“He’s safe, anyhow, Maw—’member that! That’s a whole lot too. Didn’t always know that, times he was rollin’ round so over here. You worried a whole lot about him, you know.”
But Maw didn’t answer. She seldom spoke at all—moved about as little as possible. When she had put out food for him and Tom she always went back to her corner and stared into the fire. Luke had to bring a plate to her and coax her to eat. Even the day Uncle Clem and Aunt Mollie came up she did not notice them. Only once she spoke of Nat to Luke.
“You loved him the most, didn’t ye, Maw?” he asked timidly one dreary evening.
“Why, lad, he was my first!” she said; and after a bit, as though to herself: “His head was that round and shiny when he was a little fellow it was like to a little round apple. I mind, before he ever come, I bought me a cap fur him over to Rockville, with a blue bow onto it. He looked awful smart an’ pretty in it.”
Sometimes in the night Luke, sleeping ill and thinking long, lay and listened for possible sounds from Maw’s room. Perhaps she cried in the nights. If she only would—it would help break the tension for them all. But he never heard anything but the rain—steadily, miserably beating on the sodden shingles overhead.
It was only Luke who watched the mail box now. One morning his journey to it bore fruit. No sting any longer; no fear in the thick foreign letter he carried.
“It’ll tell ye all’s to it, I bet!” he said eagerly.
Maw seemed scarcely interested. It was Luke who broke the seal and read it aloud.
It was written from the Ambulance Headquarters, in Paris—written by a man of rare insight, of fine and delicate perception. All that Nat’s family might have wished to learn he sought to tell them. He had himself investigated Nat’s story and he gave it all fully and freely. He spoke in praise of Nat; of his friendly associations with the Ambulance men; of his good nature and cheerful spirits; his popularity and ready willingness to serve. People, one felt, had loved Nat over there.
He wrote of the preliminary duties in Paris, the preparations—of Nat’s final going to join one of the three sections working round Verdun. It wasn’t easy work that waited for Nat there. It was a stiff contract guiding the little ambulance over the shell-rutted roads, with deftness and precision, to those distant dressing stations where the hurt soldiers waited for him. It was a picture that thrilled Luke and made his pulses tingle—the blackness of the nights; the rumble of moving artillery and troops; the flash of starlights; the distant crackling of rifle fire; the steady thunder of heavy guns.