That Little Mother

by Hapsburg Liebe

THAT LITTLE MOTHER

by Hapsburg Liebe
Author of "God Bless Bill," "Soldiers of Destiny," etc

THERE'S an old saying that the army will either make a man or break him; and in some instances I've seen it work. In the case of the young sojer who answered roll-call as Private Llewelyn, it done both: it broke him, and then it made him. The first come easy. The other, it was hard and terrible.

Now, a man can't be a sojer for twenty-three years in continuous service and not know men—even if he aint got no more book-learning than me. The knowledge will be beat and ground into him, forced into him whether he wants it or not. You see them come, and you see them go; you see them live, and you see them die—and by this last I say you read the most, sometimes. As soon as my eyes caught sight of Private Llewelyn walking into the barricks, I says to myself:

"Sergeant Flowers," I says, "that lad's been brought up under glass; he knows about as much o' the world as you know o' the planet they call the Big Dipper."

He was in civilian clother, and mighty well dressed. His hands and his face was as white as a society belle's. Although he was barely grown, he was as fine a figger of a young man as you'd care to see, with shoulders anybody might ha' envied. He was good-looking, too, with his blue eyes and brown hair; but his mouth and chin, they struck me as being a little weak.

The minute he was in his new khaki uniform, he turned himself loose. He soon went wild. The free-and-easy life of a sojer, after his careful guiding at home, completely upset his head. By the time we had spent a year campaigning in the Philippines, he had sunk almost as low as a man can go without being kicked out o' the service with a dishonorable discharge hanging to him. He drank like a fish, swore and gambled like a pirate, fought at every chance; he spent half his time in the guardhouse. He played off sick when there was anything hard on hand; he even sneaked out o' the common duties o' the garrison. He was a regi mental pariah, a outcast, a nobody, among his comrades. And I noticed that he never wrote any letters home, nor never got any letters from home.

THE regiment was in Catbalogan, on the coast o' Bloody Samar—that word "Bloody" belongs to Samar the same as the word "damned" belongs to a dog in a woman's lap. We was resting after a hard campaign in the interior, and there was a hundred or more sick and wounded in the big old Spanish Government building which served us as a horspital—and a dozen or so o' them was waiting for wooden overcoats. The whole outfit, except a few old reg'lar army men like me, was so lonesome and heartsick and homesick that they couldn't sleep o' nights only when they was a-doing o' guard duty.

It was a little after dark, and I was sergeant o' the guard. As usual, Private Llewelyn was one o' the prisoners. In walks our capt'in, a good-hearted Yankee from Lewiston, Maine. He acknowledges my salute, goes straight to Llewelyn's bunk, and sets down by the side o' Llewelyn. I couldn't help a-overhearing what they said.

"Llewelyn," begins Capt'in Pollard, mighty kind-like, "the first thing you know you're going to get a courtmartial and be fired out o' the army. You'll be disgraced. It'll be published in your home papers, you know. What'll your folks think about it? For their sake, if not for your own," says he, "you ought to turn a new leaf."

Llewelyn replies like he's talking to himself: "I aint got any folks but one."

And there was a quiver in his voice that told me and the Capt'in who that one was.

"What'll she think of it?" asks the company commander.

Llewelyn he looks at the Capt'in and frowns. "She wont neveh know it," he says. "It was like this: She wouldn't let me go into the army," says he, "and so I run away and went to the neahest city and enlisted undeh a false name and with a permit I wrote and witnessed myself."

"Went to Jacksonville," says the Capt'in.

"How did you know?"

"The records show it," answers Capt'in Pollard. "Besides, I know your dialect."

"Humph!" And Llewelyn almost makes a face.

"South Georgy, then," guesses the company commander.

And Llewelyn's count'nance gives it away that the Capt'in had hit the mark that time.

"Did you know," goes on Capt'in Pollard, "that it has been only because o' the mercy of Colonel Lockwood that you have not already been courtmartialed?"

"Please tell the Colonel foh me that I said to give his mehcies to somebody that wants 'em," says Llewelyn.

