Just then Emma came to the door. Emma was the Osbornes’ old servant,
brown and plump as one of her own baked apple dumplings, and as much a
part of the family as the tall clock in “the chamber.”
“Supper is ready, Miss M’randa, an’ you-all come right away, please’m,”
she said. “De muffins is light as a feather. Come on an’ butter ’em. If
you-all will live on corn bread, please’m eat it hot.”
“Poor Emma!” laughed Mrs. Osborne. “She cannot reconcile herself to our
food program.”
“I tell Emma ’bout the Belgians,” complained Sweet William. “But she
says ‘them folks is too far off for her to bother ’bout; corn bread
don’t set good on her stomach; and she’s going to eat what she likes,
long as she can get it.’ And, mother, she has light bread and hot
biscuits for herself every day, and--”
“Sh-sh, son boy!” said Mrs. Osborne. “Emma doesn’t know any better, and
we do. Come, Mayo, and Mayo. Come to the hot corn muffins!”
“I ought to go home,” said Black Mayo. “Polly’ll be expecting me.”
“Indeed she will not,” said Mrs. Osborne. “Polly never expects you till
she sees you coming in the gate. How is she, and how are your pigeons?
I understand they are a part of your family now. Of course you’ll stay
to supper, Mayo. Patsy, tell Emma to put another plate on the table.”
A visit from their Cousin Mayo, always a delight, was now especially
welcome to Dick because it postponed, perhaps prevented, a disagreeable
interview with his father. He slipped to his place and quietly devoted
himself to the hot muffins, cold ham, and damson preserves.
“Why, Dick! What have you done to your face?” asked his mother.
“Nothing. It got scratched,” he mumbled, glancing at his father.
But Mr. Osborne was not thinking of the garden; he was about to present
to his family an amazing piece of news. He prepared for it by an
impressive “Ahem!” with his eyes fixed on Black Mayo.
“A client came to my office to-day,” he said solemnly.
“Really, Mayo!” exclaimed his wife.
“What is a client?” asked Sweet William.
“Who disturbed the hoary dust of your sanctum?” asked Black Mayo.
“Well may you inquire!” said the Village lawyer. “You are responsible
for his coming.”
“I?” There was a look of blank astonishment, followed by a peal of
laughter. “You don’t mean to say that scoundrel Smith--”
“Yes. He wants to take action against you for assault and battery.”
“What is a client?” Sweet William asked again.
“What in the world are you talking about?” inquired Mrs. Osborne.
“Oh, I reckon I know.” Patsy eagerly aired her knowledge. “That Smith,
the new man at the Tolliver place, quarreled with Cousin Mayo, and
Cousin Mayo knocked him down. We saw it, Anne and I.”
“Oh, Princess Pocahontas! Are you and Lady Anne taking the witness
stand against me?” Black Mayo said in mock reproach. “Well, it’s true.”
Mrs. Osborne gave a little exclamation of horror. “Oh, Mayo!” she said,
frowning at her husband. “I’ve begged you not to let outside people buy
land around here. And now Mayo’s had to knock one of them down.”
“But, Miranda dear, when a man sells his farm and the purchaser comes
to get me to look up the title--”
“You just ought to tell him we don’t want him here,” said Mrs. Osborne.
“What is the use of being a lawyer if you can’t put some law on
outsiders to keep them from spoiling The Village?”
The two men laughed.
Then Black Mayo said: “I suppose he told you about it, Mayo. The ‘I
saids’ and ‘he saids’?”
“Yes; oh, yes!”
“H’m! I hope you’ll make him pay you a good fat fee for the case.”
“Fee!” Red Mayo stared in amazement. “Assuredly you don’t think I’d
accept his dirty money! Case! I informed him he had none.”
“But I did knock him down.”
“Of course you did. When he repeated what he said, I’d have knocked
him down myself, if he hadn’t been in my own office. I told him if The
Village heard such talk, he’d be tarred and feathered and drummed out
of the community. Then I ordered him out of my office.”
“And that is how you treat your _rara avis_, a client!” said Black Mayo.
