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.