Chapter IV (1)

... The time comes in the progress of spiritual aspiration when the generative impulse begins to manifest within rather than without. Firmly and gently the thoughts are turned to the Image within or above; the tendencies for outward manifestation slowly but surely give way.... This work sometimes goes on rapidly. A hundred times a day the thoughts of earthy attraction are finished with a soul conception, where formerly the mere physical presence sufficed.

Nothing answers thought more swiftly, but in this passage of mastery, if a single desire eludes from the aspirant, he must meet it later in a tearing and cumulative call. Surely at length the mind rises to rule. One's conception changes from the fear, the torment and the red haze, to gentleness and calm, a readiness to know _all_ the mysteries of life--to care for and respect all functions as one only can who has mastered himself.

To cast them out in hatred is failure. That means the hardening. It blights the beauty of the vales and all magic.

When one begins to unfold the wonders of the kingdom within, as one is called to do in the higher and contemplative spheres of the artistic life, there is an increasing joy that makes it easy, more and more, to lift the power of life from the torment and unrest of the generative seas.

One finds his dream of the beloved changed and infinitively endeared to him. Patience, reverence, tenderness comes to the love that once knew only the single passion of a male for the mammal. Even that, in memory, becomes beautiful to eyes of wisdom and calm--all God's plan. One is sensitive all through his breast for the unfathomable sweetness of life and love. He sees the child and the immortal in the mate. He finds that the body is truly sacred because he sees it with love and not with desire. These are good tidings. They make one happy to write them.

There are seven centres of ecstasy in the body. Through the mastery of will and love and action, the life-force is lifted to dwell with and awaken these centres. With each awakening, a new power comes--a new joy--a new hill-range crossed toward the Father's House; with each awakening, the beloved within is quickened in consciousness, and the beloved without is held more dear. The wondrous story of regeneration goes on and on, to the love that seeks to give itself utterly. To love--that is all the Soul asks.

Momentary passion swiftly passes in the increase of spiritual aspiration. Its force is not killed, but used for awakening the higher and immortal principles where real love abides. The hand of the loved one becomes sacred unto tears, and the joy of life is to serve.

The whole body is presently repolarised--the fire sparking upward--the apex of the triangle turned upward--desire of soul instead of desire of the body.... The mating of the mind and the soul is the larger, the cosmic consciousness, awaited so long. This means that the Lord has come into His Temple--the body made ready. It means that the mind and soul are one, the house no longer divided against itself. The lover is ready for the approach of his mate. Each has been cleansed at the fountains apart....

One must be utterly weary of the old. This repolarisation of the generative force cannot come until one has heard with furious passion, in the depths of pain, the call to the higher life, the new quest. Not repression then, but transmutation. One changes gently, often under a mystic administry, but always with growing love for the body and for the world, using the life forces for healing and concentration and the power to listen to the Lord within--the Voice of the Silence.... Upon the illumination of the seven centres by the life force, another mystery takes place. The levitation of the spiritual life overpowers to a considerable extent the natural gravitation of the flesh--the down-pull of years. The result, of course, is the restoration of health to all tissues of the body--the Fountain of Youth starts singing again.... To you.

* * * * *

25

ROMANCE

Affairs like these can only colour and illumine the upper side of the clouds, so far as American fiction is concerned. One might write a real novel of Regeneration, but the field of the story is not now for this; the arteries through which the public is reached by the publisher are not yet friendly to such a novel. We learn at Stonestudy to write what we please, but we are content with still small answers, at least for a time. We have ceased trying to force people to see the thing as we see it. For money to live by, to take our places comfortably in travel or sequestration, we retain the handicraft to write for markets that pay. We keep in touch with the world--that is practical mysticism. We rejoice in the dense pressures and tortures of world traffic. This is very calmly told, as it should be. My young associates learn it easily, performing the actions thereof, but for me, many years were required.

