Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  He laid her on the moss, well screened by the granite barrier, and beyond range of the brook’s rainbow spray. She was already asleep again.

  He took off both her shoes, unwound the spiral puttees and gave her bruised little feet a chance to breathe.

  He made camp, tested the wind and found it safe to build a fire, set water to simmer, and unpacked the tinned rations. Then he made the two beds side by side, laying down blankets and smoothing away the twigs underneath.

  The surviving carrier pigeon was hungry. He fed it, lifted it still banded from its place, cleaned the cage and set it to dry in a patch of sunshine.

  The four automatic pistols he loaded and laid on a shelf in the granite barricade; set ammunition and flashlight beside them.

  Then he went to his pack and got his papers and material, and unrolled the map upon which he had been at work since he and Evelyn Erith had entered the enemy’s zone of operations.

  From time to time as he worked, drawing or making notes, he glanced at the sleeping girl beside him.

  Never but once had the word “love” been mentioned between these two.

  For a long while, now — almost from the very beginning — he had known that he was in love with this girl; but, after that one day in the garden, he also knew that there was scarcely the remotest chance that he should live to tell her so again, or that she could survive to hear him.

  For when they had entered the enemy’s zone below Mount Terrible they both realised that there was almost no chance of their returning.

  He had lighted his pipe; and now he sat working away at his drawings, making a map of his route as best he could without instruments, and noting with rapid pencil all matters of interest for those upon whose orders he and this girl beside him had penetrated the forbidden forest of Les Errues. This for the slim chance of getting back alive. But he had long believed that, if his pigeons failed him at the crisis, no report would ever be delivered to those who sent him here, either concerning his discoveries or his fate and the fate of the girl who lay asleep beside him.

  An hour later she awoke. He was still bent over his map, and she presently extended one arm and let her hand rest on his knee.

  “Do you feel better, Yellow-hair?”

  “Yes. Thank you for removing my shoes.”

  “I suppose you are hungry,” he remarked.

  “Yes. Are you?”

  He smiled: “As usual. I wish to heaven I could run across a roebuck.” They both craved something to satisfy the hunger made keen by the Alpine air, and which no concentrated rations could satisfy. McKay seldom ventured to kill any game — merely an auerhahn, a hare or two, a red squirrel — and sometimes he had caught trout in the mountain brooks with his bare hands — the method called “tickling” and only too familiar to Old-World poachers.

  “Roebuck,” she repeated trying not to speak wistfully.

  He nodded: “One crossed the stream below. I saw the tracks in the moss, which was still stirring where the foot had pressed.”

  “Dare you risk a shot in Les Errues, Kay?”

  “I don’t think I’d hesitate.”

  After a silence: “Why don’t you rest? You must be dead tired,” she said. And he felt a slight pressure of her fingers drawing him.

  So he laid aside his work, dropped upon his blanket, and turned on his left side, looking at her.

  “You have not yet seen any sign of the place from which you once looked out across the frontier and saw thousands and thousands of people as busy as a swarm of ants — have you, Kay?”

  “I remember this stream and these woods. I can’t seem to recollect how far or in which direction I turned after passing this granite gorge.”

  “Did you go far?”

  “I can’t recollect,” he said. “I’d give my right arm if I could.”

  His worn and anxious visage touched her.

  “Don’t fret, Kay, dear,” she said soothingly. “We’ll find it. We’ll find out what the Hun is doing. We’ll discover what this Great Secret really is. And our pigeons shall tell it to the world.”

  And, as always, she smiled cheerfully, confidently. He had never heard her whine, had never seen her falter save from sheer physical weariness.

  “We’ll win through, Yellow-hair,” he said, looking steadily into her clear brown-gold eyes.

  “Of course. You are so wonderful, Kay.”

  “That is the most wonderful thing in the world, Evelyn — to hear you tell me such a thing!”

  “Don’t you know I think so?”

  “I can’t believe it — after what you know of me—”

  “Kay!”

