Part 19

“They’re in Isaiah, I think. Everybody knows them.” She recited in a smooth, rich voice that gave new beauty to the familiar passage: “‘Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: ... He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.’” Her voice rose—and fell again. “‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.’” She resumed in a colloquial tone: “I’ve seen so much of that, haven’t you? The lamb led dumb to the slaughter, and the quiet, wounded man hardly opening his mouth for a moan. It’s heartbreaking.”

“And yet you’d bring your own people into it.”

“Because it’s sublime. Because I’ve seen for myself that the people who take part in it are raised to levels they never knew it was possible to reach. Haven’t you found the same thing for yourself?”

“Oh, I? I’m only—”

“You’re a man—and a young man. You’re a young man who’s been—I can’t express it. It’s all in that fact. The people at home will only have to look at you to see what language could never put before them. Language isn’t equal to it. Imagination isn’t equal to it when the thing is over. Don’t you find that? Doesn’t it often seem to you, now that you’re out of it, as if it was a dream that had half escaped you? You try to tell it—and you can’t. That’s why the people who’ve been there and come back so often have nothing to say. That’s why so many of the books—except those that contain diaries jotted down on the minute—that are written afterward are so often disappointing. It’s like a great secret in every man’s soul that he knows and thinks about, and can never get out of him. So I shall make no attempt to do more than to tell the little things, the small human details—”

You will see that I was following my own train of thought as I broke in, “But New York life will get hold of you again.”

“It can’t get hold of me again, because there will be nothing for it to catch on by. That’s all over for me. It could no more seize anything I am now than you or I”—she pointed to a flock of little birds riding up and down on a long, smooth billow—“from the deck of this ship could catch one of those Mother Carey’s chickens.”

My sensations were those of a man who has received an extraordinary bit of good news, like that of a great artistic triumph or the inheritance of a fortune. It was something that went to the foundations of life, bathing them in security and peace. As we continued to talk the swing of the boat became the lulling of strong arms.

The conflict of which for the past few days my mind had been the battle-ground was suddenly appeased. Woman, love, marriage, the more comforting elements in life—were no longer in opposition to what had become a man’s pressing and sacred duties. There could be a love which asked for no moratorium; or rather, there could be a woman with the courage of a soldier.

I began to see her as comparable to that crusader’s wife who, disguised as a page, followed her lord on his journeys, to share his perils and minister to his needs. In a modern girl it was not only romantic; it was adorable. That it should have been done for me was beyond my power to believe. None but the bravest and most daring spirit would have attempted it—none but the heart capable of climbing higher and more adventurously still. I had known her for a gallant soul from that midnight minute when she pulled aside her hangings and found me lurking in her chamber; but I had never made a forecast of the heroisms and fidelities expanding here like the beauty from the heart of a rose.

_CHAPTER XXIII_

So we came to that last evening on board, of which I must now tell you. It had taken me the intervening time to get used to the new outlook. The habit of seeing myself surrounded by a whole stockade of prohibitions was too strong to overcome in a flash. I had to let my mind emerge into freedom gently, telling myself each day that with a wife like this I could serve the cause more devotedly than ever, since she would be serving it too.

Of that dedication to a cause I was possibly too much aware. My uniform made me aware of it. My game leg and my sightless eye made me aware of it. The need of whole peoples, like the French and British and Italian, of every man who could fire a gun or ram home a bayonet or speak a rousing word—that more than anything else seemed to put a consecration upon me of which I was as foolishly and yet as loftily conscious as a modern king, accustomed to a bowler hat, when he rides through the streets with his crown on.

And on the last evening there was enough of the ecstatic in the air to justify this sense of a mission.

The voyage, which had not been without the exciting stimulus of danger, was successfully over. The west was actually reached, and the things done left behind us. The things to be done were making our pulses beat faster and our energies yearn forward. To-morrow with its summons to activity was more keenly in our consciousness than to-day. Doctors, nurses, returning soldiers, the sparse handful of business men—we were already in heart ashore, walking in streets, riding in tram-cars, eating in dining-rooms, sleeping in beds, taking part in hard work, and deeming these things a privilege. Voices and laughter in the clear, still night, and the clicking of heels on the deck, were part of the relief and joyousness.

