wrist--only five-thirty. She went back with a new unrest to her
thoughts. Hugh's knee--it was odd; it had lasted a long time, ever
since--she shuddered a bit, so that old Mavourneen lifted her head and
objected softly--ever since war was declared. Over a year! To be sure,
he had hurt it again badly, slipping on the ice in December, just as it
was getting strong. She wished that his father would not be so grim when
Hugh's bad knee was mentioned. What did he mean? Did he dare to think
her boy--the word was difficult even mentally--a slacker? With that her
mind raced back to the days just before Hugh had hurt this knee. It was
in February that Germany had proclaimed the oceans closed except along
German paths, at German times. "This is war at last," her husband had
said, and she knew the inevitable had come.
Night after night she had lain awake facing it, sometimes breaking down
utterly and shaking her soul out in sobs, sometimes trying to see ways
around the horror, trying to believe that war must end before our troops
could get ready, often with higher courage glorying that she might give
so much for country and humanity. Then, in the nights, things that she
had read far back, unrealizing, rose and confronted her with
awful reality. Brutalities, atrocities, wounds, barbarous
captivity--nightmares which the Germans had dug out of the grave of
savagery and sent stalking over the earth--such rose and stood before
the woman lying awake night after night. At first her soul hid its face
in terror at the gruesome thoughts; at first her mind turned and fled
and refused to believe. Her boys, Brock and Hugh! It was not credible,
it was not reasonable, it was out of drawing that her good boys, her
precious boys trained to be happy and help the world, to live useful,
peaceful lives, should be snatched from home, here in America, and
pitched into the ghastly struggle of Europe. Push back the ocean as she
might, the ocean surged every day nearer.
Daytimes she was as brave as the best. She could say: "If we had done it
the day after the _Lusitania_, that would have been right. It would have
been all over now." She could say: "My boys? They will do their duty
like other women's boys." But nights, when she crept into bed and the
things she had read of Belgium, of Serbia, came and stood about her, she
knew that hers were the only boys in the world who could not, _could_
not be spared. Brock and Hugh! It seemed as if it would be apparent to
the dullest that Brock and Hugh were different from all others. She
could suffer; she could have gone over there light-hearted and faced any
danger to save _them_. Of course! That was natural! But--Brock and Hugh!
The little heads that had lain in the hollow of her arm; the noisy
little boys who had muddied their white clothes, and broken furniture,
and spilled ink; the tall, beautiful lads who had been her pride and her
everlasting joy, her playmates, her lovers--Brock and Hugh! Why, there
had never been on earth love and friendship in any family close and
unfailing like that of the four.
Night after night, nearer and nearer, the ghosts from Belgium and Serbia
and Poland stood about her bed, and she fought with them as one had
fought with the beasts at Ephesus. Day after day she cheered Brock and
the two Hughs and filled them with fresh patriotism. Of course, she
would not have her own fail in a hair's breadth of eager service to
their flag. Of course! And as she lifted up, for their sakes, her
heart, behold a miracle, for her heart grew high! She began to feel the
words she said. It came to her in very truth that to have the world as
one wanted it was not now the point; the point was a greater goal which
she had never in her happy life even visualized. It began to rise before
her, a distant picture glorious through a mist of suffering, something
built of the sacrifice, and the honor, and the deathless bravery of
millions of soldiers in battle, of millions of mothers at home. The
education of a nation to higher ideals was reaching the quiet backwater
of this one woman's soul. There were lovelier things than life; there
were harder things than death. Service is the measure of living. If the
boys were to compress years of good living into a flame of serving
humanity for six months, who was she, what was life here, that she
should be reluctant? To play the game, for herself and her sons, this
was the one thing worth while. More and more entirely, as the stress of
the strange, hard vision crowded out selfishness, this woman, as
thousands and tens of thousands all over America, lifted up her
heart--the dear things that filled and were her heart--unto the Lord.
And with that she was aware of a recurring unrest. She was aware that
there was something her husband did not say to her about the boys, about
young Hugh. Brock had been hard to hold for nearly two years now, but
his father had thought for reasons, that he should not serve until his
own flag called him. Now it would soon be calling, and Brock would go
instantly. But young Hugh? What did the boy's attitude mean?
"I can't make out Hughie," his father had said to her in March, 1917,
when it was certain that war was coming. "What does this devil-may-care
pose about the war mean?"
And she answered: "Let Hughie work it out, Hugh. He's in trouble in his
mind, but he'll come through. We'll give him time."
