As it lacked one minute to four when Hedworth Westerling, chief of staff
in name as well as power now, alighted from the gray automobile that
turned in at the Galland drive, the chauffeur thought well enough of
himself to forget the crush of supplies and ambulances that had delayed
His Excellency's car for at least ninety seconds in the main street of
the town. Though His Excellency had not occupied his new headquarters as
soon as he expected, this could have no influence on results. If he had
lost fifty thousand men on the first two days and two hundred thousand
since the war had begun, should he allow this to disturb his well-being
of body or mind? His well-being of body and mind meant the ultimate
saving of lives.
The Grays were winning; this alone counted in the present. They would
continue to win; this alone counted in the future. They had won by
crowding in reserves till the positions attacked yielded to superior
strength. Thus they would continue to win until the last positions had
yielded.
Five million mothers' sons against three million mothers' sons! Five to
three pounds of flesh! Five to three ounces of blood! With equal skill,
superior strength must always tell. Westerling and his staff were
responsible for the skill. If their minds would work better for it, the
nation could well afford to feed them on nightingales' tongues.
Confidence is the handmaiden of skill. Confidence is the edge on the
sword; confidence brings the final charge that wins the redoubt.
Confidence was reflected in Westerling's bearing and in his smile of
command as he passed through the staff rooms, Turcas and Bouchard in his
train, with tacit approval of the arrangements. Finally, Turcas, now
vice-chief of staff, and the other chiefs awaited his pleasure in the
library, which was to be his sanctum. On the massive seventeenth-century
desk lay a number of reports and suggestions. Westerling ran through
them with accustomed swiftness of sifting and then turned to his
personal aide.
"Tell François that I will have tea on the veranda."
From the fact that he took with him the papers that he had laid aside,
subordinate generals, with the gift of unspoken directions which is a
part of their profession, understood that he meant to go over the
subjects requiring special attention while he had tea.
"Everything is going well--well!" he added in a way that said that
everything must be if he said so and that he knew how to make everything
go well. "And we shall be up pretty late to-night. Any one who feels the
need had better take a nap"--the implication being that he did not.
"Well!" ran the unspoken communication of confidence through the staff.
So well that His Excellency was calmly taking tea on the veranda! For
the indefatigable Turcas the detail; for Westerling the front of Jove.
"Well!" The thrill of the word was with him in a flight of sentiment as
he stood on that veranda where a certain prophecy had been made to a
young colonel. Sight of the rippling folds of the flag of his country on
the outskirts of the town prolonged the thrill. His eyes swept the pale
horizon of the distances of plain and Mountain and lowered to the
garden. Above the second terrace he saw a crown of woman's hair--hair of
a jet abundance, radiant in the sunlight and shading a face that brought
familiar completeness to the scene.
He had told Marta only two weeks ago that he should see her again if
war came; and war had come. With the inviting prospect of a few holiday
moments in which to continue the interview that had been abruptly
concluded in a hotel reception-room, he started down the terrace steps.
Their glances met where the second terrace path ended at the second
terrace flight; hers shot with a beam of restrained and questioning good
humor that spoke at least a truce to the invader.
"You called sooner than I expected," she said in a note of equivocal
pleasantry.
"Or I," he rejoined with a shade of triumph, the politest of triumph. He
was a step above her, her head on a level with the pocket of his blouse.
His square shoulders, commanding height, and military erectness were
thus emphasized, as was her own feminine slightness.
"I want to thank you," she said. "As becomes a soldier, your forethought
was expressed in action. It was the promptness of the men you sent to
look after the garden which saved the uprooted plants before they were
past recovery."
"I wished it for your sake and somewhat for my own sake to be the same
that it was in the days when I used to call," he said graciously. "Tea
was from four to five, do you remember? Will you join me? I have just
ordered it."
A generous, pleasant conqueror, this! No one knew better than Westerling
how to be one when he chose. He was something of an actor. Leaders of
men of his type usually are.
"Why, yes. Very gladly!" she assented with no undue cordiality and no
undue constraint, quite as if there were no war.
"It was the Browns who cut the lindens?" he suggested significantly.
"They said that it was necessary as part of the defence," she replied.
"We shall plant new ones and have the pleasure of watching them grow."
Neutrality could not be better impersonated he thought, than in the
even cleaving of her lips over the words. They seemed to say that a
storm had come and gone and a new set of masters had taken the place of
the old. As they approached the veranda François was placing the tea
things.
"Quite the same! That was your chair, as I remember," said Westerling
after indicating to François that he might go, "and this was mine."
But the teapot was not Mrs. Galland's--it belonged to the staff.
"This is different," observed Marta, touching her finger-tip to the coat
of arms of the Grays on the side of a cup.
"Yes, my own field kit," he answered, thinking that the novelty of tea
from a soldier's service had appealed to her; for she was smiling.
"So, you being the host and I the guest now, why, you pour!" she said.
There was a touch of brittleness in her tone--of half-teasing,
half-serious brittleness.
"Oh, no, no!" he protested laughingly, and found her glance flashing
through her brows holding him fast in an indefinable challenge.
"I shall pour when you do us the honor to come to tea at the gardener's
quarters in the tower," she said.
"No, no!" he objected. "The tea conditions are the same as before."
He was earnest for his point. It would please his masculine fancy to
watch those firm, small fingers pausing over the cup before the plunge
of a lump of sugar stirred the miniature ocean in waves; to watch the
firm little hand in its grip of the handle of the pot.
"Conditions the same as before?" She laughed softly. "How can they be in
my thoughts or yours?" she asked with a sudden show of seriousness.
"We did turn you out of house and home--I understand!" he exclaimed
apologetically. "And that is the symbol of it to you!" He indicated the
coat of arms.
"The symbol of the conqueror, isn't it?" he asked playfully, for in the
company of women it pleased him to be playful.
"Conqueror? It's a big word!" she mused. "I hadn't thought of it in
connection with pouring tea"--which might be another way of saying that
she had just been thinking of it very hard and might be trying to find
whether it had a pleasant or an unpleasant side. Clearly, here was a
Marta different from any yet precipitated by the alchemy of war.
The resourceful variety of her! Oh, it was like the old days! It made
him feel young, as young as when he had been a colonel commanding the
garrison on the other side of the white posts. She had intelligence, yet
was at the same time distinctly feminine, with the gift of as much talk
about who should pour tea as about how to storm a redoubt. She did not
carry her mental wares on her sleeve. She flashed them in a way that
prompted curiosity as to the next exhibit. He had sought primarily,
selfishly, to be entertained at tea, and he was being entertained. To
want to win was his nature. He understood, too, that she wanted to win.
