The High Heart

by Basil King

  CHAPTER XXII

  As I have already said, I had almost forgotten Sarajevo. The illustratedpapers had shown us a large coffin raised high and a small one set low,telling us of unequal rank, even at the Great White Throne. I had athought for that from time to time; but otherwise Franz Ferdinand andSophie Chotek were less to me than Caesar or Napoleon.

  But toward the end of July there was a sudden rumbling. It was like thatfirst disquieting low note of the "Rheingold," rising from elementaldepths, presaging love and adventure and war and death and defeat andtriumph, and the end of the old gods and the burning of their Valhalla.I cannot say that any of us knew its significance; but it was arresting.

  "What does it mean?"

  I think Cissie Boscobel was the first to ask me that question, to whichI could only reply by asking it in my own turn. What did it mean--thisultimatum from Vienna to Belgrade? Did it mean anything? Could itpossibly mean what dinner-table diplomats hinted at between a laugh anda look of terror?

  Hugh and I were descending the Rossiter lawn on a bright afternoon nearthe end of July. Cissie, who was passing with some of the Burkes, ranover the grass toward us. Had we seen the papers? Had we read theAustrian note? Could we make anything out of it?

  I recall her as an extraordinarily vivid picture against the backgroundof blue sea, in white, with a green-silk tunic embroidered in peacock'sfeathers, with long jade ear-rings and big jade beads, and ajade-colored plume in a black-lace hat cocked on her flaming hair as shealone knew how to cock it. I merely want to point out here that toCissie Boscobel and me the questions she asked already possessed ameasure of life-and-death importance; while to Hugh they had none atall.

  I remember him as he stood aloof from us, strong and stocky andsummer-like in his white flannels, a type of that safe and separatedAmerica which could afford to look on at Old World tragedies and feelthem of no personal concern. To him Cissie Boscobel and I, with anxietyin our eyes and something worse already clutching at our hearts, werebut two girls talking of things they didn't understand and of no greatinterest, anyway.

  "Come along, little Alix!" he interrupted, gaily. "Cissie will excuseus. The madam is waiting to motor us over to South Portsmouth, and Idon't want to keep her waiting. You know," he explained, proudly, "shethinks this little girl is a peach!"

  Cissie ran back to join the Burkes and we continued our way along theCliff Walk to Mr. Brokenshire's. Hugh had come for me in order that wemight have the stroll together.

  I gave him my view of the situation as we went along, though in it therewas nothing original.

  "You see, if Austria attacks Serbia, then Russia must attack Austria; inwhich case Germany will attack Russia, and France will attack Germany.Then England will certainly have to pitch in."

  "But we won't. We shall be out of it."

  The complacency of his tone nettled me.

  "But I sha'n't be out of it, Hugh."

  He laughed.

  "You? What could you do, little lightweight?"

  "I don't know; but whatever it was I should want to be doing it."

  This joke might have been characterized as a screamer. He threw back hishead with a loud guffaw.

  "Well, of all the little spitfires!" Catching me by the arm, he huggedme to him, as we were hidden in a rocky nook of the path. "Why, you're aregular Amazon! A soldier in your way would be no more than a ninepin ina bowling-alley."

  I didn't enter into the spirit of this pleasantry. On the contrary, Iconcealed my anger in endeavoring to speak with dignity.

  "And, what's more, Hugh, than not being out of it myself, I don't seehow I could marry a man who was. Of course, no such war will come topass. It couldn't! The world has gone beyond that sort of madness. Weknow too well the advantages of peace. But if it should break out--"

  "I'll buy you a popgun with the very first shot that's fired."

  But in August, when the impossible had happened, when Germany hadinvaded Belgium, and France had moved to her eastern frontier, andRussia was pouring into Prussia, and English troops were on foreigncontinental soil for the first time in fifty years, Hugh's indifferencegrew painful. He was perhaps not more indifferent than any one else withwhom I was thrown, but to me he seemed so because he was so near me. Heread the papers; he took a sporting interest in the daily events; but itresembled--to my mind at least--the interest of an eighteenth-centuryfarmer's lad excited at a cockfight. It was somewhat in the spirit of"Go it, old boy!" to each side indifferently.

