Part 14 (2/2)

”'Pay back! Pay back in some way!' a voice keeps saying. 'Pay back! Have an object in mind. Get to work on something that will help you to pay back or you will soon take a plunge to lower depths than you have yet sounded.'

”It is not the gambling, not the drinking--no! The thing that I cannot forget, that grows more horrible the more keenly awake clean living makes me to the past, is that I am inwardly foul--as foul as a priest who has broken his vows. I have disgraced the uniform--my country's uniform. I may never wear that uniform again; never look the meanest private in a battery in the face without feeling my cheeks hot with shame. While I cannot right myself before the service, I should like to do something to right myself with my conscience. I should like to see a battery march past and look at the flag and into the faces of the soldiers of my country feeling that I had atoned--feeling so for my own peace of mind--atoned by some real deed of service.

”I have been reading how j.a.panese volunteers made a bridge of their bodies for their comrades into a Russian trench, and when everybody else felt a horrible, uncanny admiration for such madness I have envied them the glorious exhilaration of the moment before the charge. That was a sufficient reward in life for death. So I come again to you for help.

Now that you are chief of intelligence you must have many secret agents within the inner circle of the army's activities. In the midst of peace and the commonplaces of drill and manoeuvres there must be dangerous and trying work where the only distinction is service for the cause--our cause of three million against five. Find a task for me, no matter how mean, thankless, or dangerous, Lanny. The more exacting it is the more welcome, for the better will be my chance to get right with myself.”

”Come!” was Lanstron's cable in answer.

At the time he had not chosen any employment for Feller. He was thinking only that something must be found. When he heard of the death of the Gallands' gardener he recollected that before the pa.s.sion for gambling overtook Feller he had still another pa.s.sion besides his guns. The garden of the Feller estate had been famous in its neighborhood. Young Lanstron had not been more fond of the society of an engine-driver than young Feller of a gardener's. On a holiday in the capital with his fellow cadets he would separate from them to spend hours in the botanical gardens. Once, after his downfall began, at a riotous dinner party he had broken into a temper with a man who had torn a rose to pieces in order to toss the petals over the table.

”Flowers have souls!” he had cried in one of his tumultuous, abandoned reversions to his better self which his companions found eccentric and diverting. ”That rose is the only thing in the room that is not foul --and I am the foulest of all!”

The next minute, perhaps after another gla.s.s of champagne, he would be winning a burst of laughter by his mimicry of a gouty old colonel reprimanding him for his erring career.

Naturally, in the instinct of friends.h.i.+p, Lanstron's own account left out the unpleasant and dwelt on the pleasant facts of Feller's career.

”His colonel did not understand him,” he said. ”But I knew the depths of his fine spirit and generous heart. I knew his talent. I knew that he was a victim of unsympathetic surroundings, of wealth, of love of excitement, and his own talent. Where he was, something must happen. He bubbled with energy. The routine of drill, the same old chaff of the mess, the garrison gossip, the long hours of idleness while the busy world throbs outside, which form a privileged life to most officers, were stifling to him. 'Let's set things going!' he would say in the old days, and we'd set them. Most of our demerits were for some kind of deviltry. And how he loved the guns! I can see the sparkle of his men's eyes at sight of him. n.o.body could get out of them what he could. If he had not been put in the army as a matter of family custom, if he had been an actor, or if he and I had gone to build bridges, then he might have a line of capital letters and periods after his name, and he would not be a spy or I an employer of spies, doing the work of a detective agency in an officer's uniform because n.o.body but an officer may do it.”

At first Marta listened rigidly, but as the narrative proceeded her interest grew. When Lanstron quoted Feller's appeal for any task, however mean and thankless, she nodded sympathetically and understandingly; when he related the incident of the rose, its appeal was irresistible. She gave a start of delight and broke silence.

”Yes. I recall just how he looked as he stood on the porch, his head bent, his shoulders stooped, twirling his hat in his hands, while mother and I examined him as to his qualifications,” she said. ”I remember his words. He said that he knew flowers and that, like him, flowers could not hear; but perhaps he would be all the better gardener because he could not hear. He was so ingratiating; yet his deafness seemed such a drawback that I hesitated.”

Following the path to the tower leisurely, they had reached the tower.

Feller's door was open. Marta looked into the room, finding in the neat arrangement of its furniture a new significance. He was absent, for it was the dinner hour.

”And on my recommendation you took him,” Lanstron continued.

”Yes, on yours, Lanny, on a friend's! You”--she put a cold emphasis on the word--”you wanted him here for your plans! And why? You haven't answered that yet. What purpose of the war game does he serve in our garden?”

His look pleaded for patience, while he tried to smile, which was rather difficult in face of her att.i.tude.

”Not altogether in the garden; partly in the tower,” he replied. ”You are to be in the whole secret and in such a way as to make my temptation clear, I hope. First, I think you ought to see the setting. Let us go in”

Impelled by the fascination of Feller's romantic story and by a curiosity that Lanstron's manner accentuated, she entered the room.

Apparently Lanstron was familiar with the premises. Pa.s.sing through the sitting-room into the room adjoining, where Feller stored his tools, he opened a door that gave onto the circular stone steps leading down into the dungeon tunnel.

”I think we had better have a light,” he said, and when he had fetched one from the bedchamber he descended the steps, asking her to follow.

They were in a pa.s.sage six feet in height and about three feet broad, which seemed to lead on indefinitely into clammy darkness. The dewy stone walls sparkled in fantastic and ghostly iridescence under the rays from the lantern. The dank air lay moist against their faces.

”It's a long time since I've been here,” said Marta, glad to break the uncanny sound of their footsteps in the weird silence with her voice.

”Not since I was a youngster. Then I came on a dare to see if there were goblins. There weren't any; at least, none that cared to manifest himself to me.”

”We have a goblin here now that we are nursing for the Grays--an up-to-date one that is quite visible,” said Lanstron. ”This is far enough.” He paused and raised the lantern. With its light full in her face, she blinked. ”There, at the height of your chin!”

<script>