Kitabı oku: «Heart's Kindred», sayfa 7

There was a woman of Servia, and she was a peasant woman. Her clothes were those which her neighbors had found for her. Even then, so great was the haste at the last, she had crossed the ocean in a skirt and a shawl, but with no waist beneath the shawl.

“I had to come,” she said, through her interpreter. “There is only one hell worse than the hell that we have been through: and that is not to cry to the last breath that it shall be stopped. That it shall not come again to other women like us…”

There was a woman of Belgium, who belonged to a family high in position in Louvain. She wore garments which had been given to her from the American boxes. It was strange to hear that soft voice, in its broken English, speak of a thousand horrors with no passion. But when she spoke of To-morrow, and of what it must bring, her voice throbbed and strove with the spirit which poured through her.

“Do not think of Louvain,” she said. “Do not think of Belgium. Say, if you like, that this was only a part of what happens in war. Think, then, only of war. Think that war must not be ever again in this our world. While women have voices to raise to other women, we must make them understand that peace is our contribution to the earth. Women of the world, what are we waiting for?”

Then there came a woman, young, erect, burning – a woman of Hungary.

“Listen,” she said. “A Hungarian girl who went to care for the Galician refugees tells me in a recent letter the story of a poor woman who said: ‘I wanted to protect my children. I ran with the other inhabitants of the village. I took my baby in a shawl on my back. The two others hung on to my skirts. I ran fast, as fast as I could. When I got to the station, I had the two children hanging on my skirts, I had the shawl on my back, but I had no baby and I don’t know where I dropped him.’”

The Hungarian woman went on:

“They don’t want us to find out that there is no glory, no big patriotism, no love for anything noble, nothing but butchery and slaughter and rape. War means that. You know the story of the War-brides. You know how agents of the different churches compete with military rulers in glorifying this kind of prostitution. But do you know of the concentration camps with the compulsory service of women? You may have seen the full reports of the atrocities committed on Belgian women – but you didn’t get the other reports about the same kind of atrocities committed by all armies on female human beings between the ages of five and eighty-nine in all the countries where the game of war is being played. Women of the world, what are we waiting for?”⁷

And beside her, as she finished, stood an Irish woman, taking up the thread of the Hungarian’s woman’s cry:

“If we women, to whom even a partial knowledge of these happenings has come, remain silent now, then we are blood guilty. We are more than blood guilty, for we must be numbered with those who will even dare the murder of a soul.

“Let us not blind ourselves with talk of the glories and heroisms of war. We dare not ignore the moral and spiritual wreckage that remains unchronicled. We have to think of men brutalized and driven to hideous deeds by their experiences; of men with reason destroyed; of men disgraced for lack of the cold courage that can face such horrors; of men with a slain faith in good, their outlook on life eternally embittered. What of the women for whom the French government has had to devise legislation to deter them from infanticide? What of the children begotten under such conditions? Women of the world, where is your voice, that should be sowing the seeds of peace?”⁸

Almost as her own voice, went on the voice of another woman, the brief poignant entreaty of an English woman:

“We ask nothing strange! Only that which Christianity, civilization and motherhood dictate.

“The well-being of children touches all. On that common ground the opposing nations could meet and crown their courage by laying aside their arms at the call of a higher humanity.

“Can mother hearts turn from this cry? Will not womanhood join in resolve, though in divers tongues, yet with but one Voice – the Voice of pure human love and pity…”⁹

The Inger stood against the wall, and listened. A place had opened into which he had never looked, whose existence he had never guessed. He stood frowning, staring – at first trying to understand, then understanding and passionately doubting. The appeals of the first speakers did not touch him. What did women know of these things?

Then the Polish woman had spoken. Then the Servian woman. Then the Belgium woman. These undeniably knew what they were talking about! But not until that woman of Hungary had stood there, did the thought come which had pierced him: What if all that she said was true – and was true of Lory? What if it had been her child whom Lory had lost from her shawl as she ran…

He breathed hard, and looked about him. They were all, men and women alike, sitting as tense as he. And he saw that all these believed. No one, no one could doubt these women.

