CHAPTER XXII
And then a word was said which, though solving no problems, opened up a new line of suggestion.
I have spoken of Regina Barry as another transmigrated soul. I have said that I could not tell at a glance in what direction her spirit had traveled; nor could I after some days of intercourse. As much as she had been frank and open in the other period of our acquaintance, she had now become mystery to me—elusive, tantalizing, sealed. By the end of a few days I began to perceive that she came near me only, as I might say, officially. If there was danger or storm or darkness—we sailed without lights—she was within reach of me. She was within reach of me many a time if I wanted no more than a book that had fallen or a rug that had been left elsewhere on the deck. It was strange how hovering and protective her presence could be for the moment of need, and how far withdrawn the minute I could get along alone.
And far withdrawn the transmigrated spirit seemed to me at all times. Do what I would to traverse the distance, I found her as remote as ever. Do what I would to break down her defenses or transcend them, they still rose between us, impalpable, impregnable, and all but indiscernible. She had traveled away from me as I had traveled away from her; and yet now that we met in space there was some indefinable bond between us.
It was in right of that bond that I asked her one day why she was going home.
“Oh, for all sorts of reasons.” She added, “One of them is on account of father.”
“Isn’t he well?”
“Yes, he’s well enough. That isn’t it.”
As she did not explain, I refrained from asking further, not because I didn’t want to know, but because I knew she would tell me.
It was our usual trysting-place, the deck rail, though not now that which ran along the side of the ship, but the one across the portion of the upper deck toward the bow, allowing us to look down on the pit in which the few steerage passengers took the air. They were standing about in helpless, idle groups, some ten or twelve oddly clad, oddly hatted men, with three or four of their women, and a white staring baby, whose fingers, as it hung over its mother’s shoulder, dangled like bits of string.
We were in the Gulf Stream, so that the day was comparatively mild. A north wind not too violent blew away the possibility of fog and sent an occasional shaft of sunshine through the rifts in the great gray clouds. The swell left over from the gale of the past few days tossed the ship’s nose into the air with a long, slow, rhythmic heave, slightly to port, and gave to good sailors like ourselves that pleasant sensation of swinging which a bird must get on a tree.
Wind and water were fraught with the nameless peaceful intimations of the New World after the turmoil of the Old one. It is difficult to say how one seizes them, but they come with the Gulf Stream. I have always noticed that half-way over there is a change in the aura, the atmosphere. It throws a breath of balsam on the wind, and flashes on the waves that gleam which Cabot, Jacques Cartier, and the Pilgrims saw when they sighted land.
It is that wonderful sense of going westward which, I suppose, is primal to the instinct. Going eastward, one is going back to beginnings, to things lived, to things over and done with. Going westward, all is hope. It is the onward reach, the upward grasp, the endless striving. It is the lifting of the hands, the straining of the power to achieve, the yearning of the inner man. The thing that is finished is left behind, and the thing to be wrestled with and done is in front of one. The very sun goes before one with a splendid gesture of beckoning—on to work, on to self-denial, on to triumph and success—and when it sets it sets with a promise of a morrow.
We had already begun to feel that; and on my part in a spirit of compunction. I was going, as far as lay within my small powers, to turn the west back upon the east again, to reverse nature by making the stream flow toward its source. I was far from insensible to the pity of it, for I had seen the effect on my own country.
I had seen my own country—that baby giant, whose very existence as a country antedated but little the year when I was born—I had seen it pause in its work, in its play, in its task of self-development—listen—shiver—thrill—throw down the ax, the spade, the hammer, the pick—go up from the field, the factory, and the mine—and offer itself willingly. It was to me as if that was fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet:
“I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.”
I had seen that first flotilla of thirty-one ships sail down the St. Lawrence, out into the ocean, and over to the shores of England, as the first great gift of men which the New World had ever made to the Old, as some returnfor all the Old had poured out upon the New. I had seen it, for I was on it. We went gaily, as hop-pickers go to a bean-feast. We knew it was war, but the word had no meaning for us. What it meant we found out at Ypres, at Vimy, at Lens. But when I think of my country now I think of her no longer as a baby giant. She has become a girl widow—valiant, dry-eyed, high-souled, ready to go on with the interrupted work and do bigger work—but a widow all the same.
And the sword that had pierced one heart I was bringing to pierce another. I was sorry; but sorrow didn’t keep me, couldn’t keep me from being terribly in earnest.
And in on these thoughts Regina Barry broke as if she had been following them.
“Look at the waves where the sun catches them. Aren’t they like flashing steel? It’s just as if all the drowned hands at the bottom of the sea were holding up swords to the people of America, begging them to go and fight.”
I looked at her, startled. “You feel that way?”
She looked at me, indignant. “Certainly. How else could I feel?”
“Oh, I didn’t know. Americans feel so many different ways.”
“Because they don’t know. I’m going back”—she gave a light, deprecating laugh—“I’m going back to tell them.”
