A gray dawn, an east wind with a driving mist, a miserable day afield in
every promise, and Big Belt had missed none of these portents since
the full darkness. With the first relief of the morning-guard at
headquarters, he was there. Dabnitz appeared and smiled grimly. The wire
was already busy; Kohlvihr came in unsteadily, the old fume about him
that made Boylan lick his lips. His own nerves had been badly wrenched.
He could have relished a stimulant, but he hadn't thought of it alone.
“You're looking for word from the Commander?” Dabnitz asked.
“Yes.”
“So are we. It's up to him to-day. We're a mere wisp of what we were--”
Boylan simulated interest. There was but one idea in his world, however.
“By the way,” Dabnitz added. “The Commander asked for full particulars
this morning at three. They were sent to him--Mr. Mowbray's case--”
Boylan jerked up his chin. Of late, his woolen collar had apparently
shrunk.
“You haven't heard yet?”
“Not yet. We're waiting--”
“Nothing will be done until you hear?”
“Not in Mowbray's case. The others--the others have had tea.... They are
very quiet this morning--no singing.”
Boylan hated him for that, a momentary but scarring hatred.... The field
telephone began. Presently it occupied the steady swift attention of a
stenographer whose pages were put on the machine and handed in strips to
the staff members, like a last-minute news story to compositors.
...One of the hardest things Boylan ever did was to speak to Dabnitz as
follows: “I'd better be there if you take the others and leave--leave
Peter Mowbray. He's impulsive. You wouldn't want a scene--you know--”
“Wait a minute--I think your matter is on the wire,” Dabnitz said,
drawing back to the telegraph.
“Yes,” he nodded, and a moment later handed Big Belt this message:
“My compliments to Mr. Boylan and assurances of excellent regard. I have
found the favor he asks, however, altogether out of my power to grant.”
Boylan's jaw dropped; his mouth filled with saliva. Dabnitz said
something, “...desperately sorry... couldn't possibly have ended another
way.”
“Come, come--this won't do,” Big Belt muttered queerly. He was not
answering Dabnitz, but commanding himself.... He swallowed again and
turned:
“You will have charge of the affair?”
“Yes, doubtless. It will be very short--”
“I will wait for you below. Of course, I'll want to be there, you
know--”
“I didn't know,” Dabnitz sighed.
Boylan was standing below. He heard distant firing through the rain in
the direction of the field.... Lornievitch had doubtless begun a flank
movement. Kohlvihr would lick his wounds in Judenbach for another day.
Dabnitz appeared from the stairway, a paper in his hand. He dispatched a
sentry to the barracks for a platoon, and stood waiting impatiently for
its coming. Big Belt, in the door of his quarters a few paces distant,
swallowed again.... It might delay matters.... The black fact was that
it would not do more....
“Oh, I say, Lieutenant, come here a moment, please. I want to show you
something--”
Boylan led the Russian in, and turned. The place was empty. Dabnitz
regarded him wearily--then with sudden amazement.
It was a kind of bear reaching. He was pulled down, his face smothered
in a woolen shirt that covered a breast like cushioned stone. The
building must have fallen. The hands were neither rough nor swift, but
they pawed him with a kind of power that turned him to vapor. There
was one finger upon his backbone at the neck that shut off the life
currents.... Dabnitz opened his eyes presently--a choking wad of paper
in his mouth. The mammoth looked down upon him and said:
“Excuse me, Lieutenant, but I had to have a chance to think.”
At this instant Boylan saw the paper that the Russian had carried. It
had fluttered to the floor, Kohlvihr's signature in plain view. The
weights that beset the American had now to do with the uselessness of it
all. He had rendered the momentary order and its bearer ineffectual; he
might possibly divert the platoon. But the great one-eyed system was
all about, knowing its single task of destruction. It would turn back to
that piece by piece--until the task was done. Yet while he lived, Boylan
could not let it go on, in this specific instance. He was fighting the
Russian army now; that die was cast; the one thing to do was to keep
Peter Mowbray alive as long as possible. He went about further details
without hope, however.
Dabnitz was carefully bound and lifted to the corner in the midst of
saddles and kit. An extra strip was fastened around his chin to prevent
the ejection of the gag. Big Belt spoke steadily and softly as he
worked:
“You're a good soldier. You play your game to the seeds. I have no
objection to you. When it's all over I'll think of you--as a corking
field man. You've been good to us, too--everything you could do to make
us comfortable and to help us see the wheels go round.... Only this one
little thing. Perhaps you think I take it too seriously--this Mowbray
thing. Perhaps I do. That's my funeral.... Wow, and I was merely
speaking figuratively!... In any event I'm not a nihilist. I've only got
Mowbray on the brain.... I've hurt you as little as possible. I won't
leave you here long, my boy. I wasn't rough with you. You must have seen
that--”
Dabnitz's eyes rolled.
“Well, you see I couldn't have a whole lot of noise. There's the true
official timbre in your voice, Lieutenant.... Now you're snug, and the
platoon is served in the street.... Look what's here! I'm a careless
hand--six-shooter and belt. You'll rest more comfortably with 'em off.
And a bit of a sword? I'll take that, too. ...I won't be long, Dabnitz.”
He went forth carrying the paper. “Lieutenant was called to another
task,” he said haltingly to the enlisted officer in charge. “Hold your
men here, until I come--”
The firing was intense valleyward. Boylan felt the need of thinking
further and dashed into the headquarters' stairway. There were excited
voices above, and he made haste to see. Kohlvihr was wild-eyed in the
center of the upper room--the telegraph ticking nervously, half of his
staff bending with extraordinary intensity over the birth of a certain
message.... What they wanted came over the 'phone.
Boylan saw four Russian officers rush to the 'phone from the telegraph
table.... Something had happened. He backed out.
“It's all off,” he told the soldier. “Go back to barracks. The enemy has
broken through--”
He wasn't sure of the last, but tore the paper and crumpled the pieces.
The platoon reversed and vanished. At the far end of the street a
cavalry squad was galloping forward, behind a single dispatch rider.
Already the news was known in headquarters and the staff officers burst
forth with orders for retreat--retreat to the eastward. It was no
secret now. The enemy was crossing the valley that Kohlvihr had found
impassable.
Big Belt felt the life brimming up in his heart. Then he thought of
Dabnitz, and went to him, shutting the door behind.
“Do you _get_ what's on, Lieutenant? Wink once--if you do.”
Dabnitz shook his head.
“It's the enemy breaking through. Judenbach is to be abandoned _pronto_.
Listen--”
The cavalry was in the street, carrying abroad the order for retreat....
They heard it plainly now, even the details. Hospitals not to be
emptied, guns and ammunition not readily to be transported, must be
destroyed. The final hell was started in the town.
“Dabnitz, I don't want you among the captured on my account. Just forget
that order! The platoon has gone back. The staff is blocked and jammed
with greater things. Will you forget it? Wink twice--”
There was no hesitation.
“Good. The sentries must be called off--that stair-door left open. I'll
join them--and bother you no more. We'll not leave the room while the
town changes hands. They'll never even ask you if that little job is
done. Will you go with me now and do this? Wink twice--”
It was done emphatically; a beseeching for haste.
“Dabnitz, I trust you. I'll entertain you in America some time--all
Washington and New York.... You'll do exactly what I ask--no more, no
less? Good God, man, it wouldn't do any good to kill 'em now. They're
out of hand forever. Perhaps the Austrians will do it, anyway. Wink
twice--”
“Good.” The gag was jerked free, and the various bindings.
