Late in the afternoon of the sixth of August, Claude and his
empty wagon were bumping along the level road over the flat
country between Vicount and the Lovely Creek valley. He had made
two trips to town that day. Though he had kept his heaviest team
for the hot afternoon pull, his horses were too tired to be urged
off a walk. Their necks were marbled with sweat stains, and their
flanks were plastered with the white dust that rose at every
step. Their heads hung down, and their breathing was deep and
slow. The wood of the green-painted wagon seat was blistering hot
to the touch. Claude sat at one end of it, his head bared to
catch the faint stir of air that sometimes dried his neck and
chin and saved him the trouble of pulling out a handkerchief. On
every side the wheat stubble stretched for miles and miles.
Lonely straw stacks stood up yellow in the sun and cast long
shadows. Claude peered anxiously along the distant locust hedges
which told where the road ran. Ernest Havel had promised to meet
him somewhere on the way home. He had not seen Ernest for a week:
since then Time had brought prodigies to birth.
At last he recognized the Havels' team along way off, and he
stopped and waited for Ernest beside a thorny hedge, looking
thoughtfully about him. The sun was already low. It hung above
the stubble, all milky and rosy with the heat, like the image of
a sun reflected in grey water. In the east the full moon had just
risen, and its thin silver surface was flushed with pink until it
looked exactly like the setting sun. Except for the place each
occupied in the heavens, Claude could not have told which was
which. They rested upon opposite rims of the world, two bright
shields, and regarded each other, as if they, too, had met by
appointment.
Claude and Ernest sprang to the ground at the same instant and
shook hands, feeling that they had not seen each other for a long
while.
"Well, what do you make of it, Ernest?"
The young man shook his head cautiously, but replied no further.
He patted his horses and eased the collars on their necks.
"I waited in town for the Hastings paper," Claude went on
impatiently. "England declared war last night."
"The Germans," said Ernest, "are at Liege. I know where that is.
I sailed from Antwerp when I came over here."
"Yes, I saw that. Can the Belgians do anything?"
"Nothing." Ernest leaned against the wagon wheel and drawing his
pipe from his pocket slowly filled it. "Nobody can do anything.
The German army will go where it pleases."
"If it's as bad as that, why are the Belgians putting up a fight?"
"I don't know. It's fine, but it will come to nothing in the end.
Let me tell you something about the German army, Claude."
Pacing up and down beside the locust hedge, Ernest rehearsed the
great argument; preparation, organization, concentration,
inexhaustible resources, inexhaustible men. While he talked the
sun disappeared, the moon contracted, solidified, and slowly
climbed the pale sky. The fields were still glimmering with the
bland reflection left over from daylight, and the distance grew
shadowy,--not dark, but seemingly full of sleep.
"If I were at home," Ernest concluded, "I would be in the
Austrian army this minute. I guess all my cousins and nephews are
fighting the Russians or the Belgians already. How would you like
it yourself, to be marched into a peaceful country like this, in
the middle of harvest, and begin to destroy it?"
"I wouldn't do it, of course. I'd desert and be shot."
"Then your family would be persecuted. Your brothers, maybe even
your father, would be made orderlies to Austrian officers and be
kicked in the mouth."
"I wouldn't bother about that. I'd let my male relatives decide
for themselves how often they would be kicked."
Ernest shrugged his shoulders. "You Americans brag like little
boys; you would and you wouldn't! I tell you, nobody's will has
anything to do with this. It is the harvest of all that has been
planted. I never thought it would come in my life-time, but I
knew it would come."
The boys lingered a little while, looking up at the soft radiance
of the sky. There was not a cloud anywhere, and the low glimmer
in the fields had imperceptibly changed to full, pure moonlight.
Presently the two wagons began to creep along the white road, and
on the backless seat of each the driver sat drooping forward,
lost in thought. When they reached the corner where Ernest turned
south, they said goodnight without raising their voices. Claude's
horses went on as if they were walking in their sleep. They did
not even sneeze at the low cloud of dust beaten up by their heavy
foot-falls,--the only sounds in the vast quiet of the night.
Why was Ernest so impatient with him, Claude wondered. He could
not pretend to feel as Ernest did. He had nothing behind him to
shape his opinions or colour his feelings about what was going on
in Europe; he could only sense it day by day. He had always been
taught that the German people were pre-eminent in the virtues
Americans most admire; a month ago he would have said they had
all the ideals a decent American boy would fight for. The
invasion of Belgium was contradictory to the German character as
he knew it in his friends and neighbours. He still cherished the
hope that there had been some great mistake; that this splendid
people would apologize and right itself with the world.
Mr. Wheeler came down the hill, bareheaded and coatless, as
Claude drove into the barnyard. "I expect you're tired. I'll put
your team away. Any news?"
"England has declared war."
Mr. Wheeler stood still a moment and scratched his head. "I guess
you needn't get up early tomorrow. If this is to be a sure enough
war, wheat will go higher. I've thought it was a bluff until now.
You take the papers up to your mother."