Smiling broadly, he produced several bottles of whisky from a delicate and beautiful cabinet, and brought out four crystal glasses touched with gold. Then he banged on a large silver bell, chased with gilt. “Ice? Soda?” he asked. A moment later a middle-aged man in a white coat entered. Durant glanced idly at the servant, and then his heart lurched. He had never known this man personally, but up to five years ago he had been famous all over The Democracy for his literature and his poetry. Then he had written a passionate exhortation to his countrymen to restore their long-lost freedom, to oust their tyrants, “to be men again, as men were once men, and no longer the driven cattle of despots.” He had been seized, his property confiscated, his books openly burned, his wife and three daughters conscripted for the hardest manual labor in the war plants, their identities wiped out, his son assassinated in the streets. No one had known what had happened to the teacher and poet, Dr. William Dodge; it had been taken for granted that he, too, had been murdered. All pictures of him had been obliterated from the public files. However, Durant remembered that tall thin figure, that dark and ascetic face, those large deep eyes, from prints and news reels and other photographs.
The face had not changed, but the manner had. It was a dull and shuffling robot who looked expectantly at Lincoln, and who bent its head in a humble and servile manner. There was no glow in the eyes, no remembrance. Along one cheek was a twisted scar, which pulled his mouth aside.
“Ice. Soda. And be quick about it,” said Lincoln, with a rough gesture. “No fumbling this time, Bill.”
Durant, shocked and sickened, fixed his eyes on the cloisonné vases on the mantelpiece. He appeared to be staring at the comfortable fire on the marble hearth. He told himself, over and over: I must control myself. He made himself breathe very slowly, and then turned to his host. “Many conscripted workers on your farm, Mr. Lincoln?”
“Two hundred,” answered the farmer, with satisfaction. “Can’t see their barracks from these windows, but they’re out behind the woods. Fifty girls.” He gave his rich chuckle again. “Need ’em all. Thinking of applying for twenty-five more. Nearly a hundred of ’em were farmers, themselves, but disloyal.” He made his face express indignation and contempt. “Others are city folks. Took a lot of hard work to train ’em, but we did it! Hardened up their soft hands! Twenty of the girls and women were schoolteachers, but the country needed ’em for essential work on the farms, and here they are!”
All labor, all the professions, including the medical, had been conscripted nearly fifteen years. Durant had known that. However, in the cities it had not seemed so frightful, for even tyranny could become anonymous in vast anonymity. Here, on the golden land, it was more imminent, more terrible, more significant, more personal. Dr. William Dodge! A forced servant to this bulky and flabby brute who wore fine tweeds and exulted in his serfs and his influence under The Democracy!
“I’d like to know something about my district,” said Durant. “I know Philadelphia, which is part of it, but the countryside is a little hazy in my mind. How many farmers do I—control?”
Lincoln studied him, and a little of his ruddy color left his face. Control! He didn’t like the word. But he answered cautiously: “Well, now, there are about twenty of us big farmers in your district, Major, all about like me.” (Control! Nobody had dared use that word before when referring to the farmers. Nobody but this feller in his army suit!)
Lincoln’s scrutiny became more alert. He saw before him a slender young man, not very tall, with a dark complexion, dark and penetrating eyes, a large aquiline nose, a mobile mouth with three teeth missing, and a thick mop of black curling hair. Lincoln noticed that his right arm was in a sling. He cleared his throat, for that nameless uneasiness in him was increasing.
“Had an accident, Major?”
“Yes. A party. Too much to drink last night. And just when I had been detailed to take over Major Burnes’ post. I wanted to wait a few days, to visit my dentist, and get over the party, but orders are orders, you know. The Chief Magistrate can be all military, you know, and besides, I suppose he thought I needed discipline.”
Dr. Dodge brought in a silvery tray holding ice and soda. Lincoln, as he deftly filled the glasses, laughed. “Oh, I know the Chief Magistrate! That is, I’ve met him. All patriotism. All for the country. When he looks at you he scares the hell out of you, don’t he?”
Grandon said demurely: “He certainly does. I overstayed my leave one time by just forty minutes, and I was in the guardhouse a month.”
Durant sipped at his glass of excellent whisky. “I have the highest regard for the Chief Magistrate. But perhaps that’s because he’s given me absolute power over this district, more than Major Burnes ever had, and so I suppose I’m flattered. Told me to make all my own decisions, and he’d uphold them, whatever they are.” He smiled blandly at his host.
