A Story of Neutrality in Our Square ONE of the notable sporting events of Our Square is the nightly chess duel at Thomsen's Elite Restaurant. Many a beer, not a few dinners, and once even a bottle of real champagne won and lost, have marked the enthusiasm and partisanship of the backers. Personally I prefer David's cavalry dash as exemplified in long-range handling of doubled rooks, but there are plenty who swear and bet by the sapper-and-miner doggedness of Jonathan's pawn manipulations. The contestants have been known as David and Jonathan to Our Square for ten years, except for the late, melancholy months following the combat which broke off all relations and left the corner table at Thomsen's Square vacant. Since then the light-minded—such as Cyrus the Gaunt—have called them David and Goliath.

David is a little, old, hot-hearted Frenchman whose real name is Henri Dumain. Hermann Groll, alias Jonathan, alias (alas!) Goliath, is a ponderous and gentle old German. Their first meeting was at Thomsen's, back early in the century, when there were only ten tables in the place and the front window shyly invited the public through the medium of a guinea-chicken, a fish in season, and two chops with their paper-frilled shanks engaged like buttoned foils. In those days Henri, a newcomer, sat back against the side wall and unobtrusively watched a guerrilla campaign between Hermann and a nondescript casual patron with weak eyes and a deprecating manner, of whom none of us knew anything except that he came from somewhere on Avenue B and had an irritating trick of answering queen's gambit by pawn to king's rook 4. But one evening two thick-booted strangers interrupted the game and took away the eccentric pawn-pusher. He had, it appeared, flavored his aged aunt's soup with arsenic. Life has its thrills in Our Square!

Hermann was disconsolate. “A pity,” he murmured. “I should have checkmated in four moves.”

“Your pardon, but I think not,” said a courteous but positive voice.

Hermann looked up and saw Henri. “You think not?” he said mildly. “Maybe so. We will try. Sit down.”

They played it out. Owing to an unforeseen brilliant diversion on the part of the newcomer's knight, the struggle was prolonged for twenty moves before victory went to the Teuton. He rose.

“The sacrifice of the rook's pawn,” he observed, “was able. Very able. Tomorrow evening?”

“With pleasure,” answered his adversary. Thereafter they played nightly, with almost equal fortunes, and as they played their association ripened into friendship, and their friendship, through sympathies subtle and strange in two characters so apparently unlike, into the love that passeth the love of woman. They became David and Jonathan indeed, and one of the pleasantest sights that helped me to peaceful dreams was the frequent glimpse I got of the big German and the little Frenchman walking home after the battle arm in arm across Our Square.

Each had been a lone spirit, craving companionship. And nearest to the lonely heart of each was the struggle and achievement of an only son in the other half of the world; one carving out a business career in Algiers, the other introducing American ideas in horticulture to the staid garden scientists of WÜrtemberg. Presently they took to reading their boys' letters in common; and they would chuckle, or look serious, or debate, or prophesy with a single and equal interest whether it were a matter of Hermann, Jr., or of young Robert in Africa. Comradeship can go no deeper. The flash of a foreign postage stamp across the marble-topped table was the signal for Elsa, the polyglot cashier of the Elite, to set down one more drink than usual, for it invariably meant a prolonged and confidential confab after the game was over. Tradition held their chosen table always in reserve. And tradition has all the force and more than the respect of law in Our Square.

Judge, then, of our amazement at the unprecedented behavior of Inky Mike on a certain evening a little before the regular hour for the chess-players to appear. The world without was big with the presage of tremendous events just then, but this was forgotten for the moment in the shock of Mike's performance. He sauntered down the length of the aisle, an expression of self-confidence upon his smeary countenance, and coolly dropped into Jonathan's chair, nodding to Elsa, the pretty polyglot. Now Inky Mike plumes himself upon a “connection with the press” (through the rollers, it is understood in Our Square, though he is loftily vague about it) and the passion of his life is to pick news “off the wires” and announce it in advance of print, in some startling manner. This might be one of his coups. Elsa regarded him with puzzled suspicion. Then she descended upon him, polite but with firm purpose of eviction.

“Bitte,” she said, with the queenly gesture of one accustomed to command.

Mike lifted one eyebrow, and that with an effort. Otherwise he stirred not.

“S'il vous plait!” said the little cashier determinedly.

“Mine's a beer,” returned the smeary one.

“If you please!” she stamped her foot in the universal and unmistakable language.

