“I know. I thought that, too.”
They spoke slowly, little pauses between each sentence, as they felt their way on this dim pathway out toward each other.
When suddenly the play came to an end, the theatre lights flashed up, and they heard Elizabeth’s loud confident laugh, they were startled and astray, as though they had come back into a strange world.
XI
That was a strained summer in Hart’s Run, an uneasy, nervous war-summer, throwing the village people out of all their accustomed ways, as they gave themselves to the business of war. Speakers were sent to them for the various “drives,” from Red River and even occasionally from Washington as well. Judge Dean spoke to them in his soft slow voice—oratory strangely different and much more impressive than the flamboyant outbursts of the ordinary campaign-days. “Strictly speaking,” he said softly, “your country has no business at the present time but the business of killing Huns; and strictly speaking, you have no business but the business of killing Huns.”
What an amazing business for Hart’s Run! What had Hart’s Run, up to 1914, ever known about Huns? The nervous, high-strung days went by with Red Cross work, patriotic rallies, the conservation of food, and the tense reading of headlines. Long troop-trains went through Hart’s Run by night and by day, and every now and again a little handful of village men, and men from the surrounding country, left for Camp Lee.
The business of killing Huns—an amazing business indeed for Julie Rose! What did she know about Huns? She subscribed to the Liberty Loans, she worked for the Red Cross, she saved food conscientiously, and she listened to what others read out of the papers; but in truth the war did not touch her very acutely. She did all her duty, and more. She felt some of the horror of the war; but for the most part she looked on as an outsider. So it always was with her. She had always been an outsider—not quite in touch with the rest of the world. People were constantly crowding her shy sensitive nature to one side. As a child she had never been “in it” in the games at school, and now as a grown person she was not in it with her country in this terrible game. Perhaps because of this aloofness, which her timid nature had thrust upon her, she did not now feel much of the intense patriotism that ran through the country. That great uplifting thrill of close interest and contact with other human beings that came to many at that time was denied to Julie. She did all that was required of her; but she was untouched by any rewarding flame of consecration.
“It certainly is awful,” she said from time to time. But the awfulness of the war had been going on since 1914, and the first edge of it was gone. Yet sometimes the horror stuck its head out abruptly in their very midst. It did for Julie on the day that she read in the Hart’s Run News of the death of John Webster in France. “One of our Stag County young men,” the News announced, “whose parents, Mr. and Mrs. Otley Webster, are prominent citizens of Red River.” Why, yes; Julie knew the Websters. She had met them once at Henr’etta’s, and Henr’etta was always talking about Effie Webster—about her clothes, her car, how stylish she was, and about her set of new china. Henr’etta had told Julie about that china the last time she was in Red River. And now Effie Webster’s boy was dead in France. Julie shivered, and thought what awful deaths men had to die. She was rather accustomed to violent death in the lumber camps, in the mining-fields west of Hart’s Run, and on the railroads. Hadn’t her own father been killed by a falling tree? Julie recalled his death with a quiver—that stretched look of suffering, which had so widened and whitened his face. She was thinking of these things a week or so after the supper party, sitting under the light in her back room, knitting on a sweater, when Aunt Sadie came in to her from the other side of the house.
“Come on, Julie, let’s go to the picture show this evening,” she suggested.
“I can’t,” Julie returned. “I’ve got to get on with this Red Cross sweater.”