BOOK I.

_Down Among Men_

BY

WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT

AUTHOR OF “ROUTLEDGE RIDES ALONE,”

“FATE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR,” ETC.

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1913

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

TO THE MEN OF THE UPPER ROOM

... AND THIS IS THE STORY I TOLD YOU THROUGH THE SEVERAL NIGHTS:

OF THE MAN WHO CAME UP THROUGH THE DARK AND THE FIGHTING (OFTEN IN

SUCH A RUCK OF FIGHTING THAT HE COULDN’T HEAR VOICES); HOW HE WAS

PUNISHED BY MEN, BROKEN BY SELF, AND HEALED BY A WOMAN; INDEED, BUT

FOR HER, HE MIGHT HAVE CHOSEN THE LONG WAY OF THE BRUTE TO PUT ON HIS

POWERS AND ATTAIN THE CERTAIN ROYALTY OF THE HUMAN ADULT IN THIS YEAR

OF OUR LORD. SHE PAID THE PRICE; SHE WAS THE MAN-MAKER; SHE SAW THE

WORLD-MAN SHINING AHEAD.... IT IS A STORY OF THE PATH AT OUR FEET, OF

THE COMPASSIONATES WHO DRAW NEAR TO SPEAK, WHEN WE ARE BRAVE ENOUGH

TO LISTEN, OF THE WOMEN WHO WALK BESIDE US. A TALE OF THE ROAD AS WE

GO--MANY ARE AHEAD, MANY BEHIND--BUT WE DO NOT TRAVEL THIS STRETCH

AGAIN.

--_W. L. C._

KAO LIANG

_No one thought of kao liang._

_Morning did not mention it in his great story; even Duke Fallows did

not think of it._

_Kao liang, the millet of China. Inland seas of it are there, green

in the beginning of its flow, dull gold in its high tide._

_A ruffianly scouring grain. Rice is its little white sister. Millet

is the strength of the beast, the mash of the world’s poor. A hundred

millions of acres of Asia are in yield or waiting for kao liang to-day.

Remember the poor._

_In Manchuria kao liang grows strong and high. Its fox-tails brush

the brows of the tall Chinese of the north country. It brushed the caps

of the Russian soldiers one certain Fall._

_The Censurer came with the planting in that year. Kao liang was

like a soft green mould upon the hills and valleys when he came

to his battle-fields. He was watching for a browner harvest and a

ruddier planting. Fall plowing and red planting--for that, he came to

Liaoyang._

_His soldiers trampled it, devastated the young grain with their

formations, foraged their beasts upon it. Yet the millet grew, hardened

and covered the earth--for the poor must be served. Out of flood and

gale and burning, it waxed great, filling the hills and the hollows,

closing in on the city, climbing thinly to the Passes._

_Its protest to the invasion was mute as China’s, but it did not

run. Before the Japanese, it closed in. It was ripe when the brown

flanker crossed the Taitse. It was ripe when two Slav chiefs took

their thousands forth to form the anvil upon which the flanker was

to be broken. The Cossacks had been feeding their beasts upon it for

many days, and they drank in the deep hollows where the roots of

kao liang held the rain. It was ripe for the world’s poor, when the

Sentimentalist strode forth at last--the hammer that was to break the

spine of the flanker._

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

PAGE

AFIELD 1

BOOK TWO

THE HILL-CABIN 115

BOOK THREE

THE BARE-HEADED MAN 239

BOOK I.

AFIELD

1

THE town of Rosario was ahead. The cavalry expected to sup

and sleep there. Chance of firing presently from the natives was

pure routine. John Morning, back in the second troop, on the horse

of a missing soldier, wondered if years of service and exploration

would make him ever as great a correspondent as Mr. Reever Kennard

looked. The wide, sloping shoulders of the Personage were to be seen

occasionally when the trail crooked, far forward and near the General.

The bit of fighting was over before the rear troopers got rightly into

the skirmish-line (every fourth trooper holding four horses); and

now the men breathed and smoked cigarettes in one more Luzon town;

and another _Alcalde’s_ house was turned into headquarters....

This was a brigade expedition of December, 1899. Two weeks before the

General had ridden out of Manila. Various pieces of infantry had been

left to garrison the many towns which would not stay held without pins.

Two or three days more, then Batangas, and the big ride was over, the

lower Luzon incision complete, and drainage established.

Morning, with the troopers, had to look to his mount in regulation

fashion, and did not reach Headquarters until after the others. The

_Alcalde’s_ house in Rosario as usual stood large among the

straw-thatched bamboo huts. The little upper room which Morning had

come to expect through the courtesy of the staff, was easily found.

The saddle-bags and blanket-rolls of Mr. Kennard and his companion,

a civilian, named Calvert were already there, each in a corner.

Morning’s thought was that he would hear these men talk after supper.

In a third corner he placed his canteen, and shyly tucked away in the

shadow, the limp haversack.

There was a small table in the room, of black wood worn shiny by the

hands of the house, as the black wood of the floors was worn shiny by

the bare feet of servants. Upon the table was a small sheath-knife, the

brass handle of which was inscribed _Mio Amigo_.

It becomes necessary to explain that the human male is discriminating

about his loot, by the time he has been afield two weeks in a tropical

island, especially if he has camped in a fresh town every night. The

day’s march makes him value every pound that he can throw away, for

he has already been chafed by each essential button and buckle. A tin

pail of silver pesos unearthed in a church had passed from hand to

hand among the soldiers. As the stress of the days increased (and the

artificial sense of values narrowed to the fundamentals such as food

and tobacco and sleep), Morning had observed with curious approval that

the silver hoard leaked out of the command entirely--to return to the

natives for further offerings to the priests.

So the knife on the table aroused no desire. It was not even a good

knife, but _Mio Amigo_ took his eye, as if affording a bit of

insight to the native mind. It could not have been wanted by Mr.

Kennard or Mr. Calvert, since it lay upon the table. Morning put it

in his coat, knowing he would toss it away before to-morrow’s sun

was high. In his hot moist hand the brass-handle sent up a smell of

verdigris. A little later in the village road, he encountered Mr.

Reever Kennard in the act of purchasing ancient canned stuff from a

native-woman, too lame to run before the cavalry. Morning was not

natural in the Presence.

The great man was broad and round and thick. He criticised generals

afield, and in Washington when times were dry. He had dined with the

President and signed the interview. His head dropped forward slightly,

his chin sunk in its own cushions. He bought the native wares with the

air of a man who is keeping a city in suspense, and the city deserves

it. Morning stood by and did not speak. There was no reason for him to

stay; he did not expect companionship; he had nothing to say; no money

with which to buy food--and yet, having established himself there, he

could not withdraw without remark of some kind. At least he felt this;

also he felt cruelly the cub. He was at home in this service with

packers and enlisted men, but always as now, officers, and others of

his own work, made him feel the upstart.

Mr. Kennard now turned to perceive him, his eyes opening in the “Bless

me--what sort is this?” manner of the straying Englishman; and John

Morning, quite in a funk, fell to enforcing an absurd interest in the

native sheath-knife. Kennard was not drawn to such a slight affair,

but perceiving the menial in Morning, allowed him to carry some of his

purchases back to Headquarters.

Supper was a serious matter to the boy. He had no money nor provisions.

In the usual case, money would have been no good--but there were a few

things left in the shop of the lame woman. The field ration was light;

and while he would not go hungry if the staff-officers knew, it was a

delicate matter to make known his grubless state. Morning rambled over

the town, after helping Mr. Kennard to quarters, and returned empty to

the upper room. Mr. Calvert was there and appeared to see Morning for

the first time. Calvert was a slender quiet chap, and believed in what

he had to say.

“Where did you get that little sheath-knife you showed Mr. Kennard?” he

asked abruptly.

Morning sickened before the man’s eyes. His life had been fought out in

dark, rough places. He was as near twenty as twenty-five. He had the

way of the under-dog, who does not expect to be believed, looking for

the worst of it, whether guilty or not. He told Calvert he had found

the knife on this table.

“I thought I put it in my saddle-bags,” Calvert said.

“You are very welcome to it. The _Mio Amigo_ made me look at it

twice----”

“That’s why I wanted it. Take this for your trouble.”

Calvert placed a bit of paper money on the table between them.

“It was no trouble. I don’t want the money.”

“Take it along. Don’t think of it again.”

Morning didn’t want to appear stubborn. This was the peculiarity of the

episode. The thought of taking the money repelled him. The connection

of the money with supper occurred, but not with the strength of his

dislike to appear perverse or bad-tempered.... He saw all clearly after

he had accepted the paper, but the matter was then closed. He was very

miserable. He had proved his inferiority. The little brush with big men

had been too much for him. He belonged among the enlisted....

He went to the lame woman and bought a bottle of pimientos and a live

chicken. The latter he traded for a can of bacon with a soldier.

2

IMPERIAL HOTEL, Tokyo, early in March, 1904.... The Japanese

war office had finally decided to permit six American correspondents

to accompany each army. The Americans heard the news with gravity.

There were two men for every place. Only three Japanese armies were

in conception at this time. The first six Americans were easily

chosen--names of men that allowed no doubt; and this initial group,

beside being the first to take the field, was elected to act as a

committee to appoint the second and third sets of six--twelve places

and thirty waiting. The work at hand was delicate.

The committee was in session in the room of Mr. Reever Kennard. Five of

the second list had been settled upon when the name of John Morning (of

the Open Market) was brought up. It was Duke Fallows of San Francisco,

who spoke:

“I don’t know John Morning, but I know his stuff. It’s big stuff;

he’s the big man. We’ve gone too far without him already. He has more

right to be on the committee than I. He was here before I was. He has

minded his own business and taken quarters apart. I had no intention of

breaking into the picture this way, but the fact is, I expected John

Morning to go in first on the second list. Now that there is only one

place left, there really can’t be any doubt about the name.”

Mr. Reever Kennard of the _World-News_ now arose and waited for

silence. He got it. The weight of Mr. Reever Kennard was felt in this

room. Everything in it had weight--saddle and leggings of pigskin,

gauntlets, typewriters, cameras, the broadside of riding-breeches,

and a little arsenal of modern inventions which only stop firing upon

formal request. Without his hat, Mr. Reever Kennard was different,

however. Much weight that you granted under the big hat, had left that

arid country for the crowded arteries of neck and jowl and jaw, or,

indeed, for the belted cosmic center itself. He said:

“Mr. Fallows talks wide. This Morning is out on a shoe-string; and

while he may have a bit of force to handle certain kinds of action,

it isn’t altogether luck--his not getting a good berth. The young

man hasn’t made good at home. He hasn’t the money backing to stand

his share of the expense. The War Office suggests that each party of

correspondents employ a sutler----”

Fallows was still standing and broke in:

“I’m interested in that matter of making good at home. I’ve seen the

work of most Americans here, and I believe John Morning to be the best

war-writer sent out from the States. As for the shoe-string, I’ll

furnish his tooth-brush and dinnercoat--if the sutler insists----”

“We understand very clearly the enthusiasm of Mr. Fallows who wants a

second column-man for his paper. Doubtless this Morning is open----”

“I hadn’t thought of it, but certainly the _Western States_ would

profit, if John Morning turned part of his product there. How about

your _World-News_ on that?”

