Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 273, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1914 — Page 3

The Last Shot

BY FREDERICK PALMER

SYNOPSIS. At their home on the frontier between the Browns and Grays Marta Gatland and her mother, entertaining Colonel WesterUng of the Grays, see Captain Lanstron of the Browns injured by a fall In his aeroplane. Ten years later. Westerllng, nominal vice but real chief of staff, re-en-forces South La Tir arid meditates on war. He calls*on Marta, who is visiting in the •Gray capital. She tells him of her teaching children the follies of war and martial patriotism, and begs him to prevent war while he is chief of staff. On the march with the 63d of the Browns Private Stransky, anarchist, is placed under arrest. Colonel Lanstron'begs him off. Lanstron calls on Marta at her home. He talks with Feller, the gardener. Marta tells Lanstron that she believes Fejler to be a spy. Lanstron confesses it is true. Lanstron shows Marta a telephone which Feller has concealed in a secret passage under the tower fbr use to. benefit the Browns in war emergencies. Lanstron declares his love for Marta. Westerllng and the Gray premier plan Jo use a trivial international affair to foment warlike patriotism in army and people and strike before declaring war. Partow, Brown chief of staff, and LanstronT made vice, discuss the trouble, and the Brown defenses. Partow reveals his plans to. Lanstron. The Gray army crosses the border line and attacks. The Browns check them. Artillery, Infantry, aeroplanes and dirigibles engage. Stransky, rising to make the anarchist speech of his life, draws the Gray artillery fire. Nicked by a shrapnel splinter he goes Berserk and fights—"all a man.” Marta has her first glimpse of war in Its modern, cold, scientific, murderous brutality. The Browns fall back to the Galland house. Stransky forages. Marta sees a night attack. The Grays attack in force. Feller leaves his secret telephone and goes back to, his guns. Hand to hand fighting. 'The Browns fall back again. Marta asks Lanstron over the phone to appeal to Partow to stop the fighting. Vandalism in the Galland house. CHAPTER Xlll—Continued. Then a staff-officer appeared In the doorway. When he saw a woman enter the room he frowned. He had ridden from the town, which was empty of women, a fact that he regarded as a blessing. If she had been a maid servant he would have kept on his cap. Seeing that she was not, he removed it and found himself in want of words as their eyes met after she had made a gesture to the broken glass on the floor and the lacerated table top, which said too plainly: j:. "Do you admire your work?” The fact that he was well-groomed and freshly shaven did not in any wise dissipate in her feminine mind his connection with this destruction. He had never seen anything like the smile which went with the gesture. Her eyes were two continuing and challenging flames. Her chin was held high and steady, and the pallor of exhaustion, with the blackness of her hair and eyes, made her strangely commanding. He understood that she was not waiting for him to speak, but to go. * 7 , “I did not know that there was a woman here! ”he said. s . “And I did not know that officers of the Grays were accustomed to enter houses without invitations!” she replied. "This is a little different,” he began. She interrupted him. , "But the law of the Grays is that homes should be left undisturbed, isn’t it? At least. lt is the Jaw of civilization. I believe you profess, too, to protect property, do you not?” "Why, yes!" he agreed. He wished that he could get a little respite from the steady fire of her eyes. It was embarrassing and as confusing as the white light of an impracticable logic. "In that case, please place a guard around, our house lest some more of your soldiers get out of control," she went on. * “I can do that, yes," he said. "But , we are to make this a staff headquarters and must start at once to put the house in readiness." “General Westerllng’s headquarters?” she inquired. He parried the question with a frown. Staff-officers never give information. They receive information and transmit orders. “I know General Westerling. You will tell him that my mothes, Mrs. Galland, and Our maid and inyself are very tired from the entertainment he has given us, unasked, and we need sleep to-night.. So you will leave us untH morning and that door, sir, is the ondout into the grounds." The staff-officer bowed and went out by that door, glad to get away from Marta’s eyes. His inspection of the premises with a view to plans for staff accommodation could wait. Westerling would not be here for two days at least . ; "Whew! What energy she has!" he thought "I never had anybody make me feel so contemptibly unlike a gem tieman In my life." Tet Marta, returning to the hall, had to steady herself in a dizzy moment against the wall. Complete reaction had come. She craved sleep as if It were the one* true, real thing in the world. She craved sleep for the clarity of mind that comes with the morning light Jn the haziness of fleecy thought as slumber drew its soft clouds around her, her last conscious visions pleasant ones rising free of a background of horror; of Feller’s smile when he went back to his automatfaLfor good; of Dellarme’s smile as he was dying; of Stransky’s smile as Minna gave him hope; and of Hugo’s face as he uttered his flute-like cry of protest In her ears were the haunt-

