"Miss Galland!"
Blinking as she came out of the darkness into the bright light, with a
lock of her dew-sprinkled dark hair free and brushing her flushed cheek,
Marta saw the division chiefs of the Browns, after their start when
Lanstron spoke her name, all stand at the salute, looking at her rather
than at him. The reality in the flesh of the woman who had been a
comrade in service, sacrificing her sensibilities for their cause,
appealed to them as a true likeness of their conceptions of her. In
their eyes she might read the finest thing that can pass from man's to
woman's or from man's to man's. These were the strong men of her people
who had driven the burglar from her house with the sword of justice.
Their tribute had the steadfast loyalty of soldiers who were craving to
do anything in the world that she might ask, whether to go on their
knees to her or to kill dragons for her.
"I may come in?" she asked.
"Who if not you is entitled to the privilege of the staff council?"
exclaimed the vice-chief.
The others did not propose to let him do all the honors. Each murmured
words of welcome on his own account.
"We are here, thanks to you!"
"And, thanks to you, our flag will float over the Gray range!"
She must be tired, was their next thought. Four or five of them hurried
to place a chair for her, the vice-chief winning over his rivals, more
through the exercise of the rights of rank than by any superior
alacrity.
"You are appointed actual chief of staff and a field-marshal!" said the
vice-chief to Lanstron. "The premier says that every honor the nation
can bestow is yours. The capital is mad. The crowds are crying: 'On to
the Gray capital!' To-morrow is to be a public holiday and they are
calling it Lanstron Day. The thing was so sudden that the speculators
who depressed our securities in the world's markets have got their
due--ruin! And we ought to get an indemnity that will pay the cost of
the war."
Seated at one side, Marta could watch all that passed, herself
unobserved. She noted a touch of color come to Lanstron's cheeks as he
made a little shrug of protest.
"It never rains but it pours!" he said. "We were all just as able and
loyal yesterday as to-day when we find ourselves heroic. We owe our
victory to Partow's plans, to the staff's industry, the spirit of the
people and the army, and--" He threw a happy smile toward Marta.
"Perhaps it ought to be Galland Day rather than Lanstron Day," remarked
the vice-chief. "The crowds at the capital when they know her part might
cheer her more frenziedly than you, general."
"No, no--please, no!" Marta was hectic in alarm and protest.
"Your secret is ours! It's in the family!" the vice-chief hastened to
assure her. Where could a secret be safe if not in the keeping of an
army staff?
"That was almost like teasing!" she exclaimed with a laugh of relief.
"We're all in pretty good humor," remarked the vice-chief. He seemed to
have a pleasant taste in his mouth that would last him for life.
Then Marta saw their faces grow businesslike and keen, as they gathered
around the table, with Lanstron at the head. They were oblivious of her
presence, immured in a man's world of war.
"Your orders were obeyed. We have not passed a single white post yet!"
said the vice-chief impatiently. "As the Grays never expected to take
the defensive, their fortresses are inferior. Every hour we wait means
more time for them to fortify, more time to recover from their
demoralization. Our dirigibles having command of the air--we had a
wireless from one reporting all clear half-way to the Gray capital--why,
we shall know their concentrations while they are ignorant of ours. It's
the nation's great opportunity to gain enough provinces to even the
balance of population with the Grays. With the unremitting offensive,
blow on blow, using the spirit of our men to drive in mass attacks at
the right points, the Gray range is ours!"
Marta scanned the faces of the staff for some sign of dissent only to
find nothing but the ardor of victory calling for more victory, which
reflected the feeling of the coursing crowds in the capital. Though
Lanny wished to stop the war, he was only a chip on the crest of a wave.
Public opinion, which had made him an idol, would discard him as soon as
he ceased to be a hero in the likeness of its desires. She saw him aloof
as the others, in preoccupation, bent over the map outlining the plan of
attack that they had worked out while awaiting their chief's return from
the charge. He was taking a paper from his pocket and looking from one
to another of his colleagues studiously; and she was conscious of that
determination in his smile which she had first seen when he rose from
the wreck of his plane.
