Who Goes There!

He got up slowly, as though very lame.

"It's very terrible to me," he said, "to know that you feel bound to go into this mix-up. I was afraid of it as soon as I heard that war had been declared. It's been worrying me every minute since. But I suppose it's quite useless to argue with you?"

"Quite," said Guild pleasantly. "What's the matter with your leg?"

"Barked the shin. Listen! Is there any use reasoning with you?"

"No, Harry."

"Well, then," exclaimed Darrel in an irate voice, "I'll tell you frankly that you and your noble ancestors give me a horrible pain! I'm full of all kinds of pain and I'm sick of it!"

Guild threw back his blond head and laughed out-right – a clear, untroubled laugh that rang pleasantly through the ancient hall they were traversing.

As they came out on the terrace where the ladies sat in the sun knitting, Valentine looked around at Guild.

"What a delightfully infectious laugh you have," she said. "Was it a very funny story? I can scarcely believe Mr. Darrel told it."

"But he did," said Guild, seating himself beside her on the edge of the stone terrace and glancing curiously at Karen, who wore a light gown and was looking distractingly pretty.

"Such an unpleasant thing has occurred," said Mrs. Courland in her quiet, gentle voice, turning to Darrel. "Our herdsman has just come in to tell Michaud that early this morning a body of German cavalry rode into the hill pastures and drove off the entire herd of cattle and the flock of sheep belonging to Monsieur Paillard."

There was a moment's silence; Darrel glanced at Guild, saying: "Was there any explanation offered for the requisition? – any indemnity?"

"Nothing, apparently. Schultz, the herdsman, told Michaud that an Uhlan officer asked him if the cattle and sheep did not belong to the Paillard estate at Lesse. That was all. And the shepherd, Jean Pascal, tried to argue with the troopers about his sheep, but a cavalryman menaced him with his lance. The poor fellow is out in the winter fold, weeping like Bo-Peep, and Schultz is using very excited language. All our forest guards and wood-choppers are there. Michaud has gone to Trois Fontaines. They all seem so excited that it has begun to disturb me a little."

"You see," said Valentine to Guild, "our hill pastures are almost on the frontier. We have been afraid they'd take our cattle."

He nodded.

"Do you suppose anything can be done about it?" asked Mrs. Courland. "I feel dreadfully that such a thing should happen at Lesse while we are in occupation."

"May I talk with your head gamekeeper?" asked Guild.

"Yes, indeed, if you will. He ought to return from Trois Fontaines before dark."

"I'll talk to him," said Guild briefly. Then his serious face cleared and he assumed a cheerfulness of manner totally at variance with his own secret convictions.

"Troops have got to eat," he said. "They're likely to do this sort of thing. But the policy of the Germans, when they make requisition for anything, seems to be to pay for it with vouchers of one sort or another. They are not robbers when unmolested, but they are devils when interfered with. Most troops are."

The conversation became general; Darrel, sitting between Karen and Mrs. Courland, became exceedingly entertaining, to judge from Karen's quick laughter and the more subdued amusement of Katharyn Courland.

Darrel was explaining his lameness.

But the trouble with Darrel was that his modesty inclined him to be humorous at his own expense. Few women care for unattractive modesty; few endure it, none adores it. He was too modest to be attractive.

"I was sauntering along," he said, "minding my own business, when I came face to face with a wild boar. He was grey, and he was far bigger than I ever again desire to see. Before I could recover my breath his eyes got red and he began to make castanette music with his tusks, fox-trot time. And do you know what happened – in your forest, Mrs. Courland? I went up a tree, and I barked my shin in doing it. If you call that hospitality, my notions on the subject are all wrong."

"Didn't you have a gun?" asked Karen.

"I did. I admit it without a blush."

"Why didn't you use it?" asked Mrs. Courland.

"Use it? How? A gun doesn't help a man to climb a tree. It is in the way. I shall carry no more guns in your forest. A light extension ladder is all I require. And a book to pass away the time when treed."

They all laughed. "Really," asked Guild curiously, "why didn't you shoot?"

"First of all," said Darrel serenely, "I do not know how to fire off a gun. Do you want any further reasons?"

"You looked so picturesque," said Valentine scornfully, "I never dreamed you were such a dub! And you don't seem to care, either."

"I don't. I like to catch little fish. But my ferocity ends there. Kervyn, shall we try the trout for an hour this afternoon?"

