CHAPTER XXVII
Within a few days I saw the correctness of Annette’s summing up.
A medieval legend tells of an angel being sent to Satan with the message that God meant to take from the devil all the temptations with which he had seduced mankind. To this Satan resigned himself because he couldn’t help it, begging of the angel that he should be left with just one—and that the least important. “Which?” asked the angel. “Depression,” said Satan. The angel considered the request, found that depression cut but slight figure as a sin, and went back to heaven, leaving it behind him. “Good!” laughed Satan, as the celestial vision faded out. “In this one gift I’ve secured the whole bag of tricks.”
And that is what I was to find.
I was depressed on leaving Europe. I grew more depressed because of the experience on board ship. In New York I was still more depressed. There was a month in which all things worked together for evil; and then I came to the place at which Satan had desired to have me.
I have not said that during all this time I made no attempt to look up my old friends at the Down and Out or, beyond an occasional argument with Cantyre, to fulfil the mission with which I had been intrusted. Ralph Coningsby had come and offered me work, and I hadrefused it. Even the march of public events, with the introduction of lawless submarine warfare and the breaking off of diplomatic relations between Germany and the United States, hadn’t roused me. I marked the slow rise of the impulse toward war in the breasts of the American people, as passionless and as irresistible as an incoming tide, but it seemed to have nothing to do with me. I was out of it, flung aside by a fate that had made sport of me.
I was so far from the current of whatever could be called life that I grew apathetic. Though I hadn’t seen Regina for weeks, I sat down under the impalpable obstacles between us, making no effort to overcome them. I ate and drank and slept and brooded on the futility of living, and let the doing so fill my time. Lovey was worried, and dogged me round till there were minutes when I could have sprung on him and choked him.
Then came the afternoon when I decided that Satan must have his way.
There is a hotel in New York of which I had many recollections because I had frequented its barroom in the days before I went altogether down. It is a somewhat expensive-looking barroom, with heavy mahogany, gilded cornices, and frescoes of hunting-scenes on the wall. Hanging over the bar at any time during the day or night can be seen all the types that are commonly known as sporting, from the dashing to the cheap.
They might have been the same as on that day when I turned my back upon the place five years previously. They hung in the same attitudes; they called for the same drinks; they used the same profanities, though with some novelty in the slang. With my limp, my black patch, and my general haggardness, I felt like a ghost returning among them.
Timidly I approached a barman at leisure and asked for a cocktail of a brand for which I used to have a liking. I carried it off to a table placed inconspicuously behind the door leading to and from the hotel. Putting it on the table, I stared at its amber reflections.
I had come back to the same old place at last. It was curious; but there I was. All my struggling, all my wandering, all my up-hill work, all my days and nights in the trenches, all my suffering, all my love—everything had combined together to land me just here, where, so to speak, I had begun. It was the old story of dragging up the cliff, only to fall over the precipice. It seemed to be my fate. There was no escaping it.
I might not take more than that one drink during that afternoon; but I knew it would be a beginning. I should come back again; and I should come back again after that. Another type of man would do nothing of the kind; but I was my own type.
Very deliberately I said good-by to the world I had known for the past three years and more. I said good-by to work, to ambition, to salvation, to country, to love. Back, far back in my mind I was saying the same deliberate good-by to God. I shouldn’t rest now till everything was gone.
The glass was still untasted on the table. I was taking my time. The farewells on which I was engaged couldn’t be hurried. The fate in store for me would wait.
Then the door behind which I sat began to open. It opened slowly, timidly, stealthily, as if the person entering was afraid to come in. The action stirred the curiosity, and I watched.
Before I saw a face I saw a hand. Rather, I saw four fingers from the knuckles to the nails, as if some one wassteadying himself by the sheer force of holding on. They were old, thin, twisted fingers, and I knew at a glance I had seen them before.
The door continued to open, stealthily, timidly, slowly; and then, looking like a spirit rather than a man—a neat, respectable spirit wearing a silver star in his buttonhole, with trembling hands and a woeful quiver to the corner of his lower lip—Lovey stood in the barroom.
He stood as if he had never been in any such place before. He was like a visitant from some other sphere—dazed, diaphanous, unearthly.
He didn’t look at the table behind the door. His gaze was far off. I could see it scanning the backs of the hangers across the bar. Then it went over the tables one by one, traveling nearer and nearer.
Just before the dim eyes reached me I said: “Hello, Lovey! Come and sit down. What’ll you have to drink?”
