The gangplank swung out as I stepped on the deck, the air shrilling with the chirp of whistles and the creak of pulleys. I shouldered through the motley crowd and joined Mr. Brinsmade on the upper deck. I remember how solemnly I looked down on the France I knew and loved, and with what reluctant apprehension of the future I watched the gray hawser stiffen.
“Strange, to be going?”
“Yes—incredibly strange,” I said slowly. “I can’t quite believe it; for whole months to be a free agent—no longer a part of a great orderly machine, without eyes or ears or will. I think I have forgotten what the other world is like.”
“Do you regret this?”
“Regret it? Yes, it’s hard to leave a thing unfinished when you’ve gone so far. And, though I’ve hated it and cursed it, well, it is a different conception of humanity, after all, this doing a thing as a mass. I’ve accepted it, readjusted myself to it. I think it’s not the question of liking it or not liking it; it’s the feeling of the inevitable and the wanting to measure up to other men. I stopped debating with myself the day I saw a man at my side go to his death. He was a scullion out of the kitchen of a New York hotel—Carlo Roger—deserter and rascal. He could have remained, and no onewould have cared. He did his duty, unnoticed. I couldn’t do less.”
I looked up, and then down, and added, “Better hold on tight to me, Mr. Brinsmade. I feel like making a jump for it.”
Laughing he passed his arm through mine and pretended not to notice the dimness in my eyes.
“You’ve known humanity at its best, my boy,” he said. “And I, thank God, have had a glimpse of it. And when you’re like myself, a weather-worn old lawyer, who walks behind the scenes, that’s something to be thankful for. Well—if they’re not of our race—they’re the same human beings: we can share that.”
“I feel that way.”
A group of ambulance drivers descended upon us, with their fragmentary chatter.
“Boat in had a close shave.”
“Missed a torpedo by twenty feet.”
“Come off! Every one’s seeing submarines!”
“Hope we pick one up.”
“Say, what’s the matter with this boat?”
“Off for the good old U. S. A!”
A great blast of steam shook the air above us, sending its wet vapors against our cheeks. The gangway swung clear and rolled back on the dock. Another moment, and the big ship trembled beneath our feet and slowly and definitely veered out against the straining hawsers.
We left the noisy exuberance of the crowd and went down the deck, in search of quieter moods.
“Here’s our spot.”
I followed Mr. Brinsmade and slipped between two lifeboats. Then, abruptly, we stopped. The railing was already tenanted by a young woman.
If she heard our exclamation she did not change from the rigidity of her pose. We hesitated, moving to oneside, and lifted our hats in a sobered deference and, I knew, through our minds flashed the same thought: she was French and France was receding from her eyes.
One hawser still held us to the land, like a faint memory stretching back into the past. Then a sudden hissing contortion whipped over the widening waters. And so, with the parting of that link, one chapter had ended for me and another, that in the wildest flight of my imagination I could never have divined, had begun.
Instinctively I raised my eyes and recognized my chance acquaintance of the dock.
*****
She had fallen back against the life boat, arms rigidly extended, holding the railing from her. A gray film hid her features, wound about her neck and stood out in a long flutter, a ripple of light against the dark unanimity of her costume. Youth and sorrow are two great emotions which cannot be disguised. I felt, despite the rigidity of the body which told of the stricken soul, the young grace and dignity. I hoped that she would notice me, but she remained in staring oblivion. Yet, though I had spoken but a half dozen words to her, I can remember how keen was the sense of her presence at my side and how, on the instant, I forgot my personal emotions and seemed to be entering into the moods of the woman whose first glance had brought me a sense of intimacy.
I looked, and then I looked away, with a guilty consciousness of trespassing on her grief. Yet, though my glance was averted, I was looking back with her eyes. My companion spoke to me: I did not hear.
I was thinking of the wrench of old affections for her—the venture into the uncharted new—the fading of the homeland that was in her heart by a thousand memories.
Below, the swift currents of the Garonne ran from us, swift as the currents of time. Faces of blue-shirted dock hands grew blurred. Flashes of red trousers, gray-blue uniforms, brown and black of women’s dresses merged into a momentary tapestry. The ungainly, lumbering motor-boat, with a hulking colossus balanced at the tiller, dropped behind. Blue-tiled roofs slipped away. Cathedral spires came out against the horizon, like the spoutings of huge sea monsters. The grassy shores flowed back with the current. Wharves, factories, lean shipyards with naked iron arms extended, tilted ships discharging cargoes, brown vineyards combing the aged slopes, tramp steamers in dusty garments, Swedish and Greek, under the imperial banner of Britain, the Tricolor, the Stars and Stripes; tubs, derelicts, old men of the sea, reclaimed and pressed into service,—all the multiple, incongruous aspects of war crowded about our passing, and always that revelation of the human note, the swarming sea adventurers, undaunted, incredulous of the odds, contemptuous of man’s malignant genius for slaying man.
