Produced by Katherine Ward and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) THE BRIGHT SHAWL 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 THE BRIGHT SHAWL When Howard Gage had gone, his mother's brother sat with his head bowed in frowning thought. The frown, however, was one of perplexity rather than disapproval: he was wholly unable to comprehend the younger man's attitude toward his experiences in the late war. The truth was, Charles Abbott acknowledged, that he understood nothing, nothing at all, about the present young. Indeed, if it hadn't been for the thoroughly absurd, the witless, things they constantly did, dispensing with their actual years he would have considered them the present aged. They were so--well, so gloomy. Yet, in view of the gaiety of the current parties, the amounts of gin consumed, it wasn't precisely gloom that enveloped them. Charles Abbott searched his mind for a definition, for light on a subject dark to a degree beyond any mere figure of speech. Yes, darkness particularly described Howard. The satirical bitterness of his references to the "glorious victory in France" was actually a little unbalanced. The impression Abbott had received was of bestiality choked in mud. His nephew was amazingly clear, vivid and logical, in his memories and opinions; they couldn't, as he stated them in a kind of frozen fury, be easily controverted. What, above everything else, appeared to dominate Howard Gage was a passion for reality, for truth--all the unequivocal facts--in opposition to a conventional or idealized statement. Particularly, he regarded the slightest sentiment with a suspicion that reached hatred. Abbott's thoughts centered about the word idealized; there, he told himself, a ray of perception might be cast into Howard's obscurity; since the most evident fact of all was that he cherished no ideals, no sustaining vision of an ultimate dignity behind men's lives.