Routledge rides alone

They were in a troop-train at last, down the Tokaido, the old cedar-lined highway of the daimios,—Feeney, Finacune, Trollope, Bingley, other English and as many more Americans. The road was a brown streak of troop-laden trains off to embarkation ports. Japan was sending out her willing wealth of men to a brown and sullen land of such distances as would balk the short-sighted Japanese eye, so used to toy sizes in all things—toy trees, terraces, hills, and roads, whose ends are mostly in view. These men were off to fight now in the outer court of “the last and the largest empire, whose map is but half unrolled.”

Bingley was sitting apart as usual, already in puttees and Bedford cords, a blanket-roll underfoot and a light, travelling type-mill in a leather-case by his side. Bingley was brimming with the morbid, moody passion for Bingley triumphs. A great type of the militant Englishman this, with his stiff jaw and strong-seasoned blood, utterly painless to almost everything but the spur of ambition; identified peculiarly, penetratingly, with Bingley and no other; the six feet of animal named Bingley, in a soft shirt and Bingley cords. He was sombrely glad this April morning to be started for the field at last. Presently the Thames, London, the world, would hear the name of Bingley again—and the name would mean a giant grappling with “monster heroisms” in the midst of Asia and armies. The revelation and death of Jerry Cardinegh the night before had a personal aspect from Bingley’s point of view. It was that Routledge, vindicated, would have a free hand again. He would probably oust Benton Day from the Review and seek to regain his old supremacy. Routledge would require lots of handling, delicate and daring, to be downed and dimmed.

To Feeney and Finacune, the events of the night before had taken a place among the great military crises of their experience. They had cabled the morning hours away, as the other Englishmen had done, urged by the woman. Indeed, the American correspondents were not a little disturbed by the unwonted activity of the Londoners at a time when, to them, all was done. What the confession of Jerry Cardinegh meant to the English is difficult adequately to express. Routledge had always been outré and mysterious. The great treachery adjusted itself to him with a degree of readiness, since it is easier to identify a brilliant crime with an individual held loftily, than with one in the more immediate reaches of the public comprehension. But that old Jerry, their dean, their master of many services, their idol and chief, should have turned this appalling trick against the British arms which he had helped to make famous—this was a heart-jolt which bruised the twinings of a hundred sentiments. Feeney was an Irishman, and could understand the Cardinegh-passion, probably better than the others, but he could not understand its expression in treachery. To him there was only one explanation—madness....

They discerned the Pacific from the Hankone mountains, boomed through big, strange towns to Kyoto; then Sasebo, the troop-ships, and the landing at a Korean base, where they learned with bitterness that a second siege of waiting had just begun. The world outside now was but a wordless buzzing of voices, as from a locked room. They were at Anju when the first brush happened at Chengju (a neat little rout of Cossacks). They were at Chengju when Kuroki occupied Wiju, regardless of the growling of the Bear. They were at Yongampho, in the last few hours of April, when Kuroki crossed the Yalu, ten miles northeast, and fought the first great battle, named after the river. Always it was this way—a day or two’s march behind the business-end of the army.

It had been a dead delay in Tokyo; but it was a wait lively with aggravations now—the wisp of fragrant hay forever dangling in scent. An English military attaché arriving late from Seoul brought the word that the cables of the correspondents reached their papers from seven to fifteen days late; and then with lineaments of the text effaced by censorship—stale, egoless, costly messages. At this word one of the American scribes crumpled under the strain and went out into the Yellow Sea in a junk, a mad dream in his brain to meet the sea-god, Togo, face to face. Old Feeney, accustomed to discuss strategies with generals, was spurred to such a distemper that he cabled to be recalled. It is significant that his message was the first of the war to go through the Japanese censor untouched by the blue pencil.

Aye, and when the silent red stream of wounded began to trickle back from the Yalu fight, it required a man to keep himself reined down to a fox-trot. It was color, war-color, this back-throw from the weltering fields. Even this stopped, and Kuroki seemed hung forever in the hills about Fengwangcheng. The civilians breathed hard those weeks, and lived in an atmosphere burned from human rage. Always excepting Trollope, the Blue Boar, who had a feeling for China. He studied the deep, rutty Chinese roads through the hills (back of the army), some of them worn into formidable ravines—eroded by bare human feet and the showers of centuries. There were strange little shrines and monasteries high in those grim hills, and Trollope filled a note-book with their names and history. There are strata of mystery under the cuticle of China of which the raw young mind of the white man can only conceive a tithe—and then only in the ecstasy of concentration. And what names he found—Road of the Purple Emperor; Spring of the Whispering Spirit; Cascade of the Humming-bird’s Wing; Cataract of the Sombre Clouds; Grotto of the Adulteress’ Death—not names of mere flowery choosing, but names made florid by the necessities of a people whose history is so long that a poetic glamour has fallen upon it. And the Blue Boar found much to eat of a weird flavory sort, and kept his poundage.

