“Use?”
“Yes. I’m going into the army. It will be a long war. If I fell in love with you I’d not have time to win your love in return before I went away — admitting that I could ever win it. Do you see?”
“I quite see that.”
“So I had better take the papers when I can, and get into touch with the reserves of my regiment if I can.”
“What regiment?”
“The Guides.”
“The Guides! Are you an officer?”
“Yes, of the reserve.”
She knew quite well what that meant. Only the Belgian nobility of ancient lineage served as officers in the Guides.
A happiness, a wonderful tranquillity crept over her. No wonder she had found it difficult to really reproach herself with her behaviour. And it was a most heavenly comfort to her to know that if she had been indiscreet, at least she had been misbehaving with one of her own caste.
“The next station,” said the German guard, squinting in at them from the window under his lifted lantern, “is Trois Fontaines.”
“What!” exclaimed Guild surprised. “Have we passed the customs?”
“The customs? This is a German military train! What business is it of the Grand Duchy where we go or what we do?”
He lowered his lantern and turned away along the running-board, muttering: “Customs, indeed! The Grand Duchy had better mind its business — and the Grand Duchess, too!”
A few moments later the locomotive whistled a long signal note to the unseen station.
“Karen,” said Guild quietly, “in a few moments I shall be out of debt to General von Reiter. My life will be my own to do with as I please. That means good-bye.”
She said with adorable malice: “I thought you were going to rob me first.”
“I am,” he said, smiling.
“Then I shall make the crime a very difficult one for you.... So that our — parting — may be deferred.”
The train had already come to a standstill beside a little red-tiled station. Woods surrounded it; nothing was visible except the lamps on a light station-wagon drawn up to the right of the track.
The guard unlocked and opened their compartment. A young man — a mere boy — came up smilingly and lifted his cap:
“Mademoiselle Girard? Monsieur Guild? I come from Quellenheim with a carriage. I am Fritz Bergner.”
He took their luggage and they followed to the covered station-wagon. When they were seated the boy stepped into the front seat, turned his horses, and they trotted away into the darkness of a forest through which ran the widely winding road.
Fresh and aromatic with autumn perfume the unbroken woods stretched away on either hand beneath the splendour of the stars. Under little stone bridges streams darkled, hurrying to the valley; a lake glimmered through the trees all lustrous in the starlight.
Something — perhaps the beauty of the night, possibly the imminence of his departure, kept them silent during the drive, until, at last, two unlighted gate-posts loomed up to the right and the horses swung through a pair of iron gates and up a driveway full of early fallen leaves.
A single light sparkled far at the end of the vista.
“Have you ever before been here?” asked Guild.
“Once, to a hunt.”
Presently Guild could see the long, two-storied hunting lodge of timber and stucco construction with its high peaked roof and dormers and a great pair of antlers spreading above the hood of the door.
Out of the doorway came a stout, pleasant-eyed, brown-skinned woman who curtsied to them smilingly and welcomed them in German.
Everything was ready; they had been expected. There was a fire in the hall and something to eat.
Guild asked to be driven to an inn, and the housekeeper seemed surprised. There was no inn. Her orders were to prepare a room for Herr Guild, who was expected to remain over night. She regretted that she could not make them more comfortable, but the Lodge had been closed all summer, and she had remained alone with her son Fritzl to care for the place.
There seemed to be nothing for him to do but to stay over night.
Karen, waiting for his decision, looked pale and tired.
“Very well,” he said to Frau Bergner, who curtsied and went away for their candles. Then he walked over to where Karen was standing, lifted her hand and touched the slender fingers with his lips.
“Good night,” she said; “I hope your dreams will be agreeable.”
“I hope yours will be, also.”
“I hope so. I shall try to continue a dream which I had on the train. It was an odd one — something about a frontier and a sentry box. You woke me before I had entirely crossed the frontier. I’d like to cross and find out what really is on the other side.”
He laughed:
“I hope you will find, there, whatever you desire.”
“I — hope so. Because if I should cross the boundary and find — nobody — there, it might make me unhappy for the rest of my life.” And she looked up at him with a slight blush on her cheeks.
Then her features grew grave, her eyes serious, clear, and wistful.
“I think I am — learning to care — a great deal for you. Don’t let me if I shouldn’t. Tell me while there is time.”
She turned as the housekeeper came with the lighted candles.
Guild stood aside for her to pass, his grave face lowered, silent before this young girl’s candour and the troubled sincerity of her avowal.
In his own room, the lighted candle still in his hand, he stood motionless, brooding on what she had said.
And in his heart he knew that, although he had never liked any woman as much as he liked this young girl, he was not in love with her. And, somehow or other, he must tell her so — while there was still time.
CHAPTER XVI
THE FOREST LISTENS
He awoke in a flood of brightest sunshine; his bed, the floor, the walls, were bathed in it; netted reflections of water danced and quivered on the ceiling; and he lay looking at it, pleasantly conscious of green leaves stirring near his open window and of the golden splashing of a fountain.
There was a little bird out there, too, diligently practicing a few notes. The song was not elaborate. Translated, it seemed to consist of tweet! tweet! twilly-willy-willy! repeated an indefinite number of times.
