"Eh?"
The lad held out a paper.
"What in thunder is this?" demanded Carter.
"My enlistment papers, dad. I went down to the Marine Recruiting Office
the other day and passed my physical. Now--they've left a place along
the dotted line for you to sign because I'm under age."
The thing that astonished Carter most after the initial shock was a
feeling of helplessness. It was as though his relations with his son had
suddenly changed and the son had become the father. He was a foot
shorter than the boy anyway, and now he felt two feet shorter. He saw a
new light in the boy's eyes, heard a fresh note of dominance. And yet it
was only a brief time ago--a pitifully brief time ago--that he had been
holding this same boy in his arms as a baby. Now he stood at the lad's
mercy, even though he still saw below the stalwart figure of the boy-man
the downy-headed baby.
Carter gulped back a lump in his throat.
"Good Lord!" he choked. "I can't. I can't. You're all I've got."
The young man placed a steady hand upon his father's shoulder.
"You must take this thing right, dad," he said firmly.
"In another year----"
"I'd never forgive myself if I waited," cut in Ben. "I've heard too much
from the fellows who've been over there and seen. I want you to
understand that it isn't the adventure of the thing that gets me. It's
the right of it. I'm strong enough for the game, and that's all that
counts. Another year wouldn't make me any more fit."
"You'd be ready for Plattsburg--in a couple of years."
"Maybe," Ben nodded; "but somehow--well, I just hanker to use my arms
and legs rather than my head. The way I feel, nothing short of a chance
with the bayonet will satisfy me. That's why I went in for the Marines."
Carter glanced up. He saw those lips, which had once been so tender and
soft, now sternly taut.
"Have you told your mother?" asked Carter.
"No, dad. I want it all settled first."
"I--I don't know what it will do to her," Carter struggled on feebly.
"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 hoarsely 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 substitutes 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 butter. 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
substitute."
"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 sunshine and holidays--a
sort of pre-honeymoon land to the more fortunate. To-day a port in
France seemed like a port in hell.
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 passed 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 shipyards 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 God was shaken. He did
not know exactly just what his faith in God 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, God 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 shells and gas. Carter had read a good deal about the gas
shells--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 superstition 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 God. 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 God himself. And this God not only stood for
justice and honor but was justice and honor, and Carter was He and He
was Carter.
Now God 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 hoary with age, rushing
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, God'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 hell and which
possibly may have introduced some new ideas into hell 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 apron.
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
banality had he dragged her!
He strode to her side and seized her in his arms fiercely as a baffled
lover.
"Kitty," he cried hoarsely, "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
God--all together. We not only held the beasts but drove them back. It's
in the papers to-night."
"And Ben----" she faltered.
"He must have been there," he answered.
"He--he----"
But she did not finish her timorous question. She caught the contagion
of the fire in her husband's eyes and sealed her lips. And he, stooping,
kissed those lips as he used to kiss them before the boy came.
The next morning Carter drank his coffee black, and when Kitty brought
on the war doughnuts he shoved them aside.
"Don't make any more," he said. "Cut 'em out altogether. That's the
trick."
And when on the eight-ten Newell came round with a recipe for making
frosting without sugar, Carter refused to listen.
"Look here, Newell," he protested, "those confounded things don't
interest me."
"They don't?" returned Newell ominously.
"Not a little bit," Carter continued calmly.
"You mean to tell me you aren't interested in conservation?"
"Did I say that?"
"Well, it amounts to the same thing, doesn't it?"
"Not on your tintype!" replied Carter. "Look here, Newell, you've been
talking pretty plain to me lately and perhaps I've deserved it, but it
leaves me free to give you a few ideas of my own. What we've got to do
is to face this war--not duck it. We aren't going to win with
substitutes but with sacrifices. The trouble with you and your
crowd--the trouble with me--is that we've been trying to eat our cake
and save it too. What's the use of those fool recipes of yours? The time
has come to give up cake and pie and doughnuts--then why in thunder not
give them up and be done with it?"
"But the Government doesn't ask that," cut in Newell.
"Who's the Government?" demanded Carter.
"Why--why----"
"You are. I am," Carter cut in, answering his own question. "That's all
there is to it. And if you want to understand how important you are,
just multiply yourself by a hundred million. That's what Hoover does. Do
it for yourself."
Newell smiled a little maliciously.
"Perhaps you're right, old man. By the way, I'm on this Third Liberty
Loan committee, and if you'll tell me how much I can look ahead for from
you it would help."
"Ten thousand dollars," answered Carter. "In the meantime, if you hear
of anyone who wants to buy a house, let me know."
"You aren't going to leave us?"
"Not if I can hire a cheap place round town," answered Carter.
"Say--but you are plunging," exclaimed Newell uncomfortably.
"We can't let that Chateau-Thierry victory go for nothing," answered
Carter quietly.
At last--at last Carter himself had declared war. That was why when he
received a cable to the effect that Private Ben Carter was reported
seriously wounded the man could sign his name firmly to the receipt.
The time had come for the Huns to take seriously the entry of the United
States into the war.
--Frederick Orin Bartlett.