“They’re in Isaiah, I think. Everybody knows them.” She recited in a smooth, rich voice that gave new beauty to the familiar passage: “‘Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: ... He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.’” Her voice rose—and fell again. “‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.’” She resumed in a colloquial tone: “I’ve seen so much of that, haven’t you? The lamb led dumb to the slaughter, and the quiet, wounded man hardly opening his mouth for a moan. It’s heartbreaking.”
“And yet you’d bring your own people into it.”
“Because it’s sublime. Because I’ve seen for myself that the people who take part in it are raised to levels they never knew it was possible to reach. Haven’t you found the same thing for yourself?”
“Oh, I? I’m only—”
“You’re a man—and a young man. You’re a young man who’s been—I can’t express it. It’s all in that fact. The people at home will only have to look at you to see what language could never put before them. Language isn’t equal to it. Imagination isn’t equal to it when the thing is over. Don’t you find that? Doesn’t it often seem to you, now that you’re out of it, as if it was a dream that had half escaped you? You try to tell it—and you can’t. That’s why the people who’ve been there and come back so often have nothing to say. That’s why so many of the books—except those that contain diaries jotted down on the minute—that are written afterward are so often disappointing. It’s like a great secret in every man’s soul that he knows and thinks about, and can never get out of him. So I shall make no attempt to do more than to tell the little things, the small human details—”
You will see that I was following my own train of thought as I broke in, “But New York life will get hold of you again.”
“It can’t get hold of me again, because there will be nothing for it to catch on by. That’s all over for me. It could no more seize anything I am now than you or I”—she pointed to a flock of little birds riding up and down on a long, smooth billow—“from the deck of this ship could catch one of those Mother Carey’s chickens.”
My sensations were those of a man who has received an extraordinary bit of good news, like that of a great artistic triumph or the inheritance of a fortune. It was something that went to the foundations of life, bathing them in security and peace. As we continued to talk the swing of the boat became the lulling of strong arms.
The conflict of which for the past few days my mind had been the battle-ground was suddenly appeased. Woman, love, marriage, the more comforting elements in life—were no longer in opposition to what had become a man’s pressing and sacred duties. There could be a love which asked for no moratorium; or rather, there could be a woman with the courage of a soldier.
I began to see her as comparable to that crusader’s wife who, disguised as a page, followed her lord on his journeys, to share his perils and minister to his needs. In a modern girl it was not only romantic; it was adorable. That it should have been done for me was beyond my power to believe. None but the bravest and most daring spirit would have attempted it—none but the heart capable of climbing higher and more adventurously still. I had known her for a gallant soul from that midnight minute when she pulled aside her hangings and found me lurking in her chamber; but I had never made a forecast of the heroisms and fidelities expanding here like the beauty from the heart of a rose.