CHAPTER XIV
A world once considered of enduring stability had crashed fearsomelyabout the ears of Winona Penniman and Wilbur Cowan. After this nosupport was to be trusted, however seemingly stout. Old foundations hadcrumbled, old institutions perished, the walls of Time itself laywrecked. They stared across the appalling desolation with frightenedeyes. What next? In a world to be ruined at a touch, like a house ofcards, what vaster ruin would ensue?
It did not shock Wilbur Cowan that nations should plunge into anothermadness the very day after a certain fair one, mentioned in hismeditations as "My Pearl--My Pearl of great price," and eke--from theperfume label--"My Heart of Flowers," had revealed herself but a mortalwoman with an eye for the good provider. It occasioned Winona not evenmild surprise that the world should abandon itself to hideous war on thevery day after Lyman Teaford had wed beyond the purple. It was awful,yet somehow fitting. Anything less than a World War would have appearedinconsequent, anti-climactic, to these two so closely concerned in thepreliminary catastrophe, and yet so reticent that neither ever knew theother's wound. Wilbur Cowan may have supposed that the entire Pennimanfamily, Winona included, would rejoice that no more forever were they tohear the flute of Lyman Teaford. Certainly Winona never suspected that amere boy had been desolated by woman's perfidy and Lyman's madabandonment of all that people of the better sort most prize.
Other people, close observers of world events, declared that no real warwould ensue; it would be done in a few days--a few weeks at most. ButWinona and Wilbur knew better. Now anything could happen--and would. Ofall Newbern's wise folk these two alone foresaw the malign dimensions ofthe inevitably approaching cataclysm. They would fall grimly silent inthe presence of conventional optimists. They knew the war was to beunparalleled for blood and tears, but they allowed themselves no morethan sinister, vague prophecies, for they could not tell how they knew.
And they saw themselves active in war. They lost no time in doing that.The drama of each drew to a splendid climax with the arrival in Newbernof a French officer--probably a general--bound upon a grave mission.Wilbur's general came to seek out the wife of Lyman Teaford.
To her he said in choice English: "Madame, I bring you sad news. Thisyoung man died gallantly on the field of battle--the flag of my countrywas about to be captured by the enemy when he leaped bravely forward,where no other would dare the storm of shot and shell, and brought theprecious emblem safely back to our battle line. But even as the cheersof his comrades rang in his ears an enemy bullet laid him low. I sprangto his side and raised his head. His voice was already weak, for thebullet had found rest in his noble heart.
"'Tell her,' he breathed, 'that she sent me to my death so that shemight become only a bird in a gilded cage. But tell her also that I wishher happiness in her new life.' Madame, he died there, while weepingsoldiers clustered about with hats off and heads bowed--died with yourname on his pale lips---'My Pearl of great price,' he whispered, and allwas over. I bring you this photograph, which to the last he wore abovehis heart. Observe the bullet hole and those dark stains that discolouryour proud features."
Whereupon Mrs. Lyman Teaford would fall fainting to the floor and neveragain be the same woman, bearing to her grave a look of unutterablesadness, even amid the splendours of the newly furnished Latimerresidence on North Oak Street.
Winona's drama was less depressing. Possibly Winona at thirty-two haddeveloped a resilience not yet achieved by Wilbur at twenty. She was notgoing to die upon a field of battle for any Lyman Teaford. She wouldbrave dangers, however. She saw herself in a neat uniform, searching abattlefield strewn with the dead and wounded. To the latter sheadministered reviving cordial from a minute cask suspended at her trimwaist by a cord. Shells burst about her, but to these she paid no heed.It was thus the French officer--a mere lieutenant, later promoted forgallantry under fire--first observed her. He called her an angel ofmercy, and his soldiers--rough chaps, but hearty and outspoken--cheeredher as La Belle Americaine.
