It is only when one loves a town as Richard Ingraham loved Sabinsport
that one is conscious of the currents of unrest, of groping, of joy and
of grief that fluctuate through it as truly as they fluctuate through
the soul of man or woman. Love makes one sensitive--sensitive to
fleeting shadows that others never see, to secret hopes and faiths that
others never know. Dick had not been long home before he began to
understand that Sabinsport, hammering at her war tasks like a Vulcan,
hating her enemy as robustly and openly as any primitive deity, still
was restless in heart, dissatisfied with the war, untouched by its
loftiest aims and hopes.
Something more in experience must come to Sabinsport, thought Dick; and
he sometimes wondered if it would have to be a baptism of blood. She
would stick--stick to the end, he felt. Indeed, he did not believe that
all the nations of the earth combined could pry Sabinsport now from the
task to which she had put her hand. But he wanted more from her in
carrying out this task--a fuller sense of the bigness of the thing in
which she was engaged. Where was it all to come from?
As the spring drive of the Germans pounded back farther and farther the
English and French lines, the anxiety in Sabinsport grew, intensified.
Out of it Dick saw coming one emotion that greatly rejoiced him.
Sabinsport, through all the war, had never any very strong feeling for
England. To Belgium and France she had given her heart, a little of it
had gone to Serbia, England never had won more than a slightly grudging
recognition; but now, when that amazing army stood with its back to the
sea, and the world realized that though every man might fall, no man
would surrender, something broke in Sabinsport.
For the first time she realized something of the fullness and the
nobility of the English sacrifice--how with characteristic English
quiet, the nation had put everything in and called it a "bit." To Dick,
whose love of English hearts and English ways and whose faith in the
unconquerable English soul was second only to his love and faith in
America, this belated understanding of England by Sabinsport gave both
joy and hope. She was beginning to see things. They were getting down
into her soul.
As the days went on and the Germans drew nearer and nearer to Paris, as
the city was actually shelled, and as rumors came of preparations for a
siege, with all the doubts they brought of its being possible for her
to long withstand it, something like panic seized Sabinsport--an almost
angry panic. Where, where were the Americans? For what had she been
making all her great effort? Why, but to stay the invading hordes? Were
we too late? Were these hundred thousands of men that we boasted now of
having landed in so short a time, to come in only in time to see the
destruction of France and the certain invasion and destruction of
England, which Sabinsport believed that would mean? Doubt and anger and
horror possessed her.
And then suddenly the American army did appear. There was Cantigny,
and then, in the very nick of time, the last moment, when the wearied
and overwhelmed French were actually in retreat, our boys
came--Sabinsport's boys; and, careless of the long journeys which had
brought them to the spot--the sleepless hours, they broke over the
foe, beat him down, beat him back, followed, defied, laughed at his
boasted formations, his impregnable trenches, his deadly nests of
guns. It was true, as the most experienced and hardened French cried,
_Rien les arreste_--Nothing stops them! Nothing stops them!
When the story of Château-Thierry came back to Sabinsport, men shook
one another's hands, clapped one another on the back, told over and
over every item they could gather. Captain Billy walked up and down the
street, not ashamed of tears, crying, "I knew they would do it. Just
like the boys of '61." They treasured every story of reckless exploit,
of daredeviltry. "That's our boys. Just like them!" And they were even
prouder of the fact that, reckless and unafraid as they showed
themselves, they had known how to take discipline, to play the game
according to rules, that the wisest of English and French generals were
saying, "They are good soldiers."
Château-Thierry and the weeks of struggle that drove back the Hun from
the lovely Marne country, back through Soissons, back to the
Aisne--those were great days for Sabinsport; and particularly they were
great days for the War Board.
The War Board, said Dick to himself, has settled down to enjoy the war.
It spent its nightly sessions in recounting tales of heroism. Every
list of citations for bravery was gone over item by item, under the
leadership of Captain Billy. At first they set out to remember the
names, those wonderful names, not only American, but Russian, Greek,
Rumanian, Pole, Italian, Serb, Chinese and--yes, German--even German.
"By the Jumping Jehoshaphat," Captain Billy would say, "we've got them
all--every blamed nation on earth--and every one Americans. They have
all got it--good American grit. It don't make any difference where
their names come from, there isn't one of them but dies with his face
to the Hun." Over and over they recounted the gallant stories--of men
going out from shelters into which they had been ordered, to carry in
wounded, and sometimes receiving their own death bullet as they laid
their man in a place of safety--of their quick strategy in surrounding
machine gun nests and their fearless hand to hand fights with the
crews. And then those tales of the way they ran in their prisoners.
Captain Billy was never tired relating the historic tale of the
sergeant from the New York East Side who came back with 159 prisoners
and complained to his superior officer that "one had died on him."
