Chapter 17

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XVII

"Jim," said his mother, "Miss Dumont called you on the telephone at an unusual hour last night. You had gone to your room, and on the chance that you were asleep I did not speak to you."

That was all--sufficient explanation to discount any reproach from her son incident on his comparing notes with the girl in question. Also just enough in her action to convey to the girl a polite hint that the Shotwell family was not at home to people who telephoned at that unconventional hour.

On his way to business that morning, Jim telephoned to Palla, but, learning she was not at home, let the matter rest.

In his sullen and resentful mood he no longer cared--or thought he didn't, which resulted in the same thing--the accumulation of increasing bitterness during a dull, rainy working day at the office, and a dogged determination to keep clear of this woman until effort to remain away from her was no longer necessary.

For the thing was utterly hopeless; he'd had enough. And in his bruised heart and outraged common sense he was boyishly framing an indictment of modern womanhood--lumping it all and cursing it out--swearing internally at the entire enfranchised pack which the war had set afoot and had licensed to swarm all over everything and raise hell with the ancient and established order of things.

The stormy dark came early; and in this frame of mind when he left the office he sulkily avoided the club.

He very rarely drank anything; but, not knowing what to do, he drifted into the Biltmore bar.

He met a man or two he knew, but declined all suggestions for the evening, turned up his overcoat collar, and started through the hotel toward the northern exit.

And met Marya Lanois face to face.

She was coming from the tea-room with two or three other people, but turned immediately on seeing him and came toward him with hand extended.

"Dear me," she said, "you look very wet. And you don't look particularly well. Have you arrived all alone for tea?"

"I had my tea in the bar," he said. "How are you, Marya?--but I musn't detain you--" he glanced at the distant group of people who seemed to be awaiting her.

"You are not detaining me," she said sweetly.

"Your people seem to be waiting----"

"They may go to the deuce. Are you quite alone?"

"I--yes----"

"Shall we have tea together?"

He laughed. "But you've had yours----"

"Well, you know there are other things that one sometimes drinks."

There seemed no way out of it. They went into the tea-room together and seated themselves.

"How is Vanya?" he inquired.

"Vanya gives a concert to-night in Baltimore."

"And you didn't go!"

"No. It was rainy. Besides, I hear Vanya play when I desire to hear him."

Their order was served.

"So you wouldn't go to Baltimore," said Jim smilingly. "It strikes me, Marya, that you can be a coldblooded girl when you wish to be."

"After all, what do you know about me?"

He laughed: "Oh, I don't mean that I've got your number----"

"No. Because I have many numbers. I am a complicated combination," she added, smiling; "--yet after all, a combination only. And quite simple when one discovers the key to me."

"I think I know what it is," he said.

"What is it?"

"Mischief."

They laughed. Marya, particularly, was intensely amused. She was extremely fetching in her bicorne toque and narrow gown of light turquoise, and her golden beaver scarf and muff.

"Mischief," she repeated. "I should say not. There seems to be already sufficient mischief loose in the world, with the red tide rising everywhere--in Russia, in Germany, Austria, Italy, England--yes, and here also the crimson tide of Bolshevism begins to move.... Tell me; you are coming to the club to-morrow evening, I hope."

"No."

"Oh. Why?"

"No," he repeated, almost sullenly. "I've had enough of queerness for a while----"

"Jim! Do you dare include me?"

He had to laugh at her pretence of fury: "No, Marya, you're just a pretty mischief-maker, I suppose----"

"Then what do you mean by 'queerness'? Don't you think it's sensible to combat Bolshevism and fight it with argument and debate on its own selected camping ground? Don't you think it is high time somebody faced this crimson tide--that somebody started to build a dyke against this threatened inundation?"

"The best dykes have machine guns behind them, not orators," he said bluntly.

"My friend, I have seen that, also. And to what have machine guns led us in Petrograd, in Moscow, in Poland, Finland, Courland--" She shrugged her pretty shoulders. "No. I have seen enough blood."

He said: "I have seen a little myself."

"Yes, I know. But a soldier is always a soldier, as a hound is always a hound. The blood of the quarry is what their instinct follows. Your goal is death; we only seek to tame."

