A ripple of interest ran over a few quarters of Sabinsport when it read
of the sudden departure of three Serbian miners. At the banks, and in
the offices of the mills and factories, men sniffed or swore, "Doesn't
a man know when he is well off? I don't understand how a steady fellow
like Nikola Petrovitch can do such a crazy thing. Who is going to take
care of his family?" This was the usual business view.
A few members of the Ladies' Aid of Dick's church grumbled to him. "We
will have that family on our hands again. Couldn't you stop him?"
It was momentary interest only. Austria's declaration of war had not
entered their minds. Dick felt that if he had asked some of the members
of his congregation who had declared war, they might have said,
"Serbia." The repeated shocks of the news of the next few days battered
down indifference. Each night and each morning there fell into the
community facts--terrible, unbelievable--stunning and horrifying it.
Germany had invaded Belgium. She was battering down Liège. Why, what
did it mean? England had declared war on Germany. She was calling out
an army, but what for? And we--we were to be neutral, of course. We had
nothing to do with it.
The town discussed the news of that dreadful week in troubled voices,
reading the paper line by line, curious, awed--but quite detached. The
first sense of connection came when the _Argus_ announced that Patsy
McCullon was lost. The last her family had heard of her she was in
Belgium. They had cabled--could get no word. Now Patsy was Sabinsport's
pride.
She was an example, so High Town said, of what a girl could make of
herself, though as a matter of fact better backing than Patsy had for
her achievement it would be hard to find. Her father and mother were of
the reliable Scotch stock which had come a hundred years before to the
country near Sabinsport. Here Patsy's grandfather had settled and
prospered. Here her father had been born and here he still carried on
the original McCullon farm. He had married a "native" like himself, and
like himself well-to-do. They had worked hard and they had to show for
their efforts as comfortable and attractive a place as the district
boasted--not a "show farm," like Ralph Cowder's, but clean, generous
acres--many of them--substantial buildings always shining with fresh
paint, herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, gardens, vines, orchards.
The McCullons had one child, Patsy. You'd go far to find anything
firmer on its feet than Patsy McCullon, anything that knew better its
own mind or went more promptly and directly after the thing it wanted.
Patsy was twenty-four. Since the hour she was born, she had been her
own mistress. When she was ten she had elected to go into town to
school. When she was sixteen she had graduated, and the next year she
had gone to college. Her father and mother had put in a feeble protest.
They needed her. She was an only child. They had "enough." Why not
settle down? But Patsy said firmly, No. She was going to "prepare to do
something." When they asked her what, she said quite frankly she didn't
know. She'd see. She knew the first thing was education and she meant
to have it. She'd teach and pay back if they said so, but Father
McCullon hastened to say that it "wasn't necessary." He guessed she
could have what she wanted. And so Patsy had gone East to college. She
had graduated with honor two years before the war and had come back to
Sabinsport to take a position in the high school.
If Patsy had been able to analyze the motives back of her career to
date she would have found the dominating one to have been a
determination to make Sabinsport--select, rich, satisfied
Sabinsport--take her in. She had been, as a little girl, conscious that
these handsome, well-dressed, citified people, whose origin was in no
case better and often not so good as her own--Father McCullon took care
that Patsy knew the worst of the forebears of those in town who held
their heads so high--regarded her as a little country girl, something
intangibly different and inferior to themselves. When they stopped at
the farm, as they so often did in pleasant weather to eat strawberries
in summer and apples in the fall, to drink buttermilk and gather
"country posies," as they called them, she had been vaguely offended by
their ways.
When she insisted at ten upon going into town to school, it was with an
unconscious resolve to find out what made them "different"--what secret
had they for making her father and mother so proud of their visits, and
why didn't her father and mother drop in as they did? She suggested it
once when they were in town, and had been told, "No, you can't do that.
We've not been asked."
"But they come to visit you without being asked."
"But that's different. We are country people. Visitors are always
welcome in the country. City people don't expect you to come without
invitation."
This offended her. She would find out about it. But it continued to
baffle her.
She stood high in school. She quickly learned how to dress and do her
hair as well as the best of them. She read books, she shone in every
school exhibition, but she continued a girl from the country. Evidently
she must do more than come to them; she must bring them something.
She'd see what college would do.
College did wonders for Patsy. She came to it full of health and zest,
excellently prepared; good, oh very good, to look at; sufficiently
supplied with money, and, greatest of all, determined to get everything
going. "Nothing gets away from Patsy McCullon," the envious sometimes
said. It didn't, nothing tried to: she was too useful, too agreeable,
too resourceful. It didn't matter whether it was a Greek or a tennis
score, Patsy went after it, and oftener than not carried it away.
Probably if there had been annual voting for the most popular girl in
her class, there would never have been a year she wouldn't have won.
She had friends galore. All her short vacations she went on visits--the
homes of distinguished people, it would have been noted, if anybody had
been keeping tab on her. And Sabinsport always knew it.
"Miss Patsy McCullon, the daughter of Donald McCullon, is spending her
Easter holiday in New York, with the daughter of Senator Blank," the
_Argus_ reported. A thing like that didn't get by the exclusive of
Sabinsport. There weren't many of them who would not have been willing
to have given fat slices of their generous incomes for introduction
into that fashionable household.
And when college was done with and High Town was prepared to welcome
Patsy into its innermost, idlest set, she had taken its breath away and
distressed her father and mother by asking for and getting a position
in the high school.
Her reasons for this surprising action were many. She could not and
would not ask more from her parents. They had been generous, too
generous, and she'd taken freely. It wasn't fair, unless she went back
to the farm and she wouldn't do that. She could be near them if not
with them, and still be where she could conquer High Town.
But Patsy soon learned--indeed she was pretty sure of it before she put
her ambition to test--that the thing she had set out to win so long ago
wasn't the thing she wanted. She found herself free to come and go
wherever she would in Sabinsport, but it was no longer an interest.
