Part 16 (1/2)
”A broken-hearted man playing deaf; a secret telephone installed on our premises without our consent--this is all I know so far,” said Marta, who was opposite Lanstron at one end of the circular seat in the arbor of Mercury, leaning back, with her weight partly resting on her hand spread out on the edge of the bench, head down, lashes lowered so that they formed a curtain for her glance. ”I listen!” she added.
”Of course, with our three millions against their five, the Grays will take the offensive,” he said. ”For us, the defensive. La Tir is in an angle. It does not belong in the permanent tactical line of our defences. Nevertheless, there will be hard fighting here. The Browns will fall back step by step, and we mean, with relatively small cost to ourselves, to make the Grays pay a heavy price for each step--just as heavy as we can!”
They had often argued before with all the weapons known to controversy; but now the realization that his soldierly precision was bringing the forces of war into their personal relations struck her cold, with a logic as cold as his own seemed to her.
”You need not use euphonious terms,” she said without lifting her lashes or any movement except a quick, nervous gesture of her free hand that fell back into place on her lap. ”What you mean is that you will kill as many as possible of the Grays, isn't it? And if you could kill five for every man you lost, that would be splendid, wouldn't it?”
”I don't think of it as splendid. There is nothing splendid about war,”
he objected; ”not to me, Marta.”
”Still you would like to kill five to one, even ten to one, wouldn't you?” she persisted.
”Marta, you are merciless!”
”So is war. It should be treated mercilessly.”
”Yes, twenty to one if they try to take our land!” he declared. ”If we could keep up that ratio the war would not last more than a week. It would mean a great saving of lives in the end. We should win.”
”Exactly. Thank you. Westerling could not have said it better as a reason for another army-corps. For the love of humanity--the humanity of our side--please give us more weapons for murder! And after you have made them pay five to one or ten to one in human lives for the tangent, what then? Go on! I want to look at war face to face, free of the will-o'-the-wisp glamour that draws on soldiers!”
”We fall back to our first line of defence, fighting all the time. The Grays occupy La Tir, which will be out of the reach of our guns. Your house will no longer be in danger, and we happen to know that Westerling means to make it his headquarters.”
”Our house Westerling's headquarters!” she repeated. With a start that brought her up erect, alert, challenging, her lashes flickering, she recalled that Westerling had said at parting that he should see her if war came. This corroborated Lanstron's information. One side wanted a spy in the garden; the other a general in the house. Was she expected to make a choice? He had ceased to be Lanny. He personified war. Westerling personified war. ”I suppose you have spies under his very nose--in his very staff offices?” she asked.
”And probably he has in ours,” said Lanstron, ”though we do our best to prevent it.”
”What a pretty example of trust among civilized nations!” she exclaimed.
”And you say that Westerling, who commands the killing on his side, will be in no danger?”
”Naturally not. As you know, a chief of staff must be at the wire head where all information centres, free of interruption or confusion or any possibility of broken lines of communication with his corps and divisions.”
”Then Partow will not be in any danger?”
”For the same reasons, no.”
”How comfortable! In perfect safety themselves, they will order other men to death!”
”Marta, you are unjust!” exclaimed Lanstron, for he revered Partow as disciple reveres master. ”Partow has the iron cross!”--the prized iron cross given to both officers and men of the Browns for exceptional courage in action and for that alone. ”He won it leading a second charge with a bullet in his arm, after he had lost thirty per cent, of his regiment. The second charge succeeded.”
”Yes, I understand,” she went on a little wildly. ”And perhaps the colonel on the other side, who fought just as bravely and had even heavier losses, did not get the bronze cross of the Grays because he failed. Yes, I understand that bravery is a requisite of the military cult. You must take some risk or you will not cause enough slaughter to win either iron or bronze crosses. And, Lanny, are you a person of such distinction in the business of killing that you also will be out of danger?”
She had forgotten about the telephone; she had forgotten the picture of dare-devil nerve he made when he rose from the wreck of his plane. If his work were to make war, her work was against war--the mission of her life as she saw it in the intense, pa.s.sionate moments when some new absurdity of its processes appeared to her. She was ready to seize any argument his talk offered to combat the things for which he stood. She did not see, as her eyes poured her hot indignation into his, that his maimed hand was twitching or how he bit his lips and flushed before he replied:
”Each one goes where he is sent, link by link, down from the chief of staff. Only in this way can you have that solidarity, that harmonious efficiency which means victory.”
”An autocracy, a tyranny over the lives of all the adult males in countries that boast of the ballot and self-governing inst.i.tutions!” she put in.
”But I hope,” he went on, with the quickening pulse and eager smile that used to greet a call from Feller to ”set things going” in their cadet days, ”that I may take out a squadron of dirigibles. After all this spy business, that would be to my taste.”