“It’s like drink!” I said.
Lowell raised his eyes as though he meant to speak, and then lowered them and stepped back, leaving Beatrice and myself together.
“I only want you to see,” Beatrice began bravely, “how—how serious it is. Every one of us in his life must have a moment like this, and, if he could only know that the moment had come, he might decide wisely. You know the moment has come. You must see that this is the crisis. It means choosing not for a year, but for always.” She held out her hands, entwining the fingers closely. “Oh, don’t think I’m trying to stop you, Royal,” she cried. “I only want you to see that it’s final. I know that it’s like strong drink to you, but the more you give way to it—. Don’t you think, if you gave your life here a fairer trial, if you bore with it a little longer—”
She stopped sharply as though she recognized that, in urging me to a choice, she was acting as she had determined she would not. I did not answer, but stood in silence with my head bent, for I could not look at her. I knew now how much dearer to me, even than her voice, was the one which gave the call to arms. I did indeed understand that the crisis had come. In that same room, five minutes before the message arrived, I had sworn for her sake alone to submit to the life I hated. And yet in an instant, without a moment’s pause, at the first sound of “Boots and Saddles,” I had sprung to my first love, and had forgotten Beatrice and my sworn allegiance. Knowing how greatly I loved her, I now could understand, since it made me turn from her, how much greater must be my love for this, her only rival, the old life that was again inviting me.
I was no longer to be deceived; the one and only thing I really loved, the one thing I understood and craved, was the free, homeless, untrammelled life of the soldier of fortune. I wanted to see the shells splash up the earth again, I wanted to throw my leg across a saddle, I wanted to sleep on a blanket by a camp-fire, I wanted the kiss and caress of danger, the joy which comes when the sword wins honor and victory together, and I wanted the clear, clean view of right and wrong, that is given only to those who hourly walk with death.
I raised my head, and spoke very softly:
“It is too late. I am sorry. But I have decided. I must go.”
Lowell stepped out of the shadow, and faced me with the same strange look, partly of wonder, and partly of indignation.
“Nonsense, Royal,” he said, “let me talk to you. We’ve been shipmates, or comrades, and all that sort of thing, and you’ve got to listen to me. Think, man, think what you’re losing. Think of all the things you are giving up. Don’t be a weak child. This will affect your whole life. You have no right to decide it in a minute.”
I stepped to its hiding-place, and took out the sword my grandfather had carried in the Civil War; the sword I had worn in Honduras. I had hidden it away, that it might not remind me that once I, too, was a soldier. It acted on me like a potion. The instant my fingers touched its hilt, the blood, which had grown chilled, leaped through my body. In answer I held the sword toward Lowell. It was very hard to speak. They did not know how hard. They did not know how cruelly it hurt me to differ from them, and to part from them. The very thought of it turned me sick and miserable. But it was written. It had to be.