Chapter IV: Introduction (2)

"We had ridden on in that way I don't know how long, snatching a couple of feverish hours of sleep in the night, Whitney groaning and mumbling horribly, when suddenly my horse gave a little snicker--low, the way they do when you give them grain--and I felt his tired body straighten up ever so little. 'Maybe,' I thought, and I looked up. But I didn't much care; I just wanted to crawl into some cool place and forget all about it and die. It was late in the afternoon. My shadow was lengthening. Too late, really, for much mirage; but I no longer put great stock in green vegetation and matters of that kind; I had seen too much of it in the last two days fade away into nothing--nothing but blistering, damned sand. And so I wouldn't believe the cool reeds and the sparkling water until I had dipped down through a little swale and was actually fighting my horse back from the brink. I knew enough to do that, mind you, and to fight back the two mules so that they drank just a little at a time--a little at a time; and all the while I had to wait, with my tongue like sand in my mouth. Over the edge of my horse's neck I could see the water just below; it looked as cool as rain. I was always a little proud of that--that holding back; it made up, in a way, for the funk of two nights earlier. When the mules and my horse were through I dismounted and, lying flat, bathed my hands, and then, a tiny sip at a time, began to drink. That was hard. When I stood up the heat seemed to have gone, and the breeze was moist and sweet with the smell of evening. I think I sang a little and waved my hands above my head, and, at all events, I remember I lay on my back and rolled a cigarette; and quite suddenly and without the slightest reason there were tears in my eyes. Then I began to wonder what had become of Whitney; I hadn't thought of him before. I got to my feet, and just as I did so I saw him come over the little rise of sand, swaying in his saddle, and trying, the fool, to make his horse run. He looked like a great scarecrow blown out from some Indian maize-field into the desert. His clothes were torn and his mask of a face was seamed and black from dust and sweat; he saw the water and let out one queer, hoarse screech and kicked at his horse with wabbling legs.

"'Look out!' I cried, and stepped in his way. I had seen this sort of thing before and knew what to expect; but he rode me down as if I hadn't been there. His horse tried to avoid me, and the next moment the sack of grain on its back was on the sands, creeping like a great, monstrous, four-legged thing toward the water. 'Stay where you are,' I said, 'and I'll bring you some.' But he only crawled the faster. I grabbed his shoulder. 'You fool!' I said. 'You'll kill yourself!'

"'Damn you!' he blubbered. 'Damn you!' And before I knew it, and with all the strength, I imagine, left in him, he was on his feet and I was looking down the barrel of his gun. It looked very round and big and black, too. Beyond it his eyes were regarding me; they were quite mad, there was no doubt about that, but, just the way a dying man achieves some of his old desire to will, there was definite purpose in them. 'You get out of my way,' he said, and began very slowly to circle me. You could hardly hear his words, his lips were so blistered and swollen.

"And now this is the point of what I am telling you." Hardy fumbled again for a match and relit his cigarette. "There we were, we two, in that desert light, about ten feet from the water, he with his gun pointing directly at my heart--and his hand wasn't trembling as much as you would imagine, either--and he was circling me step by step, and I was standing still. I suppose the whole affair took two minutes, maybe three, but in that time--and my brain was still blurred to other impressions--I saw the thing as clearly as I see it now, as clearly as I saw that great, swollen beast of a face. Here was the chance I had longed for, the hope I had lain awake at night and prayed for; between the man and death I alone stood; and I had every reason, every instinct of decency and common sense, to make me step aside. The man was a devil; he was killing the finest woman I had ever met; his presence poisoned the air he walked in; he was an active agent of evil, there was no doubt of that. I hated him as I had never hated anything else in my life, and at the moment I was sure that God wanted him to die. I knew then that to save him would be criminal; I think so still. And I saw other considerations as well; saw them as clearly as I see you sitting here. I saw the man who loved Mrs. Whitney, and I saw Mrs. Whitney herself, and in my keeping, I knew, was all her chance for happiness, the one hope that the future would make up to her for some of the horror of the past. It would have been an easy thing to do; the most ordinary caution was on my side. Whitney was far larger than I, and, even in his weakened condition--I was weak myself--stronger, and he had a gun that in a flash of light could blow me into eternity. And what would happen then? Why, when he got back to Los Pinos they would hang him; they would be only too glad of the chance; and his wife?--she would die; I knew it--just go out like a flame from the unbearableness of it all. And there wasn't one chance in a thousand that he wouldn't kill me if I made a single step toward him. I had only to let him go and in a few minutes he would be dead--as dead as his poor brute of a horse would be within the hour. I felt already the cool relief that would be mine when the black shadow of him was gone. I would ride into town and think no more of it than if I had watched a tarantula die. You see, I had it all reasoned out as clearly as could be; there was morality and common sense, the welfare of other people, the man's own good, really, and yet--well, I didn't do it."

"Didn't?" It was Jarrick who put the question a little breathlessly.

