THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1918 (continued 6)

It was from old Mr. Ewing of Dubuque that I had my first news of Corey after that night in the Paris hotel.

He must have gone back to his army in the Balkans the next day, for we were to have seen him that night again in case he had to stay over, and when I asked I was told that Monsieur had gone.

Things kept reminding me of him. The names of streets and places in Paris recalled his flat American mispronunciation of them—mispronunciations which sounded half as if he were in fun and half as if he didn’t know any better, or hadn’t paid enough attention to learn them correctly. I believe he saw, or was subconsciously aware of, his own incongruity. Still, one would think he’d have become, so to speak, accustomed to himself in the strange rôle by then.

I think I must have spoken of him rather often to people, so long as I remained in Paris; and it was, if not exactly curious, at least a little less than one would expect, that I never came in contact with any one else who knew him, until that day, a little while ago, when I met, in the smoking-car of a west-bound train out of Chicago, the man who told me all there was, or ever will be, for any man to tell about Corey.

He may have been sitting there near me all the time; I don’t know. But then he was not the kind of man one notices in a smoking-car, or any other place, for that matter. Certainly you would never suspect that so gray and uninteresting an envelope could inclose the manuscript of a story like Corey’s. You had seen hundreds like him before, and you knew what they contained—stereotyped circular letters full of dull, indisputable facts, nothing you wanted or cared to know. And it was precisely because I wished later on one of those very dull facts that I came to speak to my man.

The train coming to a sudden stop brought me out of my oblivion, and, looking idly out of the window to see what place it might be, I was seized by one of those fits of petty annoyance incident to such interruptions, for the train had run so far past the platform that I found it impossible to see the name of the station. I got myself out of my comfortable position, and tried, by turning completely about, to see back to the station. But we had gone too far. And then—I haven’t an idea why, for it was of absolutely no importance to me—I looked about for some one to ask. And nearest me, sitting rather uncomfortably upright in his big leather chair, the little rack at his elbow guiltless of any glass, and holding listlessly in his hand the latest popular magazine, sat a gray-haired, gray-suited old gentleman, looking lonesomely out of his window.

“I beg pardon,” I said. “Can you tell me what place this is?”

He turned gratefully at the sound of my voice. “It’s ——,” he told me. I’ve never been able to recall what name he said, because, I suppose, of what came after.

It was certainly not surprising that he should think, from my manner, that I had some interest in the place, and he went on, after a moment’s hesitating silence, to say, in his unobtrusive but unmistakable Middle-West voice, that the town was a milling center—flour and meal, and that kind of thing.

I saw that I had committed myself to something more in the way of conversation than my laconic word of thanks for his information and a lapse into silence. I wondered what I could say. He was such a nice, kindly old gentleman, and he would never in the world have addressed any one first. I hit upon the most obvious sequence, and asked if, then, he was familiar with that part of the country. He said, oh yes, he was “a native of Iowa.”

“Indeed?” I said, for lack of anything else to say, and his statement not having been a particularly provocative one.

“Yes,” he said. “My home is Dubuque.”

Dubuque! Dubuque! What was it I knew about Dubuque? The name struck me instantly with a sense of importance, as if it had rung the bell of a target concealed out of sight. I sought about in my mind for a full minute before I recalled, with a kind of start—Corey.

So many things had come in between—bigger things than any one man—and overlaid all the pictures that had gone before. Overlaid them with pigment so crude, so roughly applied, that one neither saw nor remembered anything else. All the nations of Europe loosed in the Great War, and America straining hard at her worn leash of neutrality. Small wonder that Corey, of Dubuque, along with countless other memories of that pale time, had faded into a dim, far perspective.

And yet, the sound of that name had brought him—as clearly as I had seen him that night in Paris—before me. I heard his voice, felt the vigor of his personality, saw him throw back his head and laugh. And here, in the chair next my own, and ready to talk, sat a man who, by every rule of probability and chance, would be able to tell me about him.

“I know a townsman of yours,” I said, and he evinced at once a kind of mild and flattered surprise.

“From Dubuque?” he said. “Well, well! What’s his name?”

“Corey,” I said. “Doctor Corey.”

It had upon him a most unexpected effect; very much, it seemed, the same effect his announcement had had upon me the moment before. He leaned forward no more than an inch, but his mild gray eyes kindled with a kind of excited intensity.

“You knew Jim Corey! Not here—not in Dubuque?”

“I met him in Paris,” I said, “quite a long while ago.”

“In Paris! Well, well—think of that!”

He shook his head, and regarded me suddenly with a stronger and new kind of interest. I was, apparently, the first person he had ever encountered who had really known Corey abroad, and I could see that the fact had established me immediately in his mind as an intimate friend of Corey’s. I suppose I should have told him that I had only seen Corey once; that I couldn’t, as a matter of fact, claim more than a passing acquaintance. But if I had, I should never have heard what I heard. And, anyway, it wouldn’t have been, in the sense in which such things count, exactly true—for it had never been, for me at least, a one night’s acquaintance. I had seemed to know Corey better in that one night than one knows most men in a month of companionship. Yes, it was something more than the curiosity of a passing acquaintance that caused me to let the old fellow keep his impression.

“It’s queer,” he said, suddenly, throwing up his head, and pressing open the pages of his popular magazine as if he were about to begin to read, “he was a kind of relative of mine. His father and I—third cousins on our mothers’ side.” He broke off and regarded me again silently, and I believe now that he was trying to persuade himself not to go on, not to say anything more. But the temptation, the maximum, I might say, of temptation, combined with the minimum of danger that he should ever see me again, overcame his natural shyness and discretion. He seemed to decide, upon my ejaculation, to go on.

“His house is just ’round the corner from mine. His wife lives there now.”

“His wife!” The surprise was plain enough in my voice. And this seemed, just for a second, to surprise him, too.

“You knew,” he said, “that he had married?”

I explained that I hadn’t seen Corey for several years, and added that I had, however, understood that he was thinking of settling down. It put, I could see, a different face upon what he had to tell, for he seemed to adjust himself, as if he must now go back to something he had thought already understood between us.

“You didn’t know, then,” he said, “that he was dead?”

Dead! Corey dead! So that was what he had to tell. There sprang up in my mind a vague, indefinite vision of something heroic in connection with the Great War. When, I asked, and where did he die?

“A little over three months ago, in Europe. I was his executor.”

There was something in the way he made his last statement which lent it a kind of special importance. And it proved, indeed, in the end, the fact of supreme importance. And here, as if it were due me, he told me his name—Ewing; and I told him mine.

“Yes,” he said. “I made a trip to New York to see a man who’d been with him before he died. He brought a message from Corey. Queer,” he said, “that message. He must have been—a little off, you know, at the last.”

It was clear that something had occurred on his trip to New York which had puzzled him then, and continued, in spite of his explanation, to puzzle him still. It was evident in the way he went back, presently, to the beginning, as if he were stating a problem or building up a case.

He began by saying that he supposed nobody in Dubuque ever had understood Corey—“and yet”—he faced me—“you wouldn’t say he was hard to understand?”

I said that he had seemed to me to have an extremely straightforward and simple personality; that that, to me, had been one of his charms.

“Exactly!” he said, “exactly! That’s what we always thought in Dubuque—and I’ve known Jim Corey since the day he was born. Why, he’d go away on one of his trips, and stay a year, sometimes two, and the day after he’d get back you’d think he’d never been out of Dubuque, except he was so glad to be home.”

And, talking with a growing and homely fluency, the nasal quality of his rather pleasant voice increasing according to the sharpness of his interest, he proceeded to sketch in, with the fine brush of his provincialism, all the details of that picture I had had so clearly of Corey that night in Paris, more than four years before.

It was astonishing how right my picture had been; how they, who had known him always, had been no better able than I to visualize Corey outside Dubuque.

And it seemed to have been the merest chance which had led him, the year of his graduation from medical school, to take his first trip away from his native State. He had “put himself” through college, and had come out with all the school had to give, wanting more. It was doubtful if Corey had ever read a novel through in his life, but the college library yielded up treasures in scientific and medical books whose plots he remembered as easily as boarding-school girls remember the plots of Laura Jean Libbey.

In the end he had happened to be engrossed in some experiments or other with herbs, and it was that which led him to decide upon going to China. He was going to study Chinese herbs. And he had gone, straight, without any stops en route, as he did everything. But when he had been in Pekin two weeks the Boxer Rebellion broke out, and there he was in the thick of it; and a god-send he was, too, in the foreign legations, fighting and caring for wounded by turns, day and night, youth and strength and his fresh fine skill counting for ten in that beleaguered handful of desperate men.

It was for that he had got his first decoration—Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, and a little later had come from France, for the same service, and quite to the surprise of Corey, the scarlet ribbon of the Legion of Honor.

There had been, of course, the appropriate furore—pictures and full-page interviews in the San Francisco papers on his way home, and Dubuque expecting to see him come back transformed, a hero, conscious of honors won. But he had arrived, to their amazement, merely himself, and they had accepted him, after a day or two, at his own valuation.

