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October

A budget of letters with a touch of home has sent me back to my diary this morning, which, as I feared, I have neglected these last weeks. At the time these letters had been written no word had reached them of my having been wounded at Verdun, and as I sat recalling the thousand details of our daily life, I imagined how the family would receive the news.

Nothing could be more characteristic of the Littledale family than its departure to worship on Sunday morning. We are organized on the theory of absolute liberty of conscience in matters religious as well as political. My mother and Ben departed in one direction for the Unitarian Church, Aunt Janie to the Congregational, and my father, Molly and myself for the little Presbyterian chapel in the village square. Rossie, the privileged character of the family, remained in that state of suspended judgment which permitted him to lengthen the Sunday morning rest. No asperities, no dissensions resulted from this opposition of views. In fact, each Littledale was a little proud of the family’s individualism, regarding it as the inherited trait of a strong intellectual strain.

We were four brothers and a sister, and all as different as one day is from another. Because of my mother’s public interests and her theories on individualism, we were brought up with small restraint, along lines of our own choosing. Alan, the third of the line, was the rebel of the family. As I look back, I can see where the mistakes were all on the part of Ben and myself. Wild, impatient of restraint, Alan certainly was, yet the rough discipline which the older brother inflicted was the worst method of dealing with him. The two never understood each other. Every idea and every instinct was opposed and each in his way was remarkably unyielding in type.

While Rossie was alive, he and Molly, through their good humor and affection, were able to hold the insurgent in check, but after Rossie’s tragic drowning matters went from bad to worse. Alan quickly assumed the traditional rôle of the family black sheep.

In every respectable family of New England there is, I suppose, always that predestined place. It had been so in my father’s generation and in the generation before him. We all, with the exception of Molly, who was too young to have an opinion, expected that Alan would sooner or later disgrace the family, and as we did not conceal from him the state of our convictions he did his best to justify them. After being expelled from two schools and dragged into college by the application of every family influence, there came the final storm. In his sophomore year he became involved in a disgraceful row which reached the columns of the metropolitan press. Alan was permitted to resign, returned home, had a violent scene with Ben and my father, and departed, vowing never to set foot in the family home again. That we were all unjust to him admits of no doubt—I among the rest—but at that time I was completely under the influence of Ben, who was three years my senior.

* * * * *

I have left my brother Ben until the last: utterly different from me in temperament, impulse and character, he exercised over me the strongest domination. From boyhood we had been inseparable. Study came laboriously to him, to me naturally, so, despite the difference in age, we passed through school and college together. Mentally I was his superior but he exercised over me a moral supremacy by the direct and ruthless expression of his will. His strength lay in the fact that he was diverted by no complexities. He had little imagination, read little, and talked less. The two or three ideas which guided him were settled convictions. Nothing perplexed him. In all things he was a direct force.

I have noticed the same phenomenon in later life. Men of little imagination and small mental baggage often dominate men of superior imagination by the sheer tenacious simplicity of never being in doubt of what they want. As I see them now, Alan was revolt and Ben traditionalism in its most rigid New England form. He was born to maintain what was as it had been, a mid-Victorian in his tastes, a Bourbon in his ideas,—quite capable, in another era, of burning witches at the stake.

For better or for worse, our destinies have been tragically intertwined,—how tragically, I alone know. His code of morality would not have looked well in copy books but, such as it was, it did have the advantage of sincerity and a contempt for hypocrisy as he saw it in others.

To fight hard and fairly on any question; to do as he believed every man of breeding did in months of relaxation, but never to surrender the control of one’s self or to be moved out of one’s calm by any wind of passion; to take women as they came, lightly; but never to lie to them or descend to petty meanness, or to become involved in situations which compromised your dignity: this was a code which savored rather of the condottieri of the Middle Ages than of the Puritan traditions he represented. Yet he saw in it no inconsistencies and, as men go (and as I have known them), the code had certain qualities of noblesse oblige. I have since turned from this insolent egotism but for a long time it influenced my attitude towards life and brought me close to disaster. Yet, by establishing this moral tyranny, Ben saved me from what would have been the shipwreck of my life.

* * * * *

At the age of eighteen, in the summer of my Sophomore year, I fell madly, foolishly in love with the daughter of a farmer back of Littledale, Jenny Barnett, a handsome little country girl, red-cheeked, black-haired, and gray-eyed, the beauty of the county. Looking back now, I can understand many things,—particularly with the subsequent career of Jenny before me, but then I was an extremely innocent youngster, whose head turned at a look from the gray eyes in the warm odors of June, and it would never have entered my imagination to entertain the slightest suspicion of her. She, on her side, perceiving what a greenhorn she had to deal with, made up her shrewd little mind to set her cap for me. Before I knew it, I had lost so completely all perspective that I seriously considered a runaway match.