“What is a client?” repeated Sweet William, whose questions were always
answered because he never stopped asking till they were.
“A client, young man, is the golden-egg goose that a lawyer tries
to lure into his coop,” Black Mayo explained. “One fluttered to your
father and he shooed it away.”
“I wish I had a goose that laid gold eggs,” said Sweet William. “I
wouldn’t kill it, like the silly man in that story.”
“Perhaps I can find one and trade it to you for Hop-o-hop,” suggested
his cousin.
Sweet William considered and shook his head. “Hop-o-hop couldn’t get on
without me,” he said gravely.
“Ah, it’s a family failing,” laughed Black Mayo, as they left the
table. “None of you is willing to pay the price for the goose.”
The evening was so mild that they settled themselves again on the
porch. The men resumed their discussion of the war; David pored over
a bulletin about corn; Dick snuggled down in a corner with “The Days
of Bruce”; Anne and Patsy brought out their Red Cross knitting, and
whispered and giggled together. Sweet William put a stool beside his
mother’s chair and cuddled against her knee, with Scalawag at his feet.
Mrs. Osborne left the discussion of public affairs to the menfolks. She
was intent on her own task, the making out of a program for the Village
Literary Society. What pleasant meetings they would have, reading about
the Plantagenet kings, supplementing Hume’s history with Waverley
novels and Shakespeare plays. She smiled and folded her paper.
As the twilight deepened, Dick shut his book and grinned at the girls.
“Too bad not to have your company on my walk to-day, after you promised
it, too!”
“Oh! we thought of a nicer place to go, where we wouldn’t scratch our
faces,” said Anne.
“We’ll go with you some day, after you tear down all the barbed wire
and briers,” said Patsy.
“I dare you!” Dick defied them.
“You say that because you know I’m going away so soon,” said Anne.
“You’re coming back in June. I dare and double dare you for then,”
replied Dick. “I’ll be going to this place--oh! right along.”
“All right,” said Anne. “We’ll follow you; see if we don’t. We’ll not
take a dare; will we, Patsy-pet?”
Their bickering was interrupted by the approach of guests. Three men
strolled across the yard--Giles Spotswood, the cousin from the mill;
Will Blair, another cousin, who kept the Village post office; and old
Mr. Tavis, a villager outside the cousinship.
“We saw Black Mayo here, and we dropped in to talk over the news,”
said Mr. Blair. “Giles says Fayett Mallett heard at Redville that the
United States has declared war. That’s what comes of sinking American
ships; eh, Mayo?”
“Yes,” answered Black Mayo; “the German sinking of American ships was
the overt act which brought on this war, just as the Stamp Tax brought
on the Revolution. But at bottom, in both cases, the real cause is the
same: it’s a fight against a despotic government for liberty and human
rights.”
“It’s strange the Germans kept up submarine fighting after the United
States’ protests,” said Mr. Blair; “getting another powerful enemy.”
“I reckon they count on winning the war with U-boats before the United
States gets over there with both feet,” answered Black Mayo. “But I’ll
bet on the British Navy; it’s saved the Allies so far.”
“You said the Belgians saved them by that ten days of defense that gave
the French and British time to come,” said David.
“You told me the French saved them by driving the Germans back at the
battle of the Marne,” said Dick.
“Oh! but you said the stubborn retreat of that first little British
army was a real victory that made possible the Marne victory,” Patsy
reminded him.
“Well, well! a good deal of saving is necessary; and maybe the old
United States will jump in and do the final saving.”
“The French and British are pushing forward now,” said Mr. Blair.
“Yesterday’s paper says----”
The men discussed the war news in an interested but remote way, just as
they had discussed plagues in India, famines in China, the Boer War.
Their sympathies were as wide as humanity; but, after all, these things
did not touch them, really and personally, as did the death of Joe
Spencer’s little daughter or the burning of a negro cabin with a baby
in it. No one said “we” about the war; it was always “they.”
“What do you reckon they will do?” asked Mr. Spotswood. “Will they send
an army over, do you think?”
