Part 21

Then I wasn’t interested in it any more. I had pretentiously thought of myself as dedicated to a cause, and now the cause had dissolved into nothing on this leaden, overcharged air. It would be ridiculous to wean these people away from their work, even if I could play like the Pied Piper and have them follow me. I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to marry the woman I loved, and settle down quietly, industriously, to spend my days in an office and my nights at home, like the countless human ants that were running to and fro. My celibacy of the will was gone. My consecration was gone. Where these austerities had been there was now only that yearning of whatever it is that draws a man toward a woman, and I asked nothing but the freedom to enjoy. I was determined to enjoy. The resolve came over me with this first glimpse of New York. It came over me in a tide of desire which was all the fiercer for its long repression. It may have been the demand of the flesh for compensation. That which had not merely been denied, but brutalized and broken, rose with the appetite of a starving beast.

So, thirdly, I was not fit for any high undertaking. It was not my real self that had made these vows; it was a phantasm self evoked by the vast emotions of a strife in which the passions raged on a scale that lifted the human temporarily out of itself. But now that the strife had been left behind, the human fell back into the same old rut.

In the same old rut I found myself. I had reverted to what I had been before there was a war at all. My carnal instincts were as strong as ever; as strong as ever was my longing for Regina Barry as my wife. It was stronger than ever, since I meant to get her by hook or by crook, if I couldn’t do it by the methods which colloquially we call straight.

It was, however, the difficulties of hook and crook that oppressed me. The straight line was in this case that of least resistance. I grew more convinced of it as the day advanced.

There was everything to make my return to the old quarters a moment of depression. The quarters themselves, which had seemed palatial after the Down and Out, were modest to the point of being squalid. As Cantyre had said, Lovey had kept them as clean as an operating-room, but cleanliness couldn’t relieve their dingy shabbiness or make up for the absence of daylight.

Moreover, Cantyre’s own proximity was trying to me. There was only the elbow of a corridor between his rooms and mine. He would resume the old chumming habits of running in and out, while I was sharpening a knife to stab him in the back.

And in the processes of unpacking Lovey got on my nerves. He got on my nerves as a sweet, old, fussy mother gets on those of a wayward son during the hours he is compelled to stay at home. Dogging me about from one room to another, his affection was like a draught of milk held out to a man whose lips are parched for brandy.

It was a relief, therefore, when the telephone rang and Annette van Elstine asked me to come and have tea with her. I knew that Annette was not craving to see me merely as her cousin; and as my cousin I could have waited patiently for the pleasure of seeing her; but with her scent for drama and her insatiable curiosity she would raise the issues of which I wanted to talk even if I got no good from it.

I found her as little changed as if Time had not passed nor War dropped his bomb on the world.

Annette’s smartness, as I have already told you, was difficult to define. It was not in looks or dress or manner of living or gifts of intellect. If I could ascribe it to a cause I should put it down as authority of position combined with the possession of a great many personal secrets. She knew your intimate history for the reason that she asked you intimate questions. Authority of position enabled her to do this—or at least she acted as if it did—with the right of a cross-examiner to probe the truth in court. She could convey the impression that her interest in your affairs was an honor—as if a queen were to put her royal finger in your family pie—so that quite artlessly you unlocked your heart to her. Other people’s unlocked hearts were her kingdom, since, as far as I could see, she had nothing in her own.

Also, as far as I could see, she wore the same tea-gown I had always seen her in; she sat in the same chair in front of the same fire; she had before her the same tea equipage; she might have been pouring the same tea.

The transition from the necessary questions as to my personal experiences and wounds to that of the exact relations between Mrs. Hartlepool and Gen. Lord Birkenhead was an easy one. Disappointed that I had spent two years at the front and had heard nothing of the delicate situation between these distinguished persons, of which an amazing mass of contradictory detail had reached certain circles in New York, she turned the conversation on what was really the matter in hand.

“So you came over on the same boat as Regina?”

