PETER WRITES A LETTER
IN March, 1916, Sergt. Peter Starkley got back to his own country,
bigger in the chest and an inch taller than when he had gone away. He
walked a little stiffly on his right foot, it is true--but what did that
matter? His letters to the people at home had, by intention, given them
only a vague idea of the possible date of his arrival. They knew that he
was coming, that he was well, and that his new leg was such a
masterpiece of construction that he had danced on it in London on two
occasions. Otherwise he was unannounced.
He went to the town of Stanley first and left his baggage in the freight
shed at the siding. With his haversack on his shoulder and a stout stick
in his right hand, he set out along the white and slippery road. Before
he got to the bridge a two-horse sled overtook him, and the driver, an
elderly man whom he did not know, invited him to climb on. Peter
accepted the invitation with all the agility at his command.
"You step a mite lame on your right leg," said the driver.
"That's so," replied Peter, smiling.
"Been soldierin', hey? See any fight-in'?"
"Yes, I've been in Flanders."
"That so? I've got a boy in the war. Smart boy, too. They give him a job
right in England. He wears spurs to his boots, he does; and it ain't
everyone kin wear them spurs, he writes me. This here war ain't all in
Flanders. We had some shootin' round here about a year back out Pike's
Settlement way. A young feller in soldier uniform was drivin' along, and
some one shot at him from the woods. That's what _he_ said, but my
boy--that was afore he went to the war--says like enough he shot himself
so's to git out of goin'. He's a smart lad--that's why they give him a
job in England. Army Service Corps, he is--so I reckon maybe he's right
about that feller shootin' himself."
"What's his name?" asked Peter quietly.
"Starkley. Peter Starkley from Beaver Dam."
"I'm asking the name of that smart son of yours."
"Gus Todder's his name--Gus Todder, junior. Maybe you know him," was the
reply.
"No, but I've got his number," said Peter. "You tell him so in the next
letter you write him. Tell him that Sergt. Peter Starkley of the 26th
Canadian Infantry Battalion will be glad to see him when he comes home;
tell him not to cut himself on those spurs of his in the meantime; and
you'd better advise him to warn _his father_ not to shoot his mouth off
in future to military men about things he is ignorant of. Here's where I
get off. Thanks for the lift."
Peter left the sled, but turned at the other's voice and stood looking
back at him.
"I didn't get the hang of all that you was sayin'," said Todder. He was
plainly disconcerted.
"Never mind; your son will catch the drift of it," replied Peter. "I am
too happy about getting home to be fussy about little things, but don't
chat quite so freely with every returned infantryman you see about your
son's smartness. You call it smartness--but the fellows up where I left
my right leg have another name for it."
Opening the white gate, he went up the deep and narrow path between snow
banks to the white house. At the top of the short flight of steps that
led to the winter porch that inclosed the front door, he looked over his
shoulder and saw Todder still staring at him. Peter grinned and waved
his hand, then opened the door of the porch.
As he closed the door behind him, the house door opened wide before him.
Vivia stood on the threshold. She stared at him with her eyes very round
and her lips parted, but she did not move or speak. She held her slim
hands clasped before her--clasped so tight that the knuckles were
colorless. Her small face, which had been as pale as her clasped hands
at the first glimpse, turned suddenly as red as a rose; and her eyes,
which had been very bright even to their wonderful depths, were dimmed
suddenly with a shimmer of tears. And for a long time--for ten full
seconds, it may have been--Peter also stood motionless and stared. The
heavy stick slipped from his fingers and fell with a clatter on the
floor of the porch. He stepped forward then and enfolded her in his
khaki-clad arms, safe and sure against the big brass buttons of his
greatcoat; and just then the door of the porch opened, and Mr. Todder
said:
"I ain't got the hang of yer remarks yet, young feller."
"Chase yourself away home," replied Peter, without turning his head; and
there was something in the tone of his voice that caused Mr. Todder to
withdraw his head from the porch and to retire, muttering, to his sled.
Vivia had not paid the slightest heed to the interruption. She drew
Peter into the hall.
"I was afraid," she whispered. "I didn't know how much they had hurt
you, Peter--but I wasn't afraid of that. I should love you just as much
if they had crippled you,--I am so selfish in my love, Peter,--but I was
afraid, at first, that I might see a change in your eyes."
"There couldn't be a change in my eyes when I look at you, unless I were
blind," said Peter. "Even if I were blind, I guess I could see you. But
I am the same as I was, inside and out--all except a bit of a patent
leg."
Just then Mrs. Hammond made her discreet appearance, expressed her joy
and surprise at the sight of Peter and ventured a motherly kiss. Mr.
Hammond came in from the store half an hour later and welcomed Peter
cordially. The man had lost weight, and his face was grim. He got Peter
to himself for a few minutes just before supper.
