The Last Shot Part 29

"Look at him volplane--motor at full speed, too!"

The pilot was young Etzel, who, as Lanstron had observed, would charge a church tower if he were bidden. He was taking no risks in missing. His ego had no cosmos except that huge, oblong gas-bag. He drove for it as a hawk goes for its prey. One life for a number of lives--the sacrifice of a single aeroplane for a costly dirigible--that was an exchange in favor of the Browns. And Etzel had taken an oath in his heart--not standing on a cafe table--that he would never let any dirigible that he attacked escape.

"Into it! Making sure! Oh, splen--O!" cried the artillery commander.

A ball of lightning shot forth sheets of flame. Dirigible and plane were hidden in an ugly swirl of yellowish smoke, rolling out into a purple cloud that spread into prismatic mist over the descent of cavorting human bodies and broken machinery and twisted braces, flying pieces of tattered or burning cloth. David has taken Goliath down with him in a death grip.

An aeroplane following the dirigible as a screen, hoping to get home with information if the dirigible were lost, had escaped the sharpshooters in the church tower by flying around the town. However, it ran within range of the automatic and the sharpshooters on top of the castle tower. They failed of the bull's-eye, but their bullets, r.i.m.m.i.n.g the target, crippling the motor, and cutting braces, brought the crumpling wings about the helpless pilot. The watching gunners uttered "Ahs!" of horror and triumph as they saw him fall, gliding this way and that, in the agony of slow descent.

"Come, now!" called the artillery commander. "We are wasting precious time."

Entering the grounds of the Galland house, Marta had to pa.s.s to one side of the path, now blocked by army wagons and engineers' materials and tools. Soldiers carrying sand-bags were taking the shortest cut, trampling the flowers on their way.

"Do you know whose property this is?" she demanded in a burst of anger.

"Ours--the nation's!" answered one, perspiring freely at his work.

"Sorry!" he added on second thought.

Already parts of the first terrace were shoulder-high with sand-bags and one automatic had been set in place, Marta observed as she turned to the veranda. There her mother sat in her favorite chair, hands relaxed as they rested on its arms, while she looked out over the valley in the supertranquillity that comes to some women under a strain--as soldiers who have been on sieges can tell you--that some psychologists interpret one way and some another, none knowing even their own wives.

"Marta, did any of the children come?" Mrs. Galland asked in her usual pleasant tone. So far as she was concerned, the activity on the terrace did not exist. She seemed oblivious of the fact of war.

"Yes, seven."

"And did you hold your session?"

"Yes."

Marta's monosyllables absently answering the questions were expressive of her wonder at her mother. Most girls do not know their mothers much better than psychologists know their wives.

"I am glad of that, Marta. I am glad you went and sorry that I opposed your going, because, Marta, whatever happens one should go regularly about what he considers his duty," said Mrs. Galland. "They have been as considerate as they could, evidently by Colonel Lanstron's orders," she proceeded, nodding toward the industrious engineers. "And they've packed all the paintings and works of art and put them in the cellar, where they will be safe."

The captain of engineers in command, seeing Marta, hurried toward her.

"Miss Galland, isn't it?" he asked. "I have been waiting for you.

I--I--well, I found that I could not make the situation clear to your mother."

"He thinks me in my second childhood or out of my head," Mrs. Galland explained with a shade of tartness. "And he has been so polite in trying to conceal his opinion, too," she added with a comprehending smile.

The captain flushed in embarra.s.sment.

"I--I can't speak too strongly," he declared when he had regained his composure. "Though everything seems safe here now, it may not be in an hour. You must go, all of you. This house will be in an inferno as soon as the 53d falls back, and I can't possibly get your mother to appreciate the fact, Miss Galland."

"But I said that I did appreciate it and that the Gallands have been in infernos before--perhaps not as bad as the one that is coming--but, then, the Gallands must keep abreast of the times," replied Mrs.

Galland. "I have asked Minna and she prefers to remain. I am glad of that. I am glad now that we kept her, Marta. She is as loyal as my old maid and the butler and the cook were to your grandmother in the last war. Ah, the Gallands had many servants then!"

"This isn't like the old war. This place will be sh.e.l.led, enfiladed! And you two--" the captain protested desperately.

"I became a Galland when I married," said Mrs. Galland, "and the Galland women have always remained with their property in time of war.

Naturally, I shall remain!"

"Miss Galland, it was you--your influence I was counting on to--" The captain turned to Marta in a final appeal.

Mrs. Galland was watching her daughter's face intently.