Lincoln was alerted. “Then you could get my twenty-five extra farm workers for me, Major?” He leaned forward in his chair, eagerly, forgetting his uneasiness.
“I certainly could,” Durant said, with an amiable nod. “Suppose we go out over your farm, later?” He added: “After we’ve all had dinner, of course.”
Lincoln had had a meeting scheduled in Philadelphia with his fellow farmers. There was a Government check in his pocket, for which he would receive gold that afternoon to be deposited in the Philadelphia Grange. He had looked forward to the merry meeting at one o’clock with his friends. However, he said, as if with immense pleasure: “Wonderful, wonderful! I’ll show you all around, Major.” He didn’t like Durant, for he had an animal’s sensitivity for danger, and he had been especially alarmed by Durant’s easy information about his absolute power. However, he had as much as promised twenty-five new laborers, and Lincoln was prepared to be the most sedulous and happy host. Nothing was too good for the Military.
Two women entered the room, one about fifty years old, the other practically a young girl. The men got to their feet, and Durant glanced over them quickly. The older woman was evidently Mrs. Lincoln. She was big and stout and perspiring, even though the spring day was not too warm, and her skin was smooth and red like her husband’s. She wore a fine dress of dark silk, which strained over the balloons which were her breasts and the bellows which were her hips. She had legs like inverted pyramids, and her thighs were like logs, and her hands were meaty. She had a great porcine face, tiny gray eyes, a mass of gray hair tortured into many curls, a loose mouth, and an arrogant and overbearing manner.
The girl with her was charming, not over twenty-two, small and slender and dainty, with long chestnut hair and pretty blue eyes. Her mouth was red and full and smiling, and the parted lips showed two rows of fine white teeth. Her blue dress matched her eyes, and she was artlessly pleased with her diamond rings. The farmer’s daughter of ancient story had become the oppressor’s daughter of the new world, flirtatious and gay and captivating, and girlishly petulant.
“Mazie! Gracie!” boomed Lincoln, with expansive pride. “Our new administrator, Major Curtiss! Major, my girls!”
Mrs. Lincoln’s choleric eyes brightened as she looked at Durant, grew cold again as she glanced at Grandon, became filmed as if with outrage when she detected the presence of the sergeant. Then she turned again to Durant and extended her warm thick hand and beamed. “Major!” she cried, hoarsely and loudly. “Major Curtiss! Welcome to our home! Such a young man, too!” She flicked her eyes at her daughter speculatively. However, Grace Lincoln was evidently very happy at seeing Grandon again, and had no time for Durant. Grandon was smiling at the girl, and holding her hand tightly. “Gracie!” shouted Mrs. Lincoln. “Major Curtiss!”
Grace hurriedly gave her attention to Durant, and examined him. She held out her hand and he took it with his left. A natural flirt, she decided he was very attractive, but “peculiar.” Curtiss was a good American name, but he looked Jewish or Italian or something. “Major Curtiss,” she said tentatively, and her charming eyes were shrewd.
“An old fam
ily name,” answered Durant gravely. “Far back as the Revolution.”
“Uh?” said Grace, puzzled.
Lincoln roared with laughter. “He means the American Revolution—old 1775 or something, Gracie. Don’t you remember?”
The girl became pettish. “Daddy, you know they don’t teach those things in school any more. They haven’t for years.” Her tone deprecated his age. Lincoln scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Yeh, remember. Teach kids more interestin’ things in school, these past twenty years. Social studies, and such. Besides,” he chuckled, “couldn’t bring in the American Revolution without mentioning the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, could they? And that’s subversive.” He winked broadly at Durant who, with dismay, cursed himself for his own slip. He forced himself to laugh.
“We’re taught Americanism and Democracy in the schools and colleges,” Grace informed her father severely. “Not what a lot of revolutionary foreigners did two hundred years ago.”
“Yes, foreigners,” agreed Durant.
Grace smiled at him. It was an empty but pretty smile, and she moved her hips in a slight wriggle. The sergeant devoured her brutally with his eyes.
“In another twenty-five years all the old people who remember what they had been taught will be dead,” said Grandon enthusiastically. “And history will be confined to the present, and will be changing constantly as we are taught new concepts of it.”
