Told in a French Garden - Mildred Aldrich (books to read for beginners .txt) 📗

war."

"Well, I don't even know that I can deny that. I would not deliberately _choose_ it. But I am willing to accept it, and I am not a bit sentimental about it. I am not even sure that it was not needed. The world has let the Kaiser sit twenty five years on a throne announcing himself as 'God's anointed.' His pretensions have been treated seriously by all the democracies of the world. What for? Purely for personal gain. We have come to a pass where there is little a man won't do for personal gain. The business of the world, and its diplomacy, have all become so complicated and corrupt that a large percentage of the brains of honest mankind are little willing to touch either. We need shaking up all of us. If nothing can make man realize that he was not born to be merely happy and get rich, or to have a fine old time, why, such a complete upheaval as this seems to me to be necessary, and for me if this war can rip off, with its shrapnel, the selfishness with which prosperity has encrusted the lucky: if it can explode our false values with its bombs: if it can break down our absurd pretensions with its cannon, all I can say is that Germany will have done missionary work for the whole world herself included."

Before he had done, we were all on our feet shouting at him, all but the Lawyer, who smiled into his coffee cup.

"Why," cried the Critic, in anger, "one would think you held a brief for them!"

"I do NOT," snapped the Doctor, "but I don't dislike them any more than I do well," catching himself up with a laugh, "lots of other people."

"And you mean to tell me," said the gentle voice of the Divorcee at his elbow, "that you calmly face the idea of the hundreds of thousands of men, well and strong to day dead to morrow, the thought of the mothers who have borne their sons in pain, and bred them in love, only to fling them before the cannon?"

"For what, after all, _are_ we born?" said the Doctor. "_Where_ we die, or _when_ is a trifle, since die we must. But _why_ we die and _how_ is vital. It is not only vital to the man that goes it is vital to the race. It is the struggle, it is the fight, which, no matter what form it takes, makes life worth living. Men struggle for money. Financiers strangle one another at the Bourse. People look on and applaud, in spite of themselves. That is exciting. It is not uplifting. But for men just like you and me to march out to face death for an idea, for honor, for duty, that very fact ennobles the race."

"Ah," said the Lawyer, "I see. The Doctor enjoys the drama of life, but he does not enjoy the purely domestic drama."

"And out of all this," said the Trained Nurse, in her level voice, "you are leaving the Almighty. He gave us a world full of beauty, full of work, full of interest, and he gave us capacities to enjoy it, and endowed us with emotions which make it worth while to live and to die. He gave us simple laws they are clear enough they mark sharply the line between good and evil. He left us absolutely free to choose. And behold what man has made of it!"

"I deny the statement," said the Doctor.

"That's easy," laughed the Journalist.

"I believe," said the Doctor, impatiently, "that no good comes but through evil. Read your Bible."

"I don't want to read it with _your_ eyes," replied the Journalist, and marched testily down the path toward the house.

"Well," snapped the Doctor, "if I read it with _yours_, I should call on the Almighty to smite this planet with his fires and send us spinning, a flaming brand through space, to annihilation the great scheme would seem to me a failure but I don't believe it is." And off he marched in the other direction.

The Lawyer shrugged his shoulders, and suppressed, as well as he could, a smile. The Youngster, leaning his elbows on his knees, recited under his breath:

"And as he sat, all suddenly there rolled,
From where the woman wept upon the sod,
Satan's deep voice, 'Oh Thou unhappy God.'"

"Exactly," said the Lawyer.

"What's that?" asked the Violinist.

"Only the last three lines of a great little poem by a little great Irishman named Stephens entitled 'What Satan Said.'"

"After all," said the Lawyer, "the Doctor is probably right. It all depends on one's point of view."

"And one's temperament," said the Violinist.

"And one's education," said the Critic.

Just here the Doctor came back, and he came back his smiling self. He made a dash down the path to where the Journalist was evidently sulking, went up behind him, threw an arm over his shoulder, and led him back into the circle.

"See here," he said, "you are all my guests. I am unreasonably fond of you, even if we can't see Life from the same point of view. Man as an individual, and Man as a part of the Scheme are two different things. I asked you down here to enjoy yourselves, not to argue. I apologize all my fault unpardonable of me. Come now we have decided to stay as long as we can we are all interested. It is not every generation that has the honor to sit by, and watch two systems meet at the crossroads and dispute the passage to the Future. We'll agree not to discuss the ethics of the matter again. If the men marching out there to the frontier can agree to face the cannon and there are as many opinions there as here surely we can _look on_ in silence."

