Just a moment's talk in the street—twice interrupted by sentries, as they moved the hundred yards from the courtyard of Judenbach to the house of amputations.
“...He was trying to lift a man from the hopelessness of death when I stepped up quietly behind,” Berthe was saying. “He was wonderful about it, because he had felt the same hopelessness. I wish you could have heard him.”
Moritz Abel said: “He is effective. He is intellect and heart—very sound. His vision will come quickly. He does not wing—that is our trouble. We are carried away. He is still within the comprehension of the average man. We need him greatly. Also he needs us. What a man he would be to steady us—to interpret for us. The new Fatherland must have such men. It has been our destiny always to dream and to pass—another generation to make our vision flesh—”
“You mean such men as Peter Mowbray would be direct interpreters?” she asked.
“Exactly. We are poets and artists and singers. We are the fathers of the new Fatherland in a sense, but we need among us lawgivers and statesmen—men who love men straight and not through the arts—men who have the same zeal for men that the arts give us when we are pure, but who are conservers and constructors, men of great force and acumen and kindness—”
“Oh, I know so well what you mean,” she whispered. “If you could only have heard him with the bandaged man—'I am not a genius or a dreamer, man. I am so slow at dreaming and brotherhood, and all that, that a woman once ran away from me. But I saw to-day that death isn't all.'”
“Yes, that is it,” Moritz Abel said. “That is the quality. And many times among those who do not make claim nor talk of brotherhood, the reality is beaming from their daily service. Yes, that is it. I hope to know him better after the long night.”
They had reached the place of blood and torture.
“And now you must rest a little,” he told her. “You know he asked me to take care of you. I like him for that. A man would see a great deal in that, for he honored me.”
“And me—” she whispered.
It was not yet dawn. Peter heard the moaning of the men as they awoke and turned in their bandages. Surgeon and assistants passed through; two of the latter remained to start up the malingerers. Machine and rapid-fire men especially were needed at the front, it was said. Four thousand men had fallen in the past three days, and this was to be the day of the most furious battle—Kohlvihr to drive a hole through the hills, this day. An early incident revealed certain facts—personal—and had a temporary numbing influence upon Mowbray. The day had risen and Samarc awakened, when a strange orderly entered the ward, and came leisurely to the cot where Peter sat:
“What have you here?”
“A shrapnel wound in the face.”
The orderly looked under the cot for the uniform, as if to determine Samarc's place and rank.
“Where's the blouse?” he asked.
“It was covered with blood,” said Peter. “They took it away.”
“What branch of the service?”
Peter was not sure—infantry possibly. He didn't care for the stranger's manner, nor to have this particular gunner of the rapid-fire pieces hurried to the field unhealed. The orderly bent suddenly, whispering.
“She told me to tell you that she wants to come, but that it isn't safe—”
...Moritz Abel looking for an interpreter would have been interested now; also the Old Man ofThe States. The stranger had spoken leisurely. Peter's temptation was conquered before he was half through.
“Are you sure you were to give me some message?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“But I wasn't expecting anyone.”
The other regarded him keenly. Peter was well trained for that. An officer appeared in the doorway and beckoned the orderly.
“It must have been a mistake,” the latter muttered.
Peter was thinking fast. The fact remained that their meeting the night before had been noted. He was leaving for the field shortly; the harm of suspicion would fall upon her.
“I promised to call a moment this morning at the amputation house—but no one was to come for me,” he added.
“I have made a mistake,” the orderly repeated.
“...I wonder if I have?” Peter thought.
Samarc's hand came up to him, and the pull that meant he wanted to speak. Peter invariably paled before this ordeal. Not through words but sounds were the meanings tortured out.... Samarc meant to take the field. In the usual course there would be no coming back for him at nightfall, because he had “ceased to kill—”
“But must your officers know?” Peter whispered.
...The officers would know if it were the same old crew, because they knew Samarc's work. This was the substance of the answer.
“But why go?”
...They would take off the bandages to be sure that he required further hospital care. He could not endure that. The bandages must never come off.... He would rather be afield.
Peter saw the grim finality of it. Samarc wasn't changed. He meant to end it. It was not only Spenski, but the havoc under the cloths....
A young assistant surgeon at a near cot was rather too hastily laying bare the lint from a severe shoulder wound.
