Part 16

"I have always thought of the spirit of things," he added, "until I met Paula Mantone. I would have forgotten everything for her beauty, but she remembered our souls.... And now, because I would have forgotten the bodies of these men Christonal sent me here to learn that. We are spirits and bodies, too, Lange. It takes a crowned head to hold to the two ends at once--God, hear 'em sing----"

The ruffians always hushed and choked us when they sang. Something new about it this time, for Varsieff was seeing them across a red stream of their own blood.

"I can't drive 'em into the fire-pits," he muttered. "Why, I'd rather wash and dress 'em. They've got the idea that I am to lead them home. I can't betray that--not even for the Cause!... I never saw it before. They are not herds, not groups--but monads--each a man----"

"We've got to put through the big story," I said quietly. "Thirty thousand is cheap--our little planting out here is cheap, if we can give Russia the new heaven and the new earth--Russia--then America--then the world----"

I was giving him back his own words.

"Thirty thousand lives," he repeated. "Yes, the price is cheap--thirty thousand every day for awhile--your life and mine, Lange--a cheap price to pay for the glory we see in the days to come. But I can't kill these--I think Christonal knew it all the time----"

"You aren't ready for work in the constructive end, if you falter here among the wreckers----" I said.

I knew that no Cause had ever uncovered a more valuable servant than this same Varsieff, though badly out of hand just now. I wasn't making any effect upon him. He looked at me strangely.

"That sounds true--exactly and unerringly true," he said wearily.

There was no quarter possible now.

"I remember your words in clubs and cabinets and in the ante-rooms of the dumas.... You weren't afraid of blood there, Varsieff."

He winced.

"They called you the 'Fire-eater,'" I added, never knowing when to stop. "It's just as straight to-day as it was when you talked there: 'The old civilisation must be washed clean with the blood of the new----'"

His hand came up piteously.

"But their hearts are turned homeward, Lange," he said. "Their eyes are building their homes all over again--eyes turned homeward over the mountains----"

"Turned to God," I said reverently.

"Yes, but taking my word--the word of Varsieff--that God is there----"

"He is there."

"But will He come to them at the last, Lange?... Will He show His face--so they will believe?... When they feel their death-wounds--the blood sliding out, warm and silent--the cold coming in--will they hold to what I said? Will He be there for them?"

"You're shot up, old man, only a bit bewildered to-day. No one knows better than you how great emotional giving of one's self to Cause or Country makes death easy--and quickens the Soul."

Varsieff was ashen.

"I've got to eat all my words! Even you, bring back my words to me. I've talked too much.... Suppose I am a madman----?"

"Then you have no responsibility for what you said," I smiled.

He stared at the tent-wall.

"Varsieff," I said at last.

His hand came out.

"You were pure in all you undertook."

Silence.

"You wanted nothing for yourself."

"I wanted nothing for me--nothing but----"

"But what?"

"Paula Man----"

"She's a part of you--now. You look like her!"

"I think I'll have to die to see her--Oh, Lange--I'm sick--I'm impoverished, cell by cell, with loneliness----" Varsieff laughed unsteadily and added:

"I remember asking you to say to her--that she alone knew my weaknesses. Now you know them, too."

"She said she loved them.... Varsieff, I have known you a long time," I added after a moment. "I have shaped my manhood, such as it is, after you. I am proud of this--to the end. I, too, care more for you, because of this day--for understanding. To understand--that is everything. I who always listened before, tell you to-day: _The dream does hold. The dream is good. Thirty thousand men--even our singing, growling, big-footed, red-hearted thirty thousand--is a cheap price to pay for the new Russia!_"

"Do you think Paula would say that?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered, "from the mother-heart of her."

I had spoken, and now I tried to make myself believe that she would have ordered him on. I had to change him, at any cost. A rather questionable way now appeared--to lift him out of himself.