I hazarded another glance at my companion and, perceiving her still oblivious to our presence, my glance remained, my sympathies quickened by a hundred remembered scenes of parting. I could not see her eyes for the veil that hid them but, instinctively, I divined the yearning of their backward look.
Heavens, how I knew that last look! How many times, in crowded depot or passing train, I had seen on the faces of women, dry-eyed and staring, that look of the soul’s rebellion, the last renunciation, the last groping for a final memory to bear down the lonely years. France, land of her childhood and girlish dreams; France, of precious sorrows and what affections: France, of her long race and living prayers, was receding before the weakening vision that rebelled.
“I say, Davy.”
I came to myself at the touch of Mr. Brinsmade’s hand.
“I don’t think we’ve a right here, do you?”
Then, and then only, I realized how profound had been my absorption.
“No, no, guess you’re right.”
As we started to withdraw, a couple of sailors, preparing to swing the lifeboats for the night’s perilous dash into haunted seas, came shuffling up.
“Pardon, Messieurs.”
“All right—moving out.”
“Pardon, Mamzelle.”
The sailor hesitated, shuffled and touching his cap, repeated his request, unnoticed. As he stood there awkwardly, undecided, I stepped to her side, raising my hat.
“Pardon, Mademoiselle. Les matelots.”
She turned, and I felt her staring blankly at us, as though in the long blur of faces she were unable to separate friends, acquaintances and enemies. But, immediately perceiving the situation, she thanked me with a little nod and turning, said:
“Je vous dérange—mil pardons.”
There was a tired note in the modulated voice that I remember to this day,—the weariness of too much struggling.
From the sailors a chorus went up.
“Pas de quoi, Mamzelle!”
“Ne vous donnez pas la peine.”
They made way for her deferentially, fingers to their caps, simple-hearted men, quick to feel and sure to recognize the finer metal.
“Merci, Messieurs.”
A slight inclination of her head, and she had passed down the deck to the further rail.
“I didn’t realize I was staring,” I blurted out.
“Yes—a little too openly.”
“Perhaps. It rather got me—took me back to the mobilization, and the depots—the look on the faces of the women; when you’ve seen it you can’t forget it.”
We moved to the rear and talked of desultory things, as we hung on the rail and watched the steerage. Below, a returningpermissionaire, perched on a capstan, was playing on a harmonica the defiant strains of “Sambre et Meuse,” a group of cattlemen from a torpedoed ship, stretched about him, basking in the sun. The martial air quickened the blood in my veins. I saw a regiment growing out of the mists of the morning, gaunt, grim and proud, bandaged and limping, returning with their memories from the trenches. I have seen many a dress parade after battle and been thrilled; but I still can remember that first knowledge of the living returning from the dead to the rolling drums of the “Sambre et Meuse.”
“I want to love my country like that,” I said suddenly. “I want to get the same thrill when the regiment swings up the street—” I broke off. “I don’t know just how I’ll fit in. I’m afraid they won’t understand my way of looking at things. I’m rather dreading the test.”
“You’ll get that thrill.”
“I wonder. We all seem to be pulling for ourselves: liberty, individualism, yes; but real nationalism—the thing that’s a religion—the thing you get over here—that makes it worth while to die.”
“Wait until we understand.”
Some one in the khaki of a volunteer ambulance hailed me.
“David Littledale, ’08. Remember me? Joe Hungerford. Heard you were on board. What luck!”
I turned to shake hands. It was the same Joe Hungerford of school and college days, lively and irrepressible,a pink and white complexion, a mischief-loving eye, a quick smile and a clear visage, incapable of wrong, deceit, subtleties, or an unnecessary mental operation,—a boy, as his nation was young.
“Who’d thought to run in on you, Big Dale? Glad to meet you, Mr. Brinsmade. You know my father—Sam Hungerford, of the Illinois Central? Quite a crowd on board. Say, do you think there is any chance of our sighting a submarine?”
“Same old Joe,” I said, laughing. “You wouldn’t feel anything if you were being led out to be shot.”
“The devil I wouldn’t.” But, in the midst of a retort, perceiving a familiar face below, he was off, with an exclamation: “Hello! If there isn’t Frangipani! See you later!”
“There’s your young America.”
“Yes,” I assented. “And a pretty good sort, too. It does everything but think. That sounds rather hard; but that was what I was, three years ago.”
“I suppose it was the feeling of the game, the bigger game, that got you in it?”
“Frankly, yes; more or less. And that’s true of most of us. Not all, though. But once in, we got a touch of the other thing.”
“Don’t be too quick to judge when you get over there,” he said, divining my thoughts. “Public opinion is complex, but there is one thing that decides America in the end, always,—idealism. It’s a quality that is our weakness and our salvation. It makes us the prey to quacks and demagogues, until we learn to see through them. But it is the air we breathe and no one can lead us long away from it.”
