Owen Johnson

“ I knew that for the first time I had looked into eyes which no ugliness, no meanness, no unworthy thought could ever trouble, and that I was of the privileged of the world to have seen her. One look, a look that might pass a thousand times—one look in the mists of the dawn, in the scrambling, shoddy crowd—and yet, for that one instant’s fugitive understanding, all that I had been and was became as nothing, and my destiny—for better or worse, for ill and pain and sorrow, emptiness and loneliness—was irrevocably determined. Yes, mystery of the good and evil that is in us! ”

“ Dear David, don’t begrudge me this little opportunity for real service. I am happier to-day than I have been in years, for I do believe that in some mysterious way Providence has granted me the opportunity to help others to a great happiness. This, mon ami, compensates for everything.
When I had read this, a feeling of helplessness again came to me. It is one thing to combat an enemy, but how resist the quiet, self-sacrificing determination of the one you love and who loves you! From the first I have known that in Bernoline’s presence my will would always yield to her inflexible view of duty. ”

“ Bernoline, no matter what the obstacle which stands between us, it can alter nothing. While you live and I live, we are powerless to change what fate has laid upon us. As for me, just to know your love is to me so great a thing that if I had to choose again with open eyes, I would choose all I have suffered and all that may come to me, all the heart-burnings and all the daily, hourly longing, the cruelty of separation,—all just to have seen your eyes at parting. Be to each other what is right that we should be,—the rest is beyond our knowledge. ”

“ David, my religion, my faith was all that was left me. What was I to do? To take one’s life is to us a mortal sin; even that escape was denied me. And the horror when I knew that my shame was eternally fastened upon me! For the first months I sought death as only I had the right to seek it, praying for the mercy of a quick end, exposing myself in every bombardment, seeking every post of danger. Men were killed at my side—a child that ran to me was blown to pieces—and I lived. ”

“ That first knowledge of sorrow, the utter loneliness, the incomprehension that such things could exist in the simplicity of the world! There was no refuge but in dreams and for months I lived for my dream,—for that moment when the candle wick glowed and dropped into the darkness and the shimmering stars came through the open window, and my dreams would begin anew, as out of the peopled dark, ogres and kings’ sons, Napoleons and presidents, Hercules and Ulysses, fairy godmothers and elves, and—always—the loveliest princess in the world came forth to fetch me into the fantasy of the future. ”

“ To-morrow she will look in the eyes of some stranger and, despite all our entreaties, pleadings, warnings, put her hand in his and follow him into the outer world. No wonder that we have colonized the earth, when each of us has in him the soul of the pioneer! And now that I have written this, I think I understand why I cannot do what would be so easy for a Latin to do. Marriage to us is not a formula, but a need of our hidden spiritual self, the meaning of our existence. No, I can never turn to Anne with a divided memory, not even in the instinct of self-preservation! ”

“ Youth and sorrow are two great emotions which cannot be disguised. I felt, despite the rigidity of the body which told of the stricken soul, the young grace and dignity. I hoped that she would notice me, but she remained in staring oblivion. Yet, though I had spoken but a half dozen words to her, I can remember how keen was the sense of her presence at my side and how, on the instant, I forgot my personal emotions and seemed to be entering into the moods of the woman whose first glance had brought me a sense of intimacy. ”

“ A moment before they were identities, free as I still was; free to turn, to sit, to rise, to jump and to run; the next, all human semblance had sunk into the anonymity of a machine. It was glorious. It stirred me as nothing else has the power to stir the blood,—this groping become an idea, this confusion crystallizing into purpose, this visualization of man moving as history moves. Yet for that moment it terrified me with its actuality. For I felt the obliteration of all that had been for these last incredible weeks—David Littledale. Anonymity? ”

“ Our sorrows destroy us or themselves, some one has said. There is a protecting instinct, perhaps, in the soul as well as in the body. The healing fluids of the eye isolate the intruding cinder, the membranes of the body wrap around the splinter which penetrates the flesh; so, insensibly, memory drops its curtains over our grief, until the pain is lessened, and in fainter perception, we can bear to look upon it. To the first poignant wrench of my longing for Bernoline has come a sort of healing incredulity. Is it a mood or an achieved attitude? ”

“ I felt myself brute, Crusader, sinner, pagan and saint, and each mood was genuine. I saw men in the frenzy of combat swept into moments of unbelievable ferocity. I myself knew moments when there was nothing human in me, when courage was but the panic for existence. And out of the abnormal slaying self I would grope back into the man that reasoned over his actions and shivered at the animal that had run wild. I knew the pagan hour that comes so easily to those who have felt the breath of passing destruction continuously at their side. ”

