Red Fleece Part 27

"I'm not quite sure about that," Boylan answered. "The column I saw from the main road a minute ago--coming up from the valley--looked like _helmets_ to me."

"Berthe, what did you mean by _'strong--too strong'?"_

Peter had stepped back to her for a moment.

"Did I say that?" she whispered smiling.

"Yes."

"I can't think of anything--but my love for you. It must have been that."

Chapter 2

For an hour in the skylight prison, they had waited for the step upon the stairs. When it came Fallows had an inspiration, and said softly:

"Sing to 'em, Poltneck--The Lord Is Mindful of His Own--!"

As before, the song was on the wing at the word.... Throughout the hour the Germans had flooded into the little city, the main column moving rapidly on in pursuit of the Russians, a comparatively small force remaining to garrison. As Boylan had pointed out, the new enemy must have appeared in tremendous numbers thus to dare such a drive through the Russian east wing. Lornievitch was at the head of a mighty force to the east; it was but the tip of the right wing that the Germans had cut off.

An old ranker had halted at the door, his platoon behind crowding the stairway. He was small and scarred, serious and decorous. Peter felt that the head under the helmet was shaven; that here was a man conscious of moving through the days of his life's stateliest fulfillment. Boylan was nearest; a little back from the rest Poltneck stood smiling, singing as he had never sung for the Little Father. It is a fact that the old ranker waited for the end of the stanza.

"Who are you?"

Peter talked: "Four of the hospital service from Warsaw, and two American correspondents, until to-day with the Russian army--"

The platoon-officer ordered his men at rest and sent for his Captain.

"Prisoners, you may sing," he said.

They heard the voices of the gathering in the street as Poltneck sang on, and presently the clatter of a sword in the stairway. A young officer, not the Captain, appeared. There was a quick appeal in the veteran's deference and his whisper. The old head bowed affectionately, too, as to a son of finer blood than he.

"Two American correspondents,--these two," he reported. "The others are of the hospital service of the enemy."

Poltneck had finished.

"Why are you here?" the officer asked.

"They were at work all night," said Peter, "and were here for a little rest. The change this morning was effected before they were aware. We were helping.

"You were helping?" the officer repeated.

"There has been much to do in the hospitals. We have been in Judenbach--this is the fourth day."

"We will look at your pa.s.sports--yours and this gentleman's--"

The papers were produced. It was almost like a hand that came to Peter at this instant, though Berthe had not moved--the premonition that they were to be separated. He had planned nothing for this moment although it had been inevitable. There was a certain guilelessness about their whole presence together in the skylight prison, although Peter had tortured the facts a little--to avoid complication of making known their revolutionary parts. He had become so identified with his new friends, in the past three whelming days, that he had forgotten for the moment the great difference in his position as an American correspondent and noncombatant from Berthe's and the others.

Boylan had never forgotten. He had cursed his own slowness as a linguist, when Peter had taken the part of answering the German officer. He was afraid of Peter's answers, but that fear was pa.s.sing now. In fact, Peter had answered surprisingly well, and his companion was breathing easily, as a man should in a state of mental health.

It was not until this moment--the German officer examining his pa.s.sports, the ranker studying the insignia upon his sleeve--that Peter met the disaster of the future. It suddenly appeared to him-- that life apart from _these_ was bleak and a nothingness. To be caught in the great war-machine again, even with the superb loyalty of Boylan at his hand, had the grimness of death to his soul. Already he felt the new mastery of Judenbach, the hard insensitiveness of it--the stone and iron of its nature, the ineffable cruelty of its meaning and morale....

"These seem to be very complete and satisfactory," the young officer reported presently. "I shall furnish an escort to accompany you and Mr.--"

"Boylan," said the voice of the Rhodes' Agency.

"--to our Colonel Ulrich in charge of the garrison. These papers will go with you of course."

Peter cleared his voice and said steadily: "We have long given up any hope of getting anything out as newspaper men. I, for one, would be very glad of employment in the hospitals with my friends here. There has been work for many more hands than could be spared--"

"We appreciate your sacrifice," said the officer, "perhaps _we_ are not so short-handed for the care of wounded. We have already brought in men not dead whom the Russian orderlies missed on the field yesterday. I believe the abandoned hospitals in Judenbach will not suffer for the change of flags."

Peter had noted Boylan's face as the German spoke. It was slightly upturned and like bronze in its hardness, reminding him of the night before in the candle-light. It weakened him.... He glanced about the room as the officer finished. Everywhere he saw their silent urge to accept. Fallows came forward.

"Some time again, dear friend--we will work together. All is well with us--"

Abel seemed to smile; Poltneck gripped his hand, neither venturing to speak, nor did the moment require it, for they had all gone down to the gates of understanding together.... Berthe's hands were in his.

Boylan had arisen.

"Your escort is ready," the German said.

Peter turned from them, but Berthe's face was placed for all to see.... A little warmth, the mild pleasure of untried friendship, the good wish of one fellow-worker to another in pa.s.sing--this was all that the watchers saw. Even Peter in his great pa.s.sion could draw no further message from that white upturned face. But her hidden hands, held in his, gave him the very respiration of her soul.

Chapter 3

Big Belt was alone with his friend again, but Peter seemed merely the body of a man, not much use. They were kept very close by the Germans, and told frankly that they were to be sent as soon as possible to the big prison-hospital at Sondreig. Even German correspondents were not permitted afield. Judenbach was retained, but the Americans were drawn forth by the exigencies of service with Colonel Ulrich's force, and on the afternoon of the third day following the German entry, they looked back upon the little hill-town a last time. Though there had not been sound nor sight of Berthe nor the group around her, during the three days, Peter was different afield, as if he missed a certain personal identification with that obscure Galician settlement where so much had happened. He moved about as if there were something dead inside. His world had turned insane.

Those were the terrible days of November, and the two Americans were forgotten at length--as a pair of b.u.t.tons on the German uniform, forgotten because they served and were not in the way. All that had _not_ to do with Berthe Wyndham was black as the Prussian night to Mowbray's brain, but Big Belt was always by. He could not have managed except for that. There were days in which it appeared as if half the world were down and bleeding; the other half trying to lift, pulling at the edges of the fallen, as one half-stupefied would pull at a fallen body in a burning house.

At night through the silences between the cannon, sometimes over the hills through the cold rains, came to Peter Mowbray's ears the sounds of church-bells. Boylan did not always hear them. The German officers declared that there were no such sounds. Boylan's sack was filled with blood.

"If I ever get out of here," he said, "I'll write one story--one battle till I die--and I'll call it 'Vintage Fourteen'."

For he was sick of the spilled wine of men. And other armies were fighting in the vineyards of France--as were these in the piney hills of the ancient shepherd kings; and what a fertilizing it was for the manhandled lands of Europe--potash and phosphor and nitrogen in the perfect solution of the human blood.

More and more Boylan saw that Peter was queer.

"I can't think," the latter would say. "I feel like a man dying, under a mountain of dead. Mostly I don't want to live. I don't want to die.

I believe that it's all one and that this is the end of the world."

Peter could work, however. Day and night when they would let him, and mostly the Germans accepted his services gratefully now, he tugged at the dead and the dying in the field and in the field hospitals. And with the lanterns at night, often under fire, often so long that Boylan could not rest, but would wait at the hospital-division like a mother for a dissipated son.