IN WHICH WE RETURN TO "THE LAND OF THE FREE"
We found when we were leaving England another of those curious
contrasts between the nations of the earth that one meets in a long
journey. Coming into Bordeaux we were convoyed for three hours by
a ratty little French destroyer and a big dirigible French balloon.
Leaving Liverpool, we lay two nights and a day sealed in the harbour,
and then sailed out with the Arabic, the Mongolian, the Victorian,
and two freighters, amid a whole flock of cruisers and destroyers.
The protecting fleet stayed with us two nights and three days.
On the French boat the barber practically had no news of sudden
deaths and hairbreadth escapes which had happened while we slept.
We sailed into the Gironde River peacefully, almost joyously. But
we left the Mersey with a story that a big fleet of destroyers
hovered at the river's mouth; that the Belgic had been beached
out there on a shoal by a "sub," and that we would be lucky if our
throats were not cut in the water as we tried to swim ashore after
we had been blown out of our boats.
The French certainly are more casual than the English. But then,
the Germans have sunk virtually no French liners, while the British
liner is the favourite food of von Tirpetz! They even showed us
his teeth marks on our American liner, the New York. On an earlier
trip during the summer of 1917 the boat had been torpedoed when
Admiral Sims was a passenger, going to England. The Admiral was
sitting at dinner when the explosion occurred and the force of it
threw him to the high ceiling of the dining saloon! At least that's
what they told us. Caution and conflicting doubts, "fears within
and foes without," were not so unreasonable as one might fancy,
coming out of any British port.
But to Henry and me the greatest contrast came, not in the conduct
of the ship's officers, as compared with the French seamen, but in
the ship's company, going to war and coming away from it. We went
with youth; the Espagne was crowded with young men going to war,
with young women going out to serve those who were salvaging the
waste of war. The boat carried a score of lovers--some married, some
impromptu, some incidental and fleeting, but all vastly interesting.
For when the new wine blooms the old ferments, and stumbling over
the dark decks at night on the Espagne, we were forever running
into youth paired off and gazing at the mystery of the ocean and
the stars. So the corks were always popping in our old hearts; and
we enjoyed it. But we paced the black night decks of the New York
as "one who treads alone a banquet hall deserted." We were among
the younger people on the ship. There was no youth to play with
under thirty! No one touched the piano. No one lifted his voice
in song. The most devilish thing going as we sailed was a game of
chess! There was a night game of whist or cribbage or some other
sedentary game, which closed at ten, and after that in the library
the talk sagged and died like a decomposed chord in a Tschaikovsky
symphony! It was sad! One had to go to the smoking room where there
was wassail on lemon squash and insipid English beer until after
midnight. But there the talk was good. Of course it sometimes
bore a strong smell of man about it, but it was virile and wise. A
rug dealer from Odessa, a dealer in mining machinery from Moscow,
a Chicago college professer returning from Petrograd, a cigarette
maker from Egypt, a brace of British naval officers going over to
return with Canadian transports, an American aerial engineer, back
from an inspection trip to France, a great English actor, who once
played Romeo with Mary Andersen--to give one an approximate of his
age--a Red Cross commission from Italy, and an Australian premier.
The whole ship's company was but thirty-four first class and of
these but six were women. It was no place for dashing young blades
in their late forties like Henry and me.
As the hour for leaving the ship approached, the press of the
splendid months behind us drew Henry and me together more and more.
We were hanging over the deck rail looking at a faint attempt at
a cloudy sunset at the end of our last day out. We fell to talking
of the love affairs on the Espagne, and perhaps from me came some
words about the Eager Soul, the Gilded Youth and the Young Doctor.
Henry looked up dazed and anxious. Clearly he did not know what it
was all about.
"Who was this Gilded Youth?" asked Henry.
"He was the dream we dreamed when we were boys, Henry. When fate set
you out as a book agent on the highway and me to kicking a Peerless
job press in a dingy printing office. The Gilded Youth was all we
would fain have been!"
"And the Eager Soul?" quoth he.
"She, dearly beloved, was the ideal of our boyish hearts. Did
you ever have a red-headed sweetheart in those olden golden days,
Henry?" He shook a sad head in retrospection. "Nor did one ever
come to me. But most boys want one sometime, so I took her off
the Red Cross Posters and breathed the breath of life into her. And
isn't she a peach; and doesn't she kind of warm your heart and make
up for the hardship of your youth?" He smiled assent and asked:
"But the young Doctor, Bill, surely he--"
"He is the American spirit in France, Henry--badly scared, very
shy at heart, full of hope and dying to serve!"
"And it never happened--any of it?" asked Henry.
"Yes, oh, yes, Henry. There was the tall boy who played Saint Saens
on the Espagne, and did the funny stunt at the auction; there was
the night we sat on the food box near the front at Douaumont and
heard the ambulance boy whistling the bit from "Thais," far up the
hill in the misty moonlight; there was the French soldier by the
splintered tree in the Forest of Hess; there was the head nurse
killed by the abri between Souilly and Verdun, who waited while
her girls went in; there was the poor dying boy in the hospital
for whom you bought the flowers and there was the handsome New
York woman coming over to start her hospital. There was the young
doctor whom the German officer prisoner tried to kill. And there
was the picture of the red-headed Red Cross nurse, and there were
our dreams."
"And the ending--will you have a happy ending?" demanded Henry.
"Aren't the visions of the young men, and the dreams of the old
always happy? It is in passing through life from one to the other
that our courage fails and our hearts sadden. And these phantoms
are of such stuff as dreams are made of and they may not falter
or grow weary, or grow old. Youth always has a happy ending--even
in death. It is when youth ends in life that we may question its
happiness."
And so we left our fancies and walked to the big guns far forward
and gazed into the sunset, where home lay, home, and the things
that were real, and dear, and worth while.
THE END
APPENDIX A
A Soldier's Song
[Musical notation]
Love, though these hands that rest in thine so
Love, though our dreams shall have no hope but
dear, Back in-to dust, may crum-ble
this, Love, though our faith must be our
with-the year; Love, though these lips, that
rar-est bliss; Love, though the years may
[Musical notation]
meet thy lips, so true, Soon may be
bring their death and chill; Love, though our
grass that stores the morn-ing dew
blood must lose its pass-ion, still,
O Love, Know well, that this fond heart of mine,
Still, Love, Know well, that this heart is di-vine,
It shall be al-ways, al-ways, al-ways thine!
It shall be al-ways, al-ways, al-ways thine!