Black Oxen (Unabridged). Gertrude Atherton

      XVII

       Table of Contents

      He charged down Madison Avenue, barely escaping disaster at the crossings in the frightful congestion of the hour: he was not only intensely perturbed in mind, but he was in a hurry. His column was unfinished and an article on the "authentic drama" for one of the literary reviews must be delivered on the morrow. In the normal course of events it would have been written a week since.

      He was furious with himself. Passionate, impulsive, and often unreasonable, his mind was singularly well-balanced and never before had it succumbed to obsession. He had taken the war as a normal episode in the history of a world dealing mainly in war; not as a strictly personal experience designed by a malignant fate to deprive youth of its illusions, embitter and deidealize it, fill it with a cold and acrid contempt for militarism and governments, convert it to pacificism, and launch it on a confused but strident groping after Truth. It was incredible to him that any one who had read history could be guilty of such jejunity, and he attributed it to their bruised but itching egos. After all, it had been a middle-aged man's war. Not a single military reputation had been made by any one of the millions of young fighters, despite promotions, citations, and medals. Statesmen and military men long past their youth would alone be mentioned in history.

      The youth of America was individualism rampant plus the national self-esteem, and the mass of them today had no family traditions behind them—sprung from God knew what. Their ego had been slapped in the face and compressed into a mould; they were subconsciously trying to rebuild it to its original proportions by feeling older than their fathers and showering their awful contempt upon those ancient and despicable loadstones: "loyalty" and "patriotism." Writers who had remained safely at home had taken the cue and become mildly pacifist. It sounded intellectual and it certainly was the fashion.

      Clavering, whose ancestors had fought in every war in American history, had enlisted in 1917 with neither sentimentalism, enthusiasm, nor resentment. It was idle to vent one's wrath and contempt upon statesmen who could not settle their quarrels with their brains, for the centuries that stood between the present and utter barbarism were too few to have accomplished more than the initial stages of a true civilization. No doubt a thousand years hence these stages would appear as rudimentary as the age of the Neanderthals had seemed to the twentieth century. And as man made progress so did he rarely outstrip it. So far he had done less for himself than for what passed for progress and the higher civilization. Naturally enough, when the Frankenstein monster heaved itself erect and began to run amok with seven-leagued boots, all the pigmies could do was to revert hysterically to Neanderthal methods and use the limited amount of brains the intervening centuries had given them, to scheme for victory. A thousand years hence the Frankenstein might be buried and man's brain gigantic. Then and then only would civilization be perfected, and the savagery and asininity of war a blot on the history of his race to which no man cared to refer. But that was a long way off. When a man's country was in danger there was nothing to do but fight. Noblesse oblige. And fight without growling and whining. Clavering had liked army discipline, sitting in filthy trenches, wounds, hospitals, and killing his fellow men as little as any decent man; but what had these surly grumblers expected? To fight when they felt like it, sleep in feather beds, and shoot at targets? Disillusionment! Patriotism murdered by Truth! One would think they were fighting the first war in history.

      It was not the war they took seriously but themselves.

      Like other men of his class and traditions, Clavering had emerged from the war hoping it would be the last of his time, but with his ego unbruised, his point of view of life in general undistorted, and a quick banishment of "hideous memories." (His chief surviving memory was a hideous boredom.) One more war had gone into history. That he had taken an infinitesimal part in it instead of reading an account of it by some accomplished historian was merely the accident of his years. As far as he could see he was precisely the man he was before he was sent to France and he had only unmitigated contempt for these "war reactions" in men sound in limb and with no derangement of the ductless glands.

      As for the women, when they began to talk their intellectual pacificism, he told them that their new doctrine of non-resistance became them ill, but as even the most advanced were still women, consistency was not to be expected—nor desired. Their pacificism, however, when not mere affectation—servility to the fashion of the moment—was due to an obscure fear of seeing the world depopulated of men, or of repressed religious instinct, or apology for being females and unable to fight. He was extremely rude.

      And now this infernal woman had completely thrown him off his balance. He could think of nothing else. His work had been deplorable—the last week at all events—and although a month since nothing would have given him more exquisite satisfaction than to write a paper on the authentic drama, he would now be quite indifferent if censorship had closed every theatre on Broadway. Such an ass, such a cursed ass had he become in one short month. He had tramped half the nights and a good part of every day trying to interest himself by the wayside and clear his brain. He might as well have sat by his fire and read a piffling novel.

      Nevertheless, until Gora Dwight had brought her detached analytical faculty to bear on his case, he had not admitted to himself that he was in love with the woman. He had chosen to believe that, being unique and compact of mystery, she had hypnotized his interest and awakened all the latent chivalry of his nature—something the modern woman called upon precious seldom. He had felt the romantic knight ready to break a lance—a dozen if necessary—in case the world rose against her, denounced her as an impostor. True, she seemed more than able to take care of herself, but she was very beautiful, very blonde, very unprotected, and in that wistful second youth he most admired. He had thought himself the chivalrous son of chivalrous Southerners, excited and not too happy, but convinced, at the height of his restlessness and absorption, that she was but a romantic and passing