Ramsey Milholland

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RAMSEY MILHOLLAND


by Booth Tarkington




To the Memory of Billy Miller (William Henry Harrison Miller II) 1908 -
1918 Little Patriot, Good Citizen Friend of Mankind




Chapter I

When Johnnie comes marching home again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The men with the cheers, the boys with shouts,
The ladies they will all turn out,
And we'll all feel gay, when Johnnie comes marching home again!

The old man and the little boy, his grandson, sat together in the shade
of the big walnut tree in the front yard, watching the "Decoration
Day Parade," as it passed up the long street; and when the last of the
veterans was out of sight the grandfather murmured the words of the tune
that came drifting back from the now distant band at the head of the
procession.

"Yes, we'll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home again," he
finished, with a musing chuckle.

"Did you, Grandpa?" the boy asked.

"Did I what?"

"Did you all feel gay when the army got home?"

"It didn't get home all at once, precisely," the grandfather explained.
"When the war was over I suppose we felt relieved, more than anything
else."

"You didn't feel so gay when the war _was_, though, I guess!" the boy
ventured.

"I guess we didn't."

"Were you scared, Grandpa? Were you ever scared the Rebels would win?"

"No. We weren't ever afraid of that."

"Not any at all?"

"No. Not any at all."

"Well, weren't you ever scared yourself, Grandpa? I mean when you were
in a battle."

"Oh, yes; _then_ I was." The old man laughed. "Scared plenty!"

"I don't see why," the boy said promptly. "I wouldn't be scared in a
battle."

"Wouldn't you?"

"'Course not! Grandpa, why don't you march in the Decoration Day Parade?
Wouldn't they let you?"

"I'm not able to march any more. Too short of breath and too shaky in
the legs and too blind."

"I wouldn't care," said the boy. "I'd be in the parade anyway, if I was
you. They had some sittin' in carriages, 'way at the tail end; but I
wouldn't like that. If I'd been in your place, Grandpa, and they'd let
me be in that parade, I'd been right up by the band. Look, Grandpa!
Watch me, Grandpa! This is the way I'd be, Grandpa."

He rose from the garden bench where they sat, and gave a complex
imitation of what had most appealed to him as the grandeurs of the
procession, his prancing legs simulating those of the horse of the grand
marshal, while his upper parts rendered the drums and bugles of the
band, as well as the officers and privates of the militia company which
had been a feature of the parade. The only thing he left out was the
detachment of veterans.

"Putty-boom! Putty-boom! Putty-boom-boom-boom!" he vociferated, as the
drums--and then as the bugles: "Ta, ta, ra, tara!" He addressed his
restive legs: "_Whoa_, there, you Whitey! Gee! Haw! Git up!" Then,
waving an imaginary sword: "Col-lumn right! Farwud _March!_ Halt! Carry
_harms!_" He "carried arms." "Show-dler _harms!_" He "shouldered arms,"
and returned to his seat.

"That'd be me, Grandpa. That's the way I'd do." And as the grandfather
nodded, seeming to agree, a thought recently dismissed returned to the
mind of the composite procession and he asked:

"Well, _why_ weren't you ever afraid the Rebels would whip the Unions,
Grandpa?"

"Oh, we knew they couldn't."

"I guess so." The little boy laughed disdainfully, thinking his question
satisfactorily answered. "I guess those ole Rebels couldn't whipped a
flea! They didn't know how to fight any at all, did they, Grandpa?"

"Oh, yes, they did!"

"What?" The boy was astounded. "Weren't they all just reg'lar ole
cowards, Grandpa?"

"No," said the grandfather. "They were pretty fine soldiers."

"They were? Well, they ran away whenever you began shootin' at 'em,
didn't they?"

"Sometimes they did, but most times they didn't. Sometimes they fought
like wildcats--and sometimes we were the ones that ran away."

"What for?"

"To keep from getting killed, or maybe to keep from getting captured."

"But the Rebels were bad men, weren't they, Grandpa?"

"No."

The boy's forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical
shadows, produced by a struggle to think. "Well, but--" he began,
slowly. "Listen, Grandpa, listen here!"

"Well?"

"Listen! Well, you said--you said you never got scared the ole Rebels
were goin' to win."

"They did win pretty often," said the grandfather. "They won a good many
battles."

