Part 26

“Come and sit ’ere, sonny,” Lovey commanded as soon as we were alone. “I’ve got somethin’ special-like to tell ye. Did ye know,” he went on, when I was seated beside the bed, “as I’d seen Lizzy—and she ’adn’t her neck broke at all. She was lovely.”

“Where?” I asked, to humor him.

“Right ’ere—right beside that there chair that you’re a-sittin’ in.”

“When?”

“Oh, on and off—pretty near all the time now.”

“You mean that she comes and goes?”

“No; not just comin’ and goin’. She’s—she’s kind o’ ’ere all the time, only sometimes I ain’t lookin’.” His face became alight. “There she is now—and a great long street be’ind ’er. No, it ain’t a street; it’s just all lovely-like, and Lizzy with ’er neck as straight as a walkin’-stick—and not a drinkin’-woman no more she don’t look—it’s kind o’ beautiful like, Slim, only—only I can’t make ye understand.”

Sighing fretfully over his inability to explain, he lapsed into that state of which I never was sure whether it was sleep or unconsciousness.

The coma lasted for a great part of the night. Sending the nurse to lie down, I sat and watched, chiefly because I had too much on my mind and in my heart to want to go to bed. Every two or three hours Cantyre stole in, in his dressing-gown, finding nothing he could do. Once or twice I was tempted to ask him what he thought of Christian’s talk, but, fearing to break the spell it might have wrought in him, I refrained. He himself didn’t mention it, nor did he seem to know that I had observed his impulsive, shaking hands.

On one of the occasions when he was with me Lovey opened his eyes suddenly, beginning to murmur something we couldn’t understand.

“What is it, old chap?” Cantyre questioned, bending over him and listening.

But Lovey was already articulating brokenly. It took two or three repetitions, or attempts at repetition, for Cantyre to be in a position to interpret.

“What’s he trying to say?” I inquired.

Cantyre pretended to arrange the bottles on the table beside the bed so as not to have to look at me.

“He says, or he’s doing his best to say, ‘I didn’t say nothink but what was for everybody’s good.’”

It was on my lips to retort, “Perhaps he didn’t.”

I left that, however, for Cantyre, who went back to his rooms without comment.

He returned in the small hours of the morning, and once more we sat, one on one side of the bed and the other on the other, in what was practically silence. All I could say of it was that it had become a sympathetic silence. Why it was sympathetic I didn’t know: but the unclassified perceptions told me that it was.

When Lovey opened his eyes again it was with the air of not having been asleep or otherwise away from us.

“I saved ye, Slim, didn’t I?”

“Yes, Lovey, old man, you did.”

“Kep’ straight so as you would keep straight too?”

“Yes, Lovey.”

“Ye’d never ’a’ done it if it ’adn’t been for me?”

“No, Lovey.”

“And I’d never ’a’ gone away from ye, Slim. I was just a—a-frightenin’ of you. I didn’t mean no ’arm at all, I didn’t.”

“I know, Lovey.”

He fixed his glazing eyes upon me as he said, “I told ye my name wasn’t Lovey, didn’t I?”

“No, but that doesn’t matter.”

“No, that doesn’t matter now. We’re fellas together, so what’s the diff?... I don’t care where we sleeps to-night, so long as you’re there, sonny.... Greeley’s Slip is good enough for mine, if I can snuggle up to you, like.... Ye don’t mind, do ye?”

I put my arm round his shoulder, raising him.

“No, Lovey, I don’t mind. Just snuggle up.”

“’Old me ’and, sonny.”

I took his hand in mine as his head rested on my shoulder.

He gave a long, restful sigh.

“Lizzy says it’s an awful nice place where she is, and—”

I felt him slipping down in bed; but Cantyre, who knew more of such cases than I did, caught him gently round the loins and lowered him.

