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 ofvalor? 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 reston 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 backingand 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 timeto—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