It was a hell that he vividly reviewed for seven weeks, and with no Virgil to guide. A scene or two from the final day is enough:
... He had come from the bank about one in the afternoon, and had taken a chair in the bar of theVan Antwerp. He was neither limp nor sprawling, but in a condition of queer detachment from exterior influences. He knew that it was daylight; heard voices but no words, and carried himself with the rigid effort of one whose limbs are habitually flippant. Perhaps it was because he was so very generous to the waiter that he was allowed to close his eyes without being molested. In any event, his consciousness betrayed him, and away he went in the darkness of dream: The Ferryman of the Hun was poling away at the stream and he, John Morning, was but one of a company in passage. It was not the Hun river this time; the sorrel Eve was not there. Not alone the Ferryman, but all on board were lepers—he, John Morning in the midst of them, a leper. The old wound was witness to this.... They tried to land at the little towns but natives came forth and drove them away. Down, down stream they went and always natives came forth to warn them as they neared the land.... Even when they drew in to the marshes and the waste-places natives appeared and stoned them away.... And so they went down—to the ocean and the storm and Morning opened his eyes.
Opposite, his back to the marble bar, his elbows braced against the rail, stood Mr. Reever Kennard, watching him, and the look upon the face of the famous correspondent was that of scornful pity—as if there was a truce to an old enmity, no longer worth while.
Still later on that day, over on Second Avenue,Morning almost bumped into a small yellow sign at the elevator entrance to the Metal Workers’ Hall, to the effect that Duke Fallows was to address a gathering there that night.
8
Aflashof love came to his heart for Duke Fallows at the sight of the name. There was nothing maudlin about this; rather, a decent bit of stamina in the midst of sentimental overflows. It was the actual inside relation, having nothing to do with the old surface irritation.... Morning took care of himself as well as he could during the day. He meant to mix with the crowd at the meeting, but not to make himself known until he was free from vileness. He would keep track of the other’s place and movements in New York. When he was fit—there would be final restoration in the meeting. His heart thumped in anticipation. The yellow poster had turned the corner for him. These first thoughts of the upward trend are interesting:
He meant to cross the river and build a big fire in the cabin. There he would fight it out and cleanse the place meanwhile, in preparation. He pictured the cabin-door open, water on the floor, the fire burning, the smell of soap. He would heat water, wash his blankets, put them out in the sun; polish his kettles with water and sand. Every detail was important, and how strangely his mind welcomed the freshness of these simple thoughts. The glass of the windows would flash in the morning, and the door of oak would gleam with its oil.... Finally he would bring Duke there.
This was the triumph of it all. He would bring the sick man home; tend the fire for him, go to the dairyman’s for milk and eggs. They could call Jake and talk to him—seeing the heart of a simple man.... They would talk and work together ... the sickman looking up at the ceiling, and he, Morning, at the machine as in the old days. Spring would come, the big trees would break their buds and sprinkle the refuse down—and, God, it would be green again—all this rot ended.... So the days would pass quickly until Betty Berry came.... Duke would be glad to hear of her.
... That night Morning went in with the workers to their Hall and sat far back. The meeting had been arranged under socialistic auspices; seven hundred men at least were present. Through the haze of pipe, cigarette, and cigars, Duke Fallows came forth.
And this was no sick man. His knees were strong, and there was a lightness of shoulder that did away with the huddle of old times. His eyes shone bright under the hanging lamp, and his laugh was as far as Asia from scorn. There was brown upon him; his hands, when they fell idle, were curved as if to fit a broad-ax, and “I’m glad to be with you, men,” he said.
“... I have come to tell you a story—my story. Every man has one. I never tell mine twice the same, but some time I shall tell it just right, and then the answer shall come.”
Power augmented in the silence of the smoky hall. The gathering recognized the artist that had come down to them, because he loved the many and belonged with them. They gave him instinctively the rare homage of uncritical attention. Fallows told of Liaoyang—of the whole preparation—of the Russian singing, the generals, the systems by which men were called to service. Always the theme that played through this prelude was the millet of Manchuria. He told of the great grain fields, the feeding troop-horses, the hollows between the hills—how the ancient Chinese city stood in a bend of the river—of the outer fighting, the rains, the mass of men, the Chinese.
This new Duke Fallows hated no man; had no scornfor the Russian chiefs. His ideas of service and humanity concerned Russia rather than Japan—and not the imperialistic Russia, but the real spirit—the toiler, the dreamer, the singer, the home-maker—the Russia that was ready, perhaps as ready as any people in the world, to put away envy, hatred, war; to cease lying to itself, and to grasp the reality that there is something immortal about simplicity of life and service for others. What concerned this Russia, Fallows declared, concerned the very soul of the western world.
He placed the field for the battle in a large way—the silent, watery skies, all-receivingkao-liang, and the moist earth that held the deluges. Morning choked at the picture; the action came back again as Fallows spoke—Lowenkampf himself—the infantry of Lowenkampf slipping down the ledges into the grain—Luban, machine-guns, rout—the little open place in the millet where the Fallows part of the battle was fought.
“... He was a young Russian peasant. If he came into this hall now, we would all know instinctively that he belonged to us. He was fine to look upon that day, coming out of the grain—earnest, glad, his heart turned homeward. His enemy was not Japan, but Imperialism, and defeat was upon it. This defeat meant to him, as it did to hundreds of soldiers in that hour—the beginning of the road home. Luban was burning with the shame of detected cowardice. A common soldier had commented upon it in passing. And now this young Russian peasant met the eyes of Luban, and the two began to speak, and I was there to listen.
“The peasant said that this was not his war; that he had been forced to come; that it meant nothing to him if Russia took Manchuria; but that it meant a very great deal to him—this being away—because his six babies were not being fed by the Fatherland, and his field was not being ploughed.
“It was very simple. You see it all. The Fatherlandforced starvation upon a man’s children, while his field remained unploughed. Only a simple man could say it. You must be straight as a child to speak such epics. It is what you men have thought in your hearts.
“Of course, Luban only knew he was an officer and the man was not. Machine-guns were drumming in the distance, and the grain was hot and breathless all about. The forward ranks were terribly broken—the soldiers streaming back past us. Luban, who opened the discussion, was getting the worst of it, and his best reply was murder. He handled the little automatic gun better than the cause of the Fatherland—shot thePloughmanthrough the breast. I thrust him back to take the falling one in my arms....
“We seemed alone together. There was power upon me. Even in the swiftness and tumult of the passing I made the good man see that I would father his babes, look to the ploughing of his field, and be the son of his mother. His passing made all clear to me. His message was straight from the heart of the world’s suffering poor, from the heavy-laden. He spoke to kings and generals, and to all who have and are blind. There in the havoc of the retreat, dying in my arms—he made it vivid as the smiting sun of Saul—that this hideous disorder of militia was not his Fatherland. He would have fought for the real Fatherland. He was a son in spirit, and a state-builder; he would have fought for that; he was not afraid to die....
