“Had a day with the Boy Scouts. Hiked up through Montgomery County. Caught some little shiners in the creek and cooked them. Grapes thick in the Glen. The boys were like small Bacchuses, and draped themselves in fruit and leaves. They are fine fellows. I have no patience with people who look upon boys as nothing but small animals. Why their dreams! And shy about them! Now and then they open their hearts to me—and I can see the fineness that’s under the outer crust. They lie under the trees with me, and we talk as we follow the road.”
Boys——! That was it! He’d get in touch with them again. And he did. There were two, Sandy Stoddard and Arthur Lane, who came over and sat by the library fire with Rusty and the two cats, and popped corn, and wanted to hear about the war.
At first when they spoke of it, Evans would not talk—but a moment arrived when he found flaming words to show them how he felt about it.
“I know a lot of fellows,” said Sandy Stoddard, “who say that America wouldn’t have gone into it if she’d known a lot of things. And that most of the men who came back feel that they were just—fooled——”
“If they feel that way, they are fools themselves,” said Evans, shortly.
“Well, they’re all throwing bricks at us now,” said Sandy. “France and Great Britain, and the rest of them. When you read the papers you feel as if America was pretty punk——”
“Sandy,” said Evans, slowly, reaching for the right words because this boy must know the truth—“America is never punk. We’re human, like the rest of the world. We’re selfish like everybody else. But we’re kind. And most of us still believe in God. I’ve gone through a lot,” he was flushed with the sense of the intimacy of his confession; “you boys can’t ever know what I’ve gone through unless you go through it some day yourselves. But every night I thank God on my knees that I was a part of a crusade that believed it was fighting for the right. Those of us who went in with that idea came out of it with that idea. That’s all I can say about it—and I’d do it again.”
As he stood there on the hearth-rug, the boys gazed at him with awe in their eyes. They knew patriotic passion when they saw it, and here in this broken man was a dignity which seemed to make him a tower above them. They felt for the moment as if his head touched the stars.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” Evans continued; “war is hell. And most of us found horrors worse than any dreadful dream. But we learned one thing, that death isn’t awful. It is kind and beneficent. And there’s something beyond.”
“Gee,” said Sandy Stoddard, “I’m glad you said that.”