The Girl Philippa
mired. There is another gate to that hedge a few hundred yards below.
If you'll just lay those planks in the cart, we'll drive along the hard
ground here and make another bridge below."
Halkett picked up the wet and muddy planks, one by one, and placed them
crossways in the cart. Then, at a nod from Warner, he climbed up and
the cart started slowly south, winding cautiously in and out among the
bushes.
When they had driven a little distance, the men in the car across the
brook caught sight of them; the driver left his wheel and sprang out;
and from either door of the tonneau the three other men followed,
revolvers lifted. There was no shouting; not a word spoken; not a sound
except the hard, dry crack of the pistols.
"I don't know," said Warner coolly, "whether this horse will stand our
fire, but if they cross the stream we'll have to begin shooting....
We'd better begin now anyway, I think." He drew rein, turned in his
seat, and fired two shots in quick succession. The horse started, and,
instantly checked, stood trembling but behaving well enough.
Another shot from Halkett brought the running men to a halt. Warner
drove on immediately; three of the men started to follow on a run, but
half a dozen rapid shots brought them to a dead stop again. And again
the dogcart jolted slowly forward.
One of the men made a furious gesture, turned, and ran back to the
mud-stalled car; two of the others followed to aid him to extricate the
machine; the fourth man, skulking along the stream, continued to advance
as the dogcart drove on.
Warner, driving carefully, shoved with his foot a box of clips toward
the dashboard; Halkett reloaded both automatics. Presently the cart
turned east, descending the hard slope toward the stream again; and the
man who had followed them along the swampy brook immediately opened
fire.
Halkett and Warner sprang out; the former shouldered the planks and ran
forward; the latter, holding his nervous horse by the head, fired at the
man among the reeds as he advanced toward the stream.
It seemed odd that so many bullets could fly and hit nothing; Halkett
heard them whining over his head; the horse heard them too and
threatened to become unmanageable. Far up the stream the three other
men were laboring frantically to disengage the grey automobile; the man
across the creek, routed out of the reeds by the stream of bullets
directed at him, was running now to get out of range. Evidently his
automatic was empty, for it merely swung in his hand as he ran.
But what occupied Warner was the course the man was taking, straight for
the lower gate in the hedge.
"Jump in!" he called to Halkett. "We can't wait for the other planks!"
The Englishman swung up beside him; the whip whistled and the horse, now
thoroughly frightened, bounded forward down the slope and took the
improvised bridge at a single leap. For one moment it looked like a
general smash, but the cart stood it, and, after a perilous second,
righted itself.
Straight at the closed gate drove Warner, whipping his horse into a dead
run; crashed through the flimsy pickets, slashed mercilessly with his
whip at the man who pluckily stripped off his coat and strove to make
the horse swerve into the hedge, as a toreador waves his cloak at a
charging bull.
Halkett could have shot the man; but he merely turned his weapon on him
as they dashed out into the highroad once more, and tore away due south
through the rose and golden glory of the sunset.
The horse ran a flat mile before Warner chose to ease him down; the
summer wind whistled in their ears; the last glow faded from the
purpling zenith; the crimson streak on the river surface, which had run
parallel on their left like level and jagged lightning, glimmered to a
pallid ochre tint; and the flying mist of trees and bushes which had
fled past like an endless rush of phantoms now took shape and substance
once more above the rising veil of river mist.
Warner's tense features were flushed with excitement. As he gradually
eased in his horse he was smiling.
"Well, what do you know about this performance of ours, Halkett?" he
inquired rather breathlessly. "Can you beat it in the movies?"
"I'm wondering what I've let you in for," said the Englishman very
seriously.
"I'll tell you," laughed Warner; "you've let me in for a last glimpse of
my youth--the days when everything went and every chance for mischief
was gratefully seized--the days when I was a subject of the only real
democracy on earth--the Latin Quarter--the days that dawn no more,
Halkett. This is the last gleam from their afterglow. _Nosce tempus_!
But the sun has set at last, Halkett, and the last haymaker is going
home."
"It would not have been very amusing if one of those bullets had knocked
you off your seat," remarked Halkett.
"But they didn't, old chap!" returned Warner heartily. "It was a good
mix-up--exciting, harmless, and beneficial. I feel years younger.
Respectability is a good, warm coat for the winter of life; but one
feels its weight in Indian summer."
Halkett smiled but shook his head:
"No good hunting trouble. You've only to turn around any time to find
it sniffing in your tracks."
"You don't understand. For years I've worked very steadily, very
seriously. I've painted, studied, read; I've made a living by selling
some pictures, by royalties on the reproduction of pictures, by teaching
a summer class of girls. After a while, you know, one goes stale with
respectability. I went out to the East and saw the Balkan fighting. It
helped some. I made some sketches last year in Mexico. That helped.
"But there's an exhilaration about lawbreaking--or in aiding and
abetting a lawbreaker--that has the rest beaten to a batter. Today's
misdeeds mean a new lease of life to me, Halkett."
The Englishman laughed. He was still cradling the two automatics on his
knees; now, with a careless glance behind him, he leaned forward and
replaced them in their respective holsters.