“Love for him had come strangely to my heart, men. I said to him—words I cannot remember now—something I had never been able to write, because I had not written for men before, but for some fancied elect. I made him know that he had done well, that his field would bring forth, and that his house would glow red with firelight.... I think my Ploughman felt as I did even before his heart was still—that there is something beyond death in the love of men for one another....It was wonderful. We forgot the battle. We forgot Luban and the firing. We were one. His spirit was upon me—and the good God gave him peace.
“I tell you quietly, but don’t you see—this that I bring so quietly is the message from the Ploughman who passed—the message of Liaoyang? And this is the sentence of it: Where there is a real Fatherland—there will be Brotherhood.
“The world is so full of pallor and agony and sickness and stealing. First, it is because of the Lubans. The Lubans are sick for power—sick with their desires. Having no self-mastery, they are lost and full of fear. They fear the whip, they fear poverty and denial; theirs is a continual fear of being stripped to the nakedness of what they are—as old Mother Death strips a man. In the terror of all these things they seek to turn the whip upon others, to reinforce their emptiness with exterior possessions. Because their souls are dying, and because they feel the terror of sheer mortality, they seek to kill the virtue in other men. Because they cannot master themselves, they rise in passion to master others. They could not live but for the herds.
“We who labor are the strength of the world. I say to you, men, poverty is the God’s gift to His elect. It is to us who have only ourselves to master—that the dream of Brotherhood can come true. It is alone to us, who have nothing, that these possessions can come, which old Mother Death is powerless to take away. And we who labor and are heavy-laden are making our colossal error to-day. We are the muttering herds. Standing with the many we may not know ourselves. We look upon the cowardice and emptiness of the Lubans and call it Power. We see the ways of the Herd-drivers—and dream of driving others, instead of ourselves. We look upon the Herd-drivers—and turn upon them the same thoughts of envy and hatred and cruelty—which cuts them offfrom every source of power and leaves them empty and cowardly indeed.
“These are the thoughts of the herds—and yet down in the muscling mass men are not to blame. It takes room for a man to be himself—it takes room for a man to love his neighbor and to master himself. Terrified, whipped, packed, sick with the struggle and the strain of it all—how can men, turning to one another, find brotherhood in the eyes of their fellows. Living the life of the laboring herds in the great cities—why, it would take Gods to love men so!... The world is so full of pallor and agony and sickness and stealing—first, because of the Lubans, and, second, because of the City.... And after Liaoyang, I went straight to the Ploughman’s house—for I had given my word. And now I will tell you what I found on the little hill-farm up in the Schwarenka district among the toes of the Bosk mountains, a still country.”
9
“Irememberthe soldiers at Liaoyang, the last thing, the many who had grasped at the hope that defeat meant the end of the war. They were learning differently as I left. Hundreds gave up from the great loneliness.... I carried the name of my Ploughman across the brown country, and the northern autumn was trying to hold out against the frosts. Asia is desolate. We who are white men, and who know a bit of the loveliness of life—even though we labor at that which is not our life—we must grant that the Northern Chinese have learned this: To suffer quietly.
“Baikal was crossed at last. On and on by train into the West—until I came to the little village that he had said. For days it had been like following a dream. Sometimes it seemed to me so wonderful—that youngman coming out of the millet, and what he said—that I thought it must have come to me in a vision, that I was mad to look for his town and the actual house in the country beyond. Yet they knew his name in the little town, and said that early next morning I could get a wagon to take me to the cabin, which was someverstsaway.
“I had known so much of cities. For weeks I had been in the noises of the Liaoyang fighting and in trains. Moreover, I had been ill for a long time, too—a crawling, deadly illness. But that night my soul breathed. I ate black bread by candle-light and drank milk. The sharpness of mid-October was in the air. You will laugh when I say it seemed to me, an American, as if I had come home. In the morning early I looked away to the East, from whence I had come, and where the sun was rising. (The ceiling of the little room was so low I had to bend my head.) To the north the mountains were sharp in the morning light and shining like amethyst.... I left the wagon at the first sight of the hut in the distance, and I reached there in the warmth of the morning.
“An old man was sitting in the sun. He asked me to have bread, and said they had some sausage for the coming Sunday. This was mid-week. A child brought good water. Then I heard the cane of the old woman, and saw her hand first, as it thrust the cane out from the door—all brown and palsied, the hand, its veins raised and the knuckles twisted from the weight that bent her fingers against the curve of the stick. The rest was so pure. She had been a tall woman—very thin and bent and white now. When I looked into that face I saw the soul of the Ploughman. I can tell you I wanted to be there. It was very strange.... I can see her now, looking up at me, as the old do from their leaning. It was like the purity and distance of the morning. I trembled, too, before this old wife, for the fact in mymind about her son. I tell you, old mother-birds are wise.
“It was as if my garments smelled of the fighting. She knew whence I had come; she looked into my soul and found the death of her son. Her soul knew it, but not her brain yet. She may have found my love for him, too—the deep bond between us.
“‘Ask the stranger to stay. We will have sausage by the Sunday,’ said the old man. His thought was held by hunger.
“‘Hush, Jan—he comes from our son——’
“‘And where are the children and the young mother?’ I asked.
“‘They are out for faggots in the bush—they will come——’
“I had thought, as I traveled, (the thoughts of the weeks on the road,) to do many things; to give them plentifully of money; to arrange for someone to do the late fall and winter work. I had intended to go on, when sure that everything was at hand to make them comfortable. I tell you, men, it was all too living for that. One could not perform unstudied benefits for the mother of the Ploughman. There was more than money wanted there.
“‘We would like to have you stay with us,’ the mother said, ‘but our poverty is keen, and we have not bread enough now for the winter.... He was taken long before the harvest, and it is long until the grain comes again——’
“‘But if he were here—what would be done, Mother?’
“‘Ah, if he came,’ she said strangely. ‘If he came——’
“The father now spoke:
“‘He would cut wood for our neighbors this winter—when the ploughing was finished. That would providefood—good food. Oh, he would know what to do—our Jan would know——’
“I won’t soon forget that high, wavering voice of the old man—‘Oh, he would know what to do—our Jan is a good son——’ and the shake of his head.
“‘But may I not do some of the things that he would do?’
“I had to say it twice, for I spoke their language poorly. I had understood the son at Liaoyang—but all moments were not like those in which he spoke to me.
“‘And then,’ I added hastily, ‘he sent you some money——’
“I dared not offer much with that pure old face looking at me. The silver and gold that was in my purse I put in her lap.