"Listen, Friend," I added. "You are lonely--but you have the heart of a woman pulsing with yours--every beat.... You'd have to _be me_ to know what loneliness means. I'd take all the pain to have a woman like that. There are times when you are half a man, because you are apart from her, but there are other times, Varsieff, when you are twice a man--double dynamics----"

He caught me in his arms. I knew he was healed, but I felt the cad and the cur for bringing his sympathy on myself.... He was looking back toward the cold mountains when I left him, and the look of the woman was in his eyes. That night I dreamed that Paula Mantone came to me with a message for Varsieff, and that she told me some beautiful thing about the child of a king--but I could not quite get it down to brain.

* * * * *

Sedgwick, a brigadier, and technically in command of the thirty thousand, was a straight militarist in training. He looked to Varsieff, the political head, for orders. The day came when Varsieff had no one to look to, for we were cut off from Christonal and Petrograd. We were not long kept in doubt after that as to who were our immediate enemies--not German, not Austrian, but the old line Russian troops hung up to the east of us, the same that had recently occupied themselves making martyrs of the revolutionists in their ranks--two or three hundred a day.

It was a red morning when two of our _fliers_ blew down with the word that our brothers were closing in--that it looked like extermination for our thirty thousand, unless we strode out and crippled them with the first shock. Ten miles to the west the Bundalino Marshes began. We had the secret paths, but it was a wretched fugitive outlook to seek shelter there. As I looked at it, it would never occur to leaders who had brought Russia to the moment of parturition, to break up for a miserable safety in the swamps of Bundalino.

I recall the distant firing of that red morning. My eardrums had not healed from recent months more or less in touch with the artillery. I remember brushing the edge of the lines, as I crossed from Sedgwick's headquarters back to the hut I shared with Varsieff and a servant or two. The peasants were listening queerly and quietly to the far firing.

I passed through the sprawl of pup-shelters, and certain ideas occurred to me: first, that the arrangement of camp was abominable, a pitiful lack of technique shown in this bit of military handling; second, the slow cold conviction that we, as revolutionists, must have all the virtues of the old-line troops to begin with, and to build our real greatness on top of that; finally I drew from the queer attitudes of the men toward me, an intuitional flash that to them the distant firing meant a signal that they were about to fight their way home.

Varsieff was sitting dejected upon a camp-chest when I rejoined him.

"Sedgwick is ready when you are," I said. "He suggests that the men be not kept waiting too long."

Varsieff looked up. His face was livid. His soul had no chance that morning. I thought of the old story of Arjuna standing between the battle-lines, reluctant to join action against his own kindred.

"It's the same here that it was in Petrograd," I announced finally. "The dream holds----"

He shook his head.... "They are just boys--white-haired boys. They want to go home----"

That instant I seemed to see the world laughing at this great man; I saw the end of Varsieff politically.... Superb genius broken down by an intrinsic weakness--as a man who, trying to lead the world, falls for the lure of an actress maid.... I saw all his work of early years--straight, clean, unerring, selfless labour of a man to a Cause--the inspired labour of the past two years when he gave the whole fruit of his quickened heart to the new Russia--the magic of a man loved by a woman great enough to be his divine sculptor and priestess.... It was the thought of Paula Mantone that helped me that instant. Sedgwick was on the path outside. I hurried out and whispered:

"Don't come now. Come back in ten minutes----"

The General paused to let me hear the firing. "But the troops----" he said.

"Give me ten minutes more with Varsieff----"

"The attack may be called----"

"I know, but I need that time."

The old soldier turned back, hating me....

* * * * *

"Varsieff," I said a moment later.

"Yes----"

"I've got to tell you something----"

He turned quickly.

"Paula Mantone is near----"

"No!"

"I saw her last night."

"Will she see me?"

I laughed at him. "Do you think she would want to see you now?... You're a sick man, Varsieff--morally sick. Any decision is better than your present incapacity.... I think she must have sensed your weakness--that she came to bring you strength, for she is your strength."

"Does she love me?" he asked.

