Part 31 (1/2)
”As you will, Marta! Only, Marta--I plead with you--please, please leave the house!” he begged pa.s.sionately.
Again that request, which was acid to the raw spot of her anger! Again that a.s.sumption that she must desert her own home because uninvited guests would make it the theatre of their quarrel! How clear and una.s.sailable her reply in the purview of her distraught logic!
”Why particularly care for one life when you deal in lives by the wholesale?” she demanded. ”Why think of my life when you are taking other lives every minute?”
”Because I am human, not just a machine! Because yours is the one life of all to me--because I love you!” Feller, getting only one side of the talk, cautiously watching her as he held up the lantern to throw her face more clearly in relief, saw her start and caught the sound of a quick indrawing of breath between her lips, while something electric quivered through her frame. Then, as one who has twinged from a pin-p.r.i.c.k of distraction which she will not permit to waive her from a white-heat purpose, she exclaimed, in rapid, stabbing, desperate sentences:
”That! That now! After what I said to you a week ago! That in the midst of your mowing! No, no, no!” She drove the receiver down on the hook and blazed out to Feller: ”Now you will tear out the 'phone'”
He steadied himself against the wall, covering his face with his hands, and for the first time in her life she heard a man sob.
”My one chance--my last chance--gone!” he said brokenly. ”The chance for me to redeem myself, so that I might again look at the flag without shame, taken from me in the name of mercy, when, by helping to bring victory and shorten the war, I might have saved thousands of lives!” he proceeded dismally.
”The old argument! Lanny has just used it!” said Marta. But coming from a man sobbing it sounded differently. His hands fell away from his face as if they were a dead weight. She saw him a wreck of a human being with only his eyes alive, regarding her in harrowing wonder and reproach.
”When I was a gardener eating at the kitchen table, playing the part of a spy--I who was honor man at the military school--I who had a conscience that sent me back from the free life on the plains to try to atone--when I hoped to do this thing in order to prove that I was fit to die if not to live----”
He was as a man pitting his last grain of strength against overwhelming odds. There were long, poignant pauses between his sentences as he seemed to strive for coherence.
”--in order to prove it for my country, for Lanny, and for you who have been so kind to me!” he concluded, another dry sob shaking him.
His chin dropped to his breast. Even the spark in his eyes flickered out. In the feeble lantern light that deepened the shadows of his face he was indescribably pitiful. She could not look away from him. There was something infectious about his misery that compelled her to feel with his nerves.
”Please,” he pleaded faintly--”please leave me to myself. I will tear out the telephone--trust me--only I wish to be alone. I am uncertain--I see only dark!”
He sank lower against the wall, his head fell forward, though not so far but he could see her from under his eyebrows. She started as she had at the telephone, her breath came in the same sweep between her lips, and he looked for a pa.s.sionate refusal; but it did not come. She seemed in some spell of recollection or projection of thought. A l.u.s.trous veil was over her eyes. She was not looking at him or at anything in the range of her vision. She shuddered and abruptly seized her left wrist with her right hand, as Lanstron had in the arbor, which had brought her cry of ”I'm hurting you!” In this inscrutable att.i.tude she was silent for a time.
”Let it remain--it means so much to you!” she said wildly, and hurried past him still clasping her wrist.
He stared into the darkness that closed around her. With the last sound of her footsteps he became another Gustave Feller, who, all mercurial vivacity, clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth with a ”La, la, la!” as his hand shot out for the receiver. There it paused, and still another idea animated still another Gustave Feller.
”Why not tear out the telephone--why not?” he mused. ”Why didn't I agree to her plan? Why can't I ever carry more than one thing in mind at once?
I forgot that we were at war. I forget that I am already at the front. I have skill! G.o.d knows, I ought to have courage! Volunteers who have both are always welcome in war. Any number of gunners will be killed! When an artillery colonel saw what I could do he would take me on without further questioning. Then I should not be a spy, shuffling and whining, but bang-bang-bang on the target!”
In imagination he now had a gun. His hand made a movement of manipulation, head bent, eye sighting.
”How do you like that? You will like this one less! And here's another--but, no, no!” He dropped against the wall again; he drove his nails into his palms in a sort of castigation. ”I am the same as a soldier now--a soldier a.s.signed to a definite duty for my flag. I should break my word of honor--a soldier's word of honor! No, not that again!”
He s.n.a.t.c.hed down the receiver to make sure that temptation did not reappear in too luring a guise, and still another Gustave Feller was in the ascendant.
”Didn't I say to trust it to me, Lanny?” he called merrily. ”Miss Galland consents!”
”She does? Good! Good for you, Gustave!”
”Her second thought,” Feller rejoined. ”And, Lanny,” he proceeded in boyish enthusiasm, using a slang word of military school days, ”it was bulludgeous the way we brought down their planes and dirigibles! How I ache to be in it when the guns are so busy! With batteries back of the house and an automatic in the yard, things seem very homelike. I--”
”Gustave,” interrupted Lanstron, ”we all have our weaknesses, and perhaps yours is to play a part. So keep away from the fight and don't think of the guns!”
”I will, I swear!” Feller answered fervently. ”One thought, one duty!