What strategy was this which held a big, fat, pompous army inactive through a golden month of campaigning like this June? Bingley exclaimed that Kuroki was so inflated by the Yalu victory that he was content to hunt butterflies for the rest of the summer. The rumble of real war reached the writers from time to time. Apparently, the other Japanese generals were not like this gray-haired Fabius—Kuroki of the first army. A man named Oku, it was reported, had landed a second army at Pitsewo, half-way down the east coast of Liaotung, had bored straightway across some devilishly steep passes and cut off the fortress, Port Arthur, from the mainland. The story of this fight was insufferable poison to the white men with Kuroki. It had taken place on a narrow neck of land, where sits high the town of Kinchow, joining the little peninsula of the fortress to the big Liao peninsula above. The rock-collared neck of land is memorable now by a hill called Nanshan—the battle’s name. Oku burned five thousand dead after the fight, but he had cut off Port Arthur for the siege, and made possible the landing of one Nogi with a third Japanese army at Dalny—cheap at twice the price. Japanese gunboats and torpedoes at sea on the west had helped Oku get the strangle-hold on the neck of land, while a Russian fleet had bombarded from the bay on the east. What torture to believe this—that at last in the history of the world armies and navies had met in a single action! It was almost unthinkable to be camping with Kuroki in the ancient Chinese hills, while such a panorama unfolded for the eyes of other men—a battle such as the gods would put on flesh to witness.

Finally the word was brought in by the Chinese, who knew all things, that this jumping-bean, Oku, had left the fortress to Nogi and the third army, and leaped north to join a fourth army, under Nodzu, who had effected a perfect landing at Takushan. Oku whipped poor Stackelberg on the journey, Telissu being the historic title of this incident of his flying march. Thus Yalu, Nanshan, and Telissu were fought without even a smell of smoke for Bingley, Feeney, Finacune, Trollope, and others. It is to be noted that even Trollope blanched at the great war story the world missed by not letting him in on Nanshan. That was one battle for a Tolstoi. The English civilians sat together on a breezy, sweet-scented hill and watched the sun go down on one of those June evenings. Feeney was writing, the pad resting upon his knee.

“What did you say was the name of your new book?” Finacune inquired.

“‘Sitting Tight with Kuroki; or, The Wild Flowers of Manchuria,’” grumbled the old man.

Into the group presently came Major Inuki, the Japanese officer assigned to watch over the correspondents, to see that none escaped, to see that none learned anything but generalities, to furnish unlimited courtesy and apologetic ramifications that stretched from Kirin to Port Arthur. Inuki also supplied universes of unverifiable information, having to do with vague Japanese miracles and vast Russian casualties. He took off his hat now and bowed all around, inhaled a long breath with a hiss through his sparkling teeth, and snuffled violently.

“It iss more dan quite possible we will remain here for to-morr’, my dear fren’s. In such case would it not be of good to instruk your servan’s to ereck the tents—more stolidity?”

Feeney reached over and gravely clutched the flapping trouser-leg of his Chinese coolie. “Jean Valjean,” he said, “you are instruk to ereck tents—more stolidity.”

“Me plentee slabee,” said Jean.

The odor of supper was abroad in the camp of the noncombatants, and the twilight was deep in the valley of young corn. Feeney and Finacune ate in silence. These two were closer together—close as only two male adults can be who have lived long alone in broad areas, sharing toil and irritation and peril; apart from women, but akin in memories and ambition. Feeney had ridden with the greatest of the nineteenth-century generals. He was being herded now close to war, but out of range of any good to his calling. He was thinking of Nanshan—what a battle to have added to his string! Finacune was thinking of the world’s greatest woman—how she had come down like a spirit to the billiard-room that last night in Tokyo—and with what exacting zeal she had caused him and the others to cable away the last vestige of glory from the name she bore.

“Blot up another piece of tea, Feeney,” he muttered, “and cheer up.”

“I was just about to suggest, my vivid young friend, that if you spilled any more gloom on this outfit, I should burst into tears,” Feeney replied.

There was a long silence. “What?” said Feeney.

“I’m a hare-lipped cock-roach, if it isn’t wonderful!” Finacune observed in an awed tone.

“What?”

“Suppose now—just now—suppose a white woman—all in a soft summer gown and blowing golden hair—should walk through this camp? Think of it!”

“I did—twenty years ago,” said Feeney.

