Part 11

As for Ruggs, he looked forward to the acceptance of his discharge with as much grace as possible. He had striven honestly, and had apparently made of himself only an object for laughter, but he was far from giving up. Several candidates had confided to him their disappointment, as they would have liked, they said, to see him gain a commission. Indeed they had felt all along that he was going to make good.

Yet the day of his reckoning seemed never to materialize. Men went into the orderly room, and came out with hectic smiles of relief or sickly efforts at cheerfulness, while he watched and waited.

One day, after the first drill, Vance was sitting on his bunk talking finances, when a voice from the other end of the barracks called out,--

'The following men report in the orderly room at once!'

The silence was crisp. Then the voice continued with a list of about ten names, toward the end of which was Ruggs.

'Good-bye, Vance,' said he, rising. He put on his coat and brushed his clothing and shoes carefully.

Vance eyed him narrowly and pityingly during the operation, as much as to say, 'There’s no use taking any more pains with those clothes; you’ll never need them again.'

Ruggs caught the look and understood.

'You see I can’t get out of the habit,' he confessed. 'It’s not so much the clothes as--as--myself.'

At the orderly room door he waited a small eternity before his name was called.

Once inside he found himself for the first time alone with the Meter. Under his scrutiny heretofore Ruggs had felt himself to be merely number one of the rear rank needful of correction. And yet the victim felt that he could part from the captain with no feeling of resentment at the blow he was about to receive.

'Mr. Ruggs!'

The Estimator of Destinies wheeled in his chair and cast a look of brotherly frankness into Ruggs’s eyes.

'Yes, sir.'

'Mr. Ruggs, you’ve been here almost three months.'

'Yes, sir.'

'I haven’t time to mince matters with you. You have one great failing which I’m going to dwell upon. You attempt to do too many things at once. In the military service you are compelled to consider what is best for the moment. Nothing changes so fast or furiously as a military situation. Don’t forecast what you’ll do next so much as figure what you’ll do _now_. Make your men be of the greatest use in the team right _now_--understand? What you’d be liable to do would be a certain amount of banking in the trenches. While you’d be speculating on how much interest your venture would bring you to-morrow, a gas wave comes over to-day and finds your men without masks. Be ready for the thing at issue. You’ve got to take this matter in hand at once and overcome it.'

Ruggs acknowledged to himself that his difficulties were all too plainly exposed. He had tried to compass the whole of drill regulations in a single night. He had been so interested in what he was going to do to the enemy after he reached the bluff, that he had forgotten to give the proper signals to start the company on its mission. If only he had understood the correct method of approach at the beginning!

'That,' went on the Meter, as if in continuation of Ruggs’s thoughts, 'has been your downfall.'

There was a knock at the door. In answer to the captain’s 'Come in,' a thick official document was handed him.

'Be seated, Mr. Ruggs. Pardon me while I read this!'

It took some time for the perusal, during which Ruggs saw light in the shape of a new plan.

'Captain,' he inquired, as the Meter looked up, 'is there any chance for me to get into another camp or couldn’t you recommend me?'

'Second camp!' cried the Meter, staring at Ruggs as if the candidate were bereft of reason. 'Second camp! You’ll get all the second camp that’s coming to you. The whole purpose of this camp is to pick out the proper wood-pulp--that’s all. None of you is capable of being an officer now; but the men I’ve chosen, I hope have the makings. You yourself have two assets: first, a knowledge of men, and second, the power to think under stress. In another month you’ll be training rookies from the draft. What I wanted to tell you was, you’d better look out for your failing when you’re the first lieutenant, instead of the captain, of that company of yours. Do you understand?'

Ruggs understood and managed to retire. Once outside, he leaned against the building to steady his knees, and pressed his hands into his pockets to keep his fingers from trembling.

'Sorry about it, old chap!' spoke up one of those waiting near the entry.

Ruggs realized how the shock must have affected his features. The incident gave him an idea.

When he had recovered sufficiently to go back to his bunk, Vance, in a rather conventional and perfunctory tone, inquired about the outcome.

