“If there be any life beyond the grave,
It must be near the men and things we love,
Some power of quick suggestion how to save,
Touching the living soul as from above.”
She sat very still; the lamp, symbol of the Life Eternal, gleamed more brightly as the shadows deepened. The glow in the west died away, and the great stars shone with kindly eyes, just as it must have shone on Dick Carey, sitting there dreaming too, loving the beauty of it all.
And presently Ruth became conscious of other things. Curious and poignantly there grew around her, out of the very heart of the stillness, the sense of a great movement of men and things, the clash of warring instincts, an atmosphere of fierce passions, of hatred and terror, of tense anxiety, like an overstrained rod that must surely break, and yet holds. A terrible tension of waiting for something—something that was coming—coming—something that fell. She knew where she was now; for, through all the drenched sweetness of the fields and gardens, sickening, suffocating, deadly, came the smell of the Great Battlefields of the world. All of it was there—the sweat of men, the sour atmosphere of bivouac and dug-out, rotten sacking and wood, the fumes of explosives, the clinging horror of gas, the smell of the unattended death. It was all there, in one hideous whole. Shuddering, clutching the letters tightly with clenched hands in her lap, Ruth was back there again; again she was an atom in some awful scheme, again she knew the dread approach. The wait.... Great roaring echoes rolled up and filled all space. Sounds crashed and shattered, rent and destroyed.
And then, through it all, Ruth felt—held it as it were between the hands of her heart—something so wonderful it took her breath away, and she knew it for what it was, through all the tumult, the horror, and the evil, the strong determined purpose of a man for a certain end. It grew and grew, in wonder and in glory, until her heart could no longer hold it, could no longer bear it, for it became the strong determined purpose of many men for a certain end. It joined and unified into a current of living light and fire, and sang as it flowed, sang so that the sounds of horror passed and fled and the melody of its flowing filled all space, the sound of the great Song of the Return.
She was no longer a lonely atom in a scheme she could not understand, no longer a stranger and a pilgrim in a weary land, but part of an amazing and stupendous whole, working in unison, making for an end glorious beyond conception. Limits of time and space were wiped out, but when the strange and wonderful happening had passed over, never then, or at any later time, had she any doubt as to the reality of the experience. She knew and understood, though, with the Apostle of old, she could have said, “Whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell.”
But suddenly the body claimed her again, and Ruth Seer did what was a very unusual thing with her—she put her face between her hands and cried and cried till they were wet with tears, her whole being shaken as by the passing of a great wind.
When, some time later, she opened the packet she found the few pages of diary much what she had somehow expected. Just the short notes of a man pressed for every minute of his time, because every minute not given to definite duty was spent with, or for, his men. His love and care for them were in every line of those hasty scraps of writing, kept principally, it seemed to Ruth, so that nothing for each one might be forgotten. It was that personal touch that struck her most forcibly. Not one of his men had a private trouble but he knew it and took steps to help, not one was missing but he headed the search party if prior duties did not prevent, not one died without him if it were in any way possible for him to be there. That lean brown hand which she knew—had seen—what a sure thing it had been to hold. From the little hastily scribbled scraps it could be pieced together. That wonderful life which he, and many another, had led in the midst of hell. The light was fading when she took the letter out of its thin unstamped envelope, but Dick Carey’s writing was very clear, each word somewhat unusually far apart.