“You’re afraid I don’t understand,” Thurley hugged her—because she wanted to hug some one and Betsey happened to be handy. “I do understand—but remember the old railway crossing advice, ‘stop—look—listen’—” here she handed out a dress pattern for a present and took a deep interest in the debate as to whether there should be box pleats or a circular skirt!
Within a short time Thurley became both unconscious and disinterested as to her own change of heart. For she discovered that here was an opportunity to study first hand and in unsuspected fashion the war madness which was taking its toll of house-and-garden folk destined to do their bit by stay-at-home effort. The news that Dan had a commission did not surprise her beyond a certain pride, almost as if she had been instrumental in her arguments for his going. She thought that Lorraine probably cried a little and tried to convince Dan his duty lay at home because of the boy; she could picture Lorraine’s distressed, pretty self as she coaxed Dan not to go “and get killed” and Dan’s sentimental side warring with his manhood. At any rate he had gone, so Betsey told her, watching Thurley’s face for some evidence as to her state of feeling. Also he was making the very best first lieutenant in the army—for was he not the first commissioned officer from the Corners?
There had been a quota of village lads, some of whom Thurley remembered, who had gone and there was a fudge club organized by the village maidens which yielded weekly so many pounds of sugary delight to be forwarded to the training camps. The social club was a Red Cross center, the lodge rooms were forwarding station for garments and relief funds, no corner of the town but what had scrambled personal possessions into a corner to make way for impersonal duties.
As Thurley saw these evidences in even the shut-in hamlet, she reproached herself for having mere visions of a time far ahead when America should win the violet crown, the time when the future generations would recite in history the events of the war of wars and then say with as much assertion as they told of the enemy’s defeat, “A renaissance in art was noted in America during the reconstruction period, art was placed on a more permanent, moral basis, there was a widecut destroying and discouragement of all pursuits and achievements which did not conform to a high moral and spiritual idea. For the first time in the history of the world, our people demanded of artists more than their work, they demanded a conforming to moral law so that the number of art workers became fewer and the public was relieved of superfluous art intriguers whose influence was a menace.” So would the children recite and when the teacher would ask: “Who inspired this great movement?” their answer would be, “Bliss Hobart, he named it the violet crown—the crown for supremacy, violet as the eccelesiastics interpret it—for humility.”
Thurley could almost fancy she heard the answer being made, as glorious a feat as there ever was to be, to have children speak one’s name with admiration, to have shown America over-rich in all physical attributes, as taking for her spoils the greatest lesson of all, re-educating her artists so they might draw on the wonderful and hitherto barely skimmed surface of her astral or mystical energy which lies waiting for all true idealists.
The third day after Thurley’s return, when she was card-indexing her thoughts in order to begin her concert tour, wondering how to convince the town that she had returned to be one of them and that no matter how great the world might call her she did not belong to the world but to Birge’s Corners, she finally decided to go to see Lorraine.
She was amused at the situation as she slipped into a frock like the beautiful green blue rust which comes on copper and put a gold piece in her purse for the boy. She, Thurley Precore, like a wistful village spinster, going to call on the son of her erstwhile adorer! And she chose to carry out the illusion by walking through the streets, nodding at passers-by and pretending not to notice their astonished glances.
The Corners could never quite forget the birthday party for Taffy, although Taffy had long since ascended to canine realms above.