She did not see her brother until evening. "Katie," he demanded sharply,
"have you been disagreeable to Ann?"
She shook her head. "I haven't meant to be, Wayne."
Her face was so wretched that he grew contrite. "You're not pleased?"
"Why, Wayne, you can scarcely expect me to be--wholly pleased, can you?"
"But you always seemed to understand so well. I"--he paused in that
constraint there so often was between them in things delicately
intimate--"I've never told you, Katie, how fine I thought you were. So
big about it."
"It's not so difficult," said Kate, with a touch of her old smile, "to be
'big' about people who aren't marrying into the family."
It seemed that he, too, was not above cornering her. "You know, Katie, it
was your attitude in the beginning that--"
"Just don't bother calling my attention to that, Wayne," she said
sharply. "Please credit me with the intelligence to see it for myself."
Then she went right to the heart of it. "Oh Wayne--think of Major
Barrett's _knowing_."
The dull red that came quickly to his face told how bitterly he had
thought of it, though he only said quietly: "Damn Barrett."
"But you can't damn him. Suppose you were to be stationed at the
same place!"
He laughed shortly. "Well that, at least, is something upon which I can
set your fears at rest."
She looked up quickly. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, Katie, that my army days are over."
She stared at him. "I don't understand you."
"It shouldn't be so difficult to comprehend. I have resigned my
commission."
"Wayne," she asked slowly, "what do you mean?"
"Just what I say. That I have resigned my commission. That I am out of
the army."
It made it seem that the whole world was whirling round and round and
that there was nothing to take hold of. "But you can't do that. Why your
whole life is there--friends--traditions--work--future."
"Not my future," he said briefly.
His calm manner made it the more bewildering. "Wayne, I don't see how you
can--in such a light manner--give up such a big thing!"
He turned upon her in manner less calm. "What right have you to say that
it is done in a 'light manner'!"
The words had a familiar sound and she recalled them as like something
she had said to Mrs. Prescott the day before; just the day before, when
she had been so sure of things, and of herself.
"But where is your future then, Wayne?" she asked appealingly. "We know,
don't we, how hard it is for army men to find futures as civilians?"
"I'm going into the forest service."
Katie never could tell why, for the moment, it should have antagonized,
infuriated her that way. "So that's it. That's what got--a poetic notion!
And I suppose," she laughed scornfully, "you're going into the ranks?
What is it they call them? Rangers? Starting in at your age--with your
training--to 'work from the bottom up'--is that it?"
"No," he replied coldly, "that is not it. You have missed it about as far
as you could. I have no such picturesque notion. I am doing no such
quixotic thing. I value my training too highly for that. It should be
worth too much to them. I don't even scorn personal ambition, or the use
of personal pull, so you see I'm a long way from a heroic figure. I know
I've a brain that can do a certain type of thing. I know I'm well
equipped. Well, so far as the equipment goes, my country did it for me
and I mean to give it back; only I've got to do it in my own way."
"Why, Katie," he resumed after a pause, "I never was more surprised in my
life than to find you so out of sympathy with this. I knew what most
people would think of it, but I quite took it for granted that you would
understand."
"It seems a little hard," replied Katie with a tearful laugh, "to
understand the fine things other people do. And, Wayne, I'm so afraid it
will lead to disappointment! Aren't you idealizing this forest service?
Remember Fred's tales of how it's almost strangled by politics. And you
know what that means. Let us not forget Martha Matthews!"
It was a relief to be laughing together over a familiar thing. Martha
Matthews was the daughter of a congressman from somewhere--Katie never
could remember whether it was Texas or Wyoming. She had been asked to
"take her up" at one time when the army appropriation bill was pending
and Martha's father did not seem to realize that the country needed
additional defense. But when Martha discovered that army people were
"perfectly fascinating--and _so_ hospitable" Martha's parent suddenly
awakened to the grave dangers confronting his land. Katie had more than
once observed a mysterious relationship between the fact of the army set
being fashionable in Washington and the fact that the country must be
amply protected, further remarking that army people were just clever
enough to know when to be fascinating.
"No," he came back to it in seriousness, "I don't think I have many
illusions. I know it's far from the perfect thing, but I see it as set
in the right direction. It seems to me that that, in itself, ought to
mean considerable. It's the best thing I know of--for what I have to
offer. Then I want to get out of cities for awhile--get Ann away from
them." He paused over that and fell silent. "Osborne offered me a job,"
he came back to it with a laugh. "Seemed to think I was worth a very
neat sum a year to his company--but that was scarcely my notion. In fact
I doubt if I would have so much confidence in the forest service if it
weren't for his hatred of it. You can judge a thing pretty well by the
character of its enemies. Then I'm enough the creature of habit to want
to go on in a service; I'm schooled to that thing of the collectivity.
But I'll be happier in a service that--despite the weak spots in it--is
in harmony with the big collectivity--rather than hopelessly discordant
with it. And perhaps it needs some more or less disinterested fellows to
help fight for it," he added with a touch of embarrassment, as if
fearing to expose himself.