Exchange with Samarc had of course stopped. Peter, thinking deeply, watched with but half attention until the assistant surgeon briskly rebound the wound, and began tugging at the soldier to get on his feet. The wounded one whimpered his weakness.
“Get up!”
The order was repeated. “Into your clothes, man. Scores are already in the column with wounds worse than yours.”
The man groaned, stirred, but fell back. Peter had seen the wound—not a desperate one, but enough to lay a man up for a fortnight at home, and this could not have been more than three days old. There wasn't much chance of malingering.
“Come, come!” the young officer urged angrily.
The soldier tried to raise himself, but did not make good work of it.
“I'll get you up, damn you—”
A quick scream from the man on the cot. Peter did not know what the doctor did, but he smelled acid. All was cloudy before his eyes. He was a bit surprised a second after to feel the Russian's neck in his two hands:
“None but a beast would take from the stable a horse crippled like that,” he was saying.
The assistant was but a boy. Peter caught this before lasting damage was done. He left the place half crying, threatening to kill Mowbray later. His superior appeared. Peter smiled at him. Samarc was up, drawing on his clothes.
“A bit of bad judgment,” Peter said, not explaining whether it was his or the young doctor's.
The surgeon did not ask, but turned to the great muffled face.
“This man was from one of the rapid-fire commands, I believe?”
Peter was prevented from further glibness by a decisive nod from Samarc.
“The Fatherland will need you to-day,” the surgeon said with a peculiar significance.
To Peter's trained ear the sounds from Samarc were dangerously like, “Fatherland-hell.”
“A shrapnel splinter struck him in the mouth,” he explained. “He says he is ready to take the field.”
Samarc spoke again.
“His blouse is gone,” said Peter hastily. “I can manage for him.”
“Has he a fever?”
“I'm afraid so—a slight fever.”
The surgeon turned to the other cot. “Let this fellow sleep another day,” he said.
The soldier lying there gave Peter a look almost uncanny in its gratitude.
“Sit down, Samarc. I'll get you a blouse,” the latter said and left the ward.
Big Belt awoke early in his own quarters, and beat around under the blankets for his friend. Peter was not there. Boylan remembered and sat up. This was the day of the great battle, but there was to be breakfast first. He recalled what was in the saddle-bags. This proved unsatisfactory. Even that hinged on Peter, as every thought so far. ... Boylan now reflected that he might have stayed longer in the ward last night. There was just as much to hold him to the cot of Samarc as had called Peter. Altogether, the day was not beginning in a way to suit.
He sat in the center of a tired tangle of woolen blankets and buckled on his leggings. His face pricked his chest as he bent forward. There was a stabbing run of ideas that had to do with marble baths, tepid plunges and fragrant steam. This collection he made haste to banish with matters of the day, and the absence of Peter,—but the pictures were various and persistent—exceptionally enticing baths from all his history recurring. He stretched out his gray woolen shirt and brushed it hard with handfuls of dried grass; he washed uncomfortably. It was like an ablution before one is undressed—that pervasive beard affair—and a general chill and dampness about clothes and boots that had not yet worked warm. The day was alternate gray and red. Noise gained in the street. Big Belt stepped forth.
Just at this moment he saw Peter Mowbray disappear into that grim street entrance from which the unspeakable human outcry had issued yesterday. He followed, twisting into doorways to let provision wagons pass, quickening his steps to cross between detachments of infantry. A certain dead cavalry horse was powerful in the air. Boylan knew exactly where it lay, for it had called attention these three days, an Austrian property, saddle and all, a ghastly outpouring upon the turf.
Boylan found himself stepping forward with a gladness that was answered with sharp objection by his own nature, and which he would not have let Peter Mowbray know for all Judenbach. He was disgusted with the weakness that made a man friend such a profound institution in his breast.
The hall-way was dark. Boylan heard low voices; something from them prevailed to hush his entrance. In fact, at the turning he stood quite still for possibly three seconds. Beyond in the shadows Peter stood with a woman. Afterward Boylan recalled that there had been one poignant cry of pain from above, as if born of the monotone of moaning in that house.
They did not see him.... A little man appeared from the shadows, joined the two, and handed Peter a Russian blouse such as is worn by hospital stewards of the service. Peter thanked him; the other departed; the two were once more alone.... The huge scarred head of the old war-wolf withdrew jerkily; with stealth, he stepped back into the street. He did not stop until he reached his own quarters. There he found that he had not folded his blankets. In the midst of this work his hands stopped.... He was as accustomed as any man can be to unremoved horse by this time. It came steadily to his nostrils, mingled with the leathery smell of his own field-outfit. Presently he looked at his watch, and snapped the case shut with a crack. The strength of his fingers would have broken a filbert.
