D OWN AMONG MEN 
 
 !,<//// s> 
 
 WiHJbevington Comfort
 
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 
 W
 
 DOWN AMONG MEN
 
 Down 
 
 Men 
 
 BY 
 
 WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ROUTLBDGB RIDES ALONE," 
 "FATE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1913 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 TO THE MEN OF THE UPPER ROOM 
 
 . . . AND THIS IS THE STORY I TOLD YOU THROUGH THE 
 SEVERAL NIGHTS: OF THE MAN WHO CAME UP THROUGH 
 THE DARK AND THE FIGHTING (OFTEN IN SUCH A RUCK 
 OF FIGHTING THAT PIE COULDN T HEAR VOICES) ; HOW 
 HE WAS PUNISHED BY MEN, BROKEN BY SELF, AND HEALED 
 BY A WOMAN ; INDEED, BUT FOR HER, HE MIGHT HAVE 
 CHOSEN THE LONG WAY OF THE BRUTE TO PUT ON HIS 
 POWERS AND ATTAIN THE CERTAIN ROYALTY OF THE 
 HUMAN ADULT IN THIS YEAR OF OUR LORD. SHE PAID 
 THE PRICE; SHE WAS THE MAN-MAKER; SHE SAW THE 
 WORLD-MAN SHINING AHEAD. . . . IT is A STORY OF 
 
 THE PATH AT OUR FEET, OF THE COMPASSIONATES WHO 
 DRAW NEAR TO SPEAK, WHEN WE ARE BRAVE ENOUGH TO 
 LISTEN, OF THE WOMEN WHO WALK BESIDE US. A TALE 
 OF THE ROAD AS WE GO MANY ARE AHEAD, MANY BE 
 HIND BUT WE DO NOT TRAVEL THIS STRETCH AGAIN. 
 
 W. L. C. 
 
 G
 
 KAO LIANG 
 
 No one thought of kao Hang. 
 
 Morning did not mention it in his great story; even 
 Duke Fallows did not think of it. 
 
 Kao Hang, the millet of China. Inland seas of it are 
 there, green in the beginning of its flow, dull gold in its 
 high tide. 
 
 A ruffianly scouring grain. Rice is its little white sis 
 ter. Millet is the strength of the beast, the mash of the 
 world s poor. A hundred millions of acres of Asia are 
 in yield or waiting for kao Hang to-day. Remember the 
 poor. 
 
 In Manchuria kao Hang grows strong and high. Its 
 fox-tails brush the brows of the tall Chinese of the north 
 country. It brushed the caps of the Russian soldiers 
 one certain Fall. 
 
 The Censurer came with the planting in that year. Kao 
 Hang was like a soft green mould upon the hills and val 
 leys -when he came to his battle-fields. He was watch 
 ing for a browner harvest and a ruddier planting. Fall 
 plowing and red planting for that, he came to Liaoyang. 
 
 His soldiers trampled it, devastated the young grain with 
 their formations, foraged their beasts upon it. Yet the 
 millet grew, hardened and covered the earth for the 
 poor must be served. Out of flood and gale and burn 
 ing, it waxed great, filling the hills and the hollows, clos 
 ing in on the city, climbing thinly to the Passes. 
 
 Its protest to the invasion was mute as China s, but it 
 did not run. Before the Japanese, it closed in. It was 
 ripe when the brown flanker crossed the Taitse. It 
 "was ripe when two Slav chiefs took their thousands forth 
 to form the anvil upon which the flanker was to be 
 broken. The Cossacks had been feeding their beasts 
 upon it for many days, and they drank in the deep hol 
 lows where the roots of kao Hang held the rain. It was 
 ripe for the world s poor, when the Sentimentalist strode 
 forth at last the hammer that was to break the spine 
 of the flanker.
 
 CONTENTS 
 BOOK ONE 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 AFIELD 
 
 BOOK TWO 
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 115 
 
 BOOK THREE 
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN .... 239
 
 BOOK I 
 
 AFIELD
 
 BOOK I 
 
 AFIELD 
 
 i 
 
 THE town of Rosario was ahead. The cavalry ex 
 pected to sup and sleep there. Chance of firing 
 presently from the natives was pure routine. John 
 Morning, back in the second troop, on the horse of a 
 missing soldier, wondered if years of service and explo 
 ration would make him ever as great a correspondent as 
 Mr. Reever Kennard looked. The wide, sloping shoul 
 ders of the Personage were to be seen occasionally when 
 the trail crooked, far forward and near the General. 
 
 The bit of fighting was over before the rear troopers 
 got rightly into the skirmish-line (every fourth trooper 
 holding four horses) ; and now the men breathed and 
 smoked cigarettes in one more Luzon town ; and another 
 Alcalde s house w r as turned into headquarters. 
 This was a brigade expedition of December, 1899. Two 
 weeks before the General had ridden out of Manila. 
 Various pieces of infantry had been left to garrison the 
 many towns which would not stay held without pins. 
 Two or three days more, then Batangas, and the big ride 
 was over, the lower Luzon incision complete, and drain 
 age established. 
 
 Morning, with the troopers, had to look to his mount 
 in regulation fashion, and did not reach Headquarters 
 until after the others. The Alcalde s house in Rosario 
 as usual stood large among the straw-thatched bamboo 
 huts. The little upper room which Morning had come to 
 expect through the courtesy of the staff, was easily 
 found. The saddle-bags and blanket-rolls of Mr. Ken 
 nard and his companion, a civilian, named Calvert were 
 
 1
 
 2 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 already there, each in a corner. Morning s thought was 
 that he would hear these men talk after supper. In a 
 third corner he placed his canteen, and shyly tucked away 
 in the shadow, the limp haversack. 
 
 There was a small table in the room, of black wood 
 worn shiny by the hands of the house, as the black wood 
 of the floors was worn shiny by the bare feet of servants. 
 Upon the table was a small sheath-knife, the brass han 
 dle of which was inscribed Mio Amigo. 
 
 It becomes necessary to explain that the human male 
 is discriminating about his loot, by the time he has been 
 afield two weeks in a tropical island, especially if he has 
 camped in a fresh town every night. The day s march 
 makes him value every pound that he can throw away, 
 for he has already been chafed by each essential button 
 and buckle. A tin pail of silver pesos unearthed in a 
 church had passed from hand to hand among the soldiers. 
 As the stress of the days increased (and the artificial 
 sense of values narrowed to the fundamentals such as 
 food and tobacco and sleep), Morning had observed with 
 curious approval that the silver hoard leaked out of the 
 command entirely to return to the natives for further 
 offerings to the priests. 
 
 So the knife on the table aroused no desire. It was 
 not even a good knife, but Mio Amigo took his eye, as 
 if affording a bit of insight to the native mind. It could 
 not have been wanted by Mr. Kennard or Mr. Calvert, 
 since it lay upon the table. Morning put it in his coat, 
 knowing he would toss it away before to-morrow s sun 
 was high. In his hot moist hand the brass-handle sent 
 up a smell of verdigris. A little later in the village road, 
 he encountered Mr. Reever Kennard in the act of pur 
 chasing ancient canned stuff from a native-woman, too 
 lame to run before the cavalry. Morning was not natural 
 in the Presence. 
 
 The great man was broad and round and thick. He 
 criticised generals afield, and in Washington when times
 
 AFIELD 3 
 
 were dry. He had dined with the President and signed 
 the interview. His head dropped forward slightly, his 
 chin sunk in its own cushions. He bought the native 
 wares with the air of a man who is keeping a city in 
 suspense, and the city deserves it. Morning stood by and 
 did not speak. There was no reason for him to stay; 
 he did not expect companionship ; he had nothing to say ; 
 no money with wkich to buy food and yet, having estab 
 lished himself there, he could not withdraw without re 
 mark of some kind. At least he felt this ; also he felt 
 cruelly the cub. He was at home in this service with 
 packers and enlisted men, but always as now, officers, 
 and others of his own work, made him feel the upstart. 
 
 Mr. Kennard now turned to perceive him, his eyes 
 opening in the "Bless me what sort is this ?" manner of 
 the straying Englishman ; and John Morning, quite in a 
 funk, fell to enforcing an absurd interest in the native 
 sheath-knife. Kennard was not drawn to such a slight 
 affair, but perceiving the menial in Morning, allowed 
 him to carry some of his purchases back to Headquarters. 
 
 Supper was a serious matter to the boy. He had no 
 money nor provisions. In the usual case, money would 
 have been no good but there were a few things left in 
 the shop of the lame woman. The field ration was light ; 
 and while he would not go hungry if the staff-officers 
 knew, it was a delicate matter to make known his grub- 
 less state. Morning rambled over the town, after help 
 ing Mr. Kennard to quarters, and returned empty to the 
 upper room. Mr. Calvert was there and appeared to see 
 Morning for the first time. Calvert was a slender quiet 
 chap, and believed in what he had to say. 
 
 "Where did you get that little sheath-knife you 
 showed Mr. Kennard?" he asked abruptly. 
 
 Morning sickened before the man s eyes. His life 
 had been fought out in dark, rough places. He was as 
 near twenty as twenty-five. He had the way of the 
 under-dog, who does not expect to be believed, looking
 
 4 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 for the worst of it, whether guilty or not. He told Cal- 
 vert he had found the knife on this table. 
 
 "I thought I put it in my saddle-bags," Calvert said. 
 "You are very welcome to it. The Mia Amiga made 
 
 me look at it twice " 
 
 "That s why I wanted it. Take this for your trouble / 
 Calvert placed a bit of paper money on the table be 
 tween them. 
 
 "It was no trouble. I don t want the money." 
 "Take it along. Don t think of it again." 
 Morning didn t want to appear stubborn. This was 
 the peculiarity of the episode. The thought of taking 
 the money repelled him. The connection of the money 
 with supper occurred, but not with the strength of his 
 dislike to appear perverse or bad-tempered. . . . He 
 saw all clearly after he had accepted the paper, but the 
 matter was then closed. He was very miserable. He had 
 proved his inferiority. The little brush with big men 
 had been too much for him. He belonged among the 
 enlisted. . . . 
 
 He went to the lame woman and bought a bottle of 
 pimientos and a live chicken. The latter he traded for 
 a can of bacon with a soldier. 
 
 IMPERIAL HOTEL, Tokyo, early in March, 1904. 
 . . . The Japanese war office had finally decided 
 to permit six American correspondents to accompany 
 each army. The Americans heard the news with gravity. 
 There were two men for every place. Only three Jap 
 anese armies were in conception at this time. The first 
 six Americans were easily chosen names of men that 
 allowed no doubt ; and this initial group, beside being the 
 first to take the field, was elected to act as a committee 
 to appoint the second and third sets of six twelve places 
 and thirty waiting. The work at hand was delicate.
 
 AFIELD 5 
 
 The committee was in session in the room of Mr. 
 Reever Kennard. Five of the second list had been set 
 tled upon when the name of John Morning (of the Open 
 Market) was brought up. It was Duke Fallows of San 
 Francisco, who spoke: 
 
 "I don t know John Morning, but I know his stuff. 
 It s big stuff ; he s the big man. We ve gone too far with 
 out him already. He has more right to be on the com 
 mittee than I. He was here before I was. He has 
 minded his own business and taken quarters apart. I had 
 no intention of breaking into the picture this way, but 
 the fact is, I expected John Morning to go in first on the 
 second list. Now that there is only one place left, there 
 really can t be any doubt about the name." 
 
 Mr. Reever Kennard of the World-News now arose 
 and waited for silence. He got it. The weight of Mr. 
 Reever Kennard was felt in this room. Everything in 
 it had weight saddle and leggings of pigskin, gaunt 
 lets, typewriters, cameras, the broadside of riding- 
 breeches, and a little arsenal of modern inventions which 
 only stop firing upon formal request. Without his hat, 
 Mr. Reever Kennard was different, however. Much 
 weight that you granted under the big hat, had left that 
 arid country for the crowded arteries of neck and jowl 
 and jaw, or, indeed, for the belted cosmic center itself. 
 He said: 
 
 "Mr. Fallows talks wide. This Morning is out on a 
 shoe-string; and while he may have a bit of force to han 
 dle certain kinds of action, it isn t altogether luck his 
 not getting a good berth. The young man hasn t made 
 good at home. He hasn t the money backing to stand 
 his share of the expense. The War Office suggests that 
 each party of correspondents employ a sutler " 
 
 Fallows was still standing and broke in: 
 
 "I m interested in that matter of making good at 
 home. I ve seen the work of most Americans here, and 
 I believe John Morning to be the best war-writer sent
 
 6 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 out from the States. As for the shoe-string, I ll furnish 
 his tooth-brush and dinnercoat if the sutler insists " 
 
 "We understand very clearly the enthusiasm of Mr. 
 Fallows who wants a second column-man for his paper. 
 Doubtless this Morning is open " 
 
 "I hadn t thought of it, but certainly the Western 
 States would profit, if John Morning turned part of his 
 product there. How about your World-News on that?" 
 
 "I favor Mr. Borden for the sixth place in second 
 column," Kennard said simply. 
 
 "Borden reached Tokyo three weeks after Morning 
 and never campaigned before." 
 
 "He s one of the best of the younger men in New 
 York a Washington correspondent of big influence " 
 
 "I have no objection to him, except as one to take the 
 place that belongs to John Morning. I can t see him 
 there." 
 
 Kennard looked about him. Morning was not well 
 known, having been little seen at the Imperial in the last 
 six weeks. Fallows had not helped him by saying he 
 was the best war-writer sent out from the States; still 
 in a general way he could not be put aside. Kennard 
 saw this. 
 
 "I wasn t going to hurt Morning badly, if I could help 
 it," he said, "but Mr. Fallows has rather forced it. This 
 Morning isn t straight. We caught him stealing a 
 sheath-knife from the saddle-bags of Archibald Calvert 
 down in Luzon four or five years ago. Morning said he 
 found it on a table in the room assigned to us. He took 
 money from Calvert for restoring the knife." 
 
 Fallows laughed at this. 
 
 "I can t believe the story," he said. "The man who 
 did the stuff I ve read, isn t stealing sheath-knives from 
 another s saddle-bags. . . . Oh, I don t mean that it 
 didn t seem true to you, Kennard " 
 
 Kennard had waited for the last, and was not good 
 to look at until it came. He turned quickly to the others. 
 Borden was chosen.
 
 AFIELD 7 
 
 "You ve still got a place to fill in the first list," said 
 Fallows. 
 
 The committee was now excited. The fire faces 
 turned to the Westerner. 
 
 "I repeat, Kennard, that your remarks may be within 
 the letter of truth, but I wouldn t campaign in the same 
 army with a man who d bring up a thing like that against 
 a boy and five years afterward. Understand, I have 
 never spoken a word to John Morning " 
 
 "You re not giving up your place?" said the com 
 mittee. 
 
 "Exactly." 
 
 "Then you ll take Borden s with the second ?" 
 
 "I have nothing against Borden. I wouldn t spoil 
 the chance of a man already chosen." 
 
 "Then first with the third army," urged the com 
 mittee. 
 
 "I can do better than that," said Fallows. "Gentle 
 men, I thank you, and beg to withdraw." 
 
 JOHN MORNING waved back the rickshaw coolie at 
 the door of the little Japanese Inn, where he had 
 been having his own way for several weeks, and walked 
 down the Shiba road toward the Imperial hotel. He had 
 half-expected to get on the committee, which meant work 
 with the first army and a quick start ; failing in that, he 
 looked for his name to be called early in the second list, 
 and was on the way now to find out. Morning shared 
 the passion of the entire company to get afield at any 
 cost. 
 
 Reasoning, however, did not lift his restlessness and 
 apprehension. He had not been on the spot. He had 
 been unable to afford life at the Imperial; and yet, the 
 costliness of it was not altogether vain, since the old
 
 8 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 hotel had become a center of the world in the matter of 
 war-correspondence. Japan reckoned with it as the point 
 of foreign civilian force. While his brain could not or 
 ganize a condition that would spoil his chance, Morn 
 ing s more unerring inner sense warned him that he was 
 not established, as he walked in the rain. 
 
 His name was not posted in any of the three groups. 
 The card blurred after his first devouring glance, so that 
 he had to read again and a third time. For a moment 
 he was out of hand seething, eruptive. Yet there was 
 nothing to fight. . . . 
 
 Corydon Tait, a young Englishman with whom he 
 had often talked and laughed, was standing by. Tait s 
 name was not down. Morning controlled himself to 
 speak courteously. 
 
 The Englishman looked beyond him at the card. A 
 chill settled upon Morning s self-destructive heat. This 
 was new in his world. In the momentary misunderstand 
 ing, he grasped Tait s arm. 
 
 "Really, old chap, I d prefer you not to do that," the 
 other said, drawing his arm away. "It must be plain 
 that I don t know you." 
 
 "I thought you were joking," said Morning. 
 
 BACK on Shiba Road in the beginning of dusk, he 
 turned to the native inn. The door slid open be 
 fore his hand touched the latch; his figure having been 
 seen through the papered lattice. The proprietor bowed 
 to the matting and hissed with prolonged seriousness, 
 hissed in fact until the American had removed and ex 
 changed his shoes for sandals. The hand-maidens ap 
 peared and bowed laughingly. The old kitchen drudge 
 emerged from her chimney and ogled. The mother of 
 the house took the place beside her lord on the rostrum-
 
 AFIELD 9 
 
 of-the-peneils. She did not hiss, but it was very clear 
 that the matting under the white man s feet was far 
 above her in worthiness. 
 
 There was something of this formality with his every 
 entrance. Morning had felt silly during the first days 
 as he passed through the hedge of bent backs ; the empty 
 cringing and favor-groveling had seemed indecent. But 
 now (in the dusk of the house before the candles) a 
 faint touch of healing came from it. They had all served 
 him. He had been fearfully over-served. They had 
 bothered his work through excessive service so many 
 were the hands and so little to do. The women were 
 really happy to work for him. To-night, a queer glad 
 ness clung to their welcome. He had fallen indeed to 
 sense it. He was starving for reality, for some holy 
 thing. They had stripped him at the Imperial. In his 
 heart he was trying to make a reality now of this mock 
 ery of Japanese self-extinction. 
 
 The bath-boy, wet from steam, with only a loin-cloth 
 about him, followed Morning to his room. The Ameri 
 can was not allowed to bathe alone ; would not have been 
 allowed to undress himself, had he not insisted upon the 
 privilege. He sat in a tub, three walls of which were 
 wood and the fourth of iron. Against the oustide of 
 the latter, burned a furious fire of charcoal. For the 
 benefits of this bath, he was begged to make no haste 
 and to occupy his mind with matters of the higher life. 
 A moment or two before the water reached a boiling- 
 point, Morning was allowed to escape. Exceeding pres 
 sure of business was occasionally accepted as precluding 
 the chance of a bath for one day, but to miss two days 
 in succession, without proving that he had bathed else 
 where, meant a loss of respect, and a start of household 
 whispering. 
 
 He was sick to get back to work, turned to it for 
 restoration and forgetfulness, as a man to a drug. More 
 over, there was need, for he was on space. Two or three
 
 io DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 papers in the Mid-west used what he could write, though 
 he had no holding contracts, and had left Chicago with 
 such haste to catch a steamer, that there had been no 
 chance to make an arrangement, whereby these papers 
 might have used the same story simultaneously. And 
 then, there had been a delay of nearly a day in Van 
 couver. This time in Chicago would have been enough 
 for the establishment of a central office and an agent on 
 percentage, who could have enlarged his market without 
 limit, and cut down his work to one letter a day. In 
 stead, he did the same story now, from three different 
 angles. It had been this way before. With war in the 
 air, Morning was unable to breathe at home. Off he 
 went, without a return ticket tourist cars and dingy 
 second-class steamer passage but with a strange confi 
 dence in his power to write irresistibly. It was like a 
 mark this faith of his in the ability to appeal. 
 
 All his life he had lived second-class. To-night he 
 wondered if it would always be so ; if there was not 
 something in the face of John Morning, something that 
 others saw at once, which placed him instantly among 
 culls and seconds in the mysterious adjustments of the 
 world. They had made him feel so at the Imperial, be 
 fore this episode. Men who didn t write ten lines a day 
 were there on big incomes ; and others, little older than 
 he, with only two or three fingers of his ability, on a 
 safe salary and flexible expense account. 
 
 The day was brought back to him again and again. 
 The cut of Corydon Tait had crippled him. He felt it 
 now crawling swiftly along the nerves of his limbs until 
 it reached his brain, and remaining there coldly like un 
 digested matter in a sick body. He felt his face queerly. 
 There was neither fat nor flabbiness upon it. He could 
 feel the bone. His fingers brushed his mouth, and a sort 
 of burn came to him. It was the finest thing about John 
 Morning. There was a bit of poetry about it, a touch 
 of tenderness, finer than strength. Passion was in the 
 mouth, intensity without intentness, not a trace of the
 
 AFIELD n 
 
 bearish, nor bovine. It is true you often see the ruin 
 of such a mouth in quiet places where those of drugs 
 and drinks are served ; but you see as well the finished 
 picture upon the faces of those men lit with world s 
 service, who have heard the voice of the human spirit, 
 and are loved by the race, because they have forgotten 
 how to love themselves. 
 
 Morning knew it only as his weakness. It was the 
 symbol to-night of his failure. . . . Those at the 
 Imperial had seen it ; they had dared to deny him because 
 of it. The greatest among the war-men were thin-lipped 
 and sinewy-jawed the soldier face. . . . He knew 
 much about war; none had campaigned more joyously 
 than he. In the midst of peril, courage seemed altogether 
 obvious and easy; his fearlessness was too natural 
 for him to be surprised at it, though it surprised 
 others. . . . 
 
 The typewriter buzzed on. Wearily he caught up the 
 trend, but the drive was gone, although there was hardly 
 a lull in the registering of the keys for two-thirds of a 
 page. Always before, this sort of hackwork had been 
 done with a dream of the field ahead. His forces 
 fused. He had been denied a column. His hand 
 brushed across his face and John Morning was ashamed 
 ashamed of his poverty, of his work, of his own nature, 
 which made a tragedy of the cut of Corydon Tait ; 
 ashamed of the heat in his veins from the stimulants he 
 had drunk; ashamed because he had not instantly de 
 manded his rights at the Imperial; ashamed of the mess 
 of a man he was, a fool of his volition and vitality, com 
 monness stamped on his every feature. 
 
 Morning s affinity for alcohol was peculiar. He 
 worked with it successfully. So resilient was his health 
 that he was usually fresh in the morning. Often he 
 had finished a long evening of work on pretty good terms 
 with himself, the later pages of copy coming in a cloud 
 of speed. . . . The copy-producing seemed to use 
 up the whipping spirit, rather than himself ; at least, he
 
 12 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 treasured this illusion. The first bottles of rice-beer 
 lasted the longest. . . . He recalled now that the 
 maid-servants had twice heated sake for him at supper ; 
 as for the rice-beer he had been more than ever thirsty 
 to-night. He glanced into the corner where the bottles 
 were and a sense of uncleanness came over him as if 
 his body were flowing with the slow spirit, like a sea- 
 marsh at high tide. 
 
 . . . He heard the shafts of a rickshaw grate upon 
 the gravel outside. Amoya had come ; it was midnight. 
 He opened the papered lattice. The runner was bowing 
 by his cart, holding his broad hat with both hands. 
 Morning covered his machine, put fresh charcoal in the 
 brazier, caught up his hat and overcoat, and shuffled 
 down the stairway, holding his slippers on with his toes. 
 The door-boy gave him his shoes and opened the way 
 to the street. Morning greeted Amoya with a pat on the 
 shoulder, and climbed into the cart. 
 
 "Yoshuwara?" the runner asked. 
 
 "No, you shameless ruffian !" 
 
 "No?" Amoya squeaked pleasantly. 
 
 "No not no must do." 
 
 Morning waved his arm, signifying solitary and 
 peaceful enjoyment of the night air and contemplation 
 of the dark city. These night journeys had become the 
 cooling features of his day. Amoya was a living mar 
 vel, the rickshaw runner incomparable tireless, eager, 
 very proud of his work; too old to be spoiled. He was 
 old ; indeed, enough to be Morning s father, but his limbs 
 were young, and his great trunk full of power unabated. 
 
 The night was dark, damp, no moon nor star. The 
 cold which was almost tempted thinly to crust the open 
 drains, was welcome to the man s nostrils. Amoya 
 warmed and gathered speed. Up the broad Shiba Road 
 he sped, past the far dim lights of the highway, past 
 Shiba temple, the tombs of the Ronins, past the cavalry 
 barracks (by far the best joke on Japan), and the last of 
 the known land-marks.
 
 AFIELD 13 
 
 Now Morning suffered strange temptations. Few 
 white men who have lived any time in Japan have es 
 caped. A Japanese house with every creature comfort 
 was within his resources even now ; wholesome food, 
 sake, rice-beer were cheap ; excellent service, even such 
 service as Amoya s was laughably cheap. Why not sink 
 into this life and quit the agony? . . . Why did he 
 think of it as sinking into this life? Why did he agonize 
 anyway ? . . . There \vas always a fresh sore on him 
 somewhere. Surely other men did not burn back and 
 forth every day as he did. 
 
 The shame came again. He ordered Amoya back 
 within an hour, left him at the door of the Inn, drenched 
 with sweat and delighted with his extra fare. 
 
 Morning slid open the door of his room. Nothing 
 could be seen but the glow of the brazier, yet he knew 
 some one was within. ... A series of mattresses 
 and robes had been taken out from a chest of drawers 
 and made up on the matting. The women as usual, had 
 waited for him to go out. He lit the lamp. 
 
 A little Japanese maid-servant was curled up asleep 
 at the foot of his bed. Morning sat down upon the 
 cushion and mused curiously. ... It was thus that 
 Naomi had ordered Ruth to steal into the couch at the 
 feet of Boaz. Ruth had found a home, and was not 
 long allowed to make herself glad with mere gleanings. 
 . . . It was this sort of thing that made Morning hate 
 Japan. In the eyes of the old, limp-backed Inn-keeper, 
 this child was a woman. He would not have dared to 
 delegate a mere maid-servant to ply the ancient art with 
 his guest, but there were extenuations here: the delicacy 
 and subtlety of the little one s falling asleep, and the 
 child-like freshness of the offering. It was this last that 
 stung Morning, because he knew the old Japanese found 
 a commercial value in this very adolescence. 
 
 He had smiled at this child during the day, and asked 
 her name Moto-san and repeated it after her, r.s one 
 might have done the name of a child. She had just come
 
 i 4 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 in from the fields, reported the bath-boy who preempted 
 any leakage of English whatsoever, and who was fre 
 quently on the verge of being understood. . . . Her 
 hands showed labor, and she was not ashen as the Japan 
 ese beauties must be, but sweet and fragrant and so 
 little. 
 
 "It is the same the world over, when they come in 
 from the fields," he said. "Good God, she ought to be 
 sleeping with her dolls. . . . Poor little bit of a girl 
 in a man s country . . . and they sent you in here to 
 keep me from night-riding. One cannot complain of 
 hospitality . . . Moto-san. . . . Moto-san. . ." 
 
 She stirred, and snuggled deeper. "She is truly 
 asleep," he thought. 
 
 "Moto-san !" he said softly again. 
 
 The girl opened her eyes, which suddenly filled with 
 fright. Morning patted her shoulder gently. And now 
 she sat up staring at him, and remembering. 
 
 He leaned his head upon his palm and shut his eyes 
 sign of falling asleep then pointed her to the door. . . 
 Morning could not tell if she were pleased. It all seemed 
 very strange to her her smile was frightened. He re 
 peated the gesture. She had slid off the bed to the mat 
 ting upon her knees, facing him. And now she bowed 
 to the floor, and backed out so, bowing with frightened 
 smile. . . . He reflected dismally that she had lost 
 value for the eye of the Inn-keeper. 
 
 MORNING S idea as he reached the Imperial next 
 forenoon was to call the committee together, or a 
 working part of it, and to demand why he had been barred 
 from the projected columns. . . . The high and an 
 cient lobby was practically empty. It appeared that the 
 correspondents de rigeur and en masse were posing for 
 a photograph on the rear balcony, which was reached
 
 AFIELD 15 
 
 through the billiard room. Morning went there and 
 stood by the window while the picture was taken. It re 
 quired an hour or more. He was passed and re-passed. 
 Two or three Americans seemed on the point of asking 
 him to take his place with the fifty odd war-men, but they 
 checked themselves before speaking. Morning felt vilely 
 marked. Stamina did not form within him. He did not 
 realize that something finer than physical courage was 
 challenged. 
 
 He watched the backs of the formation the squared 
 shoulders, the planted feet. He knew that in the minds of 
 the posing company, each was looking at his own. From 
 each individual to his lesser or greater circle, the finished 
 picture would go. It would be reproduced in the period 
 icals which sent these men "our special correspondent" 
 designated. Personal friends in each case would choose 
 their own from the crowd. The little laughing chap in 
 brown corduroys who arranged the group was the best 
 and bravest man in field photography. He left the cam 
 era now to his assistant, and took place with the others. 
 Men of twenty campaigns were there. The dim eyes of 
 a certain little old man had looked upon more of war than 
 any other living human being. In one brain or another, 
 pictures were coiled from every campaign around the 
 world during the past forty years. Never before in his 
 tory had so many famous war-men gathered together. It 
 would be a famous picture. . . . He, John Morn 
 ing, would hear it in the future: 
 
 ". . . Why weren t you in that picture?" 
 
 "I sat in the billiard room behind at a window. I 
 had been barred out of a place among the first three 
 columns. I was under a cloud of some kind." 
 
 No, that would not be his answer. Various lies oc 
 curred. 
 
 This little mental activity completed itself without 
 any volition. It was finished now, like the picture out 
 side the materials scattering. The idea of the truth 
 merely appeared through a mental habit of looking at
 
 1 6 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 two sides a literary habit. It had brought no direct 
 relation to John Morning. But the lies had brought 
 their direct relation. 
 
 He could not remain at his place by the window, now 
 that the fifty came in for drink and play. He was afraid 
 to demand what evil concerning him was in the minds of 
 men ; afraid something would be uncovered that was 
 true. He felt the uncleanness of drink upon him, and a 
 moral softening from years of newspaper work, a train 
 ing begun in glibness, which does not recognize the 
 rights of men, but obeys a City Desk. He could not 
 organize a contending force ; and yet loathed the thought 
 of return to the Japanese Inn. He was not ready to face 
 himself alone. 
 
 It had never come to him so stirringly as now the 
 sense of something within, utterly weary of imprison 
 ment and forced companionship with the visible John 
 Morning. His misery was a silent unswerving shame. 
 A feverish impulse almost controlled him to take some 
 thing either to lift him away, or permit him to sink in 
 abandonment from the area of pain. 
 
 lie stood near the desk in the lobby. Duke Fallows 
 was coming. The Californian s legs, in their worn cor 
 duroys, were far too lean for the big bony knees a tall 
 man of forty, with tired and sunken eyes and sunken 
 mouth. Fallows had a reputation. Its strongly drawing 
 side-issue was his general and encompassing, though fas 
 tidious, love of women. Someone had whispered that 
 even if a man has the heart of a volcano, its outpouring 
 must be spread rather thin in places to cover all women. 
 He was out for the Western States, not only to show 
 war, but to show it up. Certainly he loved the under 
 dog, which is an epigram for stating that he was an anar 
 chist. 
 
 No anarchist could be gentler to meet, nor more ter 
 rible to read. Fallows owned a formidable interest in the 
 Western States; otherwise he would have had to print
 
 AFIELD 17 
 
 himself. The rest of that San Francisco property was 
 just an excellent newspaper. Its effort was to balance 
 Duke Fallows ; sometimes it seemed trying to extinguish 
 him in order to save itself. It brought sanity and com 
 mon-sense and the group-souled observation of affairs, 
 to say nothing of news and advertising all to cool the 
 occasional column of this sick man. To a few, however, 
 on the Pacific Coast, since his new assignment was an 
 nounced the Russo-Japanese war and Duke Fallows 
 meant the same thing. The majority said : "Watch the 
 Western States boom in circulation. They are sending 
 Fallows to Asia." 
 
 The two stood together, Fallows looking down. 
 Morning was broad in brow and shoulder ; slender other 
 wise and of medium height. 
 
 "I m Fallows." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 The tall man s eyes turned upward so that only the 
 whites were visible. He fingered his brow as if to pluck 
 something forth through the bone. 
 
 "Come on upstairs." 
 
 Morning followed the large, slow knees. It was less 
 that the knees wobbled rather the frailty of the hang 
 ings and pinnings. They did the three high flights and 
 began again, finally drawing up in a broad roof-room 
 that smelled of new harness and overlooking an espe 
 cially hard-packed part of Tokyo, toward the Ginza. 
 Fallows lit the fire that was ready in the grate and 
 sprawled wearily. 
 
 "Where did you study religion, Morning?" 
 
 "I didn t." 
 
 "That s one way to get it." 
 
 The sound of his own laugh came to Morning s ears 
 and hurt him. Fallows eyes were shut. There was no 
 trace of a smile around the wan mouth. 
 
 "You ll likely be more religious before you re done. 
 I mean many things by being religious a man s inability
 
 1 8 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 to lie to himself for one ; a passion for the man who s 
 down that s another. . . . I ve read your stuff. 
 It s full of religion " 
 
 Now it seemed to Morning as if he had just entered 
 a fascinating wilderness ; apart from this, he saw some 
 thing about the worn, distressed mouth of Fallows that 
 made him think of himself last night. There was one 
 more effect from this first brush. Something happened 
 in Morning s mind with that sentence about the inability 
 to lie to one s self. It was like a shot in the midst of a 
 flock of quails. A pair of birds was down, but the rest 
 of the flock was off and away, like the fragments of an 
 explosive. 
 
 "I read some of your stuff about the Filipino woman 
 woman of the river-banks/ you called her. Another 
 time you looked into a nipa-shack where an old man was 
 dying of beri-beri, and an old woman sat at bay at the 
 door " 
 
 These brought back the pictures to Morning, and the 
 dimension behind the actual light and shade and matter. 
 The healing, too, was that someone had seen his work, 
 and seen from it all that he saw, the artist s true ali 
 ment, which praise of the many cannot furnish. It gave 
 him heart like an answer to prayer, because he had been 
 very needful. 
 
 "You must have come up hard. Did you, boy?" 
 Fallows asked after a moment. 
 
 "Perhaps you would say so." 
 
 "Farm first?" 
 
 "Yes " 
 
 "And a father who misunderstood?" 
 
 "A good deal of the misunderstanding was my own 
 bull-headedness, I see now " 
 
 "And the mother, John Morning?" 
 
 "I was too little " 
 
 "Ah " 
 
 Morning found himself saying eagerly a little later:
 
 AFIELD 19 
 
 "And then the city streets selling newspapers, 
 errands, sick all the time, though I didn t know it. Then 
 I got to the horses. ... I found something in the 
 stables good for me. I liked horses so well that it hurt. 
 I learned to sleep nights and eat regularly but read so 
 much rot. Still, it was all right to be a stable-boy. A 
 big race-horse man took me on to ship with stock. I ve 
 been all over America by freight with the racers from 
 track to track. I used to let the tramps ride, but they 
 were dangerous especially the young ones. I had to 
 stay awake. An old tramp could come in anytime and 
 go to sleep but younger ones are bad. They beat you 
 up for a few dimes. I was bad, too, bad as hell. . . . 
 And then I rode there was money, but it went. I got 
 sick keeping light. The pounds over a hundred beat me 
 out of the game except the jumps. I ve ridden the 
 jumpers in England, too been all broken up. In"a fall 
 you can t always get clear. . . . All this was before 
 I was eighteen it was my kind of education." 
 
 "I likejt," said Fallows. 
 
 "One night in New York I heard a newspaper man 
 talk. ... It was in a back-room bar on Sixth ave 
 nue. I see now he was a bit broken down. He looked 
 to me then all that was splendid and sophisticated. I 
 wanted to be like him " 
 
 Fallows bent forward, his face tender as a father s. 
 "You poor little chap," he said, as if he did not see Morn 
 ing now, but the listening boy in the back-room bar. 
 
 "You see, I never really got the idea of having money 
 it went so quickly. The idea of a big bundle didn t 
 get a chance to sink in. I ve had several hundred dol 
 lars at once from riding but the next day s races, or the 
 next, got it. What I m trying to say is winnings didn t 
 seem to belong to me. Poverty was a habit. I always 
 think yet in nickels and dimes. I seem to belong 
 steerage. It wasn t long after I listened to that reporter, 
 that I got a newspaper job, chasing pictures. A year
 
 20 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 after that the wars began. I went out first on my own 
 hook ; in fact, I think you d call it that now. I seem to 
 get into a sort of mania to be off when the papers 
 begin to report trouble. I didn t know I was poorly fixed 
 this time, until here in Tokyo I saw how the others go 
 about it. Dinner-clothes, and all sorts of money invested 
 in them whether the war makes good or not " 
 
 "I was right," Fallows said finally. He had listened 
 as a forest in a drouth listens for rain. 
 
 Morning was embarrassed. He had been caught in 
 the current of the other s listening. It was not his way 
 at all to talk so much. He wasn t tamed altogether ; and 
 then he had been extra hurt by the night and the day. 
 An element of savagery arose, with the suspicion that 
 Fallows might be making fun of him. 
 
 "What were you right about, Mr. Fallows?" 
 
 "You ve got an especial guardian." 
 
 Morning waited. The fuel was crackling. The Cal- 
 ifornian watched the fire and finally began to talk. 
 
 "You re one of them. I saw it in your stuff. Then 
 they told me here that you lived in a little Japanese hotel 
 alone. That s another reason. Your kind come up alone 
 always alone. To-day I saw you watching that picture 
 business. You looked tired as if you had a long way 
 yet to swim against the current. You had a fight on 
 inside and out. You ll keep on fighting inside, long after 
 the world outside has called a truce. When you re as 
 old as I am maybe before you ll have peace inside and 
 out." 
 
 Morning was bewildered ; and had somewhat braced 
 himself in scepticism, as if the other were reading a for 
 tune out of a cup. 
 
 "You re one of them, and you ve got a guardian 
 greater than ten of these militia press-agents. You don t 
 know it yet, but your stuff shows it ; your life shows it. 
 You try to do what you want and you re forced to do 
 better. You ll be kept steerage, as you call it, kept
 
 AFIELD 21 
 
 down among- men until you see that it s the place for 
 a white man to be, and that all these other things din 
 ner-coats and expense accounts are but tricks to cover 
 a weakness. You ll be held down among men until you 
 love them, and would be sick away from service with 
 them. You won t be able to rest unless you re helping. 
 You ll choke when you say Brother. You ll answer 
 their misery and cry from your sleep, I m coming. You 
 hear them with your soul now, but the brain won t listen 
 yet. You ll go it blind for the under-dog and find out 
 afterwards that you were immortally right." 
 
 Morning s breast was burning. It was more the fiery 
 flood of kindness than the words. He had been roughed 
 so thoroughly that he couldn t take words ; he needed a 
 sign. 
 
 "The time will come when you ll hear your soul say 
 ing, Get down among men, John, and help. You ll 
 jump. A storm of hell will follow you if you don t. 
 They ll throw you overboard and even the whale won t 
 stomach you if you don t. Get down among men, 
 John ; that s your orders to Nineveh." 
 
 The Calif ornian changed the subject abruptly: 
 
 "They were good enough to give me a place with the 
 first column, but I can t see it quite. There s going to 
 be too much supervision. These Japanese are rivet- 
 headed. I like the other end. New Chwang is still 
 open. Lowenkampf is in command there. I knew him 
 years ago in Vienna. Good man for a soldier old 
 Lowenkampf. He ll take us in. Let s go over " 
 
 "I won t be exactly healed for a long stay. My 
 money is coming here 
 
 "Let it pile up. I ll stake you for the Russian 
 picnic." 
 
 Morning wanted it so intensely that he feared Duke 
 Fallows might die before they got to Lowenkampf and 
 New Chwang. . . . He was terrorized by this 
 thought : "Fallows has somehow failed to understand
 
 22 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 about me not getting a column, and not being asked into 
 the picture. When he finds out, he ll change his 
 mind. . . ." 
 
 He wanted to speak, gathered strength with violent 
 effort, but Fallows just now was restlessly eager to go 
 below. 
 
 SECOND class, that night, on the Pacific liner Man 
 churia, forward among the rough wooden bunks, 
 eating from tin-plates. ... It had been Morning s 
 suggestion. Fallows had accepted it laughingly, but as 
 a good omen. 
 
 "Two can travel cheaply as one," he said. "I m quite 
 as comfortable as usual." 
 
 Morning realized that his friend was not comfortable 
 at best. He was too well himself, too ambitious, quite 
 to realize the other s illness. Morning found a quality 
 of understanding that he had expected vaguely to find 
 sometime from some girl, but he could not return the 
 gift in kind, nor right sympathy for the big man s weak 
 ness. Fallows didn t appear to expect it. 
 
 They left the Manchuria at Nagasaki, after the In 
 land Sea passage, found a small ship for Tientsin direct ; 
 also a leftover winter storm on the Yellow Sea. Morn 
 ing, at work, typewriter on his knees, looked up one 
 night as they neared the mouth of the Pei-ho. An oil- 
 lamp swung above them smokily; the tired ship still 
 creaked and wallowed in the gale. Fallows has been 
 regarding him thoughtfully from time to time. 
 
 "You keep bolstering me up, Duke, and I don t seem 
 to help you any," Morning said. "Night and day, I 
 worry you with the drum of this machine when you re 
 too sick to work ; and here you are traveling like a tramp 
 for me. I m used to it, but it makes you worse. You
 
 AFIELD 23 
 
 staked me and made possible a bit of real work this cam 
 paign why won t you let me do some stuff for you?" 
 
 "Don t you worry about what I ve done that s par 
 ticularly my affair. Call it a gamble. Perhaps I chose 
 you as a man chooses his place to build a house. . . ." 
 
 Morning wondered at times if the other was not half 
 dead with longing for a woman. ... In the fifteen 
 years which separated the two men in age lay all the 
 difference between a soldier and an artist. Morning had 
 to grant finally that the Californian had no abiding in 
 terest in the war they were out to cover ; and this was 
 so foreign that the rift could not be bridged entirely. 
 
 "War why, I love the thought !" Fallows exclaimed. 
 "The fight s the thing but this isn t it. This is just a 
 big butchery of the blind. The Japanese aren t sweet 
 in this passion. We won t see the real Russia out here 
 in Asia. Real Russia is against all this looting and lust 
 ing. Real Russia is at home singing, writing, giving 
 itself to be hanged. Real Russia is glad to die for a 
 dream. This soldier Russia isn t ready to die. Just a 
 stir in the old torpor of decadence this Russia we re 
 going to. You ll see it its stench rising. ... I 
 want the other war. I want to live to fight in the other 
 war, when the under-dog of this world the under-dog 
 of Russia and England and America, runs no more, 
 cowers no more but stops, turns to fight to the death. 
 I want the barricades, the children fired with the spirit, 
 women coming down to the ruck, the girls from the fac 
 tories, harlots from the slums. The women won t stay 
 at home in the war I mean and you and I, John, must 
 be there, to die every morning 
 
 Yet Fallows didn t write this. He lay on his back 
 dreaming about it. Always the w r omen came into his 
 thoughts. Morning held hard to the game at hand. 
 . . . Lying on his back thus the Californian became 
 identified in his mind. And strange berths they found, 
 none stranger than the one at last in the unspeakable
 
 24 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 Chinese hotel at New Chwang. Morning remembered 
 the date 4/47*04 for he put it down in the black note 
 book, after smashing a centipede on the wall with it. 
 They were awakened the next morning by the passing of 
 a brigade of Russian infantry in full song. Each look 
 ing for "good-morning" in the eyes of the other, found 
 that and tears. 
 
 The Chinese house stirred galvanically at mid-day 
 from the farthest chicken-coop to the guest-chamber of 
 the most revered. Lowenkampf, commanding the port, 
 in sky-blue uniform, entered with his orderly and em 
 braced a certain sick man lying on a rough bench, be 
 tween his own blankets. It was just so and not other 
 wise, nor were the "European" strangers of distin 
 guished appearance. They had come in the night, cross 
 ing the river in a junk, instead of waiting for the Liao- 
 launch. They had not sought the Manchurian hotel, 
 where Europeans of quality usually go, but had asked 
 for native quartering. So rarely had this happened, that 
 the tradition was forgotten in New Chwang about angels 
 appearing unheralded. 
 
 It was a great thing to John Morning, this coming of 
 General Lowenkampf. He had not dared to trust alto 
 gether in the high friend of Duke Fallows nor even in 
 finding such a friend in New Chwang. The actual fact 
 meant that they would not be sent out of the zone of 
 war, when the Russians evacuated from New Chwang, 
 if Lowenkampf could help it ; and who could helg it if 
 not the commander of the garrison? It meant, too, that 
 everything Duke Fallows had said in his quiet and un 
 adorned way when speaking of purely mundane affairs 
 had turned out true. 
 
 Fallows sat up in his bunk to receive the embrace he 
 knew was coming. The General was a small man. He 
 must have been fifty. He appeared a tired father, the 
 father who puts his hands to his ears and looks terrified 
 when his children approach, but who loves them with
 
 AFIELD 25 
 
 secret fury and prays for them in their beds at night. 
 He had suffered ; he had a readiness to tears ; he needed 
 much brandy at this particular interval, as if his day 
 had not begun well. He spoke of the battle of the Yalu 
 and his tears were positive. It was a mistake, a hideous 
 mistake. He said this in English, and with the fright 
 ened intensity of a woman whose lover has died misun 
 derstanding her. . . . No, they were not to stay at 
 New Chwang. . . . He would make them comfort 
 able. . . . Yes, he had married a woman six years 
 ago. ... It murders the soldier in a man to marry 
 a woman and find her like other women. You may 
 think on the mystery of childbirth a whole life but when 
 your own woman, in your own house, brings you a child, 
 it is all different. A thing to be awed at. ... It 
 draws the soldier-pith out of one s spine, as you draw 
 the nerve out of a tooth. . . . You are never the 
 same afterward. 
 
 Fallows sank back smiling raptly. 
 
 "You re the same old nervous prince of realizers 
 Lowenkampf always realizing your own affairs with 
 unprecedented realism. God knows, I m glad to see you. 
 . . . John Morning, here is a man who can tell you 
 a thing you have heard before, in a way that you ll never 
 forget. It s because he only talks about what he has 
 realized for himself. His name is blown in the fabric of 
 all he says. . . . Lowenkampf, here s a boy. I ve 
 been looking for him, years ever since I found my own 
 failure inevitable. John Morning Lowenkampf, the 
 General. If you both live to get back to your babies 
 Morning s are still in the sky, their dawn is not yet you 
 will remember this day for it is a significant Trinity. 
 . . . General, how many babies have you?" 
 
 "Oh, my God one !" 
 
 Fallows seemed unspeakably pleased with that ex 
 cited remark. Lowenkampf glanced at the shut eyes of 
 his old friend, and then out of the window to the sordid
 
 26 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 Chinese street, where the Russian soldiers moved to and 
 fro in the unwieldy disquiet of a stage mob in its first 
 formation. 
 
 "But they re all my babies " 
 
 John Morning had a vision of a battle with that sen 
 tence. All the rest of the day he thrilled with it. Work 
 was so pure in his heart from the vision, that he left his 
 machine that night (Duke Fallows seemed asleep) and 
 touched the brow of his friend. 
 
 AUGUST Liaoyang, the enemy closing in. ... 
 There were times when John Morning doubted if 
 he had ever been away from the sick man, Duke Fal 
 lows, and the crowds of Russian soldiery. Individually 
 the days were long. Often in mid-afternoon, he stopped 
 to think if some voice or picture of to-day s dawning 
 did not belong to yesterday or last week. Yet routine 
 settled upon all that was past, and the days accumulated 
 into a quantity of weeks that grew like the continual 
 miracle of a hard man s savings. 
 
 Always he missed something. He was hard in health, 
 but felt white nowhere, in nor out, so much had he been 
 played upon by sun and wind and dust. The Russian 
 officers were continually asking him to try new horses 
 the roughest of the untamed purchases brought in by the 
 Chinese. It had become quite the custom among the 
 officers to advise with Morning on matters of horse 
 flesh. Fallows had started it by telling Lowenkampf 
 that Morning formerly rode the jumpers in England, 
 but the younger man had since earned his reputation in 
 the Russian post. 
 
 A sorrel mare had appeared in the city. Rat-tailed 
 and Roman-nosed she was, and covered with wounds. 
 They had tried to ride her in from the Hun. Her skin
 
 AFIELD 27 
 
 was like satin and she had not been saddled decently. 
 Just a wild, head-strong young mare in the beginning, 
 but bad handling had made her a mankiller. Lieutenant 
 Luban, soft with vodka and cigarettes, had dickered for 
 the mare, and drunkenly insisted upon mounting at once. 
 Morning caught the bridle after the first fight, and Luban 
 slid off in his arms in a state of collapse. Clearly an 
 adult devil lived in the sorrel. She was red-eyed in her 
 rage, past pain, and walked like a man. She would have 
 gone over backwards with Luban, and yet she was lovely 
 to Morning s eye, perfect as a yellow rose. He knew 
 her sort the kind that runs to courage and not to hair; 
 the kind of individual that rarely breeds. 
 
 He led her apart, talked to her; knew that she only 
 cared to kill him and be free. She was outrage ; hate 
 was the breath of her nostrils ; but she made Morning 
 forget his work. . . . Thirty officers were gathered 
 in the compound. Morning had saddled her afresh ; her 
 back was easier yet she was up, striking, pawing. He 
 knew she meant to go back. Stirrup-free, he held her 
 around the neck as she stood poised. His weight was 
 against her toppling, but sheer deviltry hurled back her 
 head, breaking the balance. They saw him push the hot 
 yellow neck from him as she fell. He landed on his 
 feet, facing her from the side, leaped clear and then 
 darted forward, catching the bridle-rein before she 
 straightened her first front leg. Morning was in the 
 saddle before she was up. Then the whole thing was 
 done over again as perfectly as one with his hand in 
 repeats a remarkable billiard-shot. 
 
 "It s only a question of time she ll kill you," said 
 Fallows. 
 
 "How she hates the Chinese, but she s the gamest 
 thing in Asia," Morning answered. "I d like to be away 
 alone with her." 
 
 "You d need a new continent for a romance like 
 that," Fallows said, and that night, in their room of
 
 28 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 Lowenkampf s headquarters, he resumed the subject, his 
 eyes lost in the dun ceiling. 
 
 "There s only one name for that sorrel mare, if I m 
 consulted." 
 
 "Name her," Morning said. 
 
 "The one I m thinking of her name is Eve." 
 
 Fallows shivered, and turned the subject, but Morn 
 ing knew he would come back. . . . They heard the 
 sentries on the stone flags below. It was monotonous 
 as the sound of the river. An east wind had blown all 
 afternoon. Dust was gritty in the blankets, sore in the 
 rifts of lip and nostril caused by the long baking wind. 
 Their eyes felt old in the dry heat. Daily the trains 
 had brought more Russians ; daily more Chinese refugees 
 slipped out behind. Liaoyang was a mass of soldiery 
 heavy and weary with soldiers dull with its single 
 thought of defense. For fifty or more miles, the south 
 ern arc of the circle about the old walled city was a 
 system of defense chains of Russian redouts, com 
 plicated entanglements, hill emplacements and rifle-pits. 
 Beyond this the Japanese gathered openly and prepared. 
 It seemed as if the earth itself would scream from the 
 break in the tension when firing began. . . . 
 
 "John a man must be alone " Fallows said 
 
 abruptly. 
 
 "That s one of the first things you told me and that 
 a man mustn t lie to himself." 
 
 "It must be thinking about your romance with that 
 sorrel fiend that brings her so close to-night, I mean 
 the real Eve. I had to put the ocean between us and 
 yet she comes. Listen, John, when you are dull and 
 tired after a hard day, you take a drink or two of 
 brandy. You, especially you, are new and lifted again. 
 That s what happens to me when a woman comes into 
 the room. . . ." 
 
 Twice before Morning had been on the verge of this, 
 and something spoiled it. He listened now, for Fallows
 
 AFIELD 29 
 
 opened his heart. His eyes held unblinkingly the dim 
 shadows of the ceiling. The step of the sentries sank 
 into the big militant silence and this was revelation : 
 
 "God, how generous women are with their treasures! 
 They are devils because of their great-heartedness. So 
 swift, so eager, so delicate in their giving. They look 
 up at you, and you are lost. My life has been gathering 
 a bouquet and some flowers fade in your hand. . . . 
 I hated it, but they looked up so wistfully and it seemed 
 as if I were rending in a vacuum. . . . Always the 
 moment of illusion that this one is the last, that here 
 is completion, that peace will come with this fragrance; 
 always their giving is different and very beautiful and 
 always the man is deeper in hell for their bestowal. 
 
 . . A day or a month man s incandescence is gone. 
 Brown eyes, blue eyes face pale or ruddy lips pas 
 sionate or pure their giving momentary or immortal 
 and yet, I could not stay. Always they were hurt less 
 among men, less among their sisters, and no strangers 
 to suffering and always hell accumulated upon my 
 head. . . . Then she came. There s a match in the 
 world for every man. Her name is Eve. She is the 
 answer of her sisterhood to such as I. 
 
 "She was made so. She will not have me near. And 
 yet with all her passion and mystery she is calling to 
 me. The rolling Pacific isn t broad enough. She has 
 bound me by all that I have given to others, by all that 
 I have denied others. She was made to match me, and 
 came to her task full-powered, as the sorrel mare came 
 to corral to-day for you. . . . Oh, yes, I honor her." 
 
 There was silence which John Morning could not 
 break. Fallows began to talk of death in terms which 
 the other remembered. 
 
 ". . . For the death of the body makes no differ 
 ence. In the body here we build our heaven or hell. 
 If we have loved possessions of the earth we are 
 weighted with them afterward, imprisoned among
 
 30 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 them. If we love flesh here, we are held like shadows 
 to fleshly men and women, enmeshed in our own prevail 
 ing- desire. If our life has been one of giving to others, 
 of high and holy things we are at the moment of the 
 body s death, like powerful and splendid birds suddenly 
 hearing the mystic call of the South. Death, it is the 
 great cleansing flight into the South. . . ." 
 
 This from the sick man, was new as the first rustle 
 of Spring to John Morning ; yet within, he seemed long 
 to have been expectant. There was thrill in the spec 
 tacle of the other who had learned by losing. . . . 
 
 Morning s mind was like the beleaguered city 
 desperate with waiting and potential disorder, outwardly 
 arrogant, afraid in secret. . . . Duke Fallows was 
 thinking of a woman, as he visioned his lost paradise. 
 The younger man left the lamp-light to go to him, and 
 heard as he leaned over the cot : 
 
 ". . . Like a lost traveler to the single point of 
 light, John, I shall go to her. Eve the one red light 
 I will glow red in the desire of her. She is my creation. 
 Out of the desire of my strength she was created. As 
 they have mastered me in the flesh, this creation of mine 
 shall master me afterward with red perpetual mastery." 
 
 Lowenkampf came in. They saw by his eyes that 
 he was more than ever drawn, in the tension and heart- 
 hunger. He always brought his intimacies to the Amer 
 icans. A letter had reached him from Europe in the 
 morning, but the army had given him no time to think 
 until now. It was not the letter, but something in it, 
 that reminded him of a story. So he brought his brandy 
 and the memory : 
 
 ". . . It was two or three evenings before I left 
 Petersburg to come here. I had followed him about 
 my little son who is five years. I had followed him about 
 the house all day. Every little while at some door, or 
 through some curtain I would see the mother smiling 
 at us. It was new to me for I had been seldom home
 
 AFIELD 31 
 
 in the day-time this playing with one s little son through 
 the long day. But God, I knew I was no longer a sol 
 dier. I think the little mother knew. She is braver than 
 I. She was the soldier for not a tear did I see all that 
 day. . . . And that night I lay down with my little 
 son to talk until he fell asleep. It was dark in the room, 
 but light was in the hall-way and the door open. . . . 
 You see, he is just five and very pure and fresh." 
 
 Fallows sat up. He was startling in the shadow. 
 
 ". . . For a long time my little man stirred and 
 talked of riding horses, when his legs were a little 
 longer, and of many things to do. He would be a sol 
 dier, of course. God pity the little thought. We would 
 ride together soon not in front of my saddle, but on a 
 pony of his own one that would keep up. I was to 
 take him out to swim . . . and we would walk in 
 the country to see the trees and animals. . . . My 
 heart ached for love of him and I, the soldier, wished 
 there were no Asia in this world, no Asia, nor any war 
 or torment. . . . He had seen a gray pony which he 
 liked, because it had put its head down, as if to listen. 
 It didn t wear any straps nor saddle, but came close, as 
 one knowing a friend, and put its head down thus the 
 child was speaking to me. 
 
 "And I heard her step in the hall the light, quick 
 step. Her figure came into the light of the door-way. 
 She looked intently through the shadows where we lay, 
 her eyelids lifted, and a smile on her lips. Our little son 
 saw her and this is what he said so drowsily: 
 
 " We are talking about what we will do when we 
 get to be men. " 
 
 Fallows broke this silence : 
 
 " When we get to be men. Thank you, General. 
 That was good for me. . . . Our friend John 
 needed that little white cloud, too. I ve just been lead 
 ing him among the wilted primroses."
 
 32 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 Morning did not speak. 
 
 Lowenkampf said the fighting- would begin around the 
 outer position to-morrow. . . . But that had been 
 said before. 
 
 8 
 
 ON the night of August 3ist, for all the planning, the 
 progress of the battle was not to the Russian lik 
 ing. All that day the movements of the Russians had 
 mystified John Morning. The broad bend of the river to 
 the east of the city had been crowded with troops 
 seemingly an aimless change of pastures. He felt that 
 after all his study of the terrain and its possibilities, the 
 big thing was getting away from him. When he men 
 tioned this ugly fear to Fallows, the answer was : 
 
 "And that s just what the old man feels." 
 
 Fallows referred to Kuropatkin. 
 
 The monster spectacle had blinded Morning. He had 
 to hold hard at times to keep his rage from finding words 
 in answer to Duke Fallows scorn for the big waiting- 
 panorama which had enthralled him utterly the fleeing 
 refugees, singing infantry, the big gun postures, the 
 fluent cavalry back along the railroad, the armored hills, 
 the whole marvelous atmosphere. . . . None of this 
 appeared to matter to Fallows. He had written little or 
 nothing. God knew why he had come. He would do 
 a story, of course. . . . Morning had written a book 
 the climax of which would be the battle. He had 
 staked all on the majesty of the story. His career would 
 be constructed upon it. He would detach himself from 
 all this and appear suddenly in America the one man in 
 America who knew Liaoyang. He would be Liaoyang; 
 his mind the whole picture. He knew the wall, the Chi 
 nese names of the streets, the city and its tenderloin, 
 where the Cantonese women were held in hideous bond 
 age. He knew the hills and the river the rapid treach-
 
 AFIELD 33 
 
 ery of the Taitse. He had watched the trains come in 
 from Europe with food, horses, guns and men ; had even 
 learned much Russian and some Chinese. He had 
 studied Lowenkampf, Bilderling, Zarubaieff, Mergen- 
 thaler; had looked into the eyes of Kuropatkin him 
 self. . . . 
 
