Billy went back to school and saw the following months of work and play go by in a dizzy procession of speeding days. Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed to stop a little longer than the others; he spent the one at a town on one of the Great Lakes, ice-boating, and the other in Chicago, where he had some cousins. They were pleasant days and weeks and months; yet he saw them go by with some satisfaction, for he looked forward greatly to the time when his father and mother would come home.
The Easter vacation approached and, on account of some alterations to the school buildings, was made much longer than usual. Billy, however, could get little satisfaction out of even such unexpected good fortune, for letters from South America had been becoming more and more doubtful as to the chance of an early return, and one, arriving the morning the holidays began, settled the matter finally.
“Business moves too slowly in these Spanish-American countries,” his father wrote, “and what you think you can do in one day always takes you two or three. Therefore plans for one year are almost bound to stretch into two, so do not be disappointed, son, if we do not come back until autumn.”
Billy put down the letter when he had read so far and sat staring at the opposite wall. It seemed too hard to endure after he had waited patiently for so long. He picked up the page and read on.
“Your mother and I have decided that since you must spend another summer alone you might as well have the camping trip you had so counted on last year. Ask any three of the boys you like and make all your own plans. Otto Bradford at Mason’s Falls will be the best guide for you to take; you remember we had him two years ago. Indeed, if your Easter vacation is extended, as the headmaster wrote me it might be, you could run out to Montana and make your arrangements with Otto; that would probably be most satisfactory. You are old enough now to manage such matters.”
Again Billy laid down the paper and sat thinking. Here was the thing that, next to his father’s and mother’s coming, he had long wanted above all others. A camping trip—among those wonderful mountains—planned by himself—to include just the boys he wanted. Whom should he ask? There was—
“Come on, Billy Wentworth, or you’ll miss the train.” The shout from the hall below brought him quickly to his senses. They were all leaving for Chicago to play the last basketball game of the season; it was from there that they were to scatter for the holidays. He seized his suitcase, jammed on his hat and ran downstairs. He would have to decide on the way whether he would go West at once or not.
It was not unnatural, perhaps, that a party of boys wrapped up in their own and the school’s affairs, should have very little knowledge of the bigger matters of the outside world. Lately, however, events were becoming so exciting, situations were growing so tense, that every boy, the moment he got on the train, must have his paper and devour the daily news. For nearly three years the war had waged in Europe, a war far too big to realize, far too distant to be very disturbing to a schoolboy’s daily life. But now war was coming near, the war with Germany that every one suddenly discovered had been inevitable from the first, yet for which every one had been too busy to get ready. It was the week before Easter, the season of that April session of Congress when the war-bill slowly but surely made its way through Senate and House, and the possibility of a struggle became a final reality.
The party of boys reached Chicago on Monday, and played their basketball game that evening. For a moment the victory that was so hardly but so triumphantly won by their team blotted out in Billy’s mind the memory of what was stirring the whole world outside. Yet even on the way back to the hotel he felt the thrill in the air, he saw crowds gathering about the bulletin boards and heard some one say, “The President is addressing Congress now.”
He went to bed clinging somehow to the obstinate thought,
“There can’t be war, there can’t. Things like that happen to other people, in other places. Nothing happens here at home.” When he got up in the morning the war again seemed far away. The whole party of boys was to be taken out by their hosts of the rival school, to be shown some of the sights of Chicago before train time. They all stood waiting in the lobby for the automobiles to come up, when the mail was brought in and some one handed Billy a letter.
It was a note from his aunt who had been spending the winter in Boston.
“I am going down to Appledore Island for Easter,” it said, “although I have never been there so early in the season before. I have a fancy to try it, and wonder whether you would feel tempted to try it with me. I happened to hear that your vacation is to be longer than usual, so that it would give you time to come. I admit that the invitation does not seem a very exciting one, but, if you happen to have no other place to go, you might be glad of my company, as I shall be so glad to have yours.” There was a postscript added,
“If you should happen to arrive before I do, and do not find the hotel ready, you could stay with Captain Saulsby.”
The first motor rolled up to the door, Billy was called for, so he stuffed the letter into his pocket and hurried out. They were swept away through the crowded streets of Chicago, where spring was already showing in the green grass and blooming crocuses of the little squares. It was even more in evidence in Lincoln Park where the shrubs and trees were putting out their new leaves and flowers were blooming all along the way. It made one feel queer and restless, Billy thought, as though one wanted something very badly and did not quite know what it was. It seemed strange how hard it was to make up his mind just what he was going to do.
The lake was very blue there on their right hand as they drove along the Sheridan Road sweeping constantly through neat suburbs, some large, some small, but all alike in one thing: that every one in the world was busy planting a garden. They passed through bits of real country with fields and meadows and pasture lands, and stopped at last before a big iron gate that guarded an enclosure full of brick buildings, wide, smooth lawns and many winding roads.
“They won’t let us in on account of the war scare,” said one of the boys who had brought them, “but we have to turn back here so we might as well stop and look through the gate. It is the Great Lakes Naval Station, where they train the sailors for the warships. Oh, look, they’re drilling now!”
A squad of uniformed sailor boys came marching past, very neat with their blue coats, their small white hats, their brown legs all moving together. They swept by like a great perfect machine, minds and bodies all trained to act absolutely together for the better accomplishment of a common purpose. They moved back and forth across the green, wheeling, turning, marching and countermarching. How hard they must have worked, Billy thought, to learn to do it so well, how each one must be trying now to do his own part perfectly so that the whole might be perfect. It brought back to him a quick memory of the night he had witnessed the war game, of the early morning when he had watched the ships go by and had seen, if only for a moment, what the Navy really meant. From what port were those same ships sailing forth today, to play at the new war game; over what seas would they be scattered to guard America from a real and terrible foe?
Then, for some reason his mind swept back to the other subject upon which he had been thinking so deeply, to the camping trip for which he should, even now, be making plans. At this very moment Otto Bradford would probably be coming out of his cabin to take the horses down to water, the sun would be bright, the thin air very cold, and the mountains all scarlet and yellow and brown in the strange colors that only the Rocky Mountains can show. Perhaps it would be so clear that you could see the Highlands, that circle of tremendous peaks beyond the rough brown buttes that hemmed the valley in, the high sky line that often was not visible for weeks together but, on a brilliant day like this, would spring suddenly into being, a vast wall of glittering white, with jagged summits that seemed to touch the very sky. The wind would blow down from the snow fields sharp and chill, it would lift the manes of the horses as they snorted, kicked up their heels and went galloping off down the trail. It would be good to see it all again but—
The sailors were marching away across the wide green. Beyond them, between two buildings he could see the lake, rough and deep blue on this windy morning, darkened here and there by the passing shadows of flying clouds. A schooner came into view, beating into the wind, first in shadow, then in sunshine, ............