"I am very sorry, _Monsieur le Baron,_ but two of your beeches have already fallen. It cannot be helped now. But there shall be no more of it, I promise you. Those young officers are--they are--let us call them overzealous. I will transfer them to another post to-morrow. The German command appreciates the correct conduct of you and _Madame la Baronne._ Is there anything more that I can do for you?"

"I thank your Excellency sincerely," replied the baron. Then he hesitated a moment, as if to weigh his words. "No, _Herr General,_ I believe there is nothing more--in which you can help me."

The old soldier's eyelids flickered for an instant. "Then I bid you a very good day," he said, bowing.

The baron hurried home, to share the big good news with his wife.

The little bad news she knew already. Together they grieved over the two fallen trees and rejoiced under the golden shadow of their untouched companions. The officers had called for wine, and more wine, and yet more wine, and were drinking deep and singing loud in the dining-room.

In the morning came an orderly with a despatch from headquarters, ordering the prince and the count to duty in a dirty village of the coal region. Their baggage was packed into the automobile, and they mounted their horses and went away in a rage.

"You will be sorry for this, dumbhead," growled the prince, scowling fiercely. "Yes," added Ludra, with a hateful grin, "we shall meet again, dear landlord, and you will be sorry."

Their host bowed and said nothing.

Some weeks later the princely automobile came to the door of the chateau. The forester brought up word that the Prince Barenberg and the Count Ludra were below with a message from headquarters; the commandant wished the baron to come there immediately; the automobile was sent to bring him. He made ready to go. His wife and his servant tried hard to dissuade him: it was late, almost dark, and very cold--not likely the commandant had sent for him--it might be all a trick of those officers--they were hateful men--they would play some cruel prank for revenge. But the old man was obstinate in his resolve; he must do what was required of him, he must not even run the risk of slighting the commandant's wishes; after all, no great harm could come to him.

When he reached the steps he saw the count in the front seat, beside the chauffeur, grinning; and the prince's harsh voice, made soft as possible, called from the shadowy interior of the car:

"Come in, baron. The general has sent for you in a hurry. We will take you like lightning. How fine your beeches look against the sky. What?"

The old man stepped into the dusky car. It rolled down the long aisle, between the smooth gray columns, beneath the fan-tracery of the low arches, out on to the stony highway. Thus the tree-lover was taken from his sanctuary.

He did not return the next day, nor the day after. His wife, tortured by anxiety, went to the district headquarters. The commandant was away. The aide could not enlighten her. There had been no message sent to the baron--that was certain. Major Barenberg and Captain Ludra had been transferred to another command. Unfortunately, nothing could be done except to report the case.

The brave woman was not broken by her anguish, but raised to the height of heroic devotion. She dedicated herself to the search for her husband. The faithful forester, convinced that his master had been killed, was like a slow, sure bloodhound on the track of the murderers. He got a trace of them in a neighboring village, where their car had been seen to pa.s.s at dusk on the fatal day. The officers were in it, but not the baron. The forester got a stronger scent of them in a wine-house, where their chauffeur had babbled mysteriously on the following day. The old woodsman followed the trail with inexhaustible patience.

"I shall bring the master's body home," he said to his mistress, "and G.o.d will use me to avenge his murder."

A few weeks later he found his master's corpse hidden in a hollow on the edge of the forest, half-covered with broken branches, rotting leaves, and melting snow. There were three bullets in the body. They had been fired at close range.

The widow's heart, pa.s.sing from the torture of uncertainty to the calm of settled grief, had still a sacred duty to live for. She had not forgotten her husband's dream. She went to the cardinal-archbishop to beg the consecration of a little burial-plot at the foot of the greatest of the beeches of Azan. That wise and brave prince of the church consented with words of tender consolation, and promised his aid in the pursuit of the criminals.

"Eminence," she said, weeping, "you are very good to me. G.o.d will reward you. He is just. He will repay. But my heart's desire is to follow my husband's dream."

So the body of the old botanist was brought back to the shadow of the great beech-trees, and was buried there, like the bones of a martyr, within the sanctuary.

Is this the end of the story?

Who can say?

It is written also, among the records of Belgium, that the faithful forester disappeared mysteriously a few weeks later. His body was found in the forest and laid near his master.

Another record tells of the trial of Prince Barenberg and Count Ludra before a court martial, The count was sentenced to ten years of labor _on his own estate._ The death-sentence of the prince was commuted to imprisonment _in some unnamed place._ So far the story of German justice.

But of the other kind of justice--the poetic, the Divine--the record is not yet complete.

I know only that there is a fatherless girl working and praying in a hospital in England, and a fatherless boy fighting and praying in the muddy trenches near Ypres, and a lonely woman walking and praying under certain great beech-trees at the Chateau d'Azan. The burden of their prayer is the same. Night and day it rises to Him who will judge the world in righteousness and before whose eyes the wicked shall not stand.

