"Oh, it isn't just that he's going. I was expecting that, but everyone is saying he's going broken-hearted. Look--"

She indicated a paragraph in the morning paper which stated that Mr.

and Mrs. Evison announced the marriage of their daughter, Marjorie Angela, to Dr. Knight.

Then Billy came in. He didn't look broken-hearted. In fact, for a man who had just lost the love of a life time he seemed in a much too healthy frame of mind to have any sentiment at all. As a matter of fact, of course, he hadn't seen the little announcement; he had some time ago stopped reading the social columns where Miss Evison's name figured, but with sisterly consideration Jean left the paper in his room where he could read it and have his battle out by himself. Ruth shared this consideration. When the evening papers, crowded with the latest draught of casualties, found s.p.a.ce to describe at length the flowers and dresses at some tea given in honor of "the popular Miss Evison," the girls so obviously avoided any comment that Billy rather wondered if he shouldn't draw their attention to the fact that Miss Evison would be charming indeed in the gown of some imported-sounding stuff with pearls and lilies of the valley. Such wooden creatures men can be, where a little tragedy would seem the appropriate thing.

Jean's nerves were soon restored to smooth running order, for which the doctor gave no small share of credit to Ruth's efforts to keep her out of doors. The county battalion was training near the city, and every evening Billy could get off, the three of them would tramp out in moccasins and general Indian accoutrements to the edge of the city, to toboggan down a snow-crusted hill, or to skate for miles down some winding creek straggling through spooky cedar swamps and open, moonlit fields. It was an invigorating change from the theatres and cafes that had been Billy's late amus.e.m.e.nt haunts--not that he had buried all these in the ashes of the past, but they seemed to have their purpose in catering to the needs of people who wanted their pleasures ready-made for them. His sister, by chance or design, frequently added other friends to their party, and he found himself, either by chance or design, taking Ruth farther up the ice than anyone else cared to go.

Of course it was natural enough; no other girl could skate so far without tiring; no other girl could abandon herself so wholly to the joy of a sport and still keep about her a sort of reverence for it.

And when he watched her from a distance, slim, buoyant, wholly alive, taking the ice like a sail before a breeze, and remembered the unconscious glow in her friendly eyes as he had skated with her, he realized that it was rather gratifying to a man's pride to know that, while he was so unnecessary to her in a material way, she still cared to have him around. That there was something strained underneath her casual friendliness he knew, and wondered; he was beginning to find it hard to be perfectly natural himself. But when he took her home one night, and very soberly asked if he might come in and talk to her, she said "It's pretty late."

He wasn't surprised. He felt that it was pretty late. He had been a long time awakening. No woman would value very highly the interest of a man supposedly trying to gather himself together from the blow of his ideal woman's engagement to another man, and she was not the type of girl likely to accept a compromise. The next day the battalion moved to a farther camp.

A few people, dependent entirely upon statistics for their information, have believed that the farming districts were not touched by the war, that the great, green country smiled peacefully through it all, hoping only that the allies might have favorable weather for their task. Investigations show few homes that have not suffered the anxiety of waiting, or the grief of loss. Many of the first to go from the cities had been nurtured in the austere discipline of some rocky farm whose meagre income did not appeal to an ambitious young man; or, if the family was large, it behooved some of them to move out and leave a delving-ground for the rest. Nor was the change to military life quite so hard for those who had rubbed against the world in many places, as for the brothers at home for whom the thought of even a training camp had a homesick apprehension.

A boy from a farm back among the hills occasionally dropped into a back seat at the village recruiting meetings. He heard unmoved the argument that he would be handsome in khaki, and listened with cynical but well-concealed amus.e.m.e.nt to girls who sang, with more zeal for, than appreciation of, the cause, "We don't want to lose you, but we think you ought to go." Then one night the officer made a sincere and rather strong appeal. He didn't minimize the hardships so far as he knew them, and he described the brutalized misery of the invaded countries as graphically as a good imagination could picture it. The boy from the farm listened with little outward sign of emotion, but a battle was going on inside. He didn't go to the platform with the few others who responded to the appeal: he had never stood before a crowd in his life. He was not used to crowds; all his life had been spent in the quiet of the fields, and the long hours of constant, necessary toil had left little time for exploring other places. He didn't know the ways of men in companies, and it would have taken more courage than he possessed to stand up before an audience and take their approval. He waited at the door until the officer came out--and he joined the army. Then he went home.

In the kitchen the fire burned low. A few geraniums had been moved to the table, that they might not freeze against the window-panes.

