and then how the conviction had come into his mind that here was a
girl for him to marry; and then how, quietly and equably, he had gone
about getting her and marrying her, as he would go about buying a team
of horses or make arrangements for cutting the hay.
Until the day he married her he felt as a driver feels who has his team
under perfect control, and who knows every bend and curve of the road
he is taking. But since that day he had been thinking about her and
worrying and wondering exactly where he stood, until everything in
the day was just the puzzle of her, and he was like a driver with a
restive pair of horses who knows his way no farther than the next bend.
And then he knew she was the biggest thing in his life.
The situation as it appeared to him he had worked out with difficulty,
for he was not a thinking man. What thinking he did dealt with the
price of harvest machinery and the best time of the year for buying
and selling. He worked it out this way: here was this girl dead, whom
he had married, and who should have married another man, who was coming
to-night to kill him. To-night sometime the world would stop for him.
He felt no longer a personal entity--he was merely part of a situation.
It was as if he were a piece in a chess problem--any moment the player
might move and solve the play by taking a pawn.
Realities had taken on a dim, unearthly quality. Occasionally a sound
from the kitchen would strike him like an unexpected note in a harmony;
the whiteness of the bed would flash out like a piece of color in a
subdued painting.
There was a shuffling in the kitchen and the sound of feet going toward
the door. The latch lifted with a rasp. He could hear the hoarse, deep
tones of a few boys, and the high-pitched sing-song intonations of
girls. He knew they were going for a few miles' walk along the roads.
He went over and raised the blind on the window. Overhead the moon
showed like a spot of bright saffron. A sort of misty haze seemed to
cling around the bushes and trees. The out-houses stood out white, like
buildings in a mysterious city. Somewhere there was the metallic whir
of a grasshopper, and in the distance a loon boomed again and again.
The little company passed down the yard. There was the sound of a
smothered titter, then a playful resounding slap, and a gurgling laugh
from one of the boys.
As he stood by the window he heard some one open the door and stand
on the threshold.
"Are you coming, Alice?" some one asked.
Michael James listened for the answer. He was taking in eagerly all
outside things. He wanted something to pass the time of waiting, as
a traveler in a railway station reads trivial notices carefully while
waiting for a train that may take him to the ends of the earth.
"Alice, are you coming?" was asked again.
There was no answer.
"Well, you needn't if you don't want to," he heard in an irritated
tone, and the speaker tramped down toward the road in a dudgeon. He
recognized the figure of Flanagan, the football-player, who was always
having little spats with the girl he was going to marry. He discovered
with a sort of shock that he was slightly amused at this incident.
From the road there came the shrill scream of one of the girls who had
gone out, and then a chorus of laughter. And against the background
of the figure behind him and of young Kennedy he began wondering at
the relationship of man and woman. He had no word for it, for "love"
was a term he thought should be confined to story-books, a word to be
suspicious of as sounding affected, a word to be scoffed at. But of
this relationship he had a vague understanding. He thought of it as
a criss-cross of threads binding one person to the other, or as a web
which might be light and easily broken, or which might have the strength
of steel cables and which might work into knots here and there and
become a tangle that could crush those caught in it.
It puzzled him how a thing of indefinable grace, of soft words on June
nights, of vague stirrings under moonlight, of embarrassing hand-clasps
and fearful glances, might become, as it had become in the case of
himself, Kennedy, and what was behind him, a thing of blind, malevolent
force, a thing of sinister silence, a shadow that crushed.
And then it struck him with a sense of guilt that his mind was wandering
from her, and he turned away from the window. He thought how much more
peaceful it would be for a body to lie out in the moonlight than on
a somber oak bedstead in a shadowy room with yellow, guttering
candle-light and five solemn-looking chairs. And he thought again how
strange it was that on a night like this Kennedy should come as an
avenger seeking to kill rather than as a lover with high hope in his
breast.
Murray slipped into the room again. There was a frown on his face and
his tone was aggressive.
"I tell you, Michael James, we'll have to do something about it." There
was a truculent note in his whisper.
The farmer did not answer.
"Will you let me go down for the police? A few words to the sergeant
will keep him quiet."
