by W. F. Morris
He glanced at her again. Her face betrayed only thoughtful attention. He went on slowly and solemnly. “I see that now, and I am sure that you too will see it—in time. That is why I am glad.” He paused and took a breath. “I am glad because I know that time”—he looked at her and added soberly, “time—is on my side.”
Their eyes met, and the expression in hers was indefinable. “On—your side,” she repeated slowly. The tone was half questioning.
He nodded his head solemnly. “Does that sound conceited?” he asked. “I am not really conceited—least of all at this moment. I think you know that.”
She nodded her head. “I know that,” she repeated earnestly. Then she looked up at him. “But you mean—?”
He nodded his head again and met her eyes. “Yes.”
There was a long silence. The sound of voices and laughter mingled with the rhythm of a fox trot came from the dance room. When at last she spoke, it was in a low voice without looking at him. “I wish you had not said all this. I enjoyed that dance so much. Now you make it very difficult for me.” Suddenly she turned and looked at him. Her face was serious but kind. “You would like me to be frank with you, wouldn’t you. Even though it—hurt a little.” She put out a hand and touched his arm, and her eyes were very kind. “Though, believe me, there is no one I would less willingly hurt.”
He patted her hand gently. “Go on. I can take one straight between the eyes if necessary.”
She looked away again, and when she spoke her voice was low and distressed. “Don’t you think, don’t you think,” she asked gently, “that you are mistaking gratitude and admiration for … for love?”
Slowly she turned her head and looked at him. He smiled into her distressed eyes. He shook his head slowly from side to side without speaking. “No,” he said at last. “I think that you are mistaking love for … gratitude and admiration.”
A startled expression leapt into her eyes for a moment and was gone again. Then she turned her head away. “Let us dance,” she said at last in a composed voice.
They glided again round the floor. Neither spoke. He steered her skilfully among the other dancers, and she responded to the slight pressure of his guiding arms as unerringly as though one mind only controlled their two rhythmically gliding bodies. He knew that she was thinking and that she was not angry with him, and he was content.
“That must be the last,” she said when the music slowed and ceased on a long drawn note. “I am getting so sleepy.”
They walked in silence side by side to the big entrance hall and across it to the foot of the broad staircase. She turned with a little smile. “I enjoyed the dance.”
His hand rested upon the polished balustrade; she was two steps above him.
“If,” he asked gently, “if—what I said proved to be true, would you—would you be—sorry?”
She halted with one foot raised upon the next stair and turned her head slowly towards him.
“Would you?” he persisted.
She looked down into his eager face, and her eyes were motherly and thoughtful.
“Would you?” he whispered.
The shake of her head was almost imperceptible. “I think I should be—glad,” she answered softly.
His radiant smile brought the colour to her cheeks.
“Good night—Clare,” he whispered.
“Good night—Charles,” she answered softly. Then she turned and went quickly up the stairs.
CHAPTER TWELVE
PAGAN was in an expansive mood as he strolled back across the foyer. He had slept all the morning and he was feeling very wide awake. He stood for a moment in the doorway of the dance room watching with abstracted eyes the couples gliding by; then he walked back to the lounge. He found young Cecil in a big arm-chair in a corner of the room and they had a liqueur together. Clare had told her brother something of the strange behaviour of Kleber and Bertha, and he was disposed to be dogmatic on the subject.
“The wild man of the woods story is obviously tosh,” he said as he lighted a long cheroot. “Baron is much nearer the mark. I was talking to a man on my way back from Gerardmer to-day. He is manager of one of those linen factories near Longermer. And he said that there was a lot of unrest among the lower orders. Many of the workmen think they would be better off under German rule; and apparently the religious question is mixed up with it too. And so what with one thing and another, he said he would not be surprised if before very long there was a dust up. And then, I suppose, the French would trot out their machine guns and mop them up. And a good job too, I say.”
“You bloodthirsty young ruffian!” laughed Pagan. “Ever seen a machine gun at work?”