“‘Oh, it is very much—the good God brought you from him, did he not?’
“‘And we will not need to wait until Sunday for——’
“‘Hush—Jan—no, we will not need to wait.’
“... And then the young mother came. I saw her steps quicken when yet she was far off. The little ones were about her—all carrying something. The older children were laughing a little, but the others were quiet in their haste and effort to keep up.... There was one little boy, but I will tell you afterward of the littlest Jan.... There was a pallor over the brood. Their health was pure, and their blood strong, but that pallor had come. Men, it was hunger already. Here were the fields, and the Fatherland had taken him before the harvest. This thing, the shocking truth of it; that this actually could be; that a country could do such a thing—made me forget everything else for the moment. Then I realized that I must keep the truth from the young mother. Before I spoke at all they told her that I had come from her husband.
“Her lips were white, her breasts wasted. She was lean from hunger, lean from her bearing. Young shewas for the six, but much had she labored, and there was a mountain wildness in her eyes. She was stilled, as the old mother had been, by the fear of hearing her man’s death. She dared not ask. She accepted what was said—that I had come from him, that I had brought money, and wished to stay for a little.... She leaned against the door, the smaller children gathering at her knees, the others putting away the wood. Her single skirt hung square, and her arms seemed very long, nearly to her knees; her hands loose and tired. Her hair was yellow; the wind had tossed it. You know how a horse that has been listening, suddenly catches his breath again. The same sound came from her as she started to breathe again.... One of the smaller children laughed, and I looked down. It was the little four-year-old, the third Jan of that house, and he was close to my knees, looking up at me ... and we were all together.
“I loved the world better after that look of the child into my eyes.... I took him on my shoulder. We went to the village together. That night the wagon brought us back; there was much food.... And that was my house. I looked out on the mountains the next day, and for many days to come, and, men—their grand sky-wide simplicity poured into my heart. I took the old horse out, and we ploughed during the few days remaining. There was not much land—but we ploughed it together to the end, when the frost made the upturned clods ring. Then I strawed up the shed for the old horse to pass his winter in warmth, and brought blankets for him. I respected that old horse. Health and good-fellowship had come to me as we worked together. I remember the sharp turning of the early afternoons from yellow to gray and to dark.... Then we went into the bush together in the early winter days. The ax rang, and the snow-bolt was piled high each day with wood. The smell of the wood-smoke in the morning air had azest for my nostrils I had never known before, and at night the cabin windows were red with fire-light. We were all one together. And I think the spirit of the Ploughman was there in the happiness.
“Sometimes in the night when I would get up to replenish the fire—the mystery of plain goodness would come to me. I would see the children and others all around. Then at the frosty window, shading the fire from my eyes, I looked out upon the snows. I was unable to contain the simple grandeurs that had unfolded to me day by day.... And then I would go back to the blankets where the little boy lay—his hand always fumbling for me as I crept in. The love that I felt for this child was beyond all fear. We could stand together against any fate. And one night it came to me that from much loving of one a man learns to love the many, and that I would really be a man when I learned to love the world with the same patience and passion that I loved the little boy. The Ploughman came along in a dream that night and said it was all quite true.
“And that was the winter.... I wish you could have seen this sick man who had come. I had lain on my back for months, except when some great effort aroused me. I had that coming on, men, which makes a man walk—as a circus bear turns and totters on his back feet. The house, the field, the plough, the horse, woods, winter, and mountains, love for the child, love for all the others—the much that my hands found to do and the heart found to give—these things made me new again. These simple sound and holy things.
“I had been a sick man mentally and morally, too, sick with ego and intellect—a nasty sickness. But one could not look, feeling the joy in which I lived, upon the snows of the foothills, nor afar through the yellow winter noons to the gilded summits of the Bosks; one could not look into the eyes of the children, the last vestige of hunger pallor gone from them; one could not talk oftobacco-and-sausage with the old man by his fireside; nor watch the mysterious great givings of the two mothers—their whole lives giving—pure instruments of giving—passionate givers, they were; givers of life and preservers of life—I say, men, one could not live in this purity and not put away such evil and cruel things.... As the sickness of the blood went from me—so that sickness of mind.... And, I tell you, we were ready as a house could be, when the news came officially that our Ploughman was among the missing from the battle of Liaoyang.
“It was sharper than any winter night. We stood in the cabin and wept together. Then in the hush—the real thought of it all came to one—to whom, do you think?... She was on her knees—the old mother—praying for the other peasant cabins in Russia—the thousands of others from which a son and husband was gone—‘cabins to which the good God has not sent such a friend.’... I tell you, men, all the evil of past days seemed washed from me in that hour.... And that is my home. (The old horse and I opened the fields again in the springtime.)
“After that I went down to Petersburg to tell my story, and to Moscow. I have told it in cellars and stables—in Berlin, in Paris, and London. I am making the great circle—to tell it here—and on, when we are finished, to Chicago, to Denver and San Francisco—and then the long sail homeward, following the first journey to the foothills of the Bosk range. I will go to my old mother there, and to the little boy, who looked up into my eyes—as if we were born to play and talk and sleep together.
“The days of the conscript gangs are over here, men. Such days are numbered, even in Russia. They don’t come to your door in this country and take you away from your work to fight across the world—but the Lubans are here—and the cities are full of horror. It isin the cities where the herds are, where the little Lubans whip, and the bigger Lubans thrive. In the pressure and heaviness of the cities—the thought that comes to the herd is the old hideous conception of the multitude—that the way of the Lubans is the way of life.... It isn’t the way. The way of life has nothing to do with greed, nor with envy, nor with schemes against the bread of other men. It is a way of peace and affiliation—of standing together. And you who have little can go that way; you who labor can go that way—because you are the strength of the world. Don’t resist your enemies, men—leave them. The Master of us all told us that. And when the herds break, and this modern hell of the city is diminished—the Lubans will follow you out—whining and bereft, they will follow you out, as the lepers of Peking follow the caravans to the gates and beyond.... I have told you of my home—the little cabin that came to me from the beginnings of compassion. And there is such a home for every man of you—in the still countries where the voice of God may be heard.”
Morning, desperately ill, rose to leave the hall. In the momentary hush, as he reached the door, the voice of Duke Fallows was raised again, calling his name.
10
“John——” a second time.
Morning turned, his arms lifted despairingly.
“Wait, John, I’ll join you!”
Fallows came down.... The man who gently held the door shut smiled with strange kindness. There was a shining of kindness in men’s faces.... Morning did not feel that he belonged. He was broken and shamed.... The big man was upon him—the long arms tossed about him.
“I’ve been looking and listening for you too long, John, to let you go.”
