Joy in the Morning Part 15

"With my last drop of blood, Hugh."

"I can't go on--alone--mother." His eyes were wild, and his words labored into utterance. "I--I don't know what to do--mother."

"The war, Hughie?"

"Of course! What else is there?" he flung at her.

"But your knee?"

"Oh, Mummy, you know as well as I that my knee is well enough. Dad knows it, too. The way he looks at me--or dodges looking! Mummy--I've got to tell you--you'll have to know--and maybe you'll stop loving me. I'm--"

He threw out his arms with a gesture of despair. "I'm--afraid to go."

With that he was on his knees beside her, and his arms gripped her, and his head was hidden in her lap. For a long minute there was only silence, and the woman held the young head tight.

Hugh lifted his face and stared from blurred eyes. "A man might better be dead than a coward--you're thinking that? That's it." A sob stopped his voice, the young, dear voice. His face, drawn into lines of age, hurt her unbearably. She caught him against her and hid the beloved, impossible face.

"Hugh--I--judging you--I? Why, Hughie, I _love_ you--I only love you. I don't stand off and think, when it's you and Brock. I'm inside your hearts, feeling it with you. I don't know if it's good or bad. It's--my own. Coward--Hughie! I don't think such things of my darling."

"'There's no--friend like a mother,'" stammered young Hugh, and tears fell unashamed. His mother had not seen the boy cry since he was ten years old. He went on. "Dad didn't say a word, because he wouldn't spoil your birthday, but the way he dodged--my knee--" He laughed miserably and swabbed away tears with the corner of his pajama coat. "I wish I had a hanky," he complained. The woman dried the tear-stained cheeks hastily with her own. "Dad's got it in for me," said Hugh. "I can tell. He'll make me go--now. He--he suspects I went skating that day hoping I'd fall--and--I know it wasn't so darned unlikely. Yes--I did--not the first time--when I smashed it; that was entirely--luck." He laughed again, a laugh that was a sob. "And now--oh, Mummy, have I _got_ to go into that nightmare? I hate it so. I am--I _am_--afraid. If--if I should be there and--and sent into some terrible job--sh.e.l.l-fire--dirt--smells--dead men and horses--filth--torture--mother, I might run. I don't feel sure. I can't trust Hugh Langdon--he might run. Anyhow"--the lad sprang to his feet and stood before her--"anyhow--why am _I_ bound to get into this? I didn't start it. My Government didn't. And I've everything, _everything_ before me here. I didn't tell you, but that editor said--he said I'd be one of the great writers of the time. And I love it, I love that job. I can do it. I can be useful, and successful, and an honor to you--and happy, oh, so happy! If only I may do as Arnold said, be one of America's big writers! I've everything to gain here; I've everything to lose there." He stopped and stood before her like a flame.

And from the woman's mouth came words which she had not thought, as if other than herself spoke them. "'What shall it profit a man,'" she spoke, "'if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?'"

At that the boy plunged on his knees in collapse and sobbed miserably.

"Mother, mother! Don't be merciless."

"Merciless! My own laddie!" There seemed no words possible as she stroked the blond head with shaking hand. "Hughie," she spoke when his sobs quieted. "Hughie, it's not how you feel; it's what you do. I believe thousands and thousands of boys in this unwarlike country have gone--are going--through suffering like yours."

Hugh lifted wet eyes. "Do you think so, Mummy?"

"Indeed I do. Indeed I do. And I pray that the women who love them are--faithful. For I know, I _know_ that if a woman lets her men, if a mother let her sons fail their country now, those sons will never forgive her. It's your honor I'm holding to, Hughie, against human instinct. After this war, those to be pitied won't be the sonless mothers or the crippled soldiers--it will be the men of fighting age who have not fought. Even if they could not, even at the best, they will spend the rest of their lives explaining why."

Hugh sat on the sofa now, close to her, and his head dropped on her shoulder. "Mummy, that's some comfort, that dope about other fellows taking it as I do. I felt lonely. I thought I was the only coward in America. Dad's condemning me; he can't speak to me naturally. I felt as if"--his voice faltered--"as if I couldn't stand it if you hated me, too."

The woman laughed a little. "Hughie, you know well that not anything to be imagined could stop my loving you."

He went on, breathing heavily but calmed. "You think that even if I am a blamed fool, if I went anyhow--that I'd rank as a decent white man? In your eyes--Dad's--my own?"

"I know it, Hughie. It's what you do, not how you feel doing it."

"If Brock would hold my hand!" The eyes of the two met with a dim smile and a memory of the childhood so near, so utterly gone. "I'd like Dad to respect me again," the boy spoke in a wistful, uncertain voice. "It's darned wretched to have your father despise you." He looked at her then. "Mummy, you're tired out; your face is gray. I'm a beast to keep you up. Go to bed, dear."

He kissed her, and with his arm around her waist led her through the dark hall to the door of her room, and kissed her again. And again, as she stood and watched there, he turned on the threshold of the den and threw one more kiss across the darkness, and his face shone with a smile that sent her to bed, smiling through her tears. She lay in the darkness, fragrant of honeysuckle outside, and her sore heart was full of the boys--of Hugh struggling in his crisis; still more, perhaps, of Brock whose birthday it was, Brock in France, in the midst of "many and great dangers," yet--she knew--serene and buoyant among them because his mind was "stayed." Not long these thoughts held her; for she was so deadened with the stress of many emotions that nature a.s.serted itself and shortly she feel asleep.