"No. I stepped toward him--so! One step, then another, very slowly, hardly a foot at a time, and all the while I watched the infernal circle of that gun, expecting it every minute to spit fire. I didn't want to go; I went against my will. I was scared, too, mortally scared; my legs were like lead--I had to think every time I lifted a foot--and in a queer, crazy way I seemed to feel two people, a man and a woman, holding me back, plucking at my sleeves. But I went. All the time I kept saying, very steady and quiet: 'Don't shoot, Whitney! D'you hear! Don't shoot or I'll kill you!' Wasn't it silly? Kill him! Why, he had me dead ten times before I got to him. But I suppose some trace of sanity was knocking at his drink-sodden brain, for he didn't shoot--just watched me, his red eyes blinking. So! One step at a time--nearer and nearer--I could feel the sweat on my forehead--and then I jumped. I had him by the legs, and we went down in a heap. He shot then; they always do! But I had him tied up with the rags of his own shirt in a trice. Then I brought him water in my hat and let him drink it, drop by drop. After a while he came to altogether. But he never thanked me; he wasn't that kind of a brute. I got him into town the morning of the second day and turned him over to his wife. So you see"--Hardy hesitated and looked at the circle of our faces with an odd, appealing look--"it _is_ queer, isn't it? All mixed up. One doesn't know." He sank back in his chair and began to scratch, absent-mindedly, at a holder with a match.

The after-theatre crowd was beginning to come in; the sound of laughter and talk grew steadily higher; far off an orchestra wailed inarticulately.

"What became of them?" I asked.

Hardy looked up as if startled. "The Whitneys? Oh--she died--Martin wrote me. Down there, within a year. One would know it would happen. Like a flame, I suppose--suddenly."

"And the man--the fellow who was in love with her?"

Hardy stirred wearily. "I haven't heard," he said. "I suppose he is still alive."

He leaned over to complete the striking of his match, and for an instant his arm touched a glass; it trembled and hung in the balance, and he shot out a sinewy hand to stop it, and as he did so the sleeve of his dinner jacket caught. On the brown flesh of his forearm I saw a queer, ragged white cross--the scar a snake bite leaves when it is cicatrized. I meant to avoid his eyes, but somehow I caught them instead. They were veiled and hurt.

THE WAKE[2]

BY DONN BYRNE

From _Harper's Magazine_

[2] Copyright, 1915, by Harper and Brothers. Copyright, 1916, by Donn
Byrne.

At times the muffled conversation in the kitchen resembled the resonant humming of bees, and again, when it became animated, it sounded like the distant cackling of geese. Then there would come a pause; and it would begin again with sibilant whispers, and end in a chorus of dry laughter that somehow suggested the crackling of burning logs.

Occasionally a figure would open the bedroom door, pass the old man as he sat huddled in his chair, never throwing a glance at him, and go and kneel by the side of the bed where the body was. They usually prayed for two or three minutes, then rose and walked on tiptoe to the kitchen, where they joined the company. Sometimes they came in twos, less often in threes, but they did precisely the same thing--prayed for precisely the same time, and left the room on tiptoe with the same creak of shoe and rustle of clothes that sounded so intensely loud throughout the room. They might have been following instructions laid down in a ritual.

The old man wished to heaven they would stay away. He had been sitting in his chair for hours, thinking, until his head was in a whirl. He wanted to concentrate his thoughts, but somehow he felt that the mourners were preventing him.

The five candles at the head of the bed distracted him. He was glad when the figure of one of the mourners shut off the glare for a few minutes. He was also distracted by the five chairs standing around the room like sentries on post and the little table by the window with its crucifix and holy-water font. He wanted to keep thinking of "herself," as he called her, lost in the immensity of the oaken bed. He had been looking at the pinched face with its faint suspicion of blue since early that morning. He was very much awed by the nun's hood that concealed the back of the head, and the stiffly posed arms and the small hands in their white-cotton gloves moved him to a deep pity.

Somebody touched him on the shoulder. "Michael James."

It was big Dan Murray, a gaunt red farmer, who had been best man at his wedding.

"Michael James."

"What is it?"

"I hear young Kennedy's in the village."

"What of that?"

"I thought it was best for you to know."

Murray waited a moment, then he went out, on tiptoe, as everybody did, his movements resembling the stilted gestures of a mechanical toy.

Down the drive Michael heard steps coming. Then a struggle and a shrill giggle. Some young people were coming to the wake, and he knew a boy had tried to kiss a girl in the dark. He felt a dull surge of resentment.

She was nineteen when he married her; he was sixty-three. Because he had over two hundred acres of land and many head of milch and grazing cattle and a huge house that rambled like a barrack, her father had given her to him; and young Kennedy, who had been her father's steward for years, and had been saving to buy a house for her, was thrown over like a bale of mildewed hay.