Michael James felt a pity for Murray. The idea of pitting a sergeant of
police against the tragedy that was coming seemed ludicrous to him. It
was like pitting a school-boy against a hurricane.
"Listen to me, Dan," he replied. "How do you know Kennedy is coming up
at all?"
"Flanagan, the football-player, met him and talked to him. He said that
Kennedy was clean mad."
"Do they know about it in the kitchen?"
"Not a word." There was a pause.
"Well, listen here, now. Go right back there and don't say a word about
it. Wouldn't it be foolish if you went down to the police and he didn't
come at all? And if he does come I can manage him. And if I can't I'll
call you. Does that satisfy you?" And he sent Murray out, grumbling.
As the door closed he felt that the last refuge had been abandoned. He
was to wrestle with destiny alone. He had no doubt that Kennedy would
make good his vow, and he felt a sort of curiosity as to how it would be
done. Would it be with hands, or with a gun, or some other weapon? He
hoped it would be the gun. The idea of coming to hand-grips with the boy
filled him with a strange terror.
The thought that within ten minutes or a half-hour or an hour he
would be dead did not come home to him. It was the physical act that
frightened him. He felt as if he were terribly alone and a cold wind
were blowing about him and penetrating every pore of his body. There
was a contraction around his breast-bone and a shiver in his shoulders.
His idea of death was that he would pitch headlong, as from a high
tower, into a bottomless dark space.
He went over to the window again and looked out toward the barn. From a
chink in one of the shutters there was a thread of yellow candle-light.
He knew there were men there playing cards to pass the time.
Then terror came on him. The noise in the kitchen was subdued. Most of
the mourners had gone home, and those who were staying the night were
drowsy and were dozing over the fire. He felt he wanted to rush among
them and to cry to them to protect him, and to cower behind them and to
close them around him in a solid circle. He felt that eyes were upon
him, looking at his back from the bed, and he was afraid to turn around
because he might look into the eyes.
She had always respected him, he remembered, and he did not want to lose
her respect now; and the fear that he would lose it set his shoulders
back and steadied the grip of his feet on the floor.
And then there flashed before him the thought of people who kill, of
lines of soldiery rushing on trenches, of a stealthy, cowering man who
slips through a jail door at dawn, and of a figure he had read of in
books--a sinister figure with an ax and a red cloak.
As he looked down the yard he saw a figure turn in the gate and come
toward the house. It seemed to walk slowly and heavily, as if tired. He
knew it was Kennedy. He opened the kitchen door and slipped outside.
The figure coming up the pathway seemed to swim toward him. Then it
would blur and disappear and then appear again vaguely. The beating of
his heart was like the regular sound of a ticking clock. Space narrowed
until he felt he could not breathe. He went forward a few paces. The
light from the bedroom window streamed forward in a broad, yellow beam.
He stepped into it as into a river.
"She's dead," he heard himself saying. "She's dead." And then he knew
that Kennedy was standing in front of him.
The flap of the boy's hat threw a heavy shadow over his face, his
shoulders were braced, and his right hand, the farmer could see, was
thrust deeply into his coat pocket.
"Aye, she's dead," Michael James repeated. "You knew that, didn't you?"
It was all he could think of saying. "You'll come in and see her, won't
you?" He had forgotten what Kennedy had come for. He was dazed. He
didn't know what to say.
Kennedy moved a little. The light from the window struck him full in
the face, and Michael James realized with a shock that it was as grim
and thin-lipped as he had pictured it. A prayer rose in his throat,
and then fear seemed to leave him all at once. He raised his head. The
right hand had left the pocket now. And then suddenly he saw that
Kennedy was looking into the room, and he knew he could see, through
the little panes of glass, the huge bedstead and the body on it. And
he felt a desire to throw himself between Kennedy and it, as he might
jump between a child and a threatening danger.
He turned away his head, instinctively--why, he could not understand,
but he felt that he should not look at Kennedy's face.
Over in the barn voices rose suddenly. They were disputing over the
cards. There was some one complaining feverishly and some one arguing
truculently, and another voice striving to make peace. They died away
in a dull hum, and Michael James heard the boy sobbing.
