Читать книгу Who Goes There! - Chambers Robert William - Страница 5

At noon on the following day Kervyn Guild wrote to his friend Darrel:

Dear Harry:

Instead of joining you on the Black Erenz for the late August trout fishing I am obliged to go elsewhere.

I have had a most unpleasant experience, and it is not ended, and I do not yet know what the outcome is to be.

From the fact that I have not dated this letter it will be evident to you that I am not permitted to do so. Also you will understand that I have been caught somewhere in the war zone and that is why the name of the place from which I am writing you is omitted – by request.

We have halted for luncheon at a wayside inn – the gentleman who is kind enough to accompany me, and I – and I have obtained this benevolent gentleman's authorization to write you whatever I please as long as I do NOT

1st. Tell you where I am going.

2d. Tell you where I am.

3d. Tell you anything else that does not suit him.

And he isn't a censor at that; he is just a very efficient, polite, and rather good-looking German officer serving as aide on the staff of a certain German major-general.

Day before yesterday, after luncheon, I was playing a quiet game of chess with the Burgomaster of a certain Belgian village, and was taking a last look before setting out for Luxembourg on foot, rücksack, stick, and all, when – well, circumstances over which I had no control interrupted the game of chess. It was white to go and mate in three moves. The Burgomaster was playing black. I had him, Harry. Too bad, because he was the best player in – well in that neighbourhood. I opened with a Lopez and he replied most irregularly. It certainly was interesting. I am sorry that I couldn't mate him and analyze the game with him. However, thank Heaven, I did announce mate in three moves, and the old gentleman was still defiantly studying the situation. I admit he refused to resign.

I left that village toward evening in a large, grey automobile. I and the gentleman who still accompanies me slept fairly well that night, considering the fact that a town was on fire all around us.

In the morning we made slow progress in our automobile. Roads and fields were greenish grey with troops – a vast horde of them possessed the valleys; they enveloped the hills like fog-banks turning the whole world grey – infantry, artillery, cuirassiers, Uhlans, hussars – all mist colour from helmet to heel – and so are their waggons and guns and caissons and traction-engines and motor-cycles and armoured cars and aeroplanes.

The latter are magnificent in an artistic sense – perfect replicas of giant pigeon-hawks, circling, planing, sheering the air or sailing high, majestic as a very lammergeier, fierce, relentless, terrible.

My efficient companion who is reading this letter over my shoulder as I write it, and who has condescended to permit a ghost of a smile to mitigate, now and then, the youthful seriousness of his countenance, is not likely to object when I say to you that what I have seen of the German army on the march is astoundingly impressive.

(He smiles again very boyishly and says he doesn't object.)

Order, precision, a knowledge of the country absolutely unhesitating marks its progress. There is much singing in the infantry ranks. The men march well, their physique is fine, the cavalry are superbly mounted, the guns – (He shakes his head, so never mind the guns.)

Their regimental bands are wonderful. It is a sheer delight to listen to them. They play everything from "Polen Blut" and "Sari," to Sousa, "Tannhäuser," and "A Hot Time," but I haven't yet heard "Tipperary." (He seems puzzled at this, but does not object.) I expect shortly to hear a band playing it. (I have to explain to my efficient companion that "Tipperary" is a tune which ought to take Berlin and Vienna by storm when they hear it. It takes Berlin and Vienna to really appreciate good music. He agrees with me.)

Yesterday we passed a convoy of prisoners, some were kilted. I was not permitted to speak to them – but, Oh, those wistful eyes of Scottish blue! I guess they understood, for they got all the tobacco I had left. (My companion is doubtful about this, but finally shrugs his shoulders.)

There is an awesome noise going on beyond us in – well in a certain direction. I think that all the artillery ever made is producing it. There's practically no smoke visible against the clear blue August sky – nothing to see at all except the feathery cotton fleece of shrapnel appearing, expanding, vanishing over a hill on the horizon, and two aeroplanes circling high like a pair of mated hawks.

