The pale parody on that sacred date which once had symbolised the
birth of Christ had come and gone; the ghastly year was nearing its
own death--the bloodiest year, for all its final triumph, that the
world had ever witnessed--_l'annee horrible_!
Nor was the end yet, of all this death and dying: for the Crimson
Tide, washing through Russia, eastward, seethed and eddied among the
wrecks of empires, lapping Poland's bones, splashing over the charred
threshold of the huns, creeping into the Balkans, crawling toward
Greece and Italy, menacing Scandinavia, and arousing the stern
watchers along the French frontier--the ultimate eastward barrier of
human liberty.
And unless, despite the fools who demur, that barrier be based upon
the Rhine, that barrier will fall one day.
Even in England, where the captive navies of the anti-Christ now
sulked at anchor under England's consecrated guns, some talked glibly
of rule by Soviet. All Ireland bristled now, baring its teeth at
government; vast armies, disbanding, were becoming dully restless; and
armed men, disarming, began to wonder what now might be their destiny
and what the destiny of the world they fought for.
And everywhere, among all peoples, swarmed the stealthy agents of the
Red Apocalypse, whispering discontent, hinting treasons, stirring the
unhappy to sullen anger, inciting the simple-minded to insanity, the
ignorant to revolution. For four years it had been a battle between
Light and Night; and now there threatened to be joined in battle the
uttermost forces of Evolution and Chaos--the spiritual Armageddon at
last, where Life and Light and Order must fight a final fight with
Degeneracy, Darkness and Death.
And always, everywhere, that hell-born Crimson Tide seemed to be
rising. All newspapers were full of it, sounding the universal alarm.
And Civilisation merely stared at the scarlet flood--gawked stupidly
and unstirring--while the far clamour of massacre throughout Russia
grew suddenly to a crashing discord in Berlin, shaking the whole world
with brazen dissonance.
Like the first ominous puff before the tempest, the deadly breath of
the Black Death--called "influenza," but known of old among the
verminous myriads of the East--swept over the earth from East to West.
Millions died; millions were yet to perish of it; yet the dazed world,
still half blind with blood and smoke, sat helpless and unstirring,
barring no gates to this pestilence that stalked the stricken earth at
noon-day.
New York, partly paralysed by sacrifice and the blood-sucking antics
of half-crazed congressmen, gorged by six years feeding after decades
of starvation, welcomed the incoming soldiers in a bewildered sort of
way, making either an idiot's din of dissonance or gaping in stupid
silence as the huge troop-ships swept up the bay.
The battle fleet arrived--the home squadron and the "6th battle
squadron"--and lay towering along the Hudson, while officers and
jackies swarmed the streets--streets now thronged by wounded,
too--pallid cripples in olive drab, limping along slowly beneath
lowering skies, with their citations and crosses and ribbons and
wound chevrons in glinting gold under the relighted lustres of the
metropolis.
So the false mockery of Christmas came to the city--a forced festival,
unutterably sad, for all that the end of the war was subject of thanks
in every church and synagogue. And so the mystic feast ended, scarcely
heeded amid the slow, half-crippled groping for financial readjustment
in the teeth of a snarling and vindictive Congress, mean in its envy,
meaner in revenge--a domestic brand of sectional Bolsheviki as dirty
and degenerate as any anarchist in all Russia.
The President had sailed away--(_Slava! Slava! Nechevo!_)--and the
newspapers were preparing to tell their disillusioned public all about
it, if permitted.
And so dawned the New Year over the spreading crimson flood, flecking
the mounting tide with brighter scarlet as it crept ever westward,
ever wider, across a wounded world.
* * * * *
Palla had not seen Jim for a very long time now. Christmas passed,
bringing neither gift nor message, although she had sent him a little
remembrance--_The Divine Pantheon_, by an unfrocked Anglican
clergyman, one Loxon Fettars, recently under detention pending
investigation concerning an alleged multiplicity of wives.
The New Year brought no greeting from him, either; nobody she knew had
seen him, and her pride had revolted at writing him after she had
telephoned and left a message at his club--her usual concession after
a stormy parting.
And there was another matter that was causing her a constantly
increasing unrest--she had not seen Marya for many a day.
Quiet grief for what now appeared to be a friendship ended--at
other times a tingle of bitterness that he had let it end so
relentlessly--and sometimes, at night, the secret dread--eternally
buried yet perennially resurrected--the still, hidden, ever-living
fear of Marya; these the girl knew, now, as part of life.
