Short Stories of the New America Part 24

X-CHaTEAU-THIERRY

When the United States of America finally declared war against His Satanic Majesty, Wilhelm of Prussia, Carter nodded his approval. The nation's decision was reached at a time when he was in a particularly generous mood, for things had been coming his way for some time and he had finally settled down comfortably to enjoy them. In the preceding fall he had reached the goal of his ambition, the managers.h.i.+p of the New York office of the Atlas Company, where he had been employed for twenty-five years. This carried a salary of seventy-five hundred-some jump from the petty twelve hundred on which he had started; even some jump from the forty-five hundred he had been drawing for the past year.

The increase allowed Carter to make several very satisfactory changes: first, to move from the rented house in Edgemere, where he had lived for five years, to a house of his own in the same town, for which he gave a warranty deed to his wife; to take his son Ben out of a commercial school and send him to Harvard for a liberal education; and to purchase a cla.s.sy little runabout. There were certain other perquisites, too, which made the world a better place to live in, such as an added servant, a finer table, and, finally, the privilege of taking the eight-ten to town instead of the seven-fifteen.

Carter enjoyed all these luxuries as only a man can who has worked hard for them and waited long. He had promised them to his pretty wife the day he married her, and now, after twenty years, he had made good. It was worth something to see him, after a substantial breakfast, kiss Kitty good-by on the front porch, give a proprietary look at the neat s.h.i.+ngled house, and stroll down the gravelly path at a leisurely pace, stopping at the gate to light a fat cigar and wave a second adieu to the little woman, who was still pretty and who he knew admired him from the crown of his head to the tips of his shoes. She was that kind.

On the eight-ten he was meeting a new cla.s.s of neighbors-all eight to ten thousand dollar men, with a few above that figure, though the latter generally moved to the Heights at round twelve thousand. They were men whose lives were now polished and round like stones on the seash.o.r.e within reach of the waves. They varied, mostly, in their dimensions, with of course some differences of political coloring. But they were fast becoming neutral even in politics. With America at war the old issues were disappearing.

Most of the men had long since become used to each other, but Carter, sitting in the smoker-it was almost like a private car reserved for those not due at their offices until nine-was actually thrilled by his a.s.sociates. And if ever he found an opportunity to refer among them to "my son at Harvard" he was puffed up all the rest of the day. The only thing he regretted was that the war had done away with football, because in high school the lad had promised to make a name for himself in the game. Still, even that had its redeeming features: his neck was safe.

Though the boy was climbing toward six feet and weighed, at eighteen, round one hundred and seventy, he threw himself into the line in those final school games with a recklessness that made Carter, looking on, catch his breath.

Carter had not been able to keep pace with the boy's physical growth. It still seemed to him but a brief time ago that he had been carrying him round in his arms as a baby. And he had carried him for miles. He had not been able to keep his hands off him. He had loved to feel the downy head against his cheek and the frightened little heart pounding against his own. Night after night he had walked the floor with him with a sense of creation akin to G.o.d's. And when anything was really the matter with the child Carter became a trembling wreck.

Well, those days were something to look back upon now with a smile. They even played their part in the present. They afforded the contrast necessary to allow him to extract to the last drop his final triumphant success. Some of those who had never taken the seven-fifteen did not know what it meant to take the eight-ten.

Carter, who had previously been content with one paper, now bought the _Times_ and the _Sun_ at the station and glanced through the headlines.

He had read with a thrill of pride, as did everyone in the whole car on that early spring morning, the President's declaration of war.

He was sitting beside Culver, of the Second National Bank, and exclaimed: "Guess that'll make Wilhelm sit up and take notice, eh?"

Culver was an older man. Carter could have punched him for his response in a level voice: "Yes. But 'tis going to make us sit up and take notice, too."

"What do you mean?" demanded Carter with a trace of aggressiveness.

"I mean that our resources are going to be tested to the limit before we're through with this."

"You wait until the Huns see Uncle Sam with his sleeves rolled up.

Wouldn't surprise me any if they quit."

Carter s.h.i.+fted his seat to a place near Barclay and Newell, who were leading a group in three cheers for the President. And on his way downtown that day he stopped to buy a flag and pole to be sent to the house. Before he reached his office these flags of red and white and blue had begun to appear in numbers on the tops of buildings and from windows, brightening the dull gray backgrounds as with flowers. It made him want to cheer. It made him walk more erect. The whole downtown atmosphere became vibrant. The declaration of war was the sole topic of conversation in the office, and one of the first things he did was to ring up Kitty and tell her about it.

"Well, old girl, we've done it!" he exclaimed.

"Done what?" she asked anxiously.

"Declared war," he announced, as though in some way he had been personally concerned in the act. "Guess that will make the Huns rub their eyes."

"War?" trembled Kitty.

"You bet! Fritzie waited a little too long with his apologies that last time."

In the succeeding days Carter followed the nation's preparations for the task ahead with a feeling of reflected glory. His favorite phrase was: "We're going at it man-fas.h.i.+on."

