Part 14 (1/2)

”You knew he was not deaf, while we wrote our messages to him and I have been learning the deaf-and-dumb alphabet! It was pretty fun, wasn't it?”

”Not fun--no, Marta!” he parried.

”He is a spy?” she asked.

”Yes, a spy. You can put things in a bright light, Marta!” He found words coming with difficulty in face of the pain and disillusion of her set look.

”Using some broken man as a p.a.w.n; setting him as a spy in the garden where you have been the welcome friend!” she exclaimed. ”A spy on what--on my mother, on Minna, on me, on the flowers, as a part of this monstrous game of trickery and lies that you are playing?”

There was no trace of anger in her tone. It was that of one mortally hurt. Anger would have been easier to bear than the measuring, penetrating wonder that found him guilty of such a horrible part. Those eyes would have confused Partow himself with the steady, welling intensity of their gaze. She did not see how his left hand was twitching and how he stilled its movement by pressing it against the bench.

”You will take Feller with you when you go!” she said, rising.

Lanstron dropped his head in a kind of shaking throb of his whole body and raised a face white with appeal.

”Marta!” He was speaking to a profile, very sensitive and yet like ivory. ”I've no excuse for such an abuse of hospitality except the obesssion of a loathsome work that some man must do and I was set to do.

My G.o.d, Marta! I cease to be natural and human. I am a machine. I keep thinking, what if war comes and some error of mine let the enemy know where to strike the blow of victory; or if there were information I might have gained and failed to gain that would have given us the victory--if, because I had not done my part, thousands of lives of our soldiers were sacrificed needlessly!”

At that she turned on him quickly, her face softening.

”You do think of that--the lives?”

”Yes, why shouldn't I?”

”Of those on your side!” she exclaimed, turning away.

”Yes, of those first,” he replied. ”And, Marta, I did not tell you why Feller was here because he did not want me to, and I was curious to see if he had sustained power enough to keep you from discovering his simulation. I did not think he would remain. I thought that in a week he would tire of the part. But now you must have the whole story. You will listen?”

”I should not be fair if I did not, should I?” she replied, with a weary shadow of a smile.

XI

MARTA HEARS FELLER'S STORY

To tell the story as Lanstron told it is to have it from the partisan lips of a man speaking for a man out of the depths of a friends.h.i.+p grown into the fibre of youth. It is better written by the detached narrator.

Gustave Feller's father had died when Gustave was twelve and his mother found it easy to spoil an only son who was handsome and popular. He suffered the misfortune of a mental brilliancy that learns too readily and of a personal charm that wins its way too easily. He danced well; he was facile at the piano; and he had so p.r.o.nounced a gift as an amateur actor that a celebrated professional had advised him to go on the stage.

The two entering the cadet officers' school at the same time, chance made them roommates and choice soon made them chums. They had in common cleverness and the abundant energy that must continually express itself in action, and a mutual attraction in the very complexity of dissimilar traits that wove well in companions.h.i.+p.

While they were together Lanstron was a brake on his friend's impulses of frivolity which carried him to extremes; but they separated after receiving their commissions, Feller being a.s.signed to the horse-artillery and Lanstron to the infantry and later to the staff. In charge of a field-battery at manoeuvres Feller was at his best. But in the comparative idleness of his profession he had much spare time for amus.e.m.e.nt, which led to gambling. Soon many debts hung over his head, awaiting liquidation at high rates of interest when he should come into the family property.

To the last his mother, having ever in mind a picture of him as a fine figure riding at the head of his guns, was kept in ignorance of this side of his life. With her death, when he had just turned thirty, a fortune was at his disposal. He made an oath of his resolution to pay his debts, marry and settle down and maintain his inheritance unimpaired. This endured for a year before it began to waver; and the wavering was soon followed by headlong obsession which fed on itself. As his pa.s.sion for gambling grew it seemed to consume the better elements of his nature. Lanstron reasoned with him, then implored, then stormed; and Feller, regularly promising to reform, regularly fell each time into greater excesses. Twice Lanstron saved him from court-martial, but the third time no intercession or influence would induce his superiors to overlook the offence. Feller was permitted to resign to avoid a scandal, and at thirty-three, penniless, disgraced, he faced the world and sought the new land which has been the refuge for numbers of his kind. Only one friend bade him farewell as he boarded a steamer for New York, and this was Lanstron.

”Keep away from cities! Seek the open country! And write me, Gustave--don't fail!” said Lanstron.

Letters full of hope came from a Wyoming ranch; letters that told how Feller had learned to rope a steer and had won favor with his fellows and the ranch boss; of a one-time gourmet's healthy appet.i.te for the fare of the chuck wagon. Lanstron, reading more between the lines than in them, understood that as muscles hardened with the new life the old pa.s.sion was dying and in its place was coming something equally dangerous as a possible force in driving his ardent nature to some excess for the sake of oblivion. Finally, Feller broke out with the truth.

”My hair is white now, Lanny,” he wrote. ”I have aged ten years in these two. With every month of this new life the horror of my career has become clear to me. I lie awake thinking of it. I feel unworthy to a.s.sociate with my simple, outspoken, free-riding companions. Remorse is literally burning up my brain. It is better to have my mind diseased, my moral faculties blurred, my body unsound; for to be normal, healthy, industrious is to remember the whole ghastly business of my dishonor.