The sea of people packed in the great square of the Brown capital made a
roar like the thunder of waves against a breakwater at sight of a white
spot on a background of gray stone, which was the head of an eminent
statesman.
"It looks as if our government would last the week out," the premier
chuckled as he returned to his colleagues at the cabinet table.
As yet only the brief bulletins whose publication in the newspapers had
aroused the public to a frenzy had been received. The cabinet, as eager
for details as the press, had remained up, awaiting a fuller official
account.
"We have a long communication in preparation," the staff had
telegraphed. "Meanwhile, the following is submitted."
"Good Heavens! It's not from the army! It's from the grave!" exclaimed
the premier as he read the first paragraphs of Partow's message. "Of all
the concealed dynamite ever!" he gasped as he grasped the full meaning
of the document, that piece of news, as staggering as the victory
itself, that had lain in the staff vaults for years. "Well, we needn't
give it out to the press; at least, not until after mature
consideration," he declared when they had reached the end of Partow's
appeal. "Now we'll hear what the staff has to say for itself after
gratifying the wish of a dead man," he added as a messenger gave him
another sheet.
"The staff, in loyalty to its dead leader who made victory possible,
and in loyalty to the principles of defence for which the army fought,
begs to say to the nation--"
It was four o'clock in the morning when this despatch concluded with "We
heartily agree with the foregoing," and the cabinet read the names of
all the general staff and the corps and division commanders. Coursing
crowds in the streets were still shouting hoarsely and sometimes
drunkenly: "On to the Gray capital! Nothing can stop us now!" The
premier tried to imagine what a sea of faces in the great square would
look like in a rage. He was between the people in a passion for
retribution and a headless army that was supposed to charge across the
frontier at dawn.
"The thing is sheer madness!" he cried. "It's insubordination! I'll have
it suppressed! The army must go on to gratify public demand. I'll show
the staff that they are not in the saddle. They'll obey orders!"
He tried to get Lanstron on the long distance.
"Sorry, but the chief has retired," answered the officer on duty
sleepily. "In fact, all the rest of the staff have, with orders that
they are not to be disturbed before ten."
"Tell them that the premier, the head of the government, their
commander, is speaking!"
"Yes, sir. But the staff were up all last night and most of to-night,
not to mention a pretty busy day. When they had finished their report to
you, sir, they were utterly done up. Yes, the orders not to disturb them
are quite positive, and as a junior I could not do so except by their
orders as superiors. The chief, before retiring, however, repeated to
me, in case any inquiry came from you, sir, that there was nothing he
could add to the staff's message to the nation and the army. It is to be
given to the soldiers the first thing in the morning, and he will let
you know how they regard it."
"Confound these machine minds that spring their surprises as fully
executed plans!" exclaimed the premier.
"It's true--Par tow and the staff have covered everything--met every
argument. There is nothing more for them to say," said the foreign
minister.
"But what about the indemnity?" demanded the finance minister. He was
thinking of victory in the form of piles of gold in the treasury.
This question, too, was answered.
"War has never brought prosperity," Partow had written. "Its purpose is
to destroy, and destruction can never be construction. The conclusion of
a war has often assured a period of peace; and peace gave the impetus of
prosperity attributed to war. A man is strong in what he achieves, not
through the gifts he receives or the goods he steals. Indemnity will not
raise another blade of wheat in our land. To take it from a beaten man
will foster in him the desire to beat his adversary in turn and recover
the amount and more. Then we shall have the apprehension of war always
in the air, and soon another war and more destruction. Remove the danger
of a European cataclysm, and any sum extorted from the Grays becomes
paltry beside the wealth that peace will create. An indemnity makes the
purpose of the courage of the Grays in their assaults and of the Browns
in their resistance that of the burglar and the looter. There is no
money value to a human life when it is your own; and our soldiers gave
their lives. Do not cheapen their service."
"Considering the part that we played at The Hague," observed the foreign
minister, "it would be rather inconsistent for us not to--"
"There is only one thing to do. Lanstron has got us!" replied the
premier. "We must jump in at the head of the procession and receive the
mud or the bouquets, as it happens."
With Partow's and the staff's appeals went an equally earnest one from
the premier and his cabinet. Naturally, the noisy element of the cities
was the first to find words. It shouted in rising anger that Lanstron
had betrayed the nation. Army officers whom Partow had retired for
leisurely habits said that he and Lanstron had struck at their own
calling. But the average man and woman, in a daze from the shock of the
appeals after a night's celebration, were reading and wondering and
asking their neighbors' opinions. If not in Partow's then in the staff's
message they found the mirror that set their own ethical professions
staring at them.
