Unto All Men

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Table of Contents

  Unto All Men

  Publishing Information

  Author Page

  Editors Note

  Unto All Men

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  Unto All Men

  by

  Taylor Caldwell

  Publishing Information

  Unto All Men

  by Taylor Caldwell

  Copyright © 2012 by Fried Family Partnership;

  mobi digital edition Copyright 2012 by eNet Press Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by eNet Press Inc.

  16580 Maple Circle, Lake Oswego OR 97034

  Digitized in the United States of America in 2012

  Revised 201208

  www.enetpress.com

  Cover designed by Eric Savage; www.savagecreative.com

  ISBN 978-1-61886-404-8

  Author Page

  Taylor Caldwell, christened Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell, was born in Manchester, England on September 7, 1900, into a family of Scottish background. Her family descended from the Scottish clan of MacGregor of which the Taylors are a subsidiary clan. In 1907 she emigrated to the United States with her parents and younger brother. Her father died shortly after the move, and the family struggled. At the age of eight she started to write stories, and in fact wrote her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, at the age of twelve! (although it remained unpublished until 1975). She continued to write prolifically, however, despite ill health.

  Taylor Caldwell was also known by the pen names of Marcus Holland and Max Reiner as well as her married name of J. Miriam Reback. Her works include Dear and Glorious Physician, a novel detailing the exploits of Saint Luke, The Listener, written about a mysterious altruistic individual who lends an ear where it is needed, and Dynasty of Death, a saga about a family of munitions makers.

  In 1918-1919, she served in the United States Navy Reserve. In 1919 she married William F. Combs. In 1920, they had a daughter, Mary (known as ‘Peggy’). From 1923 to 1924 she was a court reporter in New York State Department of Labor in Buffalo, New York. In 1924, she went to work for the United States Department of Justice, as a member of the Board of Special Inquiry (an immigration tribunal) in Buffalo. In 1931 she graduated from the University of Buffalo, and also was divorced from William Combs.

  Caldwell then married her second husband, Marcus Reback, a fellow Justice employee. She had a second child with Reback, a daughter Judith, in 1932. They were married for 40 years, until his death in 1971.

  In 1934, she began to work on the novel Dynasty of Death, which she and Reback completed in collaboration. It was published in 1938 and became a best-seller. ‘Taylor Caldwell’ was presumed to be a man, and there was some public stir when the author was revealed to be a woman. Over the next 43 years, she published 42 more novels, many of them best-sellers. For instance, This Side of Innocence was the biggest fiction seller of 1946. Her works sold an estimated 30 million copies. She became wealthy, traveling to Europe and elsewhere, though she still lived near Buffalo.

  Her books were big sellers right up to the end of her career. In 1979, she signed a two-novel deal for $3.9 million. During her career as a writer, she received several awards: The National League of American Pen Women gold medal (1948); The Buffalo Evening News Award (1949); The Grand Prix Chatvain (1950).

  She was an outspoken conservative and for a time wrote for the John Birch Society’s monthly journal American Opinion. Her memoir, On Growing Up Tough, appeared in 1971, consisting of many edited-down articles from American Opinion.

  Around 1970, she became interested in reincarnation. She had become friends with well-known occultist author Jess Stearn, who suggested that the vivid detail in her many historical novels was actually subconscious recollection of previous lives. Supposedly, she agreed to be hypnotized and undergo ‘past-life regression’ to disprove reincarnation. According to Stearn’s book, The Search of a Soul - Taylor Caldwell’s Psychic Lives (1973), Caldwell instead began to recall her own past lives - eleven in all, including one on the ‘lost continent’ of Lemuria.

  In 1972, she married William Everett Stancell, a retired real estate developer, but divorced him in 1973. In 1978, she married William Robert Prestie, an eccentric Canadian 17 years her junior. This led to difficulties with her children. She had a long dispute with her daughter Judith over the estate of Judith’s father Marcus; in 1979, Judith committed suicide. Also in 1979, Caldwell suffered a stroke, which left her unable to speak, though she could still write. (She had been deaf since about 1965.) Her daughter Peggy accused Prestie of abusing and exploiting Caldwell, and there was a legal battle over her substantial assets.

