It was this having so much to do that not only saved Dick, but it had
saved Sabinsport, for Sabinsport had gone into the war without
enthusiasm. She had accepted it fully as a thing she was obliged in
honor to carry through, but Dick felt more and more that neither her
heart was touched nor her spirit fired. He could not get over the chill
that her reception of the news that war had been declared had given
him--not a bell rang, not a whistle blew, not a man stopped work.
"Well, we are in it," they said as they met him on the street. "It's
all right."--"Nothing else to do."--"I'm for it." That would be all,
and the speaker would walk away with bent head.
How, Dick asked himself, a great wave of doubt coming over him, could a
town so unmoved, even if so determined, ever carry out the prodigious
piece of work which the Government asked of it, at the time the
declaration was made? They were to put everything in--their sons, their
money, their industries, were to be conscripted. They were to be asked
to change all their ways of living, and to do it at once. How could it
be that a town, seemingly so unstirred, would so completely strip
itself as Sabinsport was asked to do? Could this determination, which
he believed was in her, carry her through the period of sacrifice and
effort? Was she to have none of the help of pride, the consciousness of
a great cause? How far would Sabinsport go?
The first test came when the Government announced that we were to have
an army of two million men, chosen on the principle of universal
liability to service. "Never," declared the Rev. Mr. Pepper, "would
Sabinsport stand for that." And there were not a few in mills and
mines, not a few representatives of various peace parties, that
gathered about him. They loudly declared in the _Pro Bono Publico_
column of the _Argus_ that we had been plunged into war against our
will, that it was still possible to negotiate, that the American people
wanted to negotiate, that the President was playing a hypocrite's part,
that he was a puppet of Wall Street, whose only interest was to protect
foreign loans and to carry on munition making. The Rev. Mr. Pepper,
encouraged by the swift gathering of pacifists around him, engaged the
Opera House and called for a great mass meeting of protest. Sabinsport
should have a right to vote on our going into the war, if it had been
denied to the rest of the country.
What would Sabinsport do? Dick asked himself the question a little
anxiously. Would she foregather at the Opera House?
She would not. At eight o'clock on the evening that the meeting was
called that great forum contained, not the whole town and the mines and
mills, as the Rev. Mr. Pepper had been declaring all day that it would
be, but, by actual count, just two hundred people, of whom the Rev.
Richard Ingraham was one, for ever since the beginning of his life in
Sabinsport, he had made it a practice not only to attend but to take
part in all discussions, whether held in opera houses or on street
corners.
But, as it turned out, the two hundred were not to be allowed to take
their vote on peace or war in the orderly, quiet way which Dick himself
insisted they should have, for, before nine o'clock, a great tramping
was heard outside, and into the hall burst all of the active youth of
Sabinsport and at least half of its middle aged. They carried banners
on which were written in bold letters, "Right is more precious than
peace," "The world must be made safe for democracy," "Germany is a
menace to mankind," "Germany wars against peace, we war against
Germany." They not only carried their banners, but they brought their
orators, who, stationed in the galleries and on the floor, submerged
the protests of the Rev. Mr. Pepper and friends and turned the
gathering into a rousing declaration that, so far as Sabinsport was
concerned, she was in the war to a finish.
Each successive task the Government set provoked a similar wave of
protest. For days currents of unrest would run through the town, but
when the moment of decision came always Sabinsport answered
overwhelmingly in favor of the Government. There was the draft. As the
day of registration approached, the Rev. Mr. Pepper and his friends
prophesied riots; and, if not riots, at least a very general refusal to
register--but every man appeared. They came from the shops and mines
and banks and schools--a full quota. It was unbelievable. Why were
there such alarms of revolt before, if in the end there was to be
complete acceptance? Reuben Cowder had his theory.
"I tell you, Dick, the same gang are at work in this town that stirred
up the feeling against munition-making, that brought that Peace Council
here and so nearly put it over. I expect Pepper and his friends to
protest. That's all right, they belong here. That's the way they feel.
We can gauge what they say, answer back. I rather think they're good
for us, but it's not Pepper that is making the stir now. There's
somebody spreading rumors of discontent that do not exist. Who printed
those handbills that rained all over town the morning of Registration
Day, denouncing the draft as a form of slavery? Pepper didn't. He was
as surprised as the police. Why can't we get our fingers on them?"
