He took her hand.
"So you left him," he smiled. They sat in silence. He would wait for her
to take the lead. She began talking as the park grew darker.
"I didn't intend coming," she said, "because I ... I know what you
want."
Her voice quivered and her fingers tightened over his hand.
"But I came to tell you ... I can't. I'm not being foolish or anything.
But--it isn't worth it."
He looked at her and wondered. The invitation was clear. He must begin
pleading now and making love. He hesitated because she had started
crying. Tears were on her cheeks.
She was remembering Basine.
"Don't," he whispered. "I wouldn't ask you to do anything like that.
We've talked, of course. But that was just talk. Ruth, I love you."
"But love doesn't mean anything to you," she answered.
And the answer to that was marriage. He hesitated. Tears always stirred
him. Now it was dark. He placed an arm around her. The stiffening of her
body decided him.
"We'll get married," he said.
The assurance did not delight her. Marriage was something foreign. But
she stood up when he asked her to and followed him. She walked along
thinking of herself as if there were two Ruths. One was walking with a
man--where? The other was thinking about things. But there was little to
think about. If it had been Basine instead of this other, it would have
been nicer. Basine was someone she knew. Paul was a stranger. But Basine
had played with her. He had said nothing when she went away. Merely
looked at her and nodded. His success had gone to his head. He didn't
want her, even to flirt with anymore. He was too busy....
She put her arms around the stranger and wept.
It was minor tragedy. There was nothing to weep about. Nobody cared what
happened to her. If there had been somebody who cared she would never
have met him.
Schroder watched her and sighed.
"If you don't love me," he said.
"It's not that," she answered. She was forgetting about her tears. Her
close presence to him was slowly preoccupying her. He loved her. And
they would be married. It didn't matter much. But the idea made it a
little easier. She kissed him, timidly at first. And then with passion.
Schroder grimaced inwardly. It was dark and she couldn't see his eyes.
They were worried. He had been in love for a few minutes in the park. He
would have liked to remain in love. He sat before the window thinking,
Why did women insist on climaxes. Their arguments made it necessary for
men to plead. The culmination was a sort of logical gesture.
He walked toward her. He would take her hand and make love. He felt sad
and making love out of sadness was always an interesting diversion.
"Ruth," he whispered, "do you love me?"
She answered by embracing him.
"Always the same," he murmured to himself, "it's no use."
22
The children were asleep and Henrietta was reading. Basine in his
slippers and smoking-jacket sat unoccupied. Their new house worried him.
He had not yet familiarized himself with its shadows.
He smiled as he watched his wife. He was going to run for Senator but
that made no difference to her. He was a husband to her, and everything
else was incidental. He thought of Ruth. Her name no longer depressed
him. During the first three or four months that followed her absence he
had felt as if his career had ended. There was nobody to succeed for any
more. Then through Doris he had learned that she was to marry Schroder.
The information had cured him. He had been despising himself for letting
her go. Now he was able to pretend that he had been forced by her virtue
to relinquish her. It would have been a dastardly thing to do--ruin her
and prevent her from marrying and living a decent life. Her marrying
vindicated his own virtue. He was able to think that he had done the
right thing. Not only that, but he had done the only thing possible. She
had fled from him because he was a married man. Then, too, she probably
didn't love Schroder. Not as she had loved him. She was marrying him
broken-heartedly. He sometimes played with this notion. It pleased him.
His sadness at the thought of her in another man's arms was mitigated by
the two-fold thought that her heart was broken and that she was in
reality embracing marriage and not a man.
He no longer desired her. He was too busy for one thing. Still, things
were different. She had been an inspiration. Now he went on with his
plans and his climb without feeling the excitement that had filled him
during their year together. There was no one in front of whom to pose.
This made posing a rather thankless business. And he became practical in
his thoughts, less dramatic in his lies.
Henrietta had put aside her paper and was looking at him.
"Are you tired?" she asked.
He shook his head. He began to think about her. What did she do all day?
Since Ruth had left, his desire to leave his wife had vanished. He
paused, confused. She was weeping.
"What's the matter?" he asked. She lowered her head.
"Nothing," she said.
A vivid memory hurt him. He remembered kissing her for a first time in
his mother's kitchen years ago. It seemed now that she had been alive
and beautiful that evening. That was gone.
"Has anything happened," he asked softly.
Her head shook. He came to her side and looked at her. He felt helpless.
What was there to make her cry?
"I don't know, George," she said as if answering his silent question.
"Please forgive me. I just started to cry for nothing."
"Worried about something?" he pressed. He felt guilty. She was crying
because of the things he had done. But what had he done? Nothing wrong.
He had put the wrong things out of his life. And for her sake. Why
should she weep about that, then? He was the one to weep. And she had
her children. Her father was alive. He remained silent, recounting what
he tried to consider anti-weeping reasons.
"Nothing, George," she answered. "I'm ... I'm just getting old."
