Part 1

Routledge Rides Alone

TENTH EDITION

ROUTLEDGE RIDES ALONE

BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT

WITH FRONTISPIECE IN COLORS BY MARTIN JUSTICE

A. L. BURT COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1910 BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

Published March, 1910

TO THE LADY OF COURAGE WHOM I MARRIED

Contents

PROLOGUE

IN CHEER STREET, LONDON 9

FIRST CHAPTER

MOTHER INDIA IS SAID TO BE QUIVERING WITH HATRED FOR HER WHITE CHILD, THE BRITISH FOUNDLING 30

SECOND CHAPTER

THE BAFFLING INDIAN MYSTERY IS DISCUSSED BY FOUR MEN WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIRST TO SOLVE IT 42

THIRD CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE RELATES HOW A MASTER CAME DOWN FROM THE GOODLY MOUNTAINS TO FIND HIS CHELA IN THE BURNING PLAINS 51

FOURTH CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE CONTEMPLATES THE PAST IN THE MIDST OF A SHADOW FORECAST BY LARGE EVENTS 65

FIFTH CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE STEPS OUT SPIRITEDLY IN THE FOG TO FIND HIS FRIENDS, AND ENCOUNTERS THE HATE OF LONDON 74

SIXTH CHAPTER

A GRIM AND TERRIBLE TRADITION IS TOUCHED UPON FOR THE RELATION IT BEARS TO THE TREACHERY IN INDIA 85

SEVENTH CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE BEGS FOR A STIMULANT--THE STUFF THAT SINGS IN THE VEINS OF KINGS 104

EIGHTH CHAPTER

THE SUPERLATIVE WOMAN EMPTIES HER HEART OF ITS TREASURES FOR THE OUTCAST, AND THEY PART AT CHARING CROSS 110

NINTH CHAPTER

MR. JASPER IS INFORMED THAT MOTHER INDIA CAUSED NAPOLEON’S DEFEAT, AND THAT FAMINES ARE NOT WITHOUT VIRTUE 124

TENTH CHAPTER

A SINGULAR POWER IS MANIFEST IN THE LITTLE HUT AT RYDAMPHUR, AND ROUTLEDGE PERCEIVES HIS WORK IN ANOTHER WAR 139

ELEVENTH CHAPTER

A HAND TOUCHES THE SLEEVE OF THE GREAT FRIEZE COAT IN THE WINTRY TWILIGHT ON THE BUND AT SHANGHAI 148

TWELFTH CHAPTER

JOHNNY BRODIE OF BOOKSTALLS IS INVITED TO CHEER STREET, AND BOLTS, PERCEIVING A CONSPIRACY FORMED AGAINST HIM 164

THIRTEENTH CHAPTER

JERRY CARDINEGH OFFERS A TOAST TO THE OUTCAST AND IS COMPELLED TO DRINK ALONE 175

FOURTEENTH CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE IS ASSURED OF A WOMAN’S LOVE--THOUGH HE SHOULD LEAD THE ARMIES OF THE WORLD TO BURN LONDON 187

FIFTEENTH CHAPTER

NOREEN CARDINEGH APPEARS AFTER MIDNIGHT IN THE BILLIARD-ROOM OF THE IMPERIAL--AN INEFFABLE REMEMBRANCE 200

SIXTEENTH CHAPTER

CERTAIN CIVILIANS SIT TIGHT WITH KUROKI, WHILE THE BLOOD-FLOWER PUTS FORTH HER BRIGHT LITTLE BUDS 211

SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER

FEENEY AND FINACUNE ARE PRIVILEGED TO “READ THE FIERY GOSPEL WRIT IN BURNISHED ROWS OF STEEL.” 222

EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER

BINGLEY BREAKS AWAY FROM THE CAMP OF THE CIVILIANS TO WATCH “THE LEAN-LOCKED RANKS GO ROARING DOWN TO DIE.” 232

NINETEENTH CHAPTER

NOREEN CARDINEGH, ENTERING A JAPANESE HOUSE AT EVENTIDE, IS CONFRONTED BY THE VISIBLE THOUGHT-FORM OF HER LOVER 243

TWENTIETH CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE IS SEEN BY NOREEN CARDINEGH AT AN EXCITING MOMENT IN WHICH SHE DARE NOT CALL HIS NAME 255

TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE, BROODING UPON THE MIGHTY SPECTACLE OF A JAPANESE BIVOUAC, TRACES A WORLD-WAR TO THE LEAK IN ONE MAN’S BRAIN 266

TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE STRIKES A CONTRAST BETWEEN THE JAPANESE EMPEROR AND THE JAPANESE FIGHTING-MAN, WHILE OKU CHARGES INTO A BLIZZARD OF STEEL 277

TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

ROUTLEDGE ENCOUNTERS THE “HORSE-KILLER” ON THE FIELD OF LIAOYANG, AND THEY RACE FOR THE UNCENSORED CABLE AT SHANHAIKWAN 285

TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

THE GREAT FRIEZE COAT AND THE WOMAN JOURNEY DOWN THE COAST TOGETHER, AND CROSS INDIA TO THE LEPER VALLEY 303

Routledge Rides Alone

PROLOGUE

IN CHEER STREET, LONDON

Jerry Cardinegh, dean of the British word-painters of war, was just home from China, where he had caught the Allies in the act of relieving Peking. It had been a goodly and enticing service, both to watch and to portray, calling out much of glorious color and tension and peril, and not enough slaughter to chill the world’s appreciation. Cardinegh sat by the fire in his little house in Cheer Street, London, and was ministered to by his daughter, Noreen, a heavenly dispensation which the old campaigner believed he had earned. A dinner together, just the two, truly a feast after lean months crossing the mountains of separation. Then whiskey, glasses, soda, pipes, tobacco, papers of the afternoon--all served by the dearest of hands. The gray, hard veteran lived, indeed, the maiden filling his eyes.

Twenty he had left her, and she was twenty still, but the added fraction of an inch made her look very tall, and startled him. There was a mysterious bloom under the luminous pallor of her skin; fathoms more added to the depth of her eyes, and a suggestion of volume to her voice. Nature and heritage had retouched the girlish lips in color and curve, widened the tender Irish eyes, added glow and amplitude to the red-gold hair.... There had only been two women in the world for Jerry Cardinegh, and the other was a memory--the mother.

“And who do you suppose is coming to-night, deere?” he asked. There was a silver lining of the Tyrone tongue to all that Jerry said, but it was so subtle and elusive as wholly to defy English letters, save possibly that one word “deere” which he rolled fondly for Noreen, and here and there in the structure of a sentence.

“Some of your war-men to relieve Peking again to-night? Who, father?”

“Just one. The best and weirdest of them all. He’s on the way home to the States. You met him in Tokyo five years since--after the Japanese had whipped China, and the Triple Alliance had stepped in to gobble the trophies.”

The girl stirred the fire in the grate thoughtfully for an instant, then started up in a glad, impatient way. “Routledge-san?”

“The same. Now, that’s queer--after five years--I mean, the Japanese title of address--‘Routledge-san.’”

“That’s what I used to call him, and I always think of him so. I think of him a great deal. His work in the _Review_ makes me. He is one of very few whom I could welcome gladly--this first home-night with you, father.” She spoke with the old fearless candor that Cardinegh loved.

“So you think of Routledge a great deal? And why, deere?”

“He sees deeply. His work is illuminating to me. Sometimes I think of him sitting back of his work and smiling because he knows so much that he dares not set down. I think Routledge-san loves Asia--as you, as we--love Ireland, father.”

“You could not think about a better man, Noreen,” said Cardinegh. “And so he knows a lot that he doesn’t write for the _Review_? Well, maybe so.... He talks quite as well as he writes--when the spell is on him. I don’t know a man who can clear a mind of all save what he’s tossing into it--like Routledge. And the words seem to twist and work their way deep like burrs--when he leans forward with an idea.”

Noreen smiled. “And why has he not been back to London in all these years?”

“You have said it--because he loves Asia.”

“But he has not been back to America?”

“Routledge is quite as much at home in London as in Philadelphia, his native city. He has worked for the American press as well as for the English. You see, he needed us because England has something doing more or less all the time in the field. In fact, since Japan took the Chinese Port Arthur in ’94, there has been plenty for one man to do in following American and British arms--Cuba, South Africa, the Philippine Archipelago, and now China again. But I have met him off and on around the world. They are good men of our tribe, Noreen, strong, brave, and wise men, but Routledge, of them all, has warped his craft deepest into my slip, so to speak. I love the lad.”

