Last night I left off when the memory was too acute and my eyes could no longer see to write. To-night, I come back to it, impatiently, with a longing to reclaim every word, every look, every precious minute, and fix it indelibly before me. The situation here is hideous. I seem to be walking over a mine that sooner or later will go off, while I can do nothing but await the final catastrophe. To write is to return to her, to hope again that somehow, somewhere, without being false to my promise, I shall see her again.
II
The gangplank swung out as I stepped on the deck, the air shrilling with the chirp of whistles and the creak of pulleys. I shouldered through the motley crowd and joined Mr. Brinsmade on the upper deck. I remember how solemnly I looked down on the France I knew and loved, and with what reluctant apprehension of the future I watched the gray hawser stiffen.
“Strange, to be going?”
“Yes—incredibly strange,” I said slowly. “I can’t quite believe it; for whole months to be a free agent—no longer a part of a great orderly machine, without eyes or ears or will. I think I have forgotten what the other world is like.”
“Do you regret this?”
“Regret it? Yes, it’s hard to leave a thing unfinished when you’ve gone so far. And, though I’ve hated it and cursed it, well, it is a different conception of humanity, after all, this doing a thing as a mass. I’ve accepted it, readjusted myself to it. I think it’s not the question of liking it or not liking it; it’s the feeling of the inevitable and the wanting to measure up to other men. I stopped debating with myself the day I saw a man at my side go to his death. He was a scullion out of the kitchen of a New York hotel—Carlo Roger—deserter and rascal. He could have remained, and no one would have cared. He did his duty, unnoticed. I couldn’t do less.”
I looked up, and then down, and added, “Better hold on tight to me, Mr. Brinsmade. I feel like making a jump for it.”
Laughing he passed his arm through mine and pretended not to notice the dimness in my eyes.
“You’ve known humanity at its best, my boy,” he said. “And I, thank God, have had a glimpse of it. And when you’re like myself, a weather-worn old lawyer, who walks behind the scenes, that’s something to be thankful for. Well—if they’re not of our race—they’re the same human beings: we can share that.”