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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
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+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #66502 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66502)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Yellow Butterflies, by Mary Raymond
-Shipman Andrews
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: Yellow Butterflies
-
-Author: Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
-
-Release Date: October 9, 2021 [eBook #66502]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: paracelsus8 and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
-             https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
-             generously made available by The Internet Archive)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YELLOW BUTTERFLIES ***
-
-
-
-
-
-_BY MARY R. S. ANDREWS_
-
-
-JOY IN THE MORNING
-
-THE ETERNAL FEMININE
-
-AUGUST FIRST
-
-THE ETERNAL MASCULINE
-
-THE MILITANTS
-
-BOB AND THE GUIDES
-
-CROSSES OF WAR (Poems)
-
-YELLOW BUTTERFLIES
-
-HIS SOUL GOES MARCHING ON
-
-HER COUNTRY
-
-OLD GLORY
-
-THE COUNSEL ASSIGNED
-
-THE COURAGE OF THE COMMONPLACE
-
-THE LIFTED BANDAGE
-
-THE PERFECT TRIBUTE
-
-
-_CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS_
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW BUTTERFLIES
-
-
-  BY
-  Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
-
-
-  “An Unknown American who
-  gave his life in the World War.”
-
-
-  NEW YORK
-  Charles Scribner’s Sons
-  1922
-
-
-
-
-  COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
-  CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
-
-
-COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO.
-
-
-Printed in the United States of America
-
-
-Published December, 1922
-
-
-
-
-  THIS STORY IS DEDICATED TO
-  THOSE AMERICANS WHO GAVE
-  IN THE GREAT WAR EVEN MORE
-  THAN LIFE--TO THE BLINDED
-
-
-
-
-NOTE
-
-
-Throughout this story there are sentences and paragraphs quoted, taken
-bodily from a press account of the coming of the American Unknown
-Soldier. If other sentences or phrases occur for which proper credit
-has not been given, it is because the story-teller’s mind was so
-saturated with the beauty of this account that its wording seemed the
-inevitable form.
-
-For such borrowed grace the writer offers grateful acknowledgment to
-the young reporter who, given what is surely the most thrilling episode
-in all history to write about, has made what has been well-called “the
-finest bit of newspaper work ever done.” Acknowledgment and thanks to
-Mr. Kirk Simpson.
-
-  MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS.
-
-
-
-
-YELLOW BUTTERFLIES
-
-
-Out from the door of the house burst the laughing, shouting little lad.
-He raced across the grass and halted by the tulip-bed; there, with yet
-more shouts of full-throated baby laughter, he turned to look back at
-his young mother, racing after him, standing now in the doorway. His
-head was yellow as a flower, almost as yellow as the tulips, and the
-spun-silk, glittering hair of five years old curled tight in a manner
-of aureole. As the girl gazed at him, glorying in him, suddenly the sun
-came brilliantly from under a cloud, and, as if at a signal, out of the
-clover-patch at the edge of the lawn stormed a myriad of butterflies
-and floated about the golden head.
-
-“Oh, the butterflies take you for a flower, Dicky,” cried the girl.
-
-The little chap stood quite still, smiling and blinking through the
-winged sunshine, and then, behold, three or four of the lovely things
-fluttered down on his head. The young woman flashed out and caught him
-and hugged him till he squealed lustily.
-
-“Don’t, muvver,” remonstrated Dicky. “You’ll scare my ’ittle birds.
-They ’ike us, muvver.”
-
-“It’s good luck to have a butterfly light on you,” she informed him,
-and then, in a flash of some unplaced memory, with the quick mysticism
-of her Irish blood: “A butterfly is the symbol of immortality.”
-
-“’Esh,” agreed Dicky gravely. “’Esh a ’sympum--” and there he lost
-himself, and threw back his head and roared rich laughter at the droll
-long word.
-
-“It must have looked pretty,” the boy’s father agreed that night. “I
-wonder what sort they were. I used to collect them. There’s a book--”
-He went to the shelves and searched. “This is it.” There were pages
-here and there of colored pictures. “No. 2,” he read, and pointed to
-a list. “The Cloudless Sulphur. Were they solid yellow?” He turned
-a page. “‘The Cloudless Sulphur,’” he began reading aloud. “‘Large,
-two and a half inches. Wings uniform bright canary color. Likely to
-light on yellow flowers; social; it flies in masses and congregates
-on flowers. Habit of migrating in flocks from Southeast to Northwest
-in the spring and from Northwest to Southeast in the autumn. Food,
-cassia, etc. Family, Pieridæ.’ That’s the fellow,” decided the boy’s
-father, learned in butterflies. “A Pierid. ‘Many butterflies hide under
-clover,’” he read along, “‘and down in grasses--pass the nights there.
-Some sorts only come out freely in sunshine.’ Didn’t you say the sun
-came?”
-
-“All at once. They flew up then as if at a command.” She nodded.
-“That’s exactly the creature. And where it says about lighting on
-flowers of the same color--they did take Dicky’s head for a flower,
-didn’t they, Tom?”
-
-“It certainly seems as if they did.” The man smiled. “Kentucky is
-likely on the line of their spring migration Northwesterly. I reckon
-Dicky’s friends are the Cloudless Sulphur.”
-
-Dicky’s father died when the boy was eleven. The years ran on. Life
-adjusted itself as life must, and the child grew, as that other Child
-twenty centuries back, in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and
-man. There might have been more boys in America as upstanding in body
-and character, as loving and clever and strong and merry, as beautiful
-within and without as her boy, the woman considered, but she had never
-seen one. His very faults were dear human qualities which made him more
-adorable. With his tenderness and his roughness, his teachableness and
-his stubbornness, his terror of sentiment and his gusts of heavenly
-sweet love-making, the boy satisfied her to the end of her soul.
-Buoyancy found her again, and youth, and the joy of an uphill road with
-this gay, strong comrade keeping step along it. Then the war came. All
-his life she had missed no chance to make her citizen first of all
-things an American. And now that carefully fed flame of patriotism
-flamed to cover all America.
-
-“We must go in, mother. Gosh! it’s only decent. We could bring peace.
-We must go in,” he raged. He was too young to go across and he raged
-more at his youth. His mother gloried in and shivered at his rage. At
-last America was in, and the boy, who had trained in his university,
-could not fling himself fast enough into the service. The woman, as
-hundreds of thousands of other American women, was no slacker. There
-was a jingle in the papers:
-
-    “America, he is my only one,
-     My hope, my pride, and joy;
-     But if I had another
-     He should march beside his brother,
-     America, here’s my boy!”
-
-The jingle hit straight at armies of women in those days.
-
-No officers’ training-camp for Dick; he would go as an enlisted man
-with the rank and file of American men.
-
-“But you’re officer material,” complained his mother. “Aren’t you
-wasting power that the country may need?”
-
-“If I can win shoulder-bars, honey, hooray!” said Dick. “Otherwise, me
-for a dough-boy.”
-
-So as a dough-boy he went to Camp Meade, but in three months wore the
-stripes of a sergeant. Radiant, he tumbled in at home a week later,
-such a joyful lad that he sputtered ecstasy and slang. Tremendous he
-looked in his uniform, fresh colored from cold barracks and constant
-exercise and in an undreamed pink of condition.
-
-“I never considered you a delicate person,” the woman spoke up to the
-six feet two of him, “but now you’re overpowering, you’re beefy.”
-
-“Couldn’t kill me with an axe,” assented Dick cheerfully, and back in
-her brain a hideous, unformed thought stirred, of things that were not
-axes, that could kill easily even this magnificent young strength.
-
-They were as gay together as if all the training and the uniform and
-the stir and panoply of war were merely a new and rather thrilling
-game. She saw to it that there were theatres and dances and girls
-doing, and the lad threw himself into everything with, however, a
-delicious grumble after each party:
-
-“I don’t get a chance to see you at all.” That was music.
-
-And then the short, gay leave was done and Dick back at Meade again.
-The winter months went, with letters thickly coming and going. And late
-in May he wrote that he had leave once more for two days, and instantly
-he was there. There was no word as to what the sudden leave meant, but
-they knew. When it was possible our soldiers due to sail were given
-this short flying visit to their homes. Transports were going all the
-time now; great ship followed great ship till it seemed as if the
-Atlantic must be brown with khaki. And not the nearest of any must know
-when his time was, for this was one bit of the national patriotism, to
-guard the knowledge of sailing ships from the enemy. So the boy told
-nothing, but his eyes embraced her with a burning word unspoken. And
-her eyes met them with certain knowledge.
-
-“Let’s cut out the girls and balls this time,” he said. And one day,
-apropos of nothing: “You’re a peach.”
-
-She smiled back cheerfully as women were smiling at boys all over the
-United States at that date. “I couldn’t bear it if you weren’t in the
-service,” she said.
-
-In a few minutes--it appeared--the two days were over. “Run across
-for one second and say good-by to Lynnette,” she suggested, when the
-racing hours were within three of their end. Lynnette was the girl next
-door who had grown up in the shadow of Dick’s bigness, a little thing
-two years younger, shy and blunt and not just a pretty girl, but with
-luminous eyes and a heart of gold. Dick had to be prodded a bit to be
-nice to Lynnette.