He liked that quality in her the more because it heightened the valve of
victory for him.
"Then, if you don't think of it in connection with pouring tea, let me
tell you what I think of when I sit on this veranda. I think of you as
hostess. You refuse to play the part!" he exclaimed with that
persistence, softened a little, perhaps, yet suggestive of the quality
characterized by the firm jaw and still eyes, which won his point at
staff councils. Again he was conscious of one of her sweeping glances of
appraisal, with just a glint of admiration and even approval tucked away
in the recesses of her smile.
"Suppose we compromise," she suggested thoughtfully, with the gravity of
one making a great concession. "Suppose you do the heavy work, and pour,
and I drop the sugar in the cups."
But Westerling always used a half concession as a lever to gain a full
concession.
"I'd really better do it all--act out the host and the conqueror!" he
declared. "One can't compromise principles."
"Oh! Why?" She was distinctly interested, leaning nearer to him and
playing a tattoo with one set of fingers on the back of the other hand.
"Anything except your doing all the honors leaves me in the same
invidious position," he answered. "It compounds my felony. It shows that
you do think that we failed by our conduct to show respect for your
property. It leaves me feeling that you think that I do not regard this
as your veranda, your garden, your home, sacred by more than the laws of
war--by an old friendship!"
He made his appeal finely, as he well knew how to do. A certain magnetic
eloquence that went well with his handsome face and sturdy bearing had
been his most successful asset in making him chief of staff.
The tattoo of her fingers died down while she listened to his final,
serious reasons about a subject that became peculiarly significant; and
her brows lifted, her eyes opened in the surprise of one who gets a
sudden new angle of light.
"You put it very well. In that case--" she said, and his glance and hers
dropped, his to the capable hand on the handle of the teapot, hers into
the cup. "With the honors of war and officers permitted to retain their
side-arms?" she asked.
"Yes; oh, yes!" he answered happily.
She smiled her acknowledgment with just that self-respect of
capitulation which flatters the victor with the thought that he has
overcome no mean opponent--the highest form of compliment known to the
guild of courtiers.
He was susceptible to it and, in turn, to the curiosity about her that
had remained unsatisfied at the end of their talk in the hotel. Her own
veranda was the natural, familiar place to judge the work of time in
those character-forming years from seventeen to twenty-seven. She was
not like what she had been in the artificial surroundings of a fortnight
ago. She filled the eye and the mind now in the well-knit suppleness of
figure and the finished maturity of features which bore the mark of
inner growth of knowledge of life. She was not a species of intellectual
exotic, as he had feared, too baffling to allow the male intellect to
feel comfortable, but very much, as he noted discriminatingly, a woman
in all the physical freshness of a woman in her prime.
"Just like the old days, isn't it?" he exclaimed with his first sip,
convinced that the officers' commissary supplied excellent tea in the
field.
"Yes, for the moment--if we forget the war!" she replied, and looked
away, preoccupied, toward the landscape.
If we forget the war! She bore on the words rather grimly. The change
that he had noted between the Marta of the hotel reception-room and the
Marta of the moment was not altogether the work of ten years. It had
developed since she was in the capital. In these three weeks war had
been brought to her door. She had been under heavy fire. Yet this
subject of the war was the one which he, as an invader, considered
himself bound to avoid.
"We do forget it at tea, don't we?" he asked.
"At least we need not speak of it!" she replied.
Safely, then, at first, their conversation ran not on the present but on
an intimate past, free of any possible bumpers. The train of memories
once started, she herself gave it speed if it stopped at a way station;
cargo if it went empty. Prone to avoid recollections that made him feel
old--to feel old was to be out of date in his profession---he found
these livening with the youth of thirty-two and gratifying as youth's
dreams become reality. Feeling as young as a colonel, he had the
consciousness of being chief of staff. This was enough to make any
soldier enjoy the place and the company and to drink his tea slowly so
as to prolong the recess from duty. His second cup growing cold, he was
reminded of the value of time, and with a playfully reproachful look at
Marta he put a warning finger of conscience on the papers that lay
beside the bread plate.
"There's work--always work for a chief!" he declared. "I--"
Marta was quick to act on the hint. Her hands flew to the arms of her
chair as she spoke.
"There's always the garden for me! But first--" Yes, first there was
poor Hugo.
Westerling flushed guiltily that she should have taken his words as a
hint, which was only half of his emotion. The other half shot out his
hand in a restraining, companionable touch on her forearm, while his
eyes--his calculating gray eyes--glinted a youthful entreaty.
"Please! I didn't finish my sentence!" he begged. "You remember that
often I used to wait after tea until the sunset--"
"And reached your quarters late for dinner, I also remember!" she put
in. But she remained in the same position, his finger-tips on her arm,
her hands holding her body free of the chair. "That is, when you did not
stay to dinner!" she added.
"I am staying to-night. I was going to ask if you wouldn't remain on the
veranda while I go over these papers. It--it would be very cosey and
pleasant."
One of these papers, she knew, must be the evidence against Hugo Mallin.
She preferred not to make a direct appeal but to have Westerling bring
up the subject himself. His smile and the look with which he regarded
her spoke his appreciation of the picture she made and his fear of
losing it. Very cosey and pleasant, yes, the company of a prophetess,
with a ray of sunlight making her hair an aurora of flashing bronze
overtopping a brown face, the eyes holding answers to an increasing
number of unasked questions about the new forces that he had found in
her.
"Why, yes," she agreed with evident pleasure, for she was thinking of
Hugo.
Turcas now came, in answer to Westerling's ring. The orders and
suggestions on the table seemed to be the product of this lath of a man,
the vice-chief, but a lath of steel, not wood, who appeared a runner
trained for a race of intellects in the scratch class. One by one,
almost perfunctorily, Westerling gave his assent as he passed the papers
to Turcas; while Turcas's dry voice, coming from between a narrow
opening of the thin lips, gave his reasons with a rapid-firer's
precision in answer to his chief's inquiries.
With each order somewhere along that frontier some unit of a great
organism would respond. The reserves from this position would be
transferred to that; such a position would be felt out before dark by a
reconnaissance in force, however costly; the rapid-firers of the 19th
Division would be transferred to the 20th; despite the 37th Brigade's
losses, it would still form the advance; General So-and-So would be
superseded after his failure of yesterday; Colonel So-and-So would take
his place as acting major-general; more care must be exercised in
recommendations for bronze crosses, lest their value so depreciate that
officers and men would lack incentive to win them.
