The Last Shot Part 44

"General Westerling's headquarters?" she inquired.

He parried the question with a frown. Staff-officers never give information. They receive information and transmit orders.

"I know General Westerling. You will tell him that my mother, Mrs.

Galland, and our maid and myself are very tired from the entertainment he has given us, unasked, and we need sleep to-night. So you will leave us until morning and that door, sir, is the one out into the grounds."

The staff-officer bowed and went out by that door, glad to get away from Marta's eyes. His inspection of the premises with a view to plans for staff accommodation could wait. Westerling would not be here for two days at least.

"Whew! What energy she has!" he thought. "I never had anybody make me feel so contemptibly unlike a gentleman in my life."

Yet Marta, returning to the hall, had to steady herself in a dizzy moment against the wall. Complete reaction had come. She craved sleep as if it were the one true, real thing in the world. She craved sleep for the clarity of mind that comes with the morning light. In the haziness of fleecy thought, as slumber drew its soft clouds around her, her last conscious visions were the pleasant ones rising free of a background of horror: of Feller's smile when he went back to his automatic for good; of Dellarme's smile as he was dying; of Stransky's smile as Minna gave him hope; and of Hugo's face as he uttered his flute-like cry of protest. In her ears were the haunting calmness and contained force of Lanstron's voice over the telephone. She was pleased to think that she had not lost her temper in her talk with the staff-officer. No, she had not flared once in indignation. It was as if she had absorbed some of Lanny's own self-control. Lanny would approve of her in that scene with an officer of the Grays. And she realized that a change had come over her--a change inexplicable and telling--and she was tired--oh, so tired!

It had been exhausting work, indeed, for one woman, though she had been around the world, making war on two armies.

Meanwhile, all too flushed with energy, the energy of movement, to think of the feud between Hugo and Pilzer, Fraca.s.se's men had sped along the castle road. Little Peterkin easily kept pace. There was no danger in pursuit. In him was the same zest of the chase which Animated his comrades. They dropped down on a ledge without much regard to order.

Before them, at close range, was a company breaking out of close order in a _sauve-qui-peut_ rout up a reverse slope. It was not Dellarme's company, but some other that had mistaken its direction and retired too late and by the wrong road.

You will throw hand-grenades, will you? thought Fraca.s.se's men. You will mangle our fellows when they Can't strike back, will you? Now you'll pay! Now it is our turn! We have seen our blood flow and now yours will flow!

The l.u.s.t of the red slipped the cartridge clips into the magazines and held a true aim in the mad delight of slaughter. No one minded, for no one heard--not even little Peterkin--the scattering bullets in return.

They had reached the stage where the objective thought of revenge wholly submerged the subjective thought of personal danger, which is the mood of the hungry tiger in the hunt. They were the veritable finished products of veteran experience in purpose and marksmans.h.i.+p. Hugo, too, was firing, but far over the head of every target; firing like a man in a trance who needs some deciding incident to bring him out of it into the part he was to play.

Only occasional figures who had not escaped over the ridge were to be seen. The fewer the targets the greater the concentration. A whole company was firing on a dozen straggling figures. But one--that one in the pasture--seemed to have a charmed life. The ground around him was peppered with dust spots. He had only a few yards more to go to safety; yes his head--the exasperation of him!--was in line with the crest before he fell.

Where was there any more prey? With ferret quickness eyes swept the range of vision. Out of an orchard into the stubble of a wheat-field broke a panicky ma.s.s; a score or more of men who had lost their officer and their heads presumably. They were the nail under the hammer, a brown blot, a target.

"Ah!" a chorus of excited exclamations in greeting of the game flushed from cover ran along the line. Just the way you got our fellows with the hand-grenades, we will get you! This was the thought, this the prayer which they saw being fulfilled by the glad medley of their fire when Hugo Mallin sprang up and threw down his rifle as if it were something whose touch had become venomous. He threw it down with features transformed in the uplifting thought and the relief of a final resolution taken.

"I am through!" he cried. "I will not murder my fellowman who has done me no wrong! I cannot, I will not kill!"

Fraca.s.se, who was near by, heard enough to understand the purport of the declaration, and his recollection of Hugo's heresy and all the prejudice that he had formed against Hugo and the abhorrence of Hugo's offence to the strict militarist brought a rush of anger to his brain as he leaped up and drawing his sword, struck at Hugo with the flat of it. He aimed for Hugo's back, but a bullet had hit Hugo in the calf of his leg and, his knees giving under him, he received the blow on the head and fell unconscious.