“Only on the pictures,” grinned Cecil.
Pagan nodded. “I know; and the belt jams conveniently whenever the hero comes on the scene,” he laughed. “But it does look as though some sort of trouble is brewing. I have heard it from two or three sources.”
“And that fellow Kleber is in it for certain,” said Cecil.
Pagan nodded thoughtfully. “I shouldn’t wonder. Anyway, I have made up my mind to find out what he is up to.” He glanced at his watch. “I have half a mind to pay an unofficial visit to his pub to-night. You are not game, I suppose?”
Cecil put down his glass. “Rather late, isn’t it?”
Pagan grinned. “It would not take long in that car of yours,” he suggested.
Cecil shook his head. “No, I’m not really interested; but if you want to go, Griffin can run you up.”
“Thanks very much,” said Pagan. “But I don’t like to drag your man out this time of night.”
“Oh, he will be tickled to death. There is a battlefield nearby, isn’t there. He loves battlefields. He will talk for hours about it if you let him—which I don’t. How he had his knapsack full of eggs or something and what the S. O. S., or the X. Y. Z., or whatever it is, said to him. But you understand his jargon and it might interest you. We will dig him out if you like. He is always down at that café by the station at this hour.”
Pagan fetched a coat, and they walked down to the little open air café. They found Griffin seated on an iron chair under a tree, in the branches of which little red, green and yellow electric bulbs were entwined. On the little iron table before him stood a tall glass a quarter full of beer, and the upper three quarters of the glass were ringed at almost mathematically regular intervals with wreaths of white foam. Between his teeth was a half-smoked cigar with the band on. Opposite him sat the patron wearing a dark blue beret.
As Pagan and Cecil came unnoticed within earshot, Griffin removed his cigar and asked oratorically, “What did she say! San fairy anne; that’s wot she said.” The patron raised an interrogative eyebrow. Griffin took a pull at his glass and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “An’ it didn’t,” he added cryptically.
Pagan grinned. “Seems a pity to interrupt these tender reminiscences,” he said. But Cecil had no such delicate feelings in the matter; and ten minutes later Pagan was seated beside Griffin in the car which was leaving the outskirts of Munster behind it.
The evening air blew coldly as the car throbbed steadily upwards. The two bright cones from the headlights threw into shadowed relief the inequalities of the road ahead. Below them in the darkness twinkled the lights of Munster. Griffin handled the wheel with careless skill and rounded the steep hairpin bends in faultless style and with silent gears.
In a little over twenty minutes the car throbbed over the crest and glided to rest in the col. Pagan clambered out and examined his wrist watch in the glare of the headlights. “Don’t stay longer than an hour, Griffin,” he said.
Griffin coughed. “Well, sir, I was ’oping you’d let me come with you. I’m ’ot stuff on night patrols.”
Pagan hesitated. “Right ’o,” he said at last. “Come along then.”
The soft purr of the engine died away; the headlights faded out. Griffin climbed out of the car and slammed the door. “You see, sir,” he said as they se
t off up the grassy side of the col, “I’d like to see this ’ere ghost, never havin’ properly seen one afore.”
“Who said anything about ghosts?” demanded Pagan.
“Well, sir, it was like this; the Frenchies in Munster was chewing the rag about it, and then I ’eard Mr. Cecil and Miss Clare talking about what you done last night, and well, do you see, sir?”
“You put two and two together,” supplied Pagan.
“That’s right, sir,” agreed Griffin cheerfully. “Not that I altogether holds with ghosts myself,” he added. “What do you say, sir?”
“I don’t know that I ‘hold’ with them either,” answered Pagan. “But there is something queer up here, I know, because—well, I saw a figure that was not quite ordinary.”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“It’s rather difficult to say,” answered Pagan. “Your friend at the café thinks it is a sort of ape man,” he added half seriously.
