The Cup of Fury Part 53

There was food in plenty for America, but not for her confederates.

The prices were appalling. Wages went up and up, but never quite caught the expenses. It was necessary to send enormous quant.i.ties of everything to our allies lest they perish before we could arrive with troops. And Germany went on fiendishly destroying ships, foodstuffs, and capital, displaying in every victory a more insatiable cruelty, a more revolting cynicism toward justice, mercy, or truth.

The Kaiserly contempt for America's importance seemed to be justified.

People were beginning to remember Rome, and to wonder if, after all, Germany might not crush France and England with the troops that had demolished Russia. And then America would have to fight alone.

At this time Mamise stumbled upon an old magazine of the ancient date of 1914. It was full of prophecies that the Kaiser would be dethroned, exiled, hanged, perhaps. The irony of it was ghastly. Nothing was more impossible than the downfall of the Kaiser--who seemed verifying his boasts that he took his crown from G.o.d. He was praising the strong sword of the unconquerable Germany. He was marshaling the millions from his eastern front to throw the British troops into the sea and smother the France he had bled white. The best that the most hopeful could do was to mutter: "Hurry! hurry! We've got to hurry!"

Mamise grew fretful about the delay to the ship that was to take her name across the sea. She went to Davidge to protest: "Can't you hurry up my ship? If she isn't launched soon I'm going to go mad."

Davidge threw back his head and emitted a noise between laughter and profanity. He picked up a letter and flung it down.

"I've just got orders changing the specifications again. This is the third time, and the third time's the charm; for now we've got to take out all we've put in, make a new set of drawings and a new set of castings and pretty blamed near tear down the whole ship and rebuild it."

"In the name of Heaven, why?"

"In the name of hades, because we've got to get a herd of railroad locomotives to France, and sending them over in pieces won't do. They want 'em ready to run. So the powers that be have ordered me to provide two hatchways big enough to lower whole locomotives through, and pigeonholes in the hold big enough to carry them. As far as the _Mamise_ is concerned, that means we've just about got to rub it out and do it over again. It's a case of back to the mold-loft for _Mamise_."

"And about how much more delay will this mean?"

"Oh, about ninety days or thereabouts. If we're lucky we'll launch her by spring."

This was almost worse than the death of the _Clara_. That tragedy had been n.o.ble; it dealt a n.o.ble blow and woke the heart to a n.o.ble grief and courage. But deferment made the heart sick, and the brain and almost the stomach.

Davidge liked the disappointment no better than Mamise did, but he was used to it.

"And now aren't you glad you're not a ship-builder? How would you feel if you had got your wish to work in the yard and had turned your little velvet hands into a pair of nutmeg-graters by driving about ten thousand rivets into those plates, only to have to cut 'em all out again and drive 'em into an entirely new set of plates, knowing that maybe they'd have to come out another time and go back? How'd you like that?"

Mamise lifted her shoulders and let them fall.

Davidge went on:

"That's a business man's life, my dear--eternally making things that won't sell, putting his soul and his capital and his preparation into a pile of stock that n.o.body will take off his hands. But he has to go right on, borrowing money and pledging the past for the future and never knowing whether his dreams will turn out to be dollars or--junk!"

Mamise realized for the first time the pathos, the higher drama of the manufacturer's world, that world which poets and some other literary artists do not describe because they are too ignorant, too petty, too bookish. They sneer at the n.o.ble word _commercial_ as if it were a reproach!

Mamise, however, looked on Davidge in his swivel-chair as a kind of despondent demiG.o.d, a t.i.tan weary of the eternal strife. She tried to rise beyond a poetical height to the clouds of the practical.

"What will you do with all the workmen who are on that job?"

Davidge grinned. "They're announcing their monthly strike for higher wages--threatening to lay off the force. It'd serve 'em right to take 'em at their word for a while. But you simply can't fight a labor union according to Queensbery rules, so I'll give 'em the raise and put 'em on another ship."

"And the _Mamise_ will be idle and neglected for three months."

"Just about."

"The Germans couldn't have done much worse by her, could they?"

"Not much."

"I think I'll call it a day and go home," said Mamise.

"Better call it a quarter and go to New York or Palm Beach or somewhere where there's a little gaiety."

"Are you sick of seeing me round?"

"Since you won't marry me--yes."

