"Thirty thousand lives," he repeated. "Yes, the price is cheap--thirty
thousand every day for awhile--your life and mine, Lange--a cheap price
to pay for the glory we see in the days to come. But I can't kill
these--I think Christonal knew it all the time----"
"You aren't ready for work in the constructive end, if you falter here
among the wreckers----" I said.
I knew that no Cause had ever uncovered a more valuable servant than
this same Varsieff, though badly out of hand just now. I wasn't making
any effect upon him. He looked at me strangely.
"That sounds true--exactly and unerringly true," he said wearily.
There was no quarter possible now.
"I remember your words in clubs and cabinets and in the ante-rooms of
the dumas.... You weren't afraid of blood there, Varsieff."
He winced.
"They called you the 'Fire-eater,'" I added, never knowing when to
stop. "It's just as straight to-day as it was when you talked there:
'The old civilisation must be washed clean with the blood of the
new----'"
His hand came up piteously.
"But their hearts are turned homeward, Lange," he said. "Their eyes
are building their homes all over again--eyes turned homeward over the
mountains----"
"Turned to God," I said reverently.
"Yes, but taking my word--the word of Varsieff--that God is there----"
"He is there."
"But will He come to them at the last, Lange?... Will He show His
face--so they will believe?... When they feel their death-wounds--the
blood sliding out, warm and silent--the cold coming in--will they hold
to what I said? Will He be there for them?"
"You're shot up, old man, only a bit bewildered to-day. No one knows
better than you how great emotional giving of one's self to Cause or
Country makes death easy--and quickens the Soul."
Varsieff was ashen.
"I've got to eat all my words! Even you, bring back my words to me.
I've talked too much.... Suppose I am a madman----?"
"Then you have no responsibility for what you said," I smiled.
He stared at the tent-wall.
"Varsieff," I said at last.
His hand came out.
"You were pure in all you undertook."
Silence.
"You wanted nothing for yourself."
"I wanted nothing for me--nothing but----"
"But what?"
"Paula Man----"
"She's a part of you--now. You look like her!"
"I think I'll have to die to see her--Oh, Lange--I'm sick--I'm
impoverished, cell by cell, with loneliness----" Varsieff laughed
unsteadily and added:
"I remember asking you to say to her--that she alone knew my
weaknesses. Now you know them, too."
"She said she loved them.... Varsieff, I have known you a long time,"
I added after a moment. "I have shaped my manhood, such as it is,
after you. I am proud of this--to the end. I, too, care more for
you, because of this day--for understanding. To understand--that is
everything. I who always listened before, tell you to-day: _The dream
does hold. The dream is good. Thirty thousand men--even our singing,
growling, big-footed, red-hearted thirty thousand--is a cheap price to
pay for the new Russia!_"
"Do you think Paula would say that?" he asked.
"Yes," I answered, "from the mother-heart of her."
I had spoken, and now I tried to make myself believe that she would
have ordered him on. I had to change him, at any cost. A rather
questionable way now appeared--to lift him out of himself.
"Listen, Friend," I added. "You are lonely--but you have the heart of
a woman pulsing with yours--every beat.... You'd have to _be me_ to
know what loneliness means. I'd take all the pain to have a woman like
that. There are times when you are half a man, because you are apart
from her, but there are other times, Varsieff, when you are twice a
man--double dynamics----"
He caught me in his arms. I knew he was healed, but I felt the cad and
the cur for bringing his sympathy on myself.... He was looking back
toward the cold mountains when I left him, and the look of the woman
was in his eyes. That night I dreamed that Paula Mantone came to me
with a message for Varsieff, and that she told me some beautiful thing
about the child of a king--but I could not quite get it down to brain.
* * * * *
Sedgwick, a brigadier, and technically in command of the thirty
thousand, was a straight militarist in training. He looked to Varsieff,
the political head, for orders. The day came when Varsieff had no one
to look to, for we were cut off from Christonal and Petrograd. We
were not long kept in doubt after that as to who were our immediate
enemies--not German, not Austrian, but the old line Russian troops hung
up to the east of us, the same that had recently occupied themselves
making martyrs of the revolutionists in their ranks--two or three
hundred a day.
