for nothing had she made out the card-catalogue accounts of those
life-histories. "There was one old woman we helped ... she looked some
like Mrs. Wilson's mother. She had lost three sons and two sons-in-law
in the war. Both of her daughters, widows, had been sent off into
Germany to do forced labor. One of them had been a music-teacher and the
other a dressmaker. She had three of the grandchildren with her. Two of
them had disappeared ... just lost somewhere. She didn't have a cent
left, the Germans had taken everything. She was sixty-seven years old
and she was earning the children's living by doing scrub-woman's work in
a slaughter-house. She had been a school-teacher when she was young.
"There were five little children in one family. The mother was sort of
out of her mind, though the doctors said maybe she would get over it.
They had been under shell-fire for five days, and she had seen three
members of her family die there. After that they wandered around in the
woods for ten days, living on grass and roots. The youngest child died
then. The oldest girl was only ten years old, but she took care of them
all somehow and used to get up nights when her mother got crazy thinking
the shells were falling again."
Ellen spoke badly, awkwardly, haltingly. She told nothing which they
might not have read, perhaps had read in some American magazine. But it
was a different matter to hear such stories from the lips of Ellen
Boardman, born and brought up among them. Ellen Boardman had _seen_
those people, and through her eyes Marshallton looked aghast and for the
first time believed that what it saw was real, that such things were
happening to real men and women like themselves.
When she began to tell them about the Gare de l'Est she began helplessly
to cry, but she would not stop for that. She smeared away the tears with
her handkerchief wadded into a ball, she was obliged to stop frequently
to blow her nose and catch her breath, but she had so much to say that
she struggled on, saying it in a shaking, uncertain voice, quite out of
her control. Standing there before those well-fed, well-meaning,
prosperous, _safe_ countrymen of hers, it all rose before her with
burning vividness, and burningly she strove to set it before them. It
had all been said far better than she said it, eloquently described in
many highly paid newspaper articles, but it had never before been said
so that Marshallton understood it. Ellen Boardman, graceless,
stammering, inarticulate, yet spoke to them with the tongues of men and
angels because she spoke their own language. In the very real, very
literal and wholly miraculous sense of the words, she brought the
war--_home_--to them.
* * * * *
When she sat down no one applauded. The women were pale. Some of them
had been crying. The men's faces were set and inexpressive. Mr.
Wentworth stood up and cleared his throat. He said that a young citizen
of their town (he named him, the young reporter) desired greatly to go
to the French front as an ambulance driver, but being obliged to earn
his living, he could not go unless helped out on his expenses. Miss
Boardman had been able to get exact information about that. Four hundred
dollars would keep him at the front for a year. He proposed that a
contribution should be taken up to that end.
He himself went among them, gathering the contributions which were given
in silence. While he counted them afterwards, the young reporter,
waiting with an anxious face, swallowed repeatedly and crossed and
uncrossed his legs a great many times. Before he had finished counting
the minister stopped, reached over and gave the other young man a
handclasp. "I envy you," he said.
He turned to the audience and announced that he had counted almost
enough for their purpose when he had come upon a note from Mr.
Pennypacker saying that he would make up any deficit. Hence they could
consider the matter settled. "Very soon, therefore, our town will again
be represented on the French front."
The audience stirred, drew a long breath, and broke into applause.
Whatever the rest of the Union might decide to do, Marshallton, Kansas,
had come into the war.
EYES FOR THE BLIND
She woke in the morning to the sound of her alarm clock, an instrument
of torture which, before the war, she had never heard. At once there
descended upon her two overpowering sensations, one an intense desire to
stay in bed and rest, the other the realization that she had no time to
lose if she was to be at her office on time. She was up at once, and
began making a hasty toilet with cold water. It was so hasty that she
had no time to think, even in passing, of the old days when waking up
meant ringing for some one to open shutters, close windows and bring hot
water, breakfast, and the mails. By the time she had finished her
Spartan toilet, her _concierge_, very sleepy-eyed and frowsy, rang at
the door and handed in a bowl of _cafe au lait_ and a piece of bread,
with the morning paper folded across the tray. The Directrice sat down
in her cheerless dining-room and ate her breakfast, reading, eagerly at
first, and then grimly, the communique of the day. "No advance anywhere
along the lines; a few _coups-de-main_ here and there--indecisive
results." Another day like all the others had begun, a day when hope was
forbidden, when the only thing left was to endure and do the task at
hand. For her, personally, there was nothing to fear in the lists of
the dead, because she had found there, two long years before, the name
which alone gave meaning to her life.
