THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1918 (continued 5)

He paused, waiting for John to go.

John fiercely crumpled the sheet and hurled it away. Tears were in his weary eyes.

He wailed: “Is there nothing I can do to prove I am Jasper?”

“Why, certainly! You can produce what’s left of the ninety-seven thousand!”

John took from his ragged waistcoat pocket a five-dollar bill and some change. “Here’s all there is. Ninety-six thousand of it was stolen from my house last night.”

Sorry though he was for the madman the president could not help laughing. Then he tried to look sympathetic, and he comforted: “Well, that’s hard luck, old man. Uh, let’s see. You might produce some parents or relatives or somebody to prove that Jasper never did have a twin brother.”

“My parents are dead, and I’ve lost track of their kin—I was born in England—father came over when I was six. There might be some cousins or some old neighbors, but I don’t know. Probably impossible to find out, in these wartimes, without going over there.”

“Well, I guess we’ll have to let it go, old man.” The president was pressing the buzzer for his secretary and gently bidding her: “Show Mr. Holt out, please.”

From the door John desperately tried to add: “You will find my car sunk—”

The door had closed behind him. The president had not listened.

The president gave orders that never, for any reason, was John Holt to be admitted to his office again. He telephoned to the bonding company that John Holt had now gone crazy; that they would save trouble by refusing to admit him.

John did not try to see them. He went to the county jail. He entered the keeper’s office and said quietly: “I have stolen a lot of money, but I can’t prove it. Will you put me in jail?”

The keeper shouted: “Get out of here! You hoboes always spring that when you want a good warm lodging for the winter! Why the devil don’t you go to work with a shovel in the sand pits? They’re paying two-seventy-five a day.”

“Yes, sir,” said John timorously. “Where are they?”

THE STORY VINTON HEARD AT MALLORIE

By KATHARINE PRESCOTT MOSELEY

From Scribner’s Magazine

Copyright, 1918, by Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Copyright, 1919, by Katharine Prescott Moseley.

“There is only one letter for you,” said Ware’s sister, and she turned the handle of the coffee-urn as she watched him slit the envelope, for Ware had exclaimed: “By Jove! It’s from Vinton.” And then, after a moment: “That’s a nice thing. Roberts posted this last night instead of telephoning it up directly it came. He’s on the ——nia, due in New York—let me see—you have the Herald there—look in the shipping, will you? Are they sighted?”

Abigail took up the paper. “Docked last night at nine,” she said.

“Then he’ll have caught the midnight from New York. If he’s not stopping in Boston he’ll be on the eight fifty-eight.”

“Is he coming here?”

“Yes, he says so. He’ll have quite a bit to tell if I know him.” And an hour or so later Abigail Ware saw Vinton lift his eyes to the columns of the white porch glistening in the morning sun behind her, and as he sprang out of the motor and took her hand: “My foot is on my native heath and my name is MacGregor!” he cried.

Abigail led the way into the dining-room. “Come in by the fire; I’ve kept some coffee hot,” she said.

Vinton approached the warmth of the pine logs that were sending out sparks against the screen of the Franklin stove. “There’s something fearfully penetrating about the air over here at this time of year,” he began. “Open fires are its saving complement.”

Abigail held out his cup.

“Warm as toast in England; perfect English spring this year.”

“Oh, no doubt of it; spring’s the time for England,” Ware asserted.

“Fall for New England,” said Ware’s sister. “But tell me,” she went on, “you were talking of saving complements. What are the saving complements over there just now?”

“There aren’t any.” Vinton’s voice was suddenly sombre.

“I should think not!” It came from brother and sister at once.

A moment passed before Vinton turned from the fire and let his eyes wander from the pale yellow heads of the daffodils nodding in the easterly May air outside to the cool tints of the Lowestoft bowl on which some Chinese artisan a century before had picked out the initials of a merchant-sailor grandfather in pale tints of blue and gold and which now stood in the centre of the table filled with sprays of the rhodora. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I suppose there are saving complements of a sort if one is heroic enough to find them, but—well, one can hardly— What shall I say? Everything over there—I mean all sorts of what you’d call merely material objects—is being charged, I believe, with some kind of spiritual essence that is going to be indefinitely active to future contact.”

He looked across the table to where Ware sat with his chair a little pushed back, and laughed. “The intolerant old Puritan thinks I’m off again, doesn’t he?” he said almost archly. Then he glanced about the room once more. “I think,” he continued, “that there is an extraordinary beauty of a kind about our old houses over here—a charm, too, although I’ve never been able to analyze it, for, after all, you know, there’s nothing in them!”

“The Puritan,” he began to explain, “belonged peculiarly to the race that in England had always opposed all of what one may call the sensory elements that were of such immense appeal to the race of the Cavaliers, for I believe that the two did spring from essentially different roots.

“‘A primrose by a river’s brim

A yellow primrose was to him,

And it was nothing more.’”

“What more does it need to be?” Ware protested, and “Ah! there you are,” Vinton responded. “But don’t you see, after all, such negation never created”—he laughed a little again. “Never created an—an—”

“An eschatology?” supplemented Ware.

“A what? What on earth’s an eschatology?” gasped Ware’s sister.

“Say, for brevity, the material manifestation of spiritual things; not quite theological, but ’t will serve,” Vinton returned, and was silent; and after a time Abigail asked him what he thought of the legend of the Angel of Mons. Then it was that Vinton began to be truly cryptic. “What’s the use,” he said genially, “of talking about these things to two people who are made of stuff as splendidly solid and insensitive to the vibrations of what they’d call fantasy as their colonial pieces themselves.”

Abigail sighed. “I’m sorry that I’m too insensitive to hear of these saving complements of horror,” she said. “As for Billy, I suppose he wants the facts.”

“The horror,” returned Vinton, “for the facts are all horror. If it hadn’t been for the story that the Marquis of Mallorie’s daughter told me I should bring home nothing else.”

“Is this one of those manifestations you refuse to reveal to us?”

“It is the only one. It’s no use before Ware; perhaps some time—if you will listen.”

“Go on,” said Ware; “‘si non e vero, e ben trovato’”.

“Oh, I’m not making it up.”

“Well, what do they say about the Russian advance, over there? Did you see any of the big German guns in action?”

For days after this the conversation turned on the technical questions of war, with which Vinton’s opportunities as a war correspondent had made him familiar.

Then one night Vinton had come down from Boston on a late afternoon train. He had been lunching at one of the clubs with friends who had listed him to speak at two or three houses in aid of emergency funds. It was tea-time and suddenly he rose, with his cup and saucer in hand, and went over to one of the dining-room windows. “Hello,” he said. “We’re going to get a northeaster, I’ll be bound.”

“The sheep-shearer’s due,” said Ware from his desk.

And it was that very night, when the great easterly gale was enveloping the whole New England coast and was sending showers of sparks down the big fire-place before which they sat, in a low-ceiled room which had been the kitchen in colonial days, that Vinton told the story as he had heard it from the Marquis of Mallorie’s daughter.

“It seems,” he began, “that the Mallories are of an immensely ancient family in the southwest of England; the title is one of the oldest in the realm, and one of the poorest. Away back in the time of the Tudor they became Protestant under protest, and have remained so under protest; only their chapel, like the worshipping places of the early Christians, was taken down into the bosom of the earth and there it rested, exhaling strange virtues over all the land above, and, as many thought, harboring much of good that the newer order of things had cast out. And so the Mallories are High-Church and when the Puseyites began their revolt they were only approaching what the Mallories had been for centuries. And about these delightful people there is none of the fanaticism of the convert.

“When war broke out there were two beautiful daughters living, most of their time, down there at Mallorie Abbey, and a son who went over with the expeditionary force as soon as war was declared. This young man was killed in action, under the most heroic circumstances. He was, apparently, the type of young soldier who might have been one of Arthur’s men, and I believe the clerical incumbent there used to quote the lines of the Puritan Milton: ‘Arthur stirring wars under the earth that hides him,’ or ‘Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen,’ as having a kind of ironic application to the whole Mallorie domain. When I came back from France I was pretty well used up, and Carteret Lyon asked me down to his place, which stands within four or five miles of Mallorie, in the south. They are, of course, in mourning and fearfully sad, but I met the eldest daughter at tea one afternoon, and, being the most natural people on earth, and as I could tell her some things she wished to hear about France, we became almost friends at once. After that they made me welcome at Mallorie whenever I dropped in at tea-time, and one day Lady Maurya took me over the abbey, telling me as we went through the dim old place with its stained and mullioned windows a lot of its curious, almost supernatural, history. Suddenly she broke off from the narrative, on which it had seemed to me that her mind had been only lightly fixed, and, sinking down on a window-seat in the low, long hall we had been passing through, she looked up at me and said: ‘Ah, this is nothing to something that has really happened here within the year.’

“I asked her if she could tell me, and she answered that she wished to, but that it was all so very extraordinary that she feared I would be unable to believe it, and she felt that she could not hear it doubted.

“I said to her that I was the most believing man since the Dark Ages, and so she told me.