Capt'in Pollard, that fine, good man, got no promise to do better from Private Llewelyn. I tell you, the boy had fell to a awful depth. The only things on earth he cared for was something to drink and somebody to curse, gamble with or fight. I don't think he even cared for the one he had left back in South Georgy to worry her old heart out for lack of him.

NEXT afternoon Luk Ban's hordes of Moros, Pampangas and Visayans, armed with rifles, poisoned bamboo-spears, bolos and silver-mounted, flame-shaped krises that could take away a man's head at one blow, crept down from the range of scrub-covered hills that laid half around Catbalogan. We was not expecting nothing at all, and they was almost within rifle range of us before we knowed it. The Colonel he put us all in the trenches the Spaniards had dug years before around the outskirts of the town, and there we waited patient for Luk Ban to start the ball to rolling. And we knowed well that the big insurgent had a s'perior force, because he never would ha' attacked the whole regiment in the daytime without it.

I remember it as well as if it was yesterday. The sun it was that b'iling hot that we was near roasting there on our stomachs in the trenches; there wasn't a breath o' wind from nowheres. The prisoners had been armed and sent out with the rest of us to help defend against them savages; and by my side, seeming not to care nothing at all about it, was the pariah Private Llewelyn, in his reddish-brown fatigue uniform and bareheaded. I suddenly begun to feel sorry for him, in spite o' myself. I mops my sweating face with the sleeve o' my blue shirt, and I says to him:

"Kid," says I, "you're in a mighty bad fix with the regiment, sure. If you see any chance to do any redeeming o' yourself," I says, "you better take it."

He shakes his head sullen-like and looks hard at me with his dissipated blue eyes.

"Even if you get your wooden head shot off," I goes on a-getting a little mad, "it's better than a bobtail discharge—a million times better," I says.

"Not to me it aint," Llewelyn replies careless-like. "I wish," he says, "I had a quaht jug o' gin."

I said something pretty scalding, but I forget just what it was. For Luk Ban's brown men broke in a solid line from the edge o' the jungle that laid along by the foot o' the hills, and we got the order to fire. Luk Ban's rifles opened up too, and the hell of war broke loose upon us all. The roar of our Krags drownded out the keen whine o' the Mausers and the nasty, coarse hum o' the Remingtons, except when they come close to the ear.

It lasted until very near sundown, when we drove them back across the hills. It had cost us something to win that vict'ry. The horspital was crowded full o' the wounded, among them being the chaplain, who had been offering the last comforts to a man with a flung bolo still through him. A good many had went through the door of death. The young regiment, in spite o' the vict'ry, dropped into a deeper gloom than ever.

AMONG the wounded was me. It was a bullet wound across the temple, and when I come to myself it was after night and I was in the horspital. The thing that brought me back was the touch of a hand too soft and too gentle to belong to any man on earth; it was a-smoothing back my red hair from my bandaged brow. I opened my eves and looked up into the face of a little, gray old American woman! She was dressed in solid black. She was smiling; but in her blue eyes there was the shadow of some great worriment."

"Say, if—if you please, ma'am," I stammers, "when d-did you come, an' who might you be?"

In the richest 'way-down-South brogue I ever heard she tells me that her name is Mrs. Halliday, and that she has just arrived a hour before on the Campania Maritima's steamer Saturnus—the Saturnus, which now lies, twisted and burnt, on the west shore of upper Luzon. And her voice reminded me much o' Private Llewelyn's that jumped immediate at the conclusion that she's his mother. I starts to tell her where to find Llewelyn,—which was in the guardhouse, of course—when I happens to think.

"Lord," I says to myself, "it would kill that woman to know what he is!" And I decides to bide my time.

Pretty soon she walks away and goes to another wounded sojer; and him, bad hurt and a-raving delirious, he takes her hand and kisses it and calls her "Mother."

My head it commenced to aching, and not a wink o' sleep did I get that whole night. I raised myself a little, and there I sets a-looking at the gray little old woman as she goes from one man to another with her comforting words and her good smile. I remember it as well as if it was yesterday.

It would be hard for me to tell about everything she done. She petted them heartsick, homesick and wounded young sojers, and wrote last letters for some who was never to see American shores no more: and once or twice I seen her on her knees, with her hands clasped and her head bent, while some man passed out. We all commenced a-loving of her. She was a mother to us all.

