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Burned Bridges

Page 28

"A desire to serve is not an illusion," Thompson said defensively.

"One would have to define service before one could dispute that," Carr

returned casually. "What I mean is that the people who send you here

have not the slightest conception of what they send you to. When you get

here you find yourself rather at sea. Isn't it so?"

"In a sense, yes," Thompson reluctantly admitted.

"Oh, well," Carr said, with a gesture of dismissing the subject, "that

is your private business in any case. We won't get on at all if we begin

by discussing theology, and dissecting the theological motive and

activities. Do you hunt or fish at all, Mr. Thompson?"

Mr. Thompson did not, and expressed no hankering for such pursuits.

There came a lapse in the talk. Carr got out his pipe and began stuffing

the bowl of it with tobacco. Tommy Ashe sat gazing impassively over the

meadow, slapping at an occasional mosquito.

"Tommy might give you a few pointers on game," Carr remarked at last.

"He has the sporting instinct. It hasn't become a commonplace routine

with him yet, a matter of getting meat, as it has to the rest of us up

here."

Ashe made his first vocal contribution.

"If you're going to be about here for awhile," said he pleasantly,

"you'll find it interesting to dodge about after things in the woods

with a gun. Keeps you fit, for one thing. Lots of company in a dog and a

gun. Is it a permanent undertaking, this missionary work of yours, Mr.

Thompson?"

"We hope to make it so," Mr. Thompson responded.

"I should say you've taken on the deuce of a job," Tommy commented

frankly.

Thompson had no inclination to dispute that. He had periods of thinking

so himself.

The conversation languished again.

Without ever having been aware of it Thompson's circle of friends and

acquaintances had been people of wordy inclination. Their thoughts

dripped unceasingly from their tongue's end like water from a leaky

faucet. He had never come in contact with a type of men who keep silent

unless they have something to say, who think more than they speak. The

spinster aunts had been voluble persons, full of small chatter, women of

no mental reservations whatever. The young men of his group had not been

much different. The reflective attitude as opposed to the discursive was

new to him. New and embarrassing. He felt impelled to talk, and while he

groped uncertainly for some congenial subject he grew more and more

acutely self-conscious. He felt that these men were calmly taking his

measure. Especially Sam Carr.

He wanted to go on talking. He protested against their intercourse

congealing in that fashion. But he could find no opening. His

conversational stock-in-trade, he had the sense to realize, was totally

unlike theirs. He could do nothing but sit still, remain physically

inert while he was mentally in a state of extreme unrest. He ventured a

banality about the weather. Carr smiled faintly. Tommy Ashe observed

offhand that the heat was beastly, but not a patch to blizzards and

frost. Then they were silent again.

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