Woven with the Ship Part 40

She dropped the powder at the feet of the colonel and fainted in McCullough's arms, his own face scarcely less white than hers. One agonizing glance he gave to a.s.sure himself that her wounds were but slight ones, and he had to leave her to the women, for he was called to the walls.

While some of the women revived the girl, others, by Colonel Sheppard's directions, broke open the precious keg of powder and served it to the men. Those who could do so, took their places, rifle in hand, on the stockade; for the Indians and rangers now came out into the open. Carrying a great log, the Indians dashed recklessly at the fort, endeavoring to batter in the gate, while they kept down the fire of the defenders by the rapidity of their own discharge. They reached the gate and hammered on it with their ram; but the gallant little band within the walls, with their women helpers behind them, poured such a fire upon them that after heavy loss they retreated out of range, disheartened by their failure.

The next morning brought Colonel Swearingen and his militia levies, and at his approach the besiegers gave over the attempt and withdrew.

The post was saved with the women and children. Elizabeth and McCullough were the heroes of the occasion.

"How could you do it?" asked Hugh of the girl, as they wandered together by the river that evening.

"I did it for you, dear," she answered.

"No, not only for me, but for the women and children; you thought of them?"

"Oh, yes; but I thought more of you than of the others, all the time.

I knew you'd save me, Hugh. I was sure you would not let them take me.

'Twas your rifle----"

"Nay, dearest, 'twas your shoe." He took it fondly from his coat and kissed it. "This little shoe that turned you aside and gave me an opening. G.o.d forbid I should ever have to do such shooting again, dearest."

"Amen, Hugh, and yet He guided the bullets, I think."

"Yes, truly. And I never dreamed that you were such a heroine, Elizabeth. Where did you learn it? Not in Philadelphia, I am sure."

"No, Hugh, there is but one school in which they teach those things."

"And that is the school of----"

"Love," she whispered, hiding her head in his breast.

"SONNY BOY'S" DIARY

AN INCIDENT OF THE WAR IN CHINA

"Oh, a strange hand writes for our dear son--O stricken mother's soul!

All swims before her eyes--flashes with black--she catches the main words only; Sentences broken--'gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital; At present low, but will soon be better.'"

WALT WHITMAN

Among the most devoted of my paris.h.i.+oners was a certain Mrs.

Allen,--devoted to the Church, of course, that is; although, if I may judge from her actions, I think she held me personally in high esteem as well. When I became acquainted with her she was a widow with one son. Other children, girls, had been born to her I learned afterward, but she had lost them in their early childhood; and, after the death of her husband, who had been a major in the marine corps of the United States navy, her life had been entirely devoted to this son, in whom her heart was so wrapped up that she fairly wors.h.i.+pped him.

She was a gentle, quiet, retiring little woman, sad-faced and inclined to melancholy when George, her son, was not with her. He was a hearty, healthy lad, abounding in strength and spirits, full of fun and mischief, but never vicious, and he certainly adored her with a genuine enthusiasm. His mother seemed actually to bask in the suns.h.i.+ne of his presence, and when they were together she was a different woman.

When I first knew them the boy had just been given an appointment at Annapolis; and though he graduated at the head of his cla.s.s and should naturally have gone into the line of the navy, he had followed the family tradition by electing to serve in the marine corps, as his father and grandfather before him had done. He had risen to the grade of first lieutenant, and was one of the officers of the little band of United States marines who formed the Legation guard in Pekin during the terrible summer of 1900. I well remember the fearful anxiety and yet the superhuman resolution with which Mrs. Allen confronted those days of silence and suspense.

Sadly enough, among the first messages which got through from the besieged ministers was one announcing the death of her son. I was with her, of course, immediately upon the receipt of the news. Her grief was as silent as it was terrible. She made no complaint. The blow just struck her down. Her heart was affected in some way, and Dr. Taylor informed me, and I, in turn, told her that her days were numbered. I felt that it was best that she should know it. Now that her son had been taken, the desire to live left her, and she was almost happy in the thought that a short time--a month or two at most, the doctor said--would unite them again.

A few days after the receipt of the first bad news, freedom of communication having been restored meanwhile, the report of George's death was contradicted. Some one had blundered in the first message, and things were in such a state we could never find out who. He had been desperately wounded, they said, but would recover.

His mother brightened under this encouraging news. There was a faint rally and some improvement in her condition, but nothing of a permanent character. She realized the situation fully, but she summoned all her resolution and determination to her a.s.sistance and told me that she could not die until she had seen her son again. Dr.

Taylor thought that probably she might survive under the inspiration of her devotion until the boy, about whom we continued to receive favorable reports, should come home again.

So she lingered through the summer, struggling, anxious, hopeful, determined. I happened to be with her on the eventful day when she received his first letter. The joy with which she took it from me and tore it open with her white, feeble, trembling hands was almost painful to witness. I felt as if I were intruding upon a meeting; but her blank look of astonishment changing to regret, and then to bitter disappointment, even anguish, as she mastered its contents was surprising.

"I have lost my boy," she said, with trembling lips, after a while, as she handed me the letter.

"What?" I cried.

"Oh, no; he is getting better and is coming back. I do not mean that; but--but--he is going to be married. Read it yourself."

Why, it was a letter to make any woman's heart proud, I thought, and I said so. There were sober words of thanksgiving to G.o.d that his life had been spared; a modest expression of satisfaction in the promotion to a captaincy, which had come to him for his splendid courage during the siege, notably when he led the attack on the sand-bag fort on the wall, where he was wounded; and lots of love for his mother. That was not all, though. He had been a demonstrative boy always, I suppose; he had lavished affectionate endearments upon her, and she had been first in his heart; but now--ah, there was the rub.

