The Chinese house stirred galvanically at mid-day—from the farthest chicken-coop to the guest-chamber of the most revered. Lowenkampf, commanding the port, in sky-blue uniform, entered with his orderly and embraced a certain sick man lying on a rough bench, between his own blankets. It was just so and not otherwise, nor were the “European” strangers of distinguished appearance. They had come in the night, crossing the river in a junk, instead of waiting for the Liao-launch. They had not sought the Manchurian hotel, where Europeans of quality usually go, but had asked for native quartering. So rarely had this happened, that the tradition was forgotten in New Chwang about angels appearing unheralded.
It was a great thing to John Morning, this coming of General Lowenkampf. He had not dared to trust altogether in the high friend of Duke Fallows—nor even in finding such a friend in New Chwang. The actual fact meant that they would not be sent out of the zone of war, when the Russians evacuated from New Chwang, if Lowenkampf could help it; and who could help it if not the commander of the garrison? It meant, too, that everything Duke Fallows had said in his quiet and unadorned way when speaking of purely mundane affairs had turned out true.
Fallows sat up in his bunk to receive the embrace he knew was coming. The General was a small man. He must have been fifty. He appeared a tired father,—the father who puts his hands to his ears and looks terrified when his children approach, but who loves them with secret fury and prays for them in their beds at night. He had suffered; he had a readiness to tears; he needed much brandy at this particular interval, as if his day had not begun well. He spoke of the battle of the Yalu and his tears were positive. It was a mistake, a hideous mistake. He said this in English, and with the frightened intensity of a woman whose lover has died misunderstanding her.... No, they were not to stay at New Chwang.... He would make them comfortable.... Yes, he had married a woman six years ago.... It murders the soldier in a man to marry a woman and find her like other women. You may think on the mystery of childbirth a whole life—but when your own woman, in your own house, brings you a child, it is all different. A thing to be awed at.... It draws the soldier-pith out of one’s spine, as you draw the nerve out of a tooth.... You are never the same afterward.
Fallows sank back smiling raptly.
“You’re the same old nervous prince of realizers—Lowenkampf—always realizing your own affairs with unprecedented realism. God knows, I’m glad to see you.... John Morning, here is a man who can tell you a thing you have heard before, in a way that you’ll never forget. It’s because he only talks about what he has realized for himself. His name is blown in the fabric of all he says.... Lowenkampf, here’s a boy. I’ve been looking for him, years—ever since I found my own failure inevitable. John Morning—Lowenkampf, the General. If you both live to get back to your babies—Morning’s are still in the sky, their dawn is not yet—you will remember this day—for it is a significant Trinity.... General, how many babies have you?”
“Oh, my God—one!”
Fallows seemed unspeakably pleased with that excited remark. Lowenkampf glanced at the shut eyes of his old friend, and then out of the window to the sordid Chinese street, where the Russian soldiers moved to and fro in the unwieldy disquiet of a stage mob in its first formation.
“But they’re all my babies——”
John Morning had a vision of a battle with that sentence. All the rest of the day he thrilled with it. Work was so pure in his heart from the vision, that he left his machine that night (Duke Fallows seemed asleep) and touched the brow of his friend....
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