He was keen for conscription and liked to speak of a possible army of two million. When the First Liberty Loan came along he subscribed for a thousand dollars. He would have taken more, but he found that his personal expenses had taken in the last few months a decided jump. It was costing him more than twice as much to maintain his new house as it had his old. Besides that, Ben's expenses at college were a considerable item. His car, too, was costing more than he had antic.i.p.ated, and he had added unconsciously a lot to his everyday expenditures. He was smoking better cigars, eating better lunches and wearing better clothes. At the same time each one of these items was costing more. However, his new position in a way called for these things, and, besides, he was ent.i.tled to them. He had worked hard for them and they were the fair reward of attainment.

Carter had hoped to do better on the Second Liberty Loan, but when the time came he found it difficult to take out even another thousand. He rather resented the way Newell, the overzealous member of the local committee, harried him about it. When Newell suggested that he double the amount the man was presuming to know Carter's circ.u.mstances better than he himself knew them.

He had answered rather tartly:

"I'm capable of deciding my investments for myself."

In the interval between the two loans both the servants had asked for an increase in wages, and Carter had been forced to pay it or see them go.

Kitty had suggested that she be allowed to get along with one and undertake some of the housework herself, but he had set his foot down on that.

"You've had your share of housework, little woman," he said. "It's time you took a rest and enjoyed yourself."

But the servants were not the only ones who held Carter up. The grocer, the butcher and the iceman all conspired against him. When the Government began to take control under Hoover and fix prices for some of the essentials Carter was outspoken in his approval.

"It's time something of the sort was done to check the food pirates," he declared to Culver.

"Where's this government control going to stop?" questioned the latter.

"I don't know and I don't care," replied Carter aggressively.

"It's a type of paternalism, and that's dangerous," suggested Culver.

Carter replied with a glittering generality: "Your Uncle Sam has rolled up his s.h.i.+rt sleeves and means business."

Carter always chuckled contentedly over the cartoons of the tall, lank figure with the lean face, grimly set jaws and starred top hat. It expressed for him in a human way his own patriotism. It filled him with pride and gave him confidence. It satisfied his traditional conception of Americanism. He even saw in the face a reflection of his own ancestors who had fought at Bunker Hill and through the Civil War. It was distinctly New England, but New England was still in his mind distinctly America.

And yet Carter was puzzled at first when he read the names appearing in the final draft lists-puzzled and a bit worried. These names were not like those that were signed to the Declaration of Independence or those who fell at Bunker Hill. Decidedly they were more like those found in to-day's New York directory. This might have been expected, and yet it gave Carter something of a shock until one afternoon he saw a regiment of khaki-clad men marching down Fifth Avenue. Then he felt a lump in his throat that prevented him from cheering as loud as he wished. In uniform and marching to the stirring music of a military band these men were, every mother's son of them, Americans. He saw the same lean faces, the same lank, sinewy bodies, the same clear eyes and set jaws. Their lips were sealed, so that it did not matter what language they spoke. In khaki they were all Americans-the same who fought at Bunker Hill.

The sight sent Carter home with a renewed enthusiasm, which helped him survive the shock of the news that the cook had, without notice, packed up her trunk and left to take some sort of job in a factory. But fortunately he had brought along with him a sirloin steak, which, broiled, made a very satisfactory dinner. A week later the second girl left.

Mrs. Carter took it good-humoredly, even with a certain amount of relief. She had turned to Red Cross work and one thing or another, but still she missed the care of her own home. Furthermore, she had been genuinely disturbed by the way the expenses had been creeping up. But Carter stormed round and spent half the next day trying to find some new girls. The agencies showed him a few old women and shook their heads.

"We can't compete with the factories," they said sadly.

"But, hang it all, what's a man going to do?" he inquired petulantly.

The agencies, perforce, left him to answer that for himself.

As a matter of fact Carter was not wholly unselfish in his desire to relieve his wife of the housework-particularly the culinary part of it.

She did her conscientious best, but she had never been able satisfactorily to master the fine art of cooking. Possibly it was because she herself was more or less indifferent to what she ate. A slice of bread and a cup of tea were enough at any time to satisfy her, so that when she did cook it was always for him and without any other personal interest in the result. Sometimes she forgot; in fact, more often than not she forgot. Perhaps it was only some one little thing, like leaving the baking powder out of the biscuits or the sugar out of the pies. Or if she did get everything in, perhaps she failed to remember in time that the mixture was in the oven. When she began fooling round with war recipes she found herself even more bewildered.

Lord knows, it calls for deft fingers and inborn skill to make a good pie crust out of honest wheat flour, with all thought of economy thrown to the winds. It requires nothing short of genius to produce the same results with subst.i.tutes for everything except the apples.

She tried all one afternoon and created something that had a fairly good surface appearance. She waited anxiously until Carter tasted it, and then asked: "How do you like it, Ben?"

"You want the truth?" he returned.

"Of course there is no white flour in the crust, but--"

"There isn't anything in it that ought to be in a pie," he declared. "It tastes to me as though it were made out of sawdust and motor oil."