Paris
Some mysterious influence seems to be watching over me; perhaps Mr. Brinsmade, for his hand is powerful here, and a request from him would undoubtedly be honored. At any rate, on my return I found orders for me to report temporarily at the Bureau de la Presse as an interpreter. At any other time I should resent this, but now—frankly—I am glad, as I want to be able to transfer into the American service as soon as we declare war, and to be in Paris is to be where friends and influence can expedite matters. Ben goes into the Morgan-Harjes ambulance for six months, and leaves at the end of the week. He is more taciturn than ever, but the feeling of being in a great current, a man among men, is, I know, a great release to him. We have never discussed Letty since the day of our departure, when he gave me to understand that the separation was definite. I am still in the dark as to his real thoughts. Sometimes, I catch his glance on mine (quickly averted) and I wonder.
*****
The coming back to it all, much to my surprise, was the most natural thing in the world. I felt no special thrill, no strangeness and (this surprised me) not the slightest revolt. In some ways it was a relief from my thoughts, from my own little existence battling against the currents of destiny.
Yet I except one moment,—the day of our landing at Bordeaux, when the shifting turns of my destiny were brought before me in a dramatic revelation. We wereat the rail, looking down on the tedious process of the tying up to the dock. A number of blue-gray recruits were straggling out of wine shops, lounging on the piers, watching our arrival. Suddenly, at the call of a bugle, the gray, loosely flung shadows contracted, took shape and alignment, became an entity. Another command and a hundred feet swung forward, a hundred arms rippled over one body, and an idea set to purpose passed up the street. A moment before they were identities, free as I still was; free to turn, to sit, to rise, to jump and to run; the next, all human semblance had sunk into the anonymity of a machine. It was glorious. It stirred me as nothing else has the power to stir the blood,—this groping become an idea, this confusion crystallizing into purpose, this visualization of man moving as history moves. Yet for that moment it terrified me with its actuality. For I felt the obliteration of all that had been for these last incredible weeks—David Littledale. Anonymity? Yes, as death may be anonymous, and number me into the ranks of the forgotten.
*****
At Bordeaux, I bade Ben good-by and became once more Brigadier Littledale, Légion Etrangère, soldier of France. It is the dirt and the filth that are hard to accept,—the feeling of being of the cattle of war.
*****
From there to Paris, in a steaming mass of human flesh, crowded into box cars. No longer the swinging enthusiasm of the mobilization; instead a comradeship become the ox-like acceptance of a fate which has fatigued the imagination into indifference. But the return is always hideous. At Paris, to the medical inspection, and the surprise of being detached and transferred. Perhaps the imminence of our entry into the war, which can be but a matter of days, is much in my good fortune.
My new detail gives me quite a little liberty, as some of my superiors are old friends of social days, and I am permitted to sleep at the hotel with Ben, who was astonished when I walked in. To-morrow we are going over to see Alan. I am a little apprehensive of how he will receive Ben. No letter yet from Bernoline. I write her each night and mail the letter at the end of the week.
*****
Dined to-night with Ben at an out-of-the-way restaurant of older days, across the Seine, where boys of thirteen and fourteen masqueraded as waiters and gave us of the toll of death. My oldsommelier, who always kept a special bottle for me (or made me think he did), is gone, dead in the fight around the Labyrinth. New faces everywhere. Afterwards we walked back, silently, across the blackened city, stumbling down old Paris towards the dim blur of a hooded light. Occasionally a star detached itself from the Milky Way and went wandering like a great firefly, where above us, a sentinel aeroplane patrolled the night.
We came back shoulder to shoulder, unseen to each other, in long stretches of silence. It is strange how little we can say to each other. I have not the slightest inkling to the ways of his mind. Sometimes I think him totally devoid of imagination. Perhaps I am wrong and in his inner shell his thoughts are active and relentless. His code is a strange one—very Anglo-Saxon—and I think he is still ashamed that once or twice I saw him in the raw. I of course never refer to Letty, though her presence is always between us. The nearest approach to intimacy is a dialogue like this:
“How are you to-day, Ben?”
“First rate.”
“Nothing worrying you?”
“Nothing.”
“You look more like your old self.”
“Feel so.”
“All right then, old fellow?”
“Quite.”
And we are two human beings, brothers even, living from day to day and indifferent to the fates!
Whether the passion in him that Letty had fired has died out or is only smoldering, I have no way of knowing. I am inclined to think it is his pride that suffers most. I do not think there is any black resolve back of his mind. His imagination is not apt to run away with him. But, having written this, I wonder. He is a nature utterly incomprehensible to me, and daily contact seems to send him further away. I am living with a stranger.