To-day it is all so incredible that I ask myself if I could have proceeded so far, if, in the last test, a saving grain of common sense would not have halted me, and I like to reason that I was but playing with an idea, deceiving myself as much as the girl. Yet I do not know that this is a fair estimate, for I have seen so much of what men do under the narcotic impulse of passion, even against their own will and intelligence, that I am not certain I might not have played the fool,—without the interception of my brother.

In my simplicity I had gone to him with my confidence. I can still see the shock of amazement on his face. Then he remained silent a long moment, his eyes on my face.

“Absolutely sure you want to marry?”

“Oh, absolutely,” I said, yet my heart sank as though I had pronounced my own sentence.

“And the girl,—Jenny? Absolutely sure she loves you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, you’re making a fool of yourself, but that’s your affair. I’ll see you through, that’s promised.”

His words brought me no joy. A cloud settled before my eyes. At the end of half an hour, as though his mind had been made up, he questioned me adroitly as to our relations, our place of meeting, our next rendezvous. All of which information I gave him, without mistrust. The second day he came to me and said:

“What are you doing this afternoon? Nothing? Wait for me in Talbot’s wood, by the old spring. I’ve got a line on a honey tree. Meet me at four.”

“At four. I’ll be there,” I answered, not without surprise.

I installed myself in the wood at the appointed time and shortly afterward, hearing familiar voices, I sprang up and perceived Jenny on the arm of my brother. My first thought was that he was bringing her to me in sign of allegiance. The next moment, to my astonishment, I saw her fling her arms about his neck and kiss him passionately, very differently from the furtive embraces she had vouchsafed me.

The next moment I was before them, with murder in my heart. The girl sprang back with a cry. My hands reached Ben’s throat and we went to the ground. In my rage I understood but one thing,—that what he had done he had done deliberately, after having put to sleep my suspicions by an attitude of false acquiescence. My next impulse was the most tragic and instinctive hatred which can blind the reason of a human being,—the wild jealousy of brother against brother. At the thought that the girl could so easily have preferred him after all that had been between us, all the love that I had for him turned to the blackest fury, and I believe that for a short moment if I could have killed him I would have done so. The minx stood by, no longer frightened, but delighted in her vanity at the sight of our struggling over her.

At first Ben had burst out laughing, defending himself from my frantic rage but, little by little, under the sting of my blows, he too lost his head. We rolled over and over, clawing at each other frantically, striking out blindly. I was no match for him then in strength, and at the end I found myself on my back, my arms pinned under his knees, looking up into his bruised face.

Suddenly he bent down and cried angrily:

“You little fool! Is that the sort of wife you want to bring home!”

“You made her do it!” I cried, and in my rage I almost succeeded in freeing myself. He exerted all his strength and brought me back to earth.

“Made her do it! A girl that’s engaged to you? Do you want to be the laughingstock of the country?”

My brain cleared and a great thankfulness came over me. I began to laugh uproariously.

This was too much for Jenny. With a swish of her skirts, she went flying through the woods.

I continued to laugh, with a sudden detention of all my nerves, cut by sudden involuntary sobs, but the laugh was not honest and something bitter and contemptuous descended into my heart, there to remain.

“Let me up,” I said, at the end.

“All right?”

“Quite.”

We arose and surveyed the wreck we had made of each other.

“I had to do it, Davy.”

“You did right.”

We shook hands and went home, his arm over my shoulder, a rare demonstration of affection for him. Had I only been present to render him a like service when the rôles were reversed, years later!

* * * * *

There was no need of admonition and it was characteristic of him that he never once referred to the episode. All my anger turned on myself. I saw the fool I had played and I swore that I would never be caught again. From that time on vulgarity played no part in my life. Milestone Number 1.

Unquestionably the thing that saved me was the blow to my vanity. Even to this day I cannot recall the incident without resentment and, though it is quite illogical, I believe of all the episodes of my life this will always be the one I shall think on with keenest humiliation. Even between Ben and myself the memory has always remained a secret irritation. For despite all my efforts to fight down the feeling, I still retain a little resentment at the superiority he had shown,—a primitive instinct of the male, I suppose, particularly when a woman is involved.