Pan-Anglo man in Shanghai told me, however, that he thought Routledge
was playing the Chinese end--that is, living just outside the war-zone
and making sallies in, from time to time, when things are piping hot.
The reason he thought Routledge was working this game was the fact
that New York has sprung three or four great stories which London has
missed entirely. It’s all a guess, Miss Cardinegh, but somebody is
doing it, and it’s his kind of service--the perilous, hard-riding kind.
Nobody but a man on the _Inside_ of Asia would attempt it. There was an
American, named Butzel, shot by the Chinese on the Liao River ten days
ago. He was not an accredited correspondent, as I understand it, but
was using the war for a living. Butzel’s death was wired in from the
interior somewhere, and they had it back from New York in Shanghai when
I was there. Did you hear?”
“No.”
“It appears that Butzel planned to get into Liaoyang for the battle,”
Talliaferro went on, “whether the Japanese liked it or not. About the
place where the Taitse flows into the Liao, the river-pirates murdered
him----”
Talliaferro stopped, startled by the look in the face of the woman. Her
eyes were wide, almost electric with suffering, her face colorless. The
lamp-light heightened the effects; also her dress, which was of black
entire. Talliaferro noted such things. He always remembered her hand
that moment, as it was raised to check him, white, fragile, emotional.
“What is it, Miss Cardinegh?” he asked quickly.
“I was thinking,” she replied steadily, “that Mr. Routledge is there
in all likelihood--‘playing the Chinese end,’ as you call it. I was
thinking that he might not have heard that he is vindicated--that he
might be murdered before he learned that my father had confessed.”
She hurried away before the dinner was half through, and Talliaferro
was left to dislike himself, for a short period, for bringing up the
Butzel murder.... Noreen sat again by the window in her room. The story
had frightened her, so that she felt the need of being alone to think.
The dreadfulness of the night before did not return, however.... The
moon rose high to find the Wall again--every part of it, winding in the
mountains.... Was it not possible that Talliaferro was over-conscious
of the dangers of the Chinese end? Routledge had been up there,
possibly since the Yalu battle, and he had proved a master in these
single-handed services of his.... She had heard of Talliaferro’s
capacity to command the highest price, heard of him as an editorial
dictator and of his fine grasp on international affairs, but her father
had once remarked that the Excalibur “did not relish dangling his body
in the dirty area between two firing lines.”... There was hope in her
heart, and she slept.
“Please don’t apologize, Mr. Talliaferro,” she said the next morning,
when he met her sorrowfully. “It is I who should apologize. For a
moment you made me see vividly the dangers up yonder, but I put it all
away and had a real rest. Tell me about the field and Oku.”
Talliaferro was inclined to talk very little, as a rule, but he had
brooded deeply upon his failure in this service, and it was rather a
relief to speak--with Noreen Cardinegh to listen.
“At least, we have added to the gaiety of nations with our silence
in the field,” he said. “It has been the silence of the Great Wall
yonder. We knew nothing even of the main strategy, which was familiar
to all outside who cared to follow the war. Japanese officers were
assigned to overhear what we said to one another. They even opened
our personal mail. The field-telegraph was hot day and night with the
war-business, so that our messages were hung up for days, even with
the life cut out of them. And then when Oku drove into action we were
always back with the reserves--not that I think a correspondent can
do a battle classic for his cable-editor, simply because he mingles
first hand with shrapnel; but we had only the sun and stars to go by
as to which was north and south. Think of it, and the man who writes a
war-classic must have a conception of the whole land and sea array, and
an inner force of his own, to make his sentences shine----”
She smiled a little and straightened her shoulders to breathe deeply
the good sea air. They were walking out toward the Wall.
“But suppose he has the big conception, as you say, and then goes into
the heart of the thing”--her voice became tense--“where the poor brave
brutes are coming together to die?”
“He’ll unquestionably do it better,” said Talliaferro, regarding her
blowing hair with satisfaction to the artistic sense he cultivated.
“Physical heroism is cheap--the cheapest utility of the nations--but it
is not without inspiration to watch.... We had neither--neither facts
nor blood with Oku.”
