Part 72 (1/2)
”Sue for peace because women go hysterical? Do you suppose that the Browns will listen now when they think they have the advantage? Leave peace to me! Give me forty-eight hours more! I have told our troops to hold and they will hold. I don't mistake cowardly telegraphers' rumors for facts--”
”Pardon me a moment,” the premier interrupted. ”I must answer a local call.” So astute a man of affairs as he knew that Westerling's voice, storming, breaking, tightening with effort at control, confirmed all reports of disaster. ”In fact, the crockery is broken--for you and for me!” said the premier when he spoke again. His life had been a gamble and the gamble had turned against him in playing for a great prize.
There was an admirable stoicism in the way he announced the news he had received from the local call: ”The chief of police calls me up to say that the uprising is too vast for him to hold. There isn't any mutiny, but his men simply have become a part of public opinion. A mob of women and children is starting for the palace to ask me what I have done with their husbands, brothers, sons, and fathers. They won't have to break in to find me. I'm very tired. I'm ready. I shall face them from the balcony. Yes, Westerling, you and I have achieved a place in history, and they're far more bitter toward you than me. However, you don't have to come back.”
”No, I don't have to go back! No, I was not to go back if I failed!”
said Westerling dizzily.
Again defiance rose strong as the one tangible thought, born of his ruling pa.s.sion. It was inconceivable that so vast an ambition should fail. Failure! He defied it! He burst into the main staff room, where the tired officers regarded him with a glare, or momentary, weary wonder, and continued packing up their papers for departure. He went on into the telegraphers' room. Some of the operators were packing their instruments.
”The news? What is the news?” Westerling asked hoa.r.s.ely.
An operator who was still at the key, without even half rising let alone saluting, glanced up from the cavernous sockets of eyes unawed by the chief of staff's presence.
”All that comes in is bad,” he said. ”Where we get none because the wires are down we know it's worse. We've been licked.”
He went on sending a message, wholly oblivious of Westerling, who stumbled back into the staff room and paused inarticulate before Turcas.
”The army is going--resisting by units, but going. It has made its own orders!” Turcas said. The other division chiefs nodded in agreement.
”Your Excellency, we are doing our best,” added the vice-chief, holding the door for Westerling to return to his own office. ”The nation is not beaten. Given breathing time for reorganization, the army will settle down to the defensive on our own range. There the enemy may try our costly tactics against the precision and power of modern arms, if they choose. No, the nation is not beaten.”
The nation! Westerling was not thinking of the nation.
”You--” he began, looking around from face to face.
Not one showed any sign of softening or deference, and, his mind a blank, he withdrew, driven back to his isolation by an inflexible ostracism. The world had come to an end. Public opinion was master--master of his own staff. He sank down before his desk, staring, just staring; hearing the roar of battle which was drawing nearer; staring at the staff orderlies, who came in to take down the wall maps, and at his aide packing up the papers and leaving him in a room bare of all the appurtenances of his position, with little idea in his coma of despair of the hour or even that time was pa.s.sing. Finally, some one touched him on the shoulder. He looked up to see his aide at his elbow saluting and Francois, his valet, standing by with an overcoat.
”We must go, Your Excellency,” said the aide.
”Go?” asked Westerling dazedly.
”Yes, the staff has already gone to a new headquarters.”
The announcement was the needle p.r.i.c.k that once more aroused him to a sense of his situation. He rose and struck his fist on the desk in a pulsing outbreak of energy and stubbornness.
”But I stay! I stay!” he cried. ”The enemy is not near. He can't be!”
”Very near, general. You can see for yourself, said the aide.
”I will!” Westerling replied. ”I will see how the conspiracy of the staff has made ruin of my plans!”
Again something of his old manner returned; something of the stoic's fatalism flashed in his eye. He shook his head to Francois, refusing to slip his arms into the sleeves of the coat which Francois dropped on to his shoulders.
”Yes, I will see for myself!” he repeated, as he led the way out to the veranda. ”I'll see what goblin scared my pusillanimous staff and robbed me of victory!”
Every cry of triumph in war is paid for by a cry of pain. On one side, anguish of heart; on the other, inexpressible ecstasy. The Gray staff were oblivious of fatigue in the glum, overpowering necessity of restoring the organization of the Gray army for a second stand. The Brown staff were oblivious of fatigue in the exhilaration of victory.
Had a picture of the sight which the judge's son had witnessed at dawn in the path of the attack and the counter-attack been thrown on the wall of the big lobby room of the Brown headquarters, there might have been less exultation on the part of the junior officers of the staff gathered there. They were not seeing or thinking of the dead. They were seeing only brown-headed pins pus.h.i.+ng gray-headed pins out of the way on the map, as the symbol of an attack become a pursuit and of better than their dreams come true--the symbol of security for altar fires and race and nation. They were of the living, in the mightiest thrill that a soldier may know.
No doubt now! No more suspense! Labor and sacrifice rewarded! Fervent thanks to the Almighty were mingled with whistled s.n.a.t.c.hes of wedding marches and popular songs. An aide taking a message to the wire preferred leaping over a chair to going around it. A subaltern and a colonel danced together. Victory, victory, victory out of the burr of automatics, the pounding of artillery, the popping roar of rifles!