“Of opinion chiefly—but of very vital opinion.”
“Do you mean about the war?”
She said with a force like that of a suppressed cry: “He wants me not to
have anything more to do with it! And I—I can’t stop—not while it’s going
on. I—I must be doing something. It’s one of the reasons why I could
marry him—that he’s a doctor—and I could take him over there—where they
need him so much.”
“And he won’t go?”
“He doesn’t say that exactly; but he doesn’t want to. He thinks it’s all
wrong—that when it comes to brutality, one side is as bad as the other.”
“Oh, he’ll get over that—if you insist; and then you’ll marry him.”
“Perhaps so—if I haven’t already married you.”
“What makes you think you may have married me?”
“You said you’d make me.”
And in the end, when Annette came back, we left it at that, with
everything up in the air.
_CHAPTER XXVI_
More weeks followed, of which my record is chiefly in the drama of public
events.
Vast as these were at the time, they seem even vaster in the retrospect.
As my memory goes back to them they are like prodigious portents in the
sky, awful to look at and still more awful to think about. A time will
come when we shall find it amazing merely to have lived through such
happenings.
Before the invaders the Rumanian towns were going down like houses built
of blocks. In her attitude to Rumania, Russia was a mystery—a husband
who sees his wife fighting for her life and doing hardly anything to
help her. The rumors, true or false, that reached us might have been
torn from some stupendous, improbable romance—a feeble Czar, a beautiful
and traitorous Czarina, a corrupt nobility, an army betrayed, a people
seething in dreams and furies and ignorance. Washington, having gone so
far as to ask the Allied nations their peace conditions, had received
them—restitution, reparation, and future security. Then late in that
month of January, 1917, there came to people like me an unexpected shock.
Before the Senate President Wilson delivered the speech of which the tag
that ran electrically round the world was peace without victory.
I mention these things because they are the only waymarks of a time
during which my private life seemed to be drearily and hopelessly at a
standstill. The deadlock of the nations reacted on myself. Mentally I was
at grips with destiny, but nothing made any progress. I was exactly where
I had started, as regards Regina, as regards Cantyre, as regards Annette,
as regards the father and mother Barry. Outwardly I was on friendly terms
with them all, and on no more than friendly terms with any one.
The Barrys invited me to dinner, and I went. Cantyre made up a theater
party—he was fond of this form of recreation—and I went to that. Annette
asked me to a Sunday lunch at which Cantyre and Regina were guests.
The force of organized life held us together as a cohesive group; the
operation of conventional good manners kept us to courtesies. That
any one was happy I do not believe; but life threw its mask even on
unhappiness.
I got in, of course, an occasional word with Regina, which, nevertheless,
didn’t help me. As far as I could observe, she lived and moved in a kind
of hypnotic state, from which nothing I knew how to say could wake her.
She was always waiting for me to give the word, and I was afraid to give
it. If there was hypnotism, it affected us both, since I was as deeply in
the trance as she.
Now and then, however, she came out of it with some brief remark which
gave me a lead and perhaps made me hope. One such occasion was at the
theater. Cantyre had not put me next to her, but there was an entr’acte
when I found his place empty and slipped into it.
“And how are events taking their course?” I asked, with a semblance of
speaking cheerily.
“I’m waiting to see.”
“Still?”
“Still.”
“And how long is that to go on?”
“Till events have shaped their course in a way that will tell me what to
do.”
“How shall you know that?”
“How does the twig know when the current takes it from the spot where it
has been caught and carries it down-stream?”
“Oh, but you’ve got intelligence.”
“Any intelligence I’ve got implores me to keep on waiting.”
“So that you’re not going to be married right away?”
“I shall not be married till I see it’s the obvious thing to do.”
“Not even to me?”
“That’s different. I’ve already told you—”
“That if I give the word— But don’t you see I can’t give it?”
“Exactly. You’re waiting for the sign as much as I am.”
“What sign?”
“We shall recognize it when the time comes.”
“Where will it come from?”
“Right up out of life; I don’t know where, nor how.”
“Who’ll give it to us?”
She had only time, as Cantyre returned to his seat, to send me a long,
slantwise look, with the underscored words, “You know!”