* * * * *
Long and weary were those August days in Shanhaikwan. Noreen lived
for the end of the battle, and with a prayer that it would end the
war and bring in--all the correspondents. Over and over she mapped
the war-country in her mind, with a lone horseman shutting out her
view of armies. There were moments at night in which she felt that
Routledge-san was not far away--even Liaoyang was less than three
hundred miles away.... Those last days of the month--only a woman can
bear such terrors of tension. Each night-train now brought vagrant
sentences from the field, bearing upon the unparalleled sacrifices of
men by the Japanese. Throughout August thirty-first, Shanhaikwan waited
expectantly for a decision from the battle, but when the night-train
was in the Russians were still holding. Late in the afternoon of
September first, Talliaferro sought Miss Cardinegh bringing an exciting
rumor that the Japanese had won the battle and the city.
“There’s another thing,” he added. “The English agent of the trading
company here--the man of whom you don’t approve--has heard from
Bingley. He will be in from Wangcheng to-night, and something big is
up. Bingley has called for a horse to meet him at the train--a fast
horse. I’ll wager there’s an American correspondent on the train,
Miss Cardinegh, and that the ‘Horse-killer’ plans to beat him to the
cable-office in the half-mile from the station. He wouldn’t wire for a
horse if he were alone. Another matter. Borden, the American Combined
Press man here, looks to have something big under cover. Altogether, I
think there’ll be great stuff on the cable to-night. The chief trouble
is, there won’t be any core--to Bingley’s apple.... I’ll call for you
in a half-hour--if I may--and we’ll walk down to the train together.”
“Thank you. Of course,” she answered.... That half-hour pulled a big
tribute of nervous energy. Noreen did not know what to think, but she
fought back hope with all the strength which months of self-war had
given....
The train appeared at last through the gap in the Great Wall--cleared
torturingly slow in the twilight. Talliaferro directed her eyes to
two saddle-horses on the platform. Borden, the American, was in touch
with a China-boy who held a black stallion of notorious prowess....
She hardly noted. The train held her eyes. Her throat was dry--her
heart stormed with emotion.... She did not scream. Routledge hung far
out from the platform--searching to locate his mount. She covered her
face in her parasol.... This was the end of a race from the field with
Bingley.... She choked back her heart’s cry, lest it complicate.
Routledge sped past her--leaped with a laugh into the saddle of the
black stallion. His eye swept the crowd--but the yellow silk of the
parasol shielded her face. He spurred off toward the cable-office--with
Bingley thundering behind on a gray mount.... Not till then did she
dare to scream:
“Win! Ride to win, Routledge-san!”
Out of the shouting crowd, she ran after the horsemen--past the Rest
House, through the mud-huts of the native quarter.... On she sped,
the night filled with glory for her eyes.... Suddenly there was a
shot--then four more--from ahead. Fear bound her limbs, and she
struggled on--as in the horrid weights of an evil dream.
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
Parting from Noreen Cardinegh on the Bund at Shanghai, Routledge
walked back through the darkness to the German Inn far out on the
Hankow road. He was not conscious of the streets, nor of time passed.
Not a word he had spoken to the woman could he remember, but all that
she had said recurred again and again. He was torn within. The wound
was too deep for heavy pain at first--that would come later with the
drawing-together--but he was dazed, weakened. He turned into the
door of the hostelry and recalled that he had nothing to do there.
He had engaged passage on the _Sungkiang_ for Chifu that afternoon.
His baggage was aboard, and the ship lying on the water-front which
he had left. He turned back, without any particular emotion at his
absentmindedness, but he charged himself with an evil recklessness for
tarrying on the Bund in the afternoon.... Finacune had seen him, and
Noreen....
Jerry Cardinegh was still alive--lost to wars, lost to friends, but
still alive. He was close to death, his brain probably already dead to
big things, and he had not told! Noreen would never know. Routledge
tried to be glad. All his praying, hiding, and suffering had been
to save her from knowing. His lips formed a meaningless declarative
sentence to the effect that he was glad; meaningless, because there
was no sanction in his heart. He was ill and very weary. He wished it
were time for the prophesied wound, and for Noreen to come to him. He
was not powerful enough that moment, walking back to the Bund, to face
the future, and hold the thought that he was to remain an outcast....
