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Who Goes There!
Robert W. Chambers
Who Goes There!
PREFACE
The Crown Prince is partly right; the majority in the world is against him and what he stands for; but not against Germany and the Germans.
He professes surprise at the attitude of the United States. That attitude is the natural result of various causes among which are the following:
Distrust of any aggressor by a nation inclined toward peace.
Disgust at the "scrap of paper" episode.
Resentment at the invasion of Belgium.
Contempt for the Imperial Government which is industriously screwing the last penny of "indemnity" out of a ruined nation, which the people of the United States are taxing their private means to keep from starvation.
Further back there are other reasons.
For thirty years the press of Germany has seldom missed an opportunity to express its contempt for Americans. Any American who has ever lived in Germany or who has read German newspapers during the last thirty years is aware of the tone of the German press concerning America and Americans. No innuendoes have been too vulgar, no sneers too brutal for the editors of these papers, and, presumably for the readers.
Also Americans do not forget the attitude of the Imperial Government during the Spanish war. The bad manners of a German Admiral are bearing fruit.
Imperialism we Americans do not understand, but it need not make us unfriendly to empires.
But we do understand when manners are bad, or when a military caste, which maintains its traditions of personal honour by violence, becomes arrogant to the point of brutality.
A false notion of personal honour is alone enough to prevent a sympathetic understanding between two peoples.
America is not an enemy to Germany, only is it inexorably opposed to any Government which breaks faith; and which enthrones above all other gods the god of violence.
For the German soldiers who are dying in this Hohenzollern-Hapsburg war we have only sympathy and pity. We know they are as brave as any soldiers; that cruelty in the German Army is in no greater proportion than it is in any army.
But also we know that the cause of Imperial Germany is wrong; her civilization is founded on propositions impossible for any American to accept; her aims, ambitions, and ideals antagonistic to the progress to communal and individual liberty as we understand the terms. And that settles the matter for us.
CHAPTER I
IN THE MIST
They had selected for their business the outer face of an old garden wall. There were red tiles on the coping; dusty roadside vines half covered the base. Where plaster had peeled off a few weather-beaten bricks showed. Bees hummed in the trampled herbage.
Against this wall they backed the first six men. One, a mere boy, was crying, wiping his frightened eyes on his shirt-sleeve.
The dry crash of the volley ended the matter; all the men against the wall collapsed. Presently one of them, the boy who had been crying, moved his arm in the grass. A rifle spoke instantly, and he moved no more.
There came a low-spoken word of command, the firing squad shouldered rifles, wheeled, and moved off; and out of the sea-grey masses of infantry another squad of execution came marching up, smartly.
A dozen men, some in sabots, trousers, and dirty collarless shirts, some in well-cut business suits and straw hats, and all with their wrists tied behind them, stood silently awaiting their turns. One among them, a young man wearing a golf-cap, knickerbockers, heather-spats, and an absolutely colourless face, stood staring at the tumbled heaps of clothing along the foot of the wall as though stupified.
Six peasants went first; the men more smartly attired were to wait a little longer it appeared.
The emotionless and methodical preparations, the brisk precision of the operation, the cheerful celerity of the firing squad made it the more terrifying, stunning the victims to immobility.
The young man in the golf-cap and knickerbockers clenched his tied hands. Not an atom of colour remained in cheeks or lips, and he stood with face averted while the squad of execution was busy with its business.
There seemed to be some slight disorder along the wall – a defiant voice was raised hoarsely cursing all Germans; another, thin and hysterical, cheered for Belgium and the young King. Also this firing squad must have aimed badly, for bayonet and rifle-butt were used afterward and some delay occurred; and an officer, revolver swinging, prowled along the foot of the wall, kicking inquiringly at the dead heaps of heavy flesh that had collapsed there.
Houses lining the single village street began to leak smoke; smoke writhed and curled behind closed window-panes. Here and there a mounted Uhlan forced his big horse up on the sidewalk and drove his lance butt through the window glass.
Already the street was swimming in thin strata of smoke; the sea-grey uniforms of the German infantry seemed part of the haze; only the faces of the soldiery were visible – faces without bodies, thousands of flat, detached faces, thousands of little pig eyes set in a blank and foggy void. And over everything in the close, heavy air brooded the sour stench of a sweat-soaked, unwashed army.
A third squad of execution came swinging up, apparently out of nowhere, their heavy half-boots clumping in unison on the stony street.
The young man in the golf-cap and knickerbockers heard them coming and bit his bloodless lip.
After a moment the rhythm of the heavy boots ceased. The street became very silent, save where window glass continually fell tinkling to the sidewalk and the feathery whisper of flames became more audible from within the row of empty houses.
