The Tempering

"I am so called."

"I have the honour to present the Count Oku … and myself Itokai."

CHAPTER XX

When general introductions had followed, the Count Itokai smiled, with a flash of white and strong teeth.

"We have come to present a certain matter to you – but we find you entertaining guests – so the business can wait."

The courtesy of manner and the precision of inflection had the perfection of Japanese officialdom, but McCalloway's response succeeded in blending with an equal politeness a note of unmistakable aloofness.

"As you wish, gentlemen, though there is no matter concerning myself which might not be discussed in the presence of these friends."

"Assuredly!" This time it was Oku who spoke. "It is unfortunate that we are not at liberty to be more outspoken. The matter is one of certain … information … which we hope you can give us … and which is official: not personal with ourselves."

Masters made the move. "I'll pop out and see that your horses are stabled. Gentlemen – " he turned to the others – "it's a fine frosty night … shall we finish our cigars in the open air?"

With deprecating apology the two newcomers watched them go, and when the place had been vacated save for the three, McCalloway turned and bowed his guests to chairs before the hearth.

It had been a strange picture before. It was stranger now, augmented by these two squat figures with dark faces, high cheek bones, and wiry black hair: Japanese diplomats sitting before a Cumberland mountain hearth-stone.

"Excellency," began the Count Oku promptly, "I am authorized by my government to proffer you a commission upon the staff of the army of Nippon."

McCalloway's eyes narrowed. He had not seated himself but had preferred to remain non-committally standing, and now his figure stiffened and his lips set themselves.

"Count," he said almost curtly, "before we talk at all, you must be candid with me. If I choose to live in solitude, any intrusion upon that privacy should be with my consent. May I inquire how the name of Victor McCalloway has chanced to become known and of interest to the Government of Japan?"

The diplomatic agent bowed.

"The question is in point, Excellency. Unhappily I am unable to answer it. What is known to my government I cannot say. I can only relate what has been delegated to me."

"I take it you can, at least, do that."

"We have been told that a gentleman who for reasons of his own prefers to use the name of Victor McCalloway, had formerly a title more widely known."

This time McCalloway's voice was sharply edged.

"However that may be, I have now only one name, Victor McCalloway."

"That we entirely understand. Some few years back my government, in an effort to encourage Europeanizing the Chinese army, attempted to enlist your honourable services. Is that not true?"

McCalloway nodded but, as he did so, anger blazed hotly in his eyes.

"To know more about a gentleman, in private life, than he cares to state, constitutes a grave discourtesy, sirs. Whatever activities my soldiering has included, I have never been a mercenary. I have fought only under my own flag and my sword is not for hire!"

The Orientals rose and again they bowed, but this time the voice of the Count Oku dropped away its soft sheath of diplomatic suavity and, though it remained low of pitch, it carried now a ring of purpose and positiveness.

"The officer who fights for a cause is not a soldier of fortune, Excellency. The flag of the Rising Sun has a cause."

"Japan is at peace with the world. Military service can be for a cause only when it is active."

"Yes, Japan is at peace with the world – now!" The voice came sharply, almost sibilantly, with the aspirates of the race. "I am authorized to state to you that service with our high command will none the less be active – and before many months have passed. I am further authorized to state to you that the foe will be a traditional enemy of Great Britain: that our interests will run parallel with those of the British Empire – If you take service under the Sun flag, Excellency, it will be against foes of the Cross of St. George."

The two Japanese stood very erect, their beady eyes keenly agleam. Slowly, and subconsciously, Victor McCalloway too drew his shoulders back, as though he were reviewing a division. He was hearing the Russo-Japanese War forecast weeks before it burst like shrapnel on an astonished world.

"Gentlemen," he said gravely, "you must grant me leisure for thought. This is a most serious matter."

A half hour later, with cigars glowing, the guests from Japan and the guests from Louisville sat about the hearth, but on none of the faces was there any trace of the unusual or of a knowledge of great secrets.

In all truth, Mahomet had come to the mountain.