Another time was in the regrouping of guests, after Annette’s luncheon.
Finding myself beside her at a window, I asked the plain question, “Are
you engaged to Cantyre?”
“I’m just where I was when I told you about it on board ship. He hasn’t
asked me to be more definite.”
“Is he just where he was?”
“I think he is, in that—in that he expects me to marry him.”
“And you leave him under that impression?”
“I don’t know what else to do—till I get the sign.”
“You’re still looking for that?”
“Yes. Aren’t you?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Oh, but you are, whether you’re aware of it or not.”
“And suppose he urges you before the sign comes?”
“I shall still wait.”
“And suppose I urged you?”
“I’d take that as the sign.”
And after the guests went I stayed behind and told the whole story to
Annette. So long as there were no clandestine meetings under her roof,
she was as detached and sympathetic and non-committal as a chorus in a
Greek play.
“Why don’t you give her the sign, if it’s not a rude question?” she
asked, while a marvelous succession of ripples circled over her duskiness.
“Because I’m afraid to. Think what it would mean to Cantyre, who’s been
so white with me all these years.”
“As well as to every one concerned, including herself and you. I’m glad
you’ve enough common sense to feel that. See here, Frank,” she went on,
kindly, “you’ve got to pull yourself out of this state of mind. It’s
doing you no good. When you ought to be at work for your country, which
needs you desperately, you’re sulking over a love-affair. Buck up! Be a
sport! Be a man! There are lots of nice girls in New York. I’ll find you
some one.”
But at that I ran away.
_CHAPTER XXVII_
Within a few days I saw the correctness of Annette’s summing up.
A medieval legend tells of an angel being sent to Satan with the message
that God meant to take from the devil all the temptations with which he
had seduced mankind. To this Satan resigned himself because he couldn’t
help it, begging of the angel that he should be left with just one—and
that the least important. “Which?” asked the angel. “Depression,” said
Satan. The angel considered the request, found that depression cut but
slight figure as a sin, and went back to heaven, leaving it behind him.
“Good!” laughed Satan, as the celestial vision faded out. “In this one
gift I’ve secured the whole bag of tricks.”
And that is what I was to find.
I was depressed on leaving Europe. I grew more depressed because of the
experience on board ship. In New York I was still more depressed. There
was a month in which all things worked together for evil; and then I came
to the place at which Satan had desired to have me.
I have not said that during all this time I made no attempt to look up
my old friends at the Down and Out or, beyond an occasional argument
with Cantyre, to fulfil the mission with which I had been intrusted.
Ralph Coningsby had come and offered me work, and I had refused it. Even
the march of public events, with the introduction of lawless submarine
warfare and the breaking off of diplomatic relations between Germany
and the United States, hadn’t roused me. I marked the slow rise of the
impulse toward war in the breasts of the American people, as passionless
and as irresistible as an incoming tide, but it seemed to have nothing to
do with me. I was out of it, flung aside by a fate that had made sport of
me.
I was so far from the current of whatever could be called life that I
grew apathetic. Though I hadn’t seen Regina for weeks, I sat down under
the impalpable obstacles between us, making no effort to overcome them.
I ate and drank and slept and brooded on the futility of living, and let
the doing so fill my time. Lovey was worried, and dogged me round till
there were minutes when I could have sprung on him and choked him.
Then came the afternoon when I decided that Satan must have his way.
There is a hotel in New York of which I had many recollections because
I had frequented its barroom in the days before I went altogether down.
It is a somewhat expensive-looking barroom, with heavy mahogany, gilded
cornices, and frescoes of hunting-scenes on the wall. Hanging over the
bar at any time during the day or night can be seen all the types that
are commonly known as sporting, from the dashing to the cheap.
They might have been the same as on that day when I turned my back upon
the place five years previously. They hung in the same attitudes; they
called for the same drinks; they used the same profanities, though with
some novelty in the slang. With my limp, my black patch, and my general
haggardness, I felt like a ghost returning among them.
Timidly I approached a barman at leisure and asked for a cocktail of a
brand for which I used to have a liking. I carried it off to a table
placed inconspicuously behind the door leading to and from the hotel.
Putting it on the table, I stared at its amber reflections.
