Part 39 (1/2)
Several hours later David Eby sat before a lawyer and waited for the verdict. ”I'm sorry,” the lawyer shook his head. ”The stock is worthless. Six months ago you might have sold it; now it's dead as a door-nail.”
”Guess it was a wildcat scheme,” said David.
A few minutes later he went out to the street. His Aladdin's lamp was smashed! What a fool he had been!
When he reached home Mother Bab read the news in his face. ”Never mind,”
she said bravely, ”we'll get along without that money.”
”Yes--but”--David spoke slowly, as if fearing to hurt her further--”I hoped to have a nice bank account for you to draw on when--when I go.”
”You mean----” Mother Bab stopped suddenly. Something choked her, but she faced him squarely and looked up into his face.
”Yes, mother, I mean that I must go. You want me to go, don't you?”
”Yes.” The word came slowly, but David knew how truly she felt it. ”You must go. I knew it right away when I saw that we were called of G.o.d to help in the fight for world peace and righteousness. You must go; there is nothing to keep you. Phares will look after the little farm. I spoke to him about it last week----”
”Mother, you knew then!”
”I saw it in your face as soon as war was declared. Phares was lovely about it and said he could just as well take your few acres in with his and pay a percentage to me for the crops he'll get from them. Phares is kind; he has a big heart, for all his queer ways and his strict views.”
”Phares is too good to be related to me, mommie. I'm ashamed of myself.”
”Ach, you two are just different, that's all. I can go over and stay at their house. Did you tell Phbe you are going?”
He shook his head. ”I couldn't tell her yesterday. We had such a great day in the woods finding the arbutus, eating our lunch on a rock and acting just like we used to when we were ten years younger. She never mentioned war and I could not seem to break into that day of gladness to speak about the subject. I meant to tell her all about it when we got home, but then that storm came up and we stopped at a farmhouse and I heard about Caleb Warner. It struck me so hard I was just no good after that. I'll be a dandy soldier, won't I?”
He laughed and took the little woman in his arms. When, some moments later, he held the white-capped mother at arms' length and smiled into her face neither knew if the wet lashes were caused by laughter or tears.
”Some soldier you'll make,” she said as she looked at him, tall, broad of shoulder, straight of spine. ”Some soldier or sailor you'll make!”
CHAPTER XXIX
PREPARATIONS
THE days following the death of Caleb Warner were days of anxiety to other inhabitants of the little town who, like David, had purchased stock with glorious visions of sudden gain. In a short time the list of Warner's unfortunate investors was known and they were accorded various degrees of sympathy, rebuke or ridicule. The thing that hurt David was not so much the knowledge that some were speaking of him in condemnation or pity as the fact that he merited the condemnation.
But he had neither time nor inclination for self-pity. His country was calling for his services and he knew his duty was to offer himself. He could not conscientiously say his mother had urgent need of him for he knew that the little farm would supply enough for her maintenance.
Phares Eby, although a preacher among a sect who, as a sect, could not sanction the bearing of arms, accepted the decision of his cousin with no show of disapproval. ”I don't believe in wars,” he said gravely, ”but there seems to be no other way this time. One of the Eby family should go. I'll be glad to keep up your farm and help look after your mother while you are gone. The most I can do here will be less than you are going to do, but I'll raise the best crops I can and help in the food end of it.”
”You'll do your part here, Phares, and it will count. You're a bona-fide farmer. You'll have our little place a record farm when I get back.
You're a brick, Phares!” For the first time in months he felt a genuine affection for his preacher cousin. Preaching, prosaic Phares, how kind he was!
Lancaster County measured up to its fair standard in those first trying days of recruit gathering. The sons of the nation answered when she called. Pennsylvania Dutch, hundreds of them, rallied round the flag and proved beyond a doubt that the real Pennsylvania Dutch are not German-American, but loyal, four-square Americans who are keeping the faith. Two hundred years ago the ancestors of the present Pennsylvania Dutch came to this country to escape tyranny, and the love of freedom has been transmitted from one generation to another. The plain sects, so flouris.h.i.+ng in some portions of the Keystone State, consider war an evil, yet scores of men in navy blue and army khaki have come from homes where the mother wears the white cap, and have gone forth to do their part in the struggle for world freedom.