Kennedy had made several violent scenes. Michael James remembered the morning of the wedding. Kennedy waylaid the bridal-party coming out of the church. He was drunk. "Mark me," he had said, very quietly for a drunken man--"mark me. If anything ever happens to that girl at your side, Michael James, I'll murder you. I'll murder you in cold blood. Do you understand?"

Michael James could be forgiving that morning. "Run away and sober up, lad," he had said, "and come up to the house and dance."

Kennedy had gone around the countryside for weeks, drunk every night, making threats against the old farmer. And then a wily sergeant of the Connaught Rangers had trapped him and taken him off to Aldershot.

Now he was home on furlough, and something had happened to her, and he was coming up to make good his threat.

What had happened to her? Michael James didn't understand. He had given her everything he could. She had taken it all with a demure thanks, but he had never had anything of her but apathy. She had gone around the house apathetically, growing a little thinner every day, and then a few days ago she had lain down, and last night she had died, apathetically.

And young Kennedy was coming up for an accounting to-night. "Well," thought Michael James, "let him come!"

Silence suddenly fell over the company in the kitchen. Then a loud scraping as they stood up, and a harsher grating as chairs were pushed back. The door of the bedroom opened and the red flare from the fire and lamps of the kitchen blended into the sickly yellow candle-light of the bedroom.

The parish priest walked in. His closely cropped white hair, strong, ruddy face, and erect back gave him more the appearance of a soldier than a clergyman. He looked at the bed a moment, and then at Michael James.

"Oh, you mustn't take it like that, man," he said. "You mustn't take it like that. You must bear up." He was the only one who spoke in his natural voice.

He turned to a lumbering farmer's wife who had followed him in, and asked about the hour of the funeral. She answered in a hoarse whisper, dropping a courtesy.

"You ought to go out and take a walk," he told Michael James. "You oughtn't to stay in here all the time." And he left the room.

Michael James paid no attention. His mind was wandering to strange fantasies he could not keep out of his head. Pictures crept in and out of his brain, joined as by some thin filament. He thought somehow of her soul, and then wondered what a soul was like. And then he thought of a dove, and then of a bat fluttering through the dark, and then of a bird lost at twilight. He thought of it as some lonely flying thing with a long journey before it and no place to rest. He could imagine it uttering the vibrant, plaintive cry of a peewit. And then it struck him with a great sense of pity that the night was cold.

In the kitchen they were having tea. The rattle of the crockery sounded very distinctly. He could distinguish the sharp, staccato ring when a cup was laid in a saucer, and the nervous rattle when cup and saucer were passed from one hand to the other. Spoons struck china with a faint metallic tinkle. He felt as if all the sounds were made at the back of his neck, and the crash seemed to burst in his head.

Dan Murray creaked into the room. "Michael James," he whispered, "you ought to take something. Have a bite to eat. Take a cup of tea. I'll bring it in to you."

"Oh, let me alone, Daniel," he answered. He felt he would like to kick him and curse him while doing so.

"You must take something." Murray's voice rose from a whisper to a low, argumentative sing-song. "You know it's not natural. You've got to eat."

"No, thank you, Daniel," he answered. It was as if he were talking to a boy who was good-natured but tiresome. "I don't feel like eating. Maybe afterward I will."

"Michael James," Murray continued.

"Well, what is it, Daniel?"

"Don't you think I'd better go down and see young Kennedy and tell him how foolish it would be of him to come up here and start fighting? You know it isn't right. Hadn't I better go down? He's at home now."

"Let that alone, Daniel, I tell you." The thought of Murray breaking into the matter that was between himself and the young man filled him with a sense of injured delicacy.

"I know he's going to make trouble."

"Let me handle that, like a good fellow, and leave me by myself, Daniel, if you don't mind."

"Ah well, sure. You know best." And Murray crept out of the room.

As the door opened Michael could hear some one singing in a subdued voice and many feet tapping like drums in time with the music. They had to pass the night outside, and it was the custom, but the singing irritated him. He could fancy heads nodding and bodies swaying from side to side with the rhythm. He recognized the tune, and it began to run through his head, and he could not put it out of it. The lilt of it captured him, and suddenly he began thinking of the wonderful brain that musicians must have to compose music. And then his thoughts switched to a picture he had seen of a man in a garret with a fiddle beneath his chin.

He straightened himself up a little, for sitting crouched forward as he was put a strain on his back, and he unconsciously sat upright to ease himself. And as he sat up he caught a glimpse of the cotton gloves on the bed, and it burst in on him that the first time he had seen her she was walking along the road with young Kennedy one Sunday afternoon, and they were holding hands. When they saw him they let go suddenly, and grew very red, giggling in a half-hearted way to hide their embarrassment. And he remembered that he had passed them by without saying anything, but with a good-humored, sly smile on his face, and a mellow feeling within him, and a sage reflection to himself that young folks will be young folks, and what harm was there in courting a little on a Sunday afternoon when the week's work had been done?