He frowned and turned away.
Later when they lay in bed he took her in his arms. She had apparently
forgotten about her tears and their curious explanation. But he began to
talk to her.
"Old," he whispered, "you're not getting old. Don't be silly. At least
no more than I am. I'm older than you."
He held her close to him and his mind embraced a memory. This was not
his wife he held, but someone else. A vivacious, happy girl ten years
ago. No, more than that. Almost fourteen years ago. He lay remembering
another Henrietta--a charming, delightful child. He had never been in
love with her. This he knew. But the knowledge had slowly died. When he
embraced her at night a dream obscured his memory. The dream was that he
had once loved her, that she had once been beautiful, that his heart had
once sung with desire for her.
He played with this dream. It was a make-believe that saddened him. Yet
it made the moment more tolerable. Sometimes it even brought a curious
happiness. His dream would pretend that the scrawny figure he was
holding had once filled him with ecstasies. His dream would whisper to
him that he had once idolized her and that once ... once. He would lie
editing his sterile memories of her into glowing once-upon-a-times. And
when his kisses sought her cold lips it would be to this dream-Henrietta
they gave themselves, a Henrietta who had never been. It was sad to
pretend in this way that his great love had died and that his beautiful
one had faded. But it was not as sad as to remember when he kissed her
that there had never been anything.
He felt tired when he left the house the next morning. The business of
preening for the senatorial race annoyed him. The goal lured but the
details to be managed were aggravating.
He started as he opened the door of his chambers. Ruth! He stood looking
at her without words. She was pale and there was something curious about
her. She didn't look the same.
"You look surprised," she smiled. He noticed how spiritless she was.
"But ... you don't mind my coming here, do you. I've been trying to get
you."
She turned her eyes away. He had finally discovered the change, a
physical one.
"Well," he exclaimed, "I hadn't heard the good news. How's Paul."
So she was married. And had kept it secret. He smiled. He remembered
other scenes in the room. The doors locked. Her arms around him. All
that was over now. Before her motherhood, even the memory of it seemed
less certain.
"There is no good news," she was saying. "I've come to see if you can
help me."
They sat down. Basine nodded. Money. Poor girl. Schroder was always an
ass about things.
"He's gone away," she went on. "And ... and I'd like to locate him."
"Who?"
"Paul."
She covered her face. So he had deserted her. And she had come back to
him. A momentary excitement entered his thought. But he frowned
immediately. It was distasteful to think of what might have been if ...
not for this.
An amazement came into his eyes. He stared at her as she talked. She had
been ruined by Schroder and he had never married her. And when she had
refused medical interference he had calmly left the city. He listened
blankly and could think of nothing to say.
"Oh George, you must help me."
Help her! He must help her! After she had lived with this man for
months, giving herself to him! He stood up and walked down the room. It
was like he used to do, pace up and down in front of her.
He wanted to talk but he found it hard. A rage was coming into his mind
that obscured his words. The rage continued. Pausing in the center of
the room Basine began to swear. His voice had grown high pitched.
"Damn!" he shouted at her, "and you come to me. Me! You bring your
filthy sins to me! Damn his dirty soul! Yes, you're fine, you are!
Leaving me to go with that chippy-chaser. I thought ... I thought you
were somebody."
He stopped, his fist in the air. She was walking away.
"Ruth," he called after her, "listen, wait a minute."
The door closed after her. Basine stood watching the door. She would
open it and come back. But the door remained shut. He seated himself at
his desk. Moments passed and he was surprised to wake up and hear
himself mumbling. "The dirty skunk! I'll wring his neck!"
She had given herself to Schroder! Not married him.... The part he had
played in her ruin forced itself with a nauseating insistency into
Basine's mind. His memories seized him. He struggled, but the things he
knew leaped out of hiding-places and assaulted him. She had loved him.
And he had loved her. Life had seemed marvelous with her close to him.
His career, his day, its simplest detail, had been colored with
delicious excitement. But he had been afraid to reach out and take what
he wanted. It would have meant success, happiness and something
else--the word beauty withheld itself--it would have meant these things.
But he had feared possession. He had let her go away after kissing her
and telling her that he loved her. So she had gone walking in the
street and fallen into the arms of the first man she met. It was plain.
Basine writhed under triumphant accusations. A torment filled him. He
must escape from the accusations He pried himself away from his thoughts
and took his place on the bench. Other people's troubles again.
Disputes, wrangles, testimonies--his ears listened mechanically. Lawyers
were pleading with him. Witnesses were stammering. He sat with a scowl
and hunched forward in his chair. His lean face thrust itself at the
courtroom.
Thoughts too intolerable for his attention whirled sickeningly in a
background. Pictures of Ruth in the man's arms, of her surrender, of the
intimacies of their illicit affair forced themselves upon him. He loved
her. "Oh, damn him," sang itself darkly through his heart.