“She will come to me when Jerry is dead,” he repeated, and for the
time he could not fight it.... He went aboard, forgetting dinner, and
dropped upon his berth. The _Sungkiang_ put off, out into the river,
and long afterward lifted to the big swell in the offing. These were
but faint touches of consciousness. His mind held greater matters--the
strength of her hand, the breath, the fragrance, the vehemence, the
glory of the woman in the wintry dusk, as she rushed back to her
work--the tearing tragedy of parting; again the pitiless mountains of
separation....
Loose articles were banging about the floor; the pendent oil-lamp
creaked with the pitching of the ship. It was after midnight. Routledge
caught up the great frieze coat and went out on the main-deck. It was a
cold ruffian of a night, but it restored his strength.
She would keep her promise and come to him, when her father was dead.
He faced the thought now that she would never know the truth; that
Jerry Cardinegh would have spoken long since, if he could.... In some
deep dark place of the earth, she would find him; and some British eye,
ever keen, would see them together--the lady and the outcast.... He
would send her away--put on a martyrdom of frost and steel--and send
her away.... If he lied, saying that he wanted no woman--she would go
back.... But Noreen was to find him wounded, fallen. Might he not, in
delirium, utter the truth that her father failed to confess? No, the
human will could prevent that! He would go down close to the very Gates
with his lips locked.
“... I shall take care of your life for you--even in the Leper Valley!”
Routledge thought he must be mad to imagine those words. Her face--as
the words came to him--had been blotted out in the snow and the dark;
yet it was her voice, and the words rang through his soul. She could
not have seen Rawder nor the Hindu. They were lost in Northern India.
He knew nothing of Jasper having passed the hut in Rydamphur that
night, nor of his meeting with Noreen on ship-board. The Leper Valley,
hidden in the great mountains of Southern China, was scarcely a name
to the world. Could Noreen have heard the name, and used it merely as
a symbol of speech for the uttermost parts of the earth? This was the
only adjustment of the mystery upon a material basis.
He fought it all out that night in the icy gale on the main-deck of
the _Sungkiang_, and entered upon the loneliest, harshest campaign and
the bleakest season of his life.... Often it came to him with a great,
almost an overpowering surge--the passion to look into the eyes of
Noreen Cardinegh again and to stand among men, but he fought it with
the grim, immutable fact that he had taken her father’s crime and must
keep it, stand by it, with his dearest efforts until the end. If fate
destined some time to lift the burden--that was resistless.... Except
in bringing in his stories to the cables, he passed the spring and
summer in the deepest seclusion.
This he knew: if he were seen by any of his old friends among the
English, the word would be carried to Jerry Cardinegh, who, if still
alive, might be stirred to confession. To save Noreen from this was the
first point of his sacrifice. If her father were dead, unconfessed,
and word reached her that the outcast had been seen in a certain part
of Manchuria, she would come to share his hell-haunted-life--a thought
which his whole manhood shunned. Moreover, if he were seen by the
British, the sinister powerful fingers of the secret service would
stretch toward him; in which case, if nothing worse happened, he would
be driven from the terrain of war. Work was his only boon--furious,
unabating, world-rousing work. God so loved the world that he gave unto
poor forlorn man his work.... No more loitering on Bunds or Foreign
Concessions for Cosmo Routledge.
From various Chinese bases, he made flying incursions into the
war-belt for the _World-News_--a lonely, perilous, hard-shipping,
and hard-riding service, but astonishingly successful. It was his
flash from Chifu which told New York that the war was on before the
declaration. This was on the night of February eighth. A strong but not
a roaring west wind brought Togo’s firing across the gulf. He chanced a
message and verified it before dawn by an incoming German ship, which
had steamed past the fortress when the Russian fleet was attacked.
