A BIT FROM THE MOVIES
Without any regard to melodrama, when Henriette looked out of the
window after von Eichborn had rung the bell and saw him on the steps
she was frightened. The look in his eyes as he left her had been
burning in her recollection--the kind of look a woman never forgets.
His smile as he bowed to her now was characteristic of his good opinion
of himself.
"Having an idle moment I came to call," he said.
"Oh, thank you!" she answered wildly.
He waited for her to come to the door, but she stood still, pressing
her fingers to her temples in blank quandary. Possibly a sense of
self-accusation heightened her distraction. She had been polite to
him; she had rather opened the way to this visit. How was she to
escape? She looked around at her wits' end and saw that Helen was in
the room.
"I can't see him, I can't!" she exclaimed. "You must get me out of it!
I never want to speak to him again!"
She turned to the door opening onto the stairway and ran through it,
leaving Helen looking after her in doubt as to what it all meant.
Von Eichborn, having formed the habit in a month of war of walking into
chateaux without formality, waiting no longer for Henriette to come
into the hall, entered the sitting-room. Helen's back was turned to
him and he easily mistook her figure for Henriette's.
"I accepted the invitation from the window, which I found very
charming," he said, "though from your present attitude I might be led
to think that I am not welcome."
Rather slowly Helen turned, possibly in a certain cynical anticipation
of his visible surprise when he saw her face instead of the one which
had led him, an aide, to absent himself from the General's side. Even
that martial self-possession of a darling of Berlin drawing-rooms was
temporarily thrown off its balance.
"Oh!" gasped von Eichborn.
"Yes," said Helen, thoughtfully looking him over with a lift of her
chin, "I'm Henriette's sister." Inwardly she was "fighting mad," but
her eyes were coldly staring.
"Your voices are alike, but you do not look alike," von Eichborn
managed to say. He screwed his eyeglass into his eye.
"Really! You have quick perceptions!" she remarked.
Von Eichborn dropped his eyeglass and flicked his gloves, which he was
carrying in his hand, against the table.
"And the sister? I came to see her."
"She does not want to see you, and I'm sure I don't. You would be a
dreadful bore." All quite judiciously as she looked him over; the
Helen of impulses, when she ought to have been diplomatic for Phil's
sake, according to melodramatic ethics.
"Bore!" That darling of Berlin salons a bore! "Look here, you
shrewish, homely little brute, I've nothing to do with you!" he
blurted. "Tell your sister I'm here--if she is your sister. I think
you're only a servant."
Still Helen was looking him over with cool, superior eyes.
"Very bad-mannered, too!" she remarked.
"But perceptions correct. Shrewish and homely, yes!"
Nobody on earth had ever spoken to him in this fashion before. He did
not think such disrespect was possible. He was red-faced and
stuttering as he took a step toward her, raising his gloves as if he
would strike her as he often had struck his soldier servant; but his
hand dropped in face of her unflinching stare.
"Look here! Do you know that I am an officer on the staff of the army
in possession of this village? I'm going to be billeted here and I
propose to choose my room."
He moved toward the door that led to the stairs.
"Certainly!" she answered, passing through it ahead of him. He was
dumbfounded at her compliance and suspicious of its promptness.
"Henriette, the beast is going to billet himself here!" she shouted up
the stairs. "You pass through the other way and I will meet you
outside and we'll go to the cure, who will speak to the General in
command about it. The General may be a decent, respectable man."
Von Eichborn drew back from the doorway. Again he tried to fasten his
eyeglass in his eye; again it would not stick. As Helen looked around
at him after her call to her sister, with that in her stare which made
him appear the most ridiculous little puppy that ever left a kennel, he
mumbled:
"Unnecessary!"
Then she saw Phil hurrying across the grounds. She only knew how glad
she was to see him and that she felt limp in her relief as he appeared
in the room, looking so strong and ready for any eventuality. It was
another picture of him that she would never forget.
Von Eichborn, as he turned in surprise and stood there between the two,
was sheepish and confused as a human being, before his sense of
authority and position vented its truculence with a snarling irony of
inference.
"You seem not to have been looking after your cousins," he said. "I
judge that the pretty one is quite devoted to you and the shrew here
keeps guard in your absence."
Something carried Phil a step nearer to von Eichborn involuntarily; and
what came into his eyes was distilled of that old blood and tempered by
three years in the Southwest.
"And you, I judge," he replied, "are a cowardly beast, going about
sneaking into homes when no men are present and others in your uniform
are under fire!"
Cowardly was the word that sent von Eichborn out of his head with
anger. He struck at Phil's face with his gloves, but missed. The rest
was very simple. Von Eichborn went sprawling. His descent was rapid
and unexpected and the stunning effect of the impact was accentuated by
the way his head hit the floor.
"Good! good!" Helen cried, clapping her hands. "It was never done
better in the movies! Good! goo----" The word was unfinished, her jaw
dropping aghast with the seriousness of the situation.
When von Eichborn came to and realised what had happened, that he had
been brutally knocked down by a civilian, he reached for his revolver.
There was murder in his little eyes. But Phil had already taken the
revolver out of its holster.
"You have struck a Prussian officer on duty!" he stammered as he got to
his feet. "That is death, as you will find out as soon as I can bring
some men."
He was going past Phil out of the door; but Phil barred the way.
"Wait!"
And von Eichborn had to wait. The position was strange. Here was the
darling of Berlin salons and the aide of the General who commanded a
division of troops which possessed the land balked by a mere civilian,
a mere tourist; neither being armed. It was humiliating, disgusting,
shameful. Von Eichborn could not try to force his way to the door for
fear that he might be knocked down again.
