with a cry that she had not been with him.
“I couldn’t send for you,” she said. “I thought—maybe you was glad
Bunchy come. I thought maybe you was glad I was off your hands—”
“My hands,” he said, “just was huntin’ for your hands.”
“Then that ice-cream place’s wife,” she said, “told me about
to-night—and somebody told Aunt ’Cretia. And we come here to the
meeting—but when I saw you, I run and lost ’em—”
“I wanted you when I was in that meeting,” he told her, “more’n any
other time, most. I knew you knew what they meant.”
She said the thing which in the tense feeling of that hour, had
remained for her paramount.
“That woman,” she cried, “with her baby in her shawl! _Think_—when she
knew it was gone—and she couldn’t go back....”
“I thought—what if it had been you,” he told her.
She was in his arms, close in the dusk of a great cedar. “Any
woman—any woman!” she said, and he felt her sobbing.
He turned and looked away at the people. Not far from them, like murals
on the night, went the people, that little lighted stream of people,
down the white steps and along the gray drives. He looked at the women.
That about the baby in the shawl might have happened to any one of
them, if war were here.... It was terrible to think that this might
happen to any one of these women. He felt as if he knew them. And then
too, there must be some of them whose fathers had died....
He kept looking at the people, and in his arms was Lory, sobbing for
that woman who had lost her child from her shawl; and over there across
the water were thousands whose children were gone, whose fathers had
died....
Here they all seemed so kindly, and they were going home ... to homes
such as he and Lory were going to have. _Just the same—just the
same_....
And as he looked at the people, the thousands, going to their homes,
Love that had come to dwell in him, touched him on the eyes. He saw
them loving, as he and Lory loved. He saw them grieving, as that woman
had grieved for her child. He saw them lonely for their dead, as he was
lonely for his dead. None of them could deceive him. He knew them, now.
They were like Lory and like him.
Out of a heart suddenly full he spoke the utmost that he could:
“What a rotten shame,” he said, “it’d be to kill any of them!”
She looked up, and saw where he was looking, and her heart leaped with
her understanding of him.
He was trying to think it out.
“But they can’t seem to stop to think of things like that,” he said;
“not when big things come up.”
“Big things!” she cried. “What’s big things?”
“Well—rights—and land—and sea-ports,” said he.
She laughed, and caught up an end of her blue knitted shawl and covered
her face, and dropped the shawl with almost a sob.
“Rights—and land—and sea-ports!” she said over.
The three words hung in air, and echoed. And abruptly there came upon
him a dozen things that he had heard that night: “We had just three
little streets, but they took those....” “There is only one hell worse
than we have been through....” “Say, if you like, that Belgium was only
a part of what happens in war....” “We have to think of men brutalized
and driven to hideous deeds....” “Enough of slaughter. Enough of
devastation. Peace—lasting peace!” And then again the words of the
Hungarian woman: “I had the shawl on my back, but I had no baby and I
don’t know where I dropped him.”
“Think of millions of men doing like Dad and that sheriff,” the girl
said suddenly. “I saw ’em there on the woodshed floor,—stark, starin’,
ravin’ mad.”
Sharp on the dark before him was struck the image of that old madman
in the kitchen. There was a beast in him. The Inger had felt the beast
in himself answer. He had felt the shame of a man who is a beast to
another man. _What if it were the same kind of shame for the nations?_
Suddenly, in his arms, Lory was pouring out all that she had longed to
say to him.
“Back there in Inch,” she cried, “I knew there was some other way. I
had to know! It didn’t seem as if everybody could be like Dad and
Bunchy. Then I saw you—and you seemed like you could be some other
way. And you are—and see the folks there. There _is_ some other way to
be besides killin’!”
The lights in the dome went out, and that high white presence dropped
back against the sky. Still the people were going by, their feet
treading the gravel; and now there was a man’s voice, now a woman’s
voice, now the sleepy treble of a child. And they were all in some
exquisite faith of destination.
“I guess there must be some other way,” the Inger said.
To the man and the woman in each other’s arms, there came no glimpse of
the future, great with its people, “striving who should contribute most
to the happiness of mankind.” But of the man’s love was born his dim
knowledge—which had long been the woman’s knowledge—that the people
are bound together by ties which the nations must cease to break. That
the people are heart’s kindred, met here for their world-work, which
the nations must cease to interrupt.
Yet all that he could say of this was something which every soldier
knows—though armies never know:
“If that woman had been you—and the baby in the shawl had been ours—”
“Anybody’s!” she insisted. “Anybody’s baby!”
“Yes,” said the Inger then. “Anybody’s baby.!”
Printed in the United States of America.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Jane Addams: “Newer Ideals of Peace.”
[2] From Johanne Rambusch, Aalborg, Denmark.
[3] From Lida Gustava Heymann, Munich.
[4] From “Letters from the Women of the Warring Nations.”
[5] From “Letters from the Women of the Warring Nations.”
[6] Cotes du Nord, France.
[7] From Rosika Schwimmer, Buda Pesth.
[8] From Louie Bennett, Dublin.
[9] From Emily Hobhouse, London.
[10] From Clara Zetkin, Stuttgart.