"Oh, very well," Hugh the elder had agreed, "but young Americans will
have to take their stand shortly. I couldn't bear it if a son of mine
were a slacker."
She tossed out her hands. "Slacker! Don't dare say it of my boy!"
The hideous word followed her. That night, when she lay in bed and
looked out into the moonlit wood, and saw the pines swaying like giant
fans across a pulsing, pale sky, and listened to the summer wind blowing
through the tall heads of them, again through the peace of it the word
stabbed. A slacker! She set to work to fancy how it would be if Brock
and Hugh both went to war and were both killed. She faced the thought.
Life--years of it--without Brock and Hugh! She registered that steadily
in her mind. Then she painted to herself another picture, Brock and Hugh
not going to war, at home ignominiously safe. Other women's sons
marching out into the danger--men, heroes! Brock and Hugh explaining,
steadily explaining why they had not gone! Brock and Hugh after the war,
mature men, meeting returning soldiers, old friends who had borne the
burden and heat, themselves with no memories of hideous, infinitely
precious days, of hardships, and squalid trench life, and deadly
pain--for America! Brock and Hugh going on through life into old age
ashamed to hold up their heads and look their comrades in the eye! Or
else--it might be--Brock and Hugh lying next year, this year, in
unknown, honored graves in France! Which was worse? And the aching heart
of the woman did not wait to answer. Better a thousand times brave death
than a coward's life. She would choose so if she knew certainly that she
sent them both to death. The education of the war, the new glory of
patriotism, had already gone far in this one woman.
And then the thought stabbed again--a slacker--Hugh! How did his father
dare say it? A poisonous terror, colder than the fear of death, crawled
into her soul and hid there. Was it possible that Hugh, brilliant,
buoyant, temperamental Hugh was--that? The days went on, and the cold,
vile thing stayed coiled in her soul. It was on the very day war was
declared that young Hugh injured his knee, a bad injury. When he was
carried home, when the doctor cut away his clothes and bent over the
swollen leg and said wise things about the "bursa," the boy's eyes were
hard to meet. They constantly sought hers with a look questioning and
anxious. Words were impossible, but she tried to make her glance and
manner say: "I trust you. Not for worlds would I believe you did it on
purpose."
And finally the lad caught her hand and with his mouth against it spoke.
"_You_ know I didn't do it on purpose, Mummy."
And the cold horror fled out of her heart, and a great relief flooded
her.
On a day after that Brock came home from camp, and, though he might not
tell it in words, she knew that he would sail shortly for France. She
kept the house full of brightness and movement for the three days he had
at home, yet the four--young Hugh on crutches now--clung to each other,
and on the last afternoon she and Brock were alone for an hour. They had
sat just here after tennis, in the hazy October weather, and pink-brown
leaves had floated down with a thin, pungent fragrance and lay on the
stone steps in vague patterns. Scarlet geraniums bloomed back of Brock's
head and made a satisfying harmony with the copper of his tanned face.
They fell to silence after much talking, and finally she got out
something which had been in her mind but which it had been hard to say.
"Brocky," she began, and jabbed the end of her racket into her foot so
that it hurt, because physical pain will distract and steady a mind.
"Brocky, I want to ask you to do something."
"Yes'm," answered Brock.
"It's this. Of course, I know you're going soon, over there."
Brock looked at her gravely.
"Yes, I know, I want to ask you if--if _it_ happens--will you come and
tell me yourself? If it's allowed."
Brock did not even touch her hand; he knew well she could not bear it.
He answered quietly, with a sweet, commonplace manner as if that other
world to which he might be going was a place too familiar in his
thoughts for any great strain in speaking of it. "Yes, Mummy," he said.
"Of course I will. I'd have wanted to anyway, even if you hadn't said
it. It seems to me--" He lifted his young face, square-jawed,
fresh-colored, and there was a vision-seeing look in his eyes which his
mother had known at times before. He looked across the city lying at
their feet, and the river, and the blue hills beyond, and he spoke
slowly, as if shaping a thought. "So many fellows have 'gone west'
lately that there must he some way. It seems as if all that mass of love
and--and desire to reach back and touch--the ones left--as if all that
must have built a sort of bridge over the river--so that a fellow might
probably come back and--and tell his mother--"
Brock's voice stopped, and suddenly she was in his arms, his face was
against hers, and hot tears not her own were on her cheek. Then he was
shaking his head as if to shake off the strong emotion.