And nothing so delighted Captain Billy as the tales that came over of
the doughboy's directness and common sense in an emergency. "Just like
them. Don't phase them a bit. Just as much at home over there as here.
I guess they're teaching them down-trodden European countries the kind
of men a free country makes. Read about the doughboy and his mules?
Harness broke--mules ran away--turned them into a tree--smashed
one--jumped out, looked at him, saw he was done up, shot him, rigged up
and went ahead,--never said a word, never asked anybody anything, just
did what was necessary. They say those French poilus haven't stopped
talking about it yet. They would have held an inquest, sent in a
report, and probably stopped the work of that train for a week. That's
the difference."
Dick was deeply touched to notice how every now and then in the
rejoicings somebody in the War Board would nod up at Lieutenant Mikey,
looking down on them from the wall, and say, "What a pity he couldn't
have been in it now; couldn't have fought with his own men. But he was
our first one, we must never forget that." Nor did they forget their
other heroes. Often and often they would nod up to Albert on the wall,
and say, "Hold on, old fellow, your time is coming." Or to Joffre,
"Feeling pretty good to-night, ain't you, Papa Joffre?" Oh, the War
Board was certainly enjoying the war--now that it was going their way.
While the War Board regaled itself with stories of doughboy exploits at
Cantigny and Château-Thierry, the saving of Rheims, the capture of
Soissons; while it speculated over the big gun--where it was, how it
operated--quarreled over the merits of arms, and exhausted itself in
devising methods of destroying Germany--the town outside, the busy,
working town, seemed sometimes to Dick almost to be living in France
with the boys. Quite wonderfully and naturally they had built up from
what came to them in letters and news the life of their boys over
there. Of course they were proud of their exploits, but they did not
want to dwell too much on them; they meant ghastly wounds or
death--what they wanted to know was just how the boys lived, and where,
the kind of beds they slept on, the kind of food they ate, whether it
was really true that when they fell ill they had the care that they
ought to have; and all of this, this eagerness to know where the boys
were and how they were getting on in detail, made every letter that
came almost a matter of town importance.
It was quite amazing how the contents of these letters circulated. The
very arrival of one was known, sometimes, in advance of its delivery,
for the post office force took notice when a letter from anybody in the
A. E. F. arrived, and I have known it more than once to happen that if
a letter came in Saturday night--there was no Sunday delivery--one of
the postal clerks would run immediately to the telephone and call up,
"Hello, Mrs. B., here's a letter for you from Tom, if you want to come
down and get it. None of us can get away much before midnight." You can
imagine how quickly Mrs. B. went or sent.
The great interest and excitement of the postmen's life in those days
was delivering the letters from the A. E. F. It was the practice of
these functionaries in Sabinsport to put the mail in the box outside,
if you had one; to throw it on the steps if you had not; or sometimes,
if it rained, to try your door and throw it in the hall; but whenever
there was a letter from a soldier none of these things were sufficient.
Your bell rang with an eager, insistent cry which said, "There's a
letter from Tom." And the next morning, the probabilities are that the
postman lingered a bit to see if you didn't come out and tell him
personally something of what was in the letter. And you did it. Oh, how
you loved to tell what was in the letter! And how it went up and down
the town and everybody telephoned and compared it with what was in
Frank's letter, or Will's letter.
After the letters, Sabinsport's great interest was _The Stars and
Stripes_. There was no paper published on the globe so popular in the
town. A half dozen of the boys had been inspired to send it home by the
clever appeal of the paper itself. "Do the home folks a good turn by
having us send them _The Stars and Stripes_ every week," the editor
said at the head of his page, in an appealing display type. "There are
not many things you can do from this side of the water," he said, "for
your folks or your old pal or that girl back home. _The Stars and
Stripes_ would come to them like another letter every week or another
little present."
The doughboys had not passed it up, as he advised, and the paper came
to be to the home folks all that he had prophesied. Intimate, natural,
humorous, eloquent, the best bit of editing the war had inspired, _The
Stars and Stripes_ brought to Sabinsport such a sense of how the boys
were thinking and feeling and acting, the whole town was comforted and
helped. One supreme consolation it brought--the certainty that whatever
the war might be doing to their boys, it was not changing their tastes.
_The Stars and Stripes_ proved that. It was "just like them."
Although it was known that many of their men were with the divisions
fighting along the Marne, and although every night when the _Argus_
came, the first thing that the town turned to was the casualty list,
they went a long time untouched--so long that Sabinsport came to have a
curious kind of jealousy. The City, twenty-five miles away, had lost
heavily. She rejoiced, and yet she somehow wanted to pay her price.
