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 finishing stages of aërial 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 circumstances 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 associates had been slaves to creed and form, worshippers of the letter of Christianity while unconsciously they violated the spirit of Christ. Thompson had no wish to renew those old friendships, not even any curiosity about them. So he passed 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 grass 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 apron, 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 glasses 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.
At this pronunciamento of Aunt Lavina's a swift glance passed between the two old women. Thompson caught it, measured the doubt and uneasiness of the mutual look, and was puzzled thereby.
But he did not fathom its source for a day or two, and only then by a process of deduction. They treated him handsomely, they demonstrated an affection which moved him deeply because he had never suspected its existence. (They had always been so precise, almost harsh with him as a youngster.) But their living was intolerably meager. Disguise it with every artifice, a paucity of resource—or plain niggardliness—betrayed itself at every meal. Thompson discarded the theory of niggardliness. And proceeding thence on the first conclusion stood his two aunts in a corner—figuratively, of course—and wrung from them a statement of their financial status.
They were proud and reluctant. But Thompson had not moved among and dealt with men of the world to be baffled by two old women, so presently he was in possession of certain facts.
They had not been able to support themselves, to rear and educate him, on their income alone, and gradually their small capital had been consumed. They were about to negotiate the sale of their home, the proceeds of which would keep them from want—if they did not live too long. They tried to make light of it, but Thompson grasped the tragedy. They had been born in that brick cottage with the silver birch before the door.
"Well," he said at length, "I don't want to preëmpt the Lord's prerogative of providing. But I can't permit this state of affairs. I wish you had taken me into your confidence, aunties, when I was a youngster. However, that doesn't matter now. Can you live comfortably on eleven hundred dollars a year?"
Aunt Harriet held up her hands.
"My dear boy," she said, "such a sum would give us luxuries, us two old women. But that is out of the question. If we get five thousand for the place we shall have to live on a great deal less than that."
"Forget that nonsense about selling this place," Thompson said roughly. That grated on him. He felt a sense of guilt, of responsibility too long neglected. "Where I'm going I shall be supplied by the government with all I need. I've made some money. I own war-bonds sufficient to give you eleven hundred a year in interest. I'll turn them over to you. If I come back with a whole skin when the war's over, I'll be able to use the capital in a way to provide for all of us. If I don't come back, you'll be secure against want as long as you live."
He made good his word before his leave was up. He had very nearly lost faith in the value of money, of any material thing. He had struggled for money and power for a purpose, to demonstrate that he was a man equal to any man's struggle. He had signally failed in his purpose, for reasons that were still a little obscure to him. Failure had made him a little bitter, bred a pessimism it took the plight of his aunts to cure. Even if he had failed to achieve his heart's desire he had acquired power to make two lives content. Save that it ministered to his self-respect to know that he could win in that fierce struggle of the marketplace, money had lost its high value for him. Money was only a means, not an end. But to have it, to be able to bestow it where it was sadly needed, was worth while, after all. If he "crashed" over there, it was something to have banished the grim spectre of want from these two who were old and helpless.
He was thinking of this along with a jumble of other thoughts as he leaned on the rail of a transport slipping with lights doused out of the port of Halifax. There was a lump in his throat because of those two old women who had cried over him and clung to him when he left them. There was another woman on the other side of the continent to whom his going meant nothing, he supposed, save a duty laggardly performed. And he would have sold his soul to feel her arms around his neck and her lips on his before he went.
"Oh, well," he muttered to himself as he watched the few harbor lights falling astern, yellow pin-points on the velvety black of the shore," this is likely to be the finish of that. I think I've burned my last bridge. And I have learned to stand on my own feet, whether she believes so or not."