"You mustn't do that," he said. "You mustn't do that." And he patted him
on the shoulders. He felt as if something unspeakably tense had relaxed
and as if life were swinging back into balance. His voice shook and he
continued patting. "You'll come in now, and I'll leave you alone there."
He took him under the arm.
He felt the pity he had for the body on the bed envelop Kennedy, too,
and a sense of peace came over him. It was as though a son of his had
been hurt and had come to him for comfort, and he was going to comfort
him. In some vague way he thought of Easter-time.
He stopped at the door for a moment.
"It's all right, laddie," he said. "It's all right," and he lifted the
latch.
As they went in he felt somehow as if high walls had crumbled and the
three of them had stepped into the light of day.
CHAUTONVILLE[3]
BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT
From _The Masses_
[3] Copyright, 1915, by The Masses. Copyright, 1916, by Will Levington
Comfort.
They said that the Russian line was a hundred miles long. I know nothing
about that, but I know that it extended as far as the eye could reach
to the east and west, and that this had been so for many weeks. But
_time_, as it is known in the outer world, had stopped for us. It was
now November, and we had been without mails since late in August. Three
days of hideous cold had come without warning, and before the snows,
so that there was a foot of iron frost in the ground. This had to be
bitten through in all our trench-making, and though we were on the
southern slopes of the Carpathians, timber was scarce. At each of our
recent meetings with the Austrian enemy, we had expected to feel the
new strike--the different resistance of German reinforcement.
A queer sense had come to us from the Austrians. I had thought of
it many times and others had spoken the same: that it didn't matter
greatly to them. They gave us fierce fighting, but always when we
were exhausted and insane with our dead--they fell away before us.
This had happened so often that we came to expect it, our chief puzzle
being just how long they would hold out in each battle. Especially when
our brigade was engaged, and we had entered into an intensity that was
all the human could endure, I would almost stop breathing in the
expectancy of the release of tension before us. When it did not come,
I invariably found afterward that I was out of perspective with the
mainline, on account of the fierceness of our immediate struggle. We
were but one snapping loop of the fighting--too localized to affect
the main front. The Austrians gave all in a piece, when they drew back.
Days were the same, a steady suffering. I did not know before what
men could stand. We had weeks of life that formerly I would have
considered fatal to adventure with through one night or day--exposure,
fatigue, famine--and over all the passion for home, that slow lasting
fire. I began to understand how the field-mice winter--how the northern
birds live through, and what a storm, on top of a storm, means to all
creatures of the north country that are forced to take what comes, when
the earth tilts up into the bleak and icy gray. We forget this as men,
until a war comes.
But all measuring of the world had ceased for our eyes. A man must
have emotions for this, and we thought our emotions dead. I wonder
if it can be understood--this being shaken down to the end, this facing
of life and death without a personal relation?... Crawling out of the
blanket in the morning, I have met the cold--such a shock throughout,
that it centered like a long pin driven in the heart. I have seen my
friends go, right and left on the field--those who helped tend the fire
the night before--and met their end and my own peril without a quickened
pulse. Of course, I knew something was changed for me, because I had not
been this way. I had even lost the love of courage--that quality of
field-work that used to raise my hair, so high and pure did it seem to
my eyes.... But the night came, when I heard a little man mumbling over
the fire to the effect that he hated it all--that the Little Father was
making monkeys of us all--and a thrill shot over me, so that I knew I
was alive. Yes, there was something to that.
"Sh-shh--" said I. Two others drew near, as if a bottle had been opened.
And Firthus, my closest friend, gripped my arm, leaving a blue welt
where his thumb had pressed.
"It's as bad to say 'sh-sh--' as to say what he said," Firthus
whispered.
Yes, even in the coldness, there was a thrill to that. Perhaps we thrill
at the first breath of that which is to come and change us over.
