Part 11

Her make-believe mood again. She was playing at being in love. She blew him a tantalizing kiss before the illusion had time to die, and disappeared into the house. Robert stood there for a moment. He realised that Margaret was only playing, that she had probably learned the words--yes, he even remembered where she had learned them--while taking the rôle of Juliet in her senior class play. Still the objective world was a series of illusions. What matter what Margaret was thinking or feeling within that pretty little head if she could always create such illusions. If she could always create them. He walked slowly back to his car. A cloud momentarily obscured the moon. The shadowy world of silver turned to black and then back to silver. If she could always do that.

In his room he found his official orders where he had stacked them on the chifferobe two days ago. He had forgotten to sort them. He yawned and began undressing leisurely. His hand brushed against the documents and he paused to stack them up again. Here was a copy of the telegram appointing him a second lieutenant in the Officers Reserve Corps, the order directing him to appear at Camp Eustis, the order assigning him to his company. And what was that scribbled across one of the envelopes? A poem.

“_The agéd pilgrim hastens on the road Nor stops to pluck the flowers by the way Lest Death o’ertake him ere the close of day._”

It sounded familiar. He read on to the end:

“_And here and there a scarlet memory._”

He suddenly remembered. Dorothy. McCall. McCall had scribbled the poem on an old envelope. Robert remembered lending it to him--in the hospital. But--yes, he had been right all the time. By a sort of instinct. He undressed, turned off the lights and raised the shades. The moonlight lay like a river of silver across the shadowy lawn. A world of illusion and of beauty. Tomorrow, he said, he would ask Margaret to set the day. They should be married as quickly as possible.

XXI

The next morning Robert awoke only after he had been called three times. The sun was shining brightly into his window and he realized that it was past the family breakfast hour. He lay in bed thinking of what he would do, found that he was still in bed and stretched leisurely. As long as he was late for breakfast he might as well be still later. He suddenly remembered his resolve to see Margaret and induce her to set their wedding as soon as possible.

Of course, he could not with propriety visit her this morning, after having seen her only a few hours before. He would wait until afternoon. In the meantime he must straighten those papers.

As his eyes fell upon the old envelope again he had an impulse to tear it, another to send it to McCall, and a third, which he followed, to keep it with his other records. He would keep it with certain other letters, as a woman might keep old rose petals--not to bloom again, but to remind one of the past.

He noticed a card, which he had at first mistaken for the postal ordering him to report at Plattsburg. Now he saw it was a white card with the words “Non Silba Sed Anthra” in large letters on the top line. “Non Silba Sed Anthra?” Where had that come from? Let’s see. That was Latin. Anyway, he knew what two of the words meant. He went to the bookcase and pulled out his Latin dictionary. There it was.

Now he remembered. That fat man had given it to him. Oh, yes, Jarvis. He picked up the card and read it:

“Sir, six thousand men who are preparing for eventualities have their eyes upon you. You are being weighed in the balance!

“The Call is coming! Are you able and qualified to respond?

“Discuss this matter with no one.

“Oohay-Oohay-Oopay.”

It seemed rather ridiculous, some sort of a practical joke, until he remembered the society with an equally ridiculous name--Trick Track Tribe--of which Jarvis and the Pinkneys had spoken. The society that was to protect the white race, womanhood, the United States Constitution and several other things. That reminded Robert that he had promised Howard Pinkney to see him.

Before his plate Robert found two letters. The one with the Chicago postmark he opened first and read over his oatmeal. Mrs. Hamilton came in and sat opposite, although she had long since eaten her breakfast.

“Oh, mother,” he exclaimed, “a letter from Bill McCall!”

“One of your college friends?”

“No. He’s the man I’ve been telling you about. Don’t you know? That Chicago newspaper man!”

“Oh, yes, it’s too bad that he doesn’t live in Corinth.”

“I’ve never really told you or dad all that he’s done for me.”

He laid the letter to one side and looked grave.

“He’s going to have an operation--a serious operation--on his eye. It’s going to take place tomorrow morning and he writes about it as though it were a joke!”