"Yes, wait and consider," Phil added. "Let's not do anything rash, but
think it over. Now----"
"Phil, don't!" Helen broke in wildly. "You, an American, don't
realise. He can have you shot for striking him."
"After he struck me?"
"That has nothing to do with it!" put in von Eichborn hoarsely. "I'm
an officer!"
"It's all true what he says!" said Helen. There was no banter of
melodrama about her now. The scene had become tensely real and
horrible.
"But it does not stand to reason! It's----"
"Don't smile in that way!" she pleaded. "We'll lock him in a closet
and I'll stand guard. That will give you time to run for it--or some
other plan--anything so they will not get you--please, please!"
"Very moving picture-ish that, Helen," he said. "No. I'll go with von
Eichborn to see his General and explain that an officer invading a
private house struck me and I struck him back, that being a custom of
my country and I being ignorant of the customs of foreign countries.
Come!" As he led the way out of doors he added to von Eichborn: "Some
men in your position might want to forget the whole experience."
"Not that you struck me when in uniform! Never!" von Eichborn said.
"My uncle will punish that. You will be shot, as Belgians were for the
same offence."
Helen followed them. Henriette was already in the grounds, having come
down from her room by the other stairway. Thus von Stein, alighting
from his car, had the whole group before him as he approached. At
sight of him, von Eichborn murmured something under his breath and
clicked his heels together as he saluted.
"So there you are, you scoundrel!" called out the General.
Von Eichborn knew how to deal with the rage of an uncle who had no son
of his own.
"Yes, sir," he said humbly. "I came to interrogate these two young
women about this man's case."
"Without leave!" put in von Stein sternly.
"Time was important. The Major said you would not need me. You were
busy."
"No excuse!" blurted von Stein.
"Sorry, sir!" replied von Eichborn. "Then this man returned to the
house and struck me with his fist!"
"You struck an officer!" Von Stein turned on Phil, Prussian
indignation overwhelming every other idea. "Why didn't you shoot him?"
he demanded of von Eichborn.
"He took away my revolver when I was down and stunned," explained von
Eichborn.
"Baby!" roared von Stein. "And you--" to Phil, "you struck an officer!
That is settled!"
"After he had struck at me!" replied Phil steadily.
"Yes, at his face with his gloves!" put in Helen, stepping forward and
looking squarely at the General. "I saw it. And he was not here to
interrogate us. He wanted to go upstairs where my sister was. Then
our cousin came."
Von Stein gave the two girls a scrutinising look. There was truth in
Helen's eyes as surely as Henriette was beautiful. He liked Helen, not
having much use for beautiful women, being unhappily married to one.
But aside from her evidence he knew that his nephew was lying, as he
had before to get himself out of a scrape.
"Did you try to go upstairs? Answer!" he said to von Eichborn, who
understood from experience that confession was best when his uncle
spoke in that fashion.
"Yes, sir!"
"And you struck at him?"
"Yes, he insulted me."
"After his insult!" interrupted Phil. "I----"
"Silence!" von Stein roared to Phil. "I'll attend to your case later.
Now, as for you," to von Eichborn, "first, aide of a division general
absent without leave in time of action; second, billeting himself
without consent of his superior; third, wasting his superior's time
with a set of foolish charges against a civilian for a mean personal
motive; fourth, an offence to two young women alone in a house. All
entirely in keeping with previous reprehensible conduct, without the
excuse of drunkenness this time."
Thus Prussian system established the case, while von Eichborn stood
stock-still, heels together, and trembling.
"You have played on my sensibilities for the last time," continued von
Stein. "No matter how your mother pleads, you go back to your
regiment, where you will have the chance to die like a soldier if
there's any good in you. Go to the car!"
Von Eichborn saluted and obeyed.
"You have seen Prussian justice done," von Stein said, turning to Phil.
"But you--you struck a Prussian officer with your fist!" His anger
grew as he thought of the offence against the military caste.
"You--you go to the car, too!"
"The custom of my country!" said Phil, without moving. "We have our
code of personal honour as well as you. I could not have done
otherwise and ever looked my friends in the face. When they hear the
story and your view, sir, well----"
"The barbarians will call us Huns!" von Stein interrupted savagely.
"Yes, I should think so!"
It seemed unreal, this situation. But there was the Foreign Office in
Berlin and the instructions from the Most High since the whirlwind of
American indignation about Belgium. And this young man acted as if he
were somebody of importance.
"I'll show you what Prussian clemency is," said von Stein. "Because
you are a foreigner and ignorant, I will overlook the offence. Keep to
the grounds, as I told you, and nobody will interfere with you!"
After he had gone, sitting on the back seat of the car with the
expression of one who was conscious of an act of noble toleration, with
von Eichborn on the front seat beside the chauffeur, the three cousins
stared at one another wonderingly, Henriette's eyes radiant of her
appreciation.
"You saved my life, first, and this time----"
She did not need to finish the phrase except with her eyes.
Helen, whose relief had been so personal, rallied herself a little
nervously with a return to banter.
"That was surely a bit from the movies, serio-comic!" she said. "Still
another cartoon of our hero's progress in Europe! We'll call it, 'And
he shot his strong right arm out and the villain bit the dust.'"
"Helen, one of these days I'll----" Phil fumbled for words in his
embarrassment.
"Do something else grand and I'll make a cartoon of that, too!" she
said as she went into the house. When she looked into the mirror again
it was with smiling self-congratulation. "Plain face, you were of some
use once, anyway!" she said.