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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Fleece, by Will Levington Comfort
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Red Fleece
+
+Author: Will Levington Comfort
+
+
+Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6351]
+This file was first posted on November 29, 2002
+Last Updated: March 15, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED FLEECE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Fleece, by Will Levington Comfort
+
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Red Fleece by Will Levington Comfort
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    .side      { float: right; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; margin-left: 0.8em; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Fleece, by Will Levington Comfort
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Red Fleece
+
+Author: Will Levington Comfort
+
+
+Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6351]
+This file was first posted on November 29, 2002
+Last Updated: March 15, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED FLEECE ***
+
+
+
+
+Text file produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      RED FLEECE
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Will Levington Comfort
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      Author of &ldquo;Midstream,&rdquo; &ldquo;Down Among Men,&rdquo; &ldquo;Fate Knocks At the Door,&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Routledge Rides Alone,&rdquo; Etc., Etc. <br /> <br /> 1915
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE HOUR&mdash;WHEN TROOPS TURN HOME
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I. &mdash; THE WOMAN AND THE EXILE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> Chapter 1 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> Chapter 2 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> Chapter 3 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> Chapter 4 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> Chapter 5 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> Chapter 7 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> II. &mdash; THE COURT OF EXECUTION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> Chapter 1 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> Chapter 2 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> Chapter 3 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> Chapter 4 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> Chapter 5 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> Chapter 6 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> Chapter 7 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> Chapter 8 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> III. &mdash; THE HOUSE OF AMPUTATIONS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> Chapter 1 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> Chapter 2 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> Chapter 3 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> Chapter 4 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> Chapter 5 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> Chapter 6 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> Chapter 7 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> Chapter 8 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> IV. &mdash; IN THE BOMB-PROOF PIT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> Chapter 1 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> Chapter 2 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> Chapter 3 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> V. &mdash; THE SKYLIGHT PRISON </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> Chapter 1 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> Chapter 2 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> Chapter 3 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> Chapter 4 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> Chapter 5 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> Chapter 6 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> Chapter 7 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0033"> Chapter 8 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0034"> Chapter 9 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0040"> VI. &mdash; THE FIELD OF HELMETS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0035"> Chapter 1 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0036"> Chapter 2 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0037"> Chapter 3 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0038"> Chapter 4 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0039"> Chapter 5 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0040"> Chapter 6 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0041"> Chapter 7 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0042"> Chapter 8 </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0049"> VII. &mdash; THE GREEN OF CEDARS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I. &mdash; THE WOMAN AND THE EXILE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 1
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;eyes that had become wider and wider,
+      and had filled with sudden amazement (doubtless at her own answering look)
+      before they turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were to marry again it would be to a Latin woman&mdash;French,
+      Italian, even Spanish&mdash;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&mdash;mothering their children and their
+      husband, too,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not Russian?&rdquo; she said in French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head. She seemed to be relieved and he wondered why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; she asked, though not quite with the original
+      asperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It did not occur to me you would notice,&rdquo; he said in the language she had
+      ventured. &ldquo;I saw you yesterday. You made me think of New York. As I was
+      near to-day, I hoped to see you again&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are American?&rdquo; She spoke now in English, and with a still softer
+      intonation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&mdash;you speak English, too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like it. It is&mdash;-&rdquo; she checked herself and asked with just a shade
+      of coldness, &ldquo;Is there anything I can do for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to know you better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;this was something of the revelation he drew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Many people were passing. He looked toward the quieter center of the
+      Square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you walk with me there?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;It is not easy to explain this
+      sort of thing&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I must go on. You may walk a little way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very good.... You see, I cannot tell just <i>why</i>&mdash;as you
+      asked. If I knew you well, I could tell you. Yesterday I was quite
+      unromantic&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made it hard for him and did not let him see her smile. &ldquo;You mean you
+      are romantic to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter laughed. &ldquo;What a trap&mdash;and I was trying so hard to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>were</i> trying&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't need to tell you. All there is to say is that I want you to be my
+      friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have to think,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course. ... Do you pass here every day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have to think,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the third day afterward that she passed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 2
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The first time that Boylan of the <i>Rhodes News Agency</i> of New York
+      saw Peter Mowbray was in the office of Lonegan of <i>The States</i>,
+      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 <i>Rhodes''</i> he was structurally
+      the competitor of <i>The States</i> in this territory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young Mowbray may be all right,&rdquo; Boylan observed, &ldquo;but the curse of the
+      student is on him. I should say that he isn't gusty enough for hard work&mdash;vest
+      buttons too safe&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't measure health by the pound,&rdquo; Lonegan observed, regarding the
+      other's bulk with one eye shut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never heard of Mowbray spending much time in bed outside of the small
+      hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-six or seven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose he put on his gear all in a year or two?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;his route like mine&mdash;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&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Boylan remarked, &ldquo;you need the right kind of help to stand up with
+      <i>Rhodes</i> from this end&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do make it wildly exciting,&rdquo; Lonegan answered gently. &ldquo;We'll rock
+      Peter yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>The States:</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was from the Old Man, who in certain cases ventured thus to be
+      expensively felicitous....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry, Lonegan,&rdquo; Boylan said. &ldquo;I thought you would be taking the
+      field&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, the Old Man's got the right eye for these affairs. I'm a desk man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What Lonegan had swallowed to make his voice clear and steady, only he
+      knew, but his nerve was effective. &ldquo;You've got to help me, Boylan,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A grunt from the big man, who disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's with the woman,&rdquo; Lonegan concluded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Bertha Solwicz, sempstress</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 3
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hate the name of Solwicz,&rdquo; she told him the first time he came to her
+      house, &ldquo;especially from you. And you must call me <i>Berthe</i>, not
+      Bertha.&rdquo; 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 <i>We
+      Are Free</i>. 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see what they are doing,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;There is a new race of artists
+      in Russia. They have passed the emotions&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This poem was due in the world,&rdquo; Peter said. &ldquo;But it is still an age
+      ahead of the crowd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what makes it so hard for them&mdash;for him. He does not like
+      that. He would like to talk to all men straight. Moritz Abel&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;just as we were planning to set out for the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me again what you said about the country. I was away for a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is hard to think of a little excursion to the fields&mdash;with such a
+      holiday ahead, as you are called upon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't thinking of that either, Berthe, but of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, you will go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubtless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was only talking foolishly, about our little excursion. One's own wants
+      are so pitifully unimportant now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had hardly expected personally to encounter a war,&rdquo; he remarked and
+      added smilingly, &ldquo;The fact is, I hadn't thought of meeting a woman like
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe you're as cold-blooded as you try to seem, Peter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have fought all my life to be cold-blooded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She never forgot that. &ldquo;I wonder why men do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the cultivation, perhaps, of that which Americans love best of all&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nerve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We of Poland dare to be emotional,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are an older people. You know how.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One needs only to be one's self.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter smiled. &ldquo;Sometimes I dare actually to be honest with you. Even
+      Lonegan and I take no such liberties together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't a matter of courage,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You would dare anything. I know
+      your quiet, deadly kind of courage. That's the first thing I felt about
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was like Mowbray not to acknowledge that such a thing had been said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came to you asleep. I wonder if I should always have remained asleep?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your words are pretty, Peter. It makes me sad that you are going away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You remember that company of soldiers that passed us yesterday as we
+      walked? I had seen many such groups before&mdash;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&mdash;that empires ripen
+      and go to seed only on a grander scale than turnips.&rdquo; Her eyes were
+      gleaming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We who are so wise, who have mastered ourselves, should be very good to
+      the peasants&mdash;and not take what they have and kill them in wars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I lead you to believe in any way that I felt myself mastered?&rdquo; he
+      asked quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She touched his arm. &ldquo;I was talking of the Fatherland,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;as
+      one turns to the firelight. Passion there&mdash;or was it the higher
+      thing, <i>compassion?</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father earned the right to be poor,&rdquo; she once said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a long, fragile hand
+      that trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we walk somewhere, or must you go to your office, Peter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't, just yet. Yes, let's go outside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot understand,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;Especially that day when I first saw
+      you, I had nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;no time for the actual misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When they sing like that, and I think of what they shall soon be called
+      upon to do&mdash;I can hardly endure it!&rdquo; she whispered.... They stood
+      with backs against the wall, as the tail of the column moved past. &ldquo;Look
+      at that weary one&mdash;so spent and sick&mdash;yet trying to sing&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do speak, Peter,&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to find her white face looking up to him and very close. They
+      were alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't mind if I think about myself this once?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only want to say that, if you'll stay where you are, I'll come back
+      from this stuff&mdash;I was going to say, dead or alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean I am to stay in Warsaw?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not that exactly. I mean if you will stay where you are in
+      regard to me&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;How utterly silly words are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anyway&mdash;we understand. We understand, Berthe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...As for Berthe,&rdquo; she said slowly, as they walked back, &ldquo;her heart will
+      stay where you have put it, Peter. That's out of her power to change. But
+      the rest&mdash;I can't tell, yet&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as if a finger had crossed Mowbray's face laterally under the eyes
+      and across his nostrils, leaving a gray welt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know you belong to the moderns,&rdquo; he said, after a moment. &ldquo;We men
+      belong to the ancients. We want a woman to wait and weep while we go off
+      to the wars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We understand,&rdquo; she kept repeating.... &ldquo;And now, before you go, come home
+      with me and let me make you a cup of tea&mdash;just a cup of tea&mdash;before
+      you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went with her, and, when his tea-cup was finished, he happened to look
+      into the bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you see?&rdquo; she asked quickly, taking the cup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M-m-m,&rdquo; said Mowbray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 4
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Peter and Lonegan were together at dinner three hours after the message
+      from <i>The States.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a big chance, Mowbray. That's all I can say. I stay at the wire&mdash;no
+      heroics.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to see it all from here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lonegan smiled deprecatingly. &ldquo;Boylan will help you get through. You don't
+      know him yet. Some time, perhaps, you will&mdash;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 <i>The States</i> 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&mdash;a great newspaper
+      man, too. <i>The States</i> will watch closely, knowing that <i>Rhodes''</i>
+      will get everything possible from Boylan's part of the front. The point is&mdash;and
+      I think he'll want it, too&mdash;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&mdash;Peking, Manchuria and the Balkans&mdash;that I think of;
+      also the Schmedding Polar Failure. That last <i>was</i> war&mdash;a
+      spectacular expedition of the Germans&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I might as well make this a lecture, now that I've started,&rdquo; Lonegan went
+      on. &ldquo;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&mdash;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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;the peasant, the trooper, the
+      one blinded little dupe, who dies, or plunges, or loses his legs in the
+      name of the Fatherland&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see that,&rdquo; said Peter; &ldquo;but what really is interesting to me is this
+      peasant's blindness and the monkey other men make of him&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;just
+      as another might have done under Napoleon. By the way, where are you going
+      to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Duke Fallows&mdash;I know of him. When did he come to town?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, how did you get next?&rdquo; Lonegan looked a bit in awe at the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was asked to one of his private audiences last night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter knew that Lonegan had many things to ask by the quick tone in which
+      he spoke the first question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what Fallows will do to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'd turn an angel into an anarchist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man ought not to be afraid to listen if there's a chance for him to be
+      proved wrong&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Correct, absolutely. I am merely thinking about our job.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man gets in the habit of thinking about his job&mdash;doesn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he tell you about the plowman of Liaoyang?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but my companion did. Fallows must have seen that episode rather
+      clearly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's not get off the job business, Peter. As I was saying, the truth
+      isn't popular&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That doesn't sound like Lonegan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, and I don't like the feel of saying it, but it's very much to the
+      point&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Possibly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't you come to-night?&rdquo; Peter asked laughing. &ldquo;Perhaps we can both
+      reach the high point some day when we have earned the right to be poor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An eagle's nest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the eaglets are starving.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heretofore the job has been served. Come along with me and meet Duke
+      Fallows again&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll attend to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 5
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the things
+      you might find in a peasant's coat. That which he called home was a
+      peasant's house in the Bosk hills&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The startling thing to realize is that for the present we are allied with
+      England,&rdquo; said Fallows. &ldquo;I mean Russia. You see, I am Russian, now, not
+      the Russia of the Bear, but of the Man&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The peasants are children&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fallows' voice was tender. He watched the face of the woman as he spoke.
