Whenever it so happened that he failed to get a sufficient amount of this from one or the other of these men, or from his adoring aunts, he drew it from himself. He could not have named a night for months that he had fallen asleep without first thinking of the splendid soldier he would make. He would let his imagination run riot and live through battle after battle, leading his men intrepidly--men who loved the very ground on which he trod. Into the thickest places where old veterans could not have stood the gaff, he went with calm indifference. Victory followed victory--complete, hilarious victories! Dead Germans, prisoners, and cannon which Jeb flung into the game bag of his waking dreams, if put side by side, would have reached around the world.
"Tis true, that this top-lofty state of mind suffered a complete relapse when Bernstorff got his papers, and for the first time Jeb seriously felt the cold fingers of fear reach out and touch him. It had been a peculiar change, that for awhile startled him more than the imminence of war. He might have been thrilled over the wild race, the reckless dash, as of unbridled horses, with which a nation long in suspense hurtled toward a finality; but it was an elation thoroughly dampened by dread.
As the days had pa.s.sed, however, and nothing more terrible happened, his courage came creeping back, even growing into modest bravado. Excursions to the country with his rifle became frequent again. He began to feel himself stiffen-up when Miss Sallie would tell a neighbor how he was getting ready for the possible war; this neighbor told other neighbors, and he was soon basking in admiring looks which were as meat and drink to him. It was on this crest of popularity that Marian found him when she returned to Hillsdale.
With a face utterly devoid of expression she watched him now while he held back the gate with one hand while trying to stuff the bulkily folded targets into his pocket.
"Maybe you"d rather carry them, Marian," he said, "and we can look at them again on the way downtown!"
She did not answer.
"I always take them down to your father, you know," he said again.
"I should think daddy would be immensely flattered," she observed, pa.s.sing out to the street.
Scarcely had the gate closed after them when Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie, guilt written in every line of their radiant faces, tiptoed from the house, stepped into the garden and ran to the fence. As they had formerly done while watching Colonel Hampton stalk angrily townward, they now, also, leaned farther and farther over the pickets, keeping the young people who comprised their hope in view to the very last.
CHAPTER II
Colonel Hampton, after leaving the Tumpson sisters in a fog of astonishment, did not pause at the hotel and sink into the porch chair that had become his by right of daily occupation. This morning his mind was set upon greater things. Affectionate greetings from pa.s.sing friends hardly checked him, and he strode deliberately onward to the office of the Hills County _Eagle_, the daily, owned and edited by Amos Strong--a long ago friend, although for twice a score of years his most unrelenting political foe. There had been a time when the town prophesied a "meeting" between these two, but their enmity had finally congealed into nothing more deadly than complete estrangement.
Now, indifferent to a look of consternation on a reporter"s face, the Colonel stamped across the "city room," glared around until he saw a gla.s.s door marked "editor," pushed it violently open without knocking and closed it after him. This had not happened in the reporter"s memory; it had, on the other hand, been just the thing everybody feared might come to pa.s.s.
The grizzled editor did not immediately look up; yet, when he did, his astonishment was complete, and his ever alert mind reviewed the _Eagle"s_ recent utterances to discover if therein lay a reason for this visit. Recalling nothing of particular belligerency--at any rate, nothing against the Colonel--he said crisply:
"Take a seat, Colonel Hampton."
"Colonel Hampton will never take a seat in your office, sir," his caller thundered, greatly emphasizing "Colonel Hampton." And, answering a further look of perplexity in the editor"s face that now betrayed a growing anger, he continued jerkily: "We"re coming very near to war, sir; this country, our country, against those sickening anti-Christs who bayonet children, rape women, and wantonly torture unto death defenseless men--and boast of it, sir; gloat over it! It"ll be our country against that polluted swamp of slimy creatures, sir; and in our country there shall be neither Democrats nor Republicans! Politics be d.a.m.ned, sir! Until those breeders of paresis--those Hohenzollern upstarts who, as G.o.d is my witness, are the vomit of h.e.l.l--shall be stripped of their freedom, you and I cast our vote for Humanity! Amos, I want to take your hand, and I want you to take mine!"
