Books: Red Fleece

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Herr Hartz now beamed.

"We learned it," he breathed.

"They make only a few on the pattern of Mowbray.... Last night I saw
her in the street here at Sondreig.... So you see why I arranged for
her to take my place at his side--but you can arrange the rest--"

"For God's sake, what do you want? You talk and talk about such people
and women and love stories--when we have so much to say about
ourselves--"

"Be patient. We have all time," said Big Belt. "I only want them
together--a true married pair. Then they will be off my hands. You can
make Headquarters forget she is Polish--that is all. Some little place
apart--for them to be together while he heals--"

"Such a lot of talk for small things. It shall be done, Boylan, with a
paper. I will send them to the country and monobolize you myself. This
is a big war--yes?"

Chapter 8

A last time he climbed to the floor above the apothecary shop. If only
she wouldn't act up. A serious thing, this he had done. Big Belt felt
that he had rushed matters, possibly treading upon a host of delicate
and incomprehensible affairs. But, when he had found in Colonel Hartz
a man to make action of his words, he had plunged....

Peter was asleep. The woman came forward noiselessly, offering her
hand. By her face he knew that all was well with the patient. Boylan
had stiffened to resist the pang of Peter's passing from his life.
This had so far prevented his voice from softening to the woman. It
was now evening.

"I've done what seemed best," he began abruptly in a whisper. "It
appears to have accomplished what I set out after, but it's likely a
ruffian's way--"

Her gray eyes widened, her face blanched.

Big Belt cleared his throat. Whispering was difficult.

"I met an old friend who made possible your remaining here. He's to
send you into the country--as soon as the young fellow is able to be
moved. You are to take care of him there. You see, my friend happened
to be second in command here at Sondreig, and he thinks he can make
all concerned forget that you were picked up from the opposition in
Judenbach--"

"Can make Sondreig forget that?" she whispered.

"We are very old friends. We were out together in a former service--"

"And we are to be sent into the country--as soon as Peter is able?"

"Yes."

"But what is the terrible part?"

"There might have been a better way, but I didn't think of it--"

"Oh, what, Mr. Boylan?"

"I told him that you two were married--"

"Yes."

"I say, I told him that you two were married--"

"Yes--and then?"

Big Belt backed from her, and sat down.

"There isn't any _then_," he said. "That's it.... That you were
married in Warsaw, and followed him to the field--without his
knowing."

"Is that all?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Oh, you frightened me."

...Boylan was on the stairs. He halted, turned back. She came to him
eagerly.

"But _were_ you married?" he asked.

"No. But it's such a little thing compared to what might have
happened--to keep us apart. I mean what might have happened here....
Oh, God bless you!"

He twisted his chin away from his collar, drew it clear with his hand,
cleared his throat to speak, and vanished.

VII

THE GREEN OF CEDARS

It wasn't an open fire, but a little iron stove that got so red that
it trembled, and at intervals could hardly contain the puttering of
the pine; and there was a one-armed soldier, who spent the long
forenoons cutting carefully and piling, until there was a rustic
wainscot half around the room, the drying breath of which was the
purest fragrance in the world.... They petted the soldier until an
officer came down.

It was the hunting forest of a certain Count, and the hut they lived
in was but the lodge of one of his keepers; but it was far enough from
the great mansion (where wounded officers of royal blood and toppling
rank healed or died in much the same fashion as other men) to afford
the silence and solitude they had dreamed of. And all about them the
great trees pondered between the winds--pine and balsam, cedar and
fir. It had looked like a bit of an island from the Sondreig window,
but proved a true forest when they reached there--an enchanted one to
Berthe and Mowbray.

Twice Boylan came down for a day, bringing Moritz Abel the second
time; but the Colonel, whose authority had done so much for them,
required much of Big Belt, and there was a woman (some mystery about
this) who would keep dinner waiting, he said. So both times he had
started back while there remained light in the sky. And Peter had
become thoughtful.

"Why, there are whole days I can't account for," he muttered. "He must
have had me strapped to him for days at a time."

