“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 chilling even to Potsdam, one guesses—and then through an April night went almost quietly the steady work: we were at war with Germany.
The bugles sounded across the continent; drums and fifes played up and down the city streets and in town and village squares and through the countrysides. Faintly in all ears there was multitudinous noise like distant, hoarse cheering... and a sound like that was what Dora Yocum heard, one night, as she sat lonely in her room. The bugles and fifes and drums had been heard about the streets of the college town, that day, and she thought she must die of them, they hurt her so, and now to be haunted by this imaginary cheering—
She started. Was it imaginary?
She went downstairs and stood upon the steps of the dormitory in the open air. No; the cheering was real and loud. It came from the direction of the railway station, and the night air surged and beat with it.
Below her stood the aged janitor of the building, listening. “What's the cheering for?” she asked, remembering grimly that the janitor was one of her acquaintances who had not yet stopped “speaking” to her. “What's the matter?”
“It's a good matter,” the old man answered. “I guess there must be a big crowd of 'em down there. One of our students enlisted to-day, and they're givin' him a send-off. Listen to 'em, how they do cheer. He's the first one to go.”
She went back to her room, shivering, and spent the next day in bed with an aching head. She rose in the evening, however—a handbill had been slid under her door at five o'clock, calling a “Mass Meeting” of the university at eight, and she felt it her duty to go; but when she got to the great hall she found a seat in the dimmest corner, farthest from the rostrum.