September, 1918.

THE KING'S HIGH WAY

In the last remnant of Belgium, a corner yet unconquered by the German horde, I saw a tall young man walking among the dunes, between the sodden lowland and the tumbling sea.

The hills where he trod were of sand heaped high by the western winds; and the growth over them was wire-gra.s.s and thistles, bayberry and golden broom and stunted pine, with many humble wild flowers--things of no use, yet beautiful.

The sky above was gray; the northern sea was gray; the southern fields were hazy gray over green; the smoke of sh.e.l.ls bursting in the air was gray. Gray was the skeleton of the ruined city in the distance; gray were the shattered spires and walls of a dozen hamlets on the horizon; gray, the eyes of the young man who walked in faded blue uniform, in the remnant of Belgium. But there was an indomitable light in his eyes, by which I knew that he was a King.

"Sir," I said, "I am sure that you are his Majesty, the King of Belgium."

He bowed, and a pleasant smile relaxed his tired face.

"Pardon, monsieur," he answered, "but you make the usual mistake in my t.i.tle. If I were only 'the King of Belgium,' you see, I should have but a poor kingdom now--only this narrow strip of earth, perhaps four hundred square miles of debris, just a _'pou sto,'_ a place to stand, enough to fight on, and if need be to die in."

His hand swept around the half-circle of dull landscape visible southward from the top of the loftiest dune, the _Hooge Blikker._ It was a land of slow-winding streams and straight ca.n.a.ls and flat fields, with here and there a clump of woods or a slight rise of ground, but for the most part level and monotonous, a checker-board landscape--stretching away until the eyes rested on the low hills beyond Ypres. Now all the placid charm of Flemish fertility as gone from the land--it was scarred and marred and pitted. The sh.e.l.ls and mines had torn holes in it; the trenches and barbed-wire entanglements spread over it like a network of scars and welts; the trees were smashed into kindling-wood; the farmhouses were heaps of charred bricks; the shattered villages were like mouths full of broken teeth. As the King looked round at all this, his face darkened and the slight droop of his shoulders grew more marked.

"But, no," he said, turning to me again, "that is not my kingdom.

My real t.i.tle, monsieur, is _King of the Belgians._ It was for their honor, for their liberty, that I was willing to lose my land and risk my crown. While they live and hold true, I stand fast."

Then ran swiftly through me the thought, of how the little Belgian army had fought, how the Belgian people had suffered, rather than surrender the independence of their country to the barbarians. The German cannonade was roaring along the Yser a few miles away; the air trembled with the overload of sound; but between the peals of thunder I could hear the brave song of the skylark climbing his silver stairway of music, undismayed, hopeful, unconquerable. I remembered how the word of this quiet man beside whom I stood had been the inspiration and encouragement of his people through the fierce conflict, the long agony: _"I have faith in our destiny; a nation which defends itself does not perish; G.o.d will be with us in that just cause."_

"Sir," I said, "you have a glorious kingdom which shall never be taken away. But as for your land, the fates have been against you.

How will you ever get back to it? The Germans are strong as iron and they bar the way. Will you make a peace with them and take what they have so often offered you?"

"Never," he answered calmly; "that is not the way home, it is the way to dishonor. When G.o.d brings me back, my army and my Queen are going with me to liberate our people. There is only one way that leads there--the King's high way. Look, _monsieur,_ you can see the beginning of it down there. I hope you wish me well on that road, for I shall never take another."

So he bade me good afternoon very courteously and walked away among the dunes to his little cottage at La Panne.

Looking down through the light haze of evening I saw a strip of the straight white road leading eastward across the level land. At the beginning of it there was a broken bridge; in places it seemed torn up by sh.e.l.ls; it disappeared in the violet dusk. But as I looked a vision came.

The bridge is restored, the road mended and built up, and on that highway rides the King in his faded uniform with the Queen in white beside him. At their approach ruined villages rejoice aloud and ancient towns break forth into singing.

In Bruges the royal comrades stand beside the gigantic monument in the centre of the Great Market, and above the shouting of the mult.i.tude the music of the old belfry floats unheard. Ghent and Antwerp have put on their glad raiment, and in their crooked streets and crowded squares joy flows like a river surging as it goes. Into Brussels I see this man and woman ride through a welcome that rises around them like the voice of many waters--the welcome of those who have waited and suffered, the welcome of those to whom liberty and honor were more dear than life. In the _Grande Place,_ the antique, carven, gabled houses are gay with fluttering banners; the people delivered from the cruel invader sing l.u.s.tily the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_ and the old songs of Belgium.

In the midst, Albert and Elizabeth sit quietly upon their horses.

They have come home. Not by the low road of cowardly surrender; not by the crooked road of compromise and falsehood; not by the soft road of ease and self-indulgence; but by the straight road of faith and courage and self-sacrifice--the King's High Way.

HALF-TOLD TALES