And he remembered other days on which he had met her and Kennedy; and then how the conviction had come into his mind that here was a girl for him to marry; and then how, quietly and equably, he had gone about getting her and marrying her, as he would go about buying a team of horses or make arrangements for cutting the hay.

Until the day he married her he felt as a driver feels who has his team under perfect control, and who knows every bend and curve of the road he is taking. But since that day he had been thinking about her and worrying and wondering exactly where he stood, until everything in the day was just the puzzle of her, and he was like a driver with a restive pair of horses who knows his way no farther than the next bend. And then he knew she was the biggest thing in his life.

The situation as it appeared to him he had worked out with difficulty, for he was not a thinking man. What thinking he did dealt with the price of harvest machinery and the best time of the year for buying and selling. He worked it out this way: here was this girl dead, whom he had married, and who should have married another man, who was coming to-night to kill him. To-night sometime the world would stop for him. He felt no longer a personal entity--he was merely part of a situation. It was as if he were a piece in a chess problem--any moment the player might move and solve the play by taking a pawn.

Realities had taken on a dim, unearthly quality. Occasionally a sound from the kitchen would strike him like an unexpected note in a harmony; the whiteness of the bed would flash out like a piece of color in a subdued painting.

There was a shuffling in the kitchen and the sound of feet going toward the door. The latch lifted with a rasp. He could hear the hoarse, deep tones of a few boys, and the high-pitched sing-song intonations of girls. He knew they were going for a few miles' walk along the roads. He went over and raised the blind on the window. Overhead the moon showed like a spot of bright saffron. A sort of misty haze seemed to cling around the bushes and trees. The out-houses stood out white, like buildings in a mysterious city. Somewhere there was the metallic whir of a grasshopper, and in the distance a loon boomed again and again.

The little company passed down the yard. There was the sound of a smothered titter, then a playful resounding slap, and a gurgling laugh from one of the boys.

As he stood by the window he heard some one open the door and stand on the threshold.

"Are you coming, Alice?" some one asked.

Michael James listened for the answer. He was taking in eagerly all outside things. He wanted something to pass the time of waiting, as a traveler in a railway station reads trivial notices carefully while waiting for a train that may take him to the ends of the earth.

"Alice, are you coming?" was asked again.

There was no answer.

"Well, you needn't if you don't want to," he heard in an irritated tone, and the speaker tramped down toward the road in a dudgeon. He recognized the figure of Flanagan, the football-player, who was always having little spats with the girl he was going to marry. He discovered with a sort of shock that he was slightly amused at this incident.

From the road there came the shrill scream of one of the girls who had gone out, and then a chorus of laughter. And against the background of the figure behind him and of young Kennedy he began wondering at the relationship of man and woman. He had no word for it, for "love" was a term he thought should be confined to story-books, a word to be suspicious of as sounding affected, a word to be scoffed at. But of this relationship he had a vague understanding. He thought of it as a criss-cross of threads binding one person to the other, or as a web which might be light and easily broken, or which might have the strength of steel cables and which might work into knots here and there and become a tangle that could crush those caught in it.

It puzzled him how a thing of indefinable grace, of soft words on June nights, of vague stirrings under moonlight, of embarrassing hand-clasps and fearful glances, might become, as it had become in the case of himself, Kennedy, and what was behind him, a thing of blind, malevolent force, a thing of sinister silence, a shadow that crushed.

And then it struck him with a sense of guilt that his mind was wandering from her, and he turned away from the window. He thought how much more peaceful it would be for a body to lie out in the moonlight than on a somber oak bedstead in a shadowy room with yellow, guttering candle-light and five solemn-looking chairs. And he thought again how strange it was that on a night like this Kennedy should come as an avenger seeking to kill rather than as a lover with high hope in his breast.

Murray slipped into the room again. There was a frown on his face and his tone was aggressive.

"I tell you, Michael James, we'll have to do something about it." There was a truculent note in his whisper.

The farmer did not answer.

"Will you let me go down for the police? A few words to the sergeant will keep him quiet."

Michael James felt a pity for Murray. The idea of pitting a sergeant of police against the tragedy that was coming seemed ludicrous to him. It was like pitting a school-boy against a hurricane.

"Listen to me, Dan," he replied. "How do you know Kennedy is coming up at all?"

"Flanagan, the football-player, met him and talked to him. He said that Kennedy was clean mad."

"Do they know about it in the kitchen?"

"Not a word." There was a pause.

"Well, listen here, now. Go right back there and don't say a word about it. Wouldn't it be foolish if you went down to the police and he didn't come at all? And if he does come I can manage him. And if I can't I'll call you. Does that satisfy you?" And he sent Murray out, grumbling.

As the door closed he felt that the last refuge had been abandoned. He was to wrestle with destiny alone. He had no doubt that Kennedy would make good his vow, and he felt a sort of curiosity as to how it would be done. Would it be with hands, or with a gun, or some other weapon? He hoped it would be the gun. The idea of coming to hand-grips with the boy filled him with a strange terror.

