He stopped, breathless, and Ruth was leaning forward, breathless too. The passion which had seized and was swaying him was rousing like passions in the others before him; his revolt had become their revolt; and they warmed and kindled with him. But she did not. Though this outburst of his soul brought to her feeling for him, himself, beyond what she could have believed, the meaning of what he said did not so inflame her. Her feeling was amazingly personal to him.
“We protested,” he was going on. “Protested; and did nothing! They sank our ships and murdered our own people under the American flag; and we continued to protest! And England and France and the nations holding back the Boche with them ceased to honor us with expectations of action; so, expecting nothing, naturally they became more grateful and amazed at anything which we happened to do. When the Kaiser told us he might allow us—if we were very good—one ship a week to Europe, provided we sent him notice in advance and we painted it in stripes, just as he said, and when that at last was too much for us to take, they honored us in Europe with wondering what we would do; and they thanked and complimented us, their new ally, for sending them more doctors and medical supplies without charging them for it, and after a while a few divisions of soldiers.
“God knows I would say no word against our men who have gone to France; I speak for them! For I have been an American in France and have learned some of the shame of it! The shame,” he repeated passionately, “of being an American! I have gone about an ordinary duty, performing it much after the fashion of my comrades in the French service—or in the British—and when I have returned, I have found that what I happened to do is the thing picked out for special mention and praise to the public, when others who have done the same or more than myself have not had that honor. Because I was an American! They feel they must yet compliment and thank Americans for doing what they have been doing as a matter of course all this time that we have stayed out; so they thank and praise us for beginning to do now what we ought to have done in 1914.
“We have been sitting here—you and I—letting our allies thank us for at last beginning to fight a little of our war! Think of that when they have been giving themselves and their all—all—in our cause for three and a half years!”
He stepped back suddenly and stood with bowed head as though—Ruth thought—he had meant to say more, but suddenly had found that he could not. She was trembling as she sat staring at him; she was alone in her chair now; for the people all about, overswept by their feelings, were standing up again, and clapping wildly, and calling out: “France! France!... England! France!... Belgium!... England!” they were crying in adulation.
She saw him again for an instant; he had stepped back a little farther, and raised his head, and was gazing at the people acclaiming him and the allies for whom he had spoken. He stared about and seemed to seek her—at least, he gazed about when this great acclaim suddenly bewildered him, as he had gazed before he had spoken and when his eyes had found her. She stood up then; but he turned about to Lady Agnes, who had risen and was beside him; the people in front of Ruth screened him from sight and when she got view of the platform again he was gone.
The guests were leaving their chairs and moving toward the rooms where refreshments were being served; but it was many minutes before Ruth heard anyone mention other matters than the war and Gerry Hull’s speech. That had been a thoroughly remarkable and sincere statement of the American position, Ruth heard the people about her saying; to have heard it was a real experience.
It had come as the climax of what for Ruth was far more than that; the darkening of the early winter night outside the drawn curtains of the windows, the tinkling of a little clock for the half hour—half-past four—brought to her the amazing transformation worked upon Ruth Alden since, scarcely six hours before, the wonderful wand of war had touched her. With the dawn of this same day which was slipping so fast into the irrevocable past, she had awakened to dream as of a wish unrealizable that she might welcome Gerry Hull home; now she knew him; she had talked with him alone; when she had been among all his friends in the other room, he had sought her with his eyes. He had disappeared from the rooms now; and no one seemed to know where he had gone, though many inquired. But Ruth knew; so she slipped away from Hubert Lennon and from his Aunt Emilie, who had forgotten all about asking where Cynthia had been the last two days; and Ruth returned to the conservatory.
Upon that bench where they had sat together, hidden by the palms, and hanging vines, and the roses, she saw him sitting alone, bent forward with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, staring down at the floor.
He looked up quickly as he heard her step; she halted, frightened for a moment by her own boldness. If he had chosen that spot for his flight from the others, it would mean—she had felt—that he was willing that she should return there. But how did she know that? Might it not be wholly in her fancy that, since they had separated, he had thought about her at all?