PART II (continued 2)

“It made me proud of my fellow beings!”

“You—an American—felt that?”

“Particularly because I was an American,” I found myself saying, with great warmth. “Oh, I do not sentimentalize war. I have lived it.”

“You do not see it as only brutalizing, as that book ‘Gaspard,’ of which we are so much ashamed?”

“No, if that were the only side, France would not be living to-day.”

“Thank you, Monsieur,” she said, in sudden friendliness.

“The truth is in neither point of view. We cannot say that war ennobles or brutalizes mankind. I have thought about this much, and this is what I think: the man who is fundamentally a brute is made more brutal; the man who has in him a spark of nobility, even unsuspected, is lifted up. What war does is to search our souls and discover the ultimate truth. You see, in times of peace, we all more or less wear a mask for our neighbors. Well, when you’ve once gone into the trenches, that all disappears: you find out what you believe. When all may be over at any moment, you do what you want to do. And the strange thing is that each respects the other’s point of view.”

“I think there is one thing you have left out,” she said, after a moment’s thought.

“What is that?”

“The question of leadership. When he who leads is simple and high of heart, the poilu always responds.”

“Yes, that is true, absolutely true.”

“War is a time when the leader is everything, isn’t it?” She thought a moment, and added, with a little weariness in her voice: “That is why I think, no matter what the hideous suffering that comes, it does set us right and turn us from false leaders.”

At this moment Hungerford came up and, much to my chagrin, I was forced to present him, cutting short our first conversation.

VIII

Her behavior with Hungerford puzzled me. There was not a trace of the calculated reserve which dominated all our meetings and to which, if for a moment she forgot herself, she inevitably returned. A little jealousy sprang up in me, for I was quite blind then to the real reason. I felt that in me there was some lack of spontaneous appeal to a woman. Before the irresistible good spirits of the younger man I felt a heaviness of experience and wondered why in all my attempts at friendship I should be so constantly saying the things that sent her into the shell of her reserve, when she would listen with her grave smile to Joe’s amusing patter. I was blind, indeed, and though I took pains to hide it, I was weakly hurt at this unconscious camaraderie with another.

She consented to our accompanying her in her walks when Joe assumed it as a matter of course, though she did refuse, and I remember it with a secret delight, to permit him the privilege alone. Here again her personality dominated us. When Hungerford, with the free and easy catch-as-catch-can manner of the younger generation, started to assume possession of her arm, she disengaged herself quietly, and said:

“Messieurs, if you will offer me your arms.”

Any one but Hungerford would have been discountenanced. As it was, though he was a bit flustered, he gave her an exaggerated sweep of his hat.

“Style Louis XIV, Marquise!”

And, with her hands resting lightly on our arms, we adapted our impulsive strides to the leisurely grace of her choosing. Whatever her reason for assuming the name and position she did (I had never believed in it from the first), it was by such little things as this that she betrayed the quality of her breeding. Brinsmade and Peter Magnus were drawn to her instinctively, and often in the long afternoons we formed a circle of animated discussion. The opportunities to talk to her alone were rare and always she avoided them. When I did find a moment’s intimacy it was always to be made aware of the ever present sadness back of her eyes and the weight of some oppressing memory.

* * * * *

The afternoon after her first introduction to Hungerford, a curious incident happened, which, to this day, remains inexplicable to me. For neither of us ever after referred to it.

We were walking the upper deck, under the open sky, the crisp tingling air setting our cheeks to glowing. Despite herself, she was smiling at Hungerford’s whimsical instructions on American society, while I, feeling a little out of it, walked silently at her side, wondering at the ease with which Joe had plunged into her acquaintance.

“And remember, in America, a young lady of fashion, who is properly brought up, never marries until she has had a dozen proposals.”

“Never?”

“Never. It isn’t done. Oh, American girls are brought up to take care of themselves! When she is bored, do you think she waits for the men to come round? Not at all: she goes to the ’phone and says: ‘Jack, come up and take me out to dinner and a show; I want to be amused’.”

“And she pays the bill?” said Mademoiselle Duvernoy innocently.

“The what?”

“The bill.”

“Mademoiselle—I am living in hopes—”

At this moment a gust of wind caught a large woman and bore her down the deck, screaming for help. Hungerford dashed ahead, while we, sheltering ourselves in the lee of a lifeboat, stood laughing at the difficulties of the rescue. A sailor passed us and then a boy, carrying a pot of grease, slipped, and, to save himself, caught at my arm. When I had righted him, I saw such an expression of astonishment on his face as he gazed at Mademoiselle Duvernoy that I said, still laughing:

“I say, this young fellow seems to know you.”

“Eh, Bonne Dame; que c’est notre Mamzelle!”

She turned, and her face went blank: then, recovering herself, she said something rapidly in the Breton dialect which I could not understand. The effect was instantaneous. The boy drew up straight, snatched off his cap, and with marks of great respect backed away.

“Take my arm,” I said, going to her instantly.

She made no resistance and once as we started she swayed against my side. We crossed the deck and I found her a seat where she was sheltered from sight. There was no mistaking the effect on her. The lips were twitching, and the lines under her staring eyes were quivering with a haunting pain.

“Don’t try to speak. Don’t worry. No one saw you—not even I. Do you understand?”

“Monsieur—” She tried to speak and then put her hand to her throat.

“Don’t try to explain. Believe me, it isn’t necessary.”

She looked up at me, weak and shaken, and for the first time that I remembered her eyes held mine in a long, searching, mute appeal.

“But you will think—”

“Let me be your friend that far, Mademoiselle,” I said impulsively. “Trust me. I have forgotten.”

Hungerford swung around the deck and stopped short.

“Hello. What’s wrong?”

“Too much motion, you unfeeling brute, or perhaps the sight of your gyrations.”

I sent him for a chair and rugs, which gave her time to regain her self-control. Then I tucked her away in a sheltered corner, without opposition. She was stunned and did not seem to notice my presence for the long hour during which I religiously kept my eyes from her face, turning my back and staring over the driven waves. Later she called to me in a voice still weak and I helped her to the lower deck. The incident remained in my memory, obsessing it, deepening the film of mystery which had been about her from the first.

