"Nothing. Nothing."
Emma sighed a mock sigh and glanced up at the windows of her own house.
"Oh, well, everybody's difficult these days, T.A., including husbands.
That second window shade is crooked. Isn't it queer how maids never
do.... I'll tell you what I can realize, though. I realize that we're
going to have dinner at home, reg'lar old-fashioned befo'-de-war. And I
can bathe before dinner. There's richness."
But when she appeared at dinner, glowing, radiant, her hair shiningly
re-coifed, she again wore the blue uniform, with the service cap atop
her head. Buck surveyed her, unsmiling. She seated herself at table with
a little clinking of buckles and buttons. She flung her motor gloves on
a near-by chair, ran an inquiring finger along belt and collar with a
little gesture that was absurdly feminine in its imitation of
masculinity. Buck did not sit down. He stood at the opposite side of the
table, one hand on his chair, the knuckles showing white where he
gripped it.
"It seems to me, Emma, that you might manage to wear something a little
less military when you're dining at home. War is war, but I don't see
why you should make me feel like your orderly. It's like being married
to a policewoman. Surely you can neglect your country for the length of
time it takes to dine with your husband."
It was the bitterest speech he had made to her in the years of their
married life. She flushed a little. "I thought you knew that I was going
out again immediately after dinner. I left at five with the
understanding that I'd be on duty again at 8.30."
He said nothing. He stood looking down at his own hand that gripped the
chair back so tightly. Emma sat back and surveyed her trim and tailored
self with a placidity that had in it, perhaps, a dash of malice. His
last speech had cut. Then she reached forward, helped herself to an
olive, and nibbled it, head on one side.
"D'you know, T.A., what I think? H'm? I think you're jealous of your
wife's uniform."
She had touched the match to the dynamite.
He looked up. At the blaze in his eyes she shrank back a little. His
face was white. He was breathing quickly.
"You're right! I am. I am jealous. I'm jealous of every buck private in
the army! I'm jealous of the mule drivers! Of the veterinarians. Of the
stokers in the transports. Men!" He doubled his hand into a fist. His
fine eyes glowed. "Men!"
And suddenly he sat down, heavily, and covered his eyes with his hands.
Emma sat staring at him for a dull, sickening moment. Then she looked
down at herself, horror in her eyes. Then up again at him. She got up
and came over to him.
"Why, dear--dearest--I didn't know. I thought you were satisfied. I
thought you were happy. You--"
"Honey, the only man who's happy is the man in khaki. The rest of us are
gritting our teeth and pretending."
She put a hand on his shoulder. "But what do you want--what can you do
that--"
He reached back over his shoulder and found her hand. He straightened.
His head came up. "They've offered me a job in Bordeaux. It isn't a
fancy job. It has to do with merchandising. But I think you know they're
having a devil of a time with all the millions of bales of goods. They
need men who know materials. I ought to. I've handled cloth and clothes
enough. I know values. It would mean hard work--manual work lots of
times. No pay. And happiness. For me." There was a silence. It seemed to
fill the room, that silence. It filled the house. It roared and
thundered about Emma's ears, that silence. When finally she broke it:
"Blind!" she said. "Blind! Deaf! Dumb! _And_ crazy." She laughed, and
two tears sped down her cheeks and dropped on the unblemished blue serge
uniform. "Oh, T.A.! Where have I been? How you must have despised me.
Me, in my uniform. In my uniform that was costing the Government three
strapping men. My uniform, that was keeping three man-size soldiers out
of khaki. You, Jock, and Fisk. Why didn't you tell me, dear! Why didn't
you tell me!"
"I've tried. I couldn't. You've always seen things first. I couldn't ask
you to go back to the factory."
"Factory! Factory nothing! I'm going back on the road. I'm taking Fisk's
Western territory. I know the Middle West better than Fisk himself. I
ought to. I covered it for ten years. I'll pay Gertie Fisk's salary
until she's able to come back to us as stenographer. We've never had one
so good. Grace can give the office a few hours a week. And we can
promote O'Brien to manager while I'm on the road."
Buck was staring at her, dully. "Grace? Now wait a minute. You're
travelling too fast for a mere man." His hand was gripping hers, tight,
tight.
Their dinner was cooling on the table. They ignored it. She pulled a
chair around to his. They sat shoulder to shoulder, elbows on the cloth.
"It took me long enough to wake up, didn't it? I've got to make up for
lost time. The whole thing's clear in my mind. Now get this: Jock gets a
commission. Grace and the babies pack up and come to New York, and live
right here, with me, in this house. Fisk goes to war. Gertie gets well
and comes back to work for Featherlooms. Mr. T.A. Buck goes to Bordeaux.