-
-“I don’t want to miss one second of you, honey,” he objected.
-
-“Don’t you dare stay over a second. But a glimpse would mean a lot to
-her, and she’s a darling to me.”
-
-“Oh, all right,” agreed Dick. “Because she’s a darling to you--” and he
-swung off.
-
-“Dick--” as he sprang from the gallery. He turned. “Kiss her good-by,
-Dick.”
-
-“What sort of a mother----!”
-
-“She’ll object, but she’ll like it.”
-
-“You little devil,” Dick chuckled, “can’t you let a fellow handle his
-own kissing?” And started again, easy, elastic, made of sliding muscles.
-
-“Oh, Dick!” called his mother once more, and once more the brown figure
-halted. “Now, then, woman?”
-
-“Don’t peck, Dick; kiss her a thorough one.”
-
-Dick’s laughter rang across the little place. The echo of that big
-laughter in the woman was not a quickened pulse of gladness as it had
-been all his days; a sick aching answered the beloved sound, and the
-stab of a thought--would ever Dick laugh across the garden again? With
-that he was back, grinning.
-
-“I did it,” stated Dick. “It’s not often a chap’s commanding officer
-sends him out with orders for a kissing attack, so I put my elbows into
-it and made a good job. She’s kissed to pieces.”
-
-“Dick!”
-
-“Well, now! It’ll teach you to go careful how you start a man on them
-tricks. Lynnette’s a worthy child, but I’d never have thought of
-kissing her. Yet it wasn’t so bad. Rather subtle.” He licked his lips
-tentatively.
-
-“Dicky! Vulgar, vulgar boy!”
-
-“You know, I believe she did like it,” confided Dick.
-
-Then very soon, in the middle of the sunshiny, warm morning he went.
-In the hall, where they had raced and played games long ago, she told
-him good-by, doing a difficult best to give him cheer and courage to
-remember, not heart-break. Something helped her unexpectedly, reaction,
-maybe, of a chord overstrained; likely the good Lord ordered it; His
-hand reaches into queer brain-twists. She said small, silly things that
-made the boy laugh, till at last the towering figure was upon her and
-she was crushed into khaki, with his expert rifleman’s badge digging
-into her forehead. She was glad of the hurt. The small defenses had
-gone down and she knew that only high Heaven could get her through the
-next five seconds with a proper record as a brave man’s mother. In five
-seconds he turned and fled, and with a leap was through the door. Gone!
-She tossed out her arms as if shot, and fled after him. Already he was
-across the lawn, by the tulip-bed, and suddenly he wheeled at the patch
-of color and his visored cap was off, and he was kissing his hand with
-the deep glow in his eyes she had seen often lately. It was as if the
-soul of him came close to the windows and looked out at her. His blond
-hair in the sunlight was almost as yellow as on that other day long ago
-when--What was this? Up from the clover in the ditch, filling all the
-air with fluttering gold, stormed again a flight of yellow butterflies,
-the Cloudless Sulphur on their spring migration. The boy as he stood
-looking back at her shouted young laughter and the winged things
-glittered about him, and with that two lighted on his head.
-
-“Good luck! It’s for good luck, mother,” he called.
-
-She watched, smiling determinedly, dwelling on details, the uniform,
-the folds of brown wool puttees, the bronze shine on his shoes, the
-gold spots of light flickering about his head. He wheeled, stumbling
-a bit, and then the light feet sprang away; there was no Dick there
-now, only a glimmering, moving cloud of yellow--meaningless. The
-tulip-bed--sunshine--butterflies--silence. The world was empty. She
-clutched at her chest as if this sudden, sick, dropping away of life
-were physical. His triumphant last word came back to her, “It’s for
-good luck, mother”; then other words followed, words which she had
-spoken years ago.
-
-“And for immortality.”
-
-Immortality! She beat her hands against the wall. Not Dick--not her
-boy--her one thing. Not immortality for him, yet. Not for years and
-years--fifty--sixty. He had a right to long, sweet mortal life before
-that terrible immortality. She wanted him mortal, close, the flesh and
-blood which she knew. It was not to be borne, this sending him away
-to--Oh, God! The thousands on thousands of strong young things like
-Dick who had already passed to that horrible, unknown immortality. The
-word meant to her then only death, only a frantic terror; the subtle,
-underlying, enormous hope of it missed her in the black hour.
-
-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:
-
-“The ship on which I sailed has arrived safely in port.”
-
-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.
-
-“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.”
-
-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.
-
-Missing.
-
-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.
-
-“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.
-
-“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.”
-
-The girl tossed up a hand.
-
-“Yes, child. But suffering--I can’t have him suffering--long pain. It
-can’t be. Oh, God, don’t let it be that!”
-
-Lynnette’s brown head dropped on the woman’s two hands and she kissed
-them with passion.
-
-“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.
-
-    “To every man a different meaning, yet
-     Faith to the thing that set him at his best,
-     Something above the blood and dirt and sweat,
-     Something apart. May God forget the rest.”
-
-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.
-
-“I see,” Lynnette picked up the thread. “Dick is America. He’s a
-symbol. Nobody else could combine so many elements as Dick.”
-
-“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 _him_--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.
-
-Then one day Lynnette flew across the lawn and stood before her.
-“You’ve seen the paper?”
-
-“I went to the Red Cross early. I haven’t read it.” Her pulse stopped.
-“Lynnette! Not--Dick?”
-
-“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.”
-
-“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.
-
-“Lynnette, I’ll wear--those clothes, now.”
-
-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.
-
-“Oh,” the woman cried. “You hadn’t given up hope.” And then:
-“Lynnette--you loved Dicky, too.”
-
-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.”
-
-The woman caught the small figure so that the wet eyes could not see
-her. “My Lynnette!” Never on earth should the child know the true story
-of Dick’s kiss.
-
-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.
-
-“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.
-
-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.
-
-“It’s your boy, too,” the woman spoke gently, and was gone.
-
-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.
-
-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?
-
-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 _Olympia_, 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 _Olympia_ 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.
-
-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.”
-
-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.”
-
-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.
-
-Shortly after daylight next morning the tramp of marching men and
-clatter of hoofs and grinding of wheels before the Capitol told that
-the greatest parade of American history was forming, and the khaki
-tide rolled into ordered ranks. The woman saw this beginning, very
-early in the morning. She was there before the bugle sounded attention
-across the plaza and the cavalrymen snapped out their sabres and the
-infantrymen came to present and the officers to salute and the colors
-were dipped--and the sun sent a beam to Freedom on the dome and another
-to a casket moving through the doorway. She saw it carried down the
-long steps by the bravest of the brave, all decorated men, and placed
-on the black-draped caisson with its black horses, and its soldiers sat
-on their scarlet saddle-cloths. She saw that, and she saw the President
-and “Black Jack” Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the A. E. F.,
-following as chief mourners--Pershing wearing, of all his decorations,
-only the Victory Medal to which every American soldier has a right--the
-caisson where lay--Dick. She saw the crowds dense up Pennsylvania
-Avenue, the historic road “where the tramping ghosts of Grant’s legions
-marked a course.” She saw the silent, attentive thousands who packed
-the sidewalks, standing there to take their part in what was theirs,
-the glory of the American people. “Out in the broad avenue was a
-simple soldier, dead for the honor of the flag. In France he had died
-as Americans have always been ready to die, for the flag and what it
-meant.” The woman saw the massed, reverent faces, and read this in them.
-
-“It’s Dick,” she said.
-
-Later, not remembering very much how she had come, she found herself
-at Arlington, at the Amphitheatre, with yet more thousands. There
-were bright colors of foreign dress uniforms and masses of khaki and
-light and shadow and the snowy gleam of columns against a background
-of trees. Later there was distant, solemn music through the trees.
-From the direction of the fort the dim color of troops came nearer and
-nearer, clearer and clearer; the marine band, half-step to the throb
-of drums, swung out and circled the colonnade. The caisson rolled up
-where a white-surpliced choir waited, and men in uniform with medals
-on their breasts lifted Dick, and the choir sang “The Son of God
-Goes Forth to War.” They carried him past the troops with rifles at
-“present,” past the bareheaded people, through the pillared colonnade,
-with the white choir and the clergy leading them, the great of many
-lands awaiting him. They placed him on a catafalque, flower-covered,
-and the great audience, all the thousands, rose and stood as he passed
-in--Dick--with Pershing still following, Pershing who had trudged seven
-miles from the Capitol behind his soldier.
-
-The coffin rested on its base as if held up by a mound of
-blossoms--and suddenly the woman felt stabbed with a knife, a frantic,
-unbearable feeling. Her boy lay there with no sign of her near him. The
-nation had heaped him with honor, but Dick would not be satisfied with
-the nation, missing his mother. In her hand was a bunch of roses; she
-wondered where she had gotten them, and vaguely recalled a florist’s
-shop on the way out. She sprang toward a guard, a soldier, and the man
-stared at her as people did.
