The Crimson Tide: A Novel

“Yes;–toward those perilous rocks you warned me of.”

“They are perilous!” she insisted.

“You ought to know,” he rejoined; “you’re sitting on top of ’em like a bally Lorelei!”

“If that’s your opinion, hadn’t you better steer for the open sea, John?”

“Certainly I’d better. But you look so sweet up there, with your classical golden hair, that I think I’ll risk the rocks.”

“Please don’t! There’s a deadly whirlpool under them. I’m looking down at it now.”

“What do you see at the bottom, Ilse? Human bones?”

“I can’t see the bottom. It’s all surface, like a shining mirror.”

“I’ll come over and take a look at it with you.”

“I think you’ll only see our own faces reflected… I think you’d better not come.”

“I’ll be there in about half an hour,” he said gaily.

He sauntered out and on into the body of the club, exchanging with friends a few words here, a smiling handclasp there; and presently he seated himself near a window.

For a while he rested his chin on his clenched hand, staring into space, until a waiter arrived with his order.

He signed the check, drained his glass, and leaned forward again with both elbows on his knees, twirling his silver-headed stick between nervous hands.

“After all,” he said under his breath, “it’s too late, now… I’m going to see this thing through.”

As he rose to go he caught sight of Jim Shotwell, seated alone by another window and attempting to read an evening paper by the foggy light from outside. He walked over to him, fastening his overcoat on the way. Jim laid aside his paper and gave him a dull glance.

“How are things with you?” inquired Estridge, carelessly.

“All right. Are you walking up town?”

“No.”

Jim’s sombre eyes rested on the discarded paper, but he did not pick it up. “It’s rotten weather,” he said listlessly.

“Have you seen Palla lately?” inquired Estridge, looking down at him with a certain curiosity.

“No, not lately.”

“She’s a very busy girl, I hear.”

“So I hear.”

Estridge seated himself on the arm of a leather chair and began to pull on his gloves. He said:

“I understand Palla is doing Red Cross and canteen work, besides organising her celebrated club;–what is it she calls it?–Combat Club No. 1?”

“I believe so.”

“And you haven’t seen her lately?”

Shotwell glanced at the fog and shrugged his shoulders: “She’s rather busy–as you say. No, I haven’t seen her. Besides, I’m rather out of my element among the people one runs into at her house. So I simply don’t go any more.”

“Palla’s parties are always amusing,” ventured Estridge.

“Very,” said the other, “but her guests keep you guessing.”

Estridge smiled: “Because they don’t conform to the established scheme of things?”

“Perhaps. The scheme of things, as it is, suits me.”

“But it’s interesting to hear other people’s views.”

“I’m fed up on queer views–and on queer people,” said Jim, with sudden and irritable emphasis. “Why, hang it all, Jack, when a fellow goes out among apparently well bred, decent people he takes it for granted that ordinary, matter of course social conventions prevail. But nobody can guess what notions are seething in the bean of any girl you talk to at Palla’s house!”

Estridge laughed: “What do you care, Jim?”

“Well, I wouldn’t care if they all didn’t seem so exactly like one’s own sort. Why, to look at them, talk to them, you’d never suppose them queer! The young girl you take in to dinner usually looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And the chances are that she’s all for socialism, self-determination, trial marriages and free love!

“Hell’s bells! I’m no prude. I like to overstep conventions, too. But this wholesale wrecking of the social structure would be ruinous for a girl like Palla.”

“But Palla doesn’t believe in free love.”

“She hears it talked about by cracked illuminati.”

“Rain on a duck’s back, Jim!”

“Rain drowns young ducks.”

“You mean all this spouting will end in a deluge?”

“I do. And then look for dead ducks.”

“You’re not very respectful toward modernism,” remarked Estridge, smiling.

Then Jim broke loose:

“Modernism? You yourself said that all these crazy social notions–crazy notions in art, literature, music–arise from some sort of physical degeneration, or from the perversion or checking of normal physical functions.”

“Usually they do–”

“Well,” continued Shotwell, “it’s mostly due to perversion, in my opinion. Women have had too much of a hell of a run for their money during this war. They’ve broken down all the fences and they’re loose and running all over the world.

“If they’d only kept their fool heads! But no. Every germ in the wind lodged in their silly brains! Biff. They want sex equality and a pair of riding breeches! Bang! They kick over the cradle and wreck the pantry.