“Some men can find 'em anywhere,” he muttered. “And such a one! She was a flame.... As for Mr. B. B.—it's dead horse all his days.”
Ashamed of himself, Big Belt waited to see if Peter would turn in to their quarters, as he approached carrying the hospital steward's blouse across his arm. Boylan would not call. It was like a woman's way—to learn if a man had forgotten her; still he would not call.... Clean-shaven, very straight and full of life, Peter approached, smiling at packers and soldiers, a smile for all the world. “Why not?” Boylan thought. Peter did turn in, and came toward him, hand out.
“Tomato ketchup with duck's eggs. Draw up a chair,” said Boylan. He appeared just now to see the steward's blouse.
“Samarc takes the field to-day. It's for him,” Peter explained.... “He's going out to kill himself. Only one reservation—that he kill no one else.”
Boylan seemed staring at Peter's knees.
“You're letting the ketchup burn,” Peter said mildly.
“I suppose that's what he really means to do,” Big Belt observed, after a moment. “And what are we to do about it?”
“I thought I would stand by a little—not so as to be a nuisance, you know—”
“Naturally not. Of course.”
They ate in silence—a thousand things to say.
“I won't be very far from the staff,” said Peter, hurrying back to the hospital. “Poor old Samarc has two wounds, you know—”
It wasn't a day to explain things—not a day to talk. Men afield can never tell what they are doing; some devilish irony is in the air. They laugh; they listen; they hope—only a jest comes. The most thrilling and stupendous situations bring forth but a curse or a roar. Human throats are inarticulate, afield; the reality that voices heroic utterance and makes it memorable is not at work in man-fabric; splendid faces and brave actions—but the words are the revealers of emptiness. For the animal is awake and upstanding; the spirit that quickens reality is apart.
The battlefield opened to Mowbray's eyes that day with abnormal clearness, as if he had brought rest and reflection to a problem that long had harried him, He felt singularly light and full of ease—as one does sometimes in the first hours of the day after a sleepless night. The day was wild with west wind, a touch of south still clinging. The east arrayed itself again and again in all the delicate blends of pink and gray, watery yellow, rose, and azure; a different arrangement at each glance, as if separate groups of maidens followed each around a Roman bath.
Samarc was given a seat in an ammunition wagon, with orders to join his battery. Peter found his horse, already saddled by Boylan, and overtook the wagon train as it left the town. In a halt for the way to clear, Kohlvihr and his staff passed, Dabnitz and Boylan riding together. The General sat soft and lumpy in the saddle, his eyes small and feverish, his face hotly red. The staff passed on, all except Boylan believing that the correspondent had fallen in behind. Riding with the wagons, Peter frequently turned to the terrifying bandage above the steward's blouse. When the light was right, he caught a glint of the eyes beneath.
The way became steep for the wagons as they neared the emplacements. Peter swung off and led his pony. Infantry was already engaged down in the hollows; the reek of powder began to cut the air at intervals, but the strong wind as often cleansed it away, and the scent of woods came up startlingly, with the warmth of the sun upon the ground—the sweet healing breath of drying cedar boughs.
He was sorry now he had roughed it with the young doctor; that sort of thing was very far from him. He had no memory of another episode like it. On occasion, dropping into the queerest abstractions, he fanciedhernear.... It had been like a soldier leaving his lady for the battle—the precious few minutes less than an hour ago. She had promised to be with him. There had been no talk nor thought of the terrifying day she faced in the hospital; everything had to do with his taking the field. She would follow him with her thoughts. Perhaps he would find his soul out there, she suggested, as he had never found it before. Peter wondered now just what she meant by that. It was not his way to fall back upon any such abstraction.
He reflected how her presence always changed him, gave him strength of a different sort, and directness of aim.... It was true that she seemed near—on the other side from Samarc—a part of the mountain fragrance that would not be overpowered in the gun-reek. He felt if he could turn quickly enough he would catch the gleam of her colors. This was her country. She was of the north and the cold lands; she belonged to the purity of the cedars.