And went on, steadily, with her life's business, as though moving
toward a dark horizon where clouds towered gradually higher,
reflecting the glimmer of unseen lightning.
Somehow, lately, a vague sensation of impending trouble had invaded
her; and she never entirely shook it off, even in her lighter moods,
when there was gay company around her; or in the warm flush of
optimistic propaganda work; or in the increasingly exciting sessions
of the Combat Club, now interrupted nightly by fierce outbreaks from
emissaries of the Red Flag Club, who were there to make mischief.
Also, there had been an innovation established among her company of
moderate socialists; a corps of missionary speakers, who volunteered
on certain nights to speak from the classic soap-box on street
corners, urging the propaganda of their panacea, the Law of Love and
Service.
Twice already, despite her natural timidity and dread of public
speaking, Palla had faced idle, half-curious, half sneering crowds
just east or west of Broadway; had struggled through with what she had
come to say; had gently replied to heckling, blushed under insult,
stood trembling by her guns to the end.
Ilse was more convincing, more popular with her gay insouciance and
infectious laughter, and her unexpected and enchanting flashes of
militancy, which always interested the crowd.
And always, after these soap-box efforts, both Palla and Ilse were
insulted over the telephone by unknown men. Their mail, also,
invariably contained abusive or threatening letters, and sometimes
vile ones; and Estridge purchased pistols for them both and exacted
pledges that they carry them at night.
On the evening selected for Palla's third essay in street oratory, she
slipped her pistol into her muff and set out alone, not waiting for
Ilse, who, with John Estridge, was to have met her after dinner at her
house, and, as usual, accompany her to the place selected.
But they knew where she was to speak, and she did not doubt they would
turn up sooner or later at the rendezvous.
All that day the dull, foreboding feeling had been assailing her at
intervals, and she had been unable to free herself entirely from the
vague depression.
The day had been grey; when she left the house a drizzle had begun to
wet the flagstones, and every lamp-post was now hooded with ghostly
iridescence.
She walked because she had need of exercise, not even deigning to
unfurl her umbrella against the mist which spun silvery ovals over
every electric globe along Fifth Avenue, and now shrouded every
building above the fourth story in a cottony ocean of fog.
When finally she turned westward, the dark obscurity of the
cross-street seemed to stretch away into infinite night and she
hurried a little, scarcely realising why.
There did not seem to be a soul in sight--she noticed that--yet
suddenly, halfway down the street, she discovered a man walking at her
elbow, his rubber-shod feet making no sound on the wet walk.
Palla had never before been annoyed by such attentions in New York,
yet she supposed it must be the reason for the man's insolence.
She hastened her steps; he moved as swiftly.
"Look here," he said, "I know who you are, and where you're going. And
we've stood just about enough from you and your friends."
In the quick revulsion from annoyance and disgust to a very lively
flash of fright, Palla involuntarily slackened her pace and widened
the distance between her and this unknown.
"You better right-about-face and go home!" he said quietly. "You talk
too damn much with your face. And we're going to stop you. See?"
At that her flash of fear turned to anger:
"Try it," she said hotly; and hurried on, her hand clutching the
pistol in her wet muff, her eyes fixed on the unknown man.
"I've a mind to dust you good and plenty right here," he said. "Quit
your running, now, and beat it back again--" His vise-like grip was on
her left arm, almost jerking her off her feet; and the next moment she
struck him with her loaded pistol full in the face.
As he veered away, she saw the seam open from his cheek bone to his
chin--saw the white face suddenly painted with wet scarlet.
The sight of the blood made her sick, but she kept her pistol
levelled, backing away westward all the while.
There was an iron railing near; he went over and leaned against it as
though stupefied.
And all the while she continued to retreat until, behind her, his dim
shape merged into the foggy dark.
Then Palla turned and ran. And she was still breathing fast and
unevenly when she came to that perfect blossom of vulgarity and
apotheosis of all American sham--Broadway--where in the raw glare from
a million lights the senseless crowds swept north and south.
And here, where Jew-manager and gentile ruled the histrionic destiny
of the United States--here where art, letters, service, industry,
business had each developed its own species of human prostitute--two
muddy-brained torrents of humanity poured in opposite directions,
crowding, shoving, shuffling along in the endless, hopeless Hunt for
Happiness.
She had made, in the beginning of her street-corner career,
arrangements with a neighbouring boot-black to furnish one soap-box on
demand at a quarter of a dollar rent for every evening.