The young man lifted his eyes to the sombre and sunless sky. High up there above the mist and heavy bands of smoke he saw the feathery tops of tall trees, motionless.
Presently through the silence came the clatter of hoofs; Uhlans cantered past, pennons whipping from lance heads; then a soft two-toned bugle-call announced an automobile; and presently it loomed up, huge, through the parted ranks of the infantry, a great grey, low-purring bulk, slowing, halting, still purring.
A grey-clad general officer sat in the tonneau, a grey-uniformed hussar was seated beside the grey-liveried chauffeur.
As the car stopped several officers were already beside the running-board, halted stiffly at attention. The general officer, his cigar between his gloved fingers, leaned over the edge of the tonneau and said something in a very quiet voice.
Instantly a slim, stiff infantry captain saluted, wheeled sharply, and walked straight to the little file of prisoners who stood with their wrists tied behind their backs, looking vacantly at the automobile.
"Which is the prisoner-hostage who says he is American?" he snapped out in his nasal Prussian voice.
The young man who wore a golf-cap took a short step forward, hesitated.
"You?"
"Yes."
"Fall in again!"
The officer nodded to a sergeant of infantry, and a squad of men shoved the prisoners into single file, facing not the fatal wall, but westward, along the street.
"March!" said somebody. And the next moment again: "Halt!" rang out with the snapping brevity of a cracked whip. The general officer leaned from the grey tonneau and looked steadily along the file of hostages until his glance fell upon the young man in the golf-cap.
"What is your name?" he asked quietly in English.
"My name is Guild."
"The rest?"
"Kervyn Guild."
"You say you are American?"
"Yes."
The general officer looked at him for a moment longer, then said something to the hussar aide-de-camp.
The aide threw open the car door and jumped out. A lieutenant took command of the escort. The hussar whispered instructions, turned and came to attention beside the running-board, then, at a nod from the general officer, jumped up beside the chauffeur. There came the soft-toned, mellow warning of the bugle; the grey machine glided off into the mist; the prisoners and escort followed it, marching briskly.
As they passed the end of the street two houses on their right suddenly roared up in one vast, smoke-shot tower of flame, and a brassy glare lighted up the mist around them.
Somewhere near by a woman began to scream; farther down the street, more windows and doors were being beaten in. From farther away, still, came the strains of military music, resonant, full, magnificent. A detail passed with spades to bury the dead who lay under the wall. All was order, precision, and cheerful despatch. The infantry column, along the halted flanks of which the prisoners were now being marched, came to attention. Company after company marked time, heavily; shouldered rifles. Uhlans in file came spurring through the centre of the street; a cyclist followed, rifle slung across his back, sitting at ease on his machine and gazing curiously about.
Out of the end of the village street marched the prisoners and their escort, but presently halted again.
Directly in front of them stood the grey automobile drawn up by the roadside before a pair of iron gates. The gates swung from high stucco walls. On top of the walls were soldiers sitting, rifle on knee; a machine gun commanded the drive, and across the gravel more soldiers were digging a trench, setting posts, and stringing barbed wire which they unwound from great wooden reels.
Through the gates escort and prisoners threaded their way, across a lawn already trampled by cavalry, and straight on toward a pleasant looking and somewhat old-fashioned house set amid older trees and shrubbery, badly broken.
Half a dozen grey-clad staff officers were eating and drinking on the low stone terrace; their horses picketed on the lawn, nibbled the crushed shrubbery. Sentries pacing the terrace and on guard at the door came to attention as the lieutenant in charge of the escort marched his prisoners in.
At a word from him an infantryman went from prisoner to prisoner untying the cords that bound their wrists behind them. Then they were marched into an old-fashioned drawing-room on the left, sentries were placed, the remainder of the escort sat down on the floor with their loaded rifles on their laps and their backs against the wall. Their officer, the lieutenant, walked across the hallway to the room on the left, where the sentry admitted him, then closed the door and resumed his heavy pacing of the black-tiled hall.
The sergeant in charge of the escort lifted his helmet with its grey-cloth covering, scratched his bullet head, yawned. Then he said, jerking a huge thumb toward the drawing-room: "There's a good wall in the garden behind the house. They'll make the fruit grow all the better – these Belgians."
The lieutenant, coming out of the room opposite, overheard him.
"What your crops need," he said in a mincing Berlin voice, "is plenty of good English filth to spade under. See that you bring in a few cart-loads."
And he went into the drawing-room where the prisoners stood by the windows looking out silently at a great pall of smoke which was hanging over the village through which they had just been marched.
"Which of you is the alleged American?" said the lieutenant in hesitating but correct English.
The young man in knickerbockers rose from a brocaded armchair.
"Follow me. General von Reiter does you the honour to question you."