He played with the thought that she was near; and from the thought, because it was good, a glimpse of the future came to him—the peace to come, when men would dwell again with their loves, and the dream of superb affiliation would come true. All this madness of men would pass, as the rising powder-reek would pass from these Galician hills, and leave them their silence and their natural fragrance.
The wagons had gone on. Samarc's battery might have been rubbed out for all their ability to find it. All faces strange—gunners, range-finders, and the cartridge hands. Peter felt a horror in his breast for the immediate presence of the guns—as if he had reached the end of toleration in the one day with them. Samarc felt this hate, too, his ruling passion.... Any moment one of the rapid-firers might drum into action. Their sense was one—that something would be uncoupled in their minds. They turned, Peter laughing at his desire to run—as they found another group of machines emplaced in a rocky shelter a little higher than the spot where the shrapnel had struck three days before.
No one called to them as they turned back. A small belated wagon train rumbled by, but no one hailed them from the seats. They were free, alone. Peter inhaled the scent of the forest, sharp again from the acrid taint of the cool, hazy air. He loved the sweet mountain wind as never before—almost as if he were to leave it all. There was little need of exchange of words. Each understood mainly the thoughts of the other. Big guns thundered at each other from the remoter hills. Again they saw an infantry movement start forth below—the endless strings of infantry along the broad lower slopes. They stopped to watch them.
Creatures of the hollows, their business to rise and be swept back—marching forth now—Kohlvihr's command. Peter's eyes filled and his throat stopped at the spectacle of the gray lines. Surely something was the matter with him, he thought. Was it pathological—loss of sleep, or fatigue? Or was it something that Spenski and Abel, the field and hospital; more than all was it something that Berthe Wyndham had given him? In any event, it seemed as if those infantry lines marching out now to the burning front were being torn from his own breast, everymoujikprecious. He wanted to be with them, not with the heinous guns. He wished he could spare them, stop the continual sacrifice. Miles of gray lines moving out now. ...His companion's tugging hand.
It dawned upon Peter before many sounds that Samarc wanted to go alone. He pointed the trail back around the hills toward Judenbach, where it would meet the road Kohlvihr had taken, suggesting that Peter join the staff. He, Samarc, would continue the search for his battery. As a rule Mowbray was the last to continue in the presence of a man who wanted him to go; and yet, he knew that Samarc hated the field pieces as much as he, and that he did not mean to live through the day. He hesitated. The final urging was pitiful—a sort of tumult from under the cloths.
“Nothing doing, Samarc,” he said suddenly. “You and I for it—at least a while yet. I say—do the hard thing. The little man would have it so. We'll go down closer to the infantry stuff and forget ourselves.”
...Yes, Samarc would do the hard thing. There was gratitude for which Peter had no receptivity—gratitude for the friendship, the night's watching. His hand was taken and carried to the other's breast, as only a Russian could do—and down they went together.
The infantry was their magnet as they made the down grade—miles of gray lines. The lower land was trampled and dusty; the breeze lost itself in the hollows. Just as an orchardist, discovering a certain parasite on his trees, thinks of a specific poison, so they knew that this great “forward” of the Russian foot-soldiers would start the Austrian machine and rapid-fire batteries.
They were moving now in front of a long line of new Russian works which had appeared deserted. Boylan would have known better; Samarc should have known. Peter had taken for granted that these had been emptied by the huge advances already in movement. They were in the path of Kohlvihr's reserves, it appeared, in the center of the line, when the signal “forward” was sounded. The works suddenly blackened with men. It was too much for the pony. Peter found a bridle with a broken throat latch in his hand, as he watched the little beast tear down the front, and heard the roar of laughter from the oncoming line.
The new front seemed endless in the rolling land. They were instantly enveloped. Out of the throng appeared one face that Peter had bowed to once or twice before—a captain, now working his way toward them. He glanced at the civilian insignia on Peter's sleeve, and said, with a smile:
“You've tricked us well this time, Mr. Mowbray. I hope you get back as cheerfully. You'll have to go forward now—at least, until we stretch out in skirmish. We're rather thick just here. Stay with my command—”
“We thought we were back of you,” Peter said. “I assure you I didn't plan this, but it's very kind of you.”
The Captain glanced at Samarc and turned to the American as they urged on.
“Hurt badly?”
“Just his face.”
“Stay by—some of the soldiers might be rough—”
They were carried forward in the resistless interference of great numbers.
