The Last Shot Part 49

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 fas.h.i.+on. "On the firing-line you threw down your rifle. You refused to fight any more.

You said: 'd.a.m.n 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: 'd.a.m.n patriotism!' I'm afraid Captain Fraca.s.se was out of temper when he reported that. I didn't say, 'd.a.m.n 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.ses 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.