CHAPTER XVISYMPATHY
Snow began covering Siberia east of Baikal. It seemed as though winter arrived in a night. Still there were many mornings when the high, cold sunshine glinted in a trillion jewels across thin snows of early November and the nipping air was like wine, piercing a world suddenly frozen hard as wood. It was such a morning when the great white train finally moved in off the eastern steppes and began that all-day crawl around the southern and western shores of Baikal, up toward Irkutsk. Sunshine, sunshine! Cobalt blue and sunshine! If Nathan remembered Japan as a land of laughter, he remembered Siberia as a land of Sunlight Glorious. The night in black fog was only a dream, a nightmare, which had slipped in between some flaming sunset and a singing sunrise. And the sunshine glinted now on the far-rolling whitecaps of Baikal as though the water reached up and scooped nets of it from the air and rolled it over into liquid sacks of shimmering green until that imprisoned sunshine burst and made evanescent foam and swashing water laughter, icy cold.
The train was headed for far Western Siberia, in toward the Ural Mountains—Ufa, Samara and the Volga—where a thin line of valiant, ragged Czechs were stemming the Bolshevik tide eastward. Yet it dropped hospital and medical supplies and occasionally a surgeon, as it went along. It would stay a week in Irkutsk. The only patients it contained to date were unfortunates who had been picked up en route, like Nathan, pro-Allysoldatwho had escaped from Bolshevik camps or with eyes blinded and tongues pulled out had been turned loose in great Siberia to perish in agony for daring to question the political acumen and sociological sagacity of an ex-anarchist and a Bronx dish-washer.
Crowds gathered quickly at stations where the train stopped,—stolid, smoothly boarded, wooden stations resembling American freight houses in towns of ten thousand inhabitants, stations with queer, Tartar filigree and scroll work decorating the side gables, and all painted a militant mustard yellow. Madelaine beheld what Nathan had been familiar with for over a year. Flat-faced, gray-whiskered peasants in lambskin hats, green blouses, knee-length boots, who might have stepped from the pages of Tolstoi; tall, burly, chinless young men with long sandy mustaches, childlike blue eyes, massive hands, in dark green military caps, ragged civilian coats, calves protected from winter cold by spirals of coarse juting; big-bellied, deep-chested officials who seemed all the same age—around fifty years—in drum-major hats of black lambskin dented at rakish angles, dressed in great overcoats that forever required brushing, and possessing hands that always needed warming; youths with big legs and small ears, wearing cadet caps, blouses buttoned at the left shoulder, belts with big front buckles resembling closed nickel cigarette cases, long trousers like cotton overalls that bagged at the knees and flopped about each ankle like a sailor’s; women with dough-like faces, no breasts, prominent abdomens and raw hands, who wore mannish coats and swathed their heads in brilliant shawls until their features could hardly be discerned; Khirgese desert folk in suits made from undressed skins; shivering Chinese in black cambric, old felt hats and pigtails who tried to eke out a living selling corky cabbages piled in baskets swung at opposite ends of a five-foot pole; ponderous Mongolian Tartars in mountainous ulsters of goatskin and no hats, with their cues wound atop their heads and most of them forever accompanied by a long cattle whip; little children in over-size hats and caps, braving the killing wind in cotton clothing,—strange indeed was the aggregation which gathered miraculously when news of the great “Americanski” train permeated each railroad settlement. And all around and about were dogs, hundreds of dogs—half-starved, ravenous, snapping, snarling, wolfish, with wild, greenish eyes—who watched for scraps of garbage and fought over them, the stronger driving off the weaker and leaving them animated creatures of mere skin and bone, to perish of slow starvation.
They reached Irkutsk in the night. Next morning Nathanwent off to find the Consul and Hartshorn and report his abortive attempt to get through to Harbin. He was absent all day. It began to snow about four o’clock. Hartshorn entered the office car with a scowl.
“They’re holding a dance over-town to-night because of the arrival of all the Red Cross girls,” he announced; “a last bust before they go in-country.”
