“Oh, well, I’m the last person in the world to go poking into other
people’s business.”
“Exactly.”
“Only people do like to tell me things.”
“I can quite understand that—when they’ve anything to tell.”
“Which is what I thought you might have.”
“How could I have anything to tell when I’ve just spent two years in
trenches and hospitals?”
“You haven’t been in trenches and hospitals during the last ten days. Oh,
don’t say anything if you don’t want to. I’m not in the least curious.”
“Of course you’re not. No one would ever think so.”
“I’ve only been—well, just a little afraid.”
“What were you afraid of?”
“Of the situation. I suppose it wasn’t an accident that you took the boat
that she was on?”
“No, it wasn’t an accident. But what has that to do with it?”
“Just that much—that you did it on purpose.”
“So that you were afraid on my account?”
“No; on hers. You see, she’s been so terribly talked about that now that
it’s beginning again—”
“Oh, it’s beginning again, is it?”
She said, mysteriously, “Stephen Cantyre is rather a goose, you know.”
“In what way?”
“In the way of dropping hints when he’d much better keep still. He’s so
crazy about her—”
“It’s a pity for him to be dropping hints if he isn’t sure.”
“Oh, he must be sure enough! After the way she treated him before, he’d
never expose himself to the same thing the second time. It isn’t that
he’s not sure. It’s just the way he does it—confiding in every one, but
only saying that he hopes.”
“If he only hopes, it doesn’t bind any one but himself.”
“It isn’t a question of binding; it’s one of the situation. If she’s let
him hope—the second time—she’s bound. If it was only the first time—or if
she hadn’t made such an insane reputation for herself—don’t you see?—the
whole thing is in that.”
“I should think the whole thing was in whether or not she was in love
with him.”
“Well, it isn’t. If she was as much in love with somebody else as Juliet
she couldn’t throw over Stephen Cantyre now. She’d have to be put under
restraint if she did—shut up in some sort of ward. The community wouldn’t
stand for it.”
“It might be a nine days’ wonder, of course.”
“It would be one of those nine days’ wonders that last all your life.
She’d be done for.” She went on in another key. “But, of course, her
father and mother wouldn’t let her. They’re delighted. He’s very well
off—and a good fellow, who’ll give her everything she wants.”
“But what good will that do if she doesn’t care for him?”
Her animation went into the eclipse that always came over her when she
touched the heart of things.
“What makes you think she doesn’t—if it’s not a rude question?”
“The fact that she turned him down before.”
She broke in with that directness which she never hesitated to make use
of when the time came.
“You don’t think she cares anything about you?”
I considered two or three ways of meeting this, the one I adopted being
to put on a rather inane smile.
“What if she did?”
“She’d just have to get over it, that’s all. You, too!”
“Why?”
“I needn’t tell you why. You must see for yourself. Or, rather, I’ve told
you already. There are ways in which an engagement is more important than
a marriage—any engagement; and when it’s a second engagement to the same
man—If she’d been married to him, and couldn’t get along, why, no one
would think the worse of her if she got a divorce and married some one
else. She would have given him a try; she would have done her best. But
just to take him up and put him down, and take him up and put him down
again, without trying him at all—my dear Frank, it isn’t done!”
“But suppose we did it?”
“In that case it might be the world well lost for love—but the world
would be lost; and you needn’t be under any misconception about it.
Personally I’d stand by any one through almost anything; I have stood
by Regina in the past when lots of other women have given her the cold
shoulder because of her—”
“Call it anything you like. Most of us have other names for it. All I
want to say now is that I wouldn’t stand by her in this; nor by you,
either. If you had come to me when you were in your other troubles—three
or four years ago—you’d have found me just the same as if you’d been
keeping straight. Any one can go to the bad. There isn’t a family that
hasn’t some one who’s done it. But this would be the kind of thing—
Frank, old boy, I’m telling you right now, so that you’ll know where you
stand with me. I’d have to be the first to cut you both.”
To this there were several retorts I could have made, any of them quite
crushing to Annette; but I was thinking of the practical difficulties
before us. The rôle of unscrupulous coquette was the last in which Regina
would care to appear; that of cad was equally distasteful to me. Had it
been possible to make one plunge and be over with it, it would have been
different; as it was, the preliminaries—the facing of all the people who
would have to be faced—the explaining all the things that would have to
be explained—couldn’t but be devilish.