'Oh,' the dissembling Ruggs declared, 'the Meter said he’d let me stay on till the end of camp for the training I’d get, if I wanted to.'

It was enough for Vance, and those standing about refrained from asking embarrassing questions. For the next four days Ruggs was treated as one who has just lost his entire family in a wreck. On the evening of the fifth day, after supper, a reserve officer from headquarters appeared in barracks with a list, the substance of which he said could be disclosed to the public. When he had finished reading the first lieutenants every eye glared at Ruggs; and when the list was completed there was a rush for blankets and the victim. How many times Ruggs’s feet hit the ceiling, he never quite remembered.

Later, Squirmy gave a very helpful talk on Joseph, who was sold by his brothers down into Egypt after they had hidden him under a bushel. 'Ah! gentlemen,' he exhorted, '_this_ time little Joey sold his brothers. Little Joey Ruggs is going to have a coat of many colors and be ruler over many!'

And again the fun turned on Ruggs, but he stole away and wired Alice.

THE WAY OF LIFE

BY LUCY HUFFAKER

THERE was a heavy odor in the little house which quite blighted the soft spring air as it blew in through the half-open window. For supper there had been onions and sausage, and the fried potatoes had burned. The smells which had risen from the kitchen stove had mingled with the raw, soapy fumes which gave testimony that Monday was wash-day in the Black family. Now the smoking of the kerosene lamp on the centre-table seemed to seal in hermetical fashion the oppressive room against the gentle breeze of the May evening.

The woman, bending over a pair of trousers which she was patching, stuck the needle in the cloth, pulled the thimble from her fat, red finger, and rubbed her hands over her eyes.

'Bed-time, Billy,' she said to the nine-year-old boy who was playing with a picture-puzzle on the other side of the table.

'Aw, ma, let me stay up, till pa and the boys get home.'

The woman shook her head.

'I’ll get up in plenty of time to feed the chickens, anyhow. Honest, I will.'

'You ought to be glad to go to bed,' the mother sighed in answer. 'I’d be. Seems to me I’d be tickled to death if I could drop into bed without my supper any night.'

'I’ll go if you’ll go, too. I just hate to go to bed knowing all the rest of you are up.'

'Me go to bed! Why these trousers of yours aren’t finished yet and I’ve got to mend Tom’s shirt and your father’s coat, and then there’s the bread to set. Much chance I have to go to bed for a couple of hours, yet! Now you run along. If you go like a good boy, you can have a cooky.'

She put the thimble on her finger and bent over her mending again. She sewed steadily on until an hour later, when she heard the buggy drive into the yard and one of the boys came running in to ask her if she knew where the barn-lantern was. It was in the cellar, and there was barely enough oil to make a dim light while the horse was being unharnessed. The boys were sent to bed immediately, with an injunction to be quiet so Billy would not be awakened. She heard the heavy tread of her husband in the kitchen, as he hunted for the dipper to get a drink of water. Then he came into the sitting-room, sat down in a chair, and began pulling off his shoes. He groaned as he did it.

'Say, Em,' he said, 'guess who I saw in town to-night?'

'Who?' was the unimaginative response.

'You’d never guess in a hundred years. You’d never guess what she did, either. She sent you these.'

He drew from his pocket a package and a sheet of notepaper. The woman looked at them for a moment, but she didn’t touch them.

'Hurry up, Em,' said the man. 'They won’t bite you.'

'But what--' she faltered.

'The best way to find out about 'em is to open 'em.'

She opened the package first. It was a cheap colored print of St. Cecilia at the Organ. It was in a bright gilt frame. Then she opened the note. She read it through once, with a little frown puckering her forehead. Then, more slowly, she read it the second time.

'Minnie Jackson!' she murmured. 'I haven’t seen her for nearly ten years. I don’t know when I’ve thought about her, even. You read it, Jake?'

'Yes. She didn’t seal it.' He waited a minute, then said, 'I couldn’t just make out what it was all about. What day is this?'

