<p>A letter came next day from camp,
and the next, and every day for a
week, and she pulled herself together
and went about her busy hours minute
by minute cheerfully, as one
must. She disregarded the fact that
inside of her an odd mental-moral-spiritual-physical
arrangement which
is called a heart lay quite defenseless,
and that shortly a dagger was going
to be struck into it. So when the dagger
came, folded in a yellow Western
Union envelope, it was exactly as bad
as if there had been no preparation at
all. Dick had sailed. She spun about
and caught at a table. And then went
on quietly with the five hundred little
cheese-cloth “sponges” which she
had promised to have at the Red
Cross rooms to-morrow. Ghastly little
things. So the boy went, one of
two million to go, but yet, as most of
the others were, the only one. And
two weeks later, it might be, came
another telegram; a queerly worded
thing from the war office:</p>
<p>“The ship on which I sailed has arrived
safely in port.”</p>
<p>What ship? What port? After
what adventures? But the great fact
remained; he was, at least, overseas,
beyond the first great peril. She flung
herself into war work and wrote
every day a letter with its vague
military address ending in A. E. F.
And got back many letters full of enthusiasm,
of adventure, of old friends
and new, of dear French people who
had been good to him—but everybody
was good to this boy. Of hard
training, too, and a word of praise
from high quarters once or twice,
passed on secretly, proudly to the one
person to whom a fellow could repeat
such things. It was a life crowded
with happiness and hardship and
comradeship and worth-while work.
And then, soon, with danger. Through
all sordidness and horror it was a life
vitalized by enormous incentive, a
life whose memory few of those who
lived it would give up for everything
else that any career might offer. The
power of these gay, commonplace,
consecrated boys’ lives reached across
oceans and swung nations into consecration.
Dick’s mother moved gladly
in the huge orbit, for war work meant
to her Dick. The days went. He was
in action at times now, and wrote
that his life was a charmed one, and
that he walked safe through dangers;
wrote also the pitiful bit of statistics
which boys all told to their mothers,
about the small percentage of killed
and wounded; wrote as well the
heroic sweet thoughts which came
from depths of young souls which had
never before known these depths.</p>
<p>“If I’m killed, darling child, honey,
after all it’s not much different. It
wouldn’t be really long before we’d
be playing together again. And I’ve
had the joy and the usefulness of
fifty years of living in these last
months. What more could you ask?
The best thing to do with a life is to
give it away—you taught me that—and
this certainly is the best way to
give it, for our America. And don’t
worry about my suffering if I’m
wounded; there’s not much to that.
Things hurt and you stand it—that
happens in every life—and we wiggle
and get through. It hurt like the
dickens when I had pneumonia, don’t
you remember? So, behold the
straight dope of the wise man Dick,
and follow thereby. Nothing can happen
that’s unbearable; keep it in your
mind, precious. Live on the surface—don’t
go feeling any more than you
can help.”</p>
<p>Thousands of others found the
sense of that sentence a way out of
impossibility, as this woman did. She
slept nights and worked days and
wrote letters and rejoiced in getting
them, and shunned like poison
thoughts that thronged below the
threshold, thoughts she dared not
meet. Weeks wore on, months; the
Germans were being pushed back;
with a shivering joy she heard people
say that the war could not last
long; he might—he might come home
safe. She knew as that shaft of golden
hope winged across her brain, from
the reeling rapture of it she knew how
little hope she had ever had. But she
whispered Dick’s wise sentence once
in a while, “Nothing can happen
that’s unbearable,” and she held her
head high for Dick. Then the one
thing which had never entered her
mind happened. Dick was reported
among the missing.</p>
<p>Missing.</p>
<p>Let any mother of a boy consider
what that means. Anything. Everything.
“Nothing can happen that’s
unbearable,” said Dick. But this was.
A woman can’t stay sane and face
that word “missing”—can she? This
woman gasped that question of herself.
Yet she must stay sane, for Dick
might come back. Oh, he might even
come back safe and sound. They did
come through prison camps—sometimes—and
get back to health. Prison
camps. She fell to remembering
about nights when she had crept into
his room to see that he was covered
up. Mines. But that thought she
could not think. And the difficult
days crawled on, and no news came
and no more gay letters, with their
little half-sentences of love-making,
shining like jewels out of the pages,
pages each one more valuable than
heaps of gold. No letters; no news;
swiftly and steadily her fair hair was
going gray. The Armistice arrived,
and then, after a while, troops were
coming home. Because Dick would
have wanted it, because she herself
must honor these glorious lads who
were, each one, somehow partly Dick,
she threw herself into the greetings,
and many a boy was made happy
and welcome by the slim, tall, still-young
woman with the startling
white hair, who knew so well what to
say to a chap. Outwardly all her ways
stayed the same. No one of her friends
noticed a difference except that
sometimes one would say: “I wonder
what keeps her going? Does she hope
yet that Dick may come back?”