She extracted the quarter from her purse and paid the boy; carried the
soap-box herself to the curb; and, with that invariable access of
fright which attacked her at such moments, mounted it to face the
first few people who halted out of curiosity to see what else she
meant to do.
Columns of passing umbrellas hid her so that not many people noticed
her; but gradually that perennial audience of shabby opportunists
which always gathers anywhere from nowhere, ringed her soap-box. And
Palla began to speak in the drizzling rain.
For some time there were no interruptions, no jeers, no doubtful
pleasantries. But when it became more plain to the increasing crowd
that this smartly though simply gowned young woman had come to
Broadway in the rain for the purpose of protesting against all forms
of violence, including the right of the working people to strike, ugly
remarks became audible, and now and then a menacing word was flung at
her, or some clenched hand insulted her and amid a restless murmur
growing rougher all the time.
Once, to prove her point out of the mouth of the proletariat itself,
she quoted from Rosa Luxemburg; and a well-dressed man shouldered his
way toward her and in a low voice gave her the lie.
The painful colour dyed her face, but she went on calmly, explaining
the different degrees and extremes of socialism, revealing how the
abused term had been used as camouflage by the party committed to the
utter annihilation of everything worth living for.
And again, to prove her point, she quoted:
"Socialism does not mean the convening of Parliaments and the
enactment of laws; it means the overthrow of the ruling classes with
all the brutality at the disposal of the proletariat."
The same well-dressed man interrupted again:
"Say, who pays you to come here and hand out that Wall Street stuff?"
"Nobody pays me," she replied patiently.
"All right, then, if that's true why don't you tell us something about
the interests and the profiteers and all them dirty games the
capitalists is rigging up? Tell us about the guy who wants us to pay
eight cents to ride on his damned cars! Tell us about the geezers who
soak us for food and coal and clothes and rent!
"You stand there chirping to us about Love and Service and how we
oughta give. _Give!_ Jesus!--we ain't got anything left to give. They
ain't anything to give our wives or our children,--no, nor there ain't
enough left to feed our own faces or pay for a patch on our pants!
_Give?_ Hell! The interests _took_ it. And you stand there twittering
about Love and Service! We oughta serve 'em a brick on the neck and
love 'em with a black-jack!"
"How far would that get you?" asked Palla gently.
"As far as their pants-pockets anyway!"
"And when you empty those, who is to employ and pay you?"
"Don't worry," he sneered, "we'll do the employing after that."
"And will your employees do to you some day what you did to your
employers with a black-jack?"
The crowd laughed, but her heckler shook his fist at her and yelled:
"Ain't I telling you that we'll be sitting in these damn gold-plated
houses and payin' wages to these here fat millionaires for blackin'
our shoes?"
"You mean that when Bolshevism rules there are to be rich and poor
just the same as at present?"
Again the crowd laughed.
"All right!" bawled the man, waving both arms above his head,
"--yes, I do mean it! It will be our turn then. Why not? What do we
want to split fifty-fifty with them soft, fat millionaires for?
Nix on that stuff! It will be hog-killing time, and you can bet your
thousand-dollar wrist watch, Miss, that there'll be some killin' in
little old New York!"
He had backed out of the circle and disappeared in the crowd before
Palla could attempt further reasoning with him. So she merely shook
her head in gentle disapproval and dissent:
"What is the use," she said, "of exchanging one form of tyranny for
another? Why destroy the autocracy of the capitalist and erect on its
ruins the autocracy of the worker?
"How can class distinctions be eradicated by fanning class-hatred? In
a battle against all dictators, why proclaim dictatorship--even of the
proletariat?
"All oppression is hateful, whether exercised by God or man--whether
the oppressor be that murderous, stupid, treacherous, tyrannical
bully in the Old Testament, miscalled God, or whether the oppressor be
the proletariat which screamed for the blood of Jesus Christ and got
it!
"Free heart, free mind, free soul!--anything less means servitude, not
service--hatred, not love!"
A man in the outskirts of the crowd shouted: "Say, you're some
rag-chewer, little girl! Go to it!"
She laughed, then glanced at her wrist watch.
There were a few more words she might say before the time she allowed
herself had expired, and she found courage to go on, striving to
explain to the shifting knot of people that the battle which now
threatened civilisation was the terrible and final fight between Order
and Disorder and that, under inexorable laws which could never change,
order meant life and survival; disorder chaos and death for all living
things.
