Three days later Mr. Strong returned and took up his duties with stoic
bravery. Marian had sailed with a unit happening to be in need of
nurses, and by now, he told the Colonel, she must be far out upon the
ocean. Each time the telegraph operator entered the anxious father's
heart stood still--for there were nests of conscienceless submarines
waiting for just such prey! But the cable came at last announcing:
"Safe. Quickly front." It required no translation to know that she was
doubtless at that moment speeding on her mission of mercy to the
trenches. For an hour the two old men sat without speaking, moodily
staring out of the window.
No word came from Washington, other than a polite note from the
Congressman which stated that books, such as he presumed the gentlemen
wanted, were much in demand but would be sent if procurable. From the
War Department--nothing!
At the expiration of another week, however, the official envelope
arrived. In warm terms its writer appreciated the patriotism of
Hillsdale, but regretted that uniforms and rifles were not being issued
just at present to organizations such as the gallant company in
question. The Colonel had inserted that word "gallant" when reading this
at a meeting called for the purpose, assuaging his conscience with the
excuse of civic necessity. He pointed out, also, that the equipment was
tentatively promised--if one chose to interpret the letter in this way;
and, of course, everyone did so choose. Then came another wait through
which the Colonel and Mr. Strong grew more and more depressed. For hours
they would sit in semi-silence, intermittently exchanging thoughts of
Marian and Jeb.
Since Jeb's name had been entered on the roster book he felt chained to
a slowly gnawing torture, for any train might bring over an army man to
administer the oaths of allegiance, and there would then be no escape.
But as weeks passed and nothing happened he began to breathe more
hopefully. The depression, born of fear, was wearing off, while the
self-satisfied conceit slunk back into its former place. It would have
been safe to say that Jeb was close to normal.
This respite, however, took a precipitate tumble one morning when he
received word to come at once to the office. As he entered, Mr. Strong
and the Colonel looked up with serious faces.
"There isn't any bad news from Marian?" he asked, breathlessly.
They shook their heads. But he saw that something serious had happened,
and guessed in a flash that the dreaded time was at hand! With a rush
all the old fear surged back to torture him.
"Jeb," the editor said, pointing to a chair, "we've decided your best
chance lies in the Reserve Officers' Corps. If you're ready now, we'll
help you make out the papers and see that you get properly fixed up."
"Chance of a lifetime, Jeb," the Colonel enthusiastically cried.
"Training, commission, fighting with the first contingent that goes
over! I congratulate you, sir!"
"But--but what about the company?" he faltered, feeling the world wobble
and reel.
"Company the devil, sir! Amos and I don't believe the Department intends
sending us the stuff! No, sir, they've doubtless settled on this other
scheme."
Only for a moment did Job hesitate, and then he arose supreme. His face
was white, his eyes blazed as fire, his voice became pinched and high
with emotion. Never, he declared, would he turn back from the duty
toward which he had set his will! That duty was to his comrades in
Hillsdale, who had paid him the high compliment of dedicating their
lives to his leadership. Desert them now, when the first opportunity
came for personal advancement, and he would be a traitor to all mankind!
If, merely for the love of fighting, he could so far forget these
confiding fellows, how could he ever look them in the eyes again!
The truth of the matter was that Jeb worked himself into a frenzy of
oratory which convinced in spite of logic. He was pleading desperately
for Jeb, for Jeb's hide, for Jeb's life. Having no suspicion of this the
two old gentlemen listened with rapture expressed in their moistening
eyes, and when he concluded, out of breath but defiant, they sprang up
and embraced him.
"By gad, sir," the Colonel cried, "you made the shades of eloquence,
from Webster to Demosthenes, sit up and cock their ears! Amos, when this
war's over we'll run him for the senate, eh?"
So the Officers' Reserve Corps was laid upon the shelf. Other men in
Hillsdale applied for it; some were ordered to report at the training
camp of their divisional area; but, for Jeb, the dark angel of torture
had again passed by.
At breakfast one morning, opening the _Eagle_, his blood congealed into
fine particles of ice. His head whirled, his body became sick in every
part. Leaving abruptly he went into the garden and there read, painfully
read, the big headlines and their accompanying story.
The draft! Drafting between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one--and
he was twenty-six! He could not have been more in the center, in the
very bull's-eye, of the age selection! With all his senses in a panic,
his mind darted this way and that, seeking, as a trapped rat, some
avenue of exit; but on every side, so far as years counted, he was
equally hemmed in. A moment of fury took the place of fear, wherein he
cursed and raved against a government, calling itself paternal, that
would play fast and loose with its people's lives; but at last he fell
into a dull brooding, tinged with physical and mental nausea.
He was aroused by a voice, and looked up to behold the Colonel's head
and shoulders above the picket fence. The old gentleman's face was grave
and his well-known Stetson had been pulled lower to his eyes.
"I thought I'd find you," he was saying. "Walk down to my office with
me."
Since the sixth of April, now almost two months passed, the Colonel had
referred to the table in Mr. Strong's editorial sanctum as his office;
not alone because it pleased him so to do, but equally because his
friend would tolerate no other arrangement. Never having possessed an
office of any kind, he felt that it added dignity to his declining
years; and there, each morning, he would re-check the names on his
recruiting ledger, besides writing suggestions--some very good
suggestions--to the War Department. If the young Martian clerks, working
like bees in that august building at Sixteenth and Pennsylvania Avenue,
grew into the habit of unopening fat envelopes postmarked "Hillsdale"
until the very last moment, they learned to do so after a manner of
self-protection--but had the Colonel suspected this he would have gone
forthwith and flourished his cane, not only over their heads, but over
the heads of their heads, even unto the Mr. Secretary of War himself.
"I'm unhappy about you, Jeb," he said, as they fell into stride.
