"Why, you know what I mean, ma. I notice you read the war news pretty
closely, all right."
"Sammy, you mean something!"
"Now, ma, there's no need to get excited right away. Think of the
mothers who haven't even got bank-accounts whose sons have got to go."
"Sammy--you 'ain't been--"
"No, no; I haven't."
"You have! I can see it in your face! You've come home with some news to
break. You been drafted!"
He held her arms to her sides, still pressing her down to her chair. "I
tell you I haven't! Can't you take my word for it?"
"Swear to me, Sammy!"
"All right; I swear."
"Swear to me on your dead father who is an angel in heaven!"
"I swear--thataway."
She was still pressing against her breathing. "You're keeping something
back. Sammy, is it that we got mail from Germany? From Aunt Carrie? Bad
news--O my God!"
"No! No! Who could I get mail from there any more than you've been
getting it for the last two years? Mamma, if you're going to be this
excitable and get yourself sick, I won't talk over anything with you.
I'll quit."
"You got something, Sammy, to break to me. I can read you like a book."
"I'm done. If I can't talk facts over with you without your going to
pieces this way, I'm done. I quit."
She clasped her hands, her face pleading up to him. "Sammy, what is it?
If you don't tell me, I can't stand it. Sammy?"
"Will you sit quiet and not get excited?"
"Please, Sammy, I will."
"It's this: you see, ma, the way the draft goes. When a fellow's called
to war, drafted, he's got to go, no questions asked. But when a fellow
enlists for war, volunteers, you see, before the government calls him,
then thataway he can pick out for himself the thing he wants to be in
the army. Y'see? And then maybe the thing he picks out for himself can
keep him right here at home. Y'see, ma--so he don't have to go away. See
the point?"
"You mean when a boy enlists he offers himself instead of gets offered."
"Exactly."
"You got something behind all this. You mean you--you want to enlist."
"Now, ma--you see, if I was to enlist--and stay right here in this
country--with you near the camp or, as long as it's too rough life for
you, with--with Clara there--a woman to look in on--"
"Sammy--you mean it's enlistment!"
Her voice rose in velocity; he could feel her pulse run beneath his
fingers.
"It's the best way, ma. The draft is sure to get me. Let me beat it and
keep myself home--near you. We might as well face the music, ma. They'll
get me one way or another. Let me enlist now, ma. Like a man. Right
away. For my country!"
Do you know the eyes of Bellini's "Agony in a Garden"? Can you hear for
yourself the note that must have been Cassandra's when she shouted out
her forebodings? There were these now in the glance and voice of Mrs.
Lipkind as she drew back from him, her face actually seeming to shrivel.
"No, Sammy! No! No! No!"
"Ma--please--"
"You wouldn't! You couldn't! No, Sammy--my son!"
"Ma, for God's sake don't go on so!"
"Then tell me you wouldn't! Against your own flesh and blood! Tell me
you wouldn't!"
"No, no, ma! For God's sake, don't take a fit--a stroke--no, no; I
wouldn't--I wouldn't!"
"Your own blood, Sammy! Your own baby cousins what I tucked you in bed
with--mine own sister's children! Her babies what slept with you. Mine
own sister who raised me and worked down her hands to the bone to make
it so with my young husband and baby we could come to America--no--no!"
"Mamma, for God's sakes--"
"Three years like a snake here inside of it's eating me--all night--all
day--I'm a good American, Sammy; I got so much I should be thankful
for to America. Twenty-five years it's my home, the home where I had
prosperity and good treatment, the home where I had happiness with your
papa and where he lies buried, but I can't give you to fight against my
own, Sammy--to be murdered by your own--my sister what never in her life
harmed a bird--my child and her children--cousins--against each other.
My beautiful country what I remember with cows and green fields and
clover--always the smell of clover. It ain't human to murder against
your own flesh and blood for God knows what reason!"
