Роберт Чамберс - Who Goes There!

Night came; the white level glare of searchlights flooded the steamer, lingered, shifted, tossed their dazzling arms heavenward as though imploring the Most High, then swept unseen horizons where the outermost waters curve with the curving globe.

Only one light burned in the stateroom, but the port was not covered.

Karen lay on the bed, unstirring save for a slight tremor of her shoulders now and then. Her brown hair, half loosened, had fallen in thick burnished curls on the pillow; one hand covered her eyes, palm outward. Under it the vivid lips, scarcely parted, rested on each other in a troubled curve.

Guild brooded silently on the lounge under the port. Sometimes his sombre gaze rested on her, sometimes on the locked satchel which had rolled to the side of the bed.

Every time the arrowy beam of light from a warship flooded the cabin with swift white splendour his heart seemed to stop, for the menace of the wireless was always a living dread; and the stopping of a neutral ship and the taking from it of suspects had become a practice too common even to excite comment, let alone protest.

Twice they were stopped; twice Ardoise signals twinkled; but no cutter came alongside, and no officer boarded them. It was an eternity of suspense to Guild, and he stood by the open port, listening, the satchel in his hand ready to fling it out into the turmoil of heaving waters.

The steward came, and Guild ordered something served for them both in the stateroom. Karen had not awakened, but her hand had slipped from her eyes and it lay across the edge of the bed.

On the bridal finger glimmered the plain gold band—his credentials to her from her father.

He went over and looked down into the white, childish face. Faultless, serene, wonderful as a flower it seemed to him. Where the black lashes rested the curve of the cheek was faintly tinted with colour. All else was snowy save for the vivid rose of the scarcely parted lips.

Nineteen!—and all those accomplishments which her dim living–room at Westheath had partly revealed—where books in many languages had silently exposed the mind that required them—where pictures, music—all the unstudied and charming disorder of this young girl's intimate habitation had delicately revealed its tenant.

And what her living–room had foreshadowed was only, after all, but a tinted phantom of the girl he had come to know in the flesh—the real mistress of that dim room quickened to life—a warm, living, breathing reality, low–voiced, blue–eyed, winsome and sweet with the vague fragrance of youth incarnate clinging to her, to every gesture, every movement, every turn of her head—to her very skirts it seemed—youth, freshness, purity unblemished.

As he stood there he tried to realize that she was German—this young girl with her low and charming English voice and her accentless English speech.

He had listened in vain for any flaw, any indication of alien birth. Nothing betrayed her as a foreigner, except, possibly, a delightfully quaint formality in accepting any service offered. For when he asked her whether she desired this or that, or if he might do this or that for her, always her answer in the affirmative was, "Yes, please," like a little girl who had been carefully taught to respect age. It amused him; for modern English young women are less punctilious with modern youth.

There came a dull clatter of crockery from the passageway; Guild turned and opened the door. The waiter produced a folding table, spread it, and arranged the dishes.

"That will be all," whispered Guild. "Don't knock again; I'll set the tray outside."

So the waiter went away and Guild closed the door again and turned back to the bed where Karen lay. Her delicate brows were now slightly knitted and the troubled curve of her lips hinted again of a slumber not wholly undisturbed by subconscious apprehension.

"Karen," he said in a low voice.

The girl opened her eyes. They had that starry freshness that one sees in the eyes of waking children. For a moment her confused gaze met his without expression, then a hot flush stained her face and she sat up hurriedly. Down tumbled the thick, burnished locks and her hands flew instinctively to twist them up.

"I didn't realize that I had been asleep. Please, will you turn your back"—her glance fell on the table—"I shall be ready in a moment—Kervyn."

"Had I not better give you the place to yourself?"

"Yes, please."

"I'll do a sentry–go in the corridor," he said. "Open the door when you're quite ready."

So he went out and walked up and down until the stateroom door opened and her low voice summoned him.

"I can't eat," she said.

"Do you feel the sea?"

"No"—she smiled faintly—"but the excitement of the day—the anxiety―"

"We'll have some tea, anyway," he said.

They ate a little after all, and the hot and rather vile tea stimulated her. Presently he set tray and table outside in the corridor and came slowly back to where she had gathered herself in a corner of the sofa.

"The sea is rather rough," he said. "You seem to be a good sailor."

"Yes, I am. My father had a yacht and my mother and I always went when he cruised."

This slightest glimpse of personal history—the first she had vouchsafed—the first slight lifting of the curtain which hung between them, aroused his latent curiosity.

What else lay behind that delicate, opaque veil which covered the nineteen years of her? What had been the childhood, the earlier life of this young girl whom he had found living alone with a maid and a single servant at an obscure heath outside of London?

Gently born, gently bred young girls of aristocratic precedents, don't do that sort of thing. Even if they desire to try it, they are not permitted. Also they don't go on the stage, as a rule.

Neither the sign manual, the sign visible of the theatre, nor yet that occult indefinable something characteristic of the footlights appeared to taint her personality.

Talented as she was undoubtedly, cultured and gently nurtured, the sum total of all her experience, her schooling, her development, and her art had resulted only in a charming harmony, not a personality aggressively accented in any single particular. Any drawing–room in any country might have contained this young girl. Homes which possess drawing–rooms breed the self–possession, the serenity, the soft voice, the winsome candour and directness of such girls as she.

She was curled up in the corner of the sofa where he had placed behind her the two pillows from the bed, and her winning blue eyes rested every few minutes upon this young man whom she had known only a few hours and whom she already, in her heart and in her mind, was calling a friend.

She had never had any among young men—never even among older men had she experienced the quiet security, the untroubled certainty of such a friendship as had begun now—as had suddenly stepped into her life, new, yet strangely familiar—a friendship that seemed instantly fully developed and satisfactory.

There appeared to be no room for doubt about it, no occasion for waiting, no uncertainty in her mind, no inclination and no thought of the lesser conventionalities which must strew elaborately the path of first acquaintance with the old, old–fashioned garlands—those prim, stiff blossoms of discretion, of propriety, of self–conscious concession to formula and tradition.

No; when her eyes first fell on him her mind and heart seemed to recognize what neither had ever before beheld—a friend. And from that moment the girl had accepted the matter as settled, as far as she herself was concerned. And she had lost very little time in acquainting herself with his views upon the subject.

That he had responded to the friendship she had so naïvely offered did not surprise her. She seemed to have expected it—perhaps in the peril of the moments when they were nearing London and doubt and suspicion in her mind concerning the contents of her satchel were becoming an agony to her as they grew more definite—perhaps even then the sudden and deep sense of gratitude for his response had made courage a new necessity and had armoured her against panic—for friendship's sake.