He had asked for Poltneck, of whom she had seen the last in Judenbach.
The Germans had loved his singing and made very much of him; and Peter
had asked for Moritz Abel before the latter came for the day. Berthe
had answered freely, but of Duke Fallows she had not spoken in a way
to satisfy his questions. In fact, it was not until the day that Peter
first crossed the little room alone that she seemed ready to speak.
That afternoon he had called her from the window.

"Where is Fallows, Berthe?"

"Not far from here," she said. "Not as far as Sondreig from here--a
place you have never seen, but I watched it every day from the window
of the apothecary shop until you were moved. He offered himself at
once when he heard--the cholera quarantine.... But he left a message
for you to carry, Peter--gave it to me for you.

"I saw him for a few brief moments after he had volunteered. He talked
of you and that other American boy of the other war. He said that the
night he separated from that other--just after the battle of Liaoyang,
the Russians in full retreat, he had written his story of the battle--
the story of the Ploughman, and intrusted it to his friend to carry to
America. He wants you to carry his story of this service--asked me to
give it to you when you were better--to take to America with yours.
'Just a picture,' he said. 'It may be all wrong, but I see it so to-
night, and I would like to have it come out in America some time.'

"He is very dear to us, Peter--that old burning exile. Some time we
may understand his love for America.... It was hard to let him go.
They fight day and night in the Stockade. They are trying to spare
Sondreig.... I wish you might have been with him that last night
before he went. It was before I found you--before I saw the big man in
the street.... He was glad to go. There was no sense of sacrifice in
it. His whole sense was of our sorrow and the world's sorrow. But it
would have been good for him if you had been there--because you are of
his country. He said it again and again: 'She must see it. It is her
immortal opportunity,' meaning America--"

"Is his story so we can see it?" Peter asked.

"Yes."

She took from her breast a little chamois, in which was wrapped two
pages of tough tissue, spread them out, drew her chair close to him,
and read this picture Fallows had made, and his message to America:

..._It is the long night of Europe. France sits in dust upon the
ground, staring toward the End. Mother England has called for her
sons, and some have not answered. She turns her frost-rimed glass from
the grim horizons to the grimmer skies, and always in the movement of
the darkened shadows is written the word, "Disaster." ...Smileless
Germany, stricken as never a nation was stricken before, save by the
wrath of God, still holds to the fatal enchantment of a fatherland of
the ground, while the changes in the Prussian boundaries are marked in
fire and the blood of her children.... Russia is looking southward,
furious to open her casements upon the perilous seas--gloomy millions
of the tundras, mighty millions of the ice-ringing plains--looking
southward, marching southward, to-day marking time, to-morrow a
league, but southward as a ship in passage. Russia, the young, holy
genii battling with demons in her breast, everything to win and only
the fruits of her world-shocking fecundity to lose--southward to
slaughter through the long night.

...A call to America through the long night--the voice calling for her
to put on her splendid, her initial magic. The voice from the vision
of sorrow-illumined men in frozen bivouacs, crying to America to hold
fast to the dream of her Founders, lest the vessel of the future be
drained of vital essence, indeed--to hold fast until we come ...crying
for America to answer, not with rapacious intellect, not the answer of
a militant body, but an answer from the soul of the New World, with
its original vitality in the Fatherhood of God.

...Repeating through the long night that the patience of Nature is
exhausted with the hate of man for man; that the hatred of nation for
nation is a lost experiment; that the bitter romance of the predatory
is a story finished in hell; that the passion for self and boundary is
done, that Compassion for neighbor and nation is the art of the
future; crying the end of the national soul and the stroke of the hour
for the birth of the world-soul; crying to America, the only temple,
the sole house of nativity, to put on again her youthful magic, to
ignite afresh the Gleam of her Founders, to arise to her superb and
heroic destiny._ They sat in silence until the tap at the door. It
was the one-armed soldier, who came in, regarded the stove critically
inside and out, judiciously chose one knot of pine, inserted it with
grave care, and, departing, inquired if there was anything further he
could do.

"No," said Peter.