It was a red morning when two of our _fliers_ blew down with the word
that our brothers were closing in--that it looked like extermination
for our thirty thousand, unless we strode out and crippled them with
the first shock. Ten miles to the west the Bundalino Marshes began. We
had the secret paths, but it was a wretched fugitive outlook to seek
shelter there. As I looked at it, it would never occur to leaders who
had brought Russia to the moment of parturition, to break up for a
miserable safety in the swamps of Bundalino.
I recall the distant firing of that red morning. My eardrums had not
healed from recent months more or less in touch with the artillery. I
remember brushing the edge of the lines, as I crossed from Sedgwick's
headquarters back to the hut I shared with Varsieff and a servant or
two. The peasants were listening queerly and quietly to the far firing.
I passed through the sprawl of pup-shelters, and certain ideas occurred
to me: first, that the arrangement of camp was abominable, a pitiful
lack of technique shown in this bit of military handling; second, the
slow cold conviction that we, as revolutionists, must have all the
virtues of the old-line troops to begin with, and to build our real
greatness on top of that; finally I drew from the queer attitudes of
the men toward me, an intuitional flash that to them the distant firing
meant a signal that they were about to fight their way home.
Varsieff was sitting dejected upon a camp-chest when I rejoined him.
"Sedgwick is ready when you are," I said. "He suggests that the men be
not kept waiting too long."
Varsieff looked up. His face was livid. His soul had no chance that
morning. I thought of the old story of Arjuna standing between the
battle-lines, reluctant to join action against his own kindred.
"It's the same here that it was in Petrograd," I announced finally.
"The dream holds----"
He shook his head.... "They are just boys--white-haired boys. They want
to go home----"
That instant I seemed to see the world laughing at this great man;
I saw the end of Varsieff politically.... Superb genius broken down
by an intrinsic weakness--as a man who, trying to lead the world,
falls for the lure of an actress maid.... I saw all his work of
early years--straight, clean, unerring, selfless labour of a man to
a Cause--the inspired labour of the past two years when he gave the
whole fruit of his quickened heart to the new Russia--the magic of
a man loved by a woman great enough to be his divine sculptor and
priestess.... It was the thought of Paula Mantone that helped me that
instant. Sedgwick was on the path outside. I hurried out and whispered:
"Don't come now. Come back in ten minutes----"
The General paused to let me hear the firing. "But the troops----" he
said.
"Give me ten minutes more with Varsieff----"
"The attack may be called----"
"I know, but I need that time."
The old soldier turned back, hating me....
* * * * *
"Varsieff," I said a moment later.
"Yes----"
"I've got to tell you something----"
He turned quickly.
"Paula Mantone is near----"
"No!"
"I saw her last night."
"Will she see me?"
I laughed at him. "Do you think she would want to see you now?...
You're a sick man, Varsieff--morally sick. Any decision is better
than your present incapacity.... I think she must have sensed your
weakness--that she came to bring you strength, for she is your
strength."
"Does she love me?" he asked.
"That's a slap in her face to ask that--a woman who gives you her
soul's strength--the love of her life. That's lack of faith, my
friend----"
"I am whipped. The white-haired boys--they want to go home----"
"You can't wash your hands. You can't say, 'Go home, boys.' They have
to fight their way home. First, they have to fight their way to the
east out of this valley--against old Russia!... It's the first great
battle of the Old and New--first time in the history of the world. We
hold the New for better or worse--this little Theban band. You would
let us fail and dribble away and slink into the Marshes--you, her
lover, whom she calls Boy and Strongheart----"
* * * * *
"What did she say?" he asked fiercely.
"----that I need not speak of her coming unless you needed help.
She said you would not need help on account of your own lack of
courage--rather that it would be your great tenderness that might
defeat our Cause now. She said this was but a last ordeal, hardest of
all for Builders, who have ceased to kill...."
"Where did you see her?"
It was all a lie, of course, except I had dreamed of her coming. I
invented a place of meeting and added to his question that Sedgwick did
not know of her presence.
"I agreed that we were not killers, but I told her that we dared to be
cruel to ourselves," I added.
"What did she say to that?" Varsieff asked hoarsely. He had suddenly
become like a child--one who dared not go to her, who scarcely trusted
himself to speak.
"She said _that_ was the key to the whole matter--that we dare to
sacrifice ourselves--dare to inflict pain upon each other because one's
true love is the self--"
I was startled and awed at my own words. The idea was unlike anything
of mine. It was exactly as if she had told me something of the kind in
the dream. Varsieff groaned:
"The glory of her," he whispered. "Was there more?"
