Edith Wharton
The Marne: A Tale of the War
V
"It seems too absurd," said Mrs. Belknap; "but Troy will be eighteen to-morrow. And that means," she added with a sigh, "that this horrible war has been going on for three whole years. Do you remember, dearest, your fifteenth birthday was on the very day that odious Archduke was assassinated? We had a picnic on the Morterasch."
"Oh, dear," cried Sophy Wicks, flinging her tennis-racket into the air with a swing that landed it in the middle of the empty court—"perhaps that's the reason he's never stopped talking about the war for a single minute since!"
Around the big tea-table under the trees there was a faint hush of disapproval. A year before, Sophy Wicks's airy indifference to the events that were agitating the world had amused some people and won the frank approval of others. She did not exasperate her friends by professions of pacifism, she simply declared that the war bored her; and after three years of vain tension, of effort in the void, something in the baffled American heart whispered that, things being as they were, she was perhaps right.
But now things were no longer as they had been. Looking back, Troy surveyed the gradual development of the war-feeling as it entered into a schoolboy's range of vision. He had begun to notice the change before the sinking of the Lusitania. Even in the early days, when his school-fellows had laughed at him and called him "Marny," some of them had listened to him and imitated him. It had become the fashion to have a collection of war-trophies from the battlefields. The boys' sisters were "adopting war-orphans" at long distance, and when Troy went home for the holidays he heard more and more talk of war-charities, and noticed that the funds collected were no longer raised by dancing and fancy-balls. People who used the war as an opportunity to have fun were beginning to be treated almost as coldly as the pacifists.
But the two great factors in the national change of feeling were the Lusitania and the training-camps.
The Lusitania showed America what the Germans were, Plattsburg tried to show her the only way of dealing with them.
Both events called forth a great deal of agitated discussion, for if they focussed the popular feeling for war, they also gave the opponents of war in general a point of departure for their arguments. For a while feeling ran high, and Troy, listening to the heated talk at his parents' table, perceived with disgust and wonder that at the bottom of the anti-war sentiment, whatever specious impartiality it put on, there was always the odd belief that life-in-itself—just the mere raw fact of being alive—was the one thing that mattered, and getting killed the one thing to be avoided.
This new standard of human dignity plunged Troy into the lowest depths of pessimism. And it bewildered him as much as it disgusted him, since it did away at a stroke with all that gave any interest to the fact of living. It killed romance, it killed poetry and adventure, it took all the meaning out of history and conduct and civilization. There had never been anything worth while in the world that had not had to be died for, and it was as clear as day that a world which no one would die for could never be a world worth being alive in.
Luckily most people did not require to reason the matter out in order to feel as Troy did, and in the long run the Lusitania and Plattsburg won the day. America tore the gag of neutrality from her lips, and with all the strength of her liberated lungs claimed her right to a place in the struggle. The pacifists crept into their holes, and only Sophy Wicks remained unconverted.
Troy Belknap, tall and shy and awkward, lay at her feet and blushed and groaned inwardly at her wrong-headedness. All the other girls were war-mad; with the rupture of diplomatic relations the country had burst into flame, and with the declaration of war the flame had become a conflagration. And now, having at last a definite and personal concern in the affair, every one was not only happier but more sensible than when a perpetually thwarted indignation had had to expend itself in vague philanthropy.
It was a peculiar cruelty of fate that made Troy feel Miss Wicks's indifference more than the zeal of all the other young women gathered about the Belknap tennis-court. In spite of everything, he found her more interesting, more inexhaustible, more "his size" (as they said at school), than any of the gay young war-goddesses who sped their tennis-balls across the Belknap court.
It was a Long Island Sunday in June. A caressing warmth was in the air, and a sea-breeze stirred the tops of the lime branches. The smell of fresh hay-cocks blew across the lawn, and a sparkle of blue water and a dipping of white sails showed through the trees beyond the hay-fields.
