The light was gray that came down through the skylight. Abel and
Poltneck and Fallows sat on the floor in the front end, because there
were not chairs for all. Back in the shadows sat Berthe and Peter.
“...I think we will be a little bewildered,” she was saying, “as one
awakening from a dream, as one awakening in the sunlight. One stirs, you
know, and shuts the eyes again. The reality dawns slowly--if the house
is quiet.... It will be very quiet. We have been used to the cannonading
so long, and the cries in the night. It will take us a moment to realize
that it is all over. I think I see just how it will be then. I will have
that sense of the glad unknown--that something long anticipated is about
to happen. You know how it comes to one upon awakening, when something
perfect is to happen--the presence of it, before one remembers just what
it is?”
Peter nodded in the shadow.
“And then I will remember. It will be you. I will really open my
eyes--and you will be there!”
Something of her fire came to him.
“You are sure it will be like that--afterward?” he repeated.
Her voice and lips trembled. “You ask just like a little child, Peter.
It is the little child in you that strikes the heart. Don't you really
believe in the _afterward?”_
“Yes, but I can't see it quite clearly, you know, as you do.”
“You don't think it is all wayward and stupidly arranged as the army
would like to do it--do you?”
They laughed softly together, but she wanted him to see it, as she did,
“Because,” she said, “if you do, we will be together more quickly. I
would have to go and find you, if you didn't come----”
“I should want to come,” said Peter.
He followed her eyes beyond the twilight from the roof, to the face of
Fallows, seen indistinctly in the shadows. It was like the figure of a
Hindu holy man sitting there so low, his hands raised palms upward, his
voice just audible.
“Listen,” she said, her hand falling upon Peter's.
“It isn't so much their death that is the great wrong to the soldiers by
the Fatherland. A man may do worse than die, at any time. It's the death
of hate the Fatherland inspires--the fighting death--the going-down with
blood-madness and hatred for the men of another country--not enemies at
all, no harm exchanged whatsoever between them. It is such deaths that
make the world hard to breathe in--the death of preying animals. But
all that is passing. These battles had to come at the last to hurry it
away....”
“That's what I wanted to say, Peter,” Berthe whispered eagerly....
“Fallows is greater than any,--an inspirer. He will go out with his
dream for men, strong and bright. Do you think that is the same as dying
the fighting death--with a curse and a passion for the death of men whom
you have never seen face to face?”
“It's quite all right, you know,” said Peter. “I'm keen enough to see
it through, but it's a closed door yet. However, there's something
deathless about a woman like you--yes, I'm sure of that----”
Her hands pressed his swiftly. “Then you may be very sure, there's
something deathless in the man she loves.... Listen, Fallows is talking
about your country now:”
“... Russia is the invader, but America is the temple of the new spirit.
America must reanimate the world after this war. I believe she is being
born again now.... She was bred right. There is always that to fall back
upon. She was founded upon the principles of liberty and service to the
distressed. No other nation can say that. But America must lose the love
of self, must cease to be a national soul and become the nucleus of the
world soul of the future. Otherwise all that was holy in her conception
is dead, and the passion of her prophets is without avail.
“There is a time for the development of the national soul, but ahead on
the road is the world soul, the true Fatherland. The precious whisper is
abroad that more sins have been committed in the name of patriotism than
any other. The time will come when this little orbit and its slaying
delusions will be well back among the provincialisms; not a bad word in
itself, rather a lost meaning through abuse.
“Over a century ago the inspired Fichte addressed the Germans in a
series of documents charged with the most exalted enthusiasm for the
future of his people, on the basis of such a Fatherland that the only
living answer could be the superb affiliation of men. For years and
decades the gleam of that spiritual ignition endured there. Carlyle, not
a countryman, saw it and made it blaze with the fuel of his genius. It
seems dead to Prussia now, but that gleam shall never die. Some strong
youth on the road to Damascus shall be struck to the ground by its
radiance and arise to carry the light to the Gentiles.
“There must be such a voice in America now. I seem to feel the new
genius of America, not yet in its prime, hardly articulate as yet, but
rapidly maturing in these days of unparalleled suffering. They will
interpret the New Age. They will meet the New Russia face to face. I
think they are watching for us now. The bond is thicker than blood.
They will see the future of Europe written upon these millions, now
the invaders from the cold lands of poverty. I think they will hold the
spirit until we come.
“All that was true of Germany when Fichte addressed his countrymen is
true of America in this hour. All the physical and spiritual pressures
of the European disruption are turned upon the temple of America to
drive out the money-changers and make it the house of God.”
Fallows' voice softened. He was talking of America with the passion of
an exile. He loved the thoughts of her good, as he loved the peasants
about him. The room was still.
“It is a time for heroics,” he added. “America is emancipating her
genius, not only from herself, but from the thrall of the old world's
decadence. Do you think there is nothing fateful in the destructive
energy that is rubbing out ancient landmarks? Rather it would seem that
the old and the unclean has played its part, and may not be used in the
new spiritual experiment. I want to hear America's new song--the song of
the New Age--the unspoiled workmen at their task. They will sing as they
lift.... Yes, we shall hear the song of the New Age. Since the pilgrims
sang together, no such thrilling harmony shall move that western land.
They shall be singing it for Russia when we come.”
“It makes me so ashamed,” Berthe whispered after a moment, “when I think
of my weakness to-day, when you came. But, Peter, oh, I didn't want you
to come----”
“I wouldn't be ashamed,” he said. “It gave me something from you that
I couldn't have had without it. There was plenty to hold a man in
wonder--your zeal to do for others, and the exaltations, but to-day you
were down in my valley, in the earth bottoms, just seeing in the human
light, your wings tired. It was the best moment of the pilgrimage,
Berthe--the deepest.”
Peter had wanted to tell her that.