College had done something to Patsy--set her on a chase after what she
called the "real." She didn't know what it was, but she did know it was
something to be worked for--which is perhaps more than most of the
seekers of reality ever discover.
She was going to achieve the "real" and she was never going to be a
snob. She wasn't ever going to make anybody feel as those people in
Sabinsport, with their suburban, metropolitan airs, had made her feel.
She was going to treat everybody fair, for, as she sagely told herself,
"You can never tell what anybody may do--look at me!" Which of course
proves that Patsy was not free from calculation. Indeed, she steered
her course solely by calculation, but it was calculation without
malice, incapable of a meanness, a lie or a real unkindness.
"She's out after what she wants," a brother of one of her college
friends had said once, "but you can be darn sure she'll never double
cross you in getting it: she's white all through." She was, but she was
also hard; a kind, clean, just sort of hardness--of which she was
entirely unconscious.
Patsy's two years in the high school had won her the town solidly. And
when in June, 1914, she went abroad everybody had been interested. It
was her first trip and she had prepared for it thoroughly, drawing
particularly on Dick's stores of experience.
Ralph, who was feeling very wroth at her that spring because of her
indifference to his reform plans, sniffed at this. "I don't see why you
give Patsy so much time over this trip of hers. It will only make her
more unendurable, more cocksure, more blind to things about her. I like
a woman that sees."
"Sees what?" asked Dick.
"The condition of those about her--the future. Patsy McCullon doesn't
know there is a suffering woman or child in Sabinsport. She has never
crossed the threshold of a factory or entered a mine."
"She's no exception," said Dick. "There are not a half dozen of the
women in Sabinsport, even those whose entire income comes from factory
and mine, that know anything of the life of the men and women who do
the work. You can't blame Patsy for what is true of nearly all American
well-to-do women. Of course it is shocking. But Patsy at least has the
excuse that she gets no dividends from these institutions and so has no
direct responsibility."
"I'll give her credit for knowing what she wants," said Ralph, dryly.
"And playing a clean game, Ralph."
"Yes, I suppose so, but I hate a calculating woman." Dick eyed him
sharply. He had a suspicion sometimes that Ralph's irritation over
Patsy was partly growing fondness and partly self-protection. He feared
her closing in on him, and feared he would be helpless if she did.
"She'll have to work harder than she ever did before, but if I don't
mistake, she's beginning. I don't believe she knows it, though," Dick
said to himself.
Patsy sailed in June. He and Ralph had had several joyous notes from
her, and the day after the declaration of war on Serbia a long letter
announcing a sudden change of the itinerary she and Dick had arranged
with such pains.
"I have run into a college mate here who with her husband and
brother are just starting for a leisurely motor trip, half
pleasure, half business. Mr. Laurence and his brother have
connections over here, and it is to look into them that they go the
route they do. Of course, Dick, it shatters all those wonderful
Baedeker constellations we worked out for this part of the world,
but I shall see the true French country and the little towns and
I'll learn how the people live and I'll have no end of knowledge
about 'conditions' to give Ralph when I get back."
"Much she'll see there if she can't see anything here," growled Ralph.
"Who is this Laurence anyway?"
"We leave Paris around the 20th for Dijon. Mr. Laurence's firm
makes all sorts of things for farmers. They have offices in Paris
and Brussels and Berlin--all the big cities, and agents in many of
the larger towns. I suppose he takes these trips to see what the
country people need and how well the agents are persuading them
they need it. Martha says it's no end of fun to go with him. We'll
spend a day in Dijon--time enough to see the old houses and the
pastels in the museum. We're going from there to a place called
Beaune--never heard of it before, but Henry--Mr. Laurence's
brother--he knows everything about this country--says it has the
most perfect fifteenth century hospital in Europe. Then along the
Meuse into Belgium. We ought to be in Brussels by the first of
August."
And so on and on--a gurgling, happy, altogether care-free letter,
calculated above all to make a young man who still was unconscious that
he was in danger, read it and re-read it and say to himself that a girl
who could write like that at twenty-four must be a very giddy person,
and then to wake up in the night with an entirely irrelevant
thought--"She didn't say whether Henry is married. Confound him."
If Patsy had calculated her effect--which she had not, for she herself
was unconscious of why she wrote these bubbling letters so unlike her
usual ones, she could not have done better.
"I wonder where Patsy is to-day," said Dick to himself. "I hope they
turned back," but he said nothing to Ralph of his disquiet. It took
that young man forty-eight hours longer to realize that Patsy might be
caught in some unpleasant trap. He called up Dick. "The papers say
there's a panic among our tourists, Dick. Do you suppose that hits
Patsy? Don't you think we better drive out and see if the old folks
have heard from her?"
It was Sunday afternoon of August 2nd that they went out. Mr. and Mrs.
McCullon were quite serene. "Here's a letter from Patsy," they said.
"Last we've heard." It was from Paris, the 20th, two days later than
theirs, the night before they started. "She ought to be in Brussels
to-day. They say they're worried over there about getting home. I guess
Patsy can take care of herself all right. Glad she's with some real
live American business men--these Laurences seem to have pretty big
foreign interests. Patsy's all right with them."
"Of course she is," agreed Ralph. "Besides, Belgium's a good place to
be now. Belgium has a treaty with all her neighbors to keep off her
soil. France and Germany keep a strip specially for fighting purposes.
Couldn't be a better place for Patsy." And Ralph quite honestly
believed it.
But it was a different thing to Dick. He was oppressed, bewildered,
alarmed. He couldn't have told just what he feared. The world seemed
suddenly black and all roads closed. But at least he would keep his
depression to himself. He knew how entirely unreasonable it would seem
to all Sabinsport.