“It was the anniversary of her brother’s death, and a quarter to three in the morning had just struck from the clock on a kind of tower that rises over the chapel and which has a circular stairway running down into the middle of a small lady-chapel where her brother’s body (which had finally been found after the engagement in which he had been killed) had been buried. She and the other members of her family were keeping vigil beside the tomb by turns while masses were being said, during the twelve hours that were passing, and she was just mounting the stairs to go to her room for a little rest, being nearly exhausted with fatigue and emotion, when suddenly the tower and stairway, which had been in inky darkness before, became as light as day. She knew in an instant what it was, and, looking up, straight over her head she saw a Zeppelin hovering exactly above where she stood and so low that it seemed to her that she could see the crew and their preparations for the hideous work afoot. Then she looked down and a single shaft of the search-light fell directly on the heads of those who were gathered on their knees about the tomb. They were praying, with their heads bent and their eyes closed, for not one of them seemed to be aware of it, and the priests, whose chanting came up to her fearfully from the altar, were protected from it by the high reredos. There was something so dreadful and so uncanny about it all that she was petrified, for she knew that annihilation was hanging over her and all her family, without the shadow of a doubt, for the aim was at the tower—which was a landmark for miles around—and that it would fall before she could warn one of her people to safety, when, as in a flash from nowhere, flying at a most terrific rate of speed yet without a sound and straight at the Zeppelin, there appeared an aeroplane. It approached almost within hailing distance of the great thing without firing, and then, as the Zeppelin started a little, the aeroplane began swirling about it. She could not tell how long a battle went on between them without a single shot from either. It seemed as if the aeroplane was winding the monster in some intangible net, in which it turned and twisted and writhed, trying to get away into the free air; and then, again without a single shot, it fell to earth.

“Every one of the crew had been killed when the men went out to it, and while she and her sister watched from the top of the tower they saw the aeroplane skim down and land just below them. Hastening below she threw back a little door that opened to the ground, and there she came face to face with the aeronaut. He wore no helmet, and, in this very early light, for it was in the first days of the year, he looked as if he stood in a shining black armor. His hair was golden, and the rising sun touched it, and he was the most beautiful creature that she had ever seen—so beautiful that she fell back against the wall behind her.

“Then the others came and showered him with thanks and insisted that he should be their guest at Mallorie, and, to every one’s astonishment, Lady Maurya’s mother called the man who had served her son for many years and directed him to take the stranger to her son’s rooms, that had not been open since the day he fell in battle, and also she said that as they were of about the same height his wardrobe should be at the stranger’s disposal. He accepted their invitation and stayed at Mallorie Abbey for nearly a week, saying that there were a few things he must do about his machine. And yet, during his whole stay, no one ever saw him at work on it. In fact, although the Mallories never mentioned it to him, they knew that there was much excitement, not only among their own people but in the countryside, because since the moment he had come to earth no one had been able to find the aeroplane. He would sometimes play tennis with Lady Maurya and her sister the whole morning or afternoon, and at sight of him in their brother’s flannels and with his gayest kummerbunds and ties they felt no pangs, only a great comfort in his presence, not exactly as if their brother was really back with them, but as if he had power to fill them with the same sort of happiness they had always felt when the young soldier was at home with them on leave.

“One night during that week a general officer back from France on an important mission dined at the abbey. After dinner, something calling the marquis out, the officer and the aeronaut, Lieutenant Templar, as he called himself, were left alone. As the officer was bidding Lady Maurya good-by, two hours later, he said: ‘This evening has been worth twenty trips from France. I have learned that which may be of such value to us that it will turn the tide of war. This young saviour of Mallorie Abbey may be the saviour of Europe. But how does he know?’

“Then it was that Lady Maurya took Lieutenant Templar by himself, and she brought him into the very hall where she told me the story, and she said to him (and how could any creature of earth or heaven have resisted her, for she has all the beauty and all the allurements of both?): ‘Why were your wings all purple and gold when you came flying to save us that morning?’

“And he answered her: ‘The shadow of the earth upon the skies, and a touch of dawn.’

“‘But there was no dawn,’ she said. ‘And when you came to the great monster why did your wings change to flaming scarlet, so bright that no eyes could rest upon them?’

“‘The rising sun,’ he said.

“And she answered: ‘But there was no rising sun.’

“And then he looked at her for a long time while neither spoke, and at last: ‘How could you send the thing to earth without a single shot?’ she asked.

“And he answered, after a moment: ‘Because in me is all the strength of that bright ardor which has led young warriors to die in battle for the right since earth began. And now my strength is most mightily renewed with the strength of all the lads who were the first to die for England. Was not your brother one of these? Such souls are the stuff of which are made the angels and archangels and all the heavenly host.’

“And as she looked at him, standing before her, it seemed to her, in the dim light, that instead of the evening clothes he had been wearing she saw again a glint of black armor as on the morning when he had first come to them, and then, like Elsa, she asked him who he was, and he, like Lohengrin, was gone.

“But from that day to this there has been no more sorrowing at Mallorie Abbey.”

The great northeaster had stopped its wild howling at the very moment that Vinton was adding: “They have never known which of them it was—whether it was Michael—or Gabriel—or Raphael!”

Ware poked the fire and said nothing.

“Do you believe it?” asked Ware’s sister.

“What an impossible word that word ‘believe’ is! What does it mean?”

“And do you like the idea—the idea of losing one’s identity in one great superlative being like that?”

Vinton thought a moment, and then he said: “When I remember that all the trouble on this earth comes in the train of that infernal thing we call the ego it seems to me that the heavenly things must indeed arise from its complete surrender. Yes,” he continued more slowly, “yes, I think I like it very much.”

THE TOAST TO FORTY-FIVE

By WILLIAM DUDLEY PELLEY

From The Pictorial Review

Copyright, 1918, by The Pictorial Review Company.

Copyright, 1919, by William Dudley Pelley.

In this little Vermont town of Paris, on the top floor of the red-brick post-office block, over half a century have been located the quarters of Farrington Post, Paris Chapter, G. A. R.

In the rooms of Farrington Post—under a glass case filled with countless other relics belonging to Captain Jonathan Farrington’s company, that marched away one hundred and seven strong that forenoon in ’61—has been kept a bottle of rare old wine.

That wine was old when those stalwart young Vermonters who followed Captain John Farrington were children. Through half a century it has occupied its place in that glass case; during that long time it has been viewed by many visitors to our town; over and over again has the story of “The Toast to Forty-five” been told until that double-quart of priceless vintage has become one of our chief sights of interest to the stranger within the gates. It was not through accident or chance that this bottle of wine was saved. Up to last August there was a pretty sentiment connected with that bottle of wine and why it should have been preserved thus throughout the years.

Up to last August, indeed! Because that bottle is no longer under the glass case in the Grand Army rooms in the post-office block. It has been taken from among those relics of yesterday; the seal has been broken; the contents have been poured out. Glistening red as the blood which those lads of ’61 shed for the principles in which they believed, that liquor was consumed in the pledging of a toast.

When the homefolks suggested that the county give a dinner to the returned heroes on the sixteenth day of August, 1866—Bennington Battle Day and a holiday in Vermont always—Dashing Captain Jack Fuller was not the one to quash the suggestion. “Dashing Jack” had been the man to take John Farrington’s place when John lost his life at Gettysburg. He was a great dude, was Captain Jack; a lover of the dramatic and the spectacular; with the pomp of soldiering verily in his blood and the vanity of many generations of Fullers in his fiber.

On the night of August 16, 1866, “The Toast to Forty-five Banquet” was held on the top floor of the old Vermont House. It took place in the big room with the spring dance-floor. That old Paris hostelry was burned in ’73. In the course of that affair, Dashing Jack arose and made a speech—likewise a proposal.

The flower of Vermont of the Sixties was gathered about those tables. There were young men to whom fame and fortune afterward would come. There were sturdy beautiful girls in quaint dresses that in succeeding years would mother sons and daughters who are the pride and glory of Vermont of the present. The lights shone on gloriously happy faces. Two hundred voices turned the room into vocal pandemonium. It was several minutes before Dashing Captain Jack could gain their attention and make himself heard.

When finally all eyes were turned upon him, they saw that he was holding high in his right hand a bottle of wine.

“Ye gallant sons and daughters of Vermont! Tonight is a great night!” cried Jack in ringing, self-confident, magnetic tones. “We are attending a dinner tonight that will be remembered in the history of our town and State long after the last comrade now within sound of my voice has gone to make his bivouac with the illustrious Company Forty-five—the name which we have given the forty-five brave lads who marched away with us but who were not destined by a higher providence to march back. On this night, therefore, beholding this wine before me, it has occurred to me to propose the inauguration of a rite—almost a sacred rite—the like of which no Post has ever heard.”

The room was now very quiet. And Captain Jack reveled in the drama of the scene.

“In this room,” he cried, “—in sound of my voice at this moment, are two boys who will be the very last to join Company Forty-five. Sooner or later we shall all be called to answer to our names in the Great Muster; but some will be called sooner than others. There will certainly come a day in the years which lie ahead when there will be only two remaining of this company of sixty-two here to-night. Think of it, boys! Just two! Look into one another’s faces and ask yourselves—who are those two—which of you will they be?”

The room was strangely silent. The smiles died on the faces of many women. Dashing Captain Jack indicated the wine he held in his hand.