"Only that you must not falter now ... and that she would be waiting
for you at the end of the day----"
"'In the cool of the evening,' she would say," he muttered.
"Perhaps that was it," I said.
"Nothing more?"
"Yes--but only if you needed it----"
"I do."
"That she never loved you so well as now--that you mean new Russia
to her--that she will come running to you in the cool of the
evening--either here or _on the other side_--and something about the
child of a king."
His back stiffened. He arose. I saw him splendid again. I drew back in
the shadow, afraid that he would see the sweat that had broken out upon
me, though the place was cold.
Of course the idea, as I saw it, was to give the old-line troops the
fight of their lives--to show the whole of Russia a martyrdom if
necessary, thus revealing the temper of the revolutionists. Varsieff
had been tempted to let them slip back into the Marshes to save their
lives.
* * * * *
We were in the saddle side by side an hour later, and close to the
front--the two big lines moving slowly and craftily together. Varsieff
looked back at his precious boys, following willingly enough so far.
"It's their white heads that kill me," he muttered. "They are like
children, and that I should----"
"They are all our children," I answered, sweeping my hand in a circle
ahead where the troops of old Russia had filled in, waiting to deliver
us to death.
"Dear old Lange," he muttered, "I'm glad you know her----"
I wondered what that had to do with his peasant children. Her spirit
seemed a blend of his every thought and emotion.... We galloped along
the fronts, talking to the different commanders. Some were students,
in their teens, faces of boys who loved Varsieff with a love that
yearned to die for him immediately, without words, a readiness to leap
under his horse's feet.... In a kind of madness, all the mysteries of
life seemed to unfold for me that morning, the spirit of Paula Mantone
always near because I was so close to her lover.
He talked to the different leaders quite careless if the peasant ranks
listened. He told them that the outer world was watching--that new
Russia, Poland, Finland, the new Europe, the new World--all depended
upon _them_ now. He said they were chosen men--that he would never
leave the field except in victory--that he was brother and father and
lover to them--that the world would be better for this day. He talked
like a man at a bar, or standing among the river-boats, or a father to
his sons in the fields.
We rode along the lines as they marched. Our horses lathered and dried
and lathered again in the morning sun. I saw my comrade, Varsieff,
giving up his soul to the peasants:
"... I, too, have my farm that waits for me--my woman who waits for
me--my country, my dream!... I build with you. I stand or fall with
you!... We shall be better for this day, my children. This is a day for
living men and comrades----"
He filled me with a kind of white flame.
Then the crash. After that, was a moment of silence and gloom like a
cloud passing over the sun. Then our eyes began to reap.... A blizzard
of hot, stinking metal had broken in front of us--in the midst of our
marching and listening battalion. If you have ever felt the mockery
and cruelty of raging seas, you can know something of the shock
that twisted the core of me that instant. That which had been the
white-haired peasants with open laughing mouths and lifted hands, their
souls answering the leader who loved them, a song forming on their lips
... now it was as if a carcass had been moved--one that had lain long
in the sun, the devastation long continued underneath....
These were my boys. Next to Varsieff and Paula Mantone, I loved them.
Now they were down, dismembered, shaking--the air a whir of white to
my tortured ears, like a shriek of bewildered ghosts. And here and
there, like Varsieff and myself--men standing unhurt in the midst of
human fragments, like maggots, shaking themselves to cover.
I wonder if you can understand? It seemed that I still could see the
welter of our boys in the leader's face. Also I saw the death of my
good friend--the death-stroke of that superb mind--the face of a man,
whose soul had vanished.
Both our horses were down, though we were unhurt so far.... A distance
of fifteen feet separated us. I called to him. I tried to tell him that
he had not failed. I thought I should die before I moved, before I
could get started toward him. The staring failure in his face paralysed
me. For the time, he was cut off even from the spirit of Paula Mantone.
I had to look down and watch my steps as I made my way to him. I knew
some hideous fear that he would fall in that blackness--if I looked
away.... There were voices from the ground. None of the parts of men
could be still. Lips writhed before my eyes--and words were spoken like
little claps of force in thin air.... I caught his opened collar....
"It's all right, Varsieff," I whispered.
