JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER
NEW YORK
ALFRED·A·KNOPF
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1922, by
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.
Published, October, 1922
Second Printing, October, 1922
Set up and electrotyped by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y.
Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York, N. Y.
Printed and bound by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
For
Hamilton and Phoebe Gilkyson junior
in their fine drawing-room
at Mont Clare
The Works Of Joseph Hergesheimer
Novels
The Lay Anthony [1914]
Mountain Blood [1915]
The Three Black Pennys [1917]
Java Head [1918]
Linda Condon [1919]
Cytherea [1922]
The Bright Shawl [1922]
Shorter Stories
Wild Oranges [1918]
Tubal Cain [1918]
The Dark Fleece [1918]
The Happy End [1919]
Travel
San Cristobal de la Habana [1920]
New York: Alfred A. Knopf
When Howard Gage had gone, hismother’s brother sat with his headbowed in frowning thought. Thefrown, however, was one of perplexity ratherthan disapproval: he was wholly unable to comprehendthe younger man’s attitude toward hisexperiences in the late war. The truth was,Charles Abbott acknowledged, that he understoodnothing, nothing at all, about the presentyoung. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the thoroughlyabsurd, the witless, things they constantlydid, dispensing with their actual years he wouldhave considered them the present aged. Theywere so—well, so gloomy.
Yet, in view of the gaiety of the current parties,the amounts of gin consumed, it wasn’t preciselygloom that enveloped them. Charles Abbottsearched his mind for a definition, for lighton a subject dark to a degree beyond any merefigure of speech. Yes, darkness particularlydescribed Howard. The satirical bitterness of10his references to the “glorious victory in France”was actually a little unbalanced. The impressionAbbott had received was of bestiality chokedin mud. His nephew was amazingly clear,vivid and logical, in his memories and opinions;they couldn’t, as he stated them in a kind offrozen fury, be easily controverted.
What, above everything else, appeared to dominateHoward Gage was a passion for reality, fortruth—all the unequivocal facts—in oppositionto a conventional or idealized statement. Particularly,he regarded the slightest sentimentwith a suspicion that reached hatred. Abbott’sthoughts centered about the word idealized;there, he told himself, a ray of perception mightbe cast into Howard’s obscurity; since the mostevident fact of all was that he cherished no ideals,no sustaining vision of an ultimate dignity behindmen’s lives.
The boy, for example, was without patriotism;or, at least, he hadn’t a trace of the emotionalloyalty that had fired the youth of Abbott’s day.There was nothing sacrificial in Howard Gage’sconception of life and duty, no allegiance outsidehis immed