Long ago I wrote a novel about a man and woman coming to a fervent agreement to remain apart for a year before their mating, in order that they array themselves in fuller glory for each other, so that each day each would find the other more wonderful than yesterday. The novel furnished much adventure in the intervening year, otherwise it would have been still-born. What was the real theme to me apparently wasn't noted at all. Yet separation is as essential as companionship for the real Romance. A man who does life in a book must know this much, even if he use his knowledge sparingly. It's all a laugh in the higher workmanship. Romance--each has his idea of that. Each does his best by that. Here's a document of the day from John which gives his idea very well:

Since I was first with Steve and Fred and Irving and Shuk, I
have had the great sense of wanting to be out and away from the
world--to be with them _one at a time_. In the Rockies or in the
misty isles of the sea! All of them have a different meaning and
sense. _One_ will mean the Rockies or the misty mountain, saddels,
foamy bits and lathering horses. Another will mean the tarry smell
of the hold of a ship, the flapping of sails in the moonlight, and
the smell of black coffee coming up from the galleys. Another will
mean the sun betin desert--camels, and men stooping over a fire.
They are all my comrads.

Fred is a young sea-writer. We are great pals. We yousto go down
and lie in the sand, read, talk and meditate; then a little later
we would take exercise and a long swim, then rub each other down.
They were wounderful days--those. I got right to the heart of Fred,
and he did to me. He yousto come over at night and sleep with me.
Those were the nights! I got so attached to him, but we had to go
apart. He is in New York now, going to college, and I am here in
California. It does not seem right for me to be in this God blest
place in the Youneverse, and he in the slums of the world, going to
college. But it is the Plan, or it would not be this way.

The new race will stay high all through partings; then they cannot
last long--for there is nothing to stay away for. When pain
leaves, then all will be ready for the road and the great comrads,
horses and the road of greatness. It is all ahead. In the great
future--all ahead--my comrads--all comrads--the world will be all
comrads!

* * * * *

All our days, as tellers of tales, we try to tell, not stories, so much, as what Romance means to us. The very glory of life is that there are no two pictures the same.... To me, Romance means _not to stay_! It was hard to learn. Not to tarry in the senses, if for no other reason than to know the full beauty of the senses. One must not miss his train; one must not linger after curfew has sounded. There is no grey confronting of misery--like that of meeting one's own commonness catching up.

It's stiff grade work all the way, but there are heroic moments. We learn to take a supernal, rather than a sensuous joy. The most rending of lovers is the most passionate saint.... When Mohammed finally got his morals in working order, the desert was said to be full of slain....

There is something to do with _martyrdom_ in my dream of Romance in later years. All pain and fear has gone out of that word--a singing about it. The name _Kuru t'ul Ayn_ comes to my mind in thoughts of Romance--"Consolation of the Eyes," martyred soon after the Forerunner Bab had been shot in Tabriz. I cannot tell why exactly, save that she had beauty that had turned to loveliness, and many men had looked through the door of heaven in her eyes--some haunting mystery there of beauty and bestowal--the blending perhaps of the love of man and God in the same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above the common rules of life, transcending every man-made institution.

One of the Little Girl's ideas of Romance is a hill cabin, an open door to the dusk,--baby heads weaving under her hands--warm air coming up from the valleys, but _his_ step not coming that night.... Here is a suggestion from one of her letters:

Have just been out in the garden planting little seeds that will grow big and strong so that they can be put into shining pots and cooked for the Stranger's dinner--tiny carrot seeds. They had to be rolled over and over between the fingers before they could decide one by one to fall into the rich warm earth. Planting little seeds at sunset! Does it not awaken in you something of the old days we spent so close to the soil? Radiant dusk? But you have to look _back_ to see how sweet the purity and simplicity of the peasant's life. The peasants themselves do not know. To-day holy hot sunlight and lilac bloom--could there be a more wonderful day than that? And Chapel so full of power, then a planting of little seeds at sunset. Ah, Mary! I am happy as I dare to be in a world that is choking in its own blood. At least we are open and ready for any work if it is ours. We hold up our arms asking for hard and painful tasks that will fill us with that singing conquest that cries aloud: "None have more pain to hold than we!" ... We are all working toward you, toward that height. You will be waiting for us with open arms out there. We all send white love to you--our waiting Mary!

* * * * *

Peasants and mill-girls, or the dim lacking faces of the passers-by--always these join to the Little Girl's quests and dreams of the spirit. Two brief additional cuttings suggestive of her idea of Romance follow, from the twelve-year period:

The first great vision of the quest must come to a soul over the
plough, in the peasant's body--dissatisfaction with self and
surroundings. This is the beginning of everything. The person who
is content with small things, small thoughts, does not move. His
soul stays asleep. With awakening comes hate and anger and much
simple blackness. It is just _that_, which gives him the power to
stand up against the ways he has known so long--to stand up for
himself--to push the new vague dreams through to life and light.
It is all blind at first, but great and brave, too. The call that
would come to the peasant would be to the Town--to many men and
things, for that is just the opposite from his life. In a simple
way he would go to the depths of the worst he could find--to the
extreme.

