Dennison Grant Part 25

"Why didn't you marry her?" she demanded.

"Because some one else did."

"Oh!"

Her hands found his this time. "I'm sorry," she said. "Sorry I brought this up--sorry I raised these memories. But now you--who have known--will know--"

"I know--I know," he murmured, raising her fingers to his lips....

"Time, they say, is a healer of all wounds. Perhaps--"

"No. It is better that you should forget. Only, I shall see you off; I shall wave my handkerchief to YOU; I shall smile on YOU in the crowd.

Then--you will forget."...

CHAPTER XIV

Four years of war add only four years to the life of a man according to the record in the family Bible, if he happen to spring from stock in which that sacred doc.u.ment is preserved. But four years of war add twenty years to the grey matter behind the eyes--eyes which learn to dream and ponder strangely, and sometimes to s.h.i.+ne with a hardness that has no part with youth. When Captain Grant and Sergeant Linder stepped off the train at Grant's old city there was, however, little to suggest the ageing process that commonly went on among the soldiers in the Great War. Grant had twice stopped an enemy bullet, but his fine figure and sunburned health now gave no evidence of those experiences. Linder counted himself lucky to carry only an empty sleeve.

They had fallen in with each other in France, and the friends.h.i.+p planted in the foothills of the range country had grown, through the strange prunings and graftings of war, into a tree of very solid timber. Linder might have told you of the time his captain found him with his arm crushed under a wrecked piece of artillery, and Grant could have recounted a story of being dragged unconscious out of No Man's Land, but for either to dwell upon these matters only aroused the resentment of the other, and frequently led to exchanges between captain and sergeant totally incompatible with military discipline. They were content to pay tribute to each other, but each to leave his own honors unheralded.

"First thing is a place to eat," Grant remarked, when they had been dismissed. Words to similar effect had, indeed, been his first remark upon every suitable opportunity for three months. An appet.i.te which has been four years in the making is not to be satisfied overnight, and Grant, being better fortified financially against the stress of a good meal, sought to be always first to suggest it. Linder accepted the situation with the complacence of a man who has been four years on army pay.

When they had eaten they took a walk through the old town--Grant's old town. It looked as though he had stepped out of it yesterday; it was hard to realize that ages lay between. There are experiences which soak in slowly, like water into a log. The new element surrounds the body, but it may be months before it penetrates to the heart. Grant had some sense of that fact as he walked the old familiar streets, apparently unchanged by all these cataclysmic days.... In time he would come to understand. There was the name plate of Barrett, Jones, Barrett, Deacon & Barrett. There had not even been an addition to the firm. Here was the old Grant office, now used for some administration purpose. That, at least, was a move in the right direction.

They wandered along aimlessly while the sunset of an early summer evening marshalled its glories overhead. On a side street children played in the roadway; on a vacant spot a game of ball was in progress.

Women sat on their verandas and shot casual glances after them as they pa.s.sed. Handsome pleasure cars glided about; there was a smell of new flowers in all the air.

"What do you make of it, mate?" said Grant at last.

Linder pulled slowly on his cigarette. Even his training as a sergeant had not made him ready of speech, but when he spoke it was, as ever, to the point.

"It's all so unnecessary," he commented at length.

"That's the way it gets me, too. So unnecessary. You see, when you get down to fundamentals there are only two things necessary--food and shelter. Everything else may be described as tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. We've been dealing with fundamentals so long---mighty bare fundamentals at that--that all these tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs seem just a little irritating, don't you think?"

"I follow you. I simply can't imagine myself worrying over a stray calf."

"And I can't imagine myself sitting in an office and dealing with such unessential things as stocks and bonds.... And I'm not going to."

"Got any notion what you will do?" said Linder, when he had reached the middle of another cigarette.

"Not the slightest. I don't even know whether I'm rich or broke. I suppose if Jones and Murdoch are still alive they will be looking after those details. Doing their best, doubtless, to embarra.s.s me with additional wealth. What are YOU going to do?"

"Don't know. Maybe go back and work for Transley."

The mention of Transley threw Grant's mind back into old channels. He had almost forgotten Transley. He told himself he had quite forgotten Zen Transley, but once he knew he lied. That was when they potted him in No Man's Land. As he lay there, waiting.... he knew he had not forgotten. And he had thought many times of Phyllis Bruce. At first he had written to her, but she had not answered his letters. Evidently she meant him to forget. Nor had she come to the station to welcome him home. Perhaps she did not know. Perhaps--Many things can happen in four years.