“Hum,” said Lincoln, who evidently shared his wife’s suspicions and dislike of the young lieutenant.
“Don’t you agree?” asked Grandon, with an odd pouncing note in his boyish voice.
“Yes, yes,” answered Lincoln hastily. “Of course, of course! Whatever the Military says is exactly right! Who quarrels with the Military? They’ve got the best minds, haven’t they? They know what they’re talking about, don’t they?” He hurriedly asked his wife if she wished some sherry. She shook her mountainous head.
“Our friends are staying to dinner,” Lincoln informed her.
Durant caught her sudden consternation. She was looking at her husband, and Durant saw only her profile. Her lips moved in a single monosyllable, but very distinctly. Bob? Was it “Bob?”
Lincoln became very genial indeed, but crinkles of worry appeared around his eyes. “I’ve decided not to go to the Grange meeting, Mazie. And the major ought to meet the boys.” He hesitated. “That is, the two older ones. Bob was in the Army a while ago, Major, and sometimes he don’t feel so good. Maybe, Mazie, Bob could eat in his room, uh?”
But Durant said: “I’d like to meet all your sons, Mrs. Lincoln. I’ve heard that your Bob is your right arm. Tell him I want to meet him more than I do your other sons.”
Mrs. Lincoln had lost some of her high color, and her eyelids trembled. Grace said, with annoyance: “Oh, Major, you won’t like Bob! He’s so sullen. He isn’t always responsible for what he says. He was hurt in the war, too, and we’ve got to take care of him. Sometimes—sometimes he loses his temper and we’re always afraid—”
“Still,” said Durant kindly, “I’d like to meet him. I’m an old Army man, myself. I was first a sergeant and then a lieutenant, and served for nearly four years. Your other sons weren’t in the Armed Forces, Mr. Lincoln?”
The farmer shook his head helplessly. “Bob didn’t have to go. But he wanted to. Said he ought to go, and find out what it was all about. He hasn’t been the same since—”
“It was kind of stupid for Bob to go,” said Mrs. Lincoln, with affront. “No farmer’s boys ever have to go into the Army. Farms are essential. The farm boys got priority; needed at home, for the war efforts. And it wasn’t that Bob was patriotic—”
Lincoln interposed almost with panic. “He was very patriotic! Thought he ought to do his share. Said I had two other boys, and he wasn’t needed. Mazie! It’s dinnertime!”
“You’ll like Bob,” Grandon informed Durant. “He has a mind of his own. That’s all right for farmers, unless they let their minds run away with them.” He grinned. “But you don’t have to worry, Mr. Lincoln. Not when you have such a lovely young lady like Miss Lincoln, here.”
Durant smiled inwardly. This was becoming very interesting. Lincoln said: “Dinnertime, Mazie!”
She nodded; her fear was rising. She motioned to her daughter, who was again engrossed with Grandon. “Gracie, let’s go.”
“I hope three unexpected guests won’t inconvenience you,” said Durant, approaching his hostess.
The little gray eyes turned toward the lieutenant and the sergeant. “Two extra at the table’s all right,” she said.
“Three,” corrected Durant, gently. “I, the lieutenant, and the sergeant.”
There was a sudden abrupt silence in the room. Mrs. Lincoln opened and shut her mouth without a sound. Grace stared. Lincoln’s red face turned faintly purplish. Grandon smiled happily, and the sergeant grinned and straighted his shoulders. “Three,” repeated Durant, in that same gentle tone. “Nothing is too good for the Army, you said, Mr. Lincoln.”
“Yes, yes, of course!” exclaimed Lincoln. His wife was rooted on the threshold. He seized her arm, and they lumbered ahead, unevenly.
While in the vast parlor of this farmhouse, Durant had been conscious of an incongruity between everything which was supremely tasteful and yet was without taste. It had been a very subtle difference, and now he understood intuitively that objects, themselves perfect and exquisite, could acquire a dullness and lack of sparkle of life when in the presence of innate coarseness and insensitivity.
