Rupert Hughes

“ Mamise shuddered when she heard the blood-cry wrung out of Davidge’s agony.
She knew that the ship was more than a ship to him. Its death was as the death of many children. It might mean the death of many children. She stood over him, weeping for him like another Niobe among her slaughtered family. The business man in his tragedy had to have some woman at hand to do his weeping for him. He did not know how to sob his own heart out.
She felt the vigor of a high anger grip his muscles. When she heard him groan, “I’ll get a German for this!” ”

“ Davidge on the other hand had warmed toward Marie Louise suddenly, as he saw how ardent she could be. He had known her till now only in her dejected and terrified, distracted humors. Now he saw her on fire, and love began to blaze within him.
He felt his first impulse to throw an arm about her and draw her to his breast, but though the solitude was complete and the opportunity perfect, he saw that she was in no spirit for dalliance. There is no colder chaperon for a woman than a new ambition to accomplish something worth while. ”

“ But this was a slight vexation in the exultance of her mood. She was serene in the consciousness that Davidge already knew the facts about her, and that Lady Clifton-Wyatt’s gossip would fall with the dreary thud of a story heard before. So Mamise’s feet flew, and her heart made a music of its own to the tune of:
“Thank God, I told him!”
She realized, as never before, the tremendous comfort and convenience of the truth. She had been by instinct as veracious as a politely bred person may be, but now she understood that the truth is mighty good business. She resolved to deal in no other wares. ”

“ I holt in my hant a little machine to blow us all high-sky if you are so unkind to be impolite. You move––I srow. We all go up togedder in much pieces. Better it is you come with me and make no trouble, and then I let you safe your life. You agree, yes? Or must I srow?”
Davidge looked at the bomb, at Nicky, at Nuddle, then at Mamise. Life was sweet here on this high steel crag, with the cheers of the crowds about the stands coming faintly up on the delicious breeze. He knew explosives. ”

“ Further nightmares awaited her, for in the waiting-room she could not fight off the conviction that the train would never arrive. When it came clanging in on grinding wheels and she clambered aboard, she knew that it would be wrecked, and the finding of her body in the débris, or its disappearance in the flames, would break poor Davidge’s heart and leave her to the same ignominy in his memory.
While the train swung on toward Washington, she added another torment to her collection: how could she save Davidge from Nicky without betraying her sister’s husband into the hands of justice? ”

“ Mamise could not eat the food of human caterers. She had fed on honey-dew and drunk the milk of paradise.
She lived through the long procession of dishes and heard some of the oratory, the glowing praises of Davidge and Uncle Sam, Mr. Schwab, Mr. Hurley, President Wilson, the Allies, and everybody else. She heard it proclaimed that America was going back to the sea, so long neglected. The prodigal was returning home.
Mamise could think of nothing but a wish to be in bed. The room began to blur. People’s faces went out of focus. ”

“ It is an old saw that what is too foolish to be said can be sung. Music hallows or denatures whatever it touches. It was quite proper, because quite customary, for Davidge and Lady Clifton-Wyatt to stand enfolded in each other’s embrace so long as a dance tune was in the air. The moment the musicians quit work the attitude became indecent.
Amazing and eternal mystery, that custom can make the same thing mean everything, or nothing, or all the between-things. ”

“ Mamise was sick with terror of what might have been. She saw the collision with a fatal result, herself and Nicky killed and flung to the street, dead together. It was not the 279 fear of dying that froze her soul; it was the posthumous blow she would have given to Davidge’s trust in her and all women, the pain she would have inflicted on his love. For to his dying day he would have believed her false to him, a cheap and nasty trickster, sneaking off to another town to a rendezvous with another man. And that man a German! ”

“ It is a form of voluntary servitude; it absolutely destroys all respect for public law; it is the foundation of tyrannies; it is the secret of political corruption; it is the thing that holds dynasties together, family despotism; it is soul-mortgage, bribery. It is a monster of what the Americans call graft. It is chloroform to the conscience, to patriotism, to every sense of public duty. ‘Scratch my back, and I am your slave’––that’s gratitude.”
Mr. Verrinder rarely spoke at such length or with such apothegm.
Marie Louise was a little more dazed than ever to hear gratitude denounced. ”

