The air was thick with the war I feeling, like the electricity of a
storm which has not yet burst. Editha sat looking out into the hot
spring afternoon, with her lips parted, and panting with the intensity
of the question whether she could let him go. She had decided that she
could not let him stay, when she saw him at the end of the still
leafless avenue, making slowly up toward the house, with his head down,
and his figure relaxed. She ran impatiently out on the veranda, to the
edge of the steps, and imperatively demanded greater haste of him with
her will before she called aloud to him, "George!"
He had quickened his pace in mystical response to her mystical urgence,
before he could have heard her; now he looked up and answered, "Well?"
"Oh, how united we are!" she exulted, and then she swooped down the
steps to him. "What is it?" she cried.
"It's war," he said, and he pulled her up to him, and kissed her.
She kissed him back intensely, but irrelevantly, as to their passion,
and uttered from deep in her throat, "How glorious!"
"It's war," he repeated, without consenting to her sense of it; and she
did not know just what to think at first. She never knew what to think
of him; that made his mystery, his charm. All through their courtship,
which was contemporaneous with the growth of the war feeling, she had
been puzzled by his want of seriousness about it. He seemed to despise
it even more than he abhorred it. She could have understood his
abhorring any sort of bloodshed; that would have been a survival of his
old life when he thought he would be a minister, and before he changed
and took up the law. But making light of a cause so high and noble
seemed to show a want of earnestness at the core of his being. Not but
that she felt herself able to cope with a congenital defect of that
sort, and make his love for her save him from himself. Now perhaps the
miracle was already wrought in him, In the presence of the tremendous
fact that he announced, all triviality seemed to have gone out of him;
she began to feel that. He sank down on the top step, and wiped his
forehead with his handkerchief, while she poured out upon him her
question of the origin and authenticity of his news.
All the while, in her duplex emotioning, she was aware that now at the
very beginning she must put a guard upon herself against urging him, by
any word or act, to take the part that her whole soul willed him to
take, for the completion of her ideal of him. He was very nearly perfect
as he was, and he must be allowed to perfect himself. But he was
peculiar, and he might very well be reasoned out of his peculiarity.
Before her reasoning went her emotioning: her nature pulling upon his
nature, her womanhood upon his manhood, without her knowing the means
she was using to the end she was willing. She had always supposed that
the man who won her would have done something to win her; she did not
know what, but something. George Gearson had simply asked her for her
love, on the way home from a concert, and she gave her love to him,
without, as it were, thinking. But now, it flashed upon her, if he could
do something worthy to _have_ won her--be a hero, _her_ hero--it would
be even better than if he had done it before asking her; it would be
grander. Besides, she had believed in the war from the beginning.
"But don't you see, dearest," she said, "that it wouldn't have come to
this, if it hadn't been in the order of Providence? And I call any war
glorious that is for the liberation of people who have been struggling
for years against the cruelest oppression. Don't you think so too?"
"I suppose so," he returned, languidly. "But war! Is it glorious to
break the peace of the world?"
"That ignoble peace! It was no peace at all, with that crime and shame
at our very gates." She was conscious of parroting the current phrases
of the newspapers, but it was no time to pick and choose her words. She
must sacrifice anything to the high ideal she had for him, and after a
good deal of rapid argument she ended with the climax: "But now it
doesn't matter about the how or why. Since the war has come, all that is
gone. There are no two sides, any more. There is nothing now but our
country."
He sat with his eyes closed and his head leant back against the veranda,
and he said with a vague smile, as if musing aloud, "Our country--right
or wrong."
"Yes, right or wrong!" she returned fervidly. "I'll go and get you some
lemonade." She rose rustling, and whisked away; when she came back with
two tall glasses of clouded liquid, on a tray, and the ice clucking in
them, he still sat as she had left him, and she said as if there had
been no interruption: "But there is no question of wrong in this case. I
call it a sacred war. A war for liberty, and humanity, if ever there was
one. And I know you will see it just as I do, yet."
He took half the lemonade at a gulp, and he answered as he set the glass
down: "I know you always have the highest ideal. When I differ from you,
I ought to doubt myself."
A generous sob rose in Editha's throat for the humility of a man, so
very nearly perfect, who was willing to put himself below her.
