The War broke out. With very little effect upon Brownsville Landing.
“Let them fight it out,” was the prevailing opinion; it was also stated
positively that none of the nations had any clear idea of its aims or
why it was involved. Even the Belgians were fools, who had rushed into
war for no reason. There was a certain amount of awfully sentimental
sympathy for the “Belgian babies,” but it wasn’t very effective. The
Brownsville Landing natives looked upon the whole affair as a colossal
folly, in which all the participants were equally guilty; the British
perhaps a bit more reprehensible than the others. The old families,
brought up on flamboyant traditions of “1776,” looked upon the British
with scorn and dislike, the Irish element with positive hatred, and the
great mass of aliens, with their obscure and vague affiliations,
swallowed docilely the German propaganda fed to them. There was a
wide-spread conviction that the Germans were invincible, if not
superhuman, with amazing scientific devices impossible to resist. A sort
of laboratory witchcraft, “secrets” and “discoveries” without limit.
France was degenerate and vitiated; England gross, slothful, devoid of
patriotism, Russia a farce; the whole affair wouldn’t last long.
To Mr. Petersen, the European, the outbreak was of immense significance;
it was the falling of Damocles’ sword. He read the papers avidly. He was
not partisan; he felt nothing but the passionate interest of an onlooker
observing a mortal struggle between equally unpleasant adversaries. A
struggle among capitalists. With the poor man dying, bleeding,
suffering, whether victor or conqueror. He shook his head over the fate
of the Continent.
It surprised him that Minnie’s feelings were so vehement. She was
absolutely furious that there should be a war. All those men should have
known better. She didn’t know or care what it was about; she declared it
was shameful and wicked for so many people to be killed. She went so far
as to weep over it. He knew Minnie well enough to guess at something
personal in this fervour; an abstract interest was not possible for her.
Sure enough, it was a personal matter. It concerned her adored brother.
He had evidently been telling her that he wanted to enlist, for one
morning Mr. Petersen heard them at it, taking it up again with
incredible obstinacy and indirectness on both sides.
“I won’t let you!” cried Minnie. “I won’t have it!”
“Good God! What do you want to make of me? Can’t you _see_, even _you_,
that it’s the only way to rehabilitate myself? My only chance. I shan’t
lose it, no fear!”
“Don’t you dare!” she cried hysterically. “I’ll die! It would kill me!”
Mr. Petersen entered after Alec had gone out angrily, banging the door.
“Minnie, my dear,” he said, mildly, “don’t you think you’re wrong to try
to influence your brother in such a----”
“Oh, do stop!” she interrupted rudely. “You don’t understand.” And
suddenly grew angry with him. “I should think you could see he’s not fit
for a military life. So thin and sensitive. How can you be so
heartless.”
Mr. Petersen remarked that if he weren’t fit for a military life, he
wouldn’t be accepted, but Minnie said she knew all about _that_; they’d
take anyone they could get hold of, even in a dying condition.
This marked the end of her period of sweetness. With her characteristic
scorn for doctor’s orders, she refused to stay in bed any longer. In a
wrapper, thinner, pallid, and untidy, she pervaded the house, for the
sole purpose of keeping her eye on Alec. She followed him about,
scolding him, crying, tormenting him. He stopped arguing, he absolutely
refused to answer her. He would sit, with a cigarette in his mouth,
quite unmoved by her tirades.
It was undoubtedly a unique opportunity for the poor fellow to
“rehabilitate” himself, as he put it, and Mr. Petersen couldn’t
understand why he hesitated. Surely no man owed so immoderate a duty to
a sister. If he wanted to go, if he saw it as his duty to go, why in
Heaven’s name, didn’t he go, and at once?
All of poor Minnie’s loves were so inordinate. She was to Alec as she
was to her children, utterly and blindly devoted, without the least
discretion or scruple. He knew that she didn’t love him in that way,
but he felt it was because he was independent, didn’t need her so. Her
whole life consisted in service for those weaker ones. The most
superfluous services, that instead of helping hindered. She annoyed Alec
by her futile and insistent attentions, by counting his cigarettes and
deploring their number, by bringing him special dishes which were
intended to fatten him. She denied Sandra nothing, no matter how
injurious and stupid. She served her little son by carrying him in her
arms continually, never let him alone in peace. Only to Mr. Petersen she
did nothing but her duty, and not always that, though she didn’t realise
it.
