“That was written.”
“My little boy will hear it in the street. He will hear it in the school. Before he is a man—he will hear it.”
“I shall take him upon my knee. I shall tell him of you in a way that he shall never forget. And his mother—I shall tell her——”
Lowenkampf rubbed his eyes.
“I have business in Russia. This day I heard what must be done. It is almost as if I had gotten to be a man.”
Fallows leaned back laughingly, his arms extended, as if pushing the other’s knees from him.
Some inner wall broke, and the General wept. Morning put his foot against the door. The thought in his heart was: “This is something I cannot write.”...
Morning held the idea coldly now that Fallows was mentally softened from the strain. Other things came up to support it.... He, too, had seen a soldier shot by an officer. It was discipline. At best, it was but one of the thousand pictures. It had happened less because the man was retiring without a wound—thousands were doing that—than because the man answered back, when the officer spoke. He did not hear what the soldier said. This soldier possibly had trans-Baikal children, too. The day and his long illness had crazed Fallows, now at the knees of the man who had lost the battle.
“... I know what you thought this morning—when you saw your men march down into the grain,” Fallows was saying to the General. “You thought of your little boy and his mother. You thought of the babes and wives and mothers—of those soldiers of yours whom you were sending to the front. You didn’t want to send them out. You’re too close to becoming a man for that. You wondered if you would not have to suffer for sending them out so—and if this particular suffering would not have to do with your little boy and his mother——”
“My God, stop, Fallows——”