Besides, she felt that he was never so near slipping through her fingers
as when he took that meek way.
"You shall not say that! Only, for once I happen to be right." She
seized his hand in her two hands, and poured her soul from her eyes into
his. "Don't you think so?" she entreated him.
He released his hand and drank the rest of his lemonade, and she added,
"Have mine, too," but he shook his head in answering, "I've no business
to think so, unless I act so, too."
Her heart stopped a beat before it pulsed on with leaps that she felt in
her neck. She had noticed that strange thing in men; they seemed to feel
bound to do what they believed, and not think a thing was finished when
they said it, as girls did. She knew what was in his mind, but she
pretended not, and she said, "Oh, I am not sure."
He went on as if to himself without apparently heeding her. "There's
only one way of proving one's faith in a thing like this."
She could not say that she understood, but she did understand.
He went on again. "If I believed--if I felt as you do about this war--Do
you wish me to feel as you do?"
Now she was really not sure; so she said, "George, I don't know what you
mean."
He seemed to muse away from her as before. "There is a sort of
fascination in it. I suppose that at the bottom of his heart every man
would like at times to have his courage tested; to see how he would
act."
"How can you talk in that ghastly way!"
"It _is_ rather morbid. Still, that's what it comes to, unless you're
swept away by ambition, or driven by conviction. I haven't the
conviction or the ambition, and the other thing is what it comes to with
me. I ought to have been a preacher, after all; then I couldn't have
asked it of myself, as I must, now I'm a lawyer. And you believe it's a
holy war, Editha?" he suddenly addressed her. "Or, I know you do! But
you wish me to believe so, too?"
She hardly knew whether he was mocking or not, in the ironical way he
always had with her plainer mind. But the only thing was to be outspoken
with him.
"George, I wish you to believe whatever you think is true, at any and
every cost. If I've tried to talk you into anything, I take it all
back."
"Oh, I know that, Editha. I know how sincere you are, and how--I wish I
had your undoubting spirit! I'll think it over; I'd like to believe as
you do. But I don't, now; I don't, indeed. It isn't this war alone;
though this seems peculiarly wanton and needless; but it's every war--so
stupid; it makes me sick. Why shouldn't this thing have been settled
reasonably?"
"Because," she said, very throatily again, "God meant it to be war."
"You think it was God? Yes, I suppose that is what people will say."
"Do you suppose it would have been war if God hadn't meant it?"
"I don't know. Sometimes it seems as if God had put this world into
men's keeping to work it as they pleased."
"Now, George, that is blasphemy."
"Well, I won't blaspheme. I'll try to believe in your pocket
Providence," he said, and then he rose to go.
"Why don't you stay to dinner?" Dinner at Balcom's Works was at one
o'clock.
"I'll come back to supper, if you'll let me. Perhaps I shall bring you a
convert."
"Well, you may come back, on that condition."
"All right. If I don't come, you'll understand?"
He went away without kissing her, and she felt it a suspension of their
engagement. It all interested her intensely; she was undergoing a
tremendous experience, and she was being equal to it. While she stood
looking after him, her mother came out through one of the long windows,
on to the veranda, with a catlike softness and vagueness.
"Why didn't he stay to dinner?"
"Because--because--war has been declared," Editha pronounced, without
turning.
Her mother said, "Oh, my!" and then said nothing more until she had sat
down in one of the large Shaker chairs, and rocked herself for some
time. Then she closed whatever tacit passage of thought there had been
in her mind with the spoken words, "Well, I hope _he_ won't go."
"And _I_ hope he _will_" the girl said, and confronted her mother with a
stormy exaltation that would have frightened any creature less
unimpressionable than a cat.
Her mother rocked herself again for an interval of cogitation. What she
arrived at in speech was, "Well, I guess you've done a wicked thing,
Editha Balcom."
The girl said, as she passed indoors through the same window her mother
had come out by, "I haven't done anything--yet."