Curious to discover what his surroundings resembled he rose and looked out of the curtained window. There was a grassy carrefour where a fountain spouted into a stone pool; all else was forest; a stream sparkled between tree-trunks, bridged where the drive crossed it.
To bathe and dress did not take him very long. In the hall, which seemed to be the main living-room below, he prowled about, examining a number of antlers and boar-heads mounted on the beamed and plastered walls. The former had been set up in German fashion, antlers, brow-antlers, and frontal bone; and these trophies appeared to him uninteresting — even a trifle ghastly when the bleached skull also was included.
The boars’ heads were better, nothing extraordinary in size, but well-tusked. The taxidermy, however, was wretched.
The square hall itself did not appear particularly inviting. The usual long oak table and benches were there, a number of leather arm-chairs, book-racks, cue-racks, gun-racks with glazed panes to protect the weapons, a festoon of spears, hunting knives and curly hunting horns, skins on the floor, brown bear, wolf, and stag.
A badly stuffed otter displayed its teeth on the mantle over the fireplace between a pair of fighting cock pheasants and a jar of alcohol containing a large viper, which embellishments did not add to the cheerfulness of the place.
For the rest there was a billiard table shrouded in a rubber cloth, and three well-engraved portraits on the walls, Bismarck, after Lehnbach, Frederick the Great playing on a flute like fury, and the great War Lord of Europe himself, mustaches on end, sombre-eyed, sullen, cased in the magnificent steel panoply of the Guard Cuirassiers. The art gallery bored Guild, and he opened a door which he suspected communic
ated with the pantry.
It was a valet’s closet and it smelled of camphor. Shooting-coats hung on stretchers; high-laced shooting-boots were ranged in rows. On a chair lay Karen’s skirt and blouse-coat of covert cloth. Both were still slightly damp and wrinkled. Evidently they had been brought down here to be brushed and pressed while Karen slept.
Passing his hand over the brown silk lining of the coat gave him no clue to the hiding-place of the papers; what revealed their presence was a seam which had been hurriedly basted with black thread. The keen point of his pocket-knife released the basting. He drew out the papers, counted them, identified them one by one, and placed them in his breast pocket. Then he laid the coat across the back of the chair again and went out.
He had two hours to wait before there could be any decent hope of breakfast. Nobody seemed to be stirring in the house. After a few minutes he unlocked the front door and went out into the early sunshine.
It was as warm as a spring day; rain had freshened grass and trees; he sat down on the fountain’s rim and looked into the pool where a dozen trout lay motionless, their fins winnowing the icy water.
No doubt some spring, high on the wooded hills, had been piped down to furnish the pool with this perpetually bubbling jet.
The little bird who had entertained him vocally earlier in the morning was still vocal somewhere in a huge beech-tree. Around a spot of moisture on the gravel-drive two butterflies flitted incessantly. And over all brooded the calm and exquisite silence of the forest.
An hour or more later he got up and re-entered the house.
First he took a look at the valet’s room. Evidently Karen’s clothes had been brushed and pressed, for they had disappeared.
Another door in the square hall promised to lead into the pantry, judging from significant sounds within.
It did, and the housekeeper was in there as energetically busy as every German woman always is when occupied. And German women are always occupied.
The kindly soul appeared to be much flattered by his visit. They had quite a gossiping time of it while she was preparing the breakfast dishes.
It was mostly a monologue.
No, she and Fritzl were not lonely at Quellenheim, although it was pleasant to have the Lodge open and a noble company there shooting. But, like Marlbrook, the Herr Baron had gone to the wars — alas! — and it might take him some time to capture Paris and London and set the remainder of the world in order.
But it really seemed too bad; the Herr Baron was fond of his shooting; Fritzl had reported some good antlers in the forest, and a grey boar or two — but enormous! As for the place it would certainly go to ruin what with faggot stealers and godless poachers! — And the foresters, keepers, and even the wood-choppers all gone off and deserting the place — think of it! — the ungrateful Kerls — gone! — and doubtless to join the crazy Belgian army which had refused to permit Prussian troops to pass! Prussian troops! The impudence of it! Gratitude! There was little of that in the world it seemed.
“When does the Herr Baron return here?” inquired Guild, smiling.
It appeared that the Herr Baron was to have arrived at Quellenheim this very week. But yesterday his adjutant telegraphed that he could not come perhaps for many weeks. No doubt he was very busy chasing the French and English. It was a pity; because the autumn is wunderschön at Quellenheim. And as for the deer! — they stand even in the driveway and look at the Lodge, doubtless wondering, sir, why they are neglected by the hunters, and asking one another why good fat venison is no longer appreciated at Quellenheim.
“Could you tell me where I may telegraph to the Herr Baron?” asked the young man, immensely amused by her gossip.
“That I can, sir. My careful household reports are sent to the Herr Baron through military headquarters at Arenstein, Prussia. That is where he is to be addressed.”
“And a telegraph office?”
“At the railroad station.”
“In communication with Prussia?”
