It was Marta who first saw the speck in the sky. Her outcry and her
bound from her seat at the tea-table brought her mother and Colonel
Westerling after her onto the lawn, where they became motionless
figures, screening their eyes with their hands. The newest and most
wonderful thing in the world at the time was this speck appearing above
the irregular horizon of the Brown range, in view of a landscape that
centuries of civilization had fertilized and cultivated and formed.
At the base of the range ran a line of white stone posts, placed by
international commissions of surveyors to the nicety of an inch's
variation. In the very direction of the speck's flight a spur of
foot-hills extended into the plain that stretched away to the Gray
range, distinct at the distance of thirty miles in the bright afternoon
light. Faithful to their part in refusing to climb, the white posts
circled around the spur, hugging the levels.
In the lap of the spur was La Tir, the old town, and on the other side
of the boundary lay South La Tir, the new town. Through both ran the
dusty ribbon of a road, drawn straight across the plain and over the
glistening thread of a river. On its way to the pass of the Brown range
it skirted the garden of the Gallands, which rose in terraces to a
seventeenth-century house overlooking the old town from its outskirts.
They were such a town, such a road, such a landscape as you may see on
many European frontiers. The Christian people who lived in the region
were like the Christian people you know if you look for the realities of
human nature under the surface differences of language and habits.
Beyond the house rose the ruins of a castle, its tower still intact.
Marta always referred to the castle as the baron; for in her girlhood
she had a way of personifying all inanimate things. If the castle walls
were covered with hoar frost, she said that the baron was shivering; if
the wind tore around the tower, she said that the baron was groaning
over the democratic tendencies of the time. On such a summer afternoon
as this, the baron was growing old gracefully, at peace with his
enemies.
Centuries older than the speck in the sky was the baron; but the pass
road was many more, countless more, centuries older than he. It had been
a trail for tribes long before Roman legions won a victory in the pass,
which was acclaimed an imperial triumph. To hold the pass was to hold
the range. All the blood shed there would make a red river, inundating
the plain. Marta, a maker of pictures, saw how the legions, brown,
sinewy, lean aliens, looked in their close ranks. They were no less real
to her imagination than the infantry of the last war thirty years ago,
or the Crusaders who came that way, or the baron in person and his
shaggy-bearded, uncouth, ignorant ruffians who were their own moral law,
leaving their stronghold to plunder the people of the fertile plain of
the fruits of their toil.
Stone axe, spear and bow, javelin and broadsword, blunderbuss and
creaking cannon--all the weapons of all stages in the art of war--had
gone trooping past. Now had come the speck in the sky, straight on, like
some projectile born of the ether.
"Beside the old baron, we are parvenus," Marta would say. "And what a
parvenu the baron would have been to the Roman aristocrat!"
"Our family is old enough--none older in the province!" Mrs. Galland
would reply. "Marta, how your mind does wander! I'd get a headache just
contemplating the things you are able to think of in five minutes."
The first Galland had built a house on the land that his king had given
him for one of the most brilliant feats of arms in the history of the
pass. He had the advantage of the baron in that he could read and write,
though with difficulty. Marta had an idea that he was not presentable at
a tea-table; however, he must have been more so than the baron, who, she
guessed, would have grabbed all the cakes on the plate as a sheer matter
of habit in taking what he wanted unless a stronger than he interfered.
Even the tower, raised to the glory of an older family whose
descendants, if any survived, were unaware of their lineage, had become
known as the Galland tower. The Gallands were rooted in the soil of the
frontier; they were used to having war's hot breath blow past their
door; they were at home in the language and customs of two peoples;
theirs was a peculiar tradition, which Marta had absorbed with her first
breath. Every detail of her circumscribed existence reminded her that
she was a Galland.
Town and plain and range were the first vista of landscape that she had
seen; doubtless they would be the last. Meanwhile, there was the
horizon. She was particularly fond of looking at it. If you are
seventeen, with a fanciful mind, you can find much information not in
histories or encyclopædias or the curricula of schools in the horizon.
There she had learned that the Roman aristocrat had turned his thumb
down to a lot of barbarian captives because he had a fit of indigestion,
and the next day, when his digestion was better, he had scattered coins
among barbarian children; that Napoleon, who had also gone over the pass
road, was a pompous, fat little man, who did not always wipe his upper
lip clean of snuff when he was on a campaign; that the baron's youngest
daughter had lost her eyesight from a bodkin thrust for telling her
sister, who had her father's temper, that she was developing a double
chin.
For the people of Maria's visions were humanly real to her, and as such
she liked and understood them. If the first Galland were half a robber,
to disguise the fact because he was her ancestor was not playing fair.
It made him only a lay figure of romance.