I had come back to the same old place at last. It was curious; but there
I was. All my struggling, all my wandering, all my up-hill work, all my
days and nights in the trenches, all my suffering, all my love—everything
had combined together to land me just here, where, so to speak, I had
begun. It was the old story of dragging up the cliff, only to fall over
the precipice. It seemed to be my fate. There was no escaping it.
I might not take more than that one drink during that afternoon; but I
knew it would be a beginning. I should come back again; and I should come
back again after that. Another type of man would do nothing of the kind;
but I was my own type.
Very deliberately I said good-by to the world I had known for the past
three years and more. I said good-by to work, to ambition, to salvation,
to country, to love. Back, far back in my mind I was saying the same
deliberate good-by to God. I shouldn’t rest now till everything was gone.
The glass was still untasted on the table. I was taking my time. The
farewells on which I was engaged couldn’t be hurried. The fate in store
for me would wait.
Then the door behind which I sat began to open. It opened slowly,
timidly, stealthily, as if the person entering was afraid to come in. The
action stirred the curiosity, and I watched.
Before I saw a face I saw a hand. Rather, I saw four fingers from the
knuckles to the nails, as if some one was steadying himself by the sheer
force of holding on. They were old, thin, twisted fingers, and I knew at
a glance I had seen them before.
The door continued to open, stealthily, timidly, slowly; and then,
looking like a spirit rather than a man—a neat, respectable spirit
wearing a silver star in his buttonhole, with trembling hands and a
woeful quiver to the corner of his lower lip—Lovey stood in the barroom.
He stood as if he had never been in any such place before. He was like a
visitant from some other sphere—dazed, diaphanous, unearthly.
He didn’t look at the table behind the door. His gaze was far off. I
could see it scanning the backs of the hangers across the bar. Then it
went over the tables one by one, traveling nearer and nearer.
Just before the dim eyes reached me I said: “Hello, Lovey! Come and sit
down. What’ll you have to drink?”
There seemed to be an interval between hearing my voice and actually
seeing me—an interval during which a frosty, unnatural color, as if snow
were suddenly to take fire, flared in his waxlike cheek. But he came to
the table and dropped into a round-backed chair.
“Oh, Slim!”
Leaning on the table, he covered his face with his hand.
I tried putting up a bluff. “What’s the matter, Lovey? Haven’t got a
headache, have you?”
He raised those pitiful, dead blue eyes. “No, but I’ve got a ’eartache,
Slim—a ’eartache I won’t never get over.”
“Why, why—” I began to rally him.
“It’s just what I was afeared of—for days and days I’ve been afeared of
it. Been a-watchin’ of you, I ’ave.”
Here was another transmigrated soul that had traveled farther than I
knew. It was in pure curiosity as to the changes wrought in him that I
said: “I should think you would have been glad, Lovey. When I was here
before you used to want to have us both go back.”
The extinct eyes were raised on me.
“These times ain’t them times. Everything different. I ’aven’t stayed
where I was in them days, not any more nor you. Oh, to think, to think!”
“To think what?”
“That you should ’ave come back to this—and me believin’ the war ’ad done
ye good—lifted you up, like. Not but what you was the best man ever lived
before the war—”
“Oh no, Lovey. No one knows what I was better than yourself.”
“You was good even then, sonny—even in them awful old days. Goodness
ain’t just in doin’ certain things; it’s in being certain things. I don’t
’ardly know what it is; but I can tell it when I see it. And I seen it
in you, Slim—right from the first. Me and God A’mighty seen it together.
That’s why He pulled you up out o’ what you was—and made you rich—and
dressed you in swell clo’es—and sent you to the war—and made you a
’ero—and stuck you all over with medals—and brought you ’ome again to me.
And if you’d only waited—”
“Well, if I’d only waited—what?”
“You’d ’a’ got somethink better still. You’d ’a’ got it pretty soon.”
“What should I have got?”
[Illustration: “That you should ’ave come back to this—and me believin’
the war ’ad done ye good—lifted you up, like. Not but what you was the
best man ever lived before the war—”]
“I ain’t a-goin’ to tell ye. If you’d come ’ome with me you’d see.”