(Copyright, 1914. by Charles Scribner's Sana)

ing calmness and contained force, of Lanstron’s voice over the telephone. She was pleased to think that she had not lost her temper in her talk with the staff-officer. No, she had not flared once in Indignation. It was as if she had absorbed some of Lanny’s own self-control. Lanny would approve of her in that scene with an officer of the Grays. And she realized that a change had come over her —a change Inexplicable and telling—and she was tired —oh, so tired! It had been exhausting work, indeed, for one woman, though she had been around the world, making war on two armies. The general staff-officer of the Grays, who had tasted Marta’s temper on his first call, when he returned the next morning did not enter unannounced. He rang the door-bell. “I have a message for you from General Westerling," he said to her. "The general expresses his deep regret at the unavoidable damage to your house and grounds and has ’directed that everything possible be done immediately in the way of repairs.” In proof of this the officer called attention to a group of ' service-corps men who were removing the eand-bags from the first terrace. Others were at work in the garden setting uprooted plants back into the earth. “His Excellency says,” continued the officer, "that, although the house is so admirably suited for staff purposes, we will find another if you desire." He was too polite and too considerate in his attitude for Marta not to meet him in the same spirit. "That is what we should naturally prefer,” and Marta bowed her head In indecision. “We should have to begin installing the telegraph and telephone service on the lower floor at once," he remarked. “In fact, all arrangements must be made before the general’s arrival." “He has been a guest here before,” she said reminiscently and detachedly. Her head dropped lower, in apparent disregard of his presence, as ehe took counsel with herself. She was perfectly still, without even the movement of an eye-lash. Other considerations than any he might suggest, he subtly understood, held her attention. They were the criterion by which she would at length assent or dissent, and nothing could hurry the Marta of today, who yesterday had been a creature of feverish impulse.. It seemed a long time that he was watching that wonderful profile under the very black hair, soft with the softness of flesh, yet firmly carved. She lifted her head gradually, her eyes sweeping past the spjt where’ Dellarme had lain dying, where Feller had manned the automatic, where Stransky had thrown Pilzer over the parapet. He saw the glance arrested and focussed on the flag-of the Grays, which was floating from a staff on the outskirts of the town, and slowly,, glowingly, the light rippling on its folds was reflected in her face. “She is for us! She is a Gray!” he thought triumphantly. The woman and the flag! The matter-of-fact staffofficer felt the thrill of sentiment “I think we can arrange it,” Marta announced with a rare smile of assent “Then I’ll go back to town and set the signal-corps men to work,” he ■aid. - - ' - “And when you come you will find the house at your disposal," she assured him. Except that he was raising his cap instead of saluting, he was conscious of withdrawing with the deference due to a superior. / • In place of the smile, after he had gone, came a frown and a look in her eyes as if at something revolting; then the smile returned, to be succeeded by the frown, which was followed by an indeterminate shaking of the head. - •

CHAPTER XIV. * Tea on the Veranda Again. It was more irritating than ever for Mrs. Galland-4o keep pace with her daughter's Inconsistencies. Here was Marta saying coolly: ’“Unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.!* We have our property, our hope to protect Perhaps the Grays have come to stay for good, so graciousness, is our only weapon. We cannot fight a whole army singlehanded." ” „ —> “You have found that out, Marta?" said Mrs. Galland. < "We have four rooms in the baron’s tower and a kitchen stove,” Marta proceeded. "With Minna we can make ourselves very comfortable and leave the house to the staff." “The Gallands in their gardener’s quarters! , The staff of the Grays in ours! Your father will turn in his grave!" Mrs. Galland exclaimed. "But, mother, it is not quite agreeable to think of three women living in the same house with a score of strange men!” Marta persisted. "I had not thought of that, Marta. Of course, it would be abominable!” agreed Mcs, Galland, promptly, capitulating where a point of propriety wu involved. •