So much for the war. But the French officer--a general now, perhaps withone arm off--came to Newbern to claim his bride. He had been one of theimpetuous sort that simply would not take no for an answer. The weddingwas in the Methodist church, and was a glittering public function. Thegroom was not only splendidly handsome in a French way, but wore ashining uniform, and upon his breast sparkled a profusion of medals. Avast crowd outside the church waited to cheer the happy couple, andslinking at the rear of this was a drab Lyman Teaford--without medals,without uniform, dull, prosaic, enduring at this moment pangs of thekeenest remorse for his hasty act of a year before. He, too, would neverbe the same man again.
In truth, the beginning Teaford menage lay under the most unfavourableportents. Things looked dark for it.
Yet despite the forebodings of Wilbur and Winona, it began to besuspected, even by them, that the war would wear itself out, as oldDoctor Purdy said, by first intention. And in spite of affectingindividual dramas they began to feel that it must wear itself out withno help from them. It seemed to have settled into a quarrel amongforeign nations with which we could rightfully have no concern. Winonalearned, too, that her picture of the nurse on a battlefieldadministering cordial to wounded combatants from the small keg at herwaist was based upon an ancient and doubtless always fanciful print.
Wilbur, too, gathered from the newspapers that, though he might die upona battlefield, there was little chance that a French general would becommissioned to repeat his last words to Mrs. Lyman Teaford of NewbernCenter. He almost decided that he would not become a soldier. Some yearsbefore, it is true, he had been drawn to the life by a governmentposter, designed by one who must himself have been a capable dramatist.
"Join the Army and See the World," urged the large-lettered legend abovethe picture.
The latter revealed an entrancing tropical scene with graceful palmsadorning the marge of a pinkly sun-kissed sea. At a table in thebackground two officers consulted with a private above animportant-looking map, while another pleased-looking private stood atattention near by. At the left foreground a rather obsequious-lookingold colonel seemed to be entreating a couple of spruce young privates todrop round for tea that afternoon and meet the ladies.
Had Wilbur happened upon this poster in conjunction with the resolve ofMiss Pearl King to be sensible, it is possible his history might havebeen different. But its promise had faded from his memory ere his lifewas wrecked. He felt now merely that he ought to settle down tosomething. Even Sharon Whipple plainly told him so. He said it was allright to knock about from one thing to another while you were still inthe gristle. Up to twenty a boy's years were kind of yeasty anduncertain, and if he was any way self-headed he ought to be left to run.But after twenty he lost his pinfeathers and should begin to think aboutthings.
So Wilbur began to think about things. He continued to do everythingthat old Porter Howgill was asked to do, to repair cars for the Mansiongarage, and to be a shield and buckler to Sam Pickering in time of need.The _Advance_ office became freshly attractive at this time, because Samhad installed a wonderful new power press to print the paper daily; forthe _Advance_, as Sam put it, could be found ever in the van ofprogress.
The new press had innermost secrets of structure that were presentlybest known to Wilbur Cowan. No smeared small boy was required to ink itsforms and no surmounting bronze eagle was reported to scream for beerwhen the last paper was run off. Even Dave Cowan, drifting in from outof the nowhere--in shoes properly describable as only memories ofshoes--said she was a snappy little machine, and applauded his son'seasy mastery of it.
So the days of Wilbur were busy days, even if he had not settled farenough down to suit either Sam Pickering, Porter Howgill--who dideverything, if asked--or the First-Class Garage. And the blight put uponhim by a creature as false as she was beautiful proved not to beenduring. He was able, indeed, to behold her without a tremor, save ofsympathy for one compelled to endure the daily proximity of LymanTeaford.
But the war prolonged
itself as only he and Winona had felt it would,and presently it began to be hinted that a great nation, apparentlyunconcerned with its beginning, might eventually be compelled to alivelier interest in it. Herman Vielhaber was a publicly exposedbarometer of this sentiment. At the beginning he beamed upon the worldand predicted the Fatherland's speedy triumph over all the treacherousfoes. When the triumph was unaccountably delayed he appeared mysterious,but not less confident. The Prussian system might involve delay, butPrussian might was none the less invincible. Herman would explain thePrussian system freely to all who cared to listen--and many didattentively--from high diplomacy to actual fighting. He left many of hishearers with a grateful relief that neutrality had been officiallyenjoined upon them.
