Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 18, 1928 — page 101: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

FOR COUNTRY. radiant standard overhead, confident and dauntless, rippled with easy grace in the humid sea breeze of the tropics, and be- came to them a thing deified, an emblem of surpassing promise that vindicated their steadfast faith in a far homeland whose mighty protection in an hour of need would desert them not. Fine women who had followed their men in blind loyalty and unfaltering hope, and who had lost all save honor and life in their gamble with fortune, broke down and wept silently; and their tears were not for what they had lost nor through contemplation of the dun future before them wherein life must be started afresh. It was the seeing of the flag, with consciousness of what it stood for, and which had become dearer to them so infrequent sight of it. Patria, in a carriage on the outskirts of the crowd, was a prey to conflicting emo- tions. The march of the battalions had thrilled her, for her family had known the profes- sion of arms for centuries. Her heart had given a disquieting throb as Nelson swung past with his company. She had never before seen him on duty with his men; for the first time she felt that he was an enemy to her homeland. She saw officers with whom she had dined and danced the night before march ignor- ingly by her within hand’s reach, eyes to the front, stern and brief in their orders. The personal equation was lost; there re- mained only the sense of a mighty, imper- sonal and terrifying purpose of state. With illuminating comprehension Patria suddenly came more fully to realize Mex- ico’s need for her presence in Vera Cruz. And her eyes were drawn back to Stephen Nelson, where he stood at the head of his company. With tormenting persistence something within her reconstructed in her conscious- ness the tones of his voice and revisualized distressingly the tender light for her that had come always to shine in his eyes. With the stately solemnization of the na- tional air of her enemies by the massed bands amid the hush of the multitude, - Patria’s stress of soul became oppressive; her overwrought nerves jangled ‘harshly; 899 and her accusing conscience smote her. She could stand no more. Pale and upset, she touched the cochero’s back, gave him a hurried direction and was driven away from the scene, huddled into a corner of the vehicle in a purgatory of re- morse. At the hotel she dismissed the carriage. As she stood bemused upon the sidewalk her glance roved dully about the almost deserted street and the plaza beyond it. Here eyes came to rest on the white walls of the great cathedral that dominated the lesser buildings in the vicinity, Almost without volition she crossed the street un- til the shadows of the portal confronted her. Then she passed into the church. There was no sound in the vast interior save that of her own delicate footfalls as she stole up the center aisle. They seemed to ring in her ears and echo hollowly through the lofty spaciousness of the ca- thedral. A few hazy figures that appeared but in- tensified shadows from the entrance re- solved themselves as she advanced into bowed human forms; and she saw that women, mourning women, knelt in prayer. Instinctively she knew they prayed for the souls of their men who had gone to death in defense of the city a few days be- fore. With a stifled sob Patria sank for a mo- ment in genuflection then humbly made her way into a vacant pew, knelt, and bent her head to the rail before her. The familar ritual of prayers she had known since infancy seemed inadequate to fit the life-crisis that confronted her. With spontaneous words of appeal she prayed for Mexico and for strength; she invoked in- tercession for the man who had sent her on this, her mission. In a surge of fear she sobbed supplica- tion that her father might be spared, her mother, and the little Esteban, too, who seemed to have vanished from off the earth. And all the time, try as she would fo brush it aside, the image of the young American officer who had leaped into her life with such compelling fervor, an en- emy to her State, insinuated itself into her thoughts, an engaging interloper, until the Gomichbooks (C6)