Unable to deny this statement, I admitted its truth. The dusky ripples played over Annette’s round features, giving them a somber vivacity.

“Did she tell you anything?”

“Yes; a good many things.”

“Anything special, I mean?”

“Everything she said was special, as far as I can remember.”

She tried another avenue.

“You’ve gone back to your old quarters, haven’t you?”

“Yes; I kept them all the time I was away. Stupid, I suppose; but when I left New York I didn’t expect to be gone for more than a few weeks.”

“Stephen Cantyre is in that house, isn’t he?”

“On the same floor with me.”

“You’ll see a great deal of him, won’t you?”

“I did when I was there before.”

“Was he on the dock to meet Regina?”

“He was on the dock, either to meet her or to meet me. As a matter of fact, he met us both.”

“Did he say anything about her?”

“Yes; he said he had to go and speak to her.”

“Only to speak to her?”

“What more could he do—right there on the dock?”

“Oh, then you do know?”

“Know what?”

“What do you suppose? Can’t you guess?”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to guess. I thought you meant to tell me.”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know myself—officially.”

“Do you know it in any other way?”

“I know it by signs and tokens.”

“One can infer a lot from them.”

“That’s just what I’ve done. It wasn’t till I heard that you’d come over in the same boat with her—”

The rest of the sentence was conveyed by a look which invited me to go on.

“You thought I might be able to corroborate the signs and tokens?”

“Or contradict them—if it’s not a rude thing to say.”

I wriggled away from the frontal attack. “Why should it be rude?”

“Oh, well, I’m the last person in the world to go poking into other people’s business.”

“Exactly.”

“Only people do like to tell me things.”

“I can quite understand that—when they’ve anything to tell.”

“Which is what I thought you might have.”

“How could I have anything to tell when I’ve just spent two years in trenches and hospitals?”

“You haven’t been in trenches and hospitals during the last ten days. Oh, don’t say anything if you don’t want to. I’m not in the least curious.”

“Of course you’re not. No one would ever think so.”

“I’ve only been—well, just a little afraid.”

“What were you afraid of?”

“Of the situation. I suppose it wasn’t an accident that you took the boat that she was on?”

“No, it wasn’t an accident. But what has that to do with it?”

“Just that much—that you did it on purpose.”

“So that you were afraid on my account?”

“No; on hers. You see, she’s been so terribly talked about that now that it’s beginning again—”

“Oh, it’s beginning again, is it?”

She said, mysteriously, “Stephen Cantyre is rather a goose, you know.”

“In what way?”

“In the way of dropping hints when he’d much better keep still. He’s so crazy about her—”

“It’s a pity for him to be dropping hints if he isn’t sure.”

“Oh, he must be sure enough! After the way she treated him before, he’d never expose himself to the same thing the second time. It isn’t that he’s not sure. It’s just the way he does it—confiding in every one, but only saying that he hopes.”

“If he only hopes, it doesn’t bind any one but himself.”

“It isn’t a question of binding; it’s one of the situation. If she’s let him hope—the second time—she’s bound. If it was only the first time—or if she hadn’t made such an insane reputation for herself—don’t you see?—the whole thing is in that.”

“I should think the whole thing was in whether or not she was in love with him.”

“Well, it isn’t. If she was as much in love with somebody else as Juliet she couldn’t throw over Stephen Cantyre now. She’d have to be put under restraint if she did—shut up in some sort of ward. The community wouldn’t stand for it.”

“It might be a nine days’ wonder, of course.”

“It would be one of those nine days’ wonders that last all your life. She’d be done for.” She went on in another key. “But, of course, her father and mother wouldn’t let her. They’re delighted. He’s very well off—and a good fellow, who’ll give her everything she wants.”

“But what good will that do if she doesn’t care for him?”

Her animation went into the eclipse that always came over her when she touched the heart of things.

“What makes you think she doesn’t—if it’s not a rude question?”

“The fact that she turned him down before.”

She broke in with that directness which she never hesitated to make use of when the time came.