"This is from Partow: a message for you and the nation!" he announced,
as he spread a few thin, typewritten pages out on the table. "I was
under promise never to reveal its contents unless our army drove the
Grays back across the frontier. The original is in the staff vaults. I
have carried this copy with me."
At the mention in an arresting tone of that name of the dead chief, to
which the day's events had given the prestige of one of the heroes of
old, there was grave attention.
"I think we have practically agreed that the two individuals who were
invaluable to our cause were Partow and Miss Galland," Lanstron remarked
tentatively. He waited for a reply. It was apparent that he was laying a
foundation before he went any further.
"Certainly!" said the vice-chief.
"And you!" put in another officer, which brought a chorus of assent.
"No, not I--only these two!" Lanstron replied. "Or, I, too, if you
prefer. It little matters. The thing is that I am under a promise to
both, which I shall respect. He organized and labored for the same
purpose that she played the spy. When we sent the troops forward in a
counter-attack and pursuit to clear our soil of the Grays; when I
stopped them at the frontier--both were according to Partow's plan. He
had a plan and a dream, this wonderful old man who made us all seem
primary pupils in the art of war."
Could this be that terrible Partow, a stroke of whose pencil had made
the Galland house an inferno? Marta wondered as Lanstron read his
message--the message out of the real heart of the man, throbbing with
the power of his great brain. His plan was to hold the Grays to
stalemate; to force them to desist after they had battered their
battalions to pieces against the Brown fortifications. His dream was the
thing that had happened--that an opportunity would come to pursue a
broken machine in a bold stroke of the offensive.
"I would want to be a hero of our people for only one aim, to be able to
stop our army at the frontier," he had written. "Then they might drive
me forth heaped with obloquy, if they chose. I should like to see the
Grays demoralized, beaten, ready to sue for peace, the better to prove
my point that we should ask only for what is ours and that our strength
was only for the purpose of holding what is ours. Then we should lay up
no legacy of revenge in their hearts. They could never have cause to
attack again. Civilization would have advanced another step."
Lanstron continued to read to the amazed staff, for Partow's message had
looked far into the future. Then there was a P.S., written after the war
had begun, on the evening of the day that Marta had gone from tea on the
veranda with Westerling to the telephone, in the impulse of her new
purpose.
"I begin to believe in that dream," he wrote. "I begin to believe that
the chance for the offensive will come, now that my colleague, Miss
Galland, in the name of peace has turned practical. There is nothing
like mixing a little practice in your dreams while the world is still
well this side of Utopia, as the head on my old behemoth of a body well
knows. She had the right idea with her school. The oath so completely
expressed my ideas--the result of all my thinking--that I had a twinge
of literary jealousy. My boy, if you do reach the frontier, in pursuit
of a broken army, and you do not keep faith with my dream and with her
ideals, then you will get a lesson that will last you forever at the
foot of the Gray range. But I do not think so badly as that of you or of
my judgment of men."
"Lanny! Lanny!"
The dignity of a staff council could not restrain Marta. Her emotion
must have action. She sprang to his side and seized his hand, her
exultation mixed with penitence over the why she had wronged him and
Partow. Their self-contained purpose had been the same as hers and they
had worked with a soldier's fortitude, while she had worked with whims
and impulses. She bent over him with gratitude and praise and a plea for
forgiveness in her eyes, submerging the thing which he sought in them.
He flushed boyishly in happy embarrassment, incapable of words for an
instant; and silently the staff looked on.
"And I agree with Partow," Lanstron went on, "that we cannot take the
range. The Grays still have numbers equal to ours. It is they, now, who
will be singing 'God with us!' with their backs against the wall. With
Partow's goes my own appeal to the army and the nation; and I shall keep
faith with Partow, with Miss Galland, and with my own ideas, if the
government orders the army to advance, by resigning as chief of
staff--my work finished."
