Mr. Brougham stood waiting in the wings. Never before had he made a
speech; never had he been upon a stage, except to sit safely with a
delegation, in a row, behind the ice-water pitcher. He had a small dry
patch in his throat which constant swallowing failed to improve, and
the tips of his fingers kept getting cold and very distant. He was
about to make a Liberty Loan speech, and he was suffering more than he
had expected; but, as he kept murmuring to himself, "_Dulce et decorum
est_."
At twenty-eight he had volunteered among the first in the Spanish War,
and it had been no fault of his that he had never got any nearer the
front than Chattanooga. At forty-eight he could still speak for his
country--at least he hoped he could. How absurd to be nervous! This
was no time to be thinking of one's own feelings. He took out his
handkerchief and wiped the palms of his hands. "Well, Mr. Brougham,"
said the loud bold voice of the local chairman, "shall we go on?" What
was one victim more or less to him in his insatiable campaign for
speakers?
"By all means," answered Brougham in a tone which even in his own ears
sounded like that of a total stranger.
His only conscious thought was grateful remembrance that his wife was
kept at the canteen that evening, and couldn't be in the audience,
which he found himself regarding as a hostile body waiting to devour
him. He sat trying to relax the muscles of his face during the
chairman's short address; and then the fatal sentence began: " ... the
great pleasure ... introduce ... so well known ... Mr. Walter Brougham,
who will say a few rousing words to you on this great subject."
What a silly adjective "rousing" was, Brougham thought as he came
forward. He had no intention whatever of being rousing. He wondered if
he had the intention of being anything except absolutely silent. He
lifted the lid and looked into his mind as into an unexplored box. Was
there anything in it? Why, yes; rather to his surprise he found there
was.
"My friends," he began, "this is no time for oratory." Hearty, and to
Brougham totally unexpected, applause greeted this sentiment. "This is
a time for cool, steady, clear-eyed vision." That was a mistake; of
course vision was clear-eyed. "This is a time to ask ourselves this
question: How is it that we hesitate to give our money, and yet stand
ready--every one of us--to give our lives and--harder still--our sons'
lives?"
"Hear, hear!" cried a voice from the audience, fresh, young and
familiar. Brougham looked down; yes, there they were--his own two
boys, David, not eighteen, and Lawrence, hardly fifteen. Their blond,
well-brushed heads towered above the rest of the row and were easily
recognizable. He could see the expressions of their faces--cool,
serene, friendly approval. They're too damned philosophical, he said
to himself; and as he went on speaking, with all that was mortal in
him concentrated on his words, in some entirely different part of his
being a veil was suddenly lifted and he saw something that he had
been trying not to see for months--namely, that he was dissatisfied
with his elder son's attitude toward the war--it was cool; cool like
his approval of the speech. Not that Mr. Brougham wanted his son to
volunteer at his age--quite the contrary; he sincerely believed it was
every man's duty to wait until he had reached the age designated by
his country; but he did want the boy to want to volunteer. He wanted
to be able to say at the club as other fathers were saying: "What gets
into these young fellows? I've had to forbid my boy--" Perhaps if
his self-vision had been perfect he would have admitted that he had
sometimes said it.
And then it occurred to him that this was the moment to stir their
hearts--to make one of those speeches which might not touch the
audience but which would inflame the patriotism of youth. Forgetting
his recent pledge he plunged into oratory--the inherited oratory of the
Fourth of July, he snatched up any adjectives as long as they came in
threes, called patriotism by name, and spoke of the flag as Old Glory.
Hurried on by his own warmth he reached his climax too soon, ended his
speech before the audience expected and began asking for subscriptions
before anyone was ready.
There was an awkward silence. Then a young voice spoke up: "One
one-hundred-dollar bond." Yes, it was David. Mr. Brougham's heart
leaped with hope; had the boy been moved? Was this the first fruit
of repentance? He looked down, hoping to meet the upward glance of a
devotee, but David was whispering something to his younger brother
which made the latter giggle foolishly.
The ball once set rolling went fast. Subscriptions poured in; it was
a successful evening--almost as successful as the evening made famous
by a great screen artist. Mr. Brougham was warmly congratulated by the
local chairman.
"We shall call on you again, Brougham," he said gayly.
Mr. Brougham nodded, but his thought was: Is nothing enough for these
fellows?
