Burned Bridges Part 26

Carr sank into his chair with a sigh of relief.

"I am just about pickled, I do believe," he observed to the room at large.

"So I see," Sophie commented impersonally. "Is there anything uncommon about that? I am beginning to think prohibition will be rather a blessing to you, Dad, when it comes."

"Huh!" Carr grunted. "I suppose one drink does lead to another. But I don't need to be legally safe-guarded yet, thank you. My bibulosity is occasional. When it becomes chronic I shall take to the woods."

"Sometimes I find myself wis.h.i.+ng we had never come out of the woods,"

Sophie murmured.

"What?" Carr exclaimed. Then: "That's rich. You with a sure income beyond your needs, in your own right, with youth and health and beauty, with all your life before you, wis.h.i.+ng to revert to what you used to say was a living burial? That's equivalent to holding that the ostrich philosophy is the true one--what you cannot see does not exist. That ignorance is better than knowledge--that--that--Hang it, my dear, are you going to turn reactionary? But that's a woman. Now why should--"

"Oh, don't begin one of your interminable, hair-splitting elucidations,"

Sophie protested. "I know it's showing weakness to desire to run away from trouble. I don't know that I have any trouble to run from. I'm not sure I should dodge trouble if I could. I was just voicing a stray thought. We _were_ happy at Lone Moose, weren't we, Dad?"

"After a fas.h.i.+on," Carr replied promptly. "As the animal is happy with a full belly and a comfortable place to sleep. But we both craved a great deal more than that of life."

"And we are not getting more," Sophie retorted. "When you come right down to fundamentals we eat a greater variety of food, wear better clothes, live on a scale that by our former standards is the height of luxury. But not one of my dreams has come true. And you find solace in a wine gla.s.s where you used to find it in books. Over in Europe men are destroying each other like mad beasts. At home, while part of the nation plays the game square, there's another part that grafts and corrupts and profiteers and slacks to no end. It's a rotten world."

"By gad, you have got the blue gla.s.ses on to-night, and no mistake,"

Carr mused. "That's unmitigated pessimism, Sophie. What you need is a vacation. Let somebody else run this women's win-the-war show for awhile, and you take a rest. That's nerves."

"I can't. There is too much to do," Sophie said shortly. "I don't want to. If I sat down and folded my hands these days I'd go crazy."

Carr grunted. For a minute neither spoke. Sophie lay back in her chair, eyes half closed, fingers beating a slow rat-a-tat on the chair-arm.

"Have you seen Wes Thompson lately?" Carr inquired at last.

"I saw him this afternoon," Sophie replied.

"Did he tell you he was going overseas?"

"No." Sophie's interest seemed languid, judged by her tone.

"You saw him this afternoon, eh?" Carr drawled. "That's queer."

"What's queer?" Sophie demanded.

"That he would see you and not tell you where he was off to," Carr went on. "I saw him away on the Limited at six-o'clock. He told me to tell you good-by. He's gone to the front."

Sophie sat upright.

"How could he do that?" she said impatiently. "A man can't get into uniform and leave for France on two hours' notice. He called here about four. Don't be absurd."

"I don't see anything absurd except your incredulous way of taking it,"

Carr defended stoutly. "I tell you he's gone. I saw him take the train.

Who said anything about two hours' notice? I should imagine he has been getting ready for some time. You know Wes Thompson well enough to know that he doesn't chatter about what he's going to do. He sold out his business two weeks ago, and has been waiting to be pa.s.sed in his tests.

He has finally been accepted and ordered to report East for training in aviation. He joined the Royal Flying Corps."

Carr did not know that in the circle of war workers where Sophie moved so much the R.F.C. was spoken of as the "Legion of Death." No one knew the percentage of casualties in that gallant service. Such figures were never published. All that these women knew was that their sons and brothers and lovers, clean-limbed children of the well-to-do, joined the Flying Corps, and that their lives, if glorious, were all too brief once they reached the Western front. Only the supermen, the favored of G.o.d, survived a dozen aerial combats. To have a son or a brother flying in France meant mourning soon or late. So they spoke sometimes, in bitter pride, of their birdmen as the "Legion of Death", a gruesome phrase and apt.

Carr knew the heavy casualties of aerial fighting. But he had never seen a proud woman break down before the ominous cablegram, he had never seen a girl sit dry-eyed and ashy-white, staring dumbly at a slip of yellow paper. And Sophie had--many a time. To her, a commission in the Royal Flying Corps had come to mean little short of a death warrant.

