## BOOK I

### YOUNG SABIA

Summer had come, June had come, Commencement morning had come, hot, damp, drowsy, as ever at Athenia College yet carrying the class of 1917 forward on a wave of expanding emotion. Waking at dawn in the narrow little bed room of Suite 8-12, Fielding West, that for four years had contained her like a chrysalis, Sabia Howe became aware of a rustle, mysteriously moving and secret, in the maple tree outside her window, felt like an uncrumpling leaf herself, and drifted off again. What finally roused her was a suffocating, almost dirge-like fragrance of rose, carnation, lily, pansy, delphinium, and peppery peony.

Nostalgic, nostalgic was the day yet this was no ordinary Commencement, this was June 4th 1917. America had very recently entered the Great War, and the four leisurely, bookish years which for the Senior in the left-hand bedroom had ticked themselves off in measured, yet almost immortal fashion had brought her with almost a sound of trumpets to a gate opening on a long straight yet unknown road. Dazzling-bright it looked, yet dangerously untried.

"Beth!" she called softly, for it might be early. Sabia's watch had stopped, as usual, thus giving her a moment to shake her black braids over her pillow again and ponder. Her difficulties with Time were proverbial, and her old nurse, Jennie, a Rhode Island native credited with Indian blood, maintained that "young Sabia pondered and dreamed because she had been born with a caul." Miss Sabia, her Aunt, for whom she had been named, scouted the idea, and

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it was of course silly to think it was a caul that gave you an
uncanny sense of what other people were thinking or feeling and
too much connection with the Future. Still, Rhode Islanders did
have odd customs. Sabia's professor of Anthropology had been
interested in the fact that doctors had to save the caul's for the
mothers in the Providence hospitals, - but don't let's tell Pres-
ident Harrington that Science can be so human.

"Beth!" Still no answer. So she could think about
History, which with such sudden swiftness overcomes its victims,
even in the midst of the slow unfolding of nature. History was
Sabia's Major subject so how could she not be moved to her very
roots when in April with the Japanese cherry blossoms President
Wilson declared War on Germany? When in May, with the trailing
arbutus and the Finals the Draft Law passed and General Pershing,
with his little staff of Army experts sailed to France?

Would Max Pons, her distant French cousin, be meeting
them she paused to wonder? It was not impossible for Max was
attached to the Staff of General Petain. But, however that might
be, hot-foot with the June dogwood, the Class Suppers, and the
Baccalaureate sermon, Sabia Darcy Howe, after hearing a talk by
a French lady propagandist about the work of the *Enfants Refugies*,
a relief organisation for French war orphans, had put down her
name as a volunteer, to sail for France in September.

But how, why, wherefore? her Father would say - unless
he said something much more devastating, - which he would.

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She did not know why. All she knew was that History had acted with almost compulsive force, and she had been its votary - its willing votary.

After she'd done it, declared herself for the first time
breathlessly
in twenty-one years an individual, with a fate of her own, she/
told her roommate, and wired her Aunt Sabia, in Washington to
please ask about a passport. The answering telegram was ecstatic:
"Hurrah, we'll sail together." That was very disconcerting. She
had hoped to sail alone.

"Sabby dear - wake up!" Your Family's come - you overslept!"

Beth had whisked into view, long, thick-stemmed purple
iris in her pale cupped hands, a mortar-board riding high on her
corn-colored hair. From her narrow shoulders flowed away the sym-
bolic black gown, hooded in yellow, banded in white fur, which
every Athenian must wear to receive her Bachelor's degree, that
mystic parchment which certifies her marriage to learning.

"Let me see you, darling - you look simply marvellous
if rather unreal - Queen of the <u>Precious</u> - which you are not,"
said Sabia, in a sleepy voice.

"But <u>hurry</u> - look out your window.."

Framed in the oblong sash, which had the dark-green ivy
that webbed the outer stone wall of Fielding wreathing and curling
about it, was a face Sabia had dearly loved yet hardly expected
today. Dead white - or blue white, like a Spanish face, arresting
because of the sharp interrogation of eyebrows set raggedly and

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black as raven feathers, and eyes that burned like coals, arresting
too because of something excessive and almost naked in the soul
behind it.

"Sebastian - how wonderful!"

"Honey - could you lend me your Ben Jonson? Topsy's
prinking somewhere. May I come in? My late bride had to come see
what she could have felt today, if she hadn't married me.. Look, I've
brought you something nice."

"But you and Top sent me such heavenly roses," said his
friend, instinctively drawing the sheet to her chin, though Seb
wasn't *seeing* her, he never did - leave just an ear out, that was
all she was now to a man enslaved, bedazzled, bedrugged by love.

