Burned Bridges

"Oh, there's no argument. I'm committed to the enterprise," Henderson

declared. "I believe in you, Thompson. Otherwise I couldn't see your

proposition with a microscope. Well, I'll embody the various points in a

contract. Come in this afternoon and sign up."

As easily as that. Thompson went down the half-flight of stairs still a

trifle incredible over the ease with which he had accomplished a stroke

that meant--oh, well, to his sanguine vision there was no limit.

He felt pretty much as he had felt when he sold his first Groya to an

apparently hopeless prospect, elated, a little astonished at his

success, brimful of confidence to cope with the next problem.

The ego in him clamored to be about this bigger business. But that was

not possible. He came back to earth presently with the recollection that

the Summits would not be ready for distribution before late October--and

for the next five months the more Groyas he sold the better position he

would be in when he went on his own.

So when he finally had in his hands a dealer's contract covering the

Province of British Columbia he put the matter out of his mind--except

for occasional day-dreamings upon it in idle moments--and gave himself

whole-heartedly to serving the house of Henderson.

Time passed uneventfully enough. June went its way with its brides and

flowers. July drove folk upon vacations to the seaside resorts.

And in August there burst upon an incredulous world the jagged

lightnings and cannon-thunder of war.

It would be waste words to describe here the varying fortunes of the

grappling armies during the next few months. The newspapers and current

periodicals and countless self-appointed historians have attended to

that. It is all recorded, so that one must run to read it all. It is as

terribly vivid to us now as it was distant and shadowy then--a madness

of slaughter and destruction that raged on the other side of the earth,

a terror from which we stood comfortably aloof.

There was something in the war unseen by Thompson and the Hendersons and

a countless host of intelligent, well-dressed, comfortable people who

bought extras wet from the press to read of that merciless thrust

through Belgium, the shock and recoil and counter-shock of armies, of

death dealt wholesale with scientific precision, of 42-centimeter guns

and poison gas and all the rest of that bloody nightmare--they did not

see the dread shadow that hung over Europe lengthening and spreading

until its murky pall should span the Atlantic.

Thompson was a Canadian. He knew by the papers that Canada was at war, a

voluntary participant. But it did not strike him that he was at war. He

felt no call to arms. In San Francisco there was no common ferment in

the public mind, no marching troops, no military bands making a man's

feet tingle to follow as they passed by. Men discussed the war in much

the same tone as they discussed the stock market. If there was any

definite feeling in the matter it was that the European outbreak was

strictly a European affair. When the German spearhead blunted its point

against the Franco-British legions and the gray hosts recoiled upon the

Marne, the Amateur Board of Strategy said it would be over in six

months.