A Modern Mercenary Part 41

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 a.s.sembled a strange effect of pallor.

It is a common experience that silence in a place a.s.sociated 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 att.i.tude 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 n.o.bleness 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 Maasau. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 bl.u.s.tering traitor opposite was not a defeated schemer but a loyal son of Maasau!

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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 G.o.d. If there is no G.o.d, to what end anything? Those who say there is no G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l.

'Six black b.a.l.l.s, one white,' announced Major Ulm.

The prisoner's gray frank eyes flashed out at Unziar, but the Maasaun'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 Maasau, now p.r.o.nounce 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 l.u.s.ts and hates and triumphs--the satisfactions of the old days? The world has grown puny.

It is empty, empty, empty!'

CHAPTER x.x.x.

'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 coa.r.s.e bearded mouth.

He nodded at Elmur.