“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.