Short Stories of the New America Part 26

"She'll take it right," declared the boy with conviction. "She'll take it right because-because it's for women like her that we're going over there."

Carter did not reach for the paper, even then. He merely found it in his hands. He drew out his fountain pen and the name he scrawled upon the dotted line might have been written by a man of eighty.

"That's the good old dad," Ben whispered hoa.r.s.ely as he replaced the paper in his pocket. "You're a brick."

Carter tried to see it that way. There were moments even when he thought he was going to feel proud. A day or two later, when Newell, Culver and the others on the eight-ten heard of it, they hurried up to him and shook his hand with such phrases as "The boy has the right stuff in him, Carter," and "He makes us glad we live in Edgemere." All Carter could do was to turn away.

The boy's going left a great big hollow place in Carter-a hollow that only grew bigger when he began to receive the lad's enthusiastic letters from the training camp. He missed him in a way that disturbed every detail of his daily life. When he woke up in the morning it was with a sense of some deep tragedy hanging over him-as though the boy were dead. This sent him downstairs depressed and irascible. His coffee with its abominable sirup tasted more bitter than ever. The mere sight of the war doughnuts irritated him. It was as though they made mock of him.

Half the time the omelet was burned, for Kitty was becoming more forgetful than ever, and more often than not did not remember the omelet at all until she smelled it smoking. She did her best to cheer Carter up, until she found the wisest thing to do was to say nothing. As a matter of fact everything she said sounded to him as hypocritical as all the confounded war subst.i.tutes with which he found himself more and more hemmed in. Newell particularly was full of new recipes for foods and drinks that he claimed were as good as the original articles, and was forever pulling clippings from his pockets on the morning train.

"You ought to get your wife to try this, Carter," he broke out one day.

"It's a new recipe for cake without sugar, wheat or b.u.t.ter. Ellen made some last night and you couldn't tell it from the real stuff."

"What do you call the real stuff?" demanded Carter.

"Why, the cake we used to get before the war."

"And you mean to say you can't tell the difference?"

"Well, of course this isn't quite so tasty, but it's a darned good subst.i.tute."

"You're welcome," growled Carter.

Newell appeared astonished. Later he repeated the conversation to Manson, and concluded: "Do you know, if the beggar didn't have a boy in the Marines I'd say he was pro-German."

"Nonsense!" answered Manson.

"Well, he wasn't any too keen about the Second Liberty Loan when I saw him. He only took a thousand."

"So? I thought he'd be good for five, anyway."

The Government was already beginning to talk about the Third Liberty Loan. Somewhat fretfully Carter read the preliminary announcements.

Where was this thing going to stop, anyway? He was not any more than keeping even with the game now. And even so, he was not getting so much out of life as he had been getting before.

On top of that they sent the boy across. After an interval of silence Carter received a cable one day announcing his safe arrival at a port in France. It took the starch all out of him. It was like one of those nightmares he used to suffer when he dreamed of the boy in some great danger and was forced to stand by, dumb and paralyzed, powerless to help. It was like that exactly, only this was reality. Day by day and mile by mile this intangible merciless power called war was dragging the boy nearer and nearer his destruction. It was barbaric. It was wrong.

This boy was his.

Now he was at a port in France. Until the last few years that would not have been anything to worry about. He had wished the boy to travel.

France had always stood to Carter as a land of suns.h.i.+ne and holidays-a sort of pre-honeymoon land to the more fortunate. To-day a port in France seemed like a port in h.e.l.l.

On the eight-ten they kept asking about the boy, and when Carter told Barclay that Ben was over there, Barclay answered: "Lucky dog. That ought to make you proud."

Carter made no reply. That was in March, just before the big Hun offensive. When that broke Carter did not dare read the papers for a while. Those were bad days. America had then been in the war nearly a year, and yet it was possible for those gray hordes to dash at and into the allied lines. They did it again and again, until the world stood aghast and Carter himself stood aghast. It made no difference whether he read the papers or not, for hourly bulletins were pa.s.sed round the office and scarcely anything else was talked of.

America had been in the war nearly a year. Uncle Sam had appropriated billions upon billions of dollars; had built s.h.i.+pyards the size of which staggered belief; had talked of destroyers and airplanes in terms of thousands; had established vast military camps and already drafted millions of men; had turned almost every industry in the country over to war work; had taken over the railroads and whatever else was needed.

Uncle Sam had been working with his jaws set and his sleeves rolled up and flags flying from almost every housetop between the Atlantic and the Pacific; with men marching down the streets and bands playing and half the politicians of the country turned into Fourth of July orators.

Yet this thing was happening over there. Lines that had been thought impregnable were falling daily. City after city was being overrun. If the Huns paused it was only for breath, and to dash on once more. Nearer and nearer they came to Paris, until the city heard the sound of their guns; nearer and nearer, until they came to Chateau-Thierry.

Carter reached a point where almost his faith in G.o.d was shaken. He did not know exactly just what his faith in G.o.d was, but it stood for something outside himself representative of justice-just as his patriotism stood for something outside himself representative of honor.

Not to be in the slightest sacrilegious, G.o.d was a figure crowned with thorns just as Uncle Sam was a figure crowned with a starred top hat.

Both were invincible. Yet both stood aside, helpless, before the Huns'

advance.

They waited helplessly until the gray wolves reached Chateau-Thierry.

