There was nothing to be done for Lady Cecilia because she took her
bereavement with so little fuss. She asked for no sympathy; so far as I
ever saw, she shed no tears. If on that particular spot in the
neighborhood of Ypres a man had had to fall for his country, she was
proud that it had been a Boscobel. She put on a black frock and ordered
her maid to take the jade-green plume out of a black hat; but, except
that she declined invitations, she went about as usual. As the first
person we knew to be touched by the strange new calamity of war, we made
a kind of heroine of her, treating her with an almost romantic
reverence; but she herself never seemed aware of it. It was my first
glimpse of that unflinching British heroism of which I have since seen
much, and it impressed me.
We began to dream together of being useful; our difficulty was that we
didn't see the way. War had not yet made its definite claims on women
and girls, and knitting till our muscles ached was not a sufficient
outlet for our energies. Had I been in Cissie's place, I should have
gone home at once; but I suspected that, in spite of all her brave words
to me, she couldn't quite kill the hope that kept her lingering on.
My own ambitions being distasteful to Hugh, I was obliged to repress
them, doing so with the greater regret because some of the courses I
suggested would have done him good. They would have utilized the
physical strength with which he was blessed, and delivered him from that
material well-being to which he returned with the more child-like
rejoicing because of having been without it.
"Hugh, dear," I said to him once, "couldn't we be married soon and go
over to France or England? Then we should see whether there wasn't
something we could do."
"Not on your life, little Alix!" was his laughing response. "Since as
Americans we're out of it, out of it we shall stay."
Over replies like this, of which there were many, I was gnashing my
teeth helplessly when, all at once, I was called on to see myself as
others saw me, so getting a surprise.
The first note of warning came to me in a few words from Ethel Rossiter.
I was scribbling her notes one morning as she lay in bed, when it
occurred to me to say:
"If I'm going to be married, I suppose I ought to be doing something
about clothes."
She murmured, listlessly:
"Oh, I wouldn't be in a hurry about that, if I were you."
I went on writing.
"I haven't been in a hurry, have I? But I shall certainly want some
things I haven't got now."
"Then you can get them after you're married. When are you to be married,
anyhow?"
As the question was much on my mind, I looked up from my task and said:
"Well--when?"
"Don't you know?"
"No. Do you?"
She shook her head.
"I didn't know but what father had said something about it."
"He hasn't--not a word." I resumed my scribbling. "It's a queer thing
for him to have to settle, don't you think? One might have supposed it
would have been left to me."
"Oh, you don't know father!" It was as if throwing off something of no
importance that she added, "Of course, he can see that you're not in
love with Hugh."
Amazed at this reading of my heart, I bent my head to hide my confusion.
"I don't know why you should say that," I stammered at last, "when you
can't help seeing I'm quite true to him."
She shrugged her beautiful shoulders, of which one was bare.
"Oh, true! What's the good of that?" She went on, casually: "By the by,
do call up Daisy Burke and tell her I sha'n't go to that luncheon of
theirs. They're going to have old lady Billing, who's coming to stay at
father's; and you don't catch me with that lot except when I can't help
it." She reverted to the topic of a minute before. "I don't blame you,
of course. I suppose, if I were in your place, it's what I should do
myself. It's what I thought you'd try for--you remember, don't you?--as
long ago as when we were in Halifax. But naturally enough other people
don't--" I failed to learn, however, what other people didn't, because
of a second reversion in theme: "Do make up something civil to say to
Daisy, and tell her I won't come."
We dropped the subject, chiefly because I was afraid to go on with it;
but when I met old Mrs. Billing I received a similar shock. Having gone
to Mr. Brokenshire's to pay her my respects, I was told she was on the
terrace. As a matter of fact, she was making her way toward the hall,
and awkwardly carried a book, a sunshade, and the stump of a cigarette.
Dutifully I went forward in the hope of offering my services.
"Get out of my sight!" was her response to my greetings. "I can't bear
to look at you."
Brushing past me without further words, she entered the house.
"What did she mean?" I asked of Cissie Boscobel, to whom I heard that
Mrs. Billing had given her own account of the incident.
Lady Cecilia was embarrassed.
"Oh, nothing! She's just so very odd."
But I insisted:
"She must have meant something. Had it anything to do with Hugh?"
Reluctantly Lady Cissie let it out. Mrs. Billing had got the idea that I
was marrying Hugh for his money; and, though in the past she had not
disapproved of this line of action, she had come to think it no road to
happiness. Having taken the trouble to give me more than one hint that I
should many the man I was in love with she was now disappointed in my
character.
