Title: Red Fleece
Author: Comfort, Will Levington
Language: English
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RED FLEECE

By Will Levington Comfort


Author of “Midstream,” “Down Among Men,” “Fate Knocks At the Door,”
 “Routledge Rides Alone,” Etc., Etc.


1915


TO THE HOUR--WHEN TROOPS TURN HOME



CONTENTS

I. THE WOMAN AND THE EXILE

II. THE COURT OF EXECUTION

III. THE HOUSE OF AMPUTATIONS

IV. IN THE BOMB-PROOF PIT

V. THE SKYLIGHT PRISON

VI. THE FIELD OF HELMETS

VII. THE GREEN OF CEDARS



I

THE WOMAN AND THE EXILE


Peter Mowbray first saw her at the corner of Palace Square nearest
the river. He was not in the least the kind of young man who appraises
passing women, very far from a starer. At the instant their eyes met,
his thoughts had been occupied with work matters and the trickery of
events. In fact, there was so much to do that he resented the intrusion,
found himself hoping in the first flash that she would show some flaw to
break the attraction.

It may have been that her eyes were called to the passer-by just as his
had been, without warning or volition. In any event their eyes met full,
leisurely in that stirring silence before the consciousness of self,
time, place and convention rushes in. ... Though she seemed very poor,
there was something about her beyond reach in nobility. He was left with
the impression of the whitest skin, the blackest hair and the reddest
lips, but mainly of a gray-eyed girl--eyes that had become wider and
wider, and had filled with sudden amazement (doubtless at her own
answering look) before they turned away.

Desolation was abroad in Warsaw after this encounter. Mowbray thought
of New York with loneliness, the zest gone from all present activity.
Presently with curious grip his thoughts returned to a certain luncheon
in New York with a tired literary man who had talked about women with
the air of a connoisseur. The pith of the writer’s observations was
restored to his mind in this form:

“If I were to marry again it would be to a Latin woman--French, Italian,
even Spanish--a close-to-nature woman born and bred in one of the
Mediterranean countries. Not a blue-blood, for that has to do with
decadence, but a woman of the people. They are passionate but pure, as
Poe would say. If they find a man of any value, he becomes their world.
They are strong natural mothers--mothering their children and their
husband, too,--and immune to common sicknesses. Given a little food,
they know enough to prepare it with art. If a man has a bit of a dream
left, such a woman will either make him forget it painlessly, or she
will make it come true.”

There was no apparent relation, and none that proved afterward. What he
had seen at the corner of Palace Square nearest the Vistula was not the
face of a Latin woman, nor was any looseness of common birth evident in
it. The key might have had to do with the little hat she wore, just a
hat for wearing on the head, a protection against sun and rain, and with
the austerely simple black dress; but these weathered exteriors again
were effective in contrast to the vivid freshness of her natural
coloring. As for what remained of the literary man’s picture of the
ideal woman to marry, it was the last word of decadence--the eminent
selfishness of a man willing to accept the luxury of a woman who asks
little to be happy. ... The next day at the same time and place Mowbray
was there, and saw her coming from afar.

She seemed both afraid and angry, stopped abruptly and asked in Polish
what he wanted. He was startled. It was a hard moment. He explained with
difficulty that her language was as yet an inconvenient vehicle for him.

“You are not Russian?” she said in French.

He shook his head. She seemed to be relieved and he wondered why.

“What do you want?” she asked, though not quite with the original
asperity.

“It did not occur to me you would notice,” he said in the language she
had ventured. “I saw you yesterday. You made me think of New York. As
I was near to-day, I hoped to see you again---”

“You are American?” She spoke now in English, and with a still softer
intonation.

“Yes,--you speak English, too?”

“I like it. It is---” she checked herself and asked with just a shade of
coldness, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

It might be construed as a courtesy to a stranger from one who lived in
Warsaw. Peter liked it, a certain vista opening. However, there was no
answer within reach except the truth, and he plunged:

“I should like to know you better.”

The red lower lip disappeared beneath the other. Her gray eyes grew very
wide; something intrepid and exquisite in her manner as she searched
his face. Whatever she knew of the world, she dared still to trust her
intuition--this was something of the revelation he drew.

“Why?”

Many people were passing. He looked toward the quieter center of the
Square.

“Will you walk with me there?” he asked. “It is not easy to explain this
sort of thing---”

“No. I must go on. You may walk a little way.”

“You are very good.... You see, I cannot tell just _why_--as you
asked. If I knew you well, I could tell you. Yesterday I was quite
unromantic---”

She made it hard for him and did not let him see her smile. “You mean
you are romantic to-day?”

Peter laughed. “What a trap--and I was trying so hard to tell you.”

“You _were_ trying---”

“I don’t need to tell you. All there is to say is that I want you to be
my friend.”

“I should have to think,” she answered.

“Of course. ... Do you pass here every day?”

“I should have to think,” she said.

It was the third day afterward that she passed again.



Chapter 2


The first time that Boylan of the _Rhodes News Agency_ of New York saw
Peter Mowbray was in the office of Lonegan of _The States_, Mowbray’s
chief in Warsaw. Lonegan had known Peter in New York and had wanted him
for his second many months before the fact was brought about. This
was the Boylan of the Schmedding Polar Failure, of various wars and
expeditions, a huge spectacle of a man, an old-timer, and very fond of
Lonegan, though as representative of _Rhodes’_ he was structurally the
competitor of _The States_ in this territory.

“Young Mowbray may be all right,” Boylan observed, “but the curse of
the student is on him. I should say that he isn’t gusty enough for hard
work--vest buttons too safe--”

“You can’t measure health by the pound,” Lonegan observed, regarding the
other’s bulk with one eye shut.

“I never heard of Mowbray spending much time in bed outside of the small
hours.”

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-six or seven.”

“I suppose he put on his gear all in a year or two?”

“There is that look about him, but he’s safely over it. Some people
never stop, but I’ve had to look up at him from the same angle now and
then during the last five years.... It was just a little before that
he happened into--his route like mine--his cub-year in London, then
assistant in Antwerp, then in Dresden. He had Dresden alone for a year.
I’ve been angling for him some time----”

“Yes,” Boylan remarked, “you need the right kind of help to stand up
with _Rhodes_ from this end----”

“You do make it wildly exciting,” Lonegan answered gently. “We’ll rock
Peter yet.”

This chat took place in June. Ten weeks afterward Boylan came in with
the big news, and found Lonegan bending over the following cablegram,
almost the last that came through in the private cipher of _The States:_

Get Mowbray post with Russians. We are mailing influential matters.
Warsaw key-desk for northern campaigns. We are to be congratulated on
having Lonegan there.

It was from the Old Man, who in certain cases ventured thus to be
expensively felicitous....

“I’m sorry, Lonegan,” Boylan said. “I thought you would be taking the
field---”

“No, the Old Man’s got the right eye for these affairs. I’m a desk man.”

What Lonegan had swallowed to make his voice clear and steady, only he
knew, but his nerve was effective. “You’ve got to help me, Boylan,”
 he said. “You know the military end. You’ve got to help me get him
attached. I know you’d do it for me, but I want you to do it for him--”

A grunt from the big man, who disappeared.

...Lonegan’s lip curled. Again it was only Lonegan who knew why. He
read the cablegram carefully again, and felt his face as if speculating
whether he could wait until morning for a shave. There was routine
to do, and the developments of the day to file. Peter was on a mail
story.... It occurred to him presently that his second would be
interested in this eventuality from the Office. He called several places
by ‘phone without locating the younger man.

“He’s with the woman,” Lonegan concluded.

Peter had left her address somewhere, but it was not at hand; neither
was her house available to telephone. Lonegan took down the Warsaw
directory, and came finally to the street-number after this line:

“_Bertha Solwicz, sempstress_.”



Chapter 3


She, too, was almost a stranger in Warsaw, and lonely. Each had their
work, and many hours each day were required for it; still, after the
first fortnight, they managed to meet often. Peter’s time was hers, for
he had the habit of leaving his feature-letter for the quiet hours of
the night.

“I hate the name of Solwicz,” she told him the first time he came to her
house, “especially from you. And you must call me _Berthe_, not Bertha.”
 In spite of her obvious lack of means, she had a few friends of rare
quality, and yet he did not meet them. On her table that first day, he
picked up a little book of poems, the leader of which was entitled _We
Are Free_. Peter had read it a few weeks before and given it a quality
of appreciation that was seldom called in these days. Just now he noted
that the volume was affectionately inscribed to her from the author,
Moritz Abel. She spoke of him and of the group of young master workmen
to which he belonged. Then she read the poem, as they stood together. It
was a moment of honor to the poet. Peter had turned pale, and the little
room was hushed about them, as if Warsaw were suddenly stilled.

“You see what they are doing,” she said. “There is a new race of artists
in Russia. They have passed the emotions---”

“This poem was due in the world,” Peter said. “But it is still an age
ahead of the crowd.”

“That’s what makes it so hard for them--for him. He does not like that.
He would like to talk to all men straight. Moritz Abel--the name will
not be forgotten. He is like the others of the new race. They are
terrible in their calm. They have passed the emotions. They are free.
Other artists in Europe or America repress the emotions. That is but the
beginning of the mastery. When they are as great as this group of young
men, they will show the spirit of the thing, not the emotion of it.
Emotions are red. This is pure white, don’t you see?”

For three days Warsaw had been upheaved in excitement. On the afternoon
that the messenger from Lonegan brought the news of the cablegram,
Berthe and Peter were planning an excursion into the country for the
next day. She watched him closely as he read, and was sensitive enough
to realize the importance of the message, before he spoke.... He found
her gray eyes upon him. She chose her own way to break the tension:

“The country is heaven, no doubt about that. One must die to get there.
Also one must live just so. Even when I was little, something always
happened--just as we were planning to set out for the country.”

He showed her the message, but had hardly heard her words. His discovery
of this slender solitary red-lipped girl and what it meant, was rarely
clear at this moment. She had awakened him plane by plane, awakened his
passion and his mercy and his intuition.

“Tell me again what you said about the country. I was away for a
minute.”

“It is hard to think of a little excursion to the fields--with such a
holiday ahead, as you are called upon.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that either, Berthe, but of you.”

“Of course, you will go?”

“Doubtless.”

“I was only talking foolishly, about our little excursion. One’s own
wants are so pitifully unimportant now.”

“I had hardly expected personally to encounter a war,” he remarked and
added smilingly, “The fact is, I hadn’t thought of meeting a woman like
you.”

“I don’t believe you’re as cold-blooded as you try to seem, Peter.”

“I have fought all my life to be cold-blooded.”

She never forgot that. “I wonder why men do it?”

“It’s the cultivation, perhaps, of that which Americans love best of
all--”

“What?”

“Nerve.”

“We of Poland dare to be emotional,” she said.

“You are an older people. You know how.”

“One needs only to be one’s self.”

Peter smiled. “Sometimes I dare actually to be honest with you. Even
Lonegan and I take no such liberties together.”

“It isn’t a matter of courage,” she said. “You would dare anything. I
know your quiet, deadly kind of courage. That’s the first thing I felt
about you.”

It was like Mowbray not to acknowledge that such a thing had been said.

“I came to you asleep. I wonder if I should always have remained
asleep?”

“Your words are pretty, Peter. It makes me sad that you are going away.”

“You remember that company of soldiers that passed us yesterday as we
walked? I had seen many such groups before--great shocky-haired fellows
who ate and drank disgustingly. But yesterday you made me see that their
blood is redder than the Little Father’s--that empires ripen and go to
seed only on a grander scale than turnips.” Her eyes were gleaming.

“We who are so wise, who have mastered ourselves, should be very good to
the peasants--and not take what they have and kill them in wars.”

“Did I lead you to believe in any way that I felt myself mastered?” he
asked quickly.

She touched his arm. “I was talking of the Fatherland,” she answered.

He had met this intensity of hers before. Her scorn was neither hot
nor cold, but electric. So often when words failed her, Peter fancied
himself lost in some superb wilderness... Her own gray tone was in the
room to-day--her gray eyes and black hair that made the shadows seem
gray; her face that no night could hide from him. Sometimes his glance
was held to her lips--as one turns to the firelight. Passion there--or
was it the higher thing, _compassion?_ There was bend and give to the
black cloth she wore, as to the inflections of her voice. She could
forget herself. That was the first and the inexhaustible charm.

It is true that she was very poor. This room which had become his
sanctuary in Warsaw was in a humble house of a common quarter. She
laughed at this, and at her many hours of work each day, for which the
return was meager. There was the sweetest pathos to him in her little
purse, and her pride in these matters was a thing of royalty.

“My father earned the right to be poor,” she once said.

It seemed to him that her father was mentioned in the moments most
memorable... She was at the window now, her hand lifting the shade. The
light of the gray day shone through her fingers--a long, fragile hand
that trembled.

“Shall we walk somewhere, or must you go to your office, Peter?”

“I won’t, just yet. Yes, let’s go outside.”

They felt they must climb, a bit of suffocation in their hearts. Until
to-day there had been invariable stimulus for Mowbray in the age of all
things, even in the dusty, narrow, lower streets, but his smiling, easy
countenance was a lie that he disliked now. It pinched him cruelly to
leave her, and there was small amelioration in anything that the war
might bring. She would give him sympathy and zeal and honor for the work
and through all the lonely days, but what a lack would be of that swift
directness of purpose, the deeper seeing, the glad capacity for higher
heroism which he had found only in her presence. They crossed the
riverward corner of the Square, where they had met. He tried to tell her
how she had seemed that first day.

“I cannot understand,” she replied. “Especially that day when I first
saw you, I had nothing.”

Now they ascended the terraces that commanded the Vistula. The rocky
turf of the footpath, smoothed by the tread of forgotten generations
(but still whispering to her of those who had passed on); the crumbling
masonry of the retaining walls, gray with the pallor of the years; and
afar the curving, dust-swept farmlands, which had mothered a thousand
harvests, now moved with strange planting of peasant-soldiers.
Mobilization business everywhere, drilling of the half-equipped, a
singing excitement of parting, recruiting--no time for the actual
misery.

They stood in the very frown of the fortress at sunset. A column of raw
infantry came swinging out and started the descent. A moment afterward
the roar of a folk-song came up in a gust. It was as if the underworld
suddenly had been cratered.

“When they sing like that, and I think of what they shall soon be called
upon to do--I can hardly endure it!” she whispered.... They stood with
backs against the wall, as the tail of the column moved past. “Look at
that weary one--so spent and sick--yet trying to sing--”

They were in the silence again. Across the river, against the red
background, they watched another column of foot-soldiers moving like a
procession of ants erect; and beyond, on the dim plain, a field battery,
just replenished to war footing, was toiling with tired beasts and
untried pieces. Mowbray thought of the human meat being herded in
Austria for those great rakish guns, as the infantry below was being
trained for distant slaughter arenas.

“Do speak, Peter,” she whispered.

He turned to find her white face looking up to him and very close. They
were alone.

“You won’t mind if I think about myself this once?” he asked.

“Please do.”

“I only want to say that, if you’ll stay where you are, I’ll come back
from this stuff--I was going to say, dead or alive.”

“Do you mean I am to stay in Warsaw?” she asked.

“No--not that exactly. I mean if you will stay where you are in regard
to me----”

Tears filled her eyes. He would have known it even if they had not shone
through the dusk, because his fingers felt the tremor in her arms. She
tried to speak, but finished, “How utterly silly words are!”

The face of young Mowbray was strange with emotion, pale but
brilliant-eyed, his long features bending to her. She was utter
receptivity. Neither knew until afterward how rare and perfect was this
moment.

“Anyway--we understand. We understand, Berthe.”

“...As for Berthe,” she said slowly, as they walked back, “her heart
will stay where you have put it, Peter. That’s out of her power to
change. But the rest--I can’t tell, yet----”

It was as if a finger had crossed Mowbray’s face laterally under the
eyes and across his nostrils, leaving a gray welt.

“I know you belong to the moderns,” he said, after a moment. “We men
belong to the ancients. We want a woman to wait and weep while we go off
to the wars.”

“We understand,” she kept repeating.... “And now, before you go, come
home with me and let me make you a cup of tea--just a cup of tea--before
you go.”

He went with her, and, when his tea-cup was finished, he happened to
look into the bottom.

“What do you see?” she asked quickly, taking the cup.

“M-m-m,” said Mowbray.



Chapter 4


Peter and Lonegan were together at dinner three hours after the message
from _The States._

“It’s a big chance, Mowbray. That’s all I can say. I stay at the
wire--no heroics.”

“You ought to see it all from here.”

Lonegan smiled deprecatingly. “Boylan will help you get through. You
don’t know him yet. Some time, perhaps, you will--two hundred and fifty
pounds of soul. He’ll do all he can to get you the same chance he
has, because I asked him; and then he’ll try to make _The States_ look
obsolete as a newspaper, wherein, of course, he’ll fail. But he’ll try.
If he takes to you, it won’t make him try less, but he’d do your stuff
and his, if you fell sick. There isn’t another Boylan--a great newspaper
man, too. _The States_ will watch closely, knowing that _Rhodes’_ will
get everything possible from Boylan’s part of the front. The point
is--and I think he’ll want it, too--you’d better work together on the
main line of stuff, as we do here. Your letters on the side should
be better than his, because you’re a better writer. As for war stuff,
Boylan is the old master--Peking, Manchuria and the Balkans--that I
think of; also the Schmedding Polar Failure. That last _was_ war--a
spectacular expedition of the Germans--

“I might as well make this a lecture, now that I’ve started,” Lonegan
went on. “The war game isn’t complex. All the bewildering technicalities
that bristle from a military officer’s talk are just big-name stuff
designed to keep down the contempt of the crowd--the oldest professional
trick. Whenever the crowd gets to understand your terminology your game
is cooked. You know how it is in a drug-store, and you’ve seen the old
family doctor look wise....

“There’s a lot of different explosives which they fire by mathematics,
and which you can learn in part from our homely encyclopedias, but the
main game will be fought out on the same principles that Attila fought
it and Genghis Khan--numbers, traps, unexpectedness, the same dull
old flanking activities, the raid of supplies and communications, the
bending back of wings, the crimp of a line by making a hole in one
part--and all that archaic rot. As I say, the game is extinct, so far
as our modern complicated intelligences go, and the men whose names
are biggest in the papers from now on are the same old beefy type
of rudiments whom a man wouldn’t associate with in times of national
quiet.... I will end this by saying that the big story is the man--the
peasant, the trooper, the one blinded little dupe, who dies, or plunges,
or loses his legs in the name of the Fatherland--”

“I see that,” said Peter; “but what really is interesting to me is this
peasant’s blindness and the monkey other men make of him--”

“I’m glad you spoke of that, for it is a thing to avoid. Interesting,
I grant, but not popular with our kind of press. We are not servants of
the minority or the elect. You’ll find Boylan exploiting the army he’s
with--just as another might have done under Napoleon. By the way, where
are you going to-night?”

“I’m going to sit at the feet of the most genial anarchist at large. His
name is Fallows, an American, who has been ten years in Russia among the
peasants.”

“Duke Fallows--I know of him. When did he come to town?”

“Two days ago.”

“Peter, how did you get next?” Lonegan looked a bit in awe at the other.

“I was asked to one of his private audiences last night.”

Peter knew that Lonegan had many things to ask by the quick tone in
which he spoke the first question.

“You know what Fallows will do to you?”

“Yes, if one lets go. He has learned how to use his power. He has
brought forth his young upon the bare rocks, as somebody said.”

“He’d turn an angel into an anarchist.”

“A man ought not to be afraid to listen if there’s a chance for him to
be proved wrong--”

“Correct, absolutely. I am merely thinking about our job.”

“A man gets in the habit of thinking about his job--doesn’t he?”

“Did he tell you about the plowman of Liaoyang?”

“No, but my companion did. Fallows must have seen that episode rather
clearly.”

“Let’s not get off the job business, Peter. As I was saying, the truth
isn’t popular--”

“That doesn’t sound like Lonegan.”

“No, and I don’t like the feel of saying it, but it’s very much to the
point--”

“Possibly.”

“Mowbray, we are taking our bread, and its cake, too, from a paper that
expects us to exploit the orthodox heroics. The pity and atrocious sham
of it all has its side. But the fact still remains its side does not
furnish the stuff that American newspapers pay men and cable tolls to
furnish.”

“Won’t you come to-night?” Peter asked laughing. “Perhaps we can both
reach the high point some day when we have earned the right to be poor.”

“That’s a higher point than I dream of, Peter. I can’t help but think
what a nest you’ve got into. Of course, I mean with Fallows and his
kind--”

“An eagle’s nest.”

“But the eaglets are starving.”

“Heretofore the job has been served. Come along with me and meet Duke
Fallows again--”

“No. I must go back to the wire for the present. Boylan would be
shocked, too. By the way, I’ve got a bid in for you with General
Kohlvihr. Boylan is to help me put it through, of course. The more
decorated they are the more they fall for Boylan. There’s a chance that
you’ll start south with a column within two days. So you’d better get at
that encyclopedia stuff--”

“Yes, I’ll attend to that.”

Peter left him smiling, and turned his steps across the Square, into a
narrow street of the poor quarter, and on toward a little room and a low
lamp, where a woman’s hands sewed magically as she waited.



Chapter 5


Fallows met them in his small bleak room, turned the lamp low, and
opened the door of the diminutive wood-stove to let the firelight in the
room. The three sat around it.... Peter Mowbray felt strange and young
beside them. The woman seemed to belong to this world, and it was a
world at war with every existing power. All Peter’s training resisted
stubbornly. Still, right or wrong, there was a nobility about their
stand. He did not need to be sure their vision was absolutely true, yet
the suspicion developed that they saw more clearly than he, and acted
more purely. Mowbray did not lack anything of valor, but he lacked the
fire somehow. He loved Berthe Solwicz, could have made every sacrifice
for her, but that was a concrete thing.

Fallow’s bony knees were close to the fire. He seemed both light
and deep, often turning to Peter with secret intentness, and openly
regarding the young woman with amazement and delight. Nearing fifty,
Fallows was tall, thin and tanned. The deep lines of his face were
those which make a man look homely to himself, but often interesting
to others. His soft, low-collared shirt was somewhat of a spectacle in
consideration of the angular and weathered neck. No rest could exist in
the room that contained such loneliness as burned from his eyes. It was
said that he had been rich, though everything about him was poor now.
One would suspect the articles in his pockets to be meager and of poor
quality--the things you might find in a peasant’s coat. That which he
called home was a peasant’s house in the Bosk hills--the house of the
plowman of Liaoyang, whose children he fathered. Annually, however, he
went abroad, telling the story of the underdog, usually making the big
circuit from the East to the West, and stopping at a certain little
cabin within hearing distance of the whistles of Manhattan, where his
first disciple worked in solitude mainly, and against the stream. Just
now Fallows was planning a different winter’s work.... They talked of
the first fighting.

“The startling thing to realize is that for the present we are allied
with England,” said Fallows. “I mean Russia. You see, I am Russian, now,
not the Russia of the Bear, but of the Man--”

Mowbray and the woman exchanged glances, each thinking of the tea-cup
in the afternoon.... The exile showed traces of his ten years’ training
among simple men. Rhetoric and dithyramb were gone from his speech and
habit of mind. The whole study and vision of the man was to make his
words plain. Thus he said slowly:

“The peasants are children--children in mind and soul. We who have come
a little farther are responsible for them, as a father is responsible
for his children. So far we have wronged them, taught them to grasp
instead of to give, to look down instead of up. We have even stolen from
them the fruits of their looking down. The time is near at hand when
we shall have to pay for all this.... A true father would die for his
children. I know men who have done that, and there are men about us
here, even in Warsaw tonight, who are ready for that--”

Fallows’ voice was tender. He watched the face of the woman as he spoke.
She was looking hard into the fire.

Fallows added: “There are fifty million men here in Russia--roughly
speaking. Very strong, very simple, possibly very brutal men, but brutal
as a fine dog is brutal, a simplicity about that. I do not idealize
them. I have lived among them. I know this: They might be led to
virtue, instead of to wickedness. My heart bleeds for them being led to
slaughter again. The hard thing is to make them see, but the reason for
that is simple, too. If they could see--they would not be children. They
must be led. Never in modern history have they been purely led. Words
cannot make them see; wars so far have not made them see. It may be that
the sufferings and heroisms of this war shall be great enough to make
them see....”

“What would you have the peasants see first?” Peter asked.

“Their real fathers--that men of wisdom and genius are the true fathers
of the Fatherland, not the groups of predatory men. True fathers would
die for their children. To me it has been blasphemy, when the nations of
the past have called themselves Fatherlands. I would have the peasants
fathered by men who realize that the peasants are the strength and salt
of the earth; men who realize that the plan of life is good--that the
plan of life is for concord and service each to the other--that the hate
of man for man is the deadly sin, the hell of the world--that the fields
and all the treasures of the mother earth are for those who serve and
aspire, and not for those who hold fast, look down and covet more.”

Mowbray was interested in the fact that Fallows had passed the stage
of eloquence and scorn and burning hatred against evil in persons and
institutions. There was no hue and cry about his convictions. He seemed
to live in continual amazement at the slowness with which the world
moves--the slowness to a man who is ahead and trying to pull his people
along. Moreover there was that final wisdom which Fallows revealed
from time to time--momentary loss of the conviction that he himself was
immortally right. Fallows saw, indeed, that a man may be atrociously out
of plumb, even to the point of becoming a private and public nuisance,
when allowed to feed too long alone on the strong diet of his own
convictions.... An hour sped by. Fallows replenished the fire and turned
to Berthe Solwicz.

“All evening you’ve had something in your mind to tell me and I’ve been
giving forth. You must forgive a man for so many words--when he has been
living with little children so long. What is it?”

“Just a reading of a tea-cup to-day--but everything you said has its
meaning concerned in it.”

“I’m almost as interested in tea-cups as in the stars,” said Fallows.

“You know a toy-bear, such as the Germans make?”

“Yes--”

“Well, it would have been like that--if one were thinking of toys.
We thought of the Russian Bear. It was perfect--in the bottom of the
cup--standing up, walking like a man--huge paunch, thick paws held out
pathetically, legs stretched out, just as he would be, rocking, you
know--”

Fallows bowed seriously. Mowbray turned his smile to the shadows.

“Near him,” Berthe added, “was a Russian soldier--perfect--fur cap,
high boots, tightly belted, very natty--more perfect than we see in the
streets, as if drawn from ideal. He was stabbing the bear with a long
pole, leisurely--”

“It was a rifle and bayonet,” said Peter. “We both saw it, but didn’t
speak until now. He was churning the bayonet around in the great paunch
as if feeling for the vitals. The bear looked large and helpless.”

Fallows’ bronzed head had sunk upon his chest. His eyes, red with
firelight, seemed lost to all expression. “I was thinking it would
happen in Germany first,” he said.

A moment afterward he added: “There’s a time when a man wants to die for
what he believes, and another time when he’s afraid he will die before
he gets a chance to make his life count.”

Again he paused, and then looked up to Mowbray. “It’s a good omen.
That’s the _real_ war.... And was it your cup?”

“Yes.”

“You say that you are going out for the Galician service?”

“Yes, possibly with Kohlvihr’s column.”

“You will see much service,” said Fallows. “That used to be our
dream--to see service. It will be easier seen with the Russians. They
are not so modern in method as the French or Germans, or even the
Japanese. Of course, war is the same. The nation at the end will win
on the fields, not in the skies. The sky fulfillment is reserved for a
better utility than war. But war belongs under the sea.... You will not
be suppressed so rigidly with the Russians. You will see the side of
the war which will have the most bearing on the future. I do not believe
France and Germany are in the future as Russia is--”

“And England?” Peter asked quickly.

“The key to that is the wealth of the Indies--as of yore.”

“You mean if India remains loyal?”

“If India remains under the yoke.”

“But, if Britain should preserve her tenure in India with the Japanese
troops--” Peter suggested.

Fallows shuddered. “As yet I can see no philosophy under heaven to cover
that.”

“And you think Britain and Russia are enemies in spite of this
alliance?”

“Enemies, temperamental and structural--enemies, past and future.”

Peter recurred to this point: “You think that India would not remain
loyal if she had arms?”

“I was in a little village of the Punjab two years ago,” Fallows
replied, “and there was a lad of sixteen there, wonderful in promise--a
mind, a spirit. They could not raise in the village enough money to send
him across the seas steerage for his education. A single rifle costs
nearly three pounds. It is hard for us to realize how poor India is.”

Peter stood fast against this in his mind; his intellect would not
accept.... “Are you going to take the field again, Mr. Fallows?”

“Not in a newspaper way. I shall nurse wounded soldiers. At least they
have accepted me.... These are fearful and amazing days. We have all
been in a kind of long feeding dream, like the insects, accumulating
energy and terrible power for these days. Such death as we shall see!”

There was silence.

“I wonder how they are taking it in America?” Fallows mused.

“Doubtless as an opportunity for world-trade,” said Peter.

“Oh, I hope not!” the exile said passionately. “There must be another
America.”

Fallows placed his hands on Berthe’s shoulders, looking down: “You make
me think of a young woman I once knew,” he said. “Not that you look like
her--but that you have the same zeal _for something_.... You are a very
true daughter of your father--”

“You knew him?” she said huskily.

“We all knew him--we who dare to think we look ahead. When he died, his
courage came to all of us. We were changed. If it had not been a pure
and durable thing--his courage would have died with him. It is wonderful
for me to be here with you. And this man loves you.”

It was not a question, just a fragmentary utterance of a fine moment.
Fallows said it as a man who has passed on, and yet loves to study the
lives and loves of younger men. Even to Mowbray the feeling came for an
instant that he was part of the solution to which they gave themselves.

“I have not told him of my father. He does not know my name,” Berthe
said. “But I am going to tell him--before he goes.”

“He is safe,” said Fallows. “I felt free with him--almost
immediately--and that picture in the tea-cup!... Peter Mowbray, Peter
Mowbray. It is a good name. And you are going out on the big story of
the war for _The States_. You will see great things--best of all with
the Russian columns. There will be an Austerlitz every day--a Liaoyang
every day. I was in Manchuria with a man who made that his battle.
I wonder if he will come out this time--to find how his dream of
brotherhood is faring? God, how he took to that dream! He will be a
Voice--”

They were standing. Fallows suddenly reached for his cap. “I’ll go out
with you--just to get out. The room is too small for me to-night.”

Yet, when they reached the street, he left them abruptly, as if he had
already said too much.

“He seems to be burning up,” said Peter.

Berthe did not answer.

“He was like Zarathustra coming down from the mountain--so shockingly
full of power,” Peter added. “And yet he said so little of his own
part.”

“He couldn’t, Peter. He’s like you--when moments are biggest.... Oh,
Peter, where do you keep your passion?”

“You mean this great burning that Fallows knows?”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t it. I haven’t that passion. I think I am just a reporter.
But you have it.... My father loved his family. I think your father must
have loved the world--”

“But you love the world--”

“No, I love you.”

