Time is an eel. No matter how you sand your fingers, it wriggles through
and is gone. One sets an act for to-morrow, especially if one be laboring
as Potter Waite was laboring in those feverish days, and awakes suddenly
to find it is next week or next month--and nothing had been done. When
every hour of the day is carrying a double freight of necessary things to
be done, the urgent thing that is capable of being pushed ahead finds
itself moving hopelessly into the future.
When Potter drove to his office from the Bloomfield Hills club he was a
man of single purpose, and that purpose was to pry into the affairs of
Cantor until they lay upheaved for any man to view. He suspected Cantor,
he knew not of what, but of something sinister. It sufficed, in such
times, that the man had something to conceal; that the truth of him was
not held up to public view.... And Potter hated him.
As with every other man, he had used the word "hate," but he had never
understood it. Now he knew that it had a very special and exact meaning,
and he could have defined it with precision--not in words, perhaps, but by
acts which speak with an eloquence words can never hope to achieve. One
can describe with words a sunset, a hurricane, the eruption of a volcano.
But when one is done there is nothing but vowels and consonants arranged
in a certain order. They may convey a suggestion, but no more. A printed
page, no matter from what master's hand, remains a printed page. It is not
sunset, hurricane, volcano. So with hate. It cannot be stamped upon paper;
it can be indicated by conventional signs; but those conventional signs
mean nothing but a vague hint to the individual who has not experienced
the _thing_. Potter Waite experienced it. He hated Cantor, and when that
is said words have reached their limit in denoting that human emotion
which is the reverse of love.
But he did not act. He worked. No man who has not waited through days of
construction to see a new mill begin the business of its existence, to see
the shafts revolve, carrying with them their multitude of pulleys,
communicating energy from the power-plant to the machine of production,
does not know impatience. He is looking forward to the day when machines,
perfect and exact for their appointed work, shall produce a concrete thing
that can be seen and felt. It is not enough to know that each day brings
nearer the concrete thing. No man but a mill man, skilled in such matters,
knows what delays intervene, what errors creep in, what changes have to be
made--and what a pall of anxiety hangs over the whole.... Once there was a
mill which started up and ran flawlessly when it was completed. The
residence of that mill is in a fairy-tale....
In early September the strain of anxiety was everywhere present in the
huge rooms which were to turn out the motor of victory. There was a
breathlessness, an apprehension, a realization that something was wrong,
and a sense that things more catastrophic were gestating in the womb of
the future. _Something was wrong._ Engineers, superintendents, machinists,
were given to sudden ravings. Small things caused a condition of constant
irritation; an occasional big thing brought down an avalanche of
consternation. Men did not say that _something_ was wrong; they said
_somebody_ was wrong. And somebody _was_ wrong.
An atmosphere of suspicion arose like a dank fog, and every man looked
askance at his neighbor--for he knew in his heart that that neighbor might
be the man; might be spending of nights money that found its way into his
pockets from the huge sums Germany was reported to have placed in America
to hamper America's preparations for war. Some man, some _men_, were
hampering the work in that plant; it was a patent fact. Some men who had
passed the inspection of government investigators and who wore the guise
of honest American working-men had sold their souls to the German devil.
Every honest man in that plant knew that when he sat down to eat his lunch
at noon he was eating in the presence of traitors and spies.... It was not
a condition calculated to soothe.
The work of sabotage was skilfully performed, as if by the black
enchantments of an evil magician. Its results were there, but none could
say how or by whose hand.
Again and again Potter demanded results of the men of the Secret Service,
but they gave no results.
"There must be suspects," Potter declared, vehemently. "Whom do you
suspect?"
"Everybody," said Downs, who was in command. "I suspect first those men
who have the most unimpeachable antecedents. It is a safe rule in these
days to suspect the man who is above suspicion. The Germans are thorough.
It looks as if they had caused their agents to be _born_, and reared them
for thirty years for this work.... Mr. Waite, the man who is planning and
carrying out this business in Detroit is a great man."
"He's got you beaten?"
"We'll get him," said Downs.
"But meantime he is putting off by months the manufacture and delivery of
aeroplanes."
It was not alone the work done under that roof that went awry. Machines
and tools were manufactured for the business of machining motors in a
score of plants in Detroit--and they must be tools of a marvelous delicacy
and exactitude.... What percentage of them were delivered in a useless
condition will never be known, for it was a matter upon which the Signal
Corps imposed secrecy.
"There's an army of spies in Detroit," a manufacturer declared to Potter.
