All Kneeling/Chapter 15
The United States entered the World War with Christabel's complete approval. Yet her patriotism did not make her narrow-minded. She was able to assure Elliott, a pacifist, that she understood why he refused to stand up in theaters when the "Star-spangled Banner" was played. "I do, I do understand so completely how much more courage it takes than it would to fight, how much easier it would be to join in the war hysteria, and I honor you for it," she told him, at the same time that she told him she couldn't go to the theater with him that evening.
Friends who were in New York were being kind to her in the evenings, trying to keep her from being lonely, for Curtis, beautiful in uniform, had left for a South Carolina camp.
"The poetry was lovely," he wrote Christabel. "And I am certainly looking forward to reading the book on Spiritual Values just as soon as I get time." And a page later, "Could you send me some detective books, as I have quite a lot of time on my hands?"
Gobby was a sergeant, somewhere in France. "The poetry was wonderful," he wrote Christabel. "I feel from it that you must be suffering exquisitely, and my only consolation is that it is marvelous for your art. I will write you my reactions to the essays on Spiritual Values just as soon as I get time to read them—they keep us pretty busy here, as you can imagine! Since you are so sweet as to ask if there is anything else I would like to have you send me, I would certainly love some chocolate. You have to be a millionaire when it comes to buying it here"
Boyd Benjamin was in France, driving an ambulance. Christabel could see her, in the unbecoming mud and mustard of her khaki uniform, striding along with steps twice as long as any man's, and following that vision she could see herself, in white that turned from silver to gold as she went down a long corridor, in and out of sunlight falling from high windows. She saw the faces on the pillows brighten. "Sister" "Sister" Even the most terribly wounded managed to whisper it as she passed, managed a twisted answering smile to her smile that was so near tears.
But she did not go to France. "I long to go—oh, how I long to go!" she told Austin Weeks, who in happier days had done the portrait of her in a gray velvet robe de style, with a greyhound curled about her, that hung over Curtis's desk and who now was camouflaging battle-ships in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. "But I know the biggest sacrifice I can make for our boys is to stay here and use my own special gift, just as you are doing. Anyone can drive an ambulance, or nurse, but we who have been given gifts—oh, Austin, are we blessed or cursed?we have no choice."
So, although she did a little work in a white uniform and veil—the costume she wore in the beautiful photographs used to advertise her book of war poems—and gave a great deal of, Curtis's money, she felt that her important work was in connection with her writing. She autographed hundreds of copies of books for bazaars; Fly in Amber, selling well, supported several war orphans; and she never said no to a request for a benefit reading. Two or three times a week she could be seen coming out of her Venetian house, a Venetian lady in a black tricorne, with a small black lace mask of veil shading her mysterious eyes, going to read her poems somewhere. "Perhaps they will comfort some one just a little," she said, wistfully.
"It seems to me so wrong not to try to bring as much beauty into this poor ugly world as you can, especially now," she said to Austin Weeks. "I feel as if, just because my own heart is so heavy—oh, Austin, so heavy, so heavy!—I must make an effort, now of all times, to try to look as nice as I can." And to his answer she had to reply: "Oh, Austin, you mustn't talk like that! You mustn't spoil me!"
So when she read before clubs and circles, or sat at speakers' tables, she wore soft fur and velvet and pearls, and sometimes overheard, among the people crowding around to meet her, a whispered:
"She's like a little queen!"
And she tried to be queenly, in the highest sense—Noblesse oblige—to her adorers as they were introduced.
"Oh, Miss Caine! This is a real privilege! I don't know whether you caught my name. I'm Mrs. Merkle, Grace Gladwin Merkle, you might possibly have heard it in connection with my talks on 'The Psychology of Success.' I wanted to tell you how interested I was in Fly in Amber, it had a theme so like a novel I wrote several years ago—well, no, it wasn't published, but several publishers considered it"
"Oh, Mrs. Caine, your reading was simply marvelous!"
"This isn't Christabel Caine? But, my dear, you're only a child!"
"This is a great pleasure, Miss Caine! I'm sure you must be tired of hearing how much we all enjoyed your poems! I wonder if you ever happened to meet my nephew—he's a poet, too—Edgar Temple Anderson—well, it's a little volume called Heart's Home, and then he won the Southwestern Poetry Society's second prize with a poem called 'Mary Magdalene, on Broadway'"
"I just can't tell you
"Your poems were delightful, Miss Caine."
"I enjoyed your reading particularly, Miss Caine, being a writer myself"
Poor dears, thought Christabel, hearing her voice answer their adulation graciously, gently. After all, how human to try to shine, even if it's only by reflected light. Amusing, and pitiful, and yet rather beautiful. It was like something Austin Weeks had said, that had struck her as so true, "Life is the laughter of a broken-hearted clown."
