THE COURT-MARTIAL.
It has been the privilege of one or two famous Gardes du Corps to be a
law unto themselves. The Guard of Maäsau shares that privilege. The
inquiry or rather trial was to be held within closed doors, and by the
express order of the colonel-in-chief all the officers, including those
junior to the prisoner, were to be present. And every officer present on
such occasions had the right to vote. The procedure was simple. When the
witnesses had been examined the accused was invited to speak in his own
defence, then the senior officer summed up and lastly the officers
recorded their votes.
Rallywood's offence had outraged the fundamental principle of the Guard,
the blind self-sacrificing obedience which in trivial as in vital
matters demanded the merging of the private individual with hopes and
conscience of his own into the body corporate of the Guard. With the
single exception of Unziar, no man present was acquainted with the
details of Rallywood's crime. They knew only that he had grossly
disobeyed orders, and not only that, but had disobeyed them for the
furtherance of private ambition. So the charge against him intimated. It
was understood that the accusation had been lodged by Count Sagan in
consequence of information received by him, and the court-martial at
once assembled to deal with the matter.
The original prejudice against Rallywood as a foreigner and an
interloper was revived, with all the more bitterness because the men had
in the interval come to respect if not to like him. They resented the
deception they believed to have been practised upon them with the
rancour of those who find they have not only been played upon but made
tools of. Rallywood had gained his position among them by false
pretences to serve his own ends--gained it to betray them.
But more than this, he had dishonoured the Guard, brought the first blot
of treachery upon its long and unblemished traditions. Hereditary
instincts inbred and powerful were arrayed against him in the hearts of
six of his judges; in the seventh, Count Sagan, he had to encounter the
ill-blood of a profoundly vindictive nature whose purposes he had
crossed and baffled, and who harboured towards him a savage personal
hatred.
It must be understood that so far no hint of the arrangement with
England had been allowed to transpire. The engagement to be given by
Maäsau in return for the promised British loan and moral support was in
train for completion, but the final signature was not to take place till
that afternoon. Meantime the Chancellor kept a still tongue in his head
and waited upon events, knowing that when all transpired the
responsibility could be shifted on to the shoulders of the Duke. It was
a risky game, but M. Selpdorf had played many another--and won them all.
At the same time he had no intention of putting out his hand to save
Rallywood, whose disappearance from the scheme of earthly affairs would
remove an awkward cause of disagreement from the range of his own family
circle. Yet it must be admitted that M. Selpdorf really regretted that
the necessities of the case required the sacrifice of the Englishman,
for whom his former abstract liking remained entirely unaltered.
The doors of the great mess-room were closed, for within them the
court-martial was in progress. At the central table seven men with the
marks of power upon them were gathered. Above them the torn banners of
the regiment hung in the red gloom of the dome, but about the men
themselves the gray-white light of a winter day fell from the riverward
windows. It seemed to dull even the red glow of the hangings, that cold
light, which lent to the faces of those assembled a strange effect of
pallor.
It is a common experience that silence in a place associated in the mind
with voices and the movement and sounds of life has a weird and
impressive effect. Enter an empty church and you are chilled; hear a
will read in the room which you connect with laughter and the genial
routine of everyday events, and the uncanny quiet, falling away from the
single voice, benumbs you. Thus in the mess-room, where music and
laughter and the hubbub of men's talking usually resounded, the unwonted
stillness, broken only by the piercing wail of the _tsa_, struck coldly
and heavily upon the senses.
Count Sagan, his big chest covered with gold-lace and orders, loomed at
the head of the table, Wallenloup and Ulm to his right and left, Adiron,
Unziar, Adolf and Varanheim seated according to their rank. At the foot
of the table in the uniform of the Guard but without a sword stood the
prisoner.
One man present was a complete stranger to Rallywood--Major Ulm, who had
just returned from leave, and whose keen eyes set in a thin shaven face
scrutinised him coldly. Behind Ulm's bald forehead dwelt most of the
sagacity and discretion of the Guard. Strongly as his prejudices were
excited he could not avoid being struck by the bearing of the prisoner.
There was a cold fierceness about the men of the Guard, but Rallywood
stood unmoved under the many hostile eyes.
A court-martial, where the prisoner is condemned, is perhaps the most
awful scene of justice upon earth. This is so because it contains within
itself elements that edge its painfulness. The judges wield not only the
power of death, but the power of putting a man to utter shame. The
prisoners who stand at such a tribunal may be credited with the
capability, given to them by training if not by nature, of feeling
shame. And the capability of suffering shame is as distinct a quality as
the sense of honour.
Count Sagan glared round the table, and the aspect of his colleagues
pleased him; they felt under his rough imagination like a sword whose
temper the fighter is sure of. There was a horrible energy, a furious
relentlessness about his very attitude and ringing in his voice that
drove every word of his accusation into and through his hearers. As
president he put questions to the prisoner, who answered them unmoved.
Rallywood fronted them calm and soldierlike, the picture of a gallant
despair. He felt as though he stood clear of his life. It was lived and
the end in sight. His position was hard, but he seemed to be ready to
say Amen to whatever the fates might send. He had no thought of
struggling for life and love. He was far otherwise. He was one whose
love is hopeless, whose loved one is lost as though in death, and who
lives through the present dream according to an ideal, the ideal of
being worthy of the vanished past.
Unziar alone looked stonily blank, but the other grim faces round the
table regarded Rallywood with a sort of satisfaction. He had sinned
against them, but they were about to make him pay the highest human
penalty for his sin. Yet to Ulm his demeanour was suggestive. There was
something eloquent of singleness of heart and nobleness that seemed to
buoy up this man with his broken honour. There was no parade of
outraged innocence, nothing but a fearless reserve.