“... I just wanted to hear you. I’m shot to pieces, Duke; I’ll get a few drinks and wait for you. Then, you’ll see, I’m all out of range of the man you are——”
There was no answer. Morning looked up to find the long bronzed face laughing, the eye gleaming. Fallows turned to the doorman and another, saying:
“Both of you go with him. He needs a drink or two, and one of you come back to show me the way to him—when I’m through here.... This is a great night for us, John.”
The three went down in the elevator.... And so the sick man had not come back—the dithyrambic Duke Fallows was gone for good. The sick man was strong; the impassioned phrase-maker had risen to the simple testimony of service. From scorn and emotion, from judgment and selection, he had risen to the plane of loving kindness.... The air in the street refreshed him a little. Morning found a bar.
“I’ve been drinking,” he said to the men. “Fallows is a king. I was there with him at Liaoyang.... Maybe you saw my story in theWorld-News.... He stayed in the grain with Luban. I went on to see the cavalry fight.... I came back home to do the story. He went on to Russia on thePloughmanstory——”
“Is he a preacher?” said one of the men.
“Yes—but he learned about war and women first.”
“I’ll take a soft drink and go back. You stay here, and I’ll bring him to you,” the same one went on.
The other drank with Morning and agreed that they would not leave until Fallows came.
“And so he learned about war and women first,” he said queerly, when they were alone. “But he has been a laboring man——”
“Yes. You heard him.”
“But before that farm in Russia——”
“Oh, yes; he was a laborer.”
“Well, he certainly got the crowd with him,” the man acknowledged.
“You know why, don’t you?” Morning said impressively.
“No.”
“He’sforthe crowd. People feel it.”
“Oh, I knew that.”
There was quiet, and then the face turned to Morning:
“Say, how did you get such a start as this? This kind means weeks——”
“It got away from me before I knew it. I must have got to gambling with myself to see how far I could go.”
“Are you going to quit?”
A mist filled Morning’s mind. The question seemed an infringement. Then it occurred to him how he had fallen to lying to himself.
“He’ll make you quit, but don’t let him stop you too short. You’d be a wreck in a few hours. You see how you needed these two or three drinks?”
... Fallows entered with several of the committee. He had promised to speak to them again.
“It’s what I came for,” he was saying. “So long as I am wanted I’ll stay.... Yes, I’m a socialist.... Yes, I believe in fighting, but when our kind of men stand together, there won’t be anything big enough to give us a fight. When our kind of men look into one another’s eyes and find service instead of covetousness—there’s nothing in the world to stand against us.”
Fallows and Morning were in a steam-room together two hours afterward. Morning was limp and light-headed. He had told of some of the things that had happened since Baltimore—of men he had met—of the slummers—of harrowing nights and waiting for the bank to open.
“You had to have it, John?”
There was something in the way Fallows spoke the word,John, that made Morning weaker and filled his throat. He had to speak loudly for the hissing of the steam.
“Why, if you didn’t get humble and stay humble after such a training—you’d be the poorest human experiment ever undertaken by the Master. But you can’t fail. It isn’t in the cards to fail. You’ve ridden several monsters—Drink, Ambition, Literature—but they won’t get you down. Why, even the sorrel mare didn’t kill you, as I promised aforetime. I saw a lot in that story. You loved her to the last. You left her dead and hunched on an alien road. You’ve loved these others long enough. You’ll leave them dead—even that big fame stuff. I think you’ve ridden that pompous fool to death already. They are all passages on the way to Initiation. Your training for service is a veritable inspiration—and you’ll write to men—down among men. I love that idea—you’ll write the story of Compassion—down among men——”
Fallows’ face came closer through the steam. He scrutinized the wound that wouldn’t heal. “Did you ever hear about Saint Paul’s thorn in the flesh?... ‘And lest I be exalted above measure through the abundance of revelations, there was given me a thorn in the flesh—?’ It all works out. You’ll have to excuse me. The Bible was the only book I had with me up in the Bosk country. I found it all I wanted. I would take it again.... Yes, John, it’s all right with you.”
Morning was telling of that afternoon at the Armory. He passed over quickly the period of worldly achievement in New York to the quiet blessedness he had hit upon, finding the hill and the elms.
“That’s the formula—to get alone and listen——”
“That’s what you preached to-night, wasn’t it?”... Presently he was back to Betty Berry again—finding her at the ’cello—the wonderful ride to Baltimore—whichbrought him to the drink chapter once more.... He couldn’t see Duke’s face as he spoke of the woman. There was a peculiar need of the other saying something when he had finished. This only was offered:
“We won’t talk about that now, John.... You’d better take another little drink. Your voice is down.... You’ll be through after a day or two, and I’ll stay with you——”
“We’ll go over to the cabin to-morrow,” said Morning.
They were lying cot by cot in the cooling-room, and the talk for a time concerned Lowenkampf, his court-martial and discharge.
“Do you know how I thought of you coming back, Duke?” Morning whispered afterward.
“Tell me.”
“I always thought of you coming back a sick man—staring at the ceiling as you used to—sometimes talking to me, sometimes listening to what I had written. But the main thought was how I would like to take care of you. I was rotten before. I wanted you sick, so I could show you better.”
The huge hand stretched across from cot to cot.
“It was afterward—that all the things you said in Liaoyang came back to me right.... We were lying in ’Frisco waiting for quarantine, and my stuff was finished the second time, before I read your letter to me and the one to Noyes—and the Ploughman story. That was the first time I really saw it right. There was a little doctor with me—Nevin—who got it all from the first reading. At Liaoyang we were down too low among the fighting to get it. That Ploughman story made my big yarn look like a death-mask of the campaign. Betty Berry got it too.... It was the same to-night—why, you got those men, body and soul.”
“I’d like to think so, John; but I’m afraid you’rewrong. It was just a seed to-night. Men need to be cultivated every day in a thousand ways.... Women get things quicker; they can listen better.... The last night before Jesus was taken by the Roman soldiers, he told the Eleven that he could be sure only of them. He knew that of the multitude that heard him—most would sink back. He counted on just the Eleven, and built his church on the weakest, upon the most unstable—counting only on the strength of the weakest link.... The fact is, John, I’m only counting on you. I’ve got to count on you.”
Less than five weeks had elapsed, and yet the worst seemed as far back, in some of Morning’s moments, as the deck-passage out of China. He had suffered abominably. Fallows stood by night and day at first. He brought back a certain quality from the Russian farm that was pure inspiration to the other. They spoke about the Play. Morning was more than ever glad that Markheim had refused it. They sat long by the fire. More happened than modern America would believe off-hand—for John Morning began to learn to listen. Fallows was happy. His presence in the room was like the fire-light. Twice more he went across to the Metal Workers’ Hall, and still the New York group would not let him go. The Socialists brought him their ideas. He was in the heart of threatening upheavals. He reiterated that they must be united in one thing first; they must have faith in one another. They must not answer greed with greed. They must be sure of themselves; they must have a pure voice; they must know first what was wanted, and follow the vision.... Duke Fallows knew that it was all the matter of a leader.... He told them of the men and women in Russia who have put off self. Finally Duke appeared to see that his work was done, and he retired from them.
