"The kings and the middlemen will cancel each other," he answered.
Varsieff was the most active man I ever knew, and yet he moved easily
as one in a sort of spiritual drift. He was an intellectualist with
those who used their heads, a devotionalist with those who used their
hearts, a mystic among dreamers, a child among children. Though never
known much publicly, he was to my mind the biggest occult force of the
new Russia. I doubt if there was another man, unless it was Christonal,
who gave more impulse and direction to the revolutionary movement.
The heads of many departments drew inspiration from Varsieff. I
have seen him carry himself lightly through a day of decisions and
improvements and conceptions, which do not come to the ordinary master
of democracy in a year. I have seen him encounter, worked out by
others, suggestions and innovations which he himself had made--Varsieff
not realising that the thought was his own. He would innocently praise
his own work, as carried out by another. The last few months preceding
the revolution were the busiest I ever knew. We became new men. We did
not leave Petrograd, but prepared secretly for the big unburdening of
the soul of a people. The last few days, before the government changed
hands, were charged with a wrecking silence.
Christonal's nerve broke. For twelve hours he was in and out of a
system of baths and manhandlings, and I was one who stood by. Varsieff
smiled it through, his voice calm, his eyes often looking away as he
spoke. The leaders of the younger party saw who was the real chief that
day, though Christonal is a strong leader.
I was always a good desk man, and was trying to get some order in a
bundle of cipher messages in the heat of the night, when Varsieff came
and lifted me laughingly by the shoulders, thrusting the messages into
one of my deep inner pockets. I thought he was dragging me off to bed,
but when we were alone, he said:
"_She_ is near. I can't leave. Will you go to her for me?" ...
He told me many things to say.
I found Paula Mantone after many hours in one of the Registmonten
hospitals. She was frail and feverish from much labour, not regularly
attached to any nursing staff. The instant I saw her, I realised more
clearly what Varsieff had been doing--trying to kill himself with work
for the Cause. Clearly, she had lost interest in all but death and
service. I had been too much with Varsieff to notice his arrival at the
same point, but I saw their joint endeavour through her. It seemed to
me like a death-pact.
A new mystery for me. Evidently they had realised they must wait for
release in death, but serve meanwhile. The marvel of Varsieff's sending
me when he might have come himself, gave me just an inkling of the
tremendous power and patience which had come to him. Two years, or
even a year ago, he would have endangered new Russia for an hour with
Paula Mantone.
I could not breathe this rare atmosphere. So far as I knew, there was
no woman for me in earth or heaven, but certainly I would not have been
able to look over a living woman's shoulder for her mystic counterpart,
and long for death to consummate the real mating. But war teaches
lovers many wonderful things.
Paula Mantone was a kind of white silence. You had to listen keenly
for her step and give your attention to her voice. She was utterly
feminine--malleable like gold. Even to me, she was the meaning of
love. I had no thought of her being _my_ woman, and yet she seemed
spiritually to contain some sister who would answer for me. Soldiers
worshipped her. I think each saw his own in her presence. It was the
finished magic of the Trojan Helen again--every man's desire, as gold
contains potentially all the metals, and the rose the essence of all
the flowers....
She was the quietest woman I ever saw. She seemed formed of white
cloud--the sun on the other side. That was it--Varsieff was shining on
the other side. She answered him, light for light--gold for gold. For
the rest of us, she had that white, saintly lustre. And even in that,
we found much to make us brave and keep us pure.
Deep within, there was some wonder about Varsieff and Paula Mantone
which my brain could not interpret exactly. But the world had suddenly
become to me, in her presence, a place of divided hearts--millions of
divided lovers around the world. I had only known the shock and misery
of war before, and the thrilling roar of comrades, the crash of the
wreckers and the songs of the builders ever nearer. Now I heard the
still voices of lovers everywhere. In the pressures of air--callings,
cryings, yearnings made audible.
It was a new door of the heart that she opened--her particular gift
to me. That moment, though I had loved and served Varsieff for years,
I knew more thrillingly than ever his greatness, because this woman
loved him. To me, to all soldiers, she gave a reflection of that superb
bounty. To him she gave its _incandescence_. Perhaps together they
found it too terrible a light for earth, or perhaps they were unwilling
to find their fulness of days in a world so charged with agony as these
years.