Before they had made up their minds the correspondents at the front had
set the wires singing to the evening editions; for Lanstron had directed
that they be given the ran of the army's lines at daybreak. They told of
soldiers awakening after the debauch of yesterday's fighting, normal and
rested, glowing with the security of possession of the frontier and
responding to their leaders' sentiment; of officers of the type favored
by Partow who would bring the industry that commands respect to any
calling, taking Lanstron's views as worthy of their profession; of that
irrepressible poet laureate of the soldiers, Captain Stransky, I.C.
(iron cross), breaking forth in a new song to an old tune, expressing
his brotherhood ideas in a "We-have-ours-let-them-keep-theirs" chorus
that was spreading from regiment to regiment.
This left the retired officers to grumble in their coiners that war was
no longer a gentleman's vocation, and silenced the protests of their
natural ally in the business of making war, the noisy element, which
promptly adapted itself to a new fashion in the relation of nations.
Again the great square was packed and again a wave-like roar of cheers
greeted the white speck of an eminent statesman's head. All the ideas
that had been fomenting in the minds of a people for a generation became
a living force of action to break through the precedents born of
provincial passion with a new precedent; for the power of public opinion
can be as swift in its revolutions as decisive victories at arms. The
world at large, after rubbing its forehead and readjusting its
eye-glasses and clearing its throat, exclaimed:
"Why not? Isn't that what we have all been thinking and desiring? Only
nobody knew how or where to begin."
The premier of the Browns found himself talking over the long distance
to the premier of the Grays in as neighborly a fashion as if they had
adjoining estates and were arranging a matter of community interest.
"You have been so fine in waiving an indemnity," said the premier of the
Grays, "that Turcas suggests we pay for all the damage done to property
on your side by our invasion. I'm sure our people will rise to the
suggestion. Their mood has overwhelmed every preconceived notion of
mine. In place of the old suspicion that a Brown could do nothing except
with a selfish motive is the desire to be as fair as the Browns. And the
practical way the people look at it makes me think that it will be
enduring."
"I think so, for the same reason," responded the premier of the Browns.
"They say it is good business. It means prosperity and progress for both
countries."
"After all, a soldier comes out the hero of the great peace movement,"
concluded the premier of the Grays. "A soldier took the tricks with our
own cards. Old Partow was the greatest statesman of us all."
"No doubt of that!" agreed the premier of the Browns. "It's a sentiment
to which every premier of ours who ever tried to down him would have
readily subscribed!"
The every-day statesman smiles when he sees the people smile and grows
angry when they grow angry. Now and then appears an inscrutable genius
who finds out what is brewing in their brains and brings it to a head.
He is the epoch maker. Such an one was that little Corsican, who gave a
stagnant pool the storm it needed, until he became overfed and mistook
his ambition for a continuation of his youthful prescience.
* * * * *
Marta had yet to bear the shock of Westerling's death. After learning
the manner of it she went to her room, where she spent a haunted,
sleepless night. The morning found her still tortured by her
visualization of the picture of him, irresolute as the mob pressed
around the Gray headquarters.
"It is as if I had murdered him!" she said. "I let him make love to
me--I let my hand remain in his once--but that was all, Lanny. I--I
couldn't have borne any more. Yet that was enough--enough!"
"But we know now, Marta," Lanstron pleaded, "that the premier of the
Grays held Westerling to a compact that he should not return alive if he
lost. He could not have won, even though you had not helped us against
him. He would only have lost more lives and brought still greater
indignation on his head. His fate was inevitable--and he was a soldier."
But his reasoning only racked her with a shudder.
"If he had only died fighting!" Marta replied. "He died like a rat in a
trap and I--I set the trap!"
"No, destiny set it!" put in Mrs. Galland.
Lanstron dropped down beside Marta's chair.
"Yes, destiny set it," he said, imploringly.
"Just as it set your part for you. And, Marta," Mrs. Galland went on
gently, with what Marta had once called the wisdom of mothers, "Lanny
lives and lives for you. Your destiny is life and to make the most of
life, as you always have. Isn't it, Marta?"
"Yes," she breathed after a pause, in conviction, as she pressed her
mother's hands. "Yes, you have a gift of making things simple and
clear."
Then she looked up to Lanstron and the flame in her eyes, whose leaping,
spontaneous passion he already knew, held something of the eternal, as
her arms crept around his neck.
"You are life, Lanny! You are the destiny of to-day and to-morrow!"
* * * * *
Though it was very late autumn now, such was the warmth of the sun that,
with a wrap, Mrs. Galland was sitting on the veranda. She was
content--too content to go to town. As she had said to Marta, no doubt
it would be a wonderful sight, but she had never cared for public
celebrations since she had lost her husband. She could get all the joys
of peace she wanted looking at the garden and the landscape; and it did
not matter at all now if Marta were twenty-seven, or even if she were
thirty or thirty odd.