“Peter, Peter--come to-morrow! Don’t come in with me to-night!”

Peter went to his rooms at once. He was struck hard, but merely showed
a bit weary. He found himself objecting to characteristics of Fallows’
mind, the same which he had admired and delighted in from Berthe. She
had always talked easily of death, and he had been without criticism;
now he disliked the casual mention of death in Fallows’ talk.

Peter saw that he was sore, and hated himself for it. Fallows personally
was ready for death; therefore he had the right to counsel martyrdoms
for others if he wished. Death to Peter, however, was not strictly a
conversational subject. If a man were ready to die for another, it
was not good taste to say so. Still he forced himself to be just, by
thinking of Fallows’ life.

Fallows somehow had turned a corner that he, Peter Mowbray, had not come
to so far. Self-hypnotized, or not, the exile had given up everything in
life to make the world better as he saw it. He had written and traveled
and talked and plotted, even vowed himself to poverty, all for the good
of the under-dog.

“It isn’t fanaticism, when you come to look at it,” Peter mused. “He
sees it clearly, and makes one see it for the moment of listening. He
isn’t afraid. He would die every day for it, if he could.... And I take
things as I find them, and grin. I wouldn’t even have thought otherwise,
except for Berthe. I have a suspicion that I’m half-baked.”

Peter’s mind was engaging itself thus feverishly, to avoid the main
issue that the woman had flung him from her, and run to cover, stuffing
her ears, so to speak, and asking him not to follow. He braced himself
now and faced it. “If it happened to another pair, I should say it was
the finish,” he thought. “I should say that no man and woman could pass
a rock like that.... I can’t get to her point of view by thinking myself
there. I’m cold--that’s the word. And she’s superb. I’d rather be her
friend than lord of any other woman. That won’t change. And she has
spoiled everything I thought I knew. Altogether--it’s a game, bright
little story--and deep.”

Lonegan came in and flung himself down wearily.

“I’ve been busy. Boylan is leaving in thirty-six hours. You’re going
with him?”

“I’m ready,” said Peter.

“Did you have a big time?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think of Fallows now?”

“I’m strong for him.”

“Peter--you look bushed.”

“It drains a man to spend an evening in that company. A fellow has to
have a heavy lid--not to waste fire.”

Lonegan was worried. “You don’t mean to say you’re getting fevers and
emotions.”

“I’m threatened.”

“Mowbray--you’re lying. I don’t believe you’d let anybody see your
fires--not even how well you bank ‘em. It isn’t in you.”

“I wish it were,” said Peter.

* * *

For a long time after Lonegan left he plunged into his work, but there
was no sleep for him afterward. He lay very still, breathing easily,
as the fag-end of the night crawled by. At dawn he arose, dressed
noiselessly, and went out into the city.



Chapter 7


It was too early to go to Berthe, yet his steps led him to the street of
her house, and he had not passed it a second time before she opened the
blinds above, and called to him. He looked at her sorrowfully, and she
met his eyes.

“Come in, Peter. I’ve been so sorry! If you can forgive me, we’ll have
coffee together--”

He followed her upstairs. The premonition came that he was to take away
the image of Berthe Solwicz at its highest--inimitably enticing to his
heart, the girlish and utterly feminine spirit that had captivated the
man in his breast. She did not seem to know that she was like the woman
of the first meeting, but to him all her grace of that day had returned,
as if to complete the circle of the episode; and all that he had loved
since was added. The one thing in his life that he was proud of, was
that he had chosen this woman from the crowd.... They were in her room.
With both hands she held him in his coat, so that he could not remove
it, begging him to forget the last of last night before they could be at
rest.

“I don’t know as I want to, Berthe,” he said. “It made me think. There
are two kinds of people in the world--the kind who give and the kind who
take. We represent each. I’m afraid the difference is intrinsic. There
would be no satisfaction in me trying to be some one else--even trying
to be like you. I am what I am--and must be that. But, Berthe, I can
hold the suspicion that I am your inferior, and be pleasant about it--”

“Peter, Peter--you don’t understand. I don’t love myself--nor my way
better. I am poor and tortured, carrying about a legacy, or a dream. I
need you. I can tell you now--I never needed you so much as last night
when I sent you away. I need your brain and balance--your big heart. It
was never so dear to me.”

This was too much for him. He sat down before her. All night he had been
trying to qualify for a lower place in her heart than his earlier dreams
had called for--any place rather than to be apart--for the stuff of
adoration was in Peter Mowbray. Half-sitting, half-kneeling, she took
her place on the rug before him.

“But first I must tell you the story. I could not tell you at once; and
since then we have managed so well. But you must know before you go. I
am not Polish, not even in name. My father’s mother was a Russian woman,
but his father was an Irishman, and the name--my name--is Wyndham. My
father’s given name was ‘Metz’--”

Peter had caught it all before her last sentence. “Wyndham” had
been enough. He saw clearly the natural and excellent reason for the
tenderness of Duke Fallows toward the daughter of Metz Wyndham, and
recalled the tragic story of the power and fire of this prophet of the
people, who was executed by the Russian government in the midst of the
turmoil following Red Sunday--“Metz Wyndham, the notorious Red,” as he
was denoted in the subsidized press of Petersburg, though “Metz Wyndham,
the peasants’ martyr,” was a whisper which seemed destined in the end to
silence all such uproar.

“You have heard of him? You knew his story?”

The upturned face shone with a different bloom for his eyes. “Yes,” he
answered.

“...I was away from Russia for years--in London and Paris,” she said
quickly. “But at last I felt I could not stay longer. I wanted to come
back here--where the struggle is so tense and constant. He worked much
here in Warsaw. All of his kind come some time to Warsaw. And so the
name _Solwicz_, which I hate; and so the fear when I found you watching
me in the street a second time, and my relief to learn that you were not
Russian-”

“Of course I understand,” said Peter. He put his hand upon her head. “I
was in awe of you before I knew,” he added, “and yet, I always saw that
in the most vital moments something of him would come out.... I keep
seeing you with him now--what a life for a young girl--what a builder,
those years, for a young girl--and how brave you are. Berthe, I have
it--you are spoiled for common people because you were brought up with
that kind of a man. How clearly I understand last night now!”

“There’s another side to that,” she said huskily.

“Oh, I’m sorry--”

The most consummate plotting could not have endeared him to her as those
three words.

“Peter, you must see it--the other side. There was no rest with him. All
his brilliance, all his brilliant companions were one part, but there
was a steady pressure of tragedy about us--from outside. And there
was tragic pressure from him. He was subject to the most terrible
melancholia. He had enough vision to see the wrong everywhere. It was
not mania. There _is_ wrong everywhere, if one looks--in judges and
cities, in nations, wars, in the kind of amusements people plunge
into--wrong and coarseness and stupidity. He loved men but hated
institutions. Sometimes, he would see it all so clearly that the sense
of his own powerlessness would come. He would cry, ‘One man can’t do
anything. A man like me can’t be heard--oh, I can’t make myself heard!
It is as if I were shut in a tomb.’ He would only have been happy
passing from one great crowd to another--harrowing, pleading,
electrifying men. He would rise--even alone with me--to the heights of
his power--and then fall into the valleys because no one could hear.
That was his cry, _‘I can’t make myself heard!_ Then often, when he was
waiting to speak, the power would come, and leave him drained when he
faced his people. He would tell me afterward, ‘If I could only have
talked to them yesterday, or an hour before!’

“Then the doubt of self would come to him--the fear that he was wrong
or insane. ‘Berthe, it can’t be that the crowds are wrong; that I am
right--against all the crowds. It must be that I am insane.’ He would
suffer like one damned from that. Worse than all was the fear of his
own Ego. He was more afraid of that than any other lion in the way. ‘It
isn’t the cause, it’s me--that wants to be heard. It’s the accursed me
that I am striving for--in agony to relieve. I merely use the Cause. All
the time it is myself that I wish to make heard.’ That would make him
suicidal.

“I am only telling you these moods. He was a child, a playmate, the
loveliest companion a girl ever had--seeing the beauty and analogy in
all nature and outdoors--full of jest and delights. I just wanted to
show you the other side----”

It was all of breathless interest.

“There came a day,” she added, as Peter watched her raptly, “when he did
make himself heard, even as he dreamed....”

Peter thought of his reading the story--a boy at school, and was struck
with the memory of its appeal to him in the light of the present.

“...The sustaining of his friends was taken from us at the last. They
dared not come, of course. ‘Berthe, little heart, it’s all right,’ he
would say. ‘You will have to go on alone, but the way will be shown you.
You have the strength. You have been heaven and earth to me. I must go
and leave you, but that’s only a temporary matter. It will be hard--but
it has been hard _with_ me.... This is all right. It’s good for what
ails the world--but you are only a little girl! My God, I dare not think
of it....’

“I remember the dawn and the cold rain and the stone buildings--and
then to find the world’s relation to his daughter. That had been spared
before. He kept it from me, and there was such a sustaining from his
friends and power. Those most concerned are slowest to learn exactly
what the world thinks of them.... It did not come until afterward, and
then it almost killed me. I was clinging to a sorrow almost sacred, and
I found that the world saw only the shame and madness of my plight.
I suddenly saw it in the eyes of the people--how they drew apart from
me.... He had only wanted to make them better. He said that all evil was
the result of men hating one another. He did not hate men, but predatory
institutions, false fatherlands, and all slave-drivers. They hanged him
for that hatred, but what was more shocking was to find that the people
whom he loved and served were horrified at his daughter....”

It did not detract from Peter’s ardor that his intellect was away for an
instant in a rather skeptical study of Metz Wyndham’s life. To Peter
had come glimpses of the magnificent selfishness of this prophet of the
people. Did all great men have such an ego? If their lives were
closely examined would they all reveal, in their intimate and familiar
relations, the most subtle and insidious forms of self-service? In fact,
was not the mighty _ego_ the source of their record-making in the world?
... Peter banished this rush of conjectures. Whatever the father, the
whole art of the life of Metz Wyndham’s daughter was the loss of the
love of self.

“I feel before you,” he said, “as I once felt in the vineyards beneath
Vesuvius.”

She smiled at him. “There are several ways to take that.”

“Just one that I mean--and no explanation.”

“... Peter, our last day together--all shadowy background to be put
away--”

“And breakfast to occupy the immediate fore.”

He went out into the street to purchase certain essentials, found some
tall white flowers, and a copper vase to put them in. They were hungry,
after the long night, and their happiness was the exquisite moments
which they found between the darkenings. They would not permit the
parting altogether to pervade. Her face was lustrous white; her eyes
made him think of those gray days on the ocean, in which one can see
great distances. More of a girl than ever she seemed to him, with her
black hair combed loosely back and hanging in a pair of braids. The
flowers stood tall between them.

“War weather like this makes one grow quickly,” he said. “To think how
easy and content we thought ourselves--even three days ago. Now, I want
to say, ‘Come, Berthe--come with me....’ I want to take you to some
quiet place, back in the States, in the country by the water. Yes, north
country--by some lake that would be frozen when we got there. That’s
where the silence is, that winter silence. A cabin, a roaring fire--you
and I together, alone. It seems you would be safe there, and I could
begin to be satisfied--“.

“Peter, Peter--don’t make heavens to-day!”

“It’s your particular heaven. No other would ever have made me think of
_winter_--of something austere and silent for you to ignite.”

“I wonder, shall it ever come to me--to have peace and abundance of
nature? I have always had the cities, and now it is more war again--the
opposite to nature--but I shall think every hour of that winter cabin.
That is my place,” she added. “Another would have made you think of the
South--or the seas. I shall think of your being there with me--every
day--no matter where I am---”

Her words had grown vague to his ears. Her lips were so red that for the
time he saw them only. He arose and went to her around the tall flowers.

“What did you say?” he asked, after a moment.

“I don’t know--oh, yes--perhaps, if we are very good in this war, and
do all we can to make orderly our little circle of things in the great
chaos--perhaps we may earn that winter cabin and the fireplace and the
stillness. To plan our garden in the winter days---”

“I wish I hadn’t spoken of it. It’s almost unearthly far--in such a
time. But, Berthe, will you ever be satisfied with one who hasn’t the
white fire of passion--as you have, in the cause of the peasants?”

“Oh, that’s what I wanted to tell you. We are to be separated. We are
grown up--a man and a woman. We dare speak to each other. At least, I
dare.... Peter, I couldn’t love you if you were all that--all that---”
 She hesitated.

“All that you missed in me last night?” he suggested.

“Yes, but I didn’t miss it exactly. I was excited and overwrought. You
are splendid with me. It is when others are near, that you are--cold and
unemotional. I know it’s your training--that thing you Americans have
from the English. You are that way with men. You are not so with me.
But, if you were like Fallows, or like my father, I could not love you.
I would not dare---”

“Why?”

“First, I could not--and then I would not dare. First, that which we
are, we do not love. We love another kind--for completion----”

“Clearly said. That must be true,” he answered quickly. “And why would
you not dare?”

“Because we should have a little baby, and it would suffer so in coming
years. Peter, the poise and the balance--the very qualities I need in
you, and which I love, the little baby would require as his gift from
his father.”



II

THE COURT OF EXECUTION

Chapter 1


“Hai, you, Peter--wake up!”

It was Boylan’s voice, seemingly afar off, but coming closer.

“Wake up.... I say, young man, what do you think of it by this time?”

Thus Peter was awakened the seventh morning out--and in a place he had
not observed the previous night. It was as good a place as usual, if not
better, except for the smell of fish that had gone before. Clearly it
had been a fish shop, business suspended some time. There were certain
scaly trays on the sloping showboards to the street; scales glistened
among the cobwebs of the low ceilings; also the floor was of turf, and
doubtless very full of phosphor, an excellent base for rose-culture.
The place dwindled and darkened to the rear, from which the head
and shoulders of Samarc presently emerged, and a moment later Little
Spenski, his companion, sat up and rubbed his eyes. These two,
invariably together, were men of a rapid-fire battery, to meet their
pieces lower in the fields, and attached for the present, as were Boylan
and Mowbray, to the staff of General Kohlvihr’s command.

“Think of what?” Peter asked.

Boylan disdained answer. He was strapping a pigskin legging over a
bulging calf, always a severe strain. He looked up presently, reached
across and touched his forefinger to Peter’s chin then to his own, which
bristled black and gray.

“Young man, you’ve got a secret,” he remarked darkly.

Peter smiled. He kept his razors in the same case as his tooth-brush,
and the case had not been mislaid so far. He could shave in the dark.

“You’re either not of age, or your face is sterile,” said Boylan.

“The floor of this fish shop isn’t,” said Peter.

“I’ve been with you the last forty-eight hours straight. No sign of life
in that time.”

“You went out looking for fresh meat at sundown. You were gone---”

“I was gone just five minutes, because the train wasn’t up. You had tea
on when I came back.”

“There was a bit too much hot water.”

“Peter, that will do once more, but I’ve got a suspicion. No man living
can shave in the saddle--so you won’t be able to spring that one.
Besides, you are willing to discuss the matter.”

“Did you ask what town this is?”

“No,” said Boylan; “I couldn’t remember if they told me. New town every
night. The only thing to name a town is a battle. God, smell the wood
smoke--doesn’t it make you keen?”

“For what?”

Boylan looked at him. “What are we out for?”

“Apparently the column is out for blood, but I thought you might mean
breakfast.”

“The column will get blood, right enough,” said Boylan, “whether it gets
breakfast or not. What’s the news, I wonder?”

“I’ve forgotten my relation to news.... Where are you going?”

“To see if that beef-train is in. I suppose you’ll have rigged up a
turkish bath and be in the cooling room by the time I get back.”

Peter fed the horses and had tea and black bread served for two, by
the time Boylan called from a distance: “Put on the griddle, Peter--a
regular steak.... I stopped in the farrier’s on the way back and had it
anviled a bit. That’s what kept me,” he added.

Peter tossed it in the pan. Their fire was in the turf at the door
of the fish shop. Boylan drew in close, having washed noisily, and
deposited the remaining provisions in the two saddle-bags. “We’re fixed
for supper and breakfast,” he remarked, with a sigh.

“You said that the army that would win this war must win through famine.
The Russians had better begin--”

“I didn’t say anything about Mr. B. B. Boylan--”

“Mr. Big Belt Boylan,” Peter muttered, twisting his face away from the
heat and sizzling smoke steam. The name held.

The huge Rhodes’ man liked Peter more than the latter knew, and his
likings of this sort were deep and peculiar. Boylan was nearing fifty, a
man all in one piece--thick, ponderous, hard, scarred with _la viruela_,
a saber sweep, a green-blue arc in his throat where some dart or
arrow had torn its way in between vital columns. His head was bald and
wrinkled, but very large, his neck and jaw to match, his eyes a soft
blue that once had been his secret shame. Very often he had been called
into the public glare.

“I was so hungry once,” Boylan said, “that I’ve been a slave to the fear
of it ever since.” He referred to the Polar Failure. “Once in Farrel’s
Island--we were four,” he added. “We drew lots to find out which one of
us we must eat. That _was_ a winter.... All you fellows may begin famine
as soon as you like. You’ll come a long way before you arrive at the
personal familiarity of the subject earned by this same little fat
boy.... Turn it again, Peter.”

Samarc rushed past, speaking excitedly in French, and in the shadows
behind they saw the eyes of Spenski, sympathetic and wistful.

“What did he say, Peter?” Boylan asked quickly. “Samarc’s French is like
my Russian.”

“He said his face had been fixed for tea--and toast with Spenski--until
we began to steam up the place. Now he’s gone to the feed-wagons.”

“Why, bless the ruffian, there’s enough here for four.”

“I told him that, but you know Samarc.”

Little Spenski’s voice now drawled from behind.

“We’re getting low, anyway. It was right for him to fill the bags this
morning, though very kind of you to offer--”

“I don’t like that, Spenski,” said Boylan. “Bull cheek for four was my
order. Why, you fellows--”

Boylan was going to say how consistently generous with rations and
private provisions the two Warsaw men had been, but got tangled in
the language. Peter helped him. Boylan wouldn’t have it otherwise, and
quartered the steak, serving Spenski and covering the fourth with a tin.
It was an excellent feast. For five days these two pair had cautiously,
timidly even, stood for each other in that reserved way that
much-weathered men integrate a memorable friendship.... Samarc returned.
They helped him cache his provisions and drew him into the quadrangle
around the fire. There was time for an extra pot of tea, and the dawn
rose superbly. That day in the column Spenski was called into the
personal escort of Kohlvihr, Boylan accompanying. Samarc and Peter rode
as usual with the forward infantry--just behind the van, headquarters
back a quarter of a mile.

“Tell me about Spenski,” Peter asked. “He’s an interesting chap. I heard
him talking to you about the stars last evening, before supper, pointing
out Venus and Jupiter.”

“He’ll grow on you,” said Samarc, their talk in French. “He did in my
case. We’ve been together six years in and out of the big instrument
shop in Warsaw--Bloom’s. We make a camera, microscopes and even a
telescope now and then. I invented a rather profitable objective for the
Blooms, for which they gave me a position, and a small interest that has
kept me from wandering far from Warsaw. In the first days they told me
about Spenski--his remarkable workmanship--and pointed out the wiry,
red-headed little chap with the quick imperative smile you’ve seen. We
got on well together from the first. It has been no small thing for
me that he likes my ways. I got him in this service, by the way, and I
don’t know whether I’m very proud of that. He’s a lot more famous as a
workman now than six years ago.”

“What is his work?” Peter asked.

“A lens-maker. His art is one of the finest of the human eye--requires
genius to begin with. Spenski’s craft on a glass in many cases doubles
the price of the instrument. No one knows better what kind of a workman
he is, nor can follow his particular finish with a keener or more
appreciative eye, than old Dr. Abbe himself. Spenski has letters from
that old master.

“He knows all sorts of out-of-the-way things--like the star stuff. He’ll
name for you scores of the vague, indefinite ones, not to speak of the
larger magnitudes, which he can call by color at any hour of the night.
It was this passion of his for the stars which showed him his work as a
boy. That started him fabricating glasses to see them better. He has
a supreme eye for light, circles and foci, and a brain that just plays
with heavy mathematics--the most abstruse calculations. Yet, you see, he
carries it all with the ease of a boy. I think men who come with a task
to do are like that. It’s part of them. They don’t feel the weight of
what they know, because it’s all through them--not localized. You might
be with Spenski an hour or a week and never know that he was more than
just a mechanic--if you were just a mechanic.”

“It’s very interesting,” said Peter, as charmed with his companion as
with the man he talked about.

“A little while ago Spenski found his girl, and I would have
withdrawn--for that is the high test,” Samarc resumed. “But Spenski
managed to keep us both without strain.... And then the war came
along. A blight fell upon all workmanship in an hour. I had been on the
military side of things from a boy, a matter of training and heredity.
Of course, I would go. Spenski looked around the shop when I told him
this. It was stricken, the machinery cranking down, the faces of the
men white and troubled. ‘I’ll go, too,’ said he.... I reminded him of
her.... ‘She wouldn’t be interested in a chap who remained at home,’ he
said.... I told him of the big plants in Switzerland and America, where
he could be of great value, but he was not tempted. ‘I want to go if
they’ll take me in your battery,’ was his last word on the matter.

“Of course I saw to that, but there’s no work here, and there won’t be,
that can bring out Spenski’s real values. Think of using such a man
to feed the hopper of a rapid-fire piece.... But it’s good to have him
along. Spenski’s a hard habit to break.”

That night, when Boylan and Mowbray were together again, but a little
apart from the others, Big Belt said:

“Say, Peter, that little Spenski is a card. A good little chap, smart
and modest. I like him.”

“I found Samarc worth cultivating, too,” said Peter.



Chapter 2


Marching south along the Vistula with the old-fashioned army--no
airships, nothing that intensely puzzled Mowbray in this service--that
is, in the exteriors of it--nothing but earth poundage and earth power,
a game that had much to do with earth and not with heaven. Seven quiet
days of marching in splendid summer weather, the raw peasant soldiery
well fed and comfortable, becoming a unit, all outbreak of separate
consciousness anywhere more and more impossible, hardening to the
peculiar day’s work. They were used to heavy work, but this was a
particular task that needed specific hardening of feet and lungs; also
the personal idea in each breast required numbing. The physical aim was
to make men light for heavy work; to give them a taste of the joy and
the true health of the field--before the entrainments, the haste and
the fighting; but the psychological purpose was to make each atom
forget itself, to weave it well into the fabric of the mass. Kohlvihr’s
division had to be moved; very well, let the movement gather the values
of practice marching as well.

A raw division, with a scattering of Poles and Finns mixed with the
straight Slav peasantry and regarded by the Russian war office, as Peter
Mowbray understood at once, a ticklish proposition. The cement for
this new service was “green” as yet; it had to set, required frequent
wettings of fine humor and affiliation. The marvel to Mowbray was that
the thousands fell for it. They had practically all left something
that was life and death to them--land, labor, women, children. Each
had established the beginnings at least of a personal connection in
the world, and this relation had to be rubbed out. What had they been
promised to take its place? _Freedom_, doubtless. But intrinsically they
were free men.

Peter recalled what Fallows had said: that properly fathered this
peasantry might be led into a citizenship and virtue that would change
the world. Instead they were to be impregnated with every crime. With
such thoughts Peter felt the spirit of Berthe Wyndham awake in his mind.

Seven days and not a breath from the outer world. The correspondents
were allowed to move in and out of Kohlvihr’s headquarters; and, though
they paid richly for everything, were treated well, and regarded as
guests by the staff officers. Peter had met Kohlvihr in Warsaw before
the thought of war--a good-tempered, if dull and bibulous old man, he
had seemed in the midst of semi-civilian routine; but a different party
here afield. Peter recalled the saying of old sailors that you never
know a skipper until you ship under him.

Moments of evening, in the sharp hazes of wood smoke, when the whole
army seemed nestling into itself, laughing, covering its nostalgia,
putting on its strength, Peter met in certain moments the advisability
of turning his back upon Boylan and Spenski and Samarc. The
extraordinary nature of Berthe Wyndham would flood home to him, as to
one to whom it belonged, very dear but very far.... He would smile when
he thought of _The States_ and the Old Man.... “He thinks I’m clutched
in the ripping drama and waiting for blood,” he muttered, “that I am
burning to stop the breath of the outer world with my story of gore and
conquest.... But I’m eating his bread. I won’t betray. There must be a
wise way to feed the red melodramatic receptivity of the cities and at
the same time to tell the real story.”

He stood in the midst of square miles of men and military engines. On
every road other Russian forces moved southward and to the southeast.
The railroads groaned with troops, for the most part in a better state
of preparation than Kohlvihr’s division. Rumors reached the staff, as
they neared the Galician border, that the Austrian fields below were
already bleeding; finally word came, as they turned eastward, that they
were to entrain at Fransic and make a junction with the main Russian
columns preparing to invade Galicia from the northeast.

On the night before they entered Fransic, Mowbray awoke, and saw a
figure sitting in the doorway of the little hut assigned them for
quarters. It was Spenski, his face upturned in the starlight. He sat so
still that Peter slipped out from the blankets (which covered Boylan as
well) and took his place beside the lens-maker. Spenski was facing
the east. The street of the little hill town lost itself in a sharp
declivity just ahead; the nearer huts were low. The whole east was naked
to the horizon and an indescribable glory of starlight.

“Aren’t they amazing?” Spenski whispered. “It must be nearly morning,
for those are the winter stars. I think they must have wakened me up. Do
you know them?”

“Just the first magnitudes. They are more brilliant than I have ever
known.”

Orion and a great kite of suns stood out with new and flashing power.

“I never saw that huge _W_ before--” said Peter.

“You don’t mean Cassiopeia? Her chair isn’t there, but over to the
north--”

“No, no--_there_. Rigel, the upper right corner, down to the left, the
Dog-star; up to Betelguese, down to the left again to Procyon, and up to
the brightest of all--the stranger, not usually there--”

Spenski clutched him. “I was watching the bigger configuration, and
didn’t notice. Your stranger is the planet Saturn in transit between
Taurus and Orion. Saturn completes the _W_, and the _W_ stands for--”

“War, possibly,” said Peter.

There was a growl just now from Boylan: “Come on back to bed, you
star-gazers.”

“Saturn is so far and moves so slowly,” the little man whispered, “that
the _W_ will not be deranged for many months.”

The hurry call for Kohlvihr came as expected in Fransic. The first
sections of the divisions were entrained the next day--an end to summer
road-work.... A day and night of intolerable slowness in a vile coach,
and on the following noon the troop-train was halted, while a string
of Red Cross cars drew up to a siding to give the soldiers the right of
way; a momentary halt--the line of passing windows filled with cheering,
weeping nurses.

Just one reposeful face--as both trains halted a second or two. It was
the face of one who seemed to understand the whole sorry story, already
to be contemplating the ruin ahead. Her hands were folded, the eyes
intent upon the distance rather than the immediate faces of men. Mowbray
could not articulate. Above all he wanted to meet her eyes, to put back
the light of the present in them, but it was neither sound nor gesture
that accomplished it; rather the storming intensity of anguish in his
mind. His train jerked, her eyes found him, her arms raised toward him,
lips parted. It became the one, above all, of the exquisite pictures in
his consciousness, and the reality passed so quickly--gone, and no word
between them.

Thus her colors came to him again--the mystic trinity of white and gray
and black--all he had since known and loved added to the mystery of
their first meeting. It was like an awakening to the rack of thirst
after one has dreamed of a spring of gurgling water--the swift passing
of that face of tender beauty and fortitude, that fair brow, gray eyes
and black hair....

Boylan was looking deeply into his face.

“Good God, man, you’re a ghost. What is it, Peter?”

“It struck me queer to see a trainload of girls down here in the field,”
 said Peter quite steadily.

“Well, if a trainload of strange women can do that to you--here’s hoping
we never do Paris together.”

Little Spenski opposite had seen the outstretched hands, and Peter saw
that he had seen.



Chapter 3


And now a rainy field. Two days of cold wind and rain after the
cattle-cars; a different tone and temper from the men, coughing instead
of laughter at night-fall. Another nameless village--Galician, now, for
the border had been crossed, and the stillest night Peter Mowbray had
so far known among the troops. It was a listening army--the far distance
breathing just the murmur of cannonading.

He moved about within the cordon of head-quarter sentries, studying
the edges of the bivouac as the rain and the darkness fell. Kohlvihr’s
division was but a tooth of the main army now; the whole region was
massed with Russians marching westward; but still the outfit from Warsaw
was enough, all that he could encompass of the mystery of numbers.
Others had met the enemy, but these were still virgin. They were
listening.

Their faces looked white in the thickening dark, noses pinched and the
rest _beard_.... Hair--it was like some rapidly ripening harvest in
the command, different each day, making the faces harder and harder to
memorize. Mowbray had been disgusted at first--faces like changelings,
atrocious like chickens. But the beards were taking form now--all
gradations of yellow and red and black--many of that gray-yellow which
loses itself in the middle distance and becomes a blur. How he hated
hair like that!

The next day dawned bright and cold. At ten Kohlvihr, in the midst of
the southern wing, brushed the tail of an Austrian force in its turning.
The engagement was sharp exhilaration to Peter; perhaps it was to
certain of the soldiers; yet it was the first. Its touch of blood
quivered through Kohlvihr’s command not yet assimilated, stirred this
raw entity with deep inexplicable passion.

The correspondents were riding with the staff; the point of the van was
moving below in plain sight when its baptism fell. Kohlvihr licked his
white lips, the upper lip uncontrollable like a deprived drunkard’s.
Below a skirmish was spreading out, the commands trumpeting back their
messages. Mowbray turned. A little battery of mountain guns was racing
forward through the infantry column, the drivers yelling for _gangway_.
It was like a small town’s fire department in action. Now the infantry
poured down the rocky slopes that bordered the old iron road. Peter
turned quite around in the saddle. The murmur in the air was queer--like
something wrong below in a ship at sea. Kohlvihr’s face interested him,
the skirmish lines and their reinforcements, the voice of Boylan (though
his faculties were too occupied to catch that rush of humorous comment
in English); the mountain guns interested him, and the sudden racket of
Russian riflery below.

Now one of the peasant soldiers was running up the slope from the van
toward the staff. He was bare-headed, shocky-haired and bearded, making
queer, high sounds like a squirrel as he ran--quite out of order
and amazed at himself. He would have been struck down by his nearest
neighbor ten days later, felled with the nearest officer’s sword, but
there was funk and a bit of dismay in the heart of the raw division that
suffered the soldier to make his way to the staff.

Lifting his legs lumberingly, he held fast to his left wrist, where a
bullet had started the blood. He held the wound high, like a trophy,
the blood spurting, crying about it.... This was sudden discovery of
something the army had started out to find, but had forgotten in the
length of days. This was the red fleece--its drips of red were in each
raw soul now. A little way farther and the staff awoke. An officer
spoke. The peasant was caught and booted quiet. Kohlvihr licked his lips
to keep them still. He perceived that Mowbray’s eyes had fastened upon
his mouth. The lips opened again. The order came forth for the soldier
to be flogged.... It was their particular friend, Dabnitz, a lieutenant
of the staff, who was given the execution of this order.



