McClure's Magazine/Volume 50/Number 11/His Letters

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

 

“If you fall for some pretty nurse, I'll just die,” wrote his best girl. This note he buttoned over his heart. Read these letters with him

 

His Letters—by Mary Roberts Rinehart

 

Illustration by Frank Alden Weeks

 

THE boy was reading his letters. The sharp bustle of departure was over, and the ship had settled down to such quiet as is possible with four thousand young voices aboard, four thousand pairs of army-issue shoes, eighteen mascots of noise-producing varieties, and a fog over the bay.

There had been a sick feeling in what the boy would have said was his stomach, when the dim outlines of the city faded into that early-morning haze. He had cheered and waved his hat at the Goddess of Liberty, along with the others, and in a restrained voice, along the rail, he had sung in a bass newly acquired and very, very deep, “Good-bye, Broadway, Hello, France!”

The singing had cheered him. He had been hanging over the stern, but now he wandered forward.

Then he remembered his letters. There were four. He found a sheltered spot and sat down to read them. One was in an old hand, feeble and shaken. The capitals were made with tiny flourishes, and at the top of each sheet was the mark of a pin, where had been fastened underneath a sheet of lines, to show through and keep the writing straight.

The second was from his mother. It was a broad, firm script, on heavy paper. He rather thought there might be a check in it. Over the third he was puzzled; then his face cleared.

“Aunt Fanny!” he said. “Good old girl!”

He kept the fourth for the last. It was in an unformed girlish hand, written with a stub pen, and it was rather fat and heavy. He held it for a moment before he slipped it back into the pocket of his blouse.

He read his grandmother's letter first.

“My dear Grandson,” it said. “It is a long time since I have written any letters. Your Aunt Fanny does my writing for me. But now that you are going away to fight, I must send you my blessing and good-bye. It is strongly borne in on me that I shall not be here when you come back. You must not feel badly about that, if it is God's will that I am taken before long. I have lived my time, and more. I have had much happiness, and so many that I have loved are waiting for me on the other side that my going to them will be a great joy.

“I have knitted you six pairs of socks, and I have sent you also the Testament your grandfather carried through the Civil War. It was returned to me when he died at Appomattox, along with his watch. As my eldest grandchild, this watch will be yours some day.

---

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“Keep your heart and your gun clean, and love your country and your cause”

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---

“As I sit here on this quiet Sabbath day, my thoughts go back, as the thoughts of the old always do, to the past. I see your grandfather's face when the news came that war was declared against the Southern Confederacy. He was uncertain what to do. Your father was a baby then, and I was not very strong. How strange it must seem to him, waiting over there, that I have been so long in coming to him.

“At first it did not seem possible for him to leave us. Then, on a Sabbath day very like this one, we went to church together, and the clergyman announced that he had found his duty lay with the colors. One by one the men in the congregation rose and joined him.

“The memories of the old are strange. I have forgotten so much since then. But I remember everything of that day your father, asleep on my arm, and your grandfather's face, white and set. Then I saw him take up his Testament, and open it at random, and sit with it in his hand, thinking.

“He passed it over to me, and his finger was on the verse his eyes had found to lead him. You will find the page marked by your father's picture. 'What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Can that faith save him?'

“He gave me the Book, and he put his hand for a moment on your father's head. Then he stood up and said: 'I am ready to go.'

“Your father carried the Testament through the Spanish War, and now you are to carry it to France. I shall have a splendid story to tell when I join them all on the other side. My only regret is that you have no son. I should like to feel, before I go, that the fighting traditions of the family are to be carried down for other generations to come.

“The old see many things. They see that there are things better worth while than length of years, and that all that is worth living for may be crowded into a few short days. They see that life itself is nothing, and that what counts is duty and achievement. And they have learned, at the cost of much sorrow, that we are all in the hands of a greater power to use as He wills.

“The peace of God be and abide with you always.”

