Seated at the head of the table at luncheon, Mrs. Galland, with her
round cheeks, her rather becoming double chin, and her nicely dressed
hair, almost snow-white now, suggested a girlhood in the Bulwer Lytton
and Octave Feuillet age, when darkened rooms were favored for the
complexion and it was the fashion for gentlewomen to faint on occasion.
She lived in the past; the present interested her only when it aroused
some memory. To-day all her memories were of the war of forty years ago.
"I remember how Mrs. Karly collapsed when they brought word of the death
of her son, and never recovered her mind. And I remember Eunice Steiner
when they brought Charles home looking so white--and it was the very day
set for their wedding! And I remember all the wounded gathered at the
foot of the terrace and being carried in here, while the guns were
roaring out on the plain--and now it's all coming again!"
"Why, mother, you're very blue to-day!" said Marta.
"We have had these crises before. We--" Lanstron began, rallying her.
"Oh, yes, you have reason and argument," she parried gently. "I have
only my feelings. But it's in the air--yes, war is in the air, as it was
that other time. And I remember that young private, only a boy, who lay
crumpled up on the steps where he fell. I bandaged him myself and helped
to make his position easier. Yes, I almost lifted him in my arms" She
was looking at the flowers on the table but not seeing them. She was
seeing the face of the young private forty years ago.
"He asked me to bring him a rose. He said the smell of roses was so
sweet and he felt so faint. I brought him the rose--and he was dead!"
"Yes, yes!" Marta breathed. She, too, in her quick imagination, was
seeing the young private and spatters of blood on the terrace. Lanstron
feasted his eyes on her face, which mirrored her emotion.
"Oh, the groans of the dying in the night and the cheering when the news
of victory came in!" Mrs. Galland continued. "I could not cheer. But
that was, long, long ago--long ago, and yet only yesterday! And now we
are to have it all over again. The young men must have their turn. They
will not be satisfied by the experience of their fathers. Yes, all over
again; still more horrible--and it was horrible enough then! I used to
get giddy easily. I do yet. But I didn't faint--no, not once through the
days of nursing, the weeks of suspense. I wondered afterward how I could
have endured so much."
"Are we of the septicized-serum age equal to it?" Marta exclaimed.
"Yes, we of the matter-of-fact, automatic gun-recoil age!" put in
Lanstron.
"Oh, mother," Marta went on, "I wish you would go with me to the class
some morning, you who have seen and felt war, and tell it all as you saw
it to the children!"
"But," remonstrated Mrs. Galland, "I'm an old-fashioned woman; and,
Marta, your father was an officer, as your grandfather was, too. I am
sure he would not approve of your school, and I could do nothing against
his wishes."
She looked up with moistening eyes to a portrait on the opposite wall
over the seat which her husband had occupied at table. Lanstron saw
there a florid, jaunty gentleman in riding-habit, gloves on knee, crop
in hand. The spirit of the first Galland or of the stern grandfather on
the side wall--with Blücher tufts in front of his ears sturdy defiance
of that parvenu Bonaparte and of his own younger brother who had fallen
fighting for Bonaparte--would have frowned on the descendant who had
filled the house with many guests and paid the bills with mortgages in
the ebbing tide of the family fortunes. But Mrs. Galland saw only a
hero. She shared his prejudices against the manufacturers of the town;
she saw the sale of land to be cut up into dwelling sites, which had
saved the Gallands from bankruptcy, as the working of the adverse fate
of modern tendencies. Even as she had left all details of business to
her husband, so she had of late left them to Marta's managing.
"Edward and I were just engaged before the outbreak of the war," she
proceeded. "How handsome he was in his Hussars' uniform! How frightened
I was and hew proud of his fine bravado when I heard him and a number of
fellow officers drinking here in this room to quick death and speedy
promotion! Do they still have that toast, Colonel?"
"Yes, in some regiments," Lanstron answered. He would not say that what
was good form in the days of the _beau sabreur_ was considered a little
theatrical in the days of the automatic gun-recoil.
"And when he came--oh, when you came home," breathed Mrs. Galland to the
portrait, "with the scar on your cheek, how tanned and strong your hands
were and how white mine as you held them so fast! And then"--she smiled
in peaceful content--"then I did faint. I am not ashamed of it--I did!"
"Without any danger of falling far!" said Lanstron happily.
"Or with much of a jar!" added Marta.
"You prattling children!" gasped Mrs. Galland, her cheeks flushing. "Do
you think that I fainted purposely? I would have been ashamed to my
dying day if I had feigned it!"
