The Crimson Tide: A Novel

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.”