“Not at all! We’re regenerated by courage and honor and sacrifice and the sense that every man gets—every Tommy, every poilu, every bluejacket—that he personally is essential to man’s big fight in his struggle upward. It’s one of the queer things of the whole business that out of the greatest wrong human beings can inflict on one another—to go to war with them—there can come the highest benefits to every individual who gets himself ready to receive them. It makes one believe in an intelligence compelling the race toward good, however much we may be determined to go the other way.”
He tuned his voice to a new key.
“Oh, I’ve never doubted that; and now, old chap, now I—I see it.”
I knew what was coming. It was the great subject that could eclipse even that of the war. I had just force to pull the bedclothes up about my mouth and mutter a suffocated, “How?”
“What I hinted this morning. It’s all—it’s all come right. I used to think it never would, sometimes. And then—don’t laugh, old boy!—but then I’d say to myself that God would never have made me feel as I did unless He meant something to come of it. Religion keeps telling you to trust; and I did trust—on and off.”
Again I had an opportunity; but again such words as rose in me choked themselves back in my throat. I could have told him that she was ready to come to me if I lifted a finger. I knew I should have to tell him sometime, and it occurred to me that it might as well be now. It was the words that failed me, not the intention; or if it was the intention, it was the intention in any degree that made it compulsory.
I don’t think he noticed that I said nothing, for he went falteringly on:
“It’s a wonderful thing to be happy, Frank. I’ve never been happy before in my life. I’m a pusillanimous sort of bloke, and there’s the truth. I wasn’t happy at home, or at school, or at college, or in any of the hospitals where I worked; and I never made any friends. You must know I’ve been queer when I say that women have always looked at me as if I was outside of their range. They’ve never made up to me in the way they do to most fellows with a bit of money and not deformed. Regina—there! I’ve said her name—she was the very first who ever took the trouble to be more than just decently civil.”
I managed to stammer the words, “What did she do?”
“Oh, nothing very much—not at first. She seemed to think—she used to say it—that I was different from most men. That’s what she appeared to be on the lookout for. All the other chaps she knew were so much alike, and I—Well, that’s how it began. She wanted the unusual—and I turned up. After a while she thought I wasn’t unusual enough—said it in so many words—But you know that story. I’ve told you too many times already.”