"_These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene
That men call age; and those who would have been
Their sons, they gave, their immortality._"
--_Rupert Brooke._
There was no sense of loss for Billy in the days that followed Miss
Evison's leaving the neighborhood--you can't lose a thing you never
had. Removed from the fascination of her presence, and reviewing one
incident after another, there was only one theory to accept. It had
been the affair of a moment for her, a diversion acceptable for the
want of something better; now it was over, and she wanted to be free
from any further obligation. Still, it was disconcerting to an
agricultural expert, holding forth late in some village hall, while
the fire in the boxstove burned low and the frost patterns crept over
the steamy window panes, to have his efforts to inspire a sleepy
audience with the need of greater production, suddenly sidetracked by
a vision of a regal little figure in some palm-bordered ballroom,
brilliant and excited and restless as a beautiful moth that has found
the light.
He had now considerable free time in the evenings which might be
turned to good account in his work, but people had become so
accustomed to finding the office locked at night, that they had
stopped calling, and it would be difficult to win back their
interest. With notes of Miss Evison's social engagements in town
constantly finding their way into the local papers, he could scarcely
advertise that henceforth his evenings would be at the service of the
community.
But it was not the blow of Miss Evison's dismissal, nor
dissatisfaction with his work, which turned his affairs in another
direction where things like these don't count for much. It was the
first winter of the war and like many another young man absorbed in
the peaceful industries of the green country, the Representative had
had some serious debates with himself. The men who directed his work,
peering through the chaos of the country's general unpreparedness to
probable starvation ahead, kept the wires from head quarters hot,
suggesting plans for growing bigger crops in the district, leaving it
with the Representative to put the plans before the people. This they
considered his best service just then. At the same time newspapers
were bringing home reports that made it hard for men to go on tilling
their fields, even to feed the men who were fighting, or the people
whose homes had been outraged by an invading army.
Most of these steady, thinking young men with ambitions in other
directions, made no attempt to explain the motives which led them to
put away all the things they cared for to enter a new life as hateful
as it was strange to them. It might have been just the chivalry that
guided their every-day conduct in less spectacular ways, or the more
plebeian, but equally unselfish, spirit of doing an unpleasant, but
necessary, thing because someone had to do it; perhaps the
comradeship with others who were making the sacrifice had some part.
Anyway, without discussion or ceremony, the Representative gave up
his plans for the community and the possibilities of the place on the
hill, which of course didn't mean anything now, anyway, and joined
the county battalion. It would have been harder if his mother had
been living, but as things were he reasoned it wouldn't matter much
to anyone but Jean, and she had developed a splendid faculty for
taking care of herself. It was difficult to associate the easy,
self-assured young varsity student with the shy little school-teacher
who in the years when she felt the loss of her mother most, had cried
to him over problems on which he was helplessly ignorant. His
unfailing solution was to send her to Ruth Macdonald for advice,
until she acquired the habit of going herself, and didn't need his
help any more. In one way, however, Jean remained unchanged from the
little girl who had trotted after him everywhere with the
faithfulness of a little spaniel. He had taught her to climb trees,
and skate, and swim, and though naturally timid and afraid of the
water, she would float with him, perfectly confident, out to the
deepest places. When, nervous and ill with the loneliness of her
first school, she had sent for him, he had only to gather her up like
the child she was, and she went right to sleep, secure and quiet in
the strength and gentleness of his great body. With all the
admirable, twentieth-century young woman's independence, he knew that
the hero worship of the little sister remained the same, and at the
thought of leaving her he was painfully conscious of his neglect
since his interests and his holidays had been given so wholly to Miss
Evison.
It was when he returned from the ceremony of putting on his uniform
that this reproach seemed verified. The mail had brought a note from
Ruth Macdonald saying "Jean has just been sent home for a nerve rest.
I believe the trouble is mostly loneliness. If you could be with her
for a while you might tide it over."
The stenographer covertly sizing up the Representative, with the
popular feminine admiration for a uniform, wondered if his courage
had suddenly failed him that he went so white. The idea wasn't
convincing, however. The afternoon mail offered a more interesting
explanation. With amazing constructive genius she reported that Miss
Evison had written offering to take him back--"and him signed up,"
she lamented tragically. The theory gained weight, but travelled
faster, when Billy was seen taking the first train for the city.
Even Ruth became a victim to circumstantial evidence. The next day
she found Jean alone, and troubled.
"Billy's enlisted," she shuddered.
