Routledge Rides Alone
TENTH EDITION
[Illustration: ROUTLEDGE STARTED AT HER VOICE AND THE TOUCH OF HER HAND
_Page 196_]
ROUTLEDGE
RIDES ALONE
BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT
[Illustration]
WITH FRONTISPIECE IN COLORS
BY MARTIN JUSTICE
A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1910
BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
Published March, 1910
TO THE LADY OF COURAGE
WHOM I MARRIED
Contents
PROLOGUE
IN CHEER STREET, LONDON 9
FIRST CHAPTER
MOTHER INDIA IS SAID TO BE QUIVERING WITH
HATRED FOR HER WHITE CHILD, THE BRITISH
FOUNDLING 30
SECOND CHAPTER
THE BAFFLING INDIAN MYSTERY IS DISCUSSED BY
FOUR MEN WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIRST TO
SOLVE IT 42
THIRD CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE RELATES HOW A MASTER CAME DOWN
FROM THE GOODLY MOUNTAINS TO FIND HIS CHELA
IN THE BURNING PLAINS 51
FOURTH CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE CONTEMPLATES THE PAST IN THE MIDST
OF A SHADOW FORECAST BY LARGE EVENTS 65
FIFTH CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE STEPS OUT SPIRITEDLY IN THE FOG TO
FIND HIS FRIENDS, AND ENCOUNTERS THE HATE OF
LONDON 74
SIXTH CHAPTER
A GRIM AND TERRIBLE TRADITION IS TOUCHED UPON
FOR THE RELATION IT BEARS TO THE TREACHERY IN
INDIA 85
SEVENTH CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE BEGS FOR A STIMULANT--THE STUFF
THAT SINGS IN THE VEINS OF KINGS 104
EIGHTH CHAPTER
THE SUPERLATIVE WOMAN EMPTIES HER HEART OF
ITS TREASURES FOR THE OUTCAST, AND THEY PART
AT CHARING CROSS 110
NINTH CHAPTER
MR. JASPER IS INFORMED THAT MOTHER INDIA
CAUSED NAPOLEON’S DEFEAT, AND THAT FAMINES
ARE NOT WITHOUT VIRTUE 124
TENTH CHAPTER
A SINGULAR POWER IS MANIFEST IN THE LITTLE
HUT AT RYDAMPHUR, AND ROUTLEDGE PERCEIVES
HIS WORK IN ANOTHER WAR 139
ELEVENTH CHAPTER
A HAND TOUCHES THE SLEEVE OF THE GREAT FRIEZE
COAT IN THE WINTRY TWILIGHT ON THE BUND AT
SHANGHAI 148
TWELFTH CHAPTER
JOHNNY BRODIE OF BOOKSTALLS IS INVITED TO
CHEER STREET, AND BOLTS, PERCEIVING A CONSPIRACY
FORMED AGAINST HIM 164
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
JERRY CARDINEGH OFFERS A TOAST TO THE OUTCAST
AND IS COMPELLED TO DRINK ALONE 175
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE IS ASSURED OF A WOMAN’S LOVE--THOUGH
HE SHOULD LEAD THE ARMIES OF THE
WORLD TO BURN LONDON 187
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER
NOREEN CARDINEGH APPEARS AFTER MIDNIGHT IN
THE BILLIARD-ROOM OF THE IMPERIAL--AN INEFFABLE
REMEMBRANCE 200
SIXTEENTH CHAPTER
CERTAIN CIVILIANS SIT TIGHT WITH KUROKI, WHILE
THE BLOOD-FLOWER PUTS FORTH HER BRIGHT
LITTLE BUDS 211
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER
FEENEY AND FINACUNE ARE PRIVILEGED TO “READ
THE FIERY GOSPEL WRIT IN BURNISHED ROWS OF
STEEL.” 222
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER
BINGLEY BREAKS AWAY FROM THE CAMP OF THE
CIVILIANS TO WATCH “THE LEAN-LOCKED RANKS
GO ROARING DOWN TO DIE.” 232
NINETEENTH CHAPTER
NOREEN CARDINEGH, ENTERING A JAPANESE HOUSE
AT EVENTIDE, IS CONFRONTED BY THE VISIBLE
THOUGHT-FORM OF HER LOVER 243
TWENTIETH CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE IS SEEN BY NOREEN CARDINEGH AT AN
EXCITING MOMENT IN WHICH SHE DARE NOT CALL
HIS NAME 255
TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE, BROODING UPON THE MIGHTY SPECTACLE
OF A JAPANESE BIVOUAC, TRACES A WORLD-WAR
TO THE LEAK IN ONE MAN’S BRAIN 266
TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE STRIKES A CONTRAST BETWEEN THE
JAPANESE EMPEROR AND THE JAPANESE FIGHTING-MAN,
WHILE OKU CHARGES INTO A BLIZZARD OF STEEL 277
TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER
ROUTLEDGE ENCOUNTERS THE “HORSE-KILLER” ON
THE FIELD OF LIAOYANG, AND THEY RACE FOR THE
UNCENSORED CABLE AT SHANHAIKWAN 285
TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
THE GREAT FRIEZE COAT AND THE WOMAN JOURNEY
DOWN THE COAST TOGETHER, AND CROSS INDIA TO
THE LEPER VALLEY 303
Routledge Rides Alone
PROLOGUE
IN CHEER STREET, LONDON
Jerry Cardinegh, dean of the British word-painters of war, was just
home from China, where he had caught the Allies in the act of relieving
Peking. It had been a goodly and enticing service, both to watch and
to portray, calling out much of glorious color and tension and peril,
and not enough slaughter to chill the world’s appreciation. Cardinegh
sat by the fire in his little house in Cheer Street, London, and was
ministered to by his daughter, Noreen, a heavenly dispensation which
the old campaigner believed he had earned. A dinner together, just
the two, truly a feast after lean months crossing the mountains of
separation. Then whiskey, glasses, soda, pipes, tobacco, papers of the
afternoon--all served by the dearest of hands. The gray, hard veteran
lived, indeed, the maiden filling his eyes.
