Just to save the scarlet flag my cheeks flung out from Father's stare, I pretended great interest in the other envelope. It had been addressed to me by Tony.
"My letter is from Sidney. I thought I should have one from him to-day," said Di, with the brazen boldness of the legitimately engaged girl who has a right to expose her feelings. "Now he'll tell me, perhaps, when he will be able to get leave and follow us."
She proceeded to tear open the envelope in the ruthless violating way of which I could never be guilty except with a soulless circular. A letter from a lover, or a friend, full of thoughts and touched by a dear hand, is too sacred for such usage. Fearing from Di's expression that she would be capable of reading aloud choice selections from Major Vandyke's version of events, I simply couldn't stay to risk hearing them. I jumped up and fled with my two prizes.
Locked safely in my room, delicately I cut the edge of Eagle's envelope. I was on the point of drawing out the letter, which appeared to be meagrely thin, when something within me seemed to faint. Reading what he had to say, I should know in a very few words, I was sure, the fate to which he looked forward. There would be no working up, no preamble, to prepare my mind. I wasn't strong enough to bear it. I should have to take Tony's letter first, like a dose of sal volatile.
"Dear, dear Peggy," my benevolent Billiken addressed me, and as I read, the thunder rolled like the far-away drums of Fort Alvarado or El Paso. "This is my first real letter to you, for I don't count notes; and I wish it could be a better one. I'm afraid you must be pretty mad about not getting a telegram at Chicago, or anyhow at Mrs. Main's, when you'd taken all the trouble to wire me your address. But it was intimated to all of us concerned that we weren't to telegraph news about you know what to our families or friends, and that we were even to be discreet about our letters. I've been so indiscreet with you on that subject already, on a never-to-be-forgotten night, however, that the latter bit of fatherly instruction doesn't hold good in my case. Only, before telling you what I have to tell, I'll just take the liberty of reminding you once again of your promise to keep mum till Gabriel's trumpet sounds—or till I take off the embargo (is that the way to spell it, I wonder, and what exactly does it mean?). As matters look at present, one thing is liable to happen about the same time as the other. Well, now I'm going to tell you news of the court-martial as best I can. I'm no great shakes at telling things, you know. Vandyke was 'seedy' (as you say in your truly British fashion) the day appointed for the trial, and as he was the principal witness it had to be put off for twenty-four hours. You'd have thought it would be March, if anybody, who was on the sick list, wouldn't you? But he was all right in health. I don't know what was the matter with Vandyke, except that I happened to hear our old Doc say he had a temperature way up in C. Maybe it was stage fright. I felt like that myself—queer all over when the time came, as a fellow does when he's just going to be seasick.
"The court-martial was what you call a 'field-general court-martial,' which can be convened when forces are on active service, as of course we are now (though we've had nothing very active to do, except on a certain night none of us will forget, and on Army Day when we all marched and sweated to give the populace an impressive show). A field general court-martial can try cases just as grave as a general court-martial can, and its proceedings are conducted with more secrecy. It consists of not less than three officers, none of them under the rank of captain, but the president of the court may be a general officer, a colonel, or lieutenant-colonel. In this case, which was considered very important, both on account of March's fine record and the necessary secrecy that had to be maintained, we had the general commanding the Fort for president, and the other two officers of the court were a colonel and a major. I don't think you met either of them when you were here, so their names wouldn't interest you.
"The courtroom was just a plain ordinary room in the barracks at Fort Bliss; but there wasn't a map or copy of 'rules and regulations' hanging on the yellowish white walls that I can't see now, whenever I shut my eyes. I guess they were all photographed on my 'mental retina,' as the writing folks say. The three officers were in full uniform, to do honour to the case, and of course there wasn't a man present dressed in 'cits.' All were army chaps, even to the headquarters clerk who took notes of the proceedings, the orderly who kept the door, and the witnesses. There weren't many of those. I was one of the principal witnesses and you've heard from me before how little I had to say.
"March, who as prisoner had to be formally conducted in by an officer, had a seat on the left of the judges' table, and his friend, Major Dell, sat beside him. If you could have been a fly on that beastly wall, looking down at your hero, I guess you'd have been proud of the way he held himself. If he'd been brought there to receive a medal of honour instead of to be tried for a big, insane sort of offence calculated to bring about international complications he couldn't have had a prouder bearing. And he wasn't even pale. He looked just brown and calm and natural. I had to confess to when you asked me a point-blank question that night in the park, that I was all muddled up in my mind about his conduct in ordering the gunfire. I didn't know whether he'd gone off his chump, or been fooled, or what. But I can tell you one thing: I felt proud of him as a man and as my superior officer when I saw the way he bore himself for his trial. I don't know now the rights of the matter any more than I did then, in spite of the court's findings; but something tells me—as girls say—that March wasn't to blame. There's a black mystery in this, and I don't see how it's ever going to be cleared up, as things are. But to go back to the court-martial.
"March was accused by the prosecutor of having fired without orders three charges from field guns into a country living at peace with the United States, to the detriment of its inhabitants and property, and to the imminent peril of disturbing international relations. He could have objected legally to any of the judges and stated his objections. But he didn't object to them, nor to the shorthand-writer, whom he had a right to throw out if he could show reasons for thinking that the man was likely to be partial in his notes of the proceedings.
"Of course, I as a mere witness wasn't present all the time; but I know what took place, because I've heard some of it from different quarters. I know that when 'the court had been duly sworn, the accused was arraigned,' which means that the president read out the charges against March, and asked him whether he pleaded guilty or not guilty. Can't you just hear March answering steadily in that pleasant, quiet voice of his: 'Not guilty!' The next thing to follow was the prosecutor's address, outlining the case against the prisoner, and mentioning the witnesses he meant to summon. Then he called the evidence for the prosecution, and that's where, as I've heard from other witnesses, those present got their first big surprise.