The young man looked the lieutenant straight in the eye and smiled, stiffly perhaps, because his face was still pallid and the breath of death still chilled it.
"The honour," he said in an agreeably modulated voice, "is General von Reiter's. But I fear he won't realize it."
"What's that!" said the lieutenant sharply.
But young Guild shrugged his shoulders. "You wouldn't understand either. Besides you are too talkative for an underling. Do your duty – if you know how."
"Swine of a Yankee," said the lieutenant, speaking slowly and with painful precision, "do you suppose you are in your own sty of a Republic? Silence! A Prussian officer commands you! March!"
Guild dropped his hands into the pockets of his belted jacket. "You little shrimp," he said good humouredly, and followed the officer, who had now drawn his sword.
Out into the hall they filed, across it to the closed door. The sentry on duty there opened it; the lieutenant, very red in the face, delivered his prisoner, then, at a nod from the grey-clad officer who was sitting behind a writing desk, saluted, faced about, and marched out. The door closed sharply behind him.
CHAPTER II
THE MAN IN GREY
Young Guild looked steadily at the man in grey, and the man in grey gazed as steadily back from behind his desk.
He was a man of forty-five, lean, well built, blond, and of regular features save that his cheek-bones were a trifle high, which seemed to crowd his light blue eyes, make them narrower, and push them into a very slight slant. He had the well-groomed aspect of a Prussian officer, dry of skin, clean-shaven save for the mustache en croc, which his bony but powerful and well-kept hands absently caressed at intervals.
His forehead was broad and benevolent, but his eyes modified the humanity and his mouth almost denied it – a mouth firm without shrewdness, not bad, not cruel for the sake of cruelty, yet moulded in lines which promised no hope other than that iron justice which knows no mercy.
"Mr. Guild?"
"Yes, General."
General von Reiter folded his bony hands and rested them on the blotter.
"You say that you are American?"
"Yes."
"How came you to be among the Yslemont hostages?"
"I was stopping at the Hotel Poste when the Uhlans and cyclists suddenly appeared. The captain of Uhlans took the Burgomaster with whom I had been playing chess, myself, the notary, and other leading citizens."
"Did you tell him you are American?"
"Yes. But he paid no attention."
"Had you a passport?"
"Yes."
"Other papers to establish your identity?"
"A few business letters from New York. They read them, but told me they were of no use to me."
"Why did you not communicate with your nearest Consul or with the American Minister in Brussels?"
"They refused me the use of telephone and telegraph. They said that I am Belgian and properly liable to be taken as hostage for the good behaviour of Yslemont."
General von Reiter's hand was lifted meditatively to his mustache. He said: "What happened after you were refused permission to communicate with the American representatives?"
"We were all in the dining-room of the Hotel Poste under guard. At the Burgomaster's dictation I was writing out a proclamation warning the inhabitants of Yslemont not to commit any act of violence against the German soldiery and explaining that we were held as hostages for their good behaviour and that a shot fired at a German meant a dead wall and a squad of execution for us and the destruction of Yslemont for them – " He flushed, hesitated.
"Continue," said the general.
"While I was still writing the shots were fired. We all went to the window and we saw Uhlans galloping across the fields after some peasants who were running into the woods. Afterward two stretchers came by with Germans lying in them. After that an officer came and cursed us and the soldiers tied our hands behind our backs. We sat there in the dining-room until the Uhlans came riding into the street with their prisoners tied by ropes to their saddles. Then a major of infantry came into the dining-room and read our sentence to us. Then they marched us out into the fog."
The general crossed his spurred boots under the desk and lay back in his chair, looking at Guild all the while.
"So you are American, Mr. Guild?"
"Yes, General."
"In business in New York?"
"Yes."
"What business?"
"Real estate."
"Where?"
"Union Square, West."
"What is the name of the firm in which you are associated?"
"Guild and Darrel."
"Is that your partner's name?"
"Yes. Henry Darrel."
"Why are you here in Belgium?"
"I was making a foot tour in the Ardennes."
"Your business vacation?"
"Yes. I was to meet my partner in Luxembourg and return to New York with him."
"You and your partner are both absent from New York at the same time?"
"Yes."
"How is that?"
"Real estate in New York is quiet. There is practically no business now."
The general nodded. "Yes," he said, "much of what you tell me has been corroborated. In the Seegard Regiment of Infantry Number 569 you were recognized by several non-commissioned officers and men while you stood with the hostages awaiting – ah – justice," he added drily.
"Recognized?" repeated Guild.
"The soldiers who recognized you had served in New York hotels as clerks or waiters, I believe. The captain of that company, in consequence, very properly reported the matter to Colonel von Eschbach, who telephoned to me. And I am here to consider the matter."
