The huge hand stretched across from cot to cot.
“It was afterward—that all the things you said in Liaoyang came back to me right.... We were lying in ’Frisco waiting for quarantine, and my stuff was finished the second time, before I read your letter to me and the one to Noyes—and the Ploughman story. That was the first time I really saw it right. There was a little doctor with me—Nevin—who got it all from the first reading. At Liaoyang we were down too low among the fighting to get it. That Ploughman story made my big yarn look like a death-mask of the campaign. Betty Berry got it too.... It was the same to-night—why, you got those men, body and soul.”
“I’d like to think so, John; but I’m afraid you’re wrong. It was just a seed to-night. Men need to be cultivated every day in a thousand ways.... Women get things quicker; they can listen better.... The last night before Jesus was taken by the Roman soldiers, he told the Eleven that he could be sure only of them. He knew that of the multitude that heard him—most would sink back. He counted on just the Eleven, and built his church on the weakest, upon the most unstable—counting only on the strength of the weakest link.... The fact is, John, I’m only counting on you. I’ve got to count on you.”
Less than five weeks had elapsed, and yet the worst seemed as far back, in some of Morning’s moments, as the deck-passage out of China. He had suffered abominably. Fallows stood by night and day at first. He brought back a certain quality from the Russian farm that was pure inspiration to the other. They spoke about the Play. Morning was more than ever glad that Markheim had refused it. They sat long by the fire. More happened than modern America would believe off-hand—for John Morning began to learn to listen. Fallows was happy. His presence in the room was like the fire-light. Twice more he went across to the Metal Workers’ Hall, and still the New York group would not let him go. The Socialists brought him their ideas. He was in the heart of threatening upheavals. He reiterated that they must be united in one thing first; they must have faith in one another. They must not answer greed with greed. They must be sure of themselves; they must have a pure voice; they must know first what was wanted, and follow the vision.... Duke Fallows knew that it was all the matter of a leader.... He told them of the men and women in Russia who have put off self. Finally Duke appeared to see that his work was done, and he retired from them.
“It is delicate business,” he said to Morning. “There’s fine stuff in the crowd—then there’s the rest. If I should show common just once—all my work would be spoiled, and even the blessed few would forget the punch of my little story. They think I’ve gone on west.”
Still he didn’t leave the cabin on the hill.
It was only when Morning undertook to touch upon the love story—that Fallows looked away.... Morning tried to comprehend this. Something had happened. The big man who had stared at so many ceilings of Asia, breaking out from time to time in strange utterances all colored with desire; the man who had met his Eve, and talked of being controlled by her even after death—shuddered now at the mention of Betty Berry.... Morning even had a suspicion at last that the other construed a relation between the woman’s influence and the excess of alcohol. These moments dismayed him.
There is a dark spot in every man’s radiance—and this was the Californian’s, Morning concluded. In the transformation which the journey to Russia had effected, his particular weakness seemed hardened into a crust of exceptional austerity. The only women he ever spoke of in the remotest personal fashion belonged to the peasant family of the Ploughman. His audiences were unmixed by his own arrangement. In tearing out his central weakness, a certain madness on the subject had rushed in, a hatred that knew no quarter, and a zeal in denial that only one who has touched the rim of ruin can know.
On the last night of February they talked and read late. The reading was from Saint Paul in the different letters. Fallows seemed impassioned with the figure.