“It is delicate business,” he said to Morning. “There’sfine stuff in the crowd—then there’s the rest. If I should show common just once—all my work would be spoiled, and even the blessed few would forget the punch of my little story. They think I’ve gone on west.”
Still he didn’t leave the cabin on the hill.
It was only when Morning undertook to touch upon the love story—that Fallows looked away.... Morning tried to comprehend this. Something had happened. The big man who had stared at so many ceilings of Asia, breaking out from time to time in strange utterances all colored with desire; the man who had met his Eve, and talked of being controlled by her even after death—shuddered now at the mention of Betty Berry.... Morning even had a suspicion at last that the other construed a relation between the woman’s influence and the excess of alcohol. These moments dismayed him.
There is a dark spot in every man’s radiance—and this was the Californian’s, Morning concluded. In the transformation which the journey to Russia had effected, his particular weakness seemed hardened into a crust of exceptional austerity. The only women he ever spoke of in the remotest personal fashion belonged to the peasant family of the Ploughman. His audiences were unmixed by his own arrangement. In tearing out his central weakness, a certain madness on the subject had rushed in, a hatred that knew no quarter, and a zeal in denial that only one who has touched the rim of ruin can know.
On the last night of February they talked and read late. The reading was from Saint Paul in the different letters. Fallows seemed impassioned with the figure.
“I understand him,” he said.
“He was afraid of women. Sometimes he seems to hate women,” Morning remarked. Certain lines of Paul’s on the subject had broken the perfection of the message for him.
A strange look came to Fallows. The finger that was turning a page drew in with the others, and the hand that rested upon the book was clenched.... “Paul knew women,” he muttered.
“You think before he took that road to Damascus—he knew women?”
“Yes——”
“Even the Paul who stood by holding the garments of the stoners of Stephen?”
“He was a boy then. He learned afterward, I think.”
“He couldn’t have known the saints among them,” said Morning, who was smiling in his heart.
“Perhaps some saint among them was the one who made him afraid. You know women won’t have men going alone—not even the saints among women.... There may have been one who refused to be dimmed altogether even by that great light.”
“But he went alone——”
“In that way she wouldn’t be the Thorn,” Fallows said slowly. “She would be greater power for him. Yes, Saint Paul went alone. We wouldn’t be reading him to-night—had he turned back to her.”
That hurt. Morning was no longer smiling within. “I didn’t learn women—even as a boy,” he said.
Fallows was unable to speak. He had never loved Morning as at this moment. He was tender enough to catch the strange pathos of it, which the younger man could not feel.
“You’re a natural drunkard, John,” he said presently. “You are by nature ambitious, as it is intimated Cæsar was; but you are naturally a monk, too. I say it with awe.”
“You are wrong,” Morning said with strength. “When this woman came into the room at the Armory that first day—it was as if she brought with her the better part of myself——”
“You said that same before. You were sick. Youwere torn by exhaustion and by that letter of mine about Reever Kennard. It was the peace and mystery a woman always brings to a sick man....Yourwoman is your genius, John. Any rival will stifle and defame it. It’s the woman in a man that makes him a prophet or a great artist. Your ego is masculine; your soul is feminine. When you learn to keep the ego out of the brain, and use the soul, you will become an instrument, more or less perfect, for eternal utterances. When you achieve the union of the man and woman in you—that will be your illumination. You will have emerged into the larger consciousness. You are not so far as you think from that high noon-light. If you should take a woman in the human way, you will not achieve in this life the higher marriage, of which the union of two is but a symbol. That would be turning back, with the spiritual glory in your eyes—back to the shadow of flesh.”
“How do you know that?” Morning asked coldly.
“Because of the invisible restraints that have kept you from women so far.... I believe you are prepared to tell men something about the devils of drink and ambition—having met them?”
“It is possible.”
“I speak with the same authority.”
Morning did not accept this authority, but was long disturbed after the light was out.... Her ship had been six days at sea.
They opened the door wide to the first morning of March. Snow was upon the hill, but there was a promise in the air, even in the sharpness of it. The wind came in, searched among the papers of the table, disordered the draughts of the chimney, filling the room with a faint flavor of wood-smoke, that perfect incense. They stood there, testing the day, and each was thinking of the things of the night before. Fallows said:
“John, you didn’t build this cabin with the idea of a woman coming?”
“No; it was built before I found her the second time. It was my escape fromBoabdil.... But I thought of her coming, many times afterward—just as I thought of you coming back to stare at the rafters——”
Fallows looked down intently at him for a moment, and said:
“John, you’ve got about all your equipment now. You can’t stand much more tearing down. My road is not for you. You were given balance against that. Don’t venture into what is alien ground for you. You will get back your health. Even the wound will heal. Then will come to you those gracious ideals of singleness, plainness of house and fare, of purity and solitude and the integration of the greater dimension of force.... You are through looking—you must listen now. The blessedness you told me of this last summer was but a breath of what you will get....
“You are a natural monk. If you were in a monastery, the laws restraining you would be gross and material, compared with those bonds which nature has put upon you. The cowl, the cell, and the solitude are but symbols again of the inner monasticism a few rare souls have known. You need no exterior bonds, vows, nor threatenings—no walls, no brandishing threats of damnation. But, if you should betray the invisible restraints that have held you for so many years, the sin would be far deadlier than breaking any vows made to a church or to an order. Vows are for half-men, John; vows are but the crutches of an unfinished integrity.”
11
Onthe morning of the Third, at ten, her call came to him. Shortly after twelve he was across the river and far uptown in the hallway of an apartment-house. Even as he spoke her name, his was called from the head[Pg 176]of the stairs. He always remembered the intonation.... A fire was burning in the grate. The ’cello was there. She left the hall-door of the room open, but they heard voices, and it was draughty.... She went to close it and returned to Morning, who was still standing.
“What is the matter? You are not well,” she said.... It was hard for him to realize that this was only the third time he had seen her. He was trying to adjust her in the other meetings with this—the angel who had come helping to the Armory; the concert Betty Berry, her nature flung wide to expression, bringing her gift with love to her people. The Armory was one; but the Betty Berry of the concert-night was many: she who had come forth from the stage to his arms (and that was the kiss of all time); the listening Betty Berry in the dimness of the Pullman car; holding fast to his hand as a child might, while they watched the dawn of morning together; the Betty Berry who had led him to her berth on the ship—that kiss and this....