Marta was having a look behind the scenes at the fountainhead of great
events. Power! power! The absolute power of the soldier in the saddle,
with premier and government and all the institutions of peace only a dim
background for the processes of war! Opposite her was a man who could
make and unmake not only generals but even the destinies of peoples. By
every sign he enjoyed his power for its own sake. There must be a chief
of the five millions, which were as a moving forest of destruction, and
here was the chief, his strength reflected in the strong muscles of his
short neck as he turned his head to listen to Turcas. Marta recalled
the contrast between Westerling and Lanstron as they faced each other
after the wreck of the aeroplane ten years ago: the iron invincibility
of the elder's sturdy, mature figure and the alert, high-strung
invincibility of the slighter figure of the younger man.
"The evidence you asked for in that Mallin mutiny case," said Turcas,
indicating the only remaining paper.
"Yes, I want to go into that--it's a question of policy," said
Westerling.
He had taken up the paper thoughtfully after Turcas withdrew, when he
looked up to Marta in answer to a movement in her chair. She had bent
forward in a pose that freed her figure from the chair-back in an
outline of suppleness and firmness; her lips were parted, showing a
faint line of the white of her teeth, and he caught her gazing at him in
a kind of wondering admiration. But she dropped her eyelids instantly
and said deliberately, less to him than to herself:
"You have the gift!"
No tea-table flattery that, he knew; only the reflection of a fact whose
existence had been borne in on her by observation.
"The gift? How?" he inquired, speaking to the fringe of hair that half
hid her lowered face.
She looked up, smiling brightly.
"You don't know what gift! Not the pianist's! Not the poet's!" (Oh, to
save Hugo! The method she had chosen to save him, alien to all her
impulses, born of the war's stress on her mind, seemed the wise one in
view of her knowledge of the man before her) "Why, of course, the
supreme gift of command! The thing that made you chief of staff! And the
war goes well for you, doesn't it?"
Delicious morsel, this, to a connoisseur in compliments! He tasted it
with the same self-satisfied smile that he had her first prophecy. To
her who had then voiced a secret he had shared with no one, as his chest
swelled with a full breath, he bared another in the delight of the
impression he had made on her.
"Yes, as you foresaw--as I planned!" he said. "Yes, I planned all, step
by step, till I was chief of staff and ready. I convinced the premier
that it was time to strike and I chose the hour to strike; for Bodlapoo
was only a convenient excuse for the last of all the steps"
The subjective enjoyment of the declaration kept him from any keen
notice of the effect of his words. Lanny was right. It had been a war of
deliberate conquest; a war to gratify personal ambition. All her life
Marta would be able to live over again the feelings of this moment. It
was as if she were frozen, all except brain and nerves, which were on
fire, while the rigidity of ice kept her from springing from her chair
in contempt and horror. She would always wonder how the bonds of her
purpose to save Hugo held her tongue But still another purpose came on
the wings of diabolical temptation which would pit the art of woman
against the power of a man who set millions against millions in
slaughter to gratify personal ambition. She was thankful that she was
looking down as she spoke, for she could not bring herself to another
compliment. Her throat was too chilled for that yet.
"The one way to end the feud between the two nations was a war that
would mean permanent peace," he explained, seeing how quiet she was and
realizing, with a recollection of her children's oath, that he had gone
a little too far. He wanted to retain her admiration. It had become as
precious to him as a new delicacy to Lucullus.
"Yes, I understand," she managed to murmur; then she was able to look
up. "It's all so immense!" she added. "And you have yet another paper
there?" she said with a little gesture that might have been taken as the
expression of a hope that she was not overstaying her welcome.
"This is very interesting," he said, watching her narrowly now, "the
case of a private, one Hugo Mallin, who refused to fight because he was
against war on principle. Four charges: assault on a fellow soldier,
cowardice, treason, and insubordination under fire."
"Enough, I should say!" said Marta in a low tone.
"A question of which one to press--of an example," continued Westerling,
reading the full official statement for the first time.
"What is the punishment?" she asked.
"Why, of course, death!" he replied, somewhat absently, in
preoccupation. "Extraordinary! And they have located him, it seems He is
here at headquarters!"
"Yes; certainly," Marta said. "We found him under a tree, deserted and
wounded, labelled coward, and we cared for him."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Westerling. "He must have appealed strongly to your
sympathies."
There was no sharpness in the words, but he had lapsed from the personal
to the official manner.
"To my sense of humanity!" Her reply was made in much the same tone as
his remark, where he had expected emotion, even passion. More than ever
was he certain that she had undergone some revealing experience since he
had seen her in the capital. "Yes, to any one's sense of humanity--a
wounded, thirsty man in a fever!" There came, with a swift and mellowing
charm, the look of a fervent and exalted tenderness and the
pulse-arresting quiver of intensity that had swept over her at her first
sight of Hugo under the tree. "I know that he was not a coward in one
sense," she added, "for I saw him make the assault named in the first
charge."
She proceeded with the story of what she had witnessed in the
dining-room. There was no appeal on Hugo's account. Appraising the
qualities of the Marta of the moment in contrast with the Marta of
seventeen and the Marta of three weeks ago, Westerling was significantly
conscious of her attitude of impartiality, free of any attempt at
feminine influence, and of her evident desire to help him with the facts
that she knew.
"The charge of assault is only incidental," said Westerling. "But Mallin
was in the right about his comrades entering the house; right about the
destruction of property. It is our business to protect property, not
only as a principle but as a matter of policy. We do not desire to make
the population of the country we occupy unnecessarily hostile."
"I judged that from your kindness in repairing the damage done to ours,"
she assured him, and added happily: "Though I don't suppose that you go
so far in most cases as to set uprooted plants back in their beds."
"No; that is a refinement, perhaps," he answered, laughing. She was not
only more agreeable but also more sane than at the hotel. He liked the
idea of continuing to despatch his work while retaining her company. "I
must have a talk with Mallin," he said. "I must settle his case so that
if similar cases arise subordinates will know what to do without
consulting me. Would you mind if I sent for him?" He reached for the
bell to call an orderly.
