""But do not think he is cowardly, even if habitually frightened, because I also talked with his captain, who is an outspoken man, and he tells me that Wilbur is a regular fighting so-and-so. These were his very words. They are army slang, and mean that he is a brave soldier. A young man, a Mr. Edward Brennon from Newbern, a sort of athlete, came over with him, and they have been constantly together. I did not see this Mr. Brennon, but I hear that he, too, is gallantly great, and also a regular fighting so-and-so, as these rough men put it in their slang.
""Wilbur spoke of Merle"s writing about the war, and about America"s being rotten to the core because of capital that people want to keep from the workingman, and he says he now sees that Merle must have been misled; as he puts it in his crude, forceful way, this man"s country has come to stay. He says that is what he always says to himself when he has to go over the top, while he is still scared and before he grows angry--"This man"s country has come to stay." He says this big American Army would laugh at many of Merle"s speeches about America and the war.
He says the country is greater than any magazine, even the best. Now my rest hour is over, and I must go in where they are doing terrible things to these poor men. For a week I have been on my feet eighteen hours out of each twenty-four. I have just time for another tiny cigarette before going into that awful smell."
"Mercy!" cried the amazed mother.
"There you are!" retorted the judge. "Let her go into the Army and she takes up smoking. War leads to dissipation--ask any one."
"I must send her some," declared Mrs. Penniman; "or I wonder if she rolls her own?"
"Yes, and pretty soon we"ll have the whole house stenched up worse"n what Dave Cowan"s pipe does it," grumbled the judge. "The idee of a girl of her years taking up cigarettes! A good thing the country"s going dry.
Them that smoke usually drink."
"High time the girl had some fun," returned his wife, placidly.
"Needn"t be shameless about it," grumbled the judge. "A good woman has to draw the line somewhere."
The unbending moralist later protested that Winona"s letters should not be read to her friends. But Mrs. Penniman proved stubborn. She softened no word of Winona"s strong language, and she betrayed something like a guilty pride in revealing that her child was now a hopeless tobacco addict.
A month later Winona further hara.s.sed the judge.
""I think only about life and death,"" read Mrs. Penniman, ""and I"m thinking now that the real plan of things is something greater than either of them. It is not rounded out by our dying in the right faith.
Somehow it must go on and on, always in struggle and defeat. I used to think, of course, that our religious faith was the only true one, but now I must tell you I don"t know what I am.""
"My Lord!" groaned the horrified judge. "The girl"s an atheist! That"s what people are when they don"t know what they are. First swearing, then smoking cigarettes, now forsaking her religion. Mark my words, she"s coming home an abandoned woman!"
"Stuff!" said Mrs. Penniman, crisply. "She"s having a great experience.
Listen! "You should see them die here, in all faiths--Jews, Catholics, Protestants, and very, very many who have never enjoyed the consolation of any religious teachings whatsoever. But they all die alike, and you may think me dreadful for saying it, but I know their reward will be equal. I don"t know if I will come out of it myself, but I don"t think about that, because it seems unimportant. The scheme--you remember Dave Cowan always talking about the scheme--the scheme is so big, that dying doesn"t matter one bit if you die trying for something. I couldn"t argue about this, but I know it and these wonderful boys must know it when they go smiling straight into death. They know it without any one ever having told them. Sometimes I get to thinking of my own little set beliefs about a hereafter--those I used to hold--and they seem funny to me!""
"There!" The judge waved triumphantly. "Now she"s makin" fun of the church! That"s what comes of gittin" in with that fast Army set."
Mrs. Penniman ignored this.
""Patricia Whipple feels the same way I do about these matters; more intensely if that were possible. I had a long talk with her yesterday.
She has been doing a wonderful work in our section. She is one of us that can stand anything, any sort of horrible operation, and never faint, as some of the nurses have done. She is apparently at such times a thing of steel, a machine, but she feels intensely when it is over and she lets down.
""You wouldn"t know her. Thin and drawn, but can work twenty hours at a stretch and be ready for twenty more next day. She is on her way up to a first-aid station, which I myself would not be equal to. It is terrible enough at this base hospital. For one who has been brought up as she has, gently nurtured, looked after every moment, she is amazing. And, as I say, she feels as I do about life and death and the absurd little compartments into which we used to pack religion. She says she expects never to get back home, because the world is coming to an end. You would not be surprised at her thinking this if you could see what she has to face. She is a different girl. We are both different. We won"t ever be the same again.""
"Wha"d I tell you?" demanded the judge.
""The war increases in violence--dreadful sights, dreadful smells. I am so glad Merle"s eyes kept him out of it. He would have been ill fitted for this turmoil. Wilbur was the one for it. I saw him a few minutes the other day, on his way to some place I mustn"t write down. He said: "Do you know what I wish?" I said: "No; what do you wish?" He said: "I wish I was back in the front yard, squirting water on the lawn and flower beds, where no one would be shooting at me, and it was six o"clock and there was going to be fried chicken for supper and one of those deep-dish apple pies without any bottom to it, that you turn upside down and pour maple sirup on. That"s what I wish."""
