Robert W. Chambers

“ The wild rose colour was in her cheeks and the tint of crimson roses on her lips and the glory of the Soleil d'or glimmered on her loosened hair. A confused sense that the passing hour was the happiest in her life possessed her: she looked down at the brace of wet yellow trout on the bog-moss at her feet; she gazed out across the crinkled pool where the Yankee Laird of Isla waded, casting a big tinselled fly for the accidental but inevitable sea-trout always encountered in Isla during the season—always surprising and exciting the angler with emotion forever new. ”

“ Then silver leaped to meet silver as the "Doctor" touched water; one keen scream of the reel cut the sunny silence; the rod bent like a bow, staggered in his hand, swept to the surface in a deeper bow, quivered under the tremendous rush of the great fish.
Miss Erith watched the battle from an angle not that of an angler. Her hazel eyes followed McKay where he manoeuvred in midstream with rod and gaff—happily aware of the grace in every unconscious movement of his handsome lean body—the steady, keen poise of head and shoulders, the deft and powerful play of his clean-cut, brown hands. ”

“ Now there came no sound, no stirring behind the forest's sunny edge; but just inside it, in the lee of a huge rock, a young girl in ragged boy's clothing, uncoiled her slender length from her blanket and straightened out flat on her stomach. Her yellow hair made a spot like a patch of sunlight on the dead leaves. Her clear golden eyes were as brilliant as a lizard's.
From his blanket at her side a man, gaunt and ragged and deeply bitten by sun and wind, was pulling an automatic pistol from its holster. ”

“ The man lying there on the edge of the chasm was Kay McKay; the girl stretched on her stomach beside him was Evelyn Erith.
All that day they watched the Swiss soldiers searching Mount Terrible; saw a red fox steal from the lower thickets and bolt between the legs of the beaters who swung their rifle-butts at the streak of ruddy fur; saw little mountain birds scatter into flight, so closely and minutely the soldiers searched; saw even a big auerhahn burst into thunderous flight from the ferns to a pine and from the pine out across the terrific depths of space below the white shoulder of Thusis. ”

“ Listen to reason, you insane American! You can not escape those who are closing in on you—those who are filtering the forest for you—who are gradually driving you out into the eastern edges of Les Errues! And what then, when at last you are driven like wild game by a line of beaters to the brink of the eastern cliffs? There is no water there. You will die of thirst. There is no food. What is there left for you to do with your back to the final precipice? ”

“ When they lay there in the shadow of a lawn umbrella, chair beside chair, the view across Isla Water was unpolluted by the picnickers, their hamper, and their car.
"Stole away, the beggars," drawled McKay lighting a cigarette.
"Where the devil they got a permit for petrol is beyond me."
The girl lay with deep golden eyes dreaming under her long dark lashes. Sunlight crinkled Isla Water; a merle came and sang to her in a pear-tree until, in its bubbling melody, she seemed to hear the liquid laughter of Isla rippling to the sea. ”

“ A pair of automatic handcuffs he also took, and a dozen clips to fit the brace of pistols strapped under his armpits.
Then he returned to the garden; and for a long while he sat there, unstirring, just where the wall's shadow lay clean-cut across the grass, listening to the distant tinkle of cattle-bells on the unseen slope of Mount Terrible.
No shots had come from the patrol along the Franco-Swiss frontier; there was no sound save the ecstatic tumult of the nightingale drunk with moonlight, and, at intervals, the faint sound of a cowbell from those dark and distant pastures. ”

“ But McKay laid his hand on Recklow's arm:
"Nothing. It is what they have not done—fed her. That's all she needs—and sleep."
Recklow gazed heavily upon her. But if the young fail rapidly, they also respond quickly.
"Come into the house,"
Perhaps it was the hot broth with wine in it that brought a slight colour back into her ghastly face—the face once so youthfully lovely but now as delicate as the mask of death itself.
Candles twinkled on the little table where the girl now lay back listlessly in the depths of an armchair, her chin sunk on her breast. ”

“ And all the while, across the gulf out of which golden vapours curled more thickly as the sun's burning searchlight spread out across the world, the man in Swiss uniform stood on the chasm's edge, as though awaiting some further word or movement from McKay.
And, after awhile, the word came, clear, startling, snapped out across the void:
"Unsling that haversack! Don't touch the flap! Take it off, quick!"
The Swiss seemed astounded. "Quick!" repeated McKay harshly, "or I fire."
"What!" burst out the man, "you offer violence to a Swiss officer on duty within Swiss territory?" ”