I was still more startled. “Tell whom?”
“Any one I know. Every one knows some one. I don’t mean to say that I’m a Joan of Arc; but I shall do what I can.”
“And how shall you begin?”
“I’ll begin with father and with—”
She stopped at the second name, though to me the fact did not become significant till afterward.
“That’s what I meant,” she resumed, “when I said I was going back on his account.”
“You mean?”
“He doesn’t see why we should be in it. He’s like so many Americans; he hasn’t emerged from the eighteen-hundreds. He still thinks of the New World as if it was a new creation that had nothing to do with the Old. He doesn’t see that there’s only one world and one race of men, wherever they are and whatever they do. To him Americans are like souls that get over to paradise. They’re safe and can afford to dwell safely. They’re no longer concerned with the sorrows and struggles of the people left on earth.”
It was to get light on my own way that I asked, “And what are you going to say to convince him?”
“I don’t know yet. I shall say what the moment suggests.”
“And you’re sure it will suggest something?”
Her great eyes burned like coals as she turned them on me in protest at the question.
“Suggest something? You might as well ask if the air suggests something. It suggests that I breathe it; but I don’t have to think of it beforehand, when the whole world is full of it.”
“Full of what?”
She considered the question, finding in it all I meant to put there.
“I don’t know,” she answered at last. “That is, I don’t know in any sense that would go into a few words. There’s so much of it. The minute you try to express it from any one point of view you find you’re inadequate.”
I was still seeking light.
“But when you try to do it from several points of view—correlating them?”
“Even then—” She paused, reflecting, shaking her head as she went on again, as if to shake away a consciousness of the impossible. “I don’t try. There’s no use in trying. It’s so immense—so far beyond me. It’s grown so, too. When it first began I could more or less compass it—or, I thought I could. Now it’s become like nature—or God—or any of the colossal infinite conceptions—it means different things to different minds.”
“That is, we can only take of it what we take of the ocean—each a few drops—no one able to take all?”
“Something like that. And we can only give a few drops—just what we’ve got the measure to take up—some a little more, some a little less—but no one more than a little as compared to the whole. That’s why I’m not going to try to explain.”
“Then how are you going to make them understand?”
“I’ll tell them—I’ll do what I can to show them—that the greatest movement of all time is going on—and America is taking no national part in it. I’ll try to make them see that it isn’t just to avenge the few American lives lost through the U-boats, or to free Belgium, or to put down autocracy, or to do any one or two or three of the things that have been set before us. It isn’t even the whole of them, just taken as so many human motives.”
“But you’ll have to tell them what it is, won’t you? It won’t do just to put before them what it isn’t.”
“But how can I? How can any one? It would be like trying to tell them what nature is. It’s a universal composite, made up of everything; but you couldn’t goabout the country explaining it in lectures. The nearest I could come to it would be in saying that it’s the great dramatic conflict between good and evil to which human nature has been working up ever since it committed its first sin; but the words in which to do that have been so hard worked and are so terribly worn that they’ve become a kind of ditty. It seems to me best just to talk to them simply—and let them construct the monster out of the bones I lay before them. They’ll do it. The public is not very quick, but when it gets going it’s pretty instinctive.”
“Oh, then you’re going to tackle the public?”
“I’m going to tackle any one to whom I can get access.”
“You spoke just now of lectures.”
“I’ll speak of anything that will help me to get the message across. That’s why I mention father and—” Again she hesitated at a name, going on with an elision:—“first of all. They are simply the first I shall be able to talk to. As a matter of fact, not many as yet have been over there and come back to America—so that there’s a good deal of curiosity still unsatisfied—and so one will get a chance. You must have noticed already how dearly Americans, especially the women, like to be talked to. We’re talked to so much by experts on all subjects that we should burst with knowledge if our minds weren’t like those swimming-tanks with fresh water running in and out of them all the time.”
“So you’re really going to make it a kind of business?”
She spread her hands apart, palms outward.
“What else can I do? I assure you it isn’t any desire for publicity or that sort of thing. I’m just—I’m just driven on. It’s like what some one says in the Bible—I’ve taken to reading the Bible lately—it seems the onlything big enough in spirit to go with the big times—but some one says there: ‘Woe unto me, if I preach not the gospel!’ Well, it’s the same way with me. Woe unto me if I don’t do this thing! It’s taken possession of me; I can’t do anything else; and so I’m going back—”
I was expressing but one of the host of thoughts that crowded on me as I said: “You’ve got the tremendous advantage of being an American. You can say what you like. If I were—”
She stood off and surveyed me. “You don’t need to say anything. You speak for yourself. One has only to look at you.”
I smiled ruefully. “I know I’m pretty well battered up.”
“Oh, it isn’t that.”
“What is it, then?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just—it’s just everything. You’re a type. I’m not speaking of you personally, but of a lot—hundreds—thousands—I’ve seen—young fellows who make me think of some other words in the Bible.”
“What are they?”
“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 shearersis 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.