"Pooh - those were just Florist Flowers." Sebastian
grinned at her and stepped over the window sill with an easy lurch
of his long legs. But what came in at the bottom of his white
ducks were large bare brown feet, with grassblades between the toes.
Rascally Sebastian.

"My good boy.."

"I know. Men not allowed in the bedrooms and barefoot
on Athenia's new-mown virginal turf - but *que veux-tu?*" The Coles,
he related, had risen at five in Washington. Mews to reach Athenia
in the Ford for breakfast. Hot and dusty on the road, and he'd
had quite a search in a piece of woods near Princeton, for the red
columbine, because he and Sabia as children used to hunt it every
spring, on the shaley slopes of that oak-surrounded knoll near
Narragansett Bay, which had an Indian cave in its side - remember?

5

She did and was sharply touched. Seb dropped the nodding
scarlet blooms with their gaudy yellow centers and their four tiny
honey-filled cornucopias and their woody stiff stems which broke
so easily right under her chin, and they smelled like childhood.

"My Pueblo friends," -Seb and Top had explored the South-
west on their wedding journey and were always talking of their
"Pueblo friends" - "go to the high peaks to get these and the blue
ones - they call the red ones 'male' columbines and feed them to
men - the blue are for girl babies.. Aha, that gives me an idea,
Sabby."

Sheepishly, a little strangely, the tall painter picked
up a bloom and sucked the honey - Sabia knew he was thinking of
what he wanted to leave with Topsy (the unbegotten son), when he
sailed overseas. He didn't quite believe in magic, but he would
try anything now and as he chewed the flower, another person came
up in Sebastian, replacing the childhood friend - the devouring
yet dominated lover.

What young Sabia had inevitably learned of modern love -
and modern marriage - through the thin walls of the Cole guestroom
had enlarged a college education. There was something so different
about it from the staid, marriage pattern she had grown up with, and
when two you have known well (or thought to) are suddenly transformed
into a royal pair, participants in a sort of immortal drama, gods
and goddesses shaped by a Fate, you must feel life quaking under
your feet. Even gods and goddesses in their transcendent beauty,
may quarrel and grow fractious.

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"Seb - will you do something for me before you see
Father?" she coaxed, shyly.

"Sure - put on my coat and my shoes." He winked and stepped lightly out under the maple again, for he had noted that Sabia's young brother was about to enter properly by the door. Verne was not one to climb in windows, even at seventeen - Sabbie, not Verne, was the vital sprout of the Howe family tree, to Sebastian Cole, and he gave a last affectionate look at her little dusky, sympathetic face on the pillow. Not pretty exactly, Sabbie Howe, but rare and with an insight.

"Stay a minute in the study, Vernie -" but the six-footer, blonde and furiously blushing, had rushed in to give his sister a hug. She rumpled his hair and pushed him off the bed, responding in kind to his quizzical fond look.

"Give a feller the news..while I dress."

"Sure. Tantine's arrived from Washington. She's raring to see you about something or other instanter. Mother and she are unwrinkling their garden-party dresses at the College Inn, and Father is waiting under the Arch or somewhere, to take you - us all - to breakfast. <u>Waiting</u>, I said, w-a-i-t-i-n-g. Hear me?"

"Man alive - I'll hurry." She could see Verne, who "favored the Howes", through the door's crack, dressed in his fine pale-grey tweeds, from the family looms, his hard straw hat crooked under his left elbow, just as their Father held his, that is, elegantly, wandering about looking at their Commencement flowers, the roses and the peonies and the rest, that crowded

7

window-sills, desks, mantelpiece and even the floor before the
fireplace.

"Gee, what belles," Verne exclaimed with pride. "I
could smell 'em all down your Neo-Gothic corridor." Verne's
voice, though uncertain in range, already had the true clipped yet
rounded tone of the Rhode Island gentleman. A pleasant accent,
Sabia thought, except as it does suggest the Howes are a leading
family and will always receive flowers on appropriate occasions.

"The flowers are mostly Beth's - they're the May
Queen's" she corrected him. She would not have Verne growing up
a snob.

"Aren't either - here take your cards," Beth responded
in her Carolina drawl. A shower flew in.

Beth was standing, still Queen of the Bluestockings,
just because she would be Queen of anything, though not an intel-
lectual girl, primarily, by the window seat, opening more long
flower boxes, and scattering paper and string on the floor, assum-
ing as usual that Black Ella would tidy up. And she would - Ella
adored Beth Farquhar and Beth said it was because Sabby, the New
Englander, did not ask enough that she didn't get as many favors.
Verne Howe also adored his sister's roommate, was half in love
with her, if he only were not too young to realise it, and Beth
treated him with subtle feminine flattery and grace. She was
evicting him now, showing him the door and he didn't even know it.