Along toward daybreak the big medico he turned over his room in the downstairs o' the horspital building to her, and persuaded her to go to bed for some rest. Yes, he had had a mother just the same as anybody else. And when the under doctors offered their quarters instead, why, the head medico he straightens and looks stern and says: "I claim the honor, gentlemen!"

I've seen them come, and I've seen them go; I've seen them live, and I've seen them die. Some are men, and some aint. The big doctor was a man. There was scores of wishful eyes watched that little lady leave the main ward, and mine was among them.

THE following day I was discharged from the horspital building, and as I enters my company street I meets Capt'in Pollard.

"Sergeant," he says, "I am going to give you the job of being orderly to Mrs. Halliday while she is with us."

"I thank you, sir, Capt'in," I says, a-meaning every word of it.

"Please report to her for duty, Sergeant," he says.

And I salutes and makes a staggery 'bout-face and returns to the horspital building. Just as I takes my place before the little woman's door, she opens it.

"I beg leave to say, ma'am," says I, "that I have been sent to you to be your orderly."

"Awdehly?" says she. "And what is that, suh?"

"Flunky, ma'am," I explains. "I am to stay close to you, ma'am, to do anything you want done."

"Ah—a suhvant—I undehstand," says she. She hands me a chair from her room. "Then foh goodness' sake," she says, "set down; it's too tiahsome to stand theah like that!"

"Not at all," I says, passing the chair back. "It's military to stand."

"You must obey my awdehs, mustn't you?"

"Of course, ma'am!" I agrees.

"Then, suh, I awdeh you to set down!" says she, handing the chair back to me.

And I obeys orders.

Well, the whole regiment was soon a-worshiping Mrs. Halliday. During the time she felt she could spare from the sick ones in the horspital, she went around among the different companies, with me at her heels; and I could tell easy that she was a-looking for somebody. And one afternoon while we was out on one o' these rounds, she turns to me and says:

"Sahgent," she says, "have I seen every man in this regiment?"

Now I had to tell a lie, I felt; so I salutes and answers with a innocent face on me:

"Every man, ma'am," I says.

"All but them in the prison—I mean the guardhouse," she says; and she looks toward the low stone building, a old Spanish carcel, that stood down close to the bay-shore.

"Oh, yes," I says, "all but them in the guardhouse. "But," I adds, "there aint nobody much in the guardhouse, you know, ma'am—just a few raky fellows," I says.

I barely caught what she said next, which wasn't meant for my ears at all. She says to herself:

"Anyway, he would neveh be theah. He was too good for that, my David."

IT was only a few hours later that it happened. The night was as clear as crystal. The tropic stars hung so low in the sky that a man felt he could reach them from a housetop; they twinkled and shined like balls of white fire. The breeze was from the landward, and it brought with it the sweet smell of ylang-ylang and hibiscus, the lonesome cry of a nightbird of the jungle, the acquoo!-acquoo! of a iguana. Off from the horspital building somewheres come the jangling of brass strings on a native guitar, and a female voice singing a melancholy Visayan love-song in minors.

I was a-setting just outside o' Mrs. Halliday's door, expecting any minute to see the thin shaft of candlelight at my feet fade away, which would be my time to leave. Suddenly her voice comes to me, low and sad:

"Oh, Sahgent Flowehs!"

"Yes ma'am!" I says.

I went in at her command. She was standing by her open window, with her frail, white hands resting on the sill and her gentle face turned toward the breeze that brought the smell of ylang-ylang and hibiscus.

"You wanted me, ma'am?" I says, saluting.

"Is it too late foh me to go to see the Colonel?" she asks, without facing about.

"Of course not, ma'am," says I.

"Then I think I will go, Sahgent," says she.

She puts a shawl or something around her shoulders, and we goes to headquarters, which was in a small frame building covered with curygated iron that had bullet-holes in it enough to ventilate it. The door was open, and she walks in. I stops on the upper step. The Colonel, two o' the majors and a capt'in was gathered around a little table that had two burning candles and some campaign plans on it. The officers bows and greets Mrs. Halliday polite.