_CHAPTER XXXIII_

On coming back the next afternoon from selecting the spot for Lovey’s grave there was a man in khaki on the train. When I got out at the Grand Central I saw another. In Fifth Avenue I saw another and another. They seemed to spring out of the ground, giving a new aspect to the streets. In the streets that shining thing I had noticed on landing was no longer to be seen. Silver peace had faded out, while in its place there was coming—coming by degrees—but coming—that spirit of strong resolve which is iron and gold.

Or perhaps I had better say that peace had taken refuge in my dingy little flat, where Lovey was lying on his bed in his Sunday clothes, with hands folded on his breast. Peace was in every line of the fragile figure; in the face there was peace satisfied—peace content—gentle, abiding, eternal.

Two days later a little company of us stood by his grave while Rufus Legrand read the ever-stirring words of the earth to earth. It was the old comradeship which Lovey himself would have liked—the fellowship of men who had fought the same fight as he, and were hoping to be faithful unto death like him—Christian, Straight, little Spender, Beady, Pyn, the wee bye Daisy, and one or two others. Cantyre alone had none of the dark memories—and yet the bright and blessed memories—that held the rest of us together; but Cantyre had his place.

We had driven out side by side in the same motor, as what the undertaker called chief mourners. I don’t remember that we uttered a word to each other till we got out at the grave.

It was Cantyre who said, then: “I want you to drive back with me, Frank. There’s somewhere I should like to take you.”

Reassured by his use of my name, I merely nodded, wondering what he meant.

I didn’t ask, however; nor did I ask when we were back in the motor again and on our way to town. I got my first hint as we began to descend the long avenue in which Sterling Barry had his house.

As I expected, we stopped at the door. The vacant lot was still vacant, and among its dead stalks of burdock and succory April was bringing the first shades of soft green. I thought of Lovey, of course; of our tramp round Columbus Circle; of my midnight adventure right on this spot. It was like going back to another life; it was as this life must have seemed to Lovey and his Lizzy reunited in that world where her neck was as straight as a walking-stick, and everything was lovely-like.

Cantyre spoke low, as if he could hardly speak at all.

“I asked Regina to be in. She’ll be expecting us.”

And she was. She was expecting us in that kind of agitation which hides itself under a pretense of being more than usually cool. In sympathy with Lovey’s memory, I suppose, she was dressed in black, which made a foil for her vivid lips and eyes. Out of the latter she was unable to keep a shade of feverish brightness that belied the nonchalance of her greeting.

She talked about Lovey, about the funeral, about the weather, about the declaration of war, about the men in khaki who with such surprising promptness had begun to appear in the streets. She talked rapidly, anxiously, against time, as it were, and busied herself pouring tea. Suspecting, doubtless, that Cantyre had something special to say, she was trying to fight him off from it as long as possible.

I had taken a seat; he remained standing, his back to the fire. His look was abstracted, thundery, morose.

Right in the middle of what Regina was saying about the seizure of the German ships he dropped with the remark, “You two know what Lovey told me—what he’s been telling me ever since you both came home.”

Neither of us had a word to say. We could only stare. You could hear the mantelpiece clock ticking before he went on again.

“Well, I’m not going to give you up, Regina,” he declared, aggressively, then.

One of her hands was on the handle of the teapot; one was in the act of taking up a cup. If coloring was ever transmuted into flame, her coloring was at that moment. There was a dramatic intensity in her quietness.

“Have I asked you to, Stephen?”

“No; but—”

“Have I?” I demanded.

“No; but—”

“If Lovey did it it was without any knowledge of mine,” I continued. “I practically killed him, God forgive me, for doing it!”

“You’re both off the track,” Cantyre broke in. “You don’t know what I—what I want to say.”

“Very well, then, Stephen. Tell us,” Regina said, tranquilly.

He spoke stammeringly. “It’s—it’s—just this: This is no time—for—for—love.”

We stared again, waiting for him to go on.

“It’s what—what Christian told us two or three nights ago. We’re in a world where—where love and marriage are no longer the burning questions. They’re too small. Don’t you see?”

We continued to stare, but we agreed with him.

“So—so,” he faltered, “I want you—I want you both—to—to put it all off.”