But when it came--poor little Sabinsport! It came like a stroke of
lightning. One evening Dick was called up by Ralph's successor in the
_Argus_ office. "Parson," he said, in a broken voice, "I wish you would
come down. It's dreadful! The casualty list has just come in--there are
twelve of our men dead, Parson--twelve of Sabinsport's boys. Ralph's
name is among them. How are we going to get it to the people? There is
no notice to any family yet, as I know, and I cannot call them up.
Won't you come down and help me?"
It was not long before Dick was bending over the list; and the two men
were asking themselves who would better go here, who there, who's the
friend of this family, who the friend of that? They called up the
priest for the three of his own boys; the Rev. Mr. Pepper, who, in
spite of his pacifism, still had kept a gentle heart, for one of his
flock. They called up Jake Mulligan, and between them the sad duty was
performed.
The news flew. All Sabinsport wept that night. The next morning there
was laid at every door in town--subscribers or not--a little extra
sheet of the _Argus_--Sabinsport's Honor Roll. And first in the list
was the name of Lieut. Michael Sullivan, killed at Delville Wood, July
15, 1916.
It fell to Dick to go to Patsy. It was nearly midnight when he called
up Father McCullon and told him. "Wait until morning," the old man
said, "and come yourself, Dick. Mother and I could never do it."
Patsy had been back in Sabinsport since the beginning of the year.
After her marriage she lived near Ralph's camp until he had sailed in
January. By a fortune which seemed to both of them miraculous, he had
been promoted until he was a lieutenant in the Rainbow Division. He had
sailed, believing that he would soon be in the trenches. To Patsy, as
to him, this had been a matter of glad rejoicing. She had come back so
proudly to Sabinsport that Mary Sabins had been shocked. "To think
anybody," she had said to Patsy, "could rejoice when her husband was in
danger of his life. I cannot understand it, Patsy, and you in your
condition, too,"--for Patsy was scarcely less proud or less open about
the fact that Ralph was in France in the trenches than that she soon
would be a mother--the mother of a little Ralph, she proudly announced,
for she seemed to have no doubt in the world that she would bear a son.
"Ralph wanted a son."
The boy had come in the spring. Never in her capable, vivid life had
Patsy been so proud and so joyous.
And Ralph was dead, and Dick was on his way to the farm-house to tell
her. It was early when he came up the walk--and Patsy, radiant and
beautiful--oh, far more beautiful than she had ever been--met him at
the door, for she had seen him coming. She needed no telling. With that
divination of womankind whose loved ones are at the front, Patsy sensed
that Dick brought her sorrowful news of Ralph. She did not even lose
her color, but, taking him by the hand, led him into the cheerful
sitting room where, before the fire, little Ralph was cooing in his
crib. She took the baby up, and standing straight and proud, said,
"Tell me, Dick."
"Ralph's name is on the casualty list, Patsy--among the dead. But do
not lose hope," he pled, "it may be a mistake."
"It is not a mistake, Dick. He knew it. I knew it. We fought it out
together. I promised to live to raise our son. Take him, Dick--take
him," and she held out the child, crumpling to the floor as Dick sprang
to her side.
Stricken as she was--so stricken that in the coming days life itself
seemed to ooze from her veins and she lay for hours in long white
swoons, the spirit of her remained undaunted. She had made her
sacrifice when she said good-by to her husband. As Ralph had had to
fight like every man of passionate heart and living imagination to
conquer his natural fear of death in battle, so Patsy had fought to
conquer her fear of his loss. Both had won, for when the test came both
were victorious.
Ralph, so they learned one day, had lost his life in the full tide of
battle. His company had been ordered to secure a foothold on the high
northern bank of a river to which the army had fought its way. They had
been led with extraordinary skill and courage, but in crossing one
after another of the officers had been killed until Ralph was left
alone in command. He took his men through the last cruel shelling to
the desired objective, but in the final push he was fatally wounded.
Even then he had refused to give up and for hours continued to direct
his men as they literally clawed their way into the side of the bluff.
"He would not die," wrote home one grieving young soldier, "until he
knew we were safe."
And Patsy made her fight as bravely. She held her head high. Had she
not little Ralph, who, so they had both agreed, was one day to carry on
his father's work for justice and peace among men? If there were times
when it seemed as if her brave heart must break with pain, no one ever
saw her shed a tear or say other than, "I would not have held him back,
no, not even to have him here to-day."
It was to the honor and the sanctification of Sabinsport that the
bereaved took their sorrow as they did. It was more. Out of their loss
there seemed to come to the town a mysterious illumination, the
enlarged sense of what it was all about, which Dick had so desired for
her, which he had felt so keenly she should have, to sustain her.