"I mean, you said you never got scared they'd win the war."

"No, we were never afraid of that."

"Well, but if they were good men and fought like wildcats, Grandpa, and
kep' winning battles and everything, how could that be? How could you
_help_ bein' scared they'd win the war?"

The grandfather's feeble eyes twinkled brightly. "Why, we _knew_ they
couldn't, Ramsey."

At this, the little vertical shadows on Ramsey's forehead became more
pronounced, for he had succeeded in thinking. "Well, _they_ didn't know
they couldn't, did they?" he argued. "They thought they were goin' to
win, didn't they?"

"Yes, I guess they did. Up till toward the last, I suppose they probably
did. But you see they were wrong."

"Well, but--" Ramsey struggled. "Listen! Listen here, Grandpa! Well,
anyway, if they never got scared _we'd_ win, and nobody got scared
_they'd_ win--well, I don't see--"

"You don't see what?"

But Ramsey found himself unable to continue his concentration; he
slumped down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to its
more comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new butterfly
fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket fence at the
south side of the yard. "Oh, nothin' much," he murmured.

"I see." And his grandfather laughed again. "You mean: If the Rebels
felt just as sure of winning the war as we did, and kept winning battles
why shouldn't we ever have had any doubts that we were going to win?
That's it, isn't it?"

"I guess so, Grandpa."

"Well, I think it was mostly because we were certain that we were
right."

"I see," said Ramsey. "The Rebels knew they were on the side of the
Devil." But at this, the grandfather's laugh was louder than it had been
before, and Ramsey looked hurt. "Well, you can laugh if you want to!" he
objected in an aggrieved voice. "Anyway, the Sunday-school sup'intendent
told us when people knew they were on the Devil's side they always--"

"I dare say, I dare say," the old man interrupted, a little impatiently.
"But in this world mighty few people think they're on the Devil's side,
Ramsey. There was a Frenchman once, in olden times; he said people were
crazy because, though they couldn't even make worms, they believed they
could make gods. And so whenever countries or parts of a country get
into a war, each side makes a god and a devil, and says: 'God's on our
side and the Devil's on the other.' The South thought the Devil was on
our side, you see."

"Well, that kind o' mixes it all up more'n ever."

"Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn't mixed up about it. When
some people told him that God was on our side, he said the important
thing was to find out if we were on God's side. That was the whole
question, you see; because either side could make up a god, the kind of
a god they liked and wanted; and then they'd believe in him, too, and
fight for him--but if he was only a made-up god they'd lose. President
Lincoln didn't want to have a made-up god on his side; he wanted to find
God Himself and find out what he wanted, and then do it. And that's what
Lincoln did."

"Well, I don't understand much of all _that_!"

"No? Then suppose you look at it this way: The South was fighting
for what it believed to be its rights, but we weren't fighting for our
rights; we were fighting for the right. The South was fighting for
what it believed to be its right to split the Union and be a country by
itself; but we were fighting for 'Liberty and Union, now and forever,
one and inseparable.' It wasn't only the Union we fought for; it was
Freedom. The South wanted freedom to leave the Union; but the reason the
South wanted that freedom to separate from us was because _we_ wanted
the Freedom of Man. _There's_ the reason we had the certain knowledge
that we were going to win the war. How plain and simple it is!"

Ramsey didn't think so. He had begun to feel bored by the conversation,
and to undergo the oppression he usually suffered in school; yet he took
a little interest in the inexplicable increase of fervour with which his
grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine which somehow got through
the foliage of the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of glinting fine
lines in one spot, about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's head
of thick white hair. Half closing his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that
this sunshine spot was a white bird's-next and, and he had a momentary
half dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue
soldier cap on its head. The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a
sound in the boy's ears.

"Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often
think of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and
never doubted. We knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and
grandfathers to make a great country here for Freedom, and we knew that
all this wasn't just the whim of a foolish god, willing to waste such
great things--we knew that such a country couldn't have been building up
just to be wasted. But, more than that, we knew that armies fighting
for the Freedom of Man _had_ to win, in the long run, over armies that
fought for what they considered their rights.