Westerling and his aide and valet, inquiring their way as strangers,
found the new staff headquarters of the Grays established in an army
building, where Bouchard had been assigned to trivial duties, back of
the Gray range. As their former chief entered a room in the disorder of
maps and packing-cases, the staff-officers rose from their work to stand
at salute like stone images, in respect to a field-marshal's rank. There
was no word of greeting but a telling silence before Turcas spoke. His
voice had lost its parchment crinkle and become natural. The blue veins
on his bulging temples were a little more pronounced, his thin features
a little more pinched, but otherwise he was unchanged and he seemed
equal to another strain as heavy as the one he had undergone.
"We have a new government, a new premier," he said. "The old premier was
killed by a shot from a crowd that he was addressing from the balcony of
the palace. After this, the capital became quieter. As we get in touch
with the divisions, we find the army in better shape than we had feared
it would be. There is a recovery of spirit, owing to our being on our
own soil."
"Yes," replied Westerling, drowning in their stares and grasping at a
straw. "Only a panic, as I said. If--" his voice rising hoarsely and
catching in rage.
"We have a new government, a new premier!" Turcas repeated, with firm,
methodical politeness. Westerling looking from one face to another with
filmy eyes, lowered them before Bouchard. "There's a room ready for Your
Excellency up-stairs," Turcas continued. "The orderly will show you the
way."
Now Westerling grasped the fact that he was no longer chief of staff. He
drew himself up in a desperate attempt at dignity; the staff saluted
again, and, uncertainly, he followed the orderly, with the aide and
valet still in loyal attendance.
Meanwhile, the aerial scouts of the Grays were puzzled by a moving cloud
on the landscape several miles away. It filled the highway and
overflowed into the fields, without military form: women and men of
every age except the fighting age, marching together in a sinister
militancy of purpose.
"Bring the children, too!" cried the leaders. "They've more right to be
heard than any of us."
From such a nucleus it seemed that the whole population of the land
might be set in motion by a common passion. Neither the coming of
darkness nor a chill rain kept recruits from village and farmhouse from
dropping their tasks and leaving meals unfinished to swell the ranks.
What Westerling had called the bovine public with a parrot's head had
become a lion.
"There's no use of giving any orders, to stop this flood," said an
officer who had ridden fast to warn the Gray staff. "The police simply
watch it go by. Soldiers ready to lay down their lives to hold the range
give it Godspeed when they learn what it wants. Both are citizens before
they are soldiers or policemen. The thing is as elemental as an
earthquake or a tidal wave."
"Public opinion! Unanimous public opinion! Nothing can stop that!"
exclaimed Turcas in dry fatalism. "You will inform His Excellency," he
said to Westerling's aide, "that they are coming for him--all the people
are coming, and we are powerless. And--" Even Turcas's calmness failed
him and his voice caught in a convulsive swallow.
"I--I understand!" the aide said thickly, and went up-stairs.
He had suffered worse than in seeing his chief beaten; but even in
disillusion he was loyal. He was back immediately, and paused at the
foot of the stairs stonily, in the attitude of one who listens for
something; while the tramp of thousands of feet came pressing in upon
all sides.
As one great, high-pitched voice, the crowd shouted its merciless
demand; and eyes eager with the hunt as those of soldiers in pursuit
gleamed through the windows out of the darkness. Bouchard, hawk-eyed,
stern, was standing by the street door. His mediæval spirit revolted at
the thought of any kind of a mob. For such demonstrations he had a
single simple prescription--cold lead.
"We cannot strike the overwhelming spirit which we would forge into the
nation's defence," said Turcas.
The door was flung open and Bouchard drew back abruptly at the sight; he
drew back in fear of his own nature. If any one should so much as lay
hands on him when he was in uniform, a sword thrust would resent the
insult to his officer's honor; and even he did not want to strike
grandfathers and children and mothers.