Suddenly it occurred to Grant that it might be a good idea to call on Phyllis. He would take Linder along. That would make it less personal.

He knew his man well enough to keep his own counsel, and eventually they reached the gate of the Bruce cottage, as though by accident.

"Let's turn in here. I used to know these people. Mother and daughter; very fine folk."

Linder looked for an avenue of retreat, but Grant barred his way, and together they went up the path. A strange woman, with a baby on her arm, met them at the door. Grant inquired for Mrs. Bruce and her daughter.

"Oh, you haven't heard?" said the woman. "I suppose you are just back.

Well, it was a sad thing, but these have been sad times. It was when Hubert was killed I came here first. Poor dear, she took that to heart awful, and couldn't be left alone, and Phyllis was working in an office, so I came here part time to help out. Then she was just beginning to brace up again when we got the word about Grace. Grace, you know, was lost on a hospital s.h.i.+p. That was too much for her."

Grant received this information with a strange catching about the heart.

There had been changes, after all.

"What became of Phyllis?" He tried to ask the question in an even voice.

"I moved into the house after Mrs. Bruce died," the woman continued, "as my man came back discharged about that time. Phyllis tried to get on as a nurse, but couldn't manage it. Then her office was moved to another part of the city and she took rooms somewhere. At first she came to see us often, but not lately. I suppose she's trying to forget."

"Trying to forget," Grant muttered to himself. "How much of life is made up of trying to forget!"

Further questions brought no further information. The woman didn't know the firm for which Phyllis worked; she thought it had to do with munitions. Suddenly Grant found himself impelled by a tremendous desire to locate this girl. He would set about it at once; possibly Jones or Murdoch could give him information. Strangely enough, he now felt that he would prefer to be rid of Linder's company. This was a matter for himself alone. He took Linder to an hotel, where they arranged for lodgings, and then started on his search.

He located Murdoch without difficulty. It was now late, and the old clerk came down the stairs with inoffensive imprecations upon the head of his untimely caller, but his mutterings soon gave way to a cry of delight.

"My dear boy!" he exclaimed, embracing him. "My dear boy--excuse me, sir, I'm a blithering old man, but oh! sir--my boy, you're home again!"

There was no doubting the depth of old Murdoch's welcome. He ran before Grant into the living-room and switched on the lights. In a moment he was back with his arm about the young man's shoulder; he was with difficulty restraining caresses.

"Sit you down, Mr. Grant; here--this chair--it's easier. I must get the women up. This is no night for sleeping. Why didn't you send us word?"

"There is a tradition that official word is sent in advance," Grant tried to explain.

"Aye, a tradition. There's a tradition that a Scotsman is a dour body without any sentiment. Well--I must call the women."

He hurried up the stairs and Grant settled back into his chair. So this was the home of Murdoch, the man who really had earned a considerable part of the Grant fortune. He had never visited Murdoch before; he had never thought of him in a domestic sense; Murdoch had always been to him a man of figures, of competent office routine, of almost too respectful deference. The light over the centre table fell subdued through a pinkish shade; the corners of the room lay in restful shadows; the comfortable furniture showed the marks of years. The walls suggested the need of new paper; the well-worn carpet had been s.h.i.+fted more than once for economy's sake. Grant made a hasty appraisal of these conditions; possibly his old clerk was feeling the pinch of circ.u.mstances--

Murdoch, returning, led in his wife, a motherly woman who almost kissed the young soldier. In the welcome of her greeting it was a moment before Grant became aware of the presence of a fourth person in the room.

"I am very glad to see you safely back," said Phyllis Bruce. "We have all been thinking about you a great deal."

"Why, Miss--Phyllis! It was you I was looking for!" The frank confession came before he had time to suppress it, and, having said so much, it seemed better to finish the job.

"Yes, Phyllis is making her home with us now," Mrs. Murdoch explained.

"It is more convenient to her work."

Grant wondered how much of this arrangement was due to Mrs. Murdoch's sympathy for the bereaved girl, and how much to the addition which it made to the family income. No doubt both considerations had contributed to it.

"I called at your old home," he continued. "I needn't say how distressed I was to hear--The woman could tell me nothing of you, so I came to Murdoch, hoping--"

"Yes," she said, simply, as though there were nothing more to explain.

Grant noticed that her eyes were larger and her cheeks paler than they had been, but the delight of her presence leapt about him. Her hurried costume seemed to accentuate her beauty despite of all that war had done to destroy it. There was a silence which lengthened out. They were all groping for a footing.