“This is what we have to do – ” it was another German woman who was speaking and the interpreter was giving her words. “This is what we have to do: our cry must ring forth irresistibly from millions of voices: ‘Enough of slaughter, enough of devastation. Peace, lasting peace! Make room for peaceful work. Leave the way free for the fraternity of the peoples and for their coöperation in bringing to flower the culture of international civilization!’

“If men kill, it is for women to fight for the preservation of life. If men are silent, it is our duty to raise our voices on behalf of our ideals.”¹⁰

The Inger stood where the wall curved, so he was looking at the rows of faces from near the front of the room. And he was looking on a sign, a hint no greater in emphasis than a shadow, of what war is to women. He understood it, momentarily he even felt it. And for a flash he saw them all as he had seen the women in the Chicago employment agency – as if he were those women and could suffer what they suffered.

He remembered Lory, and her face lifted to his in the Chicago meeting.

“They’re voting to kill folks,” she had said. “Oh, my God.”

This was what she had meant. She had understood, and he had not understood. How had she understood? He thought about her. Out of Inch, out of scenes of killing, and of misery put upon life, Jem Moor’s girl had come, and she knew how to feel the way these women felt. All that he had been feeling for her became something which beat upon his heart like light.

A note had been sent to the chairman, and with her announcement, a movement of wonder went over the audience, and this wonder was touched with dread. A famous army man was present, and he would speak.

He came forward firmly, and it was by the merest chance that he stood there before them erect, strong, compact, alive, for he had seen service. The Inger looked at him, quickening. Immediately, at the sight of his uniform, the Inger had felt a restoration of confidence in what had always been. Then the man faced them, and he spoke as quietly as the women themselves:

“I ask only to tell you,” he said, “that I have been for twenty-five years in the service – a part of the time in active service. I have believed in armies and in armament. I still believe them to have been an obvious necessity – while our world was being whipped into shape. Now I am in the last years of my service – I do not take very readily to new ideas – even when I know that these point to the next step on the way. I tell you frankly, that if there were a call to arms, I should be there in my old place – I should serve as I have always served, I should kill whom they told me to kill, as long as they would have me there. But – ” he hesitated, and lifted his face, and in it was a light that has shone on a face in no battlefield, “if that time comes, I shall thank God for every woman who protests against it, as you here are protesting. And, if that time comes, from my soul I shall honor the men who will have the courage to be shot, rather than to go out to shoot their fellows. These men will not be lacking: I have read the signs and I have heard men talk. Your new way of warfare is not in vain. You will win. You are the voice of To-morrow. I have wanted you to know that I feel this – and that to you and to your effort I say God bless you, and prosper what you do.”

For the first time that night the silence of the audience was broken. A thunder of hands and voices spoke to him. And, as he turned to leave the platform, they did that by which they paid the highest honor that they knew – and rose and remained standing until he had reached his seat.

“Jove,” said the man near the Inger. “Old Battle-axe! Now watch the men catch up. It only needed one full-blooded man to say it…”

“Rot,” said the man beyond him. “No matter what they say, you know and I know that trade will never get out of the way of peace. There’ll be no peace while we have trade – and that’ll be for some time to come!”

At this the first man laughed.

“Trade,” he said, “was a thought before it was trade. Peace is a thought – yet.”

On the stage some one was quoting Washington: “My first wish is – to see the whole world in peace and the inhabitants of it as one band of brothers, striving who should contribute most to the happiness of mankind.”

And Victor Hugo: “A day will come when a cannon ball will be exhibited in public museums, just as an instrument of torture is now; and people will be amazed that such a thing could ever have been.”

Methodically, and as if it had become their business, the women fell to discussing what they must do. In each country more groups must be organized – for School, Home, States, Municipalities – “for the lifting of the programme of pacifism into the realm of serious commercial and educational and home and political consideration.” The psychology of war must give place to the psychology of peace.

From unfair trade legislation by one country against another, down to the sale of toy weapons and soldiers; and from competing expenditures for national defence down to military drill in schools and colleges, the temptations to militarism must pass from the earth.

“We know,” an American woman said, “that war depends on economic conditions beyond our control. But we know, too, that there is something potent to change even these, and it is this potency which we dream to liberate.”

