The Last Shot | Page 8

and high, thin nose, its nostrils drawn
back in an aristocratic sniff--camps were evil-smelling in those
days--his casquette resting on his arm, was the progenitor of him with
the Louis XIV. curls; he of the early nineteenth century, with a face like
Marshal Ney's, was the progenitor of him with the mustache and
imperial of the sixties.
It was whispered that the aristocratic sniff had taken to fierce,
no-quarter campaigns in the bitterness of a broken heart. Did the Grays,
then, really owe two of their fairest provinces to the lady who had jilted
him? Had they to thank the clever wife of him of the Louis XIV. curls,
whose intrigues won for her husband command of the army, for another
province? It was whispered, too, that the military glory of him of the
Marshal Ney physiognomy was due to the good fortune of a senile
field-marshal for an opponent. But no matter. These gentlemen had
seen the enemy fly. They had won. Therefore, they were the supermen
of sagas who incarnate a people's valor.
The Browns gratified their own sense of superiority, in turn, by
admiration of the supermen who had vanquished the Gray generals
consigned to the oblivion of the basement. In their staff building, the
first Galland occupied a prominent position in the main hall; while in
the days of Marta's old baron heroes did not have their portraits painted
for want of painters, and the present nations had consisted only of
warring baronies and principalities.
They must have been rather lonely, these immortals in the Gray
Valhalla, as His Excellency the chief of staff was seldom in his office.
His Excellency had years, rank, prestige. The breast of his uniform
sagged with the weight of his decorations. He appeared for the army at
great functions, his picture was in the shop-windows. Hedworth
Westerling, the new vice-chief of staff, was content with this
arrangement. His years would not permit him the supreme honor. This
was for a figurehead, while he had the power.
His appointment to the staff ten years ago had given him the fields he
wanted, the capital itself, for the play of his abilities. His vital energy,
his impressive personality, his gift for courting the influences that

counted, whether man's or woman's, his astute readiness in stooping to
some measures that were in keeping with the times but not with army
precedent, had won for him the goal of his ambition. He had passed
over the heads of older men, whom many thought his betters, rather
ruthlessly. Those who would serve loyally he drew around him; those
who were bitter he crowded out of his way.
The immortals would have been still more lonely, or at least confused,
in the adjoining room occupied by Westerling. There the walls were
hung with the silhouettes of infantrymen, such as you see at
manoeuvres, in different positions of firing, crouching in shallow
trenches, standing in deep trenches, or lying flat on the stomach on
level earth. Another silhouette, that of an infantryman running, was
peppered with white points in arms and legs and parts of the body that
were not vital, to show in how many places a man may be hit with a
small-calibre bullet and still survive.
The immortals had small armies. Even the mustache and imperial had
only three hundred thousand in the great battle of the last war. In this
day of universal European conscription, if Westerling were to win it
would be with five millions--five hundred thousand more than when he
faced a young Brown officer over the wreck of an aeroplane--including
the reserves; each man running, firing, crouching, as was the figure on
the wall, and trying to give more of the white points that peppered the
silhouette than he received.
Now Turcas, the assistant vice-chief of staff, and Bouchard, chief of the
division of intelligence, standing on either side of Westerling's desk,
awaited his decisions on certain matters which they had brought to his
attention. Both were older than Westerling, Turcas by ten and
Bouchard by fifteen years.
Turcas had been strongly urged in inner army circles for the place that
Westerling had won, but his manner and his inability to court influence
were against him A lath of a man and stiff as a lath, pale, with thin,
tightly-drawn lips, quiet, steel-gray eyes, a tracery of blue veins
showing on his full temples, he suggested the ascetic no less than the
soldier, while his incisive brevity of speech, flavored now and then

with pungent humor, without any inflection in his dry voice, was in
keeping with his appearance. He arrived with the clerks in the morning
and frequently remained after they were gone. His life was an affair of
calculated units of time; his habits of diet and exercise all regulated