The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 41

"You?" she broke out. And for the first time she seemed to see that his hair was white. "Are you going?"

"Every one who has ever fought for America is going. There is a company of them behind me. Listen."

Down the road there was faintly to be heard the clatter of hoofs.

"Some joined me in Virginia, some as we crossed the Potomac by Arlington, where there is a house which once belonged to a relative of mine. And there were others, old friends, who met me as we came through Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. You would not now know Valley Forge," he finished, half to himself.

The river mist had crept farther up and was a little thicker now. The moon had risen and the mist s.h.i.+mmered and shone almost as if by its own light. The world was indeed of the very substance of a dream. The hoofbeats on the road grew nearer, and at last, while old Mrs. Buchan stood in a kind of amazed silence, they came into sight, even then mere shadowy, dim, wavering figures behind the gossamer silver veil which had drifted there from the lovely Delaware. The horses looked lean and weary, though perhaps this was a trick of the moonlight. Yet they dropped their heads and began eagerly to crop the short, dusty gra.s.s by the roadside. The moonlight seemed to play tricks with their riders, too. For in the fog some of them seemed to have almost grotesquely old-fas.h.i.+oned clothes, though all had a sort of military cut to them.

Some few, indeed, were trim and modern. But the greater part were, or seemed to Mrs. Buchan to be, in shabby blue or worn gray. The chance combination of the colors struck her. She was an old woman and she could remember unhappy far-off days when blue and gray had stood for the fight of brother against brother. Into her eyes the tears came, yet she suddenly smiled through them-a pair of quite young men lounged toward the fence, and then stood at ease there, the blue-clad arm of one affectionately and boyishly thrown around the other's gray shoulder.

"These go with you?" asked old Mrs. Buchan, still held by her memories.

"Yes. They are of all kinds and all ages, and some of them were not always friends. But you see-" He smiled and pointed to the lads by the fence. "One of them is from Virginia and the other from Ohio. Virginia and Ohio fought once. But I only say that I can remember that Ohio was part of Virginia once long ago. And is not Virginia part of Ohio and Ohio part of Virginia again now? I should be pus.h.i.+ng on, however, not talking. It is the horses that are tired, not the men."

"And hungry?" suggested Mrs. Buchan.

"The horses, yes, poor beasts!" he answered. "For the men it does not matter. Yet we must reach New York by morning. And it is a matter of some five-and-fifty miles."

"Rest a half-hour and let the horses graze. You can make it by sunrise."

Mrs. Buchan went a little way down the path. It was lined with pink and white clove-pinks and their fragrance was sweet in the night.

"Open the gate there to the left, men," she called out, and her voice rang, to her, unexpectedly strong and clear. "Let the horses graze in my green meadow if they will."

They gave an answering cheer from out the mist. She saw the meadow gate swing open and the lean horses pa.s.s through, a long, long file of them.

"But they will spoil your hay crop," objected the horseman. "And it should be worth a fair sum to you."

Mrs. Buchan drew herself up. "It is of no consequence," she answered.

He bowed again.

"But I don't understand," she almost pleaded, staring again at his white hair and the little flag in his hatband that looked so oddly like a c.o.c.kade. "You say you sail to-morrow with my boy?"

"I think you understand as well as any one."

"Do I?" she whispered. And the night suddenly seemed cold and she drew her little shawl of Shetland wool more tightly about her shoulders. Yet she was not afraid.

Her guest stooped and, rising, put one of her sweet-smelling clove-pinks in his b.u.t.ton-hole.

"If you permit, I will carry it for your boy to France. We are extra men, supercargo," he went on. "We shall cross with every boat-load of boys who sail for France-we who fought once as they must fight now. They said of me, only too flatteringly, that I was first in peace. Now I must be first in war again. I must be on the first troop-s.h.i.+p that goes. And I shall find friends in France. We have always had friends in France, I imagine, since those first days. Of course, madam, you are too young to remember the Marquis de la Fayette."

"Yes, I am too young," answered old Mrs. Buchan. And she smiled through her tears at the thought of her eighty years.

"You're a mere chit of a girl, of course," he laughed-one of the few times his gravity was relaxed. "Shall I know your boy, I wonder?" Then, without waiting for her answer, "The George Buchan who fought at the battle of Princeton was about twenty-two, slim and straight, with blue eyes and brown hair and an honest, gallant way with him, and a smile that one remembered."

"You will know my boy," she told him. "And I think he will know you, General."

Even now she swears she does not quite know what she meant by this. The magic of the June night had for the moment made everything possible. Yet she will not to this day say who she thinks the horseman may have been.

Only that George would know him, as she had.

"I want them all to know that I am there," he had replied. "They will know. They will remember their country's history even as we remember.

And when the sh.e.l.ls scream in the French sky they will not forget the many times America has fought for liberty. They will not forget those early soldiers. And they will not forget Grant and Lee and Lincoln. The American eagle, madam, has a very shrill note. I think it can be heard above the whistle of German shrapnel."

He drank a gla.s.s of sherry before he went, and ate a slice of sponge-cake. Perhaps altogether he delayed a scant quarter of an hour.

The lean horses came streaming forth from the green meadow, a long, long file; and while the moon and the river mist still made it a world of wonder, the company, larger somehow than she had thought it at first, clattered off up the Princeton road toward New York and salt water and the s.h.i.+ps.

