For the next two weeks Marta's rôle resolved itself into a kind of
routine. Their cramped quarters became spacious to the three women in
the intimacy of the common secret shared by them under the very nose of
the staff. With little Clarissa Eileen, they formed the only feminine
society in the neighborhood. On sunshiny days Mrs. Galland was usually
to be found in her favorite chair outside the tower door; and here Minna
set the urn on a table at four-thirty as in the old days.
No member of the staff was more frequently present at Marta's teas than
Bouchard, who was developing his social instinct late in life by sitting
in the background and allowing others to do the talking while he watched
and listened. In his hearing, Marta's attitude toward the progress of
the war was sympathetic but never interrogatory, while she shared
attention with Clarissa Eileen, who was in danger of becoming spoiled by
officers who had children of their own at home. After the reports of
killed and wounded, which came with such appalling regularity, it was a
relief to hear of the day's casualties among Clarissa's dolls. The chief
of transportation and supply rode her on his shoulder; the chief of
tactics played hide-and-seek with her; the chief engineer built her a
doll house of stones with his own hands; and the chief medical officer
was as concerned when she caught a cold as if the health of the army
were at stake.
"We mustn't get too set up over all this attention, Clarissa Eileen, my
rival," said Marta to the child. "You are the only little girl and I am
the only big girl within reach. If there were lots of others it would
be different."
She had occasional glimpses of Hugo Mallin on his crutches, keeping in
the vicinity of the shrubbery that screened the stable from the house.
How Marta longed to talk with him! But he was always attended by a
soldier, and under the rigorous discipline that held all her impulses
subservient to her purpose she passed by him without a word lest she
compromise her position.
Bouchard was losing flesh; his eyes were sinking deeper under a heavier
frown. His duty being to get information, he was gaining none. His duty
being to keep the Grays' secrets, there was a leak somewhere in his own
department. He quizzed subordinates; he made abrupt transfers, to no
avail.
Meanwhile, the Grays were taking the approaches to the main line of
defence, which had been thought relatively immaterial but had been found
shrewdly placed and their vulnerability overestimated. The thunders of
batteries hammering them became a routine of existence, like the passing
of trains to one living near a railroad. The guns went on while tea was
being served; they ushered in dawn and darkness; they were going when
sleep came to those whom they later awakened with a start. Fights as
desperate as the one around the house became features of this period,
which was only a warming-up practice for the war demon before the orgy
of the impending assault on the main line.
Marta began to realize the immensity of the chess-board and of the
forces engaged in more than the bare statement of numbers and distances.
If a first attack on a position failed, the wires from the Galland house
repeated their orders to concentrate more guns and attack again. In the
end the Browns always yielded, but grudgingly, calculatingly, never
being taken by surprise. The few of them who fell prisoners said, "God
with us! We shall win in the end!" and answered no questions. Gradually
the Gray army began to feel that it was battling with a mystery which
was fighting under cover, falling back under cover--a tenacious,
watchful mystery that sent sprays of death into every finger of flesh
that the Grays thrust forward in assault.
"Another position taken. Our advance continues," was the only news that
Westerling gave to the army, his people, and the world, which forgot its
sports and murders and divorce cases in following the progress of the
first great European war for two generations. He made no mention of the
costs; his casualty lists were secret. The Gray hosts were sweeping
forward as a slow, irresistible tide; this by Partow's own admission. He
announced the loss of a position as promptly as the Grays its taking. He
published a daily list of casualties so meagre in contrast to their own
that the Grays thought it false; he made known the names of the killed
and wounded to their relatives. Yet the seeming candor of his press
bureau included no straw of information of military value to the enemy.
Westerling never went to tea at the Gallands' with the other officers,
for it was part of his cultivation of greatness to keep aloof from his
subordinates. His meetings with Marta happened casually when he went out
into the garden. Only once had he made any reference to the "And then"
of their interview in the arbor.
"I am winning battles for _you_!" he had exclaimed with that thing in
his eyes which she loathed.
To her it was equivalent to saying that she had tricked him into sending
men to be killed in order to please her. She despised herself for the
way he confided in her; yet she had to go on keeping his confidence,
returning a tender glance with one that held out hope. She learned not
to shudder when he spoke of a loss of "only ten thousand." In order to
rally herself when she grew faint-hearted to her task, she learned to
picture the lines of his face hard-set with five-against-three
brutality, while in comfort he ordered multitudes to death, and, in
contrast, to recall the smile of Dellarme, who asked his soldiers to
undergo no risk that he would not share. And after every success he
would remark that he was so much nearer Engadir, that position of the
main line of defence whose weakness she had revealed.
"Your Engadir!" he came to say. "Then we shall again profit by your
information; that is, unless they have fortified since you received it."
"They haven't. They had already fortified!" she thought. She was always
seeing the mockery of his words in the light of her own knowledge and
her own part, which never quite escaped her consciousness. One chamber
of her mind was acting for him; a second chamber was perfectly aware
that the other was acting.
"One position more--the Twin Boulder Redoubt, it is called," he
announced at last. "We shall not press hard in front. We shall drive in
masses on either side and storm the flanks."
This she was telephoning to Lanstron a few minutes later and having, in
return, all the news of the Browns. The sheer fascination of knowing
what both sides were doing exerted its spell in keeping her to her part.
"They've lost four hundred thousand men now, Lanny," she said.
"And we only a hundred thousand. We're whittling them down," answered
Lanstron.
"Whittling them down! What a ghastly expression!" she gasped. "You are
as bad as Westerling and I am worse than either of you! I--I announced
the four hundred thousand as if they were a score--a score in a game in
our favor. I am helping, Lanny? All my sacrifice isn't for nothing?" she
asked for the hundredth time.
"Immeasurably. You have saved us many lives!" he replied.
"And cost them many?" she asked.
"Yes, Marta, no doubt," he admitted; "but no more than they would have
lost in the end. It is only the mounting up of their casualties that
can end the war. Thus the lesson must be taught."
"And I can be of most help when the attack on the main defence is
begun?"
"Yes."
"And when Westerling finds that my information is false about
Engadir--then--"
She had never put the question to him in this way before. What would
Westerling do if he found her out?
"My God, Marta!" he exclaimed. "If I'd had any sense I would have
thought of that in the beginning and torn out the 'phone! I've been mad,
mad with the one thought of the nation--inhuman in my greedy patriotism.
I will not let you go any further!"
It was a new thing for her to be rallying him; yet this she did as the
strange effect of his protest on the abnormal sensibilities that her
acting had developed.
"Thinking of me--little me!" she called back. "Of one person's comfort
when hundreds of thousands of other women are in terror; when the
destiny of millions is at stake! Lanny, you are in a blue funk!" and she
was laughing forcedly and hectically. "I'm going on--going on like one
in a trance who can't stop if he would. It's all right, Lanny. I
undertook the task myself. I must see it through!"
After she had hung up the receiver her buoyancy vanished. She leaned
against the wall of the tunnel weakly. Yes, what if she were found out?
She was thinking of the possibility seriously for the first time. Yet,
for only a moment did she dwell upon it before she dismissed it in
sudden reaction.
"No matter what they do to me or what becomes of me!" she thought. "I'm
a lost soul, anyway. The thing is to serve as long as I can--and then I
don't care!"