Surely she hoped it. She would not
wear black. Till certainty came she
must hope. Still, little by little, as
drop by drop her heart’s blood
leaked, she was coming to believe
him dead; coming nearly to hope it.
At the same time in the tortured, unresting
brain, the brain that held so
large an area of mysticism from Irish
forbears, in that cave of weaving
thoughts there was still hope of a
miracle. The child next door, Lynnette,
not realizing to what a dangerous
borderland of sanity she was urging
desperate footsteps, helped her
frame her vague theory of comfort.</p>
<p>“Nothing is sure yet. They don’t
begin to know about all the missing,”
argued Lynnette, dark eyes shining.
“Dick may have been carried to the
ends of the earth; he may not know
even now that the war is over. He’s
so strong, nothing could—could hurt
him,” stammered Lynnette, and went
scarlet with a stab of knowledge of
things, things that even Dick’s splendid
body could not weather.</p>
<p>“Miracles do happen. Do you know,
Lynnette, it’s as if somebody whispered
that to me over and over. ‘Miracles
do happen—miracles do happen.’
My brain aches with that sentence.”
She was still a moment. “I
saw what you were thinking. Of the—otherwise.
I can’t face the—otherwise.”
Her voice thinned to a whisper.
“It’s worse than death, any
possible otherwise, now. When all the
prisoners are freed and all the soldiers
are coming—home. Lynnette—I
hope he’s dead.”</p>
<p>The girl tossed up a hand.</p>
<p>“Yes, child. But suffering—I can’t
have him suffering—long pain. It
can’t be. Oh, God, don’t let it be
that!”</p>
<p>Lynnette’s brown head dropped on
the woman’s two hands and she
kissed them with passion.</p>
<p>“I’ve got another thought, honey-child,
and I’ll try to tell you, but it’s
complicated.” She was silent again,
reviewing the waves of the ocean of
her theory. The aching, unending
thoughts had been busy with this
theory. Harmlessly, unnoticed, the
mind overwrought had been developing
a mania. Peace. Had her boy, had
all the boys, died for nothing? They
went, the marching hundreds of
thousands, with an ideal; no one who
talked to any number of soldiers of
our armies could fail to know that
latent in practically all was an unashamed
idealism. The roughest specimen
would look you in the eye and—spitting
first likely—make amazing
statements about saving the world,
about showing ’em if Americans
would fight for their flag, about paying
our debt to France, and, yes—in
a quiet, matter-of-fact way—about
dying for his country.</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse outdent">“To every man a different meaning, yet</div>
<div class="verse">Faith to the thing that set him at his best,</div>
<div class="verse">Something above the blood and dirt and sweat,</div>
<div class="verse">Something apart. May God forget the rest.”</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p>The woman, appealing and winning,
had seen this side of the enlisted man
more than most; she had brooded over
it, and over what was due to four millions
of boys giving themselves to
save the peace of the world. Shouldn’t
peace, after such sacrifice, be assured?
Should the great burnt offering
fail? Should the war-to-end-war
lead to other wars? God forbid.
By infinite little links she came to tie
her boy’s coming home to the coming
of world peace. What more typical of
America could there be than Dick?
An enlisted man—she rejoiced in
that now; of the educated classes, but
representing the rank and file as well
as the brains and gentle blood of this
land; not too poor, yet not rich; in
his youth and strength and forthgoing
power the visible spirit of a
young, strong, eager country. She
put all this into halting yet clear
enough words to the girl.</p>
<p>“I see,” Lynnette picked up the
thread. “Dick is America. He’s a
symbol. Nobody else could combine
so many elements as Dick.”</p>
<p>“I think you understand. It’s wonderful
to be able to tell it to some one
who understands. It has eaten my
soul.” She breathed fast. “Listen—this
is what, somehow, I believe, and
nothing could change my belief. Dick
is going to bring peace to his country
and to the world. God has chosen
<i>him</i>—Dick. Alive or dead his coming
will mean—peace. Peace!” The visions
of many generations of mystic
Gaels were in her eyes as they lifted
and gazed out at the branches which
swayed slowly, hypnotically across a
pale sky. The girl’s twisting hands
holding hers, she went on to unroll
the fabric which had woven itself on
the unresting loom of her brain, a
fabric which was, judged by a medical
standard, madness. The chain of
crooked logic was after this fashion:
America was the nation to bring at
the last peace; Dick was the typical
American; with his home-coming
peace would come home to the country,
and so to the world. Till Dick
came home there could be no surety,
no rest for the flag which he served.
Other women died or went mad; this
one alone, perhaps, fashioned her sorrow
into a vigil for the salvation of
her land.</p>
<p>Then one day Lynnette flew across
the lawn and stood before her.
