They were a weary, half-starved and travel-stained quartette when the
Red Guards stopped them for the last time in Russia and passed them
through, warning them that the White Guards would surely do murder if
they caught them.
The next day the White Guards halted them, but finally passed them
through, counselling them to keep out of the way of the Red Guards if
they wished to escape being shot at sight.
In the neat, shiny, carefully scrubbed little city of Helsingfors they
avoided the huns by some miracle--one of Brisson's customary
miracles--but another little company of Americans and English was
halted and detained, and one harmless Yankee among them was arrested
and packed off to a hun prison.
Also, a large and nervous party of fugitives of mixed nationalities
and professions--consuls, charges, attaches, and innocent, agitated
citizens--was summarily grabbed and ordered into indefinite limbo.
But Brisson's daily miracles continued to materialise, even in the
land of the Finn. By train, by sleigh, by boat, his quartette
floundered along toward safety, and finally emerged from the white
hell of the Red people into the sub-arctic sun--Estridge with
painfully scanty luggage, Palla Dumont with none at all, Ilse
Westgard carrying only her Cossack saddle-bags, and Brisson with his
damning papers still sewed inside his clothes, and owing Estridge ten
dollars for not getting murdered.
They all had become excellent comrades during those anxious days of
hunger, fatigue and common peril, but they were also a little tired of
one another, as becomes all friends when subjected to compulsory
companionship for an unreasonable period.
And even when one is beginning to fall in love, one can become
surfeited with the beloved under such circumstances.
Besides, Estridge's budding sentiment for Ilse Westgard, and her
wholesome and girlish inclination for him, suffered an early chill.
For the poor child had acquired trench pets from the Cossacks, and had
passed on a few to Estridge, with whom she had been constantly seated
on the front seat.
Being the frankest thing in Russia, she told him with tears in her
blue eyes; and they had a most horrid time of it before they came
finally to a sanitary plant erected to attend to such matters.
Episodes of that sort discourage sentiment; so does cold, hunger and
discomfort incident on sardine-like promiscuousness.
Nobody in the party desired to know more than they already knew
concerning anybody else. In fact, there was little more to know,
privacy being impossible. And the ever instinctive hostility of the
two sexes, always and irrevocably latent, became vaguely apparent at
moments.
Common danger swept it away at times; but reaction gradually revealed
again what is born under the human skin--the paradox called
sex-antipathy. And yet the men in the party would not have hesitated
to sacrifice their lives in defence of these women, nor would the
women have faltered under the same test.
Brisson was the philosophical stoic of the quartette. Estridge groused
sometimes. Palla, when she thought herself unnoticed, camouflaged her
face in her furs and cried now and then. And occasionally Ilse
Westgard tried the patience of the others by her healthy capacity for
unfeigned laughter--sometimes during danger-laden and inopportune
moments, and once in the shocking imminence of death itself.
As, for example, in a vile little village, full of vermin and typhus,
some hunger-crazed peasants, armed with stolen rifles and ammunition,
awoke them where they lay on the straw of a stable, cursed them for
aristocrats, and marched them outside to a convenient wall, at the
foot of which sprawled half a dozen blood-soaked, bayoneted and
bullet-riddled landlords and land owners of the district.
And things had assumed a terribly serious aspect when, to their
foolish consternation, the peasants discovered that their purloined
cartridges did not fit their guns.
Then, in the very teeth of death, Ilse threw back her blond head and
laughed. And there was no mistaking the genuineness of the girl's
laughter.
Some of their would-be executioners laughed too;--the hilarity spread.
It was all over; they couldn't shoot a girl who laughed that way. So
somebody brought a samovar; tea was boiled; and they all went back to
the barn and sat there drinking tea and swapping gossip and singing
until nearly morning.
That was a sample of their narrow escapes. But Brisson's only comment
before he went to sleep was that Estridge would probably owe him a
dollar within the next twenty-four hours.
They had a hair-raising time in Helsingfors. On one occasion, German
officers forced Palla's door at night, and the girl became ill with
fear while soldiers searched the room, ordering her out of bed and
pushing her into a corner while they ripped up carpets and tore the
place to pieces in a swinishly ferocious search for "information."
But they did nothing worse to her, and, for some reason, left the
hotel without disturbing Brisson, whose room adjoined and who sat on
the edge of his bed with an automatic in each hand--a dangerous
opportunist awaiting events and calmly determined to do some
recruiting for hell if the huns harmed Palla.
She never knew that. And the worst was over now, and the Scandinavian
border not far away. And in twenty-four hours they were over--Brisson
impatient to get his papers to Washington and planning to start for
England on a wretched little packet-boat, in utter contempt of mines,
U-boats, and the icy menace of the North Sea.
