“You had to think that. You wouldn’t be Lowenkampf if you failed to think that.... I love you for it, old friend. Big things will come from Lowenkampf, and from the conscript who came to me out of the grain with vision and a voice. The battle at home won’t be so hard to win—now that this is lost.”
There was a challenge and heavy steps on the platform—and one low, hurried voice.
Lowenkampf stood up and wiped his eyes.
“The Commander——” he whispered.
A pair of captains towered above him, a grizzled colonel behind; then Morning saw the gray of the short beard, and the dark, dry-burning of unblinking eyes, fixed upon Lowenkampf.... The latter’s shoulders drooped a little, and his eyes lowered deprecatingly for just an instant. Kuropatkin passed in. The soft fullness of his shoulders was like a woman’s. Fleshly and failing, he looked, from behind.... The Americans waited outside with the colonel and captains. The door was shut.
Midnight.... Fallows and Morning had moved in the rain among the different commands. The army at Yentai seemed to be emerging from prolonged anæsthesia to find itself missing in part and strangely disordered. It was afraid to sleep, afraid to think of itself, and denied drink. Fallows had told everywhere the story of the Ploughman; just now he helped himself to a bundle of Morning’s Chinese parchment, and was writing copy in long-hand.
His head was bowed, his eyes expressionless.
“And I alone remain to tell thee!” he muttered at last.
Morning did not answer, but resigned himself to hear more of the Messiah who came out of the grain.
“I told one of Mergenthaler’s aides the story,” Fallows said coldly. “He said it was quite the proper thing to do—to shoot down a man who was leaving the field unwounded. I told Manlewson of the First Siberians, who replied that the Russians would begin to win battles when they murdered all such, as unflinchingly and instantly as the Japanese did, and hospital malingerers as well. I told Bibinoff (who is Luban’s captain), and he said: ‘That’s the first good thing I ever heard about Luban.’ He was pleased and epigrammatic....”