Boone had not long returned from his Christmas vacation. So when he came into his dormitory room from his classes one afternoon and found his patron awaiting him there with a grave face, he was somewhat mystified, until with a soldier's precision McCalloway came to his point.

"My boy," he said, "I have come here to have a very serious talk with you."

Boone's face, which had flushed into pleasurable surprise at the sight of his visitor, fell at the gravity of the voice. He guessed at once that this was the preface to such an announcement as he always dreaded in secret, and his own words came heavily.

"I reckon you mean – that you aim to – go away."

"I aim to talk to you about going away."

Boone rallied his sinking spirits as he announced with a creditable counterfeit of cheerfulness, "All right, sir; I'm listening."

For a while the older man talked on. He was sitting in the plain room of the dormitory – and his gaze was fixed off across the snow-patched grounds, and the scattered buildings of the university.

He did not often look at the boy, who had grown into his heart so deeply that the idea of a parting carried a barb for both. He thought that Boone could discuss this matter with greater ease if the eyes of another did not lay upon him the necessity of maintaining a stoical self-repression.

McCalloway for the first time traced out in full detail the plan that he had conceived for Boone: the fantastic dream of his pilgrimage in one generation along the transitional road his youthful nation had travelled since its birth. As he listened, the young man's eyes kindled with imagination and gratitude difficult to express. He had been, he thought, ambitious to a fault, but for him his preceptor had been far more ambitious. The horizons of his aspiration widened under such confidence, but he could only say brokenly, "You're setting me a mighty big task, sir. If I can do any part of it, I'll owe it all to you."

"We aren't here to compliment each other, my boy," replied McCalloway bluntly. "But if I've made a mistake in my judgment, I am not yet prepared to admit it. You owe me nothing. I was alone, without family, without ties. I was here with a broken life – and you gave me renewed interest. But that couldn't have gone on, I think, if you hadn't been in the main what I thought you – if you hadn't had in you the makings of a man and a gentleman."

He broke off and cleared his throat loudly.

Boone, too, found the moment a trying one, and he thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets and said nothing. The uprights that supported his life's structure seemed, just then, withdrawn without warning.

"You know, when I was offered service in China, I declined – and you know why," McCalloway reminded him. "I should do the same thing today, except that now I think you can stand on your own legs. I take it you no longer need me in the same sense that you did then – and the call that comes to me is not an unworthy one."

"I reckon, sir – it's military?"

"It's at least advisory, in the military sense. My boy, it pains me not to be able to take you into my full confidence – but I can't. I can't even tell you where I am going."

"You – " the question hung a moment on the next words – "you aim to come back – sometime?"

"God granting me a safe conclusion, I shall come back … and the thought of you will be with me in my absence … the confidence in you … the hope for you."

There was again a long silence, then McCalloway said:

"I came here to discuss it with you. I have declined to give a positive answer until we could do that."

Boone wheeled, and his head came up. He felt suddenly promoted to the responsible status of a counsellor. There was now no tremor in his voice, except the thrill of his young and straightforward courage.

"You say it's not unworthy work, sir. There can't be any question. You've got to go. If you hesitated, I'd know full well I was spoiling your life."

Later, side by side, they tramped the muddy turnpikes between the rich acres of farms where thoroughbreds were foaled and trained.

"I have talked with Colonel Wallifarro," announced the soldier at length. "Next fall he wants you to come to Louisville and finish reading law in his office."

But the boy shook his head. Here, confronting a great loneliness, he was feeling the contrast between the land, whose children called it God's country, and his own meagre hills, where the creeks bore such names as Pestilence and Hell-fer-sartain.

"I couldn't go to Louisville, sir. I couldn't pay my board or buy decent clothes there. I've got that little patch of ground up there and the cabin on it, though. I'd aimed to go back there – I'll soon be of age, now – and seek to get elected clerk of the court."

"Why clerk of the court? Why not the legislature?"

The boy grinned.

"The legislature was what I aimed at – until I read the constitution. About the only job I'm not too young for is the clerkship."

McCalloway nodded.

