Olive Higgins Prouty

“ In the picture Elizabeth Oliver appeared the absolute antithesis of the fragile creature Vincent had met in the fragile evening gown, and played with afterward, dressed in her smart, well-cut golf-suit. In the picture she wore a boxey, shapeless, multipocketed affair, which disregarded all her lovely lines. Her hair was tucked entirely out of sight, beneath the brim of a service hat. On the sleeve of her left arm Vincent saw insignia of some sort. ”

“ That this stranger cared to exert herself in his behalf, filled Vincent with gratitude. And as is so likely to happen between a man and a girl, the gratitude slipped swiftly and quietly into a more involving sentiment. Vincent, to his surprise, found himself wishing to abandon the play-acting. By the fourth day he had become as anxious to tear down the artificial structure between himself and Elizabeth Oliver, (by then he had found out what the E stood for) as a week ago he had been determined to build up walls and barriers, and shut himself away from human-beings. ”

“ He was lying flat on his back, with his hands under his head for a pillow. "When a man is in a foreign country," he said, "surrounded on all sides by strangers and he suddenly runs across somebody from home, he doesn't feel a bit safe, and reliable, especially if he's as far away from home as the earth is from old Mars up there. You must know what it's like to hear your own language spoken, with your own peculiar accent too, after being tortured for weeks and weeks by the babble of crowds of strangers who don't understand even your signs and motions. ”

“ He used to be the most sociable of men. He used, too, to be kind and considerate. Since his return some of his replies to the well-meaning questions asked him by friends who had dropped into the house to grasp his hand—shake it, wring it, learn his story, had brought the color more than once to Mrs. Hollister's cheeks.
She tried always now to hover near Vincent whenever he became entangled in a group of people, so as to ward off annoying questions and remarks. Especially she tried to protect and guard him from over-zealous women. ”

“ Elizabeth Oliver flitted in and out through his brain as obstinately almost as the young German in the shell-hole.
Queer about that German. Not once since he had spoken about him to Elizabeth Oliver on the hill-top, had the night-mare about the bayonet and the hat-pin clutched and held Vincent till he woke up gasping and struggling for sufficient strength to withdraw his slippery shaft of steel. To his surprise he had been able to mention the German twice to his father over their after-dinner cigars ”

“ It got to be hell to me," he confided in a low voice to Elizabeth Oliver.
In answer she tossed a pine cone at a distant target. "See if you can hit that big gray stone beyond that tree," she said lightly.
Instead of taking the cone which Elizabeth offered him, Vincent took her hand.
"You've been the only one who has understood," he said. "You've been the only one who has known how to help. Others, even the well-meaning, say things—ask things that are like alcohol on an open wound. ”

“ Vincent went on, "I had an idea if I could once get home, back among normal human-beings again, back into old habits, old ruts, old clothes, I could forget about things over there. The doctors thought I might too. Fools!" he shrugged. "There are no old habits, old ruts left! There are no sane and normal people—not here! I discovered by the third day I was at home there was no such thing as escape. I'm thin-skinned, I suppose, super-sensitive. Some fellows don't mind talking about the thing—making entertaining stories out of its details. ”

“ Taking offense when no offense was intended was not sportsmanlike.
Vincent had made up his mind when he enlisted in the army, to form no attachment for any girl, until the war was over. Therefore he tried to persuade himself that he was glad that Miss Oliver had proved disappointing. He tried to persuade himself too, that he was thankful for Barbara's disillusioning remarks about her. Barbara had relieved herself of an accumulation of facts and opinions in regard to Elizabeth Oliver, at the luncheon table, on the very day after the hill-top episode. ”

“ Vincent's scar was on the side away from her.
"I'm glad," he laughed diffidently, "that there's some one who approves. My mother thought it a tragedy that I wouldn't wear my uniform to-night."
"Your uniform!" the girl's face fell. "Have you a uniform? I didn't think you had. I thought you were just a nice man from South America,—or some such place, to whom the war was just thunder and lightning a long way off. I'm disappointed," she pouted. "Run along. Run along. I can't have any fun with you. Eyes off men in the service you know." ”

“ Vincent made a little noise in his throat like a laugh. He glanced down at Elizabeth Oliver. All he could see beneath the round hat was the curve of her cheek and pointed chin. He went on talking in a voice that shook a little.
"If I only could have shot the man in the shell-hole—put an end to him quickly, I don't think I would have minded it so. I tried to kill a mouse once when I was a kid by sticking a hat-pin into it. An older fellow dared me to. I never forgot it. I killed the young German the same way—with my bayonet. He died slow, too—like the mouse. ”

“ She rewarded him for that with a smile and a long look.
"My name is Oliver," she replied; "E. Oliver from Mars also."
The next morning Vincent spent two hours and a half on the golf course with Miss E. Oliver (she could play a very good game for a girl) and the evening of the following day he spent three hours with her at the theater, and the next afternoon after another two hours of golf, he whisked her away in his roadster to a pretty spot he knew about beside a rocky-bedded brook, and while she read out-loud to him from one of the light novels, he got out his knife and whittled. ”

“ It's an experiment. A day or two—a week. Possibly two weeks—as long as I can stand the strenuous war-activities of a small town like this."
"Alice spends all her time at the Red Cross Headquarters," said Vincent. "Won't you be working with her?"
"Not if I know it!" shuddered this extraordinary young person. "I've brought half a tray full of novels—light novels," she specified almost savagely, "and a bag of golf clubs to while away the hours while hectic Alice is cutting and folding."
"Will you while away a few with me on the golf links?" asked Vincent. ”

“ Mrs. Hollister wished Vincent wouldn't talk like that. His answer was discouragingly characteristic of him since he had come home. She couldn't understand some of his peculiar attitudes and disinclinations. For instance his very first morning at home, he had removed from various mantels, tables, and book-case tops throughout the house all her treasured photographs of him, taken in his uniform before he sailed for France, and had deposited them in the attic. ”

“ Nothing seemed to rub Vincent the wrong way as much as a woman, young or old, who got him alone in a corner, and asked to see his war-cross, gazed worshipfully upon the jagged white scar upon his forehead and made eloquent remarks about "our splendid men." Vincent told his mother that if he drew one of that sort at her dinner-party, he wouldn't be responsible for the results.
Mrs. Hollister was well aware that it was impossible for twelve or fourteen people to sit together for more than ten minutes at a time and not talk about the war, but by placing herself at one end of the table and Mr. ”

“ Candy! When the rest of us aren't taking sugar in our tea! Depraved, I call her."
Inwardly Vincent winced—not at Barbara's testimony itself (he had heard Elizabeth Oliver talk often in similar strain) but at the discovery that the rôle which he had believed she had assumed for him alone, was played indiscriminately, for everybody's amusement. He had thought Elizabeth Oliver had shut her eyes to stern realities to spare him pain. Fool! ”

“ On the fourth day they climbed a hill which used to be a mountain when he was a boy, and for a long quiet hour, sunned themselves at the summit. Eighteen hours he had spent with her in all (he counted them up at the end of the fourth day) and not once during all that time had she shown the least curiosity as to his scar or disabled arm. ”