On a foggy afternoon, toward midwinter, John Estridge strolled into
the new Overseas Club, which, still being in process of incubation,
occupied temporary quarters on Madison Avenue.
Officers fresh from abroad and still in uniform predominated; tunics
were gay with service and wound chevrons, citation cords, stars,
crosses, strips of striped ribbon.
There was every sort of head-gear to be seen there, too, from the
jaunty overseas _bonnet de police_, piped in various colours, to the
corded campaign hat and leather-visored barrack-cap.
Few cavalry officers were in evidence, but there were plenty of spurs
glittering everywhere--to keep their owners' heels from slipping off
the desks, as the pleasantry of the moment had it.
* * * * *
Estridge went directly to a telephone booth, and presently got his
connection.
"It's John Estridge, as usual," he said in a bantering tone. "How are
you, Ilse?"
"John! I'm so glad you called me! Thank you so much for the roses!
They're exquisite!--matchless!----"
"Not at all!"
"What?"
"If you think they're matchless, just hold one up beside your cheek
and take a slant at your mirror."
"I thought you were not going to say such things to me!"
"I thought I wasn't."
"Are you alone?" She laughed happily. "Where are you, Jack?"
"At the Overseas Club. I stopped on my way from the hospital."
"Y--es."
A considerable pause, and then Ilse laughed again----a confused, happy
laugh.
"Did you think you'd--come over?" she inquired.
"Shall I?"
"What do _you_ think about it, Jack?"
"I suppose," he said in a humourous voice, "you're afraid of that
tendency which you say I'm beginning to exhibit."
"The tendency to drift?"
"Yes;--toward those perilous rocks you warned me of."
"They _are_ perilous!" she insisted.
"You ought to know," he rejoined; "you're sitting on top of 'em like a
bally Lorelei!"
"If that's your opinion, hadn't you better steer for the open sea,
John?"
"Certainly I'd better. But you look so sweet up there, with your
classical golden hair, that I think I'll risk the rocks."
"Please don't! There's a deadly whirlpool under them. I'm looking down
at it now."
"What do you see at the bottom, Ilse? Human bones?"
"I can't see the bottom. It's all surface, like a shining mirror."
"I'll come over and take a look at it with you."
"I think you'll only see our own faces reflected.... I think you'd
better not come."
"I'll be there in about half an hour," he said gaily.
* * * * *
He sauntered out and on into the body of the club, exchanging with
friends a few words here, a smiling handclasp there; and presently he
seated himself near a window.
For a while he rested his chin on his clenched hand, staring into
space, until a waiter arrived with his order.
He signed the check, drained his glass, and leaned forward again with
both elbows on his knees, twirling his silver-headed stick between
nervous hands.
"After all," he said under his breath, "it's too late, now.... I'm
going to see this thing through."
* * * * *
As he rose to go he caught sight of Jim Shotwell, seated alone by
another window and attempting to read an evening paper by the foggy
light from outside. He walked over to him, fastening his overcoat on
the way. Jim laid aside his paper and gave him a dull glance.
"How are things with you?" inquired Estridge, carelessly.
"All right. Are you walking up town?"
"No."
Jim's sombre eyes rested on the discarded paper, but he did not pick
it up. "It's rotten weather," he said listlessly.
"Have you seen Palla lately?" inquired Estridge, looking down at him
with a certain curiosity.
"No, not lately."
"She's a very busy girl, I hear."
"So I hear."
Estridge seated himself on the arm of a leather chair and began to
pull on his gloves. He said:
"I understand Palla is doing Red Cross and canteen work, besides
organising her celebrated club;--what is it she calls it?--Combat Club
No. 1?"
"I believe so."
"And you haven't seen her lately?"
Shotwell glanced at the fog and shrugged his shoulders: "She's rather
busy--as you say. No, I haven't seen her. Besides, I'm rather out of
my element among the people one runs into at her house. So I simply
don't go any more."
"Palla's parties are always amusing," ventured Estridge.
"Very," said the other, "but her guests keep you guessing."