 Duke Fallows said : 
 
 "All this is but one idea, John one dirty little idea 
 multiplied. Don t let a couple of hundred thousand sol 
 diers spoil the fact in your mind. Lowenkampf person 
 ally isn t capable of fighting for himself on such a rotten 
 basis. Fighting with a stranger on a neighbor s property 
 that s the situation. Russia says to Old Man China, 
 Go, take a little airing among your hills. A certain 
 enemy of mine is on the way here, and I want to kill 
 him from your house. It will be a dirty job, but it is 
 important to me that he be killed just so. I ll clean up 
 the door-step afterward, repair all damages, and live in 
 your house myself. . . . And the Japanese have 
 trampled the flowers and vegetable-beds of the poor old 
 Widow Korea to get here 
 
 Thus the California!! took the substance out of the 
 hundred thousand words Morning had written in the 
 past few months. Dozens of small articles had been sent 
 out until a fortnight ago through Lowenkampf, via 
 Shanghai, but the main fiber of each was kept for this 
 great story, which he meant to sell in one piece in 
 America. 
 
 Kuropatkin both Morning and Fallows saw him as 
 the mighty beam in the world s eye at this hour. To 
 Morning he was the risen master of events ; to Fallows 
 merely a figure tossed up from the moil. Morning saw 
 him as the source of power to the weak, as a silencer of 
 the disputatious and the envious, as the holding selvage 
 to the vast Russian garment, worn, stained and ready to 
 ravel, the one structure of hope in a field of infinite fail 
 ures. Fallows saw him as an integral part of all this
 
 34 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 disorder and disruption, one whose vision was marvelous 
 only in the detection of excuses for himself in the action 
 of others ; whose sorrow was a pose and whose self was 
 far too imperious for him firmly to grip the throat of a 
 large and vital obstacle. What Morning called the mys 
 tical somberness of the chief, Fallows called the sullen 
 silence of dim comprehension. Somewhere between these 
 notations the Commander stood. . . . They had seen 
 him at dusk that day. "He seems to be repressing him 
 self by violent effort," the younger man whispered. 
 
 "What would you say he were repressing, John 
 his appetite?" 
 
 The answer was silence, and late that night, (the 
 Russian force was now tense and compact as a set 
 spring), Fallows dropped down upon his cot, saying: 
 "You think I m a scoffer, don t you?" 
 "You break a man s point, that s all " 
 "I know but we re not to be together always. 
 . . . Listen, don t think me a scoffer, even now. 
 These big, bulky things won t hold you forever. Per 
 haps, if I were a bigger man, I d keep silent. You ll 
 write them well, no doubt about that. . . . But don t 
 get into the habit of thinking me a scoffer. There s such 
 a lot of finer things to fall for. John, I wasn t a scoffer 
 when I first read your stuff and saw big forces moving 
 around you. ... A man who knows a little about 
 women, knows a whole lot about men. . . . To be 
 a famous soldier, John, a man can t have any such forces 
 moving around him. He must be an empty back-ground. 
 All his strength is the compound of meat and eggs and 
 
 fish ; his strength goes to girth and jowl and fist " 
 
 "You re a wonderful friend to me, Duke." 
 "That s just what I didn t want you to say. . . , 
 There s no excellence on my part. Like a good book, I 
 couldn t riddle you in one reading." 
 
 Morning found himself again, as he wrote on that 
 last night of preparation ; that last night of summer. It
 
 AFIELD 35 
 
 was always the way, when the work came well. It 
 brought him liveableness with himself and kindness for 
 others. He had his own precious point of view again, 
 too. He pictured Kuropatkin . . . sitting at his desk, 
 harried by his sovereign, tormented by princes, seeing 
 as no other could see the weaknesses in the Russian dis 
 plays of power, and knowing the Japanese better than 
 any other ; the man who had come up from Plevna fight 
 ing, who had written his fightings, who was first to say, 
 "We are not ready," and first to gather up the unpre- 
 paredness for battle. 
 
 Morning felt himself the reporter of the Fates for 
 this great carnage. He wanted to see the fighting, to 
 miss no phase of it to know the mechanics, the results, 
 the speed, the power, weakness and every rending of this 
 great force. He did not want the morals of it, the evil 
 spirit behind, but the brute material action. He wanted 
 the literary Kuropatkin, not a possible reality. He 
 wanted the one hundred thousand words driven by the 
 one-seeing, master-seeing reporter s instinct. He was 
 Russian in hope and aspiration but absolutely negative 
 in what was to take place. He wanted the illusion of the 
 service ; he saw the illusion more clearly ; so could the 
 public. The illusion bore out every line of his work so 
 far. To laugh at the essence of the game destroyed its 
 meaning, and the huge effect he planned to make in 
 America. 
 
 Morning was sorry now for having lost during the 
 day the sense of fine relation with Fallows, but every 
 thing he had found admirable from toys and sweets to 
 wars and women the sick man had found futile and 
 betraying; everything that his own mind found good 
 was waylaid and diminished by the other. Fallows, in 
 making light of the dramatic suspense of the city, had 
 struck at the very roots of his ambition. The work of 
 the night had healed this all, however.
 
 36 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 The last night of summer joyously he ended the big 
 picture. Three themes ran through entire Nodzu s 
 artillery, under which the Russians were willingly dis 
 lodging from the shoulders and slopes of Pensu-marong ; 
 the tread of the Russian sentries below, (a real bit of 
 Russian bass in the Liaoyang symphony), and the glis- 
 sando of the rain. 
 
 He sat back from his machine at last. There were 
 two hundred and seventy sheets altogether of thin tough 
 parchment-copy 400 words to the page, and the whole 
 could be folded into an inside pocket. It was ready for 
 the battle itself. . . . All the Morning moods were 
 in the work moments of photographic description, of 
 philosophic calm, instant reversals to glowing idealism 
 then the thrall of the spectacle finally, a touch, just a 
 touch to add age, of Fallows scorn. It was newspaper 
 stuff what was wanted. He had brought his whole in 
 strument up to concert-pitch to-night. The story was 
 ready for the bloody artist. 
 
 His heart softened emotionally toward Fallows lying 
 on his back over in the shadows. . . . Lowenkampf 
 came in for a queer melting moment. . . . Morning 
 looked affectionately at his little traveling type-mill. It 
 had never faltered a hasty, cheap, last-minute purchase 
 in America, but it had seen him through. It was like a 
 horse one picks up afield, wears out and never takes 
 home, but thinks of many times in the years afterward. 
 Good little beast. . . . And this made him think 
 with a thrill of Eve, brooding in the dark below. . . . 
 She was adjusted to a thought in his mind that had to 
 do with the end of the battle. It was a big-bored, 
 furious idea. Morning glanced at his watch. Two- 
 fifteen on the morning of September. He unlaced one 
 shoe, but the idea intervened again and he moved off in 
 the stirring dream of it. It was three o clock when he 
 bent to the other shoe.
 
 AFIELD 37 
 
 ALL the next day, Liaoyang was shelled from the 
 south and southeast; all day Eve shivered and 
 sweated in the smoky turmoil. At dusk, Morning, to 
 whom the mare was far too precious to be worn out in 
 halter, rode back to Yentai along the railroad. She op 
 erated like a perfect toy over that twelve miles of beaten 
 turf. The rain ceased for an hour or two, and the dark 
 warmth of the night seemed to poise her every spring. 
 The man was electric from her. At the station Morn 
 ing learned that Lowenkampf, with thirteen battalions, 
 already had occupied the lofty coal-fields, ten miles to 
 the east on a stub of the railroad. He had first sup 
 posed the force of Siberians now crowding the station 
 to be Lowenkampf s men ; instead it was his reserve. 
 Eve had lathered richly, so that an hour passed before 
 she was cool enough for grain or water. He rubbed her 
 down, meanwhile, talked to her softly and made plans. 
 Her eye flashed red at the candle, as he shut the door of 
 the stable. That night on foot he did the ten miles to 
 the collieries, joining Fallows and the General at mid 
 night. . . . Morning was struck with the look of 
 Lowenkampf s face. He wasn t taking a drink that 
 night ; his mouth was old and white. A thin bar of pal 
 lor stretched obliquely from chin to cheek-bone. The 
 chin trembled, too ; the eyes were hungerful, yet so kind. 
 Desperate incongruity somewhere. This man should 
 have been back in Europe with his neighbors about the 
 fire his comrade tucked in up-stairs, the little mother 
 pouring tea. And yet, Lowenkampf effaced with his 
 anguish and dreamy-eyed, as if surveying the distance 
 between his heaven and hell was the brain of the sledge 
 that was to break the Flanker s back-bone to-morrow. 
 
 "The Taitse is only ten miles south," said Fallows, 
 as they turned in. "Bilderling is there. Kuroki is sup 
 posed to poke his nose in between, and Lowenkampf is to
 
 3 8 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 smash it against Bilderling. Mergenthaler s Cossacks 
 are here to take the van in the morning, and we re backed 
 up by a big body of Siberians, stretching behind to Yen- 
 
 tai station " 
 
 "I saw em," said Morning. "Lowenkampf looks sick 
 with strain." 
 
 Day appeared, with just the faintest touch of red 
 showing like a broken bit of glass. Rain-clouds, burst 
 ing-heavy, immediately rolled over it, a deluge of grays, 
 leisurely stirring with whitish and watery spots. Though 
 his troops were taking the field, Lowenkampf had not 
 left his quarters in the big freight go-down. Command 
 ers hurried in and out. Fallows was filling two canteens 
 with diluted tea, when an old man entered, weeping. It 
 was Colonel Ritz, bent, red-eyed, nearly seventy, who had 
 been ordered, on account of age and decrepitude, to re 
 main with the staff. Brokenly, he begged for his com 
 mand. 
 
 "I have always stayed with the line, General. I shall 
 be quick as another. Don t keep an old man, who has 
 always stuck to the line don t keep one like that back 
 in time of battle." 
 
 Lowenkampf smiled and embraced him sending him 
 out with his regiment. 
 
 Mergenthaler now came in. There was something 
 icy and hateful about this Roman-faced giant. His coun 
 tenance was like a bronze shield so small the black eyes, 
 and so wide and high the cheek-bones. For months his 
 Cossacks had done sensational work small fighting, far 
 scouting, desperate service. He despised Lowenkampf ; 
 believed he had earned the right to be the hammer to 
 day ; and, in truth, he had, but Lowenkampf, who ranked 
 him, had been chosen. Bleak and repulsive with rage, 
 the Cossack chief made no effort to repress himself. 
 Lowenkampf was reminded that he had been policing the 
 streets of Liaoyang for weeks, that his outfit was "fat-
 
 AFIELD 39 
 
 heeled and duck-livered." . . . More was said be 
 fore Mergenthaler stamped out, his jaw set like a stone 
 balcony. It seemed as if he tore from the heart of Low- 
 enkampf the remnant of its stamina. . . . For a 
 moment the three were alone in the head-quarters. Fal 
 lows caught the General by the shoulders and looked 
 down in his face : 
 
 "Little Father you re the finest and most courageous 
 of them all. ... It will be known and proven 
 what I say, old friend when we get to be men. " 
 
 The masses of Lowenkampf s infantry, forming on 
 the heights among the coal-fields, melted at the outer 
 edges and slid downward. Willingly the men went. 
 They did not know that this was the day. They had 
 been fearfully expectant of battle at first ever since 
 Lake Baikal was crossed. Battalion after battalion slid 
 off the heights, and were lost in the queer lanes running 
 through the rocks and low timber below. The general 
 movement was silent. The rain held off; the air was 
 close and warm. Lowenkampf, unvaryingly attentive 
 to the two Americans, put them in charge of Lieutenant 
 Luban, the young staff officer, whom Morning had 
 caught in his arms from the back of the sorrel. Down 
 the ledges they went, as the others. 
 
 Morning was uneasy, as one who feels he has for 
 gotten something a tugging in his mind to go back. 
 He was strongly convinced that Lowenkampf was unsub 
 stantial in a military way. He could not overcome the 
 personal element of this dread as if the General were of 
 his house, and he knew better than another that he was 
 ill-prepared for the day s trial. 
 
 Fallows welcomed any disaster. As he had scorned 
 the army in its waiting, he scorned it now in its strike. 
 He looked very lean and long. The knees were in cor 
 duroy and unstable, but his nerve could not have been 
 steadier had he been called to a tea-party by Kuroki. 
 As one who had long since put these things behind him,
 
 40 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 Fallows appeared ; indeed, as one sportively called out by 
 the younger set, to whom severing the spine of a flanker 
 was fresh and engrossing business. . . . Morning 
 choked with suppressions. Luban talked low and wide. 
 He was in a funk. Both saw it. Neither would have 
 objected, except that he monopolized their thoughts with 
 his broken English, and to no effect. 
 
 Now they went into the kao Hang vast, quiet, enfold 
 ing. It held the heat stale from yesterday. The sea 
 sonal rains had filled the spongy loam at the roots, with 
 much to spare blackening the lower stems. . . . For 
 an hour and a half they sunk into the several paths and 
 lost themselves, Lowenkampf s untried battalions. The 
 armies of the world might have vanished so, only to be 
 seen by the birds, moving like vermin in a hide. . . . 
 Men began to think of food and drink. The heights of 
 Yentai, which they had left in bitter hatred so shortly 
 ago, was now like hills of rest on the long road home. 
 More and more the resistance of men shrunk in the evil 
 magic of this pressure of grain and sky and holding 
 earth a curious, implacable umvorldliness it was, that 
 made the flesh cry out. 
 
 "They should have cut this grain," Luban said for the 
 third time. 
 
 Fallows had said it first. Anyone should have seen 
 the ruin of this advance, unless the end of the millet were 
 reached before the beginning of battle. They had to re 
 call with effort at last, that there was an outer world of 
 cities and seas and plains anything but this hollow coun 
 try of silence and fatness. 
 
 If you have ever jumped at the sudden drumming of 
 a pneumatic hammer, as it rivets a bolt against the steel, 
 you have a suggestion of the nervous shock from that 
 first far machine-gun of Kuroki s just a suggestion, 
 because Lowenkampf s soldiers at the moment were suf 
 focating in kao Hang. ... In such a strange and ex 
 pensive way, they cut the crops that day.
 
 AFIELD 41 
 
 Morning trod on the tail of the battalion ahead. It 
 had stopped ; he had not. The soldier in front whom 
 he bumped turned slowly around and looked into his 
 face. The wide, glassy blue eyes then turned to Fallows, 
 and after resting a curious interval, finally found 
 Luban. 
 
 The face was broad and white as lard. Whatever else 
 was in it, there was no denying the fear, the hate, the 
 cunning all of a rudimentary kind. Luban was held by 
 the man s gaze. The fright in both hearts sparked in 
 contact. The stupid face of the soldier suddenly re 
 flected the terror of the officer. And this was the result: 
 The wide-staring suddenly altered to a squint ; the vacant, 
 helpless staring of a bewildered child turned into the 
 bright activity of a trapped rodent. 
 
 Luban had failed in his great instant. His jaw was 
 loose-hinged, his mouth leaked saliva. 
 
 Now Morning and Fallows saw other faces twenty 
 faces in the grain, faces searching for the nearest officer. 
 Their eyes roved to Luban ; necks craned among the fox 
 tails. There was a slow giving of the line, and bumping 
 contacts from ahead like a string of cars. . . . 
 Morning recalled the look of Luban, as he had helped 
 him down from the sorrel. He had helped then; he 
 hated now. Fallows was better. He plumped the boy 
 on the shoulder and said laughingly : 
 
 "Talk to em. Get em in hand quick, Luban or 
 they ll be off !" 
 
 It was all in ten seconds. The nearest soldiers had 
 seen Luban fail. Other platoons, doubtless many, 
 formed in similar tableaux to the same end. A second 
 machine-gun took up the story. It was far-off, and 
 slightly to the left of the Russian line of advance. The 
 incomprehensible energy of the thing weakened the Rus 
 sian column, although it drew no blood. 
 
 A roar ahead from an unseen battalion-officer the 
 Russian Forward. Luban tried to repeat it, but pitifully.
 
 42 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 A great beast rising from the ooze and settling back 
 against the voice such was the answer. 
 
 The Thought formed. It was the thought of the day. 
 None was too stupid to catch the spirit of it. Certain it 
 was, and pervading as the grain. Indeed, it was con 
 ceived of kao Viang. The drum of the machine-gun, like 
 a file in a tooth, was but its quickener. It flourished 
 under the ghostly grays and whites of the sky. In the 
 forward battalions the Thought already clothed itself in 
 action : 
 
 To run back to follow the paths back through the 
 grain to reach the decent heights again. And this 
 was but a miniature of the thought that mastered the 
 whole Russian army in Asia to go back to rise from 
 the ghastly hollows of Asia and turn homeward 
 again. 
 
 It leaped like a demon upon the unset volition of the 
 mass. Full-formed, it arose from the lull. It effected 
 the perfect turning. 
 
 Morning saw it, and wanted the source. He had 
 planned too long to be denied now. The rout was big 
 to handle, but he wanted the -front a glimpse of the 
 actual inimical line. It was not enough for him to watch 
 the fright and havoc streaming back. Calling a cheery 
 adieu to Fallows, he bowed against the current alone 
 obeying the Russian Forward. 
 
 10 
 
 AT the edge of the trampled lane, often shunted off 
 into the standing crop, Morning made his way, 
 running when he could. . . . The pictures were in 
 finite ; a lifetime of pictures ; hundreds of faces and each 
 a picture. Men passed him, heads bowed, arms about 
 their faces, like figures in the old Dore paintings, run 
 ning from the wrath of the Lord. Here and there was
 
 AFIELD 43 
 
 pale defiance. Nine sheepish soldiers carried a single 
 wounded man, the much-handled fallen one looking silly 
 as the rest. 
 
 The utter ghostliness of it all was in Morning s mind. 
 . . . Gasping for breath, after many minutes of run 
 ning, he sank down to rest. Soldiers sought to pick him 
 up and carry him back. There were others who could 
 not live with themselves after the first panic. They fell 
 out of the retreat to join him. Others stopped to fire 
 a random emptying of magazines in the millet. Certain 
 groups huddled when they saw him mistaking a civilian 
 for an officer and covered their faces. Officers begged, 
 prayed for the men to hold, but the torrent increased, 
 individuals diving into the thick of the grain and leaking 
 around behind. White showed beneath the beards, and 
 white lips moved in prayer. The locked bayonets of the 
 Russians had never seemed so dreadful as when low-held 
 in the grain. . . . One beardless boy strode back 
 jauntily, his lips puckered in a whistle. 
 
 The marvelous complexity of common men this was 
 the sum of all pictures, and the great realization of John 
 Morning. His soul saw much that his eyes failed. The 
 day was a marvelous cabinet of gifts secret chambers 
 to be opened in after years. 
 
 Now he was running low, having entered the zone of 
 fire. He heard the steel in the grain ; stems were 
 snapped by invisible fingers ; foxtails lopped. He saw the 
 slow leaning of stems half-cut. . . . Among the 
 fallen, on a rising slope, men were crawling back ; and 
 here and there, bodies had been cast off, the cloth-covered 
 husks of poor driven peasants. They had gone back to 
 the soil, these bodies, never really belonging to the sol 
 diery. It was only when they writhed that John Morn 
 ing forgot himself and his work. The art of the dead 
 was consummate. 
 
 The grain thinned. He had come to the end of Low- 
 enkampf s infantry. It had taken an hour and a half
 
 44 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 for the command to enter in order ; less than a half-hour 
 to dissipate. The rout had been like a cloud-burst. 
 
 And this was the battle. (Morning had to hold fast 
 to the thought.) Long had he waited for this hour; 
 months he had constructed the army in his story for this 
 hour of demolition. It was enough to know that Low- 
 enkampf had failed. Liaoyang, the battle, was lost. 
 . . . Old Ritz went by weeping he had been too old, 
 they said; they had not wanted him to take his regiment 
 to field. Yet he was perhaps the last to leave the field. 
 Only his dead remained, and Colonel Ritz was not weep 
 ing for them. . . . 
 
 Now Morning saw it was not all over. Before gain 
 ing the ridge swept by Kuroki s fire, he knew that Mer- 
 genthaler was still fighting. It came to him with the 
 earthy rumble of cavalry. To the left, in a crevasse 
 under the crest of the ridge, he saw a knot of horses 
 with empty saddles, and a group of men. Closer to them 
 he crawled, along the sheltered side of the ridge, until in 
 the midst of Russian officers, he saw that splendid bruis 
 ing brute, who had stamped out of headquarters that 
 morning, draining the heart of Lowenkampf as h e went. 
 Mergenthaler of the Cossacks designed merely to be 
 the eyes and fingers of the fighting force; yet unsup 
 ported, unbodied as it were, he still held the ridge. 
 
 Kuroki, as yet innocent of the rout, would not other 
 wise have been checked. His ponderous infantry was 
 not the sort to be stopped by these light harriers of the 
 Russian army. The Flanker was watching for the Ham 
 mer, and the Hammer already had been shattered. 
 . . . Mergenthaler, cursing, handled his cavalry 
 squadrons to their death, lightly and perfectly as coins 
 in his palm. Every moment that he stayed the Japanese, 
 he knew well that he was holding up to the quick scorn 
 of the world the foot-soldiers of Lowenkampf, whom he 
 hated. His head was lifted above the rocks to watch the 
 field. His couriers came and went, slipping up and down
 
 AFIELD 45 
 
 through the thicker timber, still farther to the left. 
 . . . Morning crawled up nearby until he saw the 
 field and now action, more abandoned than he had ever 
 dared to dream : 
 
 An uncultivated valley strewn with rocks and low 
 timber. Three columns of Japanese infantry pouring 
 down from the opposite parallel ridge, all smoky with 
 the hideous force of the reserve machine-guns, and a 
 mile of rifles stretching around to the right. (It was this 
 wing s firing that had started the havoc in the grain.) 
 
 Three columns of infantry pouring down into the 
 ancient valley, under the gray stirring sky brown col 
 umns, very even and unhasting and below, the Cos 
 sacks. 
 
 Morning lived in the past ages. He lay between two 
 rocks watching, having no active sense but pure recep 
 tivity. Time was thrust back. . . . Three brown 
 dragons crawling down the slopes in the gray day 
 knights upon horses formed to slay the dragons. 
 
 Out of the sheltering rocks and timber they rode 
 and chose the central dragon quite in the classic way. 
 It turned to meet the knights upon horses head lifted, 
 neck swollen like the nuchal ribs of the cobra. In the 
 act of striking it was ridden down, but the knights were 
 falling upon the smashed head. The mated dragons had 
 attacked from either side. . 
 
 It was a fragment, a moving upon the ground, that 
 company of knights upon horses, and the Voice of it, 
 all but deadened by the rifles, came up spent and pitiful. 
 
 Mergenthaler s thin, high voice was not hushed. He 
 knew how to detach another outfit from the rocks and 
 timber-thickets, already found by the Japanese on the 
 ridge, already deluged with fire. Out from the betray 
 ing shelter, the second charge, a new child of disaster, 
 ran forth to strike Kuroki s left. . . . Parts of the 
 film were elided. The cavalrymen fell away by a terrible 
 magic. Again the point thickened and drew back, met
 
 46 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 the charge ; again the welter and the thrilling back-sweep 
 of the Russian fragment. 
 
 Morning missed something. His soul was listening 
 for something. ... It was comment from Duke 
 Fallows, so long marking time to events. . . . He 
 laughed. He was glad to be free, yet his whole inner 
 life drew back in loathing from Mengenthaler as if to 
 rush to his old companion. . . . And Mergenthaler 
 turned the brown high-boned cheeks hung with a smile 
 of derision. He was climbing far and high on Lowen- 
 fcampf s shame. ... He gained the saddle this 
 hard, huge Egoist, the staff clinging to him, and over the 
 ridge they went to set more traps. 
 
 The wide, rocking shoulders of the General sank into 
 the timber as he trotted with his aides down the death- 
 ridden valley. It may have been the sight of this little 
 party that started a particular machine-gun on the Jap 
 anese right. . . . The sizable bay the chief rode 
 looked like a polo-pony under the mighty frame. Morn 
 ing did not see him fall : only the plunging bay with an 
 empty saddle ; and then when the timber opened a little, 
 the staff carrying the leader up the trail. 
 
 It was the mystery which delayed the Japanese, not 
 Mergenthaler. When at last Kuroki s left wing contin 
 ued to report no aggressive movement from Bilderling 
 river-ward; and when continued combing in the north 
 raised nothing but bleak hills and grain-valleys hushed 
 between showers, he flooded further columns down the 
 ridge, and slew what he could of the Russian horsemen 
 who tried with absurd heroism to block his way. At two 
 in the afternoon the Flanker fixed his base among the 
 very rocks where Morning had lain and the next posi 
 tion for him to take was the coal-hills of Yentai. Only 
 the ghosts of the cavalry stood between and kao Hong. 
 
 Morning turned back a last time to the fields of millet 
 in the early dusk. He had been waiting for Mergen 
 thaler to die. The General lay in the very go-down
 
 AFIELD 47 
 
 where he had outraged Lowenkampf that morning; and 
 now the Japanese were driving the Russians from the 
 position. . . . Mergenthaler would not die. They 
 carried him to a coal-car, and soldiers pushed it on to 
 Yentai, the station. 
 
 The Japanese were closing in. They were already in 
 the northern heights contending with Stakelberg; they 
 were stretched out bluffing Bilderling to the southward. 
 They were locked with Zarubaieff at the southern front 
 of Liaoyang. They were in the grain. . . . Cold 
 and soulless Morning felt, as one who has failed in a 
 great temptation ; as one who has lived to lose, and has 
 not been spared the picture of his own eternal failure. 
 
 He looked back a last time at the grain in the closing 
 night. The Japanese were there, brown men, native to 
 the grain. The great shadowed field had whipped Low 
 enkampf and lost the battle. It lay in the dusk like a 
 woman, trampled, violated, feebly waving. Rain-clouds 
 came with darkness to cover the nakedness and bleeding. 
 
 ii 
 
 DUKE Fallows saw but one face 
 John Morning studied a thousand, mastered the 
 heroism of the Cossacks, filled his brain with blood- 
 pictures and the incorrigible mystery of common men. 
 Duke Fallows saw but one face. In the beauty and 
 purity of its inspiration, he read a vile secret out of the 
 past. To the very apocalypse of this secret, he read and 
 understood. The shame of it blackened the heavens for 
 his eyes, but out of its night and torment came a Voice 
 uttering the hope of the human spirit for coming days. 
 
 Morning had left. Luban had put on bluster and 
 roaring. Their place in the grain was now broad from 
 trampling ; the flight was on in full. It meant something; 
 to Fallows. It was not that he wanted the Japanese to 
 win the battle ; the doings of the Japanese were of little
 
 48 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 concern to him. He felt curiously that the Japanese 
 were spiritually estranged from the white man. Russia 
 was different ; he was close to the heart of the real Rus 
 sia, whose battle was at home. Russia s purpose in Asia 
 was black ; he was full of scorn for the purpose, but full 
 of love for the troops. Strange gladness was upon him 
 as the men broke away. Reality at home would come 
 from this disaster. He constructed the world s battle 
 from it, and sang his song. 
 
 One soldier running haltingly for his life looked up 
 to the face of Luban of the roaring voice and laughed. 
 Luban turned, and perceived that Fallows had not missed 
 the laugh of the soldier. This incident, now closed, was 
 in a way responsible for the next. 
 
 . . . Out of the grain came striding a tall soldier 
 of the ranks. His beard was black, his eyes very blue. 
 In his eyes was a certain fire that kindled the nature of 
 Duke Fallows as it had never been kindled before, not 
 even by the most feminine yielding. The man s broad 
 shoulders were thrust back ; his face clean of cowardice, 
 clean as the grain and as open to the sky. His head 
 was erect and bare ; he carried no gun, scorned the pre 
 tense of looking for wounded. Had he carried a dinner- 
 pail, the picture would have been as complete a good 
 man going home from a full-testing day. 
 
 In that moment Fallows saw more than from the 
 whole line before. . . . Here was a conscript. He 
 had been taken from his house, forced across Europe and 
 Asia to this hour. The reverse of his persecutors had 
 set him free. This freedom was the fire in his eyes. 
 . . . v .They had torn him from his house; they had 
 driven and brutalized him for months. And now they 
 had come to dreadful disaster. It was such a disaster as 
 a plain man might have prayed for. He had prayed 
 for it in the beginning, but in the long, slow gatherings 
 for battle, in the terrible displays of power, he had lost 
 .his faith to pray. Yet the plain man s God had an-
 
 AFIELD 49 
 
 swered that early prayer. This was the brightness of the 
 burning in the blue eyes. 
 
 His persecutors had been shamed and undone. He 
 had seen his companions dissipate, his sergeants run ; 
 seen his captains fail to hold. The great force that had 
 tortured him, that had seemed the world in strength, was 
 now broken before his eyes. Its mighty muscles were 
 writhing, their strength running down. The love of God 
 was splendid in the ranker s heart ; the breath of home 
 had come. The turning in the grain was a turning 
 homeward. 
 
 All this Fallows saw. It was illumination to him 
 the hour of his great reception. 
 
 Luban, just insulted by the other infantryman, now 
 faced the big, blithe presence, emerging unhurried from 
 the grain. Luban raised his voice: 
 
 "And what are you sneaking back for?" 
 
 "I am not sneaking " 
 
 "Rotten soldier stuff you should be shot down." 
 
 "I am not a soldier I am a ploughman." 
 
 "You are here to fight " 
 
 "They forced me to come " 
 
 "Forced you to fight for your Fatherland?" 
 
 "This is not my Fatherland, but a strange coun- 
 try " 
 
 "You are here for the Fatherland " 
 
 "I have six children in Russia. The Fatherland is 
 not feeding them. My field is not ploughed." 
 
 The talk had crackled ; it had required but a few 
 seconds ; Luban had done it all for Fallows to see and 
 hear but Fallows was very far from observing the pose 
 of that weakling. The Ploughman held him heart and 
 soul as did the infallible and instantly unerring truth 
 of his words. The world s poor, the world s degraded, 
 had found its voice. 
 
 The man was white with truth, like a priest of Mel- 
 chizedek.
 
 50 
 
 Luban must have broken altogether. Fallows, listen 
 ing, watching the Ploughman with his soul, did not turn. 
 . . . Now the man s face changed. The lips parted 
 strangely, the eyelids b fting. Whiteness wavered between 
 the eyes of the Ploughman and the eyes of Duke Fal 
 lows. Luban s pistol crashed and the man fell with a 
 sob. 
 
 Fallows was kneeling among the soaked roots of the 
 millet, holding the soldier in his arms : 
 
 "Living God, to die for you you, who are so straight 
 and so young. . . . Hear me don t go yet I must 
 have your name, Brother. . . . Luban did not know 
 you he is just a little sick man he didn t know you or 
 he wouldn t have done this. . . . Tell me your name 
 . . . and the place of your babes, and their mother. 
 . . . Oh, be sure they shall be fed glad and proud 
 am I to do that easy thing! . . . You have shown me 
 the Nearer God. . . . They shall be fed, and they 
 shall hear ! The world, cities and nations, all who suffer, 
 shall hear what the Ploughman said the soul of the 
 Ploughman, who is the hope of the world. . . . You 
 have spoken for Russia. . . . And now rest rest, 
 Big Brother you have done your work." 
 
 The soldier looked up to him. There had been pain 
 and wrenching, the vision of a desolated house. Now, 
 his eyes rested upon the American. The shadow of death 
 lifted. He saw his brother in the eyes that held him 
 his brother, and it seemed, the Son of Man smiled there 
 behind the tears. ... He smiled back like a weary 
 child. Peace came to him, lustrous from the shadow, 
 for lo ! his field was ploughed and children sang in his 
 house. 
 
 Fallows had not risen from his knees. He was talk 
 ing to himself : 
 
 ". . . Out of the grain he came the soul of the 
 Ploughman. And gently he spoke to us . . . and
 
 AFIELD 51 
 
 this is the day of the battle. I came to the battle and 
 I go to carry his message to the poor to those who 
 labor to Russia and the America of the future. Luban. 
 spoke the thought of the world, but the Ploughman spoke 
 for humanity risen. He spoke for the women, and for 
 the poor. . . . Bright he came from the grain 
 bright and unafraid and those shall hear him, who suf 
 fer and are heavy-laden. This is the battle! . . . 
 And his voice came to me a great and gracious voice 
 for tsars and kings and princes to hear and I am to 
 carry his message. . . ." 
 
 Luban laughed feebly at last, and Fallows looked up 
 to him. 
 
 "You ll hear him in your passing, Luban, poor lad. 
 You ll hear him in your hell. Until you are as simple 
 and as pure as this Ploughman you shall hear and see 
 all this again. Though you should hang by the neck to 
 night, Luban, this picture would go out with you. For 
 this is the hour you killed your Christ." 
 
 12 
 
 LOWENKAMPF was the name that meant defeat. 
 Lowenkampf it was like the rain that night. 
 . . . "Lowenkampf started out too soon." . . . 
 Morning heard it. Fallows heard it. The coughing sen 
 tries heard it. The whole dismal swamp of drenched, 
 whipped soldiery heard it. Sleek History had awakened 
 to grasp it ; Kuropatkin had washed his hands. . . . 
 Lowenkampf had started out too soon that morning. The 
 Siberians had only left Yentai Station proper when Low 
 enkampf set forth from the Coal-heights. Had his sup 
 ports been in position (very quickly and clearly the 
 world s war-experts would see this) the rout in the grain 
 would have been checked. 
 
 As it was, many of Lowenkampf s soldiers had run 
 the entire ten miles from the heights to the station, Yen-
 
 52 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 tai after emerging from kao-liang evading the Sibe 
 rian supports as they ran, as chaos flies from order. 
 Now in the darkness (with Kuroki bivouacked upon the 
 main trophy of the day, the Coal-heights) the shamed 
 battalions of Lowenkampf re-formed along the main line 
 in the midst of their unused reserves. 
 
 The day had been like a month of fever to Morning, 
 but Duke Fallows was a younger man, and a stranger 
 that night. . . . Morning tried to work, but he was 
 too close to it all, too tired. It was as if he were trying 
 to tell of a misfortune that had no beginning, and whose 
 every phase was his own heart s concern. His weariness 
 was like the beginning of death coldness and pervading 
 ennui. Against his will he was gathered in the glowing 
 currents of Duke Fallows watching, listening, not pre 
 tending even to understand, but borne along. Together 
 they went in to the General s private room. Lowenkampf 
 looked up, gathered himself with difficulty and smiled. 
 Fallows turned to Morning, asked him to stand by the 
 door, then strode forward and knelt by the General s 
 knees. It did not seem extraordinary to Morning so 
 much was insane. 
 
 "You were chosen, old friend. It has been a big day 
 for the under-dog " 
 
 "I have lost Liaoyang." 
 
 "That was written." 
 
 "My little boy will hear it in the street. He will hear 
 it in the school. Before he is a man he will hear it." 
 
 "I shall take him upon my knee. I shall tell him of 
 you in a way that he shall never forget. And his mother 
 I shall tell her " 
 
 Lowenkampf rubbed his eyes. 
 
 "I have business in Russia. This day I heard what 
 must be done. It is almost as if I had gotten to be a 
 man." 
 
 Fallows leaned back laughingly, his arms extended, 
 as if pushing the other s knees from him.
 
 AFIELD 53 
 
 Some inner wall broke, and the General wept. Morn 
 ing put his foot against the door. The thought in his 
 heart was : "This is something I cannot write." . . . 
 Morning held the idea coldly now that Fallows was 
 mentally softened from the strain. Other things came up 
 to support it . . . He, too, had seen a soldier shot 
 by an officer. It was discipline. At best, it was but one of 
 the thousand pictures. It had happened less because the 
 man was retiring without a wound thousands were do 
 ing that than because the man answered back, when the 
 officer spoke. He did not hear what the soldier said. 
 This soldier possibly had trans-Baikal children, too. The 
 day and his long illness had crazed Fallows, now at the 
 knees of the man who had lost the battle. 
 
 "... I know what you thought this morning 
 when you saw your men march down into the grain," 
 Fallows was saying to the General. "You thought of 
 your little boy and his mother. You thought of the 
 babes and wives and mothers of those soldiers of yours 
 whom you were sending to the front. You didn t want 
 to send them out. You re too close to becoming a man 
 for that. You wondered if you would not have to suffer 
 for sending them out so and if this particular suffering 
 would not have to do with your little boy and his 
 mother 
 
 "My God, stop, Fallows 
 
 "You had to think that. You wouldn t be Lowen- 
 kampf if you failed to think that. ... I love you 
 for it, old friend. Big things will come from Lowen- 
 kampf, 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 plat 
 form 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
 
 54 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 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 shoul 
 ders 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 Amer 
 icans 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 anaes 
 thesia to find itself missing in part and strangely dis 
 ordered. It was afraid to sleep, afraid to think of it 
 self, 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 writ 
 ing 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," Fal 
 lows 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 in 
 stantly 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. . . ." 
 
 Fallows stood up his face was in shadow, so far be 
 neath was the odorous lamp. 
 
 "Living God I can t make them see I can t 
 make them see! They re all enchanted. Or else I m
 
 AFIELD 55 
 
 dead and this is hell. . . . They talk about Country. 
 They talk about making a man stand in a place of sure 
 death for his Country in this Twentieth Century when 
 war has lost its last vestige of meaning to the man in the 
 ranks, and his Country is a thing of rottenness and moral 
 desolation ! What is the Country to the man in the 
 ranks ? A group of corrupt, inbred undermen who study 
 to sate themselves to tickle and soften themselves with 
 the property and blood and slavery of the poor. . . . 
 A good man, a clean man, is torn from his house to 
 fight, to stand in the fire-pits and die for such monsters. 
 Suddenly the poor man sees ! 
 
 ". . . He came forth from the grain with vision 
 smiling and unafraid. He is not afraid to fight, but he 
 has found himself on the wrong side of the battle. When 
 he fights again it will be for his child, for his house, for 
 his brother, for his woman, for his soul. Blood in plenty 
 has he for such a war. . . . Think of it, John Morn 
 ing, the Empire was entrusted to poor little Luban 
 against this man of vision ! He came forth smiling from 
 the grain. 7 do not belong here, my masters. I was 
 torn away from my woman and children, and I must be 
 home for the winter ploughing. It is a long zvay 
 and I must be off. I am a ploughman, not a soldier. I 
 belong to my children and my field. My country does 
 not plough m\ field does not feed my children. . . 
 What could Luban do but kill him little agent of 
 Herod ? But the starry child lives ! . . . 
 
 "And listen, John, to-night you heard them we 
 heard these fat-necked, vulture-breasted commanders 
 vain, envy-poisoned, scandal-mongering commanders, 
 complaining to each other: See, what stuff has been 
 given us to win battles with ! . . . I have told it and 
 they cannot see. They are not even good devils ; they 
 are not decent devourers. They have no humor that is 
 their deadly sin. An adult, half-human murderer, seeing 
 his soldiers leave the field, would cry aloud, Hello, you
 
 56 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 Innocents so you have wakened up at last ! But these 
 cannot see. Their eyes are stuck together. It is their 
 deadly sin the sin against the Holy Ghost to lack 
 humor to this extent !" 
 
 Morning laughed strangely. "Come on to bed, you 
 old anarchist," he said, though sleep was far from his 
 own eyes. 
 
 "That s it, John. Anarchy. In the name of Father 
 land, Russia murders a hundred thousand workmen out 
 here in Asia. In answer, a few men and women gather 
 together in a Petersburg cellar, saying, We are fools, not 
 heroes. When we fight again it will be for Our Coun 
 try! And they are anarchists their cause is Terror 
 ism!" 
 
 "We re all shot to pieces to-night, Duke " 
 
 "We are alive, John. Lowenkampf is alive. But he 
 who spoke to me this day, who came forth so blithely to 
 die in my arms (his woman sleeps ill to-night in the 
 midst of her babes), and he is lying out in the rain, his 
 face turned up to the rain. God damn the fat reptile 
 that calls itself Fatherland ! . . . But, I say to you, 
 that we re come nearly to the end of the prince and 
 pauper business on this planet. The soul of the Plough 
 man was heard to-day as long ago they heard the Soul 
 of the Carpenter. . . . He is lying out there in the 
 millet his face turned up to the rain. Yet I say to you, 
 John, there s more life in him this hour than in his Tsar 
 and all the princes of the blood." 
 
 Fallows covered his face with his hands. 
 
 "You re tired and thick to-night, John, but you are 
 one who must see !" he finished passionately. "You must 
 help me tell the story to the cellar gatherings in Peters 
 burg, to the secret meetings in all the centers of misery, 
 wherever a few are gathered together in the name of 
 Brotherhood in New York, London, Paris, and Berlin. 
 . . . You must help me to make other men see help 
 me to tell this thing so that the world will hear it, and
 
 AFIELD 57 
 
 with such power that the world will be unable longer 
 to lie to itself. 
 
 "I can see it now how Jesus, the Christ, tried to 
 make men see. . . . That was His Gethsemane 
 that He could not make men see. I tell you it is a God s 
 work and it came to Jesus, the Christ, at last If they 
 crucify me, perhaps, a few will see! . . . I m going 
 over to Russia, John, to learn how to tell them better." 
 
 13 
 
 THE night of the third of September, and John 
 Morning is off for the big adventure. Between 
 the hills, the roads are a-stream. . . . All day he 
 had watched different phases of the retreat. Fighting 
 back in the city ; fighting here and there along the stag 
 gering, burdened, cruelly-punished line ; a sudden break 
 ing-out of fighting in a dozen places like hidden fires ; 
 rain and wounded and seas of mud; the gray intolerable 
 misery of it all ; the sick and the dead Morning was 
 glutted with the colossal derangement. And they called 
 it an orderly retreat. 
 
 He was riding the sorrel Eve out of the zone of war. 
 The battle was behind him now, and he breathed the 
 world again. He had something to tell. Liaoyang was 
 in his brain. He was off for the ships that sail. A month 
 America the great story. . . . He felt the manu 
 script against him. It was in a Chinese belt, with money 
 for the passage home, tight against his body, a hundred 
 thousand words done on Chinese parchment and wrapped 
 in oil-skin. The book of Liaoyang he had earned it. 
 He had written it against the warping cynicism of Duke 
 Fallows. On the ship he could reshape and renew it 
 all into a master-picture. 
 
 It had been easier than he thought to break away 
 from Fallows, his friend. The latter was whelmed in
 
 58 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 the soul of the Ploughman. A big story, of course, as 
 Fallows saw it but there were scores of big stories. 
 It would ruin it to let an anarchist tell it. Suppose 
 officers in general did stop to listen to troops sneaking 
 off the field? 
 
 Duke had given him a letter, and a story for the 
 Western States. The first was not to be read until he 
 was at sea out from Japan. When Morning spoke of 
 the money he owed, the other had put the thought away. 
 Sometime he would call for it if he needed it ; it was a 
 trifle anyway. ... It hadn t been a trifle. It had 
 meant everything. 
 
 Morning was glad to breathe himself again. Yet 
 there was an ache in his heart for Duke Fallows, now 
 off for Europe the western way. He, Morning, had not 
 done his part. He hadn t given as he had taken; had 
 not kept close to Duke Fallows at the last. There was 
 a big score that money could never settle. Soundly glad 
 to be alone, but in the very gladness the picture of Duke 
 Fallows returned lying on his back, in bunks and berths 
 and beds, staring up at the ceiling, accentuating his own 
 failures to bring out the hopeful and valorous parts of 
 his friend. It was always such a picture to Morning, 
 when Fallows came to mind staring, dreaming, looking 
 up from his back. It had seemed sometimes as if he 
 were trying to make of his friend all that he had failed 
 to be. ... Yet the Duke Fallows of the last 
 twenty-four hours, wild, dithyrambic had been too 
 much. . . . Again and again, irked and heavy with 
 his own limitations, Morning s brain had seized upon the 
 weakness of the other, to condone his own slowness of 
 understanding. ... It may have been Eve, and 
 her relation to the Fallows revelation, or it may have 
 been putting hideous militarism behind, that made John 
 Morning think of Women now as he rode, and a little 
 differently from ever before. . . . Certain laughing 
 sentences of Duke Fallows came back to him presently,
 
 AFIELD 59 
 
 with a point he seemed to have missed when they were 
 uttered : 
 
 "We have our devils, John. You have ambition ; 
 Lowenkampf has drink; Mergenthaler has slaughter. 
 . . . You will love a woman ; you already drink too 
 readily, but Ambition will stand in your house and fight 
 from room to room at the last and over the premises 
 to the last ditch. He s a grand devil is Ambition. 
 . . My devil, John? Well, it isn t the big-jawed 
 male who loves a woman as she dreams to be loved. 
 It s the man with a touch of women in him just enough 
 to begin upon her mystery. . . . When I hear a cer 
 tain woman s voice, or see a certain passing figure 
 something old, very old and wise, stirs within, seems to 
 stir and thrill with eternal life. And, John, it isn t low 
 the thought. I d tell you if it were. It isn t low. It s 
 as regal as Mother Nature in a valley, on a long after 
 noon. It isn t that I want to hurt her ; it isn t that I 
 want something she has. Rather, I want all she has ! 
 I want her mind ; I want her soul ; I want her full ani 
 mations. I \vant to make her yield and give ; I want to 
 feel her battle with herself, not to yield and give. . . 
 Oh, the flesh is nothing. It is the cheapest thing in the 
 world but her giving, her yielding it s like an ocean 
 tide. It breaks every bond; it laughs at every law. 
 Power seems to rush into a woman when she yields ! 
 That s the conquest of my heart to feel that power. 
 . . . All devils are young compared to that in a man s 
 heart all but one, and that is the passion to hold spir 
 itual dominion over other men." 
 
 Morning s mind had fallen into the habit of allowing 
 much for the other s sayings of accepting much as 
 mere facility. . . . Thus he thought as he traveled 
 in the rain, Eve s swift, springy trot a stimulus to deep 
 thinking ; and always there was a bigger and finer John 
 Morning shadowing him, fathoming his smallnesses, 
 wondering at his puny rebellions and vain desires. It
 
 60 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 was in this fairer John Morning, so tragically unex 
 pressed during the past few months, that the pang lived 
 the pang of parting from his friend. 
 
 Morning was terrific physically. The thing he was 
 now doing was as spectacular a bit of newspaper service 
 as ever correspondent undertook in Asia ; and yet, to 
 John Morning the high light of achievement fell upon 
 the manuscript, not upon the action. It had not occurred 
 to him to be afraid. If he could get across the ninety 
 miles to Koupangtze through the Hun huises, through 
 the Japanese scouting cavalry, across two large and 
 many smaller yellow rivers and reach the railroad, he 
 would quickly get a ship for Japan from Tientsin or 
 Tongu and from Japan home. . . . He was do 
 ing it for himself passionately and with no sense of 
 splendor. 
 
 Fallows had been so sure of his friend s physical 
 courage, that he made no point of it, in the expression 
 of attachment. . . . He had called it vision at first, 
 this thing that had drawn him to John Morning a touch 
 of the poet, a touch of the feminine others might have 
 called it. No matter the name, he had seen it, as all 
 artists of the expression of the inner life recognize it in 
 one another; and Fallows knew well that where the 
 courage of the soldier ends, the courage of the visionary 
 begins. 
 
 Morning was a trifle peculiar, however. Unless it 
 sank utterly, he stuck to a ship, until the horizon re 
 vealed another sail. 
 
 He had come up through the dark. The world had 
 grounded him deeply in illusion. Most brilliant of prom 
 ises even Fallows had not seen him that first day in 
 too bright a dawn but he learned hard. And his had 
 been close fighting such desperate fighting that one does 
 not hear voices, and one is too deep in the ruck to see the 
 open distance. . . . Much as he had been alone 
 the world had invariably shattered his silences. Always
 
 AFIELD 6 1 
 
 he had worked worked, worked furiously, angrily, for 
 himself. . . . He was taught so. The world had 
 caught him as a child in his brief, pitiful tenderness. 
 The world was his Eli. As from sleep, he had heard 
 Reality calling. He had risen to answer, but the false 
 Eli had spoken an Eli that did not teach him truly to 
 listen, nor to say, when he heard the Voice another time 
 "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." 
 
 14 
 
 THE Taitse, of large and ancient establishment, runs 
 westward from Liaoyang for twenty-five miles, 
 and in a well-earned bed, portions of which are worn 
 in the rock. Morning rode along the north bank, thus 
 avoiding altogether a crossing of the Taitse, since his 
 journey continued westward from the point where the 
 river took its southward bend. From thence it paralleled 
 the Hun in a race to join the Liao. The main stem of 
 the latter was beyond the Hun, and these two arteries of 
 Asia broke Morning s trail. Fording streams of such 
 magnitude was out of the question, and there was a 
 strong chance of an encounter with the Hun huises at 
 the ferries. . . . 
 
 Rain, and the sorrel s round hoofs sucked sharply in 
 the clay. She had no shoes to lose in these drawing 
 vacuums. The scent of her came up warm and good to 
 the horse-lover. Alone on a road, she had always been 
 manageable, hating crowds and noise soldiers, Chinese, 
 and accoutrements. Perhaps, this was merely a biding 
 of time. Eve had a fine sense of keeping a strange road. 
 This was not usual, although a horse travels a familiar 
 road in the darkness better than a man. These two 
 worked well together. 
 
 By map the distance from Liaoyang to Koupangtse 
 was seventy miles. Morning counted upon ninety, at 
 least. The Manchurian roads are old and odd as the
 
 62 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 Oriental mind. ... He passed the southward bend 
 of the big river, and at daybreak reached Chiensen, ten 
 miles beyond, on the Hun. 
 
 Chiensen, unavoidable on account of the ferry, was 
 a danger-point. Japanese cavalry, it was reported, fre 
 quently lit there, and the Hun huises (Chinese river- 
 pirates and thieves in general, whom Alexieff designated 
 well as "the scourge of Manchuria") were at base in 
 this village. ... In the gray he found junks, a flat 
 tow and landing. 
 
 You never know what Chinese John is going to do. 
 If you have but little ground of language between you, 
 he will take his own way, on the pretext of misunder 
 standing. Morning s idea was to get across quickly, 
 without arousing the river-front. He awoke the ferry 
 man, placing three silver taels in his hand. (He carried 
 silver, enough native currency to get him to Japan, his 
 passport, and the two large envelopes Duke Fallows had 
 given him, in the hip-pockets of his riding breeches.) 
 The ferryman had no thought of making the first cross 
 ing without tea. Morning labored with him, and with 
 seeming effect for a moment, but the other fell sud 
 denly from grace and aroused his family. He was not 
 delicate about it. Morning resigned himself to the de 
 lay, and was firmly persuading Eve to be moderate, as 
 she drank from the river s edge, when Chinese John 
 suddenly aroused the river population. Standing well 
 out on the tow-flat, he trumpeted at some comrade of 
 the night before, apparently no less than a hundred yards 
 up the river. There were sleepy answers from many 
 junks within range of the voice. It was the one hateful 
 thing to John Morning yet to rough it with the ferry 
 man for his point of view would be the only thing vrorse. 
 
 The landing was rickety; its jointure with the tow- 
 boat imperfect. The American took off his coat, tossed 
 it over the sorrel s head, tying the sleeves under her 
 throat. She stiffened in rebellion, but as the darkness
 
 AFIELD 63 
 
 was as yet little broken by the day, she decided to accept 
 the situation. Morning felt her growing reluctance, 
 however, as she traversed the creaking, springy boards. 
 The crevasse between the landing and the craft was 
 bridged ; and the latter, grounded on the shore-side, did 
 not give. The mare stood in the center of the tow, 
 sweating and tense. 
 
 Numerous Chinese were now abroad eager, even in 
 sistent, to help. Their voices stirred the mare to her 
 old red-eyed insanity. Morning could hold himself no 
 longer. Once or twice before in his life this hard, bright 
 light had come to his brain. Though the exterior light 
 was imperfect, the ferryman saw the fingers close upon 
 the butt of the gun, and something of the American s 
 look. He dropped his tea, sprang to the junk and pulled 
 up the bamboo-sail. This was used to hold the tow 
 against the current. 
 
 Two natives in the flat-boat stood ready with poles. 
 And now the ferryman spoke in a surprised and disap 
 pointed way as he toiled in front. He seemed ready to 
 burst into tears ; and the two nearer Morning grunted 
 in majors and minors, according to temperament. The 
 American considered that it might all be innocent, al 
 though the voices were many from the town-front. Pol 
 ing began ; the tow drew off from the landing. Clear 
 from the grounding of the shore, the craft sank windily 
 to its balance in the stream. 
 
 This was too much for Eve. Her devil was in the 
 empty saddle. She leaped up pawing. The two Chi 
 nese at the poles dived over side abruptly. Water 
 splashed Eve s flanks, and she veered about on her hind 
 feet blinded and striking the air in front. The wobble 
 of the tow now finished her frenzy and back she went 
 into the stream. The saddle saved her spine from a 
 gash on the edge of the tow. Morning had this thought 
 when Eve arose ; that he need fear no treachery from the 
 Chinese ; and this as she fell a queer, cool, laughing
 
 6 4 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 thought that after such a fall she would never walk like 
 a man again. 
 
 He had been forced to drop the bridle, but caught it 
 luckily with one of the poles as she came up struggling. 
 He beckoned the ferryman forward, and Eve, swimming 
 and fighting, was towed across. To Morning it was like 
 one of his adventures back in the days of the race-horse 
 shipping. 
 
 Eve struck the opposite bank half-strangled from 
 her struggle and the blind. The day had come. The 
 nameless little town on this side of the Hun was out to 
 meet him. Had he brought a Korean tiger by a string, 
 however, he could not have enjoyed more space as the 
 mare climbed from the stream. He talked to her and 
 unbound her eyes. Red and deeply baleful they were. 
 She shook her head and parted her jaws. The circle of 
 natives widened. Morning straightened the saddle and 
 patted Eve s neck softly, talking modestly of her exploit. 
 . . . Natives were now hailing from mid-stream, so 
 he leaped into the sticky saddle and guided the mare 
 out to the main road leading to Tawan on the Liao. 
 . . . Queerly enough, just at this instant, he remem 
 bered the hands and the lips of the ferryman a leper. 
 Ten miles on the map he could count thirteen by 
 the road and then the Liao crossing. . . . The 
 mare pounded on until they came to a wild hollow, rock- 
 strewn, among deserted hills. Morning drew up, cooled 
 his mount and fed the soaked grain strapped to the sad 
 dle since the night before. Eve was not too cross to 
 eat nor too tired. She lifted her head often and drew 
 in the air with the sound of a bubble-pipe. . . . 
 Just now Morning noted a wrinkle in his saddle blanket. 
 Hot with dread, he loosed the girth. 
 
 He looked around in terror lest anyone see his own 
 shame and fear. He had put the saddle on in the dark, 
 but passed his hand between her back and the cloth. 
 Long ago a trainer had whipped him for a bad bit of
 
 AFIELD 65 
 
 saddling ; even at the time he had felt the whipping de 
 served. He lifted the saddle. A pink scalded mouth 
 the size of a twenty-five-cent piece was there. . . . 
 God, if he could only be whipped now. She was sensi 
 tive as satin ; it was only a little wrinkle of the rain- 
 soaked blanket. . . . His voice whimpered as he- 
 spoke to her. 
 
 Only a horseman could have suffered so. He washed 
 the rub, packed soft lint from a Russian first-aid ban 
 dage about to ease the pressure ; and then, since the rain 
 had stopped again, he rubbed her dry and walked at her 
 head for hours, despairing at last of the town named 
 Tawan. The Liao was visible before the village itself. 
 Morning shook with fatigue. He had to gain the saddle 
 for the possible need of swift action, but the wound 
 beneath never left his mind. It uncentered his self- 
 confidence a force badly needed now. 
 
 And this was the Liao the last big river, roughly 
 half-way. The end of the war-zone, it was, too, but the 
 bright point of peril from Hun huises. . , . Morn 
 ing saw the thin masts of the river junks over the bowl 
 of the hill, their tribute flags flying. . . . To pass 
 was the day s work, to make the ferry with Eve. There 
 was too much misery and contrition in his heart for him 
 to handle her roughly. The blind could not be used 
 again. She would connect that with the back-fall into 
 the Hun. The town was full of voices. 
 
 15 
 
 CHINESE were gathering. Morning went about his 
 business as if all were well, but nothing was good 
 to him about the increase of these hard, quick-handed 
 men. They were almost like Japanese. With the tail 
 of his eye, he saw shirt signals across the river. The 
 main junk fleet was opposite. Trouble he knew it. 
 The hard, bright light was in his brain.
 
 66 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 In the gathering of the natives, Eve was roused 
 afresh. His only way was to try her without the blind. 
 If she showed fight, he meant to mount quickly and ride 
 back through the crowd for one of the lower-town 
 crossings. 
 
 Without looking back, he led the way to the landing, 
 holding just the weight of the bridle-rein. His arm 
 gave with her every hesitation. To his amazement she 
 consented to try. The tow-craft was larger here 
 enough for a bullock-pair and cart and better fitted to 
 the landing. Step by step she went with him to her 
 place. 
 
 Now Morning saw that in using the blind the first 
 time he had done her another injury. She would not 
 have gone back into the Hun but for that. She awed 
 him. Something Fallows had said recurred about her 
 being unconquerable, different every day. Also Fallows 
 had said, "She will kill you at the last. . . ." 
 
 He drove back the Chinese, all but two pole-men, that 
 would have gathered on the tow. This was quietly done, 
 but his inflexibility was felt. Many signals were sent 
 across, as the tow receded from the shore, and numbers 
 increased on the opposite bank. 
 
 Eve, breathing audibly, swung forward and back with 
 the craft, as it gave to the river. The towing junk, as 
 in the Hun, held the other against the current; the rest 
 was poling and paddling. . . . The junk itself 
 slipped out of the way as the tow was warped toward 
 the landing. Other junks were stealing in. ... 
 Morning already had paid. He felt the girth of the 
 saddle, fingered the bridle, tightened his belt. A warm, 
 gray day, but he was spent and gaunt and cold. Eve 
 was hushed mulling her bit softly, trembling with 
 hatred for the Chinese. 
 
