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It is the English custom, when two boys fall to pommeling each other, to form a ring and let

them fight it out. Now it appeared to be the same with the sex-war. Rick said: "They'd better

settle it now than later." He gave advice only when it was asked, and poor Alfy was proud even

with his father. It was up to a man to handle his own women!

Marceline, on the other hand, fled to her mother and had weeping-fits. Beauty tried to

explain to her the peculiar English temperament, which makes itself appear cold but really

isn't. The short vacation was passing, and Beauty advised her daughter to make it up quickly;

but Marceline exclaimed: "I think they are horrid people, and if he won't have better manners I

don't want to have anything more to do with him." The French and the English had been

fighting ever since the year 1066.

XI

Oddly enough, it was the man from Iowa who served as international mediator. Parsifal

Dingle never meddled in anybody's affairs, but talked about the love of God, and perhaps it was

a coincidence that he talked most eloquently when he knew that two persons were at odds. God

was all and God was love; God was alive and God was here; God knew what we were doing and

saying and thinking, and when what we did was not right, we were deliberately cutting

ourselves off from Him and destroying our own happiness. That was the spiritual law; God

didn't have to punish us, we punished ourselves; and if we humbled ourselves before Him, we

exalted ourselves before one another. So on through a series of mystical statements which came

like a message from a much better world.

All this would have been familiar doctrine to the forebears of either of these young people.

Perhaps ideas have to be forgotten in order to become real again; anyhow, to both Marceline

and Alfy this strange gentleman was the originator or discoverer of awe-inspiring doctrines. A

rosy-cheeked, cherubic gentleman with graying hair and the accent of the prairies. Once when

he wanted to bathe his hands on board the sailboat he had used what he called a "wawsh-dish,"

which Alfy thought was the funniest combination of words he had ever heard.

But apparently God didn't object to the Iowa accent, for God came to him and told him what

to do. And when you thought of God, not somewhere up in the sky on a throne, but living in

your heart, a part of yourself in some incomprehensible way, then suddenly it seemed silly to

be quarreling with somebody who was a friend of the family, even if not your future spouse!

Better to forget about it—at least to the extent of a game of tennis.

Beauty thought how very convenient, having a spiritual healer in the family! She thought: "I

am an unworthy woman, and I must try to be like him and love everybody, and value them for

their best qualities. I really ought to go to Lanny's school, and meet some of those poor people,

and try to find in them what he finds." She would think these thoughts while putting on a costly

evening-gown which Irma had given her after two or three wearings; she would be escorted to

a party at the home of the former Baroness de la Tourette, and would listen to gossip about a

circus-rider who had married an elderly millionaire and was cutting a swath on this Coast of

Pleasure. The ladies would tear her reputation to shreds, and Beauty would enjoy their cruel

cleverness and forget all about the fact that God was listening to every word. A complicated

world, so very hard to be good in!

BOOK THREE

Blow, Winds, and Crack Your Cheeks

11

Woman's Whole Existence

I

THE betrayal of the British labor movement had entered like a white-hot iron into the flesh of

Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson. He had brooded over it and analyzed its causes; he had filled his

soul with images of it; and the result was to be a drama called The Dress-Suit Bribe. No literary

title, dignified and impartial, but a fighting title, a propaganda title.

The central figure was a miner's son who had escaped from the pits by becoming a secretary

of his union. He had a wife who had been a schoolteacher, somewhat above him in station. They

had no children, because the labor movement was to be their child. At the opening of the play

he was a newly elected member of Parliament. There were characters and episodes recalling his

early days of fervor and idealism, but now we saw him absorbed in the not very edifying details of

party politics, the maneuvers for power, the payment of past obligations in the hope of

incurring more.

The leisure-class woman in the story had no doubt been modeled on Rosemary, Countess of

Sandhaven, Lanny's old flame; one of those women touched by the feminist movement who

did not permit themselves to love deeply because it would interfere with their independence,

their enjoyment of prominence and applause. She was a political woman who liked to wield

power; she set out to seduce a labor leader, not because she wanted to further the interests of

her Tory group, but because she enjoyed playing with a man and subjecting him to her will.

She tried to teach him what she called common sense, not merely about love, but about

politics and all the affairs of the world they lived in. She didn't mind breaking the heart of a

wife whom she considered an inferior and superfluous person; if in the process she broke up a

labor union, that was an incidental gain.

It was a "fat" part for an actress, and at Lanny's suggestion Rick had endowed the woman

with an American mother; a common enough phenomenon in London society, this would make

the role possible for Phyllis Gracyn. Lanny's old friend and playmate had been starred in two

plays which had "flopped" on Broadway through no fault of her own; so she was in a humble

frame of mind, and when Lanny wrote her about Rick's play she cabled at once, begging to be

allowed to see the script. The part had been written for her— even to allowing for traces of an

American accent.

Lanny had become excited about the play, and had talked out every scene with his friend,

both before and after it was put down on paper. Irma and Beauty read it, and Emily and

Sophie, and of course Rick's wife; these ladies consulted together, and contributed suggestions

as to how members of the grand and beau and haut monde felt and behaved. So the play

became a sort of family affair, and there was small chance of anything's being wrong with its

atmosphere and local color. After Emily had read the entire script, she offered to put in five

thousand dollars on the same terms as the rest of them, and Sophie, the ex-baroness, was not

to be outdone.

The play would be costly to produce, on account of the money atmosphere. If you want actors

to look like workingmen or labor leaders, you can hire them cheaply, but if you want one who

can play the Chancellor of the Exchequer, you have to dip into your own. Rick, who by now had

considerable experience, estimated the total at thirty thousand dollars, and the figure sounded

familiar to Lanny, because that had been the cost of Gracyn's first production, the sum for

which she had thrown him over. Now he would take a turn at being the "angel"; a higher,

celestial kind, for whom she wouldn't have to act anywhere but on the stage.

II

The play was finished early in April, and the family went north, with Alfy returning to school.

Lanny and Irma motored the mother and father as far as Paris, starting several days ahead; for