"Please have this chair, Mrs. Halliday," invites Colonel Lockwood.

They all sets down, with the big gons saying how delighted and honored they felt at her visit.

"I come heah to have a talk with you, Colonel," says the little gray woman.

"Shall the others leave us?" asks the regimental commander.

"I—I guess it aint necessary," smiles Mrs. Halliday. "Colonel," she goes on, "I come all the way from South Geohgy to look foh my son. He was always such a good boy until he took the ahmy feveh. I wanted to please him; but—but I just couldn't let him go! Finally he become desp'rate about it. He told me that if I didn't let him go he would run away to some city wheah we has not knowed, enlist undeh an assumed name and with a fohged pehmit, and go anyway. Still I could not let him leave me—my boy David, who his fatheh named foh the David of old, the man afteh God's own heaht. He's all I've got, and I'm all he's got. I knowed of no otheh way to reach him." she says, "because of the assumed name; so I come the ten thousand miles to look foh him.... And," she says, "theah wasn't time to do anything else."

She stopped and looked down. The Colonel glanced toward Major Thornton, and Major Thornton said something I couldn't catch. Then the little mother she goes on, sadlike:

"I have had an ohganic disease of the heaht foh several yeahs; and afteh David left me to be a sojeh," she says, "I leahned from the doctohs that I had but a few months of life left.... I had but one wish in my soul. That one wish was to see my deah David once again. So theah was reelly nothing else to do but to come. I wanted to ask you, Colonel: Is theah any way that you could help me? Could you send to the otheh regiments o' the Philippines and cause copies of a letteh from me to be read aloud befoh' than all, in the hope that it might reach my David's eahs? If he knowed the truth, he would hasten to me," she says; "foh David he was a good boy—all but that running away to be a sojeh. He promised me that if I would let him go he would come home with the shouldeh-straps of a capt'in on him," she says. "Oh, he wanted to go so much!"

THE Colonel looks thoughtful. When he replies to Mrs. Halliday, it's plain it's all he can do to talk. A man with feelings inside of him was Colonel Lockwood.

"Be assured," he says, kindlike, "that I will do everything in my power to find your son for you. If you will write the letter you mentioned," says he. "I will send to every regiment in the Islands and cause copies of it to be read to every sojer. If you will just set down at the table here, Mrs. Halliday, ma'am," he says, "there's pen and ink and paper."

Mrs. Halliday she goes to her feet "Thank you so much. Colonel Lockwood; but I think I could write the letteh best in my own quahtehs. So I'll go, and I'll send it to you the first thing in the mohning by the Sergeant, suh, says she.

"By the way," says the regiment's commander, "the Sixty-seventh Volunteers has just arrived at San Pedro, which is two miles around the coast; you might look that outfit over in the morning. Doubtless we can find some way of getting you there without your walking.

"Thank you so much, suh!" she cries. "I will be ready to go at any minute to-morrow, suh. Gentlemen, I bid you good night!"

I went back to the little lady's quarters with her. When we had reached her door, she turned and smiled at me, and dismissed me. Then I hurries back to headquarters and dashes into the presence o' the four commissioned officers like a whirlwind.

"Colonel," I says, out o' breath, mighty near, "I sure beg pardon for coming to you without permission. But I felt that there wasn't no time to fool away with red tape. Colonel," says I, "Private Llewelyn, the regimental pariah, the outcast and the nobody, is that old woman's son, as sure as I aint a leper!"

Colonel Lockwood he knowed about Llewelyn, of course, the same as the balance o' the regiment did.

"Impossible!" cries he.

"Impossible!" cries Major Thornton.

"Yes sir!" I says. "I've done reasoned it all out. I heard Llewelyn tell Capt'in Pollard that he'd enlisted under a assumed name and with a forged permit because he couldn't enlist any other way. And his brogue is the same as Mrs. Halliday's and he come from South Georgy too. Please, sir. Colonel Lockwood," I begs, "let me bring Llewelyn here for you to examine!"

"Bring him," nods the Colonel.