She was moving about among the shadows of the sitting-room--a touch of her hand here and there, unconscious preparation, probably, for the guest, and a queer tension in her eyes. It was nine, and a gusty winter night, when Cardinegh admitted the world-wanderer and took his great frieze coat. Noreen watched from the far end of the hall. Routledge spoke low and laughingly, and caught the elder man by the hand and shoulder. A sense of exhilaration in full sweep dilated the veins of the girl, and with it, too, was a certain chill of dread, some nameless portent--a blend of joy, and its price in pain, all in that first glimpse. It was like the prelude of a song, or the prologue of a story, which contains an element of each emotion in the appeal of the whole....

“And this is Noreen--the little Noreen whom I once dared to call my Japanese sweetheart. Why, it’s water out of the rock to see you again, Miss Noreen!... Jerry, the years have been consummate artists here in Cheer Street while we’ve been away growing old.”

Noreen heard herself saying, “I have felt close to you a great many times, Routledge-san,--all wrapped up, as in a blanket, in those fat _Review_ columns under your name.”

“’Tis true,” said Cardinegh. “We’re all flawful imitations beside you, son.”

“I was thinking how good, how ripping good, ‘Routledge-san’ sounds again,” the guest declared. “It’s like a song of home heard from a passing ship.”

Before the fire, the two correspondents unshipped once more under the guns of the Taku forts, for the listening girl, and followed the Pei-ho, that roiled drain of a bitter land, up to the Tientsin wall.

“Routledge deserted us that day--went back to his own countrymen--the American column,” said the father.

Jerry wanted the story told for Noreen, and his memories challenged and animated Routledge. “Yes, I wanted to see my boys again,” he acknowledged. “I had one good look at them in Cuba, under Lawton, who was killed a year or so later, under my eyes, on the banks of the Maraquina River in Luzon. The Philippines was a rapid, pretty service, but a service of detachments. I was eager to see how the boys worked in numbers. The American troops are nervous, you know, a little too highly evolved to be atoms. They live for a higher game in their country--commerce and inventions. Some time the nation will rise even to a better growth than that--I mean, to the spiritual evolution.

“The boys were mostly ill in China, thin-blooded from the tropical Philippines. The column was full of fever, coughing and cursing a little. They shook in the chill damps of the nights up Tientsin way.... Poor chaps, but it was good to hear them talk, before the gray old walls of Tientsin--that night when the world was hanging to the cable-ends for the flash, ‘battle.’ I rode along the huddled column and heard Texas, Indiana, Nob Hill and the Bronx, Halsted Street and Back Bay--all from the shadows on the ground, that breathed tired oaths and shivered in the drive of the fine, chilled rain.”

Jerry took up the picture excitedly: “Do you remember when the spray of sparks shook out from behind the wall?--the party in charge of the fireworks was trying the night to see if it were dark enough. Then followed a succession of booming crashes. It was as if the plain was drawn tight as a drum-head, and they dropped comets on it.... The Chinos got the Russian range about that time, and left open sores in the snaky Slav line. And I want to know, Routledge, did you hear the high-pitched scream from the Japanese when they snatched the glory of the lead?... Ah, we’ll hear from those brown dwarfs again!”

“I think so,” said Routledge. “They ran forward like hounds, snapped at each other and gave tongue like a pack closing in for the kill. Yes, I remember, and then the fire broke out behind the wall in the native city, and the sky took on the red--the red of an Indian blanket! It shone red on the faces of the boys from the States.... Miss Noreen, you listen large-eyed as Desdemona.”

“Tell me more about your boys,” she whispered.