She left me a moment, answering some voice which I had not heard, and
stood for several seconds beside the cot of a bearded soldier, her
fingers upon his grey-white brow. I did not realise until after she
moved, that she was there at the moment of his passing. I thought of it
again: She was the white silence. I think the soldier died, believing
that his woman was there.
Twenty cots in the place--a low, cold room lit with a handful of
candles. The smell of blood and sickness and soiled clothing mingled
with the bitterness of iodoform as the chill draught swept through. The
peasant soldiers knew only the meagrest care. Their wounds were dressed
as often as possible, but there were five times too many cases for the
service, and the whole corps was impoverished.
She stood still in the dim distance a moment longer, her fingers
touching the brow already cold. Then she seemed to remember that I was
waiting at the far door. I was not twenty feet away, and yet in the
few seconds required for her to reach me, a sort of vision filled my
mind--a vision of the peace that soon would come to the world--the song
of fruitful labour sung again, peaceful lands, soft dusks, lit cabins,
filled barns, peaceful flocks and up-reaching baby fingers--all with
such a queer shock to a male consciousness like mine. And when she
stood before me, I felt that the best part of Varsieff was also there.
I even fancied his look in her eyes, such as you see exchanged in an
old pair who have lived long together. I think that a great love always
seeks to make one of two--in different ways than we dream.
"You came from him?" she whispered.
"Yes."
"How does he look?" she asked.
"He looks like you," I said, for the moment inspired. "He looks like a
sun-god, too. He looks _with your love_ into the eyes of soldiers and
statesmen and revolutionists, and they find him irresistible."
"Dear Lange," she said. "He loves you, too. You are changed. You have
come into the big magic of the revolution----"
"I am Varsieff's friend, first and last--his comrade."
"And mine," she whispered.
"The magic comes from standing between, Mlle. Mantone."
She smiled and bent toward me. She had been like a tall, white flower,
but now for a second as she bent closer, it seemed to me that I saw a
hint of Varsieff's gold flame on the other side--because we talked of
him.
"What did he say?" she continued in a low whisper.
"He said to tell you that he and all your friends were busy, day and
night, weaving and binding the Cause into one great fabric. He told me
to tell you this--that the work of the Weavers will be given to the
world in a day or two--possibly the day after to-morrow. I wish you
could have seen Varsieff's face as he spoke to me this last. I remember
his words exactly: 'Tell Paula all that I do is for her. That I read
and write and dream and breathe through her heart--that she has taught
me well to love and wait--that I love the world through her heart.'"
"Anything more?" she asked in a kind of agony.
"He told me to say that only you knew his weaknesses, so far----"
"I love them best," she answered. "A woman always holds a little
tighter to the sweet human things of her child.... But he is a teacher,
a leader. He must be clean and flawless.... If it were only for us--I
should have him, weaknesses and all.... But he is to lead the clean
peasants to their promised land----"
* * * * *
Varsieff listened as a desert listens for rain. He caught me by the
shoulders when I ceased to speak--as if to shake something more from my
mind and heart.
"A man must be half-divine to keep step with that woman," he said.
Then he changed the subject by remarking that Christonal was not
half-divine--quite.
"Christonal is ambitious," he added.
"What has he done now?" I asked.
"He has ordered me to take the field----"
That turned on a red light in my brain. Varsieff was not a soldier. I
knew instantly that Christonal was not pure--that he wanted personal
power more than the good of the Cause. No one knew Varsieff's place
better than he did. My friend could only have been ordered to the
field for the same reason that David sent the husband of Bathsheba.
After the revolutionary signal went through, Varsieff and I found
ourselves in the Galbraudin Foothills with thirty thousand men, and
every man of them wanted to go home. Somehow the peasants thought
that if they changed leaders, they would march home at once. They
were willing to fight their way home; they had felt their own power.
Varsieff loved them with a white passion.
"They won't miss, if _we_ are true! They're clean. God love
them--they're clean!"
He saw in the peasants the soil for the new earth and the soul of the
new heaven.
Germans and Austrians were to the south of our nest in the Galbraudin
Foothills, while to the east and north were the big lines of Russian
troops as yet unawakened to the principles that moved our ranks. Our
weakness was that the peasants thought the war was over.... The cold
mountains were in the distance--winter still upon them--a late spring
in the Foothills.... In this dramatic lull, our men talked of their
ploughing, of their women.