It had. I began to take pleasure in seeing my friends; to look forward to the Newport season, to the international tennis, to the golf championship at Ekwanok, to the thousand and one things that make for the happiness of a butterfly's summer.
After a month of Newport, days passed with only hurried thoughts of Lucy. Chance mention of her name gave me no uneasiness; they affected my heart, like sudden trumpets, but I knew that my face had become an inscrutable mask, and that my voice was in perfect control. Those who had thought that there was something between us began to think differently.
And then, after days of suspense, surmise, and real consternation, the legs of civilization seemed to have been knocked from under it, and the greatest nations of Europe flew at each other.
Now indeed there seemed an easy way to the year's end. The Germans rolled through Belgium and into France, outraging humanity. It looked as if they would roll right into Paris, and sow salt where the world's first city had stood.
I rushed up to Bar Harbor to tell my parents that I was going to France to enlist in the foreign legion. Oh, how swiftly the time would fly, I thought. That I might get crippled or killed never occurred to me. I thought only that having failed at everything else, I must obviously be possessed of military genius. I pictured myself climbing the bloody ladder of promotion to high command and winning the gratitude of that country which next to my own I love the most.
My mother, to whom I first broached the news, did not cry or make a fuss. But I saw that I had distressed her terribly.
"It isn't our war," she said; "and what use will one more enlisted man be to them? And besides, my dear, only sons are always the first ones to get hurt; only sons and men whose families are dependent upon them. But …" and here she gave me a wonderful look … "I think I know why you want to go. And that makes me very proud."
"I think you do know, Mumsey," I said. "It's because we'd rather get hurt trying to do something worth while, than go on the way we've always gone on, amounting to nothing, and disappointing everybody."
Then she got me in her arms, and cried over me a little.
My father, as usual, took my decision with the most good-natured indifference.