I
PHIL FARMER and Jimmy Kane stayed on in New Haven that summer of 1914;
Phil to be near his precious sources in the Yale library; Jimmy to be
near his new job. As soon as his examinations were over he had gone to
work in a factory in a very humble capacity; but he was not destined to
remain there long in any capacity, nor was it written in the stars that
he was to complete his education at Yale.
My own reasons for clinging to New Haven were less definite. Sheer
physical inertia had something to do with it, no doubt; but chiefly I
stayed because New Haven in midsummer is a social desert; and in those
days my most urgent desire was to be alone. Apart from all else, the
breaking out of almost world-wide war had drastically, as if by an
operation for spiritual cataract, opened my inner eye, no longer a bliss
in solitude, to much that was trivial and self-satisfied and ridiculous
in one Ambrose Hunt, Esq. That Susan should be in the smoke of that
spreading horror brought it swiftly and vividly before me. I lived the
war from the first.
For years, with no felt discomfort to myself, I had been a pacifist. I
was a contributing member of several peace societies, and in one of my
slightly better-known essays I had expounded with enthusiasm Tolstoy's
doctrine--which, in spite of much passionate argument to the contrary
these troublous times, was assuredly Christ's--of nonresistance to evil.
I was, in fact, though in a theoretical, parlor sense a proclaimed
Tolstoyan, a Christian anarchist--lacking, however, the essential
groundwork for Tolstoy's doctrine: faith. Faith in God as a person, as a
father, I could not confess to; but the higher anarchist vision of
humanity freed from all control save that of its own sweet
reasonableness, of men turned unfailingly gentle, mutually helpful,
content to live simply if need be, but never with unuplifted
hearts--well, I could and did confess publicly that no other vision had
so strong an attraction for me!
I liked to dwell in the idea of such a world, to think of it as a
possibility--less remote, perhaps, than mankind in general supposed.
Having lived through the Spanish War, the Boer War, and Russia's war
with Japan; and in a world constantly strained to the breaking point by
national rivalries, commercial expansion, and competition for markets;
by class struggles everywhere apparent; by the harsh, discordant
energies of its predatory desires--I, nevertheless, had been able to
persuade myself that the darkest days of our dust-speck planet were done
with and recorded; Earth and its graceless seed of Adam were at last, to
quote Jimmy, "on their way"--well on their way, I assured myself, toward
some inevitable region of abiding and beneficent light!
_Pouf!_... And then?
Stricken in solitude, I went down into dark places and fumbled like a
starved beggar amid the detritus of my dreams. Dust and shadow.... Was
there anything real there, anything worth the pain of spiritual salvage?
Had I been, all my life, merely one more romanticist, one more
sentimental trifler in a universe whose ways were not those of
pleasantness, nor its paths those of peace? Surely, yes; for my heart
convicted me at once of having wasted all my days hitherto in a fool's
paradise. The rough fabric of human life was not spun from moonshine. So
much at least was certain. And nothing else was left me. Hurled from my
private, make-believe Eden, I must somehow begin anew.
"_Brief beauty, and much weariness...._"
Susan's line haunted me throughout the first desperate isolation of
those hours. I saw no light. I was broken in spirit. I was afraid.
Morbidity, you will say. Why, yes; why not? To be brainsick and
heartsick in a cruel and unfamiliar world is to be morbid. I quite
agree. Below the too-thin crust of a _dilettante's_ culture lies always
that hungry morass. A world had been shaken; the too-thin crust beneath
my feet had crumbled; I must slither now in slime, and either sink there
finally, be swallowed up in that sucking blackness, or by some miracle
of effort win beyond, set my feet on stiff granite, and so survive.
It is most probable that I should never have reached solid ground
unaided. It was Jimmy, of all people, who stretched forth a vigorous,
impatient hand.
Shortly after the First Battle of the Marne had dammed--we knew not how
precariously, or how completely--the deluge pouring through Belgium and
Luxemburg and Northern France, Jimmy burst in on me one evening. He had
just received a brief letter from Susan. She was stationed then at
Furnes; Mona Leslie was with her; but their former hostess, the young
pleasure-loving Comtesse de Bligny, was dead. The cause of her death
Susan did not even stop to explain.
"Mona," she hurried on, "is magnificent. Only a few months ago I pitied
her, almost despised her; now I could kiss her feet. How life had wasted
her! She doesn't know fear or fatigue, and she has just put her entire
fortune unreservedly at the service of the Belgian Government--to found
field hospitals, ambulances, and so on. The king has decorated her. Not
that she cares--has time to think about it, I mean. In a sense it
irritated her; she spoke of it all to me as an unnecessary gesture. Oh,
Jimmy, come over--we need you here! Bring all America over with you--if
you can! _Setebos_ invented neutrality; I recognize his workmanship!
Bring Ambo--bring Phil! Don't stop to think about it--_come_!"
"I'm going of course," said Jimmy. "So's Prof. Farmer. How about you,
sir?"
"Phil's going?"
"Sure. Just as soon as he can arrange it."
"His book's finished?"
"What the hell has that----" began Jimmy; then stopped dead, blushing.
"Excuse me, Mr. Hunt; but books, somehow--just now--they don't seem so
important as--_see_?"
"Not quite, Jimmy. After all, the real struggle's always between ideas,
isn't it? We can't perfect the world with guns and ambulances, Jimmy."
"Maybe not," said Jimmy dryly.
"It's quite possible," I insisted, "that Phil's book might accomplish
more for humanity, in the long run, than anything he could do at his age
in Flanders."
"Susan could come home and write plays," said Jimmy; "good ones, too.
But she won't. You can bet on that, sir."
"I've never believed in war, Jimmy; never believed it could possibly
help us onward."
"Maybe it can't," interrupted Jimmy. "I've never believed in cancer,
either; it's very painful and kills a lot of people. You'd better come
with us, sir. You'll be sorry you didn't--if you don't."
"Why? You know my ideas on nonresistance, Jimmy."
"Oh, ideas!" grunted Jimmy. "I know you're a white man, Mr. Hunt. That's
enough for me. I'm not worrying much about your ideas."
"But whatever we do, Jimmy, there's an _idea_ behind it; there must be."
"Nachur'ly," said Jimmy. "Those are the only ones that count! I can't
see you letting Susan risk her life day in an' out to help people who
are being wronged, while you sit over here and worry about what's going
to happen in a thousand years or so--after we're all good and dead! Not
much I can't! The point is, there's the rotten mess--and Susan's in it,
trying to make it better--and we're not. Prof. Farmer got it all in a
flash! He'll be round presently to make plans. Well--how about it, sir?"
Granite! Granite at last, unshakable, beneath my feet!
Then, too, Susan was over there, and Jimmy and Phil were going, without
a moment's hesitation, at her behest! But I have always hoped, and I do
honestly believe, that it was not entirely that.
No; romanticist or not, I will not submit to the assumption that of two
possible motives for any decently human action, it is always the lower
motive that turns the trick. La Rochefoucauld to the contrary,
self-interest is not the inevitable mainspring of man; though, sadly I
admit, it seems to be an indispensable cog-wheel in his complicated
works....