The Last Shot Part 37

"We're making them pay for seeing our garden, but, anyhow, we won't let them pick any flowers," Stransky remarked pungently.

"If they get as far as the first terrace--well, in case of a crisis, we have hand-grenades," Dellarme added in explanation. "But, G.o.d knows, I hope we shall not have to use them."

After an interval, more figures made a rush across the road. They, too, in Stransky's words, paid a price for seeing the garden. But the flashes from the rifles and the automatic provided a target for a Gray battery.

The blue spark that flies from an overhead trolley or a third rail, multiplied a hundredfold, broke in Marta's face. It was dazzling, blinding as a bolt of lightning a few feet distant, with the thunder crash at the same second, followed by the thras.h.i.+ng hum of bullets and fragments against the side of the house.

"I knew that this must come!" something within her said. If she had not been prepared for it by the events of the last twelve hours she would have jumped to her feet with an exclamation of natural shock and horror.

As it was, she felt a convulsive, nervous thrill without rising from her seat. A pause. The next sh.e.l.l burst in line with the first, out by the linden-trees; a third above the veranda.

"We've got that range, all right!" thought the Gray battery commander, who had judged the distance by the staff map. This was all he wanted to know for the present. He would let loose at the proper time to support the infantry attack, when there were enough driblets across the road to make a charge. The driblets kept on coming, and, one by one, the number of dead on the road was augmented.

Marta was diverted from this process of killing by piecemeal by a more theatric spectacle. A brigade commander of the Grays had ticked an order over the wires and it had gone from battery to battery. Not only many field-guns, which are the terriers of the artillery, but some guns of siege calibre, the mastiffs, in a sudden outburst started a havoc of tumbling walls and cornices in the upper part of the town.

Then an explosion greater than any from the sh.e.l.ls shot a hemisphere of light heavenward, revealing a shadowy body flying overhead, and an instant later the heavens were illuminated by a vast circle of flame as the dirigible that had dropped the dynamite received its death-blow. But already the Brown infantry was withdrawing from the town, destroying buildings that would give cover for the attack in the morning as they went. Two or three hours after midnight fell a silence which was to last until dawn. The combatants rested on their arms, Browns saying to Grays, "We shall be ready for the morrow!" and Grays replying: "So shall we!"

Marta, at her window, her eyes following the movements of the display, now here, now there, found herself thinking of many things, as in the intermissions between the acts of a drama. She wondered if the groaning, wounded man were crying for water or if he were wis.h.i.+ng that some one at home were near him. She thought of her talk with Lanstron over the telephone and how mad and feminine and feeble it must have sounded to a mind working in the inexorable processes of the clash of millions of men. She saw his left hand twitching in his pocket, his right hand gripping it to hold it still, on that afternoon when, for the first time, she had understood his injury in the aeroplane accident as the talisman of his feelings--his controlled feelings! Always his controlled feelings!

She saw Feller leaning against the moist wall of the dank tunnel, suffering as it had never seemed to her that man could suffer, his agony an irresistible plea. She saw Westerling, so conscious of his strength, directing his chessmen in a death struggle against Partow. And he was coming to this house as his headquarters when the final test of the strength of the t.i.tans was made.

She hoped that her mother was still sleeping; and she had seconds when she was startled by her own calmness. Again, the faces of the children in her school were as clear as in life. She breathed her grat.i.tude that the procession in which they moved to the rear was hours ago out of the theatre of danger. In the simplicity of big things, her duty was to teach them, a future generation, no less than Feller's duty was to the pursuing shadow of his conscience. She should see war, alive, naked, b.l.o.o.d.y, and she would tell her children what she had seen as a warning.

Silence, except an occasional rifle-shot--silence and the darkness before dawn which would, she knew, concentrate the lightnings around the house. She glanced into her mother's room and marvelled as at a miracle to find her sleeping. Then she stole down-stairs and opened the outer door of the dining-room. A step or two brought her to the edge of the veranda. There she paused and leaned against one of the stone pillars.

Dellarme himself was in a half-reclining position, his back to a tree.

He seemed to be nodding. Except for a few on watch over the sand-bags, his men were stretched on the earth, moving restlessly at intervals, either in an effort to sleep or waking suddenly after a spell of hara.s.sed unconsciousness.

XXVI

FELLER IS TEMPTED

With the first sign of dawn there was a movement of shadowy forms taking position in answer to low-spoken commands. The search-light yielded its vigil to the wide-spread beam out of the east, and the detail of the setting where Marta was to watch the play of one of man's pa.s.sions, which he dares not permit the tender flesh of woman to share, grew distinct. Bayonets were fixed on the rifles that lay along the parapet of sand-bags in front of the row of brown shoulders. Back of them in the yard was a section of infantry in reserve, also with bayonets fixed, ready to fill the place of any who fell out of line, a doctor and stretchers to care for the wounded, and a detachment of engineers to mend any breaches made in the breastwork by sh.e.l.l fire.

