This afternoon we saw Alan. I had sent him word of our arrival at Bordeaux, before I knew I should have the opportunity to see him. As a matter of fact, I was apprehensive of what might happen, for both Alan and Ben are strong-willed and direct to the point. But to my surprise the meeting passed off without incident. We sat down as though twenty years had not passed and the leader was not Alan nor myself, but Ben. We both felt it. From the moment he walked into the room, he was the older brother and tradition held.
It was a curious phenomenon, yet one that I have noticed before on meeting again some hero of school days; an idolatry does abide that nothing in the passage of human life can destroy. It is probably this reason—the need of revolting against a mastership once acknowledged—thatdrives certain strong growing natures away from the dwarfing influences of the family.
Alan was alone when we entered, though Toinon came in shortly afterward.
“Well, Skipper, pretty banged up, aren’t you?”
Ben had come in with outstretched hand, as though there had never been a cloud between them, and Alan, who had hung back at my first approach, found himself shaking hands, yielding, allowing himself to be ordered around by the man against whom he had steeled his heart.
“Well, how are you? You look pretty much slapped around but a damned sight better than I expected.”
“Yes. Much better.”
“Amazingly so, old fellow. You’ll be out having a fling at the Boche before you know it.”
And he did look better, though how much may have been the excitement of seeing us is a thing I do not know.
“Here. Stretch out in this chair. If there’s any hustling to do, we’ll do it. Coddle yourself there. Davy and I can find the tobacco. Nice diggings you have here.”
At this moment Toinon came in, her market basket on her arm, and stopped short at sight of us.
“What shall I call her? Davy has told me about her,” said Ben, rising.
“Toinon—Mademoiselle Toinon, if you like.Toinon, ma mie, c’est mon frère Ben. Tu connais David. Viens ici.”
She shook hands gaily, and passing to Alan, leaned over and kissed him, while Alan looked at us with a certain defiance.
“Don’t carry a chip on your shoulder, Skipper,” said Ben, knocking out the ashes from his pipe, while Toinon disappeared with her marketing.
“And if I married her?” said Alan stubbornly.
“Why? If you’re happy,” said Ben, shrugging his shoulders, “I’m sure that’s your affair. And I say, Skipper—we’re grown up, so let’s quit scrapping.” He sat down and stretched himself before the little wood fire and began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” said Alan suspiciously.
“Guess Davy can figure it out.”
He grew suddenly solemn and laid his hand on my arm.
“Sometime, when I’m not around, you can tell him—you would, anyhow. Fact, Alan, I wasn’t laughing at you. If you’re good at guessing, that ought to shut you up. Let’s talk of other things.”
Toinon came and stood warming her ankles at the fire, looking down on the three of us. From her height she began to smile, in an amused way.
“You are alike as three ogres,” she said, drawing her finger over her eyebrows, to indicate the characteristic Littledale line. “You will lunch with us?”
“Y-a de quoi manger, ma petite?”
“Mais, oui, et du bon vin.”
Alan’s voice was of a gentleness we had never heard. We offered to run out to acharcutier, but he would not hear of it and realizing that it might be a question of pride, we did not insist. There was no reason for our anxiety, for the lunch was delicious and under the mellowing influence of the extra bottle of wine the stiffness wore away. Yet the conversation was not exactly expansive.
“What made you get into it, Skipper?”
“More amusing than staying out. How about you?”
“Same with me.”
“Davy said you were going in the ambulance.”
“Just for a couple of months. I’ve been at Plattsburg. I’ll strike for a commission as soon as we get in it.”
Ben glanced at his watch and jumped up.
“Hello! Must be off.” He shook hands punctiliously with Toinon. “Déjeuner tres bon.Good-by, Skipper. Any time I get a chance at Paris I’ll look you up. Are you fixed all right for money?”
“Plenty.”
“No offense. See you later, Davy.”
He had been over an hour in the apartment, asked twenty questions, studied everything, and said nothing at all.
“Well, that’s over,” I said, with a laugh.
“Yes, damn his cool cheek; but you’re as bad as I am; we sat there listening to him as though we were both twelve years old,” he said, in his growling way.
“Habit, Alan. You see, Ben never has two ideas in his mind. Make a good officer.”
“Probably. What was he hinting at? Domestic difficulties?”
Then I told him, omitting, of course, whatever concerned me personally.
“Yes, I see why he laughed,” he said, when I had finished. “That was almost human. Is it possible, I wonder, that Ben has got a new point of view?”
“He is a clam, you know.”
We had gone back to our chairs before the fireplace. I saw that Alan was quite puzzled over Ben’s history.
“Thinking of Ben?”
“Yes. Never figured him out that way,” he said meditatively. “You know, with all the antagonism he roused in me, I used to envy him his disposition.”
“Envy!”
“Yes; I figured out a fellow like that would go on ambling through life, getting just about what he wanted from it, not worried by ideas or having much to struggle with. Guess I don’t know so much about human nature, after all.”
“There’s a law of averages comes in, even with Ben.”
“Suppose so. Did he take it hard?”
I nodded.