And all the while this earth-rocking diapason continues more terrible, more majestic than any real thunder I ever heard.

We have had luncheon and are going on. He drank five quarts of Belgian beer! I am permitted a few minutes more and he orders the sixth quart. This is what I have to say:

In case anything should go wrong with me give the enclosed note to my mother. Please see to it that everything I have goes to her. My will is in my box in our safe at the office. It is all quite clear. There should be no trouble.

I expressed my trunk to your care in Luxembourg. You wrote me that you had received it and placed it in storage to await my leisurely arrival. In case of accident to me send it to my mother.

About the business, my share in any deals now on should go to my brother. After that if you care to take George in when he comes out of Harvard it would gratify his mother and me.

He's all to the good, you know. But don't do this if the business does not warrant it. Don't do it out of sentiment, Harry. If he promises to be of use, and if you have no other man in view, and if, as I say, business conditions warrant such an association with a view to eventual partnership, then if you care to take in George it will be all right.

He has sufficient capital, as you know. He lacks only the business experience. And he is intelligent and quick and it won't take him long.

But if you prefer somebody else don't hesitate. George is perfectly able to take care of his mother and himself.

This is all, I think. I'm sorry about the August fishing on the Black Erenz. It is a lovely stream and full of trout. All Luxembourg is lovely; it is a story-book country – a real land of romance. I wish I might have seen it again. Never were such forests, such silver streams, such golden glades, such wild-flowers – never such hills, such meadows, such skies.

Well – if I come back to you, I come back. If not – good-bye, old fellow – with all it implies between friends of many years.

Say to your kind friends, the Courlands, who so graciously invited you to bring me with you to Lesse Forest, that I shall not be able to accept their delightful hospitality, and that my inability to do so must remain to me a regret as long as I live. (These guns are thundering enough to crack the very sky! I really wish I could hear some band playing "Tipperary.")

Good-bye for a while – or indefinitely. Good luck to you.

Kervyn Guild.

"Is that quite acceptable to you?" asked Guild of the young Death's Head hussar beside him.

"Quite acceptable," replied the officer politely. "But what is there remarkable in anybody drinking six quarts of beer?"

Guild laughed: "Here is the note that I desire to enclose with it, if I may do so." And he wrote:

Dearest:

You must not grieve too much. You have George. It could not be avoided, honourably. He and I are good Americans; we are, perhaps, something else, too. But what the Book of Gold holds it never releases; what is written there is never expunged. George must do what I did when the time comes. I would have done more – was meaning to – was on my way. Destiny has ordered it otherwise.

While I live I think always of you. And it shall be so until the last.

This letter is to be sent to you by Harry Darrel only in the event of my death.

There's a good chance for me. But if things go wrong, then, good-bye, dearest.

Kervyn.

P. S.

Tell George that it's up to him, now.

K.

He held out the letter cheerfully to the hussar, but the latter had read it, and he merely nodded in respectful silence. So Guild folded it, sealed it in an envelope, wrote on it, "For my Mother in case of my death," and inclosed it in his letter to Darrel.

"Any time you are ready now," he said, rising from the little enameled iron table under the arbour.

The hussar rose, clanking, and set a whistle to his lips. Then, turning: "I shall have yet one more glass of beer," he said blandly, but his eyes twinkled.

The grey car rolled up in a few moments. Over it at a vast height something soared in hawk-like circles. It may have been a hawk. There was no telling at such a height.

So they drove off again amid the world-shaking din of the guns paralleling the allied lines toward the west. Ostend lay somewhere in that direction, the channel flowed beyond; beyond that crouched England – where bands were playing "Tipperary" – and where, perhaps, a young girl was listening to that new battle song of which the young hussar beside him had never even heard.

As the grey car hummed westward over the Belgian road, Guild thought of these things while the whole world about him was shaking with the earthquake of the guns.

"Karen," he repeated under his breath, "Karen Girard."

After a while sentinels began to halt them every few rods. The chauffeur unrolled two white flags and set them in sockets on either side of the hood. The hussar beside him produced a letter from his grey despatch-pouch.