  If he took sides at all it was rather on that to which Cissie Boscobeland I were nationally opposed; but this, we agreed, was to tease us. Sofar as opinions of his own were concerned, he was neutral. He meant bythat that he didn't care a jot who lost or who won, so long as Americawas out of the fray and could eat its bread in safety.

  "There are more important things than safety," I said to him,scornfully, one day.

  "Such as--"

  But when I gave him what seemed to me the truisms of life he wascontented to laugh in my face.

  Cissie Boscobel was more patient with him than I was. I have alwaysadmired in the English that splendid tolerance which allows to othersthe same liberty of thinking they claim for themselves; but in thisinstance I had none of it. Hugh was too much a part of myself. When hesaid, as he was fond of saying, "If Germany gets at poor degenerate oldEngland she'll crumple her up," Lady Cissie could fling him a pitying,confident smile, with no venom in it whatever, while I became bitter orfurious.

  Fortunately, Mr. Brokenshire was called to New York on businessconnected with the war, so that his dear Alexandra was delivered for awhile from his daily condescensions. Though Hugh didn't say so in actualwords, I inferred that the struggle would further enrich the house ofMeek & Brokenshire. Of the vast sums it would handle a commission wouldstick to its fingers, and if the business grew too heavy for the usualstaff to deal with Hugh's own energies were to be called into play. Hisfather, he told me, had said so. It would be an eye-opener to CousinAndrew Brew, he crowed, to see him helping to finance the European Warwithin a year after that slow-witted nut had had the hardihood to refusehim!

  In the Brokenshire villa the animation was comparable to a suppressedfever. Mr. Brokenshire came back as often as he could. Thereupon therefollowed whispered conferences between him and Jack, between him and JimRossiter, between him and kindred magnates, between three and four andsix and eight of them together, with a ceaseless stream of telegrams, ofthe purport of which we women knew nothing. We gave dinners and lunches,and bathed at Bailey's, and played tennis at the Casino, and lived inour own little lady-like Paradise, shut out from the interestsconvulsing the world. Knitting had not yet begun. The Red Cross hadbarely issued its appeals. America, with the speed of theFranco-Prussian War in mind, was still under the impression that itcould hardly give its philanthropic aid before the need for it would beover.

  Of all our little coterie Lady Cissie and I alone perhaps took the senseof things to heart. Even with us, it was the heart that acted ratherthan the intelligence. So far as intelligence went, we were convincedthat, once Great Britain lifted her hand, all hostile nations wouldtremble. That was a matter of course. It amazed us that people round usshould talk of our enemy's efficiency. The word was just coming intouse, always with the implication that the English were inefficient andunprepared.

  That would have made us laugh if those who said such things hadn't saidthem like Hugh, with detached, undisturbed deliberation, as a matterthat was nothing to them. Many of them hoped, and hoped ardently, thatthe side represented by England, Russia, and France would be victorious;but if it wasn't, America would still be able to sit down to eat anddrink, and rise up to play, as we were doing at the moment, whilenothing could shake her from her ease.

  Owing to our kinship in sentiment, Lady Cissie and I drew closertogether. We gave each other bits of information in which no one elsewould have had an interest. She was getting letters from England; I fromEngland and Canada. Her brother Leatherhead had been ordered to Francewith hi
s regiment--was probably there. Her brother Rowan, who had beenat Sandhurst, had got his commission. The young man her sister Janet wasengaged to had sailed with the Rangers for Marseilles and would go atonce to the front instead of coming home. If he could get leave theyoung couple would be married hastily, after which he would return tohis duty. My sister Louise wrote that her husband's ship was in theNorth Sea and that her news of him was meager. The husband of my sisterVictoria, who had had a staff appointment at Gibraltar, had been orderedto rejoin his regiment; and he, too, would soon be in Belgium.

  From Canada I heard of that impulse toward recruiting which wasthrilling the land from the Island of Vancouver, in the Pacific, to thatof Cape Breton, in the Atlantic, and in which the multitudes were of oneheart and one soul. Men came from farms, factories, and fisheries; theycame from banks and shops and mines. They tramped hundreds of miles,from the Yukon, from Ungava, and from Hudson Bay. They arrived in troopsor singly, impelled by nothing but that love which passes the love ofwomen--the love of race, the love of country, the love of honor, thelove of something vast and intangible and inexplicable, that comes asnear as possible to that love of man which is almost the love of God.

