"Atrocities, rubbish!" said the man. "A few drunken soldiers, yes. Every
war has had them. But that's nothing. They're all a bunch of crazy
children, both sides, and pretty soon they'll quiet down. In the
meantime," he added with a smile, "we take the profits--some of us, that
is."
"Is that all the war means to you?" asked Hilda.
"Yes, and to any sensible person," replied he. "Why do you want to go
and get yourself mixed up in it? An American belongs out of it. Go and
work in a settlement at home and let the foreign countries stew in their
own juice."
"Belgium doesn't seem like a foreign country to me," returned the girl.
"You see, I know the people. I know young Lieutenant Robert de
Broqueville and Commandant Gilson, with the wound on his face, and the
boys that come into the Flandria Hospital with their fingers shot away.
They are like members of my family. They did something for me."
"How do you make that out?"
The girl was silent for a moment, then she answered:
"They stood up for what was a matter of honor. They made a fight against
odds. They could have sold out easy enough."
"Well, I don't know," said the man, stretching his arms and yawning.
"No, that's just the trouble with men like you. You don't know, and you
don't care to know. You're all alike; you stand aloof or amused. A great
human wrong has taken place, and you say, 'Well, I don't know!'"
"Just a moment," interrupted the man.
"But I haven't finished," went on the girl; "there's another thing I
want to say. When Belgium made her fight, she suffered horrible things.
Her women and children were mutilated on system, as part of a cold
policy. Cruelty to the unoffending, that is what I mean by atrocities."
"I don't believe you," retorted the man.
"Come and see."
Hilda, who had run across from Ghent to London to stock up on supplies
for the Corps, was talking with John Hinchcliffe, American banker,
broker, financier. He was an old-time friend of Hilda's family--a young
widower, in that successful period of early middle-age when the hard
work and the dirty work have availed and the momentum of the career
maintains itself. In the prematurely gray hair, the good-looking face,
the abrupt speech, he was very much American. He was neat--neat in his
way of dressing, and in his compact phrases, as hard and well-rounded as
a pebble. The world to him was a place full of slackers, of lazy
good-nature, of inefficiency. Into that softness he had come with a high
explosive and an aim. He moved through life as a hunter among a covey of
tame partridges--a brief flutter and a tumble of soft flesh. He had the
cunning lines about the mouth, the glint in the eye, of the successful
man. He had the easy generosities, too, of the man who, possessing much,
can express power by endowing helpless things which he happens to like.
There was an abundant sentiment in him, sentiment about his daughter and
his flag, and the economic glory of his times. He was rather proud of
that soft spot in his make-up. When men spoke of him as hard, he smiled
to himself, for there in his consciousness was that streak of emotional
richness. If he were attacked for raiding a trolley system, he felt
that his intimates would declare, "You don't know him. Why John is a
King."
And, best of all, he had a kind of dim vision of how his little daughter
would come forward at the Day of Judgment, if there was anything of the
sort, and say, "He was the best father in the world."
Hilda and the banker sat quietly, each busy in thought with what had
been said. Then the girl returned to her plea.
"Come now, Mr. Hinchcliffe," she said, "you've challenged every
statement I've made, and yet you've never once been on the ground. I am
living there, working each day, where things are happening. Now, why
don't you come and see for yourself? It would do you a lot of good."
"I'm over here on business," objected the banker.
"Perfect reply of a true American," retorted Hilda, hotly. "Here are
three or four nations fighting for your future, saving values for your
own sons and grandsons. And you're too busy to inform yourself as to the
rights of it. You prefer to sit on the fence and pluck the profits. You
would just as lief sell to the Germans as to the Allies, if the money
lay that way and no risk."
"Sure. I did, in September," said the banker, with a grin; "shipped 'em
in by way of Holland."
"Yes," said Hilda, angrily, "and it was dirty money you made."
"What would you have us do?" asked he. "We're not in business for our
health."
"I tell you what I'd have you do," returned Hilda. "I'd have you find
out which side was in the right in the biggest struggle of the ages. If
necessary, I'd have you take as much time to informing yourself as you'd
give to learning about a railroad stock which you were going to buy.
Here's the biggest thing that ever was, right in front of you, and you
don't even know which side is right. You can't spare three days to find
out whether a nation of people is being done to death."