IX

I think the thing that impelled me irresistibly to Mademoiselle Duvernoy was the directness and order of her character. I knew that as she was, she had always been, and that no future temptation could ever alter for a moment her clear perception of her own high ideals. In fact, I could not conceive of any such thing as temptation even entering her life. To me, in my own consciousness of my turbulent, shifting existence and my distrust of to-morrow, it brought me a sense of cathedral calm to be privileged to sit at her side and listen. I had not the slightest thought what was awakening in me, so simple, so natural and so unpremeditated was my impulse towards her. Gradually, a sense of well-being and light-heartedness came to me, for now, while I was still aware of her struggling against me, I was also aware of her yielding. With each morning’s greeting I felt the night’s determination to relegate me into the safe distance of the crowd. Yet I had but to conquer the disappointment of her first manner and possess my soul in patience, to have her turn to me in a new friendliness. At first I talked, and she listened, gravely and attentively. I spoke of impersonal things, of memories of trenches and hospital, of my intellectual unrest and philosophic speculations. She answered me shortly, or by a question led me to find my own solution, but it was not until we were three days from port that she revealed her own thoughts and Peter Magnus was the occasion. I had been speaking of my reluctance to return home and my fear of the indifference to war I should find.

“You are never very tolerant, are you?” she said pensively.

“No, I suppose not,” I said, rather surprised at her reading my character. “And yet you who are French surely must understand the longing I have to love my own country.”

“My country has been centuries in the making. Our memories are long. In every family some one has died that France might remain France. We are an old race. We have lived together, been proud together, suffered together, a long while. That does not come in a day.”

“No, of course not.”

I must have shown in my sudden abstraction something of the indecision in my mind for, to my surprise, a note of friendly sympathy came into her voice.

“Mr. Littledale, I am afraid you are going to be unhappy, just at first. You hope for too much. Don’t be impatient. How can your people know what we know? You will learn, as we learned, to stand together—by suffering.”

At this moment, the voice of Peter Magnus broke in on our new mood.

“Then, you are glorifying war; you’ve come to that. Admit it.”

Brinsmade rose from his rugs and stood before us with an expression of utter helplessness.

“Here is a man who has been three months in France and brings back nothing but war is horrible. What am I to do with him?”

Peter Magnus ensconced himself in Brinsmade’s chair, so that we formed a group. He took off his hat and ran his hands through his hair, which was like a mane.

“When you speak of the glory of war,” he said, addressing Mademoiselle Duvernoy directly, “I see only the women in black, the cripples, the men who will grope in blindness, the station filled with the agony of parting, the homes swept by sorrow. Glory! Where is the glory in it, if you do not wear a crown? No, no, war is horrible, unthinkable!”

“Yet war is as inevitable a condition to a nation as death is to a human being,” she said quietly. “And is death so horrible?”

We three, of differing degrees of agnosticism, looked at her, struck with the boldness of the thought. It was Magnus who broke out:

“Yes, horrible! Death is horrible!”

“That, Monsieur, is because you have not seen how men die: you are frightened by the mystery of the thing you do not know. And—perhaps, in a man like you, you see only your own death—do you not?”

Magnus stared at her. From the first he had been strongly attracted to her and never failed in deference.

“What can you know of such a thing?” he asked incredulously.

“Men have died by the hundreds about me.”

“You?”

She nodded.

“You have nursed in the Red Cross?”

“Yes. I do not like to speak of myself. I only mention it because we are discussing things seriously. Yes, I have seen men die by the hundreds. Monsieur Magnus, I have listened to many things you have said, and I wish to tell you where you are wrong, and where all your doctrines will fall down. All you think of is to avoid suffering.”

“Yes, not only the suffering that comes from needless sacrifice, but the unending suffering that comes from those who must go on living. You know one thing. I know the great mass; the suffering of those who starve and suffocate.”

“You speak of the individual. I speak of the bigger thing,—the race.” A little color came into her face as she grew animated with her theme. “If a million men die to-day or to-morrow, what difference does that make to the nation, any more than the death of a single sparrow?”

“I can hardly believe it is you that says such a thing!” he said, astounded.

“Perhaps you don’t understand me. It is not how a million men die but how they live that is important.”

“You are arguing with an individualist,” said Brinsmade.

“The right to live your life as you wish is to me a far more important thing than whether half the world shall speak English or German,” said Magnus warmly. “I am looking from the bottom up. I know what they think who are striving,—not how best to enjoy life, but how to live. I know what the workers feel about such things.”

“If that is true in America,” she said, seeking to moderate the antagonism which his views aroused in her, “it is because the peasants and the workers who have emigrated are—how do you say?—déracinés; they have been uprooted; they have not yet fastened to your land; they do not love it more than they do themselves. What you say is not true of our French people. If you had seen our mobilization, you would have understood what it is,—the love of country.”

“I saw it in the city,” I said, breaking in, “and it is a memory I shall never forget.”

“But you should have seen it in the country! The quietness and the stillness of it all—only the tocsin ringing in the church towers, ringing all the afternoon. I saw it. I saw the women running to join the men in the fields; to be together, the first thought. And I can see the men leaving their reaping, sending back the women to make ready their uniforms while they went, silently—always silently—to register at the mairies. And when they went off, that night, each woman brought down something from the store of the stockings,—a hundred, two hundred francs. Not a woman rebelled. They put out flower pots on the window sills and garlands of flowers on the great locomotives; and I myself saw a little child writing in chalk on the cars, ‘J’aime la France!’ There have been other moments—moments of doubt and weakness—but it is good to have seen that!” She stopped, a little embarrassed at having been carried away by her own enthusiasm. Then, she said more quietly: “That is how the people of France, the people you speak of, felt.”

Magnus was silent a moment.

“It is hard to answer you, Mademoiselle,” he said, gently. “I grant you that it is beautiful, but I maintain that the tragic thing is that it is all so unnecessary.”

“No, no, it is not unnecessary. I say that France is finer, nobler now than it was before. Sacrifice is the essence of life. Suffering is the test of the finest in us. Why won’t you admit that? Is it because you don’t believe in anything else?”

“No,” he said. “I cannot believe.”

“Yes, that is at the bottom of much of your Socialism and your internationalism and your individualism. It is the selfish conception of mankind. There, Mr. Magnus, there, we disagree. We are not afraid of death.”

“The Socialists and Freethinkers fought bravely, Mademoiselle,” he said quietly, flushing under the antagonism he felt in her voice.

“True,” she said, checked for a moment, “but one is not truly agnostic when one’s mother has had faith. It is not a question of bravery, though. That is not quite fair,” she admitted. “Yet, I am sure I am right. If there is no religious belief, you cannot have faith also for your nation, can you, Mr. Brinsmade?”

“I had not thought of it in your way,” he said slowly. “I am inclined to believe you are right.”