“Now, come with me. I'll detain you but a second or two--”
Dabnitz walked at his side to the stair entrance of the skylight prison.
He spoke to the sentry below. The officer of the guard was called; the
sentry summoned from above, the door left open.
“Wait,” Boylan said finally to Dabnitz. “Here's your gun, Lieutenant.
I'm obliged to you. You'll know better some day what I mean by that--”
“Keep them under cover,” Dabnitz said hoarsely. “I'll kill you or any of
the others that I see in the street.”
“You'd be quite right.”
Dabnitz turned away. Big Belt deliberated. He did not quite trust the
Russian. He had covered him with his little pocket gun, as he handed
back the arms. Still Boylan couldn't have caused him to fall prisoner.
His hope now was that the Lieutenant would find such a rush and turmoil
that he would be compelled to forget the incident. ...He heard their
voices at the upper door of the stairway.
“Is that you, Boylan?”
“Yep.”
“Good-morning. What's up?” It was Peter.
“I haven't quite settled in my mind. You're not to come down. We haven't
decorated the Christmas tree. I'm sentry here--”
The side street was deserted. The main highway was a throng, strange in
its new direction of northward, for the bulk of energy had heretofore
moved toward the valley. The sappers were at their work of destruction.
The town rocked with explosions, but the main consideration to Big
Belt was that moments passed without bringing further fighting to him,
personally.
“Maybe he means to stick after all,” he muttered. “He must see that I
was square with him--”
Then Big Belt smiled grimly, as if he had heard his own words.
He watched with a kind of ferocity until the passing of the staff made
him duck back into the doorway.... Kohlvihr sitting like a potato-bag,
the brave but melancholy Doltmir--finally Dabnitz. The latter passed the
little side-street without a turn of the head. After many moments Boylan
ventured to the corner. Rifle shots from the southern border, and the
smell of fire, were matters of critical interest. The main highway
was all but emptied of Russians. One little party of artillerymen was
struggling to save a big gun half-horsed. Three ambulances hurried by
filled with wounded officers--but the cries of the thousands of
wounded enlisted men went up from the hospitals which the Russians were
abandoning. The lower half of the town was in a final ruin that blocked
the streets.
But beyond as the wind cleared the smoke an instant (or the rain held
it low to the earth), Big Belt saw a column of troops. Its single
peculiarity struck him with queer emotion. He returned to the
stair-door. A long-repressed volume came forth from his lungs, as he
trudged wearily upward.
VI
THE FIELD OF HELMETS
Chapter 1
Peter turned back from the upper door, since nothing further in the way
of news was to be had from Boylan. The first face that he saw within was
Fallows', and over it, as his own glance sped quickly, there passed
a look as from some poignant burden. It was the look of a man who had
thought the fight won, and now perceived that it must be resumed again.
Poltneck was just behind. Peter would like to have preserved in picture
the singer's realization that the chance was life instead of death--the
blend of animal and angel which is so thrillingly human, as it was
expressed upon that countenance. Abel was smiling, something of a child
in the smile, a tremulousness around the lips; and Berthe came forward
under the rain-blurred skylight--gladness, animation, a touch of the
great tension lingering, but something else that he had not seen before
in their prison hours. He went to her.
“What does it mean?” she whispered.
“It means that the door is open, the sentries gone. Big Belt is below
and the town wild with some new trouble--”
“The Austrians must have broken through,” said Fallows.
“We are to stay until he gives us word,” Peter added.
Berthe was leading him back to the shadows.
“Peter, does it mean that?”
He saw the dark low-glowing jewel in her eyes--the earth-shine, all the
sweetness of earth in it. So close to death, it had not been ignited
before in the skylight prison, but it was there for him now, and he
loved her bewilderingly.
“I think we may almost dare to hope,” he whispered.
“The still snowy woods--only a brave bird or two remaining--the short
brilliant days and early nightfall--our talks that will never come to an
end--”
Something of her longing frightened him--the danger of its intensity.
“I think we may almost dare to hope,” he repeated.
“Peter, I think--I think you are braver than any--”
“Nonsense.”
“But you did not _see_ ahead! To you, it was a closed door yesterday and
last night. Fallows wants to go. He's weary. Abel and Poltneck are old
rebels with visions. They have thought much of such hours as we have
known here. But you--I saw it the first day in Warsaw--the deadly
courage. You had built no dream. You asked no future. You faced
it--light or black.”
“Berthe--I almost broke this morning--when I looked at you sleeping--and
last night after Boylan came.... I think I would have fought them in
the street! It seemed--blasphemous for them to kill you--those dim
fellows--”
“...Peter--”
She had seemed to lose her way, the light gone from her eyes, her lips
cold.... A sprinkle of water, and she was smiling again in his arms.
“It's strong--too strong,” she murmured vaguely.
The heavy step that Peter knew was upon the stairs. He listened. Yes, it
was alone. Boylan appeared in the doorway.
“Go to him,” Berthe whispered.
Peter obeyed. There was a gladness for him in the touch of the big hand.
“Tell us, Boylan,” he said.
“They've gone.”
“The Russians?”
“Yes.”
Abel had propped a chair behind Big Belt, who sank into it eagerly.
“The Austrians have broken through?” Poltneck said.
“I'm not quite sure about that,” Boylan answered. “The column I saw
from the main road a minute ago--coming up from the valley--looked like
_helmets_ to me.”
“Berthe, what did you mean by _'strong--too strong'?”_
Peter had stepped back to her for a moment.
“Did I say that?” she whispered smiling.
“Yes.”
“I can't think of anything--but my love for you. It must have been
that.”
Chapter 2
For an hour in the skylight prison, they had waited for the step upon
the stairs. When it came Fallows had an inspiration, and said softly:
“Sing to 'em, Poltneck--The Lord Is Mindful of His Own--!”
As before, the song was on the wing at the word.... Throughout the hour
the Germans had flooded into the little city, the main column moving
rapidly on in pursuit of the Russians, a comparatively small force
remaining to garrison. As Boylan had pointed out, the new enemy must
have appeared in tremendous numbers thus to dare such a drive through
the Russian east wing. Lornievitch was at the head of a mighty force to
the east; it was but the tip of the right wing that the Germans had cut
off.
An old ranker had halted at the door, his platoon behind crowding the
stairway. He was small and scarred, serious and decorous. Peter felt
that the head under the helmet was shaven; that here was a man conscious
of moving through the days of his life's stateliest fulfillment. Boylan
was nearest; a little back from the rest Poltneck stood smiling, singing
as he had never sung for the Little Father. It is a fact that the old
ranker waited for the end of the stanza.
“Who are you?”
Peter talked: “Four of the hospital service from Warsaw, and two
American correspondents, until to-day with the Russian army--”
The platoon-officer ordered his men at rest and sent for his Captain.
“Prisoners, you may sing,” he said.
They heard the voices of the gathering in the street as Poltneck sang
on, and presently the clatter of a sword in the stairway. A young
officer, not the Captain, appeared. There was a quick appeal in the
veteran's deference and his whisper. The old head bowed affectionately,
too, as to a son of finer blood than he.
“Two American correspondents,--these two,” he reported. “The others are
of the hospital service of the enemy.”
Poltneck had finished.
“Why are you here?” the officer asked.
“They were at work all night,” said Peter, “and were here for a little
rest. The change this morning was effected before they were aware. We
were helping.
“You were helping?” the officer repeated.
“There has been much to do in the hospitals. We have been in
Judenbach--this is the fourth day.”