"General von Reiter's orders," he said briefly. "You are to read them now and return the letter to me before the enemies' parlementaire answers our flag."

Guild took the envelope, tore it open, and read:

Orders received since our interview make it impossible for me to tell you where to find me on your return.

My country place in Silesia is apparently out of the question at present as a residence for the person you are expected to bring back with you. The inclosed clipping from a Danish newspaper will explain why. Therefore you will sail from London on Wednesday or Sunday, taking a Holland liner. You will land at Amsterdam, go by rail through Utrecht, Helmond, Halen, Maastricht. You will be expected there. If I am not there you will remain over night.

If you return from your journey alone and unsuccessful you will surrender yourself as prisoner to the nearest German post and ask the officer in charge to telegraph me.

If you return successful you shall be permitted at Eijsden to continue your journey with the person you bring with you, across the Luxembourg border to Trois Fontaines, which is just beyond the Grand Duchy frontier; and you shall then deliver the person in question to the housekeeper of the hunting lodge, Marie Bergner. The lodge is called Quellenheim, and it belongs to me. If I am not there you must remain there over night. In the morning if you do not hear from me, you are at liberty to go where you please, and your engagements vis-à-vis to me are cancelled.

VON REITER, MAJ-GEN'L.

The inclosed newspaper clipping had been translated into French and written out in long-hand. The translation read as follows:

Russia's invasion of East Prussia, Posen and Silesia has sent a wave of panic over the eastern provinces of the German Empire, if reports from Copenhagen and Stockholm are to be credited. These reports are chiefly significant as indicating that the Russian advance is progressing more rapidly than has been asserted even by despatches from Petrograd.

A correspondent of the Daily Telegraph reports from Stockholm that the whole of eastern Germany is upset by the menace of Cossack raids. He hears that a diplomatic despatch from Vienna contains information that the civilian inhabitants of Koenigsberg, East Prussia, and Breslau, in Silesia, are abandoning their homes and that only the military will remain in these strongholds.

From Copenhagen it is reported, allegedly from German sources, that Silesia expects devastation by fire and sword and that the wealthy Prussian landholders, whose immense estates cover Silesia, are leading the exodus toward the west. The military authorities have done everything possible to check the panic, fearing its hurtful influence on Germany's prospects, but have been unable to reassure the inhabitants. Many of these have seen bands of Cossacks who have penetrated a few miles over the border and their warnings have spread like a forest fire.

For a long while the young man studied the letter, reading and re-reading it, until, closing his eyes, he could repeat it word for word.

And when he was letter perfect he nodded and handed back the letter to the hussar, who pouched it.

A moment later the car ran in among a horde of mounted Uhlans, and one of their officers came galloping up alongside of the machine.

He and the hussar whispered together for a few minutes, then an Uhlan was summoned, a white cloth tied to his lance-shaft, and away he went on his powerful horse, the white flag snapping in the wind. Behind him cantered an Uhlan trumpeter.

Toward sunset the grey automobile rolled west out into open country. A vast flat plain stretched to the horizon, where the sunset flamed scarlet and rose.

But it was almost dusk before from somewhere across the plain came the faint strains of military music.

The hussar's immature mustache bristled. "British!" he remarked. "Gott in Himmel, what barbarous music!"

Guild said nothing. They were playing "Tipperary."

And now, through the late rays of the afterglow, an Uhlan trumpeter, sitting his horse on the road ahead, set his trumpet to his lips and sounded the parley again. Far, silvery, from the misty southwest, a British bugle answered.

Guild strained his eyes. Nothing moved on the plain. But, at a nod to the chauffeur from the hussar, the great grey automobile rolled forward, the two Uhlans walking their horses on either side.

Suddenly, east and west as far as the eye could see, trenches in endless parallels cut the plain, swarming with myriads and myriads of men in misty grey.

The next moment the hussar had passed a black silk handkerchief over Guild's eyes and was tying it rather tightly.