I was just beginning, “Why should you assume that we are thinking of any
such thing—?”
But before I could finish the sentence the door opened gently and a
maid’s voice announced, “Mrs. Barry.”
Of all the people in the world, this lady was the last I wanted to meet
at that moment. Knowing how I must have figured in her eyes in the past,
I was planning for the future to figure in a worse light still. I had
thrown her kindness back in her face and never given her an explanation.
She must have known that my seeming flight from Long Island after that
last Sunday in June, 1914, had left her daughter unhappy; and the reason
had remained a mystery.
She gave me the first glance as she entered, and only the second to our
hostess. The awful severity of those who are temperamentally gentle and
unjudging was in the very coldness of her eye.
She was a charming, delicate, semi-invalid woman who seemed to have been
spun, like the clothes she wore, out of the least durable materials in
life. Regina had the same traits, but harder, stronger, and more lasting.
It was difficult to think of the latter as an invalid; while you couldn’t
see the mother as anything else.
Prettily old-fashioned, she seemed not to have changed her style of
dressing since the eighteen-seventies. The small bonnet might have dated
from the epoch of professional beauties when Mrs. Langtry was a girl.
The long fur pelisse with loose hanging sleeves was of no period at all.
I think she wore a train. In her own house she habitually did, and she
seemed to have just flung on the pelisse and driven down the Avenue in
her motor.
She greeted me politely, without enthusiasm, but with due regard to
the fact that I was a wounded hero home from the wars. Talking of the
invasion of Rumania, she showed herself much more alive to America’s
international duty than any of the few men I had met since my landing.
“I wish we could get my husband and Stephen to see things that way,”
she continued, sweetly, over her tea-cup. “They’re so pacifist, both
of them. My husband feels that we’ve nothing to do with it, and Stephen
is opposed to war on any ground. You must talk to him, Mr.—or captain,
isn’t it? Oh, major? You must talk to him, Major Melbury. He’ll listen to
you.” She turned to Annette. “You know, Annette, I just ran in to share
our good news with you. Regina and Stephen—they’ve made it up again—and
they’re so happy!” An oblique glance included me. She was getting the
satisfaction that women receive from a certain kind of revenge. “Poor
darling! You don’t know how hard she’s tried, Annette. People haven’t
understood her. All she’s wanted was to be sure of herself—and now she
is. She’s really been in love with Stephen all these years, only she
didn’t know it. That is, she knew it; and yet—But I’m sure you see it.
You’re one of the few who’ve never been unkind to her. She wanted me to
tell you. She’ll be so glad to have you know it, too, Major Melbury.
Perhaps she told you on the boat. I think she said she did. I don’t quite
remember. There’s been so much to say in the last few hours. There always
is at such a time, don’t you think?... No; they’re not going to announce
an engagement. It would only make more talk, after all the talk there’s
been. One of these days they’ll be married—without saying anything about
it. And, oh!—I know you’ll be interested, Annette, though it may bore
Major Melbury—Stephen has bought that very nice house—the Endsleigh
Jarrotts lived in it for a little while—on Park Avenue near Sixty-sixth
Street. Ralph Coningsby is going to remodel it for them, and I’m sure it
will be awfully attractive. That’s where they’ll live.”
It was my opportunity. I could have shouted out there and then and made a
scene.
Do you think me a coward for not doing it? Do you think me a fool?
All kinds of speeches were hot within me—and I kept them back. More
correctly, I didn’t keep them back; I simply couldn’t utter them. I
couldn’t give pain to this sweet lady sipping her tea so contentedly;
I couldn’t give pain to Annette. Annette was enjoying the situation in
which we found ourselves; the sweet lady had got compensation for months,
for years, of wondering and unhappiness in those seemingly artless
words, “She’s really been in love with Stephen all these years, only she
didn’t know it.” I knew they were spoken for my benefit. Between the
lines, between the syllables, they said, “And if you think she was ever
in love with you you’re wrong.” Whether the sweet lady believed her own
statements or not made little difference. It would gratify her all her
life to remember that she had had the chance of making them.
