Chapter 2

Ruth's eyes went reluctantly back to the marching line again. Somehow it struck her that they would not have seemed so forlorn if they had worn new trig uniforms, instead of rusty varied civilian clothes. They seemed like an ill-prepared sacrifice passing in review. Then suddenly her gaze was riveted upon a single figure, the last man in the procession, marching alone, with uplifted head and a look of self-abnegation on his strong young face. All at once something sharp seemed to slash through her soul and hold her with a long quiver of pain and she sat looking straight ahead staring with a kind of wild frenzy at John Cameron walking alone at the end of the line.

She remembered him in her youngest school days, the imp of the grammar school, with a twinkle in his eye and an irrepressible grin on his handsome face. Nothing had ever daunted him and no punishment had ever stopped his mischief. He never studied his lessons, yet he always seemed to know enough to carry him through, and would sometimes burst out with astonishing knowledge where others failed. But there was always that joke on his lips and that wide delightful grin that made him the worshipped-afar of all the little girls. He had dropped a rose on her desk once as he lounged late and laughing to his seat after recess, apparently unaware that his teacher was calling him to order. She could feel the thrill of her little childish heart now as she realized that he had given the rose to her. The next term she was sent to a private school and saw no more of him save an occasional glimpse in passing him on the street, but she never had forgotten him; and now and then she had heard little scraps of news about him. He was working his way through college. He was on the football team and the baseball team. She knew vaguely that his father had died and their money was gone, but beyond that she had no knowledge of him. They had drifted apart. He was not of her world, and gossip about him seldom came her way. He had long ago ceased to look at her when they happened to pass on the street. He doubtless had forgotten her, or thought she had forgotten him. Or, it might even be that he did not wish to presume upon an acquaintance begun when she was too young to have a choice of whom should be her friends. But the memory of that rose had never quite faded from her heart even though she had been but seven, and always she had looked after him when she chanced to see him on the street with a kind of admiration and wonder. Now suddenly she saw him in another light. The laugh was gone from his lips and the twinkle from his eyes. He looked as he had looked the day he fought Chuck Woodcock for tying a string across the sidewalk and tripping up the little girls on the way to school. It came to her like a revelation that he was going forth now in just such a way to fight the world-foe. In a way he was going to fight for her. To make the world a safe place for girls such as she! All the terrible stories of Belgium flashed across her mind, and she was lifted on a great wave of gratitude to this boy friend of her babyhood for going out to defend her!

All the rest of the straggling line of draft men were going out for the same purpose perhaps, but it did not occur to her that they were anything to her until she saw John Cameron. All those friends of her own world who were training for officers, they, too, were going to fight in the same way to defend the world, but she had not thought of it in that way before. It took a sight of John Cameron's high bearing and serious face to bring the knowledge to her mind.

She thought no longer of trying to get away. She seemed held to the spot by a new insight into life. She could not take her eyes from the face of the young man. She forgot that she was staying, forgot that she was staring. She could no more control the swelling thoughts of horror that surged over her and took possession of her than she could have controlled a mob if it had suddenly swept down upon her.

The gates presently lifted silently to let the little procession pass over to her side of the tracks, and within a few short minutes the special train that was to bear the men away to camp came rattling up, laden with other victims of the chance that sent some men on ahead to be pioneers in the camps.

These were a noisy jolly bunch. Perhaps, having had their own sad partings they were only trying to brace themselves against the scenes of other partings through which they must pass all the way along the line. They must be reminded of their own mothers and sisters and sweethearts. Something of this Ruth Macdonald seemed to define to herself as, startled and annoyed by the clamor of the strangers in the midst of the sacredness of the moment, she turned to look at the crowding heads in the car windows and caught the eye of an irrepressible youth:

"Think of me over there!" he shouted, waving a flippant hand and twinkling his eyes at the beautiful girl in her car.

