A most satisfying adventure, so that Big Belt added many things to the matters which could not be related. The old mother had told him of her son (as they sat together in the little room she called home) and Boylan had seen in him a singular hero, and made the mother see it. Presently he strode forth to the shops and returned with many packages of food affairs, and a cart of fuel following. The prodigious prices which these things commanded in Sondreig appealed to him as a trifle; in fact, the simplicity of life on these direct terms of living first hand, struck him as the eternally right way.... Then she cooked for him, very intent and eager in the great joy of it, agitated by his praise. In fact, he went to great lengths of breakfasting to show his appreciation; until, perceiving what he had done, he strode forth again with replenished understanding and restocked the cupboard by means of the cart.... Yes, he would come to-morrow.... Yes, by all means, while he was in Sondreig.
Even if he had not thought of the white-fire creature being held in the room above the apothecary shop for his return, Boylan had found it necessary to leave the old mother, since she could not be made to eat with him there. She would have cooked for him until she fell by the fire, but as for her sharing the repast, she begged him to have peace, that time was plentiful for that.... He was thinking it all out once more, a most delectable incident, as he walked swiftly through the snow toward the apothecary shop, when his shoulder was plucked by a passerby, and he turned, stiffening a bit at the roughness of it. A black-bearded man of much rank peered into his face, crying out:
“Boylan, by the One God!”
“Herr Hartz—by the same!” Big Belt exclaimed.
And now they embraced—a mighty affair, a memorable spectacle of pounding, of disengagement, of renewed embrace—so that soldiers and hospital men circled wide in passing, and the little street was hushed with the exceeding joy.
“Come and live with me, Boylan. I will not take no for an answer. Come at once, and let us a table between us have, to prevent further inderrupption of travvic—”
At no time would the cause of this majestic effusion have been made clear to an outsider, though it was plain that the American correspondent and the German officer of rank shared it alike. The truth: these two, and two others somewhere in the world, were the surviving four of a complement of over thirty men who had made up the original outfit now known as the Schmedding Polar Failure. Colonel Hartz, detached from his cavalry command for service in the prison-hospital at Sondreig, was second in command here as he had been to Schmedding in that former ill-starred expedition.
The table was between them.
“But first,” said Boylan, “there is a little business in which you can help. My friend, Mowbray... is just coming back to life from Russian wounds. I could not leave him without being assured of his care. There is one little nurse from the entrainment wards—it is a good story, which I will tell in good time—competent to care for him. She is there now, but I have already stayed longer than her leave granted. She must be set at rest, and word sent also to her own post—”
“So much words for a little thing—dictate and I write. Then tell me of yourself, which is more imbortant—”
It happened, even after the messages were sent, that Boylan spoke very little of himself. He was grappling with a certain final disposal. His talk was colored with desire. In fact, within an hour he had reached the critical part of his narrative, and was becoming more glib momentarily as the way out cleared:
“...You see, they met in Warsaw, where I was stationed before the war. She did not tell him what was in her mind. He parted from her—as any other married man taking the field. We were together with Kohlvihr's column, of which I will tell you later.... Now what do you think?”
Herr Hartz snorted. He did not care to think.
“She didn't stay in Warsaw,” Boylan went on, with great intensity. “No, my friend, she joined the hospital corps, and followed him afield—”
“The Russians take anyone for the hosbittles,” the other remarked impatiently.
“Exactly; and my friend Mowbray found her nursing sick soldiers in Judenbach. It happened that they were together when the city changed hands. By the way, there was much of interest in those days of which I will tell you later.... This is the point. She was a Polish prisoner—he an American non-combatant. I advised them to say nothing for the present that they were married. It was very ticklish to change hands anyway, and would have complicated the position of each one. So they were separated. He was with me day by day until he was wounded. He moved in a dream without her—a good boy, Colonel—and a good girl—but war. I say, we learned something about men, you and I—long ago—-”
Herr Hartz now beamed.