The gunner of the automatic sighted his barrel, slightly adjusted its elevation, and swung it back and forth to make sure that it worked smoothly, while his a.s.sistant saw that the fresh belts of cartridges which were to feed it were within easy reach. Dellarme, walking behind his men, cautioning them not to expose their heads and at the same time to fire low, had his cheery smile in excellent working order.

"We expect great things of you!" this smile said as he bent over the gunner with a pat on the shoulder.

"I understand!" said the upward glance in reply.

Marta could not deny that there was something fine about Dellarme's smile no less than in his bearing and his delicately, chiselled features. It had the a.s.surance and self-possession of a surgeon about to perform a critical operation, the difference being that, unlike the surgeon, he shared in the risk, which was for the purpose of taking vigorous young lives rather than saving lives enfeebled by disease. Was it this that gave to war its halo--this offering of the most valuable thing man possesses to sudden destruction that made war heroic?

But where was the romance of the last war forty years ago? Where the glad songs going into battle? The glitter of b.u.t.tons and the pomp of showy uniforms? The general's staff watching the course of the action by the billows of black smoke? Gone where the railroad sent the stage-coach, electricity sent the candle and horse-drawn street-cars, serum sent diphtheria, the knife sent the appendix, and rifled cannon and explosive sh.e.l.ls sent the wooden walls of old s.h.i.+ps of the line.

It occurred to none of the actors, and to Marta alone, in the tight, foreboding silence, to look aloft. There was a serene blue sky. The birds were tuning up for their morning songs when she heard the dull echo of distant guns, soon to be submerged in other thunders at nearer points along the frontier. With every faculty an alert wire strung in suspense, she was instantly aware of the appearance of a figure whose lack of uniform made it conspicuous on that stage.

In straw hat and blue blouse, shuffling with his old man's walk, Feller came along the path from the gate. He was in retreat from the enticing picture of the regiment of field-guns in front of the castle that was ready for action. As the infantry had never interested him, he would be safe from temptation in the yard. He stopped back of the engineers, his glance roving down the line of brown shoulders until it rested on the automatic. This also was a gun, though it fired only bullets. His fingers began beating a tattoo on his trousers' seam; a hungry brilliance shone in his eyes. He took four or five steps forward as if drawn by an overpowering fascination.

"This is no place for you!" said one of the engineers.

"No, and don't waste any time, either, old man!" said another. "Back to your bulbs!"

Feller did not even hear them. For the moment he was actually deaf.

"Fire!" said Dellarme's whistle. "Thur-r-r!" went the automatic in soulless, mechanical repet.i.tion, its tape spinning through the cylinder, while the rifles spoke with the human irregularity of steel-tipped fingers pounding at random on a drumhead. All along the line facing La Tir the volume of fire spread until it was like the concert of a mighty loom.

Marta could see nothing of the enemy, but she guessed that he was making a rush from the second to the third terrace and from the outskirts of the town. The engineer's repeated warning unheard above the din, he touched Feller on the leg. Feller looked around with a frown of querulous abstraction just as the breaking of a storm of sh.e.l.l fire obscured Marta's vision with dust and smoke. She felt her head jerk as if it would go free of her neck with each explosion, until she reinforced her nerves with the memory of an old soldier's warning about the folly of dodging missiles that were already past before you heard them. She knew that she was perfectly safe behind the pillar.

The Gray batteries having tried out their range by the flashes of the automatic the previous evening were making the most of the occasion.

"Uk-ung-n-ng!" the breaking jackets whipped out their grists. A crash on the roof brought a small avalanche of slate tumbling down. A concussion in the dining-room was followed by the tinkling of falling window-gla.s.s.

The engineers had work immediately when two of the infantrymen and their rifles and the sand-bags on which they leaned were hurled together in a heap of sand and torn flesh. Other bags were placed in the breach; other men sprang forward and began firing. The reserves, the hospital-corps men and the engineers hugged the breastwork for cover. The leaves clipped from the trees by bullets were blown aside with the hurricane breaths of shrapnel bursts; bullets whistled so near Marta that she heard their shrillness above every other sound. She was amazed that the house still remained standing--that any one was alive. But she had a glimpse of Dellarme maintaining his set smile and another of Feller, who had crept up behind the automatic, making impatient "come-on! come-on!

what-is-the-matter-with-you?" gestures in the direction of the batteries in front of the castle.

