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?”