* * * * *
In her room, she put together all her letters and gifts from Gearson,
down to the withered petals of the first flower he had offered, with
that timidity of his veiled in that irony of his. In the heart of the
packet she enshrined her engagement ring which she had restored to the
pretty box he had brought it her in. Then she sat down, if not calmly
yet strongly, and wrote:
"GEORGE: I understood--when you left me. But I think we had
better emphasize your meaning that if we cannot be one in
everything we had better be one in nothing. So I am sending
these things for your keeping till you have made up your mind.
"I shall always love you, and therefore I shall never marry any
one else. But the man I marry must love his country first of
all, and be able to say to me,
"'I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.'
"There is no honor above America with me. In this great hour
there is no other honor.
"Your heart will make my words clear to you. I had never
expected to say so much, but it has come upon me that I must
say the utmost.
"EDITHA."
She thought she had worded her letter well, worded it in a way that
could not be bettered; all had been implied and nothing expressed.
She had it ready to send with the packet she had tied with red, white,
and blue ribbon, when it occurred to her that she was not just to him,
that she was not giving him a fair chance. He had said he would go and
think it over, and she was not waiting. She was pushing, threatening,
compelling. That was not a woman's part. She must leave him free, free,
free. She could not accept for her country or herself a forced
sacrifice.
In writing her letter she had satisfied the impulse from which it
sprang; she could well afford to wait till he had thought it over. She
put the packet and the letter by, and rested serene in the consciousness
of having done what was laid upon her by her love itself to do, and yet
used patience, mercy, justice.
She had her reward. Gearson did not come to tea, but she had given him
till morning, when, late at night there came up from the village the
sound of a fife and drum with a tumult of voices, in shouting, singing,
and laughing. The noise drew nearer and nearer; it reached the Street
end of the avenue; there it silenced itself, and one voice, the voice
she knew best, rose over the silence. It fell; the air was filled with
cheers; the fife and drum struck up, with the shouting, singing, and
laughing again, but now retreating; and a single figure came hurrying up
the avenue.
She ran down to meet her lover and clung to him. He was very gay, and he
put his arm round her with a boisterous laugh. "Well, you must call me
Captain, now; or Cap, if you prefer; that's what the boys call me. Yes,
we've had a meeting at the town hall, and everybody has volunteered; and
they selected me for captain, and I'm going to the war, the big war, the
glorious war, the holy war ordained by the pocket Providence that
blesses butchery. Come along; let's tell the whole family about it. Call
them from their downy beds, father, mother, Aunt Hitty, and all the
folks!"
But when they mounted the veranda steps he did not wait for a larger
audience; he poured the story out upon Editha alone.
"There was a lot of speaking, and then some of the fools set up a shout
for me. It was all going one way, and I thought it would be a good joke
to sprinkle a little cold water on them. But you can't do that with a
crowd that adores you. The first thing I knew I was sprinkling hell-fire
on them, 'Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.' That was the style.
Now that it had come to the fight, there were no two parties; there was
one country, and the thing was to fight the fight to a finish as quick
as possible. I suggested volunteering then and there, and I wrote my
name first of all on the roster. Then they elected me--that's all. I
wish I had some ice-water!"
She left him walking up and down the veranda, while she ran for the
ice-pitcher and a goblet, and when she came back he was still walking up
and down, shouting the story he had told her to her father and mother,
who had come out more sketchily dressed than they commonly were by day.
He drank goblet after goblet of the ice-water without noticing who was
giving it, and kept on talking, and laughing through his talk wildly.
"It's astonishing," he said, "how well the worse reason looks when you
try to make it appear the better. Why, I believe I was the first convert
to the war in that crowd to-night! I never thought I should like to kill
a man; but now, I shouldn't care; and the smokeless powder lets you see
the man drop that you kill. It's all for the country! What a thing it is
to have a country that _can't_ be wrong, but if it is, is right anyway!"
Editha had a great, vital thought, an inspiration. She set down the
ice-pitcher on the veranda floor, and ran up-stairs and got the letter
she had written him. When at last he noisily bade her father and mother,
"Well, good night. I forgot I woke you up; I sha'n't want any sleep
myself," she followed him down the avenue to the gate. There, after the
whirling words that seemed to fly away from her thoughts and refuse to
serve them, she made a last effort to solemnize the moment that seemed
so crazy, and pressed the letter she had written upon him.
"What's this?" he said. "Want me to mail it?"