The dining room, with its wonderful carved and mosaic-work furniture, held that same uneasiness of inanimate yet peculiarly conscious things. Everything was overlain with the dulled patina of grossness which was a part of the Lincolns. Durant thought, with a smile at his own fancifulness, that everything in the room resented its owners and refused to give up its ultimate charm for them. The magnificent silver, highly polished, gave off a plated and tarnished gleam; the brocaded curtains lacked a certain grandeur of fold. The painting of fruits over the buffet was the crude work of a child. Durant strolled over to study it, excited over his own imaginings. Then he saw that it was a Van Gogh; he had seen this very painting reproduced, long ago, in magazines.
The light struck the painting fully, and so it ought to have revealed itself in all its brilliance of color and captured light. But it did not. It had blurred itself, hidden itself as if in a revolted shadow.
“Picked that up in Washington for three hams,” said Lincoln, with proud complacency. “Like it, Major? Maybe I was cheated, uh?”
“Yes,” said Durant, reflectively. “You were.”
“I told you so!” said Mrs. Lincoln, angrily. “That old thing! It don’t look like fruit, anyways.”
Durant thought, looking at the Van Gogh: You’re mine. Wait.
Grace giggled, “Daddy always wants his money’s worth. And he gets cheated. Three hams for that awful thing.”
Before they seated themselves, a young man entered, a big young man with rough dark hair and a sun-darkened face, and sullen, intelligent eyes. He had Mrs. Lincoln’s heavy features, but his had a quickened quality which eliminated the coarseness. His mouth was tight and hard, and he had put a coat over his farmer’s overalls. His hands, though clean, showed evidences of hard work in the thickened knuckles, ingrained soil about the fingernails, and calluses. It was evident that he had known nothing about the three military guests, for, when he saw them, he stopped sharply on the threshold and a look of intense and open hatred stood on his face.
Mrs. Lincoln and her husband greeted him effusively, as if they had not seen him for weeks. Mrs. Lincoln waddled to him and linked his arm with hers, and said loudly: “The new major, Bob! And you know Lieutenant Grandon, and—and—” Her bellicose but frightened eye touched Sergeant Keiser, then fell away, affronted.
“Yes, yes!” said John Lincoln, and in his voice was a pleading and desperate note. “Son, the new major of the district!”
Bob Lincol
n did not even glance at the lesser officers. His eyes fixed themselves on Durant, and his hatred was naked and without fear. He said nothing; he did not move, yet he seemed to be resisting his mother’s desperate tug on his arm.
Lincoln laughed heartily, as he waved the officers to places at the lavishly set table. “Bob doesn’t talk much,” he explained. “Kind of shy with strangers, like all us farmers. Major, right there beside Mrs. Lincoln. Lieutenant, er, beside Gracie, in your usual place, of course. Sergeant—” He paused. He was, in his way, looking for a seat “below the salt.” Sergeant Keiser stared at him. “All right, Sergeant, right here near me.” He sat down, without waiting for his wife and daughter. “Yes, Bob’s shy. Don’t like to talk, do you, Bob?” There was warning in every word.
“Please, honey, please,” Mrs. Lincoln whispered to Bob, who still stood rigidly on the threshold. She pulled at his arm, and, his eyes still fixed on Durant, he allowed himself to be drawn to the table. He ignored the place next to Durant, and sat down at the far end of the table near Sergeant Keiser. And then he settled weightily in his chair, his back bent, his eyes riveted on his plate. Durant felt his immense hostility and loathing, and there was a quickening interest in him. Here was no placating of the omnipresent, the omnipotent Military, but a powerful repudiation.
Every silver serving-dish was loaded with ham, chicken, lamb and beef, and the best of vegetables, the most tempting of gravies, the whitest of bread. White bread! Durant had not eaten white bread for years. He had never seen so prodigal a meal in his life. There was enough food on the table to feed thirty people—thirty starving people in the cities! The scent of good cooking, hearty and lavish cooking, rose in a steam of plenty over the lace tablecloth. Pitchers of rich yellow milk stood near every plate. The dinnerware was white with a wide border of fading gold, and the silver was heavy in Durant’s hand, and delicately chased. He saw an initial on each piece: “M,” enscrolled and shaded. Who was “M”? Was the family dead long ago, or in exile, or starving in some war-plant barracks, or in some rat-ridden tenement? Anything was possible. Durant surveyed the table again, the heaps of food, the lace, the plates, the pitchers of milk, and the violence of his own hatred almost choked him. Involuntarily, he looked at Bob Lincoln, and the hatred was there, too, for him, stronger and wilder than before.