Valentine turned up her dainty nose. "I shall take Mr. Guild myself. You'd better find a gamekeeper who'll teach you how to shoot off a gun." And, to Guild: "I'll take you now if you like. It's only a little way to the Silverwiltz. Shall I get a rod and fly-book for you?"

Karen, watching her, saw the frank challenge in her pretty brown eyes, saw Guild's swift response to that gay defiance. It was only the light, irresponsible encounter of two young people who had liked each other at sight and who had already established a frank understanding.

So Valentine went into the house and returned presently switching a light fly-rod and a cast of flies; and Guild walked over and joined her.

To Karen he looked very tall and sunburned, and unfamiliar in his blue-serge lounging clothes – very perfectly groomed, very severe, and unapproachable; and so much older, so much more mature, so much wiser than she had thought him.

And, as her eyes followed him from where she was seated among the terrace flowers, she realized more than ever that she did not know what to say to him, what to do with him, or how to answer such a man.

Her face grew very serious; she was becoming more deeply impressed with the seriousness of what he had asked of her; of her own responsibility. And yet, as far as love was concerned, she could find no answer for him. Friendship, swift, devoted, almost passionate, she had given him – a friendship which had withstood the hard shocks of anger and distrust, and the more bewildering shock of his kiss.

She still cared for him, relied on him; wished for his companionship. But, beyond that, what had happened, followed by his sudden demand, had startled and confused her, and, so far, she did not know whether it was in her to respond. Love loomed before her, mighty and unknown, and the solemnity of its pledges and of its overwhelming obligations had assumed proportions which awed her nineteen years.

In her heart always had towered a very lofty monument to the sacredness of love, fearsomely chaste, flameless, majestic. So pure, so immaculate was this solemn and supreme edifice she had already builded that the moment's thrill in his arms had seemed to violate it. For the girl had always believed a kiss to be in itself part of that vague, indefinite miracle of supreme surrender. And the knowledge and guilt of it still flushed her cheeks at intervals and meddled with her heart.

She had forgiven, had tried to readjust herself before her mystic altar. There was nothing else to do. And the awakened woman in her aided her and taught her, inspiring, exciting her with a knowledge new to her, the knowledge of her power.

Then, as she sat there looking at this man and at the brown-eyed girl beside him, suddenly she experienced a subtle sense of fear: fear of what? She did not know, did not ask herself. Not even the apprehension, the dread of parting with him had made her afraid; not even the certainty that he was going to join his regiment had aroused in her more than a sense of impending loneliness.

But something was waking it now – something that pierced her through and through: and she caught her breath sharply, like a child who has been startled.

For the first time in her life the sense of possession had been aroused in her, and with it the subtle instinct to defend what was her own.

She looked very intensely at the brown eyes of the young girl who stood laughing and gossiping there with the man she did not know how to answer – the man with whom she did not know what to do. But every instinct in her was alert to place upon this man the unmistakable sign of ownership. He was hers, no matter what she might do with him.

To Darrel, trying to converse with her, she replied smilingly, mechanically; but her small ears were ringing with the gay laughter of Valentine and the quick, smiling responses of Guild as they stood with their heads together over the contents of the fly-book, consulting, advising, and selecting the most likely and murderous lures.

Neither of them glanced in her direction; apparently they were most happily absorbed in this brand new friendship of theirs.

Very slowly and thoughtfully Karen's small head sank; and she sat gazing at the brilliant masses of salvia bloom clustering at her feet, silent, overwhelmed under the tremendous knowledge of what had come upon her here in the sunshine of a cloudless sky.

"Au revoir!" called back Valentine airily; "we shall return before dusk with a dozen very large trout!"

Guild turned to make his adieux, hat in hand; caught Karen's eye, nodded pleasantly, and walked away across the lawn, with Valentine close beside him, still discussing and fussing over the cast they had chosen for the trout's undoing.

CHAPTER XIX
THE LIAR

The lamps had not yet been lighted in the big, comfortable living-room and late sunlight striped wall and ceiling with rose where Karen sat sewing, and Darrel, curled up in a vast armchair, frowned over a book. And well he might, for it was a treatise on German art.

His patience arriving at the vanishing point he started to hurl the book from him, then remembering that it was not his to hurl, slapped it shut.

Which caused Karen to lift her deep violet eyes inquiringly.

"Teutonic Kultur! I've got its number," he said. Which observation conveyed no meaning to Karen.

"German art," he explained. "It used to be merely ample, adipose, and indigestible. Now the moderns have made it sinister and unclean. The ham-fist has become the mailed fist; the fat and trickling source of Teutonic inspiration has become polluted. There is no decadence more hideous than the brain cancer of a Hercules."

