Part 74 (2/2)

”She's. .h.i.t!”

But Marta did not hear him. She heard only the dreadful crack of the splitting shrapnel jacket. She had a sense of falling, and that was all.

The next that she knew she was in a long chair on the veranda and the vague shadows bending over her gradually identified themselves as her mother and Minna.

”I remember when you were telling of the last war that you didn't swoon at the sight of the wounded, mother,” Marta whispered.

”But I was not wounded,” replied Mrs Galland.

Marta ceased to be only a consciousness swimming in a haze. With the return of her faculties, she noticed that both her mother and Minna were looking significantly at her forearm; so she looked at it, too. It was bandaged.

”A cut from a shrapnel fragment,” said a doctor. ”Not deep,” he added.

”Do I get an iron cross?” she asked, smiling faintly. It was rather pleasant to be alive.

”All the crosses--iron and bronze and silver and gold!” he replied.

”You forgot platinum,” she said almost playfully, as she found nerves, muscles, and bones intact after that drop over a precipice into a black chasm. It was like the Marta of the days before she had undertaken to reform all creation, her mother was thinking. ”Did I help any?” she asked seriously.

”Well, I should say so!” declared the doctor. ”I should say so!” he repeated. ”You did the whole business down there by the gate.”

”Yes, the whole business! I brought it all on--all! I--” She flung a wild gesture at the landscape and then buried her face in her hands.

”Yes, I did the whole business I--I played, smiled, lied! That awful sight--and he might not have been writing 'kill me' if I--”

The doctor grasped her shoulders to keep her from rising. He spoke the first soothing words that came to mind. There was another shudder, an effort at control, and her hands dropped and she was looking up with a dull steadiness.

”I'm not going mad!” she exclaimed. ”What happened to--to that man who was pleading for death? Did any one who had been engaged in killing men who wanted to live kill the one who wanted to die?”

”The sh.e.l.l burst that wounded you finished him,” said the doctor.

”Which, of course, was quite according to the tenets of civilization, which wouldn't have allowed it to be done as an open act of mercy!” said Marta. ”But that is only satire. It is of no service,” she added, rising to a sitting posture to look around.

The struggle by the gate was over. All the uninjured had made good their escape. A Red Cross flag floated above the wounded and the debris of overturned wagons. Brown skirmishers were descending the near-by slopes and crossing the path of the cavalry charge. Signal-corps men were spinning out their wires. A regiment of guns were being emplaced behind a foot-hill. A returning Brown dirigible swept over the town. All firing except occasional scattered shots had ceased in the immediate vicinity, though in the distance could be heard the snarl of the firmer resistance that the Grays were making at some other point. The Galland house, for the time being, was isolated--in possession of neither side.

”Isn't there something else I can do to help with the wounded?” Marta asked. She longed for action in order to escape her thoughts.

”You've had a terrible shock--when you are stronger,” said the doctor.

”When you have had something to eat and drink,” observed the practical Minna authoritatively.

Marta would not have the food brought to her. She insisted that she was strong enough to accompany Minna to the tower. While Minna urged mouthfuls down Marta's dry throat as she sat outside the door of the sitting-room with her mother a number of weary, dust-streaked faces, with feverish energy in their eyes, peered over the hedge that bounded the garden on the side toward the pa.s.s. These scout skirmishers of Stransky's men of the 53d Regiment of the Browns made beckoning gestures as to a crowd, before they sprang over the hedge and ran swiftly, watchfully, toward the linden stumps, closely followed by their comrades. Soon the whole garden was overrun by the lean, businesslike fellows, their glances all ferret-like to the front.

”Look, Minna!” exclaimed Marta. ”The giant who carried the old man in pickaback the first night of the war!”

”Yes, the bold impudence of him!” said Minna. ”As if there was nothing that could stand in his way and what he wanted he would have!”

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