“Well,” demanded Nathan, “what of it?”
“I’d like to go and I can’t. Somebody’s got to look after these cars and be here in case the Czechs want anything.”
About six o’clock Madelaine accidentally encountered Nathan up the platform of the great marble station.
“I’m not going to-night,” he said, in response to her question. “I’m looking after the office car so Hartshorn can go. The poor fellows here haven’t had a holiday for months, and my life lately has been pretty much all holidays, especially—the past week.”
“I should very much like to see the Red Triangle outfit,” said Madelaine.
“And I’d like you to meet some of the Czechs. They’re the finest chaps on earth! They call us Y. men the ‘Little Uncles from America.’”
“It wouldn’t require much persuasion to make me forget they were giving us a dance to-night,” said Madelaine softly.
The Y. cars serving the Czechs had been permanently shunted off on a western spur, a mile south of the big main station. They were great Manchurian freight cars, sheathed inside and made habitable with doors, windows and stove-pipe chimneys. All of the service and recreational paraphernalia supplied to Red Triangle huts in France was also supplied to these club cars. There could be no huts in Siberia. There was no trench fighting. Armies maneuvered too swiftly, principally by rail.
Every Czech in every car arose as Madelaine passed through. An American Red Cross nurse! They held their caps in their hands. They were gentlemen, every man of them,—college-bred—lawyers, professors, doctors, artists, high-caste tradesmen. In one car Madelaine halted inastonishment before a painting in oils done upon the boards of the inside wall from materials which came from God-knew-where. It was “The Burning of John Huss,” the great Bohemian patriot, executed with a craft fitting to hang in any art gallery. The graceful young officer in charge spoke English. He laughed deprecatingly.
“Ah, it eese nothing. One man, he paint eet because he have much time and nothing other to do.”
Madelaine and Nathan came finally to the caboose car, Hartshorn’s combination office and living quarters. In addition to the sheet-iron stove and shelf-table were a desk, an oil lamp, a few wooden chairs. Nathan lighted the oil lamp and poked the fire, throwing in several new billets of wood. It was then about half-past eight.
“Let’s sit here and rest and—talk,” begged Madelaine. “The crowd won’t return until midnight or after; there’s no necessity for hurrying back.”
Nathan placed a chair for her so she could dry her damp footwear and skirts. He threw off his coat, for it was bungling and uncomfortable. Madelaine insisted upon it. She insisted, too, that he smoke; she saw the stem of his briar protruding from the breast pocket of his shirt.
“I know you want to smoke,” she laughed. “A man looks so gloriously comfortable and relaxed when he’s ruminating over his pipe.”
“I can’t fill it,” returned Nathan lamely. “Not with one hand. It’s of no consequence.”
“I’ll fill it for you,” declared the girl. It was not an offer. It was a simple statement.
Nathan surrendered pipe and tobacco tin and she filled his briar. She had no nonsense about it. She did not affect to be coy or awkward, or act as if men who smoked pipes were some type of monster who occasionally devoured women and little girls. She simply filled it and tamped the tobacco down hard and that was the beginning and end of the whole matter. Neither did she act as though either pipe or tobacco should be handled with tongs. She might have been filling men’s pipes for a livelihood since her school days. And when she handed it across, and the pipe was drawing evenly, she made him pull the low box on which he sat over close to the comfortable stove near her feet. Then as Sigurd might have sat at the feet of Brünhilde “with the flames allaround them, while she sang him the sacred runes, of war, of pity, of safety, of thought—wise words, sweet words, speech of great game,” so Nathan sat before Madelaine for the first time that night and once more in his life the clocks of time went unwound.
Outside, the snow was now falling heavily, smothering the city, burying them in. It hushed all the sounds of the world. No wind stirred. The flakes were great polls of wool that piled quickly. So it would snow for a week, two weeks, and create the winter-bound Siberia of old-time story and conception. They were alone, these two, in the heart of great Asia. Alone together! Little else mattered! With one big talon hand wrapped about the briar, a strong forefinger pressing into its bowl from time to time, Nathan leaned forward, half toward Madelaine, half toward the little stove.
