She opened the door, and the collie was gone. It was an hour before her father came—came and found his darlings ready to receive him. Jean had done what a brave girl should do for her mother when the time comes, and there was even a spray of fragrant arbor vitae lying on the breast, like a palm of victory.
But why was Ambrose Rich steadied into the house by Ojeeg? And why was it Ojeeg who had to draw the telegram from the pocket of Ambrose Rich?
The other thing had happened too.
Safe in the trenches for six months, under fire and untouched, singing through it all of the good time coming, relieved and on furlough. And then, passing an ammunition dump of the Canadian army, blown into pure ether. A thermite bomb, dropped from an aeroplane, had exploded the mercury fulminate, and Horatio Rich had disappeared from earth. There was no more search for him than for the effects of lightning on the sea.
What sudden release was that, as if a billion years had been reversed and a plangent mass of metal had torn itself loose again, shaking the pillared crystals to the centre of the earth! What waste of sacred stuff that might have planted a Sahara with lentils and sent a cluster of sweet peas to every sick child in Germany!
But all the time the noble gas called neon remained unmoved. Like some quiet-eyed chemist looking down the future, it heard no explosion.
Ambrose Rich knelt for a long time beside the old haircloth sofa, holding the hand that returned no clasp, glad that she had been spared the news, and listening to the stifled sounds from his daughter’s bedroom. Alas that keenness of hearing should ever persist in the old!
Chapter 11. Sodium
Down by the salt sea Marvin was resuming his drives. He talked to Gratia about the war, and found her agreeing with him. He expressed his conviction that America ought to go in. Though Gratia knew that her father thought otherwise, she told him he was right.
All through the spring of 1916 he waited in vain for signs that Congress would declare war. Then in June came the news that the British commander-in-chief had been killed. Marvin’s indignation, which had been growing steadily for a year, reached white heat. It would take thousands of men to make good the loss of one Kitchener, but he determined to be one of them. He would get ready to be sent when the inevitable declaration came.