"The proper way to check Bolshevism in America is to police the country properly, and kick out the outrageous gang of domestic Bolsheviki who have exploited us, tricked us, lied to us, taxed us unfairly, and in spite of whom we have managed to help our allies win this war.

"Then, when this petty, wretched, crooked bunch has been swept out, and the nation aired and disinfected, and when the burden of taxation is properly distributed, and business dares lift its head again, then start your debates and propaganda and try to educate your enemies if you like. But keep your machine guns oiled."

"You speak in an uncomplimentary fashion of government," said the girl, smiling.

"I am all for government. That does not mean that I am for the particular incumbents in office under the present Government. I have no use for them. Know that this war was won, not through them but in spite of them.

"Yet I place loyalty first of all--loyalty to the true ideals of that Government which some of the present incumbents so grotesquely misrepresent.

"That means, stand by the ship and the flag she flies, no matter who steers or what crew capers about her decks.

"That means, watch out for all pirates;--open fire on anything that flies a hostile flag, red or any other colour.

"And that's my creed, Marya!"

"To shoot; not to debate?"

"An inquest is safer."

"We shall never agree," said the girl, laughing. "And I'm rather glad."

"Why?"

"Because disagreements are more amusing than any _entente cordiale_, _mon ami_. It is the opposing forces that never bore each other. In life, too--I mean among human beings. Once they agree, interest lessens."

"Nonsense," he said, smiling.

"Oh, it is quite true. Behold us. We don't agree. But I am interested," she added with pretty audacity; "so please take me to dinner somewhere."

"You mean now, as we are?"

"Parbleu! Did you wish to go home and dress?"

"I don't care if you don't," he said.

"Suppose," she suggested, "we dine where there is something to see."

"A Broadway joint?" he asked, amused.

"A joint?" she repeated, smilingly perplexed. "Is that a place where we may dine and see a spectacle too and afterward dance?"

"Something of that sort," he admitted, laughing. But under his careless gaiety an ugly determination had been hardening; he meant to go no more to Palla; he meant to welcome any distraction of the moment to help tide him over the long, grey interval that loomed ahead--welcome any draught that might mitigate the bitter waters he was tasting--and was destined to drain to their revolting dregs.

* * * * *

They went to the Palace of Mirrors and were lucky enough to secure a box.

The food was excellent; the show a gay one.

Between intermissions he took Marya to the floor for a dance or two. The place was uncomfortably crowded: uniforms were everywhere, too; and Jim nodded to many men he knew, and to a few women.

And, in the vast, brilliant place, there was not a man who saw Marya and failed to turn and follow her with his eyes. For Marya had been fashioned to trouble man. And that primitively constructed and obviously-minded sex never failed to become troubled.

"We'd better enjoy our champagne," remarked Marya. "We'll be a wineless nation before long, I suppose."

"It seems rather a pity," he remarked, "that a man shouldn't be free to enjoy a glass of claret. But if the unbaked and the half-baked, and the unwashed and the half-washed can't be trusted to practise moderation, we others ought to abstain, I suppose. Because what is best for the majority ought to be the law for all."

"If it were left to me," said the girl, "I'd let the submerged drink themselves to death."

"What on earth are you talking about?" he said. "I thought you were a socialist!"

"I am. I desire no law except that of individual inclination."

"Why, that's Bolshevism!"

Her laughter rang out unrestrained: "I believe in Bolshevism--for myself--but not for anybody else. In other words, I'd like to be autocrat of the world. If I were, I'd let everybody alone unless they interfered with me."

"And in that event?" he asked, laughing, as the lights all over the house faded to a golden glimmer in preparation for the second part of the spectacle. He could no longer see her clearly across the little table. "What would you do if people interfered with you?" he repeated.

Marya smiled. The last ray of light smouldered in her tiger-red hair; the warm, fragrant, breathing youth of her grew vaguer, merging with the shadows; only the beryl-tinted eyes, which slanted slightly, remained distinct.

Her voice came to him through the music: "If I were autocrat, any man who dared oppose me would have his choice."

"What choice?"

The music swelled toward a breathless crescendo.

She said: "Oppose me and you shall learn!----"

The house burst into a dazzling flood of moon-tinted light, all thronged with slim shapes whirling in an enchanted dance. Then clouds seemed to gather; the moon slid behind them, leaving a frosty demi-darkness through which, presently, snow began to fall.

