A more serious atmosphere pervaded Headquarters, where it was realized that the issue hung in the balance. And more proclamations, a la Napoleon, were issued to sustain and hearten those who were finding bread and onions meagre fare, to shame the hesitating, the wavering. As has been said, it was Rolfe who, because of his popular literary gift, composed these appeals for the consideration of the Committee, dictating them to Janet as he paced up and down the bibliotheque, inhaling innumerable cigarettes and flinging down the ends on the floor. A famous one was headed "Shall Wool and Cotton Kings Rule the Nation?" "We are winning" it declared. "The World is with us! Forced by the unshaken solidarity of tens of thousands, the manufacturers offer bribes to end the reign of terror they have inaugurated.... Inhuman treatment and oppressive toil have brought all nationalities together into one great army to fight against a brutal system of exploitation. In years and years of excessive labour we have produced millions for a class of idle parasites, who enjoy all the luxuries of life while our wives have to leave their firesides and our children their schools to eke out a miserable existence." And this for the militia: "The lowest aim of life is to be a soldier! The `good' soldier never tries to distinguish right from wrong, he never thinks, he never reasons, he only obeys--"
"But," Janet was tempted to say, "your syndicalism declares that none of us should think or reason. We should only feel." She was beginning to detect Rolfe's inconsistencies, yet she refrained from interrupting the inspirational flow.
"The soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine." Rolfe was fond of adjectives. "All that is human in him, all that is divine has been sworn away when he took the enlistment oath. No man can fall lower than a soldier. It is a depth beyond which we cannot go."
"All that is human, all that is divine," wrote Janet, and thrilled a little at the words. Why was it that mere words, and their arrangement in certain sequences, gave one a delicious, creepy feeling up and down the spine? Her attitude toward him had become more and more critical, she had avoided him when she could, but when he was in this ecstatic mood she responded, forgot his red lips, his contradictions, lost herself in a medium she did not comprehend. Perhaps it was because, in his absorption in the task, he forgot her, forgot himself. She, too, despised the soldiers, fervently believed they had sold themselves to the oppressors of mankind. And Rolfe, when in the throes of creation, had the manner of speaking to the soldiers themselves, as though these were present in the lane just below the window; as though he were on the tribune. At such times he spoke with such rapidity that, quick though she was, she could scarcely keep up with him. "Most of you, Soldiers, are workingmen!" he cried. "Yesterday you were slaving in the mills yourselves. You will profit by our victory. Why should you wish to crush us? Be human!"
Pale, excited, he sank down into the chair by her side and lit another cigarette.
"They ought to listen to that!" he exclaimed. "It's the best one I've done yet."
Night had come. Czernowitz sat in the other room, talking to Jastro, a buzz of voices came from the hall through the thin pine panels of the door. All day long a sixty-mile gale had twisted the snow of the lane into whirling, fantastic columns and rattled the windows of Franco-Belgian Hall. But now the wind had fallen.... Presently, as his self-made music ceased to vibrate within him, Rolfe began to watch the girl as she sat motionless, with parted lips and eyes alight, staring at the reflection of the lamp in the blue-black window.
"Is that the end?" she asked, at length.
"Yes," he replied sensitively. "Can't you see it's a climax? Don't you think it's a good one?"
She looked at him, puzzled.
"Why, yes," she said, "I think it's fine. You see, I have to take it down so fast I can't always follow it as I'd like to."
"When you feel, you can do anything," he exclaimed. "It is necessary to feel."
"It is necessary to know," she told him.
"I do not understand you," he cried, leaning toward her. "Sometimes you are a flame--a wonderful, scarlet flame I can express it in no other way.
Or again, you are like the Madonna of our new faith, and I wish I were a del Sarto to paint you. And then again you seem as cold as your New England snow, you have no feeling, you are an Anglo-Saxon--a Puritan."
She smiled, though she felt a pang of reminiscence at the word. Ditmar had called her so, too.
"I can't help what I am," she said.
"It is that which inhibits you," he declared. "That Puritanism. It must be eradicated before you can develop, and then--and then you will be completely wonderful. When this strike is over, when we have time, I will teach you many things--develop you. We will read Sorel together he is beautiful, like poetry--and the great poets, Dante and Petrarch and Tasso--yes, and d'Annunzio. We shall live."
"We are living, now," she answered. The look with which she surveyed him he found enigmatic. And then, abruptly, she rose and went to her typewriter.
"You don't believe what I say!" he reproached her.
But she was cool. "I'm not sure that I believe all of it. I want to think it out for myself--to talk to others, too."
"What others?"
"Nobody in particular--everybody," she replied, as she set her notebook on the rack.
"There is some one else!" he exclaimed, rising.
"There is every one else," she said.
