I spent the hours after supper in the smoking room, puffing at my pipe, with a new tolerant understanding of the young America before me; of these young spirits, with their exaggerated bursts of humor, their overflowing belief in themselves, their boyish eagerness to return to “God’s Country.”
“I wonder if they would ever agree on anything,” I thought, as I watched the nervous, combustible American need of reaction breaking out in sudden fits of gaiety. “So many minds; so many ideas!”
Some had served from curiosity, more from the love of adventure, and a few, thrilled by the comprehensionof noble ideals. I saw them returning, scattering north, south, and west; into village, farm and city; mechanics, students, idlers; taking up again the easy, careless run of American lives; moving on obedient to the accidents which determined their paths; good-natured, generous, emotional, keen, ambitious, seeking that success that is counted in terms of dollars. And then I wondered. I wondered if the sudden, transforming call on the air would ever come to them.
“What does it matter whether a million men die to-day or next year?”
Bernoline’s words, words that had startled me at first, came back to me then. “All that matters is how they live!”
“For, if the test come,” I thought, “it is our generation that’ll have to make good. Make good! Yes, that’s one thing we can do: I have no fear of that—and yet, how unprepared we are for the test!”
*****
The next morning I was up and out on deck with the sun. Already there was the note of change. The dream life of the last days, suspended between sea and sky, between one civilization and another in a happy incredulity, was come to an end. Ahead was reality; life to be taken up again, the fixed path to be followed!
Forward, the hatches were off and the donkey engines were diving into the holds. The passengers who came out were unrecognizable in their shore clothes, stiff and formal, retreating into the shells of themselves. The smoke of an ugly freighter smirched the sky. A swarm of sea gulls, noisy as the approaching multitudes of the city, vexed the air. Across the lapping of shallower waters a dozen sails stood out to sea. At noon Fire Island rose out of the waves, passed and sank. A group on the deck below set up a cheer. The thin, white sandof Long Island slipped over the horizon and grew towards us. America—my America—was there! I felt like snatching off my hat and waving it madly, hysterically, as Frangipani and the others were doing.
I had not thought to be so stirred. I had thought to return with foreboding in my eyes and questions on my lips, and instead there came this involuntary gripping of the heart. Out of the whole world, this, this bit of land was mine!
“Good to see your own again, after all, isn’t it?” said Brinsmade, who had come to my side.
I acknowledged it, with a laugh.
“Had no idea it would affect me so.”
“It’s an instinct that’s down pretty deep, David.”
We watched the derricks swinging up their cargo. A crowd of young fellows, led by Frangipani’s ear-splitting tenor, were singing:
Give my regards to Broadway,Remember me to Herald Square!
Give my regards to Broadway,Remember me to Herald Square!
Give my regards to Broadway,Remember me to Herald Square!
“We’re all like that,” said Brinsmade. “Must blow off steam occasionally. Would you believe it—I feel like jumping down there and doing the same thing!”
“I believe you.”
I glanced at my watch for the twentieth time, and went up to the upper deck and waited, scanning the horizon that was perplexed with the drift of the great city; scows, tugboats, coast liners and pilot boats,—a busy officious rabble. Then Bernoline came.
She was gloved and bonneted, an umbrella in her hand, veiled, as she had been on the day of departure. My heart sank. I was quite unprepared for this. In my rapt imagination I had expected the Bernoline of yesterday, impulsive and generous, a woman turning back into the eager unconsciousness of girlhood. This wasmore than a mask. She had retreated behind a barrier of impersonality,—an impersonality as stiff and starched and forbidding as the outward form.
“Monsieur Littledale, will you walk with me a moment?”
The voice was calm, self-possessed and resolved. I was so overcome, I had already such a sensation of futility and defeat, that I do not know that I even acknowledged her greeting as I turned and followed at her side.
“A little farther—there—here we can be alone.”
We crossed and found a sheltered nook. I stood, staring down. All below me was ugliness, and I remember now how suddenly depressed it made me to be brought face to face with this sordid realism,—this muddy water, streaked with oil, the waste, refuse and litter of the city. The siren blew, once, twice, in shattering blasts. We moved onward, towards the river head.
“Monsieur, I have to thank you, and I do thank you deeply for your perfect courtesy towards me.” Her voice sank lower. “You have been loyal and considerate. It is a memory I shall always retain of an American gentleman. Now, I am going to appeal to that chivalry and to that loyalty.”
“You are going to ask me never to see you again.”
She hesitated before the shock of pronouncing the decision which must have been in her thoughts for days. Then, recovering herself, she said, calmly:
“That is exactly what I must ask of you.”
