Part 23 (1/2)

When he came home that night Baldwin told his wife that old Soph was getting queer. ”She talks about the children being hers,” he said.

”Oh, well, she's awfully fond of them,” Flora explained. ”And she's lived her little, narrow life, with nothing to bother her but her hats and her house. She doesn't know what it means to suffer as a mother suffers--poor Sophy.”

”Um,” Baldwin grunted.

When the official notification of Eugene's death came from the War Department, Aunt Sophy was so calm it might have appeared that Flora had been right. She took to her bed now in earnest, did Flora. Sophy neglected everything to give comfort to the stricken two.

”How can you sit there like that!” Flora would rail. ”How can you sit there like that! Even if you weren't his mother, surely you must feel something.”

”It's the way he died that comforts me,” said Aunt Sophy.

”What difference does that make!”

AMERICAN RED CROSS (Croix Rouge Americaine)

MY DEAR MRS. BALDWIN:

I am sure you must have been officially notified by the U.S.

War Dept. of the death of your son, Lieut. Eugene H. Baldwin. But I want to write you what I can of his last hours. I was with him much of that time as his nurse. I'm sure it must mean much to a mother to hear from a woman who was privileged to be with her boy at the last.

Your son was brought to our hospital one night badly ga.s.sed from the fighting in the Argonne Forest. Ordinarily we do not receive ga.s.sed patients, as they are sent to a special hospital near here. But two nights before, the Germans wrecked that hospital, so many ga.s.sed patients have come to us.

Your son was put in the officers' ward, where the doctors who examined him told me there was absolutely no hope for him, as he had inhaled so much gas that it was only a matter of a few hours. I could scarcely believe that a man so big and strong as he was could not pull through.

The first bad attack he had, losing his breath and nearly choking, rather frightened him, although the doctor and I were both with him. He held my hand tightly in his, begging me not to leave him, and repeating, over and over, that it was good to have a woman near.