Part 9

The train was screeching to a halt and through the window he saw them waiting for him--his father, a little paler than when he had seen him in New York, it seemed; his mother, clutching his arm, and trying not to cry--it was the same way she looked when she had bade him good-bye, only she, too, seemed a little older, and then Margaret, flushed and radiant, in a bright yellow silk sweater.

The next minute he was down the steps and into his mother’s arms. Yes, she was older, but not very much, and still beautiful--with her white hair and girlish complexion, her gentle blue eyes, her refined features. Hamilton remembered the time that a schoolmate had mistaken his mother and his only sister, Virginia Ruth, for sisters. Virginia Ruth was married to a New Orleans banker and had children of her own now. But no one would any longer mistake the two for sisters. One cheated time for a while, for a few years; but, in the end, time won.

Hamilton could think of nothing to say, but “Mother, how are you?”

Of the hundred questions that crowded in her brain, all that she could ask was: “Robert, isn’t your uniform too warm?” The gulf between them was suddenly bridged and they laughed.

Superintended by Mr. Hamilton, George, the middle-aged Negro chauffeur, was proudly piling the suitcases into the family automobile. He was grinning from ear to ear and remarked repeatedly that “the gen’ral sure do look well” and something about “bein’ mighty scrumptious.” Father and son shook hands briefly, but Margaret held out her arms and drew down Hamilton’s head. It was the first time that he had kissed her in the presence of anybody else, the first time he had kissed any one, outside the family, before his mother and he felt awkward and self-conscious. As he bent down, he noticed the sparkle of emeralds and diamonds in her engagement ring and felt ashamed that he had eyes for anything but Margaret herself. He noted how calmly she could kiss him--not exactly calmly, but self-possessedly and without embarrassment.

With his first glance, too, he saw how beautiful she really was and how strikingly similar her beauty was, in a way, to that of Dorothy. Only it had a quality of naiveté. She looked, if not actually younger in years, younger in spirit. Hers was the naive sophistication of the rising generation--a generation wise in its own conventionalities, the conventionalities of breaking older conventionalities.

It was surprising how her set, among the sons and daughters of the best families in Georgia, could assimilate so readily the spirit of the new freedom, without, at the same time, absorbing its intellectual aspects. Margaret, for instance, knew nothing about political or economic movements save as they came filtered to her through the mind of her parents. The freedom, therefore, was exhibited mainly in the social sphere--in attending dances and parties unchaperoned, in driving her own motor car, in discussing love and sex theories--generally gleaned from motion pictures or printed stories--in dressing more freely than her mother had done, in staying away with increasing frequency from church, in smoking cigarettes surreptitiously and even in drinking away from home--a little.

She had no real discrimination in her choice of either art, literature or cigarettes. She had no favorite schools or intellectual movements. And no theories. She simply liked a picture or a book, or didn’t like it--her emancipation from the old conventionalities expressing itself simply in a frankness in expressing her opinion. Whereas her mother would have admired a painting because she thought that was the thing to do, with Margaret the thing to do was to say you didn’t like it if you didn’t. But her taste for fiction--the only kind of literature she read--was omnivorous. In music, too, her tastes were of contradictory breadth, preferring Beethoven one night and jazz the next. She played the piano. Classical music when there were older visitors, old ballads when alone with her mother, jazz music when in her own set. When there was no one else with her she played the three categories in the order of jazz first, then ballads, and lastly classical music.

Margaret was a joy on a horse and a mermaid in the water and altogether a creditable product of the finishing school which her mother had selected for her. The best testimony to this being the fact that she could have married a half dozen of the most eligible young Corinthians, since her graduation, two years ago in June.

The Hamiltons climbed into the touring car, the returned hero seating himself between his mother and his fiancée, while the father took one of the collapsible seats. The home-coming had not been unseen by a crowd of tatterdemalion colored children, who viewed Captain Hamilton with awe until he disappeared down the street.

