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Page 44
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."
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