Chapter 23

"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!"