  I can proudly say that among my countrymen it was this, and it wasnothing short of this. They were as far from the fray as their neighborsto the south, and as safe. Belgium and Serbia meant less to most of themthan to the people of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York; but a greatcause, almost indefinable to thought, meant everything. To that causethey gave themselves--not sparingly or grudgingly, but like Araunah theJebusite to David the son of Jesse, "as a king gives unto a king."

  Men are wonderful to me--all men of all races. They face hardship socheerfully and dangers so gaily, and death so serenely. This is true ofmen not only in war, but in peace--of men not only as saints, but assinners. And among men it seems to me that our Colonial men are in thefirst rank of the manliest. Frenchman, German, Austrian, Italian,Russian, Englishman, and Turk had each some visible end to gain. Theycouldn't help going. They couldn't help fighting. Our men had nothing togain that mortal eyes could see. They have endured, "as seeing Him whois invisible."

  They have come from the far ends of the earth, and are stillcoming--turning their backs on families and business and pleasure andprofit and hope. They have counted the world well lost for love--for atrue love--a man's love--a redemptive love if ever there was one; for"greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life forhis friends."

  But when, with my heart flaming, I spoke of this to Lady Cecilia, shewas cold. "Fancy!" was the only comment she ever made on the subject.Toward my own intensity of feeling she was courteous; but she plainlyfelt that in a war in which the honors would be to the professionalsoldier, and to the English professional soldier first of all, Colonialswere out of place. It was somewhat presumptuous of them to volunteer.

  She was a splendid character--with British limitations. Among thoselimitations her attitude toward Colonials was, as I saw things, thefirst. She rarely spoke of Canadians or Australians; it was always ofColonials, with a delicately disdainful accent on the word impossible totranscribe. Geography, either physical or ethnic, was no more her strongpoint than it is that of other women; and I think she took Colonials tobe a kind of race of aborigines, like the Maoris or the Hottentots--onlythat by some freak of nature they were white. So, whenever my heart wasso hot that I could contain myself no longer, and I poured out myfoolish tales of the big things we hoped to do for the empire and theworld, the dear thing would merely utter her dazed, "Fancy!" and strikeme dumb.

  And it all threw me back on the thought of Larry Strangways. Reader, ifyou suppose that I had forgotten him you are making a mistake.Everything made my heart cry out for him--Hugh's inanity; his father'slumbering dignity; Mildred's sepulchral apothegms, which were deeperthan I could fathom and higher than I could scale; Cissie Boscobel'sstolid scorn of my country; and Newport's whole attitude of taking nonotice of me or mine. Whenever I had minutes of rebellion or stress itwas on Larry Strangways I called, with an agonized appeal to him to cometo me. It was a purely rhetorical appeal, let me say in passing. As itwould never reach him, he could not respond to it; but it relieved myrepressed emotions to send it out on the wings of the spirit. It wasthe only vehicle I could trust; and even that betrayed me--for he came.

  He came one hot afternoon about the 20th of August. His card was broughtto me by the rosebud Thomas as I was taking a siesta up-stairs.

  "Tell Mr. Strangways I shall come down at once," I said to my footmanknight; but after he had gone I sat still.

  I sat still to estimate my strength. If Larry Strangways made such anappeal to me as I had made to him, should I have the will-power toresist him? I could only reply that I must have it! There was no otherway. When Hugh had been so true to me it was impossible to be other thantrue to him. It was no longer a question of love, but of right: and Icouldn't forsake my maxim.

  Nevertheless, when I threw off my dressing-gown instinct compelled me todress at my prettiest. To be sure, my prettiest was only a floweredmuslin and a Leghorn hat, in which I resembled the vicar's daughter in aRoyal Academy picture; but if I was never to see Larry Strangways againI wanted the vision in his heart to be the most decent possible. As Idressed I owned to myself that I loved him. I had never done so before,because I had never known it--or rather, I had known it from thatevening on the train when I had seen nothing but his traveling-cap; onlyI had strangled the knowledge in my heart. I meant to strangle it again.I should strangle it the minute I went down-stairs. But for this littleinterval, just while I was fastening my gown and pinning on my hat, itseemed to me of no great harm to let the unfortunate passion come outfor a breath in the sunlight.

