CHAPTER III – THE WOMAN IN BLACK

“Do you mean to say,” demanded Helen Cameron, with some anger, “that they have no interest in the war, or in our boys who will soon begin to go over there? Impossible!”

“I repeat that,” said Ruth. “‘Impossible,’ indeed.”

“Oh, each may knit for her own kin or for other organizations,” Mercy said. “I am repeating what I have just heard, that is all. Girls! I am just boiling!”

“I can imagine it,” Helen said. “I am beginning to simmer myself.”

“Wait. Let us be calm,” urged Ruth, smiling as she laid off her things, preparatory to going into the large front room where Mrs. Curtis was entertaining the Ladies’ Aid Society.

“Is it all because of that woman in black?” demanded Helen.

“Well, she has been pointing out that the Red Cross is a great money-making scheme, and that it really doesn’t need our small contributions.”

“And she is a member herself!” snapped Helen.

“Well, she joined, of course, because she did not want anybody to think she wasn’t patriotic,” scoffed Mercy. “That is the way she puts it. But you ought to hear the stories she has been telling these poor, simple women.”

“Did you ever!” cried Helen angrily.

“It is well we came here,” Ruth said firmly. “Let me into the lions’ den, Mercy.”

“I am afraid they are another breed of cats. There is little noble or lionlike about some of them.”

Ruth and Helen were quite used to Mercy Curtis’ sharp tongue. It was well known. But it was evident, too, that the girl had been roused to fury by what she had heard at the meeting of the Ladies’ Aid Society.

The ladies of the church society were, for the most part, very good people indeed. But at this time the war was by no means popular in Cheslow (as it was not in many places) and the plague of pacifism, if not actually downright pro-German propaganda, was active and malignant.

When the door into the big front room was opened and the girls entered, Mrs. Curtis rose hastily to welcome Ruth and Helen warmly. The women were, for the most part, busily sewing. But, of course, that puts no brake upon the activities of the tongue. Indeed, the needle seems to be particularly helpful as an accompaniment to a “dish of gossip.”

“I still think it is terrible,” one woman was saying quite earnestly to another, who was one of the few idle women in the room, “if an organization like that cannot be trusted.”

The idle woman was dressed plainly but elegantly in black, with just a touch of white at wrists and throat. She was a graceful woman, tall, not yet forty, and with a set smile on her face that might have been the outward sign of a sweet temperament, and then —

“Mrs. Mantel!” whispered Helen to Ruth. “I do not like her one bit. And nobody knows where she came from or who she is. Cheslow has only been her abiding place since we went to college last autumn.”

“Sh!” whispered Ruth in return. “I am interested.”

“Oh, I assure you, my dear Mrs. Crothers, that it may not be the organization’s fault,” purred the woman in black. “The objects of the Red Cross are very worthy. None more so. But in certain places – locally, you know – of course I don’t mean here in Cheslow —

“Yet I could tell you of something that happened to me to-day. I was quite hurt – quite shocked, indeed. I saw on the street a sweater that I knitted myself last winter.”

“Oh! On a soldier?” asked another of the women who heard. “How nice!”

“No, indeed. No soldier,” said Mrs. Mantel quickly. “On a girl. Fancy! On a girl I had never seen before. And I gave that to the Red Cross with my own hands.”

“Perhaps it belonged to the girl’s brother,” another of the women observed.

“Oh, no!” Mrs. Mantel was eager to say. “I asked her. Naturally I was curious – very curious. I said to her, ‘Where did you get the sweater, my girl, if you will pardon my asking?’ And she told me she bought it in a store here in Cheslow.”

“Oh, my!” gasped another of the group.

“Do you mean to say the Red Cross sells the things people knit for them?” cried Mrs. Crothers.

“How horrid!” drawled another. “Well, you never can tell about these charitable organizations that are not connected with the church.”

Ruth Fielding broke her silence and quite calmly asked:

“Will you tell me who the girl was and where she said she bought the sweater, Mrs. Mantel?”

“Oh, I never saw the girl before,” said the lady in black.

“But she told you the name of the store where she said she purchased it?”

“No-o. What does it matter? I recognized my own sweater!” exclaimed the woman in black, with a toss of her head.

