Local Color Part 3

The people obeyed their rulers' calls. Looking back on it now it seems to us, who are onlookers, that there was no good and sufficient reason why they should have done this, but we know that obedience in such contingencies is a habit which has come down to them--and to us--from our remotest common ancestors, and it runs in our blood with the corpuscles of our blood. It is like a contagious miasma, which, being breathed into the body, afflicts all its victims with the same symptoms.

So they put on the liveries designed for them by their lords against the coming of just such an occasion--shoddy-wools, or khakis, or red-and-blue fustians, as the case might be--and they went out, these men and these boys who were not yet men, to adjudicate the misunderstanding which had arisen as between the occupants of sundry palaces in sundry capital cities.

The tide of war--such being the pretty phrase coined by those who would further popularise the inst.i.tution--lapped one sh.o.r.e after another. It went from hemisphere to continent, from continent to archipelago, from archipelago to scattered islands in seas suddenly grown barren of commerce. It flooded jungles in South Africa; it inundated the back corners of Australia; it picked up and carried away on its backwash men of every colour and of every creed and of every breed. It crossed the Atlantic Ocean to New York, and having crossed, it reached into a bas.e.m.e.nt near Union Square for Paul Misereux. And the way of that was this:

France called out her reserves. Paul Misereux, although half an American, as has been stated, was likewise a French reservist. So at length the call came to him. Although he was French he was not excitable. He accepted the summons very calmly and as a matter of course. He had been expecting that it would come, sooner or later. That same day he visited the office of the French consul where certain formalities were speedily concluded. Then he went home and to his sister and his half-sister he very quietly broke the news of what had happened and what he had done; and very quietly they took it. For they were not outwardly emotional either.

For six days life in the three-room flat went on very much as it had gone on before, except that the sisters went daily now to early ma.s.s, and on the first morning following the brother did not shave himself when he got up. French soldiers mainly wear beards, and he meant his beard should be well sprouted when he reported for service. At the end of those six days, on the seventh day, a new a.s.sistant pastry cook began serving in the restaurant cellar and a steamer drew out of her New York dock with flags flying, being bound--G.o.d and the submarines willing--for foreign parts. On the deck set apart for the second-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, close up against the rail that was next the sh.o.r.e, Paul Misereux stood, a most dumpy and unheroic figure of a man, with patches of woolly beard showing on his pale chops, waving his hand, and with many others singing the Ma.r.s.eillaise Hymn.

When the steamer was gone from sight down the river toward open water the sisters left the pierhead where they had been standing and went away, Marie to her job in the millinery place on Sixth Avenue and Helene to hers in the small flat.

Except that Paul was gone, life for the remaining two continued for a while after this to be materially unaltered. Beyond a single long letter written on the voyage across and posted upon his arrival at Bordeaux, they had no word of him. For this, though, he was not to blame. A thing so systematic it had no aspect of being of human devis.e.m.e.nt and subject to human control had caught him. This system took him in hand in the same hour that his feet touched dry land. It gave him a number, it clothed him in a uniform, put a gun in his hands, strapped upon his back and about his waist and on his flanks all the other tools needful for the prosecution of the highly specialised modern trade of manslaughter, and set him aboard a train and started him north. Thereafter the north swallowed him up and concerning him no news whatsoever came back. He was an atom in a world event, and the atoms do not count even though they contribute to the progress of the event itself.

While these sisters of his waited, hoping each day the postman would bring them a letter with a French stamp and a French postmark on it, but sorely dreading what the portent of that letter might be, a stroke of bad fortune befell them. The man who owned the place where Marie worked professed to deal in French wares exclusively; but he had a German name and he spoke with a German accent. Perhaps he felt deeply the things some people said to him and about him and about his Fatherland. Perhaps he found it hard to be neutral in his words and all his acts when so many about him were so pa.s.sionately unneutral in their words and their acts. Perhaps in those papers which avowedly were pro-German, and in those which avowedly were anti-German, he read editorials that changed his views on certain subjects. You see, the tide of war had searched him out too.