"We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew. Yet our being
against slavery was what made the war, and we had the consciousness
that we were on the side of God's plan, because His plan is clearly the
Freedom of Man. Long ago we began to see the hints of His plan--a little
like the way you can see what's coming in August from what happens in
April, but man has to win his freedom from himself--men in the light
have to fight against men in the dark of their own shadow. That light is
the answer; we had the light that made us never doubt. Ours was the true
light, and so we--"


"Boom--" The veterans had begun to fire their cannon on the crest of
the low hill, out at the cemetery; and from a little way down the street
came the rat-a-tat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played execrably.
A file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came marching
importantly up the sidewalk under the maple shade trees; and in advance,
upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded personage, shrieking incessant
commands but not concerning himself with whether or not any military
obedience was thereby obtained. Here was a revivifying effect upon young
Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened electrically; he leaped to his feet
and, abandoning his grandfather without preface or apology, sped across
the lawn and out of the gate, charging headlong upon the commander of
the company.

"You get off that 'locipede, Wesley Bender!" he bellowed. "You gimme
that sword! What rights you got to go bein' captain o' my army, I'd like
to know! Who got up this army, in the first place, I'd like to know! I
did, myself yesterd'y afternoon, and you get back in line or I won't let
you b'long to it at all!"

The pretender succumbed; he instantly dismounted, being out-shouted and
overawed. On foot he took his place in the ranks, while Ramsey became
sternly vociferous. "In-tention, company! Farwud _march_! Col-lumn
_right_! Right-showdler _harms_! Halt! Far-wud _march_. Carry harms--"

The Army went trudging away under the continuous but unheed fire of
orders, and presently disappeared round a corner, leaving the veteran
chuckling feebly under his walnut tree and alone with the empty street.
All trace of what he had said seemed to have been wiped from the
grandson's mind; but memory has curious ways. Ramsey had understood
not a fifth nor a tenth of his grandfather's talk, and already he had
"forgotten" all of it--yet not only were there many, many times in the
boy's later life when, without ascertainable cause, he would remember
the sunlight falling upon the old man's white head, to make that
semblance of a glittering bird's-nest there, but with the picture came
recollections of words and sentences spoken by the grandfather, though
the listener, half-drowsily, had heard but the sound of an old,
earnest voice--and even the veteran's meaning finally took on a greater
definiteness till it became, in the grandson's thoughts, something clear
and bright and beautiful that he knew without being just sure where or
how he had learned it.





Chapter II

Ramsey Milholland sat miserably in school, his conscious being
consisting principally of a dull hate. Torpor was a little dispersed
during a fifteen-minute interval of "Music," when he and all the other
pupils in the large room of the "Five B. Grade" sang repeated fractions
of what they enunciated as "The Star Span-guh-hulled Banner"; but
afterward he relapsed into the low spirits and animosity natural to
anybody during enforced confinement under instruction. No alleviation
was accomplished by an invader's temporary usurpation of the teacher's
platform, a brisk and unsympathetically cheerful young woman mounting
thereon to "teach German."

For a long time mathematics and German had been about equally repulsive
to Ramsey, who found himself daily in the compulsory presence of both;
but he was gradually coming to regard German with the greater horror,
because, after months of patient mental resistance, he at last began to
comprehend that the German language has sixteen special and particular
ways of using the German article corresponding to that flexible bit of a
word so easily managed English--_the_. What in the world was the use of
having sixteen ways of doing a thing that could just as well be done in
one? If the Germans had contented themselves with insisting upon sixteen
useless variations for infrequent words, such as _hippopotamus_, for
instance, Ramsey might have thought the affair unreasonable but not
necessarily vicious--it would be easy enough to avoid talking about
a hippopotamus if he ever had to go to Germany. But the fact that the
Germans picked out _a_ and _the_ and many other little words in use all
the time, and gave every one of them sixteen forms, and expected Ramsey
Milholland to learn this dizzying uselessness down to the last crotchety
detail, with "When to employ Which" as a nausea to prepare for the
final convulsion when one _didn't_ use Which, because it was an
"Exception"--there was a fashion of making easy matters hard that was
merely hellish.

The teacher was strict but enthusiastic; she told the children, over and
over, that German was a beautiful language, and her face always had a
glow when she said this. At such times the children looked patient; they
supposed it must be so, because she was an adult and their teacher; and
they believed her with the same manner of believing which those of them
who went to Sunday-school used there when the Sunday-school teachers
were pushed into explanations of various matters set forth in the Old
Testament, or gave reckless descriptions of heaven. That is to say, the
children did not challenge or deny; already they had been driven into
habits of resignation and were passing out of the age when childhood is
able to reject adult nonsense.

