Part 19

A man whirled from the outskirts of the crowd as Fellowes paused, and caught him by the coat. “There is a man!” he shrieked above the din. “One who has seen the battle!” Fellowes shook him off, lowered his head, and drove through the mob by sheer weight of bone. They took his charge with perfect good-temper. Brown hands caught at him, eyes gleamed and darkened, and half the mouths in the Town screamed at him in unison.

“There is a man in the café. A man who saw the battle! Little Mother of God, a man who was there!”

He was in the hard-breathing front rank, pressed against the wall. The closed door of the café was in front of him. He could see a pale blot wavering like a moth within the glass,—the anxious face of Pedro. Then a darkness appeared in the blot, and two smaller blots appeared with cautious gestures. Fellowes worked forward till he leaned against the door. It opened suddenly. Fat hands dragged him within. And Pedro clapped to the door again in the excited faces of his friends.

“That was well done,” said Pedro, puffing heavily. “I saw the señor. I thought, he wishes to question me, to ask me the truth; I will admit him. And you are here, señor.”

Fellowes looked round. The thick-walled room was cool and dark, bitter with the smell of stale cheap wine, and as still as a chapel. The noise outside penetrated only as a murmur. “And the man?” he asked, with a breath of relief. “You have him here?”

“The man who was there?” said Pedro. “Yes, señor. You wish to ask him of the battle? Yes, señor. I will give light.”

He brought a little reeking lamp of the sort they light in shrines. Shapes dawned on them cloudily,—barrels, jars, an old door like a cave’s mouth, and a flight of steps. “He is . . .?” began Fellowes in some astonishment. And Pedro finished quickly, “In the cellar? Yes, señor. Why? Because he is afraid.”

The last word came back deep and hollow as Pedro led the way into the cellars. “Afraid . . .”

If the upper floor had been as still as a chapel, the cellar was as still as a tomb. The steps led straight down into a square room full of broad mud pillars; on three sides of this room smaller ones opened, bins and cupboards for storing the wine and the aguardiente. Each opening was hung with a rough door, and every door stood open, so that beyond the circling shadows of the pillars there seemed to wait a monstrous company of wings. Fellowes turned mechanically to close the door at the foot of the stairs. And a voice cried to him quickly, “Señor, señor, leave the door open, in the name of God.”

“Yes,” said the fat Pedro in a whisper, “that is the man. Leave the door open, señor. In the name of God.”

Fellowes looked. The soldier sat on a straw mattress with his back against the far wall, so that all the open doors were in view. His slender brown feet were wrapped in strips of native cloth that had once been white, but were now stained a thick dark brown. His knees were drawn up and his hands clasped them. He wore some sort of uniform-coat with gaudy yellow flannel facings, and a broad hat lay beside him, together with an untouched bottle of Pedro’s wine. His voice, singularly sharp and quick, was yet the voice of a sound man.

“Are you . . .” began Fellowes, and then stopped. The face touched with a strange reflection not of light, but of darkness, answered him. It was the only answer he had. For the soldier was counting the doors on his fingers,—“Four—seven—nine, and all open.”

Fellowes turned to Pedro. “Is this man—is he a little mad?”

“O no, señor. He is only afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of a closed door, señor. He is not mad. He was there, beyond Cienaga. Wait. I will speak for you.”

He leaned forward and spoke loudly, a fat hand on either knee. “This caballero wishes to ask if you were in the fight beyond Cienaga.”

The echoes of the deep voice rolled in little thunders; each echo died before the man answered in his sharp, breathless voice.

“Yes, I was there.”

“He wishes to hear about the battle. Will you tell him all you know?”

Another silence. Then,—“Yes, I will tell him all I know. But do not shut the doors.”

Fellowes took it up eagerly in his best Spanish. “Tell me all you know, my friend, and I’ll make it well worth your while.” He felt in his pocket for a pencil and a scrap of paper. “Go on. I’m ready.”

“There was a river,” said the soldier quickly, “and a house with a yellow roof in a clearing.”

“Yes. Go on, please.”

“A house with a yellow roof. I was in the house.”

“Yes, but before that?”