"I see no reason why you shouldn't make that race, but you'll be a fitter servant of your people for knowing a bit more of the world. As to the money, I've arranged that – though you'll have to live frugally. There will be to your credit, in bank, enough to keep you for a year or two – and if I shouldn't get back – Colonel Wallifarro has my will. I want you to live at my house when you're in the mountains – and look after things – my small personal effects."

But for that plan of financing his future, Boone had a stout refusal, until the soldier stopped in the road and laid a hand on his shoulder. "I have never had a son," he said simply. "I have always wanted one. Will you refuse me?"

It was a very painful day for both of them, but when at last Boone stood under the railroad shed and saw the man who was his idol wave his hat from the rear platform, he waved his own in return, and smiled the twisted smile of stiff lips.

On the ninth of February, as the boy glanced at the morning paper before he started for his first class, he saw headlines that brought a creep to his scalp, and the hand that held the paper trembled.

Admiral Togo's fleet was steaming, with decks cleared for action, off Port Arthur – already a Japanese torpedo-boat flotilla had attacked and battered the Russian cruisers that crouched like grim watchdogs at the harbour's entrance – already the gray sea-monsters flying the sun-flag had ripped out their cannonading challenge to the guns of the coast batteries!

There had yet been no declaration of war – and the world, which had wearied of the old story of unsuccessful treaty negotiations, rubbed astonished eyes to learn that overnight a volcano of war had burst into eruption – that lava-spilling for which the Empire of Nippon had been building for a silent but determined decade.

Boone was late for his classes that day – and so distrait and inattentive that his instructors thought he must be ill. To himself he was saying, with that ardour that martial tidings bring to young pulses, "Why couldn't he have taken me along with him?"

CHAPTER XXI

For Boone the approaching summer was no longer a period of zestful anticipation. During that whole term he had looked eagerly ahead to those coming months back in the hills, when with the guidance of his wise friend he should plunge into the wholesome excitement of canvassing his district.

Now McCalloway was gone. And just before commencement a letter from Anne brought news that made his heart sink.

"Father is going home to England for the summer," she said, "and that means that I won't get to the hills. I'm heartbroken over it, and it isn't just that 'I always miss the hills,' either. I do miss them. Every dogwood that I see blooming alone in somebody's front yard, every violet in the grass, makes me homesick for the places where beauty isn't only sampled but runs riot – but there's a more personal note than that."

"You must climb old Slag-face for me, Boone, and write me all about it. If a single tree has blown down, don't fail to tell me, dear."

There was also another thing which would cloud his return to Marlin County. He could, in decency, no longer defer a painful confession to Happy. So far, chance had fended it off, but now she was back from the settlement school for good, and he was through college. In justice to her further silence could not be maintained.

Then May brought the Battle of the Yalu.

First there were only meagre newspaper reports – all that Boone saw before commencement – and later when the filtration of time brought the fuller discussions in the magazines, and the world had discovered General Kuroki, he was in the hills where magazines rarely came.

Upon the wall of General Prince's law office hung a map of the Manchurian terrain, and each day that devotee of military affairs took it down, and, with black ink and red ink, marked and remarked its surface.

On one occasion, when Colonel Wallifarro found him so employed, the two leaned over, with their heads close, in study of the situation.

"This Kuroki seems to be a man of mystery, General," began Wallifarro. "And it has set me to speculating. The correspondents hint that he's not a native Japanese. They tell us that he towers in physical as well as mental stature above his colleagues."

"I can guess your thought, Tom," smiled General Prince. "And the same idea occurred to me. You are thinking of the two Japanese agents who came to the hills – and of McCalloway's sudden departure on a secret journey. But it's only a romantic assumption. I followed the Chinese-Japanese War with a close fidelity of detail – and Kuroki, though less conspicuous than nowadays, was even then prominent."

Tom Wallifarro bit the end from a cigar and lighted it.

"It is none the less to be assumed that McCalloway is over there," he observed. "Emperors don't send personal messengers half way round the world to call unimportant men to the colours."

"My own guess is this, Tom," admitted the cavalryman. "McCalloway is on Kuroki's staff. Presumably he learned all he knew under Dinwiddie – and this campaign shows the earmarks of a similar scheme of generalship. Kuropatkin sought to delay the issue of combat, until over the restricted artery of the Siberian Railway he could augment his numbers and assume the offensive with a superior force."