“You don’t think she cares anything about you?”

I considered two or three ways of meeting this, the one I adopted being to put on a rather inane smile.

“What if she did?”

“She’d just have to get over it, that’s all. You, too!”

“Why?”

“I needn’t tell you why. You must see for yourself. Or, rather, I’ve told you already. There are ways in which an engagement is more important than a marriage—any engagement; and when it’s a second engagement to the same man—If she’d been married to him, and couldn’t get along, why, no one would think the worse of her if she got a divorce and married some one else. She would have given him a try; she would have done her best. But just to take him up and put him down, and take him up and put him down again, without trying him at all—my dear Frank, it isn’t done!”

“But suppose we did it?”

“In that case it might be the world well lost for love—but the world would be lost; and you needn’t be under any misconception about it. Personally I’d stand by any one through almost anything; I have stood by Regina in the past when lots of other women have given her the cold shoulder because of her—”

“Call it anything you like. Most of us have other names for it. All I want to say now is that I wouldn’t stand by her in this; nor by you, either. If you had come to me when you were in your other troubles—three or four years ago—you’d have found me just the same as if you’d been keeping straight. Any one can go to the bad. There isn’t a family that hasn’t some one who’s done it. But this would be the kind of thing— Frank, old boy, I’m telling you right now, so that you’ll know where you stand with me. I’d have to be the first to cut you both.”

To this there were several retorts I could have made, any of them quite crushing to Annette; but I was thinking of the practical difficulties before us. The rôle of unscrupulous coquette was the last in which Regina would care to appear; that of cad was equally distasteful to me. Had it been possible to make one plunge and be over with it, it would have been different; as it was, the preliminaries—the facing of all the people who would have to be faced—the explaining all the things that would have to be explained—couldn’t but be devilish.

I was just beginning, “Why should you assume that we are thinking of any such thing—?”

But before I could finish the sentence the door opened gently and a maid’s voice announced, “Mrs. Barry.”

Of all the people in the world, this lady was the last I wanted to meet at that moment. Knowing how I must have figured in her eyes in the past, I was planning for the future to figure in a worse light still. I had thrown her kindness back in her face and never given her an explanation. She must have known that my seeming flight from Long Island after that last Sunday in June, 1914, had left her daughter unhappy; and the reason had remained a mystery.

She gave me the first glance as she entered, and only the second to our hostess. The awful severity of those who are temperamentally gentle and unjudging was in the very coldness of her eye.

She was a charming, delicate, semi-invalid woman who seemed to have been spun, like the clothes she wore, out of the least durable materials in life. Regina had the same traits, but harder, stronger, and more lasting. It was difficult to think of the latter as an invalid; while you couldn’t see the mother as anything else.

Prettily old-fashioned, she seemed not to have changed her style of dressing since the eighteen-seventies. The small bonnet might have dated from the epoch of professional beauties when Mrs. Langtry was a girl. The long fur pelisse with loose hanging sleeves was of no period at all. I think she wore a train. In her own house she habitually did, and she seemed to have just flung on the pelisse and driven down the Avenue in her motor.

She greeted me politely, without enthusiasm, but with due regard to the fact that I was a wounded hero home from the wars. Talking of the invasion of Rumania, she showed herself much more alive to America’s international duty than any of the few men I had met since my landing.