"That's a slap in her face to ask that--a woman who gives you her soul's strength--the love of her life. That's lack of faith, my friend----"

"I am whipped. The white-haired boys--they want to go home----"

"You can't wash your hands. You can't say, 'Go home, boys.' They have to fight their way home. First, they have to fight their way to the east out of this valley--against old Russia!... It's the first great battle of the Old and New--first time in the history of the world. We hold the New for better or worse--this little Theban band. You would let us fail and dribble away and slink into the Marshes--you, her lover, whom she calls Boy and Strongheart----"

* * * * *

"What did she say?" he asked fiercely.

"----that I need not speak of her coming unless you needed help. She said you would not need help on account of your own lack of courage--rather that it would be your great tenderness that might defeat our Cause now. She said this was but a last ordeal, hardest of all for Builders, who have ceased to kill...."

"Where did you see her?"

It was all a lie, of course, except I had dreamed of her coming. I invented a place of meeting and added to his question that Sedgwick did not know of her presence.

"I agreed that we were not killers, but I told her that we dared to be cruel to ourselves," I added.

"What did she say to that?" Varsieff asked hoarsely. He had suddenly become like a child--one who dared not go to her, who scarcely trusted himself to speak.

"She said _that_ was the key to the whole matter--that we dare to sacrifice ourselves--dare to inflict pain upon each other because one's true love is the self--"

I was startled and awed at my own words. The idea was unlike anything of mine. It was exactly as if she had told me something of the kind in the dream. Varsieff groaned:

"The glory of her," he whispered. "Was there more?"

"Only that you must not falter now ... and that she would be waiting for you at the end of the day----"

"'In the cool of the evening,' she would say," he muttered.

"Perhaps that was it," I said.

"Nothing more?"

"Yes--but only if you needed it----"

"I do."

"That she never loved you so well as now--that you mean new Russia to her--that she will come running to you in the cool of the evening--either here or _on the other side_--and something about the child of a king."

His back stiffened. He arose. I saw him splendid again. I drew back in the shadow, afraid that he would see the sweat that had broken out upon me, though the place was cold.

Of course the idea, as I saw it, was to give the old-line troops the fight of their lives--to show the whole of Russia a martyrdom if necessary, thus revealing the temper of the revolutionists. Varsieff had been tempted to let them slip back into the Marshes to save their lives.

* * * * *

We were in the saddle side by side an hour later, and close to the front--the two big lines moving slowly and craftily together. Varsieff looked back at his precious boys, following willingly enough so far.

"It's their white heads that kill me," he muttered. "They are like children, and that I should----"

"They are all our children," I answered, sweeping my hand in a circle ahead where the troops of old Russia had filled in, waiting to deliver us to death.

"Dear old Lange," he muttered, "I'm glad you know her----"

I wondered what that had to do with his peasant children. Her spirit seemed a blend of his every thought and emotion.... We galloped along the fronts, talking to the different commanders. Some were students, in their teens, faces of boys who loved Varsieff with a love that yearned to die for him immediately, without words, a readiness to leap under his horse's feet.... In a kind of madness, all the mysteries of life seemed to unfold for me that morning, the spirit of Paula Mantone always near because I was so close to her lover.

He talked to the different leaders quite careless if the peasant ranks listened. He told them that the outer world was watching--that new Russia, Poland, Finland, the new Europe, the new World--all depended upon _them_ now. He said they were chosen men--that he would never leave the field except in victory--that he was brother and father and lover to them--that the world would be better for this day. He talked like a man at a bar, or standing among the river-boats, or a father to his sons in the fields.

We rode along the lines as they marched. Our horses lathered and dried and lathered again in the morning sun. I saw my comrade, Varsieff, giving up his soul to the peasants:

"... I, too, have my farm that waits for me--my woman who waits for me--my country, my dream!... I build with you. I stand or fall with you!... We shall be better for this day, my children. This is a day for living men and comrades----"

He filled me with a kind of white flame.

