It was Phyllis who arranged the details of her marriage to Charles in Mr. Haas’ study. Only the Holts, the Haddens, Friederich, and Helen were there. Later, they had a quiet dinner at the Holts’ mansion, and then Phyllis and Charles went home. It was understood that Charles, because of his enfeebled condition, must rest for a few days, then the honeymoon, which no longer needed to be postponed, would follow. Phyllis was determined that this honeymoon would not be in the form of a “rest” for Charles. He dare not be idle just now. She arranged that they would travel rapidly from city to city, from resort to resort.
When Charles and Phyllis returned from the Holts’ dinner, they found that Mrs. Meyers had lit up the lights in all the rooms, and there was coffee waiting for them, and dump cake. Mrs. Meyers cried a little when Phyllis kissed her, and cried even more when Charles shook her hands.
Then, Phyllis and Charles, arm in arm, went upstairs together. They passed Jim’s room. The lights were all brilliantly burning in there, and the door was open. Charles stopped on the threshold, and Phyllis stood beside him in silence. Charles looked at everything in the room, and it seemed to him that the room was not empty at all. Jim had left it only a few minutes ago, for a forage in the kitchen. He would return in a moment or two.
“Let’s leave the lights on,” said Phyllis.
Charles turned to her. He said: “You always understand, don’t you, Phyllis?”
They left the brightly lit room, and they left the door ajar, and went into their own room. Charles took Phyllis’ hand and led her in. Here only a light or two had been lit. Charles and Phyllis stood in the center of the room, their hands together, and the light blue of Phyllis’ silk dress was the color of her smiling eyes. Her lips smiled, also, and she did not seem to be watching Charles with passionate anxiety. Even he did not know it. He drew her to him and held her to him tightly, and she could hear his breath in her hair.
She thought that he had brought a wife to this room and to this bed, before, the bed in which he had been born. His wife, Mary, had given him a son from this bed, and a daughter, who had died, in this bed, also, and she, Mary, had died in it. The house was full of ghosts. This door was shut, but beyond it a room was lighted for a boy who would never enter it again. Phyllis was afraid.
She waited for Charles to speak, or not to speak at all. She did not know which she preferred, just at this moment. Was he, too, remembering the ghosts of those he had loved? Was he listening for them? Charles took Phyllis’ face in his hands, and he kissed her gently on the mouth.
“I’ve been waiting all my life for this,” he said. “Now, I won’t be alone any more.”
He had said the one thing she had wanted him to say. Then he added: “I’ll turn off the lights in Jim’s room.”
She let him go. She saw the hall go dark. Then she heard Charles shut the door of Jim’s room, very softly and slowly, as someone might close the room where another slept. Then he came back to her, and she was waiting for him and holding out her arms to him.
Charles protested after the first two weeks of the four-week honeymoon. It was “silly” to go “tearing around after only one or two days in one place.” But Phyllis kept him moving. She no sooner saw the gray bitterness returning to his face, or the sodden grief, than she began to repack her suitcases furiously, and Charles was whirled off. In the confusion, strangeness, and change of renewed travel, he had little time to think. And when the nights came he was so exhausted that he almost immediately fell asleep beside her.
Phyllis had hoped that Charles would talk a great deal about his dead son. But he did not. She became afraid again. He was taking up his life once more, but he would not talk, even to her, about Jim. Sometimes in the night, as he slept, he would cry out, and once or twice he called wildly for his son, and on another occasion or two he had sobbed drily. In the morning, however, he smiled at his wife, and discussed where they should go that day. They had already visited Atlantic City, Philadelphia, and New York. Now, they would go to Washington. “And then anywhere else we can think of,” Phyllis would laugh.
She was giving him comfort, and all her tenderness and devotion. Over and over, he would say: “Without you, Phyllis, there’d have been no use in going on. And when I look back, I can see that there never was any going on, without you, all those years.” She knew he meant this. But he would not let her talk to him about his son. Sometimes she was close to it, and he knew, and he would get up abruptly and suggest a walk or a late supper.