Chapter 4


The four were much together for a few days after that, Samarc and
Spenski not yet assigned to their battery. They learned each other in
those few days as men often fail to learn the hearts of their immediate
associates during years. There was fighting--scattered, open, surprising
often to one out of touch with the points and the scouting. Different
towns every day, and a continual giving of territory on the part of the
Austrians.

“This is not the main fighting at all,” said Boylan. “This is but the
edge of the game. It won’t break into print. The big stuff is farther
on. These that we meet are the Austrian columns hurrying forward. This
territory is ours for the marching through. We’ll catch it later--and
this will be forgotten.”

Samarc had known these towns that the Russian column was passing
through, yet he had to ask the names, because of the destruction.
The Austrians would always destroy in haste before leaving, and more
leisurely the Russians would destroy. It seemed to affect Samarc, as
some landmark reopened from its ruin for his eyes.

“It seems to say,” he told the lens-maker, “‘I was this at one time, and
now I must go.’” Orders came for Samarc and Spenski, but they were not
to be remotely stationed, since their battery was assigned to Kohlvihr’s
division--a different camp but the same field. Few words about the
separation, but each of the four understood.... Night and day, the dead
had been with them in the recent days--in such richness and variety
they could not escape, could not cover them, and something from the
dead entered their hearts. To Peter--so queerly were his thoughts
running--the memorable incident of their last night together had to do
with an ant colony.

Supper was over, and they had tossed on a decayed log to keep up the
fire. A nest of ants was presently driven forth by the heat from the
soft heart of the wood. They found themselves hemmed in flame and turned
back, as Peter thought, to seek the treacherous shelter of the nest
again. It was not so; they were wiser than that, and marched forth in
scores once more, each carrying an egg in its jaws. Spenski swung the
end of the log out to the grass for them to make good their retiring. It
was all very sane and admirable. Peter respected them....

The dead were with them. They had not learned to forget. Spenski would
whimper in his sleep. The days did not fill him, wearied his body but
other faculties and potencies were restless at night. This man who could
grind a lens so that a line from the center of the earth to the center
of the sun would pass through it without chromatic aberration, was more
shocked than the other three by the cursory killing of the days, his
imagination intoxicated and sleep perverted. His companion who imagined
himself of coarser and heavier texture often placed his hand upon the
dreaming one. Spenski would start, open his eyes and say, “Thanks,
Samarc.”

Continual rocking through the long days, and the rumbling of the earth
from the artillery forward. A mountain country of sharply cool nights,
of cool bright days--the scent of cedar and balsam, good water, steady
skirmishing--food just a bit scarce so that the peasants snapped and
bolted, showing sharp about the eyes. It was not hunger--just the lean
kind of fare. Peter often watched the halted columns at night as the
men sprang to the feeding. Supper fires burst forth at the drop of the
rifles. Not so raw now, the Warsaw contingent, a military eye would
remark--getting ripe, in fact.

A week afterward, Boylan reported at supper that they would be permitted
to ride with the battery on the following day. In the meantime they had
not seen nor heard of the other pair. Fighting and marching from dawn to
nightfall usually; human nature refused effort after that. They were so
near dead at night that they laughed about it, and felt their faces
in embarrassment, sharp-boned and unfamiliar as the faces of the dead.
Mowbray’s was still clean shaven. Young Dabnitz, the exquisite of the
staff, and a rather brilliant young Russian, was the only other who had
kept his razors in order. Perhaps a woman ruled his heart, as Berthe
Wyndham ruled Mowbray’s.

Big Belt had lost his last reservation about his companion. He gave
everything to Peter that he had given to Lonegan and something more--for
the field called a little more, and perhaps Peter called a little more.
The extent of Boylan’s loyalty had nothing to do with words or matters
of conduct so far, but it was a huge affair, a suggestion of which came
to the younger man from time to time and humbled him.

Twice during the first fortnight, Boylan had asked if this were
positively his first venture into the field with troops. “The reason I
ask,” he explained later, “is that you appear to have been on the job
before.”

This would have been a matter interesting to the Old Man of _The
States_, according to Lonegan’s story.

“I miss the little guy,” said Boylan, referring to Spenski. They were
anticipating the next day with the battery.

“I miss Samarc, too,” said Peter.

Romanceless, remorseless routine. The day that followed was their
hardest, for they were pressing the Austrians, taking their punishment
but inflicting punishment, as if called of God to extinguish a nation.
The face of the world seemed turned from them, in Peter’s fancy. He
marveled at what seemed the swift disintegration of an ancient worldly
establishment like Austria--going down unsung. It was not like a country
losing its identity, though that had to do with the facts; but rather
like a shadow passing, to be followed, not by sunlight, but by another
shadow of different contour and texture.

“We put such store by names,” he muttered, as he watched the Austrian
infantry give way before them, “and yet, the world will get on with
other names just the same.”

...There had been no chance for talk. They had merely pressed the hands
of their friends, something darkly melancholy about Samarc, as if his
eyes were in deep shadow, and something luminous in the eyes that shone
from the haggard face of Little Spenski. They looked forward to the
night, as men famished and athirst in a pit listen to the toil of
rescuers. Almost the last thing that Peter remembered was that the moon
came up before the sun had set. The rapid-fire battery was at work on
a hot smoky hill, the shrapnel and larger pieces still higher, and the
great masses of infantry moving below among the wind-driven hazes of the
valley, their long necklaces, of white puffs, showing and vanishing.

Mowbray’s ears were deadened to all sounds save from the immediate
machine-guns and the big hounds above; to his eyes the swaying strings
of infantry smoke-puffs in the valley were spectral and soundless.

The Russians had taken the little town of Judenbach in the early
afternoon, but the Austrians gave them a stand two miles beyond, finding
solid position in a range of craggy hills. The Russians had not cared to
leave them there over night, but the dislodgment proved difficult. The
unlimbering of the batteries toward the end of the day on the shoulders
of a thickly-wooded mass (from which Peter watched the infantry and
the moonrise in daylight), was the final effort of the day to drive the
enemy farther afield from Judenbach.

The two infantries were contending; gray Russian lines in the bottom
land and already advancing up the slopes. Day after day, smitten and
replenished--tillers of land becoming the dung of the land. Mowbray had
always pitied the infantry, and watched them now with unspeakable awe
and depression--moving up the slopes, lost in their white necklaces of
skirmish-fire, sprayed upon with steel vomit from the Austrian machines.

Samarc’s battery was idle. It was often so, Boylan reported, when the
enemy’s duplicate pieces were busy.

Now withering--those gray Russian lines. They diminished, gave way, a
thin ghostly pattern of the whole, falling back. An Austrian sortie of
yellow-brown men to finish the task.

“That’s _our_ cue,” Big Belt whispered.

The officers were already finding the range and fall. Samarc’s machine
was set, before his superior spoke. Peter saw what a week had done for
him. Samarc seemed old at the task, already to have grown old. Spenski
at the hopper--and the mutilating racket on. Between fire, Peter could
not hold in mind the inconceivable magnitude and velocity of these
sounds. His brain seemed to plow under, as it does the great events
of pain, the impress of hideous suffering which the proximity of the
machines caused. Yet at every firing the damnable things hurt him more.
Fast beyond count, as the threads break in a strip of canvas torn with
one movement--yet each crackling thread here meant projected steel.

They saw their work on the Austrian infantry lines. Yet always more
infantry would come forth, and in the silence following the machines,
the gray Russian lines stole forward again. Such was the slow battle
vibration.

A company of sappers was below, opening the wood of the slope, so that
the machine fire would not be impeded in case the Austrians drove back
the infantry beyond the hollows at the bottom of the valley. A hundred
yards down they were working like beavers among the trunks of cedar and
balsam, when a shrapnel broke among them. The Russian higher batteries
had been trying the same game among the Austrian emplacements, but could
not see results.

All battery men near the two Americans knew well that the Austrians
would note _that_ explosion of their shrapnel, and would relate the
range to the higher positions above. That one shot showed the Russian
artillerymen that their position was untenable. It was not that the
Austrians could see the damage they inflicted in one company of sappers,
but that the shattering blow in plain sight from their position would
show the exact means to displace the higher pieces that devastated their
infantry.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Boylan whispered. Again as he spoke
the orders to retire came quietly as a bit of garrison gossip, and as
coldly. Horses came running down for the ammunition carts; every muscle
of man and beast had its work now.

In thirty or forty seconds Austrian shrapnel would land higher. Peter
was tallying off the seconds, wondering if they would get clear.... At
this moment he noted that the moon had come up and that the sun was
not yet sunk. The two on the eastern and western rims of the world were
almost of a size and color, very huge and alike, except that one dazzled
the eyes--the difference between incandescence and reflection. The whole
dome was lost in florid haze. He almost laughed at what followed in
his mind, so strange is the caravan of pictures that hurries through in
action. It was the beauty above and ghastly waste of the infantry that
brought back to his brain the reason and decency of the ants in the
burning log--their order in contrast to this chaos....

The Austrians were workmen. Their searching shrapnel had been quite
enough. Samarc’s battery had begun to move, when they landed in the
heart of it. All was changed about, and new. The silence was like a deep
excavation, and the smell of fresh ground was in the air.

Peter did not see Boylan. He arose, half crawled up the torn ground to
the place where Spenski and Samarc had stood. They were some distance--a
saving distance for Mowbray--when he saw Samarc arise, his face sheeted
in red. Samarc was staring about for Spenski. Presently, Peter followed
the eyes of Samarc and saw the little man--half down, but looking up
toward his friend, the eyes wide open; also Spenski’s mouth, and the
most extraordinary smile in the red beard.

Peter crawled a step nearer. There was no voice yet. He was tranced
before this meeting of the companions, each of whom saw none but the
other. Spenski had been partly kneeling, but as Samarc approached, his
head bowed slowly down, and the smile was gone.

“Come on--they’ll do it again!”

Peter heard the words--but did not know who spoke them--possibly Boylan
from behind, possibly _he_ had said it. He had not seen Samarc’s lips
move.

The voice was an offense in that silence.

Now Peter saw none but Spenski, until Samarc reached him, lifted,
called. Peter saw the body raised from the ground to Samarc’s arms--saw
the little man’s body open upon his friend like a melon that has rotted
underneath.



Chapter 5


All went black for Peter. The slope rose up and took him. For an
eternity afterward he felt someone tugging at him--hands of terrible
strength that would not let him die, would not let him sleep. After that
a familiar voice began calling at intervals.

“Hello,” said Peter at last. “What have I been doing?”

“Not anything that you’ve pulled before. Is this an old habit?”

“What?”

“Passing out unhurt--lying like a log for an hour or two?”

“No, it’s a new one. Where are we?”

“Judenbach. It’s past supper time--”

Peter sat up, wobbled. The terrible hands steadied him again. He knew
now what had lamed him.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“I was wondering what hit me?”

“Now, you’re getting glib again,” said Boylan. Peter’s reserve had
interposed. His absence had something to do with her, but he could not
remember. “Where is she?” had got away from him as he crossed the border
back into the racking physical domain. He didn’t like that.

“Did I say anything?”

“Nothing that will be used against you,” Boylan observed. “As for what
hit you--that’s the mystery. Not a scratch in sight.... I was behind.
You were standing still as a sentry after that shrapnel. Presently you
bowled over--”

“That shrapnel?”

“Yep--”

There was an instant of silence; the picture returned and wrung a groan
from Peter. All the energy of his life rebelled against _the fact_.
Boylan’s hand tightened upon him. For the moment Mowbray was in a kind
of delirium.

“The moon had just come up,” he said, “like another sun. The real sun
was still in the sky from our hill.”

“I know. I was there. Cut it, Peter.”

“Where is Samarc?”

“In one of the hospital buildings, likely. I meant to find him as soon
as I could leave you--”

“I’ll go with you.”

Big Belt fumbled in his saddled bags for a flask, brought it in one
hand, a cup of water in the other....

They were in the streets, very dark. Once they were caught in a swift
current of sheep driven in for the commissary. Judenbach sat on the
slope of a hill, a little city, its heart of stone, very ancient, its
“hoopskirts,” as Boylan said, made of woven-cane huts. Already the
stone buildings of the narrow main street were crowded with wounded.
The correspondents were not permitted far either way from headquarters.
Finally it was necessary to get Dabnitz of the staff to conduct them....
It had all been a jumble of ambulances at nightfall from the field, the
lieutenant said. Russian soldiers were not ticketed. Many faces on the
cots were bandaged beyond recognition. The three gave up at midnight,
Peter gaining strength rather than losing it in the later hours. Orders
were that the streets be emptied of all but sentries.

“No, nothing like that--” said Boylan, as Mowbray sank to the floor by
his blanket roll. “You haven’t had supper--”

“Don’t, Boylan.... I say, what do they do with the dead?”

Rain was pattering down; the smell of drugs reached them.

“It _does_ make a difference when you know one of them--doesn’t it?....
God, man, we’re cluttered with wounded. The dead are at peace--”

“I wonder what stars he’s watching to-night?”

“Come, come. Peter--”

“I know.... I know, Boylan. Only it shows me something. He was a great
workman. There are things in the world that can’t be done because he’s
gone. There are others like him. He had a girl. He had a friend. He had
us--”

Boylan decided that talking was good. He listened and prepared soup.

“And to-morrow they’re at it again,” said Peter.

“It won’t look the same in the morning--”

Peter did not answer.

“Anyway, you didn’t bring on the war, Peter--”

“It makes a man cold with that kind of cold a supper-fire don’t help.”

“Peter, you’ve got me stopped with your moods--like a woman. Women were
always too profound for Mr. B. B. Boylan--”

“Sorry. You’ve been a prince. I’ll do better now. I’ll get out of it.
Little shock--that’s all. I think it wasn’t so much physical. Something
changed all around. I’ve been taking things as I found them so long.
That helps to bring on a war--”

Boylan glanced at him narrowly.

Peter laughed. “I’m all right. Head’s working.”

Big Belt sighed. “I loved that little guy, too. God, I’d run east to
Asia and keep on running rather than meet his girl.”

Peter drank hot soup and slept. Next morning it was like a hard problem
that one has slept upon and awakened with the process and answer
straight-going. They had not searched ten minutes (calling “Samarc”
 softly among the cots where the faces were bandaged) before a hand came
up to them. It was Peter who took it; and as their hands met, the whole
fabric of the man on the cot broke into trembling. They understood.
Samarc had been lying there rigid with his tragedy. Peter’s touch had
been enough to break the dam of his misery.

“_I have ceased to kill,_” he said.

The head was twice as big with bandages; yet under that effigy, so
terrible was the intensity of the moment, Peter became conscious of ruin
there, also of a sudden icy cold in the morning air. Samarc’s powerful
hand still clutched his. The voice that had emerged from under the
cloths was still in his ears. It had seemed to come as water from a
pipe--loosely, the faucet gone. The hand was unhurt.

“_...He came in the night. I did not speak--but my heart was fighting
against the guns. He was moving here and there. He turned to me, as if I
had suddenly cried out, ‘What shall I do?’...’You can cease to kill,’ he
said._”

Boylan was watching Peter. His face turned gray.

They received the intelligence of the words, as they came, although at
another time the mouthing would have been inarticulate as wind in one of
Judenbach’s archaic street-lamps.

“I’ll stay with him, Boylan,” said Peter, choosing the hardest thing,
but Big Belt would not leave, though the Russian columns were moving
in the street--off to renew the battle among the hills. The two sat by
until Samarc slept.

* * *

They were in the street again, moving close to the walls, for the
cavalry was crowding the narrow highway. They crossed finally to a
stone-paved area at the side of Judenbach’s main building. Their feet
were upon the stone flags of this court, when Dabnitz suddenly hurried
forward, with a gesture for them to stand back.

“Just a moment, my friends,” he said. “A little formality, but very
necessary--”

Peter lifted his eyes, perceived three men standing bare-headed against
the wall of head-quarters, twenty paces away. One of them exclaimed, his
voice calm but penetrating:

“We are not spies. We do not care to turn our backs. We are not afraid
to die, for we have made our lives count--”

It was the voice of a public speaker; the voice of a man making good
many words.... Dabnitz stepped between Boylan and Mowbray, stretching
out his arms before them. It was all in an instant. They saw Dabnitz’s
apologetic smile--and a Russian platoon at their right, rifles
raised--then the ragged volley.

Each of the three fell differently.



Chapter 6


Boylan and Peter sat together in the ante-room of headquarters. They did
not speak. Peter was getting down to the quick. He thought many things
which a man never tells another man, and seldom tells a woman; yet they
were matters of truth and reason, no sentiment about them. He recalled
many incidents of early years in which his mother had tried to teach
him sensitiveness and mercy. Until now her effort seemed to have been
wasted. It had been more simple and appealing to him to follow his
father’s picture of manhood. Possibly his mother had wearied of pitting
her will against his. He had grown up under his father’s control and
ideal. As it looked to him now, he had become all that was obvious and
average and easy; while his mother’s passion had been for him to become
one of the singular and precious and elect.... He would never have seen
this so clearly had it not been for Berthe Wyndham. She had given him a
kind of new birth, taken up the work wherein his mother had failed....

Dabnitz came in. The young staff-officer was handsome, soldierly,
black-eyed. His manner was one of enfolding cheerfulness. He had
proved fair and kindly, temperate in his tastes and delicate in his
appreciations of humor and natural effects. He could express himself
fluently in Russian, German, English and French, but was a caste-man to
the core, a militarist and autocrat. As such he proved rather appalling
to Peter Mowbray on this day.

“Is General Kohlvihr out with the fronts?” Boylan asked.

“He’s in the field, but not at the front. We got the point yesterday,
you see. I’d rather be in the van every day than left to these matters
of clean-up--”

Peter looked up at him. “Is there much of this to do?”

“I’m afraid so. They work among the hospitals. You don’t catch many of
them in the ranks--”

“Perhaps they would rather tend the wounded than to make the wounds.”

Dabnitz smiled cheerfully. “They’re afraid of their hides. When a man
does a lot of talking, he is generally shy on action--”

Peter saw the ease of the acceptance of this view on the part of the
others; saw how clearly it was the view of the military man.

“And yet it was a clean-cut death of that talker and his two companions
you just executed--”

“An exception now and then,” Dabnitz granted.

“How do you catch them?”

“We have a system at work for that purpose--everywhere, especially in
the hospitals. There isn’t much temporizing when we get them.”

Peter Mowbray’s skull prickled with heat and his face was cold with
sweat.

“What do they preach?” he managed to ask.

“Sometimes for men to rise and go home; sometimes for them to cease to
kill, and sometimes to shoot down the officers. It isn’t all that a man
has to do now to lead his men forward,” Dabnitz observed. “He must do
that, of course, but all the danger isn’t in front. It doesn’t follow
that a man has turned his back upon the enemy nowadays--if he happens to
be found with a wound in the back.”

“Were these--these that you put out this morning--working in the
hospitals?”

“Yes.”

Peter turned away.

“In a good many cases we bring a man to his feet again from a bad
wound--to find him not a soldier but a damned anarchist.”

“It’s expensive and cumbersome also to carry such a hospital system
afield,” Peter observed.

Dabnitz did not catch the irony. “Yes, it would be cheaper and simpler
to put a hard-hit soldier out of his misery--”

Boylan, watching Peter’s face, suddenly arose, suggesting that they ride
out toward the fighting. ....When they were alone, he added:

“I know you don’t want the front to-day, but it was very clear that I’d
better get you out of there....Peter, did you ever kill a man?”

“No.” The question did not seem wild to either of them--there by the
open court of Judenbach.

“I knew a man who did. I saw him getting whiter and whiter like your
face--and looking into his victim’s eyes in that queer surprised way you
looked at Dabnitz. It wasn’t in the field; in a city bar-room. I didn’t
look for what happened--but I knew something was coming. The fool went
on talking, talking. The other watched him, and when all the blood was
burned out of him....Great God, here I am talking blood--”

“It’s in the air,” said Peter. “It’s hard to breathe!.... No, I won’t
go down front to-day. I wish I could go back--back--oh, to the clean
Pole--no, to some little snowy woods in the States....Boylan, does it
suffocate you?”

“It’s different from anything I knew,” said Boylan. “It’s so damned
businesslike. Something’s come over the world. War was more like a
picnic before. I never saw it like this. I believe we’ve gone crazy.”

They stood before the main building, just at the entrance of the stone
court--halted by the hideous outcry that reached them from another
building just a few doors below. It was as if a strong man were being
murdered by torture. The big cannons boomed up the narrow cobble-paved
road from the field. As far as they could see in either direction, the
street was crowded with soldiers, stepping aside for artillery going
south, and the stream of ambulances coming in from the front. Passing
them now from the street into the court was a cortege, little but
grim--a Cossack trooper leading two bare-headed men by a rope attached
to his saddle, a Cossack non-commissioned officer walking behind with
raised pistol. Both the prisoners were young, one a mere boy, yet he was
supporting the elder. Peter’s eyes turned to the blank wall of the main
building where Dabnitz had been busy as they passed. To the right,
in the gloom from the walls, was a row of iron gratings, the windows
knocked out--darkness under the low stone lintels.

Peter had not noticed before this dim square, within the square. His
mind dwelt upon it now in the peculiar way of the faculties, when
thoughts are too swift and too terrible to bear....It was like something
he had seen before, the dark little square. Yes, it was like part of a
recess yard he had known in an old school-building years ago....

He couldn’t keep off the reality long. In every direction the murderous
army--no song, no laugh, no human nature, no love, no work, but death.
He was imprisoned. And somewhere near or far in the midst of such
a chaos, was Berthe Wyndham. Could she live in this?.... Peter was
suicidal, very close to that, a new thing to him. Queerly he realized
that death would be easy for himself, simple, acceptable. For there was
no escape. They would not let him go. There was no place that one could
go out of the army. Not even the dead go back.... It would not be fair
to her. She might live, and call to him afterward. He did not think she
could live, but there was that chance. He thought of his mother--quite
as a little boy would, his lip quivering.... He started at the touch of
Boylan’s hand.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” Big Belt said. “We’ll write, Peter. We’ll
get out the machines to-day. We’ll write a story--just as if we could
file it on a free cable. It will do us good. We’ll tell the story--”

“We’d have to eat it....Boylan, if I should tell this story on paper,
the Russians would burn it and me and the house in which it was
written....No. I must work better than that. Come back. I want
Dabnitz--”

Boylan drew him face about.

“You’re not going to--”

“No--no. I wasn’t thinking of killing him. It wouldn’t do any good.
One would have to kill all the officers and save enough energy for the
Little Father at the last. No, I want him to help me--”

They found him at headquarters.

“Lieutenant Dabnitz,” Peter said, his hand upon the Russian’s shoulder,
speaking very quietly, “I feel like a fool doing nothing all day
long--and so much to do. I want you to take me over to that hospital
Samarc is in, and set me officially to work. Let me be orderly,
anything, to-day. I want to help, if you’ll forgive me--”

“Gladly, Mr. Mowbray. I’m sure they’ll be very glad. Of course, they are
always short-handed in the hospitals.”

“Thanks.”

Boylan’s heart gave a thump at the new light in Mowbray’s eyes.

“I’ll go along, too,” he said. “I’m the daddy of them all, when it comes
to lifting.”

A ragged platoon volley crashed from the court as they entered the
street. Peter’s steps quickened.



Chapter 7


Of course, they did not know it in _The States’_ office, neither the Old
Man nor his managing editor, but a way had been found to _rock_ Peter
Mowbray. Indeed he would have been rocked to pieces had he not found his
work that day in Judenbach. ....When no one was listening, he would talk
to the wounded. Peter discovered that there was a woman in him, as many
a field-man has discovered. In fact he came to believe that we are all
mixed men and women, and that it is the woman in us that suffers most.
He had a suspicion that there was a woman in Boylan, and had to smile
just there. He sank into the work, and saved himself. Samarc appeared to
be asleep.

He would have laughed to have heard his own talk afterward. A man does
not remember what he says to a loved horse, or to a dog that looks up in
passing. Innocent as that, Peter’s sayings to the wounded and dying. Had
there been spies about, the American would have been counted eminently
safe. He had to talk; his heart was so full; it was part of the action
that saved him. All the time there was in the background of his mind a
steady amazement at himself--something of his, aloof, watchful, that was
not exactly ready to accede to all this change and emotion, and yet was
not strong enough to prevent.

Twice through the long forenoon he saw a little black-whiskered orderly,
eyes dark and wide and deep, his nose sensitive and finely shaped, his
shoulders unsoldierly. Once his cap fell as he went to lift a pan, and
Peter saw as noble a brow as ever dignified a man. He went to him and,
as he stood there, he found there was nothing to say.

“Who are you?” the other asked.

“That’s what I was trying to think to ask you?” Peter said with a smile.
“I am Mowbray, an American correspondent--”

“Why are you here?” He pointed to the cots.

“I had to do something.”

“The misery called to you?”

“Perhaps. To be sure, I’d better say my own misery made me come.”

They talked in French.

“It is all the same. You are not a beast.”

“I’m not sure,” said Peter.

“That is good, too. I’m glad you have come. All morning I have watched
you....”

“You did not answer me. Who are you?”

“I am Moritz Abel.”

He held a wash basin in one hand, a bit of linen in the other--this
man who had done such a poem that the glory of the future flashed back
through it, to sustain and to be held by men. It was a queer moment.
Facing each other, Mowbray thought of Spenski--as if the little
lens-maker stood behind the narrow shoulders of the poet.... Was it only
the little red-headed body that they had killed? Would the immortal
come back with a new story of the stars? Thus Peter found himself
thinking of Spenski, with this lover of new Russia before him. And would
the destroyers slay this one too?... Now his humanity came back in a
cloud, and he shuddered at the thought of Russia murdering the man who
wrote _We Are Free_.... Perhaps it was the woman in him that made him
say:

“I hope _you_ live through the long night, Monsieur.”



Chapter 8


Moritz Abel stepped nearer. In the silence Peter grew embarrassed.
What he had said would sound without footing since the poet did not
understand the trend of his thoughts. He meant to, add what _the long
night_ signified, and wanted his saying really known for what it was--an
utterance of pure passion against the destruction of genius. The other
replied, making all explanation unnecessary:

“I knew you for one of us. It is the long night, but it is a great honor
for us to be here and at work.”

“Where are your companions?”

The Russian smiled. “They are all about through the dark of the long
night. We may only signal in passing. In fact, I must go now--”

The surgeon in charge had entered. Peter went to Samarc’s cot, steeling
himself. “Samarc,” he whispered, without bending, “Samarc--”

The wounded man stirred a little, moaned, but did not answer.... In the
far corner Boylan was moving cots (occupants and all) closer together
for the admission of more. His sleeves were rolled. Near him a little
woman, whose waist was no larger than the white revelation of Boylan’s
forearm, was directing the way, the giant of the Polar Failure
struggling to please. Something of ease and uplift had come to Peter
from this, and from the passing of Moritz Abel. Silently battling with
Dabnitz, with Kohlvihr, with king’s desire and the animal of men, was
this service-thing greater than all, greater than death.... A soldier
called and he went toward the voice. Presently Peter was jockeying him
into good humor with low talk.

All day the battle tortured the southern distance--the cannonading
nearer, as the hours waned. The Austrians were holding their own or
better. It was the fiercest resistance which the Russian columns had as
yet encountered. All afternoon wounded were brought back. It became more
and more difficult to move among the cots in the building. So it was
with all Judenbach that was not in ruins. Twice through the afternoon
there were volleys in the court below; and when the two went forth for
food, they saw a soldier carrying baskets of dirt from the street, and
covering the stone flags close to the main building.... And from that
grim house a little down the street, came at intervals, shocking their
senses, the hideous outcry as of murder taking place.... Boylan went
down into the field an hour before sunset, Peter back to the hospital.

“I’ll see what I can find,” Big Belt remarked. “You’re right to go back,
Peter. As for me, I can stand it better outdoors.”

Crossing the street, it seemed to Peter that he had been in Judenbach
certain ages, a reckonable space of eternity--despite the lowering sun
which calmly informed him that at this time yesterday the Austrians had
found the range of Samarc’s battery with a shrapnel or two. Many things
had come to him. He wished as never before for a free cable.... Boylan
came in at dark and drew him away from Samarc’s cot.

“I’ll be back to-night,” Peter promised.

“...There’s been no break in the check to-day,” Big Belt reported.
“Kohlvihr’s division, and the immediate forces surrounding, are part
of the great right wing, and this right is holding up the whole Russian
command. I heard Kohlvihr explaining to the Commander’s aide that the
Austrians here had been reinforced; that they gave us Judenbach for
the taking yesterday, in order to fall back into the hills beyond. The
center and left, it appears, is clear, ready to fight on to Berlin or
Budapest, but the whole line is held up for this right wing. Kohlvihr
is desperate. There’ll be a hard pull to get across the hills
to-morrow--all hands, Peter.”

“This may be our last night in Judenbach then?”

“If killing a division will start a hole across that range of hills,
it’s our last night--”

“I’ll sit it out with Samarc,” Peter said.

“Go to it, if you think best. You were a mighty sick woman this morning.
Something in yonder helped you. I’ll see you through for another
treatment.”

“Boylan, don’t you stay up. You’ve roughed it to-day and been afield.
Don’t let me spoil your sleep--with a big day ahead. It wasn’t lack of
sleep that got my nerve this morning--”

“Oh, I’ll yap around till bedtime,” said the other. “What does Samarc
say?”

“Something has come over him. Some one came to him last night and seemed
to drive a nail right into his thinking--pinned him.”

“He’s turned against the killing?”

“Yes. And he’ll be restless to-night, sleeping so much to-day.... At
least, he made the appearance of sleeping. I think he was shocked to
hear his voice.... His eyes are right enough. But below--”

“What made you think he had the appearance of sleeping?”

“It just occurred to me. He didn’t want to take all my time. I whispered
his name several times--no answer. Once when I was leaving, his hand
reached up and touched my coat.”

“Is he hurt badly?”

“Not a thing in the body. It’s between his throat and his eyes.... You
know I saw him last night after the shrapnel as he lifted--it was just a
sheet of blood. Afterward it was covered in cloth. I don’t think he knew
until this morning, when he started to talk.”

“He was all knit to the little man,” Boylan said. “As good a pair as I
ever met afield.... Oh, I say, eat something--”

Peter smiled at the big fellow and turned to his soup and black bread.
He didn’t say what he thought, but it had to do with his own field
companion this time.

  * * *

...Midnight. Boylan had gone back to quarters. Peter’s ward was low-lit
and still. ...The wounded man’s hands waved before his bandage, as if to
detract attention from the windy blur of his utterance. Samarc wanted to
die.

“You know it was because of me that he came--” he repeated.

