Complete weird tales of.., p.820
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 820
Guild drew Darrel and Michaud aside.
“To go by Luxembourg and Holland is too long and too uncertain,” he said. “If we could cross the railway beyond Trois Fontaines before daylight we should have a clear country before us to Antwerp.”
It had been days since the household at Lesse had heard any war news, but Darrel recollected that there had been rumours of a German drive toward Antwerp.
Michaud nodded. “It is possible,” he said. “Brussels they may have taken; I don’t know; but Antwerp, never! I know, Monsieur; I served my time with the artillery in the Scheldt forts. No German army could pass the outer ring of fortresses; the country can be flooded. Also our King is there with his Guides and Lancers and Chasseurs-à-cheval; the entire army is there. No, Monsieur, Antwerp is open to us if you desire to take us there.”
“I do,” said Guild. “It is the better way for all of us if the country still remains clear. It is better for us than to engage in a Chasse aux Uhlans. If I could lead a dozen sturdy recruits into Antwerp it would be worth while. And, except for the post at Trois Fontaines and the troops patrolling the railway, I can not see why the country is not open to us north of Liège.”
“I know this country. It is my country,” said Michaud, “and troops or no troops I can take you across the railroad before daylight.” He shrugged his massive shoulders: “What is a Prussian patrol to a head forester?”
“You believe you can do it?”
“I pledge my honour, Monsieur.”
Guild looked at Darrel: “I wish I knew whether there has been a drive toward Antwerp. If there has been it must have come from the sea by Ostend. But I do not believe Ostend has been taken.” He turned to Michaud: “If the country is clear, why could we not pick up more men en route? Why should we not recruit in every hamlet, every village?”
“Mon Dieu, Monsieur, if there are hardy companions willing to go with the ragged men of the forest, well and good. Yet I could wish for at least one uniform among us. That represents authority and gives security.”
Guild said thoughtfully: “I have an officer’s uniform of the Guides among my luggage.”
“Lord!” exclaimed Darrel, “you brought it with you?”
“There was to have been a regimental dinner in Brussels in September. I was asked last June, and they requested me to wear uniform. I had my uniform, so I packed it.”
“Then it is there in your luggage at Quellenheim!”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said Darrel heartily, “I’m devilish glad of it. If they catch you in uniform they can’t court-martial you with a jerk of their thumbs.”
“I’m not worrying about that,” said Guild carelessly, “but,” looking at Michaud, “if you think a reserve officer in uniform is likely to encourage recruiting, I certainly shall use my uniform. You know your own people better than I do. I leave it to you, Michaud.”
“Then, Monsieur, wear your uniform. It means everything to us all; we honour and respect it; it represents authority; better still, it reassures our people. If an officer of the Guides is seen in charge of a batch of recruits, no young man, whose class has been summoned to the colours, would entertain any misgivings. Nor dare anybody hang back! Our women would jeer and ridicule them.”
“Very well,” said Guild. “Now take me as far as the wood’s edge where I can see the house at Quellenheim. Wait for me there and guide me back here, for I never could find this dark bivouac alone.”
“Follow, Monsieur,” said the old man simply.
In single file the three men moved forward through the darkness, Michaud leading without hesitation, Guild following close, and Darrel bringing up the rear.
In a few minutes the bluish lustre of the stars broke through the forest’s edge. An overgrown ride ran westward; beyond, the highway from Trois Fontaines bisected it; and out of this curved the Lodge road.
It was dark and deserted; and when Guild came in sight of the Lodge, that, too, was dark.
Up the long avenue he hastened to the house; the fountain splashed monotonously in the star-light; the circle of tall trees looked down mournfully; the high planets twinkled.
He walked around the house, hoping to find a light in the kitchen. All was black, silent, and wrapped in profoundest shadow.
He picked up a few pebbles from the driveway, counted the windows until he was certain which one was Karen’s. Her window was open. He tossed a pebble against it; and then another into the room itself.