The thought that within ten minutes or a half-hour or an hour he would be dead did not come home to him. It was the physical act that frightened him. He felt as if he were terribly alone and a cold wind were blowing about him and penetrating every pore of his body. There was a contraction around his breast-bone and a shiver in his shoulders.

His idea of death was that he would pitch headlong, as from a high tower, into a bottomless dark space.

He went over to the window again and looked out toward the barn. From a chink in one of the shutters there was a thread of yellow candle-light. He knew there were men there playing cards to pass the time.

Then terror came on him. The noise in the kitchen was subdued. Most of the mourners had gone home, and those who were staying the night were drowsy and were dozing over the fire. He felt he wanted to rush among them and to cry to them to protect him, and to cower behind them and to close them around him in a solid circle. He felt that eyes were upon him, looking at his back from the bed, and he was afraid to turn around because he might look into the eyes.

She had always respected him, he remembered, and he did not want to lose her respect now; and the fear that he would lose it set his shoulders back and steadied the grip of his feet on the floor.

And then there flashed before him the thought of people who kill, of lines of soldiery rushing on trenches, of a stealthy, cowering man who slips through a jail door at dawn, and of a figure he had read of in books--a sinister figure with an ax and a red cloak.

As he looked down the yard he saw a figure turn in the gate and come toward the house. It seemed to walk slowly and heavily, as if tired. He knew it was Kennedy. He opened the kitchen door and slipped outside.

The figure coming up the pathway seemed to swim toward him. Then it would blur and disappear and then appear again vaguely. The beating of his heart was like the regular sound of a ticking clock. Space narrowed until he felt he could not breathe. He went forward a few paces. The light from the bedroom window streamed forward in a broad, yellow beam. He stepped into it as into a river.

"She's dead," he heard himself saying. "She's dead." And then he knew that Kennedy was standing in front of him.

The flap of the boy's hat threw a heavy shadow over his face, his shoulders were braced, and his right hand, the farmer could see, was thrust deeply into his coat pocket.

"Aye, she's dead," Michael James repeated. "You knew that, didn't you?" It was all he could think of saying. "You'll come in and see her, won't you?" He had forgotten what Kennedy had come for. He was dazed. He didn't know what to say.

Kennedy moved a little. The light from the window struck him full in the face, and Michael James realized with a shock that it was as grim and thin-lipped as he had pictured it. A prayer rose in his throat, and then fear seemed to leave him all at once. He raised his head. The right hand had left the pocket now. And then suddenly he saw that Kennedy was looking into the room, and he knew he could see, through the little panes of glass, the huge bedstead and the body on it. And he felt a desire to throw himself between Kennedy and it, as he might jump between a child and a threatening danger.

He turned away his head, instinctively--why, he could not understand, but he felt that he should not look at Kennedy's face.

Over in the barn voices rose suddenly. They were disputing over the cards. There was some one complaining feverishly and some one arguing truculently, and another voice striving to make peace. They died away in a dull hum, and Michael James heard the boy sobbing.

"You mustn't do that," he said. "You mustn't do that." And he patted him on the shoulders. He felt as if something unspeakably tense had relaxed and as if life were swinging back into balance. His voice shook and he continued patting. "You'll come in now, and I'll leave you alone there." He took him under the arm.

He felt the pity he had for the body on the bed envelop Kennedy, too, and a sense of peace came over him. It was as though a son of his had been hurt and had come to him for comfort, and he was going to comfort him. In some vague way he thought of Easter-time.

He stopped at the door for a moment.

"It's all right, laddie," he said. "It's all right," and he lifted the latch.

As they went in he felt somehow as if high walls had crumbled and the three of them had stepped into the light of day.

CHAUTONVILLE[3]

BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT

From _The Masses_

[3] Copyright, 1915, by The Masses. Copyright, 1916, by Will Levington
Comfort.

They said that the Russian line was a hundred miles long. I know nothing about that, but I know that it extended as far as the eye could reach to the east and west, and that this had been so for many weeks. But _time_, as it is known in the outer world, had stopped for us. It was now November, and we had been without mails since late in August. Three days of hideous cold had come without warning, and before the snows, so that there was a foot of iron frost in the ground. This had to be bitten through in all our trench-making, and though we were on the southern slopes of the Carpathians, timber was scarce. At each of our recent meetings with the Austrian enemy, we had expected to feel the new strike--the different resistance of German reinforcement.

A queer sense had come to us from the Austrians. I had thought of it many times and others had spoken the same: that it didn't matter greatly to them. They gave us fierce fighting, but always when we were exhausted and insane with our dead--they fell away before us. This had happened so often that we came to expect it, our chief puzzle being just how long they would hold out in each battle. Especially when our brigade was engaged, and we had entered into an intensity that was all the human could endure, I would almost stop breathing in the expectancy of the release of tension before us. When it did not come, I invariably found afterward that I was out of perspective with the mainline, on account of the fierceness of our immediate struggle. We were but one snapping loop of the fighting--too localized to affect the main front. The Austrians gave all in a piece, when they drew back.

