Before she left, Thurley understood the part Lissa meant to take in the war—to go overseas apparently to sing for the boys and in reality discover and capture a widower duke for her second husband.
“Why not?” she asked. “I’m sure women have the right to seek their fortune?”
“Not at such a time. They should be sure they are needed before they go across to eat up sugar and beef and wheat—even to take up space. There should be an examining bureau where every one could be proved a hundred per cent needed.”
“Ridiculous! Think of the chance to know titled women. I wouldn’t wonder if I went to London after the war—a few titled patronesses and one is established! Of course you are bound to meet them over there, when they are all scrubbing floors and cooking. It’s so easy to become socially elevated these days! Look at the people right in America who have slaved at the Red Cross rooms to become socially exposed! Oh, I know the majority are self-sacrificing, but the other side is worth a place in history, too.”
After she left and Thurley opened the window to banish Lissa’s heavy and synthetic perfume, she thought of her cold-blooded determination to find a duke, a disabled duke would do if his title was sound, and marry him or become friendly with blue-blooded women of England who welcomed all who came to serve!
To condemn a class is not only useless but ethically a grave error. No one has ever given it credence save fanatics or disgruntled, long-haired socialists. But to argue both sides of the question, giving each fair representation and admit the errors and the virtues of both—that is common sense.
So Thurley sat this May afternoon while the city throbbed with its new turmoil, thinking of many things, all of which related to Hobart’s prophecy—that America must win the violet crown, definite recognition by the Old World that America had established new standards for art, independent of the frayed and tarnished rules which had, in a sense, caused present bloodshed. As a nation’s art progresses, the nation’s virility weakens, so history has proved, Thurley reasoned. When art reached a state of so-called perfection, commercial, physical and religious supremacy of the nation dimmed—because the foundation for that art was not made of common sense rules but fantastic and self-indulgent exceptions. Let the foundation for art be moral even if limited to begin with, inspired by self-sacrifice and with sincerity its determining motif and that nation can advance in art without fear of decadence. She went to the window to close it, looking down at the busy, broad street where strange posters met her gaze, women in uniforms, women stopping pedestrians to beg for the cause, women making speeches, boys screaming out something and waving banners, while echoes of a popular military song floated up to her,—all gay anesthesia for the horror of the war. The great and needed romance of war had taken its clutch on America; reality was left unhampered for the battlefield. That was the great division of the forces. From now on anything tinged with military trimmings would be accepted. Fortunes won by a trifling penwiper made of red, white and blue cheesecloth! An actress however infamous of character and threadbare as to ability would be lauded and her salary tripled when she screeched camp ditties or waved a flag! Pictures with the flag would sell, pictures with soul and peaceful backgrounds would be shoved aside, books such as Caleb’s would flood the market, military diaries would come in droves to the editors’ payroll. For the time being art would be a necessary factor in arousing emotions and sustaining interest. It always had been so, it always must be so at such a crisis.
It occurred to her that if Hobart’s vision could have been realized before this crisis what a mightier, more direct influence true art would have in rousing the commoner. For it would be an art of spiritual sincerity and no one would be forced to discriminate among a myriad of near-art wares and mercenary efforts in patriotic guise. The peasant whose taste for opera and pictures is unsullied until he mingles with the conglomeration which this over-generous nation offers is to be preferred!
And afterwards, Thurley thought,—strangely enough, when peace had come—would the vanguard of art be brave enough to banish forever the surplus wares, false standards and begin anew?—for these swashbuckling profiteers would be loath to cry quits.