The Sisters In Law Part 50

IV

Therefore not only did she understand these young women driven by the horrid stimulus of war; women (or girls) heretofore sheltered, virtuous, romantic, sentimental, now merely filled with the l.u.s.t of life. They were, like herself, devoted and meticulous nurses, brave, high-minded, tender; practically all, if not from the upper, at least from the educated ranks of life. But they lived under the daily shadow of death. Even when safe from the sh.e.l.ls of the big guns, the murderous aircraft paid them daily visits, singling out hospitals with diabolical precision. They were in daily contact with young torn human bodies from which had gone forever the purpose for which one generation precedes another. Life was horror. Blood and death and shattered bodies were their daily portion. No matter how brave, they heard death scream in every sh.e.l.l. The world beyond existed as a mirage. No wonder they became primeval.

Alexina had met Alice Thornd.y.k.e in one of these hospitals and observed her with some curiosity. But Alice was, to use her own vernacular, the best little bourgeoise of them all. She had had her fling. Men repelled her. She never meant to marry, even for substance. When the war was over she should live the completely independent life. n.o.body would care what economic liberties a woman took in the new era. The war had liberalized the most conservative old bunch of relatives a girl was ever inflicted with.

V

As Alexina sat huddled in her warm coat--the periwinkle blue to which she was still faithful--her dark fine hair, hanging about her, a mantle in itself, she recalled those days when she, too, had vibrated to that savage l.u.s.t for life; those days of concentrated egoism, of deep and powerful pa.s.sions whose existence she had only dimly begun to suspect after she dismissed her husband.

What had held her back? She had had a no more fastidious inheritance than most of those women, a no more cultivated intelligence, nor proud instinct of selection, nor ingrained habit of self-control.

She had put it down at first to fastidiousness, possibly a still lurking desire to be able to give all to one man; that hope of the complete mating which no woman relinquishes until toothless, certainly not in the mere zone of death.

She had concluded that it was neither of these, or at least that they had but played a part, and alone would never have won. It was a furious mental revolt at the terrific power of the body, the mind, frightened and cornered, determined to dominate; a fierce delight in the battle raging behind her serene and smiling mask to the accompaniment of that vulgar blare of war where mind over matter was as powerless in the death throe as incantations during an eruption of Vesuvius.

This internal silent warfare between her long reed-like body as little sensible to fatigue as if made of flexible steel and her extremely cold proud chaste-looking head had grown to be of such absorbing interest that the knowledge of its cessation was almost a shock. It was after a prolonged experience in a hospital where they were short of nurses and rest was almost unknown and the inroads upon her vitality so severe and menacing that she was finally ordered to Paris to rest, and there found a complete change of habit in an oeuvre founded by the equally exhausted but always valiant Olive de Morsigny, that she suddenly realized that somewhere sometime the battle had finished and mind and body were acting in complete harmony.

VI

To-night she wondered if her imagination, turned loose, stimulated, had not missed the whole point. There had been no man who had made the direct irresistible appeal. No concrete temptation.... She had after all been a degree too civilized ... or ... romantic idealism?

There had been little to stimulate and excite since she had settled down to office work in the summer of nineteen-sixteen. Her nerves, always strong, had become too case-hardened to be affected by avions or the immense uncertainties of Big Bertha; although the light on the horizon at night during the last German Drive and the bellow of the guns had shaken her with a sort of reminiscent excitement.

But for the most part she had felt frozen, torpid, a cog in the vast military machine of France, dedicating herself like hundreds of other women to the succor of men she never saw. That extraordinary abominable experience at the front was overlaid, almost forgotten. And such news as one had in Paris was quite enough to exercise the mind.... There had been the downfall of the Russian dynasty ... the still more sinister downfall of the true revolutionists ... the Bolshevik monster projecting its murderous shadow over all Europe, exposing the instability of the entire social structure....

VII

Was it? Could such an experience ever be forgotten? The gra.s.s might grow over the dead on the battlefields, but the corruption fed the wheat, and the peogle of France ate the bread. This uninvited thought had intruded itself the first time she had driven by the Marne battlefields and seen the numberless crosses in the rich abundant fields.

She smiled, a small, secret, ruthless smile.... That was her residue: ruthlessness. She may have left behind her in the turbulent war-zone the savage elementary l.u.s.t for living at any cost, but she had ineradicably learned the value of life, its brevity at best, the still more tragic brevity of youth; she had a store of hideous memories which could only be submerged first in the performance of duty if duty were imperative; then, duty discharged and finished, in the one thing that during its brief time gave life any meaning, made this earthly sojourn bearable. If she met the man she wanted she would have him if she had to fight for him tooth and nail.

It was four o 'clock. She went to bed.