It may have been two or three hours she slept. She knew afterward that it must have been at about three of the summer morning when a dream came which, detailed and vivid as it was, probably filled in time only the last minute or so before awakening. It seemed to her that glory suddenly flooded the troubled world; the infinite, intimate joy, impossible to put into words, was yet a defined and long first chapter of her dream. After that she stood on the bank of a river, a river perhaps miles wide, and with the new light-heartedness filling her she looked and saw a mighty bridge which ran brilliant with many-colored lights, from her to the misty further sh.o.r.e of the river. Over the bridge pa.s.sed a throng of radiant young men, boys, all in uniform. "How glorious!" she seemed to cry out in delight, and with that she saw Brock.

Very far off, among the crowd of others, she saw him, threading his way through the throng. He came, unhurried yet swift, and on his face was an amused, loving smile which was perhaps the look of him which she remembered best. By his side walked old Mavourneen, the wolf-hound, Brock's hand on the s.h.a.ggy head. The two swung steadily toward her, Brock smiling into her eyes, holding her eyes with his, and as they were closer, she heard Mavourneen crying in wordless dumb joy, crying as she had not done since the day when Brock came home the last time. Above the sound Brock's voice spoke, every trick of inflection so familiar, so sweet, that the joy of it was sharp, like pain.

"Mother, I'm coming to take Hughie's hand--to take Hughie's hand," he repeated.

And with that Mavourneen's great cry rose above his voice. And suddenly she was awake. Somewhere outside the house, yet near, the dog was loudly, joyfully crying. Out of the deep stillness of the night burst the sound of the joyful crying.

The woman shot from her bed and ran barefooted, her heart beating madly, into the darkness of the hall to the landing on the stairway. Something halted her. There was a broad, uncurtained pane of gla.s.s in the front door of the house. From the landing one might look down the stone steps outside and see clearly in the bright moonlight as far as the beginning of the rose archway. As she stood gasping, from beneath the flowers Brock stepped into the moonlight and began, unhurried, buoyant, as she had but now seen him in her dream, to mount the steps. Mavourneen pressed at his side, and his hand was on the dog's head. As he came, he lifted his face to his mother with the accustomed, every-day smile which she knew, as if he were coming home, as he had come home on many a moonlit evening from a dance in town to talk the day over with her. As she stared, standing in the dark on the landing, her pulse racing, yet still with the stillness of infinity, an arm came around her, a hand gripped her shoulder, and young Hugh's voice spoke.

"Mother! It's Brock!" he whispered.

At the words she fled headlong down to the door and caught at the handle. It was fastened, and for a moment she could not think of the bolt. Brock stood close outside; she saw the light on his brown head and the bend in the long, strong fingers that caressed Mavourneen's fur. He smiled at her happily--Brock--three feet away. Just as the bolt loosened, with an inexplicable, swift impulse she was cold with terror.

For the half of a second, perhaps, she halted, possessed by some formless fear stronger than herself--humanity dreading something not human, something unknown, overwhelming. She halted not a whole second--for it was Brock. Brock! Wide open she flung the door and sprang out.

There was no one there. Only Mavourneen stood in the cold moonlight, and cried, and looked up, puzzled, at empty air.

"Oh, Brock, Brock! Oh, dear Brock!" the woman called and flung out her arms. "Brock--Brock--don't leave me. Don't go!"

Mavourneen sniffed about the dark hall, investigating to find the master who had come home and gone away so swiftly. With that young Hugh was lifting her in his arms, carrying her up the broad stairs into his room.

"You're barefooted," he spoke brokenly.

She caught his hand as he wrapped her in a rug on the sofa. "Hugh--you saw--it was Brock?"

"Yes, dearest, it was our Brock," answered Hugh stumblingly.

"You saw--and I--and Mavourneen."

"Mavonrneen is Irish," young Hugh said. "She has the second sight," and the big old dog laid her nose on the woman's knee and lifted topaz eyes, asking questions, and whimpered broken-heartedly.

"Dear dog," murmured the woman and drew the lovely head to her. "You saw him." And then; "Hughie--he came to tell us. He is--dead."

"I think so," whispered young Hugh with bent head.

Then, fighting for breath, she told what had happened--the dream, the intense happiness of it, how Brock had come smiling. "And Hugh, the only thing he said, two or three times over, was, 'I'm coming to take Hughie's hand.'"

The lad turned upon her a shining look. "I know, mother. I didn't hear, of course, but I knew, when I saw him, it was for me, too. And I'm ready. I see my way now. Mother, get Dad."

Hugh, the elder, still sleeping in his room at the far side of the house, opened heavy eyes. Then he sprang up. "Evelyn! What is it?"

"Oh, Hugh--come! Oh, Hugh! Brock--Brock--" She could not say the words; there was no need. Brock's father caught her hands. In bare words then she told him.

"My dear," urged the man, "you've had a vivid dream. That's all. You were thinking about the boys; you were only half awake; Mavourneen began to cry--the dog means Brock. It was easy--" his voice faltered--"to--to believe the rest."

"Hugh, I _know_, dear. Brock came to tell me. He said he would." Later, that day, when a telegram arrived from the War Office there was no new shock, no added certainty to her a.s.surance. She went on: "Hughie saw him. And Mavourneen. But I can't argue. We still have a boy, Hugh, and he needs us--he's waiting. Oh, my dear, Hughie is going to France!"

"Thank G.o.d!" spoke Hugh's father.

Hand tight in hand like young lovers the two came across to the room where their boy waited, tense. "Father--Dad--you'll give me back your respect, won't you?" The strong young hand held out was shaking.

"Because I'm going, Dad. But you have to know that I was--a coward."

"_No_, Hugh."

"Yes. And Dad, I'm afraid--now. But I've got the hang of things, and nothing could keep me. Will you, do you despise me--now--that I still hate it--if--if I go just the same?"

The big young chap shook so that his mother, his tall mother, put her arms about him to steady him. He clutched her hand hard and repeated, through quivering lips, "Would you despise me still, Dad?"