There was one mocking intruder that raised a vociferous head. "You might
have had her. Not he. She might have been yours if you hadn't been
afraid." It was this that nauseated most. Not Schroder's villainy, but
his own cowardice. He had lost through cowardice.
The day dragged itself along. He had recovered in part the rage which
protected him from the intolerable memories. When he left the courtroom
it was with a viciousness in his step. His feet stamped down as he
walked, as if they were attacking the pavements. He entered a saloon
several blocks from the City Hall.
The place was almost deserted. A few businesslike looking men were
grouped before the long bar. They were laughing. Basine passed them and
a voice called his name. He turned and saw a familiar face in one of
the small booths against the wall. It was Levine, the newspaperman.
"Hello, Judge. Come on over and sit down."
Basine narrowed his eyes. The man was partially drunk. His drawn face,
usually pale, was flushed and his sneering black eyes were bloodshot. He
sat down opposite Levine with a greeting. A waiter brought drinks.
"What's up, Judge, you seem rather low," Levine laughed quietly. "The
world been falling on your nose? Ha, have another. Here, waiter...."
They sat drinking, the newspaperman lost in a mysterious excitement that
gathered in his voice. The excitement soothed Basine. The drinks brought
a haze into his mind. He became aware that the man was talking about his
sister. He was leaning forward, a black forelock over his bloodshot eye,
his arm thrown out on the table, and talking in a languorous voice about
Doris.
"Drowning my troubles, judge," he was saying. "It's easier to drink
yourself into forgetfulness than to lie yourself into forgetfulness, eh?
And besides you grow sick of lying, eh. Nobody lies more than me, and I
know, I know. But it ain't my fault--she's gone mad about him. You know
him--Lindstrum, the poet. Been mad about him for years. And it gets
worse ... that's all that's the matter with her. He ran away years ago
and she's gotten a phobia about people. Because he's the people's poet.
Ha, she's told me about you, George. Got an idea of making this man
Lindstrum sick by showing him how rotten people are. And using you. See?
But where do I come in? Nowhere ... nowhere. Just gabbing for years and
I don't come in nowhere.... Get me? This damn newspaper drool has eaten
into me.... She's the only one I wanted. But I don't come in, see? She's
mad ... gone mad...."
Basine's thought avoided the man's words. He sat with a blissful
vacuity. They drank till it grew night. Basine, as if recalling himself,
walked out. The newspaperman lay across the table, his head asleep on
his arm.
The night was cool. A curious impulse to let go came to Basine. He would
go somewhere and find women and noise. He walked along thinking about
this. When he had walked for an hour the impulse was gone. The haze was
slipping from him. He recalled things Levine had said. Something about
Lindstrum, the poet. His mind played with Lindstrum. He had seen
him--where? Oh yes, long ago. That was before he'd become famous. Now he
was a great poet. Hell with everything.... Get the senatorship and let
things slide.
He walked along toward his home. Henrietta would be asleep. He sighed.
The night was cool. Everything all right in the morning. Now, everything
all wrong. But in the morning--
His stride quickened. He felt half asleep and as he moved over the
deserted pavement he began mumbling, "I love you, George, I love
you...."
23
Doris was ill. The doctor had telephoned her mother and Mrs. Basine was
sitting beside the bed holding Doris' hand. A man she remembered vaguely
was standing in a corner of the room smoking. It was the poet,
Lindstrum, who was once a friend of Doris. He had been there when she
arrived, standing by the window and smoking while the doctor was fixing
an ice pack on Doris' head.
The doctor had been unable to make a diagnosis. She had a fever but they
would have to wait for more definite symptoms.
As the twilight filled the studio, Mrs. Basine grew frightened. She
thought at moments Doris was dead, she lay so still. She watched the
half-closed eyes anxiously. Perhaps Doris would die. And George was in
Washington. She had telegraphed but he couldn't arrive till the next
day. She sat wondering about her daughter. She remembered her as a
child, then as a girl.
"Changes, changes," she sighed. Changes that excited one, but all they
did was bring one nearer to this. She was thinking of death.
"How do you feel now, Doris?"
No answer. The burning eyes continued to stare, the hand she held
remained limp and dry in her fingers. Perhaps it was nothing serious.
Merely a fever. She sat nodding her head at her thoughts. She thought of
how her children had grown up and gone away. Fanny, George, Doris,
Aubrey, Henrietta, Mrs. Gilchrist, Judge Smith and the grandchildren.
These were the names of her family. They were part of her. Yet while the
rest of the world grew more and more familiar they grew more and more
strange.
"Does it pain you anywhere, Doris?"
No answer. Poor little Doris. She stroked her face. Life had used her
differently. She felt this. She knew nothing of what Doris had done or
dreamed, but the staring eyes frightened her and she understood.
