XI
Thatwas a strained summer in Hart’s Run, an uneasy, nervous war-summer, throwing the village people out of all their accustomed ways, as they gave themselves to the business of war. Speakers were sent to them for the various “drives,” from Red River and even occasionally from Washington as well. Judge Dean spoke to them in his soft slow voice—oratory strangely different and much more impressive than the flamboyant outbursts of the ordinary campaign-days. “Strictly speaking,” he said softly, “your country has no business at the present time but the business of killing Huns; and strictly speaking,youhave no business but the business of killing Huns.”
What an amazing business for Hart’s Run! What had Hart’s Run, up to 1914, ever known about Huns? The nervous, high-strung days went by with Red Cross work, patriotic rallies, the conservation of food, and the tense reading of headlines. Long troop-trains went through Hart’sRun by night and by day, and every now and again a little handful of village men, and men from the surrounding country, left for Camp Lee.
The business of killing Huns—an amazing business indeed for Julie Rose! What did she know about Huns? She subscribed to the Liberty Loans, she worked for the Red Cross, she saved food conscientiously, and she listened to what others read out of the papers; but in truth the war did not touch her very acutely. She did all her duty, and more. She felt some of the horror of the war; but for the most part she looked on as an outsider. So it always was with her. She had always been an outsider—not quite in touch with the rest of the world. People were constantly crowding her shy sensitive nature to one side. As a child she had never been “in it” in the games at school, and now as a grown person she was not in it with her country in this terrible game. Perhaps because of this aloofness, which her timid nature had thrust upon her, she did not now feel much of the intense patriotism that ran through the country. That great uplifting thrill of close interest and contact with other human beings that came to many at thattime was denied to Julie. She did all that was required of her; but she was untouched by any rewarding flame of consecration.
“It certainly is awful,” she said from time to time. But the awfulness of the war had been going on since 1914, and the first edge of it was gone. Yet sometimes the horror stuck its head out abruptly in their very midst. It did for Julie on the day that she read in theHart’s Run Newsof the death of John Webster in France. “One of our Stag County young men,” theNewsannounced, “whose parents, Mr. and Mrs. Otley Webster, are prominent citizens of Red River.” Why, yes; Julie knew the Websters. She had met them once at Henr’etta’s, and Henr’etta was always talking about Effie Webster—about her clothes, her car, how stylish she was, and about her set of new china. Henr’etta had told Julie about that china the last time she was in Red River. And now Effie Webster’s boy was dead in France. Julie shivered, and thought what awful deaths men had to die. She was rather accustomed to violent death in the lumber camps, in the mining-fields west of Hart’s Run, and on the railroads. Hadn’t her own father been killed bya falling tree? Julie recalled his death with a quiver—that stretched look of suffering, which had so widened and whitened his face. She was thinking of these things a week or so after the supper party, sitting under the light in her back room, knitting on a sweater, when Aunt Sadie came in to her from the other side of the house.
“Come on, Julie, let’s go to the picture show this evening,” she suggested.
“I can’t,” Julie returned. “I’ve got to get on with this Red Cross sweater.”
“Well,” the other sighed, “I reckon I oughtn’t to tempt you away from your duty, with our men givin’ their lives over there. Ain’t it awful about that Mrs. Webster’s boy!”
“Awful,” Julie assented.
“It’s the third one of our Stag County young men to go. That boy from Whifen that was killed early in the war, an’ that young feller that was in the Marines, and now Mrs. Webster’s son. They said when they got the word his mother just fell right over on the floor, an’ was dead for five hours. He was her only boy, and the baby child; an’ now him dead ’way off there—one of our men dead over in France—ain’t it awful?”
“Yes, awful,” Julie repeated, hurrying nervously on with her knitting.
“Well—and did you hear about the Chapin boy?” Aunt Sadie continued.
“No. What about him? What Chapin boy?” Julie asked, startled.
“Why, you know those Chapins that live out on the Easter Road, ’bout five miles from town? It’s a little log-house, sits back from the road in a right pretty yard.”