“Before that, the swamps, señor. Then the river, and the village, and the house with the yellow roof. I was in the house.”

“But—this is no use.” Fellowes turned to Pedro. “I want facts, all he knows—”

Pedro’s full-moon face was turned gravely on the soldier; his eyes, gentle as a girl’s, watched him only. “Señor,” he said, with an air slightly absent, “I think he will tell you all he knows. Listen. In the name of God.”

Pedro’s voice, the little shrine-lamp sending up a thin black finger to the roof, the shadows, the open doors,—all these chilled Fellowes a little. He glanced curiously from Pedro to the soldier. “Let him tell it in his own way, then.”

The soldier began again, as if he were speaking for the first time.

“There was the house with the yellow roof. But before that we crossed the swamps. It’s very bad in the swamps. We walked one behind the other on logs laid down in the mud; they were very old logs, very slippery. We walked for a long time, I don’t know how long. One man took the quick fever, and when the pain came, he cried and fell into the mud, in a deep place. He was gone before one could cry on the saints, and his gun too, which was a pity. This man was the first who died. I forget his name now, but he was very lucky at cockfighting.

“It was very dark in the swamps, too, dark almost like night. Sometimes the trees broke, and a line of light lay across the mud. As the long trail of men crawled along the logs, each as he passed under the light would go very slowly, and lift his face to it, until he was pushed on by the man behind who wanted to feel the sun on his eyes too. In this way two more men were drowned in the mud. But I was safe, and so was the man in front of me. I was glad of that, because he was my friend.”

“But can’t you remember how long you were in the swamps?” asked Fellowes, gently. “Who your captain was? Anything that happened?”

The soldier looked troubled. “No, I don’t remember. But I had a gun, and cartridges, and a bayoneta; and I was afraid of the insurgentes. I was afraid they would come up behind us. We didn’t know where they were. The man in front of me didn’t care. He was a young man and merry, with no hatred in him. He said, ‘If a Señor Insurgente gave me a good dinner, I’d build him a shrine.’ But I was afraid of the insurgentes. They were devils.

“When we came out of the swamps many of us had fever, and our feet were sore with leech-bites. There was a road, but it was very bad. Soon one part of our army was far ahead of the other. Those who went in front had shoes, those who went slowly, hadn’t any. I was afraid the insurgentes would catch us, but I couldn’t go fast. My friend had shoes, but he stayed with me. And one day he went off by himself, and came back laughing with a pair for me. ‘There’s a village yonder,’ he told me, ‘all shut up except the church. A poor place. Only the fleas are fat. I said a prayer in the church, amigo, and stole the jefe’s shoes for you.’

“Now that we both had shoes we left the rearguard behind us, the men who had none. I don’t remember where we went. We went on for a long time, and there was fighting in front of us. I think we fought too, because I remember hiding in some thick bushes covered with pink flowers. There was a dead man near us, and when I fired my gun, the pink flowers fell until he was almost buried,—only his feet out. There were lots of dead men, though, we didn’t mind them. But there were a few who were not dead. Those insurgentes are devils. I was not afraid of fighting—I was afraid of insurgentes. I would call to my friend in daylight, like a child at night. ‘Are they here, have they come, amigo?’ And he would say ‘No, we must still keep the dinner hot for them.’ He was a merry man even when he was hungry.

“I still had my gun, and some cartridges and my bayoneta; but we had no food. When we came to the river, and the village, and the house with the yellow roof, my friend went away to find food. I hid in the house with the yellow roof, waiting for him; I hid in a corner of the lower room behind the door, where there was a little window, high up. I had my gun, and my cartridges, and my bayoneta. I was going to fire on the rebels through the window if they came. But they didn’t come.

“It was very still in that house. The room was a very nice one, very clean. A water-pot hung under the eaves and dripped, and that was often the only sound I could hear. A child’s shoe lay in the middle of the floor; they must have been well-to-do folk if even the children had shoes. But I couldn’t find anything to eat, not so much as a mouldy plantain or a bit of bread. The door was open. I left it open and stood in the shadow behind it with my gun and my cartridges and my bayoneta, looking out of the little window and wondering where my friend was. There was a clearing outside, surrounded with tall trees. Sunlight hung like ropes made from gold between the trees. Birds talked; one flew in at the open door of the room where I hid. It was so quiet you woauld never have thought of fighting, of anger, of dead men. Except when the sunny wind blew off the woods.”