“Here is the thing which I propose; to make the annual dinners of Farrington Post different from any other reunions which shall ever be held:

“I hold in my hand the last unsealed bottle of the vintage which we have tasted to-night in our first toast in peace to the missing lads that have made that peace possible. Let this last bottle be saved. Year after year we will have our annual dinners. Year after year, as we gather round the board, familiar faces will be missing. Many will fall by the way. At last—will be only two comrades—of this roomful here to-night. And when at last those two shall face one another and think back to this first banquet in the dim and sacred past—when they alone remain—when sixty have gone to join old Forty-five and they realize that perhaps before another year is passed, they will have joined that illustrious company also—let them break the seal on this bottle. Let them fill their glasses. Let them clink those crystal rims together and drink the last toast to those who have gone. And when the seal on this bottle thus is broken, let our reunions be held no more.”

They drank, and the next morning the banquet was a thing of history.

Year after year those veterans have gathered about the board and gazed on that rare old vintage, wondering whether he was to be one of the two to drink that final toast to Forty-five—and under what circumstances. Each has realized that before another August sixteenth came around, certain familiar faces were to be missing. Dashing Captain Jack started something far more dramatic than he realized.

Poor Captain Jack! He married one of the Kingsley girls that year and a little son was born to them. A month and a day after the birth of that son he was killed in an accident on the old New York Railroad. He was the first to join Forty-five!

Sixty-two men sat down to that first banquet. In 1900 the number was thirty—less than half. In 1910 there were eleven veterans. Since 1910 the old soldiers have been going rapidly.

At the Post dinner of August 16, 1912, the ranks of Captain Jack’s company had dwindled to four old men. There was Uncle Joe Fodder, the commander; Martin Chisholm, who made his money in the grist-mill; Henry Weston, who for seven years had been an inmate of the State Soldier’s Home; and—old Wilbur Nieson, who spent his days hanging around the street corners and stores.

The reunion ended as forty-six other reunions had ended, excepting that they did not talk their battles over again so vehemently as on former occasions. Indeed, they had talked themselves out. They were “waiting” now, and the old bottle of wine set in the center of their table was a symbol of fatalism, mute testimony to the inexorable law of human life. Next day we reported it as usual in our local paper.

At about ten-thirty o’clock of the following evening—to be exact, the seventeenth day of August, 1912—Mrs. Samuel Hod, wife of the Telegraph’s editor, while working in her kitchen, heard a frightful scream come from somewhere in the neighborhood.

Mrs. Hod rushed to the door. Outside was a clear, warm summer night. Across the picket fence that separated the Hod yard from the rear yards of the houses facing on Pleasant Street, she could see a light in the kitchen of the Fuller boy’s house—young Jack Fuller, grandson of Dashing Captain Jack of years gone by. The neighborhood was very quiet during those two minutes she stood there listening in her fright.

Then suddenly that scream was repeated—sharp, clear, terrible! It came from the home across the picket fence. It was Betty Fuller screaming. From the agony in the cries something ghastly had happened. Mrs. Hod ran through her house and called to her husband. Sam helped his wife over the back fence and they made their way under the Fuller clothes-line, through the back shed, and into the little sitting-room.

Betty Fuller was down on the floor. She was face downward, her head protected by her arm. Two feet from her, between the reading-table and the door into the dining-room, was her nine-months-old baby. Holding himself unsteadily between the casings of the hall door was young Jack, his face the color of cold ashes, his lips parched, drops of sweat, heavy as glycerin, standing on his forehead.

“What’s happened?” demanded Sam.

But he saw what had happened; and his wife saw; and so did the neighbors. The baby’s crib was mute witness to what had occurred. It was overturned—between Jack and his little family.

“Betty! Betty!” cried Mrs. Hod, kneeling down to the young mother’s assistance.

“My baby! My only, only, little baby!” moaned the girl.

“Tell me,” roared Sam to the father, “how did this happen?”

“I came in—sick—I guess—I guess—I didn’t see the kid’s crib. I fell over against it! I knocked it over—”

The neighbor woman had picked up the little body.

“It’s—dead!” she whispered hoarsely.

Sam whirled on Jack.

“Sick!” he roared. “Sick! The h—— you was sick! You was drunk! You’re drunk now! See what you’ve done? You’ve killed your own kid—!”

At his words the girl shrieked again, that long agonizing terrible shriek that brought more neighbors.

“It was an accident,” whispered the Fuller boy thickly.

“It wouldn’t have been an accident if you’d behaved yourself and cut out this coming home drunk.”

The woman picked up the girl and got her to the sofa. Over and over she kept moaning: “My baby! My only, only, little baby!”

The place filled with neighbors. After a while came Doctor Johnson—who was our coroner—and Mike Hogan, our chief of police.

Mike was at a loss whether to arrest the father or not. Sam dispelled his doubts.

“When the boy comes to himself and gets the stuff out of his brain, he’ll feel bad enough, Mike,” the fatherly old editor said. “The memory of it will be enough punishment. After all, he didn’t do it intentionally.”

“He’s no good, sorr,” stormed Mike, indicating the young father while he grew husky-throated at the pathos of the little mother’s grief.

“Yes, he is, Mike. This is really Dick Fuller’s—his father’s—fault. He shouldn’t ever have left the lad ten thousand dollars and no balance-wheel. Let these two children alone. It’s for them to settle between themselves. Jack’s got the Fuller blood in him from away back; and I think this will bring out his manhood. It’s a fearful price for a young father to have to pay, Mike. But maybe, after all, it’s for the best.”

The neighbors left the boy and girl to their tragedy.

The marriage of old Wilbur Nieson’s daughter Elisabeth to young Jack Fuller had been talked of in our town for a month and a day. Richard Fuller, son of Dashing Captain Jack, had grown to manhood, made considerable money and died, leaving it to his boy, whereupon the lad started straight for the devil.

Before he had come into his inheritance, he had been “keeping company” with little Betty Nieson, who worked in the box-factory and lived with her derelict father in the scrubby old Nieson place out Cedar Street on the edge of town. The boy drank considerably and the rumor found its way into our newspaper office that, despite his money, Betty would not marry him until he had conquered the habit.

A town’s mind is a child’s mind and it readily sympathized with the struggle that the Nieson girl was making in her poor blind handicapped way to climb out of the environment which she had always known, and make something of herself. Then suddenly one day Jack Fuller sold his racy automobile. He and Betty were married and they furnished a modest home on Pleasant Street. One-half of the town said it was because Jack had gone through his inheritance. The other half said that it was his wife’s influence over him. Certainly to all appearances the girl was making a desperate and commendable struggle not only to raise herself up but to compel Jack to be a man. Then the half of the home-folks which had claimed the way Jack squandered his money had been at the bottom of his marriage, were apparently in the right. For shortly after the pitiful little marriage the boy was seen frequenting the Whitney House bar as much as ever.

Now came this additional sorrow into the girl’s life. She had married the lad trying to get away from the hereditary taint of the Nieson blood. It had come to her now that there appeared to be a taint also in the Fuller blood. She had lost her baby. The Hods said that there was a light burning in the Fuller tenement all that night.

The baby was buried the next day. It was a pathetic little funeral, just a prayer or two by Doctor Dodd of the Methodist Church, and then Blake Whipple, the undertaker, took care of the interment.

The evening of the day that the poor little shaver was laid underground, Mrs. Hod entered the tenement to console the bereaved girl. She entered without knocking. She paused at the threshold, made rigid by the sight before her.

For Jack Fuller was down on his knees before the girl he had married. His finely-shaped head was buried in her lap. He was sobbing freakishly, for men do not know how to weep. And the girl seated there on the sofa was staring into unseeing space with a holy look upon her beautifully plain face; her slender shapely fingers toying with the boy’s wavy hair.

“Never, never, never—will I touch a drop of the stuff as long as I live, Betty,” he choked between his tears. “I don’t care—what the provocation is—I won’t ever do it. I’ve been a cad, Betty. I haven’t been a Fuller at all—but I’ll show you I can be. I’ll make up for this. We’ve lost the baby, Betty—but it’s brought me to my senses. I’m—done! I swear it before God, Betty. I’m—done!”

The girl never knew a neighbor was looking on, unable to withdraw without disclosing her presence.

“If that’s the price, Jack,” she replied softly, divinely, “—if that’s the price—and you’ll keep your word—I’ll pay it! Jackie dear—I love you. I’ve loved you all along. But this has always been the way with me. There was Dad. Rum got him—rum stole him away from me. When he was himself he was all right. But he drank and then beat me—he made me want to kill myself just because I was a Nieson—because his blood half saturated with rum—was in my veins. I married you, Jackie—because I hoped to pull myself up from being a Nieson. I hoped to show folks what I wanted to be—what I tried so hard to be. Every one knows the Niesons are worthless trash, the scum of the town. And I thought—being your wife—the wife of a Fuller—things would be different. The liquor seemed robbing me of you too, Jack. But if this—has given you back to me—yes—I’ll pay the price. It’s all right, Jack. I’ll take your word that you’ll never, never take a drop of the stuff again.”

Mrs. Hod succeeded in getting out without being discovered. She went home and told her husband. Sam shook his head sadly.

“I hope so,” commented the worldly wise old newspaper man, who frequently understood two-legged human folks better than they understood themselves. “I hope so, indeed. I’d do anything under God’s heaven to help him. But I’m afraid for him—afraid for him and the girl. It sure will be hell for her if the lad breaks his promise—just once!”

