The 42nd Parallel (45 page)

After the band had gone and traffic was running again they put the window down and Miss Williams went around picking up and arranging loose papers. J.W. had a telegram from Washington accepting his services on the Public Information Committee that Mr. Wilson was gathering about him and said he’d leave in the morning. He called up Great Neck and asked Gertrude if he could come out to dinner and bring a friend. Gertrude said he might and that she hoped she’d be able to stay up to see them. She was excited by the warnews but she said the thought of all that misery and slaughter gave her horrible pains in the back of the head.

“I have a hunch that if I take you out to dinner at Gertrude’s everything will be all right,” he said to Eleanor. “I’m rarely wrong in my hunches.”

“Oh, I know she’ll understand,” said Eleanor.

As they were leaving the office they met Mr. Robbins in the hall. He didn’t take his hat off or the cigar out of his mouth. He looked drunk. “What the hell is this, Ward?” he said. “Are we at war or not?”

“If we’re not we will be before morning,” said J.W.

“It’s the goddamnedest treason in history,” said Mr. Robbins. “What did we elect Wilson for instead of Old Fuzzywhiskers except to keep us out of the goddam mess?”

“Robbins, I don’t agree with you for a minute,” said J.W. “I think it’s our duty to save . . .” But Mr. Robbins had disappeared through the office door leaving a strong reek of whisky behind him. “I’d have given him a piece of my mind,” said Eleanor, “if I hadn’t seen that he was in no condition.”

Driving out to Great Neck in the Pierce Arrow it was thrilling. A long red afterglow lingered in the sky. Crossing the Queensboro Bridge with the cold wind back of them was like flying above lights and blocks of houses and the purple bulk of Blackwell’s Island and the steamboats and the tall chimneys and the blue light of powerplants. They talked of Edith Cavell and airraids and flags and searchlights and the rumble of armies advancing and Joan of Arc. Eleanor drew the fur robe up to her chin and thought about what she’d say to Gertrude Moorehouse.

When they got to the house she felt a little afraid of a scene. She stopped in the hall to do up her face with a pocketmirror she had in her bag.

Gertrude Moorehouse was sitting in a long chair beside a crackling fire. Eleanor glanced around the room and was pleased at how lovely it looked. Gertrude Moorehouse went very pale when she saw her. “I wanted to talk to you,” said Eleanor. Gertrude Moorehouse held out her hand without getting up. “Excuse me for not getting up, Miss Stoddard,” she said, “but I’m absolutely prostrated by the terrible news.”

“Civilization demands a sacrifice . . . from all of us,” said Eleanor.

“Of course it is terrible what the Huns have done, cutting the hands off Belgian children and all that,” said Gertrude Moorehouse.

“Mrs. Moorehouse,” said Eleanor. “I want to speak to you about this unfortunate misunderstanding of my relations with your husband . . . Do you think I am the sort of woman who could come out here and face you if there was anything in these horrible rumors? Our relations are pure as driven snow.”

“Please don’t speak of it, Miss Stoddard. I believe you.”

When J.W. came in they were sitting on either side of the fire talking about Gertrude’s operation. Eleanor got to her feet. “Oh, I think it’s wonderful of you, J.W.”

J.W. cleared his throat and looked from one to the other.

“It’s little less than my duty,” he said.

“What is it?” asked Gertrude.

“I have offered my services to the government to serve in whatever capacity they see fit for the duration of the war.” “Not at the front,” said Gertrude with a startled look.

“I’m leaving for Washington tomorrow . . . Of course I shall serve without pay.”

“Ward, that’s noble of you,” said Gertrude. He walked over slowly until he stood beside her chair, then he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “We must all make our sacrifices . . . My dear, I shall trust you and your mother . . .”

