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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Joy in the Morning, by Mary Raymond Shipman
+Andrews
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Joy in the Morning
+       The Ditch; Her Country Too; The Swallow; Only One of Them; The V.C.; He That Loseth His Life Shall Find It; The Silver Stirrup; The Russian; Robina's Doll; Dundonald's Destroyer
+
+
+Author: Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
+
+Release Date: May 8, 2005  [eBook #15796]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOY IN THE MORNING***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Garcia, Josephine Paolucci, Joshua Hutchinson,
+and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team from page
+images generously made available by the Kentuckiana Digital Library
+
+
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through the Kentuckiana
+      Digital Library. See
+      http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/
+      text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;xc=1&idno=B92-171-30119788&view=toc
+
+
+
+
+
+JOY IN THE MORNING
+
+by
+
+MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS
+
+New York
+Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: He pinned the thing men die for on the shabby coat of
+the guide. [_Page_ 135]]
+
+
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+
+
+
+By MARY R.S. ANDREWS
+
+
+   JOY IN THE MORNING
+   THE ETERNAL FEMININE
+   AUGUST FIRST
+   THE ETERNAL MASCULINE
+   THE MILITANTS
+   BOB AND THE GUIDES
+   CROSSES OF WAR
+   HER COUNTRY
+   OLD GLORY
+   THE COUNSEL ASSIGNED
+   THE COURAGE OF THE COMMONPLACE
+   THE LIFTED BANDAGE
+   THE PERFECT TRIBUTE
+
+   Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+To the two stars of a service flag, to a brother and a son who served in
+France, this book is dedicated. No book, to my thinking, were one
+Shakespere and Isaiah rolled together, might fittingly answer the honor
+which they, with four million more American soldiers, have brought to
+their own. So that the stories march out very proudly, headed by the
+names of
+
+  CHAPLAIN HERBERT SHIPMAN
+
+  AND
+
+  CAPTAIN PAUL SHIPMAN ANDREWS
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+Now that the tide of Khaki has set toward our shores instead of away;
+now that the streets are filled with splendid boys with gold chevrons of
+foreign service or no less honorable silver chevrons of service here;
+now that the dear lads who sleep in France know that the "torch was
+caught" from their hands, and that faith with them was kept; now
+that--thank God, who, after all, rules--the war is over, there is an old
+word close to the thought of the nation. "Heaviness may endure for a
+night, but joy cometh in the morning." A whole country is so thinking.
+For possibly ten centuries the Great War will be a background for
+fiction. To us, who have lived those years, any tale of them is a
+personal affair. Every-day women and men whom one meets in the street
+may well say to us: "My boy was in the Argonne," or: "My brother fought
+at St. Mihiel." Over and over, unphrased, our minds echo lines of that
+verse found in the pocket of the soldier dead at Gallipoli:
+
+  "_We_ saw the powers of darkness put to flight,
+  _We_ saw the morning break."
+
+Crushed and glorified beyond all generations of the planet, war stories
+prick this generation like family records. It is from us of to-day that
+the load is lifted. We have weathered the heaviness of the night; to us
+"Joy cometh in the morning."
+
+M.R.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+      I. The Ditch
+
+     II. Her Country Too
+
+    III. The Swallow
+
+     IV. Only One of Them
+
+      V. The V.C.
+
+     VI. He That Loseth His Life Shall Find It
+
+    VII. The Silver Stirrup
+
+   VIII. The Russian
+
+     IX. Robina's Doll
+
+      X. Dundonald's Destroyer
+
+
+
+
+THE DITCH
+
+  PERSONS
+
+  THE BOY      an American soldier
+
+  THE BOY'S DREAM OF HIS MOTHER
+
+  ANGÉLIQUE           }
+                      } French children
+  JEAN-BAPTISTE       }
+
+  THE TEACHER
+
+  THE ONE SCHOOLGIRL WITH IMAGINATION
+
+  THE THREE SCHOOLGIRLS WITHOUT IMAGINATION
+
+  HE
+
+  SHE
+
+  THE AMERICAN GENERAL
+
+  THE ENGLISH STATESMAN
+
+The Time.--A summer day in 1918 and a summer day in 2018
+
+
+
+
+FIRST ACT
+
+
+_The time is a summer day in 1918. The scene is the first-line trench of
+the Germans--held lately by the Prussian Imperial Guard--half an hour
+after it had been taken by a charge of men from the Blank_th _Regiment,
+United States Army. There has been a mistake and the charge was not
+preceded by artillery preparation as usual. However, the Americans have
+taken the trench by the unexpectedness of their attack, and the Prussian
+Guard has been routed in confusion. But the German artillery has at once
+opened fire on the Americans, and also a German machine gun has
+enfiladed the trench. Ninety-nine Americans have been killed in the
+trench. One is alive, but dying. He speaks, being part of the time
+delirious._
+
+_The Boy_. Why can't I stand? What--is it? I'm wounded. The sand-bags
+roll when I try--to hold to them. I'm--badly wounded. (_Sinks down.
+Silence._) How still it is! We--we took the trench. Glory be! We took
+it! (_Shouts weakly as he lies in the trench._) (_Sits up and stares,
+shading his eyes_.) It's horrid still. Why--they're here! Jack--you!
+What makes you--lie there? You beggar--oh, my God! They're dead.
+Jack Arnold, and Martin and--Cram and Bennett and Emmet
+and--Dragamore--Oh--God, God! All the boys! Good American boys. The
+whole blamed bunch--dead in a ditch. Only me. Dying, in a ditch filled
+with dead men. What's the sense? (_Silence_.) This damned silly war.
+This devilish--killing. When we ought to be home, doing man's work--and
+play. Getting some tennis, maybe, this hot afternoon; coming in sweaty
+and dirty--and happy--to a tub--and dinner--with mother. (_Groans_.) It
+begins to hurt--oh, it hurts confoundedly. (_Becomes delirious_.)
+Canoeing on the river. With little Jim. See that trout jump, Jimmie?
+Cast now. Under the log at the edge of the trees. That's it! Good--oh!
+(_Groans_.) It hurts--badly. Why, how can I stand it? How can anybody?
+I'm badly wounded. Jimmie--tell mother. Oh--good boy--you've hooked him.
+Now play him; lead him away from the lily-pads. (_Groans_.) Oh, mother!
+Won't you come? I'm wounded. You never failed me before. I need you--if
+I die. You went away down--to the gate of life, to bring me inside.
+Now--it's the gate of death--you won't fail? You'll bring me through to
+that other life? You and I, mother--and I won't be scared. You're the
+first--and the last. (_Puts out his arm searching and folds a hand,
+still warm, of a dead soldier_.) Ah--mother, my dear. I knew--you'd
+come. Your hand is warm--comforting. You always--are there when I need
+you. All my life. Things are getting--hazy. (_He laughs_.) When I was a
+kid and came down in an elevator--I was all right, I didn't mind the
+drop if I might hang on to your hand. Remember? (_Pats dead soldier's
+hand, then clutches it again tightly_.) You come with me when I go
+across and let me--hang on--to your hand. And I won't be scared.
+(_Silence_.) This damned--damned--silly war! All the good American boys.
+We charged the Fritzes. How they ran! But--there was a mistake. No
+artillery preparation. There ought to be crosses and medals going for
+that charge, for the boys--(_Laughs_.) Why, they're all dead. And
+me--I'm dying, in a ditch. Twenty years old. Done out of sixty years
+by--by the silly war. What's it for? Mother, what's it about? I'm ill a
+bit. I can't think what good it is. Slaughtering boys--all the nations'
+boys--honest, hard-working boys mostly. Junk. Fine chaps an hour ago.
+What's the good? I'm dying--for the flag. But--what's the good? It'll go
+on--wars. Again. Peace sometimes, but nothing gained. And all of
+us--dead. Cheated out of our lives. Wouldn't the world have done as well
+if this long ditch of good fellows had been let live? Mother?
+
+_The Boy's Dream of His Mother_. (_Seems to speak_.) My very
+dearest--no. It takes this great burnt-offering to free the world. The
+world will be free. This is the crisis of humanity; you are bending the
+lever that lifts the race. Be glad, dearest life of the world, to be
+part of that glory. Think back to your school-days, to a sentence you
+learned. Lincoln spoke it. "These dead shall not have died in vain, and
+government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
+perish from the earth."
+
+_The Boy_. (_Whispers_.) I remember. It's good. "Shall not have died in
+vain"--"The people--shall not perish"--where's your hand, mother? It's
+taps for me. The lights are going out. Come with me--mother. (_Dies_.)
+
+
+
+
+SECOND ACT
+
+
+_The scene it the same trench one hundred years later, in the year 2018.
+It is ten o'clock of a summer morning. Two French children have come to
+the trench to pick flowers. The little girl of seven is gentle and
+soft-hearted; her older brother is a man of nearly ten years, and feels
+his patriotism and his responsibilities_.
+
+_Angélique_. (_The little French girl_.) Here's where they grow,
+Jean-B'tiste.
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. (_The little French boy_.) I know. They bloom bigger
+blooms in the American ditch.
+
+_Angélique_. (_Climbs into the ditch and picks flowers busily_.) Why do
+people call it the 'Merican ditch, Jean-B'tiste? What's 'Merican?
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. (_Ripples laughter_.) One's little sister doesn't know
+much! Never mind. One is so young--three years younger than I am. I'm
+ten, you know.
+
+_Angélique. Tiens_, Jean-B'tiste. Not ten till next month.
+
+Jean-Baptiste. Oh, but--but--next month!
+
+_Angélique_. What's 'Merican?
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. Droll _p'tite_. Why, everybody in all France knows that
+name. Of American.
+
+_Angélique_. (_Unashamed_.) Do they? What is it?
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. It's the people that live in the so large country
+across the ocean. They came over and saved all our lives, and France.
+
+_Angélique_. (_Surprised_.) Did they save my life, Jean-B'tiste?
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. Little _drôle_. You weren't born.
+
+_Angélique_. Oh! Whose life did they then save? Maman's?
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. But no. She was not born either.
+
+_Angélique_. Whose life, then--the grandfather's?
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. But--even he was not born. (_Disconcerted by
+Angélique's direct tactics_.) One sees they could not save the lives of
+people who were not here. But--they were brave--but yes--and friends to
+France. And they came across the ocean to fight for France. Big, strong
+young soldiers in brown uniforms--the grandfather told me about it
+yesterday. I know it all. His father told him, and he was here. In this
+field. (_Jean-Baptiste looks about the meadow, where the wind blows
+flowers and wheat._) There was a large battle--a fight very immense. It
+was not like this then. It was digged over with ditches and the soldiers
+stood in the ditches and shot at the wicked Germans in the other
+ditches. Lots and lots of soldiers died.
+
+_Angélique_. (_Lips trembling_.) Died--in ditches?
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. (_Grimly._) Yes, it is true.
+
+_Angélique_. (_Breaks into sobs._) I can't bear you to tell me that. I
+can't bear the soldiers to--die--in ditches.
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. (_Pats her shoulder._) I'm sorry I told you if it makes
+you cry. You are so little. But it was one hundred years ago. They're
+dead now.
+
+_Angélique_. (_Rubs her eyes with her dress and smiles_.) Yes, they're
+quite dead now. So--tell me some more.
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. But I don't want to make you cry more, _p'tite_. You're
+so little.
+
+_Angélique._ I'm not _very_ little. I'm bigger than Anne-Marie Dupont,
+and she's eight.
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. But no. She's not eight till next month. She told me.
+
+_Angélique_. Oh, well--next month. Me, I want to hear about the brave
+'Mericans. Did they make this ditch to stand in and shoot the wicked
+Germans?
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. They didn't make it, but they fought the wicked Germans
+in a brave, wonderful charge, the bravest sort, the grandfather said.
+And they took the ditch away from the wicked Germans, and then--maybe
+you'll cry.
+
+_Angélique_. I won't. I promise you I won't.
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. Then, when the ditch--only they called it a trench--was
+well full of American soldiers, the wicked Germans got a machine gun at
+the end of it and fired all the way along--the grandfather called it
+enfiladed--and killed every American in the whole long ditch.
+
+_Angélique_. (_Bursts into tears again; buries her face in her skirt_.)
+I--I'm sorry I cry, but the 'Mericans were so brave and fought--for
+France--and it was cruel of the wicked Germans to--to shoot them.
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. The wicked Germans were always cruel. But the
+grandfather says it's quite right now, and as it should be, for they are
+now a small and weak nation, and scorned and watched by other nations,
+so that they shall never be strong again. For the grandfather says they
+are not such as can be trusted--no, never the wicked Germans. The world
+will not believe their word again. They speak not the truth. Once they
+nearly smashed the world, when they had power. So it is looked to by all
+nations that never again shall Germany be powerful. For they are sly,
+and cruel as wolves, and only intelligent to be wicked. That is what the
+grandfather says.
+
+_Angélique_. Me, I'm sorry for the poor wicked Germans that they are so
+bad. It is not nice to be bad. One is punished.
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. (_Sternly_.) It is the truth. One is always punished.
+As long as the world lasts it will be a punishment to be a German. But
+as long as France lasts there will be a nation to love the name of
+America, one sees. For the Americans were generous and brave. They left
+their dear land and came and died for us, to keep us free in France from
+the wicked Germans.
+
+_Angélique_. (_Lip trembles_.) I'm sorry--they died.
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. But, _p'tite!_ That was one hundred years ago. It is
+necessary that they would have been dead by now in every case. It was
+more glorious to die fighting for freedom and France than just to
+die--fifty years later. Me, I'd enjoy very much to die fighting. But
+look! You pulled up the roots. And what is that thing hanging to the
+roots--not a rock?
+
+_Angélique_. No, I think not a rock. (She takes the object in her hands
+and knocks dirt from it.) But what is it, Jean-B'tiste?
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. It's--but never mind. I can't always know everything,
+don't you see, Angélique? It's just something of one of the Americans
+who died in the ditch. One is always finding something in these old
+battle-fields.
+
+_Angélique_. (_Rubs the object with her dress. Takes a handful of sand
+and rubs it on the object. Spits on it and rubs the sand_.) _V'là_,
+Jean-B'tiste--it shines.
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. (_Loftily_.) Yes. It is nothing, that. One finds such
+things.
+
+_Angélique._ (_Rubbing more_.) And there are letters on it.
+
+_Jean-Baptiste_. Yes. It is nothing, that. One has flowers _en masse_
+now, and it is time to go home. Come then, _p'tite_, drop the dirty bit
+of brass and pick up your pretty flowers. _Tiens!_ Give me your hand.
+I'll pull you up the side of the ditch. (_Jean-Baptiste turns as they
+start_.) I forgot the thing which the grandfather told me I must do
+always. (_He stands at attention_.) _Au revoir_, brave Americans. One
+salutes your immortal glory. (_Exit Jean-Baptiste and Angélique_.)
+
+
+
+
+THIRD ACT
+
+
+_The scene is the same trench in the year 2018. It is eleven o'clock of
+the same summer morning. Four American schoolgirls, of from fifteen to
+seventeen years, have been brought to see the trench, a relic of the
+Great War, in charge of their teacher. The teacher, a worn and elderly
+person, has imagination, and is stirred, as far as her tired nerves may
+be, by the heroic story of the old ditch. One of the schoolgirls also
+has imagination and is also stirred. The other three are "young
+barbarians at play." Two out of five is possibly a large proportion to
+be blessed with imagination, but the American race has improved in a
+hundred years_.
+
+_Teacher_. This, girls, is an important bit of our sight-seeing. It is
+the last of the old trenches of the Great War to remain intact in all
+northern France. It was left untouched out of the reverence of the
+people of the country for one hundred Americans of the Blank_th_
+Regiment, who died here--in this old ditch. The regiment had charged too
+soon, by a mistaken order, across what was called No-Man's Land, from
+their own front trench, about (_consults guide-book_)--about thirty-five
+yards away--that would be near where you see the red poppies so thick in
+the wheat. They took the trench from the Germans, and were then wiped
+out partly by artillery fire, partly by a German machine gun which was
+placed, disguised, at the end of the trench and enfiladed the entire
+length. Three-quarters of the regiment, over two thousand men, were
+killed in this battle. Since then the regiment has been known as the
+"Charging Blank_th_."
+
+_First Schoolgirl_. Wouldn't those poppies be lovely on a yellow hat?
+
+_Second Schoolgirl_. Ssh! The Eye is on you. How awful, Miss Hadley! And
+were they all killed? Quite a tragedy!
+
+_Third Schoolgirl_. Not a yellow hat! Stupid! A corn-colored one--just
+the shade of the grain with the sun on it. Wouldn't it be lovely! When
+we get back to Paris--
+
+_Fourth Schoolgirl (the one with imagination_). You idiots! You poor
+kittens!
+
+_First Schoolgirl_. If we ever do get back to Paris!
+
+_Teacher_. (_Wearily_.) Please pay attention. This is one of the world's
+most sacred spots. It is the scene of a great heroism. It is the place
+where many of our fellow countrymen laid down their lives. How can you
+stand on this solemn ground and chatter about hats?
+
+_Third Schoolgirl_. Well, you see, Miss Hadley, we're fed up with solemn
+grounds. You can't expect us to go into raptures at this stage over an
+old ditch. And, to be serious, wouldn't some of those field flowers make
+a lovely combination for hats? With the French touch, don't you know?
+You'd be darling in one--so _ingénue!_
+
+_Second Schoolgirl_. Ssh! She'll kill you. (_Three girls turn their
+backs and stifle a giggle_.)
+
+_Teacher_. Girls, you may be past your youth yourselves one day.
+
+_First Schoolgirl_. (_Airily._) But we're well preserved so far, Miss
+Hadley.
+
+_Fourth Schoolgirl_. (_Has wandered away a few yards. She bends and
+picks a flower from the ditch. She speaks to herself_.) The flag
+floated here. There were shells bursting and guns thundering and groans
+and blood--here. American boys were dying where I stand safe. That's
+what they did. They made me safe. They kept America free. They made the
+"world safe for freedom," (_She bends and speaks into the ditch_.) Boy,
+you who lay just there in suffering and gave your good life away that
+long-ago summer day--thank you. You died for us. America remembers.
+Because of you there will be no more wars, and girls such as we are may
+wander across battle-fields, and nations are happy and well governed,
+and kings and masters are gone. You did that, you boys. You lost fifty
+years of life, but you gained our love forever. Your deaths were not in
+rain. Good-by, dear, dead boys.
+
+_Teacher_. (_Calls_). Child, come! We must catch the train.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH ACT
+
+
+_The scene is the same trench in the year 2018. It is three o'clock of
+the afternoon, of the same summer day. A newly married couple have come
+to see the trench. He is journeying as to a shrine; she has allowed
+impersonal interests, such as history, to lapse under the influence of
+love and a trousseau. She is, however, amenable to patriotism, and, her
+husband applying the match, she takes fire--she also, from the story of
+the trench_.
+
+_He_. This must be the place.
+
+_She_. It is nothing but a ditch filled with flowers.
+
+_He_. The old trench. (_Takes off his hat_.)
+
+_She_. Was it--it was--in the Great War?
+
+_He_. My dear!
+
+_She_. You're horrified. But I really--don't know.
+
+_He_. Don't know? You must.
+
+_She_. You've gone and married a person who hasn't a glimmer of history.
+What will you do about it?
+
+_He_. I'll be brave and stick to my bargain. Do you mean that you've
+forgotten the charge of the Blank_th_ Americans against the Prussian
+Guard? The charge that practically ended the war?
+
+_She_. Ended the war? How could one charge end the war?
+
+_He_. There was fighting after. But the last critical battle was here
+(_looks about_) in these meadows, and for miles along. And it was just
+here that the Blank_th_ United States Regiment made its historic dash.
+In that ditch--filled with flowers--a hundred of our lads were mown down
+in three minutes. About two thousand more followed them to death.
+
+_She_. Oh--I do know. It was _that_ charge. I learned about it in
+school; it thrilled me always.
+
+_He_. Certainly. Every American child knows the story. I memorized the
+list of the one hundred soldiers' names of my own free will when I was
+ten. I can say them now. "Arnold--Ashe--Bennett--Emmet--Dragmore--"
+
+_She_. Don't say the rest, Ted--tell me about it as it happened. (_She
+slips her hand into his_.) We two, standing here young and happy,
+looking forward to a, lifetime together, will do honor, that way, to
+those soldiers who gave up their happy youth and their lives for
+America.
+
+_He_. (_Puts his arm around her_.) We will. We'll make a little memorial
+service and I'll preach a sermon about how gloriously they fell and how,
+unknowingly, they won the war--and so much more!
+
+_She_. Tell me.
+
+_He_. It was a hundred years ago about now--summer. A critical battle
+raged along a stretch of many miles. About the centre of the
+line--here--the Prussian Imperial Guards, the crack soldiers of the
+German army, held the first trench--this ditch. American forces faced
+them, but in weeks of fighting had not been able to make much
+impression. Then, on a day, the order came down the lines that the
+Blank_th_ United States Regiment, opposed to the Guard, was to charge
+and take the German front trench. Of course the artillery was to prepare
+for their charge as usual, but there was some mistake. There was no
+curtain of fire before them, no artillery preparation to help them. And
+the order to charge came. So, right into the German guns, in the face of
+those terrible Prussian Guards, our lads went "over the top" with a
+great shout, and poured like a flame, like a catapult, across the space
+between them--No-Man's Land, they called it then--it was only
+thirty-five yards--to the German trench. So fast they rushed, and so
+unexpected was their coming, with no curtain of artillery to shield
+them, that the Germans were for a moment taken aback. Not a shot was
+fired for a space of time almost long enough to let the Americans reach
+the trench, and then the rifles broke out and the brown uniforms fell
+like leaves in autumn. But not all. They rushed on pell-mell, cutting
+wire, pouring irresistibly into the German trench. And the Guards, such
+as were not mown down, lost courage at the astounding impetus of the
+dash, and scrambled and ran from their trench. They took it--our boys
+took that trench--this old ditch. But then the big German guns opened a
+fire like hail and a machine gun at the end--down there it must have
+been--enfiladed the trench, and every man in it was killed. But the
+charge ended the war. Other Americans, mad with the glory of it, poured
+in a sea after their comrades and held the trench, and poured on and on,
+and wiped out that day the Prussian Guard. The German morale was broken
+from then; within four months the war was over.
+
+_She_. (_Turns and hides her face on his shoulder and shakes with
+sobs_.) I'm not--crying for sorrow--for them. I'm crying--for the glory
+of it. Because--I'm so proud and glad--that it's too much for me. To
+belong to such a nation--to such men. I'm crying for knowing, it was my
+nation--my men. And America is--the same today. I know it. If she needed
+you today, Ted, you would fight like that. You would go over the top
+with the charging Blank_th_, with a shout, if the order came--wouldn't
+you, my own man?
+
+_He_. (_Looking into the old ditch with his head bent reverently_.) I
+hope so.
+
+_She_. And I hope I would send you with all my heart. Death like that is
+more than life.
+
+_He_. I've made you cry.
+
+_She_. Not you. What they did--those boys.
+
+_He_. It's fitting that Americans should come here, as they do come, as
+to a Mecca, a holy place. For it was here that America was saved. That's
+what they did, the boys who made that charge. They saved America from
+the most savage and barbarous enemy of all time. As sure as France and
+England were at the end of their rope--and they were--so surely Germany,
+the victor, would have invaded America, and Belgium would have happened
+in our country. A hundred years wouldn't have been enough to free us
+again, if that had happened. You and I, dearest, owe it to those
+soldiers that we are here together, free, prosperous citizens of an ever
+greater country.
+
+_She_. (_Drops on her knees by the ditch_.) It's a shrine. Men of my
+land, I own my debt. I thank you for all I have and am. God bless you in
+your heaven. (_Silence_.)
+
+_He_. (_Tears in his eyes. His arm around her neck as he bends to her_.)
+You'll not forget the story of the Charging Blank_th_?
+
+_She_. Never again. In my life. (_Rising_.) I think their spirits must
+be here often. Perhaps they're happy when Americans are here. It's a
+holy place, as you said. Come away now. I love to leave it in sunshine
+and flowers with the dear ghosts of the boys. (_Exit He and She_.)
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH ACT
+
+
+_The scene it the same trench in the year 2018. It is five o'clock of
+the same summer afternoon. An officer of the American Army and an
+English cabinet member come, together, to visit the old trench. The
+American has a particular reason for his interest; the Englishman
+accompanies the distinguished American. The two review the story of the
+trench and speak of other things connected, and it is hoped that they
+set forth the far-reaching work of the soldiers who died, not realizing
+their work, in the great fight of the Charging Blank_th.
+
+_Englishman_. It's a peaceful scene.
+
+_American_. (_Advances to the side of the ditch. Looks down. Takes off
+his cap_.) I came across the ocean to see it. (_He looks over the
+fields_.) It's quiet.
+
+_Englishman_. The trenches were filled in all over the invaded territory
+within twenty-five years after the war. Except a very few kept as a
+manner of monument. Object-lessons, don't you know, in what the thing
+meant. Even those are getting obliterated. They say this is quite the
+best specimen in all France.
+
+_American_. It doesn't look warlike. What a lot of flowers!
+
+_Englishman_. Yes. The folk about here have a tradition, don't you know,
+that poppies mark the places where blood flowed most.
+
+_American_. Ah! (_Gazes into the ditch_.) Poppies there. A hundred of
+our soldiers died at once down there. Mere lads mostly. Their names and
+ages are on a tablet in the capitol at Washington, and underneath is a
+sentence from Lincoln's Gettysburg speech: "These dead shall not have
+died in vain, and government of the people, by the people, for the
+people shall not perish from the earth."
+
+_Englishman_. Those are undying words.
+
+_American_. And undying names--the lads' names.
+
+_Englishman_. What they and the other Americans did can never die. Not
+while the planet endures. No nation at that time realized how vital was
+your country's entrance into the war. Three months later it would have
+been too late. Your young, untried forces lifted worn-out France and
+England and swept us to-victory. It was America's victory at the last.
+It is our glory to confess that, for from then on America has been our
+kin.
+
+_American_. (_Smiles_.) England is our well-beloved elder sister for all
+time now.
+
+_Englishman_. The soldiers who died there (_gestures to the ditch_) and
+their like did that also. They tied the nations together with a bond of
+common gratitude, common suffering, common glory.
+
+_American_. You say well that there was common gratitude. England and
+France had fought our battle for three years at the time we entered the
+war. We had nestled behind the English fleet. Those grim gray ships of
+yours stood between us and the barbarians very literally.
+
+_Englishman_. Without doubt Germany would have been happy to invade the
+only country on earth rich enough to pay her war debt. And you were
+astonishingly open to invasion. It is one of the historical facts that a
+student of history of this twenty-first century finds difficult to
+realize.
+
+_American_. The Great War made revolutionary changes. That condition of
+unpreparedness was one. That there will never be another war is the
+belief of all governments. But if all governments should be mistaken,
+not again would my country, or yours, be caught unprepared. A general
+staff built of soldiers and free of civilians hampering is one advantage
+we have drawn from our ordeal of 1917.
+
+_Englishman_. Your army is magnificently efficient.
+
+_American_. And yours. Heaven grant neither may ever be needed! Our
+military efficiency is the pride of an unmilitary nation. One Congress,
+since the Great War and its lessons, has vied with another to keep our
+high place.
+
+_Englishman_. Ah! Your Congress. That has changed since the old
+days--since La Follette.
+
+_American_. The name is a shame and a warning to us. Our children are
+taught to remember it so. The "little group of wilful men," the eleven
+who came near to shipwrecking the country, were equally bad, perhaps,
+but they are forgotten. La Follette stands for them and bears the curses
+of his countrymen, which they all earned.
+
+_Englishman_. Their ignominy served America; it roused the country to
+clean its Augean stables.
+
+_American_. The war purified with fire the legislative soul.
+
+_Englishman_. Exactly. Men are human still, certainly, yet genuine
+patriotism appears to be a _sine qua non_ now, where bombast answered in
+the old day. Corruption is no longer accepted. Public men then were
+surprisingly simple, surprisingly cheap and limited in their methods.
+There were two rules for public and private life. It was thought
+quixotic, I gather from studying the documents of the time, to expect
+anything different. And how easily the change came!
+
+_American_. The nation rose and demanded honesty, and honesty was there.
+The enormous majority of decent people woke from a discontented apathy
+and took charge. Men sprang into place naturally and served the nation.
+The old log-rolling, brainless, greedy public officials were thrown
+into the junk-heap. As if by magic the stress of the war wrung out the
+rinsings and the scourings and left the fabric clean.
+
+_Englishman_. The stress of the war affected more than internal
+politics. You and I, General, are used to a standard of conduct between
+responsible nations as high as that taken for granted between
+responsible persons. But, if one considers, that was far from the case a
+hundred years ago. It was in 1914, that von Bethmann-Hollweg spoke of "a
+scrap of paper."
+
+_American_. Ah--Germans!
+
+_Englishman_. Certainly one does not expect honor or sincerity from
+German psychology. Even the little Teutonic Republic of to-day is
+tricky, scheming always to get a foothold for power, a beginning for the
+army they will never again be allowed to have. Even after the Kaiser and
+the Crown Prince and the other rascals were punished they tried to cheat
+us, if you remember. Yet it is not that which I had in mind. The point I
+was making was that today it would be out of drawing for a government
+even of charlatans, like the Prussians, to advance the sort of claims
+which they did. In commonplace words, it was expected then that
+governments, as against each other, would be self-seeking. To-day
+decency demands that they should be, as men must be, unselfish.
+
+_America_. (_Musingly_.) It's odd how long it took the
+world--governments--human beings--to find the truth of the very old
+phrase that "he who findeth his life must lose it."
+
+_Englishman_. The simple fact of that phrase before the Great War was
+not commonly grasped. People thought it purely religious and reserved
+for saints and church services. As a working hypothesis it was not
+generally known. The every-day ideals of our generation, the friendships
+and brotherhoods of nations as we know them would have been thought
+Utopian.
+
+_American_. Utopian? Perhaps our civilization is better than Utopian.
+The race has grown with a bound since we all went through hell together.
+How far the civilization of 1914 stood above that of 1614! The
+difference between galley-slaves and able-bodied seamen, of your and
+our navy! Greater yet than the change in that three hundred years is the
+change in the last one hundred. I look at it with a soldier's somewhat
+direct view. Humanity went helpless and alone into a fiery furnace and
+came through holding on to God's hand. We have clung closely to that
+powerful grasp since.
+
+_Englishman_. Certainly the race has emerged from an epoch of intellect
+to an epoch of spirituality--which comprehends and extends intellect.
+There have never been inventions such as those of our era. And the
+inventors have been, as it were, men inspired. Something beyond
+themselves has worked through them for the world. A force like that was
+known only sporadically before our time.
+
+_American_. (_Looks into old ditch_.) It would be strange to the lads
+who charged through horror across this flowery field to hear our talk
+and to know that to them and their deeds we owe the happiness and the
+greatness of the world we now live in.
+
+_Englishman_. Their short, Homeric episode of life admitted few
+generalizations, I fancy. To be ready and strong and brave--there was
+scant time for more than that in those strenuous days. Yet under that
+simple formula lay a sea of patriotism and self-sacrifice, from which
+sprang their soldiers' force. "Greater love hath no man than this, that
+a man lay down his life for his friends." It was their love--love of
+country, of humanity, of freedom--which silenced in the end the great
+engine of evil--Prussianism. The motive power of life is proved, through
+those dead soldiers, to be not hate, as the Prussians taught, but love.
+
+_American_. Do you see something shining among the flowers at the bottom
+of the ditch?
+
+_Englishman_. Why, yes. Is it--a leaf which catches the light?
+
+_American_. (_Stepping down_.) I'll see. (_He picks up a metal
+identification disk worn by a soldier. Angélique has rubbed it so that
+the letters may mostly be read_.) This is rather wonderful. (_He reads
+aloud_.) "R.V.H. Randolph--Blank_th_ Regiment--U.S." I can't make out
+the rest.
+
+_Englishman_. (_Takes the disk_.) Extraordinary! The name and regiment
+are plain. The identification disk, evidently, of a soldier who died in
+the trench here. Your own man, General.
+
+_American_. (_Much stirred_.) And--my own regiment. Two years ago I was
+the colonel of "The Charging Blank_th_."
+
+
+
+
+HER COUNTRY TOO
+
+
+David Lance sat wondering. He was not due at the office till ten this
+Saturday night and he was putting in a long and thorough wonder. About
+the service in all its branches; about finance; about the new Liberty
+Loan. First, how was he to stop being a peaceful reporter on the
+_Daybreak_ and get into uniform; that wonder covered a class including
+the army, navy and air-service, for he had been refused by all three; he
+wondered how a small limp from apple-tree acrobatics at ten might be so
+explained away that he might pass; reluctantly he wondered also about
+the Y.M.C.A. But he was a fighting man _par excellence_. For him it
+would feel like slacking to go into any but fighting service. Six feet
+two and weighing a hundred and ninety, every ounce possible to be muscle
+was muscle; easy, joyful twenty-four-year-old muscle which knew nothing
+of fatigue. He was certain he would make a fit soldier for Uncle Sam,
+and how, how he wanted to be Uncle Sam's soldier!
+
+He was getting desperate. Every man he knew in the twenties and many a
+one under and over, was in uniform; bitterly he envied the proud peace
+in their eyes when he met them. He could not bear to explain things once
+more as he had explained today to Tom Arnold and "Beef" Johnson, and
+"Seraph" Olcott, home on leave before sailing for France. He had
+suffered while they listened courteously and hurried to say that they
+understood, that it was a shame, and that: "You'll make it yet, old
+son." And they had then turned to each other comparing notes of camps.
