"I shall take a little nap. There will be plenty to do later," said
Westerling, after the last telegram detaching the reserves for
concentration had gone.
Yes, he would rest while the troops were in motion. The staff should see
that he was still the same self-contained commander whose every faculty
was the trained servant of his will. His efforts at sleep resulted in a
numbing brain torture, which so desensitized it to outward impressions
that his faithful personal aide entering the room at dawn had to touch
him on the shoulder to arouse attention.
"There's nothing like being able to order yourself to sleep, whatever
the crisis," he said. But suddenly he winced as if a blast of bullets
had crashed through a window-pane and buried themselves in the wall
beside his bed. "What is that?" he gasped "What?" With appalling
distinctness he heard a cannonade that seemed as wide-spread as the
horizon.
"I was to tell you that the enemy has been attacking along the whole
front," the aide explained.
"Attacking! The Browns attacking!" Westerling exclaimed as he gathered
his wits. "Well, so much the worse for them. I rather expected they
would," he added.
Then through the door which the aide had left open the division chiefs,
led by Turcas, filed in. To Westerling they seemed like a procession of
ghosts. The features of one were the features of all, graven with the
weariness of the machine's treadmill. Their harness held them up. A
moving platform under their feet kept their legs moving. They grouped
around the great man's desk silently, Turcas, his lips a half-opened
seam, his voice that of crinkling parchment, acting as spokesman.
"The enemy seized his advantage," he said, "when he found that our
reserves were on the march, out of touch with the wire to headquarters."
Westerling forced a smile which he wanted to be a knowing smile.
"Exactly! Of course their guns are making a lot of noise," he said. "It
seems strange to you, no doubt, that they and not we should be
attacking. Excellent! Let them have a turn at paying the costs of the
offensive. Let them thrash their battalions to pieces. We want them
exhausted when we go in to-night."
"However, we had not prepared our positions for the defensive,"
continued that very literal parchment voice. "They began an assault on
our left flank first and we've just had word that they have turned it."
"Probably a false report. Probably they have taken an outpost. Order a
counter-attack!" exclaimed Westerling.
"Nor is that the worst of it," said the vice-chief. "They are pressing
at other well-chosen points. They threaten to pierce our centre."
"Our centre!" gibed Westerling. "You do need rest. Our centre, where we
have the column of last night's attack still concentrated! If anything
would convince me that I have to fight this war-alone--I--" Westerling
choked in irritation.
"Yes. The ground is such that it is a tactically safe and advantageous
move for Lanstron to make. He strikes at the vitals of our machine."
"But what about the remainder of the force that made the charge? What
about all our guns concentrated in front of Engadir?"
"I was coming to that. The rout of the assaulting column was much worse
than we had supposed. Those who are strong enough cannot be got to
reform. Many were so exhausted that they dropped in their tracks. Our
guns are at this moment in retreat--or being captured by the rush of the
Browns' infantry. Your Excellency, the crisis is sudden, incredible."
"Our wire service has broken down. We cannot communicate with many of
our division commanders," put in Bellini, the chief of intelligence.
"Yes, our organization, so dependent on communication, is in danger of
disruption," concluded Turcas. "To avoid disorder, we think it best to
retreat across the plain to our own range."
At the word "retreat" Westerling sprang to his feet, his cheeks purple,
the veins of his neck and temples sculptured as he took a threatening
step toward the group, which fell back before the physical rage of the
man, all except the vice-chief, his mouth a thin, ashy line, who held
his own.
"You cowards!" Westerling thundered. "Retreat when we have five millions
to their three!"
"We have not that odds now," replied the parchment voice. "All their men
are engaged. They have caught us at a disadvantage, unable to use our
numbers except in detail in trying to hold on in face of--"
"I tell you we cannot retreat!" Westerling interrupted. "That is the
end. I know what you do not know. I am in touch with the government.
Yes, I know--"
This brought fresh alarm into faces which had become set in grim
stoicism by many alarms. If the people were in ignorance of the losses
and the army in ignorance of the nation's feeling, the officers of the
staff were no less in ignorance of what passed over the long-distance
wire between the chief of staff and the premier.
"I know what is best--I alone!" Westerling continued, driving home his
point. "Tell our commanders to hold. Neither general nor man is to
budge. They are to stick to the death. Any one who does not I shall
hold up to public shame as a poltroon. Who knows but Lanstron's attack
may be a council of desperation? The Browns may be worse off than we
are. Hold, hold! If are are tired, they are tired. Frequently it takes
only an ounce more of resolution to turn the tide of battle. Hold, hold!