“Curious. I always thought of Ben as some robber baron of the Middle Ages. I’d sort of expect him to rig up a gallows and see justice done in good old mousquetaire fashion.”
“Really?”
“Yes; I say, David, why the devil do we feel his leadership the way we do? We can think all around him. We’ve gone fifty years ahead of him.”
“Funny. I’ve been puzzling over that, myself.”
“Suppose men of action aren’t necessarily thinkers. We turn around an idea, see the complexities; a decision with us is a mental process of elimination. With him, it is instantaneous—an instinct; the primitive. That’s why I’d have thought he’d strangle her.”
“Family feeling counts.”
“Yes, you’re right; felt that as we three were sitting here; felt it strong. And a year ago I would have laughed at it. It’s so. I may champ at the bit, but I’m one of you Littledales, for all that.”
Toinon brought in the coffee, slipped a pillow under his shoulders, and went back into the kitchen. He looked very like thecondottieriof the Middle Ages he described, as he sat sunk in his chair, the dressing-gown loose on his thin frame, white bony hands locked under his chin, deep eyes and stubbled hair, gaunt and relentless.
“Davy, it would be queer if I pulled through, after all.”
I looked up in surprise.
“Course you’re going to! What an idea! Why, you took my breath away when I came in—”
“Honest?”
“Quite honest.”
“You know a man like myself shouldn’t fool himself,” he said, staring into the fire. “To-day’s a good day. But I do seem to be picking up. You know, I would like to live. I don’t mind going, not at all. But—it’s such an interesting world, I’d like to see what’s going to happen, and—after.”
He moved his hand in a feeble gesture, and the shadow it made crept across the sunlight that flooded the room.
“It’s interesting when you’ve got to an impersonal point of view and you can stand and just look on. Youth is a sort of disease. I’ve lived through that fever, groped beyond my limitations, struggled with nightmares. It left some marks on me—not many. Funny, I feel just ready to begin life, now.”
“I wish to God I could look at it that way,” I said impulsively.
“What way, Davy?” he said, a little puzzled, and by that I knew that he had been talking, not to me, but to some shadowy self.
“Looking at things from the impersonal way.”
I was making a pretense of emptying my pipe, and turning, I faced his sharp eyes.
“Want to talk it out, Davy?”
“Some day, perhaps. Not now.”
“You’re too young yet,” he said, nodding. “You think in terms of yourself. Most of us do, and philosophy isn’t going to help that.”
“Right, there.”
“Know what strikes me? We human beings have so damned little charity towards ourselves. All the institutions we’ve ever created—the Church, the State, Society; for wehavecreated them—make us despise ourselves,—look down upon ourselves. For two thousand years we’ve got the conception that we are weak, crawling worms, originally sinful, predestined to evil. We’vebeen thundered at, frightened, cursed, and every agency has united to belittle us in our own eyes. And yet, Davy, look at the wonder of it; it’s only a few thousand years since we were among the beasts of the field, groping in the darkness. And now, we have illuminated the night, ridden the air, sowed the earth, bridged the sea, abolished every impossibility, except the one thing—time. And it’s not simply brain force, science, but the instinct towards a beautiful ideal, that’s amazing in us; we’ve evolved a Parthenon out of placing one stone on top of another; we’ve blown into a seashell and imagined a modern orchestra; created literature, painting, the forms of government, and all in a few thousand years, despite this strange conception of our impotence and frailty. By Jove, sometimes I almost want to go and just lift my hat in reverence to my race!”
“What’s going to happen after this war is over?” I said, interested in this revelation of Alan.
“Here?”
“Well, I was thinking of America. Been thinking a lot about it lately. You’ve had the chance to knock about as I haven’t. What do you think is coming?”
“I’ll answer you like this,” he said, reaching for a pipe which he held a moment nervously in his teeth, champing on it as a horse does on its bit. “It’s all complex till you look at it in just one way. Look at it as you would the forces of nature. Forces of human nature act just the same way. That is, if you can see them in the proper perspective.
“There’s only one genuine aristocracy in the world to-day: that’s Germany. It is a genuine force, because it does lead, is educated to lead. England is an aristocracy that is more or less artificial, struggling to hold the leadership it has inherited. And, Davy, I’m not so sure that Germany is going to be beaten.”
“Well, I’ll be damned—”
“Germany and the German idea are two separate things. You’ve got to beat her thoroughly if you want to get rid of the German conception of the State. Just a stand-off won’t do that. Quite frankly, to me the tragedy to-day is that the German idea of government, the finest modern conception, has got to be stamped out because it is harnessed to this inhuman, bestial, conscienceless Prussianism. It is economically sound and morally wrong.”