-
-“Put these--put these--right close to him,” she begged in sliding
-Southern speech. “He’s--he’s my boy.” The soldier little guessed how
-literal the words were to her, but they went direct to his heart. A boy
-of hers lay in France; this one stood for him; so he understood it.
-“Yes, ma’am,” he said gently.
-
-He took the flowers and went away with them and in a moment she saw
-them laid on the coffin, their white heads against a gorgeous wreath of
-red roses. The President’s red roses--but the woman did not know that.
-The man came back then and found her a place in one of the first rows
-of the curving line of seats where were only men and women in black.
-
-The mighty service went on. The woman going through it with the others
-seemed aware of it through another’s senses, as if she were removed
-where her consciousness could not make contact with anything earthly.
-This was Dick’s funeral, but she was not sad. Only fused to a hazy
-exaltation. Maybe Dick’s light-hearted spirit was there, hovering
-over all this and lifting her spirit with him. In any case her flowers
-lay close to him, clinging whitely against that blood-red wreath.
-They must be, she was guessing, just above where the withered little
-French roses rested still on Dick’s dear cold heart. To see them there
-brought a manner of comfort to her. And the service went on. As Bishop
-Brent’s voice ended, the bells over in Washington were ringing noon,
-and sharply the clear, high notes of a trumpeter blew attention. She
-stood up with the thousands, the millions, the nation. For the nation
-paused during two minutes then to honor--Dick. All over America, in
-churches, in marketplaces, on railway lines, the rushing life of the
-country stopped and the populace stood silent with bowed heads for
-that tremendous moment, honoring the men who had died.
-
-Then it was over; a minute-gun boomed across the river at the base of
-the Washington Monument; led by the band the stirred multitude swung
-into “America.”
-
-“My country, ’tis of thee,” the people sang. And the woman sang with
-them. She could; she was dry-eyed and calm; this was Dick’s funeral,
-her little boy Dick, her splendid, big son. Yet she seemed to feel
-nothing. The Lord God was going to give her a sign that it was Dick.
-She was anxious about that. Certain, yes, of course; but a sign was
-to come. Nervousness caught her as the President began to speak; she
-wished the Lord God would hurry; it would do at any time, surely, yet
-this strain of waiting was difficult. It was hard to listen to the
-President while one was watching every moment for the sign. And with
-that his voice had slipped into words as familiar as her own name,
-words which she had taught to Dick.
-
-“Our Father which art in Heaven----”
-
-There was a soft, many-rustling sound of thousands rising, and all the
-voices took up the age-old words:
-
-“Hallowed be Thy Name--Thy will be done.”
-
-Yes, indeed. The Lord God knew that she had bowed to His will, even as
-to that word “missing.” She supposed it was His will. She had borne it,
-somehow. But now that Dick was dead, and carried home all these miles,
-bringing peace in his quiet hands, _now_ the Lord God ought to give her
-the sign. He ought, really. With that a quartet was singing something
-about how
-
-    “Splendid they passed, the great surrender made
-     Into the light that nevermore shall fade.”
-
-Oh, yes. But one doesn’t care so much about splendor and unfading
-light--when one misses Dick. The comforting thing was that Dick was to
-bring peace--peace forever. He would care about that; that would make
-him glad. And there was going to be a sign that this boy, this Unknown
-Soldier coming from his grave in France at the very moment of the Peace
-Conference--that this boy was Dick. How could she be otherwise than
-restless till the sign came?
-
-Back of the carved, calm face in which the gray Irish eyes glowed such
-thoughts were seething. Lawyers weighing evidence would hardly have
-found her argument valid. The desperate brain which made them more than
-half knew the sophistry. But the brain _was_ desperate. One cannot face
-the word “missing” for many months and keep coolly logical. This was
-the last straw to hold her to sanity--that Dick was the Peace Bringer;
-that this boy was Dick. These things she must believe. Must.
-
-Quietly she gazed as minute by splendid minute passed, each crowded
-with such things as America has never seen before. She watched an
-officer in uniform, a “Sam Browne” belt across his breast, step
-forward. What were they going to do now? The officer shifted the
-flowers toward the foot, and she gasped as the President’s great red
-wreath was moved; her roses were next; it was too bad to take her
-roses away from Dick. But see--they were left. The officer touched
-them, and left them; the little sheaf was not in the way. But what
-was going to happen? He rolled back the flag with its heavy gold
-fringe, and with that the President stood there and was reading
-something--citations--reverently, in his incisive voice; then he bent
-and pinned two precious things to the black cloth of the coffin--the
-Distinguished Service Cross and that which Americans believe the
-highest decoration in the world, the Congressional Medal of Honor. How
-pleased Dick would have been!
-
-“Won in mortality to be worn in immortality,” spoke the President.
-
-Was Dick’s gay spirit maybe even now hovering, watching it all, smiling
-the sweet, half-shy, one-sided smile she knew, laughing at himself
-a bit for being the centre of this stupendous ceremony? In quick
-succession one brilliant uniform succeeded another by the narrow box,
-each fastening to the black cloth an honor which men have died to win.
-Something contracted her throat with a short sob when General Jacques,
-the Belgian, unpinned from his own coat the Cross of War which his King
-had put there and placed it on Dick’s coffin. And was not that Foch who
-swept off his white-plumed Marshal’s hat before the presence of--Dick?
-How Dick would have taken in the scarlet baldric, the gold sash, and
-red trousers! Dick had an enormous enthusiasm for Foch; once he had
-seen him--a solemn old fellow in a faded horizon-blue uniform and very
-muddy boots, the letter said. Smoking a pipe.
-
-Medal after medal; such an array as the greatest soldier on earth had
-never worn. They rolled back the flag over it all till the judgment
-day, and Sergeant Woodfill and the seven other heroes lifted Dick
-again and carried him down the marble steps. The band was playing “Our
-Honored Dead”; she raised her eyes and saw the city across the river;
-the dome of the Capitol under which Dick had slept last night; where
-only dead Presidents had ever slept before; nearer was the yellow of
-ploughed Virginia fields and the green of winter wheat; about them the
-snowy white of the great Amphitheatre, and directly beneath the boy
-as they carried him around was “a great splash of black--thousands
-of Americans with hats held in their hands.” Between these and the
-Amphitheatre was a white place with a hole in it. Dick’s grave. She
-moved dreamily toward that place, and people stood back for the black,
-lonely figure with its gold star. Unconscious of them, she passed till
-she was close enough to see everything.
-
-“It will be now, I think,” she was saying. “The Lord God will send His
-sign when they put Dick----”
-
-The rest of the words couldn’t be framed. Of course Dick’s soul wasn’t
-there; it was somewhere about, above, close--much interested and a good
-deal amused as well as thrilled; she felt that. This was only Dick’s
-body they were putting away covered with medals and flowers, laid on
-that priceless earth brought from France, scattered down for him to
-rest on. It was only his body. But such a precious, dear body; it had
-been so warm and strong--Oh, God! She alone out of the thousands knew
-that it was Dick, and even she--The Lord God certainly was slow about
-sending His sign.
-
-The beautiful church service was read; Dick’s soul was committed to
-God and his body to the grave. Some one touched a silver bar and the
-coffin sank slowly; a man in uniform placed a final wreath--from all
-the men of all our fighting armies. Then an old Indian in magnificence
-of chief’s feathers hobbled up and took off his sweeping war-bonnet,
-whose white feathers trailed to his moccasins, and laid it with a sort
-of stick across the open tomb. It was the last tribute. The warrior
-of ancient America saluted America’s warrior of to-day. A salvo of
-artillery. Another salvo--and another. The woman stared about. Dick
-would bivouac to-night in great company. All around him were monuments
-cut with names that were echoes of thunder of guns. There lay Porter
-and Crook; yonder lay Dewey. The slope carries along innumerable
-headstones; over the ridge are the grass ramparts of old Fort Myer,
-graves thick about them; she sensed these things as the guns rang the
-salvoes.
-
-The guns had stopped; a bugler, standing out, was playing “Taps”--the
-soldier’s good night. With the final silver note the artillery broke
-into the roar of the national salute of twenty-one guns. The crowds
-moved, shifted, thinned. The bright uniforms scattered and disappeared.
-But the tall, black figure stood there, conscious of the people only
-as a swimmer in deep water is conscious of the waves. She was in them,
-of them, but they had no personality for her. Slowly the huge audience
-spread away through the trees. The pageant was over. The pageant--what
-matter was that? Dick; Dick was dead and buried, and she stood by the
-grave of an Unknown Soldier and reproached God. He had sent her no
-sign that this boy was hers. Down among the new white crosses in the
-cemetery below moved figures; there are always figures moving among
-those crosses--but the woman felt herself alone. All the pomp and
-ceremony being finished, she was alone with her boy. She knelt near the
-new grave; the black veil blew about her, covering and uncovering the
-gold star on her sleeve.
-
-“God,” she whispered, “bless the men to-morrow who are trying to bring
-peace. I don’t know whether they know that it’s Dick who’s bringing it
-or not. I don’t care. I know, God, and You know. Only let Dick be the
-Peace Bringer, and let an American speak the master word. I thought the
-sign would be to-day, but I’ll be patient if it isn’t to be to-day.
