Joy in the Morning Part 14

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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 att.i.tude 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 hards.h.i.+ps, 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 ma.s.s 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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! G.o.d 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 G.o.d! 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. n.o.body 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!"