The Crimson Tide: A Novel
- -
- 100%
- +
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 entrée,” 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 naïvely. “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.
CHAPTER III
The dingy little Danish steamer Elsinore passed in at dawn, her camouflage obscured by sea-salt, her few passengers still prostrated from the long battering administered by the giant seas of the northern route.
A lone Yankee soldier was aboard–an indignant lieutenant of infantry named Shotwell–sent home from a fighting regiment to instruct the ambitious rookie at Camp Upton.
He had hailed his assignment with delight, thankfully rid himself of his cooties, reported in Paris, reported in London; received orders to depart via Denmark; and, his mission there fullfilled, he had sailed on the Elsinore, already disenchanted with his job and longing to be back with his regiment.
And now, surly from sea-sickness, worried by peace rumours, but still believing that the war would last another year and hopeful of getting back before it ended, he emerged from his stuffy quarters aboard the Elsinore and gazed without enthusiasm at the minarets of Coney Island, now visible off the starboard bow.
Near him, in pasty-faced and shaky groups, huddled his fellow passengers, whom he had not seen during the voyage except when lined up for life-drill.
He had not wished to see them, either, nor, probably, had they desired to lavish social attentions on him or upon one another.
These pallid, discouraged voyagers were few–not two dozen cabin passengers in all.
Who they might be he had no curiosity to know; he had not exchanged ten words with any of them during the entire and nauseating voyage; he certainly did not intend to do so now.
He favoured them with a savage glance and walked over to the port side–the Jersey side–where there seemed to be nobody except a tired Scandinavian sailor or two.
In the grey of morning the Hook loomed up above the sea, gloomy as a thunder-head charged with lightning.
After a while the batteries along the Narrows slipped into view. Farther on, camouflaged ships rode sullenly at anchor, as though ashamed of their frivolous and undignified appearance. A battleship was just leaving the Lower Bay, smoke pouring from every funnel. Destroyers and chasers rushed by them, headed seaward.
Then, high over the shore mists and dimly visible through rising vapours, came speeding a colossal phantom.
Vague as a shark’s long shadow sheering translucent depths, the huge dirigible swept eastward and slid into the Long Island fog.
And at that moment somebody walked plump into young Shotwell; and the soft, fragrant shock knocked the breath out of both.
She recovered hers first:
“I’m sorry!” she faltered. “It was stupid. I was watching the balloon and not looking where I was going. I’m afraid I hurt you.”
He recovered his breath, saluted ceremoniously, readjusted his overseas cap to the proper angle.
Then he said, civilly enough: “It was my fault entirely. It was I who walked into you. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
They smiled, unembarrassed.
“That was certainly a big dirigible,” he ventured. “There are bigger Zeps, of course.”
“Are there really?”
“Oh, yes. But they’re not much good in war, I believe.”
She turned her trim, small head and looked out across the bay; and Shotwell, who once had had a gaily receptive eye for pulchritude, thought her unusually pretty.
Also, the steady keel of the Elsinore was making him feel more human now; and he ventured a further polite observation concerning the pleasures of homecoming after extended exile.
She turned with a frank shake of her head: “It seems heartless to say so, but I’m rather sorry I’m back,” she said.
He smiled: “I must admit,” he confessed, “that I feel the same way. Of course I want to see my people. But I’d give anything to be in France at this moment, and that’s the truth!”
The girl nodded her comprehension: “It’s quite natural,” she remarked. “One does not wish to come home until this thing is settled.”
“That’s it exactly. It’s like leaving an interesting play half finished. It’s worse–it’s like leaving an absorbing drama in which you yourself are playing an exciting rôle.”
She glanced at him–a quick glance of intelligent appraisal.
“Yes, it must have seemed that way to you. But I’ve been merely one among a breathless audience… And yet I can’t bear to leave in the very middle–not knowing how it is to end. Besides,” she added carelessly, “I have nobody to come back to except a rather remote relative, so my regrets are unmixed.”