But to his everlasting credit, let it be set down that the Fuller blood came uppermost in Jack. He did not break his promise. But what the poor boy went through in that succeeding six months only a reticent God in His heaven knows.

Jack had sold his automobile for two hundred dollars. Now he transferred what was left of his legacy from a checking account in the corner bank to the savings department. He went to work for Will Pease mending automobiles in the Paris Garage.

He grew thin and haggard with the struggle he was making. Some brainless young roustabouts in our town tried to get him to drink again just for the sake of winning him back to his old habits. They actually did get him into a bar one night with a glass of liquor before him. Then I guess it came to him what he was doing. The Fuller blood in him made a great convulsion for the upper hand—and won! He smashed the glass into the tempter’s eyes and stumbled out into the raw cold night—and home.

The boy came home to his childless wife one night and said:

“Betty—it’s hell!” he said. “I’m all burned out inside, Betty—”

“Jack,” she cried piteously, “you’re not going to give way after—after the price—we paid.”

“Not if I can help it, Betty,” he replied. “But I need help, girl. I need some sort of discipline that’ll straighten me out and help me physically. Betty—I’ve got a chance—to get into the quartermaster’s department of the Vermont National Guard—”

“You mean—be a soldier?” she cried.

“And why not, Betty?” he said. “My grandfather was a soldier. You know what he did in the Civil War; what he means to the Grand Army men. It’s in my blood, I guess, Betty—”

“Jack!” she cried. “Don’t leave me now! Don’t leave me alone! Don’t! Don’t! There’s too many memories, Jack. I ain’t—brave enough, Jack!”

He sank down on the sofa and hid his burning face in his hands.

“God help me!” he groaned. “I want to win out, but I’m all wrong inside. Oh, Betty!”

She tried in her poor pitiful way to help him. She did help him—a little bit. But Jack was nearer right than he knew. He joined the Y. M. C. A. that winter and went in for athletics. But two nights a week “on the floor” wasn’t rigorous enough for him.

Pinkie Price, our star reporter, came into the newspaper office one forenoon and exclaimed, “Hey, you know that Fuller chap that killed his kid when he come home stewed? Well, what do you suppose he’s up to? You know the preparedness scare and the trouble with Mexico and everything? Well, he’s startin’ to raise a company right here in Paris—a company o’ real soldiers—so’s to have ’em ready in case we get into the Europe scrap. They’re goin’ to drill four nights a week and Sundays in Academy Hall.”

“It isn’t surprising,” commented Sam Hod. “He comes from a family of soldiers. Well, I hope he does. If he’s captain of a company of men like his grandaddy was in ’63 he’ll have his position to maintain and that won’t mean flirting with whisky. Good for the boy! I said he had the right stuff in him. Go see him and write his scheme up, Pinkie. The Telegraph’ll give it all the preferred position it deserves.”

“Hey,” said Pinkie, shifting suddenly to another subject through the association of ideas, “—d’yer know that old Martin Chisholm kicked off last night? Yep; heart disease!”

Sam looked around the office at our faces.

“So ‘The Toast to Forty-five’ has narrowed down to Henry Weston, Uncle Joe Fodder, and Wilbur Nieson! Too bad, too bad!”

Jack Fuller, out of regard for the little wife’s feelings, did not take the quartermaster’s job. But he did organize the Paris Home Guard. Soldier blood ran in his veins. The “Fuller Fire-eaters” as our town named them, was a crack company. The place Jack held as head of that company was as a tonic to the lad; it gave him something to think about, to interest himself in when the hankering for the fellowship of our three saloons became too powerful. When the trouble with Mexico became acute there were weeks when the local boys, catching his enthusiasm, drilled six nights in succession in their rooms up-stairs in the Cedar Street Engine-house. They had regular army uniforms and were connected somehow with the State National Guard—we never could just understand the connection.

As for “The Toast to Forty-five,” the climax didn’t come in August, 1916. When Bennington Battle Day rolled around that year all three men were still living who had been alive the reunion before.

In February the United States severed relations with Germany. In April the United States declared war. In June ten million young Americans enrolled themselves for the draft. And in July, when all the confusion of the draft had cleared away, it was found that half of “Fuller’s Fire-eaters” had been called upon to fill the Paris quota of Vermont’s two thousand.

But Jack Fuller’s name was not drawn.

On a certain July night in the little tenement which they still kept on Pleasant Street, the Fuller boy stood beside the table in the same room where his small son had been killed in the overturning of the cradle a while before, with his face as white as chalk and Betty before him on her knees where she had sunk down in her misery, clutching him convulsively.

“Don’t go and leave me, Jack,” she moaned. “Oh, Jack, don’t do it. You’re all I’ve got, Jack—and there are so many unmarried men to go—!”

“My grandfather led the Paris boys in ’63, Betty,” he said hoarsely. “My great-great-grandfather led a company in the battle of Bennington. The country’s calling again, Betty. It’s up to a Fuller to take his place at the head of the Paris lads once more. I’ve got the company, Betty. They’re wild to enlist as a body and I can get the regular appointment as their captain—”

“Wait till your turn comes in the draft, Jack. Don’t leave me, now, Jack. There are so many unmarried men to go. If the country wants you so bad that they call all the married men, I’ll try to be brave and give you up, Jack. But wait for that—tell me you will!”

“I can’t stand it to see the boys I’ve drilled march away with another chap at their head, Betty.”

“Jack!” she cried hysterically, “it was you that took little Edward away from me! And now—you’re taking yourself. You don’t have to go—yet. You’re taking yourself—yourself—because—you don’t love me—”

It was the first time in two or three years that she had taunted him with what he had done to their child. It reacted upon him as though she had struck him a blow.

“Betty!” he cried hoarsely. “Don’t say that, Betty. You’re mad over this thing—you’re asking me to hide behind the skirts of women—”

“Jack—I’ve had so much sorrow—first with Mother, then with Father, then losing the baby so—now with you going away and leaving me—that I can’t stand much more, Jack. I’ll go mad—really mad, Jack! I can’t go back and live again with Father, and see his stumbling footsteps when he comes home drunk, and hear his talk, and see him gibber—I’ll have nobody, nobody, to live for! Oh, Jack!”

“You can be as brave as millions of other childless wives all over America, able for a while to care for themselves. You told me once that you hated the Nieson blood in you even if your father was a soldier. You said after we were married that you were trying to pull yourself up and be somebody. You said you were happy because our kids would have Fuller blood in them. And now instead of coming up to the scratch in a real crisis, Betty, you’re showing yellow and groveling round like a Nieson. If I’m willing to run the chance of getting shot—”

But he did not go on. Her screams of hysteria began. And the little wife who had stood so much broke down at last.

Doctor Johnson was called. He attended the girl for eight days. During that time, only regard for Jack made the boys hold off in enlisting as a unit altogether for France. Doctor Johnson said that if Jack volunteered with them, and Betty heard he was going, the shock would kill her. So the boy went around town, torn between love and duty.

And during those days something happened in our community. Wilbur Nieson and Henry Weston died—within a few days of one another. Henry Weston succumbed to kidney trouble which had afflicted him for years. And old Wilbur Nieson—Wilbur Nieson had the “tremors” as we say up here in New England—delirium tremens—one night in the rear of the Whitney House. The boys in the livery found him. The Sons of Veterans buried him. So much for the carefully cherished plans of humankind. For a half-century the members of Farrington Post had saved that rare old Vintage for “The Toast to Forty-five.” And there were not even two old soldiers left of that original company to observe the sentiment. “The Toast to Forty-five” could never be pledged, after all!

A couple of weeks slipped away. August sixteenth approached. The boy came into the office of our little local paper one morning and said:

“I’ve made up my mind; I’m going to France. Instead of having our ranks broken by the draft, all the ‘Fire-eaters’ are enlisting as a body in the National Guard. And I—am going—with them.”

“But your wife?”

“It won’t be any harder for her to stay behind than it is for me to leave. But I’ve got to get into this thing. Something inside of me is firing me to do it. She’ll bear it—somehow.”

“When are you boys going?” asked Sam.

“We’ll be leaving somewhere around the twentieth.”

“The twentieth!” exclaimed Sam. In that moment something occurred to him. “The twentieth!” he exclaimed over again. “And on the sixteenth—the old army men were going to hold their last reunion if only those two hadn’t died. Jack—!”

“Yes.”

“Why not—why not—why not have Paris give you boys a royal send-off on that night—the night of the sixteenth—a dinner for you fellows the sixteenth; a dinner for you fellows in place of the old Grand Army reunion!”

“I guess the boys would be willing,” replied Jack with a sad smile.

We printed a long piece in our little local paper about it, that night. Again the Vermont boys were going to war. Again a Fuller was to lead them. Tickets for the farewell dinner were on sale at the Metropolitan Drug-store, five dollars apiece, the proceeds to go to the Red Cross.

Bennington Battle Day came. All preparations for the greatest banquet Paris ever saw were completed. The time-worn custom of having the dinner in the rooms of Farrington Post was abandoned. The Post rooms would never hold the crowd. The dinner was to be held in the assembly hall of the new high school. That was the largest floor-space procurable in Paris.

