The next time he opened them the light in the car had become very dim.
Twilight purpled the woods and hills; dusk was arriving swiftly.
It was dark when, at a way station, a soldier opened the door, saluted, and lighted the lamp in the compartment. The train lay there a long while; they were unloading horses, cannon and waggons; teams were being harnessed in the dark, guns limbered, cannoniers mounted, all in perfect order and with a quiet celerity and an absence of noise and confusion that fascinated Guild.
Presently, and within a space of time almost incredible, the artillery moved off into the darkness. He could hear the rhythmical trample of horses, the crunch of wheels, sabres rattling, the subdued clank and clatter of a field battery on the march. But he could see no lights, distinguish no loud voices, no bugle-calls. Now and then a clear whistle note sounded; now and then a horse snorted, excited by the open air.
The car in which they were was now detached and sidetracked; the long train backed slowly past and away into the darkness.
And after a while another locomotive came steaming out of the obscurity ahead; he heard them coupling it to the car in which he sat. The jar did not awaken Karen.
Presently they were in motion again; the tiled roof of an unlighted railway station glided past the window; stars appeared, trees, a high dark hill to the right.
A military guard came through the corridor, lantern in hand, and told Guild that the car was now entirely empty and at his disposal.
So he rose and went forward where he could look out ahead and see the dull glow of the smokestack and the ruddy light of the furnace.
For a long while he stood there watching the moving silhouettes of engineer and fireman. The sombre red light trembled on the rails and swept the wayside trees or painted with fiery streaks the sides of a cut or glittered along the rocky wet walls of tunnels.
When at last he went back to the compartment, Karen was sitting up, twisting her hair into shape.
“Do you feel rested?” he asked cheerfully, seating himself beside her.
“Yes, thank you. Where are we, Kervyn?”
“I don’t know.”
She was still busy with her hair, but her eyes remained on him.
“Can I do anything for you? Do you need anything?” he asked.
“I seem to need almost everything!” she protested, “including a bath and a clergyman. Oh, Kervyn, what a wedding journey! Is there anything about me that resembles a bride? And I’m not even that, yet — just a crumpled, soiled, disreputable child!”
“You are absolutely adorable just as you are!”
“No! I am unspeakable. And I want to be attractive to you. I really can be very nice-looking, only you never saw me so — —”
“Dearest!”
“I haven’t had any clothes since I first met you!” she said excitedly. “You know I can scarcely bear it to have you think of me this way. Will I have time to buy a gown in Antwerp? How long will it take us to marry each other? Because, of course, I shall not let you ride away with your regiment until you are my husband.”
She flushed again, and the tears sprang to her eyes. It was plain that her nerves had given way under the long strain.
“Kervyn! Only yesterday war meant almost nothing to me. And look at me now! — look at the girl you saw in England only a few days ago! — a woman today! — a wife tomorrow, please God — and the fear of this war already overwhelming me.”
She brushed the starting tears from her eyes; they filled again. She said miserably: “We women all inherit sorrow, it seems, the moment our girlhood leaves us. A few days ago I didn’t know what it was to be afraid. Then you came. And with you came friendship. And with friendship came fear — fear for you!... And then, very swiftly, love came; and my girlhood was gone — gone — like yesterday — leaving me alone in the world with you and love and war!”
He drew her face against his shoulder:
“This world war is making us all feel a little lonely,” he said. “The old familiar world is already changing under our bewildered eyes. It is a totally new era which is dawning; a new people is replacing the inhabitants of earth, born to new thoughts, new ideals, new ambitions.
“I think the old tyranny is already beginning to pass from men’s souls and minds; the old folk-ways, the old and out-worn terrors, the tinselled dogmas, the old false standards, the universal dread of that absolute intellectual freedom which alone can make a truly new heaven and a new earth.
“All this is already beginning to pass away in the awful intellectual revelation which this world war is making hour by hour.
“What wonder that we feel the approaching change, the apprehension of that mortal loneliness which must leave us stripped of all that was familiar while the old order passes — vanishes like mist at dawn.”
He bent and touched her hand with his lips:
“But there will be a dawn, Karen. Never doubt it, sweet!”
“Shall our children see it — if God is kind to us?” she whispered.
“Yes. If God is very kind, I think that we shall see it, too.”
The girl nodded, pressing her cheek against his, her eyes clear and sweetly grave.
He said: “No man ever born, since Christ, has dared to be himself. No woman, either.... I think our children will begin to dare.”
She mused, wide-eyed, wondering.
“And he who takes up a sword,” he said in a low voice, “shall find himself alone like a mad dog in a city street, with every living soul bent upon his extermination.
“Thus will perish emperors and kings. Our children’s children shall have heard of them, marvelling that we had lived to see them pass away into the mist of fable.”