Then, folding his arms and looking hard at Guild out of narrowing eyes that began to slant again:
"The hostages of Yslemont have justly forfeited their lives. Two of my officers have been murdered there in the streets. The law is plain. Is there any reason why these hostages should not pay the proper penalty?"
"The Burgomaster was in the act of dictating – "
"He should have dictated faster!"
"These gentlemen did not fire the shots – "
"But those over whom they exercised authority did!"
Guild fell silent and his features paled a little. The general watched him in silence for a moment and an inquiring expression came into his narrow eyes.
"Well?" he said at length.
Guild lifted his eyes.
"Well, sir," repeated the general. "I have said that there is no reason why the hostages taken at Yslemont should not be turned over to the squad of execution outside there in the hallway."
"I heard you say it."
The general looked at him curiously. "You have nothing to say?"
"No."
"Not for yourself?"
"No."
"As a matter of fact, Mr. Guild, what was your ultimate object in passing through Yslemont?"
"I have already told you that I had intended to make a foot tour through the Three Ardennes."
"Had intended?"
"Yes."
"Was that still your intention when you were made prisoner?"
After a moment's hesitation: "No," said Guild in a low voice.
"You altered your plan?"
"Yes."
"You decided to employ your vacation otherwise?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"I decided to enlist," said Guild. He was very white, now.
"Enlist?"
"Yes."
"In the British army?"
"The Belgian."
"Oh! So now you do not remind me that, as an American, you claim exemption from the execution of the sentence?"
"I have said enough," replied Guild. A slight colour showed over his cheek-bones.
"If I shoot the Burgomaster and the notary and the others in there, ought I to let you go – on your own representations?"
"I have said enough," repeated Guild.
"Oh! So you refuse to plead any particular exemption on account of your nationality?"
No answer.
"And you, by your silence, permit yourself to be implicated in the responsibility of your fellow-hostages?"
No reply.
"Why? – Mr. Guild. Is it, perhaps, after all because you are not an American in the strictest sense of that often misused term?"
There was no response.
"You were born in America?"
"Yes."
"Your father, perhaps, was born there?"
"Yes."
"Oh! And his father?"
"No."
"Oh! You are, I see, quite candid, Mr. Guild."
"Yes, when necessary."
"I see. Very well, then. Where do you get your Christian name, Kervyn? Is it an American name?"
"No."
"The name, Guild – is that an American name?"
"Yes."
"But —is it your name?"
"Yes."
"Was it, by chance, ever spelled a little differently – in times gone by, Mr. Guild?"
"Yes."
"Oh! And how, in times gone by, was it spelled by your – grandfather?"
Guild looked him calmly in the eyes. "It was spelled Gueldres," he said.
"I see, I see. That is interesting. Gueldres, Kervyn Gueldres. Why, it sounds almost Belgian. Let me see – if I remember – there was such a family inscribed in the Book of Gold. There was even a Kervyn of Gueldres – a count, was he not? – Comte d'Yvoir – Count of Yvoir, Hastière, and Lesse. Was he not – this Kervyn of Gueldres, many, many years ago?"
"I congratulate General von Reiter on his memory for such unimportant history as that of Belgium," said Guild, reddening.
"Oh, we Germans are studious in our youth – and thorough. Nothing is too unimportant to ignore and" – he smiled grimly – "nothing is too vast for us to undertake – and accomplish."
He lifted his hand to his mustache again. "Mr. Guild," he said, "at the elections in America you – ah – vote of course?"
"No."
"What?"
Guild remained silent.
The general, stroking his mustache, said pleasantly: "The Belgian nobility always interested me; it is so exclusive and there are so few families of the classe noble. Except for those ten families who are independent of Court favour – like the Croys and De Lignes – there seem to be only about thirty families who possess the privileges of the Golden Book. Is this not so?"
"General von Reiter appears to know."
The general seemed gratified at this corroboration of his own memory. "And," he went on amiably, "this Belgian nobility is a real nobility. Once of it, always a part of it. And, too, its code is so rigid, so inexorably precise that it seems almost Prussian. For example, the code of the Belgian aristocracy permits none of its members to go into any commercial business, any trade – even forbids an entry into high finance. Only the Church and Army are open to it; and in the Army only the two Guides regiments and the Lancers are permitted to young men of the aristocracy." He gazed almost mildly at the young man: "You are in business, you tell me?"
"Yes."
"Oh! Then of course you have never been a soldier."
Guild was silent.
"Have you ever served in the army?"
"Yes."
"Really! In what American regiment have you served?"
"In a militia regiment of cavalry – the 1st New York."
"How interesting. And – you have never served in the regular army?"
"N – " but Guild hesitated.
General von Reiter watched him intently.
"Did you reply in the negative, Mr. Guild?"