Suddenly the girl appeared at the window.
“Karen!” he called. She leaned out swiftly, her braided hair falling to the sill.
“Kervyn!” she whispered.
“Dear, I’ve only a moment. Could you come down and let me in without waking the others?”
“The others? Kervyn, they have gone!”
“Gone!”
“Everybody’s gone! A patrol of hussars galloped here from Trois Fontaines and ordered them across the Dutch frontier. I felt dreadfully; but there was nothing to do. So poor Mrs. Courland and her daughter and her servants have gone on toward Luxembourg with all their luggage. I’m here alone with the Frau Förster. Shall I let you in?”
“Did my luggage go to Luxembourg?”
“No; it is in the room you occupied.”
“Then come down quickly and let me in,” he said. “If there are German patrols abroad I don’t care to be caught here.”
The girl disappeared; Guild went to the front door and stood looking down the driveway and listening to catch any warning sound.
The next moment the door behind him opened and Karen’s trembling hands were in his.
He gazed down into the pale face framed by its heavy braids. In her slim nightdress and silken chamber robe she appeared very girlish.
“What has happened, Kervyn? Your clothes are torn and muddy and you look dreadfully white and tired.”
“Karen, they burned Lesse this morning.”
“Oh!” she gasped.
“Everything at Lesse is in ashes. Some of the men are dead. The survivors are in the woods behind your house waiting for me.”
She clung to his arm as they entered the house; Guild picked up one of the lighted candles from the oak table. She took the other and they ascended the stairs together.
“There was sniping,” he said. “That always brings punishment to innocent and guilty alike. Lesse is a heap of cinders; they drove the forest and shot the driven game from the steps of the carrefour shrine. Men fell there, too, under their rifles — the herdsman, Schultz, the Yslemont men, the little shepherd lad with both his dogs. When their bearers came our way we fired on them.”
“You! Oh, Kervyn! It means death if they find you!”
“I shall not be found.” He took her by the hands a moment, smiled at her, then turned swiftly and entered his room holding the candle above his head.
After his door had remained closed for a few moments she knocked.
“Kervyn,” she called, “I am frightened and I am going to dress.”
“No need of that,” came his voice; “I shall be gone in five minutes.”
But she went away with her lighted candle and entered her room. The travelling gown she wore from England lay ready; boots, spats, and waist.
Swiftly she unbraided and shook out her hair and twisted it up again, her slim fingers flying. A sense of impending danger seized and possessed her; almost feverishly she flung from her the frail night garments she wore, and dressed with ever-increasing fear of something indefinitely menacing but instant. What it might be she did not even try to formulate in thought; but it frightened her, and it seemed very, very near.
She dragged on her brown velvet hat and pinned it, and at the same moment she heard a sound in the hallway which almost stopped her heart.
It was the ringing step of a spurred boot.
Terrified, she crept to her door, listened, opened a little way. Near the stair-head a candle shone, its yellow light glimmering on the wall of the passage. Then she heard Guild’s guarded voice:
“Karen?”
“Y-yes,” she faltered in amazement as a tall figure turned toward her clothed in the complete uniform of the Guides.
“Kervyn! Is it you? Why are you in that uniform?” She came toward him slowly, her knees still tremulous from fear, and rested one hand on his arm.
“Dearest, dearest,” he said gently, “why are you trembling? There is no reason for fear. I am in uniform because I shall attempt to take a few recruits and volunteers across the railway line tonight. We are going to try to make Antwerp, which is a quicker, and I think a surer, route than through Luxembourg and Holland. Besides, they might interne us. They would without a doubt if I were in uniform and if the Lesse men came to the frontier with their guns and bandoulières.”
“Kervyn, how can you get to Antwerp? You can’t walk, dear!”
“We’ll start on foot, anyway,” he said cheerfully. “Now I must go. They’re waiting. Why did you dress, Karen?”