“The trumpet screeched ‘forward,’ and the column quickened into life,” Routledge explained, “sprang like magic into formation and swept past, panting, laughing, shouting in the rain. God, pity them! They were good boys--good boys, all. I wish they had all come back with their dreams all turned true.... They didn’t know what was ahead, except they had seen the blind gray stones of the wall through the dusk at the end of the day’s march. They didn’t know what the fight was about, but they ran to break the wall, gladly, against the rock of centuries--into fire and steel and the yellow hate from all the hells. It meant nothing to them after the wall was broken. That’s the queer, ugly part of it. The man in the ranks always gets the worst end--and so pitifully often doesn’t even have a sentiment to enthuse over. He’s apt to fall in a fight against as good friends as he has anywhere on this spinning planet, and what meaning has the change of national boundaries to his mother?” Routledge was thoughtful for a moment....

“It seems hard to use grown-ups like that--men, white men, with spines at right-angles from the snake’s, and a touch of eternity in their insides somewhere. Poor devils, getting the worst of it--that’s always the way!... I watched the tail of the column swaying by--watched the last fragments blotted up in the rain and the night. Already, in a red mist on the Tientsin Wall the dance of death had begun.”

Noreen’s eyes were filled with mysteries and mistiness. As in his work, Routledge now suggested to her volumes unsaid. Her heart sensed the great wealth of the man. She felt an inner expansion. Pity was almost a passion in his face; and there was hate, too--hate for the manipulations of the rulers of the earth, which drove forward that poor column cursing and coughing in the rain. She saw it all--as if she had been at his side that night--the fire-lit field running with the reddest blood of earth. And across the world she seemed to see the faces of the maids and mothers of these boys--faces straining toward them, all white with tragedy. And more, she seemed to see for an instant the Face of the high God, averted from His images, because they were obsessed in that profane hour by the insane devils of war.... The profile of Routledge fascinated her. He had spoken lightly--as he was accustomed to speak before men to whom war was a career--but the aroused girl saw in his eyes, tightly drawn against the lamp-light, a mystic’s rebellion against the inhumanity of material power. About his eyes and graven entire upon the tropically embrowned face was a look impossible to the men her life had known.

* * * * *

“I was tangled up in a reserve of Russian infantry afterward,” Routledge concluded. “Jerry, you’ve heard the Russians sing?”

“Aye, at Plevna and before, son.”

“It’s a thing worth living long to hear--wild and mournful as a Siberian winter.... This reserve roared its song as it bored into Tientsin--a song of snow-bound hills and ice-bound hearts--poor _muzhiks_! And a British battery, tons of charging steel and brass, thundered the bass!”

So between them, the two correspondents covered the story of that one fight in the night--on the way to lift the lid from the legations at Peking. A messenger from the _Witness_ office at this point brought certain cable copies for Cardinegh to comment upon for an editorial paragraph or two. He went into his study.

“Routledge-san, do you mind if I ask you to talk more?”

Noreen edged her chair closer like a little girl anticipating a story.

“Such listening as yours,” he laughed, “would make a Napoleon disclose his plans for the next morning’s battle. It would bring out the best of any man’s tales. Ask me anything that I know and it is yours.”

“Always when the other correspondents come here to Cheer Street--and nearly all of them call to see father--I have made them all tell me about the bravest deed--the bravest man--they have ever seen or known in all their services. I think I know them all but yours.”

“And what do you think my bravest man will be like, you collector of heroisms?”

“That’s just the point, Routledge-san. I think yours won’t be a man of merely brute courage. That’s why I am so anxious to hear.”

“In this case I am like one of the messengers to Job--I alone remain to tell you. I have never told any one, but sometimes it occurs to me to write the story of Rawder for the few who care to understand. He is my property, Miss Noreen, a humble martyr with a mighty soul like Saint Paul’s.

“He is a man born to suffer, as all the great are, who crucify themselves in various ways to lessen the sufferings of commoner men. I have never felt the same about any other man. There is something quite miraculous about our relation. Accidentally, as it appears, I have met him somewhere every second year for a double decade--the last time in Hong Kong this trip home. I surely shall see him again? Does it sound foolish to you--this idea of being destined to meet a certain some one from time to time somewhere--until the End?”

“No. I want to hear it all, just as it comes to you, with all your thoughts about it--please. Father will be busy for a half-hour in his study. I think I shall understand.”