Beside them lay the day's paper and his father's gla.s.ses; the father and mother had acquired a habit of discussing the war news long after he went to bed at night, and he had often wondered why they should be so interested; he knew now. Always on the rare occasions when he was out late, he came in quietly, took off his shoes and went directly upstairs, but to-night he sat on the wood-box, staring at the ashy fire and listening to the regular breathing in the little bedroom off the kitchen. There was only one of these comfortable, sleepy sounds to-night; his mother was awake. After all the sleepless nights she had spent over the family it was hard to think of the vigils she would keep when he had gone. It was hard to think of leaving them with the work of the farm; they were getting old and the mortgage was still hanging over them. It meant hard work and careful living to keep afloat, even with a young man's steady work. They couldn't afford to hire help, even if the help were available, and he could see his father, in the evenings of the next harvest, crippling over the fields, footsore and bent, to bring the cows home for milking.

They would be standing at the bars, in the dusk, those cows, lowing and nervous from waiting, as though they wondered why the work was never done. And his mother would come out with the pails, and on into the dark there would be no sound but the regular flow of the milk streams, and the contented breathing of the animals. The aching loneliness of it! And he, the last of their sons, who had hoped to make things easier, to some day fit up the other house on the place and bring home a girl who would be a daughter to them--after all they had hoped of him, where would he be while they were trying to do his work? Lying out under the sky somewhere, maybe, as powerless to ever help them again, as though he had never been. Yet the recruiting officer had said--and the arguments came back as logical and appealing as when he had placed them before an enthused audience. But to the boy trying to do the right thing, the problem was cruelly complicated.

Then his mother called quietly:

"There's nothing wrong, Jim?"

"No. Did I wake you coming in?"

"I was awake. I guess thinking about the boys, lying out, made me anxious. It's good to know you're in."

She left a good opening for the argument that he couldn't rest at home while the others were "lying out," but knowing her anxiety he hadn't the heart. He would tell her in the morning, and she would accept it as other mothers had done, as motherhood has always accepted things that paid little for its sacrifice. Maybe she would even be proud to be the mother of this man-child who was willing to suffer the inquisition of warfare, with a motive as chivalrous as those which prompted old-time knights to historic adventures, but in her secret moments, remembering the poignant joy of the hour when she had heard his first cry, and felt the helpless, clinging little body groping toward her and snuggling down safe in the warmth of a protecting presence, she would know that to her he would always be the little child who needed her, and, like thousands of other mothers, she would cry out fearfully and rebelliously, "G.o.d, why should these things be?"

It remained with people less personally concerned to express the fitting public appreciation of the county battalion. Mrs. Evison became the leader of a very popular suburban "khaki club," which had neither the time nor the skill to do much sewing or knitting, but by giving a series of fetes and teas and musicales, the ladies raised funds to present the battalion with a set of colors. The presentation was to be made at a garden party on the Evison grounds as soon as the shrubbery bloomed, and it was to be a rather elaborate affair. Some half-dozen more or less prominent men were invited up from the city to speak. The battalion would be there in full strength. A number of Marjorie's dearest girl friends would come out from town to supply the beauty and charm appropriate to the occasion, crosses on the sleeves and a nurse's head kerchief. There would be a military band and pavilion for dancing. The speakers' platform would be bright with flags and bunting and Chinese lantern footlights, with reserved seats in front for the mothers, and as president of the khaki club, Mrs.

Evison would say a few words to them herself.

When the time arrived she did not fail them. People had come in crowds, the presentation had pa.s.sed off with due ceremony and applause, and her soul was so filled with the perfection of her plans that she wanted to pour out the balm of her appreciation on those women who were "so gloriously sending their sons to fight for the empire and liberty." She was very charming as she stood surrounded by the flags of the allies and a few hot house palms. To make herself beautiful for them she had even risked wearing her loveliest and lowest evening gown, with just the sheerest scarf falling from a bare shoulder, as a protection from the night air. And standing there like a G.o.ddess of liberty, she told them that she wished she had a dozen sons to give. She said further that she knew these women who were so splendidly giving their boys would do still more. The food situation was serious, but what women in other countries had done the splendid women on Canadian farms would do. Belgian and French and German and even English women were sowing the seed and gathering the harvest this year; she knew that the dear mothers from the farms who had so unselfishly given their sons would not see them starve in the trenches, that they would put their shoulders to the wheel as their pioneer foremothers had done, and go into the fields if necessary, to the last one of them.