“We will look at your passports--yours and this gentleman's--”
The papers were produced. It was almost like a hand that came to Peter
at this instant, though Berthe had not moved--the premonition that they
were to be separated. He had planned nothing for this moment although it
had been inevitable. There was a certain guilelessness about their whole
presence together in the skylight prison, although Peter had tortured
the facts a little--to avoid complication of making known their
revolutionary parts. He had become so identified with his new friends,
in the past three whelming days, that he had forgotten for the moment
the great difference in his position as an American correspondent and
noncombatant from Berthe's and the others.
Boylan had never forgotten. He had cursed his own slowness as a
linguist, when Peter had taken the part of answering the German officer.
He was afraid of Peter's answers, but that fear was passing now. In
fact, Peter had answered surprisingly well, and his companion was
breathing easily, as a man should in a state of mental health.
It was not until this moment--the German officer examining his
passports, the ranker studying the insignia upon his sleeve--that Peter
met the disaster of the future. It suddenly appeared to him--that life
apart from _these_ was bleak and a nothingness. To be caught in the
great war-machine again, even with the superb loyalty of Boylan at his
hand, had the grimness of death to his soul. Already he felt the new
mastery of Judenbach, the hard insensitiveness of it--the stone and iron
of its nature, the ineffable cruelty of its meaning and morale....
“These seem to be very complete and satisfactory,” the young officer
reported presently. “I shall furnish an escort to accompany you and
Mr.--”
“Boylan,” said the voice of the Rhodes' Agency.
“--to our Colonel Ulrich in charge of the garrison. These papers will go
with you of course.”
Peter cleared his voice and said steadily: “We have long given up any
hope of getting anything out as newspaper men. I, for one, would be very
glad of employment in the hospitals with my friends here. There has been
work for many more hands than could be spared--”
“We appreciate your sacrifice,” said the officer, “perhaps _we_ are not
so short-handed for the care of wounded. We have already brought in men
not dead whom the Russian orderlies missed on the field yesterday. I
believe the abandoned hospitals in Judenbach will not suffer for the
change of flags.”
Peter had noted Boylan's face as the German spoke. It was slightly
upturned and like bronze in its hardness, reminding him of the night
before in the candle-light. It weakened him.... He glanced about the
room as the officer finished. Everywhere he saw their silent urge to
accept. Fallows came forward.
“Some time again, dear friend--we will work together. All is well with
us--”
Abel seemed to smile; Poltneck gripped his hand, neither venturing to
speak, nor did the moment require it, for they had all gone down to the
gates of understanding together.... Berthe's hands were in his.
Boylan had arisen.
“Your escort is ready,” the German said.
Peter turned from them, but Berthe's face was placed for all to see....
A little warmth, the mild pleasure of untried friendship, the good
wish of one fellow-worker to another in passing--this was all that the
watchers saw. Even Peter in his great passion could draw no further
message from that white upturned face. But her hidden hands, held in
his, gave him the very respiration of her soul.
Chapter 3
Big Belt was alone with his friend again, but Peter seemed merely the
body of a man, not much use. They were kept very close by the Germans,
and told frankly that they were to be sent as soon as possible to the
big prison-hospital at Sondreig. Even German correspondents were not
permitted afield. Judenbach was retained, but the Americans were drawn
forth by the exigencies of service with Colonel Ulrich's force, and on
the afternoon of the third day following the German entry, they looked
back upon the little hill-town a last time. Though there had not been
sound nor sight of Berthe nor the group around her, during the three
days, Peter was different afield, as if he missed a certain personal
identification with that obscure Galician settlement where so much had
happened. He moved about as if there were something dead inside. His
world had turned insane.
Those were the terrible days of November, and the two Americans were
forgotten at length--as a pair of buttons on the German uniform,
forgotten because they served and were not in the way. All that had
_not_ to do with Berthe Wyndham was black as the Prussian night to
Mowbray's brain, but Big Belt was always by. He could not have managed
except for that. There were days in which it appeared as if half the
world were down and bleeding; the other half trying to lift, pulling at
the edges of the fallen, as one half-stupefied would pull at a fallen
body in a burning house.
At night through the silences between the cannon, sometimes over the
hills through the cold rains, came to Peter Mowbray's ears the sounds
of church-bells. Boylan did not always hear them. The German officers
declared that there were no such sounds. Boylan's sack was filled with
blood.
“If I ever get out of here,” he said, “I'll write one story--one battle
till I die--and I'll call it 'Vintage Fourteen'.”
For he was sick of the spilled wine of men. And other armies were
fighting in the vineyards of France--as were these in the piney hills
of the ancient shepherd kings; and what a fertilizing it was for the
manhandled lands of Europe--potash and phosphor and nitrogen in the
perfect solution of the human blood.
More and more Boylan saw that Peter was queer.
“I can't think,” the latter would say. “I feel like a man dying, under
a mountain of dead. Mostly I don't want to live. I don't want to die. I
believe that it's all one and that this is the end of the world.”
Peter could work, however. Day and night when they would let him, and
mostly the Germans accepted his services gratefully now, he tugged at
the dead and the dying in the field and in the field hospitals. And with
the lanterns at night, often under fire, often so long that Boylan could
not rest, but would wait at the hospital-division like a mother for a
dissipated son.
“They call this the great German fighting machine,” Peter whispered to
Boylan one night, “but we're inside. We can't call it that. It's the
most pitiful and devitalized thing that ever ran up and down the earth.
And it doesn't mean anything. It's all waste--like a great body killing
itself piece by piece--all waste and death.”
He tried to make death easy for a soldier here and there, but there was
so much. His clothing smelled of death; and one morning before the smoke
fell, he watched the sun shining upon the pine-clad hills. That moment
the thought held him that the pine trees were immortal, and men just the
dung of the earth.
...One night Boylan asked as they lay down:
“Who are you?”
“Peter Mowbray.”
“Yep, and I'm Boylan. You're at liberty to correct if wrong. Are we ever
going to die or get out?”
“I don't know.... Boylan, you've been good to me. We're two to make
one--eye to eye--”
“You're making a noise like breaking down again. Don't, Peter. I've gone
on a bluff all my life. I'm a rotten sentimentalist at heart--soft
as smashed grapes. It's my devil. If you break down, I'll show him to
you--”
“It wouldn't hurt you to bellow like a girl.”
“Maybe not, but I'd shoot my head off first.”
“Did you see the old leprous peasant to-day? He was hump-backed, and he
had no lips, but teeth like a dog. He pulled at a soldier's stirrup
as we came into town. The soldier was afraid and shot him through the
mouth--”
“Shut up, Peter, or you'll get me. I've shown you more now than any
living soul knows--”
“You ought to show it to a woman. A man isn't right until a woman knows
him in and out.”
“For the love of God--go to sleep!”
They sank into restless death-ridden dreaming; and so it was many
nights, until the dawn that they fronted a swift river, black from its
snowy banks, saw the rising pine hills opposite and were swept possibly
by mistake into the center of comprehensible action--a picture lifted
from the hundred-mile ruck.
A little town, so far nameless, sat with a shivering look on the slope,
about a half mile up from the river. A Russian quick-fire gun or two was
emplaced in that vicinity, and two batteries of bigger bores (that
the correspondents knew of) were higher on either side. Infantry
intrenchments that looked like mole tracks from the distance corrugated
the slopes in lateral lines, and roads came down to the two bridges that
spanned the swift stream, less than a mile apart.
