9
“I remember the soldiers at Liaoyang, the last thing, the many who had grasped at the hope that defeat meant the end of the war. They were learning differently as I left. Hundreds gave up from the great loneliness.... I carried the name of my Ploughman across the brown country, and the northern autumn was trying to hold out against the frosts. Asia is desolate. We who are white men, and who know a bit of the loveliness of life—even though we labor at that which is not our life—we must grant that the Northern Chinese have learned this: To suffer quietly.
“Baikal was crossed at last. On and on by train into the West—until I came to the little village that he had said. For days it had been like following a dream. Sometimes it seemed to me so wonderful—that young man coming out of the millet, and what he said—that I thought it must have come to me in a vision, that I was mad to look for his town and the actual house in the country beyond. Yet they knew his name in the little town, and said that early next morning I could get a wagon to take me to the cabin, which was some versts away.
“I had known so much of cities. For weeks I had been in the noises of the Liaoyang fighting and in trains. Moreover, I had been ill for a long time, too—a crawling, deadly illness. But that night my soul breathed. I ate black bread by candle-light and drank milk. The sharpness of mid-October was in the air. You will laugh when I say it seemed to me, an American, as if I had come home. In the morning early I looked away to the East, from whence I had come, and where the sun was rising. (The ceiling of the little room was so low I had to bend my head.) To the north the mountains were sharp in the morning light and shining like amethyst.... I left the wagon at the first sight of the hut in the distance, and I reached there in the warmth of the morning.
“An old man was sitting in the sun. He asked me to have bread, and said they had some sausage for the coming Sunday. This was mid-week. A child brought good water. Then I heard the cane of the old woman, and saw her hand first, as it thrust the cane out from the door—all brown and palsied, the hand, its veins raised and the knuckles twisted from the weight that bent her fingers against the curve of the stick. The rest was so pure. She had been a tall woman—very thin and bent and white now. When I looked into that face I saw the soul of the Ploughman. I can tell you I wanted to be there. It was very strange.... I can see her now, looking up at me, as the old do from their leaning. It was like the purity and distance of the morning. I trembled, too, before this old wife, for the fact in my mind about her son. I tell you, old mother-birds are wise.
“It was as if my garments smelled of the fighting. She knew whence I had come; she looked into my soul and found the death of her son. Her soul knew it, but not her brain yet. She may have found my love for him, too—the deep bond between us.
“‘Ask the stranger to stay. We will have sausage by the Sunday,’ said the old man. His thought was held by hunger.
“‘Hush, Jan—he comes from our son——’
“‘And where are the children and the young mother?’ I asked.
“‘They are out for faggots in the bush—they will come——’