THE FOREST LISTENS
He awoke in a flood of brightest sunshine; his bed, the floor, the
walls, were bathed in it; netted reflections of water danced and
quivered on the ceiling; and he lay looking at it, pleasantly conscious
of green leaves stirring near his open window and of the golden
splashing of a fountain.
There was a little bird out there, too, diligently practicing a few
notes. The song was not elaborate. Translated, it seemed to consist of
tweet! tweet! twilly-willy-willy! repeated an indefinite number of
times.
Curious to discover what his surroundings resembled he rose and looked
out of the curtained window. There was a grassy carrefour where a
fountain spouted into a stone pool; all else was forest; a stream
sparkled between tree-trunks, bridged where the drive crossed it.
To bathe and dress did not take him very long. In the hall, which seemed
to be the main living-room below, he prowled about, examining a number
of antlers and boar-heads mounted on the beamed and plastered walls. The
former had been set up in German fashion, antlers, brow-antlers, and
frontal bone; and these trophies appeared to him uninteresting--even a
trifle ghastly when the bleached skull also was included.
The boars' heads were better, nothing extraordinary in size, but
well-tusked. The taxidermy, however, was wretched.
The square hall itself did not appear particularly inviting. The usual
long oak table and benches were there, a number of leather arm-chairs,
book-racks, cue-racks, gun-racks with glazed panes to protect the
weapons, a festoon of spears, hunting knives and curly hunting horns,
skins on the floor, brown bear, wolf, and stag.
A badly stuffed otter displayed its teeth on the mantle over the
fireplace between a pair of fighting cock pheasants and a jar of alcohol
containing a large viper, which embellishments did not add to the
cheerfulness of the place.
For the rest there was a billiard table shrouded in a rubber cloth, and
three well-engraved portraits on the walls, Bismarck, after Lehnbach,
Frederick the Great playing on a flute like fury, and the great War Lord
of Europe himself, mustaches on end, sombre-eyed, sullen, cased in the
magnificent steel panoply of the Guard Cuirassiers. The art gallery
bored Guild, and he opened a door which he suspected communicated with
the pantry.
It was a valet's closet and it smelled of camphor. Shooting-coats hung
on stretchers; high-laced shooting-boots were ranged in rows. On a chair
lay Karen's skirt and blouse-coat of covert cloth. Both were still
slightly damp and wrinkled. Evidently they had been brought down here to
be brushed and pressed while Karen slept.
Passing his hand over the brown silk lining of the coat gave him no clue
to the hiding-place of the papers; what revealed their presence was a
seam which had been hurriedly basted with black thread. The keen point
of his pocket-knife released the basting. He drew out the papers,
counted them, identified them one by one, and placed them in his breast
pocket. Then he laid the coat across the back of the chair again and
went out.
He had two hours to wait before there could be any decent hope of
breakfast. Nobody seemed to be stirring in the house. After a few
minutes he unlocked the front door and went out into the early sunshine.
It was as warm as a spring day; rain had freshened grass and trees; he
sat down on the fountain's rim and looked into the pool where a dozen
trout lay motionless, their fins winnowing the icy water.
No doubt some spring, high on the wooded hills, had been piped down to
furnish the pool with this perpetually bubbling jet.
The little bird who had entertained him vocally earlier in the morning
was still vocal somewhere in a huge beech-tree. Around a spot of
moisture on the gravel-drive two butterflies flitted incessantly. And
over all brooded the calm and exquisite silence of the forest.
An hour or more later he got up and re-entered the house.
First he took a look at the valet's room. Evidently Karen's clothes had
been brushed and pressed, for they had disappeared.
Another door in the square hall promised to lead into the pantry,
judging from significant sounds within.
It did, and the housekeeper was in there as energetically busy as every
German woman always is when occupied. And German women are always
occupied.
The kindly soul appeared to be much flattered by his visit. They had
quite a gossiping time of it while she was preparing the breakfast
dishes.
It was mostly a monologue.
No, she and Fritzl were not lonely at Quellenheim, although it was
pleasant to have the Lodge open and a noble company there shooting. But,
like Marlbrook, the Herr Baron had gone to the wars--alas!--and it might
take him some time to capture Paris and London and set the remainder of
the world in order.
But it really seemed too bad; the Herr Baron was fond of his shooting;
Fritzl had reported some good antlers in the forest, and a grey boar or
two--but enormous! As for the place it would certainly go to ruin what
with faggot stealers and godless poachers!--And the foresters, keepers,
and even the wood-choppers all gone off and deserting the place--think
of it!--the ungrateful Kerls--gone!--and doubtless to join the crazy
Belgian army which had refused to permit Prussian troops to pass!
_Prussian_ troops! The impudence of it! Gratitude! There was little of
that in the world it seemed.
"When does the Herr Baron return here?" inquired Guild, smiling.