She put on her hat without looking in the mirror. This is a strange
action in a Frenchwoman, but the Directrice was already preoccupied by
the work awaiting her in her office. As she walked rapidly along through
the rain, she was turning over in her mind the possibilities for one of
her charges, Philippe, the childlike one who was perfectly willing to
sit down there in the comfortable home provided for him and allow
himself to be forever supported. It was not, Heaven knows, that our
Directrice would not have liked forever and ever to have him supported
and cared for like any child. But she had the instinctive grasp on the
exigencies of human nature which is characteristic of her nation, and
she knew that if he were to be again a normal human being, he must be
roused to a sense of responsibility for his own life, in spite of the
dreadful calamity which war had brought him. But how could he _be_
aroused? He had shown no interest in learning how to be a professional
knitter; he had only dabbled in clay-modeling; his typewriting continued
indifferent--what could there be which she had not yet tried?
Never before, until the war took away not only the meaning of her life
but all her goods, had she known what it was to walk at that dismally
early hour in the morning through a dismally rainy street. But now she
was so absorbed with the needs of another that she did not at all feel
the rain in her face or see the mud on her shoes, and had not even the
most passing pang of pity for herself, losing her youth from one day to
another, with very little to hope for and,--alas!--nothing left to fear.
As she turned into the door of her institution, she had an inspiration.
The only thing to do for Philippe was to turn to account the inimitable
charm of his personality, since that was about all the equipment he
seemed to have. Why could not he be a traveling salesman? But how
_could_ a blind man be a traveling salesman? Ah, that was the thing for
the Directrice to contrive! That was why she was there!
* * * * *
She was, as usual, the first person to arrive at her office, although
the blind men, just coming out from breakfast, were already standing
idling about the hall before going to their classes, lighting cigarettes
and chatting. They recognized her quick, light, steady step, and all
their blind and mutilated faces lit up with welcome. Hers also. Although
they could not see it, she gave to every one the smile, the animated
look, the pretty, sideways toss of her head, the coquettish poise of her
upright little figure, which she would have given to him seeing. It was
strange to see her there, all those blind faces turned towards her, and
hers irradiating a light and warmth--Well, perhaps, they saw it, after
all.... Then she dismissed them to their work, with peremptory
affection. "Off with you now, boys; don't stand fooling around here.
There isn't a minute to lose, with all you have to do." They nodded,
saluted, and dispersed like obedient children.
She went into her office to begin the day's work. The light which had
transformed her face died out into fatigue, as she sat opening one after
another of the innumerable letters which lay on her desk, most of them
pitiful, some of them very foolish, all from people who were clamoring
for help. The stenographers came in; the professors began to arrive; the
telephone bell rang tyrannically over and over; one of the men came
groping his way back from his class to complain fretfully that his
teacher had treated him with insufficient respect; another arrived, his
cane tapping in front of him, beaming with pride, and held out a
perfectly typewritten page to show his progress; a third one limped to
the door to say he had a sore throat, and please would the Directrice
take care of it herself and not turn him over to the nurse, who did not
understand him? The minutes passed,--an hour, a precious hour was gone,
and nothing yet accomplished!
The telephone rang again, the Directrice was called and received over
the wire a communication from a lady who announced herself as the
Marquise de Rabat-Sigur, _nee_ Elizabeth Watkins. That considerable
personage said she would like to do something for the war-blind
("everybody in my set has an _aveugle de guerre_") and on being
questioned as to her competence, stated squarely that all she could do
was to take them out for walks, and please, if she did, she would like a
good-looking one, not one of those with the dreadfully mutilated faces.
The Directrice turned away from the telephone, a hard line of scorn at
the corner of her lips, her eyes very tired and old. She had not as yet
been able to attend to any of her letters.
She now began dictating rapidly the answer to one of them when the
bare-kneed boy-scout page came hurriedly to say that Pigier, the one who
had the bad face-wounds, was worse, was in one of his "spells," and the
nurse could do nothing with him. Blindness always comes of course from
head-wounds, and head-wounds mean the disorganization of all the nervous
centers. The Directrice left her work and went upstairs into the sick
man's room and sat down by his bed. The great-shouldered, massively
muscled fellow clutched at her like a scared child, and began in a
rapid, hysteric whisper to tell her of the awful things he saw in his
eternity of blackness. For he was not really blind, he told her, he saw,
yes he saw, but only not what was really there ... dreadful things,
horrible things, dead men in the trenches after an attack, corpses
rotting in the rain, artillery wagons driving headlong over men only
half-dead--he told all these visions to her, all, and as he spoke he
felt them grow faded, harmless, unreal. But she grew pale as she
listened, and turned rather sick.