To-morrow will tell a different story! We are going to win yet! Yes, we
are going to win!"
"It is for you to decide, Your Excellency," said Turcas, slowly and
precisely. "You take the responsibility."
"I take the responsibility. I am in command!" replied Westerling in
unflinching pose.
"Yes, Your Excellency."
And they filed out of the room, leaving him to his isolation.
A little later, when François came in unannounced, bringing coffee, he
found his master with face buried in hands. Westerling was on the point
of striking the valet in anger at the discovery, but instead attempted a
yawn to deceive him.
"I fell asleep; there's so little to worry about, François," he
explained.
"Yes, Your Excellency. There is no need of worrying as long as you are
in command," said François; and Westerling gulped at the coffee and
chewed at a piece of roll, which was so dry in his mouth and so hard to
swallow that he gave up the attempt.
After Marta had learned, over the telephone, from Lanstron of the
certain repulse of the Gray assault, fatigue--sheer physical fatigue
such as made soldiers drop dead in slumber on the earth, their packs
still on their backs--overcame her. Her work was done. The demands of
nature overwhelmed her faculties. She slept with a nervous twitching of
her muscles, a restless tossing of her lithe body, until hammers began
beating on her temples, beating, beating with the sound of shell
bursts, as if to warn her that punishment for her share in the killing
was to be the eternal concussion of battle in her ears. At length she
realized that the cannonading was real.
Hastening out-of-doors, as her glance swept toward the range she saw
bursts of shrapnel smoke from the guns of the Browns nearer than since
the fighting had begun on the main line, and these were directed at
bodies of infantry that were in confused retreat down the slopes, while
all traffic on the pass road was moving toward the rear. Impelled by a
new apprehension she hurried to the tunnel. Lanstron answered her
promptly in a voice that had a ring of relief and joy in place of the
tension that had characterized it since the outbreak of the war.
"Thanks to you, Marta!" he cried. "Everything goes back to you--thanks
to you came this chance to attack, and we are succeeding at every point!
You are the general, you the maker of victories!"
"Yes, the general of still more killing!" she cried in indignation. "Why
have you gone on with the slaughter? I did not help you for this. Why?"
No reply came. She poured out more questions, and still no reply. She
pressed the button and tried again, but she might as well have been
talking over a dead wire.
* * * * *
Though the morning was chill, Mrs. Galland, in a heavy coat, was seated
outside the tower door, beatifically calm and smiling; for she would
miss rejoicing over no detail of the spectacle. The battle's sounds were
sweet music--symphony of retribution. Oh, if her husband and her father
could only be with her to see the ancient enemy in flight! Her cheeks
were rosy with the happy thrumming of her heart; a delirious beat was in
her temples. She wanted to sing and cheer and give thanks to the
Almighty. The advancing bursts of billowy shrapnel down the slopes were
a heavenly nimbus to her eyes. She breathed a silent blessing on a
manoeuvring Brown dirigible. They were coming! The soldiers of her
people were coming to take back their own from the robber hosts and
restore her hearth to her. Soon she would be seated on the veranda
watching the folds of her flag floating over La Tir.
"Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it like some good story?" she said to Marta.
"Yes, like a miracle--and there has been a Galland in every war of the
Browns and you were in this!"
Having no son, she had given her daughter in sacrifice on the altar of
her country's gods, who had answered with victory. Her old-fashioned
patriotism, true to the "all-is-fair-in-war" precept, delighted in the
hour of success in every trick of Marta's double-dealing, though in
private life she could have been guilty of no deceit.
"Marta, Marta, I shall never tease you again about your advanced ideas
or about journeying all the way around the world without a chaperon.
Your father and my father would have approved!" She squeezed Marta's
hands and pressed them to her cheek. Marta smiled absently.
"Yes, mother," she said, but in such a fashion that Mrs. Galland was
reminded again that Marta had always been peculiar. Probably it was
because she was peculiar that she had been able to outwit the head of an
army.
"Oh, that mighty Westerling who was going to conquer the whole world!
How does he feel now?" mused Mrs. Galland "Westerling and his boasted
power of five against three!"
For the Grays were barbarians to her and the Browns a people of a
superior civilization, a superior aristocracy, a superior professional
and farming and laboring class. There was nothing about the Browns to
Mrs. Galland that was not superior. War, that ancient popular test of
superiority in art, civilization, morals, scholarship, the grace of
woman and the manliness of man, had proved her point in the high court,
permitting of no appeal.