“ Blue sky, blue sea, silver spindrift flying and clouds of silvery gulls—a glimmer of Heaven from the depths of the pit—a glimpse of life through a crack in the casket—and land close on the starboard bow! Sheer cliffs, with the bonny green grass atop all furrowed by the wind—and the yellow-flowered broom and the shimmering whinns blowing.
"Why, it's Scotland," he said aloud, "it's Glenark Cliffs and the Head of Strathlone—my people's fine place in the Old World—where we took root—and—O my God! Yankee that I am, it looks like home!" ”

“ Then McKay took the dead carrier pigeon from the cage and tossed it on the moss. And Manitou planted his terrible talons on the inert mass of feathers and tore it to shreds.
Evelyn attached the anklet and whistling bell; then she unwound a yard of surgeon's plaster, and kneeling, spread the eagle's enormous pinions, hold-ing them horizontal while McKay placed the two packets and bound them in place under the out-stretched wings.
The big bird had bolted the pigeon. At first he submitted with sulky grace, not liking what was happening, but offering no violence. ”

“ They were coming; they were among the rocks! He straightened up and hurled a great slab of rock down through darkness; heard them scrambling upward still; seized slab after slab and smashed them downward at the flashes as the red flare of their pistols lit up his figure against the sky.
Then, as he hurled the last slab and clutched his short, broad knife, a gasping breath fell on his cheek and a wet and icy little hand thrust a box of clips into his. And there and then The McKay almost died, for it was as if the "Cold Hand of Isla" had touched him. And he stared ahead to see his own wraith. ”

“ For the Huns were gathering in eastward from the wooded western hills, and their sustained clamour filled the air like the unclean racket of vultures sighting abomination and eager to feed.
McKay laid his loaded pistol beside him.
"Dear Yellow-hair," he whispered.
She smiled up at him. "If they think we died there on the edge of the precipice, then you and I should live.... If they doubt it they will come back through these woods.... And it isn't likely that we shall live very long." ”

“ For war between the Swiss Republic and the Hun seemed very, very near during that ten days in Berne, and neither the National Council nor the Council of the States in joint and in separate consultation could see anything except a dreadful repetition of that eruption of barbarians which had overwhelmed the land in 400 A. D. till every pass and valley vomited German savages. And even more than that they feared the terrible reckoning with the nation and with civilisation when war laid naked the heart-breaking secret of the Forbidden Forest of Les Errues.
No! War could not be. ”

“ The human wreckage barely held together, but it was light; and McKay covered it with a foot of deep green moss, and made a cairn above it out of glacial stones from the watercourse. And on the huge beech that tented it he cut a cross with his trench-knife, making the incision deep, so that it glimmered like ivory against the silvery bark of the great tree. ”

“ And the girl, supporting herself on one arm, her fingers buried in the moss, looked after him while her flushed face cooled.
McKay moved down stream with pistol lifted, scanning the hard-wood ridges on either hand. For even the reddest of roe deer, in the woods, seem to be amazingly invisible unless they move.
The stream dashed through shadow and sun-spot, splashing a sparkling way straight into the wilderness of Les Errues; and along its fern-fringed banks strode McKay with swift, light steps. ”

“ He was standing in the walled garden switching a limber trout-rod when Miss Erith came upon him next morning,—a tall straight young man in his kilts, supple and elegant as the lancewood rod he was testing.
Conscious of a presence behind him he turned, came toward her in the sunlight, the sun crisping his short hair. And in his pleasant level eyes the girl saw what had happened—what she had wrought—that this young man had come into his own again—into his right mind and his manhood—and that he had resumed his place among his fellow men and peers. ”

“ He turned, his youthful face reflecting the slight emotion in her gay voice. Then with a grave smile he set his face straight in front of him and walked on beside her, the dark green pleats of the McKay tartan whipping his bared knees. Clan Morhguinn had no handsomer son; America no son more loyal.
A dragon-fly glittered before them for an instant. Far across the rolling country they caught the faint, silvery flash of Isla hurrying to the sea.
Evelyn Erith stood in the sunny breeze of Isla, her yellow hair dishevelled by the wind, her skirt's edge wet with the spray of waterfalls. ”

“ A girl who drags something floundering out of hell is entitled to the thing if she wants it. He admitted that to himself.
But how about that "cure"?
Was THIS it—this terrible blankness—this misty unreality of things? Surcease from craving—yes. But what to take its place—what to fill in, occupy mind and body? What sop to his restless soul? What had this young iconoclast offered him after her infernal era of destruction? A distorted world, a cloudy mind, the body-substance of a ghost? And for the magic world she had destroyed she offered him a void to live in—Curse her! ”

