Down among men

by Will Levington Comfort

Fallows shivered, and turned the subject, but Morning knew he would come back.... They heard the sentries on the stone flags below. It was monotonous as the sound of the river. An east wind had blown all afternoon. Dust was gritty in the blankets, sore in the rifts of lip and nostril caused by the long baking wind. Their eyes felt old in the dry heat. Daily the trains had brought more Russians; daily more Chinese refugees slipped out behind. Liaoyang was a mass of soldiery—heavy and weary with soldiers—dull with its single thought of defense. For fifty or more miles, the southern arc of the circle about the old walled city was a system of defense—chains of Russian redoubts, complicated entanglements, hill emplacements and rifle-pits. Beyond this the Japanese gathered openly and prepared. It seemed as if the earth itself would scream from the break in the tension when firing began....

“John—a man must be alone——” Fallows said abruptly.

“That’s one of the first things you told me—and that a man mustn’t lie to himself.”

“It must be thinking about your romance with that sorrel fiend—that brings her so close to-night, I mean the real Eve. I had to put the ocean between us—and yet she comes. Listen, John, when you are dull and tired after a hard day, you take a drink or two of brandy. You, especially you, are new and lifted again. That’s what happens to me when a woman comes into the room....”

Twice before Morning had been on the verge of this, and something spoiled it. He listened now, for Fallows opened his heart. His eyes held unblinkingly the dim shadows of the ceiling. The step of the sentries sank into the big militant silence—and this was revelation:

“God, how generous women are with their treasures! They are devils because of their great-heartedness. So swift, so eager, so delicate in their giving. They look up at you, and you are lost. My life has been gathering a bouquet—and some flowers fade in your hand.... I hated it, but they looked up so wistfully—and it seemed as if I were rending in a vacuum.... Always the moment of illusion—that this one is the last, that here is completion, that peace will come with this fragrance; always their giving is different and very beautiful—and always the man is deeper in hell for their bestowal.... A day or a month—man’s incandescence is gone. Brown eyes, blue eyes—face pale or ruddy—lips passionate or pure—their giving momentary or immortal—and yet, I could not stay. Always they were hurt—less among men, less among their sisters, and no strangers to suffering—and always hell accumulated upon my head.... Then she came. There’s a match in the world for every man. Her name is Eve. She is the answer of her sisterhood to such as I.

“She was made so. She will not have me near. And yet with all her passion and mystery she is calling to me. The rolling Pacific isn’t broad enough. She has bound me by all that I have given to others, by all that I have denied others. She was made to match me, and came to her task full-powered, as the sorrel mare came to corral to-day for you.... Oh, yes, I honor her.”

There was silence which John Morning could not break. Fallows began to talk of death—in terms which the other remembered.

“... For the death of the body makes no difference. In the body here we build our heaven or hell. If we have loved possessions of the earth—we are weighted with them afterward,—imprisoned among them. If we love flesh here, we are held like shadows to fleshly men and women, enmeshed in our own prevailing desire. If our life has been one of giving to others, of high and holy things—we are at the moment of the body’s death, like powerful and splendid birds suddenly hearing the mystic call of the South. Death, it is the great cleansing flight into the South....”

This from the sick man, was new as the first rustle of Spring to John Morning; yet within, he seemed long to have been expectant. There was thrill in the spectacle of the other who had learned by losing....