Barbarians. Chambers Robert William
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Von Glahn's sidelong and preoccupied glance fell on Stent's field glasses slung short around his neck. His rigid smile died out. Soldiers wore field glasses that way; hunters, when they carried them instead of spyglasses, wore them en bandoulière.
He spoke, however, of other matters in his gentle, thoughtful voice—avoiding always any mention of politics and war—chatted on pleasantly with the familiarity and insouciance of old acquaintance. Once he turned slowly and looked at Brown—addressed him politely—while his dark eyes wandered over the American, noting every detail of dress and equipment, and the slight bulge at his belt line beneath the tunic.
Twice he found pretext to pick up his rifle, but discarded it carelessly, apparently not noticing that Stent and Brown always resumed their own weapons when he touched his.
Brown said to Von Glahn:
"Ibex stalking is a new game to me. My friend Stent tells me that you are old at it."
"I have followed some few ibex, Mr. Brown," replied the young man modestly. "And—other game," he added with a shrug.
"I know how it's done in theory," continued the American; "and I am wondering whether we are to lie in this spot until dawn tomorrow or whether we climb higher and lie in the snow up there."
"In the snow, perhaps. God knows exactly where we shall lie tonight—Mr. Brown."
There was an odd look in Siurd's soft brown eyes; he turned and spoke to Herr Professor von Dresslin, using dialect—and instantly appearing to recollect himself he asked pardon of Stent and Brown in his very perfect English.
"I said to the Herr Professor in the Traun dialect: 'Ibex may be stirring, as it is already late afternoon. We ought now to use our glasses.' My family," he added apologetically, "come from the Traunwald; I forget and employ the vernacular at times."
The Herr Professor unslung his telescope, set his rifle upright on the moss, and, kneeling, balanced the long spyglass alongside of the blued-steel barrel, resting it on his hand as an archer fits the arrow he is drawing on the bowstring.
Instantly both Brown and Stent thought of the same thing: the chance that these Germans might spy others of the Athabasca regiment prowling among the ferns and rocks of neighbouring slopes. The game was nearly at an end, anyway.
They exchanged a glance; both picked up their rifles; Brown nodded almost imperceptibly. The tragic comedy was approaching its close.
"Hirsch" grunted the Herr Professor—"und stück—on the north alm"—staring through his telescope intently.
"Accorded," said Siurd Von Glahn, balancing his spyglass and sweeping the distant crags. "Stück on the western shoulder," he added—"and a stag royal among them."
"Of ten?"
"Of twelve."
After a silence: "Why are they galloping—I wonder—the herd-stag and stück?"
Brown very quietly laid one hand on Stent's arm.
"A geier, perhaps," suggested Siurd, his eye glued to his spyglass.
"No ibex?" asked Stent in a voice a little forced.
"Noch nicht, mon ami. Tiens! A gemsbok—high on the third peak—feeding."
"Accorded," grunted the Herr Professor after an interval of search; and he closed his spyglass and placed his rifle on the moss.
His staring, protuberant eyes fell casually upon Brown, who was laying aside his own rifle again—and the German's expression did not alter.
"Ibex!" exclaimed Von Glahn softly.
Stent, rising impulsively to his feet, bracketted his field glasses on the third peak, and stood there, poised, slim and upright against the sky on the chasm's mossy edge.
"I don't see your ibex, Siurd," he said, still searching.
"On the third peak, mon ami"—drawing Stent familiarly to his side—the lightest caressing contact—merely enough to verify the existence of the automatic under his old classmate's tunic.
If Stent did not notice the impalpable touch, neither did Brown notice it, watching them. Perhaps the Herr Professor did, but it is not at all certain, because at that moment there came flopping along over the bracken and alpenrosen a loppy winged butterfly—a large, whitish creature, seeming uncertain in its irresolute flight whether to alight at Brown's feet or go flapping aimlessly on over Brown's head.
The Herr Professor snatched up his net—struck heavily toward the winged thing—a silent, terrible, sweeping blow with net and rifle clutched together. Brown went down with a crash.
At the shocking sound of the impact Stent wheeled from the abyss, then staggered back under the powerful shove from Von Glahn's nervous arm. Swaying, fighting frantically for foothold, there on the chasm's awful edge, he balanced for an instant; fought for equilibrium. Von Glahn, rigid, watched him. Then, deathly white, his young eyes looking straight into the eyes of his old classmate—Stent lost the fight, fell outward, wider, dropping back into mid-air, down through sheer, tremendous depths—down there where the broad river seemed only a silver thread and the forests looked like beds of tender, velvet moss.
After him, fluttering irresolutely, flitted Parnassus Apollo, still winging its erratic way where God willed it—a frail, dainty, translucent, wind-blown fleck of white above the gulf—symbol, perhaps of the soul already soaring up out of the terrific deeps below.
The Herr Professor sweated and panted as he tugged at the silk handkerchief with which he was busily knotting the arms of the unconscious American behind his back.
"Pouf! Ugh! Pig-dog!" he grunted—"mit his pockets full of automatic clips. A Yankee, eh? What I tell you, Siurd?—English and Yankee they are one in blood and one at heart—pig-dogs effery one. Hey, Siurd, what I told you already gesternabend? The British schwein are in Italy already. Hola! Siurd! Take his feet and we turn him over mal!"
But Von Glahn remained motionless, leaning heavily against the crag, his back to the abyss, his blond head buried in both arms.
So the Herr Professor, who was a major, too, began, with his powerful, stubby hands, to pull the unconscious man over on his back. And, as he worked, he hummed monotonously but contentedly in his bushy beard something about something being "über alles"—God, perhaps, perhaps the blue sky overhead which covered him and his sickened friend alike, and the hurt enemy whose closed lids shut out the sky above—and the dead man lying very, very far below them—where river and forest and moss and Parnassus were now alike to him.
CHAPTER VI
IN FINISTÈRE
It was a dirty trick that they played Stent and Brown—the three Mysterious Sisters, Fate, Chance, and Destiny. But they're always billed for any performance, be it vaudeville or tragedy; and there's no use hissing them off: they'll dog you from the stage entrance if they take a fancy to you.
They dogged Wayland from the dock at Calais, where the mule transport landed, all the way to Paris, then on a slow train to Quimperlé, and then, by stagecoach, to that little lost house on the moors, where ties held him most closely—where all he cared for in this world was gathered under a humble roof.
In spite of his lameness he went duck-shooting the week after his arrival. It was rather forcing his convalescence, but he believed it would accelerate it to go about in the open air, as though there were nothing the matter with his shattered leg.
So he hobbled down to the point he knew so well. He had longed for the sea off Eryx. It thundered at his feet.
And, now, all around him through clamorous obscurity a watery light glimmered; it edged the low-driven clouds hurrying in from the sea; it outlined the long point of rocks thrust southward into the smoking smother.
The din of the surf filled his ears; through flying patches of mist he caught glimpses of rollers bursting white against the reef; heard duller detonations along unseen sands, and shattering reports where heavy waves exploded among basalt rocks.
His lean face of an invalid glistened with spray; salt water dripped