“But you mustn’t suffer for that. Really, Samarc, a man couldn’t have
been a better friend than you. Spenski would tell you so if he could.
These are times for men to _live_. I wanted to kill myself this morning.
You know I was behind you on the hill, too. That, and the tragedy all
about, and then they were murdering spies and martyring real Fatherland
men out in the court--as if there wasn’t enough death afield. It was too
much for me. Old Boylan helped me, but if I hadn’t come in to work,
I’d have shot my head off. Here--men dying hard and easy; men and women
serving; so much to do,--I got better. Death isn’t everything. I’m not
a genius or a dreamer, man. I’m so slow at dreaming and brotherhood and
all that, that a woman once ran from me. But I saw to-day that death
isn’t all. I don’t know what else there is, but this is a sort of long
night, this war. A few of us are awake. If we are put to sleep--that’s
all right--I mean knocked out, you know. But so long as we are not,
we’ve got to watch and root for the dawn. God, man, there is much to do.
We’ve got to make our lives count--”

He was bending forward talking very low. He thought from the pressure of
Samarc’s hands that he was gaining ground. It was queer and laughable to
himself--this line of talk that came to him. He knew so well the pangs
of that suicidal suffocation, that he could talk for the very life of
the other. He added:

“A little black-whispered man looked up from his soap and towels this
morning. His hat fell off, and I saw he had come a long ways. He looked
at me again, and I spoke to him. Samarc, it was another of these little
whirlwinds of human force--a master workman like the man you loved.

“It was Moritz Abel who wrote _We Are Free_....

“And there are others--like Spenski and Abel--some of them dead--some to
die to-morrow. Do you think the good God would let them die so easily if
it wasn’t all right? But we mustn’t die without making our lives count.”

Peter’s eyes were covered by slender hands. It was like passing a garden
of mignonette in the night, that fleeting perfume of the hands.

“Oh, Peter, how sweet to see you and hear your voice!”

It seemed that he became molten in her presence. A heavenly _adagio_
after a prolonged movement of sin and shame and every dissonance. It
was as if she had come from a bath of peace to him; another inimitable
moment in the life of his romance. He turned to her, holding fast to the
hand that was stretched toward him. He cleared his voice.

“Excuse me, Samarc,” he said.



III

THE HOUSE OF AMPUTATIONS

Chapter 1


They looked long into each other’s faces. “You were wonderful as you
spoke of your friend. Did you know that, Peter?”

He turned away deprecatingly.

“Forgive me. Of course you didn’t know.”

“...And you meant to come all the time?” he asked at last.

“Yes.”

“I should have known it.... That day--that day across the siding--why,
Berthe, it was almost more than I could stand. I had just been thinking
of you.”

“We were like two spirits who hadn’t earned the right to be together,”
 she said.

“I’m afraid it’s dangerous now,” he answered. “One mustn’t have a whim,
other than to extinguish the enemy. The army is afraid of itself. All
day--”

Though he checked himself, she knew his thought.

“Yes, all day, they murdered white-browed men in the court below.”

“Berthe--”

“Yes.”

“I want you to guard your life--as if it were mine--just that.”

All surroundings were melting away from them. She had never seen him
like this.... Even Samarc could not hear their whispers.

“You came like an angel, Berthe,--all I ever want of an angel. I tell
you I am proud.”

“Of what, Peter?”

“That I had sense enough to go a second time to the Square at Warsaw.”

“I’m glad, too.... If we were only in the winter stillness--”

They were silent. Samarc’s hand came up to Peter, and drew him close.
It was clear that he could not bear the woman to hear his struggle for
speech. “Tell her about Spenski,” came to Peter’s ears in the lipless
mouthing.

Berthe saw that Peter was ghostly white, as he lifted his head. She
thought it had to do with what the wounded man said.

Peter began at random, gathering his thoughts on the wing. Nothing hurt
him in quite the same way as that suggested havoc under the bandage.
He steadied himself, and talked of the little lens-maker. Strength came
from the joy he was giving Samarc.... It seemed that they were quite
alone. He told of the night of stars, of the little man’s superb
sensitiveness.... She bent to Samarc at last.

“You wanted him to tell me?”

He nodded. There was something intensely pathetic in it all. Her eyes
were full of light.

“The story thrills me,” she whispered. “Oh, this is very far from a
hopeless world. What I have seen to-day--even the fortitude of infamous
men--manhood, black and white--the war within the war. Don’t you see,
all Russia is out here in the wilderness casting forth her demon? We
must not mind blood nor death--for the result means the life or death of
the world’s soul!”

Once she would have seemed very far and remotely high to Peter
Mowbray.... They had drawn a little apart from the cot.

“What made you so white?” she asked.

“It’s my weakness. We rode together for days and quartered together. He
was so clean-cut. It’s the way his words come. And he seems so utterly
bereft without the little man.”

She pressed his hand in understanding.

“Berthe, do you sleep? Do you take food? Are you well? Are they good to
you? Can you live through?”

“Yes, and what of you?”

“All is quite well with me. I can endure anything with the hope of
taking you home afterward.”

“We must be ready to give up that, too. It is hard; it’s our ordeal--but
if the end should appear, we must find strength to look it in the face.
These are the times for heroics. Every real emotion that I have ever
known is a lie--if those who love each other well enough to love the
world--do not pass on. Why, Peter, you said the same to him--speaking
of his friend and Moritz Abel, ‘Do you think the good God would let such
men die so easily, if it weren’t all right?’”

“Did I say that?”

She drew back her head, looking him through and through.

“Peter, it’s the child in you that I love. You’re so much a man, and
they all think of you as a man, man--all your training to be a man--and
yet it’s the child that a woman’s heart sees and wants to preserve for
her own.”

“Do you see much of Moritz Abel?” he asked.

“Yes.... It was he who found you for me.”

Peter was watching her red lips now. It was like that morning in her
room, the tall flowers between. He did not hear what she was saying. The
room was dim. Samarc’s face was turned from them. One man in a near
cot flung his arms about his head wearily, but his eyes were toward the
wall.... He caught her in his arms and loved the beauty of earth in her
face.

“...Peter, we must forget ourselves!”

“I can’t forget you. I want you as you are,” he repeated in tumult.
“I want you here in the world--as you are now! We’ll stand for what we
can’t help. There’s no use fighting the end if it comes. The greatest
thing here to a man will be the greatest thing after he’s dead--that’s
clear enough. But I haven’t had you here--only a few minutes. I want the
winter stillness _on earth_--in the woods--not in some paradise yet.”

“Hush--I want it too. Oh, you can never know how much!... I had better
go now--”

“Not until I know all about you. To-morrow is to be the big day of the
battle. All may be changed. If it’s a Russian victory, this is our last
night in Judenbach--”

“You will go out to the fronts?”

“Yes, for a little, but I shall watch how the day fares, so I can hurry
back.”

“To-day--we were just a stone’s throw apart. I was in that building down
the street--the amputation cases.”

“Not the house where those cries come from?”

“Yes, we work there. Moritz Abel, Fallows, Poltneck, the singer, and
others.... This morning I thought I could not bear to live. It was as
you told him--about yourself. You see we had no anesthesia, except for
cases of life or death--among the officers.”

“And you came to me from a day like that?” he asked unsteadily, his
passion blurred, even the beauty of it. The chance of her living had
suddenly darkened.

“It was like coming home,” she whispered. “...In Warsaw before your
day--sometimes crossing the Square in the darkness--I used to think what
it would mean to come to a house of happiness, after a long cruel day.
It seemed too far from me; sometimes even farther than now. When I came
in here to-night, and heard your voice--I knew what it would mean to
come home. We must not ask too much. Many have never known what has been
given to us--in these few minutes.”

“We must not ask too much,” he repeated.

She saw that he had a vivid picture of her day in that house of
amputations, that the picture had stunned him.

“But, Peter, I have seen such courage to-day. It was a revelation. All
that I had seen of isolated courage before in the world--all was there
to-day, and ten times more, there in the blood and torture. And
Poltneck sang to them--sang to the maimed and limbless--sang through the
probings--with the sound of the cannon in the distance and more wounded
coming in. He sang of home and Fatherland--even of the old Fatherland.
The many love the old still; it is only the few who love the dream of
the new.... We must not ask too much. The new spirit is being born into
the world. This war is greater than we dream of. In Warsaw I could see
only the evil, but here--under everything--is the humble and the heroic
in man. Hate and soldiery are just the surface. That which is beneath
will be above--”

She was far from him now; the white flame in her face. He saw that he
could only go on through the days and work and wait and trust in the
God he had told Samarc to trust in. How easily--without an impress of
memory, he had said that; and how heroic to accomplish--for mere man.

He did not answer--just looked at her. He saw her turn and smile. Moritz
Abel was standing there.

“I cannot tell you--what it meant to me to see you two standing so,”
 he said. “And this place of quiet--you two and your paradise!... Let me
see, it occurred to me to suggest--”

He found himself reluctant to finish. He had spoken lightly as if to
propose that they would be more comfortable in another room--but his
thoughts concerned the volleys in the court. They knew it.

“The staff knows me rather well,” said Mowbray. “I was counting on that,
but one cannot be sure--”

“There has been no secret,” she said. “Will you come in the morning
before the columns go out?”

“Yes, it will be early.”

“I’ll be watching. If not--he will be there to tell you why.”

Peter turned to the poet. “Watch over her--won’t you?”

“You honor me, Mr. Mowbray. All that I can do--be very sure of.”

She went to Samarc’s cot and took his hand. Peter saw her face
differently, as she leaned. It was one of the mysteries that her
tenderness was the face of one woman, her sorrow another.

“Good-by--good-night.”

.... A little later Peter found himself with Samarc’s hand in his. He
had been sitting by the cot watching the war within the war, head bowed
on his free hand. It was a struggle of white and black--of knights and
kings, plumes and horses, white and black.... Now the wounded man seemed
sending messages through his hand. The lamps were low.

“It’s been the day of days, Samarc,” Mowbray said. “You brought me
something that I needed very much. I wish I could do as much for you.
Let me know, won’t you, if I can?... Yes, I’ll be right here through the
night--”

He heard the tread of soldiers in the hollow-sounding court
below--clanking accouterments, heavy steps. There was a halt, a voice,
and a long moment before he breathed. It was just a change of sentries,
perhaps.



Chapter 2


Just a moment’s talk in the street--twice interrupted by sentries, as
they moved the hundred yards from the courtyard of Judenbach to the
house of amputations.

“...He was trying to lift a man from the hopelessness of death when I
stepped up quietly behind,” Berthe was saying. “He was wonderful about
it, because he had felt the same hopelessness. I wish you could have
heard him.”

Moritz Abel said: “He is effective. He is intellect and heart--very
sound. His vision will come quickly. He does not wing--that is our
trouble. We are carried away. He is still within the comprehension of
the average man. We need him greatly. Also he needs us. What a man he
would be to steady us--to interpret for us. The new Fatherland must have
such men. It has been our destiny always to dream and to pass--another
generation to make our vision flesh--”

“You mean such men as Peter Mowbray would be direct interpreters?” she
asked.

“Exactly. We are poets and artists and singers. We are the fathers
of the new Fatherland in a sense, but we need among us lawgivers and
statesmen--men who love men straight and not through the arts--men who
have the same zeal for men that the arts give us when we are pure, but
who are conservers and constructors, men of great force and acumen and
kindness--”

“Oh, I know so well what you mean,” she whispered. “If you could only
have heard him with the bandaged man--_‘I am not a genius or a dreamer,
man. I am so slow at dreaming and brotherhood, and all that, that a
woman once ran away from me. But I saw to-day that death isn’t all.’”_

“Yes, that is it,” Moritz Abel said. “That is the quality. And many
times among those who do not make claim nor talk of brotherhood, the
reality is beaming from their daily service. Yes, that is it. I hope to
know him better after the long night.”

They had reached the place of blood and torture.

“And now you must rest a little,” he told her. “You know he asked me to
take care of you. I like him for that. A man would see a great deal in
that, for he honored me.”

“And me--” she whispered.



Chapter 3


It was not yet dawn. Peter heard the moaning of the men as they awoke
and turned in their bandages. Surgeon and assistants passed through;
two of the latter remained to start up the malingerers. Machine and
rapid-fire men especially were needed at the front, it was said. Four
thousand men had fallen in the past three days, and this was to be the
day of the most furious battle--Kohlvihr to drive a hole through the
hills, this day. An early incident revealed certain facts--personal--and
had a temporary numbing influence upon Mowbray. The day had risen and
Samarc awakened, when a strange orderly entered the ward, and came
leisurely to the cot where Peter sat:

“What have you here?”

“A shrapnel wound in the face.”

The orderly looked under the cot for the uniform, as if to determine
Samarc’s place and rank.

“Where’s the blouse?” he asked.

“It was covered with blood,” said Peter. “They took it away.”

“What branch of the service?”

Peter was not sure--infantry possibly. He didn’t care for the stranger’s
manner, nor to have this particular gunner of the rapid-fire pieces
hurried to the field unhealed. The orderly bent suddenly, whispering.

_“She told me to tell you that she wants to come, but that it isn’t
safe--“_

...Moritz Abel looking for an interpreter would have been interested
now; also the Old Man of _The States_. The stranger had spoken
leisurely. Peter’s temptation was conquered before he was half through.

“Are you sure you were to give me some message?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“But I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

The other regarded him keenly. Peter was well trained for that. An
officer appeared in the doorway and beckoned the orderly.

“It must have been a mistake,” the latter muttered.

Peter was thinking fast. The fact remained that their meeting the night
before had been noted. He was leaving for the field shortly; the harm of
suspicion would fall upon her.

“I promised to call a moment this morning at the amputation house--but
no one was to come for me,” he added.

“I have made a mistake,” the orderly repeated.

“...I wonder if I have?” Peter thought.

Samarc’s hand came up to him, and the pull that meant he wanted to
speak. Peter invariably paled before this ordeal. Not through words
but sounds were the meanings tortured out.... Samarc meant to take the
field. In the usual course there would be no coming back for him at
nightfall, because he had “ceased to kill--”

“But must your officers know?” Peter whispered.

...The officers would know if it were the same old crew, because they
knew Samarc’s work. This was the substance of the answer.

“But why go?”

...They would take off the bandages to be sure that he required further
hospital care. He could not endure that. The bandages must never come
off.... He would rather be afield.

Peter saw the grim finality of it. Samarc wasn’t changed. He meant to
end it. It was not only Spenski, but the havoc under the cloths....

A young assistant surgeon at a near cot was rather too hastily laying
bare the lint from a severe shoulder wound.

Exchange with Samarc had of course stopped. Peter, thinking deeply,
watched with but half attention until the assistant surgeon briskly
rebound the wound, and began tugging at the soldier to get on his feet.
The wounded one whimpered his weakness.

“Get up!”

The order was repeated. “Into your clothes, man. Scores are already in
the column with wounds worse than yours.”

The man groaned, stirred, but fell back. Peter had seen the wound--not
a desperate one, but enough to lay a man up for a fortnight at home,
and this could not have been more than three days old. There wasn’t much
chance of malingering.

“Come, come!” the young officer urged angrily.

The soldier tried to raise himself, but did not make good work of it.

“I’ll get you up, damn you--”

A quick scream from the man on the cot. Peter did not know what the
doctor did, but he smelled acid. All was cloudy before his eyes. He was
a bit surprised a second after to feel the Russian’s neck in his two
hands:

“None but a beast would take from the stable a horse crippled like
that,” he was saying.

The assistant was but a boy. Peter caught this before lasting damage was
done. He left the place half crying, threatening to kill Mowbray later.
His superior appeared. Peter smiled at him. Samarc was up, drawing on
his clothes.

“A bit of bad judgment,” Peter said, not explaining whether it was his
or the young doctor’s.

The surgeon did not ask, but turned to the great muffled face.

“This man was from one of the rapid-fire commands, I believe?”

Peter was prevented from further glibness by a decisive nod from Samarc.

“The Fatherland will need you to-day,” the surgeon said with a peculiar
significance.

To Peter’s trained ear the sounds from Samarc were dangerously like,
“Fatherland-hell.”

“A shrapnel splinter struck him in the mouth,” he explained. “He says he
is ready to take the field.”

Samarc spoke again.

“His blouse is gone,” said Peter hastily. “I can manage for him.”

“Has he a fever?”

“I’m afraid so--a slight fever.”

The surgeon turned to the other cot. “Let this fellow sleep another
day,” he said.

The soldier lying there gave Peter a look almost uncanny in its
gratitude.

“Sit down, Samarc. I’ll get you a blouse,” the latter said and left the
ward.



Chapter 4


Big Belt awoke early in his own quarters, and beat around under the
blankets for his friend. Peter was not there. Boylan remembered and sat
up. This was the day of the great battle, but there was to be
breakfast first. He recalled what was in the saddle-bags. This proved
unsatisfactory. Even that hinged on Peter, as every thought so far. ...
Boylan now reflected that he might have stayed longer in the ward last
night. There was just as much to hold him to the cot of Samarc as had
called Peter. Altogether, the day was not beginning in a way to suit.

He sat in the center of a tired tangle of woolen blankets and buckled on
his leggings. His face pricked his chest as he bent forward. There was
a stabbing run of ideas that had to do with marble baths, tepid plunges
and fragrant steam. This collection he made haste to banish with matters
of the day, and the absence of Peter,--but the pictures were various and
persistent--exceptionally enticing baths from all his history recurring.
He stretched out his gray woolen shirt and brushed it hard with handfuls
of dried grass; he washed uncomfortably. It was like an ablution before
one is undressed--that pervasive beard affair--and a general chill and
dampness about clothes and boots that had not yet worked warm. The day
was alternate gray and red. Noise gained in the street. Big Belt stepped
forth.

Just at this moment he saw Peter Mowbray disappear into that grim street
entrance from which the unspeakable human outcry had issued yesterday.
He followed, twisting into doorways to let provision wagons pass,
quickening his steps to cross between detachments of infantry. A certain
dead cavalry horse was powerful in the air. Boylan knew exactly where it
lay, for it had called attention these three days, an Austrian property,
saddle and all, a ghastly outpouring upon the turf.

Boylan found himself stepping forward with a gladness that was answered
with sharp objection by his own nature, and which he would not have let
Peter Mowbray know for all Judenbach. He was disgusted with the weakness
that made a man friend such a profound institution in his breast.

The hall-way was dark. Boylan heard low voices; something from them
prevailed to hush his entrance. In fact, at the turning he stood quite
still for possibly three seconds. Beyond in the shadows Peter stood with
a woman. Afterward Boylan recalled that there had been one poignant cry
of pain from above, as if born of the monotone of moaning in that house.

They did not see him.... A little man appeared from the shadows, joined
the two, and handed Peter a Russian blouse such as is worn by hospital
stewards of the service. Peter thanked him; the other departed; the
two were once more alone.... The huge scarred head of the old war-wolf
withdrew jerkily; with stealth, he stepped back into the street. He did
not stop until he reached his own quarters. There he found that he had
not folded his blankets. In the midst of this work his hands stopped....
He was as accustomed as any man can be to unremoved horse by this time.
It came steadily to his nostrils, mingled with the leathery smell of his
own field-outfit. Presently he looked at his watch, and snapped the
case shut with a crack. The strength of his fingers would have broken a
filbert.

“Some men can find ‘em anywhere,” he muttered. “And such a one! She was
a flame.... As for Mr. B. B.--it’s dead horse all his days.”



Chapter 5


Ashamed of himself, Big Belt waited to see if Peter would turn in to
their quarters, as he approached carrying the hospital steward’s blouse
across his arm. Boylan would not call. It was like a woman’s way--to
learn if a man had forgotten her; still he would not call....
Clean-shaven, very straight and full of life, Peter approached, smiling
at packers and soldiers, a smile for all the world. “Why not?” Boylan
thought. Peter did turn in, and came toward him, hand out.

“Tomato ketchup with duck’s eggs. Draw up a chair,” said Boylan. He
appeared just now to see the steward’s blouse.

“Samarc takes the field to-day. It’s for him,” Peter explained.... “He’s
going out to kill himself. Only one reservation--that he kill no one
else.”

Boylan seemed staring at Peter’s knees.

“You’re letting the ketchup burn,” Peter said mildly.

“I suppose that’s what he really means to do,” Big Belt observed, after
a moment. “And what are we to do about it?”

“I thought I would stand by a little--not so as to be a nuisance, you
know--”

“Naturally not. Of course.”

They ate in silence--a thousand things to say.

“I won’t be very far from the staff,” said Peter, hurrying back to the
hospital. “Poor old Samarc has two wounds, you know--”

* * *

It wasn’t a day to explain things--not a day to talk. Men afield can
never tell what they are doing; some devilish irony is in the air. They
laugh; they listen; they hope--only a jest comes. The most thrilling and
stupendous situations bring forth but a curse or a roar. Human throats
are inarticulate, afield; the reality that voices heroic utterance and
makes it memorable is not at work in man-fabric; splendid faces and
brave actions--but the words are the revealers of emptiness. For the
animal is awake and upstanding; the spirit that quickens reality is
apart.

The battlefield opened to Mowbray’s eyes that day with abnormal
clearness, as if he had brought rest and reflection to a problem that
long had harried him, He felt singularly light and full of ease--as one
does sometimes in the first hours of the day after a sleepless night.
The day was wild with west wind, a touch of south still clinging. The
east arrayed itself again and again in all the delicate blends of pink
and gray, watery yellow, rose, and azure; a different arrangement at
each glance, as if separate groups of maidens followed each around a
Roman bath.

Samarc was given a seat in an ammunition wagon, with orders to join his
battery. Peter found his horse, already saddled by Boylan, and overtook
the wagon train as it left the town. In a halt for the way to clear,
Kohlvihr and his staff passed, Dabnitz and Boylan riding together. The
General sat soft and lumpy in the saddle, his eyes small and feverish,
his face hotly red. The staff passed on, all except Boylan believing
that the correspondent had fallen in behind. Riding with the wagons,
Peter frequently turned to the terrifying bandage above the steward’s
blouse. When the light was right, he caught a glint of the eyes beneath.

The way became steep for the wagons as they neared the emplacements.
Peter swung off and led his pony. Infantry was already engaged down in
the hollows; the reek of powder began to cut the air at intervals, but
the strong wind as often cleansed it away, and the scent of woods came
up startlingly, with the warmth of the sun upon the ground--the sweet
healing breath of drying cedar boughs.

He was sorry now he had roughed it with the young doctor; that sort of
thing was very far from him. He had no memory of another episode like
it. On occasion, dropping into the queerest abstractions, he fancied
_her_ near.... It had been like a soldier leaving his lady for the
battle--the precious few minutes less than an hour ago. She had promised
to be with him. There had been no talk nor thought of the terrifying
day she faced in the hospital; everything had to do with his taking the
field. She would follow him with her thoughts. Perhaps he would find his
soul out there, she suggested, as he had never found it before. Peter
wondered now just what she meant by that. It was not his way to fall
back upon any such abstraction.

He reflected how her presence always changed him, gave him strength of
a different sort, and directness of aim.... It was true that she seemed
near--on the other side from Samarc--a part of the mountain fragrance
that would not be overpowered in the gun-reek. He felt if he could turn
quickly enough he would catch the gleam of her colors. This was her
country. She was of the north and the cold lands; she belonged to the
purity of the cedars.

He played with the thought that she was near; and from the thought,
because it was good, a glimpse of the future came to him--the peace
to come, when men would dwell again with their loves, and the dream of
superb affiliation would come true. All this madness of men would pass,
as the rising powder-reek would pass from these Galician hills, and
leave them their silence and their natural fragrance.

The wagons had gone on. Samarc’s battery might have been rubbed out for
all their ability to find it. All faces strange--gunners, range-finders,
and the cartridge hands. Peter felt a horror in his breast for the
immediate presence of the guns--as if he had reached the end of
toleration in the one day with them. Samarc felt this hate, too, his
ruling passion.... Any moment one of the rapid-firers might drum into
action. Their sense was one--that something would be uncoupled in their
minds. They turned, Peter laughing at his desire to run--as they found
another group of machines emplaced in a rocky shelter a little higher
than the spot where the shrapnel had struck three days before.

No one called to them as they turned back. A small belated wagon train
rumbled by, but no one hailed them from the seats. They were free,
alone. Peter inhaled the scent of the forest, sharp again from the acrid
taint of the cool, hazy air. He loved the sweet mountain wind as never
before--almost as if he were to leave it all. There was little need of
exchange of words. Each understood mainly the thoughts of the other. Big
guns thundered at each other from the remoter hills. Again they saw an
infantry movement start forth below--the endless strings of infantry
along the broad lower slopes. They stopped to watch them.

Creatures of the hollows, their business to rise and be swept
back--marching forth now--Kohlvihr’s command. Peter’s eyes filled and
his throat stopped at the spectacle of the gray lines. Surely something
was the matter with him, he thought. Was it pathological--loss of sleep,
or fatigue? Or was it something that Spenski and Abel, the field and
hospital; more than all was it something that Berthe Wyndham had given
him? In any event, it seemed as if those infantry lines marching out now
to the burning front were being torn from his own breast, every _moujik_
precious. He wanted to be with them, not with the heinous guns. He
wished he could spare them, stop the continual sacrifice. Miles of gray
lines moving out now. ...His companion’s tugging hand.

It dawned upon Peter before many sounds that Samarc wanted to go alone.
He pointed the trail back around the hills toward Judenbach, where it
would meet the road Kohlvihr had taken, suggesting that Peter join the
staff. He, Samarc, would continue the search for his battery. As a rule
Mowbray was the last to continue in the presence of a man who wanted him
to go; and yet, he knew that Samarc hated the field pieces as much as
he, and that he did not mean to live through the day. He hesitated. The
final urging was pitiful--a sort of tumult from under the cloths.

“Nothing doing, Samarc,” he said suddenly. “You and I for it--at least
a while yet. I say--do the hard thing. The little man would have it so.
We’ll go down closer to the infantry stuff and forget ourselves.”

...Yes, Samarc would do the hard thing. There was gratitude for which
Peter had no receptivity--gratitude for the friendship, the night’s
watching. His hand was taken and carried to the other’s breast, as only
a Russian could do--and down they went together.

The infantry was their magnet as they made the down grade--miles of gray
lines. The lower land was trampled and dusty; the breeze lost itself in
the hollows. Just as an orchardist, discovering a certain parasite on
his trees, thinks of a specific poison, so they knew that this great
“forward” of the Russian foot-soldiers would start the Austrian machine
and rapid-fire batteries.

They were moving now in front of a long line of new Russian works which
had appeared deserted. Boylan would have known better; Samarc should
have known. Peter had taken for granted that these had been emptied
by the huge advances already in movement. They were in the path of
Kohlvihr’s reserves, it appeared, in the center of the line, when the
signal “forward” was sounded. The works suddenly blackened with men.
It was too much for the pony. Peter found a bridle with a broken throat
latch in his hand, as he watched the little beast tear down the front,
and heard the roar of laughter from the oncoming line.

The new front seemed endless in the rolling land. They were instantly
enveloped. Out of the throng appeared one face that Peter had bowed to
once or twice before--a captain, now working his way toward them. He
glanced at the civilian insignia on Peter’s sleeve, and said, with a
smile:

“You’ve tricked us well this time, Mr. Mowbray. I hope you get back as
cheerfully. You’ll have to go forward now--at least, until we stretch
out in skirmish. We’re rather thick just here. Stay with my command--”

“We thought we were back of you,” Peter said. “I assure you I didn’t
plan this, but it’s very kind of you.”

The Captain glanced at Samarc and turned to the American as they urged
on.

“Hurt badly?”

“Just his face.”

“Stay by--some of the soldiers might be rough--”

They were carried forward in the resistless interference of great
numbers.



Chapter 6


Peter had pitied the infantry formerly from a hill, having stood with
a battery as it sprayed the Austrian lines. He had watched the Austrian
machines pouring steel upon the Russians also. There had been emotion;
he had felt the shame of it powerfully on this very morning; but now he
reflected, with a touch of levity, that his pity had not been adequate.
At the present juncture he belonged to the sacrifice. The process was
reversed; the globe of his experience shortly to be made complete. He
would have the effects of light and darkness from the vantage of the
preying and the preyed upon.

Peter had never been actually down among men before. He had watched men,
studied them sincerely, passed them in the street, reflected upon their
problems. At the same time, his personal impetus had always been away
from men, his a different purpose, a different aim. He was _one_ now,
one in the massed destiny of the command, one to obey. Only by falling
could he be free from this extraordinary authority of the army.

Moreover, he felt that the motive energizing this authority was not of
the human but of the tiger.

He might have thought of all this before, as he had thought of death
as one thing for the outsider and a different thing for the little
lens-maker he liked so well. But this was experience, not conjecture. He
was an atom of the charge. The army authority disrupted his moral sense.
It bound and gagged him. No imagination could have constricted his vital
and creative force as this adventure, in which he was caught up like a
chip and carried forward in a rush of animal power. Fear had no part
of his revulsion, but the break of his will. It was not like a man
drowning, in an insensible element; this that carried him _had_ a
consciousness and it was unclean.

He saw that the rankers leaned on each other; that there was not yet in
the peasant faces about him a single separate individual relation to the
impending peril. These men might have, seen others fall by the hundreds,
but their faith was in the command, their law its law. Peter saw that
they were in a sense like men parading through city streets, who endure
the eyes of the crowds because they are part of a line. It was the
eternal illusion of numbers again--the elbow brush, the heat, the
breath, the muttering of men--this atmosphere that the military machine
breathed. Standing alone, most of them would have fallen from fear.

He smelled the unwashed crowd. Under all the bronze that life in
the open had given the command was the lardy look of earth-born men,
close-to-the-ground men; these were the hordes that put on pounds and
size, the rudiment of a mind, the momentary ignition of soul perhaps
in moments such as now--and pass to the earth again. Yet the history of
Europe was to be written upon a surface like this; this, the soil of the
future. It was close to chaos, but as yet undefiled by man. This was the
newest product of earth, the new terrific fecundity of the North
that had alarmed lower Europe; these were the peasant millions as yet
unfathered, strong as yet only as bulls are strong, gregarians, almost
without memory; their terror, pain, passion, hope, genius not individual
yet, but in the solution of the crowds.

Peter Mowbray’s shock was the loss of the sense of self; his battle
to retain this sense. He seemed to fuse in the heat, the vast solution
draining his vitality. He could have given himself to the white fire of
a group of men like Spenski, Abel, Fallows, Poltneck, perhaps--but to
give himself to this.... They were stretching out now as skirmishers,
the crush ended. Entire figures of men could be seen, instead of necks,
beards, and shoulders. Samarc gripped his arm, the other hand pointing
to a little red-haired boy who ran, crouched, sped on again, halted to
look, in the true squirrel fashion of advance, which is the approved
procedure of skirmishers. He talked to himself, appeared lost in
absorption, reminded one continually of Spenski when his face was
averted--and was just one of the miles of infantry.