“I say, Mr. Brinsmade,” I broke in, “don’t put me down for the sort of expatriate who goes round damning his country—”
“My dear David,” he said, laying his hand on my arm, “don’t worry. I feel even more strongly than you do. And it’s a big test that’s coming; make no mistake. It’s our kind that’s failing, not America. Somehow, the class that ought to lead, doesn’t.”
We separated on that, and I went down to arrange my cabin, a little uncomfortable at what I had said, and wondering if my listener had not been all the while smiling tolerantly at my youthful pessimism,—for though I am obstinate in my opinions, I do not express them easily in conversation.
When I returned the early twilight was sifting in. I went to the upper deck, with a vague feeling of uneasiness which to this day I cannot explain. Invisible nets descended between us and the fading world; the ship itself, its masts and its traveling rails, was dissolving in the flowing in of the dusk. I went directly to the rear, and twenty feet away I saw her as I had expected, a blot against the rail. She did not turn at my approach, though we were alone on the creaking deck. Twice I came to the railing at her side, hesitated and turned away. She was there, like a statue of bereavement, oblivious of all but the France that was now but the faint iterated flashing of distant lights.
I do not know how long I continued there, pacing off the deck under the swinging spaces of the night. All my instincts urged me to her side, and all my education warned me against the intrusion. I felt so keenly her utter loneliness, the mysterious sense of some overwhelming sorrow, the exhaustion of an unending struggle, that twice, with some hasty phrase on my lips, I stopped, determined to speak to her. But each time I turned away. Yet, each time, I remember the angry rebellion that came into my heart at the tyranny of convention which interposed between us. Had she been a woman of the people,—how easy it would have been! But she was not. She was of my own kind, and convention dictated that I should pass on and leave her there in the melancholy of the damp night, eating out her heart.
What was it came to me at that moment? What inexplicable intuition of danger? I had left her with a feeling of my utter helplessness, when, with my hand on the door, I stopped, looking out into the dark void, where sea and sky had disappeared and but a single step led into Infinity.
But a single step and such an easy step! Suddenly I turned, went to her directly, and said:
“Mademoiselle—pardon, Mademoiselle; you must not—vous ne pouvez rester ici.”
The emotion in my voice startled her. Her head turned hastily; she swayed and leaned heavily on the rail. I felt the stiffening of her body against the impertinence of my intrusion, and all my assurance fled.
“Monsieur, I do not think I understood you.”
She answered me slowly, in excellent English, with only the slightest accent.
“I beg your pardon, humbly. Please don’t think I mean to be impertinent,” I stammered back, “but I don’t think it is good for you to stay up here—all alone.”
I felt how ridiculous this must have sounded, and broke off lamely.
“By what right?”
“No right, Mademoiselle; just a human impulse, that’s all—just the feeling that you are in great sorrow and that you shouldn’t be left alone,—not here, at least. I feel it very strongly, Mademoiselle.”
“Monsieur, there are some sorrows that are sacred.”
The words, the accent, the suffering implied went to my heart. I felt then as I have ever felt since the indefinable superiority of her gentle nature over mine.
“Mademoiselle, I know that this may seem incomprehensible to you; I have been walking here half an hour, before I dared to speak to you, but—but I cannot go away and leave you here alone.”
Saying which, I bowed and moved away a little distance and took my station resolutely. Presently she said:
“Monsieur—you will not leave me?”
“I cannot, Mademoiselle.”
“Oh, please go away; please leave me alone!”
Her voice broke and, as I hurried to her side, she put her head suddenly down on her arms. A film of her veil whipped by the wind caught my arm, and by this slender bond I held her in my protection.
“Mademoiselle, I, too, am a soldier of France; I have fought with your people: must I turn from one of my own kind who, I know, is in distress, just because of conventionality! You are in distress, and I know it. Please let me judge for you at this moment. You must not stay up here alone. I mean it.”
“But I want to be alone.”
It was the weak voice of a child that now fought against me.
“I know I am right,” I said with difficulty, for then, as ever, all my impulse was to do her bidding. But it was the thought of the void without and that unseen step that gave me courage to resist her. “I know how impertinent this must seem to you. It is not meant that way. Do believe that. You must go down on the lower deck. You really must.”
She straightened up and there, cloaked by the night, facing each other, our wills clashed. A moment—a long moment—then, yielding, she turned and I followed by her side. Halfway down the deck she stopped.
“Just a second.”
She leaned back against the lifeboat, her hand to her throat.
“Now.”
I piloted her below and found her a chair near mine. She suffered me to wrap her up without further objection.
“There are no lights to-night and all passengers are ordered to spend the night on deck. You will be quite alone here. Good-night and thank you.”
If she answered me I did not hear her. I left her purposely and went aimlessly through the ship, with something new and strange stirring in my brain.