Part 66 (1/2)
”Yes, we all prefer army biscuits!”
”We wouldn't touch a home dinner!”
Stransky, his eyes drawing inward in their characteristic slant, was well pleased with his company, and the scattered exclamatory badinage kept on until it was interrupted by the arrival of the mail. Partow and Lanstron, understanding their machine as human in its elements, had chosen that the army should hear from home.
”How's this!” exclaimed one man, reading from a newspaper. ”They're going to put up a statue of Partow in the capital! It's to show him as he died, dropped forward on the map, and in front of his desk a field of bayonets. On one face of the base will be his name. Two of the other faces will have 'G.o.d with us!' and 'Not for theirs, but for ours!' The legend on the fourth face the war is to decide.”
”Victory! Victory!” cried those who had listened to the announcement.
”My mother says just what yours says, Tom. I needn't come home unless we win.”
”The girl I'm going to marry said that, too!”
”If we go back with the Gray army at our heels we shall strike a worse fire than if we stick!”
Stransky was thinking that they had to do more than hold the Grays.
Before he should see his girl they had to take back the lost territory.
He carried two pictures of Minna in his mind: one when she had struck him in the face as he had tried to kiss her and the other as he said good-by at the kitchen door. There was not much encouragement in either.
”But when she gets better acquainted with me there's no telling!” he kept thinking. ”I was fighting out of cussedness at first. Now I'm fighting for her and to keep what is ours!”
XLII
THE RAM
”I've learned that the greatest, most desperate attack of all is coming,” Marta told Lanstron. ”But I don't know at what point. I see Westerling only when he comes into the garden, and he does not come so frequently of late.”
Very sweet and very harrowing to him was the intimacy of their conspiracy over that underground wire. With the prolongation of the strain, he feared for her. He understood how she suffered. Sometimes he felt that the Marta of their holiday comrades.h.i.+p was dead and it was the impersonal spirit of a great purpose that brought him information and inspiration. Her voice was taut, without inflection, as if in pain, occasionally breaking into a dry sob, only to become even more taut after a silence.
”I don't--I can't urge you to any further sacrifice,” Lanstron replied.
”You have endured enough.”
”But it will help? It will be of vital service?”
”Yes, tremendously vital.”
”I will try to learn more when I see him,” she continued. ”But it cannot be done by questioning. A single question might be fatal. The thing must come in a burst of confidence. That's the horrible part of it, the--”
There was a dry sob over the wire as the voice broke and then went on steadily: ”But I'm game! I'm game!”
In the closet off the Galland library, where the long-distance telephone was installed, Westerling was talking with the premier in the Gray capital.
”Your total casualties are eight hundred thousand! That is terrific, Westerling!” the premier was saying.
”Only two hundred thousand of those are dead!” replied Westerling. ”Many with only slight wounds are already returning to the front. Terrific, do you say? Two hundred thousand in five millions is one man out of every twenty-five. That wouldn't have worried Frederick the Great or Napoleon much. Eight hundred thousand is one out of six. The trouble is that such vast armies have never been engaged before. You must consider the percentages, not the totals.”
”Yet, eight hundred thousand! If the public knew!” exclaimed the premier.
”The public does not know!” said Westerling.