PART I

Transcriber’s note: Table of Contents added by Transcriber.

CONTENTS

PART PAGE

I 3

II 79

III 187

IV 269

V 309

THE WASTED GENERATION

By Owen Johnson

_Lawrenceville Stories_

THE PRODIGIOUS HICKEY

THE VARMINT

THE TENNESSEE SHAD

* * * * *

STOVER AT YALE

THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE

THE WOMAN GIVES

VIRTUOUS WIVES

THE WASTED GENERATION

MAKING MONEY

THE SIXTY-FIRST SECOND

THE

WASTED GENERATION

BY

OWEN JOHNSON

[Illustration]

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1921

_Copyright, 1921_,

BY OWEN JOHNSON.

_All rights reserved_

Published September, 1921

TO

HUGH WALPOLE

IN FRIENDSHIP AND IN ADMIRATION

THE WASTED GENERATION

PART I

I

_August, 1916_

I am thirty this day, the twenty-ninth of August, 1916. The guns are

roaring along the Somme front. Another great attack is on. The gray

waves are passing over the top for the thousandth time and, for the

thousandth time, hope is in the air once more. I feel it in the sudden

optimism of the daily bulletin, in the groups in the market-place, in

the little knot of _evacués_, here in a Savoyard courtyard, basking in

the sun and studying the winding line of pins on the yellowed map of

the front.

“_Brigadier David Littledale, Légion Etrangère, Croix de Guerre,

wounded at Verdun, March 5th, shell wound in the shoulder and the

leg, shell-shock and gangrene. Entered Val de Grace, March 21st,

evacuated on Chambèry, July 10th, 1916._”

The record used to hang at the foot of my bed beside the fever chart

and the record of operations. From Chambèry, here into a rest area, to

put on flesh again, to quiet my jumping nerves and to fatten up for the

return to the front. To-day I have no desire to hasten that return. I

write it down frankly,--as I intend to keep honesty with myself and my

impressions. There are other times when I feel the tug and fret to be

back. It is my mood to-day, as war is a succession of unrelated moods.

This morning I ask no more of life than to continue here at my open

window in the buzzing month of August, looking down on a drowsy world

in animal content. A pipe of tobacco and the noonday meal--_Pinard_,

_pommes de terre frites_, and perhaps a _ragout_ with a touch of

onions--all these simple joys to my keen senses seem the limit of human

desires.

There is a touch of ivy at my window; below, the courtyard is

flagged and the red-tiled, shovel-hatted Savoyard roofs throw sharp

blue shadows across the glowing yellow pavement. Bompard, an old

territorial, is peeling potatoes in the door frame. Coustic and

Valentin, of the Chasseurs Alpins, are quarreling good-humoredly over a

game of Manille, and old Canache, of the _Bat d’Af_, is baking in the

chaise-longue, kepi over his nose, and a thin stream of smoke twining

upward like Jack’s beanstalk. A mottled setter is flat on his side; a

kitten plays with its toes; over the pink roofs the Col du Chat strikes

into the skies with its brass cross blazing in the sun, and I say to

myself, incredulously, that on the Northern Front cannon are roaring,

men pitting themselves against machines, as the long trains of wounded

begin to move our way,--into one of which at some near day I shall step

and return to the Legion.

A buxom, tow-headed girl comes clattering into the courtyard, draws a

pail of water and moves sinuously out. An exchange of jests, and we

watch her go. She is more than a woman. She is woman. She represents

that incredible other life to us, the dream life that runs at night

with the will-o’-the-wisps along the trenches; violins and dancing

under southern harvests; wet beaches and a glowing Normandy hearth;

lights on the boulevards; children’s voices; an old couple waiting on

a doorstep,--many things to many men! To me it brings back a stranger

of four years and some months ago,--David Littledale, of Littledale,

Connecticut; an old, rambling, red-sided house under the elms; a

household of young people, frolicking; a girl’s face,--a first love;

Ben, Alan, and Rossie, and one tomboy, shock-haired sister, Molly,

galloping up the avenue on Pinto, the cow pony.

* * * * *

Will I ever go back to it and, if I do, will all this pass away like

the frantic shadow that blots out the valley when thunder clouds come

stampeding down the Col du Chat? Will the old life come out again,

as the countryside returns, brilliant and glistening, sunlight and

shadow, balanced and friendly? Is war an incident, or an education

that remains? To tell the truth, I have seldom thought on such

things,--never in the line of duty.

In resigning my will I am conscious of having resigned my imagination.

The future is so indecipherable that it is rather a relief to say to

one’s self:

“Nothing that I can do, say or think, except obey orders, can have the

slightest effect on what is fated to happen.”

After two years war ceases to be an experience: it becomes a journey

to be traveled in the shafts of the inevitable. I have gone through

it, inspired, thrilled, grumbling, skeptical, rebellious, joking

mechanically, but always, at the last test, obedient to the hidden

power in the machine that decides my every act.

* * * * *

Why have I fallen back on this introspective mood in these emerging

days of convalescence? I think it is as a refuge from the _cafard_,--a

feeling of after all being a stranger in a strange land. Perhaps it has

a basis in physical weakness,--perhaps simply inaction: inaction which

is so demoralizing. To-day I have a longing to be back--to rub elbows

with my own people--to be no longer “_l’Americain_” but an American

among Americans.

For there is always this difference between me and Coustic and

Valentin, sons of the mountain side; Canache, Apache and filcher of

the gutters; Bompard, tiller of Normand soil: they are fighting for

something bigger than themselves that at times raises them to heights

of heroic eloquence, that obliterates the present and joins them to

their forbears of the brave days of old: Grognards, Sans Culottes,

Chevaliers and bearded Gauls. While I, I am fighting alone, for love of

a man’s adventure, in order to find myself. I am alone, for, much as I

love their country, it is theirs,--not mine.

* * * * *

Yet, if I cannot entirely possess this deep spirit of nationalism, it

has been the most satisfying experience of my haphazard, drifting life

to live among those who did. You cannot understand the _poilu_ with

your ears alone.

_Blagueur_, _critique_, _sceptique_ (bluffer, critic and skeptic)--I

have lived two years with them, _poilu_ myself by the grace of rags and

dirt, by a thousand sworn oaths never to move a further inch. I have

sung with them in the slimy trenches of the first winter. I have cursed

their commanders and sat on their boards of strategy. I have doubted,

rebelled, grumbled, and denied my leader and,--at the zero hour, surged

up and gone over the top.

* * * * *

I went into the war, heaven knows, wearied of my kind and of myself,

disillusioned with man, seeking men. I have found what I sought. I have

found and I understand them,--men, the mass, the race, which moves on,

slowly, irresistibly, without inner questionings, doing what must be

done. Above all, I have known the love of the Fatherland, the faith

of the humble, handed down at simple hearths,--the will to remain,

whatever the cost, French. Well, if I am fated to lie in No-man’s-land,

I am honestly thankful to have known life at its simplest, its keenest,

and to have served some purpose.

* * * * *

_Blagueur_, _critique_, _sceptique_, but, at the call of duty,--ready.

Often have I marveled at the soul of the _poilu_, the bit of sunlight

that abides in it--the love of the beautiful--the answering thrill

when a hero leads; that inexhaustible reserve, at the bottom of which

miracles wait! Yesterday the answer came, and it illumined the dark

places.

At lunch we were discussing the prospects of going back, that and the

end of the war are, of course, the daily topics. Canache launched on

his favorite tirade against the _embusqués_; Paris was full of them;

the hospitals were full of them; twenty miles behind the front they

were as thick as berries; before they sent back the older classes

who had been shot to pieces once already, let them clean out the

_embusqués_! As for him, Canache, he would refuse to go,--like that,

flat! He’d demand justice; he’d tell a few names, and he ended by

spitting contemptuously on the flagging, and exclaiming:

“_Sale Gouvernement!_”

Coustic, who wore the Military Medal and the Croix de Guerre, humored

the old rogue, knowing well the heart of iron behind the froth. But,

as a _poilu_, he would have been a traitor to his kind not to grumble.

For the _poilu_ has a fixed attitude: everything is wrong, from top

to bottom: the government, the leaders; the commissariat, especially;

the civilians, always. And, always, the _poilu_, despite injustice,

favoritism, neglect and inefficiency, is there to save the day!

Valentin wagged his head wisely and swore that every word was gospel.

Bompard alone remained mute, buried in his bread and cheese.

“Well, old grunter, what do you say to all this?” I said, addressing

him.

“Me?” Bompard’s face is the purple of the grape; he has a long sweeping

moustache and his eyes disappear behind shaggy eyebrows.

“Yes, you. What’ll you do if you have to go back?”

“Bah! What’s the use of words,” he said contemptuously; “if we have to

go back, we’ll go. If we’ve got to fight, we’ll fight. That’s all there

is to it. We’ll do our duty--the same as the others--perhaps, the same,

perhaps, a little better. _Que diable! Nous avons du sang français dans

nos artères, et le sang français ne ment pas!_”

The revolt died. Canache’s eyes flashed. He was back at the front,

spitting Boches and swearing horribly. Coustic and Valentin, ashamed to

have been caught in a cheap insincerity, sat up under the reproof, the

good red blood of France mounting to their cheeks. Bompard had found

the phrase. At that moment, had the hated little town major stuck his

head through the postern and cried, “Volunteers, to go immediately to

the front!” we would have risen, as one man, and cried:

“Ready!”

* * * * *

So our leaders talk to us who understand us. A phrase--something to

fire the imagination--something to exalt the heart--something to throw

defiantly from the lips in the cauldron of battle--a phrase to the

_poilu_ is worth an army or ten thousand cannon!

It was with a phrase that we won at Verdun and rolled the Hun back from

the Marne.

“_Mourir sur place! Debout les morts! Ils ne passeront pas!_” The

whole war is there. And to me who heard it, the phrase which fell

unconsciously from old Bompard’s lips,--“French blood never lies!”

makes the rest comprehensible.

It is something to have the right to a phrase like that.

II

Yesterday, when I began these notes, it was more as a caprice than

from any conviction that I would continue them. Yet to-day, I find

myself to my surprise filled with a certain eagerness. During the night

the thought came to me that it would be interesting to attempt an

absolutely honest portrayal of myself, setting down everything, small

and great, the good and the bad, as it occurred.

A classmate I met at Harvard (I cannot remember his name) once said to

me, casually:

“The man who has the courage to write down day by day the true record

of his life, concealing nothing, excusing nothing, without attempt

to reconcile the irreconcilable, putting down the sublime and the

ridiculous, the mud that soils his feet as he contemplates the

stars, the struggle, the inconsistencies, the little basenesses, the

hypocrisies that make him virtuous--the man who will dare arraign

himself before the pitiless bar of his own judgment--will leave an

immortal book. But no one has ever confessed, and no one ever will.”

I never forgot this remark. It determined a whole course of mental

speculation, fortunately or unfortunately, for it threw me into a

period of introspection which at times verged perilously close to a

melancholia, which might have been fatal had I not had in my sound

body the corrective of an intense animal delight in life and an

abounding curiosity for adventure. Since then, I have read copiously

in the so-called confessions that line the shelves of intimate

libraries, and I have recognized the essential truth of the dictum.

Even Jacques Casanova who, in the effrontery of his brilliant record

of a master-rogue, seems to have approached the stark verity of a

confession, has moments of colossal vanity, in which he cannot resist

the temptation to pose as an honest man. As for the famous confessions

of Jean Jacques Rousseau, they confess nothing at all except perhaps

the author’s desire to pass as a great man.

* * * * *

It may be that a sentiment of vanity alone is the impulse which has

determined me to this attempt; yet I do not think it is entirely

that,--except as vanity is a natural and healthy quality and is allied

to ambition. What is ambition? Is it not an instinctive rebellion

against the little term of existence which is accorded to us, the

soul’s struggling against mortality,--the longing to leave something

behind us so that we shall not be utterly snuffed out?

* * * * *

Of such ambition I am conscious. If two years voyaging over the

stormy paths of war has left me with a new conception of the flotsam

value of my life against the great currents of human destiny, it has

robbed death of half its terrors. Death has seemed such a casual

thing. Yet, at other times, there comes a swift, passionate revulsion

towards living,--a need of not entirely passing out of the memory of

those who have known us. This is the explanation, I believe, of the

multitude of little diaries, often but a jumble of hasty notes jotted

down on the eve of an attack; an impression of incredulous delight

after deliverance out of the agony of battle; a last cry of the soul,

scribbled in a shell hole under the flaming winds of a bombardment;

a final struggling to leave something that will remain,--something

tangible beyond a memory that recedes. It is this instinct, I think,

which I obey. We are all more or less fatalists; and I, for my part,

feel that my end will come in the moving ranks--some day--sooner or

later--but inevitably. There were those who were certain they would

pass unscathed out towards the unimaginable dawn, who died at my

side, by a grim freak of fate that left me living. Yet my fatalism is

unshaken. I am neither sadder nor happier for it: I accept it as the

final explanation of my presence here.