George frequently called her queer. Yet George was, in a way, proud of
her. He used to seek Doris out. And many people had talked of her as a
very unusual young woman. But life had used her curiously, not like
other girls. Perhaps it was a man. She turned toward the figure in the
corner. He was standing holding a pipe to his mouth. What if it was a
man? Scandal. Mrs. Basine sighed. What was scandal? It was only a way of
looking at facts. She would take her home with her. Poor little Doris
living alone in this place and sitting here night after night dreaming
of things. That was sad.
"Listen dear, do you want something?"
No answer. The doctor said he would be back after dinner and bring a
nurse. She would ask him if Doris could be moved and then take her home.
It was growing darker in the room. Someone was knocking. She opened the
door. It was another man. He came in and then paused.
"Is Doris ill?" he asked.
Mrs. Basine nodded.
"I am her mother," she said.
Levine looked at her and introduced himself.
"You know Mr. Lindstrum," she added. Levine stared at the poet in the
shadows and said, "Yes, I know him."
"How do you do," said Lindstrum slowly.
Doris reached her hand up as Levine approached the bed. He took it and
she whispered, "Don't go away." She tried to rise.
"You mustn't dear," her mother cautioned.
"Oh yes," Doris voice appeared to be growing stronger. "I want to sit
up. Help me, Max." He arranged the pillows. The ice-pack fell from her
head. She smiled.
"You haven't eaten anything, mother," she added. "Please, there's a
restaurant around the corner."
Mrs. Basine stood up. It might be better to go away for a while. Despite
her daughter's momentary recovery her fears had increased. She felt
something curious about Doris. But perhaps it was just the fever. She
left the room with a final glance at the flushed face. Doris had always
been strange, but there was something disturbing about her now. Her
daughter's eyes watching her opening the door, chilled her heart
suddenly. She held herself from rushing to her side and taking her in
her arms. She didn't know why, but she was certain there was something
strange about Doris. She walked into the hall. Yes, she was certain
something terrible was going to happen.
When the door closed Doris sat against the pillows, her white face
turned toward Lindstrum in the shadows.
"Did you hear we were going to war, Lief?" she asked. Behind his pipe in
the shadows the grey faced figure of Lindstrum nodded.
"George is a Senator," she added. "He's going to declare war, Lief. You
remember my brother George."
"Doris, you mustn't," Levine whispered. "Lie back, please."
She covered her face and her body shuddered.
"The filthy ones are going to war. Come closer, Lief. I want to see
you."
Lindstrum approached the bed. Doris turned to Levine.
"The pack is going to war. Did you see their eyes shining in the street,
and their mouths gloating? A new terror, eh?"
She threw her hands into her hair and her eyes centered suddenly on
Lindstrum. He was standing over her. Doris began to laugh and to climb
out of bed. She stood up barefooted in her night gown, her black hair
down and pointed out of the window.
"Don't." Levine took her hand. "You'll catch cold."
Her eyes were lustrous. Lindstrum caught her in his arms. She had leaned
toward him as if she were falling. Her body was vividly hot. He held her
and she began to laugh.
"Better lie down," he whispered.
The laugh grew louder. Her hand with its fingers extended and pointing,
wavered toward the window. She tried to talk but the laughter in her
throat prevented. She hung loosely in his arms, laughing and waving her
hands.
"The window," she gasped, "look out and see!"
"We had better get her into bed," Levine whispered. Lindstrum nodded.
But Doris pulled herself from his hold. She stumbled and fell to her
knees before the window. The room was dark and the street lights threw a
faint glare over her face. She knelt with her hands to her neck and her
eyes swinging.
"Look out!" cried Levine. Doris screamed.
"The beast ... the beast!"
She had thrown herself forward with the shriek but Lindstrum's hands
had caught her. The window glass broke.
The two men carried her into the bed. Her head fell back on the pillow.
She lay with her eyes open. Lindstrum sat leaning over her.
"Doris," he whispered. Her eyes regarded him without recognition.
"It's happened," muttered Levine. Lindstrum's hand passed over her
forehead and slipped down the loose hair.
"The fever's gone," he said softly. "Yes," he repeated, "the fever's
gone now."
Mrs. Basine returned. Doris, her eyes open, was lying as if dead. Her
mother rushed to the bed crying her name. She was breathing. The fever
was gone. Her body was almost cool.
"She was out of her head for a while," Lindstrum whispered.
"Talk to me please, dearest."
Doris sighed and looked around. They made no move as she sat up.
She left the bed and returned from a closet with a wrap over her
nightgown. They watched her until her eyes turned toward
them--expressionless, dead eyes. Mrs. Basine clasped her hands together
and trembled.
"We must call the doctor at once," she whispered. She went to the
telephone. Doris sat down in a chair near the window. Her head sank and
she gazed out. The expressionless eyes grew clouded. Tears were coming
out. She sat weeping without sound while her mother telephoned.
"Something has happened to Doris," Mrs. Basine whispered into the
telephone, "please hurry, something has happened to her...."