As if the remembered quietness locked his lips, the soldier was silent. The door at the foot of the stairs swung in a draught and he watched it anxiously with drawn-in lips until it was still. Then he went on breathlessly: “I will tell the gentleman all I can remember. It is not much. But there was fighting, but I don’t remember where or what it was all about. It is all gone. Only I was in the lower room of the house with the yellow roof, behind the door. And the door was open. I was waiting for my friend. I waited a long time, but he came at last.

“He broke through the trees on the far side of the clearing, running as if he were mad, and leaping from side to side. He had a dead fowl under each arm, and as he ran, their long necks jerked together. His tunic was all stuffed out with things, and his ragged trousers fluttered round his legs like flags round a flag-pole at a fiesta. He looked very funny. He was laughing as he ran. I laughed too, and I was just going to run and meet him, when I thought, is there a kettle here to cook the fowl in? I looked for the kettle, and looked back through the window. And I saw the little blue puff break from the trees . . .

“The crack followed, little and foolish in that big quietness as the crack of a twig. And three men ran out of the trees after my friend. They were insurgentes. I had never seen them so close before. I was afraid. But he wasn’t, I saw his white teeth flashing as he ran for the open door. He ran as fast as a dog, with the fowls’ heads jerking against his knees. And he laughed.

“I became very cold, there behind the door. Something jerked in my chest, and the gun jerked in my hand. I wondered what I should do. If I fired, I might have hit my friend. I didn’t fire. I watched the insurgentes coming nearer. I saw their faces, as they ran through the streaks of light and shadow in the clearing, now bright, now dark, and all with one thought in them . . . Then I was afraid. Afraid as I hadn’t been before. The light went out, my flesh trembled, my sinews shook against my bones. Mother of God, I died,—died many times.”

The soldier bent forward, panting. His eyes for the first time met Fellowes’.

“I was there. I will tell you all I know, señor. He was my friend. I was afraid.

“I shut the door.”

The cellar was very still. The lamp-fire trembled, and Pedro’s immense squat shadow surged like a cloud.

“I shut the door. The square of sunlight on the floor grew thin and went out. There was a place for a bolt, but no bolt. I drove in my bayoneta,—drove it in with the child’s shoe I picked up from the floor. I leaned against the door, staring at the floor where the sunlight had been. My hands were over my ears, but I could hear everything, rolling like stones in my heart, in my head . . .

“I shut the door. It was fast when he flung himself against it, calling me to open in the name of God. I wanted to open it, then, señor, I wanted to open it. But I couldn’t move. I was afraid. And they killed him against it. They didn’t shoot. They killed him with their bayonets. The points came through to the other side and pricked me,—twice,—as I leaned against it. Then they took the fowls and went away. I don’t know how many there were or why they went away. Perhaps they didn’t see the door had been open.

“It was very quiet again. I crushed my ear against my side of the door, but there was no sound from his side. I put my lips to the wood and spoke to him in a whisper for fear the insurgentes should hear and come back. I couldn’t believe that _he_ didn’t hear. I thought he was listening in silence and laughing,—just to pay me out—but there was no sound but the drip from the water-jar. It was very loud, like a bell. A drop would flash in the shadow and fall, and then the sound would come in my head,—‘Boom.’ Soon I saw that there were two ‘Booms’ to every drip that fell. I couldn’t understand it at first. But the other drip, the other noise, were outside. I looked down at my feet. The jefe’s shoes he had stolen for me were very dark, very wet, with—with what had dripped and run under the closed door from his side to mine . . .

“I was afraid again. I kicked off the shoes and ran round and round the room. I couldn’t believe that he was dead. He was such a merry one. As I ran, I kept saying, ‘I’m afraid of the insurgentes, afraid of the insurgentes,’ and I called, ‘Are you here, amigo, have they come? But he didn’t answer ‘We must keep the soup hot.’ Then I knew I wasn’t afraid of the insurgentes, but of my amigo on the other side of the door.

