And in the distant city Helen Northrup waited for her son. There had been a cable––then the long silence. He was on the way, that was all she knew.
In the work-room Helen tried to keep to the routine of her days. Her work had saved her; strengthened her. Her contact with people had given her vision and sympathy. She was marvellously changed, but of that she took little heed.
And then Northrup came, unannounced. He stood in the doorway of the room where his mother sat bent upon her task on the desk before her. For a moment he hardly knew her. He had feared to find her broken, crushed beyond the hope of health and joy. He had counted that possibility among the things that his experience had cost him. A wave of relief, surprise, and joy swept over him now.
“Mother!”
Helen paused––her pen held lightly––then she rose and came toward him. Her face Northrup was never to forget. So might a face look that welcomed the dead back to life. Just for one, poor human moment, they could not speak, they simply clung close. After that, life caught them in its common current.
The afternoon, warm and sunny, made it possible for the windows to be open wide; there were flowers blooming in a window-box and a cool breeze, now and again, drew the white curtains out, then released them with a little sighing sound. The peacefulness and security stirred Northrup’s imagination.
“It doesn’t seem possible, you know!” he said.
“Being home, dear?” Helen watched him. Every new line of his fine brown face made her lips firmer.
“Yes. I’d given up hope, and then when hope grew again I was afraid to crawl back. You’ll laugh, but I was afraid to come home and find things just the same! I couldn’t have stood it, after what I learned. I would have felt like a ghost. 267 A lot of fellows feel this way. It’s all a mistake for our home folks to think they’re doing the best for us by trying to fool us into forgetting.”
“Brace, we’ve tried, all of us, to be worthy of you boys. Even they who attempt the thing you mention are doing it for the best. Often it is the hardest way.”