The Crimson Tide: A Novel

“Wifehood? Played out! Motherhood? In the discards! Domestic partnership?–each sex to its own sphere? Ha-ha! That was all very well yesterday. But woman as a human incubator and brooder is an obsolete machine. Why the devil should free and untramelled womanhood hatch out young?

“If they choose to, casually, all right. But it’s purely a matter for self-determination. If a girl cares to take off her Sam Brown belt and her puttees long enough to nurse a baby, it’s a matter that concerns her, not humanity at large. Because the social revolution has settled all such details as personal independence and the same standard for both sexes. So, a bas Madame Grundy! A la lanterne with the old régime! No–hang it all, I’m through!”

“Don’t you like Palla any more?” inquired Estridge, still laughing.

Jim gave him a singular look: “Yes… Do you like Ilse Westgard?”

Estridge said coolly: “I am accepting her as she is. I like her that much.”

“Oh. Is that very much?” sneered the other.

“Enough to marry her if she’d have me,” replied Estridge pleasantly.

“And she won’t do that, I suppose?”

“Not so far.”

Jim eyed him sullenly: “Well, I don’t accept Palla as she is–or thinks she is.”

“She’s sincere.”

“I understand that. But no girl can get away with such notions. Where is it all going to land her? What will she be?”

Estridge quoted: “‘It hath not yet appeared what we shall be.’”

Shotwell rose impatiently, and picked up his overcoat: “All I know is that when two healthy people care for each other it’s their business–their business, I repeat–to get together legally and do the decent thing by the human race.”

“Breed?”

“Certainly! Breed legally the finest, healthiest, best of specimens;–and as many as they can feed and clothe! For if they don’t–if we don’t–I mean our own sort–the land will be crawling with the robust get of all these millions of foreigners, who already have nearly submerged us in America; and whose spawn will, one day, smother us to death.

“Hang it all, aren’t they breeding like vermin now? All yellow dogs do–all the unfit produce big litters. That’s the only thing they ever do–accumulate progeny.

“And what are we doing?–our sort, I mean? I’ll tell you! Our sisters are having such a good time that they won’t marry, if they can avoid it, until they’re too mature to get the best results in children. Our wives, if they condescend to have any offspring at all, limit the output to one. Because more than one might damage their beauty. Hell! If the educated classes are going to practise race suicide and the Bolsheviki are going to breed like lice, you can figure out the answer for yourself.”

They walked to the foggy street together. Shotwell said bitterly:

“I do care for Palla. I like Ilse. All the women one encounters at Palla’s parties are gay, accomplished, clever, piquant. The men also are more or less amusing. The conversation is never dull. Everybody seems to be well bred, sincere, friendly and agreeable. But there’s something lacking. One feels it even before one is enlightened concerning the ultra-modernism of these admittedly interesting people. And I’ll tell you what it is. Actually, deep in their souls, they don’t believe in themselves.

“Take Palla. She says there is no God–no divinity except in herself. And I tell you she may think she believes it, but she doesn’t.

“And her school-girl creed–Love and Service! Fine. Only there’s a prior law–self-preservation; and another–race preservation! By God, how are you going to love and serve if girls stop having babies?

“And as for this silly condemnation of the marriage ceremony, merely because some sanctified Uncle Foozle once inserted the word ‘obey’ in it–just because, under the marriage laws, tyranny and cruelty have been practised–what callow rot!

“Laws can be changed; divorce made simple and non-scandalous as it should be; all rights safeguarded for the woman; and still have something legal and recognised by one of those necessary conventions which make civilisation possible.

“But this irresponsible idea of procedure through mere inclination–this sauntering through life under no law to safeguard and govern, except the law of personal preference–that’s anarchy! That code spells demoralisation, degeneracy and disaster!.. And the whole damned thing to begin again–a slow development of the human race, once more, out of the chaos of utter barbarism.”