He had come close enough to self-betrayal for Katie, despite her fear and
confusion, to feel proud of him as he looked then.
"Wayne," she asked, "have you felt this way a long time? Out of sympathy
with the army?"
He did not at once reply, thinking of the night he had sat beside Ann,
night when the whole world was shaken and things he had regarded as fixed
loosened and fell. Just how much had been loosening before that--some, he
knew--just how much would have more or less insecurely held its place had
it not been for that night, he was not prepared to say--even to himself.
"Longer than I knew, I think," he came back to Katie. "One night last
fall I went to a dinner and they drank our toast." He repeated it,
very slowly. "'My country--may she always be right--but right or
wrong--my country.'
"I used to have the real thrill for that toast. That night it almost
choked me. That 'right or wrong' is a spirit I can thrill to no longer.
I'm more interested in getting it right.
"Though I'll own it terrified me, just as it seems to you, to feel it
slipping from me. Recently I had occasion to go up to West Point and I
spent a whole day deliberately trying to get back my old feeling for
things--the whole business that we know so well and that I used to
love so much.
"And, in a way, I could; but as for something gone. That day up at the
Point was one of the saddest of my life. I still loved the trappings.
They still called to me. But I knew that, for me, the spirit was dead.
"Oh I have no sensational declarations to make about the army. I
wouldn't even be prepared to say what I think about disarmament. It's
more complex than most peace advocates seem to see. I only know that the
army's not the thing for me. I can't go on in it, simply because my
feeling for it is gone."
He had been speaking slowly and seriously; his head was bent. Now he
looked up at her. "It was at the close of that day--day up at West
Point--that I resigned my commission. And if you had seen me that night,
Katie, I doubt if you would reproach me with 'doing it lightly.'"
The marks of struggle had come back to his face with the story of it.
They told more than the words.
"Forgive me," she said in her impetuous way. "No, I didn't know. How
awful it is, Wayne, that we _don't_ know--about each other."
She was forced to turn away; but after a moment controlled herself and
turned back to add: "Wayne dear, I think you're right. I'm proud of you."
"Oh, I'm entitled to no halo," he hastened to say. "It's the fellow who
would do it without an income might be candidate for that."
"But you _would_ do it without an income, Wayne," she insisted warmly.
"I don't know. How can I tell whether I would or not?
"And you'll be good to Ann?" he took advantage of her mood to press, as
though that were the one thing she could do for him. "You know, how much
she needs you, Katie."
"I shall certainly want to be good to Ann," she murmured. "Though I don't
think she needs me much--any more."
Something about her went to his heart. "Why, Katie--we all need you."
She shook her head; there were tears, but a smile with them. "Not much,
Wayne. Not now. I'm not--indispensable. Though pray why should one wish
to be anything so terrifying as indispensable?"
"Will you take Worth?" she asked after a little while. "He goes--with
you and Ann?"
"We want him. And Katie, we want you. We're to go to Colorado and fight
the water barons," he laughed. "Aren't you coming with us?"
She shook her head. "Not just now. I want to flit round in the East a
little first. Be gay--renew my youth," she laughed, choking a little.
She drew him to talk of his hopes. "I'll fess up, Katie," he said, when
warmed to it by her sympathy, "that I fear I do have rather a poetic
notion about it. I want to _do_ something--something that will count,
something set in the direction of the future. And I like the idea of
going back to that old frontier--place where I was born--and where mother
went through so much--and where father fought--and because of which he
died. And serving out there now in a way that is just as live--just as
vital--as the way he served then."
He paused; they were both thinking of their father and mother, of how
they might not have understood, of the sadness as well as the triumph
there is in change, that tug at the heart that must so often come when
the new generation sees a little farther down the road than older eyes
can see, the ache in hearts left behind when children of a new day are
called away from places endeared by habit into the incertitude and
perhaps the danger of ways unworn.
"Life seems too fine a thing, Katie, to spend it making instruments of
destruction more deadly. It's not a very happy thought to think of their
being used; and it's not a very stimulating one to think of their not
being. In either case, it doesn't make one too pleased with one's
vocation. And life seems a big enough thing," he added, a little
diffidently, "to try pretty hard to get one's self right with it."
He did not understand the way Katie was looking at him as she replied:
"Yes, Wayne; I know that. I've been thinking that myself."
Something moved her to ask: "Wayne, do you think you would have done it,
if it had not been for Ann?"
"I think," he replied quietly, "that possibly that is still another thing
I have to thank her for." His face and voice gave Katie a sharp sense of
loneliness, that loneliness which came in seeing how poorly she had
understood him, how little people knew each other.
They talked of a number of things before he suddenly exclaimed: "Oh
Katie, I must tell you. That fellow--what's his name? Mann? The mythical
being known as the man who mends the boats is a fellow you'll have to
avoid, should you ever see him again--which of course is not likely."
She had turned and was looking out at the lights in the street
below. "Yes?"
"Who do you suppose the scoundrel _is_?"
"I'm sure I don't know," she faltered.
"A military _convict_. Attacked an officer. Served time at Leavenworth."
Katie was intent upon the lights down below.