“Of course, Ward, of course . . . It’s all been a silly misunderstanding.” Gertrude flushed red. She got to her feet. “I’ve been a damn suspicious fool . . . but you mustn’t go to the front, Ward. I’ll talk mother around” . . . She went up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. Eleanor stood back against the wall looking at them. He wore a smoothfitting tuxedo. Gertrude’s salmoncolored teagown stood out against the black. His light hair was ashgray in the light from the crystal chandelier against the tall ivorygray walls of the room. His face was in shadow and looked very sad. Eleanor thought how little people understood a man like that, how beautiful the room was, like a play, like a Whistler, like Sarah Bernhardt. Emotion misted her eyes.

“I’ll join the Red Cross,” she said. “I can’t wait to get to France.”

U. S. AT WAR

UPHOLD NATION CITY’S CRY

Over there

        
Over there

at the annual meeting of the stockholders of the Colt Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company a $2,500,000 melon was cut. The present capital stock was increased. The profits for the year were 259 per cent

JOYFUL SURPRISE OF BRITISH

The Yanks are coming

        
We’re coming o-o-o-ver

PLAN LEGISLATION TO KEEP COLORED PEOPLE
FROM WHITE AREAS

many millions paid for golf about Chicago Hindu agitators in nationwide scare Armour Urges U.S. Save Earth From Famine

ABUSING FLAG TO BE PUNISHED

Labor deputies peril to Russia acts have earmarks of dishonorable peace London hears

BILLIONS FOR ALLIES

And we won’t come home

        
Till it’s over over there.

there were priests and nuns on the
Espagne
     the Atlantic was glassgreen and stormy      covers were clamped on the portholes and all the decklights were screened and you couldn’t light a match on deck

but the stewards were very brave and said the Boche wouldn’t sink a boat of the Compagnie Generale anyway, because of the priests and nuns and the Jesuits and the Comité des Forges promising not to bombard the Bassin de la Brieye where the big smelters were and stock in the company being owned by the Prince de Bourbon and the Jesuits and the priests and nuns

anyhow everybody was very brave except for Colonel and Mrs. Knowlton of the American Red Cross who had waterproof coldproof submarineproof suits like eskimosuits and they wore them and they sat up on deck with the suits all blown up and only their faces showing and there were firstaid kits in the pockets and in the belt there was a waterproof container with milkchocolate and crackers and maltedmilk tablets

and in the morning you’d walk round the deck and there would be Mr. Knowlton blowing up Mrs. Knowlton

or Mrs. Knowlton blowing up Mr. Knowlton

the Roosevelt boys were very brave in stiff visored new American army caps and sharpshooter medals on the khaki whipcord and they talked all day about We must come in We must come in

as if the war were a swimming pool

and the barman was brave and the stewards were brave they’d all been wounded and they were very glad that they were stewards and not in the trenches

and the pastry was magnificent

at last it was the zone and a zigzag course we sat quiet in the bar and then it was the mouth of the Gironde and a French torpedoboat circling round the ship in the early pearl soft morning and the steamers following the little patrolboat on account of the minefields      the sun was rising red over the ruddy winegrowing land and the Gironde was full of freighters and airplanes in the sun and battleships

the Garonne was red      it was autumn there were barrels of new wine and shellcases along the quays in front of the grayfaced houses and the masts of stocky sailboats packed in against the great red iron bridge

at the Hotel of the Seven Sisters everybody was in mourning but business was brisk on account of the war and every minute they expected the government to come down from Paris

up north they were dying in the mud and the trenches but business was good in Bordeaux and the winegrowers and the shipping agents and the munitionsmakers crowded into the Chapon Fin and ate ortolans and mushrooms and truffles and there was a big sign

MEFIEZ-VOUS

les oreilles enemies vous écoutent

red wine twilight and yellowgravelled squares edged with wine-barrels and a smell of chocolate in the park gray statues and the names of streets

Street of Lost Hopes, Street of the Spirit of the Laws, Street of Forgotten Footsteps

and the smell of burning leaves and the grayfaced Bourbon houses crumbling into red wine twilight

at the Hotel of the Seven Sisters after you were in bed late at night you suddenly woke up and there was a secretserviceagent going through your bag

and he frowned over your passport and peeped in your books and said Monsieur c’est la petite visite

La Follette was born in the town limits of Primrose; he worked on a farm in Dane County, Wisconsin, until he was nineteen.