They sat in silence for several minutes, a silence so great that Nathan could hear the woman’s wrist watch ticking distinctly. Finally Madelaine said:
“You and I have an acquaintance in common, I believe. Bernice Gridley. Isn’t that so?”
“You know—Bernie—Gridley?” Nathan forgot to smoke, so great was his surprise.
“We attended the same preparatory school at Mount Hadley, Massachusetts, for a time.”
“Then you—you—must be—the ‘Springfield friend’ with whom she went abroad. That is—I mean—was supposed to go abroad.”
It was Madelaine’s turn to be startled.
“You know—about Bernice?”
“Her father, Caleb Gridley, is one of the best friends I’ve ever had. If it hadn’t been for old Caleb—God bless him!—I’m afraid I wouldn’t have done much with my rhymes—or anything. He’s been the only real father I’ve ever known.”
“But how did you know—about Bernice?”
“Her father told me one night. I forget what started it. He was feeling pretty blue over it, although he wouldn’t say much. Bernie and I were rather good friends—once.”
“What do you mean about Mr. Gridley being the only real father you’ve ever known? Isn’t your own father living?”
Nathan swallowed with difficulty.
“It’s a long story—rather sordid—too long for me to hope to explain.”
Madelaine noted the choke in his voice. She studied his well-shaped head and muscular, capable shoulders. Some live cinders had dropped into the stove’s open ashpan. They still burned. Those ruddy flames lighted his copper countenance. What a specimen of a man he was!
She loved him. Already she loved him. Deeply.
“Perhaps I understand better than you think,” she replied calmly. “I happened to be in Paris, Vermont, one night. I met a queer old philosopher who ran the livery stable—I’ve forgotten his name. He told me about you—much!”
“You’ve been in Paris!”
“I remembered—a little poem of yours I had saved—had first appeared in a Paris paper. I stopped off there—to look up the poet. Naturally, I was interested to see what he might be like.—It was a rather unfortunate time. You had recently suffered a serious business setback. I decided to postpone my good wishes until a more appropriate occasion.”
“What night was it? Tell me frankly. Was it while they had me—locked up?”
He was so candid that his question demanded an answer equally candid.
“Yes,” she replied. Then after a time she leaned forward. “My dear boy,” she said softly, seriously, “you’ve kept things inside yourself, repressed and unvoiced so long, you’ve done yourself an injury. Why not tell me all about them? Won’t you believe I’d like to be your friend?”
“It’s a long story,” he repeated. “It’s the story of almost my entire life. And nobody wants to hear that!”
“I want to hear ‘that.’ And there is much time—before midnight.”
Then, as New England would express it, “one word led to another”, and before many minutes had passed Madelaine Theddon was adroitly drawing from Nathan all the hot, hard story of his sordid, perverted, mediocre past. He scarcely realized the girl was thus intriguing him. A great, relieving freedom lifted him, gave him one long, wide-open opportunity to unburden his tired heart. At times his voice broke with the stress of it.
He began where all good stories should begin, at the beginning.He did not boast and he did not depreciate. He took no undue credit for himself and he made no maudlin, insipid bid for compassion. He did not spare himself and he did not spare others. He hewed a straight, simple, naked narrative of fact and experience—and let the chips of blame or censure clutter where and whom they would.
The green billets burned lazily in the little stove. The smoke from Nathan’s briar curled upward and after shaping into sweeter pictures of the future than it could ever make of the past, it wafted out a slightly lowered window at the back.
And Madelaine listened. She was one of those big women whose ability to listen is part of her birthright—her maternal heritage. When Nathan spoke frankly and fearlessly of his experience with Carol, and why the Gardner girl had returned to Ohio, she interrupted for the first time.
“But couldn’t she see it was because of your great, clean love for her that you couldn’t soil that love with anything sordid? Wasn’t she big enough to realize you didn’t want your idol to have feet of clay of your own modeling?”
