A Modern Mercenary

His glance at Rallywood held a large reproach.

'But, father, in honesty and justice' —

'It is a case of private justice as opposed to national necessity. If Captain Rallywood had sacrificed his public to his private honour, if he had chosen to prefer his country's cause to his oath of fealty – '

Rallywood understood.

'No one knows I am here,' he said.

'Ah, true!'

'No one need ever know where the despatches have been. In four hours they shall be with Major Counsellor at the British Legation.'

'If you, Captain Rallywood, will bear the whole responsibility that would simplify the matter. Otherwise it is war.' Selpdorf looked meaningly at Rallywood as he spoke.

But Valerie was not deceived.

'Not that! not that!' she cried.

'It must be that or nothing.' Selpdorf did not look at her and he spoke almost brusquely.

'I know what it means. They will say he was false to his oath! Oh, father, is there no other way? I cannot let him go!'

Rallywood's face changed. Fate was crushing her two strange gifts into his hands, love and death at the same moment! He crossed to Valerie's side, and drawing her to him his gray eyes looked their courage and their happiness into hers.

'My darling, this makes it easy, whatever comes!'

'It may be death! It will be death!' He winced at the low agonised whisper.

She turned to her father.

'Father, you have the power to do anything you please in Maäsau. You will save him for me! You can save him! Promise me that or I cannot let him go!'

Selpdorf was touched. He liked Rallywood. There was much in the single-hearted soldier that appealed to his sympathies. But —

'I will not deceive you, Valerie, at such a time as this,' he answered gently; 'I cannot foresee what may happen. I may not be able to prevent the worst. Captain Rallywood holds the despatches. He offers to sacrifice himself for the State, and the decision rests with you.'

Valerie buried her face in her hands. The clock moved noiselessly on and on, and the very air seemed to throb in the silence. Then the girl raised her head and looked steadily at Rallywood.

'It would not be love if I said otherwise. You would not love me if I said otherwise. You must go, John!'

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ARREST

By the following evening tongues were busy in Révonde. Rumour and mystery and an absence of any definite information added zest to the town talk. The broken reports were curious.

Major Counsellor had fallen down the staircase at the British Legation and injured his head, his brow being much contused. His return to Révonde was explained on the ground that Germany and England had joined forces in compelling Selpdorf to lessen the heavy taxation with which Maäsau was burdened. Count Sagan had been seen in the city with a lowering face – ah, yes! it was well known he had a most patriotic distrust of German interference. Madame de Sagan had quarreled with her husband because she had insisted on helping Mademoiselle Selpdorf, who was about to be married to Baron von Elmur, in the choice of her trousseau. Some excitement was being caused in the Guards' barracks by the case of Captain Rallywood, whom Count Sagan accused of using his influence unduly with his brother-officers to forward the projects of Germany. Some even went so far as to say that he was in arrest, and others were found who shook their heads and laughed, professing to be aware of a yet deeper reason for the colonel-in-chief's animosity against the English captain.

Out of all this chaff the one grain of truth was that Counsellor, released by Unziar on the authority of a telegram from Rallywood, had arrived by the first train in the morning and had at once proceeded to the British Legation. There he found Rallywood waiting for him. 'You have seen the Chancellor?' asked Counsellor, looking hard at Rallywood, whose brown face wore a look he had never seen upon it before. 'Why was I released? Am I already too late?'

'No, you are not too late. You must see the Duke at once. Here are your despatches. Good-bye, Major, I'll meet you presently.'

'I shall not in all probability see Duke Gustave again. My part is over and done with. The world, my dear John, never sees a national policy until it begins to fly. There is no credit for hatching the egg. One would almost think it hatched of itself. Occasionally the egg is found to be addled, and then the old birds make away with it in private. But don't go yet. How have you managed to keep these? What does it mean?'

'It means principally that you must forget you have been robbed, that Elmur's game is up, and that you were mistaken in your opinion of the Chancellor.'

Counsellor looked hurriedly through the papers contained in the packet, 'John,' he said suddenly, as he folded up a small sheet of cypher notes, 'you are an infernal liar.'