“I wish we could get my husband and Stephen to see things that way,” she continued, sweetly, over her tea-cup. “They’re so pacifist, both of them. My husband feels that we’ve nothing to do with it, and Stephen is opposed to war on any ground. You must talk to him, Mr.—or captain, isn’t it? Oh, major? You must talk to him, Major Melbury. He’ll listen to you.” She turned to Annette. “You know, Annette, I just ran in to share our good news with you. Regina and Stephen—they’ve made it up again—and they’re so happy!” An oblique glance included me. She was getting the satisfaction that women receive from a certain kind of revenge. “Poor darling! You don’t know how hard she’s tried, Annette. People haven’t understood her. All she’s wanted was to be sure of herself—and now she is. She’s really been in love with Stephen all these years, only she didn’t know it. That is, she knew it; and yet—But I’m sure you see it. You’re one of the few who’ve never been unkind to her. She wanted me to tell you. She’ll be so glad to have you know it, too, Major Melbury. Perhaps she told you on the boat. I think she said she did. I don’t quite remember. There’s been so much to say in the last few hours. There always is at such a time, don’t you think?... No; they’re not going to announce an engagement. It would only make more talk, after all the talk there’s been. One of these days they’ll be married—without saying anything about it. And, oh!—I know you’ll be interested, Annette, though it may bore Major Melbury—Stephen has bought that very nice house—the Endsleigh Jarrotts lived in it for a little while—on Park Avenue near Sixty-sixth Street. Ralph Coningsby is going to remodel it for them, and I’m sure it will be awfully attractive. That’s where they’ll live.”

It was my opportunity. I could have shouted out there and then and made a scene.

Do you think me a coward for not doing it? Do you think me a fool?

All kinds of speeches were hot within me—and I kept them back. More correctly, I didn’t keep them back; I simply couldn’t utter them. I couldn’t give pain to this sweet lady sipping her tea so contentedly; I couldn’t give pain to Annette. Annette was enjoying the situation in which we found ourselves; the sweet lady had got compensation for months, for years, of wondering and unhappiness in those seemingly artless words, “She’s really been in love with Stephen all these years, only she didn’t know it.” I knew they were spoken for my benefit. Between the lines, between the syllables, they said, “And if you think she was ever in love with you you’re wrong.” Whether the sweet lady believed her own statements or not made little difference. It would gratify her all her life to remember that she had had the chance of making them.

So I came away, following the line of least resistance, because I didn’t see what else I could do.

I didn’t see what else I could do when Cantyre came into my bedroom late that night.

I knew he would be dining at the Barrys’, and that he would come looking me up after his return. To avoid him I had the choice between staying out and going to bed. My physical condition kept me from staying out very late, and so I took the other alternative. It made no difference, however, since he waked Lovey by pounding on the door, and insisted on coming in.

Dropping into the arm-chair beside my bed, with no light but that which streamed in behind him from the sitting-room, he took me on my weak side by beginning to talk about the war.

I have said that my mission had become unreal and fantastic, but that was only in relation to my personal fitness for the task. That the war was a holy war, to be fought to a holy end, remained the alpha and omega of my convictions. And to Cantyre war of any kind was plainly unholy war, productive of unholy reactions. What I felt as he talked may best be expressed by Lovey’s words next morning when he betrayed the fact that he had been listening.

“Didn’t it get yer goat, Slim, the way the doctor went on last night?”

It did get my goat, and I restrained myself only because I had been warned in London to be patient with Americans. “You must treat them as wise parents treat their sons,” I had been told. “Help them to see for themselves—and when they do that you can trust them.” So the best I could do was to help Cantyre to see for himself; and to make any headway in that I had to pretend to be tolerant.

“No one contends that war is the ideal method for settling human difficulties,” I admitted; “but as long as human society stands on certain planks in its platform there’ll be no other way.”

“Then isn’t this the time to take another way?”

“No; because you’ve got to change your bases of existence first. You can’t change your effects without first changing your causes, any more than you can graft an apple on an oak.”

“But even without removing the cause you can still sometimes nip the effect.”

“Which is what in the present instance we tried to do, and didn’t succeed in. All the trend of education during thirty years has been in the direction of eliminating war, while still keeping the principle that makes for war as part of the foundation of our life. We created a system of international law; we set up a Hague Tribunal; many of us had come to the conclusion that no great war could ever again take place; but the law by which human beings prefer as yet to live outwitted us and brought war upon us whether we would or not. So long as you keep the causes you must have the effects.”

“Then let us do away with the causes.”