Days were the same, a steady suffering. I did not know before what men could stand. We had weeks of life that formerly I would have considered fatal to adventure with through one night or day--exposure, fatigue, famine--and over all the passion for home, that slow lasting fire. I began to understand how the field-mice winter--how the northern birds live through, and what a storm, on top of a storm, means to all creatures of the north country that are forced to take what comes, when the earth tilts up into the bleak and icy gray. We forget this as men, until a war comes.

But all measuring of the world had ceased for our eyes. A man must have emotions for this, and we thought our emotions dead. I wonder if it can be understood--this being shaken down to the end, this facing of life and death without a personal relation?... Crawling out of the blanket in the morning, I have met the cold--such a shock throughout, that it centered like a long pin driven in the heart. I have seen my friends go, right and left on the field--those who helped tend the fire the night before--and met their end and my own peril without a quickened pulse. Of course, I knew something was changed for me, because I had not been this way. I had even lost the love of courage--that quality of field-work that used to raise my hair, so high and pure did it seem to my eyes.... But the night came, when I heard a little man mumbling over the fire to the effect that he hated it all--that the Little Father was making monkeys of us all--and a thrill shot over me, so that I knew I was alive. Yes, there was something to that.

"Sh-shh--" said I. Two others drew near, as if a bottle had been opened. And Firthus, my closest friend, gripped my arm, leaving a blue welt where his thumb had pressed.

"It's as bad to say 'sh-sh--' as to say what he said," Firthus whispered.

Yes, even in the coldness, there was a thrill to that. Perhaps we thrill at the first breath of that which is to come and change us over.

... For three days they had given our part of the line a different and extraordinary resistance, so that for three nights we camped in the same place. A valley was before us, and the infantry had tried to cross again and again, always meeting at a certain place in the hollows an enfilading fire from the forward low hills. We could not get enough men across to charge the emplacements.... We were mid-west of the west wing, it was said; and word came the third day that we were holding up the whole line; that the east was ready to drive through, in fact, was bending forward; that the west was marking time on our account--and here we were keeping the whole Russian invasion from spending the holidays in Budapest.

On that third day I was dispatching from brigade-headquarters to the trenches. The General and his staff stood in a shepherd's house in the midst of a circle of rocks. Waiting there I began to understand that they were having difficulty in forcing the men forward in the later charges. The lines could see their dead of former advances, black and countless upon the valley snow. This was not good for the trenches.

... Now I realized that they were talking of Chautonville, the singer, the master of our folk-songs. We had heard of him along the line--how he had come running home to us out of Germany at the last moment in July--literally pelted forth, changed from an idol into an enemy and losing a priceless engagement-series on the Continent. He had not been the least bewildered, as the story went, rather enjoying it all.... They had monopolized him at the central headquarters, so that we had not heard him sing, but the gossip of it fired the whole line--a baritone voice like a thick starry dusk, having to do with magnolias and the south, and singing of the Russia that was to mean the world. Somehow he had made us gossip to that extent. So I was interested now to hear the name of Chautonville, and that he was coming.

He was to sing us forward again. There was a pang in that, as I craned forward to look at the valley. It was not for our entertainment, but to make us forget our dead, to make us charge the valley again over our dead--it being planned that a remnant might make the crossing and charge the emplacements.... He came--a short barrel of a man and fat. They had kept him well at the Center. He was valuable in the hospitals, it was said.

The least soldierly kind of a man I had seen in many days, save the Brigadier--so white and fat was Chautonville, the top of his head small, his legs short and thick, hands fat and white and tapering, a huge neck and chin with folds of white fat under it--a sort of a perfect bird dressed for present to the Emperor. Chautonville was big-eyed with all this--large, innocent brown eyes--innocent to me, but it was the superb health of the creature, his softness, clearness of skin and eye, that gave the impression to us, so lean and stringy. For his eyes were not innocent--something in them spoiled that. We were worn to buckskin and ivory, while here was a parlor kind of health--so clean in his linen, white folds of linen, about his collar and wrists. His chest was a marvel to look at--here in the field after weeks in the Carpathians. We were all range and angles, but this was a round barrel of a man, as thick as broad, his lips plump and soft, while we for weeks had licked a dry faded line, our faces strange with bone and teeth.

"What is it?" he asked the General.

I thought of a little doctor, called by others after consultation--an extra bit of dexterity required, this being the high-priced man. There was that indoor look of a barber about him, too.

