Red Fleece Part 3

"Possibly."

"Mowbray, we are taking our bread, and its cake, too, from a paper that expects us to exploit the orthodox heroics. The pity and atrocious sham of it all has its side. But the fact still remains its side does not furnish the stuff that American newspapers pay men and cable tolls to furnish."

"Won't you come to-night?" Peter asked laughing. "Perhaps we can both reach the high point some day when we have earned the right to be poor."

"That's a higher point than I dream of, Peter. I can't help but think what a nest you've got into. Of course, I mean with Fallows and his kind--"

"An eagle's nest."

"But the eaglets are starving."

"Heretofore the job has been served. Come along with me and meet Duke Fallows again--"

"No. I must go back to the wire for the present. Boylan would be shocked, too. By the way, I've got a bid in for you with General Kohlvihr. Boylan is to help me put it through, of course. The more decorated they are the more they fall for Boylan. There's a chance that you'll start south with a column within two days. So you'd better get at that encyclopedia stuff--"

"Yes, I'll attend to that."

Peter left him smiling, and turned his steps across the Square, into a narrow street of the poor quarter, and on toward a little room and a low lamp, where a woman's hands sewed magically as she waited.

Chapter 5

Fallows met them in his small bleak room, turned the lamp low, and opened the door of the diminutive wood-stove to let the firelight in the room. The three sat around it.... Peter Mowbray felt strange and young beside them. The woman seemed to belong to this world, and it was a world at war with every existing power. All Peter's training resisted stubbornly. Still, right or wrong, there was a n.o.bility about their stand. He did not need to be sure their vision was absolutely true, yet the suspicion developed that they saw more clearly than he, and acted more purely. Mowbray did not lack anything of valor, but he lacked the fire somehow. He loved Berthe Solwicz, could have made every sacrifice for her, but that was a concrete thing.

Fallow's bony knees were close to the fire. He seemed both light and deep, often turning to Peter with secret intentness, and openly regarding the young woman with amazement and delight. Nearing fifty, Fallows was tall, thin and tanned. The deep lines of his face were those which make a man look homely to himself, but often interesting to others. His soft, low-collared shirt was somewhat of a spectacle in consideration of the angular and weathered neck. No rest could exist in the room that contained such loneliness as burned from his eyes. It was said that he had been rich, though everything about him was poor now. One would suspect the articles in his pockets to be meager and of poor quality--the things you might find in a peasant's coat. That which he called home was a peasant's house in the Bosk hills--the house of the plowman of Liaoyang, whose children he fathered.

Annually, however, he went abroad, telling the story of the underdog, usually making the big circuit from the East to the West, and stopping at a certain little cabin within hearing distance of the whistles of Manhattan, where his first disciple worked in solitude mainly, and against the stream. Just now Fallows was planning a different winter's work.... They talked of the first fighting.

"The startling thing to realize is that for the present we are allied with England," said Fallows. "I mean Russia. You see, I am Russian, now, not the Russia of the Bear, but of the Man--"

Mowbray and the woman exchanged glances, each thinking of the tea-cup in the afternoon.... The exile showed traces of his ten years'

training among simple men. Rhetoric and dithyramb were gone from his speech and habit of mind. The whole study and vision of the man was to make his words plain. Thus he said slowly:

"The peasants are children--children in mind and soul. We who have come a little farther are responsible for them, as a father is responsible for his children. So far we have wronged them, taught them to grasp instead of to give, to look down instead of up. We have even stolen from them the fruits of their looking down. The time is near at hand when we shall have to pay for all this.... A true father would die for his children. I know men who have done that, and there are men about us here, even in Warsaw tonight, who are ready for that--"

Fallows' voice was tender. He watched the face of the woman as he spoke. She was looking hard into the fire.

Fallows added: "There are fifty million men here in Russia--roughly speaking. Very strong, very simple, possibly very brutal men, but brutal as a fine dog is brutal, a simplicity about that. I do not idealize them. I have lived among them. I know this: They might be led to virtue, instead of to wickedness. My heart bleeds for them being led to slaughter again. The hard thing is to make them see, but the reason for that is simple, too. If they could see--they would not be children. They must be led. Never in modern history have they been purely led. Words cannot make them see; wars so far have not made them see. It may be that the sufferings and heroisms of this war shall be great enough to make them see...."