The thing that is holding so many from their own, is contentedness,
satisfaction. The longer one holds to this, the lower he sinks,
until he is buried in himself.... The questers who have come up
into the light, are brilliant, flashing, beautiful. But the souls
of the "white torrent" are rushing on through the dark night, a
night that grows darker and darker as it approaches the day. Their
faces are tragic, drawn, expectant; there is a sort of red-dark
cloud that they are tearing themselves through.... Only the poor
fat ones! they fill you with sadness because you can not help them
and they are not trying to help themselves. They seem to sink
almost visibly, farther and farther down, as they laugh and smile,
and nod their heads to each other (only to each other). The light
around them is really not a light at all--just a colour, a cold,
grey-black colour that looks almost dead. You could laugh if they
had anything to do with you, any power over you--you could laugh at
them and tell them that you were laughing, but their helplessness
hurts you. _They_ can only hurt themselves. There is absolutely
no humour in their faces nor in any of their movements. They are
all sober; they can not laugh inside. Always it is the sign of
flight from God to lose the sense of humour. For humour is a great
inner glowing--the power to overlook, to forget the meaner things
in people and in life. It is a power to forget one's self also,
to laugh at oneself.... I see the New Race as a line of Classic
Ruffians--a Troop of Mystic Warriors ... singing their glorious
song of stern compassion and deep love, filling all with their
questing for power and beauty.... I hear their laughter."

* * * * *

She paints the City Street a bit darker in this:

* * * * *

Dim faces, full of blank suffering and of living death. Dark
and noisy streets, crowded stores of trade.... Men--little men,
following their women, carrying the babies. The mother part of me
goes out to those little men. Down the ages, mothering imprints
its pain upon our souls. And their women now--with faces wanting,
always wanting, everything in them _wanting_! I have been carried
away by these dim hungry faces. I have seen them staring at me
with blank surprise. But then they hurry on, and the forgotten
babies cry. Hushing them, the women pass--little men following.

* * * * *

... The pain of utter isolation--somehow this means Romance to me, in a deeper fold of being. Isolation--the hate of an undivided people--a man standing alone against his nation, yet loving it better than any of the natives.... I remember in an early story of having the hero do his big task under the fiery stimulus of the hate of London. All this has something to do with the coming of Saviours.

Time approaches for many when the little three score and ten fails longer to hold the full story; one must look out of this sickly warm room of the body; one longs for the mystic death, which is _martyrdom_.... I tell all this from time to time in tales--but only the children seem to understand....

Romance--I have walked up and down streets and open highways for days and found no man's work challenging, nothing to keep alive my interest. I wanted absolutely nothing that any one else in the world had, nothing that any one could gain. All worldly activities looked diminished and pathetic to me--but under it all--the endless iteration of the Soul: "Here is a _man_--as much me as myself!" A call in that--always a call in that. One longs to die for that, once and for all.

I crossed the Yellow Sea with a wound long ago. I had missed a battle and was suffering, without the satisfaction of suffering with a bullet wound.... I lay three deep in Chinese coolies in deck passage. I wanted to see some one at home, or I should have dropped overside. In the fag of pain, on the border of delirium, I lay with the deep down men of the world, Chinese coolies in their filth and vomit. I looked into the eyes of the nearest, and saw a brother, not a stranger.... It was ten years afterward before I caught the big meaning of that moment--and that's why I say so often that the time comes when we find the sons of God in the eyes of passing men. That is _Romance_.

There is more of death and less of days in my dream of Romance now.... I can see a man giving up his woman because she is dearer than his own life to him. I can see a man going to the scaffold for a country that is taking his life and hers. (Always I see him loving his country more dearly than the sober ones of regnancy and war.) ... I see him taking his woman in his hands--half laughing, half crying, their faces upturned--one creature in that moment of parting, as they had never been in street or church, or state.... Romance in that.

I have a line here from the Valley Road Girl:

... Lastly, it came like a commandment to me--to give all to
the Coming Generation--to acknowledge the New Race as one's
God--remembering always that all Gods are jealous Gods."

It's all in that, our dream of Romance--Democracy, the Planetary Hive.

