Routledge rides alone

by Will Levington Comfort

“Yes, but he did not need to die to be called to you.”

Yet she was deathly afraid. It had been the same after the night of her dream in Cheer Street—the night that Routledge had slipped from a noose in Madras. If Noreen had known that!... It is well that she did not, for she could have borne but little more.

Further weeks ground by. Only in the sense that she did not die, Noreen lived, moving about her little house, in daylight and lamp-light, without words, but with many fears. She tried to paint a little in those wonderful summer days—days of flashing light, and nights all lit with divinity—but between her eyes and the canvas, films of memory forever swung: Routledge-san in Cheer Street; in the golden stillness of the Seville; the little Paris studio; in the carriage from Bookstalls to Charing Cross; in the snowy twilight on the Bund in Shanghai—yes, and the mist of the man here by the easel!... Always he was with her, in her heart and in her mind.

Not a word concerning Routledge, from the least or greatest of the men who had promised to watch for him! Often it came to her now that he had either allied himself with the Russians or avoided the war entirely. Could it be that he had already followed the prophecy which Mr. Jasper had repeated for her, and gone to join Rawder a last time in the Leper Valley?... No one in Japan had ever heard of the Leper Valley.

There was little mercy in the thought of him being with the Russians; and yet such a service might have appealed to a man who desired to remain apart from the English. If he were in Liaoyang or Mukden, there was no hope of reaching him, until winter closed the campaign, at least. Only a few hundred miles away, as the crow flies, and yet Mukden and Liaoyang could be approached only from around the world. The valley between two armies is impassable, indeed—unwired, untracked, and watched so that a beetle cannot cross unseen.... The general receives a dispatch at dawn containing the probable movements of the enemy for this day. One of his spies in the hostile camp which faces him, less than two miles away, has secured the information and sent it in—not across the impassable valley, but around the world.... If Routledge had known that the curse had been lifted from him, would he not have rushed back to her? It seemed so, but with the Russians, he would have been last to learn what had befallen.

Just once—and it marked the blackest hour of that black summer in Japan—the thought flooded upon her that Routledge knew, but purposely remained apart; that he was big enough to make the great sacrifice for her, but not to return to the woman whose heritage, in turn, was the Hate of London. That hour became a life-long memory, even though the thought was whipped and shamed and beaten away.

It was late in July when certain sentences in an American newspaper rose with a thrilling welcome to her eyes. There was an intimate familiarity, even in the heading, which he might not have written, but which reflected the movement and color of his work. It was in the World-News of New York, and signed “A. V. Weed.”... A rather long feature cable dated at Chifu shortly after the battle of Nanshan. A number of Russian prisoners had been taken by the Japanese, and with them was a certain Major Volbars, said to be the premier swordsman of the Russian Empire. The Japanese heard of his fame; and, as it appears, became at once eager to learn if Russian civilization produced sword-arms equal to those of her own Samurai. The prisoner was asked to meet one Watanabe, a young infantry captain, and of that meeting the World-News published the following:

... Here was armistice, the nucleus of which was combat. There was a smile upon the face of Watanabe, a snarling smile, for his lips were drawn back, showing irregular teeth, glistening white. His low brow was wrinkled and his close-cropped, bristling hair looked dead-black in the vivid noon. The hilt of his slim blade was polished like lacquer from the nimble hands of his Samurai fathers. This was Watanabe of Satsuma, whose wrist was a dynamo and whose thrusts were sparks. The devil looked out from his fighting-face.

Volbars compelled admiration—a conscienceless man, from his eyes, but courageous. He was small, heavy-shouldered, and quick of movement, with nervous eyes and hands. His left cheek was slashed with many scars, and his head inclined slightly to the right, through a certain muscular contraction of the neck or shoulder. This master of the archaic art had the love of his soldiers.

“In the name of God, let him take the attack, Major!” Volbars’ second whispered. “His style may disconcert you.”