Before I could follow up this dark hint he continued: “God A’mighty don’t
play no tricks on His children. Look at me! All He’s give me. Kep’ me
well while you was away—and ’elped me to knock off the booze when it was
mortal ’ard to do it—and pervided me with a good ’ome, thanks to you,
Slim!—and work—and wages—and a very nice man to work for, all except
bein’ a bit stuck on ’isself—and let me off washin’ windows, which was
never a trade for an eddicated man like me—and brought you back to me,
which was the best thing of all—and just because I waited.”
“What do you mean by waiting?”
“I mean waitin’ for Him. That’s somethink I’ve found out since you went
away, sonny. It’s a tip as Beady Lamont give me. You’ve got to wait
patient-like for Him; and if you do He’ll come to you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t. That’s why I’m a-tellin’ of you. It was like this:
When you went away it was somethink fierce for me—nothink but that empty
flat—and everythin’ speakin’ to me o’ you, like—yer clo’es and yer boots
and yer books and yer pipes, and the chairs you used to sit on, and the
bed you used to sleep in—and everythink like that—till I thought I was
goin’ crazy. Many’s the time I wanted to come and do just what you’re
a-doin’ of now—but I’d think o’ the promise I give you before ye went—and
I’d ’ang on a bit more. And then God A’mighty Hisself come and spoke to
me, just as He did to Beady Lamont that time he told us about when we was
in the blue stars.”
“And what did God Almighty say?”
“He come in the middle o’ the night, and woke me up out of a sound sleep—”
“How did you know it was He?”
“Oh, I knowed. Ye couldn’t ’elp knowin’.”
“Did you hear His voice?”
“Ye didn’t ’ave to ’ear. It just went all over ye, like. I sits up in
bed, and everything was dark and light at the same time, and something
awful comfortin’ like sweepin’ through and through me. Ye couldn’t
’ardly say it was ’earin’ or seein’ or feelin’ or nothink. It was just
understandin’, like—but you knowed it was there.”
“But you haven’t told me what He said.”
“That’s what I’m a-comin’ to. He says: ‘Lovey,’ says He, ‘you’ve put up a
good fight, and now ye’re over the worst of it. But I’m with ye all the
time,’ says He; ‘only I can’t give ye everythin’ to oncet. All ye can
take is what ye’ve made yerself fit to receive,’ says He; ‘because there
was a good many years in yer life when ye wasn’t fit to receive nothink.
But just you wait, and you’ll see ’ow good I’ll be to you by degrees,’
says He. ‘You go on fightin’ in your way, just as that young fella, Slim,
is fightin’ in his way, and I’ll do you both good, and bring you back to
each other,’ says He. And, oh, sonny, He’s kep’ His word—all but right up
till now, when you’ve been goin’ about that sad-like—and not wantin’ to
be ’ome. And now this!”
“But that’s not God, Lovey; that’s me.”
“I don’t see much difference. The most ways I gets a’old o’ God, as
you might say, is through the nice things people does for me—and the
nice people theirselves—especially men—I don’t ’old with women—and more
particular you, Slim—you that was more to me than my own children ever
was—than my own life—yes, sonny, than my own life. I ain’t a-goin’ to
live very long now—”
“What makes you think so?”
“I ’appen to know,” he replied, briefly. “There’s ways you can tell.”
“What ways?”
“Smellin’, for one thing. Ye can smell death just as easy as ye can
smell flowers, or the fryin’ o’ fish, or any other smell; and it’s a
sign ye’ll never be mistook in.” His ascetic profile was thrown up, with
a long sniff through his delicate, quivering nostrils. “I can smell it
now—just like the smell o’ liquor.” The profile came down, and he went
on, eagerly: “But what I’m tellin’ you is that if I could die to save
you from what ye’re beginnin’ to do this day, Slim, I’d do it cheerful.
I knowed you was bent on it before ye knowed it yerself. I’ve been
a-watchin’ on ye, and follerin’ you about when ye didn’t see me.”
“How did you know?”
“I can’t tell ye ’ow—not no more than I could tell you I knowed it was
God. It don’t matter ’ow you know things as long as you know them, does
it?”
“Perhaps not.”