“You are taking a hard road, Phyllis,” Mr. Haas had told her before her marriage. “You must remember that. It might be months before Charles can talk to you; it might even be a year or two. You must be patient, and you must just keep praying, that’s all.”
Charles no longer bought or read newspapers, not even to look at the Stock Market. The newsboys shrilled “extras” on the streets of New York, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Washington, Baltimore, and all the other cities they visited. But Charles passed the boys as if they did not exist, without a glance at the papers they offered. This, to Phyllis, was very disquieting. She said nothing, and, as the minister had suggested, she prayed.
Then, the four weeks were over, and they were returning home. They stopped in Philadelphia for a night, and the next morning they took a cab to the station. They passed a high school, and the cab had to stop to let the streams of young boys and girls cross the street. Charles looked through the windows, idly, then held himself stiffly as he heard the shouts of the youths and saw their rush. The cab still stood, but Charles let himself fall back against the seat. He had forgotten Phyllis. He stared emptily before him and his face was again a ruin of agony. Phyllis put her hand over his, and her eyes blurred with tears.
Charles said: “I hope that Fred’s been able to manage all right without me.”
The cab moved slowly on, the school doors were open, and the boisterous children fell behind. Their shouts became fainter and fainter. The cab turned a corner and the station was just ahead.
It will be this way for a long time, thought Phyllis. Every time he hears a boy’s voice, or sees a boy Jim’s age, or someone who resembles him, it will be frightful for him. He will remember when Jim was graduated from high school; he will remember him shouting and laughing and running. He will look at these other boys and wonder why his boy, of them all, had to die. Phyllis thought of all the hundreds of thousands, even millions, perhaps, of boys who would die in this war. But she thought more of their fathers and their mothers, and asked silently, with her own bitterness, why no one ever wrote of the anguish of these parents who could see no “glory” in the death of their lives and their hopes, their pride and all their work. She thought of the countless thousands of painful births which had taken place hardly two decades ago—to end in a bloody and fiery death—for nothing. She thought of the planning of parents, the sacrifices, the tears and prayers—for nothing. The drums and the banners, the reports of victories, the end of the war, itself, would mean nothing at all to men and women who stared hopelessly at empty chairs, who put away books which would never be used again, and closed doors—thousands of doors—as Charles had closed the door of Jim’s room. It was horrible that millions of young eyes would never see the sun again. It was more horrible that millions of older eyes could see the sun, but would refuse to see it. Who had said: “The tragedy of war is not in death of the young men alone; it is in the lives of their fathers”?
Such a rage and hatred came to Phyllis then, such an overpowering sorrow, that her gloved hands clenched and tears ran down her face. She forgot Charles, for he had become only one of those fathers whose sons were being murdered daily in Europe. His tragedy was the tragedy of the whole world, a monstrous and futile tragedy. Even worse, it was a planned tragedy.
She became aware that Charles was unclenching her hands, very gently. He said: “Don’t, Phyllis. It can’t be helped, now. I suppose I’ll just have to force myself to look at other boys, and not feel too much about Jim. Besides, I have you. I must remember that.”
He had spoken of Jim, voluntarily, to her. It was the first turning away from the darkness. No one could help him much; he would have to help himself. But when he would turn again and again from his suffering, she, Phyllis, would be waiting for him.
When they reached home, and were going up the stairs of the house, Charles said “You can’t know, Phyllis, how often I’ve hated to come back here. But when I leave the office, every night, you’ll be here, waiting for me. How did I get along without you before?”
But a few days later, he said to her: “Once, a long time ago, I hoped that when we were married we might have a child or two, Phyllis. I don’t want that, now. Let’s get what comfort and contentment we can out of existence, and let it end there. Once I read that having children is an affirmation of life. I don’t want to affirm anything again. It’s no use.”