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Ebook has 879 lines and 91984 words, and 18 pages

The port had prospered amazingly in those first days. After forty years and more it looked as if it were destined to be the metropolis of that part of the world. Then the first railroad came across country, and it left Sabinsport out. A smaller, poorer rival, some twenty-five miles away, secured the prize. Slowly but surely the trade that had so long put into Sabinsport changed its course to what only too soon they began to call the City. Fewer and fewer boats came up the river, fewer and fewer coaches and laden wagons came from the up-country. The town submitted with poor grace to its inevitable decline. To this day Dick found that the older families particularly were jealous of the city and resented its unconscious patronage. It had become the habit in Sabinsport to sneer at the city as vulgar, pushing and brutal, though these feelings did not prevent her from patronizing its shops and amusements.

This early disappointment had not by any means prevented the steady growth of the town. Coal had been discovered, adding a second layer of the rich to Sabinsport. The coal had brought the railroad and factories, but it was still those early settlers who had first come into the town and built the splendid old houses, with their spacious grounds, that considered themselves the aristocracy. It was an aristocracy a little insistent with newcomers on its superiority, a little scornful of its successors. It considered itself the backbone of Sabinsport, which was natural; and it was quite unconscious that the facts were every day disputing its pretensions.

Slowly and inevitably Sabinsport had been and was digesting successive waves of peoples. When the mines first opened there had been an incoming of Welsh. Only a few of them were left in the mines now. They had saved their money and had come into the town. Their children had learned trades, indeed there was a corner of the high land known as Welsh Hill; a place where one found reliable workmen of all sorts, and a place too which was famous for its music; indeed, Welsh Hill sent a famous chorus every year to the annual musical festival in the City. On Christmas morning they still promenaded the streets, waking people out of their sleep with their Christmas carols.

The Germans had come into the mines soon after the Welsh. They too had been thrifty--bought property. There were several of them that were counted among the best citizens; among them was a man, Rupert Littman, who once had milked his father's cows and raked his hay and now was president of one of the richest banks, a stockholder in every enterprise. They had been much more thoroughly absorbed into the social and business life than any other people, and much that was good in Sabinsport was due to them.

As the years had gone on, as more mines had been opened, and as mills had been built, a motley of people had come: Austrians, Serbs, Russians, Greeks, Italians, and now and then an Armenian. With all of these Dick felt himself very much at home. They seemed familiar to him, more familiar, he sometimes thought, than the smiling, busy, competent Americans of his church. There was a small group of Serbians at the mines with whom he had been especially intimate in the years of the Balkan War. More than one had left the mines to go back to Serbia to fight. They had been most exultant with the outcome of the war. The most intelligent of this group was Nikola Petrovitch, a thoughtful fellow of thirty-five or forty, an ardent Pan-Slavist. It was only because of an injury he had sustained in the mine at the time of the great disaster that he had not gone out in 1912. He had followed with Dick every step of the war, chafing bitterly that it was impossible for him to be in the fight. When at the end of June, 1914, the news of the murder of the Grand Duke had come, Nikola had been terribly cast down. "If our people did it," he said, "it was a mistake." Every line of news from that day he had discussed with Dick. He had believed from the first that Austria intended now to use all her power to crush Serbia; and "Germany will help her," he used to say. The practical acceptance of Austria's ultimatum had given Dick hope in the situation. It did not seem possible to him that any country, however autocratic and greedy, could push demand beyond the point which the Serbians had accepted.

Dick had other friends. There was the Greek, John A. Papalagos, as the sign on his flourishing fruit and vegetable store had it. People smiled at the time they knew that the Parson spent with the fruit seller. What they did not realize was that this man with his queer name was probably as well read as any man of the town, certainly far better read in European affairs than any of the leading citizens of Sabinsport. His ambition was a Greek republic, and every move on the European political checker-board he watched with excited and intelligent interest, calculating how it was going to deter or forward the one ardent passion of his life.