Twenty he had left her, and she was twenty still, but the added
fraction of an inch made her look very tall, and startled him. There
was a mysterious bloom under the luminous pallor of her skin; fathoms
more added to the depth of her eyes, and a suggestion of volume to her
voice. Nature and heritage had retouched the girlish lips in color and
curve, widened the tender Irish eyes, added glow and amplitude to the
red-gold hair.... There had only been two women in the world for Jerry
Cardinegh, and the other was a memory--the mother.
“And who do you suppose is coming to-night, deere?” he asked. There was
a silver lining of the Tyrone tongue to all that Jerry said, but it was
so subtle and elusive as wholly to defy English letters, save possibly
that one word “deere” which he rolled fondly for Noreen, and here and
there in the structure of a sentence.
“Some of your war-men to relieve Peking again to-night? Who, father?”
“Just one. The best and weirdest of them all. He’s on the way home to
the States. You met him in Tokyo five years since--after the Japanese
had whipped China, and the Triple Alliance had stepped in to gobble the
trophies.”
The girl stirred the fire in the grate thoughtfully for an instant,
then started up in a glad, impatient way. “Routledge-san?”
“The same. Now, that’s queer--after five years--I mean, the Japanese
title of address--‘Routledge-san.’”
“That’s what I used to call him, and I always think of him so. I think
of him a great deal. His work in the _Review_ makes me. He is one of
very few whom I could welcome gladly--this first home-night with you,
father.” She spoke with the old fearless candor that Cardinegh loved.
“So you think of Routledge a great deal? And why, deere?”
“He sees deeply. His work is illuminating to me. Sometimes I think of
him sitting back of his work and smiling because he knows so much that
he dares not set down. I think Routledge-san loves Asia--as you, as
we--love Ireland, father.”
“You could not think about a better man, Noreen,” said Cardinegh. “And
so he knows a lot that he doesn’t write for the _Review_? Well, maybe
so.... He talks quite as well as he writes--when the spell is on him.
I don’t know a man who can clear a mind of all save what he’s tossing
into it--like Routledge. And the words seem to twist and work their way
deep like burrs--when he leans forward with an idea.”
Noreen smiled. “And why has he not been back to London in all these
years?”
“You have said it--because he loves Asia.”
“But he has not been back to America?”
“Routledge is quite as much at home in London as in Philadelphia, his
native city. He has worked for the American press as well as for the
English. You see, he needed us because England has something doing
more or less all the time in the field. In fact, since Japan took the
Chinese Port Arthur in ’94, there has been plenty for one man to do in
following American and British arms--Cuba, South Africa, the Philippine
Archipelago, and now China again. But I have met him off and on around
the world. They are good men of our tribe, Noreen, strong, brave, and
wise men, but Routledge, of them all, has warped his craft deepest into
my slip, so to speak. I love the lad.”
She was moving about among the shadows of the sitting-room--a touch of
her hand here and there, unconscious preparation, probably, for the
guest, and a queer tension in her eyes. It was nine, and a gusty winter
night, when Cardinegh admitted the world-wanderer and took his great
frieze coat. Noreen watched from the far end of the hall. Routledge
spoke low and laughingly, and caught the elder man by the hand and
shoulder. A sense of exhilaration in full sweep dilated the veins of
the girl, and with it, too, was a certain chill of dread, some nameless
portent--a blend of joy, and its price in pain, all in that first
glimpse. It was like the prelude of a song, or the prologue of a story,
which contains an element of each emotion in the appeal of the whole....
“And this is Noreen--the little Noreen whom I once dared to call my
Japanese sweetheart. Why, it’s water out of the rock to see you again,
Miss Noreen!... Jerry, the years have been consummate artists here in
Cheer Street while we’ve been away growing old.”
Noreen heard herself saying, “I have felt close to you a great many
times, Routledge-san,--all wrapped up, as in a blanket, in those fat
_Review_ columns under your name.”
“’Tis true,” said Cardinegh. “We’re all flawful imitations beside you,
son.”
“I was thinking how good, how ripping good, ‘Routledge-san’ sounds
again,” the guest declared. “It’s like a song of home heard from a
passing ship.”
Before the fire, the two correspondents unshipped once more under
the guns of the Taku forts, for the listening girl, and followed the
Pei-ho, that roiled drain of a bitter land, up to the Tientsin wall.
“Routledge deserted us that day--went back to his own countrymen--the
American column,” said the father.
Jerry wanted the story told for Noreen, and his memories challenged
and animated Routledge. “Yes, I wanted to see my boys again,” he
acknowledged. “I had one good look at them in Cuba, under Lawton,
who was killed a year or so later, under my eyes, on the banks of the
Maraquina River in Luzon. The Philippines was a rapid, pretty service,
but a service of detachments. I was eager to see how the boys worked
in numbers. The American troops are nervous, you know, a little too
highly evolved to be atoms. They live for a higher game in their
country--commerce and inventions. Some time the nation will rise even
to a better growth than that--I mean, to the spiritual evolution.