+It made little impression that he had toiled and sweated early and late
+in this struggle to get in somewhere--army, navy, air-service--anything
+to follow the flag. He wasn't allowed. He was still a reporter on the
+_Daybreak_ while the biggest doings of humanity were getting done, and
+every young son of America had his chance to help. With a strong,
+tireless body aching for soldier's work, America, his mother, refused
+him work. He wasn't allowed.
+
+Lance groaned, sitting in his one big chair in his one small room. There
+were other problems. A Liberty Loan drive was on, and where could he lay
+hands on money for bonds? He had plunged on the last loan and there was
+yet something to pay on the $200 subscription. And there was no one and
+nothing to fall back on except his salary as reporter for the
+_Daybreak._ His father had died when he was six, and his mother eight
+years ago; his small capital had gone for his four years, at Yale. There
+was no one--except a legend of cousins in the South. Never was any one
+poorer or more alone. Yet he must take a bond or two. How might he hold
+up his head not to fight and not to buy bonds. A knock at the door.
+
+"Come in," growled Lance.
+
+The door opened, and a picture out of a storybook stood framed and
+smiling. One seldom sees today in the North the genuine old-fashioned
+negro-woman. A sample was here in Lance's doorway. A bandanna of red and
+yellow made a turban for her head; a clean brownish calico dress stood
+crisply about a solid and waistless figure, and a fresh white apron
+covered it voluminously in front; a folded white handkerchief lay,
+fichu-wise, around the creases of a fat black neck; a basket covered
+with a cloth was on her arm. She stood and smiled as if to give the
+treat time to have its effect on Lance. "Look who's here!" was in large
+print all over her. And she radiated peace and good-will.
+
+Lance was on his feet with a shout. "Bless your fat heart, Aunt
+Basha--I'm glad to see you," he flung at her, and seized the basket and
+slung it half across the room to a sofa with a casualness, alarming to
+Aunt Basha--christened Bathsheba seventy-five years ago, but "rightly
+known," she had so instructed Lance, as "Aunt Basha."
+
+"Young marse, don' you ruinate the washin', please sir," she adjured in
+liquid tones.
+
+"Never you mind. It's the last one you'll do for me," retorted Lance.
+"Did I tell you you couldn't have the honor of washing for me anymore,
+Aunt Basha?"
+
+Aunt Basha was wreathed in smiles.
+
+"Yassir, young marse. You tole me dat mo'n tree times befo', a'ready,
+sir."
+
+"Well--it's final this time. Can't stand your prices. I _can't_ stand
+your exorbitant prices. Now what do you have the heart to charge for
+dusting off those three old shirts and two and a half collars? Hey?"
+
+Aunt Basha, entirely serene, was enjoying the game. "What does I
+charges, sir? Fo' dat wash, which you slung 'round acrost de room, sir?
+Well, sir, young marse, I charges fo' dollars 'n sev'nty fo' cents, sir,
+dis week. Fo' dat wash."
+
+Lance let loose a howl and flung himself into his chair as if
+prostrated, long legs out and arms hanging to the floor. Aunt Basha
+shook with laughter. This was a splendid joke and she never, never tired
+of it. "You see!" he threw out, between gasps. "Look at that! _Fo'_
+dollars 'n sev'nty _fo'_ cents." He sat up suddenly and pointed a big
+finger, "Aunt Basha," he whispered, "somebody's been kidding you.
+Somebody's lied. This palatial apartment, much as it looks like it, is
+not the home of John D. Rockefeller." He sprung up, drew an imaginary
+mantle about him, grasped one elbow with the other hand, dropped his
+head into the free palm and was Cassius or Hamlet or Faust--all one to
+Aunt Basha. His left eyebrow screwed up and his right down, and he
+glowered. "List to her," he began, and shot out a hand, immediately to
+replace it where it was most needed, under his elbow. "But list, ye
+Heavens and protect the lamb from this ravening wolf. She chargeth--oh
+high Heavens above!--she expecteth me to pay"--he gulped sobs--"the
+extortioner, the she-wolf--expecteth me to pay her--_fo_' dollars 'n
+sev'nty _fo_' cents!"
+
+Aunt Basha, entranced with this drama, quaked silently like a large
+coffee jelly, and with that there happened a high, rich, protracted
+sound which was laughter, but laughter not to be imitated of any vocal
+chords of a white race. The delicious note soared higher, higher it
+seemed than the scale of humanity, and was riotous velvet and cream,
+with no effort or uncertainty. Lance dropped his Mephistopheles pose and
+grinned.
+
+"It's Q sharp!" he commented. "However does she do it!"
+
+"Naw, sir, young marse," Aunt Basha began, descending to speech. "De
+she-wolf, she don' expecteth you to pay no fo' dollars 'n sev'nty fo'
+cents, sir. Dat's thes what I _charges_. Dat ain' what you _pay_. You
+thes pay me sev'nty fo' cents sir. Dat's all."
+
+"Oh!" Lance let it out like a ten-year-old. It was hard to say which
+enjoyed this weekly interview more, the boy or the old woman. The boy
+was lonely and the humanity unashamed of her race and personality made
+an atmosphere which delighted him. "Oh!" gasped Lance. "That's a relief.
+I thought it was goodbye to my Sunday trousers."
+
+Aunt Basha, comfortable and efficient, was unpacking the basket and
+putting away the wash in the few bureau drawers which easily held the
+boy's belongings. "Dey's all mended nice," she announced. "Young marse,
+sir, you better wa' out dese yer ole' undercloses right now, endurin' de
+warm weather, 'caze dey ain' gwine do you fo' de col'. You 'bleeged to
+buy some new ones sir, when it comes off right cool."
+
+Lance smiled, for there was no one but this old black woman to take care
+of him and advise his haphazard housekeeping, and he liked it. "Can't
+buy new ones," he made answer. "There you go again, mixing me up with
+Rockefeller. I'm not even the Duke of Westminster, do you see. I haven't
+got any money. Only sev'nty fo' cents for the she-wolf."
+
+Aunt Basha chuckled. Long ago there had been a household of young people
+in the South whose clothes she, a very young woman then, had mended;
+there had been a boy who talked nonsense to her much as this boy--Marse
+Pendleton. But trouble had come; everything had broken like a card-house
+under an ocean wave. "De fambly" was lost, and she and her young
+husband, old Uncle Jeems of today, had drifted by devious ways to this
+Northern city. "Ef you ain't got de money handy dis week, young marse,
+you kin pay me nex' week thes as well," suggested the she-wolf.
+
+Then the big boy was standing over her, and she was being patted on the
+shoulder with a touch that all but brought tears to the black, dim eyes.
+"Don't you dare pay attention to my drool, or I'll never talk to you
+again," Lance ordered. "Your sev'nty fo' cents is all right, and lots
+more. I've got heaps of cash that size, Aunt Basha. But I want to buy
+Liberty Bonds, and I don't know how in hell I'm going to get big money."
+The boy was thinking aloud. "How am I to raise two hundred for a couple
+of bonds, Aunt Basha? Tell me that?" He scratched into his thatch of
+hair and made a puzzled face.
+
+"What fo' you want big money, young marse?"
+
+"Bonds. Liberty Bonds. You know what that is?"
+
+"Naw, sir."
+
+"You don't? Well you ought to," said Lance. "There isn't a soul in this
+country who oughtn't to have a bond. It's this way. You know we're
+fighting a war?"
+
+"Yassir. Young Ananias Johnson, he's Sist' Amanda's boy, he done tole
+his Unk Jeems 'bout dat war. And Jeems, he done tole me."
+
+Lance regarded her. Was it possible that the ocean upheaval had stirred
+even the quietest backwater so little? "Well, anyhow, it's the biggest
+war that ever was on earth."
+
+Aunt Basha shook her head. "You ain't never seed de War of de
+Rebullium," she stated with superiority. "You's too young. Well, I
+reckon dis yer war ain't much on to dat war. Naw, sir! Dat ar was a sure
+'nough war--yas, sir!"
+
+Lance considered. He decided not to contest the point. "Anyhow Aunt
+Basha, this is an awfully big war. And if we don't win it the Germans
+will come over here and murder the most of us, and make you and Uncle
+Jeems work in the fields from daylight till dark."
+
+"Dem low down white trash!" commented Aunt Basha.
+
+"Yes, and worse. And Uncle Sam can't beat the Germans unless we all
+help. He needs money to buy guns for the soldiers, and food and clothes.
+So he's asking everybody--just everybody--to lend him money--every cent
+they can raise to buy things to win the war. He gives each person who
+lends him any, a piece of paper which is a promise to pay it back, and
+that piece of paper is called a bond--Uncle Sam's promise to pay.
+Everybody ought to help by giving up every cent they have. The soldiers
+are giving their lives to save us from the horrible Germans. They're
+going over there to live in mud and water and sleep in holes of the
+earth, to be shot and wounded and tortured and killed. They're facing
+that for our sakes, to save us from worse than death, for you and Uncle
+Jeems and me, Aunt Basha. Now, oughtn't we to give all we've got to take
+care of those boys--our soldiers?"
+
+Lance had forgotten his audience, except that he was wording his speech
+carefully in the simplest English. It went home.
+
+"Oh, my Lawd!" moaned Aunt Basha, sitting down and rocking hard. "Does
+dey sleep in de col' yeth? Oh, my Lawd have mercy!" It was the first
+realization she had had of the details of the war. "You ain't gwine over
+dar, is you young marse, honey?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"I wish to God I was," spoke Lance through set teeth. "No, Aunt Basha,
+they won't take me. Because I'm lame. I'd give my life to go. And
+because I can't fight I _must_ buy bonds. Do you see? I must. I'd sell
+my soul to get money for Liberty Bonds. Oh, God!" Lance was as if alone,
+with only that anxious old black face gazing up at him. "Oh, God--it's
+my country!"
+
+Suddenly the rich flowing voice spoke. "Young marse, it's my country
+too, sir," said Aunt Basha.
+
+Lance turned and stared. How much did the words mean to the old woman?
+In a moment he knew.
+
+"Yas, my young marseter, dis yer America's de ole black 'oman's country,
+thes like it's fine young white man's, like you, sir. I gwine give my
+las' cent, like you say. Yas, I gwine do dat. I got two hun'erd dollars,
+sir; I b'en a-savin' and a-savin' for Jeems 'n me 'ginst when we git
+ole, but I gwine give dat to my country. I want Unc' Sam to buy good
+food for dem boys in the muddy water. Bacon 'n hominy, sir--'n corn
+bread, what's nourishin'. 'N I want you to git de--de Liberty
+what-je-call-'ems. Yassir. 'Caze you ain't got no ma to he'ep you out,
+'n de ole black 'oman's gwine to be de bes' ma she know how to her young
+marse. I got de money tied up--" she leaned forward and whispered--"in a
+stockin' in de bottom draw' ob de chist unner Jeem's good coat. Tomorrow
+I gwine fetch it, 'n you go buy yo' what-je-calls-'ems."
+
+Lance went across and knelt on the floor beside her and put his arms
+around the stout figure. He had been brought up with a colored mammy and
+this affection seemed natural and homelike. "Aunt Basha, you're one of
+the saints," he said. "And I love you for it. But I wouldn't take your
+blessed two hundred, not for anything on earth. I'd be a hound to take
+it. If you want some bonds"--it flashed to him that the money would be
+safer so than in the stocking under Jeem's coat--"why, I'll get them for
+you. Come into the _Daybreak_ office and ask for me, say--Monday. And
+I'll go with you to the bank and get bonds. Here's my card. Show anybody
+that at the office." And he gave directions.
+
+Five minutes later the old woman went off down the street talking half
+aloud to herself in fragments of sentences about "Liberty
+what-je-call-'ems" and "my country too." In the little shack uptown that
+was home for her and her husband she began at once to set forth her new
+light. Jeems, who added to the family income by taking care of furnaces
+and doing odd jobs, was grizzled and hobbling of body, but argumentative
+of soul.
+
+"'Oman," he addressed Aunt Basha, "Unc' Sam got lots o' money. What use
+he gwine have, great big rich man lak Unc' Sam, fo' yo' two hun'erd? But
+we got mighty lot o' use fo' dat money, we'uns. An' you gwine gib dat
+away? Thes lak a 'oman!" which, in other forms, is an argument used by
+male people of many classes.
+
+Aunt Basha suggested that Young Marse David said something about a piece
+of paper and Uncle Sam paying back, but Jeems pooh-poohed that.
+
+"Naw, sir. When big rich folks goes round collectin' po' folkses money,
+is dey liable to pay back? What good piece o' paper gwine do you? Is dey
+aimin' to let you see de color ob dat money agin? Naw, sir. Dey am not."
+He proceeded to another branch of the subject. "War ain' gwine las'
+long, nohow. Young Ananias he gwine to Franch right soon, an' de yether
+colored brothers. De Germans dey ain't gwine las' long, once ef dey see
+us Anglo-Saxons in de scrablin'. Naw, sir.
+
+"White man what come hyer yether day, he say how dey ain't gwine 'low de
+colored sojers to fight," suggested Aunt Basha. German propaganda
+reaches far and takes strange shapes.
+
+"Don' jer go to b'lieve dat white man, 'oman," thundered Jeems, thumping
+with his fist. "He dunno nawthin', an' I reckon he's a liar. Unc' Sam he
+say we kin fight an' we _gwine_ fight. An' de war ain't las' long atter
+we git to fightin' good."
+
+Aunt Basha, her hands folded on the rounded volume of apron considered
+deeply. After a time she arrived at a decision.
+
+"Jeems," she began, "yo' cert'nly is a strong reasoner. Yassir. But I
+got it bo'ne in upon me powerful dat I gotter give dese yer savin's to
+Unc' Sam. It's my country too, Jeems, same as dem sojers what's
+fightin', dem boys in de mud what ain' got a soul to wash fo' 'em. An'
+lak as not dey mas not dere. Dem boys is fightin', and gittin' wet and
+hunted up lak young marse say, fo' Aunt Basha and--bress dere
+hearts"--Aunt Basha broke down, and the upshot was that Jeems washed his
+hands of an obstinate female and--the savings not being his in any
+case--gave unwilling consent.
+
+Youth of the sterner set is apt to be casual in making appointments. It
+had not entered Lance's head to arrange in case he was not at the
+office. As for Aunt Basha, her theory was that he reigned there over an
+army of subordinates from morning till evening. So that she was taken
+aback when told that Mr. Lance was out and no one could say when he
+would be in. She had risen at dawn and done her housework and much of
+the fine washing which she "took in," and had then arrayed herself in
+her best calico dress and newest turban and apron for the great occasion
+and had reported at the _Daybreak_ office at nine-thirty. And young
+marse wasn't there.
+
+"I'll set and rest ontwell he comes in," she announced, and retired to
+a chair against the wall.
+
+There she folded her hands statelily and sat erect, motionless, an image
+of fine old dignity. But much thinking was going on inside the calm
+exterior. What was she going to do if young marse did not come back? She
+had the $200 with her, carefully pinned and double pinned into a pocket
+in her purple alpaca petticoat. She did not want to take it home. Jeems
+had submitted this morning, but with mutterings, and a second time there
+might be trouble. The savings were indeed hers, but a rebellious husband
+in high finance is an embarrassment. Deeply Aunt Basha considered, and
+memory whispered something about a bank. Young marse was going to the
+bank with her to give her money to Uncle Sam. She had just passed a
+bank. Why could she not go alone? Somebody certainly would tell her what
+to do. Possibly Uncle Sam was there himself--for Aunt Basha's conception
+of our national myth was half mystical, half practical--as a child with
+Santa Claus. In any case banks were responsible places, and somebody
+would look after her. She crossed to the desk where two or three young
+men appeared to be doing most of the world's business.
+
+"Marsters!"
+
+The three looked up.
+
+"Good mawnin', young marsters. I'm 'bleeged to go now. I cert'nly thank
+you-all fo' lettin' me set in de cheer. I won't wait fo' marse David
+Lance no mo', sir. Good mawnin', marsters."
+
+A smiling courtesy dropped, and she was gone.
+
+"I'll be darned!" remarked reporter number one.
+
+"Where did that blow in from?" added reporter number two.
+
+But reporter number three had imagination. "The dearest old soul I've
+seen in a blue moon," said he.
+
+Aunt Basha proceeded down the street and more than one in the crowd
+glanced twice at the erect, stout figure swinging, like a quaint and
+stately ship in full sail, among the steam-tuggery of up-to-date
+humanity. There were high steps leading to the bank entrance, impressive
+and alarming to Aunt Basha. She paused to take breath for this
+adventure. Was a humble old colored woman permitted to walk freely in at
+those grand doors, open iron-work and enormous of size? She did not
+know. She stood a moment, suddenly frightened and helpless, not daring
+to go on, looking about for a friendly face. And behold! there it
+was--the friendliest face in the world, it seemed to the lost old
+soul--a vision of loveliness. It was the face of a beautiful young white
+lady in beautiful clothes who had stepped from a huge limousine. She was
+coming up the steps, straight to Aunt Basha. She saw the old woman, saw
+her anxious hesitation, and halted. The next event was a heavenly smile.
+Aunt Basha knew the repartee to that, and the smile that shone in answer
+was as heavenly in its way as the girl's.
+
+"Is there anything I can do for you?" spoke a voice of gentleness.
+
+And the world had turned over and come up right side on top. "Mawnin',
+Miss. Yas'm, I was fixin' to go in dat big do' yander, but I dunno as
+I'm 'lowed. Is I 'lowed, young miss, to go in dar an' gib my two hun'erd
+to Unc' Sam?"
+
+"What?" The tone was kindness itself, but bewildered.
+
+Aunt Basha elucidated. "I got two hun'erd, young miss, and I cert'nly
+want to gib it to Unc' Sam to buy clo'se for dem boys what's fightin'
+for us in Franch."
+
+"I wonder," spoke the girl, gazing thoughtfully, "if you want to get a
+Liberty Bond?"
+
+"Yas'm--yas, miss. Dat's sho' it, a whatjer-ma-call-'em. I know'd 'twas
+some cu'is name lak dat." The vision nodded her head.
+
+"I'm going in to do that very thing myself," she said. "Come with me.
+I'll help you get yours."
+
+Aunt Basha followed joyfully in the wake, and behold, everything was
+easy. Ready attention met them and shortly they sat in a private office
+carpeted in velvet and upholstered in grandeur. A personage gave grave
+attention to what the vision was saying.
+
+"I met--I don't know your name," she interrupted herself, turning to the
+old negro woman.
+
+Aunt Basha rose and curtsied. "Dey christened me Bathsheba Jeptha,
+young miss," she stated. "But I'se rightly known as Aunt Basha. Jes'
+Aunt Basha, young miss. And marster."
+
+A surname was disinterred by the efforts of the personage which appeared
+to startle the vision.
+
+"Why, it's our name, Mr. Davidson," she exclaimed. "She said Cabell."
+
+Aunt Basha turned inquiring, vague eyes. "Is it, honey? Is yo' a
+Cabell?"
+
+And then the personage, who was, after all, cashier of the Ninth
+National Bank and very busy, cut in. "Ah, yes! A well known Southern
+name. Doubtless a large connection. And now Mrs.--ah--Cabell--"
+
+"I'd be 'bleeged ef yo' jis' name me Aunt Basha, marster."
+
+And marster, rather _intrigué_ because he, being a New Englander, had
+never in his life addressed as "aunt" a person who was not sister to his
+mother or his father, nevertheless became human and smiled. "Well, then,
+Aunt Basha."
+
+At a point a bit later he was again jolted when he asked the amount
+which his newly adopted "aunt" wanted to invest. For an answer she
+hauled high the folds of her frock, unconscious of his gasp or of the
+vision's repressed laughter, and went on to attack the clean purple
+alpaca petticoat which was next in rank, Mr. Davidson thought it wise at
+this point to make an errand across the room. He need not have bothered
+as far as Aunt Basha was concerned. When he came back she was again _à
+la mode_ and held an ancient beaded purse at which she gazed. Out of a
+less remote pocket she drew steel spectacles, which were put on. Mr.
+Davidson repeated his question of how much.
+
+"It's all hyer, marster. It's two hun'erd dollars, sir. I ben savin' up
+fo' twenty years an' mo', and me'n Jeems, we ben countin' it every mont,
+so I reckon I knows."
+
+The man and the girl regarded the old woman a moment. "It's a large sum
+for you to invest," Mr. Davidson said.
+
+"Yassir. Yas, marster. It's right smart money. But I sho' am glad to gib
+dis hyer to Unc' Sam for dem boys."
+
+The cashier of the Ninth National Bank lifted his eyes from the blank he
+was filling out and looked at Aunt Basha thoughtfully. "You understand,
+of course, that the Government--Uncle Sam--is only borrowing your money.
+That you may have it back any time you wish."
+
+Aunt Basha drew herself up. "I don' wish it, sir. I'm gibin' dis hyer
+gif,' a free gif' to my country. Yassir. It's de onliest country I got,
+an' I reckon I got a right to gib dis hyer what I earned doin' fine
+washin' and i'nin. I gibs it to my country. I don't wan' to hyer any
+talk 'bout payin' back. Naw, sir."
+
+It took Mr. Davidson and the vision at least ten minutes to make clear
+to Aunt Basha the character and habits of a Liberty Bond, and then,
+though gratified with the ownership of what seemed a brand new $200 and
+a valuable slip of paper--which meandered, shamelessly into the purple
+alpaca petticoat--yet she was disappointed.
+
+"White folks sho' am cu'is," she reflected, "Now who'd 'a thought 'bout
+dat way ob raisin' money! Not me--no, Lawd! It do beat me." With that
+she threw an earnest glance at Mr. Davidson, lean and tall and gray,
+with a clipped pointed beard. "'Scuse me, marster," said Aunt Basha,
+"mout I ask a quexshun?"
+
+"Surely," agreed Mr. Davidson blandly.
+
+"Is you'--'scuse de ole 'oman, sir--is you' Unc' Sam?"
+
+The "quexshun" left the personage too staggered to laugh. But the girl
+filled the staid place with gay peals. Then she leaned over and patted
+the wrinkled and bony worn black knuckles. "Bless your dear heart," she
+said; "no, he isn't, Aunt Basha. He's awfully important and good to us
+all, and he knows everything. But he's not Uncle Sam."
+
+The bewilderment of the old face melted to smiles. "Dar, now," she
+brought out; "I mout 'a know'd, becaze he didn't have no red striped
+pants. An' de whiskers is diff'ent, too. 'Scuse me, sir, and thank you
+kindly, marster. Thank you, young miss. De Lawd bress you fo' helpin' de
+ole 'oman." She had risen and she dropped her old time curtsey at this
+point. "Mawnin' to yo', marster and young miss."
+
+But the girl sprang up. "You can't go," she said. "I'm going to take you
+to my house to see my grandmother. She's Southern, and our name is
+Cabell, and likely--maybe--she knew your people down South."
+
+"Maybe, young miss. Dar's lots o' Cabells," agreed Aunt Basha, and in
+three minutes found herself where she had never thought to be, inside a
+fine private car.
+
+She was dumb with rapture and excitement, and quite unable to answer the
+girl's friendly words except with smiles and nods. The girl saw how it
+was and let her be, only patting the calico arm once and again
+reassuringly. "I wonder if she didn't want to come. I wonder if I've
+frightened her," thought Eleanor Cabell. When into the silence broke
+suddenly the rich, high, irresistible music which was Aunt Basha's
+laugh, and which David Lance had said was pitched on "Q sharp." The girl
+joined the infectious sound and a moment after that the car stopped.
+
+"This is home," said Eleanor.
+
+Aunt Basha observed, with the liking for magnificence of a servant
+trained in a large house, the fine façade and the huge size of "home."
+In a moment she was inside, and "young miss" was carefully escorting her
+into a sunshiny big room, where a wood fire burned, and a bird sang, and
+there were books and flowers.
+
+"Wait here, Aunt Basha, dear," Eleanor said, "and I'll get Grandmother."
+It was exactly like the loveliest of dreams, Aunt Basha told Jeems an
+hour later. It could not possibly have been true, except that it was.
+When "Grandmother" came in, slender and white-haired and a bit
+breathless with this last surprise of a surprising granddaughter, Aunt
+Basha stood and curtsied her stateliest.
+
+Then suddenly she cried out, "Fo' God! Oh, my Miss Jinny!" and fell on
+her knees.
+
+Mrs. Cabell gazed down, startled. "Who is it? Oh, whom have you brought
+me, Eleanor?" She bent to look more closely at Aunt Basha, kneeling,
+speechless, tears streaming from the brave old eyes, holding up clasped
+hand imploring. "It isn't--Oh, my dear, I believe it _is_ our own old
+nurse, Basha, who took care of your father!"
+
+"Yas'm. Yas, Miss Jinny," endorsed Aunt Basha, climbing to her feet.
+"Yas, my Miss Jinny, bress de Lawd. It's Basha." She turned to the girl.
+"Dis yer chile ain't nebber my young Marse Pendleton's chile!"
+
+But it was; and there was explanation and laughter and tears, too, but
+tears of happiness. Then it was told how, after that crash of disaster
+was over; the family had tried in vain to find Basha and Jeems; had
+tried always. It was told how a great fortune had come to them in the
+turn of a hand by the discovery of an unsuspected salt mine on the old
+estate; how "young Marse Pendleton," a famous surgeon now, had by that
+time made for himself a career and a home in this Northern state; how
+his wife had died young, and his mother, "Miss Jinny," had come to live
+with him and take care of his one child, the vision. And then the simple
+annals of Aunt Basha and Uncle Jeems were also told, the long struggle
+to keep respectable, only respectable; the years of toil and frugality
+and saving--saving the two hundred dollars which she had offered this
+morning as a "free gif" to her country. In these annals loomed large for
+some time past the figure of a "young marse" who had been good to her
+and helped her much and often in spite of his own "_res augusta
+domi_,"--which was not Aunt Basha's expression. The story was
+told of his oration in the little hall bedroom about Liberty
+"whatjer-m'-call-'ems," and of how the boy had stirred the soul of the
+old woman with his picture of the soldiers in the trenches.
+
+"So it come to me, Miss Jinny, how ez me'n Jeems was thes two wuthless
+ole niggers, an' hadn't fur to trabble on de road anyways, an' de Lawd
+would pervide, an' ef He didn't we could scratch grabble some ways. An'
+dat boy, dat young Marse David, he tole me everbody ought to gib dey
+las' cent fo' Unc' Sam an' de sojers. So"--Aunt Basha's high,
+inexpressibly sweet laughter of pure glee filled the room--"so I thes
+up'n handed over my two hun'erd."
+
+"It was the most beautiful and wonderful thing that's been done in all
+wonderful America," pronounced Eleanor Cabell as one having authority.
+She went on. "But that young man, your young Marse David, why doesn't he
+fight if he's such a patriot?"
+
+"Bress gracious, honey," Aunt Basha hurried to explain, "he's a-honin'
+to fight. But he cayn't. He's lame. He goes a-limpin'. Dey won't took
+him."
+
+"Oh!" retracted Eleanor. Then: "What's his name? Maybe father could cure
+him."
+
+"He name Lance. Marse David Lance."
+
+Why should Miss Jinny jump? "David Lance? It can't be, Aunt Basha."
+
+With no words Aunt Basha began hauling up her skirts and Eleanor,
+remembering Mr. Davidson's face, went into gales of laughter. Aunt Basha
+baited, looked at her with an inquiring gaze of adoration. "Yas'm, my
+young miss. He name dat. I done put the cyard in my ridicule. Yas'm,
+it's here." The antique bead purse was opened and Lance's card was
+presented to Miss Jinny.
+
+"Eleanor! This is too wonderful--look!"
+
+Eleanor looked, and read: "Mr. David Pendleton Lance." "Why,
+Grandmother, it's Dad's name--David Pendleton Cabell. And the Lance--"
+
+Mrs. Cabell, stronger on genealogy than the younger generation, took up
+the wandering thread. "The 'Lance' is my mother's maiden name--Virginia
+Lance she was. And her brother was David Pendleton Lance. I named your
+father for him because he was born on the day my young uncle was killed,
+in the battle of Shiloh."
+
+"Well, then--who's this sailing around with our family name?"
+
+"Who is he? But he must be our close kin, Eleanor. My Uncle David
+left--that's it. His wife came from California and she went out there
+again to live with her baby. I hadn't heard of them for years. Why,
+Eleanor, this boy's father must have been--my first cousin. My young
+Uncle David's baby. Those years of trouble after we left home wiped out
+so much. I lost track--but that doesn't matter now. Aunt Basha," spoke
+Miss Jinny in a quick, efficient voice, which suddenly recalled the
+blooming and businesslike mother of the young brood of years ago, "Aunt
+Basha, where can I find your young Marse David?"
+
+Aunt Basha smiled radiantly and shook her head. "Cayn't fin' him, honey?
+I done tried, and he warn't dar."
+
+"Wasn't where?"
+
+"At de orfice, Miss Jinny."
+
+"At what office?"
+
+"Why, de _Daybreak_ orfice, cose, Miss Jinny. What yether orfice he
+gwine be at?"
+
+"Oh!" Miss Jinny followed with ease the windings of the African mind.
+"He's a reporter on the _Daybreak_ then."
+
+"'Cose he is, Miss Jinny, ma'am. Whatjer reckon?"
+
+Miss Jinny reflected. Then: "Eleanor, call up the _Daybreak_ office and
+ask if Mr. Lance is there and if he will speak to me."
+
+But Aunt Basha was right. Mr. Lance was not at the _Daybreak_ office.
+Mrs. Cabell was as grieved as a child.
+
+"We'll find him, Grandmother," Eleanor asserted. "Why, of course--it's a
+morning paper. He's home sleeping. I'll get his number." She caught up
+the telephone book.
+
+Aunt Basha chuckled musically. "He ain't got no tullaphome, honey chile.
+No, my Lawd! Whar dat boy gwine git money for tullaphome and
+contraptions? No, my Lawd!"
+
+"How will we get him?" despaired Mrs. Cabell. The end of the council was
+a cryptic note in the hand of Jackson, the chauffeur, and orders to
+bring back the addressee at any cost.
+
+Meanwhile, as Jackson stood in his smart dark livery taking orders with
+the calmness of efficiency, feeling himself capable of getting that
+young man, howsoever hidden, the young man himself was wasting valuable
+hours off in day-dreams. In the one shabby big chair of the hall bedroom
+he sat and smoked a pipe, and stared at a microscopic fire in a toy
+grate. It was extravagant of David Lance to have a fire at all, but as
+long as he gave up meals to do it likely it was his own affair. The
+luxuries mean more than the necessities to plenty of us. With comfort in
+this, his small luxury, he watched the play of light and shadow, and the
+pulsing of the live scarlet and orange in the heart of the coals. He
+needed comfort today, the lonely boy. Two men of the office force who
+had gotten their commissions lately at an officer's training-camp had
+come in last night before leaving for Camp Devens; everybody had crowded
+about and praised them and envied them. They had been joked about the
+sweaters, and socks made by mothers and sweethearts, and about the
+trouble Uncle Sam would have with their mass of mail. The men in the
+office had joined to give each a goodbye present. Pride in them, the
+honor of them to all the force was shown at every turn; and beyond it
+all there was the look of grave contentment in their eyes which is the
+mark of the men who have counted the cost and given up everything for
+their country. Most of all soldiers, perhaps, in this great war, the
+American fights for an ideal. Also he knows it; down to the most
+ignorant drafted man, that inspiration has lifted the army and given it
+a star in the East to follow. The American fights for an ideal; the sign
+of it is in the faces of the men in uniform whom one meets everywhere in
+the street.
+
+David Lance, splendidly powerful and fit except for the small limp which
+was his undoing, suffered as he joined, whole-hearted, in the glory of
+those who were going. Back in his room alone, smoking, staring into his
+dying fire, he was dreaming how it would feel if he were the one who was
+to march off in uniform to take his man's share of the hardship and
+comradeship and adventure and suffering, and of the salvation of the
+world. With that, he took his pipe from his mouth and grinned broadly
+into the fire as another phase of the question appeared. How would it
+feel if he was somebody's special soldier, like both of those boys, sent
+off by a mother or a sweetheart, by both possibly, overstocked with
+things knitted for him, with all the necessities and luxuries of a
+soldier's outfit that could be thought of. He remembered how Jarvis,
+the artillery captain, had showed them, proud and modest, his field
+glass.
+
+"It's a good one," he had said. "My mother gave it to me. It has the
+Mills scale."
+
+And Annesley, the kid, who had made his lieutenant's commission so
+unexpectedly, had broken in: "That's no shakes to the socks I've got on.
+If somebody'll pull off my boots I'll show you. Made in Poughkeepsie. A
+dozen pairs. _Not_ my mother."
+
+Lance smiled wistfully. Since his own mother died, eight years ago, he
+had drifted about unanchored, and though women had inevitably held out
+hands to the tall and beautiful lad, they were not the sort he cared
+for, and there had been none of his own sort in his life. Fate might so
+easily have given him a chance to serve his country, with also, maybe,
+just the common sweet things added which utmost every fellow had, and a
+woman or two to give him a sendoff and to write him letters over there
+sometimes. To be a soldier--and to be somebody's soldier! Why, these two
+things would mean Heaven! And hundreds of thousands of American boys
+had these and thought nothing of it. Fate certainly had been a bit
+stingy with a chap, considered David Lance, smiling into his little fire
+with a touch of wistful self-pity.
+
+At this moment Fate, in smart, dark livery, knocked at his door. "Come
+in," shouted Lance cheerfully.
+
+The door opened and he stared. Somebody had lost the way. Chauffeurs in
+expensive livery did not come to his hall bedroom. "Is dis yer Mr.
+Lance?" inquired Jackson.
+
+Lance admitted it and got the note and read it while Jackson, knowing
+his Family intimately, knew that something pleasant and surprising was
+afoot and assisted with a discreet regard. When he saw that the note was
+finished, Jackson confidently put in his word. "Cyar's waitin', sir.
+Orders is I was to tote you to de house."