"Every plant is full of them--and how can we prevent it? Detroit was made
to their order. Our growth has compelled us to scour the earth for labor,
and we have imported labor by the excursion-train. In ten years half a
million strangers have come to Detroit.... They haven't been watched. In
some countries, I'm told, the police have the _dossier_ of every citizen.
In America the commissioner of police of a great city probably hasn't the
_dossier_ of the chief of the force. My plant is full of spies, your plant
is full of spies, and before God I see no remedy for it or protection
against it."
"I was confident of delivering motors in November," Potter said. "Maybe
now I can make deliveries in January.... If that isn't equal to a victory
in a pitched battle, then I'm an imbecile."
"Nobody realizes it. The Liberty Loan did something toward bringing the
war home to our people, but it was only a beginning. Detroit rushed and
pawed to make up its quota--but, after all, it was only a pocketbook
affair. It brought no suffering, only benefits to most. It introduced the
man with fifty dollars to investment. It made men fancy they could be
patriots for a fifty-dollar bill. But it was a step toward arousing the
people. We're nearer."
"When they give their sons--" Potter said.
"It will come closer then. The draft was a big step--and the people's
attitude toward the draft was an eye-opener. I've a notion we men who like
to think we're the most important thing in the nation, we wealthy men,
don't really know what the people are thinking about. Maybe they're more
serious than we think? Maybe there's more genuine love for America in them
than we think.... A year ago I would have said an attempt to draft would
have brought on a revolution."
"Thank God for the people!" Potter said.
"But even they won't feel the war--not when their sons march off to
training-camps ... not until the cables bring home lists of the dead. Then
America will know it is at war."
Potter dined at the Detroit Athletic Club that scorching September day
which was to see the first draft men in their farewell parade. It was
almost a gala occasion. The dining-rooms were crowded with cheerful men,
and some of those men were to march in the parade. Most of those whom
Potter saw were bent on holiday, wore a holiday expression; many carried a
humorous expression. The air was not heavy with foreboding, but light with
jest. A spectacle was in preparation for their eyes, and they were in
humor to enjoy it.
Men arose and sauntered toward Woodward Avenue. A man at the next table
said, jauntily, "Well, it's about time we ambled over to take a look at
the circus." That was the attitude--a section of the attitude. Potter
wondered how far it went, how deep its strata extended, how much of it was
genuine. There was a thoughtlessness that offended him.
He went alone to see the spectacle. He did not want companions, but wanted
to see, to study, to comprehend. He was going to the laboratory to
endeavor to assay the American people.
From a boy he bought a wooden box and stood upon it at the corner of
Woodward and Adams avenues. North and south the streets were massed with
such a crowd as Detroit had never before turned out. Potter watched the
section of it that lay under his eye, and listened for such messages by
word of mouth from the public thought as might filter to his ears.
In the park at his left the very trees bore a human fruit. Roofs were
densely fringed; every window was filled beyond its capacity--and upon all
the pitiless heat beat down. They waited patiently, for the parade, like
all parades in Detroit, was delayed in starting. A couple of women
fainted--not from emotion, not because loved ones were marching away, but
because of weariness and the breathless heat.
Potter studied, but was at a loss for conclusions. The same holiday air
was present; the same lack of somber forebodings. Once he saw a woman pass
with handkerchief to her eyes, her husband's arm about her shoulders. She
was giving a son. The crowd looked after her and whispered, and grew
silent for a moment.... Maybe they did understand, Potter thought. Maybe
this holiday air was a pose to conceal a dark care. He could not force
himself to believe it.
The crowd surged closer, straining eager eyes up the street, for the
parade approached. It came and passed--fraternal orders, Grand Army men,
Spanish War veterans, home guard, cadet corps--and the men of the
draft.... It was upon the men of the draft that interest centered, and
they came rollicking, in straggling, unmilitary lines. They, too,
apparently, were bent on holiday, for they jostled, sang, bandied retorts
with the crowd, called joyously to acquaintances, and filled the air with
straw hats. A humorist had snatched a straw hat from a companion and sent
it sailing into the air. In a moment the air was full of straw hats and
laughter.... And these men were marching away to be trained in the
business of killing their fellow-men!
It was characteristic of America that the draft men had staged their
parade with humorous effects. They carried signs and banners upon which
were mottoes, and for one legend which was serious, thought-compelling,
twenty were flamboyantly farcical. There was a fondness for announcing in
rhyme that the Kaiser would be given hell. One man led a goat which was
announced to be the Kaiser's goat.... Potter searched for a downcast face,
a tearful eye. It might have been that some were present in that marching
line, but he saw none. America was marching to war with a jest on its
lips.
