Who Goes There!. Chambers Robert William
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.
"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.
P. S.
Tell George that it's up to him, now.
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,"