That step had made him good in body and soul. It made him lean and
tanned; it sharpened and strengthened his profile; it cleared his eye
and settled his lips even more firmly. Tobacco and liquor were scarce,
and from disuse he got a new sensation of mental clearness and physical
cleanliness that was comforting and invigorating, and helped bring back
the freshness of his boyhood.
For the first time in many years, his days were full of work and,
asleep, awake, or at work, his hours were clock-like and steadied him
into machine-like regularity. It was work of his hands, to be sure, and
not even high work of that kind, but still it was work. And the measure
of the self-respect that this fact alone brought him was worth it all.
Already, his mind was taking character from his body. He was distinctly
less morbid and he found himself thinking during those long days of the
sail of what he should do after the war was over. His desire to get
killed was gone, and it was slowly being forced on him that he had been
priggish, pompous, self-absorbed, hair-splitting, lazy,
good-for-nothing, when there was no need for him to be other than what
he meant to be when he got back. And as for Judith, he felt the
bitterness of gall for himself when he thought of her, and he never
allowed himself to think of her except to absolve her, as he knew she
would not absolve herself, and to curse himself heartily and bitterly.
He understood now. It was just her thought of his faithfulness, her
feeling of responsibility for him--the thought that she had not been as
kind to him as she might have been (and she had always been kinder than
he deserved)--all this had loosed her tears and her self-control, and
had thrown her into a mood of reckless self-sacrifice. And when she
looked up into his face that night of the parting, he felt her looking
into his soul and seeing his shame that he had lost his love because he
had lost himself, and she was quite right to turn from him, as she did,
without another word. Already, however, he was healthy enough to believe
that he was not quite so hopeless as she must think him--not as hopeless
as he had thought himself. Life, now, with even a soldier's work, was
far from being as worthless as life with a gentleman's idleness had
been. He was honest enough to take no credit for the clean change in his
life--no other life was possible; but he was learning the practical
value and mental comfort of straight living as he had never learned
them before. And he was not so prone to metaphysics and morbid
self-examination as he once was, and he shook off a mood of that kind
when it came--impatiently--as he shook it off now. He was a soldier now,
and his province was action and no more thought than his superiors
allowed him. And, standing thus, at sunrise, on the plunging bow of the
ship, with his eager, sensitive face splitting the swift wind--he might
have stood to any thoughtful American who knew his character and his
history as a national hope and a national danger. The nation, measured
by its swift leap into maturity, its striking power to keep going at the
same swift pace, was about his age. South, North, and West it had lived,
or was living, his life. It had his faults and his virtues; like him, it
was high-spirited, high-minded, alert, active, manly, generous, and with
it, as with him, the bad was circumstantial, trivial, incipient; the
good was bred in the Saxon bone and lasting as rock--if the surface evil
were only checked in time and held down. Like him, it needed, like a
Titan, to get back, now and then, to the earth to renew its strength.
And the war would send the nation to the earth as it would send him, if
he but lived it through.