"Good-bye, Doris," Lindstrum spoke.
The white face of the girl remained without movement. She was staring
out the window, a lifeless figure, weeping. He approached her and
watched her tears.
Outside, he walked with his head down, through the streets.
"She knew it was going to happen," he murmured to himself, "and she
wanted to see me again before it did." His heart felt heavy. Doris with
her dead eyes weeping. Ah, a long sigh. Hard to remember things that had
been.
"Knock 'em over," he whispered aloud. "Make something ... make
something." Deep inside him were hands that pantomimed despair. People
in the streets. War was coming to them. "Huh," he said slowly, "they
tore her heart out." Everybody knew him. Everybody knew the name
Lindstrum. It was the name of a great poet. When he was dead Lindstrum
would stay alive. "Huh," he whispered, "I don't know.... Sing to them.
Yes...."
His teeth bit into the pipe stem. Tears came from his eyes. He walked
along in the night snarling with his lips parted, and weeping.
24
The war was a noisy guest. People shook hands with it. It sat down in
their little rooms. It's voice was a brass band that drowned their
troubles. Basine found a curious friend in the war.
Changes had come to him in the days that followed the scene with Ruth.
He grew cold. His heart was indifferent. His victory in the election
had sent him to bed without joy.
There was no longer an inner Basine and an outer Basine. He had fought
his way into the current of events and he was content to let them move
him. They made him Senator. They moved him to Washington, provided new
scenes for him, new faces. He heard of his sister's collapse without
sorrow. She had become crazy. To be expected, of course, to be expected,
he said to himself one evening as he sat writing a letter of sympathy to
his mother.
The thing that had happened to Basine had been the result of a
confusion. He found himself at forty robbed of life. Despair, hatred,
disgust--these things were left. He turned his back on them. They were a
company of emotions too difficult to play with. It was no longer
possible to lie. Ruth, Schroder, Henrietta, love, hope, intrigue grew
mixed up. He emerged from himself and walked away from himself like an
aggrieved and dignified guest.
He sometimes remembered himself--a distant Basine. A keen-faced one with
the feel of leadership in his heart. A mind that was alive behind its
words. He had done and thought many things. But now he had gone away. He
was silent. The day was no longer a challenge. The change carried its
reward. It seemed to bring him closer to people. At least he found a
certain charm in talking and listening that had not existed before.
He gave himself no thought. He was successful and that was enough. At
times he sat in his new quarters in Washington reading stray items in
the newspapers and reciting to himself his achievements. He found
pleasing identification in the honors he had achieved.
His political friends talked among themselves. They recalled that Basine
had once been a man of promise, a man alive with energies. And now he
was like the others in the party--an amiable fuddy-duddy. They recalled
the sensational figure he had made a few years ago in the Vice
Investigation. This seemed to have been the climax of Basine.
But the war arrived and the new Senator began to emerge. The country
became filled with mediocrities struggling to utilize the war as a
pedestal. The call had gone out for heroes and the elocutionists rushed
forward.
The psychology of the day, however, was a bit too involved for these
aspirants. The body politic of the nation found itself betrayed by its
own platitudes. A moral frenzy began to animate the horizon. But it was
the frenzy of an idea that had escaped control; an idea grown too huge
and luminous to direct any longer. The idealization of itself before
which the crowd had worshipped became now a Frankenstein. The virtues of
America had gone to war. And the nation looked on, aghast and
uncomprehending. The flattering and grandiose image of itself that the
_bete populaire_ had been creating in its law books, text books, and
hymnals had suddenly stepped from its complicated mirror and was
marching like a Mad Hatter to the front. A swarm of guides and
interpreters had leaped to its side. They danced around it chanting its
nobilities, proclaiming its grandeur. The spirit of Democracy, the
Rights of Man, the One and Only God--the Golden Rule, the Thou Shalt
Nots, the Seven Virtues, the Mann Act, the Hatred for All Variants of
Evil,--the mythical incarnation of these and kindred illusions--the
Idealization--was off for the front.
The confusion arose when the nation found itself attached as if by some
gruesome umbilical cord to this crazed Idealization, off with a Tin
Sword on its shoulder. And it must follow this Virtue-snorting monster.
It must lie down in trenches in behalf of a Fairy Tale with which it had
been shrewdly deceiving itself for a century.
But while the elocutionists fumbling for pedestals were exhorting the
nation to hoist itself by its boot-straps, to become overnight a
belligerent hierarchy around its God, there were others whose spirit
raised an authentic battle shout. One of these was Basine.
He appeared to return to himself. The Basine he had walked away from
raised itself amid the disgusts and hatreds in which it had lain
abandoned. A rage gathered in his voice. Eloquence and flashing eyes
were his. The amiable fuddy-duddy playing little politics in Washington
became a gentleman of war.