"You lie!" said he.
It was like a blow from a man's mother. I had to look into his face
before my brain accepted his words. Then I remembered _my_ lie.... The
evil of it had not come to me until now, with him breaking down before
my eyes.... I saw the look again--that I had seen by the peasant's yard
long ago as we crossed the Torqueval Peaks--the look of a frightened
child in that face of finished manhood.
I pulled him to me, and led him back toward Sedgwick's staff. I heard
myself talking and laughing, jockeying with words.... His head was
twisted to the side--his draggled remnant of a mind pulled back to the
scene of that havoc. And now, if you please, we were catching the real
thing. The old-line Russians were breaking upon us with machines and
shrapnel--the old combing and carding that seldom fails.... I saw the
cold mountains all about.
Did you ever see a slaughter of drones? Perfect economy it is, from
the standpoint of the hive. The work of providing for the future is
accomplished--no mistake in the plan. The workers gather from all
sides. One by one the big clumsy drones are put to death--wrestling,
tugging, stinging, many workers giving themselves to death to carry out
the spirit of the hive.... The officers ahead who ordered our brother
Russians upon us, thought they were right--those great grey lines
ahead, honeycombed with our own precious comrades, all of whom were not
yet martyred, as was proved. But they had not found their voice. It
looked like straight death they brought to us.
... Ages. I would turn from Varsieff's face to the cold mountains.
Something of the changelessness of the beyond and above came to me out
of the hideous fluctuation of the near and below. I could not keep
Varsieff back. He wouldn't resist so long as I held him, but the moment
my hands released, his body would rise like some automatic thing and
blindly stagger forward into the pale smoke-charged sunlight. The men
who saw him--many who knew what he had been and had heard him speak but
a few moments ago--lost their concentration on the battle. He became
everywhere the centre of a rotting line. Clearly they had been fighting
on his spirit--that, and the thought of going home....
Sedgwick rode up and saw my struggle--beckoned me back, as one in
authority would bully a guard in a madhouse.... I obeyed, thinking of
the lie I had told. Here were human fragments; the air filled with the
shrieks of the fallen--the face of my friend beside me, the face of a
blasted mind--all because of that lie of mine.
Then, as I trundled him to the rear, sometimes swinging him from one
elbow to the other, I saw a line, as one would draw a bloody finger
across his cheek. Then--it was like a monkey-bite in the bone and hair
of his eye-brow.... We were in a hail from the machines and the men
were falling back.
* * * * *
I think we are half-mad in such moments, or else touched with a divine
sanity. In the midst of utter loss, the lines breaking back, the men
beginning to stampede--the plan flashed into my mind that I could only
save the first lie by a second. If the remnant fell back to starve in
the Marshes--Varsieff forever was put from me. Such was my thought. The
personal issue was greater than the Cause. I was beside myself--never
so little, never so formidable.
My arm slipped from Varsieff who sank to his knees and flopped back
at the wheels of a four-inch _Sanguinary_, bursting hot. I ran back
to Sedgwick's staff, leaped into an empty saddle--then rode along the
cracking fronts.
"Halt----" I yelled to the faces of the slipping lines.... "Halt--and
don't you see you're running from your own Comrades?... They're taking
over the Imperialists yonder. Our men have risen in the ranks of the
enemy!..."
All along the lines, I yelled it--and it came forth like an inspired
message--lie that it was from my angle. For to me, death was better
than retreat, with the eyes of the world on our little nucleus of the
new order.... My shouts were checking them.
"Our Comrades are coming to us--hold for them!... Don't run away ...
they are coming! They are coming to join us, when they clean themselves
up over yonder--only a little clean-up first, my children. Hear the
noise?"
I don't know how long I rode. I only knew that the fighting death was
victory--that there is no propaganda like martyrdom....
They answered at first with a kind of half-hearted halt. I was struck
with the silence. A queer thing happened. I saw that I had spoken the
truth.... There was firing ahead, but it had no meaning of death to our
ranks. They were firing in the air, and some threw down their guns and
were running toward us. Presently we saw the tent-cloths hoisted in
truce. It was like seeing my mother again--shaking the table-cloth to
the birds.
