I
PHIL FARMER and Jimmy Kane stayed on in New Haven that summer of 1914; Phil to be near his precious sources in the Yale library; Jimmy to be near his new job. As soon as his examinations were over he had gone to work in a factory in a very humble capacity; but he was not destined to remain there long in any capacity, nor was it written in the stars that he was to complete his education at Yale.
My own reasons for clinging to New Haven were less definite. Sheer physical inertia had something to do with it, no doubt; but chiefly I stayed because New Haven in midsummer is a social desert; and in those days my most urgent desire was to be alone. Apart from all else, the breaking out of almost world-wide war had drastically, as if by an operation for spiritual cataract, opened my inner eye, no longer a bliss in solitude, to much that was trivial and self-satisfied and ridiculous in one Ambrose Hunt, Esq. That Susan should be in the smoke of that spreading horror brought it swiftly and vividly before me. I lived the war from the first.
For years, with no felt discomfort to myself, I had been a pacifist. I was a contributing member of several peace societies, and in one of my slightly better-known essays I had expounded with enthusiasm Tolstoy's doctrine—which, in spite of much passionate argument to the contrary these troublous times, was assuredly Christ's—of nonresistance to evil. I was, in fact, though in a theoretical, parlor sense a proclaimed Tolstoyan, a Christian anarchist—lacking, however, the essential groundwork for Tolstoy's doctrine: faith. Faith in God as a person, as a father, I could not confess to; but the higher anarchist vision of humanity freed from all control save that of its own sweet reasonableness, of men turned unfailingly gentle, mutually helpful, content to live simply if need be, but never with unuplifted hearts—well, I could and did confess publicly that no other vision had so strong an attraction for me!
I liked to dwell in the idea of such a world, to think of it as a possibility—less remote, perhaps, than mankind in general supposed. Having lived through the Spanish War, the Boer War, and Russia's war with Japan; and in a world constantly strained to the breaking point by national rivalries, commercial expansion, and competition for markets; by class struggles everywhere apparent; by the harsh, discordant energies of its predatory desires—I, nevertheless, had been able to persuade myself that the darkest days of our dust-speck planet were done with and recorded; Earth and its graceless seed of Adam were at last, to quote Jimmy, "on their way"—well on their way, I assured myself, toward some inevitable region of abiding and beneficent light!
Pouf! . . . And then?
Stricken in solitude, I went down into dark places and fumbled like a starved beggar amid the detritus of my dreams. Dust and shadow. . . . Was there anything real there, anything worth the pain of spiritual salvage? Had I been, all my life, merely one more romanticist, one more sentimental trifler in a universe whose ways were not those of pleasantness, nor its paths those of peace? Surely, yes; for my heart convicted me at once of having wasted all my days hitherto in a fool's paradise. The rough fabric of human life was not spun from moonshine. So much at least was certain. And nothing else was left me. Hurled from my private, make-believe Eden, I must somehow begin anew.
"Brief beauty, and much weariness. . . ."
Susan's line haunted me throughout the first desperate isolation of those hours. I saw no light. I was broken in spirit. I was afraid.
Morbidity, you will say. Why, yes; why not? To be brainsick and heartsick in a cruel and unfamiliar world is to be morbid. I quite agree. Below the too-thin crust of a dilettante's culture lies always that hungry morass. A world had been shaken; the too-thin crust beneath my feet had crumbled; I must slither now in slime, and either sink there finally, be swallowed up in that sucking blackness, or by some miracle of effort win beyond, set my feet on stiff granite, and so survive.
It is most probable that I should never have reached solid ground unaided. It was Jimmy, of all people, who stretched forth a vigorous, impatient hand.
Shortly after the First Battle of the Marne had dammed—we knew not how precariously, or how completely—the deluge pouring through Belgium and Luxemburg and Northern France, Jimmy burst in on me one evening. He had just received a brief letter from Susan. She was stationed then at Furnes; Mona Leslie was with her; but their former hostess, the young pleasure-loving Comtesse de Bligny, was dead. The cause of her death Susan did not even stop to explain.
"Mona," she hurried on, "is magnificent. Only a few months ago I pitied her, almost despised her; now I could kiss her feet. How life had wasted her! She doesn't know fear or fatigue, and she has just put her entire fortune unreservedly at the service of the Belgian Government—to found field hospitals, ambulances, and so on. The king has decorated her. Not that she cares—has time to think about it, I mean. In a sense it irritated her; she spoke of it all to me as an unnecessary gesture. Oh, Jimmy, come over—we need you here! Bring all America over with you—if you can! Setebos invented neutrality; I recognize his workmanship! Bring Ambo—bring Phil! Don't stop to think about it—come!"
"I'm going of course," said Jimmy. "So's Prof. Farmer. How about you, sir?"
"Phil's going?"
"Sure. Just as soon as he can arrange it."
"His book's finished?"
"What the hell has that——" began Jimmy; then stopped dead, blushing. "Excuse me, Mr. Hunt; but books, somehow—just now—they don't seem so important as—see?"
"Not quite, Jimmy. After all, the real struggle's always between ideas, isn't it? We can't perfect the world with guns and ambulances, Jimmy."
"Maybe not," said Jimmy dryly.
"It's quite possible," I insisted, "that Phil's book might accomplish more for humanity, in the long run, than anything he could do at his age in Flanders."
"Susan could come home and write plays," said Jimmy; "good ones, too. But she won't. You can bet on that, sir."
"I've never believed in war, Jimmy; never believed it could possibly help us onward."
"Maybe it can't," interrupted Jimmy. "I've never believed in cancer, either; it's very painful and kills a lot of people. You'd better come with us, sir. You'll be sorry you didn't—if you don't."
"Why? You know my ideas on nonresistance, Jimmy."
"Oh, ideas!" grunted Jimmy. "I know you're a white man, Mr. Hunt. That's enough for me. I'm not worrying much about your ideas."
"But whatever we do, Jimmy, there's an idea behind it; there must be."
"Nachur'ly," said Jimmy. "Those are the only ones that count! I can't see you letting Susan risk her life day in an' out to help people who are being wronged, while you sit over here and worry about what's going to happen in a thousand years or so—after we're all good and dead! Not much I can't! The point is, there's the rotten mess—and Susan's in it, trying to make it better—and we're not. Prof. Farmer got it all in a flash! He'll be round presently to make plans. Well—how about it, sir?"
Granite! Granite at last, unshakable, beneath my feet!
Then, too, Susan was over there, and Jimmy and Phil were going, without a moment's hesitation, at her behest! But I have always hoped, and I do honestly believe, that it was not entirely that.
No; romanticist or not, I will not submit to the assumption that of two possible motives for any decently human action, it is always the lower motive that turns the trick. La Rochefoucauld to the contrary, self-interest is not the inevitable mainspring of man; though, sadly I admit, it seems to be an indispensable cog-wheel in his complicated works. . . .