  She died of heart failure in Greenwich, Connecticut on August 30, 1985.

  Editors Note

  This story recently came to light as a bequest to her grandchildren by Taylor Caldwell. It has as background the impending invasion of the German Army into Czechoslovakia, and as foreground the thoughts of 8 men who decide to make a defense against the Germans, knowing that it would be a futile military effort but a self redeeming symbolic one. Taylor Caldwell tells the story of each, the twists and turns of their thoughts, as they each decide to stay and fight. It’s quite a call to the futility of war, and yet the necessity of not accepting tyranny.

  Here is a picture of the first page of the manuscript:

  Unto All Men

  The schoolhouse stood directly in the center of the road, which shone whitely in the silent and deserted sunlight.

  The little building, which at the most held not more than twenty-five pupils and their teacher, held no pupils today within its thick graystone walls. There was the motionless and empty silence of the Sabbath about it. Its windows were shuttered, its short sturdy door, which faced the east, locked and barred. It was a square building, rather low and squat, yet full of strength. The thickness and roughness of its walls gave it a pudgy effect, somewhat grim and unmovable, and its slightly peaked roof seemed pulled down resolutely upon its head.

  The long white road stretched away smilingly, rising and falling gently, towards the near mountains. The mountains, so clear and translucent, seemed carved with an axe of light from the intensely blue skies. Those to the west were almost incandescent, so that their chaotic outlines were barely perceptible against the brilliant heavens. Those to the northeast, however, were of such purity, such delicate blueness, that they appeared formed of hollow glass and ice, through which light poured. But between the mountains and the little solid schoolhouse there was the greenly-breathing rise and fall of a sweet and peaceful valley, empty and calm.

  Not a thing stirred or moved. There was no sound, not even the faintest, not the shadow of a whisper, in all that pellucid world. And yet within that schoolhouse were eight men, ready for death, prepared for death, waiting for death.

  The interior of the schoolhouse was so dim, from the closed door and the shuttered windows, that objects could scarcely be seen. But after a few minutes it was possible to discover that the little innocent wooden desks and benches had been pushed abruptly to the walls in disordered and hasty heaps as though they were irrelevant articles. It was possible to discern the men there, the eight men, in their bulky coarse uniforms, their packs on their backs, their long guns, pointed with bayonets, gripped in their hands. Upon their faces were gas-masks, making them look like monsters from some evil nightmare. They had arrived only a few minutes ago, and in deep dusty silence were trying on their masks, testing the readiness of their guns. There was about them an air of resolution and despair, the air of men who had decided to die.

  The light
was very dim, yet little pencils of sunlight kept darting through the chinks in the shutters, and these little pencils would flash suddenly upon the bayonets, making them slender and dazzling mirrors, sending luminous shadows of them upon a hand, a gun, the bulk of a shoulder. And the small neat blackboards, covered with spectral and childish scrawls, lined the walls, and a globe stood upon the teacher’s small square desk. Books with gay pictures had been tossed in a heap in one corner; the pages stood open, pathetically. A child had brought a cloth doll the day before; in its gaudy peasant costume, it lay sprawled in a corner, smiling a fixed worsted smile and staring at the restless soldiers with bland black-wool eyes.

  The soldiers murmured in low husky voices. They began to remove their masks, to take off their packs. The slender mirrors of the bayonets flashed on their young grim faces, their set mouths, their weary and bitter eyes, full of hatred and disillusion. No one laughed, or passed an inconsequential remark. Several sat down on their packs, and regarded the clean wooden floor broodingly, their arms dropped between their spread knees. One of them, a father himself, saw the doll. A muscle twitched about this mouth. Suddenly he put up his hand and half-covered his face. The oldest man, the sergeant, stood at the shutter that faced the long wide road. The pencils of light striped his broad peasant face with its thick black mustache. They threw a bright shadow on the broad brown planes of his rigid cheek and chin and low strong forehead. He stood like that for a long time, staring, thinking in his peasant simplicity. Whatever his thoughts, they were hard and desperate, yet unafraid.