“Are you quite sure, Mrs. Mantel,” pursued the girl of the Red Mill insistently but quite calmly, “that you could not have made a mistake?”

“Mistake? How?” snapped the other.

“Regarding the identity of the sweater.”

“I tell you I recognized it. I know I knitted it. I certainly know my own work. And why should I be cross-questioned, please?”

“My name is Ruth Fielding,” Ruth explained. “I happen to have at present a very deep interest in the Red Cross work – especially in our local chapter. Did you give your sweater to our local chapter?”

“Why – no. But what does that matter?” and the woman in black began to show anger. “Do you doubt my word?”

“You offer no corroborative evidence, and you make a very serious charge,” Ruth said. “Don’t be angry. If what you say is true, it is a terrible thing. Of course, there may be people using the name of the Red Cross who are neither patriotic nor honest. Let us run each of these seemingly wicked things down – if it is possible. Let us get at the truth.”

“I have told you the truth, Miss Fielding. And I consider you insulting – most unladylike.”

“Mrs. Mantel,” said Ruth Fielding gravely, “whether I speak and act as a lady should make little material difference in the long run. But whether a great organization, which is working for the amelioration of suffering on the battle front and in our training camps, is maligned, is of very great moment, indeed.

“In my presence no such statement as you have just made can go unchallenged. You must help me prove, or disprove it. We must find the girl and discover just how she came by the sweater. If it had been stolen and given to her she would be very likely to tell you just what you say she did. But that does not prove the truth of her statement.”

“Nor of mine, I suppose you would say!” cried Mrs. Mantel.

“Exactly. If you are fair-minded at all you will aid me in this investigation. For I purpose to take up every such calumny that I can and trace it to its source.”

“Oh, Ruth, don’t take it so seriously!” Mrs. Curtis murmured, and most of the women looked their displeasure. But Helen clapped her hands softly, saying:

“Bully for you, Ruthie!”

Mercy’s eyes glowed with satisfaction.

Ruth became silent for a moment, for the woman in black evidently intended to give her no satisfaction. Mrs. Mantel continued to state, however, for all to hear:

“I certainly know my own knitting, and my own yarn. I have knitted enough of the sweaters according to the Red Cross pattern to sink a ship! I would know one of my sweaters half a block away at least.”

Ruth had been watching the woman very keenly. Mrs. Mantel’s hands were perfectly idle in her lap. They were very white and very well cared for. Ruth’s vision came gradually to a focus upon those idle hands.

Then suddenly she turned to Mercy and whispered a question. Mercy nodded, but looked curiously at the girl of the Red Mill. When the latter explained further Mercy Curtis’ eyes began to snap. She nodded again and went out of the room.

When she returned with a loosely wrapped bundle in her hands she moved around to where the woman in black was sitting. The conversation had now become general, and all were trying their best to get away from the previous topic of tart discussion.

“Mrs. Mantel,” said Mercy very sweetly, “you must know a lot about knitting sweaters, you’ve made so many. Would you help me?”

“Help you do what, child?” asked the woman in black, rather startled.

“I am going to begin one,” explained Mercy, “and I do wish, Mrs. Mantel, that you would show me how. I’m dreadfully ignorant about the whole thing, you know.”

There was a sudden silence all over the room. Mrs. Mantel’s ready tongue seemed stayed. The pallor of her face was apparent, as innocent-looking Mercy, with the yarn and needles held out to her, waited for an affirmative reply.

CHAPTER IV – “CAN A POILU LOVE A FAT GIRL?”

The shocked silence continued for no more than a minute. Mrs. Mantel was a quick-witted woman, if she was nothing else commendable. But every member of the Ladies’ Aid Society knew what Mercy Curtis’ question meant.

“My dear child,” said the woman in black, smiling her set smile but rising promptly, “I shall have to do that for you another day. Really I haven’t the time just now to help you start any knitting. But later —

“I am sure you will forgive me for running away so early, Mrs. Curtis; but I have another engagement. And,” she shot a malignant glance at Ruth Fielding, “I am not used to being taken to task upon any subject by these college-chits!”