* * * * *

Before estimating my past conduct or proceeding to a critical analysis

of the future, I may as well take stock of Mr. David Littledale, as he

stands to-day.

Physically the damage done is trifling and soon repaired. The shoulder

is as good as new. The leg will carry a limp for some time to come. The

effects of the gas are rapidly departing, and in another two months my

nerves should come again under complete control.

Outwardly I am a typical Littledale, of a family of fighting men and

militant preachers. There never was a Littledale who did not have three

marked characteristics; the straight bushy line of the eyebrows, the

low cropped hair over the forehead, and the mouth cut like an inverted

sickle. The stark ruggedness of the jaws of our Puritan ancestry has

been softened with easier generations but the faces run lean and brown

and muscled. The ears are particularly my own and have a defiant way of

leaving the head that has earned a score of insulting nicknames.

As a family we are not given to gayety, rather over-serious, I am

afraid; tenacious, introspective, seldom shining in conversation,

listeners rather than debaters, realists and traditionalists,--though

occasionally a dreamer, like my brother Alan, comes into the family,

rebels, breaks away, and disappears restlessly into the outer world.

* * * * *

To take stock of myself mentally is not so easy. I have received the

deplorable education of the day. Everything that possibly could be

done was done to make me hate the pursuit of knowledge. I am, indeed,

an excellent example of the signal failure of American education,--the

failure to provide for the utilization of a developed type. My father

and my grandfather and his father before him were brought up to public

service as the result of a system of society and education which

demanded service of them. What, all at once, has happened to our

generation? We had everything to make us leaders, family traditions,

unlimited opportunity and undoubted energy; yet the only result that

I can see of our education has been either to divert our unquestioned

energy towards a heaping up of material comforts or to make of us

triflers and dilettanti; in a word, parasites. It may have been our

fault, but I think it was deeper,--the fault of national thinking.

Undoubtedly, in the future, the irresistible forces which mold a nation

will bring order into the multiplicity of confused movements which now

dominate us. But as I look back, even from my short retrospective,

and see myself and my brothers, I can give but one judgment. We are a

generation wasted.

* * * * *

I am at that point in my life when traditions fall away; when a man,

educated as I have been, suddenly finds himself alone, wandering

through a vast valley of doubt, seeking, with the instinct that is in

men for order, to recreate in stone the house of cards which has just

fallen about him.

What do I really believe? What of my education remains after the test

of experience? I was taught certain principles of morality, certain

judgments on conduct, given certain standards of right and wrong.

Virtue must bring its own reward and the wages of sin is death.

After a few years’ contact with the world, I find myself completely

mystified. Perhaps I have been too often behind the scenes and must

pay the penalty of disillusionment. I was given certain principles

of common honesty,--and I have seen great criminals exalted because

they either stole on a grandiose scale or procured others to steal

for them. True, I have heard many unflattering judgments passed on

these financiers, privately, but these criticisms seemed to proceed

more from an instinctive envy, and I seldom found that they interfered

in the least with the successful rogue’s power in the community. I

was given certain sharp distinctions between good women and bad. In

the cosmopolitan society which I knew in Paris, I saw those who were

surest of their position flagrantly and insolently defying all public

criticism. I have never found, in my occasional contact with women of

the demimonde, the libertinage that I have met with in certain of the

most exalted spheres of society.

My grandfather was Senator and a member of the National Cabinet. My

great-grandfather was one of the founders of the nation. My father,

as judge of the Circuit Court, has been in intimate touch with public

men and party politics. The ideal of public leadership I have always

regarded reverently and yet, on closer contact, I have discovered that

the leaders who were like demigods to my young imagination were capable

of underhand trafficking for office and midnight deals with repellant

political tricksters that seemed to me to place them on a level with

political fences,--receivers of stolen political goods. Puritan I am

and shall always be, so long as the heart of a child, which abides in

every man, remains open. Yet I have been wandering along pagan roads,

seeking new readjustments, which do not satisfy me, as I at first

believed.

* * * * *

There may be a deeper truth than I have uncovered below the shallow

surface of my experience. There must be, though I have not yet had the

vision to perceive it,--unless it be by renouncing the class into which

I was born and seeking new elements of faith in closer contact with the

great simple mass of humanity which remains vitally significant and

predestined, through the saving grace of struggle.

* * * * *

Yet do I believe, whole-heartedly and without reservation, in

Democracy? I am not sure. Certainly, not in the demoralization into

which I see it now wandering. Not if it means Democracy at the price

of inefficiency, rejection of self-discipline, and the negation of

real leadership. The vital principle, to me, is the equalization of

opportunity. Yet with it there must be an aristocracy of achievement

and an ability to recognize the quality of leadership in exceptional

men,--without which Democracy is no better than a rabble.

* * * * *

If I should announce such ideas in the rigid formalism of my Littledale

home, I would be regarded, I know, as an intellectual pariah. But I am

not seeking to impose my ideas on others. I am setting them down in a

moment of intellectual luxury, for my own self-education; that is, as

I perceive them through this vista of isolation, when old commonplaces

come into a new significance.

* * * * *

To-day there is a great yearning inside me, allied with a new feeling

of homesickness. I long to go to the home that is denied me. The air

which I have breathed these long two years has been extraordinarily

vital. I have lived with humanity at its keenest. With all the sodden

realism of war, with all its inconsistencies of detail, its mingled

brutality and heroism, it has been a privilege to have known its

rare moments of exaltation. I have known my kind as they are, as my

friends in the courtyard below are,--inconsistent and frail, selfish,

avaricious, sunk in mere animal passions of living; but I have seen

a sudden flaming vision of sacrifice exalt them above the brute, as

I have known Christian and Pagan to offer themselves on the cross of

their own suffering that their race might go on living.

III

_September_

_Sunday evening._

This morning I attended Mass with Coustic and Valentin, who are very

religious. (The others are not.) I like the solemnity and the calm of

the old Cathedral, the footsteps that slip past lost in the obscurity,

the candle-points that punctuate the darkness without illuminating it,

the sense of repose, beauty, meditation. Yet, every time I enter a

church now and see the cross, my memory returns to another crucifixion,

to a man who was not divine, yet who never flinched in his sacrificial

agony.

* * * * *

His name was Jules Fromentin, and a worse rascal did not exist in the

company. He had been a deserter in the Argentine, but he had his code.

And, somewhere in the bottom of his muddied philosophy was the love of

France. He caught the first steamer, claimed foreign citizenship, and

enlisted in the Legion. One night, in the spring of 1915, when we held

the trenches at the foot of the Notre Dame de Lorette slopes, working

towards Ablain St. Nazaire, a scouting detail was caught between the

lines and wiped out. Fromentin, alone, wounded to the death, was left

hanging on an advanced section of our barbed wire, to which he had

struggled. To attempt a rescue was humanly impossible. We had made

an advance the night before, and another was expected. The Boches,

on the _qui vive_, kept the night luminous with rockets and drooping

flares. No head could have appeared for an instant above the trench in

the illuminated night. At that, only the authority of our commander

held us in. I can remember still our feeling of horror and of rage

as we crouched helplessly in the whipped-around trench and listened

with the cold sweat starting up our backs. Fromentin was singing,--a

ribald marching song, an unprintable thing, salacious and vilifying the

Boches. From time to time a bullet reached home. Then the song ceased,

and a defiant voice cried:

“_Touché! Vive la France!_”

He lay there, suffering untold tortures--a man, and not a god--without

hope or faith, passing through the sacrificial agony, and yet, hour

after hour:

“_Touché! Sales Boches! Vive la France!_”

Then, at dawn, a final bullet, more merciful than the rest.

“_Touché!_ Ah--” And silence.

When we got to him, two days later, there were twenty-two bullet wounds

in him.

* * * * *

I put it down reverently, and reverently I compare that crucifixion

that is a symbol of mankind dying for an ideal with the divine agony

on Calvary. The agony was equal but no certainty of Paradise opened

before the man, unless there came a glorified vision we could not

share. Often, in the drab weariness of war, the sodden fatigue, the

brutalizing of the instincts and the weakening of the spirit, I go back

to the lingering horror and sublimity of that night and cling to my

symbol. For me every crude wooden cross that rises in the fields has

this human replica of the Calvary.

* * * * *

The strange thing, or perhaps the natural thing, is that I have little

inclination to write about the war. It is rather myself in its past

progression and the self which has come out of the reaction of the war

which interests me.

* * * * *

For the war is not a logical sequence in my memory. It is a jumble and

confusion of reiterated notes, endless movement, hunger, drenching,

cold. Only a few scenes detach themselves,--a very few. When I recall

the mobilization, I hear only one voice in the surge and roar of

hysterical multitudes crowding down to the departing trains at the Gare

du Nord,--a child’s voice, saying:

“_Non, non_, mamma,--don’t cry. Be brave,--till he’s gone!”

* * * * *

I seldom remember definite details, any particular dawn breaking after

the night of vigil, or the shrinking waiting of any one bombardment.

It is all one stretching gray line of sky; a tireless to and fro of

men and horses; the same broken line of trenches, a monotony of slime

and sleety rain; and all this is confused, as though I were struggling

upward through swirling, roaring bodies of water. Repetition has

dulled the perceptions. I am conscious only of fatigue, of unending

beating against the ears, of vigils under stars that never sink, of

marching,--yes, here one vivid impression always returns. It is one of

those memories that enter into the phantasmagoria of the night.

I am back again in the ranks, that have been marching for days. Some

one--the comrade at my left--says:

“_Mon vieux?_”

“What is it?”

“I want to sleep a little.”

“Pass over your rifle.”

Then he places his arm about my neck and the same to the comrade on the

other side, and presently I hear him begin to snore; marching, and dead

asleep,--until we wake him up and another takes his place.

* * * * *

What else comes out of the blur? The red smile of a comrade who lay

grinning at me in a shell hole all one mortal day. I remember no one

night, but I remember distinctly Night in the trenches,--the winging

bullets, the occasional rocket, the rising, lumbering whirl of a trench

mortar, the sudden digging in against the damp wall, a breathless wait,

and then, somewhere up the line, an explosion, and a shriek:

“_Ah, Jésu!_”

* * * * *

But all this is the confusion of drifting fog. Out of the months in

the Val de Grace I can see but two faces,--the provocative smile of a

nurse, as a doctor whispered in her ear amid the groans and delirium

of a Senegalese dying beside me, and another, the face of an old, ugly

woman, strangely devoted and untiring,--an old woman on her hands and

knees, scrubbing the floors for us, who, I was told, was a Princess of

the House of Bourbon.

Only these details come back to me. The war is too near and too

inevitable. I wish to escape it, if not entirely, for a brief

period. For inaction is what is demoralizing now, inaction and the

contemplation of the approaching fact. The moment convalescence ends

and I step again into the ranks and feel the touch of a comrade’s

shoulder, before that accomplished fact, all will seem obvious

again,--but not now. All my instinct now is to put from me this thing

that approaches so relentlessly.

* * * * *

Two periods of my life stand out; the calm of the early home days, and

the disorder of two years in Paris; two utterly, inexplicably different

David Littledales; on whom now I, a third personality, can look with

some dispassionate estimate.

IV

_October_

A budget of letters with a touch of home has sent me back to my diary

this morning, which, as I feared, I have neglected these last weeks.

At the time these letters had been written no word had reached them of

my having been wounded at Verdun, and as I sat recalling the thousand

details of our daily life, I imagined how the family would receive the

news.

Nothing could be more characteristic of the Littledale family than

its departure to worship on Sunday morning. We are organized on the

theory of absolute liberty of conscience in matters religious as well

as political. My mother and Ben departed in one direction for the

Unitarian Church, Aunt Janie to the Congregational, and my father,

Molly and myself for the little Presbyterian chapel in the village

square. Rossie, the privileged character of the family, remained in

that state of suspended judgment which permitted him to lengthen the

Sunday morning rest. No asperities, no dissensions resulted from this

opposition of views. In fact, each Littledale was a little proud of the

family’s individualism, regarding it as the inherited trait of a strong

intellectual strain.

We were four brothers and a sister, and all as different as one day is

from another. Because of my mother’s public interests and her theories

on individualism, we were brought up with small restraint, along lines

of our own choosing. Alan, the third of the line, was the rebel of the

family. As I look back, I can see where the mistakes were all on the

part of Ben and myself. Wild, impatient of restraint, Alan certainly

was, yet the rough discipline which the older brother inflicted was the

worst method of dealing with him. The two never understood each other.

Every idea and every instinct was opposed and each in his way was

remarkably unyielding in type.

While Rossie was alive, he and Molly, through their good humor and

affection, were able to hold the insurgent in check, but after Rossie’s

tragic drowning matters went from bad to worse. Alan quickly assumed

the traditional rôle of the family black sheep.