Karen followed him with intelligent interest. She said with hesitation: "The moderns, I think, are wandering outside immutable boundaries. Frontiers are eternal. If any mind believes the inclosed territory exhausted, there is nothing further to be found outside in the waste places – only chaos. And the mind must shift to another and totally different pasture – which also has its boundaries eternal and fixed."

"Right!" exclaimed Darrel. "No sculptor can find for sculpture any new mode of expression beyond the limits of the materials which have always existed; no painter can wander outside the range of black and white, or beyond the surface allotted him; the composer can express himself in music only within the limits of the audible scale; the writer is a prisoner to grammatical expression, walled always within the margins of the printed page. Outside, as you say, lies chaos, possibly madness. The moderns are roaming there. And some of them are announcing the discovery of German Kultur where they have barked their mental shins in outer darkness."

Karen smiled. "It is that way in music I think. The dissonance of mental disturbance warns sanity in almost every bar of modern music. It is that which is so appalling to me, Mr. Darrel – that in some modernism is visible and audible more and more the menace of mental and moral disintegration. And the wholesome shrink from it."

Darrel said: "Three insane 'thinkers' have led Germany to the brink where she now stands swaying. God help her, in the end, to convalescence – " he stared at the fading sunbeams on the wall, and staring, quoted:

 
"'Over broken oaths and
Through a sea of blood.'"
 

He looked up. "I'm sorry: I forget you are German."

"I forget that I am supposed to be, too… But you have not offended me. I know war is senseless. I know that war will not always be the method used to settle disputes. There will be great changes beginning very soon in the world, I think."

"I believe so, too. It will begin by a recognition of the rights of smaller nations to self-government. It will be an area of respect for the weak. Government by consent is not enough; it must become government by request. And the scriptures shall remain no more sacred than the tiniest 'scrap of paper' in the archives of the numerically smallest independent community on earth.

"The era of physical vastness, of spheres of influence, of scope is dying. The supreme wickedness of the world is Force. That must end for nations and for men. Only one conflict remains inevitable and eternal; the battle of minds, which can have no end."

For an American and an operator in real estate, Darrel's philosophy was harmlessly respectable if not very new. But he thought it both new and original, which pleased him intensely.

As for Karen, she had been thinking of Guild for the last few minutes. Her sewing lay in her lap, her dark, curly head rested in the depths of her arm-chair. Sunlight had almost faded on the wall.

Through the window she could see the trees. The golden-green depths of the beech-wood were growing dusky. Against the terrace masses of salvia and geraniums glowed like coals on fire. The brown-eyed girl had been away with him a long while.

Mrs. Courland came in, looking more youthful and pretty than ever, and seated herself with her knitting. The very last ray from the sinking sun fell on her ruddy hair.

"Think you are right, Harry," she said quietly to Darrel. "I think we will sail when you do. The men on the place are becoming very much excited over this Uhlan raid on the cattle. I could hear them from my bedroom window out by the winter fold, and they were talking loudly as well as recklessly."

"There's no telling what these forest people may do," admitted Darrel. "I am immensely relieved to know that you and Valentine are to sail when I do. As for Kervyn Guild – " he made a hopeless gesture – "his mind is made up and that always settles it with him."

"He won't return with you?"

"No. He's joining the Belgians."

"Really!"

"Yes. You see his people were Belgian some generations back. It's a matter of honour with him and argument is wasted. But it hits me pretty hard."

"I can understand. He is a most delightful man."

"He is as straight and square as he is delightful. His mother is charming; his younger brother is everything you'd expect him to be after knowing Kervyn. Theirs is a very united family, but, do you know I am as certain as I am of anything that his mother absolutely approves of what he is about to do. She is that sort. It may kill her, but she'll die smiling."

Mrs. Courland's serious, sweet eyes rested on him, solemn with sympathy for the mother she had never met.

"The horrid thing about it all," continued Darrel, "is that Kervyn is one man in a million; – and in a more terrible sense that is all he can be in this frightful and endless slaughter which they no longer even pretend to call one battle or many.

"He's a drop in an ocean, only another cipher in the trenches where hell's hail rains day and night, day and night, beating out lives without distinction, without the intelligence of choice – just raining, raining, and beating out life!.. I can scarcely endure the thought of Kervyn ending that way – such a man – my friend – "

His voice seemed hoarse and he got up abruptly and walked to the window.

Ashes of roses lingered in the west; the forest was calm; not a leaf stirred in the lilac-tinted dusk.

