Anthony, Maury, and Dick sent in their applications
for officers’ training-camps and the two latter
went about feeling strangely exalted and reproachless;
they chattered to each other, like college boys, of
war’s being the one excuse for, and justification
of, the aristocrat, and conjured up an impossible
caste of officers, to be composed, it appeared, chiefly
of the more attractive alumni of three or four Eastern
colleges. It seemed to Gloria that in this huge
red light streaming across the nation even Anthony
took on a new glamour.
The Tenth Infantry, arriving in New York from Panama,
were escorted from saloon to saloon by patriotic citizens,
to their great bewilderment. West Pointers began
to be noticed for the first time in years, and the
general impression was that everything was glorious,
but not half so glorious as it was going to be pretty
soon, and that everybody was a fine fellow, and every
race a great race—always excepting the
Germans—and in every strata of society outcasts
and scapegoats had but to appear in uniform to be
forgiven, cheered, and wept over by relatives, ex-friends,
and utter strangers.
Unfortunately, a small and precise doctor decided
that there was something the matter with Anthony’s
blood-pressure. He could not conscientiously
pass him for an officers’ training-camp.
THE BROKEN LUTE
Their third anniversary passed, uncelebrated, unnoticed.
The season warmed in thaw, melted into hotter summer,
simmered and boiled away. In July the will was
offered for probate, and upon the contestation was
assigned by the surrogate to trial term for trial.
The matter was prolonged into September—there
was difficulty in empanelling an unbiassed jury because
of the moral sentiments involved. To Anthony’s
disappointment a verdict was finally returned in favor
of the testator, whereupon Mr. Haight caused a notice
of appeal to be served upon Edward Shuttleworth.
As the summer waned Anthony and Gloria talked of the
things they were to do when the money was theirs,
and of the places they were to go to after the war,
when they would “agree on things again,”
for both of them looked forward to a time when love,
springing like the phoenix from its own ashes, should
be born again in its mysterious and unfathomable haunts.
He was drafted early in the fall, and the examining
doctor made no mention of low blood-pressure.
It was all very purposeless and sad when Anthony told
Gloria one night that he wanted, above all things,
to be killed. But, as always, they were sorry
for each other for the wrong things at the wrong times....
They decided that for the present she was not to go
with him to the Southern camp where his contingent
was ordered. She would remain in New York to
“use the apartment,” to save money, and
to watch the progress of the case—which
was pending now in the Appellate Division, of which
the calendar, Mr. Haight told them, was far behind.