One or two afternoons a week Colonel Hedworth Westerling, commander of
the regimental post of the Grays on the other side of the white posts,
stretched his privilege of crossing the frontier and appeared for tea at
the Gallands'. It meant a pleasant half-hour breaking a long walk, a
relief from garrison surroundings. Favored in mind and person, favored
in high places, he had become a colonel at thirty-two. People with fixed
ideas as to the appearance of a soldier said that he looked every inch
the commander. He was tall, strong-built, his deep, broad chest
suggesting powerful energy. Conscious of his abilities, it was not
without reason that he thought well of himself, in view of the order,
received that morning, which was to make this a farewell call.
He had found Mrs. Galland an agreeable reflection of an aristocratic
past. The daughter had what he defined vaguely as girlish piquancy. He
found it amusing to try to answer her unusual questions; he liked the
variety of her inventive mind, with its flashes of downright
matter-of-factness.
Ascending the steps with his firm, regular tread, he suggested poise and
confidence and, perhaps, vanity also in his fastidious dress. As Marta's
slight, immature figure came to the edge of the veranda, he wondered
what she would be like five years later, when she would be twenty-two
and a woman. It was unlikely that he would ever know, or that in a month
he would care to know. He would pass on; his rank would keep him from
returning to South La Tir, which was a colonel's billet except in time
of war.
Not until tea was served did he mention his new assignment; he was
going to the general staff at the capital. Mrs. Galland murmured her
congratulations in conventional fashion.
"Into the very holy of holies of the great war machine, isn't it?" Marta
asked.
"Yes--yes, exactly!" he replied.
Her chair was drawn back from the table. She leaned forward in a
favorite position of hers when she was intensely interested, with hands
clasped over her knee, which her mother always found aggravatingly
tomboyish. She had a mass of lustrous black hair and a mouth rather
large in repose, but capable of changing curves of emotion. Her large,
dark eyes, luminously deep under long lashes, if not the rest of her
face, had beauty. Her head was bent, the lashes forming a line with her
brow now, and her eyes had the still flame of wonder that they had when
she was looking all around a thing and through it to find what it meant.
Westerling knew by the signs that she was going to break out with one of
her visions, rather than one of her whimsical ideas. She was seeing the
Roman general, the baron, the first Galland, and the fat, pompous little
man, no less in the life than Hedworth Westerling. She had fused them
into one.
"Some day you will be chief of staff, the head of the Gray army!" she
suddenly exclaimed.
Westerling started as if he had been surprised in a secret. Then he
flushed slightly.
"Why?" he asked with forced carelessness. "Your reasons? They're more
interesting than your prophecy."
"Because you have the will to be," she said without emphasis, in the
impersonal revelations of thought. "You want power. You have ambition."
He looked the picture of it, with his square jaw, his well-moulded head
set close to the shoulders on a sturdy neck, his even teeth showing as
his lips parted in an unconscious smile.
"Marta, Marta! She is--is so explosive," Mrs. Galland remarked
apologetically to the colonel.
"I asked for her reasons. I brought it on myself--and it is not a bad
compliment," he replied. Indeed, he had never received one so thrilling.
His smile, a smile well pleased with itself, remained as Mrs. Galland
began to talk of other things, and its lingering satisfaction
disappeared only with Marta's cry at sight of the speck in the sky over
the Brown range. She was out on the lawn before the others had risen
from their seats.
"An aeroplane! Hurry!" she called.
This was a summons that aroused even Mrs. Galland's serenity to haste.
For the first time they were seeing the new wonder in all the
fascination of novelty to us moderns, who soon make our new wonders
commonplace and clamor impatiently for others.
"He flies! A man flies!" Marta exclaimed. "Look at that--coming straight
for your tower, baron! You'd better pull up the drawbridge and go on
your knees in the chapel, for devils are abroad!"
How fast the speck grew! How it spread to the entranced vision! It
became a thing of still, soaring wings with a human atom in its centre,
Captain Arthur Lanstron, already called a fool for his rashness by a
group of Brown officers on the aviation grounds beyond the Brown range.
Naturally, the business of war, watching for every invention that might
serve its ends, was the first patron of flight. Lanstron, pupil of a
pioneer aviator, had been warned by him and by the chief of staff of the
Browns, who was looking on, to keep in a circle close to the ground. But
he was doing so well that he thought he would try rising a little
higher. When the levers responded with the ease of a bird's wings,
temptation became inspiration and inspiration urged on temptation. He
had gone mad with the ecstasy of his sensation, there between heaven and
earth. Five seconds of this was worth five thousand years of any other
form of life.