“Well, dear, maybe it’s not so serious as you think. Surgeons can do such marvelous things nowadays. Don’t you think you’d better finish your breakfast? Did he get it in the war?”

Robert nodded.

“Yes. I never told you the details. I was afraid it might--upset you, but Bill was wounded while trying to save me.”

Briefly he sketched the account of his rescue, minimizing as much as possible the danger to himself. His mother covered her face with her hands.

“If I had known it at the time I couldn’t have stood it, Robert.”

She took a seat beside him, placed her arm about his shoulders and rested her head against him. Mammy Chloe’s dark face appeared for a moment in the swinging door leading to the kitchen, a steaming plate of corn fritters in her hand, but she did not enter. Robert took his mother’s hand and was conscious of innumerable little details of color and form.

“Just think,” he said, “not to be able to see anything!” Not to be able to see, he thought, the sun gleaming through a window and falling in bands of gold across the blue rug, with tiny dust motes dancing in them. Not to see snowy linen or shining silverware or glittering glass. Not to see the warm glow of polished rosewood and the cheerful glow of ivory woodwork. Not to see one’s mother or one’s own face in the mirror. He shut his eyes for a moment.

“And to think that I can’t do anything,” he said at length. “That I can’t even talk to him. And he writes about ‘going over the top once more.’”

His mother tried to comfort him.

“I’m sure he’ll come through it all right,” she said. “It’s too late to send him a letter, but you could send him a telegram.”

“Yes.” Hamilton rose. “I must do that.” He took up the second envelope mechanically and opened it. It was a card like the one Jarvis had given him, with the same heading: “Non Silba Sed Anthra” across the top. The Latin annoyed him, the childish air of mystery, evidently designed to impress persons who did not own Latin dictionaries. There was the same silly signature, Oohay-Oohay-Oopay--pig Latin, of course, for H. H. P., Howard Pinkney. Who else would be asinine enough to think of it? Another message, designed to be mysterious, followed the heading:

“Sir:

“You have been weighed in the balance and found not wanting!

“Strong Men--Brave Men (evidently Pinkney himself)--R-E-A-L Men (probably little Jarvis). We need such men. We know you are one.

“The Bogeys of the Fourth Dimension will shortly issue their call. Be discreet, preserve silence and bide the coming.

“Discuss this matter with no one.

“Oohay-Oohay-Oopay.”

Robert was thinking of McCall. The follow-up invitation of the Trick Track Tribe jarred on him. He thrust the card in his pocket and walked out to send his telegram.

As he walked toward his street car he offered little prayers to a God whom he now realized he had invoked all too seldom of late. He wondered why he should have been saved and McCall chosen to undergo this ordeal. And how would Dorothy take it? Would she be at his bedside?

In Paris the operation had been accepted fatalistically and in a spirit of bravado by both of them. That was because it lay still so far in the future and, too, perhaps, because they then still retained the war-time psychology, the callous outlook upon life and death that frequent contact with these had formed.

The car jolted and was dirty. The blacks, he noticed, were squeezed together in a section dirtier than the one in which he sat. It was growing warm. In another few weeks summer would be there.

Pinkney was just leaving the telegraph office.

“Oh, yes, I was going to see you today,” said Robert with a guilty feeling.

“So you got our summons from the Fourth Dimension?” inquired Pinkney with an earnest smile. “We need brave men, real men, Hamilton, to carry on our work.” There was an allusion to the flaming rood that Robert did not understand and he was able to get away only long enough to send a short message to McCall. Pinkney took his arm and insisted on escorting him to his office. On the way they paused to exchange a few words with acquaintances, some of whom referred mysteriously to the coming concilium.

Pinkney’s office was a truly magnificent one, just off the main office of the Corinth Lumber Company, with a commanding sweep of the city’s principal thoroughfare. One’s feet sank into a soft, thick rug of mauve and one’s eye immediately took in the glass-covered mahogany desk and the decorations on the wall--a silk American flag under glass, his captain’s commission in the home guards, a college diploma, a membership in some civic organization and a poem “To My Mother”--all framed. Not until they had come quite into the room did they notice that they were not alone. A rather tall, wavy-haired man with shrewd blue eyes and a straight-line mouth was standing at the window, chewing a cigar. He wore a light checked suit and tan oxfords, and had the appearance of looking older than he really was. As he saw Pinkney he waved his right hand in an indefinite salute without, at the same time, straightening up.