“I favor Mr. Borden for the sixth place in second column,” Kennard said

simply.

“Borden reached Tokyo three weeks after Morning--and never campaigned

before.”

“He’s one of the best of the younger men in New York--a Washington

correspondent of big influence----”

“I have no objection to him, except as one to take the place that

belongs to John Morning. I can’t see him there.”

Kennard looked about him. Morning was not well known, having been

little seen at the _Imperial_ in the last six weeks. Fallows had

not helped him by saying he was the best war-writer sent out from the

States; still in a general way he could not be put aside. Kennard saw

this.

“I wasn’t going to hurt Morning badly, if I could help it,” he said,

“but Mr. Fallows has rather forced it. This Morning isn’t straight. We

caught him stealing a sheath-knife from the saddle-bags of Archibald

Calvert down in Luzon four or five years ago. Morning said he found it

on a table in the room assigned to us. He took money from Calvert for

restoring the knife.”

Fallows laughed at this.

“I can’t believe the story,” he said. “The man who did the stuff I’ve

read, isn’t stealing sheath-knives from another’s saddle-bags.... Oh, I

don’t mean that it didn’t seem true to you, Kennard----”

Kennard had waited for the last, and was not good to look at until it

came. He turned quickly to the others. Borden was chosen.

“You’ve still got a place to fill in the first list,” said Fallows.

The committee was now excited. The five faces turned to the Westerner.

“I repeat, Kennard, that your remarks may be within the letter of

truth, but I wouldn’t campaign in the same army with a man who’d

bring up a thing like that against a boy--and five years afterward.

Understand, I have never spoken a word to John Morning----”

“You’re not giving up your place?” said the committee.

“Exactly.”

“Then you’ll take Borden’s with the second----?”

“I have nothing against Borden. I wouldn’t spoil the chance of a man

already chosen.”

“Then first with the third army,” urged the committee.

“I can do better than that,” said Fallows. “Gentlemen, I thank you, and

beg to withdraw.”

3

JOHN MORNING waved back the rickshaw coolie at the door of the

little Japanese Inn, where he had been having his own way for several

weeks, and walked down the Shiba road toward the _Imperial_ hotel.

He had half-expected to get on the committee, which meant work with the

first army and a quick start; failing in that, he looked for his name

to be called early in the second list, and was on the way now to find

out. Morning shared the passion of the entire company to get afield at

any cost.

Reasoning, however, did not lift his restlessness and apprehension.

He had not been on the spot. He had been unable to afford life at the

_Imperial_; and yet, the costliness of it was not altogether vain,

since the old hotel had become a center of the world in the matter

of war-correspondence. Japan reckoned with it as the point of foreign

civilian force. While his brain could not organize a condition that

would spoil his chance, Morning’s more unerring inner sense warned him

that he was not established, as he walked in the rain.

His name was not posted in any of the three groups. The card blurred

after his first devouring glance, so that he had to read again and a

third time. For a moment he was out of hand--seething, eruptive. Yet

there was nothing to fight....

Corydon Tait, a young Englishman with whom he had often talked and

laughed, was standing by. Tait’s name was not down. Morning controlled

himself to speak courteously.

The Englishman looked beyond him at the card. A chill settled upon

Morning’s self-destructive heat. This was new in his world. In the

momentary misunderstanding, he grasped Tait’s arm.

“Really, old chap, I’d prefer you not to do that,” the other said,

drawing his arm away. “It must be plain that I don’t know you.”

“I thought you were joking,” said Morning.

4

BACK on Shiba Road in the beginning of dusk, he turned to the

native inn. The door slid open before his hand touched the latch; his

figure having been seen through the papered lattice. The proprietor

bowed to the matting and hissed with prolonged seriousness, hissed

in fact until the American had removed and exchanged his shoes for

sandals. The hand-maidens appeared and bowed laughingly. The old

kitchen drudge emerged from her chimney and ogled. The mother of the

house took the place beside her lord on the rostrum-of-the-pencils.

She did not hiss, but it was very clear that the matting under the

white man’s feet was far above her in worthiness.

There was something of this formality with his every entrance. Morning

had felt silly during the first days as he passed through the hedge of

bent backs; the empty cringing and favor-groveling had seemed indecent.

But now (in the dusk of the house before the candles) a faint touch of

healing came from it. They had all served him. He had been fearfully

over-served. They had bothered his work through excessive service--so

many were the hands and so little to do. The women were really happy

to work for him. To-night, a queer gladness clung to their welcome.

He had fallen indeed to sense it. He was starving for reality, for

some holy thing. They had stripped him at the _Imperial_. In his

heart he was trying to make a reality now of this mockery of Japanese

self-extinction.

The bath-boy, wet from steam, with only a loin-cloth about him,

followed Morning to his room. The American was not allowed to bathe

alone; would not have been allowed to undress himself, had he not

insisted upon the privilege. He sat in a tub, three walls of which

were wood and the fourth of iron. Against the outside of the latter,

burned a furious fire of charcoal. For the benefits of this bath, he

was begged to make no haste and to occupy his mind with matters of the

higher life. A moment or two before the water reached a boiling-point,

Morning was allowed to escape. Exceeding pressure of business was

occasionally accepted as precluding the chance of a bath for one day,

but to miss two days in succession, without proving that he had bathed

elsewhere, meant a loss of respect, and a start of household whispering.

He was sick to get back to work, turned to it for restoration and

forgetfulness, as a man to a drug. Moreover, there was need, for he

was on space. Two or three papers in the Mid-west used what he could

write, though he had no holding contracts, and had left Chicago with

such haste to catch a steamer, that there had been no chance to make

an arrangement, whereby these papers might have used the same story

simultaneously. And then, there had been a delay of nearly a day

in Vancouver. This time in Chicago would have been enough for the

establishment of a central office and an agent on percentage, who

could have enlarged his market without limit, and cut down his work

to one letter a day. Instead, he did the same story now, from three

different angles. It had been this way before. With war in the air,

Morning was unable to breathe at home. Off he went, without a return

ticket--tourist cars and dingy second-class steamer passage--but with

a strange confidence in his power to write irresistibly. It was like a

mark--this faith of his in the ability to appeal.

All his life he had lived second-class. To-night he wondered if it

would always be so; if there was not something in the face of John

Morning, something that others saw at once, which placed him instantly

among culls and seconds in the mysterious adjustments of the world.

They had made him feel so at the _Imperial_, before this episode.

Men who didn’t write ten lines a day were there on big incomes; and

others, little older than he, with only two or three fingers of his

ability, on a safe salary and flexible expense account.

The day was brought back to him again and again. The cut of Corydon

Tait had crippled him. He felt it now crawling swiftly along the nerves

of his limbs until it reached his brain, and remaining there coldly

like undigested matter in a sick body. He felt his face queerly. There

was neither fat nor flabbiness upon it. He could feel the bone. His

fingers brushed his mouth, and a sort of burn came to him. It was the

finest thing about John Morning. There was a bit of poetry about it,

a touch of tenderness, finer than strength. Passion was in the mouth,

intensity without intentness, not a trace of the boarish, nor bovine.

It is true you often see the ruin of such a mouth in quiet places where

those of drugs and drinks are served; but you see as well the finished

picture upon the faces of those men lit with world’s service, who have

heard the voice of the human spirit, and are loved by the race, because

they have forgotten how to love themselves.

Morning knew it only as his weakness. It was the symbol to-night of his

failure.... Those at the _Imperial_ had seen it; they had dared to

deny him because of it. The greatest among the war-men were thin-lipped

and sinewy-jawed--the soldier face.... He knew much about war; none had

campaigned more joyously than he. In the midst of peril, courage seemed

altogether obvious and easy; his fearlessness was too natural for him

to be surprised at it, though it surprised others....

The typewriter buzzed on. Wearily he caught up the trend, but the drive

was gone, although there was hardly a lull in the registering of the

keys for two-thirds of a page. Always before, this sort of hackwork had

been done with a dream of the field ahead. His forces fused. He had

been denied a column. His hand brushed across his face and John Morning

was ashamed--ashamed of his poverty, of his work, of his own nature,

which made a tragedy of the cut of Corydon Tait; ashamed of the heat in

his veins from the stimulants he had drunk; ashamed because he had not

instantly demanded his rights at the _Imperial_; ashamed of the

mess of a man he was, a fool of his volition and vitality, commonness

stamped on his every feature.

Morning’s affinity for alcohol was peculiar. He worked with it

successfully. So resilient was his health that he was usually fresh in

the morning. Often he had finished a long evening of work on pretty

good terms with himself, the later pages of copy coming in a cloud of

speed.... The copy-producing seemed to use up the whipping spirit,

rather than himself; at least, he treasured this illusion. The first

bottles of rice-beer lasted the longest.... He recalled now that the

maid-servants had twice heated _sake_ for him at supper; as for

the rice-beer he had been more than ever thirsty to-night. He glanced

into the corner where the bottles were and a sense of uncleanness came

over him--as if his body were flowing with the slow spirit, like a

sea-marsh at high tide.

... He heard the shafts of a rickshaw grate upon the gravel outside.

Amoya had come; it was midnight. He opened the papered lattice. The

runner was bowing by his cart, holding his broad hat with both hands.

Morning covered his machine, put fresh charcoal in the brazier, caught

up his hat and overcoat, and shuffled down the stairway, holding

his slippers on with his toes. The door-boy gave him his shoes and

opened the way to the street. Morning greeted Amoya with a pat on the

shoulder, and climbed into the cart.

“Yoshuwara?” the runner asked.

“No, you shameless ruffian!”

“No?” Amoya squeaked pleasantly.

“No--not--no must do.”

Morning waved his arm, signifying solitary and peaceful enjoyment of

the night air and contemplation of the dark city. These night journeys

had become the cooling features of his day. Amoya was a living marvel,

the rickshaw runner incomparable--tireless, eager, very proud of his

work; too old to be spoiled. He was old; indeed, enough to be Morning’s

father, but his limbs were young, and his great trunk full of power

unabated.

The night was dark, damp, no moon nor star. The cold which was almost

tempted thinly to crust the open drains, was welcome to the man’s

nostrils. Amoya warmed and gathered speed. Up the broad Shiba Road he

sped, past the far dim lights of the highway, past Shiba temple, the

tombs of the Ronins, past the cavalry barracks (by far the best joke on

Japan), and the last of the known land-marks.

Now Morning suffered strange temptations. Few white men who have lived

any time in Japan have escaped. A Japanese house with every creature

comfort was within his resources even now; wholesome food, _sake_,

rice-beer were cheap; excellent service, even such service as Amoya’s

was laughably cheap. Why not sink into this life and quit the agony?...

Why did he think of it as _sinking_ into this life? Why did he

agonize anyway?... There was always a fresh sore on him somewhere.

Surely other men did not burn back and forth every day as he did.

The shame came again. He ordered Amoya back within an hour, left him at

the door of the Inn, drenched with sweat and delighted with his extra

fare.