“Poor old grandmother!” said the boy, inarticulately. He folded the letter and laid it beside him. He would have to hunt up that Testament and look at it. Pretty fine old chap, his grandfather. Those old guys had good stuff in 'em. Sword in one hand and Bible in the other!

He drew himself up a little. A fellow had to carry on the traditions of his family. Well, he hoped he'd do his bit when the time came.

He read his Aunt Fanny's letter next, with boyish discrimination—reserving the best for the last. He had a clear picture of his Aunt Fanny in his mind, her thin, erect figure, her graying hair, her austere dress. It had been rather a shame about Aunt Fanny, living with his grandmother for all these years, and taking care of the little old lady with such unstinting devotion.

He had seen her once or twice in the early morning, after his grandmother had had a bad night, Once he had met her on the stairway, carrying a little tray. She had looked very elderly and very tired, and he rather thought she had been crying. It had dawned on him then that life was not particularly exciting for her. He had taken the tray from her and put a strong young arm about her thin shoulders.

“Buck up, old girl,” he had said. “She's going to live for years and years yet.”

And somehow, thinking it over later, he had fancied that he had not greatly comforted her.

He opened Fanny's letter, but he did not read it at once. He had only four, and there was no use hurrying through them. Besides, there was a wrestling bout going on down the deck. He watched it idly. From somewhere below there came, too, an odor of frying bacon. He looked at his wrist-watch and mentally computed the time to mess. He sighed.

“Dear Francis,” said Aunt Fanny's letter. “I am not exactly in a right mood to write you. But I must, if you are to get this in time. I have sent a dozen pairs of socks to your mother for you, and I'd be glad to know if the sweater is open enough at the neck to go over your head easily. Try to work it on slowly at first, so you don't stretch it too much.

“THINK of your being a soldier! It is no time at all since I knitted little booties for you, so small that they were ridiculous! And now I am ashamed to show the size of the socks you require! Let me know if you need more, or if you know any boys who need them. It is all an old maid like myself can do in this war—knit for other women's children.

“I wonder sometimes if your mother knows how I envy her? She has something to give. I have nothing. I cannot even offer myself, although I know I could be useful. I must stay in the eddy here, making bandages that anyone could make, knitting, sewing and praying that sometime, some way, my chance may come. I have never regretted the care of your grandmother. You must not think that, Frank. But she is very old, and her thoughts are all in the past. Sometimes I feel that she hardly knows I am around. I am just like her armchair by the window. And I know that if that were taken away there are other chairs.... But I mustn't write like this, Frank. You will think I am getting old and hard; old am I, but not hard.

“Your mother will be shut in her room the day you read this. She will be all right after that. It is only the first wrench. But I wish I might be shut in a room, with a son or a husband going to fight in this great war. I am so proud of you. So glad you are going, so hopeful you are coming back.

“Did you ever know that the day you came brought me the great grief of my life? We were in the same house, your mother and I. And in the dawn you came, a great lusty boy-child. I shall never forget your mother's face. And only an hour or so later I learned that the man I was to marry had died of typhoid fever, in Florida. It was the day of the battle of Santiago, but he had never got beyond the detention camp.

“So you see I have given to war, but not to a big war. Only to a little, useless, hysterical war that cost more than it was worth. And now when I would give again, I have nothing to give, not even myself.

“The tobacconist's bill from school came to-day, and I paid it without showing it to your mother. Also a florist's bill you had forgotten. What a lot of flowers you have been sending to somebody or other!

“Well, Frank, I must run and see that your grandmother's luncheon goes up in good order. I meant to write you about yourself, and being a good boy, and all that, and here I have written only about myself. But I think you will understand. I had kept it in so long that I just had to talk it out. I feel better now. You are going to get the Hun, dear boy. And you are going to come back covered with medals, as a pin-cushion is stuck with pins. Your loving Aunt Fanny.”

“P.S. Let me know if the socks are large enough. And can I send you a cake now and then?”

