Short Stories of the New America Part 25

He did not eat it. It might have been possible had he been starving, but he was in no such unfortunate condition. A man does not ask for apple pie because of its calory content, but because he wants apple pie. It is a matter of taste. A primary essential is, then, not that it shall look like apple pie, but that it shall have the flavor of apple pie. He had been fond of apple pie all his life, and it certainly seemed like an innocent enough addiction. That was equally true of doughnuts and coffee for breakfast. He had enjoyed them all his life until they had become an integral part of the morning meal. As a result of long practice Mrs.

Carter had finally succeeded in perfecting herself in the art of doughnut making. But now instead of frying them in fat, she began to use an excellent vegetable subst.i.tute. Not only that, but she followed this by using a sirup for the sugar, and using eighty per cent barley flour and twenty of wheat. She had been given the recipe by the local conservation board and been a.s.sured that the product was very satisfactory.

From the viewpoint of the conservation board that may have been true, but to Carter it was nothing short of criminal to allow these b.a.l.l.s of fried barley flour to masquerade under the same name.

"Don't call 'em doughnuts," he growled, "'cause they aren't. Invent a new name for them."

"War doughnuts?" suggested Mrs. Carter anxiously.

"War nothing!" sputtered Carter. "They don't even belong to the same family."

Whereupon he turned to his coffee, sweetened with a new kind of sticky substance that tasted like an inferior grade of mola.s.ses. There were those who maintained that it was just as good as sugar for sweetening.

They were liars-bold-faced liars or they had lost their sense of taste.

They belonged to the same cla.s.s as people who maintained that coffee was better without sugar-that so one enjoyed the taste of the native berry.

One might just as well argue that flapjacks for the same reason were best without sirup; cake without frosting; bread without b.u.t.ter.

Carter found his breakfast spoiled for him at precisely the period in life when he was prepared most to enjoy his breakfast. This was extremely irritating. It sent him to the office every morning with a grouch that did not wear off until toward noon, when it was renewed by having to pay twice what he should for a tasteless lunch. His cigars were the only thing that held up well in flavor, and he began to smoke too many of them.

Carter still followed each day's news of the nation's part in the great war with honest pride. He liked the big way his country was going about its preparations. He rolled the dramatic figures over his tongue and gloated over the scale of the various projects. Six hundred millions appropriated for airplanes!

"We'll show 'em," he announced to Culver. "We'll have the air over there black with planes!"

And that job at Hog Island! They were planning to build fifty ways there inside of a year-just put them down on a marshy island.

"Nothing small about your Uncle Sam," he chuckled.

When the inevitable scandals began to be whispered and congressional investigations were started, Carter frowned.

"If these stories are true," he declared, "the grafters ought to be lynched; if they're not we ought to lynch the darn-fool congressmen who are interrupting the game."

The investigations took place, changes were made, and the work went on, with the investigations soon forgotten. Nothing could check the onward movement. Pershing landed in France, and soon was followed by his men.

Work on the same gigantic scale was begun on the other side. Docks were built, railroads laid down overnight, warehouses put up almost between dawn and twilight. This vanguard saw big and built big, and when the news of its accomplishment began to filter across to the men at home it made every American feel bigger.

At the close of his freshman year in June, Ben came back home, and that personal interest took the place of every other in Carter's mind. The boy was looking fine. Drill with the Harvard regiment had taken the place of athletics and had left him as rugged and tanned as a seasoned soldier. Carter proudly took the boy to town with him on the eight-ten and introduced him to the crowd. Then he introduced him to everyone in the office, including Stetson, the second vice president. There was some design in this. He was preparing the way for an opening here for Ben as soon as the lad was through college. With the benefit of the experience Carter could give him the boy ought to climb high in the Atlas.

Ben had acquired poise in this last year. He met these men with an a.s.surance and charm of manner tempered with respectful deference that surprised his father. It was clear that the boy made a very pleasant impression.

