CHAPTER XXXIII
NATHAN was on his way to Professor Heckelman's rooms when he stopped at the general delivery window to inquire for mail, some four weeks later. He put the letter that the clerk passed to him hastily into his coat-pocket, and five minutes afterward read it by the light of an illuminated drugstore window.
Professor Heckelman waited in vain for Nathan that night, and Mrs. Barton waited until after twelve o'clock.
Nathan hardly knew what streets he tramped as he grappled with the staggering revelations in that letter of Rebecca's. What did she say? "Address her next time as Mrs. Nathaniel Cawthorne?" "Wearing his ring?" "Using his name?" Those opening sentences had elated Nathan at first. She wasn't then evading her marriage vows! He hadn't then labored in vain to make his name more worthy to be borne by her! A wave of joy had flooded over him. Reading on, however, that wave receded gradually, drew away from him, left him cold and shivering finally. "Doing what she ought to do!" "Seemed the only right thing!" "Bound by law!" "Her duty!" Oh, all that recalled so vividly to Nathaniel Cawthorne the martyrlike attitude of the brave woman up there in the tarpaper covered shack on the edge of the Maine woods that he shuddered at the similarity. It was his mother's submissive eyes that Nathan saw when he read Rebecca's postscript. "I'm ready for you, when you are ready to come."
"Thank heaven," he whispered, "I'm not the son of that brute who made my mother suffer."
He felt no bitterness toward Rebecca. His mother had left an indelible impression upon him, and the pitying protection he used to feel for her so strongly he now felt for Rebecca. Somehow he must protect Rebecca from all fear of himself. For she was afraid of him! It was clear enough now. She had probably been afraid of him ever since that first letter, which he had written her on the boat. Poor tormented girl! He understood now why her notes to him had been brief and impersonal. They had not cloaked an inarticulate love, as he had dimly hoped, but instead a fear, a dread, perhaps an actual aversion. Often he had seen his mother's high sense of duty triumph like this over fear and aversion. But he wanted nothing of that sort from Rebecca. No! No!
"Oh, I'll never come. You needn't be afraid. I'll never come back, Rebecca," he whispered, as if she were there beside him to hear.
A few days later a young ambulance-driver, just returned from France, chanced to dine at the Barton's. The young fellow's description of his experiences behind the firing-line was filled with flying shells and bursting bombs. He had brought back some relics and passed them round after dinner. As Nathan examined the heavy lump of jagged-edged shrapnel which Mrs. Barton, with a little shudder dropped into his palm as if glad to be rid of it, he wondered, turning the thing slowly over and over in his hand, if a bit of that stuff, sudden and quick in the head somewhere, wouldn't be preferable to drifting about interminably at sea.
One day in mid-April, seated at dinner in the Barton dining-room, Mrs. Barton as usual at the head of the table, and Robert as usual at the foot, Nathan made his quiet announcement. It was a complete surprise to the mother and son.
"I'm going away for a little while," he said.
"Going away?" Robert inquired. It hadn't been mentioned before.
"Yes," he went on, glancing down at the saltcellar, and keeping his eyes upon it. "Sailors have kind of wandering natures, you know. I've been thinking for some time I better be moving on to the next port."
"What port, Nathan?" asked the clergyman.
"Well, you see, the fact is," Nathan stumbled, "it's like this. Things get to rankling in your mind, you know how, and this war, ever since the United States decided to get into it—well, it's been sort of rankling in my mind. Perhaps I better wake up, and take a little part in things. Man of my age can't be putting energy into educating himself too finely, without some pretty good excuse, these times, seems to me."
"What do you mean? What foolish notion have you gone and got now?" demanded Mrs. Barton, with sudden energy.
"Well," Nathan shrugged, "I might as well get into it first as last."
"Are you going to enlist, Nathan?" Robert asked gravely.
Nathan was embarrassed. War had been declared only a fortnight. He didn't want to appear impulsive.
"Well," he acknowledged diffidently, "I was thinking of it a little."
Mrs. Barton suddenly flung down her fork onto her plate.
"Oh," she burst out, "I just knew this horrid war was going to hit me. I've felt it from the start. Robert, are you going to go and enlist too?" she demanded with alarm.
Robert smiled indulgently at the little firebrand opposite him, then turned to Nathan.
"Nathan," he said, "your decision, if it actually is a decision, is a surprise to me. Of course I knew you'd be ready to do your part when the time came. But I should have supposed we would have talked over a thing of this sort."
"Perhaps I ought to have," Nathan replied. "I mean still to talk over the details with you. But the question of my getting into the scrap, somehow, somewhere—well, I couldn't see any reason for talking it over. I couldn't see any argument against it, not having any one dependent on me, you know, and"
"You're married!" flashed Mrs. Barton with heat.
"Yes, that's so," acknowledged Nathan; "but she is rather used not to having me about. And," he added, managing to smile a little, "I was thinking a uniform would add a little to my appearance, perhaps."
Strange he could keep on building air-castles on his dead hopes.
"Uniform! I wouldn't give a cent for fifty uniforms!" exclaimed Mrs. Barton. "It's a burning shame to keep that girl waiting for a uniform—after all this time! If that's your reason for enlisting, I don't think much of it!"
"Were you thinking of sea or land service, Nathan?" inquired the clergyman quietly.