“Yes, sir,” she said with a vigorous nod. “And whenever any of the yokels here about tamper with the wires the Uhlans come and chase them till they think the devil is after them!”
“Uhlans. Here?”
“And why not? Certainly the Uhlans come occasionally. They come when it is necessary. Also they cross the Grand Duchy when they please.”
“Then, if I write out a telegram here — —”
“Fritzl will take it, never fear, sir. Leave it on the billiard table — any telegrams or letters — and they shall be sent when Fritzl drives to the station.”
“Where,” he inquired, “is Lesse Forest?” And could he send a messenger?
“Lesse Forest? Why the chasse wall separates the range of the Lesse Hills from Quellenheim. Any peasant at Trois Fontaines who possesses a bicycle could take a message and return in an hour.”
“Do you know who leases the chasse at Lesse?”
“Yes. Some wealthy Americans.”
So he smiled his thanks and returned to the hall. There was writing material on the long oak table. And first of all he wrote out a brief telegram to General von Reiter saying that he had fulfilled his promise.
This was all he might venture to say in a telegram; the rest he embodied in his letter to the Herr Baron:
Having telegraphed to you, and fulfilled my enforced obligations to the letter, I am confident that you, in your turn, will fulfill yours, release the hostages held by your troops at Yslemont, and spare the village any further destruction and indemnity.
You had made it a part of the contract that, in case you were not at Quellenheim, I was to remain over night under your roof.
I therefore have done so. It was not an agreeable sensation, and your forced hospitality, you will recognize, imposes no obligations upon an unwilling guest.
Now, as I say, the last and least item of my indebtedness to you is finally extinguished, and I am free once more to do what I choose.
I shall be a consistent enemy to your country in whatever capacity the Belgian Government may see fit to employ me. I shall do your country all the harm I can. Not being a public executioner I have given the spies in your employment in London a week’s grace to clear out before I place proofs of their identity in the hands of the British Government.
This, I believe, closes, for the present, our personal account.
Miss Girard is well, suffered no particular hardship, and is, I suppose, quite safe at Quellenheim where your capable housekeeper and her son are in charge of the Lodge.
May I add that, personally, I entertain no animosity toward you or toward any German, individually — only a deep and inextinguishable hatred toward all that your Empire stands for, and a desire to aid in the annihilation of this monstrous anachronism of the twentieth century.
When he had signed and sealed this, and directed it, he wrote to his friend Darrel:
Dear Harry:
If you are at Lesse Forest still, which I understand adjoins the hills of Quellenheim — and if your friends the Courlands still care to ask me for a day or two, I shall be very glad to come. I am at Quellenheim, Trois Fontaines.
Please destroy the letter I intrusted to you to send to my mother. Everything is all right again. I may even have time to fish with you for a day or two.
The messenger from Trois Fontaines who takes this will wait for an answer.
Please convey my respect and my very lively sense of obligation to the Courlands. And don’t let them ask me if it inconveniences them. I can go to Luxembourg just as well and see you there if you can run over.
Did you get my luggage? I am wearing my last clean shirt. But my clothes are the limit.
If I am to stop for a day or two at the Courlands please telegraph to Luxembourg for my luggage as soon as you receive this.
Yours as usual,
Guild
P. S.
Do Uhlans ever annoy the Courlands? I imagine that Lesse is too far from the railway and too unimportant from a military standpoint
to figure at all in any operations along the edge of the Grand Duchy. And also any of the Ardennes is unfit as a highway between Rhenish Prussia and France. Am I correct?
G.
He had sealed and directed this letter, and was gazing meditatively out of the diamond-leaded windows at the splashing fountain in the court, when a slight sound attracted his attention and he turned, then rose and stepped forward.
Karen gave him her hand, smiling. In the other hand she held the last of her orchids.
“Are you rested?” he asked.
“Yes. Are you?”
“Perfectly, thank you. Really it is beautiful outside the house.”
She lifted her lovely eyes and stood gazing out into the sunshine.
“There is no word from General von Reiter?” she asked, absently caressing her cheek with the fragrant blossom in her hand.
“Not yet,” he said.
“If none comes, what are you going to do?”
“I am free, anyhow, to leave now.”
“Free?”
“Free of my engagement with Baron von Reiter.”
“Free of your obligations to — me?” she asked in a low voice.
He turned to her seriously: “My allegiance to you needs no renewal, Karen, because it has never been broken. You have my friendship if you wish for it. It is yours always as long as you care for it.”
“I do.... Are you going to leave — Quellenheim?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When a messenger brings me an answer to a letter which I shall send this morning.”
She stood caressing her lips with his flower and gazing dreamily into the forest.
“So you really are going,” she said.
“I cannot help it.”
“I thought” — she forced a smile— “that you intended to rob me first.”
He did not answer.
“Had you forgotten?” she asked, still with the forced smile.
“No.”
“Do you still mean to do it?”
“I told you that I had to have the papers.”
“Yes, and I told you that I should make it as difficult as I could for you. And I’m going to. Because I don’t want you to go.” She laughed, then sighed very frankly: “Of course,” she added, “I don’t suppose I could keep them very long if you have made up your mind to take them.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 763