As for the others, Estridge decided to cable and await orders in
Copenhagen; Palla, to sail for home on the first available Danish
steamer; Ilse, to go to Stockholm and eventually decide whether to
volunteer once more as a soldier of the proletariat or to turn
propagandist and carry the true gospel to America, where, she had
heard, the ancient liberties of the great Democracy were becoming
imperilled.
The day before they parted company, these four people, so oddly thrown
together out of the boiling cauldron of the Russian Terror, arranged
to dine together for the last time.
Theirs were the appetites of healthy wolves; theirs was the thirst of
the marooned on waterless islands; and theirs, too, was the feverish
gaiety of those who had escaped great peril by land and sea; and who
were still physically and morally demoralized by the glare and the
roar of the hellish conflagration which was still burning up the world
around them.
So they met in a private dining room of the hotel for dinner on the
eve of separation.
Brisson and Estridge had resurrected from their luggage the remains of
their evening attire; Ilse and Palla had shopped; and they now
included in a limited wardrobe two simple dinner gowns, among more
vital purchases.
There were flowers on the table, no great variety of food but plenty
of champagne to make up--a singular innovation in apology for short
rations conceived by the hotel proprietor.
There was a victrola in the corner, too, and this they kept going to
stimulate their nerves, which already were sufficiently on edge
without the added fillip of music and champagne.
"As for me," said Brisson, "I'm in sight of nervous dissolution
already;--I'm going back to my wife and children, thank God--" he
smiled at Palla. "I'm grateful to the God you don't believe in, dear
little lady. And if He is willing, I'll report for duty in two weeks."
He turned to Estridge:
"What about you?"
"I've cabled for orders but I have none yet. If they're through with
me I shall go back to New York and back to the medical school I came
from. I hate the idea, too. Lord, how I detest it!"
"Why?" asked Palla nervously.
"I've had too much excitement. You have too--and so have Ilse and
Brisson. I'm not keen for the usual again. It bores me to contemplate
it. The thought of Fifth Avenue--the very idea of going back to all
that familiar routine, social and business, makes me positively ill.
What a dull place this world will be when we're all at peace again!"
"We won't be at peace for a long, long while," said Ilse, smiling. She
lifted a goblet in her big, beautifully shaped hand and drained it
with the vigorous grace of a Viking's daughter.
"You think the war is going to last for years?" asked Estridge.
"Oh, no; not this war. But the other," she explained cheerfully.
"What other?"
"Why, the greatest conflict in the world; the social war. It's going
to take many years and many battles. I shall enlist."
"Nonsense," said Brisson, "you're not a Red!"
The girl laughed and showed her snowy teeth: "I'm one kind of Red--not
the kind that sold Russia to the boche--but I'm very, very red."
"Everybody with a brain and a heart is more or less red in these
days," nodded Palla. "Everybody knows that the old order is
ended--done for. Without liberty and equal opportunity civilisation is
a farce. Everybody knows it except the stupid. And they'll have to be
instructed."
"Very well," said Brisson briskly, "here's to the universal but
bloodless revolution! An acre for everybody and a mule to plough it!
Back to the soil and to hell with the counting house!"
They all laughed, but their brimming glasses went up; then Estridge
rose to re-wind the victrola. Palla's slim foot tapped the parquet in
time with the American fox-trot; she glanced across the table at
Estridge, lifted her head interrogatively, then sprang up and slid
into his arms, delighted.
While they danced he said: "Better go light on that champagne, Miss
Dumont."
"Don't you think I can keep my head?" she demanded derisively.
"Not if you keep up with Ilse. You're not built that way."
"I wish I were. I wish I were nearly six feet tall and beautiful in
every limb and feature as she is. What wonderful children she could
have! What magnificent hair she must have had before she sheared it
for the Woman's Battalion! Now it's all a dense, short mass of
gold--she looks like a lovely boy who requires a barber."
"Your hair is not unbecoming, either," he remarked, "--short as it is,
it's a mop of curls and very fetching."
"Isn't it funny?" she said. "I sheared mine for the sake of Mother
Church; Ilse cut off hers for the honour of the Army! Now we're
both out of a job--with only our cropped heads to show for the
experience!--and no more army and no more church--at least, as far
as I am concerned!"
And she threw back hers with its thick, glossy curls and laughed,
looking up at him out of her virginal brown eyes of a child.
"I'm sorry I cut my hair," she added presently. "I look like a
Bolshevik."
"It's growing very fast," he said encouragingly.
