Books: Red Fleece
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Will Levington Comfort >> Red Fleece
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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---"
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