“I am. A Frenchman may have ceased to believe, but he can’t get away from what has been taught him back through his generations of ancestors. For we have taught him duty, not as something he rebels against, but as an ideal, something so beautiful that he is willing to sacrifice himself to that. Also, that is why we are a great nation; because our young men are brought up to think of France as something outside of themselves, that must go on, that must live,—an ideal that is not selfish. That is what we all feel, Messieurs, from top to bottom. What difference what happens to us, if France remains? Oh, I express myself badly,” she broke off. “I wish I could make you feel what we feel!”

“I understand your point of view, and I do respect it: yet, Mademoiselle, there is something that I believe is more important, and that is to see the truth. Don’t condemn too hastily. You have the gift of faith: it is a wonderful thing. We are unhappier, I grant you; but we cannot change our independence. Pardon me if I am not convinced.”

“In what way?”

“I still maintain that when the people’s eyes are open, they will see that they are the ones who are sacrificed. The nationality you speak of is a beautiful thing,—a dramatically beautiful thing. I can understand how honor, glory, duty—those Middle Ages words—thrill your class. But the others,—the peasant, the workman; no, no, he fights without understanding, blindly, and he is the one who bears the burden. For is it not true that it is the great mass, the men in the fields and in the streets, that bears the burden and receives nothing?”

She started to answer and checked herself, but immediately, impelled by an impulse too strong to be mastered, she said:

“Monsieur Magnus, it is my right to answer that. At New Year’s, 1914, in my family, we sat down to table, fifteen of us: my mother, my father, my five brothers, uncles and cousins—fifteen. Five are left to-day: myself, a brother and two cousins at the front, and a brother who in another year will go to do his duty as a volunteer; and, if for any reason he should seek to avoid it, we would disown him though he were the last of our name.”

She said it quietly without change of voice. We looked at her, incapable of reply. Tears started to the eyes of Peter Magnus. He took off his hat and said solemnly:

“If all the world were like you, Mademoiselle Duvernoy, there would be no rebels like me.”

And, for that, I shall always maintain a respect for Peter Magnus.

X

Later in the afternoon I came out of the smoking room on the upper deck for a breath of fresh air. To my surprise I had hardly started for a turn among the rafts and lifeboats when I perceived the slender figure of Mademoiselle Duvernoy standing by the rail. I went to her. One glance, and I knew that her mood had been melancholy.

“If you are going to indulge in the mopes—you know what the mopes are—the blues—I refuse to leave you alone.”

“But, Monsieur Littledale, I don’t see—” she began, drawing herself up.

“What business it is of mine?” I said, smiling. “No, no, you can intimidate me at other times—you do that, you know—but not now, when I feel that you are sad, and—please don’t go away,” I said hurriedly, as she began to draw her cape about her. “I want to talk to you.”

“But in France we don’t talk alone with young men,” she protested, yet I noticed that she lingered.

“You are not in France, now, and we are not alone,” I said, indicating a group of children who were playing on the opposite deck.

She glanced in the direction of my gesture.

“Please, I do want to talk to you.”

Her look came to my eyes, the first time that her glance had met mine openly, and in the look was gravity, friendliness, and a shade of uncertainty. Then she looked away, hesitating.

“It is a new country and a new life you are going to, Mademoiselle,” I said quickly, “and if our ways seem freer, you will find at the bottom that you can always count on one thing,—the friendship and protection of our men.”

“You have been very kind to me, Mr. Littledale,” she said solemnly.

“I did not mean that.”

She did not turn her glance from the horizon, but her head nodded twice, and a rare smile touched the corners of her lips.

For the last days the air had been growing clearer, vibrant with the vitality of younger skies: skies that had not been drenched in the suffering of many multitudes. In the west, the sun was falling below the green-blue horizon that wavered in sharp outline; a magnificent sweep of golden reds was spreading across the cloud-strewn skies; colors of hope and exaltation, colors of action. I, who had walked in doubts, felt the boundless youth and opportunity which came streaming towards me from the world of the future.

“It has been a privilege to meet you,” I said warmly. “I wish I could talk over—so many things with you.”

“Yes, I feel what is in your mind: you are torn between two ideas—”

“Two? Twenty! I listen to every one; to Magnus, who sometimes convinces me; to Brinsmade, whom I want to believe; to twenty different points of view I pick up in the smoking room. I want to see my way clear as an American, to something that stands out and thrills me as the one word ‘France’ thrills you. I want to have some beautiful ideal of my country to live for, and I can’t yet see what we stand for. I’ve lost all the smug, complacent ideas I had, and I don’t see anything else clearly.”

“I have felt that,” she said, in her simple way, unconscious of the intimacy into which we were drifting. “Yes, I have felt that often as I watched your face when you were listening to Mr. Magnus and Mr. Brinsmade.”

“They debate what’s going to happen to America in a hundred years! What interests me is what’s going to happen now.”

“Do you believe you will get into the war?”

“I hope so, from the bottom of my heart.”

“It will be a great awakening. We in France needed the war, too. You see only what is glorious in us now. You don’t know what went before. The heart of the people was pure in the great, beautiful fields of France, and that saved us. But we had begun to lose faith; we even said that we were decadent, that our day had passed. We were led by false leaders who talked to the people of their ‘rights,’ not of their duties. And these ‘rights,’—what were they? To do as they pleased, to seek to make life easier. They were breaking down the faith of the people, the faith in the family, with their right to live each for himself; the faith in France, with their internationalism; and their faith in God, which is at the bottom of it all.”

“Yes, so you said.”

“You do not believe?” she said, turning to me.

“I hope,” I said, after a moment’s pause.

“That may be enough for you, for you have traditions, traditions founded in faith. But is that enough for the people?”

“Magnus says it is just what keeps them from progressing.”

“How does he say that?”

“He says that the Church is a superstition worked in the interests of property. When the Church tells them that the reward will come in another life, it blinds them to what they can accomplish in this if they would organize and act.”

“Mr. Magnus is honest and logical, because he does not believe,” she said, to my surprise. “Those who are not honest with themselves are those who try to stand halfway.”

“But how would you answer him?” I said, troubled.

“By his own argument. If there is no future life, and therefore no faith, why should we not do anything we please—steal, murder; why should we abide by any law?”

“But he would supplant that by devotion to the Common State,” I said, rather awkwardly.

“Isn’t that just what the Prussians are doing, with all their pretensions of calling on God? Isn’t that why we hate the Prussian idea and resent it, because it has no faith, either in the sacredness of one’s word or in the feelings of humanity? Isn’t it founded on the idea of force, and isn’t that what would result from any State formed on agnosticism? Force, and only force, would prevail.”

“But would it?”