That was the first, and it seemed after that, although he was always off to one of the far corners of the earth, they were never able to look upon him when he came home as a distinguished traveler returned. He was simply, as he seemed to wish to be, “Jim,” or sometimes “Doc” Corey come home again. And yet they knew about the things he had done. They knew where he had been. And they knew, too, about his decorations. They had seen them on one or two occasions, when he had been the guest of the evening at the “Business Men’s Banquet,” and he had “dressed up,” the old gentleman said, in a full-dress suit and all his decorations. “Two rows, all kinds, by then.” One could imagine him doing that, in a spirit of comic masquerade. And one could imagine him also doing it merely to please them.

His wife, after he was married, used to get out his decorations and show them to her women friends, and at this Corey only laughed good-humoredly. But she never showed them to men; she seemed to sense how that would embarrass him.

I asked when he had married her, and who she was.

She had been visiting friends, he said, in Dubuque, when Corey came back, he believed, from the Balkan War, in the spring of 1913. Pretty quick work they made of it, too. In August that same summer they had the wedding at her house in Des Moines. But it had surprised nobody. They knew he’d been wanting to settle down; and she was just the right kind of girl—nice and wholesome, and fond of her home. At last, he said, he was going to begin to live.

He had dropped at once into his place, exactly as if he had never been away at all—as if, after his graduation, he had come home to practise his profession. There was nothing even about his house to indicate the traveler; no obtrusive trophies of strange lands; no bizarre knick-knacks. In a room in the attic were a half-full dunnage-bag, a traveler’s kit, and an officer’s trunk, small size, the lid pressed down but warped a little so that it would not lock. And in the corner three pairs of heavy, discarded boots, gathering dust. That was all.

And he was happy; naturally, sanely, unaffectedly happy. There was no room for doubt about that. “Honesty,” Mr. Ewing called it. He used that word over and over again in relation to Corey’s psychology at that time. “And there wasn’t,” he said, “a hypocritical bone in Jim Corey’s body.” One could see what he meant, and see, too, that it had, in his mind, some obscure bearing on what came after.

He waited a little here before he went on, as if he were going over to himself incidents too trivial to relate, but which would not separate themselves from his memory of Corey in those days.

“Well,” he began, abruptly, rousing himself from his secret contemplation, “there was that winter, nineteen-thirteen, and the next summer, nineteen-fourteen; and then the European war began.”

“And he went!” I supplemented, involuntarily, since from the trend of the narrative I had, of course, seen that coming.

“No,” said Mr. Ewing in a surprisingly quiet tone of contradiction. “No, he didn’t. I was like you. I thought he’d go.”

“You thought he would!” I exclaimed, for it seemed to me he had just been trying to make me see how unshakably he had believed Corey to be fixed in Dubuque.

“Certainly,” he said. “You’d think it would be only natural he’d want to go. Wouldn’t you?” he asked, as if he had detected in my expression some disposition not to agree.

“I would,” I said, still wondering at the ease with which he had brushed aside what I had foreseen was to be his climax. For my imagination had long since outrun his story to the end of the usual domestic tragedy, wherein Corey had, at the first call of adventure, forsaken without a word his home and his wife, to find (had not Mr. Ewing told me in the very beginning of his death, three months before, some place in Europe?) his abrupt and unexpected dénouement.

There had been, then, something else. “But he did,” I put forth, “finally go? You said, I think, that he died over there?”

“Oh yes—finally. But that, you see, wasn’t what counted. It wasn’t the same. It was the way he went.”

“The way?” I repeated.

“Yes. He didn’t go the way, I mean, that I thought he’d go. The way you thought, too.”

I said I didn’t understand; that I couldn’t see what difference it made how he went, so long as he did go in the end.

“It made all the difference,” said Mr. Ewing. “You see, he didn’t rush off, at the first news of the fighting, the way you’d think a man would. Why, we used to read the papers and talk over the war news together, and every day I’d expect to hear him say something about going. He knew all the places, and the way everything was over there, but he never seemed to care to be there himself. He used to come round to my house just before supper-time in the evenings and we’d sit on the porch and talk, or maybe I’d go round to his porch. I asked him one day if he didn’t want to go, and all he said was, ‘Why should I?’ And I said I didn’t know, it seemed to me that he would. And he said he was comfortable for the first time in his life; he never had liked bumping around in all sorts of places; hated it as a matter of fact. I asked him why, if that was the case, he’d kept it up for so long, all those years; and he laughed, and said he didn’t know; he never had been able to figure that out.”

Mr. Ewing fell silent here, tapping his right foot on the carpet a little impatiently and looking speculatively, yet without seeing, at me. I had the impression that he felt he had utterly failed, up to now, in making some subtle point in his story clear, and was considering how best he might make me see. I was sure of it when, after a longish pause, he continued, for he seemed to have decided upon the abandonment of subtleties altogether, and to give me, for my own interpretation, the facts as they occurred.

Things had gone on without any change all that winter and the next summer. In August Corey went to some sort of convention of medical men in Philadelphia. He was to have been gone something over two weeks. At the end of that time Mrs. Corey had received a letter saying that some experiments in which he was specially interested had developed rather unexpectedly, and Corey, together with several others, had been detailed to stay on and work them out to their conclusion. He couldn’t say just how many days it would take; he would let her know.

At the end of another two weeks Corey was still away. The first phase of the experiments had unhappily come to grief, and they had had to begin from the first again. It was annoying, but since they had gone into it, there was nothing else to be done. He would leave for home on the moment of the work’s completion. Meantime there would be little opportunity for letter-writing. She was not to worry.

As the days went on Mrs. Corey began to regret not having gone along in the beginning, as he had wanted her to do. Mr. Ewing stopped in now and then to inquire. Her reticence made him wonder if she might not be hearing. It was plain that she did worry, but, as Mr. Ewing said, she was not the talkative kind.

And then, one morning, just two months from the day he had left, Corey arrived unexpectedly by the ten-fifty train. Mr. Ewing, passing the house on his way home that evening, had been surprised to see Corey, in his shirt-sleeves, trimming shrubs in the garden. And he had stopped to welcome him back, and they had talked about the war in quite the old way, so that from that evening on it was exactly the same as it had been before Corey had gone to his convention in Philadelphia.

It appears that all this time a very natural intimacy was growing up between these two, gentle old Mr. Ewing and Corey. And I can imagine that Corey, who became, as it were, the instantaneous friend of every one, had made in his life very few actual contacts, few, if any, real and intimate friendships. And perhaps that was why this friendship, based as it was on such small outward manifestations as talking over the news in the daily papers together, had prospered. Then, too, there was the relationship, distant enough to be free of demands.

Corey had returned from the Philadelphia trip the last week in October. It was on a Sunday afternoon near the middle of December that Mr. Ewing, sitting reading his weekly illustrated paper, looked up to see through the window Corey coming quickly along the walk. Mr. Ewing was struck by something peculiar in his friend’s appearance, something hurried in the set of his hat and overcoat, yet as if he himself were entirely unconscious of haste.

He turned in at the gate, and Mr. Ewing got up and opened the door. Corey came through it, Mr. Ewing said, as if escaping from something outside, something of which he was physically afraid. He almost pushed past Mr. Ewing and into the room, and with scarcely a glance to make sure they were alone, he spoke, and his voice was strained like a note on a too taut violin string:

“She’s found it! This—where I’d had it hid!”

He held extended in his open hand, as if there were no longer any reason for concealing it from any one, what appeared to Mr. Ewing’s bewildered eyes to be a bit of ribbon, striped green and red, and a bit of bronze metal attached.

“What is it?” he asked, stupefied by the completeness of the change that had come upon the man before him.

“It’s the Croix!” Corey’s voice was impatient, “The Croix de Guerre!”

Mr. Ewing stared at the bright-colored thing, trying to comprehend. Corey still held it outstretched in his hand, and the bronze Maltese cross with its crossed swords slipped through his fingers and hung down. Corey’s voice was going on. Mr. Ewing had missed something.

“... So now she knows,” was the end of what he heard—and in that instant his eye caught the words engraved on the cross, République Française, and the full meaning of its being there in Corey’s hand burst suddenly upon him.

The new French decoration! The Croix de Guerre!

“You’ve been there?” he managed to say. “You’ve been over there?”

“How else would I get it?” said Corey, with a kind of abandon, as if he were confessing now to some fullness of shame. “You see, she’s right. I couldn’t resist.”

Mr. Ewing was lost. “Resist what?”

“This!” Corey closed his fingers now on the Croix. “A new decoration!”

And then, as if every atom of his great, strong body had suddenly succumbed to some long-growing exhaustion, Corey dropped down into a chair and threw out his arm across the table as if he would put away from him as far as possible that offending decoration.

“But when?”—Mr. Ewing found himself reiterating—“when—when—you haven’t been away—”

“Oh, yes,” said Corey. “You remember, in August.”

And here Mr. Ewing confessed that he thought for a moment that Corey must be hopelessly mad. There was the question of time, and a dozen other questions besides. It seemed out of the realm of possibility, out of the realm of reason.

“How did you keep her from knowing?”

Mr. Ewing had not wanted to ask—had hoped the point would explain itself—and Corey looked for a moment as if he might be planning an evasion—then braced himself and looked Mr. Ewing straight in the eyes. A faint expression of scorn came round his mouth, as if he spoke of another—a scoundrel who hardly deserved his scorn.

“I left letters—dated ahead—with the scrubwoman at the laboratory to mail.” He said it, took his eyes from Mr. Ewing’s, and then he appeared to wait.