+      She was looking hard into the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fallows added: &ldquo;There are fifty million men here in Russia&mdash;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&mdash;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....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would you have the peasants see first?&rdquo; Peter asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Their real fathers&mdash;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&mdash;that
+      the plan of life is for concord and service each to the other&mdash;that
+      the hate of man for man is the deadly sin, the hell of the world&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;when he has
+      been living with little children so long. What is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a reading of a tea-cup to-day&mdash;but everything you said has its
+      meaning concerned in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm almost as interested in tea-cups as in the stars,&rdquo; said Fallows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know a toy-bear, such as the Germans make?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it would have been like that&mdash;if one were thinking of toys. We
+      thought of the Russian Bear. It was perfect&mdash;in the bottom of the cup&mdash;standing
+      up, walking like a man&mdash;huge paunch, thick paws held out
+      pathetically, legs stretched out, just as he would be, rocking, you know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fallows bowed seriously. Mowbray turned his smile to the shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Near him,&rdquo; Berthe added, &ldquo;was a Russian soldier&mdash;perfect&mdash;fur
+      cap, high boots, tightly belted, very natty&mdash;more perfect than we see
+      in the streets, as if drawn from ideal. He was stabbing the bear with a
+      long pole, leisurely&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a rifle and bayonet,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fallows' bronzed head had sunk upon his chest. His eyes, red with
+      firelight, seemed lost to all expression. &ldquo;I was thinking it would happen
+      in Germany first,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment afterward he added: &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he paused, and then looked up to Mowbray. &ldquo;It's a good omen. That's
+      the <i>real</i> war.... And was it your cup?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say that you are going out for the Galician service?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, possibly with Kohlvihr's column.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will see much service,&rdquo; said Fallows. &ldquo;That used to be our dream&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And England?&rdquo; Peter asked quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The key to that is the wealth of the Indies&mdash;as of yore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean if India remains loyal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If India remains under the yoke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, if Britain should preserve her tenure in India with the Japanese
+      troops&mdash;&rdquo; Peter suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fallows shuddered. &ldquo;As yet I can see no philosophy under heaven to cover
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think Britain and Russia are enemies in spite of this alliance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enemies, temperamental and structural&mdash;enemies, past and future.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter recurred to this point: &ldquo;You think that India would not remain loyal
+      if she had arms?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was in a little village of the Punjab two years ago,&rdquo; Fallows replied,
+      &ldquo;and there was a lad of sixteen there, wonderful in promise&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter stood fast against this in his mind; his intellect would not
+      accept.... &ldquo;Are you going to take the field again, Mr. Fallows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder how they are taking it in America?&rdquo; Fallows mused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doubtless as an opportunity for world-trade,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I hope not!&rdquo; the exile said passionately. &ldquo;There must be another
+      America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fallows placed his hands on Berthe's shoulders, looking down: &ldquo;You make me
+      think of a young woman I once knew,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Not that you look like her&mdash;but
+      that you have the same zeal <i>for something</i>.... You are a very true
+      daughter of your father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew him?&rdquo; she said huskily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We all knew him&mdash;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&mdash;his courage would have died with him. It is
+      wonderful for me to be here with you. And this man loves you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not told him of my father. He does not know my name,&rdquo; Berthe said.
+      &ldquo;But I am going to tell him&mdash;before he goes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is safe,&rdquo; said Fallows. &ldquo;I felt free with him&mdash;almost immediately&mdash;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 <i>The States</i>.
+      You will see great things&mdash;best of all with the Russian columns.
+      There will be an Austerlitz every day&mdash;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&mdash;to find how his dream of brotherhood is faring? God,
+      how he took to that dream! He will be a Voice&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were standing. Fallows suddenly reached for his cap. &ldquo;I'll go out
+      with you&mdash;just to get out. The room is too small for me to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, when they reached the street, he left them abruptly, as if he had
+      already said too much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He seems to be burning up,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Berthe did not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was like Zarathustra coming down from the mountain&mdash;so shockingly
+      full of power,&rdquo; Peter added. &ldquo;And yet he said so little of his own part.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He couldn't, Peter. He's like you&mdash;when moments are biggest.... Oh,
+      Peter, where do you keep your passion?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean this great burning that Fallows knows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you love the world&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, Peter&mdash;come to-morrow! Don't come in with me to-night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't fanaticism, when you come to look at it,&rdquo; Peter mused. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;If it happened to another pair, I should say it was the
+      finish,&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;it's a game, bright little
+      story&mdash;and deep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lonegan came in and flung himself down wearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been busy. Boylan is leaving in thirty-six hours. You're going with
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm ready,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you have a big time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think of Fallows now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm strong for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter&mdash;you look bushed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It drains a man to spend an evening in that company. A fellow has to have
+      a heavy lid&mdash;not to waste fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lonegan was worried. &ldquo;You don't mean to say you're getting fevers and
+      emotions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm threatened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mowbray&mdash;you're lying. I don't believe you'd let anybody see your
+      fires&mdash;not even how well you bank 'em. It isn't in you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish it were,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      * * *
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 7
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, Peter. I've been so sorry! If you can forgive me, we'll have
+      coffee together&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He followed her upstairs. The premonition came that he was to take away
+      the image of Berthe Solwicz at its highest&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know as I want to, Berthe,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It made me think. There are
+      two kinds of people in the world&mdash;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&mdash;even
+      trying to be like you. I am what I am&mdash;and must be that. But, Berthe,
+      I can hold the suspicion that I am your inferior, and be pleasant about it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, Peter&mdash;you don't understand. I don't love myself&mdash;nor my
+      way better. I am poor and tortured, carrying about a legacy, or a dream. I
+      need you. I can tell you now&mdash;I never needed you so much as last
+      night when I sent you away. I need your brain and balance&mdash;your big
+      heart. It was never so dear to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;any place rather than to be apart&mdash;for the stuff
+      of adoration was in Peter Mowbray. Half-sitting, half-kneeling, she took
+      her place on the rug before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;my name&mdash;is Wyndham.
+      My father's given name was 'Metz'&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter had caught it all before her last sentence. &ldquo;Wyndham&rdquo; 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&mdash;&ldquo;Metz Wyndham, the notorious Red,&rdquo; as he was denoted in
+      the subsidized press of Petersburg, though &ldquo;Metz Wyndham, the peasants'
+      martyr,&rdquo; was a whisper which seemed destined in the end to silence all
+      such uproar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have heard of him? You knew his story?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The upturned face shone with a different bloom for his eyes. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...I was away from Russia for years&mdash;in London and Paris,&rdquo; she said
+      quickly. &ldquo;But at last I felt I could not stay longer. I wanted to come
+      back here&mdash;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 <i>Solwicz</i>, 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-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I understand,&rdquo; said Peter. He put his hand upon her head. &ldquo;I
+      was in awe of you before I knew,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and yet, I always saw that in
+      the most vital moments something of him would come out.... I keep seeing
+      you with him now&mdash;what a life for a young girl&mdash;what a builder,
+      those years, for a young girl&mdash;and how brave you are. Berthe, I have
+      it&mdash;you are spoiled for common people because you were brought up
+      with that kind of a man. How clearly I understand last night now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's another side to that,&rdquo; she said huskily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm sorry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The most consummate plotting could not have endeared him to her as those
+      three words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, you must see it&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>is</i> wrong everywhere, if one looks&mdash;in judges and
+      cities, in nations, wars, in the kind of amusements people plunge into&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;harrowing, pleading, electrifying men. He would
+      rise&mdash;even alone with me&mdash;to the heights of his power&mdash;and
+      then fall into the valleys because no one could hear. That was his cry, <i>'I
+      can't make myself heard!</i> 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!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the doubt of self would come to him&mdash;the fear that he was wrong
+      or insane. 'Berthe, it can't be that the crowds are wrong; that I am right&mdash;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&mdash;that wants to be heard. It's the accursed me that I am striving
+      for&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am only telling you these moods. He was a child, a playmate, the
+      loveliest companion a girl ever had&mdash;seeing the beauty and analogy in
+      all nature and outdoors&mdash;full of jest and delights. I just wanted to
+      show you the other side&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all of breathless interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There came a day,&rdquo; she added, as Peter watched her raptly, &ldquo;when he did
+      make himself heard, even as he dreamed....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter thought of his reading the story&mdash;a boy at school, and was
+      struck with the memory of its appeal to him in the light of the present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...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&mdash;but
+      it has been hard <i>with</i> me.... This is all right. It's good for what
+      ails the world&mdash;but you are only a little girl! My God, I dare not
+      think of it....'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember the dawn and the cold rain and the stone buildings&mdash;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&mdash;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....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>ego</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel before you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;as I once felt in the vineyards beneath
+      Vesuvius.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled at him. &ldquo;There are several ways to take that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just one that I mean&mdash;and no explanation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... Peter, our last day together&mdash;all shadowy background to be put
+      away&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And breakfast to occupy the immediate fore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;War weather like this makes one grow quickly,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;To think how
+      easy and content we thought ourselves&mdash;even three days ago. Now, I
+      want to say, 'Come, Berthe&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;you
+      and I together, alone. It seems you would be safe there, and I could begin
+      to be satisfied&mdash;&ldquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, Peter&mdash;don't make heavens to-day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's your particular heaven. No other would ever have made me think of <i>winter</i>&mdash;of
+      something austere and silent for you to ignite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder, shall it ever come to me&mdash;to have peace and abundance of
+      nature? I have always had the cities, and now it is more war again&mdash;the
+      opposite to nature&mdash;but I shall think every hour of that winter
+      cabin. That is my place,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;Another would have made you think of
+      the South&mdash;or the seas. I shall think of your being there with me&mdash;every
+      day&mdash;no matter where I am&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you say?&rdquo; he asked, after a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know&mdash;oh, yes&mdash;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&mdash;perhaps we may earn that winter cabin and the fireplace
+      and the stillness. To plan our garden in the winter days&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I hadn't spoken of it. It's almost unearthly far&mdash;in such a
+      time. But, Berthe, will you ever be satisfied with one who hasn't the
+      white fire of passion&mdash;as you have, in the cause of the peasants?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's what I wanted to tell you. We are to be separated. We are
+      grown up&mdash;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&mdash;all that&mdash;-&rdquo;
+       She hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All that you missed in me last night?&rdquo; he suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;cold and
+      unemotional. I know it's your training&mdash;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&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First, I could not&mdash;and then I would not dare. First, that which we
+      are, we do not love. We love another kind&mdash;for completion&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clearly said. That must be true,&rdquo; he answered quickly. &ldquo;And why would you
+      not dare?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because we should have a little baby, and it would suffer so in coming
+      years. Peter, the poise and the balance&mdash;the very qualities I need in
+      you, and which I love, the little baby would require as his gift from his
+      father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. &mdash; THE COURT OF EXECUTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 1
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hai, you, Peter&mdash;wake up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Boylan's voice, seemingly afar off, but coming closer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wake up.... I say, young man, what do you think of it by this time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Peter was awakened the seventh morning out&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think of what?&rdquo; Peter asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young man, you've got a secret,&rdquo; he remarked darkly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're either not of age, or your face is sterile,&rdquo; said Boylan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The floor of this fish shop isn't,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been with you the last forty-eight hours straight. No sign of life
+      in that time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You went out looking for fresh meat at sundown. You were gone&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was gone just five minutes, because the train wasn't up. You had tea on
+      when I came back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a bit too much hot water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, that will do once more, but I've got a suspicion. No man living
+      can shave in the saddle&mdash;so you won't be able to spring that one.
+      Besides, you are willing to discuss the matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you ask what town this is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Boylan; &ldquo;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&mdash;doesn't it make you keen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan looked at him. &ldquo;What are we out for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Apparently the column is out for blood, but I thought you might mean
+      breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The column will get blood, right enough,&rdquo; said Boylan, &ldquo;whether it gets
+      breakfast or not. What's the news, I wonder?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've forgotten my relation to news.... Where are you going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter fed the horses and had tea and black bread served for two, by the
+      time Boylan called from a distance: &ldquo;Put on the griddle, Peter&mdash;a
+      regular steak.... I stopped in the farrier's on the way back and had it
+      anviled a bit. That's what kept me,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;We're fixed for supper and
+      breakfast,&rdquo; he remarked, with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said that the army that would win this war must win through famine.
