found himself talking to a man--a big, lean, blue-eyed western man, who
regarded Eddie with kindly, puzzled eyes. Eddie found himself telling
his story in a disjointed, breathless sort of way. When he had finished
the man uncrossed his long lean legs, took his pipe out of his mouth, and
sat up. There was something of horror in his eyes as he sat, looking at
Eddie.
"Why, kid," he said, at last. "You're deserting! You'll get the pen,
don't you know that, if they catch you? Where you going?"
"Going!" repeated Eddie. "Going! Why, I'm going home, of course."
"Then I don't see what you're gaining," said the man, "because they'll
sure get you there."
Eddie sat staring at the man for a dreadful minute. In that minute the
last of his glorious youth, and ambition, and zest of life departed from
him.
He got off the train at the next town, and the western man offered him
some money, which Eddie declined with all his old-time sweetness of
manner. It was rather a large town, with a great many busy people in it.
Eddie went to a cheap hotel, and took a room, and sat on the edge of the
thin little bed and stared at the carpet. It was a dusty red carpet. In
front of the bureau many feet had worn a hole, so that the bare boards
showed through, with a tuft of ragged red fringe edging them. Eddie
Houghton sat and stared at the worn place with a curiously blank look on
his face. He sat and stared and saw many things. He saw his mother, for
one thing, sitting on the porch with a gingham apron over her light
dress, waiting for him to come home to supper; he saw his own room--a
typical boy's room, with camera pictures and blue prints stuck in the
sides of the dresser mirror, and the boxing gloves on the wall, and his
tennis racquet with one string broken (he had always meant to have that
racquet re-strung) and his track shoes, relics of high school days, flung
in one corner, and his gay-colored school pennants draped to form a
fresco, and the cushion that Josie Morenouse had made for him two years
ago, at Christmas time, and the dainty white bedspread that he, fussed
about because he said it was too sissy for a boy's room--oh, I can't tell
you what he saw as he sat and stared at that worn place in the carpet.
But pretty soon it began to grow dark, and at last he rose, keeping his
fascinated eyes still on the bare spot, walked to the door, opened it,
and backed out queerly, still keeping his eyes on the spot.
He was back again in fifteen minutes, with a bottle in his hand. He
should have known better than to choose carbolic, being a druggist, but
all men are a little mad at such times. He lay down at the edge of the
thin little bed that was little more than a pallet, and he turned his
face toward the bare spot that could just be seen in the gathering gloom.
And when he raised the bottle to his lips the old-time sweetness of his
smile illumined his face.
Where the car turns at Eighteenth Street there is a big, glaring
billboard poster, showing a group of stalwart young men in white ducks
lolling on shores, of tropical splendor, with palms waving overhead, and
a glimpse of blue sea in the distance. The wording beneath it runs
something like this:
"Young men wanted. An unusual opportunity for travel, education and
advancement. Good pay. No expenses."
When I see that sign I think of Eddie Houghton back home. And when I
think of Eddie Houghton I see red.