In every respectable family of New England there is, I suppose, always

that predestined place. It had been so in my father’s generation and in

the generation before him. We all, with the exception of Molly, who was

too young to have an opinion, expected that Alan would sooner or later

disgrace the family, and as we did not conceal from him the state of

our convictions he did his best to justify them. After being expelled

from two schools and dragged into college by the application of every

family influence, there came the final storm. In his sophomore year he

became involved in a disgraceful row which reached the columns of the

metropolitan press. Alan was permitted to resign, returned home, had a

violent scene with Ben and my father, and departed, vowing never to set

foot in the family home again. That we were all unjust to him admits of

no doubt--I among the rest--but at that time I was completely under the

influence of Ben, who was three years my senior.

* * * * *

I have left my brother Ben until the last: utterly different from

me in temperament, impulse and character, he exercised over me the

strongest domination. From boyhood we had been inseparable. Study

came laboriously to him, to me naturally, so, despite the difference

in age, we passed through school and college together. Mentally I was

his superior but he exercised over me a moral supremacy by the direct

and ruthless expression of his will. His strength lay in the fact that

he was diverted by no complexities. He had little imagination, read

little, and talked less. The two or three ideas which guided him were

settled convictions. Nothing perplexed him. In all things he was a

direct force.

I have noticed the same phenomenon in later life. Men of little

imagination and small mental baggage often dominate men of superior

imagination by the sheer tenacious simplicity of never being in

doubt of what they want. As I see them now, Alan was revolt and Ben

traditionalism in its most rigid New England form. He was born to

maintain what was as it had been, a mid-Victorian in his tastes, a

Bourbon in his ideas,--quite capable, in another era, of burning

witches at the stake.

For better or for worse, our destinies have been tragically

intertwined,--how tragically, I alone know. His code of morality would

not have looked well in copy books but, such as it was, it did have the

advantage of sincerity and a contempt for hypocrisy as he saw it in

others.

To fight hard and fairly on any question; to do as he believed every

man of breeding did in months of relaxation, but never to surrender

the control of one’s self or to be moved out of one’s calm by any wind

of passion; to take women as they came, lightly; but never to lie to

them or descend to petty meanness, or to become involved in situations

which compromised your dignity: this was a code which savored rather of

the _condottieri_ of the Middle Ages than of the Puritan traditions he

represented. Yet he saw in it no inconsistencies and, as men go (and

as I have known them), the code had certain qualities of _noblesse

oblige_. I have since turned from this insolent egotism but for a long

time it influenced my attitude towards life and brought me close to

disaster. Yet, by establishing this moral tyranny, Ben saved me from

what would have been the shipwreck of my life.

* * * * *

At the age of eighteen, in the summer of my Sophomore year, I fell

madly, foolishly in love with the daughter of a farmer back of

Littledale, Jenny Barnett, a handsome little country girl, red-cheeked,

black-haired, and gray-eyed, the beauty of the county. Looking back

now, I can understand many things,--particularly with the subsequent

career of Jenny before me, but then I was an extremely innocent

youngster, whose head turned at a look from the gray eyes in the warm

odors of June, and it would never have entered my imagination to

entertain the slightest suspicion of her. She, on her side, perceiving

what a greenhorn she had to deal with, made up her shrewd little mind

to set her cap for me. Before I knew it, I had lost so completely all

perspective that I seriously considered a runaway match.

To-day it is all so incredible that I ask myself if I could have

proceeded so far, if, in the last test, a saving grain of common sense

would not have halted me, and I like to reason that I was but playing

with an idea, deceiving myself as much as the girl. Yet I do not know

that this is a fair estimate, for I have seen so much of what men do

under the narcotic impulse of passion, even against their own will

and intelligence, that I am not certain I might not have played the

fool,--without the interception of my brother.

In my simplicity I had gone to him with my confidence. I can still see

the shock of amazement on his face. Then he remained silent a long

moment, his eyes on my face.

“Absolutely sure you want to marry?”

“Oh, absolutely,” I said, yet my heart sank as though I had pronounced

my own sentence.

“And the girl,--Jenny? Absolutely sure she loves you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, you’re making a fool of yourself, but that’s your affair. I’ll

see you through, that’s promised.”

His words brought me no joy. A cloud settled before my eyes. At the end

of half an hour, as though his mind had been made up, he questioned

me adroitly as to our relations, our place of meeting, our next

rendezvous. All of which information I gave him, without mistrust. The

second day he came to me and said:

“What are you doing this afternoon? Nothing? Wait for me in Talbot’s

wood, by the old spring. I’ve got a line on a honey tree. Meet me at

four.”

“At four. I’ll be there,” I answered, not without surprise.

I installed myself in the wood at the appointed time and shortly

afterward, hearing familiar voices, I sprang up and perceived Jenny on

the arm of my brother. My first thought was that he was bringing her

to me in sign of allegiance. The next moment, to my astonishment, I

saw her fling her arms about his neck and kiss him passionately, very

differently from the furtive embraces she had vouchsafed me.

The next moment I was before them, with murder in my heart. The girl

sprang back with a cry. My hands reached Ben’s throat and we went to

the ground. In my rage I understood but one thing,--that what he had

done he had done deliberately, after having put to sleep my suspicions

by an attitude of false acquiescence. My next impulse was the most

tragic and instinctive hatred which can blind the reason of a human

being,--the wild jealousy of brother against brother. At the thought

that the girl could so easily have preferred him after all that had

been between us, all the love that I had for him turned to the blackest

fury, and I believe that for a short moment if I could have killed him

I would have done so. The minx stood by, no longer frightened, but

delighted in her vanity at the sight of our struggling over her.

At first Ben had burst out laughing, defending himself from my frantic

rage but, little by little, under the sting of my blows, he too lost

his head. We rolled over and over, clawing at each other frantically,

striking out blindly. I was no match for him then in strength, and at

the end I found myself on my back, my arms pinned under his knees,

looking up into his bruised face.

Suddenly he bent down and cried angrily:

“You little fool! Is that the sort of wife you want to bring home!”

“You made her do it!” I cried, and in my rage I almost succeeded in

freeing myself. He exerted all his strength and brought me back to

earth.

“Made her do it! A girl that’s engaged to you? Do you want to be the

laughingstock of the country?”

My brain cleared and a great thankfulness came over me. I began to

laugh uproariously.

This was too much for Jenny. With a swish of her skirts, she went

flying through the woods.

I continued to laugh, with a sudden detention of all my nerves, cut by

sudden involuntary sobs, but the laugh was not honest and something

bitter and contemptuous descended into my heart, there to remain.

“Let me up,” I said, at the end.

“All right?”

“Quite.”

We arose and surveyed the wreck we had made of each other.

“I had to do it, Davy.”

“You did right.”

We shook hands and went home, his arm over my shoulder, a rare

demonstration of affection for him. Had I only been present to render

him a like service when the rôles were reversed, years later!

* * * * *

There was no need of admonition and it was characteristic of him that

he never once referred to the episode. All my anger turned on myself.

I saw the fool I had played and I swore that I would never be caught

again. From that time on vulgarity played no part in my life. Milestone

Number 1.

Unquestionably the thing that saved me was the blow to my vanity.

Even to this day I cannot recall the incident without resentment and,

though it is quite illogical, I believe of all the episodes of my life

this will always be the one I shall think on with keenest humiliation.

Even between Ben and myself the memory has always remained a secret

irritation. For despite all my efforts to fight down the feeling, I

still retain a little resentment at the superiority he had shown,--a

primitive instinct of the male, I suppose, particularly when a woman is

involved.

V

A revulsion was imperative, and the revulsion sent me back to my own

kind. There is, I suppose, in every man’s life the figure of some woman

who represents what might have been; some turning point at which he

looks back and perceives where the direct road abruptly diverged. My

intimacy with Anne Brinsmade was not the usual boy and girl romance

but was something quite genuine and loyal and, though in the end the

inevitable complications brought their misunderstandings, I look back

on this natural comradeship, which extended over two years, with

real affection. For this, strangely enough, I had Jenny Barnett to

thank. The anger in me against my credulity and weak sentimentality

was so insistent that to recover some self-respect I felt the need

of asserting my ascendancy over some worthier one of her sex, if but

to prove to myself that I had the qualities of reticence, authority

and self-control I admired in my brother. It was not premeditated or

conscious, yet if it had been skillfully calculated, nothing could have

served me better.

Stephen Brinsmade was a lawyer of large political and business

activities, a man of considerable fortune, and Anne was surrounded with

every luxury and attention which he could shower on her. They had a big

place at Taunton, about fifteen miles from our home at Littledale, and

the friendship of the families was traditional. In my case there was a

deeper reason. At school I had roomed with young Stephen and when he

had died as the result of an accident on the polo field, the memory of

his friendship brought me close to the father and sister.

Anne, even as a young girl, was a problem. She was all impulse, and

no one knew where impulse might lead her. I was approaching twenty

and she was scarcely sixteen at this time, and my air of determined

impersonality successfully piqued her curiosity, roused her resentment,

and finally drew her to me in impulsive trust. Her brother had been

my dearest chum. For his young sister I could have only the most

exact loyalty. I became her confidant, assuming the rôle of mentor,

and occasionally delivered moral precepts with a gravity that was

so natural that it even eluded my sense of humor. Different beings,

I suppose, appeal to different qualities in us, according to their

needs, and there was something in the wayward, lovable, undirected

charm of the young girl which aroused the chivalry in me. My attitude,

so different from that of the men who surrounded her, naturally had

two results. It brought a delightful companionship, utterly free from

mawkishness, or the simulated coquetries and aped sentimentality which

too often, in the freedom of our American intercourse, leave the regret

in man and woman of having failed in reverence before the things that

count. Unconsciously, however, as this intimacy continued, the feminine

temptation was hard to resist. Once or twice she tried to provoke my

jealousy. I do not think it was consciously done, but I recognized it

and my studied indifference undoubtedly gave me an increasing value in

her eyes.

The influence I exerted over her was, I know, the strongest in her

life. I saw that she idealized me and though the incongruity of making

a hero of me struck me, a certain strength came from the realization.

I never fully believed in her and frequently told her so,--much to

her annoyance. I saw her as a young girl, too easily influenced, with

natural instinct towards the good, yet with dangerous cravings for

excitement and pleasure. I knew as a woman she would be the creature

of circumstances and, foreseeing the flattery and adoration that would

be hers on her entrance into the world, I doubted the stability of

her best motives. On these subjects we talked frankly, and once, with

suddenly clouded face, listening to me intently, she confessed in a

burst of feeling that my fears were justified and, genuinely moved,

placing her hand in mine, said:

“When I’m with you, Davy, I don’t want to be just selfish and

superficial. I do want other things in life; but I know myself so well

that--I’m afraid.”

* * * * *

It was in the summer after my graduation that I first became aware that

my own feelings were undergoing a change. In the beginning I was master

enough of myself to control them, even when in daily contact with her

implicit trust and her too frankly shown desire for my company. My

reason warned me that my strength was in her ignorance of my true state

of mind but, at twenty-two, with a young girl on the brink of a radiant

and lovely womanhood, the reason is but an intermittent refuge, and

propinquity and the moment, decisive. One night in mid-summer, after

a long and intimate discussion, when least I expected it, at her hand

freely and impulsively placed in mine, every inhibition in me stopped.

I raised her fingers suddenly to my lips, drew a long breath and held

them there until, troubled, she sought to withdraw them.

“Why--David!”

She was looking at me, wide-eyed and wondering.

I tried to repair my blunder, hastily and awkwardly.

“You’re such a good sort, I was thinking--well, I’d hate to have

anything but the best come to you, later--”

She was still looking at me as I stopped, floundering. I drew a long

breath and said:

“It’s chilly here. Let’s go in.”

She slipped her arm from mine and led the way back. She said no word

for the rest of the evening, while I exerted myself to talk to her

father, and left as soon as I could make the opportunity. But I knew

that she was not deceived, then or later, by my new, almost hostile

attitude of aloofness.

* * * * *

The damage was done. From that day we never really talked to each

other. And here a curious thing happened. Until then there had been

no mistaking her preference for me. It was so open that every one saw

it,--her father, my brothers, everybody. In fact, it was rather looked

upon as a matter of course that eventually we should marry. I knew

this. There are things which do not deceive us and in the attitude of

Mr. Brinsmade there was even more than consent, though on the part of

the mother I felt an increasing antagonism.

Now, over night, all was changed. We avoided the moments of intimacy

which had come so naturally. Her attitude became the extreme of

capriciousness. I knew I had blundered and believed that the blunder

was irreparable, but when I would deliberately refrain from seeing her,

she was certain to call me up and insist upon my coming to dinner. Yet

the moment I was in her presence she was so silent and so moody that

I always returned with a feeling of hopelessness and disillusionment.

Hurt and miserable, my pride drove me to assume an attitude of

raillery, which crystallized in a studious assumption of tolerant

amusement and an apparent refusal to see in her anything but a wayward

child. She resented this and never let pass an occasion to rouse my

jealousy. I was, in turn, mortified, proud, and angry.

