CHAPTER XIV
For days Mary could think of little else, but as week followed week, her thoughts merged into memories—memories that were stored away and stirred in their hiding places less and less often.
"Dad knew best," she finally told herself. "He bore it in silence all those years, so it wouldn't worry me, and I'm not going to start now. Perhaps—he's dead, too. Anyhow," she sternly repeated, "I'm not going to worry. I've seen enough of worry to start doing that."
Besides, she had too much else on her mind—"to start doing that."
As the war in Europe had progressed—America drawing nearer the crimson whirlpool with every passing month—a Red Cross chapter was organized at New Bethel. Mary took active part in the work, and whenever visitors came to speak at the meetings, they seldom went away without being entertained at the house on the hill.
"I love to think of it," she told Aunt Patty one day. "The greatest organization of mercy ever known—and practically all women's work! Doesn't that mean a lot to you, Aunt Patty? If women can do such wonderful things for the Red Cross, why can't they do wonderful things in other ways?"
Her own question set her thinking, and something seemed to tell her that now or never she must watch her chance to make old dreams come true. Surely never before in the history of the world had woman come to the front with such a splendid arrival.
"We'll get things yet, Aunt Delia," she whispered in confidence, "so that folks will be just as proud of a girl baby as a boy baby." Whereupon she wagged her finger as though to say, "You mark my words!" and went rolling away to hear a distinguished lecturer who had just returned from Europe with a message to the women in America of what their sisters were doing across the seas.
The address was given at the Red Cross rooms, and as Mary listened she sewed upon a flannel swaddling robe that was later to go to Siberia lest a new-born babe might perish. At first she listened conscientiously enough to the speaker—"What our European sisters have done in agriculture—"
"I do believe at times that it's the women more than the men who make a country great," she thought as she heard of the women ploughing, planting, reaping. To Mary's mind each stoical figure glowed with the light of heroism, and she nodded her head as she worked.
"Just as I've always said," she mused; "there's nothing a man can do that a woman can't do."
From her chair by the window she chanced to look out at an old circus poster across the street.
"Now that's funny, too," she thought, her needle suspended; "I never thought of that before—but even in such things as lion taming and trapeze performing—where you would think a woman would really be at a disadvantage—she isn't at all. She's just as good as a man!"
The voice of the speaker broke in upon her thoughts.
"I am now going to tell you," she said, "what the women of Europe are doing in the factories—"
And oh, how Mary listened, then!
It was a long talk—I cannot begin to give it here—but she drank in every word, and hungered and thirsted for more.
"There is not an operation in factory, foundry or laboratory," began the speaker, "where women are not employed—"
As in a dream Mary seemed to see the factory of Spencer & Son. The long lines of men had vanished, and in their places were women, clear-eyed, dexterous and happy at escaping from the unpaid drudgery of housework. "It may come to that, too," she thought, "if we go into war."
"In aeroplane construction," the speaker continued, "where an undetected flaw in her work might mean an aviator's life, woman is doing the carpentry work, building the frame work, making the propellers. They are welding metals, drilling, boring, grinding, milling, even working on the engines and magnetos—"
A quiver ran up and down Mary's back and her eyes felt wet. "Just what
I've always said," she thought. "Ah, the poor women—"
"They are making telescopes, periscopes, binoculars, cameras—cutting and grinding the lenses—work so fine that the deviation of a hair's breadth would cause rejection—some of the lenses as small as a split pea. They make the metal parts that hold those lenses, assemble them, adjust them, test them. These are the eyes of the army and navy—surely no small part for the woman to supply."
Mary's thoughts turned to some of the homes she had seen—the surroundings—the expression of the housewife. "All her life and no help for it," she thought. And again, "Ah, the poor women…."
"To tell you the things she is making would be to give you a list of everything used in modern warfare. They are making ships, tanks, cannon, rifles, cartridges. They are operating the most wonderful trip hammers that were ever conceived by the mind of man, and under the same roof they are doing hand work so delicate that the least extra pressure of a file would spoil a week's labour. More! There isn't a process in which she has been employed where woman has failed to show that she is man's equal in speed and skill. In many operations she has shown that she is man's superior—doing this by the simple method of turning out more work in a day than the man whose place she took—"
Mary invited the speaker to go home with her, and if you had gone past the house on the hill that night, you would have seen lights burning downstairs until after one o 'clock.
How did they train the women?
How did they find time to do their washing and ironing?
What about the children? And the babies? And the home?
As the visitor explained, stopping now and then to tell her young hostess where to write for government reports giving facts and figures on the subject which they were discussing, Mary's eyes grew dreamier and dreamier as one fancy after another passed through her mind. And when the clock struck one and she couldn't for shame keep her guest up any longer, she went to her room at last and undressed in a sort of a reverie, her glance inward turned, her head slightly on one side, and with such a look of thoughtful exaltation that I wish I could paint it for you, because I know I can never put it into words.
Still, if you can picture Betsey Ross, it was thus perhaps that Betsey looked when first she saw the flag.
Or Joan of Arc might once have gazed that way in Orleans' woods.