It appeared that the Herr Baron was to have arrived at Quellenheim this
very week. But yesterday his adjutant telegraphed that he could not come
perhaps for many weeks. No doubt he was very busy chasing the French and
English. It was a pity; because the autumn is _wunderschön_ at
Quellenheim. And as for the deer!--they stand even in the driveway and
look at the Lodge, doubtless wondering, sir, why they are neglected by
the hunters, and asking one another why good fat venison is no longer
appreciated at Quellenheim.
"Could you tell me where I may telegraph to the Herr Baron?" asked the
young man, immensely amused by her gossip.
"That I can, sir. My careful household reports are sent to the Herr
Baron through military headquarters at Arenstein, Prussia. That is where
he is to be addressed."
"And a telegraph office?"
"At the railroad station."
"In communication with Prussia?"
"Yes, sir," she said with a vigorous nod. "And whenever any of the
yokels here about tamper with the wires the Uhlans come and chase them
till they think the devil is after them!"
"Uhlans. Here?"
"And why not? Certainly the Uhlans come occasionally. They come when it
is necessary. Also they cross the Grand Duchy when they please."
"Then, if I write out a telegram here----"
"Fritzl will take it, never fear, sir. Leave it on the billiard
table--any telegrams or letters--and they shall be sent when Fritzl
drives to the station."
"Where," he inquired, "is Lesse Forest?" And could he send a messenger?
"Lesse Forest? Why the chasse wall separates the range of the Lesse
Hills from Quellenheim. Any peasant at Trois Fontaines who possesses a
bicycle could take a message and return in an hour."
"Do you know who leases the chasse at Lesse?"
"Yes. Some wealthy Americans."
So he smiled his thanks and returned to the hall. There was writing
material on the long oak table. And first of all he wrote out a brief
telegram to General von Reiter saying that he had fulfilled his promise.
This was all he might venture to say in a telegram; the rest he embodied
in his letter to the Herr Baron:
Having telegraphed to you, and fulfilled my enforced obligations
to the letter, I am confident that you, in your turn, will
fulfill yours, release the hostages held by your troops at
Yslemont, and spare the village any further destruction and
indemnity.
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.
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.
"Must I take them or will you give them up, Karen?" he asked, laughing,
as he rose.
She took a step backward, away from him. The tree-trunk checked her.
"You know I can't give them to you," she said unsteadily. "It would be
dishonourable."
"Am I to take them?"
"Are you going to?"
"Do you mean to say that rather than surrender them you would endure
such violence as that?"
"I promised.... Are you going to--to hurt me, Kervyn?" she stammered.
"I'll try not to."
She stood there, breathing fast, white, defiant.
"You'll have to surrender," he said. "You might as well. It's an
honourable capitulation in the presence of superior force."
"No."
"You refuse?"
"Yes, please."
He said: "Very well, then," with an alarming frown.
"Kervyn----"
"What?"
"If you tear my gown I--I shall have to go to bed."
"I'm not going to touch your gown," he said. "I'm going to charm those
papers so they'll leave their hiding place and fly into my pocket. Watch
me very attentively, Karen!" And he tucked up his cuffs and made a few
short passes in the air. Then he smiled at her.
"Kervyn! I thought you meant to take them. Do you know you really did
frighten me?"
"I _have_ got them," he said.
The colour came back into her cheeks; she smiled at him in a breathless
way.
"You did frighten me," she said. She came slowly back and seated herself
on the carpet of fir-needles. He sat down beside her.
"Karen, dear," he said, "you are a brick and I'm a brute. I took your
papers this morning. I _had_ to, dear."
And he drew them from his breast pocket and showed them to her.
The girl sat in wide-eyed amazement for a moment. Suddenly her face
flushed and the tears flashed in her eyes.
"You have ridiculed me!" she said. "You have treated me like a child!"
"Karen----"
"I will not listen! I shall never listen to you again! You have played
with me, hurt me, humiliated me. You have ruled and overruled me! You
gained my friendship and treated it--and me--without ceremony. And I let
you! I must have been mad----"
Her mouth quivered; she clenched her hands, gazing at him through eyes
that glimmered wet:
"How could you do it? I was honest with you; I had had no experience
with a man I cared for. You knew it. You let me care for you until I
didn't understand--until the sincerity and force of what I felt for you
bewildered me!
"And now--and now I am--unhappy--unhappy--miserable, ashamed--" She
caught her breath, scarcely able to see him through her tears--no longer
able to control the quivering lip.
She rose swiftly, encountered something--his arm--felt herself drawn
resistlessly into his embrace.
"Forgive me, Karen," he said. "I did not realize--what was happening
to--us both."
She rested her forehead on his shoulder for a moment.
"Can you forgive me, Karen?"
"Yes."
"You know I truly care for you?"
"Yes."
Scarcely knowing what he was doing, he bent to touch her forehead with
his lips, and she lifted her face at the same moment. His kiss fell on
her mouth, and she responded. At the same instant her girlhood ended
forever--vanished on her lips in a little sigh.
Dazed, silenced, a trifle faint, she turned from him blindly.
"Please," she whispered, in the ghost of a voice; and he released her.
For a few moments she stood resting against the fir-tree, her left arm
across her eyes, frightened, motionless.
The forest was very still around her, as though every leaf were
listening.