ELISE.
I.
Early next morning, in a large military ward of a London hospital, Austin
Selwyn woke from a sleep that had been charged with black dreams, and
tried to recall the events leading to his present whereabouts.
By slow, tortuous process he reconstructed the previous evening as far as
the moment when he had heard the warning guns. After that the incidents
grew dim, and faded into incoherency. He seemed to remember rushing
somewhere in a motor-vehicle. He distinctly recalled seeing a policeman
in Trafalgar Square. Yes, that was very clear--quite the most vivid
impression of the whole night, indeed. He would hang on to that
policeman.
With the care of an Arctic explorer establishing his base before going
farther into _terra incognita_, he attached the threads of his wandering
mind to that limb of the law, and groped in all the directions of his
memory's compass. But it was of no avail. Tired out with the futile
efforts he had made, his bandaged head sank back in the pillows, and the
vivid policeman in Trafalgar Square was reluctantly surrendered as a
negligible means of solution.
When he next awoke, it was to the sound of many voices. There were two
that were very close--one on either side of him, in fact. Affecting
sleep, Selwyn listened carefully.
'Wot's that you say, Jock?' said a Cockney voice to his left.
'I was obsairvin',' said the other, 'that Number Twenty-sax is occupied
this mornin'.'
'Ow yus, so it is. I was 'oping as 'ow me pal the Duke of Mudturtle
would buy the plice next to mine. But he don't look a bad cove, wot you
can see under 'is farncy 'ead-dress.'
'I dinna think he can be o' the airmy. His skin's as pale as a lassie in
love.'
'In the army, Jock? Don't hinsult 'im. 'E's one of the 'eroes of the
'ome front--hindispensibles, they calls 'em.'
'Weel, weel, noo,' expostulated the Scot, 'dinna tak' ower muckle for
granted. We canna a' gang tae the war, or wha wud bide at hame an' mak
the whusky?'
'By Gar!' said a third patient opposite, sitting up suddenly and speaking
in the disjointed but strangely musical dialect of the French-Canadian,
'she is a wise feller, dis Scoachie.'
'Bonn swoir, Frenchy,' said the Cockney graciously. ''Ow alley you
mantenongs?'
'Verra good, Tommee. How is de godam bow bells?'
'Well, the last toime I sees me old side-kick the Lord Mayor, 'e says as
'ow they was took by a Canadian for a soovenir.'
'Na,' said the Scotsman reprovingly; 'I'm thinkin' yon's exaggerated.'
'By Gar!' said the French-Canadian. 'See, the orderly come now with
water for shav'. Back in de bush or on de long portage I shav' once,
twice, perhaps tree time a month. Always before I meet my leetle girl I
shav'. But when I say good-bye and go to war--by gollies! de army make
me for do it every day. My officier, he say, "What for you no shav' dis
morning?" "Sair," I say, "I no kees de Boche--I keel him." He say
noding to dat excep', "Look at you. I shav' every day. Do you preten' I
doan' fight?" "Well," I say, "if de cap feets you, smoke it." And for
no reason he give me tree time extra for carry de godam ration.'
At this stage the arrival of wash-basins interrupted further anecdote and
philosophy, and the entire ward became animated with soldiers performing
their ablutions, some sitting up in bed, others on the edge of their
beds, and a few so weak that they could just turn painfully on their side
and wait for other hands to help.
A burst of hearty greetings told Selwyn that some one must have entered
the ward, and a few minutes later he felt the presence of a nurse beside
him.
'Good-morning,' she said, gently touching him on the shoulder. 'How is
your head feeling?'
He opened his eyes and looked into the face bending over his. 'I think
it's all right,' he said weakly. 'But, nurse, won't you tell me how I
got here?'
She dipped a cloth into a basin and bathed his hands and face.
'You were hit by a piece of shrapnel in last night's air-raid. I wasn't
on duty when you came in, but the night-sister said you were quite
delirious--though you seem ever so much better this morning, don't you?
I'll take your temperature, and after you've had some breakfast I'll put
a new dressing on your wound.'
She was just going to insert the thermometer between his lips, when he
stopped her with his hand. 'Nurse,' he said, 'why was I brought
here--among soldiers?'
'Because every hospital is filled to overflowing. The casualties are so
heavy just now.' Her voice was still kind, but there was a look of
resentment in her eyes at his question.
