Now he was at a port in France. Until the last few years that would not have been anything to worry about. He had wished the boy to travel. France had always stood to Carter as a land of sunshine and holidays—a sort of pre-honeymoon land to the more fortunate. To-day a port in France seemed like a port in hell.
On the eight-ten they kept asking about the boy, and when Carter told Barclay that Ben was overthere, Barclay answered: “Lucky dog. That ought to make you proud.”
Carter made no reply. That was in March, just before the big Hun offensive. When that broke Carter did not dare read the papers for a while. Those were bad days. America had then been in the war nearly a year, and yet it was possible for those gray hordes to dash at and into the allied lines. They did it again and again, until the world stood aghast and Carter himself stood aghast. It made no difference whether he read the papers or not, for hourly bulletins were passed round the office and scarcely anything else was talked of.
America had been in the war nearly a year. Uncle Sam had appropriated billions upon billions of dollars; had built shipyards the size of which staggered belief; had talked of destroyers and airplanes in terms of thousands; had established vast military camps and already drafted millions of men; had turned almost every industry in the country over to war work; had taken over the railroads and whatever else was needed.
Uncle Sam had been working with his jaws set and his sleeves rolled up and flags flying from almost every housetop between the Atlantic and the Pacific; with men marching down the streets and bands playing and half the politicians of the country turned into Fourth of July orators.
Yet this thing was happening over there. Lines that had been thought impregnable were falling daily. City after city was being overrun. If the Huns paused it was only for breath, and to dash on once more. Nearerand nearer they came to Paris, until the city heard the sound of their guns; nearer and nearer, until they came to Château-Thierry.
Carter reached a point where almost his faith in God was shaken. He did not know exactly just what his faith in God was, but it stood for something outside himself representative of justice—just as his patriotism stood for something outside himself representative of honor. Not to be in the slightest sacrilegious, God was a figure crowned with thorns just as Uncle Sam was a figure crowned with a starred top hat. Both were invincible. Yet both stood aside, helpless, before the Huns’ advance.
They waited helplessly until the gray wolves reached Château-Thierry. Then the news was cabled across that the Marines were holding this line—not only technically but actually. Again and again the wolves came on and staggered back.
The Marines were there—the American Marines—and they were holding.
The first report brought the sweat to Carter’s brow. Somewhere in that line without much doubt his son Ben was standing. The little boy he had carried in his arms was under that merciless fire of shrapnel and explosive shells and gas. Carter had read a good deal about the gas shells—the yellow and the blue and the green cross kind. It was devilish stuff. It burned into the lungs and the eyes and the skin. He remembered when it had first been used—had been sent sneaking across the allied lines like some ancient superstition made real. From that moment he had been for war.He talked war with everyone he met, usually ending with the exclamation: “Uncle Sam won’t stand for that sort of dirty work!”
As a matter of fact Uncle Sam had stood for it a good many months after that, and for acts even more barbaric. But now your Uncle Sam was right on the spot and Ben was on the spot. The two were one!
This was what Carter got hold of, suddenly, unexpectedly, unconsciously, as a man sees a vision. Uncle Sam was there not in the form of a middle-aged farmer in a starred top hat, but as one of the Marines, a tough, wiry young American fighter. And among these Marines was Ben, holding this ghastly line as in his play days he had helped to hold the football line. Uncle Sam was there as Carter’s boy—blood of his blood and flesh of his flesh and soul of his soul. And so in a sense Carter himself was there. This was his fight too. He and Uncle Sam were one! He and the nation were one. He and the brilliant flags flying unharmed here in the streets of New York were one. As far as Carter individually was concerned he was essentially all there was of the nation—just as, individually and as far as his own soul was concerned, he was all there was of God. But because of this, because the thought made him so big, he took in the others too—his boy, Kitty, his neighbors, the state and the United States, and finally God himself. And this God not only stood for justice and honor but was justice and honor, and Carter was He and He was Carter.
Now God and Carter and the boy and the Marines and the nation were all standing side by side behind alittle town that until now had been no more conscious of itself than Carter had been. It had been merely Château-Thierry—a tiny village where simple men and women had gone about their humble business of living with little thought of the world at large. Now it was finding itself a turning point in the history of the world, with the sinewy young men from a country that had not been discovered when Château-Thierry already was hoary with age, rushing there to help keep it true. And with Carter some four thousand miles away staring from his office window and, quite unconscious of the business of the Atlas Company, praying not that the boy might be kept safe for his own sake, but that he might be spared to fight his best—Carter’s best, the nation’s best, God’s best.
The Marines held, and then they did a little better; they began to advance. They say that Foch himself was none too sure of what these lads would find it possible to do. These men were getting their baptism of Hun fire, which is comparable to no fire this side of hell and which possibly may have introduced some new ideas into hell itself. Certainly neither Dante nor Milton revealed any conception of mustard gas.