+      The Russians had better begin&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't say anything about Mr. B. B. Boylan&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Big Belt Boylan,&rdquo; Peter muttered, twisting his face away from the
+      heat and sizzling smoke steam. The name held.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;thick, ponderous, hard, scarred with <i>la
+      viruela</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was so hungry once,&rdquo; Boylan said, &ldquo;that I've been a slave to the fear
+      of it ever since.&rdquo; He referred to the Polar Failure. &ldquo;Once in Farrel's
+      Island&mdash;we were four,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;We drew lots to find out which one
+      of us we must eat. That <i>was</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Samarc rushed past, speaking excitedly in French, and in the shadows
+      behind they saw the eyes of Spenski, sympathetic and wistful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he say, Peter?&rdquo; Boylan asked quickly. &ldquo;Samarc's French is like
+      my Russian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said his face had been fixed for tea&mdash;and toast with Spenski&mdash;until
+      we began to steam up the place. Now he's gone to the feed-wagons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, bless the ruffian, there's enough here for four.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him that, but you know Samarc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Spenski's voice now drawled from behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're getting low, anyway. It was right for him to fill the bags this
+      morning, though very kind of you to offer&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like that, Spenski,&rdquo; said Boylan. &ldquo;Bull cheek for four was my
+      order. Why, you fellows&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;just behind the van, headquarters back a quarter of a mile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me about Spenski,&rdquo; Peter asked. &ldquo;He's an interesting chap. I heard
+      him talking to you about the stars last evening, before supper, pointing
+      out Venus and Jupiter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll grow on you,&rdquo; said Samarc, their talk in French. &ldquo;He did in my
+      case. We've been together six years in and out of the big instrument shop
+      in Warsaw&mdash;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&mdash;his remarkable workmanship&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is his work?&rdquo; Peter asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A lens-maker. His art is one of the finest of the human eye&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows all sorts of out-of-the-way things&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;not localized. You might be
+      with Spenski an hour or a week and never know that he was more than just a
+      mechanic&mdash;if you were just a mechanic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's very interesting,&rdquo; said Peter, as charmed with his companion as with
+      the man he talked about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little while ago Spenski found his girl, and I would have withdrawn&mdash;for
+      that is the high test,&rdquo; Samarc resumed. &ldquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, when Boylan and Mowbray were together again, but a little
+      apart from the others, Big Belt said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Peter, that little Spenski is a card. A good little chap, smart and
+      modest. I like him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found Samarc worth cultivating, too,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 2
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Marching south along the Vistula with the old-fashioned army&mdash;no
+      airships, nothing that intensely puzzled Mowbray in this service&mdash;that
+      is, in the exteriors of it&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;green&rdquo; 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&mdash;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? <i>Freedom</i>, doubtless. But intrinsically they were
+      free men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>The States</i>
+      and the Old Man.... &ldquo;He thinks I'm clutched in the ripping drama and
+      waiting for blood,&rdquo; he muttered, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't they amazing?&rdquo; Spenski whispered. &ldquo;It must be nearly morning, for
+      those are the winter stars. I think they must have wakened me up. Do you
+      know them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just the first magnitudes. They are more brilliant than I have ever
+      known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Orion and a great kite of suns stood out with new and flashing power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never saw that huge <i>W</i> before&mdash;&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't mean Cassiopeia? Her chair isn't there, but over to the north&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no&mdash;<i>there</i>. 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&mdash;the stranger, not usually there&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Spenski clutched him. &ldquo;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 <i>W</i>, and the <i>W</i> stands for&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;War, possibly,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a growl just now from Boylan: &ldquo;Come on back to bed, you
+      star-gazers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saturn is so far and moves so slowly,&rdquo; the little man whispered, &ldquo;that
+      the <i>W</i> will not be deranged for many months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hurry call for Kohlvihr came as expected in Fransic. The first
+      sections of the divisions were entrained the next day&mdash;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&mdash;the line of passing windows filled
+      with cheering, weeping nurses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just one reposeful face&mdash;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&mdash;gone, and no
+      word between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus her colors came to him again&mdash;the mystic trinity of white and
+      gray and black&mdash;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&mdash;the swift
+      passing of that face of tender beauty and fortitude, that fair brow, gray
+      eyes and black hair....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan was looking deeply into his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God, man, you're a ghost. What is it, Peter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It struck me queer to see a trainload of girls down here in the field,&rdquo;
+       said Peter quite steadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if a trainload of strange women can do that to you&mdash;here's
+      hoping we never do Paris together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Spenski opposite had seen the outstretched hands, and Peter saw
+      that he had seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 3
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;the far distance
+      breathing just the murmur of cannonading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their faces looked white in the thickening dark, noses pinched and the
+      rest <i>beard</i>.... Hair&mdash;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&mdash;faces like
+      changelings, atrocious like chickens. But the beards were taking form now&mdash;all
+      gradations of yellow and red and black&mdash;many of that gray-yellow
+      which loses itself in the middle distance and becomes a blur. How he hated
+      hair like that!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>gangway</i>. 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 4
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is not the main fighting at all,&rdquo; said Boylan. &ldquo;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&mdash;and this will be
+      forgotten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to say,&rdquo; he told the lens-maker, &ldquo;'I was this at one time, and
+      now I must go.'&rdquo; Orders came for Samarc and Spenski, but they were not to
+      be remotely stationed, since their battery was assigned to Kohlvihr's
+      division&mdash;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&mdash;in such richness and variety
+      they could not escape, could not cover them, and something from the dead
+      entered their hearts. To Peter&mdash;so queerly were his thoughts running&mdash;the
+      memorable incident of their last night together had to do with an ant
+      colony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Thanks,
+      Samarc.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the scent of cedar and balsam, good water, steady
+      skirmishing&mdash;food just a bit scarce so that the peasants snapped and
+      bolted, showing sharp about the eyes. It was not hunger&mdash;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&mdash;getting
+      ripe, in fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Belt had lost his last reservation about his companion. He gave
+      everything to Peter that he had given to Lonegan and something more&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice during the first fortnight, Boylan had asked if this were positively
+      his first venture into the field with troops. &ldquo;The reason I ask,&rdquo; he
+      explained later, &ldquo;is that you appear to have been on the job before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This would have been a matter interesting to the Old Man of <i>The States</i>,
+      according to Lonegan's story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I miss the little guy,&rdquo; said Boylan, referring to Spenski. They were
+      anticipating the next day with the battery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I miss Samarc, too,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We put such store by names,&rdquo; he muttered, as he watched the Austrian
+      infantry give way before them, &ldquo;and yet, the world will get on with other
+      names just the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      ...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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two infantries were contending; gray Russian lines in the bottom land
+      and already advancing up the slopes. Day after day, smitten and
+      replenished&mdash;tillers of land becoming the dung of the land. Mowbray
+      had always pitied the infantry, and watched them now with unspeakable awe
+      and depression&mdash;moving up the slopes, lost in their white necklaces
+      of skirmish-fire, sprayed upon with steel vomit from the Austrian
+      machines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Samarc's battery was idle. It was often so, Boylan reported, when the
+      enemy's duplicate pieces were busy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now withering&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's <i>our</i> cue,&rdquo; Big Belt whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;yet
+      each crackling thread here meant projected steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All battery men near the two Americans knew well that the Austrians would
+      note <i>that</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got to get out of here,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;their
+      order in contrast to this chaos....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a
+      saving distance for Mowbray&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on&mdash;they'll do it again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter heard the words&mdash;but did not know who spoke them&mdash;possibly
+      Boylan from behind, possibly <i>he</i> had said it. He had not seen
+      Samarc's lips move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice was an offense in that silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Peter saw none but Spenski, until Samarc reached him, lifted, called.
+      Peter saw the body raised from the ground to Samarc's arms&mdash;saw the
+      little man's body open upon his friend like a melon that has rotted
+      underneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 5
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      All went black for Peter. The slope rose up and took him. For an eternity
+      afterward he felt someone tugging at him&mdash;hands of terrible strength
+      that would not let him die, would not let him sleep. After that a familiar
+      voice began calling at intervals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello,&rdquo; said Peter at last. &ldquo;What have I been doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not anything that you've pulled before. Is this an old habit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Passing out unhurt&mdash;lying like a log for an hour or two?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it's a new one. Where are we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Judenbach. It's past supper time&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter sat up, wobbled. The terrible hands steadied him again. He knew now
+      what had lamed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was wondering what hit me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, you're getting glib again,&rdquo; said Boylan. Peter's reserve had
+      interposed. His absence had something to do with her, but he could not
+      remember. &ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; had got away from him as he crossed the border
+      back into the racking physical domain. He didn't like that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I say anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing that will be used against you,&rdquo; Boylan observed. &ldquo;As for what hit
+      you&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That shrapnel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yep&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an instant of silence; the picture returned and wrung a groan
+      from Peter. All the energy of his life rebelled against <i>the fact</i>.
+      Boylan's hand tightened upon him. For the moment Mowbray was in a kind of
+      delirium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The moon had just come up,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;like another sun. The real sun was
+      still in the sky from our hill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. I was there. Cut it, Peter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Samarc?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In one of the hospital buildings, likely. I meant to find him as soon as
+      I could leave you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Belt fumbled in his saddled bags for a flask, brought it in one hand,
+      a cup of water in the other....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;hoopskirts,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, nothing like that&mdash;&rdquo; said Boylan, as Mowbray sank to the floor
+      by his blanket roll. &ldquo;You haven't had supper&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't, Boylan.... I say, what do they do with the dead?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rain was pattering down; the smell of drugs reached them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>does</i> make a difference when you know one of them&mdash;doesn't
+      it?.... God, man, we're cluttered with wounded. The dead are at peace&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what stars he's watching to-night?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come. Peter&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan decided that talking was good. He listened and prepared soup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And to-morrow they're at it again,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won't look the same in the morning&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter did not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anyway, you didn't bring on the war, Peter&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes a man cold with that kind of cold a supper-fire don't help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, you've got me stopped with your moods&mdash;like a woman. Women
+      were always too profound for Mr. B. B. Boylan&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry. You've been a prince. I'll do better now. I'll get out of it.
+      Little shock&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan glanced at him narrowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter laughed. &ldquo;I'm all right. Head's working.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Belt sighed. &ldquo;I loved that little guy, too. God, I'd run east to Asia
+      and keep on running rather than meet his girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Samarc&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I have ceased to kill,</i>&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;loosely,
+      the faucet gone. The hand was unhurt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>...He came in the night. I did not speak&mdash;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.</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan was watching Peter. His face turned gray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll stay with him, Boylan,&rdquo; said Peter, choosing the hardest thing, but
+      Big Belt would not leave, though the Russian columns were moving in the
+      street&mdash;off to renew the battle among the hills. The two sat by until
+      Samarc slept.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      * * *
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a moment, my friends,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;A little formality, but very
+      necessary&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and a Russian platoon at their right, rifles raised&mdash;then
+      the ragged volley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each of the three fell differently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 6
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is General Kohlvihr out with the fronts?&rdquo; Boylan asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter looked up at him. &ldquo;Is there much of this to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid so. They work among the hospitals. You don't catch many of
+      them in the ranks&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps they would rather tend the wounded than to make the wounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dabnitz smiled cheerfully. &ldquo;They're afraid of their hides. When a man does
+      a lot of talking, he is generally shy on action&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet it was a clean-cut death of that talker and his two companions
+      you just executed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An exception now and then,&rdquo; Dabnitz granted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you catch them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have a system at work for that purpose&mdash;everywhere, especially in
+      the hospitals. There isn't much temporizing when we get them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter Mowbray's skull prickled with heat and his face was cold with sweat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they preach?&rdquo; he managed to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; Dabnitz observed. &ldquo;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&mdash;if he happens to
+      be found with a wound in the back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Were these&mdash;these that you put out this morning&mdash;working in the
+      hospitals?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a good many cases we bring a man to his feet again from a bad wound&mdash;to
+      find him not a soldier but a damned anarchist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's expensive and cumbersome also to carry such a hospital system
+      afield,&rdquo; Peter observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dabnitz did not catch the irony. &ldquo;Yes, it would be cheaper and simpler to
+      put a hard-hit soldier out of his misery&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan, watching Peter's face, suddenly arose, suggesting that they ride
+      out toward the fighting. ....When they were alone, he added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo; The question did not seem wild to either of them&mdash;there by the
+      open court of Judenbach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew a man who did. I saw him getting whiter and whiter like your face&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's in the air,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;It's hard to breathe!.... No, I won't go
+      down front to-day. I wish I could go back&mdash;back&mdash;oh, to the
+      clean Pole&mdash;no, to some little snowy woods in the States....Boylan,
+      does it suffocate you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's different from anything I knew,&rdquo; said Boylan. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They stood before the main building, just at the entrance of the stone
+      court&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;darkness
+      under the low stone lintels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He couldn't keep off the reality long. In every direction the murderous
+      army&mdash;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&mdash;quite as a little
+      boy would, his lip quivering.... He started at the touch of Boylan's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll tell you what we'll do,&rdquo; Big Belt said. &ldquo;We'll write, Peter. We'll
+      get out the machines to-day. We'll write a story&mdash;just as if we could
+      file it on a free cable. It will do us good. We'll tell the story&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan drew him face about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're not going to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They found him at headquarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lieutenant Dabnitz,&rdquo; Peter said, his hand upon the Russian's shoulder,
+      speaking very quietly, &ldquo;I feel like a fool doing nothing all day long&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gladly, Mr. Mowbray. I'm sure they'll be very glad. Of course, they are
+      always short-handed in the hospitals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan's heart gave a thump at the new light in Mowbray's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go along, too,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I'm the daddy of them all, when it comes
+      to lifting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A ragged platoon volley crashed from the court as they entered the street.
