Читать книгу The Wasted Generation - Owen Johnson - Страница 12

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I am going back to America. I am going home! It has all come about so quickly that I hardly know what I feel. If it were not for the inevitable meeting with Letty—At the very thought everything in me rebels: rather an exile of ten years than the hideous mockery of that confrontation! Yet I am no longer a free agent; a superior destiny is directing all my movements. To what end? For there is no choice; my father has had a stroke and I have been sent for. In my present condition there is no excuse that I can offer. America! Home! Despite even the ominous shadow that awaits me there, I feel everything in me palpitating at the prospect. I sail from Bordeaux in three days, with Mr. Brinsmade.

* * * * *

As I had begun to suspect, Mr. Brinsmade has been the quickening finger in my transfer here. Yet I cannot reproach him, given the end in view,—though at first, when he announced that he had secured me my leave, I was inclined in my pride to be a little resentful. Of course, being the legal representative of the great banking house of Gunther and Son, purchasing agents in America for the French Government, a hint from him is all that is necessary. When you reach the inner circle of government you find always a very practical realism, and Brinsmade is in all things a realist. Yet, there is another side to him.

I think I admire him genuinely as much as any man I know. He is utterly free from cant or pretense. He is an idealist with an objective mind. When I talk with him, I feel that I am building my philosophies on the safe ground of things as they are. His knowledge of men and their motives is stupendous. He is privileged to pass in the corridors of the human opera, and though his knowledge gained of the dark places might form another to cynicism,—not so Brinsmade. His mental attitude is like his physical aspect,—genial, tolerant, unhurried, strong, not through bluster but by the authority of his knowledge and experience. The war has waked in him the desire for bigger things in America. He says so frankly, and this new hunger in him, so close to my own awakening, promises to be a great intellectual stimulus to me on the trip over. There is no misunderstanding the quality of his affection for me. I seem suddenly lifted out of a drear monotony of unchanging days, back to a life of extraordinary vitality and promise.

* * * * *

Saw my old friend, Maurice Plessis de Saint Omer. I should not have known him. All the dandy is gone, the feminine languor and grace sloughed off, and from underneath has emerged the grim, unyielding granite of a race of warriors. He is commandant in a regiment of dragoons and decorated with every honor. The mortality in his family has been fearful, but he dismisses it quickly.

“Nothing matters,—except France!”

His optimism is that of absolute faith. I can imagine how his men must adore him.

* * * * *

Said good-by to Alan,—a stiff, unsatisfactory parting, in which we acted like puppets, rather than human beings. But that is the Anglo-Saxon of it. He gave me his decoration, to put in father’s hand, and immediately began to joke about the family fetiches, our cave-dweller’s point of view, etc., but I think it was to cover up his emotion. He hates sentimentality.

“Good-by, then—”

“Good-by.”

We had separated as though it were the most casual parting in the world. I wonder if I shall see him again.