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Marta informed the officer — the same one who had rung the doorbell on his second visit—of the family’s decision he appeared shocked at the idea of eviction that was implied. But, secretly pleased at the turn of events, he hastened to apologize for war’s brutal necessities, and Marta’s complaisance led him to consider himself something of a diplomatist. Yes, more than ever he was'convinced of 'the wisdom of an invader ringing doorbells. Meanwhile, .the service-corps men had continued their work until' now there was no vestige of war in the grounds that labor could obliterate; and masone had come to repair the walls of the house Itself and plasterers to renew the broken ceilings. All this Marta regarded in a kind of charmed wonder that an Invader could be so considerate. Her manner with the officers in charge of preparations had the simplicity and ease which a woman of twenty-seven, who is not old-maidish because she is not afraid of a single future, may employ as a serene hostess. She frequently asked if there were good news. "Yes," was the uniform reply. An unexpected setback here or resistance there, but progress, nevertheless. But she learned, too, that the' first two days* fighting along the frontier had cost the Grays fifty thousand casualties. *' “In order to make an omelet you must break eggs!” she remarked. "Spoken like a true soldier —like a member of the staff!" was thg reply. In her constraint and detachment they realized her conscious appreciation of the fact that in earlier times her people had been for the Browns; but in her flashes of interest in the progress of the war, flashes from a woman’s unmilitary m&id, they judged that her heart was with the Grays. And why not? Was it not natural that a woman with more than .her share of intellectual perception should be on the right side? From her associations it was not to be expected that she would make an outright declaration of apostasy. This would destroy the value and the attractiveness of her conversion. Reverence for the past, for a father who had fought for the Browns, against her own convictions, made her attitude appear singularly an& delicately correct The war was a week old —a week which had developed *other tangents and traps than La Tir—on the morning that the first installment of junior officers cam®* to occupy the tables and desks. Where the family portraits had hung in the dining-room were now big maps dotted with brown and gray flags. Portable field cabinets with section*! maps on a large scale were arranged around the walls of the draw-ing-room. In what had been the loung-ing-room of the old daysof Galland prosperity, the’refrain of half a dfizen telegraph Instruments made medley with the clicking of typewriters. Cooks and helpers were busy in the kitchen; for the staff were to live like gentlemen; they were to have their morning baths, their comfortable beds, and

“Just Like Old Days, Isn't It?”

regular meals. No twinge of indigestion or of rheumatism from exposure was to interfere with the working of their precious intellectual - processes. No detail of assistance would be lacking to save any bureaucratic head time and labor. The bedrooms were apportioned according to rank —that of the master awaited the master; the best servant’s bedroom awaited Francois, his valet. When Bouchard, the chief of intelligence, who fought the battle of vjits and spies against Lanstron, came, two hours before Westerling was due, the last of the staff except Westerling and his personal' aide had arrived. Bouchard, with his iron-gray hair, bushy eyebrows, strong, aquiline nose, and hawk-like eyes, his mouth hidden by a bristly mustache, was lean and saturnine, and he was loyal. No jealous thought entered his mind at having to serve a man younger than himself. He did not serve a- personality; he served a chief.of staff and a profession. The score of words which escaped him as he looked over the arrangements were all of directing criticism and bitten off sharply, as if he regretted that he had to waste breath [ in communicating even a thought