+      Peter's steps quickened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 7
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Of course, they did not know it in <i>The States''</i> office, neither the
+      Old Man nor his managing editor, but a way had been found to <i>rock</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; the other asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I was trying to think to ask you?&rdquo; Peter said with a smile.
+      &ldquo;I am Mowbray, an American correspondent&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you here?&rdquo; He pointed to the cots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had to do something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The misery called to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps. To be sure, I'd better say my own misery made me come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They talked in French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all the same. You are not a beast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sure,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is good, too. I'm glad you have come. All morning I have watched
+      you....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did not answer me. Who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Moritz Abel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He held a wash basin in one hand, a bit of linen in the other&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>We
+      Are Free</i>.... Perhaps it was the woman in him that made him say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope <i>you</i> live through the long night, Monsieur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 8
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>the long night</i>
+      signified, and wanted his saying really known for what it was&mdash;an
+      utterance of pure passion against the destruction of genius. The other
+      replied, making all explanation unnecessary:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are your companions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russian smiled. &ldquo;They are all about through the dark of the long
+      night. We may only signal in passing. In fact, I must go now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The surgeon in charge had entered. Peter went to Samarc's cot, steeling
+      himself. &ldquo;Samarc,&rdquo; he whispered, without bending, &ldquo;Samarc&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day the battle tortured the southern distance&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll see what I can find,&rdquo; Big Belt remarked. &ldquo;You're right to go back,
+      Peter. As for me, I can stand it better outdoors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crossing the street, it seemed to Peter that he had been in Judenbach
+      certain ages, a reckonable space of eternity&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be back to-night,&rdquo; Peter promised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...There's been no break in the check to-day,&rdquo; Big Belt reported.
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;all hands,
+      Peter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This may be our last night in Judenbach then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If killing a division will start a hole across that range of hills, it's
+      our last night&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll sit it out with Samarc,&rdquo; Peter said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boylan, don't you stay up. You've roughed it to-day and been afield.
+      Don't let me spoil your sleep&mdash;with a big day ahead. It wasn't lack
+      of sleep that got my nerve this morning&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'll yap around till bedtime,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;What does Samarc
+      say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something has come over him. Some one came to him last night and seemed
+      to drive a nail right into his thinking&mdash;pinned him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's turned against the killing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What made you think he had the appearance of sleeping?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It just occurred to me. He didn't want to take all my time. I whispered
+      his name several times&mdash;no answer. Once when I was leaving, his hand
+      reached up and touched my coat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he hurt badly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was all knit to the little man,&rdquo; Boylan said. &ldquo;As good a pair as I
+      ever met afield.... Oh, I say, eat something&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  * * *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      ...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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know it was because of me that he came&mdash;&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>live</i>. 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&mdash;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&mdash;men dying hard and easy; men and women
+      serving; so much to do,&mdash;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&mdash;that's
+      all right&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;a master workman like the man you loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was Moritz Abel who wrote <i>We Are Free</i>....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there are others&mdash;like Spenski and Abel&mdash;some of them dead&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Peter, how sweet to see you and hear your voice!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed that he became molten in her presence. A heavenly <i>adagio</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me, Samarc,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III. &mdash; THE HOUSE OF AMPUTATIONS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 1
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      They looked long into each other's faces. &ldquo;You were wonderful as you spoke
+      of your friend. Did you know that, Peter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away deprecatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive me. Of course you didn't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...And you meant to come all the time?&rdquo; he asked at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have known it.... That day&mdash;that day across the siding&mdash;why,
+      Berthe, it was almost more than I could stand. I had just been thinking of
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were like two spirits who hadn't earned the right to be together,&rdquo; she
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid it's dangerous now,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;One mustn't have a whim,
+      other than to extinguish the enemy. The army is afraid of itself. All day&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though he checked himself, she knew his thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, all day, they murdered white-browed men in the court below.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Berthe&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to guard your life&mdash;as if it were mine&mdash;just that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All surroundings were melting away from them. She had never seen him like
+      this.... Even Samarc could not hear their whispers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You came like an angel, Berthe,&mdash;all I ever want of an angel. I tell
+      you I am proud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what, Peter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I had sense enough to go a second time to the Square at Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad, too.... If we were only in the winter stillness&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Tell her about Spenski,&rdquo; came to Peter's ears in the lipless
+      mouthing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Berthe saw that Peter was ghostly white, as he lifted his head. She
+      thought it had to do with what the wounded man said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wanted him to tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded. There was something intensely pathetic in it all. Her eyes were
+      full of light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The story thrills me,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Oh, this is very far from a
+      hopeless world. What I have seen to-day&mdash;even the fortitude of
+      infamous men&mdash;manhood, black and white&mdash;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&mdash;for the result means the
+      life or death of the world's soul!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once she would have seemed very far and remotely high to Peter Mowbray....
+      They had drawn a little apart from the cot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What made you so white?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She pressed his hand in understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Berthe, do you sleep? Do you take food? Are you well? Are they good to
+      you? Can you live through?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and what of you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All is quite well with me. I can endure anything with the hope of taking
+      you home afterward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must be ready to give up that, too. It is hard; it's our ordeal&mdash;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&mdash;if those who love each other well enough to love the world&mdash;do
+      not pass on. Why, Peter, you said the same to him&mdash;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?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I say that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew back her head, looking him through and through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;all your training to be a man&mdash;and
+      yet it's the child that a woman's heart sees and wants to preserve for her
+      own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see much of Moritz Abel?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.... It was he who found you for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...Peter, we must forget ourselves!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't forget you. I want you as you are,&rdquo; he repeated in tumult. &ldquo;I
+      want you here in the world&mdash;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&mdash;that's
+      clear enough. But I haven't had you here&mdash;only a few minutes. I want
+      the winter stillness <i>on earth</i>&mdash;in the woods&mdash;not in some
+      paradise yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush&mdash;I want it too. Oh, you can never know how much!... I had
+      better go now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will go out to the fronts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, for a little, but I shall watch how the day fares, so I can hurry
+      back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-day&mdash;we were just a stone's throw apart. I was in that building
+      down the street&mdash;the amputation cases.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the house where those cries come from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;about yourself. You see we had no anesthesia, except for
+      cases of life or death&mdash;among the officers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you came to me from a day like that?&rdquo; he asked unsteadily, his
+      passion blurred, even the beauty of it. The chance of her living had
+      suddenly darkened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was like coming home,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;...In Warsaw before your day&mdash;sometimes
+      crossing the Square in the darkness&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;in these few minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must not ask too much,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw that he had a vivid picture of her day in that house of
+      amputations, that the picture had stunned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;all was
+      there to-day, and ten times more, there in the blood and torture. And
+      Poltneck sang to them&mdash;sang to the maimed and limbless&mdash;sang
+      through the probings&mdash;with the sound of the cannon in the distance
+      and more wounded coming in. He sang of home and Fatherland&mdash;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&mdash;under everything&mdash;is the
+      humble and the heroic in man. Hate and soldiery are just the surface. That
+      which is beneath will be above&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;without an impress of
+      memory, he had said that; and how heroic to accomplish&mdash;for mere man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not answer&mdash;just looked at her. He saw her turn and smile.
+      Moritz Abel was standing there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell you&mdash;what it meant to me to see you two standing so,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;And this place of quiet&mdash;you two and your paradise!... Let
+      me see, it occurred to me to suggest&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He found himself reluctant to finish. He had spoken lightly as if to
+      propose that they would be more comfortable in another room&mdash;but his
+      thoughts concerned the volleys in the court. They knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The staff knows me rather well,&rdquo; said Mowbray. &ldquo;I was counting on that,
+      but one cannot be sure&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There has been no secret,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Will you come in the morning before
+      the columns go out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it will be early.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be watching. If not&mdash;he will be there to tell you why.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter turned to the poet. &ldquo;Watch over her&mdash;won't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You honor me, Mr. Mowbray. All that I can do&mdash;be very sure of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by&mdash;good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      .... 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&mdash;of knights and
+      kings, plumes and horses, white and black.... Now the wounded man seemed
+      sending messages through his hand. The lamps were low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's been the day of days, Samarc,&rdquo; Mowbray said. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He heard the tread of soldiers in the hollow-sounding court below&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 2
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Just a moment's talk in the street&mdash;twice interrupted by sentries, as
+      they moved the hundred yards from the courtyard of Judenbach to the house
+      of amputations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...He was trying to lift a man from the hopelessness of death when I
+      stepped up quietly behind,&rdquo; Berthe was saying. &ldquo;He was wonderful about it,
+      because he had felt the same hopelessness. I wish you could have heard
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Moritz Abel said: &ldquo;He is effective. He is intellect and heart&mdash;very
+      sound. His vision will come quickly. He does not wing&mdash;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&mdash;to interpret for us. The new Fatherland must have such
+      men. It has been our destiny always to dream and to pass&mdash;another
+      generation to make our vision flesh&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean such men as Peter Mowbray would be direct interpreters?&rdquo; she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;men
+      who love men straight and not through the arts&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know so well what you mean,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;If you could only have
+      heard him with the bandaged man&mdash;<i>'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.'&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is it,&rdquo; Moritz Abel said. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached the place of blood and torture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now you must rest a little,&rdquo; he told her. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And me&mdash;&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 3
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;Kohlvihr to drive a hole through the hills, this day.
+      An early incident revealed certain facts&mdash;personal&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A shrapnel wound in the face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The orderly looked under the cot for the uniform, as if to determine
+      Samarc's place and rank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's the blouse?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was covered with blood,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;They took it away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What branch of the service?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter was not sure&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;She told me to tell you that she wants to come, but that it isn't safe&mdash;&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...Moritz Abel looking for an interpreter would have been interested now;
+      also the Old Man of <i>The States</i>. The stranger had spoken leisurely.