For the last week the people of La Tir had been returning to their
homes, and with the early morning those from the country districts had
come swarming in for the great day. Faintly she heard the cheers of the
crowds pouring toward the frontier--cheers for the Gray premier and
cheers for Lanstron and for Turcas as they gathered for a purpose which
looked further ahead than the mere ratification of the very simple terms
of peace that left the white posts where they were before the war.
"I would rather meet you here than on your range," said Lanstron to
Turcas.
"You certainly find me in a more genial frame of mind than you would
have if you had met me there. And I am very delighted that things have
turned out as they have," replied Turcas. As soldiers of a common type
of efficiency, who understood each other, they might exchange ideas.
Marta in the family carriage, surrounded by her children, looked on.
Hugo Mallin, who had suggested getting acquainted with the Browns in a
common manoeuvre, witnessed his dream come true in miniature. His
sturdy sweetheart had become a heroine of the home town since the
newspapers had published the whole story of her lover's insubordination,
and how he had stood at the white posts rallying stragglers, which
appealed to the sentiment of the moment. People pointed her out as an
example of the loyalty of conviction. His father and mother, far from
hiding their faces in shame, carried their heads high in parental
distinction.
There was nothing unfamiliar to the student of human nature in
campaigns, which many historians overlook, so keen are they to get their
dates and circumstantial details correct, in the way that the Gray and
the Brown veterans fraternized in groups, crossing and recrossing the
frontier line as they labored with each other's tongues. This frequently
comes with peace, when the adversaries have been of the same metal and
standards of civilization. The new thing was the theme of their talk.
They had little to say of the campaign itself. They drew the curtain on
the horrors for purposes of personal glory and raised it only to point a
lesson that should prevent another war. No, they would never try killing
again. That sort of business was buried as securely as Westerling's
ambition. Partow's name kept recurring; one of the paragraphs of his
message, showing how clearly he had foreseen the effect on sentiment,
was frequently quoted:
"We have had war's test; who wants it repeated? We have kept peace with
force between these two brave, high-spirited peoples; why not have the
peace of wisdom? Former sacrifices of blood have been for the glory of
victory of one country over another. Why not consider this one a
sacrifice in common for the glory of a victory in common? If the leaders
of the great nations that boast their civilization cannot find a way to
a permanent understanding among themselves, while they stand for the
peace of the world, then the very civilization which produced the
resolute, intelligent courage and the arms and organization that we have
seen in being is a failure. Surely, the brains that directed these great
armies ought to be equal to some practical plan. Meet the conditions of
international distrust, if you will, by establishing a neutral zone ten
miles broad along the frontier free of all defences. Let the Grays guard
five miles of it on the Brown side and the Browns five miles on the Gray
side, as insurance against surprise or the ambitions of demagogues. What
an example for those other nations beyond Europe, as yet lacking your
organization and progress, whom you must aid and direct! What a return
to you in both moral and commercial profit! Keep armed, in reason; keep
strong, but only as an international police force."
* * * * *
The keen air had given Mrs. Galland the best appetite she had had for
months. She was beginning to fear a late luncheon, when Marta appeared
at the garden gate with the man whose legions had followed in the
footsteps of other winning armies through the pass. He was happier than
the old baron, when plundering was at its best, or the Roman commander
with Rome cheering him. Mrs. Galland's smile had the bliss of family
paradise regained as she watched them in a swinging hand-clasp coming up
the terrace steps. The picture they made might have seemed effeminate to
the baron. Yet we are not so sure of that. Marta had always insisted
that he was perfectly human, too, according to his lights. Possibly the
Roman commander swung hands with a Roman girl as soon as he could get
away from the crowd around his triumphal car.
"Mother, it's a shame that you missed it!" Marta called. "Why, there are
so many great things in the air that it makes me feel a conservative!
They're actually discussing disarmament and an international peace pact
for twenty years," she continued, "that nothing can break. Partow's
statue in our capital is to have not victory, but peace on the fourth
face of the plinth. They're even talking of putting up a statue to him
in the Gray capital. Why not? The Grays have a statue of one of our
great poets and we of one of their great scientists. And, to be as
polite as they, we propose to honor one of their old generals who was
almost as generous in victory as Partow. What a session of the school
next Sunday! We're going to have the children from both La Tir and South
La Tir!... The only trouble is that if Lanny keeps on giving Partow all
the credit for the good work he will succeed in making everybody think
that every time he winked after Partow's death it was according to
Partow's directions for the conduct of the war!"
"Then I shall have the more time for you," replied Lanstron, who, being
a real soldier of his time, did not care for hero worship. It was
entirely contrary to Partow's teachings.