The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (51 page)

His spurs jingled joyously as he crossed the market place, and the cobbles no longer hurt his feet.

“Is it not beautiful?” said his companion.

He looked about him with interest, as though the quaint gables and turrets were stage scenery erected but a few moments before. “Very beautiful,” he agreed. “It would make a very beautiful background for a statue.” He regarded the square with increased favour. “There would be room for at least twenty statues.”

“Perhaps one of them would be that of Captain Kurt von Unserbach?”

There was no trace of levity in her tone – nor would it have occurred to him to seek for one. “I have done nothing as yet to deserve a statue,” he replied. “There is a statue of my father in our village. It is of the most costly marble and the best workmanship. But one can have only one father to honour.” He walked some twenty paces in silence and then added, with genuine sadness and regret: “I have no child – to raise a statue to me when I am dead.”

Neither did he wonder that she should know his name. He was the only Prussian officer in that little Flemish town.

For the rest of the journey he was too occupied to make any further remarks. Carefully and methodically he noted every architectural detail that might serve as a guide on future visits to his unknown destination. Occasionally the roughness of the cobbles swayed him towards his companion and for a brief moment their shoulders would touch and, once, the filmy lace veil caressed his cheek.

Once, also, his little eyes glared and snapped arrogantly at a passing infantry officer whose gaze betokened too lively admiration.

Some fifty paces farther, a gently detaining hand was laid upon his arm – and he followed his escort through a narrow passage between two overhanging buildings. This alley led them into a small square which was well known to him. On the far side stood the
préfecture of police
, while on his right hand he could discern the familiar outline of the late mayor’s private residence.

Opposite a broad double door, studded with large square-headed nails, the party halted. He noticed the details with the greatest care. The wood was dark chestnut or oak, polished with age. In the left half, as he stood facing it, was a small but heavily barred iron grid, painted black. From the solid stone lintel projected a curiously wrought lantern-bracket. The moulding of the jambs on either side was ornamented with a series of small stone shields and bugles arranged alternately.

The younger woman opened a narrow door that was contained in the right-hand half of the large one and passed within.

“We are most grateful to you for the trouble which you have taken on our behalf,” said her mother. “It is a pleasure to find a Prussian officer who can be courteous to two lonely and friendless women.”

As she turned and went through the doorway a warm glow lit up the hall beyond. “Good night,” she said, her hand upon the latch, “and again our sincere thanks. We must not detain you any longer.”

Kurt von Unserbach had no intention of allowing the matter to end there. He placed his foot in such a position that the door could not be closed. “I am not on duty to-night,” he explained firmly. “There is no reason why I should hurry back.”

His natural courtesy and sense of chivalry bade him wait for an invitation before attempting to force his way in.

The younger woman laughed, and his skin bristled to the bulging nape of his neck. He pressed his foot more firmly against the woodwork.

“We could not very well ask you in at this hour, Herr Kapitan,” she explained. “But if you – as an officer of the invading army – insist on coming in – the responsibility lies with you alone.”

The little gurgle of merriment which followed affected him as no laughter had ever done. He thrilled again as though a skeleton hand were playing scales up and down his spine. He appreciated the mocking note: she was laughing at herself – at the conventions – and at her mother.

“I will accept the full responsibility,” he replied gravely, “but I should appreciate the mere formality of an invitation.”

“Will you not come in, then, after your great kindness?” Her tone this time defied all his attempts at analysis. “Our dinner is a cold one, but I think you will agree that there is no chef living that can equal the artist who prepared it.”

“Thank you extremely,” he replied; and a moment later the well-oiled latch had clicked behind him.

The large open hall felt pleasantly warm after the chilly draughts of the street, and he was conscious of a faint and subtle perfume which appealed to all that was sensual in his nature. He approved of the scent very strongly, and wondered whether it came from the masses of cut flowers which glowed and gleamed wherever there was a ledge on which the great glass bowls could stand. Then his eye was attracted by the life-size frescoes which adorned the side walls. He screwed his small eyeglass into his eye and studied them with interest. They were literal translations in colour of various classical incidents which are not usually translated literally in print. The drawing and the colouring were obviously the work of a master hand, strong and vigorous and almost alive. Yet although they were devoid of all vulgarity and indecency, they were the very incarnation of suggestiveness. They resembled those books which threaten always to be improper on the next page.

“Good!” exclaimed the visitor. “Very good. They might almost have been painted by a German artist.”

“Shall we go upstairs?” said his hostess. “We do not live in the ground floor rooms. They are too dark and dismal.”

“I will look at those pictures again by daylight and perhaps I will photograph them,” he said, as he crossed the tiled floor and followed her up the stairs. As he climbed, he stroked the broad flat top of the old bannister-rail with his hand, delighting in the smoothness of its time-worn surface.

So richly were the stairs carpeted that his spurred heels made no sound.

The dining-room was a large apartment with heavily curtained windows. Down the centre ran a massive refectory table, covered with a damask cloth and sparkling with glass and silver. Across one end of the room stood a similar table, which did duty as a sideboard. In one amazed and comprehensive glance he realized that it was laden with those delicacies most dear to a famished German heart and stomach. Amongst the dishes there stood, or lay in small baskets, bottles fat and thin, bottles whose corks were covered with silver, with gilt, with red or white or green.

Captain Kurt von Unserbach moistened his lips, wrenched his unwilling glance from the end table, and turned to make a complimentary speech to his hostess. To his surprise he found that he was alone. He had not heard her leave the room.

The next five minutes he spent, to his complete satisfaction, in studying the various dishes and in apportioning to each delicacy its relative weight in terms, not of appetite, but of capacity.