“Captain Hamilton,” said Pinkney, “this is Mr. Griffith.”

They shook hands, Robert mumbled an acknowledgment and Mr. Griffith said he was very glad to meet him.

“Mr. Griffith--later you’ll know him by a rather more pretentious title, Robert--is what I might term the brains of the Tribe,” remarked Pinkney. “Won’t you gentlemen take a seat? Now we can talk more comfortably. Cigars? Oh, try a _good_ brand.”

Griffith smiled so that all his teeth, including a gold tooth in front and several gold-filled ones, shone.

“That’s just some o’ his bull. Don’t you pay any attention to him,” he laughed.

“No, that’s the whole truth. You know, Captain, while you were fighting for civilization on Flanders Fields, Griffith was one of the men who was fighting the good fight over here through the most potent weapon that man has ever devised.” Griffith grinned as though Pinkney were quoting a phrase with which he was familiar, or, perhaps, had even coined himself. “That weapon is nothing else than publicity!”

Hamilton nodded. Since his return he had learned that cotton, that wood, that conservation of coal and food, that the county councils of defense, that the women, that the Y. M. C. A., that a hundred different things had won the war, and he was not surprised to hear now that publicity was the most potent weapon of mankind.

“Griffith here is an old newspaper man.”

“Oh, I know a newspaper man,” said Hamilton, to make talk. “One of my best friends in the army was correspondent for the Chicago Times.”

“What’s his name?”

“McCall.”

“Sure. I’ve read his stuff. So he was over with your outfit. Gee, he could have cleaned up if he’d been home.”

Pinkney resumed charge of the conversation and employed it in briefly sketching the more recent portion of Griffith’s biography. He had been connected with some newspaper when the war broke out, what connection, was evidently unimportant, Pinkney casting all newspaper men in one huge category as he might walnut logs or hardwood. At the outbreak of the World War he had foreseen the tremendous importance of publicity and had offered his services to various organizations in raising funds, recruiting members, and so forth. He had been secretary of the first drive ever held in Corinth to raise money for the Belgian war sufferers. Later when the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., the Salvation Army, the Near East, the Chinese, the French and several local and state organizations had started their drives Griffith’s services had been in demand.

“Corinth went over the top on every drive through this man,” said Pinkney proudly.

The expression “over the top” grated on Hamilton. It was the same phrase McCall had used in describing his coming operation.

“Weren’t you the first man to use ‘over the top’ to describe exceeding a quota?” asked Pinkney.

“Some say I was,” smiled Griffith. “But I’ve got to be going, folks. I’m mapping out a campaign to cover the entire United States.” He leaned over the desk, and drew diagrams on it with his finger as he spoke. There were hard, practical lines about his mouth, and his eyes narrowed almost to slits. “See, we’ll cover every section. We’ll have a perfect military organization with a commander-in-chief at the head.”

He went on, sketching rapidly with his forefinger on the mahogany his idea of a feudalistic system that would make the Tribe all powerful in the United States. There were strategic positions to be carried at all costs--certain localities in each state which offered an easy entrance. There were districts, corresponding to congressional districts, that must be covered by an army of Bogeys. Here was a citadel hard to break through. Here a breach in the walls. He waxed more and more enthusiastic over his plan. His words came more and more forcibly. His forefinger flashed faster and faster. His eyes gleamed. He leaned over the desk and pounded on it with his fist.

A transformed figure, Hamilton thought, from the man who had slouched against the wall when he had first entered--an almost fanatical leader, carried away with an idea. The plan was made up of bits of military science, of salesmanship, perhaps picked up through some correspondence course, of the technique of carrying on drives. Out of his miscellaneous reading, evidently, and out of an idea upon which he had been brooding perhaps for years, this man had evolved his huge “campaign.” Hamilton guessed that he was a few years above the draft age and reflected ironically what might have happened if Griffith, with his almost insane imagination, had been placed in charge of a body of troops in France.