My old doubts returned and, forgetting how much my own attitude could

excite irritation; forgetting how young she was in the knowledge of

her own needs; forgetting all that we had built upon together, I saw

her only as an inconscient child, disdaining the toy which she had

finally acquired. As her mother was, so I felt she would inevitably

become, and I ceased to believe that the memory of our talks and

the natural, kindly impulses in her would ever be strong enough to

counteract the craving for the baubles of vanities which to-morrow

would be thrown into her lap.

What hurt me most was the seeming ungenerosity of her attitude,--that

after the years of unswerving loyalty and protection I had given her

she should now adopt towards me the methods of a coquette. It ended on

a trifle. There was a scene of petty jealousy--I cannot recall it now

without astonishment--a dance accorded and withdrawn,--nothing more.

And yet for that, the course of two lives was irretrievably affected.

Perhaps this was but the pretext. We were both high-spirited, both too

young to understand life’s values or the emotions which swayed us, and

both too proud to yield the first. For a moment’s pique, we parted in

anger,--I have never seen her since. A month later I left for Paris, to

take up the study of architecture. Milestone Number 2.

The memory quickly receded. I was, of course, too young myself to have

been truly capable of love. Yet to-day, as I look back, but for that

one instant’s wavering, I can see how my whole life would have run.

From time to time I followed her career, saw her photograph in the

public fashion show blazoned forth in newspaper and periodical; read

occasional news of her reported engagements, and then, lost in the

maelstrom of a malevolent infatuation, I put her finally from my mind,

as at that time I put from me all memories of a life where quiet, order

and simple ideals dominated.

I cabled home my decision to enlist. A month later, among the frantic

letters from the family, I found one from her.

Dear old Davy:

Molly has just told me and I can’t help writing to you. We are no

longer children, are we? And the old misunderstanding was of a boy

and a girl. I have always bitterly regretted it. I don’t know whose

fault it was,--perhaps both. If I was to blame I am truly sorry.

I have never forgotten the old days or how fine you were with me.

In all my life there has been nothing more _honest_. I cannot bear

to have you go without knowing it. If you will let me, it will

mean a great deal to me if I could help just a little,--keep you

in touch with things at home, and let you know how many, many of

your friends are keeping you in their thoughts. May I,--please,

Davy--for old times.

Just as I used to be,

ANNE.

I have the letter in my hand and to-day the memory hurts. The _cafard_

is strong on me, and the futility of my drifting existence. There are

other letters, chatty, carefully restrained letters, matching the tone

of my answers,--but this one I keep, for sometimes, in moments of

depression, in the passionate revulsion to living, I turn to what might

have been.

* * * * *

At this point, Coustic came in with my orders. To-morrow I am to set

out for Paris, there to report before an examining board. He stared at

my long face and the open diary.

“What’s wrong, youngster?”

“Thinking of home, _mon vieux_.”

“What are you writing there,--a romance?”

“It passes the time.”

“Literature? Bad for the nerves. Don’t do it. You can’t change

anything--can you?”

“Evidently not.”

“Come with me. We’ll dine at La Mère Argentine’s,--a couple of red

bottles and--to hell with the rest! _Moi, je suis philosophre._”

Which, after all, was the best thing I could do. And so, out for a last

dinner with Coustic and Valentin and then no more. Quick friends and

open hearts,--but when you haven’t the time, as Coustic says, to smell

a man over, it must be open-handed and open-hearted at once. Besides,

one man is as good as another, to smoke with, to dine with, and to damn

the politicians.--I drank my two bottles and sang with the loudest, but

it cured nothing. To-night I feel the dead weight of homesickness as

never before. The prospect of Paris brings no pleasure.

VI

_Paris_

At the Quai d’Orsay, where I debarked three nights ago, the old days

came back to me with a vividness of pain which I had not expected; the

old careless days of another world which has been snuffed out. I walked

out alone, being _en permission_, feeling my way along the black banks

of the hidden Seine. The street where she had lived was close at hand

and habit was so strong that despite my reason I felt the tug of old

instinct. Where was now that light, reckless crowd, so indefatigable

in the scampering pursuit of pleasure? Scattered to the four winds of

heaven. Most of the women have drifted away,--some to London, some to

America; one, a fortune’s favorite, died in an air raid; another, a

suicide after her lover’s death, one whom I had not thought capable

of a real passion. The test of war has redeemed some of the men--there

were the good with the bad--by some spark of a saving ancestry, perhaps

simply from a gambler’s love of a new hazard. Those who were born to

fight have found a purpose; the rest,--well, it does not much matter

what has become of the froth: all that matters is that a man or two,

whom once we despised, has redeemed himself with an heroic death. All

these memories are inseparably bound up with the experience which, I

suppose, was bound to come into my life,--that I believed erased from

my memory, but which to-day remains a haunting, ominous specter which

sooner or later must be faced.

The memory that obtrudes is of a clouded page in my life--a

chapter which I fatuously hoped had been closed and laid aside

forever--something to be regretted, to stand as a warning in the

future, and yet inclining me to a greater charity. This I know is the

experience of many men. That in my case, by some malignant turn of the

fates, it should remain in tragic permanence, is something against

which I rebel.

* * * * *

I think that I can now look back dispassionately upon the David

Littledale of 1913 and recognize the impulses which led me into an

infatuation which, without the outbreak of the great war, would in all

probability have left me a moral wreck.

Even as I write this severe judgment, I react against it. Perhaps I am

too harsh upon myself. It may be that of my own will I would have found

the strength to free myself of the humiliating bondage--perhaps--but I

am not sure.

Yet I am quite certain that not for a moment was I in love with Madame

de Tinquerville. Curiosity, vanity, habit, idleness; the pride of a

young man still a boy in the ways of the world; a fancied domination

over a woman accomplished in artifice; an unsated appetite for

pleasure; susceptibility to flattery; the old Littledale failing of

intense exaggeration in all things; all these motives I clearly see.

And then,--I was playing at love, which often is more dangerous than

love itself.

* * * * *

I have frequently heard women of the demimonde referred to as dangerous

women. There is nothing dangerous in such women except to a young and

inexperienced man, with quick sympathies and a conscience. They carry

their warning on their faces. The woman who is truly dangerous is

the unsuspected woman who waits behind the mask of a Madonna. Since

my arrival, twenty instances have reminded me of the woman I knew as

Letty, Madame de Tinquerville.

I do not know that I can be entirely dispassionate as I look back over

this incident in my life. _Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner_: to

understand everything is to forgive everything. There may have been

in her life, in her inheritance, or in her tradition--perhaps in her

earlier contact with men--things which would make her comprehensible. I

do not know them. There is a mystery of evil and good in us that defies

analysis. It is so in my case; it must be so in hers. And yet,--she

is the only human being in my experience who did evil from the sheer

delight of doing it. She did it as a child plays with some defenceless

animal. Yet there was nothing obvious about her, and in all the

different societies through which she moved I doubt if more than five

men ever suspected what lay behind her quiet, strictly conventional

attitude toward life.

* * * * *

I met her first at the studio of a fashionable artist, Enrico Gonzalez,

in the midst of a Goya fête, to which the fashionable, slightly

_déclassée_ society of cosmopolitan Paris had come, eager for a new

sensation.

I saw her directly I had passed under the swinging lanterns and entered

the glowing studio. Amid the gay confusion of reds and yellows, greens

and purples of gala Spain, she stood out, slight and dark in the black

velvet serenity of her costume,--an infanta with a certain intuitive

dignity of childish astonishment.

She saw my persisting look, studied me a moment, and asked a friend to

present me. The next moment I was at her side, flattered, inviting her

to dance.

She shook her head with a smile.

“What--not dance?”

“Never, in public.”

She motioned me to a seat and, looking at me intently, said:

“Tell me, where have we met before?”

“I am certain that I have never seen you.” I was on the point of

adding, “For I could not have forgotten it,” but instinctively feeling

how banal the answer would seem to her satiated ears, I refrained.

She looked at me, unconvinced.

“You are quite certain?”

“Yes, quite.”

“As children, perhaps?”

“No.”

My manner seemed to amuse her. She studied my face a moment, and then

said:

“You are from the South; from Virginia, perhaps?”

“Not even that. A Yankee from Connecticut.”

“Strange! I shouldn’t have thought it.”

After a moment, as if her interest in me had ceased, she asked:

“You like to dance, of course?”

I bowed my assent.

“There is a little girl from the Opéra over there who dances

beautifully. Ask her to dance.” Then, as I rose, perplexed, not quite

certain whether to be angry or not,--“and later, come back and talk to

me.”

The conversation had been in French and, though I was certain she

was not of that nationality, I was unable to place her. I know that

my first movement was one of mistrust, for my answers had been

unnecessarily brusque. For no reason whatsoever I was conscious of

an instinctive antagonism and yet I obeyed her suggestion and began

a tango. From time to time I glanced in the direction of Madame de

Tinquerville but, though I was certain she was observing me, each time

I sought her glance I found her in languid conversation with the group

of young men who surrounded her.

The dance ended. With a growing antagonism, I asked myself why I had

so docilely followed her request. With a resentment that was like a

child’s, I avoided her and did not speak to her again that night. This

was the instinctive revulsion of our first meeting.

* * * * *

Yet from the crowd I watched her. Very small, she seemed slighter for

the prevailing note of black. The only note of color was the natural

brilliance of her lips,--extraordinary lips, full and, the lower one,

sensuously so, lips that had just been plunged into strawberries;

eyebrows like the flight of ravens’ wings; a nose that might have

been Cleopatra’s, thin-bridged and slightly irregular; eyes black as

Africa, not nervously alert like the glance of the city woman, which is

crowded with shifting details, but with the fixed contemplation of one

accustomed to gaze steadily towards far horizons and clear spaces.

Her manner? At first contact utterly impersonal, interested only in

herself, in her pretty poses, her transparent fingers and her dainty

feet. I remember thinking that one might live with such a woman a

lifetime and never know her inmost thoughts,--if thoughts there were

behind the mask. She had two characteristic smiles which I learned to

know; one for the public,--the smile that she wore like a necklace.

Occasionally, when something stirred a slumbering spark in her, a

smile all excitement and vibration suffused her face like the flash of

footlights: it was then that mischief was brewing. My first impression

was of distrust: of a woman all instinct, tyrannous, jealous, adroit,

feline, languid, brooding, voluptuous, hidden and, above all, without

sense of pain, either for herself or for others.

* * * * *

I retained only a troubling memory of this pungent, irritating

impression when, a few days later, I received a formal note inviting me

to call. I was flattered. I went.

She was alone. She made no reference to my avoiding her, led me to talk

with intelligence, turned any approach to intimacy, and was so natural

and gracious that I asked myself in astonishment why I should have felt

such a sudden antagonism. In a short time, without my being able to

distinguish the gradual progression, I was enveloped in the insidious

charm of her personality as completely as though she had bound me hand

and foot. For six months I forgot everything else in the world and

followed where she led, allowing her slender fingers to turn my destiny

according to their malicious fancy.

How did she do it? As skilfully as one plays a trout.

Indifference--with a sudden touch of simulated interest, immediately

withdrawn as soon as offered--a little opening of the doors to intimacy

and, once I had learned to expect it, an abrupt refusal; the power to

read me and to rouse my appetites and my vanities: in a word, the

ability to create the illusion of being pursued and of waking in me the

instinct of the pursuer.

* * * * *

I learned of her life only by hearsay, never from her own lips.

Paris is full of just such women; the drift of strange currents, out

of mysterious beginnings. Her father was an Irish adventurer, John

Finucane, who by devious and clouded ways had amassed some fortune

in Egypt and the Orient. Her mother, according to one story, was the

daughter of an Arab sheik; according to another, a gypsy; others

ascribed to her the rôle of a woman of the circus, a wandering

mountebank. I saw her once and, allowing for all exaggerations, she was

undoubtedly of some Eastern strain,--an inheritance apparent in Letty.

Madame de Tinquerville had married early an old roué of that well-known

family, impoverished and exiled to a minor diplomatic position, and

who, shortly after bringing his bride and her fortune back to Paris,

left her a widow.

She was, I am certain, thoroughly conscient in everything she did. The

corruption she exerted over me was both mental and moral. I had come

back to Paris filled with enthusiasm and ambition. My self-discipline

disappeared. I threw myself into a life of pleasure and dissipation. My

days were disorganized and I obeyed only the craving for excitement,

movement, and rapidly succeeding sensations. My old philosophy, simple

and proud, yielded to the worldly wisdom of the facile luxury which

surrounded me. I saw how easy it was to achieve by social trafficking

what men spent lifetimes laboriously to acquire.

* * * * *

Not that I yielded without a struggle. At times, scenes of extreme

violence broke out between us; scenes I realize now it was her

delight to provoke. Though of strong and violent passions, I had

always held myself in firm control. What had been an orderly, measured

mode of life, contemplative, tolerant, and good-humored, now became a

tumultuous succession of days and nights, when every nerve was raw to

the exposure. I found myself irritable, suspicious, passing from sudden

depressions to feverish flights of gayety; quick at offence and wincing

under the new tortures which she invented each day for the perverse

delight of proving to herself how completely she held me in subjection.