And Berthe asked: "Is there anything we can do for you?"

He bowed his head in the doorway, and they saw beyond him the winding
aisles of the forest--green and white, the dusk creeping in.

THE END

_A brief expression of the critical Reception of_

DOWN AMONG MEN

_Outlook_: Possessed of a marvelous descriptive genius, equipped
with a remarkably flexible use of English and impelled by the passion
of a mystic--the author of Down Among Men has written a striking
novel.

_The Dial_: Seems to us the most exalted and appealing story Mr.
Comfort has thus far written.

_The Argonaut_: A novel of extraordinary power. It is good as
_Routledge Rides Alone_. It could hardly be better.

_London Post_: Alive with incident, bounding with physical
energy, dramatic in coloring, and modern in every phrase. He has a
message delivered with vigor, inspired with tense passion.

_Atlantic Monthly_: There is so much real fire in it--the fire of
youth that has seen and suffered--so much vitality and passion that
one grows chary of petty comments. The writer offers us the cup of
life, and there is blood in the cup.

_Chicago Record-Herald_: An almost perfect tale of courage and
adventure.

_Chicago Tribune_: Contains some of the most remarkable scenes
that have appeared in recent American fiction.

_New York Times_: Few richer novels than this of Mr. Comfort's
have been published in many a long day.

_New York Globe_: We can say in all sincerity that we know of no
recent bit of descriptive writing that can match this for sustained,
breathless, dramatic interest.

_Springfield Republican: Down Among Men_ is perhaps the most
ambitious American novel that has come out during the past year.

MIDSTREAM

...A hint from the first-year's recognition of a book that was made to
remain in American literature:

_Boston Transcript_: If it be extravagance, let it be so, to say
that Comfort's account of his childhood has seldom been rivaled in
literature. It amounts to revelation. Really the only parallels that
will suggest themselves in our letters are the great ones that occur
in _Huckleberry Finn_.... This man Comfort's gamut is long and he
has raced its full length. One wonders whether the interest, the
skill, the general worth of it, the things it has to report of all
life, as well as the one life, do not entitle _Midstream_ to the
very long life that is enjoyed only by the very best of books.

_San Francisco Argonaut_: Read the book. It is autobiography in
its perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being,
more of god and devil in conflict, than any book of its kind.

_Springfield Republican_: It is difficult to think of any other
young American who has so courageously reversed the process of writing
for the "market" and so flatly insisted upon being taken, if at all,
on his own terms of life and art. And now comes his frank and amazing
revelation, _Midstream_, in which he captures and carries the
reader on to a story of regeneration. He has come far; the question
is, how much farther will he go?

Mary Fanton Roberts in The _Craftsman_: Beside the stature of
this book, the ordinary novel and biography are curiously dwarfed. You
read it with a poignant interest and close it with wonder, reverence
and gratitude. There is something strangely touching about words so
candid, and a draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such
wild and bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink
deep, penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches.
This man's words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is
breathing into a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the
inspiration of a quickened life.

Ida Gilbert Myers in _Washington Star_: Courage backs this
revelation. The gift of self-searching animates it. Honesty sustains
it. And Mr. Comfort's rare power to seize and deliver his vision
inspires it. It is a tremendous thing--the greatest thing that this
writer has yet done.

George Soule in _The Little Review_: Here is a man's life laid
absolutely bare. A direct, big thing, so simple that almost no one has
done it before--this Mr. Comfort has dared. People who are made
uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything, to whom reserve is more
important than truth--these will not read _Midstream_ through,
but others will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute
nobility of Mr. Comfort's frankness.

Edwin Markham in _Hearst's Magazine_: Will Levington Comfort, a
novelist of distinction, has given us a book alive with human
interest, with passionate sincerity, and with all the power of his
despotism over words. He has been a wandering foot--familiar with many
strands; he has known shame and sorrow and striving; he has won to
serene heights. He tells it all without vaunt, relating his experience
to the large meanings of life for all men, to the mystic currents
behind life, out of which we come, to whose great deep we return.

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