'Please don't misunderstand me,' said Selwyn wearily. 'It is only the
feeling that I have no right here. This cot should be for a soldier, and
I'm a civilian. I'm an American, and--and if you only knew'----
'Just a minute, now, until we get this temperature, and then you can tell
me all about it.'
With his lips silenced, but his doubts by no means so, he watched her
move down the ward in commencement of the countless duties of her day.
She was a woman of thirty-three or thirty-four years, still young, and
possessed of a womanliness that softened her whole appearance with a
tranquil restfulness. But beneath her eyes and in the texture of the
skin faint wrinkles were showing, thinly pencilled protests against
overwork, that no treatment could ever eradicate. On the red collar of
her uniform was a badge which told that she had gone to France with the
first little army of Regulars in 1914.
Noting her calloused hands and the too rapid approach of life's
midsummer, Selwyn watched her, and wondered what recompense could be
offered for those things. In ordinary life, given the privileges and the
opportunities which she deserved, she would have been another of those
glorious English women whose beauty is nearest the rose. She would have
been a wife to grace any home, and as a mother her charm would have been
twofold. But for more than two years incessant toil and endless
suffering had been the companions of her days, and the not over-strong
body was giving to the ordeal.
But as his heavy thoughts drifted slowly through this channel, he saw
grinning patients who were well enough get out of bed to help her. As if
she carried some magic gem of happiness, her soft voice and deft touch
brought smiles to eyes that had been scorched in the flames of hell. Men
looked up, and seeing her, believed once more in life; and hope crept
into their hearts. Men in the great shadowy valley murmured like a
child in its sleep when a ray of morning sunshine, stealing through the
curtains, plays upon its face.
And of the many things which Selwyn learned that day, one was that those
ministering angels, those women of limitless spirit and sympathy, have
memories of mute, unspoken gratitude, beside which the proudest triumphs
of the greatest beauties are but the tawdry, tinsel glory of a pantomime
queen.
II.
After the nurse had taken the thermometer from Selwyn and marked his
temperature on a chart which she placed beside him, breakfast was brought
in, and he was propped up with pillows.
'Guid-mornin',' said the Highlander. 'I hope ye're nane the waur o' your
expeerience.'
'Not 'im,' broke in the Cockney, eating his porridge with great relish.
'It done 'im good.'
'I am very well,' said Selwyn haltingly. 'I hope my arrival did not
disturb any of you last night.'
At the sound of his carefully nuanced Bostonian accent there was a
violent dumb-play of smoothing the hair and arranging the coats of
pyjamas, while one Tommy placed a penny in his eye in lieu of a monocle.
'I was 'oping,' said the Cockney, with a solemn wink to the gathering,
'as 'ow Number 26 would be took by a toff, and, blime, if it ain't! It
were gettin' blinkin' lonesome for me with only Jock 'ere and Frenchy
opposite, who ain't bad blokes in their wy, but orful crude for my
likin'.'
'Where did it hit ye?' asked the Scot encouragingly.
'On the head,' said Selwyn, pointing to his bandage.
'Mon, mon, that's apt to be dangerous.'
'Nah then!' cried the Cockney, reaching for his temperature-chart, 'we'll
open the mornink proper with the 'Ymn of 'Ate. In cise you don't know
the piece, m'lud, you can read it off your temperacher-ticket. Steady
now--everybody got a full breath? Gow!'
With great zest all the patients who were able to sit up broke into a
discordant jumble of scales as they followed the course of their
temperatures up and down the chart. Gradually, one by one, they fell out
and resumed their breakfast, until the Scotsman was the only one singing.
'Ye ken,' he said, pausing temporarily and looking at Selwyn, 'yon should
be rendered wi' proper deegnity.' With which explanatory comment he
finished the last six notes, and solemnly replaced the chart on the ledge
behind him, as if it were a copy of Handel's _Messiah_.
The last note had hardly died away when a violent controversy broke out
between a pair of Australian soldiers on one side and almost the entire
ward on the other. The thing had started by one of the Anzacs venturing
the modest opinion that if Britain had had a million Australian troops,
they, the present gathering, would be 'hoch, hoching' in Berlin
(apparently a delightful prospect) instead of being cooped up in a London
hospital.