Mrs. Belknap smiled indulgently on the pleasant scene: her judgement of Sophy Wicks was less severe than that of the young lady's contemporaries. What did it matter if a chit of eighteen, having taken up a foolish attitude, was too self-conscious to renounce it?
"Sophy will feel differently when she has nursed some of our own soldiers in a French base hospital," she said, addressing herself to the disapproving group.
The young girl raised her merry eyebrows. "Who'll stay and nurse Granny if I go to a French base hospital? Troy, will you?" she suggested.
The other girls about the tea-table laughed. Though they were only Troy's age, or younger, they did not mind his being teased, for he seemed only a little boy to them, now that they all had friends or brothers in the training-camps or on the way to France. Besides, though they disapproved of Sophy's tone, her argument was unanswerable. They knew her precocious wisdom and self-confidence had been acquired at the head of her grandmother's household, and that there was no one else to look after poor old paralytic Mrs. Wicks and the orphan brothers and sisters to whom Sophy was mother and guardian.
Two or three of the young men present were in uniform, and one of them, Mrs. Belknap's nephew, had a captain's double bar on his shoulder. What did Troy Belknap and Sophy Wicks matter to young women playing a last tennis-match with heroes on their way to France?
The game began again, with much noise and cheerful wrangling. Mrs. Belknap walked toward the house to welcome a group of visitors, and Miss Wicks remained beside the tea-table, alone with Troy. She was leaning back in a wide basket-chair, her thin ankles in white open-work stockings thrust out under her short skirt, her arms locked behind her thrown-back head. Troy lay on the ground and plucked at the tufts of grass at his elbow. Why was it that, with all the currents of vitality flowing between this group of animated girls and youths, he could feel no nearness but hers? The feeling was not particularly agreeable, but there was no shaking it off: it was like a scent that has got into one's clothes. He was not sure that he liked her, but he wanted to watch her, to listen to her, to defend her against the mockery and criticism in the eyes of the others. At this point his powers of analysis gave out, and his somewhat extensive vocabulary failed him. After all, he had to fall back on the stupid old school phrase: she was "his size"—that was all.
"Why do you always say the war bores you?" he asked abruptly, without looking up.
"Because it does, my boy; and so do you, when you hold forth about it."
He was silent, and she touched his arm with the tip of her swinging tennis-shoe. "Don't you see, Troy, it's not our job—not just now, anyhow. So what's the use of always jawing about it?"
She jumped up, recovered her racket, and ran to take her place in a new set beside Troy's cousin, the captain.
VI
It was not "his job"—that was the bitter drop in all the gladness.
At last what Troy longed for had come: his country was playing her part. And he, who had so watched and hoped and longed for the divine far-off event, had talked of it early and late to old and young, had got himself laughed at, scolded, snubbed, ridiculed, nicknamed, commemorated in a school-magazine skit in which "Marne" and "yarn" and "oh, darn," formed the refrain of a lyric beginning "Oh say, have you heard Belknap flap in the breeze?"—he, who had borne all the scoldings and all the ridicule, sustained by a mysterious secret faith in the strength of his cause, now saw that cause triumph, and all his country waving with flags and swarming with khaki, while he had to stand aside and look on, because his coming birthday was only his nineteenth.... He remembered the anguish of regret with which he had seen M. Gantier leave St. Moritz to join his regiment, and thought now with passionate envy of his tutor's fate. "Dulce et decorum est …" the old hackneyed phrase had taken on a beauty that filled his eyes with tears.
Eighteen—and "nothing doing" till he was twenty-one! He could have killed the cousins and uncles strutting about in uniform and saying: "Don't fret, old man—there's lots of time. The war is sure to last another four years." To say that, and laugh, how little they must know of what war meant!
It was an old custom in the Belknap family to ask Troy what he wanted for his birthday. The custom (according to tradition) had originated on his sixth anniversary, when, being given a rabbit with ears that wiggled, he had grown very red and stammered out: "I did so want a 'cyclopedia...."