Mr. Ewing sat there filled with a kind of amazement, touched with fear for what should come next, and suddenly he became conscious that Corey was watching him with what seemed a tremendous anxiety, waiting for him to speak. And a moment later, apparently no longer able to bear that silence, Corey leaned nervously toward Mr. Ewing, and asked in the tone of one seeking an answer of utmost importance: “You don’t see it? You don’t see what she saw?”

“See what?” said Mr. Ewing—“what who saw?” Yet he knew that Corey had meant his wife. It was she who had found the Croix ... but what did he mean she had seen?

“Don’t keep it back—just to be decent! She said it was plain, plain enough for anybody to see. What I want to know is if everybody knew it but me!”

“Knew what?” cried poor Mr. Ewing, lost more completely now than before.

“Knew why I’ve done all the things I’ve done—run all the risks. Why I went over there this time, in August, without letting her know—God knows I didn’t know why!—why I’ve always gone!”

“Why have you?” The question asked itself.

“Because I wanted the decorations! The damned orders and medals and things! Because I couldn’t resist getting a new one—wherever I saw a chance. Do you believe a man could be as—as rotten as that, all his life, and not know it himself?”

Slowly, then, Mr. Ewing began to see. And remotely it began to dawn upon him—the thing “she” in her anger had done. For there was no doubt that the thing was done. The man’s faith and belief in himself, in the cleanness and simplicity of his own motives, were gone—and gone in a single devastating blow from which he had not, and could never, recover. And, searching for the right thing to say, Mr. Ewing stumbled, as one always will, upon the one thing he should never have said:

“But you know better than that. You know it’s not so.”

Corey’s answer was not argumentative; it only stated, wearily, the fact which from the first had seemed to possess his mind:

“No, I don’t know it’s not so. I’ve never been able to give any reasons for doing the things myself. You’ve asked me why.... I couldn’t tell.”

“Why, it was youth,” said Mr. Ewing, and one can imagine him saying it, gently, as an old-fashioned physician might offer his homely remedy to a patient whose knowledge exceeded his own. “Men do those things when they’re young.”

And Corey, rejecting the simple, old-fashioned cure, made an attempt at a smile for the kindness in which it was offered. “All men are young, some time,” he said; “all men don’t do them.”

“But you happened to be the kind who would.” And at this Corey made no attempt to smile.

“That’s it!” he said. “I wasn’t the kind. I was the kind to stay at home.... I know that. I was always happier here in Dubuque. And now—this last— You’d hardly say that was on account of my youth!”

“No—but it had got into your blood.”

Corey at this gave a start and looked up suddenly at Mr. Ewing. “Into my blood— It’s the very word she used! When she admitted I might not have known it myself, she said she supposed it was just ‘in my blood’!”

He made a gesture which began violently and ended in futility, and sat silent, looking off steadily into space, as if hearing again all those dreadful revelations of hers. And once or twice Mr. Ewing, who sat helplessly by, waiting, perhaps praying, for some inspiration, made a valiant but utterly vain effort to put out his hand, to show by some mere physical act, if no other, his unshaken belief in his friend.

And so, when the need for speech had become imperative, Mr. Ewing found himself saying something to the effect that these things pass; that she had only been angry, and had said the first thing that had come into her mind. And Corey, realizing the extremity into which he had led his friend, rose and, either ignoring or not hearing, from the depth of the chasm into which he had fallen, Mr. Ewing’s last remark, made some hurried attempt at apology, and awkwardly moved toward the door.

Mr. Ewing had only been able to follow after, and say, lamely, and in spite of himself, that he mustn’t say or do anything he might be sorry for, and that they would see each other again. And then he stood in the open door and watched Corey go down the path to the gate, and along the walk, until he had turned the corner, and so out of sight.

And then he had gone back into the house and spent the remainder of that afternoon trying to realize what had passed, trying to decide upon what he should say the next time they met.

But he had reached no conclusion, and in the end had decided to leave it to chance. And Chance had solved his problem with her usual original simplicity. She took away the need for his saying anything at all; for the following day the station cab drove up to Corey’s front gate and stopped. The driver got down from his seat and went up the walk and into the house. A moment later he came out again, bearing on his shoulder the small-size officer’s trunk, the lid forced down now and locked, and in one hand, dragging slightly, a full dunnage-bag. And after him followed Corey. And no one followed him. No one came out on the porch to say good-by. No one stood at the window. The driver put the trunk on the seat beside him, and the dunnage-bag into the seat beside Corey. And then, without a word or a sign, they drove away toward the station.

It was understood in Dubuque after the next few days that Corey had gone to help in the war; he had received an urgent message from France.

And Mr. Ewing received, the day after Corey’s departure, a little note of farewell, written in pencil, while he was waiting for his train, and mailed at the station. It said merely good-by, and that he hoped he would understand.

The next week Mrs. Corey closed up the house and went to Des Moines, to stay with her people, she said, until her husband’s return.

And that was all Mr. Ewing had ever known of what passed between those two, of the details that led to the sudden and final decision to go. And it was all that he had heard of Corey until that day, three months ago, when there came to him the unexpected letter from the man in New York, telling of Corey’s death, and of a message and papers he had to deliver. Mr. Ewing had replied at once that he would go, and had followed his letter almost immediately. He had seemed to feel, ever since that Sunday afternoon, when he had failed to be of use, an increasing sense of responsibility.

He had met the man at his club; and I had, as he told of the meeting, as he described the man, a curious impression of actually seeing them there, in the big Fifth Avenue club, sitting in deeply luxurious chairs and no table between—the gentle, gray-haired, gray-eyed, gray-garbed Mr. Ewing, who had never been in New York City before; and the other, tall, very tall, with black hair, black eyes, and brown burned skin, who looked, Mr. Ewing said, as if he’d done all the things Corey had done.

It had been quite by chance that this man, whose name was Burke, and Corey had been attached to the same section and were thrown in that way a good deal together. And his very first statement had shown, with all the force of the casual phrase, how tremendously Corey had changed.

“A queer fellow,” he said, “no one could understand.” And he was a man, one would say, well accustomed to the queerest of men.

Mr. Ewing said yes, he supposed one would call him that, and asked just in what way Burke had thought Corey queer.

And Burke, it seemed, had had more than enough to base the idea upon. He cast about in his mind to select one out of the many queer things. And he had hit upon the most revealing one of them all.

Corey, he said, had gone about covered with medals, two rows, overlapping, on duty and off, all the time. That in itself was queer, especially for an American. Most men wore bars, but Corey had worn the whole thing. And yet, Burke said, he was the least egotistical man he had ever known. And he had seen him wince when other men, passing, had smiled at sight of his decorations. He could never make it out.

There was no wonder in that. Mr. Ewing, who knew Corey well, and had, one might say, something to go on, couldn’t make it out. And no more, for that matter, could I. There was something in it a little bizarre, and certainly alien. Surely no normal Anglo-Saxon American had ever indulged in such extremes of self-flagellation as that!

And then, abruptly and unbidden, there came into my mind a story of the old West, the story of how in the pioneer days a gambler, sitting down to play solitaire, laid his gun on the table beside him and, if he caught himself cheating, administered justice first hand by shooting himself. To be sure, in those days a man was pretty certain of playing a straight game. Well, so had Corey been, too, sure of the straightness of his game. And I have heard it vouched for that, even in those robust times, the thing had been seen to happen, and to come, with just that appalling simplicity of psychology, from cause to effect, straight, and without hesitation.

The analogy grew, for Burke averred that the queerest thing of all about Corey was that he had been the only man he had ever seen lacking entirely the emotion of fear. He volunteered on every sort of hazardous enterprise, and came through safe when men beside him were killed, time after time, protected, they had got to believe, by the inscrutable quality of his fearlessness. It was, Burke said, as if against some other secret consideration death to Corey counted nothing at all.

Then there was something a little peculiar in so silent a man having so many friends. Corey silent! Remembering him, one could hardly credit that change. Burke qualified that by saying that when he used the word silent, he didn’t in any sense mean morose. Corey had never been that. He merely hadn’t, as people somehow seemed to expect him to do, talked. And what he had meant by “friends” he wished to qualify, too. He hadn’t meant pals. There had been nothing so active as that. But there were ways to tell when a man was well liked. For example, no one who knew him had ever seen anything funny about Corey’s decorations, and they never talked about it among themselves.

Somebody had once asked Corey how long he had been over the first time. It was evident that he had been there before, because of the Croix de Guerre he wore when he came. And Corey had answered, about six weeks, or a little less.

“And you got the Croix in that time?” An exclamation forced out of the fellow’s astonishment, and bringing from Corey an answer without a hint of rebuff, yet certainly nothing that a man could call brag.

“You forget,” he said, with an almost imperceptible glance down at his two rows of medals—“I knew the ropes.”

The man had afterward said to Burke that he was sorry he’d asked. But he didn’t see anything to be ashamed of in the Croix—and Corey wore it where a fellow couldn’t help seeing. There was, Burke said, a queer kind of apology in it. No, there had been nothing like brag in Corey’s answer. There had been none of that in anything he had done. And he had been, according to Burke, the best surgeon of them all, the best man at his work. But of course he had come to disaster in the end. A man can’t go on ignoring danger like that.

