_ CHAPTER IV. MRS. SANDERSON'S STORY
Tears were not only in her eyes now, but running down her wrinkled old face, and the girls, with the tears of real pity in their own eyes, crowded closer about her.
"Would it help," Betty suggested gently, "if you told us about it?"
The old lady drew her gaze from the window and let it rest on the sweet, sympathetic young face, and she nodded slowly.
"I guess maybe it would," she agreed, taking a handkerchief from the pocket in her dress and wiping her eyes. "You see, I never have told anybody for years and years, and if it hadn't been for this war I suppose I should have gone right on not telling anybody for the rest of my life. Of course the Yates and Baldwins and all the folks that lived around us knew it, so there was no use telling them--" Her voice trailed off and her eyes sought the window with its vista of parade ground and low, roughly built barracks buildings.
The girls looked at her. Never in their lives, they thought, had they been so thoroughly interested in anything as they were in the secret sorrow of this gentle old lady, the sorrow that brought that strange cloud of unhappiness every time she mentioned this son of hers who had run away.
"He must have been a pretty ungrateful sort," thought Mollie resentfully, "to have run away from a mother who loved him like that."
Once more the old lady drew her eyes from the window and fixed them on the circle of eager young faces.
"I suppose young things like you couldn't be expected to understand," she went on, "and yet perhaps you'll be interested more than other folks, 'count of your having met so many young boys."
"Oh, we are interested," they cried in chorus, at which the old woman's face lighted up and she went on with more cheerfulness.
"Well, to begin with," she said, "we lived way at t'other end o' the world. Danestown, it was called, and my husband--better man never breathed--died when my little boy was only four years old. I wasn't so young any more, for Willie was the youngest--the others had all died when they was babies--and Willie's pa and me was getting along in years when he come to us--the dearest, sweetest, prettiest baby you ever set your eyes on.
"Well, we had managed to save some little money, though 'twasn't over much at best, and with me workin' on the farm week days and Sundays, we managed to get along pretty well. An' I was savin' pennies--" Here the old voice trembled and nearly broke, so that it was some minutes before the speaker could go on.
The girls tried hard to think of something to say, but as everything that came to them sounded flat and inappropriate, they kept a sympathetic silence--which was perhaps the best they could have done, after all.
"As I was sayin'," the old voice continued after a while, "I was squeezin' every little penny I could from the bare necessities to lay aside for the boy. You see, it had been his father's wish that Willie should be given the chance neither of us had ever had to get some schoolin' and have his chance in the world. I was hopin' that by the time the boy grew up I might maybe have enough to send him to college.
"Of course," she added, with an air of apologizing for a weakness that went straight to the girls' hearts, "they was only dreams. But I don't see as there was any harm in them, seein's I always kept them to myself an' never told anybody 'bout them--leastways, no one but Willie.
"Sometimes, on a winter night when the snow was fallin' outside an' the wind was howlin' round the house, I used to draw Willie up to the big, open fireplace we had in the kitchen and tell him 'bout his pa an' how he had always wished for Willie to be a fine, big man.
"An' Willie, he'd listen with those big, earnest eyes o' his--such beautiful eyes my Willie had--" Again the voice broke and trailed off into silence while the girls sat and waited as before, only with a stronger pity in their hearts for this faithful little old woman who had loved so well--and lost.
"An' then," the voice continued, more softly and dreamily than before, my little boy would reach up and pat my cheek, just like his father used to do, and seems like I can hear his voice now, just as plain as I did all those long, long years ago.
"'Maw,' he'd say, drawlin' a little in his cunnin' way, 'just don't you worry. I'll do all those things, jest like pa said, an' then we'll go an' live in a big house an' you won't have to work so hard any more--jest be happy.'
"An' then he'd take my hand that was coarse an' rough from workin' in the field and rub his soft little cheek against it an' look up at me, an' just smile--"
There was a little sob from the spot where Amy was sitting cross-legged on the floor, while the other girls were frankly and openly crying and not even noticing it.
"He--he must have been a darling!" cried Betty, unsteadily.
"He was," answered the old lady simply. "It wasn't very long after that he ran away, and I suppose"--again her eyes sought the parade ground--"if I was to meet him now I maybe wouldn't know him. You see, I'd still be lookin' for my little brown-eyed, yellow-haired Willie boy."
"But what made him run away?" asked Mollie, rubbing her eyes furiously with her handkerchief. "I shouldn't have thought--"
"Neither would I," the strange little woman interrupted abruptly. "If he hadn't had such a high spirit he never would. But--well, seem like I'm gettin' ahead of my story.
"You see, some o' the neighbors' children was a pretty wild lot an' they always had a grudge against my boy 'cause he wouldn't join them in all their escapades.
