Paul Planet was sailing away from New York and from the mother he
adored to fight under the colors of France.
Other women--mothers, wives, sisters, sweethearts--pressed forward.
They also gazed tearfully after the slowly receding steamer.
The girlish figure with the great brown eyes and firm, resolute mouth,
stood motionless.
"Paul," she murmured. "He is my only child--my boy!"
Weeks passed--months.
Paul Planet's regiment was at the front. He had learned what it
means to look death in the face, to live in the trenches, to see the
horrors and devastation of war. He had fought and fought bravely, and
experienced no regrets save one--that he must be separated from his
mother.
"We have always been more like chums than mother and son," he confided
to his comrades. "Since my earliest recollection until now we have
never been separated."
But when he drew forth a small picture from over his heart and said
it was a likeness of the mother for whose loneliness he sighed, his
friends ridiculed his statement.
"Your sweetheart," they said, "or perhaps your sister. But never, never
ask us to believe that the likeness is of your mother."
"She is always young--always beautiful--to me she will never grow old,"
declared the young soldier. But after that he did not show the picture
again.
In far away New York the fair young mother of so stalwart a son
learned, as months rolled by, what it means to watch and wait, to
tremble at the sound of the postman's ring lest it be the harbinger
of ill news; to live, day by day, in a state of suspense and agony
bordering upon despair, and to envy every mother she saw whose son
walked by her side.
Then she, too, sailed for France.
"I must find my boy," she told those who sought to dissuade her from
undertaking the trip.
For nearly a year had passed and no word had been received from Paul
Planet. His name had not appeared in the lists of dead and missing, yet
of his whereabouts his mother could learn nothing.
She applied to the officials at the Army Headquarters in Paris for
information or assistance in locating her son. Her efforts were
fruitless. Passports she received to certain sections of the country
where the family name was known and where she had relatives or friends
to visit or business to transact, but no permission was accorded her to
leave the train at any intermediate point nor to visit a military camp.
Day after day Mme. Planet planned and schemed how she might find her
boy. She made journey after journey in the vain hope that chance might
bring her near him. Her aged mother now accompanied her.
"It will be a miracle if you ever find him," declared the elder woman
as they looked forth upon miles of devastated country through which
long lines of trenches intersected. Everywhere madame's inquiry met
with the same discouraging reply. Paul Planet, the young soldier in the
automobile service, might be in one of any number of places. Even if
located it would be impossible for madame to visit him.
The train in which madame was travelling drew up at a siding near the
ruins of what had once been a small village. Several troop trains sped
by. Slowly the sidetracked train pulled forward toward the main tracks
again. Madame, restless and anxious, crossed the compartment and peered
from the window. The next instant a startled exclamation escaped her
lips.
"What is it?" asked her mother.
With frantic haste the younger woman turned and commenced to collect
their travelling bags.
"I have found Paul," she whispered. "We must leave the train at the
next station."
Now, all that day Paul Planet, for some strange psychological reason
which he could not have explained, had felt conscious of his mother's
nearness. Yet she was in New York, he reasoned and fear smote his heart
lest sickness or accident had befallen her.
"Rest--for two hours."
Down along the marching line of soldiers the order was repeated. Planet
heard it and fell out with alacrity. He heard himself detailed for
temporary duty with a corporal's guard to unload automobile trucks. A
troop train rushed by and a waiting passenger train pulled slowly out
from a siding.
Planet glanced up. From the window of the latter train a face looked
forth--a hand waved. Was he dreaming? Surely that was his mother's
face he had seen! He dashed forward. The face was very distinct now.
Impulsively he laid his finger across his lips as his mother had been
wont to do when, as a child, she had desired him to remain silent. If
the face at the window was that of his mother they must be discreet or
she would never be permitted to join him.
"My mother was on that train," he confided to the soldier beside him.
The man laughed.
"Impossible," he exclaimed. "You have seen a vision."
But Paul Planet had not seen a vision. Two miles further on, when the
train had come to a halt at the little village station, Mme. Planet
almost pulled her protesting mother of seventy down the steps. The
guards also protested.
"Your passports, madame? Where are your passports?" they asked.
"My passports?" she repeated. "Oh, monsieur, I am so excited I do not
know. There are passports there--papers--anything you want--in that
bag."
Madame was so charming--the name of Planet was so well known--that the
bag remained at the station, unopened, and the clever French-American
mother hurried off in search of her supposed friends.
She found them down along the railroad. A little squad of uniformed men
unloading automobile trucks.
"Vive la France!" she cried. "Vive la France!" and all the while her
brown eyes were gazing hungrily, eagerly into the equally brown orbs of
her son. It would not do to single him out from the others. To do so
might result in difficulties for him and for her.
The two hours' rest was lengthened to six. Still the detachment waited
by the roadside. Still madame and her mother waited.
Again the former's ready wit came to their aid. Madame was so
distressed! The friends she had expected to find in the village had
gone away. There was no place for herself and her mother to dine. Would
the soldiers be so kind--so generous----
The soldiers would. They hospitably provided a tent for madame and her
mother. It might be two days, the officers told them, before another
passenger train stopped at that station. Madame, overjoyed, resigned
herself to Providence and basked in the sunshine of her son's presence.
The ban of secrecy had been lifted now. Their relationship was made
known and pocket kodaks drafted into service as the troops were
breaking camp.
"I will have the pictures developed when I reach Paris," said madame
as she once more clasped her boy in her arms. "I have seen you again
and I am content. That two hours' respite by the roadside that resolved
itself into a two days' encampment was a special dispensation of
Providence."
"It was a miracle, mother," declared the son. "There have been miracles
all through this war. That you found me was one of them." Then he
kissed her and marched away.