"Yes, I should like to hear what he says to you and what you say to
him," she confessed with unfeigned interest, which brought a suggestion
that he was to be put on trial before her at the same time as Mallin was
on trial before Westerling. His fingers paused on the bell head without
pressure. "I told him that you were a just man," she remarked, "that any
one would be certain of justice from you."
He rang the bell; and after he had sent for Mallin, warming under the
compliment of her last remark, he dared a reconnaissance along the line
of inquiry which he had wanted to undertake from the first.
"Mallin's ideas about war seem to be a great deal like your own," he
hinted casually.
"As I expressed them at the hotel, you mean!" she exclaimed. "That seems
ages ago--ages!" The perplexity and indecision that, in a space of
silence, brooded in the depths of her eyes came to the surface in
wavering lights. "Yes, ages! ages!" The wavering lights grew dim with a
kind of horror and she looked away fixedly at a given point.
He was conscious of a thrill; the thrill that always presaged victory
for him. He realized her evident distress; he guessed that terrible
pictures were moving before her vision, and he changed the subject.
"I know how revolting it must have been to have seen those soldiers
wantonly smashing your chandelier and gloating over their mischief," he
said. "Really, the Captain was to blame for letting his men get out of
hand. He seems not to have been a competent man. We can train and train
an officer, but when war comes--well, no amount of training will supply
a certain quality that must be inborn--the quality of command."
"Such as Dellarme had!" she exclaimed absently, under her breath.
She had forgotten her part and Westerling's presence. The given point of
her gaze was exactly where Dellarme lay when he died. She was
unconsciously smiling in the way that he had smiled. But to Westerling
it seemed that she was smiling at space. He was puzzled; his perception
piqued.
"Who was Dellarme?" he was bound to ask.
"The officer in command of the company of infantry posted behind the
sand-bags in the yard--he was killed!" she answered, turning her face
toward Westerling without the smile, singularly expressionless.
"Yes, he must have had the quality from the defence he made," agreed
Westerling, in the hearty tribute of a taxable soldier to a capable
soldier. So very well had that one small position been held that every
detail was graven on the mind of a chief of staff who was supposed to
leave details to his brigade commanders. It was he himself who had
ordered the final charge after the brigade commander had advised
delaying another attack until the redoubt could be hammered to pieces
by heavy guns brought up from the rear. "But he had to go!" Westerling
exclaimed doggedly; for he could not resist this tribute, in turn, to
his own success in making an example for timid brigade commanders in the
future by driving in more reserves until the enemy yielded.
"Yes!" she agreed without any change in the set face and moody eyes.
"You saw something of the defence?"
"Yes!" Marta replied in a way that aroused his imagination.
This, he recalled, had always been her gift. The slow-drawn monosyllable
was pregnant with revelations which his knowing mind could readily
supply. She had been in the midst of the fury of the most tenacious
fighting within a small space that the war had yet to chronicle. She had
been an intimate of the splendid desperation of the Browns; known their
thoughts and feelings. What a multitude of impressions were stored in
her sensitive mind, impressions which, for the moment, seemed to benumb
her! How she could make them speak from her eyes and quiver from her
very finger-tips when she chose! He would yet hear her vivid account of
all that she had seen. It would be informatory--a reflection of the
spirit of the Browns. Her quietness itself was compelling in its latent
strength, and strength was the thing he most admired. More and more
questions winged themselves into his thoughts, while his next one served
the purpose of passing the time until Hugo came.
"There was a man out of uniform, in a gardener's garb, in charge of the
automatic," he remarked. "It was so puzzling that I heard of it. You
see, there is no limit to what a chief of staff may know."
"Yes, our gardener," she replied.
"Your gardener! Why, how was that? Wasn't he in the reserves if he were
a Brown? Wasn't he called to the colors at the outbreak of the war?"
In spite of himself the questions were somewhat sharp. They seemed to
take Marta by surprise, which, however, was evanescent.
"I wonder!" she said, as interested as Westerling in the suggestion.
"Something a soldier would think of immediately and a woman wouldn't. I
know that we lost our gardener."
That was all. She did not attempt any further explanation or enlarge on
the subject, but let it go as an inquiry unexplained in the course of
conversation.
Had Westerling been inclined to pursue it further he would have been
interrupted by the arrival of a figure with a bandaged leg and head
which came hobbling cheerfully around the corner of the house on
crutches, escorted by an infantryman. The guard saluted and withdrew
into the background. Hugo saluted and removed his cap and looked at
Westerling with the faintest turn of a smile on his lips, which plainly
spoke his quizzical appreciation of the fact that he was in the presence
of dazzling heights for a private.
Marta had a single glance from him--a glance of peculiar inquiry and
astonishment, sweeping over the tea things fairly into her eyes. Then it
was gone. He might have been the most dutiful and respectful soldier of
the five millions as he waited on the head of the five millions to
speak.
Westerling read the four charges. Then he asked the stereotyped
question:
"What have you to say to them?"
When he looked up from the paper he saw a face that was a mask, a
gentle, pleasant mask, and blue eyes looking quite steadily into his own
with a sort of well-established and dreamy fatalism.
"Nothing, sir," said Hugo respectfully.
Westerling frowned. Though a confession of guilt simplified everything,
perhaps he frowned to find no embarrassment in his presence in the
private; perhaps he apprehended impertinence in the soft blue eyes.
"You know what that means--the charges sustained?"
"Yes, sir!"
"And you have nothing to say?" Westerling's frown deepened. There was an
undercurrent of urgency in his tone. This mild culprit, waiting for the
wheels of justice to roll over him without a protest, gave him no light
as to a policy that should apply to other cases. He resented, too, any
suggestion of readiness for martyrdom No man of power who is anything of
a politician and not a fool likes to make martyrs. "Nothing?" he
repeated. "Nothing at all in your own behalf?"
A faint expression appeared on the mask. So insistently could Hugo's
mask hold attention that Westerling noted even a slight, thoughtful
drawing down of the brow and one corner of the mouth. He could not
conceive that the laws of gravity could be upset or that a private would
undertake to have fun at the expense of a chief of staff.
"Nothing, sir, unless I should make a long speech," he said. "Do you
want me to do that, sir?"
Westerling held his irritation in control and looked around at Marta. He
saw only wonder in her eyes as she intently regarded Hugo, which was his
own feeling, he suddenly realized.
"I have hardly time to listen to long speeches," he remarked.
"I thought not, sir," replied Hugo, unmoved. "That is why I said I had
nothing to say. And in want of a long speech the best that I could do to
explain would be to ask you to read certain books."
