Chapter XIII: Part 13

I am not giving you an account of the whole meeting; I mean only to report a little of what Christian said, and its effect upon Cantyre. Cantyre had come because Regina had insisted; but he sat with the atmosphere of hot, thundery silence wrapping him round.

“To be ready to give all is what the world is summoned to,” Christian declared, when he had been asked to say a few words, “and, oh, boys, I beg you to believe that it’s time! The call hasn’t come a minute too soon, and we sha’n’t be a minute too soon in getting ready to obey it.”

“Some of us ’ain’t got much to give,” a voice came from the back sitting-room.

“We’ve all got everything there is, if we only understood it,” Christian answered, promptly; “but whatever we have, it’s something we hold dear.”

“If we hold it dear,” another voice objected, “why should we be asked to give it up?”

“Because we haven’t known how to use it. Think of all you’ve had in your own life, Tom, and what you’ve done with it.”

I didn’t know what Tom had had in his life, but the retort evidently gave him something to turn over in his mind.

“There never was a time in the history of the world,” Christian went on, “when the abundance of blessing was more lavishly poured out upon mankind. In every country in both hemispheres we’ve had the treasures of the earth, the sea, and the air positively heaped upon us. Food, clothing, comfort, security, speed—have become the commonplaces of existence. The children of to-day grow up to a use of trains and motors and telephones and airplanes that would have seemed miraculous as short a time ago as when I was a lad. The standard of living has been so quickly raised that the poor have been living in a luxury unknown to the rich of two or three generations ago. The Atlantic has got to be so narrow that we count the time of our crossing it by hours. The globe has become so small that young people go round it for a honeymoon. People whose parents found it difficult to keep one house have two or three, and even more. There is money everywhere—private fortunes that would have staggered the imagination of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and Augustus and Charlemagne all combined. Amusements are so numerous that they pall on us. In lots of the restaurants of New York you can order a meal for yourself alone, and feel that neither Napoleon nor Queen Victoria nor the Czar could possibly have sat down to a better one.”

“Some could,” one of our objectors declared, with all sorts of implications in his tone.

“Oh, I’m not saying there are no inequalities or that there is just distribution of all this blessing. In fact, my point is that there is not. All I’m asserting is that the blessing is there, and that the very windows of heaven have been opened on the world in order to pour it out.”

“I never saw none of it,” a thin, sour fellow put in, laconically.

“But, Juleps, that’s what I’m coming to. The blessing was there, and some of us wouldn’t try to get what belonged to us, and others of us collared too much, and we treated it very much as children treat pennies in a scramble. We did far worse than that. We rifled, we stole, we gobbled, we guzzled, we strutted, we bragged; the fellow that was up kicked the fellow that was down to keep him down; the fellow that had plenty sneaked and twisted and cringed and cadged in order to get more; and we’ve all worked together to create the world that’s been hardly fit to live in, that every one of us has known. Now, boys, isn’t that so? Speak out frankly.”

Since in that crowd there could not be two opinions as to the world being hardly fit to live in, there was a general murmur of assent.

“Now wealth is a great good thing; and what I mean by wealth is the general storehouse, free to us all, which we call the earth and the atmosphere round it. I don’t have to tell you that it’s a storehouse crammed in every crack and cranny with the things you and I need for our enjoyment. And it isn’t a storehouse such as you and I would fill, which has got only what we could put into it; it’s always producing more. Production is its law. It’s never idle. It’s incessantly working. The more we take out of it the more it yields. I don’t say that we can’t exhaust it in spots by taxing it too much; of course we can. Greed will exhaust anything, just as it’s exhausting, under our very eyes, our forests, our fisheries, and our farms. But in general there’s nothing that will respond to good treatment more surely than the earth, nor give us back a bigger interest on the labor we put into it.”

“That’s so,” came from some one who had perhaps been a farmer.

“And so,” Christian went on, “we’ve had a world that’s given us everything in even greater abundance than we could use. We’ve had food to waste; we’ve had clothes for every shade of temperature; we’ve had coal for our furnaces, and iron for our buildings, and steel for our ships, and gasolene for our automobiles. We’ve had every invention that could help us to save time, to save worry, to save labor, to save life. Childhood has been made more healthy; old age more vigorous. That a race of young men and young women has been growing up among us of whom we can say without much exaggeration that humanity is becoming godlike, any one can see who goes round our schools and colleges.”

He took a step forward, throwing open his palms in a gesture of demand.

