He gave a long, restful sigh.
“Lizzy says it’s an awful nice place where she is, and—”
I felt him slipping down in bed; but Cantyre, who knew more of such cases
than I did, caught him gently round the loins and lowered him.
_CHAPTER XXXIII_
On coming back the next afternoon from selecting the spot for Lovey’s
grave there was a man in khaki on the train. When I got out at the Grand
Central I saw another. In Fifth Avenue I saw another and another. They
seemed to spring out of the ground, giving a new aspect to the streets.
In the streets that shining thing I had noticed on landing was no longer
to be seen. Silver peace had faded out, while in its place there was
coming—coming by degrees—but coming—that spirit of strong resolve which
is iron and gold.
Or perhaps I had better say that peace had taken refuge in my dingy
little flat, where Lovey was lying on his bed in his Sunday clothes,
with hands folded on his breast. Peace was in every line of the fragile
figure; in the face there was peace satisfied—peace content—gentle,
abiding, eternal.
Two days later a little company of us stood by his grave while Rufus
Legrand read the ever-stirring words of the earth to earth. It was the
old comradeship which Lovey himself would have liked—the fellowship of
men who had fought the same fight as he, and were hoping to be faithful
unto death like him—Christian, Straight, little Spender, Beady, Pyn, the
wee bye Daisy, and one or two others. Cantyre alone had none of the dark
memories—and yet the bright and blessed memories—that held the rest of us
together; but Cantyre had his place.
We had driven out side by side in the same motor, as what the undertaker
called chief mourners. I don’t remember that we uttered a word to each
other till we got out at the grave.
It was Cantyre who said, then: “I want you to drive back with me, Frank.
There’s somewhere I should like to take you.”
Reassured by his use of my name, I merely nodded, wondering what he meant.
I didn’t ask, however; nor did I ask when we were back in the motor again
and on our way to town. I got my first hint as we began to descend the
long avenue in which Sterling Barry had his house.
As I expected, we stopped at the door. The vacant lot was still vacant,
and among its dead stalks of burdock and succory April was bringing the
first shades of soft green. I thought of Lovey, of course; of our tramp
round Columbus Circle; of my midnight adventure right on this spot. It
was like going back to another life; it was as this life must have seemed
to Lovey and his Lizzy reunited in that world where her neck was as
straight as a walking-stick, and everything was lovely-like.
Cantyre spoke low, as if he could hardly speak at all.
“I asked Regina to be in. She’ll be expecting us.”
And she was. She was expecting us in that kind of agitation which hides
itself under a pretense of being more than usually cool. In sympathy with
Lovey’s memory, I suppose, she was dressed in black, which made a foil
for her vivid lips and eyes. Out of the latter she was unable to keep a
shade of feverish brightness that belied the nonchalance of her greeting.
She talked about Lovey, about the funeral, about the weather, about the
declaration of war, about the men in khaki who with such surprising
promptness had begun to appear in the streets. She talked rapidly,
anxiously, against time, as it were, and busied herself pouring tea.
Suspecting, doubtless, that Cantyre had something special to say, she was
trying to fight him off from it as long as possible.
I had taken a seat; he remained standing, his back to the fire. His look
was abstracted, thundery, morose.
Right in the middle of what Regina was saying about the seizure of the
German ships he dropped with the remark, “You two know what Lovey told
me—what he’s been telling me ever since you both came home.”
Neither of us had a word to say. We could only stare. You could hear the
mantelpiece clock ticking before he went on again.
“Well, I’m not going to give you up, Regina,” he declared, aggressively,
then.
One of her hands was on the handle of the teapot; one was in the act of
taking up a cup. If coloring was ever transmuted into flame, her coloring
was at that moment. There was a dramatic intensity in her quietness.
“Have I asked you to, Stephen?”
“No; but—”
“Have I?” I demanded.
“No; but—”
“If Lovey did it it was without any knowledge of mine,” I continued. “I
practically killed him, God forgive me, for doing it!”