The morning was spent in artillery dueling. The Russians seemed partly
silenced at noon. At no time was their attack cocky and confident. The
Germans determined to cross in the early afternoon. This movement was
not answered by excessive firing. German cavalry and small guns on the
east bridge, a heavy field of helmets took the west. Boylan and
Mowbray rode with the artillery. Even as the German forces combined for
position, the firing of the Russians was not spiteful. There seemed
a note of complaint and hysteria. There was no tension in the German
command; it was too weathered for that.
Now the cavalry went into action and guns moved away farther to the east
for higher emplacement.
“They're going to charge the horses up into the town. They haven't much
respect for the infantry trenches,” said Boylan.
At that instant Peter's mind opened a clearer series of pictures of
Berthe Wyndham than he had known for days. Palace Square near the river
corner; her little house in Warsaw and the tall flowers between; across
the siding after Fransic; her coming to the cot of Samarc, and all the
wonderful films of the skylight prison--the dearest of all as she slept.
He could not hold the battle in mind, for he was very rich with these
pictures, and for days had tried vainly to think just how she looked. It
had been easier to remember something which Peter designated secretly as
her soul.
Suddenly the turf rocked under his feet and his body was bent in the
terrific concussion from behind. They turned and saw the middle
stone abutment of the nearer bridge lifted from the stream--the whole
background sky black with dust and rock. Then, just as he thought of it,
the west bridge went. He spoke before Boylan, and rather unerringly, as
one does at times coming up from a dream.
“They've trapped what they think they can handle--and fired the bridges
by wire.”
Boylan said: “I can't call it German stupidity, because it didn't
occur to me that the bridges were mined.... It's to be another leisure
spraying. We're in the slaughter-pen.... God, man, look at the horses!”
It had been too late to call back the cavalry. Peter's eyes followed
Boylan's sweeping arm. The horsemen were in skirmish on the slope, just
breaking out into charge. The town above and the emplacements adjoining
which had kept their secret so well, were now in a blur of sulphur and
action directed upon the cavalry charge. The whole line went down in the
deluge--suddenly vanished under the hideous blat of the machines--whole
rows rubbed into the earth--a few beasts rising empty, shaking
themselves and tumbling back, no riders. Peter turned to the infantry in
formation on the western slopes. The Russian fire was not lax now, not
discouraged in the least, nor hysterical. It was cold-blooded murder in
gluttonous quantity.
The Americans forgot themselves. Cavalry gone--they turned to the west
and saw the poor men-beasts in rout. Even the infantry comprehended the
trick, and felt something superhuman behind it. They rushed back toward
the river--swift, ugly with white patches and unfordable, requiring a
good swimmer.... The eyes of Boylan turned back to the Horse. He had
always loved the cavalry, ridden with the cavalry always by preference.
Peter was watching the river--the hands up from the center of the
river....
They were alone, and now the Russian machines were on the German
batteries not yet emplaced, none unlimbered. It was as if the wind
carried them the spray from the sweeping fountains, turned from the
horse to put out the guns. Peter was hit and down--hit again and the
night slowly settled upon him, bringing the bells.
Chapter 4
Big Belt talked to himself in that blizzard of fire.
“He's hit--hit twice--but we can't go back to the Russians. They'll
finish the lad. Dabnitz promised. The Germans can't rescue us, because
the bridges are down. I've got to get him across the river--”
He knelt and swung the burden across his back. The firing was thinner,
and the weight hurried his great legs down to the water.... Personally
he would have waited for recapture. How he would have laughed at
Lornievitch in that case. But this that he bore was under sentence of
death in that camp. He regarded the river now, propping up his head
under the burden. It was a swift devil of a stream, black from its
winter borders and cold. He moved toward the broken bridge, hundreds of
soldiers doing the same. But none of them bore a burden.
Now he was on the steep and slidy bank-the roar of the current in his
ears, the roar of the guns behind. The stone abutments of the bridge
still stood, but the huge beams of the upper frame-work were sprawled in
the stream, the ends visible. A string of soldiers crawled along,
toward the center of the current. There was a place in which they
disappeared.... He took his position in the waiting line and heard
the cries wrung from the throats of those in the crossing--from the
paralyzing cold. Only a few succeeded. Boylan saw this, as he
awaited his turn. A steady grim procession on this side, whispering,
crowding--but a thin and straggling output on the far bank. Scenes
enacting in the center of the current shook his heart--faces and arms
against the black water, the struggles and the cries of men as they were
whipped away.
Big Belt was in; no crawl for him. He walked the ten-inch beam with his
burden, as it sank deeper and deeper toward the center. The ice of the
water bit and tore at him. It was like a burn, too, but the paralysis
was not that of fire. The chill wrestled with his consciousness, as
he reached the depth of his waist; the current was bewildering in its
pressures--like a woman clinging to his limbs, betraying him to an
enemy. A mysterious force, this of a running river, for the body of man
is not built for it, and man's mind is slow to learn the necessity of
slow movements. The temptation to hasten is like the tug of demons.
There is much to break the nerve--and yet nerve must remain king of
every action.
Boylan may have learned the trick in other wanderings. His own weight
and the weight of his burden helped his feet in the rapid runs of white
water. He made his way deeper and deeper upon the slanting ten-inch
piece, holding his consciousness steady against the penetrating stab of
the cold as it rose higher and higher, against the dizzying swirl of
the stream, and against the fact that the timber might be broken at the
center. ...The man before him seemed to go to his knees, reaching down
with his hands. Then the white-topped rush took him.... One must stand;
one must have weight to stand. The beam sunk to the center now-the water
to his heart; the man behind urging.... One soldier ahead crawled forth
where three had been.
Boylan's fears were equalized now by the sudden dread of the man behind.
If he slipped he would catch at Peter's body.
“Go slow--that's the trick!” he called. “Feel for your footing each
time. It's there. I tell you it's there, man! We rise in a moment
more--”
He felt the jointure with his feet--some renewal or stoppage of the
timber. He halted, yelling at the man behind:
“Wait--something different! I'll get you through--”
It was the slight turn of the top timbers as they had reached the apex.
“It's the top of the bridge,” he yelled above the boom of the current,
“--a turn like the peak of a low roof. A slight turn to the right. Now
the climb--”
He put it in Russian somehow, making the words clear. His intensity was
almost madness to keep the other's hands off.
A shiver passed through his burden. The water had whipped Peter's limbs.
An added call for steadiness, but a gladness about it, too, since he was
not carrying the dead.... Upgrade now. The soldier behind had passed the
turn safely and was following.
...It seemed that he had walked hours, A thousand or more German
soldiers were lost even as he. Their faces in the dusk passed him--to
and fro--hoarse questions. The gray chill dusk was all about, quite
different from anything Big Belt had known. His clothing had warmed to
him from great exertion. There was a line that caked and dampened again
down his left thigh, like an artillery stripe, from Peter's wounds.
Night came on, finding him without a command--a strange sort of
abandonment, and a certain fear of being overtaken by a Russian party.
The character of his fatigue brought back ancient memories, when he had
looked death face to face and was afraid.
“Who are you?” someone piped sharply in German.
He had moved long through the dark toward a moving file of lights.
“Two American correspondents.”
“What's that you carry?”
“The other one.”
Peter heard this. It seemed that terrible hands had been tugging at his
flesh for hours; yet he could not move, and lay upon a bed that swung
and swayed and stumbled.
“Two American correspondents,” the voice repeated.... “Search....”
Then Peter looked into the dazzle of a flashlight, and the familiar
voice said:
“Yes, he's hard hit and heavy as hell.... Passports in hip pocket-handle
him gently. ... Thanks, I'll take care of this man--unless you have a
stretcher--”
“To whom were you formerly assigned?”
