Роберт Чамберс - Who Goes There!

"Yes," said Darrel uneasily. He added with a boyish blush: "I'm rather frightfully fond of Valentine Courland, too."

"Then talk to the Courlands. Something serious evidently has happened to their landlord. If he made himself personally obnoxious to the soldiery which destroyed Wiltz–la–Vallée, a detachment might be sent here anyway to destroy Lesse Lodge. You can't tell what the Teutonic military mind is hatching. I was playing chess when they were arranging a shooting party in my honour. Come on downstairs."

"Yes, in a minute. Kervyn, I don't believe you quite got me—about Valentine Courland."

Guild looked around at him curiously.

"Is it the real thing, Harry?"

"Rather. With me , I mean."

"You're in love ?"

"Rather! But Valentine raises the deuce with me. She won't listen, Kervyn. She sits on sentiment. She guys me. I don't think she likes anybody else, but I'm dead sure she doesn't care for me—that way."

Guild studied the pattern on the rug at his feet. After a while he said: "When a man's in love he doesn't seem to know it until it's too late."

"Rot! I knew it right away. Last winter when the Courlands were in New York I knew I was falling in love with her. It hurt, too, I can tell you. Why, Kervyn, after they sailed it hurt me so that I couldn't think of anything. I didn't eat properly. A man like you can't realize how it hurts to love a girl. But it's one incessant, omnipresent, and devilish gnawing—a sensation of emptiness indescribable filled with loud and irregular heart–throbs—a happy agony, a precious pain―"

"Harry!"

"What?" asked that young man, startled.

"Do you realize you are almost shouting?"

"Was I? Well, I'm almost totally unbalanced and I don't know how long I can stand the treatment I'm getting. I've told her mother, and she laughs at me, too. But I honestly think she likes me. What would you do, Kervyn, if you cared for a girl and you couldn't induce her to converse on the subject?"

Guild's features grew flushed and sombre. "I haven't the faintest idea what a man should do," he said. "The dignified thing would be for a man to drop the matter."

"I know. I've dropped it a hundred times a week. But she seems to be glad of it. And I can't endure that. So I re–open the subject, and she re–closes it and sits on the lid. I tell you, Kervyn, it's amounting to a living nightmare with me. I am so filled with tenderness and sentiment that I can't digest it unaided by the milk of human kindness―"

"Do you talk this way to her?" asked Guild, laughing. "If you compare unrequited love to acute indigestion no girl on earth is going to listen to you."

"I have to use some flights of imagination," said Darrel, sulkily. "A girl likes to hear anything when it's all dolled out with figures of speech. What the deuce are you laughing at? All right! Wait until you fall in love yourself. But you won't have time now; you'll enlist in some fool regiment and get your bally head knocked off! I thought I had troubles enough with Valentine, and now this business begins!"

He got up slowly, as though very lame.

"It's very terrible to me," he said, "to know that you feel bound to go into this mix–up. I was afraid of it as soon as I heard that war had been declared. It's been worrying me every minute since. But I suppose it's quite useless to argue with you?"

"Quite," said Guild pleasantly. "What's the matter with your leg?"

"Barked the shin. Listen! Is there any use reasoning with you?"

"No, Harry."

"Well, then," exclaimed Darrel in an irate voice, "I'll tell you frankly that you and your noble ancestors give me a horrible pain! I'm full of all kinds of pain and I'm sick of it!"

Guild threw back his blond head and laughed out–right—a clear, untroubled laugh that rang pleasantly through the ancient hall they were traversing.

As they came out on the terrace where the ladies sat in the sun knitting, Valentine looked around at Guild.

"What a delightfully infectious laugh you have," she said. "Was it a very funny story? I can scarcely believe Mr. Darrel told it."

"But he did," said Guild, seating himself beside her on the edge of the stone terrace and glancing curiously at Karen, who wore a light gown and was looking distractingly pretty.

"Such an unpleasant thing has occurred," said Mrs. Courland in her quiet, gentle voice, turning to Darrel. "Our herdsman has just come in to tell Michaud that early this morning a body of German cavalry rode into the hill pastures and drove off the entire herd of cattle and the flock of sheep belonging to Monsieur Paillard."

There was a moment's silence; Darrel glanced at Guild, saying: "Was there any explanation offered for the requisition?—any indemnity?"

"Nothing, apparently. Schultz, the herdsman, told Michaud that an Uhlan officer asked him if the cattle and sheep did not belong to the Paillard estate at Lesse. That was all. And the shepherd, Jean Pascal, tried to argue with the troopers about his sheep, but a cavalryman menaced him with his lance. The poor fellow is out in the winter fold, weeping like Bo–Peep, and Schultz is using very excited language. All our forest guards and wood–choppers are there. Michaud has gone to Trois Fontaines. They all seem so excited that it has begun to disturb me a little."

"You see," said Valentine to Guild, "our hill pastures are almost on the frontier. We have been afraid they'd take our cattle."

He nodded.

"Do you suppose anything can be done about it?" asked Mrs. Courland. "I feel dreadfully that such a thing should happen at Lesse while we are in occupation."

"May I talk with your head gamekeeper?" asked Guild.

"Yes, indeed, if you will. He ought to return from Trois Fontaines before dark."

"I'll talk to him," said Guild briefly. Then his serious face cleared and he assumed a cheerfulness of manner totally at variance with his own secret convictions.

"Troops have got to eat," he said. "They're likely to do this sort of thing. But the policy of the Germans, when they make requisition for anything, seems to be to pay for it with vouchers of one sort or another. They are not robbers when unmolested, but they are devils when interfered with. Most troops are."

The conversation became general; Darrel, sitting between Karen and Mrs. Courland, became exceedingly entertaining, to judge from Karen's quick laughter and the more subdued amusement of Katharyn Courland.

Darrel was explaining his lameness.

But the trouble with Darrel was that his modesty inclined him to be humorous at his own expense. Few women care for unattractive modesty; few endure it, none adores it. He was too modest to be attractive.

"I was sauntering along," he said, "minding my own business, when I came face to face with a wild boar. He was grey, and he was far bigger than I ever again desire to see. Before I could recover my breath his eyes got red and he began to make castanette music with his tusks, fox–trot time. And do you know what happened—in your forest, Mrs. Courland? I went up a tree, and I barked my shin in doing it. If you call that hospitality, my notions on the subject are all wrong."

"Didn't you have a gun?" asked Karen.

"I did. I admit it without a blush."

"Why didn't you use it?" asked Mrs. Courland.

"Use it? How? A gun doesn't help a man to climb a tree. It is in the way. I shall carry no more guns in your forest. A light extension ladder is all I require. And a book to pass away the time when treed."

They all laughed. "Really," asked Guild curiously, "why didn't you shoot?"

"First of all," said Darrel serenely, "I do not know how to fire off a gun. Do you want any further reasons?"

"You looked so picturesque," said Valentine scornfully, "I never dreamed you were such a dub! And you don't seem to care, either."