Part 2

Robert was preparing to succeed his father in the control of the Hamilton interests gradually. But neither father nor son had any illusions about the inherent value or nobility of learning the business from the bottom. Father and son planned that when the time came for the younger man to step into control that a competent staff should continue to attend to all the details of the Hamilton enterprises, leaving to the son only the outlining of broad policies. This arrangement would leave Hamilton free to live his own life, according to his own theories and untrammeled by business cares.

Hamilton was living in a New York apartment, learning the details of the distribution of cotton from the New York office, and incidentally learning how to pick a Follies girl from the first row, when the United States entered the World War. He immediately applied for a commission in the army and was accepted as an officer candidate at Plattsburg. Here his ideas of inherent aristocracy received a jolt. In the bunks adjoining his were a Jew who had worked his way through the College of the City of New York and had just entered the practice of law, and an Italian-American who had formerly been a mounted policeman in Pennsylvania. He found neither particularly greasy, as he might have expected. Near him were men of German, French, Norwegian and Southern European descent. Best of all, however, he liked William McCall, New York correspondent for a Chicago newspaper, a clever, whimsical sort of fellow of Robert’s own age--a dreamer and a holder of startling, but interesting, theories of art, poetry and life. He was a brother dilettante, with an added knack of _doing_ things--besides.

McCall and Hamilton received second lieutenancies and were assigned to the same company in the New York division of the national army (the draft army). Here Hamilton’s ideas received another jolt, for men and officers represented every nation and creed. And here for the first time the idea of such phrases as “the melting pot” and “the army of democracy” began to sink into his consciousness.

His engagement to Margaret Forsyth had come quite suddenly and logically. Since childhood they had frequented the same circles. They had attended the same dances and receptions. They had played, as children, in each other’s homes, and made faces at each other across the same table. When Robert was eight and riding through the streets of Corinth on a white pony that caused all the children in sight to shout envious “ohs” and “ahs,” he formed the plan of eloping with Margaret. She agreed with alacrity. When they had reached the outskirts of the city, however, and Margaret discovered that it wasn’t a make-believe elopement, she began screaming so loudly that Robert was obliged to turn back. From that time on he pretended to have a supreme disdain for the opposite sex. In his fifteenth year, however, while home on a vacation from “prep” school, he had once more succumbed to feminine wiles--and intermittently thereafter.

The imminent departure of the troops for France, and to what perils no one could say, stimulated the dormant sentimentalism in Hamilton and, like half the young lieutenants in the division, he woke up one day to find himself engaged to Margaret, after she had come to camp with her mother to visit him.

Now, as his eyes moved restlessly about the room, as if looking for a means of escape, little incidents of his past life came popping out from unexpected hiding places in his brain. His mind had a trick of confusing two events--present and past--and he felt vaguely he had been in this ward before. Then he remembered the operation on his nose, after it had been broken in the Princeton game. It made him suddenly homesick.

“You’re looking fit to fight,” said Dr. Levin cheerfully, leaning over the bed and preparing to slip back the jacket of Hamilton’s pajamas so that he could get at the wound. “Just move your arm back a little--that’s the way. I suppose you know it’s all over now?”

Hamilton nodded.

“You don’t know what a close call you had, I’ll bet.” The surgeon deftly removed little strips of adhesive plaster.

“No,” Hamilton’s eyes were turned on the doctor. “Only this infernal wound hurts like the devil. Nurse said that--that nigger over there saved me.”

Dr. Levin turned around. The negro was asleep.

“Yes, he and a white officer picked you up near Chartreux Woods.”

“Chartreux Woods? How’d I get there? That wasn’t our objective, and anyway there weren’t any nigger troops around. Last thing I remember I was heading across no man’s land. Then something hit me.”

Hamilton scowled and noticed the quick skill with which Dr. Levin was tearing bits of porous plaster and sticking them on the edge of the bed, where they would be handy.

“I don’t know a thing about that,” said the surgeon, intent upon his work. “Now just a minute while I wash this. It won’t hurt. Did it? There now.” The dressing was complete.

“If your chest hurts too much have Meadows call me, but I think it will be all right.”

“Who’s Meadows?”

“That’s the little dark-haired nurse. They call each other by their last names and sometimes we do too.”

“I’ve noticed her,” Hamilton’s eyes suddenly wandered off into space. “Looks a lot like a girl I know back home.”

Dr. Levin smiled and patted Hamilton’s shoulder.

“You’ll be with that girl back home sooner than you think. Here, take this cigarette. A little smoking won’t hurt you.”

“I’m dying for a smoke,” said Hamilton, thrusting out a trembling hand. “It’s my first smoke in--What is the date?”

Dr. Levin told him.

