Red Fleece

by Will Levington Comfort

When he found that Peter would live—all the pathological vortices past—Big Belt turned with strange joy to exterior activities. Of course, months would be required to make his companion a man again. There might remain a crimp in him that would last always, but Boylan was aware that a man's weakness may be made his strength, and that a life habit of care which comes from cushioning a wound often results in extraordinary development of the parts of strength.

The sight of women and children brought him gusts of emotion. In one evening hour, he followed a middle-aged woman who was leading a child through the faintly-lit streets; trailed the pair for a square or two through the soft snow, a sort of miracle in the picture to him, a heaven of gentleness and order. This was his first grand reaction from the field of strife—at least, from this campaign—and he was struck as never before with the main fact—how little a man really needs to live his life in brightness and calm. Such a sense of the emptiness of war-fields surged home to him that he was left a heretic in relation to all that had called him before. It did not occur to Boylan that this was wisdom; rather the pith of the emotion was to the effect that he was getting old.

The child's thin voice reached him in questionings, and the steady low tones of the woman. A man could ask little more of the world than to lead a child thus.... Perhaps they were poor. Boylan would have liked to fix that. It had to do with the whole inner ideal of the man to be a fixer of such things—to come home to a house of little ones in quantity and many women—a broad house of aunts, sisters and old women, a long broad table of all ages, the many problems resting on him—and one woman looking straight across.... She would know everything, and yet would advise with him—quiet discussions of policy regarding this one or that one, and the interposition of food....

He was perspiring. Always after a war or expedition he had perceived such matters more or less clearly, but not quite as now. Never before had he constructed his secret heaven with such durable substance.... He actually believed that the field would never call to him again. It had become like the fear of hunger that he had learned once for all. No more of that—no more of war. He had given everything to the field, and lost his broad board in the world-house. At least, he could find a door-step somewhere.

They were gone. He thought of his companion—the sense of summons that he seemed to have known always. He turned and walked back. The snow fell softly; the street lights were pleasant and warming with this bit of peace in the world, this little circle of life with men and women and children together.... As he neared the apothecary shop, his thoughts became rounder and rounder with what he had missed. He had taken the arc and lost the globe—a sorry old specimen of a man, if the truth were told, a career behind him designed to arouse the wildness of boys, but without appeal and very much to be discouraged by real men. Finally it occurred to him of the whole races of men who had what he lacked, yet were restless for the harshness and crudity of the earth.

“If they only knew what they have,” he muttered. “I suppose they forget. Just as I forget between wars what hell is like.... I suppose they do forget, and read a man's stuff by their fires (ordering the kids to be quiet)... thinking that this war-man writing from the field is a great and lucky guy. I suppose they stop and think how things might have been different with them—had they taken to the open when the old call came.... Ordering the kids to be quiet—Good God—”

Whether it was the audacity of fatherhood that called this last into the world, or the face of the woman who had passed him—is not known. Enough that Big Belt forgot all his dreams. ...That white-skinned, wonder-eyed girl, the fire creature, twice seen in the bitter shadows of Judenbach!

She had looked into his face, as if she scarcely dared to trust her eyes, as if she, too, were not sure; and yet it had come over him like death that she was here for her own.... He tried to make himself believe that it was an illusion, just one of the queer jolts that come to a man when his thoughts are far off. But actualities rubbed this out. She was a prisoner of the Germans; probably had proved invaluable in the hospital service and had earned certain privileges; but it wouldn't do to let Peter fall into her clutches again; that meant revolution and death. They would make a dupe of him as before. It had nothing to do with peace and the outer world; it meant—

Boylan saw that he wanted Peter for his own. He wiped the sweat from under his hat.... He couldn't keep them apart; she would think out a way; a man can't wrestle with a woman.... The world was bleak and wide-open to disruption again. He climbed the stairs.

The wounded man was not awake. Boylan had objected from the first to his manner of breathing—too much in the throat, hardly a man-sized volume of air, the breathing of one who hadn't proper lung-room; but this was an old matter. He reflected on the various fatigues Mowbray had met with a smile, and the vitality which had finally pulled him loose from the cold clutch itself; standing him in stead through a journey so grisly that Boylan had not had the detachment so far to contemplate it from first to last. So he had been forced seriously to grant exceptions to the rule of chest inches and vitality. The soft winter air blew in from the slightly opened casement.