“Oh, I got you the foist time,” drawled Mike. “You should worry. They won't be here.”

“No—o—o—oah?” queried Elsa in a soaring whoop of amazement.

“Not this evenin', nor any other evenin'! You can plant a 'To Let' sign on their table. They won't care.”

“Warum? Pourquoi pas? W'y not?”

The repository of terrible secrets delivered himself of his theme in complacent triumph. “War's just declared between France and Germany. That's w'y not.”

Thus the tremendous news came to Thomsen's. On the heels of it came the Teutonic Jonathan. Inky Mike rose astounded and hastily moved, for he is sufficiently one of us to respect the Square's traditions.

“Excuse me,” he apologized. “Is Mister—is your side pardner coming?”

The answer to the question was given in the person of the Gallic David. Inky Mike gaped at them.

“Will they mix it, d'ye think?” he inquired in an awed and hopeful tone of Cyrus the Gaunt, who was eating ice cream at an adjoining table with the Bonnie Lassie. Those were the days when the Bonnie Lassie was sculping Cyrus the Gaunt and Cyrus was acting as chauffeur to ten tons of steam roller on a bet, and each was discovering the other to be the most wonderful person in the world—in which they weren't so far wrong as a cynical mind might suppose.

Cyrus did not think; at least not for the inkful one's benefit. He acted. It was done unobtrusively, his shifting to the table next the chess rivals. They did not notice it. They did not notice anything but each other. David was breathing hard, as he took his seat, and a queer light flickered in his eyes.

“You take black to-night,” said Jonathan slowly.

His friend pushed the chessboard aside. “You have heard?” he said, and pulling a newspaper from his pocket slapped it on the table.

Now the doubly damned devil of mischance influenced him to reach into the wrong pocket, so he drew forth not the “Extry—Extry” which he had just bought of Cripple Chris on the corner, but an earlier copy of the “Courrier des Etats-Unis.” Jonathan stiffened in his chair.

“I do not read that language,” he said deliberately.

“You have then perhaps lost your mind since yesterday,” said the fiery little Frenchman.

“I have the mind I have always had. It is a German mind,” was the grim response.

“Then it is the mind of a savage!” cried the other.

The big man got to his feet. The little one was up as quickly. Cyrus the Gaunt laid a hand, every finger of which had the grip of a lobster's claw, on the shoulder of each.

“Sit down,” he said quietly. “Let's arbitrate.”

“But,” began the Frenchman, “I—he—”

“There's a lady waiting to speak to you,” interrupted Cyrus.

The Bonnie Lassie stood, smiling but anxious-eyed, behind his shoulder. David sprang to get her a chair. Then they invited me into consultation, and we sat in solemn conclave while Inky Mike hovered, with diminishing hopes, on the outskirts. At the close there was ratified what I believe to have been the first agreement of total neutrality in the present world conflict. By its provisions every topic having to do with the war or any of the parties to it was rigorously tabooed. Both the German and the French language, even for purposes of exclamation and emphasis, were to be eschewed. Literature, art, and music were, however, to remain open topics, irrespective of nationality. And chess, that studious mimicry of what is most terrible in the world, was to proceed as usual. That evening David and Jonathan walked homeward across Our Square arm in arm.

By what unremitting exercise of self-control and loyalty those two kept the pact through the tinder-and-powder events of succeeding months only they themselves know. It was pitiful and at the same time beautiful to see the subterfuges whereby they preserved their affection from the blight of the all-devouring war, even in its remote associations. There came a day when mails arrived by a Holland steamer. That evening David waited expectant. But his friend gave out no news. The natural impatience of the Frenchman broke bounds.

“And the young Hermann?” he demanded. “How goes it with our special assistant to Mother Nature?”

“It goes—it goes well,” answered Jonathan.

“He persuades the others to his ideas, always?”

“Hermann is no longer in the gardens. He—he has left.”

“Left!” cried David. “Given up—” He stopped short, looking into the face of his friend, a face whose eyes shifted uneasily away from his. Then comprehension came to him, and he did a fine and beautiful thing.

“To the brave,” said he, lifting his glass, “who face death for the country that they love.”

Was there, perhaps, a small savor of salt to the beer which Jonathan set down after his draught? If so, he need not have been ashamed. It seemed to me, when I saw them going home that night, that their arms were hooked a little closer than common.

Not long after it was David's turn to get a letter. He sat fingering it when Jonathan entered.

