Crittenden

That step had made him good in body and soul. It made him lean and

tanned; it sharpened and strengthened his profile; it cleared his eye

and settled his lips even more firmly. Tobacco and liquor were scarce,

and from disuse he got a new sensation of mental clearness and physical

cleanliness that was comforting and invigorating, and helped bring back

the freshness of his boyhood.

For the first time in many years, his days were full of work and,

asleep, awake, or at work, his hours were clock-like and steadied him

into machine-like regularity. It was work of his hands, to be sure, and

not even high work of that kind, but still it was work. And the measure

of the self-respect that this fact alone brought him was worth it all.

Already, his mind was taking character from his body. He was distinctly

less morbid and he found himself thinking during those long days of the

sail of what he should do after the war was over. His desire to get

killed was gone, and it was slowly being forced on him that he had been

priggish, pompous, self-absorbed, hair-splitting, lazy,

good-for-nothing, when there was no need for him to be other than what

he meant to be when he got back. And as for Judith, he felt the

bitterness of gall for himself when he thought of her, and he never

allowed himself to think of her except to absolve her, as he knew she

would not absolve herself, and to curse himself heartily and bitterly.

He understood now. It was just her thought of his faithfulness, her

feeling of responsibility for him--the thought that she had not been as

kind to him as she might have been (and she had always been kinder than

he deserved)--all this had loosed her tears and her self-control, and

had thrown her into a mood of reckless self-sacrifice. And when she

looked up into his face that night of the parting, he felt her looking

into his soul and seeing his shame that he had lost his love because he

had lost himself, and she was quite right to turn from him, as she did,

without another word. Already, however, he was healthy enough to believe

that he was not quite so hopeless as she must think him--not as hopeless

as he had thought himself. Life, now, with even a soldier's work, was

far from being as worthless as life with a gentleman's idleness had

been. He was honest enough to take no credit for the clean change in his

life--no other life was possible; but he was learning the practical

value and mental comfort of straight living as he had never learned

them before. And he was not so prone to metaphysics and morbid

self-examination as he once was, and he shook off a mood of that kind

when it came--impatiently--as he shook it off now. He was a soldier now,

and his province was action and no more thought than his superiors

allowed him. And, standing thus, at sunrise, on the plunging bow of the

ship, with his eager, sensitive face splitting the swift wind--he might

have stood to any thoughtful American who knew his character and his

history as a national hope and a national danger. The nation, measured

by its swift leap into maturity, its striking power to keep going at the

same swift pace, was about his age. South, North, and West it had lived,

or was living, his life. It had his faults and his virtues; like him, it

was high-spirited, high-minded, alert, active, manly, generous, and with

it, as with him, the bad was circumstantial, trivial, incipient; the

good was bred in the Saxon bone and lasting as rock--if the surface evil

were only checked in time and held down. Like him, it needed, like a

Titan, to get back, now and then, to the earth to renew its strength.

And the war would send the nation to the earth as it would send him, if

he but lived it through.