It was the invasion of Belgium--the thing that could not be, the
resistance of the Belgians, the attack upon Liége, the realization that
the Germans intended to fight their way to Paris--that they must pass
through Brussels where Patsy was supposed to be, that gave Sabinsport
its first sense that the war might concern them. The anxiety of Farmer
and Mrs. McCullon, which grew with the reading of the papers, stirred
the town mightily. The poor old people, so confident at first, had
become more and more disturbed as they failed by cablegram to get any
news. They spent part of every day in town, going back at night, white
with weariness and forebodings. The only thing that buoyed them up was
the series of postals they received in these early August days. Patsy
had been at Dijon and eaten of its wonderful pastry. She had been at
Beaune and seen the fireplace big enough to roast an ox in--they were
starting for a run through the fortified towns--Belfort, Verdun, Metz,
Maubeuge--and then to Brussels via Dinant and Namur. Dreadful days of
silence followed.
It was not until the 14th of August that Mr. McCullon received word
that Patsy had arrived that day in Brussels, was well and was posting a
letter. The next morning a wire from Washington said that the Embassy
reported her in Brussels, and when the New York papers came late in the
afternoon, there was her name in the State Department's list of
"Americans Found."
It was wonderful how the news ran up and down the town. Willie Butler
rushed into the house crying at the full of his lungs, "Miss Patsy's
found. Miss Patsy's found." Willie had been a year in the high school,
and his admiration for his teacher, always considerable, had been
heated white-hot by the excitement of her adventures. They talked about
it in the barber shop and at the grocery and at the hardware store
where Farmer McCullon traded and where he had been seen so often in the
last terrible days, seeking from those whom long acquaintance had made
familiar the support that familiarity and friendliness carry.
It was a topic for half the tea tables in Sabinsport that night, and
many people whom Mr. and Mrs. McCullon scarcely knew called them up to
tell them how glad they were Patsy was safe and sometimes to confide
their dark suspicion that the reason there had been no news of her was
that she was a prisoner of war!
In the long twelve days the McCullons and Sabinsport waited for Patsy's
letter, regular cablegrams notified them of her safety. Then the letter
came. Simple as it was, it took on something of the character of a
historical document in the town. It made the things they had read and
shivered over every morning actual and in a vague way connected them
with the events. There was no little pride, too, among Patsy's friends
in town that they should know an eye-witness of what they had begun to
realize was the beginning of no ordinary war.
Patsy's letter was headed
"DINANT, BELGIUM, Friday, July 31, 1918."
"Only three weeks ago," Dick said to himself, shuddering, when the
letter came to him, "and what is going on in Dinant to-day?" for,
knowing the land foot by foot, he realized how inevitable it was that
the town must be engulfed in the Namur-Charleroi battle, the result of
which in the light of the three weeks since Patsy had written her
heading, he had no doubt.
"My dear Folks:--It is just ten days since I mailed you a letter.
That was in Paris. We were starting out. It was all so gay then.
The world has changed. It is all so anxious now. It is not for any
tangible reason--nothing I could tell you. I suppose what has
happened to me is that I have caught what is in the air. It is like
an infection--this stern, tense expectancy that pervades France.
To-day we reached Dinant, this lovely little playboy of a town, its
feet in the Meuse, its head wearing an old old citadel on a cliff
grown up with trees and ferns. You would love it so, Mother
McCullon. And here it is the same watchful, dangerous quiet. There
have been rumors of war for many days, you know. The French papers,
which I've read diligently, were full of forecastings and queer
political calculations which I didn't understand and which Mr.
Laurence said were not to be taken seriously. It didn't seem
credible to me that because a crazy fellow in a little under-sized
country like Serbia had killed even a Grand Duke that a great
country like Austria should declare war on her, particularly when
she's eaten as much humble pie as Serbia has. And even if she did,
I cannot see for the life of me what Russia has to do with it or
why France should be alarmed.
"I only know that it seems as if the very air held its breath, as
if every living thing was about to spring and kill--I can't escape
it. Perhaps it would not have caught me as it has if I had not been
so close to the frontier. When I wrote you ten days ago--it seems a
year--I told you that we were to follow the frontier from Belfort
through Toul and Verdun with a side trip to Metz, then on to
Maubeuge and into Belgium. The men have a passion for forts, and
they were obliged to go to Metz for business.
"On the evening of the 28th, just as we reached Verdun, the news
came that Austria had at last declared war. We got into town all
right and they took us into the hotel, but I thought we'd never get
out. The air suddenly seemed to rain soldiers--and suspicion--the
street swarmed with people and nobody talked or smiled.
"Verdun is so lovely. You look for miles over the country from the
high terraces--the houses are so clean and trim. They look so
stable--everything seems so settled to me here as if it had been
living years upon years and had learned how to be happy and grow in
one place. I wonder if that is the difference between the American
and French towns. These places look as if nothing could disturb
them. I'm sure if when I'm old and gray and come back to Verdun, it
will all be the same and I'll sit on the terrace looking out on the
Meuse and drink my coffee just as I did last Thursday
night!--Only--only if the Germans should get near here--they can
throw their hideous shells so far, the men say--I could fancy them
popping a big one down right into the middle of our garden,
scattering us right and left.
"Up to the time we reached Verdun we had sailed through. The most
secret places were opened for us. But the fact that Austria had
declared war on Serbia certainly slowed up our wheels. It looked on
Wednesday as if we wouldn't be able to leave Verdun. Henry's
friend--he always knows a man everywhere--wasn't there--he'd been
suddenly called, transferred. Nobody knew us and everybody
suspected us, but Mr. Laurence was determined to get into Belgium
at once. We'd be free there, he said, and could play around until
things settled down. He had to use all his influence to get out. It
was only when he enlisted our officer friends at Toul by telephone
that he was allowed to go. We had just such a time at Maubeuge
yesterday and certainly it looked like war there.
"They were beginning to cut down the trees--to open up the country
and to put up barbed-wire fences--to hold up people--I couldn't
help wondering if the wire came from Sabinsport. I never heard of
such a thing. Henry says that his officer friend told him that the
Germans on the other side of the frontier began clearing out trees
and preparing wire entanglements five days ago and that was before
Austria declared war. What does it mean?
