Part 48 (1/2)
The subjective enjoyment of the declaration kept him from any keen notice of the effect of his words. Lanny was right. It had been a war of deliberate conquest; a war to gratify personal ambition. All her life Marta would be able to live over again the feelings of this moment. It was as if she were frozen, all except brain and nerves, which were on fire, while the rigidity of ice kept her from springing from her chair in contempt and horror. She would always wonder how the bonds of her purpose to save Hugo held her tongue But still another purpose came on the wings of diabolical temptation which would pit the art of woman against the power of a man who set millions against millions in slaughter to gratify personal ambition. She was thankful that she was looking down as she spoke, for she could not bring herself to another compliment. Her throat was too chilled for that yet.
”The one way to end the feud between the two nations was a war that would mean permanent peace,” he explained, seeing how quiet she was and realizing, with a recollection of her children's oath, that he had gone a little too far. He wanted to retain her admiration. It had become as precious to him as a new delicacy to Lucullus.
”Yes, I understand,” she managed to murmur; then she was able to look up. ”It's all so immense!” she added. ”And you have yet another paper there?” she said with a little gesture that might have been taken as the expression of a hope that she was not overstaying her welcome.
”This is very interesting,” he said, watching her narrowly now, ”the case of a private, one Hugo Mallin, who refused to fight because he was against war on principle. Four charges: a.s.sault on a fellow soldier, cowardice, treason, and insubordination under fire.”
”Enough, I should say!” said Marta in a low tone.
”A question of which one to press--of an example,” continued Westerling, reading the full official statement for the first time.
”What is the punishment?” she asked.
”Why, of course, death!” he replied, somewhat absently, in preoccupation. ”Extraordinary! And they have located him, it seems He is here at headquarters!”
”Yes; certainly,” Marta said. ”We found him under a tree, deserted and wounded, labelled coward, and we cared for him.”
”Indeed!” exclaimed Westerling. ”He must have appealed strongly to your sympathies.”
There was no sharpness in the words, but he had lapsed from the personal to the official manner.
”To my sense of humanity!” Her reply was made in much the same tone as his remark, where he had expected emotion, even pa.s.sion. More than ever was he certain that she had undergone some revealing experience since he had seen her in the capital. ”Yes, to any one's sense of humanity--a wounded, thirsty man in a fever!” There came, with a swift and mellowing charm, the look of a fervent and exalted tenderness and the pulse-arresting quiver of intensity that had swept over her at her first sight of Hugo under the tree. ”I know that he was not a coward in one sense,” she added, ”for I saw him make the a.s.sault named in the first charge.”
She proceeded with the story of what she had witnessed in the dining-room. There was no appeal on Hugo's account. Appraising the qualities of the Marta of the moment in contrast with the Marta of seventeen and the Marta of three weeks ago, Westerling was significantly conscious of her att.i.tude of impartiality, free of any attempt at feminine influence, and of her evident desire to help him with the facts that she knew.
”The charge of a.s.sault is only incidental,” said Westerling. ”But Mallin was in the right about his comrades entering the house; right about the destruction of property. It is our business to protect property, not only as a principle but as a matter of policy. We do not desire to make the population of the country we occupy unnecessarily hostile.”
”I judged that from your kindness in repairing the damage done to ours,”
she a.s.sured him, and added happily: ”Though I don't suppose that you go so far in most cases as to set uprooted plants back in their beds.”
”No; that is a refinement, perhaps,” he answered, laughing. She was not only more agreeable but also more sane than at the hotel. He liked the idea of continuing to despatch his work while retaining her company. ”I must have a talk with Mallin,” he said. ”I must settle his case so that if similar cases arise subordinates will know what to do without consulting me. Would you mind if I sent for him?” He reached for the bell to call an orderly.
”Yes, I should like to hear what he says to you and what you say to him,” she confessed with unfeigned interest, which brought a suggestion that he was to be put on trial before her at the same time as Mallin was on trial before Westerling. His fingers paused on the bell head without pressure. ”I told him that you were a just man,” she remarked, ”that any one would be certain of justice from you.”
He rang the bell; and after he had sent for Mallin, warming under the compliment of her last remark, he dared a reconnaissance along the line of inquiry which he had wanted to undertake from the first.
”Mallin's ideas about war seem to be a great deal like your own,” he hinted casually.
”As I expressed them at the hotel, you mean!” she exclaimed. ”That seems ages ago--ages!” The perplexity and indecision that, in a s.p.a.ce of silence, brooded in the depths of her eyes came to the surface in wavering lights. ”Yes, ages! ages!” The wavering lights grew dim with a kind of horror and she looked away fixedly at a given point.
He was conscious of a thrill; the thrill that always presaged victory for him. He realized her evident distress; he guessed that terrible pictures were moving before her vision, and he changed the subject.
”I know how revolting it must have been to have seen those soldiers wantonly smas.h.i.+ng your chandelier and gloating over their mischief,” he said. ”Really, the Captain was to blame for letting his men get out of hand. He seems not to have been a competent man. We can train and train an officer, but when war comes--well, no amount of training will supply a certain quality that must be inborn--the quality of command.”
”Such as Dellarme had!” she exclaimed absently, under her breath.
She had forgotten her part and Westerling's presence. The given point of her gaze was exactly where Dellarme lay when he died. She was unconsciously smiling in the way that he had smiled. But to Westerling it seemed that she was smiling at s.p.a.ce. He was puzzled; his perception piqued.
”Who was Dellarme?” he was bound to ask.