“Oh, no!” Red Mayo answered confidently. “The war will be over before
they could send men abroad, even if they had a trained army ready to
start. They’ll lend the Allies money; they’ll give some--large amounts,
millions, no doubt. And they’ll supply food and munitions; they must
hustle around and get ships.”
“The main job will be to get the food to send,” said Mr. Spotswood.
“There’s an alarming shortage of grain. I never saw it so scarce and
high, since I’ve been milling. The first war work is the farmers’, to
raise a bumper crop.”
“Then I’m in war work, father,” said David. “I’m going to beat the
record on my corn acre this year.”
Dick laughed. “A poor war worker! Not even a one-horse farmer, just a
one-acre boy!”
“My one-acre boy multiplied by hundreds of thousands makes the Boys’
Corn Club a big thing,” said Mr. Spotswood. “Why aren’t you in it,
Dick?”
“I’ve got something better to do,” said Dick, confidently and
mysteriously.
“Isn’t it strange the Germans don’t see they are beaten?” said Mr.
Blair.
“Man, man! What are you talking about?” Black Mayo exclaimed. “Beaten?
In three years of war, German soil has been trampled by enemy feet
only once, those few days in that first August when the French invaded
Alsace. I fear there’s a hard struggle and dark days ahead.”
This speech amazed every one.
“Why, Cousin Mayo! Can’t the United States whip the world?” exclaimed
David.
“Aren’t most of the nations against Germany?” asked Dick.
“Oh, yes! A score of nations are united against Germany and her sister
autocracies, Austria-Hungary and Turkey and Bulgaria.”
“Is Germany so much the best fighter?” David wanted to know.
“No! But she has the inside lines, and she was ready for war. For
nearly forty years she was preparing for ‘the day,’ while the rest of
the world was busy with works of peace.”
“Didn’t the other countries have armies and navies, too?” David
persisted.
“No country ever built up such a perfect war machine as Germany,”
said Mr. Osborne. “Every point was prepared. Optical and dye experts
produced an inconspicuous gray-green uniform; engineers constructed
the Kiel Canal and a network of railroads leading to Belgium and
France; scientists captured nitrogen from the air for explosives and
fertilizers, and devised Zeppelins, huge guns, submarines, and poison
gas; experts made war plans; officers were drilled to carry them out
with soldiers trained by years of service. And the minds of people were
prepared--abroad by propaganda, and at home by patriotic-sounding talk
about ‘the seas must be free’ and ‘we demand our place in the sun.’
Even Kuno----” He paused and then said to himself, “I wonder where Kuno
is!”
“Kuno?” said Red Mayo, questioningly.
“Kuno Kleist, a German friend of mine with whom I tramped through
Mexico. He was coming home with me, but he had news that his mother was
ill, so he went back to Germany. Such a clever, merry, kind-hearted
fellow he was; confident that the eternal jubilee of peace and
brotherhood was at hand, ‘made in Germany,’ by his Socialist brethren.”
Mr. Blair laughed. “Now we are seeing what is really ‘made in Germany’
by your friend Kuno Kleist and the others.”
Black Mayo shook his head. “Not Kuno, not the will and heart of him.
They may have his body--I hope not, I hope not--as a cog in this
terrible military machine, crushing helpless nations and people with
its awful policy of frightfulness.”
“They ought all to be killed, them German scoundrels ought,” wheezed
old Mr. Tavis. “They ought to be treated like they treat the Belgians
and them other people Will Blair reads us about in his newspaper.”
“No and no!” Black Mayo said emphatically; then he went on, looking not
at Mr. Tavis, but at David and Dick: “The worst thing that could happen
to the world, to us, would be to be infected by the germ of hate.”
“But the Germans do such mean things, Cousin Mayo. How can we not hate
them?” Patsy looked up with a frown. “Father read in the paper to-day
that two more relief ships have been sunk, ships loaded with food for
the starving Belgians.”
“And I gave all my money to buy it,” said Sweet William, indignantly.
“I’m saving my sugar for the poor little Belgians. Do you reckon the
Germans’ll sink that, too?”