A few cheered her as she bade them good-night, picked up her soap-box
and carried it back to her boot-black friend, who inhabited a shack
built against the family-entrance side of a saloon.
She was surprised that Ilse and John Estridge had not appeared--could
scarcely understand it, as she made her way toward a taxicab.
For, in view of the startling occurrence earlier in the evening, and
the non-appearance of Ilse and Estridge, Palla had decided to return
in a taxi.
The incident--the boldness of the unknown man and vicious brutality of
his attitude, and also a sickening recollection of her own action and
his bloody face--had really shocked her, even more than she was aware
of at the time.
She felt tired and strained, and a trifle faint now, where she lay
back, swaying there on her seat, her pistol clutched inside her muff,
as the ramshackle vehicle lurched its noisy way eastward. And always
that dull sense of something sinister impending--that indefinable
apprehension--remained with her. And she gazed darkly out on the dark
streets, possessed by a melancholy which she did not attempt to
analyse.
Yet, partly it came from the ruptured comradeship which always
haunted her mind, partly because of Ilse and the uncertainty of what
might happen to her--may have happened already for all Palla
knew--and partly because--although she did not realise it--in the
profound deeps of her girl's being she was vaguely conscious of
something latent which seemed to have lain hidden there for a long,
long time--something inert, inexorable, indestructible, which, if
it ever stirred from its intense stillness, must be reckoned with
in years to come.
She made no effort to comprehend what this thing might be--if, indeed,
it really existed--no pains to analyse it or to meditate over the
vague indications of its presence.
She seemed merely to be aware of something indefinable concealed in
the uttermost depths of her.
It was Doubt, unborn.
* * * * *
The taxi drew up before her house. Rain was falling heavily, as she
ran up the steps--a cold rain through which a few wet snowflakes
slanted.
Her maid heard the rattle of her night-key and came to relieve her of
her wet things, and to say that Miss Westgard had telephoned and had
left a number to be called as soon as Miss Dumont returned.
The slip of paper bore John Estridge's telephone number and Palla
seated herself at her desk and called it.
Almost immediately she heard Ilse's voice on the wire.
"What is the matter, dear?" inquired Palla with the slightest shiver
of that premonition which had haunted her all day.
But Ilse's voice was cheerful: "We were so sorry not to go with you
this evening, darling, but Jack is feeling so queer that he's turned
in and I've sent for a physician."
"Shall I come around?" asked Palla.
"Oh, no," replied Ilse calmly, "but I've an idea Jack may need a
nurse--perhaps two."
"What is it?" faltered Palla.
"I don't know. But he is running a high temperature and he says that
it feels as though something were wrong with his appendix.
"You see Jack is almost a physician himself, so if it really is acute
appendicitis we must know as soon as possible."
"Is there _anything_ I could do?" pleaded Palla. "Darling, I do so
want to be of use if----"
"I'll let you know, dear. There isn't anything so far."
"Are you going to stay there to-night?"
"Of course," replied Ilse calmly. "Tell me, Palla, how did the
soap-box arguments go?"
"Not very well. I was heckled. I'm such a wretched public speaker,
Ilse;--I can never remember what rejoinders to make until it's too
late."
She did not mention her encounter with the unknown man; Ilse had
enough to occupy her.
They chatted a few moments longer, then Ilse promised to call her if
necessary, and said good-night.
A little after midnight Palla's telephone rang beside her bed and she
started upright with a pang of fear and groped for the instrument.
"Jack is seriously ill," came the level voice of Ilse. "We have taken
him to the Memorial Hospital in one of their ambulances."
"W--what is it?" asked Palla.
"They say it is pneumonia."
"Oh, Ilse!----"
"I'm not afraid. Jack is in magnificent physical condition. He is too
splendid not to win the fight.... And I shall be with him.... I shall
not let him lose."
"Tell me what I can do, darling!"
"Nothing--except love us both."
"I do--I do indeed----"
"Both, Palla!"
"Y--yes."
"_Do you understand?_"
"Oh, I--I think I do. And I do love you--love you both--devotedly----"
"You must, _now_.... I am going home to get some things. Then I shall
go to the hospital. You can call me there until he is convalescent."
"Will they let you stay there?"
"I have volunteered for general work. They are terribly short-handed
and they are glad to have me."
"I'll come to-morrow," said Palla.
"No. Wait.... Good-night, my darling."