She sat now staring blankly at her father.

"He closed up his business and joined the Flying Corps two weeks ago."

She repeated this stupidly, as if she found it almost impossible to comprehend.

"That's what I said," Carr replied testily. "What the devil did you do to him that he didn't tell you, if he was here only two hours before he left? Why, he must have come to say good-by."

"What did I do?" Sophie whispered. "My G.o.d, how was I to know what I was doing?"

She sat staring at her father. But she was not seeing him, and Carr knew she did not see him. Some other vision filled those wide-pupiled eyes.

Something that she saw or felt sent a shudder through her. Her mouth quivered. And suddenly she gave a little, stifled gasp, and covered her face with her hands.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE LAST BRIDGE

Thompson received his preliminary training in a camp not greatly distant from his birthplace and the suburban Toronto home where the spinster aunts still lived. He did not go to see them at first, for two reasons.

Primarily, because he had written them a full and frank account of himself when he got out of the ruck and achieved success in San Francisco. Their reply had breathed an open disappointment, almost hostility, at his departure from the chosen path. They made it clear that in their eyes he was a prodigal son for whom there would never be any fatted calf. Secondly, he did not go because there was seldom anything but short leave for a promising aviator.

Thompson speedily proved himself to belong in that category. There resided in him those peculiar, indefinable qualities imperative for mastery of the air. Under able instruction he got on fast, just as he had got on fast in the Henderson shops. And by the time the first fall snows whitened the ground, he was ready for England and the finis.h.i.+ng stages of aerial work antecedent to piloting a fighting plane. He had practically won his official wings.

With his orders to report overseas he received ten days' final leave.

And a sense of duty spurred him to look up the maiden aunts, to brave their displeasure for the sake of knowing how they fared. There was little other use to make of his time. The Pacific Coast was too far away. The only person he cared to see there had no wish to see him, he was bitterly aware. And nearer at hand circ.u.mstances had shot him clear out of the orbit of all those he had known as he grew to manhood.

Recalling them, he had no more in common with them now than any forthright man of action has in common with narrow visionaries. It was not their fault, he knew. They were creatures of their environment, just as he had been. But he had outgrown all faith in creeds and forms before a quickening sympathy with man, a clearer understanding of human complexities. And as he recalled them his a.s.sociates had been slaves to creed and form, wors.h.i.+ppers of the letter of Christianity while unconsciously they violated the spirit of Christ. Thompson had no wish to renew those old friends.h.i.+ps, not even any curiosity about them. So he pa.s.sed them by and went to see his aunts, who had fed and clothed him, to whom he felt a vague sort of allegiance if no particular affection.

It seemed to Thompson like reliving a very vivid sort of dream to get off a street car at a certain corner, to walk four blocks south and turn into the yard before a small brick cottage with a leafless birch rising out of the tiny gra.s.s plot and the bleached vines of sweet peas draping the fence palings.

The woman who opened the door at his knock stood before him a living link with that dreamlike past, unchanged except in minor details, a little more spare perhaps and grayer for the years he had been gone, but dressed in the same dull black, with the same spotless ap.r.o.n, the same bit of a white lace cap over her thin hair, the same pince-nez astride a high bony nose.

Aunt Lavina did not know him in his uniform. He made himself known. The old lady gazed at him searchingly. Her lips worked. She threw her arms about his neck, laughing and sobbing in the same breath.

"Surely, it's myself," Thompson patted her shoulder. "I'm off to the front in a few days and I thought I'd better look you up. How's Aunt Hattie?"

Aunt Lavina disengaged herself from his arms, her gla.s.ses askew, her faded old eyes wet, yet smiling as Thompson could not recall ever seeing her smile.

"What a spectacle for the neighbors," she said breathlessly. "Me, at my time of life, hugging and kissing a soldier on the front step. Do come in, Wesley. Harriet will be so pleased. My dear boy, you don't know how we have worried about you. How well you look."

She drew him into the parlor. A minute later Aunt Harriet, with less fervor than her sister perhaps, made it clear that she was unequivocally glad to see him, that any past rancor for his departure from grace was dead and buried.

They were beyond the sweeping current of everyday life, living their days in a back eddy, so to speak. But they were aware of events, of the common enemy, of the straining effort of war, and they were proud of their nephew in the King's uniform. They twittered over him like fond birds. He must stay his leave out with them.