When she had finished, people from somewhere applauded, the band added its contribution to the clamour, but the mothers sitting down in the shadows, with their boys back in the lines standing rigid and weary at attention, were strangely silent. The speaker gathered her draperies about her, a little elf of a girl handed her a sheaf of roses, and in the general stir which followed, a few of the women from the farms got up a bit stiffly--they were not used to sitting so long at a time--and looked about for their men to go home. It was in the press of the spring work and they hadn't had time to do the milking before they came.

Billy was there, and he had listened with all his logical faculties active. When she finished he began to move towards the gate; it was his last leave and he had plans for the next day which meant a great deal to him. There was more than enough time to catch the car to the city, but he just naturally found himself going. The band had taken a stand close to the pavilion and was starting up a waltz, and, well--it was too much like pouring honey into a cup of hemlock. At the edge of the crowd he suddenly found Marjorie right in his path, but looking the other way.

"Oh," she gasped, "you frightened me."

He didn't apologize, because he knew he hadn't frightened her. "I was just getting off to catch the car," he explained.

Miss Evison was disappointed. She had pointed out the good-looking soldier to a few of her girl friends, with a mysterious half-promise of a story, later. She had counted on this evening for days, and had rehea.r.s.ed several delicate little speeches and a touching, but very proper, farewell. She hadn't antic.i.p.ated being confronted with a new man. It would have been highly satisfactory if he had shown a sign of the end-of-everything bitterness, generally supposed to be appropriate under the circ.u.mstances, but this cool, friendly indifference was more than any girl could stand from a man who had proposed to her not six months before. He was holding out his hand and saying:

"I may not see you again before I go."

She softened at once.

"You're not going yet," she coaxed. "I simply can't let you go yet,"

and when he showed no sign of staying, she added rather sharply, "I don't believe I ever knew you to be in such a hurry before."

He smiled kindly and happily as one might over an episode of childhood.

"I have to get back to the city," he explained patiently, "We're going out to the country to-morrow."

Miss Evison wasn't used to disappointments and they made her temper very uncertain.

"Are you taking Miss Macdonald with you?" she inquired.

"Yes." He seemed modestly proud that she should guess it.

She was ashamed the minute the question was out, but that he should fail to resent it was maddening, and when she was angry she forgot to be elegant. She was smiling in a way that was not beautiful, and she said:

"You know I wouldn't have thought from the exalted opinion of her you used to have, that she'd have fallen for the soldier stuff."

There was nothing gratifying to her vanity in the way he looked at her. He was angry, of course, but more evident was the surprise of disillusionment. It seemed as though for the first time he saw her as she was and hated to believe it.

"You don't mean that, honest?" he said. He put his big toil-hardened hand on her shoulder, very gently. It was a rather remarkable hand, strong and capable and intelligent looking, and it had steadied many other people to be honest, but it was unthinkable that he should presume to take such an att.i.tude of fatherly disappointment in her conduct. So she looked at the hand until he took it away, and she said good night with as much dignity as the situation and her temper would allow.

She was still in this frame of mind when she met Dr. Knight a few minutes later, but then she was beginning to know Dr. Knight pretty well by this time, and it was impossible to avoid such things constantly.

"What's the matter?" he inquired casually.

"I had arranged to have Mr. Withers meet the girls, but he seemed to feel that he had other things more important. He's taking Miss Macdonald out to see some farm or something to-morrow. He always did have a craze for that."

Dr. Knight on close acquaintance dropped all his drawing-room talk and expressed some very plebeian views of things. His direct observation now was,

"She's the kind of girl who'd make him a great wife."

"Yes," she agreed, "the kind of girl whom every man advises every other man to marry, but never thinks of marrying himself."

The doctor studied his fiancee with the candid speculation of a man endeavoring to adjust himself to an engagement which somehow seems to have happened without his planning. He was not ill natured, but perfectly frank.

"What a little cat!" he said.

CHAPTER XIII.

"If you'd just come out with me to the hill place for one day," Billy had pleaded. "I want to have something to take away with me to remember."

Ruth had looked ahead to the day not without foreboding. Why, in the name of all that was sane, she wondered, should a man want to go and uncover the grave of his dreams at a time when he should be fighting to forget them? If he wanted her to witness the agony, of course she would be there--he would need someone--but to see him staring into the ruins of an old house at the ghost picture of the future he had visioned, to know that he was still aching for the nearness of an ethereal bit of thistledown of a girl, and to be unable to tell him just where he had been blind! It would be well if a storm and a flood would wash the place away in the night.

But the storm did not come. The sun shone and the birds sang; the car purred up hills and down; Billy seemed strangely happy, except for an occasional glance of anxiety at the white profile beside him, and the girl was preoccupied and troubled. Something was wrong. It was their last day, and it might have been so wonderful.