The mist cleared for a moment and the great green meadow was seen, so trampled that it seemed that a thousand horses must have trampled it. Al Fenton, dignified by Mrs. Buchan as "the farmer," had now belatedly roused and dressed himself. He stood by the old lady's side and dejectedly surveyed the ruin of the hay crop. He is a sober, stupid, serious witness of what had happened. And this is important; for when the sun rose, and Mrs. Buchan opened her window, the breeze from the river rippled in long green waves over a great green meadow where the gra.s.s still pointed heavenward, untrampled, undisturbed. The Buchan meadow could still, as George had believed it would, take care of his grandmother.

This is the story, to be believed, or not, as you like. They do as they like about it in Jersey. But old Mrs. Buchan believes that with each American troop-s.h.i.+p there will sail supercargo, extra men. And she believes that with these extra men we cannot lose the fight. George, too, writes home to her that we shall win.

SOLITAIRE

_By_ FLETA CAMPBELL SPRINGER From _Harper's Magazine_ _Copyright, 1918, by Harper and Brothers._ _Copyright, 1919, by Fleta Campbell Springer._

We were sitting-three Frenchmen, a young American named Homan, and I-in the cafe of one of those small Paris hotels much frequented, even then, by officers on leave. It was the winter of 1912, when the Balkans were playing out their colorful little curtain-raiser to the great drama which followed-playing it, as they say in the theater, "in one," using only the very smallest part of the stage, and failing even in their most climactic moments to completely conceal the ominous sounds from behind the curtain where the stage was being set for the real business of the play.

At the tables a sprinkling of English and Americans of the usual transient type mingled with French from the provinces, and here and there a swarthy Balkan in uniform accented the room.

It was the presence of those other Americans-two or three, I should say, besides Homan and myself, though I hadn't noticed particularly-that gave the special significance to Homan's exclamation when he discovered Corey.

I saw him pause with his gla.s.s half raised-he was gazing straight past me over my shoulder-and a smile, meant for me, came into his eyes.

"Look!" he said, "at the American!"

I turned, because his manner indicated clearly enough that I might, squarely round in my chair, and immediately it was clear to me why he had said just that. Any one would have said it-any other American, I mean-which makes it more striking-and said it involuntarily, too. You couldn't have helped it. And yet you would encounter a dozen perfectly unmistakable Americans every day in Paris without feeling the necessity for any remark. It was simply that Corey was so typically the kind of American you _wouldn't_ encounter in Paris, or any other place, you felt, outside his own country. The curious thing about him was that instantly on seeing him, almost before you thought of America, you thought of a particular and localized section of America. You thought of the Middle West. There was something wholesome and provincial and colloquial about him. He was like a boy you'd gone to grammar school with-the kind of fellow to succeed to his father's business and marry and settle down in his home town, with New York City his farthest dream of venture and romance.

Yet there he sat across the table from a dark-visaged Balkan officer who was carrying on the conversation in careful English-it would have been unimaginable that he should speak in anything _but_ English to him-and it may have been the brilliance of this man's uniform which kept one, just at first, from seeing that he, too, our American, was wearing some sort of uniform, khaki color, very workman-like and s.h.i.+pshape, which might, if there had been the least chance of throwing us off, have thrown us. But his round, good-natured, uncomplicated face, his light brown hair and the way it was brushed-the very way it grew, like a school-boy's-the comfortable set of his broad shoulders, his kind of energetic inclination to stoutness, and even the way he sat at the table, were pure American Middle West and nothing else, no matter what his uniform proclaimed. He was as American as the flag, as the opening bars of "The Star-Spangled Banner," as American as Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa.

And when, at young Homan's exclamation, I had turned and found him looking straight toward me, the twinkle of his eyes had the effect of a friendly wave of his hand. He had, of course, as he said afterward, "spotted us," too. Then he had seen-and it amused him-the little play of our discovery.

I was just turning back to applaud to Homan the obviousness of his designation, and to wonder, with him, what the uniform meant, when my eye was caught by a thin, brilliantly colored line drawn, it seemed, just above the left breast pocket of his coat, and about the same length.

My first impression of the man, of the familiarity of his type, had, I suppose, been so strong as to dull for a moment my reaction to this discovery. I had seen that vari-colored line often enough before, on the uniforms of British officers or French; I had perhaps seen it on an American, but certainly I had never seen it on an American like this. No wonder the connection was slow to establish itself. It was a decoration bar, and there must have been six ribbons at least, if not more.

For sheer incongruous a.s.sociation, I doubt if you'd find a more pat example in a lifetime than the man I had, on sight, conceived this one to be-the man I may as well say now he actually _was_-and that bar of ribbons pinned on his khaki-colored coat.

Young Homan had caught it, too, and was sending past me his deliberate stare of amazement.

It was not exactly as if we thought he hadn't come by them honestly, but more as if we suggested to each other that he couldn't surely have got them in the way decorations were usually got; it seemed somehow impossible that he understood their importance. And there was still something of that in our att.i.tude when, later on, after dinner, we had drifted into the _salon_ with the rest for our coffee, and by a kind of natural gravitation had found ourselves in conversation with our compatriot, whose jocose friendliness led young Homan to ask, half in fun to be sure, where he had got all the decorations. He showed certainly no very proper appreciation of their importance by his answer:

"Bought 'em, at the Galleries Lafayette. Get any kind you want there, y'

know."