"But here we are in Belgium--nice, neutral Belgium!
"Saturday, Aug. 1.
"I certainly can't make head or tail of European politics. We run
as fast as they will let us from a country that hasn't declared war
and that nobody has challenged, as I can see, but which merely
thinks it may be attacked, to get into a country that everybody has
signed a compact to let alone and live. This morning when I came
down into the garden of this darling hotel to drink my coffee, I
hear bells and commotion and I am told an order has come to
_mobilize_. But what for? When Mr. Laurence and Henry came they
said it was merely to protect neutrality. I don't see much in a
neutrality that calls all the men out. It is harsh business for the
people. I've been out in the streets and walking in the country for
hours and I'm broken-hearted. It seems that the bell the police go
up and down ringing means that they must go at once. There are
posters all over the walls to the _Armée de Terre_ and _Armée de
mer_, telling them to lose no time. Why, this morning the man who
was serving us left in the middle of our meal, just saying
'_Pardon, c'est la mobilization_,' and in three minutes Madame was
fluttering around apologizing for a delay and telling us it
wouldn't happen again, that she would serve us. Poor thing! she'll
have to, for every man about her place, her only son included,
followed that horrid bell. There's many a woman worse off than our
landlady. There are the farmers' wives, left quite alone with cows,
pigs, horses and the crops ready to harvest--some of them with not
a soul to help them. They never complain, only say, '_C'est la
guerre_,' but it isn't _la guerre_--at least, not in Belgium. How
can it be, with her treaties!
"DINANT, Tuesday, August 3.
"I did not send this letter as I expected to. Mr. Laurence advised
us to mail no letters until after the mobilization is well under
way--says the tax on transportation is so heavy that the mails are
held up. There is great difficulty even in getting Brussels by
telephone or telegraph, and we've had no papers for three days.
"You see, I am still at Dinant, though we will leave in a few
hours--if nothing happens! We were held by an incident of
mobilization. Sunday afternoon while we were in a shop buying some
fruit, a man came in hurriedly, leading a little boy and girl. He
wanted the woman to take them while he was gone. Their mother was
dead, he said. He had no one. The woman cried. She couldn't, she
said; she had her own--her husband must go. She must keep the shop.
How could she do it--how could she--and she appealed to me. The
poor fellow looked so wretched and the children so pretty that
Henry, who has the kindest heart in the world, said, 'See here, let
_me_ have the kids. I'll find somebody to keep them.' 'But I have
no money,' the man said. 'Well, never mind--I'll see to that,' and,
would you believe it? that man marched off leaving Henry Laurence
with two solemn little Belgians. Well, we had to stay in Dinant
forty-eight hours longer than we'd expected while Henry found a
place for them. We had such fun! He found a dear old lady in a nice
little house, and everybody said she'd be kind to them, and Henry
arranged at the bank for weekly payments as long as the father has
to be away. He could do that without trouble because his firm has a
branch in Brussels, and a man here handles their goods. We're going
this evening to say good-by and then north to Namur, which is only
fifteen miles away. We follow the Meuse--it will be a lovely ride.
"NAMUR, August 5.
"An awful, a wicked thing has happened. I can't believe it is true.
Last night when we reached our hotel here, the first thing we heard
was that Germany had crossed the Belgian frontier. Mr. Laurence and
Henry grew quite angry with the proprietor--whom they know very
well, as the firm has offices here--for repeating such a rumor, but
he insisted he was right. Germany couldn't do such a thing, Henry
insisted. The man only shrugged and said what everybody says here:
'_Guillaume est la cause._' ('William did it.') You hear the
peasants in the fields say the same thing. They don't say the
kaiser, or the emperor, or William II; just William--as one might
speak about a rich and powerful relative that he didn't like or
approve of but had to obey.
"Well, it is true. They crossed on Tuesday at the very time we were
having such fun placing our two little Dinantais--and to-day, oh,
Mother dear, I can't write it--they have attacked Liége. Nobody
seems to know just what has happened. It is sure that the Belgians
were told by Germany that they would not be disturbed. Henry came
in this afternoon with a copy of a Brussels paper in which only two
days ago the German Minister to Brussels said in an interview that
Belgium need have no fear from Germany.
"'Your neighbor's house may burn but yours will be safe'--his very
words. Think of that!--and at the very time he uttered them their
armies were there ready to cross. The King must be a perfect brick.
The Germans sent him a message, telling him what they proposed to
do. He called the parliament instanter and read them the document.
It was in the Brussels papers. It began by saying that the French
intended to march down the Meuse by Givet--a town on the border
only a little distance from Dinant--and then on to Namur into
Germany!
"There never was such a lie. Why, we have just come from there.
There wasn't a sign of such a thing. The French army didn't begin
to mobilize until Sunday, and it will take days and days, and here
Germany is _in_ Belgium. She says that she won't hurt the Belgians
if they will let her march through so as to attack France--and she
gives them twelve hours to decide--think of that. Doesn't it make
you want to fight yourself? The cowards! It is like a knife in the
back. But I am proud of little Belgium. They say the king and
parliament sat up all night going over things and in the morning
they sent back word 'No, the Germans could not pass with Belgium's
consent and if they tried to she'd fight,' and she's doing it!
"Everything has gone to pieces, mail--news--even money. The men
can't get any, and we're down to about five francs apiece. You
ought to see the high and mighty Laurences without a dollar in
their pockets--I wouldn't have missed it for a fortune. They are
like two helpless kids. They've always had it and depended on it to
get them everything they wanted and to make everybody else do
everything they wanted done. Now they can't get it and they
wouldn't be more helpless if their legs had been unhooked. The
trouble is we can't get to Brussels without money--for they've
_taken the car_! Doesn't it sound like a comic opera, Mother dear?
