Red Fleece Part 30

Berthe appeared to draw a certain truth from the situation. Perhaps she saw _the woman_ in Boylan--the mysterious, draggled creature which he designated his devil on occasion. The old war-wolf gave her credit for no such penetration. Still she kept herself second, advised, a.s.sisted for a few moments, but would not let Boylan go.

"He's knit to you. He might die if you go," she said.

Something about her choked him. He had been with men so continually.

"And then I can't stay," she whispered. "But I am so thankful to have found you--that nothing else matters.... You see, we are prisoners.

They have trusted certain of us to work; still we have no names, no way of hearing, no mails, or anything. It's a good miracle that I found you."

Presently she said again: "You don't think I understand, but I do. You have stood by him. He would not have been here but for you. He is living because of you. I see that. I see that he has been very close.... You may hate me as you wish, but you cannot help taking what I give you."

"You're an all-right young woman," Big Belt managed to remark. "I knew something of that." Then, in a panic, he added: "He'll know you to- night. He's cool now. He'll pull through. He'll know you to-night, and then I go."

"Not until he sees you.... Besides, I am a prisoner. I cannot come and go as I would. I may not be able to come to-night--they may say _no_." "He'll have all that he needs until you come," Boylan said.

She did come that night. Peter had returned, but voyaged again meanwhile. In the morning she came again.... Boylan ordered her to sit down in the far corner. He went to the bed, for Peter was stirring, and presently opened his eyes with reason and organization in them.

"h.e.l.lo," he said.

"h.e.l.lo, boy."

Peter looked beyond him and around the room.

"Go to sleep," said Boylan.

"I won't."

"All right."

Big Belt stepped aside. Peter managed to get a knuckle up to rub his eyes.

"He's back with us," Boylan whispered.

"Don't go," she pleaded.

"Don't be a fool," said Boylan.

She was there beside him, bending lower and lower. It was against nature for them not to forget the exterior world for a moment, and Boylan was on the stairs....

He saw Sondreig with eyes that seemed to have dropped their scales. It was early in the morning, and a light snow had freshened everything.

An old woman was sitting at the locked entrance of what had been a dairy shop, weeping for her only son. Boylan stopped.

She was very poor and weak.

"Come, mother," he said, lifting her.

She looked into his face in a way that roweled the man.

"Come on," he said softly. "We'll have some breakfast. And you'll tell me about it. I belong to the widows and the fatherless, too."

So they rocked away together.

Chapter 6

He was sleeping again. Berthe went to the window. Even in her happiness she was afraid, for she was remaining longer than her leave.... The window faced the south, and the apothecary shop was on the edge of town. The day was like a pearl--snowy distance, a soft- toned sky and the low s.h.i.+ne of the sun. Deep down in the west, like an island, was a thick brush of cedars, preserving their green across the miles, and calling to her with something of the native wonder of old Mother Earth; and to the right, east of south, was the huge blurred stockade where King Cholera was so far imprisoned with the bait of fresh lives each day.

The old Mother was in her winter bloom, so pure and deep-eyed, so calm and above sorrow in her distance and coloring, that it became to Berthe a moment not to be forgotten--such a moment as would make a woman homesick in heaven.

...If the big man would only come back. They might be angry for her staying. It would be so easy to lose all that she had won from the Germans. They had come to rely upon her more and more, realizing the character of her service, and forgetting its origin in Judenbach. She did not want to disappoint them. With Peter Mowbray here in good hands and climbing back to life--no woman in the midst of war could ask more.... At the bedside again, she pondered the recent weeks to this hour. Without words, without heaviness, he had come along, fitting so blithely into the new places, bringing his laugh and his skepticism of self always, asking for no sign nor reward of the future, building no dream of heaven, but standing true to the tasks of earth. Greatly more, and differently, she loved him now, and the distance held the green of cedars.

...An officer came to her from the bullet-ward.

"You are to stay until Mr. Boylan, the correspondent, comes," he said.

"But will they know? They were good to let me come."

"Colonel Hartz has signed the order. Word has been sent to the entrainment wards. You were attached there, I believe?"

"Yes."

"Let us know in case of any need here."

"Yes. Thank you."

Chapter 7

A most satisfying adventure, so that Big Belt added many things to the matters which could not be related. The old mother had told him of her son (as they sat together in the little room she called home) and Boylan had seen in him a singular hero, and made the mother see it.

Presently he strode forth to the shops and returned with many packages of food affairs, and a cart of fuel following. The prodigious prices which these things commanded in Sondreig appealed to him as a trifle; in fact, the simplicity of life on these direct terms of living first hand, struck him as the eternally right way.... Then she cooked for him, very intent and eager in the great joy of it, agitated by his praise. In fact, he went to great lengths of breakfasting to show his appreciation; until, perceiving what he had done, he strode forth again with replenished understanding and restocked the cupboard by means of the cart.... Yes, he would come to-morrow.... Yes, by all means, while he was in Sondreig.

Even if he had not thought of the white-fire creature being held in the room above the apothecary shop for his return, Boylan had found it necessary to leave the old mother, since she could not be made to eat with him there. She would have cooked for him until she fell by the fire, but as for her sharing the repast, she begged him to have peace, that time was plentiful for that.... He was thinking it all out once more, a most delectable incident, as he walked swiftly through the snow toward the apothecary shop, when his shoulder was plucked by a pa.s.serby, and he turned, stiffening a bit at the roughness of it. A black-bearded man of much rank peered into his face, crying out:

"Boylan, by the One G.o.d!"

"Herr Hartz--by the same!" Big Belt exclaimed.

And now they embraced--a mighty affair, a memorable spectacle of pounding, of disengagement, of renewed embrace--so that soldiers and hospital men circled wide in pa.s.sing, and the little street was hushed with the exceeding joy.

"Come and live with me, Boylan. I will not take no for an answer. Come at once, and let us a table between us have, to prevent further inderrupption of travvic--"

At no time would the cause of this majestic effusion have been made clear to an outsider, though it was plain that the American correspondent and the German officer of rank shared it alike. The truth: these two, and two others somewhere in the world, were the surviving four of a complement of over thirty men who had made up the original outfit now known as the Schmedding Polar Failure. Colonel Hartz, detached from his cavalry command for service in the prison- hospital at Sondreig, was second in command here as he had been to Schmedding in that former ill-starred expedition.