But clever as he was, he did not get his fingers on them. Waves of
discontent, threats of riots and strikes, protests against liberty
loans and food laws, continued to agitate the town, filling it with
anxiety and irritation. They kept her distrustful of herself, unhappy
in her undertaking, but never did they turn her from her resolve to do
her full part. Indeed, it seemed to Dick sometimes as if the direct
result was to drive those of the town who felt the deepest foreboding,
the gravest doubt, to work the harder, thus really increasing the
amount accomplished. It was this that explained why, in this admixture
of irritation, Sabinsport almost always did more than her part. The
rumors and prophecies that she would not respond this time nerved her
to fuller efforts.
Just how things would have worked out in Sabinsport, just when and how
the war would have found its way to her heart and she would have come
to have the supporting uplift of realizing the greatness of the
enterprise to which she was pledged, Dick never quite decided, for what
did happen was so largely shaped by the news that came to them in the
end of June that, in the country twenty-five miles away, the Government
had decided to place one of the sixteen great cantonments in which the
boys that had been drafted were to be trained into an army.
Sabinsport herself had had nothing to do with securing the cantonment.
It was the only thing that had happened in that part of the State in
the last two or three decades in which neither Cowder nor Mulligan had
had a hand. It was certain shrewd and powerful gentlemen of the City
that had persuaded the authorities that this was the most perfect spot
in the Union in which to place 50,000 men.
Luckily, it was a very good spot, though probably if it had been very
bad, it would have been selected, given the power that was behind its
support. The land was rolling, naturally drained, the river which
flowed close by gave, by filtering, a splendid water supply. An
important trunk line ran within five miles of the camp, making almost
ideal transportation conditions possible, and this same trunk line ran
through Sabinsport.
It was announced that the camp was to be ready in twelve weeks for
40,000 men. The town, accustomed to building in a fairly large scale,
gasped in amazement. Some jeered, others protested. It couldn't be
done. It would take twelve months, not weeks, to make the place
habitable.
All through the summer the town watched the growing cantonment to see
how things were going. The highway which ran within a short distance of
the selected land was worn smooth with the cars which went back and
forth. The Sunday trains were often crowded with workmen and their
wives and sweethearts, and all they saw increased their skepticism. So
far as they could make out, it was only a great confusion of lumber,
ditches, turned-up earth, scattered skeletons of buildings; no evidence
of planning. More than one observer came back to say, sagely, "They
don't know what they are about. It will never be a place in which men
can live. And as to being ready in September, that is nonsense."
But ready or not, they found that the cantonment was to be occupied at
the time set, and to their anxiety over the incompleteness of the camp,
there now was added a new concern--a doubt which was hardly voiced but
which gave the keenest anxiety. It was the doubt of the recruits that
began to appear. "How could you ever make soldiers of such material?"
It was her own first contingent that had awakened this alarm. The town
had made an effort to do the proper thing when the boys went off. They
were to leave on an afternoon train, and there was a luncheon given
them and a little parade through the streets. But the pathetic thing
was that these lads, who so often shambled, so many of whom were poorly
dressed, all of whom were a little shamefaced at this effort to do them
honor, did not look like soldiers. Sabinsport had had so little
experience with armies that she could not visualize these country lads,
these stooped clerks, these slouching workmen, as soldiers. She went
back home not a little unhappy. How were we ever going to make an army
from such stuff in time to do anything? That was becoming her
engrossing thought. How are we ever going to do anything in time? Her
pride was touched. And there was a real but unspoken fear in
Sabinsport's heart lest we were not going to come up to the mark before
the world.
There were just two people in Sabinsport--that is, two who talked and
were listened to, that were not worried about the camp or the making of
an army--Captain Billy and Nancy Cowder. To Uncle Billy, all these boys
were the boys of '61, and every train load side-tracked on the numerous
switches that the main line had provided on the edge of Sabinsport in
preparation for the handling of men and materials for the camp--every
train load filled him with more and more confidence. "You'll see," he
said. "We were like that--just you wait."