"It's not likely to happen, dear. The casualties in this war are
tremendously lower than in--"
"I know," she interrupted. "Of course, they are. Of course, you're
coming home without a scratch, and likely a general, and conceited
beyond words. How will we stand you!"
Brock laughed delightedly. "You're a peach," he stated. "That's the
sort. Laughing mothers to send us off--it makes a whale of a
difference."
That October afternoon had now dropped eight months back, and still the
house seemed lost without Brock, especially on this June twentieth, the
day that was his and hers, the day when there had always been "doings"
second only to Christmas at Lindow. But she gathered up her courage like
a woman. Hugh the elder was coming tonight from his dollar-a-year work
in Washington, her man who had moved heaven and earth to get into active
service, and who, when finally refused because of his forty-nine years
and a defective eye, had left his great business as if it were a joke,
and had put his whole time, and strength, and experience, and fortune at
the service of the Government--as plenty of other American men were
doing. Hugh was coming in time for her birthday dinner, and young Hugh
was with them--Her heart shrank as if a sharp thing touched it. How
would it be when they rose to drink Brock's health? She knew pretty well
what her cousin, the judge, would say:
"The soldier in France! God bring him home well and glorious!"
How would it be for her other boy then, the boy who was not in France?
Unphrased, a thought flashed, "I hope, I do hope Hughie will be very
lame tonight."
The little dog slipped from her and barked in remonstrance as she threw
out her hands and stood up. Old Mavourneen pulled herself to her feet,
too, a huge, beautiful beast, and the woman stooped and put her arm
lovingly about the furry neck. "Mavourneen, you know a lot. You know our
Brock's away." At the name the big dog whined and looked up anxious,
inquiring. "And you know--do you know, dear dog, that Hughie ought to
go? Do you? Mavourneen, it's like the prayer-book says, 'The burden of
it is intolerable.' I can't bear to lose him, and I can't, O God! I
can't bear to keep him." She straightened. "As you say, Mavourneen,
it's time to dress for dinner."
The birthday party went better than one could have hoped. Nobody broke
down at Brock's name; everybody exulted in the splendid episode of his
heroism, months back, which had won him the war cross. The letter from
Jim Colledge and his own birthday letter, garrulous and gay, were read.
Brock had known well that the day would be hard to get through and had
made that letter out of brutal cheerfulness. Yet every one felt his
longing to be at the celebration, missed for the first time in his life,
pulsing through the words. Young Hugh read it and made it sweet with a
lovely devotion to and pride in his brother. A heart of stone could not
have resisted Hugh that night. And then the party was over, and the
woman and her man, seeing each other seldom now, talked over things for
an hour. After, through her open door, she saw a bar of light under the
door of the den, Brock's and Hugh's den.
"Hughie," she spoke, and on the instant the dark panel flashed into
light.
"Come in, Mummy, I've been waiting to talk to you."
"Waiting, my lamb?"
Hugh pushed her, as a boy shoves a sister, into the end of the sofa.
There was a wood fire on the hearth in front of her, for the June
evening was cool, and luxurious Hugh liked a fire. A reading lamp was
lighted above Brock's deep chair, and there were papers on the floor by
it, and more low lights. There were magazines about, and etchings on the
walls, and bits of university plunder, and the glow of rugs and of
books. It was as fascinating a place as there was in all the beautiful
house. In the midst of the bright peace Hugh stood haggard.
"Hughie! What is it?"
"Mother," he whispered, "help me!"
"With my last drop of blood, Hugh."
"I can't go on--alone--mother." His eyes were wild, and his words
labored into utterance. "I--I don't know what to do--mother."
"The war, Hughie?"
"Of course! What else is there?" he flung at her.
"But your knee?"
"Oh, Mummy, you know as well as I that my knee is well enough. Dad knows
it, too. The way he looks at me--or dodges looking! Mummy--I've got to
tell you--you'll have to know--and maybe you'll stop loving me. I'm--"
He threw out his arms with a gesture of despair. "I'm--afraid to go."
With that he was on his knees beside her, and his arms gripped her, and
his head was hidden in her lap. For a long minute there was only
silence, and the woman held the young head tight.
Hugh lifted his face and stared from blurred eyes. "A man might better
be dead than a coward--you're thinking that? That's it." A sob stopped
his voice, the young, dear voice. His face, drawn into lines of age,
hurt her unbearably. She caught him against her and hid the beloved,
impossible face.
