A week has gone since I started these final pages. I have been amazed at the feeling of detachment that has come to me. Bernoline and Maurice have often spoken to me of that state of grace which in their faith lifts menand women above the earth to seek heaven. I have seen this same unhuman state of grace, of sanctified sacrifice, among officers andpoilusduring the war,—the need to live in some rarefied atmosphere. Family and friends recede before the proud isolation of the soul dedicated to a sacrificial death. It is not quite that with me. Yet there has come with the final writing a serenity that surprises me. Is it that I have suffered beyond my capacity—for each of us has in him only a certain capacity to suffer—or is it life in its strange compensations that is molding me? To-day, for the first time, I can recall Bernoline and feel a quiet happiness to have been privileged to know her. Until now I have felt only my bondage to the past. To-day—noblesse oblige—I want to live, and count in the living. The bitterness and the rebellion are gone; an inspiration remains.
*****
In this new liberation, Anne, too, counts for much. I have seen her three times,—once in a week’spermissionwe were together every day. Twice a week her letters come to me. It is strange how Bernoline has brought us together. We both feel it. There is a great moral force in love, and against its silent, cumulative movement the meanness and littleness of life must yield. As Bernoline, in her faith, wished to see us, we shall become.
*****
There is beyond the inherent nobility that is in Anne a largeness of spirit that is hard for a man to understand. She reveres the memory of Bernoline and in her great heart there is no trace of jealousy. At least, if there is, it is wonderful how she conceals it. That is a quality which I do not think would be in me. I can look ahead—we both can—and see what is coming; yet until every corner of my heart is wholly and loyally hers, I cannot offer it to her. To do so would be to offend what is theone thing to build on,—absolute honesty between us, that brings the deepest reverence.—Yet, to-day, I know the time is near.
*****
We both feel the call to service and often have discussed where we may fit in to do our little part. For a life that is closed in about our own self-centered enjoyment is now impossible. We see the failure of our generation,—its failure to rise to its opportunities and responsibilities, its consequent weakening and approaching impotence and the inevitable surging up from beneath of another more virile force; the substitution of a natural for an artificial power (as Alan would have said). Itisa challenge.
Once, when we were discussing this, Anne said to me a very searching thing.
“David, our kind hasn’t even the instinct of self-preservation.”
True—but if we haven’t we shall have to yield, as we should yield.
Anne constantly surprises me. I find in her such an eager outlook on life,—a longing to read, to explore, to question, to find an illuminating purpose for living. Her mind, as it awakens, leads mine on, and I react to its stimulus.
*****
I have no illusion about myself. The part I may be called on to play is but a little part in the progress of my country. Yet, there must be thousands of us—quiet, patient lieutenants—to make possible the coming of a real leader.
*****
I think I understand better now the mystery of good and evil, the thought that has run all through these pages,—often groping, turned back on itself, and often in seemingcontradiction. Sometimes out of evil there comes a healthy reaction, but the moral quality of an act remains, much as we should like to believe otherwise. Temptations, the great salient temptations that determine a life, are as rare as opportunities. They are opportunities to be met and dominated. Neither Letty nor any of her kind can to-day even for a moment swerve me from my clear perception of values. That, at least, I know. Yet, in my memory that will always be a tithe to be paid. I have won a certain mastery,—but a scar will abide.
*****
The mystery of good and the pain that from a pure source may often destroy a life is this. In each of us is the choice between rebellion and acceptance of life; in each is the reaching out beyond our designated paths, towards a love that has the romance, the mystery and the wonder of life, that we know is forbidden us. Even so in the Garden of Eden, the fruit of the tree of knowledge was forbidden. The other is facing actuality, founding our lives on a logical, practical companionship, and growing into unity through mutual respect and the test of experience. To different natures, different answers. Rebel against life and destroy ourselves with a beating of the wings against the bars of circumstance,—or meet it with a deliberate, difficult acceptance? Which, I wonder, is the more fortunate nature? But for those who have a tiny, latent spark hidden away under layers of bread-and-butter years—an uneasy stirring of remembered dreams—youth, too often, must be burned out, like a fever.
THE END