“Think of it now,” Finacune persisted raptly, leaning back against his saddle with a pot of tea in his hand. “The mere sight of her would jam a sweetheart or a wife, or both, into the brain of every man present—the first kiss or a last, dim light somewhere, a word or a caress—the unspeakable miracle that comes to every man some time—that of a woman giving herself to him!... Ah, that’s it, you old crocodile! It would all come back on live wires—if a woman walked through here—to each man his romance—hot throats, dry lips, and burning eyes. The world holds a woman for us all—even for you, yoked to the war-hag; and if memories were tangible, the right woman would sweep in upon us to-night from five continents and seven seas. A woman! The mere name is a pang to us lonely devils out here in the open, where we blister with hate because we are not allowed to smell blood. Hell!—one would think I had just broken out of a gas-house.”

“Twenty years ago——” Feeney remarked.

“Hark, listen to that young American sing——”

“You listen to me, young man,” Feeney said forcefully. “These lines, with which I am about to cleanse you from carnality are by my young friend Kipling:

“‘Sing the heretical song I have made,’” Finacune added, entirely uncooled.... “I’ve heard fat London club men expatiate for hours on what they might have done if they hadn’t married—the beasts! They couldn’t talk that way to us, sons of Hagar, out here in this unsexed wilderness! I’d tell ’em what it would mean to me—to be married to one woman! It would mean more to me to be allowed to listen to whispered revelations from one woman’s lips—than——”

“Dam’ you, quiet down!”

“Guess I better had.”

“Shall we have a hand at crib?” Feeney asked softly.

“Not now—please.”

There was a dusky splash of red in the sky beyond the western hills, and a faint red foam above. The evening was soft and sweet, and tobacco as fragrant as tropical islands.

“Gad! I’m red-blooded,” Finacune murmured after a moment. “I could squeeze milk out of a pound note. I’d like to see a dog-fight. If there’s a man-fight to-morrow, I’ll throttle Nookie-san, slide down into the stoke-hold, and see how this new brand of fighter shovels hell.”

“If you leave the woman behind,” Feeney grumbled, “I’ll go with you.”

“A man is an awful animal—when he’s fit as I am,” Finacune added. “The gang is certainly moonstruck to-night. Listen to that ungodly American sun-spotter sing.”

“That’s just the point—her star’ll be shining—only, it may not,” Finacune whispered.

Feeney disdained to answer. Presently Major Inuki appeared again and announced guilelessly:

“Gentlema’—my dear fren’s, our gen’ral express himself prepare to greet your illustrious peersonages—one and every one—in his quarters at once. Would you be deigned to follow my poor leadership?”

“Holy Father!—where’s my dress-suit?” Feeney asked with a start.

“Such an honor does not increase our chances for watching the next battle at close-range,” observed Finacune.

Nookie-san led them through the dust past innumerable battalions, until on a rising trail the sentries became as thick as fire-flies. After a twenty-minute walk they reached the summit of a commanding hill. At the entrance of a large tent paper-lanterns were hung, and below in the light Kuroki’s staff was gathered. Felicitations endured for several moments; then an inspired hush dominated all. The flap of the tent was drawn aside, and a small, gray-haired man of stars emerged stiffly. His eyes were bent toward the turf and thus he stood motionless beneath the lanterns for several seconds.

“General Kuroki,” spoke Inuki in a low voice.

The general raised his eyes for just an instant—great, tired, burning, black eyes with heavy rolled lids—bowed slightly, then backed into the tent.

“Now, there’s a man with no carnal lust in him,” Feeney commented to his companion. “He has commanded his wife and family not to write him from Japan, lest their letters distract attention from his work at hand.”

“And he drowned a thousand men crossing the Yalu,” remarked Finacune.

Bingley passed them with the remark, “I wonder if God has the dignity of Kuroki?”

Long afterward, when silence and stars lay upon the hills, there was still a low whispering in the tent of Feeney and Finacune.

“I wonder where the great frieze coat is this night?” came with a yawn from the old man.

“God knows,” Finacune replied. “Alone in the dark somewhere—unearthing great tales to be printed under a strange name. If any one finds them, it will be Dartmore, and his roots will wither because they are not in the Review. Or——” The little man halted suddenly. He had been about to add that a woman was apt to find them. Instead he said, “Alone in the dark somewhere, hiding from the wrath of the world—unless somebody’s hunted him down to tell him that he’s clean and desirable again.”

“I’d like to see the great frieze coat this night,” said Feeney in a listless tone, as if he had not listened to the other.

“I’d like to have been the one—to find him for her.”

“There never was a nobler thing done for a woman—than Routledge did,” the old man went on, after a pause.

“There never was a nobler woman,” breathed the florid one.