When he had poured out all his terrors and she had assured him--as she
had forty times before--that they were all imaginary, just the result of
his nerves not being settled yet; that as soon as he got back his
appetite and could take more exercise out of doors, and learn to roller
skate in the gymnasium, he would find they would all disappear. Having
transferred to her all his horrors, he felt himself immensely lightened
and comforted. He promised her that if she went with him to the
gymnasium, he would get up and dress and see if he could learn to stand
up on the roller skates. She left him, her imagination full of new
nightmare images to beset her next sleepless night, and hurried down to
her office again, making a hopeful calculation that while he was
dressing--this is a lengthy process with a newly blinded man--she could
certainly have time to answer some letters.
As she entered her office, a pretty young girl, richly dressed, with a
sweet, child's face, flushed with emotion, sprang up, grasped her arm
and said, in a trembling voice of nervous determination: "Madame, you do
not know me, but I have come to you at a critical moment in my life. I
have decided that I will either go into a convent, or marry a blind man.
I have plenty of money, I can support a blind man." At the expression
which came into the face of the Directrice, her voice rose hysterically.
"Don't laugh at me! Don't try to dissuade me. I detest the life at home.
My family do not understand me. I have run away from home this morning
to tell you this. My decision is irrevocable."
The Directrice, feeling herself a thousand years old in worldly wisdom,
summoned all her patience and sat down to tell her what she had told all
the other pretty, child-faced young ladies who had come with such fixed
determination. She said clearly and firmly that it was not to be
thought of; that her visitor was far too young to make any such
decision; that it would be unfair to any blind man to put him in a
position where he would certainly soon feel himself a terrible drag on a
young life; that she would not go into a convent, either, but would stay
at home with her parents, like a sensible girl, until she married a man
like herself. These were the words she pronounced, very simple,
common-sense, conversational words, which would have had no effect in
any one's else mouth. But what she was spoke more loudly than what she
said. The Directrice did not wear the black and penitential garb of a
Mother Superior, but she had acquired, through intensive experience, all
of a Mother Superior's firm, penetrating authority and calm manner. Not
a trace of the amused scorn she felt for the silly child penetrated to
the surface of her quiet manner. In ten minutes, the girl was crying,
quite relieved that her visit had come to nothing, and the Directrice
was calling for a cab to take her home. She herself put the weeping
child into the carriage, and stood looking after it with a tolerant
smile on her firm lips. "Was I ever as young as that?" she asked herself
as she went back to her office.
As she turned again to the letter from the important members of the
American colony who wanted to be put on the Governing Committee of the
institution because of the other distinguished names there, her blind
man, the one who had had the horrors, appeared at the door, dressed,
still animated with the new energy given him by his Directrice, and held
out his hand to her. She jumped up laughing--how could she manage that
laugh!--and told him he looked as though he were leading her out to
dance. By this device she managed so that, while in reality leading him,
he seemed to be leading her down the steps and across the courtyard, to
the gymnasium.
While the instructor put on his roller skates and he started on his
first round, she stayed, her face all a-sparkle with fun and interest,
calling out joking encouragements to him, and making such merry fun of
his awkwardness that he laughed back at her. One quite forgot for the
moment that he had not only no eyes, but very little face left.
Then, seeing him well started, already taking an interest in the new
sport, she turned back across the courtyard. Now that it was no longer
needed, the sparkle and animation had all gone from her face again. She
looked very old and tired, and cross and severe; and one of the
volunteer teachers (a wealthy woman, coming in to give a half-hour of
English in the intervals of her shopping and dressmaking expeditions)
thought what a disagreeable-looking woman the Directrice was.
Then, for half an hour, she was, by some extraordinary chance, left
uninterrupted in her office, and dictated rapidly the answers to her
morning mail. In order to accomplish as much as possible in this
unheard-of period of quiet, she became a sort of living flame of
attention. The real meaning of each letter was sucked out of it by a
moment's intense scrutiny. She had but a moment, in each case, to make
the decision, sometimes a very important one. The wealthy American lady
who wanted to be on the Committee was referred vaguely to some
far-distant authority, who would in turn refer her to some one else, and
so put her off without offending her; because if it is possible, wealthy
people, no matter how preposterous or self-seeking, must not be
offended. The money which Providence has so curiously placed in their
hands means too much to the needy charges in the care of the Directrice.
She who, before the earthquake changes in her life, had been so scornful
of self-seeking and pretentiousness, had now learnt a hundred adroit
ways of setting those evil forces to turn the wheels of her mill. This
was the part of her work she hated the most....
Another letter was from a blinded soldier in one of the hospitals, sent
by one of his friends, since the authorities of the hospital would not
permit him to write. He wanted to come to the Directrice's institution,
and a clique in the hospital, who were jealous of it, were combining in
a thousand subterranean ways to prevent his going there. It is very easy
for two or three seeing people to circumvent a blind man. The Directrice
did not answer this letter--she put it aside with a bright light of
battle in her eyes and a slightly distended nostril.