Peter had pitied the infantry formerly from a hill, having stood with a battery as it sprayed the Austrian lines. He had watched the Austrian machines pouring steel upon the Russians also. There had been emotion; he had felt the shame of it powerfully on this very morning; but now he reflected, with a touch of levity, that his pity had not been adequate. At the present juncture he belonged to the sacrifice. The process was reversed; the globe of his experience shortly to be made complete. He would have the effects of light and darkness from the vantage of the preying and the preyed upon.
Peter had never been actually down among men before. He had watched men, studied them sincerely, passed them in the street, reflected upon their problems. At the same time, his personal impetus had always been away from men, his a different purpose, a different aim. He wasonenow, one in the massed destiny of the command, one to obey. Only by falling could he be free from this extraordinary authority of the army.
Moreover, he felt that the motive energizing this authority was not of the human but of the tiger.
He might have thought of all this before, as he had thought of death as one thing for the outsider and a different thing for the little lens-maker he liked so well. But this was experience, not conjecture. He was an atom of the charge. The army authority disrupted his moral sense. It bound and gagged him. No imagination could have constricted his vital and creative force as this adventure, in which he was caught up like a chip and carried forward in a rush of animal power. Fear had no part of his revulsion, but the break of his will. It was not like a man drowning, in an insensible element; this that carried himhada consciousness and it was unclean.
He saw that the rankers leaned on each other; that there was not yet in the peasant faces about him a single separate individual relation to the impending peril. These men might have, seen others fall by the hundreds, but their faith was in the command, their law its law. Peter saw that they were in a sense like men parading through city streets, who endure the eyes of the crowds because they are part of a line. It was the eternal illusion of numbers again—the elbow brush, the heat, the breath, the muttering of men—this atmosphere that the military machine breathed. Standing alone, most of them would have fallen from fear.
He smelled the unwashed crowd. Under all the bronze that life in the open had given the command was the lardy look of earth-born men, close-to-the-ground men; these were the hordes that put on pounds and size, the rudiment of a mind, the momentary ignition of soul perhaps in moments such as now—and pass to the earth again. Yet the history of Europe was to be written upon a surface like this; this, the soil of the future. It was close to chaos, but as yet undefiled by man. This was the newest product of earth, the new terrific fecundity of the North that had alarmed lower Europe; these were the peasant millions as yet unfathered, strong as yet only as bulls are strong, gregarians, almost without memory; their terror, pain, passion, hope, genius not individual yet, but in the solution of the crowds.
Peter Mowbray's shock was the loss of the sense of self; his battle to retain this sense. He seemed to fuse in the heat, the vast solution draining his vitality. He could have given himself to the white fire of a group of men like Spenski, Abel, Fallows, Poltneck, perhaps—but to give himself to this.... They were stretching out now as skirmishers, the crush ended. Entire figures of men could be seen, instead of necks, beards, and shoulders. Samarc gripped his arm, the other hand pointing to a little red-haired boy who ran, crouched, sped on again, halted to look, in the true squirrel fashion of advance, which is the approved procedure of skirmishers. He talked to himself, appeared lost in absorption, reminded one continually of Spenski when his face was averted—and was just one of the miles of infantry.
Their faces looked cold now; a part of the gray tone so often observed. The officers fought to stretch them out. Every line of fear that the human mouth can express Peter saw. Now the drum of the Austrian pieces. It was not as they had heard it in the heights, but like an encore at first—as if some tremendous mass of men in a wooden gallery had started a buffeting of feet. The valley muffled the volleys; the actual steel was not heard until it neared like a rain torrent; indeed it found their immediate lines before they heard the murderous cutting of the air. The Austrian gunners were placed for enfilading, so that a fraction of point gave them impaling force and a wide swath in the ranks.
Peter saw the little red head cocked forward as if to listen to the nearing gusts of steel.
Now men were down and crying out. The fire was like that of a hostile regiment concentrating its volley upon a little knot of soldiers—the air was whipped, wild with throbbing missiles. Supernatural fear was the answer from the very souls of men. Their prayer (in Mowbray's conception) was not for life, but for cessation. Yet the machines held them with infernal leisure as one holds the stream from a garden hose to a spot of clay clinging to masonry.
In all postures the soldiers met the gale, with every answering sound. Then falling, rising, crawling, the remnant went back. It was not pain nor death nor wounds that mattered—but the hurtling concussions in the air, the plague of steel....