There ensued a silence. He was afraid she was about to go, but couldn’t seem to think of anything to say to detain her.
For the girl was very attractive to a careless and amiably casual man of his sort–the sort who start their little journey through life with every intention of having the best kind of a time on the way.
She was so distractingly pretty, so confidently negligent of convention–or perhaps disdainful of it–that he already was regretting that he had not met her at the beginning of the voyage instead of at the end.
She had now begun to button up her ulster, as though preliminary to resuming her deck promenade. And he wanted to walk with her. But because she had chosen to be informal with him did not deceive him into thinking that she was likely to tolerate further informality on his part. And yet he had a vague notion that her inclinations were friendly.
“I’m sorry,” he said rather stupidly, “that I didn’t meet you in the beginning.”
The slightest inclination of her head indicated that although possibly she might be sorry too, regrets were now useless. Then she turned up the collar of her ulster. The face it framed was disturbingly lovely. And he took a last chance.
“And so,” he ventured politely, “you have really been on board the Elsinore all this time!”
She turned her charming head toward him, considered him a moment; then she smiled.
“Yes,” she said; “I’ve been on board all the time. I didn’t crawl aboard in mid-ocean, you know.”
The girl was frankly amused by the streak of boyishness in him–the perfectly transparent desire of this young man to detain her in conversation. And, still amused, she leaned back against the rail. If he wanted to talk to her she would let him–even help him. Why not?
“Is that a wound chevron?” she inquired, looking at the sleeve of his tunic.
“No,” he replied gratefully, “it’s a service stripe.”
“And what does the little cord around your shoulder signify?”
“That my regiment was cited.”
“For bravery?”
“Well–that was the idea, I believe.”
“Then you’ve been in action.”
“Yes.”
“Over the top?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Several. Recently it’s been more open work, you know.”
“And you were not hit?”
“No.”
She regarded him smilingly: “You are like all soldiers have faced death,” she said. “You are not communicative.”
At that he reddened. “Well, everybody else was facing it, too, you know. We all had the same experience.”
“Not all,” she said, watching him. “Some died.”
“Oh, of course.”
The girl’s face flushed and she nodded emphatically: “Of course! And that is our Yankee secret;–embodied in those two words–‘of course.’ That is exactly why the boche runs away from our men. The boche doesn’t know why he runs, but it is because you all say, ‘of course!–of course we’re here to kill and get killed. What of it? It’s in the rules of the game, isn’t it? Very well; we’re playing the game!’
“But the rules of the hun game are different. According to their rules, machine guns are not charged on. That is not according to plan. Oh, no! But it is in your rules of the game. So after the boche has killed a number of you, and you say, ‘of course,’ and you keep coming on, it first bewilders the boche, then terrifies him. And the next time he sees you coming he takes to his heels.”
Shotwell, amused, fascinated, and entirely surprised, began to laugh.
“You seem to know the game pretty well yourself,” he said. “You are quite right. That is the idea.”
“It’s a wonderful game,” she mused. “I can understand why you are not pleased at being ordered home.”
“It’s rather rotten luck when the outfit had just been cited,” he explained.
“Oh. I should think you would hate to come back!” exclaimed the girl, with frank sympathy.
“Well, I was glad at first, but I’m sorry now. I’m missing a lot, you see.”
“Why did they send you back?”
“To instruct rookies!” he said with a grimace. “Rather inglorious, isn’t it? But I’m hoping I’ll have time to weather this detail and get back again before we reach the Rhine.”
“I want to get back again, too,” she reflected aloud, biting her lip and letting her dark eyes rest on the foggy statue of Liberty, towering up ahead.
“What was your branch?” he inquired.
“Oh, I didn’t do anything,” she exclaimed, flushing. “I’ve been in Russia. And now I must find out at once what I can do to be sent to France.”
“The war caught you over there, I suppose,” he hazarded.
“Yes… I’ve been there since I was twenty. I’m twenty-four. I had a year’s travel and study and then I became the American companion of the little Russian Grand Duchess Marie.”