I forgot you never saw one, but it's just such crazy things they
do. We've credit, at least, for the firm has an agent here--a big
one; but the office is closed, for the agent and bookkeepers are
mobilized. Suddenly we, Mr. Laurence and Henry and their proud
corporation, are nobody. It won't last. It's inconvenient, but it's
good for them. They somehow were so sure of things--of Germany, of
the power of the firm, of themselves--when they had their pockets
full and now--why, now we're beggars! But we're American beggars
and I tell you it does brace one up to remember that.
"NAMUR, Friday, August 7.
"We are still here at Namur, dearest one, and when the wind is
right we can hear the guns firing. It is the Germans at Liége. So
far the Belgians are holding them. Isn't it glorious? The people
are crazy with pride and joy. Of course we would not be here if it
were not for the trouble about money and the delay in getting back
our car. Mr. Laurence would not have waited for that, but Martha is
really ill and he was afraid that the journey to Brussels in the
over-crowded trains and with the delays and discomforts might be
serious for her. We couldn't be in a safer place, I suppose, if we
must stand a siege. The people say Namur has the strongest
fortifications in Belgium. There are nine great forts around the
town--not close--three or four miles off. There is a wonderful old
fortification on the hill above the river, and from there you can
see over the country for miles--a much better place for a fort it
seems to me than off out in the country, but I suppose that's my
ignorance.
"You would never believe the place was preparing for a siege. It is
more like a fête. There are flags everywhere--the French and
English with the Belgian. There are no end of soldiers. They are
building barricades in the streets, but people go on so naturally.
The old men and women are harvesting. Here and there on the river
bank you see a fisherman holding his pole as placidly as if there
was not a German in a thousand miles. The fussy little steamers and
boats with lovely red square sails go up and down the rivers just
as usual. And yet this moment if I listen I can hear a distant roar
that they tell me is the guns at Liége,
"Thursday--Later.
"We are going in the morning--if they will let us. The car has been
turned back. News has just come that yesterday the Germans were
seen in Dinant--looking for the French that they made their excuse
for invading Belgium, I suppose. It has frightened Mr. Laurence and
Henry and they want to get to Brussels. The news from Liége is very
queer. We can't tell how true it is, but the attack seems to be
heavier and to-day there flew over this town a great German
airplane! spying on us, of course. It was white, with a big blue
spot on each wing, and looked for all the world like a great
scarab, and such a racket as it made!
"I watched it from the street floating over the town so insolent
and calm, and I wanted to _kill_ it. I wasn't the only one. I saw a
Belgian workman do the funniest thing. He shook his fist at it,
screaming threats and then--spit at it!
"BRUSSELS, August 10.
"We are here at last, dearest, and they tell me I can get off a
letter--maybe. We were all day yesterday getting here--about sixty
miles--think of that for a car of the Laurences. It is all funny
now, but there were moments when it was anything but that. The
entire Belgian population between Namur and Brussels seems to be on
guard. They are spy mad. We were not out of sight of one set of
guards before another had us. We had all sorts of passports, but
they took their own time making sure and sometimes it was long, for
I don't believe they could always read. There were soldiers and
civil guards all holding us up, and when they were not on the road
it was the peasants themselves. Why, in one little town a regiment
of armed peasants stopped us. Mr. Laurence said they must have
raided the firearms' department of a historical museum to get the
weapons they carried; rusty old antiques that probably wouldn't
work if they did try to fire. They arrested us and took us to the
Burgomaster, and it took two hours to convince him we weren't
spies. I'm sure he couldn't read our passports. Finally the curé
came in and he understood at once. He scolded them like
children--told them they would offend their noble English ally if
they stopped Americans. So they let us off and even cheered us as
we went.
"We reached Brussels finally and found that Mr. Laurence's people
had arranged everything. You feel so safe here as if you could
breathe. I suppose it's because of our embassy and the office,
though the office has been turned into a hospital. Hundreds of
wounded are coming in. The Red Cross is at work raising money, and
somebody jingles a cup under your nose every time you go out. The
town is full of boy scouts, too--they say they've taken over all
the messenger service.
"Mr. Laurence had just come in and says letters will go. He tells
me, too, that you've been worried--that his cablegram from Namur
didn't get through--that there are inquiries here at the embassy
for _me_. He says you think I'm lost. Oh, my dear, I never thought
of that. But you'll surely get your wire from Washington to-day, he
says. His New York office will wire every day. I couldn't sleep if
I thought of you worried. Will see you are regularly posted. Will
leave for London as soon as Martha is stronger, and I will sail for
America as soon as I can get a ship.
"Your loving PATSY."
It was on August 22nd that the McCullons received this letter. That
afternoon came a message saying that Patsy had reached London. It was
many days before they were to know of the experiences of the ten days
between letter and message, experiences which were to kindle in the
girl that anger and that pity from which her first great passion for
other people than her own was to spring.
It was not necessary for Sabinsport to receive Patsy's letter in order
to make up its mind about the invasion of Belgium. There were many
things involved in the Great War that Sabinsport was to learn only
after long months of slow and cumbersome meditation, months upon months
of wearing, puzzled watching. They were things hard for her to learn,
for they contradicted all her little teaching in world relations and
bade her enter where the traditions of her land as she had learned them
had forbidden her to go; they forced her, a landsman, to whom the seas
and their laws and meanings were remote and unreal, to come to a
realization of what the seas meant to her, the things she made and the
children she bore; they forced her to understand that the flag and laws
which protected her homes must protect ships on the water, for as her
home was her castle so were ships the sailor's castle; they forced her
to lay aside old prejudices against England; they forced her to a
passion of pity and pride and protective love for France; they forced
her to an understanding of the utter contradiction between her beliefs
and ideals and the beliefs and ideals of the Power that had brought the
war on the world. Poor little Sabinsport! Born only to know and to
desire her own corner of the earth, wishing only that her people should
be free to work out their lives in peace--she had a long road to travel
before her mind could grasp the mighty problems the Great War had put
up to the peoples of the earth, before her heart could feel as her own
the passions and aspirations that burned and drove onward the scores of
big and little peoples that fate had brought into the struggle.