Morning slid open the door of his room. Nothing could be seen but the

glow of the brazier, yet he knew some one was within.... A series of

mattresses and robes had been taken out from a chest of drawers and

made up on the matting. The women as usual, had waited for him to go

out. He lit the lamp.

A little Japanese maid-servant was curled up asleep at the foot of

his bed. Morning sat down upon the cushion and mused curiously....

It was thus that Naomi had ordered Ruth to steal into the couch at

the feet of Boaz. Ruth had found a home, and was not long allowed to

make herself glad with mere gleanings.... It was this sort of thing

that made Morning hate Japan. In the eyes of the old, limp-backed

Inn-keeper, this child was a woman. He would not have dared to delegate

a mere maid-servant to ply the ancient art with his guest, but there

were extenuations here: the delicacy and subtlety of the little one’s

falling asleep, and the child-like freshness of the offering. It was

this last that stung Morning, because he knew the old Japanese found a

commercial value in this very adolescence.

He had smiled at this child during the day, and asked her

name--Moto-san--and repeated it after her, as one might have done the

name of a child. She had just come in from the fields, reported the

bath-boy who preëmpted any leakage of English whatsoever, and who was

frequently on the verge of being understood.... Her hands showed labor,

and she was not ashen as the Japanese beauties must be, but sweet and

fragrant--and so little.

“It is the same the world over, when they come in from the fields,”

he said. “Good God, she ought to be sleeping with her dolls.... Poor

little bit of a girl in a man’s country ... and they sent you in here

to keep me from night-riding. One cannot complain of hospitality ...

Moto-san... Moto-san....”

She stirred, and snuggled deeper. “She is truly asleep,” he thought.

“Moto-san!” he said softly again.

The girl opened her eyes, which suddenly filled with fright. Morning

patted her shoulder gently. And now she sat up staring at him, and

remembering.

He leaned his head upon his palm and shut his eyes--sign of falling

asleep--then pointed her to the door.... Morning could not tell if

she were pleased. It all seemed very strange to her--her smile was

frightened. He repeated the gesture. She had slid off the bed to the

matting upon her knees, facing him. And now she bowed to the floor, and

backed out so, bowing with frightened smile.... He reflected dismally

that she had lost value for the eye of the Inn-keeper.

5

MORNING’S idea as he reached the _Imperial_ next forenoon

was to call the committee together, or a working part of it, and to

demand why he had been barred from the projected columns.... The

high and ancient lobby was practically empty. It appeared that the

correspondents _de rigeur_ and _en masse_ were posing for a

photograph on the rear balcony, which was reached through the billiard

room. Morning went there and stood by the window while the picture

was taken. It required an hour or more. He was passed and re-passed.

Two or three Americans seemed on the point of asking him to take his

place with the fifty odd war-men, but they checked themselves before

speaking. Morning felt vilely marked. Stamina did not form within him.

He did not realize that something finer than physical courage was

challenged.

He watched the backs of the formation--the squared shoulders, the

planted feet. He knew that in the minds of the posing company,

each was looking at his own. From each individual to his lesser

or greater circle, the finished picture would go. It would be

reproduced in the periodicals which sent these men--“_our special

correspondent_”--designated. Personal friends in each case would

choose their own from the crowd. The little laughing chap in brown

corduroys who arranged the group was the best and bravest man in field

photography. He left the camera now to his assistant, and took place

with the others. Men of twenty campaigns were there. The dim eyes of

a certain little old man had looked upon more of war than any other

living human being. In one brain or another, pictures were coiled from

every campaign around the world during the past forty years. Never

before in history had so many famous war-men gathered together. It

would be a famous picture.... He, John Morning, would hear it in the

future:

“... Why weren’t you in that picture?”

“I sat in the billiard room behind at a window. I had been barred out

of a place among the first three columns. I was under a cloud of some

kind.”

No, that would not be his answer. Various lies occurred.

This little mental activity completed itself without any volition. It

was finished now, like the picture outside--the materials scattering.

The idea of the truth merely appeared through a mental habit of looking

at two sides--a literary habit. It had brought no direct relation to

John Morning. But the lies had brought their direct relation.

He could not remain at his place by the window, now that the fifty came

in for drink and play. He was afraid to demand what evil concerning him

was in the minds of men; afraid something would be uncovered that was

true. He felt the uncleanness of drink upon him, and a moral softening

from years of newspaper work, a training begun in glibness, which does

not recognize the rights of men, but obeys a City Desk. He could not

organize a contending force; and yet loathed the thought of return to

the Japanese Inn. He was not ready to face himself alone.

It had never come to him so stirringly as now--the sense of

_something_ within, utterly weary of imprisonment and forced

companionship with the visible John Morning. His misery was a silent

unswerving shame. A feverish impulse almost controlled him to take

something either to lift him away, or permit him to sink in abandonment

from the area of pain.

He stood near the desk in the lobby. Duke Fallows was coming. The

Californian’s legs, in their worn corduroys, were far too lean for the

big bony knees--a tall man of forty, with tired and sunken eyes and

sunken mouth. Fallows had a reputation. Its strongly drawing side-issue

was his general and encompassing, though fastidious, love of women.

Someone had whispered that even if a man has the heart of a volcano,

its outpouring must be spread rather thin in places to cover all women.

He was out for the _Western States_, not only to show war, but to

show it up. Certainly he loved the under-dog, which is an epigram for

stating that he was an anarchist.

No anarchist could be gentler to meet, nor more terrible to read.

Fallows owned a formidable interest in the _Western States_;

otherwise he would have had to print himself. The rest of that San

Francisco property was just an excellent newspaper. Its effort was

to balance Duke Fallows; sometimes it seemed trying to extinguish

him in order to save itself. It brought sanity and common-sense and

the group-souled observation of affairs, to say nothing of news and

advertising--all to cool the occasional column of this sick man. To

a few, however, on the Pacific Coast, since his new assignment was

announced--the Russo-Japanese war and Duke Fallows meant the same

thing. The majority said: “Watch the _Western States_ boom in

circulation. They are sending Fallows to Asia.”

The two stood together, Fallows looking down. Morning was broad in brow

and shoulder; slender otherwise and of medium height.

“I’m Fallows.”

“Yes.”

The tall man’s eyes turned upward so that only the whites were visible.

He fingered his brow as if to pluck something forth through the bone.

“Come on upstairs.”

Morning followed the large, slow knees. It was less that the knees

wobbled--rather the frailty of the hangings and pinnings. They did

the three high flights and began again, finally drawing up in a broad

roof-room that smelled of new harness and overlooking an especially

hard-packed part of Tokyo, toward the Ginza. Fallows lit the fire that

was ready in the grate and sprawled wearily.

“Where did you study religion, Morning?”

“I didn’t.”

“That’s one way to get it.”

The sound of his own laugh came to Morning’s ears and hurt him.

Fallows’ eyes were shut. There was no trace of a smile around the wan

mouth.

“You’ll likely be more religious before you’re done. I mean many things

by being religious--a man’s inability to lie to himself for one; a

passion for the man who’s down--that’s another.... I’ve read your

stuff. It’s full of religion----”

Now it seemed to Morning as if he had just entered a fascinating

wilderness; apart from this, he saw something about the worn,

distressed mouth of Fallows that made him think of himself last night.

There was one more effect from this first brush. Something happened in

Morning’s mind with that sentence about the inability to lie to one’s

self. It was like a shot in the midst of a flock of quails. A pair of

birds was down, but the rest of the flock was off and away, like the

fragments of an explosive.

“I read some of your stuff about the Filipino woman--‘woman of the

river-banks,’ you called her. Another time you looked into a nipa-shack

where an old man was dying of _beri-beri_, and an old woman sat at

bay at the door----”

These brought back the pictures to Morning, and the dimension behind

the actual light and shade and matter. The healing, too, was that

someone had seen his work, and seen from it all that he saw,--the

artist’s true aliment, which praise of the many cannot furnish. It gave

him heart like an answer to prayer, because he had been very needful.

“You must have come up hard. Did you, boy?” Fallows asked after a

moment.

“Perhaps you would say so.”

“Farm first?”

“Yes----”

“And a father who misunderstood?”

“A good deal of the misunderstanding was my own bull-headedness, I see

now----”

“And the mother, John Morning?”

“I was too little----”

“Ah----”

Morning found himself saying eagerly a little later:

“And then the city streets--selling newspapers, errands, sick all the

time, though I didn’t know it. Then I got to the horses.... I found

something in the stables good for me. I liked horses so well that it

hurt. I learned to sleep nights and eat regularly--but read so much

rot. Still, it was all right to be a stable-boy. A big race-horse

man took me on to ship with stock. I’ve been all over America by

freight with the racers--from track to track. I used to let the tramps

ride, but they were dangerous--especially the young ones. I had to

stay awake. An old tramp could come in anytime--and go to sleep--but

younger ones are bad. They beat you up for a few dimes. I was bad,

too, bad as hell.... And then I rode--there was money, but it went. I

got sick keeping light. The pounds over a hundred beat me out of the

game--except the jumps. I’ve ridden the jumpers in England, too--been

all broken up. In a fall you can’t always get clear.... All this was

before I was eighteen--it was my kind of education.”

“I like it,” said Fallows.

“One night in New York I heard a newspaper man talk.... It was in a

back-room bar on Sixth avenue. I see now he was a bit broken down. He

looked to me then all that was splendid and sophisticated. I wanted to

be like him----”

Fallows bent forward, his face tender as a father’s. “You poor little

chap,” he said, as if he did not see Morning now, but the listening boy

in the back-room bar.

“You see, I never really got the idea of having money--it went so

quickly. The idea of a big bundle didn’t get a chance to sink in.

I’ve had several hundred dollars at once from riding--but the next

day’s races, or the next, got it. What I’m trying to say is--winnings

didn’t seem to belong to me. Poverty was a habit. I always think yet

in nickels and dimes. I seem to belong--steerage. It wasn’t long after

I listened to that reporter, that I got a newspaper job, chasing

pictures. A year after that the wars began. I went out first on my

own hook; in fact, I think you’d call it that now. I seem to get into

a sort of mania to be off--when the papers begin to report trouble. I

didn’t know I was poorly fixed this time, until here in Tokyo I saw how

the others go about it. Dinner-clothes, and all sorts of money invested

in them--whether the war makes good or not----”

“I was right,” Fallows said finally. He had listened as a forest in a

drouth listens for rain.

Morning was embarrassed. He had been caught in the current of the

other’s listening. It was not his way at all to talk so much. He wasn’t

tamed altogether; and then he had been extra hurt by the night and the

day. An element of savagery arose, with the suspicion that Fallows

might be making fun of him.

“What were you right about, Mr. Fallows?”

“You’ve got an especial guardian.”

Morning waited. The fuel was crackling. The Californian watched the

fire and finally began to talk.

“You’re _one of them_. I saw it in your stuff. Then they told me

here that you lived in a little Japanese hotel alone. That’s another

reason. Your kind come up alone--always alone. To-day I saw you

watching that picture business. You looked tired--as if you had a long

way yet to swim against the current. You had a fight on--inside and

out. You’ll keep on fighting inside, long after the world outside has

called a truce. When you’re as old as I am--maybe before--you’ll have

peace inside and out.”