The little Cockney was just going to utter a crushing sarcasm, the
French-Canadian had taken in a perfectly stupendous breath, the
Highlander was calmly tasting the flavour of his own reply, when the
impending torrent was broken by the entrance of the chaplain, who wished
every one a somewhat sanctimonious 'Good-day.'
'I shall read,' he said, putting on a pair of glasses, 'the latest
_communiqué_ from the front. We have done very well. The news is quite
good--quite good. "_This morning, on a front of three miles, after an
intense artillery preparation, the Australians_"'----
''OORAY!' roared the Cockney.
The glasses popped off the chaplain's startled nose, and he just managed
by a brilliant bit of juggling to rescue them before they reached the
floor.
'I--I,' he ventured, smiling blandly, 'am delighted at your enthusiasm,
but you did not let me finish. "_This morning_"--um, um, ah--"_three
miles_"--um, um, yes--"_three miles, after an intense artillery
preparation, the Australians_"'----
''OORAY!' It was a deafening roar from the whole crowd.
'"_The Australians_"'----
'OORAY!'
'"_The_"'----
'Oo'----
Really, men, you must control yourselves. We are all glad and sustained
by any victory, however slight, but you must not give way to unmeaning
boisterousness. "_This morning, on a front of three miles, after an
intense artillery preparation, the Australians_"'----
There was a medley of submerged, prolonged snores. The chaplain looked
up indignantly. With the exception of Selwyn and the two Australians,
every one had followed the lead of the Cockney and disappeared underneath
the bed-clothes.
'This,' said the good man--'this frivolity at such a harrowing moment in
our country's destiny is neither seemly nor respectful. Cheerfulness is
admirable, until it descends to horseplay.'
With which parting salvo the worthy chaplain, who had never been to
France, and who was doing the best he could according to his clerical
upbringing, left his unruly flock, taking the _communiqué_ with him.
A little later the doctor made his rounds, pronouncing Selwyn's wound as
not dangerous, but assuring him he was lucky to be alive. Another inch
either way and---- Passing on to the Scotsman, he stayed a considerable
length of time; but as the screen was set for the examination, the
American had no way of knowing its nature.
And so, with constant badinage, seldom brilliant, but never unkind, the
morning wore on. It was nearly noon when Selwyn saw a wheeled stretcher
brought into the ward and the Highlander lifted on to it.
'Jock,' said the little Cockney, 'I 'opes as 'ow everythink will come out
orlright.'
'By Gar, Scoachie!' cried the French-Canadian, 'I am sorree. You are one
dam fine feller, Scoachie.'
'Dinna worry yersel's,' said the man from the North. 'I'm rare an' lucky
that it's to be ma richt leg an' no the left, for that richt shank o'
mine was aye a wee thing crookit at the knee, and didna dae credit tae
the airchitecture o' tither ane.'
Thus, amid the rough encouragement of his fellows, and by no means
unconscious of the dignity of his position, the Highland soldier was
taken away to the operating-room.
The French-Canadian made a remark to Selwyn, but it was not until the
second repetition that he heard him.
III.
About three o'clock that afternoon a little stream of visitors began to
arrive, and Thomas Atkins, with his extraordinary adaptability, gravely,
if somewhat inaccurately, answered the catechism of well-meaning old
ladies, and flirted heartily and openly with giggling 'flappers.'
To the visitors, however, Austin Selwyn paid no heed. He was enduring
the lassitude which follows a fever. He knew that the crisis had come,
the hour when he must face fairly the crash and ruin of his work; but he
put it off as something to which his brain was unequal. Like slow
drifting wisps of cloud, different phrases and incidents floated across
his mind, shadows of things that had left a clear imprint upon his
senses. With the odd vagrancy of an undirected mind, he found himself
recalling a few of Hamlet's lines, and smiled wanly to think how, after
all those years, the immortal Shakespeare could still give words to his
own thoughts: 'This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile
promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, . . . this brave
overhanging firmament--this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,
why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent
congregation of vapours.'
The wings of memory bore him back to Harvard, where once in a scene from
_Hamlet_ he had mouthed those very words, little dreaming that in a few
short years he would lose the sense of euphony in the cruel realisation
of their meaning.
Then, before he saw her or heard her step, he knew that SHE had come.
