One Basket Part 23

When he came home that night Baldwin told his wife that old Soph was getting queer. "She talks about the children being hers," he said.

"Oh, well, she's awfully fond of them," Flora explained. "And she's lived her little, narrow life, with nothing to bother her but her hats and her house. She doesn't know what it means to suffer as a mother suffers--poor Sophy."

"Um," Baldwin grunted.

When the official notification of Eugene's death came from the War Department, Aunt Sophy was so calm it might have appeared that Flora had been right. She took to her bed now in earnest, did Flora. Sophy neglected everything to give comfort to the stricken two.

"How can you sit there like that!" Flora would rail. "How can you sit there like that! Even if you weren't his mother, surely you must feel something."

"It's the way he died that comforts me," said Aunt Sophy.

"What difference does that make!"

AMERICAN RED CROSS (Croix Rouge Americaine)

MY DEAR MRS. BALDWIN:

I am sure you must have been officially notified by the U.S.

War Dept. of the death of your son, Lieut. Eugene H. Baldwin. But I want to write you what I can of his last hours. I was with him much of that time as his nurse. I'm sure it must mean much to a mother to hear from a woman who was privileged to be with her boy at the last.

Your son was brought to our hospital one night badly ga.s.sed from the fighting in the Argonne Forest. Ordinarily we do not receive ga.s.sed patients, as they are sent to a special hospital near here. But two nights before, the Germans wrecked that hospital, so many ga.s.sed patients have come to us.

Your son was put in the officers' ward, where the doctors who examined him told me there was absolutely no hope for him, as he had inhaled so much gas that it was only a matter of a few hours. I could scarcely believe that a man so big and strong as he was could not pull through.

The first bad attack he had, losing his breath and nearly choking, rather frightened him, although the doctor and I were both with him. He held my hand tightly in his, begging me not to leave him, and repeating, over and over, that it was good to have a woman near.

He was propped high in bed and put his head on my shoulder while I fanned him until he breathed more easily. I stayed with him all that night, though I was not on duty. You see, his eyes also were badly burned. But before he died he was able to see very well. I stayed with him every minute of that night and have never seen a finer character than he showed during all that fight for life.

He had several bad attacks that night and came through each one simply because of his great will power and fighting spirit. After each attack he would grip my hand and say, "Well, we made it that time, didn't we, nurse?" Toward morning he asked me if he was going to die.

I could not tell him the truth. He needed all his strength. I told him he had one chance in a thousand. He seemed to become very strong then, and sitting bolt upright in bed, he said: "Then I'll fight for it!" We kept him alive for three days, and actually thought we had won when on the third day...

But even in your sorrow you must be very proud to have been the mother of such a son....

I am a Wisconsin girl--Madison. When this is over and I come home, will you let me see you so that I may tell you more than I can possibly write?

MARIAN KING

It was in March, six months later, that Marian King came. They had hoped for it, but never expected it. And she came. Four people were waiting in the living room of the big Baldwin house overlooking the river. Flora and her husband, Adele and Aunt Sophy. They sat, waiting. Now and then Adele would rise, nervously, and go to the window that faced the street. Flora was weeping with audible sniffs.

Baldwin sat in his chair, frowning a little, a dead cigar in one corner of his mouth. Only Aunt Sophy sat quietly, waiting.

There was little conversation. None in the last five minutes. Flora broke the silence, dabbing at her face with her handkerchief as she spoke.

"Sophy, how can you sit there like that? Not that I don't envy you. I do. I remember I used to feel sorry for you. I used to say 'Poor Sophy.' But you unmarried ones are the happiest, after all. It's the married woman who drinks the cup to the last, bitter drop. There you sit, Sophy, fifty years old, and life hasn't even touched you. You don't know how cruel life can be to a mother."

Suddenly, "There!" said Adele. The other three in the room stood up and faced the door. The sound of a motor stopping outside. Daniel Oakley's hearty voice: "Well, it only took us five minutes from the station. Pretty good."

Footsteps down the hall. Marian King stood in the doorway. They faced her, the four--Baldwin and Adele and Flora and Sophy. Marian King stood a moment, uncertainly, her eyes upon them. She looked at the two older women with swift, appraising glances. Then she came into the room, quickly, and put her two hands on Aunt Soph's shoulders and looked into her eyes straight and sure.

"You must be a very proud woman," she said. "You ought to be a very proud woman."