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