Estridge smiled: "Because they don't conform to the established scheme
of things?"
"Perhaps. The scheme of things, as it is, suits me."
"But it's interesting to hear other people's views."
"I'm fed up on queer views--and on queer people," said Jim, with
sudden and irritable emphasis. "Why, hang it all, Jack, when a fellow
goes out among apparently well bred, decent people he takes it for
granted that ordinary, matter of course social conventions prevail.
But nobody can guess what notions are seething in the bean of any girl
you talk to at Palla's house!"
Estridge laughed: "What do you care, Jim?"
"Well, I wouldn't care if they all didn't seem so exactly like one's
own sort. Why, to look at them, talk to them, you'd never suppose them
queer! The young girl you take in to dinner usually looks as though
butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. And the chances are that she's all
for socialism, self-determination, trial marriages and free love!
"Hell's bells! I'm no prude. I like to overstep conventions, too. But
this wholesale wrecking of the social structure would be ruinous for a
girl like Palla."
"But Palla doesn't believe in free love."
"She hears it talked about by cracked illuminati."
"Rain on a duck's back, Jim!"
"Rain drowns young ducks."
"You mean all this spouting will end in a deluge?"
"I do. And then look for dead ducks."
"You're not very respectful toward modernism," remarked Estridge,
smiling.
Then Jim broke loose:
"Modernism? You yourself said that all these crazy social notions--crazy
notions in art, literature, music--arise from some sort of physical
degeneration, or from the perversion or checking of normal physical
functions."
"Usually they do----"
"Well," continued Shotwell, "it's mostly due to perversion, in my
opinion. Women have had too much of a hell of a run for their money
during this war. They've broken down all the fences and they're loose
and running all over the world.
"If they'd only kept their fool heads! But no. Every germ in the wind
lodged in their silly brains! Biff. They want sex equality and a pair
of riding breeches! Bang! They kick over the cradle and wreck the
pantry.
"Wifehood? Played out! Motherhood? In the discards! Domestic
partnership?--each sex to its own sphere? Ha-ha! That was all very
well yesterday. But woman as a human incubator and brooder is an
obsolete machine. Why the devil should free and untramelled womanhood
hatch out young?
"If they choose to, casually, all right. But it's purely a matter for
self-determination. If a girl cares to take off her Sam Brown belt and
her puttees long enough to nurse a baby, it's a matter that concerns
her, not humanity at large. Because the social revolution has settled
all such details as personal independence and the same standard for
both sexes. So, _a bas_ Madame Grundy! _A la lanterne_ with the old
regime! No--hang it all, I'm through!"
"Don't you like Palla any more?" inquired Estridge, still laughing.
Jim gave him a singular look: "Yes.... Do you like Ilse Westgard?"
Estridge said coolly: "I am accepting her as she is. I like her that
much."
"Oh. Is that very much?" sneered the other.
"Enough to marry her if she'd have me," replied Estridge pleasantly.
"And she won't do that, I suppose?"
"Not so far."
Jim eyed him sullenly: "Well, I don't accept Palla as she is--or
thinks she is."
"She's sincere."
"I understand that. But no girl can get away with such notions. Where
is it all going to land her? What will she be?"
Estridge quoted: "'It hath not yet appeared what we shall be.'"
Shotwell rose impatiently, and picked up his overcoat: "All I know is
that when two healthy people care for each other it's their
business--their _business_, I repeat--to get together legally and do
the decent thing by the human race."
"Breed?"
"Certainly! Breed legally the finest, healthiest, best of specimens;--and
as many as they can feed and clothe! For if they don't--if we don't--I
mean our own sort--the land will be crawling with the robust get of
all these millions of foreigners, who already have nearly submerged us in
America; and whose spawn will, one day, smother us to death.
"Hang it all, aren't they breeding like vermin now? All yellow dogs
do--all the unfit produce big litters. That's the only thing they ever
do--accumulate progeny.
