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What right had she, who had played such a horrible part, to think of self? There were other sweethearts with lovers alive who might be dead on the morrow if war continued. The flame sank to a live coal in her secret heart. Another passion possessed her as she seized Lanstron's hand in both her own. "Lanny, listen! Not the sound of a shot for the first time since the war began!
It was not yet time to think of marriage for her. If it had been Mrs. Galland would not have been so hospitable to Colonel Westerling. She would hardly have been, even if the colonel had been younger, say, of Captain Lanstron's age.
His arm crooked in Lanstron's, they went along the main corridor of the staff office hung with portraits of generals who had beaten or held their own with the Grays. Passing through a door for which Partow held the key, they were in a dim, narrow passage with bare walls, lighted by two small gas flames.
The officers stared at the sight of a chief of staff breaking away from his communications in this unceremonious fashion. They saw him secure a horse from a group of cavalry officers on the road and gallop away. Marta having been the object of Lanstron's attention now became the object of theirs.
The thing was so sudden that the speculators who depressed our securities in the world's markets have got their due ruin! And we ought to get an indemnity that will pay the cost of the war." Seated at one side, Marta could watch all that passed, herself unobserved. She noted a touch of color come to Lanstron's cheeks as he made a little shrug of protest. "It never rains but it pours!" he said.
And hadn't the old premier, her grandfather, said: "You can afford to be fussed about little things but never about big things"? "I'll hold the wire, Lanny. Ask Partow!" she concluded. Of the two she was the steadier. "Well?" said Partow, looking up at the sound of Lanstron's step.
"Why, there is nothing I could ever have to forgive you, Lanny," he said, returning Lanstron's pressure while for an instant his quickening muscles gave him a soldierly erectness. Then his attitude changed to one of doubt and inquiry. "And you found out that I was not deaf when you had that fall on the terrace?" he asked, turning to Marta. "That is how you happened to get the whole story?
The staff bent over the map, Lanstron's finger flying from point to point, while ready expert answers to his questions were at his elbow and the wires sang out directions that made a drenched and shivering soldiery Who had been yielding and holding and never advancing grow warm with the thought of springing from the mire of trenches to charge the enemy.
"Splendid! Splendid! There's some iron crosses in this for you!" he was shouting before he brought his horse to a standstill. "The way you held on gained the day for Lanstron's plan. They tried to flank in the valley after their second attack on your position failed We drew them on and had them a battalion in close order under the guns for a couple of minutes. It was ghastly!
Westerling continued, driving home his point. "Tell our commanders to hold. Neither general nor man is to budge. They are to stick to the death. Any one who does not I shall hold up to public shame as a poltroon. Who knows but Lanstron's attack may be a council of desperation? The Browns may be worse off than we are. Hold, hold! If are are tired, they are tired.
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