One man alone against the tide--rather, the man who has seen a tide
rise at his orders now finding all its sweep against him--Westerling,
accustomed to have millions of men move at his command, found himself,
one man out of the millions, still and helpless while they moved of
their own impulses.
As news of positions lost came in, he could only grimly repeat, "Hold!
Tell them to hold!" fruitlessly, like adjurations to the wind to cease
blowing. The bell of the long distance kept ringing unheeded, until at
last his aide came to say that the premier must speak either to him or
to the vice-chief. Westerling staggered to his feet and with lurching
steps went into the closet. There he sank down on the chair in a heap,
staring at the telephone mouthpiece. Again the bell rang. Clenching his
hands in a rocking effort, he was able to stiffen his spine once more as
he took down the receiver. To admit defeat to the premier--no, he was
not ready for that yet.
"The truth is out!" said the premier without any break in his voice and
with the fatalism of one who never allows himself to blink a fact.
"Telegraphers at the front who got out of touch with the staff were
still in touch with the capital. Once the reports began to come, they
poured in--decimation of the attacking column, panic and retreat in
other portions of the line--chaos!"
"It's a lie!" Westerling declared vehemently.
"The news has reached the press," the premier proceeded. "Editions are
already in the streets."
"What! Where is your censorship?" gasped Westerling.
"It is helpless, a straw protesting against a current," the premier
replied. "A censorship goes back to physical force, as every law does in
the end--to the police and the army; and all, these days, finally to
public opinion. After weeks of secrecy, of reported successes, when
nobody really knew what was happening, this sudden disillusioning
announcement of the truth has sent the public mad."
"It is your business to control the public!" complained Westerling.
"With what, now? With a speech or a lullaby? As well could you stop the
retreat with your naked hands. My business to control the public, yes,
but not unless you win victories. I gave you the soldiers. We have
nothing but police here, and I tell you that the public is in a mob
rage--the whole public, bankers and business and professional men
included. I have just ordered the stock exchange and all banks closed."
"There's a cure for mobs!" cried Westerling. "Let the police fire a few
volleys and they'll behave."
"Would that stop the retreat of the army? We must sue for peace."
"Sue for peace! Sue for peace when we have five millions against their
three!"
"It seems so, as the three millions are winning!" said the premier.
"Sue for peace because women go hysterical? Do you suppose that the
Browns will listen now when they think they have the advantage? Leave
peace to me! Give me forty-eight hours more! I have told our troops to
hold and they will hold. I don't mistake cowardly telegraphers' rumors
for facts--"
"Pardon me a moment," the premier interrupted. "I must answer a local
call." So astute a man of affairs as he knew that Westerling's voice,
storming, breaking, tightening with effort at control, confirmed all
reports of disaster. "In fact, the crockery is broken--for you and for
me!" said the premier when he spoke again. His life had been a gamble
and the gamble had turned against him in playing for a great prize.
There was an admirable stoicism in the way he announced the news he had
received from the local call: "The chief of police calls me up to say
that the uprising is too vast for him to hold. There isn't any mutiny,
but his men simply have become a part of public opinion. A mob of women
and children is starting for the palace to ask me what I have done with
their husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers. They won't have to break in
to find me. I'm very tired. I'm ready. I shall face them from the
balcony. Yes, Westerling, you and I have achieved a place in history,
and they're far more bitter toward you than me. However, you don't have
to come back."
"No, I don't have to go back! No, I was not to go back if I failed!"
said Westerling dizzily.
Again defiance rose strong as the one tangible thought, born of his
ruling passion. It was inconceivable that so vast an ambition should
fail. Failure! He defied it! He burst into the main staff room, where
the tired officers regarded him with a glare, or momentary, weary
wonder, and continued packing up their papers for departure. He went on
into the telegraphers' room. Some of the operators were packing their
instruments.
"The news? What is the news?" Westerling asked hoarsely.
An operator who was still at the key, without even half rising let alone
saluting, glanced up from the cavernous sockets of eyes unawed by the
chief of staff's presence.
"All that comes in is bad," he said. "Where we get none because the
wires are down we know it's worse. We've been licked."
He went on sending a message, wholly oblivious of Westerling, who
stumbled back into the staff room and paused inarticulate before Turcas.
"The army is going--resisting by units, but going. It has made its own
orders!" Turcas said. The other division chiefs nodded in agreement.