“I do not understand—must?”
“Must.”
All that I had thought out, every argument which I had built up victoriously to combat her resolution, all power of reasoning, left me. Intuition, which never fails at such times, told me that before this Bernoline nothing that I could say or do would avail. The woman whospoke was a soul in retreat, and the veil which barred the meeting of our eyes was the veil of renunciation. I blurted out:
“Why? Why do you ask such a thing, such an unnatural thing of me? What reason can there be?”
“Monsieur, I must remind you,” she said instantly, “that there is no reason why I should give explanations.”
“Wait. I can’t talk to you like this,” I broke in. “Yesterday—good heavens, where is yesterday?—yesterday I knew you. Only yesterday, we were happy as two children, exploring the world, hand in hand: to-day you come to me and face me as though I were an enemy! You speak to me behind this mask of a veil! You ask me something utterly incomprehensible and, at my first dazed question, you—but what have I done—why, why should you take this way with me?”
She raised her arms instantly and drew back her veil.
“You are not an enemy, Monsieur Littledale.”
When I looked at her I was so shocked by the pallor of her face and the dark stricken eyes that I cried involuntarily:
“I have made you suffer like that!”
“It is right that I should suffer,” she said bravely, though her lips trembled a bit, “for I have done wrong in even permitting you to speak to me.”
“Why? What wrong?” I said desperately. “What wrong is there in our friendship? I have never said a word to you, Mademoiselle, that could not be said before a third person. I never shall. Leave it as it is. Keep me in your life—as a friend, only.”
She shook her head, and her eyes never wavered from mine.
“You make it very hard for me. Yet, because I feel that what has happened is my fault, I must say things that it is very hard for a woman to say.Mon ami, Ishall not disguise from you that, had I the right, your devotion would mean to me the greatest happiness in the world. Let us not play with a situation that is too serious for half-truths. What might be cannot be. I tell you this, and after what I have told you, my friend, without concealment, I ask you to believe without further question.”
“Good God! And what do you think I feel!”
“Try to forgive me—if not now, a little later. I accuse myself bitterly. Don’t—don’t show me how I have hurt you.”
“Bernoline! Bernoline! Don’t say such things.”
I looked away, at the world that grew blurred, and at the sky and water, which ran together before my eyes. Everything was against me—the minutes even, dwindling away as we moved inexorably towards the final parting. At one moment I rebelled against the needless insensate pain of it all. Something in me called out: “She is a woman—a woman that suffers as you do. Clasp her in your arms—beat down all opposition—still all her doubts and fears with the thing that is above reasoning. Be cruel. It is the only way. Be cruel now, to be happy always.”
But at the next moment, at the thought of all it must have cost her to have said what she had said; at the struggle I had seen in her eyes, just to spare her this one added touch of pain, I was ready to accept everything she asked as she asked it. So, I stood, struggling with many impulses. At the end, I raised my head, and said:
“Bernoline, you are right: it can be no question of friendship between us. You have done a very brave thing. I wish I could do as big a thing. I cannot. There is no earthly reason which I can conceive of that can come between us. Do you think, now, after what you have shown me, I could go away without an explanationand not be haunted by the thought of what might have been!”
“Monsieur Littledale, you do not realize the difference between our positions. I am come here to this world to earn my living, as governess, nurse, companion, in whatever way God will show me.”
“Good heavens, what difference does that make to me?”
“It does, to me: it is a question of pride. I have chosen my way, and I must do as others do. Are you going to make it harder?”
“Bernoline, that is not the real reason,” I said sternly.
“Mon ami, there is the difference in religion—”
“Bernoline, that is not the real reason!”
“Monsieur Littledale,” she said, wavering from the look in my eyes, “I repeat, I alone have the right to decide, and I do not admit—”
“And I tell you now I will never let you go out of my life, no matter what you may ask of me!”
There was a long moment before she again raised her head.
“You make it very difficult for me,mon ami; if you knew how difficult, I think you would be more generous.”
The rebellious combat in me died away before the break in her voice. I looked, and saw her eyes closed with sudden tears.
“Oh, don’t,” I said brokenly. “Anything—anything but that, Bernoline!”
“My friend, I will not lie to you,” she said, after a moment. “If I could—if it were right—I should prize beyond all things your friendship.”
“Friendship!”
“It cannot be. I have been wrong, very, very wrong to have even talked to you as I have—but at moments it was beyond my strength. I reproach myself, bitterly! David,mon ami,” she said suddenly, and her hand cameout bravely and lay on mine. “I have more than I can bear, now. If you insist, I will tell you, but—it will break my heart to do so. I am going to ask you, once more. If you have the great heart I believe you have, my friend, my good loyal friend, if you do not want me to suffer more than I can bear to suffer, if I am to hold to my own respect, give me your promise never to see me again. Ask me no questions; trust me. Go your own way and let me go mine.”