Ruth experienced all the cold terror that the news has given women
the world over when the men they cared about joined the army. She
didn't say anything--people are so sick of the glib platitudes about
the glory of sacrifice when they can't drive from their imaginations
the actual torture of soul and body. Besides it never mattered
whether Ruth put her sympathy into words or not. It came to you from
the understanding kindness in her eyes, the quick, warm pressure of
her hands, and a thousand little thoughtfulnesses which anticipated
your needs. Her concern was perhaps too evident, for Jean hurried on
to explain.
"Oh, it isn't just that he's going. I was expecting that, but
everyone is saying he's going broken-hearted. Look--"
She indicated a paragraph in the morning paper which stated that Mr.
and Mrs. Evison announced the marriage of their daughter, Marjorie
Angela, to Dr. Knight.
Then Billy came in. He didn't look broken-hearted. In fact, for a man
who had just lost the love of a life time he seemed in a much too
healthy frame of mind to have any sentiment at all. As a matter of
fact, of course, he hadn't seen the little announcement; he had some
time ago stopped reading the social columns where Miss Evison's name
figured, but with sisterly consideration Jean left the paper in his
room where he could read it and have his battle out by himself. Ruth
shared this consideration. When the evening papers, crowded with the
latest draught of casualties, found space to describe at length the
flowers and dresses at some tea given in honor of "the popular Miss
Evison," the girls so obviously avoided any comment that Billy rather
wondered if he shouldn't draw their attention to the fact that Miss
Evison would be charming indeed in the gown of some imported-sounding
stuff with pearls and lilies of the valley. Such wooden creatures men
can be, where a little tragedy would seem the appropriate thing.
Jean's nerves were soon restored to smooth running order, for which
the doctor gave no small share of credit to Ruth's efforts to keep
her out of doors. The county battalion was training near the city,
and every evening Billy could get off, the three of them would tramp
out in moccasins and general Indian accoutrements to the edge of the
city, to toboggan down a snow-crusted hill, or to skate for miles
down some winding creek straggling through spooky cedar swamps and
open, moonlit fields. It was an invigorating change from the theatres
and cafes that had been Billy's late amusement haunts--not that he
had buried all these in the ashes of the past, but they seemed to
have their purpose in catering to the needs of people who wanted
their pleasures ready-made for them. His sister, by chance or design,
frequently added other friends to their party, and he found himself,
either by chance or design, taking Ruth farther up the ice than
anyone else cared to go.
Of course it was natural enough; no other girl could skate so far
without tiring; no other girl could abandon herself so wholly to the
joy of a sport and still keep about her a sort of reverence for it.
And when he watched her from a distance, slim, buoyant, wholly alive,
taking the ice like a sail before a breeze, and remembered the
unconscious glow in her friendly eyes as he had skated with her, he
realized that it was rather gratifying to a man's pride to know that,
while he was so unnecessary to her in a material way, she still cared
to have him around. That there was something strained underneath her
casual friendliness he knew, and wondered; he was beginning to find
it hard to be perfectly natural himself. But when he took her home
one night, and very soberly asked if he might come in and talk to
her, she said "It's pretty late."
He wasn't surprised. He felt that it was pretty late. He had been a
long time awakening. No woman would value very highly the interest of
a man supposedly trying to gather himself together from the blow of
his ideal woman's engagement to another man, and she was not the type
of girl likely to accept a compromise. The next day the battalion
moved to a farther camp.
A few people, dependent entirely upon statistics for their
information, have believed that the farming districts were not
touched by the war, that the great, green country smiled peacefully
through it all, hoping only that the allies might have favorable
weather for their task. Investigations show few homes that have not
suffered the anxiety of waiting, or the grief of loss. Many of the
first to go from the cities had been nurtured in the austere
discipline of some rocky farm whose meagre income did not appeal to
an ambitious young man; or, if the family was large, it behooved some
of them to move out and leave a delving-ground for the rest. Nor was
the change to military life quite so hard for those who had rubbed
against the world in many places, as for the brothers at home for
whom the thought of even a training camp had a homesick apprehension.
A boy from a farm back among the hills occasionally dropped into a
back seat at the village recruiting meetings. He heard unmoved the
argument that he would be handsome in khaki, and listened with
cynical but well-concealed amusement to girls who sang, with more
zeal for, than appreciation of, the cause, "We don't want to lose
you, but we think you ought to go." Then one night the officer made a
sincere and rather strong appeal. He didn't minimize the hardships so
far as he knew them, and he described the brutalized misery of the
invaded countries as graphically as a good imagination could picture
it. The boy from the farm listened with little outward sign of
emotion, but a battle was going on inside. He didn't go to the
platform with the few others who responded to the appeal: he had
never stood before a crowd in his life. He was not used to crowds;
all his life had been spent in the quiet of the fields, and the long
hours of constant, necessary toil had left little time for exploring
other places. He didn't know the ways of men in companies, and it
would have taken more courage than he possessed to stand up before an
audience and take their approval. He waited at the door until the
officer came out--and he joined the army. Then he went home.