* * * * *

I am using a short story as the next chapter, because it brings nearer to the centre of the picture certain ideals of romance, workmanship, martyrdom, love and death, than many essays could do. A tale may be a master-synthesis. Perhaps it is just the thing to show you what we mean, as a group,--what we mean about many things. This is not a marketable tale; in fact, it was done with the idea of making a place for itself just here in this book.

* * * * *

26

THE COSMIC PEASANT

A SHORT STORY

When I was a lad I remember hearing some one say he had read a story of love and war. I thought of it just now, as I lay panting a bit in a queer nest for the night in the Galbraudin Foothills--in the midst of an army that had no country yet--a tragic document unfolding in my heart.... A story of love and war--yes, I had seen one. It was written upon the cells of my brain, the deeper parts engraved upon the heart--the old red war with a new dream hovering above it, and the old true love, white as ever, yet a touch of the rose and gold of the new race in its folds. It seems almost my story. Like Job's servant, only I am spared to tell it. Such a little while ago, I thought the tales of love and war all told.

I saw Varsieff first at school, and went to him at once. Literally, I went to him. It was at recess, and I followed at his heels to his room instead of my own. He was not surprised. I was always at my best beside him. He accepted this gift from me. One who learns to give greatly as Varsieff did, learns also to accept the best things with grace. I only left his room long enough to get my bag. Gladly would I have slept at his door, but he asked me in. We were to be mates. Often he assured me that we were men, face to face; that I was not his Boswell, not his disciple, but a man-to-man friend. Yet I knew that my power was not the power of Varsieff, also that I was most powerful when I realised his splendid superiority.

I followed him during all the vacations. He loved the North Country--snow on the mountains, cold night rains, the filled fields and shrunken rivers of summer, the sound and natural things. He said he would find his tropical island when his work was done, but that work meant Russia to him. He was genius. Every one loved him. One vacation time we undertook to walk together over the Torqueval Peaks. He borrowed a guitar at a peasant house there in the mountains, and played for an hour as I have never heard any one play. I had been with him for almost three years and had not known he touched the instrument.

In one of those days of our walking-tour in the mountains an instance occurred of Varsieff's immeasurable tenderness of heart. One golden morning as we walked through a little village, past a vined wicker fence--a huge yellow cat sprang forth from the leaves and caught a bird on the wing. A kind of sob came from my friend at the swift little tragedy enacted in the wonderful morning light. I turned--Varsieff's face was back to its childhood--a depiction of childish horror--all finished manhood erased.

Many times in our talk his sentences formed a poem, which I would rush away to put down. He learned to do this alone afterward. Once I went to his room in Moscow after I had been away several months, and found scattered among clothing, papers, books and tea-things, a set of recent lyrical gems of his. These I gathered together in the little book, now marching around the world.

I smile to remember when I came to learn that Varsieff had other friends as devoted as I. It hurt at first; I could not understand. His big magic then was that he wanted nothing. He used to say that a man is at his worst when he wants anything for himself. The fact is Varsieff in wanting the _letter_ of nothing, really wanted the spirit of all; in wanting nothing for himself in those days, he wanted everything for the world, a new heaven and a new earth, first and especially a new Russia. Then the day came when he wanted a woman. This was altogether unexpected. I thought that Varsieff absolutely had given himself to the revolution--that humanity was his bride.

I was with him when he first saw Paula Mantone--that is but part of her name. It was in Moscow. His voice, as he spoke to me, watching her, had a different and deeper inflection than I ever heard before. She was just a girl--poorly dressed, who had paused to speak laughingly to an old flower-woman.

"Wait, Lange," he said to me, and crossed to her.

It was in the Spring of the year. The morning was very bright. She turned from the tray of flowers and looked up at him. His hands went out to her shoulders. He was searching her face with a queer and tense smile--as one who finds a woman after a few months' separation in one whom he has left a child. Of course, my thought was that he had known her before. She, too, would have slept at his door....

I heard their voices. He asked her name, where she lived, and how he could reach her again. It all seemed trifling to me. Varsieff had never been like this before. The rest of the day he was silent. We walked and dined together, but his thoughts were not for me. For once, they were not for Russia. There was a smile in his eyes, and often he turned back the way we had come. Once he said:

"I had to leave her. It was quite all I could stand. I do not think the world is a place for two such people to be happy in. Possibly, we may be allowed to meet from time to time----"

I was inclined to call this nonsense. A little later he added strangely:

"Yes, it would be dangerous to let go and become merely human in a case like this."

