Defenders of Democracy Part 34

"My land! How exciting! It must be wonderful working in a place like that."

Myrt yawned, and stretched her round young arms high above her head.

"I don't see anything exciting about it. Of course it isn't as bad as your job, sitting there all day, sewing and mending. It isn't even as if you were sewing on new stuff, like a dressmaker, and really making something out of it. I should think you'd go crazy, it's so uninteresting."

Martha turned to the window, so that her face was hidden from Myrt.

"Oh, I don't know. Darning socks isn't so bad. Depends on what you see in 'em."

"See in 'em!" echoed Miss Myrtle Halperin. "See! Well for the love of heaven what can you see in mending socks, besides holes!"

Martha didn't answer. Myrt, finding things dull, took herself off, languidly. At the door she turned and looked back on the stiff little figure seated in the window with its face to the gray twilight.

"What's become of your friend What's-his-name that you used to darn socks for at home? Grant, wasn't it? Eddie Grant?"

"That was it," answered Martha. "He's married. He and his wife, they've got to visit Eddie's folks back home, on their wedding trip.

I miss him something terrible. He was just like a son to me."

[signed] Edna Ferber

Those Who Went First

A distant bugle summoned them by day, A far flame beckoned them across the night.

They rose--they flung accustomed things away,-- The habit of old days and new delight.

They heard--they saw--they turned them over-seas,-- Oh, Land of ours, rejoice in such as these!

This was no call that sounded at their door, No wild torch flaming in their window s.p.a.ce,-- yet the quick answer went from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, The swift feet hastened to the trysting place, Laughing, they turned to death from peace and ease,-- Oh, Land of ours, be proud of such as these!

High hearts--great hearts--whose valor strikes for us Out of the awful Dissonance of war This perfect note,--in you the chivalrous YOUNG SEEKERS OF THE GRAIL RE-LIVE ONCE MORE,-- Acclaimed of men, or fallen where none sees, Oh, Land of ours, be glad of such as these!

[signed]Theodosia Garrison

A Summer's Day

Once I wrote a story of a woman's day in Paris, a Perfect Day. It had to do with the buying of all the lovely trappings that are the entrappings of the animal which Mr. Shaw believes woman endlessly pursues. One of the animals was in the story, and there was food and moonlight, music and adventure.

I never sold that marvelous tale. For years it has peeked out at me from a certain pigeon hole in my desk with the anguish of a prisoner in the Black Hole of Calcutta, and with as little hope for its liberation into the glad air of a free press. Yet it is with me now in Paris. In that last distracted moment of packing, when all sense of what is needed has left one, it was thrust into a glove case like contraband cigarettes. There may have been some idea of remolding it with a few deceiving touches--make a soldier of the hero probably--but with the "love interest" firmly remaining.

There was only one Perfect Day to a woman, I thought.

That was some weeks ago. I am now writing on the back of that romance for lack of paper, writing of another day, wondering as I work if the present day's adventures will have any quality that might hold the reader's eye. I dare not ask for the reader's heart when love does not stalk through the pages.

Paris is now an entrenched camp but one is not awakened by bugles, and the beat of drums is unheard as the troops march through the city. It was the regular "blump-blump" of military boots past my window which possibly aroused me into activity, although the companies crossing from station to cantonment no longer turn the head of the small boy as he rolls his hoop along the Champs elysees.

This troubles me, and I always go to the curb to watch them when I am in the street.

There was an instant's hesitation before I pulled up the refractory Venetian blind--the right rope so eager to rise, the left so indifferent to its improvement--an instant's dread. I was afraid "they" would be hopping about even this early in the morning, hopping, hopping--the jerking gait of the mutilated--the little broken waves of a sea of "horizon blue." But they must have been just getting their faces washed at the Salon, where once we went to see pictures and now find compositions more dire than the newest schools of painting.

On the other side the stretch of chestnuts, the taxicabs, returned to their original mission, were already weaving about in their effort to exterminate each other. Battling at the Marne had been but a slight deviation in their mode of procedure, yet when a cab recently ran down and killed a bewildered soldier impeded by a crutch strange to him, Paris raised its voice in a new cry of rage.

Beyond the Champs elysees, far beyond, rose the Eiffel tower.