"Your Excellency, we are doing our best," added the vice-chief, holding
the door for Westerling to return to his own office. "The nation is not
beaten. Given breathing time for reorganization, the army will settle
down to the defensive on our own range. There the enemy may try our
costly tactics against the precision and power of modern arms, if they
choose. No, the nation is not beaten."
The nation! Westerling was not thinking of the nation.
"You--" he began, looking around from face to face.
Not one showed any sign of softening or deference, and, his mind a
blank, he withdrew, driven back to his isolation by an inflexible
ostracism. The world had come to an end. Public opinion was
master--master of his own staff. He sank down before his desk, staring,
just staring; hearing the roar of battle which was drawing nearer;
staring at the staff orderlies, who came in to take down the wall maps,
and at his aide packing up the papers and leaving him in a room bare of
all the appurtenances of his position, with little idea in his coma of
despair of the hour or even that time was passing. Finally, some one
touched him on the shoulder. He looked up to see his aide at his elbow
saluting and François, his valet, standing by with an overcoat.
"We must go, Your Excellency," said the aide.
"Go?" asked Westerling dazedly.
"Yes, the staff has already gone to a new headquarters."
The announcement was the needle prick that once more aroused him to a
sense of his situation. He rose and struck his fist on the desk in a
pulsing outbreak of energy and stubbornness.
"But I stay! I stay!" he cried. "The enemy is not near. He can't be!"
"Very near, general. You can see for yourself, said the aide.
"I will!" Westerling replied. "I will see how the conspiracy of the
staff has made ruin of my plans!"
Again something of his old manner returned; something of the stoic's
fatalism flashed in his eye. He shook his head to François, refusing to
slip his arms into the sleeves of the coat which François dropped on to
his shoulders.
"Yes, I will see for myself!" he repeated, as he led the way out to the
veranda. "I'll see what goblin scared my pusillanimous staff and robbed
me of victory!"
* * * * *
Every cry of triumph in war is paid for by a cry of pain. On one side,
anguish of heart; on the other, inexpressible ecstasy. The Gray staff
were oblivious of fatigue in the glum, overpowering necessity of
restoring the organization of the Gray army for a second stand. The
Brown staff were oblivious of fatigue in the exhilaration of victory.
Had a picture of the sight which the judge's son had witnessed at dawn
in the path of the attack and the counter-attack been thrown on the wall
of the big lobby room of the Brown headquarters, there might have been
less exultation on the part of the junior officers of the staff gathered
there. They were not seeing or thinking of the dead. They were seeing
only brown-headed pins pushing gray-headed pins out of the way on the
map, as the symbol of an attack become a pursuit and of better than
their dreams come true--the symbol of security for altar fires and race
and nation. They were of the living, in the mightiest thrill that a
soldier may know.
No doubt now! No more suspense! Labor and sacrifice rewarded! Fervent
thanks to the Almighty were mingled with whistled snatches of wedding
marches and popular songs. An aide taking a message to the wire
preferred leaping over a chair to going around it. A subaltern and a
colonel danced together. Victory, victory, victory out of the burr of
automatics, the pounding of artillery, the popping roar of rifles!
Victory out of the mire of trenches after brain-aching strain! Victory
for you and for me and for sweethearts and wives and children! Aren't we
all Browns, orderly and captain, boyish lieutenant and gray-haired
general? A taciturn martinet of a major hugged a telegrapher to whom he
had never spoken a single unofficial word. Hadn't the telegraphers,
those silent men who were the tongue of the army, received the good
news and passed it on? Some officers who could be spared from duty went
to their quarters, where they dropped like falling logs on their beds.
To them, after their spell of rejoicing, victory meant sleep for the
first time in weeks without forked lightnings of apprehension stabbing
their sub-consciousness.
Fellowship was in the victory, the fellowship which, developed under
Partow, who believed that Napoleons and Colossi and gods in the car and
all such gentlemen belonged to an archaic farce-comedy, had grown under
Lanstron. "The staff reports," began the messages that awakened a world,
retiring with the idea that the Browns were grimly holding the
defensive, to the news that three millions had outgeneralled and
defeated five.
In the inner room, whose opening door gave glimpses of Lanstron and the
division chiefs, a magic of secret council which the juniors could not
quite understand had wrought the wonder. Lanstron had not forgotten the
dead. He could see them; he could see everything that happened. Had not
Partow said to him: "Don't just read reports. Visualize men and events.
Be the artillery, be the infantry, be the wounded--live and think in
their places. In this way only can you really know your work!"