"You know how much truth there is in all that, don't you?" I said,
evasively.
Lady Cissie did her best to support me, though between her words and her
inflection there was a curious lack of correspondence.
"Oh yes--certainly!"
I got the reaction of her thought, however, some minutes later, when she
said, apropos of nothing in our conversation:
"Since Janet can't be married this month, I needn't go home for a long
time."
But knowing that this suggestion was in the air, I was the better able
to interpret Mildred's oracular utterance the next time I sat at the
foot of the couch, in the darkened room.
"One can't be true to another," she said, in reply to some feeler of my
own, "unless one is true to oneself, and one can't be true to oneself
unless one follows the highest of one's instincts."
I said, inwardly: "Ah! Now I know the reason for her distrust of me."
Aloud I made it:
"But that throws us back on the question as to what one's highest
instincts are."
There was the pause that preceded all her expressions of opinion.
"On the principle that it is more blessed to give than to receive, I
suppose our highest promptings are those which urge us to give most of
ourselves."
"And when one gives all of oneself that one can dispose of?"
"One has then to consider the importance or the unimportance of what one
has to withhold."
Of all the things that had been said to me this was the most disturbing.
It had seemed to me hitherto that the essence of my duty lay in marrying
Hugh. If I married him, I argued, I should have done my best to make up
to him for all he had undergone for my sake. I saw myself as owing him a
debt. The refusal to pay it would have implied a kind of moral
bankruptcy. Considering myself solvent, and also considering myself
honest, I felt I had no choice. Since I could pay, I must pay. The
reasoning was the more forcible because I liked Hugh and was grateful
to him. I could be tolerably happy with him, and would make him a good
wife.
To make him a good wife I had choked back everything I had ever felt for
Larry Strangways; I had submitted to all the Brokenshire repressions; I
had made myself humble and small before Hugh and his father, and
accepted the status of a Libby Jaynes. My heart cried out like any other
woman's heart--it cried out for my country in the hour of its stress; it
cried out for my home in what I tried to make the hour of my happiness;
when it caught me unawares it cried out for the man I loved. But all
this I mastered as our Canadian men were mastering their longings and
regrets on saying their good-bys. What was to be done was to be done,
and done willingly. Willingly I meant to marry Hugh, not because he was
the man I would have chosen before all others, but because, when no one
else in the world was giving me a thought, he had had the astonishing
goodness to choose me. And now--
With Mrs. Brokenshire the situation was different. She believed I was in
love with Hugh and that the others were doing me a wrong. Moreover, she
informed me one day that I was making my way in Newport. People who
noticed me once noticed me again. The men beside whom I sat at the
occasional lunches and dinners I attended often spoke of me to the
hostess on going away, and there could be no better sign than that. They
said that, though I "wasn't long on looks," I had ideas and knew how to
express them. She ventured to hope that this kindly opinion might, in
the end, soften Mr. Brokenshire.
"Do you mean that he isn't softened as it is?"
She answered, indirectly:
"He's not accustomed to be forced--and he feels I've forced him."
It was her first reference to what she had done for Hugh and me. In its
way it gave me permission to say:
"But isn't it a question of the _quid pro quo_? If you granted him
something for something he granted you in return--"
But the expression on her face forbade my going on. I have never seen
such a parting to human lips, or so haunting, so lost a look in human
eyes. It told me everything. It was a confession of all the things she
never could have said. "Better is it," says the Book of Ecclesiastes,
"that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay."
She had vowed and not paid. She had got her price and hadn't fulfilled
her bargain. She couldn't; she never would. It was beyond her. The big
moneyed man who at that minute was helping to finance a good part of
Europe, who was a power not only in a city or a country, but the world,
had been tricked by a woman; and I in my poor little person was the
symbol of his discomfiture.
No wonder he found it hard to forgive me! No wonder that whenever I came
where he was he treated me to some kindly hint or correction which was
no sufficient veil for his scorn! As I had never to my knowledge been
hated by any one, it was terrible to feel myself an object of abhorrence
to a man of such high standing in the world. Our eyes couldn't meet
without my seeing that his passions were seething to the boiling-point.
If he could have struck me dead with a look I think he would have done
it. And I didn't hate him; I was too sorry for him. I could have liked
him if he had let me.
