CHAPTER XIX
At breakfast Rod was introduced to his son, Roderick Thorn Norquay, who lacked a few weeks of being four years old. Born in London, hurried home in 1917 when every unnecessary mouth England had to feed brought her so much nearer want, Roderick junior had no memory of his father. Rod marveled that two years could change a toddler into a sturdy boy in knickers who could be tentatively intrigued by gold braid, red tabs, and a shiny brown belt. They were both self-conscious enough to afford Mary a smile at their guarded approach to each other.
"It's funny to see you two," she said, when the youngster had marched away in care of a nurse girl. "You're like boxers—sparring for an opening."
"I suppose so," Rod returned. "I don't see the joke myself."
"Don't be so touchy, old dear," she wheedled. "You know what I mean."
"Not touchy." He smiled. "Just a bit off-color. We've missed such a devil of a lot that we can't catch up with. Having to present myself cautiously to my own kid reminds me of that. Four years wasted—worse than wasted. And we're only two out of millions."
"Wasted?"
"Absolutely."
"Then you don't think it was worth the fight? Belgium, destroying an arrogant militarism, saving the world for democracy, making further wars impossible—all those high ideals?"
Rod looked at her. Her face was placid as a shaded pool, expressionless. Her tone had been without accent—no key to her faith in those matters.
"Just phrases. Useful phrases that served their turn. Who is so naïve as to believe that now? Do you?" he asked without heat.
Mary smiled.
"No. But a great many people do. Or they say they do. They've gone about mouthing those catch phrases so long they repeat them as a sort of liturgic response whenever the war is mentioned. They respond to all questioning, all criticism, with that formula."
"I daresay," Rod mused. "But nobody in the army has any such illusions. I haven't had much chance to observe personally, but I don't know any place where democracy is in good working order. We certainly put a crimp in German militarism, but our own militarists are in a very flourishing condition, especially in France. In fact, a lot of men, from battalion commanders down to ranks, are beginning to ask what we did fight for. The few weeks I've been in civil life haven't enlightened me. After passing through that long trance of dirt, danger and drudgery, men do want to know. Some people, quite a lot, regard it as some sort of spectacular game at which our side won. They seem to be rather eager for the distribution of prizes. And there aren't any prizes. I don't think there will be. Nothing but bigger taxes, higher prices—a hell of a struggle to pay the bill—labor demanding to know why, after having fought a war and won it, they must come home and get to work and pay the bill. Oh, we won the war right enough, but it's a Pyrrhic victory. The significance of that long-drawn wrangle at Versailles doesn't seem obvious to many people."
"People—people in the mass," Mary said scornfully, "are just sheep. One big sheep says 'Baa!' and all the lesser sheep chorus 'Baa!' defiantly or plaintively, as the case may be."
Rod laughed. He got up from his chair.
"Where's that club bag? Oh, I see it. That sheep thing reminds me. I heard Andy Hall use that simile once, and I came across the same observation in a book I bought on the train."
He came back to his wife with a volume in his hand.
"Have you seen this novel?" he asked. "If not you must read it. Some one who knows this country and loves it and understands it has been putting a lot of things very clearly and sympathetically in a book. Some of it is real enough to have happened, and some of the characters seem like people I know. There's truth and power in the thing. There's a man or two in it who feels about the war and political flapdoodle and tricky manipulation of affairs and a lot of current skulduggery, very much as a good many able men I know feel about it all. There is some corking good description, some fine characterization, and some almost brilliant writing. Part of the scene is laid on the B.C. coast. It's so vivid it made me homesick. Have you seen it?"
He handed her the book. Mary opened it, let the leaves riffle through her fingers, turned back to the title page.
"'The Swirl,'" she read. "A trifle reminiscent of Gissing's 'The Whirlpool' but none the worse for that, I daresay. By Margaret Pierce. Yes, I've read it," she said soberly, "read it over and over till my eyes ached, and it seemed like words, words, words. You see this happens to be my book, Rod."
"Eh?" he looked blankly at her.