The summits of the range shot under him, unfolding a variegated rug of
landscape. He dipped the planes slightly, intending to follow the
range's descent and again they answered to his desire. He saw himself
the eyes of an army, the scout of the empyrean. If a body of troops were
to march along the pass road they would be as visible as a cloud in the
sky. Yes, here was revolution in detecting the enemy's plans! He had
become momentarily unconscious of the swiftness of his progress, thanks
to its hypnotic facility. He was in the danger which too active a brain
may bring to a critical and delicate mechanical task. The tower loomed
before him as suddenly as if it had been shot up out of the earth. He
must turn, and quickly, to avoid disaster; he must turn, or he would be
across the white posts in the enemy's country.
"Oh, glorious magic!" cried Marta.
"A dozen good shots could readily bring it down," remarked Westerling
critically. "It makes a steady target at that angle of approach. He's
going to turn--but take care, there!"
"Oh!" groaned Marta and Mrs. Galland together.
In an agony of suspense they saw the fragile creation of cloth and
bamboo and metal, which had seemed as secure as an albatross riding on
the lap of a steady wind, dip far over, careen back in the other
direction, and then the whirring noise that had grown with its flight
ceased. It was no longer a thing of winged life, defying the law of
gravity, but a thing dead, falling under the burden of a living weight.
"The engine has stopped!" exclaimed Westerling, any trace of emotion in
his observant imperturbability that of satisfaction that the machine was
the enemy's. He was thinking of the exhibition, not of the man in the
machine.
Marta was thinking of the man who was about to die, a silhouette against
the soft blue holding its own balance resolutely in the face of peril.
She could not watch any longer; she could not wait on the catastrophe.
She was living the part of the aviator more vividly than he, with his
hand and mind occupied. She rushed down the terrace steps wildly, as if
her going and her agonized prayer could avert the inevitable. The plane,
descending, skimmed the garden wall and passed out of sight. She heard a
thud, a crackling of braces, a ripping of cloth, but no cry.
Westerling had started after her, exclaiming, "This is a case for first
aid!" while Mrs. Galland, taking the steps as fast as she could, brought
up the rear. Through the gateway in the garden wall could be seen the
shoulders of a young officer, a streak of red coursing down his cheek,
rising from the wreck. An inarticulate sob of relief broke from Marta's
throat, followed by quick gasps of breath. Captain Arthur Lanstron was
looking into the startled eyes of a young girl that seemed to reflect
his own emotions of the moment after having shared those he had in the
air.
"I flew! I flew clear over the range, at any rate!" he said. "And I'm
alive. I managed to hold her so she missed the wall and made an easy
bump."
Marta smiled in the reaction from terror at his idea of an easy bump,
while he was examining the damage to his person. He got one foot free of
the wreck and that leg was all right. She shared his elation. Then he
found that the other was uninjured, just as she cried in distress:
"But your hand--oh, your hand!"
His left hand hung limp from the wrist, cut, mashed, and bleeding. Its
nerves numbed, he had not as yet felt any pain from the injury. Now he
regarded it in a kind of awakening stare of realization of a deformity
to come.
"Wool-gathering again!" he muttered to himself crossly.
Then, seeing that she had turned white, he thrust the disgusting thing
behind his back and twinged with the movement. The pain was arriving.
"It must be bandaged! I have a handkerchief!" she begged. "I'm not
going to faint or anything like that!"
"Only bruised--and it's the left. I am glad it was not the right," he
replied. Westerling arrived and joined Marta in offers of assistance
just as they heard the prolonged honk of an automobile demanding the
right of way at top speed in the direction of the pass.
"Thank you, but they're coming for me," said Lanstron to Westerling as
he glanced up the road.
Westerling was looking at the wreck. Lanstron, who recognized him as an
officer, though in mufti, kicked a bit of the torn cloth over some
apparatus to hide it. At this Westerling smiled faintly. Then Lanstron
saluted as officer to officer might salute across the white posts,
giving his name and receiving in return Westeling's.
They made a contrast, these two men, the colonel of the Grays, swart and
sturdy, his physical vitality so evident, and the captain of the Browns,
some seven or eight years the junior, bareheaded, in dishevelled fatigue
uniform, his lips twitching, his slender body quivering with the pain
that he could not control, while his rather bold forehead and delicate,
sensitive features suggested a man of nerve and nerves who might have
left experiments in a laboratory for an adventure in the air. There was
a kind of challenge in their glances; the challenge of an ancient feud
of their peoples; of the professional rivalry of polite duellists.
Lanstron's slight figure seemed to express the weaker number of the
three million soldiers of the Browns; Westerling's bulkier one, the four
million five hundred thousand of the Grays.
"You had a narrow squeak and you made a very snappy recovery at the last
second," said Westerling, passing a compliment across the white posts.
Marta could literally see a white post there between the two.
"That's in the line of duty for you and me, isn't it?" Lanstron
replied, his voice thick with pain as he forced a smile.
