And now, properly apprehensive reader--whom, in the interests of
objectivity, which has never interested me, I should never openly
address--are you not unhappy in the prospect of another little tour
through trench and hospital, of one more harrowing account of how the
Great War made a Great Man of him at last?
Be comforted! One air raid I cannot spare you; but I can spare you much.
To begin with, I can spare you, or all but spare you, a month or so over
three whole years.
You may think it incredible, but it is merely true, that I had been in
Europe for more than three years--and I had not as yet seen Susan. Phil
had seen her, just once; Jimmy had seen her many times; and I had run
into them--singly, never together--off and on, here and there, during
those slow-swift days of unremitting labor. If to labor desperately in a
heartfelt cause be really to pray, the ear of Heaven has been besieged!
But, in common humanity, there was always more crying to be done than
mortal brains or hands or accumulated wealth could compass. Once plunged
into that glorious losing struggle against the appalling hosts of
Misery, one could only fight grimly on--on--on--to the last hoarded
ounce of strength and determination.
But the odds were hopeless, fantastic! Those Titan forces of human
suffering and degradation, so half-wittedly let loose throughout Europe,
grew ever vaster, more terrible in maleficent power. They have ravaged
the world; they have ravaged the soul. An armistice has been signed, a
peace treaty is being drafted, a League of Nations is being formed--or
deformed--but those Titan forces still mock our poor efforts with
calamitous laughter. They are still in fiercely, stubbornly disputed,
but unquestionable possession of the field--insolent conquerors to this
hour. The real war, the essential war, the war against the unconsciously
self-willed annihilation of earth's tragic egoist, Man, has barely
begun. Its issue is ever uncertain; and it will not be ended in our
days....
Phil and Jimmy had gone over on the same boat, _via_ England, about the
middle of October, 1914. At that time organized American relief-work in
Europe was really nonexistent, and in order to obtain some freedom of
movement on the other side, and a chance to study out possible
opportunities for effective service, Phil had persuaded Heywood Sampson
to appoint him continental correspondent for the new review; and Jimmy
went with him, ostensibly as his private secretary.
It was all the merest excuse for obtaining passports and permission to
enter Belgium, if that should prove immediately advisable after reaching
London. It did not. Once in London, Phil had very soon found himself up
to the eyes in work. Through Mr. Page, the American Ambassador--so
lately dead--he was introduced to Mr. Herbert C. Hoover, and after a
scant twenty minutes of conversation was seized by Mr. Hoover and
plunged, with barely a gasp for breath, into that boiling sea of
troubles--the organization of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. It
does not take Mr. Hoover very long to size up the worth and stability of
any man; but in Phil he had found--and he knew he had found--a peculiar
treasure. Phil's unfailing patience, his thoroughness and courtesy,
quickly endeared him to all his colleagues and did much to make possible
the successful launching of the vastest and most difficult project for
relief ever undertaken by mortal men. Thus, almost overnight, Jimmy's
private secretaryship became anything but a sinecure. For nearly three
months their labors held them in London; then they were sent--not
unadventurously--to Brussels; there to arrange certain details of
distribution with Mr. Whitlock, the American Minister, and with the
directors of the Belgian _Comite National_.
But from Brussels their paths presently diverged. Jimmy, craving
activity, threw himself into the actual work of food distribution in the
stricken eastern districts; while Phil passed gravely on to Herculean
labors at the shipping station of the "C. R. B." in Rotterdam. He
remained in Rotterdam for upward of a year. Susan, meanwhile, had been
driven with the Belgian Army from Furnes, and was now attached to the
operating-room of a small field or receiving-hospital, which squatted
amphibiously in a waterlogged fragment of village not far from the Yser
and the flooded German lines. It was a post of danger, constantly under
fire; and she was the one woman who clung to it--who insisted upon being
permitted to cling to it, and carried her point; and, under conditions
fit neither for man nor beast, unflinchingly carried on. Mona Leslie was
no longer beside her. She had retired to Dunkirk to aid in the
organization of relief for ever-increasing hordes of civilian refugees.
And where, meanwhile, was one Ambrose Hunt, sometime _dilettante_ at
large?
It had proved impossible for me to sail with Phil and Jimmy. Just as
the preliminary arrangements were being made, Aunt Belle was stricken
down by apoplexy, while walking among the roses of her famous Spanish
gardens in Santa Barbara, and so died, characteristically intestate,
and, to my astonishment, I found that I had become the sole inheritor of
her estate; all of "Hyena Parker's" tainted millions had suddenly poured
their burdensome tide of responsibilities--needlessly and
unwelcomely--upon me. There was nothing for it. Out to California,
willy-nilly, I must go, and waste precious weeks there with lawyers and
house agents and other tiresome human necessities.