Morning was bewildered; and had somewhat braced himself in scepticism,

as if the other were reading a fortune out of a cup.

“You’re one of them, and you’ve got a guardian--greater than ten of

these militia press-agents. You don’t know it yet, but your stuff shows

it; your life shows it. You try to do what _you_ want--and you’re

forced to do better. You’ll be kept steerage, as you call it,--kept

down among men--until you see that it’s the place for a white man

to be, and that all these other things--dinner-coats and expense

accounts--are but tricks to cover a weakness. You’ll be held down among

men until you love them, and would be sick away from service with them.

You won’t be able to rest unless you’re helping. You’ll choke when you

say ‘Brother.’ You’ll answer their misery and cry from your sleep, ‘I’m

coming.’ You hear them with your soul now, but the brain won’t listen

yet. You’ll go it blind for the under-dog--and find out afterwards that

you were immortally right.”

Morning’s breast was burning. It was more the fiery flood of kindness

than the words. He had been roughed so thoroughly that he couldn’t take

words; he needed a sign.

“The time will come when you’ll hear your soul saying, ‘Get down among

men, John, and help.’ You’ll jump. A storm of hell will follow you if

you don’t. They’ll throw you overboard and even the whale won’t stomach

you if you don’t. ‘Get down among men, John’; that’s your orders to

Nineveh.”

The Californian changed the subject abruptly:

“They were good enough to give me a place with the first column, but

I can’t see it quite. There’s going to be too much supervision. These

Japanese are rivet-headed. I like the other end. New Chwang is still

open. Lowenkampf is in command there. I knew him years ago in Vienna.

Good man for a soldier--old Lowenkampf. He’ll take us in. Let’s go

over----”

“I won’t be exactly ‘healed’ for a long stay. My money is coming

here----”

“Let it pile up. I’ll stake you for the Russian picnic.”

Morning wanted it so intensely that he feared Duke Fallows might die

before they got to Lowenkampf and New Chwang.... He was terrorized by

this thought: “Fallows has somehow failed to understand about me not

getting a column, and not being asked into the picture. When he finds

out, he’ll change his mind....”

He wanted to speak, gathered strength with violent effort, but Fallows

just now was restlessly eager to go below.

6

SECOND class, that night, on the Pacific liner _Manchuria_, forward

among the rough wooden bunks, eating from tin-plates.... It had been

Morning’s suggestion. Fallows had accepted it laughingly, but as a good

omen.

“Two can travel cheaply as one,” he said. “I’m quite as comfortable as

usual.”

Morning realized that his friend was not comfortable at best. He was

too well himself, too ambitious, quite to realize the other’s illness.

Morning found a quality of understanding that he had expected vaguely

to find sometime from some girl, but he could not return the gift in

kind, nor right sympathy for the big man’s weakness. Fallow’s didn’t

appear to expect it.

They left the _Manchuria_ at Nagasaki, after the Inland Sea

passage, found a small ship for Tientsin direct; also a leftover winter

storm on the Yellow Sea. Morning, at work, typewriter on his knees,

looked up one night as they neared the mouth of the Pei-ho. An oil-lamp

swung above them smokily; the tired ship still creaked and wallowed in

the gale. Fallows has been regarding him thoughtfully from time to time.

“You keep bolstering me up, Duke, and I don’t seem to help you any,”

Morning said. “Night and day, I worry you with the drum of this

machine--when you’re too sick to work; and here you are traveling like

a tramp for me. I’m used to it, but it makes you worse. You staked me

and made possible a bit of real work this campaign--why won’t you let

me do some stuff for you?”

“Don’t you worry about what I’ve done--that’s particularly my affair.

Call it a gamble. Perhaps I chose you as a man chooses his place to

build a house....”

Morning wondered at times if the other was not half dead with longing

for a woman.... In the fifteen years which separated the two men in age

lay all the difference between a soldier and an artist. Morning had to

grant finally that the Californian had no abiding interest in the war

they were out to cover; and this was so foreign that the rift could not

be bridged entirely.

“War--why, I love the thought!” Fallows exclaimed. “The fight’s the

thing--but this isn’t it. This is just a big butchery of the blind. The

Japanese aren’t sweet in this passion. We won’t see the real Russia

out here in Asia. Real Russia is against all this looting and lusting.

Real Russia is at home singing, writing, giving itself to be hanged.

Real Russia is glad to die for a dream. This soldier Russia isn’t ready

to die. Just a stir in the old torpor of decadence--this Russia we’re

going to. You’ll see it--its stench rising.... I want the other war.

I want to live to fight in the other war, when the under-dog of this

world--the under-dog of Russia and England and America, runs no more,

cowers no more--but stops, turns to fight to the death. I want the

barricades, the children fired with the spirit, women coming down to

the ruck, the girls from the factories, harlots from the slums. The

women won’t stay at home in the war I mean--and you and I, John, must

be there,--to die every morning----”

Yet Fallows didn’t write this. He lay on his back dreaming about it.

Always the women came into his thoughts. Morning held hard to the game

at hand.... Lying on his back--thus the Californian became identified

in his mind. And strange berths they found, none stranger than the

one at last in the unspeakable Chinese hotel at New Chwang. Morning

remembered the date--4/4/’04--for he put it down in the black notebook,

after smashing a centipede on the wall with it. They were awakened the

next morning by the passing of a brigade of Russian infantry in full

song. Each looking for “good-morning” in the eyes of the other, found

that and tears.

The Chinese house stirred galvanically at mid-day--from the farthest

chicken-coop to the guest-chamber of the most revered. Lowenkampf,

commanding the port, in sky-blue uniform, entered with his orderly and

embraced a certain sick man lying on a rough bench, between his own

blankets. It was just so and not otherwise, nor were the “European”

strangers of distinguished appearance. They had come in the night,

crossing the river in a junk, instead of waiting for the Liao-launch.

They had not sought the Manchurian hotel, where Europeans of quality

usually go, but had asked for native quartering. So rarely had this

happened, that the tradition was forgotten in New Chwang about angels

appearing unheralded.

It was a great thing to John Morning, this coming of General

Lowenkampf. He had not dared to trust altogether in the high friend

of Duke Fallows--nor even in finding such a friend in New Chwang. The

actual fact meant that they would not be sent out of the zone of war,

when the Russians evacuated from New Chwang, if Lowenkampf could help

it; and who could help it if not the commander of the garrison? It

meant, too, that everything Duke Fallows had said in his quiet and

unadorned way when speaking of purely mundane affairs had turned out

true.

Fallows sat up in his bunk to receive the embrace he knew was coming.

The General was a small man. He must have been fifty. He appeared a

tired father,--the father who puts his hands to his ears and looks

terrified when his children approach, but who loves them with secret

fury and prays for them in their beds at night. He had suffered; he

had a readiness to tears; he needed much brandy at this particular

interval, as if his day had not begun well. He spoke of the battle

of the Yalu and his tears were positive. It was a mistake, a hideous

mistake. He said this in English, and with the frightened intensity of

a woman whose lover has died misunderstanding her.... No, they were not

to stay at New Chwang.... He would make them comfortable.... Yes, he

had married a woman six years ago.... It murders the soldier in a man

to marry a woman and find her like other women. You may think on the

mystery of childbirth a whole life--but when your own woman, in your

own house, brings you a child, it is all different. A thing to be awed

at.... It draws the soldier-pith out of one’s spine, as you draw the

nerve out of a tooth.... You are never the same afterward.

Fallows sank back smiling raptly.

“You’re the same old nervous prince of realizers--Lowenkampf--always

realizing your own affairs with unprecedented realism. God knows, I’m

glad to see you.... John Morning, here is a man who can tell you a

thing you have heard before, in a way that you’ll never forget. It’s

because he only talks about what he has realized for himself. His

name is blown in the fabric of all he says.... Lowenkampf, here’s a

_boy_. I’ve been looking for him, years--ever since I found my own

failure inevitable. John Morning--Lowenkampf, the General. If you both

live to get back to your babies--Morning’s are still in the sky, their

dawn is not yet--you will remember this day--for it is a significant

Trinity.... General, how many babies have you?”

“Oh, my God--one!”

Fallows seemed unspeakably pleased with that excited remark. Lowenkampf

glanced at the shut eyes of his old friend, and then out of the window

to the sordid Chinese street, where the Russian soldiers moved to and

fro in the unwieldy disquiet of a stage mob in its first formation.

“But they’re all my babies----”

John Morning had a vision of a battle with that sentence. All the rest

of the day he thrilled with it. Work was so pure in his heart from

the vision, that he left his machine that night (Duke Fallows seemed

asleep) and touched the brow of his friend....

7

AUGUST--Liaoyang, the enemy closing in.... There were times

when John Morning doubted if he had ever been away from the sick man,

Duke Fallows, and the crowds of Russian soldiery. Individually the days

were long. Often in mid-afternoon, he stopped to think if some voice or

picture of to-day’s dawning did not belong to yesterday or last week.

Yet routine settled upon all that was past, and the days accumulated

into a quantity of weeks that grew like the continual miracle of a hard

man’s savings.

Always he missed something. He was hard in health, but felt white

nowhere, in nor out, so much had he been played upon by sun and wind

and dust. The Russian officers were continually asking him to try

new horses--the roughest of the untamed purchases brought in by the

Chinese. It had become quite the custom among the officers to advise

with Morning on matters of horse-flesh. Fallows had started it by

telling Lowenkampf that Morning formerly rode the jumpers in England,

but the younger man had since earned his reputation in the Russian post.

A sorrel mare had appeared in the city. Rat-tailed and Roman-nosed she

was, and covered with wounds. They had tried to ride her in from the

Hun. Her skin was like satin and she had not been saddled decently.

Just a wild, head-strong young mare in the beginning, but bad handling

had made her a mankiller. Lieutenant Luban, soft with vodka and

cigarettes, had dickered for the mare, and drunkenly insisted upon

mounting at once. Morning caught the bridle after the first fight, and

Luban slid off in his arms in a state of collapse. Clearly an adult

devil lived in the sorrel. She was red-eyed in her rage, past pain, and

walked like a man. She would have gone over backwards with Luban, and

yet she was lovely to Morning’s eye, perfect as a yellow rose. He knew

her sort--the kind that runs to courage and not to hair; the kind of

individual that rarely breeds.

He led her apart, talked to her; knew that she only cared to kill him

and be free. She was outrage; hate was the breath of her nostrils;

but she made Morning forget his work.... Thirty officers were

gathered in the compound. Morning had saddled her afresh; her back

was easier--yet she was up, striking, pawing. He knew she meant to go

back. Stirrup-free, he held her around the neck as she stood poised.

His weight was against her toppling, but sheer deviltry hurled back

her head, breaking the balance. They saw him push the hot yellow neck

from him as she fell. He landed on his feet, facing her from the side,

leaped clear--and then darted forward, catching the bridle-rein before

she straightened her first front leg. Morning was in the saddle before

she was up. Then the whole thing was done over again as perfectly as

one with his hand in repeats a remarkable billiard-shot.

“It’s only a question of time--she’ll kill you,” said Fallows.