Hamilton was conscious of many things and of many emotions: warm sunshine bathing the town and fragrant blooming magnolia trees overarching the road; glimpses of familiar houses; the street down which he had attempted to elope with Margaret; the public school-house where he had been set upon and in which he had triumphed in his last fight of childhood; a magnificent old church which he used to admire profoundly as a boy; homes of old friends. He was conscious of the love and pride of the three with whom he rode and the feeling of possession of Margaret, whose eyes were on him, as much as his mother’s.

“Your wound is quite all right?” asked Mr. Hamilton sitting sidewise in his seat.

“It’s fine,” Hamilton assured him. “Couldn’t be better. I think I could even take the sorrel over the fence.”

“Robert, you wouldn’t do that?” said his mother reprovingly, while his father and Margaret laughed. “Taking the sorrel over the fence” had become a family joke, an expression for extreme recklessness, because shortly before leaving for New York, Robert, on a dare, had actually jumped the stone fence on the sorrel, Annabell Lee. As his father had said at the time, Robert had risked the knees of a very valuable horse and the neck of a very heedless rider.

“No, there’s not much chance after the bawling out I got last time.” Mr. Hamilton smiled.

“But Annabell is waiting for you,” he said, “all groomed up sleek and shiny by George himself, here.”

The chauffeur’s white-teethed grin was reflected in the windshield as he nodded his head. “Tha’s right, sir, that’s right. Annabell Lee, there ain’t no horses slicker than her. She like mahogany.”

“Well, I won’t take any fences. But how are you, mother? It’s wonderful to be back.”

“Oh, I’ll take you out riding,” suggested Margaret eagerly. “I know just a ripping place to go, and I’ll race you.”

“Not for a while, Margaret, I’m too lazy for much of anything right now. If I go I’ll take old Major. How is Major?”

“He’s not with us any more, Robert.”

“Did he die?”

Robert looked from his father to his mother. Her eyes faltered.

“No, we sold him,” said Mr. Hamilton.

“Getting old, I suppose.”

“Oh, have I told you? We’ve got another captain in our set,” asked Margaret suddenly. “Who do you think? Howard Pinkney. He got his commission just about the time I got that awful letter telling me you were wounded. I’ll never forget how I felt.”

“Pinkney?”

“Oh, this town is full of ’em,” the elder Hamilton laughed, with the faintest suggestion of irony in his voice. “Captains and majors.”

“Oh, no, he’s a real captain. He showed me his commission. He’s captain of our home guards, and he says it’s the same rank as captain in the infantry or artillery. Is it?”

“Well, that’s a rather embarrassing question. But perhaps we could say that it’s not _exactly_ the same thing, although it is very nearly.”

“Oh, of course, you did the _real_ fighting. It was wonderful how you risked your life and I’m proud of you, oh, ever so proud. I’ve had a service flag in the window ever since you left, with only one star--for you. Howard wanted me to have two stars, but, of course, he stayed at home. He’s one of the organizers now of the Trick Track Tribe. Or is that a secret, Mr. Hamilton? He’ll be asking Robert to join anyway.”

“It’s probably a pretty open secret.”

“Trick Track Tribe? What an odd name. Trick Track. It sounds like the cocking of an old-fashioned musket. Trick Track.”

“That’s just what it’s supposed to be. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s to revive the old Southern chivalry and maintain the superiority of the white race and promote Americanism.”

“That sounds pretty ambitious,” laughed Robert. “I really didn’t know the white race was in danger. But if the Trick Tracks can do all that, I’m for them.”

Now the car was rounding a corner and the next minute the Hamilton residence appeared at the end of a row of tall trees. There were the familiar pillars, rising from the floor of the porch to the cornice; the little grilled window just over the door, looking out from the landing on the stairs and through which Hamilton had often peered as a boy; the porch swing; the green shutters, breaking up the mass of white; the lattice under the porch, behind which Hamilton had often prowled, playing it was a bandit’s cave. The grass was as green and the vines clambered as thickly about the sides of the home as his memory had pictured.