“To Colonel Ulrich. We were across the river when that trap was sprung
this afternoon--”
“Just about wiped you fellows out, didn't they?... Passports right
enough as far as I can see. Stay here, I'll try to get a conduct.
I'm afraid there isn't any Colonel Ulrich--at least I am of that
opinion....”
Peter was let down. It puzzled him a long time because the ground was
still. The big hands eased. His familiar was beside him, however, wet
and panting. Now Peter seemed to remember that he had messages to carry.
“There's no other way--I've got to get through the lines--”
“Quite right,” Boylan answered.
“I don't want to fail. She wouldn't look twice at a man who failed--”
“Hell, child, sit still. She'd look twice if you failed a thousand
times.... Hai, don't tear open a man's bridle arm. What is it?”
“He was hump-backed--no lips--teeth like a dog--and the trooper shot him
through the mouth--”
“I know, but he's dead. His back is straight now--don't look any worse
now than ten thousand others....”
For a long time all was bewilderment. He had been lifted and lost
consciousness again in the wrenching of the hands. Then slowly he came
back and eternity began as before, his bed swaying and straining. The
familiar voice was near, the German ahead. Sentry after sentry was
passed, and each time deadly waiting.... In snatches he understood that
the voice always near was Boylan's, but as often forgot it again. Once
he realized that Boylan was carrying him, but he could not hold it in
mind.... Now he was sure that it was Boylan. He wished he could die from
the cold. He recalled that the cold climbs to a man's heart and then
lets him out in comfortable dreams.
“Hai, you!” he heard in the familiar tones. “I can't go any further.
Send a stretcher or a wagon. Tell 'em two American correspondents
are sitting out here--one with a bullet or two through his chest of
drawers--”
The bed was sinking now.... Then he was dragged across the big man's
lap, and the voice was saying:
“I never knew it to fail. The man who wins a woman gets the steel, when
it's anywhere in the air, but bullets fly wide and knives curve about a
lonely maverick who has lost all his heart winnings.”
They found Boylan so, his jaw clenched, the huge scarred head bare and
covered with night dew, but ready to talk. Across his legs, Mowbray lay,
and still breathed.
Chapter 5
Some unique thing, Big Belt, that rock of a man, had found in Peter
Mowbray. For seven days and nights, though broken with incredible
fatigues (a yellow line of bone color showing across his face under the
eyes), Boylan sat by in cars and ambulances until they reached Sondreig,
the city of the women-folk, and a regular civilized bed. What he gave
to Peter was clear; what he took from a man down, a woman's property at
best, is harder to tell. Perhaps in the great strains and pressures of
the campaigns, he had seen Peter inside, the mechanism and light effects
appertaining, and found it true. It may be that Big Belt had never been
quite sure that a man-soul could be true, and having found one, was
ready to go the limit. This is only a hazard.
Peter didn't know. He was a lump--one little red lamp burning in that
long house of a man--flickering at that, its color bad, its shadow
monstrous. Everyone but Boylan declared he would die from that wound in
his chest; and Boylan was right.
The Germans were good. They gave him a little room over an apothecary
shop at the edge of the city, off one of the bullet-wards, so that
the American would suffer from no lack that the hospital routine could
furnish, and still not be denied the ministration of his friend. There
were reasons, from the German standpoint, why it was well for Mowbray to
have every chance for life. The Russian _coup_ of the destroyed bridges,
that lesser disaster, would some time be told. Boylan might be persuaded
to tell the story to America without adjectives. This was not a very
humane way to regard large kindness from saddened and maddened men, and
Boylan did not linger over it.
The Order in Sondreig soothed. It was like a fine _morale_ shown by
troops in a pinch. The city was one spacious hospital, but orderly, the
horizon smokeless, the distance free from the crash of guns. In fact, it
seemed that the city must have prepared itself for a thousand years--as
if waiting for its messiah. There was a glad quiet in the thronging
streets that seemed to say, “It has come....”
When he found that Peter would live--all the pathological vortices
past--Big Belt turned with strange joy to exterior activities. Of
course, months would be required to make his companion a man again.
There might remain a crimp in him that would last always, but Boylan was
aware that a man's weakness may be made his strength, and that a life
habit of care which comes from cushioning a wound often results in
extraordinary development of the parts of strength.
The sight of women and children brought him gusts of emotion. In one
evening hour, he followed a middle-aged woman who was leading a child
through the faintly-lit streets; trailed the pair for a square or two
through the soft snow, a sort of miracle in the picture to him, a heaven
of gentleness and order. This was his first grand reaction from the
field of strife--at least, from this campaign--and he was struck as
never before with the main fact--how little a man really needs to
live his life in brightness and calm. Such a sense of the emptiness of
war-fields surged home to him that he was left a heretic in relation to
all that had called him before. It did not occur to Boylan that this
was wisdom; rather the pith of the emotion was to the effect that he was
getting old.
The child's thin voice reached him in questionings, and the steady low
tones of the woman. A man could ask little more of the world than to
lead a child thus.... Perhaps they were poor. Boylan would have liked
to fix that. It had to do with the whole inner ideal of the man to be a
fixer of such things--to come home to a house of little ones in quantity
and many women--a broad house of aunts, sisters and old women, a long
broad table of all ages, the many problems resting on him--and one woman
looking straight across.... She would know everything, and yet would
advise with him--quiet discussions of policy regarding this one or that
one, and the interposition of food....
He was perspiring. Always after a war or expedition he had perceived
such matters more or less clearly, but not quite as now. Never before
had he constructed his secret heaven with such durable substance.... He
actually believed that the field would never call to him again. It had
become like the fear of hunger that he had learned once for all. No more
of that--no more of war. He had given everything to the field, and lost
his broad board in the world-house. At least, he could find a door-step
somewhere.
They were gone. He thought of his companion--the sense of summons that
he seemed to have known always. He turned and walked back. The snow fell
softly; the street lights were pleasant and warming with this bit of
peace in the world, this little circle of life with men and women and
children together.... As he neared the apothecary shop, his thoughts
became rounder and rounder with what he had missed. He had taken the
arc and lost the globe--a sorry old specimen of a man, if the truth were
told, a career behind him designed to arouse the wildness of boys, but
without appeal and very much to be discouraged by real men. Finally it
occurred to him of the whole races of men who had _what he lacked_, yet
were restless for the harshness and crudity of the earth.
“If they only knew what they have,” he muttered. “I suppose they forget.
Just as I forget between wars what hell is like.... I suppose they do
forget, and read a man's stuff by their fires (ordering the kids to be
quiet)... thinking that this war-man writing from the field is a great
and lucky guy. I suppose they stop and think how things might have been
different with them--had _they_ taken to the open when the old call
came.... _Ordering the kids to be quiet_--Good God--”
Whether it was the audacity of fatherhood that called this last into the
world, or the face of the woman who had passed him--is not known. Enough
that Big Belt forgot all his dreams. ...That white-skinned, wonder-eyed
girl, the fire creature, twice seen in the bitter shadows of Judenbach!
She had looked into his face, as if she scarcely dared to trust her
eyes, as if she, too, were not sure; and yet it had come over him like
death that she was here for her own.... He tried to make himself believe
that it was an illusion, just one of the queer jolts that come to a man
when his thoughts are far off. But actualities rubbed this out. She
was a prisoner of the Germans; probably had proved invaluable in the
hospital service and had earned certain privileges; but it wouldn't do
to let Peter fall into her clutches again; that meant revolution and
death. They would make a dupe of him as before. It had nothing to do
with peace and the outer world; it meant--
Boylan saw that he wanted Peter for his own. He wiped the sweat from
under his hat.... He couldn't keep them apart; she would think out
a way; a man can't wrestle with a woman.... The world was bleak and
wide-open to disruption again. He climbed the stairs.