An explosion of his breath in astonishment saved Westerling from harsh
expletives. For one thing, he was piqued. Though he would not admit it
even to himself, he had, perhaps, fancied the idea of playing the gentle
and patient dispenser of justice before Marta A private on trial for the
greatest of military crimes seraphically advising a chief of staff to
read books! There were not enough words in the dictionary to rebuke the
insubordination of such conceit! The only way to look at the thing was
as a kind of grim jest. He retrieved his vexation with a laugh as he
turned to Marta.
She was smiling irresistibly, in concert with his own mood, as she
continued to regard Hugo. Hugo's mask was entirely for Westerling. He
did not seem to see Marta now, and through his mask radiated the
considerate understanding of one who can put himself in another's
place--which was Hugo's besetting fault or virtue, as you choose. In
short, the chief of staff had a feeling that this private knew exactly
what he, the chief of staff, was thinking.
"Yes, I was certain, sir," said Hugo, "that you were too busy either to
listen to speeches or to read books. You have months of hard work before
you, sir."
His respectful "sirs" had the deference of youth to an elder; otherwise,
he was an equal in conversation with an equal. Westerling still kept his
temper, but the way that his under jaw closed indicated that he had made
up his mind.
"One charge is enough," he said in a businesslike fashion. "On the
firing-line you threw down your rifle. You refused to fight any more.
You said: 'Damn patriotism! I'm through!' Is that so?"
A slight flush shot into Hugo's cheeks; he twisted his shoulder on his
crutch as if he had a twinge of pain, but his face did not change its
expression.
"No, sir. I did not say: 'Damn patriotism!' I'm afraid Captain Fracasse
was out of temper when he reported that. I didn't say, 'Damn
patriotism!' because I did not think that then and do not now. Would you
care to have my recollection of what I said?"
"Yes!" breathed Marta with so intent an emphasis that Westerling turned
sharply, only to find her smiling at him. Her smile said that she
thought that Hugo's story would be interesting.
"Yes; go ahead!" said Westerling.
"I think that I can recall my words very accurately, sir," Hugo
proceeded. "They were important to me. I was the individual most
affected in the matter. I said: 'I am through. I will not murder my
fellowmen who have done me no wrong. I cannot, I will not kill!'"
"That is all?" queried Westerling, again looking at Marta, this time
covertly, while he played with a teaspoon.
Brooding uncertainty had flooded the sparkle out of her eyes. She was
statue-like in her stillness, her breaths impalpable in their softness.
But the points of her knuckles were ghostly, sharp spots on her tightly
clenched hands. All that Westerling could tell was that she was
thinking, and thinking hard. There was a space of silence broken only by
the movement of the teaspoon. Hugo was the first to speak.
"I believe in patriotism, sir. That means love of country. I love my
country," he said slowly.
A preachment of patriotism from this nonchalant private was a straw too
much for Westerling's patience. He made a nervous gesture--a distinctly
nervous one as he dropped the teaspoon. He would have an end of
nonsense.
"You will answer questions!" he said. "First, you dropped your rifle?"
"Yes, sir."
"You refused to fight?"
"Yes, sir."
"You know the penalty for this?"
Hugo inclined his head. He was silent.
"Shot for treason--and immediately!" Westerling went on, irritated at
the man's complaisance. Then he bit his lip. This was harsh talk before
Marta. He expected to hear her utter some sort of protest against such
cruelty, and instead saw that her face remained calm and that there was
nothing but wonder in her eyes. She knew how to wait.
"Then, sir," said Hugo, speaking, evidently, because he was expected to
say something, "I suppose, of course, that I shall be shot. But"--he was
smiling in the way that he would when he brought a "good one" to the
head in the barracks--"but it will not be necessary to do it more than
once, will it? To tell you the truth, I had not counted on being shot
more than once."
Westerling was like a man who had lunged a blow at an object and struck
only air.
"I said that he was not a coward," Marta remarked quietly. There was
nothing in her manner to imply that she was defending Hugo. She seemed
to be incidentally justifying a previous observation of her own.
A smile in face of death! Westerling's prayer was for countless masses
of infantry who would smile in face of death and do his bidding. He
could not resist a soldier's admiration, which, however, he would not
permit to take the form of words. The form which it took was a sharp
thrust of his fist into the hollow of his hand. He had, too, a sense of
defeat which was uppermost as he spoke--a defeat that he was bound to
retrieve.
"You have a home, a father, and a mother?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
"And perhaps a sweetheart?" Westerling proceeded.
Hugo unmistakably flushed.
"I don't think sir, that official statistics require an answer to that
question. I"--and again that confounded smile, as Westerling was
beginning to regard it--"I trust, sir, that I shall not have to be shot
more than once if we do not bring any one not yet officially of my
family into the affair."
"You do not seem to like life," Westerling observed.
"I love life!" answered Hugo earnestly. "I try to get something out of
every minute of it; if nothing particular, at least the miracle of
living and breathing and thinking and seeing--seeing such beautiful
scenes as this." He looked away toward the glorious landscape. It was
the first time that he had lifted the steady gaze of those studious blue
eyes from Westerling, but directly they were back on duty. "It is
because I love life," he continued, "and think that everybody else must
love life, that I do not want to kill. Because I love my country I know
that others love their country, and I want them to keep their country."
Marta's glance had followed Hugo's into the distance. It still rested
there intently. To Westerling she showed only a profile, with the shadow
of the porch between them and the golden light of receding day in the
background: a golden light on a silhouette of ivory, a silhouette that
you might find without meaning or so full of meaning as to hold an
observer in a quandary as to what she was thinking or whether or not she
was thinking at all.
Westerling had the baffled consciousness of fencing with a culprit at
the bar who had turned adversary. It was the visionary's white logic of
the blue dome against the soldier's material logic of _x_ equals initial
velocity. Here was an incomprehensible mortal who loved life and yet was
ready to die for love of life. Here was love of country that refused to
serve country.
All a pose, a clever bit of acting to play on his feelings through the
presence of a woman, Westerling concluded. And Marta was still looking
at the landscape. Her mind seemed withdrawn from the veranda. Only her
body remained. All the impulse of Westerling's military instinct and
training, rebelling at an abstract ethical controversy with a private
about book heresies that belonged under the censor's ban, called for the
word of authority from the apex of the pyramid to put an end to talk
with an atom at the base. But that profile--that serene ivory in the
golden light, so unlike the Marta of the hotel reception-room--was
compellingly present though her mind were absent. It suggested loss of
temper as the supreme weakness. He had permitted a controversy. He must
argue his man down; he must find his adversary's weak point.