Wounded and hurt as she was, the town had to find a reason, a great
reason, to justify it all. Defending laws on sea or land that had grown
out of past struggles between nations was not enough; vengeance was not
enough, not even avenging wrongs as great as Belgium and the
_Lusitania_. Sabinsport needed to feel that out of this sacrifice there
should come some new conception of life, some greater guarantee of more
joy and freedom to more people, some pledge that in future times there
was hope of less sorrow, less hunger, less pain everywhere on the
earth. This, she finally saw, was what it was all about; and in groping
toward this realization there came to Sabinsport something that was
akin to a new faith, and with this she was for the first time fully and
unalterably reconciled to the Great War.
It was no longer grim determination, no longer hatred of an enemy that
she despised, that held her to the undertaking. It was a large and
luminous faith that out of it all a long step had been taken toward
realizing that new world to which, since the beginning of time, men
have lifted their eyes.
It was amazing how the town softened under the touch of its sorrow, how
many old feuds sank out of sight, how much warmer grew everybody's
heart. "It's doing something to us, Dick," Reuben Cowder said to him
one day. "Why, I even heard Captain Billy speak approvingly of Wilson
to-day."
It did something to Dick. It made easier his renunciation of Nancy
which he still believed was his duty. That was his part, his sacrifice,
he told himself. He must give himself now to keeping alive, feeding
this new sense that had come to the town; and he threw himself with
enthusiasm into the work of explaining to Sabinsport the national
aspirations and hopes that began to take form in the unfamiliar
countries of Europe. At the camp, at the Boys' Club, in his church, and
at the War Board, Dick made himself the advocate of Serbian and
Bohemian, Czecho-Slav and Pole. For the first time in all Sabinsport's
life, she began really to sense that these strange men who filled her
mines and her factories carried in their hearts loves for their lands
like hers for America; that they, too, had dreams--some of them coming
down from hundreds of years of struggle--of freedom and equal
opportunity in their own nations. And her chivalry, her sense of
protection, her determination to help them see it through, grew with
her knowledge.
It was perhaps quite natural that, as the days went on, Dick should
come to feel that Sabinsport had had a change of heart so profound that
it had softened even her bitterness against Germany, itself. It was
this feeling that he might even talk mercifulness to Sabinsport now
that led him into what afterwards was known as "the Parson's Big Break."
It was not until October that Dick was able to bring himself to believe
that at last the Allies had the upper hand. From the start he had seen
the war as long--long--long. It was that that made him suffer so.
Cantigny, Château-Thierry, the falling back to the Vesle--none of these
things had really convinced him. But when the Americans captured St.
Mihiel, following on the break in the North, he suddenly realized the
splendid scheme on which the great French general was working. "She's
beaten," he said, "she's beaten. It will take time, but we've got her."
No longer was it, as the French had said it in that unquenchable faith
of theirs--_On les aura_; it was no _On les a_.
And as the days went on and he became more and more certain, his
imagination flew ahead to the time when the Allies would reach the
borders of enemy territory. He had his theory about this: Germany would
unconditionally surrender before she would allow the Allies to fight on
her territory.
But he could not give up the idea that the Allies should enter
Berlin--not as destroyers but as world peacemakers. He meditated much
on this, and at last one October Sunday morning preached a sermon on
the text: "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty. And he
that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city."
At the head of his notes he had put a title, "The Great Revenge." As he
talked his imagination kindled, and almost before he knew it he fell
into a rhapsody:
"In thinking of that great day--the day when victory is near and
certain," he said, "I have dreamed a dream, and in this dream I have
seen the Allied statesmen and their military leaders gathered for a
final conference which they believed will be the last before the end of
this greatest of human tragedies.
"With the terms for the world settlement outlined and accepted, with a
full knowledge of the military situation before them, with a sober
certainty that victory is in their hands, though it may be delayed, the
conference is ready to disband. And it is then that an American
general, whom first the Allied military forces and later the Allied
diplomats had come to listen to with respect, if not eagerness, not
only for the knowledge and fine judgment that he brought to their
councils but because of a quality of spiritual insight which many of
them believed to amount to genius--it was then that this American
general asked a hearing.
"'As you know,' he said, 'I am in the fullest agreement with every
conclusion of this conference. I believe that the military situation of
the Allied armies has been rightly presented, that nothing has been
concealed of either weakness or strength, that the conclusion that the
enemy must soon yield is inevitable from the facts that have been laid
before us. What I ask the privilege of saying to this conference will
add nothing to what you already know, it will add nothing to the plan
of world reorganization which has been suggested. It is not a matter on
which action is required. It may be called a dream or a vision, as you
please. I only beg that you will listen, and not deride, for what I
have to say comes from an inner conviction so deep that to withhold it
would be for me little better than treason to the great end of all this
suffering, this labor of spirit and of mind through which we have gone
in these many hard years.