“The boys were mostly ill in China, thin-blooded from the tropical
Philippines. The column was full of fever, coughing and cursing a
little. They shook in the chill damps of the nights up Tientsin
way.... Poor chaps, but it was good to hear them talk, before the gray
old walls of Tientsin--that night when the world was hanging to the
cable-ends for the flash, ‘battle.’ I rode along the huddled column and
heard Texas, Indiana, Nob Hill and the Bronx, Halsted Street and Back
Bay--all from the shadows on the ground, that breathed tired oaths and
shivered in the drive of the fine, chilled rain.”
Jerry took up the picture excitedly: “Do you remember when the spray
of sparks shook out from behind the wall?--the party in charge of the
fireworks was trying the night to see if it were dark enough. Then
followed a succession of booming crashes. It was as if the plain was
drawn tight as a drum-head, and they dropped comets on it.... The
Chinos got the Russian range about that time, and left open sores in
the snaky Slav line. And I want to know, Routledge, did you hear the
high-pitched scream from the Japanese when they snatched the glory of
the lead?... Ah, we’ll hear from those brown dwarfs again!”
“I think so,” said Routledge. “They ran forward like hounds, snapped at
each other and gave tongue like a pack closing in for the kill. Yes,
I remember, and then the fire broke out behind the wall in the native
city, and the sky took on the red--the red of an Indian blanket! It
shone red on the faces of the boys from the States.... Miss Noreen, you
listen large-eyed as Desdemona.”
“Tell me more about your boys,” she whispered.
“The trumpet screeched ‘forward,’ and the column quickened into life,”
Routledge explained, “sprang like magic into formation and swept past,
panting, laughing, shouting in the rain. God, pity them! They were good
boys--good boys, all. I wish they had all come back with their dreams
all turned true.... They didn’t know what was ahead, except they had
seen the blind gray stones of the wall through the dusk at the end of
the day’s march. They didn’t know what the fight was about, but they
ran to break the wall, gladly, against the rock of centuries--into fire
and steel and the yellow hate from all the hells. It meant nothing to
them after the wall was broken. That’s the queer, ugly part of it. The
man in the ranks always gets the worst end--and so pitifully often
doesn’t even have a sentiment to enthuse over. He’s apt to fall in
a fight against as good friends as he has anywhere on this spinning
planet, and what meaning has the change of national boundaries to his
mother?” Routledge was thoughtful for a moment....
“It seems hard to use grown-ups like that--men, white men, with spines
at right-angles from the snake’s, and a touch of eternity in their
insides somewhere. Poor devils, getting the worst of it--that’s always
the way!... I watched the tail of the column swaying by--watched the
last fragments blotted up in the rain and the night. Already, in a red
mist on the Tientsin Wall the dance of death had begun.”
Noreen’s eyes were filled with mysteries and mistiness. As in his
work, Routledge now suggested to her volumes unsaid. Her heart sensed
the great wealth of the man. She felt an inner expansion. Pity was
almost a passion in his face; and there was hate, too--hate for the
manipulations of the rulers of the earth, which drove forward that
poor column cursing and coughing in the rain. She saw it all--as if
she had been at his side that night--the fire-lit field running with
the reddest blood of earth. And across the world she seemed to see
the faces of the maids and mothers of these boys--faces straining
toward them, all white with tragedy. And more, she seemed to see for
an instant the Face of the high God, averted from His images, because
they were obsessed in that profane hour by the insane devils of war....
The profile of Routledge fascinated her. He had spoken lightly--as he
was accustomed to speak before men to whom war was a career--but the
aroused girl saw in his eyes, tightly drawn against the lamp-light, a
mystic’s rebellion against the inhumanity of material power. About his
eyes and graven entire upon the tropically embrowned face was a look
impossible to the men her life had known.
* * * * *
“I was tangled up in a reserve of Russian infantry afterward,”
Routledge concluded. “Jerry, you’ve heard the Russians sing?”
“Aye, at Plevna and before, son.”
“It’s a thing worth living long to hear--wild and mournful as a
Siberian winter.... This reserve roared its song as it bored into
Tientsin--a song of snow-bound hills and ice-bound hearts--poor
_muzhiks_! And a British battery, tons of charging steel and brass,
thundered the bass!”
So between them, the two correspondents covered the story of that one
fight in the night--on the way to lift the lid from the legations at
Peking. A messenger from the _Witness_ office at this point brought
certain cable copies for Cardinegh to comment upon for an editorial
paragraph or two. He went into his study.
“Routledge-san, do you mind if I ask you to talk more?”
Noreen edged her chair closer like a little girl anticipating a story.
“Such listening as yours,” he laughed, “would make a Napoleon disclose
his plans for the next morning’s battle. It would bring out the best of
any man’s tales. Ask me anything that I know and it is yours.”
“Always when the other correspondents come here to Cheer Street--and
nearly all of them call to see father--I have made them all tell me
about the bravest deed--the bravest man--they have ever seen or known
in all their services. I think I know them all but yours.”
“And what do you think my bravest man will be like, you collector of
heroisms?”
“That’s just the point, Routledge-san. I think yours won’t be a man of
merely brute courage. That’s why I am so anxious to hear.”
“In this case I am like one of the messengers to Job--I alone remain
to tell you. I have never told any one, but sometimes it occurs to me
to write the story of Rawder for the few who care to understand. He is
my property, Miss Noreen, a humble martyr with a mighty soul like Saint
Paul’s.
“He is a man born to suffer, as all the great are, who crucify
themselves in various ways to lessen the sufferings of commoner men. I
have never felt the same about any other man. There is something quite
miraculous about our relation. Accidentally, as it appears, I have met
him somewhere every second year for a double decade--the last time in
Hong Kong this trip home. I surely shall see him again? Does it sound
foolish to you--this idea of being destined to meet a certain some one
from time to time somewhere--until the End?”