-But, mighty God, don’t fail me in the end. You know how I couldn’t bear
-that. It means having Dick again--ever--somehow--I can’t say it well,
-but you’re God and You know how those things are tied together. Peace
-and Dick’s immortality and the sign. Be merciful; give it to me.”
-
-A week later in Kentucky blunt little Lynnette was reasoning with her.
-“You can’t expect to set a date with the Almighty,” reasoned Lynnette.
-“I think it will come--I do think so, though I don’t know why I think
-it. Only that such a longing as yours focussed on one thing must be
-a psychological force. And, whatever God is, He does answer prayer
-somehow.”
-
-“Yes, He does,” said the woman. “Wasn’t Hughes’ word sent straight
-as lightning from heaven? It came the day after the funeral--Dick’s
-funeral. It came out of Dick’s tomb. I can’t help believing the good
-Lord did plan, along with the salvation of the nations, to make Dick
-His Peace Bringer.” She waited a moment, eyes glowing with deep light.
-Then: “‘Whatsoever ye ask in My name, believing, ye shall receive it.’”
-A thousand times she had repeated that.
-
-Lynnette nodded practically. “Uh-huh, that says it. God certainly did
-stir up Hughes when he got off that proposition. Why shouldn’t we
-believe it was partly, anyhow, the huge emotion of the Unknown Soldier
-that pushed him? The sign may come in some shape you’re not dreaming.
-Likely it will--but it’ll come. I’m sure.”
-
-“I can’t imagine in what shape--that terrifies me at times. It seems so
-impossible. And if it shouldn’t come!”
-
-“You mustn’t think that,” rebuked Lynnette. “It depends so much on
-psychology, and your will may be a big part. You don’t have to imagine
-what it will be. Yet I--do imagine things.”
-
-“You do? What?”
-
-“Oh, well,” Lynnette answered slowly, “nothing definite. Sometimes I
-fancy that the identity wasn’t lost to everybody, over in France. That
-maybe the soldiers who--who brought the four boys from the cemeteries
-found something to mark them, or one of them, and just said nothing
-about it. Maybe one of those soldiers might come to you. Why,” exploded
-Lynnette, “two or three times when I’ve seen a young, military-looking
-chap coming down this street my heart has been in my mouth. I’ve said:
-‘He’s the sign.’”
-
-“You have?” cried the woman. And then, with her arms reaching: “You
-little Lynnette! You loved Dick.”
-
-Lynnette nodded. “And Dick--loved me,” she whispered.
-
-She sprang up, and was gone. Outside she stopped a moment, staring at
-the sodden, round spot, half filled with snow, which had been a bed of
-dancing tulips.
-
-“I wonder if it’s a crime,” she reflected. “The engine skips. There’s
-no logic anywhere. But she’d go raving mad. And I love her.” Little,
-aggressive Lynnette flushed all by herself. “Dick left me, in a sort
-of way, to his mother. He said: ‘Be sweet to her, Lynnette.’ Well,”
-Lynnette ended defiantly, “I reckon I can lie a good while longer, if
-it helps her.”
-
-It is queer, considering what a small accident and what a second of
-time may end a life, that so many lives weather appalling shocks and
-years of heart-break. The woman, going softly with an ear alert always
-to catch a message, found that winter was past and spring coming in
-overnight jumps to her Southern land. With it the restlessness of
-spring crystallized into an overwhelming necessity to see the white
-tomb at Arlington. It was imperative, that desire. There was no money
-for travelling expenses, but some old mahogany went to a dealer, and
-on an April day she started. Spring comes easily in the South. It is
-much as if the lover you doubted turned all at once his face toward
-you lighted with the fire unmistakable, and you wondered in the warm
-flood of happiness if ever you did doubt. So in the turn of a hand
-in that God’s country there are vivid colors of tulips and jonquils
-and hyacinths--gold and purple and pink--and the hedges are dim with
-mists of juicy color, and the lawns have sprung to emerald, and the
-sunlight stipples the ground with gold laughter through the lace of
-boughs. And one wonders if ever there was melting snow and cold wind.
-Out at Arlington the sunlight played gaily on the headstones among the
-trees, dancing about the solemn things as if to say that, after all,
-life is only a moment; that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s
-country, and that these light-hearted dead should be kept in bright
-memory. Till it came to the snow of the Amphitheatre and the white
-tomb on the terrace, and there the sunlight seemed to pour itself
-out in full-hearted golden tide. Dreamily, mystically, smilingly it
-wrapped in its arms the grave of America’s boy. All about the tomb
-the grass seemed greener, and the air of a richer sweetness. Fold on
-fold the calm hills dropped away to the Virginia horizon; the mast
-of the _Maine_ brought from Havana shot its slender spire beyond the
-Amphitheatre; the old house of history, the pillared, porticoed house
-of the Lees, peered out from the woods like a big, gentle, dumb
-creature, watching in its old age its family who had fought and come
-through to Peace.
-
-The woman scattered a quantity of yellow tulips on the grave till it
-was all golden with them. “God,” she prayed, kneeling close--closer
-than she could be in November--“God, I’ve come such a long way. I’ve
-waited such a long time. Only You can give what I’ve come for. I want
-it so. Give me Your sign.” A long time the black figure knelt amidst
-the whiteness and greenness and spring gaiety. Many things she prayed,
-and at the last for power to give up hope. For there was yet no sign.
-Perhaps there never would be. Sobbing a little, she bent and kissed the
-yellow tulips, and turned to go.
-
-As she drifted away step by step suddenly the bells over in Washington
-were ringing the noon-hour, and she faced about, remembering. As she
-turned, up from the grass below, over the white edge of the terrace,
-stormed a fluttering mass of bright wings, and filled all the air
-with beckoning gold. A moment they hung, twinkling over the tomb, and
-then fell, brilliant, incredible, and lighted on the gold cups of the
-tulips, and flickering, dancing, gathered the sunlight into their
-myriad wings.
-
-The Cloudless Sulphurs; Dick’s butterflies; the symbol of immortality.
-The sign.
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Note
-
-No corrections were made to the text as printed. While original
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-domain in the country of publication.
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-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Yellow Butterflies, by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews</p>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
-at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
-country where you are located before using this eBook.
-</div>
-
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Yellow Butterflies</p>
-  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: October 9, 2021 [eBook #66502]</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
-  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: paracelsus8 and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YELLOW BUTTERFLIES ***</div>
-
-
-
-
-<div class="figcenter illowp46" id="cover" style="max-width: 141.375em;">
-  <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-
-<p class="center p140"><b><i>BY MARY R. S. ANDREWS</i></b></p>
-
-
-<div style="text-align: center;">
-    <div style="display: inline-block; text-align: left;">
-
-<p><b>JOY IN THE MORNING</b></p>
-
-<p><b>THE ETERNAL FEMININE</b></p>
-
-<p><b>AUGUST FIRST</b></p>
-
-<p><b>THE ETERNAL MASCULINE</b></p>
-
-<p><b>THE MILITANTS</b></p>
-
-<p><b>BOB AND THE GUIDES</b></p>
-
-<p><b>CROSSES OF WAR (Poems)</b></p>
-
-<p><b>YELLOW BUTTERFLIES</b></p>
-
-<p><b>HIS SOUL GOES MARCHING ON</b></p>
-
-<p><b>HER COUNTRY</b></p>
-
-<p><b>OLD GLORY</b></p>
-
-<p><b>THE COUNSEL ASSIGNED</b></p>
-
-<p><b>THE COURAGE OF THE COMMONPLACE</b></p>
-
-<p><b>THE LIFTED BANDAGE</b></p>
-
-<p><b>THE PERFECT TRIBUTE</b></p>
-</div></div>
-
-
-<p class="center p140"><i><b>CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS</b></i></p>
-
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-
-
-<h1 class="break-before">YELLOW BUTTERFLIES<br/></h1>
-<p class="center p140"><b>BY</b><br/>
-Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews</p>
-
-
-
-<p class="center mt5">“An Unknown American who<br/>
-gave his life in the World War.”</p>
-
-
-
-<p class="center p140 mt5">NEW YORK<br/>
-Charles Scribner’s Sons<br/>
-1922
-</p>
-
-
-
-<hr class="full"/>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1922, by</span><br/>
-CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS</p>
-<hr class="r5"/>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1922, by</span> THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO.</p>
-<hr class="r5"/>
-<p class="center">Printed in the United States of America</p>
-<hr class="r5"/>
-<p class="center">Published December, 1922</p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i006.png" alt="Colophon" style="width: 10em;"/>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-
-<hr class="full"/>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p class="center"><b>THIS STORY IS DEDICATED TO<br/>
-THOSE AMERICANS WHO GAVE<br/>
-IN THE GREAT WAR EVEN MORE<br/>
-THAN LIFE&mdash;TO THE BLINDED</b>
-</p></div>
-
-
-
-<hr class="full"/>
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="NOTE">NOTE</h2>
-
-
-<p>Throughout this story there are sentences
-and paragraphs quoted, taken
-bodily from a press account of the coming
-of the American Unknown Soldier.
