Hugh shouted, somewhat in the tone of a man kicking against the p.r.i.c.ks:
"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 a European struggle; it"s a universal one. Sooner or later you"ll see mankind 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 those kicking back. The American people has been in the first of these cla.s.ses. .h.i.therto; it remains to be seen whether or not it"s there still. But if it isn"t as a nation I can tell you that some of us will be there as individuals."
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 traitor to my manhood I"d take the first. Fortunately, no such alternative will be thrust upon us. Miss Adare pointed out to me once that there couldn"t be two right courses, each opposed to the other. Right and rights must be harmonious. If I"m true to myself I"m true to my country; and I can"t be 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 was speaking to a Brokenshire--"as soon as I can arrange things with--with my boss. He"s willing to let me go, and to keep my job for me if I come back. He"ll take charge of my small funds and of any Miss Adare intrusts to me. He asked me to give her that message. When it"s settled I shall start for Canada."
"That"ll do you no good," Hugh stated, triumphantly. "They won"t enlist Americans there."
Larry Strangways smiled.
"Oh, there are ways! If there"s nothing else for it I"ll swear in as a Canadian."
"You"d do that!" In different tones the exclamation came from Hugh and me, 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 as dear to me as it is to any one; but we"ve reached a time when such considerations must go by the board. For the matter of that, the more closely we can now identify the Briton and the American, the better it will be for the world."
He explained this at some length. The theme was so engrossing that even Hugh was willing to listen to the argument. People were talking already of a world federation which would follow the war and unite all the nations in approximate brotherhood. Larry Strangways didn"t believe in that as a possibility; at least he didn"t believe in it as an immediate possibility. There were just two nations fitted to understand each other and act together, and if they couldn"t fraternize and sympathize it was of no use to expect that miracle from races who had nothing in common.
Get the United States and the British Empire to stand shoulder to shoulder, and sooner or later the other peoples would line up beside them.
But you must begin at the beginning. Unless you started as an acorn you couldn"t be an oak; if you were not willing to be a baby you could never become a man. There must be no more Hague conferences, with their vast programs and ineffective means. The failure of that dream was evident. We must be practical; we mustn"t soar beyond the possible. The possible and the practical lay in British and American inst.i.tutions and commonly understood principles. The world had an a.s.set in them that had never been worked. To work it was the task not primarily of governments, but, first and before everything, of individuals. It was up to the British 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 first of all; that British willingness to co-operate with America was far more ready than any similar sentiment on the American side.
Hugh threw the stress on efficiency. America was so thorough in her methods that she couldn"t co-operate with British muddling.
"What is efficiency?" Larry Strangways asked. "It"s the best means of doing what you want to do, isn"t it? Well, then, efficiency is a matter of your ambitions. There"s the efficiency of the watch-dog who loves his master and guards the house, and there"s the efficiency of the tiger in the jungle. One has one"s choice."
It was not a question, he continued to reason, as to who began this war--whether it was a king or a czar or a kaiser. It was not a question of English and German compet.i.tion, or of French or Russian aggression, or fear of it. The inquiry went back of all that. It went back beyond modern Europe, beyond the Middle Ages, beyond Rome and a.s.syria and Egypt. It was a battle of principles rather than of nations--the last great struggle between reason and force--the fight between the instinct of some men to rule other men and the contrary instinct, implanted more or less in all men, that they shall hold up their heads and rule themselves.
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, not merely for a generation or a century, but since the beginning of time, for just this trial of strength. The effort would be colossal and it would 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 to come 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 about it," were the words in which he ended. "I"ve just run down from New York to speak about--about the money; and--and to bid you good-by." He glanced toward Hugh. "Possibly, in view of the fact that I"m so soon to be 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 fifteen minutes; and I expect you to be ready for me then."
But when we were alone we had little or nothing to say. I recall that quarter of an hour as a period of emotional paralysis. I knew and he knew that each second ticked off an instant that all the rest of our lives we should long for in vain; and yet we didn"t know how to make use of it.
We began to wander slowly up the slope. We did it aimlessly, stopping when we were only a few yards away from the steps. We talked about the money. We talked about his going to Canada. We talked about the breaking off, so far as we knew, of all intercourse between Mr. Grainger and Mrs.
Brokenshire. But we said nothing about ourselves. We said nothing about anything but what was superficial and trite and lame.
Once or twice Larry Strangways took out his watch and glanced at it, as if to underscore the fact that the sands were slipping away. I kept my face hidden as much as possible beneath the rose-colored parasol. So far as I could judge, he looked over my head. We still had said nothing--there was still nothing we could say--when, beneath the bank of the lawn, and moving back in our direction, we saw the crown of Hugh"s Panama.
"Good-by!" Larry Strangways said, then.
"Good-by!"
My hand rested in his without pressure; without pressure his had taken mine. I think his eyes made one last wild, desperate appeal to me but if so I was unable to respond to it.
I don"t know how it happened that he turned his back and walked firmly up the lawn. I don"t know how it happened that I also turned and took the necessary steps toward Hugh. All I can say is--and I can say it only in 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 which suddenly come back to me. It was in the words Mildred Brokenshire had used, and which, at the time, I had thought too deep for me to understand:
"Life is not a blind impulse working blindly. It is a beneficent rectifying power."
CHAPTER XXIII
As Hugh Brokenshire and I were walking along the Ocean Drive a few days after Larry Strangways had come and gone, the dear lad got some satisfaction from charging me with inconsistency.
"You"re certainly talking about England and Canada to-day very differently from what you used to."
"Am I? Well, if it seems so it"s because you don"t understand the att.i.tude of Canadians toward their mother country. As a country, as a government, England has been magnificently true to us always. It"s only between Englishmen and Canadians as individuals that irritation arises, and for that most Canadians don"t care. The Englishman snubs and the Canadian grows b.u.mptious. I don"t think the Canadian would grow b.u.mptious if the Englishman didn"t snub. Both snubbing and b.u.mptiousness are offensive to me; but that, I suppose, is because I"m over-sensitive.
And yet one forgets sensitiveness when it comes to anything really national. In that we"re one, with as perfect a solidarity as that which binds Oregon to Florida. You"ll never find one of us who isn"t proud to serve when England gives the orders."
"To be snubbed by her for serving."
"Certainly; to be snubbed by her for serving! It"s all we look for; it"s all we shall ever get. No one need make any mistake about that. In Canada we"re talking of sending fifty thousand troops to the front. We may send five hundred thousand and we shall still be snubbed. But we"re not such children as to go into a cause in the hope that some one will give us sweets. We do it for the Cause. We know, too, that it isn"t exactly injustice on the English side; it"s only ungraciousness."