These were days of world-agony, when people bought the newspapers
several times every day, and when crowds gathered in front of
bulletin boards, looking at the big maps with little flags, and
speculating, were the Germans going to get to Paris, were they going
to get to the Channel and put France out of the war? And then
suddenly the Americans struck their first blow, and hurled the
Germans back at Chateau-Thierry, and all America rose up with one
shout of triumph!
You would think that was a poor time for pacifist agitation; but the
members of the Anti-conscription League had so little discretion
that they chose this precise moment to publish a pamphlet,
describing the torturing of conscientious objectors in military
prisons and training camps! Peter had been active in this
organization from the beginning, and he had helped to write into the
pamphlet a certain crucial phrase which McGivney had suggested. So
now here were the pamphlets seized by the Federal government, and
all the members of the Anti-conscription League under arrest,
including Sadie Todd and little Ada Ruth and Donald Gordon! Peter
was sorry about Sadie Todd, in spite of the fact that she had called
him names. He couldn’t be very sorry about Ada Ruth, because she was
obviously a fanatic, bent on getting herself into trouble. As for
Donald Gordon, if he hadn’t learned his lesson from that whipping,
he surely had nobody to blame but himself.
Peter was a member of this Anti-conscription League, so he pretended
to be in hiding, and carried on a little comedy with Ada Ruth’s
cousin, an Englishwoman, who hid him out in her place in the
country. Peter had an uncomfortable quarter of an hour when Donald
Gordon was released on bail, because the Quaker boy insisted that
the crucial phrase which had got them all into trouble had been
stricken out of the manuscript before he handed it to Peter Gudge to
take to the printer. But Peter insisted that Donald was mistaken,
and apparently he succeeded in satisfying the others, and after they
were all out on bail, he made bold to come out of his hiding place
and to attend one or two protest meetings in private homes.
Then began a new adventure, in some ways the most startling of all.
It had to do with another girl, and the beginning was in the home of
Ada Ruth, where a few of the most uncompromising of the pacifists
gathered to discuss the question of raising money to pay for their
legal defense. To this meeting came Miriam Yankovich, pale from an
operation for cancer of the breast, but with a heart and mind as Red
as ever. Miriam had brought along a friend to help her, because she
wasn’t strong enough to walk; and it was this friend who started
Peter on his new adventure.
Rosie Stern was her name, and she was a solid little Jewish working
girl, with bold black eyes, and a mass of shining black hair, and
flaming cheeks and a flashing smile. She was dressed as if she knew
about her beauty, and really appreciated it; so Peter wasn’t
surprised when Miriam, introducing her, remarked that Rosie wasn’t a
Red and didn’t like the Reds, but had just come to help her, and to
see what a pacifist meeting was like. Perhaps Peter might help to
make a Red out of her! And Peter was very glad indeed, for he was
never more bored with the whining of pacifists than now when our
boys were hurling the Germans back from the Marne and writing their
names upon history’s most imperishable pages.
Rosie was something new and unforeseen, and Peter went right after
her, and presently he realized with delight that she was interested
in him. Peter knew, of course, that he was superior to all this
crowd, but he wasn’t used to having the fact recognized, and as
usual when a woman smiled upon him, the pressure of his self-esteem
rose beyond the safety point. Rosie was one of those people who take
the world as it is and get some fun out of it, so while the pacifist
meeting went on, Peter sat over in the corner and told her in
whispers his funny adventures with Pericles Priam and in the Temple
of Jimjambo. Rosie could hardly repress her laughter, and her black
eyes flashed, and before the evening was over their hands had
touched several times. Then Peter offered to escort her and Miriam,
and needless to say they took Miriam home first. The tenement
streets were deserted at this late hour, so they found a chance for
swift embraces, and Peter went home with his feet hardly touching
the ground.
Rosie worked in a paper-box factory, and next evening Peter took her
out to dinner, and their eager flirtation went on. But Rosie showed
a tendency to retreat, and when Peter pressed her, she told him the
reason. She had no use for Reds; she was sick of the jargon of the
Reds, she would never love a Red. Look at Miriam Yankovich--what a
wreck she had made of her life! She had been a handsome girl, she
might have got a rich husband, but now she had had to be cut to
pieces! And look at Sadie Todd, slaving herself to death, and Ada
Ruth with her poems that made you tired. Rosie jeered at them all,
and riddled them with the arrows of her wit, and of course Peter in
his heart agreed with everything she said; yet Peter had to pretend
to disagree, and that made Rosie cross and spoiled their fun, and
they almost quarreled.
Under these circumstances, naturally it was hard for Peter not to
give some hint of his true feeling. After he had spent all of his
money on Rosie and a lot of his time and hadn’t got anywhere, he
decided to make some concession to her--he told her he would give up
trying to make a Red out of her. Whereupon Rosie made a face at him.
“Very kind indeed of you, Mr. Gudge! But how about my making a
`White’ out of you?” And she went on to inform him that she wanted
a fellow that could make money and take care of a girl. Peter
answered that he was making money all right. Well, how was he making
money, asked Rosie. Peter wouldn’t tell, but he was making it, and
he would prove it by taking her to the theater every night.
So the little duel went on, evening after evening. Peter got more
and more crazy about this black-eyed beauty, and she got more and
more coquettish, and more and more impatient with his radical
leanings. Rosie’s father had brought her as a baby from Kisheneff,
but she was 100% American all the same, so she told him; those boys
in khaki who were over there walloping the Huns were the boys for
her, and she was waiting for one of them to come back. What was the
matter with Peter that he wasn’t doing his part? Was he a
draft-dodger? Rosie had never had anything to do with slackers, and
wasn’t keen for the company of a man who couldn’t give an account of
himself. Only that day she had been reading in the paper about the
atrocities committed by the Huns. How could any man with red blood
in his veins sympathize with these pacifists and traitors? And if
Peter didn’t sympathize with them, why did he travel round with them
and give them his moral support? When Peter made a feeble effort at
repeating some of the pacifists’ arguments, Rosie just said, “Oh,
fudge! You’ve got too much sense to talk that kind of stuff to me.”
And Peter knew, of course, that he _had_ too much sense, and it was
hard to keep from letting Rosie see it. He had just lost one girl
because of his Red entanglements. Was it up to him to lose another?
For a couple of weeks they sparred and fought. Rosie would let Peter
kiss her, and Peter’s head would be quite turned with desire. He
decided that she was the most wonderful girl he had ever known; even
Nell Doolin had nothing on her. But then once more she would pin
Peter down on this business of his Redness, and would spurn him, and
refuse to see him any more. At last Peter admitted to her that he
had lost his sympathy with the Reds, she had converted him, and he
despised them. So Rosie replied that she was delighted; they would
go at once to see Miriam Yankovich, and Peter would tell her, and
try to convert her also. Peter was then in a bad dilemma; he had to
insist that Rosie should keep his conversion a secret. But Rosie
became indignant, she set her lips and declared that a conversion
that had to be kept secret was no conversion at all, it was simply a
low sham, and Peter Gudge was a coward, and she was sick of him! So
poor Peter went away, heartbroken and bewildered.