Routledge leaned back with a cigarette, which with him was only an occasional indulgence. “As I say, I meet him every second year in my wanderings, and I am always healed from the jangle of the world and world-politics after a day with Rawder,” he resumed, watching her. “He had a strangely unattractive face as a boy--slow with that dullness which sometimes goes with the deaf, and a moist, diffused pallor that suggests epilepsy. His original home was away up in a New England village, restricted as a mortise-box in its thought and heart. The Rawders were a large, brief family--six or seven children--the whole in harrowing poverty. Certain of the littler ones were hare-lipped; all were the fright of other children. I never liked New England.... I can see yet the gray, unpainted house of the Rawders, high on a barren hill against the gray, bitter sky--rags in the broken window-panes; voices in the house that you could not forget, yet loathed to remember.... All died in a year except this boy who became my friend. All met the Reaper without pomp or heraldry, the funerals overlapping, so that the village was dazed, and the name of Rawder stands to-day for Old Mortality at his worst. So there was left only this one, a strange, wordless type of Failure in the eyes of the village.

“He was a little older than I--but a sort of slave of mine. I see it now. I had everything that good family and parental wisdom could bless a boy with, and he had nothing. That I pitied him seemed to warm his soul with gratitude. He expected so little and was willing to give so much. I wish I had understood better then.... He aspired to the ministry, but his ordination was long denied him. He was second in his class after years of study in a theological school, earned with incredible penury, but his trial sermon or something about him shocked the community. I know now that it was a wider, gentler piety. About this time I had come in from my first trip around the world. Unable to get a church, he asked for a foreign mission, the smallest mission in the loneliest, most dreadful land. His answer was a whisper through the assembly of preachers, challenging his sanity. Forgive them, as he did, Miss Noreen. I could not have fully understood the features of his tragedy, but I remember that when I parted from him that time, there was a vague desolation in my heart. I could not forget the deep, troubled eyes nor the heavy homely face, all scourged with harshness from a babe, a veritable magnet of evil fortunes.

“Back from England again, I encountered him in Boston under the banners and torches of the Salvation Army. He was thinner, deeper-eyed, richer-voiced, and all animate with love for his race. For the first time I felt the real spell of the man. It was something in his eyes, I think--something that you see in the eyes of a little child that is dying without pain.”

“Visions,” she whispered.

“Yes, that is the word. Some God-touched thing about the man in the streets of Boston. But I am making my story long, Miss Noreen. I did not know that I had all these details. It has become rather an intimate fancy of mine--this story.”

“Please tell me all. I think it is to be the story of a great victory.”

“Yes, the years to come will end it so.... Two years ago, I was riding with Tarrant’s cavalry in southern Luzon when I discovered Rawder among the troopers. It was in the midst of a blistering march of twelve hours from San Pedro Macati to Indang, without a halt for coffee or bacon. He did not see me, and I could not get to him until the column broke formation. What he must have suffered climbing Fool’s Hill as a regular cavalry recruit! There was a fight in the afternoon, and the column was badly jumbled. Every fourth man stayed behind with three horses and his own. The rest advanced, dismounted, into action. Rawder was with the fighting force. I caught a glimpse of him during the early stress of things. There was just as much iron in his jaw as in Tarrant’s, whose valor had vibrated across the Pacific. Even so, I heard a non-commissioned officer abuse him like a cur--God knows why, unless it was because Rawder did not shoot to kill. That night when we entered Indang, I could not find him. He was not in the formation next morning. Tarrant rode on without him. Apparently, I was the only one who cared. I think he was regarded much the same in the cavalry as he was by the Methodist conference and before the committee on foreign missions.

“The next week Tarrant’s column struck war--a bit of real war. I found all that archipelago-service interesting, hit-and-run campaigning, with all the human interest of bigger lines. We were caught on a sunken jungle-trail and fired upon from three sides. Small in numbers, but that fight was of the sort which makes the mess-talk of English regiments for decades, and their flag decorations. I never saw a bit of action at closer range. It was even shown to me--the peculiar way men open their mouths when struck about the belt. I heard souls speak as they passed--strange, befuddled utterances, from brains and lips running down, but full of meaning--sayings of great and memorable meaning. I saw Tarrant stand for thirty seconds under the first volleys, dismayed in the yellow glare. There is no sight for a soldier so terrible as a glimpse of havoc in the face of his chief, but he righted quickly enough. For the moment the men tried to cover themselves in the soiled short straws of their religion.