They were stationed at Jubécourt, outside Verdun, and for months the struggle had raged, attack and counterattack, for the possession of Hill 304. Corey had gone up to the front poste de secour at Esnes, where in an underground shelter fitted up in what had been the basement of an ancient château, reduced now to ruins by the German shells, he was giving first aid to the wounded brought in from the trenches.

Word had come into the poste one night that an officer, lying in a trench dugout, was too far gone to move. And Corey had volunteered to go, alone, on foot, along the zigzag communication trench that led to the dugout, under the incessant shelling, and see what he could do. And early that morning, about three o’clock, they had been carried in, Corey and his officer—the only two who had come out of that trench alive.

From the officer they had the story of what Corey had done; not many words, to be sure, and little embellishment, but such accounts need no flowers, no figures of speech. The facts are enough, told in gasps, as this one was, hurriedly, while yet there was strength, as one pays a debt, all at once, for fear he may never again have gold to pay.

A trench torpedo had found its mark. And Corey, bending above him, had deliberately braced himself, holding his arms out, and had received in his stead the exploding pieces of shell. He raised himself on his elbow to look at Corey, unconscious, on the next stretcher. He wanted it understood. He sent for an orderly and dictated a message which he managed to sign, and despatched it post-haste to Staff Headquarters. And then he resigned himself to the hands of those about him.

The news had come in to Jubécourt by telephone, and just before dawn Burke had gone up to see what could be done. When he reached the poste Corey had regained consciousness, and was waiting for him. He had sent word ahead that he was coming. And Corey was wounded, Burke said, in a way no other man could have withstood. And the “queer” thing now was that he knew it, and when Burke leaned over him there was a gleam in his eyes as if he were keeping it there by his own will power.

He seemed relieved then, and began at once—he had saved a surprising amount of strength—to speak. He knew Burke planned to go to New York, and he wanted him to deliver some papers. They were in his bag, at Jubécourt; he told him where he should find the key, and then he asked Burke to write down Mr. Ewing’s name and address.

It was while Burke was crossing the dim, lamp-lighted room in search of a pencil or pen that some one had stopped him to say that the General was coming at eleven to confer upon Corey the Medaille Militaire. It had given Burke a distinct kind of shock. Could it be, he wondered, that that was what Corey had saved himself for? For Corey knew, as well as they, that the Medaille Militaire was the one decoration never conferred upon dead men. He had gone on and borrowed the pen, and on the way back had asked if he might be allowed to tell Corey. It might, he said, do him some good. That news had turned the balance for more than one man.

But when, a few moments later, Burke, receiving permission, had told Corey his news, he had been for a moment afraid that the balance had turned—and in the wrong way. Corey had seemed hardly to comprehend, and then a sudden unaccountable change had come over his face.

“The Medaille!” he gasped. “What time did you say?”

“Eleven,” Burke told him—“three hours from now.”

He seemed then to be considering something deep within himself, so that Burke hardly heard when he said, “That’s time enough.” And Burke, thinking that he had been measuring his strength against the time, hastened a little awkwardly to reassure him. But Corey, ignoring his assurance, had seemed to arrive at some secret conclusion.

“Did you put down the name?” he asked.

Burke had forgotten the name, and Corey told him again, patiently, spelling out the address. He watched while Burke wrote.

“The papers all go to him.” He was silent a moment. Then: “Listen,” he said. “Will you give him this message for me?”

Burke promised, whatever he wished, word for word.

“Tell him,” he said, “that it breaks a man’s luck to know what he wants.”

“Yes,” said Burke. “Is there anything else?”

The strength had drained out of Corey’s voice with the last words. Again he waited while he seemed to decide. And when he spoke, at last, a strange gentleness had come into his tone, so that Burke was not surprised to hear that the message was meant now for a woman.

“Tell him,” said Corey, “there’s no use letting her know about the Medaille Militaire.”

And although Burke had divined some obscure meaning in Corey’s words, he was yet not quite certain that he had heard aright. “You mean that she’s not to know?”

Corey nodded his head, yes, and Burke saw that he was no longer able to speak. Turning, he motioned an orderly to his side, and whispered that he was afraid Corey would never last until eleven.

The orderly sped away, and a moment later the French doctor in charge stood beside Corey’s stretcher, opening his hypodermic case.

And then, Burke said, he had done what seemed to him the “queerest” thing of all. He had made a signal for Burke to come nearer, and when he had leaned down, he said, “Remember to tell him I didn’t take that.” He was looking at the hypodermic the doctor held in his hand.

“But the Medaille—” began Burke, and was stopped by the strangeness of Corey’s expression. He had, he said, smiled a secret mysterious smile, and closed his eyes with a curious look of contentment.

And even the French doctor had seen, by something in his faint gesture of refusal, that Corey would never submit to his restorative. He put the case down on a box, with a nod to the orderly, in case Corey should change his mind.

And Burke had stayed by until the Division General, just half an hour too late, had arrived at exactly eleven o’clock. Corey had not changed his mind....

That, then, was the end of the story.

So much affected was I at the nature of poor Corey’s death that I almost forgot Mr. Ewing, sitting there across from me in our comfortable smoking-car, and that he might, in all decency, expect some comment from me. Indeed, I think I should have forgotten altogether if I had not felt after a little a relaxation of his long-continued gaze, and I knew he was going to speak.

“Why,” he said, “do you think he didn’t want her to know?”

So that was the thing which had puzzled him in New York, the thing which still puzzled him now.

Well, it had puzzled me, too; and I could give him no answer, except to confess that I didn’t know. But long after the train had passed through Dubuque, and Mr. Ewing and I had said good-by, an answer, perhaps right, perhaps wrong, presented itself to my mind.

If one followed Corey at all, one must follow him all the way; perhaps he had wished to save her the pang of an added disgrace.

THE DARK HOUR

By WILBUR DANIEL STEELE

From The Atlantic Monthly

Copyright, 1918, by The Atlantic Monthly Co.

Copyright, 1919, by Wilbur Daniel Steele.

The returning ship swam swiftly through the dark; the deep, interior breathing of the engines, the singing of wire stays, the huge whispering rush of foam streaming the water-line made up a body of silence upon which the sound of the doctor’s footfalls, coming and going restlessly along the near deck, intruded only a little—a faint and personal disturbance. Charging slowly through the dark, a dozen paces forward, a dozen paces aft, his invisible and tormented face bent forward a little over his breast, he said to himself,—

“What fools! What blind fools we’ve been!”

Sweat stood for an instant on his brow, and was gone in the steady onrush of the wind.

The man lying on the cot in the shelter of the cabin companionway made no sound all the while. He might have been asleep or dead, he remained so quiet; yet he was neither asleep nor dead, for his eyes, large, wasted, and luminous, gazed out unwinking from the little darkness of his shelter into the vaster darkness of the night, where a star burned in slow mutations, now high, now sailing low, over the rail of the ship.

Once he said in a washed and strengthless voice, “That’s a bright star, doctor.”

If the other heard, he gave no sign. He continued charging slowly back and forth, his large dim shoulders hunched over his neck, his hands locked behind him, his teeth showing faintly gray between the fleshy lips which hung open a little to his breathing.

“It’s dark!” he said of a sudden, bringing up before the cot in the companionway. “God, Hallett, how dark it is!” There was something incoherent and mutilated about it, as if the cry had torn the tissues of his throat. “I’m not myself to-night,” he added, with a trace of shame.

Hallett spoke slowly from his pillow.

“It wouldn’t be the subs to-night? You’re not that kind, you know. I’ve seen you in the zone. And we’re well west of them by this, anyhow; and as you say, it’s very dark.”

“It’s not that darkness. Not that!”

Again there was the same sense of something tearing. The doctor rocked for a moment on his thick legs. He began to talk.

“It’s this war—” His conscience protested: “I ought not to go on so—it’s not right, not right at all—talking so to the wounded—the dying—I shouldn’t go on so to the dying—” And all the while the words continued to tumble out of his mouth. “No, I’m not a coward—not especially. You know I’m not a coward, Hallett. You know that. But just now, to-night, somehow, the whole black truth of the thing has come out and got me—jumped out of the dark and got me by the neck, Hallett. Look here; I’ve kept a stiff lip. Since the first I’ve said, ‘We’ll win this war.’ It’s been a matter of course. So far as I know, never a hint of doubt has shadowed my mind, even when things went bad. ‘In the end,’ I’ve said, ‘in the end, of course, we’re bound to win.’”

He broke away again to charge slowly through the dark with his head down, butting; a large, overheated animal endowed with a mind.

“But—do we want to win?”

Hallett’s question, very faint across the subdued breathings and showerings of the ship, fetched the doctor up. He stood for a moment, rocking on his legs and staring at the face of the questioner, still and faintly luminous on the invisible cot. Then he laughed briefly, shook himself, and ignored the preposterous words. He recollected tardily that the fellow was pretty well gone.