“You’ve seen the paper?”</p>
<p>“I went to the Red Cross early. I
haven’t read it.” Her pulse stopped.
“Lynnette! Not—Dick?”</p>
<p>“Oh, no—oh, no!” Lynnette went
crimson painfully. Another girl would
have had her arms around the woman,
but not this one. To show feeling
was like pulling teeth to Lynnette.
“It’s not that,” she said. “But—there’s
to be a peace conference. You
know. And they want to bring back
for us at that time, Armistice Day, an
unknown soldier.”</p>
<p>“The two things.” Yes—the two
things. What could the two things
mean but her vision, her hope for the
world. Dick was coming. He was to be
the unknown soldier. Dick was coming,
carrying peace in his dead hands.
Who else could it be? People, mere
people, could not see how that was
fitting and inevitable; but she saw it;
she knew it; God would take care of
it. The unknown soldier would be
Dick. He would bring, mystically,
certainly, success to the gathering in
Washington. And the Lord God
would give her a sign. Each day she
rose hoping the sign might be that
day. Each night she lay down sure of
its coming, willing to wait.</p>
<p>“Lynnette, I’ll wear—those clothes,
now.”</p>
<p>And when the girl came across the
lawn and found her a few days later
in new black, with the dramatic gold
star on her arm, Lynnette dropped
suddenly in a heap.</p>
<p>“Oh,” the woman cried. “You
hadn’t given up hope.” And then:
“Lynnette—you loved Dicky, too.”</p>
<p>With that Lynnette was standing
before her, her head high, a trembling
smile on her face. “I always loved
him. And now I may tell you—he
loved me.” The woman stared.
“Yes,” Lynnette said. “I didn’t
dream it till that last morning, when
he ran across—and he kissed me.
He’d never kissed me before. It—it
wasn’t just a little kiss to—an old
playmate.” The words came difficultly.
“It—would be impossible to
tell it except to you. But it was—a
long kiss. He—didn’t say anything.
I’ve thought it over and over and
I think he—believed he shouldn’t.
Somehow. But that kiss—said it.
For me. I know Dick—loved me.”</p>
<p>The woman caught the small figure
so that the wet eyes could not see her.</p>
<p>“My Lynnette!” Never on earth
should the child know the true story
of Dick’s kiss.</p>
<p>Then it was November and she
went to Washington. It meant saving
money for months, but there was
no question; the journey was as inevitable
as death. Likely the Lord
waited in Washington with that sign
which she would know when it came.
Many American women are tall and
slender, with lines of distinction; this
was one of them. In her sombre dress
with sheer white at neck and wrists,
with the shadowy veil falling and
lifting about her shoulders and accenting
her white hair, with her lithe
young movement, and with that
touch of mysticism, of other-worldness
in eyes that shone jewel-gray
from a carved face, she was an arresting
person. In great Washington,
packed with all human sorts, people
turned to look at her.</p>
<p>“The gold star! The black—the
veil! What a face of tragedy!” Such
things they said; more than once a
man’s hand crept to his hat, and he
stood bareheaded as she passed, as
before the dead. But she who had
lived for three years facing an unthinkable
word drifted through the
crowd unconscious, uncaring.</p>
<p>A newspaper had printed a composite
photograph of twenty-nine
young soldiers, one from each of the
combat divisions in France, and at
breakfast in the hotel a woman whom
she had never seen stepped across and
laid it, the picture folded out, by her
plate.</p>
<p>“It’s your boy, too,” the woman
spoke gently, and was gone.</p>
<p>Dick’s mother stared at the vague,
lovely face of an uncommonly handsome
lad, dreamy, deep-eyed, steady-mouthed,
a face rather short from
brow to chin, with a wide facial arch
between the cheek-bones—such as
was Dick’s face. The sweet extreme
of youth was like Dick, but a certain
haunting, ethereal quality was not
like him; yet, even so might her boy
look at her through the veil of another
world. There was in fact a
manner of likeness, and to the woman
whose soul was at white heat the
likeness was the voice of Heaven saying
“Amen” to her possessing
thought. Yet this was not the sign.
She would know that when it came.
This was but an incident, making
sure faith surer.</p>
<p>All the steps of his journey home
she had watched Dick—the Unknown.
When the papers had told
how Sergeant Younger, over there in
France at Châlons-sur-Marne, on
October 24th, would be sent into a
room of the city hall alone, to choose
one of four nameless dead boys lying,
each so helpless to plead his cause, in
four earth-stained coffins, she had
known well, even then, which one.
Over Dick’s quiet heart the Sergeant
would lay the white roses. The
French town decked with the colors
of the Allies; troops about the city
hall; an American flag at half-mast;
an unseen band playing on muffled
trumpets—all this while the Sergeant
walked slowly through the still room
where the dead boys waited, and
walked slowly back and turned and
went to the farthest on the right.