"I tell nothing, but you tell me everything!” said Bouchard’s hawk eyes. He was old-fashioned; he looked his part, which was one of the many points of difference between him and Lanstron as a chief of intelligence. It lacked one’ minute to four when Hedwbrth Westerling, chief of staff in name as well as power now, alighted from the gray automobile that turned in at the Galland drive. His Excellency had not occupied his new headquarters as soon as he expected, but this could have no influence on results. If he had lost fifty thousand men, on the first two days and two hundred thousand since the war had begun, should he allow this to disturb his well-being of body or mind? His wellbeing of body and mind meant the ultimate Saving of lives. —-■ Confidence was reflected in Westerling’s bearing and in his smile of command as he passed through the staff rooms, Turcas and Bouchard in his train, with tacit approval of the arrangements. Finally, Turcas, now vicechief of staff, and the other chiefs awaited his pleasure in the library, which was to be his sanctum. On the massive' seventeenth-century desk lay a number of reports and suggestions. Westerling ran through them with accustomed swiftness of pitting and then turned to his personal aide. "Tell Francois that I will have tea on the veranda.” From the fact that he took with him the papers that he had laid aside, subordinate generals, with the gift of unspoken directions which is a part of their profession, understood that he meant to go over the subjects requiring special attention while he had tea. “Everything is going well —well ILL he added. "" “Well!” ran the unspoken communication of confidence through the staff. So well that His Excellency was calmly taking tea on the veranda! For the indefatigable Turcas the detail; for Westerling the front of Jove. He had told Marta only two weeks ago that he should see her again if war came; and war had come. With the inviting prospect of a few holiday moments in which to continue the interview that had been, abruptly concluded in a hotel reception-room, he started down the terrace steps. Above the second terrace he saw a crown of Woman’s hair —hair of jet abundance, shading a face that brought familiar completeness to the scene. Thtelr glances met where the path ended at the second terrace flight; hers shot with a beam of restrained and questioning good humor that spoke at least a truce to the invader. "You called sooner than I expected,” she said in a note of equivocal pleasantry. "Or I,” he rejoined with a shade of triumph, the ’politest of triumph. He was a step above her, her head on a level with the pocket of his- blouse. His square shoulders, commanding height, and military erectness ’ were thus emphasized, as was her own feminine slightness. “I want to thank you," she said. "As becomes a soldier, your forethought was expressed in action. It was the promptness of the men you sent to look after the garden which saved the uprooted plants before they were past recovery." “I wished it for your sake and somewhat for my own sake to be the same that it was in the days when I used to call,” he said graciously. “Tea was from four to flver-do you remember? Will you join me? I have just ordered it." A generous, pleasant conqueror, this! N(TOne knew better than Westerling how to be one when he chose r He was something of an actor. Leaden of men of his type usually are. “Why, yeSl -Very gladly!" she assented with' no undue cordiality and no undue constraint, quite as if there were no wan Neutrality could not be better impersonated, he thought, than in the even cleaving of her lips over the words. They seemed to say that a storm had come and gone and a new set of masters had taken the place of the old. As they approached the veranda Francois was placing the tea things. - •« , "Just like the old days, isn’t it?” he exclaimed with his first sip, convinced that the officers’ commissary supplied excellent tea in the field. “Yes, for the moment—if we forget the war!” ehe replied, and looked away, preoccupied, toward the landscape. If we forget the war! She bore on the words rather grimly. The change that hep had noted between the Marta of the hqtel reception-room and the Marta of the moment was not altogether the work of ten years. It had developed since she was in the capital. In these three weeks war had been brought to her door. She had been under heavy fire. Yet this sub ject of the war was the one which he, as an invader, considered himself hound to avoid. “We do forget it at tea, don't we?" he asked. “At least we need not speak of it!” she replied. • “I am staying tonight. I was going to ask if you wouldn’t remain on the veranda while I go over these papers. It—-it would be very cozy and pleasant"" “Why, yes,” she agreed with evident pleasure. Turcas came. In answer to Westerling’s ring. The orders and suggestions on the table seemed to be the product of this lath of a man, the vlcecbief, but a lath of steel, not wood, who appeared a runner trained for a race of Intellects in the scratch class. One by one, almost perfunctorily, Westerllng gave bls assent as he passed the papers to Turcas; while