Mr. Strong sprang to his feet and his chair fell heavily to the floor.
It was this alarming noise that reached the listening reporter"s ear and brought him in haste to his chief"s aid; yet when he had pushed open the door, unnoticed by those within, he drew quickly back and tiptoed to his desk. There are some things at which even a reporter may not gaze.
"Do you agree with me that there should and will be war, Roger?" Mr.
Strong was saying half an hour later. They were comfortably settled now, with cigars alight, and except for slight traces where tears had marked their cheeks no one would have suspected aught but a lifetime of congeniality.
"Both should and will, Amos! It is one of the few expressions in your columns with which I have thoroughly concurred."
Mr. Strong burst into a merry laugh and waved the handkerchief that was still in his hand, crying:
"Truce, truce! You forget, Roger!"
"So I do, so I do, Amos! We sha"n"t open the old wounds again--at least, not so long as our country is in need of cohesion. My anger, I a.s.sure you, was never as great as my amazement that one of your talents could--but there, there! I may have been somewhat wrong, also--as a matter of fact, Amos, I shouldn"t be surprised if that were so! Tell me of Marian! When is she coming back to us again?"
A look of new pleasure crossed the editor"s grizzled face as he answered:
"She got home last night, Roger--and the first thing she did was to ask about you, whom she believed I hated!" Again he laughed, with a buoyancy that had not been in his voice for many years.
"She did that?" the Colonel cried, his eyes filling with tears. "G.o.d bless her! She"s a n.o.ble girl, worthy of her n.o.ble father! Do you know, Amos, I"m beginning to believe that she showed extraordinary foresight in taking that training! Why, even I considered it a romantic waste of time,--and so did you, Roger," he turned accusingly. "Admit it!"
"I did, but I wanted to humor her; for the purpose was n.o.ble, and it does a girl no harm. But I hope she won"t hold me to a foolish promise I made, to let her go across should we become involved in this t.i.tanic struggle."
"G.o.d guide her aright," the Colonel whispered; to which his old friend murmured:
"Amen."
"I stopped by the Tumpson"s," the Colonel resumed, after they had been for a moment silent. "Miss Sallie tells me that Jeb is out again with his rifle, as usual, and is showing more eagerness to be ready. I believe all our young men will respond n.o.bly if the President calls for volunteers."
"Without a doubt of it, Roger; and Jeb ought to make a fine soldier--although he"s had no military training."
"Well, no; but he"s a handsome fellow, and a gentleman, and his father was our friend, Amos. I can coach him, and give him a pretty fair idea of what war is like."
"There"s some talk of schools being inaugurated for teaching such chaps as he, should the struggle really come; schools where the most approved methods of modern warfare will be demonstrated by our regularly qualified officers."
"Schools be d.a.m.ned, sir," the Colonel thundered. "What school, what infant West Pointer, is qualified better than I, who fought my weight in wildcats four successive years!--or you, sir, who I"ve no doubt fought well, too, although under the banner of a----"
"Truce, truce!" Mr. Strong cried, this time laughing till tears of pleasure ran down his cheeks. "At Shiloh, Roger, you knew how to honor a truce, for I carried the flag to you myself--and you weren"t old enough to raise a mustache, either!"
"So you did, Amos; so you did--and, by gad, your cheeks were as smooth as a girl"s, too!" the Colonel"s voice dropped to the softness of reminiscence, growing harsh again as he added: "If I temporarily forget the rules of honorable warfare, it"s because my memory has been corrupted by the vileness of those Outcasts who, in their ego-mania, blaspheme the Almighty G.o.d by claiming kinship with Him. I wish you and I could go over there and clean up that pestilential Prussian herd! By gad, sir, they"ve the hoof and mouth disease, each confounded one of them! Whenever I think of them I get rush of blood to the head!"
