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