“No. I want to hear it all, just as it comes to you, with all your
thoughts about it--please. Father will be busy for a half-hour in his
study. I think I shall understand.”
Routledge leaned back with a cigarette, which with him was only an
occasional indulgence. “As I say, I meet him every second year in my
wanderings, and I am always healed from the jangle of the world and
world-politics after a day with Rawder,” he resumed, watching her. “He
had a strangely unattractive face as a boy--slow with that dullness
which sometimes goes with the deaf, and a moist, diffused pallor that
suggests epilepsy. His original home was away up in a New England
village, restricted as a mortise-box in its thought and heart. The
Rawders were a large, brief family--six or seven children--the whole in
harrowing poverty. Certain of the littler ones were hare-lipped; all
were the fright of other children. I never liked New England.... I can
see yet the gray, unpainted house of the Rawders, high on a barren hill
against the gray, bitter sky--rags in the broken window-panes; voices
in the house that you could not forget, yet loathed to remember.... All
died in a year except this boy who became my friend. All met the Reaper
without pomp or heraldry, the funerals overlapping, so that the village
was dazed, and the name of Rawder stands to-day for Old Mortality at
his worst. So there was left only this one, a strange, wordless type of
Failure in the eyes of the village.
“He was a little older than I--but a sort of slave of mine. I see it
now. I had everything that good family and parental wisdom could bless
a boy with, and he had nothing. That I pitied him seemed to warm his
soul with gratitude. He expected so little and was willing to give
so much. I wish I had understood better then.... He aspired to the
ministry, but his ordination was long denied him. He was second in
his class after years of study in a theological school, earned with
incredible penury, but his trial sermon or something about him shocked
the community. I know now that it was a wider, gentler piety. About
this time I had come in from my first trip around the world. Unable to
get a church, he asked for a foreign mission, the smallest mission in
the loneliest, most dreadful land. His answer was a whisper through
the assembly of preachers, challenging his sanity. Forgive them, as
he did, Miss Noreen. I could not have fully understood the features
of his tragedy, but I remember that when I parted from him that time,
there was a vague desolation in my heart. I could not forget the deep,
troubled eyes nor the heavy homely face, all scourged with harshness
from a babe, a veritable magnet of evil fortunes.
“Back from England again, I encountered him in Boston under the banners
and torches of the Salvation Army. He was thinner, deeper-eyed,
richer-voiced, and all animate with love for his race. For the first
time I felt the real spell of the man. It was something in his eyes,
I think--something that you see in the eyes of a little child that is
dying without pain.”
“Visions,” she whispered.
“Yes, that is the word. Some God-touched thing about the man in the
streets of Boston. But I am making my story long, Miss Noreen. I did
not know that I had all these details. It has become rather an intimate
fancy of mine--this story.”
“Please tell me all. I think it is to be the story of a great victory.”
“Yes, the years to come will end it so.... Two years ago, I was riding
with Tarrant’s cavalry in southern Luzon when I discovered Rawder among
the troopers. It was in the midst of a blistering march of twelve hours
from San Pedro Macati to Indang, without a halt for coffee or bacon.
He did not see me, and I could not get to him until the column broke
formation. What he must have suffered climbing Fool’s Hill as a regular
cavalry recruit! There was a fight in the afternoon, and the column was
badly jumbled. Every fourth man stayed behind with three horses and
his own. The rest advanced, dismounted, into action. Rawder was with
the fighting force. I caught a glimpse of him during the early stress
of things. There was just as much iron in his jaw as in Tarrant’s,
whose valor had vibrated across the Pacific. Even so, I heard a
non-commissioned officer abuse him like a cur--God knows why, unless it
was because Rawder did not shoot to kill. That night when we entered
Indang, I could not find him. He was not in the formation next morning.
Tarrant rode on without him. Apparently, I was the only one who cared.
I think he was regarded much the same in the cavalry as he was by the
Methodist conference and before the committee on foreign missions.
“The next week Tarrant’s column struck war--a bit of real war. I found
all that archipelago-service interesting, hit-and-run campaigning,
with all the human interest of bigger lines. We were caught on a
sunken jungle-trail and fired upon from three sides. Small in numbers,
but that fight was of the sort which makes the mess-talk of English
regiments for decades, and their flag decorations. I never saw a bit
of action at closer range. It was even shown to me--the peculiar
way men open their mouths when struck about the belt. I heard souls
speak as they passed--strange, befuddled utterances, from brains
and lips running down, but full of meaning--sayings of great and
memorable meaning. I saw Tarrant stand for thirty seconds under the
first volleys, dismayed in the yellow glare. There is no sight for a
soldier so terrible as a glimpse of havoc in the face of his chief,
but he righted quickly enough. For the moment the men tried to cover
themselves in the soiled short straws of their religion.
“It was a voice in the jungle that had startled Tarrant. I tell you the
whole story, Miss Noreen, because of _that_ voice in the jungle. The
natives were led by a white man, who wore the khaki of an American
soldier. It was this white leadership which had herded Tarrant’s column
for slaughter in that hot sink of the jungle. The cry of ‘Rawder!
Rawder!’ went up from the American command. Something in the voice
troubled me--just for a second--with the fear that Rawder _might_ have
run mad at the last.... Listen, I think there is no hate in the world
so baleful and destructive as that aroused by a deserter who leads
the enemy against his own people. And this man led a black force of
Malays!... The natives retired finally, and the white man with them. An
Indiana soldier was dying in the sun when all was still. I heard him
say wearily, ‘Gawd, if I could only have killed Rawder, hell would have
been a cinch for me!’