Another time Ruth would have resented such familiarity, but now something touched her spirit with an inexpressible pity, and she let a tiny ripple of a smile pass over her lovely face as her eyes traveled on down the platform in search of the tall form of John Cameron. In the moment of the oncoming train she had somehow lost sight of him. Ah! There he was stooping over a little white haired woman, taking her tenderly in his arms to kiss her. The girl's eyes lingered on him. His whole attitude was such a revelation of the man the rollicking boy had become. It seemed to pleasantly round out her thought of him.

The whistle sounded, the drafted men gave one last wringing hand-clasp, one last look, and sprang on board.

John Cameron was the last to board the train. He stood on the lower step of the last car as it began to move slowly. His hat was lifted, and he stood with slightly lifted chin and eyes that looked as if they had sounded the depths of all sadness and surrendered himself to whatever had been decreed. There was settled sorrow in all the lines of his fine face. Ruth was startled by the change in it; by the look of the boy in the man. Had the war done that for him just in one short summer? Had it done that for the thousands who were going to fight for her? And she was sitting in her luxurious car with a bundle of wool at her feet, and presuming to bear her part by mere knitting! Poor little useless woman that she was! A thing to send a man forth from everything he counted dear or wanted to do, into suffering and hardship--and _death_--perhaps! She shuddered as she watched his face with its strong uplifted look, and its unutterable sorrow. She had not thought he could look like that! Oh, he would be gay to-morrow, like the rest, of course, with his merry jest and his contagious grin, and making light of the serious business of war! He would not be the boy he used to be without the ability to do that. But she would never forget how he had looked in this farewell minute while he was gazing his last on the life of his boyhood and being borne away into a dubious future. She felt a hopelessly yearning, as if, had there been time, she would have liked to have told him how much she appreciated his doing this great deed for her and for all her sisters!

Has it ever been fully explained why the eyes of one person looking hard across a crowd will draw the eyes of another?

The train had slipped along ten feet or more and was gaining speed when John Cameron's eyes met those of Ruth Macdonald, and her vivid speaking face flashed its message to his soul. A pleased wonder sprang into his eyes, a question as his glance lingered, held by the tumult in her face, and the unmistakable personality of her glance. Then his face lit up with its old smile, graver, oh, much! and more deferential than it used to be, with a certain courtliness in it that spoke of maturity of spirit. He lifted his hat a little higher and waved it just a trifle in recognition of her greeting, wondering in sudden confusion if he were really not mistaken after all and had perhaps been appropriating a farewell that belonged to someone else; then amazed and pleased at the flutter of her handkerchief in reply.

The train was moving rapidly now in the midst of a deep throaty cheer that sounded more like a sob, and still he stood on that bottom step with his hat lifted and let his eyes linger on the slender girlish figure in the car, with the morning sun glinting across her red-gold hair, and the beautiful soft rose color in her cheeks.

As the train swept past the little shelter shed he bethought himself and turned a farewell tender smile on the white-haired woman who stood watching him through a mist of tears. Then his eyes went back for one last glimpse of the girl; and so he flashed out of sight around the curve.

III

It had taken only a short time after all. The crowd drowned its cheer in one deep gasp of silence and broke up tearfully into little groups beginning to melt away at the sound of Michael ringing up the gates, and telling the cars and wagons to hurry that it was almost time for the up-train.

Ruth Macdonald started her car and tried to bring her senses back to their normal calm wondering what had happened to her and why there was such an inexpressible mingling of loss and pleasure in her heart.

The way at first was intricate with congestion of traffic and Ruth was obliged to go slowly. As the road cleared before her she was about to glide forward and make up for lost time. Suddenly a bewildered little woman with white hair darted in front of the car, hesitated, drew back, came on again. Ruth stopped the car shortly, much shaken with the swift vision of catastrophe, and the sudden recognition of the woman. It was the same one who had been with John Cameron.

"Oh, I'm so sorry I startled you!" she called pleasantly, leaning out of the car. "Won't you get in, please, and let me take you home?"