 The road ascended from the river, through a narrow 
 gorge with rocky walls. The river-men were woven 
 across the way. While the tow was yet fifteen feet from
 
 AFIELD 67 
 
 the landing, Morning gained the saddle. The ferry-man 
 gestured frantically that this had never been done be 
 fore ; that a man s beast properly should be led across. 
 Morning laughed, tightened his knees, and at an early 
 instant loosened the bridle-rein, for the mare to jump. 
 The heavy tow shot back as she cleared the fissure of 
 stream. 
 
 Morning was now caught in the blur of events. The 
 Chinese did not give way for the mare, as she trotted 
 across the boards to the rocky shore. Up she went strik 
 ing. Again he had not known Eve. The back-dive into 
 the Hun had not cured her. She would walk like a man 
 and pitch back into Hell and do it again. . . . 
 Someone knifed her from the side and she toppled. 
 
 The fall was swift and terrible, for the trail sloped 
 behind. Morning s instinct was truer than his brain, 
 but there was no choice of way to jump. He could not 
 push the mare from him completely to avoid the cliff. 
 He was half-stunned against the wall, and not clear 
 from the struggle of her fall. The brain is never able 
 to report this instant afterward, even though conscious 
 ness is not lost. He was struck, trampled ; he felt the 
 cold of the rock against his breast, and the burn of a 
 knife. 
 
 The Chinese struck at him as he rose. The mare 
 was up, facing him, but dragging him upward, as a dog 
 with a bone. His left hand found the pistol. He cleared 
 the Chinese from him, emptying the chambers. . . 
 Eve let him come to her. He must have gained the 
 saddle as she swung around in the narrow gorge to be 
 gin her run. The wind rushed coldly across his 
 breast and abdomen. His shirt had been cut and pulled 
 free. It was covered with blood. He tried to hold the 
 mare, but either his strength was gone or she was past 
 feeling the bit. It was her hour. All Morning could 
 do was to keep the road. 
 
 He was all but knocked out. He had mounted as a
 
 68 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 fighter gets up under the count and fights on without 
 exactly knowing. The mare was running head down. 
 He tried his strength again. The reins were rigid; she 
 had the bit and meant to end the game. . . . He 
 loved her wild heart ; mourned for her ; called her name ; 
 told her of wrongs he had done. Again and again, the 
 light went from him ; sometimes he drooped forward to 
 her thin, short mane, and clung there, but the heat of 
 her made him ill. They came into hills, passed tiny vil 
 lages. It was all strange and terrible a hurtling from 
 high heaven. . . . Eve was like a furnace. . . . 
 
 And now she was weaving on the road running 
 drunkenly, unless his eyes betrayed. . . . The rush 
 ing wind was cold upon his breast. His coat was gone ; 
 his shirt had been cut. He tried to pull the blood- 
 soaked ends together. At this moment the blow 
 fell. 
 
 These Chinese had been quick-handed, and they knew 
 where to search for a man s goods. He was coldly sane 
 in an instant, for the rending of his whole nature ; then 
 came the quick zeal for death the intolerableness of 
 living an instant. The wallet the big story some hun 
 dreds of tales in paper ! It was the passing of these 
 from next his body that had left him cold. . . . Fury 
 must have come to his arms. The mare lifted her head 
 under his sudden attack. 
 
 Yes, he could manage her now. The bloody mouth 
 and the blind-mad head came up to him her front legs 
 giving like a colt s. Down they went together. Morn 
 ing took his fall limply, with something of supremely 
 organized indifference, and turned in the mud to the 
 mare. 
 
 She was dead. The gray of pearl was in her eyes 
 where red life had been. . . . No, she raised herself 
 forward, seemed to be searching for him, her muzzle 
 sickly relaxed. She could not stir behind. Holding 
 there for a second John Morning forgot the big story.
 
 AFIELD 69 
 
 Eve fell again. He crawled to her tried to lift her 
 head. It was heavy as a sheet-anchor to his arms. 
 . . . Her heart had broken. She had died on her 
 feet the last rising was but a galvanism. . . . He 
 looked up into the gray sky where the clouds stirred 
 sleepily. He wanted to ask something from something 
 there. . . . He could not think of what he wanted. 
 . . . Oh, yes, his book of Liaoyang. 
 
 And now his eye roved over the mare. . . . Her 
 hind legs were sheeted with fresh blood and clotted with 
 dry. . . . Desperately he craned about to see fur 
 ther. Entrails were protruding from a knife wound. 
 The inner tissues were not cut, but the opened gash had 
 let them sag horribly. She had run from Tawan with 
 that wound. . . . He had worn her to the quick in 
 night ; blinded her for the Hun crossing, when she would 
 have done nobly with eyes uncovered. . . . He had 
 not been able to keep her from killing herself. . . 
 John Morning, the horseman. . . . He had left a 
 gaping wound in the spirit of Duke Fallows. . . 
 All that he had done was failure and loss ; all that he 
 had planned so passionately, so brutally, indeed, that 
 the needs and the offerings of others had not reached his 
 heart, because of the iron self-purpose weighed there. 
 
 Luban, Lowenkampf, Mergenthaler, even the Com 
 mander-in-chief, looked strangely in through the dark 
 ened windows of his mind. The moral suffocation of 
 the grain-fields surged over him again. . . . He 
 caught a glimpse of that last moment in the ravine, but 
 not the taking of the wallet. . . . Was it just a 
 dream that a native leaped forward to grasp his stirrup, 
 and that he leaned down to fire? He seemed to recall 
 the altered brow. 
 
 The pictures came too fast. The sky did not change. 
 The something did not answer. . . . Eve was lying 
 in the mud. She looked darker and huddled. He kissed 
 her face, and as he gained his feet, the thought came
 
 70 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 queerly that he might be dead, as she was. He held the 
 thought of action to his limbs and made them move. 
 
 When he could think more clearly, he scorned the 
 pain and protest of his limbs. He would not be less 
 than Eve. If he were not dead, he would die straight 
 up, and on the road to Koupangtse. 
 
 16 
 
 THIRTY-SIX hours after Morning left Eve, an 
 English correspondent at Shanhaikwan added the 
 following to a long descriptive letter made up of refugee 
 tales, and the edges and hearsay of the war-zone: 
 
 Night of Sept. 5. ... An American whose 
 name by passport is John Morning reached here to 
 night on the Chinese Eastern, having left Koupangtse 
 this morning. According to his story, he was with 
 the Russians, now in retreat from Liaoyang, on the 
 night of Sept. 3, only forty-eight hours from this 
 writing. 
 
 Morning was in an unconscious condition upon 
 arrival. His passage had been fourth-class for the 
 journey, and he was packed among the coolies and 
 refugees on an open flat-car so crowded that all but 
 the desperately fatigued had room only to stand. 
 This white man had fallen to the floor of the car, 
 among the bare feet of the surging Oriental crowd, 
 beneath their foul garments. 
 
 . . . He was lifted forth from the car by the 
 Chinese a spectacle abjectly human, covered with 
 filth ; moreover, his body was incredibly bruised, his 
 left puttee legging torn by a deep knife-wound that 
 began at the knee, and traversed a distance of eight 
 inches downward the whole was gummed and black 
 with blood ; another knife-wound in his side was in 
 an angry condition, and his clothing was stiffened 
 from flow of it.
 
 AFIELD 71 
 
 A few taels in paper and silver were found upon 
 him ; the passport, an unopened letter addressed to 
 himself ; also a manuscript addressed to a San Fran 
 cisco paper, and to be delivered by John Morning. 
 The natives reported that he had reached Koupangtse 
 an hour before the arrival of the Chinese Eastern; 
 had employed a native to buy him fourth-class pas 
 sage, paying the native also to help him aboard. He 
 had collapsed, however, until actually among the Chi 
 nese on the flat-car. He had tasted neither food nor 
 drink during the long day s journey, nor in Kou 
 pangtse during the wait. The natives affirm that he 
 crawled part of the distance up to the railway sta 
 tion ; and that there were no English or Americans 
 there. 
 
 Upon reaching here, Morning was revived with 
 stimulants, his wounds bathed and dressed, fresh 
 clothing provided. His extraordinary vitality and 
 courage indicate that he will overcome the shocks 
 and exhaustion of a journey hardly paralleled any 
 where, if his story be true. He asserts that he must 
 be on his way to Tientsin to-morrow morning but 
 that, of course, is impossible. . . . He is not in 
 condition to answer questions, although undoubt 
 edly much is in his dazed and stricken brain for which 
 the world is at this moment waiting. 
 
 In his half-delirium, Morning seems occupied with 
 the loss of a certain sorrel mare. He also reports 
 the loss of his complete story of the battle, the pre 
 liminary fighting, the generals in character sketch, 
 the terrain and all, covering a period of four months 
 up to the moment of General Zarubaieff s withdrawal 
 from the city proper. This manuscript, said to con 
 tain over a hundred thousand words done on Chinese 
 parchment, was in a wallet with the writer s money, 
 and was cut from him in the struggle on the bank of
 
 72 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 the Liao, when the wounds were received. His as 
 sailants were doubtless Hun huises. 
 
 Whatever can be said about the irrational parts 
 of his story, the young man appears to know the 
 story of the battle from the Russian standpoint. He 
 brings the peculiar point of view that it was the 
 millet that defeated the Russians, although the supe 
 riority of the Japanese in morale, markmanship, 
 fluidity, is well known, etc. 
 
 . . . Morning lay in a decent room at the Rest 
 House in Shanhaikwan. There seemed an ivory finger 
 in his brain pointing to the sea to Japan, to the States. 
 So long as he was walking, riding, entrained, all was 
 well enough, and the rest was mere body that had to 
 obey but when he stopped, the ivory finger grew hot 
 or icy by turns ; and as now, he watched in agony for 
 the day and the departure of the train for Tientsin. 
 
 He would require help. Below the waist he was ex 
 cruciating wreckage that for the present would not an 
 swer his will. . . . They were good to him here. 
 The Chinese coolies had been good to him on the open 
 car. . . . Lowenkampf, Fallows, good to him so 
 his thoughts ran the sorrel Eve was his own heart s 
 mate. He loved her running, dying, striking. She had 
 run until her heart broke. He could not do less. She 
 had run until she was past pain he must do that and 
 go on after that. . . . Was it still in his brain the 
 great story? Would it clear and write itself the great 
 story ? 
 
 That was the question. All was well if he could get 
 Liaoyang out in words. He would do it all over again 
 on the ship. Every day the ship would be carrying him 
 closer to the States. He was still on schedule. He 
 would reach America on the first possible ship after the 
 battle of Liaoyang possibly, ahead of mails. On the 
 voyage he would re-do the book twenty days five 
 thousand words a day. He might do it better. It might
 
 AFIELD 73 
 
 come up clean out of the journey, the battle itself and 
 the pictures strengthened, brightened, impregnated with 
 fresh power. . . . Three weeks every moment sail 
 ing to the States the first and fastest ship ! . . . 
 The driving devil in his brain would be at rest. The big" 
 story would clear, as he began to write. The days of 
 labor at first would change to days of pure instrumenta 
 tion. He would drive at first then the task would drive 
 him. . . . But he must not miss a possible day to Japan 
 to Nagasaki. . . . He had not money for the 
 passage to America. At this very moment he could not 
 get out of bed but these two were mere pups compared 
 to the wolves he had met. . . . 
 
 They found him on the floor drawing on his clothes 
 in the morning an hour before the train. His wounds 
 were bleeding, but he laughed at that. 
 
 "You see, I ve got to make it. You ve been very 
 kind. I ll heal on the way not here. I ve got the big 
 story. I ve got to keep moving to think it out. I can t 
 think here. I ll get on thank you." 
 
 And he was on. That night his train stopped for 
 ten minutes at Tongu, the town near the Taku Forts, at 
 the mouth of the Pei-ho. . . . All day he had con 
 sidered the chance of getting ship here, without going 
 on to Tientsin, seventy miles up-river. The larger ships 
 lightered their traffic from Tongu ; he might catch a 
 steamer sailing to-night for Japan, or at least for Chifu. 
 . . . It was getting dark. 
 
 The face that looked through the barred window at 
 the Englishman in charge of the station at Tongu un 
 settled the latter s evening and many evenings after 
 ward. 
 
 "Is there a ship from the river-mouth to-night?" 
 
 Morning repeated his question, and perceived that 
 the agent had dropped his eyes to the two hands holding 
 the ticket-shelf. Morning s nails were tight in the wood; 
 he would wobble if he let go.
 
 74 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "Yes, there s the little Tungsheng. She goes off to 
 night " 
 
 "For Japan?" 
 
 "Yes, but she doesn t carry passengers that is 
 unless the Captain gives up his quarters, and he has 
 already done that this trip." 
 
 "Deck passengers " 
 
 "Sure, all carry coolies out of here best freight we 
 have." 
 
 "Do you sell the tickets ?" 
 
 "Who s going?" 
 
 "My servant. ... I won t go on to Tientsin if 
 I can get get him on to-night " 
 
 "The launch and lighter are supposed to be down 
 shortly from Tientsin that s all I can say. It s blow 
 ing a bit. She may not clear." 
 
 "She ll clear if any does?" 
 
 "Yes, Himmelhock has taken her out of here worse 
 than this. You d better decide I ve got to go out now. 
 The train s leaving." 
 
 Seventy miles up the river, he thought, the wrong 
 way if he stuck to the train. Every mile that ivory fin 
 ger would torture him. His brain now seemed holding 
 back an avalanche. If he chose falsely, he would tumble 
 down the blackness with the rocks and glaciers. . . . 
 This Englishman looked a gamester he might help. 
 Perhaps he wasn t a corpse. 
 
 "I ll stay," he said, and the story and all his purpose 
 wobbled and grew black. . . . He mustn t forget. 
 He mustn t fall. . . . So he stood there holding fast 
 to the ticket-shelf, which he could not feel held and 
 held, and the train clattered, grew silent, and it was 
 dark. 
 
 "Where s your servant?" 
 
 Morning s lips moved. 
 
 "Where is your servant?" 
 
 "I am my servant."
 
 AFIELD 75 
 
 "I can t give a white man deck passage. It s not 
 only against the rules but against reason." 
 
 Morning groped for his arm. "Take me into the 
 light," he said. 
 
 The man obeyed. 
 
 "What clay is this?" 
 
 "Night of September six." 
 
 "I left Liaoyang the night of the third. I rode a good 
 horse to death along the Taitse, over the Hun and the 
 Liao. I rode through the Him huises twice. I was all 
 cut up and beaten the horse went over backward in the 
 Hun, and in the gut on the bank of the Liao. ... I 
 was in Liaoyang for the battle. I was there four months 
 waiting for the battle. They took my story hundred 
 thousand words the Hun huises did, in the fight on the 
 Liao bank. The horse killed herself running with me 
 . . . but I ve got it all in my head the story. I ll 
 get to the States with it before any mail before any 
 other man. It s all in my head the whole Russian-end. 
 I can write it again on the ship to the States in three 
 weeks. . . . I ve got to get off to-night. You re the 
 one to help me. . . . See these 
 
 Morning opened his shirt and then started to undo 
 liis legging. 
 
 "For God s sake don t. . .. - But you ll die on 
 the deck 
 
 "No, the only way to kill me would be to wall me 
 up so I couldn t keep moving." 
 
 "I ll go down to the river with you in a few minutes." 
 
 And then he had John Morning sobbing on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 17 
 
 THE Englishman at Tongu was a small, sallow man, 
 with the face of one who is used to getting the 
 "worst of it. Tongu, as a post, was no exception from 
 an outsider s point of view. Morning saw this face in
 
 76 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 odd lights during the days that followed. It came to the 
 chamber of images and always he wanted to break 
 down, and his hands went out for the shoulder. . . . 
 He remembered a pitching junk in the windy blackness 
 at the mouth of the Pei-ho. (He had seen the low mud 
 flats of the Taku forts from here in another service.) 
 . . . The Tungsheng looked little not much bigger 
 than the junk, and she was wooden. There was chill 
 and a slap of rain in the blackness. 
 
 "Hul-lo, who is dere?" The slow, juicy voice came 
 from the door of the pilot-house. 
 
 "Endicott. I ve got a deck passenger " 
 
 "Huh dere dick as meggots alretty " 
 
 "This is a kitchen coolie of mine he must go. Send 
 someone down to make a place and take his transporta- 
 tion- 
 
 The grumbling that followed was a matter of habit 
 rather than of effectiveness. Morning seemed to see the 
 lower lip from which the voice came, a thick and loppy 
 member. . . . The mate came down, stepping from 
 shoulder to back, across the complaining natives. They 
 were three deep on the deck. He kicked clear a hole 
 in the lee of the cabin. . . . Morning sank in, and 
 Endicott bent to whisper : 
 
 "Put the grub-basket between your knees and don t 
 take your hands off it. ... Put the blanket over it. 
 It s a thick, good blanket. I could give you a better 
 passage, but they wouldn t take you honest, they 
 wouldn t. If they see you re white, tell old Himmelhock 
 you re Endicott s house-coolie. He can t do anything 
 now. ... If you live, write and send the big story 
 to Endicott at Tongu." 
 
 Morning was sinking to sleep. He felt the warmth 
 of the blanket, a thick, rough blanket Endicott had do 
 nated. Its warmth was like the man s heart. . . . 
 Morning s hands went out. A coolie growled at him. 
 . . . There was no worry now. It was the night of
 
 AFIELD 77 
 
 the sixth, and he was sailing. He could do no more ; 
 the ivory finger in his brain neither froze nor burned. 
 . . . The pitching did not rouse him nor the men of 
 sewers and fields sick where they sat woven, matted 
 together, trusting to the animal heat of the mass to keep 
 from dying of exposure. John Morning lay in the midst 
 of them John Morning whose body would not die. 
 
 The days and nights rushed together. . . . 
 
 Sometimes he wondered if he were not back at the 
 shipping in some stock-car with the horses but horses 
 were so clean compared to this. . . . When he could 
 think, he put clean lint to his wounds. He scorned pain, 
 for he was on his way ; and much was merciful coma. 
 
 There was rain, deluges ; and though the air rose 
 heavy as amber afterward, the freshness at the time was 
 salvation. He learned as it is probable no other Amer 
 ican ever learned, what it means to live in the muck of 
 men. All one at the beginning and at the ending, it is 
 marvelous how men separate their lives in the interval 
 how little they know of one another, and how easily 
 foolish noses turn up. Here was a man alive dream 
 ing of the baths he had missed, of Japanese Inn baths 
 most of all. 
 
 "Who am I?" he asked. . . . "John Morning," 
 would whip back to him from somewhere. "And who 
 in hell is John Morning to revolt at the sufferings of 
 other men?" 
 
 He had seen the coolies in the steerage of many ships 
 even these massed deck passages of the Yellow and 
 China Seas and the Coasting trade. He had looked at 
 them before as one looks into a cage of animals. Now 
 he was one of those who looked out, one of the slumees. 
 Once he asked, "Is this the bottom of the human drain, 
 and if not must I sink to it?" 
 
 The Chinese did steal his food that first night, but 
 fed him occasionally from their own stock. Finding him 
 white, they fouled him, but kept him warm. . . .
 
 78 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 The Tungsheng ran into Chifu harbor to avoid a storm, 
 and a full day was lost. John Morning had no phi 
 losophy then a hell-minded male full of sickness not 
 good to view, even through the bars of a cage. But at 
 best to sit five hours, where he sat more than five days 
 and nights, would condemn the mind of any white man 
 or woman to chaos, or else restore it to the fine sanity of 
 Brotherhood. 
 
 And then the day when the breeze turned warm and 
 the Islands were green ! . . . Coolies were men that 
 hour, men with eyes that melted to ineffable softness. 
 It was like Jesus coming toward them on the sea the 
 green hills of Japan. Their hearts broke with emotion ; 
 they wept and loved one another this mass all molten 
 and integrated into one. It was like the Savior coming 
 to meet them through the warm bright air. He would 
 make them clean ; their eyes would follow Him 
 always. . . . 
 
 Morning was not the only one who had to be carried 
 ashore at Shimoneseki, after the quarantine officer had 
 finished with the herd. His passport saved him. "I 
 had to come. It was the first ship out of Tongu. Deck 
 passage was the only way they would take me," was the 
 simple story. He was fevered, but strangely subdued 
 that day. Himmelhock was at the door of the pilot 
 house, when Morning looked up from the shore a last 
 time, and his native sailors, bare to the thigh, were 
 sluicing the decks. 
 
 The bath was heaven. He was able to walk after 
 ward. The officials burned his clothing, but made it 
 possible for him to buy a few light things. The wound 
 in his leg was healing; the bruises fading away. The 
 wound in his side did not heal; it was angry as a feline 
 mouth. 
 
 He had bandages, but no stockings; clean canvas 
 clothing, but no underwear. ... He found that he 
 had to wait before answering when anyone spoke; and
 
 AFIELD 79 
 
 then he was not quite sure if he had answered, and 
 would try again until they stopped him. Somewhere 
 long ago there was a parrot whose eyes were rimmed 
 with red-brown, and of stony opaqueness. He couldn t 
 recall where the parrot was, but it had something to do 
 with him when he was little, almost beyond memory. 
 His eyes now felt just as the parrot s had looked. 
 
 It was a night run back to Nagasaki by rail his 
 thought was of ships, ships, ships. He could stand off 
 from the world and see the ships all the lines of tossing, 
 steaming ships. Then he would go down to the deck of 
 one and below and aft where Asiatics were crowded 
 together. To the darkest and thickest place among 
 them he would go, and there lie and rest until the ringer 
 in his brain roused him. Then he would find that 
 the train had stopped. It was the halt that awakened 
 him. 
 
 There were two ships, all but ready to clear for the 
 States, lying in the harbor of Nagasaki that morning. 
 The first was the liner Coptic, but she had to go north 
 first, a day at Kobe, and two days at Yokohama, before 
 taking the long southeastern slide to Honolulu. She was 
 faster than the American transport, Sickles (with a light 
 load of sick and insane from the Islands), but the latter 
 was clearing for Honolulu at sundown and would reach 
 San Francisco at least one day earlier than the liner. 
 Moreover, the Coptic would have recent mails ; the 
 Sickles would beat the mails. 
 
 Money was waiting for him at Tokyo, less than an 
 hour s journey from Yokohama; he would have good 
 care and a comfortable passage home on the old liner, 
 but his brain burned at the thought. Four days north 
 not homeward. . . . The Sickles was clipper-built 
 she was white and clean-lined, lying out in the harbor, 
 in the midst of black collier babies. She was off for 
 Home to-night. He had traveled home once before on a 
 transport. He was American and she the flag was
 
 80 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 there, run together a bit in the vivid light, but the flag 
 was there ! And to-night he would be at sea pulling 
 himself together for the big story, alone with the big 
 story the ship never stopping unless they stopped in 
 ocean to drop the dead. . . . 
 
 The actual cost of the transport passage is very little, 
 merely a computation for food and berth ; the difficulty 
 is to obtain the permit. As it was, he had not enough 
 money, barely enough to get up to Yokohama, second 
 class on the Coptic ; and yet, this hardly entered. It was 
 like a home city, this American ship, to one who had 
 been in the alien heart of the Chinese country so long. 
 He would know someone, and a telegram from Frisco 
 would bring money to him. He had a mighty reliance 
 from the big story. 
 
 The U. S. quartermaster at Nagasaki was a tired old 
 man. He advised Morning to cable to Manila for per 
 mission. Morning did not say that he lacked money 
 for this, but repeated his wish to go. The old man 
 thought a minute and then referred him to Ferry, the 
 Sickles quartermaster. He had been doing this for thirty 
 years, referring others to others so that all matters 
 merely struck and glanced from him. Thus he kept an 
 open mind. Morning wanted something to take from 
 this office to Ferry of the Sickles. The resistance he 
 encountered heated him. The smell of the deck-passage 
 was in his nostrils ; it seemed in his veins, and made him 
 afraid that others caught the taint. The old quarter 
 master did not help him. Morning could hear his own 
 voice, but could not hold in mind what he said. . . . 
 The officer did not seem to be interested in Liaoyang. 
 This disturbed him. It made him ask if he had not 
 gone mad after all if he could be wrong on this main 
 trend, that he had something the world wanted. 
 
 He took a sampan at the harbor-front and went 
 aboard the transport. Ferry, the Sickles quartermaster, 
 was a tall, lean man with a shut smile that drooped.
 
 AFIELD 8 1 
 
 The face was a pinched and diminished Mergenthaler, 
 and brought out the clouds and the manias of Morning s 
 mind. 
 
 Were all quartermasters the same ? What had become 
 of men? Had the world lost interest in monster hero 
 isms? Ferry did not help him on the contrary, stood 
 looking down with the insolence of superior inches. 
 Morning found himself telling about the sorrel mare. 
 That would not do. He returned to the main fact that 
 he had the big story and must get across the Pacific 
 with it. 
 
 "I can t take you " 
 
 Morning heard it, but couldn t believe. He tried to 
 tell about the Him huises and the loss of the manuscript, 
 the walk to Koupangtse 
 
 "Really it s no affair of mine. I can t take you on. 
 . . . The Coptic is sailing " 
 
 And just now Mr. Reever Kennard appeared on the 
 deck. The summer had added portliness. He was in 
 flannels a spectacle for children and animals. . . . 
 The insignificance of all about was quickened when Mr. 
 Reever Kennard appeared. The decks were less white, 
 sailors, soldiers more enlisted. John Morning became 
 an integer of the Tungsheng s deck-passage again, and 
 the lining of his nostrils retained the reek of it. 
 
 "How do you do, Mr. Kennard?" he said. His back 
 was different. He felt a leniency there, very new or very 
 ancient, as he turned to Ferry, adding: "This gentleman 
 knows me. We parted in Tokyo this Spring, when I 
 went over with the Russians. I met him long ago in the 
 Philippine service. He will tell you " 
 
 Ferry s face grew suddenly saturnine, his eyes held in 
 the glance of the famous correspondent s. 
 
 "You ll please count it closed I can t take you." 
 
 Morning now turned to Kennard, who was sealing 
 with his tongue a little flap of cigar-wrapper which may 
 have prevented the perfect draught. Morning bowed
 
 82 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 and moved aft, where the dust of the coaling was thick, 
 and the scores of natives, women and men, who handled 
 the baskets, were a distraction which kept the reality 
 from stifling him. Presently he went ashore and it was 
 noon. . . . He could not understand Kennard ; could 
 not believe in an American doing what Ferry had done, 
 to a man who had the big story of Liaoyang. It was 
 some hideous mistake ; he had not been able to make 
 himself understood. 
 
 The Sickles launch was leaving the pier at two. 
 Morning was there and took a seat. He was holding 
 himself the avalanche again and rehearsing in his 
 mind what he should say to Ferry. His brain was afire ; 
 the wound in his side had scalded him so long that his 
 voice had a whimper in it. He had not eaten the 
 thought was repulsive but he had bought drink in the 
 thought of clearing his brain and deadening his 
 hurt. . . . 
 
 His brain was clearer on the launch, but the gin 
 fumed out of him as he approached the upper deck, 
 where Ferry s quarters were. 
 
 The Quartermaster saw him, but was speaking to an 
 infantry captain. Morning waited by the rail. Many 
 times he thought if he could only begin to speak now. 
 Yet he feared in his heart when Ferry turned to him, 
 he would fail. It was something little and testy in the 
 man something so different from what he had known in 
 the great strains of Liaoyang except for Luban. Yes, 
 Ferry was like Luban, when Luban was in the presence 
 of a fancied inferior. . . . They talked on Morn 
 ing thought of murder at last. A peculiar wiry strength 
 gathered about the idea of murder in its connection with 
 Ferry s dark, mean face. He felt all the old strength 
 in his hands, and more from days of pain days of hold 
 ing one s self will, body, brain. 
 
 "Well " Ferry had turned to him suddenly. 
 
 Morning s thoughts winged away with a swarm of
 
 AFIELD 83 
 
 details of the crime. ... "I could tell you some 
 thing of the Story I could show you how they cut me 
 on the Liao the Hun huises " 
 
 "If you come to this deck again I ll send you ashore 
 in irons." 
 
 At four that afternoon Morning saw the Coptic draw 
 up her chains and slide out of the harbor, with the swift 
 ease of a river-ferry. . . . He could not count him 
 self whipped on the Sickles and this is the real begin 
 ning of John Morning. He was Fate-driven. The man 
 who did not have the courage to ask his rights in Tokyo 
 to inquire the reason of his disbarment, was not 
 through with the American transport Sickles. A full 
 day ahead of the mails in San Francisco and he was 
 waiting for the dusk. The fight had been brought to 
 him. He was dull to the idea of being whipped. 
 
 Three enlisted men were drinking in the little apoth 
 ecary shop which Morning had used for the day s head 
 quarters. They belonged to the Sickles. They had been 
 taking just one more drink for many minutes. He told 
 them he was sailing on the transport and joined them 
 in a sampan to the ship when it was dark. The harbor 
 was still as a dream ; the dark blending w r ith the water. 
 . . . They touched the bellying white plates of the 
 ship. Morning seemed to come up from infinite depths. 
 . . . The men were very drunk ; they had ordered 
 rapidly toward the end ; the effect caught up as swiftly 
 now. They helped each other officiously. Morning put 
 on the fallen hat of one who had become unconscious. 
 . . . The watch was of them, a corporal, who was no 
 trouble-maker. He blustered profusely and hurried 
 them below. . . . Morning was bewildered. He had 
 spoken no word, but helped the others carry the body, a 
 wobbly deputation, down among the hammocks. . . . 
 He heard the voices of those maimed in mind. . . . 
 He placed his end of the soldier s body down, left his 
 companions, and made his way forward, to where the
 
 
 84 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 hammocks were farther apart. Early years had given 
 him a sort of enlisted man s consciousness of things ; and 
 he knew now not to take another s place. He chose one 
 from a pile of hammocks and slung it forward, close to 
 the bulk-head of the bedlam, and well out of the lights. 
 . . . He lay across his only baggage, a package con 
 taining a thousand sheets of Chinese parchment. He 
 lay rigid, trying to remember if out-going ships took a 
 pilot out of Nagasaki. 
 
 He heard the anchor-chain. He was very close to it. 
 The voices of the sun-struck and vino-maddened men 
 from the Islands were deadened by the hideous grating 
 of the links in the socket. ... It was not too late 
 for him to be put ashore even now ; since it was war 
 time. Of course there would be a pilot, for the harbor 
 was mined. . . . He drew the canvas about his ears, 
 but the voices of the brain-dead men reached him. 
 . . . Cats, pirates, and river-reptiles terrified them ; 
 one man was still lost in a jungle set with bolo-traps ; 
 the emptiness of others was filled by strange abomina 
 tions glad of the flesh again. 
 
 18 
 
 HE had been listening to Duke Fallows for a long 
 time Duke s voice blended with war and storm 
 and a woman s laugh. . . . Then he reverted to the 
 idea of murdering Ferry. Finally someone said : 
 
 "He s a new one from Nagasaki. He s got the 
 fevers " 
 
 And then: 
 
 "Who in hell is he?" 
 
 They began to ask questions. Morning answered 
 nothing. Day had come. He heard the throb of the 
 engines, felt the swell of the sea, but the strength of 
 yesterday s concentration was still upon him. It had
 
 AFIELD 85 
 
 built a wall around him, holding the life of his mind 
 there ; as a life of low desires imprisons the spirit to its 
 own vile region after death. . . . He did not speak, 
 but looked from face to face for Ferry. 
 
 They ceased to expect an answer from him. . . . 
 A young doctor appeared. His eyes rolled queerly; his 
 cheek folded over his mouth, as if he were beyond 
 words from drink, and tremendously pleased with his 
 prowess. They called him Nevin. He prepared himself 
 profoundly for speech. Morning now realized the nim- 
 bleness of Neviirs hands, unwinding the filthy ban 
 dages. Presently, the Doctor straightened up, passed 
 his hand over his brow, tongued the other cheek, and 
 after a sweating suspense ordered : 
 
 "Take him to the hospital." 
 
 A white room. . . . The Doctor came again. 
 They took his clothing and bathed him. . . . He 
 heard and smelled the sea through an open port . . 
 glad, but utterly weary . . . waiting for Ferry. 
 
 "My God not only cut, but trampled " a voice 
 
 said. 
 
 Morning felt if he were alone with Nevin he could 
 have said something. . . . The Doctor looked like 
 a jockey he had once known. It wasn t that, however, 
 that gave him heart, but the quick, gentle hands. . . . 
 More and more as he watched the dusty face with its 
 ineffable gravity, he saw bright humanity burning like 
 a forge-fire behind the mask. This brought tears to his 
 own eyes. Nevin, seeing them, became altogether nerv 
 ous tp look at, seemed to have a walnut in his mouth. 
 
 And now John Morning felt himself breaking he 
 was brittle, hard like glass and his last idea concerned 
 the package of Chinese parchment which they had not 
 brought from the hammock. . . . Six days after 
 ward he asked for it. 
 
 For a short while each day, during the interval, he 
 just touched the main idea and sank back to sleep. He
 
 86 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 suffered very little. The after-effects of his journey 
 from Liaoyang tried to murder him in various ways, but 
 relaxation, nourishment, good air and care worked as a 
 sort of continuous anaesthesia. On this sixth day the 
 Doctor appeared to ignore his question about the package 
 of paper, but leaned forward, glanced to the right and 
 left, as if to communicate a plan to scuttle the ship, and 
 said: 
 
 "You re one more little man. You ve had a new one 
 each day pneumonia, sclerosis, brain-fever. . . . 
 My hospital report on your case will drive the Major- 
 Surgeon into permanent retirement. . . . What 
 did you say was the matter to-day Chinese parch 
 ment?" 
 
 "I ve got so much to do, Doctor? . . . What day 
 is this?" 
 
 "Morning of the nineteenth." 
 
 The color swept into Morning s face, terror into his 
 eyes. 
 
 "I didn t think it was so bad as that I can t lay up 
 any more twelve days left. . . . Two weeks and 
 two days since I rode out of Liaoyang " 
 
 "I ll have to let em put you in the forward hutch 
 if you begin to talk Liaoyang, now that your fever s 
 down. There wasn t any Americans in that fighting " 
 
 "I m not a soldier " 
 
 Nevin wrung his hands. A thought recurred to 
 Morning. 
 
 "There was a couple of letters in my clothes one 
 addressed to a paper in Frisco, and one to me." 
 
 The other was curious enough to send an orderly to 
 search. 
 
 "Have him bring the package of paper, too," Morn 
 ing said. When all was brought in good order, he added : 
 "This letter to me I ll read later. The larger package is 
 Duke Fallows first hurried story of the battle of Liao 
 yang. I won t read that either, because I ve got to do
 
 AFIELD 87 
 
 one of my own. I did one, you know ten times as long 
 as this but the Hun huises got it on the Liao-crossing, 
 from Tawan that s where I got cut up. Morning of 
 the fourth, it was. . . . The sorrel mare did fifteen 
 miles with her guts sticking out, and I walked thirty to 
 Koupangtse, with these wounds and smashed from a 
 couple of falls before the morning of the fifth. . . . 
 You can look at Duke Fallows story, Doctor, and I ll 
 take a little doze " 
 
 Fallows battle was done clearly as a football game, 
 and as briskly, to the withdrawal of the Russian lines 
 upon the inner positions of the city and the flanking 
 movement of Kuroki. A dramatic pause then to survey 
 the Russian force on the eve of disaster, from which 
 the reader drew the big moral sickness. After that 
 Lowenkampf, the millet and the Ploughman. In quite a 
 remarkable way Fallows turned the reader now from 
 the mass to the individual. In a little trampled place 
 in the grain the battle was lost by the Russians and won 
 by Japan. . . . The Doctor was interrupted several 
 times, but no force was missed. It was a new voice to 
 him. He wondered if Fallows would make the world 
 hear it. It seemed to compel a reckoning. 
 
 The Fallows story laughed all the way. One did not 
 have to look twice at a sentence to understand, yet two 
 readings did not wear it out, nor would it leave one 
 alone. All the time the Doctor read, matters he had 
 heard in delirium from the lips of John Morning came 
 back. 
 
 Nevin remembered the tears on the first morning, 
 the choke in his own throat ; the first sight of the wounds, 
 the queer, extra zeal he had put into this case. Finally 
 he could hardly wait to learn the rest chiefly how John 
 Morning had happened to be lying in the darkest end 
 of the hammock-hole, over against the insane compart 
 ment. . . . Yet he did not wake up his patient. 
 When Morning finally opened his eyes, it was time for
 
 88 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 nourishment. Nevin brought a glass of extra wine be 
 fore inquiring. "First, tell me has Ferry seen me?" 
 
 "Captain Ferry, the quartermaster?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I d rather think not. He s about occasionally but 
 his truck with the sick men is mostly transportation and 
 nourishment 
 
 "The second time I came to ask him to take me 
 across that afternoon the second time," Morning said 
 slowly, "he told me that if I appeared on his deck again 
 he d send me ashore in irons. You see the Sickles is to 
 beat the Coptic in. I had to come. Why, the mails 
 couldn t beat me through from Liaoyang. ... I 
 finally got aboard with some soldiers but I would have 
 leeched to the anchor. . . . And, say, I think I 
 knew you that morning. It seemed as if I could let go 
 when I felt your hands " 
 
 The two were quiet. The Doctor looked obliquely at 
 an open port with one eye shut, as if he were not sure of 
 the count. . . . 
 
 Accompanying the manuscript was a letter to Noyc?, 
 editor of Western States, which chiefly concerned John 
 Morning. Many brave things were said. . . . 
 Nevin, deeply stirred with the whole business, saw the 
 Ploughman coming forth from the millet saw the 
 Ploughman going home. That little drama so dear to 
 Fallows heart was greater than Liaoyang. Nevin saw 
 that such things are deathless. . . . Deathless 
 that s the word. They look little at the time in the midst 
 of thunder and carnage; but the thunder dies away and 
 the rains come and clean the stains and the spirit of it 
 all lives in one deed or in one sentence. A woman nurses 
 the sick at Scutari, and the Crimean war is known for 
 the angel of its battlefield, by the many who do not know 
 who fought, nor what for. . . . Nevin felt the big 
 forces throbbing in the world the work of the world. 
 It had come to him distantly before. It had pulled him
 
 AFIELD 89 
 
 out of the comfort and ease of his home town to serve 
 the sick at sea and in the Islands. 
 
 The mystery of service. He had never dared tell 
 anyone. His voice broke so easily. He had covered 
 the weakness in leers and impediments, so the world 
 would not see. He had talked of his rights and his 
 wages, the dusty-faced little man. Mystery of Service 
 and men were ashamed when it touched them. 
 
 But Fallows, laughing and so powerful, this boy s 
 man-friend, wasn t afraid. Was the boy afraid? What 
 had driven him? Did the boy know what had driven 
 him? What, in God s name, had driven this human 
 engine that would not stop that threw off poisons and 
 readjusted itself against the individual and collective 
 organizations of death? 
 
 Nevin was shaken by the whole story it girded, 
 girdled him. . . . Let Ferry come. Ferry was one 
 of those bleak despoilers of human effort, whose pres 
 ence consumed the reality in another. What was Ferry 
 anyway and Ferry s sort a spoiled child or an ancient 
 decadent principle? Was it merely a child-soul with a 
 universe ahead, or was he very old and very ill incorri 
 gible self-love on its road back to nothing? . . . 
 But the Ploughman lived, Fallows lived, the boy Morn 
 ing lived their work was marching on. 
 
 The Doctor did not speak, because his voice would 
 break. He went about his work instead swift mag 
 netic hands. ... At least, he could stand between 
 Morning and the quartermaster if there were need. 
 
 When he came back Morning was at work, a hard 
 bright look of tension about him, and a line of white 
 under the strange young beard. . . . 
 
 "I think I can get it going now. I think it is be 
 ginning to come again," he said in a hushed tone. The 
 Doctor arranged the pillows better, sharpened an extra 
 pencil and went out. 
 
 "I may have to do those first pages again," he said
 
 90 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 an hour later. "It s hard to get out of the hospital 
 you know, what I mean a man s bath is so important 
 to one lying-up that it shuts out a battle-line. What a 
 fool a sick man is. But I ll get it " 
 
 He fell asleep in the dusk before the candles came. 
 The Doctor found him cool, his breathing normal. 
 . . . The next day Morning worked until Nevin re 
 monstrated. 
 
 "You ll die, if you go on " 
 
 "I ll die, if I don t," said Morning. The Doctor 
 knew in his heart that it was true. Still they com 
 promised. That night, as Morning dropped down into 
 an abyss of exhaustion, he mumbled the whole story of 
 Eve the sorrel mare. "She rose to her feet white 
 death in her eyes," he finished. . . . 
 
 Nothing attracts the eye on ship-board like a man 
 at work. All idle ones are caught in the current and 
 come to pay their devoirs to the man mastered by a 
 strong task. . . . The Doctor had Morning taken 
 to an extra berth in his own state-room. The door had 
 a spring lock, for many medicines and stores were there. 
 Ferry was not likely to happen in the Doctor s quarters. 
 The latter even doubted if he would recognize Morning. 
 He came and went, as the task drove on. Once Morn 
 ing stopped to tell him about the deck passage on the 
 Tungsheng, and another time about his brush with the 
 Hun huises in the ravine across the river from Tawan. 
 . . . The Doctor saw that Morning had made a won 
 derful instrument of himself ; he studied how the pas 
 sion of an artist works on the body of man. The other 
 found that so long as he ate regularly and fell asleep 
 without a struggle he was allowed to go on. 
 
 The Sickles was swinging down into the warmth. 
 The sick man had a bad day, lying in the harbor at 
 Honolulu. 
 
 "It isn t the work, Doctor it s the ship s stopping," 
 Morning said, squirming in the berth. "It makes my
 
 AFIELD 91 
 
 head hot. I see steamy and all that. I had it when the 
 Tungsheng lay up for a day in Chifu on account of the 
 blow. ... I had it that day in Nagaski when Ferry 
 wouldn t take me on. I ll be all right to-night. . . . 
 
 Give me a little touch of that gin and lime juice " 
 
 "Just lime juice when heads get hot. . . . You re 
 a clever little drunkard. I ve been wondering how far 
 you d go. . . . Yes, we ll clear to-night. . . . 
 Ferry s ashore. Come out and see the black boys dive 
 for pennies." 
 
 "There s something doing with this knife-wound it 
 doesn t heal," the Doctor said, mid-way between the Is 
 lands and the Farallonnes. "The leg s all right. Organs 
 and all the little organs seem to thrive on work. That 
 is, they re no worse. The leg heals but this one you 
 seem to have established a permanent drain " 
 
 "Fifty pages yesterday two hundred words a page," 
 Morning muttered. 
 
 "Yes and the day before and to-morrow and the 
 night we left Honolulu. ... If a man worked that 
 way for money, he d be as dead as Ferry inside of a 
 month. . . . Have you read your friend Fallows 
 story yet?" 
 
 "No, I don t dare a sick man isn t all himself. And 
 this story is me. It s got to be me. It s better in places 
 than the other, the one I lost. ... I haven t read 
 Duke s letter to me yet. He s strong medicine. He keeps 
 coming back to me, as it is. I want to get off alone when 
 the work is done and think. You can t see him all, when 
 he s in a room with you. . . . He was like you, in 
 being a friend to me. . . . Yet, I seem to know you 
 better. You ve helped me so. I m pretty happy the way 
 the story is coming 
 
 "See how long you can go without a drink to-day." 
 
 "It starts me off, you see. It doesn t seem to touch 
 me just steams right off with the work "
 
 92 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "That s rotten sophistry. I m watching you " 
 
 Nevin had never seen a body so driven by will. 
 Morning appeared no worse ; certainly he was no better ; 
 his brain was in absolute abeyance ; his will crashed 
 through clouds of enervation and irresolution. There 
 were times when Nevin believed Morning would col 
 lapse, when he was finished with Liaoyang, but he was 
 not so sure now. He was sure, however, that he must 
 not interfere except in extremity. . . . This was 
 part of the big work. Somehow he trusted in Duke 
 Fallows who had allowed the boy to write the de 
 tailed battle-end, and gone back to Europe to feed the 
 babes of the Ploughman. That last made him want to 
 doctor the whole world. . . . 
 
 Morning had done the story and re-written the lead. 
 The Sickles would enter the Gate at daylight. 
 
 "There s seventy-five or eighty thousand words of it. 
 It s good unless I m crazy. It s good, unless this is 
 all a dream. God, I m thirsty." 
 
 With the work done for the day, however, he asked 
 for lime juice and water. His temperature was less 
 than two points above normal ; nothing had broken ; yet 
 the voyage had not replenished Morning s body. He 
 could hardly stand. 
 
 "To-night I ll read the Fallows stuff and the 
 letters. . . . Doctor, can you get me ashore 
 early?" 
 
 "Think a minute you don t know what you ask " 
 
 "Quarantine " 
 
 Nevin nodded. "There s extra attention to a ship like 
 this they ll have to see that running wound of yours 
 for instance " 
 
 "Not if you don t report it " 
 
 The Doctor s lower jaw reached down, and to the 
 right, finding the walnut. "You wouldn t even read 
 Duke Fallows story before you wrote yours. A man 
 can t lie in his own work "
 
 AFIELD 93 
 
 "You ve been so good," Morning said huskily. "I 
 begin to expect miracles " 
 
 "You can get messages telegrams, letters ashore. 
 . . . And then it may only take a couple of hours. 
 There isn t any contagion here that I know of." 
 
 Morning first read Fallows letter to Noyes, editor 
 Western States. It told of the story accompanying but 
 more of the bearer. Laughing, loving-hearted, eloquent 
 Fallows was all through it, and fine gifts of the man s 
 thinking. There was suggestion to Noyes to use Morn 
 ing s story and get it across simultaneously in New York. 
 "The boy has never yet, so far as I can see, found time 
 to arrange a decent payment for his work. Please ob 
 serve that unless some one, equally as capable, gets into 
 Port Arthur, Morning s story will be the biggest feature 
 of the war in a newspaper way. I m going on to Europe 
 on the Ploughman story. Let Morning do the big battle 
 I ll begin to crackle later." 
 
 And then Morning read the story. . . . His 
 voice trailed up finally from the shadows of lower 
 berth. "It s good," he said to the Doctor after mid 
 night. 
 
 "It s dam good. It s better than mine. . . . He 
 was alive with it I mean with the Ploughman. It s the 
 way he did it. He tried to get it across before we sepa 
 rated. He told me from every angle told Lowenkampf 
 told them all at the station at Yentai. None of us 
 could see. . . . He was crazed about it that we 
 couldn t see. We were all choked with blood and death 
 that night. He said Kuropatkin and the others would 
 see that the Ploughman was right if they had a sense 
 of humor. Such density to humor, he called the sin 
 
 against the Holy Ghost 
 
 After they had talked many minutes, Morning 
 broke the seal to his own letter and learned why 
 he had been barred from the earlier Japanese 
 armies.
 
 94 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 19 
 
 fineness of Fallows, of Nevin, of Endicott, the 
 A station-agent at Tongu, the risen humanity of the 
 Ploughman Morning s soul to sense these men was 
 empty within him. All that he knew was blood and 
 blow and force and mass and hate. He lay panting and 
 possessed. As he had plotted in delirium how to kill 
 Ferry, dwelling upon the process and the death ; so 
 Reever Kennard came in now for a hatred as perfect and 
 destructive. The letter had called up something of the 
 same force w.hich had driven John Morning from Liao- 
 yang, over or through every barrier to the present hour 
 in which the Sickles lay off the entrance of the Golden 
 Gate waiting for dawn, thirty-six hours ahead of the 
 Coptic. 
 
 His work was diminished in his own mind ; the value 
 of his story was lost, the zest to market it, the sense of 
 the world s waiting. He was a thief in the eyes of men. 
 A man cannot steal. They believed him a thief. . . . 
 He thought of moving about the halls of the Imperial 
 that day of his thoughts as he had watched from the 
 window in the billiard-room while the picture was taken. 
 He had been tranced in terror. . . . Had he but 
 known, he would have made a hell in that house. He 
 saw Reever Kennard again on the deck of the Sickles 
 his turning to Kennard for help unparalleled shame. 
 . . . The thing he desired with such terrible zeal 
 now was enacted in his brain. That hour on the deck 
 of the Sickles was repeated, but this time he knew what 
 Kennard had done. He called him to the lie in imagina 
 tion. The jowl was heavy with scorn and the small 
 slow eyes were bright with fear yet they took nothing 
 back and Morning moved closer and closer demanding, 
 until the devil broke from him, and his knotted hand 
 sank into the soft center of the man. He watched the 
 writhing of that clean flanneled liar, watched him arise.
 
 AFIELD 95 
 
 The hand sank once more. . . . the vile play romp 
 ing through his mind again and again hideous fighting 
 of a man brought up among stable and race-track and 
 freight-route ruffians the fighting that feels no pain 
 and only a knockout can stop. . 
 
 "Wow it s hot as hell in here," came from Nevin in 
 the upper bunk. 
 
 A little before dawn, utterly ravaged by the poison 
 of his thinking, Morning was struck by the big idea. He 
 turned on the light, steadied himself to paper and pen 
 cil and wrote to Noyes of the Western States: 
 
 Inclosed find (I) Duke Fallows first story of 
 Liaoyang; (II) his letter to you, containing among 
 other things information concerning the bearer; 
 (III) the first ten thousand words of my eighty- 
 thousand-word story of the battle fought a month 
 ago to an hour including sketches of Kuropatkin, 
 and others, covering exactly terrain, the entire po 
 sition, strategy, and finally the cause of the Russian 
 disaster, with word-picture of the retreat, done on 
 the day when it was at its height. The writer left 
 the field and made the journey to Koupangtse alone, 
 nearly one hundred miles to the railroad. This is the 
 only American eye-witness story besides Fallows . 
 The mails of the second-hand reports will not reach 
 here before the arrival of the Coptic. ... I will 
 sell this story to the Western States on condition that 
 it appear in the World-News, New York, simulta 
 neously the story to be run in not less than seven 
 installments, beginning by telegraph to-morrow. I 
 insist on the World-News, but have no objection to 
 the general syndicating of the story by the Western 
 States, my price for the American newspaper rights 
 being $1,800 and transportation to New York. 
 "In God s name, are you .doing another book? " 
 Nevin demanded, letting himself down from the berth. 
 "What s the matter you re on fire?
 
 96 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 Morning was counting off the large first installment 
 of his manuscript. He placed it upon the table, with the 
 Fallows story and the two letters to Noyes. . . . 
 Then he put an empty water-pitcher on it, restoring the 
 balance of his story to its place under his pillow. 
 
 "Listen" he said, clutching Nevin s arm, "here s the 
 whole thing if I m sick to-morrow. Give it to the re 
 porter from the Western States make him see it is life- 
 blood. Make him rush with it to Noyes. It s the whole 
 business. . . . He ll get it before the quarantine 
 is lifted, if you oh, if you can! It s all there. . . . 
 You do this for me?" 
 
 "And where will you be all this time 
 
 "Oh, Nevin Nevin for God s sake put me to sleep ! 
 I m full of burning and devils! Fill up that needle 
 business and put me to sleep! ... I can t wait to 
 get across in the New York World-News. That s Reever 
 Kennard s own paper." 
 
 20 
 
 THE voices sounded far and muted voices one 
 might hear when swimming under water. It was 
 easier for him to stay down than rise and answer. He 
 seemed carried in the strong flow of a river, and pre 
 served a consciousness, very vague, that it meant death 
 to go down with the stream. At last, opening his eyes, 
 he saw the city over the pier-sheds. 
 
 The rest of the manuscript was still under the pil 
 low, but the water-pitcher rested upon the bare wood of 
 the table. It was after twelve. His deadly fury had 
 burned itself out. The thought of the World-News tak 
 ing the story, steadied his weakness. It was much 
 harder to dress than usual, however. He had no shore 
 clothes, but Nevin would see to that for him. With a 
 glad thrill, he realized that the Sickles had passed the 
 quarantine, or she wouldn t be in the slip. His mind
 
 AFIELD 97 
 
 turned to Nevin again, and when he was thinking about 
 this deep-rooted habit the voyage had inculcated, the 
 Doctor himself entered. 
 
 "Well, you gave me a night." 
 
 "You ll have some rest now." 
 
 "I ve brought some clothes for you to go ashore 
 with. . . . The Western States got your story two 
 hours ago. Ferry has gone ashore." 
 
 "Did the reporter take it here or from across the 
 harbor in quarantine?" 
 
 "He was waiting with others for us to be turned 
 loose. I gave him the stuff as we were putting about. 
 He didn t come aboard, I saw his launch reach landing. 
 I told him to put the stuff into the hands of Noyes and 
 to hurry back. All of which he did " 
 
 "Why to hurry back?" 
 
 The little man s mouth gave way to strange twist- 
 ings, and he answered grudgingly, "Well, I had a story 
 to give him." 
 
 Morning took a room at the Armory, refusing a loan 
 from the Doctor. "I ll have it shortly plenty, I think. 
 I ll lie up there until I hear from Noyes. I may hurry 
 East 
 
 The process was not clear exactly, but the old story 
 of Mio Amiga had given him a terror of borrowing. 
 The Armory was nearby. It was clean and cheap. This 
 little decision of choosing the Armory, a result of Mio 
 Amiga, too, is the most important so far. . . . The 
 Doctor went with him. The two were hushed and sick 
 with things to say. Nevin felt he was losing the throb 
 of great service ; that he could not hold it all after this 
 power-house of a man went his way. It was not only 
 Morning, but Morning was attached to the large, quiet 
 doings and seeings of the stranger named Duke Fal 
 lows. 
 
 Morning loved the Doctor. Nevin did not tower; 
 Nevin was instantly in his comprehension. Their
 
 9 8 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 throats tightened. . . . Nevin saw him to the light 
 little room, and said as he was leaving : 
 
 "I ve been all over Chinatown, looking up a formula 
 for that wound that won t heal. It s this full direc 
 tions inclosed. You ll have to get settled before you try 
 it out." 
 
 He disappeared saying he would be back. Morning 
 put the envelope in a wallet, which he had carried afield. 
 . . . It was not yet two in the afternoon. There 
 was a timorous rap at the door. Morning s head dropped 
 over drowsily. The door opened just a little and a voice 
 said: 
 
 "Is there a sick American soldier in here?" 
 
 It was low and timorous like the tapping, but there 
 was a laugh in it, and something that drove the wildness 
 out of his heart. 
 
 "Yes," he said. 
 
 "And may I come in?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 She was slight and young and pale. She passed be 
 tween the window and his eyes. Her brown hair seemed 
 half-transparent. The day was bright, but not yellow ; 
 its soft gray luster was exactly the woman s tone. There 
 was a curious unreality about the whole figure. The 
 light in her eyes was like the light in the window ; gray 
 eyes and very deep. So quietly, she came, and the day 
 was quiet, the house a queer hush everywhere. 
 
 "There are a few of us who meet the transports 
 and call on the sick soldiers. We talk to them write 
 letters or telegrams. Sometimes they are very glad. All 
 we want is to help. I haven t tried many times 
 before " 
 
 Someone had told him once of a woman in London, 
 who met the human drift in from the far tides of chance 
 and made their passing or their healing dear as heaven. 
 He had always kept the picture. He scarcely heard all 
 that this young woman was saying.
 
 AFIELD 99 
 
 She was not beautiful, not even pretty. You would 
 see her last in a room full of women. Under her eyes 
 he could not tell just where there was a line or shadow 
 of strange charm ; and where the corner of her eye-lids 
 folded into the temple a delicate perfection lived ; her 
 frail back had a line of beauty again, he could not 
 describe this. The straightness of the figure was that of 
 lightness, of aspiration. . . . Sometimes she seemed 
 just a girl. Her underlip pursed a little ; it was not red. 
 . . . She seemed waiting with the lightness of a 
 thistle waiting and listening in the lull before a wind. 
 
 "My name is Betty Berry." 
 
 "Mine is John Morning." 
 
 She told him that she was a musician, and that San 
 Francisco was her home, although she was much away. 
 He saw her with something that Duke Fallows had 
 given him. The hush deepened with the thought. Had 
 he taken from that tired breast a certain age and clear- 
 eyedness and judgment of the ways of love-women? 
 There might have been reality in this ; certainly there 
 was reality in his not havinrj seen a white girl in many 
 months. He was changed ; his v;ork done for the mo 
 ment; he was very tired and hungry for something she 
 brought. . . . "Betty Berry." 
 
 He was changed. This Western world was new to 
 him. He seemed old to the East old, much-traveled, 
 and very weary ; here was faith and tenderness and real 
 ity. Duke Fallows city Duke had strangely intrenched 
 himself here; and this wraith of an angel who came to 
 him ministering! . . . Malice and ambition repri 
 sal and murder were gone. What a dirty little man he 
 had been how rotten with self, how furious and un 
 speakable. Why had he not seen it? AVhy had he re 
 jected Duke Fallows with his brain and accepted him 
 with his soul? The soul what queer place in a man 
 is this? Duke Fallows, Lowenkampf were in and out, 
 and Nevin, even the Ploughman now ; and this little gray
 
 ioo DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 hushed spirit of a girl had come straight to his soul. 
 Why could one not always feel these Presences ? Would 
 such destroying and malignant hatred return as that for 
 Reever Kennard last night ? Was it because he had been 
 so passionate for self that until now, (when he was 
 resting and she came), decency, delight, nor vision had 
 been able to break through the deadly self-turned cur 
 rents? . . . This was like his finer self coming into 
 the room. 
 
 "How did you know that boys coming home need 
 to see you?" he asked. He had to be very careful and 
 arrange what he meant to say briskly and short. Most 
 of his thoughts would not do at all to speak. 
 
 "Women know. So many boys come home like 
 those on the Sickles whom one is not allowed to see. I 
 have watched them going out, too. They don t know why 
 they go. They don t expect to find a new country, and 
 yet it seems as if they must go and look. And many 
 come home so numbed with loneliness that they have for 
 gotten what they need." 
 
 "Then women know what boys men are?" 
 
 She smiled, and seemed listening her lips pursed, 
 her eyes like a cloudy dawn, turned from him slightly. 
 What did she hear continually that did not come to 
 him? 
 
 "I mean the men," he added, "whom the world calls 
 its bravest the gaunt explorers and fighters do women 
 know what boys they are?" 
 
 "I don t know those whom the world calls its 
 bravest." 
 
 "I think I needed to have you come," he said, "but 
 I didn t know it." 
 
 The hush was in the room again. Morning felt like 
 a little boy and as if she were a child with braids be 
 hind. They felt wonderful things, but could only talk 
 sillinesses. . . . There was something different about 
 her every time he looked. It seemed if she were gone;
 
 AFIELD 10 1 
 
 he could not summon her face to mind. He did not 
 understand it then. 
 
