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