Mamise sniffed at this and set her little desk in order, aligned the pencils in the tray, put the carbons back in the box and the rubber cover on the typewriter. Then she sank it into its well and put on her hat.

Davidge held her heavy coat for her and could not resist the opportunity to fold her into his arms. Just as his arms closed about her and he opened his lips to beg her not to desert him he saw over her shoulder the door opening.

He had barely time to release her and pretend to be still holding her coat when Miss Gabus entered. His elaborate guiltlessness confirmed her bitterest suspicions, and she crossed the room to deposit a sheaf of letters in Davidge's "in" basket and gather up the letters in his "out" basket. She pa.s.sed across the stage with an effect of absolute refrigeration, like one of Richard III's ghosts.

Davidge was furious at Miss Gabus and himself. Mamise was furious at them both--partly for the awkwardness of the incident, partly for the failure of Davidge's enterprise against her lips.

When Miss Gabus was gone the ecstatic momentum was lost. Davidge grumbled:

"Shall I see you to-morrow?"

"I don't know," said Mamise.

She gave him her hand. He pressed it in his two palms and shook his head. She shook her head. They were both rebuking the bad behavior of the fates.

Mamise trudged homeward--or at least houseward. She was in another of her irresolute states, and irresolution is the most disappointing of all the moods to the irresolute ones and all the neighbors. It was irresolution that made "Hamlet" a five-act play, and only a Shakespeare could have kept him endurable.

Mamise was becoming unendurable to herself. When she got to her cottage she found it as dismal as an empty ice-box. When she had started the fire going she had nothing else to do. In sheer desperation she decided to answer a few letters. There was an old one from Polly Widdicombe. She read it again. It contained the usual invitation to come back to reason and Washington.

Just for something positive to do she resolved to go. There was a tonic in the mere act of decision. She wrote a letter. She felt that she could not wait so long as its answer would require. She resolved to send a telegram.

This meant hustling out into the cold again, but it was something to do, somewhere to go, some excuse for a hope.

Polly telegraphed:

Come without fail dying to see you bring along a scuttle of coal if you can.

Mamise showed Davidge the telegram. He was very plucky about letting her go. For her sake he was so glad that he concealed his own loneliness. That made her underestimate it. He confirmed her belief that he was glad to be rid of her by making a lark of her departure.

He filled an old suit-case with coal and insisted on her taking it.

The porter who lugged it along the platform at Washington gave Mamise a curious look. He supposed that this was one of those suit-cases full of bottled goods that were coming into Washington in such mult.i.tudes since the town had been decreed absolutely dry. He shook it and was surprised when he failed to hear the glug-glug of liquor.

But Polly welcomed the suit-case as if it had been full of that other form of carbon which women wear in rings and necklaces. The whole country was underheated. To the wheatless, meatless, sweetless days there were added the heatless months. Major Widdicombe took his breakfasts standing up in his overcoat. Polly and Mamise had theirs in bed, and the maids that brought it wore their heaviest clothes.

There were long lines of pet.i.tioners all day at the offices of the Fuel Administration. But it did little good. All the shops and theaters were kept shut on Mondays. Country clubs were closed. Every device to save a lump of coal was put into legal effect so that the necessary war factories might run and the ships go over the sea. Soon there would be gasoleneless Sundays by request, and all the people would obey. Bills of fare at home and at hotel would be regulated by law. Restaurants would be fined for serving more than one meat to one person. Grocers would be fined for selling too much sugar to a family.

Placards, great billboards, and all the newspapers were filled with counsels to save, save, save, and buy, buy, buy Bonds, Bonds, Bonds.

People grew depressed at all this effort, all this sacrifice with so little show of accomplishment.

American troops, except a pitiful few, were still in America and apparently doomed to stay. This could easily be proved by mathematics, for there were not ships enough to carry them and their supplies. The Germans were building up reserves in France, and they had every advantage of inner lines. They could hurl an avalanche of men at any one of a hundred points of the thin Allied line almost without warning, and wherever they struck the line would split before the reserves could be rushed up to the creva.s.se. And once through, what could stop them? Indeed, the whisper went about that the Allies had no reserves worth the name. France and England were literally "all in."

Success and the hope of success did not make the Germans meek. They credited G.o.d with a share in their achievement and pinned an Iron Cross on Him, but they kept mortgaging His resources for the future.