The woman looked up and there were great tears in her eyes. It was plain why she had not seen where she was going.

"Thank you, no, I couldn't!" she said with a choke in her voice and another blur of tears, "I--you see--I want to get away--I've been seeing off my boy!"

"I know!" said Ruth with quick sympathy, "I saw. And you want to get home quickly and cry. I feel that way myself. But you see I didn't have anybody there and I'd like to do a little something just to be in it. Won't you please get in? You'll get home sooner if I take you; and see! We're blocking the way!"

The woman cast a frightened glance about and assented:

"Of course. I didn't realize!" she said climbing awkwardly in and sitting bolt upright as uncomfortable as could be in the luxurious car beside the girl. It was all too plain she did not wish to be there.

Ruth manoeuvred her car quickly out of the crowd and into a side street, gliding from there to the avenue. She did not speak until they had left the melting crowd well behind them. Then she turned timidly to the woman:

"You--are--his--_mother_?"

She spoke the words hesitatingly as if she feared to touch a wound. The woman's eyes suddenly filled again and a curious little quiver came on the strong chin.

"Yes," she tried to say and smothered the word in her handkerchief pressed quickly to her lips in an effort to control them.

Ruth laid a cool little touch on the woman's other hand that lay in her lap:

"Please forgive me!" she said, "I wasn't sure. I know it must be awful,--cruel--for you!"

"He--is all I have left!" the woman breathed with a quick controlled gasp, "but, of course--it was--right that he should go!"

She set her lips more firmly and blinked off at the blur of pretty homes on her right without seeing any of them.

"He would have gone sooner, only he thought he ought not to leave me till he had to," she said with another proud little quiver in her voice, as if having once spoken she must go on and say more, "I kept telling him I would get on all right--but he always was so careful of me--ever since his father died!"

"Of course!" said Ruth tenderly turning her face away to struggle with a strange smarting sensation in her own eyes and throat. Then in a low voice she added:

"I knew him, you know. I used to go to the same school with him when I was a little bit of a girl."

The woman looked up with a quick searching glance and brushed the tears away firmly.

"Why, aren't you Ruth Macdonald? _Miss_ Macdonald, I mean--excuse me! You live in the big house on the hill, don't you?"

"Yes, I'm Ruth Macdonald. Please don't call me Miss. I'm only nineteen and I still answer to my little girl name," Ruth answered with a charming smile.

The woman's gaze softened.

"I didn't know John knew you," she said speculatively. "He never mentioned----"

"Of course not!" said the girl anticipating, "he wouldn't. It was a long time ago when I was seven and I doubt if he remembers me any more. They took me out of the public school the next year and sent me to St. Mary's for which I've never quite forgiven them, for I'm sure I should have got on much faster at the public school and I loved it. But I've not forgotten the good times I had there, and John was always good to the little girls. We all liked him. I haven't seen him much lately, but I should think he would have grown to be just what you say he is. He looks that way."

Again the woman's eyes searched her face, as if she questioned the sincerity of her words; then apparently satisfied she turned away with a sigh:

"I'd have liked him to know a girl like you," she said wistfully.

"Thank you!" said Ruth brightly, "that sounds like a real compliment. Perhaps we shall know each other yet some day if fortune favors us. I'm quite sure he's worth knowing."

"Oh, he is!" said the little mother, her tears brimming over again and flowing down her dismayed cheeks, "he's quite worth the best society there is, but I haven't been able to manage a lot of things for him. It hasn't been always easy to get along since his father died. Something happened to our money. But anyway, he got through college!" with a flash of triumph in her eyes.

"Wasn't that fine!" said Ruth with sparkling eyes, "I'm sure he's worth a lot more than some of the fellows who have always had every whim gratified. Now, which street? You'll have to tell me. I'm ashamed to say I don't know this part of town very well. Isn't it pretty down here? This house? What a wonderful clematis! I never saw such a wealth of bloom."