Sabia, who could be with a boy of seventeen only honest,
simple, sisterly, looked on with a twinge of jealousy, then a catch

8

in her throat. The ways of one born below the Mason Dixon Line
at first suspect, had taught her much, etched a new law of woman
on the College scroll. Yet she was miserably sure she hadn't
learned to practise it.

"Why, Sabby, - you're _crying_!" Beth said it so tenderly,
that fresh rivulets began to course down the screwed up, brown-
tinted face. Beth's violet eyes, when she was concerned about
you, took on a sort of enraptured warmth and sympathy though her
own emotions never seemed to trip her up.

For a moment Sabia clung to her shoulder without speaking.

"What is it, darling?"

"Parting's such sweet sorrow, Beth - and I'm such an
<u>unfinished</u> product," Sabia stuttered. She meant - beside you,
who are so wonderfully self-directed, free, complete. Fluid, grop-
ing, timorous - that's what I am without you. Oh I <u>need</u> you..
oh don't <u>leave</u> me..

Beth held her tighter, but said nothing.

"It's - it's terrible to have the music stopping."
Sabia started bravely but found a sob.

"What music, darling?"

"The music that sounds when you come in - the May Queen's
unseen orchestra."

"Don't say such sweet things - end of our happiest years--"

"It's like a Death. Never can be happy again."

9

They were murmuring below their breaths, saying what
they had never said.

"But you're going to Paris, Sabby -"

"Am I?"

"Now listen," said Beth severely, "the idea that a girl
has to go home and live with her Family is just outmoded - even
in South Carolina!"

"Not in our Family, not in Providence," burst out
Sabia, with bitterness.

"Will you tell them at breakfast?"

"God no -" Sabia was tremulous. "I'll do it at the
Garden Party - I'll wait till I have my A. B. in hand." She
blew her nose severely. "If Father gets all tangled up in daisy
chains, and finds I'm in the First Ten it may be calming. But
I'm so afraid of hurting them.."

"Be more hard-boiled," counselled Beth, "but don't show
it. I mean - forgive me Sab, maybe its 'Southern' of me - don't
be belligerent. It's not what one says that makes men set their
jaws and baulk, I find - it's *how* one says it - get me?"

"I s'pose so," Sabia felt dubious, for was it honest
to be beguiling, when one had a real point to make? Their
Feminist President would not think so. President Mary Harrington
in her Chapel talks, made clear that an Athenia graduate had stern
and gallant duties to perform in life - to win the vote, to gain
those high-paid jobs which men aspired to keep to themselves, to
take a leading part in "public work" and "causes." Just now, she

10

must "give her trained intelligence to the War Effort." Sabia Howe, in her innocence and cocksureness did not doubt she possessed the trained intelligence - Athenia had seen to that. Athenia graduates did not walk in humbleness.

"I look like Medea in our class play," Sabia sniffled, staring at her image in the mirror, "stern and beaked. How I hate my Roman nose. My cap and gown swallow me up, so -- too short, like Mother. Selected to be a chimney-sweep on her Freshman May Day!"

It was hard to balance the academic cap on those thick black braids which she wore in a crown, round her head.

"Nonsense - you have a beautiful carriage - you're a very attractive girl, Sabby," said the consoling Beth, flitting in again. "I'm going to tell your Father how wonderful everyone thinks it is for you to volunteer to go to Paris. Your perfect French and your Honors in History, and then your French connection there."

"History's all right with Father if it just would stay in the Past," said Sabia, cogently. "I don't mean he isn't patriotic - he wanted us - the country - to be in long ago. But he hasn't digested the fact that his only daughter was born in 1896, and had the Germans marching into Belgium in her Freshman summer!" She loathed melodrama but she sounded to herself to be talking it, and making it.

"I'd think he would - with your Howe cousins going to Plattsburg, and into the Ambulance Corps, this last year or two."

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"But Father does not recognise change till so long
after it's happened that the next piece of life is bumping into
him - see how he feels about Labor Unions..." She was thinking
it was lucky she was not to be at home, for long - she would be
sure to get into trouble with her Father over the Workers' rights
and the paternal system of his mills.

"Beth - Paris is - it's *lambent* to me - it's a flame that
draws me - can't help myself. Something about France, I guess.
You can study Art next year, but I have to go along with the Amer-
icans, with the A. E. F. I *have* to go to the help of France!"

Beth's voice came quietly, soothingly, yes, yes, you
certainly do, yes, as they walked slowly, arm-in-arm, down the dim
corridor, almost like walking in a tunnel, in the rhythm of a
past already gone, towards the patch of sudden brightness of the
Arch - the brightness of the gate to the future.

Four long years they had spent learning the laws of the
life of Reason, yet somehow, they sensed already that they belonged
to a generation that had to abandon Reason to plunge into the
vortex, most irrational, of historical events.