His elation when he saw his plans going right was that of the instrument
of Partow's training and Marta's service. He pressed the hands of the
men around him; his voice caught in his gratitude and his breaths were
very short at times, like those of a spent, happy runner at the goal.
Feeding on victory and growing greedy of more, his division chiefs were
discussing how to press the war till the Grays sued for peace; and he
was silent in the midst of their talk, which was interrupted by the
ringing of the tunnel telephone. When he came out of his bedroom,
Lanstron's distress was so evident that those who were seated arose and
the others drew near in inquiry and sympathy. It seemed to them that the
chief of staff, the head of the machine, who had left the room had
returned an individual.
"The connection was broken while we were speaking!" he said blankly.
"That means it must have been cut by the enemy--that the enemy knows of
its existence!"
"Perhaps not. Perhaps an accident--a chance shot," said the vice-chief.
"No, I'm sure not," Lanstron replied. "I am sure that it was cut
deliberately and not by her."
"The 53d Regiment is going forward in that direction--the same regiment
that defended the house--and it can't go any faster than it is going,"
the vice-chief continued, rather incoherently. He and the others no less
felt the news as a personal blow. Though absent in person, Marta had
become in spirit an intimate of their hopes and councils.
"She is helpless--in their power!" Lanstron said. "There is no telling
what they might do to her in the rage of their discovery. I must go to
her! I am going to the front!"
The announcement started a storm of protest.
"But you are the chief of staff! You cannot leave the staff!"
"You've no right to expose yourself!"
"A chance shell or bullet--"
"You do not seem to realize what this victory means to you. You might be
killed at the very moment of triumph."
"I haven't had any triumph. But if I had, could there be a better time?"
Lanstron asked with a half-bantering smile.
"You couldn't reach there before the 53d Regiment anyway!" declared the
vice-chief, having in mind the fact that the staff was fifteen miles to
the rear, where it could be at the wire focus. "You will find the roads
blocked with the advance. You'll have to ride, you can't go all the way
in a car."
"Terrible hardship!" replied Lanstron. "Still, I'm going. Things are
well in hand. I can keep in touch by the wire as I proceed. If I get out
of touch then you," with a nod to the vice-chief, "know as well as I how
to meet any sudden emergency. Yes, you all know how to act--we're so
used to working together. The staff will follow as soon as the Galland
house is taken. We shall make our headquarters there. I'm free now. I
can be my own man for a little while--I can be human!"
A certain awe of him and of his position, born of the prestige of
victory, hushed further protest. Who if not he had the right to go where
he pleased in the Brown lines now? They noted the eagerness in his eyes,
the eagerness of one off the leash, shot with a suspense which was not
for the fate of the army, as he left headquarters.
* * * * *
A young officer of the Grays who was with a signal-corps section, trying
to keep a brigade headquarters in touch with the staff during the
retreat, two or three miles from the Galland house, had seen what looked
like an insulated telephone wire at the bottom of a crater in the earth
made by the explosion of a heavy shell. The instructions to all
subordinates from the chief of intelligence to look for the source of
the leak in information to the Browns made him quick to see a clew in
anything unusual. He jumped down into the crater and not only found his
pains rewarded, but that the wire was intact and ran underground in
either direction. Who had laid it? Not the Grays. Why was it there? He
called for one of his men to bring a buzzer, and it was the work of
little more than a minute to cut the wire and make an attachment. Then
he heard a woman's voice talking to "Lanny." Who was Lanny? He waited
till he had heard enough to know that it was none other than Lanstron,
the chief of staff of the Browns, and the woman must be a spy. An
orderly despatched to the chief of intelligence with the news returned
with the order:
"Drop everything and report to me in person at once."
"For this I have made my sacrifice!" Marta thought. "The killing goes on
by Lanny's orders, not by Westerling's, this time."
Leaving her mother to enjoy the prospect, a slow-moving figure,
trance-like, she went along the first terrace path to a point near the
veranda where the whole sweep of landscape with its panorama of retreat
magnetized her senses. Like the gray of lava, the Gray soldiery was
erupting from the range; in columns, still under the control of
officers, keeping to the defiles; in swarms and batches, under the
control of nothing but their own emotions. Mostly they were hugging
cover, from instinct if not from direction, but some relied on straight
lines of flight and speed of foot for escape. Coursing aeroplanes were
playing a new part. Their wireless was informing the Brown gunners where
the masses were thickest. This way and that the Brown artillery fire
drove retreating bodies, prodding them in the back with the fearful
shepherdry of their shells. Officers' swords flashed in the faces of the
bolters or in holding rear-guards to their work. Officers and orderlies
were galloping hither and thither with messages, in want of wires.