+
+Lance's eyes glowered as he looked up. "Tell me one thing," he demanded.
+
+"Yes, sir," grinned Jackson, pleased with this young gentleman from a
+very poor neighborhood, who quite evidently was, all the same,
+"quality."
+
+"Are you," inquired Lance, "are you any relation to Aunt Basha?"
+
+Jackson, for all his efficiency a friendly soul, forgot the dignity of
+his livery and broke into chuckles. "Naw, sir; naw, sir. I dunno de
+lady, sir; I reckon I ain't, sir," answered Jackson.
+
+"All right, then, but it's the mistake of your life not to be. She's the
+best on earth. Wait till I brush my hair," said Lance, and did it.
+
+Inside three minutes he was in the big Pierce-Arrow, almost as
+unfamiliar, almost as delightful to him as to Aunt Basha, and speeding
+gloriously through the streets. The note had said that some kinspeople
+had just discovered him, and would he come straight to them for lunch.
+
+Mrs. Cabell and Eleanor crowded frankly to the window when the car
+stopped.
+
+"I can't wait to see David's boy," cried Mrs. Cabell, and Eleanor, wise
+of her generation, followed with:
+
+"Now, don't expect much; he may be deadly."
+
+And out of the limousine stepped, unconscious, the beautiful David, and
+handed Jackson a dollar.
+
+"Oh!" gasped Mrs. Cabell.
+
+"It was silly, but I love it," added Eleanor; and David limped swiftly
+up the steps, and one heard Ebenezer, the butler, opening the door with
+suspicious promptness. Everyone in the house knew, mysteriously, that
+uncommon things were doing.
+
+"Pendleton," spoke Mrs. Cabell, lying in wait for her son, the great
+doctor, as he came from his office at lunch time, "Pen, dear, let me
+tell you something extraordinary." She told, him, condensing as might
+be, and ended with; "And oh, Pen, he's the most adorable boy I ever saw.
+And so lonely and so poor and so plucky. Heartbroken because he's lame
+and can't serve. You'll cure him. Pen, dear, won't you, for his
+country?"
+
+The tall, tired man bent down and kissed his mother. "Mummy, I'm not God
+Almighty. But I'll do my damdest for anything you want. Show me the
+paragon."
+
+The paragon shot up, with the small unevenness which was his limp, and
+faced the big doctor on a level. The two pairs of eyes from their
+uncommon height, looked inquiringly into each other.
+
+"I hear you have my name," spoke Dr. Cabell tersely.
+
+"Yes, sir," said David, "And I'm glad." And the doctor knew that he also
+liked the paragon.
+
+Lunch was an epic meal above and below stairs. Jeems had been fetched by
+that black Mercury Jackson, messenger today of the gods of joy. And the
+two old souls had been told by Mrs. Cabell that never again should they
+work hard or be anxious or want for anything. The sensation-loving
+colored servants rejoiced in the events as a personal jubilee, and made
+much of Aunt Basha and Unc' Jeems till their old heads reeled. Above
+stairs the scroll unrolled more or loss decorously, yet in magic colors
+unbelievable. Somehow David had told about Annesley and Jarvis last
+night.
+
+"Somebody knitted him a whole dozen pairs of socks!" he commented,
+"Really she did. He said so. Think of a girl being as good to a chap as
+that."
+
+"I'll knit you a dozen," Miss Eleanor Cabell capped his sentence, like
+the Amen at the end of a High Church prayer. "I'll begin this
+afternoon."
+
+"And, David," said Mrs. Cabell--for it had got to be "David" and "Cousin
+Virginia" by now--"David, when you get your commission, I'll have your
+field glass ready, and a few other things."
+
+Dr. Cabell lifted his eyes from his chop. "You'll spoil that boy," he
+stated. "And, mother, I pointed out that I'm not the Almighty, even on
+joints, I haven't looked at that game leg yet. I said it _might_ be
+curable."
+
+"That boy" looked up, smiling, with long years of loneliness and
+lameness written in the back of his glance. "Please don't make 'em stop,
+doctor," he begged. "I won't spoil easily. I haven't any start. And this
+is a fairy-story to me--wonderful people like you letting me--letting me
+belong. I can't believe I won't wake up. Don't you imagine it will go
+to my head. It won't. I'm just so blamed--grateful."
+
+The deep young voice trailed, and the doctor made haste to answer.
+"You're all right, my lad," he said, "As soon as lunch is over you come
+into the surgery and I'll have a glance at the leg." Which was done.
+
+After half an hour David came out, limping, pale and radiant. "I can't
+believe it," he spoke breathless. "He says--it's a simple--operation.
+I'll walk--like other men. I'll be right for--the service." He choked.
+
+At that Mrs. Cabell sped across the room and put up hands either side of
+the young face and drew it down and kissed the lad whom she did not,
+this morning, know to be in existence. "You blessed boy," she whispered,
+"you shall fight for America, and you'll be our soldier, and we'll be
+your people." And David, kissing her again, looked over her head and saw
+Eleanor glowing like a rose, and with a swift, unphrased shock of
+happiness felt in his soul the wonder of a heaven that might happen.
+Then they were all about the fire, half-crying, laughing, as people do
+on top of strong feelings.
+
+"Aunt Basha did it all," said David. "If Aunt Basha hadn't been the most
+magnificent old black woman who ever carried a snow-white soul, if she
+hadn't been the truest patriot in all America, if she hadn't given
+everything for her country--I'd likely never have--found you." His eyes
+went to the two kind and smiling faces, and his last word was a whisper.
+It was so much to have found. All he had dreamed, people of his own, a
+straight leg--and--his heart's desire--service to America.
+
+Mrs. Cabell spoke softly, "I've lived a long time and I've seen over and
+over that a good deed spreads happiness like a pebble thrown into water,
+more than a bad one spreads evil, for good is stronger and more
+contagious. We've gained this dear kinsman today because of the nobility
+of an old negro woman."
+
+David Lance lifted his head quickly. "It was no small nobility," he
+said. "As Miss Cabell was saying--"
+
+"I'm your cousin Eleanor," interrupted Miss Cabell.
+
+David lingered over the name. "Thank you, my cousin Eleanor. It's as you
+said, nothing more beautiful and wonderful has been done in wonderful
+America than this thing Aunt Basha did. It was as gallant as a soldier
+at the front, for she offered what meant possibly her life."
+
+"Her little two hundred," Eleanor spoke gently. "And so cross at the
+idea of being paid back! She wanted to _give_ it."
+
+David's face gleamed with a thought as he stared into the firelight,
+"You see," he worked out his idea, "by the standards of the angels a
+gift must be big not according to its size but according to what's left.
+If you have millions and give a few thousand you practically give
+nothing, for you have millions left. But Aunt Basha had nothing left.
+The angels must have beaten drums and blown trumpets and raised Cain all
+over Paradise while you sat in the bank, my cousin Eleanor, for the
+glory of that record gift. No plutocrat in the land has touched what
+Aunt Basha did for her country."
+
+Eleanor's eyes, sending out not only clear vision but a brown light as
+of the light of stars, shone on the boy. She bent forward, and her
+slender arms were about her knee. She gazed at David, marveling. How
+could it be that a human being might have all that David appeared to her
+to have--clear brain, crystal simplicity, manliness, charm of
+personality, and such strength and beauty besides!
+
+"Yes," she said, "Aunt Basha gave the most. She has more right than any
+of us to say that it's her country." She was silent a moment and then
+spoke softly a single word. "America!" said Eleanor reverently.
+
+America! Her sound has gone out into all lands and her words into the
+end of the world. America, who in a year took four million of sons
+untried, untrained, and made them into a mighty army; who adjusted a
+nation of a hundred million souls in a turn of the hand to unknown and
+unheard of conditions. America, whose greatest glory yet is not these
+things. America, of whom scholars and statesmen and generals and
+multi-millionaires say with throbbing pride today: "This is my country,"
+but of whom the least in the land, having brought what they may, however
+small, to lay on that flaming altar of the world's safety--of whom the
+least in the land may say as truly as the greatest, "This is my country,
+too."
+
+
+
+
+THE SWALLOW
+
+
+The Château Frontenac at Quebec is a turreted pile of masonry wandering
+down a cliff over the very cellars of the ancient Castle of St. Louis. A
+twentieth-century hotel, it simulates well a mediæval fortress and lifts
+against the cold blue northern sky an atmosphere of history. Old voices
+whisper about its towers and above the clanging hoofs in its paved
+court; deathless names are in the wind which blows from the "fleuve,"
+the great St. Lawrence River far below. Jacques Cartier's voice was
+heard hereabouts away back in 1539, and after him others, Champlain and
+Frontenac, and Father Jogues and Mother Marie of the Conception and
+Montcalm--upstanding fighting men and heroic women and hardy discoverers
+of New France walked about here once, on the "Rock" of Quebec; there is
+romance here if anywhere on earth. Today a new knighthood hails that
+past. Uniforms are thick in steep streets; men are wearing them with
+empty sleeves, on crutches, or maybe whole of body yet with racked faces
+which register a hell lived through. Canada guards heroism of many
+vintages, from four hundred years back through the years to Wolfe's
+time, and now a new harvest. Centuries from now children will be told,
+with the story of Cartier, the tale of Vimy Ridge, and while the Rock
+stands the records of Frenchmen in Canada, of Canadians in France will
+not die.
+
+Always when I go to the Château I get a table, if I can, in the smaller
+dining-room. There the illusion of antiquity holds through modern
+luxury; there they have hung about the walls portraits of the worthies
+of old Quebec; there Samuel Champlain himself, made into bronze and
+heroic of size, aloft on his pedestal on the terrace outside, lifts his
+plumed hat and stares in at the narrow windows, turning his back on
+river and lower city. One disregards waiters in evening clothes and
+up-to-date table appointments, and one looks at Champlain and the
+"fleuve," and the Isle d'Orléans lying long and low, and one thinks of
+little ships, storm-beaten, creeping up to this grim bigness ignorant
+of continental events trailing in their wake.
+
+I was on my way to camp in a club a hundred miles north of the
+gray-walled town when I drifted into the little dining-room for dinner
+one night in early September in 1918. The head-waiter was an old friend;
+he came to meet me and piloted me past a tableful of military color,
+four men in service uniforms.
+
+"Some high officers, sir," spoke the head waiter. "In conference here, I
+believe. There's a French officer, and an English, and our Canadian
+General Sampson, and one of your generals, sir."
+
+I gave my order and sat back to study the group. The waiter had it
+straight; there was the horizon blue of France; there was the Englishman
+tall and lean and ruddy and expressionless and handsome; there was the
+Canadian, more of our own cut, with a mobile, alert face. The American
+had his back to me and all I could see was an erect carriage, a brown
+head going to gray, and the one star of a brigadier-general on his
+shoulders. The beginnings of my dinner went fast, but after soup there
+was a lull before greater food, and I paid attention again to my
+neighbors. They were talking in English.
+
+"A Huron of Lorette--does that mean a full-blooded Indian of the Huron
+tribe, such as one reads of in Parkman?" It was the Englishman who
+asked, responding to something I had not heard.
+
+"There's no such animal as a full-blooded Huron," stated the Canadian.
+"They're all French-Indian half-breeds now. Lorette's an interesting
+scrap of history, just the same. You know your Parkman? You remember how
+the Iroquois followed the defeated Hurons as far as the Isle d'Orléans,
+out there?" He nodded toward where the big island lay in the darkness of
+the St. Lawrence. "Well, what was left after that chase took refuge
+fifteen miles north of Quebec, and founded what became and has stayed
+the village of Indian Lorette. There are now about five or six hundred
+people, and it's a nation. Under its own laws, dealing by treaty with
+Canada, not subject to draft, for instance. Queer, isn't it? They guard
+their identity vigilantly. Every one, man or woman, who marries into the
+tribe, as they religiously call it, is from then on a Huron. And only
+those who have Huron blood may own land in Lorette. The Hurons were, as
+Parkman put it, 'the gentlemen of the savages,' and the tradition lasts.
+The half-breed of today is a good sort, self-respecting and brave, not
+progressive, but intelligent, with pride in his inheritance, his
+courage, and his woodscraft."
+
+The Canadian, facing me, spoke distinctly and much as Americans speak; I
+caught every word. But I missed what the French general threw back
+rapidly. I wondered why the Frenchman should be excited. I myself was
+interested because my guides, due to meet me at the club station
+tomorrow, were all half-breed Hurons. But why the French officer? What
+should a Frenchman of France know about backwaters of Canadian history?
+And with that he suddenly spoke slowly, and I caught several sentences
+of incisive if halting English.
+
+"Zey are to astonish, ze Indian Hurong. For ze sort of work
+special-ment, as like scouting on a stomach. Qu-vick, ver' qu-vick, and
+ver' quiet. By dark places of danger. One sees zat nozzing at all
+af-frightens zose Hurong. Also zey are alike snakes, one cannot catch
+zem--zey slide; zey are slippy. To me it is to admire zat courage
+most--personnel--selfeesh--because an Hurong safe my life dere is six
+mont', when ze Boches make ze drive of ze mont' of March."
+
+At this moment food arrived in a flurry, and I lost what came after. But
+I had forgotten the Château Frontenac; I had forgotten the group of
+officers, serious and responsible, who sat on at the next table. I had
+forgotten even the war. A word had sent my mind roaming. "Huron!" Memory
+and hope at that repeated word rose and flew away with me. Hope first.
+Tomorrow I was due to drop civilization and its tethers.
+
+"Allah does not count the days spent out of doors." In Walter Pater's
+story of "Marius the Epicurean" one reads of a Roman country-seat called
+"Ad Vigilias Albas," "White Nights." A sense of dreamless sleep distils
+from the name. One remembers such nights, and the fresh world of the
+awakening in the morning. There are such days. There are days which
+ripple past as a night of sleep and leave a worn brain at the end with
+the same satisfaction of renewal; white days. Crystal they are, like the
+water of streams, as musical and eventless; as elusive of description as
+the ripple over rocks or brown pools foaming.
+
+The days and months and years of a life race with accelerating pace and
+youth goes and age comes as the days race, but one is not older for the
+white days. The clock stops, the blood runs faster, furrows in gray
+matter smooth out, time forgets to put in tiny crow's-feet and the extra
+gray hair a week, or to withdraw by the hundredth of an ounce the oxygen
+from the veins; one grows no older for the days spent out of doors.
+Allah does not count them.
+
+It was days like these which hope held ahead as I paid earnest attention
+to the good food set before me. And behold, beside the pleasant vision
+of hope rose a happy-minded sister called memory. She took the word
+"Huron," this kindly spirit, and played magic with it, and the walls of
+the Château rolled into rustling trees and running water.
+
+I was sitting, in my vision, in flannel shirt and knickerbockers, on a
+log by a little river, putting together fishing tackle and casting an
+eye, off and on, where rapids broke cold over rocks and whirled into
+foam-flecked, shadowy pools. There should be trout in those shadows.
+
+"Take the butt, Rafael, while I string the line."
+
+Rafael slipped across--still in my vision of memory--and was holding my
+rod as a rod should be held, not too high or too low, or too far or too
+near--right. He was an old Huron, a chief of Indian Lorette, and woods
+craft was to him as breathing.
+
+"A varry light rod," commented Rafael in his low voice which held no
+tones out of harmony with water in streams or wind in trees. "A varry
+light, good rod," paying meanwhile strict attention to his job. "M'sieu
+go haf a luck today. I t'ink M'sieu go catch a beeg fish on dat river.
+Water high enough--not too high. And cold." He shivered a little. "Cold
+last night--varry cold nights begin now. Good hun-ting wedder."
+
+"Have you got a moose ready for me on the little lake, Rafael? It's the
+1st of September next week and I expect you to give me a shot before the
+3d."
+
+Rafael nodded. "Oui, m'sieur. First day." The keen-eyed, aquiline old
+face was as of a prophet. "We go get moose first day. I show you." With
+that the laughter-loving Frenchman in him flooded over the Indian
+hunter; for a second the two inheritances played like colors in shot
+silk, producing an elusive fabric, Rafael's charm. "If nights get so
+colder, m'sieur go need moose skin kip him warm."
+
+I was looking over my flies now, the book open before me, its
+fascinating pages of color more brilliant than an old missal, and maybe
+as filled with religion--the peace of God, charity which endureth, love
+to one's neighbor. I chose a Parmachene Belle for hand-fly, always good
+in Canadian waters. "A moose-skin hasn't much warmth, has it, Rafael?"
+
+The hunter was back, hawk-eyed. "But yes, m'sieu. Moose skin one time
+safe me so I don' freeze to death. But it hol' me so tight so I nearly
+don' get loose in de morning."
+
+"What do you mean?" I was only half listening, for a brown hackle and a
+Montreal were competing for the middle place on my cast, and it was a
+vital point. But Rafael liked to tell a story, and had come by now to a
+confidence in my liking to hear him. He flashed a glance to gather up my
+attention, and cleared his throat and began: "Dat was one time--I go on
+de woods--hunt wid my fader-in-law--_mon beau-père_. It was mont' of
+March--and col'--but ver' col' and wet. So it happen we separate, my
+fador-in-law and me, to hunt on both side of large enough river. And I
+kill moose. What, m'sieur? What sort of gun? Yes. It was rifle--what one
+call flint-lock. Large round bore. I cast dat beeg ball myself, what I
+kill dat moose. Also it was col'. And so it happen my matches got wet,
+but yes, ev-very one. So I couldn' buil' fire. I was tired, yes, and
+much col'. I t'ink in my head to hurry and skin dat moose and wrap
+myself in dat skin and go sleep on de snow because if not I would die, I
+was so col' and so tired. I do dat. I skin heem--_je le plumait_--de
+beeg moose--beeg skin. Skin all warm off moose; I wrap all aroun' me and
+dig hole and lie down on deep snow and draw skin over head and over
+feet, and fol' arms, so"--Rafael illustrated--"and I hol' it aroun' wid
+my hands. And I get warm right away, warm, as bread toast. So I been
+slippy, and heavy wid tired, and I got comfortable in dat moose skin and
+I go aslip quick. I wake early on morning, and dat skin got froze tight,
+like box made on wood, and I hol' in dat wid my arms fol' so, and my
+head down so"--illustrations again--"and I can't move, not one inch. No.
+What, m'sieur? Yes, I was enough warm, me. But I lie lak dat and can't
+move, and I t'ink somet'ing. I t'ink I got die lak dat, in moose-skin.
+If no sun come, I did got die. But dat day sun come and be warm, and
+moose skin melt lil' bit, slow, and I push lil' bit wid shoulder, and
+after while I got ice broke, on moose skin, and I crawl out. Yes. I
+don' die yet."
+
+Rafael's chuckle was an amen to his saga, and at once, with one of his
+lightning-changes, he was austere.
+
+"M'sieur go need beeg trout tonight; not go need moose skin till nex'
+wik. Ze rod is ready take feesh, I see feesh jump by ole log. Not much
+room to cast, but m'sieur can do it. Shall I carry rod down to river for
+m'sieur?"
+
+In not so many words as I have written, but in clear pictures which
+comprehended the words, Memory, that temperamental goddess of moods,
+had, at the prick of the word "Huron," shaken out this soft-colored
+tapestry of the forest, and held it before my eyes. And as she withdrew
+this one, others took its place and at length I was musing profoundly,
+as I put more of something on my plate and tucked it away into my
+anatomy. I mused about Rafael, the guide of sixty, who had begun a life
+of continued labor at eight years; I considered the undying Indian in
+him; how with the father who was "French of Picardy"--the white blood
+being a pride to Rafael--he himself, yes, and the father also, for he
+had married a "_sauvagess_," a Huron woman--had belonged to the tribe
+and were accounted Hurons; I considered Rafael's proud carriage, his
+classic head and carved features, his Indian austerity and his French
+mirth weaving in and out of each other; I considered the fineness and
+the fearlessness of his spirit, which long hardship had not blunted; I
+reflected on the tales he had told me of a youth forced to fight the
+world. "_On a vu de le misère_," Rafael had said: "One has seen
+trouble"--shaking his head, with lines of old suffering emerging from
+the reserve of his face like writing in sympathetic ink under heat. And
+I marvelled that through such fire, out of such neglect, out of lack of
+opportunity and bitter pressure, the steel of a character should have
+been tempered to gentleness and bravery and honor.
+
+For it was a very splendid old boy who was cooking for me and greasing
+my boots and going off with me after moose; putting his keen ancestral
+instincts of three thousand years at my service for three dollars a
+day. With my chances would not Rafael have been a bigger man than I? At
+least never could I achieve that grand air, that austere repose of
+manner which he had got with no trouble at all from a line of unwashed
+but courageous old bucks, thinking highly of themselves for untold
+generations, and killing everything which thought otherwise. I laughed
+all but aloud at this spot in my meditations, as a special vision of
+Rafael rose suddenly, when he had stated, on a day, his views of the
+great war. He talked plain language about the Germans. He specified why
+he considered the nation a disgrace to humanity--most people, not
+German, agree on the thesis and its specifications. Then the fire of his
+ancient fighting blood blazed through restraint of manner. He drew up
+his tall figure, slim-waisted, deep-shouldered, every inch sliding
+muscle. "I am too old to go on first call to army," said Rafael. "Zey
+will not take me. Yes, and on second call. Maybe zird time. But if time
+come when army take me--I go. If I may kill four Germans I will be
+content," stated Rafael concisely. And his warrior forebears would have
+been proud of him as he stated it.
+
+My reflections were disturbed here by the American general at the next
+table. He was spoken to by his waiter and shot up and left the room,
+carrying, however, his napkin in his hand, so that I knew he was due to
+come back. A half sentence suggested a telephone. I watched the
+soldierly back with plenty of patriotic pride; this was the sort of
+warrior my country turned out now by tens of thousands. With that he
+returned, and as I looked up into his face, behold it was Fitzhugh.
+
+My chair went banging as I sprang toward him. "Jim!"
+
+And the general's calm dignity suddenly was the radiant grin of the boy
+who had played and gone to school and stolen apples with me for a long
+bright childhood--the boy lost sight of these last years of his in the
+army. "Dave!" he cried out. "Old Davy Cram!" And his arm went around my
+shoulder regardless of the public. "My word, but I'm glad!" he
+sputtered. And then: "Come and have dinner--finish having it. Come to
+our table." He slewed me about and presented me to the three others.
+
+In a minute I was installed, to the pride of my friend the head waiter,
+at military headquarters, next to Fitzhugh and the Frenchman. A campact
+résumé of personal history between Fitzhugh and myself over, I turned to
+the blue figure on my left hand, Colonel Raffré, of the French, army. On
+his broad chest hung thrilling bits of color, not only the bronze war
+cross, with its green watered ribbon striped with red, but the blood-red
+ribbon of the "Great Cross" itself--the cross of the Legion of Honor. I
+spoke to him in French, which happens to be my second mother tongue, and
+he met the sound with a beaming welcome.
+
+"I don't do English as one should," he explained in beautiful Parisian.
+"No gift of tongues in my kit, I fear; also I'm a bit embarrassed at
+practising on my friends. It's a relief to meet some one who speaks
+perfectly French, as m'sieur."
+
+M'sieur was gratified not to have lost his facility. "But my ear is
+getting slower," I said. "For instance, I eavesdropped a while ago when
+you were talking about your Huron soldiers, and I got most of what you
+said because you spoke English. I doubt if I could if you'd been
+speaking French."
+
+The colonel shrugged massive shoulders. "My English is defective but
+distinct," he explained. "One is forced to speak slowly when one speaks
+badly. Also the Colonel Chichely"--the Britisher--"it is he at whom I
+talk carefully. The English ear, it is not imaginative. One must make
+things clear. You know the Hurons, then?"
+
+I specified how.
+
+"Ah!" he breathed out. "The men in my command had been, some of them,
+what you call guides. They got across to France in charge of troop
+horses on the ships; then they stayed and enlisted. Fine soldier stuff.
+Hardy, and of resource and of finesse. Quick and fearless as wildcats.
+They fit into one niche of the war better than any other material. You
+heard the story of my rescue?"
+
+I had not. At that point food had interfered, and I asked if it was too
+much that the colonel should repeat.
+
+"By no means," agreed the polite colonel, ready, moreover, I guessed,
+for any amount of talk in his native tongue. He launched an epic
+episode. "I was hit leading, in a charge, two battalions. I need not
+have done that," another shrug--"but what will you? It was snowing; it
+was going to be bad work; one could perhaps put courage into the men by
+being at their head. It is often the duty of an officer to do more than,
+his duty--_n'est-ce-pas?_ So that I was hit in the right knee and the
+left shoulder _par exemple_, and fell about six yards from the German
+trenches. A place unhealthy, and one sees I could not run away, being
+shot on the bias. I shammed dead. An alive French officer would have
+been too interesting in that scenery. I assure m'sieur that the
+_entr'actes_ are far too long in No Man's Land. I became more and more
+displeased with the management of that play as I lay, very badly amused
+with my wounds, and afraid to blink an eye, being a corpse. The Huns
+demand a high state of immobility in corpses. But I fell happily
+sidewise, and out of the extreme corner of the left eye I caught a
+glimpse of our sand-bags. One blessed that twist, though it became
+enough _ennuyant_, and one would have given a year of good life to turn
+over. Merely to turn over. Am I fatiguing m'sieur?" the colonel broke
+in.
+
+I prodded him back eagerly into his tale.
+
+"M'sieur is amiable. The long and short of it is that when it became
+dark my good lads began to try to rescue my body. Four or five times
+that one-twentieth of eye saw a wriggling form work through sand-bags
+and start slowly, flat to the earth, toward me. But the ground was
+snow-covered and the Germans saw too the dark uniform. Each time a
+fusillade of shots broke out, and the moving figure dropped hastily
+behind the sand-bags. And each time--" the colonel stopped to light a
+cigarette, his face ruddy in the glare of the match. "Each time I
+was--disappointed. I became disgusted with the management of that
+theatre, till at last the affair seemed beyond hope, and I had about
+determined to turn over and draw up my bad leg with my good hand for a
+bit of easement and be shot comfortably, when I was aware that the
+surface of the ground near by was heaving--the white, snowy ground
+heaving. I was close enough to madness between cold and pain, and I
+regarded the phenomenon as a dream. But with that hands came out of the
+heaving ground, eyes gleamed. A rope was lashed about my middle and I
+was drawn toward our trenches." The cigarette puffed vigorously at this
+point. "M'sieur sees?"
+
+I did not.
+
+The colonel laughed. "One of my Hurons had the inspiration to run to a
+farmhouse not far away and requisition a sheet. He wrapped himself in
+it, head and all, and, being Indian, it was a bagatelle to him to crawl
+out on his stomach. They were pleased enough, my good fellows, when they
+found they had got not only my body but also me in it."
+
+"I can imagine, knowing Hurons, how that Huron enjoyed his success," I
+said. "It's in their blood to be swift and silent and adventurous. But
+they're superstitious; they're afraid of anything supernatural." I
+hesitated, with a laugh in my mind at a memory. "It's not fitting that I
+should swap stories with a hero of the Great War, yet--I believe you
+might be amused with an adventure of one of my guides." The Frenchman,
+all civil interest, disclaimed his heroism with hands and shoulders, but
+smiling too--for he had small chance at disclaiming with those two
+crosses on his breast.
+
+"I shall be enchanted to hear m'sieur's tale of his guide. For the rest
+I am myself quite mad over the 'sport.' I love to insanity the out of
+doors and shooting and fishing. It is a regret that the service has
+given me no opportunity these four years for a breathing spell in the
+woods. M'sieur will tell me the tale of his guide's superstition?"
+
+A scheme began to form in my brain at that instant too delightful, it
+seemed, to come true. I put it aside and went on with my story. "I have
+one guide, a Huron half-breed," I said, "whom I particularly like. He's
+an old fellow--sixty--but light and quick and powerful as a boy. More
+interesting than a boy, because he's full of experiences. Two years ago
+a bear swam across the lake where my camp is, and I went out in a canoe
+with this Rafael and got him."
+
+Colonel Raffré made of this fact an event larger than--I am sure--he
+would have made of his winning of the war cross.
+
+"You shame me, colonel," I said, and went on hurriedly. "Rafael, the
+guide, was pleased about the bear. 'When gentlemens kill t'ings, guides
+is more happy,' he explained to me, and he proceeded to tell an
+anecdote. He prefaced it by informing me that one time he hunt bear and
+he see devil. He had been hunting, it seemed, two or three winters
+before with his brother-in-law at the headwaters of the St. Maurice
+River, up north there," I elucidated, pointing through the window toward
+the "long white street of Beauport," across the St. Lawrence. "It's very
+lonely country, entirely wild, Indian hunting-ground yet. These two
+Hurons, Rafael and his brother-in-law, were on a two months' trip to
+hunt and trap, having their meagre belongings and provisions on sleds
+which they dragged across the snow. They depended for food mostly on
+what they could trap or shoot--moose, caribou, beaver, and small
+animals. But they had bad luck. They set many traps but caught nothing,
+and they saw no game to shoot. So that in a month they were hard
+pressed. One cold day they went two miles to visit a beaver trap, where
+they had seen signs. They hoped to find an animal caught and to feast on
+beaver tail, which is good eating."
+
+Here I had to stop and explain much about beaver tails, and the rest of
+beavers, to the Frenchman, who was interested like a boy in this new,
+almost unheard-of beast. At length:
+
+"Rafael and his brother-in-law were disappointed. A beaver had been
+close and eaten the bark off a birch stick which the men had left, but
+nothing was in the trap. They turned and began a weary walk through the
+desolate country back to their little tent. Small comfort waited for
+them there, as their provisions were low, only flour and bacon left.
+And they dared not expend much of that. They were down-hearted, and to
+add to it a snow-storm came on and they lost their way. Almost a
+hopeless situation--an uninhabited country, winter, snow, hunger. And
+they were lost. '_Egaré. Perdu_,' Rafael said. But the Huron was far
+from giving up. He peered through the falling snow, not thick yet, and
+spied a mountain across a valley. He knew that mountain. He had worked
+near it for two years, logging--the '_chantier_,' they call it. He knew
+there was a good camp on a river near the mountain, and he knew there
+would be a stove in the camp and, as Rafael said, 'Mebbe we haf a luck
+and somebody done gone and lef' somet'ing to eat,' Rafael prefers to
+talk English to me. He told me all this in broken English.
+
+"It was three miles to the hypothetical camp, but the two tired, hungry
+men in their rather wretched clothes started hopefully. And after a hard
+tramp through unbroken forest they came in sight of a log shanty and
+their spirits rose. 'Pretty tired work,' Rafael said it was. When they
+got close to the shanty they hoard a noise inside. They halted and
+looked at each other. Rafael knew there were no loggers in these parts
+now, and you'll remember it was absolutely wild country. Then something
+came to the window and looked out."
+
+"_Something_?" repeated the Frenchman in italics. His eyes were wide and
+he was as intent on Rafael's story as heart could desire.
+
+"They couldn't tell what it was," I went on. "A formless apparition, not
+exactly white or black, and huge and unknown of likeness. The Indians
+were frightened by a manner of unearthliness about the thing, and the
+brother-in-law fell on his knees and began to pray. 'It is the devil,'
+he murmured to Rafael. 'He will eat us, or carry us to hell.' And he
+prayed more.
+
+"But old Rafael, scared to death, too, because the thing seemed not to
+be of this world, yet had his courage with him. 'Mebbe it devil,' he
+said--such was his report to me--'anyhow I'm cold and hungry, me. I want
+dat camp. I go shoot dat devil.'
+
+"He crept up to the camp alone, the brother still praying in the bush.
+Rafael was rather convinced, mind you, that he was going to face the
+powers of darkness, but he had his rifle loaded and was ready for
+business. The door was open and he stepped inside. Something--'great
+beeg somet'ing' he put it--rose up and came at him, and he fired. And
+down fell the devil."
+
+"In the name of a sacred pig, what was it?" demanded my Frenchman.
+
+"That was what I asked. It was a bear. The men who had been logging in
+the camp two months back had left a keg of maple-syrup and a half barrel
+of flour, and the bear broke into both--successively--and alternately.
+He probably thought he was in bear-heaven for a while, but it must have
+gotten irksome. For his head was eighteen inches wide when they found
+him, white, with black touches. They soaked him in the river two days,
+and sold his skin for twenty dollars. 'Pretty good for devil skin,'
+Rafael said."
+
+The Frenchman stared at me a moment and then leaned back in his chair
+and shouted laughter. The greedy bear's finish had hit his funny-bone.
+And the three others stopped talking and demanded the story told over,
+which I did, condensing.
+
+"I like zat Hurong for my soldier," Colonel Raffré stated heartily. "Ze
+man what are not afraid of man _or_ of devil--zat is ze man to fight ze
+Boches." He was talking English now because Colonel Chichely was
+listening. He went on. "Zere is human devils--oh, but plentee--what we
+fight in France. I haf not heard of ozzers. But I believe well ze man
+who pull me out in sheet would be as your guide Rafael--he also would
+crip up wiz his rifle on real devil out of hell. But yes. I haf not told
+you how my Indian soldier bring in prisoners--no?"
+
+We all agreed no, and put in a request.
+
+"He brings zem in not one by one always--not always." The colonel
+grinned. He went on to tell this tale, which I shift into the vernacular
+from his laborious English.
+
+It appears that he had discerned the aptitude of his Hurons for
+reconnaissance work. If he needed information out of the dangerous
+country lying in front, if he needed a prisoner to question, these men
+were eager to go and get either, get anything. The more hazardous the
+job the better, and for a long time they came out of it
+untouched. In the group one man--nicknamed by the poilus, his
+comrades--Hirondelle--the Swallow--supposedly because of his lightness
+and swiftness, was easily chief. He had a fault, however, his dislike to
+bring in prisoners alive. Four times he had haled a German corpse before
+the colonel, seeming not rightly to understand that a dead enemy was
+useless for information.