"Jim is still on the other side the border somewhere, I guess," he said,
"though I haven't heard from him for months. I've kept the shooting
business quiet, Peter--and even about his deserting; but I had to tell
his mother and Vivia that he wasn't any good as a soldier and had gone
away. I made up some kind of story about it. Other people think he's in
France, I guess--even your folks at Beaver Dam. But what do you hear of
Pat? He isn't much of a hand at writing letters, but was well when he
wrote last to his mother."
"I didn't see him over there, but Henry ran across him and said that he
is doing fine work. He's got his third pip and is attached to
headquarters of one of the brigades of the First Division as a learner.
He has been wounded once, I believe, but very slightly."
"And I used to think that Pat wasn't much good--too easy-going and
loose-footed," said Mr. Hammond bitterly. "My idea of a man was a
storekeeper. Well, I think of him now, and I stick out my chest--and
then I remember Jim, and my chest caves in again."
They were interrupted then by Vivia; so nothing more was said about the
deserter. After supper Peter had to prove to the family that he could
dance on his new leg.
"I'll hitch the grays to the pung," said Mr. Hammond when about eight
o'clock Peter got ready to go. "It's a fine night, and the roads are a
marvel. I'll drive you home."
"And I am going too," said Vivia.
Dry maple sticks burned on the hearth of the big Franklin stove in the
sitting room of Beaver Dam. Flora sat at the big table writing a letter
to Dick; John Starkley and Jim Hammond played checkers; and Mrs.
Starkley nodded in a chair by the fire. Emma had gone to bed. John
Starkley had his hand raised and hovering for a master move when a
jangle of bells burst suddenly upon their ears. Flora darted to a
window, and the farmer hastened to the front door; but by the time Flora
had drawn back the curtains and her father had opened the door Jim
Hammond was upstairs and in his room.
Jim did not light the candle that stood on the window sill at the head
of his bed. He closed the door behind him. The blind was up; starshine
from the world of white and purple and silver without sifted faintly
into the little room. He stood for a minute in the middle of the floor,
listening to the broken and muffled sounds of talk and laughter from the
lower hall. He heard a trill of Vivia's laughter. What had brought Vivia
out again, he wondered. News of Peter, beyond a doubt; and good news, to
judge by the sounds. He seated himself cautiously on the edge of the
bed.
Now he heard his father's voice. Yes--and John Starkley was laughing.
There was another man's voice, but he could hear only a low note of it
now and then in the confused, happy babble of sound. A door shut--and
then he could not hear anything. He wondered who the third man was and
decided that he probably was some one from the village who had just
arrived home and who had brought messages from Peter. Perhaps, he
thought, Peter was even then on his way from England.
Jim sat there with the faint shine of the stars falling soft on the rag
carpet at his feet and thought what wonderful people the Starkleys were.
They had taken him in and treated him like one of the family--and like a
white man. Now that Peter was coming home and would be able to help with
the work, he would go away and show John Starkley that he had found his
courage and his manhood. He had made his plans in a general way weeks
before. He would go to another province and enlist in the artillery or
in the infantry under an assumed name; if he "made good," or got killed,
John Starkley would tell all the good he could of him to his family in
Stanley. Already he felt lonely, a dreary chill of homesickness, at the
thought of leaving Beaver Dam.
A door opened and closed downstairs, but Jim Hammond was too busy with
his thoughts and high resolves to hear the faint sounds. He even did not
hear the feet on the carpeted stairs--and a hand was on the latch of the
door before he knew that some one was about to enter the room. He sat
rigid and stared at the door.
The door opened and some one entered who bulked large and tall in the
pale half gloom of the room. The visitor halted and turned his face
toward the bed.
"Who's there?" he asked; and Jim could see the shoulders lower and
advance a little and the whole figure become tense as if for attack.
"It's me, Peter!" whispered Jim sharply "Shut the door quick!"
"You! You, Jim Hammond!" said Peter in a voice of amazement and anger.
"What the mischief are you doing here?" Without turning his face from
the bed he shut the door behind him with his heel. "Light the candle and
pull down the shade. Let me see you."
Jim got to his feet and reached for the shade, but Peter spoke before he
touched it.
"No! The candle first!" exclaimed Peter, with an edge to his voice. "I
don't trust you in the dark any more than I trust you in the woods."
Hammond struck a match and lit the candle, then drew down the shade and
turned with his back to the window. His face was pale. "I didn't figure
on your getting home so soon," he said in an unsteady voice. "I didn't
intend to be here. I thought I'd be gone before you came."
"What are you doing here, anyway?" demanded Peter. "What's the game?
Sitting in my room, on my bed, quite at home, by thunder! And your
father thinks you are in the States. Does my father know you are here?"
Jim smiled faintly. "Yes, he knows--and all your folks know. I've been
here since about the middle of October, working, and sleeping in this
room every night. My people don't know where I am--but when I get to
France you can tell them. Your father doesn't know that it was I who
fired that shot--and when I found you hadn't told him that, or even that
I was a deserter, I felt it was up to me to do my best for you while you
were away. So I've worked hard and been happy here; and I'll be sorry to
go away--but I must go now that you're home again. Don't tell my people
I'm here, Peter."
