Part 56 (1/2)
She heard all the voices in chorus: ”Look out! Look out!” And then the voice of Feller alone, insinuating, with a sinister mischievousness: ”What more could you ask? Now that you have him, hold him! For G.o.d and country--for our dear Brown land!”
Hold a man who was making love to her by the tricks of the courtesan!
But what kind of love? He was bending so close to her that she felt his breath on her cheek burning hot, and she was sickeningly conscious that he was looking her over in that point-by-point manner which she had felt across the tea-table at the hotel. This horrible thing in his glance she had sometimes seen in strangers on her travels, and it had made her think that she was wise to carry a little revolver. She wanted to strike him.
”Confess! Confess!” called all her own self-respect. ”Make an end to your abas.e.m.e.nt!”
”Confession, after the Browns have given up Bordir! Confession that makes Lanny, not Westerling, your dupe!” came the reply, which might have been telegraphed into her mind from the high, white forehead of Partow bending over his maps. ”Confession, betraying the cause of the right against the wrong; the three to the conquering five! No! You are in the things. You may not retreat now.”
For a few seconds only the duel of argument thundered in her temples--seconds in which her lips were parted and quivering and her eyes dilated with an agitation which the man at her side could interpret as he pleased. A prompting devil--a devil roused by that thing in his eyes--urging a finesse in double-dealing which only devils understand, made her lips hypnotically turn in a smile, her eyes soften, and sent her hand out to Westerling in a trance-like gesture. For an instant it rested on his arm with telling pressure, though she felt it burn with shame at the point of contact.
”We must not think of that now,” she said. ”We must think of nothing personal; of nothing but your work until your work is done!”
The prompting devil had not permitted a false note in her voice. Her very pallor, in fixity of idea, served her purpose. Westerling drew a deep breath that seemed to expand his whole being with greater appreciation of her. Yet that harried hunger, the hunger of a beast, was still in his glance.
”This is like you--like what I want you to be!” he said. ”You are right.” He caught her hand, enclosing it entirely in his grip, and she was sensible, in a kind of dazed horror, of the thrill of his strength.
”Nothing can stop us! Numbers will win! Hard fighting in the mercy of a quick end!” he declared with his old rigidity of five against three which was welcome to her. ”Then,” he added--”and then--”
”Then!” she repeated, averting her glance. ”Then--” There the devil ended the sentence and she withdrew her hand and felt the relief of one escaping suffocation, to find that he had realized that anything further during that interview would be ba.n.a.lity and was rising to go.
”I don't feel decent!” she thought. ”Society turned on Minna for a human weakness--but I--I'm not a human being! I am one of the p.a.w.ns of the machine of war!”
Walking slowly with lowered head as she left the arbor, she almost ran into Bouchard, who apologized with the single word ”Pardon!” as he lifted his cap in overdone courtesy, which his stolid brevity made the more conspicuous.
”Miss Galland, you seem lost in abstraction,” he said in sudden loquacity. ”I am almost on the point of accusing you of being a poet.”
”Accusing!” she replied. ”Then you must think that I would write bad poetry.”
”On the contrary, I should say excellent--using the sonnet form,” he returned.
”I might make a counter accusation, only that yours would be the epic form,” answered Marta. ”For you, too, seem fond of rambling.”
There was a veiled challenge in the hawk eyes, which she met with commonplace politeness in hers, before he again lifted his cap and proceeded on his way.
x.x.xVI
MARKING TIME
For the next two weeks Marta's role resolved itself into a kind of routine. Their cramped quarters became s.p.a.cious to the three women in the intimacy of the common secret shared by them under the very nose of the staff. With little Clarissa Eileen, they formed the only feminine society in the neighborhood. On suns.h.i.+ny days Mrs. Galland was usually to be found in her favorite chair outside the tower door; and here Minna set the urn on a table at four-thirty as in the old days.
No member of the staff was more frequently present at Marta's teas than Bouchard, who was developing his social instinct late in life by sitting in the background and allowing others to do the talking while he watched and listened. In his hearing, Marta's att.i.tude toward the progress of the war was sympathetic but never interrogatory, while she shared attention with Clarissa Eileen, who was in danger of becoming spoiled by officers who had children of their own at home. After the reports of killed and wounded, which came with such appalling regularity, it was a relief to hear of the day's casualties among Clarissa's dolls. The chief of transportation and supply rode her on his shoulder; the chief of tactics played hide-and-seek with her; the chief engineer built her a doll house of stones with his own hands; and the chief medical officer was as concerned when she caught a cold as if the health of the army were at stake.
”We mustn't get too set up over all this attention, Clarissa Eileen, my rival,” said Marta to the child. ”You are the only little girl and I am the only big girl within reach. If there were lots of others it would be different.”
She had occasional glimpses of Hugo Mallin on his crutches, keeping in the vicinity of the shrubbery that screened the stable from the house.
How Marta longed to talk with him! But he was always attended by a soldier, and under the rigorous discipline that held all her impulses subservient to her purpose she pa.s.sed by him without a word lest she compromise her position.
Bouchard was losing flesh; his eyes were sinking deeper under a heavier frown. His duty being to get information, he was gaining none. His duty being to keep the Grays' secrets, there was a leak somewhere in his own department. He quizzed subordinates; he made abrupt transfers, to no avail.