"Thur-eesh--thur-ees.h.!.+" As the welcome note swept overhead he waved his hands up and down in mad rapture and then peeped over the breastwork to ascertain if the practice were good. The Brown batteries had been a little slow in coming into action, but they had the range from the Gray batteries' flashes the previous night and, undisturbed in the security of their own flashes screened by the trees, soon broke the precision of the opposing fire.

Now sh.e.l.ls coming infrequently fell short or went wide. The air cleared.

Marta could again see distinctly, and she marvelled that the brown figures were proceeding with their knitting as if nothing had happened.

She could not resist a thrill of grim admiration for their steadiness or an appreciative thrill as she saw Feller eagerly peering over the automatic gunner's shoulder to watch the effect of his fire. Suddenly, both the rifles and the automatic, which had been firing deliberately, began to fire with desperate rapidity. It was as if a boxer, sparring slowly, let out all his power in a rain of blows. She could see nothing of the Grays, but she understood that they were making a rush.

Then a chance sh.e.l.l, striking at the one point which the man who fired it six thousand yards away would have chosen as his bull's-eye, obscured Feller and the automatic and its gunners in the havoc of explosion.

Feller must have been killed. The dust settled; she saw Dellarme making frantic gestures as he looked at his men. They were keeping up their fusillade with unflinching rapidity. Through the breach left in the breastwork she had glimpses, as the dust was finally dissipated, of gray figures, bayonets fixed, pressing together as they came on fiercely toward the opening. The Browns let go the full blast of their magazines.

Had that chance sh.e.l.l turned the scales? Would the Grays get into the breastwork?

All Marta's faculties and emotions were frozen in her stare of suspense at the breach. Her heart seemed straining with the effort of the living, who heard nothing, thought nothing, in the crux of their effort. War's own mesmerism had made her forget Feller and everything except the gamble, the turn of the card, while the gray figures kept stumbling on over their fallen. Then her heart leaped, a cry in a gust of short breaths broke from her lips as the Browns let go a rasping, explosive, demoniacal cheer. The first attack had been checked!

After triumph, terror, faintness, and a closing of her eyes, she opened them to see Feller, with his old straw hat--brim torn and crownless now--still on his head, rise from the debris and shake himself like a dog coming ash.o.r.e from a swim. While the engineers hastened to repair the breach he a.s.sisted Stransky, who had also been knocked down by the concussion, to lift the overturned automatic off the gunner. The doctor, putting a hand on the gunner's heart, shook his head, and two hospital-corps men removed the body to make room for the engineers.

Dellarme could now spare attention from the charge of the Gray infantry to observe the results of the sh.e.l.l fire. With the gunner dead, he looked for the gunner's a.s.sistant, who lay several feet distant. As Dellarme and the doctor hastened to him he raised himself to a sitting posture and looked around in dazed inquiry. The doctor poured a cup of brandy from his flask and held it to the a.s.sistant's lips, whereon he blinked and nodded his head in personal confirmation of the fact that he was still alive. But when he tried to raise his right arm the hand would not join in the movement. His wrist was broken.

For once Dellarme's cheery smile deserted him. There was no one left to man the automatic, so vital in the defence, and even if somebody could be found the gun was probably out of commission. As he started toward it his smile, already summoned back, was shot with surprise at sight of the gun in place and a stranger in blue blouse, white hair showing through a crownless straw hat, trying out the mechanism with knowing fingers.

Dellarme stared. Feller, unconscious of everything but the gun, righted the cartridge band, swung the barrel back and forth, and then fired a shot.

"You--you seem to know rapid-firers!" Dellarme exclaimed in blank incomprehension.

"Yes, sir!" Feller raised his finger, whether in salute as a soldier or as a gardener touching his hat it was hard to say.

"But how--where?" gasped Dellarme.

This time the movement of the finger was undoubtedly in salute, in perfect, swift, military salute, with head thrown back and shoulders stiff. Feller the gardener was dead and buried without ceremony.

"Lanstron's cla.s.s, school for officers, sir. Stood one in ballistics, prize medallist control of gun-fire. Yes, sir, I know something about rapid-firers," Feller replied, and fired a few more shots. "A little high, a little low--right, my lady, right!"

Stransky was back in his place next to the automatic and firing whenever a head appeared. He rolled his eyes in a characteristic squint of scrutiny toward the new recruit.

"Beats spraying rose-bushes for bugs, eh, old man?" he asked.

"Yes, a lead solution is best for gray bugs!" Feller remarked pungently, and their glances meeting, they saw in each other's eyes the joy of h.e.l.l.