Hamilton did not see Dorothy again before leaving France, although
he sent her a short note from camp announcing the good news. For on
their return to their regiment, both Hamilton and McCall had found
orders promoting them to captaincies. In reply Dorothy sent a note of
congratulation.
To Margaret, Hamilton sent a longer letter and another to his parents.
He was beginning to feel ashamed of his display of emotion toward
Dorothy--ashamed and perplexed. He meant to marry Margaret as soon as
he returned to America and he knew that the first principle of any
system of ethics was fidelity--fidelity to one’s country, to one’s
church, to the woman of one’s choice. Dorothy merely had interested
him. True he had much for which he would always be deeply grateful to
her. Yet there could be nothing more than friendship between them.
He did not even know Dorothy--had spoken to her intimately only twice.
He had no idea whether her peculiar fascination for him would survive
more frequent meetings, whether their brief friendship was anything
more than a passing fancy. Why then had he kissed her?--if he really
had kissed her. Sometimes it seemed like part of a dream.
Still, other men did it. One of the majors in the regiment, a married
man, was always bragging about his exploits, not merely kissing
episodes. Yet he continually referred to “the wife and kiddies” and
expressed his longing for them. There might be an exception here and
there, but practically every officer in the regiment practiced and
preached the creed: “What they don’t know”--“they” referring to wives,
fiancées and sweethearts--“won’t hurt ’em.” In civil life, Hamilton
recalled, it had been the same.
Margaret was so obviously the woman intended for him. She had beauty,
youth, the social graces and an assured social position. She would
make an ideal wife and mother and grace any home. They had always moved
in the same social circles; his friends were her friends. Their social
conventions were the same. There would be no barriers to break down, no
lessons to learn.
But after all a man didn’t love that way. One didn’t reason about such
things. He loved her--just because he loved her. And he really did love
Margaret. He had loved her when he was still in knickerbockers. He had
loved her when he was going to prep school. He had loved her all those
years in Harvard and since then.
Yet, in spite of this, Hamilton wondered whether he would now be
engaged if it had not been for the sentimentalism attendant on leaving
America to fight and possibly to die. He wondered whether she would
have come to camp at the time when he was most susceptible, if she had
not thought it a duty. Sometimes one’s motives were very complex. She
had come because she thought it her duty to give him the opportunity to
ask for all that she could give--her promise to marry him. And knowing
why she had come, he had proposed out of a sense of gallantry. If he
had not asked her it would be equivalent to jilting her.
But what difference did that make? He would have proposed to her
eventually, anyway. In the end he would marry her.
The officers spent most of their time on board the Mauretania homeward
bound in playing cards. It was early in March and still cold and foggy
on deck.
“What’s worrying you?” said McCall to Hamilton, one night over the card
table, after the other players had turned in for the night. McCall was
dealing out “cold” hands as a fitting conclusion to the evening’s play.
The cabin was thick with smoke.
“Worrying me?” Hamilton’s brows went up. “Nothing at all. I’m going to
beat you again. Come on, deal me that king.”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean something else.”
“Why, do I look downhearted?”
“Sometimes, a little. Perhaps it’s my imagination. Perhaps it’s the
getting back, the uncertainty. Sometimes I feel it. I wonder how I’ll
be able to get back into the old life. I wonder if I’ll fit in.”
Hamilton laughed.
“I’ll fit in beautifully. I’ll sleep until noon every day for a year.
I’ll take three baths a day--steam baths, cold baths, stingy shower
baths. The rest of the day I’ll lie around the house in my most
disreputable clothes, reading and sleeping.”
McCall stopped dealing the cards and leaned back in his chair. “Well, I
won’t get up for any reveille, Hamilton, but I’m going to work when I
get back.”
“Going to write the great American novel?”
“Oh, something like that. There’s one thing I’ve got out of the war. A
theme--a thumping big theme for a novel. It’s the sense of our national
unity. Before the war there used to be talk about America being a
conglomeration of races. This war has proved for all time that we are
a real nation, a single people, united so strongly by an ideal that we
have been able to sacrifice everything in a common war with an enemy
separated from us by three thousand miles of water. What other nation
can show such a record?