CHAPTER IV

I

The next day Alexina found herself suddenly free of office duty, A very handsome and wealthy American woman who had not been able to visit her beloved Paris since the beginning of the World's War, and finding the State Department obdurate to the whims of pretty women, had induced Mrs. Ballinger Groome, on one of whose committees she had worked faithfully, to ask her sister-in-law to inform the Department of State that her services at the oeuvre in Paris were indispensable.

Alexina had pa.s.sed the letter on to the President, Madame de Morsigny, and forgotten the incident. Olive wrote the necessary letter promptly.

Not only did she believe that the time had come for Alexina to rest, but she longed for a fresh access of energy in the office that would in a measure relieve herself. Moreover, Mrs. Wallack was wealthy and had many wealthy friends. That meant more money for the oeuvre, always in need of money. Olive had given large sums herself, but the president of a charity is yet to be found who will not permit its constant demands to be relieved by the generous public. Mrs. Wallack had not only promised a substantial donation at once, but a monthly contribution.

This had not been named, but Madame de Morsigny meant that it should be something more than nominal. She could do so much for Mrs. Wallack socially, now that it was possible to entertain again, that she felt reasonably confident of rousing the enthusiasm of any ambitious New Yorker. Moreover, Olive had a very insinuating way with her.

II

Mrs. Wallack presented herself at the imposing headquarters of the oeuvre, radiant, fresh, energetic, beautifully dressed. The war had interested her and commanded her sympathies to some purpose, but nothing short of personal affliction could subdue that inexhaustible vitality, and she seemed to bring into the dark and solemn rooms something of the atmospheric gayety and sunshine of a land that had done much but suffered little.

By no one was she received with more warmth of welcome than by Alexina.

The sudden release made her realize sharply her lowered vitality.

Moreover, the semi-yearly income which had just arrived from California was her own now and she could replenish her wardrobe and feel feminine and irresponsible once more. The reaction was so violent that after inducting Mrs. Wallack into the mysteries of her desk she remained in bed, prostrate, for two days. Then, feeling several years younger, she sallied forth in search of many things.

III

There is no such antidote to the migraines of the woman soul as clothes. Their only rival is travel and there are cases where they know none. Sometimes women remember to pity men, that have no such happy playground.

Alexina for all her ramifications, some of them too deep, had a light and feminine side. During the following fortnight she gave it full rein; she was absorbed, almost happy. She spent quite recklessly and after the years of economy and self-denial this alone gave her an intense satisfaction. In addition to her income forwarded by Judge Lawton, who had charge of her affairs, her brother Ballinger, who was as fond of her as of his own children, and very proud of her--she had received two decorations--sent her a large check with the mandate to spend it on herself.

IV

Even so, she was not always in the shops and the dressmakers' ateliers.

She found much amus.e.m.e.nt in strolling up and down the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, watching the odd throngs at which Paris herself seemed, to bend her head and stare.

Some poet had called Paris the mistress of Europe. She looked like an old trollop. She was dirty and dreary, unpainted and unwashed. The rain was almost incessant and the shop windows were soon denuded of the few attractive novelties scrambled together to meet the sudden demand after the long drought.

But under the long arcades the curious sauntering throngs were sheltered from the rain and found all things in Paris novel. Men in the American khaki, from generals to striplings, were there by the hundred; endless streams of young women in the uniform of the Red Cross, the Y.M.C.A., the Salvation Army; British and American nurses; members of the fashionable oeuvres artlessly watching this novel phase of Paris; the beautiful violet uniform of Le Bien-etre du Blesse; girls with worn faces and relaxed bodies fresh from the front, hundreds of them, arriving daily in camions and cars, thanking heaven for the sudden cessation of work, sleeping heaven knew where. The American women of the Commission, and others who, like Mrs. Wallack, had invented a plausible excuse to get to Paris and looked almost anachronistic in their smart gowns, their fresh faces, their bright, curious, glancing eyes.

There were also officers in the uniform of Britain, and Alexina regarded them frankly, with no effort to deceive herself. The spirit of adventure was awake in her, now that the dark mood had pa.s.sed, or slept. She hoped to meet the man of the emba.s.sy again, whether he were Gathbroke or another. She had liked his eyes.

She had met many charming and interesting men during the last two and a half years at Olive de Morsigny's table, especially when Andre, convalescent, was at home. But their eyes had said nothing to her whatever, if not for the want of trying. Alexina's imagination, torpid for many months, ran riot. This man might disappoint her, might have nothing in him for her, but she refused for more than a moment to contemplate anything so flat. Something must come of that adventure, that vital intensely personal moment when their eyes had met above flames so tiny the wonder was they could see anything but a white blur on the dark. She was as sure of meeting him again as that she trod on air after she had ordered a new gown or brought an inordinately becoming hat. She had forgotten Mortimer's existence.

CHAPTER V