Or perhaps after all he merely realised the need, in a time when business conditions were so unsettled, of economising. At any rate one Sat.u.r.day, without prior warning, he dismissed from his employ three of his women workers--an outspoken Irish girl, a silent Russian Jewess, whose brothers wore the uniform of a government which oppressed them, and a French girl, this last being Marie Misereux.

Monday morning early Marie was abroad, trying to find for herself a new job. She was deft enough with her fingers, but there were handicaps which denied her opportunity of proving to any interested person just how deft those fingers of hers were. For one thing, millinery shops, big and little, were retrenching in their expenses or trying to. For another, she was ignorant of the town and of the ways of the millinery trade--her first job had been her only one. Finally, she had only a faulty knowledge of English, and that in some lines is yet a bar against the applicant for work even in the polyglot, more-than-half-foreign city of New York.

The week which began with that Monday morning went by; other Mondays and other weeks went by, and Marie, walking the soles off her shoes upon the pavements uptown and downtown, earned nothing at all. The account in the savings bank, which always before Paul went away had grown steadily and which for the first month or so after he went had grown in a lesser degree, was dwindling and dwindling. Now when Helene coughed she pressed her hand against her side. There was no news of their brother. Except for a few distant cousins three thousand miles away, they had no kinspeople. And in this country they had no friends.

Along the crest of a low hill, like a seam, ran a succession of shattered tree trunks, hemming earthline to skyline with ragged and irregular st.i.tches. Once upon a time, not so very long before, a fine little grove of half-grown poplars had crowned that small eminence. But the cannon and the spouting volleys from the rapid-fire guns had mowed down every tree, leaving only the mutilated and homely boles.

Upon one slope of the hill--the slope that was nearer the city--a triangular-shaped patch of woodland projected its point like a promontory well up toward the hilltop. The sh.e.l.ls had wrought most grievously here, too, but, being protected somewhat by the dip in the land, the forest, as they call such a stretch of park timber in Europe, had not suffered in the same proportionate extent that the comb of saplings higher up suffered. The twistified ma.s.ses of shot-down boughs made good cover for the French sharpshooters.

Just under the far shoulder of the rise, zig-zagging this way and that after the fashion of a worm that has stiff joints, was a German trench--the foremost German trench of all the myriad trenches and cross-trenches that formed the sector of the investments at this particular point. Behind the Germans as they squatted in this trench was the village of Brimont. It had been a village once. Now it was a flattened huddle of broken masonry and shattered woodwork, from which arose constantly a sour stench of rotting things. Back of the site of the village, where a little valley made out between more hills, was a sunken road winding off to the north. Upon either side of the road were fields gouged by misaimed sh.e.l.ls until the mangled earth looked as though a thousand swine had rooted there for mast.

That was what the Germans saw when they looked over their shoulders.

What they saw when they looked straight ahead was, first, the patch of woodland sheltering their foes and beyond that, three miles away, the old French city of Rheims, with the damaged towers of the great cathedral rising above lesser buildings, and on beyond, melting away into blue reaches of s.p.a.ce, the fields of Champagne. That is to say, they could see so much when the weather was clear, which generally it wasn't. Nine days in ten, this time of the year, it rained--the cold, constant, searching rain of mid-October. It was raining on this particular day, and up on this saucer-rim of land, which ringed the plain in, the wind blew steadily with a raw bite to it.

Firing back and forth between defenders and besiegers went on intermittently. At this spot there was no hard fighting; there had been none for weeks. Farther way, right and left, along the battle line which stretched from Switzerland to the sea, the big guns roared like bulls.

But here the men lay in their shelters and nibbled at their foes like mice.

On second thought I beg to withdraw the latter simile. These men were not so much like mice as they were like moles. For they grubbed in the earth, as moles do, eating and sleeping, living and dying down in their mud burrows. Only, moles keep their fur tidied and fine, while these men were coated and clogged with the tough clayey substance in which they wallowed. It was as much as they could do to keep their rifles in cleansed working order.

