At the huge, moss-grown gate-posts of Lesse a forester lifted his grey felt hat and opened the gates; and around the first curve appeared the celebrated and beautiful old lodge of weather-stained stone and slate, the narrow terrace blazing with geraniums and scarlet sage.
Guild noticed a slender, red-haired girl seated on the steps, knitting, with a heap of dark-blue wool in her lap; but when the car drew up, Valentine Courland addressed her as “mother” — to the intense surprise of Karen as well as of himself, for Mrs. Courland seemed scarce older than her own daughter, and quite as youthfully attractive.
She welcomed Karen with a sweet directness of manner which won the girl instantly; and her manner to Guild was no less charming — an older woman’s delightful recognition of a young man’s admiration, and a smiling concession to this young man’s youth and good looks.
When Valentine mentioned Karen’s plight in the matter of wardrobe, her mother laughed gaily and, slipping one arm around Karen’s waist, took her off into the house.
“We shall remedy that immediately,” she said. “Come and see what suits you best.”
“As for you,” said Darrel to Guild, “your luggage is in your room. I suppose you are glad of that.”
“Rather,” said Guild with such intense feeling that Valentine Courland laughed outright.
“Take him to his beloved luggage,” she said to Darrel; “I had no idea he was so vain. You know the room, don’t you? It is next to your own.”
“Harry, why are you limping?” asked Valentine as Darrel rose to go.
“I’m not.”
“You are. Why?”
“Rum. I drink too much of it,” he explained seriously.
So the young men went away together; and presently Guild was flinging from him the same worn clothing which, at one terrible moment, seemed destined to become his shroud: and Darrel sat on the bed and gave him an outline of the life at Lesse Forest and of the two American women who lived there.
“Courland loved the place,” said Darrel, “and for many years until his death he spent the summers here with his wife and daughter.
“That’s why they continue to come. The place is part of their life. But I don’t know what they’ll do now. Monsieur Paillard, their landlord, hasn’t been heard of since the Germans bombarded and burnt Wiltz-la-Vallée. Whether poor Paillard got knocked on the head by a rifle-butt or a 41-centimetre shell, or whether he was lined up against some garden wall with the other poor devils when the Prussian firing-squads sickened and they had to turn the machine-guns on the prisoners, nobody seems to know.
“Wiltz-la-Vallée is nothing but an ill-smelling heap of rubbish. The whole country is in a horrible condition. You know a rotting cabbage or beet or turnip field emits a bad enough smell. Add to that the stench from an entire dead and decomposing community of three thousand people! Oh yes, they dug offal trenches, but they weren’t deep enough. And besides there was enough else lying dead under the blackened bricks and rafters to poison the atmosphere of a whole country. It’s a ghastly thing what they’ve done to Belgium!”
Guild went to his modern bathroom to bathe, but left the door open.
“Go on, Harry,” he said.
“Well, that’s about all,” continued Darrel. “The Germans left death and filth behind them. Not only what the hands of man erected is in ruins, but the very face of the earth itself is mangled out of all recognition. They tore Nature herself to pieces, stamped her features out, obliterated her very body! You ought to see some of the country! I don’t mean where towns or solitary farms were. I mean the land, the landscape! — all full of slimy pits from their shells, cut in every direction by their noisome trenches, miles and miles of roadside trees shot to splinters, woodlands burnt to ashes, forests torn to slivers — one vast, distorted and abominable desolation.”
Guild had reappeared, and was dressing.
“They didn’t ransack the Grand Duchy,” continued Darrel, “although I heard that the Grand Duchess blocked their road with her own automobile and faced the invaders until they pushed her aside with scant ceremony. If she did that she’s as plucky as she is pretty. That’s the story, anyway.”
“Have the Germans bothered you here?” asked Guild, buttoning a fresh collar.
“Not any to speak of. Of course they don’t care anything about the frontier; they’d violate it in a minute. And I’ve been rather worried because a lot of these Luxembourg peasants, particularly the woodsmen and forest dwellers, are Belgians, or are in full sympathy with them. And I’m afraid they’ll do something that will bring the Germans to Lesse Forest.”
“You mean some sort of franc-tireur business?”
“Yes, I mean just that.”
“The Germans shoot franc-tireurs without court-martial.”
“I know it. And there has been sniping across the border, everywhere, even since the destruction of Wiltz-la-Vallée. I expect there’ll be mischief here sooner or later.”
Guild, tall, broad-shouldered, erect, stood by the window looking out between the gently blowing sash-curtains, and fastening his waistcoat.
And, standing so, he said: “Harry, this is no place for Mrs. Courland and her daughter. They ought to go to Luxembourg City, or across the line into Holland. As a matter of fact they really ought to go back to America.”
