“When she calls?”
“Idiot, she will come at once! And now, throw some things in a bag, and come away with me for a couple of weeks’ fishing.”
* * * * *
As I look back at it now I am filled only with a feeling of nausea. All I can say in extenuation of this period, when the thinking man had ceased and was near to the brute, is that for weeks I had not been master of myself, that I moved in a delirium of passionate anger, weak jealousy, with every nerve unstrung and every impulse riotous, incapable of either controlling or judging my action.
* * * * *
It is not a chapter that I like to contemplate but, as it was I write it down. For the mystery of evil is that out of it there often comes a revulsion to sanity. I am not sure but in the end it was beneficial. The shock of experience made me see myself as I was, and after the disorganization the primeval spirit of order awoke in me, and now that I am seeking to build up again it is as my own mason, consciously and responsible.
The trouble with the New England tradition is its lack of flexibility. Nothing gives, but it breaks. Yield the slightest, and everything crumbles. We lack a sure sense of values and are therefore at the mercy of little things as well as great. We conceive of man’s struggle against the forces of demoralization as the defence of a fortress: one breach made, and capitulation follows. More mature reflection, tempered with a knowledge of good and evil, has led me, I think, to a broader philosophy. We are not intrenched in our beliefs but are mobile forces, constantly maneuvering, constantly at war—turned back here, advancing there—with only the ultimate objective important.
* * * * *
We had been gone but four days when the war broke out and we separated, he to join his regiment, and I to enlist in the Foreign Legion. His last words to me were, “David, my dear friend, if through weakness you return now, you are worse than the most despicable of men,—you will be utterly lost. After this, Madame de Tinquerville will hate you or love you beyond anything else in life,—and either will be fatal.”