Over in the German trench a slim Saxon youth was squatted, ankle-deep in cold yellow water. At intervals he climbed into a small scarp in the wall of the trench, a kind of niche just large enough to hold his body, and kneeling there, with his head tucked down and his shoulders drawn in, he swapped shots with a Frenchman in the woods slightly beneath and directly in front of him. Neither of them ever saw the other. Each in his firing was guided by the smack of his enemy's gun and the tiny puff of white smoke which marked its discharge; each knowing in a general way only the approximate location of the man he coveted to kill, for after an exchange of shots both would shift, the German to another scarp, the Frenchman to another tangle of felled boughs. There was nothing particularly personal, nothing especially hateful or pa.s.sionate in the present ambition of either. It was merely the job in hand.

As between these two--the Frenchman and the German--there was, excusing the differences of language and religion, no great amount of distinction to be drawn. Temperamentally they were of much the same cast. Each in his separate small sphere of endeavour had been a reasonably law-abiding, reasonably industrious, fairly useful individual, until somebody else, sitting in a high place, had willed it for him that he should put by whatsoever task he might be concerned with and engage in this business of gunning for his fellow-man.

Their uniforms, to be sure, differed in cut and colour, or had so differed until the mud of Champagne had made them of a pattern together.

The German soldier's helmet had a sharp spike set in it; the Frenchman's cap had a flattened top. Also the German carried his name and number in a small leather pouch which hung on a thong about his neck and lay snugly against the chilled skin of his breast under his shirt, whereas the Frenchman wore his name and his number on a small bra.s.s token that was made fast to a slender wire bracelet riveted about his left wrist.

Concerning these methods of marking men there had been argument from time to time, the German authorities contending that their system is the better of the two. For proof of the claim they point out that in the case of a Frenchman an arm may be torn away, bodily carrying the bracelet and the tag with it, whereas as regards a German, he may be shot in two and yet retain his identification label since it is not so very often that the head is entirely dissevered from the trunk. Here again, as in many other details, they contend German efficiency maintains its superiority over all. On both sides the matter is discussed dispa.s.sionately, just as the toxic properties of various makes of poisonous gases are discussed, or the rending powers of shrapnel upon human flesh.

About four o'clock in the afternoon the German climbed up into his favourite scarp once more. Hoping to draw his opponent's fire, he jerked his head up into sight for half a second, then jerked it down again. The trick worked; the Frenchman fired, but fired high. The German shoved his gun barrel out between two clods, shut both eyes--for he was by no means a clever marksman--and pumped a shot back in reply. The bullet from his rifle, which was a long, sharp-nosed, steel-jacketed bullet, devised in accordance with the most scientific experiments, found its billet. It struck the Frenchman as he lay belly downward on the earth with his gunstock against his cheek. It removed two fingers of the Frenchman's right hand, three fingers of his left hand, tore away his lower jaw, beard and all, and pa.s.sed out at the back of his neck, taking splintered fragments of his spinal processes with it. He turned over on his back, flapping with his arms and legs, threshing about in the wet leaves and in the mud, making grotesque bubbling sounds down in his throat.

Pretty soon after that twilight came on and the rifle firing slackened.

The Saxon youth, never knowing he had killed his enemy, called it a day and knocked off. He hunkered down in the slime to eat a tallowy stew of bull meat and barley from a metal pannikin. It was nourishing enough, this mess was, but it had the aspect of swill. Having eaten, he immediately thereafter crawled, in his wet clothes and soaked boots, into a sort of dugout hollowed in the wall of his trench, and slept there with four of his comrades on a bed of mouldy, damp rye straw.

While they slept the vermin travelled from one to another of them, making discriminative choice of which body to bite.

Down in the little forest below, the Frenchman presently quit flapping and quietly bled to death. During the night a burial party of his own people came and found him and shovelled him underground where he lay.

But first the sergeant in command of the squad removed the bangle from his wrist. In due course of time, therefore, word was carried back and back by succeeding stages to headquarters, and from there on to Paris, and from Paris on to New York, so that within a month's time or a little less it became the painful duty of a consular clerk in New York to transmit by mail to the deceased's next of kin, a sister, the intelligence, as conveyed in the official notification, that her brother, Paul Gaston Michel Misereux, was heroically dead on the Field of Honour.