Nathan sighed and shrugged his shoulders. He made no comment.
Then he told of his life with Milly, the cheapness, the shallowness, the depression and handicap of it. He told of the petty bickerings and the reasons for them; the hideous, mediocre, unsatisfying slovenliness of her home while he hungered bitterly for beautiful things without knowing how to satisfy that hunger. He told the incident of the repainted Victrola as an illustration of six discouraging years. He could afford to laugh at it now. He did laugh. But Madelaine did not laugh. She was very close to tears.
When he came to the incident where old Caleb had brought the pink rosebuds to the child’s funeral and then read Nathan the Twenty-third Psalm in the hotel afterward, Madelaine laughed, strange as the statement may sound. But it was not in mirth. It was to counteract the tears which had brimmed over. She smeared them away with her naked fingers, not bothering to draw out her handkerchief.
Nathan told of his business struggle with his father; the neurotic extravagances of his mother; the death of Milly after her liaison with Plumb. Then he came to that night in Chicago when he had visited Bernie and had acid pouredon his quivering flesh because of his infirmities. Madelaine paled a moment. Then righteous anger flooded her face.
“And Bernie said any such thing? Acted in any such way? Twitted you for things you could not help? I’d like to pull her ears!”
No woman had ever declared before that she would like to pull any one’s ears in Nathan’s behalf. It was a new experience for the lonely man and it overwhelmed him. Especially when Madelaine went on:
“I don’t think your hands are homely. I’ve watched your hands ever since we met. I think they’re the strongest, most virile hands I’ve ever seen upon a man. If I were in deep trouble, unable to protect myself, I should very much like to have hands like yours clenched into pile-driver fists, striking blows in my behalf! That for Bernie! She’s absolutely heartless and a little vulgarian herself, beside. I think she’s horrid. Oh, you poor boy! You haven’t mentioned a single girl or woman who’s come into your life or gone out of it who’s been anything but a heartache and a handicap. Hasn’t there been one, Nathan—not one?” It was the first time she had called him Nathan. But it was spoken too naturally to be crude or forward.
“I’ve told you the whole story,” said the man simply, thickly.
He put out his hand in a gesture, that old, old habitual groping motion, as though feeling for some one or something by his side. But now, for the first time in his life, that hand did not grope fruitlessly. It grasped a woman’s hand, soft, strong, human, electric in that contact!
“I beg your pardon,” he cried, startled.
“There’s no need for begging my pardon, dear boy. Somehow I feel you and I are going to be rather good friends. Some other night I’ll return your confidence by telling you my story. But to-night belongs to you.” She waited a moment and asked:
“And you never did any more with your talent for writing after your father stopped you?”
“I couldn’t. I never had the heart. Mr. Hod, editor of the local paper, hurt my feelings one night by telling me he couldn’t print any more of my rhymes until I’d stopped a certain wail and—and—well—he said I ought to sing!But I couldn’t sing. There was no song in my heart. I gave up the poetry nonsense for good.”
“No! Not for good. You will write again, finer things. You will learn to sing. I feel certain of it; you will learn to sing!”
Nathan laid his pipe aside and sat with his big talon claws at his right temple to hide the emotions playing over his face. As he seemed disposed to silence, Madelaine continued:
“It’s almost too much to understand, dear boy—how you’ve stood out true to yourself and your ideals against such a background. Most boys would have succumbed. But you kept the faith with yourself. That was glorious. Such a constancy makes me want to sing. There are so few who keep the faith and go on, plow on—fight on!—through everything!”
“I haven’t done anything yet,” was Nathan’s answer, “not anything that really counts. I’ve felt as though I were waiting to get my fundamentals straight, my feet on firm ground. Then I’d really go on. Then I’d really plow ahead. Then I’d fight in earnest! When I’ve won, maybe I’ll sing again. Yes—perhaps!”