"I wrote it," she explained. "Mary—diminutive of Margaret. Pierce—what is the purpose of a thorn? Hence Mary Thorn—Margaret Pierce. I didn't particularly like to camouflage my identity. But I wanted to say a lot of things which coming from Margaret Pierce would be considered on their merits, and which coming from Mrs. Roderick Sylvester Norquay might arouse local misconceptions. I wanted to be unhampered by family considerations. I wanted to express my inner convictions about various aspects of life as it has been unfolding to me for a long time. So I hoisted a nom de plume. It would be strange if you didn't find a resemblance to persons and things and people you know. Yet there isn't a photograph there—just traits and habits of thought, inhibitions and passions that are common to humanity in general. I'm not a propagandist. I don't know that this book, or any other books I may write, has a message, unless it is the oblique inference that stupidity and ignorance and intolerance are more fatal than guns. I'm not so much concerned with isms as I am with—well, with what Joseph Conrad meant when he wrote: 'Fashions in monsters do change; but the truth of humanity goes on forever, unchangeable and inexhaustible in the variety of its disclosures.' You really think," she ended a bit hurriedly, "it's good?"
"Good?" Rod echoed. He sat down on the arm of her chair. "Of course it's good. Didn't I come lugging it home as a find?"
He looked down at the imprint.
"New York, eh? Did you have any trouble placing it?"
"Well, yes—and no," she said. "One publisher wrote me saying that it was work of a high order but he felt sure the time was scarcely opportune for its publication—unless I cared to modify certain passages which seemed to cast a doubt on the great moral forces underlying the war. That's almost verbatim. Another said that he personally enjoyed reading it very much, but was sure it would fail to get a hearing in view of the present demand for tales completely devoid of war atmosphere.
"It is amusing sometimes to try and trace motive and action," Mary smiled. "A publisher wants to publish books that will sell. Nearly every one is affected directly and indirectly by the war. Therefore the publisher concludes people want to ignore the war, or that they will uniformly recoil from a given aspect of the war, even if it is an individual attempt to interpret some obscure phase. War isn't the theme of this book. It's incidental, just as the war is incidental,—one of humanity's growing pains. Anyway, I found a publisher. And it's getting a hearing, he tells me. People are reading it."
"You've found yourself," Rod said a little wistfully. "You've got the vision, and the power to embody your vision so that it stands out clear. I couldn't get it. I tried; I wanted to capture the spaciousness, the drama, the unquenchable spirit of the pioneers. And I couldn't. What I wanted to do seems mere inconsequential romancing beside the vivid reality you've achieved. How did you do it, wonder-woman? How do you know with such certainty what men think and feel, and how they can be beasts and heroes, groping blindly toward certain ends? Where did you get the astonishing grasp of those obscure motives which so often actuate people? You ought to write the history of the Norquay family, Mary. There's a theme for a novel. First the pioneer adventurer, courageous, determined, resourceful, infinitely patient about his foundation laying, seeing clearly what he was about. Then his son following in his father's footsteps. The grandson expanding upon the solidly laid groundwork, elaborating the original plan, acquiring land and timber, increasing the tradition of permanence. Then a generation that stands pat on its hereditary past, accepting wealth and culture as a birthright, things irrevocably bestowed upon a superior class, as a condition fixed and final for all time. Last of all a generation where the eldest son and heir is only a passionate, superficially glossed animal, who expends his fierce energy on women and financial undertakings, proving eminently successful with both. The second son, the well-balanced, sound-minded one, killed in the war. The youngest, a dreamy, sensitive youth, coming back from the war with a cracked heart and most of his romantic illusions about great men, great nations, and great idealistic undertakings knocked into a cocked hat—with no task ahead of him worth an effort, with his keenest consciousness that of a world where all stability has gone by the board; a tired, disillusioned man who wants only to sit and think, and to be grateful that if everything else seems pinchbeck there's still a woman who is eighteen-carat gold to him. I don't quite see how you would make a pattern out of such a snarl—but—"
He didn't finish the sentence. Mary's arms drew him down to her with a fierce, protecting pressure. She held him, whispering tensely:
"What have they done to you? I can't bear to hear you talk like that. It isn't true. Life hasn't gone sour. We mustn't let it. We can make it good—we must. One daren't falter. One must not brood. We're over the top of a long hill that has tried us both. Well, then—'Courage, the devil is dead!' Eh, Roderick Dhu? Love's something to hold fast by, isn't it?"