“Relief ships!” said David. “Why, they sink hospital ships, with
wounded soldiers and doctors and nurses; and ships with women and
babies. Remember the _Lusitania_!”
“I think we ought to hate them,” said Anne.
“No, dear, no,” said Black Mayo. “We ought to fight fair and hard and
without hate, for our own rights and the rights of all people, the
Germans, too. Why, the German people had no voice in making this war.
It was declared by the kaiser without consulting the _Reichstag_ in
which the people are represented.
“Remember, children, most wars are made by governments, against the
wishes and interests of the people. War is a disaster, a scourge;
war, more than famine, is the seven blasted ears of corn, the seven
lean-fleshed kine, destroying the full and the well-favored. All the
waste and woe of this World War will be worth while if they make people
realize the horror and wickedness of war and put an end to it forever.”
“You are talking over their heads,” laughed Red Mayo.
“I am not sure of that,” said Black Mayo, looking at David’s thoughtful
face. “And if I am, it is not a bad thing for young folks to have
things above them to grow up to.”
“Dick, get a chair for Cousin Alice Blair,” said Mrs. Osborne, as a
fat, smiling woman waddled up the path. “She likes the big rocker. Get
two chairs, son. There’s Miss Fanny coming down The Street, and she’ll
stop to find out what we are talking about.”
Sure enough, Miss Fanny Morrison turned in at the gate. She was the
Village seamstress, a blunt-featured, blunt-mannered, kind-hearted
woman who lived with an invalid sister in a cottage across the street
from the Osborne home.
“I saw you-all out here and I just had to come in,” she said. “Oh!
you’re talking about this war. Is it really true that the United States
is in it? Isn’t it awful? War is a terrible thing. I certainly am
glad I don’t live in a country that is in it, I mean, really in it.
My mother said that during The War they used to----” She carried the
conversation away from the war that was convulsing the world, to their
“The War,” fought before they were born.
“Did the supervisors appropriate money for our veterans to go to the
Reunion, Mayo?” Mrs. Osborne asked presently.
“The treasury’s almost empty,” answered her husband. “They gave what
they had. And we started a subscription to make up the deficit.”
“We can raise part of the money by selling lunches on the Green during
court week,” said Mrs. Osborne.
Patsy spoke quickly. “Oh, no, mother! You forget I told you the
school’s going to serve lunches that week for the Red Cross.”
Mrs. Osborne turned a surprised, indignant face to her daughter. “Why,
my dear! Aren’t you patriotic enough to give up any other plans for the
sake of our dear old Confederate soldiers?”
Patsy hung her head, with a submissive mumble.
Sweet William, now nestling against his mother’s knee, put a caressing
hand on her cheek to demand attention.
“Mother, is Virginia the United States, too?” he inquired.
“Virginia the United States?” repeated his mother.
“Virginians used to be accused of thinking so, son,” said Mr. Osborne,
laughing. “It is the general opinion that our State is a part of the
Union; it’s so on the map.”
“Then if Virginia is in the United States, we are, too; aren’t we,
father?”
“We certainly are, son; we are whatever Virginia is,” declared Mr.
Osborne.
“Then we are in this war.” Sweet William imparted the information
solemnly, as his own special discovery. “Virginia’s the United States,
and we are Virginia; and so we are in the war!”
“It sounds reasonable, son,” remarked his father, with a dry chuckle,
“but you are the first of us who has thought of it.”
While they were laughing over Sweet William’s great discovery, two men,
one leading a horse, turned from The Back Way into The Street and came
toward the Osborne home.
Black Mayo jumped up.
“There’s Jack Mallett bringing Rosinante,” he said. “I left her at the
shop to be shod, and told him I’d be back in ten minutes.”
“We all know the length of your ‘ten minutes,’” laughed Mrs. Osborne.
“It’s your fault, Miranda, all your fault,” Black Mayo turned on her.
“You asked me to stay to supper; and you know I never know when to go
home.”
By this time, Mr. Mallett and his son were at the steps, receiving a
cordial greeting. They were a little circle of friends, gentlefolks and
seamstress and blacksmith, who had grown up together in The Village.
