It wasn"t an open fire, but a little iron stove that got so red that it trembled, and at intervals could hardly contain the puttering of the pine; and there was a one-armed soldier, who spent the long forenoons cutting carefully and piling, until there was a rustic wainscot half around the room, the drying breath of which was the purest fragrance in the world.... They petted the soldier until an officer came down.
It was the hunting forest of a certain Count, and the hut they lived in was but the lodge of one of his keepers; but it was far enough from the great mansion (where wounded officers of royal blood and toppling rank healed or died in much the same fashion as other men) to afford the silence and solitude they had dreamed of. And all about them the great trees pondered between the winds--pine and balsam, cedar and fir. It had looked like a bit of an island from the Sondreig window, but proved a true forest when they reached there--an enchanted one to Berthe and Mowbray.
Twice Boylan came down for a day, bringing Moritz Abel the second time; but the Colonel, whose authority had done so much for them, required much of Big Belt, and there was a woman (some mystery about this) who would keep dinner waiting, he said. So both times he had started back while there remained light in the sky. And Peter had become thoughtful.
"Why, there are whole days I can"t account for," he muttered. "He must have had me strapped to him for days at a time."
He had asked for Poltneck, of whom she had seen the last in Judenbach.
The Germans had loved his singing and made very much of him; and Peter had asked for Moritz Abel before the latter came for the day. Berthe had answered freely, but of Duke Fallows she had not spoken in a way to satisfy his questions. In fact, it was not until the day that Peter first crossed the little room alone that she seemed ready to speak.
That afternoon he had called her from the window.
"Where is Fallows, Berthe?"
"Not far from here," she said. "Not as far as Sondreig from here--a place you have never seen, but I watched it every day from the window of the apothecary shop until you were moved. He offered himself at once when he heard--the cholera quarantine.... But he left a message for you to carry, Peter--gave it to me for you.
"I saw him for a few brief moments after he had volunteered. He talked of you and that other American boy of the other war. He said that the night he separated from that other--just after the battle of Liaoyang, the Russians in full retreat, he had written his story of the battle-- the story of the Ploughman, and intrusted it to his friend to carry to America. He wants you to carry his story of this service--asked me to give it to you when you were better--to take to America with yours.
"Just a picture," he said. "It may be all wrong, but I see it so to- night, and I would like to have it come out in America some time."
"He is very dear to us, Peter--that old burning exile. Some time we may understand his love for America.... It was hard to let him go.
They fight day and night in the Stockade. They are trying to spare Sondreig.... I wish you might have been with him that last night before he went. It was before I found you--before I saw the big man in the street.... He was glad to go. There was no sense of sacrifice in it. His whole sense was of our sorrow and the world"s sorrow. But it would have been good for him if you had been there--because you are of his country. He said it again and again: "She must see it. It is her immortal opportunity," meaning America--"
"Is his story so we can see it?" Peter asked.
"Yes."
She took from her breast a little chamois, in which was wrapped two pages of tough tissue, spread them out, drew her chair close to him, and read this picture Fallows had made, and his message to America:
..._It is the long night of Europe. France sits in dust upon the ground, staring toward the End. Mother England has called for her sons, and some have not answered. She turns her frost-rimed gla.s.s from the grim horizons to the grimmer skies, and always in the movement of the darkened shadows is written the word, "Disaster." ...Smileless Germany, stricken as never a nation was stricken before, save by the wrath of G.o.d, still holds to the fatal enchantment of a fatherland of the ground, while the changes in the Prussian boundaries are marked in fire and the blood of her children.... Russia is looking southward, furious to open her cas.e.m.e.nts upon the perilous seas--gloomy millions of the tundras, mighty millions of the ice-ringing plains--looking southward, marching southward, to-day marking time, to-morrow a league, but southward as a ship in pa.s.sage. Russia, the young, holy genii battling with demons in her breast, everything to win and only the fruits of her world-shocking fecundity to lose--southward to slaughter through the long night.
...A call to America through the long night--the voice calling for her to put on her splendid, her initial magic. The voice from the vision of sorrow-illumined men in frozen bivouacs, crying to America to hold fast to the dream of her Founders, lest the vessel of the future be drained of vital essence, indeed--to hold fast until we come ...crying for America to answer, not with rapacious intellect, not the answer of a militant body, but an answer from the soul of the New World, with its original vitality in the Fatherhood of G.o.d.