Commanders had been told to hold, but how and where to hold? They saw
neighboring regiments and brigades going and they had to go. The
machine, the complicated modern war machine, was broken; the machine,
with its nerves of intelligence cut, became a thing of disconnected
parts, each part working out its own salvation. Authority ceased to be
that of the bureau and army lists. It was that of units racked by
hardship, acting on the hour's demand.
Gorged was the pass road, overflowing with the struggling tumult of men
and vehicles. Self-preservation breaking the bonds of discipline was in
the ascendant, and it sought the highway, even as water keeps to the
river bed. Like specks on the laboring tide was the white of bandages.
An ambulance trying to cut out to one side was overturned. The frantic
chauffeur and hospital-corps orderly were working to extricate the
wounded from their painful position. A gun was overturned against the
ambulance. A mêlée of horses and men was forming at the foot of the
garden gate in front of the narrowing bounds of the road into the town,
as a stream banks up before a jam of driftwood. The struggle for right
of way became increasingly wild; the dam of men, horses, and wagons
grew. A Brown dirigible was descending toward the great target; but on
closer view its commander forbore, the humane impulse outweighing the
desire for retribution for colleagues in camp and mess who had gone down
in a holocaust in the aerial battles of the night.
Thus far the flight had seemed in the face of an unseen pursuer, like
that of an army fleeing from some power visible to itself but not to
Marta. Now she began to observe the flashes of rifles from the crests
that the rear-guards of the Grays were deserting; then the rush of the
Brown skirmish line to close quarters. Her glance pausing long on no
detail, so active the landscape with its swarms and tumult, returned to
the scene in front of the house. A Gray field-battery, cutting out to
one side of the road, knocking over flimsier vehicles and wounded who
got in the way, careening, its drivers cursing and officers shouting,
galloped out in the open field and unlimbered to support a regiment of
infantry that was hastily intrenching as a point to steady the
retreating masses on its front and protect them in their flight when
they had passed.
Marta saw how desperately the gunners worked; she could feel their
fatigue. Nature had sunk in her heart a partisanship for the under dog.
She who had stood for the three against five, now stood for the shaken,
bewildered five in the cockpit under the fire of the three. Her
sympathies went out to every beaten, weary Gray soldier. What was the
difference between a Gray and a Brown? Weren't they both made of flesh
and bone and blood and nerves?
Under the awful spell of the panorama, she did not see Westerling, who
had stopped only a few feet distant with his aide and his valet, nor did
he notice her as the tumult glazed his eyes. He was as an artist who
looks on the ribbons of the canvas of his painting, or the sculptor on
the fragments of his statue. Worse still, with no faith to give him
fortitude except the materialistic, he saw the altar of his god of
military efficiency in ruins. He who had not allowed the word retreat to
enter his lexicon now saw a rout. He had laughed at reserve armies in
last night's feverish defiance, at Turcas's advocacy of a slower and
surer method of attack. In those hours of smiting at a wall with his
fists and forehead, in denial of all the truth so clear to average
military logic, if he had only given a few conventional directions all
this disorder would have been avoided. His army could have fallen back
in orderly fashion to their own range. The machine out of order, he had
attempted no repair; he had allowed it to thrash itself to pieces.
The splinters of its débris--steel splinters--were lacerating his brain.
He had a sense that madness was coming and some instinct of
self-preservation made the whole scene grow misty, as he tried to
resolve it out of existence in the desire for some one object which was
not his guns and his men in demoralization. A bit of pink caught his
eye--the pink of a dress, a little girl's dress, down there at the edge
of the garden by the road, at the same moment that some guns of the
Browns, in a new position, opened on an inviting target. Over her head
was a crack and a blue tongue of smoke whipped out of nothing; while a
shower of shrapnel bullets made spurts of dust around her. She started
to run toward the terrace steps and another burst made her run in the
opposite direction, while she looked about in a paralysis of fear and
then threw herself on her face.
"My God! That little girl--there--there!" Westerling exclaimed
distractedly.
"Clarissa! Clarissa!" cried Marta, seeing the child for the first time.
She started precipitately to the rescue, but a hand on her arm arrested
her and she turned to see Hugo Mallin bound past her down the slope.
Still remaining on the premises under guard while Westerling had
neglected to dispose of the case, he had the run of the grounds that
morning while the staff was feverishly preparing for departure.
