Part 5 (1/2)
”Oh,” the lavender stocking was indignantly in evidence, ”how awful!”
Dorn waited until the young woman had s.h.i.+fted her hips into a more protesting outline.
”I agree,” the red face chimed in. ”It's nonsense. Dorn's full of clever nonsense. I quite agree with you, Miss Dillingham.” Miss Dillingham was the lavender stocking. The wife of the red face fidgeted, politely ominous. She announced pertly:
”I agree with what Mr. Dorn says.” Which announcement her husband properly translated into a warning and a threat of future conversation on the theme, ”You never pay any attention to me when there's anybody else around.”
Dorn continued, ”And it gives them a sense of generalities. Women live crowded between the narrow horizons of s.e.x. They don't share in life.
It's very sad, isn't it, Miss Williams?” Miss Williams removed her sash gently from the hands of the elderly youth and pouted. She was always indignant when men addressed her seriously. It gave her an uncomfortable feeling that they were making fun of her.
”Oh, I don't know,” she answered. The elderly youth nodded his head enthusiastically and whispered close to her ear, ”Exactly.”
”The things that are an entirety to women,” pursued Dorn, ”milk bottles, butcher bills, babies, cleaning days, h.e.l.lo and good-bye kisses, are merely gestures to their husbands. So in a war they find themselves able to share what is known as the larger horizon of the male. One way is through sacrifice. They sacrifice their sons, lovers, husbands, uncles, and fathers with a high, firm spirit, announcing to the press that they are only sorry their supply of relatives is limited. The sacrificing brings them in contact with the world in which their males live. That's the theory of it.”
Anna's smile continued to deny itself to his words. It said to him, ”What does it matter what you say? I love you.” And yet there was a thought behind it holding itself aloof.
”But the fact of woman is always denying her theory,” he added. ”That's what makes her confusing. The fact of her weeps at departures, sh.e.l.l shocks, amputations; grows timid and organizes pacifist societies. It's a case of s.e.x instinct versus the personal complex.”
The elderly young man straightened in his chair, removing his eyes from Miss Williams with the air of one returning to masculine worldliness.
”I don't know about that,” he said. ”It's all very well to talk about such things flippantly. But when the time comes, we must admit ...”
”That talk is foolish,” interrupted Warren. He looked at Rachel and laughed. ”As a matter of fact, if anybody else but Dorn said it, I'd believe it. But I never believe Dorn. Do you, Miss Laskin?”
Rachel answered, ”Yes.”
Dorn, piqued by the continual silence of his wife, felt a sudden discomfiture at the sound of Rachel's voice. Was Anna aware he was talking to her so as to avoid talking to Rachel? Perhaps. But Rachel's presence was diluted by the company. He caught a glimpse of her dark eyes opened towards him, and for a moment felt his words disintegrate.
He continued hurriedly:
”War, in a way, is a n.o.ble business, in that it reduces us to a biological sanity--much the same as does Miss Dillingham's lavender stocking!”
The company swallowed this with an abrupt stiffening of necks. Isaac Dorn, who had been airing himself on the veranda, relieved a tension by appearing in the doorway and moving quietly toward an unoccupied chair.
Anna reached her hand to the old man's and held it kindly. Miss Dillingham, surveying the stretch of hose which had been honored in her host's conversation, raised her eyes and replied quietly:
”Mr. Dorn is too clever to be really insulting.”
The red-faced one clung to a sense of outrage. His cheeks had grown slightly distended, and with the grimace of indignant virtue bristling on his face, he turned the expression toward his wife for approval. She nodded her head and tightened the thin line of her lips.
”I only meant,” laughed Dorn, ”that it reduces us to the sort of sanity that wipes out the absurd, artificial notions of morality that keep cluttering up the thought of the race. War reminds us that civilization and murder are compatible. Lavender stockings, speaking in generalities, are reminders that good and evil walk on equally comely legs.”
Mr. Harlan, having registered indignation, now struggled vainly against the preenings of his wit, and finally succ.u.mbed.
”In these days you can't tell Judy O'Grady and the Colonel's lady apart by their stockings, eh?” He hammered his point home with a laugh. Warren winked at Rachel as if to inform her of the mixed company they were in, and Mrs. Harlan endeavored to put an end to the isolated merriment of her husband with a ”John, you're impossible!” The elderly youth, conscious of himself as the escort of a young virgin, lowered his eyes modestly to her ankles. Dorn, watching his wife's smile deepen, nodded his head at her. He knew her momentary thought. She labored under the pleasing conviction that his risque remarks were invariably inspired by memories of her.
”Barring, of course, the unembattled stay-at-homes,” he continued. ”The sanity of battlefields is in direct ratio to the insanity of the non-combatants. You can see it already in the press. We who stay at home endeavor to excuse the crime of war by attaching ludicrous ideals and purposes to its result. Thus every war is to its non-combatants a holy war. And we get a swivel-chair collection of nincomp.o.o.ps raving weirdly, as the casualty lists pour in, of humanity and democracy. It hasn't come yet, but it will.”
”Then you don't believe in war?” said the red face, emerging triumphantly upon respectable ground.
”As a phenomenon inspired by ideals or resulting in anything more satisfactory than a wholesale loss of life, war is always a joke,” Dorn answered. He wondered whether Rachel was considering him a pompous a.s.s.
”I have a whole-hearted respect for it, however, as a biological excitement.”