The Beautiful and Damned
philosophy, and sinister music produced by the Teutonic temperament.
Those who fancied themselves particularly broad-minded made the
exquisite distinction that it was only the German Government which
aroused them to hysteria; the rest were worked up to a condition of
retching indecency. Any song which contained the word "mother" and the
word "kaiser" was assured of a tremendous success. At last every one had
something to talk about--and almost every one fully enjoyed it, as
though they had been cast for parts in a sombre and romantic play.
Anthony, Maury, and Dick sent in their applications for officers'
training-camps and the two latter went about feeling strangely exalted
and reproachless; they chattered to each other, like college boys, of
war's being the one excuse for, and justification of, the aristocrat,
and conjured up an impossible caste of officers, to be composed, it
appeared, chiefly of the more attractive alumni of three or four Eastern
colleges. It seemed to Gloria that in this huge red light streaming
across the nation even Anthony took on a new glamour.
The Tenth Infantry, arriving in New York from Panama, were escorted from
saloon to saloon by patriotic citizens, to their great bewilderment.
West Pointers began to be noticed for the first time in years, and the
general impression was that everything was glorious, but not half so
glorious as it was going to be pretty soon, and that everybody was a
fine fellow, and every race a great race--always excepting the
Germans--and in every strata of society outcasts and scapegoats had but
to appear in uniform to be forgiven, cheered, and wept over by
relatives, ex-friends, and utter strangers.
Unfortunately, a small and precise doctor decided that there was
something the matter with Anthony's blood-pressure. He could not
conscientiously pass him for an officers' training-camp.
THE BROKEN LUTE
Their third anniversary passed, uncelebrated, unnoticed. The season
warmed in thaw, melted into hotter summer, simmered and boiled away. In
July the will was offered for probate, and upon the contestation was
assigned by the surrogate to trial term for trial. The matter was
prolonged into September--there was difficulty in empanelling an
unbiassed jury because of the moral sentiments involved. To Anthony's
disappointment a verdict was finally returned in favor of the testator,
whereupon Mr. Haight caused a notice of appeal to be served upon Edward
Shuttleworth.
As the summer waned Anthony and Gloria talked of the things they were to
do when the money was theirs, and of the places they were to go to after
the war, when they would "agree on things again," for both of them
looked forward to a time when love, springing like the phoenix from its
own ashes, should be born again in its mysterious and unfathomable haunts.
He was drafted early in the fall, and the examining doctor made no
mention of low blood-pressure. It was all very purposeless and sad when
Anthony told Gloria one night that he wanted, above all things, to be
killed. But, as always, they were sorry for each other for the wrong
things at the wrong times....
They decided that for the present she was not to go with him to the
Southern camp where his contingent was ordered. She would remain in New
York to "use the apartment," to save money, and to watch the progress of
the case--which was pending now in the Appellate Division, of which the
calendar, Mr. Haight told them, was far behind.
Almost their last conversation was a senseless quarrel about the proper
division of the income--at a word either would have given it all to the
other. It was typical of the muddle and confusion of their lives that on
the October night when Anthony reported at the Grand Central Station for
the journey to camp, she arrived only in time to catch his eye over the
anxious heads of a gathered crowd. Through the dark light of the
enclosed train-sheds their glances stretched across a hysterical area,
foul with yellow sobbing and the smells of poor women. They must have
pondered upon what they had done to one another, and each must have
accused himself of drawing this sombre pattern through which they were
tracing tragically and obscurely. At the last they were too far away for
either to see the other's tears.
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER I
A MATTER OF CIVILIZATION
At a frantic command from some invisible source, Anthony groped his way
inside. He was thinking that for the first time in more than three years
he was to remain longer than a night away from Gloria. The finality of
it appealed to him drearily. It was his clean and lovely girl that he
was leaving.
They had arrived, he thought, at the most practical financial
settlement: she was to have three hundred and seventy-five dollars a
month--not too much considering that over half of that would go in
rent--and he was taking fifty to supplement his pay. He saw no need for
more: food, clothes, and quarters would be provided--there were no
social obligations for a private.
The car was crowded and already thick with breath. It was one of the
type known as "tourist" cars, a sort of brummagem Pullman, with a bare
floor, and straw seats that needed cleaning. Nevertheless, Anthony
greeted it with relief. He had vaguely expected that the trip South
would be made in a freight-car, in one end of which would stand eight
horses and in the other forty men. He had heard the "hommes 40, chevaux
8" story so often that it had become confused and ominous.
As he rocked down the aisle with his barrack-bag slung at his shoulder
like a monstrous blue sausage, he saw no vacant seats, but after a
moment his eye fell on a single space at present occupied by the feet of
a short swarthy Sicilian, who, with his hat drawn over his eyes, hunched
defiantly in the corner. As Anthony stopped beside him he stared up with
a scowl, evidently intended to be intimidating; he must have adopted it
as a defense against this entire gigantic equation. At Anthony's sharp
"That seat taken?" he very slowly lifted the feet as though they were a
breakable package, and placed them with some care upon the floor. His
eyes remained on Anthony, who meanwhile sat down and unbuttoned the
uniform coat issued him at Camp Upton the day before. It chafed him
under the arms.