Thus, to Ramsey Milholland, the German language seemed to be a
collection of perverse inventions for undeserved torment; it was full of
revolting surprises in the way of genders; vocally it often necessitated
the employment of noises suggestive of an incompletely mastered
knowledge of etiquette; and far inside him there was something faintly
but constantly antagonistic to it--yet, when the teacher declared that
German was incomparably the most beautiful language in the world, one of
the many facets of his mind submissively absorbed the statement as light
to be passed inward; it was part of the lesson to be learned. He did not
know whether the English language was beautiful or not; he never thought
about that, and no one ever said anything to him about it. Moreover,
though his deeper inward hated "German," he liked his German teacher,
and it was pleasant to look at her when that glow came upon her face.

Sometimes, too, there were moments of relaxation in her class, when
she would stop the lesson and tell the children about Germany: what a
beautiful, good country it was, so trim and orderly, with such pleasant
customs, and all the people sensible and energetic and healthy. There
was "Music" again in the German class, which was another alleviation;
though it was the same old "Star Spangled Banner" over again. Ramsey
was tired of the song and tired of "My Country 'Tis of Thee"; they were
bores, but it was amusing to sing them in German. In German they sounded
"sort o' funny," so he didn't mind this bit of the day's work.

Half an hour later there arrived his supreme trial of this particular
morning. Arithmetic then being the order of business before the house,
he was sent alone to the blackboard, supposedly to make lucid the proper
reply to a fatal conundrum in decimals, and under the glare and focus of
the whole room he breathed heavily and itched everywhere; his brain at
once became sheer hash. He consumed as much time as possible in getting
the terms of the problem stated in chalk; then, affecting to be critical
of his own handiwork, erased what he had done and carefully wrote it
again. After that, he erased half of it, slowly retraced the figures,
and stepped back as if to see whether perspective improved their
appearance. Again he lifted the eraser.

"Ramsey Milholland!"

"Ma'am?"

"Put down that eraser!"

"Yes'm. I just thought--"

Sharply bidden to get forward with his task, he explained in a feeble
voice that he had first to tie a shoe string and stooped to do so, but
was not permitted. Miss Ridgely tried to stimulate him with hints and
suggestion; found him, so far as decimals went, mere protoplasm, and,
wondering how so helpless a thing could live, summoned to the board
little Dora Yocum, the star of the class, whereupon Ramsey moved toward
his seat.

"Stand still, Ramsey! You stay right where you are and try to learn
something from the way Dora does it."

The class giggled, and Ramsey stood, but learned nothing. His
conspicuousness was unendurable, because all of his schoolmates
naturally found more entertainment in watching him than in following
the performance of the capable Dora. He put his hands in and out of his
pockets; was bidden to hold them still, also not to shuffle his feet;
and when in a false assumption of ease he would have scratched his head
Miss Ridgely's severity increased, so that he was compelled to give over
the attempt.

Instructed to watch every figure chalked up by the mathematical wonder,
his eyes, grown sodden, were unable to remove themselves from the part
in her hair at the back of her head, where two little braids began their
separate careers to end in a couple of blue-and-red checked bits of
ribbon, one upon each of her thin shoulder blades. He was conscious that
the part in Dora's shining brown hair was odious, but he was unconscious
of anything arithmetical. His sensations clogged his intellect; he
suffered from unsought notoriety, and hated Dora Yocum; most of all he
hated her busy little shoulder blades.

He had to be "kept in" after school; and when he was allowed to go home
he averted his eyes as he went by the house where Dora lived. She was
out in the yard, eating a doughnut, and he knew it; but he had passed
the age when it is just as permissible to throw a rock at a girl as at a
boy; and stifling his normal inclinations, he walked sturdily on, though
he indulged himself so far as to engage in a murmured conversation with
one of the familiar spirits dwelling somewhere within him. "Pfa!" said
Ramsey to himself--or himself to Ramsey, since it is difficult to say
which was which. "Pfa! Thinks she's smart, don't she?"... "Well, I guess
she does, but she ain't!" ... "I hate her, don't you?"... "You bet
your life I hate her!"... "Teacher's Pet, that's what _I_ call her!"...
"Well, that's what _I_ call her, too, don't I?" "Well, _I_ do; that's
all she is, anyway--dirty ole Teacher's Pet!"





