Jeb had stepped out upon the street with heavy feet. There was a dull
weight at his heart; a sickening weariness permeated his entire body.
The Colonel's words of warning to protect his stomach, the suggestion of
bullets ploughing through it, caused him to stop and loosen his belt,
which had begun to feel uncomfortable. He even ran his had over that
part of his anatomy and found that it seemed actually to be tender.
"What the hell's the matter with me?" he asked himself. "I'm no coward;
there hasn't been a coward in my family since the Crusade. No, it's the
Colonel's eternal cackling that's got my goat!"
Heartened somewhat, he continued at a faster pace and soon turned
through the side gate, thence across the porch into the Tumpson home.
Miss Sallie's voice from upstairs greeted him.
"Back safe, Jeb?"
The tenderness of her inquiry, subtly--though
unintentionally--suggesting that the manor lord had returned and
therefore the womenfolk must haste with ministering, greatly restored
his self-esteem. Again the sword began to lose its tarnish; again it
flashed in his hand with zest; again in imagination his company stepped
off with the precision of regulars!
"War's declared," he shouted. "Colonel Hampton and Mr. Strong have
patched up their fuss, and are going to recruit a company and make me
captain. We'll be smashing the Germans inside a month!"
He wondered at the strength with which these last words were spoken, and
was on the point of repeating them because their sound had caressed his
pride, when Miss Sallie gave a cry.
"Sister Veemie," she called, "come with me quickly! War is declared, and
our Jeb has been appointed to lead the soldiers! Oh, what shall become
of us!"
The last symptoms of trepidation lingering in his make-up now
disappeared entirely, and it was a tall, proud, imperious officer who
stood in the front hall waiting for the little ladies who, hand-in-hand,
came timidly down. Without speaking, Miss Veemie crossed to where he
stood. She did not seem to walk, but glide, so smooth and gentle was her
movement and the flow of her wide, rather old-fashioned skirt. Tiptoeing
and putting her arms around his neck, she simply whispered:
"Jeb!"
"Pshaw, Aunt Veemie," he said, feeling delightfully heroic, "it isn't
anything to take on about. We're at war, and at it for keeps!--that's
all there is to it! I've been honored with a captaincy, and we'll be in
France before July Fourth, and in Berlin by Thanksgiving. Think of
that!"
Miss Sallie caught his sleeve.
"Oh, Jeb," she cried, "if your dear father had lived to hear you speak
thus spiritedly!"
"We're so proud of you, dear," Miss Veemie whispered, her eyes gazing up
at him through tears of adulation. "You'll try not to get hurt, won't
you?" She admonished simply from force of habit.
It might have been a war god who dined in their home that evening. He
was seated in Jeb's place, and on either side of him sat a seamed though
gentle handmaiden, missing no opportunity to load his plate with good
things. Their faded cheeks were tinged with a glow that had not been
there in many years, their eyes sparkled with an almost forgotten light,
and the lace on their narrow-breasted bodices rose and fell with an
agitation that required at times a delicate hand to still.
The talk was of war, and Jeb handled the subject to his entire
satisfaction. His highly strung mind drew pictures that more and more
stirred their admiration--and horror. Working upon fragments of fact
that from day to day had been printed in the _Eagle_, he built a
structure of sacrifice and slaughter from which he alone arose supreme.
It was a dramatic dissertation and contained red-blooded sentiments that
would have done credit to a man who had actually played the giant game,
swapped trick for trick with death, and won out by sheer luck.
Curiously enough, he believed himself; he believed that his moment of
weakness earlier in the day had now passed into the limbo of things
never to be resurrected; he believed that his courage was absolute, that
no terrors were great enough to shake it. The ancient Egyptians brought
a skeleton to their feasts to remind them of death, but Jeb's apparent
familiarity with carnage seemed to be giving him new life.
A man may think he possesses a determined belief, yet unless he has
energy and faith enough to test it he is harboring little more than a
wish, a hope. If he is downright honest he will not permit himself to be
deceived--but the trouble is that hopes which he wishes were beliefs,
and wishes that he hopes will become beliefs, are blindfolds
deliberately placed across his eyes to spare him an unrestricted vision
of his naked soul. This is the most common type of cowardice in the
world.
The brave words Jeb uttered were most agreeable to his senses; they fed
the hole that should have been filled with courage, and he therefore
plunged onward into the realm of imageries until the little ladies felt
that they had never really known their Jeb. Certain were they that his
manliness had received a most inadequate appreciation.
Dinner over, he left them for the quietude of the garden. Back and forth
upon the path, bordered by wee budding tulips, he walked with springing
steps. His gaze was in the laced branches overhead, a tangle that broke
the calm flood of moonlight into silver patches and scattered them over
the ground. Back and forth across these he strode--one moment in sharp
outline, the next obscured--thinking, dreaming. He would not stop to
hear the unspoken message of this place, whispering to him everywhere
that the intricate mesh of branches represented Fear, through which the
pulseless courage shed upon man from God is shattered. He would not see,
in the tiny green tips pushing through the earth, that man's blooming
into perfection is a slow process, dependent upon the cultivation of his
soul. In this night of his greatest promise, he asked only to live with
dreams.
The soil surrounding Jeb's progress thus far in life had been prepared
by his two adoring aunts with very much the same care they bestowed on
their tulips. After he was put into their hands at the age of four,
neither their time, nor thought, nor means were spared in forcing his
development. But while Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie could intensify the
development of a tulip, it might not be said that they knew anything
about boys. To a critical eye--had it watched Jeb now walking this way
and that as a restive animal--the fruit of their labor would without
doubt have been pronounced satisfactory; yet only in a visual sense
could he have been called animal. So far as concerned temperament he was
merely a fretful peri locked up in a cage of flowers--for how in the
name of all creation had it been possible for Miss Sallie and Miss
Veemie, sole proprietresses of this male machine, to make him properly
masculine!
Within the dining-room there were no dreams. As he had passed out, the
little ladies remained silent for several minutes. Slowly Miss Sallie
raised her eyes and looked at her sister, then sharply exclaimed:
"Don't be a fool, now, Veemie!"
"I can't help it," the other choked. "It's an outrage for the Colonel to
have selected Jeb to do all those horrid things! He's nothing but a
boy!"
Miss Sallie was seldom out of patience with her more tender sister, yet
at this moment her love and her patriotism--by which is meant her heart
and soul--were violently in conflict. Fearing lest the former might
prevail, she replied with greater asperity:
"Well, be a fool if you must, but for pity sake don't let Jeb see you!
He's no boy any more; since this morning he's grown into a big, mature
man!--just the kind we need to end this horrible war! As for Marian,
she'll be glad enough to wait for him!"
Miss Sallie appeared not to see her sister rise hurriedly and leave the
room; but she waited, listening, until a door upstairs slammed, then
called softly to their maid:
"Be sure that Mr. Jeb's room is right!"
With this nightly admonition she went on tiptoe to her own room and
locked herself in. Until well nigh daylight a far-seeing God gazed
tenderly into the upturned faces of two women whose souls writhed in an
agony of pleading.