Sam Hod had three sons in Captain Jack’s company—more than any other father in Paris. He was designated as toastmaster for that epochal dinner. At a long table at the head of the hall he was to sit with Uncle Joe Fodder on his right and young Captain Jack Fuller on his left. Beyond, on either side there were grouped officers of the company. Then the rest of the places were filled up with the privates of Fuller’s Fire-eaters and the public. The dinner was set for eight o’clock and by ten minutes of eight there were hundreds of Parisians in the hallways and on the sidewalk unable to get standing room in the dining-room, to say nothing of obtaining a seat and a plate.

Promptly on the dot of eight, Otis Hawthorne, leader of the Paris Band, tapped his baton on his music-stand.

With a great crash the apartment was filled to the furthermost crevices with the thunderous tumult of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Every man and woman in that hall rose to his feet. They sang that song. They sang it as they had never sung it before. Because in that moment the real meaning of the words came home to them.

“—Oh, say, does the Star Spangled Banner yet wave,

O’er the land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave?”

Sam Hod looked at his three lean boys in khaki, that in another week would be only a memory. And his face shone with an emotion he had never known the meaning of before. Women wept like—women. As the chorus died away, cheer on cheer arose and floated out the lowered windows into the soft summer night.

They resumed their chairs. Jack Fuller turned to the editor.

“Who’s this empty chair for on my left?” he demanded.

“Your wife, my son,” the editor replied simply, and Mrs. Hod brought the girl in.

She was white and weak. How the editor’s wife had broken the news to her—persuaded her to come to the hall and sit in the place of honor beside her husband—has been something that we bewhiskered males in the office of our little local paper have never been able to explain. Perhaps Mrs. Hod’s sacrifice of those three tall Yankee lads in Fuller’s Fire-eaters had something to do with it. Anyhow, Betty Fuller was persuaded to come in.

She put out her hands blindly before her as she reached the head table and heard them cheering her husband’s name—and her own. She felt her way into her place. She glanced down into her husband’s surprised face and gave a terrified semblance of a smile. Then the whole room seemed to fuse before her. She has never been able to recollect connectedly the events of that evening.

The dinner began, progressed, and, after the manner of all dinners, at last ended. Sam Hod arose. He clinked on a water-glass with his knife. The hallful saw him and gradually grew quiet.

It was a beautiful speech that the editor made. He began with the part Vermont has played in every war in which America has ever engaged. He told the story of the boys who marched away in ’61 behind John Farrington. He recounted the story of Captain Farrington’s death; the succession of “Jack Fuller the First” to the place of honor in the Company, the brilliant war-record of the regiment. He told of the home-coming; of the banquet fifty-two years before. He told smoothly of the events leading up to America’s entry into the war. His quotation of the President’s famous indictments against Germany brought ovation after ovation from the home-folks, who were worked up to hysterical pitch. And when it was over the editor said:

“To-night, before sitting down to this farewell banquet to our sons, many of whom are going away from us never to return—to-night I was the recipient of a strange request. It came from the last survivor of that famous Company of Sixty-two who fifty-two years ago saw Dashing Captain Jack Fuller of glorious memory, raise aloft this receptacle of rare vintage and propose a dramatic thing.

“This was the request: By some strange fate the evening when the last toast was to be given to the illustrious dead comes at the terrifically tragic moment when the sons of many of these men are going forward to offer their lives in a new democracy. It has been suggested that nothing could have more approval from Dashing Captain Jack himself—or from all of those one hundred and six brave men who have crossed from the battlefields of earthly life into a blessed reward for their altruism—than that this toast should be given after all—if not by the two survivors, then by the leader of the local heroes who have volunteered to go “Over There” and by their sacrifice make the earth a finer, fairer, better place in which to dwell. “The Toast to Forty-five,” famous for fifty-two years, will be given at last amid this assembly of another quota of the Union’s soldiers about to go forth to preserve the same great principle for which their fathers laid their all upon the altar.”

There was silence for a time. Then came another attempt at another ovation. But it died in the excitement of the thing transpiring at that speaker’s table.

Sam Hod was opening the famous vintage.

The seal was broken. Out of that glass retainer came costly sparkling liquor, fifty-two years the prize relic of Farrington Post. Sam reached over. The two glasses of Uncle Joe Fodder and Captain Jack he filled to the brim. He stepped back—back from between Uncle Joe and Captain Jack—that they might click the rims of their slender goblets together.

“Gentlemen,” cried Uncle Joe in that breathless moment—“The Toast—to—Forty-five!”

Every military man in that room arose to his feet.

Uncle Joe’s withered old lips moved in the sunken face. The skinny hand holding the wine-glass trembled so that the beverage spilled over the edge and splashed on the white table-cloth like a clot of blood.

“Here’s to the gallant Forty-five,” he cried in a high-pitched, crackly voice. “Here’s to Captain John Farrington. And here’s to the men of Company Sixty-two and their posterity. Here’s to—here’s to Captain Jack Fuller and his posterity—”

It was an unfortunate sentence at an unfortunate time.

Jack Fuller’s posterity!

Through the lad’s brain must have flashed a picture of a scene in his sitting-room months before when he had paid a fearful price for—something! He had promised— He had promised— He looked around the room. Hundreds of eyes were upon him as he stood there, splendid and erect in olive drab. He glanced around his own table, too. And in that instant he saw—the pale, wan features of his wife!

His arm still holding awkwardly aloft the glass, Jack looked into the faces of that crowd flanking the tables and walls of that great hall.

Something came to him—the scenes, the associations—reincarnation, perhaps—the blood of his forefathers—heredity—in that great instant he was prompted to do a great and dramatic thing for the joy of the spectacular, the call of the dramatic.

Out of Joe Fodder’s toothless mouth came voiceless words—

“I’ve—gone and forgot my speech! You say something, Jack. You say it!”

Sam Hod racked his brain for words to save the situation. All Paris waited. And then—in the silence—came a rich, strong, boyish voice:

“I’ll give a toast—to Forty-five!”

It was Captain Jack. Two hundred pairs of eyes were fixed upon him. He knew perfectly that two hundred pairs of eyes were fixed upon him.

This is the thing that he did:

Deliberately into his dirty coffee-cup he poured the blood-red liquid. As his grandfather would have done, with the same exaggerated flourish the boy took from his pocket a snow-white handkerchief. With that napkin he wiped flawlessly the delicate receptacle which had held the liquor. Then he leaned over. From a glass pitcher he poured into that cleansed wine-glass its fill of pure cold sparkling water. In an instant he held it aloft.

“Fellows!” he cried. “A toast! a toast not with wine—for wine with its blood-color belongs to the times which are going—which we hope are passing forever—I’m drinking a toast with crystal water—emblematic of the clean white civilization which is coming—for which we’re going ‘Over There’ to fight and die.

“Here’s to every man who ever did a noble thing; volunteering his strength to help protect the weak! Here’s to every lad who ever fought out the terrible question in his heart and put the Greater Good above his life-hopes and ambitions. Here’s to every soul that ever laid in the dark, thinking of those at home, knowing that in the charge of dawn he might become to them but a bitter-sweet memory of days when every hour was a golden moment and time but a thing to pass away. Here’s to the dead—the illustrious dead—those who fell in battle, those of Forty-five, the men of Sixty-two, the men of every age and every land who fought the good fight nobly, to the best that was in them—for the things they believed to be right—and have gone to take finer and better orders under a Greater General, the Commander of Commanders, the Prince of—Peace!”

He paused. He drew a long breath. He looked down the table. And he continued: “But along with our toast for the soldiers of the dead, boys—while the opportunity is ours—why not give also a toast—another kind of toast—to the soldiers of the living? Not ourselves, boys—but the ones—we’re leaving behind. It is little enough we can do for them!”

His gaze wandered up to his glass. In a strange, inspired voice, he cried softly:

“A toast!—a toast, also, to the truest and best soldiers of all—the mothers, the wives, and the girls we are leaving behind!

“Here’s to the toil-hardened hands who cared for us when as helpless little kids, we were unable to care for ourselves. Here’s to the tears they have shed over our little torn clothes; the pillows that have been wet in the midnight with anxiety, longing, and heartache that we might be spared to do our duty as men. Here’s to the anguish they have suffered, the prayers they have prayed, the sacrifices they have made, the toil they have borne—all to be laid on the altar of war, all to be wiped out in a moment, perhaps, by a splinter of shrapnel or the thrust of a bayonet. Here’s to the nobility of their anguish when they come to learn we are no more; and the beauty of their faces when the divinity in their hearts tells the story upon their care-lined foreheads that they would climb the same weary Golgotha again—go through the same Gethsemane—bear the same cross—though they knew all along the end which it meant.

“Here’s to the wives we loved in the days before War came upon us. Here’s to the promises they made us—to be ours until death came between us. Here’s to the suffering they have borne for our thoughtlessness; the hours when they have looked into the future and wondered if the love that we promised was worth the price they were paying. Here’s to the hopes and the fears, the joys and the sorrows that have come to them—that are coming to them now—that are coming to them in the years on ahead with ever greater portion. Here’s to their courage and noble endeavor, given so pathetically to us chaps who sometimes—forget. May we die as faithfully in the cause to which we have pledged ourselves as they will live in the memory of what-might-have-been in the lean years when there are forms sitting in fantasy beside them in the firelight and our voices are heard in the homes we made with them—no more.

