"You"re looking at him!" replied Stransky with a benign grin.
Seeing that Stransky was only a private, the officer frowned at the anomaly when a lieutenant was present, then smiled in a way that accorded the company parliamentary rights, which he thought that they had fully earned.
"Yes, and he gets one of those iron crosses!" put in Tom Fragini.
"What for?" demanded Stransky in surprise. They were making a lot of fuss about him when he had not done anything except to work out his individual destiny.
"Yes--the first cross for Bert of the Reds!"
"And we"ll let him make a dozen anarchist speeches a day!"
"Yes, yes!" roared the company.
"By all means--but not for this; for trying to save an old man"s life!"
put in Marta.
After his survey of that amazing company the officer was the more amazed to hear a woman"s voice in such surroundings.
"The ays have it!" he announced cheerfully. He lifted his cap to Marta.
With tender regard and grave reverence for that company, he took extreme care with his next remark lest a set of men of such dynamic spirit might repulse him as an invader. "The lieutenant is in command for the present, according to regulations," he proceeded. "You will retire immediately to positions 48 to 49 A-J by the castle road. You have done your part. To-night you sleep and to-morrow you rest."
Sleep! Rest! Where had they heard those words before? Oh, yes, in a distant day before they went to war! Sleep and rest! Better far than an iron cross for every man in the company! They could go now with something warmer in their hearts than consciousness of duty well done; but this time they need not go until their dead as well as their wounded were removed.
"You"re not coming with us?" Stransky whispered to Feller.
"Eh? eh?" Feller put his hand to his ear. "Quite deaf!" he quavered.
"But I judge you ask if I am coming with you. No. I have to stay to look after my garden. It has been sadly damaged, I fear."
"That"s right--of course you"re deaf!" agreed Stransky, well knowing the contrary. "I"ll be lonely without you, pal. It was love at first sight with me!"
"And with me!" Feller whispered. "You and I, with a brigade of infantry and guns--" he began, but remembering his part, as he often would in the middle of a sentence since the distraction of war was in his mind, he turned to go.
"A cheer for the old gardener! We don"t know who he is or was, and it"s none of our business. He saved the day!" called Stransky.
Feller started; he paused and looked back as he heard that stentorian chorus in his honor; and, irresistibly, he made a snappy officer"s salute before starting on.
"That was very sweet to me," he was thinking, and then: "A mistake! a mistake! One thought! One duty!"
Making to pa.s.s around the corner of the house, he was confronted by Marta, who had come to the end of the veranda. There, within hearing of the soldiers, the dialogue that followed was low-toned, and it was swift and palpitant with repressed emotion.
"Mr. Feller, I saw you at the automatic. I heard what the wounded private of the Grays said to you and realized how true it was."
"He is a prisoner. He cannot tell."
"Does he need to? You have been seen--the conspicuous figure of a man in gardener"s garb fighting on the very terrace of his own garden! The Gray staff is bound to hear of such an extraordinary occurrence. It is one of those stories that travel of themselves. And Westerling will find that same gardener here when he comes! What hope have you for your ruse, then?"
"I--I--no matter! I forgot myself, when Lanny had warned me not to go near the guns. My promise to him! My duty! I accept what I have prepared for myself--that is a soldier"s code."
"But I shall not let you risk your life in this fashion."
"You--" A searching look--a look of fire--from his eyes into hers, which were bright with appeal.
"I feel that I have no right to let you go to your death by a firing squad," she interrupted hurriedly, "and I shall not! For I decide now not to allow the telephone to remain!"
"But my chance--my one chance to--"
"You have it there--happiness in the work you like, the work for which you seem to have been born--at least, a better work than spying and deceit--the right that you have won this morning there with the gun!"
"I"--he looked around at the automatic ravenously and fearsomely--"I--"
"It is all simply arranged. There is time for me to use the telephone before the Grays arrive. I shall tell Lanny why you took charge of the gun and how you handled it, and I know he will want you to keep it."
"And the uniform--the uniform again! Yes, the uniform--if only a gunner private"s uniform!" he exclaimed in short, pulsating breaths of ecstasy.
"Yes, count on that, too! And good-by!"
"Good-by! I--" But she had already turned away. "I"ve changed my mind!
Exit gardener! Enter gunner! I"m going with you! I"m going with you!" he cried in a jubilant voice that arrested the attention of every one on the grounds. They saw him throw his arms around Stransky and then rush to the automatic. "One thought! One duty! Oh, that is easy now!" he breathed, caressing the breech with a flutter of pats from both hands.
XXVIII
AN APPEAL TO PARTOW
"You, Marta--you are still there!" Lanstron exclaimed in alarm when he heard her voice over the tunnel telephone. "But safe!" he added in relief. "Thank G.o.d for that! It"s a mighty load off my mind. And your mother?"
"Safe, too."
"And Minna and little Clarissa Eileen?"
"All safe."
"Well, you"re through the worst of it. There won"t be any more fighting around the house, and certainly Westerling will be courteous. But where is Gustave?"
"Gone!"
"Gone!" he repeated dismally.
In a flash he had guessed another tragedy for poor Gustave, who must have once more failed to stick to his purpose, thus shattering the last hope that the thousandth chance would ever come to anything.
"Wait until you hear how he went," Marta said. With all the vividness of her impressions, a partisan for the moment of him and Dellarme, she sketched Feller"s part with the automatic.
As he listened, Lanstron"s spirit was twenty again, with the fever that Feller"s "let"s set things going!" could start rollicking in his veins.
What did the thousandth chance matter? Only a wool-gatherer would ever have had any faith in it. Victory for Gustave! Victory for the friend in whom he believed when others had disbelieved! Victory for those gifts that had broken a career against army routine in peace, once they had full play in war!
"I can see him," he said. "It was a full breath of fresh air to the lungs of a suffocating man. I--"