That happened on Christmas morning. Before night the doctors cut off what little had been left below the knee of Peter's right leg.
CHAPTER V
PETER'S ROOM IS AGAIN OCCUPIED
LIFE was very dull round Beaver Dam after Peter had gone away. John and Constance Starkley and Flora and Emma felt that every room of the old house was so full of memories of the three boys that they could not think of anything else. John Starkley worked early and late, but a sense of numbness was always at his heart. There were times when he glowed with pride and even when he flamed with anger, but he was always conscious of the weight on his heart. His grief was partly for his wife's grief.
He awoke suddenly very early one morning and heard his wife sobbing quietly. That had happened several times before, and sometimes she had been asleep and at other times awake. Now she was asleep, lonely for her boys even in her dreams. He thought of waking her; and then he reflected that, if awake, she would hide her tears, which now perhaps were giving her some comfort in her dreams.
But he could not find his own sleep again. He lighted a candle, put on a few clothes and went downstairs to the sitting room. There were books everywhere, of all sorts, in that comfortable and shabby room. The brown wooden clock on the shelf above the old Franklin stove ticked drearily. It marked ten minutes past two. Mr. Starkley dipped into a volume of Charles Lever and wondered why he had ever laughed at its impossible anecdotes and pasteboard love scenes. He tried a report of the New Brunswick Agricultural Society and found that equally dry. A flyleaf of Treasure Island held his attention, for on it was penned in a round hand, "Flora with Dick's love, Christmas, 1914."
"He was only a boy then," murmured the father. "Less than a year ago he was only a boy, and now he is a man, knowing hate and horror and fatigue—a man fighting for his life. They are all boys! Henry and Peter—Peter with his grand farm and fast mares, and his eyes like Connie's."
John Starkley got out of his chair, trembling as if with cold. He walked round the room, clasping his hands before him. Then he took the candle from the table and held it up to the shelf above the stove. There stood photographs of his boys, in uniform. He held the little flame close to each photograph in turn.
"Three sons," he said. "Three good sons—and not one here now!"