But there was no problem in Belgium's case. Germany had sworn to
respect her neutrality and she had broken her oath. She had followed
this breach of faith with unheard of violence, destruction, wantonness,
pillage, cruelty, lust.
This was true.
Now Sabinsport was simple-minded. She was not very good--that is, not
without her own cynicism, hard-headedness, hypocrisies. She didn't
pretend to any great virtue, but she would not stand for broken
contracts. "You couldn't do business that way," was the common feeling
in Sabinsport. She was harsh with people who broke bargains and saw to
it always they were punished. If the sinner was able by influence in
bribery or cleverness to escape the law, Sabinsport punished him in her
own way. She never forgot and she built up a cloud of suspicion about
the man so that he knew she had not forgotten. Men had left Sabinsport
because of her intangible, persistent disapproval of violated
agreements, repudiated debts. The invasion of Belgium, then, was
classed in the town's mind with the things she wouldn't stand for.
Moreover, the deed had been done with cruelty, and Sabinsport could not
stand for that. She might--and did--overlook a great deal of the normal
cruelty of daily life--cruelties of neglect and snobbery and bad
conditions, but the out-and-out thing she wouldn't stand. A boy caught
tying a tin can to a dog's tail in Sabinsport would be threatened by
the police, held up to scorn in school and thrashed at home. A man who
beat his wife or child went to jail, and one of Sabinsport's reasons
for mistrusting the motley group of foreigners in its mines and mills
was the stories of their harsh treatment of their women.
The steady flow of news of repeated, continued violence in Belgium
stirred Sabinsport to deeper and deeper indignation. The Sunday before
Patsy's letter arrived a group of leading men and women asked Dick to
start a relief fund; the Sunday after, almost everybody doubled his
subscription, for the letter clinched their personal judgment of the
case. "She's been there; she says it as we thought."
There was another element in Belgium's case that took a mighty grip on
Sabinsport, particularly the men and boys. It was the little nation's
courage. Many a man came to Dick with a subscription because it was so
"damned plucky." Belgium's courage had no deeper admirers than Mulligan
and Cowder. Jake swore long and loud and gave generously. Cowder said
little, but the largest sum the fund received in these first days was
slipped into Dick's hand by Reuben Cowder with a simple, "Got
guts--that country has."
It is not to be supposed that there were no dissenting voices, no
doubts, no qualifications in the matter on which the town formed its
final judgment on Belgium. There were people who intimated that Germany
simply had beaten France and England to it. Sabinsport knit her brow
and pondered. Possibly England had arranged with Belgium to let her
through in case of attack--possibly France would have broken her word
in case of need. However that might be, the fact was that it was
Germany that had abused her oath and not France or England, and she did
it at the moment when neither of the others was thinking of such a
maneuver and was unprepared for it. Belgium might be surrounded by
rogue nations, but still there is a choice in rogues. Only one so far
had proved itself a rogue. Sabinsport dismissed the doubt from her
mind. The facts were against it.
There were people, too, a few, who protested against Belgium's
resistance to Germany. Dick was not surprised to hear that a certain
important pillar on the financial side of his own flock had decried the
sacrifice as "impractical." "All very well to be brave," he said, "but
one should distinguish in important matters in this life between the
practical and impractical. I call this foolish resistance--couldn't
possibly hold that army, and if they had let it pass they would have
been paid well. Foolish waste of life and property I call it." But the
gentleman ceased his talk after listening a few times to the strongly
expressed contempt of those of his colleagues who did not fear him for
his gospel of honor when practical.
Whatever the dissent, the protest, the argument, Dick had a feeling
that it was weighed and that it tipped the scale of opinion not the
hundredth part of an ounce more than it was worth. It seemed to him
sometimes that he was looking at a mixture of chemicals watching for a
crystallization--would it come true to the laws in which he had faith?
And it did; whatever the fact and fancy, the logic and nonsense, poured
into Sabinsport's head, a sound sensible view came out. His
satisfaction in the popular opinion of the town, as he caught it in his
running up and down, was the deepest of his troubled days. And the
Reverend Richard Ingraham's days were full of trouble.
There was Ralph Gardner--his dearest friend. They were not getting on
at all. The war had broken in on Ralph's schemes for regenerating
Sabinsport at a moment when her open indifference to her own salvation
was making him furious and obstinate. It had cut off all possible
chance for a campaign. It filled the air with new sympathies and
feelings. It thrust rudely out of field matters to which men had been
giving their lives. It demanded attention to facts, relations,
situations, ideas that until now were unheard of. Insist as Ralph did
in the _Argus_ and out that the war was the affair of another
hemisphere, it continued to force his hand, challenge his attention,
change the current of the activities which he held so dear. As the days
went on it grew in importance, engulfed more and more people, began to
threaten ominously the very existence of the town itself.
Ralph struggled hopelessly against the flood, refusing to accept the
collected opinion, the popular conclusions. Particularly did he refuse
to join the condemnation of Germany. Let us understand Germany, was his
constant plea. He was seeking to bolster the long-held faith that in
the social developments of Germany lay the real hope of civilization.
Their relation to German Kultur, he did not even dimly see. They were
Kultur for him and all there was of it. Because Germany had worked out
fine and practical systems of social insurance and industrial safety,
and housing and employment, he could not believe her capable of other
than humane and fair dealing with all the world. He was ready, for the
sake of this faith, to explain away a great and growing mass of facts
which to people of no such intellectual engagement were unanswerable.
He found himself more and more at disagreement not only with Dick, his
best friend, and the town, but with certain imperative, inner doubts
that would not be quiet, and in this struggle he was getting little
help from Dick.
