Burned Bridges

They had not been able to support themselves, to rear and educate him,

on their income alone, and gradually their small capital had been

consumed. They were about to negotiate the sale of their home, the

proceeds of which would keep them from want--if they did not live too

long. They tried to make light of it, but Thompson grasped the tragedy.

They had been born in that brick cottage with the silver birch before

the door.

"Well," he said at length, "I don't want to preëmpt the Lord's

prerogative of providing. But I can't permit this state of affairs. I

wish you had taken me into your confidence, aunties, when I was a

youngster. However, that doesn't matter now. Can you live comfortably on

eleven hundred dollars a year?"

Aunt Harriet held up her hands.

"My dear boy," she said, "such a sum would give us luxuries, us two old

women. But that is out of the question. If we get five thousand for the

place we shall have to live on a great deal less than that."

"Forget that nonsense about selling this place," Thompson said roughly.

That grated on him. He felt a sense of guilt, of responsibility too long

neglected. "Where I'm going I shall be supplied by the government with

all I need. I've made some money. I own war-bonds sufficient to give you

eleven hundred a year in interest. I'll turn them over to you. If I come

back with a whole skin when the war's over, I'll be able to use the

capital in a way to provide for all of us. If I don't come back, you'll

be secure against want as long as you live."

He made good his word before his leave was up. He had very nearly lost

faith in the value of money, of any material thing. He had struggled for

money and power for a purpose, to demonstrate that he was a man equal to

any man's struggle. He had signally failed in his purpose, for reasons

that were still a little obscure to him. Failure had made him a little

bitter, bred a pessimism it took the plight of his aunts to cure. Even

if he had failed to achieve his heart's desire he had acquired power to

make two lives content. Save that it ministered to his self-respect to

know that he could win in that fierce struggle of the marketplace, money

had lost its high value for him. Money was only a means, not an end. But

to have it, to be able to bestow it where it was sadly needed, was worth

while, after all. If he "crashed" over there, it was something to have

banished the grim spectre of want from these two who were old and

helpless.

He was thinking of this along with a jumble of other thoughts as he

leaned on the rail of a transport slipping with lights doused out of the

port of Halifax. There was a lump in his throat because of those two old

women who had cried over him and clung to him when he left them. There

was another woman on the other side of the continent to whom his going

meant nothing, he supposed, save a duty laggardly performed. And he

would have sold his soul to feel her arms around his neck and her lips

on his before he went.