"You see, Willie took a lot after his father. He used to just like to sit and dream and read books you'd thought a little fellow like him couldn't understand at all--he was just twelve when he ran away.
"An' o' course these other boys, they didn't like him 'cause he was different, an' they was always layin' the blame for all their pranks on him.
"But my Willie, it didn't bother him much. He used to tell me that as long as he knew he didn't do it and I knew it, what other folks thought wasn't worth worryin' 'bout--just his pa all over.
"Only, I remember one time," the bent old form straightened up proudly and the bright old eyes gleamed, "when the other boys started pushin' things too far an' begun callin' my boy names--no names that a boy with any pride in him would stand for--I heard them--they was jest around the back o' the house, an' I came to the door with my mad up to the boilin' point, but what I saw made me stop right short an' wait for what I knew was goin' to happen.
"Willie, he was sittin' on a log by the barn, jest wrapped up in a new book he'd found, an' it was some time before just what those ragamuffins was sayin' seeped in. When it did was when I came to the door, boilin' with rage.
"Very quiet, but with a sort o' bulldog set to that chin o' his, just like his pa, he closed his book an' laid it down beside him.
"'I'll be askin' you,' he said, drawlin' very marked and facin' the bully o' the crowd that was at least two or three years older than he was--'I'll be askin' you to say what you been sayin' all over again.'
"The bully did, with trimmin's, an' Willie listened without turnin' a hair till he got all through.
"'Now,' he says, more quiet than ever--I can see him now, with his big eyes blazin' black out o' his white face and his little hands that seemed to me scarce more'n a baby's clenched tight at his side--'Now, I guess, I got to lick you!'
"An' he did!"
"He beat him?" cried Mollie excitedly. "Oh, weren't you proud?"
"I guess I was!" answered the little old woman, her eyes snapping with the memory. "That was the day my boy showed what was in him, an' after that the other boys never called him any more names.
"But, o' course," she added, while the old cloud erased the glow from her face, "that didn't keep the boys from wantin' to get even.
"Well, then came the awful day when Abner Conway's barn burned an' Abner himself came over to accuse my Willie of havin' started the fire, bringin' with him two or three o' the boys who had tried to call Willie names to swear they'd seen him do it.
"O' course Willie denied it an' I backed him up by sayin'--an' there never was truer word spoken--that Willie was with me before an' at the time the barn took fire.
"But it didn't do any good. Abner was ragin' because it meant considerable loss to him, an' so much blame had been laid at Willie's door by the other boys that he declared this time he was goin' to have him punished.
"'I'll have the law on him!' he shouted, rampagin' round my kitchen like a wild animal. I'll show that boy o' yours if he can go round settin' folks' barns on fire an' not get come up with! I'll give him a taste o' what it feels like to be behind bars. It's time somethin' was done, an', by Jerry, I'm the one to do it!'
"An' without another word he slammed out with those grinnin' imps that was makin' all the trouble followin' at his heels. Well, there isn't very much more to tell."
Here she paused, the animation left her face and she looked pityfully old and weary. Betty reached over and patted her hand, and finally she resumed her story.
"Abner kept his word and brought the sheriff around that same afternoon, but they couldn't find Willie--he was gone. He'd left a note for me--full o' love--but sayin' that he couldn't bear to bring disgrace on me an' so he'd gone away. When he'd done what his pa wanted him to, he said, he'd come back an' then we could live in the big house an' be happy.
"An' from that day to this, I've never heard a word from my little boy."
"Oh," cried Betty, pityingly, "what a terrible thing! I should think he could have written. But maybe he did, and his letters never reached you."
"That old Abner must have been a beast," cried Mollie, clenching her hands belligerently. "And those boys! Wouldn't I like to put them behind the bars?"
"You see," the old lady went on tonelessly, "it was only a little while after Willie ran away that they found out that tramps started the fire. Of course Abner was sorry then, but it was too late. My boy was gone."
"But you'll find him yet," cried Betty hopefully, springing to her feet. "I'm quite sure you will."
But the old lady shook her head sadly.
"I don't think so, my dear," she said slowly. "If my Willie boy had been alive I'm sure he would have come to me. He's--he's--almost certain--to be--dead."
The girls tried to comfort the little old woman for a few minutes more, then had to hurry away to various duties about the Hostess House--Mollie to help a young Polish boy who had been drafted into the army and who was struggling valiantly and conscientiously to learn English, Grace to write a letter for a Southern mountain boy who had never learned to read and write, and Amy and Betty to help a timid and somewhat helpless mother through the long hours of waiting before she could have a brief visit with her son during his time of relief from duty. _