In the kitchen the fire burned low. A few geraniums had been moved to
the table, that they might not freeze against the window-panes.
Beside them lay the day's paper and his father's glasses; the father
and mother had acquired a habit of discussing the war news long after
he went to bed at night, and he had often wondered why they should be
so interested; he knew now. Always on the rare occasions when he was
out late, he came in quietly, took off his shoes and went directly
upstairs, but to-night he sat on the wood-box, staring at the ashy
fire and listening to the regular breathing in the little bedroom off
the kitchen. There was only one of these comfortable, sleepy sounds
to-night; his mother was awake. After all the sleepless nights she
had spent over the family it was hard to think of the vigils she
would keep when he had gone. It was hard to think of leaving them
with the work of the farm; they were getting old and the mortgage was
still hanging over them. It meant hard work and careful living to
keep afloat, even with a young man's steady work. They couldn't
afford to hire help, even if the help were available, and he could
see his father, in the evenings of the next harvest, crippling over
the fields, footsore and bent, to bring the cows home for milking.
They would be standing at the bars, in the dusk, those cows, lowing
and nervous from waiting, as though they wondered why the work was
never done. And his mother would come out with the pails, and on into
the dark there would be no sound but the regular flow of the milk
streams, and the contented breathing of the animals. The aching
loneliness of it! And he, the last of their sons, who had hoped to
make things easier, to some day fit up the other house on the place
and bring home a girl who would be a daughter to them--after all they
had hoped of him, where would he be while they were trying to do his
work? Lying out under the sky somewhere, maybe, as powerless to ever
help them again, as though he had never been. Yet the recruiting
officer had said--and the arguments came back as logical and
appealing as when he had placed them before an enthused audience. But
to the boy trying to do the right thing, the problem was cruelly
complicated.
Then his mother called quietly:
"There's nothing wrong, Jim?"
"No. Did I wake you coming in?"
"I was awake. I guess thinking about the boys, lying out, made me
anxious. It's good to know you're in."
She left a good opening for the argument that he couldn't rest at
home while the others were "lying out," but knowing her anxiety he
hadn't the heart. He would tell her in the morning, and she would
accept it as other mothers had done, as motherhood has always
accepted things that paid little for its sacrifice. Maybe she would
even be proud to be the mother of this man-child who was willing to
suffer the inquisition of warfare, with a motive as chivalrous as
those which prompted old-time knights to historic adventures, but in
her secret moments, remembering the poignant joy of the hour when she
had heard his first cry, and felt the helpless, clinging little body
groping toward her and snuggling down safe in the warmth of a
protecting presence, she would know that to her he would always be
the little child who needed her, and, like thousands of other
mothers, she would cry out fearfully and rebelliously, "God, why
should these things be?"
It remained with people less personally concerned to express the
fitting public appreciation of the county battalion. Mrs. Evison
became the leader of a very popular suburban "khaki club," which had
neither the time nor the skill to do much sewing or knitting, but by
giving a series of fetes and teas and musicales, the ladies raised
funds to present the battalion with a set of colors. The presentation
was to be made at a garden party on the Evison grounds as soon as the
shrubbery bloomed, and it was to be a rather elaborate affair. Some
half-dozen more or less prominent men were invited up from the city
to speak. The battalion would be there in full strength. A number of
Marjorie's dearest girl friends would come out from town to supply
the beauty and charm appropriate to the occasion, crosses on the
sleeves and a nurse's head kerchief. There would be a military band
and pavilion for dancing. The speakers' platform would be bright with
flags and bunting and Chinese lantern footlights, with reserved seats
in front for the mothers, and as president of the khaki club, Mrs.
Evison would say a few words to them herself.