Late in the afternoon we had picked up the Nantucket light-ship, which rested like a star on the water. Now the horizon was being strung with beads of light, one, two, three, or little clusters at a time, behind which we knew that advancing night was lighting myriads of lamps all the way to the Pacific. On the Atlantic coast it was already dark, with cities and towns ablaze, and villages and farm-houses lit by kindly, shimmering windows. In the Middle West it was twilight, with electrics spangling the office-buildings here and there, and pale-gold flowers strewn over the prairie floors. Beyond the Mississippi it would still be day, but day dissolving gorgeously, softly, into sunset and moonrise and the everlasting magic of the stars.

As she and I hung over the deck rail side by side we felt ourselves on the edge of wonders. The Old World was in need of us, and we were in need of the New. To us who were New World born, and who were coming back to generous, easy-going welcome after the unspeakable things we had seen, the craving for New World brotherhood and vigor was like that of hunger or thirst. This much we admitted in so many words—even she.

She was still elusive; she was still mysterious. Though during the past few days she had not resisted a certain habit as to the place and hour at which we should find ourselves together and had been willing to talk freely on any theme connected with the cause, she took flight from a hint of the personal, like a bird at an approaching footstep.

Nevertheless, she was so far responsive as to say in answer to some question of mine, “My immediate plans—”

I broke in abruptly, “Let me tell you about your immediate plans.”

As the deck was faintly illuminated, since we were again sailing with lights, I saw that change in her eyes which comes when a fire on a hearth bursts into a conflagration.

Probably my tone and the change in my manner had startled her.

“You? What?” she began, confusedly.

“I’ll tell you what your plans are; but before that let me tell you something else.”

She put up her hand. “Wait! Don’t—”

But it was too late to stop me. I couldn’t have stopped myself. I was carried on by the impetus that came from my having been so many years held back. I was no longer the consecrated servant of a cause. As for having been a drunkard and a thief, no shadow of remembrance stayed with me. I was simply a man head over heels in love with a woman, and in all sorts of stupid, stumbling phrases saying so.

She listened because she couldn’t do anything else without walking away; but she listened with a kind of aloofness. With her clasped hands resting on the rail and her little, black silhouette held quietly erect, she gazed off toward a great white star, which I suppose must have been Capella, and heard my tale because she couldn’t stop it.

“Listen,” I went on, leaning on an arm extended along the rail. “I’ll tell you your story. I’ve pieced it together and I know what it is. I didn’t know it when I came on board. It puzzled me.”

Her lips moved, but there was no turn of her head or stir of her person.

“Please don’t. I’m—I’m not sure that I could bear it.”

“Why shouldn’t I? You’ve done certain things. Let me give you their interpretation.”

“If I do—” she began, weakly.

I couldn’t allow her to continue.

“I see now the explanation of so many things that bewildered me at first—that made me suffer. That day at Rosyth, for instance, when you went in and left me, you didn’t despise or hate me. You may have been disillusioned—”

“It isn’t the word,” she murmured, still motionless, and looking off at the big white star. “I’d been thinking of you as the kind of man I’d—I’d been looking for so long.”

“And you saw I was less so than any of the others.”

“I’m not saying that. But if you think it was easy to tear up all one’s conceptions by the roots and plant in new ones—however kindly—all at once—”

“Oh no, I don’t! not now. But at that time I didn’t know you. It’s only been since coming on board and finding out what you’ve done—”

Curiosity prompted her to glance round at me.

“Then it was only since coming on board?”

“Oh, it was simple enough. It’s silly to keep up the secret. I was talking, while we were still in the dock at Liverpool, with that handsome Canadian nurse.”

“Miss Ogden. She was matron of the hospital at—”

“She knew who you were. She couldn’t tell me your name, but she said—or Miss Prynne said—that you’d come over with Evelyn—that you’d been at Taplow with Mabel—”

“I know; the sort of thing that goes round among nurses.”