Later Herman beamed less brightly as he recounted tales of Germanprowess. He came to exhibit a sort of indignant pity for the Fatherland,into whose way so many obstacles were being inopportunely thrown. Hecompared Germany to a wounded deer that ravenous dogs were seeking tobring down, but his predictions of her ultimate victory were not lessconfident. Minna Vielhaber wept back of the bar at Herman's affectingpicture of the stricken deer with the arrow in her flank, and would becomforted only when he brought the war to a proper close.
It was at this time that Winona wrote in her journal: "General Shermansaid that war is the bad place. He knew."
It was also at this time that a certain phrase from a high sourcebriefly engaged the notice of Sharon Whipple.
"Guinea pigs," said he, "are also too proud to fight, but they ain'tever won the public respect on that account. They get treatedaccordingly."
It was after this that Sharon was heard ominously to wish that he werethirty or forty years younger. And it was after this that Winona becameactive as a promoter of bazaars for ravaged Belgium and a pacifist whosewatchword was "Resist not evil!" She wrote again in her journal: "Ifonly someone would reason calmly with them!" She presently becameradiant with hope, for a whole boatload of earnest souls went over toreason calmly with the combatants.
But the light she had seen proved deceiving. The earnest souls wentforward, but for some cause, never fully revealed to Winona, they hadbeen unable to reason calmly with those whose mad behaviour they hadmeant to correct. It was said that they had been unable to reason calmlyeven among themselves. It was merely a mark of Winona's earnestness thatshe felt things might have gone differently had the personnel of thisvaliant embassy been enlarged to include herself. Meantime, war wasbecoming more and more the bad place, just as General Sherman had said.She had little thought now for silk stockings or other abominations ofthe frivolous, for her own country seemed on the very verge ofcommitting a frightful error.
Some time had elapsed since Wilbur Cowan definitely knew that he wouldnever go to war because of the mother of Lyman Teaford's infant son. Hebegan to believe, however, that he would relish a bit of fighting forits own sake. Winona reasoned with him as she would have reasoned withcertain high personages on the other side of the water, and perhaps withas little success. He replied cryptically that he was an out-and-outphagocyte, and getting more so every time he read a newspaper. Winonawinced at the term--it seemed to carry sinister implications. Where didthe boy hear such words?
This one he had heard on a late Sunday afternoon when he sat, contraryto a municipal ordinance of Newbern, in the back room of HermanVielhaber, with certain officials sworn to uphold that ordinance, whodrank beer and talked largely about what we should do; for it had thenbecome shockingly apparent that the phrase about our being too proud tofight had been, in its essential meaning, misleading. Dave Cowan,citizen of the world and student of its structure, physical and social,had proved that war, however regrettable, was perhaps never to beavoided; that in any event one of the best means to avoid it was to beknown for your fighting ways. Anyway, war was but an incident in humanprogress.
Dave's hair had thinned in the years of his wandering to see a man atSeattle or New Orleans, and he now wore spectacles, without which hecould no longer have enlarged his comprehension of cosmic values, forhis latest Library of Universal Knowledge was printed in very smalltype. Dave said that since the chemicals had got together to form lifeeverything had lived on something else, and the best livers had alwaysbeen the best killers. He did not pretend to justify the plan, but thereit was; and it worked the same whether it was one microscopic organismpreying on another or a bird devouring a beetle or Germany trying toswallow the world. Rapp, Senior, said that was all very well, but thesepacifists would keep us out of war yet. Doctor Purdy, with whom he hadfinished a game of pinochle--Herman Vielhaber had lately been unable tokeep his mind on the game--set down his beer stein in an authoritativemanner, having exploded with rage even while he swallowed some of thelast decent beer to come to Newbern Center. He wiped froth from hiswaistcoat.