"And what are we doing?--our sort, I mean? I'll tell you! Our sisters
are having such a good time that they won't marry, if they can avoid
it, until they're too mature to get the best results in children. Our
wives, if they condescend to have any offspring at all, limit the
output to one. Because more than one _might_ damage their beauty.
Hell! If the educated classes are going to practise race suicide and
the Bolsheviki are going to breed like lice, you can figure out the
answer for yourself."
They walked to the foggy street together. Shotwell said bitterly:
"I do care for Palla. I like Ilse. All the women one encounters at
Palla's parties are gay, accomplished, clever, piquant. The men also
are more or less amusing. The conversation is never dull. Everybody
seems to be well bred, sincere, friendly and agreeable. But there's
something lacking. One feels it even before one is enlightened
concerning the ultra-modernism of these admittedly interesting people.
And I'll tell you what it is. Actually, deep in their souls, they
don't believe in themselves.
"Take Palla. She says there is no God--no divinity except in herself.
And I tell you she may think she believes it, but she doesn't.
"And her school-girl creed--Love and Service! Fine. Only there's a
prior law--self-preservation; and another--race preservation! By God,
how are you going to love and serve if girls stop having babies?
"And as for this silly condemnation of the marriage ceremony, merely
because some sanctified Uncle Foozle once inserted the word 'obey' in
it--just because, under the marriage laws, tyranny and cruelty have
been practised--what callow rot!
"Laws can be changed; divorce made simple and non-scandalous as it
should be; all rights safeguarded for the woman; and still have
something legal and recognised by one of those necessary conventions
which make civilisation possible.
"But this irresponsible idea of procedure through mere inclination--this
sauntering through life under no law to safeguard and govern, except
the law of personal preference--that's anarchy! That code spells
demoralisation, degeneracy and disaster!... And the whole damned
thing to begin again--a slow development of the human race, once more,
out of the chaos of utter barbarism."
Estridge, standing there on the sidewalk in the fog, smiled:
"You're very eloquent, Jim. Why don't you say all this to Palla?"
"I did. I told her, too, that the root of the whole thing was
selfishness. And it is. It's a refusal to play the game according to
rule. There are only two sexes and one of 'em is fashioned to bear
young, and the other is fashioned to hustle for mother and kid. You
can't alter that, whether it's fair or not. It's the game as we found
it. The rules were already provided for playing it. The legal father
and mother are supposed to look out for their own legal progeny. And
any alteration of this rule, with a view to irresponsible mating and
turning the offspring over to the community to take care of, would
create an unhuman race, unconscious of the highest form of love--the
love for parents.
"A fine lot we'd be as an incubated race!"
Estridge laughed: "I've got to go," he said, "And, if you care for
Palla as you say you do, you oughtn't to leave her entirely alone with
her circle of modernist friends. Stick around! It may make you mad,
but if she likes you, at least she won't commit an indiscretion with
anybody else."
"I wish I could find my own sort as amusing," said Jim, naively. "I've
been going about recently--dances, dinners, theatres--but I can't seem
to keep my mind off Palla."
Estridge said: "If you'd give your sense of humour half a chance you'd
be all right. You take yourself too solemnly. You let Palla scare you.
That's not the way. The thing to do is to have a jolly time with her,
with them all. Accept her as she thinks she is. There's no damage done
yet. Time enough to throw fits if she takes the bit and bolts----"
He extended his hand, cordially but impatiently:
"You remember I once said that girl ought to be married and have
children? If you do the marrying part she's likely to do the rest very
handsomely. And it will be the making of her."
Jim held on to his hand:
"Tell me what to do, Jack. She isn't in love with me. And she wouldn't
submit to a legal ceremony if she were. You invoke my sense of humour.
I'm willing to give it an airing, only I can't see anything funny in
this business."
"It _is_ funny! Palla's funny, but doesn't know it. You're funny!
They're all funny--unintentionally. But their motives are tragically
immaculate. So stick around and have a good time with Palla until
there's really something to scare you."
"And then?"
"How the devil do I know? It's up to you, of course, what you do about
it."