"What next?" asked the banker with a smile. "When I have informed
myself, what then? Go and sell all that I have and give to the poor?"
"No, I don't ask you to come up to the level of the Belgians," answered
Hilda, "or of the London street boys. But what can be asked even of a
New York banker is that he shall sell to the side that is in the right.
And when he does it, that he shall not make excessive profits."
"Run business by the Golden Rule?"
"No, not that, but just catch a little of the same spirit that is being
shown by millions of the common people over there. Human nature isn't
half as selfish and cowardly as men like you make out. You'll burn your
fingers if you try to put a tag on these peasants and shop-assistants
and clerks, over here. They're not afraid to die. The modern man is all
right, but you fellows at the top don't give him half a chance. A whole
race of peasants can be burned out and mutilated, and it doesn't cause a
flutter in the pulse-beat of one of you American traders."
"You're a damn poor American," said the banker bluntly.
"You're the poor American," replied Hilda. "An uncle of mine, with a few
'greats' in front of him, was one of the three to sign the Declaration
of Independence for Connecticut. Another of us was in Lincoln's Cabinet.
My people have helped to make our country. We were the ones that
welcomed Louis Kossuth, and Garibaldi. We are Americans. It's men like
you that have weakened the strain--you and your clever tricks and your
unbelief. You believe in nothing but success. 'Money is power,' say
you. It is you that don't believe in America, not I."
"What does it all come to?" he broke in harshly. "What is it all about?
You talk heatedly but what are you saying? I have given money to the
Relief Work. I've done something, I've got results. Where would you have
been without money?"
"Money!" said Hilda. "A thousandth part of your makings. And these
people are giving their life! Why, once or twice a day, they are putting
themselves between wounded men and shell fire. You talk about results.
There are more results in pulling one Belgian out of the bloody dust
than in your lifetime of shaving the market."
The color came into his face with a rush. He was so used to expressing
power, sitting silent and a little grim, and moving weaker men to his
will, that it was a new experience to be talked to by a person who quite
visibly had vital force.
"I used to be afraid of people like you," she went on. "But you don't
look half as big to me now as one of these young chauffeurs who take in
the wounded under shrapnel. You've come to regard your directive ability
as something sacred. You think you can sit in moral judgment on these
people over here--these boys that are flinging away their lives for the
future. Come with me to Belgium, and find out what they're really
fighting about."
Hinchcliffe was used to swift decisions.
"I'll do it," he said.
* * * * *
Hilda took him straight to Ghent. Then she pushed her inquiries out
among her Belgian friends. The day before, there had been a savage fight
at Alost.
"You will find what you want in Wetteren Hospital," suggested Monsieur
Caron, Secretary of the Ghent Red Cross, to Hilda.
"To-morrow, we will go there," she said.
That first evening, she led Hinchcliffe through Ghent. In her weeks of
work there, she had come to love the beautiful old town. It was
strangely unlike her home cities--the brisk prairie "parlor city," where
she had grown up inch by inch, as it extended itself acre by acre, and
the mad modern city where she had struggled for her bread. The tide of
slaughter was still to the east: a low rumble, like surf on a far-away
beach. Sometimes it came whinnying and licking at the very doorstep, and
then ebbed back, but never rolled up on the ancient city. It was only an
under-hum to merriment. It sharpened the nerve of response to whatever
passing excellence there was in the old streets and vivid gardens.
Modern cities are portions of a world in the making. But Ghent was a
completed and placid thing, as fair as men could fashion it.
As evening fell, they two leaned on St. Michel's bridge of the River
Lys. Just under the loiterers, canals that wound their way from inland
cities to the sea were dark and noiseless, as if sleep held them. The
blunt-nosed boats of wide girth that trafficked down those calm reaches
were as motionless as the waters that floated them. Out of the upper
air, bells from high towers dropped their carillon on a population
making its peace with the ended day. Cathedral and churches and belfry
were massed against the night, cutting it with their pinnacles till they
entered the region of the early stars and the climbing moon.