“Oh, yes, I know. What about the boy?” Julie questioned.
“Well, they had to send him back from camp. They couldn’t do one thing with him. He just cried all the time.”
“Criedall the time?”
“Um—’m.” Mrs. Johnson firmed her lips to a straight line, and nodded her head up and down heavily. “Yes, they couldn’t do one thing with him.”
“But—but what was the matter with him?” Julie persisted.
“I don’t know. He just cried all the time. Lost his nerve, I reckon. They sent him back home. They said he wasn’t no good to them.His father feels terrible; says he always was a nervous kind of a boy, an’ his mother humored him along till she just ruined him.”
“Oh, the poor boy!” Julie cried.
“Well my Lord, Julie! Just s’pose all our men were like that; what would Uncle Sam do?”
“Oh, of course, I know. Only—how awful it was for him!”
“Well, I’m mighty glad he ain’tmyson,” Aunt Sadie retorted. “It’ll be a thing people’ll throw up against him all his life. Folks won’t forget it in a hurry. Well,”—she dragged her large figure up out of the plush rocker,—“If you won’t go with me to the picture show, I reckon I’ll just have to go ask Mis’ Bixby; she’s better’n no company.”
She went, and after a little Julie heard her and Elizabeth Bixby setting forth. Julie sat on alone, knitting under the light, her mind filled with distressful thoughts about the Chapin boy, who found camp so awful and the prospect of death in France so overpowering, that he could do nothing but cry. “How dreadful!” Julie thought. “What was the matter with him? What made him go to pieces like that? Other men stood upagainst it; what was the matter with the Chapin boy? Oh, the poor boy! The poor thing! How frightful to give way like that, with all the camp to see!”
As far as she could remember, she had never talked to the Chapin boy and had not seen him very often. She recalled him as a thin gangling youth, with a prominent Adam’s apple and shallow, frightened blue eyes. And now he was at home again with a disgrace like that. “Oh, the poor boy!” she thought again, horrified at the spiritual collapse that would make one’s pride and reserve go down and leave one exposed before the whole world. “It’s just what I might do if I were a man—just the way I might have acted. Oh, I’m glad I’m not a man!” she told herself.
Suddenly in the stillness she heard a sharp sound in the hall. It startled her so that her hands on the knitting-needles jumped together. “Oh, what is that?” she thought. She listened rigidly a minute, and heard a creaking on the stairway. With an effort, she wrenched herself up, and stepping to the door pressed the electric button. As the light flashed up in the hall, shesaw Mr. Bixby’s white face looking down at her from the stairway.
“Oh, I scared you,” he said confusedly. “Don’t be scared; it’s just me. I didn’t go to frighten you.”
Julie looked up at him. “You?” she cried uncertainly. “Oh, it’s you!”
They stared at each other a moment, and then she turned back into her sitting-room. “Well,” she said, relieved, “I’m glad it’s you. Iwasscared. I didn’t know what to think.”
He came down the stairs, still apologizing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t go to frighten you. I was upstairs all alone—my wife’s gone to the show with Mis’ Johnson—and I got to wondering where that door went to, an’ then, just out of curiosity, I hunted round till I found a closet-key that fitted it. But I’m mighty sorry I give you a start.”
He had come into the little sitting-room now and was leaning over the back of the red-plush rocker, looking down at her. She had returned to her knitting under the light. “Oh, it’s all right; it isn’t anything. I just get scared so easy,” she told him, still with a little tremor in her voice.
“Yes,” he said, “I know. Some of us do.”
He still lingered, leaning on his arms over the back of the chair and watching her knit.
“Making a sweater?” he asked.
“Yes, for the Red Cross.” She spread it out for him to see.
“Well, the feller that gets it’ll be lucky,” he said. Still he did not go; and in a moment he spoke again, feeling his way uncertainly. “Speaking about being scared—I mean, you said you got scared easy?”