“I shouldn’t be surprised, sir,” answered Griffin cheerfully. “I’ve seen lots o’ them.”
Pagan laughed. “So have I; the sort you mean. I don’t agree with him, but he really means a sort of wild man—half ape, half man.”
“Lord, sir!” exclaimed Griffin. “What, one of them chaps like what I saw on the fair at Lewes! Covered all over with hair, he was and a tanner a time to look at him.”
“Yes, that’s the idea, more or less,” laughed Pagan. “So now you know what we are up against. But seriously,” he added, “there is something queer, and I don’t want to drag you into this against your will.”
“And what would you do alone, sir, if this monkey chap jumped out on you all of a sudden?” asked Griffin scornfully.
“That would be rather awkward, wouldn’t it!” agreed Pagan. “But you need not worry about me, I can look after myself all right. So if you would rather push off, don’t hesitate to say so.”
Griffin tramped onward for a moment or two in silence; then he said, “If it’s worth a tanner to see a monkey man in a fair, I reckon it’s worth a walk over a mountain to see one for nix.”
There was no moon, but the clear starlight showed up the dark roof and the chimneys of the inn as they turned down the track in the hollow beyond the col. They approached the clump of buildings warily. Narrow panels of yellow light escaped from the edges of the lower windows, and the white palings in front glimmered faintly in the starlight.
“What do we do now, sir?” asked Griffin as they halted in the gloom by the wall of an outbuilding. “Drore picks and shovels from the R. E.s!”
Pagan chuckled. “And then wait a couple of hours for a sapper lance corporal to turn up and show us where to dig, what! I see you have played that amusing game. No, I think the only thing we can do is to hang about for a bit in the hope that Kleber—that’s the innkeeper—comes out. He often goes out at night, and I would very much like to know where he goes to.”
They waited there in the lee of the wall and talked in whispers of those other nights, years ago, when they had trudged through the mud of Picardy towards the soaring Very lights or dug for hours beneath the stars on some weed-grown hill side to the intermittent accompaniment of staccato machine-gun bursts and occasional salvoes of gas shells. No sound came from the inn. Overhead, the great sky-sign of the stars revolved slowly.
Pagan had just made up his mind to send Griffin back when the silence was broken by the banging of a door. The sound came from the side of the inn, and was probably made by that door under the covered way which he and Baron had discovered during their exploration of the premises.
He whispered to Griffin to be quiet, and they stood there motionless, flat against the gable wall of the barn. Beyond the wall they could see the dim line of the fence which extended from it along the front of the house, broken some ten yards distant by the open gate which gave access to the barn and outbuildings.
Presently came the sound of heavy footsteps crossing the yard. The sounds grew nearer, and then almost died away as the approaching feet encountered the soft ground near the fence. A moment later a dark figure passed through the open gate.
The light was dim, but Pagan recognised the figure as that of Kleber; he was carrying what seemed to be a basket. He plodded slowly up the track through the hollow.
“Is he the one, sir?” whispered Griffin.
Pagan nodded. “Yes—we are in luck. Come on. I am very interested to see what he is up to.”
They left the shelter of the wall and followed cautiously after Kleber’s dim figure. Presently the hollow flattened out, and away to the right could be seen against the night sky the dim line of the ridge with its crest of stark dead trees. The dim figure ahead followed the track for some distance, and then suddenly diverged from it half right and began to ascend the grassy slope diagonally towards the ridge.
“Looks as though he is making for the saddle by the quarry,” whispered Pagan. “Look here, Griffin, it is no good dragging you any further. We are getting further and further away from the car. You go back. There is a road on the other side of the ridge; I can come back by that.”
Griffin was disposed to argue. “If there’s a road, sir, I’ll fetch the car and bring it round,” he whispered.
“You couldn’t get very far up it,” objected Pagan. “It runs across the old battlefield and it’s all cluttered up with branches of trees and bits of corrugated iron.”
“Then I’ll bring it up as far as I can and walk the rest,” persisted Griffin.
Pagan gave in. “Right ’o then,” he agreed. “But don’t come up further than the saddle—you can’t miss it: it makes quite a notch in the ridge on your left. Got a map?”
“In the car.”
“Good. Look here, you need not go back the way we came. Cut across to the left; march on those two stars. Got ’em? Good. They will lead you down and then up, and when you hit the road over the col turn left down it. You will be bound to strike the car. Cheery ’o. And if you don’t come across me on the road over here, don’t wait more than half an hour.”
Griffin went noiselessly down hill and soon disappeared in the gloom. Pagan quickened his steps and soon came again within sight of the dim figure ahead. It led him, as he had anticipated, to the saddle, and for a moment he thought the old quarry was the goal; but the figure passed on and down the far side of the saddle.
Here Pagan had to move very cautiously indeed, for the narrow track was littered with fragments of wood and debris, and he dared not use his torch. Several times he lost sight of Kleber altogether, but on each occasion that he did so the snapping of a twig or some other sound enabled him to pick up the trail again.
The track he was following was not that which he and Baron had taken on their morning exploration leading directly down from the saddle to the road, but one which diverged to the left and descended diagonally along the steep flank of the ridge. It threaded a forest of short splintered stumps with here and there a tall stark trunk like a lightning struck telegraph pole.
Suddenly the dim form ahead wavered and disappeared. Pagan stopped immediately to listen, and presently he was rewarded by the sounds of movement higher up the slope. Evidently Kleber had left the track and was climbing the steep slope to the left. Pagan moved on again till he reached the point at which he judged Kleber must have left the track. He looked for some smaller path leading upwards but could find none.
All sounds of movement had now ceased, but Kleber could not be more than fifty yards away. Possibly he suspected that he was being followed and had stopped to listen. Pagan, therefore, stood still and listened.
For more than five minutes this game of waiting and listening continued. No sound disturbed the silence of the night except the faint and intermittent skurryings and gnawings of rats and other rodents. Pagan decided to go on again. But he could find no trace of a path leading upwards. He placed his hat on the track as a guide and went back twenty yards and searched every inch of the bank up to it; and then he searched for twenty yards or more beyond it. But
no trace could he find of the path by which Kleber must have ascended: everywhere the way was barred by riven tree stumps, tall weeds, wire and brambles.
Kleber could not be very far away, that was certain. The noise of his progress had continued only for a minute or two after his dim form had disappeared from the track. He was up there somewhere among the shattered tree stumps on the steep bank above, either listening and waiting or in one of the many dug-outs with which this ridge was tunnelled like a rabbit warren.
Pagan crawled up the bank among some tall weeds and settled down to wait. He was rather pleased with the way in which he had followed Kleber across this difficult country; he was quite sure that no sound had betrayed his presence. It was unlikely, therefore, that Kleber had halted to listen. He had gone into a dug-out.
Pagan would have given much to know what was going on in that dug-out, but he knew that for the moment any attempt to find it was out of the question. Impetuosity could only ruin whatever chance remained of finding out the reason of Kleber’s wanderings. In any case he could find this track again and this very spot if he marked it. In the full light of day a careful search within a radius of fifty yards might reveal something.
He pulled out his pipe, but he put it back half filled into his pocket without lighting it. The smell of tobacco carried far at night, and Kleber was no fool for all his stolid appearance.
The time passed slowly. The night air was chilly, and Pagan sat with the collar of his coat turned up about his ears. Though it was dark where he sat on the shadowed hillside, across the valley a hill-top rose into the moonlight like a snowy peak, just as he had seen it on the previous evening when he had thrust his head from the drain. He could not be very far from the scene of last night’s adventure. Perhaps thirty yards below him was the road, and that old dug-out and drain could not be more than two hundred yards down it.
Suddenly he raised his head and listened. Sounds of movement had begun again on the dark hillside above him. This must be Kleber returning.