... For three days they had given our part of the line a different
and extraordinary resistance, so that for three nights we camped in
the same place. A valley was before us, and the infantry had tried
to cross again and again, always meeting at a certain place in the
hollows an enfilading fire from the forward low hills. We could not
get enough men across to charge the emplacements.... We were mid-west
of the west wing, it was said; and word came the third day that we were
holding up the whole line; that the east was ready to drive through,
in fact, was bending forward; that the west was marking time on our
account--and here we were keeping the whole Russian invasion from
spending the holidays in Budapest.
On that third day I was dispatching from brigade-headquarters to the
trenches. The General and his staff stood in a shepherd's house in the
midst of a circle of rocks. Waiting there I began to understand that
they were having difficulty in forcing the men forward in the later
charges. The lines could see their dead of former advances, black and
countless upon the valley snow. This was not good for the trenches.
... Now I realized that they were talking of Chautonville, the singer,
the master of our folk-songs. We had heard of him along the line--how
he had come running home to us out of Germany at the last moment in
July--literally pelted forth, changed from an idol into an enemy and
losing a priceless engagement-series on the Continent. He had not been
the least bewildered, as the story went, rather enjoying it all....
They had monopolized him at the central headquarters, so that we had
not heard him sing, but the gossip of it fired the whole line--a
baritone voice like a thick starry dusk, having to do with magnolias
and the south, and singing of the Russia that was to mean the world.
Somehow he had made us gossip to that extent. So I was interested now
to hear the name of Chautonville, and that he was coming.
He was to sing us forward again. There was a pang in that, as I craned
forward to look at the valley. It was not for our entertainment, but
to make us forget our dead, to make us charge the valley again over our
dead--it being planned that a remnant might make the crossing and charge
the emplacements.... He came--a short barrel of a man and fat. They had
kept him well at the Center. He was valuable in the hospitals, it was
said.
The least soldierly kind of a man I had seen in many days, save the
Brigadier--so white and fat was Chautonville, the top of his head
small, his legs short and thick, hands fat and white and tapering,
a huge neck and chin with folds of white fat under it--a sort of a
perfect bird dressed for present to the Emperor. Chautonville was
big-eyed with all this--large, innocent brown eyes--innocent to me,
but it was the superb health of the creature, his softness, clearness
of skin and eye, that gave the impression to us, so lean and stringy.
For his eyes were not innocent--something in them spoiled that. We
were worn to buckskin and ivory, while here was a parlor kind of
health--so clean in his linen, white folds of linen, about his collar
and wrists. His chest was a marvel to look at--here in the field after
weeks in the Carpathians. We were all range and angles, but this was a
round barrel of a man, as thick as broad, his lips plump and soft,
while we for weeks had licked a dry faded line, our faces strange with
bone and teeth.
"What is it?" he asked the General.
I thought of a little doctor, called by others after consultation--an
extra bit of dexterity required, this being the high-priced man. There
was that indoor look of a barber about him, too.
The General explained that a new charge was to be ordered--that three
had failed--that the men (while not exactly rebellious) faltered before
the valley a fourth time this day--that the failures were costly in
men--in short, that the inspiration of Chautonville was required now to
sing them and the reserves across.... The Austrians would quickly give
way, if the valley were passed.... Then the thousands would flood up the
slopes and--Budapest and holidays.
"You want me to sing to them for courage--as it were?" Chautonville
questioned.
I had marked his voice. I saw now that he needed all the thickness of
throat and bust--that he used it all. I hoped they would not send me
away with a message....
"You want me to walk up and down the trenches?"
"Yes, singing."
He puffed his cheeks and blew out a long breath--as if enjoying the
effect of the steam in the icy light.
"Are they under fire?" he asked.
"You see them from here--how silent they are! The enemy does not fire
until we reach the valley."
So he made no bones about his fears. Nothing of the charge would be
required of him. He could withdraw after his inspiration.... Hate
was growing within me. God, how I came to hate him--not for his
cowardice--that was a novelty, and so freely acknowledged, but because
he would sing the men to their death. This was the tame elephant that
they use to subdue the wild ones--this the decoy--the little white
bastard.
"Very well, I will walk up and down the trenches, singing--" He said it
a bit cockily.