“Hasn’t it? Take our own Revolution: what happened? Didn’t it produce worse tyrants, men of force,—Marat, Robespierre? And what killed the Revolution? The attempt to destroy faith, in the abolishing of religion. You see, you are questioning yourself as though faith were only a spiritual speculation. It is much more than that, Mr. Littledale: it is the beginning and end of all political organization. Don’t you see?”

“When you speak, it is easy to be convinced,” I said, yielding to the honesty in her eyes and the impassioned ring of her voice.

The discussion had carried her out of herself. The stiff preciseness had gone. Her words, warm and glowing, thrilled me. It was not that she convinced me of what she said but that she convinced me of herself. I felt the woman in her, swept by generous impulses, glowing with a beautiful ideal,—a great nature, with so much need to give. She checked herself.

“Pardon. I am perhaps speaking too frankly.”

“No, no, you could never do that.”

I waited her pleasure, wishing to speak but finding no words, afraid of the interruption which might come.

“I wonder what you were like before? I cannot see you in your home. But I feel you have changed.”

She said it without looking at me, hardly aware that she had spoken her thoughts aloud.

“Yes, great changes—so great that it is hard to look back and understand myself. The first night there on the deck—you remember—I could not sleep, and I kept going back over what I had been. You, too; I felt you were awake, feverishly awake. Was I right?” She nodded, but without looking at me. “I rebelled at going back! Oh, that’s what war does for you. Whether you hate it or love it, it ends by creating about you a new life and the other becomes something incredible, something you wish to forget, something you don’t wish to interfere with your liberty of action. For, Mademoiselle, the thing that’s hard at first is to build up for yourself a new life that will satisfy, a new philosophy; a new code of morals,—something to die with, not to live by. All that is so different from the other thing that I have seen men at my side who loved their homes shrink from opening a letter. For when you have prepared yourself to die it is hard to remember how you have lived. That was what I was rebelling against,—the thought of going back, taking up life again, only to have to go through all the mental pain of readjustment.”

“You are going back?” she said, turning to me in surprise.

“I am on a furlough only.”

“I didn’t know—I did not realize.”

“You ask if there have not been great changes in my life? Many, so that I wonder what is coming. Up to the present, my life has been without meaning, and I have only just realized it. It’s the change—the contrast: the coming back has opened my eyes. It’s been drifting—just drifting—nothing else. I don’t suppose I had an idea that was really my own or that I had thought out. Was it my fault, or the education they gave me? I don’t know. I went through school and college, with a nice collection of hand-picked acquaintances, wafted gently from one exclusive club to another. In the course of things I would have married in my own set a charming, irreproachable girl—a spoiled child, with entirely too much money—and settled down to the weary task of warding off boredom. Why I didn’t do it, I don’t know. A curious, rebellious pride, perhaps. I went abroad, to Paris, two years. Well, I came through that! I do not see them clearly yet or their relation to my life. They may have been necessary: time only will tell. I only know that the mobilization was like an escape into pure air. The rest? Just an acceptance of a thing that can’t be changed,—a happiness in finding some purpose.”

“Monsieur, all this has made you what you are,” she said, directly. “I did feel much of this. I felt this restlessness in you. And I think I know what you are going to do. You have qualities of the heart that will make you see clearly in the end; the qualities of the heart are sounder, truer than the qualities of the mind; make no mistake. Will you tell me about her? The young girl?”

“May I?” We had drawn a little together and stood looking over the rail at the tumbling swirl below. “After all, why not?” I added, hesitating.

“Monsieur, sometimes it is easier to speak of the deep things in our hearts to some one we meet just for a moment and never see again, when each is true of heart and understands.” She turned and a smile touched her lips,—a smile of dignity and friendliness. “I should not ask it if I did not think, if I did not feel very strongly, that I might help you to see a little clearer. She loves you, does she not?”

I did not realize then how strange the conversation was, nor the sudden intimacy that drew us together.

“It is easy to tell you anything, Mademoiselle,” I said, smiling back into her eyes. “But the situation is not just what you think. Do you believe in marriage without love?”

“I believe—we are taught to believe—that love should follow marriage,” she said, hesitating. “And if both are loyal—”

“That is your tradition; it is not ours. And you—is it always possible for you to control your hearts?”

“We are taught that such love can only mean tragedy and unhappiness,” she answered, staring away from me.

“Mademoiselle, it is Mr. Brinsmade’s daughter.” She looked up at this, startled. “We have grown up together. She is charming. I admire and respect her. Once, I thought it was a little more than that. But—but I do not love her. Let me tell you all. It would mean everything to me—power, opportunity, a big life—and Mr. Brinsmade would like it.” Then I told her of our conversation, as best I could remember. “And now, to be honest, I think—I believe that she cares for me and—yet I do not love her.”

“Your pride is very strong,” she said solemnly.

“I suppose it is.”

She considered a long moment before she began to speak.

“Monsieur, I feel, no matter what you may think to-day, your happiness lies there. The question of money is what makes it difficult to you, but it is a question that should not come into it at all. Mr. Brinsmade is right. Money is opportunity, to be utilized or to be thrown away. He is a man with big ideas, a man who goes forward, and you will go forward with him. I do feel I understand your nature more than you do yourself, perhaps. You need stability in life, a home, and a woman who loves you. A woman who is true, loyal and loves you, you will love in the end, believe me.”

“Mademoiselle, do you believe that you can make yourself love?”

“There are many kinds of love, Monsieur Littledale: loves that destroy us and wreck our lives; loves that pass; loves that we must fight down to be true to ourselves; but there is another love which is calm and security, which comes from mutual respect, the love that comes with sharing life together loyally; and that love will come later to you, for you have the qualities of the heart that count.”

“To some, to some brought up in different traditions, perhaps,” I said rebelliously. “But with myself—no.”

“Wait, the young girl is a woman, a charming woman now, and all the advantages are in her hands.”

“It is of course what I should do,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. Then, all at once, the incongruity of it struck me, and I broke into a laugh. “After all, there is one thing we forget.”

“What is that?”

“That all such things are quite unimportant: in a few months’ time I go back. It is not a time to be making such decisions.”

“You will come through safely, Monsieur Littledale,” she said, in a tone of deep conviction. “I know it. I feel it. I have strange intuitions sometimes. I see storm and trouble ahead but I see the end in happiness for you.” She could not have realized the gentleness which came into her voice. I knew that the secret of her change of manner was the introduction of a third. Was I altogether honest in permitting a serious discussion, for no thought of such a marriage was then in my mind. I watched her face eagerly, wondering at the gentle womanliness that came out of its hidden cell,—all unconsciousness and simplicity.

“And your mother—what is she like?” she said.

