Part 5

“Angelica has added a new silver piece to her necklace. It looks a bit too long; dangles too low.”

“Her father resoled his boots the other day and quarreled with the cobbler.”

“The innkeeper broke a new pitcher last week. Fell on the stairs coming from the cellar and broke the pitcher.”

“Which one?”

“The one with blue flowers on a yellow background.”

“Innkeepers are so clumsy!”

“Clumsy and rich.”

“Nae, the musician, snapped three strings in one month. It is a good omen. Never let the Gypsy use the same strings at two weddings. Either you or your wife will be unfaithful within the year.”

Every little thing is noticed. Every little thing is discussed, is food for thought and talk. And if one bought a horse the whole village is ready to give him advice. And even after the man and horse are buried, the story of how he began the bargain, the first price asked, the price offered, every word, every gesture and word of the Gypsy and the buyer are repeated for years and years; standing near the fences in the summer nights or sitting at the fireside in the winter.

“Do you remember when George bought his horse? It was the year Stan married and Maren’s bitch gave him a litter of six black little puppies.”

The chief topic of that Sunday, however, was Murdo’s marvelous recovery and the tale he had told of being immunized from bullets and disease by a great witch he had met somewhere along the shores of the Danube.

When Murdo appeared at the inn he was surrounded by older peasants who plied him with questions. The younger ones kept respectfully aside.

“But really,” said one who had great faith in Miora’s great powers, “you will not tell me, Murdo, that the one you recently met can do what Miora is able to do? That she can ride upon a broomstick through the air as well as Miora, or stay the pest as Miora has done? Don’t we know how many times Miora has saved this whole world from destruction with her incantations! And what the other one can do, Miora can and better. I am sure of that.”

Murdo listened smilingly, allowing his interlocutor to wax warmer and warmer on the subject of Miora and attracting more and more people around him.

When the crowd was big enough Murdo turned around and said, “There is Miora and there is her son, Lica. He is the truest shot of all my men. He is a good man. And were he not to believe as much in his mother’s power as he does, he would be still a better man. Here is a test. I shall go away for two days to my witch. While I am away let Miora immunize her son against pistol-shots. Then we will stand six feet apart with raised arms and cocked pistols. Who remains standing is chief.”

Murdo’s proposition was received with astonishment and awe by his listeners. Something worth while remembering had already happened. A legend was in the making. A great chief, Murdo!

I shall never forget the face of Miora after Murdo had spoken. The locks of her lower jaw seemed to have slipped out of their hinges. She was incapable of articulating a word. The gurgling, moaning cry she let out was so unearthly; it sounded more like the faint howl of packs of distant wolves than that of a human being. In her anxiety to protect with her own body the stature of her son, she stretched herself so high, it seemed her humped back was flattening out. Big as he was, Lica seemed a small baby near that knotted, bony, hardened frame of his old mother.

Murdo vanished from the place as though the earth had swallowed him. As everybody was looking for him and he was not to be found, the tale quickly spread that he had ridden away on the proverbial broomstick of the witches. Children playing in front of the inn pointed to a lone, wild duck high up in the air. They assured their elders that it was Murdo; that they had seen him rise. Before nightfall the miracle was believed. Even Miora believed it.

No horse-trading was done that day. When night came everybody felt that the thing had resolved itself into a fight of witches. That the contest was to be fought between Miora and that other witch who had cured Murdo. And that the price was to be the chieftainship of the tribe.

How could it be otherwise? If Murdo’s witch knew more powerful incantations, more effective ones than Miora’s, then Miora was a useless member of the tribe; then both she and her son Lica should have to go elsewhere. But if Murdo, who had courted and obtained the disapproval and hatred of Miora, if Murdo’s witch was not all he pretended her to be, then he could not remain the chief of the tribe. For a man had to be protected against evil and had to be able to recur to witchery if he were to rule effectively a tribe of Gypsies. What if a disease befell the cattle? What if a disease befell the people? And how frequently those two afflictions came together! How could a man be without the protection of a witch? And when that man was a ruler he had to be immune from many evils and had to be able to consult with the supernatural.

It was strange to see how the absence of Murdo affected his tribe. During the following two days life became an unbearable burden to me. Miora and her son kept to their tent. The rest of the tribe, men, women and children, huddled pell-mell, cried, yelled, scratching, pushing, at times moving like a flabby, will-less mass of soft flesh, hither and thither, without aim, without reason.

