Page:Arthur Stranger--The Stranger.djvu/15

Rh of those earlier hot-blooded sacrifices, but for cool-headed pride in this brotherhood of men and races that is known as Canada. It is the time for the last move, the time for the mopping-up, as you have called it, the time to show the world that you have won what you have won, not by brute passion and blind luck, jut by strength of will and cleanness of mind. And Oh, sir, if you can but see these things as I see them, who am an older and wiser man than you are, I can devoutly and gratefully say to you that the son you have loved and lost has not died in vain!"

Hardy turned and regarded the stranger with the faded air, so suggestive of old daguerreotypes. The earnestness of the man, the sheer persistence of the man, as he followed him like a shadow from his car even into his private office, both nettled and amazed the owner of The Works who remembered that he had a busy day ahead of him. But he remembered other things as well, as he dropped into his swivel-chair before the rosewood desk that stood so grimly bald and plain, like the deck of a battleship cleared for action. It was a place of encounter, that desk, as definite a point of combat as the squared ring of pugilists. And when the owner of it looked up at the wistful figure beyond the square of rosewood, it was almost with a challenge in his eyes. He was moved and a little bewildered, stirred by powers which he could not quite decipher. But he was a practical man, and mystery was not admitted into his scheme of things.

"There's just one thing I'd like to know," he began with a laboriously achieved bruskness of tone, "and that's why you're coming to me with this love-of-country talk. I thought I'd been getting enough of that from the people I know around here, this last few days. But I don't comprehend what brought you into the chorus!"

"It was the need, the need that could not be denied, which brought me," was the deliberate and unruffled reply.

"And what persuaded you of that?" demanded the man of business. But he let his eyes fall before the oddly luminous stare of the faded figure on the far side of the room.

"I can only remind you that an enemy of mine, who is now my comrade, once said: Debout les morts!"

"You'll have to pardon me for not quite understanding."