As for Nancy, she was amazing to Dick. She was one of those rare beings
of unquenchable faith. With it went an almost universal sympathy. Dick
had expected to find her as obsessed with the cause of Serbia as Patsy
had always been with that of Belgium, as deaf to other calls, as
impatient with Sabinsport's diffused interest as Patsy was. But he
discovered at once that her heart was open to every cry, and that her
hand instinctively reached out to aid any human being that needed help.
She had not been at home a fortnight before she was busy planning with
Ralph and Dick and her father for better housing for the girls in the
factory around the Point; with Jack Mulligan for better schools at the
mines. When war came she was as sensitive as Dick to what the town was
going through. She realized, even better than he, how utterly
Sabinsport was cut off from all outward manifestation of war, how she
saw and heard none of its martial sights and noise. She was obliged to
re-create without the help of outward things. It made the girl
extraordinarily sympathetic. Indeed, in all Sabinsport at this period
of uncertainty and alarms there was no one who kept so confident and
serene an attitude or who treated with more humor and commonsense the
rumors and fears that ran the streets or saw with more practical eye
the things to be done.
It was Nancy who first realized what a camp twenty-five miles from
Sabinsport might mean to the town--the opportunity and the threat that
were in it. Nancy, it will be remembered, had been in London when the
war broke out. She had seen Kitchener's army grow. She had lived with
soldiers, too, in hospitals and in camps, and she quickly realized that
Sabinsport had a part to play. It was to Dick that she swiftly went for
consultation.
"They will be twenty-five miles away," said Dick.
"Oh, yes," said Nancy, "but what is twenty-five miles with our
factories full of girls, and the town wide open? With all their
homesickness and their need of friends and life, we must get ready for
them."
"But how?" said Dick. "What shall we do?"
"Well," said Nancy, practically, "we women must have our canteen ready
for their passing through."
But all that Nancy could say at the start had no effect upon
Sabinsport. Nothing in her experience could give her an inkling of what
it would mean to have a camp of 50,000 men twenty-five miles away. The
distance was prohibitive. What would they have to do with Sabinsport,
with the City within five miles? It was the City's business to take
care of the camp, not hers.
It was November before Sabinsport began to feel any responsibility
about the camp. By that time, the boys had discovered the town.
Naturally, it was the City so near them that had drawn them first, and
that continued to draw them in the largest numbers. And it was the City
which from the start had accepted the responsibility of guarding the
boys who came to her. The City had formed great committees of men and
women. She had passed ordinances, she had opened canteens. Hundreds of
her homes were open to the boys, her clubs and churches and halls
regularly on the Wednesdays and Saturdays when they were off. The City
did wonderfully well from the start, and the commanding officer had
applauded the coöperation that she gave him.
In all this activity, Sabinsport, twenty-five miles away, had not been
asked to help. It was natural enough. The City always had ignored
Sabinsport. To be sure, she was a nice little country town and had a
quaint hotel, with a wonderful cook; the best place in the country
round to motor out for supper. Sabinsport had always resented this
attitude. She was the older, she had never quite gotten over feeling
that she should have been the City; she who was there so many years
before, and who was responsible for the discovery and first development
of this wealth which now the City handled and from which she so
wonderfully profited. That is, Sabinsport was jealous of the City, her
patronage, the fact that she was never taken in. It was partly this
that made her unresponsive to all the pressure that Dick and Nancy
brought upon her in the early days of the camp, to organize, to look
after the soldiery that they felt inevitably would seek the town.
Always the same answer came back: "Let the City look after them. She
has not asked us to help. It's her business."
But, little by little, she discovered that, although she might make no
overtures to the camp, the camp had found her out and was making good
use of all she had to offer in the way of pleasure and freedom. The
boys had discovered two things in Sabinsport, the two that Nancy had
predicted: that she had factories full of attractive girls and that her
saloons were wide open. The better sort had discovered the Paradise and
High Town.
