And he went to the door, opened it wide and, as she passed, he bowed to the woman with the respect which, till that day, he had paid only to the Law.
FAITHFUL TO THE END
By Clair W. Perry
Embarkation of the 10th London Reservists for France was the occasion of a demonstration in the city such as had not been seen since the Canadian contingent crossed the Channel. The call for these fresh troops had a sinister significance. It meant the long-awaited “general advance” from Calais to Belfort was impending. At the quay, where the dingy transports were swallowing up file after file of England’s youth, were hundreds of women and girls come to bid a bitter-sweet farewell to their lads, whose vigorous bodies were to be crammed into the hungry maw of war.
Lieutenant Topham, Wing Commander of the aerial division with the 10th, stood apart at the far end of the quay. He had just finished superintending the loading of his machines. He was watching the troops file aboard, hungrily absorbed in the dramatic scenes that passed, one after the other like cinema scenes, when wife, mother, sweetheart, sister, kissed loved ones good-bye. He moved nearer the sloping gangway where were enacted these hasty tender farewells, swift embraces at the foot of the passage, so swift the progress of the tramping files was scarcely halted, each woman, for an instant, giving up her soul in an embrace—and the next instant giving up her son, brother, or mate to his Maker—or his destroyer.
Topham was deeply moved by the scenes. But it was a selfish emotion. There was no one to bid him farewell. For the first time in his careless life he felt the lack. He had no mother, no sister, no sweetheart. His men friends, even, were not there; they had gone on before.
As he moved nearer the ship on which he was to take passage for France, and the wild dash in air for which he had been detailed, to shell the recently established German Zeppelin base near “Hill 60,” there came over him a premonition of death and a yearning emotion. He wanted some human being to bid him farewell, some one who placed his life above all else, a woman who cared.
In his abstracted progress he almost ran into the figure of a girl. She was standing close to the moving file, and in her searching eyes, as Topham looked in silent apology, he saw a fire that thrilled him. He noted, too, beauty, and a band of mourning on her sleeve. Her gaze pierced Topham with compelling appeal. The bugle was giving its piercing call, “All hands on.” With a sudden impulse Topham stepped close to the girl.
“Are you sending—some one away?” he queried.
She shook her head and touched the band on her arm.