"And at the Yalu, Kuroki struck and forced the fight."

"Precisely. He had three divisions lying about Wiju. It was necessary to cross the Yalu under the guns of Makau, and there we see the first manifestation of such an audacious stroke as Dinwiddie himself might have attempted."

Prince was pacing the floor now, talking rapidly, as he had done that night when, with McCalloway, he discussed Dinwiddie, his military idol.

"Kuroki – I say Kuroki, whether he was the actual impulse or the figurehead using the genius of a subordinate – threw the Twelfth Division forward a day in advance of his full force. The feint of a mock attack was aimed at Antung – and the enemy rose to the bait. One week in advance the command was given that at daybreak on the first of May the attack should develop. At many points, shifting currents had altered the channel and wiped out former possible fords. Pontoons and bridges had to be built on the spot – anchors even must be forged from scrap-iron – yet at the precise moment designated in the orders, the Mikado's forces struck their blow. But wait just a moment, Tom."

General Prince opened a drawer and took out a magazine.

"Let me read you what one correspondent writes: 'At ten-thirty on the morning of April thirtieth, the duel of the opposing heights began, with roaring skies and smoking hills. The slopes north of Chinlien-Cheng were generously timbered that morning. Night found them shrapnel-torn and naked of verdure.

"'To visualize the field, one must picture a tawny river, island-dotted and sweeping through a broken country which lifts gradually to the Manchurian ridges. Behind Tiger Hill and Conical Hill, quiet and chill in the morning mists, lay the Czar's Third Army.

"'Then were the judgments loosened.' The attack is on now, and the thin brown lines are moving forward – slowly at first, as they approach the shallows of the river beyond the bridges and the islands. Those wreaths of smoke are Zassolich's welcome – from studiously emplaced pieces raking the challengers – but the challengers are closing their gaps and gaining momentum – carrying their wounded with them, as they wade forward. There are those, of course, whom it is impossible to assist – those who stumble in the shallow water to be snuffed out, candle-fashion.'"

The General paused to readjust his glasses, and Colonel Wallifarro mused with eyes fixed on the violet spirals of smoke twisting up from his cigar end. "Our friend would seem to be playing a man's game, after his long hermitage."

Prince took up the magazine again.

"'The farther shore is reached under a withering fire. Annihilation threatens the yellow men – they waver – then comes the order to charge. For an instant the brown lines shiver and hang hesitant under the sting of the death-hail – but after that moment they leap forward and sweep upward. Their momentum gathers to an irresistible onrush, and under it the defence breaks down. The noises that have raved from earth to heaven, from horizon to horizon, are dropping from crescendo to diminuendo. The field pieces of the Czar are being choked into the muffled growl of despair. Doggedly the Russian is giving back.'"

"Do you suppose, General," inquired Colonel Wallifarro suddenly, "that McCalloway confided the purpose of his journey to the boy?"

Prince shook his head positively. "I am quite sure that he has confided it to no one – but I am equally sure that Boone has guessed it by now."

"In that event I think it would tremendously interest him to read that article."

In the log house, where he had now no companionship, Boone received the narrative.

The place was very empty. Twilight had come on with its dispiriting shadows, and Boone lighted a lamp, and since the night was cool he had also kindled a few logs on the hearth.

For a long while he sat there after reading and rereading the description of the fight along the Manchurian River. His hands rested on his knees, and his fingers held the clipping.

On the table a forgotten law book lay open at a chapter on torts, but the young man's eyes were fixed on the blaze, in whose fitful leapings he was picturing, "the thunders through the foothills; tufts of fleecy shrapnel spread along the empty plain" – and in the picture he always saw one face, dominated by a pair of eyes that could be granite-stern or soft as mossy waters.

Finally he rose and unlocked a closet from which he reverently took out a scabbarded sword. Dinwiddie had entrusted that blade to McCalloway, and McCalloway had in turn entrusted it to him. Out there he was using a less ornate sabre!

