"I'm not going to be," Ramsey said, quietly.
"By George!" And now Fred halted in front of him, both being huskily solemn. "I think I understand a little of what that means to you, old Ramsey; I think I do. I think I know something of what it costs you to make that resolution for your country's sake." Impulsively he extended his hand. "It's a pretty big thing for you to do. Will you shake hands?"
But Ramsey shook his head. "I didn't do it. I wouldn't ever have done anything just on account of her talkin' that way. She shut the door on me--it was a good while ago."
"She did! What for?"
"Well, I'm not much of a talker, you know, Fred," said Ramsey, staring at the pen he played with. "I'm not much of anything, for that matter, prob'ly, but I--well--I--"
"You what?"
"Well, I had to tell her I didn't feel about things the way she did.
She'd thought I had, all along, I guess. Anyway, it made her hate me or something, I guess; and she called it all off. I expect there wasn't much to call off, so far as she was concerned, anyhow." He laughed feebly. "She told me I better go and enlist."
"Pleasant of her!" Fred muttered. "Especially as we know what she thinks enlisting means." He raised his voice cheerfully. "Well, that's settled; and, thank God, old Mr. Bernstorff's on his way to his sweet little vine-clad cottage home! They're getting guns on the ships, and the big show's liable to commence any day. We can hold up our heads now, and we're going to see some great times, old Ramsey boy! It's hard on the home folks--Gosh! I don't like to think of that! And I guess it's going to be hard on a lot of boys that haven't understood what it's all about, and hard on some that their family affairs, and business, and so on, have got 'em tied up so it's hard to go--and of course there's plenty that just can't, and some that aren't husky enough--but the rest of us are going to have the big time in our lives. We got an awful lot to learn; it scares me to think of what I don't know about being any sort of a rear-rank private. Why, it's a regular ~profession~, like practising law, or selling for a drug house on the road. Golly! Do you remember how we talked about that, 'way back in freshman year, what we were going to do when we got out of college? You were going to be practising law, for instance, and I--well, f'r instance, remember Colburn; he was going to be a doctor, and he did go to some medical school for one year. Now he's in the Red Cross, somewhere in ~Persia~. Golly!"
He paused to digest this impossibility, then chattered briskly on.
"Well, there's ~one~ good old boy was with our class for a while, back in freshman year; I bet we won't see him in any good old army!
Old rough-neck Linski that you put the knob on his nose for. Tommie Hopper says he saw him last summer in Chicago soapboxin', yellin' his head off cussin' every government under the sun, but mostly ours and the Allies', you bet, and going to run the earth by revolution and representatives of unskilled labour immigrants, nobody that can read or write allowed to vote, except Linski. Tommie Hopper says he knows all about Linski; he never did a day's work in his life--too busy trying to get the workingmen stirred up against the people that exploit 'em! Tommie says he had a big crowd to hear him, though, and took up quite a little money for a 'cause' or something. Well, let him holler! I guess we can attend to him when we get back from over yonder. By George, old Ram, I'm gettin' kind of floppy in the gills!" He administered a resounding slap to his comrade's shoulder.
"It certainly looks as if our big days were walking toward us!"
He was right. The portentous days came on apace, and each one brought a new and greater portent. The faces of men lost a driven look besetting them in the days of badgered waiting, and instead of that heavy apprehension one saw the look men's faces must have worn in 1776 and 1861, and the history of the old days grew clearer in the new. The President went to the Congress, and the true indictment he made there reached scoffing Potsdam with an unspoken prophecy somewhat chiling even to Potsdam, one guesses--and then through an April night went almost quietly the steady work: we were at war with Germany.