“In six weeks! Six weeks! God!”

The surgeon was off to visit his other patients and, after a few puffs, Hamilton extinguished his cigarette and was ready to sink back into sleep.

IV

It was from Miss Meadows principally that Hamilton learned the details of his rescue. It was from her that he learned, for instance, that it was McCall who had helped the negro, Williams, to save his life. Where was McCall? Meadows would not tell, although she hinted that it was near-by. He guessed that it was in an adjoining ward and that she was afraid that if she told him how close, he would attempt to visit him before his full strength had returned. Meadows had heard part of the story from McCall himself and part she remembered from a newspaper account, although names of places and persons had been carefully deleted. There were other details that Dr. Levin supplied.

Apparently Hamilton had proceeded beyond his objective and fallen wounded at the edge of Chartreux Woods just before the enemy began to lay down a box barrage upon it. Hamilton wondered how he had got there. His last memory had been of advancing upon a line of trenches. Chartreux Woods lay beyond and to the left.

“Probably out of your head,” explained Dr. Levin. “You know there was a slight wound on your scalp. Probably a machine-gun bullet.”

“Must have been that,” agreed Hamilton. “Only an idiot would have done it otherwise.”

At any rate, it seemed, Hamilton had reached the last line of trenches assigned as his objective and, while his men were still mopping up, had blundered on. At the edge of the forest, weak from loss of blood, he had fallen.

It was there that McCall, whose company was lying entrenched opposite the wood, ready to advance when the signal should come, saw him the next morning, through the first gray of a drizzling dawn--the body of an American soldier lying in the open a few feet from the first row of trees and a hundred yards away. He did not know that it was Hamilton, only that it was a wounded American. How should he guess that it was Hamilton, who was supposed to be holding a position to the right and rear of his own?

And now McCall had let himself lightly over the top and was running swiftly through the mud toward his goal. Suddenly the barrage upon the forest broke and McCall flung himself to the ground. In a general way he knew that the lowness of the ground would probably shield him from observation, but to expose himself needlessly would be folly. He began to crawl forward slowly. He would continue this way for a few feet, then dive into a shell hole or behind a stump.

Across the narrow field high explosive shells were shattering the trees with thunderous roars. Projectiles screamed and whined overhead. Somewhere a machine gun chattered. A light drizzle was falling and all these sounds seemed like a thousand angry thunders following a thousand devastating lightnings. Once McCall threw himself into a puddle a second before a high explosive shell struck the earth a hundred yards away with a terrible crash that shook the earth and spattered rock, earth and metal as from a volcano’s mouth. McCall noticed with relief that Hamilton lay protected by the sweep of the terrain.

McCall doggedly kept on. As he reached his goal, he saw for the first time whom he was saving. Hamilton, his buddy! McCall quickly tied his emergency bandage around the wound in Hamilton’s chest, slid the prostrate form over his shoulder and started back. A trickle of blood which blinded his right eye told him that he had been wounded. But it was no time to quit and painfully, his wound throbbing with every step, he managed to stagger into a shell hole. Then everything turned black.

In the meantime Williams, in command of a detachment of pioneer troops assigned to McCall’s company, had been watching breathlessly from a fire step in the front-line trench. Now, when he saw McCall stagger into the shell hole, he was over the parapet in a flash and wriggling across the muddy, shell-torn ground like a snake. Half way across, a spent fragment of shell struck his head and dazed him. But he kept on, as in a trance, and reached the two white officers before his head cleared. McCall was recovering consciousness and Williams bound his wound. To his own wound he paid no attention. Then the two began their return to the American line, dragging and pushing the body of Hamilton between them.

Within the trenches all was excitement, and it was all that the lieutenant in charge of the company could do to keep every man in the front-line trench from swarming over the top.

“They’ll bring him back!” he shouted. “There’s no use any one else risking his life. Get down from the fire step and stay down if you value your lives!”

The lieutenant swore and prayed in turn. The men recklessly stuck their heads above the parapet and shouted words of encouragement, although they knew that their voices were no match for the thunder of the artillery.

“Come on now! Stick it out! Just a little longer! Come on!” Their voices pleaded.

Inch by inch, foot by foot, they were creeping. They had come within a few yards of the trench and the men were shouting themselves hoarse.

“Come on! You’re almost there! Stick it out!”

Suddenly there was a terrific explosion that sent showers of rock and mud into the trench and both Williams and McCall rolled over, the blood gushing from many wounds. Hamilton, between them, had been completely protected. This time there was no holding them. A half dozen whites and blacks were over the parapet and back again, bearing the three wounded officers.

“You’ll get court-martialed sure as hell for this!” yelled the lieutenant. Tears were in his eyes--“Or you’ll all get cited for bravery.”