“ The road still pierced the golden scene, a monotony of plenty, an endless-seeming treasure of sheaves of wheat and 171 stacks of corn, with pumpkins of yellow metal and twisted ingots of squash; but an autumnal sorrow clouded the landscape for Marie Louise.
“What do you call a good girl?” she asked.
“That’s a hard question to answer nowadays.”
“Why nowadays?”
“Oh, because our ideas of good are so much more merciful and our ideas of girls are so much more––complicated. Anyway, as the fellow said, that’s my story. And now you know all about Mamise that I know. ”

“ For many a smiling mile, on the morrow, Davidge rode in a torment. So stout a man, to be fretted by so little a matter! Yet he was unable to bring himself to the point of solving his curiosity. The car had covered forty miles, perhaps, while his thoughts ran back and forth, lacing the road like a dog accompanying a carriage. A mental speedometer would have run up a hundred miles before he made the plunge and popped the subject.
“Mamise is an unusual name,” he remarked.
Marie Louise was pleasantly startled by the realization that his long silence had been devoted to her. ”

“ Abbie began at once to recite a catalogue of troubles. They were sordid and petty, but Mamise shivered to think how real a tragedy impended. She wondered how right she was to devastate her sister’s life for 292 the sake of a cause which, after all, was only the imagined welfare of millions of total strangers. She could not see the nation for the people, but her sister was her sister, and pitifully human. That was the worst wrench of war, the incessant compulsions to tear the heart away from its natural moorings. ”

“ Marie Louise did not pretend surprise at seeing Easton, but went on scolding Victor and Bettina.
“If any of these other boys catch you playing submarine they’ll submarine you!”
And she brought the proud Bettina to book with a, “You were so glad the Lusitania was sunk, you see now how it feels!”
She felt the puerile incongruity of the rebuke, but it sufficed to send Bettina into a cyclone of grief. She was already one of those who are infinitely indifferent to the sufferings of others and infinitesimally sensitive to their own. ”

“ Men were at work everywhere, Lilliputian against the bulk of the hull they were contriving. Davidge escorted Marie Louise with caution across tremulous planks, through dark caverns into the hold of the ship.
In these grottoes of steel the clamor of the riveters grew maddening in her ears. They were everywhere, holding their machine-guns against reverberant metal and hammering steel against steel with a superhuman velocity; for man had made himself more than man by his own inventions, had multiplied himself by his own machineries. ”

“ But machinery has its messages, too. It enables the little cave-dweller to pulverize the mountain; to ship it to Mohammed in Medina; to pick it up and shoot it at his enemies.
Mamise, at any rate, was so enraptured by the fine art of machinery that when she saw a traveling-crane pick up a mass of steel and go down the track with it to its place, she thought that no poplar-tree was ever so graceful. And the rusty hulls of the new ships showing the sky through the steel lace of their rivetless sides were fairer than the sky. ”

“ The repeated name identified the strange-looking matron as the girl grown old, and Marie Louise gathered her into her arms with a fierce homesickness. Her loneliness had found what it needed. She had kinfolk now, and she sobbed: “Abbie darling! My darling Abbie!” while Abbie wept: “Mamise! Oh, my poor little Mamise!”
A cluster of cab-drivers wondered what it was all about, but Jake Nuddle felt triumphant. Marie Louise looked good to him as he looked her over, and for the nonce he was content to have the slim, round fashionable creature enveloped in his wife’s arms for a sister-in-law. ”

“ She felt a twitch at her sleeve, and turned idly.
Nicky Easton was at her side. Her mind, all her minds, began to convene in alarm like the crew of a ship attacked.
“Nicky!” she gasped.
“No names, pleass! But to follow me quick.”
“I’m right with you.” She turned to follow him. “One minute.” She stepped back and spoke fiercely to Pafflow. “Pafflow, find Mr. Davidge. Tell him Nicky is here. Remember, Nicky is here. It’s life and death. Find him.”
Pafflow mumbled, “Nicky is here!” and Mamise ran after Nicky, who was lugging a large suit-case. He was quivering with excitement. ”