“You’re both off the track,” Cantyre broke in. “You don’t know what
I—what I want to say.”
“Very well, then, Stephen. Tell us,” Regina said, tranquilly.
He spoke stammeringly. “It’s—it’s—just this: This is no
time—for—for—love.”
We stared again, waiting for him to go on.
“It’s what—what Christian told us two or three nights ago. We’re in a
world where—where love and marriage are no longer the burning questions.
They’re too small. Don’t you see?”
We continued to stare, but we agreed with him.
“So—so,” he faltered, “I want you—I want you both—to—to put it all off.”
“The moratorium of love?” I suggested.
“The moratorium of everything,” he took up, “but what—what Christian
put before us. I see that now more plainly than I ever saw anything in
my life. We’ve got to give everything up—and get it back—different. We
shall be different, too—and things that we’re struggling over now will be
settled for us, I suppose, without our taking them into our own hands at
all. That’s how I look at it, if you two will agree.”
“I agree, Stephen,” Regina said, with the same tranquillity.
“And I, too, old chap.”
“I’m—I’m going over,” he stumbled on, “with the first medical unit from
Columbia—”
“Oh, Stephen! How splendid!”
He contradicted her. “No, it isn’t. I’m not doing it from any splendid
motives whatever. I’m going just to—to try and get out of myself. Don’t
you see—you two? You must see. I’m—I’m sunk in myself; I’ve never been
anything else. That’s what’s been the matter with me. That’s why I never
made any friends. That’s why you, Frank, have never really cared a straw
about me—in spite of all the ways I’ve made up to you; and why you,
Regina, can hardly stand me. But, by God! you’re both going to!”
With this flash of excitement I sprang up, laying my hand on his arm.
“We care for you already, old man.”
“That’s not the point. I’ve—I’ve got to care for myself. I’ve got to find
some sort of self-respect.”
But Regina, too, sprang up, joining us where we stood on the hearth-rug.
She didn’t touch him; she only stood before him with hands clasped in
front of her.
“Stephen dear, you’re not doing any more heart-searching than Frank and I
are doing; or than every true American is doing all through the country.
What you say Mr. Christian told you the other night is more or less
consciously in everybody’s soul. We know we’re called to the judgment
seat; and at the judgment seat we stand. That’s all there is to it.
Marriage and giving in marriage for people like us must wait. It’s become
unimportant. There are people—younger than we are for the most part—to
whom it comes first. But for us, with our experience—each of us—you with
yours, Frank with his, I with mine—well, we have other work to do. We
must see this great thing through before we can give our attention to
ourselves. And we shall see it through, sha’n’t we, by doing as you say?
We must give everything up—and wait. Then we shall probably find our
difficulties solved for us. I often think that patience—the power to wait
and be confident—is the most stupendous force in the world.”
And with few more words than this we left her. I went first, giving them
a little time alone together. But I hadn’t gone very far before, on
accidentally turning round, I saw Cantyre coming down the steps.
_CHAPTER XXXIV_
It was just a year later that a secret but profound misgiving in my heart
began to be dispelled.
I call it secret because it was unacknowledged by myself. It would never,
I believe, have come to me of its own accord; it was suggested from
without, and even so I didn’t harbor it consciously. It was only with the
news of Seicheprey, of which the details began to come in toward the end
of April, 1918, that I knew that in the wheat of my hopes and confidences
there had been tares of anxiety and fear.
I had seen too many of those strapping, splendid fellows not to be
confident and hopeful. But I had also read too much of the folly
of pitting green boys, however magnificently built, against the
seasoned troops of long campaigns, not to have a lurking dread as to
the test. I never voiced the question, not even to my own heart; yet
Satan, the manufacturer of fear, had not failed to formulate it to my
subconsciousness. What if this noble America, so strong, so generous,
so ready to respond to that call which Christian had uttered, so eager
to pour out its all, with both hands, gladly, gaily—what if now,
before the guns of a ruthless and unconquerable foe, she should meet
the disaster that would bring her to the dust? What if those beloved
boys, all sinew and muscle as they were, should go down as I had seen
my fellow-countrymen go down, in heaps that showed the impotence of
valor? I had witnessed so much sacrifice—sacrifice by mistake, sacrifice
by lack of skill, sacrifice by lack of knowledge that could have been
obtained—that when I looked at these lads my heart sank at moments when
it should have been most buoyant.
