Short Stories of the New America Part 21

Fenville had heard of the metal cross pinned to the faded tunic and had shared the pride of John Warren and his wife, Abigail; but it had not heard of the scarred face and sightless eyes. Miles had gone forth to fight for democracy "like a true knight of old," the Fenville Weekly Gazette had said. The townspeople had not smiled at the phrase, for there had always been something gallant in Miles; he had always had a fearless and honorable outlook upon life.

"I'm not much use to them over there, so it seems good to get home," he said. "And on town-meeting day. I knew father wanted to be here, and I did, too, so we came right over from the depot."

Sightless: thrown back into the discard. But there was the same firm mouth and the same upright carriage of the well-shaped head. Broken? Not a bit of it. Everyone could see that. The old spirit was there, just as gallant as when he had set out for the battlefields of France.

"This Article No. 10," continued the sergeant. "You don't know how strange it sounds. Because I've come straight home from over there, you know. I was going to say, without seeing anything on the way." He smiled. "And that's true, too. What I mean is, I haven't had time to get adjusted to the change. It wasn't till just now that I said to myself, the war's thousands of miles off, way across the ocean. Not that the ocean would stop Fritz from getting at us mighty quick if he ever beats us over there. You may depend on that.

"Some one has to make the things that are needed and get paid for them.

That's of course. But I haven't been seeing that side. I've been seeing France and England and our own boys with their backs to the wall. I've been seeing new graveyards grow; bigger than big towns-as big as cities. And cities that were nothing but graveyards. Towns that were nothing but ash heaps. Rich lands churned up into terrible deserts.

"And I've met men-met them all the time-who'd been seeing the same and worse in Russia and Poland, Serbia and Roumania-the whole Christian world being battered and ripped to pieces.

"That is the way you think about it over there. What can you do to stop it-how can you help the millions that have lost their fathers or mothers, husbands or wives, or children-that have no food or homes or country? That is what you ask yourself day and night.

"You can never give them back what they have lost. But if you had money, you could keep some of them from dying of cold and hunger; little children at least. That is about all money means to you over there.

"So when I come home to hear that Fenville has grown rich, why, I can't seem to sense it! And that you want to fix up Farragut Square,-make it pretty,-buy the town a kind of decoration because it has been lucky enough and smart enough to make money-out of the war. It's like blood money to me-like blood itself; a drop for every penny."

Fenville had never tolerated criticism, but the man in the faded uniform with the cross on his tunic and his head up, and his poor, blind, scarred face, exerted a strange influence over the audience. Even the least imaginative man had his vision of what that figure symbolized.

"It was looking at him, as much as hearing him speak-why, I seemed to get a sight right over to France as clear as if I had been there,"

explained Mr. Totten afterwards. "France made Farragut Square look kind of small."

"I'll say just one thing more," Miles went on, and you could have heard a pin drop in that hall. "If any of our boys don't come back,-Lem Chapman and Frank Keeler and the others,-those that do, will they think a prettified Farragut Square is the best monument for the ones who died for us over there?"

The sergeant turned, and John Warren took hold of his arm to lead him back. Mr. Chapman, Lem's father, was up like a flash.

"Hold on!" he shouted. "No, it ain't, by Jupiter!"

Crash! Out came the handclapping like the rattle of rifle fire. More than one shrewd old eye was moist, and few were the hearts that did not beat with a more generous quickness.

"What can we do, Sergt. Miles?" asked Mr. Chapman. "You have told us what we shouldn't do, and I for one thank you for it. We want to do the right thing. Every man of us here does. Tell us what it is."

"Let us dispose of Article 10 first," said Dr. Shepard. The house approved, and Mr. Chapman gave way. The article was put in the form of a motion, was voted upon, and defeated as if it had never had a friend in the world.

"Make a motion, Miles!" shouted a score of voices.

"Do you want to know what I should do?" said the soldier. "There are places in France and Belgium that used to be towns. Some haven't even the cellars left. An American society has been formed to take hold of the work of building up those places after the war. We could write to that society and get the name of a town that once was-a little one; one where perhaps our own boys have fought. Fenville could put the money she meant to spend on herself into helping to make it a town again. It would help, don't you worry about that. So Fenville could feel, always, long after our time, that that little French town was her camarade. And it would be her bit; Fenville's bit."

