I don't know how I got through the next ten days. After three of them
had passed I began to fear a mental breakdown, because my mind kept
working all by itself, without orders. If I wanted to think forward,
to the end of the probationary year, I couldn't. Always I kept
thinking I ought to have done, or said, so and so. I ought to have
been firmer. I was always reviving that drive in the taxicab with
Fulton, or that last interview with my father. If my love was strong
and fine I ought never to have knuckled under. They had had too easy a
time with me. I had played into their hands, and they had treated me
like a child. From pure humiliation I could not sleep at night.
And what was Lucy doing? How was she bearing it? What sort of life
was she leading, the poor, abused child? The world seemed to have all
joined against me in a conspiracy of silence. Nobody mentioned Lucy in
my hearing. Although the same city held us, until they moved to
Stamford, I had no accidental glimpse of her. Our last talk had not
been in the least satisfactory. It seemed to me that I must see her
once more to preach courage and hope. During those first ten nights I
hardly slept at all. Sometimes I would picture out Lucy's whole course
of life during the next few months. And I imagined that, grown at last
utterly indifferent through suffering, she might drift back into her
former relations with Fulton, if only because he loved her so much, and
no one can keep on saying no forever. Such imaginings had sometimes
the vividness of scenes actually witnessed and threw me into tortures
of jealousy.
Not until a short period of the tenth day was Lucy ever actually out of
my mind. I had been sitting in a chair staring at a newspaper, all my
nerves tense and hungry, when suddenly they seemed to have relaxed and
to have been fed. The skin of my face no longer seemed tightly
stretched. I felt as if I had waked from a refreshing sleep; but this
was not the case. I had simply, without deliberation, forgotten Lucy
for half an hour, and been making agreeable personal plans for the year
of probation.
"Good Lord," I thought; "has living without her, already begun to be
easier?"
It had. I began to take pleasure in seeing my friends; to look forward
to the Newport season, to the international tennis, to the golf
championship at Ekwanok, to the thousand and one things that make for
the happiness of a butterfly's summer.
After a month of Newport, days passed with only hurried thoughts of
Lucy. Chance mention of her name gave me no uneasiness; they affected
my heart, like sudden trumpets, but I knew that my face had become an
inscrutable mask, and that my voice was in perfect control. Those who
had thought that there was something between us began to think
differently.
And then, after days of suspense, surmise, and real consternation, the
legs of civilization seemed to have been knocked from under it, and the
greatest nations of Europe flew at each other.
Now indeed there seemed an easy way to the year's end. The Germans
rolled through Belgium and into France, outraging humanity. It looked
as if they would roll right into Paris, and sow salt where the world's
first city had stood.
I rushed up to Bar Harbor to tell my parents that I was going to France
to enlist in the foreign legion. Oh, how swiftly the time would fly, I
thought. That I might get crippled or killed never occurred to me. I
thought only that having failed at everything else, I must obviously be
possessed of military genius. I pictured myself climbing the bloody
ladder of promotion to high command and winning the gratitude of that
country which next to my own I love the most.
My mother, to whom I first broached the news, did not cry or make a
fuss. But I saw that I had distressed her terribly.
"It isn't our war," she said; "and what use will one more enlisted man
be to _them_? And besides, my dear, _only_ sons are always the first
ones to get hurt; only sons and men whose families are dependent upon
them. But . . ." and here she gave me a wonderful look . . . "I think
I know why you want to go. And that makes me very proud."
"I think you _do_ know, Mumsey," I said. "It's because we'd rather get
hurt trying to do something worth while, than go on the way we've
always gone on, amounting to nothing, and disappointing everybody."
Then she got me in her arms, and cried over me a little.
My father, as usual, took my decision with the most good-natured
indifference.
"Fine experience," he said, "for any man that's free to go. Makes me
wish I were younger and without obligations. Still I can enjoy the
music at the swimming-pool with a free conscience; because I'm sending
over all the money I can spare. . . . How did you reach the conclusion
that you could go?"
"_Could_ go?"
"Yes. Of course you've no complication in your life that should keep
you from going. Well, I'm glad of that."
"It seems to me that if anyone is free to go, I am."
He smiled upon me, somewhat too playfully for my comfort, and shook his
head slowly. "So Fulton and I were right about the year's probation.
I'm delighted. How soon did you and Lucy find out that absence
_doesn't_ make the heart grow fonder?"
"Oh," I said, "it isn't _that_. What has that to do with it? There's
a year to be got over, and fighting's the most agreeable and the
quickest way I can think of just now."
My father looked disappointed.
"I hoped you had got over caring. And--you haven't?"
For a few moments I met his eyes. But only for a few moments. He
didn't laugh. "I'm glad," he said simply.