Then the news was cabled across that the Marines were holding this line-not only technically but actually. Again and again the wolves came on and staggered back.

The Marines were there-the American Marines-and they were holding.

The first report brought the sweat to Carter's brow. Somewhere in that line without much doubt his son Ben was standing. The little boy he had carried in his arms was under that merciless fire of shrapnel and explosive sh.e.l.ls and gas. Carter had read a good deal about the gas sh.e.l.ls-the yellow and the blue and the green cross kind. It was devilish stuff. It burned into the lungs and the eyes and the skin. He remembered when it had first been used-had been sent sneaking across the allied lines like some ancient superst.i.tion made real. From that moment he had been for war. He talked war with everyone he met, usually ending with the exclamation: "Uncle Sam won't stand for that sort of dirty work!"

As a matter of fact Uncle Sam had stood for it a good many months after that, and for acts even more barbaric. But now your Uncle Sam was right on the spot and Ben was on the spot. The two were one!

This was what Carter got hold of, suddenly, unexpectedly, unconsciously, as a man sees a vision. Uncle Sam was there not in the form of a middle-aged farmer in a starred top hat, but as one of the Marines, a tough, wiry young American fighter. And among these Marines was Ben, holding this ghastly line as in his play days he had helped to hold the football line. Uncle Sam was there as Carter's boy-blood of his blood and flesh of his flesh and soul of his soul. And so in a sense Carter himself was there. This was his fight too. He and Uncle Sam were one! He and the nation were one. He and the brilliant flags flying unharmed here in the streets of New York were one. As far as Carter individually was concerned he was essentially all there was of the nation-just as, individually and as far as his own soul was concerned, he was all there was of G.o.d. But because of this, because the thought made him so big, he took in the others too-his boy, Kitty, his neighbors, the state and the United States, and finally G.o.d himself. And this G.o.d not only stood for justice and honor but was justice and honor, and Carter was He and He was Carter.

Now G.o.d and Carter and the boy and the Marines and the nation were all standing side by side behind a little town that until now had been no more conscious of itself than Carter had been. It had been merely Chateau-Thierry-a tiny village where simple men and women had gone about their humble business of living with little thought of the world at large. Now it was finding itself a turning point in the history of the world, with the sinewy young men from a country that had not been discovered when Chateau-Thierry already was h.o.a.ry with age, rus.h.i.+ng there to help keep it true. And with Carter some four thousand miles away staring from his office window and, quite unconscious of the business of the Atlas Company, praying not that the boy might be kept safe for his own sake, but that he might be spared to fight his best-Carter's best, the nation's best, G.o.d's best.

The Marines held, and then they did a little better; they began to advance. They say that Foch himself was none too sure of what these lads would find it possible to do. These men were getting their baptism of Hun fire, which is comparable to no fire this side of h.e.l.l and which possibly may have introduced some new ideas into h.e.l.l itself. Certainly neither Dante nor Milton revealed any conception of mustard gas.

Creeping forward on all fours the Marines advanced. It was grim business these boys were about, while the flags flew dreamily in the streets of New York and a thousand other cities from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico-flew dreamily and prettily for safe men to look up at and for safe women and children to smile at contentedly. It was serious business they were about to the right and left of that old town, while the machines sped up and down Fifth Avenue bright in the summer sun. And yet when at length the cables flashed across the ocean the news that the old town had been won and all that meant, there was little in the message to hint of that grim business. And there was no mention at all of individuals-of the boy Ben who lay in a bit of woods like one asleep, his hair all tousled and his face dirty as he used to come in from play. But that night Carter went home with his head held high and his eyes alight.

When Carter opened the front door he was greeted with the smell of smoke from the kitchen. He hurried out there and found Mrs. Carter standing almost in tears before the charred remains of what had evidently been intended for a pie of some sort. She looked up anxiously as Carter entered. Her blue eyes began to fill with tears.

"Oh, Ben," she quavered, "I'm so sorry. I-I've been saving flour and sugar for a week to have enough to make you a real apple pie. And then-and then I forgot it. And-and--"

She made a despairing gesture toward the jet-black evidence of her unpardonable thoughtlessness. And then before Carter's accusing glance she shrank back and hid her face in the folds of her blue gingham ap.r.o.n.

Carter stared from her to the pie and then back to her. Fresh from the victory of Chateau-Thierry, this was such a pitiful travesty! She was crying-she, the mother of his son who had fought with the Marines this day, was crying in fear of his anger because she had spoiled in the baking an apple pie.

Good Lord, to what depths had he sunk! To what pitiful depths of ba.n.a.lity had he dragged her!

He strode to her side and seized her in his arms fiercely as a baffled lover.

"Kitty," he cried hoa.r.s.ely, "look up at me!"

In amazement she obeyed. The clutch of his arms took her back twenty-five years. He saw the springtime blue of her eyes.

"Kitty," he pleaded, "can you forgive me?"

"Forgive-you?" she stammered, not understanding.

"For making you think it matters a picayune what I have to eat. Little woman-little woman, we took Chateau-Thierry to-day!"

She drew back a little as though expecting evil news to follow. But the news had not yet come.

"We," he repeated-"you and I and Ben and the Marines and Uncle Sam and G.o.d-all together. We not only held the beasts but drove them back. It's in the papers to-night."