His heart quickened, and his breathing was tremulous with mingled
emotions.
'Well,' she said, coming to his bedside and offering her hand, 'how is
the invalid?'
'Elise,' he said, 'it is wonderful of you to come.' He looked at her
khaki uniform, at the driver's cap which imprisoned her hair. 'Now,' he
went on dreamily, 'it all comes back to me. It was you who brought me
here.'
'Had you forgotten that already?' she said, bringing a chair to the
bedside.
'I couldn't remember,' he answered weakly. 'All I know is that I was
walking alone--and there came a blank. When I woke up I was here with a
head that didn't feel quite like my own. But I knew, somehow, that you
had been with me.'
'What does the doctor say about your wound?'
'It is not serious.'
'You have heard since what happened?'
'Yes.'
'It was absolutely topping the way you fought for that child's life.'
He made a deprecatory gesture, and for a moment conversation ceased. He
was wondering at her voice. A subtle change had come over it. Her words
were just as uncomfortably rapid as in the first days of their
friendship, but there was a hidden quality caught by his ear which he
could not analyse. Looking at her with eyes that had waited so long for
her coming, he felt once more the affinity she held with things of
nature. Her presence obliterated everything else. They were alone--the
two of them. The hospital, London, the world, were dimmed to a distant
background.
'After such a night,' he said, 'it is very kind of you to make this
effort.'
'Not at all. We're cousins, you know.'
'I--I don't'----
'The Americans and the English, I mean. Relatives always go to each
others' funerals, so I thought I might stretch a point and take in the
hospital.'
'Oh! That was all?'
'Goodness, no! You automatically became a protégé of mine when I picked
you up last night. Isn't that a horrid expression?--but frightfully
fashionable these unmoral days.'
'You must excuse me,' he said slowly, 'but I was foolish enough to think
you came here because--well, because you wanted to.'
'So I did. An air-raid casualty is ever so much more romantic than a
wounded soldier. If he lives through it, he always proposes the very
next day either to the nurse or to the ambulance-driver, whereas a Tommy,
after his third wound, becomes so _blasé_.'
'You shouldn't torture me,' he said, wincing noticeably under the
incision of her words.
Just for a fleeting instant her eyes were softened with a tender look of
self-reproach. His heart warmed at the sight, but before he could
convince himself that it was not a creation of his own fancy, it had
passed, and once more she was holding him at bay with her impersonal
abruptness.
'Will you tell me about yourself?' he urged. 'Please.'
'What do you want to know?'
'Everything--everything!' he blurted out, impetuously leaning forward.
'My heavens! Don't you know how I've longed and waited for this moment
ever since that night at your flat? I want to hear all about you--what
you've done, where you've been, and--and in what mysterious way you've
changed.'
'Have I changed?'
'Of course you have. You're trying to appear just as you were when we
first met, but you can't do it. Even if I hadn't noticed the difference
in you, I should have known that no one could live through these times
and remain the same.'
'Why not? Haven't you?'
He laughed grimly, and his head sank back on the pillows. 'I want to
know all about you, Elise,' he repeated dully.
'Very well.' She smoothed her skirt with her hands, and folded them
Quakeress-fashion.
'As you know, I once had a flat in Park Walk--which I shared with various
and variegated female patriots, also engaged in guiding the destinies of
motor-cars. Edna was the first one to follow Marian, after she and I
quarrelled; but Edna couldn't break herself of the habit of wandering
into the Ritz for luncheon every second day with only a shilling in her
pocket.'
'But I don't see how'----
'You poor innocent! Some one always paid--don't worry. So we parted
company on that issue, and I asked Mabel to take Edna's place. Mabel was
frightfully nice, but took to opium cigarettes, and then to heroin. She
disappeared one night, and never came back. Poor girl! Her going made
room for Lily, who read the very nicest modern novels, and always cried
through the love scenes. I wish you could have seen her sitting up in
bed reading a book, eating chocolates, and sobbing like a crocodile.
Lily had only one weakness--marrying Flying Corps officers. It was
really the army's fault giving two of her husbands leave at the same
time.'
Selwyn frowned, 'What a dreadful experience!' he said.
'Oh, I don't know.' She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, but the
spirit of badinage had vanished both from her face and from her voice.