Her hands had come together in supplication; her eyes had in them a terror of returning pain and their look hung in mortal distress on my decision. Her agitation communicated itself to me; confusion was in my eyes, and in my heart was a chill.
“Good God! What can I do, when you ask me like that?” I said helplessly. “I promise. It shall be as you wish. I—it—I promise.”
“Merci, oh, mon Dieu!”
I heard her cry like something far off; all the world had dropped away from me. She came close to me; perhaps my very helplessness disarmed her.
“David, I never meant to hurt you so. Believe me, what I do is for you—for you, first. Keep me as a memory of something beautiful in your life. Day and night I shall have you in my prayers—you and your happiness. That will come, David. You will forget what I was too weak to prevent.”
I bowed my head, incapable of speech.
“There is only one thing I ask, now,” I said at last. “Oh, it’s only a little thing, otherwise it would be too cruel: I ask only to be allowed to see you through the landing—just the last courtesies.”
“Yes,mon ami.”
I held out my hand abruptly, and she gave me both of hers. She was so close to me that for a moment weswayed against each other, parting and longing in our eyes so poignant that all the world seemed like a whirlpool drawing us down together.
“Your promise, David, your promise!”
I released her hands instantly and my eyes closed not to see her so near and so weak. When I knew what I was doing again, I was alone. How long I had been there, I do not know. A great mass was before me, thrusting a torch into the skies and the kindling stars. I went down the deck like a drunken man and ran into Hungerford, who came up gayly.
“Hello, there, seen a paper?” He checked himself, staring at my face. “Here—Big Dale—what’s wrong?”
“Wrong—nothing’s wrong!”
I felt his arm under mine and was glad for this touch of another human being in my blank loneliness. I heard him rambling on, nodded my head, and knew not a word he was saying. This for long minutes, while gradually I fought back to myself.
To this day I can feel the overwhelming insolence of the stone weight of New York rising out of the waters, crushing me down in my utter loneliness. An invisible hand was lighting up the city; glass squadrons suddenly relieved, floated in carnival pomp across the night. Across the vanishing space of bridges, feverish traveling flames shot out,—one, two, and then another. A furnace belched against the sky. Electric signs swarmed out of the dusk. Below me, over the swift, oily, painted waters, were green lights, red lights, ferryboats afire, tugs coming and going, shrieking, puffing, roaring,—and always we moved on, irrevocably on, past the Battery, past the oozing, slimy hulks of the city wharves, rotting below the fiery splendor of the city’s rise; stagnant as poverty beneath the soaring pride of wealth, in the miraculous city of tragic contrasts! How vast it was, how unhuman!Every note a thousand times multiplied,—every sensation of multitude! Multitude on multitude—armies of order and disorder—a collective tyranny that roared over me on the threshold of America, as the resistless downward plunge of Niagara beats endlessly. Torrent of forty nations and twenty creeds, conflict of tongues and churning of races—not my America, but the world-vision of Peter Magnus—multitudes moving like glaciers towards destinies no one might confidently predict!
And, against this howling contention, this churning, grinding background, I saw but one figure,—the shadow of a woman, the woman I loved, exiled and alone.
*****
At six o’clock it was all over. I stood at her carriage door, bareheaded, bending over her hand. The bustle of the landing, the examination of the baggage, the damp, noisy, strident wharf, the pushing and the strife were behind us,—too soon gone. Only this remained.
“You can give him your address,” I said, stepping back.
“It is St. Rosa’s Convent.”
“Thank you.” Even at that moment, her trust in me brought a little comfort.
“Do not worry. I shall be well taken care of.”
“St. Rosa’s Convent,” I said loudly to the driver.
The moment had come. I had not realized what it would cost me. Before the finality of it, I stood, clutching the door, incapable of a word.
“God be with you,” she said, bending forward.
“Bernoline—Bernoline, if ever—”
She leaned forward and, suddenly remembering, drew her veil. Our eyes met without wavering, unconscious of the crowd that jostled and shouted behind us. She raised her hand and touched my forehead.
“Thank you, from my heart. I shall keep you in my prayers, day and night—always, David.”
She sank back, and I saw her face no more. A policeman shouted an angry order. The carriage moved away. At the window her hand fluttered in a last weak gesture. Then, even the window grew blank. I was alone, standing with head uncovered, in the midst of a group of urchins, who were mocking my long face.