Before Anthony could scrutinize the other occupants of the section a
young second lieutenant blew in at the upper end of the car and wafted
airily down the aisle, announcing in a voice of appalling acerbity:
"There will be no smoking in this car! No smoking! Don't smoke, men, in
this car!"
As he sailed out at the other end a dozen little clouds of expostulation
arose on all sides.
"Oh, cripe!"
"Jeese!"
"No _smokin'_?"
"Hey, come back here, fella!"
"What's 'ee idea?"
Two or three cigarettes were shot out through the open windows. Others
were retained inside, though kept sketchily away from view. From here
and there in accents of bravado, of mockery, of submissive humor, a few
remarks were dropped that soon melted into the listless and
pervasive silence.
The fourth occupant of Anthony's section spoke up suddenly.
"G'by, liberty," he said sullenly. "G'by, everything except bein' an
officer's dog."
Anthony looked at him. He was a tall Irishman with an expression moulded
of indifference and utter disdain. His eyes fell on Anthony, as though
he expected an answer, and then upon the others. Receiving only a
defiant stare from the Italian he groaned and spat noisily on the floor
by way of a dignified transition back into taciturnity.
A few minutes later the door opened again and the second lieutenant was
borne in upon his customary official zephyr, this time singing out a
different tiding:
"All right, men, smoke if you want to! My mistake, men! It's all right,
men! Go on and smoke--my mistake!"
This time Anthony had a good look at him. He was young, thin, already
faded; he was like his own mustache; he was like a great piece of shiny
straw. His chin receded, faintly; this was offset by a magnificent and
unconvincing scowl, a scowl that Anthony was to connect with the faces
of many young officers during the ensuing year.
Immediately every one smoked--whether they had previously desired to or
not. Anthony's cigarette contributed to the hazy oxidation which seemed
to roll back and forth in opalescent clouds with every motion of the
train. The conversation, which had lapsed between the two impressive
visits of the young officer, now revived tepidly; the men across the
aisle began making clumsy experiments with their straw seats' capacity
for comparative comfort; two card games, half-heartedly begun, soon drew
several spectators to sitting positions on the arms of seats. In a few
minutes Anthony became aware of a persistently obnoxious sound--the
small, defiant Sicilian had fallen audibly asleep. It was wearisome to
contemplate that animate protoplasm, reasonable by courtesy only, shut
up in a car by an incomprehensible civilization, taken somewhere, to do
a vague something without aim or significance or consequence. Anthony
sighed, opened a newspaper which he had no recollection of buying, and
began to read by the dim yellow light.
Ten o'clock bumped stuffily into eleven; the hours clogged and caught
and slowed down. Amazingly the train halted along the dark countryside,
from time to time indulging in short, deceitful movements backward or
forward, and whistling harsh paeans into the high October night. Having
read his newspaper through, editorials, cartoons, and war-poems, his eye
fell on a half-column headed _Shakespeareville, Kansas_. It seemed that
the Shakespeareville Chamber of Commerce had recently held an
enthusiastic debate as to whether the American soldiers should be known
as "Sammies" or "Battling Christians." The thought gagged him. He
dropped the newspaper, yawned, and let his mind drift off at a tangent.
He wondered why Gloria had been late. It seemed so long ago already--he
had a pang of illusive loneliness. He tried to imagine from what angle
she would regard her new position, what place in her considerations he
would continue to hold. The thought acted as a further depressant--he
opened his paper and began to read again.
The members of the Chamber of Commerce in Shakespeareville had decided
upon "Liberty Lads."
For two nights and two days they rattled southward, making mysterious
inexplicable stops in what were apparently arid wastes, and then rushing
through large cities with a pompous air of hurry. The whimsicalities of
this train foreshadowed for Anthony the whimsicalities of all army
administration.
In the arid wastes they were served from the baggage-car with beans and
bacon that at first he was unable to eat--he dined scantily on some milk
chocolate distributed by a village canteen. But on the second day the
baggage-car's output began to appear surprisingly palatable. On the
third morning the rumor was passed along that within the hour they would
arrive at their destination, Camp Hooker.
It had become intolerably hot in the car, and the men were all in shirt
sleeves. The sun came in through the windows, a tired and ancient sun,
yellow as parchment and stretched out of shape in transit. It tried to
enter in triumphant squares and produced only warped splotches--but it
was appallingly steady; so much so that it disturbed Anthony not to be
the pivot of all the inconsequential sawmills and trees and telegraph
poles that were turning around him so fast. Outside it played its heavy
tremolo over olive roads and fallow cotton-fields, back of which ran a
ragged line of woods broken with eminences of gray rock. The foreground
was dotted sparsely with wretched, ill-patched shanties, among which
there would flash by, now and then, a specimen of the languid yokelry of