Since then he had always been consulted on the subject with a good deal of ceremony, and had spent no little time and thought in making a judicious choice in advance. But this year his choice took no thinking over.
"I want to go to France," he said immediately.
"To France–?" It struck his keen ears that there was less surprise than he had feared in Mr. Belknap's voice.
"To France, my boy? The Government doesn't encourage foreign travel just now."
"I want to volunteer in the Foreign Legion," said Troy, feeling as if the veins of his forehead would burst.
Mrs. Belknap groaned, but Mr. Belknap retained his composure.
"My dear chap, I don't think you know much about the Foreign Legion. It's a pretty rough berth for a fellow like you. And they're as likely as not," he added carelessly, "to send you to Morocco or the Cameroon."
Troy, knowing this to be true, hung his head.
"Now," Mr. Belknap continued, taking advantage of his silence, "my counter-proposition is that you should go to Brazil for three months with your Uncle Tom Jarvice, who is being sent down there on a big engineering job. It's a wonderful opportunity to see the country—see it like a prince too, for he'll have a special train at his disposal. Then, when you come back," he continued, his voice weakening a little under the strain of Troy's visible inattention, "we'll see...."
"See what?"
"Well—I don't know … a camp … till it's time for Harvard...."
"I want to go to France at once, father," said Troy, with the voice of a man.
"To do what?" wailed his mother.
"Oh, any old thing—drive an ambulance," Troy struck out at random.
"But, dearest," she protested, "you could never even learn to drive a Ford runabout!"
"That's only because it never interested me."
"But one of those huge ambulances—you'll be killed!"
"Father!" exclaimed Troy, in a tone that seemed to say: "Aren't we out of the nursery, at least?"
"Don't talk to him like that, Josephine," said Mr. Belknap, visibly wishing that he knew how to talk to his son himself, but perceiving that his wife was on the wrong tack.
"Don't you see, father, that there's no use talking at all? I'm going to get to France anyhow."
"In defiance of our wishes?"
"Oh, you'll forget all that later," said Troy.
Mrs. Belknap began to cry, and her husband turned on her.
"My dear, you're really—really—I understand Troy!" he blurted out, his veins swelling too.
"But if the Red Cross is to send you on that mission to Italy, why shouldn't Troy wait and go as your secretary?" Mrs. Belknap said, tacking skilfully.
Mr. Belknap, who had not yet made up his mind to accept the mission, made it up on the instant. "Yes, Troy—why not? I shall be going myself—in a month or so."
"I want to go to France," said his son. And he added, laughing with sudden courage: "You see, you've never refused me a birthday present yet."
VII
France again—France at last! As the cliffs grew green across the bay he could have knelt to greet them—as he hurried down the gang-plank with the eager jostling crowd he could have kissed the sacred soil they were treading.
The very difficulties and delays of the arrival thrilled and stimulated him, gave him a keener sense of his being already a humble participant in the conflict. Passports, identification papers, sharp interrogatories, examinations, the enforced surrendering of keys and papers: how different it all was from the old tame easy landings, with the noiseless motor waiting at the dock, and France lying safe and open before them whichever way they chose to turn!
On the way over many things had surprised and irritated him—not least the attitude of some of his fellow-passengers. The boat swarmed with young civilians, too young for military service, or having, for some more or less valid reason, been exempted from it. They were all pledged to some form of relief work, and all overflowing with zeal: "France" was as often on their lips as on Troy's. But some of them seemed to be mainly concerned with questions of uniform and rank. The steamer seethed with wrangles and rivalries between their various organisations, and now and then the young crusaders seemed to lose sight of the object of their crusade—as had too frequently been the case with their predecessors.
Very few of the number knew France or could speak French, and most of them were full of the importance of America's mission. This was Liberty's chance to Enlighten the World; and all these earnest youths apparently regarded themselves as her chosen torch-bearers.
