“It’s a thing worth living long to hear—wild and mournful as a Siberian winter.... This reserve roared its song as it bored into Tientsin—a song of snow-bound hills and ice-bound hearts—poor muzhiks! And a British battery, tons of charging steel and brass, thundered the bass!”
So between them, the two correspondents covered the story of that one fight in the night—on the way to lift the lid from the legations at Peking. A messenger from the Witness office at this point brought certain cable copies for Cardinegh to comment upon for an editorial paragraph or two. He went into his study.
“Routledge-san, do you mind if I ask you to talk more?”
Noreen edged her chair closer like a little girl anticipating a story.
“Such listening as yours,” he laughed, “would make a Napoleon disclose his plans for the next morning’s battle. It would bring out the best of any man’s tales. Ask me anything that I know and it is yours.”
“Always when the other correspondents come here to Cheer Street—and nearly all of them call to see father—I have made them all tell me about the bravest deed—the bravest man—they have ever seen or known in all their services. I think I know them all but yours.”
“And what do you think my bravest man will be like, you collector of heroisms?”
“That’s just the point, Routledge-san. I think yours won’t be a man of merely brute courage. That’s why I am so anxious to hear.”
“In this case I am like one of the messengers to Job—I alone remain to tell you. I have never told any one, but sometimes it occurs to me to write the story of Rawder for the few who care to understand. He is my property, Miss Noreen, a humble martyr with a mighty soul like Saint Paul’s.
“He is a man born to suffer, as all the great are, who crucify themselves in various ways to lessen the sufferings of commoner men. I have never felt the same about any other man. There is something quite miraculous about our relation. Accidentally, as it appears, I have met him somewhere every second year for a double decade—the last time in Hong Kong this trip home. I surely shall see him again? Does it sound foolish to you—this idea of being destined to meet a certain some one from time to time somewhere—until the End?”