-If other sentences or phrases occur for
-which proper credit has not been given,
-it is because the story-teller’s mind was
-so saturated with the beauty of this account
-that its wording seemed the inevitable
-form.</p>
-
-<p>For such borrowed grace the writer
-offers grateful acknowledgment to the
-young reporter who, given what is surely
-the most thrilling episode in all history
-to write about, has made what has
-been well-called “the finest bit of newspaper
-work ever done.” Acknowledgment
-and thanks to Mr. Kirk Simpson.</p>
-
-<p>
-<span class="smcap">&emsp;Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews.</span>
-</p>
-</div>
-
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-
-
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 id="YELLOW_BUTTERFLIES">YELLOW BUTTERFLIES</h2>
-
-
-<p>Out from the door of the house
-burst the laughing, shouting
-little lad. He raced across the
-grass and halted by the tulip-bed;
-there, with yet more shouts of full-throated
-baby laughter, he turned to
-look back at his young mother, racing
-after him, standing now in the
-doorway. His head was yellow as a
-flower, almost as yellow as the tulips,
-and the spun-silk, glittering hair of
-five years old curled tight in a manner
-of aureole. As the girl gazed at
-him, glorying in him, suddenly the
-sun came brilliantly from under a
-cloud, and, as if at a signal, out of the
-clover-patch at the edge of the lawn
-stormed a myriad of butterflies and
-floated about the golden head.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, the butterflies take you for a
-flower, Dicky,” cried the girl.</p>
-
-<p>The little chap stood quite still,
-smiling and blinking through the
-winged sunshine, and then, behold,
-three or four of the lovely things
-fluttered down on his head. The
-young woman flashed out and caught
-him and hugged him till he squealed
-lustily.</p>
-
-<p>“Don’t, muvver,” remonstrated
-Dicky. “You’ll scare my ’ittle birds.
-They ’ike us, muvver.”</p>
-
-<p>“It’s good luck to have a butterfly
-light on you,” she informed him, and
-then, in a flash of some unplaced
-memory, with the quick mysticism of
-her Irish blood: “A butterfly is the
-symbol of immortality.”</p>
-
-<p>“’Esh,” agreed Dicky gravely.
-“’Esh a ’sympum&mdash;” and there he
-lost himself, and threw back his head
-and roared rich laughter at the droll
-long word.</p>
-
-<p>“It must have looked pretty,” the
-boy’s father agreed that night. “I
-wonder what sort they were. I used
-to collect them. There’s a book&mdash;”
-He went to the shelves and searched.
-“This is it.” There were pages here
-and there of colored pictures. “No.
-2,” he read, and pointed to a list.
-“The Cloudless Sulphur. Were they
-solid yellow?” He turned a page.
-“‘The Cloudless Sulphur,’” he began
-reading aloud. “‘Large, two and
-a half inches. Wings uniform bright
-canary color. Likely to light on yellow
-flowers; social; it flies in masses
-and congregates on flowers. Habit of
-migrating in flocks from Southeast
-to Northwest in the spring and from
-Northwest to Southeast in the autumn.
-Food, cassia, etc. Family,
-Pieridæ.’ That’s the fellow,” decided
-the boy’s father, learned in butterflies.
-“A Pierid. ‘Many butterflies
-hide under clover,’” he read along,
-“‘and down in grasses&mdash;pass the
-nights there. Some sorts only come
-out freely in sunshine.’ Didn’t you
-say the sun came?”</p>
-
-<p>“All at once. They flew up then
-as if at a command.” She nodded.
-“That’s exactly the creature. And
-where it says about lighting on flowers
-of the same color&mdash;they did take
-Dicky’s head for a flower, didn’t
-they, Tom?”</p>
-
-<p>“It certainly seems as if they did.”
-The man smiled. “Kentucky is likely
-on the line of their spring migration
-Northwesterly. I reckon Dicky’s
-friends are the Cloudless Sulphur.”</p>
-
-<p>Dicky’s father died when the boy
-was eleven. The years ran on. Life
-adjusted itself as life must, and the
-child grew, as that other Child twenty
-centuries back, in wisdom and stature
-and in favor with God and man.
-There might have been more boys in
-America as upstanding in body and
-character, as loving and clever and
-strong and merry, as beautiful within
-and without as her boy, the woman
-considered, but she had never seen
-one. His very faults were dear human
-qualities which made him more
-adorable. With his tenderness and
-his roughness, his teachableness and
-his stubbornness, his terror of sentiment
-and his gusts of heavenly sweet
-love-making, the boy satisfied her to
-the end of her soul. Buoyancy found
-her again, and youth, and the joy of
-an uphill road with this gay, strong
-comrade keeping step along it. Then
-the war came. All his life she had
-missed no chance to make her citizen
-first of all things an American. And
-now that carefully fed flame of patriotism
-flamed to cover all America.</p>
-
-<p>“We must go in, mother. Gosh!
-it’s only decent. We could bring
-peace. We must go in,” he raged. He
-was too young to go across and he
-raged more at his youth. His mother
-gloried in and shivered at his rage.
-At last America was in, and the boy,
-who had trained in his university,
-could not fling himself fast enough
-into the service. The woman, as hundreds
-of thousands of other American
-women, was no slacker. There was a
-jingle in the papers:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse outdent">“America, he is my only one,</div>
-<div class="verse">My hope, my pride, and joy;</div>
-<div class="verse">But if I had another</div>
-<div class="verse">He should march beside his brother,</div>
-<div class="verse">America, here’s my boy!”</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>The jingle hit straight at armies of
-women in those days.</p>
-
-<p>No officers’ training-camp for Dick;
-he would go as an enlisted man with
-the rank and file of American men.</p>
-
-<p>“But you’re officer material,” complained
-his mother. “Aren’t you
-wasting power that the country may
-need?”</p>
-
-<p>“If I can win shoulder-bars, honey,
-hooray!” said Dick. “Otherwise, me
-for a dough-boy.”</p>
-
-<p>So as a dough-boy he went to Camp
-Meade, but in three months wore the
-stripes of a sergeant. Radiant, he
-tumbled in at home a week later,
-such a joyful lad that he sputtered
-ecstasy and slang. Tremendous he
-looked in his uniform, fresh colored
-from cold barracks and constant exercise
-and in an undreamed pink of
-condition.</p>
-
-<p>“I never considered you a delicate
-person,” the woman spoke up to the
-six feet two of him, “but now you’re
-overpowering, you’re beefy.”</p>
-
-<p>“Couldn’t kill me with an axe,”
-assented Dick cheerfully, and back
-in her brain a hideous, unformed
-thought stirred, of things that were
-not axes, that could kill easily even
-this magnificent young strength.</p>
-
-<p>They were as gay together as if all
-the training and the uniform and the
-stir and panoply of war were merely
-a new and rather thrilling game. She
-saw to it that there were theatres and
-dances and girls doing, and the lad
-threw himself into everything with,
-however, a delicious grumble after
-each party:</p>
-
-<p>“I don’t get a chance to see you at
-all.” That was music.</p>
-
-<p>And then the short, gay leave was
-done and Dick back at Meade again.
-The winter months went, with letters
-thickly coming and going. And late
-in May he wrote that he had leave
-once more for two days, and instantly
-he was there. There was no word
-as to what the sudden leave meant,
-but they knew. When it was possible
-our soldiers due to sail were given
-this short flying visit to their homes.
-Transports were going all the time
-now; great ship followed great ship
-till it seemed as if the Atlantic must
-be brown with khaki. And not the
-nearest of any must know when his
-time was, for this was one bit of the
-national patriotism, to guard the
-knowledge of sailing ships from the
-enemy. So the boy told nothing, but
-his eyes embraced her with a burning
-word unspoken. And her eyes
-met them with certain knowledge.</p>
-
-<p>“Let’s cut out the girls and balls
-this time,” he said. And one day,
-apropos of nothing: “You’re a
-peach.”</p>
-
-<p>She smiled back cheerfully as women
-were smiling at boys all over the
-United States at that date. “I couldn’t
-bear it if you weren’t in the service,”
-she said.</p>
-
-<p>In a few minutes&mdash;it appeared&mdash;the
-two days were over. “Run across for
-one second and say good-by to Lynnette,”
-she suggested, when the racing
-hours were within three of their
-end. Lynnette was the girl next door
-who had grown up in the shadow of
-Dick’s bigness, a little thing two
-years younger, shy and blunt and not
-just a pretty girl, but with luminous
-eyes and a heart of gold. Dick had to
-be prodded a bit to be nice to Lynnette.</p>
-
-<p>“I don’t want to miss one second of
-you, honey,” he objected.</p>
-
-<p>“Don’t you dare stay over a second.