Turcas’s dry voice, coming from between a narrow opening of the thin lips, gave his reasons with a rapidflrer's precision in answer to his chief’s inquiries. With each order somewhere along that frontier some unit of a great organism would respond. The reserves from this position would be transferred to that; such a position would be felt out before dark by a reconnolssauce in force, however costly; the rapid-firers of the 19th Division would be transferred to the 20th; desplte-the 37th Brigade’s losses, it would still form the advance; General So-ahd-So would be superseded after his failure of yesterday; Colonel 80-and-So would take his place as acting major-general; more care must be exercised in recommendations for bronze crosses, lest their value so depreciate that officers and men would lack Incentive to win them. Marta was having a look behind the scenes at the fountainhead of great events. Power! power! The absolute power of the soldier in the saddle, with premier and government and all the institutions of peace only a dim background for the processes of war! Opposite her was a man who could make and unmake not only generals but even the destinies of peoples. By every sign he enjoyed his power for its own sake. There must be a chief of the five millions, which were as a moving forest of destruction, and here was the chief, his strength reflected in the strong muscles of his short neck as he turned his head to listen to Turcas. Marta recalled the contrast between Westerling and Lanstron as they faced each other after the wreck of the aeroplane ten years ago; the iron invincibility of the elder’s sturdy, mature figure and the alert, high-strung invincibility of the slighter figure of the younger man. He had taken up a paper thoughtfully after Turcas withdrew, when he looked up to Marta in answer to a movement in her chair. She had bent forward in a pose that freed her figure from the chair-back in an outline of suppleness and firmness; her lips were parted, showing a faint line of the white of her teeth, and he caught her gazing at him in a kind of wondering admiration. But she dropped her eyelids instantly and said deliberately, less to him than to herself: t "You have the gift!" No tea-table flattery that, he knew; only the reflection of a fact whose existence had been borne in on her by observation. “The gift? How?” he inquired, speaking to the fringe of hair that half hid her lowered face. She looked up, smiling brightly. “You don’t know what gift! Not the pianist’s! Not the poet’s! *Why, of course; the supreme gift of command! The thing that made you chief of staff! And the war goes well for you, doesn’t it?" Delicious morsel, this, to a connoisseur in compliments! He tasted it with the same self-satisfied smile that he had her first prophecy. To her who had then voiced a secret he had shared with no one, as his chest swelled with a full breath, he bared, another in the delight of the impression he had made on her. ‘ Yes, as you foresaw —as I planned!” he said. "Yes, I planned all, step by step, till I was chief of staff and ready. I convinced the premier that it was time to strike and I chose the hour to strike; for Bodlapoo was only a convenient excuse for -the last of all the steps." (TO BE CONTINUED.)

WORLD MISSION OF CHIVALRY

or Much Worth If Only to Croat, th. Useful Romance of Action. Chivalry served to draw out and de-' velop those free, bold spirits whose talents could not have been evoked by the disputations of the schoolmen nor the mortifications of the religious zealots, says the Engineering Magazine. It created a romance of action to match the. saint’s moral paradise and evoked poetry and the arts to celebrate its charms. The love of the beautiful which it begot caused a hospitable reception to be given in Europe to the refinements brought from the East by the returning crusaders, which caused the first slight stirring of international trade. The enthusiasm which the manysided ideal of chivalry evoked with its galaxy of virtues, may be seen, in literature, in the unfolding of the themes of the simple Aryan folk tales, and the prose romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, into the sensuous beauty of Provencal poetry and the delicacy and pathos of Plutarch and Dante. Chivalry embellished with romance the lives of its half-legendary founders, Charlemagne, Siegfried and Arthur. It supplied the conception of virtue sung in Chaucer’s Pilgrimage, Malory's "Morte D’Arthur” and Spenser's "Faerie Queene.” In the world of action chivalry animated the crusades, dispensed justice throughout Europe tor 400 years, purified court life and made much of the warfare of the middle ages peculiarly humane and noble. Its enthusiasm burned into brilliancy in such characters as Richardand Blondel, the Black Priu;e and his father, Tanered, Godfrey of Bouillon, Gaston de Foix, Bayard and Warwick, and in a thousand forgotten commanders of the Templars, the Knights of St John and the Teutonic Knights.