“Your room, dear, is just the way you left it,” remarked Mrs. Hamilton as the car drove up the path with a scream of the siren.

They dismounted, George springing down in time to open the door and then bringing up the rear with the suitcases. Robert had expected to see the colored servants at the door--Mammy Chloe, who baked memorial corn fritters and candied yams, and her two daughters, Clorabelle and Susy May (sometimes facetiously called Chlorine by Robert), the housemaids, and Sam, a white-haired black of uncertain age who looked after the horses, trimmed the grass and otherwise assisted George. But only Mammy Chloe appeared, in her best apron, a clean, white kerchief around her head, rocking her fat sides in happiness.

“Lor’ bless us if it ain’t Genril Robert hisself.”

“Only captain so far, Mammy Chloe,” Robert corrected her, as he took her hands in his and looked down at her. “Have you got any of those corn fritters ready for me? I’m sure hungry.” This tribute to her culinary skill pleased her prodigiously.

“Corn fritters ain’t nothing to what I done fix for you all. An’ I won’t tell you what they is. You jes’ wait till come dinner. My lan’ sakes, what all them Huns do to you? You wait! You old Mammy Chloe get you fat again, so Miss Margaret won’t know you.”

After George had deposited the suitcases in his room and Mrs. Hamilton had kissed Robert and closed the door gently behind her, Robert sank down in his chair. He was tired and warm. He had almost forgotten about his wound, yet the simple matter of traveling for thirty-six hours was telling on him. He slowly unbuttoned his coat, unfastened his puttees and unlaced his shoes. It would be a good half-hour before dinner.

He removed a cigarette from his pocket, lit it and began looking about the room. It was exactly as he had left it. The same high-ceilinged room, with its friendly ivory woodwork; the same inviting bay windows, half hidden by vines, with the circular window seats; the same rosewood furniture. In the center of one wall was the fireplace and on either side the bookcases lined with the old textbooks and his favorite volumes. Home again.

Robert arose, undressed and slipped into his bathrobe. He walked about the room to verify the presence of certain objects. Yes, even his class pipe was there. He removed his wrist watch and laid it on the dressing table. There would just be time enough for a shower.

His spirits rose under the stinging spray and he began humming’ an old army tune:

“_I wanna go home, Gee, but I wanna go home. The bullets they whistle, The cannons they roar; I don’t wanna go back to the trenches no more. I wanna sail ’cross the sea Where the Allemand can’t get at me. Oh, my, I’m too young to die. Gee, but I wanna go home!_”

As he rubbed himself with a bath towel he thought: “Mammy Chloe is right at that. I am pretty thin.” He flexed his muscles and posed before the mirror. Not so much thinner than when he had left home. He had gained almost fifteen pounds in the army and lost it all and a little more in the hospital. The scar was barely visible. He remembered the wound that his grandfather had received in the Civil War and wondered whether inquisitive children would ever ask him to show his scar. He inspected his face in the mirror. Not such a bad job for shaving on the train. He threw on his bathrobe and returned to his room. In the closet, carefully protected by a wardrobe bag hung his dinner clothes, perfectly pressed. After he had dressed he again stood before the mirror. Civilian clothes felt loose. They felt as though he had forgotten to put something on. They were careless, unrestrained, individualistic garments.

“Gee, but I wanna go home,” he sang.

When Captain Hamilton, in conventional dinner clothes, reached the foot of the stairs it was to shock his mother and Margaret.

“Wherever did you get those?” asked Margaret.

“Why, dear,” pleaded Mrs. Hamilton, “I thought you would surely wear your uniform. A few friends are coming over and I’m sure they would like to see you in uniform.”

Robert grinned.

“Oh, I don’t know. I just thought it would be rather nice to slip into these for a change. You know I’ve worn olive-drab for two years now.”

“But they will want to see you in uniform,” urged his mother.

