Роберт Чамберс - Who Goes There!

No effortless conquest means more to a man than friendship. And friendship is nothing new to a man.

But it was new to Karen; she had opened her mind to it; she was opening her heart to it, curious concerning it, interested as she had never before been, sincere about it—sincere with herself.

Never before had the girl cared for a man more than she had cared about any woman. The women she had known had not been inferior in intelligence to the men she knew. And a normal and wholesome mind and heart harbour little sentiment when the mind is busy and the body sound.

But since she had known this man she knew also that he had appealed to something more than her intelligence.

Vaguely realizing this in the crisis threatened by his violence, she had warned him that he was violating something more than friendship.

Then the episode had passed and become only an unquiet memory; but the desire for his companionship had not passed; it increased, strengthening itself with every hour in his company, withstanding self–analysis, self–reproach, defying resentment, mocking her efforts to stimulate every tradition of pride—even pride itself.

Deeply conscious of the power his personality exercised over her, perplexed, even bewildered at herself, she had not only endured the intimacy of contact with him, but in her heart she accepted it, cared for it, was conscious of relaxation and contentment except for the constant array of traditional indictments which her conscience was busily and automatically finding against her.

She could not comprehend why what he had done had not annihilated her interest in him; why she, even with effort, could find in her mind no abiding anger, no scorn, no contempt for him or for what he had done.

And because she was intelligent and healthy, in her perplexity she had tried to reason—had found nothing to account for her state of mind unless love could account for it—and knowing nothing of love, had admitted the possibility to herself and even to him. Intelligence, candour, ignorance of deeper emotion—coupled with the normal mental and physical innocence of a young girl—this was the character she had been born with and which had naturally and logically developed through nineteen years of mental and bodily cultivation. The girl was most fatally equipped for an awakening.

He stood up when she appeared, knocked out his pipe and advanced to meet her. He had been doing a lot of thinking. And he had concluded to talk very frankly to her about her friendship with him—frankly, kindly, discouraging gaily any mistaken notion she might harbour that there could be any room, any reason, any fitness for a deeper sentiment in this friendship—anything more significant than the delightful and frank affection now existing between them.

"Shall we walk in the forest, Karen?" he said.

"Yes, please."

So they turned into a sentier which curved away through a fern–set rabbit warren, over a wooden footbridge, and then led them on through alternate flecks of sunshine and shadow through a noble forest of beech and oak.

The green and brown mast lay thick under–foot, premature harvest of windfalls—perhaps the prodigality of those reckless sylvan spendthrifts, the squirrels and jays.

Here and there a cock–pheasant ran through a spinny at their approach; rabbits scuttled into wastes of bracken as yet uncurled and unblemished by a frost; distant crashes and a dull galloping signalled the unseen flight of deer. Now and then the dark disturbance of the forest floor betrayed where the horny, furry snouts of boar had left furrows of fresh black earth amid the acorns.

They came upon the stream again—or perhaps a different little brook, splashing and curling amid its ferns and green, drenched mosses. Stepping stones crossed it; Karen passed lightly, surely, on little flying feet, and stood laughing on the other side as he paused to poke about in the pool in hopes of starting a trout into arrowy flight.

When he crossed she had seated herself under a fir, the branches of which swept the ground around her; and so utterly had she vanished that she was obliged to call him before he could discover her whereabouts.

"Under this green tent," she said, "if I had a bed, and some books, and clothes, and food, and my maid and—a piano, I could live most happily all summer." She laughed, looked at him—"if I had all these and— you ," she added.

"Why drag me into such a perfect paradise?"

"I shouldn't drag you," she said gravely. "I should merely tell you where I lived."

"I didn't mean it that way."

"You might have, with reason. I have demanded a great deal of your time."

"I have demanded all of yours!" he retorted, lightly.

"Not more than I was content to give…. It seems all a dream to me—which began when you rang the bell at Hyacinth Villa and roused me from my sleep. And," she added with a gay flash of malice, "you have kept me awake ever since."

"And you, me!"

"Not a bit! You slept in the railway car."

"So did you."

"In your arms, practically…." She looked up at him curiously: "What did you think of me, Kervyn?"

"I thought you were an exceedingly tired girl."

"I was. Is that all you thought about it?"

"You know," he said, laughing, "when a man is asleep he doesn't do much thinking."

"What did you think afterward?"

"About what?"

"About my sleeping against your shoulder?"

"Nothing," he said carelessly.

"Were you quite—indifferent?"

He didn't know how to answer.

"I was not," she said. "I was contented, and I thought continually about our friendship—except when what I was doing made me uneasy about—what I was doing…. Isn't it curious that a girl could do a thing like that and feel comfortable except when she remembered that a girl doesn't usually do a thing like that?"

He began to laugh, and she laughed, too.

She said: "Always my inclination has been, from a child, to explain things to myself. But I can't explain you, yet. You are very different, you know."

"Not a bit―"

"Yes, please. I've found that out…. Tell me, do you really mean to go today?"

"Yes, Karen, I do."

"Couldn't you stay?"

"I really couldn't."

"Why, please?"

"I must be about my business."

"Enlistment?"

"Yes."

"In the Guides," she said, as though to herself.

He nodded.

"The Guides," she repeated, looking rather vacantly at a sun spot that waxed and waned on the dry carpet of fir–needles at her feet. "I have seen them. They are odd, with their furry headgear and their green jackets and boots and cherry–red breeches…. I have danced with officers of the Guides in Brussels…. I never thought that my first man friend would be an officer in the Guides."

"I never thought my best friend among women would be the first woman I ever robbed," he said rather grimly.

"Oh, but you haven't done it yet! And I don't see how you propose to do it."

He looked up, forcing a smile:

"Don't you?"

"Not if you are going away. How can you? The only way I can see is for you to stay at Quellenheim in hopes that I might forget to lock my door some night. You know," she said, almost wistfully, "I might forget—if you remained long enough."

He shook his head.

"Then you have given it up?"

"No."

"But I don't see!"

She was so pretty in her perplexity, so utterly without art in her frankness and curiosity that the impulse to mystify and torment her possessed him.

"Will you bet that I shall not have those papers in my possession within ten minutes?" he asked.

"How can you?"

"I can. And I shall."

She gazed at him incredulously, then suddenly her cheeks lost their colour and she stood up under the fir–tree.