...Repeating through the long night that the patience of Nature is exhausted with the hate of man for man; that the hatred of nation for nation is a lost experiment; that the bitter romance of the predatory is a story finished in h.e.l.l; that the pa.s.sion for self and boundary is done, that Compa.s.sion for neighbor and nation is the art of the future; crying the end of the national soul and the stroke of the hour for the birth of the world-soul; crying to America, the only temple, the sole house of nativity, to put on again her youthful magic, to ignite afresh the Gleam of her Founders, to arise to her superb and heroic destiny._ They sat in silence until the tap at the door. It was the one-armed soldier, who came in, regarded the stove critically inside and out, judiciously chose one knot of pine, inserted it with grave care, and, departing, inquired if there was anything further he could do.
"No," said Peter.
And Berthe asked: "Is there anything we can do for you?"
He bowed his head in the doorway, and they saw beyond him the winding aisles of the forest--green and white, the dusk creeping in.
THE END
_A brief expression of the critical Reception of_
DOWN AMONG MEN
_Outlook_: Possessed of a marvelous descriptive genius, equipped with a remarkably flexible use of English and impelled by the pa.s.sion of a mystic--the author of Down Among Men has written a striking novel.
_The Dial_: Seems to us the most exalted and appealing story Mr.
Comfort has thus far written.
_The Argonaut_: A novel of extraordinary power. It is good as _Routledge Rides Alone_. It could hardly be better.
_London Post_: Alive with incident, bounding with physical energy, dramatic in coloring, and modern in every phrase. He has a message delivered with vigor, inspired with tense pa.s.sion.
_Atlantic Monthly_: There is so much real fire in it--the fire of youth that has seen and suffered--so much vitality and pa.s.sion that one grows chary of petty comments. The writer offers us the cup of life, and there is blood in the cup.
_Chicago Record-Herald_: An almost perfect tale of courage and adventure.
_Chicago Tribune_: Contains some of the most remarkable scenes that have appeared in recent American fiction.
_New York Times_: Few richer novels than this of Mr. Comfort"s have been published in many a long day.
_New York Globe_: We can say in all sincerity that we know of no recent bit of descriptive writing that can match this for sustained, breathless, dramatic interest.
_Springfield Republican: Down Among Men_ is perhaps the most ambitious American novel that has come out during the past year.
MIDSTREAM
...A hint from the first-year"s recognition of a book that was made to remain in American literature:
_Boston Transcript_: If it be extravagance, let it be so, to say that Comfort"s account of his childhood has seldom been rivaled in literature. It amounts to revelation. Really the only parallels that will suggest themselves in our letters are the great ones that occur in _Huckleberry Finn_.... This man Comfort"s gamut is long and he has raced its full length. One wonders whether the interest, the skill, the general worth of it, the things it has to report of all life, as well as the one life, do not ent.i.tle _Midstream_ to the very long life that is enjoyed only by the very best of books.
_San Francisco Argonaut_: Read the book. It is autobiography in its perfection. It shows more of the realities of the human being, more of G.o.d and devil in conflict, than any book of its kind.
_Springfield Republican_: It is difficult to think of any other young American who has so courageously reversed the process of writing for the "market" and so flatly insisted upon being taken, if at all, on his own terms of life and art. And now comes his frank and amazing revelation, _Midstream_, in which he captures and carries the reader on to a story of regeneration. He has come far; the question is, how much farther will he go?
Mary Fanton Roberts in The _Craftsman_: Beside the stature of this book, the ordinary novel and biography are curiously dwarfed. You read it with a poignant interest and close it with wonder, reverence and grat.i.tude. There is something strangely touching about words so candid, and a draught of philosophy that has been pressed from such wild and bitter-sweet fruit. The message it contains is one to sink deep, penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches.
This man"s words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing into a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the inspiration of a quickened life.
Ida Gilbert Myers in _Washington Star_: Courage backs this revelation. The gift of self-searching animates it. Honesty sustains it. And Mr. Comfort"s rare power to seize and deliver his vision inspires it. It is a tremendous thing--the greatest thing that this writer has yet done.
George Soule in _The Little Review_: Here is a man"s life laid absolutely bare. A direct, big thing, so simple that almost no one has done it before--this Mr. Comfort has dared. People who are made uncomfortable by intimate grasp of anything, to whom reserve is more important than truth--these will not read _Midstream_ through, but others will emerge from the book with a sense of the absolute n.o.bility of Mr. Comfort"s frankness.
Edwin Markham in _Hearst"s Magazine_: Will Levington Comfort, a novelist of distinction, has given us a book alive with human interest, with pa.s.sionate sincerity, and with all the power of his despotism over words. He has been a wandering foot--familiar with many strands; he has known shame and sorrow and striving; he has won to serene heights. He tells it all without vaunt, relating his experience to the large meanings of life for all men, to the mystic currents behind life, out of which we come, to whose great deep we return.