As children and men and women, in school and shop and church, they
played and worked and worshipped together. Each stood on his own
merits, and only old negroes spoke slightingly of “poor white trash.”
But the class lines were there, as deep or even deeper than when they
were marked by wealth and land and slaves. An Osborne or Wilson or Mayo
was--oh, well! an Osborne or Wilson or Mayo, and not a Tavis or Jones
or Hight.
“I’m awfully sorry, Jack----” began Black Mayo, going to get his horse.
“Oh! that’s all right,” interrupted Mr. Mallett. “I was shutting up the
shop and I saw you here, so I thought I’d bring the mare. She don’t
like to stand tied.”
“Thank you, Jack.”
“Come in, Jack; come in, you and Fayett, and sit awhile,” said Red
Mayo, heartily.
“No, Red; no, Miss Miranda, thank you,” replied Mr. Mallett. “I can’t
set down. I’ve got to go straight home. I promised my old woman I
would.” But he tarried to share his news with them. “You’ve been
talking ’bout the war, I reckon. Fayett heard to-day at Redville the
Congress has voted for it. And--what do you think?--he’s going to give
up agricultural school and be a soldier.”
“Fayett a soldier!” exclaimed Dick, looking at his neighbor with
amazement and a sort of awe.
The elders, too, were exclaiming and questioning, looking at the
boy whom they had known all his life as if he had suddenly become a
stranger. That a Village boy was going as a soldier did not bring home
to them the fact that the World War had become an American war; it
merely seemed to carry him away from them, making him a part of that
mighty overseas conflict.
“Is Fayett really going?” asked Miss Fanny Morrison.
“Well, he wants to, and my old woman and me’ve been talking it over and
we’ve done both give our consent; so I reckon it’s settled,” was the
answer.
“How could his mother agree?” As Mrs. Osborne asked the question, her
hold tightened on the man child drowsing at her knee.
“He told us he felt he ought to go, and she says she wouldn’t stand
in the way of anything he thought he ought to do,” Mr. Mallett said
quietly. “And if his mother can give him up, I’ve got no right to hold
him back.”
“But, Fayett,--” Mr. Blair turned to the boy--“I don’t understand your
wanting to go. You were always such a peaceable fellow.”
“Yes, sir,” said the lad, as if that were a reason for him to fight in
this war. “And now that the United States is in it, it seems like I
must go. Of free will. Not waiting to be sent.”
He spoke as an American, but those listening remembered that he was the
great-great-grandson of a Frenchman.
Black Mayo turned to Mr. Mallett. “Well, well, well! Your
great-grandfather came here to fight for American liberty, and now your
son is going to France to fight for freedom there. Wouldn’t that old
Mallett of the mine be proud of Fayett? Ah, it’s fine to act so that
our ancestors might be proud of us! God bless you, boy!”
He wrung Fayett’s hand, man to man, and then took his bridle rein.
“Thank you, Jack,” he said again. “Good night, folks. It’s ten minutes
to eight. Polly is locking the back door this minute, and when I get
there she’ll be settled with her knitting. Come to see us, all of you.”
He paused in the yard and said, “Mayo, a word with you.” Then he said
in an undertone: “It’s best to keep quiet about what happened to-day.
Tell Anne and Patsy so. That fellow Smith doesn’t understand how we
feel about things. If his foolish speech gets abroad, it will injure
him. Maybe I was a little too quick on the trigger.”
He swung into the saddle and the roan mare galloped away.
While the other guests were saying good night, Dick slipped to his
bedroom, avoiding a private interview with his father.
“He won’t punish me to-morrow,” he said. “It’s Sunday, Easter Sunday.”
Easter Sunday! And America, that had striven so hard for peace, had
been whirled into the red World War.
But it was not of the nation that Mrs. Osborne was thinking as she put
Sweet William to bed.
“Poor Mrs. Mallett!” she said to herself. “What if it were my boy that
is going?” And she kissed her little son so fiercely that he stirred
and opened his eyes.
“Mother,” he said drowsily, “will my sugar be enough----”
He was asleep before the question was finished.