CHAMBÉRY, the capital of Savoy, a town situated toward the south of the
extreme east of France, has not always been as well known to America as
its more important neighbors, Grenoble and Lyons. Up to a few years ago
it was celebrated chiefly because it was the location of the chateau of
the old dukes of Savoy and the birthplace of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Now
it is known to thousands and thousands of Americans because during the
great War it was metamorphosed into a rest center for colored soldiers.
To the tourist’s mind it might stand out for three reasons: as a city in
which it is well nigh impossible to get a lost telegram repeated; as a
place where one may procure at very little expense the most excellent of
manicures and the most delicious of little cakes. And, thirdly, as the
scene of a novel by Henri Bordeaux, “La Peur de Vivre,” the story of a
young girl who, afraid to face the perils of life, forfeited therefore
its pleasures.
Certainly Alice Du Laurens, the young woman of Bordeaux’ novel, would
have been no more astonished to find herself in New York than Maggie
Ellersley, whom she so closely resembled in character, was to find
herself in Chambéry. The nervous shock which Harry Portor had predicted
from her encounter with Neal followed only too surely, but for another
reason. The flesh wound itself had been negligible and she might have
recovered without the nervous breakdown, had not Mr. Simpson in an agony
of remorse at the danger to which he had so unwittingly exposed her,
subjected her again with equally complete unconscious thoroughness to
another shock. He was always presenting her with flowers, magazines, and
journals, his eyes silently beseeching her forgiveness. For Maggie had
never betrayed his share in the disaster and had thus made him her eager
servitor forever.
Two weeks after the accident he brought her an evening paper. “Just
picked this up as I come along, Miss Maggie. But there’s some flowers
comin’ later on.”
She took the folded paper listlessly and let her eyes travel over the
front sheet. A tiny paragraph leaped at her from the bottom of a column.
“Negro Leaps In Front Of Subway Train.”
“A Negro, later identified as Henderson Neal, was killed instantly this
afternoon——”
They found it hard to quiet her. “I killed him,” she moaned to Harry
Portor, hastily summoned. “His death is as much due to me as though I
had poisoned him. I did poison his life.”
Portor was at his wits’ end. She was too weak to be sent away from home
by herself. Her mother could not leave the house, for Maggie’s illness
had decidedly crippled her resources. And once more they were dependent
on lodgers for their livelihood.
Once Portor spoke to her of Peter, thinking to comfort her, but the
allusion only made her worse. “Peter! I was getting ready to ruin his
life, too. Oh, how awful everything is. If I could only see him again!”
It was all very odd, Harry thought, wondering if Joanna could interpret
this. The situation was too complex for him to handle.
It was her first cry of penitence, and as she lay there day after day
reviewing her life she came to understand and to analyze for what it was
that quality of hers, that tendency to climb to the position she wanted
over the needs and claims of others. Now that she had no strength, now
that life stretched around her a dreary procession of sullen, useless
days, she realized the beauty inherent in life itself, the miracle of
health and sane nerves, of the ability to make a living, of being
helpful to others.
“Why, Henderson, even Henderson—if I could have taken him back that
first time, I might have changed him, got him to work at something
profitable and interesting. Maybe,” she thought, for the first time
since her marriage, “we might have had a child. And what difference did
it make if I didn’t go with those—‘dickties?’ I could have had a nice
time; I used to have nice times, lovely cosy times with Anna and Tom.”
That brought her to the thought of Peter. “Of course, he didn’t want me.
And I never loved him. He always did and always will love Joanna.
Whether he gets her or not, she’s the woman for him. He needs her as I
need Philip.” She lay quite still then, concentrating, probing her
inmost spirit. “As I need no one,” she said to herself aloud. “If I ever
get well again I shall be what I want to be without depending on
anybody. And I shall always be content.”
Who shall explain the relation between mind and spirit? She grew better
after that, began to sit up and, joining one of her mother’s myriad
committees, engaged in the preparation of outfits for the men overseas.
Very slowly, almost reluctantly her interest in life came creeping back
with her strength. She grew to be like the little girl she had been
long, long ago, before her overpowering desire got possession of her.
But she needed the stimulus of an occupation which would take her out of
herself.
“If I could find something which would make me forget everything that is
past, Harry,” she told the young doctor. He had fallen into the habit of
taking her on his rounds two and three times a week. The air did her
good and the occasion gave him a chance to study her.
