I had no wish to linger there and started homeward, drenched and utterly miserable. Nor will I deny that this weird spectacle in those rugged, dark-enshrouded mountains, had made me the prey of shadowy forebodings and uncanny fancies. I, too, must start at every little sound and shudder with a sort of vague apprehension. I cannot describe it any better than to say that I felt as if something dreadful were going to happen. I thought how the war had pushed its long, bloody tentacles out to the farthest corner of the world—causing murder in some tropic village, suicide in the ice-bound north—horror and destruction everywhere. And it was here upon these neutral Alpine hills, this war, stalking in the form of one distraught and guilty soul, who had been cast up here with all his crimes upon his head. “One cannot get away from it,” I said.
I felt it, I knew it—that something, I knew not what, but something, was going to happen.
V
Tells of my experience in the night, and brings my formal narrative to a close.
The household was gone to bed when I reached the little inn, but the fire had been left burning for me, and I hung my dripping garments before it and sank down on the massive settle. The candle was burning out but the blaze in the big fireplace diffused its grateful warmth and gave out a dim, fitful brightness. I remember how it checkered up the rough wainscot and low-raftered ceiling so that my eye was ever and again caught by moving figures which were nothing but the reflection of the dancing blaze. Outside the blown rain beat against the little windows in intermittent splashes, which seemed to heighten the sense of comfort and security within.
But I took small comfort in the dim warmth, for I was sick at heart—sick with horror and disgust at the renewed memory of that creature’s deeds—treason—cowardly murder—but most of all at myself. I tried to console myself with the reflection that it was better so, that after all I had been giving aid and comfort to the enemy. We do not get much consolation from the mental comforts which we manufacture for ourselves, and the result of all this idle thinking was just to take me back home to Bridgeboro and to conjure up thoughts of my young friend, Roy Blakeley. Do a good turn daily, he had said. I could see him as he said it! Two on Sundays and holidays. Get a turning lathe and turn out good turns. Keep turning. I smiled at the recollection of all his nonsense.... A fine kind of a good turn I had done!
So I fell to thinking, or rather my mind wandered aimlessly back to that day when Roy and I had stood outside the Bridgeboro station, reading the account of Tom Slade’s last exploit. I recalled the little catch in his voice when he asked me if I was “sure it was really true,” and of how he looked across the street at the window of Temple Camp office, where hung the service flag with its single star. Then I thought of the grave in Pevy with its little wooden cross marked with rough lettering—absurdly German. I thought of how, even to the last moment of our parting, when he handed up my grips to the car platform, he clung staunchly to the hope that somehow his pal was yet living.
“Well, at least,” I reflected cynically, “Tom Slade had the decency to leave a few untainted memorials of loyal service behind him—enough to make a story.” And I thanked my stars that no hint of other things had escaped from my pen, in that tale which I had written for Roy. That did not trouble my conscience at all now. Might it not go down as a good turn? And the girl, whoever she was, she must never know either. Where ignorance was bliss, ’twas folly to be wise. Why should I disgrace my own home town and bring shame upon this noble “good turner” and scout?
Then in my drowsy reverie (for the dying fire had cast its spell on me) I thought of something Slade had said to Jeanne Grigou—that you cannot disgrace yourself alone. Queer he had not thought of that when he had fallen into the web of the unspeakable Dennheimer. Why had he not thought of Bridgeboro then—little Bridgeboro which was first over the top with its loan quota. Had not the Schmitt affair been quite enough for little Bridgeboro which had had its name sprawled all over the New York papers on account of it?
Well, in any event, there should be no more of this business....