He was right. The next morning they heard from the old man (the colonel). Every one of them, including McCall and Williams, had been cited for conspicuous bravery on the field of battle, over and above their line of duty, in rescuing the wounded.

V

Hamilton was sitting up in a wheelchair, watching Miss Meadows flutter about from one patient to another--raising or lowering a bed, adjusting a pillow, injecting morphine, sponging a patient’s back, bringing water--doing a hundred and one things. Hamilton admired her swift skill--the sureness with which she did everything, the expertness with which her capable fingers patted the bedclothes into position, the gentle strength of her finely molded arm when she lifted a man in bed or helped him to his chair, the dexterity with which she snipped off gauze and linen and converted them into dressing pads and bandages. Above all, her cheerfulness.

At six each morning she would come into the ward--in her familiar white sweater coat on the cooler days--and take temperatures. She carried scores of thermometers in a glass, it seemed, and as she moved from bed to bed she would shake them down with a dexterous twist of her wrist. Sometimes, on especially cold days, when her fingers were numb, a thermometer would slip from her grasp and shatter on the floor. But in spite of cold, and no matter how little she had slept the night before, she invariably smiled.

Meadows had a word and a nickname for everyone. Hamilton was a “Colonel,” because of his first outburst against having a negro in his ward, his Southern accent and his rather aristocratic cast of features.

“In a few more days, you’ll have a regular goatee, and then you _will_ look like a colonel,” she used to tease him when he was still lying on his back, unable to shave.

The patients were all her boys and she mothered them in a delightfully impartial manner.

One of the men she maternally called “Sleepyhead,” because he was always asleep when time came for taking temperatures. Another was “Caruso,” because he snored (she called it singing) in his sleep.

“That was a most beautiful aria you rendered last night,” teased Meadows, “it sounded like the Awakening of the Lion from Hagenbeck.”

Then, as every one in the ward laughed, and before Caruso could reply, she thrust a thermometer between his lips. Caruso pretended to be in a great rage and in pantomime drew a knife and threatened her with it.

“How’s the Great Lover?” she asked another, who had come out of the ether revealing certain startling chapters of his amatory experiences. “The Hearst papers have got a reporter planted under your bed, so you had better be careful of what you say in your sleep. They’re running the first chapter of your memoirs, An Ethereal Affinity, tonight.”

“You know I have only one love,” mocked back the Great Lover, stretching out his arms.

“I wonder who that can be,” said Meadows and popped a thermometer into his mouth.

“Great Scott, nurse, I’m burning up!” cried a patient. Meadows snatched the thermometer from his hand to find the mercury near the top of the column. It was an old trick, however. The patient had held the end of a cigarette to the bulb.

“My, oh my!” Meadows shook her head, so that the brown curls straggled out from beneath her cap. “We’ll have to cut out the nicotine. No more cigarettes from now on, and you’ll see how soon your temperature goes back to normal!”

“Not one cigarette, nursey?” pleaded the practical joker.

“Not a chocolate cigarette--unless you share it with me!”

For each there was some bit of badinage that made the dreary days of convalescence pass all the more quickly. Even with the more serious cases, the officers whose jaws had been replaced with pieces of metal strung together by wire, the officers who had been blinded, the amputations--Meadows joked.

Hamilton was making comparisons. He wondered whether the girl to whom he had become engaged just before he left for France could have stood the gaff as well. Physically they were remarkably alike. They could easily pass for cousins, even sisters. They were both little women and both had a girlish animation. Both were dark, with wavy brown hair and large brown eyes. Eyes of a wild doe, Hamilton used to say of Margaret. Meadows might have been an inch taller and correspondingly heavier. But the same domed forehead, refined nose, bowed lips.

Hamilton wondered whether Margaret, so graceful on the dance floor, so competent in the drawing room, or at the dinner table, would be equally at home in a hospital ward. Could she have rubbed a man’s back with alcohol, or placed a drain in a gaping wound as successfully as she poured tea--do all these things with a smile? He wondered.

Meadows was approaching Hamilton’s wheelchair with a cup of steaming chocolate, and for a moment Hamilton had an acute longing to be back in the States, nearer Margaret.

“What’s the matter, Colonel, hasn’t she written?” the nurse smiled down upon him. “I’m quite sure I saw a letter for you in the office. Orderly’ll be up in a few minutes. Drink this chocolate. I made it myself.”

Hamilton took the cup and admitted that he was woefully homesick.

“Some day,” he gulped and blinked hard. “Jimminy, this stuff is hot!--some day I’d like to have you meet some one in Georgia--Corinth. A girl I know--my--some one I know real well. She looks a great deal like you, too. Same complexion and same way of smiling. Might be sisters.”