He laughed and strode away through the fog.
* * * * *
It had seemed to Jim a long time since he had seen Palla. It wasn't
very long. And in all that interminable time he had not once called
her up on the telephone--had not even written her a single line. Nor
had she written to him.
He had gone about his social business in his own circle, much to his
mother's content. He had seen quite a good deal of Elorn Sharrow; was
comfortably back on the old, agreeable footing; tried desperately to
enjoy it; pretended that he did.
But the days were long in the office; the evenings longer, wherever he
happened to be; and the nights, alas! were becoming interminable, now,
because he slept badly, and the grey winter daylight found him
unrefreshed.
Which, recently, had given him a slightly battered appearance,
commented on jestingly by young rakes and old sports at the Patroon's
Club, and also observed by his mother with gentle concern.
"Don't overdo it, Jim," she cautioned him, meaning dances that ended
with breakfasts and that sort of thing. But her real concern was
vaguer than that--deeper, perhaps. And sometimes she remembered the
girl in black.
Lately, however, that anxiety had been almost entirely allayed. And
her comparative peace of mind had come about in an unexpected manner.
For, one morning, entering the local Red Cross quarters, where for
several hours she was accustomed to sew, she encountered Mrs.
Speedwell and her lively daughter, Connie--her gossiping informants
concerning her son's appearance at Delmonico's with the mysterious
girl in black.
"Well, what do you suppose, Helen?" said Mrs. Speedwell, mischievously.
"Jim's pretty mystery in black is here!"
"Here?" repeated Mrs. Shotwell, flushing and looking around her at the
rows of prophylactic ladies, all sewing madly side by side.
"Yes, and she's prettier even than I thought her in Delmonico's,"
remarked Connie. "Her name is Palla Dumont, and she's a friend of
Leila Vance."
* * * * *
During the morning, Mrs. Shotwell found it convenient to speak to
Leila Vance; and they exchanged a pleasant word or two--merely the
amiable civilities of two women who recognise each other socially as
well as personally.
And it happened in that way, a few days later, that Helen Shotwell met
this pretty friend of Leila Vance--Palla Dumont--the girl in black.
And Palla had looked up from her work with her engaging smile, saying:
"I know your son, Mrs. Shotwell. Is he quite well? I haven't seen him
for such a long time."
And instantly the invisible antennae of these two women became busy
exploring, probing, searching, and recognising in each other all that
remains forever incomprehensible to man.
For Palla somehow understood that Jim had never spoken of her to his
mother; and yet that his mother had heard of her friendship with her
son.
And Helen knew that Palla was quietly aware of this, and that the
girl's equanimity remained undisturbed.
Only people quite sure of themselves preserved serenity under the
merciless exploration of the invisible feminine antennae. And it was
evident that the girl in black had nothing to conceal from her in
regard to her only son--whatever that same son might think he ought to
make an effort to conceal from his mother.
To herself Helen thought: "Jim has had his wings singed, and has fled
the candle."
To Palla she said: "Mrs. Vance tells me such interesting stories of
your experiences in Russia. Really, it's like a charming romance--your
friendship for the poor little Grand Duchess."
"A tragic one," said Palla in a voice so even that Helen presently
lifted her eyes from her sewing to read in her expression something
more than the mere words that this young girl had uttered. And saw a
still, pale face, sensitive and very lovely; and the needle flying
over a bandage no whiter than the hand that held it.
"It was a great shock to you--her death," said Helen.
"Yes."
"And--you were there at the time! How dreadful!"
Palla lifted her brown eyes: "I can't talk about it yet," she said so
simply that Helen's sixth sense, always alert for information from the
busy, invisible antennae, suddenly became convinced that there were no
more hidden depths to explore--no motives to suspect, no pretense to
expose.
Day after day she chose to seat herself between Palla and Leila Vance;
and the girl began to fascinate her.
There was no effort to please on Palla's part, other than that natural
one born of sweet-tempered consideration for everybody. There seemed
to be no pretence, no pose.