As a matter of fact it was only with Papalagos and the Serbians on the hill that Dick was able to carry on any really intelligent exchange of views on European politics. Ralph, who ought to have been, he felt, his comrade in these matters, had practically no interest in them. This indifference always puzzled and dismayed Dick. European politics, in Ralph's opinion, were as unrelated to the United States as the politics of Mars. One feature only he treated with interest, and that was Germany's social work. The forms of social insurance she had devised interested him keenly. He had regularly written enthusiastic editorials on the way she met the breaking down of men through age, illness, accident. Her handling of employment was one of his stock subjects. Germany was socially efficient in his mind, preserving men power, "as well as machines and hogs," as he put it in the phrase of his school. He pictured her as a land where every man and woman was well housed, continuously employed, cared for in sickness or in health, and that was all Ralph knew about Germany. When Dick, who had tramped the land from end to end, put in a protest and mentioned the army as the end of all this care of human beings, Ralph broke out in a violent defense of the military system. It was merely a way of training men physically and arousing in them social solidarity. A nation couldn't do what Germany did for men and women unless she loved them. It was what the United States needed.

Outside of these devices for meeting the breaking down of human beings, Ralph took no interest in Europe. His attitude through the Balkan War had baffled Dick by its perfunctoriness. He published the news as it came to him daily. He kept the maps on his walls, and now and then he wrote a few correct paragraphs, noting the change in situation. He was pleased that the power of Turkey was limited at the end, for he did have a hazy notion of the undesirableness of Turkey in Europe, but beyond this there was neither feeling nor understanding.

How, Dick asked himself, could a man of Ralph's ability spend four years in a first-class American college and two on a great newspaper and still be so completely cut off from the affairs of the globe outside of the United States? It was a fact, but Dick could not understand how it could be a fact. It gave him his first real sense of the newness of the country, its entire absorption in itself.

Ralph defended this indifference. "They're nothing to us," he declared. "We're too busy taking care of their scrap heaps. A million a year coming here to be reconstructed and Americanized, why should we bother about what Europe thinks or does? We're too busy. They can't touch us."

He tried hard, as he walked, to push away the depression which was overwhelming him. "Of course, they'll stop it," he told himself; "they have before. It is folly for me to let this thing get hold of me in this way."

It was twilight when he crossed the fields to the mining settlement and made for the house of his friend Nikola Petrovitch. In the dim light the little house looked very pleasant. Stana Petrovitch loved her garden, and the severe outlines of the company house were softened with blossoming honeysuckle, which filled the air with a faint perfume. It was very sweet to see, but before Dick was near enough to get more than a pleasant outline, from the house there came a burst of strong, fierce song--a dozen voices, eloquent with emotion. How well he knew it! The Serbian National Anthem:

"God of Justice! Thou Who saved us When in deepest bondage cast, Hear Thy Serbian children's voices, Be our help as in the past. With Thy mighty hand sustain us, Still our rugged pathway trace; God, our Hope! protect and cherish Serbian crown and Serbian race!

"On our sepulcher of ages Breaks the resurrection morn, From the slough of direst slavery Serbia anew is born. Through five hundred years of durance We have knelt before Thy face, All our kin, O God! deliver! Thus entreats the Serbian race. Amen."

"God help the women," he said to himself. Turning, he went around and to the street. It was the end of a shift, and the men who had come out had washed, eaten and now were smoking their pipes in groups at one or another door. The women were collected too. There was excitement in the air.

"Mr. Dick," some one called to him. "Is it true, the war?"

"I am afraid so," he said.

"And what are they jumping on poor little Serbia for, a big one like Austria? That's your kings for you."

It was one of his Irish friends speaking.

"But they'll fight, them Serbians; they're scrappers all right. Nikola is going in the morning. Marta too. It is good to live in a country where they don't have wars."

"Nikola's foolish to go," broke in some one. "I told his woman so, and she flared up and said, 'He no go, I go! Serbian men fight--not 'fraid.' I guess she's right. I don't see what she is going to do, five kids too."