“ The Kaiser had put in the shop-window of the world samples enough of the future as it would be made by Germany.
And in the mood of that day, with defeatism rife in Europe, and pessimism miasmatic in America, there was reason enough for Nicky to believe in his prophecy and to inspire belief in its possibility. The only impossible thing about it was that the world should ever endure the dominance of Germany. Death would seem better to almost everybody than life in such a civilization as she promised.
Mamise feared the Teutonic might, but she could not for a moment consent to accept it. ”

“ The mighty one was wearing the woman’s kirtle and carrying her distaff, and the girl was staggering under the lion-skin and leaning on the bludgeon. Marie Louise always hated the group. It seemed to her to represent just the way so many women tried to master the men they infatuated. But Marie Louise despised masterable men, and she had no wish to make a toy of one. Yet she had wondered if a man and a woman could not love each other more perfectly if neither were master or mistress, but both on a parity––a team, indeed.
Davidge enjoyed talking to her, at least. ”

“ Then followed a day of drudgery at the loathly necessities of her stupid work.
Detail and delay are the tests of ambition. Ambition sees the mountain-peak blessed with sunlight and cries, “That is my goal!” But the feet must cross every ditch, wade every swamp, scramble across every ledge. The peak is the harder to see the nearer it comes; the last cliffs hide it altogether, and when it is reached it is only a rough crag surrounded by higher crags. The glory that lights it is glory in distant eyes alone.
So for poor Mamise. ”

“ Marriage is a circle that cannot be quite squared.
She sat droopily in her chair for a long while, pondering mankind and womankind and their mutual dependence and incompatibility. It would be nice to be married if one could stay single at the same time. But it was hopelessly impossible to eat your cake and have it, too.
Abbie, watching from her window and not knowing that Davidge had gone, imagined all sorts of things and wished that her wild sister would marry and settle down. ”

“ Davidge’s head was buzzing with thoughts in which Cruit had no part:
“Can she be one of those horrible women who have many lovers? Is she a woman of affairs? What is all this mystery about her? What was she so afraid of the night she would not stop at Mrs. Widdicombe’s? Why was she so upset by the appearance of Lady Clifton-Wyatt? Why was she in such a hurry to get me away from Mrs. Prothero’s dinner, and to keep me from keeping my engagement with Lady Clifton-Wyatt? Why so much German association?” ”

“ The boy did not know what a harpy was, but he knew that his beloved Fräulein was being called something, and he struck at Marie Louise fiercely, kicked at her shins and tried to bite her hands, screaming: “You shall not call our own precious Fräulein names. Harpy, your own self!”
And the little girl struck and scratched and made a curdled face and echoed, “Harpy, your own self!”
It hurt Marie Louise so extravagantly to be hated by these irascible cherubs that her anger vanished in regret. She pleaded: “But, my darlings, you don’t know what you are saying. ”

“ Teeth ached just as fiercely; jealousy was just as sickly green; empires crackled; people starved in herds; cities were pounded to gravel; army after army was taken prisoner or slaughtered; yet each agitated atom in the chaos was still the center of the tormented universe.
Marie Louise suffered for mankind and for herself. She was lonely, love-famished, inept, dissatisfied, and abysmally ashamed of her general ineffectiveness. Then one of Washington’s infamous hot weeks supervened. In the daytime the heat stung like a cat-o’-nine-tails. ”

“ The men who had shadowed Marie Louise had months before given her up as hopelessly correct. But guardian angels were still provided for Nicky Easton; and one of them, seeing this meeting, took Marie Louise back into the select coterie of the suspects.
There’s no cure for your bodily aches and pains like terror. It lifts the paralytic from his bed, makes the lame scurry, and gives the blind eyes enough for running. Marie Louise’s fatigue fell from her like a burden whose straps are slit. ”