Again, he was with the Russians at Wangcheng before the port was
closed, and got the story of the Yalu fight. This through John Milner,
the American consul at Wangcheng, in whom he made a staunch and valued
friend, regretting that it was necessary to do so under the name of
“A. V. Weed.” Milner was an old _World-News_ editor, a man of stirring
energy, and strong in the graces of the Russians at his post. He
was ardent to serve all American interests, and the _World-News_ in
particular. He presented Routledge to General Borodoffsky, who told the
story of the battle; and there was a fine touch in the fact that the
general wept as he related the Russian defeat. The story proved more
complete and accurate than any which the correspondents with Kuroki
managed to get through the Japanese censor. Kuroki’s great losses by
drowning were for the first time brought out. Borodoffsky declared with
tears that the future of the war must not be judged by this battle, as
the Russian defeat was due entirely to an error of judgment. Routledge
was leaving Wangcheng with the story when two British correspondents
arrived. This prevented his return. The Borodoffsky story was filed in
Shanhaikwan.
In a sea-going junk, the third week of May, Routledge crossed the
Liaotung Gulf, hoping to get into Port Arthur, which was not yet
invested. Instead, he stumbled onto the Nanshan story. From the
northern promontory of Kinchow he caught a big and valuable conception
of this literatesque engagement of the land and sea forces, and
returned with it to Chifu for filing.
Back to lower Liaotung again, in early June. In spite of every
precaution, one of Togo’s gunboats ran him down in Society Bay, and he
was sent ashore under a guard. Great luck served him, inasmuch as there
were no English with the Japanese at this place, Pulatien, where he was
held for ten days, while the officers debated upon his credentials. It
was here that Routledge encountered the prettiest feature-story of the
war--the duel of Watanabe and Major Volbars, a prisoner from Nanshan.
The Japanese escorted him to his junk at last, and he put off with
orders from one of Togo’s ensigns to return no more to Kwantung waters.
The battle of Telissu was fought on this day at sea, and he missed it
entirely. With English now in Wangcheng and Chifu, Routledge ordered
his Chinese to sail north, and to put him ashore at Yuenchen, a little
port twenty miles to the west of the Liao’s mouth.
It was only by a squeak that the order was carried out. That was a
night of furies on the yellow gulf. Bent in the hold, thigh-deep
in tossing water, Routledge recalled the hovel in Rydamphur with a
sorry smile. It did not seem at that moment that the storm would
ever permit him to be maimed on land--or a woman to come to him. The
old craft was beaten about under bare poles in a roaring black that
seemed to drop from chaos. The Chinese fought for life, but the gray
of death-fear was upon them. Bruised, almost strangled, Routledge
crouched in the musty hold, until his mind fell at last into a strange
abstraction, from which he aroused after an unknown time. His physical
weariness was extreme, but it did not seem possible that he could have
slept, standing in black, foaming water, and with a demoniacal gale
screeching outside. Yet certainly something had gone from him and had
taken his consciousness, or the better part of it.... It was this
night that Noreen Cardinegh had entered at dusk her little house in
Minimasacuma-cho and met by the easel the visible thought-form of her
lover.
Day broke with the wind lulled, and the old craft riding monster seas,
her poles still to the sky. The daylight sail brought him to Yuenchen;
from whence he made his way northward by land to Pingyang. This town
was but an hour’s saddle to the east of the railroad and telegraph
at Koupangtze--twenty miles west of the junction of the Taitse and
the Liao river, and fifty miles west of Liaoyang. Here he established
headquarters completely out of the white man’s world, rested and wrote
mail stories for several weeks. Toward the end of July, he set out on
a ten days’ saddle trip toward Liaoyang, with the idea of becoming
familiar with the topography of the country, in preparation for the
battle, already in sight. It was on this trip that he was hailed one
afternoon by an American, named Butzel. This young man was sitting on
the aft-gunnel of a river-junk, rolling a cigarette, when Routledge
turned his horse upon the Taitse river-road, four or five miles to the
east of the Liao. Routledge would have avoided the meeting had he been
given a chance, but Butzel gaily ordered his Chinese to put ashore. The
voice was that of a man from the Middle States--and Routledge filled
with yearning to take a white hand. His only friend since he had left
Rawder in India was Consul Milner at Wangcheng.
Butzel had journeyed thus deep into the elder world--as natural an
explorer as ever left behind his nerves and his saving portion of fear.