-But a glimpse would mean a
-lot to her, and she’s a darling to
-me.”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, all right,” agreed Dick. “Because
-she’s a darling to you&mdash;” and
-he swung off.</p>
-
-<p>“Dick&mdash;” as he sprang from the
-gallery. He turned. “Kiss her good-by,
-Dick.”</p>
-
-<p>“What sort of a mother&mdash;&mdash;!”</p>
-
-<p>“She’ll object, but she’ll like it.”</p>
-
-<p>“You little devil,” Dick chuckled,
-“can’t you let a fellow handle his
-own kissing?” And started again,
-easy, elastic, made of sliding muscles.</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, Dick!” called his mother once
-more, and once more the brown figure
-halted. “Now, then, woman?”</p>
-
-<p>“Don’t peck, Dick; kiss her a thorough
-one.”</p>
-
-<p>Dick’s laughter rang across the little
-place. The echo of that big laughter
-in the woman was not a quickened
-pulse of gladness as it had been
-all his days; a sick aching answered
-the beloved sound, and the stab of a
-thought&mdash;would ever Dick laugh
-across the garden again? With that
-he was back, grinning.</p>
-
-<p>“I did it,” stated Dick. “It’s not
-often a chap’s commanding officer
-sends him out with orders for a kissing
-attack, so I put my elbows into
-it and made a good job. She’s
-kissed to pieces.”</p>
-
-<p>“Dick!”</p>
-
-<p>“Well, now! It’ll teach you to go
-careful how you start a man on them
-tricks. Lynnette’s a worthy child,
-but I’d never have thought of kissing
-her. Yet it wasn’t so bad. Rather
-subtle.” He licked his lips tentatively.</p>
-
-<p>“Dicky! Vulgar, vulgar boy!”</p>
-
-<p>“You know, I believe she did like
-it,” confided Dick.</p>
-
-<p>Then very soon, in the middle of the
-sunshiny, warm morning he went.
-In the hall, where they had raced and
-played games long ago, she told him
-good-by, doing a difficult best to give
-him cheer and courage to remember,
-not heart-break. Something helped
-her unexpectedly, reaction, maybe, of
-a chord overstrained; likely the good
-Lord ordered it; His hand reaches
-into queer brain-twists. She said
-small, silly things that made the boy
-laugh, till at last the towering figure
-was upon her and she was crushed
-into khaki, with his expert rifleman’s
-badge digging into her forehead. She
-was glad of the hurt. The small defenses
-had gone down and she knew
-that only high Heaven could get her
-through the next five seconds with
-a proper record as a brave man’s
-mother. In five seconds he turned and
-fled, and with a leap was through the
-door. Gone! She tossed out her arms
-as if shot, and fled after him. Already
-he was across the lawn, by the
-tulip-bed, and suddenly he wheeled
-at the patch of color and his visored
-cap was off, and he was kissing his
-hand with the deep glow in his eyes
-she had seen often lately. It was as if
-the soul of him came close to the
-windows and looked out at her. His
-blond hair in the sunlight was almost
-as yellow as on that other day
-long ago when&mdash;What was this? Up
-from the clover in the ditch, filling
-all the air with fluttering gold,
-stormed again a flight of yellow butterflies,
-the Cloudless Sulphur on
-their spring migration. The boy as he
-stood looking back at her shouted
-young laughter and the winged things
-glittered about him, and with that
-two lighted on his head.</p>
-
-<p>“Good luck! It’s for good luck,
-mother,” he called.</p>
-
-<p>She watched, smiling determinedly,
-dwelling on details, the uniform, the
-folds of brown wool puttees, the
-bronze shine on his shoes, the gold
-spots of light flickering about his
-head. He wheeled, stumbling a bit,
-and then the light feet sprang away;
-there was no Dick there now, only a
-glimmering, moving cloud of yellow&mdash;meaningless.
-The tulip-bed&mdash;sunshine&mdash;butterflies&mdash;silence.
-The
-world was empty. She clutched at her
-chest as if this sudden, sick, dropping
-away of life were physical. His
-triumphant last word came back to
-her, “It’s for good luck, mother”;
-then other words followed, words
-which she had spoken years ago.</p>
-
-<p>“And for immortality.”</p>
-
-<p>Immortality! She beat her hands
-against the wall. Not Dick&mdash;not her
-boy&mdash;her one thing. Not immortality
-for him, yet. Not for years and
-years&mdash;fifty&mdash;sixty. He had a right
-to long, sweet mortal life before that
-terrible immortality. She wanted him
-mortal, close, the flesh and blood
-which she knew. It was not to be
-borne, this sending him away to&mdash;Oh,
-God! The thousands on thousands
-of strong young things like
-Dick who had already passed to that
-horrible, unknown immortality. The
-word meant to her then only death,
-only a frantic terror; the subtle, underlying,
-enormous hope of it missed
-her in the black hour.</p>
-
-<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&mdash;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&mdash;you taught me that&mdash;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&mdash;that
-happens in every life&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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”&mdash;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&mdash;sometimes&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;miracles do happen.’
-My brain aches with that sentence.”
-She was still a moment. “I
-saw what you were thinking. Of the&mdash;otherwise.
-I can’t face the&mdash;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&mdash;home. Lynnette&mdash;I
-hope he’s dead.”</p>
-
-<p>The girl tossed up a hand.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, child. But suffering&mdash;I can’t
-have him suffering&mdash;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&mdash;spitting
-first likely&mdash;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&mdash;in
-a quiet, matter-of-fact way&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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>&mdash;Dick. Alive or dead his coming
-will mean&mdash;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&mdash;Dick?”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, no&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;he
-loved me.” The woman stared.
-“Yes,” Lynnette said. “I didn’t
-dream it till that last morning, when
-he ran across&mdash;and he kissed me.
-He’d never kissed me before. It&mdash;it
-wasn’t just a little kiss to&mdash;an old
-playmate.” The words came difficultly.
-“It&mdash;would be impossible to
-tell it except to you. But it was&mdash;a
-long kiss. He&mdash;didn’t say anything.
-I’ve thought it over and over and
-I think he&mdash;believed he shouldn’t.
-Somehow. But that kiss&mdash;said it.
-For me. I know Dick&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;a far boom of guns&mdash;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&mdash;Dick. The woman shook
-in a tearless sob. Dick. What was it
-all&mdash;all the glory that the nations,
-that America could heap on him,
-when&mdash;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&mdash;as the Cloudless
-Sulphurs stormed up from the clover
-around his blond head. Dick! Her
-little, laughing Dick&mdash;her big, loving
-Dick. Then she was aware of a
-gun crashing, a band playing a dirge&mdash;the
-gun crashing again into the
-music; it was the “minute-guns of
-sorrow” they were firing. And then
-suddenly&mdash;a shrill sound and a heart-stirring&mdash;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>
-
-<p>Shortly after daylight next morning
-the tramp of marching men and clatter
-of hoofs and grinding of wheels
-before the Capitol told that the greatest
-parade of American history was
-forming, and the khaki tide rolled
-into ordered ranks. The woman saw
-this beginning, very early in the
-morning. She was there before the
-bugle sounded attention across the
-plaza and the cavalrymen snapped
-out their sabres and the infantrymen
-came to present and the officers to
-salute and the colors were dipped&mdash;and
-the sun sent a beam to Freedom
-on the dome and another to a casket
-moving through the doorway. She
-saw it carried down the long steps by
-the bravest of the brave, all decorated
-men, and placed on the black-draped
-caisson with its black horses,
-and its soldiers sat on their scarlet
-saddle-cloths. She saw that, and she
-saw the President and “Black Jack”
-Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the
-A. E. F., following as chief mourners&mdash;Pershing
-wearing, of all his decorations,
-only the Victory Medal to
-which every American soldier has a
-right&mdash;the caisson where lay&mdash;Dick.
-She saw the crowds dense up Pennsylvania
-Avenue, the historic road
-“where the tramping ghosts of
-Grant’s legions marked a course.”
-She saw the silent, attentive thousands
-who packed the sidewalks,
-standing there to take their part in
-what was theirs, the glory of the
-American people. “Out in the broad
-avenue was a simple soldier, dead for
-the honor of the flag. In France he
-had died as Americans have always
-been ready to die, for the flag and
-what it meant.” The woman saw the
-massed, reverent faces, and read this
-in them.</p>
-
-<p>“It’s Dick,” she said.</p>
-
-<p>Later, not remembering very much
-how she had come, she found herself
-at Arlington, at the Amphitheatre,
-with yet more thousands. There were
-bright colors of foreign dress uniforms
-and masses of khaki and light
-and shadow and the snowy gleam of
-columns against a background of
-trees. Later there was distant, solemn
-music through the trees. From the
-direction of the fort the dim color
-of troops came nearer and nearer,
-clearer and clearer; the marine band,
-half-step to the throb of drums,
-swung out and circled the colonnade.
-The caisson rolled up where a white-surpliced
-choir waited, and men in
-uniform with medals on their breasts
-lifted Dick, and the choir sang “The
-Son of God Goes Forth to War.”