There seemed to be an interval between hearing my voice and actually seeing me—an interval during which a frosty, unnatural color, as if snow were suddenly to take fire, flared in his waxlike cheek. But he came to the table and dropped into a round-backed chair.
“Oh, Slim!”
Leaning on the table, he covered his face with his hand.
I tried putting up a bluff. “What’s the matter, Lovey? Haven’t got a headache, have you?”
He raised those pitiful, dead blue eyes. “No, but I’ve got a ’eartache, Slim—a ’eartache I won’t never get over.”
“Why, why—” I began to rally him.
“It’s just what I was afeared of—for days and days I’ve been afeared of it. Been a-watchin’ of you, I ’ave.”
Here was another transmigrated soul that had traveled farther than I knew. It was in pure curiosity as to the changes wrought in him that I said: “I should think you would have been glad, Lovey. When I was here before you used to want to have us both go back.”
The extinct eyes were raised on me.
“These times ain’t them times. Everything different. I ’aven’t stayed where I was in them days, not any more nor you. Oh, to think, to think!”
“To think what?”
“That you should ’ave come back to this—and me believin’ the war ’ad done ye good—lifted you up, like. Not but what you was the best man ever lived before the war—”
“Oh no, Lovey. No one knows what I was better than yourself.”
“You was good even then, sonny—even in them awful old days. Goodness ain’t just in doin’ certain things; it’s in being certain things. I don’t ’ardly know what it is; but I can tell it when I see it. And I seen it in you, Slim—right from the first. Me and God A’mighty seen it together. That’s why He pulled you up out o’ what you was—and made you rich—and dressed you in swell clo’es—and sent you to the war—and made you a ’ero—and stuck you all over with medals—and brought you ’ome again to me. And if you’d only waited—”
“Well, if I’d only waited—what?”
“You’d ’a’ got somethink better still. You’d ’a’ got it pretty soon.”
“What should I have got?”
“That you should ’ave come back to this—and me believin’ the war ’ad done ye good—lifted you up, like. Not but what you was the best man ever lived before the war—”
“That you should ’ave come back to this—and me believin’ the war ’ad done ye good—lifted you up, like. Not but what you was the best man ever lived before the war—”
“I ain’t a-goin’ to tell ye. If you’d come ’ome with me you’d see.” Before I could follow up this dark hint he continued: “God A’mighty don’t play no tricks onHis children. Look at me! All He’s give me. Kep’ me well while you was away—and ’elped me to knock off the booze when it was mortal ’ard to do it—and pervided me with a good ’ome, thanks to you, Slim!—and work—and wages—and a very nice man to work for, all except bein’ a bit stuck on ’isself—and let me off washin’ windows, which was never a trade for an eddicated man like me—and brought you back to me, which was the best thing of all—and just because I waited.”
“What do you mean by waiting?”
“I mean waitin’ for Him. That’s somethink I’ve found out since you went away, sonny. It’s a tip as Beady Lamont give me. You’ve got to wait patient-like for Him; and if you do He’ll come to you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t. That’s why I’m a-tellin’ of you. It was like this: When you went away it was somethink fierce for me—nothink but that empty flat—and everythin’ speakin’ to me o’ you, like—yer clo’es and yer boots and yer books and yer pipes, and the chairs you used to sit on, and the bed you used to sleep in—and everythink like that—till I thought I was goin’ crazy. Many’s the time I wanted to come and do just what you’re a-doin’ of now—but I’d think o’ the promise I give you before ye went—and I’d ’ang on a bit more. And then God A’mighty Hisself come and spoke to me, just as He did to Beady Lamont that time he told us about when we was in the blue stars.”
“And what did God Almighty say?”
“He come in the middle o’ the night, and woke me up out of a sound sleep—”
“How did you know it was He?”
“Oh, I knowed. Ye couldn’t ’elp knowin’.”
“Did you hear His voice?”
“Ye didn’t ’ave to ’ear. It just went all over ye, like. I sits up in bed, and everything was dark and light at the same time, and something awful comfortin’ like sweepin’ through and through me. Ye couldn’t ’ardly say it was ’earin’ or seein’ or feelin’ or nothink. It was just understandin’, like—but you knowed it was there.”
“But you haven’t told me what He said.”