"'The enemy will soon yield. I am one of those that believe that he
will yield at or before his last line of defense. I believe this, not
because I think that line less strong than it has been represented,
less strong than the enemy himself has boasted it to be--it may be the
most nearly impregnable line of defense that has been constructed in
all the history of the world--I believe he will yield because I believe
that yielding at this point is the inevitable result of his own
lifelong military teachings.
"'Germany has held that those people she wished to subdue could be
frightened into submission. Her people have been schooled for years to
believe that by inventing new and unheard of ways of destruction, by
attacking the defenseless, by stealthily striking where the laws of war
had forbidden men to strike, they could so terrorize the world that it
would submit to her supremacy without long resistance. She has learned
that neither the French nor the English, the Italian nor the American
people can be terrorized. She has learned that free people have no fear
of human devices, however hideous and destructive.
"'But what is the logical result of this story of teaching on the minds
of the people who teach it? This doctrine of frightfulness
will--already has--acted as a boomerang. There is not a military man in
this room who has not, from the beginning of his experience with the
enemy, found that when their own methods were turned back they were the
quickest to say "Enough." When we turned their own infernal gas
inventions against them they appealed to the laws of war. When, after
months and months of endurance of their bombardment of peaceful towns
and countrysides, England, in despair and rage, retaliated, they again
appealed to the laws of war. The natural reaction of their own gospel
is to make them and their peoples fear the things which they taught
other nations would fear.
"'Germany has given to the world the most awful exhibits of
destructiveness that mortal man has ever conceived. We, who have
marched through the torn and battered villages and homes of France and
Belgium and Serbia, have been made old and gray by the things that we
have seen. She believed that this destruction would take the heart out
of us. She did not know the peoples she attacked. And now her turn has
come. My conviction is that those who have taught this frightfulness,
and the people to whom they have taught it, will never have the moral
or physical courage to run the risk of having applied to them what they
have applied to us. The day we reach this last invincible line and make
our first break in it--as we know we shall--that day the sword of the
enemy will be laid down! They will not be able to face the horrors of
fighting on their own land, of seeing their own villages, their own
homes, undergoing the awful punishment which they have so wantonly
given the villages and homes of other countries. They will yield. They
will yield on the border. Gentlemen, we shall not be obliged to fight
our way to Berlin. And I am one of those who will be glad when the time
comes that we are not to take another life, not to devastate another
mile of the earth's fair face; that we are not to batter down another
cottage, or destroy another beautiful work of man's hands.
"'But that does not mean that I believe that the Allied armies should
not go to Berlin. What I have at this moment to propose to this
conference is that when the day comes--as it surely will--that the
German and the Austrian emperors and their high commands say to us, "We
yield,"--the Allied armies shall say to them: "Gentlemen, you will
yield in Berlin. We go to Berlin. But we go to your capital not as
destroyers; we go as saviors of freedom.
"'"We shall make no claim upon you in crossing your land. We shall lead
our armies--French, English, Italian, American--through your fertile
fields, your pleasant villages, into your beautiful capital, without
cost or pain or destruction to you. We shall take with us our food, we
shall ask no lodging for which we do not give fair return, and we shall
pledge our honor that no woman suffer, even by word or look, from those
hundreds of thousands of marching men."
"'Gentlemen, our armies will do this if we ask it of them. To do it
will give this people who have held as a religion the destructive
notion of progress and power which has encircled the earth with woe, an
exhibit of what free men really are. It will show them as no other act
could do that in our interpretation of progress and power, there is no
element of compulsion of others or of injury to others. If we can take
these hundreds of thousands of men of ours into Berlin and leave no
trace of destruction, no story of injustice behind us, we will give the
world the greatest exhibit of the control that free men can exercise
over themselves that it has ever seen or conceived. We shall prove the
Biblical saying that "He that ruleth his spirit is better than he who
taketh a city."
"'I ask, then, that when Germany yields--as she soon will--we say, "We
receive your sword in Berlin." And that we march our armies there for
that great ceremony. You will say that this is too much to ask of
armies. Gentlemen, I am willing to pledge the American army to that
great act of self-control.'
"The General sat down. For a long time there was silence at the table,
and then the oldest, the least smiling, the longest in arms of the
English staff, arose and said: 'I pledge the English Tommies to march
to Berlin without injury to man or woman or child.' A white haired
Italian sprang to his feet: 'You may count on us,' he cried. Then
slowly the great French general, to whose genius the campaign soon to
finish was due, arose. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'you all realize what it
would mean to the French poilus who have seen their country so
obliterated that many of them cannot even trace the lines of the little
farms on which they were born, who know that when they go back to the
villages in which they and their families once lived, they will not be
able to find the spot where their homes stood, you must know what it
would mean to these men to march into Germany as conquerors, to see her
fields still peaceful and fertile, her villages still untouched, and
with this bitter contrast before their eyes, neither by look or act to
show hate or insult. Yet, if this conception of our American friend
ever becomes possible, I pledge the French poilu to that majestic
undertaking.'