Four begging letters from people who had no claim on her or the
institution; two from inventors--one of whom had quite simply discovered
the secret of perpetual motion, which, he thought, would be of especial
benefit to blind people,--the other had invented a typewriter
wonderfully adapted for the blind, a detailed description of which he
forwarded. In her lightning survey the Directrice perceived that the
machine weighed seventy pounds, threw the letter violently in the
waste-paper basket, and turned to the next. Over this one she lingered a
moment, her face softening again. It was from one of her graduates, who
had come into the institution with the horrors, who had clung to her
like a dead weight for the first month of his stay, but who, before the
end of his six months' sojourn there, had become perfect master of the
knitting machine. Just before leaving, he had married the nurse who had
taken care of him in the hospital, the Directrice being, of course,
chief witness at the wedding. And now, after a year, he wrote her to
make a report. They earned their living well, he and his wife, he had
bought three other knitting machines and had a little workroom in his
house, where he, his wife and two employees carried on a lucrative
business; that is, his wife did until the arrival of a baby--such a
healthy, hearty little boy whom they had called Victor, because the
Directrice's name is Victorine; and please, will she be his
godmother?... Yes, there are good moments in the life of the Directrice,
moments when there is no mask on her face, either of courageous smiling
or of bitter fatigue; when she is, for just a moment, a very happy
woman, happy in a curious, impersonal way which was as little within her
capacities before the war as all the rest of her laborious, surcharged
life.
And then, somehow, it was lunch time. Where had the morning gone? She
must needs go in now and sit down at one of the long tables, looking up
and down the line of blind faces, watching the fumbling hands trying so
hard to learn the lesson of self-reliance in the new blackness. She had
acquired an almost automatic dexterity in turning a cup so that the
handle will be in the right place for the groping hand, in cutting up a
morsel of meat on the plate of the man beside her, while engaging him in
lively conversation so that he shall not notice it, in slipping the
glass under the water carafe which is being awkwardly tilted by one of
those dreadful searching hands. Through some last prodigy of dexterity
she ate her own lunch while she did this. There were four of the long
tables, and every day she must sit at a different one, or the others
will be jealous.
After lunch she stood for a few minutes in the big hall, laughing and
talking with the men, helping them light their cigarettes, listening to
their complaints or their accounts of the triumphs of the morning. As
she went back into her office, she saw that one of them was following
her, and her experienced eye saw by his shambling gait, by the listless
way in which he handled his little bamboo cane, by every slack line of
his body, what the trouble was. He had the "_cafard_"--the blues--and
nobody could do anything for him but the Directrice. She was very tired
herself, and for just a moment she reflected that if she had an
instant's time, she would probably have the worst fit of "_cafard_" ever
known to man. But she had _not_ an instant's time, so, without seeming
to note the cloud on his face, she pulled open the drawer where she
always kept some device against these evil hours. This time it was a new
invention for writing Braille by hand. She told her "pensionnaire" that
she was so glad he happened to come, because she had been wanting his
opinion on the advisability of this. "See, it is intended to be used
thus,"--she put it in his hands,--"and the little bar is made of such
and such an alloy instead of the aluminum that is usually used, with
such and such claimed benefits." Did he think, now, that it would be
better than the standard one they were using, and what did he think
about the advisability of giving the inventor a chance to make a few
samples? With that she was launched upon a history of the inventor's
life, what a hard time he had had, how eager he was to do something for
the blind, and she wondered if perhaps her blind men there would be
willing to give him an interview. The inventor would consider it such an
honor. But in the meantime, of course, let him look carefully at the
little invention, so that he can have the best judgment possible to give
the inventor. The west wind of this new interest in another's life, this
new importance for himself, blew away visibly before her eyes the black
clouds of disheartenment. Her blind man was only a boy, after all. He
took the little Braille plaque under his arm and, tapping briskly before
him, felt his way to the door, saying, over his shoulder importantly,
that he would try to find half an hour's time to give the inventor,
although his days were really very much occupied. The Directrice looked
after him with speculative eyes. "Now I have used up that device, what
shall I do for the next one?"
Suddenly she realized that this was the visiting hour for the hospital
where the blind man was being held in durance by the little plot against
him. The fighting light came into her eyes again, she clapped on her
hat--you will note it is the second time this day she has put on her hat
without looking at herself in the glass--and swept out to do combat, all
her firm, small, erect person animated by the same joy in battle which
had sent her crusading forefathers into the fight singing and tossing
their swords up into the air. She was gone an hour and a half, and when
she came back, although she looked several degrees more tired even than
before, a grim satisfaction sat upon her hard, small mouth. She had won
her point. The blind man was to be allowed to come.