"I'm *scared*, Beth.." Scared of her Father's sudden emotions born of the challenge to his prejudices; scared of the words she had to speak. Hard and shiny as billiard balls, they would carom into the Rhode Island granite of Father's mind, and split in a burst of flame. And the girl who loved to please, who wanted to be right, who adored her home would be branded, would sear another heart.

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"But your Father's such a darling," reminded Beth.

"See what he's doing for me! Your family have - I can't tell you..." said the golden Beth, the orphan who had had to struggle so hard so young. Mr. Howe was lending her money to go to Art School; for a college degree, to Beth, had not proved the answer.

"But that's so natural - he admires you and he can afford it, and you're not his daughter - catch Father letting me go to Art School!"

"An artist can sleep in every bed?" commented the South Carolinian with a touch of sarcasm. After all she was a Farquhar, the New Englanders did not have all the good blood.

"Look, Sabby - there he is in the Hall Parlor."

No daughter really sees her Father till she has taken at least a step away from his roof-tree. Sabia, standing there, felt she was viewing a stranger.

Asa Howe, was a man in his prime, and knew it. The late forties were pleasant to him. His well-cut tan tweeds, rounded out a bit under his gold like watch chain but not much for though earthy, fond of a good table, he was alert and athletic, like his son, Verne, and his sister. He was pacing the floor, turning by the long windows almost with a click of heels, and observing all the while, with a pensive air, the flocks of young Athenians, fluttering over the Spring Campus in their black gowns, and their starched white dresses, like a flock of woodpeckers, he thought.

13

"Can't you just see how Father hates Athenia?" whis-
pered Sabia. "I know what he's thinking - it has made his girl
into a scholar and a Woman Suffragist and a supporter of the
Womens Trade Union League, and admirer of President Woodrow Wilson!"..

"Why not, Sab? You sound guilty.. I think your Father
is just enjoying walking the 'Captains Look-Out!'"

That was the square railed deck on the roof of the John
Thorne house, on Hope Street, which Asa Howe had inherited from
the ancestor who built it in the Georgian days.

"Mornin', Capt'n Howe!"

Suddenly he spotted "his" Seniors and the flush that
ran over his clear-cut, rather British countenance, his warm move-
ment toward them melted his child's heart to a pulp.

"How burned you are, Daddy! Bet you've been canoeing -
on the Sekonk, the Sekonnet, or the Potowomut, the Pawtuxet, the
Moshassuk, or the Woonasqualachet." She reeled them off, humor-
ously, the Indian Rivers, as he had taught her in her babyhood,
and he laughed with pleasure.

"Nothing like a River in Spring, with catkins - unless
it's an autumn river with red leaves and a setter and a gun!
Beth - I'm going to complete Sabia's education with a gun next
fall - and I'll teach you, too, to shoot if you'll leave your
art study.."

At that a silence fell, which he broke by extracting from
his pocket two little jewelry boxes. The pearl pins were antiques,
of course - Asa Howe always bought antiques. All three sets of eyes
were misty as he fastened them on the white frocks with a sturdy
kiss for each girl.

14

II

The screened porch of the Inn was so thick-hung with Virginia Creeper that the light within was under-sea green. But Asa Howe spied out every waitress and sent her flying for strawberries and cream, waffles and maple syrup, sausages and scrapple, and platefulls of muffins and crumpets, potfulls of coffee. He was a free-handed host, and as his gypsy of a wife was so apt to be vague and detached from life's conventional underpinnings, took the lead in the seating of his party of eight - that required thought, yet there was Seb Cole, whose bottom would never sit easy where it belonged, sliding into the seat on his hostess' left.

Constance Howe received the dart of husbandly displeasure with a shiver of eyelids. She had never stopped hating to be classed with the Raggle Taggle Gypsies - Oh, and she shooed her son out of the seat of honor and made the grumpy Seb transfer.

When parental unity cracked over a minor point, like this, the only daughter instantly identified with her Mother and her Mother's people. She looked distinctly a Darcy, she believed - the Darcies who were short and would be plump if they didn't watch out. Who were "dark-complected", dreamy, /"artistic" if not "poetic" (whatever that meant), forgetful, and as her Father put it, prone to fall into brown studies, and leap to conclusions. The Darcies might even have a bit of French-Canadian blood, (no glory to a Rhode Islander) and they certainly were poor, and ever concerned about the fate of the underdog..

15

All her Mother's favorites, her own brother, Phil Darcy,
Uncle Phil, who had gone to the Argentine to make a fortune and
returned without his shirt, Sebastian Cole who insisted on being
a painter instead of entering a lucrative family business were in
a sense underdogs. And I'm a Darcy, too, thought young Sabia,
taking it all in, adding it all up in her secret self.