Dick. He bent and laid down the
white French roses—over Dick. She
was sorry about the other boys, yet
Dick meant all of them. It was ordered.
Dick was the Peace Bringer.
She read how the inscription carried
the words: “An Unknown American
who gave his life in the
World War.” She smiled a little to
think how she alone in the world
knew the Unknown; how among
more than two thousand unidentified
soldiers buried on the battlefields
where they fell, chosen by
chance so that even the field where he
had fallen might never be placed—she
smiled to think how through this
mist of circumstance she knew Dick.
The woman was mad, it might have
been said, had any one known her
full thought; who among us, with
imagination, but hides a small corner
of madness from the world?</p>
<p>Flower-heaped, carrying the cross of
the Legion of Honor, moving like
the mightiest king through weeping
throngs, Dick came to the gray old
cruiser <i>Olympia</i>, where Dewey had
once said: “You may fire now, Gridley,
if you are ready.” And they carried
him on board, and a General
was his escort home, and a guard of
his comrades stood about him day
and night as he slept among the flags,
his faded French roses above his
breast. The cruiser had steamed out
from Havre through dipped flags and
firing guns, and all the way across the
Atlantic she was saluted by all ships
large and small which sailed within
vision. Because she carried Dick.
With that it was November 9th and
a raw, foggy, rainy day, but the
woman went out from city noises, in
the wet, where it was quiet, to listen
for something. After a while she
heard it—a far boom of guns—salutes
to the <i>Olympia</i> as she came
slowly up the Potomac. The fog hid
her, but fort after fort, post after
post, took up the tale and thundered
its solemn welcome to the nation’s
dead boy. The boy’s mother was at
the Navy Yard when the ship swung
into dock. She saw the crew, standing
high up, in dark-blue lines, stiff, at
attention; astern, under the muzzle
of a gun that had rung into history
that May morning in Manila Bay,
was an awning; beneath it something
flag-draped—Dick. The woman shook
in a tearless sob. Dick. What was it
all—all the glory that the nations,
that America could heap on him,
when—ah, Dick! She seemed to see
his eyes and the deep look in them as
he turned by the tulip-bed and kissed
his hands to her—as the Cloudless
Sulphurs stormed up from the clover
around his blond head. Dick! Her
little, laughing Dick—her big, loving
Dick. Then she was aware of a
gun crashing, a band playing a dirge—the
gun crashing again into the
music; it was the “minute-guns of
sorrow” they were firing. And then
suddenly—a shrill sound and a heart-stirring—as
they lifted the coffin to
the gangway, the boatswain, in the
old ceremony of the sea, “piped his
comrade over the side.” Step by
slow step they carried the lad down
and the boatswain’s whistle called
piercingly again as Dick, high on the
shoulders of eight uniformed men,
reached shore. Dick was home. The
coffin wound between the lines of
troops and marines, toward the gun-carriage,
and the rigid young bluejackets
far above watched still at attention,
and with that a bugler blew
flourishes and the band broke into
the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the nation’s
hymn. And still the minute-guns
crashed through. And packed
thousands of plain American citizens
waited bareheaded for hours in the
cold rain to see this beloved boy of
America carried by.</p>
<p>Many people remarked the slender,
tall woman in her billowy black veil
with the gold star on her arm. Some
spoke of her. “A wonderful face,”
they said, and: “Her eyes are burning
her up.” And more than one
thought: “Who knows? It may be
her boy.”</p>
<p>After that she stood hour after hour
in a shadowy doorway of a large
chamber and watched a marvellous
procession file past, four abreast.
Hour after hour. Without ceasing
they came; it was as if the country
poured itself out in one draft of
love. Sometimes a group halted and
there was a short ceremony. She saw
the President place the silver shield
with its forty-eight gold stars; she
saw the Boy Scouts, fresh-faced,
sturdy lads such as Dick had been
five or six years ago, form and recite
their oath by Dick’s coffin; she saw
the embassies of England, of France,
and Italy bring wreaths for Dick;
she saw the ancient Indian fighters,
led by General Miles, and the Belgians
with their palm, and the old
man of ninety-one who wore his old
Victoria Cross, and Pershing, laying
down his wreath and stepping back to
salute his soldier, and the Chinese
and the Japanese with their antique
bowing, and the white-turbaned Hindus,
and ever and ever the plain
Americans in their thousands, “his
own people from every nook of the
nation, who gave him his reward.”</p>
<p>The short gray day faded and night
came and still the crowds poured, and
Dick’s mother stood, still, unconscious
of fatigue, and saw, as in a
dream, the pageant, till the last ones
allowed to come in had passed out
and the swaying woman in black
went also, and the boy was alone with
his guard of five comrades, “his head
eastward toward France and at his
feet the twinkling lights of Washington.”
Far above him on the great
dome of the Capitol the brooding
figure of Freedom, his comrade also,
watched.</p>
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