“That’s how they hated him that day. The story of Rawder, the deserter,
went around the world. It had the eternal grip of interest of a
scapegoat who turns into a fire-brand. Manila sent column after column
of infantry into the Indang country and down below to the Camarines,
but the renegade was not to be captured just yet.
“I continued to ride with Tarrant for awhile after that. He found
action when there was any; moreover, I felt that the real story of
Rawder had not been written. He was big to me, and I could not believe
the voice from the jungle was his. Tarrant was ordered with his
troop and two others, dismounted, to Minday, a little island south
of Luzon, which Nature has punished in various ways. I remember the
empty, sun-blinded inlet, as our little transport stirred the sand.
Not a _banco_ or _casco_ came out to meet us. We were in the midst of
a people who put up no front for peace. There is a Spanish tradition
that each male native of Minday is possessed of seven devils and the
leaders ten.
“‘Best fighting men on the islands--these Mindayans,’ Tarrant told me.
‘The price of life here is to kill first, to kill all the time, snakes
and men.’ That night I wandered about the deserted port in the Crusoe
silence. At the edge of the town, I was ‘put out’ by the route of
flashing stars--a blow on the head from behind.
“Oddly enough, Miss Noreen, the natives let me live. In the morning I
awoke in a bungalow and discovered Rawder sitting in the doorway.
“His queerly-cut eyelids were drawn together by the intensity of light.
Outside, the sunlight waved in pure white flame. It was the vividest
time of the day, of the hottest time of the year, in the fieriest
island of the globe. Minday is insidious. You can breathe and walk
outside, but if you don’t get under cover when your scalp warns you
with its prickling, you will likely be buried at eventide by the wild
dogs of Minday. Or, possibly, if your vitality is immense, the sun
will spare your life, but fry the contents of your brain-pan, which is
rather worse than losing an arm.
“Rawder did not note that I was awake. He was exchanging ideas with
a young Mindayan whose skin was the color of the dead wet oak leaves
which floor the woods at home in the spring. It appears that this
stained one had been in Luzon and learned eighteen or twenty words of
English. Through these, and the signs which clasp the world, Rawder was
amassing Mindayan for the purpose of--administering Methodism to the
natives.
“I had been unconscious for many hours. I could not rise, and my brain
seemed to be working on a little boy’s shift. For ages, it seemed,
I watched the hand and lip converse, too weak to call, to ask why I
lived--my skull filled with sick-room wonderings. Rawder labored on
with the language, calm, gentle, homely unto pain. He was leaner,
stronger, than before; untanned, but the pasty pallor was gone from
his face. Years had outgrown the heritage of physical disorder. I had
always noted how his thoughts formed, slowly, thoroughly, without
adornment, but each thought straining his limitations to the roof of
his brain. If an action were involved in any of Rawder’s thoughts,
he carried out that action, as good hounds run--to the death. I saw
now that wonderful look about him, that Heaven-warmed something which
distinguishes a man who has great work to do in the world. Perhaps I
alone could see it. They say God never sends a great soul among men
without some one to recognize it. It may be that the honor is mine in
the case of Rawder. Stricken as I was, I could not help noting his
endurance of concentration. This, as you know, is the gift only of
mystics. He was driving the monkey-mind of the Mindayan interpreter
to the beds of torture with it.... He saw, at last, that my eyes were
open, and came to me, kneeling down to take my hand. The native seized
the moment to escape.
“It transpired I was in the real village, two miles back from the port.
The Mindayans had brought me with several American soldiers who had
wandered the night before over the edge of camp, to furnish a bright
torture-entertainment in the town-plaza. Rawder had saved my life, but
the others had gone out in unmentionable ways.
“‘I was awake when they brought you in,’ he said. ‘These people have
not rallied to me very strongly yet, or I could have saved the boys
who were captured.... But you--I begged for your life through the
interpreter, saying that you were a great teacher and not a soldier,
showing them the difference in your garments--and your face.’
“Perhaps you can picture, Miss Noreen, his struggle with the natives,
while I had lain unconscious that night.... I explained to him that
Tarrant’s command took him for a deserter and a renegade, whose
leadership had made fiends of the Tagals. He stared out in the open
for a long time without speaking. He was not whipped nor enraged, as a
lesser man would be. I think I shall always remember his words:
“‘I seem to fail so many times and in so many ways before getting
started in my real work, Mr. Routledge. The soldiers are not to blame.
They could not understand me; and yet my purpose was so simple. I
should not have told them that I meant to be a missionary in Asia
when my enlistment was through. It confused them. Some time all will
understand. Some time I shall do well and not fail.’
“‘But how did you get away from the command?’ I asked.
“‘I do not know,’ he answered. ‘During the fight I fell from the heat
and a slight wound. I awoke alone, concealed my arms in the jungle,
and tried to follow the troop. I must have mistaken the trail, because
I never saw the American outfit again. Three days of night travel
brought me close to the big native coast town of Triacnakato, where I
fell in with a party of Mindayans, there on a trading voyage----’
“‘Tell me, Rawder,’ I interrupted, ‘why you joined the cavalry in the
first place.’
“‘Asia called to me. Always, in those last days in Boston I heard Asia
call me to work. I had no money to reach the Pacific nor to cross it,
so I was enlisted with a regiment ordered to service here. I had heard
of certain soldiers doing good work among their fellows in the old
English regiments, and thought that until I was free again I might
be a help in the troop. White men do not seem to listen to me, Mr.
Routledge.’
“Thus he talked, Miss Noreen. Do you like him a little bit--my great
man, Rawder?”