+
+"The Boches are good killing," he had elucidated to his officer. And
+finally: "It is well, m'sieur, the colonel. One failed to understand
+that the colonel prefers a live Boche to a dead one. Me, I am otherwise.
+It appears a pity to let live such vermin. Has the colonel, by chance,
+heard the things these savages did in Belgium? Yes? But then--Yet I will
+bring to m'sieur, the colonel, all there is to be desired of German
+prisoners alive--_en vie_; fat ones; _en masse_."
+
+That night Hirondelle was sent out with four of his fellow Hurons to
+get, if possible, a prisoner. Pretty soon he was separated from the
+others; all but himself returning empty-handed in a couple of hours. No
+Germans seemed to be abroad. But Hirondelle did not return.
+
+"He risks too far," grumbled his captain. "He has been captured at last.
+I always knew they would get him, one night."
+
+But that was not the night. At one o'clock there was suddenly a sound of
+lamentation in the front trench of the French on that sector. The
+soldiers who were sleeping crawled out of their holes in the sides of
+the trench walls, and crowded around the zigzag, narrow way and rubbed
+their eyes and listened to the laughter of officers and soldiers on
+duty. There was Hirondelle, solemn as a church, yet with a dancing light
+in his eyes. There, around him, crowded as sheep to a shepherd, twenty
+figures in German uniform stood with hands up and wet tears running down
+pasty cheeks. And they were fat, it was noticeable that all of them were
+bulging of figure beyond even the German average. They wailed "Kamerad!
+Gut Kamerad!" in a chorus that was sickening to the plucky poilu
+make-up. Hirondelle, interrogated of many, kept his lips shut till the
+first excitement quieted. Then: "I report to my colonel," he stated, and
+finally he and his twenty were led back to the winding trench and the
+colonel was waked to receive them. This was what had happened:
+Hirondelle had wandered about, mostly on his stomach, through the
+darkness and peril of No Man's Land, enjoying himself heartily; when
+suddenly he missed his companions and realized that he had had no sign
+of them for some time. That did not trouble him. He explained to the
+colonel that he felt "more free." Also that if he pulled off a success
+he would have "more glory." After two hours of this midnight amusement,
+in deadly danger every second, Hirondelle heard steps. He froze to the
+earth, as he had learned from wild things in North American forests. The
+steps came nearer. A star-shell away down the line lighted the scene so
+that Hirondelle, motionless on the ground, all keen eyes, saw two
+Germans coming toward him. Instantly he had a scheme. In a subdued
+growl, yet distinctly, he threw over his shoulder an order that eight
+men should go to the right and eight to the left. Then, on his feet, he
+sent into the darkness a stern "Halt!" Instantly there was a sputter,
+arms thrown up, the inevitable "Kamerad!" and Hirondelle ordered the
+first German to pass him, then a second. Out of the darkness emerged a
+third. Hirondelle waved him on, and with that there was a fourth. And a
+fifth. Behold a sixth. About then Hirondelle judged it wise to give more
+orders to his imaginary squad of sixteen. But such a panic had seized
+this German mob; that little acting was necessary. Dark figure followed
+dark figure out of the darker night--arms up. They whimpered as they
+came, and on and on they came out of shadows. Hirondelle stated that he
+began to think the Crown Prince's army was surrendering to him. At last,
+when the procession stopped, he--and his mythical sixteen--marched the
+entire covey, without any objection from them, only abject obedience, to
+the French trenches.
+
+The colonel, with this whining crowd weeping about him, with
+Hirondelle's erect figure confronting him, his black eyes regarding the
+cowards with scorn as he made his report--the colonel simply could not
+understand the situation. All these men! "What are you--soldiers?" he
+flung at the wretched group. And one answered, "No, my officer. We are
+not soldiers, we are the cooks." At that there was a wail. "Ach! Who,
+then, will the breakfast cook for my general? He will _schrecklich_
+angry be for his sausage and his sauerkraut."
+
+By degrees the colonel got the story. A number of cooks had combined to
+protest against new regulations, and the general, to punish this
+astounding insubordination, had sent them out unarmed, petrified with,
+terror, into No Man's Land for an hour. They had there encountered
+Hirondelle. Hirondelle drew the attention of the colonel to the fact
+that he had promised prisoners, fat ones. "Will my colonel regard the
+shape of these pigs," suggested Hirondelle. "And also that they are
+twenty in number. Enough _en masse_ for one man to take, is it not, my
+colonel?"
+
+The little dinner-party at the Frontenac discussed this episode. "Almost
+too good to be true, colonel," I objected. "You're sure it _is_ true?
+Bring out your Hirondelle. He ought to be home wounded, with a war cross
+on his breast, by now."
+
+The colonel smiled and shook his head. "It is that which I cannot
+do--show you my Hirondelle. Not here, and not in France, by _malheur_.
+For he ventured once too often and too far, as the captain prophesied,
+and he is dead. God rest the brave! Also a Croix de Guerre is indeed
+his, but no Hirondelle is there to claim it."
+
+The silence of a moment was a salute to the soul of a warrior passed to
+the happy hunting-grounds. And then I began on another story of my
+Rafael's adventures which something in the colonel's tale suggested.
+
+The colonel, his winning face all a smile, interrupted. "Does one
+believe, then, in this Rafael of m'sieur who caps me each time my tales
+of my Huron Hirondelle? It appears to me that m'sieur has the brain, of
+a story-teller and hangs good stories on a figure which he has built and
+named so--Rafael. Me, I cannot believe there exists this Rafael. I
+believe there is only one such gallant d'Artagnan of the Hurons, and it
+is--it was--my Hirondelle. Show me your Rafael, then!" demanded the
+colonel.
+
+At that challenge the scheme which had flashed into my mind an hour ago
+gathered shape and power. "I will show him to you, colonel," I took up
+the challenge, "if you will allow me." I turned to include the others.
+"Isn't it possible for you all to call a truce and come up tomorrow to
+my club to be my guests for as long or as short a time as you will? I
+can't say how much pleasure it would give me, and I believe I could give
+you something also--great fishing, shooting, a moose, likely, or at
+least a caribou--and Rafael. I promise Rafael. It's not unlikely,
+colonel, that he may have known the Hirondelle. The Hurons are few. Do
+come," I threw at them.
+
+They took it after their kind. The Englishman stared and murmured:
+"Awfully kind, I'm sure, but quite impossible." The Canadian, our next
+of kin, smiled, shaking his head like a brother. Fitzhugh put his arm of
+brawn about me again till that glorious star gleamed almost on my own
+shoulder, and patted me lovingly as he said: "Old son, I'd give my eyes
+to go, if I wasn't up to my ears in job."
+
+But the Frenchman's face shone, and he lifted a finger that was a
+sentence. It embodied reflection and eagerness and suspense. The rest of
+us gazed at that finger as if it were about to address us. And the
+colonel spoke. "I t'ink," brought out the colonel emphatically, "I t'ink
+I damn go."
+
+And I snatched the finger and the hand of steel to which it grew, and
+wrung both. This was a delightful Frenchman. "Good!" I cried out.
+"Glorious! I want you all, but I'm mightily pleased to get one. Colonel,
+you're a sport."
+
+"But, yes," agreed the colonel happily, "I am sport. Why not? I haf four
+days to wait till my sheep sail. Why not kip--how you say?--kip in my
+hand for shooting--go kill moose? I may talk immensely of zat moose in
+France--hein? Much more _chic_ as to kill Germans, _n'est çe pas_?
+Everybody kill Germans."
+
+At one o'clock next day the out-of-breath little train which had gasped
+up mountains for five hours from Quebec uttered a relieved shriek and
+stopped at a doll-house club station sitting by itself in the
+wilderness. Four or five men in worn but clean clothes--they always
+start clean--waited on the platform, and there was a rapid fire of "_Bon
+jour_, m'sieur," as we alighted. Then ten quick eyes took in my colonel
+in his horizon-blue uniform. I was aware of a throb of interest. At once
+there was a scurry for luggage because the train must be held till it
+was off, and the guides ran forward to the baggage-car to help. I
+bundled the colonel down a sharp, short hill to the river, while
+smiling, observant Hurons, missing not a line of braid or a glitter of
+button, passed with bags and _pacquetons_ as we descended. The blue and
+black and gold was loaded into a canoe with an Indian at bow and stern
+for the three-mile paddle to the club-house. He was already a schoolboy
+on a holiday with unashamed enthusiasm.
+
+"But it is fun--fun, zis," he shouted to me from his canoe. "And
+_lequel_, m'sieur, which is Rafael?"
+
+Rafael, in the bow of my boat, missed a beat of his paddle. It seemed to
+me he looked older than two years back, when I last saw him. His
+shoulders were bent, and his merry and stately personality was less in
+evidence. He appeared subdued. He did not turn with a smile or a grave
+glance of inquiry at the question, as I had expected. I nodded toward
+him.
+
+"_Mais oui_," cried out the colonel. "One has heard of you, _mon ami_.
+One will talk to you later of shooting."
+
+Rafael, not lifting his head, answered quietly, "_C'est bien, m'sieur._"
+
+Just then the canoes slipped past a sandy bar decorated with a fresh
+moose track; the excitement of the colonel set us laughing. This man was
+certainly a joy! And with that, after a long paddle down the winding
+river and across two breezy lakes, we were at the club-house. We
+lunched, and in short order--for we wanted to make camp that night--I
+dug into my _pacquetons_ and transformed my officer into a sportsman,
+his huge delight in Abernethy & Flitch's creations being a part of the
+game. Then we were off.
+
+One has small chance for associating with guides while travelling in the
+woods. One sits in a canoe between two, but if there is a wind and the
+boat is _chargé_ their hands are full with the small craft and its heavy
+load; when the landing is made and the "messieurs" are _débarqués_,
+instantly the men are busy lifting canoes on their heads and packs on
+their backs in bizarre, piled-up masses to be carried from a leather
+tump-line, a strap of two inches wide going around the forehead. The
+whole length of the spine helps in the carrying. My colonel watched
+Delphise, a husky specimen, load. With a grunt he swung up a canvas U.S.
+mailbag stuffed with _butin_, which includes clothes and books and shoes
+and tobacco and cartridges and more. With a half-syllable Delphise
+indicated to Laurent a bag of potatoes weighing eighty pounds, a box of
+tinned biscuit, a wooden package of cans of condensed milk, a rod case,
+and a raincoat. These Laurent added to the spine of Delphise.
+
+"How many pounds?" I asked, as the dark head bent forward to equalize
+the strain.
+
+Delphise shifted weight with another grunt to gauge the pull. "About a
+hundred and eighty pounds, m'sieur--quite heavy--_assez pesant_." Off he
+trotted uphill, head bent forward.
+
+The colonel was entranced. "Hardy fellows--the making of fine soldiers,"
+he commented, tossing his cigarette away to stare.
+
+That night after dinner--but it was called supper--the colonel and I
+went into the big, airy log kitchen with the lake looking in at three
+windows and the forest at two doors. We gunned over with the men plans
+for the next day, for the most must be made of every minute of this
+precious military holiday. I explained how precious it was, and then I
+spoke a few words about the honor of having as our guest a soldier who
+had come from the front, and who was going back to the front. For the
+life of me I could not resist a sentence more about the two crosses
+they had seen on his uniform that day. The Cross of War, the Legion of
+Honor! I could not let my men miss that! Rafael had been quiet and
+colorless, and I was disappointed in the show qualities of my show
+guide. But the colonel beamed with satisfaction, in everything and
+everybody, and received my small introduction with a bow and a flourish
+worthy of Carnegie Hall.
+
+"I am happy to be in this so charming camp, in this forest magnificent,
+on these ancient mountains," orated the colonel floridly. "I am most
+pleased of all to have Huron Indians as my guides, because between
+Hurons and me there are memories." The men were listening spell-bound.
+"But yes. I had Huron soldiers serving in my regiment, just now at the
+western front, of whom I thought highly. They were all that there is,
+those Hurons of mine, of most fearless, most skilful. One among them was
+pre-eminent. Some of you may have known him. I regret to say that I
+never knew his real name, but among his comrades he went by the name of
+l'Hirondelle. From that name one guesses his qualities--swift as a
+swallow, untamable, gay, brave to foolishness, moving in dashes not to
+be followed--such was my Hirondelle. And yet this swift bird was in the
+end shot down."
+
+At this point in the colonel's speech. I happened to look at Rafael,
+back in the shadows of the half-lighted big room. His eyes glittered out
+of the dimness like disks of fire, his face was strained, and his figure
+bent forward. "He must have known this chap, the Swallow," I thought to
+myself. "Just possibly a son or brother or nephew of his." The colonel
+was going on, telling in fluent, beautiful French the story of how
+Hirondelle, wrapped in a sheet, had rescued him. The men drank it in.
+"When those guides are old, old fellows, they'll talk about this night
+and the colonel's speech to their great-grandchildren," I considered,
+and again the colonel went on.
+
+"Have I m'sieur's permission to _raconter_ a short story of the most
+amusing which was the last escapade of my Hirondelle before he was
+killed?"
+
+M'sieur gave permission eagerly, and the low murmur of the voices of the
+hypnotized guides, standing in a group before the colonel, added to its
+force and set him smiling.
+
+"It was like this," he stated. "My Hirondelle was out in No Man's Land
+of a night, strictly charged to behave in a manner _comme il faut_, for
+he was of a rashness, and we did not wish to lose him. He was valuable
+to us, and beyond that the regiment had an affection for him. For such
+reasons his captain tried--but, yes--to keep him within bounds. As I
+say, on this night he had received particular orders to be _sage_. So
+that the first thing the fellow does is to lose his comrades, for which
+he had a _penchant_, one knows. After that he crawls over that accursed
+country, in and out of shellholes, rifle in his teeth likely--the good
+God knows where else, for one need be all hands and feet for such
+crawling. He crawled in that fashion till at last he lost himself. And
+then he was concerned to find out where might be our lines till in time
+he heard a sound of snoring and was well content. Home at last. He
+tumbled into a dark trench, remarking only that it was filled with men
+since he left, and so tired he was with his adventure that he pushed
+away the man next, who was at the end, to gain space, and he rolled over
+to sleep. But that troublesome man next took too much room. Our
+Hirondelle planted him a kick in the middle of the back. At which the
+man half waked and swore at him--in German. And dropped off to sleep
+again with his leg of a pig slung across Hirondelle's chest. At that
+second a star-shell lighted up the affair, and Hirondelle, staring with
+much interest, believe me, saw a trench filled with sleeping Boches. To
+get out of that as quietly as might be was the game--_n'est-ce-pas, mes
+amis_? But not for Hirondelle.
+
+"'My colonel has a liking for prisoners,' he reported later. 'My
+captain's orders were to conduct oneself _très comme il faut_. It is
+always _comme il faut_ to please the colonel. Therefore it seemed _en
+regle_ to take a prisoner. I took him. _Le v'la_.'
+
+"What the fellow did was to wait till the Boche next door was well
+asleep, then slowly remove his rifle, then fasten on his throat with a
+grip which Hirondelle understood, and finally to overpower the Boche
+till he was ready enough to crawl out at the muzzle of Hirondelle's
+rifle."
+
+There was a stir in the little group of guides, and from the shadows
+Rafael's voice spoke.
+
+"Mon colonel--pardon!"
+
+The colonel turned sharply. "Who is that?"
+
+"There were two Germans," spoke the voice out of the shadows.
+
+The colonel, too astonished to answer, stared. The voice, trembling,
+old, went on. "The second man waked and one was obliged to strangle him
+also. One brought the brace to the captain at the end of the
+carabine--rifle."
+
+"In heaven's name who are you?" demanded the colonel.
+
+From where old Rafael had been, bowed and limp in his humble, worn
+clothes, stepped at a stride a soldier, head up, shoulders squared,
+glittering eyes forward, and stood at attention. It was like magic. One
+hand snapped up in a smart salute.
+
+"Who are you?" whispered the colonel.
+
+"If the colonel pleases--l'Hirondelle."
+
+I heard the colonel's breath come and go as he peered, leaning forward
+to the soldierly figure. "_Nom de Ciel_," he murmured, "I believe it
+is." Then in sharp sentences: "You were reported killed. Are you a
+deserter?"
+
+The steady image of a soldier dropped back a step.
+
+"My colonel--no."
+
+"Explain this."
+
+Rafael--l'Hirondelle--explained. He had not been killed, but captured
+and sent to a German prison-camp.
+
+"You escaped?" the colonel threw in.
+
+"But yes, my colonel."
+
+The colonel laughed. "One would know it. The clumsy Boches could not
+hold the Swallow."
+
+"But no, my colonel."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"One went to work before light, my colonel, in that accursed
+prison-camp. One was out of sight from the guard for a moment, turning a
+corner, so that on a morning I slipped into some bushes and hid in a
+dugout--for it was an old camp--all day. That night I walked. I walked
+for seven nights and lay hid for seven days, eating, my colonel, very
+little. Then, _v'la_, I was in front of the French lines."
+
+"You ran across to our lines?"
+
+"But not exactly. One sees that I was yet in dirty German prison
+clothes, and looked like an infantryman of the Boches, so that a poilu
+rushed at me with a bayonet. I believed, then, that I had come upon a
+German patrol. Each thought the other a Hun. I managed to wrest from the
+poilu his rifle with the bayonet, but as we fought another shot me--in
+the side."
+
+"You were wounded?"
+
+"Yes, my colonel."
+
+"In hospital?"
+
+"Yes, my colonel."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Three months, my colonel."
+
+"Why are you not again in the army?"
+
+The face of the erect soldier, Hirondelle, the dare-devil, was suddenly
+the face of a man grown old, ill, and broken-hearted. He stared at the
+stalwart French officer, gathering himself with an effort. "I--was
+discharged, my colonel, as--unfit." His head in its old felt hat dropped
+into his hands suddenly, and he broke beyond control into sobs that
+shook not only him but every man there.
+
+The colonel stepped forward and put an arm around the bent shoulders.
+"_Mon héros!_" said the colonel.
+
+With that Rafael found words, never a hard task for him. Yet they came
+with gasps between. "To be cast out as an old horse--at the moment of
+glory! I had dreamed all my life--of fighting. And I had it--oh, my
+colonel--I had it! The glory came when I was old and knew how to be
+happy in it. Not as a boy who laughs and takes all as his right. I was
+old, yes, but I was good to kill the vermin. I avenged the children and
+the women whom those savages--My people, the savages of the wood, knew
+no better, yet they have not done things as bad as these vile ones who
+were educated, who knew. Therefore I killed them. I was old, but I was
+strong, my colonel knows. Not for nothing have I lived a hard life. _On
+a vu de la misère_. I have hunted moose and bear and kept my muscles of
+steel and my eyes of a hawk. It is in my blood to be a fighting man. I
+fought with pleasure, and I was troubled with no fear. I was old, but I
+could have killed many devils more. And so I was shot down by my own
+friend after seven days of hard life. And the young soldier doctor
+discharged me as unfit to fight. And so I am come home very fast to hide
+myself, for I am ashamed. I am finished. The fighting and the glory are
+for me no more."
+
+The colonel stepped back a bit and his face flamed. "Glory!" he
+whispered. "Glory no more for the Hirondelle? What of the Croix de
+Guerre?"
+
+Rafael shook his head. "I haf heard my colonel who said they would have
+given me--me, the Hirondelle--the war cross. That now is lost too."
+
+"Lost!" The colonel's deep tone was full of the vibration which only a
+French voice carries. With a quick movement he unfastened the catch that
+held the green ribbon, red-striped, of his own cross of war. He turned
+and pinned the thing which men die for on the shabby coat of the guide.
+Then he kissed him on either cheek. "My comrade," he said, "your glory
+will never be old."
+
+There was deep silence in the camp kitchen. The crackling of wood that
+fell apart, the splashing of the waves of the lake on the pebbles by the
+shore were the only sounds on earth. For a long minute the men stood as
+if rooted; the colonel, poised and dramatic, and, I stirred to the
+depths of my soul by this great ceremony which had come out of the skies
+to its humble setting in the forest--the men and the colonel and I, we
+all watched Rafael.
+
+And Rafael slowly, yet with the iron tenacity of his race, got back his
+control. "My colonel," he began, and then failed. The Swallow did not
+dare trust his broken wings. It could not be done--to speak his thanks.
+He looked up with black eyes shining through tears which spoke
+everything.
+
+"Tomorrow," he stated brokenly, "if we haf a luck, my colonel and I go
+kill a moose."
+
+They had a luck.
+
+
+
+
+ONLY ONE OF THEM
+
+
+It was noon on a Saturday. Out of the many buildings of the great
+electrical manufacturing plant at Schenectady poured employees by
+hundreds. Thirty trolley-cars were run on special tracks to the place
+and stood ready to receive the sea streaming towards them. Massed
+motor-cars waited beyond the trolleys for their owners, officials of the
+works. The girl in blue serge, standing at a special door of a special
+building counted, keeping watch meantime of the crowd, the cars. A
+hundred and twenty-five she made it; it came to her mind that State
+Street in Albany on a day of some giant parade was not unlike this, not
+less a throng. The girl, who was secretary to an assistant manager, was
+used to the sight, but it was an impressive sight and she was
+impressionable and found each Saturday's pageant a wonder. The pageant
+was more interesting it may be because it focussed always on one
+figure--and here he was.
+
+"Did you wait, long?" he asked as he came up, broad-shouldered and
+athletic of build, boyish and honest of face, as good looking a young
+American as one may see in any crowd.
+
+"I was early." She smiled up at him as they swung off towards the
+trolleys; her eyes flashed a glance which said frankly that she found
+him satisfactory to look upon.
+
+They sped past others, many others, and made a trolley car and a seat
+together, which was the goal. They always made it, every Saturday, yet
+it was always a game. Exhilarated by the winning of the game they
+settled into the scat for the three-quarters of an hour run; it was
+quite a worth-while world, the smiling glances said one to the other.
+
+The girl gazed, not seeing them particularly, at the slower people
+filling the seats and the passage of the car. Then: "Oh," she spoke,
+"what was it you were going to tell me?"
+
+The man's face grew sober, a bit troubled. "Well," he said, "I've
+decided. I'm going to enlist."
+
+She was still for a second. Then: "I think that's splendid," she brought
+out. "Splendid. Of course, I knew you'd do it. It's the only thing that
+could be. I'm glad."
+
+"Yes," the man spoke slowly. "It's the only thing that could be. There's
+nothing to keep me. My mother's dead. My father's husky and not old and
+my sisters are with him. There's nobody to suffer by my going."
+
+"N-no," the girl agreed. "But--it's the fine thing to do just the same.
+You're thirty-two you see, and couldn't be drafted. That makes it rather
+great of you to go."
+
+"Well," the man answered, "not so very great, I suppose, as it's what
+all young Americans are doing. I rather think it's one of those things,
+like spelling, which are no particular credit if you do them, but a
+disgrace if you don't."
+
+"What a gray way of looking at it!" the girl objected. "As if all the
+country wasn't glorying in the boys who go! As if we didn't all stand
+back of you and crowd the side lines to watch you, bursting with pride.
+You know we all love you."
+
+"Do you love me, Mary? Enough to marry me before I go?" His voice was
+low, but the girl missed no syllable. She had heard those words or some
+like them in his voice before.
+
+"Oh, Jim," she begged, "don't ask me now. I'm not certain--yet. I--I
+couldn't get along very well without you. I care a lot. But--I'm not
+just sure it's--the way I ought to care to marry you."
+
+As alone in the packed car as in a wood, the little drama went on and no
+one noticed. "I'm sorry, Mary." The tone was dispirited. "I could go
+with a lot lighter heart if we belonged to each other."
+
+"Don't say that, Jim," she pleaded. "You make me out--a slacker. You
+don't want me to marry you as a duty?"
+
+"Good Lord, no!"
+
+"I know that. And I--do care. There's nobody like you. I admire you so
+for going--but you're not afraid of anything. It's easy for you, that
+part. I suppose a good many are really--afraid. Of the guns and the
+horror--all that. You're lucky, Jim. You don't give that a thought."
+
+The man flashed an odd look, and then regarded his hands joined on his
+knee.
+
+"I do appreciate your courage. I admire that a lot. But somehow Jim
+there's a doubt that holds me back. I can't be sure I--love you enough;
+that it's the right way--for that."
+
+The man sighed. "Yes," he said. "I see. Maybe some time. Heavens knows I
+wouldn't want you unless it was whole-hearted. I wouldn't risk your
+regretting it, not if I wanted you ten times more. Which is impossible."
+He put out his big hand with a swift touch on hers. "Maybe some time.
+Don't worry," he said. "I'm yours." And went on in a commonplace tone,
+"I think I'll show up at the recruiting office this afternoon, and I'll
+come to your house in the evening as usual. Is that all right?"
+
+The car sped into Albany and the man went to her door with the girl and
+left her with few words more and those about commonplace subjects. As
+he swung down the street he went over the episode in his mind, and
+dissected it and dwelt on words and phrases and glances, and drew
+conclusions as lovers have done before, each detail, each conclusion
+mightily important, outweighing weeks of conversation of the rest of the
+world together. At last he shook his head and set his lips.
+
+"It's not honest." He formed the words with his lips now, a summing up
+of many thoughts in his brain. The brain went on elaborating the text.
+"She thinks I'm brave; she thinks it's easy for me to face enlisting,
+and the rest. She thinks I'm the makeup which can meet horror and
+suffering light-heartedly. And I'm not. She admires me for that--she
+said so. I'm not it. I'm fooling her; it's not honest. Yet"--he groaned
+aloud. "Yet I may lose her if I tell her the truth. I'm afraid. I am. I
+hate it. I can't bear--I can't bear to leave my job and my future, just
+when it's opening out. But I could do that. Only I'm--Oh, damnation--I'm
+afraid. Horror and danger, agony of men and horses, myself wounded
+maybe, out on No Man's Land--left there--hours. To die like a dog. Oh,
+my God--must I? If I tell it will break the little hold I have on her.
+Must I go to this devil's dance that I hate--and give up her love
+besides? But yet--it isn't honest to fool her. Oh, God, what will I do?"
+People walking up State Street, meeting a sober-faced young man, glanced
+at him with no particular interest. A woman waiting on a doorstep
+regarded him idly.
+
+"Why isn't he in uniform?" she wondered as one does wonder in these days
+at a strong chap in mufti. Then she rebuked her thought. "Undoubtedly
+there's a good reason; American boys are not slackers."
+
+His slow steps carried him beyond her vision and casual thought. The
+people in the street and the woman on the doorstep did not think or care
+that what they saw was a man fighting his way through the crisis of his
+life, fighting alone "per aspera ad astra--" through thorns to the
+stars.
+
+He lunched with a man at a club and after that took his way to the
+building on Broadway where were the recruiting headquarters. He had told
+her that he was going to enlist. As he walked he stared at the people in
+the streets as a man might stare going to his execution. These people
+went about their affairs, he considered, as if he--who was about to
+die--did not, in passing their friendly commonplace, salute them. He did
+salute them. Out of his troubled soul he sent a silent greeting to each
+ordinary American hurrying along, each standing to him for pleasant and
+peaceful America, America of all his days up to now. Was he to toss away
+this comfortable comradeship, his life to be, everything he cared for on
+earth, to go into hell, and likely never come back? Why? Why must he?
+There seemed to be plenty who wanted to fight--why not let them? It was
+the old slacker's argument; the man was ashamed as he caught himself
+using it; he had the grace to see its selfishness and cowardice. Yet his
+soul was in revolt as he drove his body to the recruiting office, and
+the thoughts that filled him were not of the joy of giving but of the
+pain of giving up. With that he stood on the steps of the building and
+here was Charlie Thurston hurrying by on the sidewalk.
+
+"Hello, Jim! Going in to enlist? So long till you come back with one leg
+and an eye out."
+
+It was Thurston's idea of a joke. He would have been startled if he had
+known into what a trembling balance his sledge-hummer wit cast its
+unlucky weight. The balance quivered at the blow, shook back and forth
+an instant and fell heavily. Jim Barlow wheeled, sprang down the stone
+steps and bolted up the street, panting as one who has escaped a wild
+beast. Thurston had said it. That was what was due to happen. It was now
+three o'clock; Barlow fled up State Street to the big hotel and took a
+room and locked his door and threw himself on the bed. What was he to
+do? After weeks of hesitation he had come to the decision that he would
+offer himself to his country. He saw--none plainer--the reasons why it
+was fit and right so to do. Other men were giving up homes and careers
+and the whole bright and easy side of life--why not he? It was the
+greatest cause to fight for in the world's history--should he not fight
+for it? How, after the war, might he meet friends, his own people, his
+children to come, if he alone of his sort had no honorable record to
+show? Such arguments, known to all, he repeated, even aloud he repeated
+them, tossing miserably about the bed in his hotel room. And his mind at
+once accepted them, but that was all. His spirit failed to spring to his
+mind's support with the throb of emotion which is the spark that makes
+the engine go. The wheels went around over and over but the connection
+was not made. The human mind is useful machinery, but it is only the
+machine's master, the soul, which can use it. Over and over he got to
+his feet and spoke aloud: "Now I will go." Over and over a repulsion
+seized him so strongly that his knees gave way and he fell back on the
+bed. If he had a mother, he thought, she might have helped, but there
+was no one. Mary--but he could not risk Mary's belief in his courage.
+Only a mother would have understood entirely.
+
+With that, sick at heart, the hideous sea of counter arguments,
+arguments of a slacker, surged upon him. What would it all matter a
+hundred years from now? Wasn't he more useful in his place keeping up
+the industries of the nation? Wasn't he a bigger asset to America as an
+alive engineer, an expert in his work, than as mere cannon fodder, one
+of thousands to be shot into junk in a morning's "activity"--just one of
+them? Because the Germans were devils why should he let them reach over
+here, away over here, and drag him out of a decent and happy life and
+throw him like dirt into the horrible mess they had made, and leave him
+dead or worse--mangled and useless. Then, again--there were plenty of
+men mad to fight; why not let them? Through a long afternoon he fought
+with the beasts, and dinner-time came and he did not notice, and at last
+he rose and, telephoning first to Mary a terse message that he would not
+be able to come this evening, he went out, hardly knowing what he did,
+and wandered up town.
+
+There was a humble church in a quiet street where a service flag hung,
+thick with dark stars, and the congregation were passing out from a
+special service for its boys who were going off to camp. The boys were
+there on the steps, surrounded by people eager to touch their hands, a
+little group of eight or ten with serious bright faces, and a look in
+their eyes which stabbed into Barlow. One may see that look any day in
+any town, meeting the erect stalwart lads in khaki who are about our
+streets. It is the look of those who have made a vital sacrifice and
+know the price, and whose minds are at peace. Barlow, lingering on the
+corner across the way, stared hungrily. How had they got that look, that
+peace? If only he might talk to one of them! Yet he knew how dumb an
+animal is a boy, and how helpless these would be to give him the master
+word.
+
+The master-word, he needed that; he needed it desperately. He must go;
+he must. Life would be unendurable without self-respect; no amount of
+explaining could cover the stain on his soul if he failed in the answer
+to the call of honor. That was it, it was in a nut-shell, the call. Yet
+he could not hear it as his call. He wandered unhappily away and left
+the church and its dissolving congregation, and the boys, the pride of
+the church, the boys who were now, they also, separating and going back
+each to his home for the last evening perhaps, to be loved and made much
+of. Barlow vaguely pictured the scenes in those little homes--eyes
+bright with unshed tears, love and laughter and courage, patriotism as
+fine as in any great house in America, determination that in giving to
+America what was dearest it should be given with high spirit--that the
+boys should have smiling faces to remember, over there. And then
+again--love and tender words. He was missing all that. He, too, might go
+back to his father's house an enlisted man, and meet his father's eyes
+of pride and see his sisters gaze at him with a new respect, feel their
+new honor of him in the touch of arms about his neck. All these things
+were for him too, if he would but take them. With that there was the
+sound of singing, shrill, fresh voices singing down the street. He
+wheeled about. A company of little girls were marching towards him and
+he smiled, looking at them, thinking the sight as pretty as a garden of
+flowers. They were from eight to ten or eleven years old and in the
+bravery of fresh white dresses; each had a big butterfly of pink or blue
+or yellow or white ribbon perched on each little fair or dark head, and
+each carried over her shoulder a flag. Quite evidently they were coming
+from the celebration at the church, where in some capacity they had
+figured. Not millionaires children these; the little sisters likely of
+the boys who were going to be soldiers; just dear things that bloom all
+over America, the flowering of the land, common to rich and poor. As
+they sprang along two by two, in unmartial ranks, they sang with all
+their might "The Long, Long Trail."
+
+  "There's a long, long trail that's leading
+    To No Man's Land in France
+  Where the shrapnel shells are bursting
+    And we must advance."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then:
+
+  We're going to show old Kaiser Bill
+  What our Yankee boys can do.
+
+Jim Barlow, his hands in his pockets, backed up against a house and
+listened to the clear, high, little voices. "No Man's Land in France--We
+must advance--What our Yankee boys can do."
+
+As if his throat were gripped by a quick hand, a storm of emotion swept
+him. The little girls--little girls who were the joy, each one, of some
+home! Such little things as the Germans--in Belgium--"Oh, my God!" The
+words burst aloud from his lips. These were trusting--innocent,
+ignorant--to "What our Yankee boys can do." Without that, without the
+Yankee boys, such as these would be in the power of wild beasts. It was
+his affair. Suddenly he felt that stab through him.
+
+"God," he prayed, whispering it as the little girls passed on singing,
+"help me to protect them; help me to forget myself." And the miracle
+that sends an answer sometimes, even in this twentieth century, to true
+prayer happened to Jim Barlow. Behold he had forgotten himself. With his
+head up and peace in his breast, and the look in his face already,
+though he did not know it, that our soldier boys wear, he turned and
+started at a great pace down the street to the recruiting office.