Naturally her Father at his end of the table had put
the young married lady, Topsy Cole, on his own right - marriage was
to be taken seriously, and Top with her teasing quips and cranks,
her green siren linen and her red curls, was keeping him guessing,
while his favorite Beth on the other side, in her regal robes,
with her suave feminine feeling seduced his heart. Between the two
of them Asa Howe felt like a king, puffed out his chest and beamed
at his own girl, who would soon be home, available again. Two women
in the home, one young and gay, were better than one any day.

Young Sabia, in the spinsterish middle of the table,
facing her Aunt Sabia opposite, between the two buzzing conversa-
tional groups, perceived that Tantine, like a real confederate,
was withholding a confidence until the buzz grew into a babble.

She was all but sure the news would be good: anyone who looked as tall, worldly, blonde, well-dressed, and self-assured as Aunt Sabia - or even Verne - could hardly be anything but successful. Young Sabia wished she did not mistrust the diplomatic approach, her Aunt's natural way. It gave her a prick of moral discomfort, yet as her Mother sometimes pointed out - she had a way of dotting the iis - young Sabia was not above profitting by the

16

Howes' grasp on the mundane sphere.

"Is everything settled, Tantine?" The niece had lowered her voice.

Miss Howe's look said: "Wait." She was wearing a white linen tailor suit, probably a Paquin model, Sabia thought, which somehow "met the challenge of War." It set off Miss Howe's willowy figure, the clear-cut almost classic features, set in the long narrow face of the Rhode Island aristocrat. A face that could be frigid, if it liked; but that attracted tremendously men of the governing class. Miss Howe's winters in her little _pied a terre_ on Madison Avenue were gay and brilliant, she was known for good works, and for executive ability, and had quite naturally been asked, by the bankers who were to run the Red Cross in Paris, to aid them with their organisation problems.

"What's the matter about poor me?" Sabia whispered.

"Well, I asked about that passport.."

Unconsciously, inconceivably, for she never blundered, Tantine had raised her voice, and this combined with one of those sudden hushes that Fate ordains, at festal boards, made the words ring out.

Sabia glanced this way, that way transfixed with stark terror. Yes, her Father's look, at first mere mild interest, for he had no thought of opposing his sister, even felt proud of her war project, was sharpening, was bent on his little girl.

"What's that about a _passport_?" He spoke in his cold, business voice.

17

Now everybody, even her Mother, vague no longer, even
her ally Verne, reproachful, even Seb and Topsy were staring at
her. Their faces in the grey-green light were ghostly. Only
Tantine, who could not err, who must be perfect, had turned away,
only Beth regarded her with love and hope:

"Go to it, Sabby, now's the time," said Beth's blue-eyed, warming her solar plexus, giving her breath a place to go.

"Father - I was going to tell you later, of course. But
I could not tell you before, you see - it just happened. I've
volunteered to go to Paris - work with French orphans. Not now,"
Sabia plead with him, "we'll have lots of time for our Connecticut
River canoe trip -" Her voice was fading away, was inaudible.

The tall American man, the head of the family, the boss,
the mill owner in his might, stared at her unbelievingly. Ridic-
ulous! Impossible!

"In March - wasn't it March, Constance? Yes, March,
last March, your Spring vacation, you promised me to come home to
stay a year, Sabia. We agreed that, if you insisted on working
for a higher degree, you could start at Brown University - in
your own home".

"I know, Father. But that was March. We weren't at
War in March." She sounded explosive, and felt her cheeks burn
hot. "Why did you send me to spend that year at the Boncoeurs,
between school and college, if you didn't want me to love France
enough to risk something.. enough to spare me to do some real work?.."

18

"What's that got to do with the price of eggs, Sabby? I have it on inside authority that over three million tons of shipping have been destroyed by the German subs in the last nine months."

"Would you have a <u>Howe</u> draw back before a <u>submarine?</u> You know as well as I do that Vernie is too young to even volunteer, and you are too old." He winced, Verne looked wrathy, and the rebel felt suddenly unable to go on. Her effort to be hard-boiled was succeeding, it was planting a knife in the ribs of her menfolk.

"I'll keep an eye on her, Sir," Sebastian interposed, quickly, "if the Boches don't get me. If I get overseas, as I hope. Camouflage is what I'm trying for." That got nowhere and her Aunt, dismissing Sebastian like a gnat, intervened with tact, with an ooze of sentiment:

"I'd <u>love</u> to take Sabby with me, Ase. In fact we'll sail together, live together in Paris - I'll take care of Sabby never fear."

Verne, beside her, gave her a sly nudge.

"Do you know Ase, Max Pons, notre joli cousin, Max, who was a banker when we knew him best, is now on the <u>Etat-Major</u> of the hero of Verdun - Petain the new Commander in Chief of the French Army?"