 It had grown quite a little darker before they no 
 ticed. The far rumble of thunder finally made them see 
 a storm gathering. 
 
 "You won t go until it s over?" 
 
 "It might be better for me to go now before it 
 begins." 
 
 "Do you live far?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then stay please." 
 
 She drew her chair closer. They tried to tell each 
 other of what they had been, but this didn t prosper. 
 The peculiar thing was that their history seemed to be 
 gin from now all was far and unimportant but this. 
 Morning, moreover, did not mean to spoil the primary 
 idea in her mind of his being an American soldier; 
 though all his recent history impinged upon the one fact 
 that he wasn t. . . . He tried to hold her face in his 
 mind with shut eyes, but it was a forced and unfair pic 
 ture when mentally dragged there. . . . The thun 
 der increased and the rain. 
 
 "Once when I was little," she said, "I was alone in 
 the house when a storm came, and I was so frightened 
 that day that I never could be since, in just the same 
 way." 
 
 Perfect revelation. Something in him wished she 
 were pretty. She was such a shy and shadowy creature. 
 He called to mind the girls he had known coarse and 
 tawdry lot, poor things. Betty Berry was all that they 
 were not ; yet some of them were prettier. He could see 
 their faces quite distinctly, and this startled him, be 
 cause shutting his eyes from full gaze at this girl, he 
 could not see her twice the same. . . . The weather 
 cleared. They were together in silence for moments at 
 a time. She became more and more like a wraith when 
 the natural dusk thickened.
 
 102 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "Was it hard for you to knock and speak that first 
 moment ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Do do any of the soldiers ever misunderstand?" 
 
 "No " 
 
 "That s fine of them," he granted. 
 
 "They couldn t when one has no thought, only to be 
 kind to them " 
 
 "You think they see that at once?" 
 
 "They must." 
 
 "A man doesn t know all about soldiers simply be 
 cause he soldiers with them," Morning said. 
 
 "And then " 
 
 "Yes " 
 
 "They look at me and it s very plain that I come just 
 to be good to them. . . . They think of me in the 
 same way as a Salvation Army lassie or a mis 
 sionary " 
 
 "Now, that s queer," said he. "It didn t occur to me 
 at all. It would never come to me to ask you to leave 
 a tract." 
 
 "And I didn t feel like a missionary, either. . . . 
 Now it s all cleared again. I must go." 
 
 There was a pang. . . . Where was Nevin? 
 Why had Noyes or someone from the Western States 
 not come to him? Coming back to these things pained. 
 . . . A boy in the halls called the afternoon papers 
 in a modified voice. 
 
 "Will you get me the papers especially the Western 
 States?" 
 
 She hurried to call the boy. He saw the huge picture 
 of Duke Fallows on the sheet toward him, as she re- 
 entered. 
 
 "This is what I want," he said hoarsely, taking the 
 Western States. . . . 
 
 "John Morning," she whispered. 
 
 In inch letters across the top there it was:
 
 AFIELD 103 
 
 JOHN MORNING BRINGS IN THE FIRST FAL 
 LOWS STORY. 
 
 Full Day Ahead of Coptic Mails. . . . Morning 
 Leaves Fallows on the Field Beyond Liaoyang, Night of 
 September 3rd. . . . Two Americans Alone See 
 Great Battle. . . . The Incomparable Fallows 
 Story Printed in Full in the Western States To-day. 
 . . . John Morning s Detail Picture a Book in It 
 self Begins in the Western States To-morrow Big 
 gest Newspaper Feature of the Year s Campaign. . . . 
 Read To-day How John Morning Brought in the News 
 - a Story of Unparalleled Daring and Superhuman 
 Endurance. . . . 
 
 Such was the head and the big-print captions. 
 Morning s riding forth from Liaoyang on the night of 
 the third the sorrel mare the Hun Crossing the Liao 
 Crossing and the fight with the river-bandits the run 
 away of the sorrel and her broken heart his journey 
 dazed and delirious, covered with wounds, thirty miles to 
 Koupangtse Tongu the battle to get aboard the 
 Sickles, first, second, and third attempts redoing the 
 great story on shipboard all this in form of an inter 
 view and printed as a local story, ran ahead of the Duke 
 Fallows article. 
 
 A great moment, and John Morning, forgetting all 
 else, even forgetting the girl who glanced at him with 
 awed and troubled eyes, held hard for a moment to the 
 one realization : Noyes would not have printed, "Be 
 gins in the Western States to-morrow/ had he not ar 
 ranged for publication in Reever Kennard s World- 
 News. . . . 
 
 Her chair was farther away. She waited for him 
 as one expecting to be called. He turned ; their eyes 
 met full. 
 
 "You are not an American soldier "
 
 104 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "I am an American. I have had a hard time, almost 
 as hard as any soldier could " 
 
 "I wouldn t have come the whole city will serve 
 you : 
 
 "That s why I didn t speak. No soldier could have 
 gotten more good." 
 
 Her eyes turned downward. The room was almost 
 dark. A knock at the door. 
 
 "I must go " 
 
 He held out his hand. "Won t you come again?" 
 
 "It doesn t seem " 
 
 He would not let her hand go. "Oh, won t you come 
 again ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Thank you." 
 
 Betty Berry opened the door for Noyes and another, 
 and she passed out. 
 
 21 
 
 NOYES said lightly: 
 "The young lady doesn t need to go on our 
 account 
 
 "But she s gone," Morning muttered. The walls gave 
 him back the words. 
 
 "If it s any interest to you, Morning, I ve followed 
 directions in your letter," the editor said presently. 
 
 "The World-News " 
 
 "That s what I waited for before coming here. 
 They re using Field s local story to-morrow morning. 
 It s on the wire to them now. This is Field." 
 
 "I had the pleasure of bringing in your manuscript 
 from the Sickles rather early this morning," said the lat 
 ter. "Also I did the story that Doctor Nevin told 
 me." 
 
 "I wish he would come," said Morning. 
 
 "Nevin?"
 
 AFIELD 105 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "He s on his toes where you are concerned," said 
 Field. 
 
 "He has done much for me 
 
 "Friend Fallows is rather strong for you, too, I 
 should say," Noyes offered. 
 
 He was a pale, soft, middle-aged man who gave the 
 impression of being more forceful than he looked. 
 
 "I owe everything to him," said Morning. 
 
 "By the way, Morning, what were you mad at, when 
 you wrote that letter of directions to me? I followed 
 it carefully as you said price World-News every 
 thing. We ll have a lot of other papers beside the 
 World-Nczvs but that letter made me hot under the 
 collar every time I glanced at it 
 
 "I was just about to break. I was very sick of 
 words. Every sentence was like drawing a rusty chain 
 in one ear and out the other." 
 
 "Of course you know you ve got the world by the 
 tail on this Russian end this Liaoyang story," Noyes 
 observed. 
 
 "I ve written the story. The big part of the copy 
 is here for you." 
 
 "You re not going to quit now. Are you down and 
 out physically?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why, Morning," Field broke in, "you ought to make 
 ten thousand dollars in the next thirty days. You ve 
 got a big feature for every magazine in America and 
 then the book." 
 
 "The chance doesn t come but once in a life time 
 and then only to God s chosen few, who work like hell," 
 said Noyes, and he sat back to review this particularly 
 finished remark. 
 
 "What would you do?" Morning asked. 
 
 "I d start for New York to-night. Field s story about 
 you the one we run to-night at the head of Fallows
 
 106 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 story will start the game. A couple of installments of 
 your big yarn will have appeared in the World-News 
 when you reach New York. If it ends as good as it be 
 gins, you ll have the big town groggy within a week. 
 You ll receive the magazine editors in your hotel, con 
 tract to furnish so much and talk off same to expert 
 typists. That s the way things are done. You ve got 
 the goods. New York serves a man like that. It s 
 nothing to me, but I know the game even if I never 
 cornered a Liaoyang story. Fallows said you have done 
 more work for less money than any man in America. 
 He s one of our owners 
 
 So Noyes rambled on ; Field breaking in with fresh 
 and timely zest. Morning had not looked beyond the 
 main story. He saw separate articles now in every 
 phase. It would work out. . . . Four days of rest 
 looking out of the car-window. He would land in 
 New York once and for all land hard do it all at 
 once. Then he would rest. . . . He was seething 
 again. . . . With this advantage he could break in 
 to the markets that would stand aloof from his ordinary 
 product for years. All day his devil had slept, and now 
 was awake for rough play in the dusk. His dreams 
 organized the big markets breaking out of the news 
 papers into the famous publications ! He had the stuff. 
 It would be as Noyes said. He would have thought of 
 it for another man. 
 
 "How soon can I start?" he said. 
 
 "Four or five hours." 
 
 "I m obliged to you. . . . Fallows seems still 
 with me," he said strangely. ... "I must see 
 Nevin " 
 
 There was a ringing in his brain at some unused 
 door, but he did not answer. He was driven again. 
 Harrowing the idea of waiting a single day ... in 
 these modern hours when world-events are so swiftly 
 forgotten.
 
 AFIELD 107 
 
 Everything was settled. Morning was taken from 
 place to place in a cab. Noyes not only was conscien 
 tious about seeing to every detail for Friend Fallows 
 but he made it very clear that he was not accustomed to 
 spend his evenings down-town. From time to time, he 
 dropped hints of what he would be doing at home at 
 this hour. Down-town nights were all put away for 
 him, he declared. 
 
 The balance of the manuscript was locked in the safe 
 at the Western States to be set up to-morrow, and proofs 
 sent out. The second and possibly third installments of 
 the story would go to the World-News by telegraph, 
 the rest follow by mail. 
 
 "To-morrow morning, out in the mountains, you ll 
 have the satisfaction of knowing that New York is read 
 ing Field s story which we ran to-day. Is that stuff the 
 Doctor gave us, right, Morning?" 
 
 "Huh ?" 
 
 "Did you dream about that sorrel mare entrails 
 out walking like a man white death in her eyes?" 
 Noyes pursued. 
 
 "God, I wonder if I did? Did I dream that I did the 
 big story twice? 
 
 He was in pain ; there was lameness in his mind at 
 being driven again. He wished Noyes would go home. 
 
 . . Messengers were back and forth to the Sickles 
 trying to get Nevin. Transportation to New York was 
 the newspaper s affair ; when it was handed him, some 
 thing went from Morning that he could not get again. 
 There was much to drink. Noyes had put all this from 
 him so long that he found the novelty humorous and 
 yet, what a bore it was after all! Field was a steaming 
 geyser of enthusiasms. Both talked. Others talked. 
 Morning was sick with words. He had not had words 
 drummed into his brain in so long. He half-realized 
 that his impatience for all these things was disgust at 
 himself, but all his past years, and their one-pointed aim
 
 io8 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 held him now. This was his great chance. . . . He 
 wanted Nevin. 
 
 These city men gave him everything, and disap 
 pointed him. Had he been forced to battle with them for 
 markets ; had he been forced to accept the simple column 
 rate, he could not have seen them as now. Because they 
 had become his servants, he touched their weakness. 
 And what giants he had known Fallows and Nevin 
 and Endicott, the little Englishman at Tongu. . . . 
 You must answer a man s need when that need is des 
 perate to make a heart-hold. A man makes his friends 
 before his world capitulates. 
 
 He was waiting in the bar of the Polander. . . . 
 Nevin had not been found. Morning was clothed, ex 
 pensed; his order upon New York for the price of the 
 story would not be touched until he reached there. He 
 had won already ; he had the world by the tail. . . 
 Nevin did not come. There was no bite in the drink for 
 Morning. He was in pain ; others made a night of it. 
 He struggled in the pits of self, that sleepless, never- 
 forgetting self. There was a calling, a calling deep 
 within, but the outer noise spoiled the meaning. Men 
 drank with single aim ; they drank like Russian officers 
 to get drunk. They were drunk ; all was rich and free. 
 Noyes knew many whom he saw every day, and many 
 whom he had seen long ago. He called them forward to 
 meet Morning, who had brought in the story. . . . 
 Morning who knew Duke Fallows Morning who had 
 the big story of the year, beginning to-morrow. . . . 
 And always when they passed, Noyes remarked that the 
 down-town stuff was silly as the devil. White and cleri 
 cal, his oaths were effective. He drank hard and well 
 as men go. Field drank well his impulses becoming 
 more gusty, but not evil. . . . Once Morning would 
 have called this a night of triumph. Every one looked 
 at him talked respectfully whispered, pointed. . . . 
 Twenty minutes left the crowd grew denser in the
 
 AFIELD 109 
 
 Polander bar. There was a voice in the arch to the 
 hotel. Ferry entered in the midst of men. He was talk 
 ing high, his eyes dancing madly. 
 
 "Why, the son of ... threw me that s all. 
 He s done with the Sickles. . . . Who? Why, 
 Nevin, the squint-eyed son of a ... He threw me. 
 . I thought this Morning was some drunken re 
 mittance man wanting passage. Reever Kennard said 
 he was a thief. . . . Nevin might have come to me. 
 . Why, Morning didn t even pay his commuta 
 tion for rations 
 
 "I would have mailed it to you, Ferry except for 
 this meeting," said Morning, his voice raised a little to 
 carry. 
 
 An important moment to him, and one of the strang 
 est of his life. This was the man whom he had dreamed 
 of murdering, the man who had made him suffer as 
 only the gods should make men suffer. And yet Ferry 
 was like an unpleasant child ; and Morning, troubled by 
 greater things, had no hate now, no time nor inclina 
 tion to hate. The face that had seemed dark and piti 
 less on the deck in Nagasaki harbor was only weak 
 and undone an unpleasant child crying, refusing to be 
 quieted an annoyance to the house. Such was the 
 devil of the Sickles, the man who had stood between him 
 and America, the man who had tried to make him miss 
 beating the Coptic mails. . . . They faced each 
 other, the quartermaster, wincing and shrunken. 
 
 "I had to get across, Ferry. I was too sick to make 
 you see. Kennard always says that. He seems to know 
 that best but it isn t true. ... I was bad to look 
 at. You see, I had come a long way. I was off my 
 head and eyes " 
 
 "I didn t know," Ferry blurted, "and now Nevin has 
 
 thrown me. I wasn t supposed to take civilians " 
 
 "I know it only I had to get across. ... I 
 don t know what I d have done but for Nevin. He was
 
 no DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 mother and father on the voyage. I can give you the 
 commutation now " 
 
 "You were a stowaway " 
 
 "That s what made it delicate to pay for the 
 passage " 
 
 Ferry was broken-nerved. He suggested buying a 
 drink, as a child who has learned a fancied trick of 
 men. 
 
 And Morning drank. Noyes glanced at Field, who 
 had suddenly become pale and anxious with a story 
 idea. He was at work drink-clouds shoved back and all 
 the exterior enthusiasm fresh as after a night s rest. 
 He was on a new story. 
 
 Ferry went away and Morning looked at the clock. 
 Only five minutes of his life had been used in this im 
 portant transaction. Nevin had not come Nevin who 
 had lost his berth, thrown over his own work for him. 
 
 . . There would be no more Nevin on the Sickles. 
 Would he come East? 
 
 "Oh, I say, Field drop the Ferry end of the story," 
 Morning said. 
 
 "Sure," said Field glibly. 
 
 "Nothing to it," said Noyes. 
 
 Morning was too tired to go further, though he felt 
 their lie. 
 
 "But, Nevin," he said to Noyes. 
 
 "I ll have him found to-morrow. That s the big 
 local thing to-morrow." 
 "Tell him " 
 
 When Morning stopped telling Noyes and Field what 
 to tell Nevin for him, it was time to go for the ferry. 
 The Polander slipped out of Morning s mind like a 
 dream smoke, voices, glasses, indecent praise. Noyes 
 reached across the bar for a package. That last seemed 
 quite as important as anything. 
 
 They left him at the ferry these men of the Western 
 States servants of his action and his friends.
 
 AFIELD in 
 
 And somewhere in the city was little Nevin, who had 
 done his work and who had not come for his pay ; some 
 where in the city, but apart from voices and adulation 
 the man w T ho had forgotten himself in telling the story 
 of how the news was brought in. ... It was all 
 desperately unfinished. It hurt him every moment. 
 
 In the Pullman berth he opened the package Noyes 
 had given him ; the porter brought a glass. Afterward, 
 he lay in the darkness. It was very still when he had 
 become accustomed to the wheels. The going always 
 had soothed him. In the still train and the peace of the 
 road, he heard at last that ringing again at the new door 
 of his life, and opened to Betty Berry, who had prom 
 ised to come.
 
 BOOK II 
 
 THE HILL-CABIN
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 
 
 MORNING sat in the yielding leather of the Boabdil 
 library, quite as if he had passed his youth in the 
 midst of people who talk of doing things. Liaoyang had 
 been written, even the abandoned impediments of retreat 
 covered. It had all come to pass quite according to the 
 early ideas of Noyes and Field. John Morning was 
 Liaoyang in America. His book Liaoyang, magazine 
 and newspaper articles gathered together, was estab 
 lished as important authority in encyclopaedic and other 
 reference books. The most captious must grant that 
 living man can do no more than this. 
 
 Morning had dined with the president. One after 
 another he had made every magazine of note, and much 
 money. He had done his own story of the journey, 
 which proved more of a comment maker than the battle 
 description ; and his article on the deck passages of the 
 Chinese coolies will always be an incentive to foreign 
 missions. New York had waited upon him, had ex 
 ploited him, given him bewildering payments, and called 
 him everything, even Hugoesque and Tolstoianic. It 
 was very hard for Morning to retain the conviction that 
 there wasn t ten pages of all this copy that ranked in 
 sheer value with the ten pages of Fallows Ploughman. 
 He didn t for awhile. 
 
 Liaoyang was on in full magazine blast in America, 
 while Mukden and Sha River were being fought across 
 the world. At this time Morning spent an hour a day,
 
 u6 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 as war-expert for a particularly incessant daily news 
 paper of New York. So all people knew what the cam 
 paign was about, and what certain generals might do, 
 from past grooves of their wearing in history. Also 
 German gentlemen of military pasts wrote letters dis 
 puting the prophecies. Morning had certainly ar 
 rived. 
 
 The condition or place of arrival was slippery. The 
 peace of Portsmouth had been protocoled. . . . Li- 
 aoyang, deep in the valley of desuetude, was without 
 even the interest of perspective. The name, Liaoyang, 
 made the mind of the world lame. . . . Even in the 
 heat of arrival, the thing had puzzled him. Money ceased 
 to gladden him after a few mails ; did not spare him 
 from the nearest irritation. Plainly he was quite the 
 same John Morning after appearing in the great mag 
 azines as before ; and the people whom he had inter 
 ested were mainly of the same sort that had come for 
 ward in the Polander bar. 
 
 He had been a sick man since the Hun Crossing. 
 When the big New York task was finished, and it was 
 done with something of the same drive of will that char 
 acterized the second writing of the main story on board 
 the Sickles, he was again ready to break, body and brain. 
 Running down entirely, he had reached that condition 
 which has an aversion to any task. His productive mo 
 tors had long lain in the dark, covered from the dust. 
 This was the time he clubbed about. The Boabdil was a 
 favorite, but even here, men drew up their chairs from 
 time to time, day and night, dispatching the waiter for 
 drink and saying: 
 
 "Those Japs are pretty good fighters, aren t they?" 
 or, "What do you consider will become of China in the 
 
 event of " or, very cheerily, "Well, Mr. Morning, 
 
 are you waiting for another war?" 
 
 He slept ill; drank a very great deal; the wound in 
 his side had not healed and he had made no great friends.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 117 
 
 He thought of these four things on this particular mid 
 day in the Boabdil library. . . . Nearby was old 
 Conrad with the morning papers, summoning the 
 strength to dine. It was usually late in the afternoon, 
 before he arose to the occasion, but with each stimulant, 
 he informed the nearest fellow-member that he was go 
 ing to eat something presently. The old man stopped 
 reading to think about it. After much conning, he de 
 cided that he had better have just one more touch of 
 this with a dash of that which he took slowly, listen 
 ing for comment from within. . . . After dinner 
 he would smoke himself to sleep and begin preparing for 
 the following morning s chops. "Eat twice a day, sir 
 no more not for years." 
 
 Conrad in his life had done one great thing. In 
 war-time, before the high duty was put on, he had ac 
 cumulated a vast cellar full of whiskey. That had meant 
 his hour. Riches, a half century of rich dinners, clean 
 collars and deep leather chairs all from that whiskey 
 sale. . . . "Picturesque," they said of Conrad at 
 the Boabdil. "What would the club do without 
 him?" . . . 
 
 Morning watching him now, remembered an old man 
 who used to sit at a certain table in a Sixth avenue bar. 
 The high price of whiskey had reversed conditions in 
 this case, and a changed collar meant funeral or festiv 
 ity. Forty years ago this old man had bred a colt that 
 became a champion. That was his hour, his answer for 
 living. After all, Morning concluded, having seen Con 
 rad fall asleep one night, the old horseman was less 
 indecent. 
 
 Finally Morning thought of the little Englishman 
 at Tongu and the blanket ; then of Fallows and Nevin 
 Fallows saying, "Come on upstairs," that day of their 
 first meeting at the Imperial, and Nevin saying, "Well, 
 
 you gave me a night " . . . Morning began to 
 
 laugh. "Picturesque, what-would-we-do-without Con-
 
 n8 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 rad" sitting five days and nights on the deck passage 
 from the mouth of the Pei-ho to the lowest port of 
 Japan. . . . 
 
 He hadn t thought much of Nevin and Fallows and 
 the Tongu Endicott in the months that followed his 
 arrival from San Francisco, when the work went with 
 a rush. And Betty Berry there were times when he 
 was half sure she name, Armory and all formed but 
 an added dream that Nevin had injected hypodermically 
 the night before. 
 
 Morning could think about all these now. The ed 
 itors had begun to tell what they wanted. He had sent 
 in stuff which did not meet their needs. He was linked 
 to war in their minds. Moreover, plentiful money had 
 brought to the surface again his unfinished passion to 
 gamble, as his present distaste for work had increased 
 the consumption of alcohol. ... It was Reverses 
 that reminded him of Fallows and Nevin and the Tongu 
 blanket and the angel he had entertained in the Armory 
 room. 
 
 Editors didn t care for his fiction. "A good war 
 story is all right any time," they said, but apparently 
 his were not, for five or six trials didn t take. He had a 
 tendency to remember Fallows when he wrote fiction. 
 The story of the Ploughman came curiously back to 
 mind, when he was turned loose from straight narrative, 
 and he was "balled" between planes. . . . He 
 thought of a play. . . . 
 
 Varce now came into the library and drew up a chair. 
 Varce had one of his stories ; Varce edited a magazine 
 that sold several million every two weeks. Long ago, 
 with great effort, and by paying prodigiously, Varce had 
 secured from Morning one of the final tiles of the great 
 Liaoyang mosaic. . . . Varce was tall, a girl s 
 dream of poet-knight black, wavy hair, straight ex 
 cellent features, a figure lean enough for modern 
 clothes.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 119 
 
 "Morning," he said, "do you know the fighting 
 game?" 
 
 "You mean pugilistically?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I used to do fights." 
 
 Varce went on presently: 
 
 "A great series of articles is to be written on the 
 boyhood and general atmosphere of the men who have 
 made great ring history big stuff, you know well 
 written from a man who can see the natural phenomena 
 of these bruisers how they are bred and all that. Now 
 three things go into the fighter punch, endurance, but, 
 most of all, instinct the stuff that doesn t let him lay 
 down when the going is rough, and doesn t keep him 
 from putting the wallop on a groggy opponent. Many 
 a good fighter has missed championship because he was 
 too tender-hearted to knock-out a helpless " 
 
 "Do you like that story of mine you have, Varce?" 
 Morning asked yawning. 
 
 "Oh, it s a good enough story a bit socialistic what 
 are you trying to get at?" 
 
 "No need of me furnishing diagrams, if the manu 
 script leaves you that way," Morning said. "You were 
 just saying about the last touch to a beating yes, I ve 
 heard about those three things " 
 
 "Do you want the series?" 
 
 "No, I m doing a play." 
 
 . . . After Varce had gone, Morning thought it all 
 out again. Varce was living a particularly unmitigated 
 lie. Five years ago he had done some decent verse. He 
 had a touch of the real poetic vision, and he had turned 
 it to trade. He was using it now to catch the crowd. 
 An especially sensational prostitution, this one ithat 
 would make the devil scratch his head. . . . And 
 Varce could do without him. Liaoyang had not made 
 the name of John Morning imperative. Moreover, he 
 himself was living rotten. He wished he had told Varce
 
 izo DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 what he thought of him and his multi-millionaire sub 
 scription. . . . He hadn t ; he had merely spoken of 
 his play. The bridges were not burned behind him. He 
 might be very glad to do a series of "pug" stories for 
 Varce. There were good stories in these fighters but 
 the good stories, as he saw them, were not what Varce 
 saw in the assignment. 
 
 It summed up that he was just beginning over again ; 
 that he must beat the game all over again in a different 
 and larger dimension or else quit. . . . He or 
 dered a drink. . . . He could always see himself. 
 That was a Morning faculty, the literary third eye. He 
 saw himself doing a series of the fighters saw it even 
 to the red of the magazine covers, and the stuff of the 
 announcements. . . . John Morning, the man who 
 did fifty-mile fronts at Liaoyang, putting all his un 
 paralleled battle color in the action of a 24-foot ring. 
 Then the challenge to the reader : "Can you stand a de 
 scriptive force of this calibre? If you can, read the story 
 of the great battle between Ambi Viles and Two-pill 
 Terry in next issue." . . . He would have to tell 
 seriously before the battle description, however, how 
 Ambi was a perfect gentleman and the sole support of 
 his mother, an almost human English gentlewoman. It 
 is well to be orthodox. 
 
 Somebody spoke of whiskey in the far end of the 
 library, insisting on a certain whiskey, and old Conrad 
 cocked up his ears out of a meaty dream. . . . 
 Morning closed his eyes. He felt the warmth of a ship 
 beneath, the drive of the cold rain on deck and the 
 heaving of the sea. There was something almost sterile- 
 clean about that deck-passage, compared to this. . . . 
 Then he remembered again the men he had known, and 
 the woman who came to the Armory room and the 
 long breath his soul took, with her coming. . . . 
 Finally he saw himself years hence, as if he had quit 
 the fight now and taken New York and Varce as they
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 121 
 
 meant to use him. . . . He was sunk in leather, 
 blown up like an inner tube and showing red, stalled in 
 some club library, and forcing the world to remember 
 Liaoyang, bringing down the encyclopaedia to show his 
 name, when extra drunk. . . . No, he would be 
 hanging precariously to some porter job on Sixth avenue, 
 trying to make the worn and tattered edges of his world 
 believe how he had once carried the news from Liao 
 yang to Koupangtse. . . . 
 
 A saddle-horse racked by on the asphalt, and turned 
 into the park. Morning arose. There was stabbing and 
 scalding from the unhealed wound in his side. The pain 
 reminded him of the giants he had once known and of 
 the woman who came to the Armory room. It had al 
 ways been so ; always something about him unsound, 
 something that would not heal. He had accepted 
 eagerly, but ever his giving had been paltry. And he 
 had to be pulled down, out of the shine of fortune, be 
 fore he remembered how great other men had been to 
 him. 
 
 THAT night he dreamed that he had passed through 
 death. . . . He was standing upon a cliff, be 
 tween the Roaming Country and a valley of living earth. 
 He did not want the spirit region ; in his dream he turned 
 his back upon it. He did not want the stars. Illusion 
 or not, he wanted the earth. He looked down upon it 
 through the summer night, down through the tree-tops 
 into a valley that lay in the soft warm dusk. He 
 watched with the passion and longing of a newly-dead 
 mother, who hears her child crying for her, and senses 
 the desolation of her mate. . . . The breath of earth 
 came up to him through the exhaling leaves leaves 
 that whispered in the mist. He could have kissed the 
 soil below for sheer love of it. He wanted the cool, 
 damp earth in his hands, and the thick leaf-mould under
 
 122 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 his feet, and the calm wide listening of the trees. . . . 
 Stars were near enough, but earth was not. He wanted 
 to be down, down in the drip of the night. He would 
 wait in ardor for the rain of the valley. . . . Look 
 ing down through the tree-tops, he sensed the earth pas 
 sion, the lovely sadness of it and desired it, even if he 
 must die again. . . . There was an ache in the de 
 sire like the ache of thirst that puts all other thoughts 
 away, and turns the dream and the picture to running 
 water. 
 
 He awoke, and went to his window in the dark. He 
 saw New York and realized that he was dying for the 
 country. His eyes smarted to tears, when he remem 
 bered rides and journeys and walks he had taken over 
 the earth, so thoughtlessly, without knowing their boon 
 and beauty and privilege. . . . While he was stand 
 ing there, that which he had conceived as To-morrow, 
 became To-day, and appeared over the rim of the oppo 
 site gorge of apartments. The first light of it sank far 
 down into the tarry stuffiness of the pavement, but the 
 dew that fell with the dawn-light was pure as heaven 
 to his nostrils. 
 
 That day he crossed the river, and at the end of a 
 car-line beyond Hackensack, walked for a half-hour. It 
 was thus that Morning found his hill. Just a lifted cor 
 ner of a broad meadow, with a mixed company of fine 
 trees atop. He bought it before dusk. The dairyman s 
 farmhouse was a quarter-mile distant; the road, a hun 
 dred and fifty yards from the crest of the hill, with 
 trees thinly intervening. The south was open to even 
 wider fields ; in the far distance to the west across the 
 meadows, the sky was sharpened by a low ribbon of 
 woods and hill-land. In the east was the suspended 
 silence of the Hudson. 
 
 "I want a pump and a cabin, and possibly a shed for 
 a horse," he said, drinking a glass of buttermilk, at the 
 dairyman s door.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 123 
 
 He was directed to Hackensack. 
 
 With the falling darkness again upon the hills, he 
 saw that certain crowded, mid-growth trees were better 
 down. The fine thought of building his cabin of them 
 occurred. By the time he reached Hackensack, the house 
 of logs was so dear in thought, that he wanted nothing 
 short of a cabinet-joiner for such a precious task. That 
 night he met Jake Robin, who was sick of nailing at 
 houses in rows, a job that had long since ceased to af 
 ford deep breaths to his capacity. 
 
 The next day Morning moved to Hackensack, and 
 Jake was at work. . . . Three thousand he had lost 
 gambling ... he wished he had it now. Much 
 more had been lost, and not so cleanly, in reaching the 
 final Boabdil realization, but he had enough. Presently 
 he was helping Jake, and there was joy in it. 
 
 They tapped a spring some thirty feet beneath the 
 humped shoulder of the hill ; built a shed for the horse 
 he had not yet found, and then fitted the cabin to the 
 fire-place of concrete and valley stone. One sizeable 
 room it was, that faced the open south from the brow 
 of the hill. 
 
 A fine unfolding this love of Morning s for wood 
 itself, and woods. Over a half-hundred trees were his 
 own elm, beech, hickory, oak, ash, and maple and like 
 a fine clean colony of idealists they stood meditating. 
 . . . One never knows the quality of wood until one 
 builds his own house. Opening the timbers for the big 
 mortices each was a fresh and fragrant discovery. Jake 
 and he lingered long, after the cabin was roofed, over 
 the heavy oak flooring, and the finishing of windows 
 and doors and frames. They built some furniture to 
 gether of hickory, which is a wood a man should handle 
 with reverence, for it is fine in its way as wheat and 
 grapes and honey and wild olives. Hickory answers 
 graciously to the work of the hand, and, like a good dog, 
 flourishes with men. . . . They built a table and
 
 i2 4 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 bed-frame and a chest of drawers ; and Morning at last 
 went to Hackensack for pots, kettles, and tea things. 
 Jake Robin, like one who has built a ship, was loath to 
 leave without trying the cabin. Morning kept him busy 
 in the clearing, long after he was in the mood to start 
 work on the play. There was a platform to build for the 
 pump ; also a certain rustic bench. The shed needed 
 tinkering; an extra cabinet for books was indispensable 
 and screens. . . . No one had ever let Jake play 
 before in his life. . . . Moreover, he was paid for 
 the extra hour required to walk to and from town. All 
 Hack heard about it. 
 
 "You ll need a chicken-coop " 
 
 "No," said Morning. The look on Jake s face was 
 like old Amoya s in Tokyo, when the rickshaw-runner 
 was forbidden to take him to the Yoshuwara. 
 
 "I can fit you up a little ice-box near the spring so s 
 you ll pump it full of water, and keep your vittles " 
 
 Morning wanted the stillness for the play, but he 
 couldn t refuse. Two days more. Then Jake scratched 
 his head. 
 
 "You ll be wantin a vine on the cabin," he ventured. 
 "I know the man who has the little ivies." 
 
 This was irresistible. "Can you see me owning a 
 vine ?" asked Morning. Yet there was significance in the 
 idea together with the play. 
 
 "And I ll build a bit of a trainer to start it. By the 
 end of summer " 
 
 "Bring it on, Jake " 
 
 "An I ll fetch a couple of rose vines, and dreen them 
 with broken crockery from the holler " 
 
 The vine prospered and the play ; and the roses began 
 to feel for Jake s trellis. The tool-box was still there. 
 
 "You ll be needin fire-wood for the winter. To be 
 sure, you can buy it, but what s the good, with dead stuff 
 to be knocked down and small trees to be thinned out, 
 and the shed gapin open for the saddle-horse you re not
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 125 
 
 sure of findin ? It s wood you ought to have in 
 there " 
 
 In fact, it was no small task to break Jake of the hill- 
 habit. Morning grew accustomed to the ax, and the 
 crashing of branches, many of which would have been 
 sacrificed to the strong winds of the Fall. Meanwhile, 
 the shed had come into its own, and there were piles 
 of firewood seasoning in the sun and shade. 
 
 He was alone with the nights ; sitting there in his 
 doorway when it was fine, studying the far lights of the 
 city. . . . City lights meant Varce and Conrad, not 
 his great friends. Every hour that he looked, he liked 
 better the wind about the doorway and the open southern 
 fields. 
 
 One night he felt his first twinge of sorrow for the 
 big city. Hatred, it had been before. Other men were 
 tortured as he had been, but somehow, the way didn t 
 get into their dreams and drive them forth, as he had 
 been driven. They were really not to blame for Boab- 
 dilling; they sank into the cushions and lost the sense of 
 reality. And then the thousands in the hall-bedrooms 
 and worse, to whom Boabdil was heaven s farthest pa 
 vilion! Morning seemed to have something to say to 
 those thousands, but wasn t ready yet. 
 
 He longed for Fallows, whom he saw more clearly 
 every day especially since the Ploughman had crept 
 into the play. . . . He wanted to wait upon the big 
 sick man ; to have him here, to prepare food for him, 
 and sit with him in these silences. He wanted Endicott 
 at Tongu, too, and Nevin oh, yes, Nevin. It was like 
 a prayer that he sent out some nights for the unearth 
 ing of these giants from their hiding so that he could 
 listen to them, and serve them and make them glad for 
 their giving to him. 
 
 A deep summer night. The purple of the north 
 seemed washed and thinned in ether, (nothing else could
 
 126 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 bring out the heavenly lustre of it), and the black, fragile 
 top-foliage of the woods leaned against it, listening, fem 
 inine. Darkness only on the ground ; yet he loved it, the 
 heart of the dusk that throbbed there. He loved the 
 earth and the water that mingled in the hollows. He 
 breathed with strange delight the air that brushed the 
 grass and the clover-scent that came to him around the 
 hill. . . . And this was the momentary passion 
 that he was going from all this. He loved it as one who 
 was passing beyond. It was like the dream after all. 
 Just as Mother Earth was unfolding, he was called. She 
 was like a woman long lived-with, but unknown, until 
 the sudden revelation of parting. . . . He touched 
 the stones with his hand. 
 
 In the hush, waiting for a katydid to answer, that 
 night, Morning fell asleep. . . . He had climbed to 
 his cabin, as if it were a room on an upper floor. Be 
 fore he opened the door, he knew someone was within. 
 Before the light, it was clear that someone was curled 
 up asleep on the foot of his hard bed. . . . Yes, it 
 was she who had restored his soul, that day at the 
 Armory and there she lay sleeping. . . . He did 
 not call her, as he had called Moto-san ; there was no 
 thought to waken her, for everything was so pure and 
 lovely about it. He stood there, and watched her grate 
 fully it seemed a long time until the katydid answered. 
 
 AFTER Markheim had kept the play three months 
 it was now November Morning crossed to the 
 the city to force the decision. The producer was pre 
 vailed upon to see him. 
 
 "It will be read once more," said Markheim. "It 
 will go or not. We like it, but we are afraid of it. To 
 morrow we will know or not."
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 127 
 
 "What are you afraid of?" 
 
 "I don t know. I do not read plays." 
 
 "To-morrow ? 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Markheim bought his opinions, and was attentive to 
 those which cost the most. . . . 
 
 Morning drew a napkin the size of a doll s handker 
 chief from a pile. A plate of eggs and bacon rung, as 
 if hitting a bull s-eye upon the white marble before him. 
 He was still wondering what Markheim was afraid of. 
 He didn t like the feel of it. The Lowenkampf of Duke 
 Fallows had crept into the play Lowenkampf, whose 
 heart was pulled across the world by the mother and 
 child. How they had broken his concentration on the 
 eve of the great battle. 
 
 At the time, he had seen the tragic sentimentalist as 
 one caught in a master weakness, but all that was gone. 
 Lo\venkampf still moved white in his fancy, while the 
 other generals, even Mergenthaler, had become like the 
 dim mounds in his little woodland. . . . And what 
 a dramatic thing, to have a woman and a child break 
 ing in upon the poised force of a vast Russian army. 
 It was like Judith going down into the valley-camp of the 
 Assyrians and smiting the neck of Holofernes with his 
 own fauchion. Morning s mind trailed away in the 
 fascination of Fallows, and in the dimension he had 
 been unable to grasp in those black hours of blood. 
 . . . So many things were different aLer this sum 
 mer alone ; yet he had never seemed quite rested, neither 
 in mind nor body. . . . He had been all but un- 
 killable like the sorrel Eve before that journey from 
 Liaoyang to New York. Now, even after the ease and 
 moral healing of the summer alone, his wound was un- 
 healed. . . . 
 
 The telephone-miss in Markheim s reception-room 
 was very busy when he called the next afternoon. 
 . . . Something about her reminded him of Mio
 
 128 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 I 
 
 Amigo. She was a good deal sharper. Was it the brass 
 handle? . . . To hear her, one would think that she 
 had come in late, and that New York needed scolding, 
 even spanking, which exigencies of time and space de 
 ferred for the present. Her words were like the spat, 
 spat, spat, of a spanking. . . . She was like an 
 angry robin, too, at one end of a worm. She bent and 
 pulled, but the worm had a strangle-hold on a stone. 
 It gave, but would not break. . . . Morning saw the 
 manuscript at this point on her side-table, and the fun 
 of the thing was done. . . . She looked up, trailed 
 a soft arpeggio on the lower-right of her board, grasped 
 the manuscript firmly, and shoved it to him. 
 
 "Mr. Morning to see Mr. Markheim," he said. 
 
 "Mr. Markheim is " 
 
 But the husky voice of the producer just now reached 
 them from within. 
 
 "Busy " she finished with a cough. . . . New 
 
 York was at it again. Stuyvesant especially had a devil, 
 and Bryant was the last word. 
 
 ". . . You can t see Mr. Markheim. This is your 
 message " 
 
 "Oh, it really isn t. This is just an incident. I hesi 
 tate to trouble you, but I must see Mr. Markheim." 
 
 The play was wrapped in the identical paper in which 
 it had been brought. 
 
 She must have touched something, for a boy came in 
 a younger brother, past doubt but so bewildered, as 
 to have become habitually staring. 
 
 "Tell Mr. Markheim, Mr. Morning insists on seeing 
 him." 
 
 The boy seemed on the point of falling to his knees 
 to beg for mercy. Morning s personal distemper sub 
 sided. Here was a drama, too the great American 
 stage. . . . One word came out to him from Mark 
 heim: 
 
 "In-zists !"
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 129 
 
 "How do you do, Mr. Morning good afternoon." 
 
 Markheim had his hand in a near drawer, and was 
 smiling with something the same expression that old 
 Conrad used when listening for the dinner notice. 
 
 "You see \ve do not want it \ve are afraid," he be 
 gan, and becoming suddenly hopeful, since Morning 
 drew forth no bomb, he added, "You have a girl s idea 
 of war, Mr. Morning good afternoon." 
 
 He liked his joke on the name. "We were in doubt 
 about the w r ar part afraid and so we consulted an 
 expert one who \vas on the spot," he said pleasantly. 
 
 Morning s mind was searching New York ; his idea 
 was fateful. 
 
 "We are not bermidded to divulge who the expert is, 
 but we did not spare money " 
 
 Morning s eye was held to the desk over the shoulder 
 of Markheim, to a large square envelope, eminent in 
 blue, upon the corner of which was the name "Reever 
 Kennard." 
 
 "I m sure you did not. He was always a high-priced 
 man," he said idly. . . . And so this was the long- 
 delayed answer to his appearance in the World-News to 
 the extent of eighty thousand words. He had heard that 
 Mr. Reever Kennard was back on finance and politics. 
 . . . Markheim had not followed his mind nor caught 
 the sentence. Morning passed out through the hush. 
 He paused at the door to give the office-boy a present a 
 goodly present to be divided with the sister, just now 
 occupied with a fresh outbreak of obstreperousness on 
 the part of Gramercy. 
 
 Morning had moments of something like the old 
 rage ; but the extreme naturalness of the thing, and its 
 touch of humor, helped him over for the next hour or 
 so. Apparently, the opportunity had fallen into the lap 
 of Mr. Reever Kennard ; come to him with homing 
 familiarity. The war-expert had spoken, not as one
 
 130 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 offering his values gratuitously, but as one called and 
 richly paid. Morning reflected that the summer alone 
 on his hill must have subdued him. As a matter of fact, 
 he was doubtful about the play; not because Markheim 
 was afraid ; not by any means because Mr. Reever Ken- 
 nard had spoken, but because it had not come easily, and 
 the three incidents which made the three acts did not 
 stand up in his mind as the exact trinity for the integra 
 tion of results. But one cannot finally judge his own 
 work. * 
 
 He wandered straight east from that particular the 
 atre of Markheim s where the offices were and passed 
 Fourth Avenue. He never went quite that way again, 
 but remembered that there was an iron picket-fence of 
 an old residence to lean against ; and at the corner of it, 
 nearer town, the sidewalk sank into a smoky passage 
 where lobsters, chops, and a fowl or two were tossed to 
 gether in front. It was all but dark. He was averse 
 to taking his present mood across the river. It wasn t 
 fair to the cabin. Mio Amiga recurred queerly and 
 often to mind. . . . 
 
 "Look there s Mr. Morning " 
 
 "Sh-sh oh, Charley sh-sh !" 
 
 Morning was compelled. Could this little shrinking 
 creature, beside whom the under-sized brother now ap 
 peared hulking, be the same who had bossed Manhattan 
 to a peak in his presence such a little while ago? She 
 seemed terrified, all pointed for escape, sick from the 
 strain of the street. 
 
 "Why, hello!" Morning said. 
 
 She pulled her brother on, saying with furious effort 
 of will, "I m sure we re much obliged for your pres 
 ent " 
 
 "I had forgotten that," Morning said. 
 
 "We re going to take in the show," the boy remarked, 
 drawing back. At large, thus, he was much better to 
 look upon.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 131 
 
 "Come on, Charley we mustn t detain " 
 
 Morning had an idea, and looked at the sister as he 
 said, "Won t you have supper with me somewhere? I 
 have nothing " 
 
 Her face was livid as if all the fears of a lifetime 
 had culminated into the dreadful impendings of this 
 moment. She tried to speak. . . . Then it came to 
 Morning in a belated way that she thought she was 
 accosted ; that she connected his gift with this meeting. 
 He couldn t let her go now and yet, it was hard for 
 him to know what to say. 
 
 "I mean we three," he began hastily. "This play be 
 ing refused rather knocked me out, and I didn t know 
 what to do with the evening. I don t live in New York, 
 you know. I thought you and your brother that we 
 might have supper together " 
 
 He spoke on desperately, trying to stir to life the 
 little magpie sharpness again. It was more to her 
 brother she yielded. New York must have frightened 
 her terribly. . . . Morning managed to get down 
 to the pair that night. He was clumsy at it, however, 
 for it was a new emprise. Mostly John Morning had 
 been wrapped and sealed in his own ideas. The boy 
 was won with the first tales of war, but the sister re 
 mained apart with her terrors. No one had taught her 
 that kindness may be a motive in itself. 
 
 And now Morning was coping with what seemed a 
 real idea : What was the quality of the switch-board that 
 harnessed her character? Here she was wild and dis 
 ordered like a creature denied her drug. With that 
 mystic rumble of angry New York in her ears the 
 essential buzz of a million desires passing through her 
 she was a force, a flying and valuable force. Was she 
 lain open to obsession now because she was removed 
 from that slavery? Was that maddening vibration the 
 lost key to her poise? 
 
 He tried hard, not daring to be attentive in the least.
 
 132 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 She would have fled, if he had. He was boyishly kind 
 to her brother. That awed, and was beginning to hold 
 her. 
 
 Morning saw clearly that she stood like a stretched 
 wing between her brother s little soul and the world. 
 She could be brave in sheltering Charley. The boy was 
 really alive. He ate and answered and listened and lived, 
 the show ahead. ... In the midst of it, Morning 
 awoke to the fact that he was having a good time; and 
 here was the mystery with the last two people in New 
 York he would have chosen ; a two, his whole life-busi 
 ness had taught him to employ thoughtlessly, as other 
 metropolitan adjuncts pavements, elevators, messen 
 gers. Here \vas life in all its terror and complication, 
 the same struggles he had known ; yet he had always 
 seen himself as a sort of Titan alone in the great de 
 stroying elements. The joke was on him. 
 
 Charley left them for just a moment. The sister 
 said, as if thinking aloud : 
 
 ". . . And yet, he cries every morning because 
 he has to go to the office. Oh, he wouldn t go there 
 without me " 
 
 A world of meaning in that. They were sitting in 
 the dark of the Charity Union play-house, with Charley 
 between them. The aims and auspices of the perform 
 ance were still indefinite to Morning, who had not ceased 
 to grapple with his joke the seriousness with which he 
 had habitually regarded John Morning, his house, his 
 play, his unhealed wound, his moral debility. . . . 
 
 For fifteen minutes a giant had marvelously man 
 handled his companion. The curtain dropped an instant, 
 and in the place where the giant had performed now 
 stood a cello and a chair. . . . She came on like 
 the wraith of an angel and sat down and played. 
 . . . How long she played Morning never knew, but 
 somewhere in it he caught his breath as one who had 
 come back to life. . . . And then she was gone.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 133 
 
 The audience was mildly applauding. He turned to the 
 sister leaning on the knees of the boy: 
 
 "I know her. She is very dear to me. If you don t 
 mind, I ll leave you now. You are safe with Charley 
 and some time again I ll come. I thank you very much. 
 I really want to do this again we three : 
 
 Even though his own joy was bewildering, he saw the 
 sudden happiness of Charley s sister, who, in spite of 
 all, had been haunted by the dread of the afterward. 
 Now that was gone from her. Relief was in her face. 
 It was all so much better than she had dared to hope. 
 He had wanted nothing except to be kind and now 
 he was going. She gave her hand impulsively. 
 . . . Charley did, too, and was ordered to call a car 
 riage for his sister if he wished ; at all events, the means 
 was attended. . . . Then they saw him making his 
 way forward putting money into the hands of ushers, 
 and inquiring the way to the stage. . . . And she 
 was there, playing again. 
 
 SHE was making the people like her. Her effect was 
 gradual. They had been held by more obvious dis 
 plays. The instrument seemed very big for her, but the 
 people liked her all the better for this. . . . He 
 could not be one with the audience, but the old watching 
 literary eye the third eye caught the sense of the peo 
 ple s growing delight. She made them feel that she be 
 longed to them ; as if she said : 
 
 "I have come back to you. I will do just what you 
 ask. Everything I have is yours 
 
 It was different and dearer to John Morning than 
 anything he had ever known. The picture came clearly 
 to him as he walked around behind. . . . This was 
 the hour of her return. She had gone from the hearts
 
 i 3 4 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 of her people long ago to bring back music. It was the 
 beautiful old story of their sacrifice to send her away. 
 How splendidly she had learned; how thrillingly they 
 remembered her beginnings. And she had never for 
 gotten; she would always love and thank them indeed, 
 she was happier than any now. . . . Morning was 
 lost for a moment in his story. 
 
 She was approaching, but did not see him yet. The 
 house was pleased with her, not noisily, but pleasantly. 
 She turned to bow to the people and then back toward 
 the wings. She saw him standing there. Her arms went 
 out to him, though she had not quitted the stage. . . . 
 The gesture was new to the people. ... It was 
 different from her coming to him at the Armory. . . . 
 They were standing together. 
 
 "Why don t you go on again?" a voice said, and with 
 a queer irritation in the tone. 
 
 . . . She was playing again and with dash and 
 power. 
 
 Morning had to shut his eyes now, really to hear ; and 
 yet, he could not summon her face to mind when his 
 eyes were shut. He thought with a quick burn of shame 
 that he had once wished her prettier. Sadness followed, 
 for, it seemed to him, their meeting had been broken. 
 She belonged to the people and not to him. They loved 
 her. . . . She was different. He saw it now. The 
 audience, so pleased and joyous, lifted her in a way per 
 haps that he could never do. 
 
 It was everywhere the music. It filled the high, 
 brick-walled stage, vibrated in the spiral stairways, 
 moved mysteriously in the upper darkness and immen 
 sity. Behind the far wings a man was moving up and 
 down in a sort of enchantment no, he was memorizing 
 something. A few of the far front rows were visible 
 from where Morning stood, and the forward boxes 
 opposite. . . . 
 
 Morning was wandering in a weird land, a hollow
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 135 
 
 land. The woman s playing was between him and the 
 world of men ; half for them, half for him. The Mem- 
 orizer was but another phantom, wandering with the 
 ghost of a manuscript. Between Morning and the player 
 was only the frail, fluent current of music. This was a 
 suspense of centuries. . . . Would she go to Them, 
 or return to Him? The tall, dim canvases were fields 
 of emptiness and silence, in which he wandered listen 
 ing, tortured with tension ; and the loft was sunless, 
 moonless, unearthly. . . . 
 
 The music ceased. He heard the calling of the other 
 world to her. He was apart in the shadows. Would 
 she go to them, or would she remember him, waiting? 
 . . . She was coming. He heard her step behind the 
 wings. It was light as a gloved hand upon a table. He 
 was hungry and athirst and breathless. For the first 
 time he saw that her throat and arms were bare. . . . 
 They were standing together again, but the Other Phan 
 tom intercepted. 
 
 It was the Memorizing Man. He came forward in 
 an agony of excitement. "You ll have to prompt me," 
 he said to Betty Berry, speaking roughly in his tension. 
 "It s my first time with this new dope. I thought I had 
 it, but I ain t and there s a barrel of it." 
 
 The stage was slightly changed. Morning was think 
 ing how hideous the work of some men. The Phantom 
 was scourged with the fear of one who was to do imper 
 fectly what another had written. The woman had car 
 ried a small table and chair to the wings, out of view 
 of the audience and as near as possible to the Mem- 
 orizer. . . . Morning found something soft and 
 fragrant in his hands. Betty Berry s wrap, which she 
 had given to him before going to the table. And now 
 the monologue had begun. ... It was to be hu 
 morous. 
 
 Betty Berry, standing beside the table, raised her 
 eyes from the paper, and beckoned to Morning. His
 
 136 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 first thought was that he might disturb her prompting, 
 and he hesitated. She looked up again. Then he thought 
 she might want her wrap. He tiptoed forward and put 
 it around her shoulders. 
 
 "It wasn t that," she whispered, her eyes upon the 
 paper. "I wanted you to keep me company. This is 
 long. Sit down." 
 
 "Won t you sit down?" he said from behind, very- 
 close to her hair. 
 
 She shook her head. ... It was peculiar she 
 standing, and he in the chair. The soft wrap winged 
 out, and her arm beneath slid across his shoulder; the 
 hollow of her left arm against his cheek. He kissed it, 
 and his face burned against its coolness. 
 
 She shivered slightly, but did not take her arm away. 
 Now he looked up into her face her eyelids drawn, her 
 lips compressed, her gaze steadily held to the manuscript. 
 The Phantom was carried on by the alien humor. 
 Laughter was beginning to crackle here and there 
 through the house. Betty Berry followed with her eyes 
 just the words. 
 
 "I was so glad to find you," Morning whispered. 
 
 Her lips moved. 
 
 Matters tumbled over each other in his mind to say 
 to her; he was thinking sentences rather than words. 
 He knew that it was not well to talk now, but there 
 seemed so much to say, and so little time. He caught 
 himself promising to give her understanding, and he 
 told her that she seemed everything he wanted to know. 
 His cheek was burning as never before. . . . 
 
 The remotest happened. The Phantom faltered in 
 a climax, and covered the difficulty with a trick await 
 ing the line from the wings. Betty Berry had become 
 rigid. Her eyes would not see the page. 
 
 Morning spoke a sentence in a low, carrying way. 
 He had plucked it from the page painfully near his own 
 eyes. It may be that the Memorizer righted himself, or
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 137 
 
 that the prompted line was what he needed. Anyway, 
 he was going again, and rising to the end. . . . 
 
 The two stood together while the house laughed, re 
 calling the performer. 
 
 "Thanks. I caught it fine," the Phantom said hastily. 
 "Not even the front rows knew. I was listening for 
 Miss Berry and your cue came " 
 
 "It went all right," said Morning. 
 
 The other took the manuscript and passed on, roll 
 ing a cigarette. . . . For just a moment, the two 
 were alone. Into each other s arms they went, with the 
 superb thoughtlessness of children . . . and then 
 they heard steps and voices. . . . He wondered 
 that Betty Berry could laugh and reply to those who 
 spoke to her. . . . He wanted to escape with her. 
 Never had he wanted anything so much. He was ex 
 hausted, humbled, inspired. To be out in the street with 
 her it seemed almost too good to be. ... She was 
 saying good-night and good-bye. He followed, carrying 
 the cello. 
 
 MORNING remembered that he had thought of her 
 once before as having braids down behind as if 
 they were boy and girl together, and now it seemed as 
 if they were wandering through some Holland street. 
 He had never been in a Holland street, but the sense of 
 it came to him as he walked with her, carrying her 
 instrument. His primary instinct was to turn away 
 from the noise of the cars, and where the lights were 
 less glaring. Moreover, now that they were alone, the 
 impulse to say many things had left him. 
 
 "We must hurry to the ferry there is only a few 
 minutes 
 
 He had known somehow that she was going away
 
 138 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 perhaps from something she had said to the others at 
 the theatre. 
 
 "You re not going way back to to the Armory?" 
 
 "No, to Europe just for a few weeks. I sail to 
 morrow morning from Baltimore. All we have to do is 
 to catch the ferry and train. I have sleeper-tickets 
 and berth and all " 
 
 "I ll I ll go across on the ferry with you," he said 
 huskily. 
 
 She felt his suffering by her own, and said: 
 
 "My old master is there. I am to meet him I think 
 in Paris I shall know when I reach London. There is 
 to be just a few private concerts and some lessons fur 
 ther from him. For two years we ve planned to do this. 
 I go to Baltimore, because it is cheaper to sail from 
 there 
 
 "And you ll be back when?" 
 
 "By the first of March just a few days over three 
 months " 
 
 He was silent for a time, and then asked : "Do you 
 think this is just like a chance meeting to me as one 
 meets an old friend in New York?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I was in a whirl when I saw you," he said desper 
 ately. "It was such a pretty thing, too the way I hap 
 pened to come to the theatre . . . and now you re 
 going away- 
 
 Yes yes but it s only a little while " 
 
 "Did you know I was here in New York?" 
 "I knew you had been. I saw your work- 
 
 "But anywhere my work appears a letter sent in 
 
 care of the paper or magazine would find me " 
 
 "We I mean women do not write that way " 
 
 "I know I know. . . . But / didn t have any 
 thing but the name, Betty Berry " 
 
 "It seemed that night after I left you at the Armory
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 139 
 
 everyone was talking about John Morning. And to 
 think I supposed you just a soldier. Everywhere, it was 
 what John Morning had done, and what he had endured 
 and I had spent the afternoon with you. I started to 
 read that story about your journey, but I couldn t go on. 
 It seemed that I would die before I was half through 
 your sufferings. ... I would try to think of the 
 things we said, but they didn t come back. I couldn t 
 rest. I was glad you asked me to come again. I could 
 hardly wait for the morning to go back to the 
 Armory " 
 
 He had no answer. They were in a cross-town car. 
 
 "But I think I understand. We won t say anything 
 of that again. . . ." 
 
 "You went back to the Armory that next morn 
 ing?" 
 
 "Yes " 
 
 "Oh, but I wasn t ready," he said at last, as if goaded 
 by pain. "I had so much to learn. Why, I had to learn 
 this how little this means " 
 
 He pointed out of the windows to the city streets. 
 
 "You mean New York?" 
 
 "Yes " 
 
 "It really seems as if men must learn that, first of all. 
 You have done well to learn so soon." 
 
 "It s so different now. I must have been half-uncon 
 scious that day when you came. You were like an angel. 
 I didn t know until afterward what it really meant to 
 me. . . . You remember the men who came news 
 paper men? They showed me what I could do in New 
 York how I could make the magazines and the big 
 markets. I was knocked-out. You must see it all I 
 wanted to do in coming years to make what seemed 
 the real literary markets all was to be done in a few 
 weeks. ... It was not until I was on the train that 
 night that I remembered you were a living woman, and 
 had come to me. Then I didn t know what to
 
 1 40 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 do. ... But ever since I have thought of that aft 
 ernoon, every day. . . ." 
 
 They boarded the ferry and moved away from the 
 rest of the people. 
 
 "I hate to have you go," he said. The words were 
 wrung from him. They were such poor and common 
 words, but his every process of thought repeated them. 
 He looked back the years, and found a single afternoon 
 in the midst of passionate waste the single afternoon 
 in which she came. . . . She was everything to him. 
 He wanted to go on and on this way, carrying her cello. 
 He could ask no more than to have her beside him. He 
 had learned the rest it was trash and suffering. He 
 wanted to tell her all he knew not in the tension of this 
 momentary parting but during days and years, to tell 
 his story and have her sanction upon what was done, and 
 to be done. She was dear ; peace was with her. . . . 
 She would tell him all that was mysterious ; together 
 they would be One Who Knew. Together they would 
 work do the things that counted, and learn faith. . . . 
 