“How she hates the Chinese, but she’s the gamest thing in Asia,”

Morning answered. “I’d like to be away alone with her.”

“You’d need a new continent for a romance like that,” Fallows said, and

that night, in their room of Lowenkampf’s headquarters, he resumed the

subject, his eyes lost in the dun ceiling.

“There’s only one name for that sorrel mare, if I’m consulted.”

“Name her,” Morning said.

“The one I’m thinking of--her name is Eve.”

Fallows shivered, and turned the subject, but Morning knew he would

come back.... They heard the sentries on the stone flags below. It

was monotonous as the sound of the river. An east wind had blown all

afternoon. Dust was gritty in the blankets, sore in the rifts of

lip and nostril caused by the long baking wind. Their eyes felt old

in the dry heat. Daily the trains had brought more Russians; daily

more Chinese refugees slipped out behind. Liaoyang was a mass of

soldiery--heavy and weary with soldiers--dull with its single thought

of defense. For fifty or more miles, the southern arc of the circle

about the old walled city was a system of defense--chains of Russian

redoubts, complicated entanglements, hill emplacements and rifle-pits.

Beyond this the Japanese gathered openly and prepared. It seemed as if

the earth itself would scream from the break in the tension when firing

began....

“John--a man must be alone----” Fallows said abruptly.

“That’s one of the first things you told me--and that a man mustn’t lie

to himself.”

“It must be thinking about your romance with that sorrel fiend--that

brings her so close to-night, I mean the real Eve. I had to put the

ocean between us--and yet she comes. Listen, John, when you are dull

and tired after a hard day, you take a drink or two of brandy. You,

especially you, are new and lifted again. That’s what happens to me

when a woman comes into the room....”

Twice before Morning had been on the verge of this, and something

spoiled it. He listened now, for Fallows opened his heart. His eyes

held unblinkingly the dim shadows of the ceiling. The step of the

sentries sank into the big militant silence--and this was revelation:

“God, how generous women are with their treasures! They are devils

because of their great-heartedness. So swift, so eager, so delicate in

their giving. They look up at you, and you are lost. My life has been

gathering a bouquet--and some flowers fade in your hand.... I hated it,

but they looked up so wistfully--and it seemed as if I were rending in

a vacuum.... Always the moment of illusion--that _this_ one is the

last, that here is completion, that peace will come with _this_

fragrance; always their giving is different and very beautiful--and

always the man is deeper in hell for their bestowal.... A day or

a month--man’s incandescence is gone. Brown eyes, blue eyes--face

pale or ruddy--lips passionate or pure--their giving momentary or

immortal--and yet, I could not stay. Always they were hurt--less among

men, less among their sisters, and no strangers to suffering--and

always hell accumulated upon my head.... Then she came. There’s a match

in the world for every man. Her name is Eve. She is the answer of her

sisterhood to such as I.

“She was made so. She will not have me near. And yet with all her

passion and mystery she is calling to me. The rolling Pacific isn’t

broad enough. She has bound me by all that I have given to others, by

all that I have denied others. She was made to match me, and came to

her task full-powered, as the sorrel mare came to corral to-day for

you.... Oh, yes, I honor her.”

There was silence which John Morning could not break. Fallows began to

talk of death--in terms which the other remembered.

“... For the death of the body makes no difference. In the body here we

build our heaven or hell. If we have loved possessions of the earth--we

are weighted with them afterward,--imprisoned among them. If we love

flesh here, we are held like shadows to fleshly men and women, enmeshed

in our own prevailing desire. If our life has been one of giving to

others, of high and holy things--we are at the moment of the body’s

death, like powerful and splendid birds suddenly hearing the mystic

call of the South. Death, it is the great cleansing flight into the

South....”

This from the sick man, was new as the first rustle of Spring to John

Morning; yet within, he seemed long to have been expectant. There was

thrill in the spectacle of the other who had learned by losing....

Morning’s mind was like the beleaguered city--desperate with waiting

and potential disorder, outwardly arrogant, afraid in secret.... Duke

Fallows was thinking of a woman, as he visioned his lost paradise. The

younger man left the lamp-light to go to him, and heard as he leaned

over the cot:

“... Like a lost traveler to the single point of light, John, I shall

go to her. Eve--the one red light--I will glow red in the desire of

her. She is my creation. Out of the desire of my strength she was

created. As they have mastered me in the flesh, this creation of mine

shall master me afterward--with red perpetual mastery.”

Lowenkampf came in. They saw by his eyes that he was more than

ever drawn, in the tension and heart-hunger. He always brought his

intimacies to the Americans. A letter had reached him from Europe in

the morning, but the army had given him no time to think until now. It

was not the letter, but something in it, that reminded him of a story.

So he brought his brandy and the memory:

“... It was two or three evenings before I left Petersburg to come

here. I had followed him about--my little son who is five years. I had

followed him about the house all day. Every little while at some door,

or through some curtain--I would see the mother smiling at us. It was

new to me--for I had been seldom home in the day-time--this playing

with one’s little son through the long day. But God, I knew I was no

longer a soldier. I think the little mother knew. She is braver than

I. She was the soldier--for not a tear did I see all that day.... And

that night I lay down with my little son to talk until he fell asleep.

It was dark in the room, but light was in the hall-way and the door

open.... You see, he is just five--and very pure and fresh.”

Fallows sat up. He was startling in the shadow.

“... For a long time my little man stirred and talked--of riding

horses, when his legs were a little longer, and of many things to do.

He would be a soldier, of course. God pity the little thought. We would

ride together soon--not in front of my saddle, but on a pony of his

own--one that would keep up. I was to take him out to swim ... and we

would walk in the country to see the trees and animals.... My heart

ached for love of him--and I, the soldier, wished there were no Asia

in this world, no Asia, nor any war or torment.... He had seen a gray

pony which he liked, because it had put its head down, as if to listen.

It didn’t wear any straps nor saddle, but came close, as one knowing a

friend, and put its head down--thus the child was speaking to me.

“And I heard her step in the hall--the light, quick step. Her figure

came into the light of the door-way. She looked intently through the

shadows where we lay, her eyelids lifted, and a smile on her lips. Our

little son saw her and this is what he said so drowsily:

“‘We are talking about what we will do--when we get to be men.’”

* * * * *

Fallows broke this silence:

“‘When we get to be men.’ Thank you, General. That was good for me....

Our friend John needed that little white cloud, too. I’ve just been

leading him among the wilted primroses.”

Morning did not speak.

Lowenkampf said the fighting would begin around the outer position

to-morrow.... But that had been said before.

8

ON the night of August 31st, for all the planning, the progress of

the battle was not to the Russian liking. All that day the movements

of the Russians had mystified John Morning. The broad bend of the

river to the east of the city had been crowded with troops--seemingly

an aimless change of pastures. He felt that after all his study of the

terrain and its possibilities, the big thing was getting away from

him. When he mentioned this ugly fear to Fallows, the answer was:

“And that’s just what the old man feels.”

Fallows referred to Kuropatkin.

The monster spectacle had blinded Morning. He had to hold hard at times

to keep his rage from finding words in answer to Duke Fallows’ scorn

for the big waiting-panorama which had enthralled him utterly--the

fleeing refugees, singing infantry, the big gun postures, the fluent

cavalry back along the railroad, the armored hills, the whole marvelous

atmosphere.... None of this appeared to matter to Fallows. He had

written little or nothing. God knew why he had come. He would do a

story, of course.... Morning had written a book--the climax of which

would be the battle. He had staked all on the majesty of the story. His

career would be constructed upon it. He would detach himself from all

this and appear suddenly in America--the one man in America who knew

Liaoyang. He would be Liaoyang; his mind the whole picture. He knew the

wall, the Chinese names of the streets, the city and its tenderloin,

where the Cantonese women were held in hideous bondage. He knew the

hills and the river--the rapid treachery of the Taitse. He had watched

the trains come in from Europe with food, horses, guns and men; had

even learned much Russian and some Chinese. He had studied Lowenkampf,

Bilderling, Zarubaieff, Mergenthaler; had looked into the eyes of

Kuropatkin himself....

Duke Fallows said:

“All this is but one idea, John--one dirty little idea multiplied.

Don’t let a couple of hundred thousand soldiers spoil the fact in your

mind. Lowenkampf personally isn’t capable of fighting for himself

on such a rotten basis. Fighting with a stranger on a neighbor’s

property--that’s the situation. Russia says to Old Man China, ‘Go,

take a little airing among your hills. A certain enemy of mine is on

the way here, and I want to kill him from your house. It will be a

dirty job, but it is important to me that he be killed just so. I’ll

clean up the door-step afterward, repair all damages, and live in

your house myself.... And the Japanese have trampled the flowers and

vegetable-beds of the poor old Widow Korea to get here----’”

Thus the Californian took the substance out of the hundred thousand

words Morning had written in the past few months. Dozens of small

articles had been sent out until a fortnight ago through Lowenkampf,

via Shanghai, but the main fiber of each was kept for this great story,

which he meant to sell in one piece in America.

_Kuropatkin_--both Morning and Fallows saw him as the mighty

beam in the world’s eye at this hour. To Morning he was the risen

master of events; to Fallows merely a figure tossed up from the moil.

Morning saw him as the source of power to the weak, as a silencer of

the disputatious and the envious, as the holding selvage to the vast

Russian garment, worn, stained and ready to ravel, the one structure of

hope in a field of infinite failures. Fallows saw him as an integral

part of all this disorder and disruption, one whose vision was

marvelous only in the detection of excuses for himself in the action

of others; whose sorrow was a pose and whose _self_ was far too

imperious for him firmly to grip the throat of a large and vital

obstacle. What Morning called the mystical somberness of the chief,

Fallows called the sullen silence of dim comprehension. Somewhere

between these notations the Commander stood.... They had seen him at

dusk that day. “He seems to be repressing himself by violent effort,”

the younger man whispered.

“What would you say he were repressing, John--his appetite?”

The answer was silence, and late that night, (the Russian force was now

tense and compact as a set spring), Fallows dropped down upon his cot,

saying:

“You think I’m a scoffer, don’t you?”

“You break a man’s point, that’s all----”

“I know--but we’re not to be together always.... Listen, don’t think me

a scoffer, even now. These big, bulky things won’t hold you forever.

Perhaps, if I were a bigger man, I’d keep silent. You’ll write them

well, no doubt about that.... But don’t get into the habit of thinking

me a scoffer. There’s such a lot of finer things to fall for. John,

I wasn’t a scoffer when I first read your stuff--and saw big forces

moving around you.... A man who knows a little about women, knows a

whole lot about men.... To be a famous soldier, John, a man can’t have

any such forces moving around him. He must be an empty back-ground. All

his strength is the compound of meat and eggs and fish; his strength

goes to girth and jowl and fist----”

“You’re a wonderful friend to me, Duke.”

“That’s just what I didn’t want you to say.... There’s no excellence on

my part. Like a good book, I couldn’t riddle you in one reading.”

