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At the moment he looked around, and before he could speak a command, a hospital-corps man who was near Grandfather Fragini threw himself in a low tackle and brought the old man to earth, while the company sergeant sprang for Stransky with an oath. But Stransky was in no mood to submit.
Directly to the rear was the cut through which the company had come from the main pass road, and beyond that the Galland house, which was to be the second stand. "Can you see them from up here?" chirped a voice in a jubilant, cackling laugh that drew Dellarme's attention to his immediate surroundings, and he saw Grandfather Fragini coming up to join him on the crest.
"I suppose it means war," said Tom Fragini with a soberness that was in keeping with the grave faces of his fellows. Stransky sitting at one side by himself smiled. "Well, you'd think it was a funeral!" grandfather exclaimed in disgust. "There will be lots of funerals!" said Tom. "I s'pose there will be; but if you get that in your mind how can you fight?" grandfather demanded.
The satire of war makes the valet's son a hero; the chance of war kills the manufacturer's son and lets the day-laborer's son live; the sport of war gives the latent forces of a Stransky full play; the mercy of war grants Grandfather Fragini a happy death; the glory of war brings Dellarme quick promotion; the glamour and the spectacular folly of war turn the bolts of the lightnings which man has mastered against man.
"Times have certainly changed!" grumbled Grandfather Fragini. Interested in their own reunion, they had paid no attention to a group of Tom's comrades near-by, sprawled around a newspaper containing the latest despatches from both capitals. It was a group as typical as that of the Grays around Hugo Mallin's cot; only the common voice was that of defence.
"All right, sir, you're so decent about it!" grumbled Stransky, taking his place in the ranks. Hep-hep-hep! the regiment started on its way, with Grandfather Fragini keeping at his grandson's side. "Makes me feel young again, but it's darned solemn beside the Hussars, with their horses' bits a-jingling.
Have you forgotten Tom Fragini and the sergeant and the others of Captain Dellarme's men of the 53d of the Browns, whom we left marching along the road to La Tir, with old Grandfather Fragini, veteran of the Hussars, in his faded uniform coat with his medal on his breast, keeping step, hep-hep-hep?
On the earth, saturated with rivulets and little lakes of blood, gleamed the lead shrapnel bullets and the brighter, nickelled rifle-bullets and the barrels of rifles dropped from the hands of the fallen. "I'd have bled to death if you hadn't put on that bandage. You saved my life!" whispered the man next to the judge's son, who was Tom Fragini. "Did I? Did I?" exclaimed the judge's son.
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.
Legs and bodies were thrown out as if driven centrifugally by a powerful breath, with Hugo lost in the smoke and dust of the weaving mass. He came out of it bearing Clarissa in his arms, up the terrace steps. To Marta, this was an isolated deed of saving life, of mercy in the midst of merciless slaughter; a parallel to that of Stransky bringing in Grandfather Fragini pickaback.
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