Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1915 — WAR [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WAR

By EMMA LEE WALTON

(Copyright, The Frank A. Munsey Co.) Mary sat by the front window, crouched down, watching. Her eyes were red with recent tears, but she spoke bravely and without a tremor to someone in the other room. "There are some boys out here playing tag,” she said with a poor imitation of a laugh. “One of them just fell into a puddle. He looks so funny.” “When Billy went to West Point he said there wouldn’t be anybody to fight,” the littlest brother submitted shakily. “ ’Less it was Indians. Now they send him to war.” Mary drew a quick breath. Their mother was sewing in the library while Lionel read aloud to her, and she must not hear. She must not think they weren’t being brave, too. • "Come here, Bobble," Mary said softly. “From here you can see 'way up the street.” The littlest brother came gladly, because he was lonely and forlorn. On the wide window-seat it was brighter, and one could see a telegraph boy a block away if one came. Then, too, Mary would talk, and mother was so silent it frightened a body. Ever since the newspaper had said, yesterday, that an officer, a lieutenant of the Forty-second, had been killed away oft there, mother had not slept, and she was so white — It seemed there were not many lieutenants in C company of the Forty-second, and somebody named Censor had held back the name. "Will the president telegraph, Mary?” he asked in a whisper. "Do you think it’s Billy, do you?” Mary was gazing wild-eyed at a boy in blue who came whistling down the street What should she do if he came to their steps? Could she get there before he rang? How could she tell mother, how could she? "If it is Billy, will they put flowers on his grave, Mary?” the littlest brother asked. "Mary, is that boy coming here, is he?” “No,” Mary said with a little gasp. “He’s gone to Mrs. Winthrop’s. I suppose their aunt is coming to visit. Go open the door for the postman, there’s a good boy. The postman is coming, mother,” she called. "Bobbie is getting the mail.” Thus would mother be saved the fear that a message had come. Lionel closed the book, and she could hear him speaking with a brave jocularity. "Well, we’d have heard by this time, anyhow. I said all along there wasn't anything to worry about. It isn’t as if he were all alone. He’s got a lot of friends in the regiment, you know, and somebody’d wire. They’d have plenty of time, because thqy never do much the day after a fight.” Bobbie brought in the mall, all cast aside for the picture postals from Billy which they admired while mother read his fat letter in silence. It was the custom to read Billy’s letters aloud, but no one wanted the task now. Each could read by himself, except the littlest brother, and Mary read it to him in a whisper on the window-seat. Deep down in their hearts they knew they might have worse than this to bear, with Billy’s cheery letters coming every little while, even though Billy himself were lying silent in another land, under the flag of the alien, the enemy. How could they bear it then? The telephone rang insistently, harshly, and Lionel, who was not worried, sprang with one leap to answer it, his one awful thought being that they did telephone the telegrams sometimes. The color came back to his face as he listened. "It’s father," he said at once. “He says,” Lionel added after a moment, “be says that headquarters has had no news, and he thinks that is encouraging. They’would have heard, he thinks. He is coming home early.” Father could not do any business, then? What mattered it whether there was any business done any more; what mattered anything? Mary, on the window-seat, her arm over Bobbie’s shoulder, could see, hundreds of miles away, the little group of men fighting desperately against the advancing hordes and one by one falling where they had stood, guarding the stores. A lieutenant was very young, just out of the Point, gay, debonair, affectionate, home-loving boy that he was! - - * . So the time dragged along and father came home. He talked about business and the men who had been in to see him, about a runaway horse that had upset a banana cart, and about a story in a magazine, but he said no word of Billy. He and mother sat side by aide as he talked, and when mother laid her hand on the arm of bls chair he put his hand over hers and held it. The papers tossed on the library table no one had touched. The wild excitement over the war, the thrill at news of battles, the patriotic anxiety to do something to help had left them under the cloud of a possible personal loss. Billy! Why, it was only last winter he had been with them, acting like a small boy, with more charming pranks in a

half-hour than little Bobbie could think up in a day. “He was so thoughtful,” mother whispered, speaking at last to the strong man beside her. “Do you remember how he brought home those mint candies because he knew I was fond of them? And how he got up in the middle of the night to oil his squeaky door for fear the wind’s blowing it might keep me awake? Doesn’t it seem as though anything under all the heavens would be easier to bear than suspense like this?” Bobbie, thinking only of the fact that mother must not be allowed to worry, looked about for aid at this moment. Mary had gone back to the Window-seat and Lionel had disappeared, so, as father did nothing but stroke his wife’s hand, his face drawn and queer, Bobbie stepped bravely into the breach. "Mother,” he said shakily, "you remember wunst I swallered a brass bell oft my reins? Well, now, mother, it’s beginning to hurt something awful right round here.” Bobbie’s band roved indefinitely, uncertainly over the region he supposed to cover his little stomach, but his heroic announcement did not have the desired effect. Instead of rising, hor-ror-sticken, to save him, his mother most unexpectedly seized him and gathered him up like a very tiny, boy into her lap, where he was still sitting, disgracefully babied, when Lionel excitedly burst in. "I went over to the drug store,” Lionel cried, with a thrill in his voice which they all felt “It isn’t Billy, it isn’t Billy! It was a man named Smith, and he lives in St Louis, and I found out by telephoning the Tribune. And it isn’t Billy, it isn’t Billy! I was afraid to telephone from here because it might have been. I knew there wasn’t anything to worry about Oh, mother, it isn’t Billy!” - Mothers are very queer things, very queer. Here was their mother, who had been silent for thirty hours or so, just sewing on Bobbie’s new waist all the time they didn’t know whether it was Billy or not, and then, when they knew it was a fellow named Smith, she just put her head down on father’s shoulder and cried pitifully. And an father did was to pat her on the back and say: “There, dear, there!” while two great tears rolled down his own cheeks unheeded. Lionel knelt beside her and put his arms around her as best he could with Bobbie in the way, and Mary crouched down on the other side, as near as she could, her face turned away from him.

'Mary was crying, too! Perhaps they didn't quite understand. "I said it was not Billy,** he repeated. “There isn't any mistake, either. I made ’em give me the managing editor, and he read the cablegram to me. He was awful nice. He said his brother’s down there, too. I thought you’d say ’Thank God!* or something.” Mother put her hand on Lionel’s shoulder and patted it gently. "I do say ’Thank God!’ dear,” she said through her tears. “But we must not forget in our own great gladness that it was somebody’s boy.” Lionel sat flat on the floor, his long length across the rug, and gazed straight ahead. Shorn of its fife and drum, its trumpet and shining banner, stripped of its might and power, its charm and triumph and glory, he tasted war.

Mary Drew a Quick Breath.