"Your province is one of the most patriotic," he said. "Its people are
of the purest blood of our race. They have always been loyal. They have
always fought determinedly. To no people would a traitor be so
abhorrent. Do you want the distinction of being a traitor--one lone
traitor in your loyal province?"
Hugo was visibly affected. The twisted corner of his mouth quivered.
"I had thought of that, too, sir," he said.
"Suppose your father and mother knew that your comrades had labelled you
a coward before the whole army; that they had thought you worthy only of
kicks and to be left to die by the roadside. Suppose that your father
and mother knew that the story of Hugo Mallin, coward and traitor, who
threw down his rifle under fire is being told throughout the land--as I
shall have it told--until your name is a symbol for cowardice and
treason. How would your father and mother feel?"
There was an unsteady movement of Hugo's body on his crutches. He
swallowed hard, moistening dry lips; and the mobility of feature that
could change the mask into the illumination of varied emotions spoke
horror and asked for pity.
"I--I--as a matter of mercy, when I have admitted the charge, I ask you
not to bear on that, sir!" he stammered. Then the crutches creaked with
a stronger grip of his hands and a stiffening of his body as he mastered
his feelings. The mask recovered its own, even to the drawing down of
the corner of the mouth. "I have reasoned that all out, sir," he went
on. "It was the thing which kept me from throwing down my rifle before
we made our first charge. I have written a letter to my father and
mother."
Marta had been so engrossed in the landscape that she seemed not to have
been listening. It was her voice, come out of the distance, that asked,
without any inflection except that of tense curiosity:
"May we see the letter?"
As she turned her eyes looked directly into Hugo's, their gaze locked,
as it were: hers that of a simple request, his that of puzzled,
unsatisfied scrutiny.
"May we?" she repeated to Westerling, looking now frankly at him,
"though I don't know as it is in keeping with the situation or with your
wishes to grant the whim of a woman. But you see," she added smiling,
"that is what comes of having a woman present."
If she had any double meaning Westerling could not find it in her eyes.
"I am willing," said Hugo. "Indeed, I shall be very glad to have my side
heard."
"Yes, let us see the letter," assented Westerling; for he, too, was
curious.
When Hugo had given it to Westerling and he saw that it was not very
long, he began reading aloud:
"'I've kept very well and cheerful and I'm cheerful now,'" the letter
began. "'Please always think of me as cheerful. Everybody in our company
has fought well; just as bravely as our forefathers did in the wars of
their day.'"
"Which hardly agrees with your ideas," observed Westerling.
"Exactly, sir. Men should be brave for their convictions," answered
Hugo. "And, as you said, the men of our province are loyal to the old
ideas. They believe they ought to fight the Browns."
Then followed a brief, intimate, appealing story of how each of his dead
comrades had fallen.
"'You can read these to their folks at home, if you want to. They might
like to know.'"
Irresistibly there crept into Westerling's face at these recitals of
soldierly courage the satisfaction of the commander with the spirit of
his men. Here was proof of the valor of the units of his army.
"'Now I have something to tell you which will hurt you very much,'"
Westerling read on, "'but you must recollect that I was always regarded
as a little queer. And I don't think people will hold you to blame on my
account. I hope they will sympathize with you for having such a son. You
will have heard the story from the men of the company, but I also want
to tell it to you....'"
After it was told the letter proceeded:
"'I feel that I was a coward up to the moment that everybody else was
calling me a coward. Then I felt free and happy, as if I had been true
to myself. I felt that I had been just as much in the wrong as if we
should break into our neighbor's house and take his property because we
were stronger than he. How would you feel if a neighbor entered your
house and made it his own? You would call in the police. But what if
there were no police? Would that make it right?'"
Marta's own opinions! The spirit of her children's prayer! Head bent,
hands clasped, she was simply listening.
"'Would it be cowardice if one of the neighbor's family said, "I will
not take any further part in this robbery!" when he saw you, mother,
weeping over you, father, as you lay dead after trying to defend your
house? When I was asked to fire at those running men it was like
standing on a neighbor's door-step and firing down the street at my
neighbors in flight. I could not do it. I could not do it though twenty
million men were doing the same thing. No, I could not do it any more
than you could commit murder, father. That is all. Perhaps when those
who survive from my company come home, after they have been beaten as
they will be--'"
"What!" Westerling exploded.
All the force of his being had to take umbrage at this. Beaten! Marta
saw the rigid, unyielding Westerling who had cried, "We shall win!" when
she made her second prophecy. But the comparison did not occur to him.
Nothing occurred to him but red anger, until the first dart of reason
warned him, a chief of staff, that a private had made him completely
lose his temper. He recovered his poise with a laugh and without even
glancing at Marta.
"Well, we might as well hear the reasons for your expert opinion," he
said, his satire a trifle hoarse after the strain of his emotion.
"Because the Browns fight for their homes!" answered Hugo "When the
great crisis comes they have a reserve strength that we have not:
conscience, the intelligent conscience of this age that cannot fool
itself with false enthusiasm continually. They are fighting as I should
pray that I might fight if the Browns invaded our country; as I might
fight against a murderous burglar. For I will fight, sir, I will fight
with my face to the white posts, but not with my back to them! The
Browns have no more right to cross our frontier than we have to cross
theirs!"
There was a perceptible shudder on Marta's part, an abrupt, tossing
elevation of her head. She stared at the spot where Dellarme had lain in
the garden. Dellarme's smile was back on her lips; it seemed graven
there. Her eyes, which Westerling could not see, were leaping flames.
"I'm afraid you will not have the chance," Westerling observed, as he
returned the letter to Hugo, its reading unfinished. "What if every man
held your views? What would become of the army and the nation?" he
demanded.
"Why, I think I have made that plain," replied Hugo. He appeared no less
weary than Westerling over continual beating of the air to no purpose.
"We should retreat to our own soil, where we belong."
"And you are ready to be shot for that principle?"
The question was sharp and final.
"Yes, if being shot for what I did is dying for it--though I prefer to
live for it!" said Hugo, still without any pose. He refused to play for
a chapter in the future book of martyrs to peace. This was the
irritating thing about him to a soldier, who deprecated all kinds of
personal bravado and show as against the efficiency of the modern
military machine, when men were supposed to respond to duty in the face
of death as automatically as in any business requiring team-work, with
an every-day smile like Hugo's on their lips.
