A NEW JOAN OF ARC
The woman in scarlet rose, lifted her hand, and the crowd sprang to
their feet to the music of the most stirring song of revolution ever
written.
Norman and Elena were both swept from their seats in spite of
themselves. Elena's eyes flashed with excitement.
"What on earth is that they are singing, Norman?" she whispered.
"The Marseillaise hymn."
"Isn't it thrilling?" she gasped.
"It makes your heart leap, doesn't it?"
"And, heavens, how they sing it!" she exclaimed.
Norman turned and looked over the crowd of eager faces--every man and
woman singing with the passionate enthusiasm of religious fanatics--an
enthusiasm electric, contagious, overwhelming. In spite of himself he
felt his heart beat with quickened sympathy.
He was amazed at the character of the audience. He had expected to see
a throng of low-browed brutes. The first shock he received was the
feeling that this crowd was distinctly an intellectual one. They might
be fanatics. They certainly were not fools. The stamp of personality
was clean cut on almost every face. They were fighters. They meant
business and they didn't care who knew it. Some of them wore dirty
clothes, but their faces were stamped with the power of free,
rebellious thought--a power that always commands respect in spite of
shabby clothes. He looked in vain for a single joyous face. Not a
smile. Deep, dark eyes, shining with the light of purpose, mouths
firm, headstrong, merciless, and bitter, but nowhere the glimmer of a
ray of sunlight! He felt with a sense of awe the uncanny presence of
Tragedy.
And to his amazement he noticed a lot of men he knew in the
crowd--three or four authors, a newspaper reporter evidently off duty,
two college professors, a clergyman, three artists, a priest, and a
street preacher.
The hymn died away into a low sigh, like the sob of the wind after a
storm. The crowd sank to their seats so quietly with the dying of the
music that Norman and Elena were standing alone for an instant. They
awoke from the spell, and dropped into their seats with evident
embarrassment.
A boy of sixteen stepped briskly to the front in answer to a nod from
the chairman, and recited a Socialist poem. After the first stanza,
which was crude and stilted, Norman's eye rested on the heavy figure
of the chairman. He was surprised at the power of his rugged face.
Through its brute strength flashed the keenest sense of alert
intelligence--an intelligence which seemed to lurk behind the big,
shaggy eyebrows as if about to spring on its victim. His heavy-set
face was covered with a thick, reddish blond beard and his short hair
stood up straight on his head, like the bristles of a wild boar. Of
medium height and heavy build, with arms and legs of extraordinary
muscle and big, coarse short fingers evidently gnarled and knotted, by
the coarsest labor in youth, he looked like a blacksmith who had taken
a college course by the light of his forge at night. There was
something about the way he sat crouching low in his seat, watching
with his keen gray eyes everything that passed, that bespoke the man
of reserve power--the man who was quietly waiting his hour.
"By George, a pretty good pet name they've given him--'The Blond
Beast,'" Norman muttered. "I shouldn't like to tackle him in the
dark."
The woman in red leaned toward the chairman and said something in low
tones. He nodded his massive head, smiled, and looked back over his
shoulder at the girl sitting behind them. The movement showed for the
first time a long ugly scar on the side of his great neck.
"Look at that fellow's neck!" whispered Elena.
"Yes. He had a close call that time," Norman answered. "But I'll bet
the other one never lived to tell the story----"
"Sh! 'The Scarlet Nun' is going to speak."
The woman in red rose and walked to the edge of the platform. She
stood silent for a moment, her tall, graceful, willowy figure erect
and tense. The crowd burst into a tumult of applause. She smiled,
bowed, and lifted her slender hand with a quick, imperious gesture for
silence.