The wounded man was not awake. Boylan had objected from the first to his
manner of breathing--too much in the throat, hardly a man-sized volume
of air, the breathing of one who hadn't proper lung-room; but this was
an old matter. He reflected on the various fatigues Mowbray had met with
a smile, and the vitality which had finally pulled him loose from the
cold clutch itself; standing him in stead through a journey so grisly
that Boylan had not had the detachment so far to contemplate it from
first to last. So he had been forced seriously to grant exceptions to
the rule of chest inches and vitality. The soft winter air blew in from
the slightly opened casement.
Peter's face was wan and boyish--different to Boylan as a result of his
encounter in the street. He saw Peter now with the eyes of a man who
must give up.... She was here in Sondreig. He would not help her, but if
she came, there would be no fight.... It had been his fault. Boylan had
sensed the danger of giving too much--from the beginning.... One woman
brings a man into the world, sees him properly a man, and another woman
takes him away.... Just how Big Belt broke into this particular picture
must be suggested rather than explained. He was very close to mothers
that night. He could understand fathers, too.
...They would never know what he had done. The Russians had not
understood, except Lornievitch, in part, and he was far away; the
Germans would never piece the fragments together, and Peter himself had
been mainly unconscious. Peter had not been told even of the Dabnitz
episode.... They might have pulled together for years if it hadn't been
for the woman, but there was bound to be a woman. Mowbray was like that.
Big Belt yawned over it all, drew his cot close, so he could hear
Peter's call, lit a fresh candle, and wished he had remembered to smoke
outside. Presently, however, he was breathing forth the full volume of a
man.
Sitting by the civilized bed early the next afternoon he heard a voice
below that clenched his jaw much as it had been that night outside the
German camp before the stretcher was brought. She had found them. She
did not speak first, but looked in.... Seeing the face upon the bed, she
could not ask, nor speak, but crossed the room. It would have been just
the same so far--had Boylan not been there. In fact, he had withdrawn
from the place by his companion.... She knelt an instant. Now she arose
and faced the friend.
“He will live.”
Peter was still afar off.
“Yes, ma'am--I think he will.”
She came to him now. “I saw you last night,” she whispered. “I saw you
come here. I could not come until now.”
“Humph--” or something of the sort was heard from Boylan.
Berthe appeared to draw a certain truth from the situation. Perhaps she
saw _the woman_ in Boylan--the mysterious, draggled creature which he
designated his devil on occasion. The old war-wolf gave her credit for
no such penetration. Still she kept herself second, advised, assisted
for a few moments, but would not let Boylan go.
“He's knit to you. He might die if you go,” she said.
Something about her choked him. He had been with men so continually.
“And then I can't stay,” she whispered. “But I am so thankful to have
found you--that nothing else matters.... You see, we are prisoners. They
have trusted certain of us to work; still we have no names, no way of
hearing, no mails, or anything. It's a good miracle that I found you.”
Presently she said again: “You don't think I understand, but I do. You
have stood by him. He would not have been here but for you. He is living
because of you. I see that. I see that he has been very close.... You
may hate me as you wish, but you cannot help taking what I give you.”
“You're an all-right young woman,” Big Belt managed to remark. “I
knew something of that.” Then, in a panic, he added: “He'll know you
to-night. He's cool now. He'll pull through. He'll know you to-night,
and then I go.”
“Not until he sees you.... Besides, I am a prisoner. I cannot come and
go as I would. I may not be able to come to-night--they may say _no_.”
“He'll have all that he needs until you come,” Boylan said.
She did come that night. Peter had returned, but voyaged again
meanwhile. In the morning she came again.... Boylan ordered her to sit
down in the far corner. He went to the bed, for Peter was stirring, and
presently opened his eyes with reason and organization in them.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello, boy.”
Peter looked beyond him and around the room.
“Go to sleep,” said Boylan.
“I won't.”
“All right.”
Big Belt stepped aside. Peter managed to get a knuckle up to rub his
eyes.
“He's back with us,” Boylan whispered.
“Don't go,” she pleaded.
“Don't be a fool,” said Boylan.
She was there beside him, bending lower and lower. It was against nature
for them not to forget the exterior world for a moment, and Boylan was
on the stairs....
He saw Sondreig with eyes that seemed to have dropped their scales. It
was early in the morning, and a light snow had freshened everything. An
old woman was sitting at the locked entrance of what had been a dairy
shop, weeping for her only son. Boylan stopped.
She was very poor and weak.
“Come, mother,” he said, lifting her.
She looked into his face in a way that roweled the man.
“Come on,” he said softly. “We'll have some breakfast. And you'll tell
me about it. I belong to the widows and the fatherless, too.”
So they rocked away together.
Chapter 6
He was sleeping again. Berthe went to the window. Even in her happiness
she was afraid, for she was remaining longer than her leave.... The
window faced the south, and the apothecary shop was on the edge of town.
The day was like a pearl--snowy distance, a soft-toned sky and the low
shine of the sun. Deep down in the west, like an island, was a thick
brush of cedars, preserving their green across the miles, and calling to
her with something of the native wonder of old Mother Earth; and to the
right, east of south, was the huge blurred stockade where King Cholera
was so far imprisoned with the bait of fresh lives each day.
The old Mother was in her winter bloom, so pure and deep-eyed, so calm
and above sorrow in her distance and coloring, that it became to Berthe
a moment not to be forgotten--such a moment as would make a woman
homesick in heaven.
...If the big man would only come back. They might be angry for her
staying. It would be so easy to lose all that she had won from the
Germans. They had come to rely upon her more and more, realizing the
character of her service, and forgetting its origin in Judenbach. She
did not want to disappoint them. With Peter Mowbray here in good hands
and climbing back to life--no woman in the midst of war could ask
more.... At the bedside again, she pondered the recent weeks to this
hour. Without words, without heaviness, he had come along, fitting so
blithely into the new places, bringing his laugh and his skepticism of
self always, asking for no sign nor reward of the future, building no
dream of heaven, but standing true to the tasks of earth. Greatly more,
and differently, she loved him now, and the distance held the green of
cedars.
...An officer came to her from the bullet-ward.
“You are to stay until Mr. Boylan, the correspondent, comes,” he said.
“But will they know? They were good to let me come.”
“Colonel Hartz has signed the order. Word has been sent to the
entrainment wards. You were attached there, I believe?”
“Yes.”
“Let us know in case of any need here.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Chapter 7
A most satisfying adventure, so that Big Belt added many things to the
matters which could not be related. The old mother had told him of her
son (as they sat together in the little room she called home) and Boylan
had seen in him a singular hero, and made the mother see it. Presently
he strode forth to the shops and returned with many packages of food
affairs, and a cart of fuel following. The prodigious prices which these
things commanded in Sondreig appealed to him as a trifle; in fact, the
simplicity of life on these direct terms of living first hand, struck
him as the eternally right way.... Then she cooked for him, very intent
and eager in the great joy of it, agitated by his praise. In fact, he
went to great lengths of breakfasting to show his appreciation; until,
perceiving what he had done, he strode forth again with replenished
understanding and restocked the cupboard by means of the cart.... Yes,
he would come to-morrow.... Yes, by all means, while he was in Sondreig.