+      Peter's temptation was conquered before he was half through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure you were to give me some message?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I wasn't expecting anyone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other regarded him keenly. Peter was well trained for that. An officer
+      appeared in the doorway and beckoned the orderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must have been a mistake,&rdquo; the latter muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promised to call a moment this morning at the amputation house&mdash;but
+      no one was to come for me,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have made a mistake,&rdquo; the orderly repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...I wonder if I have?&rdquo; Peter thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;ceased to kill&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But must your officers know?&rdquo; Peter whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...The officers would know if it were the same old crew, because they knew
+      Samarc's work. This was the substance of the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      ...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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young assistant surgeon at a near cot was rather too hastily laying bare
+      the lint from a severe shoulder wound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The order was repeated. &ldquo;Into your clothes, man. Scores are already in the
+      column with wounds worse than yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man groaned, stirred, but fell back. Peter had seen the wound&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come!&rdquo; the young officer urged angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier tried to raise himself, but did not make good work of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll get you up, damn you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None but a beast would take from the stable a horse crippled like that,&rdquo;
+       he was saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A bit of bad judgment,&rdquo; Peter said, not explaining whether it was his or
+      the young doctor's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The surgeon did not ask, but turned to the great muffled face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This man was from one of the rapid-fire commands, I believe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter was prevented from further glibness by a decisive nod from Samarc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Fatherland will need you to-day,&rdquo; the surgeon said with a peculiar
+      significance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Peter's trained ear the sounds from Samarc were dangerously like,
+      &ldquo;Fatherland-hell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A shrapnel splinter struck him in the mouth,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;He says he
+      is ready to take the field.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Samarc spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His blouse is gone,&rdquo; said Peter hastily. &ldquo;I can manage for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has he a fever?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid so&mdash;a slight fever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The surgeon turned to the other cot. &ldquo;Let this fellow sleep another day,&rdquo;
+       he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldier lying there gave Peter a look almost uncanny in its gratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down, Samarc. I'll get you a blouse,&rdquo; the latter said and left the
+      ward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 4
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;but the pictures were various and
+      persistent&mdash;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&mdash;that pervasive beard affair&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some men can find 'em anywhere,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;And such a one! She was a
+      flame.... As for Mr. B. B.&mdash;it's dead horse all his days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 5
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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. &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; Boylan thought. Peter did
+      turn in, and came toward him, hand out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tomato ketchup with duck's eggs. Draw up a chair,&rdquo; said Boylan. He
+      appeared just now to see the steward's blouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Samarc takes the field to-day. It's for him,&rdquo; Peter explained.... &ldquo;He's
+      going out to kill himself. Only one reservation&mdash;that he kill no one
+      else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan seemed staring at Peter's knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're letting the ketchup burn,&rdquo; Peter said mildly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose that's what he really means to do,&rdquo; Big Belt observed, after a
+      moment. &ldquo;And what are we to do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I would stand by a little&mdash;not so as to be a nuisance, you
+      know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naturally not. Of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They ate in silence&mdash;a thousand things to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't be very far from the staff,&rdquo; said Peter, hurrying back to the
+      hospital. &ldquo;Poor old Samarc has two wounds, you know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      * * *
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It wasn't a day to explain things&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;but the words are the revealers of emptiness. For the animal
+      is awake and upstanding; the spirit that quickens reality is apart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the sweet
+      healing breath of drying cedar boughs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>her</i>
+      near.... It had been like a soldier leaving his lady for the battle&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;on
+      the other side from Samarc&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wagons had gone on. Samarc's battery might have been rubbed out for
+      all their ability to find it. All faces strange&mdash;gunners,
+      range-finders, and the cartridge hands. Peter felt a horror in his breast
+      for the immediate presence of the guns&mdash;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&mdash;that something would be uncoupled in
+      their minds. They turned, Peter laughing at his desire to run&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;the endless strings of infantry along the broad
+      lower slopes. They stopped to watch them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Creatures of the hollows, their business to rise and be swept back&mdash;marching
+      forth now&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>moujik</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a sort of tumult from under the cloths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing doing, Samarc,&rdquo; he said suddenly. &ldquo;You and I for it&mdash;at
+      least a while yet. I say&mdash;do the hard thing. The little man would
+      have it so. We'll go down closer to the infantry stuff and forget
+      ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      ...Yes, Samarc would do the hard thing. There was gratitude for which
+      Peter had no receptivity&mdash;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&mdash;and down they went together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The infantry was their magnet as they made the down grade&mdash;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
+      &ldquo;forward&rdquo; of the Russian foot-soldiers would start the Austrian machine
+      and rapid-fire batteries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;forward&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a captain, now working his way toward them. He
+      glanced at the civilian insignia on Peter's sleeve, and said, with a
+      smile:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've tricked us well this time, Mr. Mowbray. I hope you get back as
+      cheerfully. You'll have to go forward now&mdash;at least, until we stretch
+      out in skirmish. We're rather thick just here. Stay with my command&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We thought we were back of you,&rdquo; Peter said. &ldquo;I assure you I didn't plan
+      this, but it's very kind of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Captain glanced at Samarc and turned to the American as they urged on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurt badly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just his face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay by&mdash;some of the soldiers might be rough&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were carried forward in the resistless interference of great numbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 6
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>one</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moreover, he felt that the motive energizing this authority was not of the
+      human but of the tiger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>had</i> a consciousness and it was
+      unclean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the elbow brush, the heat, the breath, the
+      muttering of men&mdash;this atmosphere that the military machine breathed.
+      Standing alone, most of them would have fallen from fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;and
+      was just one of the miles of infantry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter saw the little red head cocked forward as if to listen to the
+      nearing gusts of steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;but the hurtling concussions in the
+      air, the plague of steel....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>the storm</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you hard hit, boy?&rdquo; Peter called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were others about&mdash;a whole line of fallen, but they saw just
+      this one&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;only a breath.
+      Samarc shouldered him, raised himself with the burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will come back,&rdquo; he called to the faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>moujik</i>
+      arose from his knees in front of them, as they staggered on. He was
+      stunned, bewildered, blinded, but he could hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on&mdash;we're going back,&rdquo; Peter said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're going back,&rdquo; Peter said. &ldquo;Come on. You can crawl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;My God, how they obey <i>men</i>!&rdquo; he said, with awe.
+      &ldquo;They <i>could</i> be led right&mdash;peasants who obey like that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was singing all about him&mdash;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)&mdash;a low
+      singing as of wells of gladness reaching the surface. Peter was torn with
+      the agony of the field, yet thrilling with happiness&mdash;as if there was
+      liberation somewhere within. He turned to the crawling one who inspired
+      him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're all hurt, but we're going back to bed. Come on&mdash;you're doing
+      famously&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The back bobbed to greater effort. The blind one held him fast, and the
+      Redhead left his trail of blood and murmured about <i>the storm</i>.... 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&mdash;five of them, alone, for,
+      queerly enough, they were as one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;so glad and so mighty was that shouting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get the name of the hospital man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dabnitz plucked the sleeve of Samarc's coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hospital steward,&mdash;I have that,&rdquo; he said a second time, &ldquo;but what's
+      the name and the division?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can't speak,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;I'll get his name later. He's been wounded
+      in the mouth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Curiously enough in this turmoil it appeared for the first time why Samarc
+      had been allowed a free field practically&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter&mdash;are you hit?&rdquo; It was Boylan's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, just bushed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now he heard Kohlvihr say: &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, you've put the whole line back into fighting trim!&rdquo; Boylan
+      whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 7
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;fighting
+      trim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;Kohlvihr the center of
+      all. Big Belt was ministering&mdash;a flask, a momentary massage, a steady
+      run of comment, ruddy from the heart.... The activity came to him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kohlvihr was actually planning another infantry advance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kohlvihr might sally forth for his wounded; hundreds were dying out there
+      in the windy hollow. He, Peter Mowbray, had seen their faces&mdash;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&mdash;and again&mdash;and again, until the end of the day&mdash;until
+      enough passed through to gain the opposite slopes in fighting force, or
+      until the Austrian ammunition was exhausted....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Kohlvihr had never been out there. His cave was well back in the
+      shelter of the works&mdash;sheltered from ahead and from the sky, with
+      Judenbach behind.... Old Doltmir, the second in command, was saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a terrible price to pay, General&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was balm in that, but acid covered it an instant later from
+      Kohlvihr, who swallowed a drink and turned with a snarl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have the price to pay&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. <i>He loved
+      them and knew why.</i> And those men, their lives and deaths&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God, Boylan,&rdquo; he muttered in English, &ldquo;can't you get him by the
+      throat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan's eyes were wild. He laughed softly, however, saying in Russian:
+      &ldquo;Very good, Peter&mdash;you'd joke at your death&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Big Belt's eyes roved to Dabnitz, who apparently had not heard Peter's
+      remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...Don't let them take off the bandages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Samarc left his seat in the dark corner and walked evenly toward the
+      center where Kohlvihr stood, his aides about him&mdash;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&mdash;a door made
+      of cedar trunks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the moment Peter was blocked between two desires, or paralyzed. The
+      huge face of Boylan close by mutely implored him to be silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Samarc,&rdquo; he called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 8
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;advance as skirmishers&rdquo;
+       was given. They were inspiring the men in the name of the Little Father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If only they hadn't said that,&rdquo; Peter muttered pathetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;that
+      was the whole story. If they were given true fathers!... Why, that <i>was</i>
+      the answer!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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, <i>and
+      he knew why</i>.... 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&mdash;in
+      the past three days... three days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;it was only mid-forenoon. He would go to his quarters and clean
+      up a little&mdash;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&mdash;razors and all gone with the pony.
+      Boylan would have the laugh at him now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could not sit still in his quarters. Voices came to him from the
+      street, from the court&mdash;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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;They were talking of you as an enemy&mdash;&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;neither
+      Berthe Wyndham nor Moritz Abel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many eyes held him. He did not see the young doctor, but the surgeon who
+      had come to the other ward was there&mdash;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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wished for Boylan again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;as
+      a maimed bird that has fallen lies still under its wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His breath burst from him. He had been holding it as if under water. His
+      eyes traveled electrically now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter waved his hand in a gesture of obedience, but turned to glance in
+      the gloom under the lintel again. It was just <i>in the turning</i> that
+      he had caught the gleam of her colors&mdash;not when he stared straight
+      in. Peter assured himself of this before giving himself up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV. &mdash; IN THE BOMB-PROOF PIT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 1
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The dead man in the hospital steward's coat had been carried forth from
+      the bomb-proof pit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be without a command, General,&rdquo; Doltmir suggested, at the end of
+      the second infantry throwback, following that in which Peter had
+      participated. &ldquo;We are not disturbing them greatly in our advances. We are
+      chiefly effective in destroying their ammunition&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we must continue that,&rdquo; said Kohlvihr.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The officers must drive them forward&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most of the lesser commanders are lying in the valley. The troops are
+      killing them as well as the enemy&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean there is mutiny, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you advise me to leave them funking in the trenches?&rdquo; Kohlvihr
+      demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General, I would advise a report to the Commander of our failure in four
+      advances&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not care to report four failures without a fifth trial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Doltmir turned back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...He is under suspicion, sir,&rdquo; that young officer was saying to his
+      chief. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get him,&rdquo; said Kohlvihr. &ldquo;Is he under arrest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; as yet merely under espionage. He was valuable in rather a unique way
+      in the hospitals yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring him at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kohlvihr sent an order for his troops to rest and have a bite in the
+      trenches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sorry Doltmir stepped forward again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it not be well to bring in our wounded from the field, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will <i>have</i> the field presently,&rdquo; said Kohlvihr. &ldquo;The sun is not
+      hot. The lines already have seen too much of their blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Belt remembered that. Moments were intense again when Poltneck was
+      brought in&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poltneck&mdash;he calls himself,&rdquo; Dabnitz whispered. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan noted how much taller the singer was than even the tall Russian
+      officer&mdash;as the two stood together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The men are very tired, Poltneck,&rdquo; Dabnitz began. &ldquo;Much has been required
+      of them, and much is still required. We want you to help us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We thought you would sing for your fellow soldiers. You are from the
+      peasantry, I am told?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, from the people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We thought you would understand,&rdquo; Dabnitz added. &ldquo;There is an operatic
+      tenor in the command&mdash;one Chautonville. We might have sent for him,
+      but our thought was to reach the soldiers directly. It is a great honor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it? How and where do you want me to sing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An advance is to be ordered immediately. We will send an escort with you
+      along the trenches&mdash;just before the order is given. I heard you
+      singing yesterday. I am sure the men will answer with zeal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not used to crowds,&rdquo; Poltneck objected weakly. &ldquo;I am just a simple
+      man. Already I am without voice. I beg of you to send for Chautonville of
+      the opera.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dabnitz was puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan reflected swiftly at this point that the smile might be neither
+      deep nor portentous&mdash;a single accomplishment, some stray refinement
+      perhaps that had leaked back somehow to the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no. I am afraid. I belong back among the wounded. I am very good
+      there. This is not my place&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you require men to assist you to the trenches? Already I have talked
+      too long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yesterday I was an anesthetic,&rdquo; Poltneck wailed. &ldquo;To-day I am to be a
+      stimulant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kohlvihr now came forward. &ldquo;It is time,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General,&rdquo; said Dabnitz, &ldquo;we have to deal with an unusual peasant, I am
+      afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would not do for me to encroach upon the work of professionals,&rdquo; the
+      singer explained in dilemma.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see he is humorous,&rdquo; Dabnitz observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We sent for you to sing to the soldiers. Will you do that?&rdquo; the General
+      asked, from puffing cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poltneck looked down at him with sudden steadiness. &ldquo;On the way home,&rdquo; he
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You refuse&mdash;then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would prefer that you wound them first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At least, he has declared himself,&rdquo; said Dabnitz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 2
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the man who would sing for the
+      wounded, but who would not sing men to their death. Come to think&mdash;there
+      was a prostitution about it. Certainly Poltneck had a point of view. And
+      he was a hair-raiser of quality... everything about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;must play it for Peter Mowbray,
+      too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You fellows certainly have your troubles&mdash;front and back,&rdquo; he said
+      to Dabnitz. &ldquo;But I say, Lieutenant, you couldn't ask troops to go forward
+      better&mdash;you couldn't ask more of the Japanese in the business of
+      charges&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't out in that service,&rdquo; Dabnitz observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grand little bunch of celibates afield, those Japanese&mdash;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&mdash;as yours did
+      to-day&mdash;out over their own dead, too&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and
+      turned away....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was like the swoop of a carrion bird an instant afterward&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kohlvihr's face was gray as the fringe of his hair. He looked little and
+      aged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My compliments to the commander,&rdquo; he was dictating, &ldquo;...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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dispatch rider was standing by. The dirt sprinkled down on their heads
+      through the wooden buttresses as another shrapnel broke outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the wounded, General. The field is alive with wounded&mdash;&rdquo; came
+      from Doltmir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't send troops out there again&mdash;&rdquo; The voice was thick and
+      hoarse with repression. &ldquo;We'll get them at nightfall.... Gentlemen, we may
+      now withdraw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan was actually afraid of his thoughts, lest they be read in his face&mdash;the
+      shocking personal business on Kohlvihr's part. &ldquo;A little shrapnel or two
+      sends him quaking home, and <i>they</i> went out five times for him into
+      the very steam of hell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His brain kept repeating this in spite of him, so that he did not try to
+      overtake the staff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And <i>they</i>&mdash;the poor last fragment of them&mdash;were piling
+      back toward Judenbach, leaving their wounded behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 3
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's Mowbray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dabnitz came close and looked at the other sorrowfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long have you known Mr. Mowbray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;not the Austrians, but enemies more subtle and
+      insidious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For God's sake&mdash;Dabnitz!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought it would hurt you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might just as well say it of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been with Mowbray night and day. He is a newspaper man, brain and
+      soul&mdash;one of the coolest and most effective I have ever met. He has
+      been for years in Paris and Berlin, before Warsaw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not. But a personal matter ought not to weigh against a man's life&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or that a woman came to him last night, in the heart of the night&mdash;and
+      talked long&mdash;and was called for by the same revolutionist; that Mr.