It stopped. Peter lay exhausted an instant. He felt no hurt. He was down because one could not stand in that sweep of projectiles. He recalled that he had seen the red head fall a moment before, and turned like a sick man, his eyes rolling, to learn if it were a dream or not. Yes, Redhead had fallen. Samarc was crawling toward him on his knees. Peter writhed forward, too, but disliking the movement lest it bring the guns upon them again. He forgot that. Redhead was muttering aboutthe storm.
“Are you hard hit, boy?” Peter called.
There were others about—a whole line of fallen, but they saw just this one—his cheek to the dirt, his mouth moving queerly. He was young like the undersurgeon, seventeen or eighteen, and much bewildered, the gray, clayey hue upon him, but not at all uncouth. Samarc felt his spine, turned him. The wound was in his body. Just now Redhead saw the effigy that was Samarc. He had been watching Peter before.
His mouth opened, eyes seemed to settle back into a red gleam of horror, his face swung around into the dirt. Peter would have given his arm to spare Samarc that. No sound from under the cloth—only a breath. Samarc shouldered him, raised himself with the burden.
There are pressures of will. One turns on a certain force to meet an obstacle, and it is exhausted. There are other sources of power, but one brushes death to summon them. Far ahead they saw the remnant making cover. Now Peter noted that there was human need at every step. They lay in all positions, squirmed their faces up to him and implored. The few were still; the many writhed. He looked for a small one. He had never lifted a man and was surprised when one came up and rolled as if by magic across his back. It was so easy that he wanted to take others.
“I will come back,” he called to the faces.
He meant to come back as he said it. He wanted to bring them all in. He had no hate for the Austrian gunners, because he had seen Samarc and Spenski at the same work, and he knew that the heart of man changes in a day. He would have helped the little undersurgeon had he been there. Amoujikarose from his knees in front of them, as they staggered on. He was stunned, bewildered, blinded, but he could hear.
“Come on—we're going back,” Peter said.
The other held out his hand gropingly. Peter placed the flap of his coat in it, and the moujik stumblingly followed.... Another soldier on his knees barred the way.
“We're going back,” Peter said. “Come on. You can crawl—”
The soldier set out eagerly to obey, as if it had been a great boon to follow with his own strength. It was the mightiest episode of the day to Peter Mowbray. “My God, how they obeymen!” he said, with awe. “Theycouldbe led right—peasants who obey like that!”
There was singing all about him—not of bullets, though this little movement on the field drew a thin, uncertain long-range fire from some intrenchment (apparently it was not enough to start a machine)—a low singing as of wells of gladness reaching the surface. Peter was torn with the agony of the field, yet thrilling with happiness—as if there was liberation somewhere within. He turned to the crawling one who inspired him:
“We're all hurt, but we're going back to bed. Come on—you're doing famously—”
The back bobbed to greater effort. The blind one held him fast, and the Redhead left his trail of blood and murmured aboutthe storm.... It was a long range for the rifles, and seemed as harmless as sandflies after the horror of hornets they had known.... They were alone. They saw the heaped rims of the Russian works ahead—five of them, alone, for, queerly enough, they were as one.
And now from ahead, from the concealed Russian lines, arose a roar such as Peter had never known. It struck him with a psychic force that filled his eyes with tears, though he did not understand. He thought that the end of the war must have come—so glad and so mighty was that shouting.
Now a fragment of the line ran forth to bring the little party in, not minding Peter's gestures in the least; for he waved them back, lest they start the machines again.... It appeared that his little group of maimed and blind came home marching into the very hearts of the command—even the Red one.... They had laid their burdens down; an incoherent Boylan took Peter, leading the way back to the staff. Kohlvihr and Dabnitz stood there, the old man repeating:
“Get the name of the hospital man.”
Dabnitz plucked the sleeve of Samarc's coat.
“Hospital steward,—I have that,” he said a second time, “but what's the name and the division?”
“He can't speak,” said Peter. “I'll get his name later. He's been wounded in the mouth.”
Curiously enough in this turmoil it appeared for the first time why Samarc had been allowed a free field practically—why he had not been impressed for service by one of the batteries. It was the steward's blouse that Abel had given him.... Peter lost wonder at this. Things were darkening about him. He smelled the cedars. Her colors seemed just out of view.... She had been near.
