Who Goes There!

"You can't go back to England, Karen."

"That is true. I forgot."

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know."

"Don't go to Germany."

"Why?"

"There may be an invasion."

She had lifted her head as he spoke. After a moment she sighed like a tired child, laid her head back on his arm and rested one slender hand on his shoulder.

It suddenly seemed to her that the world, which had been going very well with her, had halted, and was beginning to go the other way.

"Kervyn?"

"Yes?"

"You could take the papers when I am asleep, I suppose. I couldn't help it, could I?"

"That is one way," he said, smiling.

"What was the other?"

He did not reply.

She sighed again. "I suggested it," she said, "in order to give you a little more time to do – what you said you thought – possible."

"Fall in love?" he asked lightly. "Yes."

"What would be the use, Karen?"

"Use?"

"Yes. I'm going into the army. It will be a long war. If I fell in love with you I'd not have time to win your love in return before I went away – admitting that I could ever win it. Do you see?"

"I quite see that."

"So I had better take the papers when I can, and get into touch with the reserves of my regiment if I can."

"What regiment?"

"The Guides."

"The Guides! Are you an officer?"

"Yes, of the reserve."

She knew quite well what that meant. Only the Belgian nobility of ancient lineage served as officers in the Guides.

A happiness, a wonderful tranquillity crept over her. No wonder she had found it difficult to really reproach herself with her behaviour. And it was a most heavenly comfort to her to know that if she had been indiscreet, at least she had been misbehaving with one of her own caste.

"The next station," said the German guard, squinting in at them from the window under his lifted lantern, "is Trois Fontaines."

"What!" exclaimed Guild surprised. "Have we passed the customs?"

"The customs? This is a German military train! What business is it of the Grand Duchy where we go or what we do?"

He lowered his lantern and turned away along the running-board, muttering: "Customs, indeed! The Grand Duchy had better mind its business – and the Grand Duchess, too!"

A few moments later the locomotive whistled a long signal note to the unseen station.

"Karen," said Guild quietly, "in a few moments I shall be out of debt to General von Reiter. My life will be my own to do with as I please. That means good-bye."

She said with adorable malice: "I thought you were going to rob me first."

"I am," he said, smiling.

"Then I shall make the crime a very difficult one for you… So that our – parting – may be deferred."

The train had already come to a standstill beside a little red-tiled station. Woods surrounded it; nothing was visible except the lamps on a light station-wagon drawn up to the right of the track.

The guard unlocked and opened their compartment. A young man – a mere boy – came up smilingly and lifted his cap:

"Mademoiselle Girard? Monsieur Guild? I come from Quellenheim with a carriage. I am Fritz Bergner."

He took their luggage and they followed to the covered station-wagon. When they were seated the boy stepped into the front seat, turned his horses, and they trotted away into the darkness of a forest through which ran the widely winding road.

Fresh and aromatic with autumn perfume the unbroken woods stretched away on either hand beneath the splendour of the stars. Under little stone bridges streams darkled, hurrying to the valley; a lake glimmered through the trees all lustrous in the starlight.

Something – perhaps the beauty of the night, possibly the imminence of his departure, kept them silent during the drive, until, at last, two unlighted gate-posts loomed up to the right and the horses swung through a pair of iron gates and up a driveway full of early fallen leaves.

A single light sparkled far at the end of the vista.

"Have you ever before been here?" asked Guild.

"Once, to a hunt."

Presently Guild could see the long, two-storied hunting lodge of timber and stucco construction with its high peaked roof and dormers and a great pair of antlers spreading above the hood of the door.

Out of the doorway came a stout, pleasant-eyed, brown-skinned woman who curtsied to them smilingly and welcomed them in German.

Everything was ready; they had been expected. There was a fire in the hall and something to eat.

Guild asked to be driven to an inn, and the housekeeper seemed surprised. There was no inn. Her orders were to prepare a room for Herr Guild, who was expected to remain over night. She regretted that she could not make them more comfortable, but the Lodge had been closed all summer, and she had remained alone with her son Fritzl to care for the place.