your music," said Hilda. "Why didn't you go on with it?"

"I had thought of it. But there was always something in me that called, and[98] I went into the army. For years we have known this thing was coming. A man could not do otherwise than hold himself ready for that. And now it is left to you young people to go on—always the new harmony, that sings in the ears, and never comes into the notes."

[98]

The Commandant, Commandant Jost, was perhaps the best of all their soldier friends. He was straight and sturdy, a pine-tree of a man in his early fifties. He was famous in Flanders for his picked command of 110, all of them brave as he was brave, ready to be wiped out because of their heart of courage. Often the strength of his fighting group was sapped, till one could count his men on the fingers of the hands. But always there were fresh fellows ready to go the road with him. He never ordered them into danger. He merely called for volunteers. When he went up against absurd odds, and was left for dead, his men returned for him, and brought him away for [99]another day. His time hadn't come, he said. It was no use shooting him down, and clipping the bridge from his nose,—when his day came, he would be done for, but not ahead of that. This valiant Belgian soldier was a mystic of war.

[99]

In the trenches and at the hospitals, Hilda had met a race of prophets, men who carry about foreknowledge and premonitions. Sturdy bearded fellows who salute you as men about to die. They are perfectly cheery, as brave as the unthinking at their side, but they tramp firmly to a certain end. War lets loose the rich life of subconsciousness which most mortals keep bottled up in the sleepy secular days of humdrum. Peril and sudden death uncork those heady vapors, and sharpen the super-senses. This race of men with their presciences have no quarrel with death. They have made their peace with it. It is merely that they carry a foreknowledge of it—[100]they are sure they will know when it is on the way.

[100]

No man of the troops was more smitten with second-sight, than this friend of the Pervyse women, this courageous Commandant. His eyes were level to command, but they grew distant and luminous when his mood was on him. This gift in him called out the like in other men, and his pockets were heavy with the keepsakes of young soldiers, a photograph of the beloved, a treasured coin, a good-bye letter, which he was commissioned to carry to the dear 

 Prev. P 40/84 next