The girl regarded him hesitatingly for a moment, as if to reply was not
easy. “I like him so well,” she answered at last, “that I wish it were
my destiny to meet him every little while up the years, as you do. Tell
me all.”
“And so he had started in to teach the words of John Wesley, and
others, to these Mindayans whom Spain had left to themselves on account
of their ferocity. God knows why the Mindayans gave him a Messiah’s
chance to learn their language and explain his message, but they let
him live. And now I must tell you about another moment or two of
battle. There has been far too much war already for your frightened
eyes, but this is short and about my bravest man.
“As we talked, there was a sharp crack of a Krag carbine. I could not
rise, but crawled to the doorway. The Mindayans had formed in the plaza
for action. Tarrant was coming with his squadron of cavalry to settle
for the murders of the night before, and the naked Mindayans essayed
to meet him in the open--as the Tagals of Luzon had never dared to
do. It was all on in a moment. Out of the jungle came the boys from
the States--queer, quick lines, blowing their bubbles of white smoke,
dropping down to fire and running forward in skirmish, answering the
trumpet-talk as running metal answers to the grooves of a mold. In the
blazing open--in a light so intense that it was pain to look through
it--the forces met. Mindayans, with guns dating from Magellan; the
Americans with their swift, animate Krags; a squadron of white men,
three skeleton troops picked from forty States, stacked against a
thousand-odd glistening blacks all enthused to die. Hell’s forbidden
chambers were emptied that hour, Miss Noreen. I hated war then--but
have hated it since far more.
“They met--before my eyes they met--and the dead flew out of the lines
like chaff, and were trampled like chaff by the toilers. Hand-to-hand
at last; shiny black of flesh against the dull green-brown of khaki;
the jungle alive with reserves exchanging poisoned salads of metal;
science against primal lust; seasoned courage against fanaticism;
yellow sky above, yellow sand beneath; blood-letting between, and the
eternal jungle on every hand. It was a battle to haunt and debase a
watcher’s brain.
“I did not know Tarrant’s prowess until that day. One man might falter
in his command, but the lines were rigid as steel. His trumpeter
interpreted every movement of the commander’s lips. I pawed the matting
of the hut, but could not lift the anchorage of my hips. Rawder stood
above me, watching, the lines of his sweating face weaving with sorrow.
The thing was growing upon me--what the end of the fight would mean
to him--but his sad face was clean of all fear. Years ago, when I was
a boy and loved physical courage, I should have worshipped that clean
look of his. Tears in his eyes for the men who had brutalized him!...
“There is always a last minute to a fight, Miss Noreen,--when each
force puts forth its final flicker of courage, and the lesser zeal is
killed. The last drain of gameness wins the battle, when strength and
strategy are gone. It wins for spiders and boys and armies. Tarrant had
it.... When it was all over, the men of Rawder’s troop saw him in the
doorway and rushed forward.
“‘Mr. Routledge,’ he said softly, ‘they are coming for me. The boys
have spoiled my mission here.’
“His hand touched my forehead. The ghastly illness left me.... I don’t
believe in telling a lady a story which one would refrain from telling
his fellow war-scribes, Miss Noreen, but believe me, you have impelled
it with perfect listening----”
“His hand touched your forehead,” she repeated.
“Yes, and there was something about the touch that a dealer in
war-stuff could not very well enlarge upon in print. At one moment I
was but the shell of a man--and the next I could rise.
“Rawder’s old troop was running forward to finish him--Tarrant in the
lead. I tried to make them hear--these white men, as they rushed in,
full of the hang-over hell of a fight. But they would not hear me. The
men saw only the crown of a great day--to kill the deserter who had
led the Tagals against them in Luzon--Rawder, the renegade, whom they
believed stood also behind the deaths of last night and this day. To
kill him after whipping the Mindayans would call down the glory of the
Pantheon.... Rawder stepped back, smiling, empty of hand. I managed to
trip Tarrant and yell the story in his ears as he fell. A top-sergeant
went by me with a native-knife.... The fluids were running from the man
who had saved me, before Tarrant or I could intervene, but the rest
were stopped.
“Hours afterward, in the night, he regained consciousness. At least,
consciousness wavered in his eyes, and I bent to hear, ‘I am not yet to
die.’...
“And it was true, Miss Noreen, in spite of a fearful wound--but that
is all healed.... Tarrant was relieved from Minday. Back in Manila, we
learned that the real renegade of lower Luzon had been captured alive
by volunteer infantry. His name is Devlin, and he is since notorious in
Luzon story. Through Tarrant, whom I saturated with the substance of
Rawder’s character, my bravest man was discharged for disability....
A month ago, I left him on the Hong Kong water-front. He had found
night-work among the sailors--saving them from the human vultures who
prey upon poor Jack-ashore-with-money-in-his-pocket--hard, evil-judged
work, but the only kind that Rawder knows so far. Many a drugged or
drunken sailor has awakened on board his own ship with a tithe of his
earnings and a whole skin left, to wonder vaguely in after voyages
who was his strange-voiced, gentle-handed protector--the last he
remembered in Hong Kong.... Rawder told me I should find him in India
next--said that he was called to the heart of India by a dream. He is
to find his teacher.... Is it beyond belief to you, Miss Noreen, that
there is a great meaning in this Indian shadow which has fallen upon
my bravest man? I have known Hindus who could look beyond the flesh
of men--despised by their own race--and discover souls of stirring
evolution and inspiring purity.”
Jerry Cardinegh entered. Noreen caught her breath quickly, as if
suddenly awakened from a dream.