Why I did not strangle her in some blind moment of rage, I do not know.

This I will say: she did not lack courage. It never failed her in the

dangerous excesses of jealousy she provoked in me, for, even as my

fingers itched to close over her delicate throat, at a sudden smile,

at a look in the shadowy eyes, at a caress from her fingers, the heat

would vanish from my brain and I would be pliant in her hands. Perhaps

it was this constant revolt--the rough, untamed animal in me--that

interested her. Did she care for me, or not? At this moment, despite

the tragic sequence of events, I am not certain but that at bottom,

despite all her malignant appetites, her joy in destruction, her

catlike love of cruelty, for some unknown reason, she genuinely loved

me,--so far as she could comprehend love. Sometimes I believe that the

secret of her attachment to me was in my resemblance to some one whom

she had known and loved--as a young girl loves--before the flood of

corruption had contaminated her. It may be that I recalled this other

by some trick of look or manner. I do not know. I know very little of

her past life.

VII

As I try to reconstruct this episode, much of it remains blurred,--a

confused repetition of fatiguing emotions; scenes of jealousy no

sooner ended than begun again: revulsions in me away from her, weak

returns: the obsession of her presence; her caprices and her demands

disorganizing all the routine of a once methodical existence. Only a

few scenes come back to me vividly. Of her life I know as little as of

the motives which ran in her agile mind. I am beginning to see her now

with a colder point of view; then I did not understand her at all. We

never discussed her life or mine,--that is, what had happened before

our meeting.

I do not know her age exactly (perhaps twenty-five, perhaps thirty)

yet she seemed always of another generation, and old in the wisdom of

experience. I had often the curious feeling of not looking at her but

at the mirror of a woman, and of never being able to progress beyond

the pale reflection.

As I try to analyze her now, her salient quality was an utter inability

to feel pain. Nor do I believe she could understand it in others, even

when for her own enjoyment she was its cause. She was, of course, one

of those women of over-refined temperament who simulate sensations

they no longer can feel, seeking mentally what is no longer a natural

impulse. Her curiosity in inflicting pain was of this nature.

* * * * *

Occasionally, however, she was capable of an amazing frankness, whether

by cunning or from the inconsistency of her woman’s nature. Once, when

I sought to penetrate beyond her reserve--the occasion was after an

accidental meeting with her mother as we were driving in the Bois--she

said something to me in such prophetic artlessness that to this day I

wonder if for one moment this was not the true Letty.

Our carriages had met and passed and for an instant I had felt her

suddenly rigid at my side. I looked over and saw something out of

Letty’s past,--a thin, crooked old lady, very black, bejeweled and

grotesquely dressed, who was agitating a pink parasol as though it were

a bell-rope, to attract our attention. The next second, and we had

passed.

“Your mother?”

“Yes.”

She had been too startled to deny it.

“Letty,” I said eagerly, for the tone of her voice threw an air of

romantic mystery about her figure to me, “don’t you want to,--can’t you

tell me something of your life?”

She shook her head.

“To you, if to any one. Don’t ask me. It is too painful!”

She added, and at such moments I felt twenty years rushing in between

us:

“Life is only a succession of doors to be closed and never reopened. I

never do.”

Something made me reply:

“Not very flattering to me.”

She looked at me, and answered:

“Oh, you! How you will hate me, some day!”

It was by such unexpected remarks, by the very seeming frankness of

an abrupt confession, that she knew how to rouse my curiosity and to

surround herself with a glamor of mystery. I believed in her sorrows

until the day came when I was shocked out of my fatuity and saw the

feline delight in playing with a wounded animal which alone was

insatiable in her character.

I have often wondered over that speech and why she had made it. A

sense of the dramatic, a moment’s indulgence in absolute truth, a sure

sense of the effect on my tempestuous imagination, to be warned of

danger? Perhaps, all three.

“_Life is only a succession of doors to be closed and never reopened._”

It is strange how a phrase remains when a memory has been conquered.

This phrase, which summed up all her defiant, selfish, worldly wisdom,

has come back to me again and again and, though I am freed of the

tyranny of her malicious personality, the poison of her philosophy

still lurks in my memory.

* * * * *

There are moments when we look back in cold memory and cannot

comprehend the whence and the wherefore of the hot fever that once

dominated every sense and drove us through the hallucination of a

passion. So with me, to-day.

When I think of Jenny Barnett, I seem to remember a confidence told

me by a friend of college days: when I recall Letty, I seem to recall

a chapter in some unhealthy romance. It is impossible that I and that

David Littledale are one and the same person!

* * * * *

The heart of a man is like running water,--the years in their course

purify the moral contagion. I do not know that this is true of all men.

Perhaps those who remain in the stagnant pools of little existence

never free themselves of the scum of the past; yet it is true of those

who venture out into the traveling current. In a large sense, it is

true of the generations, that move as great rivers move,--and in this

running purification is the hope of all society.

* * * * *

Why, at this period of my life, should I have fallen so completely

under the spell of such a woman as Madame de Tinquerville? It was not

genuine love that caused it, for as I conceive love it is the calm of a

great certainty,--and with Letty it was never anything but a ceaseless

conflict. If not Letty, would it have been some one else? Was it an

experience which I was to undergo,--an impulse that came from within

me, rather than from outside? Perhaps I understand better to-day the

springs of my impulses.

There are in most men two strong and opposite impulses towards

women which, at first sight, appear contradictory but are easily

reconcilable, as they spring from the two linked needs of their natures

and are the key to the many seeming inconsistencies, infidelities,

abrupt passions and incomprehensible tyrannies into which their

sentimental cravings lead them. A man seeks in woman saint and sinner,

calm and tempest, salvation and demoralization.

As architects of life our instincts are towards order and discipline,

yet we are eternally seeking the thing that will upset our

self-control. We are irresistibly attracted by what threatens our

equanimity, enslaves our senses, imprisons our will,--for that brief,

fleeting ecstasy which we feel at its fullness only when we are aware

that we have cast aside the reins of our government. But, as the

abiding instinct of our nature is order, there remains always the

ideal of woman, which represents the revulsion to sanity, calm and

serenity,--back to which we grope with reverence and to which we fasten

with the instinct of self-preservation. I know this is true, though

to-day this woman, the woman who is serenity and order, has not come

into my life.

So intimately entwined are these two natures, these twin struggling

impulses, that they often remain confused and inseparable. This is the

explanation of the two tragedies of society, each proceeding from the

same complex source: the phenomenon of a man’s marrying his mistress

and that darker mystery which remains behind the curtain of marriage,

the debasing of an ideal once raised in reverence.

* * * * *

The ease with which I yielded to her dominance, the disorganization

into which I plunged, and the violent revulsion which came in the end

are explainable, I believe, by this conflict in our nature. But then

I did not reason thus, I did not reason at all, and therein lay the

danger,--a danger that I shudder now to contemplate.

What was the essence of this corruption which she exercised over

me,--that was more moral and mental than physical? It was in the

stifling of all the youth and ambition of my nature by the baleful

weight of her age-old weariness of intellect. She took a keen delight

in seeking out my illusions, one by one; of slowly destroying them

before my eyes under her malicious wit. She taught me that all striving

was futile, that youth was a season of riotous enjoyment for the wise,

and that only fools sacrificed it in a groaning pursuit of an ambition

which could never be attained.

“Why strain for the thing that is here, at your finger tips?

This is the fullness of life; seize it. What would you seek?--a

career?--fame? My dear little Davy, you are not a genius. Your talents

are not even considerable. The chances are that after ten years of

drudgery you would only have condemned yourself to the bitterness of

disillusionment! What do men seek in fame? Just the vanity that a

pretty woman has to be noticed as she enters a restaurant. Believe me,

the quality of youth, which you hold so lightly, is worth all your

drowsy, rheumatic celebrities! You have senses given you to enjoy life

with,--enjoy it!”

“And, the end--”

“Who knows what may be the end? Rather remorse than regrets!”

All her philosophy was summed up in this sentence. Yet she was

exceedingly punctilious in her religious observances and, although

she had a sort of dare-devil courage, she hated so the intrusion of

realities that she would turn down a side street rather than meet a

funeral.

* * * * *

The struggle to free myself was a hideous one. Again and again I

determined to fling off the unhealthy bondage that weighed on my

freedom of thought, and as often, from weakness, from fear of giving

pain, with rage and hatred in my soul, I temporized. The fear of giving

pain! How it holds a man at the last to his own destruction! For I was

still innocent enough of what such a world can hold of depravity to

believe that, such as she was, she loved me with all the good and bad

of her nature.

Once, after a week of mutual recriminations, driven beyond my strength

by her simulated scenes of jealousy, I went to her, determined to

provoke a final rupture. I can still remember the rage in my heart as I

came into her salon that night of the final rupture that calls out the

primitive criminal which abides in all of us. For criminal instinct is

essentially the instinct of the survival of the fittest, and in that

moment when, rightly or wrongly, we reach the frenzy where we must tear

from us the arms that hold us back,--we destroy as criminals destroy. I

cannot think of what might have happened that night, without a shudder.

I came resolved to wound her on the raw, to force her out of her calm,

and in the clash of our hatreds to find my escape. Yet, despite taunts

and insults, she remained superbly self-possessed,--complete mistress

of the situation. When from very exhaustion I stopped, she looked up

at me, with her smile of Mona Lisa, her eyes sparkling with triumph,

and said carelessly:

“So you love me as much as that!”

“Love you?” I cried, choking with inarticulate rage. I tried to

continue but I could not. I felt that if I remained another minute in

her presence I did not know what I might do. “The end--thank God! The

end!”

I flung up my arms, with a horrible laugh, and bolted for the door. But

as I went I heard her clap her hands, as a delighted child might have

done, and her voice came to me:

“David--you will come back.”

* * * * *

And back I returned, to delude myself, once more, with her sudden

melting repentance, to listen to her self-accusation, to believe that

all she had done wickedly and consciously had been only the instinct of

a jealous woman to know how completely she was loved. Not a delectable

page in my life. I set it down as it happened, without extenuation.

Yet, two days later, I was free of her, forever! She lied to me and I

caught her in the lie.

* * * * *

We were to have dined together and to have gone to the theater, but she

had written me the day before that she would be forced to leave town.

This had often happened and this postponement did not in the least

excite my suspicion. A young Frenchman, the Comte Maurice Plessis de

Saint Omer, one of my intimate friends, happened to drop in on me, and

agreeing to dine together, we set out for Foyot’s, near the Luxemburg,

bent on an epicurean dinner and a quiet evening.

Maurice de Saint Omer, in the pleasure-seeking crowd in which we moved,

had the reputation of being a great dandy and my natural attraction

towards him was considerably enhanced by the compliment to my vanity.

He came of one of the great families of France which named its

ancestors before the Crusades (his father was the Duc de Saint Omer

and the château is the famous one near the Lorraine border). While he

lived the life of a thorough man of the world, as it was understood

in the Paris before the war, he brought to all relations of life

dignity and distinction. He was neither rake nor profligate. Straight,

tawny-haired, nose high-bridged and sensitively chiseled, blue-eyed and

soft of voice, almost too elegant for our American ideal, his courage

and tact had made him one of the arbiters on the field of honor. Why he

should have taken to me, I do not know, but he did, and he occasionally

favored me with his confidences. My own entanglement with Madame de

Tinquerville was known to him. In fact, for months all his influence

had been exerted to show me the quicksands into which I was sinking. We

were talking of her as we neared the restaurant.

“And La Belle Tinquerville?”

“I was to have dined with her to-night but she was called to St.

Germain.”

“No use warning you, my dear fellow, I suppose?”

“Evidently not,” I answered moodily. “I must work out my fate alone.”

“At least--open your eyes.”

“In what way?”

“Neither she nor you is the slightest in love.”

“What do you call it, then, when one moment you are ready to do murder,

and the next you are as weak as a child, ready to believe anything,

undergo anything, afraid of everything?”

“My dear friend, I went through that, at the age of sixteen, with a

little girl in a _laiterie_ who could not write five words correctly

and who ran off with a lawyer’s clerk. The trouble is you are still

sixteen. You know, I do not discuss women lightly; my principles are

fixed on that point. But you have come to me as a friend and as a

friend I am once more going to warn you.”

“Go on,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“My dear David,--you have no place in this society of ours,” he said,

taking my arm. “You have a heart, and you have no knowledge of the

conventions of the game. We do not love in this crowd; we play at

love; just as we do not discuss; we play at discussing. We meet, to

fence lightly and gracefully, with tremendous lunges,--which are

always parried. We do not seek a woman because we want her but because

twenty other men want her and--we wish to carry off the prize. You are

seeking romance, and--it has never crossed our thresholds. This society

is old: it refines only on its emotions. It is egotistical, selfish,

superficial, and self-indulgent. There isn’t a man or woman in it who

doesn’t love himself or herself better than anything else in the world.