The next three years Varsieff and I were much apart. I do not profess quite to understand the obstacles between him and Paula Mantone. They had loved each other instantly and torrentially. They were much together, yet there was some super-human torture about it. Even if I have a glimpse of the mystery, I'm afraid few will understand. There is something back of each one of us greater than our actions. We are all greater than we seem. It was as if Varsieff and Paula Mantone were only intended to meet here--to meet and quicken each other for a greater giving to the world. I wonder if it is quite true, what he said toward the last: That really splendid lovers may consecrate themselves to each other, but they must also learn to give each other to the world.... In the beginning they tried to lose themselves in each other, and they encountered untellable pain.

At length came the night when Varsieff returned to my lodgings, saying that it was only a question of time when they should find peace. He said he knew they would find peace, for he had already touched it momentarily. I wondered if she were dead, and he caught my thought.

"No, Lange," he said. "I am still to see her from time to time."

Before that first meeting with Paula Mantone in the street, Varsieff had loved Russia and the world, a friend and comrade to me and to many others. All his love had suddenly been called in and directed upon the woman. After the three years, he gave himself to all of us again--but a quickened illuminated man. He had been brilliant to me before that, but the brilliance of phosphorous compared to sunlight now. Varsieff was making some strange spiritual initiation out of his love story. His presence glorified me on the night of his coming--the summer before the war.

"There are four layers to Russia," I remember him saying. "The royalty on top, then the dreamers, then the middlemen, then the peasants. Kings and middlemen go together; dreamers and peasants go together.... Yes, time will come when the dreamers and the peasants truly shall belong to each other. They have been lovers a long time."

I asked him about the other pair.

"The kings and the middlemen will cancel each other," he answered.

Varsieff was the most active man I ever knew, and yet he moved easily as one in a sort of spiritual drift. He was an intellectualist with those who used their heads, a devotionalist with those who used their hearts, a mystic among dreamers, a child among children. Though never known much publicly, he was to my mind the biggest occult force of the new Russia. I doubt if there was another man, unless it was Christonal, who gave more impulse and direction to the revolutionary movement.

The heads of many departments drew inspiration from Varsieff. I have seen him carry himself lightly through a day of decisions and improvements and conceptions, which do not come to the ordinary master of democracy in a year. I have seen him encounter, worked out by others, suggestions and innovations which he himself had made--Varsieff not realising that the thought was his own. He would innocently praise his own work, as carried out by another. The last few months preceding the revolution were the busiest I ever knew. We became new men. We did not leave Petrograd, but prepared secretly for the big unburdening of the soul of a people. The last few days, before the government changed hands, were charged with a wrecking silence.

Christonal's nerve broke. For twelve hours he was in and out of a system of baths and manhandlings, and I was one who stood by. Varsieff smiled it through, his voice calm, his eyes often looking away as he spoke. The leaders of the younger party saw who was the real chief that day, though Christonal is a strong leader.

I was always a good desk man, and was trying to get some order in a bundle of cipher messages in the heat of the night, when Varsieff came and lifted me laughingly by the shoulders, thrusting the messages into one of my deep inner pockets. I thought he was dragging me off to bed, but when we were alone, he said:

"_She_ is near. I can't leave. Will you go to her for me?" ...

He told me many things to say.

I found Paula Mantone after many hours in one of the Registmonten hospitals. She was frail and feverish from much labour, not regularly attached to any nursing staff. The instant I saw her, I realised more clearly what Varsieff had been doing--trying to kill himself with work for the Cause. Clearly, she had lost interest in all but death and service. I had been too much with Varsieff to notice his arrival at the same point, but I saw their joint endeavour through her. It seemed to me like a death-pact.

A new mystery for me. Evidently they had realised they must wait for release in death, but serve meanwhile. The marvel of Varsieff's sending me when he might have come himself, gave me just an inkling of the tremendous power and patience which had come to him. Two years, or even a year ago, he would have endangered new Russia for an hour with Paula Mantone.

I could not breathe this rare atmosphere. So far as I knew, there was no woman for me in earth or heaven, but certainly I would not have been able to look over a living woman's shoulder for her mystic counterpart, and long for death to consummate the real mating. But war teaches lovers many wonderful things.