“Yes, I do,” she answered, to help him out as he hesitated. “I’m awful timid; sudden noises always make me jump.”
“Yes, I know. And I was thinking how it was with that boy.”
“What boy?” she asked.
“The feller they had to send back from camp. Chapin, I think was the name. You heard about him?”
He waited, looking down at her.
Suddenly Julie comprehended a strained anxiety in his tone, and her heart began to beat quickly.
“Yes, I heard,” she said, and kept her eyesdown on her knitting now, not to look too closely at him.
“They said he just cried”—he swallowed nervously—“all the time in camp. They said they couldn’t do a thing with him.”
“I know; I heard.” Julie knit faster.
“They said everybody’d laugh at him from now on,” he continued.
Julie raised her eyes and looked straight up at him. “Inever will,” she promised.
He drew a free breath. He seemed to have been waiting for her to say this. “I didn’t b’lieve you would,” he said.
“I never will,” she answered faithfully again, as though making a solemn compact with him.
She saw his hands that clutched the back of the chair tremble slightly, and a faint hot moisture broke out upon his forehead. Then he stooped closer to her, daring all.
“Shesaid—my wife said—that was just what I’d do in camp.”
“You wouldn’t,” she cried sharply. “You wouldn’t! I know you wouldn’t.”
“But—but I might,” he faltered, moistening his lips. “It’s—it’s just what I might do.”
“You wouldnot!” Julie repeated violently, clutching her knitting so tight that one of the bone needles snapped in two.
“She said I would,” he persisted. “And then she went off to the show. I was all alone. I got to studyin’ about it. I thought—I thought—”
“I know,” she interjected quickly. “I know, I understand how it is.”
He moistened his lips once more, and tried again. “And—and I thought maybe she was right,” he got out at last.
“She is not right. She isn’t!”
“And everybody’s laughin’ at the Chapin boy—”
“I’ll never laugh at him.”
“An’ I thought—” He swallowed again. “I thought, ‘Maybe it’ll beyouthey’ll all be laughin’ at next week.’” He paused a moment. “And—and now you know it all,” he ended.
“I understand.” Julie’s eyes were suddenly full of tears, so that his strained face, gazing hungrily down at her, was blurred through them. “I know. I was sitting here thinking that, too. I was thinking, if I was a man maybe that was just what I’d do. Maybe I wouldn’t stand upagainst things any better than that Chapin boy.”
“You? You thought that?”
“Yes,” she nodded back at him.
“Then you know,” he said, with a breath of relief. “I didn’t want any one to laugh at him,” he went on. “Don’t laugh,” he pleaded, as though now he were defending the Chapin boy to that cold outside world that had laughed. “Maybe he just couldn’t help it, the poor feller! Life’s mighty big for some folks—too big—bigger than a lot of us knows how to stand up against. You don’t know how hard he tried; folks don’t know how hard a person tries; butyouunderstand, Miss Rose?” He suddenly broke off, his eyes coming back to her face. “You understand, Miss Julie?”
“Yes, I understand,” she answered faithfully. “An’ I know about life being so big.”
“It’s too big for some folks,” he said. “Well, I must go.” He drew himself erect, and started toward the door; then he turned back. “Miss Rose—Miss Julie,” he said, “I want to tell you—I didn’t tell you the truth—I don’t have to tell you anything but what’s the truth. I opened that door and found you on purpose. Of courseI knew where it went. I was sitting there all alone after what she said. And then someway Ihadto see if you were laughin’ like all the rest. Now you know—I don’t have to tell you anything but what’s the truth.” He went then. And presently Julie heard the door at the top of the steps shut and locked, and the key withdrawn from the inside.
Not long afterward Elizabeth Bixby and Aunt Sadie returned, and presently upstairs Julie heard Elizabeth’s high voice taunting her husband. The walls were thin, and certain words came vividly down to her. “Oh, yes you would, too! You’d be just like him!”
“That woman’s a devil. She’s just a devil!” Julie whispered to herself.