"They'll laugh out of the other side of their mouths," Potter heard a man
remark, and that was the nearest he approached to gloomy prophecies that
day.
He went back to his work. He had seen, and he was puzzled. He could not
read the meaning of that day's spectacle, and it hurt and bewildered him.
"They don't take it seriously," he said to himself. "What does it mean?"
Perhaps if he could have stepped into the homes of those thousands of
young men he might have read a different message; perhaps if he could have
seen the farewells, heard the words of father or mother to son who was
going away from them to fight for the great issue of the right of
individual nations to live, he might have perceived matters which were
hidden from him. The American does not parade his grief; does not flaunt
before the world his serious emotions. Those are for his secret heart; not
even, save in great moments, for his immediate family. With a rude joke
and a laugh he puts himself on record, and perhaps that record lies. There
is but one record that offers verity, but that is a secret record, not
open to the investigator. It is printed in the recesses of the heart.
Hildegarde saw the parade, too, saw it from the vantage-point of Cantor's
office window, and watched his face with greater interest than she watched
the passing men below. His expression was ironical, almost sneering. He
was studying, appraising. Hildegarde said to herself that he was
formulating in his mind a report of the thing to be forwarded through
devious channels to Berlin. In due time the High Command in Germany would
have spread before it Cantor's well-considered estimate of America's draft
army, and, if his expression were indicative, that report would be
pleasing to those in charge of Germany's military destinies.
She mused on her anomalous position--an American girl, loyal to the last
ounce of her blood, in this room with a man whom she knew to be a German
secret agent. Somehow the thing did not seem so inexplicable to her, but
she considered it thoughtfully. She knew this man to be what he was--but
had not a scrap of evidence to bolster up her knowledge. It was her duty
to indicate him to the authorities, but she did not point him out--because
she was tied to the trade he represented by a cable she could not
break.... And she accepted him as a companion because to refuse to do so
was to cut herself off from companionship. With this man alone could she
move about in the world and snatch such pleasures and forgetfulness as
minor excitements commanded.
For a week after that disquieting encounter with Potter Waite at the
Bloomfield Hills club she had refused to see Cantor; determined she would
never see him, allow him to be her escort or guard again.... But a week of
lonely imprisonment forced her to give way. She sent word by the man who
brought her food that she would receive Cantor, and he came.
"Does this mean that you're through playing with me?" he demanded, coldly.
"I have never played with you," she said.
"You have pretended to consider my offer of marriage."
"I have considered it."
"And your answer."
"I can give you no answer--yet. I--You know I do not love you. But--"
"Marry me and I'll attend to the love," he said, grimly. "You suppose you
are in love with that lunatic Waite.... Let me tell you that you may as
well forget him first as last. If you were the last woman in the world, he
would never marry you."
She flashed out at him in fury. "It wouldn't matter who or what I was,"
she said, "Potter Waite would marry me to-morrow. What do you know about
it? You know nothing about such a man as Potter; you have no standards to
judge him by.... He's real, he's honest. He loves me...."
"He's a fool."
"Then you could profit by losing your wits," she said, sharply. "Suppose
we omit Potter Waite from our talk. It gets us nowhere."
"If you'll omit him from your thoughts--"
"If only I could."
"You sent for me," he said, after a pause. "Why?"
"Because I'm tired of being shut up in a cage."
"Suppose I refuse to take you out of it--without something more definite
in the way of promises?"
"Then I'll stay shut up.... You may as well understand me one time as
another. If I marry you I'll marry you when I'm ready, and not until I'm
ready. I don't want to marry you. I don't want to marry anybody.... But
there are limits to what one can endure. To marry you might be more
endurable than not to marry you.... I've seen enough of life to realize
that. I couldn't have realized it a year ago. I'm talking frankly to you,
Mr. Cantor."
"I agree with you," he said, ironically.
"You seem to think I am desirable as a wife. But you don't love me. You
have your reasons for wanting me."
"Undoubtedly."
"Would you care to tell me what they are?"
"I like excitement," he said, with a grim laugh. "With you as my wife I
would never have to seek it."
"My father is wealthy. I have social position here.... I suppose, if we
are to think about this as barter and sale, that you have something to
offset that--besides your presence and--abilities."
He drew himself up and stared at her. "I--" he began, and checked himself.
He had been on the point of a disclosure, she knew, driven by vanity. He
shrugged his shoulders. "You would not be the loser," he said.
"In case you ever leave America," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"In war-times," she said, "I have read that spies are shot."
