The Last Shot Part 82

"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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.saults 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 pa.s.sion 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-gla.s.ses and clearing its throat, exclaimed:

"Why not? Isn't that what we have all been thinking and desiring? Only n.o.body 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 pa.s.sion 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 st.u.r.dy 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 circ.u.mstantial 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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 appet.i.te 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 pa.s.s. 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 wors.h.i.+p. It was entirely contrary to Partow's teachings.