The room had disordered him at the first moment. It was so particularly a New York apartment room. But the ’cello helped it; the grate-fire was good, and after she had shut the door—there was something eternal about the sweetness of that—it was quite the place for them to be.
He was animate with emotions—and yet they were defined, sharp, of their own natures, no soft overflow of sentiment, each with a fineness of its own, like breaths of forest and sea and meadow lands. These were great things which came to him; but they were not passions.... He saw her with fear, too. Simply being here, had the impressiveness of a miracle. It was less that he did not deserve to be with her, than that the world he knew was hardly the place for such blessedness. He was listening to her, in gladness and humility:
“... I asked myself again and again after you were gone, ‘Is it a dream?’ ... I moved about thedecks waiting for the night, as one in a deep dream.... You were gone so quickly after that voice. Oh, I was all right. I was full of you. It would have seemed sacrilege to ask for you again.... Yet I seemed to expect you with every knock or step or bell. They asked me to play on shipboard, and I could hardly believe you were not among those who listened.... That first night at sea, the moon was under a hazy mass. I don’t know why I speak of it, but I remember how I stood watching it—perhaps hours—and out of it all I only realized at last that my hands were so small for the things I wanted to do for you, and for everybody.”
That was the quality of her—as if between every sentence, hours of exterior influences had intervened.... He began to realize that Betty Berry never explained. All that afternoon, in different ways, his comprehension augmented on how fine a thing this is. She was glad always to abide by what she said or did. Even on that night, when she came from her playing to the wings where he stood, came to his arms, while the people praised her—she never made light of that acceptance. Many would have diminished it, by saying that they were not accountable in the excitement and enthusiasm of a sympathetic audience. It was so to-day when the door was closed. It seemed to Morning as if human adults should be as fine as this—above all guile and fear.
He was in a risen world that afternoon. Often he wished he could make the world see her as he did. But that was the literary habit, and a tribute to her. Certainly it was not for the writing. He was clay beside her, but happy to be clay.... She did not know it, he thought, but she was free.
That was his thought of the day. Betty Berry was free. The door of the cage was open for her. She did not have to stay, but she did stay for love of the weaker-winged.
“Will all our meetings be so different and lovely?”she asked in the early dusk. “Please tell me about yourself very long ago—the little boy, before he went away.”
It was queer for her to ask that. He had expected her to inquire at once about the three months since their parting in Baltimore. He had determined to tell if she asked, but it was hard even to think of his descents, with her sitting by the fire so near. Such things seemed to have nothing to do with him now—especially when he was with her. They were like old and vile garments cast off; and without relation to him, unless he went back and put them on again. Little matters like Charley and his sister had a relation, for they were without taint. His thoughts to-day were thoughts of doing well for men, as in fine moments with Duke Fallows—of going outwith herinto the world to help—of writing and giving, of laughing and lifting.... It was surprising how he remembered the very long ago days—the silent, solid, steadily-resisting little chap. Many things came back, and with a clearness that he had not known for years. The very palms of her hands were upturned in her listening; it seemed as if the valves of her heart must be open.
“I can see him—the dear little boy——”
He laughed at her tenderness.... They went out late to dinner; and by the time he had walked back to the house it was necessary for him to leave, if he caught the last car to Hackensack. Duke Fallows would be expecting him at the cabin....
It came to him suddenly, and with a new force, on the ferry, that he had once wished she were pretty. He suffered for it again. He could never recall her face exactly. She came to him in countless ways—with poise for his restlessness, with faith and stamina that made all his former endurings common—but never in fixed feature. It was the same with her sayings. He remembered the spirit and the lustre of them, but never the words.... She was a saint moving unobservedabout the world, playing—adrift on the world, and so pure.
He realized also that he had spoken of Betty Berry for the last time to Duke Fallows. There was no doubt in his mind now that Fallows had replaced his old weakness with what might be called, in kindness—fanaticism.... The thought was unspeakable that Betty Berry could spoil his work in the world—he, John Morning, a living hatch of scars from his errors ... and so arrogant and imperious he had been in evil-doing! This trend made him think of her first words to-day: “You are not well.” It was true that he had been astonished often of late by a series of physical disturbances, so much so that he had begun to ask himself, in his detached fashion, what would come next. He could not accept Fallows’ promise that he would get altogether right in health again. He was certainly not so good as he had been. These things made him ashamed.
Now that he was away from her, the sense obtained that he had not been square in withholding the facts of the wastrel period. It didn’t seem quite the same now, as when she was sitting opposite. He would have to tell her some time, and of that certain mental treachery to her, and of the wound, too.... He saw the light of the hill cabin. A touch of the old irritation of Liaoyang had recurred of late. Morning could master it better now. Still so many things that Fallows had said in Asia had come true. Climbing up the hill, he laughed uneasily at the idea of his being temperamentally a monk.... He had not strayed much among women; he had been too busy. Now he had met his own. He would go to her to-morrow. His love for her was the one right thing in the world. Fallows nor the world could alter that....
The resistance which these thoughts had built in his mind was all smoothed away by the spontaneous affectionof the greeting. They sat down together before the fire, but neither spoke of the woman who had come between.
12
Onthe way to Betty Berry the second day, Morning could not quite hold the altitude of yesterday. There was much of the boy left in the manner of his love for her. The woman that the world saw, and which he saw with physical eyes, was only one of her mysteries. The important thing was that he saw her really, and as she was not seen by another.... They had been together an hour when this was said:
“There comes a time—a certain day—when a little girl realizes what beauty is, and something of what it means in the world. That day came to me and it was hard. I fought it out all at once. I was not exactly sure what I wanted, but I knew that beauty could never help me in any way. I learned to play better when I realized this fully. I have said to myself a million times, ‘Expect nothing. No one will love you. You must do without that,’ I believed it firmly.... So you see when I went back to the Armory that next morning I had something to fall back upon.... I would not have thought about it except you made me forget—that afternoon. Why, I forget it now when you come; but when you go, I force myself to remember——”
“Why do you do that?”
She was looking into the fire. The day was stormy, and they were glad to be kept in.
“Why do you do that?” he repeated.
“Because I can’t feel quite at rest about our being together always. It seems too wonderful. You must understand—it’s only because it is so dear a thing——”
She had spoken hastily, seeing the fear and rebellion in his eyes.
“Betty Berry.... We’re not afraid of being poor. Why not go out and get married to-day—now?”
Her hand went out to him.
“That wouldn’t be fine in us,” she said intensely. “I would feel that we couldn’t be trusted—if we did anything like that.... Oh, that would never keep us together—thatis not the great thing. And to-day—what a gray day and bleak. We shall know if that day comes. It will be one such as the butterfly chooses for her emerging. It must not be planned. Such a day comes of itself.... Why, it would be like seizing something precious from another’s hand—before it is offered——”
“And you think you are not beautiful?” he said.