She went out of the room in a manner that, had she been thirty years younger, could have been called “flounced” – head tossing and skirts swishing with resentment. Several of the women looked at the girl of the Red Mill askance, although they dared not criticize Mercy Curtis, for they knew her sharp tongue too well.

“Mrs. Pubsby,” Ruth said quietly to the pleasant-faced, Quakerish-looking president of the society, “may I say a word to the ladies?”

“Of course you may, Ruthie,” said the good woman comfortably. “I have known you ever since you came to Jabez Potter’s, and I never knew you to say a dishonest or unkind word. You just get it off your mind. It’ll do you good, child – and maybe do some of us good. I don’t know but we’re – just a mite – getting religiously selfish.”

“I have no idea of trying to urge you ladies to give up any of your regular charities, or trying to undermine your interest in them. I merely hope you will broaden your interests enough to include the Red Cross work before it is too late.”

“How too late?” asked Mrs. Crothers, rather snappishly. She had evidently been both disturbed and influenced by the woman in black.

“So that our boys – some of them your sons and relatives – will not get over to France before the Red Cross is ready to supply them with the comforts they may need next winter. It is not impossible that boys right from Cheslow will be over there before cold weather.”

“The war will be over long before then, Ruthie,” said Mrs. Pubsby complacently.

“I’ve heard Dr. Cummings, the pastor, say that he is told once in about so often that the devil is dead,” Ruth said smiling. “But he is never going to believe it until he can personally help bury him. Our Government is going about this war as though it might last five years. Are we so much wiser than the men at the head of the nation – even if we have the vote?” she added, slyly.

“It does not matter whether the war will be ended in a few weeks, or in ten years. We should do our part in preparing for it. And the Red Cross is doing great and good work – and has been doing it for years and years. When people like the lady who has just gone out repeat and invent slanders against the Red Cross I must stand up and deny them. At least, such scandal-mongers should be made to prove their statements.”

“Oh, Ruth Fielding! That is not a kind word,” said Mrs. Crothers.

“Will you supply me with one that will satisfactorily take its place?” asked Ruth sweetly. “I do not wish to accuse Mrs. Mantel of actually prevaricating; but I do claim the right of asking her to prove her statements, and that she seems to decline to do.

“And I shall challenge every person I meet who utters such false and ridiculous stories about the Red Cross. It is an out-and-out pro-German propaganda.”

“Why, Mrs. Mantel is a member of the Red Cross herself,” said Mrs. Crothers sharply.

“She evidently is not loyal to her pledge then,” Ruth replied with bluntness. “The lady is not a member of our local chapter, and I have failed yet to hear of her being engaged in any activity for the Red Cross.

“But I want you ladies – all of you – to take the Red Cross work to heart and to learn what the insignia stands for.”

With that the earnest girl entered upon a brief but moving appeal for members to the local chapter, for funds, and for workers. As Helen said afterward, Ruth’s “mouth was opened and she spake with the tongues of angels!”

At least, her words did not go for naught. Several dollar memberships were secured right there and then. And Mrs. Brooks and Mary Lardner promised a certain sum for the cause – both generous gifts. Best of all, Mrs. Pubsby said:

“I don’t know about this being shown our duty by this wisp of a girl. But, ladies, she’s right – I can feel it. And I always go by my feelings, whether it’s in protracted meetings or in my rheumatic knee. I feel we must do our part.

“This gray woolen sock I’m knitting was for my Ezekiel. But my Ezey has got plenty socks. From now on I’m going to knit ’em for those poor soldiers who will like enough get their feet wet ditching over there in France, and will want plenty changes of socks.”

So Ruth started something that afternoon, and she went on doing more and more. Cheslow began to awake slowly. The local chapter rooms began to hum with life for several hours every day and away into the evening.

In the Cameron car, which Helen drove so that a chauffeur could be relieved to go into the army, the two girls drove all about the countryside, interesting the scattered families in war work and picking up the knitted goods made in the farmhouses and villages.

In many places they had to combat the same sort of talk that the woman in black was giving forth. Ruth was patient, but very insistent that the Red Cross deserved no such criticism.

