Part 68 (1/2)
Occasionally came a sob from a man gone hysterical under the strain, a moan of mental misery; and once a laugh, a strange, hiccoughy, delirious laugh, a strident attempt at the wit that keeps up courage; and from Pilzer, the butcher's son, a string of oaths mixed with brimstone and obscenity. After each outbreak an automatic, irritable whisper for silence came from an officer. Legs and arms, bodies and souls and brains in a nauseating press! Humanity reckoned by the pound, high-priced from breeding and rearing and training; yet very cheap.
Hearts thumped and watches ticked off the time, until suddenly the heavens were racked by the prologue of the guns. Child's play that baptism of sh.e.l.l fire in the first charge of the war beside later thunders; and these, in turn, mild beside this terrific outburst, with all the artillery concentrated to support the ram in a sudden blast. The pa.s.sing projectiles formed the continuous scream and roar of some many-toned siren that penetrated the flesh as well as the ears with its sound. Orders could not have been heard if given. There was no need for orders. Fraca.s.se, counting off the minutes between him and eternity on his watch face by his flash-light, saw that ten had pa.s.sed. Then his finger that pressed a b.u.t.ton, his brain that spoke to his hand, were those of an automaton acting by time release. He exploded the mine. This was the signal for the charge; for all the legs of the ram to move.
XLIII
JOVE'S ISOLATION
An hour or so before the attack the telegraph instruments in the Galland house had become pregnantly silent. There were no more orders to give; no more reports to come from the troops in position until the a.s.sault was made. Officers of supply ceased to transmit routine matters over the wire, while they strained their eyes toward the range. Officers of the staff moved about restlessly, glancing at their watches and going to the windows frequently to see if the mist still held.
No one entered the library where Westerling was seated alone with nothing to do. His suspense was that of the mothers who longed for news of their sons at the front; his helplessness that of a man in a hospital lobby waiting on the result of an operation whose success or failure will save or wreck his career. The physical desire of movement, the conflict with something in his own mind, drove him out of doors.
”I want to blow my lungs in the fresh air! Call me if I am needed. I shall be in the garden,” he told his aide; and he thought that his voice sounded calm and natural, as became Jove in a crisis that unnerved lesser men. ”Though I fancy it is the other chief of staff who will have the work to do this evening, eh?” he added, forcing one of the smiles which had been the magnetic servant of his personal force in his rise to power.
”Yes, Your Excellency,” said the aide.
Westerling was rather pleased with the fact that he could still smile; pleased with the loyalty of this young officer when, day by day, the rest of the staff had grown colder and more mechanical in the att.i.tude that completed his isolation. Walking vigorously along the path toward the tower, the exercise of his muscles, the feel of the cool, moist air on his face, brought back some of the buoyancy of spirit that he craved.
A woman's figure, with a cape thrown over the shoulders and the head bare, loomed out of the mist.
”I couldn't stay in--not to-night,” Marta said, as Westerling drew near.
”I had to see. It's only a quarter of an hour now, isn't it?”
”The Browns may sing 'G.o.d with us,' but He seems to have been with the Grays,” Westerling answered. ”Our whole movement was perfectly screened by the heavy weather.”
”But they know--they know every detail that you have told me!” ran her mocking, scarifying thought. ”And this will be the most terrible attack of all?” she asked faintly.
”Yes, such a concentration of men and guns as never were driven against any position--an irresistible force,” he said. ”Irresistible!” he repeated with a heavy emphasis.
”But if the Browns did know where you were going to attack?” she asked absently and still more faintly. ”The sacrifice of lives then would be all the greater?”
”Yes, we should have to pay a higher price, but still we should be irresistible--irresistible!” he answered.
Ghastly faces were staring at her, their lips moving in death to excoriate her. It was not too late to tell him the truth; not too late to stop the attack. Her head had sunk; she trembled and swayed and a kind of moan escaped her. She seemed utterly frail and so distraught that Westerling, in an impulse of protection, laid his hands on her relaxed shoulders. She could feel the pressure of each finger growing firmer in its power, while a certain eloquence possessed him in defiance of his apprehensions.
”Our cause is at stake to-night,” he declared, ”yours and mine! We must win, you and I! It is our destiny!”
”You and I!” repeated Marta. ”Why you and I?”
It seemed very strange to be thinking of any two persons when hundreds of thousands were awaiting the signal for the death prepared by him. He mistook the character of her thought in the obsession of his egoism.
”What do lives mean?” he cried with a sudden desperation, his grip of her shoulders tightening. ”It is the law of nature for man to fight.
Unless he fights he goes to seed. One trouble with our army is that it was soft from the want of war. It is the law of nature for the fittest to survive! Other sons will be born to take the place of those who die to-night. There will be all the more room for those who live. Victory will create new opportunities. What is a million out of the billions on the face of the earth? Those who lead alone count--those who dwell in the atmosphere of the peaks, as we do!” The pressure of his strong hands in the unconscious emphasis of his pa.s.sion became painful; but she did not protest or try to draw away, thinking of his hold in no personal sense but as a part of his self-revelation. ”All--all is at stake there!” he continued, staring toward the range. ”It's the Rubicon! I have put my career on to-night's cast! Victory means that the world will be at our feet--honor, position, power greater than that of any other two human beings! Do you realize what that means--the honor and the power that will be ours? I shall have directed the greatest army the world has ever known to victory!”
”And defeat means--what does defeat mean?” she asked narrowly, calmly; and the pointed question released her shoulders from the vise.
What had been a shadow in his thoughts became a live monster, striking him with the force of a blow. He forgot Marta. Yes, what would defeat mean to _him_? Sheer human nature broke through the bonds of mental discipline weakened by sleepless nights. Convulsively his head dropped as he covered his face.
”Defeat! Fail! That I should fail!” he moaned.