  He turned slowly and surveyed the room. He saw the dusky blackboard with their scrawls; he sat the motionless globe on the desk. He saw the books, the benches and the doll. He saw the soldiers, some sitting on their packs, some leaning against the walls, one or two, like himself, standing at the shutters, watching the road. He saw the glinting bayonets.

  For a long time he gazed at them all. And then he said, in his slow reluctant countryman’s voice:

  “There is still time. If there is anyone here who wants to go, let him go at once. We will not blame him. Perhaps he has a wife, children.” His rusty voice broke on a hard breath. “I have four children,” he went on, simply.

  No one answered Now his eyes became fierce, a little wild, almost pleading. “There is yet time. If a man wants to go, we will say: ‘God be with you.’ We will not think him a coward. We will think of his children.”

  No one answered. But each man looked at him and did not move.

  He sighed. He regarded them as a father, or as an older brother, would regard them. He had been a relentless disciplinarian, never fraternizing with them even for an instant, always stubborn and suspicious with the stubbornness and suspiciousness of the peasant. They had called him “Old Hardheel,” and the name had been deserved. None of them had liked him; some of them had hated him. But all had respected him. And now he sighed, and looked at them long and steadfastly, with a curious tremor about his mouth.

  “God bless you,” he said in his simplicity, and again his voice broke, and he turned abruptly and resumed his staring at the road.

  Two of the soldiers were very young men, barely twenty-one. One of them was a Jew, a slender pale little Jew with a thin Talmudic face and deep dark tragic eyes. He had hands like those of a tubercular woman’s, all veins and delicacy, incongruous hands on the muzzle of a gun. His uniform seemed too large for him; his leggings bound legs as frail as a child’s, and his rough boots were of the smallest specifications. There was a dancer’s air about him, and in fact, he had only recently broken a very good engagement at the Grand Theatre in Prague, the first engagement in many lean and anxious months. His gay little dancing partner, his wife Gitel, was now trying frantically to replace him in their engaging repertoire. Her last moments with him had been a tearful confusion of grief and dread and frenzied instructions thrown over the shoulder to a seriously-practicing and sweating young substitute. She had flung her thin little arms about her husband’s neck; she had pressed her tiny triangular face to his, wetting his cheek with her tears. Her dazed wet eyes had gazed at him wildly. And all the time she had shrieked, glancing over her shoulder: “No, no, Anton! Not like that! Three to the right, a bend in the middle, with a comical expression, five to the left, a stumble!” Her brief little dancing skirt, all pink tulle and bright little stars, stuck out backwards from her body as she pressed her legs and torso against her husband; her dark tumbled curls curled moistly on her damp forehead and tear-streaked cheeks.

  And then at the last moment, she had wept in agony, crying over and over: “Aaron! Aaron! God keep you! God bring you back to me! O God, what a fool is that Anton!”

  Aaron Schachner carefully examined the muzzle of his gun, but he did not see the gun. He saw Gitel’s face. He sighed.

  Then he no longer saw Gitel, whom he loved. He saw the miserable aching thinness of his childhood in Prague. His father had been a petty shopkeeper selling musty socks and heavy boots to the town peasantry on a back street in the slums. His mother had died when he was ten. At fifteen he was helping his father. Then all of a sudden no one seemed to have any money. The owner of the shop threw them out. There was no place to go, except to public shelter. There in a horrible rooming house Aaron’s father had died. Aaron, starving, and just in the nick of time, found a job cleaning up backstage in the Royal Theatre. For three years he had watched the murmurs on the great dreary stage. The next year he had a small part assisting a magician. Somehow he acquired the technique of dancing; the talent was already in him. Then he had met Gitel and had married her. She had taught him the niceties of his art.