He hadn’t any particular credentials, he said, and hadn’t played the
newspaper game very strongly up to now. The Japanese had refused to
permit him to go out with any of the armies; and he had tried to get
into Port Arthur with a junk, but Togo had driven him off. He had very
little money, and was tackling China to get to the Russian lines. It
was his idea for the Russians to capture him, and, incidentally, to
show him how they could defend Liaoyang. In a word, he was eluding
Japan, bluffing his way through the interior of China, and about to
enforce certain hospitality from the Russians. A great soul--in this
little man, Butzel.
Routledge delighted in him, but feared for his life. He himself was
playing a similar lone-hand, but he carried Red-beard insignia,
purchased at a big price; and when he had ventured into a river or
sea-junk, he had taken pains to arrange that his receipt for a certain
extortion was hung high on the foremast. Thus was he ever approved
by the fascinating brotherhood of junk pirates. These were details
entirely above the Butzel purse and inclination. The two men parted in
fine spirit after an hour, the adventurer urging his Chinese up the
Taitse toward the Russian lines. He was not so poor as he had been, and
he yelled back joyously to Routledge that there wasn’t enough trails in
this little piker of a planet to keep them from meeting again.
His words proved true. Poor Butzel rode back in state that afternoon,
his head fallen against the tiller and a bullet hole in his breast.
Even his clothing had been taken. The junk was empty except for
the body. With a heavy heart, Routledge attended to the burial and
marked the spot. That night he rode to Koupangtze, and, by paying the
charges, succeeded in arranging for a brief message to be cabled to the
_World-News_; also a telegram to the American consul at Shanghai.
So much is merely a suggestion of the work that told for his paper that
summer. For weeks at a time he was in the saddle, or junking it by sea
and river. Except when driven to the telegraph, he avoided every port
town and every main-travelled road. He was lean, light but prodigiously
strong. A trencherman of ordinary valor would have dragged out a
hateful existence of semi-starvation upon the rations that sufficed
for Routledge; and none but a man in whom a giant’s strength was
concentrated could have followed his travels. The old Manchurian trails
burned under his ponies; and, queerly enough, he never ruined a mount.
He had left Shanghai on the first of February, ill from confinement,
the crowds, and his long sojourn in the great heat of India. The hard
physical life at sea in the Liao gulf and afield in Manchuria, and,
possibly more than anything, his life apart from the English, restored
him to a health of the finest and toughest texture.
China challenged him. He never could feel the tenderness of regard for
the Yellow Empire that India inspired, but it held an almost equal
fascination. China dwelt in a duller, more alien light to his eyes; the
people were more complicated, less placable and lovable, than Hindus,
but the same mysterious stillness, the same dust of ages, he found in
both interiors; and in both peoples the same imperturbable patience
and unfathomable capacity to suffer and be silent. Routledge moved in
towns almost as unknown to the world as the Martian surfaces; learned
enough of the confusion of tongues to procure necessities; supplied
himself with documents, bearing the seals of certain dark fraternities,
which appeared to pass him from place to place without harm: and, with
a luck that balanced the handicap of an outcast, and an energy, mental
and physical, utterly impossible to a man with peace in his heart, he
pushed through, up to Liaoyang, an almost incredible season’s work.
More and more the thought was borne upon him during July and August
that the coming big battle would bring to him a change of fortune--if
only a change from one desolation to another. He felt that his
war-service was nearing its end. He did not believe that Liaoyang was
to end the war, but he thought it would close the campaign for the
year; and he planned to conclude his own campaign with a vivid intimate
portrait of the battle. Meanwhile he hung afar from the Russian and
Japanese lines, and little Pingyang had a fire lit for him and a table
spread when he rode in from his reconnoissance.
Late in August, when the artillery began, Routledge crossed to the
south bank of the Taitse with a pair of good horses, and left them
about two miles to the west of the city with a Pingyang servant who
had proven trustworthy. On the dawn of the thirtieth he made a wide
detour behind Oku, nearly to Nodzu’s lines, and watched the battle
from Sha peak--one of the highest points of the range. He had studied
Liaoyang long through the intricate Chinese maps; and as the heights
had cleared the fighting-field for Bingley, so now did Routledge grasp
the topography from his eyrie during that first day of the real battle.
Similarly also, he hit upon Kuroki’s flank movement as the likeliest
strategy of the Japanese aggression, and he came to regard it as a fact
before starting for the free cable at Wangcheng the following night.