“Yes, I know. It’s pretty bad. But you’re away from it most of the time. You’re the lucky one. You see what I’ve had to listen to, the last week, don’t you? You see, don’t you?”
When he went home at the end of the year, late in May, he found that Helen and Hugh Barton had preceded him. They were living with Gant, at Woodson Street. Hugh Barton had secured the Altamont agency.
The town and the nation boiled with patriotic frenzy—violent, in a chaotic sprawl, to little purpose. The spawn of Attila must be crushed (“exterminated,” said the Reverend Mr. Smallwood) by the sons of freedom. There were loans, bond issues, speech-making, a talk of drafts, and a thin trickle of Yankees into France. Pershing arrived in Paris, and said, “Lafayette, we are here!”, but the French were still looking. Ben went up before the enlistment board and was rejected. “Lungs—weak!” they said quite definitely. “No—not tubercular. A tendency. Underweight.” He cursed. His face was a little more like a blade—thinner, grayer. The cleft of his scowl was deeper. He seemed more alone.
Eugene came up into the hills again and found them in their rich young summer glory. Dixieland was partly filled by paying guests. More arrived.
Eugene was sixteen years old. He was a College Man. He walked among the gay crowd of afternoon with a sense of elation, answering the hearty greetings with joy, warming to its thoughtless bombast.
“They tell me you’re batting a thousand down there, son,” yelled Mr. Wood, the plump young pharmacist, who had been told nothing at all. “That’s right, boy! Go get’em.” The man passed forward cheerfully, up the prosperous glade of his store. Fans droned.
After all, Eugene thought, he had not done so badly. He had felt his first wounds. He had not been broken. He had seen love’s bitter mystery. He had lived alone.