Capable, immune so far from the attacks of the enemy, its very outlines seem to have taken on a great importance. Once the giant toy of a people who frolicked, it now serves in its swift mission as the emblem of a race more gigantic than we had conceived.

It is not a relieving thought to such of us as still can play, that spirit, whether in the bosom of the boulevardier or his country cousin playing bowls in the cool of the evening, is the same that projects itself brilliantly across the battlefield; that the flash of a woman's eye as she invites a conquest is the flame upon the alter when sacrifice is needed; that the very gaiety which makes one laugh is a force to endure the deepest pits that have been dug for mankind. Even as I continually struggle with a lump in my throat which I often think should remain with me forever, I dare claim that of all the necessitous qualities in life the spirit of play must be the last to leave a race. Its translation to the gravities of living needs no bellows for the coaxing of the fire.

It is ever burning upon the hearth of the happy heart.

The gilded statuary of the bridge of Alexander III, like flaming beacons in the sun's rays, waved us out and on to the Invalides to see the weekly awarding of medals. It is presumably the gay event of the week as the band plays, and there is some color in the throngs who surge along the colonnades to look into the court of honor.

A portion of the great s.p.a.ce is now accommodating huge shattered cannon and air craft of the enemy, their ma.s.siveness suggesting, as the little glittering medals are pinned upon the soldiers' b.r.e.a.s.t.s, that it is not so easy to be a hero and go a-capturing.

By the judicious wavings of famous autographs we were permitted the upper balcony to sketch the heroic ones within the hollow square formed by soldiers and marines. Directly beneath us stood the band with the bra.s.sard of the red cross on their arms, for they are still the stretcher bearers at the front. In the center of the square was a little group of men, seventy perhaps but the s.p.a.ce was vast. Some were standing, some seated with stiff stumps of legs sticking out queerly. Here and there a nurse stood by a blind man, and there were white oblong gaps in the line which designated the beds of the paralyzed.

I had set my teeth and said that I must stand it when across the courtyard like a liquid stream of some spilled black portion came the mothers and the wives, who were to wear the ribbon their soldiers had earned in exchange for their lives. Or should there be little sons or daughters they received this wondrous emblem of their fathers'

sacrifice. We could see the concerted white lift of handkerchiefs to the eyes of the black line of women as the general bestowed the honors. But the little children were tranquil.

With the beginning of the distribution the band, for which I had longed that it might give a glow to the war, swung into a blare of triumph. It was the first note of music we had heard in France.

And as we all expressed our emotion with abandonment throughout the enlivening strains of "The Was.h.i.+ngton Post," I appreciated the infinite wisdom of marching drumless through the streets--of the divine lack of the bugles' song. For music, no matter its theme, makes happy only those who are already happy. To those who suffer it urges an unloosening of their grief--and grief must not go abroad in France.

There was an end to the drama. The guard of honor marched through the porte, banners flying. It was a happy ending, I suppose, though one might not think so by the triumphal chariots that entered the court to bear away the heroes--chariots with that red emblem emblazoned upon a white disc which would have mystified an early Caesar. But my thoughts were not entirely with the chief actors in the play, rather with the squad of soldiers who had surrounded them, the supers who would have enjoyed medals, too, and upon whom opportunity had not smiled; whose epic of brave deeds may never be read, and who, by chance, may go legless yet ribbonless up the Champs elysees.

"They" were hopping up the Avenue when we crossed it again, yet we all went on about our daily tasks as one pa.s.ses the blind man on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Thirty-third Street. He may receive a penny, a tw.a.n.g of the heart strings, but he must be pa.s.sed to go into the shop. My list was in my purse bearing but a faint resemblance to the demands of other years. I thought as I took it out what confusion of mind would have been my portion had I found it in my purse three summers ago, in what state of madness could any one prepare for a day in Paris such a program as: "Gloves, Hospital 232, furs, workshop for blind, sh.e.l.l combs, see my baby at Orphelinat, hair nets, cigarettes to my soldier, try on gowns, funeral of Am. airman," and on and on through each day's great accomplishment to the long quiet night.