"Then," Westerling began, and broke off abruptly. His eyes sought Marta.
The affair seemed to have worn on her nerves also. There was a
distinctly appreciable effort at self-control in the slow way that she
turned her head. The flame in her eyes was suddenly suffused in a liquid
glance which slowly brightened with a suggestion.
"It is extraordinary!" she breathed. "Don't you think that the blow on
his head and the fever afterward has something to do with it?"
Hugo answered for himself.
"My views are the same as they were before the blow and the act that
brought the blow!" he said, with a slight cast of the eye toward Marta
which intimated that he wanted no help from the deserter of the
principles which she had professed to him previously.
She shuddered as if hurt, but only momentarily.
"Psychological, I suppose--psychological and irresponsible abnormality!"
she murmured, avoiding Hugo's look and bending her own on Westerling
persistently.
"Long words!" said Hugo. "Insanity is shorter."
But Westerling did not seem to hear. His thought was shaped by the
superb misery and sensitiveness in Marta's face. He had done wrong to
ask her to remain. Of course the scene had been painful to her. She
would not be herself if she wanted to see a man tried for his life. He
knew that views not unlike Hugo's were latent in many minds lacking
Hugo's initiative that would respond to the right impulse. A way out
occurred to him as inspiration, which pleased his sense of craft. The
press, which the premier reported was irritated by his censorship--the
press which must have sensation, the traffic of its trade--should have a
detailed account of how one of our indomitable regiments placarded a
private as coward, proving thereby that the army was a unit of
aggressive zeal.
"You are alone--one man in a million in your ideas!" he declared, with
judicial gravity. "We shall postpone your trial and leave public opinion
to punish you. Your story will be given to the press in full; your name
will be a byword throughout the land, an example, and while you are
convalescing you will remain a prisoner. When you are well we shall have
another talk I may give you a chance, for the sake of your father and
mother and your sweetheart and the good opinion of your neighbors, to
redeem yourself."
"I had to tell you what I felt, sir," said Hugo. "Thank you for letting
me live, after you knew."
He saluted and turned away. Marta and Westerling watched him as he
hobbled around the corner of the house and in a heavy silence listened
to the crunch of his crutch tips on the gravel growing fainter. Her
lashes, those convenient curtains for hiding thought, dropped as
Westerling looked around; but he saw that her lips had reddened and that
she was drawing a long, deep, energizing breath. When the lashes lifted,
there was still wonder in her eyes--wonder which had become definite
tribute to him. The assurance he wanted was that he had borne himself
well, and he had it.
"You kept your patience beautifully," she told him. "It seems to me that
you were both kind and wise."
"How I was to be merciful against the facts puzzled me," he replied,
"until you saved the day with your suggestion of psychological
irresponsibility."
"Then I helped? I really helped?"
"You did, decidedly! You--" There he broke off, for he found himself
speaking to her profile.
She had looked away in a sudden flight of abstraction, very far away,
where the lowering sun was stretching the shadows of the foot-hills
toward the white posts. Capes and pillars and promontories of shadow
there in the distance! Swinging, furry finger-points of shadow from the
tall hollyhocks in the garden swaying with the breeze! The dark shade of
the house's mass over the yard!
It was time for him to be at his desk. But she seemed far from any
suggestion of going. She seemed to expect him to wait; otherwise he
might have concluded that she had forgotten his presence. Yet were he to
rustle a paper he knew that she would hear it. Though she did not change
her position in the chair, she appeared subtly active in every fibre.
He found waiting easy, free as he was to watch the beauty of her profile
in the glory of the sunset. The superb thing about her was that she
always called for study. Her lips moved in sensitive turns; her breast
rose in soft billows with her breaths; the long, flickering eyelashes
ran outward from black to bronze and to feather tips of gold. In time
measured by the regular standard of clock ticks, which in the brain may
either race madly or drag mercilessly, she was not long silent. When she
spoke she' did not look entirely around at first; he had no glimpse into
her eyes.
"It was another experience of war," she said moodily, returning to the
subject of Hugo. "Yes, something like the final chapter of experience,
the trial of this dreamer." Then a wave of restless impatience with her
abstraction swept over her. Speaking of dreamers, she herself would stop
dreaming. "For experience does make a great difference, doesn't it?" she
exclaimed with a sad, knowing smile. After a perceptible pause her eyes
suddenly glowed into his. All the commotion of her thought was
galvanized into purpose in the look. "I have had a heart full and a mind
full of experiences!" she said. "I have been close to war--closer than
you! I have looked on while others fought!"
The thing was coming! He should hear the story of the change that war
had wrought in her. She appeared to regard him as the one listener whom
she had sought; as a confidant who alone could understand her. His gift
for listening was in full play as he relaxed and settled back in his
chair, shading his eyes with his hand lest he should seem to stare. For
in his eagerness he would not miss any one of her varied signals of
emotion.
She was as vivid as he knew that she would be, her narration flashes of
impression in clear detail. Her being seemed transparent to its depths
and her moods through the last week to run past him in review. He
marvelled at times at her military knowledge; again at her impartiality.
She was neither for the Browns nor the Grays; she was simply telling
what she had seen. She passed by some horrors; on others she dwelt with
fearless emphasis.
"Then the hand-grenades were thrown!" She put her hands over her eyes.
"As they fell"--she put her hands over her ears--"oh, the groans!"
"It was the Browns who started it!" he interjected in defence. "I had
hoped that we should escape that kind of warfare." He was too intent to
recall what he had said to the premier about using every known method of
destruction.
"And this is only the beginning, isn't it?" she asked piteously,
exhausted with her story.
"Only the beginning!" he agreed.
Again brooding wonder appeared in her eyes, while there was wonder in
his eyes--wonder at her.
"And you remain with your property!" he exclaimed in a burst of
admiration.
Once more she was looking away into the distance; once more he was
studying her profile. He knew that she had gone through her experience
without tears and without a scream. She had been subjected to his final
test of all merit--war. Courage she had, feminine courage. And he had
often asked himself what would happen if he, a great man, should ever
meet a great woman. He was baffled by the resources of a mind that was
held in detachment under her charm; baffled as to what she was thinking
at that moment, only to find her smiling at him, the wonder in her eyes
resolving itself into purpose.
"You see, I have been very much stirred up," she said half
apologetically. "There are some questions I want to ask--quite
practical, selfish questions. You might call them questions of property
and mercy. The longer the war lasts the greater will be the loss of life
and the misery?"