Madame de Tinquerville may be better, or worse, than the rest of her

set. I do not know. If you were an American nabob, perhaps she might

make up her mind to marry you. Luckily, you are not. There is something

primitive enough in you to resist and rebel. There is still something

young in you,--a piece of a real heart left. When she has completely

broken you, dominated you and corrupted you, you will cease to interest

her. Bid her good-by before she closes the door in your face.”

“Every word you say is the truth,” I said impulsively, “but,--then--”

“I know,--I know,” he said, laughing, and then, turning to a more

serious tone, he added, “Do not think me cynical. I am not. There exist

in this world women that are worthy to be loved, in reverence. One day

I shall meet a young girl whom I can respect and adore as I do the

ideal of womanhood that is in my mother and sister, but when I take a

wife I shall never bring her to this poisoned atmosphere. David, if you

were a man of the world, if you could keep to the surface of things, I

should shrug my shoulder, but you can not.” He gripped my arm tightly.

“You are not even a man. Confess that it is only your vanity that holds

you, that at bottom you hate this entanglement that humiliates you and

corrupts you.”

“It is a nightmare,” I said gloomily.

“Well, then?”

“In her way,” I said, “she loves me.”

He stopped and looked at me in amazement at my innocence. I did not

understand his look then. I do, now. He started to speak. I can imagine

what was on the tip of his tongue but, beyond a certain point his

notion of chivalry would not permit him to go.

“In that case, my dear David, I have nothing more to say. Your

appetite, at least, is not affected?”

“Not in the least.”

“Then a very good solution to all problems is a certain _Canard au

vin blanc_ and gooseberries, that Carlo will cook for us with his own

hands!”

We had ascended the old Rue de Tournon, the Senate rising ahead of us.

We entered the restaurant, and the first person I saw was Madame de

Tinquerville, dining _en tête-à-tête_ with a man unknown to me.

She looked up, saw me, and glanced down again, quickly. We passed into

the inner room and took a table. Something exploded in my brain.

“You saw?” said De Saint Omer.

“Yes.”

“You are convinced?”

“Quite. The man?”

“Pedro Fornesco,--an Argentine millionaire.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Three months.”

I began to laugh. De Saint Omer slipped his hand over my wrist.

“David--it is Providence.”

“Thank God,” I said loudly, but, despite myself, I felt a cold in the

small of my back and a dryness in my throat.

“Will you follow my advice?” he said, studying me anxiously.

“Wait.” I put my head in my hands and drew great breaths, while I

fought for calm and decision.

“Now.”

“You are sure of your control?”

“Absolutely.”

“No scenes?”

“I give you my word.”

“That must be understood,” he said firmly. “No public scandal--no

dramatics, my friend, or as sure as you are sitting here you will have

to answer to me. Is that understood?”

“I assure you I never was more master of myself,” I said, smiling, and,

indeed, a cold indifference had come to me. I felt a tempest raging in

my brain and somewhere in that tempest a voice crying, “Now or never!”

“Very well, I believe you. Carlo!” The head waiter came hastily to us.

“Carlo. A table opposite M. Fornesco,--the one that is engaged.”

“M. le Comte--”

“Carlo--this is an exception. I _must_ have it.”

His eye met the head waiter’s, who hesitated and bowed. We rose and,

sauntering into the main dining room, seated ourselves two tables away

from Madame de Tinquerville, in an angle that was partitioned off from

the rest of the room. When, with an appearance of casualness, I turned

to watch her, I saw in her eyes a look of abject terror. Every such

woman believes more or less in the dramatics of Camille and, from that

moment to the end, I know Letty awaited the public scene that would

strip her sacred reputation and leave her the butt of Paris gossip.

As for myself, I was at that moment capable of the greatest cruelty

without the turning of a hair: I found resources of self-control in me

that astounded me. I laughed, discussed affairs of the day whimsically,

and swapped anecdotes, as though out on a collegian’s holiday. Madame

de Tinquerville watched me from the corner of her eye, never losing me

from her gaze, listening, waiting--

Towards the end of the dinner, De Saint Omer said to me:

“You know the anecdote on Gommecourt,--no? Quite amusing. I’ll tell it

to you. Besides,--there is a moral.”

“A moral?” I said, feeling that the comedy was about to begin.

“Gommecourt was a young parvenu of the time of the Regence who had

become involved in an affair with a celebrated actress of those days.

He was avaricious, vain, prudent, and not without a certain wit, as you

shall see.”

The conversation at Madame de Tinquerville’s table had stopped. De

Saint Omer’s voice could be heard distinctly, and I knew that Letty was

listening breathlessly.

“When it was time for Gommecourt to marry, he was much embarrassed how

to break away from his charming but expensive friend. He took up a pen

and wrote a long and very tender letter, recalling his past happiness,

his regret at the decision of his family,--a very, very moving,

affectionate, temperamental and tragic letter, and at the end he wrote,

‘I shall never forget, and I send you an order for one hundred thousand

francs.’”

“Very handsome,” I said mechanically, not yet seeing daylight.

“A little too handsome--as Gommecourt decided, after a very brief

struggle. He wrote a second letter, a very tender letter, too, but a

little modified in its transports of passion, and ended by announcing a

gift of fifty thousand francs.”

“Very prudent.”

“Wasn’t it? You see, Gommecourt was of good, thrifty stock. The more

he considered it, the more absurd it seemed to him to give way to his

impulses. And then, suppose she had not been faithful? He wrote a third

letter, quite formal this time, and cut the sum to twenty thousand

francs.”

By this time the conversation at the other two tables had ceased,

and every one was listening, quite frankly amused at De Saint Omer’s

vivacious account.

“So, Gommecourt, quite delighted with his two transactions by which

he had saved himself eighty thousand francs, arose to send off letter

number three. But, halfway to the bell, suddenly he stopped, struck

his forehead and exclaimed, ‘But, after all, it’s simpler than that!’

And, returning to the table, he wrote a final letter, thus,--‘I have

discovered all. Adieu.’”

“Bravo!” I cried loudly, above the ripple of laughter which greeted the

ending. “And he was right.”

“You like the anecdote?”

“Excellent.” I glanced at Madame de Tinquerville and saw her rigidly

examining her plate. “But it doesn’t fit all cases,--since we are now

talking of ruptures.”

“Oh, a friend of mine had an even better expedient!”

“I should like to know it,” I remarked, pretending to laugh. “One never

knows--”

“He simply took his card and marked on it ‘P.P.C.’ and left it at her

home. That, and nothing more.”

“Thanks for the idea.”

I drew out my portfolio instantly and selected a card. The couple next

to us, deceived by my gayety, began to laugh.

“A pencil?”

“Be careful!” said De Saint Omer, under his breath.

“Don’t worry.”

I took the pencil he offered me, after a little hesitation, and

inscribed the three letters.

“Carlo! An envelope--and call a taxi.”

“David! No scene.”

“Don’t worry, I tell you.”

I addressed the envelope, slipping the card into it and, the reckoning

being paid, rose and stood deliberately facing Madame de Tinquerville.

For that one awful moment, which I prolonged, I paid her back in terror

the thousand humiliations of those hideous months.

Then we lifted our hats with exaggerated ceremony and went out.

We left the letter at her _concierge’s_ and went directly to my

apartment.

“You have letters--keepsakes--of hers?” asked De Saint Omer.

I nodded.

“Make a package of them and leave them with the _concierge_, to be

given to her when she calls--”

“When she calls?”

“Idiot, she will come at once! And now, throw some things in a bag, and

come away with me for a couple of weeks’ fishing.”

* * * * *

As I look back at it now I am filled only with a feeling of nausea.

All I can say in extenuation of this period, when the thinking man had

ceased and was near to the brute, is that for weeks I had not been

master of myself, that I moved in a delirium of passionate anger,

weak jealousy, with every nerve unstrung and every impulse riotous,

incapable of either controlling or judging my action.

* * * * *

It is not a chapter that I like to contemplate but, as it was I write

it down. For the mystery of evil is that out of it there often comes a

revulsion to sanity. I am not sure but in the end it was beneficial.

The shock of experience made me see myself as I was, and after the

disorganization the primeval spirit of order awoke in me, and now that

I am seeking to build up again it is as my own mason, consciously and

responsible.

The trouble with the New England tradition is its lack of flexibility.

Nothing gives, but it breaks. Yield the slightest, and everything

crumbles. We lack a sure sense of values and are therefore at the

mercy of little things as well as great. We conceive of man’s struggle

against the forces of demoralization as the defence of a fortress: one

breach made, and capitulation follows. More mature reflection, tempered

with a knowledge of good and evil, has led me, I think, to a broader

philosophy. We are not intrenched in our beliefs but are mobile forces,

constantly maneuvering, constantly at war--turned back here, advancing

there--with only the ultimate objective important.

* * * * *

We had been gone but four days when the war broke out and we separated,

he to join his regiment, and I to enlist in the Foreign Legion. His

last words to me were, “David, my dear friend, if through weakness you

return now, you are worse than the most despicable of men,--you will be

utterly lost. After this, Madame de Tinquerville will hate you or love

you beyond anything else in life,--and either will be fatal.”

I did not see her again. I threw myself into the war as a salvation,

seeking an escape from a life that filled me with horror, hating and

despising myself, asking only to forget. She wrote me many letters,

frantic, repentant, imploring an answer, and then a final one--the rage

of a woman scorned--full of veiled threats. I did not answer them.

I heard indirectly that she had entered the Red Cross, devoting herself

with a courage and determination that had surprised every one. When

the memory had receded and my normal self had returned, I was willing

to believe that the mobilization which had come to France as a moral

re-birth had perhaps reached the Magdalene in her,--as in how many

others! Yet, I wondered how much the dramatic impulse was responsible.

But the scales had fallen from my eyes. It was not against the woman

but myself against which I revolted with every force in me. The strange

thing is that, once the rupture was complete, she passed completely out

of my existence, and in a fortnight I was looking back upon that period

with incredulity. Events were too colossal to remember private sorrows.

I felt myself, at last, one of a great army of action, redeemed to

meaning and purpose.

* * * * *

Those who did not see the mobilization can never have a conception of

all that war can bring of sublimity and purification,--as those who

never knew the first winter in the trenches cannot imagine the long

horror of that soul-crushing defence. If the war had only ended in the

first year! But, it didn’t. Incredulity succeeded the first flaming

rise of faith. Neither the end nor the issue can now be foreseen. Those

who had faith remain in that faith; others, to whom faith had come as a

revealing experience, have lapsed into the old easy habits. Life has

readjusted itself along the lines of war, and society has returned to

its old divisions! So it must have been with Madame de Tinquerville. By

the end of the year the impulse had burned out. The daily thing ceased

to be dramatic. Her old nature asserted itself. She drifted away to

England, and then to America, gradually and easily back into the life

of self-indulgence and pleasure she craved.

I had not heard of her for over a year and a half when, dragged out of

the inferno at Verdun, transported from a field hospital, more dead

than alive, to the Hospital du Val du Grace at Paris, I came out of a

battle for life to have a letter from my brother placed in my hands,

announcing his marriage to Letty, Madame de Tinquerville.

I went off into a delirium and for weeks fought against a return to

life. But the obstinate nature in me triumphed over my will, and

I found myself at last convalescent, facing the issue of some day

confronting the brother I loved with the knowledge of the secret which

must always be between us.

* * * * *

The thing that frightens me, that leaves me cold when I think of it,

is this: Can she still have power over my senses? I say I am certain

that I never loved her, that this yoked hostility, this mutual tyranny

could not be love, and yet--Something there was that was insidious and

instinctive, something that blinded me and stopped my ears to warnings,

and sent me to her with the obsession of pursuit and conquest. I have

seen infatuation in other men and understood it, yet in myself it still

is incredible. If it had to be, I only hope it is a fever that has

burned itself out and left me immune for the future.--Yet now, as I

stop to analyze myself and my motives, as I look back at that scene in

the Café Foyot (I think I suffered as much as she did), and remember

the first wild leap of animal rage when I saw her with Fornesco at her

side, I wonder--

If I were only sure that I could write--Milestone Number 3.

VIII

_November_

To-day I saw my brother, Alan, after six years. Through a chance

meeting, I found him living in the Luxemburg quarter. A girl answered

my knock. We stood confronting each other, mutually surprised. I

remembered her among the restless habitués of the Abbé de Thelême

and the Café de Paris, in the old days. The paint and artifice were

gone. She stood there, dark-eyed, frail, olive-tinted, considering me

suspiciously, her woman’s instinct warned of possible danger to the

thing she sheltered from the world.

“_Tiens_; it’s you, Toinon!”

She started forward and looked at me intently, but in her multitudinous

conception of man, my face was but a blur in the panorama.

“It’s me you want to see--what’s your business?”

