Night after night, nearer and nearer, the ghosts from Belgium and Serbia and Poland stood about her bed, and she fought with them as one had fought with the beasts at Ephesus. Day after day she cheered Brock and the two Hughs and filled them with fresh patriotism. Of course, she would not have her own fail in a hair's breadth of eager service to their flag. Of course! And as [pg 215] she lifted up, for their sakes, her heart, behold a miracle, for her heart grew high! She began to feel the words she said. It came to her in very truth that to have the world as one wanted it was not now the point; the point was a greater goal which she had never in her happy life even visualized. It began to rise before her, a distant picture glorious through a mist of suffering, something built of the sacrifice, and the honor, and the deathless bravery of millions of soldiers in battle, of millions of mothers at home. The education of a nation to higher ideals was reaching the quiet backwater of this one woman's soul. There were lovelier things than life; there were harder things than death. Service is the measure of living. If the boys were to compress years of good living into a flame of serving humanity for six months, who was she, what was life here, that she should be reluctant? To play the game, for herself and her sons, this was the one thing worth while. More and more entirely, as the stress of the strange, hard vision crowded out selfishness, this woman, as thousands [pg 216] and tens of thousands all over America, lifted up her heart—the dear things that filled and were her heart—unto the Lord.
And with that she was aware of a recurring unrest. She was aware that there was something her husband did not say to her about the boys, about young Hugh. Brock had been hard to hold for nearly two years now, but his father had thought for reasons, that he should not serve until his own flag called him. Now it would soon be calling, and Brock would go instantly. But young Hugh? What did the boy's attitude mean?
"I can't make out Hughie," his father had said to her in March, 1917, when it was certain that war was coming. "What does this devil-may-care pose about the war mean?"
And she answered: "Let Hughie work it out, Hugh. He's in trouble in his mind, but he'll come through. We'll give him time."
"Oh, very well," Hugh the elder had agreed, "but young Americans will have to take their [pg 217] stand shortly. I couldn't bear it if a son of mine were a slacker."
She tossed out her hands. "Slacker! Don't dare say it of my boy!"
The hideous word followed her. That night, when she lay in bed and looked out into the moonlit wood, and saw the pines swaying like giant fans across a pulsing, pale sky, and listened to the summer wind blowing through the tall heads of them, again through the peace of it the word stabbed. A slacker! She set to work to fancy how it would be if Brock and Hugh both went to war and were both killed. She faced the thought. Life—years of it—without Brock and Hugh! She registered that steadily in her mind. Then she painted to herself another picture, Brock and Hugh not going to war, at home ignominiously safe. Other women's sons marching out into the danger—men, heroes! Brock and Hugh explaining, steadily explaining why they had not gone! Brock and Hugh after the war, mature men, meeting returning soldiers, old friends who had borne the burden and heat, themselves [pg 218] with no memories of hideous, infinitely precious days, of hardships, and squalid trench life, and deadly pain—for America! Brock and Hugh going on through life into old age ashamed to hold up their heads and look their comrades in the eye! Or else—it might be—Brock and Hugh lying next year, this year, in unknown, honored graves in France! Which was worse? And the aching heart of the woman did not wait to answer. Better a thousand times brave death than a coward's life. She would choose so if she knew certainly that she sent them both to death. The education of the war, the new glory of patriotism, had already gone far in this one woman.
And then the thought stabbed again—a slacker—Hugh! How did his father dare say it? A poisonous terror, colder than the fear of death, crawled into her soul and hid there. Was it possible that Hugh, brilliant, buoyant, temperamental Hugh was—that? The days went on, and the cold, vile thing stayed coiled in her soul. It was on the very day war was declared that young Hugh injured his knee, a bad injury. When he [pg 219] was carried home, when the doctor cut away his clothes and bent over the swollen leg and said wise things about the "bursa," the boy's eyes were hard to meet. They constantly sought hers with a look questioning and anxious. Words were impossible, but she tried to make her glance and manner say: "I trust you. Not for worlds would I believe you did it on purpose."
And finally the lad caught her hand and with his mouth against it spoke. "You know I didn't do it on purpose, Mummy."
And the cold horror fled out of her heart, and a great relief flooded her.