And, beside the Inger, the man said again:

“Peace is only a thought, – yet. But even economic conditions were only thought, once!”

Gradually in the voice of one and another, the word took shape – so simply that the enormity of the import was pathetically lacking: That representatives of the women of the world, united in a demand for international righteousness, shall petition the men and women of the world to turn to the new knowledge that war is an outworn way to settle difficulties; that with one voice we shall all refuse any longer to let the traditions of a past age be put upon us; that the old phrases and catch-words shall not stand for one moment before the naked question of the race: “Is this the best that life can do with life?” That we shall learn from one another that there is no such thing as preparing against war, but that to prepare for war breeds war – twin-born are the slayer and the slain; that we shall teach one another that “Thou shalt not kill” is not only moral law, but sound economic policy, for always these two are one. And that from the constructive plans devised in anguish and in hope by men and women of to-day, there be selected and inaugurated a world programme for permanent peace without armistice and a council of the nations looking toward the federation of the world.

“We have talked long enough of treaties and of arbitration,” they said. “Let us have done with such play. Let us speak the phrase quite simply: The federation of the world.”

And the message concluded:

“For we, the women of the world, have banded ourselves together to demand that war be abolished.”

Last, he remembered a Voice. Afterward, he could not have told what woman spoke, or of what nation they said that she had come. But what she said was like the weaving of what the others had spun.

“Remember,” said her Voice, “that all this is nothing. It is only the body, made for the spirit. And the spirit is that new dominant mind which shall be born in the world – the mind of love.

“You’ll not get this by going to governments. You’ll not get this by the meeting of groups of representative people. You’ll not get this by International Police. These things must be – will be, as a matter of course. But they will not be the mind of love.

“Something will come into the world – and it will know nothing of arbitration, it will know nothing of armistice, it will know nothing of treaties; nor will it know anything of those other ways of secret warfare by which great nations seem to keep clean hands: the ways of ‘high’ finance through ‘peaceful penetration.’

“Something will come into the world, and it will know nothing of nations.

“The little loyalties will go. National pride, national ‘honor,’ patriotism – all the little scaffolds will fall away. And within will be the light that we lack.

“It is the mind of love. I am not afraid to say that beside it, governments are nothing. It is the mind of love. It may be in the simplest cottage of a peasant who goes to the war for a false ideal. But of this as yet the nations do not know.

“What is it that we must know?

“That the nations are nothing – the people are everything. That the people are bound together by ties which the nations must cease to break. That the people are heart’s kindred, met here together for their world-work, and that the nations must cease to interrupt.”

Even then the Cabinet meeting was already concluded, and the newsboys were on the streets with the Extras; and on the bulletin boards of the world the word was being flashed:

“NO ACTION TO BE TAKEN

BY U. S.”

And in the newspapers was the text of that letter, simple, human, of almost religious import, which was to make the United States, years hence, stand out as the first great headland upon new shores.

The people were coming out at the doors of the Capitol. Among them were the women who had spoken – the Polish woman, the Servian peasant, the lady of Louvain. The other women in the crowd put out their hands and took the hands of these women. Those stretching, pressing hands of silent women marked a giant fellowship which disregarded oceans, strange tongues, countless varying experiences, and took account of only one thing.

The Inger was looking up at the white dome against the black sky, and about him at the march of the people. Through his thought ran the flood of this that he had heard. In his absorption he lurched heavily against a man who was trying to pass him and who jostled him. For the first time in his life, the Inger felt no surge of anger at such a happening. He looked in the man’s face.

“Gosh,” the Inger said. “That was too alfired bad!”

The man smiled and nodded. Momentarily, the Inger felt on his arm the touch of the man’s hand.

“All right, brother,” the man said, and was gone.

The Inger felt a sudden lightness of heart. And about him the people went along so quietly. Abruptly the tumult of his thinking gave way to something nearer than these things. He looked in their faces. None of them knew that his father had died! It occurred to him now that there was hardly one of them who, on being told, would not say something to him – perhaps even shake his hand. He thought that many of these people must have seen their fathers die. He wondered which ones these would be, and he wished that he knew which ones they were. Something in him went along with the people, because they must have had fathers who had died. He looked at them in a new way. Their fathers must have died…

Oh, if only, he thought, Lory might have been there to-night with those women who felt as she felt…

He was aware of a hand on his arm. He turned, feeling an obscure pleasure that perhaps some one had something to say to him. It was Lory, alone.