“When it was dark, so dark I could see nothing, I went to the door. My hands were quite steady as I worked out the bayoneta. But I opened it the breadth of a hand. Señor, the door opened inwards. As it came, something came with it, heavy, dragging on the ground—pinned to it as a bat’s skin’s pinned on a board . . .

“I don’t remember much. I shut the door again. I was very cold. I took my gun and broke down the window and climbed out that way.

“The clearing was in very dark shadow, but the tops of the trees were white in the coming moonlight. I knew I must be away before the moonlight shone on the door. I dropped from the window and my foot struck something,—a loaf of bread. His tunic was all fat with things as he ran and laughed . . .

“I was very hungry. I caught it up and ran, wondering why the insurgentes had left it. I went on and on. The moon rose and the light came on my hands. They were dark, señor, the bread was dark. No wonder the insurgentes had left it. It was all spoiled . . .

“I don’t remember much more. I went on,—went on. Then it was day, and there was a town, one of our towns. When they saw my feet, they let me ride in the wagons. They offered me bread, but I couldn’t eat it. They thought I was wounded and starved. They thought I had fought the rebels. Perhaps I had. But I only remember that I was afraid. And so I shut the door.”

“But the fighting?” asked Fellowes under his breath. “Under whose command? Who cut off the insurgentes? Where will the troops retire? He must . . .”

“Hush, señor.” Pedro lifted his hand and turned on his heel. “Hush. He knows no more.”

“More?” The man in the yellow facings caught at the word. “Tell the gentleman that’s all. There was a house, and an open door, and I shut the door.”

“Come,” said Pedro again, “there is no more. He has told you all he knows.”

They went softly up the steps. And behind them the breathless voice called: “Señor, señor, for the pity of God, do not close the door!”

THE MEN WHO CLIMBED

What had taken Stephen Forrester to the Exhibition would be difficult to say. He had told his friends that snow and ice and anything higher than a first floor made him feel ill, and had then proceeded to lose himself very pleasantly among the fleshpots. Well, he had earned his fleshpots. Yet here he was, at three o’clock on a sunny afternoon, paying his entrance fee like anybody else to the Association Rooms, to see Macrae’s photographs.

“The large photographs of Mount Forrester are in Room C,” said the very efficient young person with the bobbed hair who gave him his change. “Kindly keep to the right.” He thanked her humbly and clicked through the turnstile in the wake of a large woman in musquash and carnations, who would probably have given much to know him. For Forrester was something of a lion that winter.

He went into Room C, after a guilty glance about A and B. But no one was there who knew him. No one said: “That’s Forrester! Yes, the fellow with the limp. You’d never dream he was fond of that sort of thing, would you?” His first thought was: “Mac did some good work!” Then, with an involuntarily catching of the breath, he stopped short before the great photograph that held the end wall alone.

And as he did so he knew with sure foreknowledge that any time in his life he might be brought up with that little thrill, that while he lived, a hundred chance scents or colours or silences would have power to renew for him that air of ineffable space, those sheathed and virgin rocks, those upper snows austere against the burning blue; that the impersonal passion of the climber had been, was, and forever would be the moving force of his soul.

“Mount Forrester from the South-east,” the catalogue had it. Just that! He was the man who had conquered Mount Forrester; and he was the man who knew how utterly the great height had conquered him.

He sat down on one of the leather divans placed at intervals down the centre of the room, staring at the enlarged photograph with half-closed eyes. The heated air grew cold in his throat; inside his irreproachable gloves the scars of his old frost-bites burned and tingled; he tapped one well-shod foot—the lame one—on the floor. There in the extreme left-hand corner of the picture was the bit of ice that had slid and crushed him. That had been on the return journey. They said he’d never walk again. Macrae himself had been all in when he took that picture. Why, they’d put him in the tent in the middle of a snow flurry; the cloud had cleared and the light was right; they’d found Mac up to his ears in snow half a mile away, clutching the camera—raving, but he’d taken the picture.

“Excuse me, boss—you done any climbin’?”

