The next night Molly and I drove over to the Brinsmades’. Anne had been insistently in my thoughts all day. All my revolt from the dead weight of emptiness in life was instinctively towards her. Yet I can hardly explain to myself now the strangeness of my conduct, once in her presence, nor the motive that prompted me deliberately to wound her, as though I were seeking once for all to reject her from my life. Was it somesavage instinct of honesty towards her, or a strange unhuman bitterness that entered my soul,—a resentment for the thing offered against the thing denied? I do not know. I cannot yet see clearly.
Yet I do know that I came there eagerly, with a great need of the affection of my old playmate. For what Bernoline had waked in me, the discovery of the harmonious companionship of a true woman, had left me with a new feeling of dependence. Perhaps, also, in the years of absence, I had idealized my very human little friend.
*****
I do not know if such contradictory impulses are true to others or only to me. I imagine that few persons would understand me. Yet it is true that in the desolate loneliness against which I was struggling, I longed to find in some one, some one known and kind, some measure of that deep womanhood of the Bernoline who had gone.
*****
When we arrived the dance was in full swing. I stood staring, unable to adjust myself to the carnival note. For months I had not looked on such a scene. For months I had forgotten the existence of this world, where color fired the imagination and music awoke disturbing needs of pleasure. Anne hurried forward, we shook hands, and—a sudden shyness came between us. Others crowded up, an old friend or two, chance acquaintances; an indiscriminate, curious crowd that, to my annoyance, insisted on treating me as a hero. I resented it all. The men offended me. I forgot I had once been like them. How unrelated to actualities they were, these men, mostly of my generation, of the generation of wasted opportunities, well-set-up, pleasing, clean-cut, but so untested, so devoid of the stamp of leadership. What could they know of the realities that were gathering on the horizon? Thesobered France of Bernoline lay outside. Light and shadow, I thought. Half the world dancing, while the other half staggers through the night!
Then I thought of the leaping call to duty which, in the coming day, would startle them in the midst of their playtime. And, knowing what I know, the irony of it all stood out. How little they could divine the future or what the immutable, slow-moving course of little things could mean to each.
“My generation is the tragic generation,” De Saint Omer had often said to me. Would this, too, be our tragic generation,—a generation brought up only to play, to enjoy life gluttonously, to pursue pleasure riotously—abruptly halted in the full of the revelry and summoned to face the recurring test of the ages?
*****
I dare say the mood was morbid and my own mental condition was accountable for much in it. Yet there was cause for irritation. My ears were filled with the chatter of silliness. I was paraded for the curiosity of empty-headed girls, outrageously décolleté and bejeweled. Had I been afraid? Wouldn’t I please tell them about the atrocities? Had I really killed a man? What did it feel like? What sort of uniform did I wear? Was it attractive?
One disappointed young lady exclaimed:
“Oh, dear! Then you’re not an aviator. I’m just crazy to have one of those dinky little caps!”
*****
Molly, who divined my irritation, saved the situation by drawing me away into the library, where I shook hands with Mr. Brinsmade, and presently, ashamed of my too evident ill-humor, I returned to the ballroom.
I was a little hurt, too, that Anne had not made more of my coming. I remembered her diffidence, her quickyielding to others who pressed around her, and I asked myself moodily the reason for this attitude. Was it the memory of old days, of certain things half expressed in her letters? Had her father spoken to her as he had to me? Did she expect that I would assume any rights over her? This last thought increased my irritation. I stood at the door of the conservatory, watching her as she danced.
It was not the Anne that I remembered. There was a finished charm about all she did, a grace of conscious assurance, a sure sense of her own value, that for some reason offended me. She was no longer an impulsive girl, but a brilliant and confident woman. From the tumult of her golden hair to the decolleté of her black jet gown, that revealed too boldly the lithe and graceful lines of her body; in the ready smile of attention, to the eyes which had the fevered sense of pleasure, she was one of them,—of a vapid, inconsequential society which, that night, offended every instinct in me.
“And the worst is, she feeds upon it,” I said to myself gloomily.
*****
When the dance ended, she came directly to me, smiling and confident. I was quite at a loss to account for the sudden antagonism which came over me.
“I’ve saved this dance: it’s yours, Davy. If you’ll ask me?”
“I’ve forgotten how,” I said shortly, and with very bad grace. “Besides, after all this while, we might have something to say to each other.”
Now, this was not only ill-humored, but unjustified. She looked at me quickly and then, with a glance down the conservatory: “There’s a corner. Let’s sit it out, then?”
A little remorseful, I gave her my arm, saying:
“First I want to thank you for your letters. They meant a lot.”
She did not answer, suddenly serious, wondering, perhaps, at my mood. When we had come to our corner she turned and faced me.
“You have changed, Davy.”
“And I don’t think I should have known you.” She looked at me so quickly that I added, “You see—I am dazzled.”
“You do not approve?”
The truth is that I did not quite approve, and her question threw me off my guard. She must have read in my eyes, for such a hurt look came to the corners of her lips that I repeated hastily:
“My dear Anne, I am dazzled. Just think; I have come out of a gray world, and I am still blinking with astonishment. I can’t quite get used to it. You women are different from the women over there—more feminine, perhaps—but you represent something I had forgotten. Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m an old bear who comes to you, grumbling, out of the wet and the mud.”
“I see,” she said, and then, “but I do pay attention to what you say, so please be frank, as you always were, Davy.”
“I don’t think you would understand,” I began and then, struck by the absurdity of it, I broke into a laugh. “After all, it isn’t the slightest business of mine.”
“Am I any different from the rest?”
I looked into the dancing crowd.
“No, of course not.”
“Well—then?”
“Anne, you will not understand in the least; you probably will be offended, but, since you ask, I will tell you.”
But there I stopped.
“So, you’re not going to tell me?”
“No. Besides, it is a question of a point of view.”
“I wonder what you really think of me, Davy?” she said, puzzled. “Is it such a very bad opinion?”
“It is not your fault. It is the whole system,” I blurted out, led on by my growing irritation; the feeling, perhaps, of the quality of girlhood that should be there and was now gone; the eyes that had seen too much, the ears that had heard too much, the woman who knew too well her worth in the eyes of men. Perhaps it was because I needed to see her differently that I felt so strongly. “It’s you who are defrauded. There are bigger things in our women than just the pursuit of pleasure. However,” I broke off, with a sudden laugh, “I am just as absurd to be talking to you like this!”
“I wanted to go over there and nurse,” she said, looking down. “Heavens, don’t you think I’m tired of this sort of life!”
“I wonder just how sincere that is,” I said, watching her with amusement. “Service, or—adventure?”
She sat up, suddenly frowning.
“You will go back?”
“Of course.”
Suddenly a recollection smote me.
“My dear Anne, don’t mind me to-night. I dare say I’m unjust, but I’m living in another world, and this shocks me—the incomprehension of it all! Are these really men and women, and do they think war is a vaudeville show? Yes, I am out of temper; but if you’d heard the questions I’ve been asked! I beg your pardon. You were very good to write me all the time: it meant a lot, too.”
She looked up, so happily, that I began to reproach myself for my boorishness.
“What is it you don’t like in me?”
“I should like to see you—you and Molly—in the blue and white of the Red Cross, with big square hob-nailed boots, splashing around in the mud and rain, with smirches on your dainty noses!”
I had hurt her, despite my assumed levity, and I knew it. Some one came up to claim a dance, and she rose quickly, both of us glad of the interruption. The rest of the evening I spent with Mr. Brinsmade, discussing politics. Now that I write it, I am sorry that I acted as I did. Yet I am at a loss to know why.