Marta watched him leaping from terrace to terrace. Before he had reached
Clarissa worse than shrapnel bursts happened. The spatter of the
fragments and bullets falling on either side of the road whipped the
edges of the struggling human jam inward. In the midst of this a
percussion shell struck, bursting on contact with the road and spreading
its own grist of death and the stones of the road in a fan-shaped,
mowing swath. Legs and bodies were thrown out as if driven centrifugally
by a powerful breath, with Hugo lost in the smoke and dust of the
weaving mass. He came out of it bearing Clarissa in his arms, up the
terrace steps. To Marta, this was an isolated deed of saving life, of
mercy in the midst of merciless slaughter; a parallel to that of
Stransky bringing in Grandfather Fragini pickaback.
"Big fireworks!" said Clarissa Eileen as Hugo set her down in front of
Marta, whose heart was in her eyes speaking its gratitude.
The artillery's maceration of the human jam suddenly ceased; perhaps
because the gunners had seen the Red Cross flag which a doctor had the
presence of mind to wave. Westerling turned from a sight worse to him
than the killing--that of the flowing retreat along the road pressing
frantically over the dead and wounded in growing disorder for the cover
of the town, and found himself face to face with the mask-like features
of that malingerer who had told him on the veranda that the Grays could
not win. Gall flooded his brain. In Hugo he recognized something kindred
to the spirit that had set his army at flight, something tangible and
personified; and through a mist of rage he saw Hugo smiling--smiling as
he had at times at the veranda court--and saluting him as a superior
officer.
"Now I am going to fight," said Hugo, "if they try to cross the white
posts; to fight with all the skill and courage I can command. But not
till then. They are still in their own country and we are not in ours.
Then they, in the wrong, will attack and we, in the right, will
defend--and, God with us, we shall win."
Thus a second time he had given to the prayer of Marta's children the
life of action. She could imagine how steadfastly and exaltedly he would
face the invader.
"Thank you, Miss Galland," he said. "And say good-by to your mother and
Minna for me."
He was gone, without waiting for any reply, this stranger whom her part
had not permitted to know well. A thousand words striving for utterance
choked her as she watched him pass out of sight. Westerling was
regarding her with a stare which fixed itself first on one thing and
then on another in dull misery. Near by were Bellini, the chief of
intelligence, and a subaltern who had arrived only a minute before. The
subaltern was dust-covered. He seemed to have come in from a hard ride.
Both were watching Marta, as if waiting for her to speak. She met
Westerling's look steadily, her eyes dark and still and in his the
reflection of the vague realization of more than he had guessed in her
relations with Hugo.
"Well," she breathed to Westerling, "the war goes on!"
"That's it! That's the voice!" exclaimed the subaltern in an explosion
of recognition.
A short, sharp laugh of irony broke from Bellini; the laugh of one
whose suspicions are confirmed in the mixture of the sublime and the
ridiculous. Marta looked around at the interruption, alert, on guard.
"You seem amused," she remarked curiously.
"No, but you must have been," replied Bellini hoarsely. "Early this
morning, not far from the castle, this young officer found in the crater
made by a ten-inch shell a wire that ran in a conduit underground. The
wire was intact. He tapped it. He heard a voice thanking some one for
her part in the victory, and it seems that the woman's voice that
answered is yours, Miss Galland. So, General Westerling, the leak in
information was over this wire from our staff into the Browns'
headquarters, as Bouchard believed and as I came to believe."
So long had Marta expected this moment of exposure that it brought no
shock. Her spirit had undergone many subtle rehearsals for the occasion.
"Yes, that is true," she heard herself saying, a little distantly, but
very quietly and naturally.
Westerling fell back as from a blow in the face. His breath came hard at
first, like one being strangled. Then it sank deep in his chest and his
eyes were bloodshot, as a bull's in his final effort against the
matador. He raised a quivering, clenched fist and took a step nearer
her.
But far from flinching, Marta seemed to be greeting the blow, as if she
admitted his right to strike. She was without any sign of triumph and
with every sign of relief. Lying was at an end. She could be truthful.
"Do you recall what I said in the reception-room at the hotel?" she
asked.
The question sent a flash into a hidden chamber of his mind. Now the
only thing he could remember of that interview was the one remark which
hitherto he had never included in his recollection of it.
"You said I could not win." He drew out the words painfully.