“And so I put two and two together and formed a theory.”

“You needn’t tell me what it is. Please don’t.”

“But I want to.” I hurried on before she could protest further. “When you saw that you’d—you’d hurt me—that day at Rosyth—and that I had disappeared—and gone into the army—and away to England—you got into touch with Evelyn—”

“I wanted to do something,” she declared, in a tone of self-defense. “I couldn’t help it when I knew the need was going to be so great. We didn’t see that all at once, because we thought the war was going to be over in a very little while. But when we began to realize it wasn’t—”

“Oh, I don’t say you did it all on my account.”

Though this was meant to provoke either admission or denial, she glided over it.

“It wasn’t easy to do anything in New York, because we hadn’t got that far as yet; and so I naturally went to Canada. When I did so Annette gave me a line of introduction to Evelyn.”

“And you told her about me.”

She fell into my trap so far as to say: “I didn’t tell her. I simply let her guess.”

“Guess what?”

“All I ever said to her in words was to ask her never to mention my name to you.”

“But why?”

“I did the same with Lady Rideover when she took me on at Taplow.”

“Why—again?”

“For the reason that—that if you ever came to find out what I was doing you’d misunderstand it; just as I see you—you do.”

“But I don’t. I don’t misunderstand it when I say that in going to my sisters you wanted to be—you mustn’t be offended!—you wanted to be near me—to watch over me as much as possible.”

“You were the only man I knew at that time who’d taken the actual step of going to the war. If there’d been any others—”

“It wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been a hundred. I don’t misunderstand it when I say that as soon as you knew I was going home by this boat you arranged—”

“To go home by it too,” she forestalled, quickly, “so that you should have somebody near you who could get about in the normal way in case there was danger. I admit that. It’s perfectly true.” She turned round on me with fire in her manner as well as in her eyes. “But what do you think I’m going home for?”

I repeated what she had said a few days before:

“You’re going home on account of your father—and to interest him and other Americans in American duty as to the war.”

“That’s a reason; it’s the reason I find it easiest to give. But I mustn’t hide it from you now that—that I’ve—I’ve another.”

I made one of my long mental leaps. I made it as a man might take the one chance of life in leaping a crevasse, knowing that there are more chances that he will be dashed to pieces in the chasm.

“You’re going home to be married.”

There was a kind of awe in the way she drew off from me.

“You’re extraordinary,” she breathed, faintly. “Miss Ogden didn’t tell you that.”

I had not cleared the crevasse. I was struggling desperately on the edge of it, while beneath me was the abyss.

“You’re going home to marry me.”

I think she gave a little bitter laugh. At any rate, there was the echo of it in her tone, as she said, with sardonic promptness: “How can I be going home to marry you, when—when I never knew till within half an hour that you—that you cared anything about me?”

I, too, must have laughed, the statement struck me as so absurd.

“What? You never knew—?”

She shook her head with an emphasis almost violent.

“You may have known,” she said, in that voice which, after all, could not be called bitter, for the reason that it was reproachful, “but I’d come to the conclusion that”—she tried to carry the situation off with a second laugh, a laugh that ended as something like a sob—“that you didn’t.”

I leaned down toward her, speaking the words right into her face.

“Didn’t care?”

She nodded silently.

“For God’s sake, what made you think that?”

“Oh—everything!”

“Everything? When? How?”

She was doing her best to convey the impression that it didn’t matter.

“Everything—always—in New York—at Atlantic City—there especially! And lately—”

“Yes? Lately?”

“Lately—at Taplow.”

“But at Taplow—how? In Heaven’s name—how?”

“Oh, I was in and out of your room.”

“So I understand; but what of that?”

“Nothing; nothing; only—only what I saw.”

“Well, what did you see?”

Instead of answering this question at once she shifted her ground.

“If you cared—as you say—why didn’t you tell some one?”

“Tell some one? Who could I tell?”