+
+"Why, you did come."
+
+It was nine o'clock and he stood with lighted face in the middle of the
+little library. And she came in; it was an event to which he never got
+used, Mary's coming into a room. The room changed always into such an
+astonishing place.
+
+"Mary, I've done it. I'm--" his voice choked a bit--"I'm a soldier." He
+laughed at that. "Well not so you'd notice it, yet. But I've taken the
+first step."
+
+"I knew, Jim. You said you were going to enlist. Why did you telephone
+you couldn't come?"
+
+He stared down at her, holding her hands yet. He felt, unphrased,
+strong, the overwhelming conviction that she was the most desirable
+thing on earth. And directly on top of that conviction another, that he
+would be doing her desirableness, her loveliness less than the highest
+honor if he posed before her in false colors. At whatever cost to
+himself he must be honest with her. Also--he was something more now
+than his own man; he was a soldier of America, and inside and out he
+would be, for America's sake, the best that was in him to be.
+
+"Mary, I've got a thing to tell you."
+
+"Yes?" The sure way in which she smiled up at him made the effort
+harder.
+
+"I fooled you. You think I'm a hero. And I'm not. I'm a--" for the life
+of him he could not get out the word "coward." He went on: "I'm a blamed
+baby." And he told her in a few words, yet plainly enough what he had
+gone through in the long afternoon. "It was the kiddies who clinched it,
+with their flags and their hair ribbons--and their Yankee boys. I
+couldn't stand for--not playing square with them."
+
+Suddenly he gripped her hands so that it hurt. "Mary, God help me, I'll
+try to fight the devils over there so that kiddies like that, and--you,
+and all the blessed people, the whole dear shooting-match will be safe
+over here. I'm glad--I'm so glad I'm going to have a hand in it. Mary,
+it's queer, but I'm happier than I've been in months. Only"--his brows
+drew anxiously. "Only I'm scared stiff for fear you think me--a coward."
+
+He had the word out now. Thee taste wasn't so bad after all; it seemed
+oddly to have nothing to do with himself. "Mary, dear, couldn't
+you--forget that in time? When I've been over there and behaved
+decently--and I think I will. Somehow I'm not afraid of being afraid
+now. It feels like a thing that couldn't be done--by a soldier of Uncle
+Sam's. I'll just look at the other chaps--all heroes, you know--and be
+so proud I'm with them and so keen to finish our job that I
+know--somehow I _know_ I'll never think about my blooming self at all.
+It's queer to say it, Mary, but the way it looks now I'm in it, it's not
+just country even. It's religion. See, Mary?"
+
+There was no sound, no glance from Mary. But he went on, unaware, so
+rapt was he in his new illumination.
+
+"And when I come back, Mary, with a decent record--just possibly with a
+war-cross--oh, my word! Think of me! Then, couldn't you forget this
+business I've been telling you? Do you think you could marry me then?"
+
+What was the matter? Why did she stand so still with her head bending
+lower and lower, the color deepening on the bit of cheek that his
+anxious eyes could see.
+
+"Mary!"
+
+Suddenly she was clutching his collar as if in deadly fear.
+
+"Mary, what's the matter? I'm such a fool, but--oh, Mary, dear!"
+
+With that Mary-dear straightened and, slipping her clutch to the lapel
+of his old coat, spoke. She looked into his eyes with a smile that was
+sweeter--oh, much sweeter!--for tears that dimmed it, and she choked
+most awfully between words. "Jim"--and a choke. "Jim, I'm terrified to
+think I nearly let you get away. You. And me not worthy to lace your
+shoes--" ("Oh, gracious, Mary--don't!") "me--the idiot, backing and
+filling when I had the chance of my life at--at a hero. Oh, Jim!"
+
+"Here! Mary, don't you understand? I've been telling you I was scared
+blue. I hated to tell you Mary, and it's the devil to tell you twice--"
+
+What was this? Did Heaven then sometimes come down unawares on the head
+of an every-day citizen with great lapses of character? Jim Barlow,
+entranced, doubted his senses yet could not doubt the touch of soft
+hands clasped in his neck. He held his head back a little to be sure
+that they were real. Yes, they were there, the hands--Barlow's next
+remark was long, but untranslatable. Minutes later. "Mary, tell me what
+you mean. Not that I care much if--if this." Language grows elliptical
+under stress. "But--did you get me? I'm--a coward." A hand flashed
+across his mouth.
+
+"Don't you dare, Jim, you're the bravest--bravest--"
+
+The words died in a sharp break. "Why, Jim it was a hundred thousand
+times pluckier to be afraid and then go. Can't you see that, you big
+stupid?"
+
+"But, Mary, you said you admired it when--when you thought I was a lion
+of courage."
+
+"Of course. I admired you. Now I adore you."
+
+"Well," summed up, Barlow bewildered, "if women aren't the blamedest!"
+
+And Mary squealed laughter. She put hands each side of his face.
+"Jim--listen. I'll try to explain because you have a right to
+understand."
+
+"Well, yes," agreed Jim.
+
+"It's like this. I thought you'd enlist and I never dreamed you were
+balky. I didn't know you hated it so. Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"Go on," urged Jim.
+
+"I thought you were mad to be going, like--like these light-headed boys.
+That you didn't mind leaving me compared to the adventure. That you
+didn't care for danger. But now--now." She covered his eyes with her
+fingers, "Now Jim, you need me. A woman can't love a man her best unless
+she can help him. Against everything--sorrow, mosquitoes, bad
+food--drink--any old bother. That's the alluring side of tipplers. Women
+want to help them. So, now I know you need me," the soft, unsteady voice
+wandered on, and Jim, anchored between, the hands, drank in her look
+with his eyes and her tones with his ears and prayed that the situation
+might last a week. "You need me so, to tell you how much finer you are
+than if you'd gone off without a quiver."
+
+Barlow sighed in contentment. "And me thinking I was the solitary
+'fraid-cat of America!"
+
+"Solitary! Why, Jim, there must be at least ten hundred thousand men
+going through this same battle. All the ones old enough to think,
+probably. Why Jim--you're only one of them. In that speech the other
+night the man said this war was giving men their souls. I think it's
+your kind he meant, the kind that realizes the bad things over there and
+the good things over here and goes just the same. The kind--you are."
+
+"I'm a hero from Hero-ville," murmured Barlow. "But little Mary, when I
+come back mangled will you feel the same? Will you marry me then, Mary?"
+
+"I'll marry you any minute," stated Mary, "and when you come back I'll
+love you one extra for every mangle."
+
+"Any minute," repeated Barlow dramatically. "Tomorrow?"
+
+And summed up again the heaven that he could not understand and did not
+want to, "Search me," he adjured the skies in good Americanese, "if
+girls aren't the blamedest."
+
+
+
+
+THE V.C.
+
+
+I had forgotten that I ordered frogs' legs. When mine were placed before
+me I laughed. I always laugh at the sight of frogs' legs because of the
+person and the day of which they remind me. Nobody noticed that I
+laughed or asked the reason why, though it was an audible chuckle, and
+though I sat at the head of my own dinner-party at the Cosmic Club.
+
+The man for whom the dinner was given, Colonel Robert Thornton, my
+cousin, a Canadian, who got his leg shot off at Vimy Ridge, was making
+oration about the German Crown Prince's tactics at Verdun, and that was
+the reason that ten men were not paying attention to me and that I was
+not paying attention to Bobby. When the good chap talks human talk,
+tells what happened to people and what their psychological processes
+seemed to be, he is entertaining. He has a genuine gift of sympathy and
+a power to lead others in the path he treads; in short, he tells a good
+story. But like most people who do one thing particularly well he is
+always priding himself on the way he does something else. He likes to
+look at Colonel Thornton as a student of the war, and he has the time of
+his life when he can get people to listen to what he knows Joffre and
+Foch and Haig and Hindenberg ought to have done. So at this moment he
+was enjoying his evening, for the men I had asked to meet him, all
+strangers to him, ignorant of his real powers, were hanging on his
+words, partly because no one can help liking him whatever he talks
+about, and partly because, with that pathetic empty trouser-leg and the
+crutch hooked over his chair, he was an undoubted hero. So I heard the
+sentences ambling, and reflected that Hilaire Belloc with maps and a
+quiet evening would do my tactical education more good than Bobby
+Thornton's discursions. And about then I chuckled unnoticed, over the
+silly frogs' legs.
+
+"Tell me, Colonel Thornton, do you consider that the French made a
+mistake in concentrating so much of their reserve--" It was the
+Governor himself who was demanding this earnestly of Bobby. And I saw
+that the Governor and the rest were hypnotized, and did not need me.
+
+So I sat at the head of the table, and waiters brooded over us, and
+cucumbers and the usual trash happened, and Bobby held forth while the
+ten who were bidden listened as to one sent from heaven. And, being
+superfluous, I withdrew mentally to a canoe in a lonely lake and went
+frogging.
+
+Vicariously. I do not like frogging in person. The creature smiles. Also
+he appeals because he is ugly and complacent. But for the grace of God I
+might have looked so. He sits in supreme hideousness frozen to the end
+of a wet log, with his desirable hind legs spread in view, and smiles
+his bronze smile of confidence in his own charm and my friendship. It is
+more than I can do to betray that smile. So, hating to destroy the beast
+yet liking to eat the leg, about once in my summer vacation in camp I go
+frogging, and make the guides do it.
+
+It would not be etiquette to send them out alone, for in our club guides
+are supposed to do no fishing or shooting--no sport. Therefore, I sit in
+a canoe and pretend to take a frog in a landing-net and miss two or
+three and shortly hand over the net to Josef. We have decided on
+landing-nets as our tackle. I once shot the animals with a .22 Flobert
+rifle, but almost invariably they dropped, like a larger bullet, off the
+log and into the mud, and that was the end. We never could retrieve
+them. Also at one time we fished them with a many-pronged hook and a bit
+of red flannel. But that seemed too bitter a return for the bronze
+smile, and I disliked the method, besides being bad at it. We took to
+the landing-net.
+
+To see Josef, enraptured with the delicate sport, approach a net
+carefully till within an inch of the smile, and then give the old graven
+image a smart rap on the legs in question to make him leap headlong into
+the snare--to see that and Josef's black Indian eyes glitter with joy at
+the chase is amusing. I make him slaughter the game instantly, which
+appears supererogatory to Josef who would exactly as soon have a
+collection of slimy ones leaping around the canoe. But I have them dead
+and done for promptly, and piled under the stern seat. And on we paddle
+to the next.
+
+The day to which I had retired from my dinner-party and the tactical
+lecture of my distinguished cousin was a late August day of two years
+before. The frogging fleet included two canoes, that of young John
+Dudley who was doing his vacation with me, and my own. In each canoe, as
+is Hoyle for canoeing in Canada, were two guides and a "m'sieur." The
+other boat, John's, was somewhere on the opposite shore of Lac des
+Passes, the Lake of the Passes, crawling along edges of bays and
+specializing in old logs and submerged rocks, after frogs with a
+landing-net, the same as us. But John--to my mind coarser--was doing his
+own frogging. The other boat was nothing to us except for an occasional
+yell when geography brought us near enough, of "How many?" and envy and
+malice and all uncharitableness if the count was more, and hoots of
+triumph if less.
+
+In my craft sailed, besides Josef and myself, as bow paddler, The Tin
+Lizzie. We called him that except when he could hear us, and I think it
+would have done small harm to call him so then, as he had the brain of a
+jack-rabbit and managed not to know any English, even when soaked in it
+daily. John Dudley had named him because of the plebeian and reliable
+way in which he plugged along Canadian trails. He set forth the queerest
+walk I have ever seen--a human Ford, John said. He was also quite mad
+about John. There had been a week in which Dudley, much of a doctor, had
+treated, with cheerful patience and skill, an infected and painful hand
+of the guide's, and this had won for him the love eternal of our Tin
+Lizzie. Little John Dudley thought, as he made jokes to distract the
+boy, and worked over his big throbbing fist, the fist which meant daily
+bread--little John thought where the plant of love springing from that
+seed of gratitude would at last blossom. Little he thought as the two
+sat on the gallery of the camp, and the placid lake broke in silver on
+pebbles below, through what hell of fire and smoke and danger the
+kindliness he gave to the stupid young guide would be given back to him.
+Which is getting ahead of the story.
+
+I suggested that the Lizzie might like a turn at frogging, and Josef,
+with Indian wordlessness, handed the net to him. Whereupon, with his
+flabby mouth wide and his large gray eyes gleaming, he proceeded to miss
+four easy ones in succession. And with that Josef, in a gibberish which
+is French-Canadian patois of the inner circles, addressed the Tin Lizzie
+and took away the net from him, asking no orders from me. The Lizzie,
+pipe in mouth as always, smiled just as pleasantly under this punishment
+as in the hour of his opportunities. He would have been a very handsome
+boy, with his huge eyes and brilliant brown and red color and his
+splendid shoulders and slim waist of an athlete if only he had possessed
+a ray of sense. Yet he was a good enough guide to fill in, for he was
+strong and willing and took orders amiably from anybody and did his
+routine of work, such as chopping wood and filling lamps and bringing
+water and carrying boats, with entire efficiency. That he had no
+initiative at all and by no chance did anything he was not told to, even
+when most obvious, that he was lacking in any characteristic of
+interest, that he was moreover a supreme coward, afraid to be left alone
+in the woods--these things were after all immaterial, for, as John
+pointed out, we didn't really need to love our guides.
+
+John also pointed out that the Lizzie--his name was, incidentally,
+Aristophe--had one nice quality. Of course, it was a quality which
+appealed most to the beneficiary, yet it seemed well to me also to have
+my guests surrounded with mercy and loving kindness. John had but to
+suggest building a fire or greasing his boots or carrying a canoe over
+any portage to any lake, and the Lizzie at once leaped with a bright
+smile as who should say that this was indeed a pleasure. "C'est bien,
+M'sieur," was his formula. He would gaze at John for sections of an
+hour, with his flabby mouth open in speechless surprise as if at the
+unbelievable glory and magnificence of M'sieur. A nice lad, John Dudley
+was, but no subtle enchanter; a stocky and well-set-up young man with a
+whole-souled, garrulous and breezy way, and a gift of slang and a
+brilliant grin. What called forth hero-worship towards him I never
+understood; but no more had I understood why Mildred Thornton, Colonel
+Thornton's young sister, my very beautiful cousin, should have selected
+him, from a large assortment of suitors, to marry. Indeed I did not
+entirely understand why I liked having John in camp better than anyone
+else; probably it was essentially the same charm which impelled Mildred
+to want to live with him, and the Tin Lizzie to fall down and worship.
+In any case the Lizzie worshipped with a primitive and unashamed and
+enduring adoration, which stood even the test of fear. That was the
+supreme test for the Tin Lizzie, who was a coward of cowards. Rather
+cruelly I bet John on a day that his satellite did not love him enough
+to go out to the club-house alone for him, and the next day John was in
+sore need of tobacco, not to be got nearer than the club.
+
+"Aristophe will go out and get it for me," he announced as
+Aristophe--the Lizzie--trotted about the table at lunch-time purveying
+us flapjacks.
+
+The Tin Lizzie stood rooted a second, petrified at the revolutionary
+scheme of his going to the club, companions unmentioned. There one saw
+as if through glass an idea seeking a road through his smooth gray
+matter. One had always gone to the club with Josef, or Maxime or
+Pierre--certainly M'sieur meant that; one would of course be glad to
+go--with Josef or Maxime or Pierre--to get tobacco for M'sieur John. Of
+course, the idea slid through the old road in the almost unwrinkled gray
+matter, and came safely to headquarters.
+
+"C'est bien, M'sieur," answered the Lizzie smiling brightly.
+
+And with that I knocked the silly little smile into a cocked hat. "You
+may start early tomorrow, Aristophe," I said, "and get back by dark,
+going light, I can't spare any other men to go with you. But you will
+certainly not mind going alone--to get tobacco for M'sieur John."
+
+The poor Tin Lizzie turned red and then white, and his weak mouth fell
+open and his eyebrows lifted till the whites of his eyes showed above
+the gray irises. And one saw again, through the crystal of his
+unexercised brain, the operation of a painful and new thought. M'sieur
+John--a day alone in the woods--love, versus fear--which would win. John
+and I watched the struggle a bit mercilessly. A grown man gets small
+sympathy for being a coward. And yet few forms of suffering are keener.
+We watched; and the Tin Lizzie stood and gasped in the play of his
+emotions. Nobody had ever given this son of the soil ideals to hold to
+through sudden danger; no sense of inherited honor to be guarded came to
+help the Lizzie; he had been taught to work hard and save his
+skin--little else. The great adoration for John which had swept him off
+his commonplace feet--was it going to make good against life-long
+selfish caution? We wondered. It was curious to watch the new big
+feeling fight the long-established petty one. And it was with a glow of
+triumph quite out of drawing that we saw the generous instinct win the
+battle.
+
+"Oui, M'sieur," spoke Aristophe, unconscious of subtleties or watching.
+"I go tomorrow--alone. _C'est bien, M'sieur_."
+
+It was about the only remark I ever heard him make, that gracious:
+"_C'est bien, M'sieur_!" But he made it remarkably well. Almost he
+persuaded me to respect him with that hearty response to the call of
+duty, that humble and high gift of graciousness. One remembers him as
+his dolly face lighted at John's order to go and clean trout or carry in
+logs, and one does not forget the absurd, queer little fast trot at
+which his powerful young legs would instantaneously swing off to obey
+the behest. Such was the Tin Lizzie, the guide who paddled bow in my
+canvas canoe on the day of the celebrated frog hunt.
+
+That the frog hunt was celebrated was owing to the Lizzie. He should
+have been in John's boat, as one of John's guides, but at the last
+moment, there was a confusion of tongues and Lizzie was shipped aboard
+my canoe. In the excitement of the chase Josef, stern man, had faced
+about to manipulate his landing-net; Aristophe also slewed around and,
+sitting on the gunwale, became stern paddler. I was in the middle
+screwed anyhow, watching the frog fishing and enjoying the enjoyment of
+the men. Poor chaps, it was the only bit of personal play they got out
+of our month of play. Aristophe, the Tin Lizzie, was quite mad with the
+excitement even from his very second fiddle standpoint of paddler to
+Josef's frogging. His enormous gray eyes snapped, his teeth showed white
+and gold around his pipe--which he nearly bit off--and he even used
+language.
+
+"_Tiens! Encore un!_" hissed the Lizzie in a blood-curdling whisper as a
+new pair of pop eyes lifted from the edge of a rotten log.
+
+And Josef, who had always seen the frog first, fired a guttural
+sentence, full of contempt, full of friendliness, for he sized up the
+Lizzie, his virtues and his limitations, accurately. And then the boat
+was pushed and pulled in the shallow water till Josef and the net were
+within range. With, that came the slow approach of the net to the smile,
+the swift tap on the eatable legs, and headlong into his finish leaped
+M. Crapaud. Which is rot his correct name, Josef tells me, in these
+parts, but M. Guarron. And that, being translated, means Mr.
+Very-Big-Bull-Frog.
+
+Business had prospered to fourteen or fifteen head of frogs, and we
+calculated that the other boat might have a dozen when, facing towards
+Aristophe, I saw his dull, fresh face suddenly change. My pulse missed a
+beat at that expression. It was adequate to an earthquake or sudden
+death. How the fatuous doll-like features could have been made to
+register that stare of a soul in horror I can't guess. But they did. The
+whites of his eyes showed an eighth of an inch above the irises and his
+black eyebrows were shot up to the roots of his glossy black hair. In
+the gleaming white and gold of his teeth the pipe was still gripped. And
+while I gazed, astonished, his unfitting deep voice issued from that
+mask of fear:
+
+"_Tiens! Encore un!_" And I screwed about and saw that the Lizzie was
+running the boat on top of an enormous frog which he had not spied till
+the last second. With that Josef exploded throaty language and leaning
+sidewise made a dive at the frog. Aristophe, unbalanced with emotion and
+Josef's swift movement shot from his poise at the end of the little
+craft, and landed, in a foot of water, flat on his buck, and the frog
+seized that second to jump on his stomach.
+
+I never heard an Indian really laugh before that day. The hills
+resounded with Josef's shouts. We laughed, Josef and I, till we were
+weak, and for a good minute Aristophe sprawled in the lake, with the
+frog anchored as if till Kingdom come on his middle, and howled lusty
+howls while we laughed. Then Josef fished the frog and got him off the
+Tin Lizzie's lungs. And Aristophe, weeping, scrambled into the boat. And
+as we went home in the cool forest twilight, up the portage by the
+rushing, noisy rapids, Josef, walking before us, carrying the
+landing-net full of frogs' legs, shook with laughter every little while
+again, as Aristophe, his wet strong young legs, the only section of him
+showing, toiled ahead up the winding thread of a trail, carrying the
+inverted canoe on his head.
+
+It was this adventure which came to me and seized me and carried me a
+thousand miles northward into Canadian forest as I looked at the frogs'
+legs on my plate at the Cosmic Club, and did not listen to my cousin,
+the Colonel, talking military tactics.
+
+The mental review took an eighth of the time it has taken me to tell it.
+But as I shook off my dream of the woods, I realized that, while
+Thornton still talked, he had got out of his uninteresting rut into his
+interesting one. Without hearing what he said I knew that from the look
+of the men's faces. Each man's eyes were bright, through a manner of
+mistiness, and there was a sudden silence which was perhaps what had
+recalled me.
+
+"It's a war which is making a new standard of courage," spoke the young
+Governor in the gentle tone which goes so oddly and so pleasantly with
+his bull-dog jaw. "It looks as if we were going to be left with a world
+where heroism is the normal thing," spoke the Governor.
+
+"Heroism--yes," said Bobby, and I knew with satisfaction that he was off
+on his own line, the line he does not fancy, the line where few can
+distance him. "Heroism!" repeated Bobby, "It's all around out there. And
+it crops out--" he begun to smile--"in unsuspected places, from varied
+impulses."
+
+He was working his way to an anecdote. The men at the table, their
+chairs twisted towards him, sat very still.
+
+"What I mean to say is," Bobby began, "that this war, horrible as it is,
+is making over human, nature for the better. It's burning out
+selfishness and cowardice and a lot of faults from millions of men, and
+it's holding up the nobility of what some of them do to the entire
+world. It takes a character, this débâcle, and smashes out the
+littleness. Another thing is curious. If a small character has one good
+point on which to hang heroism, the battle-spirit searches out that
+point and plants on it the heroism. There was a stupid young private in
+my command who--but I'm afraid I'm telling too many war stories," Bobby
+appealed, interrupting himself. "I'm full of it, you see, and when
+people are so good, and listen--" He stopped, in a confusion which is
+not his least attractive manner.
+
+From down the table came a quick murmur of voices. I saw more than one
+glance halt at the crutch on the back of the soldier's chair.
+
+"Thank you. I'd really like to tell about this man. It's interesting,
+psychologically to me," he went on, smiling contentedly. He is a lovable
+chap, my cousin Robert Thornton. "The lad whom I speak of, a
+French-Canadian from Quebec Province, was my servant, my batman, as the
+Indian army called them and as we refer to them often now. He was so
+brainless that I just missed firing him the first day I had him. But
+John Dudley, my brother-in-law and lieutenant, wanted me to give him a
+chance, and also there was something in his manner when I gave him
+orders which attracted me. He appeared to have a pleasure in serving,
+and an ideal of duty. Dudley had used him as a guide, and the man had a
+dog-like devotion to 'the lieutenant' which counted with me. Also he
+didn't talk. I think he knew only four words. I flung orders at him and
+there would be first a shock of excitement, then a second of tense
+anxiety, then a radiant smile and the four words: '_C'est bien, Mon
+Capitaine_.' I was captain then."
+
+At that point I dropped my knife and fork and stared at my cousin. He
+went on.
+
+"'_C'est bien, Mon Capitaine_.' That was the slogan. And when the
+process was accomplished, off he would trot, eager to do my will. He was
+powerful and well-built, but he had the oddest manner of locomotion ever
+I saw, a trot like--like a Ford car. I discovered pretty soon that the
+poor wretch was a born coward. I've seen him start at the distant sound
+of guns long before we got near the front, and he was nervous at going
+out alone at night about the camp. The men ragged him, but he was such
+a friendly rascal and so willing to take over others' work that he got
+along with a fraction of the persecution most of his sort would have
+had. I wondered sometimes what would happen to the poor little devil
+when actual fighting came. Would it be '_C'est bien, Mon Capitaine_,' at
+the order to go over the top, or would the terrible force of fear be too
+much for him and land him at last with his back to a wall and a firing
+squad in front--a deserter? Meantime he improved and I got dependent on
+his radiant good will. Being John Dudley's brother-in-law sanctified me
+with him, and nothing was too much trouble if I'd give him a chance
+sometimes to clean John's boots. I have a man now who shows no ecstacy
+at being ordered to do my jobs, and I don't like him.
+
+"We were moved up towards the front, and, though Mr. Winston Churchill
+has made a row about the O.S.--the officers' servants who are removed
+from the firing line, I know that a large proportion of them do their
+share in the trenches. I saw to it that mine did.
+
+"One night there was a digging expedition. An advance trench was to be
+made in No Man's Land about a hundred and fifty yards from the Germans.
+I was in command of the covering party of thirty-five men; I was a
+captain. We, of course, went out ahead. Beauramé was in the party. It
+was his first fighting. We had rifles, with bayonets, and bombs, and a
+couple of Lewis guns. We came up to the trenches by a road, then went
+into the zigzag communication trenches up to the front, the fire-trench.
+Then, very cautiously, over the top into No Man's Land. It was nervous
+work, for at any second they might discover us and open fire. It suited
+us all to be as quiet as human men could be, and when once in a while a
+star-shell, a Very light, was sent up from the German lines we froze in
+our tracks till the white glare died out.
+
+"The party had been digging for perhaps an hour when hell broke loose.
+They'd seen us. All about was a storm of machine-gun and rifle bullets,
+and we dropped on our faces, the diggers in their trench--pretty shallow
+it was. As for the covering party, we simply took our medicine. And
+then the shrapnel joined the music. Word was passed to get back to the
+trenches, and we started promptly. We stooped low as we ran over No
+Man's Land, but there were plenty of casualties. I got mine in the foot,
+but not the wound which rung in this--" Thornton nodded his head at the
+crutches with a smile. "It was from a bit of shrapnel just as I made the
+trench, and as I fell in I caught at the sand bags and whirled about
+facing out over No Man's Land; as I whirled I saw, close by, Beauramé's
+face in a shaft of light. I don't know why I made conversation at that
+moment--I did. I said:
+
+"When did you get back?"
+
+And his answer came as if clicked on a typewriter. "Me, I stayed, _Mon
+Capitaine_. It had an air too dangerous, out there."
+
+I stared in a white rage. You'll imagine--one of my men to dare tell me
+that! And at that second, simultaneously, came the flare of a shell star
+and a shout of a man struck down, and I knew the voice--John Dudley. He
+was out there, the tail end of the party, wounded. I saw him as he
+fell, on the farther side of the new trench. Of course, one's instinct
+was to dash back and bring him in, and I started. And I found my foot
+gone--I couldn't walk. Quicker than I can tell it I turned to Beauramé,
+the coward, who'd been afraid to go over the top, and I said in French,
+because, though I hadn't time to think it out, I yet realized that it
+would get to him faster so--I said:
+
+"Get over there, you deserter. Save the lieutenant--Lieutenant Dudley.
+Go."
+
+For one instant I thought it was no good and I was due to have him shot,
+if we both lived through the night. And then--I never in my life saw
+such a face of abject fear as the one he turned first to me and then
+across that horror of No Man's Land. The whites of his eyes showed, it
+seemed, an eighth of an inch above the irises; his black eyebrows were
+half way up his forehead, and his teeth, luxuriously upholstered with
+fillings, shone white and gold in the unearthly light. It was such a mad
+terror as I'd never seen before, and never since. And into it I, mad
+too with the thought of my sister if I let young John Dudley die before
+my eyes--I bombed again the order to go out and bring in Dudley. I
+remember the fading and coming expressions on that Frenchman's face like
+the changes on a moving picture film. I suppose it was half a minute.
+And here was the coward face gazing into mine, transfigured into the
+face of a man who cared about another man more than himself--a common
+man whose one high quality was love.
+
+"_C'est bien, Mon Capitaine_," Beauramé spoke, through still clicking
+teeth, and with his regulation smile of good will he had sprung over the
+parapet in one lithe movement, and I saw him crouching, trotting that
+absurd, powerful fast trot through the lane in our barbed wire, like
+lightning, to the shallow new trench, to Dudley. I saw him--for the
+Germans had the stretch lighted--I saw the man pick up my brother-in-law
+and toss him over his shoulders and start trotting back. Then I saw him
+fall, both of them fall, and I knew that he'd stopped a bullet. And
+then, as I groaned, somehow Beauramé was on his feet again. I expected,
+that he'd bolt for cover, but he didn't. He bent over deliberately as if
+he had been a fearless hero--and maybe he was--and he picked up Dudley
+again and started on, laboring, this time in walking. He was hit badly.
+But he made the trench; he brought in Dudley.
+
+Then such a howl of hurrahs greeted him from the men who watched the
+rescue as poor little Aristophe Beauramé--"
+
+"Ah!" I interjected, and Bobby turned and stared--"as the poor little
+scared rat had not dreamed, or had any right to dream would ever greet
+his conduct on earth. He dropped Dudley at my feet and turned with his
+flabby mouth open and his great stupid eyes like saucers, towards the
+men who rushed to shake his hand and throw at him words of admiration
+that choked them to get out. And then he keeled over. So you see. It was
+an equal chance at one second, whether a man should be shot for a
+deserter or--win the Victoria Cross."
+
+"What!" I shouted at my guest. "What! Not the Victoria Cross! Not
+Aristophe!"
+
+Bobby looked at me in surprise. "You're a great claque for me," he said.
+"You seem to take an interest in my hero. Yes, he got it. He was badly
+hurt. One hand nearly gone and a wound in his side. I was lucky enough
+to be in London on a day three months later, and to be present at the
+ceremony, when the young French-Canadian, spoiled for a soldier, but
+splendid stuff now for a hero, stood out in the open before the troops
+in front of Buckingham Palace and King George pinned the V.C. on his
+breast. They say that he's back in his village, and the whole show. I
+hear that he tells over and over the story of his heroism and the rescue
+of '_Mon Lieutenant_.' to never failing audiences. Of course, John is
+looking after him, for the hand which John saved was the hand that was
+shot to pieces in saving John, and the Tin Lizzie can never make his
+living with that hand again. A deserter, a coward--decorated by the King
+with the Victoria Cross! Queer things happen in war!" There was a stir,
+a murmur as of voices, of questions beginning, but Bobby was not quite
+through.
+
+"War takes the best of the best men, and the best of the cheapest, and
+transfigures both. War doesn't need heroes for heroism. She pins it on
+anywhere if there's one spot of greatness in a character. War does
+strange things with humanity," said Bobby.
+
+And I, gasping, broke out crudely in three words: "Our Tin Lizzie!" I
+said, and nobody knew in the least what I meant, or with what memories I
+said it.
+
+
+
+
+HE THAT LOSETH HIS LIFE SHALL FIND IT
+
+
+The Red Cross women had gone home. Half an hour before, the large
+library had been filled with white-clad, white-veiled figures. Two long
+tables full, forty of them today, had been working; three thousand
+surgical dressings had been cut and folded and put away in large boxes
+on shelves behind glass doors where the most valuable books had held
+their stately existence for years. The books were stowed now in trunks
+in the attic. These were war days; luxuries such as first editions must
+wait their time. The great living-room itself, the center of home for
+this family since the two boys were born and ever this family had been,
+the dear big room with its dark carved oak, and tapestries, and stained
+glass, and books, and memories was given over now to war relief work.
+
+Sometimes, as the mistress walked into the spacious, low-ceilinged,
+bright place, presences long past seemed to fill it intolerably. Brock
+and Hugh, little chaps, roared in untidy and tumultuous from football,
+or came, decorous and groomed, handsome, smart little lads, to be
+presented to guests. Her own Hugh, her husband, proud of the beautiful
+new house, smiled from the hearth to her as he had smiled twenty-six
+years back, the night they came in, a young Hugh, younger than Brock was
+now. Her father and mother, long gone over "to the majority," and the
+exquisite old ivory beauty of a beautiful grandmother--such ghosts rose
+and faced the woman as she stepped into the room where they had moved in
+life, the room with its loveliness marred by two long tables covered
+with green oilcloth, by four rows of cheap chairs, by rows and rows of
+boxes on shelves where soft and bright and dark colors of books had
+glowed. She felt often that she should explain matters to the room,
+should tell the walls which had sheltered peace and hospitality that she
+had consecrated them to yet higher service. Never for one instant,
+while her soul ached for the familiar setting, had she regretted its
+sacrifice. That her soul did ache made it worth while.
+
+And the women gathered for this branch Red Cross organization, her
+neighbors on the edge of the great city, wives and daughters and mothers
+of clerks, and delivery-wagon drivers, and icemen, and night-watchmen,
+women who had not known how to take their part in the war work in the
+city or had found it too far to go, these came to her house gladly and
+all found pleasure in her beautiful room. That made it a joy to give it
+up to them. She stood in the doorway, feeling an emphasis in the quiet
+of the July afternoon because of the forty voices which had lately gone
+out of the sunshiny silence, of the forty busy figures in long, white
+aprons and white, sweeping veils, the tiny red cross gleaming over the
+forehead of each one, each face lovely in the uniform of service, all
+oddly equalized and alike under their veils and crosses. She spoke aloud
+as she tossed out her hands to the room:
+
+"War will be over some day, and you will be our own again, but forever
+holy because of this. You will be a room of history when you go to
+Brock--"
+
+Brock! Would Brock ever come home to the room, to this place which he
+loved? Brock, in France! She turned sharply and went out through the
+long hall and across the terrace, and sat down where the steps dropped
+to the garden, on the broad top step, with her head against the pillar
+of the balustrade. Above her the smell of box in a stone vase on the
+pillar punctured the mild air with its definite, reminiscent fragrance.