“And we’re going to have you with us, Captain Hamilton,” exclaimed Griffith at last, shaking hands and making for the door. “Got a blank? All right, let him fill it out. The concilium meets Tuesday night. Only a few more days and we can get him in on this. Well, I’m glad I met you, Captain.”

Griffith put on his soft felt hat a little to one side and walked out. Hamilton made a movement as if to follow, too.

“Wait a minute, Robert, fill this out!”

Pinkney removed a card from his drawer and handed it to Robert.

“What we need is men who have been overseas, preferably officers, in order to get the soldiers interested in it.”

Robert looked at the row of questions on the card. Was his motive in answering serious? His age, occupation, birthplace, length of local residence and so forth.

“This is worse than an income tax questionnaire,” laughed Robert. “They want to know the color of my hair and eyes, where my parents were born, and my religion. Well, that’s easy enough. But what’s the idea of asking my politics?”

Pinkney smiled. “Oh, some of the questions, I suppose, aren’t really necessary. But we wish to be absolutely exclusive. Suppose a man should answer that he was a Socialist or an Anarchist?”

“Why in the devil would an Anarchist want to join the Trick Track Tribe? He’s opposed to all government. Why should he pay dues to belong to a sort of feudal government, according to the way Griffith outlined it?”

“Well, he might--I suppose he really wouldn’t, but that really isn’t it. Oh, you’ll find out after you join.”

Robert had been asked to join other secret organizations. In every case there had been a certain air of mystery about it and a great to do about selecting only persons of a high level for membership, and, although he had joined only the exclusive Corinth Club, he had always suspected that the mysteriousness and air of exclusiveness of the others had been maintained principally with a view to making membership seem more difficult and hence more desirable. A few questions struck his attention, however, as he jotted down his answers:

“Were your parents born in the United States of America?

“Are you a Gentile or a Jew?

“Do you believe in the principles of Pure Americanism?

“Do you believe in white supremacy?

“What is your religious faith?

“Of what church are you a member, if any?

“Of what religious faith are your parents?

“Do you owe any kind of allegiance to any foreign nation, government, institution, sect, people, ruler or person?”

Robert finished answering the questions and signed a statement “asserting and affirming” that the questions had been truthfully answered.

“Well,” he rose, “I don’t know whether I’ve answered all your questions satisfactorily or not--”

“We’ll let you know,” Pinkney waved the card dry and extended his hand. “But don’t worry about that. The initiation will be next Tuesday. We’ll tell you exactly where to be. Don’t forget!”

Robert walked out of the office with Pinkney’s injunction ringing in his ear. After all, the insistence of every one to have him join the Tribe was rather flattering. But the rest of the day his mind was not so much on the coming ceremony as on the outcome of McCall’s operation.

XXII

Robert did not ask Margaret to set the day for their marriage that day. It was no time for him to be planning his nuptials while his buddy was risking his life in the hospital. He told Margaret of the operation and she sympathized with him.

“What a dreadful thing the war is,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’d care to go anywhere under the circumstances. I can just understand the way you feel. We might just sit at home tonight if you wish and I’ll sing you some ballads.”

She confided her own troubles to him. Difficulty in getting the proper clothing in Corinth. Difficulty in getting her parents to appreciate her more liberal views. Difficulty in getting her mother to allow her to discard corsets. What had happened to the comparatively demure miss that Robert had left behind when he had left Corinth? Two years ago she would no more have dreamed of mentioning corsets than she would have dreamed of smoking a pipe. As for not wearing them, Robert remembered, with amusement, that whereas preachers in describing Corinth as a second Babylon two years ago had pointed to the fact that women were pinching in their waists and allowing their skirts to drag on the ground for the sake of increasing their fascination in the eyes of men, they were now decrying the shameless Jezebels who went with skirts but to their knees and without certain garments that women had always worn. Times had changed.