When he came to it was with a twitch of pain in his ribs. He saw the glowering faces of his comrades above him and realized that Pilzer had given him a kick which expressed the general opinion.

"Once ought to be enough of that," said the doctor, who was bandaging the leg, speaking to Pilzer.

Yet in the doctor's eyes Hugo saw no favor, only the humanity of his occupation of mercy to criminal and king alike. But Hugo expected no favor and he was glad of what he had done as he swooned again. When he came to a second time, his head aching with throbs, it was with a sense of falling. He found that he was on a litter that had just been set down. Evidently this was by order of the colonel, who was standing over Hugo in the company of some officers. All were regarding him as if he were a species of reptile.

"World anarchist ideas, which is another word for treason or white liver," observed the colonel. "To think that it happened in my regiment!

But I'll not try to cover it for the regiment's good name. He will get the full measure of the law!"

"The placard is a good idea," suggested an officer.

"Yes, put on by one of his comrades!"

"The punishment of public opinion. It shows how sound the army is at heart."

Hugo, lowering his glance, was able to see a sheet of note-paper pinned to his blouse. It was lettered, but he could not make out the words.

Then he heard the approach of a galloping horse, whose hoofs seemed to strike his head, and heard the horse stop and an orderly saying something about Company I having got too far forward into a mess and the need of litters.

"We can spare this one," said the colonel.

Hugo was rolled roughly onto the ground by the roadside and left alone.

He managed to raise himself on his elbow and saw that the lettering of the placard was "Coward!" Officers and soldiers and hospital-corps men called attention to it as they pa.s.sed. The sun was very hot and he was growing feverish. Painfully he dragged himself to the shelter of a tree, and then, looking around, saw that he was near the big house of the terraced garden.

x.x.x

MARTA MEETS HUGO

The general staff-officer of the Grays, who had tasted Marta's temper on his first call, when he returned the next morning did not enter unannounced. He rang the door-bell.

"I have a message for you from General Westerling," he said to her. "The general expresses his deep regret at the unavoidable damage to your house and grounds and has directed that everything possible be done immediately in the way of repairs."

In proof of this the officer called attention to a group of service-corps men who were removing the sand-bags from the first terrace. Others were at work in the garden setting uprooted plants back into the earth.

"His Excellency says," continued the officer, "that, although the house is so admirably suited for staff purposes, we will find another if you desire."

He was too polite and too considerate in his att.i.tude for Marta not to meet him in the same spirit.

"That is what we should naturally prefer," and Marta bowed her head in indecision.

"We should have to begin installing the telegraph and telephone service on the lower floor at once," he remarked. "In fact, all arrangements must be made before the general's arrival."

"He has been a guest here before," she said reminiscently and detachedly.

Her head dropped lower, in apparent disregard of his presence, as she took counsel with herself. She was perfectly still, without even the movement of an eyelash. Other considerations than any he might suggest, he subtly understood, held her attention. They were the criterion by which she would at length a.s.sent or dissent, and nothing could hurry the Marta of to-day, who yesterday had been a creature of feverish impulse.

It seemed a long time that he was watching that wonderful profile under the very black hair, soft with the softness of flesh, yet firmly carved.

She lifted her head gradually, her eyes sweeping past the spot where Dellarme had lain dying, where Feller had manned the automatic, where Stransky had thrown Pilzer over the parapet. He saw the glance arrested and focussed on the flag of the Grays, which was floating from a staff on the outskirts of the town, and slowly, glowingly, the light rippling on its folds was reflected in her face.

"She is for us! She is a Gray!" he thought triumphantly. The woman and the flag! The matter-of-fact staff-officer felt the thrill of sentiment.

"I think we can arrange it," Marta announced with a rare smile of a.s.sent.

"Then I'll go back to town and set the signal-corps men to work," he said.

"And when you come you will find the house at your disposal," she a.s.sured him.

Except that he was raising his cap instead of saluting, he was conscious of withdrawing with the deference due to a superior.

In place of the smile, after he had gone, came a frown and a look in her eyes as if at something revolting; then the smile returned, to be succeeded by the frown, which was followed by an indeterminate shaking of the head.

The roar of battle kept up its steady refrain in the direction of the range. Marta had heard it when she fell asleep and heard it when she awakened. A battery of heavy guns of the Grays broke their flashes from a knoll this side of the one where Dellarme's men had made their first stand. At the foot of the garden, where yesterday she had distributed flowers to the wounded Browns, a regiment of Gray infantry was marching past a train of siege-guns. All the figures moving on the landscape, which yesterday had been brown, had changed to gray. The Grays were masters of the town and all the neighborhood.