+Box is a plant of antecedents of sentiment, of memories. The woman
+inhaling its delicate sharpness, was caught back into days past. She
+considered, in rapid jumps of thought, events, episodes, epochs. The day
+Brock was born, on her own twentieth birthday, up-stairs where the rosy
+chintz curtains blew now out of the window; the first day she had come
+down to the terrace--it was June--and the baby lay in his bassinet by
+the balustrade in that spot--she looked at the spot--the baby, her big
+Brock, a bundle of flannel and fine, white stuff in lacy frills of the
+bassinet. And she loved him; she remembered how she had loved that baby,
+how, laughing at herself, she had whispered silly words over the stolid,
+pink head; how the girl's heart of her had all but burst with the
+astonishing new tide of a feeling which seemed the greatest of which she
+was capable. Yet it was a small thing to the way she loved Brock now. A
+vision came of little Hugh, three years younger, and the two toddling
+about the terrace together, Hugh always Brock's satellite and adorer, as
+was fitting; less sturdy, less daring than Brock, yet ready to go
+anywhere if only the older baby led. She thought of the day when Hugh,
+four years old, had taken fright at a black log among the bushes under
+the trees.
+
+"It's a bear!" little Hugh had whispered, shaking, and Brock, brave but
+not too certain, had looked at her, inquiring.
+
+"No, love, it's not a bear; it's an old log of wood. Go and put your
+hand on it, Hughie."
+
+Little Hugh had cried out and shrunk back. "I'm afraid!" cried little
+Hugh.
+
+And Brock, not entirely clear as to the no-bear theory, had yet bluffed
+manfully. "Come on, Hughie; let's go and bang 'um," said Brock.
+
+Which invitation Hugh accepted reluctantly with a condition, "If you'll
+hold my hand, B'ocky."
+
+The woman turned her head to see the place where the black log had lain,
+there in the old high bushes. And behold! Two strong little figures in
+white marched along--she could all but see them today--and the bigger
+little figure was dragging the other a bit, holding a hand with
+masterful grip. She could hear little Hugh's laughter as they arrived at
+the terrible log and found it truly a log. Even now Hugh's laugh was
+music.
+
+"Why, it's nuffin but an old log o' wood!" little Hugh had squealed, as
+brave as a lion.
+
+As she sat seeing visions, old Mavourneen, Brock's Irish wolf-hound,
+came and laid her muzzle on the woman's shoulder, crying a bit, as was
+Mavourneen's Irish way, for pleasure at finding the mistress. And with
+that there was a brown ripple and a patter of many soft feet, and a
+broken wave of dogs came around the corner, seven little cairn-terriers.
+Sticky and Sandy and their offspring. The woman let Sticky settle in her
+lap and drew Sandy under her arm, and the puppies looked up at her from
+the step below with ten serious, anxious eyes and then fell to chasing
+quite imaginary game up and down the stone steps. Mavourneen sighed
+deeply and dropped with a heavy thud, a great paw on the edge of the
+white dress and her beautiful head resting on her paws, the topaz,
+watchful eyes gazing over the city. The woman put her free hand back and
+touched the rough head.
+
+"Dear dog!" she spoke.
+
+Another memory came: how they had bought Mavourneen, she and Hugh and
+the boys, at the kennels in Ireland, eight years ago; how the huge baby
+had been sent to them at Liverpool in a hamper; the uproarious drive the
+four of them--Hugh, the two boys, and herself--and Mavourneen had taken
+in a taxi across the city. The puppy, astonished and investigating
+throughout the whole proceeding, had mounted all of them, separately and
+together, and insisted on lying in big Hugh's lap, crying
+broken-heartedly at not being allowed. How they had shouted laughter,
+the four and the boy taxi-driver, all the journey, till they ached! What
+good times they had always had together, the young father and mother and
+the two big sons! She reflected how she had not been at all the
+conventional mother of sons. She had not been satisfied to be gentle and
+benevolent and look after their clothes and morals. She had lived their
+lives with them, she had ridden and gone swimming with them, and played
+tennis and golf, and fished and shot and skated and walked with them,
+yes, and studied and read with them, all their lives.
+
+"I haven't any respect for my mother," young Hugh told her one day. "I
+like her like a sister."
+
+She was deeply pleased at this attitude; she did not wish their respect
+as a visible quality. Vision after vision came of the old times and
+care-free days while the four, as happy and normal a family as lived in
+the world, passed their alert, full days together before the war. Memory
+after memory took form in the brain of the woman, the center of that
+light-hearted life so lately changed, so entirely now a memory. War had
+come.
+
+At first, in 1914, there had been excitement, astonishment. Then the
+horror of Belgium. One refused to believe that at first; it was a lurid
+slander on the kindly German people; then one believed with the brain;
+one's spirit could not grasp it. Unspeakable deeds such as the Germans'
+deeds--it was like a statement made concerning a fourth dimension of
+space; civilized modern folk were not so organized as to realize the
+facts of that bestiality.
+
+"Aren't you thankful we're Americans?" the woman had said over and over.
+
+One day her husband, answering usually with a shake of the head,
+answered in words. "We may be in it yet," he said. "I'm not sure but we
+ought to be."
+
+Brock, twenty-one then, had flashed at her: "I want to be in it. I may
+just have to be, mother."
+
+Young Hugh yawned a bit at that, and stretching his long arm, he patted
+his brother's shoulder. "Good old hero, Brock! I'll beat you a set of
+tennis. Come on."
+
+That sudden speech of Brock's had startled her, had brought the war, in
+a jump which was like a stab, close. The war and Lindow--their
+place--how was it possible that this nightmare in Europe could touch the
+peace of the garden, the sunlit view of the river, the trees with birds
+singing in them, the scampering of the dogs down the drive? The distant
+hint of any connection between the great horror and her own was pain;
+she put the thought away.
+
+Then the _Lusitania_ was sunk. All America shouted shame through sobs of
+rage. The President wrote a beautiful and entirely satisfactory note.
+
+"It should be war--war. It should be war today," Hugh had said, her
+husband. "We only waste time. We'll have to fight sooner or later. The
+sooner we begin, the sooner we'll finish."
+
+"Fight!" young Hugh threw at him. "What with? We can just about make
+faces at 'em, father."
+
+The boy's father did not laugh. "We had better get ready to do more than
+make faces; we've got to get ready." He hammered his hand on the stone
+balustrade. "I'm going to Plattsburg this summer, Evelyn."
+
+"I'm going with you." Brock's voice was low and his mouth set, and the
+woman, looking at him, saw suddenly that her boy was a man.
+
+"Well, then, as man power is getting low at Lindow, I'll stay and take
+care of Mummy. Won't I? We'll do awfully well without them, won't we,
+Mum? You can drive Dad's Rolls-Royce roadster, and if you leave on the
+handbrake up-hill, I'll never tell."
+
+Father and son had gone off for the month in camp, and, glad as she was
+to have the younger boy with her, there was yet an uneasy, an almost
+subconscious feeling about him, which she indignantly denied each time
+that it raised its head. It never quite phrased itself, this fear, this
+wonder if Hugh were altogether as American as his father and brother.
+Question the courage and patriotism of her own boy? She flung the
+thought from her as again and yet again it came. People of the same
+blood were widely different. To Brock and his father it had come easily
+to do the obvious thing, to go to Plattsburg. It had not so come to
+young Hugh, but that in good time he would see his duty and do it she
+would not for an instant doubt. She would not break faith with the lad
+in thought. With a perfect delicacy she avoided any word that would
+influence him. He knew. All his life he had breathed loyalty. It was she
+herself, reading to them night after night through years, who had taught
+the boys hero worship--above all, worship of American heroes,
+Washington, Paul Jones, Perry, Farragut, Lee; how Dewey had said, "You
+may fire now, Gridley, if you are ready"; how Clark had brought the
+_Oregon_ around the continent; how Scott had gone alone among angry
+Indians. She had taught them such names, names which will not die while
+America lives. It was she who had told the little lads, listening
+wide-eyed, that as these men had held life lightly for the glory of
+America, so her sons, if need came, must be ready to offer their lives
+for their country. She remembered how Brock, his round face suddenly
+scarlet, had stammered out:
+
+"I _am_ ready, Mummy. I'd die this minute for--for America. Wouldn't
+you, Hughie?"
+
+And young Hugh, a slim, blond angel of a boy, of curly, golden hair and
+unexpected answers, had ducked beneath the hero, upsetting him into a
+hedge to his infinite anger. "I wouldn't die right now, Brocky," said
+Hugh. "There's going to be chocolate cake for lunch."
+
+One could never count on Hugh's ways of doing things, but Brock was a
+stone wall of reliability. She smiled, thinking of his youth and beauty
+and entire boyishness, to think yet of the saying from the Bible which
+always suggested Brock, "Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind
+is stayed on Thee." It was so with the lad; through the gay heart and
+eager interest in life pulsed an atmosphere of deep religiousness. He
+was always "in perfect peace," and his mother, less balanced, had stayed
+her mind on that quiet and right young mind from its very babyhood. The
+lad had seen his responsibilities and lifted them all his life. It came
+to her how, when her own mother, very dear to Brock, had died, she had
+not let the lads go with her to the house of death for fear of saddening
+their youth, and how, when she and their father came home from the hard,
+terrible business of the funeral, they met little Hugh on the drive,
+rapturous at seeing them again, rather absorbed in his new dog. But
+Brock, then fourteen, was in the house alone, quiet, his fresh, dear
+face red with tears, and a black necktie of his father's, too large for
+him, tied under his collar. Of all the memories of her boys, that
+grotesque black tie was the most poignant and most precious. It said
+much. It said: "I also, O, my mother, am of my people. I have a right to
+their sorrows as well as to their joys, and if you do not give me my
+place in trouble, I shall do what I can alone, being but a boy. I shall
+give up play, and I shall wear mourning as I can, not knowing how very
+well, but pushed by all my being to be with my own in their mourning."
+
+Quickly affection for the other lad asserted itself. Brock and Hugh were
+different, but Hugh was a dear boy, too--undeveloped, that was all. He
+had never taken life seriously, little Hugh, and now that this war-cloud
+hung over the world, he simply refused to look at it; he turned away his
+face. That was all, a temperament which loved harmony and shrank from
+ugliness; these things were young Hugh's limitations, and no ignoble
+quality.
+
+In a long dream, yet much faster than the words have told it, in
+comprehensive flashes of memory, her elbows on her knees and her face,
+in her slender hands, looking out over the garden with its arched way of
+roses, with its high hedge, looking past the loveliness that was home to
+the city pulsing in summer heat, to the shining zigzag of river beyond
+the city, the woman reviewed her boys' lives. Boys were not now merely
+one phase of humanity; they had suddenly become the nation. They stood
+in the foreground of a world crisis; back of them America was ranged,
+orderly, living and moving to feed, clothe, and keep happy these
+millions of lads holding in their hands the fate of the earth. Her boys
+were but two, yet necessary. She owed them to the country, as other
+mothers of men.
+
+There was a whistle under the archway, a flying step, and young Hugh
+shot from beneath the rosiness of Dorothy Perkins vines and took the
+stone steps in four bounds. All the dogs fell into a community chorus of
+barks and whines and patterings about, and Hugh's hands were on this one
+and that as he bent over the woman.
+
+"A _good_ kiss, Mummy; that's cold baked potato," he complained, and she
+laughed and hugged him.
+
+"Not cold; I was just thinking. Your knee, Hughie? You came up like a
+bird."
+
+Hugh made a face. "Bad break, that," he grinned, and limped across the
+terrace and back. "Mummy, it doesn't hurt much now, and I do forget,"
+he explained, and his color deepened. With that: "Tom Arthur is waiting
+for me in town. We're going to pick up Whitney, the tennis champion, at
+the Crossroads Club. May I take Dad's roadster?"
+
+"Yes, Hughie. And, Hugh, meet the train, the seven-five. Dad's coming
+to-night, you know."
+
+The boy took her hand, looked at her uneasily. "Mummy, dear, don't be
+thinking sinful thoughts about me. And don't let Dad. Hold your fire,
+Mummy."
+
+She lifted her face, and her eyes were the eyes of faith he had known
+all his life. "You blessed boy of mine, I will hold my fire." And then
+Hugh had all but knocked her over with a violent kiss again, and he
+slammed happily through the screen doors and was leaping up the stairs.
+Ten minutes later she heard the car purring down the drive.
+
+The dogs settled about her with long dog-sighs again. She looked at her
+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.
+
+Then, fighting for breath, she told what had happened--the dream, the
+intense happiness of it, how Brock had come smiling. "And Hugh, the only
+thing he said, two or three times over, was, 'I'm coming to take
+Hughie's hand.'"
+
+The lad turned upon her a shining look. "I know, mother. I didn't hear,
+of course, but I knew, when I saw him, it was for me, too. And I'm
+ready. I see my way now. Mother, get Dad."
+
+Hugh, the elder, still sleeping in his room at the far side of the
+house, opened heavy eyes. Then he sprang up. "Evelyn! What is it?"
+
+"Oh, Hugh--come! Oh, Hugh! Brock--Brock--" She could not say the words;
+there was no need. Brock's father caught her hands. In bare words then
+she told him.
+
+"My dear," urged the man, "you've had a vivid dream. That's all. You
+were thinking about the boys; you were only half awake; Mavourneen began
+to cry--the dog means Brock. It was easy--" his voice faltered--"to--to
+believe the rest."
+
+"Hugh, I _know_, dear. Brock came to tell me. He said he would." Later,
+that day, when a telegram arrived from the War Office there was no new
+shock, no added certainty to her assurance. She went on: "Hughie saw
+him. And Mavourneen. But I can't argue. We still have a boy, Hugh, and
+he needs us--he's waiting. Oh, my dear, Hughie is going to France!"
+
+"Thank God!" spoke Hugh's father.
+
+Hand tight in hand like young lovers the two came across to the room
+where their boy waited, tense. "Father--Dad--you'll give me back your
+respect, won't you?" The strong young hand held out was shaking.
+"Because I'm going, Dad. But you have to know that I was--a coward."
+
+"_No_, Hugh."
+
+"Yes. And Dad, I'm afraid--now. But I've got the hang of things, and
+nothing could keep me. Will you, do you despise me--now--that I still
+hate it--if--if I go just the same?"
+
+The big young chap shook so that his mother, his tall mother, put her
+arms about him to steady him. He clutched her hand hard and repeated,
+through quivering lips, "Would you despise me still, Dad?"
+
+For a moment the father could not answer. Then difficult tears of
+manhood and maturity forced their way from his eyes and unheeded rolled
+down his cheeks. With a step he put his arms about the boy as if the boy
+were a child, and the boy threw his about his father's shoulders.
+
+For a long second the two tall men stood so. The woman, standing apart,
+through the shipwreck of her earthly life was aware only of happiness
+safe where sorrow and loss could not touch it. What was separation,
+death itself, when love stronger than death held people together as it
+held Hugh and her boys and herself? Then the older Hugh stood away,
+still clutching the lad's hand, smiling through unashamed tears.
+
+"Hugh," he said, "in all America there's not a man prouder of his son
+than I am of you. There's not a braver soldier in our armies than the
+soldier who's to take my name into France." He stopped and steadied
+himself; he went on: "It would have broken my heart, boy, if you had
+failed--failed America. And your mother--and Brock and me. Failed your
+own honor. It would have meant for us shame and would have bowed our
+heads; it would have meant for you disaster. Don't fear for your
+courage, Hugh; the Lord won't forsake the man who carries the Lord's
+colors."
+
+Young Hugh turned suddenly to his mother. "I'm at peace now. You and
+Dad--honor me. I'll deserve respect from--my country. It will be a wall
+around me--And--" he caught her to him and crushed his mouth to
+hers--"dearest--Brock will hold my hand."
+
+
+
+
+THE SILVER STIRRUP
+
+
+In the most unexpected spots vital sparks of history blaze out. Time
+seems, once in a while, powerless to kill a great memory. Romance blooms
+sometimes untarnished across centuries of commonplace. In a new world
+old France lives.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is computed that about one-seventh of the French-Canadian population
+of Canada enlisted in the great war. The stampede of heroism seems to
+have left them cold. A Gospel of the Province first congealed the none
+too fiery blood of the _habitants_, small farmers, very poor, thinking
+in terms of narrowest economy, of one pig and ten children, of
+painstaking thrift and a bare margin to subsistence. Such conditions
+stifle world interests. The earthquake which threatened civilization
+disturbed the _habitant_ merely because it hazarded his critical balance
+on the edge of want. The cataclysm over the ocean was none of his
+affair. And his affairs pressed. What about the pig if one went to war?
+And could Alphonse, who is fourteen, manage the farm so that there would
+be vegetables for winter? Tell me that.
+
+When in September, 1914, I went to Canada for two weeks of camping I had
+heard of this point of view. Dick Lindsley and I were met at the Club
+Station on the casual railway which climbs the mountains through Quebec
+Province, by four guides, men from twenty to thirty-five, powerfully
+built chaps, deep-shouldered and slim-waisted, lithe as wild-cats. It
+was a treat to see their muscles, like machines in the pink of order,
+adjust to the heavy _pacquetons_, send a canoe whipping through the
+water. There was one exception to the general physical perfection; one
+of Dick's men, a youngster of perhaps twenty-two, limped. He covered
+ground as well as the others, for all of that; he picked the heaviest
+load and portaged it at an uneven trot, faster than his comrades; he was
+what the _habitants_ call "ambitionné." Dick's canoe was loaded first,
+owing to the fellow's efficiency, and I waited while it got away and
+watched the lame boy. He had an interesting face, aquiline and dark, set
+with vivid light-blue eyes, shooting restless fire. I registered an
+intention to get at this lad's personality. The chance came two days
+later. My men were off chopping on a day, and I suddenly needed to go
+fishing.
+
+"Take Philippe," offered Dick. "He handles a boat better than any of
+them."
+
+Philippe and I shortly slipped into the Guardian's Pool, at the lower
+end of the long lake of the Passes. "It is here, M'sieur," Philippe
+announced, "that it is the custom to take large ones."
+
+By which statement the responsibility of landing record trout was on my
+shoulders. I thought I would have a return whack. My hands in the snarly
+flies and my back to Philippe I spoke around my pipe, yet spoke
+distinctly.
+
+"Why aren't you in France fighting?"
+
+The canoe shivered down its length as if the man at its stern had
+jumped. There was a silence. Then Philippe's deep, boyish voice
+answered.
+
+"As M'sieur sees, one is lame."
+
+I felt a hotness emerging from my flannel collar and rushing up my face
+as I bent over that damned Silver Doctor that wouldn't loose its grip on
+the Black Hackle. I didn't see the Black Hackle or the Silver Doctor for
+a moment. "Beg pardon," I growled. "I forgot." I mumbled platitudes.
+
+"M'sieur le Docteur has right," Philippe announced unruffled. "One
+should fight for France. I have tried to enlist, there are three times,
+explaining that I am '_capable_' though I walk not evenly. But one will
+not have me. Therefore I have shame, me. I have, naturally, more shame
+than another because of Jeanne."
+
+"Because of Jeanne?" I repeated. "Who is Jeanne?"
+
+There was a pause; a queer feeling made me slew around. Philippe's old
+felt hat was being pulled off as if he were entering a church.
+
+"But--Jeanne, M'sieur," he stated as if I must understand. "Jeanne
+d'Arc. _Tiens_--the Maid of France."
+
+"The Maid of France!" I was puzzled. "What has she to do with it?"
+
+"But everything, M'sieur." The vivid eyes flamed. "M'sieur does not
+know, perhaps, that my grandfather fought under Jeanne?"
+
+"Your grandfather!" I flung it at him in scorn. The man was a poor
+lunatic.
+
+"But yes, M'sieur. My grandfather, lui-même."
+
+"But, Philippe, the Maid of Orleans died in 1431." I remembered that
+date. The Maid is one of my heroic figures.
+
+Philippe shrugged his shoulders. "Oh--as for a _grandpère_! But not the
+_grandpère à present_, he who keeps the grocery shop in St. Raymond.
+Certainly not that grandfather. It is to say the _grandpère_ of that
+_grandpère_. Perhaps another yet, or even two or three more. What does
+it matter? One goes back a few times of grandfathers and behold one
+arrives at him who was armorer for the Maid--to whom she gave the silver
+stirrup."
+
+"The silver stirrup." My Leonard rod bumped along the bow; my flies
+tangled again in the current. I squirmed about till I faced the guide
+in the stern. "Philippe, what in hell do you mean by this drool of
+grandfathers and silver stirrups?"
+
+The boy, perfectly respectful, not forgetting for a second his affair of
+keeping the canoe away from the fish-hole, looked at me squarely, and
+his uncommon light eyes gleamed out of his face like the eyes of a
+prophet. "M'sieur, it is a tale doubtless which seems strange to you,
+but to us others it is not strange. M'sieur lives in New York, and there
+are automobiles and trolley-cars and large buildings _en masse_, and to
+M'sieur the world is made of such things. But there are other things. We
+who live in quiet places, know. One has not too much of excitement, we
+others, so that one remembers a great event which has happened to one's
+family many years. Yes, indeed, M'sieur, centuries. If one has not much
+one guards as a souvenir the tale of the silver stirrup of Jeanne. Yes,
+for several generations."
+
+The boy was apparently unconscious that his remarks were peculiar.
+"Philippe, will you tell me what you mean by a silver stirrup which
+Jeanne d'Arc gave to your ancestors?"
+
+"But with pleasure, M'sieur," he answered readily, with the gracious
+French politeness which one meets among the _habitants_ side by side
+with sad lapses of etiquette. "It is all-simple that the old
+grandfather, the ancient, he who lived in France when the Maid fought
+her wars, was an armorer. '_Ça fait que_'--_sa fak_, Philippe pronounced
+it--'so it happened that on a day the stirrup of the Maid broke as her
+horse plunged, and my grandfather, the ancient, he ran quickly and
+caught the horse's head. And so it happened--_çe fait que_--that my
+grandfather was working at that moment on a fine stirrup of gold for her
+harness, for though they burned her afterwards, they gave her then all
+that there was of magnificence. And the old follow--_le vieux_--whipped
+out the golden stirrup from his pocket, quite prepared for use, so it
+happened--and he put it quickly in the place of the silver one which she
+had been using. And Jeanne smiled. 'You are ready to serve France,
+Armorer.'
+
+"She bent then and looked _le vieux_ in the face--but he was young at
+the time.
+
+"'Are you not Baptiste's son, of Doremy?' asked the Maid.
+
+"'Yes, Jeanne,' said my _grandpère_.
+
+"'Then keep the silver stirrup to remember our village, and God's
+servant Jeanne,' she said, and gave it to him with her hand."
+
+If a square of Gobelin tapestry had emerged from the woods and hung
+itself across the gunwale of my canvas canoe it would not have been more
+surprising. I got my breath. "And the stirrup, what became of it?"
+
+The boy shrugged his shoulders. "_Sais pas_," he answered with French
+nonchalance. "One does not know that. It is a long time, M'sieur le
+Docteur. It was lost, that stirrup, some years ago. It may be a hundred
+years. It may be two hundred. My grandfather, he who keeps the grocery
+shop, has told me that there is a saying that a Martel must go to France
+to find the silver stirrup. In every case I do not know. It is my wish
+to fight for France, but as for the stirrup or Jeanne--_sais pas_."
+Another shrug. With that he was making oration, his light eyes flashing,
+his dark face working with feeling, about the bitterness of being a
+cripple, and unable to go into the army.
+
+"It is not _comme il faut_, M'sieur le Docteur, that a man whose very
+grandfather fought for Jeanne should fail France now in her need.
+Jeanne, one knows, was the saviour of France. Is it not?" I agreed. "It
+is my inheritance, therefore, to fight as my ancient grandfather
+fought." I looked at the lame boy, not knowing the repartee. He began
+again. "Also I am the only one of the family proper to go, except
+Adolphe, who is not very proper, having had a tree to fall on the lungs
+and leave him liable to fits; and also Jacques and Louis are too young,
+and Jean Baptiste he is blind of one eye, God knows. So it is I who
+fail! I fail! Jesus Christ! To stay at home like a coward when France
+needs men!"
+
+"But you are Canadian, Philippe. Your people have been here two hundred
+years."
+
+"M'sieur, I am of France. I belong there with the fighting men." His
+look was a flame, and suddenly I know why he was firing off hot shot at
+me. I am a surgeon.
+
+"What's the matter with your leg?" I asked.
+
+The brilliant eyes flashed. "Ah!" he brought out, "One hoped--If M'sieur
+le Docteur would but see. I may be cured. To be straight--to march!" He
+was trembling.
+
+Later, in the shifting sunshine at the camp door, with the odors of
+hemlocks and balsams about us, the lake rippling below, I had an
+examination. I found that the lad's lameness was a trouble to be cured
+easily by an operation. I hesitated. Was it my affair to root this
+youngster out of safety and send him to death in the _débâcle_ over
+there? Yet what right had I to set limits? He wanted to offer his life;
+how could I know what I might be blocking if I withheld the cure? My job
+was to give strength to all I could reach.
+
+"Philippe," I said, "if you'll come to New York next month I'll set you
+up with a good leg."
+
+In September, 1915, Dick and I came up for our yearly trip, but Philippe
+was not with us. Philippe, after drilling at Valcartier, was drilling
+in England. I had lurid post cards off and on; after a while I knew that
+he was "somewhere in France." A grim gray card came with no post-mark,
+no writing but the address and Philippe's labored signature; for the
+rest there were printed sentences: "I am well. I am wounded. I am in
+hospital. I have had no letter from you lately." All of which was struck
+out but the welcome words, "I am well." So far then I had not cured the
+lad to be killed. Then for weeks nothing. It came to be time again to go
+to Canada for the hunting. I wrote the steward to get us four men, as
+usual, and Lindsley and I alighted from the rattling train at the club
+station in September, 1916, with a mild curiosity to see what Fate had
+provided as guides, philosophers and friends to us for two weeks. Paul
+Sioui--that was nice--a good fellow Paul; and Josef--I shook hands with
+Josef; the next face was a new one--ah, Pierre Beauramé--one calls one's
+self that--_on s'appelle comme ça. Bon jour!_ I turned, and got a shock.
+The fourth face, at which I looked, was the face of Philippe Martel. I
+looked, speechless. And with that the boy laughed. "It is that M'sieur
+cannot again cure my leg," answered Philippe, and tapped proudly on a
+calf which echoed with a wooden sound.
+
+"You young cuss," I addressed him savagely. "Do you mean to say you have
+gone and got shot in that very leg I fixed up for you?"
+
+Philippe rippled more laughter--of pure joy--of satisfaction. "But, yes,
+M'sieur le Docteur, that leg _même_. Itself. In a battle, M'sieur le
+Docteur gave me the good leg for a long enough time to serve France. It
+was all that there was of necessary. As for now I may not fight again,
+but I can walk and portage _comme il faut_. I am _capable_ as a guide.
+Is it not, Josef?" He appealed, and the men crowded around to back him
+up with deep, serious voices.
+
+"Ah, yes, M'sieur."
+
+"_B'en capable!_"
+
+"He can walk like us others--the same!" they assured me impressively.
+
+Philippe was my guide this year. It was the morning after we reached
+camp. "Would M'sieur le Docteur be too busy to look at something?"
+
+I was not. Philippe stood in the camp doorway in the patch of sunlight
+where he had sat two years before when I looked over his leg. He sat
+down again, in the shifting sunshine, the wooden leg sticking out
+straight and pathetic, and began to take the covers off a package. There
+were many covers; the package was apparently valuable. As he worked at
+it the odors of hemlock and balsam, distilled by hot sunlight, rose
+sweet and strong, and the lake splashed on pebbles, and peace that
+passes understanding was about us.
+
+"It was in a bad battle in Lorraine," spoke Philippe into the sunshiny
+peace, "that I lost M'sieur le Docteur's leg. One was in the front
+trench and there was word passed to have the wire cutters ready, and
+also bayonets, for we were to charge across the open towards the
+trenches of the Germans--perhaps one hundred and fifty yards, eight
+_arpents_--acres--as we say in Canada. Our big guns back did the
+preparation, making what M'sieur le Docteur well knows is called a
+_rideau_--a fire curtain. We climbed out of our trench with a shout and
+followed the fire curtain; so closely we followed that it seemed we
+should be killed by our own guns. And then it stopped--too soon, M'sieur
+le Docteur. Very many Boches were left alive in that trench in front,
+and they fired as we came, so that some of us were hit, and so terrible
+was the fire that the rest were forced back to our own trench which we
+had left. It is so sometimes in a fight, M'sieur le Docteur. The big
+guns make a little mistake, and many men have to die. Yet it is for
+France. And as I ran with the others for the shelter of the trench, and
+as the Boches streamed out of their trench to make a counter attack with
+hand-grenades I tripped on something. It was little Réné Dumont, whom
+M'sieur le Docteur remembers. He guided for our camp when Josef was ill
+in the hand two years ago. In any case he lay there, and I could not let
+him lie to be shot to pieces. So I caught up the child and ran with him
+across my shoulders and threw him in the trench, and as he went in there
+was a cry behind me, 'Philippe!'
+
+"I turned, and one waved arms at me--a comrade whom I did not know very
+well--but he lay in the open and cried for help. So I thought of Jeanne
+d'Arc, and how she had no fear, and was kind, and with that, back I
+trotted to get the comrade. But at that second--pouf!--a big noise, and
+I fell down and could not get up. It was the good new leg of M'sieur le
+Docteur which those _sacrés_ Boches had blown off with a hand-grenade.
+So that I lay dead enough. And when I came alive it was dark, and also
+the leg hurt--but yes! I was annoyed to have ruined that leg which you
+gave me--M'sieur le Docteur."
+
+I grinned, and something ached inside of me.
+
+Philippe went on. "It was then, when I was without much hope and weak
+and in pain and also thirsty, that a thing happened. It is a business
+without pleasure, M'sieur le Docteur, that--to lie on a battle-field
+with a leg shot off, and around one men dead, piled up--yes, and some
+not dead yet, which is worse. They groan. One feels unable to bear it.
+It grows cold also, and the searchlights of the Boches play so as to
+prevent rescue by comrades. They seem quite horrible, those lights. One
+lives, but one wishes much to die. So it happened that, as I lay there,
+I heard a step coming, not crawling along as the rescuers crawl and
+stopping when the lights flare, but a steady step coming freely. And
+with that I was lifted and carried quickly into a wood. There was a hole
+in the ground there, torn by a shell deeply, and the friend laid me
+there and put a flask to my lips, and I was warm and comforted. I looked
+up and I saw a figure in soldier's clothing of an old time, such as one
+sees in books--armor of white. And the face smiled down at me. 'You will
+be saved,' a voice said; and the words sounded homely, almost like the
+words of my grandfather who keeps the grocery shop. 'You will be saved.'
+It seemed to me that the voice was young and gentle and like a woman's.
+
+"'Who are you?' I asked, and I had a strange feeling, afraid a little
+M'sieur, yet glad to a marvel. I got no answer to my question, but I
+felt something pressed into my hand, and then I spoke, but I suppose I
+was a little delirious, M'sieur, for I heard myself say a thing I had
+not been thinking. 'A Martel must return to France to find the silver
+stirrup'--I said that, M'sieur. Why I do not know. They were the words I
+had heard my grandfather speak. Perhaps the hard feeling in my hand--but
+I cannot explain, M'sieur le Docteur. In any case, there was all at once
+a great thrill through my body, such as I have never known. I sat up
+quickly and stared at the figure. It stood there. M'sieur will probably
+not believe me--the figure stood there in white armor, with a sword--and
+I knew it for Jeanne--the Maid. With that I knew no more. When I woke it
+was day. I was still lying in the crater of the shell which had torn up
+the earth of a very old battle-field, but in my hand I held
+tight--this."
+
+Philippe drew off the last cover with a dramatic flourish and opened the
+box which had been wrapped so carefully. I bent over him. In the box,
+before my eyes, lay an ancient worn and battered silver stirrup. There
+were no words to say. I stared at the boy. And with that suddenly he had
+slewed around clumsily--because of his poor wooden leg--and was on his
+knees at my feet. He held out the stirrup.
+
+"M'sieur le Docteur, you gave me a man's chance and honor, and the joy
+of fighting for France. I can never tell my thanks. I have nothing to
+give you--but this. Take it, M'sieur le Docteur. It is not much, yet to
+me the earth holds nothing so valuable. It is the silver stirrup of
+Jeanne d'Arc. It is yours."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a glass case on the wall of my library hangs an antique bit of
+harness which is my most precious piece of property. How its story came
+about I do not even try to guess. As Philippe said the action of that
+day took place on a very old battle-field. The shell which made the
+sheltering crater doubtless dug up earth untouched for hundreds of
+years. That it should have dug up the very object which was a tradition
+in the Martel family and should have laid it in the grasp of a Martel
+fighting for France with that tradition at the bottom of his mind seems
+incredible. The story of the apparition of the Maid is incredible to
+laughter, or tears. No farther light is to be got from the boy, because
+he believes his story. I do not try to explain, I place the episode in
+my mind alongside other things incredible, things lovely and spiritual,
+and, to our viewpoint of five years ago, things mad. Many such have
+risen luminous, undesirable, unexplained, out of these last horrible
+years, and wait human thought, it may be human development, to be
+classified. I accept and treasure the silver stirrup as a pledge of
+beautiful human gratitude. I hold it as a visible sign that French blood
+keeps a loyalty to France which ages and oceans may not weaken.