His two boys were waiting for him at the stage door. "You're good, sir,
you're good!" they cried, patting him on the back.
"I never thought he'd let them have it so mild," said Lawrence.
Mr. Brougham did not mind being laughed at--at least he always said he
didn't--but he couldn't bear to have patriotism in any form held up to
ridicule. He thought to himself:
"They don't know what it costs a man of my age to go on a stage and
make a speech. I don't enjoy making myself conspicuous."
"We'll stop and get your mother at the canteen," he said sternly.
"Oh, yes, this is mother's night for saving the country, isn't it?"
said Lawrence.
"Did you know," said David to his brother, across his father's head,
for they were both taller than he, "did you know that a gob tipped
mother the other evening? So pleased with his coffee that he flicked
her a dime for herself."
"Oh, you sailor-boys!" said Lawrence in a high falsetto.
This was really more than Mr. Brougham could bear in his exalted state.
"I don't like that, boys," he said.
"No, father," answered David; "but you know we never tipped mother; in
fact, it's always been quite the other way."
"I mean I don't like your tone of ridicule, of--of--of--" He couldn't
think of the word he wanted, and felt conscious that David had it on
the tip of his tongue but was too tactful to interrupt. "You boys don't
seem to appreciate the sacrifice, the physical strain for a woman of
your mother's age--standing all evening handing out sandwiches--not
accustomed to hard work either."
Both boys looked gravely ahead of them, and Mr. Brougham had a
sickening conviction they were both trying to think of something to say
that would calm him.
The canteen was just closing, and the two boys made themselves useful
in putting things away. "Just as if it were a school picnic," their
father thought.
As soon as they were on their way home Mrs. Brougham asked about the
speech. Had it gone well?
"Oh, father was great, mother," David answered. "He took it from them
in wads, and presented Lawrence and me to his country with every bond."
"A lady behind us was awfully affected," said Lawrence. "She kept
whispering that she understood the speaker had two lovely boys of his
own."
"I could hardly keep Lawrence from telling her that she had not been
misinformed."
Mr. Brougham sighed. This was not the tone of young men suddenly
roused to a new vision of patriotism. He said aloud: "I was glad you
felt financially able to take a bond yourself, David."
"Oh, yes," answered his son. "I sold my boat yesterday."
Mr. Brougham was not so Spartan a parent that he did not feel a pang to
think of the boy without his favorite pastime on this perhaps his last
summer.
"Quite right," he said. "This is no year for pleasure boats."
"You get a good price for boats this year," said David.
There it was again--that note Mr. Brougham didn't like. Even if David's
motives had been financial and not patriotic he might have allowed
Lawrence to see an example of self-sacrifice. Instead Lawrence was
getting just like his brother.
Brougham was not a man who habitually eased his burdens by casting them
on his wife, but that night when they went upstairs he took her into
his confidence.
"Are you satisfied with David's attitude toward the war?" he began.
She was a silent, deep woman whose actions always astonished those who
had no intuitive knowledge of the great general trends of her nature.
She and David usually understood each other fairly well.
Now she shook her head. "No," she said.
"Good Lord!" said poor Mr. Brougham. "I don't want the boy shot in a
trench. I think it's his duty to wait a year or two; but I can't see
that he has any enthusiasm, any eagerness, hardly any interest. He
seized the paper last evening, and I supposed that he wanted to read
about the offensive. Not at all! After a glance at the headlines he
turned to the baseball news. Do you understand him?"
"No," said his mother.
"At his age I should have been in this war, with or without my parents'
consent. Mind you, I don't want him in it--not for a year or two. But
why doesn't he want to get in? He's not a coward."
"No," said his mother, and then she added: "I've thought a great deal
about it, and I think it's because he's so young--so immature."
"Immature!" cried Mr. Brougham. "Why, he's always using words I don't
know the meaning of!"
"Perhaps he doesn't either," said his wife. "That's immature, isn't it?
But I meant the immaturity of not seeing responsibilities--not taking
them up, at least. You see, my dear, he's very young--only a year out
of school. It's natural enough."
"It's not natural at all," answered Mr. Brougham. "Just out of
school--school is the very place to learn patriotism--drilling and all
that--and I'm sure Granby is one of the most patriotic men I ever knew.
He inspires most of his boys. No, I don't understand. I shall speak to
David about his attitude."