AS soon as I seen that dog Llewelyn, I felt like I wanted to horsewhip him. He knowed his mother was there, of course—he couldn't help but know it—and yet he didn't seem to care nothing about it at all. When we entered headquarters, he didn't even stand at "Attention."

"What is your name?" asks the Colonel, a-snapping it out like a rifle-shot.

"Robeht—"

"David, and not Robert!" clips the Colonel.

"David Llewel—"

"Not Llewelyn!" Colonel Lockwood breaks in.

"David Halliday, then," grins that desp'rate young man.

"I thought so." And the Colonel lifts his brows. "David, your mother has but a short time to live, and she has come all the way to the Philippines, ten thousand miles, to see you once again before she goes—"

He went on with it, and never have I heard, in all my life, such a going-over as David Halliday received. And David Halliday he felt the force of it He went red and white by turns; once he staggered and sunk almost to his knees. He begun to beg the Colonel to quit. But the Colonel wouldn't quit until he was through. I tell you it was turrible!

And no sooner had Colonel Lockwood reached the end of that awful grilling when a runner from the horspital bursts in at the doorway and jerks out breathless:

"She's dying—that little mother—leakage of the heart—a few minutes, at most—"

Then the Colonel he interrupts in a voice like iron:

"Take off your uniform, Capt'in Bruce! Quick!" he says—and he faced back to David Halliday. "You're going to put on Capt'in Bruce's uniform—you're going to deceive her—d'ye hear, you unspeakable young scoundrel! You belong to 'M' of the Sixty-seventh Volunteers, just arrived at San Pedro, up the coast—d'ye hear? And you've got to act the part, too! Quick. I say, Capt'in Bruce, for God's sake!" he says.

He takes Capt'in Bruce's blouse and tears away from each side o' the collar-band the crossed guns, because they had the figgers 73 instead of 67 on them.

IN a very short space of time David Halliday was in a capt'in's uniform, with a capt'in's hat on his head and a capt'in's sword and scabbard hooked to a belt around his waist—and damme if he didn't look like a officer in spite of himself! Then the Colonel he took Halliday by a arm and went running toward the horspital building with him, with me a-following close in their wake.

"Act the part, d'ye hear?" pants the regimental commander as they go. "If you don't, David Halliday, I'll make you wish you had! She come ten thousand miles just to look upon your dirty, villainous, scoundrelly face. Act the part, or I'll—I'll make you regret that you was ever borned!"

The regiment had got the news. It was gathered around the horspital building, waiting, silent and mighty anxious; for I tell you it loved her to a man. The Colonel and Halliday, with me at their heels, broke through the close-packcd sojers; and the Colonel he begun to cry out in a voice that rung like the ring o' steel, so that the little woman could hear him:

"Make way there, I say! Make way for Capt'in Holiday, of the Sixty-sevnth Volunteers! Make way there ahead!"

The sojers divided, and we passed through. We hurried into the room where the little lady set in a big chair, with the head doctor bending over her. She was white; but she was still alive. As her son went in at the door she seen him and knowed him.

"David!" she gasps. And the happiness that was in her voice is a thing I can't tell about.

Halliday gave a great, sobbing cry and fell to his knees before her. With her last strength she put out her frail, white arms and put them around him, drawing his head close to her poor old failing heart.

"Fohgive me!" he says, all choked in bis throat, kneeling there at what I once heard a good chaplain call the first altar of life, his mother's knee.

"Ah—a capt'in's—shoulder-straps—deah son!" she mutters; and we seen she tried to tighten her arms and couldn't. "Don't ask—my fohgiveness! But fohgive me! I wanted—to hold—you—back.... Oh—deah son—fohgive—me—"

Her gray old head fell forward. She kissed the golden bars on his shoulder.

And then she passed out.

WE put her to rest in the regiment's silk flag, under a fragrant ylang-ylang, under starry hibiscus. We fired the three volleys of a sojer over her, and a bugler tried hard to blow "raps" while the regiment knelt. For it was the greatest and finest and best sojer of all that had went to sleep—that little mother.

David Halliday he made of himself a man like the David of old, a man after God's own heart; it become the work of his life to win the commission of a capt'in, and he has done it.