"Hugh--I--judging you--I? Why, Hughie, I _love_ you--I only love you. I
don't stand off and think, when it's you and Brock. I'm inside your
hearts, feeling it with you. I don't know if it's good or bad. It's--my
own. Coward--Hughie! I don't think such things of my darling."
"'There's no--friend like a mother,'" stammered young Hugh, and tears
fell unashamed. His mother had not seen the boy cry since he was ten
years old. He went on. "Dad didn't say a word, because he wouldn't spoil
your birthday, but the way he dodged--my knee--" He laughed miserably
and swabbed away tears with the corner of his pajama coat. "I wish I had
a hanky," he complained. The woman dried the tear-stained cheeks hastily
with her own. "Dad's got it in for me," said Hugh. "I can tell. He'll
make me go--now. He--he suspects I went skating that day hoping I'd
fall--and--I know it wasn't so darned unlikely. Yes--I did--not the first
time--when I smashed it; that was entirely--luck." He laughed again, a
laugh that was a sob. "And now--oh, Mummy, have I _got_ to go into that
nightmare? I hate it so. I am--I _am_--afraid. If--if I should be there
and--and sent into some terrible job--shell-fire--dirt--smells--dead men
and horses--filth--torture--mother, I might run. I don't feel sure. I
can't trust Hugh Langdon--he might run. Anyhow"--the lad sprang to his
feet and stood before her--"anyhow--why am _I_ bound to get into this? I
didn't start it. My Government didn't. And I've everything, _everything_
before me here. I didn't tell you, but that editor said--he said I'd be
one of the great writers of the time. And I love it, I love that job. I
can do it. I can be useful, and successful, and an honor to you--and
happy, oh, so happy! If only I may do as Arnold said, be one of
America's big writers! I've everything to gain here; I've everything to
lose there." He stopped and stood before her like a flame.
And from the woman's mouth came words which she had not thought, as if
other than herself spoke them. "'What shall it profit a man,'" she
spoke, "'if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?'"
At that the boy plunged on his knees in collapse and sobbed miserably.
"Mother, mother! Don't be merciless."
"Merciless! My own laddie!" There seemed no words possible as she
stroked the blond head with shaking hand. "Hughie," she spoke when his
sobs quieted. "Hughie, it's not how you feel; it's what you do. I
believe thousands and thousands of boys in this unwarlike country have
gone--are going--through suffering like yours."
Hugh lifted wet eyes. "Do you think so, Mummy?"
"Indeed I do. Indeed I do. And I pray that the women who love them
are--faithful. For I know, I _know_ that if a woman lets her men, if a
mother let her sons fail their country now, those sons will never
forgive her. It's your honor I'm holding to, Hughie, against human
instinct. After this war, those to be pitied won't be the sonless
mothers or the crippled soldiers--it will be the men of fighting age who
have not fought. Even if they could not, even at the best, they will
spend the rest of their lives explaining why."
Hugh sat on the sofa now, close to her, and his head dropped on her
shoulder. "Mummy, that's some comfort, that dope about other fellows
taking it as I do. I felt lonely. I thought I was the only coward in
America. Dad's condemning me; he can't speak to me naturally. I felt as
if"--his voice faltered--"as if I couldn't stand it if you hated me,
too."
The woman laughed a little. "Hughie, you know well that not anything to
be imagined could stop my loving you."
He went on, breathing heavily but calmed. "You think that even if I am a
blamed fool, if I went anyhow--that I'd rank as a decent white man? In
your eyes--Dad's--my own?"
"I know it, Hughie. It's what you do, not how you feel doing it."
"If Brock would hold my hand!" The eyes of the two met with a dim smile
and a memory of the childhood so near, so utterly gone. "I'd like Dad to
respect me again," the boy spoke in a wistful, uncertain voice. "It's
darned wretched to have your father despise you." He looked at her
then. "Mummy, you're tired out; your face is gray. I'm a beast to keep
you up. Go to bed, dear."
He kissed her, and with his arm around her waist led her through the
dark hall to the door of her room, and kissed her again. And again, as
she stood and watched there, he turned on the threshold of the den and
threw one more kiss across the darkness, and his face shone with a smile
that sent her to bed, smiling through her tears. She lay in the
darkness, fragrant of honeysuckle outside, and her sore heart was full
of the boys--of Hugh struggling in his crisis; still more, perhaps, of
Brock whose birthday it was, Brock in France, in the midst of "many and
great dangers," yet--she knew--serene and buoyant among them because his
mind was "stayed." Not long these thoughts held her; for she was so
deadened with the stress of many emotions that nature asserted itself
and shortly she feel asleep.