“We learned it,” he breathed.
“They make only a few on the pattern of Mowbray.... Last night I saw her in the street here at Sondreig.... So you see why I arranged for her to take my place at his side—but you can arrange the rest—”
“For God's sake, what do you want? You talk and talk about such people and women and love stories—when we have so much to say about ourselves—”
“Be patient. We have all time,” said Big Belt. “I only want them together—a true married pair. Then they will be off my hands. You can make Headquarters forget she is Polish—that is all. Some little place apart—for them to be together while he heals—”
“Such a lot of talk for small things. It shall be done, Boylan, with a paper. I will send them to the country and monobolize you myself. This is a big war—yes?”
A last time he climbed to the floor above the apothecary shop. If only she wouldn't act up. A serious thing, this he had done. Big Belt felt that he had rushed matters, possibly treading upon a host of delicate and incomprehensible affairs. But, when he had found in Colonel Hartz a man to make action of his words, he had plunged....
Peter was asleep. The woman came forward noiselessly, offering her hand. By her face he knew that all was well with the patient. Boylan had stiffened to resist the pang of Peter's passing from his life. This had so far prevented his voice from softening to the woman. It was now evening.
“I've done what seemed best,” he began abruptly in a whisper. “It appears to have accomplished what I set out after, but it's likely a ruffian's way—”
Her gray eyes widened, her face blanched.
Big Belt cleared his throat. Whispering was difficult.
“I met an old friend who made possible your remaining here. He's to send you into the country—as soon as the young fellow is able to be moved. You are to take care of him there. You see, my friend happened to be second in command here at Sondreig, and he thinks he can make all concerned forget that you were picked up from the opposition in Judenbach—”
“Can make Sondreig forget that?” she whispered.
“We are very old friends. We were out together in a former service—”
“And we are to be sent into the country—as soon as Peter is able?”
“Yes.”
“But what is the terrible part?”
“There might have been a better way, but I didn't think of it—”
“Oh, what, Mr. Boylan?”
“I told him that you two were married—”
“Yes.”
“I say, I told him that you two were married—”
“Yes—and then?”
Big Belt backed from her, and sat down.
“There isn't any then,” he said. “That's it.... That you were married in Warsaw, and followed him to the field—without his knowing.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Oh, you frightened me.”
...Boylan was on the stairs. He halted, turned back. She came to him eagerly.
“But were you married?” he asked.
“No. But it's such a little thing compared to what might have happened—to keep us apart. I mean what might have happened here.... Oh, God bless you!”
He twisted his chin away from his collar, drew it clear with his hand, cleared his throat to speak, and vanished.
THE GREEN OF CEDARS
It wasn't an open fire, but a little iron stove that got so red that it trembled, and at intervals could hardly contain the puttering of the pine; and there was a one-armed soldier, who spent the long forenoons cutting carefully and piling, until there was a rustic wainscot half around the room, the drying breath of which was the purest fragrance in the world.... They petted the soldier until an officer came down.
It was the hunting forest of a certain Count, and the hut they lived in was but the lodge of one of his keepers; but it was far enough from the great mansion (where wounded officers of royal blood and toppling rank healed or died in much the same fashion as other men) to afford the silence and solitude they had dreamed of. And all about them the great trees pondered between the winds—pine and balsam, cedar and fir. It had looked like a bit of an island from the Sondreig window, but proved a true forest when they reached there—an enchanted one to Berthe and Mowbray.
Twice Boylan came down for a day, bringing Moritz Abel the second time; but the Colonel, whose authority had done so much for them, required much of Big Belt, and there was a woman (some mystery about this) who would keep dinner waiting, he said. So both times he had started back while there remained light in the sky. And Peter had become thoughtful.
“Why, there are whole days I can't account for,” he muttered. “He must have had me strapped to him for days at a time.”