+
+
+
+
+THE RUSSIAN
+
+
+The little dinner-party of grizzled men strayed from the dining-room and
+across the hall into the vast library, arguing mightily.
+
+"The great war didn't do it. World democracy was on the way. The war
+held it back."
+
+It was the United States Senator, garrulous and incisive, who issued
+that statement. The Judge, the host, wasted not a moment in
+contradicting. "You're mad, Joe," he threw at him with a hand on the
+shoulder of the man who was still to him that promising youngster,
+little Joe Burden of The School. "Held back democracy! The war! Quite
+mad, my son."
+
+The guest of the evening, a Russian General who had just finished five
+strenuous years in the Cabinet of the Slav Republic, dropped back a step
+to watch, with amused eyes, strolling through the doorway, the two
+splendid old boys, the Judge's arm around the Senator's shoulders,
+fighting, sputtering, arguing with each other as they had fought and
+argued forty odd years up to date.
+
+Two minutes more and the party of six had settled into deep chairs, into
+a mammoth davenport, before a blazing fire of spruce and birch. Cigars,
+liqueurs, coffee, the things men love after dinner, were there; one had
+the vaguest impression of two vanishing Japanese persons who might or
+might not have brought trays and touched the fire and placed tiny tables
+at each right hand; an atmosphere of completeness was present, one did
+not notice how. One settled with a sigh of satisfaction into comfort,
+and chose a cigar. One laughed to hear the Judge pound away at the
+Senator.
+
+"It's all a game." Dr. Rutherford turned to the Russian. "They're
+devoted old friends, not violent enemies, General. The Senator stirs up
+the Judge by taking impossible positions and defending them savagely.
+The Judge invariably falls into the trap. Then a battle. Their battles
+are the joy of the Century Club. The Senator doesn't believe for an
+instant that the war held back democracy."
+
+At that the Senator whirled. "I don't? But I do.--Don't _smoke_ that
+cigar, Rutherford, on your life. Peter will have these atrocities.
+Here--Kaki, bring the doctor the other box.--That's better.--I don't
+believe what I said? Now listen. How could the fact that the world was
+turned into a military camp, officers commanding, privates obeying,
+rank, rank, rank everywhere throughout mankind, how could that fail to
+hinder democracy, which is in its essence the leveling of ranks? Tell me
+that!"
+
+The doctor grinned at the Russian. "What about it, General? What do you
+think?"
+
+The General answered slowly, with a small accent but in the wonderfully
+good English of an educated Russian. "I do not agree with the
+Sena-torr," he stated, and five heads turned to listen. There was a
+quality of large personality in the burr of the voice, in the poise and
+soldierly bearing, in the very silence of the man, which made his slow
+words of importance. "I believe indeed that the Sena-torr is
+partly--shall I say speaking for argument?"
+
+The Senator laughed.
+
+"The great war, in which all of us here had the honor to bear arms--that
+death grapple of tyranny against freedom--it did not hold back the cause
+of humanity, of democracy, that war. Else thousands upon thousands of
+good lives were given in vain."
+
+There was a hushed moment. Each of the men, men now from fifty to sixty
+years old, had been a young soldier in that Homeric struggle. Each was
+caught back at the words of the Russian to a vision of terrible places,
+of thundering of great guns, of young, generous blood flowing like
+water. The deep, assured tones of the Russian spoke into the solemn
+pause.
+
+"There is an episode of the war which I remember. It goes to show, so
+far as one incident may, where every hour was crowded with drama, how
+forces worked together for democracy. It is the story of a common man of
+my country who was a private in the army of your country, and who was
+lifted by an American gentleman to hope and opportunity, and, as God
+willed it, to honor. My old friend the Judge can tell that episode
+better than I. My active part in it was small. If you like"--the dark
+foreign eyes flashed about the group--"if you like I should much enjoy
+hearing my old friend review that little story of democracy."
+
+There was a murmur of approval. One man spoke, a fighting parson he had
+been. "It argues democracy in itself, General, that a Russian
+aristocrat, the brother of a Duke, should remember so well the
+adventures of a common soldier."
+
+The smouldering eyes of the Slav turned to the speaker and regarded him
+gravely. "I remember those adventures well," he answered.
+
+The Judge, flung back in a corner of the davenport, his knees crossed
+and rings from his cigar ascending, stared at the ceiling, "Come along,
+Peter. You're due to entertain us," the Senator adjured him, and the
+Judge, staring upwards, began.
+
+"This is the year 1947. It was in 1917 that the United States went into
+war--thirty years ago. The fifth of June, 1917, was set, as you
+remember, for the registration of all men in the country over
+twenty-one and under thirty-one for the draft. I was twenty-three,
+living in this house with my father and mother, both dead before the war
+ended. Being outside of the city, the polling place where I was due to
+register was three miles off, at Hiawatha. I registered in the morning;
+the polls were open from seven A.M. to nine P.M. My mother drove me
+over, and the road was being mended, and, as happened in those days in
+the country, half a mile of it was almost impassable. There were no
+adjustable lift-roads invented then. We got through the ruts and
+stonework, but it was hard going, and we came home by a detour through
+the city rather than pass again that beastly half mile. That night was
+dark and stormy, with rain at intervals, and as we sat in this room,
+reading, the three of us--" The Judge paused and gazed a moment at the
+faces in the lamplight, at the chairs where his guests sat. It was as if
+he called back to their old environment for a moment the two familiar
+figures which had belonged here, which had gone out of his life. "We sat
+in this room, the three of us," he repeated, "and the butler came in.
+
+"'If you please, sir, there's a young man here who wants to register,'
+he said.
+
+"'Wants to register!' my father threw at him. 'What do you mean?'
+
+"We all went outside, and there we found not one, but five boys,
+Russians. There was a munitions plant a mile back of us and the lads
+worked there, and had wakened to the necessity of registering at the
+last moment, being new in the country and with little English. They had
+directions to go to the same polling place as mint, Hiawatha, but had
+gotten lost, and, seeing our lights, brought up here. Hiawatha, as I
+said, is three miles away. It was eight-thirty and the polls closed at
+nine. We brought the youngsters inside, and I dashed to the garage for
+the car and piled the delighted lads into it and drove them across.
+
+"At least I tried to. But when we came to the bad half mile the car
+rebelled at going the bit twice in a day, and the motor stalled. There
+we were--eight-forty-five P.M.--polls due to close at nine--a year's
+imprisonment for five well-meaning boys for neglecting to register. I
+was in despair. Then suddenly one of the boys saw a small red light
+ahead, the tail light of an automobile. We ran along and found a big car
+standing in front of a house. As we got there, out from the car stepped
+a woman with a lantern, and as the light swung upward I saw that she was
+tall and fair and young and very lovely. She stopped as the six of us
+loomed out of the darkness. I knew that a professor from the University
+in town had taken this house for the summer, but I don't know the people
+or their name. It was no time to be shy. I gave my name and stated the
+case.
+
+"The girl looked at me. 'I've seen you,' she said. 'I know you are Mr.
+McLane. I'll drive you across. One moment, till I tell my mother.'
+
+"She was in the house and out again without wasting a second, and as she
+flashed into the car I heard a gasp, and I turned and saw in the glare
+of the headlights as they sprang on one of my Russians, a gigantic
+youngster of six feet four or so, standing with his cap off and his head
+bent, as he might have stood before a shrine, staring at the spot where
+the girl had disappeared into the car. Then the engine purred and my
+squad tumbled in.
+
+"We made the polls on the tap of nine. Afterwards we drove back to my
+car and among us, with the lantern, we got the motor running again, the
+girl helping efficiently. The big fellow, when we told her good-night,
+astonished me by dropping on his knees and kissing the edge of her
+skirt. But I put it down to Slavic temperament and took it casually.
+I've learned since what Russian depth of feeling means--and tenacity of
+purpose. There was one more incident. When I finally drove the lads up
+to their village the big chap, who spoke rather good English when he
+spoke at all, which was seldom, invited me to have some beer. I was
+tired and wanted to get home, so I didn't. Then the young giant
+excavated in his pocket and brought out a dollar bill.
+
+"'You get beer tomorrow.' And when I laughed and shoved it back he
+flushed. 'Excuse--Mr. Sir,' he said. 'I make mistake.' Suddenly he drew
+himself up--about to the treetops, it looked, for he was a huge, a
+magnificent lad. He tossed out his arm to me. 'Some day,' he stated
+dramatically, 'I do two things. Some day I give Mr. Sir somethings more
+than dollar--and he will take. And--some day I marry--Miss Angel!'
+
+"You may believe I was staggered. But I simply stuck out my fist and
+shook his and said: 'Good. No reason on earth why a fellow with the
+right stuff shouldn't get anywhere. It's a free country.' And the giant
+drew his black brows together and remarked slowly: 'All
+countries--world--is to be free. War will sweep up kings--and
+other--rubbish. I--shall be--a man.'
+
+"Besides his impressive build, the boy had--had--" the Judge glanced at
+the Russian General, whose eyes glowed at the fire. "The boy had a
+remarkable face. It was cut like a granite hill, in sweeping masses. All
+strength. His eyes were coals. I went home thoughtful, and the Russian
+boy's intense face was in my mind for days, and I told myself many times
+that he not only would be, but already was, a man.
+
+"Events quickstepped after that. I got to France within the year, and,
+as you remember, work was ready. It was perhaps eighteen months after
+that registration day, June fifth, which we keep so rightly now as one
+of our sacred days, that one morning I was in a fight. Our artillery had
+demoralized the enemy at a point and sent them running. There was one
+machine gun left working in the Hun trenches--doing a lot of damage.
+Suddenly it jammed. I was commanding my company, and I saw the chance,
+but also I saw a horrid mess of barbed wire. So I just ran forward a bit
+and up to the wire and started clipping, while that machine gun stayed
+jammed. Out of the corner of an eye I could see men rushing towards it
+in the German trench, and I knew I had only a moment before they got it
+firing again. Then, as I leaped far forward to reach a bit of
+entanglement, my foot slipped in a puddle and as I sprawled I saw our
+uniform and a dead American boy's face under me, and I fell headlong in
+his blood over him and into a bunch of wire. And couldn't get up. The
+wire held like the devil. I got more tied up at every pull. And my
+clippers had fallen from my hand and landed out of reach.
+
+"'It's good night for me,' I thought, and was aware of a sharp regret.
+To be killed because of a nasty bit of wire! I had wanted to do a lot of
+things yet. With that something leaped, and I saw clippers flashing
+close by. A big man was cutting me loose, dragging me out, setting me on
+my feet. Then the roar of an exploding shell; the man fell--fell into
+the wire from which he had just saved me. There was no time to consider
+that; somehow I was back and leading my men--and then we had the
+trenches.
+
+"The rest of that day was confusion, but we won a mile of earthworks,
+and at night I remembered the incident of the wire and the man who
+rescued me. By a miracle I found him in the field hospital. His head was
+bandaged, for the bit of shell had scraped his cheek and jaw, but his
+eyes were safe, and something in the glance out of them was familiar.
+Yet I didn't know him till he drew me over and whispered painfully, for
+it hurt him to talk:
+
+"'Yester--day I did--give Mr. Sir somethings more than dollar. And he
+did--take it.'
+
+"Then I know the big young Russian of registration day who had tried to
+tip me. Bless him! I got him transferred to my command and--" the Judge
+hesitated a bit and glanced at his distinguished guest. One surmised
+embarrassment in telling the story of the General's humble compatriot.
+
+The General rose to his feet and stood before the fire facing the
+handful of men. "I can continue this anecdote from the point that is
+more easily than my friend the Judge," spoke the General. "I was in the
+confidence of that countryman of mine. I know. It was so that after he
+had been thus slightly useful to my friend the Judge, who was the
+Captain McLane at that time--"
+
+The Judge broke in with a shout of deep laughter worthy of a boy of
+eighteen. "He 'slightly obliged me by saving my life." The American,
+threw that into the Russian's smooth sentences. "I put that fact before
+the jury."
+
+The four men listening laughed also, but the Russian held up a hand and
+went on gravely: "It was quite simple, that episode, and the man's
+pleasure. I knew him well. But what followed was not ordinary. The
+Captain McLane saw to it that the soldier had his chance. He became an
+officer. He went alive through the war, and at the end the Captain
+McLane made it possible that he should be educated. His career was a
+gift from the Captain McLane--from my friend the Judge to that man, who
+is now--" the finished sentence halted a mere second--"who is now a
+responsible person of Russia.
+
+"And it is the incident of that sort, it is that incident itself which I
+know, which leads me to combat--" he turned with a deep bow--"the
+position of the Sena-torr that the great war did not make for democracy.
+Gentlemen, my compatriot was a peasant, a person of ignorance, yet with
+a desire of fulfilling his possibilities. He had been born in social
+chains and tied to most sordid life, beyond hope, in old Russia. To try
+to shake free he had gone to America. But it was that caldron of fire,
+the war, which freed him, which fused his life and the life of the
+Captain McLane, so different in opportunity, and burned from them all
+trivialities and put them, stark-naked of advantages and of drawbacks
+artificial, side by side, as two lives merely. It made them--brothers.
+One gave and the other took as brothers without thought of false pride.
+They came from the furnace men. Both. Which is democracy--a chance for a
+tree to grow, for a flame to burn, for a river to flow; a chance for a
+man to become a man and not rest a vegetable anchored to the earth
+as--Oh, God!--for many centuries the Russian mujiks have rested. It is
+that which I understand by democracy. Freedom of development for
+everything which wants to develop. It was the earthquake of war which
+broke chains, loosened dams, cleared the land for young forests. It was
+war which made Russia a republic, which threw down the kingships, which
+joined common men and princes as comrades. God bless that liberating
+war! God grant that never in all centuries may this poor planet have
+another! God save democracy--humanity! Does the Sena-torr yet believe
+that the great war retarded democracy?" The Russian's brilliant,
+smouldering eyes swept about, inquiring.
+
+There was a hush in the peaceful, firelit, lamp-lit room. And with that,
+as of one impulse, led by the Senator, the five men broke into
+handclapping. Tears stood in eyes, faces were twisted with emotion; each
+of these men had seen what the thing was--war; each knew what a price
+humanity had paid for freedom. Out of the stirring of emotion, out of
+the visions of trenches and charges and blood and agony and heroism and
+unselfishness and steadfastness, the fighting parson, he who had bent,
+under fire, many a day over dying men who waited his voice to help them
+across the border--the parson led the little company from the intense
+moment to commonplace.
+
+"You haven't quite finished the story, General. The boy promised to do
+two things. He did the first; he gave the Judge 'something more than a
+dollar,' and the Judge took it--his life. But he said also he was going
+to marry--what did he call her?--Miss Angel. How about that?"
+
+The Russian General, standing on the hearthrug, appeared to draw himself
+up suddenly with an access of dignity, and the Judge's boyish big laugh
+broke into the silence, "Tell them, Michael," said the Judge. "You've
+gone so far with the fairy story that they have a right to know the
+crowning glory of it. Tell them."
+
+And suddenly the men sitting about noticed with one accord what,
+listening to the General's voice, they had not thought about--that the
+Russian was uncommonly tall--six feet four perhaps; that his face was
+carved in sweeping lines like a granite hillside, and that an old, long
+scar stretched from the vivid eyes to the mouth. The men stared,
+startled with a sudden simultaneous thought. The Judge, watching,
+smiled. Slowly the General put his hand into the breast pocket of his
+evening coat; slowly he drew out a case of dark leather, tooled
+wonderfully, set with stones. He opened the case and looked down; the
+strong face changed as if a breeze and sunshine passed over a mountain.
+He glanced up at the men waiting.
+
+"I am no Duke's brother," he said, smiling, suddenly radiant. "That is a
+mistake of the likeness of a name, which all the world makes. I am born
+a mujik of Russia. But you, sir," and he turned to the parson, "you wish
+an answer of 'Miss Angel,' as the big peasant boy called that lovely
+spirit, so far above him in that night, so far above him still, and yet,
+God be thanked, so close today! Yes? Then this is my answer." He held
+out the miniature set with jewels.
+
+
+
+
+ROBINA'S DOLL
+
+
+Massive, sprawling, uncertain writing, two sentences to the page; a
+violent slant in the second line, down right, balanced by a drastic
+lessening of the letters, up right, in the line underneath; spelling not
+as advised in the Century Dictionary--a letter from Robina, aged eight.
+Robina's Aunt Evelyn, sitting in her dress and cap of a Red Cross nurse
+in the big base hospital in Paris, read the wandering, painstaking, very
+unsuccessful literary effort, laughing, half-crying, and kissed it
+enthusiastically.
+
+"The darling baby! She shall have her doll if it takes--" Aunt Evelyn
+stopped thoughtfully.
+
+It would take something serious to buy and equip the doll that Robina,
+with eight-year-old definiteness, had specified. The girl in the Red
+Cross dress read the letter over.
+
+"Dear Aunt Evelyn," began Robina and struck no snags so far. "I liked
+your postcard so much." (The facilis descensus to an averni of
+literature began with a swoop down here.) "Mother is wel. Fother is wel.
+The baby is wel. The dog has sevven kitens." (Robina robbed Peter to pay
+Paul habitually in her spelling.) "Fother sais they lukk like choklit
+eclares. I miss you, dere Aunt Evelyn, because I lov you sew. I hope
+Santa Claus wil bring me a doll. I want a very bigg bride doll with a
+vale and flours an a trunk of close, and all her under-close to buton
+and unboton and to have pink ribons run into. I don't want anythig sode
+on. Come home, Aunt Evelyn, becaus I miss you. But if the poor wundead
+soljers ned you then don't come. But as soone as you can come to yure
+loving own girl--ROBINA."
+
+The dear angel! Every affectionate, labored word was from the warm
+little heart; Evelyn Bruce knew that. She sat, smiling, holding the
+paper against her, seeing a vision of the faraway, beloved child who
+wrote it. She saw the dancing, happy brown eyes and the shining, cropped
+head of pale golden brown, and the straight, strong little figure; she
+heard the merry, ready giggle and the soft, slow tones that were always
+full of love to her. Robina, her sister's child, her own god-daughter
+had been her close friend from babyhood, and between them there was a
+bond of understanding which made nothing of the difference in years.
+Darling little Robina! Such a good, unspoiled little girl, for all of
+the luxury and devotion that surrounded her!
+
+But--there was a difficulty just there. Robina was unspoiled indeed,
+yet, as the children of the very rich, she was, even at eight,
+sophisticated in a baby way. She had been given too many grand dolls not
+to know just the sort she wanted. She did not know that what she wanted
+cost money, but she knew the points desired--and they did cost money.
+Aunt Evelyn had not much money.
+
+"This one extravagant thing I will do," said Evelyn Bruce, "and I'll
+give up my trip to England next week, and I'll do it in style. Robina
+won't want dolls much longer and this time she's got to have her heart's
+desire."
+
+Which was doubtless foolish, yet when one is separated by an ocean and a
+war from one's own, it is perhaps easier to be foolish for a child's
+face and a child's voice, and love sent across the sea. So Evelyn Bruce
+wrote a letter to her cousin in England saying that she could not come
+to her till after Christmas. Then she went out into Paris and ordered
+the doll, and reveled in the ordering, for a very gorgeous person indeed
+it was, and worthy to journey from Paris to a little American. It was to
+be ready in just two weeks, and Miss Bruce was to come in and look over
+the fine lady and her equipment as often as desired, before she started
+on her ocean voyage.
+
+"It would simply break my heart if she were torpedoed."
+
+Evelyn confided that, childlike, to the black-browed, stout Frenchwoman
+who took a personal interest in every "buton," and then she opened her
+bag and brought out Robina's photograph, standing, in a ruffled bonnet,
+her solemn West Highland White terrier dog in her arms, on the garden
+path of "Graystones" between tall foxgloves. And the Frenchwoman tossed
+up enraptured hands at the beauty of the little girl who was to get the
+doll, and did not miss the great, splendid house in the background, or
+the fact that the dog was of a "_chic_" variety.
+
+The two weeks fled, every day full of the breathless life--and death--of
+a hospital in war-torn France. Every day the girl saw sights and heard
+sounds which it seemed difficult to see and hear and go on living, but
+she moved serene through such an environment, because she could help.
+Every day she gave all that was in her to the suffering boys who were
+carried, in a never-ending stream of stretchers, into the hospital. And
+the strength she gave flowed back to her endlessly from, she could not
+but believe it, the underlying source of all strength, which stretches
+beneath and about us all, and from which those who give greatly know how
+to draw.
+
+Two or three times, during the two weeks, Evelyn had gone in to inspect
+the progress of Robina's doll, and spent a happy and light-hearted
+quarter of an hour with friendly Madame of the shop, deciding the color
+of the lady's party coat, and of the ribbons in her minute underclothes,
+and packing and repacking the trunk with enchanting fairy
+foolishnesses. Again and again she smiled to herself, in bed at night,
+going about her work in the long days, as she thought of the little
+girl's rapture over the many and carefully planned details. For, with
+all the presents showered on her, Robina's aunt knew that Robina had
+never had anything as perfect as this exquisite Paris doll and her
+trousseau.
+
+The day came on which Evelyn was to make her final visit to "La
+Marquise," as Madame called the doll, and the nurse was needed in the
+hospital and could not go. But she telephoned Madame and made an
+appointment for tomorrow.
+
+"'La Marquise' finds herself quite ready for the voyage," Madame spoke
+over the telephone. "She is all which there is of most lovely; Paris
+itself has never seen a so ravishing doll. I say it. We wait anxiously
+to greet Mademoiselle, I and La Marquise," Madame assured her. Evelyn,
+laughing with sheer pleasure, made an engagement for the next day,
+without fail, and went back to her work.
+
+There was a badly wounded _poilu_ in her ward, whom the girl had come to
+know well. He was young, perhaps twenty-seven, and his warm brown eyes
+were full of a quality of gentleness which endeared him to everyone who
+came near him. He was very grateful, very uncomplaining, a
+simple-minded, honest, common, young peasant, with a charm uncommon. The
+unending bright courage with which he made light of cruel pain, was
+almost more than Evelyn, used as she was to brave men's pain, could
+bear. He could not get well--the doctors said that--and it seemed that
+he could not die.
+
+"If Corporal Duplessis might die," Evelyn spoke to the surgeon.
+
+He answered, considering: "I don't see what keeps him alive."
+
+"I believe," said Evelyn, "there's something on his mind. He sighs
+constantly. Broken-heartedly. I believe he can't die until his mind is
+relieved."
+
+"It may be that," agreed Dr. Norton. "You could help him if you could
+get him to tell you." And moved on to the next shattered thing that had
+been, so lately, a strong, buoyant boy.
+
+Evelyn went back to Duplessis and bent over him and spoke cheerful
+words; he smiled up at her with quick French responsiveness, and then
+sighed the heavy, anxious sigh which had come to be part of him. With
+that the girl took his one good hand and stroked it. "If you could tell
+the American Sister what it is," she spoke softly, "that troubles your
+mind, perhaps I might help you. We Americans, you know," and she smiled
+at him, "we are wonderful people. We can do all sorts of magic--and I
+want to help you to rest, so much. I'd do anything to help you. Won't
+you tell me what it is that bothers?" Evelyn Bruce's voice was winning,
+and Duplessis' eyes rested on her affectionately.
+
+"But how the Sister understands one!" he said. "It is true that there is
+a trouble. It hinders me to die"--and the heavy sigh swept out again.
+"It would be a luxury for me--dying. The pain is bad, at times. Yet the
+Sister knows I am glad to have it, for France. Ah, yes! But--if I might
+be released. Yet the thought of what I said to her keeps me from dying
+always."
+
+"What you said 'to her,' corporal?" repeated Evelyn. "Can't you tell me
+what it was? I would try so hard to help you. I might perhaps."
+
+"Who knows?" smiled the corporal, "It is true that Americans work magic.
+And the Sister is of a goodness! But yes. Yet the Sister may laugh at
+me, for it is a thing entirely childish, my trouble."
+
+"I will not laugh at you, Corporal," said Evelyn, gravely, and felt
+something wring her heart.
+
+"If--then--if the Sister will not think it foolish--I will tell." The
+Sister's answer was to stroke his fingers. "It is my child, my little
+girl," Duplessis began in his deep, weak tones. "It was to her I made
+the promise."
+
+"What promise?" prompted Evelyn softly, as he stopped.
+
+"One sees," the deep voice began again, "that when I told them goodbye,
+the mother and Marie my wife, and the _petite_, who has five years,
+then I started away, and would not look back, because I could not well
+bear it, Sister. And suddenly, as I strode to the street from our
+cottage, down the brick walk, where there are roses and also other
+flowers, on both sides--suddenly I heard a cry. And it was the voice of
+little Jeanne, the _petite_. I turned at that sound, for I could not
+help it, Sister, and between the flowers the little one came running,
+and as I bent she threw her arms about my neck and held me so tight,
+tight that I could not loosen the little hands, not without hurting her.
+'I will not let you go--I will not let you go.' She cried that again and
+again. Till my heart was broken. But all the same, one had to go. One
+was due to join the comrades at the station, and the time was short. So
+that, immediately, I had a thought. 'My most dear,' I spoke to her. 'If
+thou wilt let me go, then I promise to send thee a great, beautiful
+doll, all in white, as a bride, like the cousin Annette at her wedding
+last week.' And then the clinging little hands loosened, and she said,
+wondering--for she is but a baby--'Wilt thou promise, my father?' And I
+said, 'Yes,' and kissed her quickly, and went away. So that now that I
+am wounded and am to die, that promise which I cannot keep to my
+_petite_, that promise hinders me to die."
+
+The deep, sad voice stopped and the honest eyes of the peasant boy
+looked up at Evelyn, burning with the pain of his body and of his soul.
+And as Evelyn looked back, holding his hand and stroking it, it was as
+if the furnace of the soldier's pain melted together all the things she
+had ever cared to do. Yet it was a minute before she spoke.
+
+"Corporal," she said, "your little girl shall have her doll, I will take
+it to her and tell her that her father sent it. Will you lie very still
+while I go and get the doll?"
+
+The brown eyes looked up at her astounded, radiant, and the man caught
+the hem of her white veil and kissed it. "But the Americans--they do
+magic. You shall see, Sister, if I shall be still. I will not die before
+the Sister returns. It is a joy unheard of."
+
+The girl ran out of the hospital and away into Paris, and burst upon
+Madame. Somehow she told the story in a few words, and Madame was crying
+as she laid "La Marquise" in a box.
+
+"It is Mademoiselle who is an angel of the good God," she whispered, and
+kissed Evelyn unexpectedly on both cheeks.
+
+Corporal Duplessis lay, waxen, starry-eyed, as the American Sister came
+back into the ward. His look was on her as she entered the far-away
+door, and he saw the box in her arms. The girl knelt and drew out the
+gorgeous plaything and stood it by the side of the still, bandaged
+figure. An expression as of amazed radiance came into the fast-dimming
+eyes--into those large, brown, childlike eyes which had seen so little
+of the gorgeousness of earth. His hand stirred a very little--enough,
+for Evelyn quickly moved the gleaming satin train of the doll under the
+groping fingers. The eyes lifted to Evelyn's face and the smile in them
+was that of a prisoner who suddenly sees the gate of his prison opened
+and the fields of home beyond. It mattered little, one may believe, to
+the welcoming hosts of heaven that the angel at the gate of release for
+the child-soul of Corporal Duplessis, the poilu, was only Robina's doll!
+
+
+
+
+DUNDONALD'S DESTROYER
+
+
+This is the year 1977. It will be objected that the episode I am going
+to tell, having happened in 1917, having been witnessed by twenty-odd
+thousand people, must have been, if true, for sixty years common
+property and an old tale. But when General Cochrane--who saved England
+at the end of the great war--told me the Kitchener incident of the story
+last year, sitting in the rose-garden of the White Hart Inn at
+Sonning-on-Thames, I had never heard of it.
+
+I wonder why he told me. Probably, as is the case in most things which
+most people do, from a mixture of impulses. For one thing I am an
+American girl, with a fresher zest to hear tales of those titanic days
+than the people or the children of the people who lived through them.
+Also the great war of 1914 has stirred me since I was old enough to know
+about it, and I have read everything concerning it which I could lay
+hands on, and talked to everyone who had knowledge of it. Also, General
+Cochrane and I made friends from the first minute. I was a quite
+unimportant person of twenty-four years, he a magnificent hero of
+eighty, one of the proud figures of England; it made me a bit dizzy when
+I saw that he liked me. One feels, once in a long time, an unmistakable
+double pull, and knows that oneself and another are friends, and not
+age, color, race nor previous condition of servitude makes the slightest
+difference. To have that happen with a celebrity, a celebrity whom it
+would have been honor enough simply to meet, is quite dizzying. This was
+the way of it.
+
+I was staying with my cousin Mildred Ward, an Atlanta girl who married
+Sir Cecil Ward, an English baronet of Oxfordshire. I reached
+Martin-Goring on a day in July just in time to dress for dinner. When I
+came down, a bit early, Milly looked me over and pronounced favorably.
+
+"You're not so hard to look at," she pronounced. "It takes an American
+really to wear French clothes. I'm glad you're looking well tonight,
+because one of your heroes--Oh!"
+
+She had floated inconsequently against a bookcase in a voyage along the
+big room, and a spray of wild roses from a vase on the shelf caught in
+her pretty gold hair.
+
+"Oh--why does Middleton stick those catchy things up there?" she
+complained, separating the flowers from her hair, and I followed her
+eyes above the shelf.
+
+"Why, that's a portrait of Kitchener--the old great Kitchener, isn't
+it?" I asked. "Did he belong to Cecil's people?"
+
+"No," answered Milly, "only Cecil's grandfather and General Cochrane--or
+something--" her voice trailed. And then, "I've got somebody you'll be
+crazy about tonight, General Cochrane."
+
+"General Cochrane?"
+
+"Oh! You pretend to know about the great war and don't know General
+Cochrane, who saved England when the fleet was wrecked. Don't know him!"
+
+"Oh!" I said again. "Know him? Know him! I know every breath, he drew.
+Only I couldn't believe my ears. The boy Donald Cochrane? It isn't true
+is it? How did you ever, ever--?"
+
+"He lives five miles from us," said Milly, unconcernedly. "We see a lot
+of him. His wife was Cecil's great-aunt. She's dead now. His daughter is
+my best friend. 'The boy Donald Cochrane'!" She smiled a little. "He's
+no boy now. He's old. Even heroes do that--get old."
+
+And with that the footman at the door announced "General Cochrane."
+
+I stared away up at a very tall, soldierly old man with a jagged scar
+across his forehead. His wide-open, black-lashed gray eyes flashed a
+glance like a menace, like a sword, and then suddenly smiled as if the
+sun had jumped from a bank of storm-clouds. And I looked into those
+wonderful eyes and we were friends. As fast as that. Most people would
+think it nonsense, but it happened so. A few people will understand. He
+took me out to dinner, and it was as if no one else was at the table. I
+was aware only of the one heroic personality. At first I dared not speak
+of his history, and then, without planning or intention, my own voice
+astonished my own ears. I announced to him:
+
+"You have been my hero since I was ten years old."
+
+It was a marvelous thing he did, the lad of twenty, even considering
+that the secret was there at his hand, ready for him to use. The
+histories say that--that no matter if he did not invent the device, it
+was his ready wit which remembered it, and his persistence which forced
+the war department to use it. Yes, and his heroism which led the ship
+and all but gave his life. And when he had fulfilled his mission he
+stepped back into the place of a subaltern; he was modest, even
+embarrassed, at the great people who thronged to him. England was saved;
+that was all his affair; nothing, so the books say, could prod him into
+prominence--though he rose to be a General later--after that, after
+being the first man in England for those days. It was this personage
+with whom I had gone out to dinner, and to whom I dared make that sudden
+speech: "You have been my hero, General Cochrane, since I was ten years
+old."
+
+He slued about with the menacing, shrapnel look, and it seemed that
+there might be an explosion of sharp-pointed small bullets over the
+dinner-table.
+
+"Don't!" I begged. The sun came out; the artillery attack was over; he
+looked at me with boyish shyness.
+
+"D'you know, when people say things like that I feel as if I were
+stealing," he told me confidentially. "Anybody else could have done all
+I did. In fact, it wasn't I at all," he finished.
+
+"Not you? Who then? Weren't you the boy Donald Cochrane?"
+
+"Yes," he said, and stopped as if he were considering it. "Yes," he said
+quietly in the clean-cut, terse English manner of speaking, "I suppose I
+was the boy Donald Cochrane." He gazed across the white lilacs and pink
+roses on the table as if dreaming a bit. Then he turned with a long
+breath. "My child," he said, "there is something about you which gives
+me back my youth, and--the freshness of a great experience. I thank
+you."
+
+I gazed into those compelling eyes, gasping like a fish with too much
+oxygen, I felt myself, Virginia Fox, meshed in the fringes of historic
+days, stirred by the rushing mighty wind of that Great Experience. I was
+awestruck into silence. Just then Milly got up, and eight women flocked
+into the library.
+
+I was good for nothing there, simply good for nothing at all. I tried to
+talk to the nice, sensible English women, and I could not. I knew Milly
+was displeased with me for not keeping up my end, but I was sodden with
+thrills. I had sat through a dinner next to General Cochrane, the Donald
+Cochrane who was the most dramatic figure of the world war of sixty
+years ago. It has always moved me to meet persons who even existed at
+that time. I look at them and think what intense living it must have
+meant to pick up a paper and read--as the news of the day, mind
+you--that Germany had entered Belgium, that King Albert was fighting in
+the trenches, that Von Kluck was within seventeen miles of Paris, that
+Von Kluck was retreating--think of the rapture of that--Paris
+saved!--that the Germans had taken Antwerp; that the _Lusitania_ was
+sunk; that Kitchener was drowned at sea! I wonder if the people who
+lived and went about their business in America in those days realized
+that they were having a stage-box for the greatest drama of history? I
+wonder. Terror and heroism and cruelty find self-sacrifice on a scale
+which had never been dreamed, which will never, God grant, need to be
+dreamed on this poor little racked planet again. Of course, there are
+plenty of those people alive yet, and I've talked to many and they
+remember it, all of them remember well, even those who were quite small.