'It’s our birthday--Minnie’s and mine. We used to call ourselves twins, but she’s a year older than I am. I’ve been so busy all day I never thought about it. What does Minnie look like?'

'Oh, she looks about the same, I guess, as the last time she was home. She’s getting fatter, though. Guess the climate out in California must agree with her.'

'Is she as fat as I am?'

'Just about, I guess.'

'Did she look as if they were well off? What kind of a dress did she have on?'

'I don’t know. Good enough, I guess. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. While she ran into the store to get this picture and write this note to you, old Jackson was bragging to me about how well Elmer had done. He said Min had married about as well as any girl round here.'

'Did he say anything about whether she ever paints any?'

'Paints? What ever are you talking about, Em?'

She had bent over her sewing again, and he could not see her face as she answered, 'When Minnie and I were little girls, I reckon we never had any secrets from each other, at all. I know I talked about things to her I never could have told anybody else. She was that way with me, too. Well, she always said she wanted to paint, and I wanted to play. She was always copying every picture she saw. I remember she did one picture called A yard of Roses, from a calendar. It was so good you couldn’t have told the difference. Don’t you remember the time she took the prize at the art exhibit at the country fair, with a picture she had copied, called The Storm? One of the judges said it just made him shiver to look at it, it was so real.'

'Come to think of it, I believe I do recollect something about Min having queer notions. I know us boys used to think she was stuck-up. What did she mean about the vow and about this picture being of you, by her?'

For a moment there was only the little click of her thimble against the needle. Then she said, 'I guess I can’t make it clear to you, Jake. Minnie always did have her own way of putting things. We had lots of fancies, as we used to call them. But I suppose she was thinking about our old dreams. If they’d come true, she might have painted me, sitting like that.'

'It don’t look much like you, even when you was young,' was the reply of the man, not given to 'fancies'; 'but what is it about the vow?'

'I don’t know,' said his wife shortly.

It was one of the few lies she had ever told her husband. Just why, having told him so much, she couldn’t tell him that Minnie Jackson and she had promised each other that, no matter what happened, nothing should keep them from realizing their ambitions, and that each year they would give a report to each other on their birthday, she could not have said. But suddenly her throat contracted and she could not see the patch on the coat.

'How this lamp does smoke!' she said, as she brushed her hand over her eyes.

'Well,' yawned her husband, 'I guess most folks, leastwise most girls, have silly notions when they’re young. Who’d ever think to see you now, that you ever had any such ideas? You’re a good wife for a farmer, Em. There ain’t a better woman anywhere, than you.'

It was one of the few times in all the years of their marriage that he had praised her. Jacob Black had never been one to question life or to marvel at its wonders. For him, it held no wonders. The spell of life had caught him when he was young. He had 'fallen in love' with Emmeline Mead and he had married her. She had borne him eight children. Five of them had lived. If Jacob Black had thought about it at all, which he did not, he would have said that was the way life went. One was young. Then one grew old. When one was young, one married, and probably there were children.

The wing of romance had brushed him so lightly in its passing, that at the time it had brought to him no yearning for an unknown rapture, no wonder at the mystery of life. After twenty-one years, if he had given it any thought whatsoever, he would have said that their marriage 'had turned out well.' Em had been a good wife; she had risen at daylight and worked until after dark. She wasn’t foolish about money. She never went to town unless there was something to take her there. She went to church, of course, and when it was her turn, she entertained the Ladies' Aid. Such recreations were to be expected. Yes, Em had been a good wife. But then, he had been a good husband. He never drank. He was a church member. He always hired a woman to do the housework, for two weeks, when there was a new baby. He let Em have the butter and chicken money.

The clock struck nine.

'I’m going to bed,' he said, 'there’s lots to do to-morrow. Nearly through your mending?'

'No. Anyhow, I guess I’ll wait up for John and Victoria to come home.'

'Better not, if you’re tired. John may get in early, but probably Vic will be mooning along.'

'What?' she cried. 'What do you mean by that, Jake Black?'

'Say, Em, are you blind? Can’t you see there’s something between her and Jim? Haven’t you noticed that it isn’t John he comes to see now? Haven’t you seen how Vic spruces up nights when, he’s coming over?'