Then, when that trance of peace had given them the light sadness which
fulfilled beauty brings, they found it good to hasten down the deserted
street to the cafés and thronging friendly people. They knew how to live
and take their pleasure, those people of Ghent. No sullen silence and
hasty gorging for them. They practised a leisurely dining and an eager
talk, a zest in the flying moment. Their streets were blocked to the
curb with little round occupied tables. Inner rooms were bright with
lights and friendly with voices. From the silver strainer of the
"filtered coffee" the hot drops fell through to the glass, one by one,
black and potent. Good coffee, and a gay race.
But those lively people knew in their hearts that a doom was on its way,
so their evenings had the merit of a vanishing pleasure, a benefit not
to be renewed with the seasons. Time for the people of Ghent carried the
grace of last days, when everything that is pleasant and care-free is
almost over, and every greeting of a comrade is touched with Vale. It is
the little things that are to be lost, so to the little things the time
remaining is given. It is then one learns that little things are the
dearest, the light-hearted supper in the pleasant café with the friend
whose talk satisfies, the walk down street past familiar windows, the
look of roofs and steeples dim in the evening light.
"It's different, isn't it?" said the banker thoughtfully.
"Yes," agreed Hilda; "it isn't much like Chicago."
"Think of destroying places like this!" went on Hinchcliffe. "Why, they
can't rebuild them."
"No," laughed Hilda; "this sort of ancestral thing isn't quite in our
line."
"How foolish of them to go to war!" continued the banker. When his mind
once gripped an idea, it carried it through to the terminal station.
Hilda turned on him vigorously.
"You realize, don't you," she said, "that Belgium didn't bring on this
war? You remember that it was some one else that came pouncing down upon
her. It seems almost a pity, doesn't it, to smash this beauty and hunt
these nice people?"
"It's all wrong," he said; "it's all wrong."
* * * * *
Wetteren Hospital--brick walls and stone floors, the clatter of wooden
shoes in the outer corridor, where peasants shuffled. In two inner
rooms, where eleven cots stood, there was a hush, for there lay the
grievously wounded. Eleven peasants they were, men, women, and a child.
A priest was ministering cheer to them, bed by bed. Four Sisters were
busy and noiseless in service. The priest led Hilda and Hinchcliffe to
the cot of one of the men. The peasant's face was pallid, and the cheeks
sunken from loss of blood. The priest addressed him in Flemish, telling
him these two were friendly visitors, and wished to know what had been
done to him. Quietly and sadly the man in the bed spoke. Sentence by
sentence the priest translated it for Hilda and the banker. On Sunday
morning, the peasant, Leopold de Man, of Number 90 Hovenier Straat,
Alost, was hiding in the house of his sister, in the cellar. The Germans
made a fire of the table and chairs in the upper room. Then catching
sight of Leopold, they struck him with the butt of their guns, and
forced him to pass through the fire. Then, taking him outside, they
struck him to the ground, and gave him a blow over the head with a gun
stock, and a cut of the bayonet which pierced his thigh, all the way
through.
Slowly, carefully, he went on with his statement:
"In spite of my wound they make me pass between their lines, giving me
still more blows of the gun-butt in the back, in order to make me march.
There are seventeen or eighteen persons with me. They place us in front
of their lines and menace us with their revolvers, crying out that they
will make us pay for the losses they have suffered at Alost. So, we
march in front of the troops.
"When the battle begins, we throw ourselves on our faces to the ground,
but they force us to rise again. At a certain moment, when the Germans
are obliged to retire, we succeed in escaping down side streets."
Hilda was watching Hinchcliffe while the peasant and the priest were
speaking. Curiously and sympathetically she watched him. A change had
come over the man: something arrogant had left him. Even his voice had
changed, as he leaned forward and asked, "What does he say?" The banker
had pulled out a black leather note-book, and was taking down the
translation as the priest gave it. Something kindly welled up inside
Hilda toward him. Something spoke to her heart that it was the crust of
him that had fallen away. She had misjudged him. In her swift way she
had been unjust. Her countryman was not hard, only unseeing. Things
hadn't been brought to his attention. She was humbly glad that she had
cared to show him where the right of things lay. Her fault was greater
than his. He had only been blind. Distance had hidden the truth from
him. But she had been severe with him to his face. She had committed the
sin of pride, the sin of feeling a spiritual superiority.