When he could make himself heard, the Rev. Jeremiah Soule made a motion, the gist of which was that a committee be appointed to correspond with the society with the object of learning the name of some small devastated town in France or Belgium that would be a worthy recipient of twenty-five thousand dollars from Fenville's treasury, the same to be expended toward rebuilding the town at the end of the war.

A dozen voices seconded the motion, and on being put to vote it was carried unanimously. Mr. Crabbe, the conscientious objector, was one of the first to rise on the ay vote. The fiery little man had his streak of sentiment, after all.

So had Henry Torrey, who said gruffly that he was glad to see the town's money spent for a really useful purpose for once.

"Three cheers for Sergt. Warren, then!" shouted Mr. Chapman. "And make them rousers!"

"He and John went out," said a voice in the rear of the hall.

"Cheer him from the steps!" cried another.

The crowd filed out. The two Warrens were walking down the road. The sergeant had his father's arm; but his head was up, and it was not he, but the older man, that had the air of being led. For some reason the crowd fell silent.

Finally some one said crisply, "Miles Warren always could see straight.

And I tell you he can see as straight's ever, even if he is blind."

-Fisher Ames, Jr.

IX-THE COWARD

We will call him Albert Lloyd. That wasn't his name, but it will do:

Albert Lloyd was what the world terms a coward.

In London they called him a slacker.

His country had been at war nearly eighteen months, and still he was not in khaki.

He had no good reason for not enlisting, being alone in the world, having been educated in an Orphan Asylum, and there being no one dependent upon him for support. He had no good position to lose, and there was no sweetheart to tell him with her lips to go, while her eyes pleaded for him to stay.

Every time he saw a recruiting sergeant, he'd slink around the corner out of sight, with a terrible fear gnawing at his heart. When pa.s.sing the big recruiting posters, and on his way to business and back he pa.s.sed many, he would pull down his cap and look the other way, to get away from that awful finger pointing at him, under the caption, "Your King and Country Need You"; or the boring eyes of Kitchener, which burned into his very soul, causing him to shudder.

Then the Zeppelin raids-during them, he used to crouch in a corner of his boarding-house cellar, whimpering like a whipped puppy and calling upon the Lord to protect him.

Even his landlady despised him, although she had to admit that he was "good pay."

He very seldom read the papers, but one momentous morning, the landlady put the morning paper at his place before he came down to breakfast.

Taking his seat, he read the flaring headline, "Conscription Bill Pa.s.sed," and nearly fainted. Excusing himself, he stumbled upstairs to his bedroom, with the horror of it gnawing into his vitals.

Having saved up a few pounds, he decided not to leave the house, and to sham sickness, so he stayed in his room and had the landlady serve his meals there.

Every time there was a knock at the door, he trembled all over, imagining it was a policeman who had come to take him away to the army.

One morning his fears were realized. Sure enough there stood a policeman with the fatal paper. Taking it in his trembling hand, he read that he, Albert Lloyd, was ordered to report himself to the nearest recruiting station for physical examination. He reported immediately, because he was afraid to disobey.

The doctor looked with approval upon Lloyd's six feet of physical perfection, and thought what a fine guardsman he would make, but examined his heart twice before he pa.s.sed him as "physically fit"; it was beating so fast.

From the recruiting depot Lloyd was taken, with many others, in charge of a sergeant, to the training depot at Aldershot, where he was given an outfit of khaki, and drew his other equipment. He made a fine-looking soldier, except for the slight shrinking in his shoulders, and the hunted look in his eyes.

At the training depot it does not take long to find out a man's character, and Lloyd was promptly dubbed "Windy." In the English Army, "windy" means cowardly.

The smallest recruit in the barracks looked on him with contempt, and was not slow to show it in many ways.

Lloyd was a good soldier, learned quickly, obeyed every order promptly, never groused at the hardest fatigues. He was afraid to. He lived in deadly fear of the officers and "Non-Coms" over him. They also despised him.