  “I’m sorry — but a scar is a scar—”

  “There is no scar! Do you hear me! No scar, no stain! Don’t you suppose a woman can judge? And I have my own opinion of you, Kay — and it is a perfectly good opinion and suits me.”

  She smiled, closed her eyes as though closing the discussion, opened them and smiled again at him.

  And now, as always, he wondered how this fair young girl could find courage to smile in the very presence of the most dreadful death any living woman could suffer — death from the Hun.

  He lay looking at her and she at him, for a while.

  In the silence, a dry stick snapped and McKay was on his feet as though it had been the crack of a pistol.

  Presently he stooped, and she lifted her pretty head and rested one ear close to his lips:

  “It’s that roebuck, I think, down stream.” Then something happened; her ear touched his mouth — or his lips, forming some word, came into contact with her — so that it was as though he had kissed her and she had responded.

  Both recoiled; her face was bright with mounting colour and he seemed scared. Yet both knew it was not a caress; but she feared he thought she had invited one, and he feared she believed he had offered one.

  He went about his affair with the theoretical roebuck in silence, picking up one of his pistols, loosening his knife in its sheath; then, without the usual smile or gesture for her, he started off noiselessly over the moss.

  And the girl, supporting herself on one arm, her fingers buried in the moss, looked after him while her flushed face cooled.

  McKay moved down stream with pistol lifted, scanning the hard-wood ridges on either hand. For even the reddest of roe deer, in the woods, seem to be amazingly invisible unless they move.

  The stream dashed through shadow and sun-spot, splashing a sparkling way straight into the wilderness of Les Errues; and along its fern-fringed banks strode McKay with swift, light steps. His eyes, now sharpened by the fight for life — which life had begun to be revealed to him in all its protean aspects, searched the dappled, demi-light ahead, fiercely seeking to pierce any disguise that protective colouration might afford his quarry.

  Silver, russet, green and gold, and with the myriad fulvous nuances that the forest undertones lend to its ensembles, these were the patterned tints that met his eye on every side in the subdued gradations of woodland light.

  But nothing out of key, nothing either in tone, colour, or shape, betrayed the discreet and searched for discord in the vague and lovely harmony; — no spiked head tossed in sudden fright; no chestnut flank turned too redly in the dim ensemble, no delicate feet in motion disturbed the solemn immobility of tree-trunk and rock. Only the fern fronds quivered where spray rained across them; and the only sounds that stirred were the crystalline clash of icy rapids and the high whisper of the leaves in Les Errues.

  And, as he stood motionless, every sense and instinct on edge, his eyes encountered something out of key with this lovely, sombre masterpiece of God. Instantly a still shock responded to the mechanical signal sent to his eyes; the engine of the brain was racing; he stood as immobile as a tree.

  Yes, there on the left something was amiss, — something indistinct in the dusk of heavy foliage — something, the shape of which was not in harmony with the suave design about him woven of its Creator. After a long while he walked slowly toward i
t.

  There was much more of it than he had seen. Its consequences, too, were visible above him where broken branches hung still tufted with bronze leaves which no new buds would ever push from their dead clasp of the sapless stems. And all around him yearling seedlings had pushed up through the charred wreckage. Even where fire had tried to obtain a foothold, and had been withstood by barriers of green and living sap, in burnt spaces where bits of twisted metal lay, tender shoots had pushed out in that eternal promise of resurrection which becomes a fable only upon a printed page.

  McKay’s business was with the dead. The weather-faded husk lay there amid dry leaves promising some day to harmonise with the scheme of things.

  Mice had cleaned the bony cage under the uniform of a British aviator. Mice gnaw the shed antlers of deer. And other bones.

  The pockets were full of papers. McKay read some of them. Afterward he took from the bones of the hand two rings, a wrist-watch, a whistle which still hung by a short chain and a round object attached to a metal ring like a sleigh-bell.

  There was a hollow just beyond, made once in time of flood by some ancient mountain torrent long dry, and no longer to be feared.