The consequence of Sabinsport's blindness and her refusal to accept
responsibility heaped up every day--the girl question, as they called
it. There were sudden marriages which shocked and distressed her. There
were no marriages, that horrified her even more. A new type of women
began to appear in the streets. And again and again on Saturday
afternoons soldiers were taken back to camp, but not to barracks--to
the guard house. Irritation and disgust with the camp grew in the town,
and then, late in November, sickness began. It ran rampant through the
camp, still insufficiently equipped with hospitals and doctors and
nurses to handle anything like an epidemic. Heartbreaking tales of
deaths, from lack of care, it was charged, filled the town. Nancy who,
from the opening of the camp, had given practically all of her time to
whatever service she could put her hands to, and who by her common
sense, her skill, her sweetness, had won completely officers, doctors,
and nurses, now gave herself up to regular nursing, coming back only
once a week for a half-day's rest--on Monday afternoon always, though
nobody at the time thought about that.
Dick practically spent his days and nights in service. He, too, had
from the start been received by officers and doctors as one of those
rare civilians who can be allowed the freedom of a camp and really
help, not hinder, its work.
But Sabinsport was not rallying to the efforts of Nancy and Dick. The
town was horrified at the things that she saw going on. She bitterly
blamed the commanding officer, the War Department, the Government. She
resented the intimations that she had had from both the authorities in
the City and in the camp that her failure to deal resolutely with her
saloons and with the strange women who were finding shelter within her
limits, was a menace to the boys. Matters were not at all helped by the
kind of agitation which had begun in the town, with the hope of
controlling the situation. The center of this agitation was Mrs. Susan
Katcham, president of an old-time temperance organization--a good,
aggressive, tactless woman, whose main effect upon Sabinsport had
always been to steel even the sober to the support of the saloon.
Mrs. Katcham now had no need to argue about the disastrous effects of
the open saloon. Every day was demonstrating it, to the disgust and
shame of the town. There was just one man everybody knew that could put
a stop to this thing, and that was Jake Mulligan, for Jake controlled
the police, and Jake owned half or two-thirds of the property in
Sabinsport on which liquor was sold. Mrs. Katcham went for him openly
and viciously, hammer and tongs; and all she did was to make him take a
terrible oath that he would not budge an inch in the matter; that it
was the business of the camp to keep its soldiers at home, and not his
to run Sunday schools for the protection of grown men.
The tragic thing to Dick was that he saw growing in Sabinsport out of
this clash, an increasing distaste for a soldier.
"Never, never," he said, "would the heart of Sabinsport be reached
until this was blotted out." But what was to be done. He took it to the
commanding officer himself, and between them they laid out a plan for
capturing Sabinsport's heart.
"It's melodrama," said Dick.
"It will do the work," said the General.
But that was to be done.
The execution of the plan, which the General and Dick had agreed upon
for the siege and capture of Sabinsport's heart, was not easy, in the
pressure and anxiety which the epidemic in the camp had brought, and
its probable effect seemed to both men more and more doubtful as the
friction between the town and camp grew.
It was on Christmas night that it was to be carried out. The Sunday
night before Dick came home, white with weariness and despondency. He
had had a day too hard for him, that he knew; one which his physician
would have called dangerous. But how could it be helped? At daybreak a
doctor at the camp had telephoned that Peter Tompkins couldn't live,
that he had asked for the "minister." Would he go down? "Be there in an
hour," Dick had answered--and he was. The poor lad was almost gone.
Dick sat with him to the end, took his last message--winced, wondered,
and bowed his head at the sheer, cheerful bravery with which the boy
took what he called faintly his "medicine." "Didn't take care like they
told me," he said. "Tell Mother they've done the best they could." But
Dick knew that while the loyal fellow might take upon himself the cause
of his own death, blundering orders and unthinking friends were
responsible. The boys had been told to bring as little as possible to
camp--only a suit case which could be sent back with the clothes they
wore. Peter, like hundreds of others in that cruel month of December
had started from his home in his oldest, thinnest clothes, without an
overcoat. He was going to throw everything away, he said, and not
trouble to send anything back; and there had been nobody in the town
with sufficient forethought and authority to prevent the risk he took.
He had reached camp chilled to the bone. The supply of clothing was
short. He had to go about for days in his thin, old garments. He could
not get warm, exercise as he would, hug the fire as he would.