Old Emmer takes off her uniform and begins to serve her country--on the
road."
At that he got up and began pacing the room. "I can't have you do that,
dear. Why, you left all that behind when you married me."
"Yes, but our marriage certificate didn't carry a war guarantee."
"Gad, Emma, you're glorious!"
"Glorious nothing! I'm going to earn the living for three families for a
few months, until things get going. And there's nothing glorious about
that, old dear. I haven't any illusions about what taking a line on the
road means these days. It isn't travelling. It's exploring. You never
know where you're going to land, or when, unless you're travelling in a
freight train. They're cock o' the walk now. I think I'll check myself
through as first-class freight. Or send my pack ahead, with natives on
foot, like an African explorer. But it'll be awfully good for me
character. And when I'm eating that criminal corn bread they serve on
dining cars on a train that's seven hours late into Duluth I'll remember
when I had my picture, in uniform, in the Sunday supplements, with my
hand on the steering wheel along o' the nobility and gentry."
"Listen, dear, I can't have you--"
"Too late. Got a pencil? Let's send fifty words to Jock and Grace.
They'll wire back 'No!' but another fifty'll fetch 'em. After all, it
takes more than one night letter to explain a move that is going to
change eight lives. Now let's have dinner, dear. It'll be cold, but
filling."
Perhaps in the whirlwind ten days that followed a woman of less energy,
less determination, less courage and magnificent vitality might have
faltered and failed in an undertaking of such magnitude. But Emma was
alert and forceful enough to keep just one jump ahead of the
swift-moving times. In a less cataclysmic age the changes she wrought
within a period of two weeks would have seemed herculean. But in this
time of stress and change, when every household in every street in every
town in all the country was feeling the tremor of upheaval, the
readjustment of this little family and business group was so
unremarkable as to pass unnoticed. Even the members of the group itself,
seeing themselves scattered to camp, to France, to New York, to the
Middle West, shuffled like pawns that the Great Game might the better be
won, felt strangely unconcerned and unruffled.
It was little more than two weeks after the night of Emma's awakening
that she was talking fast to keep from crying hard, as she stuffed
plain, practical blue serge garments (unmilitary) into a bellows
suitcase ("Can't count on trunks these days," she had said. "I'm not
taking any chances on a clean shirtwaist"). Buck, standing in the
doorway, tried hard to keep his gaze from the contemplation of his
khaki-clad self reflected in the long mirror. At intervals he said:
"Can't I help, dear?" Or, "Talk about the early Pilgrim mothers, and the
Revolutionary mothers, and the Civil War mothers! I'd like to know what
they had on you, Emma."
And from Emma: "Yeh, ain't I noble!" Then, after a little pause: "This
house is going to be so full of wimmin folks it'll look like a Home for
Decayed Gentlewomen. Buddy McChesney, aged six months, is going to be
the only male protector around the place. We'll make him captain of the
home guard."
"Gertie was in to-day. She says I'm a shrimp in my uniform compared to
Charley. You know she always was the nerviest little stenographer we
ever had about the place, but she knows more about Featherlooms than any
woman in the shop except you. She's down to ninety-eight pounds, poor
little girl, but every ounce of it's pure pluck, and she says she'll be
as good as new in a month or two, and I honestly believe she will."
Emma was counting a neat stack of folded handkerchiefs.
"Seventeen--eighteen--When she comes back we'll have to pay her twice
the salary she got when she left. But, then, you have to pay an errand
boy what you used to pay a shipping clerk, and a stock girl demands
money that an operator used to brag about--nineteen--"
Buck came over to her and put a hand on the bright hair that was
rumpled, now, from much diving into bags and suitcases and clothes
closets.
"All except you, Emma. You'll be working without a salary--working like
a man--like three men--"
"Working for three men, T.A. Three fighting men. I've got two service
buttons already," she glanced down at her blouse, "and Charley Fisk said
I had the right to wear one for him. I'll look like a mosaic, but I'm
going to put 'em all on."
* * * * *
The day before Emma's departure for the West Grace arrived, with bags,
bundles, and babies. A wan and tired Grace, but proud, too, and with the
spirit of the times in her eyes.