"For a rather celebrated and weighty member of the social structure," he
remarked, "there is a good deal of the boy left in you."
"When that dies in a man," returned Warner lightly, "creative and
constructive work end. The child who built with blocks, the youth who
built airier castles, is truly dead. And so is the man he has become."
"Do you think so?"
"I know it. The same intellectual and physical restlessness drives one
to create and construct, which, as a boy, drove one into active and
constructive mischief. When the day dawns wherein creating no longer
appeals to me, then I am old indeed, Halkett, and the overcoat of
respectability will suit me the year round.... I'm very glad that I
have found it oppressive this July day. By the way, what day does it
happen to be?"
Halkett said:
"It happens to be the last day of July. I have an idea that several
billion other people are destined to remember these last few days of
July, 1914, as long as they live."
"Why?" inquired the American curiously.
"Because, within these last few days, Austria has declared war on
Servia, Russia has already ordered partial mobilization, Germany has
sent her an ultimatum, and will back it up tomorrow."
"What! How do you know?"
"You don't mean to ask me that, do you?" said Halkett pleasantly.
"No, of course not----" Warner gazed straight ahead of him as he drove;
his altered features had become gravely expressionless. After a moment
he said:
"I can't comprehend it. Servia had agreed to everything
demanded--except that one item which she offered to arbitrate. I can't
understand it."
Halkett said calmly:
"It is not difficult to understand. A telegram has been suppressed--the
only telegram which could now prevent war." He removed his straw hat,
took from the lining a strip of semi-transparent paper, and read aloud
the minute handwriting:
"The German government has published several telegrams which the Emperor
of Russia exchanged with Emperor William. Among these telegrams,
nevertheless, is one which was not published--a dispatch from His
Russian Majesty, dated July 29, 1914, containing a proposition to submit
the Austro-Servian conflict to The Hague Tribunal.
"This has an appearance of a desire in Germany to pass over in silence
the attempt to prevent the approaching collision. In view of this, the
Minister of Foreign Affairs is authorized to publish the telegram
mentioned, of which this is the text:
"'Thanks for your conciliatory and friendly telegram. Inasmuch as the
official message presented today by your ambassador to my minister was
conveyed in a very different tone, I beg you to explain this divergency.
It would be right to give over the Austro-Servian problem to The Hague
Conference. I trust in your wisdom and friendship.'"
"Where did you get that?" asked Warner bluntly.
"This morning at the Boule d'Argent. A friend was kind enough to leave
it for me in a note," he added blandly.
"Do you believe it to be authentic?"
"Unfortunately, I can not question its truth."
"You think that the German government----"
"Without any doubt at all, Warner. For her The Day is about to dawn at
last. Her Joshua has halted the course of the sun long enough to suit
himself. It is scheduled to rise tomorrow."
"Do you mean war?"
"I do."
"Where?"
"Well, here, in France--to mention one place."
"In _France_!"
"Surely, _surely_!"
"Invasion?"
"Exactly."
"From which way?"
Halkett shrugged:
"Does anybody now believe it will come by way of the Barrier Forts? The
human race never has been partial to cross-country traveling; only ants
prefer it."
"You think it will come by the flank--through Belgium?"
"Ask yourself, Warner. Is there an easier way for it to come?"
"But the treaties?"
"_Nulla salus bello; necessitas no habet legem._"
"Nothing dishonorable is ever necessary."
"Ah! If nations could only agree upon the definition of that word
'honor'! There'd be fewer wars, my friend."
"You think, if France follows Russia's example and mobilizes, that
Germany will strike through Belgium?"
"I'm sure of it."
"What about England, then?" asked Warner bluntly.
But Halkett remained silent; and he did not repeat the question.
"After all," he said, presently, "this entire business is incredible.
Diplomacy will find a way out of it." And, after a moment's silence:
"You don't think so?"
"No."
Presently Halkett turned and looked back through the gathering dusk.
"I wonder," he said, "whether they'll get their car out tonight?"
"They'll have to go back to Ausone for aid," said Warner.
"Do you still mean to put me up at Sais?"
"Certainly. You don't expect your friends back there to assault the
inn, do you?"
"No," said Halkett, laughing. "They don't do things that way just yet."
Warner snapped his whip, caught the curling lash, let it free, twirled
it, and, snapped it again, whistling cheerfully a gay air from his
student days--a tune he had not thought of before in years.
"I believe," he said, frankly hopeful, "that you and I are going to have
another little party with those fellows before this matter is ended."
"I'm sure of it," said Halkett quietly.
A few moments later Warner, still whistling his joyous air, pointed
toward a cluster of tiny lights far ahead in the dark valley.
"Sais," he said; and resumed his song blithely:
"Gai, gai, mariez-vous!
C'est un usage
Fort sage.
Gai, gai, mariez-vous,
Le mariage est si doux!--"
"Like a bird it is!" he added ironically.
"By the way, you're _not_ married, are you?" inquired Halkett uneasily.
"Oh, Lord! No! Why the unmerited suspicion?"
"Nothing much. I just thought that after getting you into this scrape I