Red Fleece

Red Fleece, by Will Levington
Comfort

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red Fleece, by Will Levington
Comfort Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to
check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or
redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Red Fleece
Author: Will Levington Comfort
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6351] [Yes, we are more than

one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on November 29,
2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED
FLEECE ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.

RED FLEECE
BY
WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT Author of "Midstream," "Down
Among Men," "Fate Knocks At the Door," "Routledge Rides Alone,"
Etc., Etc.
1915,
TO THE HOUR--WHEN TROOPS TURN HOME

CONTENTS
I. THE WOMAN AND THE EXILE
II. THE COURT OF EXECUTION
III. THE HOUSE OF AMPUTATIONS

IV. IN THE BOMB-PROOF PIT
V. THE SKYLIGHT PRISON
VI. THE FIELD OF HELMETS
VII. THE GREEN OF CEDARS

I
THE WOMAN AND THE EXILE
Peter Mowbray first saw her at the corner of Palace Square nearest the
river. He was not in the least the kind of young man who appraises
passing women, very far from a starer. At the instant their eyes met, his
thoughts had been occupied with work matters and the trickery of
events. In fact, there was so much to do that he resented the intrusion,
found himself hoping in the first flash that she would show some flaw
to break the attraction.
It may have been that her eyes were called to the passer-by just as his
had been, without warning or volition. In any event their eyes met full,
leisurely in that stirring silence before the consciousness of self, time,
place and convention rushes in. ... Though she seemed very poor, there
was something about her beyond reach in nobility. He was left with the
impression of the whitest skin, the blackest hair and the reddest lips,
but mainly of a gray-eyed girl--eyes that had become wider and wider,
and had filled with sudden amazement (doubtless at her own answering
look) before they turned away.
Desolation was abroad in Warsaw after this encounter. Mowbray
thought of New York with loneliness, the zest gone from all present
activity. Presently with curious grip his thoughts returned to a certain
luncheon in New York with a tired literary man who had talked about
women with the air of a connoisseur. The pith of the writer's
observations was restored to his mind in this form:

"If I were to marry again it would be to a Latin woman--French, Italian,
even Spanish--a close-to-nature woman born and bred in one of the
Mediterranean countries. Not a blue-blood, for that has to do with
decadence, but a woman of the people. They are passionate but pure, as
Poe would say. If they find a man of any value, he becomes their world.
They are strong natural mothers--mothering their children and their
husband, too,--and immune to common sicknesses. Given a little food,
they know enough to prepare it with art. If a man has a bit of a dream
left, such a woman will either make him forget it painlessly, or she will
make it come true."
There was no apparent relation, and none that proved afterward. What
he had seen at the corner of Palace Square nearest the Vistula was not
the face of a Latin woman, nor was any looseness of common birth
evident in it. The key might have had to do with the little hat she wore,
just a hat for wearing on the head, a protection against sun and rain, and
with the austerely simple black dress; but these weathered exteriors
again were effective in contrast to the vivid freshness of her natural
coloring. As for what remained of the literary man's picture of the ideal
woman to marry, it was the last word of decadence--the eminent
selfishness of a man willing to accept the luxury of a woman who asks
little to be happy. ...