I had, consequently, much to think about. I thought and I prayed. It was
not a minute at which to do anything hurriedly. To a spirit so hot as
mine it would have been a relief to lash out at them all; but, as I had
checked myself hitherto, I checked myself again. I reasoned that if I
kept close to right, right would take care of me. Not being a
theologian, I felt free to make some closeness of identity between right
and God. I might have defined right as God in action, or God as right in
conjunction with omnipotence, intelligence, and love; but I had no need
for exactness of terms. In keeping near to right I knew I must be near
to God: and near to God I could let myself go so far that no power on
earth would seem strong enough to save me--and yet I should be saved.
I went on then with a kind of fearlessness. If I was to marry Hugh I was
convinced that I should be supported; if not, I was equally convinced
that something would hold me back.
"If anything should happen," I said to Cissie Boscobel one day, "I want
you to look after Hugh."
The dawn seemed to break over her, though she only said, tremulously:
"Happen--how?"
"I don't know. Perhaps nothing will. But if it does--"
She slipped away, doubtless so as not to hear more.
And then one evening, when I was not thinking especially about it, the
Cloud came down on the Mountain; the voice spoke out of it, and my
course was made plain.
But before that night I also had received a cablegram. It was from my
sister Louise, to say that the _King Arthur_, her husband's ship, had
been blown up in the North Sea, and that he was among the lost.
So the call was coming to me more sharply than I had yet heard it. With
Lady Cecilia's example in mind, I said little to those about me beyond
mentioning the fact. I suppose they showed me as much sympathy as the
sweeping away of a mere brother-in-law demanded. They certainly said
they were sorry, and hinted that that was what nations let themselves in
for when they were so rash as to go to war.
"Think we'd ever expose our fellows like that?" was Hugh's comment. "Not
on your life!"
But they didn't make a heroine of me as they did with Lady Cissie; not
that I cared about that. I only hoped that the fact that my
brother-in-law's name was in all the American accounts of the incident
would show them that I belonged to some one, and that some one belonged
to me. If it did I never perceived it. Perhaps the loss of a mere
captain in the navy was a less gallant occurrence than the death in
action of a Lord Leatherhead; perhaps we were already getting used to
the toll of war; but, whatever the reason, Lady Cissie was still, to all
appearances, the only sufferer. Within a day or two a black dress was my
sole reminder that the _King Arthur_ had gone down; and, even to Hugh, I
made no further reference to the catastrophe.
And then came the evening when, as Larry Strangways said on my telling
him about it, "the fat was all in the fire."
It was the occasion of what had become the annual dinner at Mr.
Brokenshire's in honor of Mrs. Billing--a splendid function. Nothing
short of a splendid function would have satisfied the old lady, who had
the gift of making even the great afraid of her. The event was the more
magnificent for the reason that, in addition to the mother of the
favorite, a number of brother princes of finance, in Newport for
conference with our host, were included among the guests. Of these one
was staying in the house, one with the Jack Brokenshires, and two at a
hotel. I was seated between the two who were at the hotel because they
were socially unimportant. Even Mr. Brokenshire had sometimes to extend
his domestic hospitality to business friends for the sake of business,
when perhaps he should have preferred to show his attentions in clubs.
The chief scene, if I may so call it, was played to the family alone in
Mildred's sitting-room, after the guests had gone; but there was a
curtain-raiser at the dinner-table before the assembled company. I give
bits of the conversation, not because they were important, but because
of what they led up to.
We were twenty-four, seated on great Italian chairs, which gave each of
us the feeling of being a sovereign on a throne. It took all the men of
the establishment, as well as those gathered in from the Jack
Brokenshires' and Mrs. Rossiter's, to wait on us, a detail by which in
the end I profited. The gold service had been sent down from the vaults
in New York, so that the serving-plates were gold, as well as the plates
for some of the other courses. Gold vases and bowls held the roses that
adorned the table, and gold spoons and forks were under our hands. It
was the first time I had ever been able to notice with my own eyes how
nearly the rich American can rival the state of kings and emperors.
It goes without saying that all the women had put on their best, and
that the jewels were as precious metals in the days of Solomon; they
were "nothing accounted of." Diamonds flashed, rubies broke out in fire,
and emeralds said unspeakable things all up and down the table; the rows
and ropes and circlets of pearls made one think of the gates of
Paradise. I was the only one not so bedecked, getting that contrast of
simplicity which is the compensation of the poor. The ring Hugh had
given me, a sapphire set in diamonds, was my only ornament; and yet the
neat austerity of my black evening frock rendered me conspicuous.