Chapter III

He had not forgiven her four years later when he entered high school
in her company, for somehow Ramsey managed to shovel his way through
examinations and stayed with the class. By this time he had a long
accumulation of reasons for hating her: Dora's persistent and increasing
competency was not short of flamboyant, and teachers naturally got the
habit of flinging their quickest pupil in the face of their slowest and
"dumbest." Nevertheless, Ramsey was unable to deny that she had become
less awful lookin' than she used to be. At least, he was honest enough
to make a partial retraction when his friend and classmate, Fred
Mitchell, insisted that an amelioration of Dora's appearance could be
actually proven.

"Well, I'll take it back. I don't claim she's every last bit as awful
lookin' as she always has been," said Ramsey, toward the conclusion of
the argument. "I'll say this for her, she's awful lookin', but she may
not be as awful lookin' as she was. She don't come to school with the
edge of some of her underclo'es showin' below her dress any more, about
every other day, and her eyewinkers have got to stickin' out some, and
she may not be so abbasa_loot_ly skinny, but she'll haf to wait a mighty
long while before _I_ want to look at her without gettin' sick!"

The implication that Miss Yocum cared to have Ramsey look at her, either
with or without gettin' sick, was mere rhetoric, and recognized as such
by the producer of it; she had never given the slightest evidence of
any desire that his gaze be bent upon her. What truth lay underneath his
flourish rested upon the fact that he could not look at her without some
symptoms of the sort he had tersely sketched to his friend; and yet, so
pungent is the fascination of self-inflicted misery, he did look at her,
during periods of study, often for three or four minutes at a stretch.
His expression at such times indeed resembled that of one who has dined
unwisely; but Dora Yocum was always too eagerly busy to notice it. He
was almost never in her eye, but she was continually in his; moreover,
as the banner pupil she was with hourly frequency an exhibit before the
whole class.

Ramsey found her worst of all when her turn came in "Declamation,"
on Friday afternoons. When she ascended the platform, bobbed a little
preliminary bow and began, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear,"
Ramsey included Paul Revere and the Old North Church and the whole
Revolutionary War in his antipathy, since they somehow appeared to
be the property of the Teacher's Pet. For Dora held this post in
"Declamation" as well as in everything else; here, as elsewhere, the
hateful child's prowess surpassed that of all others; and the teacher
always entrusted her with the rendition of the "patriotic selections":
Dora seemed to take fire herself when she declared:

"The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat."

Ramsey himself was in the same section of declaimers, and performed
next--a ghastly contrast. He gave a "selection from Shakespeare,"
assigned by the teacher; and he began this continuous misfortune by
stumbling violently as he ascended the platform, which stimulated a
general giggle already in being at the mere calling of his name. All of
the class were bright with happy anticipation, for the miserable Ramsey
seldom failed their hopes, particularly in "Declamation." He faced them,
his complexion wan, his expression both baleful and horrified; and he
began in a loud, hurried voice, from which every hint of intelligence
was excluded:

"Most pottent, grave, and rev--"

The teacher tapped sharply on her desk, and stopped him. "You've
forgotten to bow," she said. "And don't say 'pottent.' The word is
'potent'."

Ramsey flopped his head at the rear wall of the room, and began again:

"Most pottent potent gray and revenerd signers my very nobe and approve
good masters that I have tan away this sole man's dutter it is mose true
true I have marry dur the very headman frun tuv my fending hath this
extent no more rude am I in speech--in speech--rude am I in speech--in
speech--in speech--in speech--"

He had stalled. Perhaps the fatal truth of that phrase, and some sense
of its applicability to the occasion had interfered with the mechanism
which he had set in operation to get rid of the "recitation" for him.
At all events, the machine had to run off its job all at once, or it
wouldn't run at all. Stopped, it stayed stopped, and backing off granted
no new impetus, though he tried, again and again. "Hath this extent
no more rude am I in speech--" He gulped audibly. "Rude rude rude am
I--rude am I in speech--in speech--in speech. Rude am I in speech--"