 She took the cello from him, so that he could carry 
 to the Pullman her large case checked in the Jersey sta 
 tion. ... It was very quiet and dark in the coach. 
 All the berths were made up but one, in which they sat 
 down. . . . They were alone. It was perfect. 
 
 "I can t go back now. I ll go on with you to Tren 
 ton. ... I have thought so much of meeting you. 
 . . . When the men came that day to the Armory 
 they showed me everything that seemed good then 
 fame and money waiting in New York. It seemed that 
 it couldn t wait another day that I must go that night. 
 . . . When the train started (it was like this in Oak 
 land) I thought of you of you, back in Frisco and 
 coming to the Armory in the morning. It broke me. 
 But I wasn t right not normal. I had worked like a 
 madman wounds and all. I worked like a madman in 
 New York "
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 141 
 
 She put her hand on his. Her listening centered him. 
 That was it as if he had not been whirling true before. 
 . . . Her hand, her listening, and he was himself 
 eager to give her all that was real. 
 
 "It s so good to have you here," she said in a low, 
 satisfied way. "Will you be able to get a train back all 
 right?" 
 
 "Yes." Now he thought of Charley and his sister. 
 
 "It was such a good little thing that brought me to 
 you," he said. "One of the little things that I never 
 thought of before," he told her hurriedly. 
 
 "They are very wonderful those little things, as 
 you call them. ... A person is so safe in doing 
 them " 
 
 "I must tell Duke Fallows about that," he added. 
 "About that word safe, as you just said it. ... 
 Did you read his story?" 
 
 "About the Ploughman?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Oh, it was wonderful!" Betty Berry said. "He 
 made me see it. It was almost worth a war to make 
 people see that " 
 
 She stopped strangely. He was bending close, 
 watching her. 
 
 "Do you know you are a love-woman?" 
 
 "You mean something different?" she asked queerly. 
 
 "I mean you are everything don t you see? You 
 know everything at once that I have to get bruised and 
 tortured to know. And when you are here, I know 
 where I am. It s different from any kind of resting to 
 be here with you. It s kind of being made over. And 
 then you are so tender 
 
 "You make the tears come, John Morning." 
 
 Now, it was very dark where they were; the real 
 silences began. He knew the most wonderful thing 
 about her her listening. . . . Sometimes, she 
 seemed hardly there. Sometimes the love for her and
 
 1 42 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 the sweet quality of it all shut his throat, and he stared 
 away in the dark. It came to him that Betty Berry 
 left to herself would be infallible. She might do 
 wrong, through the will of someone else, but her own 
 impulses were unerringly right. There was delicacy, 
 perhaps, from the long summer alone, in this sense that 
 he must not impose his will. She would be unable to 
 refuse anything possible. If ever Betty Berry were 
 forced to refuse anything he asked, they would never be 
 the same together. And so he studied her. Her nature 
 was like something that enfolded. It was like an at 
 mosphere his own element. 
 
 "Betty " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Betty- 
 "Yes 
 
 And then she laughed and kissed him. He was say 
 ing her name in the very hush of contemplation ; so real 
 that the name was all. 
 
 THE Pullman conductor passing through after 
 Trenton gave Morning further passage, and 
 moved on with a smile. A wonderful old darkey was the 
 porter, very huge, past seventy, with a voice purringly 
 kind, and the genial deference of the Old South. Morn 
 ing was thinking there couldn t be better hands in which 
 to leave the Betty Berry. . . . Fifteen minutes at 
 Philadelphia; they hurried out for a cup of coffee. As 
 one of the big station clocks marked the minutes, Morn 
 ing felt havoc with a new and different force. 
 
 "I can t go back now," he said. 
 
 "You look so tired the long night journey back " 
 
 she faltered. 
 
 "Would you like to have me go farther to Wil 
 mington to Baltimore ?"
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 143 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "And you won t mind staying up?" 
 
 Betty Berry covered her eyes. ... "I never 
 rested in quite the same way as to-night," she said. "It 
 has been happy so happy, unexpected. I shall have 
 nine days at sea to think of it to play and think of it, 
 moment by moment." 
 
 "I ll go with you clear through to the ship then." 
 
 The clock ceased its torment. 
 
 "Have you plenty of money to get back and all?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Are you sure because I could loan you some?" 
 
 He told her again, but the thought held a comrade 
 ship that gripped him. It happened that he was plen 
 tifully supplied ; though he would have walked back 
 rather than confess otherwise a peculiar stupidity. The 
 beaming of the old porter made the moment at the steps 
 of the coach so fine, Morning found himself explaining : 
 
 "The lady is sailing from Baltimore in the morning. 
 I ve decided to go clear through to the pier." 
 
 This was an extraordinary thing for him to explain. 
 
 They sat in silence until the train moved, and they 
 could forget the snoring. . . . The coach grew 
 colder, and Betty unpacked a steamer rug which they 
 used for a lap-robe. Even the old darkey went to sleep 
 after Wilmington. 
 
 "Letters " she said at last. "I have been thinking 
 about that. . . . There s no way to tell where I am 
 to be. I won t know until London, where I am to meet 
 my old master. Perhaps then I could tell you but I 
 daren t think of letters and risk disappointment. . . . 
 You must wait until I write you 
 
 Morning began to count the days, and she knew what 
 was in his mind. 
 
 "That s just it one gets to lean on letters. One s 
 letters are never one s self. I know that extended writ 
 ing throws one out from the true idea of another. I
 
 144 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 shall think of to-night during the weeks. ... It 
 seems, we forgot the world to-night. There behind 
 the scenes how wonderful. . . . There was no 
 thought about it. I just found myself in your arms 
 
 "Then I am not to write until I hear from you?" 
 he asked. It had not occurred to him before that she 
 could have any deeper reason than an uncertain itin 
 erary. 
 
 "That will be best. . . . Don t you see, writing is 
 your work. It will make you turn your training upon 
 me. Something tells me the peril of that. As to-night 
 dimmed away you would force the picture. . . . 
 Trained as you, one writes to what he wishes one 
 to be, not to what one is. ... You would make me 
 all over to suit and when I came, there would be a 
 shock. . . . And then think if some night very 
 eager and heart-thumping, I should reach a city so 
 lonely and hungry for my letter and it shouldn t be 
 there. . . . No, to-night must do for me. I shall 
 go on my way playing and biding my time, until the 
 return steamer. Then some morning, about the first of 
 March, you shall hear that I am back and that I am 
 waiting for my real letter " 
 
 "And where did you learn all this about a man 
 writing himself out of the real?" John Morning asked 
 wonderingly. 
 
 "If I were to be in one place to receive your letters, 
 I might not have thought of it yet it is true. . . . 
 Then, my letters are nothing. Perhaps I am a little 
 afraid to write to you. I think with the cello " 
 
 "All that seems very old and wise, beyond my kind 
 of thinking," he said. 
 
 For a long time she was listening. It was like that 
 first afternoon. . . . What did Betty Berry hear 
 continually? It gave him a conception of what recep 
 tivity meant that quiescence of all that is common, that 
 abatement of the world and the worldly self, that quality
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 145 
 
 purely feminine. It was like a valley receiving the aft 
 ernoon sunlight. He realized vaguely at first that the 
 mastery of self, necessary for such listening, is the very 
 state of being saints pray for, and practice continually 
 to attain. . . . Perhaps, he thought, this is the way 
 great powers come from such listening the listening 
 of the soul ; perhaps such power would come again and 
 again, if only the strength of it were turned into service 
 for men ; perhaps it was a kind of prayer. ... It 
 was all too vague for him to speak. . . . 
 
 She was first to whisper that the dawn had come. 
 
 "I love you," he said. 
 
 He saw her eyes with the daylight, as he had not 
 seen them since that first afternoon gray eyes, very 
 deep. The same strange hush came to him from them. 
 And there was a soft gray lustre with the morning about 
 her traveling-coat ; and her brown hair seemed half- 
 transparent against the panes. No one was yet abroad 
 in the coach. 
 
 "I don t seem to belong at all except that I love 
 you," he whispered. 
 
 "Tell me what that means oh, please " 
 
 "When I think of what I am, and who I am, and 
 what I have been and what common things I have done 
 in the stupidity of thinking they were good," he ex 
 plained with a rush of words ; "when I think of the 
 dozen turnings in my life, when little things said or done 
 by another have kept me from greater shame and noth 
 ingness oh, it doesn t seem to me that I belong at all 
 to such a night as this ! But when I feel myself here, 
 and see you, and how dear you are to me, how you wait 
 for my words, and what happiness this is together then 
 it comes to me that I don t belong to those other things, 
 but only to this that I could never be a part of those 
 old thoughts and ways, if you were always near " 
 
 "And I have waited a long time. . . . The world 
 has said again and again, He will never come, but
 
 i 4 6 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 something deeper of me something deeper than plays 
 the cello, kept waiting on and on. That deeper me 
 seemed to know all the time." 
 
 Talking and listening carried them on. John Morn 
 ing had the different phases of self segregated in an 
 astonishing way. He spoke of himself as man can only 
 with a woman making- pictures of certain moments, as a 
 writer does. Volumes of emotion, they burned, talking 
 and listening, leaning upon each other s words and 
 thoughts. They were one, in a very deep sense of joy 
 and replenishment. They touched for moments the 
 plane of unity in which they looked with calm upon the 
 parting, but the woman alone poised herself there. They 
 left the old darkey a blessing in his voice and smile. 
 Such passages of the days journeys were always impor 
 tant to Betty Berry. 
 
 Morning fell often from the heights to contemplate 
 the journey s end and the dividing sea. In spite of his 
 words, in spite of his belief his giving was not of her 
 quality of giving. His replenishment was less therefore. 
 . . . They moved about the streets of Baltimore in 
 early morning. The baggage went on to the ship. An 
 hour remained. Sounds and passing people distracted 
 him. The woman was fresher than when he had seen 
 her last night, but Morning was haggard and full of 
 needs. . . . She was a continual miracle, unlike 
 anything that the world held different in every word 
 and nestling and intonation. Much of her was the 
 child yet from this naive sweetness, her mood would 
 change to a womanhood which enfolded and completed 
 him, so that they were as a globe together. In such in 
 stants she brought vision to his substance; mind to his 
 brain, intuition to his logic, divination to his reason, 
 affinity to each element enveloping him as water an 
 island. The touch of her hand was a kiss ; and of her 
 kiss itself, passion was but the atmosphere; there was 
 earth below and sky above. . . . She took him to
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 147 
 
 the state-room where she was to be, "so you will know 
 where I am when you think of me." . . . They 
 heard the knock of heels on the deck above. . . . 
 
 He could not think. He heard them calling for visi 
 tors to go ashore. . . . He thought once it was too 
 late, and when he was really below on the wharf and she 
 above, and he realized that the wild hope of being taken 
 away with her, (his own will not entering, as the ser 
 pent entered Eden,) he could hardly see her for the 
 blur not of tears, but of his natural rending. Her voice 
 was but one of many good-byes to the shore, yet it came 
 to him out of the tumult of voices and whistles as a ewe 
 to find her own. 
 
 MORNING heard some one nearby say that so-and-so 
 had not really sailed, but was just going down the 
 bay. ... It was thus he learned that he might have 
 passed the forenoon with Betty Berry on the Chesa 
 peake. In fact, there w r as no reason for him not taking 
 the voyage. ... In a quick rush of thinking, as he 
 stood there on the piers, all his weaknesses paraded be 
 fore him, each with its particular deformity. The sorry 
 pageant ended with a flourish, and he was left alone with 
 the throb of the unhealed wound in his side. 
 
 Betty Berry would not have agreed to let him take 
 the voyage, just for the sake of being with her. He 
 knew this instinctively, but perhaps it might have been 
 managed. . . . To think he had missed the chance 
 of the forenoon. . . . The liner was sliding down 
 the passage, already forgotten by the lower city. . . . 
 Morning found himself looking into the window of a 
 drink-shop. Bottles and cases of wine in their dust and 
 straw-coats were corded in the window, which had an 
 English dimness and look of age. A quiet place; the 
 signs attested that ales were drawn from the wood and
 
 148 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 that many whiskeys of quality were within. Something 
 of attraction for the spirituous imagination was in the 
 sweet woody breath that reached him when he opened 
 the door. A series of race-horse pictures took his mind 
 from himself to better things. 
 
 These influences played merely upon the under-sur- 
 faces of an intelligence whose thoughts followed the 
 steamer down the Chesapeake as certainly as the flock 
 of gulls. ... It was that quiet time in the morning, 
 after the floors are washed. The day was bright, with 
 just a touch of cold in the air. 
 
 . . . A drink improved him generally. He exam 
 ined the string of horses again, and talked to the man 
 behind. The man declared it was his law not to drink 
 oftener than once in the half-hour, during the forenoon ; 
 he stated that it paid to exert this self-control, as his ap 
 petite was better and he was less liable to "slop over" 
 in the afternoon. Morning was then informed that oys 
 ters were particularly good just now, and that a man with 
 a weak stomach could live on oysters. . . . There 
 was just one little flange of an oyster that was indigest 
 ible. The man knew this because drink makes one dainty 
 about his eating, and one can tell what agrees with him 
 or otherwise. Furthermore, one could detach the indi 
 gestible flange in one s mouth before swallowing anyone 
 could with practice. The man glanced frequently at the 
 clock. . . . Well, he would break over, just once, 
 and make up later. A half hour was sometimes a con 
 siderable portage. . . . They became companion 
 able. 
 
 Morning started back for New York at noon. The 
 particular train he caught was one of the best of its kind. 
 The buffet, the quality of service and patronage had a 
 different, an intimate appeal to-day. He sat there until 
 dark in that sort of intensive thinking which seemed 
 very measured and effective to Morning. His chief 
 trend was a contemplation, of course, of the night before.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 149 
 
 Aspects appeared that did not obtrude at all with the 
 woman by him. Considering the opportunity, he had 
 kissed her very rarely, as he came to think of it. ... 
 
 His fellow-passengers let him alone. He reflected 
 that he could always get along with the lower orders of 
 men with sailors, soldiers, bartenders ; with the Jakes, 
 Jethros, and Jerries of the world. Duke Fallows had 
 remarked this. . . . Duke Fallows . . . the old 
 Liaoyang adventure came back more clearly than it had 
 for months. . . . That was a big set of doings. Cer 
 tainly there was a thrill about those days, when one 
 stopped to think. 
 
 At dinner time, approaching the end of the journey, 
 Morning met a pronounced disinclination to stay on the 
 Jersey side. The little cabin on the hill was certainly not 
 for this condition of mind. He had to stop and think that 
 it was only yesterday noon when he left the cabin. A 
 period of time that flies rapidly, appears strangely long 
 when regarded from the moments of its closing. The 
 period of the past thirty hours since he had left the hill 
 was like a sea-voyage. The lights across the river had 
 a surprising attraction. When he realized the old steam 
 of alcohol, his mind glibly explained that it was merely 
 an episode of a sick and overwrought body ; that the real 
 John Morning, of altruism and aspiration, was away at 
 sea with the love-woman, much cherished, the very soul 
 of him. 
 
 More than a half-year before he had fled to the coun 
 try, weary to nausea of men in chairs and buffets. The 
 animalism of it had utterly penetrated him at last ; the 
 Conrad study was but one of many revelations. He had 
 hated the Boabdil; and hated more the processes of his 
 own mind when alcohol impelled. Only yesterday morn 
 ing he had hated the whole vanity of New York leisure, 
 with the same freshness that had characterized his first 
 month of cleanliness. Yet he found novelty in the pres 
 ent adventure ; the prevailing illusion of which was that
 
 150 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 he was wrong yesterday rather than now. That night 
 he sought his old haunts. There was a gladness about it. 
 
 "One mustn t be too much alone," he decided, "espe 
 cially if he is to write. ... I must have got cocky 
 sitting there alone by the cabin-door. . . . These 
 fellows aren t so bad. . . ." 
 
 Presently he was telling the old story of Liaoyang. 
 That roused him a little and pulled upon mental fibers 
 still lame. . . . Was he to be identified always with 
 that? ... A week later he was telling the story of 
 breaking away from the Russians at Liaoyang and mak 
 ing the journey alone to Koupangtse. This was in a 
 strangely quiet bar on Eighth Avenue, in the Forties. A 
 peculiarity about this particular telling of the story was 
 that he remembered the ferryman on the Hun the one 
 who had wakened the river-front as he led Eve down 
 to drink the ferryman who was a leper. . . . 
 
 As days passed he went down deeper than ever be 
 fore. "I must have had this coming " he would say, 
 
 and refused to cross the river to rest. There were mo 
 ments when he felt too unutterably dirty to go to the 
 cabin. One day, he kept saying, "I m going to see this 
 through." And on another day he reflected continually 
 (conscious of the cleverness of the thought) that this 
 drink passage was like the journey to Koupangtse. 
 . . . Then there was the occasion when it broke upon 
 him suddenly that he was being avoided at the Boabdil. 
 He never went back. . . . One morning he joined 
 some sailors who had breezed in from afar. They 
 brought him memories and parlances ; their ways were 
 his ways all that day, whose long drift finally brought 
 them to Franey s Lobelia, as tough and tight a little bar 
 as you would ask any modern metropolis to furnish. The 
 sailors were down and done-for now, but Morning stood 
 by for the end, enjoying the place and the wide bleak 
 ness of it. ... A slumming party came in about 
 midnight young men and women of richness and va-
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 151 
 
 riety, trying to see bottom by looking straight down 
 as if one could see through such dirty water. 
 
 The city s dregs about him a fabric of idiocy and 
 perversion and murder did not look so fatuous nor 
 wicked to Morning s eye, as did this perfumed company. 
 They thought they were seeing life, but, deeper than 
 brain, they knew better; their laughter and their voices 
 were off the key, because they were not being true to 
 themselves. Franey s regulars were glad for the extra 
 drinks, but Morning had a fury. His shame for the 
 party was akin to the shame he had held for Lowenkampf 
 on the eve of battle long ago. He arose, short and 
 flaming, yet conscious even in his rage of the brilliance 
 of his idea. 
 
 "You people make me sick," he said, lurching out. 
 "You d have to be slumee to see how silly you look " 
 
 They tried to detain him to laugh at him but one 
 woman knew better. Her low voice of rebuke to her 
 companions was a far greater rebuke to John Morning 
 at the door. 
 
 . . . Finally he began to wonder how long they 
 would keep on giving him money at the bank. He turned 
 up every day. No matter what he drew it was always 
 gone. Sometimes a holiday tricked him, and he suf 
 fered. He watched for Sundays, after he learned. 
 . . . The banking business was a hard process, be 
 cause he had to emerge ; had to come right up to the 
 window and speak to a clean, white man who had 
 known him before. It became the sole ascent of Morn 
 ing s day a torturing one. He washed and shaved for 
 it, when possible, and after a time managed frequently to 
 save enough to steady his nerves for the ordeal. Then 
 he had to write his name, and always a blue eye was 
 leveled at him, and he felt the dirt in his throat. . . . 
 So he drifted for six weeks, and it was winter. 
 
 His descent was abrupt and deep. He tried to get 
 back, and found his will treacherous. He was prey at
 
 152 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 times to abominable fears. His body was unmanage 
 able from illness. There were times when it would have 
 meant death or insanity not to drink. For the first time 
 in his life he encountered an inertia that could not be 
 whipped to the point of reconstructivity. His thoughts 
 cloyed all fine things ; his expression made them mawkish 
 and teary; his emotions overflowed on small matters. 
 Betty Berry, around whom all this brooding revolved, 
 hardly reached a plane worthy of interpretation. Morn 
 ing s conception of the woman on the afternoon she came 
 to the Armory, or on the night-trip to Baltimore, con 
 trasted with this mental apparition of the sixth week : 
 
 "She is a professional musician, making her own way 
 in the world, and taking, as many a man would, the 
 things that please her as she passes. This is not the great 
 thing to her that it is to me. Other men have doubtless 
 interested her suddenly and rousingly, and have gone 
 their way. . . . Had she been a stranger to a man s 
 sudden loving she would never have beckoned me to 
 the chair in the wings that night. She would never have 
 come to my arms as I went to hers 
 
 Sweat broke from him. The savage and abandoned 
 company of thoughts had ridden down all else, like a 
 troop of raiders, destroying as they went. . . . The 
 troop was gone ; the shouting died away but he was left 
 more lewd and low than the worst. He had defiled the 
 image of the woman who had given herself so eagerly. 
 He recalled how he had talked of understanding, how 
 he had praised her in his thoughts because she was brave 
 enough to be natural, and to act as a natural woman who 
 has found her own, after years of repression. The other 
 side of the shield was turned to torture him the sweet, 
 low-leaning, human tenderness of Betty Berry, her pa 
 tience, her endless and ever-varying bestowals. She had 
 called his the voice of reality, and become silent before 
 it ; had proved great enough to remain undestroyed in a 
 man s world; her faith and spirit arose above centuries
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 153 
 
 of lineage in a man s world and she was Betty Berry 
 who knew her lover s presence, though they were almost 
 strangers to each other, and opened her arms to 
 him. . . 
 
 It was a hell that he vividly reviewed for seven weeks, 
 and with no Virgil to guide. A scene or two from the 
 final day is enough : 
 
 . . . He had come from the bank about one in the 
 afternoon, and had taken a chair in the bar of the Van 
 Antwerp. He was neither limp nor sprawling, but in a 
 condition of queer detachment from exterior influences. 
 He knew that it was daylight ; heard voices but no 
 words, and carried himself with the rigid effort of one 
 whose limbs are habitually flippant. Perhaps it was be 
 cause he was so very generous to the waiter that he was 
 allowed to close his eyes without being molested. In 
 any event, his consciousness betrayed him, and away he 
 went in the darkness of dream : The Ferryman of the 
 Hun was poling away at the stream and he, John Morn 
 ing, was but one of a company in passage. It was not 
 the Hun river this time ; the sorrel Eve was not there. 
 Not alone the Ferryman, but all on board were lepers 
 he, John Morning in the midst of them, a leper. The 
 old wound was witness to this. . . . They tried to 
 land at the little towns but natives came forth and drove 
 them away. Down, down stream they went and always 
 natives came forth to warn them as they neared the land. 
 . . . Even when they drew in to the marshes and the 
 waste-places natives appeared and stoned them away. 
 . . . And so they went down to the ocean and the 
 storm and Morning opened his eyes. 
 
 Opposite, his back to the marble bar, his elbows 
 braced against the rail, stood Mr. Reever Kennard, 
 watching him, and the look upon the face of the famous 
 correspondent was that of scornful pity as if there was 
 a truce to an old enmity, no longer worth while. 
 
 Still later on that day, over on Second Avenue,
 
 154 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 Morning almost bumped into a small yellow sign at the 
 elevator entrance to the Metal Workers Hall, to the ef 
 fect that Duke Fallows was to address a gathering there 
 that night. 
 
 8 
 
 A FLASH of love came to his heart for Duke Fallows 
 at the sight of the name. There was nothing 
 maudlin about this; rather, a decent bit of stamina in 
 the midst of sentimental overflows. It was the actual in 
 side relation, having nothing to do with the old surface 
 irritation. . . . Morning took care of himself as 
 well as he could during the day. He meant to mix with 
 the crowd at the meeting, but not to make himself known 
 until he was free from vileness. He would keep track 
 of the other s place and movements in New York. When 
 he was fit there would be final restoration in the meet 
 ing. His heart thumped in anticipation. The yellow 
 poster had turned the corner for him. These first 
 thoughts of the upward trend are interesting: 
 
 He meant to cross the river and build a big fire in 
 the cabin. There he would fight it out and cleanse the 
 place meanwhile, in preparation. He pictured the cabin- 
 door open, water on the floor, the fire burning, the smell 
 of soap. He would heat water, wash his blankets, put 
 them out in the sun ; polish his kettles with water and 
 sand. Every detail was important, and how strangely 
 his mind welcomed the freshness of these simple 
 thoughts. The glass of the windows would flash in the 
 morning, and the door of oak would gleam with its oil. 
 . . . Finally he would bring Duke there. 
 
 This was the triumph of it all. He would bring the 
 sick man home; tend the fire for him, go to the dairy 
 man s for milk and eggs. They could call Jake and talk 
 to him seeing the heart of a simple man. . . . 
 They would talk and work together . . . the sick
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 155 
 
 man looking up at the ceiling, and he, Morning, at the 
 machine as in the old days. Spring would come, the 
 big trees would break their buds and sprinkle the refuse 
 down and, God, it would be green again all this rot 
 ended. ... So the days would pass quickly until 
 Betty Berry came. . . . Duke would be glad to hear 
 of her. 
 
 . . . That night Morning went in with the work 
 ers to their Hall and sat far back. The meeting had 
 been arranged under socialistic auspices ; seven hundred 
 men at least were present. Through the haze of pipe, 
 cigarette, and cigars, Duke Fallows came forth. 
 
 And this was no sick man. His knees were strong, 
 and there was a lightness of shoulder that did away with 
 the huddle of old times. His eyes shone bright under 
 the hanging lamp, and his laugh was as far as Asia from 
 scorn. There was brown upon him ; his hands, when 
 they fell idle, were curved as if to fit a broad-ax, and 
 "I m glad to be with you, men," he said. 
 
 "... I have come to tell you a story my story. 
 Every man has one. I never tell mine twice the same, 
 but some time I shall tell it just right, and then the an 
 swer shall come." 
 
 Power augmented in the silence of the smoky hall. 
 The gathering recognized the artist that had come down 
 to them, because he loved the many and belonged with 
 them. They gave him instinctively the rare homage of 
 uncritical attention. Fallows told of Liaoyang of the 
 whole preparation of the Russian singing, the generals, 
 the systems by which men were called to service. Always 
 the theme that played through this prelude was the mil 
 let of Manchuria. He told of the great grain fields, the 
 feeding troop-horses, the hollows between the hills how 
 the ancient Chinese city stood in a bend of the river 
 of the outer fighting, the rains, the mass of men, the 
 Chinese. 
 
 This new Duke Fallows hated no man ; had no scorn
 
 i 5 6 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 for the Russian chiefs. His ideas of service and hu 
 manity concerned Russia rather than Japan and not the 
 imperialistic Russia, but the real spirit the toiler, the 
 dreamer, the singer, the home-maker the Russia that 
 was ready, perhaps as ready as any people in the world, 
 to put away envy, hatred, war; to cease lying to itself, 
 and to grasp the reality that there is something immor 
 tal about simplicity of life and service for others. What 
 concerned this Russia, Fallows declared, concerned the 
 very soul of the western world. 
 
 He placed the field for the battle in a large way the 
 silent, watery skies, all-receiving kao-liang, and the moist 
 earth that held the deluges. Morning choked at the pic 
 ture; the action came back again as Fallows spoke 
 Lowenkampf himself the infantry of Lowenkampf 
 slipping down the ledges into the grain Luban, machine- 
 guns, rout the little open place in the millet where the 
 Fallows part of the battle was fought. 
 
 ". . . He was a young Russian peasant. If he 
 came into this hall now, we would all know instinctively 
 that he belonged to us. He was fine to look upon that 
 day, coming out of the grain earnest, glad, his heart 
 turned homeward. His enemy was not Japan, but Im 
 perialism, and defeat was upon it. This defeat meant to 
 him, as it did to hundreds of soldiers in that hour the 
 beginning of the road home. Luban was burning with 
 the shame of detected cowardice. A common soldier had 
 commented upon it in passing. And now this young 
 Russian peasant met the eyes of Luban, and the two 
 began to speak, and I was there to listen. 
 
 "The peasant said that this was not his war ; that he 
 had been forced to come ; that it meant nothing to him 
 if Russia took Manchuria ; but that it meant a very great 
 deal to him this being away because his six babies 
 were not being fed by the Fatherland, and his field was 
 not being ploughed. 
 
 "It was very simple. You see it all. The Father-
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 157 
 
 land forced starvation upon a man s children, while his 
 field remained unploughed. Only a simple man could say 
 it. You must be straight as a child to speak such epics. 
 It is what you men have thought in your hearts. 
 
 "Of course, Luban only knew he was an officer and 
 the man was not. Machine-guns were drumming in the 
 distance, and the grain was hot and breathless all about. 
 The forward ranks were terribly broken the soldiers 
 streaming back past us. Luban, who opened the discus 
 sion, was getting the worst of it, and his best reply was 
 murder. He handled the little automatic gun better than 
 the cause of the Fatherland shot the Ploughman 
 
 - o 
 
 through the breast. I thrust him back to take the fall 
 ing one in my arms. . 
 
 "We seemed alone together. There was power upon 
 me. Even in the swiftness and tumult of the passing I 
 made the good man see that I would father his babes, 
 look to the ploughing of his field, and be the son of his 
 mother. His passing made all clear to me. His message 
 was straight from the heart of the world s suffering 
 poor, from the heavy-laden. He spoke to kings and gen 
 erals, and to all who have and are blind. There in the 
 havoc of the retreat, dying in my arms he made it vivid 
 as the smiting sun of Saul that this hideous disorder 
 of militia was not his Fatherland. He would have fought 
 for the real Fatherland. He was a son in spirit, and a 
 state-builder ; he would have fought for that ; he was 
 not afraid to die. . . . 
 
 "Love for him had come strangely to my heart, men. 
 I said to him words I cannot remember now some 
 thing I had never been able to write, because I had not 
 written for men before, but for some fancied elect. I 
 made him know that he had done well, that his field 
 would bring forth, and that his house would glow red 
 with firelight. ... I think my Ploughman felt as I 
 did even before his heart was still that there is some 
 thing beyond death in the love of men for one another.
 
 158 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 . . . It was wonderful. We forgot the battle. 
 We forgot Luban and the firing. We were one. His 
 spirit was upon me and the good God gave him 
 peace. 
 
 "I tell you quietly, but don t you see this that I 
 bring so quietly is the message from the Ploughman who 
 passed the message of Liaoyang? And this is the sen 
 tence of it: Where there is a real Fatherland there 
 will be Brotherhood. 
 
 "The world is so full of pallor and agony and sick 
 ness and stealing. First, it is because of the Lubans. 
 The Lubans are sick for power sick with their desires. 
 Having no self-mastery, they are lost and full of fear. 
 They fear the whip, they fear poverty and denial ; theirs 
 is a continual fear of being stripped to the nakedness 
 of what they are as old Mother Death strips a man. In 
 the terror of all these things they seek to turn the whip 
 upon others, to reinforce their emptiness with exterior 
 possessions. Because their souls are dying, and because 
 they feel the terror of sheer mortality, they seek to kill 
 the virtue in other men. Because they cannot master 
 themselves, they rise in passion to master others. They 
 could not live but for the herds. 
 
 "We who labor are the strength of the world. I say 
 to you, men, poverty is the God s gift to His elect. It is 
 to us who have only ourselves to master that the dream 
 of Brotherhood can come true. It is alone to us, who 
 have nothing, that these possessions can come, which old 
 Mother Death is powerless to take away. And we who 
 labor and are heavy-laden are making our colossal error 
 to-day. We are the muttering herds. Standing with the 
 many we may not know ourselves. We look upon the 
 cowardice and emptiness of the Lubans and call it Power. 
 We see the ways of the Herd-drivers and dream of 
 driving others, instead of ourselves. We look upon the 
 Herd-drivers and turn upon them the same thoughts 
 of envy and hatred and cruelty which cuts them off
 
 THE HILL-CABIN* 159 
 
 from every source of power and leaves them empty and 
 cowardly indeed. 
 
 "These are the thoughts of the herds and yet down 
 in the muscling mass men are not to blame. It takes 
 room for a man to be himself it takes room for a man 
 to love his neighbor and to master himself. Terrified, 
 whipped, packed, sick with the struggle and the strain of 
 it all how can men, turning to one another, find brother 
 hood in the eyes of their fellows. Living the life of the 
 laboring herds in the great cities why, it would take 
 Gods to love men so ! . . . The world is so full of 
 pallor and agony and sickness and stealing first, be 
 cause of the Lubans, and, second, because of the City. 
 . . . And after Liaoyang, I went straight to the 
 Ploughman s house for I had given my \vord. And 
 now I will tell you what I found on the little hill-farm 
 up in the Schwarenka district among the toes of the Bosk 
 mountains, a still country." 
 
 9 
 
 REMEMBER the soldiers at Liaoyang, the last 
 thing, the many who had grasped at the hope that 
 defeat meant the end of the war. They were learning 
 differently as I left. Hundreds gave up from the great 
 loneliness. ... I carried the name of my Plough 
 man across the brown country, and the northern autumn 
 was trying to hold out against the frosts. Asia is deso 
 late. We who are white men, and who know a bit of the 
 loveliness of life even though we labor at that which 
 is not our life we must grant that the Northern Chinese 
 have learned this : To suffer quietly. 
 
 "Baikal was crossed at last. On and on by train into 
 the West until I came to the little village that he had 
 said. For days it had been like following a dream. 
 Sometimes it seemed to me so wonderful that young
 
 i6o DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 man coming out of the millet, and what he said that I 
 thought it must have come to me in a vision, that I was 
 mad to look for his town and the actual house in the 
 country beyond. Yet they knew his name in the little 
 town, and said that early next morning I could get a 
 wagon to take me to the cabin, which was some versts 
 away. 
 
 "I had known so much of cities. For weeks I had 
 been in the noises of the Liaoyang fighting and in trains. 
 Moreover, I had been ill for a long time, too a crawl 
 ing, deadly illness. But that night my soul breathed. I 
 ate black bread by candle-light and drank milk. The 
 sharpness of mid-October was in the air. You will 
 laugh when I say it seemed to me, an American, as if 
 I had come home. In the morning early I looked away 
 to the East, from whence I had come, and where the 
 sun was rising. (The ceiling of the little room was so 
 low I had to bend my head.) To the north the moun 
 tains were sharp in the morning light and shining like 
 amethyst. . . . I left the wagon at the first sight of 
 the hut in the distance, and I reached there in the warmth 
 of the morning. 
 
 "An old man was sitting in the sun. He asked me to 
 have bread, and said they had some sausage for the 
 coming Sunday. This was mid-week. A child brought 
 good water. Then I heard the cane of the old woman, 
 and saw her hand first, as it thrust the cane out from 
 the door all brown and palsied, the hand, its veins 
 raised and the knuckles twisted from the weight that bent 
 her fingers against the curve of the stick. The rest was 
 so pure. She had been a tall woman very thin and bent 
 and white now. When I looked into that face I saw 
 the soul of the Ploughman. I can tell you I wanted to 
 be there. It was very strange. ... I can see her 
 now, looking up at me, as the old do from their leaning. 
 It was like the purity and distance of the morning. I 
 trembled, too, before this old wife, for the fact in my
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 161 
 
 mind about her son. I tell you, old mother-birds are 
 wise. 
 
 "It was as if my garments smelled of the fight 
 ing. She knew whence I had come ; she looked into 
 my soul and found the death of her son. Her 
 soul knew it, but not her brain yet. She may have 
 found my love for him, too the deep bond be 
 tween us. 
 
 Ask the stranger to stay. We will have sausage 
 by the Sunday/ said the old man. His thought was held 
 by hunger. 
 
 Hush, Jan he comes from our son 
 
 " And where are the children and the young mother? 
 I asked. 
 
 r They are out for faggots in the bush they will 
 come 
 
 "I had thought, as I traveled, (the thoughts of the 
 weeks on the road,) to do many things ; to give them 
 plentifully of money; to arrange for someone to do the 
 late fall and winter work. I had intended to go on, 
 when sure that everything v/as at hand to make them 
 comfortable. I tell you, men, it was all too living for 
 that. One could not perform unstudied benefits for the 
 mother of the Ploughman. There was more than money 
 wanted there. 
 
 " We would like to have you stay with us/ the 
 mother said, but our poverty is keen, and we have not 
 bread enough now for the winter. . . . He was 
 taken long before the harvest, and it is long until the 
 grain comes again 
 
 " But if he were here what would be done, 
 Mother? 
 
 " Ah, if he came/ she said strangely. If he 
 came 
 
 "The father now spoke : 
 
 " He would cut wood for our neighbors this winter 
 when the ploughing was finished. That would provide
 
 1 62 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 food good food. Oh, he would know what to do 
 our Jan would know 
 
 "I won t soon forget that high, wavering voice of 
 the old man Oh, he would know what to do our Jan 
 is a good son and the shake of his head. 
 
 " But may I not do some of the things that he 
 would do? 
 
 "I had to say it twice, for I spoke their language 
 poorly. I had understood the son at Liaoyang but all 
 moments were not like those in which he spoke to me. 
 
 " And then, I added hastily, he sent you some 
 money 
 
 "I dared not offer much with that pure old face look 
 ing at me. The silver and gold that was in my purse 
 I put in her lap. 
 
 " Oh, it is very much the good God brought you 
 from him, did he not? 
 
 " And we will not need to wait until Sunday for 
 
 " Hush Jan no, we will not need to wait. 
 
 ". . . And then the young mother came. I saw 
 her steps quicken when yet she was far off. The little 
 ones were about her all carrying something. The older 
 children were laughing a little, but the others were quiet 
 in their haste and effort to keep up. . . . There was 
 one little boy, but I will tell you afterward of the littlest 
 Jan. . . . There was a pallor over the brood. Their 
 health was pure, and their blood strong, but that pallor 
 had come. Men, it was hunger already. Here were the 
 fields, and the Fatherland had taken him before the har 
 vest. This thing, the shocking truth of it ; that this ac 
 tually could be ; that a country could do such a thing 
 made me forget everything else for the moment. Then 
 I realized that I must keep the truth from the young 
 mother. Before I spoke at all they told her that I had 
 come from her husband. 
 
 "Her lips were white, her breasts wasted. She was 
 lean from hunger, lean from her bearing. Young she
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 163 
 
 was for the six, but much had she labored, and there 
 was a mountain wildness in her eyes. She was stilled, 
 as the old mother had been, by the fear of hearing 
 her man s death. She dared not ask. She accepted what 
 was said that I had come from him, that I had brought 
 money, and wished to stay for a little. . . . She 
 leaned against the door, the smaller children gathering 
 at her knees, the others putting away the wood. Her 
 single skirt hung square, and her arms seemed very 
 long, nearly to her knees ; her hands loose and tired. 
 Her hair was yellow ; the wind had tossed it. You know 
 how a horse that has been listening, suddenly catches his 
 breath again. The same sound came from her as she 
 started to breathe again. . . . One of the smaller 
 children laughed, and I looked down. It was the little 
 four-year-old, the third Jan of that house, and he was 
 close to my knees, looking up at me . . . and we 
 were all together. 
 
 "I loved the world better after that look of the child 
 into my eyes. ... I took him on my shoulder. We 
 went to the village together. That night the wagon 
 brought us back ; there was much food. . . . And 
 that was my house. I looked out on the mountains the 
 next day, and for many days to come, and, men their 
 grand sky-wide simplicity poured into my heart. I took 
 the old horse out, and we ploughed during the few days 
 remaining. There was not much land but we ploughed 
 it together to the end, when the frost made the upturned 
 clods ring. Then I strawed up the shed for the old horse 
 to pass his winter in warmth, and brought blankets for 
 him. I respected that old horse. Health and good- 
 fellowship had come to me as we worked together. I 
 remember the sharp turning of the early afternoons from 
 yellow to gray and to dark. . . . Then we went into 
 the bush together in the early winter days. The ax rang, 
 and the snow-bolt was piled high each day with wood. 
 The smell of the wood-smoke in the morning air had a
 
 1 64 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 zest for my nostrils I had never known before, and at 
 night the cabin windows were red with fire-light. We 
 were all one together. And I think the spirit of the 
 Ploughman was there in the happiness. 
 
 "Sometimes in the night when I would get up to re 
 plenish the fire the mystery of plain goodness would 
 come to me. I would see the children and others all 
 around. Then at the frosty window, shading the fire 
 from my eyes, I looked out upon the snows. I was un 
 able to contain the simple grandeurs that had unfolded 
 to me day by day. . . . And then I would go back 
 to the blankets where the little boy lay his hand always 
 fumbling for me as I crept in. The love that I felt 
 for this child was beyond all fear. We could stand to 
 gether against any fate. And one night it came to me 
 that from much loving of one a man learns to love the 
 many, and that I would really be a man when I learned 
 to love the world with the same patience and passion 
 that I loved the little boy. The Ploughman came along 
 in a dream that night and said it was all quite true. 
 
 "And that was the winter. ... I wish you could 
 have seen this sick man who had come. I had lain on 
 my back for months, except when some great effort 
 aroused me. I had that coming on, men, which makes a 
 man walk as a circus bear turns and totters on his 
 back feet. The house, the field, the plough, the horse, 
 woods, winter, and mountains, love for the child, love for 
 all the others the much that my hands found to do and 
 the heart found to give these things made me new 
 again. These simple sound and holy things. 
 
 "I had been a sick man mentally and morally, too, 
 sick with ego and intellect a nasty sickness. But one 
 could not look, feeling the joy in which I lived, upon the 
 snows of the foothills, nor afar through the yellow win 
 ter noons to the gilded summits of the Bosks ; one could 
 not look into the eyes of the children, the last vestige of 
 hunger pallor gone from them ; one could not talk of
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 165 
 
 tobaccoand-sausage with the old man by his fireside ; nor 
 watch the mysterious great givings of the two mothers 
 their whole lives giving pure instruments of giving 
 passionate givers, they were ; givers of life and preserv 
 ers of life I say, men, one could not live in this purity 
 and not put away such evil and cruel things. . . . 
 As the sickness of the blood went from me so that 
 sickness of mind. . . . And, I tell you, we were ready 
 as a house could be, when the news came officially that 
 our Ploughman was among the missing from the battle 
 of Liaoyang. 
 
 "It was sharper than any winter night. We stood in 
 the cabin and wept together. Then in the hush the 
 real thought of it all came to one to whom, do you 
 think? . . . She was on her knees the old mother 
 praying for the other peasant cabins in Russia the 
 thousands of others from which a son and husband was 
 gone cabins to which the good God has not sent such a 
 friend. ... I tell you, men, all the evil of past 
 days seemed washed from me in that hour. . . . 
 And that is my home. (The old horse and I opened the 
 fields again in the springtime.) 
 
 "After that I went down to Petersburg to tell my 
 story, and to Moscow. I have told it in cellars and 
 stables in Berlin, in Paris, and London. I am making 
 the great circle to tell it here and on, when we are 
 finished, to Chicago, to Denver and San Francisco and 
 then the long sail homeward, following the first journey 
 to the foothills of the Bosk range. I will go to my old 
 mother there, and to the little boy, who looked up into 
 my eyes as if we were born to play and talk and sleep 
 together. 
 
 "The days of the conscript gangs are over here, men. 
 Such days are numbered, even in Russia. They don t 
 come to your door in this country and take you away 
 from your work to fight across the world but the Lu- 
 "bans are here and the cities are full of horror. It is
 
 1 66 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 in the cities where the herds are, where the little Lubans 
 whip, and the bigger Lubans thrive. In the pressure 
 and heaviness of the cities the thought that comes to the 
 herd is the old hideous conception of the multitude 
 that the way of the Lubans is the way of life. . . . 
 It isn t the way. The way of life has nothing to do 
 with greed, nor with envy, nor with schemes against the 
 bread of other men. It is a way of peace and affilia 
 tion of standing together. And you who have little 
 can go that way; you who labor can go that way be 
 cause you are the strength of the world. Don t resist 
 your enemies, men leave them. The Master of us all 
 told us that. And when the herds break, and this modern 
 hell of the city is diminished the Lubans will follow 
 you out whining and bereft, they will follow you out, 
 as the lepers of Peking follow the caravans to the gates 
 and beyond. ... I have told you of my home 
 the little cabin that came to me from the beginnings of 
 compassion. And there is such a home for every man 
 of you in the still countries where the voice of God 
 may be heard." 
 
 Morning, desperately ill, rose to leave the hall. In 
 the momentary hush, as he reached the door, the voice 
 of Duke Fallows was raised again, calling his name. 
 
 10 
 
 " a second time. 
 
 Morning turned, his arms lifted despairingly. 
 "Wait, John, I ll join you !" 
 Fallows came down. . . . The man who gently 
 held the door shut smiled with strange kindness. There 
 was a shining of kindness in men s faces. . . . 
 Morning did not feel that he belonged. He was broken 
 and shamed. . . . The big man was upon him the 
 long arms tossed about him.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 167 
 
 "I ve been looking and listening for you too long, 
 John, to let you go." 
 
 "... I just wanted to hear you. I m shot to pieces, 
 Duke; I ll get a few drinks and wait for you. Then, 
 you ll see, I m all out of range of the man you are " 
 
 There was no answer. Morning looked up to find 
 the long bronzed face laughing, the eye gleaming. Fal 
 lows turned to the doorman and another, saying : 
 
 "Both of you go with him. He needs a drink or two, 
 and one of you come back to show me the way to him 
 when I m through here. . . . This is a great night 
 for us, John." 
 
 The three went down in the elevator. . . . And so 
 the sick man had not come back the dithyrambic Duke 
 Fallows was gone for good. The sick man was strong ; 
 the impassioned phrase-maker had risen to the simple 
 testimony of service. From scorn and emotion, from 
 judgment and selection, he had risen to the plane of lov 
 ing kindness. . . . The air in the street refreshed 
 him a little. Morning found a bar. 
 
 "I ve been drinking," he said to the men. "Fallows 
 is a king. I was there with him at Liaoyang. . . . 
 Maybe you saw my story in the World-News. . . . 
 He stayed in the grain with Luban. I went on to see the 
 cavalry fight. ... I came back home to do the story. 
 He went on to Russia on the Ploughman story 
 
 "Is he a preacher?" said one of the men. 
 
 "Yes but he learned about war and women first." 
 
 "I ll take a soft drink and go back. You stay here, 
 and I ll bring him to you," the same one went on. 
 
 The other drank with Morning and agreed that they 
 would not leave until Fallows came. 
 
 "And so he learned about war and women first," he 
 said queerly, when they were alone. "But he has been a 
 laboring man " 
 
 "Yes. You heard him." 
 
 "But before that farm in Russia "
 
 1 68 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "Oh, yes ; he was a laborer." 
 
 "Well, he certainly got the crowd with him," the man 
 acknowledged. 
 
 "You know why, don t you?" Morning said impres 
 sively. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "He s for the crowd. People feel it." 
 
 "Oh, I knew that." 
 
 There was quiet, and then the face turned to Morn 
 ing: 
 
 "Say, how did you get such a start as this? This 
 kind means weeks " 
 
 "It got away from me before I knew it. I must 
 have got to gambling with myself to see how far I 
 could go." 
 
 "Are you going to quit?" 
 
 A mist filled Morning s mind. The question seemed 
 an infringement. Then it occurred to him how he had 
 fallen to lying to himself. 
 
 "He ll make you quit, but don t let him stop you too 
 short. You d be a wreck in a few hours. You see how 
 you needed these two or three drinks?" 
 
 . . . Fallows entered with several of the commit 
 tee. He had promised to speak to them again. 
 
 "It s what I came for," he was saying. "So long as I 
 am wanted I ll stay. . . . Yes, I m a socialist. 
 . . . Yes, I believe in fighting, but when our kind of 
 men stand together, there won t be anything big enough 
 to give us a fight. When our kind of men look into one 
 another s eyes and find service instead of covetousness 
 there s nothing in the world to stand against us." 
 
 Fallows and Morning were in a steam-room together 
 two hours afterward. Morning was limp and light 
 headed. He had told of some of the things that had 
 happened since Baltimore of men he had met of the 
 slummers of harrowing nights and waiting for the bank 
 to open.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 169 
 
 "You had to have it, John?" 
 
 There was something in the way Fallows spoke the 
 word, John, that made Morning weaker and filled his 
 throat. He had to speak loudly for the hissing of the 
 steam. 
 
 "Why, if you didn t get humble and stay humble after 
 such a training you d be the poorest human experi 
 ment ever undertaken by the Master. But you can t fail. 
 It isn t in the cards to fail. You ve ridden several 
 monsters Drink, Ambition, Literature but they won t 
 get you down. Why, even the sorrel mare didn t kill 
 you, as I promised aforetime. I saw a lot in that story. 
 You loved her to the last. You left her dead and hunched 
 on an alien road. You ve loved these others long enough. 
 You ll leave them dead even that big fame stuff. I 
 think you ve ridden that pompous fool to death already. 
 They are all passages on the way to Initiation. Your 
 training for service is a veritable inspiration and you ll 
 write to men down among men. I love that idea you ll 
 write the story of Compassion down among men " 
 
 Fallows face came closer through the steam. He 
 scrutinized the wound that wouldn t heal. "Did you ever 
 hear about Saint Paul s thorn in the flesh? . . . 
 And lest I be exalted above measure through the abun 
 dance of revelations, there was given me a thorn in the 
 flesh ? It all works out. You ll have to excuse me. 
 The Bible was the only book I had with me up in the 
 Bosk country. I found it all I wanted. I would take 
 it again. . . . Yes, John, it s all right with you." 
 
 Morning was telling of that afternoon at the Armory. 
 He passed over quickly the period of worldly achieve 
 ment in New York to the quiet blessedness he had hit 
 upon, finding the hill and the elms. 
 
 "That s the formula to get alone and listen " 
 
 "That s what you preached to-night, wasn t it?" 
 . . . Presently he was back to Betty Berry again 
 finding her at the cello the wonderful ride to Balti-
 
 i yo DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 more which brought him to the drink chapter once 
 more. . . . He couldn t see Duke s face as he spoke 
 of the woman. There was a peculiar need of the other 
 saying something when he had finished. This only was 
 offered : 
 
 "We won t talk about that now, John. . . . 
 You d better take another little drink. Your voice is 
 down. . . . You ll be through after a day or two, 
 and I ll stay with you " 
 
 "We ll go over to the cabin to-morrow," said Morn 
 ing. 
 
 They were lying cot by cot in the cooling-room, and 
 the talk for a time concerned Lowenkampf, his court- 
 martial and discharge. 
 
 "Do you know how I thought of you coming back, 
 Duke?" Morning whispered afterward. 
 
 "Tell me." 
 
 "I always thought of you coming back a sick man 
 staring at the ceiling as you used to sometimes talking 
 to me, sometimes listening to what I had written. But 
 the main thought was how I would like to take care of 
 you. I was rotten before. I wanted you sick, so I could 
 show you better." 
 
 The huge hand stretched across from cot to cot. 
 
 "It was afterward that all the things you said in 
 Liaoyang came back to me right. . . . We were ly 
 ing in Frisco waiting for quarantine, and my stuff was 
 finished the second time, before I read your letter to me 
 and the one to Noyes and the Ploughman story. That 
 was the first time I really saw it right. There was a 
 little doctor with me Nevin who got it all from the 
 first reading. At Liaoyang we were down too low 
 among the fighting to get it. That Ploughman story 
 made my big yarn look like a death-mask of the cam 
 paign. Betty Berry got it too. ... It was the same 
 to-night why, you got those men, body and soul." 
 
 "I d like to think so, John ; but I m afraid you re
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 171 
 
 wrong. It was just a seed to-night. Men need to be cul 
 tivated every day in a thousand ways. . . . Women 
 get things quicker; they can listen better. . . . The 
 last night before Jesus was taken by the Roman soldiers, 
 he told the Eleven that he could be sure only of them. 
 He knew that of the multitude that heard him most 
 would sink back. He counted on just the Eleven, and 
 built his church on the weakest, upon the most unstable 
 counting only on the strength of the weakest link. 
 . . The fact is, John, I m only counting on you. 
 I ve got to count on you." 
 
 Less than five weeks had elapsed, and yet the worst 
 seemed as far back, in some of Morning s moments, as 
 the deck-passage out of China. He had suffered abomin 
 ably. Fallows stood by night and day at first. He 
 brought back a certain quality from the Russian farm 
 that was pure inspiration to the other. They spoke 
 about the Play. Morning was more than ever glad that 
 Markheim had refused it. They sat long by the fire. 
 More happened than modern America would believe off 
 hand for John Morning began to learn to listen. Fal 
 lows was happy. His presence in the room was like the 
 fire-light. Twice more he went across to the Metal 
 Workers Hall, and still the New York group would not 
 let him go. The Socialists brought him their ideas. He 
 was in the heart of threatening upheavals. He reiterated 
 that they must be united in one thing first ; they must 
 have faith in one another. They must not answer greed 
 with greed. They must be sure of themselves ; they 
 must have a pure voice ; they must know first what was 
 wanted, and follow the vision. . . . Duke Fallows 
 knew that it was all the matter of a leader. . . . He 
 told them of the men and women in Russia who have put 
 off self. Finally Duke appeared to see that his work was 
 done, and he retired from them. 
 
 "It is delicate business," he said to Morning. "There s
 
 172 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 fine stuff in the crowd then there s the rest. If 1 should 
 show common just once all my work would be spoiled, 
 and even the blessed few would forget the punch of my 
 little story. They think I ve gone on west." 
 
 Still he didn t leave the cabin on the hill. 
 
 It was only when Morning undertook to touch upon 
 the love story that Fallows looked away. . . . 
 Morning tried to comprehend this. Something had hap 
 pened. The big man who had stared at so many ceilings 
 of Asia, breaking out from time to time in strange ut 
 terances all colored with desire ; the man who had met 
 his Eve, and talked of being controlled by her even 
 after death shuddered now at the mention of Betty 
 Berry. . . . Morning even had a suspicion at last 
 that the other construed a relation between the woman s 
 influence and the excess of alcohol. These moments dis 
 mayed him. 
 
 There is a dark spot in every man s radiance and 
 this was the Californian s, Morning concluded. In the 
 transformation which the journey to Russia had effected, 
 his particular weakness seemed hardened into a crust of 
 exceptional austerity. The only women he ever spoke 
 of in the remotest personal fashion belonged to the peas 
 ant family of the Ploughman. His audiences were un 
 mixed by his own arrangement. In tearing out his cen 
 tral weakness, a certain madness on the subject had 
 rushed in, a hatred that knew no quarter, and a zeal in 
 denial that only one who has touched the rim of ruin 
 can know. 
 
 On the last night of February they talked and read 
 late. The reading was from Saint Paul in the different 
 letters. Fallows seemed impassioned with the figure. 
 
 "I understand him," he said. 
 
 "He was afraid of women. Sometimes he seems 
 to hate women," Morning remarked. Certain lines of 
 Paul s on the subject had broken the perfection of the 
 message for him.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 173 
 
 A strange look came to Fallows. The finger that 
 was turning a page drew in with the others, and the 
 hand that rested upon the book was clenched. . . . 
 "Paul knew women," he muttered. 
 
 "You think before he took that road to Damascus 
 he knew women?" 
 
 "Yes " 
 
 "Even the Paul who stood by holding the garments 
 of the stoners of Stephen?" 
 
 "He was a boy then. He learned afterward, I think." 
 
 "He couldn t have known the saints among them," 
 said Morning, who was smiling in his heart. 
 
 "Perhaps some saint among them was the one who 
 made him afraid. You know women won t have men 
 going alone not even the saints among women. . . . 
 There may have been one who refused to be dimmed 
 altogether even by that great light." 
 
 "But he went alone " 
 
 "In that way she wouldn t be the Thorn," Fallows 
 said slowly. "She would be greater power for him. 
 Yes, Saint Paul went alone. We wouldn t be reading 
 him to-night had he turned back to her." 
 
 That hurt. Morning was no longer smiling within. 
 "I didn t learn women even as a boy," he said. 
 
 Fallows was unable to speak. He had never loved 
 Morning as at this moment. He was tender enough to 
 catch the strange pathos of it, which the younger man 
 could not feel. 
 
 "You re a natural drunkard, John," he said presently. 
 "You are by nature ambitious, as it is intimated Caesar 
 was ; but you are naturally a monk, too. I say it with 
 awe." 
 
 "You are wrong" Morning said with strength. 
 "When this woman came into the room at the Armory 
 that first day it was as if she brought with her the bet 
 ter part of myself " 
 
 "You said that same before. You were sick. You
 
 i 7 4 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 were torn by exhaustion and by that letter of mine about 
 Reever Kennard. It was the peace and mystery a woman 
 always brings to a sick man. . . . Your woman is 
 your genius, John. Any rival will stifle and defame it. 
 It s the woman in a man that makes him a prophet or a 
 great artist. Your ego is masculine ; your soul is femi 
 nine. When you learn to keep the ego out of the brain, 
 and use the soul, you will become an instrument, more 
 or less perfect, for eternal utterances. When you achieve 
 the union of the man and woman in you that will be 
 your illumination. You will have emerged into the 
 larger consciousness. You are not so far as you think 
 from that high noon-light. If you should take a woman 
 in the human way, you will not achieve in this life the 
 higher marriage, of which the union of two is but a sym 
 bol. That would be turning back, with the spiritual 
 glory in your eyes back to the shadow of flesh." 
 
 "How do you know that?" Morning asked coldly. 
 
 "Because of the invisible restraints that have kept 
 you from women so far. ... I believe you are pre 
 pared to tell men something about the devils of drink and 
 ambition having met them?" 
 
 "It is possible." 
 
 "I speak with the same authority." 
 
 Morning did not accept this authority, but was long 
 disturbed after the light was out. . . . Her ship had 
 been six days at sea. 
 
 They opened the door wide to the first morning of 
 March. Snow was upon the hill, but there was a prom 
 ise in the air, even in the sharpness of it. The wind 
 came in, searched among the papers of the table, dis 
 ordered the draughts of the chimney, filling the room 
 with a faint flavor of wood-smoke, that perfect incense. 
 They stood there, testing the day, and each was think 
 ing of the things of the night before. Fallows said: 
 
 "John, you didn t build this cabin with the idea of a 
 woman coming?"
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 175 
 
 "No ; it was built before I found her the second time. 
 It was my escape from Boabdil. . . . But I thought 
 of her coming, many times afterward just as I thought 
 of you coming back to stare at the rafters " 
 
 Fallows looked down intently at him for a moment, 
 and said: 
 
 "John, you ve got about all your equipment now. 
 You can t stand much more tearing down. My road is 
 not for you. You were given balance against that. 
 Don t venture into what is alien ground for you. You 
 will get back your health. Even the wound will heal. 
 Then will come to you those gracious ideals of single 
 ness, plainness of house and fare, of purity and solitude 
 and the integration of the greater dimension of force. 
 . . . You are through looking you must listen now. 
 The blessedness you told me of this last summer was 
 but a breath of what you will get. . . . 
 
 "You are a natural monk. If you were in a monas 
 tery, the laws restraining you would be gross and mate 
 rial, compared with those bonds which nature has put 
 upon you. The cowl, the cell, and the solitude are but 
 symbols again of the inner monasticism a few rare souls 
 have known. You need no exterior bonds, vows, nor 
 threatenings no walls, no brandishing threats of damna 
 tion. But, if you should betray the invisible restraints 
 that have held you for so many years, the sin would 
 be far deadlier than breaking any vows made to a church 
 or to an order. Vows are for half-men, John ; vows are 
 but the crutches of an unfinished integrity." 
 