“No,” he went on. “Up to to-night I’ve never doubted. No one in the world, in our part of the world, has doubted. The proposition was absurd to begin with. Prussia, and her fringe of hangers-on, to stand against the world—to stand against the very drift and destiny of civilization? Impossible! A man can’t do the impossible; that’s logic, Hallett, and that’s common sense. They might have their day of it, their little hour, because they had the jump—but in the end! in the end!— But look at them, will you! Look at them! That’s what’s got me to-night, Hallett. Look at them! There they stand. They won’t play the game, won’t abide at all by the rules of logic, of common sense. Every day, every hour, they perform the impossible. Not once since the war was a year old have they been able to hang out another six months. They’d be wiped from the earth; their people would starve. They’re wiped from the earth, and they remain. They starve and lay down their skinny bodies on the ground, and they stand up again with sleek bellies. They make preposterous, blind boasts. They say, ‘We’ll over-run Roumania in a month.’ Fantastic! It’s done! They say, ‘Russia? New-born Russia? Strong young boy-Russia? We’ll put him out of it for good and all by Christmas.’ That was to cheer up the hungry ones in Berlin. Everybody saw through it. The very stars laughed. It’s done! God, Hallett! It’s like clockwork. It’s like a rehearsed and abominable programme—”

“Yes—a programme.”

The wounded man lay quite still and gazed at the star. When he spoke, his words carried an odd sense of authenticity, finality. His mind had got a little away from him, and now it was working with the new, oracular clarity of the moribund. It bothered the doctor inexplicably—tripped him up. He had to shake himself. He began to talk louder and make wide, scarcely visible gestures.

“We’ve laughed so long, Hallett. There was Mittel-Europa! We always laughed at that. A wag’s tale. To think of it—a vast, self-sufficient, brutal empire laid down across the path of the world! Ha-ha! Why, even if they had wanted it, it would be—”

“If they wanted it, it would be—inevitable.”

The doctor held up for a full dozen seconds. A kind of anger came over him and his face grew red. He couldn’t understand. He talked still louder.

“But they’re doing it! They’re doing that same preposterous thing before our eyes, and we can’t touch them, and they’re— Hallett! They’re damn near done! Behind that line there,—you know the line I mean,—who of us doesn’t know it? That thin line of smoke and ashes and black blood, like a bent black wire over France! Behind that line they’re at work, day by day, month after month, building the empire we never believed. And Hallett, it’s damn near done! And we can’t stop it. It grows bigger and bigger, darker and darker—it covers up the sky—like a nightmare—”

“Like a dream!” said Hallett softly; “a dream.”

The doctor’s boot-soles drummed with a dull, angry resonance on the deck.

“And we can’t touch them! They couldn’t conceivably hold that line against us—against the whole world—long enough to build their incredible empire behind it. And they have! Hallett! How could they ever have held it?”

“You mean, how could we ever have held it?”

Hallett’s words flowed on, smooth, clear-formed, unhurried, and his eyes kept staring at the star.

“No, it’s we have held it, not they. And we that have got to hold it—longer than they. Theirs is the kind of a Mittel-Europa that’s been done before; history is little more than a copybook for such an empire as they are building. We’ve got a vaster and more incredible empire to build than they—a Mittel-Europa, let us say, of the spirit of man. No, no, doctor; it’s we that are doing the impossible, holding that thin line.”

The doctor failed to contain himself.

“Oh, pshaw! pshaw! See here, Hallett! We’ve had the men, and there’s no use blinking the truth. And we’ve had the money and the munitions.”

“But back of all that, behind the last reserve, the last shell-dump, the last treasury, haven’t they got something that we’ve never had?”

“And what’s that?”

“A dream.”

“A what?”

“A dream. We’ve dreamed no dream. Yes—let me say it! A little while ago you said, ‘nightmare,’ and I said, ‘dream.’ Germany has dreamed a dream. Black as the pit of hell,—yes, yes,—but a dream. They’ve seen a vision. A red, bloody, damned vision,—yes, yes,—but a vision. They’ve got a programme, even if it’s what you called it, a ‘rehearsed and abominable programme.’ And they know what they want. And we don’t know what we want!”

The doctor’s fist came down in the palm of his hand.

“What we want? I’ll tell you what we want, Hallett. We want to win this war!”

“Yes?”

“And by the living God, Hallett, we will win this war! I can see again. If we fight for half a century to come; if we turn the world wrong-side-out for men, young men, boys, babes; if we mine the earth to a hollow shell for coal and iron; if we wear our women to ghosts to get out the last grain of wheat from the fields—we’ll do it! And we’ll wipe this black thing from the face of the earth forever, root and branch, father and son of the bloody race of them to the end of time. If you want a dream, Hallett, there’s a—”

“There’s a—nightmare. An overweening muscular impulse to jump on the thing that’s scared us in the dark, to break it with our hands, grind it into the ground with our heels, tear ourselves away from it—and wake up.”

He went on again after a moment of silence.

“Yes, that’s it, that’s it. We’ve never asked for anything better; not once since those terrible August days have we got down on our naked knees and prayed for anything more than just to be allowed to wake up—and find it isn’t so. How can we expect, with a desire like that, to stand against a positive and a flaming desire? No, no! The only thing to beat a dream is a dream more poignant. The only thing to beat a vision black as midnight is a vision white as the noonday sun. We’ve come to the place, doctor, where half a loaf is worse than no bread.”

The doctor put his hands in his pockets and took them out again, shifted away a few steps and back again. He felt inarticulate, handless, helpless in the face of things, of abstractions, of the mysterious, unflagging swiftness of the ship, bearing him willy-nilly over the blind surface of the sea. He shook himself.

“God help us,” he said.

“What God?”

The doctor lifted a weary hand.

“Oh, if you’re going into that—”

“Why not? Because Prussia, doctor, has a god. Prussia has a god as terrible as the God of conquering Israel, a god created in her own image. We laugh when we hear her speaking intimately and surely to this god. I tell you we’re fools. I tell you, doctor, before we shall stand we shall have to create a god in our own image, and before we do that we shall have to have a living and sufficient image.”

“You don’t think much of us,” the doctor murmured wearily.

The other seemed not to hear. After a little while he said:

“We’ve got to say black or white at last. We’ve got to answer a question this time with a whole answer.”

“This war began so long ago,” he went on, staring at the star. “So long before Sarajevo, so long before the ‘balances of power’ were thought of, so long before the ‘provinces’ were lost and won, before Bismarck and the lot of them were begotten, or their fathers. So many, many years of questions put, and half-answers given in return. Questions, questions: questions of a power-loom in the North Counties; questions of a mill-hand’s lodging in one Manchester or another, of the weight of a headtax in India, of a widow’s mass for her dead in Spain; questions of a black man in the Congo, of an eighth-black man in New Orleans, of a Christian in Turkey, an Irishman in Dublin, a Jew in Moscow, a French cripple in the streets of Zabern; questions of an idiot sitting on a throne; questions of a girl asking her vote on a Hyde Park rostrum, of a girl asking her price in the dark of a Chicago doorway—whole questions half-answered, hungry questions half-fed, mutilated fag-ends of questions piling up and piling up year by year, decade after decade.— Listen! There came a time when it wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do at all. There came a time when the son of all those questions stood up in the world, final, unequivocal, naked, devouring, saying, ‘Now you shall answer me. You shall look me squarely in the face at last, and you shall look at nothing else; you shall take your hands out of your pockets and your tongues out of your cheeks, and no matter how long, no matter what the blood and anguish of it, you shall answer me now with a whole answer—or perish!’”

“And what’s the answer?”

The doctor leaned down a little, resting his hands on the foot of the cot.

The gray patch of Hallett’s face moved slightly in the dark.

“It will sound funny to you. Because it’s a word that’s been worn pretty thin by so much careless handling. It’s ‘Democracy’!”

The doctor stood up straight on his thick legs.

“Why should it sound funny?” he demanded, a vein of triumph in his tone. “It is the answer. And we’ve given it. ‘Make the world safe for democracy!’ Eh? You remember the quotation?”

“Yes, yes, that’s good. But we’ve got to do more than say it, doctor. Go further. We’ve got to dream it in a dream; we’ve got to see democracy as a wild, consuming vision. If the day ever comes when we shall pronounce the word ‘democracy’ with the same fierce faith with which we conceive them to be pronouncing ‘autocracy’—that day, doctor—”

He raised a transparent hand and moved it slowly over his eyes.

“It will be something to do, doctor, that will. Like taking hold of lightning. It will rack us body and soul; belief will strip us naked for a moment, leave us new-born and shaken and weak—as weak as Christ in the manger. And that day nothing can stand before us. Because, you see, we’ll know what we want.”

The doctor stood for a moment as he had been, a large, dark troubled body rocking slowly to the heave of the deck beneath him. He rubbed a hand over his face.

“Utopian!” he said.

“Utopian!” Hallett repeated after him. “To-day we are children of Utopia—or we are nothing. I tell you, doctor, to-day it has come down to this—Hamburg to Bagdad—or—Utopia!”

The other lifted his big arms and his face was red.

“You’re playing with words, Hallett. You do nothing but twist my words. When I say Utopian, I mean, precisely, impossible. Absolutely impossible. See here! You tell me this empire of theirs is a dream. I give you that. How long has it taken them to dream it? Forty years. Forty years! And this wild, transcendental empire of the spirit you talk about,—so much harder,—so many hundreds of times more incredible,—will you have us do that sort of a thing in a day? We’re a dozen races, a score of nations. I tell you it’s—it’s impossible!”

“Yes. Impossible.”