The soul-shattering experience made them remember old words and old curses. Customs and habits which had long ago fallen into disuse, fallen by the wayside at the Ganges River, on the Turkestan roads, rose to the surface again. The women formed a circle holding each other’s braids and pulling hard, yelling and turning round and round. The men stripped and flogged one another. At one time during the night, when I had seen an altar built, I feared a return to human sacrifice. But the fire was not lighted. An old Gypsy spoke and stayed whatever was about to take place. He urged them to keep their minds away. Not to commit themselves. For if Miora were stronger and they had committed themselves mentally to the other one, they were sure to be punished. So they danced rhythmless dances and sang tuneless songs, buried their nails in the flesh of their faces and their breasts, and howled with delight. In the end some one started to repeat incessantly two words, “Cirtra, vatra; cirtra, vatra; cirtra, vatra.” Soon they were all repeating the same words, holding one another under the spell of their feverish, dilated eyes and the jerking, nervous movements of their limbs and shoulders.

The loud moaning of Miora rose above the din of the monotone, which soon became like an accompaniment to the wailing song. From time to time this unearthly cacophony was punctured with a dry and piercing report from Lica’s pistol.

In their distraction the Gypsies had not noticed the appearance of Murdo in their midst. When they had noticed him they remained silent and surrounded him. Oh, they believed in him and his witch! He could see that in their eyes. Why had he thought it necessary to test them?

Murdo was in his bare feet and dressed only in a white shirt, held closely to the hips with a wide red sash.

“Call Lica,” he ordered, “but let two men keep Miora in her tent.”

Lica came out. He was not too sure on his feet. I could see Murdo remarked that. The old chief walked to where the young Gypsy was standing, measured six feet away from him, opened the shirt at his chest until the gray-haired surface was exposed, and said:

“Aim well, Lica, for I want no excuse afterward. It is known thou art the best shot of the tribe.”

Miora howled her loudest. The others were awe-struck and silent.

“Now,” and the old chief leveled his pistol. “When I say ‘three.’”

Lica was pale, but he had regained his composure. It was evident both men were anxious to end the affair.

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three.” Both men emptied their pistols; and Murdo fell flat on his back. The blood trickled.

“Murdo!” I cried, leaning over the dying man.

Lica was untouched, wondering, amazed at what had happened.

“In--my--left--hand--take it--” Murdo murmured softly.

“He--is--a good shot. They will believe in him. It’s what--they need. A chief--in whom they believe--a great witch, Miora--greater than mine----”

From his left hand I took the lead of the bullet Murdo had fired at Lica!

He died to give them a chief they could believe greater than he was.

So they danced and made merry. And there was song and wine, and the women were again at their best and the men at their happiest.

“Oh, Murdo, grandson of the mighty chief Lupu, but father of none worthy of thy blood. I shall tell of thy death to the ‘other ones’ so that they might know how to die themselves. I have already told them of thy great wisdom; that wisdom which was far greater than that of the snake, yet had none of its poison; and thy great wing-strength, more powerful than that of the eagle, on which thou hast lifted thine own soul above the dirt and the dust of the valley, but never soiled with the blood of prey.

“Murdo, grandson of Lupu, the Wolf. Eagle and Snake. Man. Of all who have seen thee die I am the only one to know the truth. The tribe is scattered to the four winds. ‘Lilith’ has done her dreadful work. Murdo, my teacher, my chief, thou who hast been more than father or brother to me, forgive me if I have not told the story as thou, incomparable one, wouldst have had me tell it.”

[4] Copyright, 1922, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1923, by Konrad Bercovici.

AN UNKNOWN WARRIOR[5]

By SUSAN M. BOOGHER

(From _The Junior League Bulletin_)

Snow was falling over London; a great blur of zig-zagging flakes; the embankment was deserted; the streets half-filled; in the houses of Parliament long windows etched themselves in light; Westminster Abbey was almost obliterated by the downfall, its time-stained crevices had filled, like cups, with drifts of snow.

Out of the obscurity and the snow a soldier approached Westminster.

He paused a moment on the opposite side of the street to peer at the great pile before him, and in his eyes was the half-incredulous amazement of one who finds himself at home again after strange, unhappy wanderings.

For an instant the Abbey seemed subtly changed; vague, intangible, unearthly. It was the drifting snow, of course, that obliterated the stains of time in its multitudinous delicate crevices; the drifting snow that was like a veil about his vision.

The zig-zagging flakes momentarily blinded the soldier, confused him ... for an instant in the falling snow, he saw the Abbey white and stainless like a transcendent chalice lifted to the sky.

Then the soldier passed through the high-pointed portal. The padded doors fell to behind him. Dim and quiet, the great nave stretched away into the gloom.

After a moment the soldier raised his bared head; his eyes, grown accustomed to the twilight, lifted to the rose window above the altar.

He had taken off the heavy coat he wore; shorn of its bulk, he seemed extremely young, boyish, child-like even. There was something of childhood in the hidden, secret happiness of his eyes; something of childhood in the furtive way he fingered the column at whose base he stood, then quickly withdrew his hand.

As one touches a flower, his gaze fondled the dim Abbey.

Presently he moved slowly down the splendid nave, pausing now and then to drink in with thirsty eyes the beauty about him....

