There was much drinking the next night, Hamilton acquitting himself
like a gentleman--that is, imbibing large quantities without
perceptible effect--and McCall like a zealot.
“Ought to get drunk. Ought to get drunk.” McCall kept repeating. “Last
chance on the bounding, boundless Atlantic.”
McCall went on explaining his philosophy of intoxication between
swallows.
“This is occasion that demands intoxication,” he said. “Demands
intoxication, like poet demands fine frenzy with his eye rolling
between heaven and earth and hell, or something.
“When you’re not drunk, Hamilton, you’re bundled with clothes--pants,
shoes, coat, fur coat, gloves, silk hat. They’re your conventions, your
inhibitions, your prohibitions--hooray for Bryan! You can’t embrace
occasion with clothes on--shoes, hats, coats, overcoat, pants. Got to
get rid of ’em, boys, got to get rid of ’em! Civilized man’s got too
many clothes. How’s he going to do it? How’s he going to do it, boys?”
McCall went gravely from one to the other, repeating his question.
Nobody was listening. Every one was laughing extravagantly, except the
sentimental major, who was weeping over his wife and kiddies. A captain
and a second lieutenant were trying vainly to comfort him. Two captains
were telling funny stories at the same time. Another group was singing
songs. Hamilton was laughing loudly at all of them because he was the
only man sober.
“I’ll tell you how to get rid of your clothes,” McCall held up a
whiskey bottle and waxed oratorical. “Civilized man got solution
right here, in little bottle with removable cork. Get drunk! Then all
conventions, all restraints disappear like the dew before a midday
sun, like dew on desert’s dusty face, like dew--well, anyway like dew!
“When you’re drunk, you’re free. You’re free like gilded bird let out
of cage, or bird out of gilded cage. Your mind is free. Your soul is
free of its trammels. Who wants to wear trammels anyway? Down with
trammels. The fetters on your mind--the restraints, the conventions are
removed like buttons from pair trousers. One drink and you remove the
yoke from your neck.”
He unbuttoned his blouse, untied the white collar about his neck and
flung it to the floor.
“You remove strait-jacket of liberties.”
He wriggled out of his tight coat and flung it on one of the berths.
“You remove shirt of Nessus.”
Swish, his shirt came off.
“You practice sabotage against moralities.”
His putties and shoes went clattering on the floor.
“Now look at me. A free man. A symbol of released spirit. A symbol--I
say I’m a symbol. Listen to me syming--sym; sym, sym, sym, sym.”
He began beating a rhythm against the table with his bottle.
“I’m a symbol--”
“He’s a dumb-bell!” some one else shouted. “Put some clothes on the
idiot.”
The next minute the symbol of man’s freedom from restrictions was being
wrapped in a blanket and deposited in a berth, still protesting, in a
voice growing feebler and feebler, his symbolism by a series of sym,
sym, syms.
A few hours later, Hamilton was standing at the bow of the ocean
liner, drinking in deep draughts of the cool air and peering through
the gray fog. Far away, on the horizon, the cloud seemed blacker. The
sun was just beginning to rise in the vessel’s wake, throwing huge
shadows ahead. All about him other men were peering through the mist.
There was an air of excitement, of eagerness and of expectation. There
was a subdued buzz of conversation, through which brisk orders and
the bustle of the sailors sounded. As it grew lighter, Hamilton saw
men crowding the rails, in life-boats, swarming along the rigging,
everywhere. It was vain to try to keep the land men in their place.
There were heads at every port hole.
Hamilton’s eyes had become tired from peering into the west and from
lack of sleep and he had fallen into a sort of doze. Battle scenes,
pictures of Margaret, the hospital, training camp, were jumbled in his
brain. He was happy and yet vaguely dissatisfied. He wondered whether
any one would be at the pier to meet him. He wondered whether Margaret
would be there and what she would say when they met. Would his father
be there?
He wondered whether he would ever see Dorothy again. The unit to which
Dorothy belonged had returned to America three weeks ago. Dr. Levin had
returned on the same ship and, undoubtedly by this time, had gotten his
discharge. Before leaving he had written Hamilton, telling him that he
meant to spend a few weeks in New York before returning to Chicago. He
had given his address at a hotel on Fifth Avenue, near Central Park,
and had urged Hamilton and McCall to visit him there at their first
opportunity. It would be good to see him again, perhaps spend a night
or two together, as they had in Paris.
Hamilton aroused himself. The sun was growing warmer and brighter
and--suddenly on the horizon, still far away, loomed New York--a
shadowy mass out of which tall, slender towers aspired to the sky.
Glittering Gothic cathedrals of a race of giants. Gigantic fairy
palaces. And there, gleaming in the morning sunlight, a symbolic figure
with torch extended.
Hamilton had come home again. Home to the land of Liberty, home to
the land which had given lavishly of its treasure, of its very flesh
and blood to bring a new conception of liberty and democracy to the
old world. A fresh, strong, triumphant country, throwing spires of
steel and huge smoke-stacks into the air, spanning rivers, tunnelling
through mountains, girding waterfalls, building cities and binding
them by bands of steel. The young giant among nations, deep-chested,
long-limbed, athletic; the clean-minded, hard-fisted champion of
democracy. The champion of down-trodden races and peoples. The one
nation without a selfish claim at the peace conference. Hamilton felt
proud that he was an American.
The morning dragged in routine. Tasks--roll calls, sick reports,
personnel reports, final inspections. Hamilton made a little speech
to his men, cautioning them to behave as soldiers even though
they had returned, emphasizing certain instructions in regard to
debarkation--the order in which they were to leave, how they were
to entrain, and so forth. But principally he thanked them for their
loyalty and expressed the conviction that they would continue to
practise the lessons that they had all learned in the war--himself
included, the unity of the nation, its strength, physical and moral,
because it was a nation composed of many different human elements. A
nation where each man was a citizen like any other man in spite of
differences in race, color and religion.