“France was fighting for her life. Naturally she was united. Germany
for an extension of her trade. England to oppose it and protect her
own. Belgium had been invaded. Russia was afraid of losing her interest
in the Balkans. All the other countries had economic or political
interests one way or the other, and in the end they were fighting for
their lives.
“But we had absolutely nothing tangible to fight for--nothing but an
ideal, or set of ideals. Making the world safe for democracy may seem
too simple a formula to explain the complex political and economic
motives for our entering the war, but it was true in the main. As far
as the soldiers were concerned, that’s exactly what they were fighting
for--what we used to tell them at training camp. You didn’t find any
difference in the courage or loyalty of your men, simply because of
their parentage, did you?”
Hamilton considered.
“No. I don’t think so. I haven’t really thought it out. There might
be an advantage in favor of one nationality or another--but it would
probably be small. Of course, we got most of the lower east side
element in our companies, a lot of little sweat-shop tailors, Jews.
Most of them had probably never seen a rifle before in their lives. But
they turned out surprisingly well. They’ve got intelligence.”
“Well, it’s this feeling of national unity I want to express. This
unity we used to talk about in the training camps--that we used to
instill into the men with their bayonet drill and manual of arms. This
unity of America’s children, regardless of race or creed.”
“‘_Long, too long, America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and
prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing,
grappling with direst fate and recoiling not.
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en
masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceived what your children en
masse really are?)_’”
“I see,” said Hamilton thoughtfully, “you want to show what America is
en masse.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
He laid down the cards and ran his long, tapering fingers through his
hair. Then he closed his eyes and began:
“‘_Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon;
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.
I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the
rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes,
and all over the prairies;
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each
other’s necks,
By the love of comrades--
By the manly love of comrades.
For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you, ma femme!
For you, for you, I am trilling these songs._’”
For a moment they were silent. It was Hamilton who broke the silence.
“I’ve been feeling the same thing,” he said. “You know I’ve been
brought up in the South. Ancestors lived in Georgia before Oglethorpe
and all that.”
He waved his arm expressively. “And I suppose I’ve been something of
a snob. All through the war I got to realizing it. But old ideas die
hard. Take Williams, for instance, the nigger that saved my life. I
wanted to thank him and yet I couldn’t. Something stuck in my throat.
It was the same way when I saw him at the reception. I couldn’t stand
seeing him there on a par with white men. It was the way I’d been
brought up, I guess. Grandfather owned a hundred slaves.
“I don’t believe in social equality for the negro. I think the
white man was destined to rule and the black to be ruled--don’t
interrupt--still I’ve begun to see that the white man, we rulers,
haven’t been doing the fair thing by the black. I wasn’t fair to
Williams, and the South isn’t fair to its millions of Williams. We
deprive them of an education, we don’t give them a fair trial in our
courts. We don’t let them vote.
“It’s the same way with foreigners. I’ve been with them, slept with
them, eaten with them, fought with them. Under the skin we’re all
the same. The same elemental passions, the same hopes and fears. Not
so much difference in culture as you’d think, except what’s due to
difference in education.”
Hamilton went on eagerly, often incoherently, while McCall nodded his
head in approval.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you talk like that,” he put in.
“What’s happened to you?”
Hamilton pondered. “I suppose I’ve been coming to it gradually--and
without realizing it. You know how those things go. You advocate an
idea and then for the sake of consistency you keep advocating it.”
“Yes, I understand. It’s what I always call ‘mental inertia.’”
“Mental or moral inertia, that’s it. The inertia that one has to
overcome in order to change an opinion--the subconscious prejudices
and reactions, the fear of being thought inconsistent, all that.
When I first learned that the universe had not been created in seven
days--that is, seven days of twenty-four hours each--I fought against
it. I didn’t want to believe it. A rational being would obviously weigh
the facts coldly and dispassionately and then arrive at a conclusion.