For the repose of their brother's spirit they had a ma.s.s said at the little French Catholic Church where they worshipped, and in his memory candles burned upon the altar. Out of a length of cheap sleazy stuff they made a mourning frock for Helene. Wearing it, her face seemed whiter than ever and the two red spots in her cheeks seemed redder.

Marie had the black frock, with the white collars and cuffs, which had been her uniform as a saleswoman in the place on lower Sixth Avenue; she wore that as she hunted for work. Regardless of their sorrow, the hunt must go on. It went on, and was a vain quest. From much weeping her eyes were swollen and puffy and her face was drawn out of all comeliness.

Even though through merciful forbearance each forbore to tell her so, none of those to whom she applied for work cared to hire so homely appearing a serving woman. In another week, or at most two, they would be sc.r.a.ping the bottom of their savings account.

Before this they had lived on scanty rations, wasting never a crumb. Now they trimmed the food allowance still finer. It may have been the lack of sufficient nourishment that caused Helene to drop down in a faint on the floor of the tiny kitchen one evening in the middle of the second week following the receipt of the news from the consul's office. As Marie bent to raise her head in her arms, a little stream of blood began to run from one corner of Helene's mouth. For some time after she recovered consciousness and had opened her eyes the little trickle of blood continued, and Marie, sitting beside her, wiped it away as fast as it oozed out between her lips. The younger girl appeared to suffer no pain, but was very weak. Marie got her undressed and into her bed in the small middle room. Then she ran downstairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt to find out from the caretaker where the nearest doctor was to be found.

It seemed there was one only two doors away. He came presently, a testy man of sixty who was lame. One of his legs was inches shorter than its mate. He lived in a tenement himself and his practice was among tenement dwellers, and he was underpaid and overworked and had trouble enough sometimes to make both ends meet. He grew shorter of breath and of disposition at every step as he wallowed up the stairs, Marie going ahead to show him the way to the rear flat at the top of the house.

Wheezing until the sound of his breathing filled the room, he sat down alongside Helene, and while he held one of her pipe-stem wrists in his hand he asked Marie certain questions. Then he told Marie to go into the front room and wait for him there.

In ten minutes or less he limped in to her where she sat with her hands clenched between her knees and her eyes big and rounded with apprehension. He thought he closed the intervening door behind him, but the latch failed to catch in the slot and it swung ajar for a s.p.a.ce of two or three inches. Neither of them took note of this.

"She's quiet now," he said: "the hemorrhage is checked. I took a sample of her blood. I'll make a blood test to-morrow morning. How long has this been going on--this cough?"

A good long time, Marie told him--several months. She went on, in her broken English, to explain: "We thought it was but a bad cold, that soon she would be well----"

He broke in on her impatiently:

"That's what you said before. That's no excuse." He looked about him.

"How many are there of you living here--just you two?"

"We are quite alone," she told him. "We had also a brother, but--but he now is dead."

It did not occur to her to tell him how the brother had died, or when.

"What's your business?" he demanded. Then as she seemed not to get his intent, he added:

"Can't you understand plain English? What do you do for a living?"

"Your pardon, doctor; I am a milliner."

"And this other girl--your sister--she's been staying at home and doing the housekeeping, you said?"

She nodded. For a moment there was silence, she still seated, he before her balancing himself on the longer leg of the two and on his heavy cane. "I'll make a blood test in the morning," he said at length, repeating what he had said a moment before.

"Doctor," said Marie, "tell me, please, the truth. My sister--is she then so ill?"

"Ill?" he burst out at her irritably. "Ill? I should say she is ill.

She's got tuberculosis, if you know what that means--consumption."

She sucked her breath in sharply. Her next question came slowly: "What is there then to do?"

"Well, she couldn't last long here--that's dead certain. You've got to get her away from here. You've got to get her up into the North Woods, in the mountains--Saranac or some place like that--in a sanitarium or an invalids' camp where she can have the right kind of treatment. Then she'll have a chance."

By a chance he meant that with proper care the sick girl might live for three months or for four, or at the outside for six. The case was as good as hopeless now; he knew that. Still his duty was to see that his patients' lives were prolonged--if possible.

"These mountains, I do not know them. We are strangers in this country."