“Come into Cheslow and see what we are doing there at our local headquarters. I will take you in and bring you back. I’ll take you to the county headquarters at Robinsburg. You will there hear men and women speak who know much more than I do about the work.”

This was the way she pleaded for fairness and public interest, and a ride in a fine automobile was a temptation to many of the women and girls. An afternoon in the rooms of a live Red Cross chapter usually convinced and converted most of these “Doubting Thomasines,” as Helen called them.

Working with wool and other goods was all right. But money was needed. A country-wide drive was organized, and Ruth was proud that she was appointed on the committee to conduct it. Mr. Cameron, who was a wealthy department store owner in the city, was made chairman of this special committee, and he put much faith in the ability of the girl of the Red Mill and his own daughter to assist materially in the campaign for funds.

“Get hold of every hardshell farmer in the county,” he told the girls. “Begin with your Uncle Jabez, Ruthie. If he leads with a goodly sum many another old fellow who keeps his surplus cash in a stocking or in the broken teapot on the top cupboard shelf will come to time.

“The reason it is so hard to get contributions out of men like Jabez Potter,” said Mr. Cameron with a chuckle, “is because nine times out of ten it means the giving up of actual money. They have their cash hid away. It isn’t making them a penny, but they like to hoard it, and some of ’em actually worship it.

“And not to be wondered at. It comes hard. Their backs are bent and their fingers knotted from the toil of acquiring hard cash, dollar by dollar and cent by cent. It is much easier to write a check for a hundred dollars to give to a good cause than it is to dig right down into one’s jeans and haul out a ten-dollar note.”

Ruth knew just how hard this was going to be – to interest the purses of the farming community in the Red Cross drive. The farmers’ wives and daughters were making their needles fly, but the men merely considered the work something like the usual yearly attempt to get funds out of them for foreign missions.

“I tell ye what, Niece Ruth, I got my doubts,” grumbled Uncle Jabez, when she broached the subject of his giving generously to the cause. “I dunno about so much money being needed for what you’re callin’ the ‘waste of war’!”

“If you read those statistics, compiled under the eyes of Government agents,” she told him, “you must be convinced that it is already proved by what has happened in France and Belgium – and in other countries – during the three years of war, that all this money will be needed, and more.”

“I dunno. Millions! Them is a power of dollars, Niece Ruth. You and lots of other folks air too willing to spend money that other folks have airned by the sweat of their brows.”

He offered her a sum that she was really ashamed to put down at the top of her subscription paper. She went about her task in the hope that Uncle Jabez’s purse and heart would both be opened for the cause.

Not that he was not patriotic. He was willing – indeed anxious – to go to the front and give his body for the cause of liberty. But Uncle Jabez seemed to love his dollars better than he did his body.

“Give him time, dearie, give him time,” murmured Aunt Alvirah, rocking back and forth in her low chair. “The idea of giving up a dollar to Jabez Potter’s mind is bigger than the shooting of a thousand men. Poor boys! Poor boys! How many of them may lack comforts and hospitals while the niggard people like Jabez Potter air wakin’ up?”

Ruth’s heart was very sore about the going over of the American expeditionary forces at this time, too. She said little to Helen about it, but the fact that Tom Cameron – her very oldest friend about the Red Mill and Cheslow – looked forward to going at the first moment possible, brought the war very close to the girl.

The feeling within her that she should go across to France and actually help in some way grew stronger and stronger as the days went by. Then came a letter from Jennie Stone.

“Heavy,” as she had always been called in school and even in college, was such a fun-loving, light-hearted girl that it quite shocked both Ruth and Helen when they learned that she was already in real work for the poor poilus and was then about to sail for France.

Jennie Stone’s people were wealthy, and her social acquaintances were, many of them, idle women and girls. But the war had awakened these drones, and with them the plump girl. An association for the establishment and upkeep of a convalescent home in France had been formed in Jennie’s neighborhood, and Jennie, who had always been fond of cooking – both in the making of the dishes and the assimilation of the same – was actually going to work in the diet kitchen.

“And who knows,” the letter ended in Heavy’s characteristic way, “but that I shall fall in love with one of the blessés. What a sweet name for a wounded soldier! And, just tell me! Do you think it possible? Can a poilu love a fat girl?”