Morning found himself again, as he wrote on that last night of

preparation; that last night of summer. It was always the way, when

the work came well. It brought him liveableness with himself and

kindness for others. He had his own precious point of view again,

too. He pictured Kuropatkin ... sitting at his desk, harried by his

sovereign, tormented by princes, seeing as no other could see the

weaknesses in the Russian displays of power, and knowing the Japanese

better than any other; the man who had come up from Plevna fighting,

who had written his fightings, who was first to say, “We are not

ready,” and first to gather up the unpreparedness for battle.

Morning felt himself the reporter of the Fates for this great carnage.

He wanted to see the fighting, to miss no phase of it--to know the

mechanics, the results, the speed, the power, weakness and every

rending of this great force. He did not want the morals of it, the evil

spirit behind, but the brute material action. He wanted the literary

Kuropatkin, not a possible reality. He wanted the one hundred thousand

words driven by the one-seeing, master-seeing reporter’s instinct. He

was Russian in hope and aspiration--but absolutely negative in what

was to take place. He wanted the illusion of the service; he saw the

illusion more clearly; so could the public. The illusion bore out every

line of his work so far. To laugh at the essence of the game destroyed

its meaning, and the huge effect he planned to make in America.

Morning was sorry now for having lost during the day the sense of fine

relation with Fallows, but everything he had found admirable--from

toys and sweets to wars and women--the sick man had found futile and

betraying; everything that his own mind found good was waylaid and

diminished by the other. Fallows, in making light of the dramatic

suspense of the city, had struck at the very roots of his ambition. The

work of the night had healed this all, however.

The last night of summer--joyously he ended the big picture. Three

themes ran through entire--Nodzu’s artillery, under which the

Russians were willingly dislodging from the shoulders and slopes of

Pensu-marong; the tread of the Russian sentries below, (a real bit of

Russian bass in the Liaoyang symphony), and the glissando of the rain.

He sat back from his machine at last. There were two hundred and

seventy sheets altogether of thin tough parchment-copy--400 words

to the page, and the whole could be folded into an inside pocket.

It was ready for the battle itself.... All the Morning moods were

in the work--moments of photographic description, of philosophic

calm, instant reversals to glowing idealism--then the thrall of the

spectacle--finally, a touch, just a touch to add age, of Fallows’

scorn. It was newspaper stuff--what was wanted. He had brought his

whole instrument up to concert-pitch to-night. The story was ready for

the bloody artist.

His heart softened emotionally toward Fallows lying on his back over

in the shadows.... Lowenkampf came in for a queer melting moment....

Morning looked affectionately at his little traveling type-mill. It

had never faltered--a hasty, cheap, last-minute purchase in America,

but it had seen him through. It was like a horse one picks up afield,

wears out and never takes home, but thinks of many times in the years

afterward. Good little beast.... And this made him think with a thrill

of Eve, brooding in the dark below.... She was adjusted to a thought in

his mind that had to do with the end of the battle. It was a big-bored,

furious idea. Morning glanced at his watch. Two-fifteen on the morning

of September. He unlaced one shoe, but the idea intervened again and

he moved off in the stirring dream of it. It was three o’clock when he

bent to the other shoe.

9

ALL the next day, Liaoyang was shelled from the south and

southeast; all day Eve shivered and sweated in the smoky turmoil. At

dusk, Morning, to whom the mare was far too precious to be worn out in

halter, rode back to Yentai along the railroad. She operated like a

perfect toy over that twelve miles of beaten turf. The rain ceased for

an hour or two, and the dark warmth of the night seemed to poise her

every spring. The man was electric from her. At the station Morning

learned that Lowenkampf, with thirteen battalions, already had occupied

the lofty coal-fields, ten miles to the east on a stub of the railroad.

He had first supposed the force of Siberians now crowding the station

to be Lowenkampf’s men; instead it was his reserve. Eve had lathered

richly, so that an hour passed before she was cool enough for grain or

water. He rubbed her down, meanwhile, talked to her softly and made

plans. Her eye flashed red at the candle, as he shut the door of the

stable. That night on foot he did the ten miles to the collieries,

joining Fallows and the General at midnight.... Morning was struck with

the look of Lowenkampf’s face. He wasn’t taking a drink that night; his

mouth was old and white. A thin bar of pallor stretched obliquely from

chin to cheek-bone. The chin trembled, too; the eyes were hungerful,

yet so kind. Desperate incongruity somewhere. This man should have been

back in Europe with his neighbors about the fire--his comrade tucked in

up-stairs, the little mother pouring tea. And yet, Lowenkampf--effaced

with his anguish and dreamy-eyed, as if surveying the distance between

his heaven and hell--was the brain of the sledge that was to break the

Flanker’s back-bone to-morrow.

“The Taitse is only ten miles south,” said Fallows, as they turned in.

“Bilderling is there. Kuroki is supposed to poke his nose in between,

and Lowenkampf is to smash it against Bilderling. Mergenthaler’s

Cossacks are here to take the van in the morning, and we’re backed up

by a big body of Siberians, stretching behind to Yentai station----”

“I saw ’em,” said Morning. “Lowenkampf looks sick with strain.”

* * * * *

Day appeared, with just the faintest touch of red showing like a broken

bit of glass. Rain-clouds, bursting-heavy, immediately rolled over

it,--a deluge of grays, leisurely stirring with whitish and watery

spots. Though his troops were taking the field, Lowenkampf had not left

his quarters in the big freight _go-down_. Commanders hurried in

and out. Fallows was filling two canteens with diluted tea, when an

old man entered, weeping. It was Colonel Ritz, bent, red-eyed, nearly

seventy, who had been ordered, on account of age and decrepitude, to

remain with the staff. Brokenly, he begged for his command.

“I have always stayed with the line, General. I shall be quick as

another. Don’t keep an old man, who has always stuck to the line--don’t

keep one like that back in time of battle.”

Lowenkampf smiled and embraced him--sending him out with his regiment.

Mergenthaler now came in. There was something icy and hateful about

this Roman-faced giant. His countenance was like a bronze shield--so

small the black eyes, and so wide and high the cheek-bones. For months

his Cossacks had done sensational work--small fighting, far scouting,

desperate service. He despised Lowenkampf; believed he had earned the

right to be the hammer to-day; and, in truth, he had, but Lowenkampf,

who ranked him, had been chosen. Bleak and repulsive with rage, the

Cossack chief made no effort to repress himself. Lowenkampf was

reminded that he had been policing the streets of Liaoyang for weeks,

that his outfit was “fat-heeled and duck-livered.”... More was said

before Mergenthaler stamped out, his jaw set like a stone balcony. It

seemed as if he tore from the heart of Lowenkampf the remnant of its

stamina.... For a moment the three were alone in the head-quarters.

Fallows caught the General by the shoulders and looked down in his face:

“Little Father--you’re the finest and most courageous of them all....

It will be known and proven--what I say, old friend--‘when we get to be

men.’”

The masses of Lowenkampf’s infantry, forming on the heights among the

coal-fields, melted at the outer edges and slid downward. Willingly

the men went. They did not know that this was the day. They had been

fearfully expectant of battle at first--ever since Lake Baikal was

crossed. Battalion after battalion slid off the heights, and were lost

in the queer lanes running through the rocks and low timber below. The

general movement was silent. The rain held off; the air was close and

warm. Lowenkampf, unvaryingly attentive to the two Americans, put them

in charge of Lieutenant Luban, the young staff officer, whom Morning

had caught in his arms from the back of the sorrel. Down the ledges

they went, as the others.

Morning was uneasy, as one who feels he has forgotten something--a

tugging in his mind to go back. He was strongly convinced that

Lowenkampf was unsubstantial in a military way. He could not overcome

the personal element of this dread--as if the General were of his

house, and he knew better than another that he was ill-prepared for the

day’s trial.

Fallows welcomed any disaster. As he had scorned the army in its

waiting, he scorned it now in its strike. He looked very lean and long.

The knees were in corduroy and unstable, but his nerve could not have

been steadier had he been called to a tea-party by Kuroki. As one who

had long since put these things behind him, Fallows appeared; indeed,

as one sportively called out by the younger set, to whom severing the

spine of a flanker was fresh and engrossing business.... Morning choked

with suppressions. Luban talked low and wide. He was in a funk. Both

saw it. Neither would have objected, except that he monopolized their

thoughts with his broken English, and to no effect.

Now they went into the _kao liang_--vast, quiet, enfolding. It

held the heat stale from yesterday. The seasonal rains had filled the

spongy loam at the roots, with much to spare blackening the lower

stems.... For an hour and a half they sunk into the several paths and

lost themselves, Lowenkampf’s untried battalions. The armies of the

world might have vanished so, only to be seen by the birds, moving like

vermin in a hide.... Men began to think of food and drink. The heights

of Yentai, which they had left in bitter hatred so shortly ago, was now

like hills of rest on the long road home. More and more the resistance

of men shrunk in the evil magic of this pressure of grain and sky and

holding earth--a curious, implacable unworldliness it was, that made

the flesh cry out.

“They should have cut this grain,” Luban said for the third time.

Fallows had said it first. Anyone should have seen the ruin of this

advance, unless the end of the millet were reached before the beginning

of battle. They had to recall with effort at last, that there was an

outer world of cities and seas and plains--anything but this hollow

country of silence and fatness.

If you have ever jumped at the sudden drumming of a pneumatic hammer,

as it rivets a bolt against the steel, you have a suggestion of the

nervous shock from that first far machine-gun of Kuroki’s--just

a suggestion, because Lowenkampf’s soldiers at the moment were

suffocating in _kao liang_.... In such a strange and expensive

way, they cut the crops that day.

Morning trod on the tail of the battalion ahead. It had stopped; he

had not. The soldier in front whom he bumped turned slowly around

and looked into his face. The wide, glassy blue eyes then turned to

Fallows, and after resting a curious interval, finally found Luban.

The face was broad and white as lard. Whatever else was in it, there

was no denying the fear, the hate, the cunning--all of a rudimentary

kind. Luban was held by the man’s gaze. The fright in both hearts

sparked in contact. The stupid face of the soldier suddenly reflected

the terror of the officer. And this was the result: The wide-staring

suddenly altered to a squint; the vacant, helpless staring of a

bewildered child turned into the bright activity of a trapped rodent.

Luban had failed in his great instant. His jaw was loose-hinged, his

mouth leaked saliva.

Now Morning and Fallows saw other faces--twenty faces in the grain,

faces searching for the nearest officer. Their eyes roved to Luban;

necks craned among the fox-tails. There was a slow giving of the line,

and bumping contacts from ahead like a string of cars.... Morning

recalled the look of Luban, as he had helped him down from the sorrel.

He had helped then; he hated now. Fallows was better. He plumped the

boy on the shoulder and said laughingly:

“Talk to ’em. Get ’em in hand--quick, Luban--or they’ll be off!”

It was all in ten seconds. The nearest soldiers had seen Luban

fail. Other platoons, doubtless many, formed in similar tableaux

to the same end. A second machine-gun took up the story. It was

far-off, and slightly to the left of the Russian line of advance. The

incomprehensible energy of the thing weakened the Russian column,

although it drew no blood.

A roar ahead from an unseen battalion-officer--the Russian

_Forward_. Luban tried to repeat it, but pitifully. A great beast

rising from the ooze and settling back _against_ the voice--such

was the answer.