 II 
 
 ON the morning of the Third, at ten, her call came to 
 him. Shortly after twelve he was across the river 
 and far uptown in the hallway of an apartment-house. 
 Even as he spoke her name, his was called from the head
 
 176 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 of the stairs. He always remembered the intonation. 
 . . . A fire was burning in the grate. The cello was 
 there. She left the hall-door of the room open, but they 
 heard voices, and it was draughty. . . . She went to 
 close it and returned to Morning, who was still standing. 
 
 "What is the matter? You are not well," she said. 
 
 . . . It was hard for him to realize that this was 
 only the third time he had seen her. He was trying to 
 adjust her in the other meetings with this the angel 
 who had come helping to the Armory ; the concert Betty 
 Berry, her nature flung wide to expression, bringing her 
 gift with love to her people. The Armory was one ; 
 but the Betty Berry of the concert-night was many : she 
 who had come forth from the stage to his arms (and 
 that was the kiss of all time) ; the listening Betty Berry 
 in the dimness of the Pullman car; holding fast to his 
 hand as a child might, while they watched the dawn 
 of morning together ; the Betty Berry who had led him 
 to her berth on the ship that kiss and this. . . . 
 
 The room had disordered him at the first moment. It 
 was so particularly a New York apartment room. But 
 the cello helped it; the grate-fire was good, and after 
 she had shut the door there was something eternal about 
 the sweetness of that it was quite the place for them 
 to be. 
 
 He was animate with emotions and yet they were 
 defined, sharp, of their own natures, no soft overflow 
 of sentiment, each with a fineness of its own, like breaths 
 of forest and sea and meadow lands. These were great 
 things which came to him; but they were not passions. 
 . . . He saw her with fear, too. Simply being 
 here, had the impressiveness of a miracle. It was less 
 that he did not deserve to be with her, than that the 
 world he knew was hardly the place for such blessedness. 
 He was listening to her, in gladness and humility : 
 
 "... I asked myself again and again after you 
 were gone, Is it a dream? ... I moved about the
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 177 
 
 decks waiting for the night, as one in a deep dream. 
 
 . . You were gone so quickly after that voice. Oh, 
 I was all right. I was full of you. It would have seemed 
 sacrilege to ask for you again. . . . Yet I seemed to 
 expect you with every knock or step or bell. They asked 
 me to play on shipboard, and I could hardly believe you 
 \vere not among those who listened. . . . That first 
 night at sea, the moon was under a hazy mass. I don t 
 know why I speak of it, but I remember how I stood 
 watching it perhaps hours and out of it all I only 
 realized at last that my hands were so small for the 
 things I wanted to do for you, and for everybody." 
 
 That was the quality of her as if between every 
 sentence, hours of exterior influences had intervened. 
 . He began to realize that Betty Berry never ex 
 plained. All that afternoon, in different ways, his com 
 prehension augmented on how fine a thing this is. She 
 was glad always to abide by w r hat she said or did. Even 
 on that night, when she came from her playing to the 
 wings where he stood, came to his arms, while the peo 
 ple praised her she never made light of that accept 
 ance. Many would have diminished it, by saying that 
 they were not accountable in the excitement and enthu 
 siasm of a sympathetic audience. It was so to-day when 
 the door was closed. It seemed to Morning as if human 
 adults should be as fine as this above all guile and fear. 
 
 He was in a risen world that afternoon. Often he 
 wished he could make the world see her as he did. But 
 that was the literary habit, and a tribute to her. Cer 
 tainly it was not for the writing. He was clay beside 
 her, but happy to be clay. . . . She did not know it, 
 he thought, but she was free. 
 
 That was his thought of the day. Betty Berry was 
 free. The door of the cage was open for her. She did 
 not have to stay, but she did stay for love of the weaker- 
 winged. 
 
 "Will all our meetings be so different and lovely?"
 
 178 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 she asked in the early dusk. "Please tell me about your 
 self very long ago the little boy, before he went away." 
 
 It was queer for her to ask that. He had expected 
 her to inquire at once about the three months since their 
 parting in Baltimore. He had determined to tell if she 
 asked, but it was hard even to think of his descents, with 
 her sitting by the fire so near. Such things seemed to 
 have nothing to do with him now especially when he 
 was with her. They were like old and vile garments cast 
 off ; and without relation to him, unless he went back and 
 put them on again. Little matters like Charley and his 
 sister had a relation, for they were without taint. His 
 thoughts to-day were thoughts of doing well for men, as 
 in fine moments with Duke Fallows of going out with 
 her into the world to help of writing and giving, of 
 laughing and lifting. ... It was surprising how 
 he remembered the very long ago days the silent, solid, 
 steadily-resisting little chap. Many things came back, 
 and with a clearness that he had not known for years. 
 The very palms of her hands were upturned in her 
 listening ; it seemed as if the valves of her heart must be 
 open. 
 
 "I can see him the dear little boy " 
 
 He laughed at her tenderness. . . . They went 
 out late to dinner; and by the time he had walked back 
 to the house it was necessary for him to leave, if he 
 caught the last car to Hackensack. Duke Fallows would 
 be expecting him at the cabin. . . . 
 
 It came to him suddenly, and with a new force, on 
 the ferry, that he had once wished she were pretty. He 
 suffered for it again. He could never recall her face 
 exactly. She came to him in countless ways with poise 
 for his restlessness, with faith and stamina that made 
 all his former endurings common but never in fixed 
 feature. It was the same with her sayings. He remem 
 bered the spirit and the lustre of them, but never the 
 words. . . . She was a saint moving unobserved
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 179 
 
 about the world, playing adrift on the world, and so 
 pure. 
 
 He realized also that he had spoken of Betty Berry 
 for the last time to Duke Fallows. There was no doubt 
 in his mind now that Fallows had replaced his old weak 
 ness with what might be called, in kindness fanaticism. 
 . . . The thought was unspeakable that Betty Berry 
 could spoil his work in the world he, John Morning, 
 a living hatch of scars from his errors . . . and 
 so arrogant and imperious he had been in evil-doing! 
 This trend made him think of her first words to-day: 
 "You are not well." It was true that he had been as 
 tonished often of late by a series of physical disturb 
 ances, so much so that he had begun to ask him 
 self, in his detached fashion, what would come next. 
 He could not accept Fallows promise that he would 
 get altogether right in health again. He was certainly 
 not so good as he had been. These things made him 
 ashamed. 
 
 Now that he was away from her, the sense obtained 
 that he had not been square in withholding the facts 
 of the wastrel period. It didn t seem quite the same 
 now, as when she was sitting opposite. He would have 
 to tell her some time, and of that certain mental treach 
 ery to her, and of the wound, too. . . . He saw 
 the light of the hill cabin. A touch of the old irritation 
 of Liaoyang had recurred of late. Morning could mas 
 ter it better now. Still so many things that Fallows had 
 said in Asia had come true. Climbing up the hill, he 
 laughed uneasily at the idea of his being temperament 
 ally a monk. . . . He had not strayed much among 
 women ; he had been too busy. Now he had met his 
 own. He would go to her to-morrow. His love for her 
 was the one right thing in the world. Fallows nor the 
 world could alter that. . . . 
 
 The resistance which these thoughts had built in his 
 mind was all smoothed away by the spontaneous affec~
 
 180 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 tion of the greeting. They sat down together before 
 the fire, but neither spoke of the woman who had come 
 between, 
 
 12 
 
 ON the way to Betty Berry the second day, Morn 
 ing could not quite hold the altitude of yesterday. 
 There was much of the boy left in the manner of his love 
 for her. The woman that the world saw, and which he savr 
 with physical eyes, was only one of her mysteries. The 
 important thing was that he saw her really, and as she 
 was not seen by another. . . . They had been to 
 gether an hour when this was said: 
 
 "There comes a time a certain day when a little 
 girl realizes what beauty is, and something of what it 
 means in the world. That day came to me and it was 
 hard. I fought it out all at once. I was not exactly sure 
 what I wanted, but I knew that beauty could never help 
 me in any way. I learned to play better when I realized 
 this fully. I have said to myself a million times, Ex 
 pect nothing. No one will love you. You must do with 
 out that, I believed it firmly. ... So you see when 
 I went back to the Armory that next morning I had 
 something to fall back upon. ... I would not have 
 thought about it except you made me forget that after 
 noon. Why, I forget it now when you come; but when 
 you go, I force myself to remember " 
 
 "Why do you do that?" 
 
 She was looking into the fire. The day was stormy, 
 and they were glad to be kept in. 
 
 "Why do you do that?" he repeated. 
 
 "Because I can t feel quite at rest about our being 
 together always. It seems too wonderful. You must 
 understand it s only because it is so dear a thing " 
 
 She had spoken hastily, seeing the fear and rebellion 
 in his eyes.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 181 
 
 "Betty Berry. . . . We re not afraid of being, 
 poor. Why not go out and get married to-day now?" 
 
 Her hand went out to him. 
 
 "That wouldn t be fine in us," she said intensely. "I 
 would feel that we couldn t be trusted if we did any 
 thing like that. . . . Oh, that would never keep us 
 together that is not the great thing. And to-day 
 what a gray day and bleak. We shall know if that day 
 comes. It will be one such as the butterfly chooses for 
 her emerging. It must not be planned. Such a day 
 comes of itself. . . . Why, it would be like seizing 
 something precious from another s hand before it is 
 offered 
 
 "And you think you are not beautiful?" he said. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He tried to tell her how she seemed to him when 
 they were apart how differently and perfectly the 
 phases of her came. 
 
 "It makes me silent," he went on. "I try to tell just 
 where it is. And sometimes when I am away I wonder 
 what is so changed and cleansed and buoyant in my 
 heart and then I know it is you sustaining." 
 
 "It doesn t seem to belong to me what you say," 
 she answered. "I don t dare to think of it as mine. 
 . . . Please don t think of me as above other women. 
 I am not apart nor above. I am just Betty Berry, who 
 comes and goes and plays dull in so many ways as yet, 
 a little afraid to be happy. When you tempt me as now 
 to be happy it seems I must go and find someone very 
 miserable and do something perfect for him. . . . 
 But, it is true, I fear nothing so much as that you should 
 believe me more than I am." 
 
 A little afterward she was saying in her queer, un- 
 jointed way, as if she spoke only here and there a sen 
 tence from the thoughts running swiftly through her 
 mind: 
 
 ". . . And once, (it was only a few weeks after
 
 1 82 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 the Armory, and I was playing eastward) I heard your 
 name mentioned among some musicians. They had been 
 talking about your war, and they had seen the great 
 story. ... I couldn t tell them that I know you? 
 . . . It was known you were in New York, and one 
 of the musicians spoke of an early Broadway engage 
 ment of starting for New York that very night. It was 
 the most common thing to say but I went to my room 
 and cried. Going to New York where you were. Can 
 you understand that it didn t seem right for him, just 
 to take a train like that? And I had to go eastward so 
 slowly. For a while after that, traveling out there, I 
 couldn t hold you so clearly ; but as we neared New York 
 whether I wished it or not I began to feel you again, 
 to expect you at every turning. Sometimes as I played 
 it was uncanny, the sense that came to me, that you 
 were in the audience, and that we were working to 
 gether. . . . And then you came." 
 
 Her picture changed now. Morning grew restless. 
 It was almost as if there were a suggestion from Duke 
 Fallows in her sentences: 
 
 "I thought of you always as alone. . . . You 
 have gone so many ways alone. Perhaps the thought 
 came from your work. I never could read the places 
 where you suffered so but I mean from the tone and 
 theme of it. You were down among the terrors and 
 miseries but always alone. . . . You will go back 
 to them alone, but carrying calmness and cheer. You 
 will be different. . . . It s hard for me to say, but 
 if we should clutch at something for ourselves greedily 
 because we want something now and you should not be 
 able to do your work so well because of me I think 
 I think I should never cease to suffer." 
 
 A dozen things to say had risen with hostility in his 
 mind to check this faltering expression, the purport of 
 which he knew so well in its every aspect. He hated the 
 thought of others seeing his future and not considering
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 183 
 
 him. He hated the fear that came to him. There had 
 been fruits to all that Fallows had said before. He had 
 plucked them afterward. And now Betty Berry was one 
 with Fallows in this hideous and solitary conception of 
 him. And there she sat, lovely and actual the very 
 essence of all the good that he might do. He was so 
 tired of what she meant ; and it was all so huge and un 
 breakable, that he grew calm before he spoke, from the 
 very inexorability of it. 
 
 There is no place for me to go that you could not 
 go with me. Every one seems to see great service for 
 me, but I see it with you. Surely we could go together 
 to people who suffer. ... I have been much alone, 
 but I spent most of the time serving myself. I have 
 slaved for myself. If Duke Fallows had left me alone, 
 I should have been greedy and ambitious and common. 
 I see you now identified with all the good of the future. 
 You came bringing the good with you to the Armory 
 that day, but I was so clouded with hatred and self- 
 serving, that I really didn t know it until afterward. 
 . . . All the dreams of being real and fine, of doing 
 good in work, and with hands and thoughts, of some 
 time really being a good man who knows no happiness 
 but service for others that means you you ! You must 
 come with me. We will be good together. We will serve 
 together. Everybody will be better for us. We 
 will do it because we love so much and can t help 
 it" 
 
 "Oh, don t say any more please please! It is too 
 much for me. Go away won t you?" 
 
 She had risen and clung to him, her face imploring. 
 
 "Do you really want me to go away?" he said. 
 
 "Yes I have prayed for one to come saying such 
 things of two going forth to help prayed without 
 faith. ... I cannot bear another word to be 
 said to-day. ... I want to sit here and live 
 with it "
 
 1 84 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 He was bewildered. He bent to kiss her brow but 
 refrained. . . . Her face shone; her eyes were filled 
 with tears. . . . He was in the street trying to recall 
 what he had said. 
 
 13 
 
 HE did not cross the river, but wandered about the 
 city. . . . She had starved her heart always, 
 put away the idea of a lover, and sought to carry out her 
 dreams of service alone. Then he had come. In the 
 midst of mental tossing and disorder to-day, he had 
 stumbled upon an expression of her highest idea of 
 earth-life: for man and woman to serve together God 
 loving the world through their everyday lives. . . . 
 And she had been unable to bear him longer near her. 
 It was the same with her heart, as with one who has 
 starved the body, and must begin with morsels. 
 
 He was in the hotel writing-room filling pages to 
 her. He did not mean to send the pages. It was to 
 pass the time until evening. He lacked even the begin 
 nings of strength to stay away from her until to-morrow. 
 He would have telephoned, but she had not given him 
 the number, or the name of the woman who kept the 
 house. The writing held his thoughts from the mo 
 mentarily recurring impulse to go back. The city was 
 just a vibration. Moments of the writing brought her 
 magically near. In spite of her prayer for him not to, 
 his whole nature idealized her now. His mind was 
 swept again and again with gusts of her attraction. 
 Thoughts of hers came to him almost stinging with 
 reality . . . and to see her again to see her again. 
 Once in the intensity of his outpouring, he halted as if 
 she had called as if she had called to him to come 
 up to her out of the hollows and the vagueness of 
 light. 
 
 It was nightfall. He gave way suddenly to that
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 185 
 
 double-crossing of temptation which forces upon the 
 tempted one the conviction that what he desires is the 
 right thing. . . . He would be a fool not to go. She 
 would expect him. . . . He arose and set out for 
 her house. 
 
 But as he neared the corner something within felt 
 itself betrayed. 
 
 "And so I cannot be content with her happiness," he 
 thought. "I cannot be content with the little mysteries 
 that make her the one Betty Berry. I am not brave 
 enough to be happy alone as she is. I must have the 
 woman. . . ." 
 
 He was hot with the shame of it. He saw her 
 bountifulness ; her capacity to wait. Clearly he saw that 
 all these complications and conflicts of his own mind 
 were not indications of a large nature, but the failures 
 of one unfinished. She did not torture herself with 
 thoughts ; she obeyed a heart unerringly true and real. 
 She shone as never before ; fearless, yet with splendid 
 zeal for giving ; free to the sky, yet eager to linger low 
 and tenderly where her heart was in harmony ; a stranger 
 to all, save one or two in the world, pitilessly hungry 
 to be known, and yet asking so little. . . . Com 
 pared with her, he saw himself as a littered house, wind 
 blowing through broken windows. 
 
 . . . That night, sitting with Duke Fallows be 
 fore the fire, brooding on his own furious desires, he 
 thought of the other John Morning who had brooded 
 over the story of Liaoyang in so many rooms with the 
 same companion. All that former brooding had only 
 forced the world to a show-down. He knew, forever, 
 how pitifully little the world can give. ... A cabin 
 on the hill and a name that meant a call in the next 
 war. . . . 
 
 The face of the other cooled and stilled him. Duke 
 was troubled ; Duke, who wasn t afraid of kings or 
 armies or anything that the world might do ; who didn t
 
 1 86 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 seem even afraid now of the old Eve violence, whoever 
 she was was afraid to speak of Betty Berry to his best 
 friend. . . . Morning wondered at this. Had Duke 
 given up or was he afraid of mixing things more if he 
 expressed himself? The fire-lit face was tense. One 
 after another of the man s splendid moments and per 
 formances ran through Morning s mind the envelop 
 ing compassion in Tokyo, Liaoyang, in the grain, in the 
 ploughed lands the Lowenkampf friend, the friend of 
 the peasant house, the friend of men in Metal Workers 
 Hall, his own friend in a score of places and ways the 
 man s consummate art in friendliness. . . . 
 
 "Duke, there s a lot to think about in just plain living, 
 isn t there?" 
 
 The other started. "Hello," he said. "I didn t think 
 you were in my world." 
 
 Betty Berry was waiting at the stairs the next 
 morning. 
 
 "Did you get my letter?" she whispered, when the 
 door had swung to. 
 
 "No. . . . Mailed last night?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I left the cabin two hours before the mail. It s 
 rural delivery, you know. Jethro reaches my box late in 
 the forenoon " 
 
 "I wrote it about dark, but didn t mail it until later. 
 I thought you would come " 
 
 He told her how he had written, how he had come 
 to her house, and turned away. They were very happy. 
 
 "To think that you came so far. I couldn t sit still, 
 I was so expectant at that very time. . . . But it 
 was good for us " 
 
 "I understood after a while." 
 
 "Of course, you understood. ... I was oh, so 
 happy yesterday. Yet, aren t we strange? Before it 
 was night, I wanted you to come back. ... I
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 187 
 
 didn t go out last night. I couldn t practice. To-night, 
 there are some friends whom I must see " 
 
 Morning, in a troubled way, reckoned the hours until 
 evening. . . . She was here and there about the 
 room. The place already reflected her. She had never 
 been so blithe before. ... It was an hour after 
 ward that he picked up a little tuning-fork from the 
 dresser, and twanged it with his nail. She started and 
 turned to him, her thumb pressed against her lips her 
 whole attitude that of a frightened child. 
 
 "I wonder if I could tell you?" she said hesitatingly. 
 "It would make many things clear. You told me about 
 
 little boy you. It was my father s " 
 
 He waited without speaking. 
 
 ". . . He used to lead the singing in a city 
 church," she said. "Always he carried the tuning-fork. 
 He would twang it upon a cup or a piece of wood, and 
 put it to his ear taking the tone. He had a soft tenor 
 voice. There was never another just like it, and always 
 he was humming. ... I remember his lips moving 
 through the long sermons, as he conned the hymn-book, 
 one song after another, tapping his fork upon a signet 
 ring. How I remember the tiny twanging, the light hum 
 of an insect that came from him, from song to song, 
 his finger keeping time, his lips pursed over the 
 words. 
 
 "He never heard the preacher. There was no organ 
 allowed, but he led the hymns. He loved it. He held 
 the time and tone for the people but never sang a hymn 
 twice the same, bringing in the strangest variations, but 
 always true, his face flaming with pleasure. 
 
 "For years and years we lived alone. As a little girl, 
 I was lifted to the stool to play his accompaniments. As 
 a young woman, I supported him, giving music lessons. 
 The neighbors thought him an invalid. . . . All his 
 viciousness was secret from the world, but common prop 
 erty between us from my babyhood. I pitied him and
 
 1 88 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 covered him, fed him when he might have fed himself, 
 waited upon him when he might have helped me. He 
 would hold my mind with little devilish things and 
 thoughts as natural to him as the tuning-fork. . . . 
 He would despoil the little stock of food while I was 
 away, and nail the windows down. My whole life, I 
 marveled at the ingenuity of his lies. He was so little 
 and helpless. I never expected to be treated as a decent 
 creature, from those who had heard his tales. They 
 looked askance at me. 
 
 "For years, he told me that he was dying, and I sat 
 with him in the nights, or played or read aloud. If any 
 one came, he lay white and peaceful, with a look of 
 martyrdom. . . . And then at the last, I fell asleep 
 beside him. It was late, but the lamp was burning. I 
 felt him touch me before morning the little old white 
 thing, his lips pursed. The tuning-fork dropped with a 
 twang to the floor. I could not believe I was free but 
 cried and cried. At the funeral, when the church people 
 
 spoke of our .pain-racked and martyred brother " 
 
 She did not finish. 
 
 Morning left her side. "I never thought of a little 
 girl that way," he said, standing apart. "Why, you have 
 given me the spirit of her, Betty. It is what you have 
 passed through that has made you perfect. . . . And 
 I was fighting for myself, and for silly things all the 
 time- 
 But he had not expressed what was really in his 
 mind of the beauty and tenderness of unknown women 
 everywhere, in whose hearts the sufferings of others find 
 arable ground. Surely, these women are the grace of 
 the world. His mother must have been weathered by 
 such perfect refinements, otherwise he would not have 
 been able to appreciate it in Betty Berry. It was all too 
 dreamy to put into words yet, but he felt it very im 
 portant in his life this that had come to him from 
 Betty s story, and from Betty standing there woman s
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 189 
 
 power, her bounty, her mystic valor, all from the un 
 conscious high behavior of a child. 
 
 She had given him something that the Ploughman 
 gave Duke Fallows. He wanted to make the child live 
 in the world s thoughts, as Duke was making the Plough 
 man live. 
 
 It was these things common, beautiful, passed-by 
 things, that revealed to Morning, as he began to be ready 
 the white flood of spirit that drives the world, that is 
 pressing always against hearts that are pure. 
 
 He went nearer to her. 
 
 "Everything I think is love for you, Betty," he said. 
 
 The air was light about her, and delicate as from 
 woodlands. 
 
 THE horse and phaeton both very old of the rural- 
 carrier could be seen from the hill-cabin. Duke 
 Fallows walked down to the fence to say "Hello" to 
 jjethro whom he admired. He returned bearing very 
 thoughtfully a letter addressed to John Morning. It 
 was from across the river ; the name, street, and num 
 ber of the sender were written upon the envelope. 
 . . . Fallows sat down before the fire again, staring 
 at the letter. He thought of the woman who had writ 
 ten this, (just the few little things that Morning had 
 said) and then he thought of the gaunt peasant woman 
 in Russia, the mate of the Ploughman, and of the mother 
 of the Ploughman. He thought of the little boy, Jan 
 the one little boy of the six, that had his heart, and 
 whom he longed for. 
 
 He thought of this little boy on one hand- and the 
 world on the other. 
 
 Then he thought of Morning again, and of the 
 woman. 
 
 He loved the world; he loved the little boy. Some-
 
 1 90 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 times it seemed to him when he was very happy that 
 he loved the world and the little boy with almost the 
 same compassion the weakness, fineness, and innocence 
 of the races of men seeming almost like the child s. 
 
 He thought of John Morning differently. He had 
 loved him at first, because he was down and fighting 
 grimly. He thought of him of late as an instrument, 
 upon which might be played a message of mercy and 
 power to all who suffered to the world and to the little 
 boy alike. 
 
 And now Fallows was afraid for the instrument. 
 Many things had maimed it, but this is the way of men ; 
 and these maimings had left their revelations from the 
 depths. Such may measure into the equipment of a big 
 man, destined to meet the many face to face. Fallows 
 saw this instrument in danger of being taken over by a 
 woman to be played upon by colorful and earthly se 
 ductions. No man could grant more readily than he, 
 that such interpretations are good for most men ; that 
 the highest harmony of the average man is the expres 
 sion of love for his one woman and his children. But 
 to John Morning, Fallows believed such felicity would 
 close for life the great work which he had visioned from 
 the beginning. 
 
 He did not want lyrical singing from John Morning, 
 he wanted prophetic thunderings. 
 
 He wanted this maimed young man to rise up from 
 the dregs and tell his story and the large meaning of it. 
 He wanted him to burn with a white light before the 
 world. He wanted the Koupangtse courage to drive into 
 the hearts of men ; a pure reformative spirit to leap forth 
 from the capaciousness where ambition had been ; he 
 wanted John Morning to ignite alone. He believed the 
 cabin in which he now sat was built blindly from the 
 boy s standpoint, but intelligently from the spirit of the 
 boy, to become the place of ignition. He believed this 
 of Morning s to be a celibate spirit that could be finally
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 191 
 
 maimed only by a woman. He believed that Morning 
 was perfecting a marvelous instrument, one that would 
 altar all society for the better, if he gave his heart to 
 the world. 
 
 Fallows even asked himself if he did not have his 
 own desperate pursuits among women in too close con 
 sideration. ... It would be easy to withdraw. So 
 often he had faltered before the harder way, and found 
 afterward that the easy one was evil. . . . He left 
 it this way: If he could gain audience with Betty Berry 
 alone this evening he would speak ; if Morning were with 
 her, he would find an excuse for joining them and 
 quickly depart. Last night Morning had returned to the 
 cabin early; the night before by the last car. It was 
 less than an even chance. . . . Fallows crossed the 
 river, thinking, if the woman were common it would be 
 easy. The way it turned out left no doubt as to what 
 he must do. Approaching the number, on the street 
 named on the corner of the envelope, he passed John 
 Morning, head down in contemplation. He was ad 
 mitted to the house. Betty Berry appeared, led him to 
 a small upper parlor, and excused herself for a moment. 
 
 Fallows sat back and closed his eyes. He was suffer 
 ing. All his fancied hostility was gone. He saw a wom 
 an very real, and to him magical ; he saw that this was 
 bloody business. . . . She came back, the full ter 
 ror of him in her eyes. She did not need to be so sensi 
 tive to know that he had not come as a cup-bearer. 
 . . . He was saying to himself, "I will not struggle 
 with her. . . ." 
 
 "Have I time to tell my story?" 
 
 "I was going out. . . . John Morning just went 
 away because I was to meet old friends. But, if this is 
 so very important, of course " 
 
 "It is about him." 
 
 "I think you must tell your story." 
 
 Fallows talked of Morning s work, of what he had
 
 1 92 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 first seen irom Luzon, and of the man he found in Tokyo. 
 He spoke of the days and nights in Liaoyang, as he had 
 watched Morning at his work. 
 
 "He s at his best at the type-writer. When the work 
 is really coming right for him, he seems to be used by a 
 larger, finer force than he shows at other times. . . . 
 It is good to talk to you, Miss Berry. You are a real 
 listener. You seem to know what I am to say next " 
 
 "Go on," she said. 
 
 "When a man with a developed power of expression 
 stops writing what the world is saying, and learns to 
 listen to that larger, finer force within him indeed, 
 when he has a natural genius for such listening, and 
 cultivates a better receptivity, always a finer and more 
 sensitive surface for its messages such a man becomes 
 in time the medium between man and the energy that 
 drives the world " 
 
 "Yes " 
 
 "Some call this energy that drives the world the 
 Holy Spirit, and some call it the Absolute. I call it 
 love of God. A few powerful men of every race are 
 prepared to express it. These individuals come up like 
 the others through the dark, often through viler dark 
 ness. They suffer as others cannot dream of suffering. 
 They are put in terrible places each of which leaves its 
 impress upon the instrument the mind. You have read 
 part of John Morning s story. Perhaps he has told you 
 other parts. His mind is furrowed and transcribed with 
 terrible miseries. 
 
 "Until recently his capacity was stretched by the fu 
 rious passion of ambition. It seemed in Asia as if he 
 couldn t die, unexpressed ; as if the world couldn t kill 
 him. You saw him at the Armory just after he had 
 passed through thirty days hard enough to slay six men. 
 Ambition held him up and hate and all the powers of 
 the ego. 
 
 "This is what I want to tell you: When the love of
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 193 
 
 God fills that furious capacity which ambition has made 
 ready ; when the love of God floods over the broadened 
 surfaces of his mind, furrowed and sensitized by suf 
 fering, filling the matrix which the dreadful experiences 
 have marked so deeply John Morning will be a wonder 
 ful instrument of interpretation between God and his 
 race/ 
 
 "I can make my story very short for you, Miss 
 Berry. Your listening makes it clearer than ever to me. 
 I see what men mean when they say they can write to 
 women. Yes, I see it. ... John Morning has made 
 ready his cup. It will be filled with the water of life 
 to be carried to men. But John Morning must feel first 
 the torture of the thirst of men. 
 
 "Every misery he has known has brought him nearer 
 to this realization ; days here among the dregs of the 
 city ; days of hideous light and shadow ; days on the 
 China Sea, sitting with coolies crowded so they could not 
 move ; days afield, and the perils ; days alone in his little 
 cabin on the hill ; sickness, failures, hatreds from men, 
 the answering hatred of his fleshly heart all these have 
 knit him with men and brought him understanding. 
 
 "He has been down among men. Suffering has 
 graven his mind with the mysteries of the fallen. You 
 must have understanding to have compassion. In John 
 Morning, the love of God will pass through human 
 deeps to men. Deep calls to deep. He will meet the 
 lowest face to face. He will bring to the deepest down 
 man the only authority such a man can recognize that 
 of having been there in the body. And the thrill of ris 
 ing will be told. Those who listen and read will know 
 that he has been there, and see that he is risen. He will 
 tell how the water of life came to him and flooded over 
 him, and healed his miseries and his pains. The splendid 
 shining authority of it will rise from his face and from 
 his book. 
 
 "And men won t be the same after reading and lis-
 
 I 9 4 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 tening; (nor women who receive more quickly and pas 
 sionately) women won t be the same. Women will 
 see that those who suffer most are the real elect of this 
 world. It s wonderful to make women listen, Miss 
 Berry, for their children bring back the story. 
 
 "It isn t that John Morning must turn to love God. 
 I don t mean that. He must love men. He must re 
 ceive the love of God and give it to men. To be able 
 to listen and to receive with a trained instrument of 
 expression, and then to turn the message to the service 
 of men that s a World-Man s work. John Morning will 
 do it if he loves humanity enough. He s the only liv 
 ing man I know who has a chance. He will achieve 
 almost perfect instrumentation. He will express what 
 men need most to know in terms of art and action. The 
 love of God must have man to manifest it, and that s 
 John Morning s work if he loves humanity enough to 
 make her his bride." 
 
 Fallows was conscious now of really seeing her. 
 She had not risen, but seemed nearer as if the chair, 
 in which she slowly rocked, had crept nearer as he 
 talked. Her palms resting upon her knees were turned 
 upward toward him : 
 
 "And you think John Morning is nearly ready for 
 that crown of Compassion?" 
 
 "Yes " 
 
 "You think he will receive the Compassion and give 
 it to men in terms of art and action?" 
 
 "Yes " 
 
 "You think if he loves me if he turns his love to me, 
 as he is doing he cannot receive that greater love which 
 he must give men?" 
 
 "Yes " 
 
 "And you think it would be a good woman s part to 
 turn him from her?" 
 
 "Yes " 
 
 "And you came to tell me this?"
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 195 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I think it is true " 
 
 "Oh, listen listen " he cried, rising and bending 
 
 over her "a good woman s part it would be that! It 
 would be something more something greater than even 
 he could ever do. . . . What a vision you have 
 given me !" 
 
 She stood before him, her face half-turned to the 
 window. Yet she seemed everywhere in the room her 
 presence filling it. He could not speak again. He turned 
 to go. Her words reached him as he neared the door. 
 
 "Oh, if I only had my little baby to take away!" 
 
 15 
 
 FALLOWS stood forward on the ferry that night 
 and considered the whole New York episode. He 
 had done his work. He had told the Ploughman story 
 five times. It was just the sowing. He might possibly 
 come back for the harvest. . . . He had another 
 story to tell now. Could he ever tell it without break 
 ing? . . . He had tortured his brain to make things 
 clear for Morning and for men. He realized that a man 
 who implants a complete concept in another intelligence 
 and prevents it from withering until roots are formed 
 and fruitage is assured, performs a miracle, no less ; be 
 cause, if the soil were ready, the concept would come of 
 itself. He had driven his brain by every torment to 
 make words perform this miracle on a large scale. 
 
 And this little listening creature he had just left 
 she had taken his idea, finished it for him, and involved 
 it in action. To her it was the Cross. She had carried 
 it to Golgotha, and sunk upon it with outstretched 
 palms. . . . There was an excellence about Betty 
 Berry that amazed him, in that it was in the world. 
 . . . He had not called such women to him, because
 
 196 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 such women were not the answer to his desires. He 
 realized with shame that a man only knows the women 
 who answer in part the desires of his life. Those who 
 had come to him were fitted to the plane of sensation 
 upon which he had lived so many years. He had con 
 demned all women because, in the weariness of the 
 flesh, he had suddenly risen to perceive the falsity of 
 his affinities of the flesh. "What boys we are!" he 
 whispered, "in war and women and work what boys !" 
 
 Betty Berry had taught him a lesson, quite as enor 
 mous to his nature as the Ploughman s. A man who 
 thinks of women only in sensuousness encounters but 
 half-women. He had learned it late, but well, that a 
 man in this world may rise to heights far above his 
 fellows in understanding, but that groups of women are 
 waiting on all the higher slopes of consciousness for 
 their sons and brothers and lovers to come up. They 
 pass their time weaving laurel-leaves for the brows of 
 delayed valiants. . . . 
 
 Duke thought of the men he had seen afield, the 
 gravity with which these men did their great fighting 
 business, the world talking about them. Then he thought 
 of the little visionary in her room accepting her 
 tragedy. . . . 
 
 Even now, in the hush and back-swing of the pendu 
 lum, it seemed very true what he had said. She had 
 seen it. It is dangerous business to venture to change 
 the current of other lives ; no one knew it better than 
 Fallows. But he considered Morning. Morning, as it 
 were, had been left on his door-step. Morning would 
 be alone now alone to listen and receive his powers. 
 . . . Fallows looked up from the black water to the 
 far-apart pickets of the wintry night. He was going 
 home. 
 
 The cabin was lit. Fallows climbed the hill wearily. 
 There was a certain sharpness as of treachery from his
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 197 
 
 night s work, but to that larger region of mind, open 
 to selfishness and the passion to serve men, peace had 
 come. He was going home, first to San Francisco then 
 to the Bosks and the little boy. 
 
 Morning arose quickly at the sound of the step on the 
 hard ground, and opened the door wide. He had been 
 reading her letter, which Fallows had left upon the 
 table. The letter had been like an added hour with her. 
 It was full of shy joy, full of their perfect accord, re 
 mote from the world its road and stone-piles and 
 evasions. . . . Fallows saw that he looked white 
 and wasted. The red of the firelight did not mislead 
 his eye. Its glow was not Morning s and did not blend 
 with the pallor. 
 
 "I m going on to-morrow, John," he said. 
 
 "Frisco?" 
 
 "Yes and then 
 
 "You ll come back here?" 
 
 "No, I ll keep on into the west to my cabin " 
 
 "It would be nearer this way. I planned to see you 
 after "Frisco." 
 
 "I ll come back," Fallows thought repeated, "for the 
 harvest." 
 
 "And so you are going to make the big circle again ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You haven t finished this first one, until you jreach 
 Noyes and your desk in the Western States." 
 
 "The next journey won t take so long." 
 
 "You ve been the good angel to me again, Duke. 
 It s quite a wonder, how you turn up in disaster of 
 mine. ... I wonder if I shall ever come to you 
 but you won t get down. You wouldn t even stay ill." 
 
 "You won t get down again, John, at least, in none of 
 the ways you know about " 
 
 Both men seemed spent beyond words. . . . 
 Morning saw in the other s departure the last bit of 
 resistance lifted from his heart s quest. Betty Berry had
 
 198 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 come between them. Morning s conviction had never 
 faltered on the point that Fallows was structurally weak 
 on this one matter. . . . And so he was going. All 
 that was illustrious in their friendship returned. They 
 needed few words, but sat late before turning in. The 
 cabin cooled and freshened. Each had the thought, be 
 fore finally falling asleep, that they were at sea again. 
 . . . And in the morning the thing that lived from 
 their parting was this, from Duke Fallows : 
 
 "Whatever you do, John don t forget your own 
 the deepest down man. He is yours go after him 
 get him !" 
 
 . . . She was at the top of the stairs when he 
 called the next morning; and he was only half-way up 
 when he saw that she had on her hat and coat and 
 gloves. The day was bitter like the others. He had 
 thought of her fire, and the quiet of her presence. He 
 meant to tell her all about Duke Fallows and the going. 
 It was his thought that she might find in this (not 
 through words, but through his sense of release from 
 Duke s antagonism) a certain quickening toward their 
 actual life together. He wanted to talk of bringing her 
 to the cabin at least, for her to come for a day. 
 
 "You will go with me to get the tickets and things. 
 I must start west at once." 
 
 It was quite dark in the upper hallway. Morning 
 reached out and turned her by the elbow, back toward 
 the door of her room. There in the light, he looked into 
 her face. She was calm, her eyes bright. Whatever 
 the night had brought if weakness it was mastered, if 
 exaltation it was controlled. But she was holding very 
 hard. There was a tightness about her mouth that ter 
 rified him. It was not as it had been with them ; he was 
 not one with her. 
 
 "You mean that you are going away for some 
 time?"
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 199 
 
 "Yes. . . . Oh, you must not mind. We are 
 road people. We have been wonderfully happy. You 
 must not look so tragic " 
 
 It wasn t like her at all. "We are not road people," 
 he thought. . . . "You must not look so tragic," 
 that was just like a thing road people might say. 
 
 He sat down. The weakness of his limbs held his 
 mind. It seemed to him, if he could forget his body, 
 words might come. At first the thought of her going 
 away was intolerable, but that had dwindled. It was the 
 change in her the something that had happened the 
 flippancy of her words. . . . He looked up suddenly. 
 It seemed as if her arms had been stretched toward him, 
 her face ineffably tender. So quickly it had happened 
 that he could not be sure. He wanted this very thing so 
 much that his mind might have formed the illusion. He 
 let it pass. He did not want her to say it was not so. 
 
 Words of her letter came back to him. Neither the 
 letter nor yesterday had anything to do with this day. 
 . . . "You are drawing closer all the time. I have 
 been so happy to-day that I had to write. You must 
 know that I sent you away because I could not bear 
 more happiness. . . ." 
 
 Where was it? What had happened? He was fev 
 ered. Something was destroying him. . . . Betty 
 Berry did not suffer for herself it was with pity for 
 him. The mother in her was tortured. It was her own 
 life this love of his for her the only child she would 
 ever have. She had loved its awakenings, its diffidences, 
 the faltering steps of its expression. The man was not 
 hers, but his love for her was her very own. . . . 
 She had not thought of its death, when Fallows talked 
 the night before. She had thought of her giving up 
 for his sake, but not of the anguish and the slaying of 
 his love for her. And this was taking place now. 
 
 "You will let me write to you?" he said, still think 
 ing of the letter.
 
 200 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 "And you will write to me?" 
 
 She remembered now what she had written. . . . 
 The fullness of her heart had gone into that. She could 
 not write like that again. Yet he was asking for her 
 letters, as a child might ask for a drink. . . . She 
 could not refuse. It wasn t in nature to see his face, 
 and refuse. . . . Surely if she remained apart it was 
 all any one could ask. 
 
 "Yes, I will write sometimes." 
 
 He stood in the center of the room, his head bowed 
 slightly, his eyes upon the wall. He was ill, bewildered, 
 his mind turning here and there only to find fresh dis 
 tress. . . . Suddenly he remembered that he had not 
 told her of his drinking. . . . That must be it. 
 Some one else had told her, and she was hurt and 
 broken. 
 
 "I meant always to tell you," he said. "Only it 
 really did not seem to signify by the time you came 
 back. And when I was with you oh, I seemed very far 
 from that. I don t understand it now " 
 
 She did not know what he meant ; did not care, 
 could not ask. It was something he clutched in the 
 disintegration. . . . He looked less death-like in his 
 thinking of it. 
 
 "It doesn t greatly matter," she said. "I have to go 
 west. . . . Won t you come with me to get the 
 tickets ?" 
 
 "I can t go out into the street yet. If there is 
 anything more I have done won t you let me 
 know?" 
 
 Suddenly he realized her side, that he was detaining 
 her; that it wasn t easy for her to speak. It was not 
 his way to impose his will upon anyone ; his natural 
 shyness now arose, and he fingered his hat. 
 
 "Dear John Morning you haven t done anything. 
 You have made me happy. I must go away to my work
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 201 
 
 and you, to yours. . . . It is hard for me, but I see 
 it as the way. I have promised to write : 
 
 The words came forth like birds escaping thin, 
 evasive, vain words. That which she had seen so clearly 
 the night before, (and which she seemed utterly to have 
 lost the meaning of) was a lock upon every real utter 
 ance now. She had not counted upon this tragedy of her 
 mother instinct this slaying of the perfect thing in him, 
 which she had loved to life. 
 
 He arose, and sat down ; he swallowed, started to 
 speak, but could not. He was like a boy this man who 
 had seen so much, just a bewildered boy, his suffering 
 too deep for words the sweetest part of him to her, 
 dying before her eyes. And the dream of their service 
 together, their hand-in-hand going out to the world, 
 their poverty and purity and compassion together these 
 were lost jewels. ... It was all madness, the world 
 < all madness and devilishness. Beauty and virtue and 
 loving kindness were gone, the world turned insane. 
 . . . The thought came to tell him she was insane; 
 a better lie still, that she was not a pure woman. She 
 started to speak, but his eyes came up to her. . . . 
 She tried it again, but his eyes came up to her. He 
 fingered his hat boyishly. The mother in her breast 
 could not. 
 
 Their dreadful night. The winter darkness was com 
 ing on swiftly. Her train was leaving. 
 
 "But you said you were not going to work for the 
 present. You have been working so hard all win 
 ter v 
 
 He had said it all before. 
 
 "Yes but there is much for me to do days of study 
 and practice and thinking. You will understand. 
 . . . Everything will come clear and you will under 
 stand. You see, to-day this isn t a day for words with 
 us. ... One must have one s own secret place.
 
 202 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 You must say of me, She suddenly remembered some 
 thing and had to go away. . . ." 
 
 " She suddenly remembered something and had to 
 hurry away, " he repeated, trying to smile. "But she 
 will write to me. I will work work and when you 
 let me, I will come to you " 
 
 "Yes " 
 
 He had to leave. . . . He kissed her again. 
 There was something like death about it. 
 
 "If we were only dead," she said, "and were going 
 away together " 
 
 . . . A man stepped up to him, regarded him in 
 tently. Morning realized that he must get alone. He 
 had been shaking his head wearily, and unseeingly 
 standing in the main corridor of the station in Jersey 
 shaking his head. ... It was full night outside. 
 He forgot that he did not have to recross the river and 
 was on the ferry back to New York before he 
 remembered. . . . 
 
 He gained the hill to his cabin long afterward. That 
 reminded him that Duke Fallows had gone, too and 
 that very morning. 
 
 It seemed farther back in his life than Liaoyang. 
 
 16 
 
 BETTY BERRY S journey was ten hours west by 
 the limited trains straight to the heart of her 
 one tried friend, Helen Quiston, a city music teacher. 
 Her first thought, and the one buoy, was that she would 
 be able to tell everything. . . . She could not make 
 Helen Quiston feel the pressure that his Guardian 
 Spirit (she always thought of Duke Fallows so) invoked 
 in that half-hour of his call, but with a day or a night 
 she could make her friend know what had happened, and
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 203 
 
 something of the extent of force which had led to her 
 sacrifice. Helen would tell her if she were mad. All 
 through that night she prayed that her friend would call 
 her mad would force her to see that the thing she had 
 done was viciously insane. 
 
 She was engulfed. For the first time, her spirit 
 failed to right itself in any \vay. She was more de 
 pendent upon Helen Quiston than she had conceived 
 possible, since the little girl had fought out the different 
 cruel presentations of the days, during the early life with 
 her father. 
 
 Throughout the night en route she thought of the 
 letter she had promised to write to John Morning. The 
 day with him had brought the letter from a vague prom 
 ise to an immediate duty upon her reaching the studio. 
 . . . She was to write first, and at once. Already 
 she was making trials in her mind, but none would do. 
 He would penetrate every affectation. The wonder and 
 dreadfulness of it was that she must not tell the truth, 
 for he would be upon her, furiously human, disavowing 
 all separateness from the race, as one with a message 
 must be ; disavowing the last vestige of the dream of 
 compassion which his Guardian Spirit had pictured. 
 . . . She knew his love for her. She had seen it 
 suffer. Would Helen Quiston show her that she must 
 bring it back that the Guardian Spirit was evil? There 
 was a fixture about it, a whispering of the negative deep 
 within. 
 
 She could not write of the memories. Not the least 
 linger of perfume from that night at the theatre must 
 touch her communication. Yet it was the arch of all. 
 As she knew her soul and his, they had been as pure as 
 children that night even before a word was spoken. It 
 had been so natural such a rest and joy. . . . She 
 had learned well to put love away, before he came. From 
 the few who approached, she had laughed and with 
 drawn. The world had daubed them. In her heart to-
 
 204 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 ward other men, she was as a consecrated nun. And this 
 was like her Lord who had come. . . . She had 
 made her way in the world among men. She knew them, 
 worked among them, pitied them. Her father had been 
 as weak, as evil, as passionate, as pitiable. In the be 
 ginning she had learned the world through him all its 
 bitter, brutal lessons. As she knew the cello and its 
 literature, she knew the world and the cheap artifices it 
 would call arts. . . . She had even put away judg 
 ments; she had covered her eyes; accustomed her ears 
 to patterings ; made her essential happiness of little 
 things; she had labored truly, and lived on, wondering 
 why. And he had come at last with understanding. She 
 had seen in Morning potentially all that a woman loves, 
 and cannot be. He had made her mind and heart fruit 
 ful and flourishing again. Then his Guardian Spirit 
 had appeared and spoken. As of old there had been 
 talk of a serpent. As of old the serpent was of 
 woman. 
 
 Helen Quiston was just leaving for a forenoon s 
 work away from the studio. She sat down for a mo 
 ment holding the other in her arms ; then she made tea 
 and toast, and hastened off to return as quickly as pos 
 sible. . . . For a long time Betty Berry stood by 
 the piano. The day was gray and cold, but the studio 
 was softly shining. All the woods of it were dark, 
 approximately the black of the grand piano ; floors and 
 walls and picture frames were dark, but the openings 
 were broad, and naked trees stirred outside the back 
 windows. . . . She did not look the illness that was 
 upon her. She was a veteran in suffering. . . . She 
 forgot to breathe, until the need of air suddenly caught 
 and shook her throat. It was often so when the hidden 
 beauty of certain music unfolded to her for the first 
 time. 
 
 She went to the rear windows, gradually realizing
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 205 
 
 that it would soon be spring-time. There was a swift, 
 tangible hurt in this that brought tears. There had been 
 no tears for the inner desolation. . . . "Poor dear 
 John Morning," she whispered. 
 
 The reproduction of a wonderful painting of the 
 meeting of Beatrice and Dante held her eye for a long 
 time. . . . The blight was upon her as she tried a 
 last time to write. It spread over her hand and the table, 
 the room, the day. There was a hurt for him in every 
 thing she wanted to say. She was hot and ill her back, 
 her brain, her eyes, from trying. She could not hurt 
 him any more. He had done nothing but give her heal 
 ing and visions. His Guardian had done nothing but 
 tell the truth, which she had seen at the time. This 
 agony of hers had existed. It was like everything else 
 in the world. 
 
 She wrote at last of their service in the world. They 
 needed, she said, the strong air of solitude to think out 
 the perfect way. It was very hard for her, who had 
 fared so long on dreams and denials and loneliness. He 
 must remember that. "Great things come to those who 
 love at a distance," she wrote bravely. Tears started 
 when she saw the sentence standing so dauntlessly upon 
 the page of her torture. ... It would make them 
 kinder, make their ideals live and how young they 
 were ! . . . She said that she was afraid to be so 
 happy as he had made her in certain moments. Often 
 she found herself staring at the picture of Beatrice and 
 Dante. 
 
 The thought that broke in upon this brave writing 
 was that she was denied the thrill of great doing, as it 
 had come to her while Fallows had spoken. ... It 
 would have lived on, had she gone that night, without 
 seeing Morning again. Moreover, her way was different 
 from that which she had pictured, as his Guardian 
 talked. She did not see then that her action made a kind 
 of lie of all her giving up to that hour; and that there
 
 206 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 could be no united sacrifice. It was pure, voiceless sacri 
 fice for her and blind murdering for him. . . . 
 
 From the choke of this, her mind would turn to the 
 song of triumph her spirit had sung as his Guardian told 
 the story. . . . She had seemed to live in a vast 
 eternal life, as she listened ; and this which she was 
 asked to do was just to attend a temporary flesh sick 
 ness. She had the strange blessedness that comes with 
 the conviction that immortality is here and now, as those 
 few men and women of the world have known in their 
 highest moments. 
 
 She could get back nothing of that exaltation. It 
 would never come again. The spirit it had played upon 
 was broken. . . . She had been rushing away on her 
 thoughts. It was afternoon, the letter unfinished, the 
 cello staring at her from the corner. It had stood by 
 her in all her sorows of the years, but was empty as a 
 fugue now endless variations upon the one theme of 
 misery. . . . Happiness does not come back to the 
 little things after one has once known the breath of 
 life. . . . She closed the narrow way of the letter, 
 which she had filled with words no past nor future, 
 only the darkness that had come in to mingle with the 
 dark hangings of the room of her friend. . . . She 
 kissed the pages and sent them back the way she had 
 come in the night. 
 
 The qualities that had brought her the friend, Helen 
 Quiston, and which had made the friendship so real, 
 were the qualities of Betty Berry. She had come to the 
 last woman to be told of her madness, or to find admoni 
 tion toward breaking down the thing she had begun. 
 . . . They had talked for hours that night. 
 
 "I know it is lovely, dear Betty. Why, you look 
 lovelier this instant than I ever dreamed you could be. 
 Loving a man seems to do that to a woman but the 
 privilege of the greater thing! Oh, you are privileged.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 207 
 
 That s the way of the great love. I should like some 
 time to know that Guardian. How did mere man grasp 
 the beauty and mystery of service like that? . . . 
 Stay with me. I will serve you, hands and feet. It is 
 enough for me to touch the garment s hem. . . . 
 You are already gone from us, dearest. You have loved 
 a man. You do love a man. He is worthy. You have 
 not found him wanting. What matters getting him 
 when you have found your faith? Think of us think 
 of the gray sisterhood you once belonged to nuns of the 
 world who go about their work helping, and who say 
 softly to each other as they pass, No, I have not been 
 able to find him yet. 
 
 17 
 
 MORNING awoke in the gray of the winter morn 
 ing. The place was cold and impure. He had 
 fallen asleep without the accustomed blasts of hill-sweep 
 ing wind from window to window. He had not started 
 the fire the night before ; had merely dropped upon his 
 cot, dazed with suffering and not knowing his weariness. 
 He was reminded of places he had awakened in other 
 times when he could not remember how he got to bed. 
 Beyond the chairs and table lay the open fire-place, the 
 ashes hooded in white. 
 
 The blackness of yesterday returned, but with a hot 
 resentment against himself that he had not known be 
 fore. He had followed Betty Berry about for hours, and 
 had not penetrated the hollow darkness with a single 
 ray of intelligence. This dreadful business was his, yet 
 he had been stricken ; had scarcely found his speech. 
 There was no doubt of Betty Berry now, though a dozen 
 evasions of hers during the day returned. She was do 
 ing something hard, but something she thought best to 
 do. The real truth, however, was rightly his property. 
 . . . To-day she would write. To-morrow her letter
 
 208 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 would come. If it did not contain some reality upon 
 which he might stand through the present desolation, he 
 would go to her. . . . Yes, he would go to her. 
 
 His side was hurting. He was used to that; it had 
 no new relation now. Everything was flat and wretched. 
 Distaste for himself and this nest in which he had lain, 
 was but another of the miserable adjuncts of the morn 
 ing. He stood forth shivering from the cot; struck a 
 match and held it to some waste paper. Kindling was 
 ready in the fire-place, but the paper flared out and fell 
 to ashes, as he watched his left hand. He went to the 
 window and examined his hand closer. The nails were 
 broken and dry; there were whitish spots on the joints. 
 He had seen something of this before, but his physical 
 reactions had been so various and peculiar, in the past six 
 weeks, that he had refused to be disturbed. 
 
 Just now his mind was clamoring with memories. 
 He had the sense that as soon as an opening was forced 
 in his mind, a torrent would rush in. He felt his heart 
 striking hard and with rapidity. The floor heaved 
 windily, or was it the lightness of his limbs? He went 
 about the things to do with strange zeal, as if to keep 
 his brain from a contemplation so hideous that it could 
 not be borne. 
 
 He lit another paper, placed kindling upon it, poked 
 the charred stubs of wood free from the thick covering 
 of white, and brought fresh fuel. Then, as the fire 
 kindled, he opened the door and windows, and swept and 
 swept. . . . But it encroached upon him. . . . 
 The open wound was no longer a mystery. . . . His 
 dream of the river and the boat that was not allowed to 
 land; his dream of the cliff, and looking down into the 
 life of earth through the tree-tops . . . the ferry 
 man of the Hun . . . and now yesterday with its 
 two relations to the old cause. 
 
 His whole nature was prepared for the revelation; 
 yet it seemed to require years in coming. Like the loss
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 209 
 
 of the manuscript in the Liao ravine, it was done before 
 he knew. 
 
 "Of course, they had to rush away, when they found 
 out," he mumbled. "Of course, they couldn t stay. Of 
 course, they couldn t be the ones to tell me." 
 
 It might have been anywhere in China; the ferryman 
 on the Hun . . . during the deck-passage. . . . 
 It did not greatly matter. Some contact of the Orient 
 had started the slow virus on its long course in his veins. 
 He knew that it required from three to five years to 
 reach the stage of revealing itself as now. He saw it as 
 the source of his various recent indispositions, and rea 
 lized that he could not remain in his cabin indefinitely. 
 It would be well for a while. Neither Duke Fallows nor 
 Betty Berry would tell. He could keep his secret, and 
 then to die in some island quarantine? None of that. 
 This was his life. He was master of it. He should die 
 when he pleased, and where. 
 
 . . Yes, she had her gloves on, when he came. 
 She had not removed them all day, not even at the very 
 last. . . . How strange and frightened she had 
 been how pitiful and hard for her ! She could not have 
 told him. She had loved him and had suddenly learned. 
 She had seen that he did not know. ... It 
 must have come to her in the night after the last 
 day of happiness. Perhaps the processes of its com 
 ing to her were like his. He was sorry for Betty 
 Berry. 
 
 And he could not see her again ; he could not see 
 her again. He passed the rest of the day with this 
 repetition. . . . His life was over. That s what it 
 amounted to. Of course, he would not let them segre 
 gate him. His cabin would do for a while, until the 
 secret threatened to reveal itself, and then he would 
 finish the business. . . . The two great issues leaned 
 on each other: The discovery of his mortal taint took 
 the stress from the tragedy of yesterday; and that he
 
 210 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 could not see Betty Berry again kept madness away 
 from the abominable death. . . . The worst of it 
 all was that the love-mating was ended. This brought 
 him to the end of the first day, when he began to think 
 of the Play. 
 
 The literary instinct, of almost equal disorder with 
 dramatic instinct, and which he had come to despise dur 
 ing the past year, returned with the easy conformity of 
 an undesirable acquaintance that reportorial sentence- 
 making faculty, strong as death, and as uncentering to 
 the soul of man. Morning saw himself searching libra 
 ries for data on leprosy, being caught by officials the 
 subject of nation-wide newspaper articles and magazine 
 specials, the pathos of his case variously appearing 
 Liaoyang recalled his own story Reever Kennard re 
 lating afresh the story of the stealing of Mio Aniigo. 
 What a back-wash from days of commonness ! The ego 
 and the public eye two Dromios equal in monkey- 
 mindedness and rapacity. 
 
 Morning was too shattered to cope with this ancient 
 dissipation at first. 
 
 After the warring and onrushing of different facul 
 ties, a sort of coma fell upon the evil part, and the 
 ways of the woman came back to him. He sat by his fire 
 that night, the wound in his side forgotten, the essence 
 of Asia s foulness in his veins, forgotten and medi 
 tated upon the sweetness of Betty Berry. He approached 
 her image with a good humility. He saw her with 
 something of the child upon her as if he had suddenly 
 become full of years. "How beautiful she was !" he 
 would whisper ; and then he would smile sadly at the 
 poor blind boy he had been, not to see her beautiful at 
 first. . . . To think, only three days before, she 
 had sent him away, because she could not endure, except 
 alone, the visitation of happiness that came to her. Peo 
 ple of such inner strength must have their secret times 
 and places, for their strength comes to them alone. To
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 211 
 
 think that he had not understood this at once. . . . 
 He had been eloquent and did not know it. 
 
 "Hell," he said, "that s the only way one can say 
 the right thing when he doesn t plan it." 
 
 . . . If his illness had been any common thing 
 she would not have been frightened away. He was sure 
 of this. It took Asia s horror to frighten her away. 
 He saw her now, how she must have fought with it. He 
 shuddered for her suffering on that day. . . . That 
 day why it was only the day before yesterday. . . . 
 He never realized before how the illusion, Time, is only 
 measurable by man s feeling. . . . He was a little 
 surprised at Duke Fallows. He himself wouldn t have 
 been driven off, if Duke had suddenly uncovered a lep 
 rous condition. He had been driven off by Duke s ideas, 
 but no fear of contagion could do it. Yet Duke was the 
 bravest man he had ever known in such deep and aston 
 ishing ways courageous. Yet he had been brought up 
 soft. He wasn t naturally a man-mingler. It had been 
 too much for him. It was a staggerer this. Fallows 
 was a Prince anyway. Every man to his own fear. 
 . . . This was the second morning. 
 
 Old Jethro, the rural delivery carrier, drove by that 
 morning without stopping. She could not have mailed 
 her letter until last night another day to wait for it. 
 Morning tried to put away the misery. Women never 
 think of mail-closing times. They put a letter in the 
 box and consider it delivered. . . . He puzzled on, 
 regarding the action of Duke Fallows, in the light 
 of what he would have done. No understanding 
 came. 
 