The boy put down the letter. There was a reflective gleam in his eyes. It was rotten luck for Aunt Fan. She ought to have been married, and had a lot of kids. Think of that poor devil dying of typhoid in the Spanish War! No danger of that for him. He had been jabbed with all sorts of things.

A private was passing along the deck in front of him, and he hailed him.

“Say, Wat,” he inquired, anxiously, “how about getting cakes and things over? Any trouble about it?”

Over his mother's letter he rather hesitated. She had been very brave, he knew, but if his going could break up Aunt Fan into telling about herself, it could do mighty queer things. He was all she had, these days, and she had just about had a fit when he first went away to school.

But he need not have worried.

“Dearest boy of my heart,” wrote his mother. “This is not a good-bye letter at all. It is a sort of 'welcome' letter—a welcome to new and big things. All these years I have been waiting for you to be a man. And now at last you are a man, with a man's work before you. I am not happy, I cannot write you that. But I am proud. You will never know how proud I am.

“I wear my little service pin like a medal. I want everyone to see it, to know that I have a son who is a soldier for his country. I have hung the service flag high, and I should like so big and blue a star in it that people would stop to stare at it!

“I am not giving you, dearest lad, I am only lending you. You are coming back, and when you come you will find your room ready, and the dogs waiting, and your mother in a perfectly new and expensive gown, at the door. And you will come swinging up, as you always did, and shout, 'Hello, everybody! How's everything?'

“How dear and foolish it all sounds—and yet it is what so many of us are living for.

“You won't forget to wear your woolens, dear, will you? And to change your stockings when you get your feet wet. I have knitted you a dozen pairs. You know how easily you take cold. Do you remember the time you had the measles, and I took them from you, and how you sent the nurse in with a picture you had drawn of yourself, with your face all covered with little dots? I still have it.

“Oh, my dear, my dear, I am writing everything but what I want to say. I do not want to weaken, but sometimes, when I think of the long time ahead—I wonder if you boys, setting out on this great adventure, can ever know what love you are leaving behind? Boy, I do not want to be told such things, but surely, surely they know. What hopes and fears and prayers! What tremblings! And what faith in them!

“What hurts most, I think, is that if anything does go wrong, we cannot care for you. Always, until now, there was something we could do, even if it was only a mustard plaster, or a bit of iodine for a little cut. But now we can do nothing. What a wonderful poster that is of the Red Cross, the great mother! It has given me such comfort.

“I am turning your allowance over to the Red Cross.

“DEAREST, the one thing that keeps me up is my faith in our cause. It is so right, so wonderful. And God is good. He has given us these wonderful years; we have had together, and He has made you what your father so hoped—a man. But sometimes I wonder just how close we will seem to you, over there. We are really so near, just over the edge of the sea. But it will seem very far sometimes. What I want you most to remember is that this war is only an interlude—that behind it, as before it, there is peace and happiness waiting, and home. To so live, lad of my heart, that you can come back, you and all the others, and take up life again where you left it off, that is my prayer for you. Perhaps not where you left off. You will have grown and changed. But to come back, joyous and triumphant, to those of us who wait. All the months, dear, will be one long waiting.

“Perhaps while you are reading this I shall be in church. I get a little comfort—a great deal, really—out of my quiet hour in some empty church. I just go in and say a little prayer, and then I sit for a time quietly. There is a sort of peace—well, it helps, dear. And sometimes I feel as though your father is nearer then than at other times.

“God bless and keep you, darling. Do you remember your grandfather's motto, written in the little Testament that is yours now? 'Keep your heart and your gun clean.' Do that, dearest boy of my heart. And Jove your country and your cause, as you love

“Your Mother.”

The boy blew his nose fiercely, but he was inarticulate. He had only the vocabulary of youth.

“Poor old mother!” he said to himself. He blinked and surveyed the horizon somberly. “Poor old mother! Scared to death and as plucky as a goat.”

