Part 25

"Well, I don't know," said the man, stretching his arms and yawning.

"No, that's just the trouble with men like you. You don't know, and you don't care to know. You're all alike; you stand aloof or amused. A great human wrong has taken place, and you say, 'Well, I don't know!'"

"Just a moment," interrupted the man.

"But I haven't finished," went on the girl; "there's another thing I want to say. When Belgium made her fight, she suffered horrible things. Her women and children were mutilated on system, as part of a cold policy. Cruelty to the unoffending, that is what I mean by atrocities."

"I don't believe you," retorted the man.

"Come and see."

Hilda, who had run across from Ghent to London to stock up on supplies for the Corps, was talking with John Hinchcliffe, American banker, broker, financier. He was an old-time friend of Hilda's family--a young widower, in that successful period of early middle-age when the hard work and the dirty work have availed and the momentum of the career maintains itself. In the prematurely gray hair, the good-looking face, the abrupt speech, he was very much American. He was neat--neat in his way of dressing, and in his compact phrases, as hard and well-rounded as a pebble. The world to him was a place full of slackers, of lazy good-nature, of inefficiency. Into that softness he had come with a high explosive and an aim. He moved through life as a hunter among a covey of tame partridges--a brief flutter and a tumble of soft flesh. He had the cunning lines about the mouth, the glint in the eye, of the successful man. He had the easy generosities, too, of the man who, possessing much, can express power by endowing helpless things which he happens to like. There was an abundant sentiment in him, sentiment about his daughter and his flag, and the economic glory of his times. He was rather proud of that soft spot in his make-up. When men spoke of him as hard, he smiled to himself, for there in his consciousness was that streak of emotional richness. If he were attacked for raiding a trolley system, he felt that his intimates would declare, "You don't know him. Why John is a King."

And, best of all, he had a kind of dim vision of how his little daughter would come forward at the Day of Judgment, if there was anything of the sort, and say, "He was the best father in the world."

Hilda and the banker sat quietly, each busy in thought with what had been said. Then the girl returned to her plea.

"Come now, Mr. Hinchcliffe," she said, "you've challenged every statement I've made, and yet you've never once been on the ground. I am living there, working each day, where things are happening. Now, why don't you come and see for yourself? It would do you a lot of good."

"I'm over here on business," objected the banker.

"Perfect reply of a true American," retorted Hilda, hotly. "Here are three or four nations fighting for your future, saving values for your own sons and grandsons. And you're too busy to inform yourself as to the rights of it. You prefer to sit on the fence and pluck the profits. You would just as lief sell to the Germans as to the Allies, if the money lay that way and no risk."

"Sure. I did, in September," said the banker, with a grin; "shipped 'em in by way of Holland."

"Yes," said Hilda, angrily, "and it was dirty money you made."

"What would you have us do?" asked he. "We're not in business for our health."

"I tell you what I'd have you do," returned Hilda. "I'd have you find out which side was in the right in the biggest struggle of the ages. If necessary, I'd have you take as much time to informing yourself as you'd give to learning about a railroad stock which you were going to buy. Here's the biggest thing that ever was, right in front of you, and you don't even know which side is right. You can't spare three days to find out whether a nation of people is being done to death."

"What next?" asked the banker with a smile. "When I have informed myself, what then? Go and sell all that I have and give to the poor?"

"No, I don't ask you to come up to the level of the Belgians," answered Hilda, "or of the London street boys. But what can be asked even of a New York banker is that he shall sell to the side that is in the right. And when he does it, that he shall not make excessive profits."

"Run business by the Golden Rule?"

"No, not that, but just catch a little of the same spirit that is being shown by millions of the common people over there. Human nature isn't half as selfish and cowardly as men like you make out. You'll burn your fingers if you try to put a tag on these peasants and shop-assistants and clerks, over here. They're not afraid to die. The modern man is all right, but you fellows at the top don't give him half a chance. A whole race of peasants can be burned out and mutilated, and it doesn't cause a flutter in the pulse-beat of one of you American traders."

"You're a damn poor American," said the banker bluntly.

"You're the poor American," replied Hilda. "An uncle of mine, with a few 'greats' in front of him, was one of the three to sign the Declaration of Independence for Connecticut. Another of us was in Lincoln's Cabinet. My people have helped to make our country. We were the ones that welcomed Louis Kossuth, and Garibaldi. We are Americans. It's men like you that have weakened the strain--you and your clever tricks and your unbelief. You believe in nothing but success. 'Money is power,' say you. It is you that don't believe in America, not I."

"What does it all come to?" he broke in harshly. "What is it all about? You talk heatedly but what are you saying? I have given money to the Relief Work. I've done something, I've got results. Where would you have been without money?"

"Money!" said Hilda. "A thousandth part of your makings. And these people are giving their life! Why, once or twice a day, they are putting themselves between wounded men and shell fire. You talk about results. There are more results in pulling one Belgian out of the bloody dust than in your lifetime of shaving the market."

The color came into his face with a rush. He was so used to expressing power, sitting silent and a little grim, and moving weaker men to his will, that it was a new experience to be talked to by a person who quite visibly had vital force.

"I used to be afraid of people like you," she went on. "But you don't look half as big to me now as one of these young chauffeurs who take in the wounded under shrapnel. You've come to regard your directive ability as something sacred. You think you can sit in moral judgment on these people over here--these boys that are flinging away their lives for the future. Come with me to Belgium, and find out what they're really fighting about."

Hinchcliffe was used to swift decisions.

"I'll do it," he said.