"I can well imagine it," said Asa Howe, striving to control his rising tones. "Max never cared for banking - not really - but he does like the seats of the mighty. Like you,

19

Sister! But that doesn't excuse you for encouraging our little
Sabby - what does she know of War Orphans - or any other kind?
That bookworm...A child herself. Even the State Department of that
crackpot Wilson won't give Sabby a passport." His voice was angry
and taut and worse - it was hurt, hurt, hurt.

"I bet Miss Sabia can wangle it - she always has a friend
at court," remarked Topsy, who seemed to be taking a wicked pleasure
in the general discomfiture. She had a way of enjoying the trou-
bles of others, Topsy.. Almost cruel, Sabia thought, but her Aunt
threw Top a half smile.

"Now Constance, said Mr. Howe, severely, "don't you worry
about this." Mrs. Howe had remained calm, almost detached but he
noticed it not - the tempestuous, combative incensed mood he could
not handle was always passed on with a: "Don't you worry, Con."

"Mother doesn't mind," said Sabia hastily. Somehow she
believed her Mother was one to let her children go, hot cling to
their coattails. Still, when her Mother, grave, leaned over and
took her hand, across Verne, the hand was cold, and Sabia, shaky, drew
her own away, and cramped it under the table.

What misery, what awful unspeakable misery - a family
fight on Commencement morning!

"Father.."

"FATHER.." He was still staring at his plate, his full
lips tightly bitten into a straight, scarred line.

"This - this is my-- Graduation! I'm in the First Ten -
aren't you glad?" In a second the floods of tears would burst.

20

"We're rather proud of Sabby." Beth had intervened and quietly expanded the theme. Several other voices broke in to say there was a war on, one must do Something - and all the while Asa Howe twisted his moustaches, grey blonde bristly points, with impatient fingers, square and stubby and well kept. Children were callous critters. A knife had carved out a piece of his heart. Moreover, he had a rankling sense that the females of the species were in league against him.

"Are we sending Pershing over just to 'show the flag', Sir? - if I remember rightly Joffre asked us for one American division - how do you chalk things up, Sir?" Sebastian was trying to draw impersonal fire from his sullen host. Anything to help Sabby.. who looked so sunk and shaky.

"Guillaume says they can't win without us -" Sabia then hesitantly put in.

"Guillaume? Guillaume who? Oh yes, you mean Professor Boncoeur's nephew - the hollow-eyed French instructor with the long black cape and the beard - the one the street urchins followed, when you took him sight-seeing - what would he know about it?"

"He's only - only at the French Front, Father," choked Sabia. Father could not "abide" her dear Guillaume. He was jealous. He had felt something in the air.

"Well, Max's last letter said..." she began again with desperation, but her Father turned on her like a shot.

"What's that? Do you still hear from Max Pons?"

"Course I do!"

"Why shouldn't she?" muttered Verne, taking her part. "Our cousin, after all!" The boy was grand.

21

"But Max is married now.." Mr. Howe said in an odd voice.

"Goodness, Father, - what on earth has that to do with it?" The ineffable, superior, collegiate tone was her last weapon, and she knew it was irritating, yet there she went. "Ours is a sort of Historical correspondence," she said airily, "a kind of war journal, sort of - I just mean I send him comments from the American press on major war events - like the German Peace Offer, - Bethman-Hollweg's refusal to define peace aims - all that," she cried, being belligerent, being superior, putting him in a mood, she could see it all in Beth's downcast look.

"I suppose my Socialist daughter quotes _The New Republic_ and _The Nation_ to our French cousin - that _would_ give Max Pons a fine idea of what America is thinking!"

To the manufacturer, who aimed at success by an honest, conservative code of industry, ability, integrity, sanctioned by his fathers any new social ideas were "socialistic", especially if they touched on the relations of capital and labor and the sacred ground of marital love. He had once flung _The New Republic_ in the fire, with a strong swearword, for which he later blushed, because it had an article on birth control.

"Who is this 'Max' you're all talking about?" muttered Sebastian. "One thing sure - he can read _The Times_ for himself. What is Truth, Mr. Howe? I'm a pacifist yet I've signed up to go to France and kill the Germans! Like it or leave it, we're the generation that has to go to War." His passionate, yet wounded gaze now sought his wife, who nodded back with martial fervor.

22

(Now why, Sabia wondered, would Top let him go? A
married man.)

Could claim exemption

"Girls - girls! The Sendor Procession is forming!"

That was a Sophomore marshal, shaking her baton at them from the
Inn steps.

"Oh you Rho-Dislanders," cried Topsy, the Baltimorean,
mocking their speech, "you're all so contumacious and picturesque!"

The party did seem to be breaking up in fragments, and
Mrs. Howe, perceiving it, intervened. Constance Howe was a passive
woman, it took a good deal to bring her down from her cloud, but
when she came she spoke like Jehovah, cryptically.