  And yet, after having rehearsed all the romantic speeches I should makein giving him up forever, he never mentioned love to me at all. On thecontrary, he had on that gleaming smile which, from the beginning of ouracquaintance, was like the flash of a sword held up between him and me.When he came forward from a corner of the long, dim drawing-room all theembarrassment was on my side.

  "I suppose you wonder what brings me," were the words he uttered whenshaking hands.

  I tried to murmur politely that, whatever it was, I was glad to seehim--only the words refused to form themselves.

  "Can't we go out?" he asked, as I cast about me for chairs. "It's sostuffy in here."

  I led the way through the hall, picking up a rose-colored parasol ofMrs. Rossiter's as we passed the umbrella-stand.

  "How much money have you got?" he asked, abruptly, as soon as we were onthe terrace.

  I made an effort to gather my wits from the far fields into which theyhad wandered.

  "Do you mean in ready cash? Or how much do I own in all?"

  "How much in all?"

  I told him--just a few thousand dollars, the wreckage of what my fatherhad left. My total income, apart from what I earned, was about fourhundred dollars a year.

  "I want it," he said, as we descended the steps to the lower terrace."How soon could you let me have it?"

  I made the reckoning as we went down the lawn toward the sea. I shouldhave to write to my uncle, who would sell my few bonds and forward methe proceeds. Mr. Strangways himself said that would take a week.

  "I'm going to make a small fortune for you," he laughed, in explanation."All the nations of the earth are beginning to send to us for munitions,and Stacy Grainger is right on the spot with the goods. There'll be ademand for munitions for years to come--"

  "Oh, not for years to come!" I exclaimed. "Only till the end of thewar."

  "'But the end is not by and by,'" he quoted from the Bible. "It's a longway off from by and by--believe me! We're up against the strugglemankind has been getting ready for ever since it's had a history. Idon't want just to make money out of it; but, since money's to bemade--since we can't help making it--I want you to be in on it."

  I didn't thank him, because I had something else on my mind.

  "Perhaps you
don't know that I'm engaged to Hugh Brokenshire. We're tobe married before we move back to New York."

  "Yes, I do know it. That's the reason I'm suggesting this. You'll wantsome money of your own, in order to feel independent. If you don't haveit the Brokenshire money will break you down."

  I don't know what I said, or whether I was able to say anything. Therewas something in this practical care-taking interest that moved me morethan any love declaration he could have made. He was renouncing me ineverything but his protection. That was going with me. That was watchingover me. There was no one to watch over me in the whole world with justthis sort of devotion.

  I suppose we talked. We must have said something as we descended theslope; I must have stammered some sort of appreciation. All I canclearly remember is that, as we reached the steps going down to theCliff Walk, Hugh was coming up.

  I had forgotten that this sort of encounter was possible. I hadforgotten Hugh. When I saw his innocent, blank face staring up at us Ifelt I was confronting my doom.

  "Well!" he ejaculated, as though he had caught us in some criminalconspiracy.

  As it was for me to explain, I said, limply:

  "Mr. Strangways has been good enough to offer to make some money for me,Hugh. Isn't that kind of him?"

  Hugh grew slowly crimson. His voice shook with passion. He came up onestep.

  "Mr. Strangways will be kinder still in minding his own business."

  "Oh, Hugh!"

  "Don't be offended, Mr. Brokenshire," Larry Strangways said, peaceably."I merely had the opportunity to advise Miss Adare as to herinvestments--"

  "I shall advise Miss Adare as to her investments. It happens that she'sengaged to me!"

  "But she's not married to you. An engagement is not a marriage; it'sonly a preliminary period in which two persons agree to consider whetheror not a marriage between them would be possible. Since that's thesituation at present, I thought it no harm to tell Miss Adare that ifshe puts her money into some of the new projects for ammunition that Iknow about--"

  "And I'm sure she's not interested."

  Mr. Strangways bowed.

  "That will be for her to decide. I understood her to say--"

  "Whatever you understood her to say, sir, Miss Adare is not interested!Good afternoon." He nodded to me to come down the steps. "I was justcoming over for you. Shall we walk along together?"