The silence came down between them, heavy with all the dark, impersonal sounds of passage, the rhythmical explosions of the waves, the breathing of engines, the muffled staccato of the spark in the wireless room, the note of the ship’s bell forward striking the hour and after it a hail, running thin in the wind: “Six bells, sir, and—all’s well!”

“All’s well!”

The irony of it! The infernal patness of it, falling so in the black interlude, like stage business long rehearsed.

“All’s well!” the doctor echoed with the mirthless laughter of the damned.

Hallett raised himself very slowly on an elbow and stared at the star beyond the rail.

“Yes, I shouldn’t wonder. Just now—to-night—somehow—I’ve got a queer feeling that maybe it is. Maybe it’s going to be.—Maybe it’s going to be; who knows? The darkest hour of our lives, of history, perhaps, has been on us. And maybe it’s almost over. Maybe we’re going to do the impossible, after all, doctor. And maybe we’re going to get it done in time. I’ve got a queer sense of something happening—something getting ready.”

When he spoke again, his voice had changed a little.

“I wish my father could have lived to see this day. He’s in New York now, and I should like—”

The doctor moved forward suddenly and quietly, saying: “Lie down, Hallett. You’d better lie down now.”

But the other protested with a gray hand.

“No, no, you don’t understand. When I say—well—it’s just the shell of my father walking around and talking around, these ten years past. Prison killed his heart. He doesn’t even know it, that the immortal soul of him has gone out. You know him, doctor. Ben Hallett; the Radical—‘the Destroyer,’ they used to call him in the old days. He was a brave man, doctor; you’ve got to give him that; as brave as John the Baptist, and as mad. I can see him now,—to-night,—sitting in the back room in Eighth Street, he and old Radinov and Hirsch and O’Reilly and the rest, with all the doors shut and the windows shut and their eyes and ears and minds shut up tight, trying to keep the war out. They’re old men, doctor, and they must cling to yesterday, and to to-morrow. They mustn’t see to-day. They must ignore to-day. To-day is the tragic interruption. They too ask nothing but to wake up and find it isn’t so. All their lives they’ve been straining forward to see the ineffable dawn of the Day of Man, calling for the Commune and the red barricades of revolution. The barricades! Yesterday, it seems to them now, they were almost in sight of the splendid dawn—the dawn of the Day of Barricades. And then this war, this thing they call a ‘rich man’s plot’ to confound them, hold them up, turn to ashes all the fire of their lives. All they can do is sit in a closed room with their eyes shut and wait till this meaningless brawl is done. And then, to-morrow—to-morrow—some safely distant to-morrow (for they’re old men),—to-morrow, the barricades! And that’s queer. That’s queer.”

“Queer?”

“It seems to me that for days now, for weeks and months now, there’s been no sound to be heard in all the length and breadth of the world but the sound of barricades.”

The voice trailed off into nothing.

To the doctor, charging slowly back and forth along the near deck, his hands locked behind him and his face bent slightly over his breast, there came a queer sense of separation, from Hallett, from himself, his own everyday acts, his own familiar aspirations, from the ship which held him up in the dark void between two continents.

What was it all about, he asked himself over and over. Each time he passed the shadow in the companionway he turned his head, painfully, and as if against his will. Once he stopped squarely at the foot of the cot and stood staring down at the figure there, faintly outlined, motionless and mute. Sweat stood for a moment on his brow, and was gone in the steady onrush of the wind. And he was used to death.

But Hallett had fooled him. He heard Hallett’s whisper creeping to him out of the shadow:

“That’s a bright star, doctor.”

THE BIRD OF SERBIA

By JULIAN STREET

From Collier’s Weekly

Copyright, 1918, by P. F. Collier & Son, Inc.

Copyright, 1919, by Julian Street.

“Here’s a queer item,” remarked the man at the window end of the long leather-covered seat, looking up from his newspaper and apparently speaking in general to the other occupants of the Pullman smoking compartment. “There’s a dispatch here announcing the death from tuberculosis of that Serbian who shot the Archduke of Austria at Sarajevo. It seems he has been in prison ever since. I thought he had been executed long ago.”

Four of us, strangers to one another, had settled in the smoking compartment at the beginning of the journey from Chicago to New York, and as we had been on our way nearly an hour it seemed time for conversation.

“They didn’t execute him,” replied a man who sat in one of the chairs, “because he was under age. It’s against the law, over there, to execute a person under twenty-one. This boy was only nineteen.”

“The law wouldn’t have cut much figure over here in a case like that,” replied the first speaker.

“Perhaps not,” returned the man in the chair, “but respect for law is one of the few benefits that seem to go with autocratic government. I don’t find that dispatch in my paper. May I borrow yours?”

The other handed over the journal, indicating the item with his finger.

“I had almost forgotten that fellow,” spoke up a third traveler. “The rush and magnitude of the war have carried our thoughts—and for the matter of that, our soldiers too—a pretty long way since the assassination occurred. Yet I suppose historians, digging back into the minute beginnings of the war, will all trace down to the shot fired by that Serbian.”

“That’s what the paper says,” returned the one who had begun to talk. “It speaks of ‘the historic shot fired in Serbia’ as the thing that fired the world.”

“And in doing so,” declared the man who had borrowed the paper, “it falls into a popular error. The shot was not fired in Serbia, but in Austria-Hungary, and the boy who did the shooting was an Austro-Hungarian subject.”

“But that doesn’t seem possible,” interposed the man who had spoken of the historical aspect of the case. “If he was an Austrian subject and did the shooting in Austria, how could Austria make that an excuse for attacking Serbia?”

The other looked from the window for a moment before replying.

“It was one of the poorest excuses imaginable,” he returned. “Autocracies can do those things; that’s why they must be stamped out. As you said, historians will trace back to the assassination. It so happened that I was over there at the time and got a glimpse of what lay back of the assassination—microscopic, unclean forces of which historians will never hear, yet which seem peculiarly suitable in connection with Austria’s crime. But I had better not get to talking about all that.”

As though in indication of his intention to be silent, he closed his mouth firmly. It was a strong mouth and could shut with finality. Everything about him expressed strength and determination mixed, as these qualities often are in the highest type of American business man, with gentleness, good nature, and modesty. I liked his looks. He was the kind of man you would pick out to take care of your watch and pocketbook—or your wife—in case of emergency. I wanted him to go on talking, and said so, and when both the other men backed up my request, he began in a spirit evidently reluctant but obliging:

“For some years before the outbreak of this war,” he said, “I represented a large American oil company in southeastern Europe, where we had a considerable market. My headquarters were at Vienna, but my travels took me through various countries inhabited by people of the Serb race, and I found it advantageous to learn to speak the Serbian tongue, both for business reasons and because I enjoyed making friends among the people. In order to practice the language and form some knowledge of the people, I made it a custom, when traveling, to stop at small hotels used by the Serbs themselves, in preference to the more cosmopolitan establishments; or, where the small hotels were not clean, I would sometimes take a room with some Serbian family.

”In Bosnia there was one very attractive little city to which I was always particularly glad to go. It was a place of thirty or forty thousand inhabitants and lay in a lovely, fertile valley among the hills; and you may judge something of it by the fact that the Serbs coupled the adjective ‘golden’ with the town’s name. Not one American in a thousand—probably not one in a hundred thousand—had ever heard of the place then, yet it was the capital of Bosnia. The Austrian governor of Bosnia had his palace there, and the life of the place was like that of some great capital in miniature. One thing about the town which interested me was the way in which its people and its architecture reflected Bosnian history. In the first place there were many Serbs there, the more prosperous of them dressing like conventional Europeans—except that the fez was worn by almost all of them—and living in low, picturesque Serbian houses, with roofs of tile or flat stone shingle; the rest peasants in the Bosnian costume, who came in from the outlying agricultural regions. But also there were Mohammedans—leftovers from the days of Turkish dominion—and the town had minarets and other architectural signs of the Turk. And last there were the Austrians—the Austrian governor, Austrian soldiers in uniform about the streets, Austrian minor officials everywhere; and in new buildings, parks, and boulevards, Austrian taste. For, after taking Bosnia, under the Treaty of Berlin, in 1878, the Austrians, knowing well that their grabbing policy was criticized, went to some pains to beautify the Bosnian capital, with the object, it is commonly understood, of impressing visitors—and perhaps also the inhabitants themselves—with the ‘benefits’ of Austrian rule—as though palaces, parks, pavements, and prostitutes were sufficient compensation to the Serbs for the racial unity and freedom which have been denied them, first by one nation, then by another.“

“But,” some one broke in, “up to the time of the present war, didn’t the Serbs have Serbia?”

“The present kingdom of Serbia proper was inhabited by Serbs,” returned the other, “but the Serbia we know is only a small part of what was, long ago, the Serbian Empire. Since the fall of the empire, in the fourteenth century, it has been the great ambition of the Serbs to become again a unified nation. Bosnia was a part of the old empire, but was conquered by the Turks, and later taken over by the Austrians. The story I am about to tell shows, however, what an enduring race consciousness the Bosnian Serbs have maintained.