“Well, Alan, I don’t think I can follow you there,” I said, warmly. “Perhaps I hate them too much to see any good in them, but—”
“Good? Why, Davy, what are you going to put up against them? Your other civilizations, based on individualism, without responsibility, order, discipline, efficiency? Whatever you may think about it, Germany has a logical conception, worked out to the minutest detail. What have we? A government based on the theory of the consent of the governed. And who governs? Not the people—not the leaders we see—but something which remains in the shadows. We’re plundered, we’re wasteful, we’re inefficient; we don’t even know there is a science of government. Government annoys us. We conceive of the State as a big telephone central, a convenient policeman. It isn’t an ideal; it isn’t even a central idea to express all the future of a great democracy. Why talk of the State when we can’t govern even a single city! No other nation in the world could go on like that without being gobbled up. But we go on because we see no visible danger. David, I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be better for us if Germany did win,—just as it would bring us up short if we had the threat of a great civilization on our Mexican frontier.”
“I grant that; but what if Germany doesn’t win?”
“Then it won’t be a question of what we’ve got to do but one of natural evolution. Let’s go back to forces. Wherever you find the greatest force concentrating, there you’ll find the ultimate power. What is a revolution but the shifting of the balance of power from an artificial force to a natural force? When the old order falters, weakens, sickens, it becomes an artificial control; the leadership is imposed and not genuine, and, you can put it down as an axiom that an artificial force is a force whose days are numbered. Society is like an iceberg. Eight ninths of it are under the surface, but when that upper minority dwindles below the line of safety, the submerged mass rises to the sky. We have a new peak but the balance remains the same. That’s all.”
“I see what you’re driving at,” I admitted reluctantly, for his method recalled to me the haunting prophecies of Peter Magnus.
“We’ve had the king idea and the aristocratic idea, and both theoretically were good ideas so long as you had the intelligent despot and the class that had the right to lead; and those ideas were practical ideas, so long as they were concentrated, unified, and efficient. Decay, before revolution, destroyed them. Then you’ve had the rise of the middle class, and remember this in all fairness, Davy, each class has always ruled in its own interest. Now, in America what class or force is there that is unified, concentrated and efficient to carry out its decisions?”
“Labor, and labor alone,” I said, following in his thought.
“Something greater than agitation has done it. It’s the course of modern civilization,—machinery. It began with the first invention. To-day it is an accelerating force. Ten thousand cobblers scattered through a State are not a political force, but ten thousand workers in a shoe factory are. They live together, they think together,they become politically conscious. Davy, answer this to yourself: can you honestly believe there is anything going to prevent a class that has the power, that knows it has the power, from finally exercising that power, in the same way and for the same ends that every other social movement has acted?”
“No, not as you put it; not as I see it now.”
“Why deceive ourselves? What is the meaning of a strike? More wages, better conditions? Not fundamentally. Every strike is one step onward in the solidification of a new political force,—a skirmish before the final battle.”
“Then you, too, think that the old order is passing?”
“Passing! It started the day universal suffrage was proclaimed. I suppose now you’ll ask me if I believe in democracy?”
“I confess I am wondering.”
“Ask me if I believe in machinery! Why debate on what is an accomplished fact? Why ask if a river should move in its course? If machinery was inevitable, so democracy was inevitable. We have proclaimed universal suffrage; now we must watch it work out to its logical conclusion. We’ve been proclaiming one thing and doing another for generations. Now, we’re going to find out.”
“Socialism, then?”
“Not necessarily. The rise of a new force; a perfectly natural appetite for power, that’s all. Ideas are always translated into appetites. The Girondins were a body of idealists, and the Revolution they produced immediately devoured them. As a matter of fact, men in the mass do not want anything different from men as privileged individuals; only they want the luxury for themselves, and when they are strong enough they seize it,—to live first and then to enjoy life in a big and bigger way,—the pursuitof happiness, if you wish. Just as strong in the mass as with us.”
“I’ll agree this much, Alan,” I said, “though I know much of what you’ve said is true: our American failure has been the failure to produce a continuing class of leadership. If those who are born to lead, who ought to be educated to lead, won’t lead, they must take the consequences. And I’m hitting my own kind!”
“Particularly as others are preparing to take that leadership.”
When I left, I put out a hand with a genuine admiration and affection.
“Well, Alan, it’s pretty late to be finding it out, isn’t it, but I’m glad I’ve really got to know you.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said gruffly, but pleased nevertheless. “Drop around. Lots more to be settled in the old world. I say, Davy, I wonder what Ben would have thought of my heresies?”
We broke into a hearty laugh at this, and I went out.
When I reached the hotel, I sat down and wrote out a little of the conversation to Bernoline. For I am anxious to know what she, with every instinct opposed, will say to it.
“Queer duck, Alan,” said Ben that night at table. “How long did you stay?”
“About an hour or two.”
“Could you get him to talk?”
“Yes, he opened up quite a bit.”
“Don’t like his dying there, like a dog. We ought to get him home.”
“I’m afraid you’ll find him rather obstinate.”
“Don’t like it.”
“I think we’d better accept him on his own terms.”
“Don’t like it. Don’t like his dying in a hole. Don’t like the woman.”
“Are we our brother’s keeper?”
“Well, at least, we ought to have a good doctor in.”
“I’ve thought of that.”
I arranged for Doctor Murchison, a man I knew at Neuilly, to go over and make a thorough examination, cautioning him about dispelling illusions. His report, as I feared, leaves little hope; the lungs are badly affected. It can be only a question of time.
*****
Ben went off to-night.