HENRY JAMES
443
unburied male corpse covered with wounds. Elizabeth proposes that
a grave be dug, but as they lift the corpse it suddenly opens its eyes
and says "Amen." She and her companion place it in the grave and
stamp the earth down with their feet.
Various changes occur- Ford gets better, gets worse, etc., and
at one point when it seems he is dying, Elizabeth accepts Bruce, who
is visiting in the town at the time. But Ford unexpectedly has a turn
for the better and is brought home to be nursed. His mother manages
to keep Elizabeth away from him for some time. When first rejected
at his door, Lizzie wraps a blanket around herself and goes out on
the steps. Bruce comes by, but she will not talk with him and leaves
him standing there stupefied. The next day she manages to get into
Jack's room, and he appears to recognize her. When Mrs. Ford learns
of this visit, she is very angry, but Jack asks for Elizabeth to come
again. This time he explains to her that he knows he is going to die.
He is, however, glad that she has found someone else and blesses them
both. He asks Elizabeth to be kind to his mother. He dies. The next
day Elizabeth encounters Bruce, but she is willing only to say farewell.
She says she must do justice to her old love. She forbids Bruce to fol–
low her. "But for all that he went in" ( 12, p. 281 ) .
Th~
story has today a timely interest of a general sort since it
embodies a type of problem confronting many young men and women
in
the confused contemporary world. But it obviously goes deeper by
bringing home the manner in which events on a national, or even in–
ternational, scale may have a peculiarly personal significance for the
individual which is timeless in character. Thus James says ( 12, pp. 263
f. ) : "I have no intention of following Lieutenant Ford to the seat
of war. The exploits of
hi~
campaign are recorded in the public jour–
nals of the day, where the curious may still peruse them. My own taste
has always been for unwritten history, and my present business is
w1th the reverse of the picture."
As
a first step in interpretation must be noted the facts that the hero
foresees his own death, is wounded, and dies. In foreseeing his death,
he makes his sweetheart promise that she will forget him and choose
another if need be. The mother opposes the match, and the girl in the
case is represented as abandoning the hero well before his own
physical wounds have doomed him. It is hardly possible to escape the
conclusion that those wounds were not meant to be fatal without the
contribution of the unhappy love motif. The wounds of the hero are,
in other words, not those of a patriot who dies of what befalls him in
military combat. They are those of a lover forsaken by his psychologi-
