Part 6 (2/2)
”Yes, I shouldn't wonder if it were!”
Why shouldn't he admit the truth to the one who had rung the bell of his secret ambition long ago by recognizing in him the ability to reach his goal? He marvelled at her grasp of the situation.
”It wasn't so very hard to say, was it?” she asked happily, in response to his smile. Then, her gift of putting herself in another's place, while she strove to look at things with his purpose and vision, in full play, she went on in a different tone, as much to herself as to him: ”You have labored to make yourself master of a mighty organization. You did not care for the non-essentials. You wanted the reality of shaping results.”
”Yes, the results, the power!” he exclaimed.
”Fifteen hundred regiments!” she continued thoughtfully, looking at a given point rather than at him. ”Every regiment a blade which you would bring to an even sharpness! Every regiment a unit of a harmonious whole, knowing how to screen itself from fire and give fire as long as bidden, in answer to your will if war comes! That is what you live and plan for, isn't it?”
”Yes, exactly! Yes, you have it!” he said. His shoulders stiffened as he thrilled at seeing a picture of himself, as he wanted to see himself, done in bold strokes. It a.s.sured him that not only had his own mind grown beyond what were to him the narrow a.s.sociations of his old La Tir days, but that hers had grown, too. ”And you--what have you been doing all these years?” he asked.
”Living the life of a woman on a country estate,” she replied. ”Since you made a rule that no Gray officers Should cross the frontier we have been a little lonelier, having only the Brown officers to tea. Did you really find it so bad for discipline in your own case?” she concluded with playful solemnity.
”One cannot consider individual cases in a general order,” he explained.
”And, remember, the Browns made the ruling first. You see, every year means a tightening--yes, a tightening, as arms and armies grow more complicated and the maintaining of staff secrets more important. And you have been all the time at La Tir, truly?” he asked, changing the subject. He was convinced that she had acquired something that could not be gained on the outskirts of a provincial town.
”No. I have travelled. I have been quite around the world.”
”You have!” This explained much. ”How I envy you! That is a privilege I shall not know until I am superannuated.” While he should remain chief of staff he must be literally a prisoner in his own country.
”Yes, I should say it was splendid! Splendid--yes, indeed!” Snappy little nods of the head being unequal to expressing the joy of the memories that her exclamation evoked, she clasped her hands over her knees and swung back and forth in the ecstasy of seventeen.
”Splendid! I should say so!” She nestled the curling tip of her tongue against her teeth, as if the recollection must also be tasted.
”Splendid, enchanting, enlightening, stupendous, and wickedly expensive!
Another girl and I did it all on our own.”
”O-oh!” he exclaimed.
”Oh, oh, oh!” she repeated after him. ”Oh, what, please?”
”Oh, nothing!” he said. It was quite comprehensible to him how well equipped she was to take care of herself on such an adventure.
”Precisely, when you come to think it over!” she concluded.
”What interested you most? What was the big lesson of all your journeying?” he asked, ready to play the listener.
”Being born and bred on a frontier, of an ancestry that was born and bred on a frontier, why, frontiers interested me most,” she said. ”I collected impressions of frontiers as some people collect pictures. I found them all alike--stupid, just stupid! Oh, so stupid!” Her frown grew with the repet.i.tion of the word; her fingers closed in on her palm in vexation. He recollected that he had seen her like this two or three times at La Tir, when he had found the outbursts most entertaining. He imagined that the small fist pressed against the table edge could deliver a stinging blow. ”As stupid as it is for neighbors to quarrel!
It put me at war with all frontiers.”
”Apparently,” he said.
She withdrew her fist from the table, dropped the opened hand over the other on her knee, her body relaxing, her wrath pa.s.sing into a kind of shamefacedness and then into a soft, prolonged laugh.
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