“Yes.”
He tried to tell her how she seemed to him when they were apart—how differently and perfectly the phases of her came.
“It makes me silent,” he went on. “I try to tell just where it is. And sometimes when I am away—I wonder what is so changed and cleansed and buoyant in my heart—and then I know it is you—sustaining.”
“It doesn’t seem to belong to me—what you say,” she answered. “I don’t dare to think of it as mine.... Please don’t think of me as above other women. I am not apart nor above. I am just Betty Berry, who comes and goes and plays—dull in so many ways—as yet, a little afraid to be happy. When you tempt me as now to be happy—it seems I must go and find someone very miserable and do something perfect for him.... But, it is true, I fear nothing so much as that you should believe me more than I am.”
A little afterward she was saying in her queer, unjointed way, as if she spoke only here and there a sentence from the thoughts running swiftly through her mind:
“... And once, (it was only a few weeks afterthe Armory, and I was playing eastward) I heard your name mentioned among some musicians. They had been talking about your war, and they had seen the great story.... I couldn’t tell them that I know you?... It was known you were in New York, and one of the musicians spoke of an early Broadway engagement—of starting for New York that very night. It was the most common thing to say—but I went to my room and cried. Going to New York—where you were. Can you understand—that it didn’t seem right for him, just to take a train like that? And I had to go eastward so slowly. For a while after that, traveling out there, I couldn’t hold you so clearly; but as we neared New York—whether I wished it or not—I began to feel you again, to expect you at every turning. Sometimes as I played—it was uncanny, the sense that came to me, that you were in the audience, and that we were working together.... And then you came.”
Her picture changed now. Morning grew restless. It was almost as if there were a suggestion from Duke Fallows in her sentences:
“I thought of you always as alone.... You have gone so many ways alone. Perhaps the thought came from your work. I never could read the places where you suffered so—but I mean from the tone and theme of it. You were down among the terrors and miseries—but always alone.... You will go back to them—alone, but carrying calmness and cheer. You will be different.... It’s hard for me to say, but if we should clutch at something for ourselves—greedily because we want something now—and you should not be able to do your work so well because of me—I think—I think I should never cease to suffer.”
A dozen things to say had risen with hostility in his mind to check this faltering expression, the purport of which he knew so well in its every aspect. He hated the thought of others seeing his future and not consideringhim. He hated the fear that came to him. There had been fruits to all that Fallows had said before. He had plucked them afterward. And now Betty Berry was one with Fallows in this hideous and solitary conception of him. And there she sat, lovely and actual—the very essence of all the good that he might do. He was so tired of what she meant; and it was all so huge and unbreakable, that he grew calm before he spoke, from the very inexorability of it.
“There is no place for me to go—that you could not go with me. Every one seems to see great service for me, but I see it with you. Surely we could go together to people who suffer.... I have been much alone, but I spent most of the time serving myself. I have slaved for myself. If Duke Fallows had left me alone, I should have been greedy and ambitious and common. I see you now identified with all the good of the future. You came bringing the good with you to the Armory that day, but I was so clouded with hatred and self-serving, that I really didn’t know it until afterward.... All the dreams of being real and fine, of doing good in work, and with hands and thoughts, of sometime really being a good man who knows no happiness but service for others—that means you—you! You must come with me. We will be good together. We will serve together. Everybody will be better for us. We will do it because we love so much—and can’t help it——”
“Oh, don’t say any more—please—please! It is too much for me. Go away—won’t you?”
She had risen and clung to him, her face imploring.
“Do you really want me to go away?” he said.
“Yes—I have prayed for one to come saying such things—of two going forth to help—prayed without faith.... I cannot bear another word to be said to-day.... I want to sit here and live with it——”
He was bewildered. He bent to kiss her brow—but refrained.... Her face shone; her eyes were filled with tears.... He was in the street trying to recall what he had said.
13
Hedid not cross the river, but wandered about the city.... She had starved her heart always, put away the idea of a lover, and sought to carry out her dreams of service alone. Then he had come. In the midst of mental tossing and disorder to-day, he had stumbled upon an expression of her highest idea of earth-life: for man and woman to serve together—God loving the world through their everyday lives.... And she had been unable to bear him longer near her. It was the same with her heart, as with one who has starved the body, and must begin with morsels.
He was in the hotel writing-room—filling pages to her. He did not mean to send the pages. It was to pass the time until evening. He lacked even the beginnings of strength to stay away from her until to-morrow. He would have telephoned, but she had not given him the number, or the name of the woman who kept the house. The writing held his thoughts from the momentarily recurring impulse to go back. The city was just a vibration. Moments of the writing brought her magically near. In spite of her prayer for him not to, his whole nature idealized her now. His mind was swept again and again with gusts of her attraction. Thoughts of hers came to him almost stinging with reality ... and to see her again—to see her again. Once in the intensity of his outpouring, he halted as if she had called—as if she had called to him to come up to her out of the hollows and the vagueness of light.
It was nightfall. He gave way suddenly—to thatdouble-crossing of temptation which forces upon the tempted one the conviction that what he desires is the right thing.... He would be a fool not to go. She would expect him.... He arose and set out for her house.
But as he neared the corner something within felt itself betrayed.
“And so I cannot be content with her happiness,” he thought. “I cannot be content with the little mysteries that make her theoneBetty Berry. I am not brave enough to be happy alone—as she is. I must have the woman....”
He was hot with the shame of it. He saw her bountifulness; her capacity to wait. Clearly he saw that all these complications and conflicts of his own mind were not indications of a large nature, but the failures of one unfinished. She did not torture herself with thoughts; she obeyed a heart unerringly true and real. She shone as never before; fearless, yet with splendid zeal for giving; free to the sky, yet eager to linger low and tenderly where her heart was in harmony; a stranger to all, save one or two in the world, pitilessly hungry to be known, and yet asking so little.... Compared with her, he saw himself as a littered house, wind blowing through broken windows.
... That night, sitting with Duke Fallows before the fire, brooding on his own furious desires, he thought of the other John Morning who had brooded over the story of Liaoyang in so many rooms with the same companion. All that former brooding had only forced the world to a show-down. He knew, forever, how pitifully little the world can give.... A cabin on the hill and a name that meant a call in the next war....
The face of the other cooled and stilled him. Duke was troubled; Duke, who wasn’t afraid of kings or armies or anything that the world might do; who didn’tseem even afraid now of the old Eve violence, whoever she was—was afraid to speak of Betty Berry to his best friend.... Morning wondered at this. Had Duke given up—or was he afraid of mixing things more if he expressed himself? The fire-lit face was tense. One after another of the man’s splendid moments and performances ran through Morning’s mind—the enveloping compassion—in Tokyo, Liaoyang, in the grain, in the ploughed lands—the Lowenkampf friend, the friend of the peasant house, the friend of men in Metal Workers’ Hall, his own friend in a score of places and ways—the man’s consummate art in friendliness....
