“I have cabled Father,” Elliott announced 256 at dinner, with the prettiest imaginable little air of importance and confidence, “I have cabled Father to find out all he can about Pete and to let us know at once. Perhaps we shall hear something to-morrow.”
But the next day passed, and the next, and the day after that, and still no cable from Father.
It was very bewildering. At first Elliott jumped every time the telephone rang, and took down the receiver with quickened pulses. No matter what her brain said, her heart told her Father would send good news. She couldn’t associate him with thoughts of ill news. Of course, her brain said there was no logic in that kind of argument, and that facts were facts; and in a case like Pete’s, fathers couldn’t make or mar them. Her heart kept right on expecting good tidings.
But when long days and longer nights dragged themselves by and no word at all 257 came from overseas, the girl found out what a big empty place the world may become, even while it is chuck-full of people, and what three thousand miles of water really means. She thought she had known before, but she hadn’t. So long as letters traveled back and forth, irregularly timed it might be, but continuously, she still kept the familiar sense of Father—out of sight, but there, as he had always been, most dependably there. Now, for the first time in her life, she had called to him and he had not answered. There might be—there probably were, she reminded herself—reasons why he hadn’t answered; good, reassuring reasons, if one only knew them. He might be temporarily in a region out of touch with cables; the service might have dropped a link somewhere. One could imagine possible explanations. But it was easier to imagine other things. And the fact remained that, since he didn’t answer, she 258 couldn’t get away from a horrible, paralyzing sense that he wasn’t there.
It didn’t do any good to try to run from that sensation; there was nowhere to run. It blocked every avenue of thought, a sinister shape of dread. The only help was in keeping very, very busy. And even then one couldn’t stop one’s thoughts traveling, traveling, traveling along those fearful paths.
At last Elliott knew how the others felt about Pete. She had thought she understood that and felt it, too, but now she found that she hadn’t. It makes all the difference in the world, she discovered, whether one stands inside or outside a trouble. The heart that had ached so sympathetically for Bruce knew its first stab of loss and recoiled. The others recognized the difference; or was it only that Elliott herself had eyes to see what she had been blind to before? No one said anything. In little unconscious, lovable 259 ways they made it quite clear that now she was one with them.
“Perhaps we would better send for them to come home from Camp Devens,” Father Bob suggested one day. He threw out his remark at the supper-table, which would seem to address it to the family at large, but he looked straight at Elliott.
“Oh, no,” she cried, “don’t send for them!” But she couldn’t keep a flash of joy out of her eyes.
“Sure you’re not getting tired?”
“Certain sure!”