 All thoughts returned in the course of the hours, his 
 mind milling over and over again the different phases, 
 but each day had its especial theme. The first was that 
 he would not see Betty Berry again ; that Duke Fallows 
 had been frightened away, the second ; and on the third
 
 212 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 morning, before dawn, he began to reckon with physi 
 cal death, as if this day s topic had been assigned to 
 him. 
 
 Sister Death she had been in the shadows before. 
 Occasionally he had shivered afterward, when he thought 
 of some close brush with her. She was all right, only he 
 had thought of her as an alien before. It really wasn t 
 so a blood sister now. . . . He recalled scenes in 
 the walled cities of China. . . . She had certainly 
 put over a tough one on him. ... It would be in 
 this room. He wouldn t wait until his appearance was 
 a revelation. . . . He would do the play. Some 
 thing that he could take, would free him from the pres 
 ent inertia, so he could work for a while, a few 
 hours a day. When the play was done the Sister 
 would come at his bidding. . . . He had always 
 thought of her as feminine. A line from somewhere 
 seemed to seize upon her very image this time not sis 
 ter, but 
 
 Dark mother, always gliding near, with soft 
 feet 
 
 He faced her out on that third morning. Physically 
 there was but a tremor about the coming. Not the 
 suffering, but a certain touch and shake of the heart, 
 heaved him a little the tough little pump stopped, its 
 fine incentive and its life business broken. . . . 
 But that was only the rattle of the door-knob of 
 death. 
 
 It was all right. He wasn t afraid. The devil, Am 
 bition, was pretty well strangled. There must be some 
 thing that lasts, in his late-found sense of the utter un 
 importance of anything the world can give the world 
 which appreciates only the boyish part of a real man s 
 work. So he would take out with him a reality of the 
 emptiness of the voice of the crowd. Then the unclean 
 desire for drink was finished none of that would cling 
 to him; moreover, no fighting passion to live on would
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 213 
 
 hold him down to the body of things. . . . But he 
 would pass the door with the love of Betty Berry 
 strong, young, imperious, almost untried. . . . 
 Would that come back with him ? Does a matter of such 
 dimension die? Does one come back at all? . . . 
 
 Probably in this room. . . . 
 
 Then he thought of the play that must be done in 
 this room ; and curiously with it, identifying itself with 
 the play and the re-forming part of it, was the favorite 
 word of Duke Fallows Compassion. What a title for 
 the play! Duke s word and Duke s idea. . . . All 
 this brought him to the thought of Service, as he had 
 pictured it for Betty Berry a life together doing things 
 for men loving each other so much that there were 
 volumes to spare for the world down among men to 
 the deepest down man. 
 
 His throat tightened suddenly. He arose. A sob 
 came from him. . . . His control broke all at once. 
 . . . How a little run of thoughts could tear down 
 a man s will ! It wasn t fear at all but the same depic 
 tion running in his mind that had so affected Betty Berry 
 when she begged to be alone. . . . 
 
 "The deepest down man the deepest down man. 
 . . . It is I, Duke ! . . . Surely you must have 
 meant me all the time!" 
 
 But it passed quickly, properly whipped and put away 
 with other matters all but a certain relating together of 
 the strange trinity, Death, Service, and Betty Berry 
 which he did not venture to play with, for fear of re 
 lapse. . . . He had been eating nothing. He must 
 go to Hackensack. The little glass showed him a hag 
 gard and unshaven John Morning, but there was noth 
 ing of the uncleanness about the face in reflection. . . . 
 He heard the "giddap" of Jethro far on the road. The 
 old rig was coming. ... It stopped at his box. He 
 hurried down the hill.
 
 214 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 18 
 
 TWO letters; one from Duke Fallows. Morning 
 opened this on the way up the slope. He was 
 afraid of the other. He wanted to be in the cabin with 
 the door shut when that other was opened. . . . 
 Fallows was joyous and tender just a few lines written 
 on the way west: "... I won t be long in Frisco. 
 I know that already. The Western States does very 
 well without me. . . . Soon on the long road to 
 Asia and Russia. I must look up Lowenkampf again be 
 fore going home. He was good to us, wasn t he, John? 
 . . . And you, this old heart thrills for you. You 
 are coming on. I don t know anything more you need. 
 I say you are coming on. You ll do the Play and the 
 Book. . . . John, you ought to write the book of the 
 world s heart. . . . And then you will get so full of 
 the passion to serve men that writing won t be enough. 
 You will have to go down among them again and 
 labor and lift among men. Things have formed about 
 you for this. . . . We are friends. ... I am 
 coming back for the harvest." 
 
 The sun had come out. Morning was standing in the 
 doorway as he finished. The lemon-colored light fell 
 upon the paper. ... It wasn t like Duke to write in 
 this vein after running away. He repeated aloud a 
 sentence to this effect. Then he went in, shut the door, 
 and, almost suffocating from the tension, read the letter 
 of Betty Berry. 
 
 It was just such a letter as would have sent him to 
 her, before his realization of the illness. . . . He 
 saw her torture to be kind, and yet not to lift his hopes. 
 It was different from Fallows , in that it fitted exactly to 
 what he now knew about himself. And he had to believe 
 from the pages that she loved him. There was an eter^ 
 nal equality to that. . . . The air seemed full of 
 service. Two letters from his finest human relations,
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 215 
 
 each stirring him to service. He did not see this just 
 now with the touch of bitterness that might have flav 
 ored it all another time. . . . What was there about 
 him that made them think of him so? If they only 
 knew how meager and tainted so much of his thinking 
 was. Some men can never make the world see how little 
 they are. 
 
 He wrote to Betty Berry. Calm came to him, and 
 much the best moments that he had known in the three 
 days. He was apt to be a bit lyrical as a letter-lover he 
 whose words were so faltering face to face with the 
 woman. Thoughts of the play came to his writing. He 
 was really in touch with himself again. He would never 
 lose that. He would work every day. When a man s 
 work comes well he can face anything. . . . The 
 play was begun the fourth day, and, on the fifth, another 
 letter from Betty Berry. This was almost all about his 
 work. She had seized upon this subject, and her letters 
 lifted his inspiration. She could share his work. There 
 was real union in that. . . 
 
 He was forgetting his devil for an hour at a time. 
 There were moments of actual peace and well-being. He 
 did not suffer more than the pain he had been accus 
 tomed to so long. And then, a real spring day breathed 
 over the hill. 
 
 That morning, without any heat of producing, and 
 without any elation from a fresh letter from the woman, 
 he found that in his mind to say aloud : 
 
 "I m ready for what comes." 
 
 By a really dramatic coincidence, within ten minutes 
 after this fruitage of fine spirit, John Morning found an 
 old unopened envelope from Nevin, the little doctor of 
 the Sickles. He had recalled some data on Liaoyang 
 while inspecting the morning something that might 
 prove valuable for the play, in the old wallet he had 
 carried afield. Looking for this in the moulded leather, 
 he found the letter Nevin had left in the Armory, before
 
 21 6 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 departing just a little before Betty Berry came that day. 
 . . . Nevin had not come back. But Noyes and Field 
 had come. 
 
 Morning remembered that Nevin had spoken that 
 morning of finding something for the wound that 
 would not heal. . . . The remedy was Chinese. The 
 Doctor knew of its existence, but had procured the name 
 with great difficulty in the Chinese quarter. . . . 
 Morning was to fast ten days while taking the treatment. 
 
 He went about it with a laugh. The message had 
 renewed his deep affection for Nevin. It had come 
 forth from the hidden place where Nevin now toiled, 
 (secretly trying, doubtless, to cover every appearance of 
 his humanity). . . . He remembered how Nevin 
 had studied the wound that refused to heal. The last 
 thing had been his report on that. When there was 
 nothing more to be offered but felicities he had 
 vanished. 
 
 Morning did not leap into any expectancy that he 
 was to be healed, but thoughts of Nevin gave him another 
 desire after the play and the book to trace the great 
 hearted little man before the end. Nevin would be found 
 somewhere out among the excessive desolations. If it 
 may be understood, the idea of mortal sickness remained 
 in Morning s mind at this time, mainly as a barrier be 
 tween him and Betty Berry. 
 
 Nevin s drug was procured in New York. Hacken- 
 sack failed utterly in this. . . . On the third day, 
 Morning suffered keenly for the need of food. A para 
 graph from Betty Berry on the subject of the fasting at 
 this time completely astonished him ; indeed, shook the 
 basic conviction as to the meaning of her departure: 
 
 "... I have often thought you did not seem so 
 well after I returned from Europe, as you were when 
 we parted. But the ten days will do for you, something 
 that makes whatever might happen in the body seem so
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 217 
 
 little and unavailing. . . . Don t you see, you are 
 doing what every one, destined to be a world-teacher, 
 has done? . . . What amazes me continually, is that 
 you seem to be brought, one by one, to these things by 
 exterior processes, rather than through any will of your 
 ;own. . . . The Hebrew prophets were all called 
 upon to do this in order to listen better. Recall, too, the 
 coming forth from the Wilderness of the Baptist, and the 
 forty days in the wilderness of the Master Himself. 
 Why, it is part of the formula ! You will do more than 
 improve the physical health ; you will hear your message 
 more clearly. . . . I sit and think in the very hush 
 of expectancy for you." 
 
 As the evidences came, so they vanished. She could 
 not have fled from him in the fear of leprosy and writ 
 ten in this way ; nor could Duke Fallows, who was first 
 of all unafraid of fleshly things. The conviction of his 
 taint, and of its incurableness, daily weakened. Before 
 the ten days passed, the last vestige of the horror was 
 cleaned away. Illusion and yet the mental battle 
 through which he had passed, and which, through three 
 terrible days, had shaken him body and soul, was just 
 as real in the graving of its experience upon the fabric 
 of his being as was the journey to Koupangtse, done 
 hand and foot and horse. He perceived that man, farther 
 advanced in the complications of self-consciousness, cov 
 ers ground in three days and masters a lesson that would 
 require a life to learn in the dimness and leisure of 
 simple consciousness. 
 
 There was no way of missing this added fact: He, 
 John Morning, was not designed to lean. He had been 
 whipped and spurred through another dark hollow in 
 the valley of the shadow, to show him again, and finally, 
 that he was not intended for leaning upon others, yet 
 must have an instant appreciation of the suffering of 
 others. He had been forced to fight his own way to a 
 certain poise, through what was to him, at the time,
 
 218 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 actual abandonment in distress, by the woman and the 
 friend he loved. Moreover, he had accepted death ; resig 
 nation to death in its most horrible form had been driven 
 into his soul an important life lesson, which whole 
 races of men have died to learn. 
 
 He was seeing very clearly. . . . He bathed con 
 tinually both in water and sunlight, lying in the open 
 doorway as the Spring took root on his hill and below. 
 Often he mused away the hours, with Betty Berry s let 
 ters in his hand too weak almost to stir at last, but 
 filled with ease and well-being, such as he had never 
 known. Water from the Spring was all he needed, 
 and the activity of mind was pure and unerring, as 
 if he were lifted above the enveloping mists of the 
 senses, through which he had formerly regarded 
 life. 
 
 Everything now was large and clear. Life was like 
 a coast of splendid altitude, from which he viewed the 
 mighty distances of gilded and cloud-shadowed sea, birds 
 sailing vast-pinioned and pure, the breakers sounding 
 a part of the majestic harmony of granite and sea and 
 sky; the sun Gad-like, and the stars vast and pure like 
 the birds. 
 
 When he actually looked with his eyes, it was as if 
 he had come back, a man, to some haunt of childhood. 
 The little hill was just as lovely, a human delight in the 
 unbudded elms, a soft and childish familiarity in the 
 new greens of the sun-slope grass. The yellow primrose 
 was first to come, for yellow answers the thinnest, farth 
 est sunlight. The little cabin was like a cocoon. He was 
 but half-out. Soon the stronger sunlight would set him 
 free then to the wings. . . . One afternoon he 
 stared across to the haze of the great city. His eyes 
 smarted with the thought of the Charleys and the sis 
 ters, of the Boabdils and the slums. . . . Then, at 
 last, he thought of Betty Berry waiting and thinking of 
 him . . . "in the very hush of expectancy." The
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 219 
 
 world was very dear and wonderful, and his love for her 
 was in it all. 
 
 It was the ninth day that the bandage slipped from 
 him, as clean as when he put it on the day before, and 
 when he opened the door of the cabin he heard the first 
 robin. . . . There was a sweeping finality in the 
 way it had come from Nevin, and the quality of the man 
 lived in Morning s appreciation. His friends were al 
 ways gone before he knew how fine they were. 
 
 He was slow to realize that the days of earth-life 
 were plentiful for him, in the usual course. A man is 
 never the same after he has accepted death. . . . 
 And it had all come in order. . . . He could look 
 into her eyes and say, "Betty Berry, whatever you want, 
 is right for me, but I think it would be best for you to 
 tell me everything. We are strong and if we are not 
 to be one together, we should talk it over and under 
 stand perfectly." . . . 
 
 How strange he had missed this straight way. There 
 had been so much illusion before. His body was utterly 
 weak, but his mind saw more clearly and powerfully than 
 ever. 
 
 The Play was conceived as a whole that ninth day. 
 The sun came warmly in, while he wrote at length of 
 the work, as he finally saw it. ... On the tenth 
 day he drank a little milk and slept in his chair by the 
 doorway. . . . There was one difficult run that the 
 robin went over a hundred and fifty times, at least. 
 
 19 
 
 BETTY BERRY watched the progress of the fast 
 ing with a mothering intensity. She saw that 
 which had been lyrical and impassioned give way to the 
 workman, the deeper-seeing artist. He was not less
 
 220 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 human; his humanity was broadened. From one of his 
 pages, she read how he had looked across at the higher 
 lights of New York o/ie clear March night. His mind 
 had been suddenly startled by a swift picture of the 
 fighting fool he had been, and of the millions there, 
 beating themselves and each other to death for vain 
 things. . . . She saw his Play come on in the days 
 that followed the fasting. There was freshness in his 
 voice. She did not know that he had accepted death, 
 but she saw that he was beginning to accept her will in 
 their separation. 
 
 And this is what she had tried to bring about, but 
 her heart was breaking. Dully she wondered if her 
 whole life were not breaking. The something implacable 
 which she had always felt in being a woman, held her 
 like a matrix of iron now. Her life story had been a 
 classic of suffering, yet she had never suffered before. 
 
 A letter from him, (frequently twice a day, they 
 came) and it was her instant impulse to answer, al 
 most as if he had spoken. And when she wrote all 
 the woman s life of her had to be cut from it cut again 
 and again until was left only what another might say. 
 . . . She was forced to learn the terrible process of 
 elimination which only the greater artists realize, and 
 which they learn only through years of travail that 
 selection of the naked absolute, according to their vision, 
 all the senses chiseled away. His work, his health, 
 especially the clear-seeing that came from purifying of 
 the body, the detachment of his thoughts from physical 
 emotions of these, which were clear to her as the im 
 pulses of instinct she allowed herself to write. But 
 the woman s heart of flesh, which had fasted so long 
 for love, so often found its way to her pages, and forced 
 them to be done again. . . . Certain of his para 
 graphs dismayed her, as : 
 
 "Does it astonish you," he asked, almost joyously, 
 "when I say there is something about Betty Berry be-
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 221 
 
 yond question such a luxurious sense of truth? . . . 
 I feel your silences and your listenings between every 
 sentence. It is not what you say, though in words you 
 seem to know what I am to-day, and what I shall be 
 to-morrow but all about the words, are you those per 
 fect hesitations, the things which I seemed to know at 
 first, but could not express. They were much too fine 
 for a medium of expression which knew only wars, 
 horses, and the reporting of words and deeds of men. 
 . . . Why, the best thing in my heart is its trust for 
 you, Betty Berry. Looking back upon our hours to 
 gether, I can see now that all the misunderstandings 
 were mine and all the truth yours. When it seems to me 
 that we should be together, and the memories come pil 
 ing back those perfect hours I say, because of this 
 trust, Though it is not as I would have it, her way is 
 better. And I know I shall come to see it, because she 
 cannot be wrong. " 
 
 So she could not hide her heart from him, even 
 though she put down what seemed to her unworthiness 
 and evasion, and decided through actual brain-process 
 what was best to say. A new conduct of life was not 
 carrying Betty Berry up into the coolness beyond the 
 senses. Fasting would never bring that to her. Fast 
 ing of the body was so simple compared to the fasting 1 
 of the heart which had been her whole life. Nor could 
 she ever rise long from the sense of the serpent in wo 
 man which she had realized from the words of his 
 Guardian not a serpent to the usual man, but to the 
 man who was destined to love the many instead of one. 
 . . . She loved him as a woman loves the boy, the 
 lover, the man of him the kisses, the whispers, the 
 arms of strength, the rapture of nearness. . . . 
 
 He must have been close to the spirit of that night 
 at the theatre, when this was written : 
 
 "The letter to-day, with the plaintive note in it, has 
 brought you even closer. I never think of you as one
 
 222 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 who can be tried seriously ; always as one finished, with 
 infinite patience, and no regard at all for the encompass 
 ing common. Of course, I know differently, know that 
 you must suffer, you who are so keenly and exquisitely 
 animate but you have an un-American poise. . . . 
 You played amazingly. I loved that at once. There was 
 a gleam about it. Betty Berry s gleaming. I faced you 
 from the wings that night. I wanted to come up behind 
 you. You were all music. . . . But I love even bet 
 ter the instrument of emotions you have become. That 
 must be what music is for to sensitize one s life, to 
 make it more and more responsive. . . ." 
 
 Then in a different vein : 
 
 ". . . The long forenoons, wherein we grow. 
 . . . Yes, I knew you were a tree-lover; that the 
 sound of running water was dear to you . . . and 
 the things you dream of ... work and play and 
 forest scents and the wind in the branches. . . . 
 Sometimes it seems to me is it a saying of lovers? 
 that we should be boy and girl together. . . . Why, 
 I ve only just now learned to be a boy. There was so 
 much of crudity and desire and anguish-to-do-greatly- 
 at-any-cost until just a little ago. But I ve never had a 
 boyhood that could have known you. I wasn t ready for 
 such loveliness in the beginning. . . . I ve wanted 
 terribly to go to you, but that is put away for the time." 
 
 These lines wrung her heart. "Oh, no," she cried, 
 "you have not learned how to become a boy. There was 
 never a time you were not ready until now! You are 
 becoming a man and the little girl oh, she is a little 
 girl in her heart. . . ." 
 
 Everything his Guardian had promised was coming 
 to be. He was changing into a man. That would take 
 him from her at the last even letters, this torrent of 
 his thoughts of life and work. She saw the first process 
 of it as the Play grasped him finally the old tragedy 
 of a man turning from a woman to his work. . . .
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 223 
 
 She built the play from the flying sparks. . . 
 He was thronged with illusions of production. How 
 badly he had done it before, he said, and how perfect 
 had proved the necessity to wait, and to do it a second 
 time. . . . Even the most unimaginative audience 
 must build the great battle picture from the headquarters 
 scene ; then the trampled arena of the Ploughman, deep 
 in the hollow of that valley, and his coming forth through 
 the millet. . . . 
 
 ". . . It s so simple," he wrote in fierce haste. 
 "You see, I remember how hard it was for me to grasp 
 that first night, when Fallows brought in the story to the 
 Russian headquarters. ... I have remembered 
 that. I have made it so that I could see it then. And I 
 was woven in and fibred over with coarseness, from 
 months of life in Liaoyang and from the day s hideous 
 brutality. I have measured my slowness and written to 
 quicken such slowness as that. The mystery is, it is not 
 spoiled by such clearness. It is better it never lets you 
 alone. It won t let you lie to yourself. You can t be the 
 same after reading it. ... And it goes after the 
 deepest down man. . . . Every line is involved in 
 action. 
 
 "The third act sometime we ll see it together how 
 the main character leaves the field and goes out in search 
 of the Ploughman s hut, across Asia and Europe ; how 
 he reaches there the old father and mother, the six 
 children, the one little boy, who has the particular an* 
 swer for the man s lonely love the mother of the six, 
 common, silent, angular, her skirt hanging square, as 
 Duke put it but she is big enough for every one to get 
 into her heart. You will see the fear of her man s 
 death, which the stranger s presence brings to her, though 
 he leaves it to Russia to inform the family. You will see 
 the beautiful mystery of compassion that he brings, too. 
 That s the whole shine of the piece. And it came from 
 the ministry of pain.
 
 224 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 . . . "I m not praising my Play it isn t. It s 
 Duke s almost every word of it every thought, the work 
 of Duke s disciple. I have merely felt it all and made it 
 clear clear. You see it all. Many thousands must see, 
 and see what the name means. It s the most wonderful 
 word in the world to me, Compassion." 
 
 Then came the break for a day, and the flash that 
 his work on the Play was finished. "The cabin will be 
 harder for me now. The new work is only a dream so 
 far and this goes to Markheim to-day. . . . It is 
 very queer that I should go back to Markheim, but some 
 how I want to pick up that failure. There are other 
 reasons. ... I shall tell him that he can have five 
 days, I m just getting ready to go across the River. 
 . . . My health was almost never better. I m not 
 tired. The work has seemed to replenish me, as your 
 letters do. But that last letter yesterday s it seems 
 to come from behind a screen, where other voices were 
 the loved tones troubled and crowded out by others. It 
 left me restless and more than ever longing to see you. 
 It is as if there were centuries all unintelligible, to be 
 made clear only by being with you. The world and the 
 
 other voices drown yours " 
 
 She felt the instinct of centuries to hold out her arms 
 to him arms of the woman, after man s task in the 
 world home at evening with the prize of the hunt and 
 battle. The world for the day, the woman for the night 
 that is man s way. She seemed to know it now from 
 past eternity. And for woman day and night the man 
 of her thoughts. . . . She was afraid of her every 
 written word now. Her heart answered every thrill of 
 his ; the murmuring and wrestling resistance of his 
 against the miles, was hers ten-fold. . . . The days 
 of the fasting had not been like this, nor the two weeks 
 that followed in which he had completed the play. 
 . . . April had come. She was ill. Her music was 
 neglected altogether. Her friend, Helen Quiston, never
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 225 
 
 faltered in her conception of the beauty and the mystery 
 of the separation. With all her will, Helen sustained her 
 against the relinquishing of the lofty ideal of sacrifice, 
 and tried to distract her impassioned turning to the east. 
 . . . She would hold to the death ; Betty Berry knew 
 this. 
 
 "It s harder now that the play is done," Betty re 
 peated. "He can t be driven instantly to work again. I 
 can t lie to him. He doesn t fight me he thinks I m 
 right that s the unspeakable part of it. There is noth 
 ing for me to write about except his work. . . ." 
 
 And Helen Quiston found her, a half-hour afterward, 
 staring out of the window, exactly as she had left her 
 hands in her lap exactly the same. . . . Betty Berry 
 was thinking unutterable things, having to do with ador 
 able meetings in the theatre-wings of wonderful night 
 journeys, all night talking of waiting in a little room, 
 and at the head of the stairs. There was an invariable 
 coming back to the first kiss in the wings of the theatre. 
 
 "We were real we were true to each other that 
 night true as little children. We needed no words," 
 this was her secret story. . . . "Oh, I waited so 
 long for him . . . and we could have gone out to 
 gether and served in a little way. But they would not 
 let us alone." 
 
 He had been across to New York. . . . The 
 second morning after the play was finished, she received 
 a letter with a rather indescribable ending. He told her 
 of fears and strangeness, of intolerable longing for some 
 thing to happen that would bring them together. . . . 
 The rest is here : 
 
 "I m a bit excited by the thought that just came to 
 me. And another, but I won t tell you yet, for fear. 
 . . . I don t quite understand myself. I seem afraid. 
 I think I would ask more of myself than I would of 
 another man just now. There seem all about me invis 
 ible restraints. Something deep within recognizes the
 
 226 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 greatness and finality of your meaning to me. . . . 
 It is true, you do not leave the strength to me. Did you 
 ever ? No, I won t ask that. . . . This letter isn t 
 kind to you unsettling, strange, full of an intensity to 
 see and be with you. . . ." 
 
 Moments afterwards, as she was standing at the 
 piano the letter trailing from her hand the telephone 
 in the inner room startled her like a human cry. 
 
 20 
 
 IT was Morning. She did not remember his words nor 
 her answers only that she had told him he might 
 come up-town to her. He had dropped the receiver then, 
 as if it burned him. 
 
 So, it was a matter of minutes. Nothing was ready. 
 Least of all, was she ready. She could hardly stand. 
 She had forgotten at first, and it had required courage, 
 of late, to look in the mirror. She would have given up, 
 before what she saw now, but a robin was singing in 
 the foliage by the rear windows. She went out to open 
 the studio door into the hall, then retired to the inner 
 room again. . . . "He can heal you, and bring back 
 the music," her heart whispered, but her mind cowered 
 before herself, and this mate of herself, Helen Quiston, 
 and before his Guardian. . . . She heard his step 
 on the stair . . . called to him to wait in the studio. 
 He was pacing to and fro. 
 
 Morning felt the light resistance in her arms. His 
 kiss fell upon her cheek. He held her at arm s length, 
 looking into her face. 
 
 She laughed, repeating that she was not ill. . . . 
 She was always thinner in summer, she said. In her 
 withholding, there was destructiveness for the zeal he 
 had brought; and that which she set herself resolutely 
 to impart the sense of their separateness found its
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 227 
 
 lodgment in his nature. It would always be there now, 
 she thought ; it would augment, like ice about a spring 
 in early winter, until the frost sealed the running alto 
 gether. The lover was stayed, though his mind would 
 not yet believe. 
 
 "Is it really possible," he said, sitting before her rest 
 lessly, "that I am here in your house, and that I can stay, 
 and talk with you, and see you and hear you play? I 
 have thought about it so much that it s hard to realize." 
 
 "It is quite what a lover would say," she thought. 
 . . . She had to watch her words. Her heart went 
 out to him, but her mind remembered the work to do. 
 . . . Self-consciousness, and a weighing of words 
 how horrible between them! 
 
 "And what made you come? I had just read your 
 letter, when the telephone rang 
 
 "I shouldn t have sent that letter," he answered. "I 
 must have sent it because of the things I thought, and 
 didn t write. . . . The night before, I had come home 
 to the cabin after Markheim and the city. It was 
 dreadful with the work gone. Yesterday was too much 
 for me the Spring day alone not ready to begin 
 again you here. ... I got to thinking about you 
 so fast and the shame of it, for us to be apart that 
 I couldn t endure it. ... I thought of going to 
 you in a month in a week ; and then when the 
 letter was mailed, I thought of it being with you this 
 morning. ... A thousand things poured into my 
 mind. It seemed finally as if everything was wrong be 
 tween us ; as if I had already remained too long from 
 you. It was like fighting devils. . . . And then I 
 tried to beat the letter to you, but it got here by an 
 earlier train this morning." 
 
 He was like a child to her, telling about something 
 that had frightened him. 
 
 Their silences were strained. His eyes had a sleep 
 less look. Betty saw it working upon him the repulsion
 
 228 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 that had gone from her. She wished she might go to 
 his arms and die. It suddenly came over her the use- 
 lessness of it all the uselessness of being a woman, of 
 waiting, of final comprehension all for this rending. 
 . . . Yet she saw what would happen if she followed 
 her heart. He would take her. There would be a ra 
 diant season, for the lover within him was not less be 
 cause his work was for other men. But there was also 
 within him (his Guardian had made her believe it) her 
 rival, a solitary stranger come to the world for service, 
 who would not delay long to show him how he had be 
 trayed his real work, how he had caged his greater self, 
 his splendid pinions useless. . . . Morning would 
 hear the world calling for work he could not do. 
 
 "There seem all about me invisible restraints." 
 
 This from the letter of the morning alone remained 
 with her. It expressed it all. The sentence uprose in 
 her mind. It was more dominant to her than if a father 
 had forbade his coming, or even if by his coming an 
 other was violated. 
 
 All the forbiddings that Society can bring against 
 desire are but symbols compared to the invisible re 
 straints of a full man s nature. Men who are held by 
 symbols, ruled by exterior voices and fears, are not fin 
 ished enough to be a law unto themselves. ... It 
 wasn t the terror of these thoughts, but tenderness in 
 answer to his hurried tumble of explanation regarding 
 his coming, that had filled Betty s eyes. He caught the 
 sparkle of a tear in profile, and came to her. 
 
 "It s like creating visibly, without hands, but with 
 thoughts creating a masterpiece to see the tears come 
 like that " 
 
 He drew a chair to the bench where she sat, her back 
 to the piano. Helen Quiston was away, as usual, for the 
 forenoon. 
 
 "It is creating another world," she answered 
 steadily.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 229 
 
 He stared at her. She saw again that sleepless look. 
 
 "You ve been a whole month on a lofty ridge just 
 think of it fasting and pure expression of self spir 
 itual self-revelation " 
 
 It seemed to him there was a suggestion in what she 
 said for the new book. 
 
 "And now you are down in the meadows again," she 
 finished. 
 
 "The earth-sweet meadows with you." 
 
 He could not know what the words meant to her; 
 that there was no quarter in them for her. She did not 
 belong to his ascents. 
 
 "Somehow I always think of you as belonging best 
 to the evenings, the hushed earth, the sweetness of the 
 rest-time. You make me remember what to do, and how 
 to do it well. Why, just now you made me see clearly 
 for a second what I must do next. You make me love 
 people better when I am close to you." 
 
 She was not to be carried away by these givings 
 which would have made many a woman content. 
 
 "Remember, I have had your letters every day. You 
 are very dear to me up there. You have been down in 
 the meadows and in the caverns much. You are not 
 ready to return even for the evenings. You stand now 
 for austere purity for plain, ancient, mother s knee 
 ideals. You must not delude yourself. A man must be 
 apart in order to see. You did not begin really to live 
 until you drew apart." 
 
 He felt her stripping his heart. His face lifted in 
 agony, and his eyes caught the picture on the wall of 
 the meeting of Beatrice and Dante. The Florentine 
 woman seemed not to touch the earth ; the poet was 
 awed, mystic in the fusion of their united powers. It 
 was fateful that Morning saw the picture at this instant. 
 
 "Look," he said, "what the world has from the meet 
 ing of that man and woman an immortal poem !" 
 
 "But Beatrice passed on "
 
 230 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "She became identified with his greater power, Betty. 
 She was one with it " 
 
 "By passing on!" 
 
 He arose and lifted her to her feet, and his arms did 
 not relinquish her. 
 
 "And you mean that you would pass on? . . . 
 You must not. You must not. We would both be broken 
 and bewildered. I love you. I have come to you. I 
 want to be near and work with you. I know you all, 
 and shall love you always. I have come to you, and 
 I must stay or you must come with me " 
 
 Her resistance was broken for the moment. An icy 
 burden fell from her. She clung to him, and tears helped 
 her. 
 
 They were together again in the studio that after 
 noon. Betty Berry was making tea, her strength re 
 newed. Helen Quiston had come and gone. Morning 
 had been away for an hour. 
 
 "Strange man," she said, "let us reason together. 
 . . . You are working now for men. That is right, 
 but when you are full of power, when you come really 
 into the finished man you are to be, and all these hard 
 years have healed beyond the last ache you will work 
 for women. Does it sound strange from me, that the 
 inspiration of the world to-day is with the women? 
 Why, it seems to me that men are caught in the very 
 science of cruelty. And then, the women of to-day rep 
 resent the men of the future. When one of the pre- 
 parers of the way brings his gospel to women, he kindles 
 the inspiration of the next generation. But this fire can 
 only come from the solitary heights never from the 
 earth-sweet meadows " 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "The men who have done the most beautiful verses 
 and stories about children have had no children of their 
 own. A man cannot be the father of his country and
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 231 
 
 the father of a house. The man who must do the great 
 est work for women must hunger for the vision of 
 Woman, and not be yoked with one. . . . It is so 
 clear. It is always so." 
 
 "All that you say makes me love you more, 
 Betty- 
 
 "Don t, dear. Don t make it harder for me. . . . 
 It is not I that thrills you. It is my speaking of your 
 work that fills your heart with gladness the things you 
 feel to do 
 
 "They are from you " 
 
 "Don t say that. It is not true." 
 
 "But I never saw so clearly " 
 
 "Then go away with the vision. Oh, John Morning, 
 you cannot listen to yourself with a woman in the 
 room !" 
 
 He lifted his shoulders, drawing her face to his. "I 
 was going to say, you are my wings," he whispered. 
 "But that is not it. You are my fountain. I would 
 come to you and drink " 
 
 "But not remain " 
 
 "I love your thoughts, Betty, your eyes and lips " 
 
 "Because you are athirst " 
 
 "I shall always be athirst!" 
 
 "That is not nature." 
 
 He shuddered. 
 
 "Do men, however athirst remain at the oases? 
 Men of strength would they not long to go? Would 
 they not remember the far cities and the long, blinding 
 ways of the sun?" 
 
 "But you could go with me " he exclaimed. 
 
 "That is not nature!" 
 
 He was the weaker. "But you have gone alone to 
 the far cities, and the long, blinding ways of the 
 sim " 
 
 "Yes, alone. But with you a time would come 
 when I could not. We are man and woman. There
 
 232 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 would be little children. I would stay and you could 
 not leave them. . . . Oh, they are not for you, dear. 
 They would weaken your courage. You would love 
 them. At the end of the day, you would want them, 
 and the mother again. . . . The far cities would not 
 hear you; the long, blinding ways of the sun would 
 know you no more " 
 
 "Betty," he whispered passionately, "how wonder 
 fully sweet that would be!" 
 
 "Yes ... to the mother . . . but you I 
 can see it in your eyes. You would remember Nineveh, 
 that great city. . . ." 
 
 Darkness was about them. 
 
 "Betty Berry you would rather I wouldn t take the 
 train to you again not even when it seems I cannot stay 
 longer away?" 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 "Betty " 
 
 "Yes. ..." 
 
 She left him and crossed to the far window. 
 
 "Would you not have me come to you again at 
 all?" 
 
 She could not hold the sentence, and her answer. 
 The room was terrible. It seemed filled with presences 
 that suffocated her that cared nothing for her. All day 
 they had inspired her to speak and answer and now 
 they wanted her death. She moved to the cello. Her 
 hands fluttered along the strings old, familiar ways 
 but making hardly a sound. ... If she did not soon 
 speak, he would come to her. She would fail again the 
 touch of him, and she would fail. 
 
 "Betty, is there never to be the fountain at even- 
 ing?" 
 
 "You know you know " she cried out. Words 
 stuck after that. She had net a thought to drive them. 
 
 He arose.
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 233 
 
 "Don t," she implored. "Don t come to me! I can 
 not bear it." 
 
 . . It was his final rebellion. 
 
 "I am not a preparer of the way. I have not a mes 
 sage. I am sick of the thought. I am just a man and 
 I love you !" 
 
 At last she made her stand, and on a different posi 
 tion. "I could not love you if that were true." 
 
 She heard him speak, but not the words. She heard 
 the crackling and whirring of flames. He did not cross 
 the room. . . . She had risen, her arms groping to 
 ward him. She felt him approach, and the flames were 
 farther. . . . She must not speak of flames. 
 
 "You will go away soon won t you ?" she whispered, 
 as he took her. 
 
 "Yes, to-night 
 
 "Yes to-night," she repeated. 
 
 She was lying upon the couch in the studio, and his 
 chair was beside her. 
 
 "No, don t light anything no light! . . . It is 
 just an hour. ... I could not think of food until 
 you go. But you may bring me a drink of water. On the 
 way to the train, you can have your supper. ... I 
 will play play in the dark, and think of you as you 
 
 She talked evenly, a pause between sentences. There 
 was a tensity in the formation of words, for the whir 
 ring and crackling distracted, dismayed her. Her heart 
 was breaking. This she knew. When it was finished, 
 he would be free. . . . The flames were louder and 
 nearer, as he left for the drink of water. She called 
 to him to light a match, if he wished, in the other room. 
 . . . He was in her room. She knew each step, just 
 where. He was there. It was as if he were finally ma 
 terialized from her thoughts in the night, her dreaming 
 and writing to him. His hand touched her dresser. She
 
 234 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 heard the running water . . . and then it was all 
 red and rending and breathless, until she felt the water 
 to her lips. Always, as he came near, the flames receded. 
 
 And out of all the chaos, the figure of the craftsman 
 had returned to him. The world had revealed itself to 
 him as never before in the passage of time. She had 
 given him her very spirit that day, and the strength of all 
 her volition from the month of brooding upon the con 
 ception of his Guardian. Literally on that day the new 
 Book was conceived, as many a man s valorous work 
 has begun to be, in a woman s house her blood and 
 spirit, its bounty. 
 
 "This is a holy place to me, this room," he said, the 
 agonies of silence broken. "I can feel the white floods 
 of spirit that drive the world." 
 
 She did not need to answer. She held fast to her 
 self, lest something betray her. Darkness was salvation. 
 All that his Guardian had asked was in her work. John 
 Morning told it off, sentence by sentence. It took her 
 life, but he must not know. She thought she would 
 die immediately after he was gone but, strangely, now 
 the suffering was abated. . . . She was helping. 
 . . . Was not that the meaning of life to give, to 
 help, to love? . . . Someone had said so. 
 
 He lifted her, carried her in his arms, talked and 
 praised her. 
 
 "There s something deathlessly bright about you, 
 Betty Berry!" he whispered. "I am going but we are 
 one ! Don t you feel it ? You are loving the world from 
 my heart!" 
 
 To the door, but not to the light, she walked with 
 him. . . . Up the stairs he strode a last time to take 
 her in his arms. 
 
 "We are one a world-loving one remember that!" 
 
 She did not know why, but as he kissed her she 
 thought of the pitcher broken at the fountain. 
 
 It was all strange light and singing flame. . . .
 
 THE HILL-CABIN 235 
 
 She was lost in the hall. She laughed strangely. . . . 
 She must play him on his way. . . . Someone helped 
 her through the raining light until she could feel the 
 
 strings.
 
 BOOK III 
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 
 
 THE red head of the little telephone-miss bowed 
 over the switch-board when Morning entered 
 Markheim s. She colored, smiled; all metropolitan out 
 rages of service forgotten. Charley waved furtively 
 from afar ; the door to the inner office opened. 
 
 "Well?" said the manager. 
 
 "Well, Mr. Markheim?" 
 
 "You have come too soon." 
 
 "I said five days." 
 
 "We read no play in five days." 
 
 "It was left here on that basis." 
 
 "Nonsense." 
 
 "You can give it to me now." 
 
 "It is being read now. Your title is rotten. The old 
 one was better." 
 
 "That title will grow on you," said Morning, who 
 began to like the interview. "I shall come to take the 
 play to-morrow unless you decide to keep it and bring 
 it out this Fall " 
 
 "Why did you come to Markheim again ? Have you 
 tried all the rest?" 
 
 "There was something unfinished about our former 
 brush I didn t like the feel of it. ... My play is 
 done over better. Neither copy has been submitted 
 except to Markheim." 
 
 "Your play may be as bad as before."
 
 2 4 o DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "Yes. It looks better to me, however." 
 
 "You ve got a war play again " 
 
 "That first and second act." 
 
 "You can t write war. This is not war- 
 
 Morning did not realize the change that had come 
 over him until he recalled the shame and rebellion that 
 had risen in his mind when Markheim had said this be 
 fore. . . . Something had come to him from Duke 
 Fallows, or from Betty Berry, or from the hill silences. 
 He was a new creature. . . . Must one be detached 
 somewhat from the world in order to use it? This was 
 his sense at the moment: that he could compel the mind 
 before him, reinforced as it was by distaste for every 
 thing decent, and manifesting the opinions of other men, 
 including Reever Kennard s. There was no irritation 
 whatsoever; no pride in being a war-writer, good or 
 bad. Markheim s denial had no significance in the world 
 above or water beneath. He saw, however, that he must 
 change Markheim s idea, and that he must do it by 
 beating Markheim in his own particular zone of ac 
 tivity. 
 
 There was a certain fun in this. He arose and stood 
 by the other s chair. The eye-balls showed wider and 
 rolled heavily. The pistol or bomb was never far from 
 his mind. Morning looked down at him, saying quietly : 
 
 "You said something like that before, and it wasn t 
 your opinion it was Reever Kennard s. I don t object 
 to it exactly, but I want to show you something. You 
 know Reever Kennard s paper?" 
 
 Markheim nodded. 
 
 "You know the World-News sent him out to the 
 Russo-Japanese war big expense account, helpers, 
 dress-suits, and all that?" 
 
 "I know he was there." 
 
 "The same managing editor who sent Reever Ken- 
 nard out is still on the desk. He should be in the office 
 now. The number is "
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 241 
 
 Morning found it for him hastily, and added: "You 
 call him now." 
 
 "I don t want to call him up 
 
 "But you d better. Twice you said something that 
 someone told you and it s troublesome. The short way 
 out is to call him now " 
 
 Morning was tapping the desk lightly. Markheim 
 reached for the extension phone. Luckily, the thing 
 was managed luckily, and through the name of Mark 
 heim. 
 
 "Ask him who did the story of the battle of Liao- 
 yang for the World-News?" Morning ordered. 
 
 The question was asked and the answer came back. 
 
 "Ask him if it was a good story and how long." 
 
 It was asked and answered. 
 
 "Ask him if it was conceded to be the best story of 
 the war published in America." 
 
 The talk was extended this time, Markheim explain 
 ing why he asked. 
 
 "What did he say?" Morning asked. 
 
 "He said it was all right," Markheim granted pertly. 
 "Only that there was a very good story from another 
 man on Port Arthur afterward." 
 
 "That is true. There was a heady little chap got 
 into Port Arthur and came out strong. . . . Now, 
 look here " 
 
 Morning went to the case where a particularly recent 
 encyclopaedia was drawn forth. He referred to the war, 
 but especially to the final paragraph of the article, cap- 
 tioned "Bibliography." . . . His own name and the 
 name of his book was cited as the principal American 
 reference. ... It was all laughable. No one knew 
 better than Morning that such action would be silly 
 among real people. 
 
 "You don t see Reever Kennard referred to, do you 
 as authority of war-stuff? . . . The point is that 
 you play people get so much counterfeit color and office-
 
 242 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 setting that you naturally can t look authoritatively on 
 the real thing. . . . However, the fact that I know 
 more about the battle of Liaoyang than any other man 
 in America would never make a good play. There s a 
 lot beside in this play a lot more than at first " 
 
 "They have your play out now reading it," Mark- 
 heim observed. 
 
 Morning added: "It s clear to you, isn t it, why Mr. 
 Reever Kennard didn t care for the John Morning 
 play ?" 
 
 Markheim s eyes gleamed. This was pure business. 
 "You had the goods and delivered it in his own 
 office " 
 
 "Exactly " 
 
 "You bother me too much about this play. The title 
 is rotten " 
 
 "You ll like that, when you see Markheim with it. 
 There s a peculiar thing about the word it doesn t die. 
 It never rests. It s human divine, too. There s a cry 
 in it to some happiness, to some sorrow to the many, 
 hope. ... It sings. I would rather have it than 
 glory. . . . Listen, Markheim Offers Compassion 
 why, that s a God s business offering compas 
 sion " 
 
 "You feel like a song-bird this afternoon, Mr. Morn- 
 ing- 
 
 "I ll be back to-morrow " 
 
 "Too soon " 
 
 "Can t help it. It s ready. It will be the big word 
 this Winter. You can read it in an hour. I m off to 
 morrow from Markheim. The Winter will clear my 
 slate in this office, whether you take it or not " 
 
 "Come back at noon " 
 
 Charley s sister looked up from her pad. Her swift 
 change of expression to a certain shyness and pleasure, 
 too, in a sort of mutual secret, added to Morning s mer 
 riment as he left the building. . . . He wondered con-
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 243 
 
 tinually that afternoon what had come over him. He 
 had not been able to do this sort of thing before. The 
 astonishing thing was his detachment from any tensity 
 of interest. It was all right either way, according to 
 his condition of mind. The question was important: 
 Must a man be aloof from the fogging ruck of accepted 
 activities in order to see them, and to manage best 
 among things as they are ? 
 
 There was the new book, too. Betty Berry had given 
 him the new task. A splendor had come to life even 
 with the unspeakable sadness of the ending of that day. 
 The beauty of that day would never die. Every phase 
 of her sacrifice revealed a subtle, almost superhuman, 
 faith in him. Was it this her faith in him that made 
 him so new and so strong; that made him know in his 
 heart that if the Play were right it would go in spite 
 of Markheim, in spite of all New York? And if it 
 were not right, certainly he did not want it to go. . . . 
 Markheim and New York he regarded them that night 
 from his doorstep ; then turned his back to the city, and 
 faced the west and the woman. 
 
 It broke upon him. She was mothering him. She 
 was bringing to his action all that was real and powerful 
 fighting for it, against every desire and passion of her 
 own. Her wish for his good was superior to her own 
 wish for happiness. She gave him his work and his 
 dreams. He knew not what mystery of prayer and con 
 centration she poured upon him. . . . This place in 
 which she had never been was filled with her. The little 
 frail creature was playing upon him, as upon her instru 
 ment. Moments were his in which she seemed a mighty 
 artist. 
 
 And then he saw men everywhere just instruments 
 but played upon by forces of discord and illusion. 
 . . . He saw these men clearly, because he had been 
 of them. Such forces had played upon him. . . . 
 He had been buffeted and whipped along the rough ways.
 
 244 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 He had looked up to the slaughterers of the wars as 
 unto men of greatness. He had been played upon by 
 the thirsts and the sufferings, by greed and ambition. He 
 had hated men. He had fumed at bay before imagined 
 wrongs ; and yet no one had nor could wrong him, but 
 himself. 
 
 One by one he had been forced to fight it out with 
 his own devils to the last ditch. There they had quit 
 vanished like puffs of nasty smoke. He had stood be 
 neath Reever Kennard, almost poisoning himself to 
 death with hatred. Pure acknowledgment this, that his 
 life moved in the same scope of evil. . . . He had 
 accepted the power of Markheim, feared it, and suffered 
 over the display of it. Now he found it puny and 
 laughable. He had worked for himself, and it had 
 brought him only madness and shattering of force. He 
 had been brought to death, had accepted it in its most 
 hideous form and risen over it. ... His hill was 
 calm and sweet in the dusk. Though his heart was 
 lonely and though all this clear-seeing seemed not so 
 wonderful as it would be to have the woman with him 
 in the cabin yet it was all very good. He felt strong, 
 his fighting force not abated. 
 
 He had his work. She had shown him that. He 
 would write every line to her. His work would lift him 
 up, as the days of the Play had lifted him out of the 
 senses and the usual needs of man. He would be with 
 her, in that finer communion of instrument and artist. 
 . . . The world was very old and dear. Men s hearts 
 were troubled, but men s evils were very trifling, when 
 all was understood. He would never forget his lessons. 
 He would tell everyone what miracles are performed in 
 the ministry of pain. . . . He looked into the dark 
 of the west and loved her. 
 
 "Well, you are on time," said Markheim the follow 
 ing noon.
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 245 
 
 "Yes," Morning said with calmness and cheer. 
 
 "We will take the play. I have had it read. . . . 
 We can do no more than bust." 
 
 "This Fall the production?" 
 
 "I will give it the Markheim in November." 
 
 He seemed to be surprised that Morning did not 
 emotionalize in some way. He had expected at least to 
 be informed that "bust" was out of the question, and 
 missed this mannerism of the playwright, now that the 
 thing was his and not the other s. . . . Moreover, 
 Markheim was pleased with the way he had reached the 
 decision. He wanted Morning to know. 
 
 "There was that difference of opinion. . . . Do 
 you know what I did?" 
 
 Morning couldn t imagine. 
 
 "Well," said Markheim, sitting back, hands patting 
 his girth, "those who have nothing but opinions read 
 your play. They like it ; they like it not. It will pay. 
 It will not pay. It is revolutionary, artistic, well- 
 knit/ good second act much rot it is, and is not. Who 
 do you think settle the question?" 
 
 "Yourself?" 
 
 "Not me I have no opinion." 
 
 "Who then?" 
 
 "The friend of no man." It was said with grandeur. 
 
 Morning waited. 
 
 Markheim leaned forward, beaming not unkindly, 
 and whispered : 
 
 "The little one at the switch-board outside the door. 
 She said it was lovely. . . . Oh, she s a sharp lit 
 tle spider/ 
 
 HERE is an extra bit of the fabric, that goes along 
 with the garment for mending. . . . Mid- 
 May, and never a sign of the old wound s reopening. 
 Something of Morning s former robustness had spent
 
 246 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 itself, but he had all the strength a man needs, and that 
 light unconsciousness of the flesh which is delightful to 
 those who produce much from within. The balance of 
 his forces of development had turned from restoring his 
 body to a higher replenishment. 
 
 The mystery of work broke upon him more and 
 more, and the thrall of it ; its relation to man at his best ; 
 the cleansing of a man s daily life for the improvement 
 of his particular expression in the world s service; the 
 ordering of his daily life in pure-mindedness, the power 
 of the will habitually turned to the achieving of this 
 pure-mindedness. He saw that man is only true and at 
 peace when played upon from the spiritual source of 
 life; therefore, all that perfects a man s instrumentation 
 is vital, and all that does not is destructive. Most im 
 portant of all, he perceived that a real worker has noth 
 ing whatever to do beyond the daily need, with the result 
 of his work in a worldly way ; that any deep relation to 
 wordly results of a man s work is contamination. 
 
 He. lost the habit and inclination to think what he 
 wanted to say. He listened. He became sceptical of 
 all work that came from brain, in the sense of having 
 its origin in something he had actually learned. He re 
 membered how Fallows had spoken of this long ago; 
 (he had not listened truly enough to understand then) ; 
 how a man s brain is at his best when used purely to 
 receive as a little finer instrument than the type 
 writer. 
 
 Except for certain moments on the borderland of 
 sleep, Betty Berry was closest to him during his work. 
 His every page was for her eye a beloved revelation 
 of his flesh and mind and spirit. And the thing had to 
 be plain, plain, plain. That was the law. 
 
 How Fallows had fought for that. "Don t forget the 
 deepest down man, John!" . . . Betty Berry and 
 Fallows and Nevin were his angels his cabin, a place of 
 continual outpouring to them. Few evils were powerful
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 247 
 
 enough to stem such a current, and penetrate the glad 
 ness of giving. 
 
 He slept lightly, and was on the verge again and 
 again, almost nightly, in fact, of surprising his own 
 greater activity that does not sleep. He often brought 
 back just the murmur of these larger doings; and on 
 the borderlands he sometimes felt himself in the throb 
 of that larger consciousness which moves about its med 
 itations and voyagings, saying to the body, "Sleep on." 
 It was this larger consciousness that used him as he 
 used the typewriter, when he was writing at his best and 
 his listening was pure. . . . He had been held so 
 long to the ruck that he would never forget the parlance 
 of the people and not fall to writing for visionaries. 
 
 . . . One night he dreamed he went to Betty 
 Berry. . . . He was ascending the stairs to her. 
 She seemed smaller, frailer. Though he was a step or 
 two down, his eyes met hers equally. She was lovelier 
 than anything he had ever known or conceived in 
 woman. Her smile was so wistful and sweet and com 
 passionate that the hush and fervor of it seemed every 
 where in the world. There was a shyness in her lips 
 and in the turn of her head. Some soft single garment 
 was about her as if she had come from a fountain in 
 the evening. . . . And suddenly there was a great 
 tumult within him. He was lost in the battle of two 
 selves the man who loved and destroyed, and the man 
 who loved and sustained. 
 
 The greater love only asked her there loved her 
 there, exquisite, apart, found in her a theme for infinite 
 contemplation, as she stood smiling. . . . The other 
 was the love of David, when he looked across the house 
 tops at Bathsheba, bathing, and made her a widow to 
 mother Solomon. This human love was strong in the 
 dream, for he caught her in his arms, and kissed, and 
 would not let her go, until her voice at last reached his 
 understanding.
 
 248 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "Oh, why did you spoil it all? Oh, why when I 
 thought it was safe to come?" 
 
 He had no words, but her message was not quite 
 ended : 
 
 "I should have come to you as before and not this 
 way but you seemed so strong and so pure. . . . 
 It is my fault all my fault." 
 
 She was Betty Berry but lovelier than all the earth 
 the spirit of all his ideals in woman. The marvelous 
 thing about it was that he knew after the dream that 
 this was the Betty Berry that would live in spite of any 
 thing that could happen to the Betty Berry in the world. 
 He knew that she waited for him for the greater lover, 
 John Morning, whose love did not destroy, but sus 
 tained. . . . She who regarded him in "the hush of 
 expectancy" from the distance of a night s journey, and 
 he who labored here stoutly in the work of the world, 
 were but names and symbols of the real creatures above 
 the illusion of time. . . . So he came to love death 
 not with eagerness, but as an ideal consummation. 
 Such a result were impossible had he not faced 
 death as an empty darkness first, and overcome the fear 
 of it. 
 
 These many preparations for real life on earth in the 
 flesh he was to put in his book not his adventures, but 
 the fruits of them how he had reached to-day, and its 
 decent polarity in service. He had been hurled like a 
 top into the midst of men. After the seething of wild 
 energy and the wobblings, he had risen to a certain sing 
 ing and aspiring rhythm the whir of harmony. He 
 told the story in order, day by day. Though it was done 
 with the I s, there was no self-exploitation. John Morn 
 ing was merely the test-tube, containing from time to 
 time different compounds of experience. And he did it 
 plainly, plainly, plainly, as is the writer s business. 
 
 As he watched for Jethro, one morning early in June, 
 he perceived a second figure in the old rig. At the box,
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 249 
 
 the stranger got out and followed Jethro s arm, directed 
 up the hill toward the cabin, disappeared for a moment 
 in the swail-thicket by the fence, and presently began 
 the ascent, bringing Morning s papers and letters. 
 . . . The stranger was tall and tanned, wore a wide 
 hat and approached with a slim ease of movement. 
 Morning knew he had seen him before, but could not 
 remember until the voice called : 
 
 "Hullo that you, John Morning?" 
 
 It was Archibald Calvert, last met during the night- 
 halt in Rosario, Luzon, the correspondent who had rid 
 den with Reever Kennard, and who had lost Mio Amiga. 
 He had always thought rather pleasantly of Archibald 
 Calvert when he thought at all. 
 
 "Say what are you getting set for out here?" 
 
 "It s better and cheaper than a hall-bedroom," Morn 
 ing answered. 
 
 "That sounds good. . . . Well, I spent all day 
 yesterday looking for you first clue, Boabdil second at 
 Markheim s from a little red-haired girl. . . . The 
 rural man picked me up 
 
 "I ve got some cold buttermilk- 
 
 "Pure asceticism also a pearl of an idea " 
 
 They sat down together. 
 
 "So you made ten thousand dollars out of Liaoyang 
 after you came back. ... I looked up the story. 
 It was say, it was a bride, Morning!" 
 
 "Thanks. Duke Fallows did a better one in one- 
 tenth the space. The pay-end didn t mean much. I m 
 not a good bed for money culture. Tell me where you ve 
 been, Mr. Calvert." 
 
 "Oh, I ve been around. Didn t get up to the Russ- 
 Jap stuff. I was down among the Pacific Islands. You 
 know I m a better tramp than writer. It s five years 
 since I hit New York. . . . They say old Reever 
 Kennard is doing politics. He ll be back from Wash 
 ington to-night "
 
 250 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "Politics, and an occasional dramatic criticism," said 
 Morning. 
 
 "You know that never sat easy that day in Ro- 
 sario " 
 
 "Didn t it?" 
 
 "I was down to Batangas three days later unpack 
 ing saddle-bags, and found Mio Amiga No. i. Deeper 
 down I found its mate. . . . They re common in 
 Luzon as old Barlow knives when we were kids. . . 
 I made a scene about that knife with my own deep 
 down in my own duffel. ... I suppose you ve for 
 gotten." 
 
 "No I haven t." 
 
 "You were pretty decent about it. It was a nasty thing 
 even to speak about it as I did. You see, the inscrip 
 tion rather appealed to kid-intelligence in my case, and I 
 thought it was unique, instead of the popular idea of a 
 cheap Filipino knife." 
 
 "Kennard took it seriously, didn t he?" said Morning. 
 
 "You mean at the time ? . . . Yes, I couldn t un 
 derstand that exactly." 
 
 Morning decided not to speak of that day s relation 
 to Tokyo five years later. 
 
 "Well," said Calvert, after a pause, "I hunted you up 
 to say I was an ass, and to give you back your knife. 
 The pair have been smelling up my things around the 
 world for a long time." 
 
 Morning grasped it eagerly. 
 
 Some time afterward, when Calvert arose to go, 
 Morning ventured this much : 
 
 "And so you re going to see Reever Kennard?" 
 
 "Yes, to-night. ... I suppose you two and the 
 others game together from time to time?" 
 
 "The fact is, New York isn t very good anchorage 
 for that sort of thing," Morning said. 
 
 "... I was glad when they told me you had put 
 ever that big Liaoyang stuff, Morning "
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 251 
 
 Morning smiled and took the quick brown hand of the 
 other. Calvert appealed to him, but it couldn t be 
 shown in any way. Calvert was like a good horse, 
 gladly giving evidence of fine feeling, but embarrassed 
 when made much of. ... He went away blithely 
 off, for God knows where but fearlessly on his 
 way. 
 
 Morning held the little knife in his hand. 
 
 He thought of that hard Philippine service which had 
 seemed so big at the time ; of that day when he watched 
 the fat shoulders of Reever Kennard in the forward sets 
 of horse, Kennard seeming all that greatness can be. He 
 thought of the halt in Rosario, of the lame woman. He 
 looked at the little knife again. . . . He had not 
 really wanted it then, and yet it had cut the strings of 
 his Fates, turning them loose upon him. It had knocked 
 him out of the second Japanese column five years after 
 ward, and given him instead Duke Fallows and Liao- 
 yang. It had given him that great battle, Lowenkampf, 
 the Ploughman, Eve, the sorrel mare the journey to 
 Koupangtse the blanket at Tongu the deck-pas 
 sage the Sickles, Ferry and Nevin even Noyes and 
 Field. 
 
 It had given him the Armory, and Betty Berry. 
 
 He held it fast. 
 
 It had given him money, fame, and New York for a 
 day the opinion from Kennard that killed the first writ 
 ing of Compassion the mood to see Charley and his sis 
 ter at the switch-board, which brought him to Betty 
 Berry again. . . . Out of these had come all that 
 was real and true of this hour. It had given him the 
 slums and the leper conflict Nevin s cure and the fasting 
 the real Ploughman the better Compassion the 
 cabin in which he sat, his place of Initiation. It had 
 given him the triumph over death the illumination of 
 love and labor the listening life of the soul, and the 
 vision of its superb immortality.
 