He laughed. "You have that silly idea yet? Well, so long as you don't
prattle about it, no harm is done.... And I'll see to it you don't
prattle."
"I've thought of offering to marry you if you would release my father. But
that idea didn't appeal. I knew you wouldn't keep your promise ... so long
as he was useful to you."
"The American family system is a puzzle to me," he said.
"You arrange these things better--in Germany?"
"You would be impossible in Germany or France or Russia."
"Yes," she said. "I am American.... That's the terrible truth. I'm
American, and I have a traitor for a father and a spy of the enemy for a
possible husband. Oh," she said, with a sudden flux of despair, "why
should this thing happen to me--to me?"
He offered no sympathy. "Anyhow," he said, "you have had to send for
me.... And I came. I'm patient, and you are worth being patient for." His
eyes glowed as they rested upon her, perceiving her slender, ardent youth,
the fire, the ability to live, the reckless charm of her. "Let it rest so.
We will go on as before."
And so it had been. She recalled that conversation now as the music of
bands and the voice of the multitude arose to her ears. So it had
been--and there was no change. His patience and persistence were unabated;
her power of resistance was undiminished.
He turned to her suddenly. "America imagines she can stand up against
Germany's armies with those." He pointed downward. "And these men of the
Middle West and the West are the best you can give. Look at them."
She looked at the straggling lines of jaunty men, lacking uniform, lacking
bearing, lacking everything that goes to make the soldier, but a something
which was invisible to her eyes and to Cantor's eyes, but which is the
thing, when all else is judged and weighed, that carries a man
steadfastly, unflinchingly, into a hell of carnage.
"A regiment of Prussians would annihilate an army of them," Cantor said.
"Wait six months, a year," she retorted. "Then talk."
"In a year," he said, "the game will be played out. America's men don't
signify. Nothing she can do signifies, beyond her money and her
munitions.... And those..."
"It's your business to deal with," she said, quickly.
He turned around and said, suddenly, "Are you going to marry me?"
"I don't know."
"I'd as soon you didn't," he said, significantly.
She stared at him, perplexed; then she comprehended. She was not outraged,
was not even angry. The thing she had read in his eyes more than once was
not the desire which urges a man to take a wife. Her lips curled. "I
suppose the next step would be to use me in your trade," she said. "Spy
literature is full of attractive women used as--shall we say bait?"
His eyes darkened. "If I were interested in such things," he said, "I'd
say you could fit the part."
"It's one I'll never play," she said, shortly.
"The future is--the future," he said.
He turned again to the window; left her brooding, frightened, staring
toward to-morrow and the cargo of good or ill which to-morrow was
freighting toward her.... She had never considered herself as good or bad
in the way of morals. She had taken herself for granted, as one who would
not be touched by certain things. They had seemed romantic, fictitious....
She realized that they were real; that no one is born into the world
shielded from them by some mystic immunity. What other women had been she
might be. She was flesh of their flesh, breathing the same air, endowed
with the same intelligence, swayed by the same temptations, compelled by
the same events.... To what might not overwhelming events compel her?...
She shrank from the thought; it was of hideous aspect, and unwholesome. It
was an unequal struggle--one slender girl against the covetous forces of
evil. If evil fixed its eyes upon her, if malevolent events hustled and
jostled her toward their ends, as events had been jostling her--what
refuge had she? She was conscious of a strength of resolution, of a
righteous aversion, but would their strength prevail against such potence
as would be arrayed against them? It was a question she could not answer
until the future demanded an answer from her. Only the conflict could make
manifest the truth. It lay with her own soul, and she could not inventory
her own soul. Nothing but the pressure of the event itself could do that.
Cantor turned to her again. "The parade is over," he said. "Where shall we
go?"
"Home," she said, in a low tone--a frightened, lonely tone.
"I've offended you?"
"No, I'm not offended. I'm not even surprised."
"Good," he said. "Suppose, then, we eliminate the idea of marriage.
Substitute my suggestion."
She looked into his eyes with a show of courage, a show of steadiness, but
it was bravado. Her soul quaked. For the first time in her brief life
squalid evil leered at her from the shadows; she knew it awaited her
around the next corner, licking its leering, slavering lips. It lay in
wait. One unguarded second, one instant when the protection of that virtue
which is breathed into every woman's soul from the great Mother Soul was
drugged by stealth or stunned by brutal blow, and she might be lost.
"Let us go," she said.
She had carried herself better than she knew. Cantor was left perplexed.
She baffled him. He did not know what to think nor what had been the
result of his words.