He had asked for Poltneck, of whom she had seen the last in Judenbach. The Germans had loved his singing and made very much of him; and Peter had asked for Moritz Abel before the latter came for the day. Berthe had answered freely, but of Duke Fallows she had not spoken in a way to satisfy his questions. In fact, it was not until the day that Peter first crossed the little room alone that she seemed ready to speak. That afternoon he had called her from the window.
“Where is Fallows, Berthe?”
“Not far from here,” she said. “Not as far as Sondreig from here—a place you have never seen, but I watched it every day from the window of the apothecary shop until you were moved. He offered himself at once when he heard—the cholera quarantine.... But he left a message for you to carry, Peter—gave it to me for you.
“I saw him for a few brief moments after he had volunteered. He talked of you and that other American boy of the other war. He said that the night he separated from that other—just after the battle of Liaoyang, the Russians in full retreat, he had written his story of the battle—the story of the Ploughman, and intrusted it to his friend to carry to America. He wants you to carry his story of this service—asked me to give it to you when you were better—to take to America with yours. 'Just a picture,' he said. 'It may be all wrong, but I see it so to-night, and I would like to have it come out in America some time.'
“He is very dear to us, Peter—that old burning exile. Some time we may understand his love for America.... It was hard to let him go. They fight day and night in the Stockade. They are trying to spare Sondreig.... I wish you might have been with him that last night before he went. It was before I found you—before I saw the big man in the street.... He was glad to go. There was no sense of sacrifice in it. His whole sense was of our sorrow and the world's sorrow. But it would have been good for him if you had been there—because you are of his country. He said it again and again: 'She must see it. It is her immortal opportunity,' meaning America—”
“Is his story so we can see it?” Peter asked.
“Yes.”
She took from her breast a little chamois, in which was wrapped two pages of tough tissue, spread them out, drew her chair close to him, and read this picture Fallows had made, and his message to America:
...It is the long night of Europe. France sits in dust upon the ground, staring toward the End. Mother England has called for her sons, and some have not answered. She turns her frost-rimed glass from the grim horizons to the grimmer skies, and always in the movement of the darkened shadows is written the word, “Disaster.” ...Smileless Germany, stricken as never a nation was stricken before, save by the wrath of God, still holds to the fatal enchantment of a fatherland of the ground, while the changes in the Prussian boundaries are marked in fire and the blood of her children.... Russia is looking southward, furious to open her casements upon the perilous seas—gloomy millions of the tundras, mighty millions of the ice-ringing plains—looking southward, marching southward, to-day marking time, to-morrow a league, but southward as a ship in passage. Russia, the young, holy genii battling with demons in her breast, everything to win and only the fruits of her world-shocking fecundity to lose—southward to slaughter through the long night.
...A call to America through the long night—the voice calling for her to put on her splendid, her initial magic. The voice from the vision of sorrow-illumined men in frozen bivouacs, crying to America to hold fast to the dream of her Founders, lest the vessel of the future be drained of vital essence, indeed—to hold fast until we come ...crying for America to answer, not with rapacious intellect, not the answer of a militant body, but an answer from the soul of the New World, with its original vitality in the Fatherhood of God.
...Repeating through the long night that the patience of Nature is exhausted with the hate of man for man; that the hatred of nation for nation is a lost experiment; that the bitter romance of the predatory is a story finished in hell; that the passion for self and boundary is done, that Compassion for neighbor and nation is the art of the future; crying the end of the national soul and the stroke of the hour for the birth of the world-soul; crying to America, the only temple, the sole house of nativity, to put on again her youthful magic, to ignite afresh the Gleam of her Founders, to arise to her superb and heroic destiny. They sat in silence until the tap at the door. It was the one-armed soldier, who came in, regarded the stove critically inside and out, judiciously chose one knot of pine, inserted it with grave care, and, departing, inquired if there was anything further he could do.
“No,” said Peter.
And Berthe asked: “Is there anything we can do for you?”
He bowed his head in the doorway, and they saw beyond him the winding aisles of the forest—green and white, the dusk creeping in.