Chapter 4

My husband was suffering even as I was suffering; but no one realized it, least of all myself. Every one was especially kind to me, because I was a woman. People are rarely attentive and tender with men when loss comes. Men are supposed to be strong and self-controlled; their hearts are rated as a little less deep and tender than the hearts of women; yet when men are truly hurt they need love and care even as little children.

A month after the baby's death, Tom and I were walking along the Embankment in London one Saturday afternoon, when we met a small girl carrying a little child. The baby was too tired to walk any farther; it was dirty, and was crying bitterly. Tom stopped, spoke to the girl, and offered to carry the baby, who soon quieted down on Tom's shoulder. At the end of that walk Tom's light summer suit was ruined. I expected him to turn with some trivial, jesting remark, but he said nothing. I looked at him and saw that his face was set and hard and his eyes wet. Without looking at me, he said: “Don't speak to me now.”

That moment of silence revealed to me my husband's character better than months of talking.

The next day my husband came to me and said: “Mary, I have asked for a leave of absence. We are going back to the United States. We are going out West to have a visit with your family.”

Two years before I had believed that Tom would not fit into my Northwest. But in twenty-four hours Tom and my father were old pals. He was as much at home with mother and the children as I, and all the neighbors liked him. He was interested in everything on the ranch, and even in the small-town life of the village. He interested father in putting modern equipment on the ranch. He went hunting with the men, played games with the children, visited the little district schoolhouse, and found joy in buying gifts for the youngsters. When mother made a big platter full of taffy, he pulled as enthusiastically as a boy. As I stood at the corral, one day, and watched Tom with my youngest brother, I remembered him at the court of St. James, and I began to understand.

Tom was natural. It was just a part of him to be kindly and gracious to everybody. I had never seen him angry with men of his own type, but I saw him furious enough to commit murder when a man on the ranch tied up a dog and beat her for running away. In after years I saw Tom angry with men of his own class; I saw him waging long, bitter fights against public men who had betrayed public trust. Something barbaric in me was satisfied that my kind, gently bred man was one with the men of my own tribe, who fought man and beast and the elements to take civilization farther west.

Almost a generation slipped by between that visit to the West and the next scene in my life of which I shall write. Many things of personal and of national importance happened meantime, but they have nothing to do with this message to women. I was in France when the World War began. I had been in Vienna again, and in England at regular intervals. I had learned to accept life as I found it, and to get much joy out of living. Sometimes I chafed a little under the demands of social life and needless formalities, but I accepted them as inevitable.

Then the world was torn in two. The earth dripped in blood and sorrow. Life became more difficult than on the frontier, and more elemental. I was present, in the first year of the war, in a house where the King and Queen of the Belgians were guests, where great generals and great statesmen had gathered on great and earnest and desperate business. I was only an onlooker, and I noticed what every one else was too absorbed to see. As the evening progressed, I realized that pomp and ceremony had died with the youth of France. King, generals, statesmen met as human men pitting their wits against one another, desperately struggling to find a way out of the hell into which they were falling.

Twice the king rose to his feet, and no one else stood. They were all too deep in the terrible question of war.

When the meeting was over and the guests of the house ready to retire, the little queen said very quietly: “Madam, may not my husband and I occupy this room together? It is very kind of you to arrange two suites for us, but I am sure there are many guests here to-night--and, anyway, I prefer to be near him.”

The war had done that. Who would expect a queen to think of the problems of housing guests, even a great queen? And the war had made the king not the king, but her man, very near and very dear.

Many other conventions I saw die by the way as the war progressed. Then America came in.

There is a temptation to talk about America in the war, but, after all, that has no bearing on my story. Soon after the United States entered, American men and women began to arrive in Europe in great numbers. I met them everywhere; sight-seeing, in offices, at universities, at embassies and consulates. I met them and loved them and suffered for them.

I was proud of something they brought to France that France needed, and I have no doubt that many of them took back to America something from France that we need.

For pure mental quality and courage, no people on earth could match what the American girls took to France. It was the finest stuff in the world. They knew how to meet hardship without grumbling. They knew how to run a kitchen and see that hungry men were fed. They knew how to nurse, to run telephones, automobiles--anything that needed to be done. Some failed and fell by the wayside, but they were the smallest possible percentage.