The woman dropped her sewing in her lap. The needle ran into her thumb. Mechanically, she pulled it out. She was so intent, looking at him, trying to grasp his meaning, that she did not notice the drops of blood which fell on her mending. When she spoke, it was with difficulty.

'O Jake, it can’t be. It just can’t be.'

'Why can’t it?'

'Why, he’s not good enough for Victoria.'

'Not good enough? Why, what’s the matter with Jim? I never heard a word against him and I’ve known him ever since he was a little shaver. He’s steady as can be, and a hard worker.'

'I know all that. I wasn’t thinking about such things. I was thinking about--oh, about--other things.'

'Other things? Well, what on earth is the matter with the other things? Forman’s place is as good as any hereabouts, and it’s clear, and only three children to be divided among. There’s money in the bank, too, I’ll bet.'

'But Victoria is so young, Jake. Why, she’s just a girl!'

'She’s old as you was, when we got married, Em.'

He went into the kitchen for another drink of water. When he came through the room, he bent over to pick up his shoes.

'Say, Em,' he said, 'you surely don’t mean what you’ve been saying, do you, about Jim not being good enough for Vic? 'Cause it ain’t likely that she’ll ever get another chance as good.'

She did not answer. The man looking at her, the man who had lived with her for more than twenty years, did not know that a sudden rage against life was in her heart. He did not know that the lost dreams of her youth were crying out in her against the treachery of life. He did not know that the bandage which the years had mercifully bound across her eyes had fallen away, and that she was seeing the everlasting tragedy of the conflict between dreams and life. He did not know that, in that moment, she was facing the supreme sorrow of motherhood in the knowledge that the beloved child cannot be spared the disillusions of the years. He only knew that she was worried.

'Don’t you be giving Vic any of your queer notions,' he said, in a voice which was almost harsh.

Jacob Black was an easygoing man. But he had set his heart on seeing his daughter the wife of Jim Forman. Did not the Forman farm join his on the southeast?

Until she heard him walking around in their bedroom overhead, she sewed on. Then she laid down her work. She picked up the picture. It was small, but she held it clutched in both hands, as though it were heavy. It would not have mattered to her if she had known that critics of art scoffed at the picture. To her it was more than a masterpiece; it was a miracle. Had she not felt like the pictured saint, when she had sat at the organ, years ago? She, too, had raised her eyes in just that way; and if actual roses had not fallen on the keys, the mystical ones of hopes too fragile for words, and beauties only dreamed of, had fallen all about her. There was a time when she had played the little organ in church. How her soul had risen on the chords which she struck for the Doxology, which always came just before the benediction! Even after Victoria was born, she had played the organ for a time. Then the babies came fast, and when one has milking to do and dishes to wash and one’s fingers are needle-pricked, it is hard to find the keys. Also, when one works from daylight till dark, one wants only rest. There is a sleep too deep for dreams.

It was years since Emmeline Black had dreamed except in the terms of her motherhood. For herself, the dream had gone. She did not rebel. She accepted. It was the way of life with women like her. She would not have said her life was hard. Jacob Black had been a good husband to her. Only a fool, having married a poor farmer, could expect that the dreams of a romantic girl would ever come true. Once she had expected it, of course. That was when Jacob Black had seemed as a prince to Emmeline Mead. She had felt the wing of romance as it brushed past her. But that was long ago. She did not like the routine of her life. But neither did she hate it. For herself, it had come to seem the natural, the expected thing. But for Victoria--

Her dreams had not all gone when Victoria was born. That first year of her marriage, it had seemed like playing at being a housekeeper to do the work for Jacob and herself. She had loved her garden, and often, just because she had loved to be with him and because she loved the smell of the earth and the growing things which came from it, she had gone into the fields with her husband. Then, when the year was almost gone, her baby was born. She had loved the other children as they came, and she had grieved for the girls and the boy who had died; but Victoria was the child of her dreams. The other children had been named for aunts and uncles and grandfathers, and so had satisfied family pride. But that first baby had been named for a queen.