The horizon bristled with gentlemen of war. But the terrified crowd
casting about for leaders, as the draft shovelled it toward the
trenches, eyed them with suspicion. There must be authentic gentlemen of
war--men above suspicion. Men maddened with a desire to fight and
destroy were wanted. Basine was one of these. His tirades against the
enemy left nothing in doubt. They were not concerned with idealisms. The
enemy must be destroyed, he began to cry, or else it would destroy
civilization.
Huns, he cried, vandals and scoundrels. Gorillas, demons, soulless
monsters. His phrases drew frightful caricatures of the enemy. His
orations were among the few that stirred terror. The Germans were not
enemies of an ideal--not a rabble of Nietzsches at theological grips
with a rabble of Christs. They were Huns, said Basine, barbarians,
fiends, hacking children to pieces, pillaging, raping, destroying.
This was a language the nation understood. It contained in it the
inspiration to heroism and sacrifice. Out of it arose the grisly cartoon
which awakened fear. Terrified by the possibilities of Hun domination
and massacres, the crowd patriotically bared its bosom to the lesser
horror--war. It marched forth behind its idiot Idealization not to
defend that absurdity but to save itself from the clutches of massacring
savages.
The energies which came to life abruptly in Basine focused into a
strange passion against the Germans. He was vicious, intolerant,
unscrupulous in his denunciations. This established him instantly as a
leader.
The crowd, casting about for leaders, seized upon men more terrified
than themselves. And upon these abject ones who raved and howled from
the pulpit, stage and press, they heaped rewards and canonizations.
There was one phase of Basine's hatred that offered a curious
explanation. From the beginning he devoted himself to describing the
hideous immorality of the Huns. He loaned himself passionately to all
rumors celebrating the wholesale rape of women committed by the invaders
of Belgium. Deportations, well-poisonings, child-murders figured
extensively in his eloquence. But gradually he appeared to concentrate
upon what he called the ultimate horror--"fair Europe overrun by this
horde of seducers and immoral blackguards." Schroder was a German.
The war rehabilitated Basine. It enabled him to destroy Schroder. The
complicated underworld of hate, disgust, disillusion which his ludicrous
renunciation of Ruth and her subsequent betrayal by Schroder had created
in him, was the arsenal from which he armed himself for war.
He had lapsed into a sterile and amiable Basine in order to escape from
emotions become too intolerable and too dangerous to utilize. The murder
of Schroder would not have restored him. The return of the woman he
still loved would have been equally futile. Life had become too
intolerable for Basine to face and adjust. He had permitted himself
convenient burial.
On the night he had gotten drunk with the newspaperman, Basine saw
himself as he was--a creature misshapen and humorous--and he had buried
the vision and fled from it. To sit contemplating an inner self become a
grotesque cripple was intolerable. He sought for a brief space to
transfer his self-loathing to Schroder but Schroder, the man, was too
small to contain it. Schroder, the war, however, was another matter.
Basine unlocked himself, exhumed himself, and came forth with a yell in
his throat. The German army was five million Schroders. He hurled
himself at them. He was happy in his rage. A sincerity hypnotized him.
The Germans were not only five million Schroders. They were also the
incarnated nauseas and despairs of Basine. Schroder, the man, had become
for him, illogically but soothingly, the cause of everything that had
become misshapen and humorous inside him. Schroder, the man, was the
sand in which Basine, the ostrich, buried his head. Now Schroder, the
Germans, Schroder, the World War, Schroder, the rape of Belgium, the
devastation of France, offered a more hospitable grave for the misshapen
and humorous image of himself. To destroy the Germans became for Basine
synonymous with destroying the things inside himself from which he had
fled helplessly. The destruction of these things consisted of giving
them outlet, of giving them voice. His hatreds, despairs and
disillusions arose and spat themselves upon the Germans. The process
cleansed and invigorated him and launched him before the public as a
leader to be trusted, a hero to venerate during its dark hour.
25
The company assembled in his mother's home greeted Basine with
excitement. He had stopped over during a tour in behalf of the Liberty
Loan. Mrs. Basine had persuaded him to attend a function in his honor.
He was late. They were waiting dinner for him.
When he entered, a sense of great affairs, of world disturbances came
into the room with him. At the table the talk centered around him. He
was the superior patriot. Questions were fired at him--when would the
war end, what was the real secret of this and that and did he know what
was behind the latest note from the President, and when was the German
offensive due? He answered ambiguously, offering no information and
exciting his audience by his reticence.
Aubrey Gilchrist, who had held the floor before the Senator's arrival,
listened eagerly to his brother-in-law. Aubrey's patriotism was a bond
between them. But it was of a different quality. Aubrey's patriotism was
founded on the fact that America was the most virtuous nation in the
world. He devoted himself to a campaign among his friends and had even
spoken publicly a number of times. In his talk he grew eloquent over the
moral grandeur of his country and hailed the altruism and honesty of his
countrymen as a light that illumined the world.