Such untroubled frankness, such unconscious candour were rather
difficult to believe in, yet Helen was now convinced that in Palla
these phenomena were quite genuine. And she began to understand more
clearly, as the week wore on, why her son might have had a hard time
of it with Palla Dumont before he returned to more familiar pastures,
where camouflage and not candour was the rule in the gay and endless
game of blind-man's buff.
"This girl," thought Helen Shotwell to herself, "could easily have
taken Jim away from Elorn Sharrow had she chosen to do so. There is no
doubt about her charm and her goodness. She certainly is a most
unusual girl."
But she did not say this to her only son. She did not even tell him
that she had met his girl in black. And Palla had not informed him;
she knew that; because the girl herself had told her that she had not
seen Jim for "a long, long time." It really was not nearly as long as
Palla seemed to consider it.
Helen lunched with Leila Vance one day. The former spoke pleasantly of
Palla.
"She's such a darling," said Mrs. Vance, "but the child worries me."
"Why?"
"Well, she's absorbed some ultra-modern Russian notions--socialistic
ones--rather shockingly radical. Can you imagine it in a girl who
began her novitiate as a Carmelite nun?"
Helen said: "She does not seem to have a tendency toward extremes."
"She has. That awful affair in Russia seemed to shock her from one
extreme to another. It's a long way from the cloister to the radical
rostrum."
"She spoke of this new Combat Club."
"She organised it," said Leila. "They have a hall where they invite
public discussion of social questions three nights a week. The other
three nights, a rival and very red club rents the hall and howls for
anarchy and blood."
"Isn't it strange?" said Helen. "One can not imagine such a girl
devoting herself to radical propaganda."
"Too radical," said Leila. "I'm keeping an uneasy eye on that very
wilful and wrong-headed child. Why, my dear, she has the most
fastidious, the sweetest, the most chaste mind, and yet the things she
calmly discusses would make your hair curl."
"For example?" inquired Helen, astonished.
"Well, for example, they've all concluded that it's time to strip poor
old civilisation of her tinsel customs, thread-worn conventions,
polite legends, and pleasant falsehoods.
"All laws are silly. Everybody is to do as they please, conforming
only to the universal law of Love and Service. Do you see where that
would lead some of those pretty hot-heads?"
"Good heavens, I should think so!"
"Of course. But they can't seem to understand that the unscrupulous
are certain to exploit them--that the most honest motives--the
purest--invite that certain disaster consequent on social irregularities.
"Palla, so far, is all hot-headed enthusiast--hot-hearted theorist.
But I remember that she did take the white veil once. And, as I tell
you, I shall try to keep her within range of my uneasy vision.
Because," she added, "she's really a perfect darling."
"She is a most attractive girl," said Helen slowly; "but I think she'd
be more attractive still if she were happily married."
"And had children."
Their eyes met, unsmilingly, yet in silent accord.
* * * * *
Their respective cars awaited them at the Ritz and took them in
different directions. But all the afternoon Helen Shotwell's mind was
occupied with what she now knew of Palla Dumont. And she realised that
she wished the girl were back in Russia in spite of all her charm and
fascination--yes, on account of it.
Because this lovely, burning asteroid might easily cross the narrow
orbit through which her own social world spun peacefully in its
orderly progress amid that metropolitan galaxy called Society.
Leila Vance was part of that galaxy. So was her own and only son.
Wandering meteors that burnt so prettily might yet do damage.
For Helen, having known this girl, found it not any too easy to
believe that her son could have relinquished her completely in so
disturbingly brief a time.
Had she been a young man she knew that she would not have done so.
And, knowing it, she was troubled.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, her only son was troubled, too, as he walked slowly
homeward through the winter fog.
And by the time he was climbing his front steps he had concluded to
accept this girl as she was--or thought she was--to pull no more long
faces or sour faces, but to go back to her, resolutely determined to
enjoy her friendship and her friends too; and give his long
incarcerated sense of humour an airing, even if he suffered acutely
while it revelled.