“You do? What?”
“Oh, well,” Lynnette answered slowly, “nothing definite. Sometimes I fancy that the identity wasn’t lost to everybody, over in France. That maybe the soldiers who—who brought the four boys from the cemeteries found something to mark them, or one of them, and just said nothing about it. Maybe one of those soldiers might come to you. Why,” exploded Lynnette, “two or three times when I’ve seen a young, military-looking chap coming down this street my heart has been in my mouth. I’ve said: ‘He’s the sign.’”
“You have?” cried the woman. And then, with her arms reaching: “You little Lynnette! You loved Dick.”
Lynnette nodded. “And Dick—loved me,” she whispered.
She sprang up, and was gone. Outside she stopped a moment, staring at the sodden, round spot, half filled with snow, which had been a bed of dancing tulips.
“I wonder if it’s a crime,” she reflected. “The engine skips. There’s no logic anywhere. But she’d go raving mad. And I love her.” Little, aggressive Lynnette flushed all by herself. “Dick left me, in a sort of way, to his mother. He said: ‘Be sweet to her, Lynnette.’ Well,” Lynnette ended defiantly, “I reckon I can lie a good while longer, if it helps her.”
It is queer, considering what a small accident and what a second of time may end a life, that so many lives weather appalling shocks and years of heart-break. The woman, going softly with an ear alert always to catch a message, found that winter was past and spring coming in overnight jumps to her Southern land. With it the restlessness of spring crystallized into an overwhelming necessity to see the white tomb at Arlington. It was imperative, that desire. There was no money for travelling expenses, but some old mahogany went to a dealer, and on an April day she started. Spring comes easily in the South. It is much as if the lover you doubted turned all at once his face toward you lighted with the fire unmistakable, and you wondered in the warm flood of happiness if ever you did doubt. So in the turn of a hand in that God’s country there are vivid colors of tulips and jonquils and hyacinths—gold and purple and pink—and the hedges are dim with mists of juicy color, and the lawns have sprung to emerald, and the sunlight stipples the ground with gold laughter through the lace of boughs. And one wonders if ever there was melting snow and cold wind. Out at Arlington the sunlight played gaily on the headstones among the trees, dancing about the solemn things as if to say that, after all, life is only a moment; that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country, and that these light-hearted dead should be kept in bright memory. Till it came to the snow of the Amphitheatre and the white tomb on the terrace, and there the sunlight seemed to pour itself out in full-hearted golden tide. Dreamily, mystically, smilingly it wrapped in its arms the grave of America’s boy. All about the tomb the grass seemed greener, and the air of a richer sweetness. Fold on fold the calm hills dropped away to the Virginia horizon; the mast of the Maine brought from Havana shot its slender spire beyond the Amphitheatre; the old house of history, the pillared, porticoed house of the Lees, peered out from the woods like a big, gentle, dumb creature, watching in its old age its family who had fought and come through to Peace.
The woman scattered a quantity of yellow tulips on the grave till it was all golden with them. “God,” she prayed, kneeling close—closer than she could be in November—“God, I’ve come such a long way. I’ve waited such a long time. Only You can give what I’ve come for. I want it so. Give me Your sign.” A long time the black figure knelt amidst the whiteness and greenness and spring gaiety. Many things she prayed, and at the last for power to give up hope. For there was yet no sign. Perhaps there never would be. Sobbing a little, she bent and kissed the yellow tulips, and turned to go.
As she drifted away step by step suddenly the bells over in Washington were ringing the noon-hour, and she faced about, remembering. As she turned, up from the grass below, over the white edge of the terrace, stormed a fluttering mass of bright wings, and filled all the air with beckoning gold. A moment they hung, twinkling over the tomb, and then fell, brilliant, incredible, and lighted on the gold cups of the tulips, and flickering, dancing, gathered the sunlight into their myriad wings.
The Cloudless Sulphurs; Dick’s butterflies; the symbol of immortality. The sign.