"Have you seen Wes Thompson lately?" Carr inquired at last.
"I saw him this afternoon," Sophie replied.
"Did he tell you he was going overseas?"
"No." Sophie's interest seemed languid, judged by her tone.
"You saw him this afternoon, eh?" Carr drawled. "That's queer."
"What's queer?" Sophie demanded.
"That he would see you and not tell you where he was off to," Carr went
on. "I saw him away on the Limited at six-o'clock. He told me to tell
you good-by. He's gone to the front."
Sophie sat upright.
"How could he do that?" she said impatiently. "A man can't get into
uniform and leave for France on two hours' notice. He called here about
four. Don't be absurd."
"I don't see anything absurd except your incredulous way of taking it,"
Carr defended stoutly. "I tell you he's gone. I saw him take the train.
Who said anything about two hours' notice? I should imagine he has been
getting ready for some time. You know Wes Thompson well enough to know
that he doesn't chatter about what he's going to do. He sold out his
business two weeks ago, and has been waiting to be passed in his tests.
He has finally been accepted and ordered to report East for training in
aviation. He joined the Royal Flying Corps."
Carr did not know that in the circle of war workers where Sophie moved
so much the R.F.C. was spoken of as the "Legion of Death." No one knew
the percentage of casualties in that gallant service. Such figures were
never published. All that these women knew was that their sons and
brothers and lovers, clean-limbed children of the well-to-do, joined the
Flying Corps, and that their lives, if glorious, were all too brief
once they reached the Western front. Only the supermen, the favored of
God, survived a dozen aërial combats. To have a son or a brother flying
in France meant mourning soon or late. So they spoke sometimes, in
bitter pride, of their birdmen as the "Legion of Death", a gruesome
phrase and apt.
Carr knew the heavy casualties of aërial fighting. But he had never seen
a proud woman break down before the ominous cablegram, he had never seen
a girl sit dry-eyed and ashy-white, staring dumbly at a slip of yellow
paper. And Sophie had--many a time. To her, a commission in the Royal
Flying Corps had come to mean little short of a death warrant.
She sat now staring blankly at her father.
"He closed up his business and joined the Flying Corps two weeks ago."
She repeated this stupidly, as if she found it almost impossible to
comprehend.
"That's what I said," Carr replied testily. "What the devil did you do
to him that he didn't tell you, if he was here only two hours before he
left? Why, he must have come to say good-by."