At lunch Ben repeated to his father some of the experiences he had heard from college mates who had gone over to drive ambulances. The boy was full of it and his cheeks grew flushed as he talked. Carter became disturbed.

"That's all very well," broke in Carter; "but those fellows might have made themselves more useful if they had waited until they were of age.

Both President Lowell and the War Department are advising men to wait and finish their college courses, aren't they?"

"Yes," admitted Ben; "they advise that."

"Well, it's sound advice," declared Carter. "A man with a college education and Plattsburg on top of that is worth twenty ambulance drivers. Officers are what we need."

"I suppose so," agreed Ben abstractedly.

The reply left Carter more comfortable. The boy was only just nineteen, and that gave him two more years before he was twenty-one. By that time the war would be over. Carter was sure of it. The nation by then would be in full stride, and when that time came that was to be the end. Of course, if by any chance the war should be prolonged-why, then the boy would have to go. But that contingency was two years off-two long years off. In the meanwhile the boy could feel that he was getting his training. He was going to make a better officer for waiting. He would gain in experience and judgment-two most necessary qualifications for an officer. Carter proceeded to enlarge on that subject. But the boy listened indifferently. Carter's position, however, was sound, and the more he talked the more he convinced himself of this, so that he succeeded in putting himself enough at ease to talk of the war in a general way.

"Sort of makes a man glad he's an American to be living in these days, eh, Ben?"

"You bet!" nodded Ben.

"The rest of the world thought we'd gone soft, but your old Uncle Sam has shown that he still has fighting stuff in him. It took us some time to get stirred up, but once started-woof!"

"We've got a big job on our hands," said Ben.

"The bigger the better," declared Carter. "It takes a big job to wake us up."

The boy was surprised and encouraged by his father's aggressive att.i.tude, and yet when he ventured to reintroduce the subject of ambulance service he saw his father shy off again. He was puzzled by this and went away after lunch to meet his chum Stanley.

A week later, as Carter was about to settle down on the front porch for an after-dinner smoke, Ben came along, took his arm and led him down the graveled path toward the road-out of sight of the house, where Mrs.

Carter was washing the dishes. The boy kept his father's arm in an unusually demonstrative manner until he stopped beneath an electric light.

Then he asked quite casually: "Dad, got your fountain pen with you?"

"Eh?"

The lad held out a paper.

"What in thunder is this?" demanded Carter.

"My enlistment papers, dad. I went down to the Marine Recruiting Office the other day and pa.s.sed my physical. Now-they've left a place along the dotted line for you to sign because I'm under age."

The thing that astonished Carter most after the initial shock was a feeling of helplessness. It was as though his relations with his son had suddenly changed and the son had become the father. He was a foot shorter than the boy anyway, and now he felt two feet shorter. He saw a new light in the boy's eyes, heard a fresh note of dominance. And yet it was only a brief time ago-a pitifully brief time ago-that he had been holding this same boy in his arms as a baby. Now he stood at the lad's mercy, even though he still saw below the stalwart figure of the boy-man the downy-headed baby.

Carter gulped back a lump in his throat.

"Good Lord!" he choked. "I can't. I can't. You're all I've got."

The young man placed a steady hand upon his father's shoulder.

"You must take this thing right, dad," he said firmly.

"In another year--"

"I'd never forgive myself if I waited," cut in Ben. "I've heard too much from the fellows who've been over there and seen. I want you to understand that it isn't the adventure of the thing that gets me. It's the right of it. I'm strong enough for the game, and that's all that counts. Another year wouldn't make me any more fit."

"You'd be ready for Plattsburg-in a couple of years."

"Maybe," Ben nodded; "but somehow-well, I just hanker to use my arms and legs rather than my head. The way I feel, nothing short of a chance with the bayonet will satisfy me. That's why I went in for the Marines."

Carter glanced up. He saw those lips, which had once been so tender and soft, now sternly taut.

"Have you told your mother?" asked Carter.

"No, dad. I want it all settled first."

"I-I don't know what it will do to her," Carter struggled on feebly.