Aubrey had overcome his impulse to publish his father's manuscript under
his own name. His fears had finally triumphed. He had utilized his
decision in a curious way. For months after determining not to commit
the imposture he had discussed the decision among his friends.
"I worked a number of years on it," he explained simply, "but on reading
it over I feel that it's not the thing to be given the public. It's a
bit too Rabelaisian and unrestrained. Among gentlemen, yes. But when one
thinks of young men and women reading such things one hesitates. I feel
too that I can do better. Perhaps in another year or so I'll finish
something more worthy."
This explanation had given him a pleasurable emotion. It had coincided
with the inner Aubrey--the Isaiah who thundered in secret. He had gone
about elated with the knowledge of his honesty--not only the honesty of
refraining from the imposture but the honesty of sparing the public a
work likely to undermine its morals. With the advent of the war Aubrey's
elation had expanded miraculously. The nation became a collection of
Aubrey Gilchrists. He found an outlet for his self admiration in
boasting tirelessly of the virtues of his countrymen. His interest in
the Germans was faint. He was chiefly concerned with having the moral
grandeur of his nation recognized and triumphant.
Seated opposite him was Fanny. She smiled when he looked at her. The war
had brought Fanny happiness. It had released her from the tormenting of
Ramsey. She turned occasionally toward Ramsey a few seats removed at the
table and spoke to him. He had changed. He sat flushed and elated and
took his turn at denouncing the enemy, at avowing vengeance and
prophesying terrible victories over the Hun. His anger rivalled
Basine's. The curious game he had played with Fanny had lost its
interest. He had emerged like Basine. Fanny was no longer necessary to
his desire for a sense of power--a power which convinced him of his
manliness and concealed from him the secret of his inferiority. He had
transferred his game from Fanny to the Germans. He was now tormenting
the Germans. The news of their defeats, the hope of their annihilation
inflated him. In addition, his belligerent air, his gory threats enabled
him to establish himself in his eyes and in the eyes of others as a
thorough man.
There were others in the company--Judge Smith, red-faced and glowering;
Aubrey's mother engaged in excommunicating the Germans as socially unfit
and outside the pale of her sympathy or support; a number of prominent
social and political lights. They discussed the war with animation,
fired questions at the senator and ate heartily.
Dishes clattered. Servants appeared and disappeared. Mrs. Basine,
sitting beside her son listened to him proudly and grew sad. Her son's
prestige pleased her. But the war saddened her. She noticed that Mrs.
Gilchrist was growing old--too old to share the enthusiasms of the day.
Yet there was a comradeship in the room that stirred Mrs. Basine. She
disliked most of the individuals around her. But when they came together
there was something charming in the way they talked and smiled and
exchanged confidences.
Mrs. Basine had secretly allied herself with a pacifist group of women
who labelled their minor timidity as intellectualism and argued with
violence against the major timidity identified as patriotism. She had a
horror of war, her imagination seeing herself continually suffering with
the soldiers of both sides. A similar sensitiveness had converted her
into a vague socialist. The misery of what she called the masses was a
mirror in which she saw a possible image of herself. She subscribed with
enthusiasm to doctrines which promised to establish justice and
tranquility in the world.
But now among the people in her home Mrs. Basine noticed an enviable
optimism. Some of them were old friends, others new friends. But all of
them were alike in one way. All of them seemed wonderfully excited over
the fact that this war was going to put an end to all wars. She would
have liked to share this optimism. But her intelligence deprived her of
the solace. Yet she was able to feel kindly toward the ideals she sensed
were false. They were somehow like her own ideals--inspired by similar
things.
The camaraderie in the room heightened. This was a war that was going to
put an end to all wars and everyone felt happy. They talked and
laughed. Their manner seemed to hint that the war was not only going to
put an end to all wars but to all troubles. Yes, the Germans vanquished,
victory achieved, and the world would be beautifully straightened out.
They identified themselves avidly with the world--these old and new
friends. The enemy who had dogged their monotonous little footsteps
through the years--the veiled Nemesis who had harassed them and filled
them with helpless, futile hatreds, tripped them up and robbed them at
every turn--this enemy was at last unmasked. He was identified now. He
was their troubles--their defeats. And they had him out in the open now
where they could shout battle cries and leap upon him. He was the
Germans.
Mrs. Basine, groping for an understanding of the elation among her
guests and desiring to share it, thought of her grandchildren. She
remembered George when he was no older than his son. This memory seemed
to give the lie to the excitement in the room. She wondered why. She
remembered Fanny when she was a girl. And Henrietta long ago. Henrietta
was smiling quietly at her husband--a faded matron, scrawny, silent. And
Doris was upstairs, weeping perhaps. She had taken Doris out of the
sanitarium to care for her at home. The doctor said melancholia. She
might be cured if something could be found to interest her. But there
was nothing. She sat wide-eyed and morose through the day, her hands
listless and waited till night came and sleep. Her skin was yellow and
there were little glints in her eyes as if they were peering out of the
dark.