“That’s what I’m a-comin’ to. He says: ‘Lovey,’ says He, ‘you’ve put up a good fight, and now ye’re over the worst of it. But I’m with ye all the time,’ says He; ‘only I can’t give ye everythin’ to oncet. All ye can take is what ye’ve made yerself fit to receive,’ says He; ‘because there was a good many years in yer life when ye wasn’t fit to receive nothink. But just you wait, and you’ll see ’ow good I’ll be to you by degrees,’ says He. ‘You go on fightin’ in your way, just as that young fella, Slim, is fightin’ in his way, and I’ll do you both good, and bring you back to each other,’ says He. And, oh, sonny, He’s kep’ His word—all but right up till now, when you’ve been goin’ about that sad-like—and not wantin’ to be ’ome. And now this!”
“But that’s not God, Lovey; that’s me.”
“I don’t see much difference. The most ways I gets a’old o’ God, as you might say, is through the nice things people does for me—and the nice people theirselves—especially men—I don’t ’old with women—and more particular you, Slim—you that was more to me than my own children ever was—than my own life—yes, sonny, than my own life. I ain’t a-goin’ to live very long now—”
“What makes you think so?”
“I ’appen to know,” he replied, briefly. “There’s ways you can tell.”
“What ways?”
“Smellin’, for one thing. Ye can smell death just as easy as ye can smell flowers, or the fryin’ o’ fish, or any other smell; and it’s a sign ye’ll never be mistook in.” His ascetic profile was thrown up, with a long sniff through his delicate, quivering nostrils. “I can smell it now—just like the smell o’ liquor.” The profile came down, and he went on, eagerly: “But what I’m tellin’ you is that if I could die to save you from what ye’re beginnin’ to do this day, Slim, I’d do it cheerful. I knowed you was bent on it before ye knowed it yerself. I’ve been a-watchin’ on ye, and follerin’ you about when ye didn’t see me.”
“How did you know?”
“I can’t tell ye ’ow—not no more than I could tell you I knowed it was God. It don’t matter ’ow you know things as long as you know them, does it?”
“Perhaps not.”
“I’ve just been a-livin’ in yer skin ever since ye come ’ome, sonny. It was as if all yer thoughts passed through my mind, and all yer feelin’s through my ’eart. I ain’t much of a ’and at love—that kind of female love, I mean—not now, I ain’t; but I know that when ye’re young it kind o’ ketches you—”
“Stop, Lovey,” I said, warningly.
“All right, Slim, I’ll stop. I don’t need to go on. All I want to say is that you don’t know—you couldn’t know—the fancy I’ve took to you—and I used to think that you kind o’ ’ad a fancy for me, like.”
“So I have.”
The mild eyes searched me. There was a violent trembling of the lower lip.
“Do you mean that, Slim?” Before I could answer headded, proudly: “I don’t need to ’ave no one sayin’ they’ve got a fancy for me when they ’aven’t.”
“Oh, but it’s true!”
Two shivering hands were stretched out toward me in dramatic appeal.
“Oh, then leave that there drink alone and come ’ome along o’ me.” His eyes fell on the glass. “’Ow many o’ them things ’ave ye ’ad?”
“None yet; this is the first; and I haven’t tasted it.”
He straightened himself up, speaking with what I can only call a kind of exaltation.
“Then God A’mighty has sent me to you in time. It’s Him—and except Him ’tain’t no one nor nothink. Slim, if you puts yer lips to that glass now ye’ll be sinnin’ in His face just as much as if it was Him and not me as was a-pleadin’ with ye.”
“It isn’t a sin to take a cocktail.”
“Not for every one, I don’t suppose. It wouldn’t be for the doctor; and it wouldn’t be for Mr. Coningsby; but ’tis for me, and ’tis for you. There’s take-it-and-leave-it people in the world, and there’s take-it-and-be-damned; and you and me belongs to the last. Oh, Slim, don’t be mad wi’ me! Ain’t ye a silver-star man in the Down and Out? Ain’t I yer next friend—yer real next friend, that is—a great deal more than that young Pyn, with ’is impotent tongue, what stood up with you? Come ’ome along o’ me, and I’ll show you somethin’ good.”
It was the dark hint again.
“What are you driving at, Lovey? What is there at home?”
His reply might have been paraphrased from a writing he had never heard of.
“There’s things ahead of you, Slim, different from what you’re expectin’ of. Wait.”
I confess to being startled. You must see me as in an overwrought condition, reacting from the tremendous strain, first of fighting, then of blindness, and thirdly of emotional stress. I do not pretend that more than any other man who comes back from the jaws of the infernal brazier in Flanders I was my normal self. I was easily up and easily down, easily excited and easily impressed. The mere cast of Lovey’s two brief sentences impressed me.