“Mother? Why, I don’t know how to describe her,” I said, in some perplexity. “I don’t know whether you’d understand. Mother goes in for public things—very strong on woman suffrage, charities, uplift, and pacifism. She’s a terrific worker. She has terrific convictions—terrific! The Governor’s a trump; a sort of country gentleman. He’s written quite a bit; he has convictions, too: other convictions. There’s six of us; all with convictions—separate convictions. Oh, we’d amuse you. A typical American family.”

She shook her head.

“That seems so strange; but don’t your families stand together?”

“Well, there’s one thing unites us,” I said, with a laugh. “We agree on our right to disagree.”

She frowned in some perplexity.

“I don’t think I understand a home like that.”

“It isn’t like your French idea of home. We are all tremendously devoted to each other but the thing you mean—the family tradition—the standing for one definite idea—that doesn’t exist.”

“Are you a happy race, I wonder?”

The question surprised me.

“I had never thought of that. I should say we are—yes—and yet—I don’t know: perhaps we are not. We are a nation of individualists, full of driving energy and ambition. We all want something we haven’t got. I’m afraid it’s rather a material ambition, usually. I’d like to believe it makes for the greatness of the country,—this restlessness, this discontent, this wanting to push up: but perhaps we do sacrifice a good deal to it. I haven’t thought over that much.”

“I think that what makes my nation truly great is that we are the happiest people in the world.”

“I don’t think I quite understand you.”

“Everything is so well ordered with us,” she said, and her voice softened as she spoke of loved things. “Just as our beautiful land is so well ordered: the fields so well laid out, the trees so well disciplined, the little, red-topped villages so clean and so prosperous, so in harmony. Just so in our family life: it is so well ordered. We have real grandmothers and real grandchildren, and our fathers are real heads of the family. I don’t think a Frenchwoman would want to have a husband who didn’t have authority, to whom she didn’t look up. And our mothers—you can never know the affection, the deference, the respect that surrounds them.”

“Yes, I know that: it’s a rare and beautiful thing.”

“We have such pride in what the family has stood for. We live as one, we surround the family life with so many quaint little customs. There is much beauty and simplicity in it, for we are willing to be happy as our grandfathers have been happy; and that happiness is not selfish; it means many, many sacrifices often, but that makes it true happiness because we cannot be happy unless we keep our pride in our ideals.” She stopped. “I don’t know if you understand me, but I think we study how to live more than you do. And, because we French are so happy together, we can give everything to keep that happiness undefiled and pass it down to our children.”

“Tell me of yourself—of your life,” I said, strangely moved.

She drew back, as though she had been unaware of a listener. The change was so instantaneous that it startled me.

“But—Monsieur—certain things I cannot discuss—”

“Yet you asked me the same questions, didn’t you?”

“I? But I—”

She was thrown into confusion—at loss for an answer—and, all at once, her face went red.

“I only want you to understand, Mademoiselle,” I said, with kindness, “that it seemed a natural thing. It was not an impertinence. I could never be impertinent to you.”

“You make me feel—” She hesitated again. “I am sorry—I didn’t realize. But you made me talk. It were better I should not; I knew I should not.”

“For heaven’s sake, why not?”

“I do not want to hurt you, Monsieur Littledale. You have been so kind, so generous; but you make me do things I don’t want to do,—things that are against my traditions, for I am traveling alone, unprotected—”

“Mademoiselle Duvernoy, I shall consider it a great privilege to be your friend now and hereafter.”

“That cannot be; it is not possible; it is not right. We go different ways in the world.”

“I don’t believe that—”

“We go different ways,” she repeated firmly. “If you will be generous, you will not ask any more—please.”

She ended so low that it came to me in a whisper.

“I can be generous, but not to that point,” I said obstinately. “I want another answer.”

“Monsieur Littledale, we are just chance acquaintances,” she said, bringing her hands together in impulsive entreaty. “There is no reason—”

“I do not believe we are what you say. It was something more than that which brought me to your side that first night here.”

“What do you mean?”

She turned to me, with startled eyes.

“The feeling that made me know you were in—in danger.”

“In danger!”

“In danger, Mademoiselle. I felt it so strongly that it sent me to you, and I did not dare leave you alone.”

I had no sooner said it than I realized how profoundly and fatally I had erred. The woman who faced me I had never seen before.

“Monsieur, you do not know me. I am not of a race of cowards. I do not take a coward’s way out of life.”

I looked at her, without power to answer,—amazed and baffled by the swift succession of emotions which had culminated in this erect and scornful pride. My eyes dropped before the look.

“Mademoiselle,” I said, at last. “I have offended you, I have offended you, when my only thought, from the moment I met you, has been to offer you all my friendship and deference. I am profoundly and miserably sorry.”

I left her and went down the deck to the farther rail. There was no resentment towards her,—only a weak, sinking misery that I should have wounded her. My ears were filled with the sound of her gentleness. I remembered only the hurt pride in her eyes. I saw her face in the mists of the twilight, her deep eyes looking gravely out at me.

“Good God! How could she think I would say or do word or deed to hurt her!” I said to myself, again and again.

“Monsieur Littledale?”

Unperceived, she had come to me. She was there, waiting at my side.

“Monsieur Littledale, I am sorry, too.”

Her hands were clasped before her, and the eyes that looked to me in compassion and forgiveness were blurred. I put out my hands blindly, but she had fled. I stood there, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, my heart pounding within me.

It was then I knew that I loved her.

XI

She was not down to dinner when I came eagerly into the crowded salon. She was not on the deck when I hurried up, nor did she appear again that night. I slept badly and was out with the dawn, making endless rounds through the sailors, who were swabbing down the decks.

I knew that I was beginning to love her, nor was I so dull as not to feel that to her, too, I was more than just a chance acquaintance. I did not attempt to analyze my feelings or to penetrate the future. The present hour was too imperious. My mood was not of exultation but of fear of her shy and persistent avoidance of me. If only a week were before us! But the day was the last, and the morrow would bring America, and—separation. I think I did not realize the full force of the emotion that had swept over me; nor all the complexities, the hazards, and the tragic destiny that it had, in the twinkling of an eye, laid upon my life. My only thought was to see her again to know from her first look that I still retained what had come to us in the dusk before. I knew that everything was horribly against me. I was certain, for some reason I could not fathom, that she would resist me, had resisted me from the first. I was sure of nothing. But though it meant finally but emptiness and the struggle to forget, I was powerless to draw back now.