"We stay!" replied Marta, and the captain saw in the depths of her eyes, a cold blue-black, that further argument was useless.

With a shrug of his shoulders he was turning to go when his lieutenant, hurrying up and pointing to the row of lindens at the edge of the estate, exclaimed:

"If we only had those trees out of the way! They cut the line of our fire! They form cover and protection for the enemy."

"The orders are against it," replied the captain.

"Lanstron may be a great soldier, but--" declared the lieutenant petulantly.

"Cut the lindens if it will help the Browns!" called Mrs. Galland.

"Cut the lindens, mother! Is everything to be destroyed--everything to satisfy the appet.i.te of savagery?" exclaimed Marta. Then, in an abrupt change of mood, inexplicable to the captain and even to herself, she added: "My mother says to cut the lindens. And you will tell us when to go into the house?" Marta asked the captain.

"Yes. There is no danger yet--none until we see the 53d falling back."

What mockery, what uncanny staginess for either her mother or herself to be so calm! Yet, what else were they to do? Were they to scream? Or fall into each other's arms and sob? Marta found a strange pleasure in looking at her garden before it was spattered with blood, as it had been in the last war. It had never seemed more beautiful. There was a sublimity in nature's obliviousness to the thras.h.i.+ng of the air with sh.e.l.ls in a gentle breeze that fluttered the petals of the hydrangeas.

The sight of Feller coming along the path of the second terrace brought in sudden vividness to her mind that question which must soon be decided: whether or not she would allow him to remain to carry out his plan. He still had the garden-shears in hand. He was walking with the slow and soft step which was in keeping with the serenity of his occupation. Pausing before the chrysanthemum bed, he touched his hat, and as he awaited her approach he lifted one of the largest blooms that was drooping from its weight on the slender stem.

"They look well, don't you think?" he asked cautiously; and he was very cool, while his eyes had a singular limpidity, speaking better than any words the sadness of his story and the dependence of his hope of regeneration upon her.

"Yes, quite the best they ever have," she replied, inclined to look away from him, conscious of her sensitiveness to his appeal, and yet still looking at him, while she marvelled at him, at herself, at everything.

"Thank you," he said. "You don't know how much that means, how pleased I am."

Now came the sweep of a rising roar from the sky with the command to attention of the rush of a fast express-train past a country railway station. Two Gray dirigibles with their escort of aeroplanes--in formation like that which Mrs. Galland and Feller had seen race along the frontier--were bearing toward the pa.s.s over the pa.s.s road. One glimpse of the squadron was as a match to Feller's military pa.s.sion. He swept off his old straw hat and with it all of the gardener's chrysalis.

Feller the artillerist gazed aloft in feverish excitement.

"Lanny has them guessing! They're bound to know his plans if it takes all the air craft in the shop!" he exclaimed. "And what are we doing?

Yes, what are we doing?" he cried in alarm as his glance swept the sky in front of the squadron, already even with the terrace in its terrific speed.

The automatic and the riflemen in the tower banged away to no purpose, for the aerostatic officers of the Grays had been apprised of the danger in that direction.

"Minutes, seconds count! Where are our high-angle guns?" Feller went on.

He was unconsciously gesticulating with all the fervor of hurrying a battery into place to cover an infantry retreat in a crisis. "And they're turning! What's the matter? What are high-angle guns for, anyway, with such targets naked over our lines? Ah-h! Beautiful!"

The central sections of the envelope of the rear dirigible had been torn in shreds; it was buckling. Clouds of blue shrapnel smoke broke around its gondola. A number of field-guns joined forces with a battery of high-angle guns in a havoc that left a drifting derelict that had ceased to exist to Feller's mind immediately it was out of action; for he saw that the remainder of the squadron had completed its loop and was pointing toward the plain.

"And they were low enough to see all they want to know and rising now--evidently already out of reach of our guns--and nothing against them!" he groaned as he saw a clear sky ahead of the big disk and its attending wings, while clenched fists pumping up and down with the movement of his forearms shook his whole body in a palpitation of angry disgust. "Lanny, what's the matter! Lanny, they've beaten you! Eh? What?

What--" A long whistle broke from his lips. His body still, transfixed, he cupped his hands over his eyes. "So, that is it! That is your plan, Lanny, old boy!" he shouted. "But if one of their confounded little aviators gets back, he has the story!"

From a great alt.i.tude, literally out of the blue of heaven, high over the Gray lines, Marta made out a Brown squadron of dirigibles and planes descending across the track of the Grays.