"Mamma, there is a reason it--"
"I tell you I'm a good American, Sammy. For America I give my last cent,
but not to stick knives in my own--it ain't human--Why didn't I die
before we got war? What good am I here? In my boy's way for his
country--his marriage--his happiness--why don't I die?"
"Ma, I tell you you mustn't! You're making yourself sick. Let me fan
you. Here, ma, I didn't mean it. See--I'm holding you tight. I won't
never let go. You're my little sweetheart mamma. You mustn't tremble
like that. I'm holding you tight--tight--little mamma."
"My boy! My little boy! My son! My all! All in their bed together.
Three. Her two. Mine. The smell of clover--my boy--Sammy--Sam--" She
fainted back into his arms suddenly, very white and very quiet and very
shriveled.
He watched beside her bed the next five hours of the night, his face so
close above hers that, when she opened her eyes, his were merged into
one for her, and the clasp of his hand never left hers.
"You all right, ma? Sure? Sure you don't need the doctor?"
She looked up at him with a tired, a burned-out, an ashamed smile. "The
first time in my life, Sammy, such a thing ever happened to me."
He pressed a chain of close kisses to the back of her hand, his voice
far from firm. "It was me, ma. I'll never forgive myself. My little
mamma, my little mamma sweetheart!"
"I feel fine, son; only, with you sitting here all night, you don't let
me sleep for worry that you ain't in bed."
"I love it. I love to sit here by you and watch you sleep. You're sure
you've no fever? Sure?"
"I'm well, Sammy. It was nothing but what you call a fainting-fit. For
some women it's nothing that they should faint every time they get a
little bit excited. It's nothing. Feel my hands--how cool! That's always
a sign--coolness."
He pressed them both to his lips, blowing his warm breath against them.
"There now--go to sleep."
The night-light burning weakly, the great black-walnut bedstead
ponderous in the gloom, she lay there mostly smiling and always
shamefaced.
"Such a thing should happen to me at my age!"
"Try to sleep, ma."
"Go in your room to bed, and then I get sleep. Do you want your own
clerks should beat you to business to-morrow?"
"A little whisky?"
"Go away; you got me dosed up enough with such _Schnapps_."
"The light lower?"
"No. If you don't go in your room, I lay here all night with my eyes
open, so help me!"
He rose, stiff and sore-kneed, hair awry, and his eyes with the red rims
of fatigue. "You'll sure ring the little bell if you want anything, ma?"
"Sure."
"You promise you won't get up to fix breakfast."
"If I don't feel good, I let you fix mine."
"Good night, little sweetheart mamma."
"You ain't--mad at me, Sam?"
"Mad! Why, ma, you mustn't ask me a--a thing like that; it just kills me
to hear you. Me that's not even fit to black your shoes! Mad at you?
Why, I--I--Good night--good--night--ma."
* * * * *
At just fifteen minutes before seven, to the pungency of coffee and the
harsh sing of water across the hall, Mrs. Lipkind in a fuzzy wrapper the
color of her eyes and hair, kissed her son awake.
"Sam! Sammy! Get up! _Thu, thu_! I can't get him up in the morning!"
The snuggle away and into the crotch of his elbow.
"Sam-my--quarter to seven!"
He sprang up then, haggard, but in a flood of recollection and remorse.
"Ma, I must 'a' dropped off at the last minute. You all right? What are
you doing up? Go right back! Didn't I tell you not to get up?"
"I been up an hour already; that's how fine I feel. Get up, Sammy; it's
late."
He flung on his robe, trying to withdraw her from the business of
looping back the bed-clothing over the footboard and pounding into
the pillows.
"I tell you I won't have it! You got to lay in bed this morning."
"I'm all right, Sammy. Wouldn't I say so if I wasn't?" But she sat down
rather weakly on the edge of the bed, holding the right side of her,
breathing too hard.
"I--I shouldn't have beat that pillow is all. Let me get my breathing.
I'm all right." Nevertheless, she let him relax her to his pillow, draw
the covers down from the footboard, and cover her.