At the close of his talk, a little Jewish corporal came up to him,
saluted and asked timidly if he could shake his hand. Hamilton extended
his hand with a smile.
“You know, captain,” the corporal’s eyes blinked with happiness, “I
absolutely didn’t know it was in you. I thought, you’ll pardon me,
captain, you was a damn fine officer, but a stuck-upper. Now, I see my
mistake. It was all the time you was playing a game like--so we’d be
better soldiers.”
Emboldened by the corporal, an Italian, who ran a fruit stand two years
ago, came up and shook hands warmly.
“Eet is vairy fine,” he said in his broken English. “That feeling you
express. I feel it too, down here. We one, big, fine people. We all
fight togaither. No wop. No dago. All Americains now!”
Hamilton gulped.
“That’s exactly so, Marco. We’re all Americans. We’ve all earned the
right to be called that now.”
He looked about at the other men. Some were too bashful to come
forward. They stood back, with something like awe and gladness in their
eyes. Others crowded around him in little groups. Here was a Greek, who
had left a shoe shine stand to enter the war, and had been cited twice
for bravery. Here was a Slav, who had probably dug ditches since coming
to America and, in spite of the difficulties of mastering a foreign
language, had become a corporal. Here was an Essex street tailor who
had won the Croix de Guerre.
He studied their faces. They were the faces of men who had always
worked hard, mostly with their hands, and who still had met the test on
the field of battle, in the gentleman’s job of fighting.
Here was a German baker, a Hungarian waiter, a Polish truck driver.
Here were Gentiles and Jews, Protestants and Catholics; a few men from
northern Europe, blue eyed, with long skulls; some Slavs with high
cheek bones and round heads; but mostly brown-eyed men from southern
Europe, and Jews. Men of the east side of New York--unskilled laborers,
clerks, milk-wagon drivers, elevator operators. Men from all the
uninteresting and useful occupations of New York.
The last task had been done, the men were dressed and packed and
excitedly crowding every available spot on the ship from which they
could see land. The ship rocked with shouts and cheers. Men were
singing songs about their companies and cities; sentimental songs,
marching songs. Jokes flew back and forth. College yells, modified
to suit States and regiments, rose. Cheers for individual officers.
Hamilton heard a three times three for him that sounded familiarly like
the yell the bleachers had given him the day he was carried off the
field with the broken nose.
They had passed quarantine and were being tugged up the Hudson, with a
score of smaller boats--tugs and launches draped in bunting--forming an
escort. On the boats were huge canvas and cardboard signs of welcome.
On the decks of the welcoming ships, along the shore, from every
window and on the roofs of the towering skyscrapers thousands of men,
women and children were waving bright flags and banners, throwing
clouds of confetti and serpentines of paper. Gay flags and strips of
bunting flamed from the buildings.
The band on the Mauretania struck up a tune. Bands on the shores
played. Whistles and sirens screamed, bells rang. Voices shouted songs
and words of welcome. The mingled sounds rose and fell in tremendous
surges. It was New York’s welcome.
On the tugs men were shouting through megaphones: “Is Jack Butler, of
Company E, there? His mother welcomes him.” “Hello Bill!” The men on
the ship shouted their answers in chorus.
“Is Dick Blackwell on board?” This time there was no answer. The men
looked at each other, their faces suddenly red. Dick was not on board.
He had made the supreme sacrifice and now lay on the field of glory
somewhere in France.
His name had appeared on the casualty list, but someone had refused to
believe it until the last.
Now they had passed the Battery and its cheering thousands and were
being swung about to the pier in Hoboken. On the Jersey shore--new
bands of music, new flags and banners, new thousands of waving,
exultant human beings.
The band strikes up “Home, Sweet Home”; cheering, laughing and singing
suddenly die down. A new look of wistfulness steals into the men’s
eyes. No one trusts himself to look at his neighbor. There is a murmur
of suppressed sobbing. The ecstacy of a common happiness is gone. Each
is carried to his own little world of memory, of joy or sorrow. But the
next minute the band is blaring out “How Dry I Am,” and everyone is
laughing, cheering and beginning to sing uproariously. A few minutes
later the ship touches the side of the pier. They are back again. It is
noon.
Hamilton was watching the reception committee coming on board--first
the general in charge of the port of debarkation, a magnificent
but pathetic figure (he had made many fruitless efforts to be sent
overseas, but had always been turned down because of age or some other
unknown reason). Beside him walked the mayor of New York, all smiles.
Then a group of officers--generals and colonels. Next, other city
and state officials. Then a delegation of congressmen and prominent
citizens and, suddenly, among them, Hamilton’s father--a tall, slender
man in the fifties, with aristocratic iron-gray hair and blue eyes,
arched brows, gray moustache and goatee. A little thinner and paler
than he had appeared two years ago, Hamilton thought in that first
whirl of oversweeping emotions.
He longed to cry out to his father, but instead he stood peering
over the rail motionless. A hundred questions rushed into his
mind--questions about his old life, about his father’s health, about
his mother, about the home, about the servants, about persons he had
known. Would he appear changed to his father? A flood of old emotions,
associations long forgotten, vague anxieties, swept over him.
He felt strangely aloof, far away, a stranger among familiar things,
one returned to a once familiar land that has somehow become foreign.
Suddenly he was a child again, with an absurd wish to cry--in spite of
the cheers and songs and band music all about him. He had started to
run away from Corinth on his white pony, became frightened and homesick
and galloped back home to fling himself into his father’s arms.
The next moment Robert was elbowing his way to the companionway and
down the stairs.