Everything was gloriously impersonal and objective, accurate and material.
Forbes understood the spirit of old convicts who, after cursing their penitentiaries for years, are let out into the world's turmoil, and by and by return, pleading to be let in again.
Only yesterday he had been trying to concoct schemes for postponing the date of his return to duty; now he was resolved to anticipate it.
He paid his bill at the hotel—with further erosion of the bank-account—and took the Subway and the ferry to Governor's Island.
The first sentinel he encountered recognized him for an officer by his shoulders and his carriage; and, halting on his post at just the right distance, faced outward and presented arms with decorative rigidity. As Forbes' hand went to the brim of his derby hat it felt a vizor there, and his heart went up in thanks. And his eyes went to the colors!—the little piece of wrinkling sky in the corner and the red stripes swimming in luxurious curves.
Next Forbes noted a doting smile half hidden by a saluting hand. It was a sergeant who had served with him in the Philippines; the very man Forbes had been shouting to when the bullet passed through his cheek; the very sergeant who had carried him half a mile to a field hospital in a rain of sun that beat upon the head like a thug's sandbag. That was man's work. Forbes returned the salute and shook the hand of the sergeant. As he remembered, he had got the sergeant out of some woman scrape. Why should good soldiers always be so easily defeated by women?
And next he met two officers he had known in West Point and in Cuba and at Manila. The small army of the United States seemed hardly more than a large club.
One of these officers, Major Chatham, dragged Forbes to his home for dinner—as pretty a home as a man could wish, with as pretty a wife and two children. And they had a maid to wait on them—and they kept a little automobile, too, the major being his own chauffeur. They seemed happy. Perhaps it was only manners, but the wife seemed as happy as a lark—or, rather, a canary. And yet Forbes could see how she differed from Persis. And he was glad that he had not brought a sea-gull down there for a mate.
He left, after his first cigar, on a pretext of unpacking. In the late twilight the sea-gulls that swung and tilted and dipped about the bay like little air-yachts did not seem so desirable, after all. He declared himself emancipated and contented. He thrust his head high and bulged his chest and walked soldierly.
And so he prospered till he was alone in his quarters, and the dark closed in and he turned on the light, and set about the establishment of his effects with all the fanatic neatness and order a West Point training could give a man.