“It will turn up, the right thing always does,” he comforted her. “You
know you are lots better already.”
“Yes, so much better than you can guess,” she returned, leaving him
slightly mystified at the peculiar expression with which she was
regarding him. He would have been more astonished if he could have read
her thought. “Once,” she said to herself, “I might have tried to make
him like me, tried to get him to marry me and lift me out of my
obscurity. My, I’m glad that’s over.”
Once on her return from one of these trips her mother came rushing to
her. “Guess who’s here, Maggie? But, pshaw, you’d never guess. John
Howe, do you remember?”
John Howe who had come to her rescue in the early days! “Now you just
set still,” her mother fussed about her, “and I’ll bring him up. He’s
the Reverend John Howe now. I’ll bet he’ll do you good.”
Ministers for some reason are either fat or lean. John Howe ran to the
lean type. He came in looking very much as usual, to stay only “five
minutes,” he told Mrs. Ellersley.
He stayed five hours and Maggie poured out her heart, her first liking
for Philip, her marriage, her discovery of her husband’s “profession,”
her engagement to Peter and her insensate determination to hold on to
him.
“And then Henderson killed himself. Oh, John, I’ve been a wicked, wicked
creature.”
“Not as bad as all that, Maggie, but life has been as unkind to you as
though you had been. That’s the trouble,—whether you burn yourself
intentionally or not, you get hurt all the same. And it’s all over now,
you’ve quite decided to let—to break with this Bye fellow?”
“You were right at first. To let him go. Yes.”
“H’m, what do you suppose he’ll do then, go back to this other girl?”
“It sounds so funny to hear you talk of her that way, so slightingly,
almost,” said Maggie, a little surprised.
“Well, of course, she’s nothing to me. Daresay she’s a nice enough girl,
though she sounds a bit priggish. Do you think she’ll take him back?”
“Oh, I hardly think so. You see, she’s the only one of us who’s kept on
and got what she wanted out of life. She’s on the stage, a dancer, the
success of the season! Peter’s just barely through school, if indeed he
did get through, and, anyway, he’s still as poor as a church mouse. And
I’m just Miss Nobody. The thing is—if Peter wants to go to her, he can.”
“And what will you do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t guess. Something I hope very different that will
take me as completely out of myself as though I had been transposed to a
fourth dimension. Can’t you think of something, John?”
“I don’t know, I believe I have a sort of idea. Are you pretty strong
now, Maggie?”
“The Doctor says I’m as strong as I’ll ever be without change of
interests and surroundings. Let’s hear about your idea.”
“No, that’s enough for to-day. Besides, I’m not sure enough of it.” But
he came back the next day fortified. The Young Men’s Christian
Association had decided to send a few colored women workers among the
colored men at the front. Two had already gone, but more were needed. If
he could get the position for Maggie it would prove just the change she
needed. Did she think she could go?
“Me,” Maggie breathed, “go to France! To help the poor boys! Oh, I’d
love it, John.”
It was the thing for her. Of course, its accomplishment took time and
much handling of red tape, but it did come to pass and Maggie, leaving
behind her an apprehensive mother and cousin—for the day of submarines
was not yet over—set sail for France. She landed at Brest, from Brest
she went to Paris, where she was summoned to Chambéry to help Mrs.
Terry, the colored worker, in charge of the leave-center in the Savoyard
capital.
Maggie was taken out of herself completely. The voyage, the danger, the
foreign language and new customs went to her head like wine. The need of
the men overwhelmed and staggered her. They were pathetically proud of
her—and of Mrs. Terry, too,—glad to be allowed a sight of her bright
face, to exchange a word. To be permitted to dance with her sent any one
of them into a delirium of ecstatic pride. They were brave fellows,
conducting themselves as became soldiers, persistently cheerful in the
face of the hateful prejudice that followed and flayed them in the very
act of laying down their lives for their country. For a time the Negro
soldiers had been permitted to go over to Aix-les-Bains once a week, to
reap the benefit of the baths, but a white American woman seeing in this
an approach to “social equality,” contrived to start a protest which
resulted in a withdrawal of this permission and the black men were
confined strictly to Chambéry.