Even if he had not thought of the white-fire creature being held in
the room above the apothecary shop for his return, Boylan had found it
necessary to leave the old mother, since she could not be made to eat
with him there. She would have cooked for him until she fell by the
fire, but as for her sharing the repast, she begged him to have peace,
that time was plentiful for that.... He was thinking it all out once
more, a most delectable incident, as he walked swiftly through the snow
toward the apothecary shop, when his shoulder was plucked by a passerby,
and he turned, stiffening a bit at the roughness of it. A black-bearded
man of much rank peered into his face, crying out:
“Boylan, by the One God!”
“Herr Hartz--by the same!” Big Belt exclaimed.
And now they embraced--a mighty affair, a memorable spectacle of
pounding, of disengagement, of renewed embrace--so that soldiers and
hospital men circled wide in passing, and the little street was hushed
with the exceeding joy.
“Come and live with me, Boylan. I will not take no for an answer.
Come at once, and let us a table between us have, to prevent further
inderrupption of travvic--”
At no time would the cause of this majestic effusion have been
made clear to an outsider, though it was plain that the American
correspondent and the German officer of rank shared it alike. The truth:
these two, and two others somewhere in the world, were the surviving
four of a complement of over thirty men who had made up the original
outfit now known as the Schmedding Polar Failure. Colonel Hartz,
detached from his cavalry command for service in the prison-hospital
at Sondreig, was second in command here as he had been to Schmedding in
that former ill-starred expedition.
The table was between them.
“But first,” said Boylan, “there is a little business in which you can
help. My friend, Mowbray... is just coming back to life from Russian
wounds. I could not leave him without being assured of his care. There
is one little nurse from the entrainment wards--it is a good story,
which I will tell in good time--competent to care for him. She is there
now, but I have already stayed longer than her leave granted. She must
be set at rest, and word sent also to her own post--”
“So much words for a little thing--dictate and I write. Then tell me of
yourself, which is more imbortant--”
It happened, even after the messages were sent, that Boylan spoke very
little of himself. He was grappling with a certain final disposal. His
talk was colored with desire. In fact, within an hour he had reached the
critical part of his narrative, and was becoming more glib momentarily
as the way out cleared:
“...You see, they met in Warsaw, where I was stationed before the war.
She did not tell him what was in her mind. He parted from her--as any
other married man taking the field. We were together with Kohlvihr's
column, of which I will tell you later.... Now what do you think?”
Herr Hartz snorted. He did not care to think.
“She didn't stay in Warsaw,” Boylan went on, with great intensity. “No,
my friend, she joined the hospital corps, and followed him afield--”
“The Russians take anyone for the hosbittles,” the other remarked
impatiently.
“Exactly; and my friend Mowbray found her nursing sick soldiers in
Judenbach. It happened that they were together when the city changed
hands. By the way, there was much of interest in those days of which I
will tell you later.... This is the point. She was a Polish prisoner--he
an American non-combatant. I advised them to say nothing for the present
that they were married. It was very ticklish to change hands anyway, and
would have complicated the position of each one. So they were separated.
He was with me day by day until he was wounded. He moved in a dream
without her--a good boy, Colonel--and a good girl--but war. I say, we
learned something about men, you and I--long ago---”
Herr Hartz now beamed.
“We learned it,” he breathed.
“They make only a few on the pattern of Mowbray.... Last night I saw her
in the street here at Sondreig.... So you see why I arranged for her to
take my place at his side--but you can arrange the rest--”
“For God's sake, what do you want? You talk and talk about such
people and women and love stories--when we have so much to say about
ourselves--”
“Be patient. We have all time,” said Big Belt. “I only want them
together--a true married pair. Then they will be off my hands. You can
make Headquarters forget she is Polish--that is all. Some little place
apart--for them to be together while he heals--”
“Such a lot of talk for small things. It shall be done, Boylan, with a
paper. I will send them to the country and monobolize you myself. This
is a big war--yes?”
Chapter 8
A last time he climbed to the floor above the apothecary shop. If only
she wouldn't act up. A serious thing, this he had done. Big Belt felt
that he had rushed matters, possibly treading upon a host of delicate
and incomprehensible affairs. But, when he had found in Colonel Hartz a
man to make action of his words, he had plunged....
Peter was asleep. The woman came forward noiselessly, offering her
hand. By her face he knew that all was well with the patient. Boylan had
stiffened to resist the pang of Peter's passing from his life. This
had so far prevented his voice from softening to the woman. It was now
evening.
“I've done what seemed best,” he began abruptly in a whisper. “It
appears to have accomplished what I set out after, but it's likely a
ruffian's way--”
Her gray eyes widened, her face blanched.
Big Belt cleared his throat. Whispering was difficult.
“I met an old friend who made possible your remaining here. He's to send
you into the country--as soon as the young fellow is able to be moved.
You are to take care of him there. You see, my friend happened to
be second in command here at Sondreig, and he thinks he can make
all concerned forget that you were picked up from the opposition in
Judenbach--”
“Can make Sondreig forget that?” she whispered.
“We are very old friends. We were out together in a former service--”
“And we are to be sent into the country--as soon as Peter is able?”
“Yes.”
“But what is the terrible part?”
“There might have been a better way, but I didn't think of it--”
“Oh, what, Mr. Boylan?”
“I told him that you two were married--”
“Yes.”
“I say, I told him that you two were married--”
“Yes--and then?”
Big Belt backed from her, and sat down.
“There isn't any _then_,” he said. “That's it.... That you were married
in Warsaw, and followed him to the field--without his knowing.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Oh, you frightened me.”
...Boylan was on the stairs. He halted, turned back. She came to him
eagerly.
“But _were_ you married?” he asked.
“No. But it's such a little thing compared to what might have
happened--to keep us apart. I mean what might have happened here.... Oh,
God bless you!”
He twisted his chin away from his collar, drew it clear with his hand,
cleared his throat to speak, and vanished.
VII
THE GREEN OF CEDARS
It wasn't an open fire, but a little iron stove that got so red that
it trembled, and at intervals could hardly contain the puttering of the
pine; and there was a one-armed soldier, who spent the long forenoons
cutting carefully and piling, until there was a rustic wainscot half
around the room, the drying breath of which was the purest fragrance in
the world.... They petted the soldier until an officer came down.
It was the hunting forest of a certain Count, and the hut they lived in
was but the lodge of one of his keepers; but it was far enough from the
great mansion (where wounded officers of royal blood and toppling rank
healed or died in much the same fashion as other men) to afford the
silence and solitude they had dreamed of. And all about them the great
trees pondered between the winds--pine and balsam, cedar and fir. It had
looked like a bit of an island from the Sondreig window, but proved
a true forest when they reached there--an enchanted one to Berthe and
Mowbray.
Twice Boylan came down for a day, bringing Moritz Abel the second time;
but the Colonel, whose authority had done so much for them, required
much of Big Belt, and there was a woman (some mystery about this) who
would keep dinner waiting, he said. So both times he had started back
while there remained light in the sky. And Peter had become thoughtful.
“Why, there are whole days I can't account for,” he muttered. “He must
have had me strapped to him for days at a time.”
He had asked for Poltneck, of whom she had seen the last in Judenbach.
The Germans had loved his singing and made very much of him; and Peter
had asked for Moritz Abel before the latter came for the day. Berthe
had answered freely, but of Duke Fallows she had not spoken in a way
to satisfy his questions. In fact, it was not until the day that Peter
first crossed the little room alone that she seemed ready to speak. That
afternoon he had called her from the window.
“Where is Fallows, Berthe?”