The Thought formed. It was the thought of the day. None was too

stupid to catch the spirit of it. Certain it was, and pervading as

the grain. Indeed, it was conceived of _kao liang_. The drum

of the machine-gun, like a file in a tooth, was but its quickener.

It flourished under the ghostly grays and whites of the sky. In the

forward battalions the Thought already clothed itself in action:

To run back--to follow the paths back through the grain--to reach the

decent heights again. And this was but a miniature of the thought that

mastered the whole Russian army in Asia--to go back--to rise from the

ghastly hollows of Asia and turn homeward again.

It leaped like a demon upon the unset volition of the mass.

Full-formed, it arose from the lull. It effected the perfect turning.

Morning saw it, and wanted the source. He had planned too long to

be denied now. The rout was big to handle, but he wanted _the

front_--a glimpse of the actual inimical line. It was not enough

for him to watch the fright and havoc streaming back. Calling a cheery

_adieu_ to Fallows, he bowed against the current--alone obeying

the Russian _Forward_.

10

AT the edge of the trampled lane, often shunted off into the

standing crop, Morning made his way, running when he could.... The

pictures were infinite; a lifetime of pictures; hundreds of faces and

each a picture. Men passed him, heads bowed, arms about their faces,

like figures in the old Dore paintings, running from the wrath of the

Lord. Here and there was pale defiance. Nine sheepish soldiers carried

a single wounded man, the much-handled fallen one looking silly as the

rest.

The utter ghostliness of it all was in Morning’s mind.... Gasping

for breath, after many minutes of running, he sank down to rest.

Soldiers sought to pick him up and carry him back. There were others

who could not live with themselves after the first panic. They fell

out of the retreat to join him. Others stopped to fire--a random

emptying of magazines in the millet. Certain groups huddled when

they saw him--mistaking a civilian for an officer--and covered their

faces. Officers begged, prayed for the men to hold, but the torrent

increased, individuals diving into the thick of the grain and leaking

around behind. White showed beneath the beards, and white lips moved

in prayer. The locked bayonets of the Russians had never seemed so

dreadful as when low-held in the grain.... One beardless boy strode

back jauntily, his lips puckered in a whistle.

The marvelous complexity of common men--this was the sum of all

pictures, and the great realization of John Morning. His soul saw much

that his eyes failed. The day was a marvelous cabinet of gifts--secret

chambers to be opened in after years.

Now he was running low, having entered the zone of fire. He heard the

steel in the grain; stems were snapped by invisible fingers; fox-tails

lopped. He saw the slow leaning of stems half-cut.... Among the fallen,

on a rising slope, men were crawling back; and here and there, bodies

had been cast off, the cloth-covered husks of poor driven peasants.

They had gone back to the soil, these bodies, never really belonging to

the soldiery. It was only when they writhed that John Morning forgot

himself and his work. The art of the dead was consummate.

The grain thinned. He had come to the end of Lowenkampf’s infantry. It

had taken an hour and a half for the command to enter in order; less

than a half-hour to dissipate. The rout had been like a cloud-burst.

And this was the battle. (Morning had to hold fast to the thought.)

Long had he waited for this hour; months he had constructed the army

in his story for this hour of demolition. It was enough to know that

Lowenkampf had failed. Liaoyang, the battle, was lost.... Old Ritz went

by weeping--he had been too old, they said; they had not wanted him to

take his regiment to field. Yet he was perhaps the last to leave the

field. Only his dead remained, and Colonel Ritz was not weeping for

them....

Now Morning saw it was _not_ all over. Before gaining the ridge

swept by Kuroki’s fire, he knew that Mergenthaler was still fighting.

It came to him with the earthy rumble of cavalry. To the left, in a

crevasse under the crest of the ridge, he saw a knot of horses with

empty saddles, and a group of men. Closer to them he crawled, along the

sheltered side of the ridge, until in the midst of Russian officers, he

saw that splendid bruising brute, who had stamped out of headquarters

that morning, draining the heart of Lowenkampf as he went. Mergenthaler

of the Cossacks--designed merely to be the eyes and fingers of the

fighting force; yet unsupported, unbodied as it were, he still held the

ridge.

Kuroki, as yet innocent of the rout, would not otherwise have been

checked. His ponderous infantry was not the sort to be stopped by these

light harriers of the Russian army. The Flanker was watching for the

Hammer, and the Hammer already had been shattered.... Mergenthaler,

cursing, handled his cavalry squadrons to their death, lightly and

perfectly as coins in his palm. Every moment that he stayed the

Japanese, he knew well that he was holding up to the quick scorn of

the world the foot-soldiers of Lowenkampf, whom he hated. His head was

lifted above the rocks to watch the field. His couriers came and went,

slipping up and down through the thicker timber, still farther to the

left.... Morning crawled up nearby until he saw the field--and now

action, more abandoned than he had ever dared to dream:

An uncultivated valley strewn with rocks and low timber. Three columns

of Japanese infantry pouring down from the opposite parallel ridge, all

smoky with the hideous force of the reserve--machine-guns, and a mile

of rifles stretching around to the right. (It was this wing’s firing

that had started the havoc in the grain.)

Three columns of infantry pouring down into the ancient valley, under

the gray stirring sky--brown columns, very even and unhasting--and

below, the Cossacks.

Morning lived in the past ages. He lay between two rocks watching,

having no active sense--but pure receptivity. Time was thrust back....

Three brown dragons crawling down the slopes in the gray day--knights

upon horses formed to slay the dragons.

Out of the sheltering rocks and timber they rode--and chose the central

dragon quite in the classic way. It turned to meet the knights upon

horses--head lifted, neck swollen like the nuchal ribs of the cobra. In

the act of striking it was ridden down, but the knights were falling

upon the smashed head. The mated dragons had attacked from either

side....

It was a fragment, a moving upon the ground,--that company of knights

upon horses,--and the Voice of it, all but deadened by the rifles, came

up spent and pitiful.

Mergenthaler’s thin, high voice was not hushed. He knew how to detach

another outfit from the rocks and timber-thickets, already found by

the Japanese on the ridge, already deluged with fire. Out from the

betraying shelter, the second charge, a new child of disaster, ran

forth to strike Kuroki’s left.... Parts of the film were elided. The

cavalrymen fell away by a terrible magic. Again the point thickened

and drew back, met the charge; again the welter and the thrilling

back-sweep of the Russian fragment.

Morning missed something. His soul was listening for something.... It

was comment from Duke Fallows, so long marking time to events.... He

laughed. He was glad to be free, yet his whole inner life drew back in

loathing from Mergenthaler--as if to rush to his old companion.... And

Mergenthaler turned--the brown high-boned cheeks hung with a smile of

derision. He was climbing far and high on Lowenkampf’s shame.... He

gained the saddle--this hard, huge Egoist, the staff clinging to him,

and over the ridge they went to set more traps.

The wide, rocking shoulders of the General sank into the timber--as he

trotted with his aides down the death-ridden valley. It may have been

the sight of this little party that started a particular machine-gun

on the Japanese right.... The sizable bay the chief rode looked like a

polo-pony under the mighty frame. Morning did not see him fall: only

the plunging bay with an empty saddle; and then when the timber opened

a little, the staff carrying the leader up the trail.

It was the mystery which delayed the Japanese, not Mergenthaler. When

at last Kuroki’s left wing continued to report no aggressive movement

from Bilderling river-ward; and when continued combing in the north

raised nothing but bleak hills and grain-valleys hushed between

showers, he flooded further columns down the ridge, and slew what he

could of the Russian horsemen who tried with absurd heroism to block

his way. At two in the afternoon the Flanker fixed his base among the

very rocks where Morning had lain--and the next position for him to

take was the coal-hills of Yentai. Only the ghosts of the cavalry stood

between--and _kao liang_.

Morning turned back a last time to the fields of millet in the early

dusk. He had been waiting for Mergenthaler to die. The General lay in

the very _go-down_ where he had outraged Lowenkampf that morning;

and now the Japanese were driving the Russians from the position....

Mergenthaler would not die. They carried him to a coal-car, and

soldiers pushed it on to Yentai, the station.

The Japanese were closing in. They were already in the northern heights

contending with Stakelberg; they were stretched out bluffing Bilderling

to the southward. They were locked with Zarubaieff at the southern

front of Liaoyang. They were in the grain.... Cold and soulless Morning

felt, as one who has failed in a great temptation; as one who has lived

to lose, and has not been spared the picture of his own eternal failure.

He looked back a last time at the grain in the closing night. The

Japanese were there, brown men, native to the grain. The great shadowed

field had whipped Lowenkampf and lost the battle. It lay in the dusk

like a woman, trampled, violated, feebly waving. Rain-clouds came with

darkness to cover the nakedness and bleeding.

11

DUKE Fallows saw but one face.... John Morning studied a

thousand, mastered the heroism of the Cossacks, filled his brain with

blood-pictures and the incorrigible mystery of common men. Duke Fallows

saw but one face. In the beauty and purity of its inspiration, he read

a vile secret out of the past. To the very apocalypse of this secret,

he read and understood. The shame of it blackened the heavens for his

eyes, but out of its night and torment came a Voice uttering the hope

of the human spirit for coming days.

Morning had left. Luban had put on bluster and roaring. Their place in

the grain was now broad from trampling; the flight was on in full. It

meant something to Fallows. It was not that he wanted the Japanese to

win the battle; the doings of the Japanese were of little concern to

him. He felt curiously that the Japanese were spiritually estranged

from the white man. Russia was different; he was close to the heart of

the real Russia whose battle was at home. Russia’s purpose in Asia was

black; he was full of scorn for the purpose, but full of love for the

troops. Strange gladness was upon him--as the men broke away. Reality

at home would come from this disaster. He constructed the world’s

battle from it, and sang his song.

One soldier running haltingly for his life looked up to the face of

Luban of the roaring voice--and laughed. Luban turned, and perceived

that Fallows had not missed the laugh of the soldier. This incident,

now closed, was in a way responsible for the next.

... Out of the grain came striding a tall soldier of the ranks. His

beard was black, his eyes very blue. In his eyes was a certain fire

that kindled the nature of Duke Fallows as it had never been kindled

before, not even by the most feminine yielding. The man’s broad

shoulders were thrust back; his face clean of cowardice, clean as the

grain and as open to the sky. His head was erect and bare; he carried

no gun, scorned the pretense of looking for wounded. Had he carried a

dinner-pail, the picture would have been as complete--a good man going

home from a full-testing day.

In that moment Fallows saw more than from the whole line before....

Here was a conscript. He had been taken from his house, forced across

Europe and Asia to this hour. The reverse of his persecutors had set

him free. This freedom was the fire in his eyes.... They had torn him

from his house; they had driven and brutalized him for months. And

now they had come to dreadful disaster. It was such a disaster as a

plain man might have prayed for. He _had_ prayed for it in the

beginning, but in the long, slow gatherings for battle, in the terrible

displays of power, he had lost his faith to pray. Yet the plain man’s

God had answered that early prayer. This was the brightness of the

burning in the blue eyes.