Rallywood laughed and his spurs jingled as he left the room, glad to have escaped so cheaply from Counsellor's keen observation. The old Major went to the window and watched him ride away in the sunshine, a gallant figure in his glittering uniform, sitting squarely on his big bay charger. No suspicion crossed his thoughts that Rallywood was probably taking his last ride through the sunny streets, that at every stride of his high-stepping horse he drew nearer to the final scene of all. He had gathered from Rallywood's bearing that the difficulties in his path had somehow been surmounted. Rallywood was capable. He had won the day by energy or pluck or both, but the old diplomatist had no time at the moment to trouble his head as to the exact means.

Before the forenoon was over Counsellor, acting through the proper channels, secured Maäsau's acceptance of the British proposals, and a satisfactory undertaking which excluded all rivals from the field, at any rate during the Duke's lifetime. Counsellor did not appear in the negotiations. He remained shut up at the Legation, but when at length they came to public knowledge the German party were not under any delusion; they recognised to whose direct offices they owed defeat.

Baron von Elmur said nothing, as a matter of fact he did nothing, but he used his influence with an effect that was yet to bear fruit. He was inclined to suspect Selpdorf, but the Chancellor proved that he had only carried out the German's own suggestion in sending Rallywood to the Frontier. Ill-luck, he argued, combined with Sagan's blundering, had done the rest. He deplored it. It was clear that Rallywood, taking advantage of his position, and under pretence of carrying the despatches to the Chancellor had simply gone to Révonde and wired to Unziar a false order of release for Major Counsellor. The sole delinquent was Rallywood, and the Count in a torrent of curses promised himself a time of reckoning.

The day, which had begun in a brief burst of sunshine, closed in clouds. Evening climbed sullenly up out of the bleak river.

Traffic died in the streets, and the cloaked troopers passing hither and thither against the rising tsa became the chief objects to be seen as night gathered.

Rallywood stood at the side window of his quarters looking out over the twinkling city. He seemed to have had as yet no time for regret or gloomy anticipation. He had dwelt absorbed on the single fact that Valerie loved him. He was ready to sacrifice himself and his hopes with a smile. Later on, in sorrow and heaviness of heart, he accused himself bitterly of spoiling Valerie's young life. But he had not reached that stage yet; he was lingering in the first transient period when men and women see visions and dream dreams, when the present is lost in the recent past, while love's first spell is laid upon them, and the light that never was on land or sea blinds them to the chances and changes of common life. As long as the glory of it lasts a man is caught up into the seventh heaven, and the things of earth have no power over him.

But the breaking of the vision came to Rallywood sufficiently quickly. His view of the lamp-lit city grew suddenly blurred and he saw instead his own reflection in the polished glass, as the lights were turned on in the room behind him. In that same instant too the vague sweet outlook faded from his mind.

Then a hand was laid upon his shoulder and he saw another figure mirrored beside his own against the dark background of the night. There was a suggestion of reluctance in Unziar's movements.

'I regret, Captain Rallywood, that I have been ordered to place you in arrest.'

CHAPTER XXIX

THE COURT-MARTIAL

It has been the privilege of one or two famous Gardes du Corps to be a law unto themselves. The Guard of Maäsau shares that privilege. The inquiry or rather trial was to be held within closed doors, and by the express order of the colonel-in-chief all the officers, including those junior to the prisoner, were to be present. And every officer present on such occasions had the right to vote. The procedure was simple. When the witnesses had been examined the accused was invited to speak in his own defence, then the senior officer summed up and lastly the officers recorded their votes.

Rallywood's offence had outraged the fundamental principle of the Guard, the blind self-sacrificing obedience which in trivial as in vital matters demanded the merging of the private individual with hopes and conscience of his own into the body corporate of the Guard. With the single exception of Unziar, no man present was acquainted with the details of Rallywood's crime. They knew only that he had grossly disobeyed orders, and not only that, but had disobeyed them for the furtherance of private ambition. So the charge against him intimated. It was understood that the accusation had been lodged by Count Sagan in consequence of information received by him, and the court-martial at once assembled to deal with the matter.