"We must teach France efficiency," they all said with a glowing condescension.
The women were even more sure of their mission; and there were plenty of them, middle-aged as well as young, in uniform too, cocked-hatted, badged and gaitered—though most of them, apparently, were going to sit in the offices of Paris war-charities, and Troy had never noticed that Frenchwomen had donned khaki for that purpose.
"France must be purified," these young Columbias proclaimed. "Frenchmen must be taught to respect Women. We must protect our boys from contamination … the dreadful theatres … and the novels … and the Boulevards.... Of course we mustn't be hard on the French, for they've never known Home Life, or the Family … but we must show them … we must set the example...."
Troy, sickened by their blatancy, had kept to himself for the greater part of the trip; but during the last days he had been drawn into talk by a girl who reminded him of Miss Wicks, though she was in truth infinitely prettier. The evenings below decks were long, and he sat at her side in the saloon and listened to her.
Her name was Hinda Warlick, and she came from the Middle West. He gathered from her easy confidences that she was singing in a suburban church choir while waiting for a vaudeville engagement. Her studies had probably been curtailed by the task of preparing a repertory, for she appeared to think that Joan of Arc was a Revolutionary hero, who had been guillotined with Marie Antoinette for blowing up the Bastille; and her notions of French history did not extend beyond this striking episode. But she was ready and eager to explain France to Troy, and to the group of young men who gathered about her, listening to her piercing accents and gazing into her deep blue eyes.
"We must carry America right into the heart of France—for she has got a great big heart, in spite of everything," Miss Warlick declared. "We must teach her to love children and home and the outdoor life, and you American boys must teach the young Frenchmen to love their mothers. You must set the example.... Oh, boys, do you know what my ambition is? It's to organize an Old Home Week just like ours, all over France from Harver right down to Marseilles—and all through the devastated regions too. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could get General Pershing to let us keep Home Week right up at the front, at 'Eep and Leal and Rams, and all those martyr cities—right close up in the trenches? So that even the Germans would see us and hear us, and perhaps learn from us too?—for you know we mustn't despair even of teaching the Germans!"
Troy, as he crept away, heard one young man, pink and shock-headed, murmur shyly to the Prophetess: "Hearing you say this has made it all so clear to me–" and an elderly Y.M.C.A. leader, adjusting his eye-glasses, added with nasal emphasis: "Yes, Miss Warlick has expressed in a very lovely way what we all feel: that America's mission is to contribute the human element to this war."
"Oh, good God!" Troy groaned, crawling to his darkened cabin. He remembered M. Gantier's phrase, "Self-satisfaction is death," and felt a sudden yearning for Sophy Wicks's ironic eyes and her curt "What's the use of jawing?"
He had been for six months on his job, and was beginning to know something about it: to know, for instance, that nature had never meant him for an ambulance-driver.
Nevertheless he had stuck to his task with such a dogged determination to succeed that after several months about the Paris hospitals he was beginning to be sent to exposed sectors.
His first sight of the desolated country he had traversed three years earlier roused old memories of the Gantier family, and he wrote once more to their little town, but again without result. Then one day he was sent to a sector in the Vosges which was held by American troops. His heart was beating hard as the motor rattled over the hills, through villages empty of their inhabitants, like those of the Marne, but swarming with big fair-haired soldiers. The land lifted and dipped again, and he saw ahead of him the ridge once crowned by M. Gantier's village, and the wall of the terraced garden, with the horn-beam arbour putting forth its early green. Everything else was in ruins: pale weather-bleached ruins over which the rains and suns of three years had passed effacingly. The church, once so firm and four-square on the hill, was now a mere tracery against the clouds; the hospice roofless, the houses all gutted and bulging, with black smears of smoke on their inner walls. At the head of the street a few old women and children were hoeing vegetables before a row of tin-roofed shanties, and a Y.M.C.A. hut flew the stars-and-stripes across the way.