“What things?” I asked, with that mixture of credulity and rejection with which one puts questions to a trance medium.
“I’ll not tell ye; I’ll show ye; only ye must come ’ome.” As if in illustration of his words, he added, “Ye must begin to wait right now.”
“But why wait?”
“Because God A’mighty can’t give us everything to oncet. Didn’t I say He told me that Hisself? We ain’t fit to receive more’n a little at a time, just like babies. That’s another tip as Beady give me. And Mr. Christian he p’inted out to me oncet that wait is one of the frequentest words in the Bible. See here! Beady writ this for me.” Fumbling in an inside pocket, he drew forth a carefully folded bit of paper, saying, as he did so: “It was one of the times when I was awful low in my mind because you was away. I don’t ’old with them low fellas at the Down and Out—not as a reg’lar thing, I don’t—but now and then when I just couldn’t seem to get along without you I’d go down to one of the meetin’s. Then oncet Beady sits beside me and begins a-kiddin’ o’ me, callin’ me old son and everything like that. But by ’n’by he sees I wasn’t in no such humor, and we starts in to talk serious-like. And then—well, I don’t ’ardly know ’ow I come to let it out—but Beady he sees just ’ow it was with me, and he bucks me up and writes me this. He ain’t as bad as you’d think he’d be, that Beady. It’s good words out of the Bible, and there’s a reg’lar tip in ’em.”
The shaky hands unfolded the bit of foolscap on which was scrawled in a laborious script:
“Wait on the Lord; wait, I say, on the Lord.”
Beneath this counsel from one psalm were the verses from another:
“I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.”
I suppose you will call my impulse by some modern psychological name, and for aught I know you may be right. But the words were not without their effect on me. They came to me with the mystery of a message emanating from the days before Time, and from spheres which have no need of the sun to rise or of the moon to give brightness or of the light of any candle. That it was carried to me by this tottering old man whom I had known in such different conditions only added to the awe.
I struggled to feet that were as shaky as Lovey’s hands, carried my little white ticket to the bookkeeper, paid for my drink, which I had left untouched, and flinging an “All right, Lovey; I’m your man!” to him, hobbled out into the lobby of the hotel.
My immediate sensation was that which you have known when the black cloud of troubles that enveloped you on waking has been instantly dispelled on your gettingout of bed. The troubles may still be there; but you know your competence to live and work and deal with them.
What I felt chiefly, I think, was that the old temptation would never master me again. I had been face to face with it, and hadn’t submitted to its spell. Something had been healed in me; something had been outgrown. A simple old man with no eloquence but that of his affection had led me as another might be led by a child.
With this sense of release came a sense of energy. I was given back to my mission; my mission was given back to me. That which for lack of a more humble term I can only call the spirit of consecration took hold of me again and made me its own. The aims for which the war was being fought were my aims; I had no others. When these objectives were won my life, it seemed to me, would be over. It would melt away in that victory as dawn into sunrise. It would not be lost; it would only be absorbed—a spark in the blaze of noonday.
And as for love—well, after all, there was the moratorium of love. My lot in this respect—if it was to be my lot—would be no harder than that of millions of other men the wide world over. Love was no longer the first of a man’s considerations, not any more than the earning of a living could be the first. It might be a higher thing for her—a higher thing for me—to give it up.
Turning these things over in my mind and wondering vaguely what might be awaiting me at the apartment, I said nothing to Lovey as we trundled homeward in a taxicab; nor did Lovey say anything to me.
It was only when we got out of the lift and he had turned the key in our own door that he said, with suddenenergy: “Slim, I’ll be yer servant right down to the very ground.”
“Oh no, you won’t be, Lovey,” I returned, deprecatingly. “We’re fellas together. We’re buddies. We’ll be buddies as long as we live.”
He slapped his leg with a cackle that was, as nearly as his old lungs could make it, a heartfelt, mirthful laugh.
“There! Didn’t I tell you? That’s what I’ve been a-waitin’ for; and the Lord has give it to me at last. He can’t do much more for me now—not till He takes me ’ome, like.” He raised his sharp profile and sniffed. “I smell it, Slim—a kind o’ stuffy smell it is now—but I ain’t mistook in it. And now, Slim,” he went on, triumphantly, as he threw the door open and entered before me to turn on the lights—“and now, Slim, what you’re a-waitin’ for is—is waitin’ ’ere for you.”
I knew it couldn’t be Regina that Lovey was caging in these overheated rooms, since she wouldn’t be sitting in the dark.