And on that agreement we all went to bed.

But on the following day, as we sat in the garden after dinner, our attempts to "keep off the grass" were miserably visible. They cast a constraint on the party. Every topic seemed to lead to the forbidden enclosure. It was at a very critical moment that the Sculptor, sitting cross legged on a bench, in a real Alma Tadema attitude, filled the dangerous pause with:

"It was in the days of our Lord 1348 that there happened in Florence, the finest city in Italy "

And the Violinist, who was leaning against a tree, touched an imaginary mandolin, concluding: "A most terrible plague."

The Critic leaped to his feet.

"A corking idea," he cried.

"Mine, mine own," replied the Sculptor. "I propose that what those who, in the days of the terrible plague, took refuge at the Villa Palmieri, did to pass away the time, we, who are watching the war approach as our host says it will do here. Let us, instead of disputing, each tell a story after dinner to calm our nerves, or otherwise."

At first every one hooted.

"I could never tell a story," objected the Divorcee.

"Of course you can," declared the Journalist. "Everybody in the world has one story to tell."

"Sure," exclaimed the Lawyer. "No embargo on subjects?"

"I don't know," smiled the Doctor. "There is always the Youngster."

"You go to blazes," was the Youngster's response, and he added: "No war stories. Draw that line."

"Then," laughed the Doctor, "let's make it tales of our own, our native land." And there the matter rested. Only, when we separated that night, each of us carried a sealed envelope containing a numbered slip, which decided the question of precedence, and it was agreed that no one but the story teller should know who was to be the evening's entertainer, until story telling hour arrived with the coffee and cigarettes.


I

THE YOUNGSTER'S STORY

IT HAPPENED AT MIDNIGHT

THE TALE OF A BRIDE'S NEW HOME


The daytimes were not ever very bad. Short handed in the pretty garden, every one did a little work. The Lawyer was passionately fond of flowers, and the Youngster did most of the errands. The Sculptor had found some clay, and loved to surprise us at night with a new centre piece for the table, and the Divorcee spent most of her time tending Angele's baby, while the Doctor and the Nurse were eternally fussing over new kinds of bandages and if ever we got together, it was usually for a little reading aloud at tea time, or a little music. The spirit of discussion seemed to keep as far away before the lights were up as did the spirit of war, and nothing could be farther than that _appeared_.

The next day we were unusually quiet.

Most of us kept in our rooms in the afternoon. There were those stories to think over, and that we all took it so seriously proved how very much we had been needing some real thing to do. We got through dinner very comfortably.

There was little news in the papers that day except enthusiastic accounts of the reception of the British troops by the French. It was lovely to see the two races that had met on so many battle fields conquered, and been conquered by one another embracing with enthusiasm. It was to the credit of all of us that we did not make the inevitable reflections, but only saw the humor and charm of the thing, and remembered the fears that had prevented the plans of tunnelling the channel, only to find them humorous.

The coffee had been placed on the table. The Trained Nurse, as usual, sat behind the tray, and we each went and took our cup, found a comfortable seat in the circle under the trees, where a few yellow lanterns swung in the soft air.

Then the Youngster pulled a white head band with a huge "Number One" on it, out of his pocket, placed it on his head after the manner of the French Conscripts, struck an attitude in the middle of the circle, drew his chair deftly under him, and with the air of an experienced monologist began:

* * * * *

Not so very many years ago there was a pretty wedding at Trinity Church in Boston. It was quite the sort of marriage Bostonians believe in. The man was a rising lawyer, rather a sceptic on all sorts of questions, as most of us chaps pride ourselves on being, when we come out of college. They were married in church to please the Woman. What odds did it make?

Before they were married they had decided to live outside the city. She wanted a garden and an old house. He did not care where they lived so long as they lived together. Very proper of him, too. They spent the last year of their engaged life, the nicest year of some girls' lives, I have heard in hunting the place. What they finally settled on was an old colonial house with a colonnaded front, and a round tower at each end, standing back from the road, and approached by a