Heart's Kindred

The Inger, seeing her there across from him, spoke out in a kind of wonder.

“It seems like I can’t remember the time when you wasn’t along,” he said.

She laughed – and it was pathetic to see how an interval of comfort and quiet warmed her back to security and girlishness. But not to the remotest coquetry. Of that, since the morning on the desert, he had had in her no glimpse. By this he knew dimly all that he had forfeited. He made wistful attempts to call forth even a shadow of her old way.

“A week ago,” he said, “I hardly knew you.”

She assented gravely, and found no more to say about it.

“A week ago,” he said, “I was fishing, and didn’t bring home nothin’ but a turtle.” He smiled at a recollection. “I was scrapin’ him out,” he said, “when I heard your weddin’ bell. How’d you ever come to have a weddin’ bell?” he wondered.

“It was Bunchy’s doing,” she said, listlessly. “He sent the priest a case o’ somethin’, to have it rung. I hated it.”

“Well,” said the Inger, “it was Bunchy’s own rope, then, that hung him. I shouldn’t have come down if I hadn’t heard the bell – ” he paused perplexed. “You didn’t know I was down there, though?” he said.

“No, I thought you’d be up on the mountain when I went up. I didn’t think you’d be in town. You hardly ever,” she added, “did come down.”

He did not miss this: she had noticed, then, that he hardly ever came down.

“When I did come,” he said, “I always saw you with Bunchy. Only that once.”

“Only that once,” she assented, and did not meet his eyes. “Oh!” she cried, “I’ll be glad when we get to Washington and I’m off your hands! That’s why I wanted a job here – to be off your hands!”

On this the Inger was stabbed through with his certainty. It was true, then. She was longing to be free of him – and no wonder! To hide his hurt and his chagrin he turned to the waiter, who was arriving with flapjacks, and lifted candidly inquiring eyes.

“See anything the matter with my hands?” he drawled.

“No, sir,” said the man, in surprise.

“Well, neither do I,” said the Inger. “What is the matter with ’em?” he demanded of Lory, as the man departed.

“Why, if it wasn’t for me on ’em,” said Lory, “you’d be starting for war.”

War! The Inger heard the word in astonishment. That was so, he had been going to the war. He had been bent on going to the war, and had so announced his intention. In that day on the mountain, those days on the train, these hours in the city, he had never once thought of war. He flooded his flapjacks with syrup, and said nothing.

“Washington ain’t much out of your way,” she added. “You can get started by day after to-morrow anyway.”

Still he was silent. Then, feeling that something was required of him, he observed nonchalantly:

“Well, we don’t have to talk about it now, as I know of.”

In this, however, he reckoned without his host of the restaurant. As the Inger paid the bill, there was thrust in his hands a white poster, printed in great letters:

GIANT MASS MEETING

THE COLISEUM

TO-NIGHT! TO-NIGHT! TO-NIGHT!

WHAT IS AMERICA

TO DO

IN THE PRESENT CRISIS

The Inger read it through twice.

“What crisis?” he asked.

The restaurant keeper – a man with meeting eyebrows, who looked as if he had just sipped something acid – stopped counting change in piles, and stared at him.

“Where you from?” he asked, and saw the packs, and added “Boat, eh? Ain’t you heard about the vessel?”

The Inger shook his head.

“Well, man,” said the restaurant keeper with enjoyment, “another nice big U. S. merchantman is blowed into flinders a couple o’ days ago, a-sailin’ neutral seas. Nobody much killed, I guess – but leave ’em wait and see what we give ’em!”

“Does it mean war?” asked the Inger, eagerly.

“That’s for the meetin’ to say,” said the man, and winked, and, still winking, reached for somebody’s pink check.

The Inger turned to Lory with eyes alight.

“Let’s get a train in the night,” he said. “Let’s stay here for this meeting.”

In the circumstances, there was nothing that she could well say against this. She nodded. The Inger consulted his timetable, found a train toward morning, and the thing was done. He left the place like a boy.

“Let’s see some of this Mouth o’ the Pit this afternoon,” he said, “being we’re here. And then we’ll head for that war meeting. It’s grand we got here for it,” he added.

Lory looked up at him in a kind of fear. On the mountain that night she had not once really feared him. But here, she now understood, was a man with whom, in their days together, she had after all never yet come face to face.

VI

They sat where they could see the great audience gather. The people came by thousands. They poured in the aisles, advanced, separated, sifted into the rows of seats, climbed to the boxes, the galleries, ranged along those sloping floors like puppets. The stage filled. There were men and women, young, old, clothed in a mass of black shot through with color. Here were more people than ever in their lives Lory or the Inger had seen. The stage alone was a vast audience hall.

The people talked. A dull roar came from them, fed by voices, by shuffling feet, by the moving of garments and papers and bodies. They all moved. No one was still. The human mass, spread so thinly in the hollow shell of the hall, moved like maggots.

The Inger leaned forward, watching. His eyes were lit and his breath quickened. His huge frame obscured the outlook of a little white-faced youth who sat beside him, continually stroking and twisting at a high and small moustache.

“Sit back, sir, can’t you?” this exasperated youth finally demanded.

The Inger, his hand spread massively as he leaned on his leg, tossed him a glance, over shoulder, and with lifted brows.

“Why, you little lizard,” he observed, only, and did not change his posture.

A group of men and women in evening clothes sat beside Lory, who frankly stared at them. One of the women, elderly, pallidly powdered, delicately worn down by long, scrupulous care of her person, sat with one blue and boned hand in evidence, heavily clad with rings.

“Look at the white bird’s claw,” the Inger said suddenly. “I’d like to snap it off its bloomin’ stem.”