“I’m thinking of bobbing my hair,” said Margaret. She was curled up on the couch beside him in a childish posture which she would have thought unladylike before the war. “Irene Castle has bobbed hers. But mother has a fit whenever I mention the subject. She won’t even let me smoke. What do you think about it?”

“Oh, I suppose I’m a little old-fashioned--”

“All the men are like that. Howard says the same thing. Dad says it’s immoral. For heaven’s sakes, what’s the way you’ve got your hair combed got to do with morality? Or whether you smoke or not? Men can do everything and the minute a woman wants to do something they do, every one sits on her.”

Robert laughed.

“You look exactly like a small child protesting because you can’t have another piece of candy.”

Margaret pretended to cry in vexation.

“That’s the trouble with you men, you refuse to take us seriously.”

“Well, if you were old and ugly, I suppose I could sit down and argue the thing out with you. But in that case, of course, I wouldn’t care if you clipped your hair or chewed tobacco. Taking you as you are, however, and as I expect you to be to me, I prefer you with your hair exactly as it is--even if it is hard to comb--and without any cigarette between your ruby lips. Of course, in France I saw many splendid women with bobbed hair, and of course, every one smokes there. But that was Paris--and I don’t think you’d look well with a cigarette.”

“That’s no reason at all.”

“Perhaps it isn’t. Still, why shouldn’t it be? Suppose you didn’t look as well with bobbed hair or smoking a cigarette. Shouldn’t that be reason enough?”

“But supposing _I_ thought I looked just as well? If we were married would you forbid me to bob my hair?”

Hamilton considered.

“Not that it would do any good, perhaps, but I think I would.”

Margaret sat up very suddenly.

“There,” she wrenched the ring from her finger, “if you expect to control me after we’re married, we might as well call it off now before it’s too late.”

Robert turned white and his hand trembled as it went out. He stammered unintelligibly.

“Wh-why--why?”

Margaret suddenly laughed.

“I ought to have a snapshot of you. You really thought I meant it. You put your hand out to take it. There, now you may have the pleasure of putting it back again.”

She moved closer to him and placed her right arm about him as he replaced the ring.

“My, you look solemn. You look as though you were actually sorry that I didn’t give you the ring back.”

“No, but you did shock me. Why did you do it, dear?” As he said this he was dimly aware of the fact that there was a trace of truth in what she had said. A very faint trace. He drew her to him and patted her dark hair slowly.

“Well, that is what I wanted,” she blushed. “You’ve acted so cool lately. You haven’t kissed me once this evening.”

“Oh, yes, I did.”

“I mean since you came in. You seem always thinking about something else. So I gave you this shock to, to--”

He kissed her warmly on the lips. He noticed her eyes close and her head tilt back and against him. He heard her sigh and wondered that he could so coolly watch her the while. Poor child, she expected his love. He drew her still more closely to him.

“You haven’t said a word about--about our wedding.”

Robert flushed.

“No, darling. I haven’t talked over business matters with father yet. He seems so busy lately. But as soon as I do we’ll talk it over.”

Love is a peculiar thing, Hamilton thought on the way home. He felt sorry for Margaret. He sympathized with her. Still he had no desire to fondle her. He had done so simply because he knew that she desired it. Was this love? Or was it something else?

Perhaps it was the highest form of love--the love springing from sympathy. And still he had postponed making the decision as to the date of their marriage. Well, by right he should talk to his father first about the business. Here a whole month had gone by during which he had simply loafed about the house and attended innumerable society affairs.

He decided that he must return the poem to McCall, or rather to Dorothy, with a little note explaining how he had found it. Margaret’s actions had given him a new insight into such things. He appreciated better how Dorothy would miss it. He could enclose the poem and the note in another letter to Levin, whose address he had. Levin would surely know where to reach her. Perhaps it would be better to wait until tomorrow, until after the operation. In any case Dorothy would be glad to get the poem back again, but he would know better tomorrow how to word the letter to her.

XXIII

Robert was inspecting the rose bushes with his mother late the next day when Mammy Chloe appeared at the door.

“The telegram company want Mistah Cap’n Robe’t Hamilton at de phone.”

“All right, just a minute.”

“Dat’s what I tell ’em.”