 252 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 He held it fast and looked hard at the little friend. 
 The brass handle sent up a smell of verdi-gris from his 
 hot hand. 
 
 THIS was John Morning s splendid summer. He 
 was up often at two or three in the morning. 
 Thoughts and sentences of yesterday, now cleared and 
 improved, thronged his mind, as he made coffee. He 
 learned that a man may write the first half of a book, 
 but be used as a mere slave of the last half. And yet, 
 to be the instrument of a rush of life and ideas, the lat 
 ter becoming every hour more coherent and effective, 
 was a privilege to make a man sing. And to increase, 
 at the same time, in the realization of the courage and 
 tenderness and faith of a woman who waited ; to feel the 
 power of her in the work ; to work for her ; to put his 
 love for her in the work, all the strength of her attrac 
 tion this was living the life of depth and fullness. 
 
 Times when he looked out of the doorway, and the 
 elms were shaping against the flowery purple of day 
 break, and the robin beginning thirstily his eyes 
 smarted with tears at the beauty of it all, the privilege 
 of work, and the absolute Tightness of the whole crea 
 tion, in which a man can t possibly lose, after he has 
 heard his real self speak. He loved life and death in 
 such moments, and knew there was a Betty Berry in the 
 waiting studio, and another over the Crossing. (Had 
 he not glimpsed her in his dream at the top of the stair 
 way?) 
 
 So his book prospered, enfolding the common man. 
 It had something for every man who had not come so 
 far as he. He was of them, in every understanding 
 among them, different only in that it was his business to 
 write by the way. His old failures furnished the studies 
 of distintegrating forces. Personally, he was detached
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 253 
 
 from them, as his writing showed, except for an intel 
 lectual familiarity as detached as from the worn cloth 
 ing he had left here and there around the world. One 
 by one, the constructive and destructive principles of the 
 average man were shown divided against each other in 
 the arena of mind and how the friends and loves had 
 come to the balance. Nevin was in the fabric, the little 
 Englishman at Tongu, Fallows and the Woman not in 
 name, (there was no name but John Morning s), but 
 they were all there, lifting and laughing and drawing, 
 as friends and loves do in the life of a man. Again and 
 again he cried out that the peace and sweet reason of 
 things he had found was of their bringing that with 
 out them he would have been lost again and again by 
 the way. 
 
 . . . The Summer days passed magically. Mark- 
 heim was beginning to talk rehearsals. He had found 
 the right man to play the Ploughman. . . . Late- 
 September. The letters from Betty Berry were rarer, 
 thinner. They troubled him. . . . One morning he 
 watched Jethro s rig approach a golden morning, and 
 the cattle were feeding down in the meadow. He had 
 seen the picture a thousand times the cattle on the slope 
 yet it was never so real to him, nor had he hungered 
 for the face of Betty Berry as now. . . . Jethro 
 stopped at his box, and he hurried down. There was a 
 letter from her and one from Russia, too. The first 
 did not free his mind from sorrow though the effort 
 was plain to do this very thing. . . . The letter from 
 Fallows filled the day : 
 
 "... I knew, John, if I sat down to write, it 
 would set free all my longing to go back to you. So I 
 have put it off from week to week. . . . From the 
 Western States I followed our old trail to Tokyo, then 
 via Peking, to Shanhaikwan, Koupangtse, Liaoyang. 
 . . . I stopped there, and went around by the coal 
 fields, where the millet had been planted all over again.
 
 254 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 I talked over the battle with the Japanese. They are 
 just as interested as ever in what the other man knows. 
 Though the big battle seemed like another life to me, it 
 was their immediate yesterday. They would do it all 
 over again. The Ploughman seemed to walk with me ; 
 the rest was boyish babble. ... I found Lowen- 
 kampf white and quiet but the woman loves him, if 
 Russia does not. The little boy is a man-soul. That s 
 the story except that he sent his love to you. The 
 three are off to South America, and all is well. . . . 
 Up in the Bosk hills, I followed the Summer. The old 
 man is gone. He had his sausages at the last. . . . 
 
 "I was needed, but the little farm was all right. The 
 neighbor had done his part. There was enough for all. 
 . . . How simple, one little vanity of a man such as 
 I am, and this family has enough and to spare ; food and 
 firelight, good-will, their hope of heaven brought down 
 to comprehension again all for so little, John. If men 
 only knew the joy of it how it lasts and augments, how 
 it sustains the man who does it to weave a mesh of 
 happiness for the poor. The fact is, he has to watch 
 very carefully, or he ll get caught in the mesh himself. 
 
 "The little boy came running to meet me. I think 
 he ran to meet me somewhere before. He is different 
 from all the others except for that touch of the old 
 mother which he has, and that something about the 
 Ploughman. He was white and all eyes when I picked 
 him up. They said he wasn t well, but in three days he 
 was sound again color breaking through. To think 
 that my coming could do that for any living soul I. 
 
 "The old Mother. . . . She was just waiting for 
 me lingering until I came watching down the road in 
 the sunlight. We talked a little. She spoke softly of 
 her soldier-son. It was only a few days. ... It all 
 came from her, John the battle of Liaoyang so far as 
 its meaning to me. She was the light on the Plough 
 man s brow that made a different man of me. He never
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 255 
 
 dreamed of messages to the world of men, nor the pas 
 sion to serve men but he had his mother s faith and 
 something- of her vision. That made him different from 
 other Russian soldiers, so that I could see. The little 
 boy Jan will bring it to life again. Your play goes 
 straight back to her. There s everlasting quality in being 
 a mother like that. I think it was the fourth morning 
 that I suddenly began to listen attentively to what she 
 was saying. It was about us all intimately about her 
 soldier-son. . . . The younger mother came in her 
 sad, weary face different. . . . She went out, and 
 returned with her shoes on. . . . Suddenly I knew 
 that the old sweet flower was passing. Why, she was 
 gone before I knew it smiling up at the saints from 
 my arms. ... I heard the little boy coming quickly 
 knew his step as I would know yours, John. I seemed 
 to wait for his hand upon the door. I saw him, and he 
 saw us came forward on tip-toe, and we were all to 
 gether " 
 
 Morning didn t read the rest just then. It seemed 
 one of the finest things he had ever known Duke Fal 
 lows preserving the old mother and the others in their 
 conviction that he was just a peasant like the Ploughman. 
 
 FROM that April night after Morning left, when 
 Helen Quiston found her wandering in the halls, 
 and asking in a childish way to be taken to the cello 
 (saying that her father had hidden it from her in a 
 strange place), until now in mid-September, Betty Berry 
 had not left the studio-apartment. The real break-down 
 had begun a month before the high day in which Morn 
 ing came ; perhaps on the very night his Guardian had 
 called. She had scarcely played or practiced since then ; 
 she read nothing, talked to no one except Helen. Morn-
 
 256 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 ing had noted her anxiously early on the day of his call 
 at the studio, but such power had come in the flashes of 
 those hours, and so high was she enthroned and illumined 
 in his own mind at the end, (in which she had kept to the 
 darkness), that he had not realized the blight that had 
 touched her life. 
 
 Helen Quiston had long loved the woman. She knew 
 much that the Doctor did not. It was she who read the 
 letters which in certain moments of the day Betty hastily 
 penned. It was as if for a moment in a long gray day, a 
 ray of watery sunlight broke through the cloud-banks. 
 In the momentary shining of her mind, Betty would 
 write to Morning. Many of the letters were impossible. 
 Certain of these letters would have brought the lover 
 by the first train. Even Betty had a sense of this and 
 relied upon the music-teacher. Here and there among 
 the notes, too, was a wisp of the old sweet spirit. It 
 was a wonderful conception to Helen Quiston : that all 
 but these had gone to replenish the creative fire of a 
 lover who knew well what his lady had given, but not 
 what it meant to her. Just as surely as the Hindoo 
 woman offers herself upon the funeral pyre with the body 
 of her mate, Betty Berry had given her spirit to the liv 
 ing. A hundred times the singing teacher had heard 
 these words from white lips that smiled : 
 
 "We are one a deathless, world-loving one!" 
 And often she heard this queer verse from the Per 
 sian: 
 
 "Four eyes met. There were changes in two souls. 
 r And now I cannot remember whether he is a man and I 
 
 a woman, 
 
 Or he a woman and I a man. All I know is, 
 There were two: Love came, and there is one. . . ." 
 
 "Don t forget to remind me that I must tell him I 
 am happy," Betty would say. . . . When a letter 
 was finally finished and sealed, she would lean back, shut 
 ting her eyes with a sigh, saying: "Now read me his
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 257 
 
 that came to-day and yesterday." . . . And after 
 ward: "Isn t it wonderful, Helen, dear? Isn t it quite 
 wonderful? You are so dear to understand." 
 
 Self-destruction is the first danger," the Doctor had 
 said in the early days. "That s why she should be in a 
 sanatorium under professional vigilance. Each case is 
 individual. She might take a sudden dislike to the saint- 
 liest of nurses even to you. The fever will not last, but 
 it is a long battle. Shock, overwork, a terrible disap 
 pointment such are the causes. Singular sweetness of 
 disposition, as in this case, is very rare. The thing that 
 goes with this usually is the frozen stare hours mo 
 tionless, looking at the wall " 
 
 Morning s letters were like white-hot fragments from 
 his forge roughly fashioned, but still seething with 
 force. Helen Quiston felt that there was a splendid 
 singing in that forge ; that a man s voice attuned with 
 God and the world was raised in the morning; that 
 silence drew on as the concentration of the task deep 
 ened ; that there was singing in the evening again. Ali 
 ment for the soul of the music teacher, these letters. She 
 would have fought to obey Betty Berry against the will 
 of the Doctor and nurse had it been necessary. 
 
 One of these September-morning letters was par 
 ticularly joyous with enthusiasm for Betty Berry s gift 
 to him. He told again how it wove into, beautified and 
 energized his work. 
 
 "Literally I thank the stars for you," Helen Quiston 
 read. "Sometimes it comes to me as if straight from 
 you strength that I feel with my limbs, strength that 
 means health. It surges through my veins like magic 
 so that my eyes smart with tears. I speak your name 
 again and again in thankfulness for love fresh every day, 
 and for the pity for men in my heart 
 
 Betty was not following. It was frequently so in the 
 first reading.
 
 258 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "Free," she repeated softly, from a thought of yes 
 terday s letter. "He said I was free. He said I never 
 explained " 
 
 "Yes, dear, he was writing of that night he came to 
 the theatre. I ll get the letter for you to-night. He 
 said that you belonged to the risen world, the woman s 
 world that you trusted your vision did not seek to 
 explain, but rejoiced. He said you had no guile, that 
 you asked nothing, and were unafraid. He means to 
 give the world a portrait of the risen woman a por 
 trait of you." 
 
 Betty Berry did not answer. Mention of that 
 night at the theatre invariably affected her to si 
 lence. 
 
 "I must hurry away for a little while, but I will finish 
 this," Helen added, reading on : 
 
 "In the evenings, the greater power of you comes 
 over my life like a spiritual rain. I remember the art of 
 your hands, the sweet mystery of your lips ; the tender 
 ness of your eyes and words ; but over it all the inner 
 power of you, strong as truth, pure as truth, wise as the 
 East, and sweet as the South. It is the spirit of you 
 that has come to me your singing, winging, feminine 
 spirit. It has made me whole. . . . Do you know, 
 I used to think the world would be made better by force, 
 by arraignment, by revelation of evil. You have shown 
 me the better way of making the world better by loving 
 it. That s woman s way, the Christ s way. . . . And 
 when I think that you have given me this blessed thing, 
 this finest fruit of earth your love, created out of trial 
 and loneliness, your love, so pure and true and valorous 
 when I think that it is mine, and how you fought 
 through the long day to give me this, and only this 
 when I think of the splendor of that day s work of yours, 
 I kneel to you, and to the spirit of the world in the 
 wood, in the hut, before the door, under my elms, under 
 the stars, I kneel to you and the Source of you. The
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 259 
 
 peace that comes, and the power this, is my passionate 
 wish for you! I would restore it to you magnified." 
 
 Helen Quiston read all this a second time that Sep 
 tember morning , although her pupils were waiting. 
 . . . It was to her like the song from a strong man s 
 house. 
 
 You are rich and elect, Betty !" she cried. "You 
 have been a woman and zuanted love. You have finished 
 your work at night, alone, and realized that there was 
 no one your arms tired, your throat tired, your brain 
 and soul tired and heart-lonely and there was no one. 
 How rich you are now ! I think a woman is rich who can 
 say : In London or Tokyo or New South Wales there is 
 one who loves me who may be thinking at this moment 
 about me who wishes I were there, or he were here ; 
 whose heart s warmth stretches across the distance and 
 makes the world a home, because he is in the world. 
 . . . It would seem to me that I should be exultant 
 to-day if there was such a one for me. It seems if 
 I could see him in a year, even if I could not see him at 
 all, and he were somewhere I should be all new and 
 radiant, born again. . . . But you. Betty dear oh, 
 think what you have what you are giving!" 
 
 Betty s eyes were shut. There was a gray line around 
 the faint color of the lips, and she was pale as a candle- 
 flame in the morning sun. 
 
 T wish you could stay with me, dearest," she whis 
 pered. "It is too much for me when I am alone. But 
 when you are here, what you say and what you see 
 makes me believe. . . . And you must tell me what 
 to write in answer to this to satisfy him. I shall hold 
 it in my hand, and rest " 
 
 "I ll come back this afternoon. We ll have supper, 
 and the letter will be mailed. You ll know what to say 
 then " 
 
 She hurried away, lest her heart break. The tired, 
 emotionless voice trailed after her. And all day she
 
 260 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 heard Betty s voice among the unfinished voices, and saw 
 the spiritless clay of her heart s friend sitting in deathly 
 labor below, tormented by the phantom of a will like a 
 once glorious empire become desolate, a foolish scion 
 upon the throne. 
 
 HELEN QUISTON was the brain of the studio, the 
 eyes and fingers even, in part, the spirit of the 
 place that John Morning loved. It was a letter of hers 
 that John Morning answered with this paragraph : 
 
 "I shut my eyes after the first reading and it seemed 
 to me I went sailing. There were many voyagers and 
 many islands but I found my Island. It called to me 
 and I knew it was for me. The voyagers sailed on past 
 the curving inlets and the arrowed points but I sailed 
 home. I found the fountains, the crags, the echoes, the 
 virgin springs, the mysterious meeting places of the land 
 and sea, the enchanted forest where the fairies are and 
 the sun was rising. It was thus I answered the calling 
 mystery of your spirit. . . ." 
 
 She was glad that his mind turned to the actual mem 
 ory picture of Betty Berry, as he finished : 
 
 "I do love the woman that moves about the world, 
 the woman others see the lips that tremble, the eyes 
 that fill with tears so swiftly over some loveliness, and 
 so rarely over her own sorrow ; the instant-enfolding 
 mind, the listening and the vitality but it seems that I 
 love in a greater way the heart that called to its lover 
 without words who fared forth to meet her lover and 
 gave her soul." 
 
 More and more Helen Quiston perceived that John 
 Morning was becoming sufficient unto himself the 
 larger lover, loving the world through his lady, and need 
 ing less, even in thought, her hands and kisses and emo 
 tions. She saw steadily that which Duke Fallows had
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 261 
 
 made Betty Berry see for a night. She did not see it 
 as clearly as Betty Berry saw it that night, but she be 
 held an enduring radiance from it, because her body was 
 not in the wreck of sacrifice. She had a woman s sense 
 of the large relation of things, and a woman s faith. 
 The misery of life as she had met it, the disorder, monot 
 ony, and gray sorrow of it all, was her profound assur 
 ance of another and brilliant side to the shield. She 
 wanted nothing for herself in these particular instances. 
 For Betty Berry she saw a swift transfer to a certain 
 indefinite perfection, no less attractive because it was 
 unlimned in her mind. Her own happiness, her great 
 privilege, was to be third in this miracle of a man and 
 woman passing beyond in a truly royal way. There was 
 a mystic quality that suited her mind in the coming of 
 the Guardian to Betty Berry s room, and in the fact that 
 John Morning would never know of this. It was like 
 the coming of some Michael or Gabriel. From what she 
 knew of John Morning s work, she could believe in the 
 planetary promise that the Guardian seemed to see ; in 
 deed, she could have believed in it with less evidence, 
 because the Guardian said so. ... Her particular 
 dream was for the man to appear who would make 
 women see what it was in their hands and hearts to do 
 for the coming race. She dreamed of a man to come 
 with words to women that would be reflected upon the 
 brows of children to be, that would help to fashion the 
 latent dreams into great children. She believed it was 
 the agony of being childless that put this dream into her 
 own mind, and she believed that the world-ignition could 
 only come from a man who knew the same agony. 
 . . . So she listened raptly to the singing from the 
 forge; and more and more, with almost unspeakable ex 
 citement, she realized that the voice of John Morning 
 was slowly and surely taking to itself the authority and 
 harmony which his Guardian had promised. 
 
 He wrote often now of the rehearsals of Compassion,
 
 262 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 of his large fears and small satisfactions in them. He 
 was always glad to get back to the cabin and the Book. 
 . . . That book some of her own inner life would 
 be in it. She had given in the letters everything she 
 dared. Her tears were all shed ; there was dry burning 
 in her eyes, for what Betty Berry had given to that Book. 
 . . . Now in mid-September it was done, all but a 
 month s chiseling and polishing. It would be given to 
 the publisher two weeks before the first appearance of 
 Compassion at the Markheim the first week in Novem 
 ber. . . . She dared not think what would happen 
 when the Book was done, and the destiny of the play 
 established. ... A letter from Morning at this time 
 contained for Helen Quiston one winged, triumphant 
 sentence. She was reading aloud to Betty Berry : 
 
 "It was straight, clean going, right to the end of the 
 book. . . . It is hard-held. It is kind. It laughs. 
 It goes after the deepest-down man. . . . You have 
 to reach almost self-effacement to associate with fine 
 ideas and to get to the front in service. . . . How 
 hard it was to make me see that the real world is not 
 over there among writers and publishers and drama- 
 producers, but everywhere among the hearts of the poor! 
 
 "And, oh, Betty Berry, it isn t the book it s the life 
 that counts. You have made me live. You earned your 
 strength alone suffering alone through the years. 
 That s the highest honor that can come to man or woman 
 in this world to be chosen for such years as you have 
 known. It comes only to the strong the strength to 
 stand alone. The world bows sooner or later before 
 such character. Men feel it, though their eyes be shut. 
 
 "There is a certain excellence in the honor of stand 
 ing alone. Alone, man or woman is either ahead or be 
 hind the crowd. In the latter case, he is imbecile or de 
 fective, and God is with him. . . . God is in the 
 forward solitudes, too. What a splendor about standing 
 in the full light! The crowd cannot get it. The crowd
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 263 
 
 keeps the light from itself. There the maiming is, the 
 suffering, the cruelty ; there the light is divided, and the 
 warmth is the low heat of men, not the grand primal 
 vitality of the Sun. There in the crowd, Apparition and 
 Appearance take the place of the Real. . . . Now 
 and then, in the torturing passage of the crowd, the land 
 mark of some pioneer is reached, and the cry goes up, 
 We are on the right road, for that man passed here! 
 The name of the pioneer becomes part of the crowd s 
 impedimenta. Perhaps he smiles from the Other Side, 
 not because the crowd has found his trail he may have 
 wanted that once, though not long but looking back 
 upon his greater birth, he smiles the place where he 
 emerged and stood alone on the grand frontier. . . . 
 You have made me strong enough to believe that you 
 and I may go away up into the coolness beyond the 
 senses even in this life " 
 
 Helen Quiston stopped. That last was the final sanc 
 tion. The Guardian knew, when he chose John Morning. 
 It was the one thought she had hardly dared formulate 
 for him, and which she had awaited ardently during the 
 late weeks. 
 
 "He means that a woman can go, too !" she cried, 
 trembling, forgetful even of Betty Berry; "he is on the 
 path higher, higher and yet, he says that women, too, 
 can go that way alone " 
 
 Betty Berry frowned. "What does he mean by going 
 alone about a man and a woman going alone?" She 
 was suffering to understand, angry that the other under 
 stood. 
 
 "He says that the woman may also go alone to that 
 Eminence ! No man no human man has ever said that 
 before. Men think of men passing upward. People 
 caught in their desires have forever lied to themselves, 
 trying to believe that man and woman can go together. 
 . . . He says here " her eye darted on to read : 
 
 " Men and women gain their strength to reach that
 
 264 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 Eminence by being alone by loving alone ! You taught 
 him that. . . . Don t you see, dearest, it is the be 
 ginning of his real message? You gave it to him and 
 what a message it is for you and for even for me " 
 
 "But woman is the serpent," Betty Berry muttered. 
 
 Helen arose to turn on a wall light. Her hand fum 
 bled. Her eyes could not be brought down from that 
 lofty plateau. A strange peace had come into the lone 
 liness of her life. She wanted to tell it everywhere to 
 Nuns of the World. ... It had been a man s world 
 so long that this thought had never come. Always in 
 the world s thought and art the flesh of woman had 
 kept her down in the dusks and valleys. Sons climbed ; 
 lovers left their maids to climb . . . but only the 
 Gods knew all the time that daughters could go. 
 
 Betty was silent. It had become the habit of her life 
 not to speak when the mists thickened. . . . The 
 picture of Dante and Beatrice was in the light. Helen 
 pointed to it : 
 
 Who would think of saying that Beatrice, who was 
 the Way did not share the vision and the conscious 
 ness?" she asked softly. 
 
 Betty shut her eyes. The other returned with eager 
 love and sat down at her knees. "And now I will read 
 the last. Just think how clearly he sees : 
 
 " The world is so dear to me because of you. I am 
 so freshly conscious of its roundness, of the profile of its 
 coasts as seen from above ; of its light and darkness, the 
 sharpness of sun in the retreating gray, of its skies and 
 its peaks, the last to darken and the first to answer the 
 morn. ... I put the candle away just now, and in 
 the darkness I saw the Earth from above not from 
 afar, but from some space nearer than the moon. I saw 
 it all at once. The moon shining upon one side, the sun 
 shining upon the other a golden side, a silver side. 
 . . . And I saw you afterward not as you are in the 
 studio, but as a shadowed, quiet figure among moonlit
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 265 
 
 ruins. You were calm, and moved silently here and there. 
 Ruins were about you, yet you seemed to know the things 
 to do. What does it mean?" 
 
 "What does it mean, Helen?" Betty repeated. 
 
 The other s eyes filled with tears. The question 
 might have come from a little old lady of eighty, whose 
 house of life was locked, all but the sitting-room. 
 
 "It s just a dream, dear," she whispered. 
 
 "There are no ruins about me when you are here," 
 Betty said. 
 
 "Ruins, dearest? . . . No, gardens and living 
 temples " 
 
 Betty arose, and moved slowly up and down the stu 
 dio, then stood by her chair. The impulse even to lift 
 her hand was unusual. She moved now with difficulty, 
 but was not conscious of it. The room was dark, except 
 for the one wall-light. Helen went to her side, helped 
 her at last to the chair. Betty s face was deathly, but 
 there was a mournful reasonableness in her eyes, a faint 
 grasp of actuality, that the other had not seen for weeks. 
 The old enemies, memory and hope, were in feeble 
 conflict. 
 
 "Do you think he means that I am not well?" 
 
 "He was only expressing a dream-picture. . . 
 I m sure he hasn t interpreted it 
 
 "But he will. That comes afterward " 
 
 Betty was either better or worse. . . . The Doc 
 tor came. As he was leaving, Helen walked to the stairs 
 with him. 
 
 "Yes, there is a change," he said. 
 
 "You think it is good?" 
 
 "Yes. . . . It s been nearly six months. Yes, I 
 think it is good. She would have been dead without you, 
 Aliss Quiston. I don t know what you do but you keep 
 her from the engrossing mania." 
 
 "She has some strength, Doctor?"
 
 266 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 "It is all a matter of will at this stage. All along we 
 have battled to keep her somehow nourished." 
 
 Helen went back to the studio. Betty was on her 
 feet again. The nurse was at hand, but she had never 
 been able to involve herself in the patient s understand 
 ing. She left the room now, anticipating the inevitable 
 request. 
 
 "Do you think, Helen that as he finishes his work 
 more and more the ruins will come back to mind?" 
 
 THE Summer was done ; the book had been ten days 
 out of Morning s hand ; the final rehearsals were 
 engrossing and painful, and the letters from the hill- 
 cabin, though buoyant, were not so frequent. . . . 
 Service for men service for men ! The words seemed 
 integrated into the life of the man. There was some 
 thing herculean in his striving. The long Summer had 
 ripened the harvest. Conceptions which had been vague 
 and dreamy in the first letters were ready at his hand 
 now, daily expressions of his work. Helen Quiston, so 
 long dream-fed, trembled at the thought that she had 
 something to do with a giant s making. 
 
 It never occurred to her that the things so real in 
 her mind were at least an age distant from the interests 
 of the world. She did not stop to think that the drama so 
 vital and amazing to her would be out of the comprehen 
 sion even of the decent doctor who came to the studio 
 day after day. Not once did it enter her mind that the 
 world would regard her as heartless and fanatic for her 
 strength in so ruthlessly holding her closest friend to 
 the sacrifice. Her problem now was what to do with 
 John Morning after the first night of the play, and the 
 report upon his book was in. She was afraid he would 
 come. He would see Betty Berry see what her giving
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 267 
 
 had done. He would learn that it was she, Helen Quis- 
 ton, who had given him the peace in which to find the 
 larger consciousness ; her letters, in Betty Berry s hand, 
 that had filled the distances with peace for him. 
 
 She had no thought for John Morning except as an 
 instrument. It was something the way Duke Fallows 
 had thought of him at the last. Either one would have 
 sacrificed themselves, but they were not called. Only 
 Betty Berry loved him for himself, and to her was the 
 altar. They loved him for the future, and guarded him 
 as the worker-bees guard the queen because she is poten 
 tially the coming race. 
 
 And this was the miracle : John Morning at his work 
 had passed the need of the kiss of woman-. He had been 
 tided over the grand crossing by the love of Betty Berry. 
 Receiving it now, he did not hold it for himself, but 
 gave it forth in service to men. . . . There was 
 something cosmic about this to Helen Quiston. 
 
 Breathless expectancy in the studio on the early No 
 vember evening of Compassion s first performance at 
 the Markhcim. Though nothing of the sort had been 
 arranged, Helen Quiston expected a telegram after the 
 Play. It was not yet cold, but an east wind had been 
 rising since dark, and there was tension in the sounds 
 and shaking everywhere. Betty had, for her, a very 
 keen sense of the importance of the night to the man in 
 New York. 
 
 "I feel as if I had lived, Betty," her friend whispered. 
 "Oh, what must it be to you?" 
 
 "I feel that I have died," the other murmured. 
 
 Though she rested better and accepted food with less 
 reluctance, (the doctor declaring himself satisfied with 
 the progress of the past six weeks), it had been the hard 
 est period for Helen Quiston. Something was in Betty s 
 mind that was not confided. Often in the evening she 
 showed a preference for being alone. Helen feared for
 
 268 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 a time that the other might write a letter without her 
 supervision, but as there was no change in the tenor of 
 Morning s replies, the outpouring of his thankfulness in 
 no way diminished, the only conclusion was that Betty 
 at least had not mailed such a one. She had taken sud 
 den dislikes to several different nurses in turn. When she 
 wanted anything there was a terrible concentration about 
 it. Helen and the doctor and all concerned were drawn 
 into the vortex. 
 
 "It s the way she used to practice," her friend said. 
 
 "Miss Quiston- " began the doctor. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Oh, it doesn t matter. I was just thinking are you 
 so real to all your friends ?" 
 
 "I have no friend like Betty." 
 
 "That eases my mind." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "A few friends like that and there wouldn t be any 
 singing teacher." 
 
 Helen Quiston realized fully for the first time that 
 the doctor was exactly a human being, having the va 
 rious features of the species. 
 
 They were startled by a crash in the inner room. The 
 nurse entered quickly to announce that a flower-pot con 
 taining a fuchsia had fallen from the window-sill. 
 
 "The plant is in ruins," she said. 
 
 Betty rose immediately. Ruins the word was a fiery 
 stimulant to her. In a few moments she ceased her pac 
 ing, saying that she was utterly weary. Helen, though 
 leaving for the room she occupied, a flight above, could 
 but remark upon the gleaming intensity of Betty s eyes, 
 and the restless leaping of her hands. . . . 
 
 The nurse came to her. Betty went with her into 
 the inner room. In the next fifteen minutes, the patient 
 was more or less alone, while the studio couch, upon 
 which the nurse was accustomed to rest, was being pre-
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 269 
 
 pared. Unwatched, her movements quickened, a queer, 
 furtive smile played upon her lips, and certain actions 
 altogether uncommon occupied her concentrated atten 
 tion. The key was quietly removed from the door be 
 tween the studio and the living-room ; a large bundle 
 was carried from a closet-shelf to the rear window and 
 tossed out. From behind the books in a small case near 
 the reading-lamp a purse was produced ; and finally, when 
 the nurse was at the farthest end of the studio, Betty 
 drew a large, sharp knife from the same hiding-place, 
 and with astonishing quiet and force severed the tele 
 phone wires just beneath the bell-box, fastened to the 
 wall close to the floor. The knife was returned to its 
 hiding-place. The nurse joined her, and Betty, at the 
 studio door, suddenly sank into a chair with a cry of 
 exhaustion. The other ran to her. 
 
 "It is nothing! Bring some water 
 
 The nurse had not reached the medicine-case in the 
 bath, when the patient sprang up and locked the inter 
 vening door of the apartment, leaving the woman inside 
 with a "dead" telephone. 
 
 For the first time in half a year, Betty left the studio, 
 carefully closing the main door. Out the back way, she 
 found her parcel, and in the windy darkness put on the 
 rain-coat, traveling hat, veil, gloves and shoes it had 
 contained, departing breathlessly through the alley gate. 
 
 For a long time the hammering upon floors and walls 
 could not be located in the studio-building. The outer 
 door of Betty s apartment was tried, but found locked ; 
 and since there was no response to the bell, nothing came 
 of the offerings of the earlier Samaritans. Much time 
 was occupied by the nurse in trying to call the telephone- 
 exchange. A stranger in the street was finally per 
 suaded, from the upper window, to find the janitor of 
 the building and send him to the Quiston studio. Mas 
 ter keys set the nurse free. 
 
 Helen Quiston first notified the Doctor, who came
 
 270 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 hastily. The story of the nurse was explicit as a hospital 
 report. 
 
 "Is your car here, Doctor?" Miss Quiston asked pres 
 ently. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Will you take me down-town? I ll be ready in a 
 moment." 
 
 "Gladly." 
 
 "The Doctor was informed in a tense but controlled 
 voice that the patient was doubtless at this moment upon 
 a certain east-bound train. "Betty left here a few min 
 utes after nine," Helen added. "The train I m thinking 
 of left at ten-five. It is now eleven. . . . Oh, I 
 wonder what she had on? She was dressed when I left 
 her shirt-waist, black skirt, house-slippers " 
 
 Five minutes search and thinking on the part of Miss 
 Quiston uncovered the fact that Betty s rain-coat and a 
 certain small traveling hat were missing. . . . Noth 
 ing was positively established at the station. 
 
 "I must send a telegram, Doctor," Helen said. 
 
 It was to Morning at his rural-delivery address. Her 
 heart sank with fear lest the message fail to reach him, 
 until it was finally handled by the post-office. 
 
 "There s nothing further to do," she said hopelessly. 
 
 Night brought no news, nor the early morning. At 
 nine-thirty o clock, Helen Quiston was leaving the studio 
 for the morning s work, when she heard a light, swift 
 step on the stairs someone coming up at least three steps 
 at a time. The hall-door was half-swung. Helen stood 
 waiting. . . . Now a stranger was at the doorway, 
 hesitating, yet expectant. His brow was tanned, as if 
 he had walked bare-headed in the sun. His gray eyes 
 were remarkably clear and very kind. For a second or 
 two they stood face to face, forgetting to speak. 
 
 "Where is Betty Berry?" It was a demand, yet 
 gently spoken. 
 
 "Are you are you John Morning?"
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 271 
 
 "Yes. . . . Where is she?" 
 
 I think she has gone to you I do not know, but I 
 think she has gone to the hill-cabin " 
 
 "Are you her friend?" 
 
 "Yes I am Miss Ouiston." 
 
 "When did she go?" 
 
 "Last night. I telegraphed you " 
 
 He came close to her. His hand upon her shoulder 
 drew her to a chair, and he brought another near. "I 
 will not stop to ask questions," he said heavily. "You 
 tell me all 
 
 "What of the play?" 
 
 "I don t know I left before it was done to come 
 here. . . . She is ill go on " 
 
 The story faltered at first, but the gray eyes steadied 
 her. Toward the end she talked swiftly, coherently. She 
 winged over the one certain cause of Betty s illness. 
 . . . \Vhen she stopped, it seemed to her that some 
 mighty machinery was whirring below, its vibrations in 
 the floor and walls. 
 
 He arose, stood beside her all the light and reason 
 gone from his face. For several seconds he stood there, 
 his left hand swiftly tapping her shoulder. The powers 
 of the man were afar miles away upon his hill. This 
 was just a tapping blind man in the room. . . . 
 
 "I must go. I have no words now. . . . She is 
 there. It must be nearly ten now. I must hurry to 
 her." 
 
 The engines in the house flagged and were silent. 
 
 The woman stood where he had left her, smiling. 
 
 BETTY held her purse tightly in her hand, and cer 
 tain thoughts were held as tightly in her brain, as 
 she pressed against the wind. ... It was something 
 like going to a distant concert engagement in the night.
 
 272 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 . . . Her limbs were uncertain, and there was a con 
 stant winging in her breast, as though it were the cage 
 of a frantic bird. She did not mind. She could forget 
 it if only her eyes remained true. For the first time in 
 months she was on her own strength, her own will. 
 There was a sharp distress in the responsibility, but also 
 an awakening of force. 
 
 The wind whipped her breath away, yet she liked the 
 wild freedom of it if only she could continue to see and 
 remember what to say. The studio was a hideous black 
 ness that drove her from behind. This was a new and 
 consuming hatred. The two squares to the large up 
 town hotel where a cab was readily obtainable were long 
 as a winter night ; and the tension to remember seemed 
 destroying her by the time she found a driver. She told 
 him the station and the train. 
 
 "Plenty of time, Ma am," he said. 
 
 Her eyes filled with tears. It was true, then, that 
 there was such a station, such a train, that there was 
 time, and nothing had betrayed her. "I must not speak ; 
 I must not speak," kept warning in her mind ; "but he is 
 so good to me !" 
 
 Now she felt the cold, as she rested a moment before 
 the new ordeal at the station destination, tickets, the 
 Pullman, not to fall, not to speak any but the exact 
 words. . . . The driver helped her out. Everything 
 was familiar, but miraculously large. . . . She gave 
 the man extra money, and the faintest, humblest "Thank 
 you !" escaped her. He whistled a porter for her. 
 
 "The ticket window," she said. And now she need 
 only follow. It was warmer. It would be warm in the 
 Pullman. . . . She took the young colored man s 
 arm. He turned with good nature. 
 
 "I have been ill," she said. It was frightened from 
 her lips. 
 
 "There is plenty of time, Miss. I ll see you through 
 to the berth the ten-five yes m."
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 273 
 
 The quick tears started again, and an aching lump in 
 her throat. She wanted to cry out her thankfulness. 
 She wanted to be told again and again that all this was 
 not a dream, from which she would awaken in that place 
 of death. The value of her veil awed her ; and it was 
 she who had thought of it. Could it really be true that 
 she had forgotten nothing? Would she actually arrive 
 at her journey s end? 
 
 The porter procured berth and tickets, and now he 
 assured her that her train was ready. She followed him 
 through interminable distances, down countless stairs ; 
 she watched and listened critically, as he delivered both 
 tickets to the Pullman conductor. All she had to do was 
 to follow, to say nothing and to pay. With what thank 
 fulness did she pay ; and with what warming courtesy 
 were her gifts received. Surely the world was changed. 
 It had become so dear and good. . . . She had a 
 far-off vision of a peremptory Betty Berry of another 
 world, striding to and fro among men and trains and 
 cities, giving her commands, expecting obedience, con 
 ferring gratuities according to rigid principle. 
 
 The car-porter was more w r onderful than any an 
 old Southern darkey, with little patches of gray beard, 
 absurdly distributed. A homing gentleness was in his 
 voice, and his smile was from a better world. . . 
 There had been another porter like him some 
 where. 
 
 "She goes clear through," the station porter said, 
 "and she s been sick." 
 
 "Ah ll see the young Miss clar through," the old 
 man drawled. "Just depen on me, Miss. Sit right down 
 here berth ll be ready right smaht." 
 
 She did not sleep, but she was warm and not uncom 
 fortable. She dared think a little of the end of the jour 
 ney, but there was so much to do in the morning, so much 
 to keep in mind. She held fast to her purse. In her de 
 pendence, the magic of it was like a strange discovery.
 
 274 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 In the early morning", the porter brought her coffee with 
 some hot milk and toast. The wind had long since been 
 left behind, but a cold rain was falling. She would be 
 cold. The terminal was reached. The old man bore her 
 forth. There was something merciful and restoring in 
 his gentle gratitude. A station porter led her to the 
 Hackensack car. 
 
 She thought of breakfast on the way, but forgot it 
 again upon reaching Hackensack, where she was directed 
 to the post-office. 
 
 She wrote the address of John Morning and asked 
 shiveringly at the stamp window if there was any way 
 in which she could be delivered there. 
 
 The clerk could not see if she were laughing under 
 the veil. 
 
 "The rural carrier knows the way," she added. "I d 
 be willing to pay well " 
 
 The clerk craned his head back through the office, 
 and called: 
 
 "Jethro !" 
 
 A large, dusty man came forward with the air of 
 having just breakfasted. He took the slip containing 
 the address from her hand. 
 
 "The lady wants to go with you, Jethro 
 
 The rural carrier tilted his spectacles benignly to re 
 gard her. 
 
 "Bless me even been there?" 
 
 "No but letters go safely " 
 
 "I rather think they do since I take em. Is this 
 your writing?" 
 
 The place was darkening, suffocating to her. "Yes 
 if you would only take me. Five, ten 
 dollars oh, I should be so glad to pay anything I 
 have " 
 
 The carrier penetrated the veil. 
 
 "Just sit down by the heater, Lady," he said in a low 
 ered tone. "We ll get there, and it won t cost you five
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 275 
 
 or ten dollars, neither. I know where you want to go, 
 and I know who you are, if I m not mistaken. Lizzie 
 and I will get you there " 
 
 She turned quickly, for the tears were coming. 
 . Could it really be that she had remembered 
 everything? Was she really going to him, and this the 
 last stage of the journey? The heart of the large, dusty 
 man had radiated so suddenly upon her. She was not 
 afraid of him, but she must not faint nor speak until she 
 was away from the others. Very still she sat by the 
 heater, praying for strength, praying that it was not all 
 a dream. . . . 
 
 "Miss Betty Berry!" 
 
 There was an instant in which the call had but a vague 
 meaning; then shot home to her the hideous fear of be 
 ing taken back. She was close to screaming, yet it was 
 only the rural-carrier coming. 
 
 "Yes?" she said, clearing her throat. 
 
 "I thought I couldn t be wrong," he said. "I ve 
 brought a good many letters addressed to you back to 
 town from the place you re going, and carried a good 
 many out yonder in this writing of yours. . . . Liz 
 zie and me are ready, Miss." 
 
 As they stepped out the rear door, he touched her arm 
 reflectively, and re-entered to bring a hairy black robe. 
 The vehicle, of a vanished type, was gray even in the 
 rain, and cocked to one side from the sagging of years, 
 where the carrier sat. Betty s weight did not visibly 
 impress the high side. He tucked the hairy robe about 
 her, the mail-bags at her feet, picked up the lines, and 
 lo ! they moved. 
 
 "Lizzie ain t very showy on knee action, Miss Berry," 
 he said, "but along about half-past eleven, when w y e get 
 there, you ll remark she s stiddy." 
 
 It was only ten now. . . . Mud and miles and 
 mail-boxes ; dragging moments, and miles and cold rain. 
 
 . . She had to talk a little. The journey of the
 
 276 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 night was nearest, and she told how good the train-men 
 had been to her. 
 
 "You haven t traveled much, Miss, I take it?" he said 
 softly. 
 
 "Oh, no." Then distantly again she remembered a 
 Betty Berry of concert seasons on the wing from city 
 to city. It was all too remote for speech. At one house 
 a woman came forth with tea and sandwiches. Betty 
 was grateful for the warm drink and wanted to pay, but 
 the carrier pushed back her hand and tucked her in 
 again. 
 
 "Guess this is going to be a surprise for the bare 
 headed man?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "He s your young man, then?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 He seemed relieved. "He won t be staying out here 
 much longer not likely though we do have a spell of 
 good weather in November mostly." 
 
 Often she lost every sense of distance and identity. 
 The lapses grew longer toward the end, and when she 
 did not answer, Tethro thought she had fallen asleep. 
 
 . . A long stretch at last, barren of mail-boxes. 
 . . . When he finally drew up, she followed his eyes 
 to her lover s name upon the tin by the roadside. Then 
 he pointed beyond the low near trees and hollows. It 
 was all desolate ; the Fall tints subdued in the pervading 
 gray. She saw a clump of greater trees in the upper 
 middle distance. 
 
 " Bout a thousand feet straight in, Miss and up 
 under them big trees. You ll see his shanty before 
 you re half-way. Just keep your eye on them elums. 
 He d be down here if it was any kind of weather. Guess 
 you re glad. D ruther go alone and find him there, 
 wouldn t you?" 
 
 "Yes. . . . And now I want to give you this, 
 please."
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 277 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 She could not leave him so. "For Lizzie she s so 
 steady. I m rich . . . and I ll be much happier - 
 going to the bare-headed man. Please for me " 
 
 Don t you take that robe off!" he said suddenly. "I 
 don t want it jumpin in and out. I never take it out 
 of the office till snow ilies. He ll bring it down to the 
 box, when I m passin to-morrow. Why, you d get all 
 soaked, Miss a-goin up to him. . . . Well, I ll 
 take the money for Lizzie if you re rich but it s ridic 
 ulous much, and I d have fetched you for nothin ." 
 
 She pressed his hand in both of hers and turned away 
 through the break in the fence. ... It seemed 
 darker ; and when the grinding of the tires on the wet 
 gravel died away, the dripping silence came home to her, 
 alien and fearful. . . . She had seen the name ; soon 
 she would see his house but this was no man s land, an 
 after-death land ; this was the hollows and the vague 
 ness of light/ of which he had written. . . . 
 
 She saw the house and faltered on. She had not the 
 strength to call. . . . On the slope to the great trees 
 the burden of the heavy robe would have borne her to 
 the ground, had she not let it fall from her. . . . She 
 could not believe the padlock on the door, felt it with her 
 hands, the weight and the brass of it. It was hard for 
 her to understand the cruel cold of it as for a child 
 that has never been hurt intentionally. She sank to her 
 knees and prayed that it was not there. . . . But it 
 was. The reality entered her brain, the thick icy metal 
 of it. 
 
 "Betty Berry Betty Berry, I am coming!" 
 She lifted her head in the rain. His call was like a 
 thought of her own, but sharper, truer. This was his 
 door. He was coming. It was still light. She wanted 
 to sleep again, but the death-like cold warned her. She 
 would die before he came.
 
 278 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 She raised herself against the door. The black heap 
 of the fur-robe on the slope held her eyes. . . . On 
 the way to it she fainted again ; again the cold rain roused 
 her. . . . Always on the borders of the rousing, she 
 heard it : 
 
 "Betty Berry Betty Berry, I am coming!" 
 
 She knelt in the wet leaves beside the robe . . . 
 her thoughts turned back to the night the goodness of 
 the men, their tender voices. . . . There was a call 
 ing up in the dusk among the trees. Yes, she must lie 
 at his door. Men were good ; the lock alone had hurt 
 her. His Guardian had put it there. . . . Upward 
 she crawled, dragging the robe. 
 
 "Yes, you are coming!" she answered. Always when 
 the cold rain roused her, she would answer, and crawl a 
 little farther with the robe. At the door at last, she lay 
 down beneath it. ... 
 
 Still again his calling roused her. It was darker 
 but not yet night. . . . 
 
 "Betty Berry Betty Berry, I am coming!" 
 
 It was nearer. 
 
 "I knew you would let me in," she tried to say, and 
 then voices. ... It seemed as if the porter of the 
 Old South had come. . . . His voice lulled her, and 
 his smile was the glow of the home-hearth. 
 
 8 
 
 SHE was lying upon the single narrow bed. . . . 
 Something long ago had been premonitive of this. 
 Morning s mind, too, caught up the remembrance of 
 Moto-san and the Japanese Inn. . . . He watched. 
 Sometimes he said with all his will that she must not die. 
 She could not die, when his will was dominant, but he 
 was exhausted ; his will-power flagged frequently. 
 
 All day yesterday in the train he had held her in his 
 mind sent his calls to her across the miles. From dif-
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 279 
 
 ferent stations he had telegraphed to Jake at Hacken- 
 sack, to Jethro at the post-office, and to his neighbor, 
 the dairyman, who had a telephone. Jethro had been 
 the first to reach the cabin, but it was nearly dusk then. 
 The others were quick to appear. Jethro found her at 
 the door, partly covered in the furry robe. That robe 
 crowned him in Morning s mind. They had broken in 
 the door, and lit the fire. Morning reached the cabin at 
 nine. Jethro spoke of a doctor. 
 
 "I m the doctor," Morning said. The three had left 
 him. 
 
 It was now after midnight. She had not aroused. 
 Old scenes quivered across the surface of her couscious- 
 ness, starting a faintly mumbled sentence now and then : 
 The Armory, the first kiss, the road to Baltimore, letters, 
 hurried journeys, the Guardian ; and much about the 
 latest journey from cab to station, from porter to Pull 
 man, from car to clerk to carrier. He saw how the night 
 and the day had used her final strength. Always the 
 Guardian intervened to break her will, and Morning did 
 not understand. There were other enemies ; the studio, 
 the nurse, the padlock, and the rain. After brief hushes, 
 she would speak of his coming, or answer his calling. 
 
 It was the one theme of his life even now the great 
 thing Betty Berry had done. It awed and chilled him 
 to realize how coarse-fibered he had been, so utterly im 
 pervious, not to sense the nature of the force that had 
 upheld him, nor the quality of the bestowals. . . . 
 There was a rending about it, and yet it was all so quiet 
 now. It seemed to him that a man s life is husk after 
 husk of illusion, that the illusions are endless. He had 
 torn them away, one after another, thinking each time 
 that he had come to the grain. . . . And what was 
 the sum of his finding so far ? That good is eternal ; that 
 man loves God best by serving men ; that greatness is 
 in the working, not in the result ; that a man who has 
 found his work has found the soul s sunlight, and that
 
 2 8o DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 service for men is its rain. Surely, these are not husks. 
 
 . . . It had been a hard, weary way. He was like 
 a tired child now, and here was the little mother 
 wearied with him unto death. . . . He had been so 
 perverse and headstrong. She had given him her love 
 and guidance until her last strength was spent. He must 
 be the man now. . . . He wondered if his heart 
 would break, when he realized fully his own evil and her 
 unfathomable sweetness? . . . Must a woman al 
 ways fall spent and near to death before a man can be 
 finished ? Or is it because her work is done that she falls ? 
 
 He knelt beside her. Sometimes, in the lamplight, she 
 looked as he had seen her at the Armory ; again, as if 
 she were playing; now, it was as she had been to him 
 in the dark of the Pullman seat. . . . Who was the 
 Guardian ? 
 
 . . . And this was what had come to her from 
 teaching him the miracle of listening alone. ... It 
 was true. He belonged to that life, as Duke Fallows 
 had always said. She had made him see it by going 
 from him. He would never be the same, after having 
 tasted the greater love, in which man and woman are 
 one in the spirit of service, having renounced the emblem 
 of it. And with all her vision and leading the glory 
 of it had not come to her as to him. It had all but killed 
 her. She had come to him a forgotten purpose, a 
 broken vessel. 
 
 He would love her back to life. That was his work 
 now. Everything must stop for that even truth. 
 . . . He halted. If he loved her back to full and 
 perfect health again, would she not be the same as she 
 had been? Would she not take up her Cross again? 
 . . . No, he would not let her. He would destroy 
 the results of his work if necessary. He would force 
 himself to forget, even in the spirit this taste of the 
 mystic oneness that had come to him. He would show 
 his need for her every hour. That would ma!:e her
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 281 
 
 happy his leaning upon her word and thought and 
 action. He would show her his need of her presence in 
 the long, excellent forenoons, in the very processes of 
 his task and in the evenings, her hands, her kisses, her 
 step, her voice ; he would make her see that these were 
 his perfect essentials. 
 
 "I ve talked and written a lot about how a man should 
 live in the past six months/ he said grimly. "I ve got 
 to do a bit of real living in the world now. God knows 
 1 love her as I used to. That seemed enough then!" 
 
 He looked up from her face. The ghost of day had 
 come softly to the South. He arose, took the lamp 
 across the room and blew it out. Then he opened the 
 door. The mingled night and dawn came in, a cool dim 
 ness, but the rain had ceased. He replenished the fire, 
 left the door open, and returned to her. She had be 
 come quiet since the lamp had been taken away. . . . 
 A sense of the man and woman together, and of her 
 strength returning crept upon him. He welcomed it, 
 though the deeps cried out. 
 
 "When you are yourself, you will want to go away 
 again the long, blinding ways of the sun," he whis 
 pered. "But I will say, T cannot spare you, Betty Berry. 
 This is the place for two to be. We will begin 
 again " 
 
 His thought of what she would answer brought back 
 to mind the play, Compassion, and the Book of John 
 Morning. . . . He smiled. He had almost forgot 
 ten. Night before last, at the beginning of the third act, 
 he had left the Markheim. He had given way suddenly 
 to the thought that had pulled at him all day to take the 
 train to Betty Berry that night. . . . The play had 
 seemed good. Even to him there had been moments of 
 thrilling joy. It had been surprisingly different, sitting 
 in front with the audience, from the rehearsals. Of yes 
 terday s notices he had not seen a single one. It was a 
 far thought to him even now of the play s failure, but if
 
 282 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 it did fail, how easy to say to Betty Berry, "You see, how 
 mad I was alone how mad in my exaltation how terri 
 bly out of tune? I needed you here. I need you 
 now 
 
 Then he thought of the bigger thing the Book. 
 There wasn t a chance for that to fail. It would find its 
 own. What would he say about that? . . . He 
 would say, "I love you, Betty Berry. It was loving you 
 that made the book. And when it was done how I 
 longed for you !" 
 
 That was true true now. . . . He kissed her 
 shut eyelids. There was blessedness in her being here 
 even shattered and so close to death blessedness and a 
 dreadful fear. That fear was ever winging around, but 
 did not come home to him and fold its wings. He was 
 not himself. . . . "My God!" he cried out, "what 
 folds upon folds and phases upon phases of experience 
 
 a man must pass to learn to live " 
 
 For an instant it all came back that taste of the open 
 road and larger dimension of man the listening, the 
 labor, the sharpened senses, scant diet, tireless service, 
 the great companions love of the world and unfailing 
 compassion. ... It was as they had said. He had 
 belonged everywhere but in a woman s arms. . . . 
 
 It came clear as a vision, and he put it from him as 
 an evil thing and all the voices. The red dawn was 
 staring into his eyes, and afar off a horse nickered. He 
 held his hands against the light, as if to destroy it. 
 
 "I have said it in the Book, We have all eternity to 
 play in, and if that is not a lie this Call will come to 
 me again !" 
 
 And this was his renunciation. 
 
 Her stillness troubled him. 
 
 "I am your lover," he whispered. "I will not let you 
 go, Betty Berry. Don t you hear I love you?" 
 
 He lifted her, walked to and fro between the fire and
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 283 
 
 the cot. She was so very little. . . . The day came 
 up with a mystic shining, and the warmth returned. 
 These were the first hours of that fleeting Indian sum 
 mer, the year s illumination the serene and conscious 
 death of Summer. . . . The door was wide open to 
 the light. . . . Morning put down his burden, but 
 could not be still. He brought water and scrubbed the 
 floor and door-step. The wood shone white as it dried 
 white as the square table which was an attraction of 
 daylight. He tossed the water away down the hollow, 
 drew more and washed as the countrymen do, lifting 
 handfuls to his head. Then he brought basin, soap, and 
 towels bathed her face and hands, afterward carrying 
 her forth to the sunlight. The thin shade of the elms 
 was far down the meadow, for the day was not high. 
 
 "I love you, Betty Berry," he continued to repeat, as 
 he turned again and again to the cot. There was an 
 hypnotic effect in the words ; and there was a certain 
 numbed surface in his brain that refused to cope with 
 the immediate stresses in the room. 
 
 Jethro came early, and was not content to leave the 
 mail at the box. He brought letters, a paper, and a large 
 package. Jethro looked at the face on the cot and at the 
 bare-headed man. Words failed him to whom words 
 were so easy. He ventured to mention the name of a 
 doctor, and was answered furiously: 
 
 "I am the doctor." 
 
 Jethro lingered. Morning turned suddenly to look at 
 the cot, and it seemed to the carrier that his eyes would 
 have frightened away death. . . . Morning caught 
 him by the shoulders : 
 
 "You re a good man, Jethro," he said hastily. 
 "When I think of that fur robe it seems as if I ve got 
 to do something for you with my hands." 
 
 The carrier went his w r ay. 
 
 This he found in the newspaper a "follow" para-
 
 284 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 graph apparently to the dramatic notice of the day be 
 fore: 
 
 "The second performance of Compassion last 
 night to a fairly rilled house is interesting in its rela 
 tion to the fear frankly expressed in this column yes 
 terday, to the effect that Compassion is too good a 
 play to get on well. The fear was well founded upon 
 experience ; and yet we may have before us an ex 
 ception a quality of excellence that will not be sub 
 dued. It is too much to hope for, that at any other 
 time this season we will be equally glad to find our 
 fear for a play s future ill-founded." 
 Morning had not known of the doubt ; and this was 
 the rise of the tide again from the doubt. . . . He 
 glanced at the package. There was a spreading cold in 
 his vitals. It was from the publisher he had chosen the 
 Book of John Morning returned. 
 
 He was hostile for an instant an old vindictive self 
 resenting this touch upon his gift of self-revelation. 
 The protecting thought followed quickly that the book 
 was in no way changed by this accident of encountering 
 the wrong publisher. The really important part of the 
 incident followed these insignificant thoughts : Above all 
 things, this letter would help to prove to Betty Berry his 
 need for her. He would not send it out again at once. 
 This refusal would weigh more than anything he could 
 say, to prove that loneliness had been too much, too 
 strong for him that it had thrown his work out of 
 reality, instead of into it. ... He was bending over 
 her. A step at the door, and he turned to find Helen 
 Quiston there. 
 
 SHE entered and went to the cot, without words, but 
 pressed his hand as she passed. . . . 
 "You were there and you let her get so low as 
 this."
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 285 
 
 Helen turned to search his face. "Yes," she said. 
 
 "Who is this Guardian? 
 
 "Some angel that came to her, I think." 
 
 "He seems very real to her " 
 
 "Angels are real." 
 
 Angels do not make saints suffer " 
 
 "On the contrary, that appears to be the life-business 
 of saints " 
 
 "She will never go back to that !" he said with low 
 vehemence. 
 
 Helen regarded her old comrade for a moment, kissed 
 her reverently, and then turned to the man. 
 
 "You poor boy," she said. 
 
 There was something cold and rock-like about this 
 slave of the future, looking over and beyond the immi 
 nent tragedy. He was helpless, maddened. . . . 
 
 "She always said you loved her that you were the 
 one woman absolutely true. How could you let her de 
 stroy herself?" 
 
 "I knew her before you came, and loved her. I gave 
 her my house. I waited upon her night and morning. 
 I love Betty Berry. You are torn and tortured, but you 
 will see " 
 
 "She will not be away from me again! . 
 Bah ! what is work to this ?" 
 
 Helen smiled. "Do you think she would have come 
 if she had been the real Betty Berry?" 
 
 "Do you think I would have been duped had I 
 been the real John Morning?" 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "I mean a man is mad when he is doing a book. He 
 may call it happiness, but it is a kind of devil s madness. 
 He is open for anything to rush in. ... I am a 
 common man. I do not belong to that visionary 
 thing " 
 
 "You are caught in your emotions. I know your 
 work "
 
 286 DOWN AMONG MEN 
 
 He drew her to the door, saying excitedly: 
 
 "Compassion threatens to fail. My book has come 
 back," he said triumphantly. "Look at this " 
 
 He gave her the publisher s letter. 
 
 "Your play has not failed," she said. . . . "And 
 this why, this is just a bit of the world. John Morning 
 at thirty-three talks of failure. Let us talk over this 
 day, when you are fifty-three. . . . What an empty 
 victory for her if you failed now " 
 
 She was looking back at the cot. Morning whispered 
 his reiteration: 
 
 "I love her. I shall have her here. I shall make her 
 see that I love her. That is my service. You are all 
 mad conspirators against us. We are man and woman. 
 Our world is each other. She shall see and believe this 
 if I write drivel " 
 
 Helen did not seem quite to hear him. She 
 drew away from him as if called in a trance to 
 the bedside. 
 
 "My little dearest oh, Betty Berry you have done 
 so well. You have paid the price for a World-Man " 
 
 Morning followed her. . . . Betty s eyes were 
 opened fixed upon Helen Quiston. 
 
 "What did you say?" she questioned wonderingly. 
 
 "God love you, Betty. I said you had paid the price 
 for a World-Man 
 
 She raised on her elbow alone, her eyes now looking 
 beyond the woman to Morning. 
 
 "He is there," she whispered. "He is there. He has 
 come." 
 
 Her hand stretched toward him, and sank slowly to 
 his brow as he knelt. 
 
 "My love," she said. . . . "It is all right. I see 
 it all once more. It is so good and right just as your 
 Guardian told me. ... It was only the birth-pangs 
 I suffered. They were hard. . . . Birth is hard, 
 but death is easy. Don t you see, Helen, he was my little
 
 THE BARE-HEADED MAN 287 
 
 baby? . . . Oh, you came so hard, John Morning 
 and, oh, I love you so !" 
 
 He saw the fact of her passing, but the deeper reali 
 zation was slow. It was much to him, for the instant, 
 that she spoke and looked into his eyes. 
 
 "I love you, Betty Berry," he said, his voice lifting. 
 "I love you as a saint, as a mother as a child!" 
 
 "But not as a woman," she whispered. 
 
 THE END.
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
 
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