It also goes without saying that I had no right to be conspicuous, being
the person of least consequence at the board. Mr. Brokenshire not only
felt that himself, but he liked me to feel it; and he not only liked me
to feel it, but he liked others to see that his great, broad spirit
admitted me among his family and friends from noble promptings of
tolerance. I was expected to play up to this generosity and to present
the foil of humility to the glory of the other guests and the beauty of
the table decorations.
In general I did this, and had every intention of doing it again.
Nothing but what perhaps were the solecisms of my immediate neighbors
caused my efforts to miscarry. I had been informed by Mrs. Brokenshire
beforehand that they were socially dull, that one of them was "awful,"
and that my powers would be taxed to keep them in conversation. My
mettle being up, I therefore did my best.
The one who was awful proved to be a Mr. Samuel Russky, whose claim to
be present sprang from the fact that he was a member of a house that had
the power to lend a great deal of money. He was a big man, of a mingled
Slavic and Oriental cast of countenance, and had nothing more awful
about him than a tendency to overemphasis. On my right I had Mr. John G.
Thorne, whose face at a glance was as guileless as his name till
contemplation revealed to you depth beyond depth of that peculiar
astuteness of which only the American is master. I am sure that when we
sat down to table neither of these gentlemen had any intention of taking
a hand in my concerns, and are probably ignorant to this day of ever
having done so; but the fact remains.
It begins with my desire to oblige Mrs. Brokenshire by trying to make
the dinner a success. Having to lift the heaviest corner, so to speak, I
gave myself to the task first with one of my neighbors and then with the
other. They responded so well that as early as when the terrapin was
reached I was doing it with both. As there was much animation about the
table, there was nothing at that time to call attention to our talk.
Naturally, it was about the war. From the war we passed to the attitude
of the United States toward the struggle; and from that what could I do
but glide to the topics as to which I felt myself a mouthpiece for Larry
Strangways? It was a chance. Here were two men obviously of some
influence in the country, and neither of them of very strong
convictions, so far as I could judge, on any subject but that of
floating foreign bonds. As the dust from a butterfly's wing might turn
the scale with one or both of them, I endeavored to throw at least that
much weight on the side of a British and American entente.
At something I said, Mr. Russky, with the slightest hint of a Yiddish
pronunciation, complained that I spoke as if all Americans were
"Anglo-Zaxons"; whereas it was well known that the "Anglo-Zaxon" element
among them was but a percentage, which was destined to grow less.
"I'm not putting it on that ground," I argued, with some zeal, taking up
a point as to which one of Larry Strangways's letters had enlightened
me. "I see well enough that the American ideal isn't one of nationality,
but of principle. When the federation of the States was completed it was
on the basis not of a common Anglo-Saxon origin, but on that of the
essential unity of mankind. Mere nationality was left out of the
question. All nations were welcomed, with the idea of welding them into
one."
"And England," Mr. Russky declared, somewhat more loudly than was
necessary for my hearing him, "is still bound up in her Anglo-Zaxondon."
"Not a bit of it!" I returned. "Her spirit is exactly the same as that
of this country. Except this country, where is there any other of which
the gates and ports and homes and factories have been open to all
nations as hers have been? They've landed on her shores in thousands and
thousands, without passports and without restraint, welcomed and
protected even when they've been taking the bread out of the born
Englishman's mouth. Look at the number of foreigners they've been
obliged to round up since the war began--for the simple reason that
they'd become so many as to be a peril. It's the same not only in the
British Islands, but in every part of the British Empire. Always the
same reception for all, with liberty for all. My own country, in
proportion to its population, is as full of citizens of foreign birth as
this is. They've been fathered and mothered from the minute they landed
at Halifax. Poles and Ruthenians and Slovaks and Icelanders have been
given the same advantages as ourselves. I'm not boasting of this, Mr.
Russky. I'm only saying that, though we've never defined the principle
in a constitution, our instinct toward mankind is the same as yours."
It was here Mr. Thorne broke in, saying that sympathy in the United
States was all for France.
"I can understand that," I said. "You often find in a family that the
sympathy of each of the members is for some one outside. But that
doesn't keep them from being a family, or from acting in important
moments with a family's solidarity."
"And, personally," Mr. Thorne went on, "I don't care for England."
I laughed politely in his face.
"And do you, a business man, say that? I thought business was carried on
independently of personal regard. You might conceivably not like Mr.