+And it has stirred me simply to look into the eyes of such an one and
+consider that those eyes read such things as morning news. The great war
+has had a hold on me since I first heard of it, and I distinctly
+remember the day, from my father, at the age of seven.
+
+"Can you remember when it happened, father?" I asked him. And then: "Can
+you remember when they drove old people out of their houses--and killed
+them?"
+
+"Yes," said my father. And I burst into tears. And when I was not much
+older he told me about Donald Cochrane, the boy who saved England.
+
+It was not strange to my own mind that I could not talk commonplaces
+now, when I had just spent an hour tailing to the man who had been that
+historic boy--the very Donald Cochrane. I could not talk commonplaces.
+
+Milly's leisurely voice broke my meditation. "I'm sorry that my cousin,
+Virginia Fox, should have such bad manners, Lady Andover," she was
+drawling. "She was brought up to speak when spoken to, but I think it's
+the General who has hypnotized her. Virginia, did you know that Lady
+Andover asked you--" And I came to life.
+
+"It was Miss Fox who hypnotized the General, I fancy," said Lady Andover
+most graciously, considering I had overlooked her existence a second
+before. "He had a word for no one else during dinner." I felt myself go
+scarlet; it had pleased the Marvelous Person, then, to like me a
+little, perhaps for the youth and enthusiasm in me.
+
+With that the men straggled into the room and the tall grizzled head of
+my hero, his lined face conspicuous for the jagged, glorious scar,
+towered over the rest. I saw the vivid eyes flash about, and they met
+mine; I was staring at him, as I must, and my heart all but jumped out
+of me when he came straight to where I stood, my back against the
+bookcase.
+
+"I was looking for you," he said simply.
+
+Then he glanced over my head and his hand shot up in a manner of salute;
+I turned to see why. I was in front of the portrait of Lord Kitchener.
+
+"Did you know him, General Cochrane?" I asked.
+
+"Know him?" he demanded, and the gray glance plunged out at me from
+under the thick lashes.
+
+"Don't do it," I pleaded, putting my hands over my eyes. "When you look
+at me so it's--bombs and bullets." The look softened, but the lean,
+wrinkled face did not smile.
+
+"You asked if I knew Kitchener," he stated.
+
+I spoke haltingly. "I didn't know. Ought I to have known?"
+
+General Cochrane gazed down, all at once dreamy, as if he looked through
+me at something miles and æons away.
+
+"No," he said. "There's no reason why you should. You have an uncommon
+knowledge of events of that time, an astonishing knowledge for a young
+thing, so that I forget you can't know--all of it." He stopped, as if
+considering. "It is because I am old that I have fancies," he went on
+slowly. "And you have understanding eyes. I have had a fancy this
+evening that you and I were meant to be friends; that a similarity of
+interests, a--a likeness--oh, hang it all!" burst out the General like a
+college boy. "I never could talk except straight and hot. I mean I've a
+feeling of a bond between us--you'll think me most presuming--"
+
+I interrupted, breathless. "It's so," I whispered. "I felt it, only I'd
+not have dared--" and I choked.
+
+Old General Cochrane frowned thoughtfully. "Curious," was what he said.
+"It's psychology of course, but I'm hanged if I know the explanation.
+However, since it's so, my child, I'm glad. A man as old as I makes few
+new friends. And a beautiful young woman--with a brain--and charm--and
+innocent eyes--and French clothes!"
+
+One may guess if I tried to stop this description. I could have listened
+all night. With that:
+
+"'Did I know Kitchener!' the child asked," reflected the General, and
+threw back his splendid head and laughed. I stared up, my heart pumping.
+Then, "Well, rather. Why, little Miss Fox--" and he stopped. "I've a
+mind to tell the child a fairy-story," he said. "A true fairy-story
+which is so extraordinary that few have been found to believe it, even
+of those who saw it happen."
+
+He halted again.
+
+"Tell me!"
+
+General Coehrane looked about the roomful of people and tossed out his
+hand. "In this mob?" he objected. "It's too long a story in any case.
+But why shouldn't you and I have a séance, to let a garrulous old fellow
+talk about his youth?" he demanded in his lordly way. "Why not come out
+on the river in my boat? They'll let you play about with an
+octogenarian, won't they?"
+
+"I'll come," I answered the General eagerly.
+
+"Very good. Tomorrow. Oh, by George, no. That confounded Prime Minister
+comes down to me tomorrow. I detest old men," said General Cochrane.
+"Well, then, the day after?"
+
+The Thames was a picture-book river that day, gay with row-boats and
+punts and launches, yet serene for all its gaiety; slipping between
+grassy banks under immemorial trees with the air of a private stream
+wandering, protected, through an estate. The English have the gift above
+other nations of producing an atmosphere of leisure and seclusion, and
+surely there is no little river on earth so used and so unabused as the
+Thames. Of all the craft abroad that bright afternoon, General
+Cochrane's white launch with its gold line above the water and its
+gleaming brass trimmings was far and away the prettiest, and I was
+bursting with pride as we passed the rank and file on the stream and
+they looked at us admiringly. To be alive on such a day in England was
+something; to be afloat on the silvery Thames was enchantment; to be in
+that lovely boat with General Cochrane, the boy Donald Cochrane, was a
+rapture not to be believed without one's head reeling. Yet here it was
+happening, the thing I should look back upon fifty, sixty years from
+now, an old gray woman, and tell my grandchildren as the most
+interesting event of my life. It was happening, and I was enjoying every
+second, and not in the least awed into misery, as is often the case with
+great moments. For the old officer was as perfect a playmate as any
+good-for-nothing young subaltern in England, and that is putting it
+strongly.
+
+"Wouldn't it be nicer to land at Sonning and have our tea there?" he
+suggested. We were dropping through the lock just higher than the
+village; the wet, mossy walls were rising above us on both sides and the
+tops of the lock-keeper's gorgeous pink snapdragons were rapidly going
+out of sight. My host went on: "There's rather a nice rose-garden, and
+it's on the river, and the plum-cake's good. What do you think, that or
+on board?"
+
+"The rose-garden," I decided.
+
+Sonning is a village cut out of a book and pasted on the earth. It can't
+be true, it's so pretty. And the little White Hart Inn is adorable.
+
+"Is it really three hundred years old?" I asked. "The standard roses
+look like an illustration out of 'Alice in Wonderland.' Yes, please--tea
+in the White Hart garden."
+
+The old General heaved a sigh. "Thank Heaven," he said. "I was most
+awfully anxious for fear you'd say on the boat, and I didn't order any."
+
+We slipped under an arch of the ancient red bridge and were at the
+landing. I remember the scene as we stood on shore and looked down the
+shining way of the river, the tall grasses bending on either side like
+green fur stroked by the breeze; I remember the trim sea-wall and velvet
+lawn, and the low, long house with leaded windows of the place next the
+inn. A house-boat was moored to the shore below, white, with scarlet
+geraniums flowing the length of the upper deck, and willow chairs and
+tables; people were having tea up there; muslin curtains blew from the
+portholes below. Some Americans went past with two enormous Scotch
+deer-hound puppies on leash. "Be quiet, Jock," one of them said, and the
+big, gentle-faced beast turned on her with a giant, caressing bound, the
+last touch of beauty in the beautiful, quiet scene.
+
+It was early, so that we took the table which pleased us, one set a bit
+aside against a ten-foot hedge, and guarded by a tall bush of tea-roses.
+A plump maid hurried across the lawn and spread a cloth on our table and
+waited, smiling, as if seeing us had simply made her day perfect. And
+the General gave the orders.
+
+"The plum-cake is going to be wonderful," I said then, "and I'm hungry
+as a bear for tea. But the best thing I've been promised this afternoon
+is a fairy-story."
+
+The shrapnel look flashed, keen and bright and afire, but I looked back
+steadily, not afraid. I knew what sunlight was going to break; and it
+broke.
+
+"D'you know," said he, "I'm really quite mad to talk about myself. Men
+always are. You've heard the little tale of the man who said, 'Let's
+have a garden-party. Let's go out on the lawn and talk about me'? One
+becomes a frightful bore quite easily. So that I've made rules--I don't
+hector people about--about things I've been concerned with. As to the
+incident I said I'd tell you, that would be quite impossible to tell
+to--well, practically anyone."
+
+My circulatory system did a prance; he could tell it practically to no
+one, yet he was going to tell it to me! I instantly said that. "But
+you're going to tell it to me?" I was anxious.
+
+"Child, you flatter well," said the Marvelous Person, who had brought me
+picnicking. "It's the American touch; there's a way with American women
+quite irresistible."
+
+"Oh--American women!" I remonstrated.
+
+"Yes, indeed. They're delightful--you're witches, every mother's
+daughter of you. But you--ah--that's different, now. You and I, as we
+decided long ago, on day before yesterday, have a bond. I can't help the
+conviction that you're the hundred-thousandth person. You have
+understanding eyes. If I were a young man--And yet it's not just that;
+it's something a bit rarer. Moreover, they tell me there's a chap back
+in America."
+
+"Yes," I owned. "There is a chap." And I persisted: "I'm to have a
+fairy-story?"
+
+The black-lashed gaze narrowed as it traveled across the velvet turf and
+the tall roses, down the path of the quiet river. He had a fine head,
+thick-thatched and grizzled, not white; his nose was of the straight,
+short English type, slightly chopped up at the end--a good-looking nose;
+his mouth was wide and not chiseled, yet sensitive as well as strong;
+the jaw was powerful and the chin square with a marked dimple in it;
+there was also color, the claret and honey of English tanned
+complexions. Of course his eyes, with the exaggeratedly thick and long
+black lashes, were the wonderful part of him, but there is no
+describing the eyes. It was the look from them, probably, which made
+General Cochrane's face remarkable. I suppose it was partly that
+compelling look which had brought about his career. He was six feet
+four, lean and military, full of presence, altogether a conspicuously
+beautiful old lion in a land where every third man is beautiful.
+
+"What are you looking munitions-of-war at, General, down the innocent
+little Thames River? You must be seeing around corners, past Wargrave,
+as far as Henley."
+
+"I didn't see the Thames River," he shot at me in his masterful way. "I
+was looking at things past, and people dead and gone. We ancients do
+that. I saw London streets and crowds; I read the posters which told
+that Kitchener was drowned at sea, and then I saw, a year later, England
+in panic; I saw an almighty meeting in Trafalgar Square and I heard
+speeches which burned my ears--men urging Englishmen to surrender
+England and make terms with the Huns. Good God!" His fist came down on
+the rattling little iron table.
+
+"My blood boils now when I remember. Child," he demanded, "I can't see
+why your alluring ways should have set me talking. Fancy, I've never
+told this tale but twice, and I'm holding forth to a little alien whom I
+haven't known two days, a young ne'er-do-well not born till forty years
+after the tale happened!"
+
+"What difference does that make?" I asked. "Age means nothing to real
+people. And we've known each other since--since we hunted pterodactyls
+together, pre-historically. Only--I hate bats," I objected to my own
+arrangement. I went on: "If you knew how I want to hear! It's the most
+wonderful thing in my life, this afternoon--you."
+
+"I know you are honest," he said. "Different from the ruck. I knew that
+the moment I saw you."
+
+"Then," I prodded, "do begin with the posters about Lord Kitchener."
+
+"But that's not the beginning," he protested. "You'll spoil it all," he
+said.
+
+"Oh, no, then! Begin at the beginning. I didn't know. I wanted to get
+you started."
+
+The gray eyes dreamed down the placid river water.
+
+"The beginning was before I was born. It began when Kitchener, a young
+general, picked up a marauding party of black rascals on his way to
+Khartoum. They had a captive, a white girl, a lady. They had murdered
+her father and mother and young brother. The father was newly appointed
+Colonel of a regiment, traveling to his post with his family. The Arabs
+were saving the girl for their devilish head chieftain. Kitchener had
+the lot executed, and sent for the girl. She was--"
+
+The old man's hand lifted to his head and he took off his hat and laid
+it on the ground.
+
+"I cannot speak of that girl without uncovering," he said, quietly. "She
+was my mother." There was an electrical silence. I knew enough to know
+that no words fitted here. The old officer went on: "She was one of the
+wonderful people. What she seemed to think of, after the horrors she had
+gone through, was not herself or her suffering, but only to show her
+gratitude. It was a long journey--weeks--through that land of hell,
+while she was in Kitchener's hands, and not once did she lose courage.
+The Sirdar told me that it was having an angel in camp--she held that
+rough soldiery in the hollow of her hand. She told Kitchener her story,
+and after that she would not talk of herself. You've heard that he never
+had a love affair? That's wrong. He was in love then, and for the rest
+of his life, with my mother."
+
+I gasped. The shrapnel eyes menaced me.
+
+"She could not speak of herself, d'you see? It was salvation to think
+only of others, so that she'd not told him that she was engaged to my
+father. Love from any other was the last thing she was thinking of.
+After what had happened she was living from one breath to another and
+she dared not consider her own affairs. The night before they reached
+Cairo, Kitchener asked her to marry him. He was over forty then; she was
+nineteen. She told him of her engagement, of course--told him also that
+it might be she would never marry at all; a life of her own and
+happiness seemed impossible now. She might go into a sisterhood. Work
+for others was what she must have. Then, unexpectedly, my father was at
+Cairo to meet her, and Kitchener went to him and told him. From that on
+the two men were close friends. My people were not married till five
+years later, and when I came to be baptized General Kitchener was
+godfather. All my young days I was used to seeing him about the house at
+intervals, as if he belonged to us. I remember his eyes following my
+mother. Tall and slight she was, with a haunted look, from what she'd
+seen; she moved softly, spoke softly. It was no secret from the two, my
+father and mother, that he loved her always. Yet, so loyal, so crystal
+he was that my father had never one moment of jealousy. On the contrary
+they were like brothers. Then they died--my father and mother. The two
+almost together. I came into Kitchener's hands, Lord Kitchener by then.
+When he met me in London, a long lad of seventeen, he held my fingers a
+second and looked hard at me.
+
+"'You're very like her, Donald,' he said. And held on. And said it
+again. 'Your mother's double. I'd know you for her boy if I caught one
+look of your eyes, anywhere,' he said. 'Her boy.'--Well--what? Do I want
+more tea? Of course, I do."
+
+For the smiling plump maid had long ago brought the steaming stuff, the
+bread and butter and jam and plum cake, I had officiated and General
+Cochrane had been absorbing his tea as an Englishman does,
+automatically, while he talked.
+
+About us the tables were filling up, all over the rose-garden. The
+Americans were there with the beautiful long-legged giant deer-hound
+puppy, Jock, and were having trouble with his table manners. People came
+in by twos and threes and more, from the river, with the glow of
+exercise on their faces; an elderly country parson sat near,
+black-coated, white-collared, with his elderly daughter and their dog, a
+well-behaved Scottie this one, big-headed, with an age-old, wise, black
+face. And a group of three pretty girls with their pretty pink-cheeked
+mother and a young man or so were having a gay time with soft-voiced
+laughter and jokes, not far away. The breeze lifted the long purple and
+rose-colored motor veils of mother and daughters. The whole place was
+full of bright colors and low-toned cheerful talk, yet so English was
+the atmosphere, that it was as if the General and I were shut into an
+enchanted forest. No one looked at us, no one seemed to know we were
+there. The General began to talk again, unconscious as the rest of
+anything or anybody not his affair.
+
+"I got my commission in 1915 in K-1, Kitchener's first hundred thousand,
+and I went off to the front in the second year of the war. I had a
+scratch and was slightly gassed once, but nothing much happened for a
+long time. And in 1916, in May, came the news that my godfather, the
+person closest to me on earth, was drowned at sea. I was in London, just
+out of the hospital and about to go back to France."
+
+The old General stopped and stared down at the graveled path with its
+trim turf border lying at his feet.
+
+"It was to me as if the world, seething in its troubles, was suddenly
+empty--with that man gone. I drifted with the crowd about London town,
+and the crowd appeared to be like myself, dazed. The streets were full
+and there was continually a profound, sorrowful sound, like the groan of
+a nation; faces were blank and gray. Those surging, mournful London
+streets, and the look of the posters with great letters on them--his
+name--that memory isn't likely to leave me till I die. Of course, I got
+hold of every detail and tried to picture the manner of it to myself,
+but I couldn't get it that he was dead. Kitchener, the heart of the
+nation; I couldn't comprehend that he had stopped breathing. I couldn't
+get myself satisfied that I wasn't to see him again. It seemed there
+must be some way out. You'll remember, perhaps, that four boats were
+seen to put off from the _Hampshire_ as she sank? I tried to trace those
+boats. I traveled up there and interviewed people who had seen them. I
+got no good from it. But it kept coming to me that it was not a mine
+that had sunk the ship, that it was a torpedo from a German submarine,
+and that Kitchener was on one of the boats that put off and that he had
+been taken prisoner by the enemy. God knows why that thought
+persisted--there were reasons against it--it was a boy's theory. But it
+persisted; I couldn't get it out of my head. I was in St. Paul's at the
+Memorial Service; I heard the 'Last Post' played for him, and I saw the
+King and Queen in tears; all that didn't settle my mind. I went back to
+the front, heavy-hearted, and tried to behave myself as I believed he'd
+have had me--the Sirdar. My people had called him the Sirdar always.
+Luck was with me in France; I had chances, and did a bit of work, and
+got advancement."
+
+"I know," I nodded. "I've read history. A few trifles like the rescue of
+the rifles and holding that trench and--"
+
+The old soldier interrupted, looking thunderous. "It has a bearing on
+the episode I'm about to tell you. That's why I refer to it."
+
+I didn't mind his haughtiness. It was given me to see the boy's shyness
+within that grim old hero.
+
+"So that when I landed in London in 1917, having been stupid enough to
+get my right arm potted, it happened that my name was known. They picked
+me out to make a doing over. I was most uncommonly conspicuous for
+nothing more than thousands of other lads had done. They'd given their
+lives like water, thousands of them--it made me sick with shame, when I
+thought of those others, to have my name ringing through the land. But
+so it was, and it served a purpose, right enough, I saw later.
+
+"Then, as I began to crawl about, came the crisis of the war. Ill news
+piled on ill news; the army in France was down with an epidemic; each
+day's news was worse than the last; to top all, the Germans found the
+fleet. It was in letters a foot long about London--newsboys crying awful
+words:
+
+"'Fleet discovered--German submarines and Zeppelins approaching.'
+
+"A bit later, still worse. 'The _Bellerophon_ sunk by German
+torpedo--ten dreadnoughts sunk--' There were the names of the big ships,
+the _Queen Elizabeth_, the _Warspite_, the _Thunderer_, the
+_Agamemnon_, the _King Edward_--a lot more, battle cruisers, too--then
+ten more dreadnoughts--and more and worse every hour. The German navy
+was said to be coming into the North Sea and advancing to our coast. And
+our navy was going--gone--nothing to stand between us and the fate of
+Belgium.
+
+"Then England went mad! I thank God I'll not live through such days
+again. The land went mad with fear. You'll remember that there had been
+a three-year strain which human nerves were not meant to bear. Well,
+there was a faction who urged that the only sane act now possible was to
+surrender to Germany quickly and hope for a mercy which we couldn't get
+if we struggled. The government, under enormous pressure, weakened. It's
+easy to cry 'Shame!' now, but how could it stand firm with the country
+stampeding back of it?
+
+"So things were the day of the mass meeting in Trafalgar Square. I was
+tall, and so thin and gaunt that, with my uniform and my arm in its
+sling, it was easy to get close to the front, straight under the
+speakers. And no sooner had I got there than I was seized with a
+restlessness, an uncontrollable desire to see my godfather--Kitchener.
+Only to see him, to lay eyes on him. I wish I might express to you the
+push of that feeling. It was thirst in a desert. With that spell on me I
+stood down in front of the stone lions and stared up at Nelson on his
+column, and listened to the speakers. They were mad, quite, those
+speakers. The crowd was mad, too. It overflowed that great space, and
+there were few steady heads in the lot. You'll realize it looked a bit
+of a close shave, with the German navy coming and our fleet being
+destroyed, no one knew how fast, and the army in France, and struck down
+by illness. At that moment it looked a matter of three or four days
+before the Huns would be landing. Never before in a thousand years was
+England as near the finish. As I stood there fidgeting, with the
+starvation on me for my godfather, it flashed to me that there's a
+legend in every nation about some one of its heroes, how in the hour of
+need he will come back to save the people--Charlemagne in France, don't
+you know, and Barbarossa and King Arthur and--oh, a number. And I spoke
+aloud, so that the chap next prodded me in the ribs and said: 'Stop
+that, will you? I can't hear'--I spoke aloud and said:
+
+"'This is the hour. Come back and save us.'
+
+"The speakers had been ranting along, urging on the people to force the
+government to give in and make terms with those devils who'd crushed
+Belgium. Of course there were plenty there ready to die in the last
+ditch for honor and the country, but the mob was with the speakers.
+Quite insane with terror the mob was. And I spoke aloud to Kitchener,
+like a madman of a sort also, begging him to come from another world and
+save his people.
+
+"'This is the hour; come and save us,' said I, and said it as if my
+words could get through to Kitchener in eternity.
+
+"With that a taxicab forced through the crowd, close to the platform,
+and it stopped and somebody got out. I could see an officer's cap and
+the crowd pressing. My eyes were riveted on that brown cap; my breath
+came queerly; there was a murmur, a hush and a murmur together, where
+that tall officer with the cap over his face pushed toward the speakers.
+I felt I should choke if I didn't see him--and I couldn't see him. Then
+he made the platform, and before my eyes, before the eyes of twenty
+thousand people, he stood there--Kitchener!"
+
+General Cochrane stared defiantly at me. "I'm not asking you to believe
+this," he said. "I'm merely telling you--what happened."
+
+"Go on," I whispered.
+
+He went on: "A silence like death fell on that vast crowd. The voice of
+the speaker screaming out wild cowardice about mercy from the Germans
+kept on for a few words, and then the man caught the electrical
+atmosphere and was aware that something was happening. He halted
+half-way in a word, and turned and faced the grim, motionless
+figure--Kitchener. The man stared a half minute and shot his hands up
+and howled, and ran into the throng. All over the great place, by then,
+was a whisper swelling into a bass murmur, into a roar, his name.
+
+"'Kitchener--Kitchener!' and 'K. of K.!' and 'Kitchener of Khartoum!'
+
+"Never in my life have I heard a volume of sound like London shouting
+that day the name of Kitchener. After a time he lifted his hand and
+stood, deep-eyed and haggard, as the mass quieted. He spoke. I can't
+tell you what he said. I couldn't have told you the next hour. But he
+quieted us and lifted us, that crowd, fearstruck, sobbing, into courage.
+He put his own steady dignity into those cheap, frightened little
+Johnnies. He gave us strength even if the worst came, and he held up
+English pluck and doggedness for us to look at and to live by. As his
+voice stopped, as I stood down in front just under him, I flung up my
+arms, and I suppose I cried out something; I was but a lad of twenty,
+and half crazed with the joy of seeing him. And he swung forward a step
+to me as if he had seen me all the time--and I think he had. 'Do the
+turn, Donald,' he said, 'The time has come for a Cochrane to save
+England.'
+
+"And with that he wheeled and without a look to right or left, in his
+own swift, silent, shy way he was gone.
+
+"Nobody saw where he went. I all but killed myself for an hour trying to
+find him, but it was of no use. And with that, as I sat at my lunch, too
+feverish and stirred to eat food, demanding over and over what he meant,
+what the 'turn' was which I was to do, why a Cochrane should have a
+chance to save England--with that, suddenly I knew."
+
+General Cochrane halted again, and again he gazed down the little river,
+the river of England, the river which he, more than any other, had kept
+for English folk and their peaceful play-times. I knew I must not hurry
+him; I waited.
+
+"The thing came to me like lightning," he went on, "and I had only to go
+from one simple step to another; it seemed all thought out for me. It
+was something, don't you see, which I'd known all my lifetime, but
+hadn't once thought of since the war began. I went direct to my bankers
+and got a box out of the safe and fetched it home in a cab. There I
+opened it and took out papers and went over them.... This part of the
+tale is mostly in print," General Cochrane interrupted himself. "Have
+you read it? I don't want to bore you with repetitions."
+
+I answered hurriedly, trembling for fear I might say the wrong thing:
+"I've read what's in print, but your telling it puts it in another
+world. Please go on. Please don't shorten anything."
+
+The shadow of a smile played. "I rather like telling you a story, d'you
+know," he spoke, half absent-mindedly--his real thoughts were with that
+huge past. He swept back to it. "You know, of course, about Dundonald's
+Destroyer--the invention of my great-grandfather's kinsman, Thomas
+Cochrane, tenth Earl of Dundonald? He was a good bit of an old chap in
+various ways. He did things to the French fleet that put him as a naval
+officer in the class with Nelson and Drake. But he's remembered in
+history by his invention. It was a secret, of course, one of the puzzles
+of the time and of years after, up to 1917. It was known there was
+something. He offered it to the government in 1811, and the government
+appointed a committee to examine into it. The chairman was the Duke of
+York, commander-in-chief of the army, said to be the ablest
+administrator of military affairs of that time. Also there were Admirals
+Lord Keith and Exmouth and the Congreve brothers of the ordnance
+department. A more competent committee of five could not have been
+gathered in the world. This board would not recommend the adoption of
+the scheme. Why? They reported that there was no question that the
+invention would do all which Dundonald claimed, but it was so
+unspeakably dreadful as to be impossible for civilized men.
+
+"There was not a shadow of doubt, the committee reported, that
+Dundonald's device would not merely defeat but annihilate and sweep out
+of existence any hostile force, whole armies and navies. 'No power on
+earth could stand against it,' said the old fellow, and the five experts
+backed him up. But they considered that the devastation would be inhuman
+beyond permissible warfare. Not war, annihilation. In fact, they shelved
+it because it was too efficient. There was great need of means for
+fighting Napoleon just then, so they gave it up reluctantly, but it was
+a bit too shocking.
+
+"The weak point of the business was, as Dundonald himself declared, that
+it was so simple--as everybody knows now--that its first use would tell
+the secret and put it in the hands of other nations. Therefore the
+committee recommended that this incipient destruction should be stowed
+away and kept secret, so that no power more unscrupulous than England
+should get it and use it for the annihilation of England and the
+conquest of the world. Also the committee persuaded the Earl before he
+went on his South American adventure to swear formally that he would
+never disclose his device except in the service of England. He kept that
+oath.
+
+"Well, the formula for this affair was, of course, in pigeonholes or
+vaults in the British Admiralty ever since the committee in 1811 had
+examined and refused it. But there was also, unknown to the public,
+another copy. The Earl was with my great-grandfather, his kinsman and
+lifelong friend, shortly before his death, and he gave this copy to him
+with certain conditions. The old chap had an ungovernable temper,
+quarreled right and left, don't you know, his life long, and at this
+time and until he died he was not on speaking terms with his son Thomas,
+who succeeded him as Earl, or indeed with any of the three other sons.
+Which accounts for his trusting to my great-grandfather the future of
+his invention. I found a quaint note with the papers. He said in effect
+that he had come to believe with the committee that it was quite too
+shocking for decent folk. Yet, he suggested, the time might come when
+England was in straits and only a sweeping blow could serve her. If that
+time should come it would be a joy to him in heaven or in hell--he
+said--to think that a man of his name had used the work of his brains to
+save England.
+
+"Therefore, the Earl asked my grandfather to guard this gigantic secret
+and to see to it that one man in each generation of Cochranes should
+know it and have it at hand for use in an emergency. My grandfather came
+into the papers when he came of age, and after him my father; I was due
+to read them when I should be twenty-one. I was only twenty in 1917. But
+the papers were mine, and from the moment it flashed to me what
+Kitchener meant I didn't hesitate. It was this enormous power which was
+placed suddenly in the hands of a lad of twenty. The Sirdar placed it
+there.
+
+"I went over the business in an hour--it was simple, like most big
+things. You know what it was, of course; everybody knows now. Wasn't it
+extraordinary that in five thousand years of fighting no one ever hit on
+it before? I rushed to the War Office.
+
+"Well, the thing came off. At first they pooh-poohed me as an unbalanced
+boy, but they looked up the documents in the Admiralty and there was no
+question. It isn't often a youngster is called into the councils of the
+government, and I've wondered since how I held my own. I've come to
+believe that I was merely a body for Kitchener's spirit. I was conscious
+of no fatigue, no uncertainty. I did things as the Sirdar might have
+done them, and it appears to me only decent to realize that he did do
+them, and not I. You probably know the details."
+
+I waited, hoping that he would not stop. Then I said: "I know that the
+government asked for twenty-five volunteers for a service which would
+destroy the German fleet, but which would mean almost certain death to
+the volunteers. I know that you headed the list and that thousands
+offered." My voice shook and I spoke with difficulty as I realized to
+whom I was speaking. "I know that you were the only one who came back
+alive, and that you were barely saved."
+
+General Cochrane seemed not to hear me. He was living over enormous
+events.
+
+"It was a bright morning in the North Sea," he talked on, but not to me
+now. "Nobody but ourselves knew just what was to be done, but everybody
+hoped--they didn't know what. It was a desperate England from which we
+sailed away. We hadn't long to wait--the second morning. There were
+their ships, the triumphant long lines of the invader. There were their
+crowded transports, the soldiers coming to crucify England as they had
+crucified Belgium--thousands and tens of thousands of them. Then--we
+did it. German power was wiped off the face of the earth. German
+arrogance was ended for all time. And that was the last I knew," said
+General Cochrane. "I was conscious till it was known that the trick had
+worked. Of course it couldn't be otherwise, yet it was so beyond
+anything which mankind had dreamed that I couldn't believe it till I
+knew. Then, naturally, I didn't much care if I lived or died. I'd done
+the turn as the Sirdar told me, and one life was a small thing to pay. I
+dropped into blackness quite happily, and when I woke up to this good
+earth I was glad. England was right. The Sirdar had saved her."
+
+"And the Sirdar?" I asked him. "Was it--himself?"
+
+"Himself? Most certainly."
+
+"I mean--well--" I stammered. And then I plunged in. "I must know," I
+said. "Was it Lord Kitchener in flesh and blood? Had he been a prisoner
+in Germany and escaped? Or was it--his ghost?"
+
+The old lion rubbed his cheek consideringly. "Ah, there you have me,"
+and he smiled. "Didn't I tell you this was a tale which could be told to
+few people?" he demanded. "'Flesh and blood'--ah, that's what I can't
+tell you. But--himself? Those people, the immense crowd which saw him
+and recognized him, they knew. Afterwards they begged the question. The
+papers were full of a remarkable speech made by an unknown officer who
+strikingly resembled Kitchener. That's the way they got out of it. But
+those people knew, that day. There wasn't any doubt in their minds when
+that roar of his name went up. They knew! But people are ashamed to own
+to the supernatural. And yet it's all around us," mused General
+Cochrane.
+
+"Could it have been--did you ever think--" I began, and dared not go on.
+
+"Did I ever think what, child?" repeated the old officer, with his
+autocratic friendliness. "Out with it. You and I are having a
+truth-feast."
+
+"Well, then," I said, "if you won't be angry--"
+
+"I won't. Come along."
+
+"Did you ever think that it might have been that--you were only a boy,
+and wounded and weak and overstrained--and full of longing for your
+godfather. Did you ever think that you might have mistaken the likeness
+of the officer for Kitchener himself? That the thought of Dundonald's
+Destroyer was working in your mind before, and that it materialized at
+that moment and you--imagined the words he said. Perhaps imagined them
+afterwards, as you searched for him over London. The two things might
+have suggested each other in your feverish boy's brain."
+
+I stopped, frightened, fearful that he might think me not appreciative
+of the honor he had done me in telling this intimate experience. But
+General Cochrane was in no wise disturbed.
+
+"Yes, I've thought that," he answered dispassionately. "It may be that
+was the case. And yet--I can't see it. That thing happened to me. I've
+not been able to explain it away to my own satisfaction. I've not been
+able to believe otherwise than that the Sirdar, England's hero, came to
+save England in her peril, and that he did it by breathing his thought
+into me. His spirit got across somehow from over there--to me. I was the
+only available person alive. The copy in the archives was buried, dead
+and buried and forgotten for seventy years. So he did it--that way. And
+if your explanation is the right one it isn't so much less wonderful, is
+it?" he demanded. "In these days psychology dares say more than in 1917.
+One knows that ghost stories, as they called them in those ignorant
+times, are not all superstition and imagination. One knows that a soul
+lives beyond the present, that a soul sometimes struggles back from what
+we call the hereafter to this little earth--makes the difficult
+connection between an unseen world of spirit, unconditioned by matter,
+and our present world of spirit, conditioned by matter. When the pull is
+strong enough. And what pull could be stronger than England's danger? To
+Kitchener?" The black-lashed, gray eyes flamed at me, unblinking the
+rift of light through the curtain of eternal silences.
+
+When I spoke again: "It's a story the world ought to own some day," I
+said. "Love of country, faithfulness that death could not hinder."
+
+"Well," said old General Cochrane, "when I'm gone you may write it for
+the world if you like, little American. And what I'll do will be to find
+the Sirdar, the very first instant I'm over the border, and say to him,
+'I've known it was your work all along, sir, and however did you get it
+across?'"
+
+A month ago my cousin sent me some marked newspapers. General Cochrane
+has gone over the border, and I make no doubt that before now he has
+found the Sirdar and that the two sons and saviors of a beloved little
+land on a little planet have talked over that moment, in the leisures
+and simplicities of eternity, and have wondered perhaps that anyone
+could wonder how he got it across.
+
+
+
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