Those American girls knew how to do everything--almost everything.

Two wonderful girls, one who ran a telephone for the army and another in the “Y,” both from the Middle West, were at headquarters the day the King and Queen of the Belgians arrived. With others they were sent to serve tea, and they served it. The “Y” girl, taking a young captain whose presence made her eyes glisten to her Majesty, said:

“Captain Blank, meet the queen.”

And the queen, holding out her hand, and never batting an eye to show that all the conventions had been thrown to the winds, said:

“Captain, I am very happy to meet you.”

They served tea--served it to the king, the queen, the general of the American army, and other important people. There was cake besides tea, and it was not easy to drink tea and eat cake standing. The telephone girl insisted that General Pershing must sit down. The king was standing, and of course, General Pershing continued to do the same.

“Will you sit down?” said another girl to the king. “There are plenty of chairs.”

That girl had done her job in France--a job of which many a man might have been proud--and on her left breast she wore a military medal for valor. The king touched the medal, smiled at her, and said he was glad there were plenty of chairs, for he knew places where there were not.

But General Pershing and his cake still bothered the little Illinois girl, who went back at him again and asked him to sit down and enjoy his cake. The king indicated to the general to be seated.

No one but General Pershing would have known what to do between the rule to stand when a king stands and the rule to obey the order of the king. He gracefully placed his plate on the side of a table, half seated himself on it, which was a compromise, and went on enjoying himself. The king sat down.

If any one had told that girl the sacredness of the convention she had ignored, she would have suffered as keenly as I had suffered in my youth. It was such a simple thing to learn; yet who in the middle of a war would think of stopping to run a class in etiquette? The point is that any girl capable of crossing half the world to do a big job and a hard one in a foreign land should have been given the opportunity to learn the rules of social intercourse.

I saw some American girls and men on official occasions at private houses and at official functions. They were clever, attractive, fascinating; but when they came to the end of their visit, they rose to go, and then stood talking, talking, talking. They did not know exactly how to get away. They did not want to be abrupt nor appear to be glad to leave.

It would have been so simple for some one to say to them: “One of the first rules in social life is to get up and go when you are at the end of your visit.”

I was in Paris when Marshal Joffre gave the American Ambassador, Mr. Sharp, the gold oak leaves as a token of France's veneration for America. There were young girls around us who did not hesitate to comment on everybody there. One little New Jersey girl insisted rather audibly that Clemenceau looked like the old watchman on their block; and a boy, a young officer, complained that General Foch “had not won as many decorations as General Bliss and General Pershing.” Some youngsters asked high officers for souvenirs. Many French people perhaps did worse, but it hurt me to see even a few of our own splendid young people guilty of such crudities, because our American youth is so fine at heart.

When the great artist Rodin died, I went to the public ceremony held in his memory. Suddenly I realized that America and France each had something left that war had not destroyed. A young American art student, who had given up his career for his uniform, and was invalided back in Paris minus an arm, stood very near me. As he turned to Colonel House I heard him say:

“Rodin's going is another battle lost.”

It was typical of the American quality of which we have cause to boast--the fineness of heart that is in our young people.

The day of the armistice in France, those of us who are older stood looking on and realizing that all class distinctions, all race, age, and pursuits, had been wiped off the map. People were just people. There was a complete abandon. I am not a young woman, but I was caught up by the fury of the crowd, and swept along singing, laughing, weeping. Young soldiers passing would reach out to touch my hand, sometimes to kiss me.

That night I believed that the war had broken down many of our barriers; that all foolish customs had died; that the terrific price paid in human blood and human suffering had at least left a world honest with itself, simple and ready for good comradeship; that men were measured by manliness and women by ideals. It was a part of the armistice day fervor, but I believed it.

And then I came home and went to Newport.

V.

Just before I came home to America in the Spring of 1919, I went to Essex for a week-end in one of those splendid old estates which are the pride of England.

It was not my first visit, but I was awed anew by the immensity of the place, its culture and wealth which seemed to have existed always, its aged power and pride. Whole lives had been woven into its window curtains and priceless rugs; centuries of art lived in the great tapestries; successive generations of great artists had painted the ancestors of the present owner.