+      Mowbray went to her a little after daybreak this morning&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Dabnitz&mdash;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&mdash;you
+      turn around&mdash;and they are in an affair&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the two were overheard to speak of days in Warsaw together. It is not
+      such a little affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing of it, but is such a thing fatal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is under arrest with the other revolutionist that I mentioned&mdash;a
+      case against her that is hardly breakable&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan sat down,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you are aware&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dabnitz, I was shocked as you. Peter was beside himself. He had come in
+      from the field&mdash;the actuality of it. He forgot where he was. The
+      unparalleled energy of the General to win the day, you know&mdash;and
+      Peter had just come in from the hollows where the men lay&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Boylan, I'm sorry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you it is a mistake. The boy is as sound as&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He couldn't finish. There were exceptions to everything he thought of. &ldquo;I
+      want to see him,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll try to manage that for you, a little later.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <h3>
+      * * *
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, they'll shoot the lad,&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sentence remained in his brain in lit letters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The States of America couldn't help him; even Mother Nature had turned her
+      face from this war.... &ldquo;My dear Boylan, I'm sorry&mdash;&rdquo; something
+      crippling in that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dabnitz returned, bringing a pair of saddle bags.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're Mr. Mowbray's,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;His horse got loose and tangled himself
+      in a battery. One of the men brought in the bags.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, Lieutenant,&rdquo; said Boylan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dabnitz started to the door when Boylan called, &ldquo;Oh, I say, did you look
+      through 'em?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russian smiled deprecatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, I needn't have asked that, but I wanted you to. I'll gamble
+      you didn't find anything&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A little book of poems by a man we're familiar with. A woman's name on
+      the front page&mdash;a woman we're familiar with. Nothing startling, Mr.
+      Boylan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter will want these,&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V. &mdash; THE SKYLIGHT PRISON
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 1
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Peter walked ahead unbound. He could not keep his mind on the journey with
+      the sentry. His thoughts winged from Lonegan at Warsaw, to <i>The States''</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry,&rdquo; the poet said. &ldquo;I had hoped&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we had hoped,&rdquo; Peter replied with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came forward like a wraith&mdash;into the light&mdash;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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was much to it, hardly like a human episode&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, I could not believe&mdash;until I touched you. I was praying just
+      here, that you would not come&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very grateful to be here,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was so lonely. I was afraid of death. Fallows talked to me and Moritz
+      Abel&mdash;but it did not do. I was thinking of you at the battle, as if
+      you were a thousand miles away&mdash;as if I were waiting, as a mother for
+      you, waiting for tidings with a babe in her arms&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused and he said, &ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; knowing that she must speak on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...It was just like that. I prayed that you would live&mdash;that you
+      would not be brought here&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;I mean our
+      good friends&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must be very dear to each other&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did pray for them not to bring you here,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;If I had not left
+      Warsaw, you would not be here now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen&mdash;oh, Berthe, don't say that. Please, listen&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The current was turned on in his brain, thoughts revolving faster and
+      faster:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;the matter is lifted out of our
+      hands. And dear Berthe, what do you think it means to me&mdash;this last
+      hour together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it mean, Peter?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;and it didn't come to me until here in
+      Judenbach&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She must have known,&rdquo; Berthe whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fallows drew near. He seemed calm but very weary. &ldquo;May I bring up my chair
+      for a little while?&rdquo; he asked as an old nurse might.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please do,&rdquo; they said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; Fallows answered, and returned with his wooden chair. &ldquo;If you
+      change the subject I shall have to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just saying that I had found something in the world that my mother
+      knew all the time,&rdquo; Peter explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say, this is important. Moritz must come in,&rdquo; Fallows told them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They nodded laughingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moritz,&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;Here's a little boy and girl telling stories&mdash;very
+      important stories. You must hear.... We're all one, Peter Mowbray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I've always used my head,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;always explained why, and made diagrams. The one time I didn't use my
+      head&mdash;well, the best thing happened in my experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter was in for it, and weathered gracefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll forgive me,&rdquo; he said, when they asked to know. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not help thinking of that when I recalled another little matter
+      yesterday&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are good to let us listen,&rdquo; Fallows said quietly. He was staring at
+      the ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here in Judenbach the relations of all other days began to match up. It
+      was as if the whole war was to show <i>me</i>, 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&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fallows straightened his head and blinked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It was all slipping away in a loneliness not to be described,'&rdquo; he
+      repeated. &ldquo;We know that. This is too fine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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....
+      &ldquo;Peter, you're lying. I don't believe you'd let anybody see your fires&mdash;not
+      even how well you bank 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;Fallows
+      and Abel, and the woman who had changed him. They were before him now as
+      messengers from the benignant empire of the future&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...The laughable thing about it,&rdquo; he finished, &ldquo;&mdash;the thing that
+      held me speechless as Samarc left my side there in the dark corner of the
+      pit&mdash;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....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the magic of the
+      hospital steward's coat, the scent of the cedars, and Peter's persistent
+      sense of Berthe's nearness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Actually, I had to stop and think,&rdquo; he explained. &ldquo;Each time I fell into
+      an abstraction, it struck me that she was there. It seems yesterday, too&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was just here,&rdquo; Berthe said. &ldquo;It was soon after we came. We were all
+      quiet at first&mdash;in different corners&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Slipping away in that loneliness,&rdquo; Fallows suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As for me,&rdquo; said Moritz Abel, &ldquo;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&mdash;and I missed having something to do&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They smiled at him. &ldquo;Perhaps I was out there,&rdquo; Berthe said. &ldquo;Perhaps I was
+      only sitting here&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a magician,&rdquo; Abel said. &ldquo;He sang to them yesterday&mdash;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&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice broke a little. His brow was wet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fallows came back from the ceiling, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moritz, my boy, all is well with us. That which is true is immortal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 2
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Abel reflected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said presently, &ldquo;but we have not fulfilled our purpose.... You
+      know, we set out in high courage to start the army back home again&mdash;and
+      now, here we are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man named Columbus set out to discover a short passage to India and
+      found a New World. Really my son&mdash;these are not our affairs. We have
+      done what we could.... Once I wanted the world to answer abruptly to my
+      service&mdash;to speak up sharp. But I have made terms&mdash;hard terms we
+      all must make. This is it&mdash;to do our part the best we can, and keep
+      off the results. They are God's concern, Moritz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was younger,&rdquo; Fallows went on, &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They heard a voice in the street&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not well to welcome me,&rdquo; he groaned at last. &ldquo;I should have been
+      in a cell alone&mdash;not here among friends. You see in me the most
+      abject failure&mdash;a mere music-monger who forgot his greater work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were hoping not to see you,&rdquo; said Abel, &ldquo;yet sending our dearest
+      thoughts. What you have done is good, and we will not be denied a song.
+      Speak, Poltneck&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was all right till you went. I was thinking of everything&mdash;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&mdash;something
+      thrust upon me that makes sounds. The rest is emptiness. In fact there
+      must be emptiness where sounds come from&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We know better than that,&rdquo; said Fallows. &ldquo;Tell us and we will judge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poltneck straightened up and met the eyes of Peter. &ldquo;This is the
+      correspondent?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came up from the field this morning and in looking for us&mdash;fell
+      under suspicion,&rdquo; Berthe explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw your companion in the bomb-proof pit,&rdquo; Poltneck declared. &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at the faces about him, and continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;a pestilential place sunken in
+      the ground and covered with sods. There they broke it to me what was
+      wanted&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His listeners began to understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I was to sing to the lines,&rdquo; Poltneck added. &ldquo;It appears they had
+      been driven back several times, leaving their dead and wounded in such
+      numbers on the field&mdash;officers and men&mdash;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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't sing the lines into a new advance?&rdquo; Fallows asked. His face
+      looked lined and gray as he leaned forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poltneck's self-scorn was vitriolic as he now spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;the joy of astonishing. Oh, they were
+      without humor. It goes with the army&mdash;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&mdash;what I meant, and what the real state of my scorn was&mdash;at
+      least, in part. And I was taken away, very pleased with myself and joyous&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not see where you failed. Where, where?&rdquo; Berthe asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Fallows who understood first&mdash;even before Abel and Peter, who
+      was not so imbued with the specific passion of the revolutionist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was here&mdash;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,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have gone out to the lines and met the men face to face. Oh, it
+      is hard&mdash;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&mdash;all
+      the lines crumbling&mdash;the bomb-proof pit squashed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The final stroke fell upon him this instant. None of the others had
+      thought of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And these&mdash;doors! Living God, we could have opened these doors!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their hands went out to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 3
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;five
+      together, a singer, a poet, a peasant, and two lovers. It's like a
+      pastoral&mdash;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 <i>coup</i> 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&mdash;<i>The
+      Lord Is Mindful of His Own</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was started as one would answer a question&mdash;food in his hand, and
+      his eyes turned upward&mdash;a song of the Germans, too, the music of
+      Mendelssohn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... 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&mdash;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. ...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. ...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 4
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;an outsider, as never before.
+      Dabnitz came at last. Big Belt arose and clutched his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lieutenant,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;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&mdash;if you spare him. I don't
+      care to go to him&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;with Poltneck singing and all joined hands&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan's knees bent to the seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we will not disturb them for the time. We will let you know,&rdquo; said
+      Dabnitz. &ldquo;It would be a shame to interrupt such a pleasant party.
+      Judenbach will be our headquarters for one more night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 5
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Moritz Abel was saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;following the
+      spirit of the Good Samaritan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 6
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...I think we will be a little bewildered,&rdquo; she was saying, &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;that something long
+      anticipated is about to happen. You know how it comes to one upon
+      awakening, when something perfect is to happen&mdash;the presence of it,
+      before one remembers just what it is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter nodded in the shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then I will remember. It will be you. I will really open my eyes&mdash;and
+      you will be there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something of her fire came to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are sure it will be like that&mdash;afterward?&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice and lips trembled. &ldquo;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 <i>afterward?&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but I can't see it quite clearly, you know, as you do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't think it is all wayward and stupidly arranged as the army would
+      like to do it&mdash;do you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They laughed softly together, but she wanted him to see it, as she did,
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if you do, we will be together more quickly. I would
+      have to go and find you, if you didn't come&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should want to come,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; she said, her hand falling upon Peter's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;the fighting death&mdash;the
+      going-down with blood-madness and hatred for the men of another country&mdash;not
+      enemies at all, no harm exchanged whatsoever between them. It is such
+      deaths that make the world hard to breathe in&mdash;the death of preying
+      animals. But all that is passing. These battles had to come at the last to
+      hurry it away....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I wanted to say, Peter,&rdquo; Berthe whispered eagerly....