X

Her face in the darkness, and about them the green gloom of the Square, were all that he knew of the time. Not far from them, like murals on the night, went the people, that little lighted stream of people, down the white steps and along the gray drives.

At first he could say nothing to her. He seized at her hand as he had seized upon it that night in Chicago, but then he remembered and let her hand fall; and at last he blurted out a consuming question:

“Where is he?”

“Who?” Lory asked surprisingly, and understood, and still more surprisingly replied:

“Bunchy! He’s gone to New York.”

This city’s name the Inger repeated stupidly, and as if it made no answer to anything.

“Just for a few days,” she explained, “before he goes home.”

“Home!”

To tell the truth she seemed not to be thinking very much about Bunchy.

“I told him I’d never marry him – not in fifty hundred years. And he went home.”

He considered this incredulously.

“Couldn’t you tell him that without comin’ clear to Washington to do it?” he demanded.

“No,” she said. “There was the money. Why didn’t you tell me you’d give Dad that money?”

He tried to answer her, but all the while this miracle was taking him to itself: Bunchy had gone.

“I guess because it sounded like a square deal, when I only done it to devil Bunchy some,” he told her.

“Is that all you done it for?”

He looked at her swiftly. Was that all that he had done it for?

“Is it?” she said.

“I donno,” he answered truthfully. “It was some of it.”

“I wish,” she said, “I wish’t I knew.”

With that he moved a little toward her, and tried to see her face.

“Why?” he asked.

She turned away and said nothing. And when she did that, he caught his breath and stooped to her.

“You tell me why you wish’t you knew,” he bade her.

“Oh well,” she said – and she was breathless too – “if you done it to help me – get away – then I shouldn’t feel so bad about goin’ to the hut.”

“About comin’ to me?”

“About makin’ you do all this for me!” she cried. “I’m sick over it. I don’t know how to tell you…”

He wondered if it was possible that she did not understand.

“I done the only thing I could think to do,” she said. “There wasn’t anybody else…”

“Do you get the idea,” he demanded, “that I’m ever going to forget how you said that to me that first night? I was drunk – but I knew when you said that. And then – ”

“Don’t,” she said.

“How can I help it?” he asked bitterly. “I made fool enough of myself that night – ”

“Don’t,” she begged.

“ – so’s you never can forget it,” he finished. “And so’s I never can. If it hadn’t been for that – ”

“What then?” she asked.

And now he did not answer, but looked away from her, and so it was she who made him tell.

“What then?” she said again.

“Would you have liked me then,” he burst out, “before that night?”

She said – and nothing could have swept him like the simplicity and honesty of this:

“But you never come down to town once after that morning on the horse.”

“How did you know that?” he cried.

“I watched,” she answered, quietly.

And yet this, he knew, was before that night on the trail. This was still in the confidence of her supreme confession: “I didn’t know no woman I could tell – nor no other decent man.” And she had watched for him…

But, after all, she was telling him so now! And here, to-night, when she no longer had need of him, her comradeship was unchanged. And there had been those hours on the train from Chicago…

“You watched!” he repeated. “Oh look here! Would you watch – now?”

To her voice came that tremor that he remembered, which seemed to be in the very words themselves.

“I watched all day to-day,” she said.

Even then he did not touch her. It was as if there were some gulf which she must be the one to cross.

“Oh Lory, Lory!” he cried.

And she understood, and it was she who stretched out her hands to him.

In their broken talk, he told her of his father, and she clung to him with a cry that she had not been with him.

“I couldn’t send for you,” she said. “I thought – maybe you was glad Bunchy come. I thought maybe you was glad I was off your hands – ”

“My hands,” he said, “just was huntin’ for your hands.”