Breakfast passed, and the morning drew out, and she did not come. I went to my chair and threw myself down, bodily and mentally tired. A vast feeling of depression possessed me. Magnus came and talked to me. I was conscious of seeming to listen; I caught phrases, heard myself making responses. I knew nothing. My heart sank within me and such a feeling of physical weakness possessed me, in this new, utter sense of loneliness, that I could do no more than lie there, stretched inertly, saying again and again to myself:

“She will not come. I have frightened her away.”

Yet she had not passed the door before I was instantly aware of it. A wave of happiness and well-being went through me, as though my lungs had filled with the first life-giving breath of air. She was coming, head down and walking fast. I sprang up and hurried to relieve her of the rug she was carrying. I knew she saw me, for she wavered and turned aside to speak to a little French-woman who was traveling with her baby.

“Good morning, Mademoiselle.”

“Good morning, Monsieur.”

“May I take your rug?”

She glanced at her arm as though she had just perceived its burden.

“Thank you, Monsieur.”

I went to her chair and prepared it for her coming. All the depression had left me at the first glance into her gray eyes. She, too, had felt the tumult and the turmoil; it was written there in weariness and strain. A violent joy, a sense of living and of hope, surged up in me, as I awaited her first words. When I turned she had taken the arm of her companion and was silently pacing off the deck.

An intuition, the instinct born of the struggle which is inseparable from love, came to me. I, too, would avoid her and, in my absence, in the longing denied, she would suffer, too, and by that suffering come closer to me. Cruel? Yes, as in such moments the impulse is to beat down all obstacles, to contend without quarter for the happiness that lies beyond the agony of doubt and disbelief! I rose and went into the smoking room, steeling myself to patience, resolved not to leave it until luncheon. I sat there ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. At the end of a half-hour I could bear it no longer. I went out hurriedly and, all my resolutions forgot, straight to where she waited in her chair.

“Mademoiselle, you have not forgiven me,” I said, without preliminaries.

“Why?”

She turned, startled, and the new conflict I saw in the haunted weariness of her glance brought me a sense of coming victory.

“Because you avoid me.”

“I?”

She could not meet the direct challenge of my look and turned away. Still I pursued, without compassion.

“Yes. You avoid me. Would you rather that I did not remain here?” I asked suddenly, sure of her answer. “For nothing in the world would I do anything that would be distasteful to you. Tell me only what you wish. Shall I go?”

She hesitated and, before the trouble I felt in her, my resolve almost gave way. Yet, because I was fighting for both of us, I held firm.

“Only tell me what you wish.”

Once or twice she seemed to make up her mind to speak, but each time she checked herself.

“Do you realize that by this time to-morrow we shall be steaming up New York harbor?”

“This time to-morrow!”

“This time to-morrow.”

She put down the book she held in her hands with a show of purpose, and looked out gravely.

“A strange world to both of us,” I said.

To my annoyance, the sound of the gong began to rumble through the ship.

“What—already?” she said, to my delight, looking incredulously at her watch.

“Take your luncheon up here; it’s a perfect day.”

“What a good idea! Yes, I think I shall.”

I hesitated, all my assurance melting away.

“I suppose the terrible gods of French etiquette would rock on their thrones if I stayed, too—”

“I should feel very conspicuous.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I knew you would feel that way.”

My tone fell, in such unconcealed chagrin that she could not help noticing it. She sat up and glanced down the deck. Other groups, yielding to the sunlight which poured over the dancing ocean and flung rainbows in the spray, were preparing to picnic above.

“It is the last day,” I repeated.

“Please—I should like if you will stay,” she said, all at once, and then blushed and looked away.

I affected not to notice her confusion and busied myself with a serious contemplation of the menu.

“There, it’ll be just like a meal at the front! Not quite so good cooking as at one of your little country inns. Do you know, what you said the other day’s been in my mind?”

“What was that?”

“About seeing death at first hand. I didn’t feel the way you did. I was all broken up the first time; couldn’t sleep for a week. And yet, you Frenchwomen go through all that and can still smile. Why is it? Have we weaker nerves?”

“Don’t you think there is something changed in our smiles?” she said, looking up.

“Yes, yes, I feel that. But you have so much faith in the good of the world, you seem so uplifted by your experience, there is something so serene in your eyes—”

I stopped, realizing how personal my analysis was growing.

“Ah, but when you are not just a spectator, when you are helping, it is different. What is uplifting in service is that your own self becomes of such little importance.”

“Yes, but I should think your memories—” I broke off. “When you told that fairy tale to Master Jack, the first day, you could even laugh.”

“It’s because what I remember is not pain and ugliness but only the beauty of sacrifice and the nobility of men who at other times may have been very sordid,” she said warmly. “Do you know what our memories are?” She half closed her eyes, and a tender look touched her lips. “I think of one Christmas Eve—a great barn where I was nursing—a barn that had been improvised into a hospital, with beds in the straw, just like the birthplace of the little Saviour. I don’t like to speak of myself, but I will tell you this. We stayed—my mother and I—in a little village on the frontier—our village—when the Germans came through; and that village, our little village, changed hands six times.”

“And you stayed—you and your mother?”

“We stayed, not to abandon our people and to take care of our poor wounded.”

“And they let you do that?”

“They needed some one to take care of their own,” she said, with a frown, “and we agreed—my mother and I—to do that if we could be permitted to nurse our own men. Six times the village changed hands, but on that night—Christmas Night—it was ours. So we made ready to celebrate. We organized a concert. Oh, it was a strange concert! There were over a hundred wounded in that great barn, and only a dozen could stand on their legs, but they were all so gay, for that is something our brave little poilus never lose,—their gaiety. And there was to be a tree, and all sorts of funny presents. And the concert! There was a quartet, and there was a waiter from the Café de Paris who was lying in a stall—with his feet carried off—who was to sing comic songs, and a real tenor from the Conservatoire, who would sing magnificent arias from the opera, and then there was to be a comic recitation, and a classic recitation. Every one quite forgot their troubles in the excitement. But Christmas morning a dozen wounded were brought in, and one, a sergeant of chasseurs, in such a dreadful state that we did not think he would live through the day. So of course, we prepared to give up the celebration: and what do you think? He heard the men talking, and he sent for me.

“‘Mademoiselle, is it true you are giving up the concert on my account?’

“‘You are in a bad way, mon petit!’ I told him.

“‘Bad way! Allons! I am going to die,’ he broke out. ‘Eh, bien! I choose to die gaily, instead of in a corner, like a dog. It is my wish that the concert go on. And tell the comrades to sing out good and strong!’

“It was done, as he wished.”

“And he died?”