  The next year or so had been pure dreadfulness, compounded of hunger and hopelessness, fear and cold, for a meagre engagement in Karlsbad had ended without another opening. They danced at carnivals, talked of Paris, hugging each other in damp boarding-house beds to keep themselves warm. There had been more of the desperate desire for warmth in their embraces than there had been passion.

  Aaron shivered, remembering that time. Then he no longer could remember that very clearly, and even the face of Gitel began to fade. Scenes from his childhood kept lodging themselves vividly before his eyes. He felt the winter wind again; he saw his father’s thin coughing chest. He felt the wet iciness of winter pavements though broken shoes. He felt sickness and feebleness, anguish and pain once more. He remembered that his father, just before he had died, had whispered hoarsely and simply to him: “My son, forgive me.” For years he had puzzled vaguely over that. But now he knew.

  The vivid pictures suddenly fled, dissolved. He saw the dim walls of the schoolhouse, the light-barred face of his sergeant. Then all at once he felt exultant, freed, released for all time. The little m......ing soul of this pallid little Jew knew only peace now, only exaltation.

  The other very young man had just left the University of Prague for his uniform. His father, too, was a shopkeeper, but a prosperous one. He had a large elegant antique shop, full of Russian silver sweetmeat boxes, heavy silver candlesticks, gilt-framed miniatures of mincing curled ladies, Turkish prayer-rugs, exquisite Dresden figurines, polished ancient teapots, jade and gold curios, shining trays like crusted shields, chairs with dark curved backs, and bowls like lustrous mother-of-pearl. He made a fine living from tourists, and those who had fled from Berlin and Vienna in time enough to salvage most of their fortunes. His proceeds enabled him to live in a good solid bourgeoisie house with one servant, and to send his only and beloved son, Tomas Slivak, to the University, where he could study medicine.

  Tomas’ youthful visions were all pleasantness and warmth and comfort and amiability, forming a background for his intense devotion and ambition. From his earliest childhood he had wanted to be a surgeon. Nothing else could attract him for a moment. His father had encouraged him, sheepishly at first, and then with passionate pride. “My son, who is studying in the University,” he would say. “A surgeon.”
And then his eyes would be suddenly glistening, for all his toothy smile.

  In the new troubled days he had said to Tomas: “I care nothing for politics. I let them agitate. I do not like this man, Benes. But I would not quarrel with him. I leave that for silly students, who have no ambition as you have, my son! I leave that for fascist agitators, and foolish Communists. I merely work and serve, and hope for the future, and take pride in my shop and you, Tomas!”

  But there had come that day when Tomas had to leave the University, and take up an unfamiliar gun. He father had seemed to grow old all in a few minutes to be come smaller, shrunken. But he had smiled his fixed toothy smile, in spite of his glazed dead eyes and his excessive pallor. He had embraced Tomas convulsively, but had never stopped smiling.

  “It is only a time, Tomas! Just a few days. The Germans are big talkers, but Hitler is no fool. He will never dare to step across the border of Czechoslovakia, our country. There is England, who helped to form our state, and France, who is out gallant ally, and Russia, who has sworn to help us, though I don’t hold with the Communists myself! They will defend us! They will protect us! All this, the uniform of yours, my son, and your gun! are only gestures to frighten this monster, Hitler. Just a few days! And then, you will be at your silly books again, and come home smelling of the morgue and the cemetery!”

  Tomas had not been able to say goodbye. He had run abruptly from his father. Yet he remembered what he had said, his good solid father who knew the worth of the last small curio in his crowded and elegant shop. Hitler would not dare, in spite of the Nuremburg speech. He was a madman, but he had a madman’s shrewdness. He would never dare to defy England and France and Russia,. Why, even he must know it was suicide. This uniform, this gun, this marching, these blistered feet, these long stony and sweating days, were only gestures in the face of Hitler, the Mad Dog of Europe, who knew better than to engage the world to his certain death. It is true that no one really knew what Runciman had recommended to Prime Minister Chamberlain, but it was surely certain that England would not retreat, would not help in the dismemberment and looting of the little republic she had helped create, and whose borders she had guaranteed!