Forrester came to earth with a start, and leaned round the curve of the leather seat-back the better to see and answer the man who had so suddenly spoken to him. But he was slow in answering as the details of the questioner’s face presented themselves to him around the curve of the fat green morocco. For what possible interest could such a one have in climbing mountains? An elderly clerk out of work? Scarcely educated enough, judged Forrester. A night watchman? More likely. Anyway, a sub-under-assistant at whatever he set his hand to do. The stamp of the man born to work under other men was on him, on his respectable garments, on his vague face set in graying bristles; one could guess him treading forever the same smoothed rut, running on the same rail, until pushed off at last into a still deeper obscurity. And he was already growing old. Forrester, clean from his heights, was quick to pity. “One of the Great Unlucky,” he said to himself; and aloud: “Yes, I’ve climbed a good bit. Are you—interested in it?”

The stranger smiled slowly. Then he drew out seven coppers and arranged them along his dingy palm. There was a certain youthfulness, a hovering and unexpected sweetness in his smile that attracted Forrester. “These here,” he said, “are all I got left o’ what Maggie allows me fer baccy this week, after payin’ me admission.” He returned the coins to his pocket and resumed his slow contemplation of the picture.

For a moment Forrester was in doubt. But the shabby-respectable man was oblivious of him, his whole attention absorbed in the picture. And it was Forrester who renewed the conversation on some impulse of sympathy, saying: “Where have you done your climbing?”

“Me? Oh, anywhere north o’ Thunder Valley, for the most part. You _got_ to climb there to get about. Don’t see no sense in doin’ it fer fun.” He turned his eyes again to the photograph, and once more that shy, half-boyish smile transfigured his commonplace face. “But you thinks different when yer young eh, Mister? Where you done _your_ climbin’ if I may arsk?”

Forrester nodded toward the wall. “Thereabouts mostly,” he said pleasantly. “My name’s Forrester—Stephen Forrester, at your service.”

The stranger turned completely around; his face rose over the back of the divan like a queer mild moon. “You—Forrester?” he said with interest. “Well, now! You the feller that climbed that mountain an’ had it named fer him?”

“Yes,” smiled Forrester, conscious of an excusable glow.

“_My!_” said the unknown softly. “My! If that don’t beat all!” He looked at Forrester carefully, as if making a friendly inventory of him. He rubbed his hands gently together. “Maggie’ll be _that_ amused to hear tell I seen you!” he said shyly.

Well—_amused_ was not just the word that Forrester had expected! But the other man came sidling along the leather seat, all alight with interest. He put out his hand, so palpably the hand of a failure, and touched Forrester’s sleeve. “Mister,” he begged simply, “tell me all about it, so’s I can tell Maggie!”

The appeal hit Forrester in his softest place. He was touched. Who was Maggie? He visioned her as beautiful and dreaming of her native hills; in a mental flash he saw himself telling a moving story to a dozen well-appointed dinner-tables. He said kindly: “Tell me what you want to know. But first—who’s Maggie? Where is she?”

“My old girl. Mister. She’s washin’ dishes at Henniker’s til I get a job.” He went on with a touch of pride: “She don’t have to work when _I’m_ doin’ anything, boss.”

Again Forrester was moved; he guessed that Maggie washed dishes a lot at Henniker’s and did it cheerily. Maggie’s husband went on with a shy eagerness, jerking his thumb at the wall: “Did you have to cross Somahl’ to the glacier, Mister?” “Yes.” Forrester was conscious of an increasing astonishment, for the glacier was not shown on the photograph, and is not named on any map. “We climbed that long ridge to the east—the photograph does not show much of it—and worked along till we came to the little plateau. And there we made our last camp. We went up next day. We wanted to do it in a day, so as not to spend a night at that altitude.”

“I know.” The face of Maggie’s husband showed keener, harder; he was touched with some quiet amusement that puzzled Forrester. “You went up roped, boss?”

“As far as that big fissure.” Forrester was kindling, as a lyric poet might kindle at the talk of love. “We cast them off then. They were too great a weight. We kept them as dry as we could, but there was a continual _poudre_ and they were frozen as stiff as steel rods, crackling as we moved. It sounded so loud, that crackle.”

“The papers say you was the only one that made the peak, Mister, the only one that made good.”