Red Fleece | Page 7

a certain little cabin within hearing distance of the whistles of Manhattan, where his first disciple worked in solitude mainly, and against the stream. Just now Fallows was planning a different winter's work.... They talked of the first fighting.
"The startling thing to realize is that for the present we are allied with England," said Fallows. "I mean Russia. You see, I am Russian, now, not the Russia of the Bear, but of the Man--"
Mowbray and the woman exchanged glances, each thinking of the tea-cup in the afternoon.... The exile showed traces of his ten years' training among simple men. Rhetoric and dithyramb were gone from his speech and habit of mind. The whole study and vision of the man was to make his words plain. Thus he said slowly:
"The peasants are children--children in mind and soul. We who have come a little farther are responsible for them, as a father is responsible for his children. So far we have wronged them, taught them to grasp instead of to give, to look down instead of up. We have even stolen from them the fruits of their looking down. The time is near at hand when we shall have to pay for all this.... A true father would die for his children. I know men who have done that, and there are men about us here, even in Warsaw tonight, who are ready for that--"
Fallows' voice was tender. He watched the face of the woman as he spoke. She was looking hard into the fire.
Fallows added: "There are fifty million men here in Russia--roughly speaking. Very strong, very simple, possibly very brutal men, but brutal as a fine dog is brutal, a simplicity about that. I do not idealize them. I have lived among them. I know this: They might be led to virtue, instead of to wickedness. My heart bleeds for them being led to slaughter again. The hard thing is to make them see, but the reason for that is simple, too. If they could see--they would not be children. They must be led. Never in modern history have they been purely led. Words cannot make them see; wars so far have not made them see. It may be that the sufferings and heroisms of this war shall be great enough to make them see...."
"What would you have the peasants see first?" Peter asked.
"Their real fathers--that men of wisdom and genius are the true fathers of the Fatherland, not the groups of predatory men. True fathers would die for their children. To me it has been blasphemy, when the nations of the past have called themselves Fatherlands. I would have the peasants fathered by men who realize that the peasants are the strength and salt of the earth; men who realize that the plan of life is good--that the plan of life is for concord and service each to the other--that the hate of man for man is the deadly sin, the hell of the world--that the fields and all the treasures of the mother earth are for those who serve and aspire, and not for those who hold fast, look down and covet more."
Mowbray was interested in the fact that Fallows had passed the stage of eloquence and scorn and burning hatred against evil in persons and institutions. There was no hue and cry about his convictions. He seemed to live in continual amazement at the slowness with which the world moves--the slowness to a man who is ahead and trying to pull his people along. Moreover there was that final wisdom which Fallows revealed from time to time--momentary loss of the conviction that he himself was immortally right. Fallows saw, indeed, that a man may be atrociously out of plumb, even to the point of becoming a private and public nuisance, when allowed to feed too long alone on the strong diet of his own convictions.... An hour sped by. Fallows replenished the fire and turned to Berthe Solwicz.
"All evening you've had something in your mind to tell me and I've been giving forth. You must forgive a man for so many words--when he has been living with little children so long. What is it?"
"Just a reading of a tea-cup to-day--but everything you said has its meaning concerned in it."
"I'm almost as interested in tea-cups as in the stars," said Fallows.
"You know a toy-bear, such as the Germans make?"
"Yes--"
"Well, it would have been like that--if one were thinking of toys. We thought of the Russian Bear. It was perfect--in the bottom of the cup --standing up, walking like a man--huge paunch, thick paws held out pathetically, legs stretched out, just as he would be, rocking, you know--"
Fallows bowed seriously. Mowbray turned his smile to the shadows.
"Near him," Berthe added, "was a Russian soldier--perfect--fur cap, high boots, tightly belted,