The original prejudice against Rallywood as a foreigner and an interloper was revived, with all the more bitterness because the men had in the interval come to respect if not to like him. They resented the deception they believed to have been practised upon them with the rancour of those who find they have not only been played upon but made tools of. Rallywood had gained his position among them by false pretences to serve his own ends – gained it to betray them.

But more than this, he had dishonoured the Guard, brought the first blot of treachery upon its long and unblemished traditions. Hereditary instincts inbred and powerful were arrayed against him in the hearts of six of his judges; in the seventh, Count Sagan, he had to encounter the ill-blood of a profoundly vindictive nature whose purposes he had crossed and baffled, and who harboured towards him a savage personal hatred.

It must be understood that so far no hint of the arrangement with England had been allowed to transpire. The engagement to be given by Maäsau in return for the promised British loan and moral support was in train for completion, but the final signature was not to take place till that afternoon. Meantime the Chancellor kept a still tongue in his head and waited upon events, knowing that when all transpired the responsibility could be shifted on to the shoulders of the Duke. It was a risky game, but M. Selpdorf had played many another – and won them all. At the same time he had no intention of putting out his hand to save Rallywood, whose disappearance from the scheme of earthly affairs would remove an awkward cause of disagreement from the range of his own family circle. Yet it must be admitted that M. Selpdorf really regretted that the necessities of the case required the sacrifice of the Englishman, for whom his former abstract liking remained entirely unaltered.

The doors of the great mess-room were closed, for within them the court-martial was in progress. At the central table seven men with the marks of power upon them were gathered. Above them the torn banners of the regiment hung in the red gloom of the dome, but about the men themselves the gray-white light of a winter day fell from the riverward windows. It seemed to dull even the red glow of the hangings, that cold light, which lent to the faces of those assembled a strange effect of pallor.

It is a common experience that silence in a place associated in the mind with voices and the movement and sounds of life has a weird and impressive effect. Enter an empty church and you are chilled; hear a will read in the room which you connect with laughter and the genial routine of everyday events, and the uncanny quiet, falling away from the single voice, benumbs you. Thus in the mess-room, where music and laughter and the hubbub of men's talking usually resounded, the unwonted stillness, broken only by the piercing wail of the tsa, struck coldly and heavily upon the senses.

Count Sagan, his big chest covered with gold-lace and orders, loomed at the head of the table, Wallenloup and Ulm to his right and left, Adiron, Unziar, Adolf and Varanheim seated according to their rank. At the foot of the table in the uniform of the Guard but without a sword stood the prisoner.

One man present was a complete stranger to Rallywood – Major Ulm, who had just returned from leave, and whose keen eyes set in a thin shaven face scrutinised him coldly. Behind Ulm's bald forehead dwelt most of the sagacity and discretion of the Guard. Strongly as his prejudices were excited he could not avoid being struck by the bearing of the prisoner.

There was a cold fierceness about the men of the Guard, but Rallywood stood unmoved under the many hostile eyes.

A court-martial, where the prisoner is condemned, is perhaps the most awful scene of justice upon earth. This is so because it contains within itself elements that edge its painfulness. The judges wield not only the power of death, but the power of putting a man to utter shame. The prisoners who stand at such a tribunal may be credited with the capability, given to them by training if not by nature, of feeling shame. And the capability of suffering shame is as distinct a quality as the sense of honour.

Count Sagan glared round the table, and the aspect of his colleagues pleased him; they felt under his rough imagination like a sword whose temper the fighter is sure of. There was a horrible energy, a furious relentlessness about his very attitude and ringing in his voice that drove every word of his accusation into and through his hearers. As president he put questions to the prisoner, who answered them unmoved.

Rallywood fronted them calm and soldierlike, the picture of a gallant despair. He felt as though he stood clear of his life. It was lived and the end in sight. His position was hard, but he seemed to be ready to say Amen to whatever the fates might send. He had no thought of struggling for life and love. He was far otherwise. He was one whose love is hopeless, whose loved one is lost as though in death, and who lives through the present dream according to an ideal, the ideal of being worthy of the vanished past.