“From our young Robert?” asked the German.

David nodded.

“Am I to see it?”

“He says—he says some things about—about the war,” faltered the Frenchman. “Youth is perhaps harsh. And he is a high spirit—my boy.”

Something in the tone told the German. “He has enlisted?”

The other father nodded.

“I am glad,” said the German simply. “And may God bring him safely through!”

How that could have happened which did thereafter come to pass between two souls so fine, so brave, so forbearing, is one of the mysteries of the madness of the human heart. It was on the evening when Elsa, the polyglot, had just completed her chef-d'ouvre of embroidery which still hangs upon the wall. It is a legend subscribed in a double scroll, which is held in the beak of a dove of peace about half the size of the scroll, the whole being tastefully surrounded by a frieze of olive branches done in blue, Elsa's green yarn having given out prematurely. The legend reads:—

Out of compliment she had hung it over the chess-players' table. The game developed a swift and interesting attack, that evening, down an open center, David having castled on the queen's side, and brought both rooks into early action. All was going well for him, when a band outside halted and began to play “Die Wacht am Rhein.” That they played it atrociously out of tune is unimportant to the issue. Rendered by a celestial choir that particular song would probably have inspired David with frenzy. The first symptom was that he moved his queen upon a. diagonal with his king, open to an opposing bishop. Just what the course of events subsequently was I cannot say, as my table was in the far end. But I heard Elsa's lamentable voice, startled quite out of the practice of the language neutrality which she preached, and this is what I heard: —“Oh, Messieurs! Oh! Meine Herren!! Gents!!!”

Crash! The chessboard was swept to the floor, and the contestants rolled after it, tight clinched. They tipped over two neighboring tables, and a plate of salad, a soft-shell crab, and a fried chicken, violating their neutrality, descended to take a conspicuous part in the fight. Over and over rolled the combatants, now one on top, now the other, clawing, kicking, pummeling, and filling the air with bilingual fury. It was all very comic, for the onlookers who didn't understand, and the “Tribune” reporter made a good story of it next day. But he did not know—how could he?—the underlying tragedy; the tragedy of hate, where love had been and loneliness in the place of comradeship. With ordinary luck it might have been kept out of the newspapers and the police court, but, unfortunately, Terry the Cop, a wise young Daniel of Our Square, was followed in by a strange policeman. “And so,” Terry explained to me, regretfully,

“I had to make the pinch. Wouldn't it make you sick?” he added. “Two good old guys like them! War sure is hell!” Of the subsequent proceedings, Inky Mike brought us a fuller report than the newspapers. The Little Red Doctor, being appealed to to procure bail, had done so, and had further taken two stitches in, the big man's head and set a disjointed thumb for the little man. In the police court, thanks to Terry, who “put him wise,” the judge had bidden the two belligerents shake hands and go free. They shook hands, at arm's length, and went free, separately.

“No more David an' Jonathan stuff,” gloated Inky Mike. “David and Goliath is more in their line. This finishes their game.”

“Ah, Smart Aleck!” said Elsa resentfully. “You know nothing. 'S macht nichts aus! Ça ne signifie rien! Fudge is what I try to say. They come back this evening, good as new.”

Come back they did not, however. In vain did Elsa keep her eyes on the clock and her hopes high. When nine o'clock struck and the table beneath her desk was still vacant she burst into tears, gave a Magyar from Second Avenue eight dollars and sixty cents change out of a five-dollar bill (the Magyar hasn't been seen since), and rushed forth from the place with her apron over her head, finding refuge on a bench of Our Square, where she sat openly wailing until Terry the Cop led her home.

“Will they never come back to their little table, do you think?” miserably inquired. Polyglot Elsa of the Little Red Doctor several evenings later, gazing with blurred eyes down upon the stolidly opposing armies of chessmen in their brave array.

The Little Red Doctor shook a dubious head. “That's a bad mess,” he said.

“But they have nothing else but themselves!” cried the girl. “So sad it is. Perhaps,” she added with timid hopefulness, “you could make a peace again between them.”

“I've tried. The only peacemaker strong enough to bring them together, I'm afraid, is my old friend Death.”