In the tremendous pressure of preparation and organization, it was
impossible that the physical condition of each boy should be known to
his officers. Peter had to shift for himself in those first days. He
was shy and homesick. It was Dick, who was making a specialty of the
homesick, who had discovered how serious his condition was and who had
seen to it that he was sent to the hospital; and it was Dick who had
given him the care which the one doctor and one nurse in a ward where
there were two hundred very sick boys could not possibly give.
It was too late. Peter was dead, and, two hours before, Dick had seen
his rough pine coffin on the platform, ready for the journey home. A
clumsy wreath had been laid upon it by some sorrowing "buddy," at its
foot stood a cheap suitcase, containing all the boy's few belongings.
At the head a soldier kept guard. Dick's heart ached for the mother who
must receive the pitiful box. And he groaned as he thought of the many,
very many, he feared, that would follow it.
Sabinsport's temper at the moment weighed even more heavily upon Dick
that night than the sickness at the camp. The inevitable scandal, that
both he and the General had feared, had come the night before. Twenty
boys, off for their Saturday holiday, had slipped into Sabinsport for
what they called a "blow out." They had gone to Beefsteak John's, one
of the cheap workmen's hotels, had taken rooms, laid off their
uniforms, put on pajamas and called up the barkeeper. Of course he
could give them what they wanted, for they were not in uniform! And he
had done it.
The scandal had been made worse by the introduction of a half dozen of
the strange women who had taken up their dwelling in Sabinsport. Before
morning the crowd was on the streets, rioting madly. The boys had been
arrested and were in jail. The whole story was in the City's Sunday
morning paper. Sabinsport was disgraced before the world.
The General and Dick had talked the matter over in the hour after he
had closed poor Peter's eyes, and both had agreed that this probably
put an end to their Christmas celebration. "You can see," the General
had said, "how impossible it will be for me to do my part unless I know
that every saloon in Sabinsport is absolutely closed. That's my
ultimatum. They tell me that there's a man by the name of Mulligan that
controls the town. Could you get at him?"
"I could," said Dick, "but I don't know whether it would do any good.
Mulligan is obstinate. I am sure I could have persuaded him long ago to
close every house he owns in Sabinsport and willingly have stood his
losses if it had not been for Mrs. Katcham. So long as she continues in
the field, he will keep everything open to spite her."
"I don't wonder," said the General, sympathetically. "Same here. She's
been trying to force me to appoint a mother for every fifty boys. Let
'em live in the camp. Thinks I'm in league with the liquor interests
because I refuse--told me so to my face. You can't do anything with
such women. But you must stop the liquor selling there some way unless
you want me to appeal to Washington."
Dick had come back to town anxious and disheartened. "It's a nice
situation, and Christmas only two days away." He was sitting perplexed
and weary before his fire, when who should come in but Mulligan himself.
"Can you give me a few minutes, Reverend?" he called, in his hearty
voice.
Dick stared in amazement. "Of course," he said. "Come in." He helped
him with his coat, stirred the fire, offered him a cigar, and sat down.
"See here, Dick," Mulligan began. "I wouldn't come telling anybody in
this town I'm ashamed of myself but you--I am. That thing last night
was my fault. If I'd ever given the boys round town a hint that they
weren't to sell booze to soldiers, they'd never done it, uniform or no
uniform; but I never batted an eye at 'em. I've known all along they
got stuff whenever they wanted it. I never tipped the police not to see
things, but I never tipped 'em to see 'em, and that's what they was
waitin' for. If it hadn't been for that Katcham woman, I'd 'a' done it.
I'm that mean I couldn't stand it to see her get her way. Now, she's
gettin' up a mass meetin' for Christmas--think of that, a mass meetin'
on Christmas. Well, I'm goin' to beat her to it.
"I control ten saloons in this town--all except the pikers--I'm closing
every blamed one of them to-day--canceled the leases. I'll turn out
every doggone man that don't shut down. And I'm warnin' the little
fellows that they've got to follow suit. They're howling, but let 'em.
I have told them I'd treat them square, pay them for six months. They
know me. Let them sue if they want to. They know that I can prove that
they've been selling to the boys. There's not a jury in the State that
would give them damages. The bar at Beefsteak Jim's is closed now. I'm
going to make this town clean, so clean that the boys can play dominoes
without being laughed at.