When the time arrived she did not fail them. People had come in
crowds, the presentation had passed off with due ceremony and
applause, and her soul was so filled with the perfection of her plans
that she wanted to pour out the balm of her appreciation on those
women who were "so gloriously sending their sons to fight for the
empire and liberty." She was very charming as she stood surrounded by
the flags of the allies and a few hot house palms. To make herself
beautiful for them she had even risked wearing her loveliest and
lowest evening gown, with just the sheerest scarf falling from a bare
shoulder, as a protection from the night air. And standing there like
a goddess of liberty, she told them that she wished she had a dozen
sons to give. She said further that she knew these women who were so
splendidly giving their boys would do still more. The food situation
was serious, but what women in other countries had done the splendid
women on Canadian farms would do. Belgian and French and German and
even English women were sowing the seed and gathering the harvest
this year; she knew that the dear mothers from the farms who had so
unselfishly given their sons would not see them starve in the
trenches, that they would put their shoulders to the wheel as their
pioneer foremothers had done, and go into the fields if necessary, to
the last one of them.
When she had finished, people from somewhere applauded, the band
added its contribution to the clamour, but the mothers sitting down
in the shadows, with their boys back in the lines standing rigid and
weary at attention, were strangely silent. The speaker gathered her
draperies about her, a little elf of a girl handed her a sheaf of
roses, and in the general stir which followed, a few of the women
from the farms got up a bit stiffly--they were not used to sitting so
long at a time--and looked about for their men to go home. It was in
the press of the spring work and they hadn't had time to do the
milking before they came.
Billy was there, and he had listened with all his logical faculties
active. When she finished he began to move towards the gate; it was
his last leave and he had plans for the next day which meant a great
deal to him. There was more than enough time to catch the car to the
city, but he just naturally found himself going. The band had taken a
stand close to the pavilion and was starting up a waltz, and,
well--it was too much like pouring honey into a cup of hemlock. At
the edge of the crowd he suddenly found Marjorie right in his path,
but looking the other way.
"Oh," she gasped, "you frightened me."
He didn't apologize, because he knew he hadn't frightened her. "I was
just getting off to catch the car," he explained.
Miss Evison was disappointed. She had pointed out the good-looking
soldier to a few of her girl friends, with a mysterious half-promise
of a story, later. She had counted on this evening for days, and had
rehearsed several delicate little speeches and a touching, but very
proper, farewell. She hadn't anticipated being confronted with a new
man. It would have been highly satisfactory if he had shown a sign of
the end-of-everything bitterness, generally supposed to be
appropriate under the circumstances, but this cool, friendly
indifference was more than any girl could stand from a man who had
proposed to her not six months before. He was holding out his hand
and saying:
"I may not see you again before I go."
She softened at once.
"You're not going yet," she coaxed. "I simply can't let you go yet,"
and when he showed no sign of staying, she added rather sharply, "I
don't believe I ever knew you to be in such a hurry before."
He smiled kindly and happily as one might over an episode of
childhood.
"I have to get back to the city," he explained patiently, "We're
going out to the country to-morrow."
Miss Evison wasn't used to disappointments and they made her temper
very uncertain.
"Are you taking Miss Macdonald with you?" she inquired.
"Yes." He seemed modestly proud that she should guess it.
She was ashamed the minute the question was out, but that he should
fail to resent it was maddening, and when she was angry she forgot to
be elegant. She was smiling in a way that was not beautiful, and she
said:
"You know I wouldn't have thought from the exalted opinion of her you
used to have, that she'd have fallen for the soldier stuff."
There was nothing gratifying to her vanity in the way he looked at
her. He was angry, of course, but more evident was the surprise of
disillusionment. It seemed as though for the first time he saw her as
she was and hated to believe it.
"You don't mean that, honest?" he said. He put his big toil-hardened
hand on her shoulder, very gently. It was a rather remarkable hand,
strong and capable and intelligent looking, and it had steadied many
other people to be honest, but it was unthinkable that he should
presume to take such an attitude of fatherly disappointment in her
conduct. So she looked at the hand until he took it away, and she
said good night with as much dignity as the situation and her temper
would allow.
She was still in this frame of mind when she met Dr. Knight a few
minutes later, but then she was beginning to know Dr. Knight pretty
well by this time, and it was impossible to avoid such things
constantly.
"What's the matter?" he inquired casually.
"I had arranged to have Mr. Withers meet the girls, but he seemed to
feel that he had other things more important. He's taking Miss
Macdonald out to see some farm or something to-morrow. He always did
have a craze for that."
Dr. Knight on close acquaintance dropped all his drawing-room talk
and expressed some very plebeian views of things. His direct
observation now was,
"She's the kind of girl who'd make him a great wife."
"Yes," she agreed, "the kind of girl whom every man advises every
other man to marry, but never thinks of marrying himself."
The doctor studied his fiancee with the candid speculation of a man
endeavoring to adjust himself to an engagement which somehow seems to
have happened without his planning. He was not ill natured, but
perfectly frank.
"What a little cat!" he said.