“Oh, it isn’t that.”
“What is it, then?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just—it’s just everything. You’re a type. I’m
not speaking of you personally, but of a lot—hundreds—thousands—I’ve
seen—young fellows who make me think of some other words in the Bible.”
“What are they?”
“They’re in Isaiah, I think. Everybody knows them.” She recited in a
smooth, rich voice that gave new beauty to the familiar passage: “‘Surely
he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: ... He was wounded for
our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement
of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we
like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and
the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.’” Her voice rose—and
fell again. “‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not
his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep
before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.’” She resumed
in a colloquial tone: “I’ve seen so much of that, haven’t you? The lamb
led dumb to the slaughter, and the quiet, wounded man hardly opening his
mouth for a moan. It’s heartbreaking.”
“And yet you’d bring your own people into it.”
“Because it’s sublime. Because I’ve seen for myself that the people who
take part in it are raised to levels they never knew it was possible to
reach. Haven’t you found the same thing for yourself?”
“Oh, I? I’m only—”
“You’re a man—and a young man. You’re a young man who’s been—I can’t
express it. It’s all in that fact. The people at home will only have to
look at you to see what language could never put before them. Language
isn’t equal to it. Imagination isn’t equal to it when the thing is over.
Don’t you find that? Doesn’t it often seem to you, now that you’re out
of it, as if it was a dream that had half escaped you? You try to tell
it—and you can’t. That’s why the people who’ve been there and come back
so often have nothing to say. That’s why so many of the books—except
those that contain diaries jotted down on the minute—that are written
afterward are so often disappointing. It’s like a great secret in every
man’s soul that he knows and thinks about, and can never get out of him.
So I shall make no attempt to do more than to tell the little things, the
small human details—”
You will see that I was following my own train of thought as I broke in,
“But New York life will get hold of you again.”
“It can’t get hold of me again, because there will be nothing for it to
catch on by. That’s all over for me. It could no more seize anything I
am now than you or I”—she pointed to a flock of little birds riding up
and down on a long, smooth billow—“from the deck of this ship could catch
one of those Mother Carey’s chickens.”
My sensations were those of a man who has received an extraordinary bit
of good news, like that of a great artistic triumph or the inheritance of
a fortune. It was something that went to the foundations of life, bathing
them in security and peace. As we continued to talk the swing of the boat
became the lulling of strong arms.
The conflict of which for the past few days my mind had been the
battle-ground was suddenly appeased. Woman, love, marriage, the more
comforting elements in life—were no longer in opposition to what had
become a man’s pressing and sacred duties. There could be a love which
asked for no moratorium; or rather, there could be a woman with the
courage of a soldier.
I began to see her as comparable to that crusader’s wife who, disguised
as a page, followed her lord on his journeys, to share his perils and
minister to his needs. In a modern girl it was not only romantic; it was
adorable. That it should have been done for me was beyond my power to
believe. None but the bravest and most daring spirit would have attempted
it—none but the heart capable of climbing higher and more adventurously
still. I had known her for a gallant soul from that midnight minute when
she pulled aside her hangings and found me lurking in her chamber; but I
had never made a forecast of the heroisms and fidelities expanding here
like the beauty from the heart of a rose.
_CHAPTER XXIII_
So we came to that last evening on board, of which I must now tell you.
It had taken me the intervening time to get used to the new outlook. The
habit of seeing myself surrounded by a whole stockade of prohibitions
was too strong to overcome in a flash. I had to let my mind emerge into
freedom gently, telling myself each day that with a wife like this I
could serve the cause more devotedly than ever, since she would be
serving it too.
Of that dedication to a cause I was possibly too much aware. My uniform
made me aware of it. My game leg and my sightless eye made me aware of
it. The need of whole peoples, like the French and British and Italian,
of every man who could fire a gun or ram home a bayonet or speak a
rousing word—that more than anything else seemed to put a consecration
upon me of which I was as foolishly and yet as loftily conscious as
a modern king, accustomed to a bowler hat, when he rides through the
streets with his crown on.
And on the last evening there was enough of the ecstatic in the air to
justify this sense of a mission.
The voyage, which had not been without the exciting stimulus of danger,
was successfully over. The west was actually reached, and the things
done left behind us. The things to be done were making our pulses beat
faster and our energies yearn forward. To-morrow with its summons to
activity was more keenly in our consciousness than to-day. Doctors,
nurses, returning soldiers, the sparse handful of business men—we were
already in heart ashore, walking in streets, riding in tram-cars, eating
in dining-rooms, sleeping in beds, taking part in hard work, and deeming
these things a privilege. Voices and laughter in the clear, still night,
and the clicking of heels on the deck, were part of the relief and
joyousness.
Late in the afternoon we had picked up the Nantucket light-ship, which
rested like a star on the water. Now the horizon was being strung with
beads of light, one, two, three, or little clusters at a time, behind
which we knew that advancing night was lighting myriads of lamps all
the way to the Pacific. On the Atlantic coast it was already dark, with
cities and towns ablaze, and villages and farm-houses lit by kindly,
shimmering windows. In the Middle West it was twilight, with electrics
spangling the office-buildings here and there, and pale-gold flowers
strewn over the prairie floors. Beyond the Mississippi it would still be
day, but day dissolving gorgeously, softly, into sunset and moonrise and
the everlasting magic of the stars.
As she and I hung over the deck rail side by side we felt ourselves on
the edge of wonders. The Old World was in need of us, and we were in need
of the New. To us who were New World born, and who were coming back to
generous, easy-going welcome after the unspeakable things we had seen,
the craving for New World brotherhood and vigor was like that of hunger
or thirst. This much we admitted in so many words—even she.
She was still elusive; she was still mysterious. Though during the past
few days she had not resisted a certain habit as to the place and hour
at which we should find ourselves together and had been willing to talk
freely on any theme connected with the cause, she took flight from a hint
of the personal, like a bird at an approaching footstep.
Nevertheless, she was so far responsive as to say in answer to some
question of mine, “My immediate plans—”