“I don’t know.” She looked up at him in a dazed way. “I wanted to be with you.”
“I’m going back to the forest, dear.”
“Could I come?”
“No. I don’t want you to be out at night. There’s only a fireless camp there and a dozen ragged and dirty men. Besides, there might be some sort of trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“Not likely. Still there might be patrols out from Trois Fontaines, even from Lesse. I don’t know. Michaud says he can take us across the railway line before daylight. If he can do that I think we shall find the country clear beyond. Anyway, we’ll know soon. Now I must say good-bye.”
She laid her cold hands in his, tried to speak, but could not. Then, of a sudden, her fingers gripped his in terror; there came the rushing swish of an automobile around the gravel circle outside, a loud resonant humming, a sharp voice speaking in German, a quick reply in the same tongue.
“The — the valet’s room. Quick!” she gasped, pushing him backward across the room and through the doorway. Behind him the swinging leather door closed silently again; the girl stood rigid, white as a sheet, then she walked to the oak table, picked up a book, and dropped into the depths of a leather arm-chair.
Outside the mellow whirr of the motor had ceased; the door of the car closed with a click; quick, firm steps ascended the path; there came a low jingling sound, the clash of metal, then a key was rattled in the outer lock, turned sharply, and the door creaked open.
Karen rose to her feet. Every atom of colour had fled her cheeks.
“Karen!”
“You?” she said in a ghost of her own voice.
Kurt von Reiter seemed astonished. He came forward very quickly, a tall, thin, faultless figure moulded perfectly into his tight sea-grey uniform. Bending only a very little from the waist as though too tightly buttoned in, he bowed above the icy hand she extended, paid his respects with flawless courtesy, straightened up, placed his shrouded spiked helmet on the table.
“I had scarcely expected to find you awake,” he said. “It is after two o’clock in the morning.”
She made a supreme effort at self-control.
“I have been a trifle nervous, Kurt. There was trouble at Lesse Forest last evening.”
“Yes. Who told you?”
“I was there.”
“At Lesse!”
“Yes, a guest of Mrs. Courland — an American lady.”
“I know about her. She is a friend of Mr. Guild.”
Karen nodded; a painful and fixed smile quivered in her colourless lips.
“Was Mr. Guild there also?” inquired von Reiter.
“Yes.”
“He left with the others, I suppose.”
She said: “Everybody was in a panic. I invited them to come here, but a patrol from Trois Fontaines galloped up and ordered them to go through Luxembourg — across the Dutch frontier. It seemed very harsh.”
The girl had seated herself again; von Reiter drew up a chair beside the table opposite her and sat down. Candle light played over his dry, sandy-blond face and set his blue eyes glittering.
“Are you well, Karen?”
“Quite, thank you. And you?”
“God be thanked, in perfect health.” He did not mention three broken ribs still bandaged and which had interfered with the perfectly ceremonious bow of a German officer.
He said: “I took this opportunity to come. It was my first chance to see you. Been travelling since noon.”
“You — remain tonight?”
“I can not. I came for one reason only. You know what it is, Karen.”
She did not answer.
He waited a moment, looked absently around the room, glanced up at the stag’s antlers, then his gaze returned to her.
“Were you much frightened by what happened at Lesse?” he asked. “You do not look well.”
“I am well.”
“Did you experience any trouble in leaving England?”
“Yes, some.”
“And Mr. Guild? Was he — useful?”
“Yes.”
Von Reiter gazed at the girl thoughtfully. One elbow rested on the table corner, the clenched fist supporting his chin. In the other hand he continued to crumple his gloves between lean, powerful, immaculate fingers.
“Karen,” he said, “did you bring with you whatever papers you happened to possess at the time?”
After a moment the girl answered in a low voice: “No.”
“Did you destroy them?”
“No.”
“What became of them?” he insisted. A mottled flush gathered on his cheek-bones; after a few seconds the carefully scrubbed features of the man grew pink.