“And Howard is going to be here and I do want him to see you in uniform. He’s going to wear his,” added Margaret.

“Which is all the more reason why I shouldn’t. Anyway my uniform’s too hot, and my gabardine is in the trunk.”

But Mrs. Hamilton triumphantly pointed to the fact that George had just returned from another trip to the depot with Robert’s locker trunks and would carry them up in another minute, and Captain Hamilton was forced to turn back and resume the habiliments of war. But he did it happily. The last time, he thought.

XIX

Howard Pinkney did come, as Margaret had predicted, and, as she had likewise predicted, he wore his captain’s uniform. He made some sort of explanation. He was either coming from an affair or going to one which all the officers of the home guards were to attend or had attended, and there was no time left for changing into “civies.” He was very apologetic about it and very effulgent in his praise of the returning captain.

Hamilton’s dislike for Pinkney was reborn. He had disliked him in childhood because Howard had rosy cheeks--an unforgivable offense in a boy. He had punched his nose for that reason many, many years ago, although the announced reason was that Pinkney “was too darned smart.” And having harmed him for no legitimate reason, he naturally disliked him still more. Pinkney, however, in spite of Robert’s opinion, had turned out disappointingly successful. He had stepped out of college into a large lumber firm, showed a precocious grasp of business principles and within two years had been made vice-president. During the war he had made his spectacular coup of cornering most of the available Southern walnut used in fashioning rifle stocks.

For a young man he had a peculiarly set--Hamilton called it “ossified”--mind. He accepted traditional ideas as firmly as do men of twice his years and without youth’s questioning of them. In business he had a whole set of principles that Hamilton never knew existed. He had ideas about the position of the South in industry and about the South’s contribution to world commerce. Things that no healthy young man would think twice about. Where Hamilton would be interested in discussing a football game or a play, Pinkney would discuss the extension of the federal reserve system.

To Robert, business was a mere incident in life, a necessary evil whereby one provided one’s self with the means of enriching and enjoying it. To Pinkney, business was one of life’s essentials. He took it quite as seriously as tennis or riding. A surprising fellow.

Tennis and riding he did well--efficiently--that was the word. Just as he did everything else. It was part of his physical life. He had departments--physical, mental, moral, social, and all separated from each other like boxes in a vault. In order to succeed one must give so much time and effort to each of these divisions. One must play tennis or take some other suitable form of exercise every day so as to keep in trim for the more serious duties of life. When Pinkney went for a walk, he didn’t say: “I’m going out to commune with nature,” which is sentimental, but understandable, or “I’m going along a picturesque road,” or simply “I’m going for a walk,” but “I’m going to get an hour’s exercise.”

He had an annoying way of keeping up with the times in everything. He even subscribed to the New York Times so that he might profit by the book reviews and bought the volumes there recommended.

He attended church and the most important social functions with regularity and was looked up to everywhere. He was pointed out as an example of the Southern young man in business. On public committees he frequently represented the young business man. Nothing could keep him from becoming in time president of his firm, a bank director, president of the Chamber of Commerce and a college trustee.

It was only characteristic that Howard Pinkney should still aspire to Margaret’s hand long after she had chosen Robert, and it was also characteristic of him that he should neither show nor feel the slightest animosity towards his successful rival. He treated him with all the charity that he used toward a formidable business competitor.

Pinkney was undeniably handsome in his concentrated, alert way. He was nearly as tall as Robert, slighter-framed but heavier, with straight, light brown hair combed back from a sloping forehead. His features were more regular, less rugged than Robert’s and his gray eyes were intelligent and intense. Hamilton noticed all this as Pinkney first entered the room and wondered why Margaret had so often rejected him in favor of himself. It was Howard’s only failure.

Howard, as an officer of the home guard, somehow supererogated to himself the function of reintroducing Hamilton to his townsfolk.

