PART ONE (continued 6)

“I dare say it was my fault,” he confessed.

“One of the oldest faults on earth, Tod. I warned you. But you had to fight your first fight, and get blooded—and beaten. Nature again. One of her ways of eliminating weaklings. Well, what about it, now?”

“About what?” said Tod.

“Ambition, the man’s game, or office life in a sleepy, sea coast town.”

Tod’s eyes flashed. He sat with his chin in his fists, thinking.

“You mean that what you said to me that night in the hotel, about my training for some big job?”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Burgetrode, sitting up and watching Tod’s eyes and mouth.

Tod said nothing for nearly a minute.

“It was a mistake,” he said gruffly, digging one heel into the grass.

“Where was the mistake?”

“My marrying. I have never said so before to any living soul, but it’s the truth. I’ve known it for months. She killed the last bit of love in me last week.”

“How?” asked the big one softly.

“I—I wanted a kid,” said Tod. “I’ve been so lonely, and she wouldn’t do it. I know it means pain and work for a woman, but, after all, what’s marriage for?”

Mr. Burgetrode smiled.

“I’ve often wanted a kid, Tod,” he said, “but the want didn’t come to me till I was old. I’d been too busy doing things. Supposing—you think it over.”

“What about my wife?” Tod asked.

“Will she complain if your income doubles?”

“I don’t think so,” said Tod.

They walked back to Shaston, and Tod had tea at the familiar old Hotel Majestic. He sat on the balcony of Mr. Burgetrode’s sitting-room, saying little, but looking over the sea with eyes that had sighted the sails of a strange ship rising above the horizon.

“I’ve got him,” said Mr. Burgetrode to himself; “I thought I should get him some day.”

When Tod went back to his rooms at Tom Lavender’s, he found Millie sulking over a book. He had promised to take her on the pier, and he had forgotten all about it.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked suspiciously.

“Walking with a friend?”

“A man, I suppose?”

“Yes, a man I used to know years ago; met him by chance.”

He did not tell her that it was Mr. Burgetrode, and his wife thought that he had been philandering with a girl.

Tod stayed up late that night talking to Tom Lavender. He wanted the cool hand of Tom’s wisdom to touch him after that strenuous bout with Mr. Burgetrode, and he developed to Tom all the vigour of the great man’s creed of work and the joy of work. The lover of birds had no selfish net to spread for Tod, though he was sadder than Tod knew at the thought of losing him.

“It’s a great opportunity,” he said, “and opportunity’s a horse so few men ever get a lift on. I’d take it, old chap!”

Tod lunched next day with Mr. Burgetrode.

* * * * *

Yet this plan of the great man was overset by circumstances that were stronger than Mr. Burgetrode, and he—like Tod—was to be but a fierce striving figure in the huge fresco of a world upheaval, a figure out of the brain of Michael Angelo the great. Julian Burgetrode met the inevitable, and smiled at it with some of the pride of a father. The man he had chosen could but prove himself a man.

In the sunlight of an August morning these two met on the white steps of the hotel; Tod with a deep light in his eyes and the tense fire of youth touched with a new heroism; Mr. Burgetrode with the day’s paper in his hand, and a kind of grimness about his mouth.

He looked at Tod, and he knew at once what Tod had come to say.

“Well, young Ajax?”

“I must go,” said Tod; “I wanted to come and tell you, sir. It’s right, isn’t it, even if I have to throw up everything? I am going round to the drill hall to sign on.”

Mr. Burgetrode held out a hand to Tod.

“Ajax couldn’t do anything else, boy. You’re right, utterly right. But when you come back, I shall want you to come to me.”

“I’ll come,” said Tod, much moved; “but there’s just one thing.”

“Out with it, boy. What is worrying you?”

“My wife,” said Tod. “I have some money left, but it’s capital; and army pay won’t keep a wife. If I handed you the money, sir?”

Mr. Burgetrode’s eyes had lost all their fierceness.

“I’ll see to your wife, Tod; she shan’t suffer.”

“God bless you, sir,” said Tod; “I don’t suppose I shall have much trouble with the doctor.”

“But the Germans will with you,” said Mr. Burgetrode to himself. “Ave triumphans, little Great Heart—and may thousands of the same breed go with you. Why didn’t this happen when I was young!”