"No, no. It's for you. I wrote it after you went this morning. Keep
it--keep it--and read it sometime--" She thought, and then her
inspiration came: "Read it if ever you doubt what you've done, or fear
that I regret your having done it. Read it after you've started."
They strained each other in embraces that seemed as ineffective as their
words, and he kissed her face with quick, hot breaths that were so
unlike him, that made her feel as if she had lost her old lover and
found a stranger in his place. The stranger said, "What a gorgeous
flower you are, with your red hair, and your blue eyes that look black
now, and your face with the color painted out by the white moonshine!
Let me hold you under my chin, to see whether I love blood, you
tiger-lily!" Then he laughed Gearson's laugh, and released her, scared
and giddy. Within her wilfulness she had been frightened by a sense of
subtler force in him, and mystically mastered as she had never been
before.
She ran all the way back to the house, and mounted the steps panting.
Her mother and father were talking of the great affair. Her mother said:
"Wa'n't Mr. Gearson in rather of an excited state of mind? Didn't you
think he acted curious?"
"Well, not for a man who'd just been elected captain and had to set 'em
up for the whole of Company A," her father chuckled back.
"What in the world do you mean, Mr. Balcom? Oh! There's Editha!" She
offered to follow the girl indoors.
"Don't come, mother!" Editha called, vanishing.
Mrs. Balcom remained to reproach her husband. "I don't see much of
anything to laugh at."
"Well, it's catching. Caught it from Gearson. I guess it won't be much
of a war, and I guess Gearson don't think so, either. The other fellows
will back down as soon as they see we mean it. I wouldn't lose any sleep
over it. I'm going back to bed, myself."
* * * * *
Gearson came again next afternoon, looking pale, and rather sick, but
quite himself, even to his languid irony. "I guess I'd better tell you,
Editha, that I consecrated myself to your god of battles last night by
pouring too many libations to him down my own throat. But I'm all right,
now. One has to carry off the excitement, somehow."
"Promise me," she commanded, "that you'll never touch it again!"
"What! Not let the cannikin clink? Not let the soldier drink? Well, I
promise."
"You don't belong to yourself now; you don't even belong to _me_. You
belong to your country, and you have a sacred charge to keep yourself
strong and well for your country's sake. I have been thinking, thinking
all night and all day long."
"You look as if you had been crying a little, too," he said with his
queer smile.
"That's all past. I've been thinking, and worshipping _you_. Don't you
suppose I know all that you've been through, to come to this? I've
followed you every step from your old theories and opinions."
"Well, you've had a long row to hoe."
"And I know you've done this from the highest motives--"
"Oh, there won't be much pettifogging to do till this cruel war is--"
"And you haven't simply done it for my sake. I couldn't respect you if
you had."
"Well, then we'll say I haven't. A man that hasn't got his own respect
intact wants the respect of all the other people he can corner. But we
won't go into that. I'm in for the thing now, and we've got to face our
future. My idea is that this isn't going to be a very protracted
struggle; we shall just scare the enemy to death before it conies to a
fight at all. But we must provide for contingencies, Editha. If anything
happens to me--"
"Oh, George!" She clung to him sobbing.
"I don't want you to feel foolishly bound to my memory. I should hate
that, wherever I happened to be."
"I am yours, for time and eternity--time and eternity." She liked the
words; they satisfied her famine for phrases.
"Well, say eternity; that's all right; but time's another thing; and I'm
talking about time. But there is something! My mother! If anything
happens--"
She winced, and he laughed. "You're not the bold soldier-girl of
yesterday!" Then he sobered. "If anything happens, I want you to help my
mother out. She won't like my doing this thing. She brought me up to
think war a fool thing as well as a bad thing. My father was in the
civil war; all through it; lost his arm in it." She thrilled with the
sense of the arm round her; what if that should be lost? He laughed as
if divining her: "Oh, it doesn't run in the family, as far as I know!"
Then he added, gravely, "He came home with misgivings about war, and
they grew on him. I guess he and mother agreed between them that I was
to be brought up in his final mind about it; but that was before my
time. I only knew him from my mother's report of him and his opinions; I
don't know whether they were hers first; but they were hers last. This
will be a blow to her. I shall have to write and tell her--"