"Pacifists!" he stormed. "Why don't they ever look into their ownbodies? They couldn't live a day on non-resistance to evil. Every one oftheir bodies is thronged with fighting soldiers. Every pacifist is aliving lie. Phagocytes, that's what they are--white corpuscles--and it'sall they're there for. They believe in preparedness hard enough. See 'emmarch up to fight when there's an invasion! And how they do fight! Thesepacifists belie their own construction. They're built on a fight fromthe cradle and before that.
"I wish more of their own phagocytes would begin to preachnon-resistance and try to teach great moral lessons to invading germs.We wouldn't have to listen to so many of 'em. But phagocytes don't actthat way. They keep in training. They don't say, like that poor oldmaunderer I read this morning, that there's no use preparing--that amillion phagocytes will spring to arms overnight if their country'sinvaded. They keep in trim. They fight quick. If they didn't we wouldn'tbe here."
"These phagocytes--is infantry, yes?" demanded Herman Vielhaber. "Inever hear 'em named before like that."
"Infantry, and all the other branches, in a healthy body--and our ownbody is healthy. Watch our phagocytes come forward now, just as thosetiny white corpuscles rush through the blood to an invaded spot. You'llsee 'em come quick. Herman, your country has licked Belgium andSerbia--you can rightly claim that much. But she'll never get anotherdecision. Too many phagocytes."
Dave Cowan, who always listened attentively to Doctor Purdy for newwords, was thus enabled to enlighten Winona about her own and otherpeople's phagocytes; and Winona, overwhelmed by his mass of detail--forDave had supplemented Purdy's lecture with fuller information from hisencyclopedia--had sighed and said: "Oh, dear! We seem to be living overa volcano!"
This had caused Dave to become more volubly instructive.
"Of course! Didn't you know that? How thick do you suppose the crust ofthe earth is, anyway? All we humans are--we're plants that have grownout of the cooled crust of a floating volcano; plants that can walk andtalk, but plants just the same. We float round the sun, which is onlyanother big volcano that hasn't cooled yet--good thing for us ithasn't--and the sun and us are floating round some other volcano that noone has discovered yet because the circle is too big, and that one isprobably circling round another one--and there you are. That's plain,isn't it?"
"Not very," said Winona.
"Well, I admit there's a catch in it I haven't figured out yet, but thefacts are right, as far as I've gone. Anyway, here we are, and we gothere by fighting, and we'll have to keep on fighting, one way oranother, if we're to get any place else."
"I don't know anything about all that," said Winona; "but sometimes Ialmost think the Germans deserve a good beating."
This was extreme for Winona, the arch pacifist.
"You almost think so, eh? Well, that's a good specimen of almostthinking. Because the Germans don't deserve any such thing unlesssomeone can give it to them. If the bird can swallow the worm the birddeserves the worm. The most of us merely almost think."
It was much later--an age later, it seemed to Winona--for her country,as she wrote in her journal, had crossed the Rubicon--that she went toattend a meeting of protest in a larger city than Newbern; a meeting of
mothers and potential mothers who were persuaded that war was neverexcusable.
She had listened to much impassioned oratory, with a sickening surprisethat it should leave her half-hearted in the cause of peace at anyprice; and she had gone to take her train for home, troubled with amonstrous indecision. Never before had she suffered an instant'sbewilderment in detecting right from wrong.
As she waited she had observed on a siding a long, dingy train, from thewindows of which looked the faces of boys. She was smitten with a quickcuriosity. There were tall boys and short boys; and a few of them wereplump, but mostly they were lean, with thin, browned faces, and theywere all ominously uniformed. Their keen young faces crowded the openwindows of the cars, and they thronged upon the platforms to make noisypurchases from younger boys who offered them pitiful confections frombaskets and trays.