'It didn't take long to lose most of one's illusions. It is one thing to
meet people as Lord Durwent's daughter, and quite another as a free-lance
ambulance-driver. I've seen what people really are since I've been on my
own, and I'm sick of the whole thing.'
'You don't mean that, Elise?'
'I do. Men are rotten, and women are cats.'
He smiled quizzically, but she kept her eyes averted from his. It almost
appeared as if she were determined to retain her pose of callousness at
any effort, but his sense of psychology told him that his first
conjecture was correct. The girl who had endured was trying to hide
herself behind the personality of her old self.
'My dear girl,' he said slowly, 'it is an old trick of women to talk for
the purpose of convincing themselves. I don't care what you have
seen--you could not have passed through the ordeal of these long months
and believe in your innermost soul that either men or women are rotten.
In many ways I feel as if what little knowledge I possess dates from last
night; and I have learned things about men right here in this ward to-day
that have made me humble. These chaps that we call ignorant, the lower
classes--why, they are superb, wonderful. I tell you they have greatness
in them. I wish you could have seen them'----
'Haven't I seen them,' she cried, with a little catch in her throat,
'hundreds and hundreds of times? Almost every day, and at all hours of
the night, I've gone to meet the Red Cross trains. I have seen men die
while being lifted out of the ambulance--men who would try to smile their
thanks to us just before the end came. I have'---- She caught her hands
in a tight grip, and her eyes welled with tears. 'But they're just
jingoes, I suppose,' she said, blending a scornfulness with her repressed
grief.
'I have deserved this,' said Selwyn, his face drawn. 'Nothing that you
can say is half so bitter as my thoughts.'
'I didn't mean to hurt you,' she said.
'If ever a man was sincere, I was, Elise. Since I left you at Roselawn I
have followed the one path, thinking there was a great light ahead. Now
I am afraid that, perhaps, it was only a mirage.'
'No, it wasn't,' she replied vehemently. 'I hated you for thinking
English women would not aid their men to fight, and I wanted never to see
you again. But do you remember when I said that the glory of war was in
women's blood? There was a certain amount of truth in it at the
beginning; for when I first saw the wounded arrive I was madly excited.
I wanted to shout and cheer. But as the months have gone on, and I have
seen our soldiers maimed and bleeding and suffering, while thousands of
their women at home have simply broken loose and lost all sense of
decency or self-respect--oh, what's the use?'
'But you mustn't forget the women who have done such great things for the
country.'
'I know--but what's it all for? Since this battle of the Somme our
casualties have been frightful, and every day means so many of our real
men killed, and so many more shirkers and rotters in proportion to carry
on the life of England. We've had our women's revolution all right.
There are not many of the old barriers left; but what a mess we have made
of our freedom! When I think of all that, and then recall what you said
about war, I know that you were right, and we were wrong.'
'You are wonderfully brave,' said Selwyn, 'not only for having done so
much, but in telling me that.'
'No,' she said, lowering her eyes to the gloves which she held in her
hand; 'I have lost all my courage. Every night I feel as if another day
of meeting the wounded will kill me. . . . If it could only end!
Anything would be better than these awful casualty lists.'
'Elise'--he raised himself on his elbow and leaned towards her--'you
prove yourself a woman when you say that; but you're wrong. I can't give
my reasons yet, but since last night I have been seeing clearer and
clearer that Britain not only must not lose, but must _win_. I know
other men have said it ten thousand times, but only to-day have I begun
to see that, in its own strange, unidealistic manner, this Empire is
fighting for civilisation.'
'Then'--her eyes were lit with sudden, glistening radiancy--'then you
don't think our men have died uselessly?'
'I could not believe in God,' he answered, wondering at the calm
certainty of his voice uttering things which would have infuriated him a
few hours before, 'if I thought that this war's dead had fallen for
nothing.' His hand, which had been raised in gesture, fell limply on the
bed. 'Up to yesterday,' he went on slowly, 'I reasoned truth; to-day--I
feel truth. I wonder if it is not always so, that higher knowledge
begins with the end of reasoning.'
For a couple of minutes neither spoke, and his head was throbbing with
anvil-beats. Twice she started to speak, but stopped each time as though
distrustful of her own words.
'I am going back to America, Elise.' His dreamy eyes were gazing beyond
her into the distance, or he might have noted that the colour in her
cheeks fluctuated suddenly and the fingers on her gloves tightened.