"And I've seen the Chief. I've told him if his men so much as wink at a
glass of beer sold to a soldier, I'll fire him. I've told him he's to
run out any shady woman that shows her bleached head in this burg, and
put the camp onto any boy that tries to sneak into any mischief. I'm
goin' to make this town clean, Dick, so clean all these doggone camp
towns around the country that are rolling up their eyes at Sabinsport's
wickedness and calling attention to how good they are and rejoicing
that we've got it in the neck, will sing another song. I'll show them.
And what tickles me most is getting ahead of the Katcham woman. She's
not going to spoil our Christmas by her mass meetin'. When the town
gets up to-morrow morning, they will find that things are shut down. I
have seen to it that it gets out. Everybody will know without waiting
for the _Argus_, and you ought to see what's going in the _Argus_
to-morrow night. I'm letting it be known that the landlords in this
town made a voluntary agreement--note that, Reverend, voluntary
agreement, for the good of the army and the good of Sabinsport, not to
sell another glass of beer as long as this war lasts. Don't that sound
noble? Won't that shut up those neighborhoods in the State that are
taking pains to say how depraved this burg is?
"I don't want you to tell anybody I had a hand in this, Reverend. Just
tellin' you because I care about what _you_ think, and because I want
you to know the straight goods. It's goin' to be done, and so you can
stop worryin'. That's got me more than once--see you lookin' so
anxious. And then there's Jack. I hate to have him know over there in
France what happened Saturday night. I'm sending him the paper and
along with it a copy of the agreement. That's all. I'm not going to
have _his_ town disgraced again. So long, Reverend, and get some sleep.
You need it."
There were tears in Dick's eyes as he wrung Mulligan's hand. "You
better believe I'll sleep," he said. "Now, we'll have our festival, and
I'm counting on your being there. The General and his staff are coming,
and we'll have a surprise which couldn't have been sprung if it hadn't
been for what you've done. You've saved Sabinsport more than once,
Mulligan, but you never did it so good a turn as to-day."
"Nothing in that, Reverend. Thank the Katcham woman. I had to beat her
to it."
Dick went back to his pipe. He was too happy to sleep. He remembered a
remark of Katie's, made months ago, and he repeated it aloud, "The Lord
sure is a wonder!"
* * * * *
For several years now Sabinsport had had a Christmas tree on the square
at five P. M. of Christmas eve, with carols and prayers and the free
distribution to all the children of large and enticing stockings filled
with candies. At six, almost every house in town had lighted candles in
its windows. This year they were to have their Christmas tree as usual,
but, in deference to Mr. Hoover, the candies and candles were to be
saved. At nine o'clock on Christmas night, there was to be a community
celebration, the details of which nobody seemed to know, but the
program had been hinted at in every quarter of the town in such a
mysterious way that the anticipation was high.
Dick and Nancy had been responsible for drawing everybody in. The mines
and mills, as well as High Town, had representatives. Every quarter
knew that somebody from its ranks was to do something, though what that
something was was an entire secret.
Sabinsport had a wonderful place for a great community celebration--the
Opera House. When Mulligan and Cowder planned the Opera House they had
been in their most optimistic mood. They wanted it big--big enough for
conventions and expositions--"a stage on which you could have a
circus," was Jake's idea. The result was a great, gaudy barn with a
stage which would have done for a hippodrome. Financially, the size of
the thing had defeated its purpose, but for a great town celebration it
was magnificent. It was none too big for the affair in which Dick was
interested.
By seven o'clock of Christmas night, the Opera House was packed. At
seven-thirty the program began--songs and tableaux and speeches and
impersonations. It went without a hitch--swift, compelling, and, oh, so
merry. In an hour after it began the house was a happy, cheering crowd,
helped not a little in their joyfulness by the presence of scores upon
scores of soldiers, guests from the camp, and by the aid which the
applause was getting from two boxes filled with officers, the General
among them.
The program was almost finished--all but a single number which appeared
simply as Music and Tableaux. If the audience had not been so
interested, it would have noticed that up to this point there had been
but the scantiest of reference to army or navy, to war or country. The
very absence of these topics hushed them to silence when suddenly the
orchestra broke into "Over There."