"Wait a minute, friends,-- I want to tell you all I'm
sorry our little breakfast party has been so haunted by the sound
of a chick chipping an egg-shell. They do like getting out, I
find", and she took the arm of her disconcerted daughter, with a
half laugh.

"These are queer times - do you think it would be like
the age of the early Christians, Ase? First imprison them (per-
haps in college) and thank goodness they can't fight the Gladiators?
And after, thank Goodness they didn't have to fight the Gladiators,
but can be thrown to the lions!"

23

III

It was a good omen, as Miss Sabia in her glowing way said to young Sabia and the rest of the assembled family on the murky, oppressive September day of their embarkation for France, that their French liner was the old one-class *Rochambeau*. The Vicomte de Rochambeau had his share in Rhode Island history and the Howes were supposedly connected in some distant fashion with that Miss Betsy Whipple with whom he left, on his departure after the American Revolution his black charger, Duc. Whether a scandal or not it was too far back to know or care!

Seeing her Father scant of a smile even, his daughter, squeezing his arm, suggested a more timely omen: nothing much had happened in or to the War during the Summer. The chief job of the Allies seemed to be still to *hold on*. That was something for her people to put in their pipes and smoke - that, and the news that the submarine attacks were a bit less ferocious of late.

Mr. Howe hardly conceded it, and one could not get away from the fact that aunt and niece, like almost everyone else on the Passenger list, were in uniform and going to War. In all those she saw young Sabia sensed the same current of high, altru-istic adventure - the fervid current that charged her own heart with energy. It was like starting on a new kind of Crusade which American History till now had never foretold or forecast. Those who had moved Westward from the old countries of Europe, free, they supposed of all its dusty chains, were now moving back, ready to give even their blood in transfusion, to keep France and England

24

and Italy and Belgium alive.

There was a lot to think about.

Miss Howe was less concerned about History than about steamer chairs and seats at the Captain's table, and first baths: a Howe was of course entitled to the best, and her brother fully agreed, and prepared to help her.

"Do you know, Moth," said Sabia, "I need to bone up for my job on this trip. I need to be alone. I just can't stand sitting in the very middle of the Promenade deck, while Tantine gathers admirers about her and offers them sweets from her Dean box and her Charles box and all.."

She spoke crossly, in an injured tone, and her Mother, in her blue straw hat with the red rose and her blue foulard gave her young soldier a funny look.

"It's time you realised something, dear -" she said slowly. "Living with a Howe has its price. Yes," she nodded, her face grave as she saw the still untouched face that resembled her own quiver with surprise, "everything has its price - one pays. The price of marriage to your dear Father - I wanted him and love him so, as you know - was marrying your Aunt Sabia too - as it were, and so to speak. Thanks to your Grandfather Howe's Will - and the quaint New England ancestral way of leaving houses in fractional parts to those not intended by the Almighty to live under one roof - Sabia Howe had rather an undue share in our first child. She rather stole you, Sabby as a baby and on - do you know how? By her spoil-

25

ing, spoiling, spoiling! She was much more romantic and indulgent than your mousy little Mother."

It was astounding to hear such words, arising from the seemingly still waters, everything conspired to make today a separation from childish things, and from the blessed age of unbounded confidence.

"I can see you waking up to Tantine now, a bit and feeling irritated, too - well, that's just growing pains for you. Your Auntie is no different - she's more or less 'set' - but you are! Your four years of reading and intense intellectual work and opening your mouth wide to the golden words of professors, swallowing them down like the richest worms, and yanking them up again at midnight with hot chocolate and argument - that has dug you out of your old home roots and made you intellectual and combative. Yet here you are, with your favorite Tantine and your toughest root - in the very same room, and all! Your Aunt is a darling and one of the seven wonders of Providence, but she is not a college room-mate."

"No," said Sabia tragically. She was thinking at a pace so violent her head seemed ready to burst.

"Now this is what I'm leading up to - it is possible to go off by oneself a bit - that is how I've lived with your Father. You remember I've always kept my membership in the Saturday Morning Club in Boston since we lived there, during our first three married years. When my soul feels invaded, I write a paper on St. Simeon Stylites, the saint that lived on the column in the desert - remember?

That gave me lot of time at the library.
And run up to Boston to deliver it and see my old friends. St.
Simeon shows one the dangers of untouchability and then one can
be social again, You have, alas, one of those souls like mine -
an egg without a shell - too easily mingled with others. Well,
my dear one's soul is private, it's one's own, don't give it up,
just get a shell for it somehow."

"Mother - you're so wonderful. Wise..I."

"There is that French proverb, Sab - 'If Youth knew, if
Age could.'" She looked sad, almost drawn as she stood there, with
Red Cross men and YMCA men and even tall young lieutenants who must
be catching up with their units on a civilians' boat, milling past.

"What else was it I wanted to say?" Mrs. Howe had a habitual gesture her child loved, it was/unconscious - holding her left hand, such a delicate pretty brown hand, to her heart, when moved. "Are you sure you don't - don't love Guillaume Boncoeur, Sabby?" Her dispassionate voice was tender and anxious. "He's so pure. Rare as a jewel. Of course your Father does not.."

Sabia pressed her head against her Mother's shoulder. In
matters of deep feeling she could hardly let a word emerge from
her lips.

"I don't. It's sad. Oh I feel so responsible.."

With a sigh that the child remembered later the Mother
hesitated and would have said more, but the other two, the tall
handsome blonde Howes swept up to them, their heads noticeable
above the crowd.

Now it was the Father's turn. He took his daughter's arm,

27

and with his quick, athletic step wanted to be shown the cabin.
It was an inside one, a war-time choice, pocket size, and opposite
the Smoking Saloon, and stuffed full of luggage, rugs, typewriters,
cameras, as well as all their mail, their flowers, their fruit.

"Miserable, musty little hole - wish I could have got
you a better - damn that rattle of chips!"

The woolen manufacturer sharply closed the door but the
sound of the inveterate poker players, and the smell of their
smokers and drinkers' leavings, which would haunt the voyage, seeped
in from the corridor.

"Sabby - promise me one thing will you? That you will
not dine alone in Paris with a man. It's not suitable!"

And as she stared, aghast, into the blazing azure of his
eyes he burst - she was sure later it could not have been premed-
itated, it was so wholly irrational - into a plea that she should
not sail! That she should get off the ship and come home where
she belonged! He could not let her go on this crazy war venture.

So Father had not accepted really - only agreed. The
explosion of emotion was violent, like the time when he "burst" in
the front hall in Hope Street about her walking in the Suffrage
Parade. Only worse, much worse.

The agony with which he clasped her shoulders could not
now be set aside, for she was mature enough to recognise its weight.
As a child, being so dear to one human heart had been a security

28

and a shelter. Now, with the stab of growing consciousness,
being so wanted rang like the clank of chains.

What could one do about it - at twenty-one with the
need to get to Paris? The muscles of her legs were so strong,
today, she felt she could walk the Atlantic Ocean in one giant
stride.

"You won't?" His face was convulsed, and for a second
of time, one ever after engraved in tragic memory, her whold future
hung in the balance. But the warning bell was clanging, and before
she knew it the familiar family faces had receded into the blurry
weepy generalised sea of faces on the shadowy dock, and the
Rochambeau, drawing out of its slip in the sidling, swishing way
liners have, blowing raucously through its funnels, had left them
behind - left all young Sabia loved best.

Her Aunt, with unexpected understanding, departed below
to "get things organised" leaving her niece to work things out with
her homesick, stricken heart and her throat with the frog in it.

Young Sabia had made several blind turns about the now almost empty
dock before she became really aware that planks balanced on sea
water, throbbing with engine sounds, smelly with kitchen and bilge
odors, were under her feet. But soon the air was fresher and more
salty, and the shores of New Jersey, and the skyscrapers of Man-
hattan, in their Arabian Nights' patterns, were yielding to an
open sea, choppy and blue and elemental. Even the Goddess of
Liberty and the reaches of Staten Island were fading away, and the
girl in the dark grey uniform was facing towards France.

29

Leaning on the rail in the advancing prow of her ship,
which cut the sunny green-blue into two mother of pearl furrows,
an image her Mother had invoked appeared before her. Like Beth,
Guillaume could always be summoned from within, he was inside her
as well as outside, and now, as she gazed, his blue eyes in their
deep sockets promptly searched hers and she trembled.

Oh Guillaume - I hurt you.

Guillaume was built something like the young lieutenant
she had noticed earlier - tall, fair-haired, spare of bone and
brawn. But there the likeness stopped. Guillaume's spareness
was on the meagre side. You worried lest he ate enough, lest he
could take a blow, whereas the American's spareness was athletic.
American boys were so dashing, outgoing and undisciplined-looking -
Guillaume was so self-contained, reticent, almost ascetic.

Maybe, thought Sabia humbly, that is why I let him down.
I did not understand, when he asked me to read Pascal at Athenia,
while he read the same passages at Princeton, that he would con-
sider this a courtship. A French girl would have known.

She had been too innocent, - far - far too innocent.
Naive! A girl who had been loved by a man before would have known.
She hadn't. She didn't. She did not even think a man could love
her - to herself she wasn't anything worth marrying - yet. But
Guillaume seemed to realise, value her sincerity, her honesty, and
how sad she had been to hurt him so. He bore her no grudge. On
the contrary he still insisted "he had not been mistaken."