“She says it's the right thing,” volunteered Jackson, proudly. Women who felt that a man going into the service was a right thing. Women who saw war as a duty to be done, not a wild adventure for the adventurous.
“You ought to be very proud of her,” he said slowly. “There are not many like that.”
“Well,” Jackson said, apologetically, “they'll come round, sir. Some of them kind of hate the idea, just at first. But I look to see a good many doing what my wife's doing.”
Clayton wondered grimly what Jackson would think if he knew that at that moment he was passionately envious of him, of his uniform, of the youth that permitted him to wear that uniform, of his bronzed skin, of his wife, of his pride in that wife.
“You're a lucky chap, Jackson,” he said. “I sent for you because I wanted to say that, as long as you are in the national service, I shall feel that you are on a vacation”—he smiled at the word—“on pay. Under those circumstances, I owe you quite a little money.”
Jackson was too overwhelmed to reply at once.
“As a matter of fad,” Clayton went on, “it's a national move, in a way. You don't owe any gratitude. We need our babies, you see. More than we do hats! If this war goes on, we shall need a good many boy babies.”
And his own words suddenly crystallized the terror that was in him. It was the boys who would go; boys who whistled in the morning; boys who dreamed in the spring, long dreams of romance and of love.
Boys. Not men like himself, with their hopes and dreams behind them. Not men who had lived enough to know that only their early dreams were real. Not men, who, having lived, knew the vast disillusion of living and were ready to die.
It was only after Jackson had gone that he saw the fallacy of his own reasoning. If to live were disappointment, then to die, still dreaming the great dream, was not wholly evil. He found himself saying,