“What nonsense you talk!” cried the girl. “When the Chief was down to see me yesterday, he spoke of nothing but you. ‘They beat him, but he won out!’ he said, ‘they shook him off but he went back and found ’em!’ He told me it was a case of grit versus violence—and grit won. In all the time I’ve known the Chief, I’ve never heard him talk so much about one man before. Do you know,” Barbara went on, looking up at Desmond, “I think you’ve made the Chief feel a little bit ashamed of himself. And that I may tell you is a most extraordinary achievement!”
“Do you think you’re strong enough to hear some news?” asked Desmond after a pause.
“Of course,” replied the girl. “But I think I can guess it. It’s about Strangwise, isn’t it?”
Desmond nodded.
“He was shot yesterday morning,” he replied. “I’m glad they did it in France. I was terrified lest they should want me to go to it.”
“Why?” asked the girl with a suspicion of indignation in her voice, “he deserved no mercy.”
“No,” replied Desmond slowly, “he was a bad fellow—a Prussian through and through. He murdered your poor father, he shot Rass, he instigated the killing of the maid, Marie, he was prepared to sacrifice his own wife even, to this Prussian God of militarism which takes the very soul out of a man’s body and puts it into the hands of his superior officer. And yet, and yet, when one has soldiered with a man, Barbara, and roughed it with him and been shelled and shot at with him, there seems to be a bond of sympathy between you and him for ever after. And he was a brave man, Barbara, cruel and unscrupulous, I admit, but there was no fear in him, and I can’t help admiring courage. I seem to think of him as two men—the man I soldiered with and the heartless brute who watched while that beast Bellward...”
He broke off as a spasm of pain crossed the girl’s face. “I shall remember the one and forget the other,” he concluded simply.
“Tell me,” said the girl suddenly, “who was Strangwise?”
“After he was arrested and just before they were going to take him off,” Desmond said, “he asked to be allowed to say a word privately to the Chief. We were all sent away and he told the Chief his real name. He thought he was going to be hanged, you see, and while he never shrank from any crime in the fulfilment of his mission, he was terrified of a shameful death. He begged the Chief to see that his real name was not revealed for the disgrace that his execution would bring upon his family. Curiously Prussian attitude of mind, isn’t it?”