CHAPTER XV
Jim was becoming quite the military man. His new passion took him away from womankind, saved him from temptation, and freed his thoughts from the obsession of either Kedzie or Charity. The whole nation was turning again toward soldiering, drifting slowly and resistingly, but helplessly, into the very things it had long denounced as Prussianism and conscription. A universal mobilization was brewing that should one day compel all men and all women, even little boys and girls and the very old, to become part of a giant machinery for warfare.
England, too, had railed at conscription, and when the war smote her had seen her little army of a quarter of a million almost annihilated under the first avalanche of the German descent toward Paris. England had gathered volunteers and trained them behind the bulwark of her navy and the red wall of the bleeding French nation. And England had given up volunteering and gone into the business of making everybody, without distinction of sex, age, or degree, contribute life and liberty and luxury to the common cause.
Behind the bulwark of the British fleet and the Allied armies the United States had debated, not for weeks or months, but for years with academic sloth the enlargement of its tiny army. It had accomplished only the debate, a ludicrous haggle between those who turned their backs on the world war and said that war was impossible and those who declared that it was inevitable.
Some Americans asserted that it was none of America's business what happened in Europe or how many American citizens died on the free seas, and that the one way to bring war into our country was to be prepared for it. Other Americans grew angry enough to forswear their allegiance to a nation of poltroons and dotards; they went to France or Canada to fight or fly for the Allies. Many of them died. Yet others tried to equip themselves at home somewhat to meet the red flood when it should break the dam and sweep across the American borders.
Of these last was Jim Dyckman. Since he had joined the National Guard he gave it more and more of his enthusiasm. Unhappily married men have always fled to the barracks or the deck as ill-mated women fled to convents.
Night after night Jim spent at the armory, drilling with his company, conferring at headquarters, laboring for recruits, toiling over the paper work.
Kedzie pouted awhile at his patriotism, ridiculed it and hated it, and then accepted it as a matter of course. She could either stay at home and read herself to sleep or join the crowds. The rehearsals of the “Day of the Bud” gave her some business, and she picked up a few new friends. She made her appearance with the company in a three-nights' performance that netted several thousands of dollars. Jim saw her once. She was gorgeous, a little too gorgeous. She did not belong. She felt it herself, and overworked her carelessness. Her non-success hurt her bitterly. People did not say of her, as in the movies, “How sweet!” but, “Rather common!”
And now Kedzie was bewildered and lost. She found no comfort in Jim. She had to seek companionship somewhere. At first she made her engagements only on Jim's drill nights. Soon she made them on nights when he was free.