Thus the Californian took the substance out of the hundred thousand words Morning had written in the past few months. Dozens of small articles had been sent out until a fortnight ago through Lowenkampf, via Shanghai, but the main fiber of each was kept for this great story, which he meant to sell in one piece in America.
Kuropatkin—both Morning and Fallows saw him as the mighty beam in the world’s eye at this hour. To Morning he was the risen master of events; to Fallows merely a figure tossed up from the moil. Morning saw him as the source of power to the weak, as a silencer of the disputatious and the envious, as the holding selvage to the vast Russian garment, worn, stained and ready to ravel, the one structure of hope in a field of infinite failures. Fallows saw him as an integral part of all this disorder and disruption, one whose vision was marvelous only in the detection of excuses for himself in the action of others; whose sorrow was a pose and whose self was far too imperious for him firmly to grip the throat of a large and vital obstacle. What Morning called the mystical somberness of the chief, Fallows called the sullen silence of dim comprehension. Somewhere between these notations the Commander stood.... They had seen him at dusk that day. “He seems to be repressing himself by violent effort,” the younger man whispered.
“What would you say he were repressing, John—his appetite?”
The answer was silence, and late that night, (the Russian force was now tense and compact as a set spring), Fallows dropped down upon his cot, saying:
“You think I’m a scoffer, don’t you?”
“You break a man’s point, that’s all——”
“I know—but we’re not to be together always.... Listen, don’t think me a scoffer, even now. These big, bulky things won’t hold you forever. Perhaps, if I were a bigger man, I’d keep silent. You’ll write them well, no doubt about that.... But don’t get into the habit of thinking me a scoffer. There’s such a lot of finer things to fall for. John, I wasn’t a scoffer when I first read your stuff—and saw big forces moving around you.... A man who knows a little about women, knows a whole lot about men.... To be a famous soldier, John, a man can’t have any such forces moving around him. He must be an empty back-ground. All his strength is the compound of meat and eggs and fish; his strength goes to girth and jowl and fist——”
“You’re a wonderful friend to me, Duke.”
“That’s just what I didn’t want you to say.... There’s no excellence on my part. Like a good book, I couldn’t riddle you in one reading.”
Morning found himself again, as he wrote on that last night of preparation; that last night of summer. It was always the way, when the work came well. It brought him liveableness with himself and kindness for others. He had his own precious point of view again, too. He pictured Kuropatkin ... sitting at his desk, harried by his sovereign, tormented by princes, seeing as no other could see the weaknesses in the Russian displays of power, and knowing the Japanese better than any other; the man who had come up from Plevna fighting, who had written his fightings, who was first to say, “We are not ready,” and first to gather up the unpreparedness for battle.