“Our district manager for Bosnia lived in the town of which I have been speaking, and when I first went there he took me to a small but particularly clean and attractive hotel, run by an Austrian Serb. As is usual in small hotels in Europe, the proprietor’s family took part in the work of running the place; and as I used to stay there frequently, sometimes for two or three weeks at a stretch, I soon came to know them all well. As the years passed I became really attached to them, and there were many signs to show that they were fond of me. Michael, the father, exercised general supervision—though he was not above carrying a trunk upstairs; Stana, the mother, kept the accounts and superintended the cooking, which was excellent; the two daughters worked in the kitchen and sometimes helped wait on table. Even the boy, Gavrilo, the youngest member of the family, helped after school with light work, though he studied hard and was not very strong. I often sat with them at their own family table at one end of the dining-room; I called them all by their given names, and addressed them with the ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ of familiarity.

“When I first knew Gavrilo he was twelve or thirteen years old. His father, though of pure Serb blood, had acquired, with years and experience in business, a certain resignation to the existing order of things. He had seen several wars and revolutions, and as he grew older had begun to think that peace under Austrian domination was better than continual conflict, whatever the cause.

“The boy Gavrilo was, however, more like Stana, his mother. Stana could grow old, but the flame in her, the poetry, the mysticism, and above all the Serbian racial feeling, never diminished. Gavrilo learned the Serbian folk stories and songs at her knee; also he learned from her Serbian history, which, under Austria, was not taught in the schools; for the Austrians have long desired to crush out Serbian racial feeling.

“Gavrilo and I became great friends. He was hungry for knowledge and never tired of asking me about the United States and our freedom, free speech, and free opportunity—all of which, of course, seemed very wonderful to one growing up in a decadent, bureaucratic empire, made up of various races held together against their will. In return I gathered from Gavrilo a considerable knowledge of Serb history and legend—and you may be sure that in what he told me, neither the Turks nor the Austrians came off very well. Even as a lad he always referred to the Austrians as shvaba—a Serbian word meaning something like our term boches—and by the time he was sixteen he had promoted them to be proclete shvaba, which may be freely translated as ‘damned boches.’

“For a long time I took his strong anti-Austrian utterances lightly, considering them the result of boyish ebullience of spirit, but as he grew nearer manhood, and the fierceness of his feeling seemed to increase rather than diminish, I became concerned about him; for it is no wiser for an Austrian Serb to call the Austrians shvaba than it would be for an Alsatian to call the Prussians boches.

“As Gavrilo grew up, his passionate racial feeling disturbed me more and more, though, of course, I sympathized with it. I determined to make an opportunity for a serious talk with him on the subject, and to that end suggested that he go with me to the neighboring hills for a couple of days’ gunning; for Bosnia abounds in game.

“Gavrilo proved to be a very good shot. He would shoot wild pigeons, grouse, and woodcock from the hip, and he even brought along a pistol with which he could hit a hare at a considerable distance. These exhibitions of skill were, however, accompanied by remarks which did not make it easier for me to broach the topic upon which I wished to speak to him. When he would hit a pigeon he would exclaim: ‘There goes another member of the Hapsburg family!’ or: ‘That one was a shvab tax collector!’ or, mock-heroically, ‘So much for you, you nobleman of brilliant plumage with a von before your name. No more will the peasants step out of the road and bow down before you!’

“‘Look here, Gavrilo,’ I said, when we sat to rest upon a fallen tree, ‘you are a Serb, and that is something to be proud of, but after all, you are an Austrian subject, and your forefathers have been Austrian subjects for a long time. You have your home here, so why not make the best of a bad bargain, and be like the rest of the young fellows?’

“‘You think I am not like them?’ he replied. ‘That is only because you do not know them as you know me. Every momche who is a worthy descendant of the race that fought to the death at Kossovo—the Field of the Black Bird—is of the comitajia. We younger fellows are to be comitajia also. We have our meetings in the same kafana where the others meet to make their plans. When we are a little older they will take us in and we shall all work together.’

“‘But what is this work you speak of?’

“‘Whatever it is,’ he returned, ‘you may be sure it is in the interest of our race.’

“‘But you speak of comitajia,’ I said. ‘Has not that word more than one significance? I know the military scouts with bombs are comitajia, but are not revolutionists called by the same term?’

“Gavrilo showed his strong white teeth in one of those extraordinary mischievous smiles which now and then illuminated his face. Instead of giving me a direct answer he said:

“‘Dear friend, I am glad to perceive that your knowledge of our beloved Serbian tongue becomes daily more accurate.’

“‘But, Gavrilo,’ I protested, refusing to be put off with a jest, ‘to be concerned in a revolution would be the worst thing that could happen to you.’

“‘No, not the worst thing. Worse than being a Serb and joining in a revolution would be to be a Serb and fail to lift a hand in the struggle for freedom.’

“‘Revolutions,’ I said, sententiously, ‘do not pay, Gavrilo.’

“‘But since when has that been so?’ he countered quickly. ‘There was, for instance, the French Revolution. Did not that pay? And there was the American Revolution. Surely that paid! And there was the revolution of Serbia against the Turks. That is paying too.’ His luminous black eyes, so like those of a wild deer, snapped as he spoke. Then his expression changed quickly to one of amusement over my discomfiture, and he added with a little laugh: ‘I have an American friend—a gentleman who manages the business of a large oil company over here. He can tell you, as he has me, of the benefits of the American Revolution and of American freedom. I promise you that some day you shall meet him face to face—let us say to-morrow morning when he is shaving.’

“It seemed to me that I had taken an unfortunate line with him there, so I tried another.

“‘Well, then, let us put it on selfish grounds. There is no great reason why you, personally, should be dissatisfied. You have good prospects in your father’s business. The thing for you to do, in the natural course, is to marry and settle down. And certainly a man who has a sweetheart such as yours hasn’t any business in a comitajia; for such things lead to prisons and executions, not to domesticity.’

“‘What makes you think I have a sweetheart?’ he demanded, flushing.

“‘Haven’t I seen Mara?’

“‘Well, what of it?’

“‘If you can resist Mara,’ I told him, ‘you have more strength than I would give you credit for.’ And it was quite true; for Mara, who lived next door to the hotel, was a beautiful young thing, and they were much together.

“‘Mara is a flirt,’ said he.

“‘What matter,’ I returned, ‘so long as she flirts most with you?’

“‘But does she like me best?’ he mused. ‘There is this fellow in the Government railways who comes as often as he can to see her. He has the advantage of being a connection by marriage, and is very handsome. Really too handsome for a man. I am glad he does not live here all the time.’

“‘You have the advantage of living next door,’ I encouraged. ‘The one thing that might interfere is this idea of yours about being one of the comitajia.’

“‘Still,’ he protested, shaking his head doubtfully, ‘a man’s first duty is not to the woman he loves, but to the race he loves, because both she and he belong to it. You know our old song?’ And he sang there in the woods:

“‘Doucho, my soul, I love thee second best;

Thou art the dearest part of Serbia to me;

But after all thou art but a part, even as I am a part;

And it is Serbia, always Serbia, that together we love most!’

“Though not altogether satisfied with our conversation, I felt that in appealing to the boy’s love for Mara I had struck the right note, and I hoped that as time went on he would think more about her than about the comitajia. For, though one may be heartily in sympathy with revolutionary ideas, especially in the case of an oppressed race, one does not like to see a youth of whom one is really fond, heading toward disaster, even in such a cause. Moreover, as I have said, Gavrilo was not as solidly built as the average Serb, and I had the feeling that the burning spirit in him—and I assure you it was more like a living flame than anything I have seen in the nature of man or woman—must either be kept under control or else destroy his body.

“Consequently I was much relieved to see, as I returned from time to time, that the boy-and-girl romance between Gavrilo and Mara was naturally and charmingly developing into something more mature. This led me to hope the more that, as he turned from a youth into a man, Gavrilo would shed some of the violence of his revolutionary aspirations, and from the indications I judged that such a thing was indeed coming to pass. In order more fully to reassure myself, I more than once took occasion to lead conversations with him into such channels that, should he desire to do so, he could speak to me of the comitajia; but he always let the openings pass, seeming eager, now, to speak only of the lovely Mara.

“When, in the summer of 1913, I arrived for one of my periodical visits, Gavrilo came rushing to my room, and seizing both my hands told me that he and Mara were now betrothed. He was then eighteen and she seventeen—for you understand, of course, that these dark South Europeans develop younger than our people do. Both families were pleased, and I felt that the dangers I had feared for Gavrilo were past, and was duly thankful. I went out and bought a necklace for Mara, and when I gave it to her, she and Gavrilo made me clasp it around her neck, and he said to her, very seriously: ‘Yes, and our dear friend shall be the godfather of our first child. Is it not so, Maro doucho?’ And Mara, taking me by the hand, told me it was quite true, and that she was going to love me as much as Gavrilo loved me, and that, moreover, they were going to have hundreds of children, and that every one of the children should love me too. It was all indescribably naïve and pretty until Gavrilo unfortunately added: ‘Yes, our children will love you, and they will love us, but most of all they will love the idea of a free Serb race.’

“At that a cloud passed over Mara’s face.

“‘Oh, Gavrilo!’ she cried impatiently, ‘shall we never hear of anything but the Serb race? Is there nothing else in the world? Must that come before your thought of your friend, here’—indicating me—‘before your thought of me, of the children we hope to have, of everything? Must you have Serbian freedom on your bread in place of cheese, and in your glass in place of wine? Sometimes I think your eyes shine more brightly when you speak of our race than when you call me doucho—my soul. I ask myself, is it indeed the soul of Mara that he loves, or is it the soul of the race?’

