Ruth trembled with joyous excitement.
“I wanted to tell you better what I meant,” he went on. “And to find out more from you.”
“About?”
“What we’d been arguing. I told you that day I’d never had a chance to talk over affairs with an American like you; and I hadn’t later.
“You see,” he explained after a moment of thought, “it seemed to me that the other people I met at home—or most of them, anyway—went into the war as a sort of social event. I don’t mean that they made light of it; they didn’t. They were heart and soul in the cause; and a good many of them did a lot of real work. But they didn’t react to any—original ideas, as far as I could make out. They imported their opinions and sympathies. And the ones who were hottest to have America in the war weren’t the people who’d been most of their lives in America; but the ones who’d been in England or France. I told you that day that what they said was just what I’d been hearing on the other side.”
In spite of the canvas shield, it was very cold where they were standing. Gerry moved a bit as he talked; and Ruth stepped with him, letting him lead her to a door which he opened, to discover a little writing room or card room which happened to be deserted just then. He motioned to her to precede him; and when she sat down upon one of the upholstered chairs fixed before a table, he took the place opposite, tossing his cap away and loosening his coat. She unbuttoned her coat and pulled off her heavy gloves. She had made no reply, and he seemed to expect none, but to be satisfied with her waiting.
“I suppose you’re thinking that’s the way I got my opinions too,” he said. “But it’s not quite true. I wasn’t trying to be English or French or foreign in any way. I was proud—not ashamed—to be American. Why, at school in England they used to have a regular game to get me started bragging about America and Chicago and our West. I liked the people over there; but I liked our people better. Grandfather—well, he seemed to me about the greatest sort of man possible; and his friends and father’s friends who used to come to look me up at Harrow once in a while—some of ’em were pretty raw and uncouth, but I liked to show ’em off! I did. They’d all done something themselves; and most of ’em were still doing things—big things—and putting in eight or ten hours a day in their offices. They weren’t gentlemen at all in the sense that my friends at Harrow knew English gentlemen; but I said they were the real thing. America—my country—was made up of men who really did things!
“Then the war came and showed us up! I tell you, Miss Gail, I couldn’t believe it at first. It seemed to me that the news couldn’t be getting across to America; or that lies only were reaching you. Then the American newspapers came to France and everyone could see that we knew and stayed out!”
“Last week,” Ruth said, “and yesterday; and before I met you this morning, I knew how to tell you what I tried to that day at Mrs. Corliss’. I’ve thought more about that, I’m sure, than anything else recently; but now—” she gazed across the little table at him and shook her head—“it’s no use. It’s not anything one can argue, I guess. It’s just faith and feeling—faith in our own people, Lieutenant Hull!”
She saw, as he watched her, that she was disappointing him and that he had been hoping that, somehow, she could resolve the doubts of his own people which possessed him; she saw—as she had observed at Mrs. Corliss’—that his eyes lingered upon her face, upon her hands, as though he liked her; but her stubbornness in upholding those people whom she would not even try to explain, offended him again. He glanced out the port above her.