Jim"s sombre eyes rested on the discarded paper, but he did not pick it up. "It"s rotten weather," he said listlessly.
"Have you seen Palla lately?" inquired Estridge, looking down at him with a certain curiosity.
"No, not lately."
"She"s a very busy girl, I hear."
"So I hear."
Estridge seated himself on the arm of a leather chair and began to pull on his gloves. He said:
"I understand Palla is doing Red Cross and canteen work, besides organising her celebrated club;--what is it she calls it?--Combat Club No. 1?"
"I believe so."
"And you haven"t seen her lately?"
Shotwell glanced at the fog and shrugged his shoulders: "She"s rather busy--as you say. No, I haven"t seen her. Besides, I"m rather out of my element among the people one runs into at her house. So I simply don"t go any more."
"Palla"s parties are always amusing," ventured Estridge.
"Very," said the other, "but her guests keep you guessing."
Estridge smiled: "Because they don"t conform to the established scheme of things?"
"Perhaps. The scheme of things, as it is, suits me."
"But it"s interesting to hear other people"s views."
"I"m fed up on queer views--and on queer people," said Jim, with sudden and irritable emphasis. "Why, hang it all, Jack, when a fellow goes out among apparently well bred, decent people he takes it for granted that ordinary, matter of course social conventions prevail.
But n.o.body can guess what notions are seething in the bean of any girl you talk to at Palla"s house!"
Estridge laughed: "What do you care, Jim?"
"Well, I wouldn"t care if they all didn"t seem so exactly like one"s own sort. Why, to look at them, talk to them, you"d never suppose them queer! The young girl you take in to dinner usually looks as though b.u.t.ter wouldn"t melt in her mouth. And the chances are that she"s all for socialism, self-determination, trial marriages and free love!
"h.e.l.l"s bells! I"m no prude. I like to overstep conventions, too. But this wholesale wrecking of the social structure would be ruinous for a girl like Palla."
"But Palla doesn"t believe in free love."
"She hears it talked about by cracked illuminati."
"Rain on a duck"s back, Jim!"
"Rain drowns young ducks."
"You mean all this spouting will end in a deluge?"
"I do. And then look for dead ducks."
"You"re not very respectful toward modernism," remarked Estridge, smiling.
Then Jim broke loose:
"Modernism? You yourself said that all these crazy social notions--crazy notions in art, literature, music--arise from some sort of physical degeneration, or from the perversion or checking of normal physical functions."
"Usually they do----"
"Well," continued Shotwell, "it"s mostly due to perversion, in my opinion. Women have had too much of a h.e.l.l of a run for their money during this war. They"ve broken down all the fences and they"re loose and running all over the world.
"If they"d only kept their fool heads! But no. Every germ in the wind lodged in their silly brains! Biff. They want s.e.x equality and a pair of riding breeches! Bang! They kick over the cradle and wreck the pantry.
"Wifehood? Played out! Motherhood? In the discards! Domestic partnership?--each s.e.x 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 s.e.xes. So, _a bas_ Madame Grundy! _A la lanterne_ with the old regime! 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 sp.a.w.n 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--acc.u.mulate 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.
h.e.l.l! If the educated cla.s.ses are going to practise race suicide and the Bolsheviki are going to breed like lice, you can figure out the answer for yourself."