Evening star., 1942-07-02
CHAPTER ".

CHAPTER ~.
Upstairs in the little palace of the
Mayor the staff of Col. Lanser made
its headquarters. There were five
of them besides the colonel.
There was Maj. Hunter, haunted
little man of figures, a little mar
who, being a dependable unit, con-
sidered all other men either as de-
pendable units or as unfit to live
Maj. Hunter was an engineer and
except in case of war, no one would
have thought of giving him COM
mand of men. For Maj Hunter set
his men in rows like figures and he
added and subtracted and multi
piled them ,...
He was an arithmetician rather
than mathematician. None of the
humor, the music or the mysticism
of higher mathematics ever entered
his head. Men might vary in height
or weight or color, just as is diff :
ferent from 8, but there was little
other difference. He had been mar
ried several times and he did not
know why his wi es became very
nervous before they left him.
Capt Bentick was family man,
q lover of dogs and pink children
and Christmas. He was too old to
be captain, but curious lack of
ambition had kept him in that rank.
Before the war he had admired the
British country gentleman very
much, wore English clothes, kept
English dogs, smoked in an English
pipe a special pipe mixture sent him
from London and subscribed to
those country magazines which extol
gardening and continually argue
about the relative merits of English
and Gordon settlers. Capt. Bentick
spent all his holidays in Sussex and
liked to be mistaken for an English
man in Budapest or Paris.
The war changed all that out
wardly, but he had sucked on a pipe
too long, had carried a stick too
long to give them up suddenly.
Once, five years before, he had writ
ten letter to the Times about grass
dying in the Midlands and had
signed it Edmund Twitchell, ESQ.
and, furthermore, the Times had
printed it. X
Contrasting Captains.
II Capt. Bentick was too old to
be a captain, Capt. Loft was too
young. Capt. Loft was as much a
captain as one can imagine. He
lived and breathed his captaincy.
He had no unmilitary movements.
A driving ambition forced him up
through the grades. He rose like
cream. to the top of milk. He clicked
his heels as perfectly as a dancer
does. He knew every kind of mill
tary courtesy and insisted on using
it all Generals were afraid Of him
because he knew more about the de-
portment of a soldier than they did.
Capt. Loft thought and believed
that a soldier is the highest develop
ment of animal life. If he consid-
cred God at all, he thought of Him
as an old and honored general, re-
sired and gray, living among re-
membered battles and putting
wreaths on the graves of his lieu
tenants several times a year. Capt.
Loft believed that all women fall
in love with a uniform and he did
not see how it could be otherwise.
In the normal course of events he
would be a brigadier general at As
and have his picture in the illus
trated papers, f1anked by tall, pale,
masculine women wearing lacy pic
ture hats.
Its. Prache and Tonder were
snot-noses, undergraduates, lieu
tenants, trained in tie politics of
the day, believing the great new sys-
tenn invented by a genius so great
that they never bothered to verify
its results. They were sentimental
young men, given to tears and to
furies.
1t. Prackle carried a lock of hair
IN the back of his watch, wrapped
In bit of blue satin, and the hair
was constantly getting loose and
clogging the balance wheel. so that
he wore a wrist watch for telling
time. Prackle was a dancing part
ner, a gay young man who never
theless could scowl like the leader,
could brood like the leader. He
hated degenerate art and had ue-
stroyed several canvases with his
own hands. In cabarets he some
times made pencil sketches of his
companions which were so good that
he had often been told he should
have been an artist.
Romantic Lieutenants.
Prackle had several blond sisters
OF whom he was so proud that he
had on occasion caused a commo-
ton when he thought they had been
insulted. The sisters were a little
disturbed about it because they were
afraid some one might set out to
prove the insults, which would not
have been hard to do. 1t. Prackle
spent nearly all his time off duty
day-dreaming of 1t. Tonder's blond
sister.
1t. Tonder was poet, a bitter
poet who dreamed of perfect, ideal
love Of elevated young men for
poor girls. Tonder was a dark ro-
mantle with vision as wide as his
experience. He sometimes spoke
blank verse under his breath to
imaginary dark women.
He longed for death on the pattle-
field, with weeping parents in the
background, and the leader, brave
but sad in the presence of the dying
youth. He imagined his death very
often, lighted by a fair setting sun
which glinted on broken military
equipment, his men standing silently
around him, with heads sunk low, as
over fat cloud galloped the Valky-
ries, big-breasted, mothers and mis-
tresses in one, while Wagnerian
thunder crashed in the background
And he even had his dying words
ready
These were the men of the staff,
each one playing war as children
play Run, Sheep, Run" Maj
Hunter thought of war as an arith-
metical job to be done so he could