Red Fleece Part 20

"Or that a woman came to him last night, in the heart of the night-- and talked long--and was called for by the same revolutionist; that Mr. Mowbray went to her a little after daybreak this morning--"

"Ah, Dabnitz--a little romance! All night he was serving in the hospital. I went out to find him this morning, and saw him turn into the amputation house. Following, I saw him standing there.... He had probably never seen her until last night. You know how some young fellows are. They--you turn around--and they are in an affair--"

"But the two were overheard to speak of days in Warsaw together. It is not such a little affair."

"I know nothing of it, but is such a thing fatal?"

"She is under arrest with the other revolutionist that I mentioned--a case against her that is hardly breakable--"

Boylan sat down,

"Of course you are aware--of the remark he made this morning in the field headquarters? I saw how gallantly you tried to cover it. It was that remark, by the way, which nearly cost the life of our General.

The hospital steward, took up the action as you know--"

"Dabnitz, I was shocked as you. Peter was beside himself. He had come in from the field--the actuality of it. He forgot where he was. The unparalleled energy of the General to win the day, you know--and Peter had just come in from the hollows where the men lay--"

"My dear Boylan, I'm sorry--"

For the first time, Big Belt felt the iron personality of the other.

There was something commercial in the manner of the last, a kind of ushering out one who would not do. There are men who remain as aloof as the peaks of Phyrges, though their words and intonations come down running softly out of a smile. Boylan looked away, and then, with an inner groan, turned back.

"I tell you it is a mistake. The boy is as sound as--"

He couldn't finish. There were exceptions to everything he thought of.

"I want to see him," he added.

"I'll try to manage that for you, a little later."

It was darkening. In the front room of the house, Kohlvihr sat bung- eyed by a telegraph instrument. The further strategy from Judenbach was still in the dark to Boylan. He wished the heavens would fall. As never before, he had the sense that he had pinned his life and faith to matters of no account; not that Peter Mowbray belonged to these matters, but that he, too, was meshed in them.... A shot from somewhere below in the town. Boylan shivered. There was shooting from time to time for various butchering reasons, but this particular shot was all Big Belt needed to finish the picture.

"Why, they'll shoot the lad," he muttered.

The sentence remained in his brain in lit letters.

The States of America couldn't help him; even Mother Nature had turned her face from this war.... "My dear Boylan, I'm sorry--" something crippling in that.

Dabnitz returned, bringing a pair of saddle bags.

"They're Mr. Mowbray's," he said. "His horse got loose and tangled himself in a battery. One of the men brought in the bags."

"Thanks, Lieutenant," said Boylan.

Dabnitz started to the door when Boylan called, "Oh, I say, did you look through 'em?"

The Russian smiled deprecatingly.

"Of course, I needn't have asked that, but I wanted you to. I'll gamble you didn't find anything--"

"A little book of poems by a man we're familiar with. A woman's name on the front page--a woman we're familiar with. Nothing startling, Mr.

Boylan."

Dabnitz was gone, the bags lying on the floor. Big Belt opened the nearest flap. On top was a case containing a tooth brush and a pair of razors.

"Peter will want these," he muttered.

V

THE SKYLIGHT PRISON

Chapter 1

Peter walked ahead unbound. He could not keep his mind on the journey with the sentry. His thoughts winged from Lonegan at Warsaw, to _The States'_ office and home, as if carrying the message of his own end.... Boylan might finally break out with the details.... The personal part ended suddenly, like an essential formality, leaving him a sorrow for Boylan and his mother especially. His full faculties now opened to Berthe Wyndham.

He was ordered to turn twice to the left. They had left the little stone court, entering the main street, and back again into the first side street for a short distance to a narrow stairway, between low mercantile houses now used for hospitals. Up the creaking way; the sentry within answered the sentry without and opened the door. A long narrow room with a single square of light from the roof, and Moritz Abel came forward.

"I'm sorry," the poet said. "I had hoped--"

"Yes, we had hoped," Peter replied with a smile.

Duke Fallows appeared from the shadows and hastily pressed his hand.

Abel had turned toward the square of light, as if there were still another.

She came forward like a wraith--into the light--and still toward him, her lips parted, her eyes intent upon him. The sentry who had brought him turned, clattered down the stairs. The door was shut by the other sentry. Her lips moved, but there was nothing that he heard. With one hand still in his, she turned and led him back under the daylight to the shadows.... He heard Moritz Abel's voice repeating that he had been a poor protector. Fallows spoke....

There was much to it, hardly like a human episode--the silence so far as words between them, the tragedy in each soul that the other must go; the tearing readjustments to the end of all work in the world, and the swift reversion of the mind to its innumerable broken ends of activity; and above all, the deep joy of their being together in this last intense weariness.... She wore her white veiled cap and ap.r.o.n; having followed the summons from her work. There was a chair in the shadows, and she pressed him down in her old way, and took her own place before him (as in her own house) half-sitting, half-kneeling.

"Peter, I could not believe--until I touched you. I was praying just here, that you would not come--"

"I am very grateful to be here," he said.

"I was so lonely. I was afraid of death. Fallows talked to me and Moritz Abel--but it did not do. I was thinking of you at the battle, as if you were a thousand miles away--as if I were waiting, as a mother for you, waiting for tidings with a babe in her arms--"

She paused and he said, "Tell me," knowing that she must speak on.

"...It was just like that. I prayed that you would live--that you would not be brought here--that the time would pa.s.s swiftly. We have been here hours. They came for us soon after you went. We were all together in that place--all at our work. They led us here through the streets. It seemed very far. Something caught in the throat when the soldiers looked at me. I know what my father felt when he kept saying, 'It's all right. Yes, this is all right.' I know just how the surprise and the amazement affected him from time to time, and made him say that.... Then we were here. I wanted this darker chair. They came--I mean our good friends--Fallows came and talked to me, and Moritz Abel, but it wasn't what I seemed to need. Ah, Peter, I'm talking in circles--"

Something warned him that she was going to break, but he could not speak quickly enough. The human frightened little girl that he had never seen before in Berthe Wyndham, was so utterly revealing to his heart that he was held in enchantment. She seemed so frail and tender, as she said plaintively:

"We must be very dear to each other--"

There were tears in her eyes now, and her breast rose and fell with emotion, as poignant to Mowbray as if it were his own.