his abrupt visitor was an officer of gendarmes come to arrest and carry him before a magistrate. For what?

Was this a bit of his romance, or a disgusting reality? We fear he found it the latter eventually.

'For what am I wanted?' he asked, haughtily.

'You will learn that soon enough, monsieur.'

'And to where must I accompany you?'

'To the police station--first.'

'First--and where afterwards?'

'That is as may be--but I have not come here to answer your questions--especially if asked in such a tone.'

'I am an officer in Her Britannic Majesty's service.'

'Officers in Her Britannic Majesty's service do not usually come to Belgium with such papers as have been found among your baggage.'

'The fellow is mad!' exclaimed Goring, on which the gendarme uttered a growl and struck the brass hilt of his sword significantly with his left hand.

'If monsieur is a British officer perhaps he has his cards about him?' he said, after a little pause.

'Of course I have,' replied Goring, and proceeded in haste to investigate, but in vain, the pockets of his coat.

'The case is gone; I have dropped it somehow,' he exclaimed, in perplexity and confusion.

'Bah!' exclaimed the gendarme; 'I thought so--come along; we are but wasting time.'

A voiture was summoned. A gendarme mounted on the box beside the driver, other two stepped inside with Goring, who, thus escorted, was driven in silence through several streets, just as the lamps were being lighted, to a police station in a narrow alley, near the Rempart Saint Catharine, where he was conducted into a species of office, over the mantelpiece of which were the ancient arms of the city of Antwerp, like those of Edinburgh, a castle triple-towered with three banners, each bearing a human hand, and there he found himself before a Juge de Paix or Préfet he knew not which; but a portly individual armed with considerable authority, and determined apparently to use it.

'For what purpose or reason am I brought here, monsieur?' asked Goring, haughtily and angrily.

The man in authority--the Préfet, we shall call him--drew from his pocket a bronze medal attached to a ribbon, and shook it in his face, saying brusquely,

'I will teach you to know the Belgian colours when you see them. Gardez-vous!' he added.

Goring was too much of a soldier and gentleman to insult or resist any constituted authority, and, believing the whole affair to be, if not a joke, some explainable mistake, waited the next move with patience.

A whispered conversation went on in French between his captors and the Préfet, who made several entries in a large book, looking through his large, round spectacles at their prisoner from time to time, and then most severely at a little roll of printed papers, which the officer of gendarmes laid before him.

'What is all this about--what is the meaning of this absurdity, this outrage?' demanded Goring.

'No outrage at all,' replied the official, knitting his brows.

'Why has my baggage been seized!'

'You will learn in good time. _Sapristi_.'

'Why not now?'

'Well, it contained what it should not.'

'My baggage?'

'Yes.'

'It was duly inspected by the _douanier_ at the quay and passed.'

'Yes; your portmanteau, as he is here ready to affirm,' replied the Préfet; 'but not your roll of railway rugs?'

'And what the deuce was in it?'

'That which you were too cunning to have in your portmanteau.'

'Too cunning to put in my portmanteau!' said Goring, in utter bewilderment, and almost inclined to laugh now.

'_Sapristi_!' exclaimed the other, using that exclamation which is for ever on a Belgian tongue; 'don't repeat my words, insolent! You concealed there these revolutionary papers, the existence of which and your object in coming to Belgium were duly and fortunately reported to the police the moment you stepped upon the Quai Van Dyck.'

'My object--reported--and by whom?'

'I do not precisely know--one of your countrymen, however; it was reported to the gendarme on duty there, and the report proved a true one. Here is a roll of nearly fifty circulars issued by the chiefs of the late French Commune in three languages, one of them being Flemish, inciting a rising against kings and all constituted authorities, which no doubt you intended to distribute here in the cause of liberty, equality, fraternity, and social democracy.'

Goring was so confounded by all this that he remained for a moment or two silent, and then he laughed heartily.

'You will find this no laughing matter--Sapristi?' exclaimed the other, dipping a pen in the ink-bottle. 'Your name, coquin?'