The General explained that a new charge was to be ordered--that three had failed--that the men (while not exactly rebellious) faltered before the valley a fourth time this day--that the failures were costly in men--in short, that the inspiration of Chautonville was required now to sing them and the reserves across.... The Austrians would quickly give way, if the valley were passed.... Then the thousands would flood up the slopes and--Budapest and holidays.

"You want me to sing to them for courage--as it were?" Chautonville questioned.

I had marked his voice. I saw now that he needed all the thickness of throat and bust--that he used it all. I hoped they would not send me away with a message....

"You want me to walk up and down the trenches?"

"Yes, singing."

He puffed his cheeks and blew out a long breath--as if enjoying the effect of the steam in the icy light.

"Are they under fire?" he asked.

"You see them from here--how silent they are! The enemy does not fire until we reach the valley."

So he made no bones about his fears. Nothing of the charge would be required of him. He could withdraw after his inspiration.... Hate was growing within me. God, how I came to hate him--not for his cowardice--that was a novelty, and so freely acknowledged, but because he would sing the men to their death. This was the tame elephant that they use to subdue the wild ones--this the decoy--the little white bastard.

"Very well, I will walk up and down the trenches, singing--" He said it a bit cockily.

I was in no way a revolutionist, yet I vowed some time to get him, alone.... I seemed to see myself in a crowded city street at night--some city full of lights, as far as heaven from now--going in with the crowd under the lights--to hear him sing. There I could get him.... Not a revolutionist, at all; no man in the enlisted ranks more trusted than I; attached for dispatch-work at brigade-headquarters; in all likelihood of appearance so stupid, as to be accepted as a good soldier and nothing more.... Now I remembered how far I was from the lights of any city and crowded streets--here in the desperate winter fighting, our world crazed with punishment, and planning for real fighting in the Spring. The dead of the valley arose before my eyes.... Perhaps within an hour _my_ room would be ready. Still I should be sorry to pass, and leave Chautonville living on.

They beckoned me to his escort. I followed, hoping to see him die presently. This new hope was to watch him die--and not do it with my hands. Yes, I _trusted_ that Chautonville would not come back from the trenches.

The pits stretched out in either direction--bitten into the ground by the most miserable men the light of day uncovered--bitten through the snow and then through a thick floor of frost as hard as cement. I heard their voices--men of my own country--voices as from swooning men--lost to all mercy, ready to die, not as men, but preying, cornered animals--forgotten of God, it seemed, though that was illusion; forgotten of home which was worse to their hearts, and illusion, too. For we could not hold the fact of home. It had proved too hard for us. The bond had snapped. Only death seemed sure.

Chautonville opened his mouth.

It was like sitting by a fire, and falling into a dream.... He sang of our fathers and our boyhood; the good fathers who taught us all they knew, and whipped us with patience and the fear of God. He sang of the savory kitchen and the red fire-lit windows (bins full of corn and boxes high with wood); of the gray winter and the children of our house, the smell of wood-smoke and the low singing of the tea-kettle on the hearth.

And the officers followed him along the trenches, crying to us, "_Prepare to charge_!"

He sang of the ice breaking in the rivers--the groan of ice rotting in the lakes under the softness of the new life--of the frost coming up out of the fallows, leaving them wet-black and gleaming-rich. He sang of Spring, the spring-plowing, the heaviness of our labor, with spring lust in our veins, and the crude love in our hearts which we could only articulate in kisses and passion.

A roar from us at that--for the forgotten world was rushing home--the world of our maidens and our women.... He sang of the churches--sang of Poland, sang of Finland--of the churches and the long Sabbaths, the ministry of the gentle, irresistible Christ, of the Mary who mothered Him and mothered us all.

We were roaring like school-boys now behind him--the officer-men shouting to us to stand in our places and prepare to charge.

... He was singing of the Spring again--of the warm breath that comes up over the hills and plains--even to _our_ little fields. On he went singing, and I followed like a dog or a child--hundreds of others following--the menacing voices just stabbing in through the song of open weather and the smell of the ground.... My father had sung it to me--the song of the soil, the song _from_ the soil. And the smell of the stables came home, and the ruminating cattle at evening, the warm smell of the milking and the red that shot the dusk.... My mother taking the pails in the purple evening.

And this about us was the soldiery of Russia--the reek of powder, the iron frost, and the dead that moved for our eyes in the dip of the white valley. And each of us saw _our_ field, our low earth-thatched barns, and each of us saw our mothers, and every man's father sang.... We cried to him, when he halted a moment--and our hearts, they were burning in his steps--burning, and not with hatred.

Now he sang of the Springtime--and, my God--of our maidens! On the road from her house, I had sung it--coming home in the night from her house--when, in that great happiness which a man knows but once, I had leaped in the softness of the night, my heart traveling up the moon-ray in the driven flame of her kiss. (She did not sleep that night, nor I, for the husk of the world had been torn away.) ... He sang our maidens back to us--to each man, his maiden--their breasts near, and shaken with weeping. They held out our babes, to lure us home--crying "_Come back_!" to us....