“I think so too,” nodded Darrell. “I think we may persuade them to come back with us.”
Without looking at his business partner and friend, Guild said: “I am not going back with you.”
“What!”
“I can’t. But you must go — rather soon, too. And you must try to persuade the Courlands to go with you.”
“What are you planning to do?” demanded Darrel with the irritable impatience of a man who already has answered his own question.
“You can guess, I suppose?”
“Yes, dammit! — I can! I’ve been afraid you’d do some such fool thing. And I ask you, Kervyn, as a sane, sensible Yankee business man, is it necessary for you to gallop into this miserable free fight and wallow in it up to your neck? Is it? Is it necessary to propitiate your bally ancestors by pulling a gun on the Kaiser and striking an attitude?”
Guild laughed. “I’m afraid it’s a matter of propitiating my own conscience, Harry. I’m afraid I’ll have to strike an attitude and pull that gun.”
“To the glory of the Gold Book and the Counts of Gueldres! I know! You’re very quiet about such things, but I knew it was inside you all the time. Confound it! I was that worried by your letter to me! I thought you’d already done something and had been caught.”
“I hadn’t been doing anything, but I had been caught.”
“I knew it!”
“Naturally; or I shouldn’t have written you a one-act melodrama instead of a letter.... Did you destroy the letter to my mother?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That was right. I’ll tell you about it some time. And now, before we go down, this is for your own instruction: I am going to try to get into touch with the Belgian army. How to do it I don’t see very clearly, because there are some two million Germans between me and it. But that’s what I shall try to do, Harry. So, during the day or two I remain here, persuade your friends, the Courlands, of the very real danger they run in remaining at Lesse. Because any of these peasants at any moment are likely to sally forth Uhlan sniping. And you know what German reprisals mean.”
“Yes,” said Darrel uneasily. He added with a boyish blush: “I’m rather frightfully fond of Valentine Courland, too.”
“Then talk to the Courlands. Something serious evidently has happened to their landlord. If he made himself personally obnoxious to the soldiery which destroyed Wiltz-la-Vallée, a detachment might be sent here anyway to destroy Lesse Lodge. You can’t tell what the Teutonic military mind is hatching. I was playing chess when they were arranging a shooting party in my honour. Come on downstairs.”
“Yes, in a minute. Kervyn, I don’t believe you quite got me — about Vale
ntine Courland.”
Guild looked around at him curiously.
“Is it the real thing, Harry?”
“Rather. With me, I mean.”
“You’re in love?”
“Rather! But Valentine raises the deuce with me. She won’t listen, Kervyn. She sits on sentiment. She guys me. I don’t think she likes anybody else, but I’m dead sure she doesn’t care for me — that way.”
Guild studied the pattern on the rug at his feet. After a while he said: “When a man’s in love he doesn’t seem to know it until it’s too late.”
“Rot! I knew it right away. Last winter when the Courlands were in New York I knew I was falling in love with her. It hurt, too, I can tell you. Why, Kervyn, after they sailed it hurt me so that I couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t eat properly. A man like you can’t realize how it hurts to love a girl. But it’s one incessant, omnipresent, and devilish gnawing — a sensation of emptiness indescribable filled with loud and irregular heart-throbs — a happy agony, a precious pain — —”
“Harry!”
“What?” asked that young man, startled.
“Do you realize you are almost shouting?”
“Was I? Well, I’m almost totally unbalanced and I don’t know how long I can stand the treatment I’m getting. I’ve told her mother, and she laughs at me, too. But I honestly think she likes me. What would you do, Kervyn, if you cared for a girl and you couldn’t induce her to converse on the subject?”
Guild’s features grew flushed and sombre. “I haven’t the faintest idea what a man should do,” he said. “The dignified thing would be for a man to drop the matter.”
“I know. I’ve dropped it a hundred times a week. But she seems to be glad of it. And I can’t endure that. So I re-open the subject, and she re-closes it and sits on the lid. I tell you, Kervyn, it’s amounting to a living nightmare with me. I am so filled with tenderness and sentiment that I can’t digest it unaided by the milk of human kindness — —”
“Do you talk this way to her?” asked Guild, laughing. “If you compare unrequited love to acute indigestion no girl on earth is going to listen to you.”
“I have to use some flights of imagination,” said Darrel, sulkily. “A girl likes to hear anything when it’s all dolled out with figures of speech. What the deuce are you laughing at? All right! Wait until you fall in love yourself. But you won’t have time now; you’ll enlist in some fool regiment and get your bally head knocked off! I thought I had troubles enough with Valentine, and now this business begins!”
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 like
d 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.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 766