"Jock!" she repeated, in answer to their questions. "My dears, he
doesn't know I'm alive. I visited him at camp the day before I left. He
thinks he'll be transferred East, as we hoped. Wouldn't that be
glorious! Well, I had all sorts of intimate and vital things to discuss
with him, and he didn't hear what I was saying. He wasn't even
listening. He couldn't wait until I had finished a sentence so that he
could cut in with something about his work. I murmured to him in the
moonlight that there was something I had long meant to tell him and he
answered that dammit he forgot to report that rifle that exploded. And
when I said, 'Dearest, isn't this hotel a _little_ like the place we
spent our honeymoon in--that porch, and all?' he said, 'See this feller
coming, Gracie? The big guy with the moustache. Now mash him, Gracie.
He's my Captain. I'm going to introduce you. He was a senior at college
when I was a fresh.'"
But the peace and the pride in her eyes belied her words.
Emma's trip, already delayed, was begun ten days before her husband's
date for sailing. She bore that, too, with smiling equanimity. "When I
went to school," she said, "I thought I hated the Second Peloponnesian
War worse than any war I'd ever heard of. But I hate this one so that I
want everyone to get into it one hundred per cent., so that it'll be
over sooner; and because we've won."
They said little on their way to the train. She stood on the rear
platform just before the train pulled out. They had tried frantically to
get a lower berth, but unsuccessfully. "Don't look so tragic about it,"
she laughed. "It's like old times. These last three years have been a
dream--a delusion."
He looked up at her, as she stood there in her blue suit, and white
blouse, and trim blue hat and crisp veil. "Gad, Emma, it's uncanny. I
believe you're right. You look exactly as you did when I first saw you,
when you came in off the road after father died and I had just taken
hold of the business."
For answer she hummed a few plaintive bars. He grinned as he recognized
"Silver Threads Among the Gold." The train moved away, gathered speed.
He followed it. They were not smiling now. She was leaning over the
railing, as though to be as near to him as the fast-moving train would
allow. He was walking swiftly along with the train, as though
hypnotized. Their eyes held. The brave figure in blue on the train
platform. The brave figure in khaki outside. The blue suddenly swam in a
haze before his eyes; the khaki a mist before hers. The crisp little
veil was a limp little rag when finally she went in to search for Upper
Eleven.
The white-coated figure that had passed up and down the aisle unnoticed
and unnoticing as she sat hidden behind the kindly folds of her
newspaper suddenly became a very human being as Emma regained
self-control, decided on dinner as a panacea, and informed the white
coat that she desired Upper Eleven made up early.
The White Coat had said, "Yas'm," and glanced up at her. Whereupon she
had said:
"Why, William!"
And he, "Well, fo' de lan'! 'F 'tain't Mis' McChesney! Well, mah sakes
alive, Mis' McChesney! Ah ain't seen yo' since yo' married. Ah done heah
yo' married yo' boss an' got a swell brownstone house, an' ev'thing
gran'--"
"I've got everything, William, but a lower berth to Chicago. They swore
they couldn't give me anything but an upper."
A speculative look crept into William's rolling eye. Emma recognized it.
Her hand reached toward her bag. Then it stopped. She smiled. "No. No,
William. Time was. But not these days. Four years ago I'd have slipped
you fifty cents right now, and you'd have produced a lower berth from
somewhere. But I'm going to fool you. My boss has gone to war, William,
and so has my son. And I'm going to take that fifty cents and buy thrift
stamps for Miss Emma McChesney, aged three, and Mr. Buddy McChesney,
aged six months. And I'll dispose my old bones in Upper Eleven."
She went in to dinner.
At eight-thirty a soft and deferential voice sounded in her ear.
"Ah got yo' made up, Mis' McChesney."
"But this is my--"
He beckoned. He padded down the aisle with that walk which is a peculiar
result of flat feet and twenty years of swaying car. Emma followed. He
stopped before Lower Six and drew aside the curtain. It was that lower
which can always be produced, magically, though ticket sellers, Pullman
agents, porters, and train conductors swear that it does not exist. The
key to it is silver, but to-night Emma McChesney Buck had unlocked it
with finer metal. Gold. Pure gold. For William drew aside the curtain
with a gesture such as one of his slave ancestors might have used before
a queen of Egypt. He carefully brushed a cinder from the sheet with one
gray-black hand. Then he bowed like any courtier.
Emma sank down on the edge of the couch with a little sigh of weariness.
Gratefulness was in it, too. She looked up at him--at the wrinkled,
kindly, ape-like face, and he looked down at her.
"William," she said, "war is a filthy, evil, vile thing, but it bears
wonderful white flowers."
"Yas'm!" agreed William, genially, and smiled all over his rubbery,
gray-black countenance. "_Yas'm!_"
And who shall say he did not understand?