Creeping forward on all fours the Marines advanced. It was grim business these boys were about, while the flags flew dreamily in the streets of New York and a thousand other cities from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico—flew dreamily and prettily for safe men to look up at and for safe women and children to smile at contentedly. It was serious business they were about tothe right and left of that old town, while the machines sped up and down Fifth Avenue bright in the summer sun. And yet when at length the cables flashed across the ocean the news that the old town had been won and all that meant, there was little in the message to hint of that grim business. And there was no mention at all of individuals—of the boy Ben who lay in a bit of woods like one asleep, his hair all tousled and his face dirty as he used to come in from play. But that night Carter went home with his head held high and his eyes alight.
When Carter opened the front door he was greeted with the smell of smoke from the kitchen. He hurried out there and found Mrs. Carter standing almost in tears before the charred remains of what had evidently been intended for a pie of some sort. She looked up anxiously as Carter entered. Her blue eyes began to fill with tears.
“Oh, Ben,” she quavered, “I’m so sorry. I—I’ve been saving flour and sugar for a week to have enough to make you a real apple pie. And then—and then I forgot it. And—and——”
She made a despairing gesture toward the jet-black evidence of her unpardonable thoughtlessness. And then before Carter’s accusing glance she shrank back and hid her face in the folds of her blue gingham apron.
Carter stared from her to the pie and then back to her. Fresh from the victory of Château-Thierry, this was such a pitiful travesty! She was crying—she, the mother of his son who had fought with the Marinesthis day, was crying in fear of his anger because she had spoiled in the baking an apple pie.
Good Lord, to what depths had he sunk! To what pitiful depths of banality had he dragged her!
He strode to her side and seized her in his arms fiercely as a baffled lover.
“Kitty,” he cried hoarsely, “look up at me!”
In amazement she obeyed. The clutch of his arms took her back twenty-five years. He saw the springtime blue of her eyes.
“Kitty,” he pleaded, “can you forgive me?”
“Forgive—you?” she stammered, not understanding.
“For making you think it matters a picayune what I have to eat. Little woman—little woman, we took Château-Thierry to-day!”
She drew back a little as though expecting evil news to follow. But the news had not yet come.
“We,” he repeated—“you and I and Ben and the Marines and Uncle Sam and God—all together. We not only held the beasts but drove them back. It’s in the papers to-night.”
“And Ben——” she faltered.
“He must have been there,” he answered.
“He—he——”
But she did not finish her timorous question. She caught the contagion of the fire in her husband’s eyes and sealed her lips. And he, stooping, kissed those lips as he used to kiss them before the boy came.
The next morning Carter drank his coffee black, and when Kitty brought on the war doughnuts he shoved them aside.
“Don’t make any more,” he said. “Cut ’em out altogether. That’s the trick.”
And when on the eight-ten Newell came round with a recipe for making frosting without sugar, Carter refused to listen.
“Look here, Newell,” he protested, “those confounded things don’t interest me.”
“They don’t?” returned Newell ominously.
“Not a little bit,” Carter continued calmly.
“You mean to tell me you aren’t interested in conservation?”
“Did I say that?”
“Well, it amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
“Not on your tintype!” replied Carter. “Look here, Newell, you’ve been talking pretty plain to me lately and perhaps I’ve deserved it, but it leaves me free to give you a few ideas of my own. What we’ve got to do is to face this war—not duck it. We aren’t going to win with substitutes but with sacrifices. The trouble with you and your crowd—the trouble with me—is that we’ve been trying to eat our cake and save it too. What’s the use of those fool recipes of yours? The time has come to give up cake and pie and doughnuts—then why in thunder not give them up and be done with it?”
“But the Government doesn’t ask that,” cut in Newell.
“Who’s the Government?” demanded Carter.
“Why—why——”
“You are. I am,” Carter cut in, answering his own question. “That’s all there is to it. And if you wantto understand how important you are, just multiply yourself by a hundred million. That’s what Hoover does. Do it for yourself.”
Newell smiled a little maliciously.
“Perhaps you’re right, old man. By the way, I’m on this Third Liberty Loan committee, and if you’ll tell me how much I can look ahead for from you it would help.”
“Ten thousand dollars,” answered Carter. “In the meantime, if you hear of anyone who wants to buy a house, let me know.”
“You aren’t going to leave us?”
“Not if I can hire a cheap place round town,” answered Carter.
“Say—but you are plunging,” exclaimed Newell uncomfortably.
“We can’t let that Château-Thierry victory go for nothing,” answered Carter quietly.
At last—at last Carter himself had declared war. That was why when he received a cable to the effect that Private Ben Carter was reported seriously wounded the man could sign his name firmly to the receipt.
The time had come for the Huns to take seriously the entry of the United States into the war.
—Frederick Orin Bartlett.