His persecutors had been shamed and undone. He had seen his companions

dissipate, his sergeants run; seen his captains fail to hold. The

great force that had tortured him, that had seemed _the world_

in strength, was now broken before his eyes. Its mighty muscles were

writhing, their strength running down. The love of God was splendid in

the ranker’s heart; the breath of home had come. The turning in the

grain--was a turning homeward.

All this Fallows saw. It was illumination to him--the hour of his great

reception.

Luban, just insulted by the other infantryman, now faced the big,

blithe presence, emerging unhurried from the grain. Luban raised his

voice:

“And what are _you_ sneaking back for?”

“I am not sneaking----”

“Rotten soldier stuff--you should be shot down.”

“I am not a soldier--I am a ploughman.”

“You are here to fight----”

“They forced me to come----”

“Forced you to fight for your Fatherland?”

“This is not my Fatherland, but a strange country----”

“You are here for the Fatherland----”

“I have six children in Russia. The Fatherland is not feeding them. My

field is not ploughed.”

The talk had crackled; it had required but a few seconds; Luban had

done it all for Fallows to see and hear--but Fallows was very far from

observing the pose of that weakling. The Ploughman held him heart and

soul--as did the infallible and instantly unerring truth of his words.

The world’s poor, the world’s degraded, had found its voice.

The man was white with truth, like a priest of Melchizedek.

Luban must have broken altogether. Fallows, listening, watching the

Ploughman with his soul, did not turn.... Now the man’s face changed.

The lips parted strangely, the eyelids lifting. Whiteness wavered

between the eyes of the Ploughman and the eyes of Duke Fallows. Luban’s

pistol crashed and the man fell with a sob.

Fallows was kneeling among the soaked roots of the millet, holding the

soldier in his arms:

“Living God, to die for you--you, who are so straight and so young....

Hear me--don’t go yet--I must have your name, Brother.... Luban did

not know you--he is just a little sick man--he didn’t know you or he

wouldn’t have done this.... Tell me your name ... and the place of

your babes, and their mother.... Oh, be sure they shall be fed--glad

and proud am I to do that easy thing!... You have shown me the Nearer

God.... They shall be fed, and they shall hear! The world, cities and

nations, all who suffer, shall hear what the Ploughman said--the soul

of the Ploughman, who is the hope of the world.... You have spoken for

Russia.... And now rest--rest, Big Brother--you have done your work.”

The soldier looked up to him. There had been pain and wrenching, the

vision of a desolated house. Now, his eyes rested upon the American.

The shadow of death lifted. He saw his brother in the eyes that held

him--his brother, and it seemed, the Son of Man smiled there behind

the tears.... He smiled back like a weary child. Peace came to him,

lustrous from the shadow, for lo! his field was ploughed and children

sang in his house.

* * * * *

Fallows had not risen from his knees. He was talking to himself:

“... Out of the grain he came--the soul of the Ploughman. And gently

he spoke to us ... and this is the day of the battle. I came to

the battle--and I go to carry his message to the poor--to those who

labor--to Russia and the America of the future. Luban spoke the thought

of the world, but the Ploughman spoke for humanity risen. He spoke for

the women, and for the poor.... Bright he came from the grain--bright

and unafraid--and those shall hear him, who suffer and are heavy-laden.

This is the battle!... And his voice came to me--a great and gracious

voice--for tsars and kings and princes to hear--and I am to carry his

message....”

Luban laughed feebly at last, and Fallows looked up to him.

“You’ll hear him in your passing, Luban, poor lad. You’ll hear him in

your hell. Until you are as simple and as pure as this Ploughman--you

shall hear and see all this again. Though you should hang by the neck

to-night, Luban,--this picture would go out with you. For this is the

hour you killed your Christ.”

12

LOWENKAMPF was the name that meant defeat. Lowenkampf--it was

like the rain that night.... “Lowenkampf started out too soon.”...

Morning heard it. Fallows heard it. The coughing sentries heard it.

The whole dismal swamp of drenched, whipped soldiery heard it. Sleek

History had awakened to grasp it; Kuropatkin had washed his hands....

Lowenkampf had started out too soon that morning. The Siberians had

only left Yentai Station proper when Lowenkampf set forth from the

Coal-heights. Had his supports been in position (very quickly and

clearly the world’s war-experts would see this) the rout in the grain

would have been checked.

As it was, many of Lowenkampf’s soldiers had run the entire ten

miles from the heights to the station, Yentai--after emerging from

_kao-liang_--evading the Siberian supports as they ran, as chaos

flies from order. Now in the darkness (with Kuroki bivouacked upon the

main trophy of the day, the Coal-heights) the shamed battalions of

Lowenkampf re-formed along the main line in the midst of their unused

reserves.

The day had been like a month of fever to Morning, but Duke Fallows

was a younger man, and a stranger that night.... Morning tried to

work, but he was too close to it all, too tired. It was as if he

were trying to tell of a misfortune that had no beginning, and whose

every phase was his own heart’s concern. His weariness was like the

beginning of death--coldness and pervading _ennui_. Against his

will he was gathered in the glowing currents of Duke Fallows--watching,

listening, not pretending even to understand, but borne along. Together

they went in to the General’s private room. Lowenkampf looked up,

gathered himself with difficulty and smiled. Fallows turned to Morning,

asked him to stand by the door, then strode forward and knelt by the

General’s knees. It did not seem extraordinary to Morning--so much was

insane.

“You were chosen, old friend. It has been a big day for the

under-dog----”

“I have lost Liaoyang.”

“That was written.”

“My little boy will hear it in the street. He will hear it in the

school. Before he is a man--he will hear it.”

“I shall take him upon my knee. I shall tell him of you in a way that

he shall never forget. And his mother--I shall tell her----”

Lowenkampf rubbed his eyes.

“I have business in Russia. This day I heard what must be done. It is

almost as if I had gotten to be a man.”

Fallows leaned back laughingly, his arms extended, as if pushing the

other’s knees from him.

Some inner wall broke, and the General wept. Morning put his foot

against the door. The thought in his heart was: “This is something I

cannot write.”...

Morning held the idea coldly now that Fallows was mentally softened

from the strain. Other things came up to support it.... He, too, had

seen a soldier shot by an officer. It was discipline. At best, it was

but one of the thousand pictures. It had happened less because the man

was retiring without a wound--thousands were doing that--than because

the man answered back, when the officer spoke. He did not hear what the

soldier said. This soldier possibly had trans-Baikal children, too. The

day and his long illness had crazed Fallows, now at the knees of the

man who had lost the battle.

“... I know what you thought this morning--when you saw your men march

down into the grain,” Fallows was saying to the General. “You thought

of your little boy and his mother. You thought of the babes and wives

and mothers--of those soldiers of yours whom you were sending to the

front. You didn’t want to send them out. You’re too close to becoming a

man for that. You wondered if you would not have to suffer for sending

them out so--and if this particular suffering would not have to do with

_your_ little boy and his mother----”

“My God, stop, Fallows----”

“You had to think that. You wouldn’t be Lowenkampf if you failed to

think that.... I love you for it, old friend. Big things will come from

Lowenkampf, and from the conscript who came to me out of the grain with

vision and a voice. The battle at home won’t be so hard to win--now

that this is lost.”

There was a challenge and heavy steps on the platform--and one low,

hurried voice.

Lowenkampf stood up and wiped his eyes.

“The Commander----” he whispered.

A pair of captains towered above him, a grizzled colonel behind; then

Morning saw the gray of the short beard, and the dark, dry-burning

of unblinking eyes, fixed upon Lowenkampf.... The latter’s shoulders

drooped a little, and his eyes lowered deprecatingly for just an

instant. Kuropatkin passed in. The soft fullness of his shoulders was

like a woman’s. Fleshly and failing, he looked, from behind.... The

Americans waited outside with the colonel and captains. The door was

shut.

Midnight.... Fallows and Morning had moved in the rain among the

different commands. The army at Yentai seemed to be emerging from

prolonged anæsthesia to find itself missing in part and strangely

disordered. It was afraid to sleep, afraid to think of itself, and

denied drink. Fallows had told everywhere the story of the Ploughman;

just now he helped himself to a bundle of Morning’s Chinese parchment,

and was writing copy in long-hand.

His head was bowed, his eyes expressionless.

“And I alone remain to tell thee!” he muttered at last.

Morning did not answer, but resigned himself to hear more of the

Messiah who came out of the grain.

“I told one of Mergenthaler’s aides the story,” Fallows said coldly.

“He said it was quite the proper thing to do--to shoot down a man

who was leaving the field unwounded. I told Manlewson of the First

Siberians, who replied that the Russians would begin to win battles

when they murdered all such, as unflinchingly and instantly as the

Japanese did, and hospital malingerers as well. I told Bibinoff (who

is Luban’s captain), and he said: ‘That’s the first good thing I ever

heard about Luban.’ He was pleased and epigrammatic....”

Fallows stood up--his face was in shadow, so far beneath was the

odorous lamp.

“Living God--I can’t make them see--I can’t make them see! They’re

all enchanted. Or else I’m dead and this is hell.... They talk about

Country. They talk about making a man stand in a place of sure death

for his Country--in this Twentieth Century--when war has lost its

last vestige of meaning to the man in the ranks, and his Country is a

thing of rottenness and moral desolation! What is the Country to the

man in the ranks? A group of corrupt, inbred undermen who study to

sate themselves--to tickle and soften themselves--with the property

and blood and slavery of the poor.... A good man, a clean man, is torn

from his house to fight, to stand in the fire-pits and die for such

monsters. Suddenly the poor man sees!

“... He came forth from the grain with vision--smiling and unafraid.

He is not afraid to fight, but he has found himself on the wrong side

of the battle. When he fights again it will be for his child, for his

house, for his brother, for his woman, for his soul. Blood in plenty

has he for such a war.... Think of it, John Morning, the Empire was

entrusted to poor little Luban--against this man of vision! He came

forth smiling from the grain. ‘_I do not belong here, my masters.

I was torn away from my woman and children, and I must be home for

the winter ploughing. It is a long way--and I must be off. I am a

ploughman, not a soldier. I belong to my children and my field. My

country does not plough my field--does not feed my children...._

What could Luban do but kill him--little agent of Herod? But the starry

child lives!...

“And listen, John, to-night--you heard them--we heard these fat-necked,

vulture-breasted commanders--vain, envy-poisoned, scandal-mongering

commanders, complaining to each other: ‘See, what stuff has been given

us to win battles with!... I have told it and they cannot see. They

are not even good devils; they are not decent devourers. They have

no humor--that is their deadly sin. An adult, half-human murderer,

seeing his soldiers leave the field, would cry aloud, ‘Hello, you

Innocents--so you have wakened up at last!’ But these cannot see.

Their eyes are stuck together. It is their deadly sin--the sin against

the Holy Ghost--to lack humor to this extent!”

Morning laughed strangely. “Come on to bed, you old anarchist,” he

said, though sleep was far from his own eyes.

“That’s it, John. Anarchy. In the name of Fatherland, Russia murders

a hundred thousand workmen out here in Asia. In answer, a few men and

women gather together in a Petersburg cellar, saying, ‘We are fools,

not heroes. When we fight again it will be for _Our_ Country!’ And

they are anarchists--their cause is Terrorism!”