He bent forward, leaning his old weight upon a heavy polished stick, which his freckled hand gripped upon the silver knob.
Muttering, his proud powerful old head turned shakily from side to side, darting fierce splintered glances at the drifting crowd.
He was a very parfit gentil knight.
He muttered.
“Suh?” said the negro, pulling in on his reins, and turning around.
“Go on!
Go on, you scoundrel!” said Colonel Pettigrew.
“Yes, suh,” said the negro.
They drove on.
In the crowd of loafing youngsters that stood across the threshold of Wood’s pharmacy, Colonel Pettigrew’s darting eyes saw two of his own cadets.
They were pimply youths, with slack jaws and a sloppy carriage.
He muttered his disgust.
Not the same!
Not the same!
Nothing the same!
In his proud youth, in the only war that mattered, Colonel Pettigrew had marched at the head of his own cadets.
There were 117, sir, all under nineteen.
They stepped forward to a man . . . until not a single commissioned officer was left . . . 36 came back . . . since 1789 . . . it must go on! . . .
19, sir — all under one hundred and seventeen . . . must . . . go . . . on!
His sagging cheek-flanks trembled gently.
The horses trotted out of sight around the corner, with a smooth-spoked rumble of rubber tires.
George Graves and Eugene entered Wood’s pharmacy and stood up to the counter.
The elder soda-jerker, scowling, drew a sopping rag across a puddle of slop upon the marble slab.
“What’s yours?” he said irritably.
“I want a chock-lut milk,” said Eugene.
“Make it two,” added George Graves.
O for a draught of vintage that hath been cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth!
25
Yes.
The enormous crime had been committed.
And, for almost a year, Eugene had been maintaining a desperate neutrality.
His heart, however, was not neutral.
The fate of civilization, it appeared, hung in the balance.
The war had begun at the peak of the summer season.
Dixieland was full.
His closest friend at the time was a sharp old spinstress with frayed nerves, who had been for thirty years a teacher of English in a New York City public school.
Day by day, after the murder of the Grand Duke, they watched the tides of blood and desolation mount through the world.
Miss Crane’s thin red nostrils quivered with indignation.
Her old gray eyes were sharp with anger.
The idea!
The idea!
For, of all the English, none can show a loftier or more inspired love for Albion’s Isle than American ladies who teach its noble tongue.
Eugene was also faithful.
With Miss Crane he kept a face of mournful regret, but his heart drummed a martial tattoo against his ribs.
The air was full of fifes and flutes; he heard the ghostly throbbing of great guns.
“We must be fair!” said Margaret Leonard.
“We must be fair!”
But her eyes darkened when she read the news of England’s entry, and her throat was trembling like a bird’s.
When she looked up her eyes were wet.
“Ah, Lord!” she said.