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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”