I was in no way a revolutionist, yet I vowed some time to get him,
alone.... I seemed to see myself in a crowded city street at night--some
city full of lights, as far as heaven from now--going in with the crowd
under the lights--to hear him sing. There I could get him.... Not a
revolutionist, at all; no man in the enlisted ranks more trusted than
I; attached for dispatch-work at brigade-headquarters; in all likelihood
of appearance so stupid, as to be accepted as a good soldier and nothing
more.... Now I remembered how far I was from the lights of any city and
crowded streets--here in the desperate winter fighting, our world crazed
with punishment, and planning for real fighting in the Spring. The dead
of the valley arose before my eyes.... Perhaps within an hour _my_ room
would be ready. Still I should be sorry to pass, and leave Chautonville
living on.
They beckoned me to his escort. I followed, hoping to see him die
presently. This new hope was to watch him die--and not do it with my
hands. Yes, I _trusted_ that Chautonville would not come back from the
trenches.
The pits stretched out in either direction--bitten into the ground
by the most miserable men the light of day uncovered--bitten through
the snow and then through a thick floor of frost as hard as cement. I
heard their voices--men of my own country--voices as from swooning
men--lost to all mercy, ready to die, not as men, but preying, cornered
animals--forgotten of God, it seemed, though that was illusion;
forgotten of home which was worse to their hearts, and illusion, too.
For we could not hold the fact of home. It had proved too hard for us.
The bond had snapped. Only death seemed sure.
Chautonville opened his mouth.
It was like sitting by a fire, and falling into a dream.... He sang
of our fathers and our boyhood; the good fathers who taught us all they
knew, and whipped us with patience and the fear of God. He sang of the
savory kitchen and the red fire-lit windows (bins full of corn and boxes
high with wood); of the gray winter and the children of our house, the
smell of wood-smoke and the low singing of the tea-kettle on the hearth.
And the officers followed him along the trenches, crying to us,
"_Prepare to charge_!"
He sang of the ice breaking in the rivers--the groan of ice rotting in
the lakes under the softness of the new life--of the frost coming up
out of the fallows, leaving them wet-black and gleaming-rich. He sang
of Spring, the spring-plowing, the heaviness of our labor, with spring
lust in our veins, and the crude love in our hearts which we could only
articulate in kisses and passion.
A roar from us at that--for the forgotten world was rushing home--the
world of our maidens and our women.... He sang of the churches--sang of
Poland, sang of Finland--of the churches and the long Sabbaths, the
ministry of the gentle, irresistible Christ, of the Mary who mothered
Him and mothered us all.
We were roaring like school-boys now behind him--the officer-men
shouting to us to stand in our places and prepare to charge.
... He was singing of the Spring again--of the warm breath that comes
up over the hills and plains--even to _our_ little fields. On he went
singing, and I followed like a dog or a child--hundreds of others
following--the menacing voices just stabbing in through the song of
open weather and the smell of the ground.... My father had sung it to
me--the song of the soil, the song _from_ the soil. And the smell of
the stables came home, and the ruminating cattle at evening, the warm
smell of the milking and the red that shot the dusk.... My mother taking
the pails in the purple evening.
And this about us was the soldiery of Russia--the reek of powder, the
iron frost, and the dead that moved for our eyes in the dip of the white
valley. And each of us saw _our_ field, our low earth-thatched barns,
and each of us saw our mothers, and every man's father sang.... We cried
to him, when he halted a moment--and our hearts, they were burning in
his steps--burning, and not with hatred.
Now he sang of the Springtime--and, my God--of our maidens! On the
road from her house, I had sung it--coming home in the night from her
house--when, in that great happiness which a man knows but once, I had
leaped in the softness of the night, my heart traveling up the moon-ray
in the driven flame of her kiss. (She did not sleep that night, nor I,
for the husk of the world had been torn away.) ... He sang our maidens
back to us--to each man, his maiden--their breasts near, and shaken with
weeping. They held out our babes, to lure us home--crying "_Come back_!"
to us....
And some had not seen the latest babe at _her_ breast; and some of us
only longed for that which we knew--the little hands and the wondering
eyes at her skirts--hands that had helped us over the first rough
mysteries of fatherhood.