“And here’s to the girls we are leaving behind! Here’s to the kisses they have given us under the stars of many summers—the memory of their hands and their lips and their eyes! Here’s to the weight in their souls and the pain that will hallow the memories that will haunt them through the years. Here’s to the sighs and the shadows, the heart-hopes and the longing! God grant in His goodness their fidelity is rewarded!

“These are the things to which we drink—the men of yesterday—and the memory of their heroism which has been—and the women of to-day and whose heroism is to be. With the great incentive of these two in our hearts, boys—let us drink and go away to fight like men—to honor the first—to sanctify the second.”

He clinked his glass against that of speechless Uncle Joe Fodder’s—and they drank—Uncle Joe drinking his wine with a hand which trembled so that the liquid stained his withered claw like a scarlet wound.

The hall was strangely silent.

Sam turned to his wife. “That boy never composed that beautiful speech alone, Mary,” he said—“not impromptu like that!”

Down the hall an old lady whispered to her daughter:

“Alice! Alice!—His grandaddy made just such a speech—almost word for word—the night John Farrington’s company bade us women-folks good-by.”

As the hall was being cleared for the big farewell dance, Sam came to the boy.

“Laddie,” he demanded, “where did you learn that speech?”

“What speech?” asked the boy.

“You know what speech—the toast!”

“I don’t know, Mr. Hod. I just looked at the faces—and the wine—and—and—Betty!—and it just came out.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Sure, it’s the truth. What was it I said that was so awful wonderful?”

“Don’t you remember what you said?”

The boy laughed ashamedly. “—I couldn’t repeat it if it cost me my life,” he replied. “It—just—came—out!”

Late that night the old editor lay in his bed thinking of many things.

“The things in life are far stranger than the things in story books,” he said. Then in the velvet dark he whispered: “Strange! Strange!”

Dashing Captain Jack Fuller, true to his blood and his birthright, went away on the following day at the head of his sturdy volunteers. They entrained at ten o’clock for Fort Ethan Allen.

Truly the boy did not remember the words of that toast which he gave that memorable evening. But one thing he does remember. He remembers the words of the girl he had married as he took her in his arms in those last few sweet moments following the final breakfast in the little home:

“It was the Nieson in me that didn’t want you to go, Jack,” she choked brokenly. “Up to last night I didn’t want you to go. But when you wouldn’t drink the wine—when you had the courage to do what you did in front of all those people—I was ashamed of my selfishness. Jackie dear—I’m the proudest, happiest, miserablest woman in all this town!”

He pressed her to him. He kissed her—an embrace that left her weak and limp.

“And you can count on me, Jack,” she said, “I’ll—do—my—duty—too! Even—if you should never come back; remember I said—I was sorry for the way I’ve acted; I’ll—do—my—duty—too!”

“Good-by, Betty!” he choked.

“Good-by—my soldier!” she lisped—bravely—piteously.

But she sent him away—with a smile!

She’s working now at her old place in Amos Wheeler’s box-shop. She closed down the little home on Pleasant Street partly because she could not keep up the expense, partly because she could not endure—the memories. She’s living out in her father’s old place at the far end of Cedar Street.

Poor little, dear little, brave little woman!

We know from his letters to our local paper, that Jack Fuller has reached France. The girl is alone, earning five dollars a week in the box-factory to support herself. The lad is “Over There” in the Whirlpool and the Nightmare—and where the fighting is thickest, there we believe Jack Fuller will be found.

But somehow, we feel that Jack Fuller will not fall. We feel there is coming a great and a glorious day for our little town of Paris up here in these mountains. In fancy we can see a morning when a great crowd is going to mill around and through the platforms and the railroad yards of our station. The hour is coming when a train whistle will sound far down the Greene River valley. The minutes will pass. The whistle will sound nearer. Finally in the lower end of the yards we will see a great furl of seething smoke from an oncoming locomotive. Another and a third whistle will shriek as a great high-breasted mogul comes bearing down upon us, seeming to cry out to us from the decreasing distance: “I’ve got them! I’ve got them! I’m bringing them back! Every mother’s son of them! They’re in these coaches I’m pulling behind me now!” And the train will come to a grinding stop, and amid cheer after cheer and the gyrations of the Paris band seeking to blow itself inside out, down from that train will come the soldiers of Uncle Sam—the boys who never have been and never can be whipped—great bronzed men with lean jaws, faces the hue of copper and muscles as hard as billets of steel. Car after car will disgorge them—men who met the Great Problem, offered themselves, ran the risk, fought the fight, gave their last full measure of devotion, and have come back home to women who cannot trust themselves to speak—only hold out their arms mutely.

And we feel certain that in that great day, after the Nightmare is over and the world is a fairer, better world, that one of those great bronzed heroes will gather up in his war-hardened arms a slender little girl in the plainest of white shirt-waists and black skirts, with the paste dried on the poor little workaday clothes and the worn shoes turning her step over cruelly. He will gather her up while the tears fall clumsily, for men do not know how to weep. And there will be no more weariness in her homeward walk in that twilight. After all, not all the boys are going to die. Many are coming back, hundreds of thousands of them. There will be other toasts to Forty-five pledged by the living. It must be so, for God still rules in His heaven and will make all right with the world.

Yet just now—for Betty Fuller—the way is lonesome and her pillow is wet with her tears in the midnight. But—

She sent her man away with a smile.

Poor little, dear little, brave little woman!

All over America her name is legion!

EXTRA MEN

By HARRISON RHODES

From Harper’s Magazine

Copyright, 1918, by Harper and Brothers.

Copyright, 1919, by Harrison Rhodes.

The pretty, peaceful Jersey farm-land slopes gently up from the Delaware River to the little hill which Princeton crowns. It is uneventful country. The railway does not cross it, nor any of the great motor trunk roads. On the river itself there is no town of considerable size, though on the map you read the quaint name of Washington Crossing for a little hamlet of a few houses. This will remind you of the great days when on these sleepy fields great history was made. But the fields have lain quiet in the sun now for more than a century, and even the legends of Revolutionary days are for the most part forgotten along these country roads.

As for modern legends, the very phrase seems proof of their impossibility. And in spite of her spacious and resounding past, New Jersey’s name now seems to mean incorporations and mosquitoes and sea-bathing and popcorn-crisp rather than either legend or romance. But with the coming of the Great War strange things are stirring in the world, and in the farthest corners of the land the earth is shaken by the tramp of new armies. In the skies by day and night there is a sign. And the things one does not believe can happen may be happening, even in New Jersey.

The small events on the Burridge Road which are here set down cannot even be authenticated. There are people down by the river who say they saw a single horseman go through the village at dusk, but not one seems to know which way he came. There is no ferry at Washington Crossing and the bridge at Lambertville had, since three that afternoon, been closed for repairs. What facts are set down here—and indeed they are scarcely facts—were acquired because a chauffeur missed the road and a motor then broke down. What story there is—and indeed there is perhaps not much story—has been pieced together from fragments collected that afternoon and evening. And if the chronicle as now written is vague, it can be urged that, though it all happened so recently as last year, it is already as indeterminate and misty as a legend.

We may, however, begin with undisputed facts. When her grandson enlisted for the war old Mrs. Buchan became very genuinely dependent on the little farm that surrounded the lovely old Colonial house on the Burridge Road. (Meadows, and horses, and hay and the quality and price of it, have much to do with our story—as, indeed, befits a rural chronicle.) The farm had been larger once, and the hospitality which the old house could dispense more lavish. Indeed, the chief anecdote in its history had been the stopping there once of Washington, to dine and rest on his way to join the army in New York. Old Mrs. Buchan, who, for all her gentleness, was incurably proud, laid special stress on the fact that on that night the great man had not been at an inn—which was in the twentieth century to cheapen his memory by a sign-board appeal to automobile parties—but at a gentleman’s house. A gentleman’s house it still was; somehow the Buchans had always managed to live like gentlemen. But if George, the gay, agreeable last one of them, could also live that way, it was because his grandmother practised rigid heart-breaking economy. The stories of her shifts and expedients were almost fables of the countryside. When George came home—he had a small position in a New York broker’s office—there was gaiety and plenty. He might well have been deceived into thinking that the little he sent home from New York was ample for her needs. But when he went back his grandmother lived on nothing, or less than that. She dressed for dinner, so they said, in black silk and old lace, had the table laid with Lowestoft china and the Buchan silver, and ate a dish of corn-meal mush, or something cheaper if that could be found!

George Buchan’s enlistment—it was in the aviation service—had been early. And very early he was ordered to France to finish his training there. Two days before he expected his ship to sail the boy got a few hours’ furlough and came to the Burridge Road to say good-by to his grandmother.

What was said we must imagine. He was all the old lady had left in the world. But no one ever doubted that she had kissed him and told him to go, and to hold his head high as suited an American and a Buchan. Georgie would perhaps have had no very famous career in Wall Street, but no one doubted that he would make a good soldier. There had always been a Buchan in the armies of the Republic, his grandmother must have reminded him. And very likely Georgie, kissing her, had reminded her that there had always been a Buchan woman at home to wish the men God speed as they marched away, and told her too to hold her old head high.