“Does Mr. Alan Littledale live here?”

“And if he does?”

“I am his brother.”

Instantly her manner changed.

“Ah, you’ve come to take him away, then?”

Before I could answer, a voice from within cried querulously: “_Qui est

là?_”

The next moment a big frame, topped by a shaggy head, came into the

anteroom.

“Hello, Alan!” I said, extending my hand.

He drew back, scowling and undecided.

“What the devil brings you here?”

“My dear fellow,” I said, smiling. “You do happen to be my own flesh

and blood and, no matter how we’ve fought in the past, we’re both

Littledales, to the end.”

Now, Alan had scoffed and stormed against all our traditions but,

despite all, there still remained a lingering pride in the name. He

relented a little bit,--though with ill grace.

“If you’re coming in to lecture me--”

“Don’t be an ass, Alan,” I broke in good-naturedly. “I’m no more saint

than you are. Well, am I to come in or not?”

“You can come in.”

I had expected a shoddy, disordered interior. The little apartment

was immaculate; flower-boxes, red and white geraniums at the balcony

which gave on a garden; neatness, order, charm. I sat, asking no

questions,--puzzled. Was it from love of the man, or from the denied

natural instinct towards home-building? Toinon served the dinner, which

she had cooked herself; hesitated and then, at a sign from Alan, sat

down with us. When Alan left the room she turned to me and said, in a

warning voice: “He is very ill.”

Down the hall I heard him coughing.

“How ill?”

She shook her head.

“Does he realize--?”

“No, no.”

Dinner over, she cleared the table deftly and converted the room into a

salon, brought the tisane to her invalid, lit our cigars and, drawing

up her chair before the fire, began to crochet. But, all at once,

looking up, she said:

“If you’d rather be alone?”

“Stay, of course.”

I, studying the end of my cigar, waited, feeling his defiant glance on

me.

“Shocked?”

“Why?”

“You always were sanctimonious when it was a question of doing things

openly.”

“I haven’t come here to quarrel,” I said, smiling. His characterization

at the moment struck me as grotesque. So far, we had barely skimmed the

surface of things, and I felt the underlying hostility of his attitude.

Resolving to take the bull by the horns, I said:

“Alan, before we bury the past, as I hope we’ll do, I want to tell you

that I blame myself. I was unjust; we were all unjust to you. I regret

it with all my heart.”

He stared at me, as a man grudging to relinquish his advantage.

“What good will that do--now?”

“You are right. It can do no good--now. But we can’t talk as man to

man until we’ve had it out. So now you know how I feel. As for the

rest--I’ve done a lot of things, been a bigger fool than you’ve ever

been, so, your adjective doesn’t apply.”

He looked at me quizzically.

“You’ve changed; changed a lot! You talk like a two-fisted man. How

long have you been away from that precious family of ours?”

“About five years.” I drew a letter from my pocket. “It was through

Molly I heard of you.”

His face softened. “The one human being in the family.”

“And Rossie, Alan.”

“Yes, yes,--Rossie,” he said hastily. “Had he lived--but he didn’t.

Great God! What a family! As much human affection as you can squeeze

out of the hind foot of a horsefly! You--you were one of them, but

I--God knows why--I was different. I was stifling in that atmosphere

of smug egotism.” His voice rose as his face set in anger. The girl

looked up from her knitting and then at me, anxiously, but I knew that

it was better for him to give play to the pent-up grievances of years.

“I was stifling. I tell you--starved! A home? A mockery! A gallery of

granite statues. I can’t remember one single time having known what it

was to have a father or mother. I never knew a word of sympathy, a look

of love. You made me believe I was a lost soul--a gallows bird--you

made me believe it myself! Why? Because I had warm blood in my veins,

because I was human, had imagination, ambition, wild animal force. I,

who was worth the whole lot of you, you crushed out with your cold,

damned superiority, your conventionality and your pride in yourselves.

And now, you come here and acknowledge you were wrong! Sublime!”

“We were wrong.”

“Wrong? Can you give me back these ten years? Can you make me what I

should have been? Great heavens, this decent little devil here has got

more of a woman’s heart to her when she brings me my medicine than the

whole blooming lot of you ever dreamed of!”

Toinon, who only half understood, looked up.

“What are you saying about me, _mon ami_?”

“Only good things, and only half of what you deserve,” he said, laying

his hand on her shoulder. He sat down, exhausted, and leaning over,

buried his head in his hands.

“Now, you know what I think, what I shall always think. At that, though

I hate it all--your narrowness and priggishness and holier-than-thou

attitude--you’ve left your confounded Littledale pride in me. I _am_

one of you, under my skin, or else I’d marry the only human being--”

He stopped, looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t worry. I

won’t. Give me Molly’s letter.”

When he came to a part that told of my father’s ill health, he frowned

and looked up. “That’s why you’ve come round, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“To take me back with you--grand reconciliation--prodigal son--and all

that sort of stuff?”

“I had no such thought,” I answered warmly. “As a matter of fact, I am

not going myself.”

“You’re not?” He looked at me, too sharply for comfort. “Why not?

Easiest thing in the world for you to get leave in your condition.”

“I want to get back to the Legion,” I said, looking away.

He saw there was more than I wished to say and probably he ascribed it

to a different reason for, the letter read, his manner changed, and he

said:

“Looks bad for the Governor. Well, I’ve nothing against him. A good

sort, in his way, and as he saw; a civilization that passes away with

the rising flood. Good sort--but utterly without significance. No--I

won’t go back. What a farce--to play the prodigal son! Why, Davy, I’ve

_lived_! You haven’t, none of you has. I’ve lived--I’ve seen--I’ve

been down in the depths and seen! And you’ve gone on playing at being

eighteenth century Littledales, and never realizing that you don’t

count! You don’t even realize what America--the new America--is!”

“I think I suspect it,” I said, surprised at the turn of the

conversation. I had come, I think, rather patronizingly, and I found

myself yielding to a mental supremacy.

“Your kind still believes in government by individuals; you can’t

even see what’s coming. It’s mass that counts, to-day. I don’t

say ‘majorities’: the world has always been governed by organized

minorities, and it always will be. You don’t know your generation; I

do; I’ve been one of them. I know what’s coming!”

“You don’t think much of our generation, I gather,” said I, startled at

the way his thought had run with mine.

“Of the generation of our kind? Precious little!”

“Well, Alan--that’s about my way of thinking.”

“Honest?”

“Why not?” I said, amused.

“What’s happened to you?” he said, pulling at his chin. “Aren’t you

satisfied with being a Littledale, with a Harvard accent, and a number

of good clubs, and parading up and down this private preserve God

made for you? You haven’t lost faith in your Divine right of being a

Littledale? Good God--he has!”

We broke out laughing and, leaning over, struck hands with a resounding

clap.

“Davy, damned if I expected this!”

“Well, Alan, you’ve been knocking round one way. I’ve knocked round

another: between us we must have gone up and down the scale,” I said,

settling back. “Well, what have you gotten out of it, and what do you

think of this funny old world of ours?”

He looked at me a long moment, still a little suspicious of me.

“I enjoy it,” he said, to my surprise.

“Really? As for me, I’ve had about everything I started with knocked

into a cocked hat.”

“Then there’s hope--so long as you cling to some sort of code.”

“Wonder if I do.”

“Aren’t there some things that you wouldn’t do, no matter what

happened? You wouldn’t forge--or cheat--”

“Well, hardly.”

“Well, David, that’s moral. Suppose my ideas shock you. They do most

persons. You asked just now what I’ve picked up these ten years. That’s

about the most important,--judging men by their codes. A man who’s got

a code of morals is moral, whether he’s a libertine, a horse thief

or--a minister. We start with about a hundred and fifty inhibitions

that are poured into our ears; we end with about five or six fences

which, no matter what happens, we won’t cross.”

“Don’t get you.”

“Take your man of the world, who considers every woman fair game; go

further down; take one who’ll think nothing of taking a woman to pay

his debts, use one woman to pay what he gives another; yet there are

certain things he won’t do. He won’t cheat at cards. That’s a code.

Take your criminal type. If there is something stops him somewhere--say

that it’s only going to the gallows without ‘peaching’ on a

friend--that’s a code,--his code of morals, and, by that, he’s moral!”

“You’re not serious,” I said, laughing.

“Never more so. Think me crazy--wild--eccentric--anything you want.

I’m looking from the bottom up towards your top-heavy society and

your morality, and I tell you that it’s only the man who won’t stop

at anything, who’ll cheat, lie, steal, seduce a young girl, traffic

in women--a man incapable of a code--that is absolutely, hopelessly

immoral. Look here; you’re still looking at things from a moral point

of view; you can’t help it. I’m just looking on--recognizing things as

they are--interested in the human game. You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“Frankly--yes.”

“You think I’m bitter--a rebel--my head against everything. Perhaps so;

once, very much so. Not now. Fact, I’m rather more of an optimist than

you. If we got down to it, you’d find I had a better opinion of mankind

than you.”

The excitement into which his defence of himself had worked him started

a coughing fit. Toinon came in and looked at me in warning. I rose

immediately, holding out my hand.

“Well, Alan, I don’t have to agree with you, do I, to say that I’m

honestly glad to talk to you?”

“No, no, of course not. I’m a queer dick, probably, but I’ve got

reasons for what I think. Don’t ask questions, if you don’t want my

answers.” He touched the decorations I wore and said, “I’m human

enough, though, to be glad you’re wearing those. Picked up a couple

myself, with the Canadians.”

“We never heard--”

“I was under an assumed name. Tell them at home about it when you

write.”

“Alan, there’s one thing,” I said, voicing a thought that had been

uppermost in my mind, “one thing I have a right to know--”

“Oh, go along with you. Of course, you’d have to say the obvious

thing,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder. “I’m well fixed. Thanks

just the same. And don’t worry about me; I’m picking up amazingly. Come

again. Come again, soon.”

He went off into the back room, that I might not hear his coughing.

“Is he any better?” I asked of Toinon, who had followed me to the door.

She shook her head.

“Gas--at Neuve Chapelle.”

“No hope?”

“He is condemned.”

I stood, moodily incredulous, unable to believe that beneath the vital

activity of the brain the inevitable, relentless contagion was working

in the body. Then I tried to thank her but made a sad botch of it.

“Whatever happens, Toinon,” I said, giving her my address, “remember

that I shan’t forget what you’ve done. I shall see that--” She looked

at me, so suddenly and so straight that I floundered and stopped. “I

meant if ever you were in need--” Still she kept her eyes directly on

mine, disdaining a reply and, under that look I stammered: “Forgive me.

I’m an ass--but it was kindly meant.”

Then, not knowing what to do, I took off my hat and made her an

absurdly exaggerated bow. She shrugged her shoulders and closed the

door. Which was no more than I deserved.

* * * * *

At the hotel I found a card from Stephen Brinsmade, offering me a

rendezvous for the next day. I wonder if he is behind this transfer to

Paris, and what it means?

* * * * *

I have set down as nearly as I can remember the circumstances of my

first meeting with my brother after the lapse of years. I do not

pretend to judge him for I am not in the mood to formulate judgments.

I only know that a great new current of thought flowed into my mind

and that I felt an eagerness to encounter again the opposition of his

strangely antagonistic and dispassionate mind. As for Toinon, I don’t

pretend to sentimentalize her kind. In my experience nothing is further

from the truth than the Marguerite Gauthiers of fiction.

The war, after a brief period of the hysterical emotionalism of

mob psychology, has shaken down society into much the same order

as before. The rear has its pagan side, a revulsion to life, a

frantic determination to eat, drink and be merry under the shadow of

to-morrow’s realism. There is an outward sobriety and a decent respect

for the black democracy of sorrow. Below the surface, revelry is as

_macabre_ as ever, for it must compress the passions of a lifetime into

a span of hours, and laughter is the hunger for unrealities. A few

of Toinon’s class--a very few--have turned Magdalene, some genuinely

impelled to service, most of them swayed by a new dramatic loyalty to

some man who brings them the new sensations of heroic love.

There is nothing sentimental about Toinon. She is a realist who looks

life steadily in the face. Yet she, too, has her code, as Alan would

have said.

IX

I am going back to America. I am going home! It has all come about

so quickly that I hardly know what I feel. If it were not for the

inevitable meeting with Letty--At the very thought everything in me

rebels: rather an exile of ten years than the hideous mockery of that

confrontation! Yet I am no longer a free agent; a superior destiny

is directing all my movements. To what end? For there is no choice;

my father has had a stroke and I have been sent for. In my present

condition there is no excuse that I can offer. America! Home! Despite

even the ominous shadow that awaits me there, I feel everything in me

palpitating at the prospect. I sail from Bordeaux in three days, with

Mr. Brinsmade.