Then I saw their lines and ours running together--yes, Varsieff's
new heaven and new earth--saw them running together bare-headed,
white-haired peasant boys, hands outstretched, mouths open.... Freedom
was an aureola of different sunlight around their heads. On they came
like glorious ruffians, seizing their brothers in their arms--the lines
folding together like good mates before the Lord.
Then it was like a blast--that Varsieff must see this! A cold blast
in the heart--that he must not miss this glory--that my eyes must not
dwell upon this great consummation alone! Deep within, I knew my pain
was because his head was not lifted to the picture of his conquest.
Deep within, I knew that for some inexplicable reason of fate, he was
held back like the old Master on the other side of the Jordan--not
allowed to enter and witness the beauty of the promised land.
In the midst of that radiant tumult, I ran back to the place that I
had left him. It was trampled; the mud was deeper, but Varsieff was
not there.... In the midst of the shouting and the glory, I searched
for him.... Hours passed, the fighting ceased ... we were a hundred
thousand strong, armed, provisioned, hearts turned homeward.... Scores
of us were looking for the Varsieff now.
And then I heard my name called, and two young student-officers caught
me, one to each elbow and carried me forward, running to where the
woman stood ... Paula Mantone. She was standing in the midst of her own
people--the sun on her face. And I saw, too, the white look of one who
has conquered fear, but the weariness of her eyes was like the presence
of death....
"Where is he?" she whispered.
"Oh, God, I do not know----"
"Poor dear Lange--all is well with us.... The boys of two armies
rushing together--yes, Lange, this is a good day for us----"
She spoke rapidly, like lines committed--the same death-like weariness
in her tones.... She had taken my hand:
"Come, we must find him ... take me to the place where you left
him--come quickly----"
It was some distance. We walked at first in silence. It seemed as if
I could not live if I did not find out what she would have done this
morning in my place. Presently she said:
"I thought he would fail when it came to ordering a charge. He was very
brave, they say."
I loved the students who told her that, but I had known too much
torture to keep the perfect silence.
"... It was hard for him.... He isn't a killer--he saw only the
white-haired boys----"
"My beloved----" she whispered.
"I told him that it was the same in Petrograd as here--that the dream
held here--that you would have told him to be strong at the death
part----"
She was not listening. She did not answer.
* * * * *
"It was just here. He was wounded a trifle. I left him to stop the
troops. They were breaking a bit," I explained.
I had passed the place a dozen times. I remembered by the big
_Sanguinary_--hot when I had let go of Varsieff's arm. The dead had
been covered. The big gun was a wreck now--even the caisson with a
broken wheel.
Then I realised it had been moved. There was a queer mound under the
wreckage. I reached down; my hand felt warmth in the mud. The woman was
with me.... I think we moved that mammoth caisson together.... There
was no white on him--a coating of mud but warm. We lifted him and the
woman's breast covered him from my eyes.... I heard him say her name. I
heard him speak of the tropical island they would go to together....
I stood apart--I who had stood at his side so long.... There were
seconds when I heard her low passionate whispers--when I watched the
arch of her shoulder, the beauty of her bended brow.... I did not see
his face again. She held it fast to her and talked somehow out of the
world. Then I saw her raise her eyes as she had done that night in the
tent. For the first time I realised that he had only kept alive for her
coming.... But still I felt he must know the whole story. I did not go
closer, but called in half a whisper:
"Tell him how the boys came together--arms out and laughing like
brothers. Don't let him go without knowing that--tell him how they
threw their guns away and then sat down on the ground together--singing
of home and the rivers and the ploughed lands and the women waiting for
us----"
"I told him--I told him!" she answered. "You may come to him ... but
he--he only waited to see me.... Ah, Lange, you had him so much----"
I looked away. Dusk was falling, the white peaks like spirits.... I had
not seen his face again, but it suddenly came to me how it had looked
when I saw it before--that which was the bravest and most beautiful
face that I knew in manhood--how it had been beaten and bruised under
the boots of running peasants--crushed into the mire by the feet of
the men he loved so well. For a moment, I was in the red world of rage
that this should be, but then the mighty drama of it came nearer,
the supreme laughing art of it all--that only the saviours call to
them. And I smiled, looking away to the dusk falling on the cold
mountains--and I knew that my friend's spirit was as close to us as the
body she held against her breast....
Then back in the bivouacs a song began--the men of two armies roaring
out a song of the great white democracy of the future....
* * * * *
27