XXXIII
IN FELLER'S PLACE
What am I? What have I done? What am I about to do? shot as forked shadows over the hot lava-flow of Malta's impulse. The vitality that Westerling had felt by suggestion from a still profile rejoiced in a quickening of pace directly she was out of sight of the veranda. All the thinking she had done that afternoon had been in pictures; some saying, some cry, some groan, or some smile went with every picture.
Coming to the arbor she slowed down for a step or two, arrested by the recollection of her last meeting with Lanstron. There it was that she had scored him for making her an accomplice of trickery. She saw his twitching hand, and the misery in his eyes and the cadence of his words came as clearly as notes from a violin in a silent chamber to her ears. She nodded in affirmation; she shook her head in negation; she frowned; she laughed strangely, and hurried on.
The sitting-room of the tower was empty to other eyes but not to hers. In imagination she saw Feller standing by the table in the dejection of his heart-break when he faced her and Lanstron, his secret disclosed; and the appeal was more potent in memory than it had been at the time. She went on into the bedroom, which had been formerly the tool-room. On the threshold of the steps into the darkness she glanced back, to see Feller's face transfixed as it had been when he discovered the presence of interlopers—transfixed in fighting rage.
The lantern was in the corner at hand. Only yesterday, in want of occupation, as she thought, she had cleaned the chimney and trimmed the wick. It seemed as if Lanny's fingers were lighting it now; as if he were leading the way as he had on her first visit to the telephone. After her hastening steps had carried her along the tunnel to the telephone, she set down the lantern and pressed the spring that opened the panel door. Another moment and she would be embarked on her great adventure in the finality of action. That little ear-piece became a spectre of conscience. She drew back convulsively and her hands flew to her face; she was a rocking shadow in the thin, reddish light of the lantern.
Conscious mind had torn off the mask from subconscious mind, revealing the true nature of the change that war had wrought in her. She who had resented Feller's part—what a part she had been playing! Every word, every shade of expression, every telling pause of abstraction after Westerling confessed that he had made war for his own ends had been subtly prompted by a purpose whose actuality terrified her.
Her hypocrisy, she realized, was as black as the wall of darkness beyond the lantern's gleam. All her pictures became a whirling involution of extravaganza and all the speeches of the characters of the scenes a kind of wail. Then this demoralization passed, as a nightmare passes, with Westerling's boast again in her ears. She was seeing Hugo Mallin; hearing him announce his principles in sight of the spot where Dellarme had died:
"I love my country.... But I know that other men love theirs.... Men should be brave for their convictions.... The Browns are fighting for their homes.... They are fighting, as I should want to fight, against murder and burglary.... I will fight with my face to the white posts, but not with my back to them."