“The moratorium of love?” I suggested.

“The moratorium of everything,” he took up, “but what—what Christian put before us. I see that now more plainly than I ever saw anything in my life. We’ve got to give everything up—and get it back—different. We shall be different, too—and things that we’re struggling over now will be settled for us, I suppose, without our taking them into our own hands at all. That’s how I look at it, if you two will agree.”

“I agree, Stephen,” Regina said, with the same tranquillity.

“And I, too, old chap.”

“I’m—I’m going over,” he stumbled on, “with the first medical unit from Columbia—”

“Oh, Stephen! How splendid!”

He contradicted her. “No, it isn’t. I’m not doing it from any splendid motives whatever. I’m going just to—to try and get out of myself. Don’t you see—you two? You must see. I’m—I’m sunk in myself; I’ve never been anything else. That’s what’s been the matter with me. That’s why I never made any friends. That’s why you, Frank, have never really cared a straw about me—in spite of all the ways I’ve made up to you; and why you, Regina, can hardly stand me. But, by God! you’re both going to!”

With this flash of excitement I sprang up, laying my hand on his arm.

“We care for you already, old man.”

“That’s not the point. I’ve—I’ve got to care for myself. I’ve got to find some sort of self-respect.”

But Regina, too, sprang up, joining us where we stood on the hearth-rug. She didn’t touch him; she only stood before him with hands clasped in front of her.

“Stephen dear, you’re not doing any more heart-searching than Frank and I are doing; or than every true American is doing all through the country. What you say Mr. Christian told you the other night is more or less consciously in everybody’s soul. We know we’re called to the judgment seat; and at the judgment seat we stand. That’s all there is to it. Marriage and giving in marriage for people like us must wait. It’s become unimportant. There are people—younger than we are for the most part—to whom it comes first. But for us, with our experience—each of us—you with yours, Frank with his, I with mine—well, we have other work to do. We must see this great thing through before we can give our attention to ourselves. And we shall see it through, sha’n’t we, by doing as you say? We must give everything up—and wait. Then we shall probably find our difficulties solved for us. I often think that patience—the power to wait and be confident—is the most stupendous force in the world.”

And with few more words than this we left her. I went first, giving them a little time alone together. But I hadn’t gone very far before, on accidentally turning round, I saw Cantyre coming down the steps.

_CHAPTER XXXIV_

It was just a year later that a secret but profound misgiving in my heart began to be dispelled.

I call it secret because it was unacknowledged by myself. It would never, I believe, have come to me of its own accord; it was suggested from without, and even so I didn’t harbor it consciously. It was only with the news of Seicheprey, of which the details began to come in toward the end of April, 1918, that I knew that in the wheat of my hopes and confidences there had been tares of anxiety and fear.

I had seen too many of those strapping, splendid fellows not to be confident and hopeful. But I had also read too much of the folly of pitting green boys, however magnificently built, against the seasoned troops of long campaigns, not to have a lurking dread as to the test. I never voiced the question, not even to my own heart; yet Satan, the manufacturer of fear, had not failed to formulate it to my subconsciousness. What if this noble America, so strong, so generous, so ready to respond to that call which Christian had uttered, so eager to pour out its all, with both hands, gladly, gaily—what if now, before the guns of a ruthless and unconquerable foe, she should meet the disaster that would bring her to the dust? What if those beloved boys, all sinew and muscle as they were, should go down as I had seen my fellow-countrymen go down, in heaps that showed the impotence of valor? I had witnessed so much sacrifice—sacrifice by mistake, sacrifice by lack of skill, sacrifice by lack of knowledge that could have been obtained—that when I looked at these lads my heart sank at moments when it should have been most buoyant.

Then came Seicheprey, and I knew.

Then came the Marne, the Ourcq, the Vesle; and I was satisfied.

For the cause had absorbed me again, heart and soul and mind. I was being sent all over the country, and sometimes into Canada, to speak for it. In this way I came to be in a small town in the Middle West—Mendoza happened to be its name—when, picking up a paper, I saw that a hospital had been bombed. The next edition reported that two doctors and three or four nurses had been killed. The next told us their names. Among the names was....