"And rush of words to the tongue, Roger," the editor added, good naturedly. "But, my friend, such blasts of hatred are too German to be acceptable. We"re not a nation of small venom!"
"I don"t give a cracky whether we are or not! Those rag-tag and bobtail vermin are calling us names!--and, if I can"t fight, by gad, I"ll cuss back!"
"No, you won"t, and be part of the big, conquering nation that you are.
Those "hymns of hate" don"t affect England!--neither do the scores of lewd verses that flow like filth all over Germany! They are merely the wails of disappointed people, Roger,--the shrieks of a cruelly tricked national soul! Let them pa.s.s!"
"Disappointed people fiddle-sticks!--and I say that it"s a tragic mistake to let anything pa.s.s! The most dangerous propaganda waged by German spies in this country--more alarming in its results thus far than the blowing up of munition factories, the setting afire of grain elevators, the enciting of Mexico--has been the honorless skill with which they have fed the American mind upon the idea of a disgruntled Germany, a starving Germany, and all such twaddle! Can"t you see why such tales are being circulated? Simply to inject into our minds the poison of national inertia, so that when war comes--as it some day shall--every fellow will be likely to think: "Oh, it can"t last long now!--let the other boys get ready; I haven"t time!""
"I hadn"t thought of that, Roger."
"Then think of it now; and, furthermore, remember this, Amos: that no sooner will war be declared before their propaganda will go one step farther. Do you know what it will be? Peace talk! Crumbling Germany ready to make terms! Why? Simply to keep filling our systems with more of the national inertia poison--to keep us r.e.t.a.r.ded--to keep us from dashing into the big game with every fibre quivering, and our souls afire to finish it up! Berlin"s hope is that while America grows sleek with too much optimism, Germany will grow stronger to prolong her insolent and murderous campaign. Open your columns, Amos, and shout these truths broadcast--for therein will rest the salvation of our country! Germany poor in food or munitions?--fiddle-sticks! The German people disgruntled?--twaddle!"
"Where do you get this idea?" Mr. Strong looked at him in amazement.
"Out of my good, common horse-sense brain! You recall that story of the German Government confiscating the people"s copper utensils and taking copper from the roofs of buildings, to keep up the manufacture of ammunition? Any school boy should have known that they didn"t appropriate one copper pot, nor lift an inch of copper roofing, when the vast mines of Sweden pour their enormous output--not only of copper, but of unrivaled iron ore--in almost a continuous stream from Stockholm to Lubeck Bay; and von Capelle"s fleet is there to see it safely across, too! The cry came forth that they were short of cotton for explosives--and that cry was sent out on the very day a national holiday had been proclaimed to celebrate their discovery of a method by which all types of high explosives can be made without cotton! Why, Amos, lying is a fine art with that government! I read in your own paper a long and pathetic ditty, cabled from Amsterdam, about "starving Germany!" Don"t you know that, with the millions of deported Belgians, Serbians, and Poles--to say nothing of the war prisoners--Germany should have this year a larger acreage under cultivation than at any time since the Confederation? They know how to farm intensively over there, and get their fertilizer, as they have already been getting their fats--from their own dead. These are but the beginnings of other things our common sense would teach us, were we not hypnotized with a morbid craving to swallow their neatly prepared fairy-tales!"
"Roger," Mr. Strong sprang to his feet, "by the eternal, you speak inspired words! They _have_ poisoned us with lies of a starving Imperial Government; they"ll continue to poison us with lies of an early peace--and then prepare fresh blows while we wallow in our self-complaisance! Open my columns? They"ll blaze as columns of righteous fire!" Leaning forward, he added: "Why shouldn"t we be getting ready here in Hillsdale? There"s fine material for a company of militia!
Will you join with me in equipping one?"
The Colonel banged his hand down on the table.
"Done!" he cried.
"And there," the editor continued, pointing out of the window, "is the captain for it!"