IV
In October, Henry left his sons in school and embarked on the Majestic for Europe. He had come home as to a generous mother and had been profusely given more than he asked—money, release from an intolerable situation, and the fresh strength to fight for his own. Watching the fading city, the fading shore, from the deck of the Majestic, he had a sense of overwhelming gratitude and of gladness that America was there, that under the ugly debris of industry the rich land still pushed up, incorrigibly lavish and fertile, and that in the heart of the leaderless people the old generosities and devotions fought on, breaking out sometimes in fanaticism and excess, but indomitable and undefeated. There was a lost generation in the saddle at the moment, but it seemed to him that the men coming on, the men of the war, were better; and all his old feeling that America was a bizarre accident, a sort of historical sport had gone forever. The best of America was the best of the world.
Going down to the purser’s office, he waited until a fellow passenger was through at the window. When she turned, they both started, and he saw it was the girl.
“Oh, hello!” she cried. “I’m glad you’re going! I was just asking when the pool opened. The great thing about this ship is that you can always get a swim.”
“Why do you like to swim?” he demanded.
“You always ask me that.” She laughed.
“Perhaps you’d tell me if we had dinner together tonight.”
But when, in a moment, he left her he knew that she could never tell him—she or another. France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter—it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart.
Published in The Saturday Evening Post magazine (19 October 1929).