Dick walked on. One of the foremen dropped out of the group that sat on the porch.

"May I speak with you, Mr. Dick?" he said. "A man came to-night, Serbian. He was here when Nikola and Marta came up, and went home with them. Nikola was just here. He told me Serbia was going to war, and that he and Marta and Yovan were leaving in the morning. What's the row? Is there a war?"

Dick told him all he knew. The foreman's brief comment was, "Must be some country that will take a man like Nikola out of a job like his--family too."

"It is," said Dick.

Back at home he called up Ralph. "Better be sure that some one is at the 10:30 to-morrow morning, Sam. Nikola is leaving. Marta and Yovan too."

"Leaving," said Ralph. "Why, they're the best men in the 'Emma.' You don't mean they're fools enough to rush out without knowing whether there's going to be a war. It will be over before they get there. Stop 'em, Dick. It is nonsense."

"There'll be a war when they get there, all right, Ralph, and no man could hold Nikola now. Make a note of their going, won't you?"

"Sure, if you want it."

"Nikola Petrovitch, Yovan Markovitch, and Marta Popovitch, all of the 'Emma' mine, left at 10:30 this morning for New York. They expect to sail at once for Serbia, where they will join the army which has been called into the field by Austria's declaration of war. Hope to see you back soon, boys."

And thus it was that the Great War first came to Sabinsport.

A ripple of interest ran over a few quarters of Sabinsport when it read of the sudden departure of three Serbian miners. At the banks, and in the offices of the mills and factories, men sniffed or swore, "Doesn't a man know when he is well off? I don't understand how a steady fellow like Nikola Petrovitch can do such a crazy thing. Who is going to take care of his family?" This was the usual business view.

A few members of the Ladies' Aid of Dick's church grumbled to him. "We will have that family on our hands again. Couldn't you stop him?"

It was momentary interest only. Austria's declaration of war had not entered their minds. Dick felt that if he had asked some of the members of his congregation who had declared war, they might have said, "Serbia." The repeated shocks of the news of the next few days battered down indifference. Each night and each morning there fell into the community facts--terrible, unbelievable--stunning and horrifying it. Germany had invaded Belgium. She was battering down Li?ge. Why, what did it mean? England had declared war on Germany. She was calling out an army, but what for? And we--we were to be neutral, of course. We had nothing to do with it.

She was an example, so High Town said, of what a girl could make of herself, though as a matter of fact better backing than Patsy had for her achievement it would be hard to find. Her father and mother were of the reliable Scotch stock which had come a hundred years before to the country near Sabinsport. Here Patsy's grandfather had settled and prospered. Here her father had been born and here he still carried on the original McCullon farm. He had married a "native" like himself, and like himself well-to-do. They had worked hard and they had to show for their efforts as comfortable and attractive a place as the district boasted--not a "show farm," like Ralph Cowder's, but clean, generous acres--many of them--substantial buildings always shining with fresh paint, herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, gardens, vines, orchards.

The McCullons had one child, Patsy. You'd go far to find anything firmer on its feet than Patsy McCullon, anything that knew better its own mind or went more promptly and directly after the thing it wanted. Patsy was twenty-four. Since the hour she was born, she had been her own mistress. When she was ten she had elected to go into town to school. When she was sixteen she had graduated, and the next year she had gone to college. Her father and mother had put in a feeble protest. They needed her. She was an only child. They had "enough." Why not settle down? But Patsy said firmly, No. She was going to "prepare to do something." When they asked her what, she said quite frankly she didn't know. She'd see. She knew the first thing was education and she meant to have it. She'd teach and pay back if they said so, but Father McCullon hastened to say that it "wasn't necessary." He guessed she could have what she wanted. And so Patsy had gone East to college. She had graduated with honor two years before the war and had come back to Sabinsport to take a position in the high school.