"And you did not faint in the presence of the dead and dying!" said
Marta thoughtfully, wonderingly, leaning nearer to her mother, her eyes
athirst and drinking.
"But I believe it is only a wispy-waspy sort of girl that faints at all
these days. They're all so businesslike," said Mrs. Galland--"so
businesslike that they are ceasing to marry."
How many girls she had known to wait a little too long! If anything
could awaken Marta to action it ought to be war, which was a great
match-maker forty years ago. The thought of a lover in danger had
precipitated wavering hearts into engagements. Marta's mood was such
that she received the hint openly and playfully to-day.
"Oh, I don't despair!" she exclaimed, straightening her shoulders and
drawing in her chin with a mock display of bravery. "I believe it was in
an English novel that I read that any woman without a hump can get any
man she sets out for. It is a matter of determination and concentration
and a wise choice of vulnerable objects."
"Marta, Marta!" gasped Mrs. Galland. In her tone was a volume of
lamentation.
"Now that I'm twenty-seven mother is ready to take any risk on my
behalf, if it is masculine. By the time I'm thirty she will be ready to
give me to a peddler with a harelip!" she said mischievously.
"A peddler with a harelip! Marta, will you never be serious?"
"Some day, mother," Marta went on, "when we find the right man, you hold
him while I propose, and together we'll surely--"
Mrs. Galland could not resist laughing, which was one way to stop
further absurdities--absurdities concealing a nervous strain they
happened to be this time--while Colonel Lanstron was a little flushed
and ill at ease. She had a truly silvery laugh--the kind no longer in
fashion among the gentry since golden laughs came in,--that went well
with the dimples dipping into her pink cheeks.
Contrary to custom, she did not excuse herself immediately after
luncheon for her afternoon nap, but kept battling with her nods until
nature was victorious and the fell fast asleep. Marta, grown restless
with impatience, suggested to Lanstron that they stroll in the garden,
and they took the path past the house toward the castle tower, stopping
in an arbor with high hedges on either side around a statue of Mercury.
"Now!" exclaimed Marta narrowly. "It was you, Lanny, who recommended
Feller to us as a gardener, competent though deaf!" With literal brevity
she told how she had proved him to be a man of most sensitive hearing.
"I didn't let him know that he was discovered. I felt too much pity for
him to do that. You brought him here--you, Lanny, you are the one to
explain."
"True, he is not deaf!" Lanstron replied.
"You knew he was not deaf, while we wrote our messages to him and I have
been learning the deaf-and-dumb alphabet! It was pretty fun, wasn't it?"
"Not fun--no, Marta!" he parried.
"He is a spy?" she asked.
"Yes, a spy. You can put things in a bright light, Marta!" He found
words coming with difficulty in face of the pain and disillusion of her
set look.
"Using some broken man as a pawn; setting him as a spy in the garden
where you have been the welcome friend!" she exclaimed. "A spy on
what--on my mother, on Minna, on me, on the flowers, as a part of this
monstrous game of trickery and lies that you are playing?"
There was no trace of anger in her tone. It was that of one mortally
hurt. Anger would have been easier to bear than the measuring,
penetrating wonder that found him guilty of such a horrible part. Those
eyes would have confused Partow himself with the steady, welling
intensity of their gaze. She did not see how his left hand was twitching
and how he stilled its movement by pressing it against the bench.
"You will take Feller with you when you go!" she said, rising.
Lanstron dropped his head in a kind of shaking throb of his whole body
and raised a face white with appeal.
"Marta!" He was speaking to a profile, very sensitive and yet like
ivory. "I've no excuse for such an abuse of hospitality except the
obesssion of a loathsome work that some man must do and I was set to do.
My God, Marta! I cease to be natural and human. I am a machine. I keep
thinking, what if war comes and some error of mine let the enemy know
where to strike the blow of victory; or if there were information I
might have gained and failed to gain that would have given us the
victory--if, because I had not done my part, thousands of lives of our
soldiers were sacrificed needlessly!"
At that she turned on him quickly, her face softening.
"You do think of that--the lives?"
"Yes, why shouldn't I?"
"Of those on your side!" she exclaimed, turning away.
"Yes, of those first," he replied. "And, Marta, I did not tell you why
Feller was here because he did not want me to, and I was curious to see
if he had sustained power enough to keep you from discovering his
simulation. I did not think he would remain. I thought that in a week he
would tire of the part. But now you must have the whole story. You will
listen?"
"I should not be fair if I did not, should I?" she replied, with a weary
shadow of a smile.