"You have been living here ever since the middle of October, working
here, and your own father and mother don't know where you are?"
"Your people are the only ones who know."
Peter eyed him in silence for a minute.
"Why did you shoot me, Jim?" he asked more gently.
"How do I know?" exclaimed Hammond. "I was drinking; I was just about
mad with drink. I liked you well enough, Peter,--I didn't want to kill
you,--but the devil was in me. It was drink made me act so bad in St.
John; it was drink made me desert; it was drink that came near making a
murderer of me. That's the truth, Peter--and now I wish you'd go
downstairs, for I don't want my father or Vivia to find me here--or to
know anything about me till I'm in France."
"Shall I find you here when I come back?" asked Peter.
"I'll come downstairs as soon as they go," said Hammond.
Peter was about to leave the room when he suddenly remembered the errand
that had brought him away from the company downstairs. It was a
photograph of himself taken at the age of five years. Vivia had heard of
it and asked for it; and before either of his parents or Flora had been
able to think of a way of stopping him he had started upstairs for it.
Now he found it on the top of a shelf of old books and wiped off the
dust on his sleeve.
"Vivia wants it," he said, smiling self-consciously.
He found Flora waiting at the head of the stairs for him.
"It's all right; I've had a talk with him," he whispered, and when he
reached the sitting room he met the anxious glances of his parents with
a smile and nod that set their immediate anxieties at rest.
It was past midnight when Vivia and her father drove away. Then Jim came
downstairs, and Peter shook hands with him in the most natural way in
the world.
"When we met in my bedroom we were both too astonished to shake hands,"
explained Peter.
"You must sleep in Dick's room now, Peter," said Mrs. Starkley.
"Only for one night," said Jim, trying to smile but making a poor job of
it. "I'll be off to-morrow, now that Peter is home again--just as I
planned all along, you know. I--it isn't the going back to the army I
mind; it is--leaving you people."
He smiled more desperately than ever.
Mrs. Starkley and Flora did not dare trust their voices to reply. John
Starkley laid a hand on Jim's shoulder and said, "Go when it suits you,
Jim, and come back when it suits you--and we shall miss you when you are
away, remember that."
The three men sat up for another hour, talking of Peter's experiences
and Jim's plans. They went upstairs at last, but even then neither Peter
nor Jim could sleep, for the one was restless with happiness and the
other with the excitement of impending change. Peter would see Vivia on
the morrow, and Jim would meet strange faces. Peter had returned to the
security that he had fought and shed his blood for and to the life and
people he loved; Jim's fighting was all before him, and behind him a
disgrace to be outlived.
After a while Peter got up and went to Jim's room in his pyjamas; he sat
on the edge of Jim's bed, and they talked of the fighting over in
France.
"I've been thinking about my reënlistment," said Jim, "and I guess I'll
take a chance on my own name. It's my name I want to make good."
"Sounds risky--but I don't believe it is as risky as it sounds," said
Peter.
"Not if I go far enough away to enlist--to Halifax or Toronto. There
must be lots of Hammonds in the army. I'll take the risk, anyway. It
isn't likely I'll run across any of the old crowd. None of our old
officers would be hard on me, I guess, if they found me fighting and
doing my duty."
"Capt. Long is dead. A great many of the old crowd are dead, and others
have been promoted out of the regiment. Remember Dave Hammer?"
"Yes. If I could ever be as good a soldier as Dave Hammer I think I'd
forget--except sometimes in the middle of the night, maybe--what a mean,
worthless fellow I have been."
"I'll tell you what, Jim," said Peter suddenly, "I'll write a letter for
you to carry; and if any one spots you over there and is nasty about it,
you go to any officer you know in the old battalion and tell the truth
and show my letter. I guess that will clear your name, Jim, if you do
your duty."
"You don't mean to put _everything_ in the letter, do you?"
"Only what is known officially--that you went home from your regiment
here in Canada on pass, started acting the fool and deserted. That is
the charge against you, Jim--desertion. But it is the mildest sort of
desertion, and reënlistment just about offsets it. The same thing done
in France in the face of the enemy is punished--you know how."
"Yes, I know how it is punished," said Hammond. "You wouldn't worry
about that if you knew as much about how I feel now as I do myself. Of
course I've got to prove it before you'll believe it, Peter, but I'm not
afraid to fight."
When Peter had gone back to his room, he sat down to write the letter
that Jim Hammond was to carry in his pocket. It was a long letter, and
Peter was a slow writer. He spared no pains in making every point of his
argument perfectly clear. He staked the military reputation of the whole
Starkley family on James Hammond's future behavior as a soldier. He
sealed it with red wax and his great-grandfather's seal and addressed
the envelope to "Any Officer of the 26th Can. Infty. Bn. or of any Unit
of the Can. Army Corps of the B. E. F." When finally he had the letter
done, it was morning.