+      &ldquo;Fallows is greater than any,&mdash;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&mdash;with a curse and a passion for the death of men
+      whom you have never seen face to face?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's quite all right, you know,&rdquo; said Peter. &ldquo;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&mdash;yes, I'm sure of that&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hands pressed his swiftly. &ldquo;Then you may be very sure, there's
+      something deathless in the man she loves.... Listen, Fallows is talking
+      about your country now:&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a time for heroics,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;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&mdash;the song of the New
+      Age&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me so ashamed,&rdquo; Berthe whispered after a moment, &ldquo;when I think
+      of my weakness to-day, when you came. But, Peter, oh, I didn't want you to
+      come&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't be ashamed,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It gave me something from you that I
+      couldn't have had without it. There was plenty to hold a man in wonder&mdash;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&mdash;the
+      deepest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter had wanted to tell her that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 7
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Big Belt stood before a man of his own size&mdash;Lornievitch, the
+      Commander of commanders, Himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rows of sleepy stenographers in the outer room of a broad shepherd's house
+      in a little hill village&mdash;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&mdash;the center
+      of this monster battle-line&mdash;to say nothing of the spectacular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men now filled a small inner room. Lornievitch spoke English&mdash;an
+      English much to the caller's liking. Perhaps it was the bond of bulk
+      between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, and so you are Boylan of the <i>Rhodes?</i>&mdash;what is it, Mr.
+      Boylan? We are very busy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a young friend of <i>The States&rdquo;</i> he began and talked for three
+      minutes&mdash;talked until Lornievitch squirmed and his aides hurried
+      forward ready to assist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what does Kohlvihr say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have come here to me. Meanwhile, on the wire is the young man's
+      case&mdash;a love affair with a revolutionist&mdash;and a sort of
+      be-damned to the Russian army. You are a strong man, doubtless a brave one&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan was fighting for Peter's life as he would not have fought for his
+      own; and yet he warmed to the commander&mdash;fibers all through him
+      warming&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Mr. Boylan,&rdquo; Lornievitch added, &ldquo;what would you do in my case?
+      There's big action, front, side, within. They have a case against the
+      others&mdash;and he is one of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He may be one in a momentary infatuation&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, Boylan&mdash;this is no time for girls!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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 <i>loco,</i>
+      I'll take him home under my arm&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Boylan, what do you want of him this way? He's a newspaper
+      competitor&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;and a boy over it all. I didn't
+      know&mdash;until I found him in danger. I couldn't feel worse if I were
+      his old woman&mdash;I am twice his age, damn near&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;before final action
+      is taken. Maybe I'll look him over myself. Good night.... Oh, I say, Mr.
+      Boylan&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, General.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it doesn't matter. I was just thinking I'd like to have one friend
+      like young what's-his-name of <i>The States</i> has&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mowbray&mdash;Mowbray&mdash;don't forget the name, General&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan put his soul in it. He loved the Russians. It was far this side of
+      midnight, but he smelled the dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 8
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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 &ldquo;green noise&rdquo; of
+      spring breaks the iron cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was thinking of America, that she was &ldquo;bred right&rdquo;; 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&mdash;that
+      great emancipation of Alexander? And Russia now held the Earth's mighty
+      energy of fecundity&mdash;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&mdash;the Russian
+      voice that would challenge America to answer brother to brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The folk songs were singing in his soul, and the lines of Abel's <i>We Are
+      Free,</i> the friendships of Spenski and Samarc, of these in the room, and
+      the love of Berthe Wyndham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;These things are immortal.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, to-morrow,&rdquo; he exclaimed aloud suddenly, &ldquo;why, to-morrow, we will
+      laugh at today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it must have been the singing and all,&rdquo; he said breathlessly. &ldquo;It
+      got away from me. It has all been too fine to-day. I don't see&mdash;I
+      really don't&mdash;how I managed to earn it all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I brought your shaving-tackle,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Hello, Peter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The face in the thin ray looked like polished metal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in.&rdquo; Peter had him by the hand, which was easily pulled across the
+      threshold, but the body didn't move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I won't come in&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boylan, come in!... I want you to meet&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. I'll see you in the morning.... For God's sake, don't look so happy,
+      and keep your mouth shut.... Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How sensitive we are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All the weariness that he had ever known came upon him, gathering together
+      for descent, pressing out vitality, leaving him cold and undone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very tired,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Perhaps we can rest a little. The
+      three are resting.&rdquo; Then a little later, like a child half-asleep, she
+      added, &ldquo;I love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was her good-night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>&ldquo;Dear Peter&mdash;it's the day of our journey&mdash;&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're just a boy,&rdquo; Berthe remarked.... &ldquo;It must make one feel clean. It
+      has been years since I was present&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;that step
+      upon the stair, but only a sentry with tea and bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 9
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're looking for word from the Commander?&rdquo; Dabnitz asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So are we. It's up to him to-day. We're a mere wisp of what we were&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan simulated interest. There was but one idea in his world, however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way,&rdquo; Dabnitz added. &ldquo;The Commander asked for full particulars
+      this morning at three. They were sent to him&mdash;Mr. Mowbray's case&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan jerked up his chin. Of late, his woolen collar had apparently
+      shrunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't heard yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet. We're waiting&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing will be done until you hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in Mowbray's case. The others&mdash;the others have had tea.... They
+      are very quiet this morning&mdash;no singing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+      &ldquo;I'd better be there if you take the others and leave&mdash;leave Peter
+      Mowbray. He's impulsive. You wouldn't want a scene&mdash;you know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a minute&mdash;I think your matter is on the wire,&rdquo; Dabnitz said,
+      drawing back to the telegraph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he nodded, and a moment later handed Big Belt this message:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan's jaw dropped; his mouth filled with saliva. Dabnitz said
+      something, &ldquo;...desperately sorry... couldn't possibly have ended another
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come&mdash;this won't do,&rdquo; Big Belt muttered queerly. He was not
+      answering Dabnitz, but commanding himself.... He swallowed again and
+      turned:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will have charge of the affair?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, doubtless. It will be very short&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will wait for you below. Of course, I'll want to be there, you know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know,&rdquo; Dabnitz sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say, Lieutenant, come here a moment, please. I want to show you
+      something&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan led the Russian in, and turned. The place was empty. Dabnitz
+      regarded him wearily&mdash;then with sudden amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a choking wad of paper in his mouth. The
+      mammoth looked down upon him and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me, Lieutenant, but I had to have a chance to think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;as a corking
+      field man. You've been good to us, too&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dabnitz's eyes rolled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went forth carrying the paper. &ldquo;Lieutenant was called to another task,&rdquo;
+       he said haltingly to the enlisted officer in charge. &ldquo;Hold your men here,
+      until I come&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan saw four Russian officers rush to the 'phone from the telegraph
+      table.... Something had happened. He backed out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all off,&rdquo; he told the soldier. &ldquo;Go back to barracks. The enemy has
+      broken through&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;retreat to the eastward. It was no secret now.
+      The enemy was crossing the valley that Kohlvihr had found impassable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Belt felt the life brimming up in his heart. Then he thought of
+      Dabnitz, and went to him, shutting the door behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you <i>get</i> what's on, Lieutenant? Wink once&mdash;if you do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dabnitz shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the enemy breaking through. Judenbach is to be abandoned <i>pronto</i>.
+      Listen&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good. The sentries must be called off&mdash;that stair-door left open.
+      I'll join them&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was done emphatically; a beseeching for haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dabnitz, I trust you. I'll entertain you in America some time&mdash;all
+      Washington and New York.... You'll do exactly what I ask&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good.&rdquo; The gag was jerked free, and the various bindings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, come with me. I'll detain you but a second or two&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; Boylan said finally to Dabnitz. &ldquo;Here's your gun, Lieutenant. I'm
+      obliged to you. You'll know better some day what I mean by that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep them under cover,&rdquo; Dabnitz said hoarsely. &ldquo;I'll kill you or any of
+      the others that I see in the street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd be quite right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that you, Boylan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-morning. What's up?&rdquo; It was Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe he means to stick after all,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;He must see that I was
+      square with him&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Big Belt smiled grimly, as if he had heard his own words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0040" id="link2H_4_0040"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI. &mdash; THE FIELD OF HELMETS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 1
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it mean?&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It means that the door is open, the sentries gone. Big Belt is below and
+      the town wild with some new trouble&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Austrians must have broken through,&rdquo; said Fallows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are to stay until he gives us word,&rdquo; Peter added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Berthe was leading him back to the shadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, does it mean that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw the dark low-glowing jewel in her eyes&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we may almost dare to hope,&rdquo; he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The still snowy woods&mdash;only a brave bird or two remaining&mdash;the
+      short brilliant days and early nightfall&mdash;our talks that will never
+      come to an end&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something of her longing frightened him&mdash;the danger of its intensity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we may almost dare to hope,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter, I think&mdash;I think you are braver than any&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you did not <i>see</i> 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&mdash;I saw it the first day in Warsaw&mdash;the deadly
+      courage. You had built no dream. You asked no future. You faced it&mdash;light
+      or black.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Berthe&mdash;I almost broke this morning&mdash;when I looked at you
+      sleeping&mdash;and last night after Boylan came.... I think I would have
+      fought them in the street! It seemed&mdash;blasphemous for them to kill
+      you&mdash;those dim fellows&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...Peter&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's strong&mdash;too strong,&rdquo; she murmured vaguely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavy step that Peter knew was upon the stairs. He listened. Yes, it
+      was alone. Boylan appeared in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to him,&rdquo; Berthe whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter obeyed. There was a gladness for him in the touch of the big hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell us, Boylan,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Russians?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Abel had propped a chair behind Big Belt, who sank into it eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Austrians have broken through?&rdquo; Poltneck said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not quite sure about that,&rdquo; Boylan answered. &ldquo;The column I saw from
+      the main road a minute ago&mdash;coming up from the valley&mdash;looked
+      like <i>helmets</i> to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Berthe, what did you mean by <i>'strong&mdash;too strong'?&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter had stepped back to her for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I say that?&rdquo; she whispered smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't think of anything&mdash;but my love for you. It must have been
+      that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 2
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sing to 'em, Poltneck&mdash;The Lord Is Mindful of His Own&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter talked: &ldquo;Four of the hospital service from Warsaw, and two American
+      correspondents, until to-day with the Russian army&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The platoon-officer ordered his men at rest and sent for his Captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prisoners, you may sing,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two American correspondents,&mdash;these two,&rdquo; he reported. &ldquo;The others
+      are of the hospital service of the enemy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poltneck had finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why are you here?&rdquo; the officer asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were at work all night,&rdquo; said Peter, &ldquo;and were here for a little
+      rest. The change this morning was effected before they were aware. We were
+      helping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were helping?&rdquo; the officer repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There has been much to do in the hospitals. We have been in Judenbach&mdash;this
+      is the fourth day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will look at your passports&mdash;yours and this gentleman's&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The papers were produced. It was almost like a hand that came to Peter at
+      this instant, though Berthe had not moved&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not until this moment&mdash;the German officer examining his
+      passports, the ranker studying the insignia upon his sleeve&mdash;that
+      Peter met the disaster of the future. It suddenly appeared to him&mdash;that
+      life apart from <i>these</i> 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&mdash;the stone and
+      iron of its nature, the ineffable cruelty of its meaning and morale....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These seem to be very complete and satisfactory,&rdquo; the young officer
+      reported presently. &ldquo;I shall furnish an escort to accompany you and Mr.&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boylan,&rdquo; said the voice of the Rhodes' Agency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;to our Colonel Ulrich in charge of the garrison. These papers will
+      go with you of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter cleared his voice and said steadily: &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We appreciate your sacrifice,&rdquo; said the officer, &ldquo;perhaps <i>we</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some time again, dear friend&mdash;we will work together. All is well
+      with us&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan had arisen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your escort is ready,&rdquo; the German said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 3
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those were the terrible days of November, and the two Americans were
+      forgotten at length&mdash;as a pair of buttons on the German uniform,
+      forgotten because they served and were not in the way. All that had <i>not</i>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I ever get out of here,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I'll write one story&mdash;one
+      battle till I die&mdash;and I'll call it 'Vintage Fourteen'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For he was sick of the spilled wine of men. And other armies were fighting
+      in the vineyards of France&mdash;as were these in the piney hills of the
+      ancient shepherd kings; and what a fertilizing it was for the manhandled
+      lands of Europe&mdash;potash and phosphor and nitrogen in the perfect
+      solution of the human blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More and more Boylan saw that Peter was queer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't think,&rdquo; the latter would say. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They call this the great German fighting machine,&rdquo; Peter whispered to
+      Boylan one night, &ldquo;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&mdash;like a great body killing
+      itself piece by piece&mdash;all waste and death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...One night Boylan asked as they lay down:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peter Mowbray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yep, and I'm Boylan. You're at liberty to correct if wrong. Are we ever
+      going to die or get out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know.... Boylan, you've been good to me. We're two to make one&mdash;eye
+      to eye&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;soft as
+      smashed grapes. It's my devil. If you break down, I'll show him to you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn't hurt you to bellow like a girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe not, but I'd shoot my head off first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shut up, Peter, or you'll get me. I've shown you more now than any living
+      soul knows&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to show it to a woman. A man isn't right until a woman knows
+      him in and out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the love of God&mdash;go to sleep!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a picture lifted
+      from the hundred-mile ruck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the cavalry went into action and guns moved away farther to the east
+      for higher emplacement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're going to charge the horses up into the town. They haven't much
+      respect for the infantry trenches,&rdquo; said Boylan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've trapped what they think they can handle&mdash;and fired the
+      bridges by wire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan said: &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;suddenly vanished under the hideous blat of the machines&mdash;whole
+      rows rubbed into the earth&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Americans forgot themselves. Cavalry gone&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;the hands up from the
+      center of the river....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;hit again and the night slowly settled
+      upon him, bringing the bells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 4
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Big Belt talked to himself in that blizzard of fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's hit&mdash;hit twice&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;but a thin and
+      straggling output on the far bank. Scenes enacting in the center of the
+      current shook his heart&mdash;faces and arms against the black water, the
+      struggles and the cries of men as they were whipped away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;and yet nerve must remain king of every action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Boylan's fears were equalized now by the sudden dread of the man behind.