Two figures were in the doorway: a heavy-set market woman with a fringe
of down on her lip and a cadaverous, tidily dressed old man, who might
have been a superannuated schoolmaster, with a bronze cross won in the
war of forty years ago on his breast and his eyes burning with the
youthful fire of Grandfather Fragini's.
"They got the premier in the capital. We've come for Westerling! We want
to know what he did with our sons! We want to know why he was beaten!"
cried the market woman.
"Yes," said the veteran. "We want him to explain his lies. Why did he
keep the truth from us? We were ready to fight, but not to be treated
like babies. This is the twentieth century!"
"We want Westerling! Tell Westerling to come out!" rose the impatient
shouts behind the two figures in the doorway.
"You are sure that he has one?" whispered Turcas to Westerling's aide.
"Yes," was the choking answer--"yes. It is better than that"--with a
glance toward the mob. "I left my own on the table."
"We can't save him! We shall have to let them--"
Turcas's voice was drowned by a great roar of cries, with no word except
"Westerling" distinguishable, that pierced every crack of the house. A
wave of movement starting from the rear drove the veteran and the market
woman and a dozen others through the doorway toward the stairs. Then the
sound of a shot was heard overhead.
"The man you seek is dead!" said Turcas, stepping in front of the crowd,
his features unrelenting in authority. "Now, go back to your work and
leave us to ours."
"I understand, sir," said the veteran. "We've no argument with you."
"Yes!" agreed the market woman. "But if you ever leave this range alive
we shall have one. So, you stay!"
Looking at the bronze cross on the veteran's faded coat, the staff
saluted; for the cross, though it were hung on rag's, wherever it went
was entitled by custom to the salute of officers and "present arms" by
sentries.
As news of the shot travelled among the people the cries dropped into
long-drawn breaths of thirst satiated. Their mission was fulfilled. The
tramp of their feet as they dispersed homeward mingled with the urging
of officers to weary men and the rumbling of wagons and guns and the
sound of pick and spade on the range, where torches flickered over the
heads of the working parties. But no other shot after the one heard from
Westerling's room was fired. The Grays were at grip with the fact of
disaster. An angry, wounded animal that had failed of its kill was
facing around at the mouth of its lair for its own life.
"We're tired--we're all tired; but keep up--keep up!" urged the
officers. "We have a new chief of staff and there will be no more
purposeless sacrifices. It's their turn at the charge; ours to hold.
We'll give them some of the medicine they've been giving us. God with
us! Our backs against the wall!"
After Lanstron's announcement to the Brown staff of his decision not to
cross the frontier, there was a restless movement in the chairs around
the table, and the grimaces on most of the faces were those with which a
practical man regards a Utopian proposal. The vice-chief was drumming on
the table edge and looking steadily at a point in front of his fingers.
If Lanstron resigned he became chief.
"Partow might have this dream before he won, but would he now?" asked
the vice-chief. "No. He would go on!"
"Yes," said another officer. "The world will ridicule the suggestion;
our people will overwhelm us with their anger. The Grays will take it
for a sign of weakness."
"Not if we put the situation rightly to them," answered Lanstron. "Not
if we go to them as brave adversary to brave adversary, in a fair
spirit."
"We can--we shall take the range!" the vice-chief went on in a burst of
rigid conviction when he saw that opinion was with him. "Nothing can
stop this army now!" He struck the table edge with his fist, his
shoulders stiffening.
"Please--please, don't!" implored Marta softly. "It sounds so like
Westerling!"
The vice-chief started as if he had received a sharp pin-prick. His
shoulders unconsciously relaxed. He began a fresh study of a certain
point on the table top. Lanstron, looking first at one and then at
another, spoke again, his words as measured as they ever had been in
military discussion and eloquent. He began outlining his own message
which would go with Partow's to the premier, to the nation, to every
regiment of the Browns, to the Grays, to the world. He set forth why the
Browns, after tasting the courage of the Grays, should realize that they
could not take their range. Partow had not taught him to put himself in
other men's places in vain. The boy who had kept up his friendship with
engine-drivers after he was an officer knew how to sink the plummet into
human emotions. He reminded the Brown soldiers that there had been a
providential answer to the call of "God with us!" he reminded the people
of the lives that would be lost to no end but to engender hatred; he
begged the army and the people not to break faith with that principle of
"Not for theirs, but for ours," which had been their strength.