“Not far from here,” she said. “Not as far as Sondreig from here--a
place you have never seen, but I watched it every day from the window
of the apothecary shop until you were moved. He offered himself at once
when he heard--the cholera quarantine.... But he left a message for you
to carry, Peter--gave it to me for you.
“I saw him for a few brief moments after he had volunteered. He talked
of you and that other American boy of the other war. He said that the
night he separated from that other--just after the battle of Liaoyang,
the Russians in full retreat, he had written his story of the
battle--the story of the Ploughman, and intrusted it to his friend to
carry to America. He wants you to carry his story of this service--asked
me to give it to you when you were better--to take to America with
yours. 'Just a picture,' he said. 'It may be all wrong, but I see it so
to-night, and I would like to have it come out in America some time.'
“He is very dear to us, Peter--that old burning exile. Some time we
may understand his love for America.... It was hard to let him go.
They fight day and night in the Stockade. They are trying to spare
Sondreig.... I wish you might have been with him that last night before
he went. It was before I found you--before I saw the big man in the
street.... He was glad to go. There was no sense of sacrifice in it. His
whole sense was of our sorrow and the world's sorrow. But it would have
been good for him if you had been there--because you are of his country.
He said it again and again: 'She must see it. It is her immortal
opportunity,' meaning America--”
“Is his story so we can see it?” Peter asked.
“Yes.”
She took from her breast a little chamois, in which was wrapped two
pages of tough tissue, spread them out, drew her chair close to him, and
read this picture Fallows had made, and his message to America:
..._It is the long night of Europe. France sits in dust upon the ground,
staring toward the End. Mother England has called for her sons, and
some have not answered. She turns her frost-rimed glass from the
grim horizons to the grimmer skies, and always in the movement of the
darkened shadows is written the word, “Disaster.” ...Smileless Germany,
stricken as never a nation was stricken before, save by the wrath of
God, still holds to the fatal enchantment of a fatherland of the ground,
while the changes in the Prussian boundaries are marked in fire and the
blood of her children.... Russia is looking southward, furious to open
her casements upon the perilous seas--gloomy millions of the tundras,
mighty millions of the ice-ringing plains--looking southward, marching
southward, to-day marking time, to-morrow a league, but southward as a
ship in passage. Russia, the young, holy genii battling with demons in
her breast, everything to win and only the fruits of her world-shocking
fecundity to lose--southward to slaughter through the long night_.
...A call to America through the long night--the voice calling for her
to put on her splendid, her initial magic. The voice from the vision of
sorrow-illumined men in frozen bivouacs, crying to America to hold fast
to the dream of her Founders, lest the vessel of the future be drained
of vital essence, indeed--to hold fast until we come ...crying for
America to answer, not with rapacious intellect, not the answer of a
militant body, but an answer from the soul of the New World, with its
original vitality in the Fatherhood of God.
...Repeating through the long night that the patience of Nature is
exhausted with the hate of man for man; that the hatred of nation for
nation is a lost experiment; that the bitter romance of the predatory
is a story finished in hell; that the passion for self and boundary is
done, that Compassion for neighbor and nation is the art of the future;
crying the end of the national soul and the stroke of the hour for the
birth of the world-soul; crying to America, the only temple, the sole
house of nativity, to put on again her youthful magic, to ignite afresh
the Gleam of her Founders, to arise to her superb and heroic destiny.
They sat in silence until the tap at the door. It was the one-armed
soldier, who came in, regarded the stove critically inside and out,
judiciously chose one knot of pine, inserted it with grave care, and,
departing, inquired if there was anything further he could do.
“No,” said Peter.
And Berthe asked: “Is there anything we can do for you?”
He bowed his head in the doorway, and they saw beyond him the winding
aisles of the forest--green and white, the dusk creeping in.
THE END
_A brief expression of the critical Reception of_
DOWN AMONG MEN
_Outlook_: Possessed of a marvelous descriptive genius, equipped
with a remarkably flexible use of English and impelled by the passion of
a mystic--the author of Down Among Men has written a striking novel.
_The Dial_: Seems to us the most exalted and appealing story Mr. Comfort
has thus far written.
_The Argonaut_: A novel of extraordinary power. It is good as _Routledge
Rides Alone_. It could hardly be better.
_London Post_: Alive with incident, bounding with physical energy,
dramatic in coloring, and modern in every phrase. He has a message
delivered with vigor, inspired with tense passion.
_Atlantic Monthly_: There is so much real fire in it--the fire of youth
that has seen and suffered--so much vitality and passion that one grows
chary of petty comments. The writer offers us the cup of life, and there
is blood in the cup.
_Chicago Record-Herald_: An almost perfect tale of courage and
adventure.
_Chicago Tribune_: Contains some of the most remarkable scenes that have
appeared in recent American fiction.
_New York Times_: Few richer novels than this of Mr. Comfort's have been
published in many a long day.
_New York Globe_: We can say in all sincerity that we know of no
recent bit of descriptive writing that can match this for sustained,
breathless, dramatic interest.
_Springfield Republican: Down Among Men_ is perhaps the most ambitious
American novel that has come out during the past year.
MIDSTREAM
...A hint from the first-year's recognition of a book that was made to
remain in American literature:
_Boston Transcript_: If it be extravagance, let it be so, to say
that Comfort's account of his childhood has seldom been rivaled in
literature. It amounts to revelation. Really the only parallels that
will suggest themselves in our letters are the great ones that occur in
_Huckleberry Finn_.... This man Comfort's gamut is long and he has
raced its full length. One wonders whether the interest, the skill, the
general worth of it, the things it has to report of all life, as well as
the one life, do not entitle _Midstream_ to the very long life that is
enjoyed only by the very best of books.
_San Francisco Argonaut_: Read the book. It is autobiography in its
perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being, more of
god and devil in conflict, than any book of its kind.
_Springfield Republican_: It is difficult to think of any other young
American who has so courageously reversed the process of writing for the
“market” and so flatly insisted upon being taken, if at all, on his own
terms of life and art. And now comes his frank and amazing revelation,
_Midstream_, in which he captures and carries the reader on to a story
of regeneration. He has come far; the question is, how much farther will
he go?
Mary Fanton Roberts in The _Craftsman_: Beside the stature of this book,
the ordinary novel and biography are curiously dwarfed. You read it with
a poignant interest and close it with wonder, reverence and gratitude.
There is something strangely touching about words so candid, and
a draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such wild and
bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink deep,
penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches. This man's
words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing into
a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the inspiration of a
quickened life.
Ida Gilbert Myers in _Washington Star_: Courage backs this revelation.
The gift of self-searching animates it. Honesty sustains it. And Mr.
Comfort's rare power to seize and deliver his vision inspires it. It is
a tremendous thing--the greatest thing that this writer has yet done.
George Soule in _The Little Review_: Here is a man's life laid
absolutely bare. A direct, big thing, so simple that almost no one
has done it before--this Mr. Comfort has dared. People who are made
uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything, to whom reserve is more
important than truth--these will not read _Midstream_ through, but
others will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute nobility
of Mr. Comfort's frankness.
Edwin Markham in _Hearst's Magazine_: Will Levington Comfort, a novelist
of distinction, has given us a book alive with human interest, with
passionate sincerity, and with all the power of his despotism over
words. He has been a wandering foot--familiar with many strands; he has
known shame and sorrow and striving; he has won to serene heights.
He tells it all without vaunt, relating his experience to the large
meanings of life for all men, to the mystic currents behind life, out of
which we come, to whose great deep we return.