Part 46 (2/2)

Confidence was reflected in Westerling's bearing and in his smile of command as he pa.s.sed through the staff rooms, Turcas and Bouchard in his train, with tacit approval of the arrangements. Finally, Turcas, now vice-chief of staff, and the other chiefs awaited his pleasure in the library, which was to be his sanctum. On the ma.s.sive seventeenth-century desk lay a number of reports and suggestions. Westerling ran through them with accustomed swiftness of sifting and then turned to his personal aide.

”Tell Francois that I will have tea on the veranda.”

From the fact that he took with him the papers that he had laid aside, subordinate generals, with the gift of unspoken directions which is a part of their profession, understood that he meant to go over the subjects requiring special attention while he had tea.

”Everything is going well--well!” he added in a way that said that everything must be if he said so and that he knew how to make everything go well. ”And we shall be up pretty late to-night. Any one who feels the need had better take a nap”--the implication being that he did not.

”Well!” ran the unspoken communication of confidence through the staff.

So well that His Excellency was calmly taking tea on the veranda! For the indefatigable Turcas the detail; for Westerling the front of Jove.

”Well!” The thrill of the word was with him in a flight of sentiment as he stood on that veranda where a certain prophecy had been made to a young colonel. Sight of the rippling folds of the flag of his country on the outskirts of the town prolonged the thrill. His eyes swept the pale horizon of the distances of plain and Mountain and lowered to the garden. Above the second terrace he saw a crown of woman's hair--hair of a jet abundance, radiant in the sunlight and shading a face that brought familiar completeness to the scene.

He had told Marta only two weeks ago that he should see her again if war came; and war had come. With the inviting prospect of a few holiday moments in which to continue the interview that had been abruptly concluded in a hotel reception-room, he started down the terrace steps.

Their glances met where the second terrace path ended at the second terrace flight; hers shot with a beam of restrained and questioning good humor that spoke at least a truce to the invader.

”You called sooner than I expected,” she said in a note of equivocal pleasantry.

”Or I,” he rejoined with a shade of triumph, the politest of triumph. He was a step above her, her head on a level with the pocket of his blouse.

His square shoulders, commanding height, and military erectness were thus emphasized, as was her own feminine slightness.

”I want to thank you,” she said. ”As becomes a soldier, your forethought was expressed in action. It was the promptness of the men you sent to look after the garden which saved the uprooted plants before they were past recovery.”

”I wished it for your sake and somewhat for my own sake to be the same that it was in the days when I used to call,” he said graciously. ”Tea was from four to five, do you remember? Will you join me? I have just ordered it.”

A generous, pleasant conqueror, this! No one knew better than Westerling how to be one when he chose. He was something of an actor. Leaders of men of his type usually are.

”Why, yes. Very gladly!” she a.s.sented with no undue cordiality and no undue constraint, quite as if there were no war.

”It was the Browns who cut the lindens?” he suggested significantly.

”They said that it was necessary as part of the defence,” she replied.

”We shall plant new ones and have the pleasure of watching them grow.”

Neutrality could not be better impersonated he thought, than in the even cleaving of her lips over the words. They seemed to say that a storm had come and gone and a new set of masters had taken the place of the old. As they approached the veranda Francois was placing the tea things.

”Quite the same! That was your chair, as I remember,” said Westerling after indicating to Francois that he might go, ”and this was mine.”

But the teapot was not Mrs. Galland's--it belonged to the staff.

”This is different,” observed Marta, touching her finger-tip to the coat of arms of the Grays on the side of a cup.

”Yes, my own field kit,” he answered, thinking that the novelty of tea from a soldier's service had appealed to her; for she was smiling.

”So, you being the host and I the guest now, why, you pour!” she said.

There was a touch of brittleness in her tone--of half-teasing, half-serious brittleness.

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