The war had quickly opened itself to Dick as something prodigious,
murderous--all-inclusive. He saw the earth encircled by it--felt the
inevitableness finally of the entrance of the United States. From the
start it had been clear to him, as it could not have been to one who
had not known the thought and passion of the German ruling class, that
this must become the most desperate struggle the earth had yet seen
between those who felt themselves fit and appointed to plan and rule in
orderly fashion the lives of men and the blundering, groping mass
fumbling at expression but forever indomitable in its determination to
rule itself.
Dick felt that he must get into it, the very thick of it, nothing but
the limit--the direct, utter giving of himself--his body, his blood,
would satisfy the passion that seized him. He would go to Canada and
enlist. And with the determination there came a tormenting uncertainty.
Would they accept him? All his life he had lived under a restraint--his
guardian--physicians in almost every great center of the world had
impressed it repeatedly upon him: "No great exertion, no great
excitements. Nothing to fear with normal, steady living, everything
from strain."
His guardian had put it to him early: "This is a sporting proposition,
Dick; you were born with this physical handicap. You can live a long,
full, useful life without danger if you are willing to live within
certain physical and mental limitations. Moderation, calm cheerfulness,
courage; that will carry you through. It's a man's code, Dick. Make up
your mind now and never forget the limits."
Dick had done it easily--at the start. Restraint had become the habit
of his life. Only now and then he felt a pang. Sports of the severe
sort were closed to him. He went through Europe for years with the
imperative call of the snow mountain in his soul and never answered it.
And now? He determined before the close of August that, come what
would, he would enlist. He could slip past some way, and so with only
an evasive explanation to Ralph he went to Montreal. It was a ghastly
and heart-breaking experience. He tried again and again, and no
examiner would pass him. He went to the greatest of Canadian
specialists--a wise and understanding man. "Give up the idea, boy," he
said gently. "You might live six months. The chances are you would not
one. You have no right to insist for the good of the service. And let
me tell you something. You are not the only man to-day who feels that
to be denied the chance to fling himself into this mighty thing is the
greatest calamity life could offer. We men who are too old feel it.
Many a man with burdens of political, social, professional, industrial
responsibility in him so imperative that he must remain here, feels it.
You are one of a great host to whom is denied the very final essence of
human experience, giving their blood--for the finest vision the earth
has yet seen. Don't let it down you. Go home to the States and help
them to learn what this thing means. They can't know. It is different
with us. Where England leads, Canada follows. The States will go in
only as the result of an inner conviction that this struggle is between
the kind of things they stand for and the kind of things which led them
to their original break with England, their original vision and plan of
government. That is what it is, but your people will be slow to see it.
They are not attacked. England and France are. It is not fear of attack
that will finally take you in. You yourself have said that. It is the
consciousness that the right of self-government by peoples on this
earth is threatened. Go back and help your land see it."
Dick scarcely heard the counsel. He was conscious only of his sentence
and he refused to accept that. He went in turn to the leading
specialists in the States, men whom he had consulted in the past, and
from each heard the same verdict. He knew they were right. That was the
dreadful truth. He knew that forcing himself into service, as he might
very well do in England under the circumstances of the moment there,
would mean training a man who could not hold out instead of one who
could.
Dick went back to Sabinsport a beaten, miserable man. Ralph was quick
to sense that some overwhelming rebuff had come to Dick. He suspected
what it was. If Dick had not been too crushed at the moment to realize
that his dear but limited and obstinate friend was making awkward
efforts to show his sympathy, it is quite possible that they might have
come together sufficiently to discuss the war without rancor. But Dick
was blind to everything but his own misery. He failed Ralph utterly.
He said to himself daily, "I am of no use on the earth; thirty-five--a
fortune I did not earn, an education, relations, experiences prepared
for me; a profession adopted as a refuge in a time of need; a citizen
of a country in which I have not taken root; an accident in the only
spot on earth where I've ever done an honest day's work; the very
companions of my student days throwing themselves into a noble struggle
in which I would gladly die and from which I'm hopelessly debarred. A
useless bit of drifting wreckage, why live?"
It was the victory of the Marne which, coming as it did at the moment
of his deepest despair, pulled Dick back into something like normal
courage and cheer. The probability that Paris would fall into German
hands had filled him with horror. When he read the first headlines of
the turn of the battle, he had bowed his head and sobbed aloud, "Thank
God, thank God."
All over the land that September morning hundreds of Americans who knew
and loved their France like Dick, sobbed broken thanks to the Almighty.
If for the millions it was simply an amazing turn in the war, an
unexpected proof that Germany was not as invulnerable as she had made
them believe, for these hundreds it was a relief from a pain that had
become intolerable.
Dick was not the only one in Sabinsport, however, that the victory of
the Marne stirred to the depths. John A. Papalogos hung out a French
flag over his fruit and startled the children by giving them handfuls
of his wares, the grown-ups by his reckless measures and everybody by
an abandon of enthusiasm which not a few regarded as suspicious. "Must
have been drinking," Mary Sabins told Tom when he came home for lunch.
At the mines the effect was serious. The Slavs fell on the Austrians
and beat them unmercifully. It was the only way they knew to answer the
arrogance that the German advance had brought out. It was worth noting
that in the general mêlée the Italian miners sided with the Slavs.
The barrier between Dick and Ralph was still up when Patsy arrived.
They all knew by this time something of what the girl had seen between
her letter of August 10th mailed in Brussels and her arrival in London
the twenty-first. Held by the unwillingness of Mr. Laurence to allow
his wife to travel until she was stronger and by his inability to
believe that the invasion of Belgium could be the monstrous thing it
proved and by his complacent faith that nothing anyway could harm an
American business man, it was not until the 19th he obeyed the
imperative order of the embassy to go while he could. In those days of
waiting, Patsy had come into daily contact with the horrors and
miseries of war. She had seen Brussels filling up with wounded, had
spent lavishly of her strength and of Laurence money in helping
improvise hospitals and in feeding, nursing and comforting refugees.