“But, fellows, what good has all this prodigious plenty been doing us? Has it made us any better? Have we become any more thankful that we all had enough and to spare? Have we been any more eager to see that when we had too much the next man had a sufficiency? Have we rejoiced in this plenitude as the common delight of every one? Have we seen it as the manifestation of the God who expresses Himself in all good things, and Who has given us, as one of the apostles says, all things richly to enjoy? Has it brought us any nearer Him? Has it given us any increased sympathy with Him? Or have we made it minister to our very lowest qualities, to our appetites, to our insolence, to our extravagance, to our sheer pride that all this was ours, to wallow in, to waste, and to despise?

“You know we have done the last. There isn’t a man among us who hasn’t done it to a greater or less degree. There is hardly a man in New York who hasn’t lived in the lust of the purely material. You may go through the world and only find a rarefied creature here and there who hasn’t reveled and rioted and been silly and vain and arrogant to the fullest extent that he dared.”

The wee bye Daisy was sitting in the front row, looking up at the speaker raptly.

“I haven’t, Mr. Christian,” he declared, virtuously.

“Then, Daisy, you’re the rarefied creature I said was an exception. Most of us have,” he went on when the roar of laughter subsided. “If we haven’t in one way we have in another. And what has been the result? Covetousness, hatred, class rivalry, capital and labor bitternesses, war. And now we’ve come to a place where by a queer and ironical judgment upon us the struggle for possession is going to take from us all that we possess.”

He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and spoke casually, confidentially.

“For, boys, that’s what I’m coming to. All the good things we have are going to be taken away from us. Since we don’t know how to use them, and won’t learn, we’ve got to give them back.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that, Mr. Christian,” a common-sense voice cried out in a tone of expostulation.

“Peter, you’ll see. You’ll only have to live a few months longer to find yourself like every one else in America, lacking the simple essentials you’ve always taken as a matter of course. It isn’t luxuries alone that you’ll be called on to give up; it will be the common necessaries of every-day life. The great summons is coming to us, not merely from our government, not merely from the terrified and stricken nations of mankind, but from God above—to give everything back to Him. I don’t say that we shall starve or that we shall freeze; but we may easily be cold and hungry and driven to a cheese-paring economy we never expected to practise. The light will be taken from our lamps, the work from our fingers, the money from our pockets. We shall be searched to the very soul. There’s nothing we sha’n’t have to surrender. At the very least we must give tithes of all that we possess, signifying our willingness to give more.”

“Some of us ’ain’t got nothing.”

It was the bitter cry of the dispossessed.

“Yes, Billy; we’ve all got life; and life, too, we shall have to offer up. There are some of you chaps sitting here that in all human probability will be called on to do it.”

“You won’t, Mr. Christian. You’re too old.”

“I’m too old, Spud, but my two boys are not; and they’re getting ready now. Whether it’s harder or easier to let them go rather than for me to go myself I leave to any of you guys that have kids.”

“Perhaps it won’t be as bad as what you think.”

“Jimmy, I’m only reasoning from what I see in the world already. When the human race is being trodden in the wine-press we in America can’t expect to be spared. If any of you want to know what’s happening to the kind of world we’ve made for ourselves let him read the eighteenth chapter of the book of the Revelation. That chapter might be written of Europe as it is at this minute. Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. The kings of the earth stand off from her, crying, Alas! alas! that great city Babylon, for in one hour is her judgment come! The merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more, saying, Alas! alas! that great city, which was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, for in one hour so great riches is come to naught. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, cast dust on their heads and cry over her, Alas! alas! that great city wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour she is made desolate.”

“But that ain’t us.”

“No, Headlights, that’s not us. I agree with you that there’s a difference. America is not in the same boat with Europe—not quite—but very nearly. Perhaps because our crimes are not so black we’ve been given the chance to do what we have to do more of our own free act. From Europe what she had has been taken away violently, whether she would or no. We have the chance to come before the throne of God and offer it back of our own free will. You see the difference! And, oh, boys, I want you to do it—”

“It ain’t for us, Mr. Christian, to decide that.”

“Oh yes, it is, Beady! It’s for each of us to offer willingly in his own heart. Not just to the government—not just to the country—not just to France or Belgium or any other nation that’s in a tight place—but to that blessed and heavenly Father Who’s giving us this wonderful chance to put everything into His hands again, and get it all back for redistribution. Don’t you see? That’s it—the redistribution! A better world has to come out of this—a juster world—a happier world—a cleaner world. And in that reconstruction we Americans have the chance to take the lead because we’re doing it of our own accord. Every other country has some ax to grind; but we have none. We’ve none except just to be in the big movement of all mankind upward and forward. But the difference between us and every other country—unless it’s the British Empire—is that we do it man by man, each stepping out of the ranks in his turn as if he was the only one and everything depended on his act. It’s up to you, Beady; it’s up to me; it’s up to each American singly.”