Their faces looked cold now; a part of the gray tone so often observed.
The officers fought to stretch them out. Every line of fear that the
human mouth can express Peter saw. Now the drum of the Austrian pieces.
It was not as they had heard it in the heights, but like an encore at
first--as if some tremendous mass of men in a wooden gallery had started
a buffeting of feet. The valley muffled the volleys; the actual steel
was not heard until it neared like a rain torrent; indeed it found their
immediate lines before they heard the murderous cutting of the air. The
Austrian gunners were placed for enfilading, so that a fraction of point
gave them impaling force and a wide swath in the ranks.

Peter saw the little red head cocked forward as if to listen to the
nearing gusts of steel.

Now men were down and crying out. The fire was like that of a hostile
regiment concentrating its volley upon a little knot of soldiers--the
air was whipped, wild with throbbing missiles. Supernatural fear was
the answer from the very souls of men. Their prayer (in Mowbray’s
conception) was not for life, but for cessation. Yet the machines held
them with infernal leisure as one holds the stream from a garden hose to
a spot of clay clinging to masonry.

In all postures the soldiers met the gale, with every answering sound.
Then falling, rising, crawling, the remnant went back. It was not pain
nor death nor wounds that mattered--but the hurtling concussions in the
air, the plague of steel....

It stopped. Peter lay exhausted an instant. He felt no hurt. He was down
because one could not stand in that sweep of projectiles. He recalled
that he had seen the red head fall a moment before, and turned like a
sick man, his eyes rolling, to learn if it were a dream or not. Yes,
Redhead had fallen. Samarc was crawling toward him on his knees. Peter
writhed forward, too, but disliking the movement lest it bring the
guns upon them again. He forgot that. Redhead was muttering about _the
storm_.

“Are you hard hit, boy?” Peter called.

There were others about--a whole line of fallen, but they saw just this
one--his cheek to the dirt, his mouth moving queerly. He was young like
the undersurgeon, seventeen or eighteen, and much bewildered, the gray,
clayey hue upon him, but not at all uncouth. Samarc felt his spine,
turned him. The wound was in his body. Just now Redhead saw the effigy
that was Samarc. He had been watching Peter before.

His mouth opened, eyes seemed to settle back into a red gleam of horror,
his face swung around into the dirt. Peter would have given his arm to
spare Samarc that. No sound from under the cloth--only a breath. Samarc
shouldered him, raised himself with the burden.

There are pressures of will. One turns on a certain force to meet an
obstacle, and it is exhausted. There are other sources of power, but
one brushes death to summon them. Far ahead they saw the remnant making
cover. Now Peter noted that there was human need at every step. They lay
in all positions, squirmed their faces up to him and implored. The few
were still; the many writhed. He looked for a small one. He had never
lifted a man and was surprised when one came up and rolled as if by
magic across his back. It was so easy that he wanted to take others.

“I will come back,” he called to the faces.

He meant to come back as he said it. He wanted to bring them all in.
He had no hate for the Austrian gunners, because he had seen Samarc and
Spenski at the same work, and he knew that the heart of man changes in
a day. He would have helped the little undersurgeon had he been there. A
_moujik_ arose from his knees in front of them, as they staggered on. He
was stunned, bewildered, blinded, but he could hear.

“Come on--we’re going back,” Peter said.

The other held out his hand gropingly. Peter placed the flap of his coat
in it, and the moujik stumblingly followed.... Another soldier on his
knees barred the way.

“We’re going back,” Peter said. “Come on. You can crawl--”

The soldier set out eagerly to obey, as if it had been a great boon to
follow with his own strength. It was the mightiest episode of the day to
Peter Mowbray. “My God, how they obey _men_!” he said, with awe. “They
_could_ be led right--peasants who obey like that!”

There was singing all about him--not of bullets, though this little
movement on the field drew a thin, uncertain long-range fire from some
intrenchment (apparently it was not enough to start a machine)--a low
singing as of wells of gladness reaching the surface. Peter was torn
with the agony of the field, yet thrilling with happiness--as if there
was liberation somewhere within. He turned to the crawling one who
inspired him:

“We’re all hurt, but we’re going back to bed. Come on--you’re doing
famously--”

The back bobbed to greater effort. The blind one held him fast, and the
Redhead left his trail of blood and murmured about _the storm_.... It
was a long range for the rifles, and seemed as harmless as sandflies
after the horror of hornets they had known.... They were alone. They saw
the heaped rims of the Russian works ahead--five of them, alone, for,
queerly enough, they were as one.

And now from ahead, from the concealed Russian lines, arose a roar such
as Peter had never known. It struck him with a psychic force that filled
his eyes with tears, though he did not understand. He thought that the
end of the war must have come--so glad and so mighty was that shouting.

Now a fragment of the line ran forth to bring the little party in, not
minding Peter’s gestures in the least; for he waved them back, lest they
start the machines again.... It appeared that his little group of maimed
and blind came home marching into the very hearts of the command--even
the Red one.... They had laid their burdens down; an incoherent Boylan
took Peter, leading the way back to the staff. Kohlvihr and Dabnitz
stood there, the old man repeating:

“Get the name of the hospital man.”

Dabnitz plucked the sleeve of Samarc’s coat.

“Hospital steward,--I have that,” he said a second time, “but what’s the
name and the division?”

“He can’t speak,” said Peter. “I’ll get his name later. He’s been
wounded in the mouth.”

Curiously enough in this turmoil it appeared for the first time why
Samarc had been allowed a free field practically--why he had not been
impressed for service by one of the batteries. It was the steward’s
blouse that Abel had given him.... Peter lost wonder at this. Things
were darkening about him. He smelled the cedars. Her colors seemed just
out of view.... She had been near.

“Peter--are you hit?” It was Boylan’s voice.

“No, just bushed.”

Now he heard Kohlvihr say: “Anything for you we can, Mr. Mowbray. As a
civilian, you are of course exempt from specific honors, but as soon as
I learn your companion’s name I shall suggest that he be honored by the
Little Father.”

“Why, you’ve put the whole line back into fighting trim!” Boylan
whispered.



Chapter 7


Something of the activity now apparent to the blurred faculties of
Mowbray, as he sat in the clammy embrace of nausea and struggling for
breath, appealed to him as structurally wrong; almost inconceivably
abominable, in fact. He had no interest in his so-called achievement,
regarded it with a laugh, repeated that it was pure accident; but
such as it was, he objected to it being used to put the line back into
“fighting trim.”

He was in the large sod-covered pit occupied by field headquarters. He
turned at the sound of breathing at his side. Samarc was sitting there.
Peter’s hand went to his knee. Aides, messengers, and orderlies hastened
in and out. There were twenty men in the pit--Kohlvihr the center of
all. Big Belt was ministering--a flask, a momentary massage, a steady
run of comment, ruddy from the heart.... The activity came to him again.

Kohlvihr was actually planning another infantry advance.

Peter started to speak, but halted for further reflection, a bit
skeptical as to his own sanity. This was the third day of the battle;
this the day planned to drive a hole through the difficult Austrian
hills; the whole Russian army was dependent upon taking this Austrian
position; the weather was becoming colder, Berlin still afar off; the
Russian left and center pinned to the results of action here.

So far mental processes seemed adequate, but this changed in no way his
attitude toward the atrocious activity in the brain of Kohlvihr of the
bomb-proof pit.

Kohlvihr might sally forth for his wounded; hundreds were dying
out there in the windy hollow. He, Peter Mowbray, had seen their
faces--their bodies to the end of sight. But Kohlvihr had no thought
of that; rather to meet the range of death machines again with another
horde of his skirmishers--and again--and again, until the end of the
day--until enough passed through to gain the opposite slopes in fighting
force, or until the Austrian ammunition was exhausted....

And Kohlvihr had never been out there. His cave was well back in the
shelter of the works--sheltered from ahead and from the sky, with
Judenbach behind.... Old Doltmir, the second in command, was saying:

“It’s a terrible price to pay, General--a terrible price. You will note
that they enfilade our lines as we reach the bottom land. You will
note that their machines cover the valley perfectly and that they are
practiced now--”

There was balm in that, but acid covered it an instant later from
Kohlvihr, who swallowed a drink and turned with a snarl.

“We have the price to pay--”

Peter was thinking now of the front line that had cheered his coming in;
the men so ready to forget themselves for a little spectacle, and the
thrill that had come to his own breast from their shouting. _He loved
them and knew why._ And those men, their lives and deaths--were in
the hands of this red-eyed human rat who fouled the air.... No, Peter
thought, it wasn’t the brandy that smelled. It’s Kohlvihr and the
brandy.

“Good God, Boylan,” he muttered in English, “can’t you get him by the
throat?”

Boylan’s eyes were wild. He laughed softly, however, saying in Russian:
“Very good, Peter--you’d joke at your death--”

And Big Belt’s eyes roved to Dabnitz, who apparently had not heard
Peter’s remark.

...And now the tugging from Samarc that meant words! It seemed as if a
ghastly stillness prepared for that final rumble; certainly stillness
followed it. All eyes turned, even Kohlvihr’s, to the effigy. But Peter
alone understood.

“...Don’t let them take off the bandages.”

Samarc left his seat in the dark corner and walked evenly toward the
center where Kohlvihr stood, his aides about him--poor old Doltmir
standing apart and distressed. The moment had come for the order to be
given. Kohlvihr turned to a dispatch rider at the door--a door made of
cedar trunks.

For the moment Peter was blocked between two desires, or paralyzed. The
huge face of Boylan close by mutely implored him to be silent.

“Samarc,” he called.

Samarc did not turn. Now Peter saw the red face of Kohlvihr in its gray
fringe suddenly lifted and enlarged. The effigy was close to it, but
not higher, and hands were tightening beneath it--Samarc’s strong unhurt
hands. There had been one snarling scream. It was followed by a shot
from Dabnitz. The red face went down with the other to the clay floor.



Chapter 8


The roar of the battle followed as Peter staggered back alone to
Judenbach. He must have traversed a mile before there was a rational
activity of his faculties. The first mental picture was that of
the officers running along the works as the order for “advance as
skirmishers” was given. They were inspiring the men in the name of the
Little Father.

“If only they hadn’t said that,” Peter muttered pathetically.

Then he recalled that Kohlvihr had been lifted practically unhurt from
the clay floor; that his order was carried out. The infantry had obeyed.
With all he knew, and all he had seen that day, the mystery of common
men deepened. Out of it all strangely stood forth in his mind now the
man who could not rise, but who crawled after him at a word....
These men obeyed--that was the whole story. If they were given true
fathers!... Why, that _was_ the answer!

Peter had come into this with all the fire of revelation. He had earned
it. Blood and courage, and the stress of death, had given it to him. Yet
it was worth it all. He would tell Berthe Wyndham....

He stopped short at the edge of the town. Never was there in his life
a moment of profounder humility. Berthe Wyndham had told him all this
before they left Warsaw--on the day that the message came from Lonegan.
All he had learned to-day through such rigor and jeopardy she had told
him; and she had understood it then with the same passion that he had it
now.

Peter had only listened that day; he had lived it to-day. His heart
suddenly flooded with warmth for Fallows. Fallows had been through all
this--all the burning and zealotry of it, and had come forth into
the coldness and austerity of service. It was very wonderful. Peter
Mowbray’s eyes smarted. They, and the service, had certainly crumpled
the old fronts of calm and the sterile pools of intellect. He loved the
peasants now, _and he knew why_.... He saw what a stick he had been,
but this didn’t trouble him greatly. The new seeing was enough; he was
changed. His emotions presently concerned the fresh realizations so
dearly bought--in the past three days... three days.

Not until now did he think of Samarc.... The reality had stood like a
black figure at the door of his brain throughout all the walk, but it
did not enter until now. No, Samarc would not come back to Judenbach. It
was finished as he had intended. He had ceased to kill. Even at the last
he had but used his hands, and in as righteous wrath as ever tortured
human fingers to terrible strength.... He, Mowbray, had not remained to
assure himself that the last command of his friend was obeyed. This
hurt him not a little.... He was in the main street... exertion, sorrow,
exaltation; now he was whipped again. He felt he had not done well at
the last. A teamster yelled to him to get out of the way. Peter stepped
back wearily to let a string of ambulances by.

Across was that grim door of the house of amputations. He was not quite
ready to enter. He would get himself in hand better. He had not been
gone long--it was only mid-forenoon. He would go to his quarters and
clean up a little--perhaps rest a moment. His thoughts turned often to
Samarc, always with a pang. He wished the Big Belt were here. This last
reminded him of his saddle bags--razors and all gone with the pony.
Boylan would have the laugh at him now.

He could not sit still in his quarters. Voices came to him from the
street, from the court--even from that grim place a little down the way.
He arose and went across to the familiar hospital ward.... Another was
in Samarc’s place. A hand beckoned. It was from the cot of the soldier
for whom he had struggled with the young doctor. He went to it. There
was a message:

_“They were talking of you as an enemy--“_

That was all. Peter did not care for particulars. His volition was
quickened. He had been sadly in need of that. Now he went direct to
the hallway, where he had left her in the morning, and on upstairs. The
rooms were crowded with wounded and medical officers, but no familiar
face--neither Berthe Wyndham nor Moritz Abel.

Many eyes held him. He did not see the young doctor, but the surgeon who
had come to the other ward was there--that bland, quiet face, regarding
him curiously now. Peter asked nothing, and was free apparently to move
anywhere about the building. None of his own was there. His loneliness
was untellable. He could not have spoken to a stranger without a break
of tone....

He wished for Boylan again.

Peter was in the street, moved along the walls as one very tired. He was
searching, but the thoughts grew so terrible that he could not keep his
eyes to outer activity. His steps led him to the Court of Executions.
Standing by the street gate, he dreaded to enter. He would not tolerate
this, yet it was more than life or death. He had a mental picture of
finding her there, her body shrinking into one of the stone corners--as
a maimed bird that has fallen lies still under its wings.

His breath burst from him. He had been holding it as if under water. His
eyes traveled electrically now.

There were dead in the court, but she was not there, nor Abel nor
Fallows. He looked through the row of gratings and under the arches.
There was a low stone lintel with a dim deserted hall beyond....

Just now a step behind him, heavy boots ringing on the stone flags.
Peter turned. A Russian soldier halted, raised his rifle, commanded him
to advance.

Peter waved his hand in a gesture of obedience, but turned to glance in
the gloom under the lintel again. It was just _in the turning_ that
he had caught the gleam of her colors--not when he stared straight in.
Peter assured himself of this before giving himself up.



IV

IN THE BOMB-PROOF PIT

Chapter 1


The dead man in the hospital steward’s coat had been carried forth from
the bomb-proof pit.

Big Belt perceived that the day was working out according to its evil
beginnings.... After coming in from the infantry hollows as one risen
from the dead (and transfigured in the garish light of field bravery)
Peter Mowbray had left him again, now in the possession of strange
devils.

Boylan was not ready to go back to Judenbach. It was almost noon. He was
watching the heart of the Russian invasion of Galicia, and from its
main lesion. This he knew quite as well as Dabnitz, or Doltmir, or the
half-insane Kohlvihr himself. The Austrians still held. Indeed, it was
not hard for them. The Russian west wing entire, and possibly part of
its center, would be called upon to flank this stoutly adhering force,
if Kohlvihr continued to fail. Such an action would greatly delay the
general forward movement of the Russian arms.

“You will be without a command, General,” Doltmir suggested, at the
end of the second infantry throwback, following that in which Peter had
participated. “We are not disturbing them greatly in our advances. We
are chiefly effective in destroying their ammunition--”

“Then we must continue that,” said Kohlvihr.

“But the troops will not continue to charge. Our reserves are in. The
fresher men see the fate of the former advances. The hollows are in
plain sight from the forward rifle pits.”

“The officers must drive them forward--”

“Most of the lesser commanders are lying in the valley. The troops are
killing them as well as the enemy--”

“Do you mean there is mutiny, sir?”

“Not of a reckonable type. These men work in the midst of action.
Moreover, our troops are hard pressed. Our division has borne the brunt
for three days in almost unparalleled action.”

“Would you advise me to leave them funking in the trenches?” Kohlvihr
demanded.

“General, I would advise a report to the Commander of our failure in
four advances--that we can not get sufficient men across the valley to
charge the Austrian positions. Meanwhile I would order the wounded to
be brought in. After that, I would suggest food for the men in the
trenches.”

“I do not care to report four failures without a fifth trial.”

Doltmir turned back.

Big Belt was thinking fast. In all his experience, he had never seen the
Inside stripped naked like this. Of course, he had observed the
strategy of small bodies of troops determined by a swift consultation of
officers; but this was an army in itself, or had been, and on the part
of Kohlvihr it was very clear that personal matters were powerfully to
the fore. Kohlvihr was enraged; Kohlvihr was ambitious. Big Belt was
aware that, given a free hand and a free cable, he could make Kohlvihr a
loathsome monster in the eyes of the world, this merely by a display of
the facts.

Boylan’s view was cleared a little as he thought of such a narrative.
His sense of the reception of the story showed him the commanding nature
of it. The thing might be done later. Peter’s trouble was that he could
not forget it for the present. Thoughts of work put a new energy into
Boylan’s thinking. These things now passing in the bomb-proof pit formed
the climax of a narrative that had been running from the Warsaw office
to the present hour.... For a moment in the story’s grasp, Boylan did
not hear the voice of the invaluable Dabnitz:

“...He is under suspicion, sir,” that young officer was saying to his
chief. “In fact, the whole hospital corps is rotten with revolutionists,
but the fact remains he can sing like an angel. I think if Poltneck were
brought here to the lines and made to sing the folk songs--”

“Get him,” said Kohlvihr. “Is he under arrest?”

“No; as yet merely under espionage. He was valuable in rather a unique
way in the hospitals yesterday.”

“Bring him at once.”

Kohlvihr sent an order for his troops to rest and have a bite in the
trenches.

The sorry Doltmir stepped forward again:

“Would it not be well to bring in our wounded from the field, sir?”

“We will _have_ the field presently,” said Kohlvihr. “The sun is not
hot. The lines already have seen too much of their blood.”

Big Belt remembered that. Moments were intense again when Poltneck was
brought in--a tall, angular, sandy-faced chap, with a wide mouth and
glistening teeth, a smile that quickened the pulse, somehow. Boylan
thought of the passions of women for such men. His shoulders were lean
and square. Yellow hair, long on top and cropped tight below the brim
of his hat, dropped a lock across his forehead, as he uncovered in the
bomb-proof pit. He had been shaven-recently. Boylan reflected that he
belonged to the hospital corps. There was a thrill about him not to be
missed.

“Poltneck--he calls himself,” Dabnitz whispered. “Poltneck perhaps, but
I’ve seen him with the Imperial orchestra or I’m losing memory. I didn’t
have a good look at him before--”

Dabnitz was called by the General, who was seated with Doltmir over a
small collation with wine and bread. The lieutenant was requested to
arrange the inspiration for the men in the trenches.

Boylan noted how much taller the singer was than even the tall Russian
officer--as the two stood together.

“The men are very tired, Poltneck,” Dabnitz began. “Much has been
required of them, and much is still required. We want you to help us.”

“Yes?”

Poltneck had been looking about, interested as a kitten in a strange
house. He regarded Kohlvihr and the rest, the trace of a smile around
his mouth. The smile was still there as he turned quickly to Dabnitz
with the single questioning word, not contemptuous in itself, but Boylan
imagined it morally so. The voice furnished a second and very real
thrill.

“We thought you would sing for your fellow soldiers. You are from the
peasantry, I am told?”

“Yes, from the people.”

“We thought you would understand,” Dabnitz added. “There is an operatic
tenor in the command--one Chautonville. We might have sent for him, but
our thought was to reach the soldiers directly. It is a great honor.”

“Is it? How and where do you want me to sing?”

“An advance is to be ordered immediately. We will send an escort with
you along the trenches--just before the order is given. I heard you
singing yesterday. I am sure the men will answer with zeal.”

Poltneck seemed to wilt. Boylan was caught with the others thinking it
was the mention of the trenches that frightened this hospital soldier.
Yet the smile had not changed when Boylan’s eye roved to that. It was
not more contemptuous, nor less; but something about it was unsteadying.
Dabnitz already had used many more words than he expected.

“I am not used to crowds,” Poltneck objected weakly. “I am just a simple
man. Already I am without voice. I beg of you to send for Chautonville
of the opera.”

Dabnitz was puzzled.

“That is out of the question. Chautonville is back in the city. Within
twenty minutes the order for advance will be given. Come, Poltneck; you
will do very well when you see your soldiers--”

Boylan reflected swiftly at this point that the smile might be neither
deep nor portentous--a single accomplishment, some stray refinement
perhaps that had leaked back somehow to the people.

“No, no. I am afraid. I belong back among the wounded. I am very good
there. This is not my place--”

“Will you require men to assist you to the trenches? Already I have
talked too long.”

“Yesterday I was an anesthetic,” Poltneck wailed. “To-day I am to be a
stimulant.”

Kohlvihr now came forward. “It is time,” he said.

“General,” said Dabnitz, “we have to deal with an unusual peasant, I am
afraid.”

“It would not do for me to encroach upon the work of professionals,” the
singer explained in dilemma.

“You see he is humorous,” Dabnitz observed.

“We sent for you to sing to the soldiers. Will you do that?” the General
asked, from puffing cheeks.

Poltneck looked down at him with sudden steadiness. “On the way home,”
 he said.

“You refuse--then?”

“I would prefer that you wound them first.”

“At least, he has declared himself,” said Dabnitz.



Chapter 2


They did not murder him then and there. Boylan was glad of that. His
sack was already full of blood.... It was all too big. Something would
happen to spoil the telling. No man ever got out with such a story....
He was a little ashamed to find himself thinking of his newspaper story
so soon after the singer was led forth--the man who would sing for the
wounded, but who would not sing men to their death. Come to think--there
was a prostitution about it. Certainly Poltneck had a point of view. And
he was a hair-raiser of quality... everything about him.

Boylan thought of writing the Poltneck incident, and became hopeless
again. The Russians would be idiots to let him out alive. He did not
expect it. The only chance was that they couldn’t see themselves.
Perhaps Kohlvihr thought he was a hero to-day. Doubtless he did.... One
thing was sure, he, Boylan, must sit tight with his enthusiasm for the
Russian force; must play it harder than ever--must play it for Peter
Mowbray, too.

“You fellows certainly have your troubles--front and back,” he said to
Dabnitz. “But I say, Lieutenant, you couldn’t ask troops to go forward
better--you couldn’t ask more of the Japanese in the business of
charges--”

“I wasn’t out in that service,” Dabnitz observed.

“Grand little bunch of celibates afield, those Japanese--religious about
these matters of using up hostile ammunition. Fact is, I never saw
white troops go out to a finish four times in one day--as yours did
to-day--out over their own dead, too--”

He was becoming genial; his heart quaking for Peter, as he thought
suddenly of the words aimed at Kohlvihr’s throat, and of Peter’s
association at the last with the man in the steward’s blouse. ...Dabnitz
was unvaryingly courteous.

The advance was on again. Boylan went forth to see the repulse. The
main lines on either side had loosened to fill the gaps of Kohlvihr’s
division, the much-torn outfits braced by the fresher infantrymen. On
they went, a last time, over the strewn land.

Boylan saw it all again; heard the drum of the batteries when the troops
reached the hollow of the valley; saw them change like figures on a
blurred screen; perceived the antics and the general settling--and
turned away....

It was like the swoop of a carrion bird an instant afterward--and the
deafening strike. The Austrians had varied a little. A shrapnel
battery had been emplaced among the rapid-fire pieces during the recent
interval. A hundred yards down the works to the east landed the first
finger of a hand that groped for headquarters. Boylan watched for the
second shell--one eye, and as little besides as possible, above the
rim of the trench now deserted. It was the same tension and tallying of
seconds that Peter had known on the afternoon that the moon rose before
the setting sun. Big Belt ducked at the second scream. The explosion was
nearer and a little back. He returned to field headquarters just as a
third shrapnel shivered the land still nearer the bomb-proof pit.

Kohlvihr’s face was gray as the fringe of his hair. He looked little and
aged.

“My compliments to the commander,” he was dictating, “...report that
after five advances we find enemy’s front impregnable to infantry.
Headquarters now under shrapnel fire. We are forced to withdraw toward
Judenbach--”

The dispatch rider was standing by. The dirt sprinkled down on their
heads through the wooden buttresses as another shrapnel broke outside.

“But the wounded, General. The field is alive with wounded--” came from
Doltmir.

“I can’t send troops out there again--” The voice was thick and hoarse
with repression. “We’ll get them at nightfall.... Gentlemen, we may now
withdraw.”

Boylan was one of the last to leave. He saw the aged legs disappear up
the earth-rise as the rear door opened. The legs jerked and twitched
spasmodically, as if taking an invisible spanking.

Boylan was actually afraid of his thoughts, lest they be read in his
face--the shocking personal business on Kohlvihr’s part. “A little
shrapnel or two sends him quaking home, and _they_ went out five times
for him into the very steam of hell.”

His brain kept repeating this in spite of him, so that he did not try to
overtake the staff.

And _they_--the poor last fragment of them--were piling back toward
Judenbach, leaving their wounded behind.



Chapter 3


Goylan was back in Judenbach. It was four in the afternoon. He had
searched everywhere for Peter Mowbray. The whole war zone was getting
blacker and blacker to his sight. He had even gone to the Grim House
to look for the white-fire creature who had taken his companion to her
breast, figuratively speaking; but neither she, nor the weak-shouldered
little chap who had brought the hospital steward’s blouse, was there.
There remained Dabnitz, who more than any other was aware generally of
what passed. Big Belt returned to headquarters and waited. Darkness was
thickening before the Lieutenant came in.

“Where’s Mowbray?”

Dabnitz came close and looked at the other sorrowfully.

“How long have you known Mr. Mowbray?”

Boylan tried to think. His faculties were at large. According to facts
he had known Peter (and not at all intimately) during a mere ten weeks
before the column left Warsaw. Facts, however, hadn’t anything to do
with the reality. Peter Mowbray was his own property. He said as much,
his voice going back on him.

“Mr. Boylan, I have seldom been more hard hit. He was my friend, too. A
more charming and accomplished young American would be hard to find,
but we who are out for service, a life and death matter for our country,
must not let these things enter. Mr. Mowbray is affiliated in various
ways with our enemies--not the Austrians, but enemies more subtle and
insidious.”

“For God’s sake--Dabnitz!”

“I thought it would hurt you.”

“You might just as well say it of me.”

“Not at all. Your record stands. It was well known to us when you were
accepted to accompany our column. You will recall that it was your
estimate of Mr. Mowbray’s superior that decided us to accept the younger
man--”

“I have been with Mowbray night and day. He is a newspaper man, brain
and soul--one of the coolest and most effective I have ever met. He has
been for years in Paris and Berlin, before Warsaw.”

“I am sorry. You did not know that he caught a young surgeon by the
throat this morning, when the former was very properly stimulating a
malingerer?”

“I did not. But a personal matter ought not to weigh against a man’s
life--”

“You did not know that he was seen in somewhat extended conversation
yesterday and last evening with one of the most dangerous of our recent
discoveries among the revolutionists?”

“I did not.”

“Or that a woman came to him last night, in the heart of the night--and
talked long--and was called for by the same revolutionist; that Mr.
Mowbray went to her a little after daybreak this morning--”

“Ah, Dabnitz--a little romance! All night he was serving in the
hospital. I went out to find him this morning, and saw him turn into
the amputation house. Following, I saw him standing there.... He had
probably never seen her until last night. You know how some young
fellows are. They--you turn around--and they are in an affair--”

“But the two were overheard to speak of days in Warsaw together. It is
not such a little affair.”

“I know nothing of it, but is such a thing fatal?”

“She is under arrest with the other revolutionist that I mentioned--a
case against her that is hardly breakable--”

Boylan sat down,

“Of course you are aware--of the remark he made this morning in the
field headquarters? I saw how gallantly you tried to cover it. It was
that remark, by the way, which nearly cost the life of our General. The
hospital steward, took up the action as you know--”

“Dabnitz, I was shocked as you. Peter was beside himself. He had come
in from the field--the actuality of it. He forgot where he was. The
unparalleled energy of the General to win the day, you know--and Peter
had just come in from the hollows where the men lay--”

“My dear Boylan, I’m sorry--”

For the first time, Big Belt felt the iron personality of the other.
There was something commercial in the manner of the last, a kind of
ushering out one who would not do. There are men who remain as aloof
as the peaks of Phyrges, though their words and intonations come down
running softly out of a smile. Boylan looked away, and then, with an
inner groan, turned back.

“I tell you it is a mistake. The boy is as sound as--”

He couldn’t finish. There were exceptions to everything he thought of.
“I want to see him,” he added.

“I’ll try to manage that for you, a little later.”

* * *

It was darkening. In the front room of the house, Kohlvihr sat bung-eyed
by a telegraph instrument. The further strategy from Judenbach was
still in the dark to Boylan. He wished the heavens would fall. As
never before, he had the sense that he had pinned his life and faith to
matters of no account; not that Peter Mowbray belonged to these matters,
but that he, too, was meshed in them.... A shot from somewhere below
in the town. Boylan shivered. There was shooting from time to time for
various butchering reasons, but this particular shot was all Big Belt
needed to finish the picture.

“Why, they’ll shoot the lad,” he muttered.

The sentence remained in his brain in lit letters.

The States of America couldn’t help him; even Mother Nature had turned
her face from this war.... “My dear Boylan, I’m sorry--” something
crippling in that.

Dabnitz returned, bringing a pair of saddle bags.

“They’re Mr. Mowbray’s,” he said. “His horse got loose and tangled
himself in a battery. One of the men brought in the bags.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” said Boylan.

Dabnitz started to the door when Boylan called, “Oh, I say, did you look
through ‘em?”

The Russian smiled deprecatingly.

“Of course, I needn’t have asked that, but I wanted you to. I’ll gamble
you didn’t find anything--”

“A little book of poems by a man we’re familiar with. A woman’s name
on the front page--a woman we’re familiar with. Nothing startling, Mr.
Boylan.”

Dabnitz was gone, the bags lying on the floor. Big Belt opened the
nearest flap. On top was a case containing a tooth brush and a pair of
razors.

“Peter will want these,” he muttered.



V

THE SKYLIGHT PRISON

Chapter 1


Peter walked ahead unbound. He could not keep his mind on the journey
with the sentry. His thoughts winged from Lonegan at Warsaw, to _The
States’_ office and home, as if carrying the message of his own end....
Boylan might finally break out with the details.... The personal part
ended suddenly, like an essential formality, leaving him a sorrow for
Boylan and his mother especially. His full faculties now opened to
Berthe Wyndham.

He was ordered to turn twice to the left. They had left the little stone
court, entering the main street, and back again into the first side
street for a short distance to a narrow stairway, between low mercantile
houses now used for hospitals. Up the creaking way; the sentry within
answered the sentry without and opened the door. A long narrow room with
a single square of light from the roof, and Moritz Abel came forward.