Winona stared at them with a sickened wonder. They were all so alive, soalert, so smiling, so eager to be on with the great adventure. In one ofthe cars a band of them roared a stirring chorus. It stirred Winonabeyond the calm that should mark people of the better sort. She forgotthat a gentleman should make no noise and that a lady is serene; forgotutterly. She waved a hand--timidly at first--to a cluster of young headsat a car window, and was a little dismayed when they waved heartily inreturn. She recovered and waved at another group--less timidly thistime. Again the response was instant, and a malign power against whichshe strove in vain carried Winona to the train's side. Heads were thrustforth and greetings followed, some shy and low-toned, some with feignedman-of-the-world jauntiness.
Winona was no longer Winona. A freckled young vender with a baskethalted beside her. Winona searched for her purse and emptied its hoardinto one gloved hand. Coins spilled from this and ran about theplatform. Hands sprang from the window above her to point out theirresting places, and half a dozen of the creatures issued from the car torecover them for her. Flustered, eager, pleasantly shocked at her owndaring, Winona distributed gifts from the basket, seeing only the handsthat came forth to receive them.
Chewing gum, candy, popcorn, figs--even cigarettes--and Winona the firstvice-president and recording secretary of Newbern's anti-tobaccoleague! War was assuredly what Sherman had so pithily described it, forshe now sent the vender back to replenish his stock of cigarettes, andbought and bestowed them upon immature boys so long as her coin lasted.Their laughter was noisy, their banter of one another and of Winona wascontinuous, and Winona laughed, even bantered. That she should banterstrangers in a public place! She felt rowdy, but liked it.
There was a call from the front of the train, and the group about hersprang to the platform as the cars began to move, waving her gracious,almost condescending adieus, as happy people who go upon a wondrousjourney will wave to poor stay-at-homes. Winona waved wildly now, beinglost to all decorum; waved to the crowded platform and then to the cloudof heads at the window above her.
From this window a hand reached down to her--a lean, hard, brownhand--and the shy, smiling eyes of the boy who reached it sought hers insomething like appeal. Winona clutched the hand and gripped it as shehad never gripped a human hand before.
"Good-bye, sister!" said the boy, and Winona went a dozen steps with thetrain, still grasping the hand.
"Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye--all of you!" she called, and was holdingthe hand with both her own when the train gathered speed and took itfrom her grasp.
She stood then watching other windows thronged with young heads as thetrain bore them on; she still waved and was waved at. Faint strains ofthe resumed chorus drifted back to her. Her face was hurting with a setsmile.
She stumbled back across the platform, avoiding other groups who hadcheered the passing train, and found sanctuary by a baggage truck loadedwith crates of live chickens. Here she wept unnoticed, and wondered whyshe was weeping. Later, in her own train, she looked down and observedthe white-ribboned badge which she had valiantly pinned above her heartthat very morning. She had forgotten the badge--and those boys must haveseen it. Savagely she tore it from its mooring, to the detriment of anew georgette waist, and dropped it from the open window.
That night she turned back in her journal to an early entry: "If onlysomeone would reason calmly with them. Resist not evil!" She stared atthis a long time, then she dipped a new pen in red ink and full acrossit she wrote "What rotten piffle!" That is, she nearly wrote thosewords. What she actually put down was "What r-tt-n piffle!"
To Wilbur Cowan, in recounting her fall from the serene heights ofpacifism, she brazenly said: "Do you know--when that poor boy reacheddown to shake hands with me, if I could have got at him I just know Ishould have kissed him."
"Gee whiz!" said Wilbur in amazed tribute.
"I don't care!" persisted Winona. "That's the way I felt--he was such anice boy. He looked like you, as if he'd come from a good home and hadgood habits, and I did want to kiss him, and I would have if I couldhave reached him--and I'm not going to tell a falsehood about it for anyone, and I'm--I'm hostile."
"Well, I guess pretty soon I'll be going," said Wilbur.
Winona gazed at him with strangely shining eyes.
"You wouldn't be any good if you didn't!" she said, suddenly.
It was perhaps the least ornate sentence she had ever spoken.
"Gee whiz!" said Wilbur again. "You've changed!"
"Something came over me," said Winona.
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