“I feel that some time I shall see your bravest man, Routledge-san,”
she whispered.
FIRST CHAPTER
MOTHER INDIA IS SAID TO BE QUIVERING WITH HATRED FOR HER WHITE CHILD,
THE BRITISH FOUNDLING
The dusk was stretching out over the windy hills. There had been
a skirmish that day in upper India. Two British columns which had
campaigned for months apart telescoped with frightful sounds of
gladness. Her Majesty’s foot-soldiers, already tightly knotted about
their supper-fires, hooted the cavalrymen who were still struggling
with halter-shanks, picket-lines, and mounts that pounded the turf
and nickered sky-high for the feed-wagons to come in. Every puff of
wind bore a new smell--coffee, camels, leather, gun-reek, cigarettes,
saddle-blankets, and nameless others. To-morrow there would be a
mile square of hill-pasture so tainted by man and beast that a
native-bullock would starve before cropping there until the season of
torrents soaked it sweet again.
The civilian correspondents grouped together for mess. There was
Bingley of the _Thames_, respected but not loved, and rather better
known as the “Horse-killer”--a young man of Napoleonic ambition and
Cowperish gloom. There was Finacune of the _Word_, who made a florid
romance of war-stuff, garnished his battle-fields with palms and
ancient temples, and would no more forget his moonlight than the
estimate of the number slain. Finacune made a red-blooded wooer out
of the British army, and a brown, full-breasted she-devil out of the
enemy. His story of the campaign was a courtship of these two, and it
read like “A Passion in the Desert,” for which the _Word_ paid him well
and loved him mightily. Finacune had another inimitable peculiarity.
He possessed one of those slight, natty figures which even civilized
clothes cannot spoil; and he could emerge from thirty days in the
field, dapper and sartorially fit as from a morning’s fox-hunt.
Then there were Feeney and Trollope and Talliaferro, who carry trays
and announce carriages in this narrative, though high priests of the
press and Londoners of mark.
The point of the gathering was old Jerry Cardinegh, of the _Witness_,
by profession dean of the cult of the British word-painters of war,
but a Tyrone patriot, bone and brain and passion. Just now, old Jerry
was taking a dry smoke, two ounces of Scotch, commanding his servants
to beat a bull-cheek into tenderloin, and adorning the part of master
of ceremonies. Cardinegh wore easily a triple fame: first, and always
first, for the quality of his work; second, for having seen more of
war (twenty-seven campaigns since he messed with the Chinese Gordon,
to this night in Bhurpal) than any other man on the planet; and third
for being the father of Noreen Cardinegh, absolutely the loveliest
young woman manifesting at the present time in London. The old man’s
tenderness of heart for Ireland and for all that Ireland had done and
failed, was known in part among the scribes and Pharisees. It had been
an endless matter of humor among his compatriots. Just now Finacune
remembered the stock question and launched it:
“Jerry, if England and Ireland went to war, which would be your
home-office--London _Witness_ or Dublin _Contemporary_?”
Cardinegh had never answered twice the same. “Neither,” he declared
lightly now, extracting a can of kippered herring from Finacune’s
saddle-bags, “but a captain’s tent, during such times as I wasn’t
leading the Irish to glory. Have you an opener? I need a relish to cut
this whiskey.”
“The old war-horse isn’t always humorous,” remarked Bingley, who was
sitting apart. Bingley always sat apart, lest somebody should see his
black book of notes or borrow his provisions.
Trollope turned to Finacune with a whisper. “The dean is looking ill.
Have you noticed?”
Finacune nodded.
“It would be a heller if this little affair in the hills should prove
the old man’s last campaign,” Trollope drawled softly.
Another figure emerged from the dusk, and Jerry Cardinegh leaped with
a roar into the arms of an agile giant in a great frieze coat. For a
moment it appeared as if the two were in deadly conflict. Pup-tents
were unpinned, supper-kits scattered, native servants crawled off as
from a duel of man-eaters, and the saintly camels lifted their heads in
fresh dismay. It was a good, a relishable greeting, and the proper way
for men who love each other to meet after prolonged absence.
“Arise, my children, and _kow-tow_ to Routledge, your spiritual
father!” Cardinegh commanded at last.
All but Bingley obeyed.
“Get up, you young scut,” Jerry called ominously, “or go feed with the
camels.”
“I haven’t the honor of knowing the gentleman,” Bingley said without
rising.
“Better read your history some more,” the dean observed, turning his
back upon the young lion of the _Thames_. “Gentlemen,” he resumed
with an oratorical pause, “behold the man whom the Gods formed for a
war-correspondent--or a spy, as you like--and they tempered him in
hell’s fire and holy water--the Gods. Gentlemen, this is Routledge, who
knows India better than any of you know London, and he’s an American.
This is Routledge, who rides alone, who stays afield in times of peace
promoting wars for us--and more wars. I say, Routledge, when were you
home last?”
“Sit down, you ‘damaged archangel,’” Routledge said laughingly. “I sat
before your fireside in Cheer Street, London, little more than a year
ago.”
Hearing the name of the newcomer, the “Horse-killer” was not slow to
gain his feet. He came forward hastily, the sullenness gone from his
face, giving place to a mixture of envy and admiration. He stared long
and intently at the gaunt profile of Routledge. Finacune saw the look
and interpreted it for his own pleasure in these words: “And so you are
Routledge, the, just now, so-called greatest of all. Well, I am Bingley
of the _Thames_. I have surpassed all the others in this campaign,
and some time I shall measure wit and grit with you. Meanwhile, you
are worth cultivating.” And truly enough the first words of the
“Horse-killer” as he extended his hand were:
“I am Bingley of the _Thames_, Mr. Routledge.”
