Red Fleece Part 16

"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.

Chapter 6

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, pa.s.sed 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 was _one_ now, one in the ma.s.sed 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 him _had_ a 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 pa.s.s 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, pa.s.sion, 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 ma.s.s of men in a wooden gallery had started a buffeting of feet. The valley m.u.f.fled 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 c.o.c.ked 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 about _the 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. A _moujik_ arose 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 G.o.d, how they obey _men_!" he said, with awe. "They _could_ be 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 about _the 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.

Chapter 7