"A good and noble
woman," wrote the old lady, "and very much in love with my boy."
That line rang in Raymond's head long afterwards. He read it
again and again, bewildered, tempted and yet afraid to believe it
true, moved to the depths of his nature, at once happy and unhappy
in the gamut of his doubts. It could not be possible. No, it could
not be possible. Standing at the breech of his gun, his eyes on a
Spanish gunboat they had driven under the shelter of a fort, he
found himself repeating: "And very much in love with my boy. And
very much in love with my boy." And then, suddenly becoming intent
again on the matter in hand, he slammed the breech-mechanism shut
and gave the enemy a six-inch shell.
Then there came the news of his mother's death. As much a victim
of the war as any stricken soldier or sailor at the front, she was
numbered on the roll of the fallen. The war had killed her as
certainly, as surely, as any Mauser bullet sped from a tropic
thicket. Raymond had only the consolation of knowing that Miss
Latimer had been with her at the last and that she had followed
his mother to the grave. Her letter, tender and pitiful, filled
him with an inexpressible emotion. His little world now held but
her.
This was the last letter he was destined to receive from her. The
others, if there were others, all went astray in the chaotic
confusion attendant on active service. The poor quartermaster,
when the ship was so lucky as to take a mail aboard, grew
accustomed to be told that there was nothing for him.
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