"I should like you all to sign it--to make it simply the old form of
'the staff has the honor to report,'" he said finally.
There was a hush as he finished--the hush of a deep impression when one
man waits for another to speak. All were looking at him except the
vice-chief, who was still staring at the table as if he had heard
nothing. Yet every word was etched on his mind. The man whose name was
the symbol of victory to the soldiers, who would be more than ever a
hero as the news of his charge with the African Braves travelled along
the lines, would go on record to his soldiers as saying that they could
not take the Gray range. This was a handicap that the vice-chief did not
care to accept; and he knew how to turn a phrase as well as to make a
soldierly decision. He looked up smilingly to Marta.
"I have decided that I had rather not be a Westerling, Miss Galland," he
said. "We'll make it unanimous. And you," he burst out to Lanstron--"you
legatee of old Partow; I've always said that he was the biggest man of
our time. He has proved it by catching the spirit of our time and
incarnating it."
Vaguely, in the whirl of her joy, Marta heard the chorus of assent as
the officers sprang to their feet in the elation of being at one with
their chief again. Lanstron caught her arm, fearing that she was going
to fall, but a burning question rose in her mind to steady her.
"Then my shame--my sending men to slaughter--my sacrifice was not in
vain?" she exclaimed.
Misery crept into her eyes; she seemed to be seeing some horror that
would always haunt her. These businesslike men of the council were
touched by a fresh understanding of her and of the reason for her
success, which had demanded something more than human art--something
pure and fine and fearless underneath art. They sought to win one more
victory that should kill her memory of what she had done.
"Miss Galland," said the vice-chief, "Westerling's fate, whatever it is,
would have been the same. He could never have taken our range. He would
have only more lives to answer for, and Partow's dream could not have
come true."
"You think that--you--all of you?" she asked.
"All! All!" they said together.
"Yes, but for you the losses on both sides would have been
greater--hundreds of thousands greater," concluded the vice-chief. "And
to-night I think you helped me to see right; you struck a light in my
mind when I was about to forget the law of service."
"You see, then, you did hasten the end, Marta," said Lanstron.
"Yes, I do see, Lanny!" she whispered. She was weak now, with no spur to
her energy except her happiness as she leaned on his arm. Then he felt
an impulsive pressure as she looked up at him. "The law of service, as
you say!" she said, turning to the vice-chief. "Isn't that the finest
law of all? Couldn't I help you with the appeal? Perhaps I might put in
it a thought to reach the women. They are a part of public opinion"
"I was going to suggest it, but you seemed so weary that I hadn't the
heart," said Lanstron.
"Just the thing--the mothers, wives, and sweethearts!" declared the
vice-chief.
"I'm not a bit tired now!" Marta assured them brightly. "I'm fresh for
the fight again."
"Another thing," added Lanstron, "we ought to have the backing of the
corps and division commanders."
"Precisely," agreed the vice-chief. "We want to make sure of this thing.
We'd look silly if the old premier ordered the army on and left us high
and dry; and it would mean certain disaster. Shall I get them on the
telephone?"
"Yes," said Lanstron.
It was long after midnight when the collaborative composition of that
famous despatch was finished.
"Now I'm really tired, Lanny," said Marta as she arose from the table.
"I can think only of prayers--joyful little prayers of thanks rising to
the stars."
She slipped her arm through his. As they moved toward the door the
chiefs of divisions, keeping to the etiquette that best expressed their
soldierly respect, saluted her.
"If this were told, few would believe it; nor would they believe many
other things in the inner history of armies which are forever held
secret," thought the vice-chief.
Outside, the stars were twinkling to acknowledge those little prayers of
thanks, and the night was sweet and peaceful, while the army slept.