“‘When we get to be men.’ Thank you, General. That was good for me.... Our friend John needed that little white cloud, too. I’ve just been leading him among the wilted primroses.”
Morning did not speak.
Lowenkampf said the fighting would begin around the outer position to-morrow.... But that had been said before.
8
On the night of August 31st, for all the planning, the progress of the battle was not to the Russian liking. All that day the movements of the Russians had mystified John Morning. The broad bend of the river to the east of the city had been crowded with troops—seemingly an aimless change of pastures. He felt that after all his study of the terrain and its possibilities, the big thing was getting away from him. When he mentioned this ugly fear to Fallows, the answer was:
“And that’s just what the old man feels.”
Fallows referred to Kuropatkin.
The monster spectacle had blinded Morning. He had to hold hard at times to keep his rage from finding words in answer to Duke Fallows’ scorn for the big waiting-panorama which had enthralled him utterly—the fleeing refugees, singing infantry, the big gun postures, the fluent cavalry back along the railroad, the armored hills, the whole marvelous atmosphere.... None of this appeared to matter to Fallows. He had written little or nothing. God knew why he had come. He would do a story, of course.... Morning had written a book—the climax of which would be the battle. He had staked all on the majesty of the story. His career would be constructed upon it. He would detach himself from all this and appear suddenly in America—the one man in America who knew Liaoyang. He would be Liaoyang; his mind the whole picture. He knew the wall, the Chinese names of the streets, the city and its tenderloin, where the Cantonese women were held in hideous bondage. He knew the hills and the river—the rapid treachery of the Taitse. He had watched the trains come in from Europe with food, horses, guns and men; had even learned much Russian and some Chinese. He had studied Lowenkampf, Bilderling, Zarubaieff, Mergenthaler; had looked into the eyes of Kuropatkin himself....
Duke Fallows said:
“All this is but one idea, John—one dirty little idea multiplied. Don’t let a couple of hundred thousand soldiers spoil the fact in your mind. Lowenkampf personally isn’t capable of fighting for himself on such a rotten basis. Fighting with a stranger on a neighbor’s property—that’s the situation. Russia says to Old Man China, ‘Go, take a little airing among your hills. A certain enemy of mine is on the way here, and I want to kill him from your house. It will be a dirty job, but it is important to me that he be killed just so. I’ll clean up the door-step afterward, repair all damages, and live in your house myself.... And the Japanese have trampled the flowers and vegetable-beds of the poor old Widow Korea to get here——’”