She had lived years in days.
The letters they had received before she arrived were broken cries of
amazed pity. "I cannot write of what I see," she had said. "Refugees
fill the streets, coming from every direction, on foot, beside dog
carts, on farm wagons piled high with all sorts of stuff. They are all
so white and tired and bewildered--and they are so like the folks
around home. It's the old people that break my heart. Somehow it seems
more terrible for them than even the children, though they take it so
quietly. We picked up an old woman of eighty to-day. She might have
been old Mother Peters out at Cowder's Corners--never before in a great
city--her son killed at Louvain--her daughter-in-law lost--nobody she
knew--no money--a poor, wandering, helpless old soul. Of course we've
found her a place and left money, but what is that?--she's alone and
we're going and there are so many of them and the Germans are
coming--what will they all do--what will they all do?"...
On August 18th she wrote:
"We're going, rushing away almost as the poor souls we've been
helping rushed here. We're leaving them--I feel like a coward, but
we're only in the way, after all. Nothing you can do counts."
On August 22nd she had written from London after a flight of hardship
and horrors:
"We're here at last. I cannot believe that there is a place where
people are safe, where they do not fly and starve. England after
Belgium! It is so sweet, but it does not seem right. I cannot
consent to be calm when just over there those dreadful things are
happening. But every one here is working to care for the refugees
that are coming in by the hundreds. You must not be surprised if I
come home with an armful of Belgian orphans."
A paragraph in a last letter aroused keen interest in Sabinsport when
it was noised around.
"At one of the stations for Belgian refugees I found Nancy Cowder.
It was she who recognized me. I was giving my address, promising to
raise money in America, when a girl standing near said, 'Did you
say Sabinsport? It is your home? You are returning?'
"'Yes,' I said.
"'It is my home, too. I am Nancy Cowder. Will you tell my father
you saw me, that I am well, and that he is not to be anxious?'
"I was never so surprised. Why, Mother, she looks the very great
lady. I know all of that hateful gossip about her is not true. It
can't be. I've found out a lot about her here."
"Trust Patsy for that," growled Ralph, when he and Dick read the letter.
"She has heaps of friends and is staying with Lady Betty Barstow. She's
been working day and night since the war began. At the Embassy an
attaché told me she was about the most level-headed and really useful
American woman he'd seen--'And beautiful and interesting and generous,'
he added. This is another case where Sabinsport has been wrong."
* * * * *
Dick and Ralph were curious about Patsy's encounter, for they long ago
had discovered that Nancy Cowder was one of Sabinsport's standing
subjects of gossip, that the town considered her highly improper. There
seemed to be two reasons: one was the general disapproval of anything
that belonged to Reuben Cowder, and then the notion that "a girl who
raised dogs and horses and took them east, even to England, could not
be 'nice.'"
Dick was much amused when he learned that the Sabinsport skeleton, as
Ralph had always called Nancy Cowder, was visiting the Barstows. "She
must be all right," he mused, "or she would not be in that house." You
see, Dick had known Lady Barstow's brother at Oxford and more than once
had passed a week-end with him at his sister's place.
But Nancy Cowder was quickly forgotten in Patsy's return. She came a
new Patsy, thin and pale, with the energy and the spirit of a Crusader
in her blazing eyes. Belgium and her wrongs had been burnt into Patsy's
soul. It was her first great unselfish passion. It had made her tender
beyond belief with her father and mother. The two restrained,
inexpressive old people were almost embarrassed by the tears and the
kisses she showered on them. This was not their business-like,
assertive girl, absorbed in her own plans and insisting on her own
ways. It was a girl who watched them with almost annoying persistence,
who wanted to save them steps, guard them from imaginary danger, give
them pleasures they had never even coveted. What they did not realize
was that, as Patsy looked into their faces, visions of distracted,
homeless Belgian women, of broken, wounded Belgian men, floated before
her eyes, that she found relief in doing for them even unnecessary
services since she could do nothing for those others.
Patsy's passion made her hard on the town. She demanded that it
champion Belgium's cause as she had, with all its soul and all its
resources; that it think of nothing else. But this it could not do.
Sabinsport, ignorant and distant as it was, had developed something of
a perspective and was sensing daily something of the complexity of the
elements in the war. It could not think singly of Belgium.
Ralph, bitter in spirit at finding Patsy so changed, so absorbed in her
conception of her own and her friends' duty, took her to task for
emotionalism. He forced arguments on her: that Germany was the only
bulwark between civilization and the Russian peril; that she had been
hampered by an envious England; that if Germany had not violated
Belgium, France would. If Ralph had not been stung to jealousy by
Patsy's interest in something outside himself he would never have been
as stupid and as unreasonable as he proved. He knew he was wrong. He
knew that he admired her for the unselfish passion she showed. He knew
he hurt her, but he _wanted_ to hurt her!
Patsy--bewildered, shocked, wounded to the heart by Ralph's
talk--promptly forbade him ever to speak to her again and went home and
for the first time in her life cried herself to sleep. She had not
known how completely she was counting on Ralph's sympathy. She had said
to herself: "Now I know something of what he feels about people who
suffer; he'll know I understand; we can work together." And here was
her dream dissolved. Patsy was learning that war is not the only
destroyer of human happiness and hopes.
Ralph charged their quarrel to the war, as he did everything not to his
liking. Every day he pounded more emphatically on the wrong of all wars
and particularly this war. Every day he preached neutrality, though it
must be confessed that he did it all with decreasing faith. It was a
hard rôle. He was a man without a text in which he believed to the
full. Then suddenly in October he found what he was searching. Reuben
Cowder had landed a munition contract. He was to convert a factory made
idle by the war and build largely. Ralph was himself again. No
self-respecting community should permit money to be made within its
limits from war supplies. It was blood money.