"There was but one to hear from--a king--a king who knew that scores of
his fairest towns and cities, with all their treasured work of
centuries of labor and skill and love, were in hopeless, blood-stained
ruins--who knew that thousands of his brave and honest countrymen and
countrywomen had been dragged from the remnants of homes left them, to
do the bidding of the enemy in his own land; who knew that, scattered
in foreign lands were little children of his realm who never would know
even the names to which they had been born.
"And the conference was still, and the hearts of all were big with
pity, looking on this king who sat with bowed head. Long minutes passed
before, rising proudly, he lifted to them a face which bore the look of
one who comes fresh from a great struggle and a great victory, and in
the quiet voice they had learned to know, the king said: 'Gentlemen, I
pledge you that the Belgian army will march to Berlin and leave behind
it no shattered wall, no mutilated old man, no outraged woman, no
orphaned child.'"
* * * * *
The rhapsody was over. Dick stopped, a little breathless. Never before
in all his experience as a speaker had he so lost himself. He blinked a
little, then suddenly was conscious of a curious change in his
audience--disapproval--almost hostility. What was the matter? It threw
him off his balance a bit, and he finished his sermon haltingly. They
went out stiff, disapproving backbones. What in the world had he done?
He went into the vestry room, saying to himself, "What is the matter?"
It was very common for the vestrymen to come around and say, "That was
fine, Ingraham. Just what ought to be said," but to-day the only person
that waited on him at the door as he came out was Miss Sarah Kenton, a
lady of sixty or so, whom he and Ralph were accustomed to call, "Our
Intellectual." Miss Sarah had had a literary experience, she had
written books. There was no subject which ever came up on which she did
not have a pronounced opinion. It must be confessed that she held most
of Sabinsport in awe. With Dick, she had always been as nearly humble
as was possible for her, for Dick was a man who had seen most of the
world which Miss Sarah had not. Besides, his reading and thinking, even
she admitted, was much broader and mellower than hers. Almost
invariably Miss Sarah approved of Dick, but this morning when he came
out she was waiting for him very rigid and very stern, and what she
said was to the point.
"You have made a great mistake, Mr. Ingraham, in your sermon this
morning. You have outraged us and you have injured yourself. No matter
what we would _do_ if we were given the direct alternative of sparing
Germany or injuring her--an alternative which can only be hypothetical,
and therefore should not be discussed now even as a 'mere dream'--no
matter, I say, what we would _do_ if face to face with such an
alternative, we don't want people to talk to us now about sparing the
smiling fields and cheerful little happy homes of Germany! It isn't
that we are bloodthirsty, but we are nauseated, Richard Ingraham, at
talking about the blessed state of Germany compared with the desolation
she has made in other countries. We don't want to hear about it."
And Miss Sarah turned on her heel and walked down the street,
indignation and disgust in every tap of her shoe on the pavement.
What Miss Sarah had so pointedly put straight to Dick himself, his
retiring congregation was saying in more or less abbreviated and
moderated form to one another. "I can't see it," said one; "it's
looking too far ahead to talk like that. Besides, it sounds like peace
propaganda to me, and I won't stand for that, even from the Domine,
much as I have always believed in him."
"It's pacifist talk," said another. "Makes me feel as if we'd been
harboring a serpent in our bosom through all these years. It might be
all very well to talk about a peaceful walk to Berlin if the Germans
were not Germans, but they are Germans, the people who have stood for
all these atrocities, who have been militarized out of all semblance to
human beings, they must have their lesson. It's a church for a church,
a cottage for a cottage, I think."
"He's all wrong," said another. "Get them with their backs to the wall
and they would fight like hell, for they've got it into their heads
that our men would do every fearful thing to their women and children
that they have done to ours."
The air was thick with disapproval that day in Sabinsport of the Rev.
Richard Ingraham; and suspicion gathered and gathered as the day went
on. Could it be that they had been mistaken, that he really was at
heart a pacifist?
The day was to come--and it was not far distant--when all these
indignant patriots were to do their best to make amends for their
resentment.
Under the great burst of joyous relief which the news of the signing of
the armistice caused in Sabinsport, her anger at Dick began to soften.
As the days went on and they actually saw at least the spirit of his
dream coming true--their own boys crossing into the enemy's country in
orderly fashion, going about the enemy's streets in self-control, even
holding the enemy's children on their knees and joining in their
Christmas trees and Christmas carols--a kind of wonder seized them. It
was a prophecy they had listened to. Even Miss Sarah Kenton was one day
to come to Dick and express her appreciation of his sermon, as frankly
as she had just expressed her disapproval.