"Yes, John planted that and fussed over it," said his mother with pride as she slipped unaccustomedly out of the car to the sidewalk. "I'm very glad to have met you and it was most kind of you to bring me home. To tell the truth"--with a roguish smile that reminded Ruth of her son's grin--"I was so weak and trembling with saying good-bye and trying to keep up so John wouldn't know it, that I didn't know how I was to get home. Though I'm afraid I was a bit discourteous. I couldn't bear the thought of talking to a stranger just then. But you haven't been like a stranger--knowing him, and all----"

"Oh, thank you!" said Ruth, "it's been so pleasant. Do you know, I don't believe I ever realized what an awful thing the war is till I saw those people down at the station this morning saying good-bye. I never realized either what a useless thing I am. I haven't even anybody very dear to send. I can only knit."

"Well, that's a good deal. Some of us haven't time to do that. I never have a minute."

"You don't need to, you've given your son," said Ruth flashing a glance of glorified understanding at the woman.

A beautiful smile came out on the tired sorrowful face.

"Yes, I've given him," she said, "but I'm hoping God will give him back again some day. Do you think that's too much to hope. He is such a good boy!"

"Of course not," said Ruth sharply with a sudden sting of apprehension in her soul. And then she remembered that she had no very intimate acquaintance with God. She wished she might be on speaking terms, at least, and she would go and present a plea for this lonely woman. If it were only Captain La Rue, her favorite cousin, or even the President, she might consider it. But God! She shuddered. Didn't God let this awful war be? Why did He do it? She had never thought much about God before.

"I wish you would let me come to see you sometime and take you for another ride," she said sweetly.

"It would be beautiful!" said the older woman, "if you would care to take the time from your own friends."

"I would love to have you for one of my friends," said the girl gracefully.

The woman smiled wistfully.

"I'm only here holidays and evenings," she conceded, "I'm doing some government work now."

"I shall come," said Ruth brightly. "I've enjoyed you ever so much." Then she started her car and whirled away into the sunshine.

"She won't come, of course," said the woman to herself as she stood looking mournfully after the car, reluctant to go into the empty house. "I wish she would! Isn't she just like a flower! How wonderful it would be if things had been different, and there hadn't been any war, and my boy could have had her for a friend! Oh!"

* * * * *

Down at the Club House the women waited for the fair young member who had charge of the wool. They rallied her joyously as she hurried in, suddenly aware that she had kept them all waiting.

"I saw her in the crowd at the station this morning," called out Mrs. Pryor, a large placid tease with a twinkle in her eye. "She was picking out the handsomest man for the next sweater she knits. Which one did you choose, Miss Ruth? Tell us. Are you going to write him a letter and stick it in the toe of his sock?"

The annoyed color swept into Ruth's face, but she paid no other heed as she went about her morning duties, preparing the wool to give out. A thought had stolen into her heart that made a tumult there and would not bear turning over even in her mind in the presence of all these curious people. She put it resolutely by as she taught newcomers how to turn the heel of a sock, but now and then it crept back again and was the cause of her dropping an occasional stitch.

Dottie Wetherill came to find out what was the matter with her sock, and to giggle and gurgle about her brother Bob and his friends. Bob, it appeared, was going to bring five officers home with him next week end and they were to have a dance Saturday night. Of course Ruth must come. Bob was soon to get his _first_ lieutenant's commission. There had been a mistake, of course, or he would have had it before this, some favoritism shown; but now Bob had what they called a "pull," and things were going to be all right for him. Bob said you couldn't get anywhere without a "pull." And didn't Ruth think Bob looked perfectly fine in his uniform?

It annoyed Ruth to hear such talk and she tried to make it plain to Dottie that she was mistaken about "pull." There was no such thing. It was all imagination. She knew, for her cousin, Captain La Rue, was very close to the Government and he had told her so. He said that real worth was always recognized, and that it didn't make any difference where it was found or who your friends were. It mattered _what you were_.