“I have both seen and heard of your work, and admired it, Mr.
Bingley,” Routledge responded cordially. “It is good to know you.”
“And I have heard of you, too,” Bingley replied, to the delight of the
others.
Routledge embraced several old friends, but to most he was known less
in person than by reputation. He had a tendency to laugh at the Powers
in the act of making war, a tendency to make the world see that war
was a hang-over from the days when men ate their flesh hot from the
kill, not from the fire. Veiled under all his work, and often expressed
openly in a stinging line, was his conviction that war was a ghastly
imposition upon the men in the ranks. This was considered by the rest
as a mere mental dissipation of a truly great worker.
A certain aloofness added to the mystery and enchantment of the man.
In the field, he would attach himself to some far-ranging column out
for dirty work, choosing his command from an intimate knowledge of
the leader and the men; to which was added a conception of India, her
topography, strategies, fighters, and her methods of thought and action
which could hardly be paralleled--outside of the secret service--in any
British mind.
The _Review_ invariably kept a second man at the heart of things to
cover the routine, so that Routledge could follow his inclinations
for hard-riding and bring in his wondrous tales of far chances, night
attacks, the enemy at first hand, the faces and valor of the few who
hearkened to the swish of the Reaper, the scream from inert flesh as
the spirit flees away--the humor, the horror, the hell of the clash.
It is an axiom of the craft that in a platoon fighting for its life
there is all the grip of human interest that appals in the collision
of fifty-mile battle-fronts; and Routledge played the lesser game to
the seeds. It was said of him that he could crawl into the soldier’s
brain and watch the machinery falter in full blast and break down.
Always you felt, as you read him, that he had a great pity for the
ranker, and a great hate for the system that used him.
Where the Terrible was involved, there was a jolting energy in the
descriptive powers of Routledge. Even the type which bore his messages
from the field to the streets of London seemed sometimes vivid,
crackling characters snapped hot from the reeking centres of war. He
could make his first lines stand out in the thick _Review_ columns like
a desert sunset.
At the end of a campaign, instead of seeking the seductions of
hero-worshipping London, Routledge would drift, possibly disguised,
into some Indian hot-bed, there to study language, occultism, Borgian
poisons, or Cleopatran perfumes. Tales of his ways and his work took
the place of his presence at home in times of peace. Some traveller
coming in from afar would relate how Routledge had smiled through
a six-day water-famine; how Routledge had missed the native knives
which find so often the source of human fountains in the dark. It was
whispered, and accredited, that the Brahmins called him _One_; that
they remembered him as great and distinguished and of sacerdotal caste
in some former incarnation, and were loyal still. This is an honor
so great that there are not five score men in all the occident who
adequately can appreciate it. Mother India is sensitive to the warming
currents of a great man, even though he be a derelict in the world.
Routledge had made the English-speaking world utter his name familiarly
and to look for the same in public prints. For this reason, Finacune,
with his typewriter on his lap, an American _poncho_ spread upon the
turf beneath him, his back against a stone, and a lantern at his elbow,
rained a column upon his machine. Finishing the work with a half-smile,
he hooted aloud:
“Oh, Routledge--see what comes o’ riding alone! In a month or six
weeks, God loving the mails, the _Word_ will publish: ‘The civilian
mess was joined to-night by that young roving planet, Cosmo Routledge,
who in present and former campaigns has driven straight to the source
of exclusive information and pulled the hole in after him.’ Then, for a
stick or two, I have discussed the great frieze coat,” Finacune added
whimsically, “described the prophet’s brow, the slender hands of swift
eloquence, and the sad, ineffable eyes of Routledge, born of America,
a correspondent for the British, a citizen of the world, at home in
India, and mystic of the wars.”
“Just add,” Cardinegh remarked meltingly, “that his heart beats for
Ireland.”
That was a marvellous night. Big natures throbbed in rhythm. Whiskey
as it sometimes will--the devil of it--brought out the brave and true
and tender of human speech. Routledge told a bit of the story of the
great frieze coat.... They were moments of trampling violence in the
narrative; instants of torrid romance--to which the wearer had been a
witness or a listener....
“Ah, they made cloth in those days,” old Jerry sighed. “Would you look
under the collar of it for the name of the old Belfast maker?”
“It’s there, sure enough,” said Routledge, “as Tyrone is water-marked
in the great Cardinegh scroll.”
Jerry did not answer for a moment. His face looked singularly white in
the dark.
“The dean went back to Ireland just before we came out here this
trip,” growled old Feeney, of the _Pan-Anglo News Service_. “It
seems he couldn’t start an insurrection there, so he rushed back to
the _Witness_ office and haunted the cable-editor’s room until the
Bhurpalese took pity on him and began shooting at Tommies.”
Hours passed with talk and laughter, liquor and song. It was strictly
a night session of the inner section of war-painters; and in spirit
the high priests of elder service trooped back to listen among the
low-hanging Indian stars.... It was knee-deep in the morning hours when
Routledge and Cardinegh drew apart at last. They walked out between the
snoring lines, whispering:
“Jerry, what has this narrow-gauge campaign done to you? Fever or
famine? You look drawn and blown and bleached.”
“I am going into the lair after this,” Cardinegh said. “The boys won’t
believe it, but this is absolutely my last fling at the field. I am
going home to Noreen, son, and London and the _Witness_ may go to hell.”
There was unnatural venom in the old man’s words. His tightened hands
stirred restlessly; his eyes, seen in the flare of a match as he lit a
cigarette, were unquiet, alive with some torture of tension. Routledge
gripped the vehement arm.