“I’m sorry,” the poet said. “I had hoped--”

“Yes, we had hoped,” Peter replied with a smile.

Duke Fallows appeared from the shadows and hastily pressed his hand.
Abel had turned toward the square of light, as if there were still
another.

She came forward like a wraith--into the light--and still toward him,
her lips parted, her eyes intent upon him. The sentry who had brought
him turned, clattered down the stairs. The door was shut by the other
sentry. Her lips moved, but there was nothing that he heard. With one
hand still in his, she turned and led him back under the daylight to the
shadows.... He heard Moritz Abel’s voice repeating that he had been a
poor protector. Fallows spoke....

There was much to it, hardly like a human episode--the silence so far as
words between them, the tragedy in each soul that the other must go; the
tearing readjustments to the end of all work in the world, and the swift
reversion of the mind to its innumerable broken ends of activity; and
above all, the deep joy of their being together in this last intense
weariness.... She wore her white veiled cap and apron; having followed
the summons from her work. There was a chair in the shadows, and she
pressed him down in her old way, and took her own place before him (as
in her own house) half-sitting, half-kneeling.

“Peter, I could not believe--until I touched you. I was praying just
here, that you would not come--”

“I am very grateful to be here,” he said.

“I was so lonely. I was afraid of death. Fallows talked to me and Moritz
Abel--but it did not do. I was thinking of you at the battle, as if you
were a thousand miles away--as if I were waiting, as a mother for you,
waiting for tidings with a babe in her arms--”

She paused and he said, “Tell me,” knowing that she must speak on.

“...It was just like that. I prayed that you would live--that you would
not be brought here--that the time would pass swiftly. We have been here
hours. They came for us soon after you went. We were all together in
that place--all at our work. They led us here through the streets. It
seemed very far. Something caught in the throat when the soldiers looked
at me. I know what my father felt when he kept saying, ‘It’s all right.
Yes, this is all right.’ I know just how the surprise and the amazement
affected him from time to time, and made him say that.... Then we
were here. I wanted this darker chair. They came--I mean our good
friends--Fallows came and talked to me, and Moritz Abel, but it wasn’t
what I seemed to need. Ah, Peter, I’m talking in circles--”

Something warned him that she was going to break, but he could not speak
quickly enough. The human frightened little girl that he had never seen
before in Berthe Wyndham, was so utterly revealing to his heart that
he was held in enchantment. She seemed so frail and tender, as she said
plaintively:

“We must be very dear to each other--”

There were tears in her eyes now, and her breast rose and fell with
emotion, as poignant to Mowbray as if it were his own.

“I did pray for them not to bring you here,” she added. “If I had not
left Warsaw, you would not be here now--”

“Listen--oh, Berthe, don’t say that. Please, listen--”

The current was turned on in his brain, thoughts revolving faster and
faster:

“It would all have been a mere military movement if you had not come. I
would not have understood Spenski, nor the real Samarc, nor Kohlvihr as
he is, nor the charges of infantry. The coming of Moritz Abel, words I
have heard, the street, the singing, the field, the future--why, it’s
all different because you came. I am not dismayed by this. I have had
a great life here. If this is our last day--the matter is lifted out of
our hands. And dear Berthe, what do you think it means to me--this last
hour together?”

“What does it mean, Peter?’

“I look into your face, and know that I’ve found something the world
tried to make me believe wasn’t here. Everything I did as a boy and man
tried to show me that there isn’t anything uncommon in a man finding a
woman. My mother knew differently, but every time she wanted to tell me
something happened. Another voice broke in, or perhaps she saw I wasn’t
attentive or ready. But I know now--and it didn’t come to me until here
in Judenbach--”

“She must have known,” Berthe whispered.

Fallows drew near. He seemed calm but very weary. “May I bring up my
chair for a little while?” he asked as an old nurse might.

“Please do,” they said.

“Thank you,” Fallows answered, and returned with his wooden chair. “If
you change the subject I shall have to go.”

“I was just saying that I had found something in the world that my
mother knew all the time,” Peter explained.

“Oh, I say, this is important. Moritz must come in,” Fallows told them.

They nodded laughingly.

“Moritz,” he called. “Here’s a little boy and girl telling stories--very
important stories. You must hear.... We’re all one, Peter Mowbray.”

They drew closer together. Berthe was watching Peter intensely, knowing
that it was his test, very far from his way. Then she remembered the
death-room, and that all things are changed by that. She sat very still,
trying to give him strength to go on. “I’ve always used my head,” he
said, “always explained why, and made diagrams. The one time I didn’t
use my head--well, the best thing happened in my experience.”

Peter was in for it, and weathered gracefully.

“You’ll forgive me,” he said, when they asked to know. “I was thinking
of meeting Berthe Wyndham. I saw her one day passing through the Square
in Warsaw near the river corner. Well, it all came about, because I went
there again the next day at the same time--”

He was a little breathless, but the glad and eager sincerity of his
listeners helped him, and he wanted more than all to lift Berthe if he
could.

“I could not help thinking of that when I recalled another little matter
yesterday--in Judenbach. Once when we were little, my brother Paul and
I quarreled. My mother and I were alone afterward. I told her of the
tragedy. Everything seemed lost since I had lost Paul. She said, ‘Some
time you will find your real playmate, if you are good and search very
hard.’ I suppose she has forgotten. I forgot for years. But it came
to me here.... You see I never suffered before, never was tested,
everything came smoothly, everything covered up--”

“You are good to let us listen,” Fallows said quietly. He was staring at
the ceiling.

“Here in Judenbach the relations of all other days began to match up.
It was as if the whole war was to show _me_, each department carried on
clearly. I didn’t know a man could stand so much. Day before yesterday
morning, I wanted to quit. I had a kind of madness from it all--an ache
that wouldn’t break or bleed, and was driving the life out of me. I
found the way out by going into the hospital. I had to forget myself or
go under.... When it seemed all over to-day, and the sentry was marching
me here (you see I had gone back to the house of amputations and
couldn’t find any of you, and then to the Court of Execution, and you
were not there), it was all slipping away in a loneliness not to be
described, when I found you here--”

Fallows straightened his head and blinked.

“‘It was all slipping away in a loneliness not to be described,’” he
repeated. “We know that. This is too fine.”

Peter laughed. He was thinking of what Lonegan had said on the night he
came back from Berthe’s door, after she had asked him not to come
in.... “Peter, you’re lying. I don’t believe you’d let anybody see your
fires--not even how well you bank ‘em.”

They seemed to require further talk from him. He did not want the two
men, sorry they had drawn up their chairs. His heart was very tender
to them--Fallows and Abel, and the woman who had changed him. They
were before him now as messengers from the benignant empire of the
future--strange strong souls gathered together now in waiting at the end
of a road.... He told them of the bomb-proof pit, the naked animalism of
Kohlvihr, the infantry advances and of Samarc. Presently his heart was
light again, the pent forces of expression springing gladly into use.

“...The laughable thing about it,” he finished, “--the thing that held
me speechless as Samarc left my side there in the dark corner of the
pit--was that just a few minutes before Kohlvihr had promised to see
that the Little Father decorated him. He had almost reached the General
when my throat worked, and I called, ‘Samarc.’ It was as if he didn’t
hear me. Nothing would have stopped him. It was his idea, yet I think he
meant only to stop the order of another infantry advance. He had ceased
to kill, you know....”

Peter ended it hastily. They were all interested to know why Samarc was
to have been decorated. This opened the earlier part of the day, and his
strange wandering with Samarc among the hills--the magic of the hospital
steward’s coat, the scent of the cedars, and Peter’s persistent sense of
Berthe’s nearness.

“Actually, I had to stop and think,” he explained. “Each time I
fell into an abstraction, it struck me that she was there. It seems
yesterday, too--”

“I was just here,” Berthe said. “It was soon after we came. We were all
quiet at first--in different corners--”

“Slipping away in that loneliness,” Fallows suggested.

“As for me,” said Moritz Abel, “I had to make peace with myself. We have
been very busy the last few days. I have discovered that I am a bit of a
coward at heart--and I missed having something to do--”

They smiled at him. “Perhaps I was out there,” Berthe said. “Perhaps I
was only sitting here--”

It was a queer matter that the three men, each of whom would have given
his life to save the woman’s, to all appearances accepted the fact of
her as one of them in courage and control. It was Abel who mentioned
the singer, Poltneck, whom Peter had not met. He had been left in the
hospital when the others were taken; yet he had been one in all their
interests and the most reckless and outspoken of all in his hatred of
slaughter. They did not understand, but hoped he would be saved.

“He’s a magician,” Abel said. “He sang to them yesterday--as they bore
the knife. He seemed to hold them in the everlasting arms. It was worth
living to witness that, but I’m afraid Poltneck will come to us. He’s
got the fury. Hearing that we are gone, he will start something--if
only to join us. Then there will be no one to escape with the story. It
troubles me.... If Mr. Mowbray were only free. Doesn’t it seem that our
brothers should hear the story?”

His voice broke a little. His brow was wet.

Fallows came back from the ceiling, and said:

“Moritz, my boy, all is well with us. That which is true is immortal.”



Chapter 2


Abel reflected.

“Yes,” he said presently, “but we have not fulfilled our purpose.... You
know, we set out in high courage to start the army back home again--and
now, here we are.”

“A man named Columbus set out to discover a short passage to India and
found a New World. Really my son--these are not our affairs. We have
done what we could.... Once I wanted the world to answer abruptly to
my service--to speak up sharp. But I have made terms--hard terms we all
must make. This is it--to do our part the best we can, and keep off the
results. They are God’s concern, Moritz.”

“I dare say.”

“When I was younger,” Fallows went on, “I wanted to make a circle of
light around the world. I thought they must see it, as I did. And often
I left my friends discussing my failure. But once I came home and looked
into the eyes of a little boy--a little peasant child named Jan. I saw
that his love for me had awakened his soul.... Man, these matters are
managed with a finer art than we dream of. The work is the thing.”
 Peter swung into the larger current. They had all been cold. Fallows was
burning for them. The ice and the agony were melting from each heart.

“We think all is going wrong. We sit and breathe our failures often
when the celestial answer is in the air. If we were not so obtuse and
fleshly, we could see the quickening of light about us. We have had our
hours here. We have breathed the open. A very huge army is about us, and
we are thrust aside. It would seem that we and our little story are lost
in the great brute noise. Why, Moritz, these things that we have thought
and dreamed will rise again in the midst of a world that has forgotten
the tread of armies.”

They heard a voice in the street--a running step upon the stair. Queerly
it happened in that instant of waiting, that Peter heard the sound of
dropping water beyond the partition--drip, drip, drip, upon a tinny
surface. Berthe had risen, and followed Fallows and Abel to the door.
A moment later Poltneck, the singer, was with them, and the sentry
who brought him took his post with the other at the entrance. He freed
himself from them, and strode alone to the front of the room, where he
sat, face covered in his hands, weaving his head to and fro.

“You do not well to welcome me,” he groaned at last. “I should have been
in a cell alone--not here among friends. You see in me the most abject
failure--a mere music-monger who forgot his greater work.”

“Tell us--”

He did not answer at once. They led him back into the shadows where
Peter and Berthe had been; gathered closely about, so their voices would
not carry.

“We were hoping not to see you,” said Abel, “yet sending our dearest
thoughts. What you have done is good, and we will not be denied a song.
Speak, Poltneck--”

“I was all right till you went. I was thinking of everything--but then
I became blind. The work in the hospitals palled. I did not do what I
could. They saw I was different, and watched closely. That made me mad.
I am a fool to temper and pride. All I have is something that I did not
earn--something thrust upon me that makes sounds. The rest is emptiness.
In fact there must be emptiness where sounds come from--”

“We know better than that,” said Fallows. “Tell us and we will judge.”

Poltneck straightened up and met the eyes of Peter. “This is the
correspondent?” he asked.

“He came up from the field this morning and in looking for us--fell
under suspicion,” Berthe explained.

The long hard arm stretched out to Peter, who still was somewhat at sea,
as Boylan had been, and afraid that he detected a taint of the dramatic.

“I saw your companion in the bomb-proof pit,” Poltneck declared. “In
fact, I just came from there, but I will tell you.... I was perhaps two
hours or more in the hospital, after you three were taken, when they
sent for me. I thought it a summons, of course, such, as you--”

He glanced at the faces about him, and continued:

“But instead of leading me in the direction you had taken, the sentry
bade me mount a horse at the door, and we rode rapidly down to the edge
of the valley, to Kohlvihr’s headquarters--a pestilential place sunken
in the ground and covered with sods. There they broke it to me what was
wanted--”

His listeners began to understand.

“Yes, I was to sing to the lines,” Poltneck added. “It appears they had
been driven back several times, leaving their dead and wounded in such
numbers on the field--officers and men--that there was some hesitation
about the expediency of trying it again. Not, however, in the bomb-proof
pit. Kohlvihr was of a single mind, determined to make his reputation as
man-indomitable at the expense of his division. A patchy old rodent of a
man--

“I was to be used to sing the men forward. Great God, they didn’t see
the difference from singing to wounded men, to men under the knife
without sleep, to dying men and to homesick bivouacs--from this that
they asked. It is my devil. I played with them. I made them think I was
afraid. I made them think I was simple. One of them told me of the tenor
Chautonville with the army. I played to that. It was very petty of me to
get caught in this cleverness, because that’s how I fell--”

“You didn’t sing the lines into a new advance?” Fallows asked. His face
looked lined and gray as he leaned forward.

“No, I didn’t do that. But I made them wait to find out. I was so
occupied with repartee and acting that I failed to seize the real chance
of all the world. I told them I had been tried out as an anesthetic, but
was not sure of myself in an opposite capacity. I begged them to send
for the member of imperial orchestra stars--”

Poltneck’s self-scorn was vitriolic as he now spoke.

“I told them I was a poor simple man afraid of great numbers, abased
even before wounded, but that if they would wound the men first I would
try. It was this that betrayed me--the joy of astonishing. Oh, they were
without humor. It goes with the army--to be without humor. Really,
you would have been dumfounded at the brittleness of mind which I
encountered in the bomb-proof pit.... Of course, it had to come. It
dawned on them--what I meant, and what the real state of my scorn
was--at least, in part. And I was taken away, very pleased with myself
and joyous--”

“I do not see where you failed. Where, where?” Berthe asked.

It was Fallows who understood first--even before Abel and Peter, who was
not so imbued with the specific passion of the revolutionist.

“I was here--back in the city when it came to me what I might have done.
And so clearly the cause of the failure was shown to me,” Poltneck said,
with a humility that touched Peter deeply, for his first thought had
vanished before the fact that Poltneck neither in the action nor the
narrative had once thought of his own life or death.

“I should have gone out to the lines and met the men face to face. Oh,
it is hard--hard that I did not think of it, for I could have sung them
home, instead of on into the valley. We might have been marching back
now--all the lines crumbling--the bomb-proof pit squashed!”

The final stroke fell upon him this instant. None of the others had
thought of it.

“And these--doors! Living God, we could have opened these doors!”

Their hands went out to him.



Chapter 3


A basket of food was sent in during the early afternoon. They gathered
about, making a place for the woman under the light. Abel was brighter,
his eyes full of tenderness. Poltneck had not long been able to hold out
in his misery against the philosophy of Fallows, who said as they broke
the bread:

“We have spoken our testimony, and the big adventure is ahead. It’s
against the law to look back. We are honored men. I am proud to be here,
proud of a service that requires no herald. In all my dreaming in
the little cabin in the Bosks I could think of no rarer thing than
this--five together, a singer, a poet, a peasant, and two lovers. It’s
like a pastoral--but the dark suffering army is about us. ... Listen to
the fighting. ... But there will be an end to fighting? ... Our Poltneck
may already have sung the song to turn the armies back. Be very sure, he
would have thought of his _coup_ in time to-day, had the hour struck for
that. Sing to us now, my son. Your soul will come home to you. Sing to
us--_The Lord Is Mindful of His Own_--”

It was started as one would answer a question--food in his hand, and
his eyes turned upward--a song of the Germans, too, the music of
Mendelssohn.

... It became very clear to the five that the plan was good, that
nothing mattered but the inner life, and that the soul breathes deeply
and comes into its own immortal health, by man’s thought and service to
his brother. They saw it again--that goodly rock of things. The light
was shining above. Their eyes filled with tears, and their hands touched
each others’ like children in a strange hush and shadow. ...

They heard a ragged volley of platoon fire from the distant court, but
it did not hold their thoughts from the song nor change a note. The huge
sandy head was turned upward, and the hand with its bit of broken bread
moved to and fro. ...



Chapter 4


Boylan went back to headquarters again, but his nerve was breaking. He
did not feel at one with the staff this afternoon, rather as a stranger
who wanted something which the great brute force was unwilling to give.
He was full of fears and disorders, as if all the eyes of men were
searching his secret places. He told the sentry that he would like to
see Lieutenant Dabnitz, and gave his name, much as a trooper would.
He sat cold and breathing hard for many minutes--an outsider, as never
before. Dabnitz came at last. Big Belt arose and clutched his arms.

“Lieutenant,” he said. “I’ll spend my life to prove you wrong about
Peter Mowbray. I’ll get the United States of America to thank you and
General Kohlvihr, and the army for your kindness--if you spare him. I
don’t care to go to him--unless I can take him word. My God, Lieutenant,
you mustn’t shoot that boy! We’ve ridden together, all three. There’s
so much death without that. He’s innocent as a babe of any revolutionary
principle. I’ll give America the greatest Russian story that--”

“My dear Boylan, believe me, you are wrong. They are deep as hell
against us. You need not trouble, for they are happy as children at a
birthday party--with Poltneck singing and all joined hands--”

Boylan’s knees bent to the seat.

“But we will not disturb them for the time. We will let you know,”
 said Dabnitz. “It would be a shame to interrupt such a pleasant party.
Judenbach will be our headquarters for one more night.”



Chapter 5


Moritz Abel was saying:

“... There is one perfect story in the world. It will bear the deepest
scrutiny of mind or matter or soul. Physically it is exact; mentally it
balances; spiritually it is the ultimate lesson. You will find in it all
that you need to know about Christianity, for it is the soul of that;
the one thing that was not in the world before the Christ came. You
will learn in it who is your Father; who your Brother is, and who your
Neighbor.

“It will impart to you the clear eye for shams and material offices
and for the peril of fancied chosen peoples. From it you will draw the
cosmic simplicity of good actions, and a fresh and kindling hatred for
the human animal of grotesque desire.

“Children grasp it with thrilling comprehension; it silences the
critical faculty of the intellectuals and animates the saint to tears of
ecstasy, even to martyrdoms. It expresses the dream of peace alike for
nations and men. It is a globe. You can go it blind, and win--following
the spirit of the Good Samaritan.”



Chapter 6


The light was gray that came down through the skylight. Abel and
Poltneck and Fallows sat on the floor in the front end, because there
were not chairs for all. Back in the shadows sat Berthe and Peter.

“...I think we will be a little bewildered,” she was saying, “as one
awakening from a dream, as one awakening in the sunlight. One stirs, you
know, and shuts the eyes again. The reality dawns slowly--if the house
is quiet.... It will be very quiet. We have been used to the cannonading
so long, and the cries in the night. It will take us a moment to realize
that it is all over. I think I see just how it will be then. I will have
that sense of the glad unknown--that something long anticipated is about
to happen. You know how it comes to one upon awakening, when something
perfect is to happen--the presence of it, before one remembers just what
it is?”

Peter nodded in the shadow.

“And then I will remember. It will be you. I will really open my
eyes--and you will be there!”

Something of her fire came to him.

“You are sure it will be like that--afterward?” he repeated.

Her voice and lips trembled. “You ask just like a little child, Peter.
It is the little child in you that strikes the heart. Don’t you really
believe in the _afterward?”_

“Yes, but I can’t see it quite clearly, you know, as you do.”

“You don’t think it is all wayward and stupidly arranged as the army
would like to do it--do you?”

They laughed softly together, but she wanted him to see it, as she did,
“Because,” she said, “if you do, we will be together more quickly. I
would have to go and find you, if you didn’t come----”

“I should want to come,” said Peter.

He followed her eyes beyond the twilight from the roof, to the face of
Fallows, seen indistinctly in the shadows. It was like the figure of a
Hindu holy man sitting there so low, his hands raised palms upward, his
voice just audible.

“Listen,” she said, her hand falling upon Peter’s.

“It isn’t so much their death that is the great wrong to the soldiers by
the Fatherland. A man may do worse than die, at any time. It’s the death
of hate the Fatherland inspires--the fighting death--the going-down with
blood-madness and hatred for the men of another country--not enemies at
all, no harm exchanged whatsoever between them. It is such deaths that
make the world hard to breathe in--the death of preying animals. But
all that is passing. These battles had to come at the last to hurry it
away....”

“That’s what I wanted to say, Peter,” Berthe whispered eagerly....
“Fallows is greater than any,--an inspirer. He will go out with his
dream for men, strong and bright. Do you think that is the same as dying
the fighting death--with a curse and a passion for the death of men whom
you have never seen face to face?”

“It’s quite all right, you know,” said Peter. “I’m keen enough to see
it through, but it’s a closed door yet. However, there’s something
deathless about a woman like you--yes, I’m sure of that----”

Her hands pressed his swiftly. “Then you may be very sure, there’s
something deathless in the man she loves.... Listen, Fallows is talking
about your country now:”

“... Russia is the invader, but America is the temple of the new spirit.
America must reanimate the world after this war. I believe she is being
born again now.... She was bred right. There is always that to fall back
upon. She was founded upon the principles of liberty and service to the
distressed. No other nation can say that. But America must lose the love
of self, must cease to be a national soul and become the nucleus of the
world soul of the future. Otherwise all that was holy in her conception
is dead, and the passion of her prophets is without avail.

“There is a time for the development of the national soul, but ahead on
the road is the world soul, the true Fatherland. The precious whisper is
abroad that more sins have been committed in the name of patriotism than
any other. The time will come when this little orbit and its slaying
delusions will be well back among the provincialisms; not a bad word in
itself, rather a lost meaning through abuse.

“Over a century ago the inspired Fichte addressed the Germans in a
series of documents charged with the most exalted enthusiasm for the
future of his people, on the basis of such a Fatherland that the only
living answer could be the superb affiliation of men. For years and
decades the gleam of that spiritual ignition endured there. Carlyle, not
a countryman, saw it and made it blaze with the fuel of his genius. It
seems dead to Prussia now, but that gleam shall never die. Some strong
youth on the road to Damascus shall be struck to the ground by its
radiance and arise to carry the light to the Gentiles.

“There must be such a voice in America now. I seem to feel the new
genius of America, not yet in its prime, hardly articulate as yet, but
rapidly maturing in these days of unparalleled suffering. They will
interpret the New Age. They will meet the New Russia face to face. I
think they are watching for us now. The bond is thicker than blood.
They will see the future of Europe written upon these millions, now
the invaders from the cold lands of poverty. I think they will hold the
spirit until we come.

“All that was true of Germany when Fichte addressed his countrymen is
true of America in this hour. All the physical and spiritual pressures
of the European disruption are turned upon the temple of America to
drive out the money-changers and make it the house of God.”

Fallows’ voice softened. He was talking of America with the passion of
an exile. He loved the thoughts of her good, as he loved the peasants
about him. The room was still.

“It is a time for heroics,” he added. “America is emancipating her
genius, not only from herself, but from the thrall of the old world’s
decadence. Do you think there is nothing fateful in the destructive
energy that is rubbing out ancient landmarks? Rather it would seem that
the old and the unclean has played its part, and may not be used in the
new spiritual experiment. I want to hear America’s new song--the song of
the New Age--the unspoiled workmen at their task. They will sing as they
lift.... Yes, we shall hear the song of the New Age. Since the pilgrims
sang together, no such thrilling harmony shall move that western land.
They shall be singing it for Russia when we come.”

“It makes me so ashamed,” Berthe whispered after a moment, “when I think
of my weakness to-day, when you came. But, Peter, oh, I didn’t want you
to come----”

“I wouldn’t be ashamed,” he said. “It gave me something from you that
I couldn’t have had without it. There was plenty to hold a man in
wonder--your zeal to do for others, and the exaltations, but to-day you
were down in my valley, in the earth bottoms, just seeing in the human
light, your wings tired. It was the best moment of the pilgrimage,
Berthe--the deepest.”

Peter had wanted to tell her that.



Chapter 7


Big Belt stood before a man of his own size--Lornievitch, the Commander
of commanders, Himself.

It was night. Boylan had plunged into a new vat of power, and persuaded
Dabnitz to furnish an escort from Judenbach, four miles to the east to
the main headquarters of the Galician army.

Rows of sleepy stenographers in the outer room of a broad shepherd’s
house in a little hill village--a web of wires on the low ceiling,
lanterns, candles, field ‘phones and telegraph tickers, none altogether
subsided; as much routine as in the management of a state--the center of
this monster battle-line--to say nothing of the spectacular.

The two men now filled a small inner room. Lornievitch spoke English--an
English much to the caller’s liking. Perhaps it was the bond of bulk
between them.

“Well, and so you are Boylan of the _Rhodes?_--what is it, Mr. Boylan?
We are very busy.”

“I have a young friend of _The States”_ he began and talked for three
minutes--talked until Lornievitch squirmed and his aides hurried forward
ready to assist.

“And what does Kohlvihr say?”

“I had to speak to him through an interpreter. I could not get the
answer I wanted. He has had a terrible day. The life of one American is
too small for discussion there--”

“And you have come here to me. Meanwhile, on the wire is the young man’s
case--a love affair with a revolutionist--and a sort of be-damned to the
Russian army. You are a strong man, doubtless a brave one--”

Boylan was fighting for Peter’s life as he would not have fought for
his own; and yet he warmed to the commander--fibers all through him
warming--something of man-business about this office that made the
headquarters at Judenbach look sinister and den-like. It was just his
hope in all likelihood.

“But Mr. Boylan,” Lornievitch added, “what would you do in my case?
There’s big action, front, side, within. They have a case against the
others--and he is one of them.”

“He may be one in a momentary infatuation--”

“Nonsense, Boylan--this is no time for girls!”

“I grant you that, sir. But he is not a revolutionist. I’ve slept and
ridden with him night and day. His paper wouldn’t pay for cigarettes
to do other than tell the story from the army end. If he’s gone _loco,_
I’ll take him home under my arm--”

“I say, Boylan, what do you want of him this way? He’s a newspaper
competitor--”

“Mowbray got to me. Didn’t try to, but he’s there. Took the field as
if it had been his work always. He’s a friend, clever, courageous, a
gentleman always, clean cut, a laugh, a hand--and a boy over it all.
I didn’t know--until I found him in danger. I couldn’t feel worse if I
were his old woman--I am twice his age, damn near--”

“You’re invincible, Boylan. I’ll tell you this: I feel better. That’s
worth something. Things look black here in the valleys. Something human
I needed, in your coming. Go back now. Nothing will be done until
the morning. We’ve had to shoot Austrian spies all day. Caught ‘em
red-handed. I feel red-handed, too. Go back, and before to-morrow
morning I’ll get an order over to straighten him out from the
others--before final action is taken. Maybe I’ll look him over myself.
Good night.... Oh, I say, Mr. Boylan--”

“Yes, General.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I was just thinking I’d like to have one friend
like young what’s-his-name of _The States_ has--”

“Mowbray--Mowbray--don’t forget the name, General--”

“Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

Boylan put his soul in it. He loved the Russians. It was far this side
of midnight, but he smelled the dawn.

Back in his own quarters, as he yawned largely at the flickering shadows
of the freshly-lit candle, he noted Peter’s saddle bags on the floor,
and considered that it might be well to get them over to-night.



Chapter 8


Peter walked the room, a changing star or two in the windy skylight; a
candle in the center by the stair-door where the sentry stood; Berthe
watching him steadily from her chair. The others at the far end looked
up occasionally. They were talking low-toned. Poltneck had been singing
folk-songs--pure spirit of the boat and cradle, of the march and the
marriage and the harvest, of the cruel winter and the pregnant warmth
again; songs that had come up from the soil and stream and the simple
heart of man, older than Mother Moscow, old beyond any human name to
attach to them. True and anonymous, these songs. The lips that first
sung them never knew that they had breathed the basic gospel which does
not die, but moves from house to house around the world. Indeed, the
melodies were born of the land and the sky, like the mist that rises
from the earth when the yellow sun comes up from the south, and the
“green noise” of spring breaks the iron cold.

The moment had come when Peter could not sit still. Berthe was never so
dear, but he could not stay. He held the three men in true full comrade
spirit, but he could not sit with them now. He had nothing to fear; all
was quite well.

He was thinking of America, that she was “bred right”; that some change
might be upon her now, something akin to his own transformation. Was
there a bond thicker than blood between America and the New Russia? Word
had reached the field that Russia had put away her greatest devil in a
day. A nation is to be reckoned with that makes her changes thus at a
sweep. Had Russia not freed fifty million slaves at one stroke of the
pen--that great emancipation of Alexander? And Russia now held the
Earth’s mighty energy of fecundity--an ultimate significance here; for
this guest invariably comes before a people has reached its meridian,
and not afterward.... His companions of the death cell were touching
the truth; this dark suffering army was the Europe of the future--the
Russian voice that would challenge America to answer brother to brother.

The folk songs were singing in his soul, and the lines of Abel’s _We Are
Free,_ the friendships of Spenski and Samarc, of these in the room, and
the love of Berthe Wyndham.

All had prevailed. The culmination was now. He thought of the actuality
of to-morrow, but without terror, or blankness. It would seem that he
were leaving all this; that America, Russia, friendship, the love of
woman, were no longer his portion; yet he seemed closer than ever to
them. It was as Fallows said, “These things are immortal.” Perhaps this
very room, and this, the greatest of his days in the world, would be
pictured by some one to come, as clearly and as magically as he saw
it all now; by some young workman of the reconstruction, after the red
horse of war was driven back forever.

He was sustained. The sense came clearly that nothing men might do could
cause him harm. He felt even that his mother would some time know how
well he had come to understand her at the last. Everything was answered
by the mystic future. It was all there; all would be told.

“Why, to-morrow,” he exclaimed aloud suddenly, “why, to-morrow, we will
laugh at today.”

They were about him. They seemed to understand all that had brought
his words, as if they had followed his thoughts to the same apostrophe.
...He was laughing in the midst of them.

“I think it must have been the singing and all,” he said breathlessly.
“It got away from me. It has all been too fine to-day. I don’t see--I
really don’t--how I managed to earn it all.”

A step upon the stair, slow and heavy, a step that Peter Mowbray knew.
The companion sentry had remained below at the street door, and now
called to his fellow of the guard to open. ...Peter was abashed before
his friend like a child that had disobeyed, and come to believe that he
knew better than the father. It was Big Belt at midnight.

“I brought your shaving-tackle,” he said. “Hello, Peter.”

The face in the thin ray looked like polished metal.

“Come in.” Peter had him by the hand, which was easily pulled across the
threshold, but the body didn’t move.