She fixed Dottie's sock and moved on to the wool table to get ready an allotment for some of the ladies to take home.

Mrs. Wainwright bustled in, large and florid and well groomed, with a bunch of photographer's proofs of her son Harry in his uniform. She called loudly for Ruth to come and inspect them. There were some twenty or more poses, each one seemingly fatter, more pompous and conceited looking than the last. She stated in boisterous good humor that Harry particularly wanted Ruth's opinion before he gave the order. At that Mrs. Pryor bent her head to her neighbor and nodded meaningly, as if a certain matter of discussion were settled now beyond all question. Ruth caught the look and its meaning and the color flooded her face once more, much to her annoyance. She wondered angrily if she would never be able to stop that childish habit of blushing, and why it annoyed her so very much this morning to have her name coupled with that of Harry Wainwright. He was her old friend and playmate, having lived next door to her all her life, and it was but natural when everybody was sweethearting and getting married, that people should speak of her and wonder whether there might be anything more to their relationship than mere friendship. Still it annoyed her. Continually as she turned the pages from one fat smug Wainwright countenance to another, she saw in a mist the face of another man, with uplifted head and sorrowful eyes. She wondered if when the time came for Harry Wainwright to go he would have aught of the vision, and aught of the holiness of sorrow that had shown in that other face.

She handed the proofs back to the mother, so like her son in her ample blandness, and wondered if Mrs. Cameron would have a picture of her son in his uniform, fine and large and lifelike as these were.

She interrupted her thoughts to hear Mrs. Wainwright's clarion voice lifted in parting from the door of the Club House on her way back to her car:

"Well, good-bye, Ruth dear. Don't hesitate to let me know if you'd like to have either of the other two large ones for your own 'specials,' you know. I shan't mind changing the order a bit. Harry said you were to have as many as you wanted. I'll hold the proofs for a day or two and let you think it over."

Ruth lifted her eyes to see the gaze of every woman in the room upon her, and for a moment she felt as if she almost hated poor fat doting Mamma Wainwright. Then the humorous side of the moment came to help her and her face blossomed into a smile as she jauntily replied:

"Oh, no, please don't bother, Mrs. Wainwright. I'm not going to paper the wall with them. I have other friends, you know. I think your choice was the best of them all."

Then as gaily as if she were not raging within her soul she turned to help poor Dottie Wetherill who was hopelessly muddled about turning her heel.

Dottie chattered on above the turmoil of her soul, and her words were as tiny April showers sizzling on a red hot cannon. By and by she picked up Dottie's dropped stitches. After all, what did such things matter when there was _war_ and men were giving their _lives_!

"And Bob says he doubts if they ever get to France. He says he thinks the war will be over before half the men get trained. He says, for his part, he'd like the trip over after the submarines have been put out of business. It would be something to tell about, don't you know? But Bob thinks the war will be over soon. Don't you think so, Ruth?"

"I don't know what I think," said Ruth exasperated at the little prattler. It seemed so awful for a girl with brains--or hadn't she brains?--to chatter on interminably in that inane fashion about a matter of such awful portent. And yet perhaps the child was only trying to cover up her fears, for she all too evidently worshipped her brother.

Ruth was glad when at last the morning was over and one by one the women gathered their belongings together and went home. She stayed longer than the rest to put the work in order. When they were all gone she drove around by the way of the post office and asked the old post master who had been there for twenty years and knew everybody, if he could tell her the address of the boys who had gone to camp that morning. He wrote it down and she tucked it in her blouse saying she thought the Red Cross would be sending them something soon. Then she drove thoughtfully away to her beautiful sheltered home, where the thought of war hardly dared to enter yet in any but a playful form. But somehow everything was changed within the heart of Ruth Macdonald and she looked about on all the familiar places with new eyes. What right had she to be living here in all this luxury while over there men were dying every day that she might live?