"And what do you suppose he was prying around the Island for?"
"I'm sure I have no idea," she managed to say.
"Going to write a _play_--a play about the _army_! Now what do you
think of that? Darrett found out about it. Oh just the man, you see, to
write a play about the army! And some sensationalists here are going to
put it on. It's the most damnable insolence I ever heard of! They ought
to stop it."
"Oh, I don't know," said Katie, still absorbed in the cabs down below;
"a man has a right to use his experiences--in a play."
"Well a fine view he'll give of it! It's the most insufferable
impertinence I ever knew of!"
She turned around to ask oddly: "Why, Wayne, why all this heat? You're
not in the army any more."
"Well, don't you think I'm not _of_ it, when an upstart like that turns
up to rail at it!"
"But how do you know he'll rail?"
"Oh he'll rail, all right. I know his type. But we'll see to it that it's
pretty generally understood it's military life as presented by a military
_convict_."
"Perhaps you can trust him to make that point clear himself," said Katie
rather dryly.
"The _coward_. The _cur_."
She turned upon him hotly. "Look here, Wayne, I don't know why you're so
sure you have a right to say that!"
"I'd like to know why I haven't! Attacked an officer without the
slightest provocation whatsoever! Some kind of a hot-headed taking sides
with a deserter, I believe it was. I suppose this remarkable play is to
be a glorification of desertion," he laughed.
"Well," said Katie with an unsteady laugh, "perhaps there are worse
things to glorify than desertion."
He stared at her. "Come now, Katie, you know better than that."
But Katie was looking at him strangely. "Wayne," she said quietly,
"you're a deserter, yourself."
He flushed, but after an instant laughed. "Really, Katie, you have a
positive genius for saying preposterous things."
"In which there may occasionally lurk a little truth. You _are_
deserting. Why aren't you?"
"I call that about as close to rot as an intelligent person could come,"
he replied hotly. "I'm resigning my commission. It's perfectly regular."
"Yes; being an officer and a gentleman, you _can_ resign your commission,
and have it perfectly regular. Being that same officer and gentleman, you
never were mugged--treated as a prospective criminal; no four thousand
posters bearing your picture will now be sent broadcast over the country;
no fifty dollars is offered lean detectives for your capture; you're in
no chance of being thrown into prison and have your government do all in
its power to wring the manhood out of you! Oh no--an officer and a
gentleman--you resign your commission and go ahead with your life. But
you're leaving the army, aren't you? Deserting it. And why? Because you
don't like the spirit of it. And yet--though you're too big for
it--though it's _time_ for you to desert--you're enough bound by it not
to let the light of your intelligence fall for one single second on the
question of desertion!"
She had held him. He made no reply, looking in bewilderment at her red
cheeks and blazing eyes.
Suddenly her face quivered. "Wayne," she said, "I don't use the term as
a hard name. I'm not using it in just its technical sense, our army
sense. But mayn't desertion be a brave thing? A fine thing? To desert a
thing we've gone beyond--to have the courage to desert it and walk right
off from the dead thing to the live thing--? Oh, don't mind my calling
you a deserter, Wayne," she added, her eyes full of tears, "for the
truth is I'd like to be a deserter myself. But perhaps one deserter is
enough for a family--and you beat me to it." She laughed and turned back
to the cabs.
He wanted to go on with the argument; show her what it was in desertion
that army men despised, make the distinction between deserting and
resigning. But the truth was he was more interested in the things Katie
had said than in the things which could be called in refutation.
And Katie puzzled him; her heat, feeling, not only astonished but worried
him a little. She was standing there now beating a tattoo on the window
pane. He wondered what she was thinking about. The experience as to Ann
revealed Katie to him as having thought about things he would not have
dreamed she was thinking about. What in the world did she mean by saying
she'd like to be a deserter herself? One of her preposterous sayings--but
it was true that considerable truth had often lurked at the heart of
Katie's absurd way of talking.
Watching her, he was drawn to thought of her attractiveness and that made
him wonder whom Katie would marry. He had always been secretly proud of
his sister's popularity; it seemed she should make a brilliant marriage.
Live brilliantly. It was the thing to which she was adapted. Katie was
unique. Distinctive. Secretly, unadmittedly, he was very ambitious for
her. And with a little smile he considered that seemingly Katie was just
shrewd enough to be ambitious for herself. She had steered her little
bark safely past the place where she would be likely to marry a
lieutenant. Was she heading for a general?
So he reflected with humor and affection, watching Katie beat the tattoo
on the window.
Thought of what some one had said of her as the army girl suggested
something that changed his mood, bringing him suddenly to his feet.
"Katie," he demanded, "how much did you ever talk to this fellow? You
don't think, do you, that he was trying to get you for his 'army
girl'--or some such rot? If I thought that--You don't think, do you,
Katie, that that was what he was trying to work you for?"
Katie suddenly raised her hands and pushed back her hair, for the minute
covering her eyes. "No, Wayne," she said, "I don't think that was what he
was trying to 'work me' for."
And unable to bear more, she told him that she was very tired and asked
him to go.