“What papers had you?” he asked.
She looked up at him in silence and a deeper colour stained his face so that in contrast his pale mustache, en croc, and his clipped hair appeared almost white.
“Kurt,” she said, “how could you permit me to be involved in such matters?”
“Karen, do you imagine I supposed that war with England was imminent? I never dreamed that England would intervene! And when she did, and when it was already too late to reach you, the anxiety concerning you, and concerning what papers might still be passing from the Edmeston Agency through your hands, nearly drove me insane.”
“Yet you instructed me to bring back with me any papers I might have in my possession.”
“I tell you I did not count on war with England. Nobody did. I meant only that you were to bring with you what papers you had when you returned. Did not Grätz instruct you to destroy your papers?”
“No.”
Von Reiter’s lean jaws snapped. “Then what did you do with them?”
“I put them into my satchel. On board the steamer the satchel was opened and the papers taken.”
Anger, apprehension, twitched at his thin lips; then a deeper emotion softened the grim lines of his features.
“God be thanked,” he said, “that you were not involved in England. It was a living nightmare to me — that constant uncertainty concerning you. I could not reach you; I could do nothing, make no arrangements. Cipher code was forbidden even from neutral countries. It was only at the last moment I found a secret wireless lane still open to us. In that way I managed to notify Grätz that this man Guild was on his way to find you and bring you back here; that no more papers were to be sent through you to me; and that what you had were to be destroyed. Did you hear from him at all?”
“He telephoned that my maid had been arrested on a serious charge and that I was to leave Hyacinth Villa at once with Mr. Guild. He said nothing about papers. But I remembered what I had promised you, and I put into my satchel what papers I had.... They nearly lost me my life,” she added, gazing steadily at him.
“Do you mean to say that you knew the papers were compromising and still you undertook to bring them? Were you insane to attempt such a thing?”
“Had I not promised you, Kurt?”
“Circumstances alter conditions and absolve promises however solemn. Common sense decides where honour is involved.”
She flushed brightly: “There I am more English than German, Kurt. A promise is a promise, and not” — she looked at him musingly— “not what the British press reproaches us for calling a ‘scrap of paper.’”
He said grimly: “When a supposed friend suddenly aims a blow at you, strike first if you can and discuss the ethics afterward. We tore up that ‘scrap of paper’ before the dirty fingers of England could clutch it, that’s all.”
“And lost the world’s sympathy. Oh, Kurt!”
“But we retained the respect born of fear. We invaded Belgium before the others could do it, that’s all.... I do not care to discuss the matter. The truth is known to us and that is sufficient.”
“It is not sufficient if you desire the sympathy of the world.”
Von Reiter’s eyes became paler and fixed and he worried the points of his up-brushed mustache with powerful, lean fingers.
“Make no mistake,” he said musingly. “America’s turn will come.... For all the insolence she has offered in our time of need, surely, surely the time is coming for our reckoning with her. We have not forgotten von Diederichs; we shall not forget this crisis. All shall be arranged with method and order when we are ready.... Where is that American — or Belgian, as he seems to think his honour of the moment requires him to be?”
“Mr. Guild?”
“Yes.”
“He did not come here when the others arrived from Lesse Forest.”
“He’s a fire-brand,” said von Reiter coldly. “Our system of information informed us sufficiently. I should have had him extinguished at Yslemont had he not been the one man who stood any chance of getting into England and bringing you back.”
“Also you trusted him,” she said quietly.
“Yes, I did. He is a Gueldres of Yvoir. The Gueldres have never lied. When he said he’d return, that settled the matter.” Von Reiter’s eyes had an absent look as though following a detached idea, and his features became expressionless.
“When the war ends,” he said, “and if that man ever comes to Berlin, it would afford me gratification to offer him my hand — or my card. Either extreme would suit me; he is not a man to leave one indifferent; it is either friendship or enmity — the hand or the card. And I do not know yet which I might prefer.”