Then the crash. After that, was a moment of silence and gloom like a cloud passing over the sun. Then our eyes began to reap.... A blizzard of hot, stinking metal had broken in front of us--in the midst of our marching and listening battalion. If you have ever felt the mockery and cruelty of raging seas, you can know something of the shock that twisted the core of me that instant. That which had been the white-haired peasants with open laughing mouths and lifted hands, their souls answering the leader who loved them, a song forming on their lips ... now it was as if a carcass had been moved--one that had lain long in the sun, the devastation long continued underneath....

These were my boys. Next to Varsieff and Paula Mantone, I loved them. Now they were down, dismembered, shaking--the air a whir of white to my tortured ears, like a shriek of bewildered ghosts. And here and there, like Varsieff and myself--men standing unhurt in the midst of human fragments, like maggots, shaking themselves to cover.

I wonder if you can understand? It seemed that I still could see the welter of our boys in the leader's face. Also I saw the death of my good friend--the death-stroke of that superb mind--the face of a man, whose soul had vanished.

Both our horses were down, though we were unhurt so far.... A distance of fifteen feet separated us. I called to him. I tried to tell him that he had not failed. I thought I should die before I moved, before I could get started toward him. The staring failure in his face paralysed me. For the time, he was cut off even from the spirit of Paula Mantone.

I had to look down and watch my steps as I made my way to him. I knew some hideous fear that he would fall in that blackness--if I looked away.... There were voices from the ground. None of the parts of men could be still. Lips writhed before my eyes--and words were spoken like little claps of force in thin air.... I caught his opened collar....

"It's all right, Varsieff," I whispered.

"You lie!" said he.

It was like a blow from a man's mother. I had to look into his face before my brain accepted his words. Then I remembered _my_ lie.... The evil of it had not come to me until now, with him breaking down before my eyes.... I saw the look again--that I had seen by the peasant's yard long ago as we crossed the Torqueval Peaks--the look of a frightened child in that face of finished manhood.

I pulled him to me, and led him back toward Sedgwick's staff. I heard myself talking and laughing, jockeying with words.... His head was twisted to the side--his draggled remnant of a mind pulled back to the scene of that havoc. And now, if you please, we were catching the real thing. The old-line Russians were breaking upon us with machines and shrapnel--the old combing and carding that seldom fails.... I saw the cold mountains all about.

Did you ever see a slaughter of drones? Perfect economy it is, from the standpoint of the hive. The work of providing for the future is accomplished--no mistake in the plan. The workers gather from all sides. One by one the big clumsy drones are put to death--wrestling, tugging, stinging, many workers giving themselves to death to carry out the spirit of the hive.... The officers ahead who ordered our brother Russians upon us, thought they were right--those great grey lines ahead, honeycombed with our own precious comrades, all of whom were not yet martyred, as was proved. But they had not found their voice. It looked like straight death they brought to us.

... Ages. I would turn from Varsieff's face to the cold mountains. Something of the changelessness of the beyond and above came to me out of the hideous fluctuation of the near and below. I could not keep Varsieff back. He wouldn't resist so long as I held him, but the moment my hands released, his body would rise like some automatic thing and blindly stagger forward into the pale smoke-charged sunlight. The men who saw him--many who knew what he had been and had heard him speak but a few moments ago--lost their concentration on the battle. He became everywhere the centre of a rotting line. Clearly they had been fighting on his spirit--that, and the thought of going home....

Sedgwick rode up and saw my struggle--beckoned me back, as one in authority would bully a guard in a madhouse.... I obeyed, thinking of the lie I had told. Here were human fragments; the air filled with the shrieks of the fallen--the face of my friend beside me, the face of a blasted mind--all because of that lie of mine.

Then, as I trundled him to the rear, sometimes swinging him from one elbow to the other, I saw a line, as one would draw a bloody finger across his cheek. Then--it was like a monkey-bite in the bone and hair of his eye-brow.... We were in a hail from the machines and the men were falling back.