But all that was for a later day. There is no question at all but that,
at the moment, Richard Ingraham had deeply outraged Sabinsport spirit
of righteous indignation against the Germans which he had done more
than any other man to awaken.
He went back to his study in the rectory after his interview with Miss
Sarah and sat for a long time, considering what he had done. "Good
Lord!" he said, "I certainly have put my foot in it. They really think
I am a pacifist," and he threw back his head and laughed aloud. But it
was a rueful laugh. Disapproval was a new experience for the young man.
He had had nothing but affectionate approval from the day that
Sabinsport first made his acquaintance. He could not remember a time in
all these years of speaking to them that his sermons had not met with
kindly appreciation, and now? Why, they had walked out of that church
as if they thought him a German spy.
And yet, underneath his chagrin, there was a certain exaltation. "She
has a mind of her own, Sabinsport, and she is not afraid to show it.
You can trust her to take care of her own, even against her own. But
what a climb I will have to get back!" And then quickly the thought
came, "I wonder if Nancy will feel as they do?" That gave him a cold
heart, almost a physical sickness. He could bear everything but to have
Nancy look at him as the people had when he first came out of his
rhapsody and realized their faces.
He put it through bravely. At the evening service there was the
smallest number of people that he ever remembered to have seen, but he
talked exactly as he had planned.
Monday had always been for him a play day. Usually he started off in
the morning for a long tramp, and since he had established his
friendly, homelike relations with Nancy, oftener than not he made it a
point to walk into her living room at half-past four or five for a cup
of tea. Reuben Cowder usually made it a point, too, to get home by five
on Mondays, knowing Dick would be there, for Reuben Cowder had grown
fonder as the months went by of the young parson, and sometimes he said
to himself, "I wish it were Dick and not Otto that she cared for. What
a son he would make."
This habit of Dick's was known to Patsy. Patsy had been stirred to
wrath by the echoes that had reached her before night of Sunday and all
through Monday morning of Dick's pro-Germanism. What utter stupidity,
she had said. Of course it's nothing but a reaction from the uplift
they have been wallowing in. Angry as she was at the thought of any
criticism of Dick, she was willing to slur even the spirit which had
taken possession of the town and in which she as much as Dick had
rejoiced. And to Patsy as to Dick, the only real alarm in the outbreak
was that it would reach Nancy and that she might be influenced. For
Patsy you see had come to believe that the two were in love.
"I think, Little Ralph," she said, talking aloud to the baby, "it's
time for your mother to take a decisive hand. He was the best friend
your father ever had. If it had not been for him you would not have
been here, little boy. If Nancy Cowder doesn't love him, she ought to.
At least she is not going to be turned against him now by this
senseless gossip." And so Patsy, whose anguished heart was becoming
braver and braver day by day in service to others, arrived at the
McCullon farm just about the time that Nancy came in from camp.
"I have come to lunch, Nancy," Patsy announced. "I want to know if you
have heard what Sabinsport is doing to Dick."
"Doing to Dick?" Nancy cried, turning white. "Why, what do you mean?"
"She does care!" Patsy said to herself. "They are doing a cruel thing;
they are accusing him of treason--he--he who has led us all into the
light, who showed Ralph the way, who gave me Ralph. They are badgering
him, heckling him, Nancy. And all out of their stupid, stupid, wicked,
revengeful spirits."
"But what--what do you mean?" Nancy cried, still white and trembling.
And Patsy, having made her impression, put aside her eloquence, and
told her what she knew of the sermon that had aroused resentment in the
town. As she went on, relief, tenderness, amusement chased one another
across Nancy's unconscious face.
"Oh, I understand, Patsy. You needn't defend Richard Ingraham to me. He
ought to have known better, though. He ought to have known the town
better. Why, Sabinsport really at heart was never so bitter against
Germany as she is to-day. It was foolish, foolish of him; but it's
wicked, wicked of them to doubt him. He has led us all. Why, my father,
Patsy. See what he has done for my father, and for me! Why, he brought
me back. Never would father have found me if it had not been for him."
It was a very satisfied Patsy that sat down at the lunch table, but it
was also a very curious one. There was one point that needed clearing
up, and that was Otto Littman. And so, with a calculated
unconsciousness that Nancy didn't catch at all, Patsy said, "I wish I
knew, just for my own guidance, what there is in all the suspicion
against Otto Littman. They are saying that he has done something fine,
that has made up for all his early defense of Germany; but nobody seems
to know what it is."