The one cheering thought in all this annoying pother was--and it was a
thought that grew rapidly in significance to me as I journeyed
westward--that fate had now made it possible for me to purify Hyena
Parker's millions by putting them to work for mankind.--Well, they have
since done their part, to the last dollar; they have spent themselves in
the losing battle against Misery, and are no more. Nothing became their
lives like the ending of them. But for all that, the world, you see, is
as it is--and the battle goes on.
Phil kept in touch with me from the other side, in spite of his
difficulties--as did Jimmy and Susan--and he had prepared the way for me
when at length I could free myself and sail. I was instructed to go to
Paris, direct, and fulfill certain duties there in connection with the
ever-increasing burdens and exasperations of the "C. R. B." I did so.
Six months later my activities were transferred to Berne; and--not to
trace in detail the evolution of my career, such as it was; for though
useful, I hope, it was never, like Phil's, exceptionally brilliant--I
had become, about the period of America's entry into the war, a modest
captain in the Red Cross, stationed at Evian, in connection with the
endless, heartbreaking task of repatriating refugees from the invaded
districts. And there my job rooted me until January of that dark winter
of our unspeakable depression, 1918.
With the beginning of America's entry into the war Phil had gone to
Petrograd for the American Red Cross, his commission being to save the
lives of as many Russian babies as possible by the distribution of
canned milk. Then, one evening--early in September, 1917, it must have
been--he started alone for Moscow, to lay certain wider plans for
disinterested relief-work before the sinister, the almost mythical
Lenine. That is the last that has ever been seen of him, and no word has
ever come forth directly from him out of the chaos men still call
Russia. The Red Cross and the American and French Governments have done
their utmost to discover his whereabouts, without avail. There are
reasons for believing he is not dead, nor even a prisoner. The dictators
of the soviet autocracy have been unable to find a trace of him, so they
affirm; and there are reasons also for believing that this is true.
As for Jimmy, you will not be surprised to learn that Jimmy had not long
been content with relief-work of any kind. He was young; and he had
_seen_ things--there, in the eastern districts. By midsummer of 1915 he
had resigned from the "C. R. B.," had made a difficult way to Paris, via
Holland and England, had enlisted in the Foreign Legion, and had
succeeded in getting himself transferred to the French Flying Corps.
Thus, months before we had officially abandoned our absurd neutrality,
he was flying over the lines--bless him! If Jimmy never became a
world-famous ace, well--there was a reason for that, too; the best of
reasons. He was never assigned to a combat squadron, for no one brought
home such photographs as Jimmy; taken tranquilly, methodically, at no
great elevation, and often far back of the German lines. His quiet
daring was the admiration of his comrades; anti-aircraft batteries had
no terrors for him; his luck was proverbial, and he grew to trust it
implicitly, seeming to bear a charmed life.
But Susan's luck had failed her, at last. On Thanksgiving Day of 1917
she was wounded in the left thigh by a fragment of shrapnel, a painful
wound whose effects were permanent. She will always walk slowly, with a
slight limp, hereafter. Mona Leslie got her down as far as Paris by
January 20, 1918, meaning to take her on to Mentone, where she had
rented a small villa for three months of long-overdue rest and
recuperation for them both. But on reaching Paris, Susan collapsed; the
accumulated strain of the past years struck her down. She was taken to
the comfortable little Red Cross hospital for civilians at Neuilly and
put to bed. A week of dangerous exhaustion and persistent insomnia
followed.
I knew nothing of it directly, at the moment. I knew only that on a
certain day Miss Leslie had planned to start with Susan from Dunkirk for
Mentone; I was waiting eagerly for word of their safe arrival in that
haven of rest and beauty; and I was scheming like a junior clerk for my
first vacation, for two weeks off, perhaps even three, that I might run
down to them there. But no word came. Throughout that first week in
Paris, Miss Leslie in her hourly anxiety neglected to drop me a line.
And then one night, as I sat vacantly on the edge of my bed in my hotel
room at Evian, almost too weary to begin the tedious sequence of
undressing and tumbling into it, came the second of my psychic reels, my
peculiar visions; briefer, this one, than my first; but no less
authentic in impression, and no less clear.