"Land, I guess. Seems strange to you, I suppose. Seaman, like me. But I might as well get into the thick of it. Besides, I've had a pretty big dose of the sea."
"When, Nathan?" queried Robert Barton.
"Oh, as soon as possible. Next week—the week after!"
"Why, Nathaniel Cawthorne," ejaculated Mrs. Barton. "What about passing those examinations at the university, Professor Heckelman has gone to such trouble to make arrangements for? Two months ago you were studying yourself just pale, in an effort to get that bit of paper that would certify to Rebecca how much progress you'd made, and now you mean to say you aren't going to stay even for the examinations! Well, I call that foolish!"
"Probably, it does seem so, Mrs. Barton, but I don't seem to have the same heart for books lately," truthfully Nathan told her.
"Nonsense! Mercy, what if all our young men went and lost their heads like this? Anyhow, Nathan," she brought out triumphantly, "they won't have you, dear child, with those fingers of yours!"
"See if they won't!" Nathan retorted. "Except for the looks, I don't miss those fingers any more than I do long hair, Mrs. Barton."
Robert Barton told his mother that night, after Nathan had gone to his room, that he thought he understood the reason for the boy's decision.
"It is the result of the general waking-up in him. He's never felt any personal responsibility toward anything before—least of all toward a big affair like the U. S. A. Education has created in him a new feeling of respectability, a new feeling of responsibility too, which he can't quite dodge. I saw that he was interested when Jenkins, the young ambulance-driver, was here, but I had no idea it was as serious as this. I must write to Richard Macomber—classmate of mine. Lives in New York. He's interested in things military. Spent two summers at Plattsburg. He'll know how to advise Nathan wisely."
"O dear, dear, how I shall miss that boy!" sighed Mrs. Barton, wiping teary eyes. "Next to you, Robert, he's the dearest boy in the world to me."
The day before Nathan started for the east (after Richard Macomber had replied to Robert Barton that he'd like to see his friend's protégé, and talk with him) he left a package in a jeweler's shop with instructions for it to be mailed on a certain date the following July. The package was for Rebecca. It was an answer to her letter.
Nathan figured that of the notes he had left on the schooner to be mailed to Rebecca at different ports the last one ought surely to reach her by June. However, he'd play safe, and wait until July before mailing a reply to her letter. He wished to avoid all danger of detection. He didn't want Rebecca to surmise that he had been working a deception upon her all these years. She must never guess how hard he had tried to make himself suitable for her. He didn't want pity any more than he wanted submission.
More than a year ago Nathan had bought an engagement ring for Rebecca. He had observed that in Mrs. Barton's world most all the young married women wore engagement-rings with their wedding-rings, and he had asked Mrs. Barton to help him pick one out. He had drawn twenty-five dollars from his savings-bank account, to pay for the ring. The stone in it wasn't very large, but it was larger than twenty-five dollars ever could have bought. In the midst of the purchase of the ring Mrs. Barton had asked Nathan please to call up the house by telephone, and tell them that she'd be a little late for lunch. In his absence she and the clerk had changed the price tags.
Mrs. Barton supposed that Rebecca had long been wearing the pretty little ring which it had so rejoiced her heart to pay for in part. But Rebecca had never seen it. It had been lying quietly all this time in the top drawer of Nathan's chiffonier.
He hadn't meant to keep it so long, but he couldn't mail it immediately because he was supposed to be in New Zealand at the time, or some such remote place, and when he might have sent it without suspicion, he had begun to be afraid that any reminder of his claims might be unwelcome to the girl who had jumped so eagerly at his suggestion that he postpone his return.
He pondered over what to do with the little useless symbol as he made preparations to move his belongings out of the room that had been his so long. For so many months he had been accustomed to take out the dainty little platinum circlet, with the single pure white stone, and gaze upon it, as his thoughts hovered tenderly about Rebecca, that now the sight of it was painful to him. The little velvet-lined jewel-box that held the precious crystal so like Rebecca herself, had become a little velvet-lined casket that held something dead now, and soulless. He wanted to bury it out of his sight.
One night as he lay awake, staring into the dark, it occurred to him that the ring might perform a service for him. He had been wondering in what words he could most sparingly offer Rebecca her release. The ring could help him, he believed. He got up, and then and there sat down at his desk, and wrote a note to Rebecca.
This is what it said:
Dear Rebecca:
I am sending you an engagement ring because you never had one. Most girls are engaged before they are married, but it's the other way round with you. I am asking you to be engaged after you are married. And just as most girls' engagements are followed by marriage, yours, Rebecca, is to be followed by friendship. The fortunes of a sailor are uncertain always, but especially in time of war. I have been thinking of getting into the war myself, and before doing it, it seems only fair to relieve you of all further obligations to me. It isn't right that you should be troubled all your life by the thought of your duty to such a stranger as I am to you. This ring I am sending wipes out our marriage, Rebecca.
I am proud you are using my name, but if you see fit not to use it in the future, it will be all right. The thought that you used it even for a little while will help me always to keep it clean.
I'm sorry, but it won't be very convenient for me ever to see you again—so don't be afraid I'll be turning up some day. I won't. I think, Rebecca, there is something about "on the grounds of desertion" that makes things easy for a girl, left by a man as I am leaving you.
Good-by, Rebecca, and this time, forever.