All three sons of that house went into the war. One never returned from Egypt, another is buried in Flanders. Only the youngest returned.

At first glance the smooth life seemed unchanged in the proud old house. But before sundown of my first day there, I knew that life had put its acid test to the shield and proved it pure gold.

War taxes had fallen heavily on the estate and it was to be leased to an American. Until then, the castle was a home to less fortunate buddies of the owner's sons.

But these were not the tests I mean, neither these nor the courage and the poise of that family in the face of their terrible loss, nor their effort to make every one happy and comfortable.

It was an incident at tea time that opened my eyes. The youngest son, now the only son, came in from a cross-country tramp and brought with him a pleasant faced young woman whom he introduced as “one of my pals in the war.”

That was enough. Lady R. greeted her as one of the royal blood. The girl was the daughter of a Manchester plumber. She had done her bit, and it had been a hard bit, in the war, and now she was stenographer in a near-by village. Later in the afternoon the story came out. She had been clerk in the Q. M. corps and after her brother's death she asked for service near the front, something hard. She got it. The mules in the supply and ammunition trains must be fed and it was her job to get hay to a certain division. The girl had ten motor trucks to handle and twenty men, three of them noncommissioned officers.

After four days, during which trucks had disappeared and mules gone unfed, she asked the colonel for the rank of first sergeant, with only enlisted men under her.

Her first official orders were: All trucks must stay together. If one breaks down, the others will stop and help.

The second day of her new command, she met our young host, who needed a truck to move supplies and tried to commandeer one of hers. When she refused, he ordered her. He was a captain.

“I am under orders to get those ten loads of hay to the mules,” was her reply.

“What will you do if I just take one of them?” asked the captain.

“You won't,” said the girl confidently.

“I must get a truck,” he insisted. “What can you do about it if I take one of yours?”

“England needs men,” she answered. “But if you made it necessary I'd have to shoot you. If the mules are n't fed, you and other men can't fight. If you were fit to be a captain, you'd know that.”

The young captain told the story himself and his family enjoyed it, evidently admiring the Manchester lassie, who sat there as red as a poppy. They did not bend to the plumber's daughter, nor seem to try to lift her to the altars of their ancient hall.

Every one met on new ground, a ground where human beings had faced death together. It was sign of a new fellowship, too deep and fine for even a fish knife to sever. There was no consciousness of ancient class. There was only to-day and to-morrow.

It was the America I love--that spirit. The best America--valuing a human being for personal worth. Then I sailed for home. I went to Newport, to the Atlantic coast resorts. They were all the same.

The world had changed but not my own country.

I saw more show of wealth, more extravagance, more carelessness, more reckless morals than ever before, and--horrible to contemplate--springing up in the new world, the narrow social standards which war had torn from the old.

Social lines tightened. Men who had been overwhelmingly welcome while they wore shoulder straps were now rated according to bank accounts or “family.” The “doughboy shavetail”, a hero before the armistice, or the aviator who held the stage until November eleventh, once he put on his serge suit and went back to selling insurance or keeping books, became a nodding acquaintance, sometimes not even that.

I was heartsick. I thought often of those splendid men I had met in France and of the girls who poured tea for the King of the Belgians. I wondered if any one back home was “just nodding” to them.

Everywhere was the blatant show of new wealth.

New money always glitters. I saw it in cars with aluminum hoods and gold fittings, diamonds big as birds' eggs, ermine coats in the daytime--jeweled heels at night.

Bad breeding plus new money shouted from every street corner. At private dinners, I ate foods that I knew were served merely because they were expensive, glutton feasts with twice as much as any one could eat with comfort.

One day I went to market--the kind of a market to which my mother would have gone--and I saw women whose husbands labored hard, scorning to buy any but porterhouse steaks--merely because porterhouse steak stood for prosperity.