"Always thinking of his stomach!" muttered the judge.
""But he has gone on, and I can"t feel distressed, even though I know it is probable he will never come back. I know it won"t make any difference in the real plan, and that it is only important that he keep on being a fighting so-and-so, as they say in the Army. It is not that I am callous, but I have come to get a larger view of death--mere death. I said good-bye to him for probably the last time with as little feeling as I would have said good-bye to Father on departing for a three-days"
trip to the city.""
"Naturally she"d forget her parents," said the judge. "That"s what it leads to."
Late in June of that year the shattered remains of a small town somewhere in France, long peaceful with the peace of death, became noisy with a strange new life. Two opposing and frenzied lines of traffic clashed along the road that led through it and became a noisy jumble in the little square at its centre, a disordered ma.s.s of camions, artillery, heavy supply wagons, field kitchens, ambulances, with motorcycles at its edges like excited terriers, lending a staccato vivacity to its uproar.
Artillery and soldiers went forward; supply wagons, empty, and ambulances, not empty, poured back in unending succession; and only the marching men, gaunt shapes in the dust, were silent. They came from a road to the south, an undulating double line of silent men in dust-grayed khaki, bent under a burden of field equipment, stepping swiftly along the narrow, stone-paved street, heads down, unheeding the jagged ruin of small shops and dwellings that flanked the way. Reaching the square, they turned to cross a makeshift bridge--beside one of stone that had spanned the little river but now lay broken in its shallow bed.
Beyond this stream they followed a white road that wound gently up a sere hill between rows of blasted poplars. At the top of the rise two shining lines of helmets undulated rhythmically below the view.
At moments the undulations would cease and the lines dissolve. The opposing streams of traffic would merge in a tangle beyond extrication until a halt enabled each to go its way. A sun-shot mist of fine dust softened all lines until from a little distance the figures of men and horses and vehicles were but twisting, yellowish phantoms, strangely troubled, strangely roaring.
At these times the lines of marching men, halted by some clumsy clashing of war machines, instantly became mere huddles of fatigue by the wayside, falling to earth like rows of standing blocks sent over by a child"s touch.
Facing the square was a small stone church that had been mistreated. Its front was barred by tumbled masonry, but a well-placed sh.e.l.l had widely breached its side wall. Through this timbered opening could be seen rows of cots hovered over by nurses or white-clad surgeons. Their forms flashed with a subdued radiance far back in the shaded interior. Litter bearers came and went.
From the opening now issued a red-faced private, bulky with fat. One of his eyes was hidden from the public by a bandage, but the other surveyed the milling traffic with a humorous tolerance. Though propelling himself with crutches, he had contrived to issue from the place with an air of careless sauntering. Tenderly he eased his bulk to a flat stone, aforetime set in the church"s facade, and dropped a crutch at either side. He now readjusted his hat, for the bandage going up over his shock of reddish hair had affected its fit. Next he placed an inquiring but entirely respectful palm over the bandaged eye.
"Never was such a h.e.l.l of a good eye, anyhow," he observed, and winked the unhidden eye in testimony of his wit. Then he plucked from back of an ear a half-smoked cigarette, relighted this, and leered humorously at the spreading tangle before him.
"Naughty, naughtykins!" he called to a driver of four mules who had risen finely to an emergency demanding sheer language. "First chance I had to get a good look at the war, what with one thing and another," he amiably explained to a sergeant of infantry who was pa.s.sing.
Neither of his sallies evoked a response, but he was not rebuffed. He wished to engage in badinage, but he was one who could entertain himself if need be. He looked about for other diversion.
To the opening in the church wall came a nurse. She walked with short, uncertain steps and leaned against the ragged edge of the wall, with one arm along its stone for support. Her face was white and drawn, and for a moment she closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the dust-laden air.
The fat private on the stone, a score of feet away, studied her approvingly. She was slight of form and her hair beneath the cap was of gold, a little tarnished. He waited for her eyes to open, then hailed her genially as he waved at a tangle of camions and ambulances now blocking the bridge.
"Worse"n fair week back home on Main Street, hey, sister?"
But she did not hear him, for a battered young second lieutenant with one arm in a sling had joined her from the dusk of the church.
"Done up, nurse?" he demanded.
"Only for a second. We just finished something pretty fierce."
She pointed back of her, but without looking.
"Why not sit down on that stone?"
He indicated a fallen slab at her feet. She looked at it with frank longing, but smiled a refusal.
"Da.s.sent," she said. "I"d be asleep in no time."
"Cheer up! We"ll soon finish this man"s job."
The girl looked at him with eyes already freshened.
"No, it won"t ever be finished. It"s going on forever. Nothing but war and that inside."
Again she pointed back without turning her head.
"Another jam!"