At the university of Wisconsin he worked his way through. He wanted to be an actor, studied elocution and Robert Ingersoll and Shakespeare and Burke;

(who will ever explain the influence of Shakespeare in the last century, Marc Antony over Caesar’s bier, Othello to the Venetian Senate and Polonius, everywhere Polonius?)

riding home in a buggy after commencement he was Booth and Wilkes writing the Junius papers and Daniel Webster and Ingersoll defying God and the togaed great grave and incorruptible as statues magnificently spouting through the capitoline centuries;

he was the star debater in his class,

and won an interstate debate with an oration on the character of Iago.

He went to work in a law office and ran for district attorney. His schoolfriends canvassed the county riding round evenings. He bucked the machine and won the election.

It was the revolt of the young man against the state republican machine

and Boss Keyes the postmaster in Madison who ran the county was so surprised he about fell out of his chair.

That gave La Follette a salary to marry on. He was twentyfive years old.

Four years later he ran for congress; the university was with him again; he was the youngsters’ candidate. When he was elected he was the youngest representative in the house.

He was introduced round Washington by Philetus Sawyer the Wisconsin lumber king who was used to stacking and selling politicians the way he stacked and sold cordwood.

He was a Republican and he’d bucked the machine. Now they thought they had him. No man could stay honest in Washington.

Booth played Shakespeare in Baltimore that winter. Booth never would go to Washington on account of the bitter memory of his brother. Bob La Follette and his wife went to every performance.

In the parlor of the Plankinton Hotel in Milwaukee during the state fair, Boss Sawyer the lumber king tried to bribe him to influence his brother-in-law who was presiding judge over the prosecution of the Republican state treasurer;

Bob La Follette walked out of the hotel in a white rage. From that time it was war without quarter with the Republican machine in Wisconsin until he was elected governor and wrecked the Republican machine;

this was the tenyears war that left Wisconsin the model state where the voters, orderloving Germans and Finns, Scandinavians fond of their own opinion, learned to use the new leverage, direct primaries, referendum and recall.

La Follette taxed the railroads

John C. Payne said to a group of politicians in the lobby of the Ebbitt House in Washington “La Follette’s a damn fool if he thinks he can buck a railroad with five thousand miles of continuous track, he’ll find he’s mistaken . . . We’ll take care of him when the time comes.”

But when the time came the farmers of Wisconsin and the young lawyers and doctors and businessmen just out of school

took care of him

and elected him governor three times

and then to the United States Senate,

where he worked all his life making long speeches full of statistics, struggling to save democratic government, to make a farmers’ and small businessmen’s commonwealth, lonely with his back to the wall, fighting corruption and big business and high finance and trusts and combinations of combinations and the miasmic lethargy of Washington.

He was one of “the little group of wilful men expressing no opinion but their own”

who stood out against Woodrow Wilson’s armed ship bill that made war with Germany certain; they called it a filibuster but it was six men with nerve straining to hold back a crazy steamroller with their bare hands;

the press pumped hatred into its readers against La Follette,

the traitor,

they burned him in effigy in Illinois;

in Wheeling they refused to let him speak.

In nineteen twentyfour La Follette ran for president and without money or political machine rolled up four and a half million votes

but he was a sick man, incessant work and the breathed out air of committee rooms and legislative chambers choked him

and the dirty smell of politicians,

and he died,

an orator haranguing from the capitol of a lost republic;

but we will remember

how he sat firm in March nineteen seventeen while Woodrow Wilson was being inaugurated for the second time, and for three days held the vast machine at deadlock. They wouldn’t let him speak; the galleries glared hatred at him; the senate was a lynching party,

a stumpy man with a lined face, one leg stuck out in the aisle and his arms folded and a chewed cigar in the corner of his mouth