“‘Mara, my dear child,’ I put in, ‘I believe you are jealous.’

“‘Of whom, pray?’ she demanded, turning upon me and flinging her head back proudly.

“‘Not of an individual,’ I answered, ‘but of a people.’

“‘Perhaps it is true,’ she returned with a shrug. ‘Well, what of it?’

“‘Only this: that a woman with nothing more concrete than a whole race to be jealous of is in no very sad plight.’

“‘But I tell you I demand to be loved for myself!’ Mara flashed back.

“Gavrilo sighed deeply, as though at the hopelessness of making her understand his point of view. Then, mournfully, he hummed:

“‘Thou art the dearest part of Serbia to me;

But after all thou art but a part, even as I am a part;

And it is Serbia, always Serbia—’

“But Mara would not let him finish.

“‘Enough!’ she cried. ‘I detest that song! You know how I detest it!’

“Gavrilo looked at me and shook his head. ‘Oh, these women!’ he exclaimed. ‘What they do to one!’

“Then, gazing reflectively at Mara, he added in the tone of one attempting to be philosophical: ‘Well, when a little female looks as angelic as my Mara, naturally we expect her to think like an angel too.’

“At this Mara’s anger departed as quickly as it had come. ‘There!’ she exclaimed, flinging her arms about his neck and kissing him upon both cheeks, ‘there spoke my own dear Gavrilo! Poor Gavrilo! What have I been saying? You know I love the Serbs no less than you do! You do know it, don’t you? Well, then, say so!’

“‘God forbid that I should believe otherwise!’ answered Gavrilo, kissing her in return.

“As I left them I thought to myself that with Mara’s temperament, to say nothing of the ‘hundreds of children’ she promised him, Gavrilo’s married life would not prove monotonous, whatever else it might be. When, in the course of the subsequent fall and winter, I saw them again, they seemed as happy as a pair of wild birds.

“Once, in the spring, when I was with them, the comitajia chanced in some way to be mentioned, whereupon Mara at once darkened, saying to me:

“‘That is my one sorrow.’

“‘But why should it be?’ Gavrilo asked her. ‘Have I not plighted you my word that I shall not take part in any—well, in any indiscretions that may be proposed?’

“‘Yes, I have not forgotten. You said that as long as I loved you you would be my good Gavrilo.’

“‘So,’ he returned gaily, ‘all you need do is to continue to adore me as I deserve.’

“‘But you meet with them at the kafana,’ she said, uneasily.

“‘They are my friends,’ he answered. ‘Naturally, then, I meet with them. All men meet at the kafana. It is the way of men. A little wine or coffee or prune brandy and a little talk—that is all. I go also to church, but that does not make me a priest. And besides, dearest Maro, if I were not sometimes with the momchidia, how would I know the joy of returning to you?’

“‘If the devil had your tongue,’ laughed Mara, ‘he could talk all the saints out of heaven!’

“So it always was with Mara. Her ideas came and went—as Gavrilo once put it to me—like humming birds flitting in and out amongst the flowers. Never have I seen a human being turn from gay to grave, and back again, as rapidly as she.

“Arriving at the little hotel in the early part of June, 1914, I found them all full of plans for a great fête to be celebrated on Vidov-dan—Kossovo Day—June 28. This day might be called the Serbian Fourth of July, but it partakes also of the character of our Memorial Day, for it is the anniversary of that tragic event in Serbian history, the Battle of Kossovo, in which the Turks defeated the Serbs in 1389, leaving the entire Serbian nobility dead upon the field. That is one reason why Serbia has no nobles to-day. ‘Kossovo’ means ‘the field of the black bird,’ the kos being a black songbird resembling the starling. But this was to be no ordinary celebration of the holiday, for in the Balkan War of the two preceding years Serbia had consummated her independence and humbled the Turks, and a part of the Serbian racial dream was thereby realized. Mara, Gavrilo, and their parents united in urging me to return for the festival, and before departing I agreed to do so.

“True to my word, I arrived several days ahead of time. Gavrilo had not returned from the academy when I reached the hotel, but Michael and Stana gave me a warm welcome and produced the costumes they were intending to wear, and I remember that Stana said I ought to have a costume too—that even though I had not been so fortunate as to be born a Serb, they proposed to adopt me.

“‘But you should see Mara’s costume!’ she exclaimed, when I admired hers. ‘It is a true Serbian dress, very old, which came to her from her great-grandmother. Such beautiful embroidery you never saw.’

“That made a good excuse for me to go and see Mara, whom I found sewing in the little garden behind the house. The costume, which she showed me, was indeed beautiful, and I admired it in terms which were, I hope, sufficiently extravagant to please even a girl as exacting as she.

“While talking with her I observed a bird cage hanging on a hook by the window and, never having noticed it before, asked if she had a new bird.

“In reply she merely nodded, without looking up from her work.

“I strolled over and looked at the bird.

“‘Why,’ I said, ‘this bird appears to be a kos, Maro.’ Probably there was a note of surprise in my voice, for the kos is not supposed to live in captivity.

“Mara looked up sharply.

“‘Are you visiting blame upon me, then?’ she asked.

“‘Not at all,’ I answered, mystified at her tone. ‘I did not know that the kos could be tamed; that is all.’

“‘Did Gavrilo tell you to speak to me about this?’ she demanded.

“‘Certainly not,’ I answered. ‘I have not seen Gavrilo yet.’ Then, crossing to where she sat, and looking down at her, I asked: ‘What is the matter, Maro? How have I offended you?’

“Her eyes filled with tears as she looked up at me.

“‘You have not offended me, dear friend,’ she said. ‘It is only that I am made miserable by this subject. My relative who is employed in the railway caught this bird a few days since, placed it in a cage, and presented it to me. And if he is a handsome young fellow, am I to be censured for that? I am not his mother nor yet his father; I did not make him handsome! And even so, what is a little bird, to make words and black looks over?’

“‘You mean that Gavrilo is annoyed?’

“‘Since this bird came,’ she returned, ‘I have heard of nothing else. He begs me to let it go. He insists that it will die. He says the man who gave it me is cruel and that I am cruel too.’

“‘Then why not release it?’ I suggested. ‘It is dying in the cage, Maro.’

“‘Let it die, then!’ she cried, and burst into a flood of tears.

“‘Now, Maro,’ I urged when the paroxysm had abated, ‘what is all this about?’

“‘Well,’ she gulped, wiping her eyes, ‘a girl must have a little character, must she not? She must make up her own mind occasionally about some little thing! Is not that true? Is the man she loves to tell her when to draw in her breath and when to let it go again? Is he to tell her when to wink her eyes? Is she to cease to think and do only as he thinks? Here came this young man—with the miserable bird. I desired it not. Then came Gavrilo, black and angry like a storm out of the mountains, ordering me to let the bird go. I wished to do as Gavrilo said, but as my relative had caught it and given it to me I felt I should first speak to him. Besides, he is older and knows a great deal, being in the Government railroads. And what did he say? “Maro,” he said, “you do as you wish. If you wish to be a little fool, humor this boy. He is spoiled. He has everything as he desires it. They say you are to marry him. Very well. But if you think always with his mind, and hold no ideas of your own, I tell you you will make a wife no better than one of those stupid Turkish women....” That is why I determined to retain the bird. There is a kos in every second tree. Well, then, is it not better that this one die than that my soul shall wither? Why should I be called Mara if I shall no longer be a separate being, but only Gavrilo in another body?’

“As she finished, we heard Gavrilo calling her name from the street, and a moment later he came in through the garden gate.

“I saw at once that he was agitated.

“‘So you have come!’ he cried, seizing my hands. ‘But, alas, my friend, it is in vain. You have heard the evil tidings?’

“‘You mean about—?’ I had almost said ‘about the bird,’ but fortunately he interrupted, exclaiming:

“‘Yes, about the festival.’

“‘What tidings?’ demanded Mara.

“Gavrilo threw his arms above his head in a gesture of helpless fury.

“‘Those proclete shvaba!’ he burst out. ‘They issued an edict only an hour ago, forbidding entirely our festival of Vidov-dan!’

“‘No!’ cried Mara, dismayed, half rising from her seat.

“‘Yes. There shall be no celebration—not for the Serbs. Nothing! Attempts to commemorate the anniversary will result in arrest. It is announced that in place of our festival there will upon that day be extensive maneuvers of the Austrian army and that Grand Headquarters will be here in our city. We are given to understand that the Archduke himself will come and hold the review. Could anything be devised more to insult us upon our national holiday? Oh, of what vile tricks are not these accursed shvaba capable?’

“‘I am surprised,’ I said, ‘that the Archduke would be party to a thing of this kind, for it is understood that he is pro-Serb. Certainly his wife is a Slav.’

“‘The more shame to her, then, for marrying him,’ said Gavrilo, with a shrug. ‘He is the spawn, of an autocrat who is in turn the spawn of generations of autocrats. Scratch them and they are all the same. They play the game of empire—the dirty game of holding together, against their will, the people of seven races in Austria-Hungary; grinding them down, humiliating them, keeping them afraid. No man, no group of men, should have such power! It is medieval, grotesque, wicked!’