"This settles it," he said, quietly. "I'm going to get a doctor."
She caught his hand. "If--if you want to get me excited for sure, just
you call a doctor--now--before I talk with you a minute--I want to
talk--I'm all right, Sammy, if you let me talk to you. One step to that
telephone, and I get excited--"
"Please, ma--"
"Sammy?"
"Yes."
"Will you listen to me and do like I want it?"
"Yes."
"I--been a bad old woman."
"That's right--break my heart."
"I got a brave boy for a son, and I want to make from him a coward."
"Ma--please!"
"I laid saying to myself all night, a mother should have such a son like
mine and make things hard for him yet!"
"Please, get it all out of your head--"
"From America what has given to me everything I should hold back my son
from fighting for. In war, it ain't your own flesh and blood what
counts; it's the flesh and blood of your country--not, Sam? I been
thinking only it's my family affair. If God lets be such a terrible
thing like war, there is somewhere a good reason for it. I want you to
enlist, Sammy, for your country. Not for in an office, but for where
they need you. I want you to enlist to get some day to be such a
lieutenant and a captain like you used to play it with tin soldiers.
I want--"
"Mamma, mamma, you know you don't mean it!"
"I want it, I tell you. All night I worked on it how dumb I've been, not
right away to see it--last night. With Clara near you in the camp--"
"Ma, I didn't mean it that way; I--"
"Clara near you for a woman to look in on, I been so dumb not to right
away see it. I'm glad you let it out, Sam. I wouldn't take five thousand
dollars it didn't happen--I feel fine--I want it--I--"
"I didn't mean it, ma--I swear! Don't rub it in this
way--please--please--"
"Why, I never wanted anything in my life like I want this, Sammy--that
you should enlist--a woman to look in on--I been a bad woman, Sammy,
I--I--oh--"
It was then that Mr. Lipkind tore to the telephone, his hands so
frenzied that they would not properly hold the receiver.
At eight o'clock, and without even a further word, Mrs. Lipkind breathed
out quietly, a little tiredly, and yet so eloquent of eye. To her son,
pleading there beside her for the life she had not left to give, it was
as if the swollen bosom of some stream were carrying her rapidly but
gently down its surface, her gaze back at him and begging him to stay
the current.
"Mamma! Darling! Doctor--please--for God's sakes--please--she wants
something---she can't say it--give it to her! Try to make her tell me
what she wants--she wants something--this is terrible--don't let her
want something--mamma--just one word to me--try--try--O my
God--Doctor--"
A black arm then reached down to withdraw him from the glazed stare
which had begun to set in from the pillow.
By ten o'clock a light snow had set in, blowing almost horizontally
across the window-pane. He sat his second hour there in a rather forward
huddle beside the drawn shade of that window, the _sotto-voce_ comings
and goings, all the black-coated _parvenus_ that follow the wake of
death, moving about him. A clock shaped like a pilot's wheel, a boyhood
property which had marked the time of twenty years, finally chimed the
thin, tin stroke of eleven and after a swimming, nebulous interval,
twelve. He glanced up each time with his swollen eyes, and then almost
automatically out to the wall telephone in the hall opposite the open
door. But he did not move. In fact, for two more hours sat there
impervious to proffered warmth of word or deed. Meanwhile, the snow
behind the drawn shade had turned to rain that beat and washed
against the pane.
Just so the iciness that had locked Samuel Lipkind seemed suddenly to
melt in a tornado of sobs that swept him, felled him into a prostration
of the terrible tears that men weep.
At a training-camp--somewhere--from his side of a tent that had flapped
like a captive wing all through a wind-swept night, Lieutenant Lipkind
stirred rather painfully for a final snuggle into the crotch of an elbow
that was stiff with chill and night damp.
Out over the peaked city that had been pitched rather than built, and on
beyond over the frozen stubble of fields, sounded the bugle-cry of the
reveille, which shrills so potently:
I can't get 'em up; I can't get 'em up;
I can't get 'em up in the morn--ing!