“Not that day, but the next,” she said, “without a complaint. Do you think that when I can remember there are men like that in France, I have a right to be sad?”

The deck steward came and went, and we began our luncheon. A hundred questions were on my tongue, but I gave voice to none.

“They were so patient and so simple in their courage,” she continued gravely, “always trying to help me. Many times, I’ve had a soldier who was suffering say to me:

“‘Allons, Mam’zelle, get your sleep to-night. If this arm of mine won’t keep quiet, I can be of some use. I’ll make the rounds.’”

“And the brave fellows who fretted because they couldn’t return soon enough to the lines! They were so gay. I remember a little Breton who had both legs gone, posing for his photograph, with stockings pinned to his trousers, and saying:

“‘When I get up to Paris, I’ll get a pair of legs that’ll make me two inches taller than this old Auvergnat over here!’”

“Those are the things that are good to remember. Poor boys! There were so many that died unnecessarily! We were so few, and we could do so little!”

“But you had doctors?”

She shook her head.

“I am speaking of the first months. Only from time to time a doctor, and, when the Germans had the village, never. But I think that was better.”

“I could not have done that,” I said, shaking my head. “I think I could meet what I had to meet but—day in and day out—to have seen others suffer, others die like that—”

“I only remember the look of gratitude in their eyes,” she said, simply. “And then, I had my part. I had to keep up their morale, you know, and send them back to the front with courage. It would never have done for me to weaken.” She turned with a smile and saw the profound gravity on my face. “Believe me, what I say is true,” she said solemnly. “It had its hardships, but they were days of beauty, and I never think on them without a thrill of pride in the France I have been privileged to know. Please don’t look so grave. I’m afraid I’ve been too serious.”

I was staring at her, looking into the past which she had conjured up, divining things she had passed lightly over.

“Why are you staring so?” she said, a little embarrassed.

“I was trying to imagine you in your white and blue costume,—the most beautiful robe that has ever been given to woman,” I said solemnly. “You have no photograph?”

She shook her head.

“I only meant I should have liked to see it.”

“I love the uniform, too,” she said, and a note of sadness was in her voice.

“But you will go back?” I said, before I could catch myself.

“I shall never go back. Will you take the tray?”

I hastened to obey. When I returned, I saw at once a stiffening of her whole nature against me.

“Confess that you are thinking of the sacred gods of French etiquette,” I said, hoping to make her smile.

She acknowledged the hit, with a little confusion.

“Then please blame me, and not your conscience, for I made you talk.”

“That is so. You make me talk against my will.”

“And now you are wondering how you can run away.”

“How do you know me so well?” she said, forced at last into a smile.

“Oh, I do. There is a very stern, uncompromising Mademoiselle Duvernoy, and there is a very gay, happy Mademoiselle Duvernoy.”

“Once, there was a very frivolous one,” she said, nodding.

“I didn’t say that—”

“But it is so; oh, very frivolous—very mondaine, before the war—who loved good things, as a child loves sugar plums!”

“What terrible sins you must have had on your conscience!” I said, laughing.

“Oh, but I loved pleasure, very much, and the things of this world. I did, very much.”

I smiled.

“I smile, as the Father who heard your confession must have smiled.”

She shook her head.

“I was a very superficial little person; not at all tolerant, very satisfied with myself, and very dissatisfied with others.”

“Good heavens; I don’t think you have ever been anything but the spirit of gentleness!” I broke out.

She drew back instantly, and I hastened to repair the blunder my impulsiveness had made.

“You women of France all have that quality of gentleness,” I said hastily, in a more guarded tone. “That is what I notice about all of you.”

She relaxed, though not quite convinced.

“You idealize me, Monsieur. We have done our duty, that is all, and we have found in it a great happiness.”

“I wish my sister—I used to think of her as my little sister; good heavens, she must be twenty now!—I wish my sister Molly could know you. Of all the family, she is closest to me. I hate to think of her going through four or five years of useless life, dancing herself to death, learning to get bored with every pleasure: she’s such a little trump, now.” I took out my pocketbook and brought out a photograph of a youngster in pigtail, tanned and straight, looking out with innocent laughter at the most beautiful of worlds.

She took it, and glanced from the photograph to me.

“Yes, I understand. There is something very noble, very pure, very brave. She is your favorite?”

I began to laugh.

“What is it?”

“Do you know, that’s only the second time I think you’ve really looked me in the eyes.”

She blushed—as she did easily—and tried to laugh.

“We are told never to look a man in the eyes. It is very old-fashioned to you?”

“But why?”

“Because,” she hesitated a little and then went on, looking away from me, “because, when you look in a man’s eyes, they say, you are seeking a different meaning to his words.” She blushed furiously. “It’s not that exactly but—how shall I say?—we are taught that it is too forward—too provocative. But you are laughing at me,” she said, covered with confusion.

“I am not laughing, Mademoiselle,” I said seriously, “and I like that in you.”

The conversation became difficult and a certain diffidence overcame us. A moment before, she had been talking to me freely and impulsively, though a little shy and hesitant, as a young girl. I saw her mood change and a certain womanly dignity come to her.

“Monsieur, I have been thinking much of the confidence you entrusted to me. Have you—have you no photograph of Miss Brinsmade?”

My pocketbook was still in my hand. I drew out a little snapshot and handed it to her. She held it a long time, studying it intently.

“She is very beautiful,” she said at last.

“Yes.”

“This is how long ago?”

“Three—four years; when she was just out of school.”

She nodded, still studying it.

“Monsieur, there is a great deal that is waiting there—a great deal of love—a great deal of nobility. A woman like that will be what you want her to be; only, don’t make her wait too long.”

I took the photograph, looked at it wondering if she had said all her thought, and slowly replaced it in my pocket.

“Mademoiselle, I, too, have been thinking over our conversation and I feel I may have given you a wrong impression—”

“How so?”

“I was only discussing something that was a remote possibility, nothing that I have really considered. I reproach myself a little; I had not the right—on her account.”

“Why?”

“Because I know now that it is quite impossible.”

Heavens, how much I wished to say to her, and how little I dared. I waited, wondering if she would understand. She did not answer, but I saw her hands clasp and unclasp in her lap.

“What you have said of marriage is natural to your traditions. Some other man might do as you suggest and find happiness. I know—I know I could not, and keep my self-respect. I shall never marry, Mademoiselle, unless my whole heart goes with it.” I hesitated and, despite myself, knowing the danger of it, I added, very low, “I know that now.”

She did not hesitate but answered me, instantly and lightly.

“Perhaps, Monsieur, the future will settle that. Will you permit me to hope that it may be so?”