“ Bernoline! Don’t say such things.”
I looked away, at the world that grew blurred, and at the sky and water, which ran together before my eyes. Everything was against me—the minutes even, dwindling away as we moved inexorably towards the final parting. At one moment I rebelled against the needless insensate pain of it all. Something in me called out: “She is a woman—a woman that suffers as you do. Clasp her in your arms—beat down all opposition—still all her doubts and fears with the thing that is above reasoning. Be cruel. It is the only way. Be cruel now, to be happy always.” ”

“ Everything separates me from Bernoline. In our basic conceptions of life, she in her clear outlook of faith, and I in my driven questionings; she in her unquestioned acceptance of duty; I in my rebellion against aught which means the immolation of self on the altar of convention. We are as distant as though she stood at the threshold of a hundred years and I at the close. A civilization and an age intervene between us. Yet why, knowing this, despite instinct and will, have we been powerless to turn away? ”

“ But you have come to me as a friend and as a friend I am once more going to warn you.”
“Go on,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
“My dear David,—you have no place in this society of ours,” he said, taking my arm. “You have a heart, and you have no knowledge of the conventions of the game. We do not love in this crowd; we play at love; just as we do not discuss; we play at discussing. We meet, to fence lightly and gracefully, with tremendous lunges,—which are always parried. We do not seek a woman because we want her but because twenty other men want her and—we wish to carry off the prize. ”

“ I listen to every one; to Magnus, who sometimes convinces me; to Brinsmade, whom I want to believe; to twenty different points of view I pick up in the smoking room. I want to see my way clear as an American, to something that stands out and thrills me as the one word ‘France’ thrills you. I want to have some beautiful ideal of my country to live for, and I can’t yet see what we stand for. I’ve lost all the smug, complacent ideas I had, and I don’t see anything else clearly. ”

“ At Bordeaux, I bade Ben good-by and became once more Brigadier Littledale, Légion Etrangère, soldier of France. It is the dirt and the filth that are hard to accept,—the feeling of being of the cattle of war.
* * * * *
From there to Paris, in a steaming mass of human flesh, crowded into box cars. No longer the swinging enthusiasm of the mobilization; instead a comradeship become the ox-like acceptance of a fate which has fatigued the imagination into indifference. But the return is always hideous. At Paris, to the medical inspection, and the surprise of being detached and transferred. ”

“ At the close of a brave, gossipy letter of Bernoline’s about the war frenzy at home, a passage that I have read over three times,—one that I do not comprehend.
When you write me, David, that you can never think of me but as a woman to whom every good act is instinctive,—how sadly you misjudge me. David, this very ideal you have of me makes me examine my conscience so restlessly. Don’t idealize me. See me as I am,—a very human and weak woman, who falls far short of the ideal you raise of her. ”

“ For, Mademoiselle, the thing that’s hard at first is to build up for yourself a new life that will satisfy, a new philosophy; a new code of morals,—something to die with, not to live by. All that is so different from the other thing that I have seen men at my side who loved their homes shrink from opening a letter. For when you have prepared yourself to die it is hard to remember how you have lived. That was what I was rebelling against,—the thought of going back, taking up life again, only to have to go through all the mental pain of readjustment. ”

“ For weeks, ever since the staggering nightmare of the German thrust in March, we have been marching and counter-marching, entraining and debarking, living in a delirium. I have had no news from home in ages. Heaven only knows where my mail has gone. I can only scribble down a note here and there and wait for a moment that never comes. The war has seen nothing to match this hideous driving tempest of massed artillery. I have ceased to think or to wonder what is in store for me. The imagination, like the body, yields to fatigue and ceases to respond. ”

“ I have lived with humanity at its keenest. With all the sodden realism of war, with all its inconsistencies of detail, its mingled brutality and heroism, it has been a privilege to have known its rare moments of exaltation. I have known my kind as they are, as my friends in the courtyard below are,—inconsistent and frail, selfish, avaricious, sunk in mere animal passions of living; but I have seen a sudden flaming vision of sacrifice exalt them above the brute, as I have known Christian and Pagan to offer themselves on the cross of their own suffering that their race might go on living. ”

“ There is beyond the inherent nobility that is in Anne a largeness of spirit that is hard for a man to understand. She reveres the memory of Bernoline and in her great heart there is no trace of jealousy. At least, if there is, it is wonderful how she conceals it. That is a quality which I do not think would be in me. I can look ahead—we both can—and see what is coming; yet until every corner of my heart is wholly and loyally hers, I cannot offer it to her. ”