Paula Mantone was a kind of white silence. You had to listen keenly for her step and give your attention to her voice. She was utterly feminine--malleable like gold. Even to me, she was the meaning of love. I had no thought of her being _my_ woman, and yet she seemed spiritually to contain some sister who would answer for me. Soldiers worshipped her. I think each saw his own in her presence. It was the finished magic of the Trojan Helen again--every man's desire, as gold contains potentially all the metals, and the rose the essence of all the flowers....

She was the quietest woman I ever saw. She seemed formed of white cloud--the sun on the other side. That was it--Varsieff was shining on the other side. She answered him, light for light--gold for gold. For the rest of us, she had that white, saintly lustre. And even in that, we found much to make us brave and keep us pure.

Deep within, there was some wonder about Varsieff and Paula Mantone which my brain could not interpret exactly. But the world had suddenly become to me, in her presence, a place of divided hearts--millions of divided lovers around the world. I had only known the shock and misery of war before, and the thrilling roar of comrades, the crash of the wreckers and the songs of the builders ever nearer. Now I heard the still voices of lovers everywhere. In the pressures of air--callings, cryings, yearnings made audible.

It was a new door of the heart that she opened--her particular gift to me. That moment, though I had loved and served Varsieff for years, I knew more thrillingly than ever his greatness, because this woman loved him. To me, to all soldiers, she gave a reflection of that superb bounty. To him she gave its _incandescence_. Perhaps together they found it too terrible a light for earth, or perhaps they were unwilling to find their fulness of days in a world so charged with agony as these years.

She left me a moment, answering some voice which I had not heard, and stood for several seconds beside the cot of a bearded soldier, her fingers upon his grey-white brow. I did not realise until after she moved, that she was there at the moment of his passing. I thought of it again: She was the white silence. I think the soldier died, believing that his woman was there.

Twenty cots in the place--a low, cold room lit with a handful of candles. The smell of blood and sickness and soiled clothing mingled with the bitterness of iodoform as the chill draught swept through. The peasant soldiers knew only the meagrest care. Their wounds were dressed as often as possible, but there were five times too many cases for the service, and the whole corps was impoverished.

She stood still in the dim distance a moment longer, her fingers touching the brow already cold. Then she seemed to remember that I was waiting at the far door. I was not twenty feet away, and yet in the few seconds required for her to reach me, a sort of vision filled my mind--a vision of the peace that soon would come to the world--the song of fruitful labour sung again, peaceful lands, soft dusks, lit cabins, filled barns, peaceful flocks and up-reaching baby fingers--all with such a queer shock to a male consciousness like mine. And when she stood before me, I felt that the best part of Varsieff was also there. I even fancied his look in her eyes, such as you see exchanged in an old pair who have lived long together. I think that a great love always seeks to make one of two--in different ways than we dream.

"You came from him?" she whispered.

"Yes."

"How does he look?" she asked.

"He looks like you," I said, for the moment inspired. "He looks like a sun-god, too. He looks _with your love_ into the eyes of soldiers and statesmen and revolutionists, and they find him irresistible."

"Dear Lange," she said. "He loves you, too. You are changed. You have come into the big magic of the revolution----"

"I am Varsieff's friend, first and last--his comrade."

"And mine," she whispered.

"The magic comes from standing between, Mlle. Mantone."

She smiled and bent toward me. She had been like a tall, white flower, but now for a second as she bent closer, it seemed to me that I saw a hint of Varsieff's gold flame on the other side--because we talked of him.

"What did he say?" she continued in a low whisper.

"He said to tell you that he and all your friends were busy, day and night, weaving and binding the Cause into one great fabric. He told me to tell you this--that the work of the Weavers will be given to the world in a day or two--possibly the day after to-morrow. I wish you could have seen Varsieff's face as he spoke to me this last. I remember his words exactly: 'Tell Paula all that I do is for her. That I read and write and dream and breathe through her heart--that she has taught me well to love and wait--that I love the world through her heart.'"

"Anything more?" she asked in a kind of agony.

"He told me to say that only you knew his weaknesses, so far----"

"I love them best," she answered. "A woman always holds a little tighter to the sweet human things of her child.... But he is a teacher, a leader. He must be clean and flawless.... If it were only for us--I should have him, weaknesses and all.... But he is to lead the clean peasants to their promised land----"

* * * * *

Varsieff listened as a desert listens for rain. He caught me by the shoulders when I ceased to speak--as if to shake something more from my mind and heart.