In a distant chapel, candles like captive fireflies were flickering amid the gloom of drooping banners, and the furled flags of forgotten wars....

The vastness of Westminster, the stateliness, lifted him as wings lift.

It had always been so; throughout his childhood the Abbey had held for him the beauty and romance that other boys find in sport, in girls, in love.

He was remembering how often and often as a child he had brought lunch with him and spent whole days exploring the Abbey--its great naves and chapels, its crypts and tombs.

And it was still the same. War had not changed the Abbey.

The soldier now was standing before the chancel at the high altar, his face lifted to the rose window that glowed above it. And suddenly, like light, transcendent happiness was about him.

War had not changed him either!

The thought that was like light about him bore him in an ecstasy of thanksgiving to his knees. His prayer was incoherent; a feeling of infinite, lifted happiness: to have gone from college, physically untrained for war, psychologically unprepared, to have spent three years in the mud and blood,--and to have remained unchanged!

War had not changed him. War was an interruption, a suspension, a holding of one’s breath ... the things for which he had lived--poetry and beauty still were first.

Irrelevantly, and with an overwhelming longing, he remembered the casual eyes of men who dwell in peace; he remembered English lanes that call out to be trod; violets like music in the grass; the cloistral quality of libraries; that first faint tremble in the trees of spring; moonlight like snow upon the night....

And then, a tremendous symphony, the poems he had loved broke over him. For an interval he was breathless, remembering the unbearable beauty of Shakespeare’s sonnets; Chaucer, like a dayesie in the grass; the music of Milton; Shelley’s “luminous wings”; Wordsworth, “whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.”

Poetry! English poetry! He felt abased and purified and lifted. In a sudden flash he re-beheld his England as the land of poets. Not of shopkeepers, sailors, empire-builders. But of poets--the winged voices of the race!

There were Ireland, of course, and India, and Egypt, and opium; dreadful ills! He shuddered imperceptibly. But these things, in the final analysis, were not England. England was the poets whose voices sing always of freedom; England was the barons at Runnymede; Magna Carta; England was America, too; the pilgrims who planted a dream upon the wilderness; and that still prophetic voice speaking today above the roar and belch of war to the heart of the world. England was Westminster: Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Wilson.

“Cloud-capped towers” ... “and visions splendid” ... “men too proud to fight.”

Then the young soldier thought of his king; instinctively his eyes lifted, his hand rose to the salute. Not as a kindly, middle-aged man, slightly shrunken with mediocrity, did the young soldier think of his king. To him, he was a knightly, shining figure, splendid with romance. Medieval mysticism; crusaders faring forth to holy lands; the glamour of Elizabeth’s bright reign; all the lesser poets like fugitive and falling stars upon the night; these things were England to the young soldier, were his king. King and Country! The phrase lifted him again in exaltation. King and Country! It was for that he was a warrior; it was for poetry and peace--tranquility like the silence here in Westminster, where dreams unfold.

War was a cloud that would pass from before the shining beauty of life. Others would know it again. _Others_....

Bitterness and grief for a moment assailed him. He had felt life poignantly. A poet does; most poignantly, perhaps, the man not quite a poet. Beauty had been so vividly acute; the laughter of forsythia in the spring; summer’s perfumed, star-sown nights, the flaunting flags of autumn, the thrill like military music on the wind. These things to him were happiness as sharp as pain. And winter, too, with its largo of snow.

It was winter now ... and snowing.

As the exaltation of his mood subsided, the soldier found his down-cast gaze caught by an insignia on the overcoat that hung across his arm; the number of a regiment, a division. The symbols seemed to him suddenly utterly divorced from himself, alien. War was not possible, _the war was not_. It could not be that yesterday he had been in France; tomorrow he would be there again.

Incredulity swept him.

In the silence and the solitude and the twilight of Westminster, the thing that he had left, the thing to which he must return, seemed impossible, an unreality, delirium.

He thought suddenly of death ... it was the first time he had thought of death since he had entered the Abbey. It seemed incredible that men were dying at that instant, killing each other with terrible guns, when the quiet here was so profound.

For an instant one of those moments of distorted sensation assailed him, of familiarity with what occurs; the silence was acute with soundless sounds; in the shadow about him crowded unseen presences; the pounding of his heart was louder than a drum ... and suddenly he knew that he had never been surprised, always the things that had come to him he had foreseen. Suddenly he knew that he had always known that this would happen to him; war and death. For an instant he closed his eyes against memory, against war, presentiment.

Like terrible and bitter waters, despair engulfed him; he was conscious of a fumbling, still-born gesture after the youth that he had lost, the beauty forgotten, the poems he would not write.

_He had meant to be a poet._

Always, as a child, a youth, he had meant to be a poet, and write phrases like the “vision splendid,” and sleep in Westminster with the mighty dead.

