Red Fleece | Page 6

popular with our kind of press. We are not servants of the minority or the elect. You'll find Boylan exploiting the army he's with--just as another might have done under Napoleon. By the way, where are you going to-night?"
"I'm going to sit at the feet of the most genial anarchist at large. His name is Fallows, an American, who has been ten years in Russia among the peasants."
"Duke Fallows--I know of him. When did he come to town?"
"Two days ago."
"Peter, how did you get next?" Lonegan looked a bit in awe at the other.
"I was asked to one of his private audiences last night."
Peter knew that Lonegan had many things to ask by the quick tone in which he spoke the first question.
"You know what Fallows will do to you?"
"Yes, if one lets go. He has learned how to use his power. He has brought forth his young upon the bare rocks, as somebody said."
"He'd turn an angel into an anarchist."
"A man ought not to be afraid to listen if there's a chance for him to be proved wrong--"
"Correct, absolutely. I am merely thinking about our job."
"A man gets in the habit of thinking about his job--doesn't he?"
"Did he tell you about the plowman of Liaoyang?"
"No, but my companion did. Fallows must have seen that episode rather clearly."
"Let's not get off the job business, Peter. As I was saying, the truth isn't popular--"
"That doesn't sound like Lonegan."
"No, and I don't like the feel of saying it, but it's very much to the point--"
"Possibly."
"Mowbray, we are taking our bread, and its cake, too, from a paper that expects us to exploit the orthodox heroics. The pity and atrocious sham of it all has its side. But the fact still remains its side does not furnish the stuff that American newspapers pay men and cable tolls to furnish."
"Won't you come to-night?" Peter asked laughing. "Perhaps we can both reach the high point some day when we have earned the right to be poor."
"That's a higher point than I dream of, Peter. I can't help but think what a nest you've got into. Of course, I mean with Fallows and his kind--"
"An eagle's nest."
"But the eaglets are starving."
"Heretofore the job has been served. Come along with me and meet Duke Fallows again--"
"No. I must go back to the wire for the present. Boylan would be shocked, too. By the way, I've got a bid in for you with General Kohlvihr. Boylan is to help me put it through, of course. The more decorated they are the more they fall for Boylan. There's a chance that you'll start south with a column within two days. So you'd better get at that encyclopedia stuff--"
"Yes, I'll attend to that."
Peter left him smiling, and turned his steps across the Square, into a narrow street of the poor quarter, and on toward a little room and a low lamp, where a woman's hands sewed magically as she waited.
Chapter 5
Fallows met them in his small bleak room, turned the lamp low, and opened the door of the diminutive wood-stove to let the firelight in the room. The three sat around it.... Peter Mowbray felt strange and young beside them. The woman seemed to belong to this world, and it was a world at war with every existing power. All Peter's training resisted stubbornly. Still, right or wrong, there was a nobility about their stand. He did not need to be sure their vision was absolutely true, yet the suspicion developed that they saw more clearly than he, and acted more purely. Mowbray did not lack anything of valor, but he lacked the fire somehow. He loved Berthe Solwicz, could have made every sacrifice for her, but that was a concrete thing.
Fallow's bony knees were close to the fire. He seemed both light and deep, often turning to Peter with secret intentness, and openly regarding the young woman with amazement and delight. Nearing fifty, Fallows was tall, thin and tanned. The deep lines of his face were those which make a man look homely to himself, but often interesting to others. His soft, low-collared shirt was somewhat of a spectacle in consideration of the angular and weathered neck. No rest could exist in the room that contained such loneliness as burned from his eyes. It was said that he had been rich, though everything about him was poor now. One would suspect the articles in his pockets to be meager and of poor quality--the things you might find in a peasant's coat. That which he called home was a peasant's house in the Bosk hills--the house of the plowman of Liaoyang, whose children he fathered. Annually, however, he went abroad, telling the story of the underdog, usually making the big circuit from the East to the West, and stopping at