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Page 17
Aunt Basha smiled radiantly and shook her head. "Cayn't fin' him, honey?
I done tried, and he warn't dar."
"Wasn't where?"
"At de orfice, Miss Jinny."
"At what office?"
"Why, de _Daybreak_ orfice, cose, Miss Jinny. What yether orfice he
gwine be at?"
"Oh!" Miss Jinny followed with ease the windings of the African mind.
"He's a reporter on the _Daybreak_ then."
"'Cose he is, Miss Jinny, ma'am. Whatjer reckon?"
Miss Jinny reflected. Then: "Eleanor, call up the _Daybreak_ office and
ask if Mr. Lance is there and if he will speak to me."
But Aunt Basha was right. Mr. Lance was not at the _Daybreak_ office.
Mrs. Cabell was as grieved as a child.
"We'll find him, Grandmother," Eleanor asserted. "Why, of course--it's a
morning paper. He's home sleeping. I'll get his number." She caught up
the telephone book.
Aunt Basha chuckled musically. "He ain't got no tullaphome, honey chile.
No, my Lawd! Whar dat boy gwine git money for tullaphome and
contraptions? No, my Lawd!"
"How will we get him?" despaired Mrs. Cabell. The end of the council was
a cryptic note in the hand of Jackson, the chauffeur, and orders to
bring back the addressee at any cost.
Meanwhile, as Jackson stood in his smart dark livery taking orders with
the calmness of efficiency, feeling himself capable of getting that
young man, howsoever hidden, the young man himself was wasting valuable
hours off in day-dreams. In the one shabby big chair of the hall bedroom
he sat and smoked a pipe, and stared at a microscopic fire in a toy
grate. It was extravagant of David Lance to have a fire at all, but as
long as he gave up meals to do it likely it was his own affair. The
luxuries mean more than the necessities to plenty of us. With comfort in
this, his small luxury, he watched the play of light and shadow, and the
pulsing of the live scarlet and orange in the heart of the coals. He
needed comfort today, the lonely boy. Two men of the office force who
had gotten their commissions lately at an officer's training-camp had
come in last night before leaving for Camp Devens; everybody had crowded
about and praised them and envied them. They had been joked about the
sweaters, and socks made by mothers and sweethearts, and about the
trouble Uncle Sam would have with their mass of mail. The men in the
office had joined to give each a goodbye present. Pride in them, the
honor of them to all the force was shown at every turn; and beyond it
all there was the look of grave contentment in their eyes which is the
mark of the men who have counted the cost and given up everything for
their country. Most of all soldiers, perhaps, in this great war, the
American fights for an ideal. Also he knows it; down to the most
ignorant drafted man, that inspiration has lifted the army and given it
a star in the East to follow. The American fights for an ideal; the sign
of it is in the faces of the men in uniform whom one meets everywhere in
the street.
David Lance, splendidly powerful and fit except for the small limp which
was his undoing, suffered as he joined, whole-hearted, in the glory of
those who were going. Back in his room alone, smoking, staring into his
dying fire, he was dreaming how it would feel if he were the one who was
to march off in uniform to take his man's share of the hardship and
comradeship and adventure and suffering, and of the salvation of the
world. With that, he took his pipe from his mouth and grinned broadly
into the fire as another phase of the question appeared. How would it
feel if he was somebody's special soldier, like both of those boys, sent
off by a mother or a sweetheart, by both possibly, overstocked with
things knitted for him, with all the necessities and luxuries of a
soldier's outfit that could be thought of. He remembered how Jarvis,
the artillery captain, had showed them, proud and modest, his field
glass.
"It's a good one," he had said. "My mother gave it to me. It has the
Mills scale."
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