-They carried him past the troops with
-rifles at “present,” past the bareheaded
-people, through the pillared
-colonnade, with the white choir and
-the clergy leading them, the great
-of many lands awaiting him. They
-placed him on a catafalque, flower-covered,
-and the great audience, all
-the thousands, rose and stood as
-he passed in&mdash;Dick&mdash;with Pershing
-still following, Pershing who had
-trudged seven miles from the Capitol
-behind his soldier.</p>
-
-<p>The coffin rested on its base as if
-held up by a mound of blossoms&mdash;and
-suddenly the woman felt stabbed
-with a knife, a frantic, unbearable
-feeling. Her boy lay there with no
-sign of her near him. The nation had
-heaped him with honor, but Dick
-would not be satisfied with the nation,
-missing his mother. In her hand
-was a bunch of roses; she wondered
-where she had gotten them, and
-vaguely recalled a florist’s shop on
-the way out. She sprang toward a
-guard, a soldier, and the man stared
-at her as people did.</p>
-
-<p>“Put these&mdash;put these&mdash;right close
-to him,” she begged in sliding Southern
-speech. “He’s&mdash;he’s my boy.”
-The soldier little guessed how literal
-the words were to her, but they went
-direct to his heart. A boy of hers lay
-in France; this one stood for him; so
-he understood it. “Yes, ma’am,” he
-said gently.</p>
-
-<p>He took the flowers and went away
-with them and in a moment she saw
-them laid on the coffin, their white
-heads against a gorgeous wreath of
-red roses. The President’s red roses&mdash;but
-the woman did not know that.
-The man came back then and found
-her a place in one of the first rows of
-the curving line of seats where were
-only men and women in black.</p>
-
-<p>The mighty service went on. The
-woman going through it with the
-others seemed aware of it through
-another’s senses, as if she were removed
-where her consciousness could
-not make contact with anything
-earthly. This was Dick’s funeral, but
-she was not sad. Only fused to a
-hazy exaltation. Maybe Dick’s light-hearted
-spirit was there, hovering
-over all this and lifting her spirit with
-him. In any case her flowers lay close
-to him, clinging whitely against that
-blood-red wreath. They must be, she
-was guessing, just above where the
-withered little French roses rested
-still on Dick’s dear cold heart. To
-see them there brought a manner of
-comfort to her. And the service went
-on. As Bishop Brent’s voice ended,
-the bells over in Washington were
-ringing noon, and sharply the clear,
-high notes of a trumpeter blew attention.
-She stood up with the thousands,
-the millions, the nation. For
-the nation paused during two minutes
-then to honor&mdash;Dick. All over
-America, in churches, in marketplaces,
-on railway lines, the rushing
-life of the country stopped and the
-populace stood silent with bowed
-heads for that tremendous moment,
-honoring the men who had died.</p>
-
-<p>Then it was over; a minute-gun
-boomed across the river at the base of
-the Washington Monument; led by
-the band the stirred multitude swung
-into “America.”</p>
-
-<p>“My country, ’tis of thee,” the people
-sang. And the woman sang with
-them. She could; she was dry-eyed
-and calm; this was Dick’s funeral,
-her little boy Dick, her splendid, big
-son. Yet she seemed to feel nothing.
-The Lord God was going to give her
-a sign that it was Dick. She was
-anxious about that. Certain, yes, of
-course; but a sign was to come.
-Nervousness caught her as the President
-began to speak; she wished the
-Lord God would hurry; it would do
-at any time, surely, yet this strain
-of waiting was difficult. It was hard
-to listen to the President while one
-was watching every moment for the
-sign. And with that his voice had
-slipped into words as familiar as her
-own name, words which she had
-taught to Dick.</p>
-
-<p>“Our Father which art in Heaven&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>There was a soft, many-rustling
-sound of thousands rising, and all the
-voices took up the age-old words:</p>
-
-<p>“Hallowed be Thy Name&mdash;Thy
-will be done.”</p>
-
-<p>Yes, indeed. The Lord God knew
-that she had bowed to His will, even
-as to that word “missing.” She supposed
-it was His will. She had borne
-it, somehow. But now that Dick was
-dead, and carried home all these
-miles, bringing peace in his quiet
-hands, <i>now</i> the Lord God ought to
-give her the sign. He ought, really.
-With that a quartet was singing
-something about how</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="verse outdent">“Splendid they passed, the great surrender made</div>
-<div class="verse">Into the light that nevermore shall fade.”</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Oh, yes. But one doesn’t care so
-much about splendor and unfading
-light&mdash;when one misses Dick. The
-comforting thing was that Dick was
-to bring peace&mdash;peace forever. He
-would care about that; that would
-make him glad. And there was going
-to be a sign that this boy, this Unknown
-Soldier coming from his grave
-in France at the very moment of the
-Peace Conference&mdash;that this boy was
-Dick. How could she be otherwise
-than restless till the sign came?</p>
-
-<p>Back of the carved, calm face in
-which the gray Irish eyes glowed
-such thoughts were seething. Lawyers
-weighing evidence would hardly
-have found her argument valid. The
-desperate brain which made them
-more than half knew the sophistry.
-But the brain <i>was</i> desperate. One
-cannot face the word “missing” for
-many months and keep coolly logical.
-This was the last straw to hold her to
-sanity&mdash;that Dick was the Peace
-Bringer; that this boy was Dick.
-These things she must believe. Must.</p>
-
-<p>Quietly she gazed as minute by
-splendid minute passed, each crowded
-with such things as America has
-never seen before. She watched an
-officer in uniform, a “Sam Browne”
-belt across his breast, step forward.
-What were they going to do now?
-The officer shifted the flowers toward
-the foot, and she gasped as the President’s
-great red wreath was moved;
-her roses were next; it was too bad to
-take her roses away from Dick. But
-see&mdash;they were left. The officer
-touched them, and left them; the
-little sheaf was not in the way. But
-what was going to happen? He rolled
-back the flag with its heavy gold
-fringe, and with that the President
-stood there and was reading something&mdash;citations&mdash;reverently,
-in his
-incisive voice; then he bent and
-pinned two precious things to the
-black cloth of the coffin&mdash;the Distinguished
-Service Cross and that
-which Americans believe the highest
-decoration in the world, the Congressional
-Medal of Honor. How
-pleased Dick would have been!</p>
-
-<p>“Won in mortality to be worn in
-immortality,” spoke the President.</p>
-
-<p>Was Dick’s gay spirit maybe even
-now hovering, watching it all, smiling
-the sweet, half-shy, one-sided
-smile she knew, laughing at himself
-a bit for being the centre of this stupendous
-ceremony? In quick succession
-one brilliant uniform succeeded
-another by the narrow box, each fastening
-to the black cloth an honor
-which men have died to win. Something
-contracted her throat with a
-short sob when General Jacques, the
-Belgian, unpinned from his own coat
-the Cross of War which his King had
-put there and placed it on Dick’s
-coffin. And was not that Foch who
-swept off his white-plumed Marshal’s
-hat before the presence of&mdash;Dick?
-How Dick would have taken in the
-scarlet baldric, the gold sash, and
-red trousers! Dick had an enormous
-enthusiasm for Foch; once he had
-seen him&mdash;a solemn old fellow in a
-faded horizon-blue uniform and very
-muddy boots, the letter said. Smoking
-a pipe.</p>
-
-<p>Medal after medal; such an array as
-the greatest soldier on earth had
-never worn. They rolled back the flag
-over it all till the judgment day, and
-Sergeant Woodfill and the seven
-other heroes lifted Dick again and
-carried him down the marble steps.
-The band was playing “Our Honored
-Dead”; she raised her eyes and
-saw the city across the river; the
-dome of the Capitol under which
-Dick had slept last night; where
-only dead Presidents had ever slept
-before; nearer was the yellow of
-ploughed Virginia fields and the green
-of winter wheat; about them the
-snowy white of the great Amphitheatre,
-and directly beneath the boy as
-they carried him around was “a great
-splash of black&mdash;thousands of Americans
-with hats held in their hands.”
-Between these and the Amphitheatre
-was a white place with a hole in it.
-Dick’s grave. She moved dreamily
-toward that place, and people stood
-back for the black, lonely figure with
-its gold star. Unconscious of them,
-she passed till she was close enough
-to see everything.</p>
-
-<p>“It will be now, I think,” she was
-saying. “The Lord God will send His
-sign when they put Dick&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
-
-<p>The rest of the words couldn’t be
-framed. Of course Dick’s soul wasn’t
-there; it was somewhere about, above,
-close&mdash;much interested and a good
-deal amused as well as thrilled; she
-felt that. This was only Dick’s body
-they were putting away covered with
-medals and flowers, laid on that priceless
-earth brought from France, scattered
-down for him to rest on. It was
-only his body. But such a precious,
-dear body; it had been so warm and
-strong&mdash;Oh, God! She alone out of
-the thousands knew that it was Dick,
-and even she&mdash;The Lord God certainly
-was slow about sending His
-sign.</p>
-
-<p>The beautiful church service was
-read; Dick’s soul was committed to
-God and his body to the grave.
-Some one touched a silver bar and
-the coffin sank slowly; a man in uniform
-placed a final wreath&mdash;from all
-the men of all our fighting armies.
-Then an old Indian in magnificence
-of chief’s feathers hobbled up and
-took off his sweeping war-bonnet,
-whose white feathers trailed to his
-moccasins, and laid it with a sort of
-stick across the open tomb. It was
-the last tribute. The warrior of ancient
-America saluted America’s warrior
-of to-day. A salvo of artillery.
