Роберт Чамберс - Who Goes There!

You had made it a part of the contract that, in case you were not at Quellenheim, I was to remain over night under your roof.

I therefore have done so. It was not an agreeable sensation, and your forced hospitality, you will recognize, imposes no obligations upon an unwilling guest.

Now, as I say, the last and least item of my indebtedness to you is finally extinguished, and I am free once more to do what I choose.

I shall be a consistent enemy to your country in whatever capacity the Belgian Government may see fit to employ me. I shall do your country all the harm I can. Not being a public executioner I have given the spies in your employment in London a week's grace to clear out before I place proofs of their identity in the hands of the British Government.

This, I believe, closes, for the present, our personal account.

Miss Girard is well, suffered no particular hardship, and is, I suppose, quite safe at Quellenheim where your capable housekeeper and her son are in charge of the Lodge.

May I add that, personally, I entertain no animosity toward you or toward any German, individually—only a deep and inextinguishable hatred toward all that your Empire stands for, and a desire to aid in the annihilation of this monstrous anachronism of the twentieth century.

When he had signed and sealed this, and directed it, he wrote to his friend Darrel:

DEAR HARRY:

If you are at Lesse Forest still, which I understand adjoins the hills of Quellenheim—and if your friends the Courlands still care to ask me for a day or two, I shall be very glad to come. I am at Quellenheim, Trois Fontaines.

Please destroy the letter I intrusted to you to send to my mother. Everything is all right again. I may even have time to fish with you for a day or two.

The messenger from Trois Fontaines who takes this will wait for an answer.

Please convey my respect and my very lively sense of obligation to the Courlands. And don't let them ask me if it inconveniences them. I can go to Luxembourg just as well and see you there if you can run over.

Did you get my luggage? I am wearing my last clean shirt. But my clothes are the limit.

If I am to stop for a day or two at the Courlands please telegraph to Luxembourg for my luggage as soon as you receive this.

Yours as usual,

GUILD.

P. S.

Do Uhlans ever annoy the Courlands? I imagine that Lesse is too far from the railway and too unimportant from a military standpoint to figure at all in any operations along the edge of the Grand Duchy. And also any of the Ardennes is unfit as a highway between Rhenish Prussia and France. Am I correct?

G.

He had sealed and directed this letter, and was gazing meditatively out of the diamond–leaded windows at the splashing fountain in the court, when a slight sound attracted his attention and he turned, then rose and stepped forward.

Karen gave him her hand, smiling. In the other hand she held the last of her orchids.

"Are you rested?" he asked.

"Yes. Are you?"

"Perfectly, thank you. Really it is beautiful outside the house."

She lifted her lovely eyes and stood gazing out into the sunshine.

"There is no word from General von Reiter?" she asked, absently caressing her cheek with the fragrant blossom in her hand.

"Not yet," he said.

"If none comes, what are you going to do?"

"I am free, anyhow, to leave now."

"Free?"

"Free of my engagement with Baron von Reiter."

"Free of your obligations to— me ?" she asked in a low voice.

He turned to her seriously: "My allegiance to you needs no renewal, Karen, because it has never been broken. You have my friendship if you wish for it. It is yours always as long as you care for it."

"I do…. Are you going to leave—Quellenheim?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"When a messenger brings me an answer to a letter which I shall send this morning."

She stood caressing her lips with his flower and gazing dreamily into the forest.

"So you really are going," she said.

"I cannot help it."

"I thought"—she forced a smile—"that you intended to rob me first."

He did not answer.

"Had you forgotten?" she asked, still with the forced smile.

"No."

"Do you still mean to do it?"

"I told you that I had to have the papers."

"Yes, and I told you that I should make it as difficult as I could for you. And I'm going to. Because I don't want you to go." She laughed, then sighed very frankly: "Of course," she added, "I don't suppose I could keep them very long if you have made up your mind to take them."

"Is that your idea of me?" he asked, laughing.

She nodded, thoughtfully: "You take what you want, sooner or later. There is no hope in opposing you. You are that kind of man. I have learned that."

She touched the orchid to her chin meditatively. "It surprised me," she added. "I have not been accustomed to authority like yours. I am my own mistress, and I supposed I was accountable to myself alone. But—" she lifted her eyes, "it appears that I am accountable to you. And the realization does not seem to anger me very deeply."

He looked away: "I do not try to control you, Karen," he said in a low voice.

"You have done so whether or not you have tried. I don't know what has happened to me. Do you?"

"Nothing," he said, forcing a laugh. "Except you are learning that the greatest pleasure of friendship is a confidence in it which nothing can disturb."

"Confidence in friendship—yes. But confidence in you !—that ended in our stateroom. Without confidence I thought friendship impossible…. And here I am asking you not to go away—because I—shall miss you. Will you tell me what is the matter with a girl who has no confidence in a man and who desires his companionship as I do yours?" Her cheeks flushed, but her eyes were steady, bright, and intelligent: "Am I going to fall in love with you, Kervyn?"

He laughed mirthlessly: "No, not if you can reason with yourself about it," he said. "It merely means that you are the finest, most honest, most fearless woman I ever knew, capable of the most splendid friendship, not afraid to show it. That is all it means, Karen. And I am deeply, humbly grateful…. And very miserable…. Because―"

The entrance of Frau Bergner with the breakfast tray checked him. They both turned toward the long oak table.

Fortunately the culinary school where the housekeeper had acquired her proficiency was not German. She had learned her art in Alsace.

So the coffee was fragrant and the omelette a dream; and there were grapes from the kitchen arbour and ham from a larder never lacking the succulent by–products of the sanglier of the Ardennes.

Frau Bergner took his letters and telegram, promising that Fritzl should find somebody with a bicycle at Trois Fontaines to carry the other note to Lesse Forest.

She hovered over them while they ate. The breakfast was a silent one.

Afterward Karen wrote a number of notes addressed to her modiste in Berlin and to various people who might, in her present emergency, supply her with something resembling a wardrobe.

Guild had taken his pipe out to the fountain, where she could see him through the window, seated on the coping of the pool, smoking and tracing circles in the gravel with a broken twig.

She hurried her notes, called the housekeeper to take them, then, without taking hat or gloves, she went out into the sunshine. The habit, so easily acquired, of being with Guild was becoming a necessity, and neither to herself nor to him had it yet occurred to her to pretend anything different.

There was, in her, an inherent candour, which unqualified, perhaps unsoftened by coquetry, surprises more than it attracts a man.

But its very honesty is its undoing; it fails to hold the complex masculine mind; its attractiveness is not permanent. For the average man requires the subtlety of charm to stir him to sentiment; and charm means uncertainty; and uncertainty, effort.