Estridge, standing there on the sidewalk in the fog, smiled:

“You’re very eloquent, Jim. Why don’t you say all this to Palla?”

“I did. I told her, too, that the root of the whole thing was selfishness. And it is. It’s a refusal to play the game according to rule. There are only two sexes and one of ’em is fashioned to bear young, and the other is fashioned to hustle for mother and kid. You can’t alter that, whether it’s fair or not. It’s the game as we found it. The rules were already provided for playing it. The legal father and mother are supposed to look out for their own legal progeny. And any alteration of this rule, with a view to irresponsible mating and turning the offspring over to the community to take care of, would create an unhuman race, unconscious of the highest form of love–the love for parents.

“A fine lot we’d be as an incubated race!”

Estridge laughed: “I’ve got to go,” he said, “And, if you care for Palla as you say you do, you oughtn’t to leave her entirely alone with her circle of modernist friends. Stick around! It may make you mad, but if she likes you, at least she won’t commit an indiscretion with anybody else.”

“I wish I could find my own sort as amusing,” said Jim, naïvely. “I’ve been going about recently–dances, dinners, theatres–but I can’t seem to keep my mind off Palla.”

Estridge said: “If you’d give your sense of humour half a chance you’d be all right. You take yourself too solemnly. You let Palla scare you. That’s not the way. The thing to do is to have a jolly time with her, with them all. Accept her as she thinks she is. There’s no damage done yet. Time enough to throw fits if she takes the bit and bolts–”

He extended his hand, cordially but impatiently:

“You remember I once said that girl ought to be married and have children? If you do the marrying part she’s likely to do the rest very handsomely. And it will be the making of her.”

Jim held on to his hand:

“Tell me what to do, Jack. She isn’t in love with me. And she wouldn’t submit to a legal ceremony if she were. You invoke my sense of humour. I’m willing to give it an airing, only I can’t see anything funny in this business.”

“It is funny! Palla’s funny, but doesn’t know it. You’re funny! They’re all funny–unintentionally. But their motives are tragically immaculate. So stick around and have a good time with Palla until there’s really something to scare you.”

“And then?”

“How the devil do I know? It’s up to you, of course, what you do about it.”

He laughed and strode away through the fog.

It had seemed to Jim a long time since he had seen Palla. It wasn’t very long. And in all that interminable time he had not once called her up on the telephone–had not even written her a single line. Nor had she written to him.

He had gone about his social business in his own circle, much to his mother’s content. He had seen quite a good deal of Elorn Sharrow; was comfortably back on the old, agreeable footing; tried desperately to enjoy it; pretended that he did.

But the days were long in the office; the evenings longer, wherever he happened to be; and the nights, alas! were becoming interminable, now, because he slept badly, and the grey winter daylight found him unrefreshed.

Which, recently, had given him a slightly battered appearance, commented on jestingly by young rakes and old sports at the Patroon’s Club, and also observed by his mother with gentle concern.

“Don’t overdo it, Jim,” she cautioned him, meaning dances that ended with breakfasts and that sort of thing. But her real concern was vaguer than that–deeper, perhaps. And sometimes she remembered the girl in black.

Lately, however, that anxiety had been almost entirely allayed. And her comparative peace of mind had come about in an unexpected manner.

For, one morning, entering the local Red Cross quarters, where for several hours she was accustomed to sew, she encountered Mrs. Speedwell and her lively daughter, Connie–her gossiping informants concerning her son’s appearance at Delmonico’s with the mysterious girl in black.

“Well, what do you suppose, Helen?” said Mrs. Speedwell, mischievously. “Jim’s pretty mystery in black is here!”

“Here?” repeated Mrs. Shotwell, flushing and looking around her at the rows of prophylactic ladies, all sewing madly side by side.

“Yes, and she’s prettier even than I thought her in Delmonico’s,” remarked Connie. “Her name is Palla Dumont, and she’s a friend of Leila Vance.”