If Patsy had been able to analyze the motives back of her career to date she would have found the dominating one to have been a determination to make Sabinsport--select, rich, satisfied Sabinsport--take her in. She had been, as a little girl, conscious that these handsome, well-dressed, citified people, whose origin was in no case better and often not so good as her own--Father McCullon took care that Patsy knew the worst of the forebears of those in town who held their heads so high--regarded her as a little country girl, something intangibly different and inferior to themselves. When they stopped at the farm, as they so often did in pleasant weather to eat strawberries in summer and apples in the fall, to drink buttermilk and gather "country posies," as they called them, she had been vaguely offended by their ways.

When she insisted at ten upon going into town to school, it was with an unconscious resolve to find out what made them "different"--what secret had they for making her father and mother so proud of their visits, and why didn't her father and mother drop in as they did? She suggested it once when they were in town, and had been told, "No, you can't do that. We've not been asked."

"But they come to visit you without being asked."

"But that's different. We are country people. Visitors are always welcome in the country. City people don't expect you to come without invitation."

This offended her. She would find out about it. But it continued to baffle her.

She stood high in school. She quickly learned how to dress and do her hair as well as the best of them. She read books, she shone in every school exhibition, but she continued a girl from the country. Evidently she must do more than come to them; she must bring them something. She'd see what college would do.

College did wonders for Patsy. She came to it full of health and zest, excellently prepared; good, oh very good, to look at; sufficiently supplied with money, and, greatest of all, determined to get everything going. "Nothing gets away from Patsy McCullon," the envious sometimes said. It didn't, nothing tried to: she was too useful, too agreeable, too resourceful. It didn't matter whether it was a Greek or a tennis score, Patsy went after it, and oftener than not carried it away. Probably if there had been annual voting for the most popular girl in her class, there would never have been a year she wouldn't have won. She had friends galore. All her short vacations she went on visits--the homes of distinguished people, it would have been noted, if anybody had been keeping tab on her. And Sabinsport always knew it.

And when college was done with and High Town was prepared to welcome Patsy into its innermost, idlest set, she had taken its breath away and distressed her father and mother by asking for and getting a position in the high school.

Her reasons for this surprising action were many. She could not and would not ask more from her parents. They had been generous, too generous, and she'd taken freely. It wasn't fair, unless she went back to the farm and she wouldn't do that. She could be near them if not with them, and still be where she could conquer High Town.

But Patsy soon learned--indeed she was pretty sure of it before she put her ambition to test--that the thing she had set out to win so long ago wasn't the thing she wanted. She found herself free to come and go wherever she would in Sabinsport, but it was no longer an interest. College had done something to Patsy--set her on a chase after what she called the "real." She didn't know what it was, but she did know it was something to be worked for--which is perhaps more than most of the seekers of reality ever discover.

She was going to achieve the "real" and she was never going to be a snob. She wasn't ever going to make anybody feel as those people in Sabinsport, with their suburban, metropolitan airs, had made her feel. She was going to treat everybody fair, for, as she sagely told herself, "You can never tell what anybody may do--look at me!" Which of course proves that Patsy was not free from calculation. Indeed, she steered her course solely by calculation, but it was calculation without malice, incapable of a meanness, a lie or a real unkindness.

"She's out after what she wants," a brother of one of her college friends had said once, "but you can be darn sure she'll never double cross you in getting it: she's white all through." She was, but she was also hard; a kind, clean, just sort of hardness--of which she was entirely unconscious.

Patsy's two years in the high school had won her the town solidly. And when in June, 1914, she went abroad everybody had been interested. It was her first trip and she had prepared for it thoroughly, drawing particularly on Dick's stores of experience.

Ralph, who was feeling very wroth at her that spring because of her indifference to his reform plans, sniffed at this. "I don't see why you give Patsy so much time over this trip of hers. It will only make her more unendurable, more cocksure, more blind to things about her. I like a woman that sees."

"Sees what?" asked Dick.

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