And Nancy, quite unguarded, told her as much as she dared of what Otto
himself had told her in confession, of how he had been carried away by
the German dream of world empire, of how his vanity had led him in the
first years of the war to aid the plotters in America, of how he had
come to his senses when he saw that violence against life and property,
as well as the spreading of German ideas (which he had considered
legitimate), was intended, of his break with Max, of his determination
to win back the confidence of Sabinsport, and of his plea that Nancy,
whom he had always loved, the one woman whom he had ever thought to
make his wife, should help him.
"I could not do it, Patsy," she said, with tears; "but it has almost
broken my heart not to stand by him as a friend in his hard, uphill
fight. I understand perfectly how Otto was deluded. I know his vanity;
and he has done a noble thing and the day will come when Sabinsport
will understand, after the war is over. But it hurts me, oh, you don't
know how it hurts me, not to be able to help. But what can I do? I do
not love him. I shall never love him."
And Patsy, the case quite clear in her mind, went back to Young Ralph,
satisfied that she had done a good afternoon's work.
It was a couple of hours later that Dick walked in on Nancy. Possibly,
he said to himself, she had not heard of the sermon of the day before,
for she came running down the steps to greet him, saying, "You are
late. I hoped you would come." It even seemed to him she was warmer in
her greetings than usual.
They were hardly in before Reuben Cowder's car drew up, and he came
into the drawing room. His greeting to Dick was curt and stern. He
neither delayed nor hesitated about expressing his disapproval.
"What is this I hear about that sermon of yours yesterday, Ingraham?
They tell me you talked some kind of twaddle about a peaceful entrance
into Berlin, that you don't want the Huns punished, that you don't want
any disturbance of their lands, that you propose to leave these
brigands and murderers untouched, their spoils in their hands, to let
them get away with their infamous atrocities. If that's the way you
feel, I don't want you in my house."
There was a sudden little stir on one side of the room. Dick thought of
it afterwards as something exactly like a bird fluttering out of its
nest, and flying to his side. And there was Nancy, standing straight
and looking into her father's eye--Cowder look for Cowder look.
"Stop that, Father," she said. "I know what Dick said. I know exactly
what he meant. No revenge could be so great as what he planned." Her
hand was laid protectingly on Dick's arm. She stood, his defender,
blazing with understanding and sympathy. She had said "Dick"--it was
the first time in all their acquaintance.
And Reuben Cowder had a great light. For a "hard business man," it was
quite extraordinary that he could divine that this was possibly the
great hour in the lives of these two young people, that possibly it was
not Otto, after all; and, with a gruff, "I beg your pardon, Ingraham,"
he left the room.
The girl did not stir from where she stood. She did not take her hand
from his arm. She only turned a very white face straight up to him.
"You said 'Dick,'" he said slowly. "You meant it, Nancy?"
"I meant it--Dick."
Then the Rev. Richard Ingraham did the most sensible thing he ever did
in his life, he put his hand over the cold one on his arm, and said, "I
love you, Nancy Cowder."
And the reply came swiftly, unhesitatingly, "I love you, Dick."
An hour later the two came out to the veranda, the look of glory still
on their faces. In a very few minutes--so few that he might have been
accused of waiting around the corner for their appearance,--Reuben
Cowder joined them. Dick went straight to the point: "I have asked
Nancy to marry me, Mr. Cowder. She has said, Yes. What do you say?"
"Well," said Reuben Cowder, "I say I would rather have you for a son
than any man I ever knew."
The three sat long on the veranda in the warm, deepening, October
twilight, looking out over the great valley in its glorious autumn
coloring, down to a segment of that curve of the great river above
which Sabinsport lay. It was not of the past that they talked, it was
not of Sabinsport's struggles and sorrows, it was not of the war news
of the day; it was of the future. To all three of them, Reuben Cowder
as well as Dick and Nancy, the last hour had opened the new world for
which the war had been fought.
"It will soon be over," Reuben said. "We've got them, sure thing. We
must think now of the future, Dick. There are a lot of changes coming
to Sabinsport. There will be things doing here when the boys get back.
I will need you both. I am old. I have the old ways; but I have learned
something since you and Ralph Gardner came to this town, and I'm not so
old that I can't learn more. I must do it, for we must reckon with
those stacks there."
He nodded his head to the opening he had cut long ago in the noble
trees which ran down the long slope of the great lawn, an opening that
he always carefully preserved for it brought into the landscape from
the veranda the tall smoke stacks of the wire mills.
Dick's mind flew back to the day a dozen years before when he had
walked over the hills and caught his first view of the town. There were
but four stacks that day, there were twelve now, and from every one of
the twelve black smoke rose, straight into the clear air, and they said
as clear and loudly to him now as they had so long ago, "We are the
strong things here, we are the things to be reckoned with."
Yes, they had great struggles for great things coming, he and Reuben
Cowder, and Nancy Cowder--his wife.
THE END
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End of Project Gutenberg's The Rising of the Tide, by Ida M. Tarbell