“I’ve just been a-livin’ in yer skin ever since ye come ’ome, sonny. It
was as if all yer thoughts passed through my mind, and all yer feelin’s
through my ’eart. I ain’t much of a ’and at love—that kind of female
love, I mean—not now, I ain’t; but I know that when ye’re young it kind
o’ ketches you—”
“Stop, Lovey,” I said, warningly.
“All right, Slim, I’ll stop. I don’t need to go on. All I want to say is
that you don’t know—you couldn’t know—the fancy I’ve took to you—and I
used to think that you kind o’ ’ad a fancy for me, like.”
“So I have.”
The mild eyes searched me. There was a violent trembling of the lower lip.
“Do you mean that, Slim?” Before I could answer he added, proudly: “I
don’t need to ’ave no one sayin’ they’ve got a fancy for me when they
’aven’t.”
“Oh, but it’s true!”
Two shivering hands were stretched out toward me in dramatic appeal.
“Oh, then leave that there drink alone and come ’ome along o’ me.” His
eyes fell on the glass. “’Ow many o’ them things ’ave ye ’ad?”
“None yet; this is the first; and I haven’t tasted it.”
He straightened himself up, speaking with what I can only call a kind of
exaltation.
“Then God A’mighty has sent me to you in time. It’s Him—and except Him
’tain’t no one nor nothink. Slim, if you puts yer lips to that glass now
ye’ll be sinnin’ in His face just as much as if it was Him and not me as
was a-pleadin’ with ye.”
“It isn’t a sin to take a cocktail.”
“Not for every one, I don’t suppose. It wouldn’t be for the doctor;
and it wouldn’t be for Mr. Coningsby; but ’tis for me, and ’tis for
you. There’s take-it-and-leave-it people in the world, and there’s
take-it-and-be-damned; and you and me belongs to the last. Oh, Slim,
don’t be mad wi’ me! Ain’t ye a silver-star man in the Down and Out?
Ain’t I yer next friend—yer real next friend, that is—a great deal more
than that young Pyn, with ’is impotent tongue, what stood up with you?
Come ’ome along o’ me, and I’ll show you somethin’ good.”
It was the dark hint again.
“What are you driving at, Lovey? What is there at home?”
His reply might have been paraphrased from a writing he had never heard
of.
“There’s things ahead of you, Slim, different from what you’re expectin’
of. Wait.”
I confess to being startled. You must see me as in an overwrought
condition, reacting from the tremendous strain, first of fighting, then
of blindness, and thirdly of emotional stress. I do not pretend that more
than any other man who comes back from the jaws of the infernal brazier
in Flanders I was my normal self. I was easily up and easily down,
easily excited and easily impressed. The mere cast of Lovey’s two brief
sentences impressed me.
“What things?” I asked, with that mixture of credulity and rejection with
which one puts questions to a trance medium.
“I’ll not tell ye; I’ll show ye; only ye must come ’ome.” As if in
illustration of his words, he added, “Ye must begin to wait right now.”
“But why wait?”
“Because God A’mighty can’t give us everything to oncet. Didn’t I say He
told me that Hisself? We ain’t fit to receive more’n a little at a time,
just like babies. That’s another tip as Beady give me. And Mr. Christian
he p’inted out to me oncet that wait is one of the frequentest words
in the Bible. See here! Beady writ this for me.” Fumbling in an inside
pocket, he drew forth a carefully folded bit of paper, saying, as he did
so: “It was one of the times when I was awful low in my mind because
you was away. I don’t ’old with them low fellas at the Down and Out—not
as a reg’lar thing, I don’t—but now and then when I just couldn’t seem
to get along without you I’d go down to one of the meetin’s. Then oncet
Beady sits beside me and begins a-kiddin’ o’ me, callin’ me old son and
everything like that. But by ’n’ by he sees I wasn’t in no such humor,
and we starts in to talk serious-like. And then—well, I don’t ’ardly know
’ow I come to let it out—but Beady he sees just ’ow it was with me, and
he bucks me up and writes me this. He ain’t as bad as you’d think he’d
be, that Beady. It’s good words out of the Bible, and there’s a reg’lar
tip in ’em.”
The shaky hands unfolded the bit of foolscap on which was scrawled in a
laborious script:
“Wait on the Lord; wait, I say, on the Lord.”