Rallywood hardly heard the grave voices that discussed his fate,
stirring as they did so the clogging quiet which hung with such solemn
effect over the historic room.
Those lofty walls had never before echoed to a similar charge or a like
disgrace. The accusation was set forth in general terms. It spoke only
of a certain prisoner and certain despatches. Rallywood acting under
valid orders, had taken over the despatches from Unziar, and next by a
false telegram to Unziar had ordered the release of a certain prisoner.
Also he had used the despatches to forward aims of his own, to the loss
and detriment of the Free State of Maäsau. Anthony Unziar gave his
evidence briefly and with caution, but it was conclusive.
After the charge had been completed and proved, a few minutes silence
ensued. Then Count Sagan addressed the prisoner.
'Captain Rallywood, have you anything to say in your own defence?'
A sudden jarring sense of amusement struck upon Rallywood. They were
playing a farce; Count Simon, with his mortal enmity, was but acting his
part. The whole procedure was hollow yet he Rallywood would have to give
his life to prove that all this seeming was deadly earnest--that the
blustering traitor opposite was not a defeated schemer but a loyal son
of Maäsau!
Rallywood could not repress a quick smile.
Count Simon flung his fist upon the table.
'Do you hear me?' he shouted; 'what have you to say in your defence?'
Rallywood looked him in the eyes.
'Nothing,' he said.
There was a hush. Sagan picked up the glances of the officers round him.
Rallywood's words had come as a shock. Most of the men expected some
attempt if not at a defence at least at a justification of his conduct.
Sagan's harsh voice was raised again.
'His sword.'
Unziar sprang up hurriedly.
'It is in the ante-room,' he said; 'I will bring it.'
Sagan rose from his place as Unziar returned with a naked sword in his
hand. The Count took it and laid it on the table before him.
Then standing he addressed the court.
'Gentlemen of the Guard,--I must thank you in the first place for the
admirable patience with which you have listened to the details of the
abominable crime with which the prisoner, John Rallywood, is charged.
His guilt has been proved up to the hilt by Lieutenant Unziar's
evidence, but in addition to that the accused was not ashamed to convict
himself out of his own mouth. The sentence upon a traitor as upon a
mutinous soldier is unalterable. It is death! No doubt, gentlemen, we
are unanimously agreed upon that, and the formality of the ballot is all
that is left.'
The ballot-box stood upon a side-table at the upper end of the room, and
beside it a basket with a number of ivory balls, some black, some white.
The officers went up in rotation and each with his back to the company
placed a ball of the colour he chose in the ballot-box.
The haggard daylight was fading slowly as the men left their chairs and
returned to them in silence.
Rallywood waited, not in suspense indeed, but with the full sense that
his fate was being legally recorded by a jury of his fellows. It is at
such a moment as this that a man goes back to his belief in God. If
there is no God, to what end anything? Those who say there is no God say
the world is a sad and very evil place. If their creed were universally
accepted, the last state of humanity would be worse than the first, and
earth degenerate into a hopeless and helpless hell.
'Six black balls, one white,' announced Major Ulm.
The prisoner's gray frank eyes flashed out at Unziar, but the Maäsaun's
rigid face gave no sign.
Then Count Sagan, secure of his enemy, let himself go. He lifted the
sword from the table, and casting one more glance at the prisoner, he
placed the gleaming point upon the floor, bending the delicate blade,
and stamping upon it midway with his booted heel. There was a shallow
ring as the steel broke, then a clash of metal as the Count flung the
hilt upon the point, as if the touch contaminated him.
'John Rallywood, this court has found you guilty and condemned you to
die! And I, Count Simon of Sagan, colonel-in-chief of the Guard of
Maäsau, now pronounce upon you the sentence of death. Trusted by the
Guard, you chose to betray them! Where is the oath of fealty by which
you swore to obey? We are polluted by your treason, we are tainted by
your shame! Are you afraid to speak? Is your voice frozen in your
throat? The greater part of your punishment should be in its shame. But
you cannot feel it! You and shame are strangers--the last infamy of the
base! You are loathsome, a mercenary false to his salt, a hound who sold
himself for money first and for disgraceful gain afterwards! How can I
touch you? Where can I prod you? On what nerve, since the nerve of shame
is dead? Like the groom, one could only punish you with a whip. I shall
lay the matter before the Duke. I will urge it upon my colleagues,' he
swept his arm round the table; 'a hundred with the whip or to run the
gauntlet of the Guard. That would touch you more than words, or shame,
or death! Ha, that reaches you!' he cried, and then there was a fierce
exultation in the raucous volleying words, 'You have disgraced the Guard
but we cannot for reasons of state publicly disgrace you. But you shall
be shot--shot like a dog! You shall not meet death face to face as many
a brave man has met it, but you shall be shot, cringing with your back
to the gun-muzzles--like the cur you are!'
Rallywood's pale features had flushed for a second. There was a
brutality about Sagan's denunciations which shocked the men around him.
Rallywood deserved something, but not this, not that! Unziar's eyes
burned, Wallenloup was frowning. But Sagan swept on. He was a man who
trampled horribly upon a fallen foe.
At last Wallenloup could bear it no longer. He rose to his feet and
saluting the Count led the way from the room, the line closing with
Rallywood between Adolf and Unziar as guard.
Left alone in the great dim vaulted chamber, Sagan stood upright and
watched the door through which they had filed out, and there came upon
him in the dying daylight a terrible moment, such as all uncontrolled
natures must at times know. A sense of the futility of all things, a
knowledge that life has lost its taste, the hideousness of finally
baffled desire.
He hurled out his heavy arms with a wild gesture.
'Where have they gone? Where are they, the strong lusts and hates and
triumphs--the satisfactions of the old days? The world has grown puny.
It is empty, empty, empty!'