—3—

It was late Sunday night. Leon had not arrived. It was what you might call the eleventh hour and the fifty-ninth minute of this affair, and I was taking it for granted that I was in the soup up to my ears. The die apparently was cast. The Canwick blood seemed to have turned a sour yellow in at least one spot. I didn’t know where Leon was, but I should have assumed hours ago that he would not be there. I don’t know what I could have done about it anyway, except confess and get us both in a stew, but it got my goat to think that I forced myself into this martyrdom. But I was in it—and that’s all there was to it.

O Leon, thou personification of courage, thou dear brave considerate brother, I really felt more sorry for you than for myself. A man as yellow as you was a fit object for the world’s pity! I offered to help you with no idea that such consequences could be possible and with, I now realized, a mistaken conception of my brother’s love and gratitude. This situation ceased to be funny a long time ago and if I did not pity him more than I hated him, I’d have given the whole show away before this. And the joke of it was that no doubt he felt confident that I would never do that.

And he was quite right: I would go through with my end of this thing in spite of him and his yellow streak. No future day in this man’s army could be any worse than the one I had just put in—and which was not ended yet, so I felt sure that, barring accidents and given any lucky breaks at all, I’d be better able to stand what was coming than he would. If things ever got too bad, I’d throw up my part and let him take the consequences. After all, if I got caught in this, he was the one that would suffer. I doubt if he realized that!

However, being a generous and loving sister, I continued to give him the benefit of every possible doubt; I continued to hope that he hadn’t deliberately deserted me in this predicament. And I took it for granted that he would at least be willing to do everything he could to protect me, and later get me out of it. If he did as I told him in my letter, without regard to his petty prejudices and silly comforts, he probably would save me from all sorts of embarrassment and himself from any amount of trouble and worry—for I could get along safely, if I was at all lucky. I’d made up my mind to get along—to lick this game if I had to kill off the general staff man by man.

I didn’t know where he was now, but he’d surely get in touch with Auntie sometime soon, no matter where he was, and then she’d tell him what he must do—unless she passed out from the shock before that. Leon must stay away from Wakeham; even Vyvy must think he’d gone overseas. In my letter to him I promised to send her a few lines of love and kisses now and then to keep her happy.

I told him I’d write to him at Booneville—that was far enough away from home and far enough back in the woods to be a safe place for him to rusticate and hide for a while, until he could do something about me. He could lose himself in New York easily enough, but then he might get picked up somehow and made to enlist or do something. I suggested that he take the name of Leonard Lane, and stay at Booneville for a while.

Auntie would have to let it leak out that I was down South or out West, doing war work of some kind, like entertaining in the camps. Anyone who knew me would accept that story easily. My letters to her would, of course, be censored—unless I could manage to get them okayed by the General. If censored, I’d have to send instructions to Leon in onion juice: write a letter and interline it with other sentences written in onion juice, then when he or she held it near heat, the invisible onion-juice letters would be made visible. I knew it worked: we used to do it when we were kids.

So far so good: but how was I going to get out of this? There was the big problem, and the only answer I could see from here was for Leon to get a passport, if necessary, and get over to France by hook or crook, even if he had to work on a cattle boat or an oil tanker—anyway to get there. The rest would be easy: we would switch and I’d come back in his place.... Sounds reasonable in theory; I only hoped it would work out in practice. It depended, of course, upon how eager Leon was to get there—but—oh, hell, when that factor entered in, I might as well give up, for he never was eager to do anything that might be hard work or uncomfortable.

As far as I could see now, with everyone all packed up and waiting for the C. O. to appear with the final word, my fate was lying helpless in the lap of the gods. Which reminds me that I just by grace of God remembered what Mark Twain or somebody like him said about telling the difference between a girl and a boy: the General tossed a packet of papers to me and I instinctively spread my legs to catch it in my lap—and there wasn’t any lap there; but I saved the day by catching it with my hand instead. I don’t suppose the General would have noticed such a thing anyway. No reason why he should—but then I couldn’t be too careful. I certainly had to watch my step.