There was no pose in his fortitude. He was evidently disgusted with
himself over the whole business, and he turned to the group of three
officers and a civilian who alighted from a big Brown army automobile as
if he were prepared to have them say their worst. They seemed between
the impulse of reprimanding and embracing him.
"I hope that you are not surprised at the result," said the oldest of
the officers, a man of late middle age, rather affectionately and
teasingly. He wore a single order on his breast, a plain iron cross, and
the insignia of his rank was that of a field-marshal.
"Not now. I should be again, sir," said Lanstron, looking full at the
field-marshal in the appeal of one asking for another chance. "I was
wool-gathering. My mind was off duty for a second and I got a lesson in
self-control at the expense of the machine. I treated it worse than it
deserved, and it treated me better than I deserved. But I shall not
wool-gather next time. I've got a reminder more urgent than a string
tied around my finger."
"Yes, that hand needs immediate attention," said the doctor. He and
another officer began helping Lanstron into the automobile.
"The first flight ever made over a range--even a low one! Thirty miles
straightaway!" remarked the civilian, making a cursory examination of
the wreck of the machine which was a pattern known by his name.
"Very educational for our young man," said the field-marshal, and at
sight of Mrs. Galland paused while they exchanged the greetings of old
friends.
"Your Excellency, may we send back for you, sir?" called the doctor. He
was not one to let rank awe him when duty pressed. "This hand ought to
be at the hospital at once."
"I'm coming along. I've a train to catch," replied His Excellency,
springing into the car. "No more wool-gathering, eh?" he said, giving
Lanstron a pat on the shoulder. To Lanstron this pat meant another
chance.
"Good-by!" he called to the young girl, who was still watching him with
big, sympathetic eyes. "I am coming back soon and land in the field,
there, and when I do. I'll claim a bunch of flowers."
"Do! What fun!" she cried, as the car started.
"The field-marshal was Partow, their chief of staff?" Westerling asked.
"Yes," said Mrs. Galland. "I remember when he was a young infantry
officer before the last war, before he had won the iron cross and become
so great. He was not of an army family--a doctor's son, but very clever
and skilful."
"Getting a little old for his work!" remarked Westerling. "But
apparently he is keen enough to take a personal interest in anything
new."
"Wasn't it thrilling and--and terrible!" Marta exclaimed.
"Yes, like war at our own door again," replied Mrs. Galland, who knew
war. She had seen war raging on the pass road. "Lanstron, the young man
said his name was," she resumed after a pause. "No doubt the Lanstrons
of Thorbourg. An old family and many of them in the army."
"The way he refused to give in--that was fine!" said Marta.
Westerling, who had been engrossed in his own thoughts, looked up.
"Courage is the cheapest thing an army has! You can get hundreds of
young officers who are glad to take a risk of that kind. The thing is,"
and his fingers pressed in on the palm of his hand in a pounding gesture
of the forearm, "to direct and command--head work--organization!"
"If war should come again--" Marta began. Mrs. Galland nudged her. A
Brown never mentioned war to an officer of the Grays; it was not at all
in the accepted proprieties. But Marta rushed on: "So many would be
engaged that it would be more horrible than ever."
"You cannot make omelets without breaking eggs," Westerling answered
with suave finality.
"I wonder if the baron ever said that!" Marta recollected that it was a
favorite expression of the fat, pompous little man. "It sounds like the
baron, at all events."
Westerling did not mind being likened to the baron. It was a
corroboration of her prophecy. The baron must have been a great leader
of men in his time.
"The aeroplane will take its place as an auxiliary," he went on, his
mind still running on the theme of her prophecy, which the meeting with
Lanstron had quickened. "But war will, as ever, be won by the bayonet
that takes and holds a position. We shall have no miracle victories,
no--"
There he broke off. He did not accompany Mrs. Galland and Marta back to
the house, but made his adieus at the garden-gate.
"I'm sure that I shall never marry a soldier!" Marta burst out as she
and her mother were ascending the steps.
"No?" exclaimed Mrs. Galland with the rising inflection of a placid
scepticism that would not be drawn into an argument. Another of Marta's
explosions! It was not yet time to think of marriage for her. If it had
been Mrs. Galland would not have been so hospitable to Colonel
Westerling. She would hardly have been, even if the colonel had been
younger, say, of Captain Lanstron's age. Though an officer was an
officer, whether of the Browns or the Grays, and, perforce, a gentleman
to be received with the politeness of a common caste, every beat of her
heart was loyal to her race. Her daughter's hand was not for any Gray.
Young Lanstron certainly must be of the Thorbourg Lanstrons, she mused.
A most excellent family! Of course, Marta would marry an officer. It
was the natural destiny of a Galland woman. Yet she was sometimes
worried about Marta's whimsies. She, too, could wonder what Marta would
be like in five years.