"Oh, yes, it grows fast," she nodded indifferently. "Shall we return
to the table? I am rather thirsty."
Ilse and Brisson were engaged in an animated conversation when they
reseated themselves. The waiter arrived about that time with another
course of poor food.
Palla, disregarding Estridge's advice, permitted the waiter to refill
her glass.
"I can't eat that unappetising entree," she insisted, "and champagne,
they say, is nourishing and I'm still hungry."
"As you please," said Brisson; "but you've had two glasses already."
"I don't care," she retorted childishly; "I mean to live to the utmost
in future. For the first time in my silly existence I intend to be
natural. I wonder what it feels like to become a little intoxicated?"
"It feels rotten," remarked Estridge.
"Really? _How_ rotten?" She laughed again, laid her hand on the
goblet's stem and glanced across at him defiantly, mischievously.
However, she seemed to reconsider the matter, for she picked up a
cigarette and lighted it at a candle.
"Bah!" she exclaimed with a wry face. "It stings!"
But she ventured another puff or two before placing it upon a saucer
among its defunct fellows.
"Ugh!" she complained again with a gay little shiver, and bit into a
pear as though to wash out the contamination of unaccustomed
nicotine.
"Where are you going when we all say good-bye?" inquired Estridge.
"I? Oh, I'm certainly going home on the first Danish boat--home to
Shadow Hill, where I told you I lived."
"And you have nobody but your aunt?"
"Only that one old lady."
"You won't remain long at Shadow Hill," he predicted.
"It's very pretty there. Why don't you think I am likely to remain?"
"You won't remain," he repeated. "You've slipped your cable. You're
hoisting sail. And it worries me a little."
The girl laughed. "It's a pretty place, Shadow Hill, but it's dull.
Everybody in the town is dull, stupid, and perfectly satisfied:
everybody owns at least that acre which Ilse demands; there's no
discontent at Shadow Hill, and no reason for it. I really couldn't
bear it," she added gaily; "I want to go where there's healthy
discontent, wholesome competition, natural aspiration--where things
must be bettered, set right, helped. You understand? That is where I
wish to be."
Brisson heard her. "Can't you practise your loving but godless creed
at Shadow Hill?" he inquired, amused. "Can't you lavish love on the
contented and well-to-do?"
"Yes, Mr. Brisson," she replied with sweet irony, "but where the poor
and loveless fight an ever losing battle is still a better place for
me to practise my godless creed and my Law of Love."
"Aha!" he retorted, "--a brand new excuse for living in New York
because all young girls love it!"
"Indeed," she said with some little heat, "I certainly do intend to
live and not to stagnate! I intend to live as hard as I can--live and
enjoy life with all my might! Can one serve the world better than by
loving it enough to live one's own life through to the last happy
rags? Can one give one's fellow creatures a better example than to
live every moment happily and proclaim the world good to live in, and
mankind good to live with?"
Ilse whispered, leaning near: "Don't take any more champagne, Palla."
The girl frowned, then looked serious: "No, I won't," she said
naively. "But it is wonderful how eloquent it makes one feel, isn't
it?"
And to Estridge: "You know that this is quite the first wine I have
ever tasted--except at Communion. I was brought up to think it meant
destruction. And afterward, wherever I travelled to study, the old
prejudice continued to guide me. And after that, even when I began to
think of taking the veil, I made abstinence one of my first
preliminary vows.... And _look_ what I've been doing to-night!"
She held up her glass, tasted it, emptied it.
"There," she said, "I desired to shock you. I don't really want any
more. Shall we dance? Ilse! Why don't you seize Mr. Brisson and make
him two-step?"
"Please seize me," added Brisson gravely.
Ilse rose, big, fresh, smilingly inviting; Brisson inspected her
seriously--he was only half as tall--then he politely encircled her
waist and led her out.
They danced as though they could not get enough of it--exhilaration
due to reaction from the long strain during dangerous days.
It was already morning, but they danced on. Palla's delicate
intoxication passed--returned--passed--hovered like a rosy light in
her brain, but faded always as she danced.
There were snapping-crackers and paper caps; and they put them on and
pelted each other with the drooping table flowers.
Then Estridge went to the piano and sang an ancient song, called "The
Cork Leg"--not very well--but well intended and in a gay and
inoffensive voice.
But Ilse sang some wonderful songs which she had learned in the
Battalion of Death.
And that is what was being done when a waiter knocked and asked
whether they might desire to order breakfast.
That ended it. The hour of parting had arrived.
No longer bored with one another, they shook hands cordially,
regretfully.
* * * * *
It was not a very long time, as time is computed, before these four
met again.