“Judge, here is Captain Hamilton. Isn’t he looking splendid after his harassing experiences in France? We must have him recount them to us some evening at the club. Lieutenant Brownlow--Mr. Brownlow is one of the lieutenants in the guards. He was exempt because of fallen arches--Lieutenant Brownlow has been longing to see you and I have taken the liberty of inviting him. Of course he knows all about your splendid exploits. Mr. Jarvis, our hero has come back again. Have you a card with you? We must bring him into the Trick Track Tribe. Yes, here it is. Thank you. Give it to me when you have filled it out.”

Hamilton slipped the card into his pocket without reading it. He was becoming tired of meeting so many people. He had always looked forward to his home coming as to an opportunity for unlimited rest. And here he was in the midst of a buzz of many conversations, shaking hands, answering a hundred questions, standing up, moving around to different groups, always smiling. Of course, he understood, this was his first night at home. One had to sacrifice one’s self to the duties of society. But he heartily wished that it was over. He wished, above all, that the home guard would suddenly mobilize for some reason and that Pinkney would be called out.

In Paris he had enjoyed the salons, the stimulating exchange of ideas; but in his own home he wished to be alone with his parents, and perhaps with Margaret. His parents, he perceived, were probably wishing the same thing. They kept throwing little smiles at him and to each other and Mrs. Hamilton kept coming over to squeeze his hand. How beautiful his mother really must have been when she was, say, Margaret’s age. He loved her soft gray hair. And how distinguished his father looked, with his immaculate moustache and goatee.

Robert moved to a little group of men who were discussing some subject animatedly and sat down.

“There’s only one solution for this problem,” the fat, bald-headed little man, who had been introduced to him as Mr. Jarvis, was saying, “and that’s Americanization.”

“Americanization?” It was Pinkney’s father speaking, a heavy moustached man, with hawk-like features--Howard “took after” his mother. “Americanization? What they need is a good dose of tar and feathers. Yes, sir, good old tar and feathers. What do you think about it, Captain Hamilton?” He leaned forward in his chair.

“What is that?” asked Robert.

“Those damned foreigners,” the older Pinkney drawled. “The niggers are bad enough. But now these damned foreigners are getting too strong here.”

Mr. Pinkney was the sort of man who never referred to foreigners, save as “damned foreigners,” nor to women without adding “God bless ’em.”

“Do you know what some of those Jews are doing? Yes, sir, let me tell you! They’re bringing business up Telfair Avenue. When my father built there, yes, sir, it was the finest district in Corinth. He thought he’d leave it for his children and his children’s children. Never thought the town would grow to it. Now, sir, just take a drive past the place. I had to sell it three years ago. What are they doing? Putting up apartments, yes, sir, apartments.”

He looked fiercely at Hamilton as if to see whether Robert could possibly have any sympathy with a foreigner who put up apartment buildings.

“Five years ago that Jew real estate man, Abrams, came to me. Said it was inevitable that business must expand and that it would march up Telfair Avenue. Said he was negotiating for some leases there and advised me to convert my property into something that would pay. Pay, sir, pay! I told him that my father hadn’t built his house to pay, but to live in. Ha, Ha!”

Jarvis and Pinkney and the other gentlemen laughed.

“That’s a good one, all right,” said Jarvis.

“Yes, sir, live in. Well, he said that as the lower part of Telfair Avenue became a business section, the value of the upper part would fall because it would lose its exclusiveness. And he advised me to tear down the home or at least remodel it into an apartment building, and move out in Fairview. Said he was moving there himself.”

Pinkney looked about sharply and paused a moment to accentuate the effect of the denouement of the incident.

“What did I tell him? I said, ‘So you’re moving out to Fairview? Well, that’s every reason in the world why _I shouldn’t_! Just like that, sir. Shut him up, right off, like that.’”

“That’s the way to fix ’em!” said Jarvis, nodding his head.

“But wasn’t the real estate man right after all?” Hamilton asked timidly after the laughter had subsided. “Wasn’t it good advice?”