Then came Seicheprey, and I knew.
Then came the Marne, the Ourcq, the Vesle; and I was satisfied.
For the cause had absorbed me again, heart and soul and mind. I was being
sent all over the country, and sometimes into Canada, to speak for it. In
this way I came to be in a small town in the Middle West—Mendoza happened
to be its name—when, picking up a paper, I saw that a hospital had been
bombed. The next edition reported that two doctors and three or four
nurses had been killed. The next told us their names. Among the names
was....
And so he did give his all.
I didn’t write to Regina; Regina didn’t write to me. She was busy, as I
was busy; but somewhere in the distance and the silence between us there
was a place where our spirits met.
And when we met in person we still didn’t speak of it. It was too deep,
too sacred, too complicated and strange to go readily into words. It was
easier and more natural to talk of something else.
That was at Rosyth, on Long Island, at the end of June. Hearing that I
had returned to New York for a rest, Hilda Grace asked me down for the
week-end, just as she had asked me exactly four years before.
On this occasion she made no attempt to sound me; she mentioned Regina
only to say that she was at the red-and-yellow house on the opposite hill
for a little rest on her part. By disappearing after lunch on Sunday she
gave me to understand that I was free.
I went to the old Hornblower house by the way I had taken when I had
last come away from it—down Mrs. Grace’s steps to the beach—along the
shore—and up the steps to the lawn where the foxgloves bordered the
scrub-oak.
I went back to the veranda where I had waited and sat down in one of the
same chairs. Taking out a cigarette, I lighted it and began to smoke.
Perhaps some one had seen me from a window, for in a little while there
was the click of high heels on the bare steps of the stairway. Then out
on the veranda came a figure too little to be tall and too tall to be
considered little, carrying herself proudly, placing her dainty feet
daintily, but advancing toward me instead of going away. She was dressed
in white, with a scarlet band about her waist and another about her
dashing Panama, of the same shade as her lips. In the opening at the neck
she wore a string of pearls. Lower down, the opening was fastened by a
diamond bar-pin. In her hand she carried a gold-mesh purse, which she
threw carelessly on a table as she passed.
She met me as any hostess meets a man who comes to make a call. We talked
of the topics of the day, beginning with the weather. From the weather we
passed to the war, and to all our anxieties and humiliations through the
spring. We could do this, however, with a ray of cheerfulness, because
the Château-Thierry salient was beginning to be wiped out.
“But why do things have to happen the way they do?” I asked her. “If
we’re going to win, why couldn’t we have won from the first? What’s
the use of all this backing and filling, this losing and taking, and
relosing and retaking, the same old ground? Oh, I know there are the
usual explanations as to our not being up to the mark in munitions and
man power; but I mean what is the explanation from the point of view of
an All-Powerful and All-Intelligent—?”
“Isn’t it the same explanation that applies to every human life?”
“Well, what’s that?”
“I don’t know that I can tell you,” she smiled, thoughtfully; “but I do
feel sure that we need our experiences. With minds and natures like ours
we’re not fitted to go straight and simply from point to point. The long
way round has to be our short way home, and—and—the way things happen is
the best way.... Oh, dear, what’s happening?”
It was admirably staged. The slipping of the string of pearls to the
floor could hardly have been another accident. For me there was but one
thing to do.
Springing to my feet I stooped and picked the necklet up. Having picked
it up, I put it in my pocket.
I stood smiling down at her. She sat smiling up at me. There was more in
that smile than a lifetime of words could have uttered.
But when I was about to pull the pearls out of my pocket again she leaned
forward and said, huskily: “Don’t, Frank. Keep them.”