“Then that ice-cream place’s wife,” she said, “told me about to-night – and somebody told Aunt ’Cretia. And we come here to the meeting – but when I saw you, I run and lost ’em – ”

“I wanted you when I was in that meeting,” he told her, “more’n any other time, most. I knew you knew what they meant.”

She said the thing which in the tense feeling of that hour, had remained for her paramount.

“That woman,” she cried, “with her baby in her shawl! Think– when she knew it was gone – and she couldn’t go back…”

“I thought – what if it had been you,” he told her.

She was in his arms, close in the dusk of a great cedar. “Any woman – any woman!” she said, and he felt her sobbing.

He turned and looked away at the people. Not far from them, like murals on the night, went the people, that little lighted stream of people, down the white steps and along the gray drives. He looked at the women. That about the baby in the shawl might have happened to any one of them, if war were here… It was terrible to think that this might happen to any one of these women. He felt as if he knew them. And then too, there must be some of them whose fathers had died…

He kept looking at the people, and in his arms was Lory, sobbing for that woman who had lost her child from her shawl; and over there across the water were thousands whose children were gone, whose fathers had died…

Here they all seemed so kindly, and they were going home … to homes such as he and Lory were going to have. Just the same – just the same…

And as he looked at the people, the thousands, going to their homes, Love that had come to dwell in him, touched him on the eyes. He saw them loving, as he and Lory loved. He saw them grieving, as that woman had grieved for her child. He saw them lonely for their dead, as he was lonely for his dead. None of them could deceive him. He knew them, now. They were like Lory and like him.

Out of a heart suddenly full he spoke the utmost that he could:

“What a rotten shame,” he said, “it’d be to kill any of them!”

She looked up, and saw where he was looking, and her heart leaped with her understanding of him.

He was trying to think it out.

“But they can’t seem to stop to think of things like that,” he said; “not when big things come up.”

“Big things!” she cried. “What’s big things?”

“Well – rights – and land – and sea-ports,” said he.

She laughed, and caught up an end of her blue knitted shawl and covered her face, and dropped the shawl with almost a sob.

“Rights – and land – and sea-ports!” she said over.

The three words hung in air, and echoed. And abruptly there came upon him a dozen things that he had heard that night: “We had just three little streets, but they took those…” “There is only one hell worse than we have been through…” “Say, if you like, that Belgium was only a part of what happens in war…” “We have to think of men brutalized and driven to hideous deeds…” “Enough of slaughter. Enough of devastation. Peace – lasting peace!” And then again the words of the Hungarian woman: “I had the shawl on my back, but I had no baby and I don’t know where I dropped him.”

“Think of millions of men doing like Dad and that sheriff,” the girl said suddenly. “I saw ’em there on the woodshed floor, – stark, starin’, ravin’ mad.”

Sharp on the dark before him was struck the image of that old madman in the kitchen. There was a beast in him. The Inger had felt the beast in himself answer. He had felt the shame of a man who is a beast to another man. What if it were the same kind of shame for the nations?

Suddenly, in his arms, Lory was pouring out all that she had longed to say to him.

“Back there in Inch,” she cried, “I knew there was some other way. I had to know! It didn’t seem as if everybody could be like Dad and Bunchy. Then I saw you – and you seemed like you could be some other way. And you are – and see the folks there. There is some other way to be besides killin’!”

The lights in the dome went out, and that high white presence dropped back against the sky. Still the people were going by, their feet treading the gravel; and now there was a man’s voice, now a woman’s voice, now the sleepy treble of a child. And they were all in some exquisite faith of destination.

“I guess there must be some other way,” the Inger said.

To the man and the woman in each other’s arms, there came no glimpse of the future, great with its people, “striving who should contribute most to the happiness of mankind.” But of the man’s love was born his dim knowledge – which had long been the woman’s knowledge – that the people are bound together by ties which the nations must cease to break. That the people are heart’s kindred, met here for their world-work, which the nations must cease to interrupt.

Yet all that he could say of this was something which every soldier knows – though armies never know:

“If that woman had been you – and the baby in the shawl had been ours – ”

“Anybody’s!” she insisted. “Anybody’s baby!”

“Yes,” said the Inger then. “Anybody’s baby.!”