Yet to buy freely and even frivolously in France need hara.s.s nothing more soulful than a letter of credit, and it was with less of guilt than of fear that I entered the courtyard of my furrier. I turned the b.u.t.ton ever so gently with the same dread in my heart that I had suffered in going back to all of my shop keepers of previous summers. Would he still be there? Two years is a long time, and he was a young man. But he was there, wounded in the chest but at work in the expectation of being recalled. He did not want to go back, but of course if he was needed--

And I must lay stress on the magnificence of this hope that he might not have to return to the trenches. I have found many who do not want to go back. Fierce partisans of French courage deny this, reading in my contention a lack of bravery, but to me it is valor of a glorious color. For they do return without resentment, and, what is more difficult in this day of monumental deeds and minute bickerings, without criticism.

Like most of the men who came out of the trenches he had very little to say about them. It amused him to hear that my new fur coat purchased in America is of so fleeting a dye that I must dart into the subway whenever the sun s.h.i.+nes. He was laughing quietly as he wished me a cloudy winter upon my descending the broad stone steps into the empty, echoing courtyard. The unexpected appreciation of my doubtful humor set me musing over the possibility of a duty new to Americans. It is the French who have stood for gaiety. We have warmed ourselves in their quick wit. Perhaps it is time for us to do our little clownish best to set them laughing.

Having made the resolve I failed meanly to put it into execution.

I knew I was going to fail as the motor stopped before the great house in the rue Daru--the lordly house of exquisitely tinted walls although the colors are not seen by those who dwell within. There is a paved COUR beyond the high wall with great steps leading up to the hotel. At the right are the stables, where delicate fabrics are woven--the workmen with heads erect; where are special looms for those who, by the sad demands of this war, are denied hands as well as their two eyes. At the left is another building and here the men play in a gymnasium, even fence with confidence. In an anteroom is a curious lay figure that the most sensitive of the students may learn ma.s.sage--it is the blind in j.a.pan who give their understanding fingers to this work--and in the rooms above is a printing press, silent for lack of funds, but ready to give a paper of his own to the sightless. Only, at "The Light House" they will not accept that a single one of their guests is without vision.

"Ah GUARDIENNE," cried one of the students to the American woman who has established our Light House methods over there, "you do not see the unevenness of this fabric for your eyes are in your way."

I was standing in the room where the plan of the house is set upon a table. It is the soldier's first lesson that he may know the turns and steps, and run about without the pitiful outstretching of arms. There were other callers upon the GUARDIENNE. A blind graduate who had learned to live (which means to work) had returned with his little old father, and both were telling her that he had enough orders for his sweaters from the "Trois Quartiers" to keep him occupied for two years. The family felt that he was established--so there was nothing more to fear. And then because we were all happy over it the old man and the woman and myself began to cry noiselessly.

Only the blind boy remained smiling through the choking silence.

I went to the window and glared down into the gardens where other soldiers were studying at little tables with a professor for each, and I asked myself why, in this great exigency, I was not being funny and paying my debt to France. But there was nothing to be funny about. The thing that dried my tears was the recollection of the blind asylum of my youth, where the "inmates" never learned to walk without groping, where we were shown hideous bead furniture, too small for dolls, which was the result of their eager but misspent lives.

There was a gown to be ordered before noon and as I drove back through the Faubourg St. Honore I found myself looking fondly, thirstily into the shop windows, lifting my free eyes to the charming vagaries of old buildings, and again I made a vow although it had nothing to do with humor. On my dressing table rests a cus.h.i.+on of brocade and I shall carry it about as one who may yield to temptation carries a pledge, for the card which is attached chants out to me whenever my eyes rest upon it: "Soldat Pierre. Aveugle de la guerre. Blesse a Verdun." And as long as Soldier Pierre. Blind from the war. Wounded at Verdun can go on weaving his fabrics I pray that I may carry whatever burden may be mine with the unrebellious spirit.

Ah well! The robe took its place in the curriculum of my new Parisian day. It was to be a replica in color of that worn by the head of the house--her one of mourning was so bravely smart--for the business must go on and only the black badge of glory in fas.h.i.+onable form show itself in the gay salon. "Yes, we must go on," she said, "though every wife may give her mate. It is of an enormity to realize before one dies that he can be done without--that there are enough little ones to keep France alive and we women in the meantime can care for the country. Our men may die glad in that thought, but I think there must be a little of grief, too.