Karen, who had been listening, stirred in the depths of her chair and clasped her fingers over her sewing.

Mrs. Courland said quietly:

"It is pleasant for any woman to have known such a man as Mr. Guild."

"Yes," said Karen.

"If the charm of his personality so impresses us who have known him only a very little while, I am thinking what those who are near and dear to him must feel."

"I, too," said Karen, faintly.

"Yet she loves him best who would not have it otherwise it seems."

"Yes; he must go," said Karen. "Some could not have it – otherwise."

A man came to light the lamps. And a little while after they were lighted Mrs. Courland quietly looked up from her knitting. One swift, clear glance she gave; saw in the young girl's eyes what she had already divined must be there. Then bent again above her ivory needles. After a while she sighed, very lightly.

"They're late," remarked Darrel from the window.

"They are probably strolling up the drive; Valentine knows enough not to get lost," said her mother.

After a few moments Karen said: "Would my playing disturb you?"

"No, dear. Please!"

So Karen rose and walked to the piano. Presently Darrel turned and seated himself to listen to the deathless sanity of Beethoven flowing from the keys under a young girl's slender fingers.

She was still seated there when Valentine came in, and turned her head from the keyboard, stilling the soft chords.

"We had such a good time," said Valentine. "We caught half a dozen trout, and then I took him to the Pulpit where we sat down and remained very quiet; and just at sunset three boar came out to feed on the oak mast; and he said that one of them was worth shooting!"

"You evidently have had a good time," said Darrel, smiling. "What happened to Guild. Did the boar tree him?"

"I think he'd be more likely to tree the boar," remarked the girl. And to her mother she said: "He went on toward the winter fold to talk to Michaud who has just returned from Trois Fontaines. There were a lot of men there, ours and a number of strangers. So I left him to talk to Michaud. What have you all been doing this afternoon?" turning to Karen, and from her, involuntarily to Darrel.

"Miss Girard and I have conversed philosophically and satisfactorily concerning everything on earth," he said. "I wish my conversations with you were half as satisfactory."

Valentine laughed, but there was a slight flush on her cheeks, and again she glanced at Karen, whose lovely profile only was visible where she bent in silence above the keyboard.

"Your mother," remarked Darrel, "has decided to sail with me. Would you condescend to join us, Valentine?"

"Mother, are you really going back when Harry sails?"

"Yes. I don't quite like the attitude of the men here. And Harry thinks there is very likely to be trouble between them and the Germans across the border."

The girl looked thoughtfully at her mother, then at Darrel, rather anxiously.

"Mother," she said, "I think it is a good idea to get Harry out of the country. He is very bad-tempered, and if the Germans come here and are impudent to us he'll certainly get himself shot!"

"I! I haven't the courage of a caterpillar!" protested Darrel.

"You're the worst fibber in the Ardennes! You did kill that grey boar this morning! What do you mean by telling us that you went up a tree! Maxl, the garde-de-chasse at the Silverwiltz gate, heard your shot and came up. And you told him to dress the boar and send a cart for it. Which he did! – you senseless prevaricator!"

"Oh, my!" said Darrel meekly.

"And you're wearing a bandage below your knee where the boar bit you when you gave him the coup-de-grâce! Maxl washed and bound it for you! What a liar you are, Harry! Does it hurt?"

"To be a liar?"

"No! where you were tusked?"

"Maxl was stringing you, fair maid," he said lightly.

"He wasn't! You walk lame!"

"Laziness and gout account for that débutante slouch of mine. But of course if you care to hold my hand – "

The girl looked at him, vexed, yet laughing:

"I don't want people who do not know you to think you really are the dub you pretend to be! Do you wish Miss Girard to believe it?"

"Truth is mighty and must – "

"I know more about you than you think I do, Harry. Mr. Guild portrayed for me a few instances of your 'mouse'-like courage. And I don't wish you to lose your temper and be shot if the Uhlans ride into Lesse and insult us all! Therefore I approve of our sailing for home. And the sooner the better!"

"You frighten me," he said; "I think I'll ask Jean to pack my things now." And he got up, limping, and started for the door.

"Mother," she said, "that boar's tusks may poison him. Won't you make him let us bandage it properly?"

"I think you had better, Harry," said Mrs. Courland, rising.

"Oh, no; it's all right – "

"Harry!" That was all Valentine said. But he stopped short.

"Take his other arm, mother," said the girl with decision.

She looked over her shoulder at Karen; the two young girls exchanged a smile; then Valentine marched off with her colossal liar.