"If you please, come to the other side of the room," said the priest,
leading the way to the cot of a peasant, whose cheeks had the angry red
spot of fever. He was Frans Meulebroeck, of Number 62 Drie
Sleutelstraat, Alost. Sometimes in loud bursts of terror and suffering,
and then falling back into a hopeless pain-laden monotone, he told his
story.
"They broke open the door of my home," he said; "they seized me, and
knocked me down. In front of my door, the corpse of a German lay
stretched out. The Germans said to me, 'You are going to pay for that to
us.' A few moments later, they gave me a bayonet cut in my leg. They
sprinkled naphtha in my house, and set it afire. My son was struck down
in the street, and I was marched in front of the German troops. I do not
know even yet the fate of my son."
Gradually as the peasant talked, the time of his suffering came upon
him. His eyes began to see it again in front of him. They became fixed
and wild, the white of them visible. His voice was shrill and broken
with sobs. There was a helpless unresisting agony in his tone and the
look on his face.
"My boy!" he said. "I haven't seen him." His body shook with sobbing.
"Enough," said the priest. "_Bonne chance_, comrade; courage."
In the presence of the priest and of the Sister, the two peasants signed
each man his statement, Leopold firmly, the fevered Frans making his
mark with a trembling hand. Hinchcliffe shut his note-book and put it
back into his pocket.
The little group passed into the next room, where the wounded women were
gathered. A Sister led Hilda to the bedside of a very old woman, perhaps
eighty years old. The eyes were closed, the thin white hair straggled
across the pillow. There was no motion to the worn-out body, except for
faint breathing.
"Cut through the thigh with a bayonet," said the Sister.
Hilda stepped away on tiptoe, and looked across the ward. There, rising
out of the bedclothes, was a little head, a child's head, crowned with
the lightest of hair. Gay and vivid it gleamed in that room of pain. It
was hair of the very color of Hilda's own. The child was propped up in
bed, and half bent over, as if she had been broken at the breast-bone.
It was the attitude of a bent old body, weary with age. And yet, the
tiny oval face of soft coloring, and the bright hair, seemed made for
happiness.
Clear across the room, otherwise so silent in its patient misery, there
came a little whistling from the body of the child. With each give of
the breath, the sound was forced out. The wheezing, as if the falling
breath caught on some jagged bit of bone, and struggled for a moment to
tear itself free, hurt Hilda.
The face of the little girl was heavy with stupor, the eyes half closed.
Pain had done its utmost, and a partial unconsciousness was spreading
over troubled mind and tortured body. The final release was close at
hand.
Hinchcliffe had stepped up. There was an intent look in his face as he
watched the child. Then the man's expression softened. The cunning lines
about the mouth took on something of tenderness. The shrewd, appraising
eyes lost their glint under a film of tears. He went over to the little
one, and touched her very lightly on the hair. It was bright and gay,
and incongruous on a body that was so visibly dying. It gave a pleasure
of sunlight on what was doomed. Still she went on whistling through her
broken body, and with each breath she gave a low murmur of pain.
"Sister," said Hilda, to one of the women, "what is it with the child?
She is very ill?"
"She is dying," said the nurse. "Her back is slashed open to the bone
with bayonets. She was placed in front of the troops, and they cut her,
when she fell in fright."
"And her breathing?" asked Hilda. "I can hear her with each breath."
"Yes, it is hard with her. Her body is torn, and the breath is loud as
it comes. It will soon be over. She will not suffer long."
Hilda and her companion stepped out into the open air, and climbed into
the waiting motor. The banker was crying and swearing softly to himself.
"The little children who have died, what becomes of them?" said Hilda.
"Will they have a chance to play somewhere? And the children still in
pain, here and everywhere in Belgium--will it be made up to them? Will a
million of indemnity give them back their playtime? That little girl
whom you touched--"
"The hair," he said, "did you see her hair? The same color as yours."
"I know," said Hilda, "I saw myself in her place. I feel that I could go
out and kill."
"It was the hair," repeated the banker. "My little daughter's hair is
the color of yours. That was why I let you say those things to me that
evening in London. I could not sleep that night for thinking of all you
said. And when I looked across the room just now, I thought it was my
daughter lying there. For a moment, I thought I saw my daughter."