Senator Basine laughed at the sally of a pretty woman. The table joined
his laughter. The senator was an inspiration. His manner was forceful,
his words direct. When he listened his head remained flung back. When he
talked he lowered his head and raised his eyes. There was an anger in
him that awed. It played behind his words.
"You're right, George." Aubrey answered a remark Basine had made. "I
agree with you entirely. But after all, the purposes of this war are
more than victory over an enemy. The victory over ourselves--"
Aubrey's words were lost in the racket of rising diners. The eating was
over. The guests filed into the library. Henrietta slipped her hand
through her husband's arm. She remembered vaguely the afternoon in the
Basine library when George Basine had asked her to marry him. No,--it
was in the kitchen. She would have liked to talk about it. But this was
no time to mention such things. She sat down and listened to the excited
remarks of the guests. There was an interruption. Aubrey, at the window,
raised his voice.
"Look here," he exclaimed, "soldiers."
The company crowded to the front of the room. Men in civilian clothes
carrying small bundles over their shoulders were marching four abreast
down the center of the street.
"Entraining for war, by God!" said Ramsey.
They watched in silence. Soldiers going to war! There was something
incongruous about that. A vague feeling of surprise and discomfort held
the watchers. Men who would in a short time be lying in trenches,
shooting with guns, killing other men. And they felt curiously out of
touch with the marchers, as if the enemy they had been denouncing at
the table and vilifying throughout their day were someone not so far
away as France. As if these marching men in the street were being sent
to the wrong address.
26
Basine hurried in the dark street. His mother and Henrietta stood in the
doorway watching him. He carried a suitcase and had promised to write
frequently. The Liberty Loan tour had cut short his visit. He was
walking to catch his train at the neighborhood station a few blocks
away.
As he turned the corner, Basine paused. Someone had called his name. He
looked around and saw a man standing under the street lamp.
"Hello George. How are you?"
The man held out his hand and Basine, taking it, studied him for a
moment. Keegan. Poor old Hugh Keegan. Basine smiled.
"Well, well," he exclaimed. "What are you doing around here, Hugh?"
They stood shaking hands. Basine noticed the furtive, shabby air of his
old friend. He hadn't seen or heard of Keegan or thought of him for
years. It was strange to meet him like this, walking in a street.
"I live down the street a ways," Keegan answered. An almost womanish
shyness was in his manner. "Been hearing and reading a lot about you,
George." He lowered his voice. "You sure made good."
Basine smiled deprecatingly.
"Walking my way, Hugh?" he inquired. "Going to the train." He felt
nervous. Keegan was like meeting yesterdays.
"Yes," said Keegan.
They walked along. Basine felt his exhuberance leaving him. A curious
desire to apologize to Keegan took hold of him. But for what? Because
Keegan looked shabby. Keegan acted frightened and ashamed of something.
"We used to have some good times together, George."
The man was impossibly wistful. Like a beggar asking
something--demanding something.
"Yes," said Basine. This Keegan ... this Keegan. He looked at him out of
the corners of his eyes. Shabby, furtive, blond-faced, tired.
"What have you been doing, Hugh?" he asked.
"Oh, didn't you hear," Keegan answered. His voice grew more deferential.
He began to talk in an apologetic murmur.
"My wife died," he apologized. "I got married, you know, four years ago.
Four years this coming November. We went to a picnic last June and Helen
ate something."
Keegan's voice sank to a confidential and still apologetic whisper.
"About two nights after," he added, "she died."
Basine looked at him and saw tears in his eyes. Keegan had married
somebody and she had died. This had happened to Keegan. Basine grew
nervous.
"Awf'ly glad to have seen you again, Hugh," he said after a pause. "Am
sorry to hear about it. We must get together sometime. I think I'll have
to run."
They shook hands and Basine hurried on. He was aware of Keegan looking
after him. A vacuous-faced Keegan with tears in his eyes. A Keegan who
had found something and lost it. What kind of a woman could have loved
Keegan? What kind ... what kind ... poor Hugh. He had been young once.
Now it was all over. Basine sighed. Keegan saddened. Keegan was like
yesterdays. He started to walk faster. He began to run, the suitcase
thumping against his leg.
"I'll miss the train," he assured himself furtively and ran.
But there was plenty of time for the train. Another fifteen minutes. He
was running for something else. Yes, he was running away from
Keegan--from the vacuous, shabby figure of Keegan that stood weeping
behind him. An oath throbbed in his mind.
"Damn...." he muttered. The word stopped him. He walked the rest of the
way to the station. A sadness darkened him. He was sad, impossibly sad,
as if his heart were breaking. Because Keegan had found something and
lost it. Because his old friend Hugh had started to cry.... "Poor
Hughie," he murmured.