But it took me a long time to accept the fact that the earth is
millions of years old.”
“Oh, that’s the way with all new ideas,” McCall fished a cigarette
box out of his pocket, passed it over to Hamilton and selected a
cigarette himself. “Hand me the matches. Nobody wants a new idea,
until it’s forced on him, including, of course, Christianity. The
man with a new idea--whether it’s a new religious philosophy, a new
system of government, a new way of painting, a new way of writing,
a new invention--is hooted down in the church, the school or the
market-place. About the best thing that can happen to any innovator is
to die of hunger in an attic. You know that old saw about building a
better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door. Emerson
was all wrong. Now if you take a standard, common, ordinary mouse trap
and open a stand on Fifth Avenue and Broadway or on State and Madison
Streets and advertise Hamilton Mouse Traps consistently, you will get
the world to use them. But, believe me, if you retreat to a wood and
spend twenty years in studying the weaknesses of mice and inventing an
entirely new trap for their ensnarement, you will stick in that same
wood until travelers find your body devoured by the squirrels. Nobody
will buy your better mouse trap. Why? Simply because it’s a different
kind of mouse trap than anyone has used before--unless you spend time
and effort showing him that it is better.”
“Yes, I suppose we’re all like that. We hate change. Our engineers
study means of reducing friction, overcoming inertia, when the most
important inertia is in our minds.”
They paused and remained silent for a moment, puffing reflectively on
their cigarettes.
“I’ll tell you what has set me thinking,” said Hamilton at length,
laying his cigarette down. “No, thanks, no more. Some one I met in
Paris. Of course, all this time, all these two years, my ideas had been
changing gradually. Did you ever study physics? You know how it is when
you have a salt in solution and you try to crystallize it; you have
the proper solution, the temperature is correct, but nothing happens
until you give it a little jar. I suppose that jar offsets some sort of
inertia--the inertia of form.
“Well, my jar came by my contact with some one. All the time my ideas
had been changing subconsciously. I had been piling up new impressions.
But I still continued to reason along old lines. Then I came in contact
with some one who had given up a life of--well, the sort of life I had
planned--for one of service. I’ve always been an egoist. I’ve always
sneered at reformers and idealists. But here was a person whose motives
were so obviously different from anything I had ever encountered that
my mind was jarred. I didn’t know it at the time. I wonder how many
revelations are discovered after they actually take place? It sounds
like a paradox.”
“Aha, so another woman has come into your life!” McCall grinned and lit
a fresh cigarette.
“Woman?”
“Certainly! She’s given you this little jar--set you thinking.”
“I didn’t say it was a woman.”
“But you didn’t say it wasn’t. Which amounts to the same thing. If it
had been a man you would have said Major Jinks, or Dr. Levin, or Peter
Smith or whoever it was. You wouldn’t say ‘some one’ all the time.”
“You _are_ right,” said Hamilton, at length. “Let’s open a door and
get some of this smoke out before we turn in. Miss Meadows has set me
thinking. But you know what I think--”
“No.”
“I’m going down to Corinth first thing and get married.”
“Well, I’m not surprised. You’ve been engaged long enough. Ever since
we were at Camp Mills. Best of luck, old man.”
Hamilton was disappointed. He had thought that the announcement would
surprise McCall. It had surprised himself. He had suddenly expressed
his intention aloud. Was it to commit himself to making a decision? He
was in love with Margaret. He wished to be united with her irrevocably.
He wished that there be no doubt in his mind about it. There really was
no reason, after all, why McCall should be surprised. He had expected
it right along. Hamilton wondered why he should wish to pledge himself
to marry Margaret, and why he should take this means of proclaiming his
intention. He wondered whether McCall would think it odd, or whether he
thought about it at all.
“Well, two more days and we’ll see land,” said McCall, as he hopped
into bed. “Just think, one more night after this, then home again! No
more reveille. No more trenches. No more slumgullion. No more rain.
Whee! We really _ought_ to get drunk!” Hamilton agreed and slowly
prepared for bed.