For a moment or two he forgot the last letter, awaiting its turn on his knee. All sorts of dear, familiar memories flooded his mind. He thought of his dog, and of his room at home, and of the old cook who had helped to rear him. He remembered his shabby little car, a poor thing but his own. And his father's picture, with always a few fresh flowers below it. And he remembered, too, the day he had decided to enlist.

It had been in church, and for the first time a great silk flag hung beside the altar. When the choir came in, followed by the clergyman, he had almost forgotten to rise. It had suddenly come over him that that was his flag!

“Funny thing!” he reflected. 'Grandfather got it in church, too. Old boy never came back, either. Well—cheero!”

He picked up the last letter.

He opened it slowly, as one who defers a long-looked-for moment, to enjoy its anticipation to the full. The little line between his eyes disappeared, and unconsciously he smoothed his wind-ruffled hair. He glanced about, too, to be sure of no interruption.

“Dearest Frank,” began the letter. “It is perfectly awful to think of your going away. It fairly makes me sick. This old war has just spoiled everything. It isn't possible to have a decent party, and as for tennis—well, I am playing with a lot of scrubs. They are either under seventeen or over forty.

“I just say darn the Germans anyhow. I hope they'll get all that's coming to them, and more. Give one of them a good jab for me, Frank.

“Well, I suppose you'll be started when you read this. I am just sick about it. And I'll bet you are too, if this wind keeps up. I hope you'll get a chance at a submarine going over. I mean, of course, a nice safe chance, so you can run it down or blow it up, or something. I don't want anything to happen to you. You know that, Frank.

“I don't know that I have any news. Bess is engaged to Merrill at last. They were made for each other, but it took them a long time to find it out. And Merrill is going into the Navy. And Bess wants him to get something safe, at home. Well, that's Bess, all over!

“Did you get the eight pairs of socks I sent you? Bess is sending you some also, and Jane and Alice Lee are making some more. I had the most awful time getting mine done. I simply loathe knitting, but I couldn't bear to think of your not having any. And I wanted you to have something I'd made myself. You are simply to think of me all the time you are wearing them.

“I HAD the most awful dream about you last night. I won't tell you about it, but it was horrible. Please be careful of shells, won't you? You know you are so brave that you are reckless, and I don't want you spoiled. You're awfully good-looking, you know.

“I just lie awake at night, Frank, wondering if you'll ever think about me at all when you get over there. I know it's silly, for you know so many nice girls everywhere, and I don't think the French girls are so very attractive, do you? They're so stiff and self-conscious, but they certainly do know how to make eyes at a good-looking man. And you are perfectly wonderful in your uniform, Frank. It's the most becoming thing.

“I am really awfully sad. I hardly laugh at all any more, and everyone thinks I am en awful grouch. I'm just crumby all the time. And I think I'll go somewhere and be a nurse. There was a procession of nurses the other day, and they were absolutely fetching. All the men took their hats off. I expect you'll fall for some pretty nurse, Frank, and just forget all about us at home. And if you do I'll just die.

“I have read this all over, and it sounds pretty gushy. But I am just sick all over. There's nothing left in America. I'm going to France if I have to swim. And perhaps if you haven't forgotten all about me, we'll meet over there. I won't forget you, Frank. I just never will. And I think you're the bravest thing I ever knew.

“Well, get me a German prisoner for a keepsake, and bring home a whole row of medals. But you'll do that. You're that kind. And, Frank, I shall be thinking of you every minute. I'm going to-night to the funniest play I can find. I've just got to forget things for a little.

“L———”

THE boy read the letter gravely and slowly. He found nothing lacking in it.

“Poor little girl!” he said to himself. “Poor little girl!' As if a fellow would look at a French girl when he can think of her!”

Then he read the letter again.

Sometime later he went below. In the little cabin his room-mate was pinning a photograph on the wall, and standing off, cigarette in hand, to admire it.

“Some girl!” said the boy, taking a squint at it.

Then he opened his bedroll and very carefully put away the letters from his grandmother, Aunt Fanny and his mother. But the last letter he buttoned into the pocket of his blouse—over his heart.

And went to mess.