-Another salvo&mdash;and another. The
-woman stared about. Dick would
-bivouac to-night in great company.
-All around him were monuments cut
-with names that were echoes of
-thunder of guns. There lay Porter
-and Crook; yonder lay Dewey. The
-slope carries along innumerable headstones;
-over the ridge are the grass
-ramparts of old Fort Myer, graves
-thick about them; she sensed these
-things as the guns rang the salvoes.</p>
-
-<p>The guns had stopped; a bugler,
-standing out, was playing “Taps”&mdash;the
-soldier’s good night. With the
-final silver note the artillery broke
-into the roar of the national salute of
-twenty-one guns. The crowds moved,
-shifted, thinned. The bright uniforms
-scattered and disappeared. But the
-tall, black figure stood there, conscious
-of the people only as a swimmer
-in deep water is conscious of the
-waves. She was in them, of them,
-but they had no personality for her.
-Slowly the huge audience spread
-away through the trees. The pageant
-was over. The pageant&mdash;what matter
-was that? Dick; Dick was dead and
-buried, and she stood by the grave
-of an Unknown Soldier and reproached
-God. He had sent her no
-sign that this boy was hers. Down
-among the new white crosses in the
-cemetery below moved figures; there
-are always figures moving among
-those crosses&mdash;but the woman felt
-herself alone. All the pomp and ceremony
-being finished, she was alone
-with her boy. She knelt near the new
-grave; the black veil blew about her,
-covering and uncovering the gold star
-on her sleeve.</p>
-
-<p>“God,” she whispered, “bless the
-men to-morrow who are trying to
-bring peace. I don’t know whether
-they know that it’s Dick who’s bringing
-it or not. I don’t care. I know,
-God, and You know. Only let Dick
-be the Peace Bringer, and let an
-American speak the master word. I
-thought the sign would be to-day, but
-I’ll be patient if it isn’t to be to-day.
-But, mighty God, don’t fail me in the
-end. You know how I couldn’t bear
-that. It means having Dick again&mdash;ever&mdash;somehow&mdash;I
-can’t say it well,
-but you’re God and You know how
-those things are tied together. Peace
-and Dick’s immortality and the sign.
-Be merciful; give it to me.”</p>
-
-<p>A week later in Kentucky blunt little
-Lynnette was reasoning with her.
-“You can’t expect to set a date with
-the Almighty,” reasoned Lynnette.
-“I think it will come&mdash;I do think so,
-though I don’t know why I think it.
-Only that such a longing as yours
-focussed on one thing must be a
-psychological force. And, whatever
-God is, He does answer prayer somehow.”</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, He does,” said the woman. “Wasn’t Hughes’ word sent straight
-as lightning from heaven? It came
-the day after the funeral&mdash;Dick’s funeral.
-It came out of Dick’s tomb. I
-can’t help believing the good Lord
-did plan, along with the salvation of
-the nations, to make Dick His Peace
-Bringer.” She waited a moment,
-eyes glowing with deep light. Then:
-“‘Whatsoever ye ask in My name,
-believing, ye shall receive it.’” A
-thousand times she had repeated
-that.</p>
-
-<p>Lynnette nodded practically. “Uh-huh,
-that says it. God certainly did
-stir up Hughes when he got off that
-proposition. Why shouldn’t we believe
-it was partly, anyhow, the huge
-emotion of the Unknown Soldier that
-pushed him? The sign may come in
-some shape you’re not dreaming.
-Likely it will&mdash;but it’ll come. I’m
-sure.”</p>
-
-<p>“I can’t imagine in what shape&mdash;that
-terrifies me at times. It seems
-so impossible. And if it shouldn’t
-come!”</p>
-
-<p>“You mustn’t think that,” rebuked
-Lynnette. “It depends so
-much on psychology, and your will
-may be a big part. You don’t have to
-imagine what it will be. Yet I&mdash;do
-imagine things.”</p>
-
-<p>“You do? What?”</p>
-
-<p>“Oh, well,” Lynnette answered slowly,
-“nothing definite. Sometimes I
-fancy that the identity wasn’t lost
-to everybody, over in France. That
-maybe the soldiers who&mdash;who brought
-the four boys from the cemeteries
-found something to mark them, or
-one of them, and just said nothing
-about it. Maybe one of those soldiers
-might come to you. Why,” exploded
-Lynnette, “two or three times
-when I’ve seen a young, military-looking
-chap coming down this street
-my heart has been in my mouth. I’ve
-said: ‘He’s the sign.’”</p>
-
-<p>“You have?” cried the woman.
-And then, with her arms reaching:
-“You little Lynnette! You loved
-Dick.”</p>
-
-<p>Lynnette nodded. “And Dick&mdash;loved
-me,” she whispered.</p>
-
-<p>She sprang up, and was gone. Outside
-she stopped a moment, staring at
-the sodden, round spot, half filled
-with snow, which had been a bed of
-dancing tulips.</p>
-
-<p>“I wonder if it’s a crime,” she reflected.
-“The engine skips. There’s no
-logic anywhere. But she’d go raving
-mad. And I love her.” Little, aggressive
-Lynnette flushed all by herself.
-“Dick left me, in a sort of way, to his
-mother. He said: ‘Be sweet to her,
-Lynnette.’ Well,” Lynnette ended
-defiantly, “I reckon I can lie a good
-while longer, if it helps her.”</p>
-
-<p>It is queer, considering what a small
-accident and what a second of time
-may end a life, that so many lives
-weather appalling shocks and years
-of heart-break. The woman, going
-softly with an ear alert always to
-catch a message, found that winter
-was past and spring coming in overnight
-jumps to her Southern land.
-With it the restlessness of spring
-crystallized into an overwhelming necessity
-to see the white tomb at Arlington.
-It was imperative, that desire.
-There was no money for travelling
-expenses, but some old mahogany
-went to a dealer, and on an April day
-she started. Spring comes easily in
-the South. It is much as if the lover
-you doubted turned all at once his
-face toward you lighted with the fire
-unmistakable, and you wondered in
-the warm flood of happiness if ever
-you did doubt. So in the turn of a
-hand in that God’s country there are
-vivid colors of tulips and jonquils and
-hyacinths&mdash;gold and purple and pink&mdash;and
-the hedges are dim with mists
-of juicy color, and the lawns have
-sprung to emerald, and the sunlight
-stipples the ground with gold laughter
-through the lace of boughs. And
-one wonders if ever there was melting
-snow and cold wind. Out at Arlington
-the sunlight played gaily on the
-headstones among the trees, dancing
-about the solemn things as if to say
-that, after all, life is only a moment;
-that it is sweet and fitting to die for
-one’s country, and that these light-hearted
-dead should be kept in bright
-memory. Till it came to the snow
-of the Amphitheatre and the white
-tomb on the terrace, and there the
-sunlight seemed to pour itself out in
-full-hearted golden tide. Dreamily,
-mystically, smilingly it wrapped in
-its arms the grave of America’s boy.
-All about the tomb the grass seemed
-greener, and the air of a richer sweetness.
-Fold on fold the calm hills
-dropped away to the Virginia horizon;
-the mast of the <i>Maine</i> brought
-from Havana shot its slender spire
-beyond the Amphitheatre; the old
-house of history, the pillared, porticoed
-house of the Lees, peered out
-from the woods like a big, gentle,
-dumb creature, watching in its old
-age its family who had fought and
-come through to Peace.</p>
-
-<p>The woman scattered a quantity of
-yellow tulips on the grave till it was
-all golden with them. “God,” she
-prayed, kneeling close&mdash;closer than
-she could be in November&mdash;“God,
-I’ve come such a long way. I’ve
-waited such a long time. Only You
-can give what I’ve come for. I want
-it so. Give me Your sign.” A long
-time the black figure knelt amidst the
-whiteness and greenness and spring
-gaiety. Many things she prayed, and
-at the last for power to give up hope.
-For there was yet no sign. Perhaps
-there never would be. Sobbing a little,
-she bent and kissed the yellow
-tulips, and turned to go.</p>
-
-<p>As she drifted away step by step
-suddenly the bells over in Washington
-were ringing the noon-hour, and
-she faced about, remembering. As
-she turned, up from the grass below,
-over the white edge of the terrace,
-stormed a fluttering mass of bright
-wings, and filled all the air with beckoning
-gold. A moment they hung,
-twinkling over the tomb, and then
-fell, brilliant, incredible, and lighted
-on the gold cups of the tulips, and
-flickering, dancing, gathered the sunlight
-into their myriad wings.</p>
-
-<p>The Cloudless Sulphurs; Dick’s butterflies;
-the symbol of immortality.
-The sign.</p>
-</div>
-
-<div class="transnote chapter mt5">
-<p class="center"><b>Transcriber’s Note</b></p>
-
-<p>No corrections were made to the text as printed.</p>
-
-<p>While original copyright information has been retained, this book is in the public domain
-in the country of publication.</p>
-
-<p>The cover was created by the transcriber using elements from the original publication and
-placed in the public domain.</p>
-</div>
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