A strangling agony was in his throat.... He felt betrayed. War had betrayed him. Fate had. Now he would never be a poet and sleep in Westminster. He was only a soldier, a warrior ... an unknown warrior.

The terrible and bitter waters, the strangling agony at length subsided. He felt spent, exhausted, devoid of emotion.

And after a moment he rose from his knees; he was remembering why he had come back to England on this strange leave; he was remembering he must hurry if he were to stand again among the mighty dead.

The look of childhood, the look of hidden, secret happiness returned to his face as he turned away from the high altar and traversed the transept.

When at last he had come to the Poets’ Corner, he paused, he relaxed, he drew a deep breath, as one who has indeed come home.

Above him in the stained glass windows myriad colors gleamed. It was lighter there than any place in the Abbey, than any place in England, the young soldier thought ... any place in the world.

England’s poets! He found himself again among them.

It was a tryst he kept!

As he stood there, the twilight, and the storm, and war, all the weary weight he carried, vanished from about him. Like a rush of purifying waters, poetry and beauty swept his soul.

It was for this he had come home!

Hot, unexpected tears in his eyes startled the young soldier. Poetry! He had not until today really thought of poetry for three hideous years of war. Poetry! The very word was the loveliest in the language. Unexpectedly, he remembered his bookshelves, his volumes of poems, certain pages--words themselves were before his eyes.

“Whither is fled the visionary gleam?”

“Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”

Like a deep-toned organ, the music of Wordsworth’s Ode was about him. “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.”... The words suggested phraseless things; they lifted him, he soared upon their beauty.

Suddenly illusion swept him....

Visions swirled upon the dark; about him the dim distances leaped into light; the great Abbey was ablaze with candles; through its windows gleamed the sun; a thronging multitude was gathered beneath the drooping banners and the furled flags of forgotten wars; upon the silence pulsed the slow beat of funeral music, as a vast procession passed in insubstantial pageantry behind a flag-draped bier to where the mighty dead of England sleep.

Illusion crowded upon the young soldier; blinded him; dazzled him.... Life had been too stabbing to last, poetry too poignant. And now it did not matter; _his_ life, _his_ death, _his_ poetry.

“Another race hath been, and other palms are won.”

A flag-draped bier! Like great protecting wings about his soul presentiment enfolded him.... Peace comes after war; death after life; and always to the poet, come poetry and beauty. A shining something, like light, was about him, was in his eyes and soul. Unsung songs ... a voiceless poet ... a soldier, an unknown warrior ... _sleeping in Westminster with the mighty dead_!

The swirling visions vanished. Illusion fell away.

The young soldier sank to his knees; for an instant his head was bowed in prayer ... “thoughts too deep for tears.”

The vision he had seen had blinded him, and humbled him and healed. Gradually his eyes re-focused to the dark, but the shining something, like light, remained in his soul.

In the stained glass window the colors had blurred together, but still a lantern, in the hand of a figure grown shadowy and dull, retained its fire; the soldier watched it fade.

And then he rose and moved away. Beyond a transparent dimming window, he glimpsed a gargoyle vague with snow. The great nave as he traversed it was a well of darkness. Out of the silence came the muffled sound of a padded door.

In the vestibule, a ragged newsboy flitted past him like a bat; his face and the papers under his arm made white blots in the gloom. “’Ello! A soldier hin the Habbey!” The boy drew up at his side. “Paper, sir? News from the front?”

The soldier looked about him tentatively, as one waking from a dream. In the shadows the newsboy’s face was strangely white, and he had eerie eyes. The man wondered what he was doing in the Abbey.

“Hit’s the quiet ’ere hafter the streets,” the boy volunteered, as if in answer to the unspoken thought. His strangely white face and his eyes fascinated the soldier, hypnotized him.

“Hit’s quiet ’ere too hafter the guns!” The boy was pirouetting from one foot to another.

“Yes,” the soldier said. He wanted to tell the boy to come here often. He wanted to tell the boy about poetry and beauty--the Intimations of Immortality.

“Hi come to the big shows they pulls off ’ere, too,” the child said unexpectedly.

For an instant his illusion recurred to the soldier; a vast crowd, lights and banners--funeral music, a _flag-draped bier_!

“But Hi likes hit better when hit’s dark and quiet--like now!”

The newsboy’s eerie eyes re-focused to the soldier’s vision. It had come to him that this boy, other boys, loved the Abbey as he had. For an instant he realized the linked chain of life. He saw a passing torch.

Then he got into his overcoat. Shrinking a little as one does who leaves home for the darkness and the cold, the young soldier passed out from Westminster.

Snow was falling over London; a great blur of zig-zagging flakes....

[5] Copyright, 1922, by _The Junior League Bulletin_. Copyright, 1923, by Susan M. Boogher.

THE HELPLESS ONES[6]

By FREDERICK BOOTH

(From _Broom_)