FullReads

“Well!” said Emma.

And, “Well?” said T.A.

She sat fingering the letter, her breakfast cooling before her. “Of course, Jock wants to get into it. I wish he could. I’d be so proud of him. He’d be beautiful in khaki. But there’s work to do right here. And he ought to be willing to wait six months.”

“They can’t wait six months over there, Emma. They need him now.”

“Oh, come, T.A.! One man–“

“Multiplied by a million. Look at Fisk. Just such another case. Look at–“

The shrill summons of the telephone cut him short. Emma’s head came up alertly. She glanced at her wrist-watch and gave a little exclamation of horror.

“That’s for me! I’m half an hour late! The first time, too.” She was at the telephone a second later, explanatory, apologetic. Then back in the dining-room doorway, her cheeks flushed, tugging at her gloves, poised for flight. “Sorry, dear. But this morning was so important, and that letter about Jock upset me. I’m afraid I’m a rotten soldier.”

“I’m afraid you are, Emma.”

She stared at that. “Why–! Oh, you’re still angry at something. Listen, dear–I’ll call for you at the office to-night at five, and we’ll walk home together. Wait for me. I may be a few minutes late–“

She was off. The front door slammed sharply. Buck sat very still for a long minute, staring down at the coffee cup whose contents he did not mean to drink. The light from the window cameoed his fine profile. And you saw that his jaw was set. His mind was a thousand miles away, in Chicago, Illinois, with the boy who wanted to fight and couldn’t.

Emma, flashing down Fifth Avenue as fast as wheels and traffic rules would permit, saw nothing of the splendid street. Her mind was a thousand miles away, in Chicago, Illinois.

And a thousand miles away, in Chicago, Illinois, Jock McChesney, three hours later, was slamming down the two big windows of his office. From up the street came the sound of a bugle and of a band playing a brisk march. And his office windows looked out upon Michigan Avenue. If you know Chicago, you know the building that housed the Raynor offices–a great gray shaft, towering even above its giant neighbours, its head in the clouds, its face set toward the blue beauty of Lake Michigan. Until very recently those windows of his office had been a source of joy and inspiration to Jock McChesney. The green of Grant Park just below. The tangle of I.C. tracks beyond that, and the great, gracious lake beyond that, as far as the eye could see. He had seen the changes the year had brought. The lake dotted with sinister gray craft. Dog tents in Grant Park, sprung up overnight like brown mushrooms. Men–mere boys, most of them–awkward in their workaday clothes of office and shop, drilling, wheeling, marching at the noon hour. And parades, and parades, and parades. At first Jock, and, in fact, the entire office staff–heads of departments, writers, secretaries, stenographers, office boys–would suspend business and crowd to the windows to see the pageant pass in the street below. Stirring music, khaki columns, flags, pennants, horses, bugles. And always the Jackie band from the Great Lakes Station, its white leggings twinkling down the street in the lead of its six-foot-six contortionistic drum-major.

By October the window-gazers, watching the parades from the Raynor windows, were mostly petticoated and exclamatory. Jock stayed away from the window now. It seemed to his tortured mind that there was a fresh parade hourly, and that bugles and bands sounded a taunting note.

“Where are you! (sounded the bugle)
Where are you?
Where are YOU?!!!
Where
are
you?
Where–are–you-u-u-u–“

He slammed down the windows, summoned a stenographer, and gave out dictation in a loud, rasping voice.

“Yours of the tenth at hand, and contents noted. In reply I wish to say–“

(Boom! Boom! And a boom-boom-boom!)