  The human wreckage barely held together, but it was light; and McKay covered it with a foot of deep green moss, and made a cairn above it out of glacial stones from the watercourse. And on the huge beech that tented it he cut a cross with his trench-knife, making the incision deep, so that it glimmered like ivory against the silvery bark of the great tree. Under this sacred symbol he carved:

  “SIR W. BLINT, BART.”

  Below this he cut a deep, white oblong in the bark, and with a coal from the burned airplane he wrote:

  “THIS IS THE BEGINNING, NOT THE END. THIS ENGLISHMAN STILL CARRIES ON!”

  He stood at salute for a full minute. Then turned, dropped to his knees, and began another thorough search among the debris and dead leaves.

  “Hello, Yellow-hair!”

  She had been watching his approach from where she was seated balanced on the stream’s edge, with both legs in the water to the knees.

  He came up and dropped down beside her on the moss.

  “A dead airman in Les Errues,” he said quietly, “a Britisher. I put away what remained of him. The Huns may dig him up: some animals do such things.”

  “Where did you find him, Kay?” she asked quietly.

  “A quarter of a mile down-stream. He lay on the west slope. He had fallen clear, but there was not much left of his machine.”

  “How long has he lain there in this forest?”

  “A year — to judge. Also the last entry in his diary bears this out. They got him through the head, and his belt gave way or was not fastened. — Anyway he came down stone dead and quite clear of his machine. His name was Blint — Sir W. Blint, Bart…. Lie back on the moss and let your bruised feet hang in the pool…. Here — this way — rest that yellow head of yours against my knees. … Are you snug?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold out your hands. These were his trinkets.”

  The girl cupped her hands to receive the rings, watch, the gold whistle in its little gem-set chains, and the sleigh-bell on its bracelet.

  She examined them one by one in silence while McKay ran through the pages of the notebook — discoloured pages all warped and stained in their leather binding but written in pencil with print-like distinction.

  “Sir W. Blint,” murmured McKay, still busy with the notebook. “Can’t find what W. stood for.”

  “That’s all there is — just his name and military rank as an aviator:

  I left the disk where it hung.”

  The girl placed the trinkets on the moss beside her and looked up into McKay’s face.

  Both knew they were thinking of the same thing. They wore no disks.

  Would anybody do for them what McKay had done for the late Sir W.

  Blint?

  McKay bent a little closer over her and looked down into her face. That any living creature should touch this woman in death seemed to him almost more terrible than her dying. It was terror of that which sometimes haunted him; no other form of fear.

  What she read in his eyes is not clear — was not quite clear to her, perhaps. She said under her breath:

  “You must not fear for me, Kay…. Nothing can really touch me now.”

  He did not understand what she meant by this immunity — gathering some vague idea that she had spoken in the spiritual sense. And he was only partly right. For when a girl is beginning to give her soul to a man, the process is not wholly spiritual.

  As he looked down at her in silence he saw her gaze shift and her eyes fix themselves on something above the tree-tops overhead.

  “There’s that eagle again,” she said, “wheeling up there in the blue.”

  He looked up; then he turned his sun-dazzled eyes on the pages of the little notebook which he held open in both hands.

  “It’s amusing reading,” he said. “The late Sir W. Blint seems to have been something of a naturalist. Wherever he was stationed the lives of the birds, animals, insects and plants interested him. … Everywhere one comes across his pencilled queries and comments concerning such things; here he discovers a moth unfamiliar to him, there a bird he does not recognise. He was a quaint chap—”

  McKay’s voice ceased but his eyes still followed the pencilled lines of the late Sir W. Blint. And Evelyn Erith, resting her yellow head against his knees, looked up at him.

  “For example,” resumed McKay, and read aloud from the diary:

  “Five days’ leave. Blighty. All top hole at home. Walked with

  Constance in the park.

  Pair of thrushes in the spinney. Rookery full. Usual butterflies in unusual numbers. Toward twilight several sphinx moths visited the privet. No net at hand so did not identify any. Pheasants in bad shape. Nobody to keep them down. Must arrange drives while I’m away.