“Why ain’t it up to every European singly?”

“It is. They’re just beginning to understand that it is. The Englishman, the Frenchman, the Italian, they’re beginning to see that the democracy we talk so much about isn’t merely a question of the vote—that it isn’t primarily a question of the vote at all—it’s one of self-government in the widest and yet the most personal sense. The great summons is not to mankind in nations; it’s to mankind as individuals. It’s to Tom and Jimmy and Peter and Headlights and Daisy and every one who has a name. It’s the individual who makes the country, who forms the army, who becomes the redemptive element. In proportion as the individual cleanses himself from the national sin the national sin is wiped out. So it’s by Englishmen and Englishwomen that England will renew itself—”

I think it was my old friend, the Irish hospital attendant, who called out, “What’s England’s national sin?”

The question brought the speaker to a halt. He seemed to reflect.

“What’s England’s national sin?” he repeated. “I should say—mind you, I’m not sitting in judgment on any one or any people—but we’ve all got to clean our stables, even if it takes the labors of Hercules to accomplish it—I should say England’s national vice—the vice that’s been eating the heart out of her body, and the spirit out of her heart—is sensuality.”

“What’s the matter with France?”

“I’m not an international physician with a specialty for diagnosis,” Christian laughed; “but in my opinion France has been corroded through and through with sordidness. She’s been too petty, too narrow, too mean, too selfish—”

“Say, boss, tell us about my country.”

“You mean, Italy, Tony? Haven’t you got to get rid of your superstition, and all the degrading things superstition brings with it? I want you to understand that we’re talking of national errors, not of national virtues.”

“Have we got a national error in the United States?”

“What do you think, Tapley? Isn’t it as plain as the nose on your face? Isn’t it written all over the country, on every page of every newspaper you pick up?”

“What? What is it?” came from several voices at once.

“Dishonesty!” he cried, loudly. “We Americans have got our good points, but of them honesty is the very smallest. If any one called us a nation of sharpers he wouldn’t be very far wrong. Our notion of competition is to get the better of the other fellow, by foul means if it can’t be done by fair. That’s the case in private life, and when it comes to public—well, did you ever hear of anything that we ever undertook as a people that didn’t have to be investigated before very long? You can hardly read a daily paper in which the investigation of some public trust isn’t going on. Dishonesty is stamped deep, deep into the American character as it is to-day; and for that very reason, if for no other, we’ve got to give everything back. If we don’t it will be taken from us by main force; and we’re not of the type to wait for that.”

He seemed to gather himself together. His face, always benignant, began to glow with an inward light.

“But, boys, what I want you to understand is that we can make this act of offering as a great act of faith. Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down! We can take our good gifts and our perfect gifts and hand them up! We can anticipate their being taken from us by giving them. We can give them as men who know whence they have been received, and where they will be held in trust for us—not grudgingly nor of necessity, as the Bible tells us, for God loveth a cheerful giver. Now is the time for us to test that love—every man for himself. The appeal is to the individual. Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom, according to the measure that ye mete. For this giving isn’t to men, it’s to God; it isn’t a portion, it’s all; it isn’t limited to material things, it includes our love and our life. It’s the great summons; it’s the great surrender. And—boys—my dear old boys who’ve been saved from other things—we’ve all been saved for this—for something we never expected, but which isn’t hard to do when you look at it in the right way—to hand ourselves back, in body, mind, and possessions, to Him from whom we came, that He may make a new use of us and begin all over again.”

And the first thing I saw when he stopped was Cantyre springing forward to grasp him by the hand.

_CHAPTER XXXII_

When I got out the streets were already buzzing with a rumor that no extra had as yet proclaimed. The House of Representatives had followed the Senate in voting for war, and the President was about to sign the declaration.

But I forgot this on arriving at the flat, for Lovey was propped up in bed, with his thin nose in the air, making little sniffs.

“I smell it, Slim,” he smiled, as I entered. “Kind of a coffee smell it is now, with a dash o’ bacon and heggs.”

“That smell is always round this flat, Lovey,” I said, trying to be casual. “It’s all the breakfasts you and I have eaten—”

“Oh no, Slim. You can’t be mistook in this; and besides—” He made a sign to the man nurse who for the past week or two Cantyre had sent in from one of his hospitals. “You clear out, d’ye ’ear? I want to talk to my buddy, private-like.”

The man strolled out to the living-room, whispering to me as he passed: “There’s a change in him. I don’t think he’ll last through the night.”

“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