The Major Part 59

"Oh, do tell us," said Ethel. But Kellerman looked at Jane.

"If you care to tell, Mr. Kellerman," she said.

The little Jew stood silent a few minutes, leaning upon his rifle and looking down upon the ground. Then in a low, soft voice he began: "I was born in Poland--German Poland. The first thing I remember is seeing my mother kneeling, weeping and wringing her hands beside my father's dead body outside the door of our little house in our village. He was a student, a scholar, and a patriot." Kellerman's voice took on a deeper and firmer tone. "He stood for the Polish language in the schools. There was a riot in our village. A German officer struck my father down and killed him on the ground. My mother wiped the blood off his white face--I can see that white face now--with her ap.r.o.n. She kept that ap.r.o.n; she has it yet. We got somehow to London soon after that. The English people were good to us. The German people are tyrants. They have no use for free peoples." The little Jew's words snapped through his teeth. "When war came a week ago I could not sleep for two nights. On Friday I joined the Ninetieth. That night I slept ten hours." As he finished his story the lad stood staring straight before him into the moving crowd. He had forgotten the girls who with horror-stricken faces had been listening to him. He was still seeing that white face smeared with blood.

"And your mother?" said Jane gently as she laid her hand upon his arm.

The boy started. "My mother? Oh, my mother, she went with me to the recruiting office and saw me take the oath. She is satisfied now."

For some moments the girls stood silent, unable to find their voices.

Then Jane said, her eyes glowing with a deep inner light, "Mr.

Kellerman, I am proud of you."

"Thank you, Miss Brown; it does me good to hear you say that. But you have always been good to me."

"And I want you to come and see me before you go," said Jane as she gave him her hand. "Now will you take us out through the crowd? We must get along."

"Certainly, Miss Brown. Just come with me." With a fine, soldierly tread the young Jew led them through the crowd and put them on their way. He did not shake hands with them as he said good-bye, but gave them instead a military salute, of which he was apparently distinctly proud.

"Tell me, Jane," said Ethel, as they set off down the street, "am I awake? Is that little Kellerman, the greasy little Jew whom we used to think such a beast?"

"Isn't he splendid?" said Jane. "Poor little Kellerman! You know, Ethel, he had not one girl friend in college? I am sorry now we were not better to him."

The streets were full of people walking hurriedly or gathered here and there in groups, all with grave, solemn faces. In front of The Times office a huge concourse stood before the bulletin boards reading the latest despatches. These were ominous enough: "The Germans Still Battering Liege Forts--Kaiser's Army Nearing Brussels--Four Millions of Men Marching on France--Russia Hastening Her Mobilisation--Kitchener Calls for One Hundred Thousand Men--Canada Will Send Expeditionary Force of Twenty-five Thousand Men--Camp at Valcartier Nearly Ready--Parliament a.s.sembles Thursday." Men read the bulletins and talked quietly to each other. They had not yet reached clearness in their thinking as to how this dread thing had fallen upon their country so far from the storm centre, so remote in all vital relations. There was no cheering--the cheering days came later--no ebullient emotion, but the tightening of lip and jaw in their stern, set faces was a sufficient index of the tensity of feeling. Canadians were thinking things out, thinking keenly and swiftly, for in the atmosphere and actuality of war mental processes are carried on at high pressure.

As the girls stood at the corner of Portage Avenue and Main waiting for a crossing, an auto held up in the traffic drew close to their side.

"h.e.l.lo, Ethel! Won't you get in?" said a voice at their ear.

"h.e.l.lo, Lloyd! h.e.l.lo, Helen!" cried Ethel. "We will, most certainly. Are you joying, or what?"

"Both," said Lloyd Rushbrooke, who was at the wheel. "Helen wanted to see the soldiers. She is interested in the Ninetieth but he wasn't there and I am just taking her about."

"We saw the Ninetieth and the Kilties too," said Ethel. "Oh, they are fine! Oh, Helen, whom do you think we saw in the Ninetieth? You will never guess--Heinrich Kellerman."

"Good Lord! That greasy little Sheeney?" exclaimed Rushbrooke.

"Look out, Lloyd. He's Jane's friend," said Ethel.

Lloyd laughed uproariously at the joke. "And you say the little Yid was in the Ninetieth? Well, what is the Ninetieth coming to?"

"Lloyd, you mustn't say a word against Mr. Kellerman," said Jane. "I think he is a real man."

"Oh, come, Jane. That little Hebrew Shyster? Why, he does not wash more than once a year!"

"I don't care if he never washes at all. I won't have you speak of him that way," said Jane. "I mean it. He is a friend of mine."

"And of mine, too," said Ethel, "since to-night. Why, he gave me thrills up in the armoury as he told us why he joined up."

"One ten per, eh?" said Lloyd.

"Shall I tell him?" said Ethel.

"No, you will not," said Jane decidedly. "Lloyd would not understand."

"Oh, I say, Jane, don't spike a fellow like that. I am just joking."

"I won't have you joke in that way about Mr. Kellerman, at least, not to me." Few of her college mates had ever seen Jane angry. They all considered her the personification of even-tempered serenity.

"If you take it that way, of course I apologise," said Lloyd.

"Now listen to me, Lloyd," said Jane. "I am going to tell you why he joined up." And in tones thrilling with the intensity of her emotion and finally breaking, she recounted Kellerman's story. "And that is why he is going to the war, and I am proud of him," she added.