Norman was struck by the note of religious fervour which her whole
personality seemed to radiate. The peculiar scarlet robe she wore
accented this impression perhaps, and its strangeness added a touch of
awe. The dress gave one the impression of a nun's garb except that its
long folds were so arranged that they revealed rather than concealed
the beautiful lines of her graceful figure. The colour was the deep,
warm red of the Socialist flag--the colour of human blood, chosen as
the symbol of the universal brotherhood of man. The effect of a nun's
cowl was given by a thin scarlet mantilla thrown over the head, the
silken meshes of its long fringe mingling with the waves of her thick
black hair. Her face was that of a madonna of the slender type,
except that the lips were too full, round, and sensuous and her long
eyelashes drooped slightly over dark, lustrous eyes.
"Comrades," she began, in slow, measured tones, "after to-night I
retire from the platform to take up work for which I am better fitted.
I promised you a big surprise this evening, and you shall not be
disappointed----"
A murmur rippled the audience and she paused, smiling into Norman's
face with a curious look. She spoke with a decided foreign accent with
little moments of coquettish hesitation as though feeling for words.
Norman felt an almost irresistible impulse to help her.
"I am going to in-tro-duce to you to-night," she continued, "a new
leader, whose tongue the God of the poor and the outcast and the
dis-in-herited has touched with divine fire. She is no stran-ger.
Twenty years ago she was born beneath the bright skies of
Cal-i-for-nia at Anaheim, in the little Socialist colony of Polish
dreamers led by Madame Modjeska, Count Bozenta, and Henry Sienkiewicz,
the distin-guished author of 'Quo Vadis.' As you know, the colony
failed. Her mother died in poverty and she was placed in an orphan
asylum until eight years of age, when she was taken back to Poland by
her foolish kins-men. Four years later I found her, a ragged,
homeless waif, in the streets of Warsaw, alone and star-ving. Since
then she has been mine. Amid the squalor and misery of the old world
her busy little tongue never tired telling of the glories of
Cali-for-nia! Always she sighed for its groves of oranges and olives,
its dazzling flowers, its luscious grapes, its rich valleys, its
cloud-kissed, snow-clad mountains and the mur-mur of its mighty seas!
It was her tiny hand that led me across the ocean to you. I have sent
her to school in one of your Western colleges where a great Socialist
professor has taught her history and e-con-omics. I have the high
honour, comrades, of intro-ducing to you the child of genius who from
to-night will be the Joan of Arc of our Cause, Comrade Barbara
Bozenta!"
She quickly turned and drew forward a trembling slip of a girl whose
big brown eyes were swimming in tears of excitement. A moment of
intense silence, and the crowd burst into cheers as the dazzling
beauty of their new champion slowly dawned on their understanding. The
woman in red resumed her seat, and the girl stood bowing, trembling,
and smiling.
The young athlete watched her keenly. Never had he seen such a bundle
of quivering, pulsing, nervous, ravishing beauty. He could have sworn
he saw electric sparks flash from the tips of every eyelash, from
every strand of the mass of brown curls that circled her face and fell
in rich profusion on her shoulders and across her heaving bosom. He
felt before she had uttered a word--felt, rather than saw--the
remarkable effectiveness of the simple, girlish dress which enhanced
her dark beauty. She wore the same deep red as the older woman, but
the bottom of the skirt was relieved by a row of ruffles edged with
white lace. A scarf of white embroidered at the ends with scarlet
flowers, was thrown gracefully around her shoulders and hung below the
knees. Her round young arms were bare to the elbows, her throat and
neck bare to the upper edge of the full bust.
The girl's eyes sought Norman's for an imperceptible instant and a
smile flashed from her trembling lips. The cheering ceased and she
began to speak. He watched her with breathless intensity, and listened
with steadily increasing fascination. Her voice at first was low, yet
every word fell clear and distinct. Never had he heard a voice so
tender and full of expressive feeling--soft and mellow, sweet like the
notes of a flute. There was something in its tone quality that
compelled sympathy, that stole into the inner depths of the soul of
the listener, and led reason a willing captive.