A new sense of values came to Maggie, living now in the midst of scenes
like these. The determinedly cheerful though somewhat cynical attitude
of “the boys” in such conditions seemed to her the most wonderful thing
she had ever witnessed. It was as though they said to hostile forces:
“Oh, yes, we know you’ll do for us in every possible way, slight us,
cheat us, betray us, but you can’t kill the real life within us, the
essential us. You may make us distrustful, incredulous, disillusioned,
but you can’t make us despair or corrode us with bitterness. Call us
children if you like, but in spite of everything, life _is_ worth
living, and we mean to live it to the full.”
So many impressions, so many happenings crowded in on Maggie during
those days that she failed to differentiate between the strange and the
unusual, the calculable and the unexpected. So that on the night when a
new detachment of men filed into the canteen and she glanced up to find
that the tall lieutenant to whom she was handing a cup of cocoa was
Peter, she did not feel at first astonished. Afterwards it came to her
that, subconsciously, she had noticed how subdued, how cautious his
greeting to her had been. His manner toward Mrs. Terry, whom he had
known slightly in New York, seemed by contrast almost effusive.
“That,” she told herself later, angrily, “was because he didn’t want to
encourage me. How he dreads me! Poor Peter. I’ll put him at his ease.”
She was to make arrangements the next day for a trip to Lake Bourget. On
her way to the station she spied Peter sitting, a desolate and lonely
figure, in the little parkway that ran through the broad street. He did
not see her advancing and she had a chance to examine him. His face,
still handsome, was thin and lined and his eyes were hopeless. She held
out her hand.
He let it drop after a brief pressure.
“I was thinking of you, Maggie.”
“And I of you. How wretched you look, Peter!”
He told her, then, of his wound and of his stay in a hospital in Toul.
“My arm is all right now. I’ve even been in another engagement. In a
month at the most, I expect to return to the front again.”
“Do you dread it?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Dread it? My goodness, no. I think I
prefer war to ordinary living. It is so quick and decisive. Of course,
there are some tiresome delays. We were held up for six weeks at Brest
and the transportation overseas was very slow. But I didn’t care, I made
a fine friend on account of it. I wish I’d met him sooner.” He didn’t
tell her the name. That, he thought morosely, would only start her off
again on his social standing. “He was killed,” he ended hastily.
“I’m so sorry. That’s why you’re so dismal.”
“Perhaps, and then, I don’t understand anything more. Life is all a maze
and I can’t find my way out. I hope I get killed in my next engagement.”
She bit her lip at that. How blind she had been! “Well, I’m going to
obviate one difficulty for you, Peter. I’ve decided not to
marry—anybody. I think I want to try life on my own. No, don’t say
anything. You can’t very well thank me and there’s no use pretending
you’re sorry. It was a bad business, Peter, and I’m glad it’s over.”
Before he could speak she had left him. His wound and the loss of
Meriwether, his constant brooding, had wrought in him an habitual
dejection. But he was conscious of a slight lifting of the pall which
hung over him, a loosening of the web.
They saw very little of each other in the five or six days before his
departure. Maggie was rather glad of this. She wanted no reminders to
spoil her feeling of having begun everything anew with a clean slate.
Her new-found independence was a source of the greatest joy. Each night
she mapped out afresh her future life. When she returned to America she
would start her hair work again, she would inaugurate a chain of Beauty
Shops. First-class ones. Of her ability to make a good living she had no
doubt. And she would gather about her, friends, simple kindly people
whom she liked for themselves: who would seek her company with no
thought of patronage. She would stand on her two feet, Maggie Ellersley,
serene, independent, self-reliant. The idea exalted her and she went
about her work the picture of optimism and happiness.
The boys called her “Sunlight.” They all liked her and she was kind to
them. Some of them were fine fellows, well educated and successful. It
was Maggie’s greatest secret triumph that in these particularly
favorable conditions she felt no impulse to attempt to realize that old
insistent ambition.
On the utmost peak of the Mont du Nivrolet, which towers east of
Chambéry, directly opposite the _Chaîne de l’Epine_, gleams an immense
cross twenty-five meters high, visible from all the surrounding country.
At sunset it stood out boldly and Maggie, looking at it daily at that
hour, came to regard it as a sort of luminous symbol of faith. “Oh, God,
you have brought me peace; perhaps some day I shall know happiness.”
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