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Page 46
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.
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