Unziar alone looked stonily blank, but the other grim faces round the table regarded Rallywood with a sort of satisfaction. He had sinned against them, but they were about to make him pay the highest human penalty for his sin. Yet to Ulm his demeanour was suggestive. There was something eloquent of singleness of heart and nobleness that seemed to buoy up this man with his broken honour. There was no parade of outraged innocence, nothing but a fearless reserve.

Rallywood hardly heard the grave voices that discussed his fate, stirring as they did so the clogging quiet which hung with such solemn effect over the historic room.

Those lofty walls had never before echoed to a similar charge or a like disgrace. The accusation was set forth in general terms. It spoke only of a certain prisoner and certain despatches. Rallywood acting under valid orders, had taken over the despatches from Unziar, and next by a false telegram to Unziar had ordered the release of a certain prisoner. Also he had used the despatches to forward aims of his own, to the loss and detriment of the Free State of Maäsau. Anthony Unziar gave his evidence briefly and with caution, but it was conclusive.

After the charge had been completed and proved, a few minutes silence ensued. Then Count Sagan addressed the prisoner.

'Captain Rallywood, have you anything to say in your own defence?'

A sudden jarring sense of amusement struck upon Rallywood. They were playing a farce; Count Simon, with his mortal enmity, was but acting his part. The whole procedure was hollow yet he Rallywood would have to give his life to prove that all this seeming was deadly earnest – that the blustering traitor opposite was not a defeated schemer but a loyal son of Maäsau!

Rallywood could not repress a quick smile.

Count Simon flung his fist upon the table.

'Do you hear me?' he shouted; 'what have you to say in your defence?'

Rallywood looked him in the eyes.

'Nothing,' he said.

There was a hush. Sagan picked up the glances of the officers round him. Rallywood's words had come as a shock. Most of the men expected some attempt if not at a defence at least at a justification of his conduct.

Sagan's harsh voice was raised again.

'His sword.'

Unziar sprang up hurriedly.

'It is in the ante-room,' he said; 'I will bring it.'

Sagan rose from his place as Unziar returned with a naked sword in his hand. The Count took it and laid it on the table before him.

Then standing he addressed the court.

'Gentlemen of the Guard, – I must thank you in the first place for the admirable patience with which you have listened to the details of the abominable crime with which the prisoner, John Rallywood, is charged. His guilt has been proved up to the hilt by Lieutenant Unziar's evidence, but in addition to that the accused was not ashamed to convict himself out of his own mouth. The sentence upon a traitor as upon a mutinous soldier is unalterable. It is death! No doubt, gentlemen, we are unanimously agreed upon that, and the formality of the ballot is all that is left.'

The ballot-box stood upon a side-table at the upper end of the room, and beside it a basket with a number of ivory balls, some black, some white. The officers went up in rotation and each with his back to the company placed a ball of the colour he chose in the ballot-box.

The haggard daylight was fading slowly as the men left their chairs and returned to them in silence.

Rallywood waited, not in suspense indeed, but with the full sense that his fate was being legally recorded by a jury of his fellows. It is at such a moment as this that a man goes back to his belief in God. If there is no God, to what end anything? Those who say there is no God say the world is a sad and very evil place. If their creed were universally accepted, the last state of humanity would be worse than the first, and earth degenerate into a hopeless and helpless hell.

'Six black balls, one white,' announced Major Ulm.

The prisoner's gray frank eyes flashed out at Unziar, but the Maäsaun's rigid face gave no sign.

Then Count Sagan, secure of his enemy, let himself go. He lifted the sword from the table, and casting one more glance at the prisoner, he placed the gleaming point upon the floor, bending the delicate blade, and stamping upon it midway with his booted heel. There was a shallow ring as the steel broke, then a clash of metal as the Count flung the hilt upon the point, as if the touch contaminated him.