“They all were murdered, weren’t they?” he asked, much interested.
“Yes… I’m trying to forget–”
“I beg your pardon–”
“It’s quite all right. I, myself, mentioned it first; but I can’t talk about it yet. It’s too personal–” She turned and looked at the monstrous city.
After a silence: “It’s been a rotten voyage, hasn’t it?” he remarked.
“Perfectly rotten. I was so ill I could scarcely keep my place during life-drill… I didn’t see you there,” she added with a faint smile, “but I’m sure you were aboard, even if you seem to doubt that I was.”
And then, perhaps considering that she had been sufficiently amiable to him, she gave him his congé with a pleasant little nod.
“Could I help you–do anything–” he began. But she thanked him with friendly finality.
They sauntered in opposite directions; and he did not see her again to speak to her.
Later, jolting toward home in a taxi, it occurred to him that it might have been agreeable to see such an attractively informal girl again. Any man likes informality in women, except among the women of his own household, where he would promptly brand it as indiscretion.
He thought of her for a while, recollecting details of the episode and realising that he didn’t even know her name. Which piqued him.
“Serves me right,” he said aloud with a shrug of finality. “I had more enterprise once.”
Then he looked out into the sunlit streets of Manhattan, all brilliant with flags and posters and swarming with prosperous looking people–his own people. But to his war-enlightened and disillusioned eyes his own people seemed almost like aliens; he vaguely resented their too evident prosperity, their irresponsible immunity, their heedless preoccupation with the petty things of life. The acres of bright flags fluttering above them, the posters that made a gay back-ground for the scene, the sheltered, undisturbed routine of peace seemed to annoy him.
An odd irritation invaded him; he had a sudden impulse to stop his taxi and shout, “Fat-heads! Get into the game! Don’t you know the world’s on fire? Don’t you know what a hun really is? You’d better look out and get busy!”
Fifth Avenue irritated him–shops, hotels, clubs, motors, the well-dressed throngs began to exasperate him.
On a side street he caught a glimpse of his own place of business; and it almost nauseated him to remember old man Sharrow, and the walls hung with plans of streets and sewers and surveys and photographs; and his own yellow oak desk–
“Good Lord!” he thought. “If the war ends, have I got to go back to that!–”
The family were at breakfast when he walked in on them–only two–his father and mother.
In his mother’s arms he suddenly felt very young and subdued, and very glad to be there.
“Where the devil did you come from, Jim?” repeated his father, with twitching features and a grip on his son’s strong hand that he could not bring himself to loosen.
Yes, it was pretty good to get home, after all– … And he might not have come back at all. He realised it, now, in his mother’s arms, feeling very humble and secure.
His mother had realised it, too, in every waking hour since the day her only son had sailed at night–that had been the hardest!–at night–and at an unnamed hour of an unnamed day!–her only son–gone in the darkness–
On his way upstairs, he noticed a red service flag bearing a single star hanging in his mother’s window.
He went into his own room, looked soberly around, sat down on the lounge, suddenly tired.
He had three days’ leave before reporting for duty. It seemed a miserly allowance. Instinctively he glanced at his wrist-watch. An hour had fled already.
“The dickens!” he muttered. But he still sat there. After a while he smiled to himself and rose leisurely to make his toilet.
“Such an attractively informal girl,” he thought regretfully.
“I’m sorry I didn’t learn her name. Why didn’t I?”
Philosophy might have answered: “But to what purpose? No young man expects to pick up a girl of his own kind. And he has no business with other kinds.”
But Shotwell was no philosopher.
The “attractively informal girl,” on whom young Shotwell was condescending to bestow a passing regret while changing his linen, had, however, quite forgotten him by this time. There is more philosophy in women.
Her train was now nearing Shadow Hill; she already could see the village in its early winter nakedness–the stone bridge, the old-time houses of the well-to-do, Main Street full of automobiles and farmers’ wagons, a crowded trolley-car starting for Deepdale, the county seat.