“Peter—are you hit?” It was Boylan's voice.
“No, just bushed.”
Now he heard Kohlvihr say: “Anything for you we can, Mr. Mowbray. As a civilian, you are of course exempt from specific honors, but as soon as I learn your companion's name I shall suggest that he be honored by the Little Father.”
“Why, you've put the whole line back into fighting trim!” Boylan whispered.
Something of the activity now apparent to the blurred faculties of Mowbray, as he sat in the clammy embrace of nausea and struggling for breath, appealed to him as structurally wrong; almost inconceivably abominable, in fact. He had no interest in his so-called achievement, regarded it with a laugh, repeated that it was pure accident; but such as it was, he objected to it being used to put the line back into “fighting trim.”
He was in the large sod-covered pit occupied by field headquarters. He turned at the sound of breathing at his side. Samarc was sitting there. Peter's hand went to his knee. Aides, messengers, and orderlies hastened in and out. There were twenty men in the pit—Kohlvihr the center of all. Big Belt was ministering—a flask, a momentary massage, a steady run of comment, ruddy from the heart.... The activity came to him again.
Kohlvihr was actually planning another infantry advance.
Peter started to speak, but halted for further reflection, a bit skeptical as to his own sanity. This was the third day of the battle; this the day planned to drive a hole through the difficult Austrian hills; the whole Russian army was dependent upon taking this Austrian position; the weather was becoming colder, Berlin still afar off; the Russian left and center pinned to the results of action here.
So far mental processes seemed adequate, but this changed in no way his attitude toward the atrocious activity in the brain of Kohlvihr of the bomb-proof pit.
Kohlvihr might sally forth for his wounded; hundreds were dying out there in the windy hollow. He, Peter Mowbray, had seen their faces—their bodies to the end of sight. But Kohlvihr had no thought of that; rather to meet the range of death machines again with another horde of his skirmishers—and again—and again, until the end of the day—until enough passed through to gain the opposite slopes in fighting force, or until the Austrian ammunition was exhausted....
And Kohlvihr had never been out there. His cave was well back in the shelter of the works—sheltered from ahead and from the sky, with Judenbach behind.... Old Doltmir, the second in command, was saying:
“It's a terrible price to pay, General—a terrible price. You will note that they enfilade our lines as we reach the bottom land. You will note that their machines cover the valley perfectly and that they are practiced now—”
There was balm in that, but acid covered it an instant later from Kohlvihr, who swallowed a drink and turned with a snarl.
“We have the price to pay—”
Peter was thinking now of the front line that had cheered his coming in; the men so ready to forget themselves for a little spectacle, and the thrill that had come to his own breast from their shouting.He loved them and knew why.And those men, their lives and deaths—were in the hands of this red-eyed human rat who fouled the air.... No, Peter thought, it wasn't the brandy that smelled. It's Kohlvihr and the brandy.
“Good God, Boylan,” he muttered in English, “can't you get him by the throat?”
Boylan's eyes were wild. He laughed softly, however, saying in Russian: “Very good, Peter—you'd joke at your death—”
And Big Belt's eyes roved to Dabnitz, who apparently had not heard Peter's remark.
...And now the tugging from Samarc that meant words! It seemed as if a ghastly stillness prepared for that final rumble; certainly stillness followed it. All eyes turned, even Kohlvihr's, to the effigy. But Peter alone understood.
“...Don't let them take off the bandages.”
Samarc left his seat in the dark corner and walked evenly toward the center where Kohlvihr stood, his aides about him—poor old Doltmir standing apart and distressed. The moment had come for the order to be given. Kohlvihr turned to a dispatch rider at the door—a door made of cedar trunks.
For the moment Peter was blocked between two desires, or paralyzed. The huge face of Boylan close by mutely implored him to be silent.
“Samarc,” he called.
Samarc did not turn. Now Peter saw the red face of Kohlvihr in its gray fringe suddenly lifted and enlarged. The effigy was close to it, but not higher, and hands were tightening beneath it—Samarc's strong unhurt hands. There had been one snarling scream. It was followed by a shot from Dabnitz. The red face went down with the other to the clay floor.
The roar of the battle followed as Peter staggered back alone to Judenbach. He must have traversed a mile before there was a rational activity of his faculties. The first mental picture was that of the officers running along the works as the order for “advance as skirmishers” was given. They were inspiring the men in the name of the Little Father.