“Yes! Let us. Only, to do that in time for the present situation we should have begun five hundred years ago. You can’t put out the fire the ages have kindled as you’d blow out a candle. When you’ve spent centuries in preparing your mine, and fixed a time fuse to make it explode, you’ve nothing to do but to let it go off. This war wasn’t made overnight. The world has been getting ready for it as long as there have been human beings to look askance at one another. Now we’ve got it—with all its horrors, but also with all its compensations.”

“Compensations for the lives it has ruined?”

“In the lives it has saved—yes. You’ll never get its meaning unless you see it as a great regenerative process.”

“Do you mean to tell me that we can only be regenerated by fire and sword and rapine?”

“Not at all! We’re regenerated by courage and honor and sacrifice and the sense that every man gets—every Tommy, every poilu, every bluejacket—that he personally is essential to man’s big fight in his struggle upward. It’s one of the queer things of the whole business that out of the greatest wrong human beings can inflict on one another—to go to war with them—there can come the highest benefits to every individual who gets himself ready to receive them. It makes one believe in an intelligence compelling the race toward good, however much we may be determined to go the other way.”

He tuned his voice to a new key.

“Oh, I’ve never doubted that; and now, old chap, now I—I see it.”

I knew what was coming. It was the great subject that could eclipse even that of the war. I had just force to pull the bedclothes up about my mouth and mutter a suffocated, “How?”

“What I hinted this morning. It’s all—it’s all come right. I used to think it never would, sometimes. And then—don’t laugh, old boy!—but then I’d say to myself that God would never have made me feel as I did unless He meant something to come of it. Religion keeps telling you to trust; and I did trust—on and off.”

Again I had an opportunity; but again such words as rose in me choked themselves back in my throat. I could have told him that she was ready to come to me if I lifted a finger. I knew I should have to tell him sometime, and it occurred to me that it might as well be now. It was the words that failed me, not the intention; or if it was the intention, it was the intention in any degree that made it compulsory.

I don’t think he noticed that I said nothing, for he went falteringly on:

“It’s a wonderful thing to be happy, Frank. I’ve never been happy before in my life. I’m a pusillanimous sort of bloke, and there’s the truth. I wasn’t happy at home, or at school, or at college, or in any of the hospitals where I worked; and I never made any friends. You must know I’ve been queer when I say that women have always looked at me as if I was outside of their range. They’ve never made up to me in the way they do to most fellows with a bit of money and not deformed. Regina—there! I’ve said her name—she was the very first who ever took the trouble to be more than just decently civil.”

I managed to stammer the words, “What did she do?”

“Oh, nothing very much—not at first. She seemed to think—she used to say it—that I was different from most men. That’s what she appeared to be on the lookout for. All the other chaps she knew were so much alike, and I—Well, that’s how it began. She wanted the unusual—and I turned up. After a while she thought I wasn’t unusual enough—said it in so many words—But you know that story. I’ve told you too many times already.”

“And now?”

“She thinks she’ll marry me.”

He brought out the statement in a voice all awe and amazement.

“She only thinks?”

“Oh, she will. She wouldn’t say anything about it if she didn’t mean—”

“And—and you’re going to—to let her?”

“Let her? Why, man, you might as well ask me if I’d let God forgive my sins if He said He’d do it.”

“God could forgive your sins and not be any the worse off Himself.”

He sprang forward in his chair, grabbing at the bedclothes.

“Frank, I swear to you it will be the same with her. She’ll never be sorry. I’ll never let her. She’ll be like God to me. I’ll make my whole life worship and service.”

“If that’s what she wants.”

“It’s what every woman wants, so they say. They just ask to be loved; and when you love them enough—” He uttered a little shrill laugh, in which there was a touch of the hysterical that was always somewhere about him. “God! Frank, it’s wonderful! Even you who know her can’t imagine what it means to a lonely bloke like me.”

I pumped myself up to a great effort.

“Suppose”—I had to moisten my lips before going on—“suppose she was to play you the same trick she played you before?”

“She wouldn’t.”

In spite of his evident conviction, I pressed the question.

“But if she did?”