Warren or Mr. Casemente"--I named the two other banker guests--"or even
Mr. Brokenshire; but you do business with them as if you loved them, and
quite successfully, too. In the same way the Briton and the American
might put personal fancies out of the question and co-operate for great
ends."
"Ah, but, young lady," Mr. Russky exclaimed, so noisily as to draw
attention, "you forget that we're far from the scene of European
disputes, and that our wisest course is to keep out of them!"
I fell back again on what I had learned from Larry Strangways.
"But you're not far from the past of mankind. You inherit that as much
as any European; and it isn't an inheritance that can be limited
geographically." I still quoted one of Larry Strangways's letters,
knowing it by heart. "Every Russian and German and Jew and Italian and
Scotchman who lands in New York brings a portion of it with him and
binds the responsibility of the New World more closely to the sins of
the Old. Oceans and continents will not separate us from sins. As we can
never run away from our past, Americans must help to expiate what they
and their ancestors have done in the countries from which they came.
This isn't going to be a local war or a twentieth-century war. It's the
struggle of all those who have had to bear the burdens of the world
against those who have made them bear them."
"If that was the case," Mr. Russky said, doubtfully, "Americans would be
all on one side."
"They will be all on one side--when they see it. The question is, Will
they see it soon enough?"
Being so interested I didn't notice that our immediate neighbors were
listening, nor did I observe, what Cissie Boscobel told me afterward,
that Hugh was dividing disquieting looks between me and his father. I
did try to divert Mr. Thorne to giving his attention to Mrs. Burke, who
was his neighbor on the right, but I couldn't make him take the hint. It
was, in fact, he who said:
"We've too many old grudges against England to keep step with her now."
I smiled engagingly.
"But you've no old grudges against the British Empire, have you?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've no old grudges against Canada, or Australia, or the West Indies,
or New Zealand, or the Cape?"
"N-no."
"Nor even against Scotland or Wales or Ireland?"
"N-no."
"You recognize in all those countries a spirit more or less akin to your
own, and one with which you can sympathize?"
"Y-yes."
"Then isn't that my point? You speak of England, and you see the
southern end of an island between the North Sea and the Atlantic; but
that's all you see. You forget Scotland and Ireland and Canada and
Australia and South Africa. You think I'm talking of a country three
thousand miles away, whereas it comes right up to your doors. It's on
the borders of Maine and Michigan and Minnesota, and all along your
line. That isn't Canada alone; it's the British Empire. It's the country
with which you Americans have more to do than with any other in the
world. It's the one you have to think of first. You may like some other
better, but you can't get away from having it as your most pressing
consideration the minute you pass your own frontiers. That," I declared,
with a little laugh, "is what makes my entente important."
"Important for England or for America?" Mr. Russky, as a citizen of the
country he thought had most to give, was on his guard.
"Important for the world!" I said, emphatically. "England and
America--the British Empire and the United States--are both secondary in
what I'm trying to say. I speak of them only as the two that can most
easily line up together. When they've done that the rest will follow
their lead. It's not to be an offensive and defensive alliance, or
directed against any other power. It would be a starting-point, the
beginning of world peace. It would also be an instance of what could be
accomplished in the long run among all the nations of the world by
mutual tolerance and common sense."
As I made a little mock oratorical flourish there was a laugh from our
part of the table. Some one sitting opposite called out, "Good!" I
distinctly heard Mrs. Billing's cackle of a "Brava!" I ought to say,
too, that, afraid of even the appearance of "holding forth," I had kept
my tone lowered, addressing myself to my left-hand companion. If others
stopped talking and listened it was because of the compulsion of the
theme. It was a burning theme. It was burning in hearts and minds that
had never given it a conscious thought; and, now that for a minute it
was out in the open, it claimed them. True, it was an occasion meant to
be kept free from the serious; but even in Newport we were beginning to
understand that occasions kept free from the serious were over--perhaps
for the rest of our time.
After that the conversation in our neighborhood became general. With the
exception of Hugh, who was not far away, every one joined in, aptly or
inaptly, as the case might be, with pros and cons and speculations and
anecdotes and flashes of wit, and a far deeper interest than I should
have predicted. As Mrs. Brokenshire whispered after we regained the
drawing-room, it had made the dinner go; and a number of women whom I
hadn't known before came up and talked to me.
But all that was only the curtain-raiser. It was not till the family
were assembled in Mildred's room up-stairs that the real play began.