“If only they hadn't said that,” Peter muttered pathetically.
Then he recalled that Kohlvihr had been lifted practically unhurt from the clay floor; that his order was carried out. The infantry had obeyed. With all he knew, and all he had seen that day, the mystery of common men deepened. Out of it all strangely stood forth in his mind now the man who could not rise, but who crawled after him at a word.... These men obeyed—that was the whole story. If they were given true fathers!... Why, thatwasthe answer!
Peter had come into this with all the fire of revelation. He had earned it. Blood and courage, and the stress of death, had given it to him. Yet it was worth it all. He would tell Berthe Wyndham....
He stopped short at the edge of the town. Never was there in his life a moment of profounder humility. Berthe Wyndham had told him all this before they left Warsaw—on the day that the message came from Lonegan. All he had learned to-day through such rigor and jeopardy she had told him; and she had understood it then with the same passion that he had it now.
Peter had only listened that day; he had lived it to-day. His heart suddenly flooded with warmth for Fallows. Fallows had been through all this—all the burning and zealotry of it, and had come forth into the coldness and austerity of service. It was very wonderful. Peter Mowbray's eyes smarted. They, and the service, had certainly crumpled the old fronts of calm and the sterile pools of intellect. He loved the peasants now,and he knew why.... He saw what a stick he had been, but this didn't trouble him greatly. The new seeing was enough; he was changed. His emotions presently concerned the fresh realizations so dearly bought—in the past three days... three days.
Not until now did he think of Samarc.... The reality had stood like a black figure at the door of his brain throughout all the walk, but it did not enter until now. No, Samarc would not come back to Judenbach. It was finished as he had intended. He had ceased to kill. Even at the last he had but used his hands, and in as righteous wrath as ever tortured human fingers to terrible strength.... He, Mowbray, had not remained to assure himself that the last command of his friend was obeyed. This hurt him not a little.... He was in the main street... exertion, sorrow, exaltation; now he was whipped again. He felt he had not done well at the last. A teamster yelled to him to get out of the way. Peter stepped back wearily to let a string of ambulances by.
Across was that grim door of the house of amputations. He was not quite ready to enter. He would get himself in hand better. He had not been gone long—it was only mid-forenoon. He would go to his quarters and clean up a little—perhaps rest a moment. His thoughts turned often to Samarc, always with a pang. He wished the Big Belt were here. This last reminded him of his saddle bags—razors and all gone with the pony. Boylan would have the laugh at him now.
He could not sit still in his quarters. Voices came to him from the street, from the court—even from that grim place a little down the way. He arose and went across to the familiar hospital ward.... Another was in Samarc's place. A hand beckoned. It was from the cot of the soldier for whom he had struggled with the young doctor. He went to it. There was a message:
“They were talking of you as an enemy—”
That was all. Peter did not care for particulars. His volition was quickened. He had been sadly in need of that. Now he went direct to the hallway, where he had left her in the morning, and on upstairs. The rooms were crowded with wounded and medical officers, but no familiar face—neither Berthe Wyndham nor Moritz Abel.
Many eyes held him. He did not see the young doctor, but the surgeon who had come to the other ward was there—that bland, quiet face, regarding him curiously now. Peter asked nothing, and was free apparently to move anywhere about the building. None of his own was there. His loneliness was untellable. He could not have spoken to a stranger without a break of tone....
He wished for Boylan again.
Peter was in the street, moved along the walls as one very tired. He was searching, but the thoughts grew so terrible that he could not keep his eyes to outer activity. His steps led him to the Court of Executions. Standing by the street gate, he dreaded to enter. He would not tolerate this, yet it was more than life or death. He had a mental picture of finding her there, her body shrinking into one of the stone corners—as a maimed bird that has fallen lies still under its wings.
His breath burst from him. He had been holding it as if under water. His eyes traveled electrically now.
There were dead in the court, but she was not there, nor Abel nor Fallows. He looked through the row of gratings and under the arches. There was a low stone lintel with a dim deserted hall beyond....
Just now a step behind him, heavy boots ringing on the stone flags. Peter turned. A Russian soldier halted, raised his rifle, commanded him to advance.
Peter waved his hand in a gesture of obedience, but turned to glance in the gloom under the lintel again. It was justin the turningthat he had caught the gleam of her colors—not when he stared straight in. Peter assured himself of this before giving himself up.