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diff --git a/old/66502-0.txt b/old/66502-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 37970ab..0000000 --- a/old/66502-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1424 +0,0 @@ -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. 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