So I came away, following the line of least resistance, because I didn’t
see what else I could do.
I didn’t see what else I could do when Cantyre came into my bedroom late
that night.
I knew he would be dining at the Barrys’, and that he would come looking
me up after his return. To avoid him I had the choice between staying
out and going to bed. My physical condition kept me from staying out
very late, and so I took the other alternative. It made no difference,
however, since he waked Lovey by pounding on the door, and insisted on
coming in.
Dropping into the arm-chair beside my bed, with no light but that which
streamed in behind him from the sitting-room, he took me on my weak side
by beginning to talk about the war.
I have said that my mission had become unreal and fantastic, but that was
only in relation to my personal fitness for the task. That the war was
a holy war, to be fought to a holy end, remained the alpha and omega of
my convictions. And to Cantyre war of any kind was plainly unholy war,
productive of unholy reactions. What I felt as he talked may best be
expressed by Lovey’s words next morning when he betrayed the fact that he
had been listening.
“Didn’t it get yer goat, Slim, the way the doctor went on last night?”
It did get my goat, and I restrained myself only because I had been
warned in London to be patient with Americans. “You must treat them as
wise parents treat their sons,” I had been told. “Help them to see for
themselves—and when they do that you can trust them.” So the best I could
do was to help Cantyre to see for himself; and to make any headway in
that I had to pretend to be tolerant.
“No one contends that war is the ideal method for settling human
difficulties,” I admitted; “but as long as human society stands on
certain planks in its platform there’ll be no other way.”
“Then isn’t this the time to take another way?”
“No; because you’ve got to change your bases of existence first. You
can’t change your effects without first changing your causes, any more
than you can graft an apple on an oak.”
“But even without removing the cause you can still sometimes nip the
effect.”
“Which is what in the present instance we tried to do, and didn’t succeed
in. All the trend of education during thirty years has been in the
direction of eliminating war, while still keeping the principle that
makes for war as part of the foundation of our life. We created a system
of international law; we set up a Hague Tribunal; many of us had come to
the conclusion that no great war could ever again take place; but the law
by which human beings prefer as yet to live outwitted us and brought war
upon us whether we would or not. So long as you keep the causes you must
have the effects.”
“Then let us do away with the causes.”
“Yes! Let us. Only, to do that in time for the present situation we
should have begun five hundred years ago. You can’t put out the fire the
ages have kindled as you’d blow out a candle. When you’ve spent centuries
in preparing your mine, and fixed a time fuse to make it explode, you’ve
nothing to do but to let it go off. This war wasn’t made overnight. The
world has been getting ready for it as long as there have been human
beings to look askance at one another. Now we’ve got it—with all its
horrors, but also with all its compensations.”
“Compensations for the lives it has ruined?”
“In the lives it has saved—yes. You’ll never get its meaning unless you
see it as a great regenerative process.”
“Do you mean to tell me that we can only be regenerated by fire and sword
and rapine?”
“Not at all! We’re regenerated by courage and honor and sacrifice and the
sense that every man gets—every Tommy, every poilu, every bluejacket—that
he personally is essential to man’s big fight in his struggle upward.
It’s one of the queer things of the whole business that out of the
greatest wrong human beings can inflict on one another—to go to war with
them—there can come the highest benefits to every individual who gets
himself ready to receive them. It makes one believe in an intelligence
compelling the race toward good, however much we may be determined to go
the other way.”
He tuned his voice to a new key.
“Oh, I’ve never doubted that; and now, old chap, now I—I see it.”
I knew what was coming. It was the great subject that could eclipse even
that of the war. I had just force to pull the bedclothes up about my
mouth and mutter a suffocated, “How?”
“What I hinted this morning. It’s all—it’s all come right. I used to
think it never would, sometimes. And then—don’t laugh, old boy!—but then
I’d say to myself that God would never have made me feel as I did unless
He meant something to come of it. Religion keeps telling you to trust;
and I did trust—on and off.”
Again I had an opportunity; but again such words as rose in me choked
themselves back in my throat. I could have told him that she was ready
to come to me if I lifted a finger. I knew I should have to tell him
sometime, and it occurred to me that it might as well be now. It was the
words that failed me, not the intention; or if it was the intention, it
was the intention in any degree that made it compulsory.