In simple yet burning words she told of the darkness and poverty, the
crime and shame, hunger and cruelty of the old world in which she had
spent four years of her childhood. And then in a flight of poetic
eloquence, came the story of her dreams of California, the Golden
West, the land of eternal sunshine and flowers. And then, in a voice
quivering and choking with emotion, she drew the picture of what she
found--of Hell's Half Acre, in which she stood, with its brazen vice,
its crime, its hopeless misery, its want and despair. With bold and
fierce invective she charged modern civilization with this infamy.
"Why do strong men go forth to war?" she cried, looking into the
depths of Norman's soul. "Here is the enemy at your door, gripping the
soft, white throats of your girls. Watch them sink into the mire at
your feet and then down, down into the black sewers of the under-world
never to rise again! I, too, call for volunteers. For heroes and
heroines--not to fight another--I call you to a nobler warfare. I call
you to the salvation of a world. Will you come? I offer you stones for
bread, the sky for your canopy, the earth for your bed, and for your
wages death! None may enter but the brave. Will you come----?"
The last words of her appeal rang through Norman's heart with
resistless power. Her round, soft arms seemed about his neck and his
soul went out to her in passionate yearning. He gripped the chair to
hold himself back from shouting:
"Yes! I'm coming!"
She sank to her seat before the crowd realized that she had stopped. A
shout of triumph shook the building--wave after wave, rising and
falling in ever-increasing intensity. At its height the Scarlet Nun
sprang to her feet, with a graceful leap reached the edge of the
platform, and again lifted her hand. A sudden hush fell on the crowd.
"Now, comrades, the battle-hymn of the Republic set to new music! Mark
its words, and remember that we sing it not as a mem-ory, but as a
proph-esy of the day our streets may run red with the blood of the
last struggle of Man to break his chains of Slav-ery--a proph-esy,
remember, not a mem-ory! Read it Barbara!"
The girl was by her side in an instant, and read from memory, her
clear sweet voice tremulous with passion:
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on!
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening's dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on!
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer them, be jubilant my feet!
Our God is marching on!"
The crowd burst again into triumphant song, and Norman looked at their
faces with increasing amazement. The immense vitality of their faith,
the rush of its forward movement, the grandeur and audacity of their
programme struck him as a revelation. They proposed no half-way
measures. They meant to uproot the foundations of modern society and
build a new world on its ruins. Their leaders were fanatics--yes. But
fanatics were the only kind of people who would dare such things and do
them. Here was a movement, which at least meant something--something
big, heroic, daring. His face suddenly flushed and his heart leaped
with an impulse.
"In heaven's name, Norman, what's the matter?" Elena asked.
The young poet-athlete looked at her in a dazed sort of way and
stammered:
"Did you ever see anything like it?"
"No, and I don't want to again," she replied with a frown. "Let's go
home."
"Wait, they are taking up a collection. At least we must pay for our
seats."
When the usher passed he emptied the contents of his pocket in the
collection-box.
As the meeting broke up, the boy who placed their seats touched Norman
on the arm.
"Let me introduce ye to her. I wants ter tell 'er ye er my
friend--I've yelled my head off for ye many a day on de football
ground. Jest er minute. I'll fetch 'er right down."
The boy darted up on the platform, and Norman turned to Elena:
"Shall we please the boy?"
"You mean yourself," she replied. "I decline the honour."
She turned away into the crowd as the boy returned leading Barbara.
Norman hastened to meet them at the foot of the platform steps.
"Dis is me friend, Worth, de captain of de football team, Miss
Barbara," proudly exclaimed the boy.
Barbara extended her soft hand with a warm, friendly smile, and
Norman clasped it while his heart throbbed.
"I congratulate you," he said, "on your wonderful triumph to-night."
"You were interested?" she asked, quietly.
"More than I can tell you," was the quick response.
"Then join our club and help me in my work among the poor," she urged,
with frank eagerness. "We meet to-morrow afternoon at three o'clock.
Won't you come?"
A long, deep look into her brown eyes--his face flushed and his heart
leaped with sudden resolution.
"Thank you, I will," he slowly answered.
He joined Elena at the door and they walked home in brooding silence.