None of the boys cared for music. They 'took after' the Black family. But Victoria, so Emmeline felt, belonged to her. She had always been able to play by ear, and her voice was sweet and true. The butter-and-egg money for a long time had gone for music lessons for Victoria. When the girl was twelve, her mother had begun a secret fund. Every week she pilfered a few pennies from her own small income and put them away. Some time Victoria was to go to the city and have lessons from the best teacher there. For five years she did not purchase a thing for herself to wear, except now and then a dress pattern of calico. That was no real sacrifice to her. The hard thing was to deny pretty clothes to Victoria.

Then a year of sickness came. She tried to forget the little sum of money hidden away. Surely their father could pay the bills. If she had spent the butter-and-egg money, as he had thought she had done, he would have had to pay them alone. But when the doctor said that Henry must be taken to the county seat for an operation, there was no thought of questioning her duty. Her husband had been surprised and relieved when she gave him her little hoard. It was another proof that he had a good wife, and one who was not foolish about money.

At last, her sewing was finished. She went into the kitchen and began to set the bread. But her thoughts were not on it. She was thinking of Emmeline Mead and her dreams, and how they had failed her. She had expected Victoria Black to redeem those dreams. And now Victoria was to marry and go the same hard way toward drab middle-age. She heard some one step on the front porch. There was a low murmur of voices for a moment and a little half-stifled laugh. Then the door opened.

'Mother, is that you?' came something which sounded half-whisper, half-laugh from the door.

She raised her eyes from the bread-pan. She smiled. But she could not speak. It seemed as if the fingers of some world-large hand had fastened around her heart. To her Victoria had always been the most beautiful, the most wonderful being, on earth. But she had never seen this Victoria before. The girl was standing in the door--eyes shining, lips trembling, her slim young body swaying as if to some hidden harmony. Then she leaped across the kitchen, and threw her strong arms round her mother.

'I’m so glad you’re up and alone! O mother, I had to see you to-night. I couldn’t have gone to bed without talking to you. I was thinking it was a blessed thing father always sleeps so hard, for I could tip-toe in and get you and he’d never know the difference.' She stifled a little laugh and went on, 'Come on, outdoors. It is too lovely to stay inside.' She drew her mother, who had not yet spoken, through the door. 'I guess, mother,' she said, as if suddenly shy when the confines of the kitchen were left behind for the star-lighted night, 'that you know what it is, don’t you?'

For answer, Emmeline Black sobbed.

'Don’t, mother, don’t. You mustn’t mind. Just think how near home I’ll be! Isn’t that something to be glad about?'

Her mother nodded her head as she wiped her eyes on her gingham apron.

'I wondered if you saw it coming?' the girlish voice went on. 'You never let on, and the kids never teased me any. So I thought perhaps you told 'em not to. I haven’t felt like being teased about Jim, some way. It’s been too wonderful, you know.'

Not until that moment did Emmeline Black acknowledge the defeat of her dreams. Wonderful! To love and be loved by Jim Forman, of whom the most that could be said was that he was steady and a hard worker, and that there were only two other children to share his father’s farm!

'Don’t cry, mother,' implored Victoria, 'though I know why you’re doing it. I feel like crying, too, only something won’t let me cry to-night. I guess I’m just too happy ever to cry again.'

Still her mother had not spoken. She had stopped crying and stood twisting her apron with nervous fingers.

'Mother,' said Victoria, suddenly, 'you like Jim, don’t you?'

She said it as if the possibility of any one’s not liking Jim was preposterous. But, nevertheless, there was anxiety in her voice.

Her mother nodded her head.

'Then why aren’t you really glad? I thought you would be, mother.'

There was no resisting that appeal in Victoria’s voice. Never in her life had she failed her daughter. Was she to fail her in this hour?

'You seem like a little girl to me, Victoria,' she found voice to say, at last. 'I guess all mothers feel like this when their daughters tell them they are going to leave them. I reckon I never understood until just now, why my mother acted just like she did when I told her your father and I were going to be married.'