In Washington I met a new kind of American, a type that has sprung up suddenly like an evil toadstool. It is a fungous disease that spreads. Some hangs from old American stock, some dangles from recent plantings, all of it is snobbish and offensive. It wears foreign clothes and affects foreign ways, sometimes even foreign accents. It chops and mumbles its words like English servants who speak their language badly. Some of this is acquired at fashionable finishing schools or from foreign secretaries and servants. These new Americans try to appear superior and distinctive by scorning all things American. They want English chintzes in their homes, French brocades and Italian silks and do not even know that some of these very textiles from America have won prizes in Europe since 1912. An American manufacturer told me he has to stamp his cretonne “English style print” to sell it in this country.

This new species of American apes royalty. It goes in for crests. It may have made its money in gum shoes or chewing tobacco, but it hires a genealogist to dig up a shield. Fine, if you are entitled to a crest. But fake genealogists will cook up a coat for the price.

There are crests on the motor-cars, crests on the stationery, on the silver, the toilet articles--there are sometimes even crests on the servants' buttons and on linen and underclothes!

Fake crests are the first step down, and like all lies they lead to other lies. The next step is ancestors.

Selling and painting ancestors is another business which thrives around New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. And the public swallows it. They swallow each other's ancestors. Even old families take these new descendants as a matter of course.

One of these new Americans recently gave a large feast in Washington with every out-of-season delicacy in profusion. The only simple thing in the house was the mind of the hostess. That night it was a tangled skein.

I saw she was worried. Her house was full of potentates, the wives of two cabinet officers, and Mrs. Coolidge. She left the room twice after the dinner hour had arrived, and it was late when dinner was finally announced.

Later in the evening one of the servants whispered to the hostess that she was wanted on the telephone--the State Department.

She returned to the drawing-room looking as if she had just heard of a death in the family. The guests began considerately to leave.

Her expensive party was a dismal failure. As I have known her husband for years, I asked if I could be of any use.

“It 's too late, now,” he said. “She had the Princess Bibesco and the Princess Lubomirska here and the wife of the Vice President, and she didn't know the precedence they took. She held up dinner half an hour trying to get the State Department and now they tell her she guessed wrong. It 's a tragedy to her.”

I confess I did not feel very sorry for that woman. I remembered my little Indiana girl who introduced the captain to the Queen of Belgium.

I began to feel as if all America were like the De Morgan jingle:

“Great fleas have little fleas On their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas And so ad infinitum.”

Then I took a trip across the continent, stopping off in Indiana to see my little Y friends. It was like a bath for my soul. Brains count out West. Anybody who tries to show off is snubbed.

You must do something to be anything in the Middle West; just to have something doesn't count. You don't list your ancestors as you must in Virginia or the Carolinas, but to feel self-respecting you must do something.

I was happy to renew my wartime friendships. Those who have not shared a great work or a greater tragedy will not understand these bonds.

The same young friend who served tea to the king took me to a musicale. She wore her war medal. One of the guests, a lady from Virginia who claims four coats of arms, was impressed by the girl's medal and the fact that she had entertained the king.

The girl had married since the war, a fine young Irish lawyer, with a family name which once belonged to a king but which, since hard times hit the old sod, has been a butt for song and jest.

The name did not impress the lady from Virginia. “You have such an interesting face,” she said. “What was your name before your marriage?”

“Oh, it was much less interesting than my husband's,” answered my young Y friend, and lifting the conversation out of the personal she asked, “Have you read Mr. Keynes' 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace?'”

“I had n't read it myself,” she confided to me later, “but it was the first new book I could think of!”

That is good American manners and what the French call savoir faire.

The Far West still keeps the American inheritance of open hearted hospitality and its provincialism. The West has inherited some of the finest virtues of our country, and if it is not bitten by Back Bay, Philadelphia, Virginia, or Charleston, it will grow up into its mother's finest child.

“No church west of Chicago, no God west of Denver,” we used to hear when I was a child. But to-day, the churches are part of the community and even men go. People in the West do not seem to go to church merely out of respect for the devil and a conscience complex, but because they like to. Churches and schools are important places in the West.

President Harding has said that he hopes more and more people will learn to want to pray in a closet alone with God. There are many people like that in our Middle West. I say this, because I hope it may help other American women who love their country to fight for honesty and purpose in our national life, and for tolerance and respect for the simple things in our private lives.