Part 50 (1/2)
”I am willing,” said Hugo. ”Indeed, I shall be very glad to have my side heard.”
”Yes, let us see the letter,” a.s.sented Westerling; for he, too, was curious.
When Hugo had given it to Westerling and he saw that it was not very long, he began reading aloud:
”'I've kept very well and cheerful and I'm cheerful now,'” the letter began. ”'Please always think of me as cheerful. Everybody in our company has fought well; just as bravely as our forefathers did in the wars of their day.'”
”Which hardly agrees with your ideas,” observed Westerling.
”Exactly, sir. Men should be brave for their convictions,” answered Hugo. ”And, as you said, the men of our province are loyal to the old ideas. They believe they ought to fight the Browns.”
Then followed a brief, intimate, appealing story of how each of his dead comrades had fallen.
”'You can read these to their folks at home, if you want to. They might like to know.'”
Irresistibly there crept into Westerling's face at these recitals of soldierly courage the satisfaction of the commander with the spirit of his men. Here was proof of the valor of the units of his army.
”'Now I have something to tell you which will hurt you very much,'”
Westerling read on, ”'but you must recollect that I was always regarded as a little queer. And I don't think people will hold you to blame on my account. I hope they will sympathize with you for having such a son. You will have heard the story from the men of the company, but I also want to tell it to you....'”
After it was told the letter proceeded:
”'I feel that I was a coward up to the moment that everybody else was calling me a coward. Then I felt free and happy, as if I had been true to myself. I felt that I had been just as much in the wrong as if we should break into our neighbor's house and take his property because we were stronger than he. How would you feel if a neighbor entered your house and made it his own? You would call in the police. But what if there were no police? Would that make it right?'”
Marta's own opinions! The spirit of her children's prayer! Head bent, hands clasped, she was simply listening.
”'Would it be cowardice if one of the neighbor's family said, ”I will not take any further part in this robbery!” when he saw you, mother, weeping over you, father, as you lay dead after trying to defend your house? When I was asked to fire at those running men it was like standing on a neighbor's door-step and firing down the street at my neighbors in flight. I could not do it. I could not do it though twenty million men were doing the same thing. No, I could not do it any more than you could commit murder, father. That is all. Perhaps when those who survive from my company come home, after they have been beaten as they will be--'”
”What!” Westerling exploded.
All the force of his being had to take umbrage at this. Beaten! Marta saw the rigid, unyielding Westerling who had cried, ”We shall win!” when she made her second prophecy. But the comparison did not occur to him.
Nothing occurred to him but red anger, until the first dart of reason warned him, a chief of staff, that a private had made him completely lose his temper. He recovered his poise with a laugh and without even glancing at Marta.
”Well, we might as well hear the reasons for your expert opinion,” he said, his satire a trifle hoa.r.s.e after the strain of his emotion.
”Because the Browns fight for their homes!” answered Hugo ”When the great crisis comes they have a reserve strength that we have not: conscience, the intelligent conscience of this age that cannot fool itself with false enthusiasm continually. They are fighting as I should pray that I might fight if the Browns invaded our country; as I might fight against a murderous burglar. For I will fight, sir, I will fight with my face to the white posts, but not with my back to them! The Browns have no more right to cross our frontier than we have to cross theirs!”
There was a perceptible shudder on Marta's part, an abrupt, tossing elevation of her head. She stared at the spot where Dellarme had lain in the garden. Dellarme's smile was back on her lips; it seemed graven there. Her eyes, which Westerling could not see, were leaping flames.
”I'm afraid you will not have the chance,” Westerling observed, as he returned the letter to Hugo, its reading unfinished. ”What if every man held your views? What would become of the army and the nation?” he demanded.
”Why, I think I have made that plain,” replied Hugo. He appeared no less weary than Westerling over continual beating of the air to no purpose.
”We should retreat to our own soil, where we belong.”
”And you are ready to be shot for that principle?”
The question was sharp and final.
”Yes, if being shot for what I did is dying for it--though I prefer to live for it!” said Hugo, still without any pose. He refused to play for a chapter in the future book of martyrs to peace. This was the irritating thing about him to a soldier, who deprecated all kinds of personal bravado and show as against the efficiency of the modern military machine, when men were supposed to respond to duty in the face of death as automatically as in any business requiring team-work, with an every-day smile like Hugo's on their lips.