It was like a call, penetrating, stirring. It hushed and thrilled them
beyond applause. The hush deepened when suddenly, across the long drop
curtain there flashed the words:--
SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE
The orchestra played on, every brain fitting the words to the notes:
"Over there, over there,
Send the word over there,
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming ev'rywhere.
So prepare, say a pray'r,
Send the word, send the word to beware,
We'll be over, we're coming over,
And we won't come back till it's over, over there."
Slowly the curtain rose on a scene that much looking in the last few
months at photographs and picture papers had made familiar to them--a
French town, the kind they knew the boys were billeted in, with its
long row of gray-faced houses, its red-tiled roofs, its quaint church
with its simple, very simple statue of Joan of Arc; and behind, rising
perpetually, mountains, along which ran a highway, climbing up and up.
A company of boys in khaki swarmed over the place. They were resting on
their arms, waiting orders. They hung out of the windows, sat in the
doorways, grouped carelessly in the roadway, swarmed over the pedestal
up to the very feet of the figure of Joan.
The house watched the scene with swelling heart. Then from an upper
window, there suddenly came a clear baritone. A boy, leaning out, his
eyes on the little statue, began to sing a song new to Sabinsport.
Alone he sang through the first verse, then the wonderful refrain was
taken up,
"Joan of Arc, Joan of Arc,
Do your eyes
From the skies
See the foe?
Don't you see the drooping fleur-de-lis?
Can't you hear the tears of Normandy?
Joan of Arc, Joan of Arc,
Let your spirit guide us through,
Come, lead your France to victory.
Joan of Arc, they are calling you, calling you."
It was but the beginning. It had put the waiting boys in the mood for
song, and the appealing refrain had scarcely died away when the tension
was broken by a merry voice starting, "Where do we go from here, Boys?
Where do we go from here?" From gay they swung to grave, and then back
to gay. "The Star Spangled Banner" brought everybody to their feet. "I
don't want to get well, I don't want to get well," set everybody to
laughing. Then came "Christmas Night" and then--"Home, Sweet Home." It
was almost too much for the singers themselves, for more than one lad
on the stage dropped his head, unable to go on. As the song rose, so
sweet, and familiar, so ladened with memories, the audience sat with
quivering faces and eyes grown wet. If it had not been for the emotion
which had seized it, it would have been sooner conscious that there was
an unusual accompaniment to the words, a rhythmical beating, which grew
louder and louder until it became a steady tramp. It had grown so near
that it would have broken the spell which held the house, if suddenly a
bugle had not sent every man on the stage to his feet.
They fell in line, and just as the outside tramp came too distinct to
be mistaken, an order, "Forward, March," came quick and sharp. They
filed out and behind them came others, an interminable stream, across
the stage, only to reappear, mounting upward along the road in the
background. And as they started upward, at the right and top of the
height, a great luminous American flag was suddenly flung out. It waved
and waved as if in salute to the mounting men. They went up, up. Their
young faces, turned to their banner, wore looks of such resolve, such
exultation, that the hearts of the men and women watching, breathless
below, swelled with pride and hope.
The host came on, wave after wave; the orchestra played on the wrought
up audience as on a viol. They broke into cheers, dropped into silence,
sobbed, then cheered and cheered and cheered; and when the light
gradually faded, the curtain slowly dropped, the music little by little
subsided; they sat unstrung, listening to the tramping grow dimmer and
dimmer until it was lost in the sounds of the town.
It was a new Sabinsport that went home that night. Whatever might
happen, never again would she doubt, or close her heart to the soldier.
She was his. The General, waiting in his box for Dick, said as he
grasped his hand, "That's settled, Ingraham. We'll have no more trouble
with this town."
But if Sabinsport had been chastened and her heart opened, she still
had to grope her way into the organized service that alone could
restore her hurt pride and give her some realizing sense of being a
part of the great undertaking; and it was a hard moment for that.
In all the war there was not a month more difficult than January of
1918. The camp and the town were in the clutch of the most cruel
weather that part of the world had ever seen. Again and again in these
weeks, the miles of switches and sidings in the valley were blocked
with long trains of cars filled with coal, with every conceivable kind
of freight for the camp, as well as with materials needed for the
shipyards and overseas. Although every effort was made to keep tracks
clear for troop trains, every now and then, one filled with tired and
shivering men would be held up. They sang--oh, yes, they always sang;
but you could not go among them and not know that the singing often hid
frightened and homesick hearts.
