CHAPTER XXXIII
The remainder of the summer found Thurley undecided as to what she should do next and not having Hortense as an aide-de-camp and with Polly still squandering her legacy, Thurley stayed in town to collect her faculties and study new rôles.
She found that women were chattering about “finding the group spirit,” pointing with envy and emulation to the soldiers who had found “the group spirit” and were working together for the cause. The germ of unrest, masquerading under the altruistic title of “group spirit,” was prevalent among all the women Thurley knew and those of whom she heard.
Even Ernestine came to explain incoherently that she had cancelled the season’s engagements to sail for France—“to help”—anything that was needed, play or amuse or scrub floors, Thurley dear, and was noncommittal as to her disorganized interests at home or her personal qualifications to serve in this capacity. Thurley accepted Ernestine’s good-by with a sense of amusement. Thurley herself did not feel she was slacking although it would have been difficult to explain just why she did not. She, too, had brought the “blessed memory” with her from the hermitage, acting as ballast for the chaos which prevailed about her.
A feeling of age had also claimed her. She seemed to see beyond these struggling, enthusiastic but deluded women who were sincere in their efforts, yet forgetful that to serve one’s immediate circle of dependents is the best way in which to serve the larger cause. Thurley saw ahead to the psychological struggle taking place in one year, three, five—who knows?—when these restless spirits, suffering from repression of emotion or ennui had rushed pell mell with a bevy of excuses and accomplishments into the teeth of the fight and the fight had unexpectedly ceased and their adventure was at an end.
She did not try to argue with Ernestine to stay at home and when Mark came to say good-by, a few mornings later, saying he was to dance and give athletic drills overseas, she said very faintly,
“But is war a pink tea? If I were a soldier and I saw an able-bodied man dancing about in a toga to give an imitation of Greek handball, I’d ask him to get into the trenches with me or quit. After all, Mark, you are going because Lissa is going!”
“Lissa is after a duke,” Mark said lightly. “How about one of these floor-scrubbing duchesses? What about yourself? You might capture an earl,” drawing on his cream-colored kid gloves. “Fancy Bliss, who blew in yesterday fit as a fiddle, declaring he would stick along at the old game right here.”
Thurley’s face must have showed her joy.
“Oh-ho, so Lissa is right,” Mark laughed. “She always contended that it was Bliss whose word was law with you!”