“No,” laughed Miss Meadows, shaking her head, “I haven’t a relative south of South Bend, Indiana. It’s just a stage of convalescence. When they reach it, all my boys,” she gave an expressive wave of her white arm, “tell me I remind them of some one. So you’d better look out or you’ll be mistaking me for her and telling me things meant only for her shell-like ears. Oh, such things have happened before!”

Meadows shook her forefinger saucily at the colonel and whisked away. Hamilton swallowed a burning gulp of chocolate and felt more homesick than ever.

Meadows was right. There _was_ a letter for Hamilton--a letter which sent his heart thumping. It came in a square envelope, lined with colored tissue, addressed in large, round characters, in green ink and smelling faintly of musk. A dozen postmarks and forwarding addresses showed the course it had travelled. Hamilton had written Margaret that he would spend his leave in Paris, the last week in September, and she had addressed the letter in care of the American Club. When Hamilton failed to claim the missive, it had evidently been sent to headquarters. From there it had been forwarded to his regiment. The letter had followed the regiment from post to post, had finally caught up with it and been sent on to the field hospital. From there it had been sent to the American hospital on Rue de St. Jacques, Paris. Evidently Margaret was unaware that Hamilton had been wounded and had lain hovering between life and death for two months. Hamilton tore open the letter.

“Dearest Bobby boy,” it ran. “I know that some horrid censor will be snooping through this, so I can’t tell you how much I love you!

“I suppose you are in Paris now, enjoying your leave. Oh, how jealous I am of those _notorious_ French beauties! I hear that they bob their hair, wear skirts up to their knees and smoke cigarettes. How shocking! But you’ll always be true to your little Margaret, won’t you?

“You don’t know how much we at home suffer! I don’t mean by going without wheat or meat or heat on certain days or without lights at night; nor even our untiring work on drives and committees and meetings. I mean the gap you have made in our lives _that nothing can fill_!

“Every one of us at home would give _anything_ he could to join you on the firing line. I know I would, if I were a man. In the meantime I am ‘doing my bit’ by knitting Red Cross sweaters and preparing gauze. I am attending a class in hospitalization, so that I can help out in our local hospitals in case all the trained nurses are accepted for overseas duty.

“Papa is very proud of you. When he learned that you had been recommended for a captaincy, he said that he just _knew_ that you had it in you, because you came from one of the best Southern families. Father has so much responsibility now, keeping the niggers at work. He says that his overseers are working day and night to keep up the production of cotton. Cotton is used in the soldiers’ uniforms and in making gun-cotton, so father really feels as though he’s doing his bit in fighting the Hun.

“Cousin George says he wishes he were in your shoes, but the local draft board has ruled that his services in editing a newspaper are indispensable, and of more value to the country than shouldering a rifle.

“Howard Pinkney--the man you were so jealous of--foolish boy!--still comes around and proposes regularly. But there’s no chance, is there, against my soldier boy? I hate these war profiteers, but papa says Howard is becoming a splendid business man and doing a real service to the nation by supplying the arsenals with walnut for rifle stocks. It seems that walnut is the best wood for that purpose, and at the beginning of the war Howard very thoughtfully managed to collect most of it in the South. He said that he would have liked to follow your example, but I suppose he is doing more by ‘carrying on’ right at home, seeing that the boys over there are supplied with rifle stocks.

“You see, _everybody’s_ ‘doing his bit,’ one way or another. I think it is _splendid_! It’s the only way that our Anglo-Saxon supremacy can be maintained. Even at our dances and receptions the note is patriotic. We invite all the officers from the camps near-by and do our best to make them feel as if they had not been forgotten. We always end up with the _Star-Spangled Banner_ and everyone stands up so straight and sings _right from the heart_!

“A few foreigners and radicals have given us some trouble by not subscribing their full quota of Liberty Bonds, and the committee of twenty-one has daubed their houses yellow. Some have even asked for higher wages, because the war has made prices go up so high. But they don’t realize their sacred duty to their country. There is talk about the negroes revolting. Some agitators have been at work amongst them. They’re demanding accountings and cash, or rather hinting at it. They wouldn’t dare demand it. It sounds like Bolshevism to dad! A Socialist came here to speak--but the committee rode him out of town on a rail before he could get a meeting and spread disregard for Americanism and the Constitution.

“Dad and George and Howard say that the old Ku Klux Klan ought to be revived to teach the negroes their place and keep the agitators and other carpetbaggers from invading the South.

“But I _mustn’t_ bore you any more with this. I simply wanted to let you know how the war was affecting the South. Perhaps by this time the war will be over. I just know when the Americans get upon the field of battle they will show the rest of the Allies a thing or two about fighting.”