The town itself, surrounded as she was by mines underlaid with coal,
was suffering. Sabinsport was startled to find some of her own families
in actual danger of death by freezing. In a town which all its life had
been accustomed to wait until the last minute and then call up and ask
that a load of coal be delivered at once, and to get it as it would get
its roast from the butcher's, it was natural that many prosperous
families were low in fuel supplies.
It was hard for the man of influence then not to throw aside all sense
of responsibility for anybody but his family. Queer stories of the
tricks that men played in order to get coal, headed for their
neighbors, were told. And as for the poor, they waited in long lines,
with pails and scuttles, to get their little lot, and many a time went
home without it.
Unreasonably enough, storm and snow classed themselves in Sabinsport's
mind as part of the war, and her uneasiness grew. Was it all to be like
this--failure, sorrow, shame, suffering? Was she never to see anything
orderly, sufficient, successful? Was there nothing in war that was
brave, glorious and stirring? Sabinsport was seeing only the fringe of
the great undertaking, and it looked ragged enough in the early part of
1918.
In all this, Dick was going from depth to depth of discouragement.
Inveterate believer that he was in this town, which he had come so to
love, in the country in whose institutions he so believed, doubt and
despair of the outcome of the great undertaking grew upon him. We were
not going to be able to handle even the physical side of it. It was not
alone what he saw at home; it was what he heard from his friends in
Washington. Their letters, once hopeful, became despairing. "It looks
to me to-day," one of them wrote him along in the middle of January,
"as if the whole war machine had broken down. I have believed and
believed, but the fact is we are not getting men over. It's all
nonsense about our having 400,000 on the other side; there are not over
100,000. It's all nonsense about our building ships--the whole business
is simply tangled up. It's an awful, humiliating failure, I am afraid,
Dick. The men at the top are camouflaging the whole situation. I cannot
endure it that we men back here should fail the fine fellows who gave
themselves so utterly, so fearlessly."
This letter was the last straw to Dick's despair. He was overwhelmed
with the futility of all the gigantic effort, sickened by the inability
of Sabinsport properly to even take care of its own in a stress of
weather, sickened by what he saw in the camp. Sabinsport was failing,
the camp was failing, the country was failing. And why should he expect
anything else? What was the human race, after all, but a set of
selfish, limited bunglers?
And so, night after night, he tossed and groaned, and slept fitfully.
Things grinned at him. He wakened feverish and worn. In the day things
said, "What's the use? Why talk about democracy? Why talk about
ideals?" And he? Why, he was an utter failure. To get into it, to have
a turn in the trenches, to be soaked with filth, to be broken with
fatigue, to struggle to his feet, to feel a blessed death wound--that,
that was the only thing that would count.
He worked, of course; wore every day his mask of courage and good
cheer; but day by day it was growing harder to keep it on. Day by day
his strength was failing, for Dick, for the first time in his life, was
recklessly disobeying the boundaries which had been set for his
physical existence. The over-fatigue which he had always
conscientiously avoided he not only sought but coveted; the strains
which he had been told might at any time be fatal to him, he took
almost gladly. Finally his friends among the physicians at the camp
warned him, "You will break down, Ingraham, as sure as the world if you
don't take things easier." His friends grew worried. Nancy came to him
and begged him to stop, to go away for a while; but he laughed at them
all. In the bitterness of his soul he had come to feel that here was
his way out; he could give himself here.
The break came suddenly in the hospital at the camp; one day he
collapsed utterly and was taken home unconscious. An almost superhuman
effort of doctors and nurses brought him around, and a month later,
very white and humble, he was taken from Sabinsport to the South by
Reuben Cowder himself.
His desire to die had left him. He was his normal self, save for his
physical weakness. He meant to get well and come back to
Sabinsport--Sabinsport, whose grief and anxiety over his illness had
touched him to the heart? And he did his part. Three months later he
came back--a little thinner, a little quieter, but quite himself again
and capable of steady effort.