It may have been two or three hours she slept. She knew afterward that
it must have been at about three of the summer morning when a dream
came which, detailed and vivid as it was, probably filled in time only
the last minute or so before awakening. It seemed to her that glory
suddenly flooded the troubled world; the infinite, intimate joy,
impossible to put into words, was yet a defined and long first chapter
of her dream. After that she stood on the bank of a river, a river
perhaps miles wide, and with the new light-heartedness filling her she
looked and saw a mighty bridge which ran brilliant with many-colored
lights, from her to the misty further shore of the river. Over the
bridge passed a throng of radiant young men, boys, all in uniform. "How
glorious!" she seemed to cry out in delight, and with that she saw
Brock.
Very far off, among the crowd of others, she saw him, threading his way
through the throng. He came, unhurried yet swift, and on his face was an
amused, loving smile which was perhaps the look of him which she
remembered best. By his side walked old Mavourneen, the wolf-hound,
Brock's hand on the shaggy head. The two swung steadily toward her,
Brock smiling into her eyes, holding her eyes with his, and as they
were closer, she heard Mavourneen crying in wordless dumb joy, crying as
she had not done since the day when Brock came home the last time. Above
the sound Brock's voice spoke, every trick of inflection so familiar, so
sweet, that the joy of it was sharp, like pain.
"Mother, I'm coming to take Hughie's hand--to take Hughie's hand," he
repeated.
And with that Mavourneen's great cry rose above his voice. And suddenly
she was awake. Somewhere outside the house, yet near, the dog was
loudly, joyfully crying. Out of the deep stillness of the night burst
the sound of the joyful crying.
The woman shot from her bed and ran barefooted, her heart beating madly,
into the darkness of the hall to the landing on the stairway. Something
halted her. There was a broad, uncurtained pane of glass in the front
door of the house. From the landing one might look down the stone steps
outside and see clearly in the bright moonlight as far as the beginning
of the rose archway. As she stood gasping, from beneath the flowers
Brock stepped into the moonlight and began, unhurried, buoyant, as she
had but now seen him in her dream, to mount the steps. Mavourneen
pressed at his side, and his hand was on the dog's head. As he came, he
lifted his face to his mother with the accustomed, every-day smile which
she knew, as if he were coming home, as he had come home on many a
moonlit evening from a dance in town to talk the day over with her. As
she stared, standing in the dark on the landing, her pulse racing, yet
still with the stillness of infinity, an arm came around her, a hand
gripped her shoulder, and young Hugh's voice spoke.
"Mother! It's Brock!" he whispered.
At the words she fled headlong down to the door and caught at the
handle. It was fastened, and for a moment she could not think of the
bolt. Brock stood close outside; she saw the light on his brown head and
the bend in the long, strong fingers that caressed Mavourneen's fur. He
smiled at her happily--Brock--three feet away. Just as the bolt
loosened, with an inexplicable, swift impulse she was cold with terror.
For the half of a second, perhaps, she halted, possessed by some
formless fear stronger than herself--humanity dreading something not
human, something unknown, overwhelming. She halted not a whole
second--for it was Brock. Brock! Wide open she flung the door and sprang
out.
There was no one there. Only Mavourneen stood in the cold moonlight, and
cried, and looked up, puzzled, at empty air.
"Oh, Brock, Brock! Oh, dear Brock!" the woman called and flung out her
arms. "Brock--Brock--don't leave me. Don't go!"
Mavourneen sniffed about the dark hall, investigating to find the master
who had come home and gone away so swiftly. With that young Hugh was
lifting her in his arms, carrying her up the broad stairs into his room.
"You're barefooted," he spoke brokenly.
She caught his hand as he wrapped her in a rug on the sofa. "Hugh--you
saw--it was Brock?"
"Yes, dearest, it was our Brock," answered Hugh stumblingly.
"You saw--and I--and Mavourneen."
"Mavonrneen is Irish," young Hugh said. "She has the second sight," and
the big old dog laid her nose on the woman's knee and lifted topaz eyes,
asking questions, and whimpered broken-heartedly.
"Dear dog," murmured the woman and drew the lovely head to her. "You saw
him." And then; "Hughie--he came to tell us. He is--dead."
"I think so," whispered young Hugh with bent head.