Jeb, having reached a state of mind wherein he expected at any moment to
be called a coward, felt his body stiffen as if to receive a blow. He
had become ashamed even to inquire for news of Marian, during these last
few days, as the contrast of their characters was a thing he preferred
keeping in the background. He now looked stolidly at the pavement, and
asked:
"What about?"--but the words were huskily inarticulate and he repeated
them, this time in a louder voice: "What about?"
"Oh, everything," the old gentleman answered. "Your splendid loyalty to
the company that won't be formed has robbed you of a place in other
branches of the service which by this time would have meant much to you,
and I'm afraid now it's too late to recover the lost ground." He failed
to notice that his young friend drew a breath of relief, or that he
stepped out with greater confidence. "You might be training this minute,
Jeb, were it not for my vain desire to put you quickly in a place of
command! I am greatly distressed--greatly to be blamed!"
"Please don't say that, sir," Jeb turned to him quickly, yet with more
pleasure than solicitude in his voice. "There'll be a second camp, and I
won't lose anything in the long run. Even if I never get to go at all,
Colonel, I've the satisfaction of having tried--that is, I _will_ have
tried; which, along with your kindness, is more than a compensation."
He meant this. He saw an opportunity, moreover, to beat the draft by
giving out ahead of time his determination to attend the second training
camp. It had not before occurred to him, because he had been too
mentally paralyzed to think clearly. Now a suspicion which once had
flickered in his mind came back with renewed vigor: that a kind of Fate
was watching his career. It had steered him safely past the home
company, and later had steered through rapids that might easily have
dashed him against the first training camp. At present it was pointing
to a secret passage of escape from conscription. To-day, he figured
rapidly, was the thirty-first of May; the second camp would not open
until August the twenty-seventh. Oh, lots of things could happen in
three months! Jeb had not felt quite so hopeful since the declaration of
war, and launched a flow of pyrotechnical sentiments which warmed the
Colonel's blood.
This wordy recklessness continued while they turned into the _Eagle_
building and ascended to the "office." Mr. Strong looked up smilingly as
they entered, and the Colonel, standing with legs apart, pushed back his
hat, exclaiming:
"Amos, Jeb has in him, I declare, sir, the spirit of the old days! He'll
make a record, sir, of which we'll be proud; and also make those
wretched Huns take water or I don't know a soldier! Rather than feel
depressed because our planning has thus far kept him away from the
Colors, he's confidently and happily looking forward to the second
training camp for officers, sir. Incidentally this will spare him the
odium--the odium, sir--of being drafted like a common slacker!"
"I'd die if I were drafted," Jeb put in. "I don't see how drafted men
can face their own kind, much less the enemy!"
"You're right," the Colonel thundered. "Such a system saps our manhood!
I thank God, Amos, that in the old days men responded to the call
without being driven like a herd of moral lepers!"
"Not so fast, not so fast," Mr. Strong began to laugh at them. "In the
old days, Roger, we owed our successes at arms to luck, rather than to a
finely organized army. Washington couldn't have whipped the British
without France; we couldn't have held our own with them again in 1812 if
they hadn't been up to their ears in the Peninsular War, and unable to
send anything like an equal force over here to engage us. It's the
truth, Roger, and we lose nothing by admitting it! The Mexican War was a
vastly superior power against a little one, and the same condition
prevailed when we tackled Spain. Only once in our history did we find it
necessary to draft, and that was when we fought an antagonist--I will
not say an enemy--in every way our equal; that, Roger," he laid his hand
on the Colonel's arm and spoke tenderly, "was when we fought you."
The Colonel looked out of the window. His eyes blinked several times
before he replied, in the same gentle voice:
"By gad, Amos, you did have to draft then, didn't you!"
"We did, and I'm frank to say we should have done so in every war before
and after. It's the only fair way, and the only efficient way! But aside
from what we should have done, today we're fighting neither Mexico nor
Spain. We're fighting a blood-glutted monster whose breath is poisonous
gas, whose touch is fever, whose thoughts are leprous. This is too
serious an emergency to trust in the hands of a fallacious volunteer
system! The Government, by which I mean ourselves, must look to its
knitting with an alertness never before found necessary, or this time we
perish. And I want to tell you, Roger, with all solemnity, that there
may be a score of legitimate reasons why a young man should not
volunteer, but none to caste dishonor on his endraftment. This nation
merely says to its young fighting men, 'Step up, my sons!'--then, all
who should fight, will; and those who should not, won't! There is no way
more fair; there is no way more honorable! So do not re-utter your
sentiments, either of you!"
"I expect you're right," the Colonel murmured.
"I know I am. And you'll realize it next Tuesday, Roger, when you see
what fine types of young fellows come before you to be registered. I put
you down as a registrar," he added, "because I am to be one, also."
"Thank goodness I won't have to register," Jeb said contentedly. "I'm
going to the second camp."
"You'll have to register, all the same, Jeb," the editor turned to him.
"All men in the age must do that."
"But how about the second camp?"
"There's some talk of taking no men in the second camp who are in the
draft age. Youngsters like you are wanted for the rank and file."
Mr. Strong turned to his desk and began opening mail, else he might have
read Jeb's secret at a glance. The Colonel, blissfully ignorant, leaned
over the ledger and began for the hundredth time to check off the
extinct roster, saying with resignation:
"That sounds reasonable, Amos; and, since there's no odium attached to a
drafted man, it may be all the greater achievement in the long run when
Jeb has worked himself up from the ranks. He'll be a better officer for
it."
"When is this registration?" Jeb tried to make his voice sound natural.
"Next Tuesday," Mr. Strong answered over his shoulder. The Colonel was
still preoccupied and did not look up. The next moment Jeb slipped out
and turned, dizzily, into Main street.