“No, I won’t come in--”

“Boylan, come in!... I want you to meet--”

“No. I’ll see you in the morning.... For God’s sake, don’t look so
happy, and keep your mouth shut.... Good-night.”

A curtain had fallen before the glowing future. Peter couldn’t raise
it again. He tried to restore his laugh and light-heartedness for the
others, but it was a mockery. The world had come in all its chaos and
mad fatigue. All that he had said was without meaning. The singing was
over. Berthe gave him her hand as he returned to the dark corner. She
did not speak, for a moment, and then only to say:

“How sensitive we are!”

All the weariness that he had ever known came upon him, gathering
together for descent, pressing out vitality, leaving him cold and
undone.

“You are very tired,” she whispered. “Perhaps we can rest a little. The
three are resting.” Then a little later, like a child half-asleep, she
added, “I love you.”

It was her good-night.

Throughout that short night he dreamed of cedar boughs and pungent
autumn air; flurries of snow falling from wide pine branches. There was
gray in the skylight when he awoke. Berthe was near, her cheek against
his saddle bags, which he had placed for her the last thing. Very white
and small her face looked as she slept, her hands folded under her
chin.... Peter watched, his eyes becoming accustomed to the faint light.
The white cap lay near, a different and imperfect white compared to her
flesh; and the soft deep night of her hair seemed to him of sufficient
loveliness for any world. A girl asleep--and such a faith had they
known. There was a beauty about it all that rebuked the actuality of the
place and the town and the soldiery.

Misery began deep in his heart, welled up to his throat, blurring
his eyes, resolving his whole nature almost past resistance; that a
love-woman still without her chance, without her child, so fair and
unafraid, who had asked so little for herself and so much for the
world--should be brought to the shame and the shot of fools. A flutter
of eyes. Mowbray gripped his self-control with every ounce of force. He
would hold her in his power of will while she met the issue of the day,
and its first cruel thought. Her brow contracted a little, as if through
some passing pain.... The dawn of a smile that pursed her lips to speak
his name, met his kiss instead. He held her face between his hands,
smiling at her, while the realization came.

_“Dear Peter--it’s the day of our journey--“_

He brushed the lather in gratefully with cold water. The touch of the
razor gave him a queer pang such as he had never met before.

“You’re just a boy,” Berthe remarked.... “It must make one feel clean.
It has been years since I was present--”

The others were now awake. They made merry over the shaving, all taking
turns, even Fallows, the last and the longest. Indeed he had scarcely
finished before their first test came. It was like a whip--that step
upon the stair, but only a sentry with tea and bread.



Chapter 9


A gray dawn, an east wind with a driving mist, a miserable day afield in
every promise, and Big Belt had missed none of these portents since
the full darkness. With the first relief of the morning-guard at
headquarters, he was there. Dabnitz appeared and smiled grimly. The wire
was already busy; Kohlvihr came in unsteadily, the old fume about him
that made Boylan lick his lips. His own nerves had been badly wrenched.
He could have relished a stimulant, but he hadn’t thought of it alone.

“You’re looking for word from the Commander?” Dabnitz asked.

“Yes.”

“So are we. It’s up to him to-day. We’re a mere wisp of what we were--”

Boylan simulated interest. There was but one idea in his world, however.

“By the way,” Dabnitz added. “The Commander asked for full particulars
this morning at three. They were sent to him--Mr. Mowbray’s case--”

Boylan jerked up his chin. Of late, his woolen collar had apparently
shrunk.

“You haven’t heard yet?”

“Not yet. We’re waiting--”

“Nothing will be done until you hear?”

“Not in Mowbray’s case. The others--the others have had tea.... They are
very quiet this morning--no singing.”

Boylan hated him for that, a momentary but scarring hatred.... The field
telephone began. Presently it occupied the steady swift attention of a
stenographer whose pages were put on the machine and handed in strips to
the staff members, like a last-minute news story to compositors.
...One of the hardest things Boylan ever did was to speak to Dabnitz as
follows: “I’d better be there if you take the others and leave--leave
Peter Mowbray. He’s impulsive. You wouldn’t want a scene--you know--”

“Wait a minute--I think your matter is on the wire,” Dabnitz said,
drawing back to the telegraph.

“Yes,” he nodded, and a moment later handed Big Belt this message:

“My compliments to Mr. Boylan and assurances of excellent regard. I have
found the favor he asks, however, altogether out of my power to grant.”

Boylan’s jaw dropped; his mouth filled with saliva. Dabnitz said
something, “...desperately sorry... couldn’t possibly have ended another
way.”

“Come, come--this won’t do,” Big Belt muttered queerly. He was not
answering Dabnitz, but commanding himself.... He swallowed again and
turned:

“You will have charge of the affair?”

“Yes, doubtless. It will be very short--”

“I will wait for you below. Of course, I’ll want to be there, you
know--”

“I didn’t know,” Dabnitz sighed.

Boylan was standing below. He heard distant firing through the rain in
the direction of the field.... Lornievitch had doubtless begun a flank
movement. Kohlvihr would lick his wounds in Judenbach for another day.

Dabnitz appeared from the stairway, a paper in his hand. He dispatched a
sentry to the barracks for a platoon, and stood waiting impatiently for
its coming. Big Belt, in the door of his quarters a few paces distant,
swallowed again.... It might delay matters.... The black fact was that
it would not do more....

“Oh, I say, Lieutenant, come here a moment, please. I want to show you
something--”

Boylan led the Russian in, and turned. The place was empty. Dabnitz
regarded him wearily--then with sudden amazement.

It was a kind of bear reaching. He was pulled down, his face smothered
in a woolen shirt that covered a breast like cushioned stone. The
building must have fallen. The hands were neither rough nor swift, but
they pawed him with a kind of power that turned him to vapor. There
was one finger upon his backbone at the neck that shut off the life
currents.... Dabnitz opened his eyes presently--a choking wad of paper
in his mouth. The mammoth looked down upon him and said:

“Excuse me, Lieutenant, but I had to have a chance to think.”

At this instant Boylan saw the paper that the Russian had carried. It
had fluttered to the floor, Kohlvihr’s signature in plain view. The
weights that beset the American had now to do with the uselessness of it
all. He had rendered the momentary order and its bearer ineffectual; he
might possibly divert the platoon. But the great one-eyed system was
all about, knowing its single task of destruction. It would turn back to
that piece by piece--until the task was done. Yet while he lived, Boylan
could not let it go on, in this specific instance. He was fighting the
Russian army now; that die was cast; the one thing to do was to keep
Peter Mowbray alive as long as possible. He went about further details
without hope, however.

Dabnitz was carefully bound and lifted to the corner in the midst of
saddles and kit. An extra strip was fastened around his chin to prevent
the ejection of the gag. Big Belt spoke steadily and softly as he
worked:

“You’re a good soldier. You play your game to the seeds. I have no
objection to you. When it’s all over I’ll think of you--as a corking
field man. You’ve been good to us, too--everything you could do to make
us comfortable and to help us see the wheels go round.... Only this one
little thing. Perhaps you think I take it too seriously--this Mowbray
thing. Perhaps I do. That’s my funeral.... Wow, and I was merely
speaking figuratively!... In any event I’m not a nihilist. I’ve only got
Mowbray on the brain.... I’ve hurt you as little as possible. I won’t
leave you here long, my boy. I wasn’t rough with you. You must have seen
that--”

Dabnitz’s eyes rolled.

“Well, you see I couldn’t have a whole lot of noise. There’s the true
official timbre in your voice, Lieutenant.... Now you’re snug, and the
platoon is served in the street.... Look what’s here! I’m a careless
hand--six-shooter and belt. You’ll rest more comfortably with ‘em off.
And a bit of a sword? I’ll take that, too. ...I won’t be long, Dabnitz.”

He went forth carrying the paper. “Lieutenant was called to another
task,” he said haltingly to the enlisted officer in charge. “Hold your
men here, until I come--”

The firing was intense valleyward. Boylan felt the need of thinking
further and dashed into the headquarters’ stairway. There were excited
voices above, and he made haste to see. Kohlvihr was wild-eyed in the
center of the upper room--the telegraph ticking nervously, half of his
staff bending with extraordinary intensity over the birth of a certain
message.... What they wanted came over the ‘phone.

Boylan saw four Russian officers rush to the ‘phone from the telegraph
table.... Something had happened. He backed out.

“It’s all off,” he told the soldier. “Go back to barracks. The enemy has
broken through--”

He wasn’t sure of the last, but tore the paper and crumpled the pieces.
The platoon reversed and vanished. At the far end of the street a
cavalry squad was galloping forward, behind a single dispatch rider.
Already the news was known in headquarters and the staff officers burst
forth with orders for retreat--retreat to the eastward. It was no
secret now. The enemy was crossing the valley that Kohlvihr had found
impassable.

Big Belt felt the life brimming up in his heart. Then he thought of
Dabnitz, and went to him, shutting the door behind.

“Do you _get_ what’s on, Lieutenant? Wink once--if you do.”

Dabnitz shook his head.

“It’s the enemy breaking through. Judenbach is to be abandoned _pronto_.
Listen--”

The cavalry was in the street, carrying abroad the order for retreat....
They heard it plainly now, even the details. Hospitals not to be
emptied, guns and ammunition not readily to be transported, must be
destroyed. The final hell was started in the town.

“Dabnitz, I don’t want you among the captured on my account. Just forget
that order! The platoon has gone back. The staff is blocked and jammed
with greater things. Will you forget it? Wink twice--”

There was no hesitation.

“Good. The sentries must be called off--that stair-door left open. I’ll
join them--and bother you no more. We’ll not leave the room while the
town changes hands. They’ll never even ask you if that little job is
done. Will you go with me now and do this? Wink twice--”

It was done emphatically; a beseeching for haste.

“Dabnitz, I trust you. I’ll entertain you in America some time--all
Washington and New York.... You’ll do exactly what I ask--no more, no
less? Good God, man, it wouldn’t do any good to kill ‘em now. They’re
out of hand forever. Perhaps the Austrians will do it, anyway. Wink
twice--”

“Good.” The gag was jerked free, and the various bindings.

“Now, come with me. I’ll detain you but a second or two--”

Dabnitz walked at his side to the stair entrance of the skylight prison.
He spoke to the sentry below. The officer of the guard was called; the
sentry summoned from above, the door left open.

“Wait,” Boylan said finally to Dabnitz. “Here’s your gun, Lieutenant.
I’m obliged to you. You’ll know better some day what I mean by that--”

“Keep them under cover,” Dabnitz said hoarsely. “I’ll kill you or any of
the others that I see in the street.”

“You’d be quite right.”

Dabnitz turned away. Big Belt deliberated. He did not quite trust the
Russian. He had covered him with his little pocket gun, as he handed
back the arms. Still Boylan couldn’t have caused him to fall prisoner.
His hope now was that the Lieutenant would find such a rush and turmoil
that he would be compelled to forget the incident. ...He heard their
voices at the upper door of the stairway.

“Is that you, Boylan?”

“Yep.”

“Good-morning. What’s up?” It was Peter.

“I haven’t quite settled in my mind. You’re not to come down. We haven’t
decorated the Christmas tree. I’m sentry here--”

The side street was deserted. The main highway was a throng, strange in
its new direction of northward, for the bulk of energy had heretofore
moved toward the valley. The sappers were at their work of destruction.
The town rocked with explosions, but the main consideration to Big
Belt was that moments passed without bringing further fighting to him,
personally.

“Maybe he means to stick after all,” he muttered. “He must see that I
was square with him--”

Then Big Belt smiled grimly, as if he had heard his own words.

He watched with a kind of ferocity until the passing of the staff made
him duck back into the doorway.... Kohlvihr sitting like a potato-bag,
the brave but melancholy Doltmir--finally Dabnitz. The latter passed the
little side-street without a turn of the head. After many moments Boylan
ventured to the corner. Rifle shots from the southern border, and the
smell of fire, were matters of critical interest. The main highway
was all but emptied of Russians. One little party of artillerymen was
struggling to save a big gun half-horsed. Three ambulances hurried by
filled with wounded officers--but the cries of the thousands of
wounded enlisted men went up from the hospitals which the Russians were
abandoning. The lower half of the town was in a final ruin that blocked
the streets.

But beyond as the wind cleared the smoke an instant (or the rain held
it low to the earth), Big Belt saw a column of troops. Its single
peculiarity struck him with queer emotion. He returned to the
stair-door. A long-repressed volume came forth from his lungs, as he
trudged wearily upward.



VI

THE FIELD OF HELMETS

Chapter 1


Peter turned back from the upper door, since nothing further in the way
of news was to be had from Boylan. The first face that he saw within was
Fallows’, and over it, as his own glance sped quickly, there passed
a look as from some poignant burden. It was the look of a man who had
thought the fight won, and now perceived that it must be resumed again.
Poltneck was just behind. Peter would like to have preserved in picture
the singer’s realization that the chance was life instead of death--the
blend of animal and angel which is so thrillingly human, as it was
expressed upon that countenance. Abel was smiling, something of a child
in the smile, a tremulousness around the lips; and Berthe came forward
under the rain-blurred skylight--gladness, animation, a touch of the
great tension lingering, but something else that he had not seen before
in their prison hours. He went to her.

“What does it mean?” she whispered.

“It means that the door is open, the sentries gone. Big Belt is below
and the town wild with some new trouble--”

“The Austrians must have broken through,” said Fallows.

“We are to stay until he gives us word,” Peter added.

Berthe was leading him back to the shadows.

“Peter, does it mean that?”

He saw the dark low-glowing jewel in her eyes--the earth-shine, all the
sweetness of earth in it. So close to death, it had not been ignited
before in the skylight prison, but it was there for him now, and he
loved her bewilderingly.

“I think we may almost dare to hope,” he whispered.

“The still snowy woods--only a brave bird or two remaining--the short
brilliant days and early nightfall--our talks that will never come to an
end--”

Something of her longing frightened him--the danger of its intensity.

“I think we may almost dare to hope,” he repeated.

“Peter, I think--I think you are braver than any--”

“Nonsense.”

“But you did not _see_ ahead! To you, it was a closed door yesterday and
last night. Fallows wants to go. He’s weary. Abel and Poltneck are old
rebels with visions. They have thought much of such hours as we have
known here. But you--I saw it the first day in Warsaw--the deadly
courage. You had built no dream. You asked no future. You faced
it--light or black.”

“Berthe--I almost broke this morning--when I looked at you sleeping--and
last night after Boylan came.... I think I would have fought them in
the street! It seemed--blasphemous for them to kill you--those dim
fellows--”

“...Peter--”

She had seemed to lose her way, the light gone from her eyes, her lips
cold.... A sprinkle of water, and she was smiling again in his arms.

“It’s strong--too strong,” she murmured vaguely.

The heavy step that Peter knew was upon the stairs. He listened. Yes, it
was alone. Boylan appeared in the doorway.

“Go to him,” Berthe whispered.

Peter obeyed. There was a gladness for him in the touch of the big hand.

“Tell us, Boylan,” he said.

“They’ve gone.”

“The Russians?”

“Yes.”

Abel had propped a chair behind Big Belt, who sank into it eagerly.

“The Austrians have broken through?” Poltneck said.

“I’m not quite sure about that,” Boylan answered. “The column I saw
from the main road a minute ago--coming up from the valley--looked like
_helmets_ to me.”

“Berthe, what did you mean by _‘strong--too strong’?”_

Peter had stepped back to her for a moment.

“Did I say that?” she whispered smiling.

“Yes.”

“I can’t think of anything--but my love for you. It must have been
that.”



Chapter 2


For an hour in the skylight prison, they had waited for the step upon
the stairs. When it came Fallows had an inspiration, and said softly:

“Sing to ‘em, Poltneck--The Lord Is Mindful of His Own--!”

As before, the song was on the wing at the word.... Throughout the hour
the Germans had flooded into the little city, the main column moving
rapidly on in pursuit of the Russians, a comparatively small force
remaining to garrison. As Boylan had pointed out, the new enemy must
have appeared in tremendous numbers thus to dare such a drive through
the Russian east wing. Lornievitch was at the head of a mighty force to
the east; it was but the tip of the right wing that the Germans had cut
off.

An old ranker had halted at the door, his platoon behind crowding the
stairway. He was small and scarred, serious and decorous. Peter felt
that the head under the helmet was shaven; that here was a man conscious
of moving through the days of his life’s stateliest fulfillment. Boylan
was nearest; a little back from the rest Poltneck stood smiling, singing
as he had never sung for the Little Father. It is a fact that the old
ranker waited for the end of the stanza.

“Who are you?”

Peter talked: “Four of the hospital service from Warsaw, and two
American correspondents, until to-day with the Russian army--”

The platoon-officer ordered his men at rest and sent for his Captain.

“Prisoners, you may sing,” he said.

They heard the voices of the gathering in the street as Poltneck sang
on, and presently the clatter of a sword in the stairway. A young
officer, not the Captain, appeared. There was a quick appeal in the
veteran’s deference and his whisper. The old head bowed affectionately,
too, as to a son of finer blood than he.

“Two American correspondents,--these two,” he reported. “The others are
of the hospital service of the enemy.”

Poltneck had finished.

“Why are you here?” the officer asked.

“They were at work all night,” said Peter, “and were here for a little
rest. The change this morning was effected before they were aware. We
were helping.

“You were helping?” the officer repeated.

“There has been much to do in the hospitals. We have been in
Judenbach--this is the fourth day.”

“We will look at your passports--yours and this gentleman’s--”

The papers were produced. It was almost like a hand that came to Peter
at this instant, though Berthe had not moved--the premonition that they
were to be separated. He had planned nothing for this moment although it
had been inevitable. There was a certain guilelessness about their whole
presence together in the skylight prison, although Peter had tortured
the facts a little--to avoid complication of making known their
revolutionary parts. He had become so identified with his new friends,
in the past three whelming days, that he had forgotten for the moment
the great difference in his position as an American correspondent and
noncombatant from Berthe’s and the others.

Boylan had never forgotten. He had cursed his own slowness as a
linguist, when Peter had taken the part of answering the German officer.
He was afraid of Peter’s answers, but that fear was passing now. In
fact, Peter had answered surprisingly well, and his companion was
breathing easily, as a man should in a state of mental health.

It was not until this moment--the German officer examining his
passports, the ranker studying the insignia upon his sleeve--that Peter
met the disaster of the future. It suddenly appeared to him--that life
apart from _these_ was bleak and a nothingness. To be caught in the
great war-machine again, even with the superb loyalty of Boylan at his
hand, had the grimness of death to his soul. Already he felt the new
mastery of Judenbach, the hard insensitiveness of it--the stone and iron
of its nature, the ineffable cruelty of its meaning and morale....

“These seem to be very complete and satisfactory,” the young officer
reported presently. “I shall furnish an escort to accompany you and
Mr.--”

“Boylan,” said the voice of the Rhodes’ Agency.

“--to our Colonel Ulrich in charge of the garrison. These papers will go
with you of course.”

Peter cleared his voice and said steadily: “We have long given up any
hope of getting anything out as newspaper men. I, for one, would be very
glad of employment in the hospitals with my friends here. There has been
work for many more hands than could be spared--”

“We appreciate your sacrifice,” said the officer, “perhaps _we_ are not
so short-handed for the care of wounded. We have already brought in men
not dead whom the Russian orderlies missed on the field yesterday. I
believe the abandoned hospitals in Judenbach will not suffer for the
change of flags.”

Peter had noted Boylan’s face as the German spoke. It was slightly
upturned and like bronze in its hardness, reminding him of the night
before in the candle-light. It weakened him.... He glanced about the
room as the officer finished. Everywhere he saw their silent urge to
accept. Fallows came forward.

“Some time again, dear friend--we will work together. All is well with
us--”

Abel seemed to smile; Poltneck gripped his hand, neither venturing to
speak, nor did the moment require it, for they had all gone down to the
gates of understanding together.... Berthe’s hands were in his.

Boylan had arisen.

“Your escort is ready,” the German said.

Peter turned from them, but Berthe’s face was placed for all to see....
A little warmth, the mild pleasure of untried friendship, the good
wish of one fellow-worker to another in passing--this was all that the
watchers saw. Even Peter in his great passion could draw no further
message from that white upturned face. But her hidden hands, held in
his, gave him the very respiration of her soul.



Chapter 3


Big Belt was alone with his friend again, but Peter seemed merely the
body of a man, not much use. They were kept very close by the Germans,
and told frankly that they were to be sent as soon as possible to the
big prison-hospital at Sondreig. Even German correspondents were not
permitted afield. Judenbach was retained, but the Americans were drawn
forth by the exigencies of service with Colonel Ulrich’s force, and on
the afternoon of the third day following the German entry, they looked
back upon the little hill-town a last time. Though there had not been
sound nor sight of Berthe nor the group around her, during the three
days, Peter was different afield, as if he missed a certain personal
identification with that obscure Galician settlement where so much had
happened. He moved about as if there were something dead inside. His
world had turned insane.

Those were the terrible days of November, and the two Americans were
forgotten at length--as a pair of buttons on the German uniform,
forgotten because they served and were not in the way. All that had
_not_ to do with Berthe Wyndham was black as the Prussian night to
Mowbray’s brain, but Big Belt was always by. He could not have managed
except for that. There were days in which it appeared as if half the
world were down and bleeding; the other half trying to lift, pulling at
the edges of the fallen, as one half-stupefied would pull at a fallen
body in a burning house.

At night through the silences between the cannon, sometimes over the
hills through the cold rains, came to Peter Mowbray’s ears the sounds
of church-bells. Boylan did not always hear them. The German officers
declared that there were no such sounds. Boylan’s sack was filled with
blood.

“If I ever get out of here,” he said, “I’ll write one story--one battle
till I die--and I’ll call it ‘Vintage Fourteen’.”

For he was sick of the spilled wine of men. And other armies were
fighting in the vineyards of France--as were these in the piney hills
of the ancient shepherd kings; and what a fertilizing it was for the
manhandled lands of Europe--potash and phosphor and nitrogen in the
perfect solution of the human blood.

More and more Boylan saw that Peter was queer.

“I can’t think,” the latter would say. “I feel like a man dying, under
a mountain of dead. Mostly I don’t want to live. I don’t want to die. I
believe that it’s all one and that this is the end of the world.”

Peter could work, however. Day and night when they would let him, and
mostly the Germans accepted his services gratefully now, he tugged at
the dead and the dying in the field and in the field hospitals. And with
the lanterns at night, often under fire, often so long that Boylan could
not rest, but would wait at the hospital-division like a mother for a
dissipated son.

“They call this the great German fighting machine,” Peter whispered to
Boylan one night, “but we’re inside. We can’t call it that. It’s the
most pitiful and devitalized thing that ever ran up and down the earth.
And it doesn’t mean anything. It’s all waste--like a great body killing
itself piece by piece--all waste and death.”

He tried to make death easy for a soldier here and there, but there was
so much. His clothing smelled of death; and one morning before the smoke
fell, he watched the sun shining upon the pine-clad hills. That moment
the thought held him that the pine trees were immortal, and men just the
dung of the earth.

...One night Boylan asked as they lay down:

“Who are you?”

“Peter Mowbray.”

“Yep, and I’m Boylan. You’re at liberty to correct if wrong. Are we ever
going to die or get out?”

“I don’t know.... Boylan, you’ve been good to me. We’re two to make
one--eye to eye--”

“You’re making a noise like breaking down again. Don’t, Peter. I’ve gone
on a bluff all my life. I’m a rotten sentimentalist at heart--soft
as smashed grapes. It’s my devil. If you break down, I’ll show him to
you--”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to bellow like a girl.”

“Maybe not, but I’d shoot my head off first.”

“Did you see the old leprous peasant to-day? He was hump-backed, and he
had no lips, but teeth like a dog. He pulled at a soldier’s stirrup
as we came into town. The soldier was afraid and shot him through the
mouth--”

“Shut up, Peter, or you’ll get me. I’ve shown you more now than any
living soul knows--”

“You ought to show it to a woman. A man isn’t right until a woman knows
him in and out.”

“For the love of God--go to sleep!”

They sank into restless death-ridden dreaming; and so it was many
nights, until the dawn that they fronted a swift river, black from its
snowy banks, saw the rising pine hills opposite and were swept possibly
by mistake into the center of comprehensible action--a picture lifted
from the hundred-mile ruck.

A little town, so far nameless, sat with a shivering look on the slope,
about a half mile up from the river. A Russian quick-fire gun or two was
emplaced in that vicinity, and two batteries of bigger bores (that
the correspondents knew of) were higher on either side. Infantry
intrenchments that looked like mole tracks from the distance corrugated
the slopes in lateral lines, and roads came down to the two bridges that
spanned the swift stream, less than a mile apart.

The morning was spent in artillery dueling. The Russians seemed partly
silenced at noon. At no time was their attack cocky and confident. The
Germans determined to cross in the early afternoon. This movement was
not answered by excessive firing. German cavalry and small guns on the
east bridge, a heavy field of helmets took the west. Boylan and
Mowbray rode with the artillery. Even as the German forces combined for
position, the firing of the Russians was not spiteful. There seemed
a note of complaint and hysteria. There was no tension in the German
command; it was too weathered for that.

Now the cavalry went into action and guns moved away farther to the east
for higher emplacement.

“They’re going to charge the horses up into the town. They haven’t much
respect for the infantry trenches,” said Boylan.

At that instant Peter’s mind opened a clearer series of pictures of
Berthe Wyndham than he had known for days. Palace Square near the river
corner; her little house in Warsaw and the tall flowers between; across
the siding after Fransic; her coming to the cot of Samarc, and all the
wonderful films of the skylight prison--the dearest of all as she slept.
He could not hold the battle in mind, for he was very rich with these
pictures, and for days had tried vainly to think just how she looked. It
had been easier to remember something which Peter designated secretly as
her soul.

Suddenly the turf rocked under his feet and his body was bent in the
terrific concussion from behind. They turned and saw the middle
stone abutment of the nearer bridge lifted from the stream--the whole
background sky black with dust and rock. Then, just as he thought of it,
the west bridge went. He spoke before Boylan, and rather unerringly, as
one does at times coming up from a dream.

“They’ve trapped what they think they can handle--and fired the bridges
by wire.”

Boylan said: “I can’t call it German stupidity, because it didn’t
occur to me that the bridges were mined.... It’s to be another leisure
spraying. We’re in the slaughter-pen.... God, man, look at the horses!”

It had been too late to call back the cavalry. Peter’s eyes followed
Boylan’s sweeping arm. The horsemen were in skirmish on the slope, just
breaking out into charge. The town above and the emplacements adjoining
which had kept their secret so well, were now in a blur of sulphur and
action directed upon the cavalry charge. The whole line went down in the
deluge--suddenly vanished under the hideous blat of the machines--whole
rows rubbed into the earth--a few beasts rising empty, shaking
themselves and tumbling back, no riders. Peter turned to the infantry in
formation on the western slopes. The Russian fire was not lax now, not
discouraged in the least, nor hysterical. It was cold-blooded murder in
gluttonous quantity.

The Americans forgot themselves. Cavalry gone--they turned to the west
and saw the poor men-beasts in rout. Even the infantry comprehended the
trick, and felt something superhuman behind it. They rushed back toward
the river--swift, ugly with white patches and unfordable, requiring a
good swimmer.... The eyes of Boylan turned back to the Horse. He had
always loved the cavalry, ridden with the cavalry always by preference.
Peter was watching the river--the hands up from the center of the
river....

They were alone, and now the Russian machines were on the German
batteries not yet emplaced, none unlimbered. It was as if the wind
carried them the spray from the sweeping fountains, turned from the
horse to put out the guns. Peter was hit and down--hit again and the
night slowly settled upon him, bringing the bells.



Chapter 4


Big Belt talked to himself in that blizzard of fire.

“He’s hit--hit twice--but we can’t go back to the Russians. They’ll
finish the lad. Dabnitz promised. The Germans can’t rescue us, because
the bridges are down. I’ve got to get him across the river--”

He knelt and swung the burden across his back. The firing was thinner,
and the weight hurried his great legs down to the water.... Personally
he would have waited for recapture. How he would have laughed at
Lornievitch in that case. But this that he bore was under sentence of
death in that camp. He regarded the river now, propping up his head
under the burden. It was a swift devil of a stream, black from its
winter borders and cold. He moved toward the broken bridge, hundreds of
soldiers doing the same. But none of them bore a burden.

Now he was on the steep and slidy bank-the roar of the current in his
ears, the roar of the guns behind. The stone abutments of the bridge
still stood, but the huge beams of the upper frame-work were sprawled in
the stream, the ends visible. A string of soldiers crawled along,
toward the center of the current. There was a place in which they
disappeared.... He took his position in the waiting line and heard
the cries wrung from the throats of those in the crossing--from the
paralyzing cold. Only a few succeeded. Boylan saw this, as he
awaited his turn. A steady grim procession on this side, whispering,
crowding--but a thin and straggling output on the far bank. Scenes
enacting in the center of the current shook his heart--faces and arms
against the black water, the struggles and the cries of men as they were
whipped away.

Big Belt was in; no crawl for him. He walked the ten-inch beam with his
burden, as it sank deeper and deeper toward the center. The ice of the
water bit and tore at him. It was like a burn, too, but the paralysis
was not that of fire. The chill wrestled with his consciousness, as
he reached the depth of his waist; the current was bewildering in its
pressures--like a woman clinging to his limbs, betraying him to an
enemy. A mysterious force, this of a running river, for the body of man
is not built for it, and man’s mind is slow to learn the necessity of
slow movements. The temptation to hasten is like the tug of demons.
There is much to break the nerve--and yet nerve must remain king of
every action.

Boylan may have learned the trick in other wanderings. His own weight
and the weight of his burden helped his feet in the rapid runs of white
water. He made his way deeper and deeper upon the slanting ten-inch
piece, holding his consciousness steady against the penetrating stab of
the cold as it rose higher and higher, against the dizzying swirl of
the stream, and against the fact that the timber might be broken at the
center. ...The man before him seemed to go to his knees, reaching down
with his hands. Then the white-topped rush took him.... One must stand;
one must have weight to stand. The beam sunk to the center now-the water
to his heart; the man behind urging.... One soldier ahead crawled forth
where three had been.

Boylan’s fears were equalized now by the sudden dread of the man behind.
If he slipped he would catch at Peter’s body.

“Go slow--that’s the trick!” he called. “Feel for your footing each
time. It’s there. I tell you it’s there, man! We rise in a moment
more--”

He felt the jointure with his feet--some renewal or stoppage of the
timber. He halted, yelling at the man behind:

“Wait--something different! I’ll get you through--”

It was the slight turn of the top timbers as they had reached the apex.

“It’s the top of the bridge,” he yelled above the boom of the current,
“--a turn like the peak of a low roof. A slight turn to the right. Now
the climb--”

He put it in Russian somehow, making the words clear. His intensity was
almost madness to keep the other’s hands off.