* * * * *

As I had begun to suspect, Mr. Brinsmade has been the quickening finger

in my transfer here. Yet I cannot reproach him, given the end in

view,--though at first, when he announced that he had secured me my

leave, I was inclined in my pride to be a little resentful. Of course,

being the legal representative of the great banking house of Gunther

and Son, purchasing agents in America for the French Government, a hint

from him is all that is necessary. When you reach the inner circle of

government you find always a very practical realism, and Brinsmade is

in all things a realist. Yet, there is another side to him.

I think I admire him genuinely as much as any man I know. He is utterly

free from cant or pretense. He is an idealist with an objective mind.

When I talk with him, I feel that I am building my philosophies on

the safe ground of things as they are. His knowledge of men and their

motives is stupendous. He is privileged to pass in the corridors of

the human opera, and though his knowledge gained of the dark places

might form another to cynicism,--not so Brinsmade. His mental attitude

is like his physical aspect,--genial, tolerant, unhurried, strong, not

through bluster but by the authority of his knowledge and experience.

The war has waked in him the desire for bigger things in America.

He says so frankly, and this new hunger in him, so close to my own

awakening, promises to be a great intellectual stimulus to me on the

trip over. There is no misunderstanding the quality of his affection

for me. I seem suddenly lifted out of a drear monotony of unchanging

days, back to a life of extraordinary vitality and promise.

* * * * *

Saw my old friend, Maurice Plessis de Saint Omer. I should not have

known him. All the dandy is gone, the feminine languor and grace

sloughed off, and from underneath has emerged the grim, unyielding

granite of a race of warriors. He is commandant in a regiment of

dragoons and decorated with every honor. The mortality in his family

has been fearful, but he dismisses it quickly.

“Nothing matters,--except France!”

His optimism is that of absolute faith. I can imagine how his men must

adore him.

* * * * *

Said good-by to Alan,--a stiff, unsatisfactory parting, in which

we acted like puppets, rather than human beings. But that is the

Anglo-Saxon of it. He gave me his decoration, to put in father’s

hand, and immediately began to joke about the family fetiches, our

cave-dweller’s point of view, etc., but I think it was to cover up his

emotion. He hates sentimentality.

“Good-by, then--”

“Good-by.”

We had separated as though it were the most casual parting in the

world. I wonder if I shall see him again.

X

_Bordeaux_

My last night on the soil of France. To-morrow I leave for America,

and for a brief, incredible two months go back into the life that

was once mine, but which to-night is incomprehensible, strange and

unreal. I am writing in a little bedroom of the Hotel de l’Europe,

fitfully awake, and stirred at the thought of the change as I never

had believed possible. I don’t quite know this sudden self that is

come so imperiously into my mood. I am older by a dozen years than

this morning,--and by a mental decision that I feel deep down in my

heart has been made. To-night I believe has brought a crisis in my

life. I am not quite sure of my motives; I do not know that I wish

to examine them too closely. But to-night the old rebellion against

the obvious in life has somehow left me. I am conscious of a new point

of view. Acceptance of life, a middle-age philosophy, a yielding to

safe currents? Yes, all of these and, perhaps, most of all, just an

overpowering homesickness,--the cry in my heart to be back among my own

kind. For all of which I have Mr. Brinsmade to thank and the strangest

of strange confidences.

* * * * *

It began quite naturally and I had not the slightest suspicion of

any serious purpose. We were dining in a papier-maché grotto of the

celebrated Chapon Fin when, in the midst of the meal, he looked over at

me and said abruptly:

“David, ever thought of getting out of the service?”

The question took me by surprise, coming so close to thoughts that had

haunted me for weeks.

“At times, when I get the _cafard_,” I admitted. “Every one does.”

“How long have you been in the Legion?”

“Over two years, now. There isn’t much of the glamor left, sir. It gets

to be a long drag without much light ahead.” A little regretful of my

frankness, I sought to justify myself. “You see, I went into it from

the spirit of adventure; it was a man’s job. I don’t say it wasn’t also

from love of the French. You couldn’t have seen that mobilization and

not have felt a thrill. Then--you do hate a bully. At bottom, though,

it was the adventure,--the biggest thing that had ever happened in the

world. You couldn’t be there and keep out of it.”

“But now--?”

“Now the thrill is gone,” I admitted. “It’s grim plugging, not much

fireworks or new business. When you’ve seen Verdun--”

“Yes?”

“When you’ve gone through that,” I said, frowning at the starting

memories of that inferno, “it takes it out of you.”

“It ages you--” he interrupted, looking at me.

“It’s hideous--horrible. I wake up at night even now and then and feel

myself back in it. You can’t imagine it. I can’t describe it. You go in

because you’re a soldier and a man,--that’s all. You expect to die--you

know you’re going to die; all there is to it is a blind rage for

killing and a prayer to die quickly when it comes.”

My hand was trembling and my eyes must have taken on that strange

far-off glaze which we bring back out of battle, for he stopped me with

a sudden grip on my arm.

“Here! That’s doing you no good. We’ll talk of other things.”

I looked at my hand, which was shaking, and feeling an attack of nerves

impending, I rose hurriedly and left the room.

“It takes you like that,” I said, when I had fought it out and

returned. “I’m sorry. I’m much better now. I don’t get it often.”

He looked at me gravely.

“Good heavens, man! Are you going back in that condition?”

“It won’t take a month to get me in shape.”

“It still attracts you?”

“I hate it.”

“Why, then?”

“Because,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, “because I hate this other

thing more,--this sitting out of it, when real men are doing!”

He hesitated, and then leaned forward.

“David, if you ever make up your mind--if you feel you need a longer

time to pull yourself together--or if you want to get out--let me know.

That’s all.”

This hurt more than he could understand, and my answer must have been

brusque, for though he spoke out of affection for me, he deserved it.

“Look here, Mr. Brinsmade, I don’t want things done that way.”

“I only meant--”

“Thank you, but there’s too much of that, already. Question of pride;

that’s all.”

He was tactful enough not to insist and turned the conversation.

Towards the end of the dinner, and a magnificent bottle of Château

Margot 1896, he said to me:

“David, you are a hard man to talk to.”

“Oh, no--if you talk directly.”

“All right: suppose I do. Let’s talk about Anne.”

“About Anne!” I exclaimed, taken off my guard.

“Suppose I should tell you, point-blank, I want you for my son-in-law?

Well, what astonishes you? My frankness?”

“Why sir, it’s very kind of you,” I began lamely, “but, Anne--?”

“Exactly. As to Anne,--I’m convinced she cares, always has cared,” he

said, leaning forward. “I know something happened. I don’t know whether

you want to talk about it. Really, I should appreciate--”

The interview had taken such an extraordinary turn that I found myself,

without surprise, answering:

“Mr. Brinsmade, quite frankly, I am not in love with Anne.”

“I know that now, but--”

“Once, for a time,--yes, I thought so. But neither of us had the right

to be thinking of such things, then. It was a boy and girl affair.”

“Quite sure that was all?”

“Quite. The trouble was I showed her what I felt, or thought I felt,

and from that came the inevitable complication and misunderstanding. We

were both very stubborn. Mr. Brinsmade, there’s another thing, since

we’re speaking plainly,” I added, suddenly impelled to frankness. “Do

you realize that in these years many things have come into my life? I

wonder if you would feel as you do--”

“David, you have been tried; that shows in your face,” he said, looking

at me keenly. “I have been a young man myself, and I don’t pretend to

misunderstand you. Perhaps this is unfair to you--”

“Mr. Brinsmade, there was a woman--I almost went on the rocks two years

ago,” I said abruptly, and immediately regretted it.

“Are you your own master to-day?”

“Yes--thank God.”

“Absolutely certain?”

“Absolutely.”

“That’s all I want to know,” he said, as though satisfied by the

estimate of his own eyes. “I appreciate your confidence, and like you

for it. I’m not partisan for the wild oats theory but, sometimes,

when you’ve been through the mill, it does leave you with a sense of

values.” Our eyes met, and each nodded in silent comprehension.

“Now, let’s go on. Was there ever a question of pride in it--on your

side?”

“Frankly and naturally, yes. I have no intention of going through life

on my wife’s pocketbook.”

“Good. Now the decks are cleared. As I thought. You’ve been frank.

So’ll I. Take up this question of money. What is money? Opportunity.

If men like yourself, who have ideas, energy, and ambition, refuse to

take the opportunity money offers you,--who profits? Some well-groomed

little parasite who will loaf through life genteelly until the day

when the real people rise and take it away from him. And quite right, I

say. And that is what I don’t intend to have for my daughter.” He cited

names of men, men in public life of our acquaintance, whose start in

life had been facilitated by the fortunes of their wives. “Look at it

from my point of view. I’ve made what I’ve made, and I want it to count

in this world. David, what do you intend to do in life?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Fight through the war.”

“But, after?”

“After!” I said incredulously. “I may take up the study of architecture

again, unless--unless I am able to do what I really want,--which is to

write.”

“So I supposed. Don’t decide quickly. The current is all the other

way. We are a country of action, and you’ve got that in you. I don’t

make mistakes in men. The real Americans are not those who sit and

meditate; they are those who are laying the foundations. Write? What

is the future? Deceptions. You know I’m not a low-brow, as they say.

Every night, before I go to sleep, I read an hour in Balzac. Books are

half my life, so what I say to you I say without narrowness. But what

are our writers to-day? The servants of a great public that wants to

be amused, diverted in moments of relaxation; a great mass that is

striving, combating, contending,--a public of children. Is that all

you want to do? Amuse them? Write for yourself: you’ll be over their

heads--misunderstood--if not ridiculed! The current is against you.

We move rapidly, and we read rapidly; a moment to laugh or dream, as

we read on the train. Hard for you,--yes, but what do individuals

count, to-day?” He laid his hand on my arm. “Commerce, science, public

affairs. You like a man’s job. That’s where it lies, and it’s our kind

that must lead. Jump into the fight. Wealth and education are not only

opportunities but responsibilities: that’s what we must understand. I

said I want you as my son-in-law, Davy. It’s more than that: I want to

invest what I’ve made in a man that counts. I want you with me. I want

to feel when it comes time for me to step out that I’m passing on the

power to count for big things to some leadership I’ve inspired.”

He talked some while in this strain and, despite myself, I felt myself

yielding to his persuasion. Brinsmade is not a selfish man. Among

his own friends he was looked at rather askance for his progressive

tendencies. I found myself thinking, with pride, “Here is a man,

thoroughly American, who has a sentiment of nationality; who does not

look at life from a detached point of view but has a sense of being one

in a multitude with a higher loyalty than his own interests--loyalty to

the name he bears--and a pride in the America that will come!”

I think he saw the effect he had produced on me and, shrewd lawyer

that he was, he did not insist. I left him, exceedingly flattered and

already inclined to the pleasant ways he opened to me.

* * * * *

Just why I should feel any compunction is the thing that surprises me,

now. Yet I do feel,--well, if not compunction, a little uneasiness.

After all, up to now, whatever I have done has been done impulsively,

without a second thought as to the advantages or disadvantages to me.

This is another thing. For the first time, I am looking on life with a

middle-aged estimating of values,--and to-night is like a valedictory

to a youth that has fled.

In one way I almost resent the very frankness of his discussion with

me. For now I am somehow uneasily conscious that there must be a

certain grim deliberation about my future conduct. And I ask myself

again, “Is this a new phase of life into which I have entered,--a new

milestone left behind?”

* * * * *

There are other things which haunt me. I know that with Brinsmade’s

influence with the French Government it would be an easy thing for

him to procure my discharge and, under the circumstances, with my

past record and my present condition, who could criticize me? I have

the feeling that this is in the back of his mind, and looking ahead

and wondering what may happen when I meet Anne again, I cannot help

wondering if to-night I am not stepping out from the bonds which have

forged my destiny here to a foreign land, to those whose every thought

and action is strange to my traditions. The thing is so obvious I

cannot avoid facing it. If only it had come unperceived and by hidden

ways: would it have been easier for my pride and my self-respect?

* * * * *

The trouble is that during my convalescence I have been aware that the

terrific strain on my physical energy has left a moral inclination

towards the easy way through the future. This physical and moral

vitality in us is of course inseparable. I have noticed that as men’s

bodies grow old a tolerance of social laxities comes with it. Women

in moments of physical exhaustion are most vulnerable. The effect

of shell-shock on the moral fabric, even in officers of the highest

character, is well known. And then, there is something else. Comrades

of mine, who have fought with me with unimaginable bravery, return from

death with the feeling that they have spent all their vital energy and

looking to society to assure their future, as a right acquired.

To-night I feel old, with the sense of duty accomplished. I have done

quite enough, I tell myself, in my passage through the inferno of

war. If now, when opportunity offers, it pleases me to dispense with

the bruising struggle for existence, who has the right to judge of my

actions? Certainly not those who have not dared what I have dared.

* * * * *

All this is really rather morbid: both my will and my body have given

beyond their strength and are still convalescent, or I should not be

troubled with such sickly doubts. Well--who knows? Is this a mood, or a

decision? To-night, frankly, I feel I have done enough to have earned

my right to rest. Let others do their part. Milestone Number 4.