The heart-cry beneath his brave optimism and blind faith in the Ultimate Good was not lost on the girl. Lost on her? It surcharged her, overpowered her, surfeited through her and under her and about her till her calm eyes glowed starry again. It was like him. He would say it. She knew it years before—expected it.
And Bernie had made her believe that this man was a provincial, a “hick,” impossible! Poor Bernie! She had wanted a man who could wear a monocle without looking silly or lead a cotillion. And he was so big that little tinsel-worshiping Bernie couldn’t see him. So she struck him, scarred him, wounded him without knowing, discounting all Gentlewomen by her narrowness.
What this man needed was simple, pitifully simple. He needed some one in his life with the capacity to love greatly. All else would follow as a matter of normal dénouement.
“Dear boy,” she said huskily, “relax! Don’t worry any longer. Let all the past and pressure ease away. Let’s even forget that you’re a man and I’m a woman. Let’s see if we can’t just be good friends for a time—and help each other. You have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide, nothingto worry over, nothing to hold you or handicap you any more. You have courage. You have strength. You have inherent ability. You have hunger for beauty and divine discontent which the world needs more of. You have that great, indefinable, invaluable thing which the world calls Personality—your greatest asset! All life lies ahead of you. It’s flooded with color and sunshine. And you’re ‘leaping as a strong man to run a race.’ Wonderful! Start that race! Start for the Higher Hill Top. You can do it. All you need is some one to believe in you. Well, maybe there are far more people believing in you than you’ve ever dreamed. Keep the faith with them, even as you’ve kept it so far with yourself. Be true to your high calling wherewith you were called. Everything which has gone before has been Education. You have reached Commencement now. Ahead lies the world—the Battlefield! Go in with your Strongheart singing. Oh, dear boy, you deserve it so! I know you deserve it—the spoil—and the Hill Top!”
“God!” cried Nathan. He spoke the holy word in a way that kept it holy. A woman telling him this!
There was a pain like a knife-thrust in the back of his throat. He sat like a man turned to stone, scarcely daring to move. But he did move. He turned his face and looked up into—calm eyes. Calm eyes? But starry eyes too. They could be both. Verily they could be both.
With the self-assurance of the wise nurse—the woman of medicine perhaps at the moment—who knew what her patient needed more than all else for swift recovery—Madelaine gently drew Nathan toward her. She opened her lap.
Nathan’s face went down into that lap. That strong face was awash with hot, hard, terrible man-tears, though all the girl saw was a slight, intermittent, noiseless contraction of his broad shoulders.
But his one good talon hand stole out—halfway around her waist. A grip of iron!
It was the end of the trek for Nathan. In that simple privilege, that soft lap, those cool, gentle hands that stroked his hair, the soothing touch on his bowed back, the whispered words of comfort and incentive, the lad came to know at last the great, indefinable, unfathomable solace of a loving woman’s ministering tenderness. He did not want a mate—not then. He wanted only a mother. And he got a mother.He got a mother-spirit glorious. Richly it was his, for the taking; how richly he never dreamed at the time. There was no less respect nor mate-love for Nathan on the girl’s part in that moment, because he wanted the mother in her. If he had not wanted it, she would have been disappointed. Other things would come afterward—perhaps—after he had found himself, satiated his starved, emaciated soul with her gentle sympathy and wisdom of his need.
It was a strange scene to occur far in the empire of the ill-fated Romanoffs. New England was twelve thousand miles removed at that moment. And yet at the ends of the earth these two who needed each other so greatly had found Arcadie. And all was well!
Heavier and thicker fell the snow outside. All sounds were muffled. The world was shut out. The odorous oil lamp sputtered fussily—a perturbed chaperone. Pleasant crackling of flame leaped now and then in the little stove. Yet the war had been fought for this moment. Years before, this tiny car had left the Moscow shops for this moment. It had been drawn to Irkutsk and left precisely here for this moment. All things on earth had moved forward and existed down to and for this moment. And Nathan felt that whatever happened now, life from this moment would never be the same again—not quite the same.
In his life there was now aWoman!