Speed of Run of Stream.

A stream runs most rapidly onefifth of the depth below the surface and its average speed is that of the current two-fifths of the depth above the bottom.

FIRST OF VIRTUES

Faith and Hope Never Quite to Be Recognized Without Presence of Love. “Where are the nine?” There were ten cleansed, ten lifted out of deepest despair; but only one was really cleansed. The other nine were healed of their physical disease, it is true; but they denied themselves the full benefit of Christ’s power. Their gain was a temporary gain, and therf was no assurance of safety in the future. All ten of those men possessed faith of a sort, and all hoped to be healed of their leprosy; but that kind of faith and hope is of the earth earthy, and it belongs to the present only. One turned back in an access of loving gratitude; and, because of love, found both faith.and love raised Into terms of the eternal. The command that they should go show themselves unto the priests strengthened such faith and hope as they possessed, because that was the method of attesting and confirming a cure. The suggestion implied, in an established method of procedure, undoubtedly had much to do with the possibility of the nine being cleansed. It certainly relieved them of any necessity of believing in our Lord as we believe in him, for instance; and the loving * mercy of Christ allowed them to partake of the surface-good, even If they could not receive the deep and abiding quality that was hidden beneath the outward sign and token of his compassion. Aft Empty Without Love. However the order in which the three great Christian virtues be received, faith and hope are never quite faith and hope without love. That which must pass away can never satisfy; for while we enjoy it,- no matter how beautiful it is, the thing which is temporary makes known to us its temporary character; and "full bloom” is inevitably associated with “fade” and "sere.” Spring cannot erase the memory of winter; and as we gather in the fruits of the harvest, care and fear and want lie in the background of joyUnshed tears brighten the loving regard that enfolds our dear ones, for we part at the last from all that has its being in time. Strength and vigor are ours today, but how quickly gone, and we-all unaware till weakness comes and the making of place for others. The fear of poverty sits at the elbow of the rich; and he who has power knows no rest

“All is vanity,” indeed, unless all be quickened by love until faith and hope reach out beyond the world of appearance into the world of things as they are, and'are always to be. The law was given to Moses, graven deep on stone; and through all Israel’s song breaks the note of sadness. Faith there was, and hope; but faith was a present relationship; hope an earthly promise. Fulfillment of the Law. . The law is fulfilled in the person of our Lord, whom we may love with all the full meaning of the word. “If the ministration of death, written and engraven in stone, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away; how shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious—■’’ as we read in the epistle. The “love” of the Gospels brings us into relationship with the person who is eternal. Faith and hope likewise center about him, when we love him; and the theme of the Christian’s song is triumphant joy; for he reverses the order of nature and the natural man. His pain and sorrow, his trials and tribulations, death and partings—these things shall be no more; and life, joy and love become the ultimate realities. Now the spirit of love is obedience. (“Walk in the spirit, and ye Shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh . . . for if ye be led of the spirit, ye are not under the law . . . the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace 8 . . against such there is no law. That we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love .that which thou dost command.**) And obedience unto what? To a dead law, or to the spirit of life? ° How can we be under the -law tn the world when we have fixed our desires where Christ dwelleth, in the world eternal? When we love him we shall believe and hope also; and believing and hoping we shall lovingly serve, obediently walking In the way of his commandments. —The Living Church.

Jesus Knows.

How sweet to remember that Jesus feels with us in everything that tries or vexes, whether it be real or imaginary. Sometimes when we go to earthly friends for consolation, they may think our trouble an imaginary one, then they tell us to'make ourselves happy. Far different is it with Jesus. Nothing that troubles us is too insignificant to grieve him, and whether it be real, or whether it be supposed wrong, how sweet to feel that *whoever else condemns, he soothes, he calms, and he sympathizes. —Selected. . ■’ ■

Freedom in Cbedience.

The service of Christ is freedom.” Therein the highest faculties of the human spirit find their fullest and most unhampered expression. The liberty that is life in found in obedience to the taw of Him who has made us free. J, :