"Splendid!" cried Helen Brookes. "You are in the Ninetieth, too, Lloyd, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Lloyd. "At least, I was. I have not gone much lately. I have not had time for the military stuff, so I canned it."

"And we saw Pat Scallons and Ted Tuttle in the Ninetieth, too, and Ramsay Dunn--oh, he did look fine in his uniform--and Frank Smart--he is going if he can," said Ethel. "I wonder what his mother will do. He is the only son, you know."

"Well, if you ask me, I think that is rot. It is not right for Smart.

There are lots of fellows who can go," said Lloyd in quite an angry tone. "Why, they say they have nearly got the twenty-five thousand already."

"My, I would like to be in the first twenty-five thousand if I were a man," said Ethel. "There is something fine in that. Wouldn't you, Jane?"

"I am not a man," said Jane shortly.

"Why the first twenty-five thousand?" said Lloyd. "Oh, that is just sentimental rot. If a man was really needed, he would go; but if not, why should he? There's no use getting rattled over this thing. Besides, somebody's got to keep things going here. I think that is a fine British motto that they have adopted in England, 'Business as usual.'"

"'Business as usual!'" exclaimed Jane in a tone of unutterable contempt.

"I think I must be going home, Lloyd," she added. "Can you take me?"

"What's the rush, Jane? It is early yet. Let's take a turn out to the Park."

But Jane insisted on going home. Never before in all her life had she found herself in a mood in which she could with difficulty control her speech. She could not understand how it was that Lloyd Rushbrooke, whom she had always greatly liked, should have become at once distasteful to her. She could hardly bear the look upon his handsome face. His clever, quick-witted fun, which she had formerly enjoyed, now grated horribly.

Of all the college boys in her particular set, none was more popular, none better liked, than Lloyd Rushbrooke. Now she was mainly conscious of a desire to escape from his company. This feeling distressed her. She wanted to be alone that she might think it out. That was Jane's way. She always knew her own mind, could always account for her emotions, because she was intellectually honest and had sufficient fort.i.tude to look facts in the face. At the door she did not ask even her friend, Ethel, to come in with her. Nor did she make excuse for omitting this courtesy. That, too, was Jane's way. She was honest with her friends as with herself.

She employed none of the little fibbing subterfuges which polite manners approve and which are employed to escape awkward situations, but which, of course, deceive no one. She was simple, sincere, direct in her mental and moral processes, and possessed a courage of the finest quality.

Under ordinary circ.u.mstances she would have cleared up her thinking and worked her soul through the mist and stress of the rough weather by talking it over with her father or by writing a letter to Larry. But during the days of the past terrible week she had discovered that her father, too, was tempest-tossed to an even greater degree than she was herself; and somehow she had no heart to write to Larry. Indeed, she knew not what to say. Her whole world was in confusion.

And in Winnipeg there were many like her. In every home, while faces carried bold fronts, there was heart searching of the ultimate depths and there was purging of souls. In every office, in every shop, men went about their work resolute to keep minds sane, faces calm, and voices steady, but haunted by a secret something which they refused to call fear--which was not fear--but which as yet they were unwilling to acknowledge and which they were unable to name. With every bulletin from across the sea the uncertainty deepened. Every hour they waited for news of a great victory for the fleet. The second day of the war a rumour of such a victory had come across the wires and had raised hopes for a day which next day were dashed to despair. One ray of light, thin but marvellously bright, came from Belgium. For these six breathless days that gallant little people had barred the way against the onrus.h.i.+ng mult.i.tudes of Germany's military hosts. The story of the defence of Liege was to the Allies like a big drink of wine to a fainting man. But Belgium could not last. And what of France? What France would do no man could say. It was exceedingly doubtful whether there was in the French soul that enduring quality, whether in the army or in the nation, that would be steadfast in the face of disaster. The British navy was fit, thank G.o.d! But as to the army, months must elapse before a British army of any size could be on the fighting line.

Another agonising week pa.s.sed and still there was no sure word of hope from the Front. In Canada one strong, heartening note had been sounded.

The Canadian Parliament had met and with splendid unhesitating unanimity had approved all the steps the Government had taken, had voted large sums for the prosecution of the war, and had pledged Canada to the Empire to the limit of her power. That fearless challenge flung out into the cloud wrapped field of war was like a clear bugle call in the night. It rallied and steadied the young nation, touched her pride, and breathed serene resolve into the Canadian heart. Canadians of all cla.s.ses drew a long, deep breath of relief as they heard of the action of their Parliament. Doubts, uncertainties vanished like morning mists blown by the prairie breeze. They knew not as yet the magnitude of the task that lay before them, but they knew that whatever it might be, they would not go back from it.

At the end of the second week the last fort in Liege had fallen; Brussels, too, was gone; Antwerp threatened. Belgium was lost. From Belgian villages and towns were beginning to come those tales of unbelievable atrocities that were to shock the world into horrified amazement. These tales read in the Canadian papers clutched men's throats and gripped men's hearts as with cruel fingers of steel.

Canadians were beginning to see red. The blood of Belgium's murdered victims was indeed to prove throughout Canada and throughout the world the seed of mighty armies.

At the end of the second week Jane could refrain no longer. She wrote to Larry.