I realized, as I reflected on the situation, that I was only a man, and that no man had ever fathomed the subtle depths of a woman's--a mother's--heart. It was as she had said; he was going to be married. I must admit that nine-tenths of the letter was filled with descriptions of the young woman to whom he had plighted his troth. He sang her praises with the blindness of youth and the ardor of manhood.

They had met for the first time during the siege. She had been a belated traveller who had been caught in the Boxer uprising, and had been forced to take shelter in the Legation. She had shown herself to be a heroine, of course. Everybody was heroic in those days. We all expected they would be, and they were. After George had been wounded she had nursed him back to life and won her way into his heart in the process. It was all quite natural, certainly, and very romantic. She was coming back with him. They were to be married by one of the missionaries in the Legation, where the romance had begun, as soon as he was able to stand it, and he hoped soon to present to his mother a new daughter, who was "the best, the sweetest, the n.o.blest little woman in the world, and whom I love and adore with all my heart," and so on until the end of the letter.

I thought myself that he might have spared her a little of that; and, as I watched Mrs. Allen's face and tried to talk to comfort her, I began to have a dim realization of what a shock it was. That boy had been everything to her, as I said, and she to him. She had always been first in his affection and he in hers. Alone in the world, the two had grown up together. Now that his life was spared, she confronted the fact that she was called upon to share him with another woman.

Oh, the bitterness of jealousy in old age! It was there. Oh, the hopeless feeling that comes over a mother when she realizes that, in a certain sense, she is supplanted! I saw it in the white face, the pressed lips, the trembling hands of the stricken woman leaning back in the chair before me. It matters not that it is the usual course of life; that did not make it easier for her. Other mothers had to bear such things, we both knew, but now it seemed different.

Well, I comforted her as best I could, said all things possible before I left her, but to little purpose, I fear. The next day she was dead.

The second shock had been too much for her. I was with her when she pa.s.sed away. When I came into the room I noticed that the table by her bed was covered with a pile of common red-backed blank books, which I had never seen before.

"Sonny Boy!"--that's what she called him; in spite of the fact that he was a great big fellow, and as manly as a soldier should be, he was always in her heart what he had been as a child--"Sonny Boy's diary,"

she whispered to me; "I want you to take them--keep them until he comes home and then give them to him. And I want you to read them, too, so that you may know--and--and--sympathize."

Sympathize with whom? I wondered. With George or with her? Ah, I soon found out. I thought she had gone after the prayers had been said, she lay on the bed so still and quiet. But she opened her eyes presently and whispered brokenly in the silence,--

"Tell him--I love him better than--than--any one in the whole world--will--ever--love him--Sonny--Boy."

After that her eyes remained open until I closed them.

I took the books home, and the evening of the day of the funeral I sat down to read them. It was late at night, or rather early in the morning, when I finished them, and then I did something for which my conscience has troubled me ever since.

I wish that I could tell you all that was in those little worn blank books. Every word of them had been written by her own hand. She began with his birth, the first entry being made as soon as she was able to hold a pen. She chronicled religiously every event that bore even the remotest relation to the boy. You could see how he grew into her life, how he became a part of it, and, finally, as the years pa.s.sed by, all of it. There was nothing that he did or said which was not noted. His most trivial actions, his most unimportant words, were all faithfully set down and commented upon. In those books was the history of the development of a human being,--nay, the development of a great pa.s.sion as well.

As he grew older, and his mother lost successively his father and the two little girls, it was easy to see how the boy became more and more to her. The entries were longer and more connected,--more coherent, I should say. There were whole pages filled with her speculations concerning him. She set down the ambitions she had cherished for his work, the hopes born in her heart for his future, her dreams of his achievements that were to be; she quoted freely from his letters when he was away at school. She inserted photographs of him in all stages of development. She wrote out the prayers she made for his welfare.

The entries abounded with expressions of her ever-growing, absorbing love for him. Yes, and when he had his boyish flirtations and had evidently written to her about charming girls he had met, the jealousy of a mother's heart spoke in her comments. It was quite evident to me as I read on, absorbed in it all, that she would never be able to bear the idea of any one coming between her and that lad. How she rejoiced in his successes and love for her! There were troubles, too,--illnesses, sc.r.a.pes; but her love never wavered, and things always seemed to come right in the end.

I could see that the keeping of that diary had become a pa.s.sion with her. She confessed herself to it as a devotee might to some spiritual adviser. She poured out her heart on those pages which no living eye but mine had ever seen, I verily believe. She was absolutely true; entirely frank. The book was a self-revelation, all unconscious. I could see the enn.o.bling effect of that great pa.s.sion. She grew greater as I read on and on. A soul was laid bare in the written pages. I seemed to be treading on hallowed ground as I tenderly turned the faded leaves. No one could ever have spoken aloud as she wrote. It's not in nature to do so. It was her secret heart, her most sacred feelings, her inmost soul that lived and vibrated in the silent letters. I seemed to be looking upon things not meant for mortal eyes.

And through it all there was a note of depreciation. Was she, could she, be worthy of him? Oh, the sweetness of the humility of a mother!

But I cannot linger to tell all the story, all I read, all I divined.

At last came the entries of the present year. When he had gone away she had sworn she would be brave. He was a soldier, he must do his duty and uphold the honored name of his father; but, oh, the anxiety of it all! I could see that it had almost killed her; yet she had kept up under the dreadful strain until the news of his death came.