She rose, with a formal nod and made a pretext to descend to her cabin. I saw her to the door and returned, my brain in a whirl. At one moment she had seemed to come to me with such impulsiveness; at the next, to be a thousand miles away. I dropped back into my chair, uneasy and tortured by regrets. A flash of gold on the gray scarf she had left behind her caught my eye and, leaning over, I picked up a little brooch I had always seen at her throat. It was in the form of a locket, heart-shaped, such as children wear. I turned it over in my hands and saw an inscription on the back, a date and a name written in a free hand:

BERNOLINE

The next moment I realized that unwittingly I had trespassed on the mystery of her identity. I put the pin hastily in my pocket and rose, with an idea to restore it to her immediately. I went into the Ladies’ Cabin, hoping to find her there, and then into the writing room. I could not take it, myself, to her stateroom and I did not wish to entrust it to a steward. In the end, I kept it and waited for her reappearance.

XII

It was well into the heart of the afternoon when I discovered her, at her old post on the upper deck.

“Mademoiselle, please do not think that I mean to intrude,” I said diffidently, when I had come to her side.

“You are not intruding, and I had hoped that you would come,” she said, without evasion. “For, Monsieur, I feel that I ought to say something to you very seriously.”

Her manner, in its decision and thoughtfulness, alarmed me.

“I have things, too, which I wish to talk over with you, in the uttermost seriousness. I am a little afraid of that conversation,” I said, looking down, “because we are going to disagree. My mind is made up to certain things, Mademoiselle, and I do not think you can change it.” I added, looking up into the sadness of her eyes, “Will you grant me a favor—a last favor. There is so little time that is left us. Wait until to-morrow.”

She shook her head.

“My conscience reproaches me for putting it off as I have done. Do not make it any harder.”

“If it is to be only a memory,” I said, “let the memory be complete. It is something even to have had a memory of you. Please grant my request.”

I doubt whether she would have yielded even then, though I saw her breast rise and her eyes close at my voice, had I not brought forward the locket, saying:

“Mademoiselle, I came to bring you this. I found it on your chair.”

Her hand went to her dress spasmodically, and the color left her face with the violence of her emotion.

“I must tell you. I did not realize what I was doing, but I saw the name on the back.”

“You did not open the locket?” she said, in terror.

“Mademoiselle, I am sorry that you asked that question.”

“Forgive me—I—forgive me.” She put her hand to her eyes, and stood trembling from head to foot. God knows it was hard not to take her in my arms. But I stood there, gritting my teeth, waiting until she grew quiet once more.

“Bernoline—so that is your name?” I said softly.

“Yes, that is my name.”

“I have known, from the first. Bernoline—I am glad I saw it, for the other name I could not associate with you.”

“Monsieur.” She turned, and this time her eyes looked me through and through. “You are a man of honor? Give me your word of honor never to mention that name to a human being. Oh, I do not mean to hurt you—I do trust you. But—I must have your word!”

“You have hurt me,” I said. “It was not necessary, but—you have my word.”

Her agitation was so extreme that she hardly noticed my reply.

“Mademoiselle—no one who has had the privilege of knowing you—of listening to you—can ever believe that you were brought up to be a governess. And if you had been,” I added hastily, “that would not make the slightest difference. You are you, and that is sufficient. I think, Mademoiselle, I never wanted anything more in the world than to be your friend.”

She shook her head again at this, but the agitation passed and her voice was soft with pleading as she answered me:

“Monsieur Littledale, you will forgive me? From the heart? I did not know what I was saying. I should always trust you—in everything—without a doubt.”

“Thank you,” I said, all choked up.

“Your friendship? Yes. But, friends? No. To-morrow, it is to be good-by,” she said, more gently than I had heard her. “Is it not better to say now what we must say to each other?”

“No, no—to-morrow.”

“To-morrow, then. Since you asked it and because I did hurt you,” she answered. “Only, make no mistake. You have seen me, Monsieur, in moments of weakness. Why I have been so I do not know: I am not like that. I can do what has to be done.” The locket was in her hands; she held it before her. “It is the last thing that remains of all my past life. I had no right to keep it; I have been wrong. Monsieur Littledale, I think you will understand now how immovable my resolution is, when I know what must be done!”

She opened her hand, and the locket, a tiny streak of gold, vanished into the sea.

“It was my baby pin, and the name was in the handwriting of my father.”

It was done without a tremor and the chill of the waters, into which the locket had passed, possessed me.

* * * * *

Instinctively we avoided the danger of personal references. For the rest of the afternoon we sat there together, talking eagerly, unconscious as two children of the shortening day. I do not remember ever to have known such an exquisite and eager pleasure as in this impulsive searching of our minds. It was the delight in meeting in intimate conversation some one who woke in me all my dormant imagination and led me along suddenly opening galleries, into unsuspected worlds. As we rambled on, touching lightly or profoundly twenty changing ideas, a deep tranquillity came to my restless spirit, not simply from the contemplation of the serenity that lay on her open forehead and deep in her clear, untroubled eyes, nor the charm of listening to the melody of her voice, but in the calm certitude of coming happiness. I was happy; yes, for that one all too brief afternoon. I was happy as I never realized happiness could come to me. For I saw such happiness in her face that at times she seemed no more than a girl of sixteen, artlessly spreading before me her imagination and her treasured thoughts. She was happy. I knew what that meant. I was content to go no further, sure that on the morrow, when we came to serious discussion, I could turn all her objections, based, as I believed them to be, on a sentiment of too scrupulous pride.

We were in the midst of a gay debate on the upbringing of the young girl in France, when the sound of the dinner gong broke in on our illusions.

“What, so soon!”

“It is not possible!”

The two cries came simultaneously. We stood up, suddenly sobered. I saw her face change.

“And, to-morrow afternoon—here,” I said confidently.

“It were better to say good-by now,” she said wearily.

“It will not be good-by, Mademoiselle.”

She shook her head and gave me her hand, and I remember now how heavily it lay for that short second in mine.

“Monsieur, I repeat, you make me do things I do not mean to do, that I have no right to do.”

“Wait until to-morrow,” I said, so completely happy that I tried to laugh her out of her mood and refused to perceive the solemnity and sadness that settled over her face.

* * * * *

I am glad now, as I look back, for that one hour of absolute faith in the future. Life was a certainty; I was filled with an eagerness to begin and in the knowledge of the rare and beautiful realization of happiness, I had not the slightest fear of the test of the morrow.

XIII

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 comprehension of 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 sand of 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:

“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 was more 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 who spoke 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, I shall 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 explanation and 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 came out 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 we swayed 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.