The old disorder was re-established, on account of trouble with Mrs.
Hansen.
Minnie came into his little room one morning, frowning.
“Chris,” she said. “You’ll have to tell that woman to go at once!”
“Who, my dear?”
“You know very well! That Hansen woman! _This_ time she’s surpassed
herself. I never heard of such impudence. Never! There she was, the
old--_creature_--snooping round in Alec’s room. Snooping!”
Now Mr. Petersen had long been aware of this sole failing in an
otherwise classically lofty character. He knew that Mrs. Hansen snooped.
But, having no secrets, her snooping hadn’t particularly disturbed him.
He realised, too, that for one of Minnie’s secretive nature, snooping
must seem a crime; he knew by this time that _she_ had plenty of things
to hide, queer little magpie stores, money she imagined she was saving,
clothes she had ruined in the making, bills she didn’t wish seen. He
thought it rather humorous.
“That’s too bad,” he said, soothingly. “Still--perhaps if you speak to
her----”
“Indeed I shan’t. _You_ engaged her and _you_ can get rid of her. I will
_not_ have her in the house. Poking her nose into everyone’s affairs.
She’s got to go at once!”
She heard the baby crying and turned to go.
“I never did trust that woman,” she said, turning back at the door. “I
always felt there was something queer when we missed all that food last
autumn.”
Mr. Petersen was stricken dumb. To accuse poor Mrs. Hansen of that!
And such was the plausibility, the fatal assurance of Minnie’s manner,
that he was almost inclined to disbelieve the evidence of his own eyes,
to deny the facts known to him, and to put his faith in her words....
She got another servant, a silly young girl, and between them they
produced a masterpiece of discomfort and disorder. They quarrelled, too,
in a distressing way; but were nevertheless conscious of a sort of bond.
Mr. Petersen would hear Minnie in the kitchen preparing food for the
baby and talking to Addie with interest, with animation, as she had
never talked to Mrs. Hansen, who was so much more worth talking to. And
Addie would reply as one woman to another. They used to discuss the war
sometimes with deep indignation. Their opinions were identical. Addie’s
young man, who was a German with American citizenship, hankered after
the Fatherland, and wanted to go home and fight, but Addie had told him
firmly that if he did, _she_ was done with him. He could find one of
those fat German girls.
Minnie’s housekeeping annoyed her brother very much. In fact, Mr.
Petersen thought him unnecessarily fault-finding with the anxious little
woman. She used to cry sometimes but she never resented anything he
said. She would excuse herself by saying that the baby took up so much
of her time. And that was a new cause of offense. He accused her
bitterly of favouritism, and even Mr. Petersen was obliged to admit a
basis of truth in the accusation. She had an absolutely frantic passion
for her little son; she was ready enough to be sharp and unjust to
Sandra if she disturbed his inordinate demands for quiet slumber.
It was a beautiful, a wonderful baby, a lusty, blonde little Petersen
with serene blue eyes and a sort of debonair quality; a baby no woman
could be blamed for adoring. But she was so immoderate, so inordinately
proud of having a son anyway. And when, combined with its superior sex,
it possessed the attractions of this son, how withstand it? She expected
Sandra to worship as she did, and Sandra refused. Sandra was annoyed
with this superfluous child. As far as she was concerned it was useless,
too young for a playmate and not docile enough for a toy. Moreover it
received attentions which properly belonged to her. Uncle Alec alone
confined his devotion to her.
He didn’t want the little girl out of his sight. He spent many hours
walking through the garden, holding her hand, listening to her, touching
her misty hair. He couldn’t play with her or amuse her as Mr. Petersen
did, but she was able to love him even more. They had between them a
rare and touching sympathy.
Mr. Petersen thought it charming. He often watched the grave little
girl, sitting on the sofa beside the wretched man, reading aloud to him
from her funny little books, which she knew by heart, sometimes stopping
to run her little hand over his cheeks, or his beard, which amused her.
“Isn’t _that_ a nice one?” she would ask, ending some story about bears
or wolves or fairies.
“Rather!” he would answer. “You’re a very clever, good kid to read to me
like that.”