And so he did give his all.

I didn’t write to Regina; Regina didn’t write to me. She was busy, as I was busy; but somewhere in the distance and the silence between us there was a place where our spirits met.

And when we met in person we still didn’t speak of it. It was too deep, too sacred, too complicated and strange to go readily into words. It was easier and more natural to talk of something else.

That was at Rosyth, on Long Island, at the end of June. Hearing that I had returned to New York for a rest, Hilda Grace asked me down for the week-end, just as she had asked me exactly four years before.

On this occasion she made no attempt to sound me; she mentioned Regina only to say that she was at the red-and-yellow house on the opposite hill for a little rest on her part. By disappearing after lunch on Sunday she gave me to understand that I was free.

I went to the old Hornblower house by the way I had taken when I had last come away from it—down Mrs. Grace’s steps to the beach—along the shore—and up the steps to the lawn where the foxgloves bordered the scrub-oak.

I went back to the veranda where I had waited and sat down in one of the same chairs. Taking out a cigarette, I lighted it and began to smoke.

Perhaps some one had seen me from a window, for in a little while there was the click of high heels on the bare steps of the stairway. Then out on the veranda came a figure too little to be tall and too tall to be considered little, carrying herself proudly, placing her dainty feet daintily, but advancing toward me instead of going away. She was dressed in white, with a scarlet band about her waist and another about her dashing Panama, of the same shade as her lips. In the opening at the neck she wore a string of pearls. Lower down, the opening was fastened by a diamond bar-pin. In her hand she carried a gold-mesh purse, which she threw carelessly on a table as she passed.

She met me as any hostess meets a man who comes to make a call. We talked of the topics of the day, beginning with the weather. From the weather we passed to the war, and to all our anxieties and humiliations through the spring. We could do this, however, with a ray of cheerfulness, because the Château-Thierry salient was beginning to be wiped out.

“But why do things have to happen the way they do?” I asked her. “If we’re going to win, why couldn’t we have won from the first? What’s the use of all this backing and filling, this losing and taking, and relosing and retaking, the same old ground? Oh, I know there are the usual explanations as to our not being up to the mark in munitions and man power; but I mean what is the explanation from the point of view of an All-Powerful and All-Intelligent—?”

“Isn’t it the same explanation that applies to every human life?”

“Well, what’s that?”

“I don’t know that I can tell you,” she smiled, thoughtfully; “but I do feel sure that we need our experiences. With minds and natures like ours we’re not fitted to go straight and simply from point to point. The long way round has to be our short way home, and—and—the way things happen is the best way.... Oh, dear, what’s happening?”

It was admirably staged. The slipping of the string of pearls to the floor could hardly have been another accident. For me there was but one thing to do.

Springing to my feet I stooped and picked the necklet up. Having picked it up, I put it in my pocket.

I stood smiling down at her. She sat smiling up at me. There was more in that smile than a lifetime of words could have uttered.

But when I was about to pull the pearls out of my pocket again she leaned forward and said, huskily: “Don’t, Frank. Keep them.”

I looked at her, puzzled. “Why, Regina?”

“Because some day you—you’ll give them back to me. Till then they’ll be yours. They’ll be a symbol—a pledge.”

“Will it be—some day—some day—soon?”

“Not so very soon, Frank. I must still have time to—to think of Stephen. I cared for him—in my way.”

“I think of him, too,” I said, shakily. “It seems hard that he should have had to give everything, when I’m—I’m getting everything.”

“Oh, death isn’t so terrible—or so significant. There wouldn’t be so much of it if it was. I only mean—but I can’t explain to you. We must get a little farther on—not only you and I—but our country—our countries—we must give still more—we must at least offer all even if it isn’t all taken away from us—before it’s given back to us—renewed—purified.”

“And then?”

“Oh, then!”

But the glow in her face said the rest.

THE END