Routledge rides alone

by Will Levington Comfort

The great system of Russian fortifications now opened fire upon the Japanese charge. Men were falling. The bulk of the infantry avalanche had passed, and smoke was crowding out the distances. The long p-n-n-n-g of the high bullets, and the instant b-zrp of the close ones, were stimulus for that fast, clear thinking which so often comes close to death. Routledge’s brain seemed to hold itself aloof from his body, the better to grasp and synthesize the startling actions of the present.

The smoke blurred all but a finger-bone of the valley; yet from that part he could reconstruct the whole horrid skeleton of a Twentieth-century crime.... The brown line of Japanese rolled up against the first Russian trench. Routledge thought of toy soldiers, heads bent forward, legs working, and guns of papier maché in bayonet charge. The works wore a white ruff of smoke, and its lace was swept by stray winds down over the fallen....

The grip upon his arm relaxed. For a moment Routledge thought he was hit, when the blood rushed down the veins of his arm where the tightened fingers had been. He was free—and at what a cost! The little sergeant was down—his legs wriggling and beating against the American’s, the “red badge of courage” widening on his breast. Routledge bent over him and looked long into the dying face—forgetting the world and the war, forgetting all but the spirit behind the hour.

The face was brown, oriental. In the corner of the mouth was a flake of rice, and the coarse-grained dust of Manchuria was over all. The eyes were turned back, and the ears were bad. Evolution was young in the shape of the head and the cut of those ears—small, thick, close to the skull, criminal ears. But the mouth was beautiful! It was carved as if some God had done it—and on a fine morning when joy was abroad in the world—and the perfection of the human mouth was the theme of the day.

Routledge had not even water to give, but he said, “Hello.”

Deep understanding came to him from the dying face. He saw what it meant to this little soldier to go out for his Emperor—saw the faith and pity of it all. It was the smiling face of a man who comes home after years of travail to the marvel of a loved woman’s arms.

“Sayonara!” the fine lips muttered. One of the sweetest and saddest words of human speech—this Japanese farewell.

“Sayonara!” Routledge repeated.... The body jerked itself out, but the smile remained. The whole story of the Japanese conquest stirred in Routledge’s brain. It was all in the smile upon the face of the guard—all in that one perishable portrait of joy.

Routledge had once seen the Emperor for whom this soldier died with a smile. Though it was forenoon, he had been forced to put on evening-clothes for the Presence. Mutsuhito came back to his mind as he bent over the fresh corpse....

“He has no such mouth as yours, little sergeant,” he said in a swift, strange fashion. “His head is not so good as your hard, bad head, though his ears are better. He was dazed with champagne, as you have never been. He had the look of an epileptic, and they had to bring him a red-blooded woman of the people to get a son from him—and that son a defective!... A soft, inbred pulp of a man, without strength of will or hand or brain, and God only knows what rudiment of a soul—such is the Lord of Ten Thousand Years, whom you die for with a smile. You are greater than the Empire you serve, little sergeant—greater than the Emperor you die for; since he is not even a clean abstraction.... God pity you—God pity you all!”