Jonathan almost wholly disappeared from Our Square after the rupture. Not so David. He was much in evidence. Usually he whistled as he walked with a lightsome and swaggering step to show that he hadn't a care in the world. But when you got near him you saw the hollows under his eyes. Pride carried him even into Thomsen's, and almost to the vacant table in the corner. Not quite. For thereon stood the little wood soldiers, sturdy and stanch, and above them leaned Elsa, smiling welcome to him—and hope. David, the irreconcilable, stopped short, dropped into the nearest chair, turned his back upon that haunted corner, and ordered his favorite refreshment in a voice so cheerful that it almost chirped. Halfway through his carafon, having caught Elsa's gaze, melancholy, accusing, and imploring, he swore, choked over his vin ordinaire, and retreated in bad order to the shelter of the outer darkness without paying his check.

How long he wandered about Our Square I cannot say. He was there when I crossed to Thomsen's at nine o'clock. He was there when I peered out at ten. He was still there when I returned home at eleven-fifteen.

So was Jonathan. The reason why we of the Square had not seen him of late was that he had chosen for his promenade an hour when he would be unlikely to encounter any of us. This time he met David. They passed each other within a foot. Jonathan was profoundly absorbed in the condition of a tree trunk which he had passed without interest some thousands of times. David studied the constellation Orion with a concentrated attention quite creditable in one so new to a passion for astronomy. I sat down on a bench and gave vent to my feelings. Said Terry the Cop to me, approaching solicitously:—

“Are ye laughing, dominie, or choking to death?”

“I am laughing, Terry,” I said.

“And why are ye laughing, dominie?”

“I am laughing, Terry,” I informed him, “because it is better to laugh than to do a certain other thing.” And I declined, with proper dignity, his well-meant but ill-informed offer to escort me home.

There came a black day for our fiery old French David when the Dutch liner arrived bearing assorted mails. That afternoon he paced, stony-eyed and silent, a square swept vacant by savage rain blasts, with a half-ounce of letter over his heart and a thousand tons of grief pressing down above it. Presently another bedraggled wayfarer entered the Square, wandered aimlessly, and sprawled his ponderous bulk upon the corner bench, where the umbrella tree affords a partial shelter. The Teuton Jonathan was also braving the storm.

Back and forth, back and forth, through the fierce, gray slant of the rain, marched the Frenchman, drawing at each turn a little nearer to the corner bench. The German did not move nor look up. He seemed lost in reverie. A square of white cardboard lay on his knee. His eyes stared out over it, brooding. At length the marcher in the rain came to the rightabout directly in front of the bench and stopped, rubbing his forehead like a man struggling out of a dream. David had recognized Jonathan.

He took an impetuous step forward. A gust of wind plucked the square of cardboard from the unheeding German's knee. It fell, displaying to the newcomer the double eagle of imperial Germany. David's face, which had softened, became a mask of fury. Another step forward and he saw something else above the insigne, a bar of black. He stooped and picked up the card. Jonathan neither saw nor moved.

Beneath the symbol on the card stood a line of German script. David lifted his eyes from it and looked about him. In the doorway of the Elite Restaurant, just across the asphalt, he saw Polyglot Elsa.

“BehÜte!” cried Elsa when she saw his face. “Sainte Vierge! What has happened?”

“Mademoiselle, translate for me,” cried the little old Frenchman: “'Auf dem Felde der Ehre gefallen'.”

“'Dead on the field of honor.' What—” But he was already halfway back, fighting his way through the gusts. With grave misgivings Elsa saw him advance upon his former friend and bitter foe. She wished Terry would come. Terry was a mighty discourager of trouble and violence.

David advanced to the sheltered bench without speaking. Quietly he seated himself beside Jonathan. Jonathan might have been dead for all that he heeded. His mind was in another world. David touched him on the shoulder.

“Hein?” said the big German vaguely. “'S ist du?” using involuntarily the tender pronoun of affection. Comprehension and remembrance came back to him instantly, and he shrank away with an inarticulate snarl of hatred.

David drew from his pocket the letter that had crushed the heart beneath it. He spread it on his knee.

“I have seen, Hermann,” he said brokenly. “Look you.”

Hermann looked. He looked from the gallant tricolor to the words below, and one phrase stood forth and went to his heart. “Mort dans la gloire pour la patrie: Robert Humain.”

Jonathan's fingers crept to David's knee and clung there. David's hand went to Jonathan's shoulder. The two old heads sagged lower and lower and closer and closer.

And Terry the Cop, who had crossed the street in five leaps with the liveliest anticipation of trouble in the first degree, took one look, turned hastily away, and huskily commanded a storm-beaten sparrow in the path to move on.