And some had not seen the latest babe at _her_ breast; and some of us only longed for that which we knew--the little hands and the wondering eyes at her skirts--hands that had helped us over the first rough mysteries of fatherhood.

And now I glimpsed the face of Chautonville in the mass--the open mouth. It was not the face that I had seen. For he had lied to me, as he had lied to the officers, and this was the face of an angel, and so happy. Long had he dreamed and long had he waited for this moment--and happy, he was, as a child on a great white horse. He was not singing us across the red-white valley. He was singing us home.

Then I heard the firing, and saw the officers trying to reach him, but we were there. We laughed and called to him, "Sing us the maidens again!"... "_For I have a maiden_--" a man said.... "Sing us the good Christ." ... "_For I was called to the ministry_--" another cried.... "Sing of the Spring and the mothers at the milking--" for we all had our mothers who do not die.... He was singing of our homes in the north country--singing as if he would sing the Austrians home--and the Germans--and would to God that he had!

Then his voice came through to us--not in the great dusky baritone of song, but like a command of the Father: "_Come on, men, we are going home!_"

... But I could not go. A pistol stopped me. So I lay on my elbow watching them turn back--a little circle of hundreds eager to die for him. All who had heard the singing turned homeward. And the lines came in from the east and from the west and deluged them.... Propped on my elbow, I saw them go down in the deluge of the obedient--watched until the blood went out and blurred the picture. But I saw enough in that darkening--that there was fine sanity in their dying. I wished that I could die with them. It was not slaughter, but martyrdom. It called me through the darkness--and I knew that some man's song would reach _all_ the armies--all men turning home together--each with his vision and unafraid.

LA DERNIÈRE MOBILISATION[4]

BY W.A. DWIGGINS

From _The Fabulist_

[4] Copyright, 1915, by W.A. Dwiggins.

On the left the road comes up the hill out of a pool of mist; on the right it loses itself in the shadow of a wood. On the farther side of the highway a hedgerow, dusty in the moonlight, spreads an irregular border of black from the wood to the fog. Behind the hedgerow slender poplar trees, evenly spaced, rule off the distance with inky lines.

A movement stirs the mist at the bottom of the hill. A monotonous rhythm grows in the silence. The mist darkens, and from it there emerges a strange shadowy column that reaches slowly up the hill, moving in silence to the sombre and muffled beating of a drum. As it draws nearer the shadow becomes two files of marching men bearing between them a long dim burden.

The leaders advance into the moonlight. Each two men are carrying between them a pole, and from pole to pole have been slung planks making a continuous platform. But that which is heaped upon the platform is hidden with muddy blankets.

The uniforms of the men--of various sorts, indicating that they are from many commands--are in shreds and spotted with stains of mould and earth; their heads are bound in cloths so that their faces are covered. The single drummer at the side of the column carries slung from his shoulder the shell of a drum. No flag flies from the staff at the column's head, but the staff is held erect.

Slowly the head of the line advances to the shadow of the wood, touches it and is swallowed. The leaders, the bare flag-staff, the drummer disappear; but still from the shade is heard the muffled rhythm of the drum. Still the column comes out of the mist, still it climbs the hill and passes with its endless articulated burden. At last the rearmost couple disengages itself from the mist, ascends, and is swallowed by the shadow. There remain only the moonlight and the dusty hedgerow.

* * * * *

From the left the road runs from Belgium; to the right it crosses into France.

* * * * *

The dead were leaving their resting places in that lost land.

THE CITIZEN[5]

BY JAMES FRANCIS DWYER

From _Collier's Weekly_

[5] Copyright, 1915, by P.F. Collier and Son, Incorporated. Copyright,
1916, by James Francis Dwyer

The President of the United States was speaking. His audience comprised two thousand foreign-born men who had just been admitted to citizenship. They listened intently, their faces, aglow with the light of a new-born patriotism, upturned to the calm, intellectual face of the first citizen of the country they now claimed as their own.

Here and there among the newly made citizens were wives and children. The women were proud of their men. They looked at them from time to time, their faces showing pride and awe.

One little woman, sitting immediately in front of the President, held the hand of a big, muscular man and stroked it softly. The big man was looking at the speaker with great blue eyes that were the eyes of a dreamer.

The President's words came clear and distinct:

_You were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some expectation of a better kind of life. You dreamed dreams of this country, and I hope you brought the dreams with you. A man enriches the country to which he brings dreams, and you who have brought them have enriched America._

The big man made a curious choking noise and his wife breathed a soft "Hush!" The giant was strangely affected.

The President continued:

_No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us, but remember this, if we have grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with you. A man does not go out to seek the thing that is not in him. A man does not hope for the thing that he does not believe in, and if some of us have forgotten what America believed in, you at any rate imported in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. Each of you, I am sure, brought a dream, a glorious, shining dream, a dream worth more than gold or silver, and that is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome._