Chapter XXXII

by Susan Glaspell

　　Captain Jones had come down from Fort Sheridan late that afternoon. Hehad been in Chicago for several days, as a member of a board assembled upat Fort Sheridan. The work was over and he would return to the Arsenalthat night.

　　But he was not to go until midnight. He would have dinner and go tothe theater with some of the friends with whom he had been in thoselast few days.

　　He wished it were otherwise. He was in no mood for them. He would farrather have been alone.

　　He had a little time alone in his room before dinner and sat theresmoking, thinking, looking at the specks of men and women moving about inthe streets way down there below.

　　He was in no humor that night to keep to the everlasting talk about armyaffairs, army grievances and schemes, all those things of a world withina world treated as if larger than the whole of the world. The last fewdays had shown him anew how their hold on him was loosening.

　　There seemed such a thing as the army habit of mind. Within their owndomain was orderliness, discipline, efficiency, subservience to thecollectivity, pride in it, devotion to it—many things of mind andcharacter sadly needed in the chaotic world without. But army men lackedperspective; in isolation they had lost their sense of proportion, ofrelationships. They had not a true vision of themselves as part of awhole. They had, on the other hand, unconsciously fallen into the way ofassuming the whole existed for the part, that they were larger than thething they were meant to serve. Their whole scale was so proportioned;their whole sense of adjustment so perverted.

　　They lacked flexibility—openness—all-sides-aroundness.

　　Life in the army disciplined one in many things valuable in life. Itfailed in giving a true sense of the values of life.

　　He could not have said why it was those inflated proportions irritatedhim so. They lent an unreality to everything. They made for falsestandards. And more and more the thing which mattered to him was reality.

　　He tried to pull away from the things that thought would lure him into.

　　He had not the courage to let himself think of her tonight.

　　He feared he had not increased his popularity in the last few days. At adinner the night before a colonel had put an end to a discussion on war,in which several of the younger officers showed dangerous symptoms ofhospitality to the civilian point of view, with the pious pronouncement:"War was ordained by God."

　　"But man pays the war tax," he had not been able to resist adding, andthe Colonel had not joined in the laugh.

　　He found it wearisome the way the army remained so smug in its assumptionthat God stood right behind it. When worsted on economic grounds—andperhaps driven also from "survival of the fittest" shelter—a pompousretreat could always be effected to divinity.

　　It was that same colonel who, earlier in the evening, had thus ended adiscussion on the unemployed. "The poor ye have always with you," saidthe Colonel, delicately smacking his lips over his champagne and gentlyturning the conversation to the safer topic of high explosives.

　　He turned impatiently from thought of it to the men and women far downbelow. He was always looking now at crowds of men and women, alwayshoping for a familiar figure in those crowds.

　　With all the baffling unreality there had been around her, she seemed toexpress reality. She made him want it. She made him want life. Made himfeel what he was missing—realize what he had never had.

　　It seemed that if he did not find her he would not find life.

　　She, too, had wanted life. Her quest had been for life—that he knew. Andhe wanted to find her that he might tell her he understood, tellher—what he had never told any one—that all his life he, too, haddreamed of a something somewhere.

　　And he was growing the farther apart from his army friends because hehad come to think of them as standing between.

　　During the summer he had seen. In the mornings when they were going towork, in the evenings when they were going home, he had many times beenupon the streets with the people who worked. He could not any longerregard the enlargement of the army, its organization and problems as themost vital thing in the world. It did not seem to him that what the worldwanted was a more deadly rifle. His lip curled a little as he looked downat the men and women below and considered how little difference it madeto them whether rifles were improved or not. And so many things did makedifference with them—they needed improvements on so many things—that tobe giving one's life to perfecting instruments of destruction struck himas a sorry vocation.

　　It made him feel very distinctly apart.

　　He knew of no class of men more isolated from the real war of the worldthan were the men of the army. They were tied up in their own war ofcompetition—competition in preparedness for war. They were franticallyoccupied in the creation of a Frankenstein. They would so perfectdestruction as to destroy themselves. Meanwhile their blood had grown sohot in their war of competition that they were in prime condition forpersuading themselves a real war awaited them. This hot blood found itsway into much talk of hardihood and strenuousness, vigor, martialvirtues, "the steeps of life," "the romance of history"—all calculatedto raise the temperature of tax-paying blood. So successful was theself-delusion of the militarist that sanity appeared mollycoddelism.

　　Their greatest fear was fear of the loss of fear.

　　And now they were threatened by colorless economists who weremollycoddelistically making clear that the "stern reality" was the gianthallucination.

　　It seemed rather close to farce.

　　That night he was going back. Katie, too, had gone. For the first timethat summer neither of them would be there. It seemed giving up.

　　Loneliness reached out into places vast and barren in the thought thatboth in the things of the heart and the affairs of men he seemed destinedto remain apart.

　　He looked far more the dreamer than the man of warfare as he sat there,his face, which was so finely sensitive as sometimes to be called cold,saddened with the light of dreams which know themselves for dreams alone.

　　That very first night, night when she had been so shy, he had felt inher that which he called the real thing, which he knew for the greatthing, which had been, for him, the thing unattainable. And with allher timidity, aloofness, elusiveness, he had felt an inexplicablenearness to her.

　　He had found out something about the conditions girls had to meet. Hisface hardened, then tightened with pain in the thought of those being theconditions Ann was meeting. He did not believe those conditions would goon many days longer if every man had to see them in relation to some onehe cared for. "The poor ye have always with you" might then prove lessauthoritative—less satisfying—as the final word.

　　And the other conditions—things his sort stood for—Darrett—the wholestory—He had come to loathe the words chivalry and honor and all therest of the empty terms that resounded so glibly against false standards.

　　Something was wrong with the world and he could not see that improving arifle was going to go very far toward setting it right.

　　And there was springing up within him, even in his loneliness and gloom,a passion to be doing something that would help set it right.

　　An older officer with whom he had been talking that day had spokenlovingly of his father, under whom he had served; spoken of his hardihoodand integrity, his manliness and soldierliness. As he thought of it nowit seemed to him that just because he was his father's son—had in himthe blood of the soldier—he should help fight the real battles of theday—the long stern battles of peace.

　　His father had served, faithfully and well. He, too, would like to serve.But yesterday's needs were not to-day's needs, nor were the methods ofyesterday desirable, even possible, for to-day. What could be fartherfrom serving one's own day than rendering to it the dead forms of whathad been the real service to a day gone by?

　　There came a curious thought that to give up the things of war might bethe only way to save the things that war had left him. That perhaps hecould only transmit his heritage by recasting the form of giving.

　　Looking out across the miles of the city's roofs, hearing the rumble ofthe city as it came faintly up to him, watching the people hurrying toand fro, there was something puerile in the argument that men any longerneeded war to fill their lives, must have the war fear to keep them fromsoftness and degeneration. Thinking of the problems of that very city, itseemed men need not worry greatly about having nothing to fight for, nostimulus to manhood.

　　Men and women! Those men and women passing back and forth and all themillions of their kind, they were what counted. The things thatmattered to them were the things that mattered. Their needs the thingsto fight for.

　　So he reflected and drifted, brushing now this, now that, in thoughtand fancy.

　　Weary—lonely—he dreamed a dream, dream such as the weary and the lonelyhave dreamed before, will dream again. Too utterly alone, he dreamed hewas not alone. Heart-hungry, he dreamed of love. He dreamed of Ann. Hehad dreamed of her before, would dream of her again. Dream of her, if fornothing else, because he knew she had dreamed of love; because she madehim know that it was there, because, unreasoningly, she made him hope.

　　Her face that night at the dance—that night in the boat, when they hadtalked almost not at all, had seemed to feel no need for talking—thingsremembered blended with things desired until it seemed he could feel herhair brush his face, feel her breath upon his cheek, her arms about hisneck—vivid as if given by memories instead of wooed from dreams.

　　But the benign dream became torturing vision—vision of Ann with handsheld out to him—going down—her wonderful eyes fearful with terror.

　　It was that which dreaming held for him.

　　And it seemed that he—he and his kind—all of those who stood for thethings not real were the thing beating Ann down.

　　Dreams gone and vision mercifully falling away there came a yearning,just a simple human yearning, to know where she was. He felt he couldbear anything if only he knew that she was safe.

　　The telephone rang. He supposed it was some of his friends—somethingabout the hour for dining.

　　He would not answer. Could not. Too sick of it all—too sore.

　　But it kept ringing, and, habit in the ascendency, he took downthe receiver.

　　It was not a man's voice. It was a woman's. A faint voice—he couldscarcely catch it.

　　And could with difficulty reply. He did not know the voice, it was toofaint, too far-away, but a suggestion in it made his own voice and handunsteady as he said: "Yes? What is it?"

　　"Is this—Captain Jones?"

　　The voice was stronger, clearer. His hand grew more unsteady.

　　"Yes," he replied in the best voice he could muster. "Yes—this is

　　Captain Jones. Who is it, please?"

　　There was a silence.

　　"Tell me, please," he managed to say. "Is it—?"

　　The voice came faintly back, "Why it's—Ann."

　　The keenest joy he had ever known swept through him. To be followed bythe most piercing fear. The voice was so faint—so unreal—what if itwere to die away and he would have no way to get it back!

　　It seemed he could not hold it. For an instant he was crazed with thesense of powerlessness. He felt it must even then be slipping back intothe abyss from which it had emerged.

　　Then he fought. Got himself under command; sent his own voice full andstrong over the wire as if to give life to the voice it seemed mustfade away.

　　"Ann," he said firmly, authoritatively, "listen to me. No matter whathappens—no matter what's the matter—I've got something you must hear.If we're cut off, call up again. Will you do that? Are you listening?"

　　"Yes," came Ann's voice, more sure.

　　"I've got to see you. You hear what I say? It's about Katie. You care alittle something for Katie, don't you, Ann?"

　　It was a sob rather than a voice came back to him.

　　"Then tell me where I can find you."

　　She hesitated.

　　"Tell me where you're living—or where I can find you. Now tell me thetruth, Ann. If you knew the condition Katie was in—"

　　She gave him an address on a street he did not know.

　　"Would you rather I came there? Or rather I meet you down town? Just asyou say. Only I must see you tonight."

　　"I—I can't come down town. I'm sick."

　　His hand on the receiver tightened. His voice, which had been almostharsh in its dominance, was different as he said: "Then I'll comethere—right away."

　　There was no reply, but he felt she was still there. "And, Ann," he said,very low, and far from harshly, "I want to see you, too."

　　There was a little sob in which he faintly got "Good-bye."

　　He sank to a chair. His face was buried in his hands. It was severalminutes before he moved.