In April, 1919, he sailed from Brest and on the tenth of May arrived in Rumley, discharged from the Army and jobless. On the way home he stopped over in Chicago to notify his employers that he would be ready to resume work after a month’s much-needed rest and quiet down in the old town. He was blandly informed that as soon as anything turned up they would be pleased and happy to take him back into the concern, but at present there wasn’t a vacancy in sight—in fact, they were cutting down the operating force wherever it was possible, and so on and so forth. Yes, they remembered perfectly that they had promised him his old place when he returned, but how in God’s name were they to know that the war was going to last as long as it did? He couldn’t expect them to hold a job open for him for nearly four years, could he? Only too glad to take you on again, Baxter, when things begin to pick up—and all that.
Being a captain in the Army and used to plain speaking, he told the astonished general manager what he thought of him and the whole works besides, and airily went his way.
The horrors of war had not affected his spirits. He went over in the first place full of cheer and enthusiasm; he came back without the latter, but indomitably possessed of the former. He had seen grim sights and sickened under the spectacle; he had stood by the side of dying comrades and wept as he would have wept over his own brother; he had known times when life was far harder to bear than the thought of death; and he had said what he believed to be his last prayer a hundred times or more. But when the guns ceased their everlasting roar and the smoke lifted to reveal a blue sky that smiled, he too smiled and was glad to be alive. He had lived on hope through the carnage of what seemed a thousand years; the hope which men, in their bewildered after-joy, were prone to call their luck. It was hope that went over the top with them, but it was luck that saw them through.
And so when he was turned away, empty-handed, from the place where he had proved his worth as a soldier of industry, he was not dismayed. He experienced a lively sense of indignation, he felt outraged, but he did not sit himself down over against the walls of Nineveh to devote a single hour to lamentation.
The injustice rankled. He had heard of other men coming back to find their places occupied by indispensables, but it had never occurred to him that his bosses would “welch” on their promise. He had never for an instant doubted, and yet when he was turned away he was not surprised. It seemed odd to him that he was not surprised. Perhaps it was because he had reached the point where nothing could surprise him. In any case, he strode out of the old familiar offices with his chin high, enjoying a very good opinion of himself and an extremely poor one of his late employers. It did not occur to him to feel the slightest uneasiness about the future. He would be no time at all in landing a good job with any one of the half dozen big concerns that had tried in vain to get him away from the V—— Company. He would take his month or two of idleness down in the old town, where he could realize on the dreams and the longings that had never ceased to attend him, awake or asleep, through all the black ages spent in France.
This time there was no delegation at the station to meet him. Too many of Rumley’s young men had preceded him home from the war. He was no better than the rest of them and deserved no more. His father and Sammy Parr were waiting for him when the train pulled in.
“By thunder, Oliver, it beats the dickens how you work into my plans so neatly,” cried the latter. “You always seem to be coming home at the right minute. You couldn’t have timed it better if you’d—oh, excuse me, Mr. Baxter, I forgot you hadn’t—er, here’s your father, Oliver.”
Old Oliver came shuffling up from the background. He eyed his son narrowly.
“What’s this, I hear about them not taking you back on your old job?” he demanded. He extended his hand, which young Oliver gripped in both of his.
“Aren’t you glad to see me back, alive and well, dad?” he cried. “Not even scratched, or gassed or shell-shocked or anything. You act as though you—”