"And I pleaded with your selfishness--the only appeal to be made to
you," she continued, "to prevent war, which you could have done. When
you said that you brought on this war to gratify your ambition, I chose
to be one of the weapons of war; I chose, when driven to the wall, to be
true to that part of my children's oath that made an exception of the
burglar, the highwayman, and the invader. In war you use deceit and
treachery, under the pleasanter names of tactics and strategy, to draw
men to their death in traps, in order to increase the amount of your
killing. It was strategy, tactics, manoeuvres--give it any fine word
you please--that hideous and shameless part which I played. With fire I
fought fire. I fought for civilization, for my home, with the only means
I had against the wickedness of a victory of conquest--the precedent of
it in this age--a victory which should glorify such trickery as you
practised on your people."
"I should like to shoot you dead!" cried Bellini.
"No doubt. I like your honesty in saying so," said Marta. "Why not? The
business of war is murder; and as I have engaged in it I can claim no
exception. And why shouldn't women engage in it? Why should they be
excepted from the sport when they pay so many of the costs? It's easy to
die and easy to kill. The part you force on women is much harder. By
killing me you admit me to full equality."
"You--you--" But Bellini had no adequate word for her, and his anger
softened into a kind of admiration of her, of envy, perhaps, that he had
had no such adjutant. It hardened again as he looked Westerling up and
down, before turning to leave without a salute or even a direct word.
"And you let me make love to you!" Westerling said in a dazed, groping
monotone to Marta.
Such a wreck was he of his former self that she found it amazing that
she could not pity him. Yet she might have pitied him had he plunged
into the fight; had he tried to rally one of the broken regiments; had
he been able to forget himself.
"Rather, you made love to yourself through me," she answered, not
harshly, not even emphatically, but merely as a statement of passionless
fact. "If you dared to endure what you ordered others to endure for the
sake of your ambition; if--"
She was interrupted by a sharp zip in the air. Westerling dodged and
looked about wildly.
"What is that?" he asked. "What?"
Five or six zips followed like a charge of wasps flying at a speed that
made them invisible. Marta felt a brush of air past her cheek and
Westerling went chalky white. It was the first time he had been under
fire. But these bullets were only strays. No more came.
"Come, general, let us be going!" urged the aide, touching his chief on
the arm.
"Yes, yes!" said Westerling hurriedly.
François, who had picked up the coat that had fallen from Westerling's
shoulders with his start at the buzzing, held it while his master thrust
his hands through the sleeves.
"And this is wiser," said the aide, unfastening the detachable insignia
of rank from the shoulders of the greatcoat. "It's wiser, too, that we
walk," he added.
"Walk? But my car!" exclaimed Westerling petulantly.
"I'm afraid that the car could not get through the press in the town,"
was the reply. "Walking is safer."
The absence in him of that quality which is the soldier's real glory,
the picture of this deserted leader, this god of a machine who had been
crushed by his machine, his very lack of stoicism or courage--all this
suddenly appealed to Marta's quick sympathies. They had once drunk tea
together.
"Oh, it was not personal! I did not think of myself as a person or of
you as one--only of principles and of thousands of others--to end the
killing--to save our country to its people! Oh, I'm sorry and,
personally, I'm horrible--horrible!" she called after him in a broken,
quavering gust of words which he heard confusedly in tragic mockery.
He made no answer; he did not even look around. Head bowed and hardly
seeing the path, he permitted the aide to choose the way, which lay
across the boundary of the Galland estate.
They had passed the stumps of the linden-trees and were in the vacant
lot on the other side, when something white fluttered toward him,
rustled by the breeze that carried it, and lay still almost at his feet.
He saw his own picture on the front page of a newspaper, with the
caption, "His Excellency, Field-Marshal Hedworth Westerling, Chief of
Staff of Our Victorious Army." He stared at the picture and the picture
stared at him as if they knew not each other. A racking shudder swept
through him. He turned his face with a kind of resolution, appealing in
its starkness, toward the battle and his glance rested on the battery
and the shattered regiment of infantry in the fields opposite the
Galland gate, under a canopy of shrapnel smoke, bravely holding their
ground.
"I should be there. That is the place for me!" he exclaimed with a trace
of his old forcefulness.
The aide's lips parted as if to speak in protest, but they closed in
silence, while a glance of deep human understanding, dissolving the
barriers of caste, passed between him and the valet, eloquent of their
approval and their loyal readiness to share the fate of their fallen
chief.
The canopy of shrapnel smoke grew thicker; the infantry began to break.
"But, no!" said Westerling. "The place for a chief of staff is at his
headquarters."