'Why?' There was nothing in her voice to indicate anything but casual
interest.
'I must go back,' he said, leaning towards her--'back to my own country.
You don't understand. . . . There comes a moment when every fibre of a
man's being craves for his own people, for the very air that he breathed
as a boy. All these wasted months and last night's climax of damnable
murder have left me dazed. I am floundering hopelessly--but at home I
shall be able to clear my mind of its mists and see this whole thing as
it really is.'
A wall of pain pressed against his head, and his face went gray with
agony. In an instant she was standing over him arranging his pillows,
and soothing his temples with the gentle pressure of her hands.
For the first time in many months he knew the help and compassion of a
woman--and the woman was Elise. He was weak from loss of blood, weary
from the long travail of the mind, and her presence, with its indefinable
fragrance of clover and morning flowers, was as exquisite music to his
senses.
'If you only knew,' he murmured, 'how I have longed for this moment. It
has been very lonely for me--and I have wanted you so much, Elise. God!
I've wanted you until I had to struggle to keep from crying out your name
in the very streets. Forgive me talking like this.' He groped for her
hand and held it tightly in his. 'I never had any right to tell you what
you meant to me--and less now than before--but when I come back'----
'You will never come back.' She laughed with a strange tremulousness,
but in her eyes there was something of the scorn she had shown towards
him at Roselawn.
'You are wrong,' he said; 'I must'----
'You are an American,' she answered quickly, 'and that comes first with
you. Your country has nothing to do with this war, and you are going
back to it. You will stay there. I know you will.'
With his old decisive mannerism he sat up, and his eyes flashed with
vigour.
'I will come back,' he said firmly. 'Life has separated us--it has not
been your fault or mine--but some day, Elise, when I get my grip on
things again, I shall come to you, and you will have to listen. We need
each other, and nothing on the earth can alter that'----
'Except America!' She laughed again, and withdrew her hand from his.
'Elise!' he cried, reaching towards her, 'listen to me'----
The Cockney patient leaned over with a bag in his hand. ''Ave a gripe?'
he said genially.
'No, th'---- began Selwyn.
'Thanks so much,' said Elise, taking the bag and picking a small cluster
for the American, afterwards handing the bag back to the Tommy.
''Ave a few yourself, won't yer?' said the warrior.
'May I?'
''Ere,' said the Cockney, with mock brusqueness. 'Tike a bunch.'
Perhaps from the very intensity of their previous talk, the threads
snapped, and her quickly uttered sentences, with the accompanying sparkle
in her eyes, showed him that he could hope for little more than badinage
for the rest of her visit. Almost as if she desired to eradicate the
memory of her emotional admission, she gave her vivacity full play. For
a few minutes he tried to bring back the close intimacy of their souls,
but she fenced him off, and met his heart-hungry glances with the gayest
of smiles.
Roselawn, she told him, had been transformed into a convalescent home,
and Lord and Lady Durwent were living in one of the wings. Practically
all the servants had enlisted or gone into war-work; and even Mathews,
the groom, after perjuring himself before a whole regiment of army
doctors, had been accepted (with grave official doubts) for military
service.
Interspersed with these details she recounted incidents of her London
life as an ambulance-driver, and it was all her listener could do to
follow the swift irrelevance of her course. Only once did she pause
when, in answer to his question, she told him she had heard nothing of
Dick.
IV.
A few minutes later she rose to go.
'I have stayed much too long,' she said. 'I do hope you'll get better
quickly.'
He took her hand in his, but made no attempt to translate the meaning of
the moment into language. He had worked against her country; while she
plied her rounds of mercy, he had written on the debasement and the
fallacy of it all. Lying in the wreck of his idealism, in the grip of
physical pain, dreading the torture of his own thoughts, could he express
what her coming had meant? He wanted to tell her of his heart-hunger, of
his loneliness, his gratitude, understanding, reverence, and, above all,
of his love. There was so much that it made him silent.
'Good-bye, Elise,' he said.
'Good-bye,' she answered.
That was the end. Of such paltry substance are words.
'By Gar!' said the French-Canadian, looking after her as she disappeared
down the ward, 'she mak me tink of my leetle girl Marie; only Marie,
mebbe, is only so high, _comme ça_, and got de black hair, so! I am
homeseek. Yes. It mak me verra homeseek. _Godam_!'
