Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1914-12-04
CHAPTER xI-continued.

She was at the door of her mothers
room, which was like an antique shop.
Old plates lay on top of old tables,
with vases on the floor under the
tables. Surrounded by her treasures,
Mrs. Galland awaited the attack; not
as a soldier awaits it, but as that ven
cradle Roman senator of the story
faced the barbarous Gauls-neither
disputing the power of their spears
nor yielding the self-respect of his own
mind and soul. She had lain down in
her wrapper for the night, and the
light from single candle-she still
favored candles-revealed her features
calm and philosophical among the pill
lows. Yet the magic of war, reaching
deep into hidden emotions, had her
also under its spell. Her voice was at
once more tender and vital.
Marta, l see that you are all on
wires!"
Yes; jangling wires, every one.
Jangling every second out of tune"
Marta acquiesced.
Marta, my father"-her father had
been a premier of the Browns-"al-
ways said that you may enjoy the lux
ury OF fussing over little things, for
they don't count much one way or an
other; but about big things you must
never fuss or you will not be worthy
Of big things. Marta, you cannot stop
a railroad train with your hands. This
ia not the first war on earth and we
are not the first women who ever
thought that war was wrong. Each
OF us has his work to do and you will
have yours. 1t does no good to tire
yourself out and fly to pieces, even if
you do know so much and have been
around the world
She smiled as a woman of sixty,
who has a secret heart-break that she
had never given her husband son,
may smile at a daughter who is both
son and daughter to her, and her
plump hand, all curves like her plump
face and her plump body, spread open
In appeal.
Marta, who, in the breeding of her
generation, felt sentiment as more or
less of lure from logic, dropped be-
side the bed in sudden burst of sen
ttment and gathered the plump hand
In hers and kissed it.
Mother, you are wonderful" she
said. Mother, you are great!"
After a time, her ear becoming &C
customed to the firing as a city dwell
Ier's to the distant roar OF city traf-
&c, Mrs. Galland slept. But Marta
could not follow her advice. If, tran
silently at least, she had found some
thing of the peace of the confessional,
the vigor of youth was in her arteries;
and youth cannot help remaining
awake under some conditions. She
tiptoed across the hall into her own
room and seated herself by the win
dow The symbol of what the ear
had heard the eye saw-war, working
In tones of the landscape by day with
smokeless powder; war, revealed by
its tongues of flame at night. Ugly
bursts of fire from the higher hills
spread to the heavens like an aurora
borealis and broke their messengers
IN sheets of dame over the lower hills
the batteries of the Browns sprin-
king death about the heads of the
gunners of the Grays emplacing their
batteries. Staccato flashes from a
single point counted so many bullets
from an automatic, which directed by
the beams of the search-lights, found
their targets in sections of advancing
infantry. Hill crests, set off with
flashes running back and forth, de-
marked infantry lines of the Browns
assisting the automatics.
There were lulls between the
crashes of the small arms and the
heavy, throaty speech of the guns;
lulls that seemed to say that both
sides had paused for breathing
spell; lulls that allowed the battle in
the distance to be heard in its perva-
sive undertone. In one of them, when
even the undertone had ceased for a
few seconds, Marta caught family the
groans of wounded man-one Of the