There must have been some talk about the money that there wouldn’t be now; without his little weekly check she was indeed almost penniless. It is quite likely that they spoke of selling the house and decided against it. Part of the boy’s pay was of course to come to his grandmother, but, as she explained, there were so many war charities needing that, and then the wool for her knitting— She must manage mostly with the farm. There was always the vegetable-garden, and a few chickens, and the green meadow, which might be expected to yield a record crop of hay.

We may imagine that the two—old lady and boy—stepped out for a moment into the moonlit night to look at the poor little domain of Buchan that was left. Under the little breeze that drifted up from the Delaware the grass bent in long waves like those of the summer seas that Georgie was to cross to France. As the Buchans looked at it they might have felt some wonder at the century-old fertility of the soil. Back in the days of the Revolution Washington’s horse had pastured there one night. Then, and in 1812, and during the great battle of the States, the grass had grown green and the hay been fragrant, and the fat Jersey earth had out of its depths brought forth something to help the nation at war. Such a field as that by the old white house can scarcely be thought of as a wild, primeval thing; it has lived too long under the hand of man. This was a Buchan field, George’s meadow, and by moonlight it seemed to wave good-by to him.

“You aren’t dependent on me now, dear,” he may have said, with his arm around his grandmother. “I just leave you to our little garden patch and our chickens and the green meadow.”

“You mustn’t worry, dear. They’ll take care of me,” she must have answered.

So George went away; and the night after, the night before he sailed, the horseman and his company came.

It was at dusk, and a gossamer silvery mist had drifted up from the Delaware. He had hitched his horse by the gate. He was in riding-breeches and gaiters and a rather old-fashioned riding-coat. And in the band of his hat he had stuck a small American flag which looked oddly enough almost like a cockade. He knocked at the door, quite ignoring the new electric bell which George had installed one idle Sunday morning when his grandmother had felt he should have been at church. As it happened, old Mrs. Buchan had been standing by the window, watching the mist creep up and the twilight come, thinking of Georgie so soon to be upon the water. As the horseman knocked she, quite suddenly and quite contrary to her usual custom, went herself to the door.

His hat was immediately off, swept through a nobler circle than the modern bow demands, and he spoke with the elaboration of courtesy which suited his age; for, though his stride was vigorous, he was no longer young. It was a severe, careworn face of a stern, almost hard, nobility of expression. Yet the smile when it came was engaging, and old Mrs. Buchan, as she smiled in return, found herself saying to herself that no Southerner, however stern, could fail to have this graceful lighter side. For his question had been put in the softer accents of Virginia and of the states farther south.

“I’ve lost my way,” he began, with the very slightest, small, gay laugh. But he was instantly serious. “It is so many, many years since I was here.”

Mrs. Buchan pointed up the road.

“That is the way to Princeton.”

“Princeton, of course. That’s where we fought the British and beat them. It seems strange, does it not, that we now fight with them?”

“We must forget the Revolution now, must we not?” This from Mrs. Buchan.

“Forget the Revolution!” he flashed back at her, almost angrily. Then more gently: “Perhaps. If we remember liberty!” He glanced an instant up the road to Princeton hill and then went on. “They fought well then, madam. As a soldier I am glad to have such good allies. But I was forgetting. Yonder lies Princeton, and from there there is the post-road to New York, is there not? I must be in New York by morning.”

Mrs. Buchan was old-fashioned, but she found herself murmuring amazedly something about railroads and motor-cars. But he did not seem to hear her.

“Yes,” he continued, “I must be in New York by morning. The first transport with our troops sails for France.”

“I know,” she said, proudly. “My grandson, George Buchan, sails for France.”

“George Buchan? There was a George Buchan fought at Princeton, I remember.”

“There was. And another George Buchan in the War of Eighteen-twelve. And a John in the Mexican War. And a William in eighteen sixty-three. There was no one in the Spanish War—my son was dead and my grandson was too young. But now he is ready.”

“Every American is ready,” her visitor answered. “I am ready.”

“You?” she broke out. And for the first time she seemed to see that his hair was white. “Are you going?”

“Every one who has ever fought for America is going. There is a company of them behind me. Listen.”

Down the road there was faintly to be heard the clatter of hoofs.

“Some joined me in Virginia, some as we crossed the Potomac by Arlington, where there is a house which once belonged to a relative of mine. And there were others, old friends, who met me as we came through Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. You would not now know Valley Forge,” he finished, half to himself.

The river mist had crept farther up and was a little thicker now. The moon had risen and the mist shimmered and shone almost as if by its own light. The world was indeed of the very substance of a dream. The hoofbeats on the road grew nearer, and at last, while old Mrs. Buchan stood in a kind of amazed silence, they came into sight, even then mere shadowy, dim, wavering figures behind the gossamer silver veil which had drifted there from the lovely Delaware. The horses looked lean and weary, though perhaps this was a trick of the moonlight. Yet they dropped their heads and began eagerly to crop the short, dusty grass by the roadside. The moonlight seemed to play tricks with their riders, too. For in the fog some of them seemed to have almost grotesquely old-fashioned clothes, though all had a sort of military cut to them. Some few, indeed, were trim and modern. But the greater part were, or seemed to Mrs. Buchan to be, in shabby blue or worn gray. The chance combination of the colors struck her. She was an old woman and she could remember unhappy far-off days when blue and gray had stood for the fight of brother against brother. Into her eyes the tears came, yet she suddenly smiled through them—a pair of quite young men lounged toward the fence, and then stood at ease there, the blue-clad arm of one affectionately and boyishly thrown around the other’s gray shoulder.

“These go with you?” asked old Mrs. Buchan, still held by her memories.

“Yes. They are of all kinds and all ages, and some of them were not always friends. But you see—” He smiled and pointed to the lads by the fence. “One of them is from Virginia and the other from Ohio. Virginia and Ohio fought once. But I only say that I can remember that Ohio was part of Virginia once long ago. And is not Virginia part of Ohio and Ohio part of Virginia again now? I should be pushing on, however, not talking. It is the horses that are tired, not the men.”

“And hungry?” suggested Mrs. Buchan.

“The horses, yes, poor beasts!” he answered. “For the men it does not matter. Yet we must reach New York by morning. And it is a matter of some five-and-fifty miles.”

“Rest a half-hour and let the horses graze. You can make it by sunrise.”

Mrs. Buchan went a little way down the path. It was lined with pink and white clove-pinks and their fragrance was sweet in the night.

“Open the gate there to the left, men,” she called out, and her voice rang, to her, unexpectedly strong and clear. “Let the horses graze in my green meadow if they will.”

They gave an answering cheer from out the mist. She saw the meadow gate swing open and the lean horses pass through, a long, long file of them.

“But they will spoil your hay crop,” objected the horseman. “And it should be worth a fair sum to you.”

Mrs. Buchan drew herself up. “It is of no consequence,” she answered.

He bowed again.

“But I don’t understand,” she almost pleaded, staring again at his white hair and the little flag in his hatband that looked so oddly like a cockade. “You say you sail to-morrow with my boy?”

“I think you understand as well as any one.”

“Do I?” she whispered. And the night suddenly seemed cold and she drew her little shawl of Shetland wool more tightly about her shoulders. Yet she was not afraid.

Her guest stooped and, rising, put one of her sweet-smelling clove-pinks in his button-hole.

“If you permit, I will carry it for your boy to France. We are extra men, supercargo,” he went on. “We shall cross with every boat-load of boys who sail for France—we who fought once as they must fight now. They said of me, only too flatteringly, that I was first in peace. Now I must be first in war again. I must be on the first troop-ship that goes. And I shall find friends in France. We have always had friends in France, I imagine, since those first days. Of course, madam, you are too young to remember the Marquis de la Fayette.”

“Yes, I am too young,” answered old Mrs. Buchan. And she smiled through her tears at the thought of her eighty years.

“You’re a mere chit of a girl, of course,” he laughed—one of the few times his gravity was relaxed. “Shall I know your boy, I wonder?” Then, without waiting for her answer, “The George Buchan who fought at the battle of Princeton was about twenty-two, slim and straight, with blue eyes and brown hair and an honest, gallant way with him, and a smile that one remembered.”

“You will know my boy,” she told him. “And I think he will know you, General.”

Even now she swears she does not quite know what she meant by this. The magic of the June night had for the moment made everything possible. Yet she will not to this day say who she thinks the horseman may have been. Only that George would know him, as she had.

“I want them all to know that I am there,” he had replied. “They will know. They will remember their country’s history even as we remember. And when the shells scream in the French sky they will not forget the many times America has fought for liberty. They will not forget those early soldiers. And they will not forget Grant and Lee and Lincoln. The American eagle, madam, has a very shrill note. I think it can be heard above the whistle of German shrapnel.”

He drank a glass of sherry before he went, and ate a slice of sponge-cake. Perhaps altogether he delayed a scant quarter of an hour. The lean horses came streaming forth from the green meadow, a long, long file; and while the moon and the river mist still made it a world of wonder, the company, larger somehow than she had thought it at first, clattered off up the Princeton road toward New York and salt water and the ships.