Beneath this counsel from one psalm were the verses from another:
“I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my
cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay,
and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.”
I suppose you will call my impulse by some modern psychological name, and
for aught I know you may be right. But the words were not without their
effect on me. They came to me with the mystery of a message emanating
from the days before Time, and from spheres which have no need of the sun
to rise or of the moon to give brightness or of the light of any candle.
That it was carried to me by this tottering old man whom I had known in
such different conditions only added to the awe.
I struggled to feet that were as shaky as Lovey’s hands, carried my
little white ticket to the bookkeeper, paid for my drink, which I had
left untouched, and flinging an “All right, Lovey; I’m your man!” to him,
hobbled out into the lobby of the hotel.
My immediate sensation was that which you have known when the black cloud
of troubles that enveloped you on waking has been instantly dispelled on
your getting out of bed. The troubles may still be there; but you know
your competence to live and work and deal with them.
What I felt chiefly, I think, was that the old temptation would never
master me again. I had been face to face with it, and hadn’t submitted to
its spell. Something had been healed in me; something had been outgrown.
A simple old man with no eloquence but that of his affection had led me
as another might be led by a child.
With this sense of release came a sense of energy. I was given back to my
mission; my mission was given back to me. That which for lack of a more
humble term I can only call the spirit of consecration took hold of me
again and made me its own. The aims for which the war was being fought
were my aims; I had no others. When these objectives were won my life, it
seemed to me, would be over. It would melt away in that victory as dawn
into sunrise. It would not be lost; it would only be absorbed—a spark in
the blaze of noonday.
And as for love—well, after all, there was the moratorium of love. My lot
in this respect—if it was to be my lot—would be no harder than that of
millions of other men the wide world over. Love was no longer the first
of a man’s considerations, not any more than the earning of a living
could be the first. It might be a higher thing for her—a higher thing for
me—to give it up.
Turning these things over in my mind and wondering vaguely what might
be awaiting me at the apartment, I said nothing to Lovey as we trundled
homeward in a taxicab; nor did Lovey say anything to me.
It was only when we got out of the lift and he had turned the key in our
own door that he said, with sudden energy: “Slim, I’ll be yer servant
right down to the very ground.”
“Oh no, you won’t be, Lovey,” I returned, deprecatingly. “We’re fellas
together. We’re buddies. We’ll be buddies as long as we live.”
He slapped his leg with a cackle that was, as nearly as his old lungs
could make it, a heartfelt, mirthful laugh.
“There! Didn’t I tell you? That’s what I’ve been a-waitin’ for; and the
Lord has give it to me at last. He can’t do much more for me now—not till
He takes me ’ome, like.” He raised his sharp profile and sniffed. “I
smell it, Slim—a kind o’ stuffy smell it is now—but I ain’t mistook in
it. And now, Slim,” he went on, triumphantly, as he threw the door open
and entered before me to turn on the lights—“and now, Slim, what you’re
a-waitin’ for is—is waitin’ ’ere for you.”
I knew it couldn’t be Regina that Lovey was caging in these overheated
rooms, since she wouldn’t be sitting in the dark.
_CHAPTER XXVIII_
It was not Regina Barry who was waiting for me, but it was the next best
thing.
Lovey stood off and pointed to it as it lay, white and oblong, on the
sitting-room table.
“Give it to me with ’er own ’and,” he said, mysteriously. “Druv up to the
door and asked the janitor to call me down. Told me to tell you that it
wouldn’t be at ’alf past four, as she says in the note, but at five, and
’oped you wouldn’t keep ’er waitin’.”
I held it in my hand, turning it over. I felt sure of what was in it,
but I didn’t know whether I was sorry or glad. Of course I should be
glad from one point of view; but the points of view were so many. It
would be all over now with the mission, for which my enthusiasm had so
suddenly revived. When we had done this thing we should be discredited
and ostracized by the people we knew best, and for some time to come.
I stood fingering the thing, feeling as I had felt now and then when we
had given up a trench or a vantage-point we had been holding against
odds. Wise as it might be to yield, it was, nevertheless, a pity,
and only left ground that would have to be regained. There was moral
strength, too, in the mere fact of holding. Not to hold any longer was a
sign of weakness, however good the reason.