* * * * *

I think we are half-mad in such moments, or else touched with a divine sanity. In the midst of utter loss, the lines breaking back, the men beginning to stampede--the plan flashed into my mind that I could only save the first lie by a second. If the remnant fell back to starve in the Marshes--Varsieff forever was put from me. Such was my thought. The personal issue was greater than the Cause. I was beside myself--never so little, never so formidable.

My arm slipped from Varsieff who sank to his knees and flopped back at the wheels of a four-inch _Sanguinary_, bursting hot. I ran back to Sedgwick's staff, leaped into an empty saddle--then rode along the cracking fronts.

"Halt----" I yelled to the faces of the slipping lines.... "Halt--and don't you see you're running from your own Comrades?... They're taking over the Imperialists yonder. Our men have risen in the ranks of the enemy!..."

All along the lines, I yelled it--and it came forth like an inspired message--lie that it was from my angle. For to me, death was better than retreat, with the eyes of the world on our little nucleus of the new order.... My shouts were checking them.

"Our Comrades are coming to us--hold for them!... Don't run away ... they are coming! They are coming to join us, when they clean themselves up over yonder--only a little clean-up first, my children. Hear the noise?"

I don't know how long I rode. I only knew that the fighting death was victory--that there is no propaganda like martyrdom....

They answered at first with a kind of half-hearted halt. I was struck with the silence. A queer thing happened. I saw that I had spoken the truth.... There was firing ahead, but it had no meaning of death to our ranks. They were firing in the air, and some threw down their guns and were running toward us. Presently we saw the tent-cloths hoisted in truce. It was like seeing my mother again--shaking the table-cloth to the birds.

Then I saw their lines and ours running together--yes, Varsieff's new heaven and new earth--saw them running together bare-headed, white-haired peasant boys, hands outstretched, mouths open.... Freedom was an aureola of different sunlight around their heads. On they came like glorious ruffians, seizing their brothers in their arms--the lines folding together like good mates before the Lord.

Then it was like a blast--that Varsieff must see this! A cold blast in the heart--that he must not miss this glory--that my eyes must not dwell upon this great consummation alone! Deep within, I knew my pain was because his head was not lifted to the picture of his conquest. Deep within, I knew that for some inexplicable reason of fate, he was held back like the old Master on the other side of the Jordan--not allowed to enter and witness the beauty of the promised land.

In the midst of that radiant tumult, I ran back to the place that I had left him. It was trampled; the mud was deeper, but Varsieff was not there.... In the midst of the shouting and the glory, I searched for him.... Hours passed, the fighting ceased ... we were a hundred thousand strong, armed, provisioned, hearts turned homeward.... Scores of us were looking for the Varsieff now.

And then I heard my name called, and two young student-officers caught me, one to each elbow and carried me forward, running to where the woman stood ... Paula Mantone. She was standing in the midst of her own people--the sun on her face. And I saw, too, the white look of one who has conquered fear, but the weariness of her eyes was like the presence of death....

"Where is he?" she whispered.

"Oh, God, I do not know----"

"Poor dear Lange--all is well with us.... The boys of two armies rushing together--yes, Lange, this is a good day for us----"

She spoke rapidly, like lines committed--the same death-like weariness in her tones.... She had taken my hand:

"Come, we must find him ... take me to the place where you left him--come quickly----"

It was some distance. We walked at first in silence. It seemed as if I could not live if I did not find out what she would have done this morning in my place. Presently she said:

"I thought he would fail when it came to ordering a charge. He was very brave, they say."

I loved the students who told her that, but I had known too much torture to keep the perfect silence.

"... It was hard for him.... He isn't a killer--he saw only the white-haired boys----"

"My beloved----" she whispered.

"I told him that it was the same in Petrograd as here--that the dream held here--that you would have told him to be strong at the death part----"

She was not listening. She did not answer.

* * * * *

"It was just here. He was wounded a trifle. I left him to stop the troops. They were breaking a bit," I explained.

I had passed the place a dozen times. I remembered by the big _Sanguinary_--hot when I had let go of Varsieff's arm. The dead had been covered. The big gun was a wreck now--even the caisson with a broken wheel.