After a while she lifted her face and looked at him out of wistful eyes:
“Meanwhile you fight for them,” she said.
“I am of today — a part of the mock mystery and the tarnished tinsel. That grey old man of Austria quarrels with his neighbour of Servia, and calls out four million men to do his murders for him. And an Emperor in white and steel buckles on his winged helmet summons six million more in the name of God.
“That is a tragedy called ‘Today.’ But it is the last act, Karen. Already while we hold the stage the scene shifters are preparing the drama called ‘Tomorrow.’
“Already the last cues are being given; already the company that held the stage is moving slowly toward the eternal wings. The stage is to be swept clean; everything must go, toy swords and cannon, crowns and ermine, the old and battered property god who required a sea of blood and tears to propitiate him; the old and false idol once worshiped as Honour, and set upon a pedestal of dead bones. All these must go, Karen — are already going.... But — I am in the cast of ‘Today’; I may only watch them pass, and play my part until the curtain falls.”
They remained silent for a long time. The train had been running very slowly. Presently it stopped.
Guild rose and went to the door of the compartment, where a lantern glimmered, held high. Soldiers opened the door; an officer of Guard Cuirassiers saluted.
“We control the line no farther,” he said. “Telegraphic orders direct me to send you forward with a flag.”
“May I ask where we are?” said Guild.
“Not far from Antwerp. Will you aid Madam to descend? Time presses. We have a motor car at your disposal.”
He turned, aided Karen to the wooden platform, which was thronged with heavy cavalrymen, then lifted out their luggage, which a soldier in fatigue cap took.
“There was also a box,” said Guild to the officer of Cuirassiers.
“It is already in the tonneau.” He drew a telegram from his pocket and handed it to Guild, and the young man read it under the flickering lantern light:
Captain the Comte d’Yvoir:
I am told that I shall recover. It has been, so far, between us, only the sword; but I trust, one day, it shall be the hand. Luck was against me. Not your fault.
I send to you
and to my daughter my respect and my good will. Until a more auspicious day, then, and without rancour.
Your friend the enemy,
Von Reiter, Maj.-Gen’l.
Karen, reading over his shoulder, pressed his arm convulsively. Tears filled her eyes, but she was smiling.
“May we send a wire?” asked Guild of the officer.
An orderly came with pencil and telegraph blank. Guild wrote:
We are happy to learn that you are to recover. Gratitude, respect, salute from me; from her, gratitude and love. It will always be the hand. May the auspicious day come quickly.
Gueldres, Capt. Reserve.
The orderly took the blank; Guild returned the salute of the Cuirassier and followed the soldier who was carrying their luggage.
An automobile stood there, garnished with two white lanterns and a pair of white flags.
A moment later they were speeding through the darkness out across a vast dim plain.
An officer sat in the front seat beside a military chauffeur; behind them, on a rumble, was seated a cavalryman.
In a few minutes the first challenge came; they stopped; helmeted figures clustered around them, a few words were whispered, then on they rolled, slowly, until there came another challenge, another delay; and others followed in succession as the tall phantoms of Uhlans loomed up around them in the night.
Two of these lancers wheeled and accompanied the automobile at a canter. One of the riders was a trumpeter; and very soon the car halted and the Uhlan set his trumpet to his lips and sounded it.
Almost immediately a distant bugle answered. The cavalryman on the rumble stood up, hung one of the lanterns to a white flag, and waved it slowly to and fro. Then the mounted Uhlan tied the flag to his lance-tip, hung the lantern to it, and raised it high in the air. Already the chauffeur had piled their luggage by the roadside; the officer got out, came around, and opened the door. As Karen descended he gave her his arm, then saluted and sprang to his place. The car backed in a half circle, turned, backed again, swung clear around, and went humming away into the darkness.
From the shadowy obscurity ahead came the trample of horses.
“Halt! Who goes there?” cried the mounted lancer.
“Parlementaire with a flag!”
The Uhlan trumpeter sounded the parley again, then, reversing his trumpet, reined in and sat like a statue, as half a dozen cloaked riders walked their horses up under the rays of the lantern which dangled from the Uhlan’s lifted lance.
A cavalryman wearing a jaunty Belgian forage cap leaned from his saddle and looked earnestly at Guild.
“Who is this, if you please?” he asked curiously.
“Reserve cavalry officer and his wife,” said the Uhlan crisply. “Orders are to deliver them to you.”
The Belgian lieutenant had already recognized the uniform of the Guides; so had the other cavalrymen; and now they were hastily dismounting and leading their horses forward.
“Karen,” said Guild unsteadily, “it’s my own regiment!” And he stepped forward and took the lieutenant’s hands in both of his. His features were working; he could not speak, but the troopers seemed to understand.
They gave Karen a horse; Guild lifted her to the saddle, shortened the stirrup, and set her sideways.