The mist cleared for a moment and the great green meadow was seen, so trampled that it seemed that a thousand horses must have trampled it. Al Fenton, dignified by Mrs. Buchan as “the farmer,” had now belatedly roused and dressed himself. He stood by the old lady’s side and dejectedly surveyed the ruin of the hay crop. He is a sober, stupid, serious witness of what had happened. And this is important; for when the sun rose, and Mrs. Buchan opened her window, the breeze from the river rippled in long green waves over a great green meadow where the grass still pointed heavenward, untrampled, undisturbed. The Buchan meadow could still, as George had believed it would, take care of his grandmother.

This is the story, to be believed, or not, as you like. They do as they like about it in Jersey. But old Mrs. Buchan believes that with each American troop-ship there will sail supercargo, extra men. And she believes that with these extra men we cannot lose the fight. George, too, writes home to her that we shall win.

SOLITAIRE

By FLETA CAMPBELL SPRINGER

From Harper’s Magazine

Copyright, 1918, by Harper and Brothers.

Copyright, 1919, by Fleta Campbell Springer.

We were sitting—three Frenchmen, a young American named Homan, and I—in the café of one of those small Paris hotels much frequented, even then, by officers on leave. It was the winter of 1912, when the Balkans were playing out their colorful little curtain-raiser to the great drama which followed—playing it, as they say in the theater, “in one,” using only the very smallest part of the stage, and failing even in their most climactic moments to completely conceal the ominous sounds from behind the curtain where the stage was being set for the real business of the play.

At the tables a sprinkling of English and Americans of the usual transient type mingled with French from the provinces, and here and there a swarthy Balkan in uniform accented the room.

It was the presence of those other Americans—two or three, I should say, besides Homan and myself, though I hadn’t noticed particularly—that gave the special significance to Homan’s exclamation when he discovered Corey.

I saw him pause with his glass half raised—he was gazing straight past me over my shoulder—and a smile, meant for me, came into his eyes.

“Look!” he said, “at the American!”

I turned, because his manner indicated clearly enough that I might, squarely round in my chair, and immediately it was clear to me why he had said just that. Any one would have said it—any other American, I mean—which makes it more striking—and said it involuntarily, too. You couldn’t have helped it. And yet you would encounter a dozen perfectly unmistakable Americans every day in Paris without feeling the necessity for any remark. It was simply that Corey was so typically the kind of American you wouldn’t encounter in Paris, or any other place, you felt, outside his own country. The curious thing about him was that instantly on seeing him, almost before you thought of America, you thought of a particular and localized section of America. You thought of the Middle West. There was something wholesome and provincial and colloquial about him. He was like a boy you’d gone to grammar school with—the kind of fellow to succeed to his father’s business and marry and settle down in his home town, with New York City his farthest dream of venture and romance.

Yet there he sat across the table from a dark-visaged Balkan officer who was carrying on the conversation in careful English—it would have been unimaginable that he should speak in anything but English to him—and it may have been the brilliance of this man’s uniform which kept one, just at first, from seeing that he, too, our American, was wearing some sort of uniform, khaki color, very workman-like and shipshape, which might, if there had been the least chance of throwing us off, have thrown us. But his round, good-natured, uncomplicated face, his light brown hair and the way it was brushed—the very way it grew, like a school-boy’s—the comfortable set of his broad shoulders, his kind of energetic inclination to stoutness, and even the way he sat at the table, were pure American Middle West and nothing else, no matter what his uniform proclaimed. He was as American as the flag, as the opening bars of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as American as Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa.

And when, at young Homan’s exclamation, I had turned and found him looking straight toward me, the twinkle of his eyes had the effect of a friendly wave of his hand. He had, of course, as he said afterward, “spotted us,” too. Then he had seen—and it amused him—the little play of our discovery.

I was just turning back to applaud to Homan the obviousness of his designation, and to wonder, with him, what the uniform meant, when my eye was caught by a thin, brilliantly colored line drawn, it seemed, just above the left breast pocket of his coat, and about the same length.

My first impression of the man, of the familiarity of his type, had, I suppose, been so strong as to dull for a moment my reaction to this discovery. I had seen that vari-colored line often enough before, on the uniforms of British officers or French; I had perhaps seen it on an American, but certainly I had never seen it on an American like this. No wonder the connection was slow to establish itself. It was a decoration bar, and there must have been six ribbons at least, if not more.

For sheer incongruous association, I doubt if you’d find a more pat example in a lifetime than the man I had, on sight, conceived this one to be—the man I may as well say now he actually was—and that bar of ribbons pinned on his khaki-colored coat.

Young Homan had caught it, too, and was sending past me his deliberate stare of amazement.

It was not exactly as if we thought he hadn’t come by them honestly, but more as if we suggested to each other that he couldn’t surely have got them in the way decorations were usually got; it seemed somehow impossible that he understood their importance. And there was still something of that in our attitude when, later on, after dinner, we had drifted into the salon with the rest for our coffee, and by a kind of natural gravitation had found ourselves in conversation with our compatriot, whose jocose friendliness led young Homan to ask, half in fun to be sure, where he had got all the decorations. He showed certainly no very proper appreciation of their importance by his answer:

“Bought ’em, at the Galleries Lafayette. Get any kind you want there, y’ know.”

We laughed, all of us, for everybody had seen the cases of medals and decorations at the Galleries. I believe for an instant the youngster was half inclined to think he had bought them. I know I was. As some kind of outlandish practical joke, of course. It seemed, absurd as the idea was, so much likelier than that he could have been through the kind of experiences which result in being decorated by foreign governments. And such an imposing array! The scarlet ribbon of the Legion of Honor, the green of the Japanese “Rising Sun,” the brilliant stripes of Russian and English decorations, and strange ones I had never seen before!

You see, he had turned out much more Middle West than we had imagined. In the first ten minutes of our conversation he had spoken of “home,” and mentioned the name of the town—Dubuque, Iowa! And a few minutes later he gave us, by the merest chance phrase or two, involving the fact that his married sister lived “a block and a half down the street” from his mother’s house, a perfectly complete picture of that street—broad and shady and quiet, of his mother’s yellow frame house, and the other, white with a green lawn round it, where his sister lived. And the point was that he was making no effort toward such an effect. He was only being himself.

His dinner companion, the Balkan officer, came in presently and addressed Corey as “Doctor” (I adjusted myself to that, still with the Dubuque setting, however), and it was in the conversation following upon the new introduction that the object of his being in Paris came out. He told us, quite by the way, though not in the least depreciating the importance of his mission—that he was in Paris for a few days looking up anesthetics for the Serbian army. He had been working, he said, down in the Balkans since shortly after the outbreak of the war, in charge of a sanitary section. They’d been out of anesthetics for some time now—impossible to get them in—and they’d been operating, amputating the poor devils’ legs and arms, without anesthetics; and now at last he’d left things long enough to come up to Paris himself and see what could be done. He was starting back the next day or the day after that.

Corey, from Dubuque! In a makeshift Serbian field hospital, in that terrible cold, performing delicate and difficult operations—wholesale, as they must have been performed—on wounded Balkan soldiers; probing for bullets in raw wounds—that was a picture to set up beside the one we had of him in Dubuque!

And yet—it wasn’t at all a question of doubt (we’d read it all in the papers day after day); it wasn’t that we didn’t believe Corey was telling the truth; his evidence was too obvious for that—the picture didn’t somehow succeed in painting itself—I can’t to this day say why. Surely the Balkans just then—operations without anesthetics, the pageantry and blood-red color of war—surely there was pigment of more brilliant hue than any contained in the mere statement that his married sister lived a block and a half down the street from his mother’s. But the picture wasn’t painted. Corey wasn’t the artist to do it. Not, mind you, that he tried; he was as far from trying to impress one, from affectation, as a boy of fourteen.

I do remember my imagination taking me far enough to think that if I were a soldier, and wounded, and had to have a leg or an arm off, I couldn’t think of a man I’d rather have do it than Corey. Oh yes, I believed him; I knew he’d been down there in the Balkans, as he said, and was going back again to-morrow—but I went right on seeing him in Dubuque, practising his quiet, prosperous profession in the same suite of offices his father had used before him.

He himself lent, by the things he said, force and reality to the illusion. He’d like nothing better, he declared, than settling down in Dubuque for the rest of his life, and enjoying a home of his own. He intended, in fact, to do just that when he had finished the Balkan business. “I’m that type,” he said. “I never was meant to knock around the world like this.”

And he was that type, so much the type that it seemed hardly credible he shouldn’t turn out the exception to prove the rule. He had already, one would think, made a sufficient divergence.

And that, I suppose—the feeling that no personality could follow so undeviating a line, so obviously its own path—was responsible for my impression, when I came later to hear how completely he had followed it, of his being because of it much more unique than he could ever have made himself by turning aside. True enough, there are people who, if they heard the tale, might maintain that he could hardly have accomplished a more striking divergence from type. I’ll have to confess I thought so myself—at the first; certainly I thought so all the while I listened, long afterward, to the quiet, though somewhat nasal, and thoroughly puzzled voice of the gentle old man from Dubuque, who seemed, as he recounted the story, to be seeking in me some solution of Corey’s phenomenon.

I thought it even afterward, until, sitting there where he had left me, I began slowly to orient the facts in relation to Corey’s character. And then, all at once, it came to me that it was exactly because Corey hadn’t diverged that he did what he did. He went straight through everything to his predestined end. Any other man would have had stages, subtleties, degrees of divergence. But Corey knew none of those things.