For He had come back.
Lieutenant Iver Davenport--without as much hair as Peace Europa, because of the burning effects of mustard gas--slowly recovering from shrapnel-wounds, was back at Camp Evens, where once, in premature passion, he had rashly “bawled out” a sergeant, now, by the fortunes of war, a lieutenant like himself.
His mother and sister had been up to see him. They had sat by his cot in the base hospital, and Sara, knowing the sort of news for which he was thirsting, had told him all the story of their camping summer, making it center chiefly around one leading figure--that of the Torch Bearer, Olive Deering.
She described the waning fires of resolution upon the hill of the night-heron, when grit had gone glimmering, and how Olive had gloriously rekindled the flame from the glow in her own breast--and by the thought of what Soldier Brothers were enduring over there.
“It was from a letter about her cousin Clay--Clayton Forrest--that she read. He apparently did ‘his all’ over there, but came through, as--as did that other cousin of Olive’s, the rich banker’s son, who put in his time working in a shipyard on this side. Atlas, we nicknamed him because when we first saw him he was apparently holding up--supporting--with his back and shoulders a horribly heavy, raw, yellow ship’s rib--and the World with it.... That’s just how he felt; I know he did.... Never mind; I like him awfully well now--ever since I let him take my freak of a dory! Ha! that’s another story.”
So Sara’s tongue ran on, a moved, at times a merry, flame, into the returned soldier’s ear.
“But,”--her voice retreated into the softest twilight of conjecturing speech--“but I don’t believe Atlas--or any one of her cousins--holds up Olive’s world. Perhaps I ought not to say it....”
She broke off, mistily, as her eyes met her brother’s, with the homing hunger in them; her brother who had temporarily lost his hair--but not his smile!
“Do you mean--mean to say”--he began, in the old headstrong way. “Ah, well! nothing matters, girlie, except that I’m at home--at home, alive, and can soon see--everybody--for myself. Although I don’t know whether they’ll let me out of here before Christmas, or not. If they do--if I should be discharged from the hospital, and sent to the Casualty Detachment--why, I might get back to you sooner--sooner than I hope for, now.”
“Quite--unexpectedly--perhaps?”