The young mountaineer slipped the blade out of the sheath and once more read the engraved inscription.

Something rose in his throat, and he gulped it down. He spoke aloud, and his words sounded unnatural in the empty room.

"The Emperor of China sent for him – and he wouldn't go," said the boy. "The Emperor of Japan sent for him – and he couldn't refuse. That's the character of gentleman that's spent years trying to make a man of me."

Suddenly Boone laid the sword on the table and dropped on his knees beside it, with his hands clasped over the hilt.

"Almighty God," he prayed, "give me the strength to make good – and not disappoint him."

It was a heavy hearted young man who presented himself the next night at the house of Cyrus Spradling, and one who went as a penitent to the confessional.

Once more the father sat on the porch alone with his twilight pipe, and once more the skies behind the ridges were high curtains of pale amber.

"Ye're a sight fer sore eyes, boy," declared the old mountaineer heartily. "An' folks 'lows thet ye aims ter run fer office, too. Wa'al, I reckon betwixt me an' you, we kin contrive ter make shore of yore gettin' two votes anyhow. I pledges ye mine fer sartain."

Boone laughed though tears would better have fitted his mood, and the old fellow chuckled at his own pleasantry.

"I reckon my gal will be out presently," Cyrus went on. "I've done concluded thet ye war p'int-blank right in arguing that schoolin' wouldn't harm her none."

But when the girl came out, the man went in and left them, as he always did, and though the plucking of banjos within told of the family full gathered, none of the other members interrupted the presumed courtship which was so cordially approved.

Happy stood for a moment in the doorway against a lamplit background, and Boone acknowledged to himself that she had an undeniable beauty and that she carried herself with the simple grace of a slender poplar. She was, he told himself with unsparing self-accusation, in every way worthier than he, for she had fought her battles without aid, and now she stood there smiling on him confidently out of dark eyes that made no effort to render their welcome coy with provocative concealment.

"Howdy, Boone," she said in a voice of soft and musical cadences. "It's been a long time since I've seen you."

"Yes," he answered with a painful sort of slowness, "but now that we're both through school and back home to stay, I reckon we'll see each other oftener. Are you glad to come back, Happy?"

For a few moments the girl looked at him in the faint glow that came through the door, without response. It was as though her answer must depend on what she read in his face, and there was not light enough for its reading.

"I don't quite know, myself, Boone," she said hesitantly at last. "I've sort of been studying over it. How about you?"

When she had settled into a chair, he took a seat at her feet with his back against one of the posts of the porch, and replied with an assumption of certainty that he did not feel, "A feller's bound to be glad to get back to his own folks."

"After I'd been down there the first time and came back here again, I wasn't glad," was her candid rejoinder. "I felt like I just couldn't bear it. Over there things were all clean, and folks paid some attention to qualities – only they didn't call 'em that. They say 'manners' at the school. Here it seemed like I'd come home to a human pig-sty – and I was plumb ashamed of my own folks. When I looked ahead and saw a lifetime of that – it seemed to me that I'd rather kill myself than go on with it."

"You say" – Boone made the inquiry gravely – "that you felt like that at first. How do you feel now?"

"Later on I got to feelin' ashamed of myself, instead of my people," she replied. "I got to seein' that I was faultin' them for not having had the chance they were slavin' to give me."

Boone bent attentively forward but he said nothing, and she went on.

"You know as well as I do that, so far, there aren't many people here that have much use for changes, but there are some few. The ground that the school sets on was given by an old man that didn't have much else to give. I remember right well what he said in the letter he wrote. It's printed in their catalogue: 'I don't look after wealth for them, but I want all young-uns taught to live right. I have heart and cravin' that our people may grow better, and I deed my land to a school as long as the Constitution of the United States stands.' I reckon that's the right spirit, Boone."

CHAPTER XXII

Still the boy sat silent, with his chin in his hand, as sits the self-torturing figure of Rodin's bronze "Penseur" – the attitude of thought which kills peace. Boone understood that unless Happy found a man who shared with her that idea of keeping the torch lit in the midst of darkness, her life might benefit others, but for herself it would be a distressing failure.