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Page 43
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."
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