“You tighten bathroom faucets? You’re a high-brow, remember! You’re above tightening bathroom faucets these days, Nat Forge!”
CHAPTER VIII
DRIFTING
I
America was not going to preserve her neutrality and keep from the European shambles much longer. As the days passed and 1917 drew closer, there was less and less doubt about it.
The Lusitania tragedy had forecast what might possibly come; the President’s famous note of May 13 had met with general approval. Wilson had received a vote of confidence. He was free to deal with the situation created by the various peace proposals of the winter of 1916-1917. But the negotiations which followed in December and January were obscure at the time and the vital issue by no means clear. Then on the twenty-second of January came the announcement of unrestricted submarine warfare. Declaration of war on April 6 was only a matter of dénouement.
When Madelaine came home for the spring vacation, she was hardly in a mood, with the swift and ominous trend of world events moving about her, to consider any advances of a marital tenor from Gordon or any other man. Then one night in late February it came to her how short the space can really be between a blind exasperation and intolerance of anything threatening a fierce desire for complete independence, and a frantic heart-cry after reliance on a man’s strength, the most tender and intimate dependence life had to offer her.
She would arise in the morning fully determined to postpone her studies until the German menace was blasted forever and follow scores of her sister students to France,—to work out her own salvation on bloody fields where men in the abstract needed her most. She went to bed to clutch the counterpane hysterically as the most lonesome and unwanted woman in God’s bloody world. Between these two moods she swayed back and forth, wondering at times if she were losing her capacity for straight, cold-brained reasoning.
Gordon came up to the house that February night and found Madelaine in the upstairs library. Mrs. Theddon was down in the city directing some Red Cross affair. The servants were below in the rear, out of sight and—in so far as Madelaine went—out of mind. A coal fire glowed beautifully in the open grate. In silken gown which only accentuated the strength and comeliness of her figure, the young woman sank down before the coals with Gordon across from her. Neither spoke for a long time. Madelaine knew it was no ordinary call which had brought Gordon up to-night. The man’s manner was perturbing.
“Madge,” he said at last, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.”