Red Fleece Part 13

She drew back her head, looking him through and through.

"Peter, it's the child in you that I love. You're so much a man, and they all think of you as a man, man--all your training to be a man-- and yet it's the child that a woman's heart sees and wants to preserve for her own."

"Do you see much of Moritz Abel?" he asked.

"Yes.... It was he who found you for me."

Peter was watching her red lips now. It was like that morning in her room, the tall flowers between. He did not hear what she was saying.

The room was dim. Samarc's face was turned from them. One man in a near cot flung his arms about his head wearily, but his eyes were toward the wall.... He caught her in his arms and loved the beauty of earth in her face.

"...Peter, we must forget ourselves!"

"I can't forget you. I want you as you are," he repeated in tumult. "I want you here in the world--as you are now! We'll stand for what we can't help. There's no use fighting the end if it comes. The greatest thing here to a man will be the greatest thing after he's dead--that's clear enough. But I haven't had you here--only a few minutes. I want the winter stillness _on earth_--in the woods--not in some paradise yet."

"Hush--I want it too. Oh, you can never know how much!... I had better go now--"

"Not until I know all about you. To-morrow is to be the big day of the battle. All may be changed. If it's a Russian victory, this is our last night in Judenbach--"

"You will go out to the fronts?"

"Yes, for a little, but I shall watch how the day fares, so I can hurry back."

"To-day--we were just a stone's throw apart. I was in that building down the street--the amputation cases."

"Not the house where those cries come from?"

"Yes, we work there. Moritz Abel, Fallows, Poltneck, the singer, and others.... This morning I thought I could not bear to live. It was as you told him--about yourself. You see we had no anesthesia, except for cases of life or death--among the officers."

"And you came to me from a day like that?" he asked unsteadily, his pa.s.sion blurred, even the beauty of it. The chance of her living had suddenly darkened.

"It was like coming home," she whispered. "...In Warsaw before your day--sometimes crossing the Square in the darkness--I used to think what it would mean to come to a house of happiness, after a long cruel day. It seemed too far from me; sometimes even farther than now. When I came in here to-night, and heard your voice--I knew what it would mean to come home. We must not ask too much. Many have never known what has been given to us--in these few minutes."

"We must not ask too much," he repeated.

She saw that he had a vivid picture of her day in that house of amputations, that the picture had stunned him.

"But, Peter, I have seen such courage to-day. It was a revelation. All that I had seen of isolated courage before in the world--all was there to-day, and ten times more, there in the blood and torture. And Poltneck sang to them--sang to the maimed and limbless--sang through the probings--with the sound of the cannon in the distance and more wounded coming in. He sang of home and Fatherland--even of the old Fatherland. The many love the old still; it is only the few who love the dream of the new.... We must not ask too much. The new spirit is being born into the world. This war is greater than we dream of. In Warsaw I could see only the evil, but here--under everything--is the humble and the heroic in man. Hate and soldiery are just the surface.

That which is beneath will be above--"

She was far from him now; the white flame in her face. He saw that he could only go on through the days and work and wait and trust in the G.o.d he had told Samarc to trust in. How easily--without an impress of memory, he had said that; and how heroic to accomplish--for mere man.

He did not answer--just looked at her. He saw her turn and smile.

Moritz Abel was standing there.

"I cannot tell you--what it meant to me to see you two standing so,"

he said. "And this place of quiet--you two and your paradise!... Let me see, it occurred to me to suggest--"

He found himself reluctant to finish. He had spoken lightly as if to propose that they would be more comfortable in another room--but his thoughts concerned the volleys in the court. They knew it.

"The staff knows me rather well," said Mowbray. "I was counting on that, but one cannot be sure--"

"There has been no secret," she said. "Will you come in the morning before the columns go out?"

"Yes, it will be early."

"I'll be watching. If not--he will be there to tell you why."

Peter turned to the poet. "Watch over her--won't you?"

"You honor me, Mr. Mowbray. All that I can do--be very sure of."

She went to Samarc's cot and took his hand. Peter saw her face differently, as she leaned. It was one of the mysteries that her tenderness was the face of one woman, her sorrow another.

"Good-by--good-night."

.... A little later Peter found himself with Samarc's hand in his. He had been sitting by the cot watching the war within the war, head bowed on his free hand. It was a struggle of white and black--of knights and kings, plumes and horses, white and black.... Now the wounded man seemed sending messages through his hand. The lamps were low.

"It's been the day of days, Samarc," Mowbray said. "You brought me something that I needed very much. I wish I could do as much for you.

Let me know, won't you, if I can?... Yes, I'll be right here through the night--"

He heard the tread of soldiers in the hollow-sounding court below-- clanking accouterments, heavy steps. There was a halt, a voice, and a long moment before he breathed. It was just a change of sentries, perhaps.

Chapter 2

Just a moment's talk in the street--twice interrupted by sentries, as they moved the hundred yards from the courtyard of Judenbach to the house of amputations.

"...He was trying to lift a man from the hopelessness of death when I stepped up quietly behind," Berthe was saying. "He was wonderful about it, because he had felt the same hopelessness. I wish you could have heard him."

Moritz Abel said: "He is effective. He is intellect and heart--very sound. His vision will come quickly. He does not wing--that is our trouble. We are carried away. He is still within the comprehension of the average man. We need him greatly. Also he needs us. What a man he would be to steady us--to interpret for us. The new Fatherland must have such men. It has been our destiny always to dream and to pa.s.s-- another generation to make our vision flesh--"

"You mean such men as Peter Mowbray would be direct interpreters?" she asked.

"Exactly. We are poets and artists and singers. We are the fathers of the new Fatherland in a sense, but we need among us lawgivers and statesmen--men who love men straight and not through the arts--men who have the same zeal for men that the arts give us when we are pure, but who are conservers and constructors, men of great force and ac.u.men and kindness--"

"Oh, I know so well what you mean," she whispered. "If you could only have heard him with the bandaged man--_'I am not a genius or a dreamer, man. I am so slow at dreaming and brotherhood, and all that, that a woman once ran away from me. But I saw to-day that death isn't all.'"_

"Yes, that is it," Moritz Abel said. "That is the quality. And many times among those who do not make claim nor talk of brotherhood, the reality is beaming from their daily service. Yes, that is it. I hope to know him better after the long night."

They had reached the place of blood and torture.

"And now you must rest a little," he told her. "You know he asked me to take care of you. I like him for that. A man would see a great deal in that, for he honored me."

"And me--" she whispered.