“My mother is very tired after her walk.”

Captain von Unserbach started guiltily and removed his finger from his mouth. These thick carpets were delightful to walk upon, but they were devilish inconvenient at times.

“She has retired to bed and hopes that you will excuse her.”

Kurt von Unserbach clicked his heels and excused her with all the good will in the world. Then he raised his eyes and forgot even the good things upon the table.

Many a heart has been lost in the moonlight to be recovered instantly in the more mellow glow of lamps. But this woman was even more bewitchingly beautiful now that he could see the full glory of her coiled black hair. No trace of a warmer tint stained the smooth ivory of her skin. Her eyes, he realized, were not dark brown but were almost black with a little emerald green sparkle in their depths.

He looked up at the ceiling to see if there was a green shade to any of the lamps. There was not. Wherefore he looked into her eyes again – and his glance was gripped and held till he prayed that her lids might close for one brief second. When at last they fell, he sank back into a chair and breathed fast.

One thing he vowed silently: that, Emperor or no Emperor, he could never love any woman but this. He no longer wished to go to England. Miss Smith–! He broke in upon his own thoughts with a sudden shout of laughter. What did ten thousand Misses Smith weight in the balance against one smile of this woman.

“Come; you must be famished after your onerous duties as
chevalier aux dames
,” she laughed. “See; I will wait upon you by way of repaying the debt.”

Whereupon, the Captain tucked one corner of his napkin into the collar of his uniform and fell more deeply in love than ever. She served him with never too much of this and with never too little of that. He could not have helped himself with more delicate accuracy. Moreover, she ate practically nothing, a novelty which appealed to his æsthetic sense.

And the wines! Were there ever such wines! Each one in its turn seemed to have gained an added delicacy of flavour from the memory of its predecessor. It would have been a pleasure even to sip them – it was paradise to swallow them by the glassful. An Englishman would have slipped silently beneath the table, but Kurt von Unserbach merely leant back on a roseate cloud and twiddled his feet at the prosaic world below.

The banquet ended with a coffee liqueur under a film of fresh cream, and with one of his own cigars.

“You are a German,” he exclaimed ecstatically. “You must be a German. You are a Prussian of the Prussians.”

“I am of no nationality,” she replied. “I was once an Alsacienne – but now I belong to no nation.”

“Then you were half a German,” he exclaimed in triumph, “and I will make you entirely a Prussian.”

“But your marriage is an affair of state. Your emperor would never agree that you should marry me.”

Captain von Unserbach settled himself more comfortably back on his rosette cloud and twiddled his feet at the Emperor. “I am
von und zu
,” he declared haughtily, “and if he refuses his consent I will threaten to kill myself.”

From the expression in her eyes he gathered that this would be an even greater blow to her than to the Emperor. He hastened to assure her that he would not carry this threat to the extreme of fulfilling it.

“And – tell me,” she changed the subject, “were you in that first great advance into Belgium?”

“My regiment was one of the first that rode ahead past the fortress of Liege,” he answered proudly. “But why talk of other women when I have you here with me?”

But she encouraged him to speak of his doings, and her eyes mastered his as the fumes of the wine loosened his tongue. And as he told her tale after tale of those hideous days, the green lights in the depths of her eyes shone steadily – and coldly.

“That is from your point of view,” she said. “But supposing your army had found it a military necessity to sack this town. Supposing that your triumphant soldiers had already broken into this house before I had met you?”

Von Unserbach shuddered and winced. “Ach – don’t! It is unthinkable!” He deliberately evaded her meaning. “All these beautiful things would then have been destroyed.”

“And for me? Do you care nothing then for me?”

For one second he stared back at her, and then he sprang to his feet. His chair fell to the floor unheeded. “God in Heaven!” he shouted. “Care for you! I love you more than anything!”

He strode towards her and took her into his arms.

At five o’clock the following morning Captain Kurt von Unserbach let himself out silently by the narrow door. His face wore an expression of rapturous ecstasy. He drew his cloak tightly round him, and set out at a brisk strut for the barracks. It was certainly a cruel stroke of fate which had torn him from paradise at such an hour; but he reflected that the same fate which had selected him for early morning duties on that particular day had also thrown him in the path of this wonderful happiness. But for Fate he would never had met his– ? “Thousand devils!” he laughed. “Why, I don’t even know her name.”

He felt in his pocket for his cigar case and then remembered suddenly that he had left it on the mantelshelf in the bedroom. He paused for a moment and then turned again towards the barracks. He would not have time to go back, and it would be safe enough in her keeping. If her mother found it . . . ? He shrugged his shoulders. She could always say that she had taken it in there to keep it safe.

That morning was all seconds, and every second seemed like an hour. Moreover he was ravenously hungry, in spite of the heavy meal he had devoured such a short time before. His subordinates suffered even more than was usual. His only other gleam of consolation was the glance of unconcealed envy cast upon him by the infantry officer he had passed on the previous night.

As soon as he was off duty and had swallowed a hasty but ample lunch he hurried to the square. At first he was unable to locate the house, which had a strangely different appearance in the light of day. The door jambs with their shields and bugles he had found easily enough; but what, in the moonlight, had appeared to be a door of polished wood with a painted grid in it, was shabby in the extreme. The grid was red with rust. Blistered and dirty paint hung in tattered strips from the woodwork. He tugged at the remains of an iron handle, and in the distance sounded the metallic bleat of a broken bell. He rang again and listened. There was an echo which resembled those to be found only in an empty house. He stepped back into the roadway and looked up at the windows. Those which were not broken were covered with grime. He then noticed that there was no wrought iron lantern-bracket over the door. He heaved a sigh of relief. It could not be the same house.