  I backed away from him toward the stone balustrade.

  "But, Hugh, I can't leave Mr. Strangways like this. He's come all theway from New York on purpose to--"

  "Then I shall defray his expense and pay him for his time; but if we'regoing at all, dear--"

  At a sign of the eyes from Larry Strangways I mastered my wrath at thisinsolence, and spoke meekly:

  "I didn't know we were going anywhere in particular."

  "And you'll excuse me, Mr. Brokenshire," our visitor interrupted, "if Isay that I can't be dismissed in this way by any one but Miss Adareherself. You must remember she isn't your wife--that she's still a freeagent. Perhaps, if I explain the matter a little further--"

  Hugh put up his hand in stately imitation of his father.

  "Please! There's no need of that."

  "Oh, but there is, Hugh!"

  "You see," Mr. Strangways reasoned, "it's more than a question of makingmoney. We shall make money, of course; but that's only incidental. WhatI'm really asking Miss Adare to do is to help one of the most gloriouscauses to which mankind has ever given itself--"

  I started toward him impulsively.

  "Oh! Do you feel like that?"

  "Not like that; that's all I feel. I live it! I've no other thought."

  It was curious to see how the force of this all-absorbing topic sweptHugh away from the merely personal standpoint.

  "And you call yourself an American?" he demanded, hotly.

  "I call myself a man. I don't emphasize the American. This thingtranscends what we call nationality."

  Hugh shouted, somewhat in the tone of a man kicking against the pricks:

  "Not what I call nationality! It's got nothing to do with us."

  "Ah, but it will have something to do with us! It isn't merely aEuropean struggle; it's a universal one. Sooner or later you'll seemankind divided into just two camps."

  Hugh warmed to the discussion.

  "Even if we do, it still doesn't follow that we'll all be in your camp."

  "That depends on whether we're among those driving forward or thosekicking back. The American people has been in the first of these classeshitherto; it remains to be seen whether or not it's there still. But ifit isn't as a nation I can tell you that some of us will be there asindividuals."

  Hugh's tone was one of horror.

  "You mean that you'd go and fight?"

  "That's about the size of it."

  "Then you'd be a traitor to your country for getting her into trouble."

  "If I had to choose between being a traitor to my country and a traitorto my manhood I'd take the first. Fortunately, no such alternative willbe thrust upon us. Miss Adare pointed out to me once that there couldn'tbe two right courses, each opposed to the other. Right and rights mustbe harmonious. If I'm true to myself I'm true to my country; and I can'tbe true to my country unless I do my 'bit,' as the phrase begins to go,for the good of the human race."

  "And you're really going?" I asked, breathlessly.

  "As soon as I can arrange things with Mr."--but he remembered he wasspeaking to a Brokenshire--"as soon as I can arrange things with--withmy boss. He's willing to let me go, and to keep my job for me if I comeback. He'll take charge of my small funds and of any Miss Adareintrusts to me. He asked me to give her that message. When it's settledI shall start for Canada."

  "That'll do you no good," Hugh stated, triumphantly. "They won't enlistAmericans there."

  Larry Strangways smiled.

  "Oh, there are ways! If there's nothing else for it I'll swear in as aCanadian."

  "You'd do that!" In different tones the exclamation came from Hugh andme, simultaneously.

  I can still see Larry Strangways with his proud, fair head held high.

  "I'd do anything rather than not fight. My American birthright is asdear to me as it is to any one; but we've reached a time when suchconsiderations must go by the board. For the matter of that, the moreclosely we can now identify the Briton and the American, the better itwill be for the world."

  He explained this at some length. The theme was so engrossing that evenHugh was willing to listen to the argument. People were talking alreadyof a world federation which would follow the war and unite all thenations in approximate brotherhood. Larry Strangways didn't believe inthat as a possibility; at least he didn't believe in it as an immediatepossibility. There were just two nations fitted to understand each otherand act together, and if they couldn't fraternize and sympathize it wasof no use to expect that miracle from races who had nothing in common.Get the United States and the British Empire to stand shoulder toshoulder, and sooner or later the other peoples would line up besidethem.