"Oh, don't! You'll have him enlisting to-morrow."
"No; for I shall explain to him that he must wait."
She smiled. "You're going to stir him up to want to do something which
you won't allow him to do. Is that sensible, dear?"
It wasn't sensible, but--more important--it was inevitable. Mr.
Brougham, feeling as he did, could not be silent. He had always been
proud of his boys, had always assumed they were stuff to be proud of.
They had done decently in their lessons, well in their athletics.
What could a father ask more? Now for the first time he found himself
questioning his right to be proud, and the doubt was like poison in his
system. He must speak to his son.
The difficulty of "speaking to" people is that we either take too
portentous a tone, and thus ruffle the minds we mean to impress, or
else that we speak so casually as to make no impression at all. Mr.
Brougham's leanings were all to the former manner, and recognizing
this weakness he made one more effort at the indirect attack. Hearing
that his nephew, a lieutenant of infantry, was about to sail, he sent
for him to come and dine. In his greeting of the young man he tried to
express his respect for the uniform, even when decorated by nothing
more than a gold bar.
"I envy you, my boy," he said. "I remember how I felt when I first put
on those clothes in 1898--not that we can compare that war with this,
but the emotion is the same--the emotion is always the same. We all
envy you in this house."
David looked rather impish. "Envy him!" he said. "And him such a bad
sailor!"
At this Brougham's brows contracted, but the lieutenant smiled.
"Yes," he said; "won't I wish I had stayed at home!"
This sentiment would have shocked Mr. Brougham except that he believed
he recognized in it the decent Anglo-Saxon cloak of a profound
feeling--very different from David's cold inaction.
As soon as dinner was over he left the boys alone and took a chair on
the piazza, from which he could watch the expressions of their faces.
They fell at once into a conversation of the deepest interest; so
interesting that they began to move their hands about in unaccustomed
gestures. Once David lifted his and brought it down with a sidewise
swoop.
"That's it!" a voice rang out. "It's great!"
Mr. Brougham felt justified in moving a little nearer. He then found
that the subject of discussion was jazz-band records for the phonograph.
The next morning, looking out of his window early, he saw David in
his bathing suit trying, with a seriousness that might have drilled
a company, to teach a new handspring to Lawrence. And this made it
impossible for Mr. Brougham to be silent any longer.
When David came back to the house, dressed, but with his hair still
dark and wet from his swim, his father stopped him.
"Sit down a minute," he said. "I want to speak to you. I want you to
explain your attitude toward this war."
This opening sentence, which he had thought of while the handsprings
were going on, would have been excellent if he could have given his son
time to answer it, but he couldn't; his emotions swept him on, and at
the end of five minutes he was still talking:
"The Civil War was fought by boys your age or younger. I don't say
it was best, but it's the fact. And here you are--you've had every
advantage--of education, of luxury, of protection. Don't you care for
the traditions of your country? You're not a child any more. You're
old enough to understand that a hideous catastrophe has come upon the
world, and before long you must take your part in remedying it. What's
your attitude to the war?"
"I think we're going to win it, sir, in the end."
"Other people are going to win it?"
"Would you approve of my enlisting at once? I understood--"
"No, I would not approve of it, as I've told you," answered his father,
feeling that somehow he was being unjustly cornered. "But because a
man's too young to make a soldier, that doesn't mean he shouldn't have
any patriotism in his make-up--should be absolutely indifferent, with
his head full of handsprings and jazz bands."
"I'm not indifferent," said David; "and as for jazz bands, even the men
at the Front like them."
"But you're not at the Front--if you get my point."
"I don't believe I do," said David.
Civil as David's tone was there was of course a trace of hostility in
the words themselves, and in his distress Mr. Brougham decided to go
and consult Granby, the head of the school where David had been for
five years and where Lawrence still was.
Brougham only went to Granby in desperate straits, for he was a little
afraid of his son's schoolmaster. Granby was a tall bald man of fifty,
with an expression at once stern and humble--stern with the habit
of innumerable decisions, humble with the consciousness that half
of them had been wrong. Brougham admired him, but could not be his
friend, owing to the fact that he always became in Granby's presence an
essential parent and nothing else. Mrs. Brougham, with the protection
of her long silences, managed better to retain her individuality in his
presence.
"I've come to consult you about David," he began.