Part 49 (2/2)

”Then, sir,” said Hugo, speaking, evidently, because he was expected to say something, ”I suppose, of course, that I shall be shot. But”--he was smiling in the way that he would when he brought a ”good one” to the head in the barracks--”but it will not be necessary to do it more than once, will it? To tell you the truth, I had not counted on being shot more than once.”

Westerling was like a man who had lunged a blow at an object and struck only air.

”I said that he was not a coward,” Marta remarked quietly. There was nothing in her manner to imply that she was defending Hugo. She seemed to be incidentally justifying a previous observation of her own.

A smile in face of death! Westerling's prayer was for countless ma.s.ses of infantry who would smile in face of death and do his bidding. He could not resist a soldier's admiration, which, however, he would not permit to take the form of words. The form which it took was a sharp thrust of his fist into the hollow of his hand. He had, too, a sense of defeat which was uppermost as he spoke--a defeat that he was bound to retrieve.

”You have a home, a father, and a mother?” he asked.

”Yes, sir.”

”And perhaps a sweetheart?” Westerling proceeded.

Hugo unmistakably flushed.

”I don't think sir, that official statistics require an answer to that question. I”--and again that confounded smile, as Westerling was beginning to regard it--”I trust, sir, that I shall not have to be shot more than once if we do not bring any one not yet officially of my family into the affair.”

”You do not seem to like life,” Westerling observed.

”I love life!” answered Hugo earnestly. ”I try to get something out of every minute of it; if nothing particular, at least the miracle of living and breathing and thinking and seeing--seeing such beautiful scenes as this.” He looked away toward the glorious landscape. It was the first time that he had lifted the steady gaze of those studious blue eyes from Westerling, but directly they were back on duty. ”It is because I love life,” he continued, ”and think that everybody else must love life, that I do not want to kill. Because I love my country I know that others love their country, and I want them to keep their country.”

Marta's glance had followed Hugo's into the distance. It still rested there intently. To Westerling she showed only a profile, with the shadow of the porch between them and the golden light of receding day in the background: a golden light on a silhouette of ivory, a silhouette that you might find without meaning or so full of meaning as to hold an observer in a quandary as to what she was thinking or whether or not she was thinking at all.

Westerling had the baffled consciousness of fencing with a culprit at the bar who had turned adversary. It was the visionary's white logic of the blue dome against the soldier's material logic of _x_ equals initial velocity. Here was an incomprehensible mortal who loved life and yet was ready to die for love of life. Here was love of country that refused to serve country.

All a pose, a clever bit of acting to play on his feelings through the presence of a woman, Westerling concluded. And Marta was still looking at the landscape. Her mind seemed withdrawn from the veranda. Only her body remained. All the impulse of Westerling's military instinct and training, rebelling at an abstract ethical controversy with a private about book heresies that belonged under the censor's ban, called for the word of authority from the apex of the pyramid to put an end to talk with an atom at the base. But that profile--that serene ivory in the golden light, so unlike the Marta of the hotel reception-room--was compellingly present though her mind were absent. It suggested loss of temper as the supreme weakness. He had permitted a controversy. He must argue his man down; he must find his adversary's weak point.

”Your province is one of the most patriotic,” he said. ”Its people are of the purest blood of our race. They have always been loyal. They have always fought determinedly. To no people would a traitor be so abhorrent. Do you want the distinction of being a traitor--one lone traitor in your loyal province?”

Hugo was visibly affected. The twisted corner of his mouth quivered.

”I had thought of that, too, sir,” he said.

”Suppose your father and mother knew that your comrades had labelled you a coward before the whole army; that they had thought you worthy only of kicks and to be left to die by the roadside. Suppose that your father and mother knew that the story of Hugo Mallin, coward and traitor, who threw down his rifle under fire is being told throughout the land--as I shall have it told--until your name is a symbol for cowardice and treason. How would your father and mother feel?”

There was an unsteady movement of Hugo's body on his crutches. He swallowed hard, moistening dry lips; and the mobility of feature that could change the mask into the illumination of varied emotions spoke horror and asked for pity.

”I--I--as a matter of mercy, when I have admitted the charge, I ask you not to bear on that, sir!” he stammered. Then the crutches creaked with a stronger grip of his hands and a stiffening of his body as he mastered his feelings. The mask recovered its own, even to the drawing down of the corner of the mouth. ”I have reasoned that all out, sir,” he went on. ”It was the thing which kept me from throwing down my rifle before we made our first charge. I have written a letter to my father and mother.”

Marta had been so engrossed in the landscape that she seemed not to have been listening. It was her voice, come out of the distance, that asked, without any inflection except that of tense curiosity:

”May we see the letter?”

As she turned her eyes looked directly into Hugo's, their gaze locked, as it were: hers that of a simple request, his that of puzzled, unsatisfied scrutiny.

”May we?” she repeated to Westerling, looking now frankly at him, ”though I don't know as it is in keeping with the situation or with your wishes to grant the whim of a woman. But you see,” she added smiling, ”that is what comes of having a woman present.”

If she had any double meaning Westerling could not find it in her eyes.

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