"Very well, sir!" he said with a certain dignity which Fracasse, who was a good deal of a martinet, found very irritating.
"No, that would suit you too well!" Fracasse declared. "You shall stay! You shall do the duty for which your country trained you and take your share of the chances."
"Yes, sir!" answered Hugo. "But won't you," he asked persuasively and with the wondering inquiry of the suggestion that had sprung into his heretic brain, "won't you ask the men if there are not some here who really, in their hearts, the logic of their hearts—which is often better than brain logic—do not believe just as I do?"
"Have you gone insane? There are none!" In the impulse of anger that swept his cheeks with a red wave Fracasse half drew his sword as if he would strike Hugo. "And, Mallin, you are a marked man. I shall watch you! I'll have the lieutenants and sergeants watch you. At the first sign of flunking I'll make an example of you!"
"Yes, sir," answered Hugo, with the automatic deference of private to officer but with a reserved and studious inquiry that made the captain bite his lip.
"I'll have Aronson and Pilzer watch you, too!" Fracasse added.
"Yes, sir!" said Pilzer promptly.
Then, under the restraint of the captain's presence, there was a silence that endured. The men were left to the sole resource of their thoughts and observation of their surroundings. They were lying in a pasture facing the line of white posts whose tops ran in an even row over level ground. On the other side of the boundary was a wheat-field. Here a farmer had commenced his fall ploughing. His plough was in the furrow where he had left it when he unhitched his team for the day, before an orderly had come to tell him that he must move out of his house overnight. The wheat stubble swept on up to a knoll in the distance.
All the landscape in front of Fracasse's company seemed to have been deserted; no moving figures were anywhere in sight; no sign of the enemy's infantry. No trains came or went along the lines of steel into the mountain tunnel, which had been mined at a dozen points by the Browns. No vehicles and no foot-passengers dotted the highway into the town. Over the mountains and over the plain, planes and dirigibles moved in wide circles restively, watching for a signal as hawks watch for prey. Suspense this—suspense of such a swift vibration that it was like a taut G string of a violin under the bow!
Faintly the town clock was heard striking the hour. From eight to nine and nine to ten Fracasse's men waited; waited until the machine was ready and Westerling should throw in the clutch; waited until the troops were in place for the first move before he hurled his battalions forward. Every pawn of flesh facing the white posts had a thousand thoughts whirling in such a medley that he could be said to have no thought at all, only an impression juggled by destiny. No one would have confessed what he felt, while physical inactivity gave free rein to mental activity. That thing of a nation's nightmare; that thing for which generations had drilled without its materializing; that thing of speculation, of hazard, of horror; that thing of quick action and long-enduring consequences was coming.