  Late at night a barn owl in the chapel belfrey. Saw him and heard him. Constance nervous; omens and that sort, I fancy; but no funk. Rotten deal for her.”

  “Who was Constance?” asked Miss Erith.

  “Evidently his wife…. I wish we could get those trinkets to her.” His glance shifted back to the pencilled page and presently he read on, aloud:

  France again. Headquarters. Same rumour that Fritz has something up his sleeve. Conference. Letter from Constance. Wrote her also.

  10th inst.:

  Conference. Interesting theory even if slightly incredible. Wrote

  Constance.

  12th inst.:

  Another conference. Sir D. Haig. Back to hangar. A nightingale singing, clear and untroubled above the unceasing thunder of the cannonade. Very pretty moth, incognito, came and sat on my sleeve. One of the Noctuidae, I fancy, but don’t know generic or specific names. About eleven o’clock Sir D. Haig. Unexpected honour. Sir D. serene and cheerful. Showed him about. He was much amused at my eagle. Explained how I had found him as an eaglet some twenty years ago in America and how he sticks to me like a tame jackdaw.

  Told Sir D. that I had been taking him in my air flights everywhere and that he adored it, sitting quite solemnly out of harm’s way and, if taking to the air for a bit of exercise, always keeping my plane in view and following it to earth.

  Showed Sir D. H. all Manitou’s tricks. The old chap did me proud.

  This was the programme:

  I.— ‘Will you cheer for king and country, Manitou?’

  Manitou (yelping)— ‘Houp — gloup — houp!’

  I.— ‘Suppose you were a Hun eagle, Manitou — just a vulgar Boche buzzard?’

  Manitou (hanging his head)— ‘Houp — gloup — houp!’

  I.-’But you’re not! You’re a Yankee eagle! Now give three cheers for

  Uncle Sam!’

  Manitou (head erect)— ‘Houp — gloup — houp!’

  Sir D. convulsed. Ordered a trench-rat for Manitou as usual. While he was discussing it I told Sir D. H. how I could always se
nd Manitou home merely by attaching to his ankle a big whistling-bell of silver.

  Explained that Manitou hated it and that I had taught him to fly home when I attached it by arranging that nobody except my wife should ever relieve him of the bell.

  It took about two years to teach him where to go for relief.

  Sir D, much amused — reluctant to leave. Wrote to Connie later. Bed.

  13th inst.:

  Summoned by Sir D. H. Conference. Most interesting. Packed up. Of at 5 P. M., taking my eagle, Manitou. Wrote Constance.

  14th inst.:

  Paris. Yankees everywhere. Very ft. Have noticed no brag so far.

  Wrote Constance.

  20th inst.:

  Paris. Yanks, Yanks, Yanks. And ‘thanks’ rimes. I said so to one of ‘em. ‘No,’ said he, ‘Tanks’ is the proper rime — British Tanks!’ Neat and modest. Wrote Connie.

  21st inst.:

  Manitou and I are off. Most interesting quest I ever engaged in.

  Wrote to my wife.

  Delle. Manitou and I both very fit. Machine in waiting. Took the air for a look about. Manitou left me a mile up. Evidently likes the Alps. Soared over Mount Terrible whither I dared not venture — yet! Saw no Huns. Back by sundown. Manitou dropped in to dinner — like a thunderbolt from the zenith. Astonishment of Blue Devils on guard. Much curiosity. Manitou a hero. All see in him an omen of American victory. Wrote Connie.

  30th inst.:

  Shall try ‘it’ very soon now.

  If it’s true — God help the Swiss! If not — profound apologies I suppose. Anyway its got to be cleared up. Manitou enamoured of mountains. Poor devil, it’s in his blood I suppose. Takes the air, now, quite independent of me, but I fancy he gets uneasy if I delay, for he comes and circles over the hangar until my machine takes the air. And if it doesn’t he comes down to find out why, mad and yelping at me like an irritated goblin.

  I saw an Alpine butterfly to-day — one of those Parnassians all white with wings veined a greenish black. Couldn’t catch him. Wrote to Connie. Bed.