She wrote in her Secret Journal:
"No one will ever know how hard these readings are. They leave me utterly spent, and yet after the emotional exhaustion comes an indescribable peace and happiness, deep, oh, deep, to feel that I can feed these hungry, souls. When I just let myself rest in that thought, I know that in spite of the sorrow and darkness of these heart-breaking days, in spite of all my pain, I am a happy and a blesséd Child. And I pray that in spite of all their kindness and the wonderful things they say to me, I may keep unspoiled, I may just be happily, humbly grateful because I have been given this gift to share."
Aunt Deborah died in her sleep that winter. "Something in me has died with you, Aunt Deborah darling," Christabel wrote in her Journal. "My childhood, I think. Those days I spent at Shady Lawn, out in the garden where the spilled petals of the thousand-leafed roses covered the ground with pink silk from a very rapture of blooming, or in high-shuttered rooms, always dim and cool, though heat beat outside like the waves of brassy sea. And you were always there with me, dear, loving the lonely child, who does not forget."
She could not go to the funeral, for she was in bed with threatened influenza, but she sent a blanket of violets—"For darling Aunt Deborah, from her Christabel"; she went into deepest mourning, and she wrote the poem, "An Old Woman Dies in Time of War," beginning, "Sorrow on sorrow, a shadow that falls in the night"
Uncle Johnnie, in New York on business connected with Deborah's estate, and lunching at the Century Club, saw Talbot Emery Towne, but did not see him first. Mr. Towne, eating rice pudding at another table, pushed his saucer aside, pulled down his face, and came to Uncle Johnnie.
"Mr. Caine," he said, in a voice several notes lower than usual.
"Oh! Howdo."
"I want to assure you that Mrs. Towne and I are feeling the deepest sympathy for you in your loss."
"Thank you."
"We have thought of you constantly"
Liar, thought Uncle Johnnie. If you get your voice down any lower, my lad, you'll never get it up again, which would be a blessing to the world, God knows!
"A rarely beautiful spirit"
But presently, with a brave uplift of head, mouth corners, voice, Mr. Towne changed the subject to Christabel—also a rarely beautiful spirit, he told Uncle Johnnie. "Courageously keeping up her work, in spite of her loss. She feels, as this fine younger generation of ours does feel, and some of us oldsters, too, perhaps, that in a time of universal sorrow one has no right to dwell in one's personal griefs." And finding, to his surprise, that Mr. Caine was Not visiting his niece, he told him that Christabel was giving a reading that afternoon for the benefit of the French Wounded, in Mrs. Towne's drawing room.
"Under the patronage of our very good friend, Countess de la Tour du Sanglier. I myself, most unfortunately for me, will be unable to be present—we poor publishers can't call our lives our own—but Mrs. Towne will be overjoyed to see you and to have you join her afterward in a cup of tea."
In Mrs. Towne's long drawing room the front row of little gilt chairs was empty, and emptiness scalloped into the second and third rows, but the rest of the room was full of ladies, edging in sideways, flapping gloved hands, loosening furs; and here and there a gentleman. Uncle Johnnie sat down, as near the door as possible, the fragile chair swaying and squeaking, though he had grown quite thin since Deborah died.
A Neo-Greek young lady plucked an accompaniment to conversation from her harp, an owl in a cutaway recited in French, followed by great applause, and then came Christabel.
She stood silent for a moment, unsmiling, but starry-eyed. In her long crêpe veil, with a wimple of white crêpe framing the lovely oval of her face, she looked like a young Mother Superior. "Precious person!" the lady next Uncle Johnnie groaned, and her companion whispered reverently, "War widow?" while other ladies whispered, "Shsh!" for Christabel had begun to read.
You win, Christabel, Uncle Johnnie thought. No matter what the circumstances, I back you to win!
Silence to cloak my wounds—the tears that!
Have shed for you, the passionate and deep
Blue of the gentian under the sad sky"
Christabel was reading, and much more to the same effect—a thorough inventory, ending:
Quite right, too, thought Uncle Johnnie. Don't you do it. What aren't you going to speak about next?
She swayed slightly, a flower in the wind, and clung to the back of a chair, as if she were spent, before she raised her head and gave the title.
"'An Old Woman Dies in Time of War.'"
Uncle Johnnie got up and went out, walking on several outraged ladies. Fumbling for his hat, he could hear Christabel's voice,
The butler, who had retired for a few words with the waiters in the dining room, got to the front door just too late. It closed with a bang loud enough to make all the adoring ladies jump.