They offered him another horse, but he shook his head, flung one arm over Karen’s saddle and walked on slowly beside her stirrup.
Behind them the clatter of retreating hoofs marked the return of the Uhlans. From somewhere in the darkness a farm cart rumbled up and cavalrymen lifted in their luggage.
Now, under the clustered planets the cart and the troopers moved off over a wide, smooth road across the plain.
And last of all came Karen with Guild on foot beside her.
“And last of all came Karen with Guild on foot beside her”
Her horse stepped slowly, cautiously; her slim hand lay on her lover’s shoulder, his arm was around her, and his cheek rested against her knees.
All the world was before them now, with all that it can ever hold for the sons of men — the eternal trinity, inexorable, unchangeable — Death, and Life, and Love.
CHAPTER XXVI
AMICUS DEI
I
Through the April meadows ambling
Where the new born lambs are gamb’ling
Cometh May and vanisheth; —
Cometh lovely June a-rambling; —
July follows out of breath
Scattering the playful swallows;
On her heels a Shepherd follows,
All dolled up like Old Man Death.
II
While he capers, pipes, and prances,
Meadows wither where he dances;
Suddenly the sunshine ends!
Shrinking from his grinning glances,
Every blossom wilts and bends.
Spectral forests rise and tower,
Bursting into crimson flower,
And an iron rain descends.
III
Shepherd, Shepherd, lithely whirling,
To your screaming pipes a-skirling,
Tell me why you blithely dance?
But the shrilling tempest, hurling
Shrivelled blossoms of Romance,
Answered: “Help! For Christ is dying!”
And I heard the pipes replying:
“Let the Friend of God advance!”
IV
Prince of the Vanguard, armed from head to heel,
And reassuring God amid your bayonets
Where the Imperial standard frets
And the sun sets
Across five million marching acolytes in steel,
Red looms a ruined world against the West,
Red lie its dead beneath your sombre crest,
And redly drips your sword
And the lances of your horde
Where all things died, the loveliest and best.
In this dead land there stirs no pulse, no breath,
For, where you ride, on your right hand rides Death.
V
God’s ally, self-ordained to wield His rod,
Trampling His will into the heretics,
Leveling their shrines to heaps of bricks,
How the red stain sticks
To the ten million pair of boots that plod!
Quickly on Him your Iron Cross bestow
That He may wash you whiter than the snow.
VI
Prince of the Vanguard, heed no bleeding clod
Left on the reeking sod among your myrmidons
Where the anathema of your Huns
Hurled from iron guns
Dashes a million frightened souls to God!
Bright shines the promise of the Prince of Peace:
“Sheer you My sheep; garner their fleece,” —
Or was it “feed” He said?
Too late! His sheep are dead.
All things must die, and even Death shall cease.
Then the Almighty on His throne may nod
Unvexed by martyrs importuning God.
THE END
ATHALIE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
TO
M
Y FRIEND
MESSMORE KENDALL
CHAPTER I
WHEN Mrs. Greensleeve first laid eyes on her baby she knew it was different from the other children.
“What is the matter with it?” she asked.
The preoccupied physician replied that there was nothing the matter. In point of fact he had been admiring the newly born little girl when her mother asked the question.
“She’s about as perfect as they make ‘em,” he concluded, placing the baby beside her mother.
The mother said nothing. From moment to moment she turned her head on the pillow and gazed down at her new daughter with a curious, questioning expression. She had never gazed at any of her other children so uneasily. Even after she fell asleep the slightly puzzled expression remained as a faint crease between her brows.
Her husband, who had been wandering about from the bar to the office, from the office to the veranda, and occasionally entirely around the exterior of the road-house, came in on tiptoe and looked rather vacantly at them both.
Then he went out again as though he was not sure where he might be going. He was a little man and mild, and he did not look as though he had been created for anything in particular, not even for the purpose of procreation.
It was one of those early April days when birds make a great fuss over their vocal accomplishments, and the brown earth grows green over night — when the hot spring sun draws vapours from the soil, and the characteristic Long Island odour of manure is far too prevalent to please anybody but a native.
Peter Greensleeve, wandering at hazard around the corner of the tavern, came upon his business partner, Archer B. Ledlie leisurely digging for bait in the barn-yard. The latter was in his shirt-sleeves — always a good sign for continued fair weather.
“Boy?” inquired Ledlie, resting one soil-incrusted boot on his spade.
“Another girl,” admitted Greensleeve.
“Gawsh!” After a moment’s rumination he picked up a squirming angle-worm from the edge of the shallow excavation and dropped it into the empty tomato can.
“Going fishing?” inquired Greensleeve without interest.
“I dunno. Mebbe. Your boy Jack seen a trout into Spring Pond.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 773