"What would you have the peasants see first?" Peter asked.

"Their real fathers--that men of wisdom and genius are the true fathers of the Fatherland, not the groups of predatory men. True fathers would die for their children. To me it has been blasphemy, when the nations of the past have called themselves Fatherlands. I would have the peasants fathered by men who realize that the peasants are the strength and salt of the earth; men who realize that the plan of life is good--that the plan of life is for concord and service each to the other--that the hate of man for man is the deadly sin, the h.e.l.l of the world--that the fields and all the treasures of the mother earth are for those who serve and aspire, and not for those who hold fast, look down and covet more."

Mowbray was interested in the fact that Fallows had pa.s.sed the stage of eloquence and scorn and burning hatred against evil in persons and inst.i.tutions. There was no hue and cry about his convictions. He seemed to live in continual amazement at the slowness with which the world moves--the slowness to a man who is ahead and trying to pull his people along. Moreover there was that final wisdom which Fallows revealed from time to time--momentary loss of the conviction that he himself was immortally right. Fallows saw, indeed, that a man may be atrociously out of plumb, even to the point of becoming a private and public nuisance, when allowed to feed too long alone on the strong diet of his own convictions.... An hour sped by. Fallows replenished the fire and turned to Berthe Solwicz.

"All evening you've had something in your mind to tell me and I've been giving forth. You must forgive a man for so many words--when he has been living with little children so long. What is it?"

"Just a reading of a tea-cup to-day--but everything you said has its meaning concerned in it."

"I'm almost as interested in tea-cups as in the stars," said Fallows.

"You know a toy-bear, such as the Germans make?"

"Yes--"

"Well, it would have been like that--if one were thinking of toys. We thought of the Russian Bear. It was perfect--in the bottom of the cup --standing up, walking like a man--huge paunch, thick paws held out pathetically, legs stretched out, just as he would be, rocking, you know--"

Fallows bowed seriously. Mowbray turned his smile to the shadows.

"Near him," Berthe added, "was a Russian soldier--perfect--fur cap, high boots, tightly belted, very natty--more perfect than we see in the streets, as if drawn from ideal. He was stabbing the bear with a long pole, leisurely--"

"It was a rifle and bayonet," said Peter. "We both saw it, but didn't speak until now. He was churning the bayonet around in the great paunch as if feeling for the vitals. The bear looked large and helpless."

Fallows' bronzed head had sunk upon his chest. His eyes, red with firelight, seemed lost to all expression. "I was thinking it would happen in Germany first," he said.

A moment afterward he added: "There's a time when a man wants to die for what he believes, and another time when he's afraid he will die before he gets a chance to make his life count."

Again he paused, and then looked up to Mowbray. "It's a good omen.

That's the _real_ war.... And was it your cup?"

"Yes."

"You say that you are going out for the Galician service?"

"Yes, possibly with Kohlvihr's column."

"You will see much service," said Fallows. "That used to be our dream --to see service. It will be easier seen with the Russians. They are not so modern in method as the French or Germans, or even the j.a.panese. Of course, war is the same. The nation at the end will win on the fields, not in the skies. The sky fulfillment is reserved for a better utility than war. But war belongs under the sea.... You will not be suppressed so rigidly with the Russians. You will see the side of the war which will have the most bearing on the future. I do not believe France and Germany are in the future as Russia is--"

"And England?" Peter asked quickly.

"The key to that is the wealth of the Indies--as of yore."

"You mean if India remains loyal?"

"If India remains under the yoke."

"But, if Britain should preserve her tenure in India with the j.a.panese troops--" Peter suggested.

Fallows shuddered. "As yet I can see no philosophy under heaven to cover that."

"And you think Britain and Russia are enemies in spite of this alliance?"

"Enemies, temperamental and structural--enemies, past and future."

Peter recurred to this point: "You think that India would not remain loyal if she had arms?"