“Oh, any one. Lady Rideover, for one. She’d made a promise not to mention me; but you hadn’t.”

“But why should I have mentioned you when I never supposed she had any notion—”

“But you see that’s it. If you’d cared—so much—you’d have done it—to one of your sisters or the other. But you didn’t—not to either; and so they got the idea—”

“Yes? What idea did they get? Go on. Tell me.”

I noticed that she was twisting and untwisting her fingers, and that she had begun throwing me quick, nervous glances through the half-light.

“It’s no use telling you, because it doesn’t matter. That is, it doesn’t matter now. Everything’s—arranged.”

“We’ll talk about that later. I want to know what idea Mabel and Evelyn got.”

“They didn’t get it exactly. They were only beginning to get it when I made them understand that I was going back to be—Oh, why do you make me talk about it? Why do you bring it all up now, when it can’t do any good?”

To get at the facts I was obliged to speak with the severity one uses toward a difficult child.

“I want you to tell me what idea Mabel and Evelyn got.”

“Isn’t it perfectly evident what idea they’d get? Any one would get it when you—when you never said a word—not the least, little, confidential word—and you so ill!—and blind!—and to your own sisters!—and that Miss Farley there!”

I passed over the reference to Miss Farley because I couldn’t see what it meant. I had enough to do in seizing the new suggestion that had come to me.

“They didn’t think—they couldn’t have thought—that there was nothing on my side.”

“And everything on mine. That’s precisely the inference they drew. Girls do go about, you know, giving people to understand that men—”

“But not girls like you.”

“Yes, girls like me; or sufficiently like me. And so I had—in sheer self-respect—to let Lady Rideover see that there was nothing in it of the kind of thing she thought, and that I was actually going home to be—”

“But didn’t she see? Didn’t she know? Didn’t everybody see? Didn’t everybody know?”

In the two brief sentences that came out with something like a groan she threw tremendous emphasis on the first word.

“Nobody knew! Nobody saw!”

There was a similar emphasis on the penultimate word in my response.

“Did you ask them?”

She flashed back at me: “I did—almost. At times like that—if it’s so—some one generally knows it from—from the person who’s expecting to be brimming over with his secret.” She laughed again, lightly, nervously. “But in this instance nobody did.”

“You asked them?”

“Practically. I forgot everything I used to consider pride and—and I sounded them.”

“You sounded whom?”

“Oh, the people who knew you best—and who knew me—Annette, Esther Coningsby, Ralph—any one to whom I thought you might have betrayed yourself by a word. But it was just as with Evelyn and Lady Rideover. You had practically not mentioned my name. Hilda Grace told me she tried to sound you—that Sunday at Rosyth.”

“Well?”

“I’m only quoting her, mind you. She said she didn’t get”—there was a repetition of that nervous laugh—“she said she didn’t get—any satisfaction. And so—”

I tried to take a reasonable tone. “But how could I tell you or anybody else before I’d confessed to you who I was and where you’d first seen me?”

“Exactly. I quite understand that—now that you’ve said what you’ve said to-night. It’s where the past makes us pay—”

“For what I used to be.”

“Oh, you’re not the only one,” she declared, in a curious, offhand tone. “It’s for what I used to be, too.”

I found it difficult to follow her. “What you used to be? I don’t understand you.”

“You know about me—how I’ve been engaged to one man after another—and broken the engagements.”

“Because you were trying to find the right one.”

“It wasn’t only that. I thought of myself; I didn’t think of them. I let them offer me everything they had to give—and pretended to accept it—just to experiment—to play with—and now—now I’m—I’m caught!”

“Caught—in what way?”

She tossed her hands outward in a little, exasperated gesture.

“I can’t do the same thing again. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be sane.”

“The same thing? Do tell me what you mean.”

“It’s—it’s one of the same men. I’m—I’m caught. It’s what mother—and Elsie Coningsby—and other people who could talk to me plainly—told me would happen some day. I’m—I’m punished. And I can’t do the same thing the second time.”

It was still to escape from the yawning hell into which I felt myself going down that I said, stupidly, “Why can’t you?”