A shiver passed through his burden. The water had whipped Peter’s limbs.
An added call for steadiness, but a gladness about it, too, since he was
not carrying the dead.... Upgrade now. The soldier behind had passed the
turn safely and was following.

...It seemed that he had walked hours, A thousand or more German
soldiers were lost even as he. Their faces in the dusk passed him--to
and fro--hoarse questions. The gray chill dusk was all about, quite
different from anything Big Belt had known. His clothing had warmed to
him from great exertion. There was a line that caked and dampened again
down his left thigh, like an artillery stripe, from Peter’s wounds.
Night came on, finding him without a command--a strange sort of
abandonment, and a certain fear of being overtaken by a Russian party.
The character of his fatigue brought back ancient memories, when he had
looked death face to face and was afraid.

“Who are you?” someone piped sharply in German.

He had moved long through the dark toward a moving file of lights.

“Two American correspondents.”

“What’s that you carry?”

“The other one.”

Peter heard this. It seemed that terrible hands had been tugging at his
flesh for hours; yet he could not move, and lay upon a bed that swung
and swayed and stumbled.

“Two American correspondents,” the voice repeated.... “Search....”

Then Peter looked into the dazzle of a flashlight, and the familiar
voice said:

“Yes, he’s hard hit and heavy as hell.... Passports in hip pocket-handle
him gently. ... Thanks, I’ll take care of this man--unless you have a
stretcher--”

“To whom were you formerly assigned?”

“To Colonel Ulrich. We were across the river when that trap was sprung
this afternoon--”

“Just about wiped you fellows out, didn’t they?... Passports right
enough as far as I can see. Stay here, I’ll try to get a conduct.
I’m afraid there isn’t any Colonel Ulrich--at least I am of that
opinion....”

Peter was let down. It puzzled him a long time because the ground was
still. The big hands eased. His familiar was beside him, however, wet
and panting. Now Peter seemed to remember that he had messages to carry.

“There’s no other way--I’ve got to get through the lines--”

“Quite right,” Boylan answered.

“I don’t want to fail. She wouldn’t look twice at a man who failed--”

“Hell, child, sit still. She’d look twice if you failed a thousand
times.... Hai, don’t tear open a man’s bridle arm. What is it?”

“He was hump-backed--no lips--teeth like a dog--and the trooper shot him
through the mouth--”

“I know, but he’s dead. His back is straight now--don’t look any worse
now than ten thousand others....”

For a long time all was bewilderment. He had been lifted and lost
consciousness again in the wrenching of the hands. Then slowly he came
back and eternity began as before, his bed swaying and straining. The
familiar voice was near, the German ahead. Sentry after sentry was
passed, and each time deadly waiting.... In snatches he understood that
the voice always near was Boylan’s, but as often forgot it again. Once
he realized that Boylan was carrying him, but he could not hold it in
mind.... Now he was sure that it was Boylan. He wished he could die from
the cold. He recalled that the cold climbs to a man’s heart and then
lets him out in comfortable dreams.

“Hai, you!” he heard in the familiar tones. “I can’t go any further.
Send a stretcher or a wagon. Tell ‘em two American correspondents
are sitting out here--one with a bullet or two through his chest of
drawers--”

The bed was sinking now.... Then he was dragged across the big man’s
lap, and the voice was saying:

“I never knew it to fail. The man who wins a woman gets the steel, when
it’s anywhere in the air, but bullets fly wide and knives curve about a
lonely maverick who has lost all his heart winnings.”

They found Boylan so, his jaw clenched, the huge scarred head bare and
covered with night dew, but ready to talk. Across his legs, Mowbray lay,
and still breathed.



Chapter 5


Some unique thing, Big Belt, that rock of a man, had found in Peter
Mowbray. For seven days and nights, though broken with incredible
fatigues (a yellow line of bone color showing across his face under the
eyes), Boylan sat by in cars and ambulances until they reached Sondreig,
the city of the women-folk, and a regular civilized bed. What he gave
to Peter was clear; what he took from a man down, a woman’s property at
best, is harder to tell. Perhaps in the great strains and pressures of
the campaigns, he had seen Peter inside, the mechanism and light effects
appertaining, and found it true. It may be that Big Belt had never been
quite sure that a man-soul could be true, and having found one, was
ready to go the limit. This is only a hazard.

Peter didn’t know. He was a lump--one little red lamp burning in that
long house of a man--flickering at that, its color bad, its shadow
monstrous. Everyone but Boylan declared he would die from that wound in
his chest; and Boylan was right.

The Germans were good. They gave him a little room over an apothecary
shop at the edge of the city, off one of the bullet-wards, so that
the American would suffer from no lack that the hospital routine could
furnish, and still not be denied the ministration of his friend. There
were reasons, from the German standpoint, why it was well for Mowbray to
have every chance for life. The Russian _coup_ of the destroyed bridges,
that lesser disaster, would some time be told. Boylan might be persuaded
to tell the story to America without adjectives. This was not a very
humane way to regard large kindness from saddened and maddened men, and
Boylan did not linger over it.

The Order in Sondreig soothed. It was like a fine _morale_ shown by
troops in a pinch. The city was one spacious hospital, but orderly, the
horizon smokeless, the distance free from the crash of guns. In fact, it
seemed that the city must have prepared itself for a thousand years--as
if waiting for its messiah. There was a glad quiet in the thronging
streets that seemed to say, “It has come....”

When he found that Peter would live--all the pathological vortices
past--Big Belt turned with strange joy to exterior activities. Of
course, months would be required to make his companion a man again.
There might remain a crimp in him that would last always, but Boylan was
aware that a man’s weakness may be made his strength, and that a life
habit of care which comes from cushioning a wound often results in
extraordinary development of the parts of strength.

The sight of women and children brought him gusts of emotion. In one
evening hour, he followed a middle-aged woman who was leading a child
through the faintly-lit streets; trailed the pair for a square or two
through the soft snow, a sort of miracle in the picture to him, a heaven
of gentleness and order. This was his first grand reaction from the
field of strife--at least, from this campaign--and he was struck as
never before with the main fact--how little a man really needs to
live his life in brightness and calm. Such a sense of the emptiness of
war-fields surged home to him that he was left a heretic in relation to
all that had called him before. It did not occur to Boylan that this
was wisdom; rather the pith of the emotion was to the effect that he was
getting old.

The child’s thin voice reached him in questionings, and the steady low
tones of the woman. A man could ask little more of the world than to
lead a child thus.... Perhaps they were poor. Boylan would have liked
to fix that. It had to do with the whole inner ideal of the man to be a
fixer of such things--to come home to a house of little ones in quantity
and many women--a broad house of aunts, sisters and old women, a long
broad table of all ages, the many problems resting on him--and one woman
looking straight across.... She would know everything, and yet would
advise with him--quiet discussions of policy regarding this one or that
one, and the interposition of food....

He was perspiring. Always after a war or expedition he had perceived
such matters more or less clearly, but not quite as now. Never before
had he constructed his secret heaven with such durable substance.... He
actually believed that the field would never call to him again. It had
become like the fear of hunger that he had learned once for all. No more
of that--no more of war. He had given everything to the field, and lost
his broad board in the world-house. At least, he could find a door-step
somewhere.

They were gone. He thought of his companion--the sense of summons that
he seemed to have known always. He turned and walked back. The snow fell
softly; the street lights were pleasant and warming with this bit of
peace in the world, this little circle of life with men and women and
children together.... As he neared the apothecary shop, his thoughts
became rounder and rounder with what he had missed. He had taken the
arc and lost the globe--a sorry old specimen of a man, if the truth were
told, a career behind him designed to arouse the wildness of boys, but
without appeal and very much to be discouraged by real men. Finally it
occurred to him of the whole races of men who had _what he lacked_, yet
were restless for the harshness and crudity of the earth.

“If they only knew what they have,” he muttered. “I suppose they forget.
Just as I forget between wars what hell is like.... I suppose they do
forget, and read a man’s stuff by their fires (ordering the kids to be
quiet)... thinking that this war-man writing from the field is a great
and lucky guy. I suppose they stop and think how things might have been
different with them--had _they_ taken to the open when the old call
came.... _Ordering the kids to be quiet_--Good God--”

Whether it was the audacity of fatherhood that called this last into the
world, or the face of the woman who had passed him--is not known. Enough
that Big Belt forgot all his dreams. ...That white-skinned, wonder-eyed
girl, the fire creature, twice seen in the bitter shadows of Judenbach!

She had looked into his face, as if she scarcely dared to trust her
eyes, as if she, too, were not sure; and yet it had come over him like
death that she was here for her own.... He tried to make himself believe
that it was an illusion, just one of the queer jolts that come to a man
when his thoughts are far off. But actualities rubbed this out. She
was a prisoner of the Germans; probably had proved invaluable in the
hospital service and had earned certain privileges; but it wouldn’t do
to let Peter fall into her clutches again; that meant revolution and
death. They would make a dupe of him as before. It had nothing to do
with peace and the outer world; it meant--

Boylan saw that he wanted Peter for his own. He wiped the sweat from
under his hat.... He couldn’t keep them apart; she would think out
a way; a man can’t wrestle with a woman.... The world was bleak and
wide-open to disruption again. He climbed the stairs.

The wounded man was not awake. Boylan had objected from the first to his
manner of breathing--too much in the throat, hardly a man-sized volume
of air, the breathing of one who hadn’t proper lung-room; but this was
an old matter. He reflected on the various fatigues Mowbray had met with
a smile, and the vitality which had finally pulled him loose from the
cold clutch itself; standing him in stead through a journey so grisly
that Boylan had not had the detachment so far to contemplate it from
first to last. So he had been forced seriously to grant exceptions to
the rule of chest inches and vitality. The soft winter air blew in from
the slightly opened casement.

Peter’s face was wan and boyish--different to Boylan as a result of his
encounter in the street. He saw Peter now with the eyes of a man who
must give up.... She was here in Sondreig. He would not help her, but if
she came, there would be no fight.... It had been his fault. Boylan had
sensed the danger of giving too much--from the beginning.... One woman
brings a man into the world, sees him properly a man, and another woman
takes him away.... Just how Big Belt broke into this particular picture
must be suggested rather than explained. He was very close to mothers
that night. He could understand fathers, too.

...They would never know what he had done. The Russians had not
understood, except Lornievitch, in part, and he was far away; the
Germans would never piece the fragments together, and Peter himself had
been mainly unconscious. Peter had not been told even of the Dabnitz
episode.... They might have pulled together for years if it hadn’t been
for the woman, but there was bound to be a woman. Mowbray was like that.

Big Belt yawned over it all, drew his cot close, so he could hear
Peter’s call, lit a fresh candle, and wished he had remembered to smoke
outside. Presently, however, he was breathing forth the full volume of a
man.

Sitting by the civilized bed early the next afternoon he heard a voice
below that clenched his jaw much as it had been that night outside the
German camp before the stretcher was brought. She had found them. She
did not speak first, but looked in.... Seeing the face upon the bed, she
could not ask, nor speak, but crossed the room. It would have been just
the same so far--had Boylan not been there. In fact, he had withdrawn
from the place by his companion.... She knelt an instant. Now she arose
and faced the friend.

“He will live.”

Peter was still afar off.

“Yes, ma’am--I think he will.”

She came to him now. “I saw you last night,” she whispered. “I saw you
come here. I could not come until now.”

“Humph--” or something of the sort was heard from Boylan.

Berthe appeared to draw a certain truth from the situation. Perhaps she
saw _the woman_ in Boylan--the mysterious, draggled creature which he
designated his devil on occasion. The old war-wolf gave her credit for
no such penetration. Still she kept herself second, advised, assisted
for a few moments, but would not let Boylan go.

“He’s knit to you. He might die if you go,” she said.

Something about her choked him. He had been with men so continually.

“And then I can’t stay,” she whispered. “But I am so thankful to have
found you--that nothing else matters.... You see, we are prisoners. They
have trusted certain of us to work; still we have no names, no way of
hearing, no mails, or anything. It’s a good miracle that I found you.”

Presently she said again: “You don’t think I understand, but I do. You
have stood by him. He would not have been here but for you. He is living
because of you. I see that. I see that he has been very close.... You
may hate me as you wish, but you cannot help taking what I give you.”

“You’re an all-right young woman,” Big Belt managed to remark. “I
knew something of that.” Then, in a panic, he added: “He’ll know you
to-night. He’s cool now. He’ll pull through. He’ll know you to-night,
and then I go.”

“Not until he sees you.... Besides, I am a prisoner. I cannot come and
go as I would. I may not be able to come to-night--they may say _no_.”
 “He’ll have all that he needs until you come,” Boylan said.

She did come that night. Peter had returned, but voyaged again
meanwhile. In the morning she came again.... Boylan ordered her to sit
down in the far corner. He went to the bed, for Peter was stirring, and
presently opened his eyes with reason and organization in them.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello, boy.”

Peter looked beyond him and around the room.

“Go to sleep,” said Boylan.

“I won’t.”

“All right.”

Big Belt stepped aside. Peter managed to get a knuckle up to rub his
eyes.

“He’s back with us,” Boylan whispered.

“Don’t go,” she pleaded.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Boylan.

She was there beside him, bending lower and lower. It was against nature
for them not to forget the exterior world for a moment, and Boylan was
on the stairs....

He saw Sondreig with eyes that seemed to have dropped their scales. It
was early in the morning, and a light snow had freshened everything. An
old woman was sitting at the locked entrance of what had been a dairy
shop, weeping for her only son. Boylan stopped.

She was very poor and weak.

“Come, mother,” he said, lifting her.

She looked into his face in a way that roweled the man.

“Come on,” he said softly. “We’ll have some breakfast. And you’ll tell
me about it. I belong to the widows and the fatherless, too.”

So they rocked away together.



Chapter 6


He was sleeping again. Berthe went to the window. Even in her happiness
she was afraid, for she was remaining longer than her leave.... The
window faced the south, and the apothecary shop was on the edge of town.
The day was like a pearl--snowy distance, a soft-toned sky and the low
shine of the sun. Deep down in the west, like an island, was a thick
brush of cedars, preserving their green across the miles, and calling to
her with something of the native wonder of old Mother Earth; and to the
right, east of south, was the huge blurred stockade where King Cholera
was so far imprisoned with the bait of fresh lives each day.

The old Mother was in her winter bloom, so pure and deep-eyed, so calm
and above sorrow in her distance and coloring, that it became to Berthe
a moment not to be forgotten--such a moment as would make a woman
homesick in heaven.

...If the big man would only come back. They might be angry for her
staying. It would be so easy to lose all that she had won from the
Germans. They had come to rely upon her more and more, realizing the
character of her service, and forgetting its origin in Judenbach. She
did not want to disappoint them. With Peter Mowbray here in good hands
and climbing back to life--no woman in the midst of war could ask
more.... At the bedside again, she pondered the recent weeks to this
hour. Without words, without heaviness, he had come along, fitting so
blithely into the new places, bringing his laugh and his skepticism of
self always, asking for no sign nor reward of the future, building no
dream of heaven, but standing true to the tasks of earth. Greatly more,
and differently, she loved him now, and the distance held the green of
cedars.

...An officer came to her from the bullet-ward.

“You are to stay until Mr. Boylan, the correspondent, comes,” he said.

“But will they know? They were good to let me come.”

“Colonel Hartz has signed the order. Word has been sent to the
entrainment wards. You were attached there, I believe?”

“Yes.”

“Let us know in case of any need here.”

“Yes. Thank you.”



Chapter 7


A most satisfying adventure, so that Big Belt added many things to the
matters which could not be related. The old mother had told him of her
son (as they sat together in the little room she called home) and Boylan
had seen in him a singular hero, and made the mother see it. Presently
he strode forth to the shops and returned with many packages of food
affairs, and a cart of fuel following. The prodigious prices which these
things commanded in Sondreig appealed to him as a trifle; in fact, the
simplicity of life on these direct terms of living first hand, struck
him as the eternally right way.... Then she cooked for him, very intent
and eager in the great joy of it, agitated by his praise. In fact, he
went to great lengths of breakfasting to show his appreciation; until,
perceiving what he had done, he strode forth again with replenished
understanding and restocked the cupboard by means of the cart.... Yes,
he would come to-morrow.... Yes, by all means, while he was in Sondreig.

Even if he had not thought of the white-fire creature being held in
the room above the apothecary shop for his return, Boylan had found it
necessary to leave the old mother, since she could not be made to eat
with him there. She would have cooked for him until she fell by the
fire, but as for her sharing the repast, she begged him to have peace,
that time was plentiful for that.... He was thinking it all out once
more, a most delectable incident, as he walked swiftly through the snow
toward the apothecary shop, when his shoulder was plucked by a passerby,
and he turned, stiffening a bit at the roughness of it. A black-bearded
man of much rank peered into his face, crying out:

“Boylan, by the One God!”

“Herr Hartz--by the same!” Big Belt exclaimed.

And now they embraced--a mighty affair, a memorable spectacle of
pounding, of disengagement, of renewed embrace--so that soldiers and
hospital men circled wide in passing, and the little street was hushed
with the exceeding joy.

“Come and live with me, Boylan. I will not take no for an answer.
Come at once, and let us a table between us have, to prevent further
inderrupption of travvic--”

At no time would the cause of this majestic effusion have been
made clear to an outsider, though it was plain that the American
correspondent and the German officer of rank shared it alike. The truth:
these two, and two others somewhere in the world, were the surviving
four of a complement of over thirty men who had made up the original
outfit now known as the Schmedding Polar Failure. Colonel Hartz,
detached from his cavalry command for service in the prison-hospital
at Sondreig, was second in command here as he had been to Schmedding in
that former ill-starred expedition.

The table was between them.

“But first,” said Boylan, “there is a little business in which you can
help. My friend, Mowbray... is just coming back to life from Russian
wounds. I could not leave him without being assured of his care. There
is one little nurse from the entrainment wards--it is a good story,
which I will tell in good time--competent to care for him. She is there
now, but I have already stayed longer than her leave granted. She must
be set at rest, and word sent also to her own post--”

“So much words for a little thing--dictate and I write. Then tell me of
yourself, which is more imbortant--”

It happened, even after the messages were sent, that Boylan spoke very
little of himself. He was grappling with a certain final disposal. His
talk was colored with desire. In fact, within an hour he had reached the
critical part of his narrative, and was becoming more glib momentarily
as the way out cleared:

“...You see, they met in Warsaw, where I was stationed before the war.
She did not tell him what was in her mind. He parted from her--as any
other married man taking the field. We were together with Kohlvihr’s
column, of which I will tell you later.... Now what do you think?”

Herr Hartz snorted. He did not care to think.

“She didn’t stay in Warsaw,” Boylan went on, with great intensity. “No,
my friend, she joined the hospital corps, and followed him afield--”

“The Russians take anyone for the hosbittles,” the other remarked
impatiently.

“Exactly; and my friend Mowbray found her nursing sick soldiers in
Judenbach. It happened that they were together when the city changed
hands. By the way, there was much of interest in those days of which I
will tell you later.... This is the point. She was a Polish prisoner--he
an American non-combatant. I advised them to say nothing for the present
that they were married. It was very ticklish to change hands anyway, and
would have complicated the position of each one. So they were separated.
He was with me day by day until he was wounded. He moved in a dream
without her--a good boy, Colonel--and a good girl--but war. I say, we
learned something about men, you and I--long ago---”

Herr Hartz now beamed.

“We learned it,” he breathed.

“They make only a few on the pattern of Mowbray.... Last night I saw her
in the street here at Sondreig.... So you see why I arranged for her to
take my place at his side--but you can arrange the rest--”

“For God’s sake, what do you want? You talk and talk about such
people and women and love stories--when we have so much to say about
ourselves--”

“Be patient. We have all time,” said Big Belt. “I only want them
together--a true married pair. Then they will be off my hands. You can
make Headquarters forget she is Polish--that is all. Some little place
apart--for them to be together while he heals--”

“Such a lot of talk for small things. It shall be done, Boylan, with a
paper. I will send them to the country and monobolize you myself. This
is a big war--yes?”



Chapter 8


A last time he climbed to the floor above the apothecary shop. If only
she wouldn’t act up. A serious thing, this he had done. Big Belt felt
that he had rushed matters, possibly treading upon a host of delicate
and incomprehensible affairs. But, when he had found in Colonel Hartz a
man to make action of his words, he had plunged....

Peter was asleep. The woman came forward noiselessly, offering her
hand. By her face he knew that all was well with the patient. Boylan had
stiffened to resist the pang of Peter’s passing from his life. This
had so far prevented his voice from softening to the woman. It was now
evening.

“I’ve done what seemed best,” he began abruptly in a whisper. “It
appears to have accomplished what I set out after, but it’s likely a
ruffian’s way--”

Her gray eyes widened, her face blanched.

Big Belt cleared his throat. Whispering was difficult.

“I met an old friend who made possible your remaining here. He’s to send
you into the country--as soon as the young fellow is able to be moved.
You are to take care of him there. You see, my friend happened to
be second in command here at Sondreig, and he thinks he can make
all concerned forget that you were picked up from the opposition in
Judenbach--”

“Can make Sondreig forget that?” she whispered.

“We are very old friends. We were out together in a former service--”

“And we are to be sent into the country--as soon as Peter is able?”

“Yes.”

“But what is the terrible part?”

“There might have been a better way, but I didn’t think of it--”

“Oh, what, Mr. Boylan?”

“I told him that you two were married--”

“Yes.”

“I say, I told him that you two were married--”

“Yes--and then?”

Big Belt backed from her, and sat down.

“There isn’t any _then_,” he said. “That’s it.... That you were married
in Warsaw, and followed him to the field--without his knowing.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, you frightened me.”

...Boylan was on the stairs. He halted, turned back. She came to him
eagerly.

“But _were_ you married?” he asked.

“No. But it’s such a little thing compared to what might have
happened--to keep us apart. I mean what might have happened here.... Oh,
God bless you!”

He twisted his chin away from his collar, drew it clear with his hand,
cleared his throat to speak, and vanished.



VII

THE GREEN OF CEDARS


It wasn’t an open fire, but a little iron stove that got so red that
it trembled, and at intervals could hardly contain the puttering of the
pine; and there was a one-armed soldier, who spent the long forenoons
cutting carefully and piling, until there was a rustic wainscot half
around the room, the drying breath of which was the purest fragrance in
the world.... They petted the soldier until an officer came down.

It was the hunting forest of a certain Count, and the hut they lived in
was but the lodge of one of his keepers; but it was far enough from the
great mansion (where wounded officers of royal blood and toppling rank
healed or died in much the same fashion as other men) to afford the
silence and solitude they had dreamed of. And all about them the great
trees pondered between the winds--pine and balsam, cedar and fir. It had
looked like a bit of an island from the Sondreig window, but proved
a true forest when they reached there--an enchanted one to Berthe and
Mowbray.

Twice Boylan came down for a day, bringing Moritz Abel the second time;
but the Colonel, whose authority had done so much for them, required
much of Big Belt, and there was a woman (some mystery about this) who
would keep dinner waiting, he said. So both times he had started back
while there remained light in the sky. And Peter had become thoughtful.

“Why, there are whole days I can’t account for,” he muttered. “He must
have had me strapped to him for days at a time.”

He had asked for Poltneck, of whom she had seen the last in Judenbach.
The Germans had loved his singing and made very much of him; and Peter
had asked for Moritz Abel before the latter came for the day. Berthe
had answered freely, but of Duke Fallows she had not spoken in a way
to satisfy his questions. In fact, it was not until the day that Peter
first crossed the little room alone that she seemed ready to speak. That
afternoon he had called her from the window.

“Where is Fallows, Berthe?”

“Not far from here,” she said. “Not as far as Sondreig from here--a
place you have never seen, but I watched it every day from the window
of the apothecary shop until you were moved. He offered himself at once
when he heard--the cholera quarantine.... But he left a message for you
to carry, Peter--gave it to me for you.

“I saw him for a few brief moments after he had volunteered. He talked
of you and that other American boy of the other war. He said that the
night he separated from that other--just after the battle of Liaoyang,
the Russians in full retreat, he had written his story of the
battle--the story of the Ploughman, and intrusted it to his friend to
carry to America. He wants you to carry his story of this service--asked
me to give it to you when you were better--to take to America with
yours. ‘Just a picture,’ he said. ‘It may be all wrong, but I see it so
to-night, and I would like to have it come out in America some time.’

“He is very dear to us, Peter--that old burning exile. Some time we
may understand his love for America.... It was hard to let him go.
They fight day and night in the Stockade. They are trying to spare
Sondreig.... I wish you might have been with him that last night before
he went. It was before I found you--before I saw the big man in the
street.... He was glad to go. There was no sense of sacrifice in it. His
whole sense was of our sorrow and the world’s sorrow. But it would have
been good for him if you had been there--because you are of his country.
He said it again and again: ‘She must see it. It is her immortal
opportunity,’ meaning America--”

“Is his story so we can see it?” Peter asked.

“Yes.”

She took from her breast a little chamois, in which was wrapped two
pages of tough tissue, spread them out, drew her chair close to him, and
read this picture Fallows had made, and his message to America:

..._It is the long night of Europe. France sits in dust upon the ground,
staring toward the End. Mother England has called for her sons, and
some have not answered. She turns her frost-rimed glass from the
grim horizons to the grimmer skies, and always in the movement of the
darkened shadows is written the word, “Disaster.” ...Smileless Germany,
stricken as never a nation was stricken before, save by the wrath of
God, still holds to the fatal enchantment of a fatherland of the ground,
while the changes in the Prussian boundaries are marked in fire and the
blood of her children.... Russia is looking southward, furious to open
her casements upon the perilous seas--gloomy millions of the tundras,
mighty millions of the ice-ringing plains--looking southward, marching
southward, to-day marking time, to-morrow a league, but southward as a
ship in passage. Russia, the young, holy genii battling with demons in
her breast, everything to win and only the fruits of her world-shocking
fecundity to lose--southward to slaughter through the long night_.

...A call to America through the long night--the voice calling for her
to put on her splendid, her initial magic. The voice from the vision of
sorrow-illumined men in frozen bivouacs, crying to America to hold fast
to the dream of her Founders, lest the vessel of the future be drained
of vital essence, indeed--to hold fast until we come ...crying for
America to answer, not with rapacious intellect, not the answer of a
militant body, but an answer from the soul of the New World, with its
original vitality in the Fatherhood of God.

...Repeating through the long night that the patience of Nature is
exhausted with the hate of man for man; that the hatred of nation for
nation is a lost experiment; that the bitter romance of the predatory
is a story finished in hell; that the passion for self and boundary is
done, that Compassion for neighbor and nation is the art of the future;
crying the end of the national soul and the stroke of the hour for the
birth of the world-soul; crying to America, the only temple, the sole
house of nativity, to put on again her youthful magic, to ignite afresh
the Gleam of her Founders, to arise to her superb and heroic destiny.
They sat in silence until the tap at the door. It was the one-armed
soldier, who came in, regarded the stove critically inside and out,
judiciously chose one knot of pine, inserted it with grave care, and,
departing, inquired if there was anything further he could do.

“No,” said Peter.

And Berthe asked: “Is there anything we can do for you?”

He bowed his head in the doorway, and they saw beyond him the winding
aisles of the forest--green and white, the dusk creeping in.

THE END



_A brief expression of the critical Reception of_

DOWN AMONG MEN

 _Outlook_: Possessed of a marvelous descriptive genius, equipped
with a remarkably flexible use of English and impelled by the passion of
a mystic--the author of Down Among Men has written a striking novel.

_The Dial_: Seems to us the most exalted and appealing story Mr. Comfort
has thus far written.

_The Argonaut_: A novel of extraordinary power. It is good as _Routledge
Rides Alone_. It could hardly be better.

_London Post_: Alive with incident, bounding with physical energy,
dramatic in coloring, and modern in every phrase. He has a message
delivered with vigor, inspired with tense passion.

_Atlantic Monthly_: There is so much real fire in it--the fire of youth
that has seen and suffered--so much vitality and passion that one grows
chary of petty comments. The writer offers us the cup of life, and there
is blood in the cup.

_Chicago Record-Herald_: An almost perfect tale of courage and
adventure.

_Chicago Tribune_: Contains some of the most remarkable scenes that have
appeared in recent American fiction.

_New York Times_: Few richer novels than this of Mr. Comfort’s have been
published in many a long day.

_New York Globe_: We can say in all sincerity that we know of no
recent bit of descriptive writing that can match this for sustained,
breathless, dramatic interest.

_Springfield Republican: Down Among Men_ is perhaps the most ambitious
American novel that has come out during the past year.



MIDSTREAM

...A hint from the first-year’s recognition of a book that was made to
remain in American literature:

_Boston Transcript_: If it be extravagance, let it be so, to say
that Comfort’s account of his childhood has seldom been rivaled in
literature. It amounts to revelation. Really the only parallels that
will suggest themselves in our letters are the great ones that occur in
_Huckleberry Finn_.... This man Comfort’s gamut is long and he has
raced its full length. One wonders whether the interest, the skill, the
general worth of it, the things it has to report of all life, as well as
the one life, do not entitle _Midstream_ to the very long life that is
enjoyed only by the very best of books.

_San Francisco Argonaut_: Read the book. It is autobiography in its
perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being, more of
god and devil in conflict, than any book of its kind.

_Springfield Republican_: It is difficult to think of any other young
American who has so courageously reversed the process of writing for the
“market” and so flatly insisted upon being taken, if at all, on his own
terms of life and art. And now comes his frank and amazing revelation,
_Midstream_, in which he captures and carries the reader on to a story
of regeneration. He has come far; the question is, how much farther will
he go?

Mary Fanton Roberts in The _Craftsman_: Beside the stature of this book,
the ordinary novel and biography are curiously dwarfed. You read it with
a poignant interest and close it with wonder, reverence and gratitude.
There is something strangely touching about words so candid, and
a draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such wild and
bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink deep,
penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches. This man’s
words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing into
a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the inspiration of a
quickened life.

Ida Gilbert Myers in _Washington Star_: Courage backs this revelation.
The gift of self-searching animates it. Honesty sustains it. And Mr.
Comfort’s rare power to seize and deliver his vision inspires it. It is
a tremendous thing--the greatest thing that this writer has yet done.

George Soule in _The Little Review_: Here is a man’s life laid
absolutely bare. A direct, big thing, so simple that almost no one
has done it before--this Mr. Comfort has dared. People who are made
uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything, to whom reserve is more
important than truth--these will not read _Midstream_ through, but
others will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute nobility
of Mr. Comfort’s frankness.

Edwin Markham in _Hearst’s Magazine_: Will Levington Comfort, a novelist
of distinction, has given us a book alive with human interest, with
passionate sincerity, and with all the power of his despotism over
words. He has been a wandering foot--familiar with many strands; he has
known shame and sorrow and striving; he has won to serene heights.
He tells it all without vaunt, relating his experience to the large
meanings of life for all men, to the mystic currents behind life, out of
which we come, to whose great deep we return.





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