Goring's brow knit at this epithet; so he replied sternly, giving his name and rank.

'Calls himself a British officer, does he?' said the magistrate to the gendarmes, who laughed at it as a joke.

'Were you ever in Belgium before?'

'No.'

'What is your profession or occupation?'

'I have already told you.'

'Are you married?'

'Really, monsieur, your questions border on the impertinent.'

'You are an Englishman?'

'I am glad to say I am.'

'But well acquaint with Lester Squarr, I doubt not, where all the foreign _canaille_ do congregate?'

'You are an insolent fool.'

'We shall teach you to play tricks in Belgium, however.'

'D--n Belgium!' exclaimed Goring, losing patience utterly at last. 'I wish it was a few inches under the sea, instead of being a few inches out of it.'

'_C'est excellent, c'est excellent! Je déclare qu'il est incorrigible. Gendarmes, remenez-le à Prison--Rue des Beguines_,' exclaimed the Préfet, furiously.

'This is beyond a joke now, by Jove; it is as well the mess don't know of it,' was Goring's first thought. 'I should be quizzed to death as the agitator of Republican principles in Belgium. And this cursed confusion and detention will prevent me from discovering Alison.'

He was now deprived of her ring, in spite of all his protestations and supplications that it might be left with him; his watch and purse were also taken from him; but all were carefully put past, however, and in a few minutes more, escorted by gendarmes with drawn swords, and followed by a crowd of fellows in blue blouses and wooden sabots, he was conducted past the church of St. Augustine, in the Rue des Beguines, to the great towering prison, the walls of which overshadow the centre of the Rue des Beguines; and there, after being formally handed over to the care of the _concierge_ in a little chamber scantily furnished, with a strongly grated window, he found himself left to his own reflections.

Pride of his position as an English gentleman, and as a British officer bearing the Royal commission, rose in revolt in his heart at the grotesque insult put upon him through some extraordinary mistake; and though he was conscious that the rascally valet Gaskins had deceived him as to the address of his master, and was aware that the latter and Sir Ranald too would now be put upon their guard and shift their quarters, thus making approaches to Alison more difficult, Goring never for a moment connected him with his present predicament, the escape from which, by some legal and constitutional measure, would have to be seen to at once. Doubtless with morning the whole folly of the affair would be brought to light, and in the meanwhile he could but resort to patience, while the hours were chimed and carillons rung in the adjacent church of St. André, wherein a portrait of Mary Queen of Scots now marks the grave of two English ladies, her attendants, one of whom received her last embrace previous to her execution.

He could also hear the artillery trumpets sounding tattoo in the Caserne des Predicateurs, and the sound made him think of the merriment and luxury prevailing at that very hour in the mess-room at Atdershot, and of his regiment now far away on the billow in the transport then steaming along the western coast of Africa.

Then his adopted patience deserted him, and he started to his feet, only to anathematise the people of Antwerp generally, their authorities in particular, and to seat himself hopelessly again on a somewhat hard chair.

Morning came; the day passed on and the evening also, and again he heard the shrill trumpets pealing out tattoo in the echoing square of the artillery barracks; and many days and nights followed each other, till he was well-nigh mad with exasperation and anxiety, but no token came of release or further examination.

If some absurd or misleading paragraph appeared in the Belgian papers, and from these found its way into the English journals, what strange views of his predicament might not be taken by his friends and the military authorities at home!

But the Belgian police, like other similar forces on the Continent, are very reticent with reference to their own movements and affairs; and, as yet, they prevented him from communicating with our consul at Antwerp, our ambassador at Brussels, or by letter with his solicitors, Messrs. Taype, Shawrpe, & Scrawly, Gray's Inn Square, the presence of one of whom in Antwerp might have proved of vast service to him just then. So the weary days passed on, and Bevil Goring thought with truth that he would have cause to remember long the bitter coffee and onion soup--or _soupe-maigre_--and the _Ratatouil_, Flemish for a ragout made of scraps of meat, during his enforced abode in the Rue des Beguines!