+      If he slipped he would catch at Peter's body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go slow&mdash;that's the trick!&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;Feel for your footing each
+      time. It's there. I tell you it's there, man! We rise in a moment more&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt the jointure with his feet&mdash;some renewal or stoppage of the
+      timber. He halted, yelling at the man behind:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait&mdash;something different! I'll get you through&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the slight turn of the top timbers as they had reached the apex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the top of the bridge,&rdquo; he yelled above the boom of the current, &ldquo;&mdash;a
+      turn like the peak of a low roof. A slight turn to the right. Now the
+      climb&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put it in Russian somehow, making the words clear. His intensity was
+      almost madness to keep the other's hands off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...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&mdash;to and fro&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; someone piped sharply in German.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had moved long through the dark toward a moving file of lights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two American correspondents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that you carry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The other one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two American correspondents,&rdquo; the voice repeated.... &ldquo;Search....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Peter looked into the dazzle of a flashlight, and the familiar voice
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he's hard hit and heavy as hell.... Passports in hip pocket-handle
+      him gently. ... Thanks, I'll take care of this man&mdash;unless you have a
+      stretcher&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To whom were you formerly assigned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To Colonel Ulrich. We were across the river when that trap was sprung
+      this afternoon&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;at least I am of that opinion....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no other way&mdash;I've got to get through the lines&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite right,&rdquo; Boylan answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want to fail. She wouldn't look twice at a man who failed&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was hump-backed&mdash;no lips&mdash;teeth like a dog&mdash;and the
+      trooper shot him through the mouth&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, but he's dead. His back is straight now&mdash;don't look any
+      worse now than ten thousand others....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hai, you!&rdquo; he heard in the familiar tones. &ldquo;I can't go any further. Send
+      a stretcher or a wagon. Tell 'em two American correspondents are sitting
+      out here&mdash;one with a bullet or two through his chest of drawers&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bed was sinking now.... Then he was dragged across the big man's lap,
+      and the voice was saying:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 5
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter didn't know. He was a lump&mdash;one little red lamp burning in that
+      long house of a man&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>coup</i> 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Order in Sondreig soothed. It was like a fine <i>morale</i> 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&mdash;as
+      if waiting for its messiah. There was a glad quiet in the thronging
+      streets that seemed to say, &ldquo;It has come....&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he found that Peter would live&mdash;all the pathological vortices
+      past&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;at least, from this campaign&mdash;and he was struck as
+      never before with the main fact&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;to come home to a house of little ones in quantity and
+      many women&mdash;a broad house of aunts, sisters and old women, a long
+      broad table of all ages, the many problems resting on him&mdash;and one
+      woman looking straight across.... She would know everything, and yet would
+      advise with him&mdash;quiet discussions of policy regarding this one or
+      that one, and the interposition of food....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were gone. He thought of his companion&mdash;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&mdash;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 <i>what he lacked</i>,
+      yet were restless for the harshness and crudity of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they only knew what they have,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;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&mdash;had <i>they</i> taken to the open when the old
+      call came.... <i>Ordering the kids to be quiet</i>&mdash;Good God&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether it was the audacity of fatherhood that called this last into the
+      world, or the face of the woman who had passed him&mdash;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!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wounded man was not awake. Boylan had objected from the first to his
+      manner of breathing&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter's face was wan and boyish&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter was still afar off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, ma'am&mdash;I think he will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She came to him now. &ldquo;I saw you last night,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;I saw you
+      come here. I could not come until now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Humph&mdash;&rdquo; or something of the sort was heard from Boylan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Berthe appeared to draw a certain truth from the situation. Perhaps she
+      saw <i>the woman</i> in Boylan&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's knit to you. He might die if you go,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something about her choked him. He had been with men so continually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then I can't stay,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;But I am so thankful to have
+      found you&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently she said again: &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're an all-right young woman,&rdquo; Big Belt managed to remark. &ldquo;I knew
+      something of that.&rdquo; Then, in a panic, he added: &ldquo;He'll know you to-night.
+      He's cool now. He'll pull through. He'll know you to-night, and then I
+      go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;they may say <i>no</i>.&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;He'll have all that he needs until you come,&rdquo; Boylan said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter looked beyond him and around the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to sleep,&rdquo; said Boylan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Belt stepped aside. Peter managed to get a knuckle up to rub his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's back with us,&rdquo; Boylan whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't go,&rdquo; she pleaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be a fool,&rdquo; said Boylan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was very poor and weak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, mother,&rdquo; he said, lifting her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked into his face in a way that roweled the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on,&rdquo; he said softly. &ldquo;We'll have some breakfast. And you'll tell me
+      about it. I belong to the widows and the fatherless, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So they rocked away together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 6
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;such a moment as would make a woman
+      homesick in heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...An officer came to her from the bullet-ward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are to stay until Mr. Boylan, the correspondent, comes,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But will they know? They were good to let me come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Colonel Hartz has signed the order. Word has been sent to the entrainment
+      wards. You were attached there, I believe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us know in case of any need here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 7
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boylan, by the One God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Herr Hartz&mdash;by the same!&rdquo; Big Belt exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now they embraced&mdash;a mighty affair, a memorable spectacle of
+      pounding, of disengagement, of renewed embrace&mdash;so that soldiers and
+      hospital men circled wide in passing, and the little street was hushed
+      with the exceeding joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The table was between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But first,&rdquo; said Boylan, &ldquo;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&mdash;it is a good story,
+      which I will tell in good time&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much words for a little thing&mdash;dictate and I write. Then tell me
+      of yourself, which is more imbortant&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;...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&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Herr Hartz snorted. He did not care to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She didn't stay in Warsaw,&rdquo; Boylan went on, with great intensity. &ldquo;No, my
+      friend, she joined the hospital corps, and followed him afield&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Russians take anyone for the hosbittles,&rdquo; the other remarked
+      impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;a good boy, Colonel&mdash;and a good girl&mdash;but war.
+      I say, we learned something about men, you and I&mdash;long ago&mdash;-&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Herr Hartz now beamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We learned it,&rdquo; he breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;but you can arrange the rest&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For God's sake, what do you want? You talk and talk about such people and
+      women and love stories&mdash;when we have so much to say about ourselves&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be patient. We have all time,&rdquo; said Big Belt. &ldquo;I only want them together&mdash;a
+      true married pair. Then they will be off my hands. You can make
+      Headquarters forget she is Polish&mdash;that is all. Some little place
+      apart&mdash;for them to be together while he heals&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;yes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      Chapter 8
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've done what seemed best,&rdquo; he began abruptly in a whisper. &ldquo;It appears
+      to have accomplished what I set out after, but it's likely a ruffian's way&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her gray eyes widened, her face blanched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Belt cleared his throat. Whispering was difficult.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I met an old friend who made possible your remaining here. He's to send
+      you into the country&mdash;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can make Sondreig forget that?&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are very old friends. We were out together in a former service&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we are to be sent into the country&mdash;as soon as Peter is able?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is the terrible part?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There might have been a better way, but I didn't think of it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what, Mr. Boylan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him that you two were married&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, I told him that you two were married&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;and then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Big Belt backed from her, and sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There isn't any <i>then</i>,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That's it.... That you were
+      married in Warsaw, and followed him to the field&mdash;without his
+      knowing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, ma'am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you frightened me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      ...Boylan was on the stairs. He halted, turned back. She came to him
+      eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>were</i> you married?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. But it's such a little thing compared to what might have happened&mdash;to
+      keep us apart. I mean what might have happened here.... Oh, God bless
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He twisted his chin away from his collar, drew it clear with his hand,
+      cleared his throat to speak, and vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0049" id="link2H_4_0049"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII. &mdash; THE GREEN OF CEDARS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;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&mdash;an enchanted one to Berthe and
+      Mowbray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, there are whole days I can't account for,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;He must
+      have had me strapped to him for days at a time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Fallows, Berthe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not far from here,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Not as far as Sondreig from here&mdash;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&mdash;the cholera quarantine.... But he left a message for you to
+      carry, Peter&mdash;gave it to me for you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;just after the battle of Liaoyang, the
+      Russians in full retreat, he had written his story of the battle&mdash;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&mdash;asked me to
+      give it to you when you were better&mdash;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.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is very dear to us, Peter&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;because you are of his country. He said it again
+      and again: 'She must see it. It is her immortal opportunity,' meaning
+      America&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is his story so we can see it?&rdquo; Peter asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...<i>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, &ldquo;Disaster.&rdquo; ...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&mdash;gloomy millions of the tundras, mighty millions of the
+      ice-ringing plains&mdash;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&mdash;southward to slaughter through the long night</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...A call to America through the long night&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ...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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Peter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Berthe asked: &ldquo;Is there anything we can do for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed his head in the doorway, and they saw beyond him the winding
+      aisles of the forest&mdash;green and white, the dusk creeping in.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE END
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <i>A brief expression of the critical Reception of</i>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      DOWN AMONG MEN
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ <i>Outlook</i>: Possessed of a marvelous descriptive genius, equipped
+with a remarkably flexible use of English and impelled by the passion of
+a mystic&mdash;the author of Down Among Men has written a striking novel.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Dial</i>: Seems to us the most exalted and appealing story Mr.
+      Comfort has thus far written.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Argonaut</i>: A novel of extraordinary power. It is good as <i>Routledge
+      Rides Alone</i>. It could hardly be better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>London Post</i>: 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>: There is so much real fire in it&mdash;the fire
+      of youth that has seen and suffered&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Chicago Record-Herald</i>: An almost perfect tale of courage and
+      adventure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Chicago Tribune</i>: Contains some of the most remarkable scenes that
+      have appeared in recent American fiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>New York Times</i>: Few richer novels than this of Mr. Comfort's have
+      been published in many a long day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>New York Globe</i>: 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Springfield Republican: Down Among Men</i> is perhaps the most
+      ambitious American novel that has come out during the past year.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      MIDSTREAM
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      ...A hint from the first-year's recognition of a book that was made to
+      remain in American literature:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Boston Transcript</i>: 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 <i>Huckleberry
+      Finn</i>.... 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 <i>Midstream</i> to the very long life that is enjoyed only by
+      the very best of books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>San Francisco Argonaut</i>: 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Springfield Republican</i>: It is difficult to think of any other young
+      American who has so courageously reversed the process of writing for the
+      &ldquo;market&rdquo; 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, <i>Midstream</i>,
+      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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Fanton Roberts in The <i>Craftsman</i>: 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ida Gilbert Myers in <i>Washington Star</i>: 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&mdash;the greatest thing that this writer has yet
+      done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Soule in <i>The Little Review</i>: Here is a man's life laid
+      absolutely bare. A direct, big thing, so simple that almost no one has
+      done it before&mdash;this Mr. Comfort has dared. People who are made
+      uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything, to whom reserve is more
+      important than truth&mdash;these will not read <i>Midstream</i> through,
+      but others will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute nobility
+      of Mr. Comfort's frankness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edwin Markham in <i>Hearst's Magazine</i>: 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&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Fleece, by Will Levington Comfort
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Fleece, by Will Levington Comfort
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Red Fleece
+
+Author: Will Levington Comfort
+
+
+Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6351]
+This file was first posted on November 29, 2002
+Last Updated: July 3, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED FLEECE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Fleece, by Will Levington Comfort
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Fleece, by Will Levington Comfort
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+Title: Red Fleece
+
+Author: Will Levington Comfort
+
+Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6351]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 29, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED FLEECE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Fleece, by Will Levington Comfort
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