“Because I can’t. It’s what I said just now. It wouldn’t be sane. I’ve made a kind of history for myself. If I were to do the same thing again it wouldn’t merely seem cruel, it would seem crazy.”

“But if you don’t care for him?”

“I do—in a way. He’s been so good and kind and patient and everything! And even if I didn’t care for him at all it would be just the same—after what I’ve let him think—the second time.”

I could see her reasoning, if reasoning it was, though it was not the uppermost thought in my mind. As a matter of fact, I was repeating her statement as to “one of the same men.” Which one of them was it? There had been three—the one she didn’t trust—the one she couldn’t have lived with—and the one who was only very nice. It would make such a difference which one it proved to be that I was afraid to ask her.

I burst out, desperately: “Oh, but why did you—let him think it—the second time?”

“I don’t know. It happened by degrees—by writing—in letters—and I didn’t see how far I was going. It was a kind of reaction.”

“Reaction from what?”

She looked at me wildly. “From you, I think. As far as I remember it became definite at Taplow.”

“When you were actually seeing me every day?”

“That was the reason. It was seeing you so cheerful and full of jokes—and not missing—not missing any one—nor ever mentioning them—not to a soul. It just convinced me of what I’d been sure of before—ever since the time at Atlantic City—that you didn’t—that you never had.... And so when he suggested it in one of his letters—I don’t know what made me!—but I didn’t say it was impossible.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, who knows?—or something like that. And then he cabled—but I didn’t cable back—I only wrote—trying to say no—but not saying it decidedly enough.... And so it’s gone on—he writing and cabling both—and I only writing, but letting him think—just little by little—and not seeing how far I was being swept along.”

I wanted to be clear as to the facts.

“Then do I understand that you’re engaged to him?”

“I told him I wouldn’t be engaged again—that engagements for me had come to be grotesque. I said that if we did it we’d—we’d just go somewhere and be married.”

“If you did it? Then it’s possible—”

“No; because he’s expecting it. I’ve allowed him to expect it—just little by little, you understand—and not seeing how far I was letting myself in.... And now he’s told some people who used to know about it when I was engaged to him before—and that binds me because it will get about—so that if I were to break it off with him the second time I should be a laughing-stock—and quite rightly.”

“Oh, Regina, how could you?”

Taking no note of the fact that for the first time in my life I had called her Regina, she answered, simply: “I tell you I don’t know. If I do know it was because I was so lonely—and I’m over twenty-six—and feel older still—and nobody seemed to care about me but him—and I couldn’t bear the idea of going on and never marrying any one at all—which is what Elsie Coningsby said would happen to me—and what I’d been half wishing for myself—and yet half afraid of.... And you—”

“Yes? What about me?”

“There was a nurse at Taplow, that Miss Farley—”

“Miss Farley! Oh, good God!”

“Well, how did I know? She was very pretty.”

“Could I see whether she was pretty or not?”

“And you were always joking with her and thanking her.”

“Of course I thanked her. What else could I do?”

“You needn’t have kissed her hand. I caught you doing that one day when I was tidying up in your room.”

“Did you? Very likely. When a man is as helpless as I was his gratitude often becomes maudlin.”

“I don’t know that you need call it that. He simply falls in love with the pretty nurse who takes care of him. It was happening all the time in the hospitals. But for me—right there in your room—and shut out from everything—”

“But that wasn’t my fault. If I’d known you were there—”

“It was your fault at Atlantic City—and afterward—when I’d let you see—far more than a girl should ever let any man see.”

“But you know how impossible it was for me then—till I’d told you who I was.”

“I know it now. I didn’t know it before half an hour ago. And the time when you told me that—that thing—at Rosyth—I had no idea whether or not you meant.... And when you blame me for not coming down-stairs quicker than I did—”

“I haven’t blamed you, Regina.”

“You can’t imagine what it was to be all at sea not merely as to what you felt, but actually as to what you were—and had been. When you pulled the pearls out of your pocket—and said you were that man—”