Red Fleece Part 24

"He may be one in a momentary infatuation--"

"Nonsense, Boylan--this is no time for girls!"

"I grant you that, sir. But he is not a revolutionist. I've slept and ridden with him night and day. His paper wouldn't pay for cigarettes to do other than tell the story from the army end. If he's gone _loco,_ I'll take him home under my arm--"

"I say, Boylan, what do you want of him this way? He's a newspaper compet.i.tor--"

"Mowbray got to me. Didn't try to, but he's there. Took the field as if it had been his work always. He's a friend, clever, courageous, a gentleman always, clean cut, a laugh, a hand--and a boy over it all. I didn't know--until I found him in danger. I couldn't feel worse if I were his old woman--I am twice his age, d.a.m.n near--"

"You're invincible, Boylan. I'll tell you this: I feel better. That's worth something. Things look black here in the valleys. Something human I needed, in your coming. Go back now. Nothing will be done until the morning. We've had to shoot Austrian spies all day. Caught 'em red-handed. I feel red-handed, too. Go back, and before to-morrow morning I'll get an order over to straighten him out from the others-- before final action is taken. Maybe I'll look him over myself. Good night.... Oh, I say, Mr. Boylan--"

"Yes, General."

"Oh, it doesn't matter. I was just thinking I'd like to have one friend like young what's-his-name of _The States_ has--"

"Mowbray--Mowbray--don't forget the name, General--"

"Good-night."

"Good-night."

Boylan put his soul in it. He loved the Russians. It was far this side of midnight, but he smelled the dawn.

Back in his own quarters, as he yawned largely at the flickering shadows of the freshly-lit candle, he noted Peter's saddle bags on the floor, and considered that it might be well to get them over to-night.

Chapter 8

Peter walked the room, a changing star or two in the windy skylight; a candle in the center by the stair-door where the sentry stood; Berthe watching him steadily from her chair. The others at the far end looked up occasionally. They were talking low-toned. Poltneck had been singing folk-songs--pure spirit of the boat and cradle, of the march and the marriage and the harvest, of the cruel winter and the pregnant warmth again; songs that had come up from the soil and stream and the simple heart of man, older than Mother Moscow, old beyond any human name to attach to them. True and anonymous, these songs. The lips that first sung them never knew that they had breathed the basic gospel which does not die, but moves from house to house around the world.

Indeed, the melodies were born of the land and the sky, like the mist that rises from the earth when the yellow sun comes up from the south, and the "green noise" of spring breaks the iron cold.

The moment had come when Peter could not sit still. Berthe was never so dear, but he could not stay. He held the three men in true full comrade spirit, but he could not sit with them now. He had nothing to fear; all was quite well.

He was thinking of America, that she was "bred right"; that some change might be upon her now, something akin to his own transformation. Was there a bond thicker than blood between America and the New Russia? Word had reached the field that Russia had put away her greatest devil in a day. A nation is to be reckoned with that makes her changes thus at a sweep. Had Russia not freed fifty million slaves at one stroke of the pen--that great emanc.i.p.ation of Alexander?

And Russia now held the Earth's mighty energy of fecundity--an ultimate significance here; for this guest invariably comes before a people has reached its meridian, and not afterward.... His companions of the death cell were touching the truth; this dark suffering army was the Europe of the future--the Russian voice that would challenge America to answer brother to brother.

The folk songs were singing in his soul, and the lines of Abel's _We Are Free,_ the friendships of Spenski and Samarc, of these in the room, and the love of Berthe Wyndham.

All had prevailed. The culmination was now. He thought of the actuality of to-morrow, but without terror, or blankness. It would seem that he were leaving all this; that America, Russia, friendship, the love of woman, were no longer his portion; yet he seemed closer than ever to them. It was as Fallows said, "These things are immortal." Perhaps this very room, and this, the greatest of his days in the world, would be pictured by some one to come, as clearly and as magically as he saw it all now; by some young workman of the reconstruction, after the red horse of war was driven back forever.

He was sustained. The sense came clearly that nothing men might do could cause him harm. He felt even that his mother would some time know how well he had come to understand her at the last. Everything was answered by the mystic future. It was all there; all would be told.

"Why, to-morrow," he exclaimed aloud suddenly, "why, to-morrow, we will laugh at today."

They were about him. They seemed to understand all that had brought his words, as if they had followed his thoughts to the same apostrophe. ...He was laughing in the midst of them.

"I think it must have been the singing and all," he said breathlessly.

"It got away from me. It has all been too fine to-day. I don't see--I really don't--how I managed to earn it all."

A step upon the stair, slow and heavy, a step that Peter Mowbray knew.

The companion sentry had remained below at the street door, and now called to his fellow of the guard to open. ...Peter was abashed before his friend like a child that had disobeyed, and come to believe that he knew better than the father. It was Big Belt at midnight.

"I brought your shaving-tackle," he said. "h.e.l.lo, Peter."

The face in the thin ray looked like polished metal.

"Come in." Peter had him by the hand, which was easily pulled across the threshold, but the body didn't move.

"No, I won't come in--"

"Boylan, come in!... I want you to meet--"

"No. I'll see you in the morning.... For G.o.d's sake, don't look so happy, and keep your mouth shut.... Good-night."

A curtain had fallen before the glowing future. Peter couldn't raise it again. He tried to restore his laugh and light-heartedness for the others, but it was a mockery. The world had come in all its chaos and mad fatigue. All that he had said was without meaning. The singing was over. Berthe gave him her hand as he returned to the dark corner. She did not speak, for a moment, and then only to say:

"How sensitive we are!"

All the weariness that he had ever known came upon him, gathering together for descent, pressing out vitality, leaving him cold and undone.

"You are very tired," she whispered. "Perhaps we can rest a little.

The three are resting." Then a little later, like a child half-asleep, she added, "I love you."

It was her good-night.

Throughout that short night he dreamed of cedar boughs and pungent autumn air; flurries of snow falling from wide pine branches. There was gray in the skylight when he awoke. Berthe was near, her cheek against his saddle bags, which he had placed for her the last thing.

Very white and small her face looked as she slept, her hands folded under her chin.... Peter watched, his eyes becoming accustomed to the faint light. The white cap lay near, a different and imperfect white compared to her flesh; and the soft deep night of her hair seemed to him of sufficient loveliness for any world. A girl asleep--and such a faith had they known. There was a beauty about it all that rebuked the actuality of the place and the town and the soldiery.

Misery began deep in his heart, welled up to his throat, blurring his eyes, resolving his whole nature almost past resistance; that a love- woman still without her chance, without her child, so fair and unafraid, who had asked so little for herself and so much for the world--should be brought to the shame and the shot of fools. A flutter of eyes. Mowbray gripped his self-control with every ounce of force.

He would hold her in his power of will while she met the issue of the day, and its first cruel thought. Her brow contracted a little, as if through some pa.s.sing pain.... The dawn of a smile that pursed her lips to speak his name, met his kiss instead. He held her face between his hands, smiling at her, while the realization came.

_"Dear Peter--it's the day of our journey--"_

He brushed the lather in gratefully with cold water. The touch of the razor gave him a queer pang such as he had never met before.

"You're just a boy," Berthe remarked.... "It must make one feel clean.

It has been years since I was present--"

The others were now awake. They made merry over the shaving, all taking turns, even Fallows, the last and the longest. Indeed he had scarcely finished before their first test came. It was like a whip-- that step upon the stair, but only a sentry with tea and bread.

Chapter 9