She was a gentle, quiet, retiring little woman, sad-faced and inclined to melancholy when George, her son, was not with her. He was a hearty, healthy lad, abounding in strength and spirits, full of fun and mischief, but never vicious, and he certainly adored her with a genuine enthusiasm. His mother seemed actually to bask in the sunshine of his presence, and when they were together she was a different woman.
When I first knew them the boy had just been given an appointment at Annapolis; and though he graduated at the head of his class and should naturally have gone into the line of the navy, he had followed the family tradition by electing to serve in the marine corps, as his father and grandfather before him had done. He had risen to the grade of first lieutenant, and was one of the officers of the little band of United States marines who formed the Legation guard in Pekin during the terrible summer of 1900. I well remember the fearful anxiety and yet the superhuman resolution with which Mrs. Allen confronted those days of silence and suspense.
Sadly enough, among the first messages which got through from the besieged ministers was one announcing the death of her son. I was with her, of course, immediately upon the receipt of the news. Her grief was as silent as it was terrible. She made no complaint. The blow just struck her down. Her heart was affected in some way, and Dr. Taylor informed me, and I, in turn, told her that her days were numbered. I felt that it was best that she should know it. Now that her son had been taken, the desire to live left her, and she was almost happy in the thought that a short time—a month or two at most, the doctor said—would unite them again.
A few days after the receipt of the first bad news, freedom of communication having been restored meanwhile, the report of George's death was contradicted. Some one had blundered in the first message, and things were in such a state we could never find out who. He had been desperately wounded, they said, but would recover.
His mother brightened under this encouraging news. There was a faint rally and some improvement in her condition, but nothing of a permanent character. She realized the situation fully, but she summoned all her resolution and determination to her assistance and told me that she could not die until she had seen her son again. Dr. Taylor thought that probably she might survive under the inspiration of her devotion until the boy, about whom we continued to receive favorable reports, should come home again.
So she lingered through the summer, struggling, anxious, hopeful, determined. I happened to be with her on the eventful day when she received his first letter. The joy with which she took it from me and tore it open with her white, feeble, trembling hands was almost painful to witness. I felt as if I were intruding upon a meeting; but her blank look of astonishment changing to regret, and then to bitter disappointment, even anguish, as she mastered its contents was surprising.
"I have lost my boy," she said, with trembling lips, after a while, as she handed me the letter.
"What?" I cried.
"Oh, no; he is getting better and is coming back. I do not mean that; but—but—he is going to be married. Read it yourself."
Why, it was a letter to make any woman's heart proud, I thought, and I said so. There were sober words of thanksgiving to God that his life had been spared; a modest expression of satisfaction in the promotion to a captaincy, which had come to him for his splendid courage during the siege, notably when he led the attack on the sand-bag fort on the wall, where he was wounded; and lots of love for his mother. That was not all, though. He had been a demonstrative boy always, I suppose; he had lavished affectionate endearments upon her, and she had been first in his heart; but now—ah, there was the rub.