V.
She did not come again. Every morning his heart quickened with hope, and
each afternoon grew heavy with discouragement as the hours passed by
without the step he listened for. The arrival of the mail was an instant
of mad expectancy and mute resignation. But every day carried its cargo
of renewed hope, and he grudged the very hours of sleep that separated
him from it.
He wrote to her three times--pleaded with her to come again. He begged
forgiveness for omitted or committed things which might have hurt her,
but no reply came. He thought of writing to Roselawn, fancying she might
have gone there, but he was certain that before the letter could reach
her she would have come again, and they would only laugh at the idea of
any misunderstanding.
He blamed himself for a hundred imaginary crimes. He had not asked her
if she would return. Perhaps he had carelessly uttered words that
wounded her. He knew her pride; knew that after their parting at the
flat it must have been hard for her to make the first move towards
reconciliation--and she might have mistaken his joy for petty personal
triumph.
Or--had he been an utter fool? Was this her punishment of him? With the
consummate artistry of her sex, had she simulated sympathy and
forbearance to make his torture all the more exquisite? He dismissed the
suggestion as something vile, but, feeding on his doubts and longings, it
grew stronger and more insistent with every hour's passing. A hundred
times a day he closed his eyes and lived the sweet memory of her visit;
but with the gathering arraignments of his doubts, he wondered if it had
all been the studied act of the English girl's reprisal on the American
who had dared to challenge her nation.
Weary, weary hours--the inactivity of the body lending fuel to the flames
of his mind. He determined to dismiss her from his thoughts, and with
his power of mental discipline he reduced his mood to one of mute
resignation.
Then the thought of America came to him, and he was seized with an
impetuous craving for his own country, his own land, where men's natures
were broad and mountainous, like America itself. He pictured New York
towering into the skies, the charming homes of Boston, where so many
happy hours had been spent in genial, cultured controversy. He smelt the
ozone of the West, where sandy plains melted into the horizon; where men
lived in the open, and a man was your friend for no better reason than
that he was following the same trail as yourself.
America. . . . He was impatient now of every day that kept him in
England. He felt that his emotions, his brain, his convictions would all
be rudderless until he breathed once more the air of the New World, with
its vassal oceans bringing tribute to both Eastern and Western coasts.
He would not call himself a failure or a success until he looked on his
handiwork in the light of the great Republic. As his ancestors leaving
the shores of Holland and Ireland, as millions of men and women had done
with the Old World dwindling away in the distance, he looked towards
America for the answer to existence.
Ten days after his admission he was allowed to leave the hospital for his
rooms in St. James's Square.
He took his leave of the little group who had been his companions
for the time--the little Cockney with his incessant exuberance; the
French-Canadian, picturesque of language and imagination; the one
remaining Australian, vigorous of thought and forceful of temperament;
the nurse, carrying Florence Nightingale's lamp through the
blackness of war. He tried to say a little of what was bursting for
utterance, but they only laughed and fenced it off. They wished him
'Cheerio--good-bye--good luck;' and he wondered if the whole realm of
lived or written drama held any farewell more sublimely expressive of a
great people enduring to the uttermost.
His servant had a taxi-cab waiting for him. Driving first to a
florist's, he purchased roses for the nurse; then, stopping at a
tobacconist's, he left a generous order for all the occupants of the
ward. After that he went directly to the American Consul's office and
made arrangements for his return to New York.
VI.
It was late in December when, driving to Waterloo to catch the boat-train
to Southampton, Selwyn was held up in the Strand by the crush of people
welcoming the arrival of Red Cross trains from the front.
Leaning out of the window, he watched the motor-cars and ambulances
coming out from the station courtyard, while London's people, as they had
done from the beginning, welcomed the unknown wounded with waving
handkerchiefs and flowers, with hearts that wept and faces that bravely
smiled.
With a suppressed cry, Selwyn opened the door and leaped into the crowd.
He had seen her driving one of the ambulances, and he fought his way
furiously through the human mass to the open roadway. But it was
useless. The ambulance had disappeared.
Struggling back to the taxi, he re-entered it, and turning round, made
for Waterloo Bridge by way of the Embankment.