  But you must begin at the beginning. Unless you started as an acorn youcouldn't be an oak; if you were not willing to be a baby you couldnever become a man. There must be no more Hague conferences, with theirvast programs and ineffective means. The failure of that dream wasevident. We must be practical; we mustn't soar beyond the possible. Thepossible and the practical lay in British and American institutions andcommonly understood principles. The world had an asset in them that hadnever been worked. To work it was the task not primarily of governments,but, first and before everything, of individuals. It was up to theBritish and American man and woman in their personal lives and opinions.

  I interrupted to say that it was up to the American man and woman firstof all; that British willingness to co-operate with America was far moreready than any similar sentiment on the American side.

  Hugh threw the stress on efficiency. America was so thorough in hermethods that she couldn't co-operate with British muddling.
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  "What is efficiency?" Larry Strangways asked. "It's the best means ofdoing what you want to do, isn't it? Well, then, efficiency is a matterof your ambitions. There's the efficiency of the watch-dog who loves hismaster and guards the house, and there's the efficiency of the tiger inthe jungle. One has one's choice."

  It was not a question, he continued to reason, as to who began thiswar--whether it was a king or a czar or a kaiser. It was not a questionof English and German competition, or of French or Russian aggression,or fear of it. The inquiry went back of all that. It went back beyondmodern Europe, beyond the Middle Ages, beyond Rome and Assyria andEgypt. It was a battle of principles rather than of nations--the lastgreat struggle between reason and force--the fight between the instinctof some men to rule other men and the contrary instinct, implanted moreor less in all men, that they shall hold up their heads and rulethemselves.

  It was part of the impulse of the human race to forge ahead and upward.The powers that worked against liberty had been arming themselves, notmerely for a generation or a century, but since the beginning of time,for just this trial of strength. The effort would be colossal and itwould be culminating; no human being would be spared taking part in it.If America didn't come in of her own accord she would be compelled tocome in; and meantime he, Larry Strangways, was going of free will.

  He didn't express it in just this way. He put it humbly, colloquially,with touches of slang.

  "I've got to be on the job, Miss Adare, and there are no two ways aboutit," were the words in which he ended. "I've just run down from New Yorkto speak about--about the money; and--and to bid you good-by." Heglanced toward Hugh. "Possibly, in view of the fact that I'm so soon tobe off--and may not come back, you know," he added, with a laugh--"Mr.Brokenshire won't mind if--if we shake hands."

  I can say to Hugh's credit that he gave us a little while together.Going down the steps he had mounted, he called back, over his shoulder:

  "I'm going off for a walk, dear. I shall return in exactly fifteenminutes; and I expect you to be ready for me then."

  But when we were alone we had little or nothing to say. I recall thatquarter of an hour as a period of emotional paralysis. I knew and heknew that each second ticked off an instant that all the rest of ourlives we should long for in vain; and yet we didn't know how to make useof it.

  We began to wander slowly up the slope. We did it aimlessly, stoppingwhen we were only a few yards away from the steps. We talked about themoney. We talked about his going to Canada. We talked about the breakingoff, so far as we knew, of all intercourse between Mr. Grainger and Mrs.Brokenshire. But we said nothing about ourselves. We said nothing aboutanything but what was superficial and trite and lame.

  Once or twice Larry Strangways took out his watch and glanced at it, asif to underscore the fact that the sands were slipping away. I kept myface hidden as much as possible beneath the rose-colored parasol. So faras I could judge, he looked over my head. We still had saidnothing--there was still nothing we could say--when, beneath the bank ofthe lawn, and moving back in our direction, we saw the crown of Hugh'sPanama.

  "Good-by!" Larry Strangways said, then.

  "Good-by!"

  My hand rested in his without pressure; without pressure his had takenmine. I think his eyes made one last wild, desperate appeal to me but ifso I was unable to respond to it.

  I don't know how it happened that he turned his back and walked firmlyup the lawn. I don't know how it happened that I also turned and tookthe necessary steps toward Hugh. All I can say is--and I can say it onlyin this way--all I can say is, I felt that I had died.

  That is, I felt that I had died except for one queer, bracing echo whichsuddenly come back to me. It was in the words Mildred Brokenshire hadused, and which, at the time, I had thought too deep for me tounderstand:

  "Life is not a blind impulse working blindly. It is a beneficentrectifying power."