“ Then, not far away on the port quarter, a deck-gun spoke with a sharper explosion, and intense stillness reigned in the saloon.
"If there's any necessity," he whispered, "you recollect your boat, don't you?"
"Yes.... I don't want to go—without you." He said, in a pleasant firm voice which was new to her: "I know what you mean. But you are not to worry. I am absolutely well."
The girl turned toward him, the echoes of the guns filling her ears, and strove to read his face in the ghastly, dreary light.
"I'm really cured, Miss Erith," he said. "If there's any emergency
I'll fight to live. ”

“ There was no reply to the invitation, no sound from the forest, no movement visible. Thin threads of vapour began to ascend from the tremendous depths of the precipice, steaming upward out of mist-choked gorges where, under thick strata of fog, night still lay dark over unseen Alpine valleys below.
The Swiss officer advanced to the cliff's edge and looked down upon a blank sea of cloud. Presently he turned east and walked cautiously along the rim of the chasm for a hundred yards. ”

“ On the third day the drive had forced them from the hilly western woods, eastward and inexorably toward that level belt of shaggy forest, scrub growth, and arid, bowlder-strewn table-land where there was probably no water, nothing living to kill for food, and only the terrific ravines beyond where cliffs fell downward to the dim green world lying somewhere below under its blanket of Alpine mist. ”

“ However, from far ahead came a glimmer; and even when she was obliged to drop to her knees and creep forward, she could still make out the patch of light, and the Via Mala again became visible with its vitreous polished floor and its stalactites and water-blunted stalagmites always threatening to trip her and transfix her.
Now, very far ahead, something moved and partly obscured the distant glimmer; and she saw, at a great distance, the two men she followed, moving in silhouette across the light. When they had disappeared she ventured to move on again. ”

“ The place was rather misty now in the moonlight from the vapours of a cold little brook which ran foaming and clattering through it between banks thickset with fern.
And now Recklow moved very swiftly but quietly, down through the misty, ferny valley to the filbert and hazel thicket just beyond; and went in among the bushes, treading cautiously upon the moist black mould.
There glimmered the French wires—merely a wide mesh and an ordinary barbed barrier overhead; but the fence was deeply ditched on the Swiss side. A man could climb over it; and Recklow started to do so ”

“ No; the strength that he might derive from such a knowledge was not that deathless energy and clear thinking necessary to blind, stern, unswerving devotion to the motherland. Love of woman, and her love given, could only make the burden of decision triply heavy for this man who stood staring at space beside her here in the forest twilight where shreds of the night mist floated like ghosts and a lost sunspot glowed and waned and glowed on last year's leaves. ”

“ Suddenly his pistol flashed redly, rapidly; a heavy, soft bulk went tumbling down the rocks; another reeled there, silhouetted against Isla Water, then lurched forward, striking the earth with his face. And now from every angle slanting lines of blood-red fire streaked the night; Isla Craig rang and echoed with pelting lead.
"Next!" called out McKay with his ugly careless laugh. "Two down. No use to set 'em up again! Let dead wood lie. It's the law!"
"Can they hear the shooting at the house?" whispered Miss Erith. ”

“ And yet the Hun-pack hunting them though the forbidden forest of Les Errues had, in their new indifference to their quarry's alarm, and in the ferocity of their growing boldness, offered the two fugitives a new hope and a new reason for courage:—the grim courage of those who are about to die, and who know it, and still carry on. ”

“ At night the Swiss camp-fires glimmered on the rocks of Mount Terrible while, fireless, McKay and Miss Erith lay in their blankets under heaps of dead leaves on the knees of Thusis, cold as the moon that silvered their forest beds. ”

“ His face altered; he raised himself on one elbow:
"The swine have turned all Europe into a bloody wallow. They're belly-deep in it—Kaiser and knecht! But that's only part of it. They're destroying souls by millions!... Mine is already damned."
Miss Erith sprang to her feet: "I tell you not to say such a thing!" she cried, exasperated. "You're as young as I am! Besides, souls are not slain by murder. If they perish it's suicide, ALWAYS!"
She began to pace the white room nervously, flinging open her fur coat as she turned and came straight back to his bed again. ”

“ It overlooks the terrain in Alsace where for fifty years the Hun has been busy day and night with his sinister, occult operations. Its entrance, if there be any save by the way of avalanches—the way I entered—must be guarded by the Huns; its only exit into Hunland. That is Les Errues. That is the region which masks the Great Secret of the Hun."
He dropped the papers and, clasping his knees in his arms, sat staring out into the infernal blaze of sunset.
"The world," he said slowly, "pays little attention to that agglomeration of cantons called Switzerland. ”