"Yes, for both sides; and the heavier the expense and the taxes."
"If you win, then we shall be under your flag and pay taxes to you?"
"Yes, naturally."
"The Browns do not increase in population; the Grays do rapidly. They
are a great, powerful, civilized race. They stand for civilization!"
"Yes, facts and the world's opinion agree," he replied. Puzzled he might
well be by this peculiar catechism. He could only continue to reply
until he should see where she was leading.
"And your victory will mean a new frontier, a new order of international
relations and a long peace, you think? Peace--a long peace!"
Was there ever a soldier who did not fight for peace? Was there ever a
call for more army-corps or guns that was not made in the name of peace?
He had his ready argument, spoken with the forcible conviction of an
expert.
"This war was made for peace--the only kind of peace that there can be,"
he said. "My ambition, if any glory comes to me out of this war, is to
have later generations say: 'He brought peace!'"
Though the premier, could he have heard this, might have smiled, even
grinned, he would have understood Westerling's unconsciousness of
inconsistency. The chief of staff had set himself a task in victory
which had no military connection. Without knowing why, he wanted to win
ascendancy over her mind.
"The man of action!" exclaimed Marta, her eyes opening very wide, as
they would to let in the light when she heard something new that pleased
her or gave food for thought. "The man of action, who thinks of an ideal
as a thing not of words but as the end of action!"
"Exactly!" said Westerling, sensible of another of her gifts. She could
get the essence of a thing in a few words. "When we have won and set
another frontier, the power of our nation will be such in the world that
the Browns can never afford to attack us," he went on. "Indeed, no two
of the big nations of Europe can afford to make war without our consent.
We shall be the arbiters of international dissensions. We shall command
peace--yes, the peace of force, of fact! If it could be won in any other
way I should not be here on this veranda in command of an army of
invasion. That was my idea--for that I planned." He was making up for
having overshot himself in his confession that he had brought on the war
as a final step for his ambition.
"You mean that you can gain peace by propaganda and education only when
human nature has so changed that we can have law and order and houses
are safe from burglary and pedestrians from pickpockets without
policemen? Is that it?" she asked.
"Yes, yes! You have it! You have found the wheat in the chaff."
"Perhaps because I have been seeing something of human nature--the human
nature of both the Browns and the Grays at war. I have seen the Browns
throwing hand-grenades and the Grays in wanton disorder in our
dining-room directly they were out of touch with their officers!" she
said sadly, as one who hates to accept disillusionment but must in the
face of logic.
Westerling made no reply except to nod, for a movement on her part
preoccupied him. She leaned forward, as she had when she had told him he
would become chief of staff, her hands clasped over her knee, her eyes
burning with a question. It was the attitude of the prophecy. But with
the prophecy she had been a little mystical; the fire in her eyes had
precipitated an idea. Now it forged another question.
"And you think that you will win?" she asked. "You think that you will
win?" she repeated with the slow emphasis which demands a careful
answer.
The deliberateness of his reply was in keeping with her mood. He was
detached; he was a referee.
"Yes, I know that we shall. Numbers make it so, though there be no
choice of skill between the two sides."
His tone had the confidence of the flow of a mighty river in its
destination on its way to the sea. There was nothing in it of prayer, of
hope, of desperation, as there had been in Lanstron's "We shall win!"
spoken to her in the arbor at their last interview. She drew forward
slightly in her chair. Her eyes seemed much larger and nearer to him.
They were sweeping him up and down as if she were seeing the slim figure
of Lanstron in contrast to Westerling's sturdiness; as if she were
measuring the might of the five millions behind him and the three
millions behind Lanstron. She let go a half-whispered "Yes!" which
seemed to reflect the conclusion gained from the power of his presence.
"Then my mother's and my own interests are with you--the interests of
peace are with you!" she declared.
She did not appear to see the sudden, uncontrolled gleam of victory in
his eyes; for now she was looking fixedly at the point where Hugo had
stood. By this time it had become a habit for Westerling to wait
silently for her to come out of her abstractions. To disturb one might
make it unproductive.
"Then if I want to help the cause of peace I should help the Grays!"
The exclamation was more to herself than to him. He was silent. This
girl in a veranda chair desiring to aid him and his five million
bayonets and four thousand guns! Quixote and the windmills--but it was
amazing; it was fine! The golden glow of the sunset was running in his
veins in a paean of personal triumph. The profile turned ever so little.
Now it was looking at the point where Dellarme had lain dying.
Westerling noted the smile playing on the lips. It had the quality of a
smile over a task completed--Dellarme's smile. She started; she was
trembling all over in the resistance of some impulse--some impulse that
gradually gained headway and at last broke its bonds.
"For I can help--I can help!" she cried out, turning to him in wild
indecision which seemed to plead for guidance. "It's so terrible--yet if
it would hasten peace--I--I know much of the Browns' plan of defence! I
know where they are strong in the first line and--and one place where
they are weak there--and a place where they are weak in the main line!"
"You do!" Westerling exploded. The plans of the enemy! The plans that
neither Bouchard's saturnine cunning, nor bribes, nor spies could
ascertain! It was like the bugle-call to the hunter. But he controlled
himself. "Yes, yes!" He was thoughtful and guarded.
"Do you think it is right to tell?" Marta gasped half inarticulately.
"Right? Yes, to hasten the inevitable--to save lives!" declared
Westerling with deliberate assurance.
"I--I want to see an end of the killing! I--" She sprang to her feet as
if about to break away tumultuously, but paused, swaying unsteadily, and
passed her hand across her eyes.
"We intend a general attack on the first line of defence to-night!" he
exclaimed, his supreme thought leaping into words.
"And you would want the information about the first line to-night if--if
it is to be of service?"
"Yes, to-night!"
Marta brought her hands together in a tight clasp. Her gaze fluttered
for a minute over the tea-table. When she looked up her eyes were calm.
"It is a big thing, isn't it?" she said. "A thing not to be done in an
impulse. I try never to do big things in an impulse. When I see that I
am in danger of it I always say: 'Go by yourself and think for half an
hour!' So I must now. In a little while I will let you know my
decision."
Without further formality she started across the lawn to the terrace
steps. Westerling watched her sharply, passing along the path of the
second terrace, pacing slowly, head bent, until she was out of sight.
Then he stood for a time getting a grip on his own emotions before he
went into the house.