"A man must be half-divine to keep step with that woman," he said.

Then he changed the subject by remarking that Christonal was not half-divine--quite.

"Christonal is ambitious," he added.

"What has he done now?" I asked.

"He has ordered me to take the field----"

That turned on a red light in my brain. Varsieff was not a soldier. I knew instantly that Christonal was not pure--that he wanted personal power more than the good of the Cause. No one knew Varsieff's place better than he did. My friend could only have been ordered to the field for the same reason that David sent the husband of Bathsheba.

After the revolutionary signal went through, Varsieff and I found ourselves in the Galbraudin Foothills with thirty thousand men, and every man of them wanted to go home. Somehow the peasants thought that if they changed leaders, they would march home at once. They were willing to fight their way home; they had felt their own power. Varsieff loved them with a white passion.

"They won't miss, if _we_ are true! They're clean. God love them--they're clean!"

He saw in the peasants the soil for the new earth and the soul of the new heaven.

Germans and Austrians were to the south of our nest in the Galbraudin Foothills, while to the east and north were the big lines of Russian troops as yet unawakened to the principles that moved our ranks. Our weakness was that the peasants thought the war was over.... The cold mountains were in the distance--winter still upon them--a late spring in the Foothills.... In this dramatic lull, our men talked of their ploughing, of their women.

Some one said, "They're enlisting the women and girls----"

It went through the lines like a taint of gas. The men were difficult then even for Varsieff to hold.

You must get the picture. We revolutionists were cut off from the world. The Germans and Austrians sent us messages--some friendly, some derisive. They thought us fools or gods, but waited to see what we would do. The old line of Russian troops all about--just as clean peasantry as our forces--but officered by the straight military class, impervious so far as a body to any shaft of the propagandist.

Varsieff whispered to me that those regular forces were honeycombed with our comrades, but that they were being put to death under the slightest suspicion--that two or three hundred were martyred each day.

The strangeness and horror of it all dawned upon me--the sense of the whole world against us, even America from whom we had drawn the spirit of our courage--a kind of holding of our army for slaughter. Listen, I have seen tens of thousands of troops go down to the pits of white and red, seen their opened veins colour the snows, seen the spots of red on the brown earth turn black. I have seen the boys lean over the trenches and the pools from each throat widen and deepen from one man to another. I have seen a man grab his mate as he fell and say some absurd whimsical thing that the soldier next didn't understand until _his_ moment of death--a little sentence that folded them, not in extinction, but in a new life. All the horrors of death--quantity and quality--yellow and red and white--pure white passings that made a man think of the lilies--all manner of death I had seen, and still it had all been impersonal compared to now.

This was my own heart business. I shared leadership with Varsieff. These lives were in my hands. I wanted to go down among the boys--one by one and say that I was pure, that I loved them--that if they died they were at least loved and not wasted.

I always wondered what those young peasant souls thought about death. Once in a lot of pain when I was just a boy, I wanted badly to die and was deterred from taking my life, because of a counter-desire to get home and see my mother. I think it must be like that with the peasants.

Varsieff saw them in a strange mystic light. No man loved them as he did. They looked like sons of God to him. That's what he saw when they went down to death.

"There are no dreams too fine for them to answer," he whispered. "They are pure--they come from the North like all invaders--glacially pure! We'll warm their hearts--lead them home to God--teach them how to live!"

He was silent suddenly. I asked him to go on and then saw the queerest look instead. Varsieff was torn by the thought, that now as a leader of revolutionists he must teach his peasants how to _die_ as well.... A civilian, I repeat, does not realise this quite the same. In the Capitol, we had worked for a Cause that meant the death of men, but now we were the officers called upon to charge live troops to the fork and the grill. I knew Varsieff to be more imaginative and tender than I, yet I would not have mentioned my qualms, had I known how terribly he was suffering. He caught my hands, whispering:

"You have it, too?"

It was the single hour of weakness that Varsieff had ever revealed to me. I studied his face without speaking.

"I brought them to this," he muttered. "I have always thought of the spirit of things. I was always pure enough, following that dream.... But, Lange, we're a little mad--we who dream.... I had to come here. I had to see this fighting end. Perhaps Christonal knew what he was doing."

I put my arm around his shoulder. We Russians are allowed that.

"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."