“Duke, there’s a lot to think about in just plain living, isn’t there?”
The other started. “Hello,” he said. “I didn’t think you were in my world.”
Betty Berry was waiting at the stairs the next morning.
“Did you get my letter?” she whispered, when the door had swung to.
“No.... Mailed last night?”
“Yes.”
“I left the cabin two hours before the mail. It’s rural delivery, you know. Jethro reaches my box late in the forenoon——”
“I wrote it about dark, but didn’t mail it until later. I thought you would come——”
He told her how he had written, how he had come to her house, and turned away. They were very happy.
“To think that you came so far. I couldn’t sit still, I was so expectant at that very time.... But it was good for us——”
“I understood after a while.”
“Of course, you understood.... I was—oh, so happy yesterday. Yet, aren’t we strange? Before it was night, I wanted you to come back.... Ididn’t go out last night. I couldn’t practice. To-night, there are some friends whom I must see——”
Morning, in a troubled way, reckoned the hours until evening.... She was here and there about the room. The place already reflected her. She had never been so blithe before.... It was an hour afterward that he picked up a little tuning-fork from the dresser, and twanged it with his nail. She started and turned to him, her thumb pressed against her lips—her whole attitude that of a frightened child.
“I wonder if I could tell you?” she said hesitatingly. “It would make many things clear. You told me about little boy—you. It was my father’s——”
He waited without speaking.
“... He used to lead the singing in a city church,” she said. “Always he carried the tuning-fork. He would twang it upon a cup or a piece of wood, and put it to his ear—taking the tone. He had a soft tenor voice. There was never another just like it, and always he was humming.... I remember his lips moving through the long sermons, as he conned the hymn-book, one song after another, tapping his fork upon a signet ring. How I remember the tiny twanging, the light hum of an insect that came from him, from song to song, his finger keeping time, his lips pursed over the words.
“He never heard the preacher. There was no organ allowed, but he led the hymns. He loved it. He held the time and tone for the people—but never sang a hymn twice the same, bringing in the strangest variations, but always true, his face flaming with pleasure.
“For years and years we lived alone. As a little girl, I was lifted to the stool to play his accompaniments. As a young woman, I supported him, giving music lessons. The neighbors thought him an invalid.... All his viciousness was secret from the world, but common property between us from my babyhood. I pitied him andcovered him, fed him when he might have fed himself, waited upon him when he might have helped me. He would hold my mind with little devilish things and thoughts—as natural to him as the tuning-fork.... He would despoil the little stock of food while I was away, and nail the windows down. My whole life, I marveled at the ingenuity of his lies. He was so little and helpless. I never expected to be treated as a decent creature, from those who had heard his tales. They looked askance at me.
“For years, he told me that he was dying, and I sat with him in the nights, or played or read aloud. If any one came, he lay white and peaceful, with a look of martyrdom.... And then at the last, I fell asleep beside him. It was late, but the lamp was burning. I felt him touch me before morning—the little old white thing, his lips pursed. The tuning-fork dropped with a twang to the floor. I could not believe I was free—but cried and cried. At the funeral, when the church people spoke of ‘our pain-racked and martyred brother’——”
She did not finish.
Morning left her side. “I never thought of a little girl that way,” he said, standing apart. “Why, you have given me the spirit of her, Betty. It is what you have passed through that has made you perfect.... And I was fighting for myself, and for silly things all the time——”
But he had not expressed what was really in his mind—of the beauty and tenderness of unknown women everywhere, in whose hearts the sufferings of others find arable ground. Surely, these women are the grace of the world. His mother must have been weathered by such perfect refinements, otherwise he would not have been able to appreciate it in Betty Berry. It was all too dreamy to put into words yet, but he felt it very important in his life—this that had come to him from Betty’s story, and from Betty standing there—woman’spower, her bounty, her mystic valor, all from the unconscious high behavior of a child.
She had given him something that thePloughmangave Duke Fallows. He wanted to make the child live in the world’s thoughts, as Duke was making thePloughmanlive.
It was these things—common, beautiful, passed-by things, that revealed to Morning, as he began to be ready—the white flood of spirit that drives the world, that is pressing always against hearts that are pure.
He went nearer to her.
“Everything I think is love for you, Betty,” he said.
The air was light about her, and delicate as from woodlands.
14
Thehorse and phaeton—both very old—of the rural-carrier could be seen from the hill-cabin. Duke Fallows walked down to the fence to say “Hello” to Jethro whom he admired. He returned bearing very thoughtfully a letter addressed to John Morning. It was from across the river; the name, street, and number of the sender were written upon the envelope.... Fallows sat down before the fire again, staring at the letter. He thought of the woman who had written this, (just the few little things that Morning had said) and then he thought of the gaunt peasant woman in Russia, the mate of thePloughman, and of the mother of thePloughman. He thought of the little boy, Jan—the one little boy of the six, that had his heart, and whom he longed for.
He thought of this little boy on one hand—and the world on the other.
Then he thought of Morning again, and of the woman.
He loved the world; he loved the little boy. Sometimesit seemed to him when he was very happy—that he loved the world and the little boy with almost the same compassion—the weakness, fineness, and innocence of the races of men seeming almost like the child’s.
He thought of John Morning differently. He had loved him at first, because he was down and fighting grimly. He thought of him of late as an instrument, upon which might be played a message of mercy and power to all who suffered—to the world and to the little boy alike.
And now Fallows was afraid for the instrument. Many things had maimed it, but this is the way of men; and these maimings had left their revelations from the depths. Such may measure into the equipment of a big man, destined to meet the many face to face. Fallows saw this instrument in danger of being taken over by a woman—to be played upon by colorful and earthly seductions. No man could grant more readily than he, that such interpretations are good for most men; that the highest harmony of the average man is the expression of love for his one woman and his children. But to John Morning, Fallows believed such felicity would close for life the great work which he had visioned from the beginning.
He did not want lyrical singing from John Morning, he wanted prophetic thunderings.
He wanted this maimed young man to rise up from the dregs and tell his story and the large meaning of it. He wanted him to burn with a white light before the world. He wanted the Koupangtse courage to drive into the hearts of men; a pure reformative spirit to leap forth from the capaciousness where ambition had been; he wanted John Morning to ignite alone. He believed the cabin in which he now sat was built blindly from the boy’s standpoint, but intelligently from the spirit of the boy, to become the place of ignition. He believed this of Morning’s to be a celibate spirit that could be finallymaimed only by a woman. He believed that Morning was perfecting a marvelous instrument, one that would alter all society for the better, if he gave his heart to the world.