'John Rallywood, this court has found you guilty and condemned you to die! And I, Count Simon of Sagan, colonel-in-chief of the Guard of Maäsau, now pronounce upon you the sentence of death. Trusted by the Guard, you chose to betray them! Where is the oath of fealty by which you swore to obey? We are polluted by your treason, we are tainted by your shame! Are you afraid to speak? Is your voice frozen in your throat? The greater part of your punishment should be in its shame. But you cannot feel it! You and shame are strangers – the last infamy of the base! You are loathsome, a mercenary false to his salt, a hound who sold himself for money first and for disgraceful gain afterwards! How can I touch you? Where can I prod you? On what nerve, since the nerve of shame is dead? Like the groom, one could only punish you with a whip. I shall lay the matter before the Duke. I will urge it upon my colleagues,' he swept his arm round the table; 'a hundred with the whip or to run the gauntlet of the Guard. That would touch you more than words, or shame, or death! Ha, that reaches you!' he cried, and then there was a fierce exultation in the raucous volleying words, 'You have disgraced the Guard but we cannot for reasons of state publicly disgrace you. But you shall be shot – shot like a dog! You shall not meet death face to face as many a brave man has met it, but you shall be shot, cringing with your back to the gun-muzzles – like the cur you are!'

Rallywood's pale features had flushed for a second. There was a brutality about Sagan's denunciations which shocked the men around him. Rallywood deserved something, but not this, not that! Unziar's eyes burned, Wallenloup was frowning. But Sagan swept on. He was a man who trampled horribly upon a fallen foe.

At last Wallenloup could bear it no longer. He rose to his feet and saluting the Count led the way from the room, the line closing with Rallywood between Adolf and Unziar as guard.

Left alone in the great dim vaulted chamber, Sagan stood upright and watched the door through which they had filed out, and there came upon him in the dying daylight a terrible moment, such as all uncontrolled natures must at times know. A sense of the futility of all things, a knowledge that life has lost its taste, the hideousness of finally baffled desire.

He hurled out his heavy arms with a wild gesture.

'Where have they gone? Where are they, the strong lusts and hates and triumphs – the satisfactions of the old days? The world has grown puny. It is empty, empty, empty!'

CHAPTER XXX

'UPON THE GREAT WORLD'S ALTAR-STAIRS.'

It is a commonplace that selfish natures, balked of gratification, seek relief in making the unhappiness of others, preferably of those who are helpless to resist or to resent. Therefore Count Sagan employed the interval before going to the Palace to procure the signature of the Duke to Rallywood's death-warrant in paying a flying visit to his wife, whom he had not seen since the morning of the boar-hunt at the Castle.

He found several other people calling upon Madame de Sagan, who was not fond of solitude. Numbers gave the pretty Countess courage. She took no notice of her husband's entrance, although the soft colour left her face instantly as a candle-flame is blown out. But Count Simon had only five minutes to spare and something to say in them. Isolde's feeble rebellion escaped him; he strode to her side, and with a single glance dispersed the little coterie of guests about her, the only one who kept his position being Baron von Elmur.

Sagan stood before his wife, an evil smile on his coarse bearded mouth. He nodded at Elmur.

'I have news of interest for both of you.'

'Ah! it is over then?' Elmur asked at once. He discerned the Count's intention and would have averted its fulfilment if possible. The thought that he was about to make a woman unhappy never deterred Elmur from any course of action whatsoever, but he preferred not to see them so. He delighted in pretty women, and Isolde of Sagan was exceptionally pretty; therefore, for the sake of the next half hour of her society he would have spared her the tidings her husband's malice designed to thrust upon her in public. Afterwards the deluge might come, but what matter? Have we not all our deluges in private that submerge our world in tears? 'Madame has kindly promised to assist in the tableaux vivants next week,' he added hastily.

The Count grinned his contempt.

'You should reproduce the death of a traitor. Come to see Rallywood shot in the morning by way of an object lesson.'

Madame de Sagan's hand flew to her throat with a quick gasp of horror; for a second the room seemed to swing round, then slowly settle again.

'Why, what has he done?' she asked; her lips were dry but she spoke deliberately.

'Nothing new, only he happened to be found out this time. Well, au revoir!'

Elmur stood up and followed him.

'The signature of his Highness?' he asked in a low voice.