The girl leaned toward him, watching the spectacle in silence. Perhaps unconsciously her left hand, satin-smooth, slipped over his--as though the contact were a symbol of enjoyment shared.

Light broke the next moment, revealing the spectacle on stage and floor in all its tinsel magnificence--snow-nymphs, polar-bears, all capering madly until an unearthly shriek heralded the coming of a favorite clown, who tumbled all the way down the stage steps and continued hysterically turning flip-flaps, cart-wheels, and somersaults until he landed with a crash at the foot of the steps again.

* * * * *

A large, highly coloured and over-glossy man, passing under their box during a dancing intermission, bowed rather extravagantly to Jim. He recognised Angelo Puma, with contemptuous amusement at his impudence.

It was evident, too, that Puma was quite ready to linger if encouraged--anxious, in fact, to extend his hand.

But his impudence had already ceased to amuse Jim, and he said carelessly to Marya, in a voice perfectly audible to Puma:

"There goes a man who, in collusion with a squinting partner of his, once beat me out of a commission."

Puma's heavy, burning face turned abruptly from Marya, whom he had been looking at; and he continued on across the floor. And Jim forgot him.

* * * * *

They remained until the place closed. Then he took her home.

It was an apartment overlooking the park from Fifty-ninth Street--a big studio and apparently many comfortable rooms--a large, still place where no servants were in evidence and where thick velvety carpets from Ushak and Sultanabad muffled every footfall.

She had insisted on his entering for a moment. He stood looking about him in the great studio, where Vanya's concert-grand loomed up, a sprawling, shadowy shape under the dim drop-light which once had been a mosque-lamp in Samarcand.

The girl flung stole and muff from her, rolled up her gloves and took a shot at the piano, then, laughing, unpinned her hat and sent it scaling away into the golden dusk somewhere.

"Are you sleepy, Jim?"

A sudden vision of his trouble in the long, long night to face--trouble, insomnia, and the bitterness welling ever fresher with the interminable thoughts he could not suppress, could not control----

"I'm not sleepy," he said. "But don't you want to turn in?"

She went over to the piano, and, accompanying herself on deadened pedal where she stood, sang in a low voice the "_Snow-Tiger_," with its uncanny refrain:

"Tiger-eyes
Tiger-eyes,
What do you see
Far in the dark
Over the snow?
Far in the dark
Over the snow,
Slowly the ghosts of dead men go,--
Horses and riders under the moon
Trample along to the dead men's rune,
_Slava! Slava!_
Over the snow."

"That's too hilarious a song," said Jim, laughing. "May I suggest a little rag to properly subdue us?"

"You don't like _Tiger-eyes_?"

"I've heard more cheerful ditties."

"When I'm excited by pleasure," said the girl, "I sing _Tiger-eyes_."

"Does it subdue you?"

She looked at him. "No."

Still standing, she looked down at the keys, struck the muffled chords softly.

"Tiger-eyes
Tiger-eyes,
Where do they go,
Far in the dark
Over the snow?
Into the dark,
Over the snow,
Only the ghosts of the dead men know
Where they have come from, whither they go,
Riding at night by the corpse-light glow,
_Slava!_ _Slava!_
Over the snow."

"Well, for the love of Mike----"

Marya's laughter pealed.

"So you don't like _Tiger-eyes_?" she demanded, coming from behind the piano.

"I sure don't," he admitted.

"The real Russian name of the song is 'Words! Words!' And that's all the song is--all that any song is--all that anything amounts to--words! words!--" She dropped onto the long couch,--"Anything except--love."

"You may include that, too," he said, lighting a cigarette for her; and she blew a ring of smoke at him, saying:

"I may--but I won't. For goodness sake leave me the last one of my delusions!"

They both laughed and he said she was welcome to her remaining delusion.

"Won't you share it with me?" she said, her smile innocent enough, save for the audacity of the red mouth.

"Share your delusion?"

"Yes, that too."

This wouldn't do. He lighted a cigarette for himself and sauntered over to the piano.

"I hope Vanya's concert is a success," he said. "He's such a charming fellow, Vanya--so considerate, so gentle--" He turned and looked at Marya, and his eyes added: "Why the devil don't you marry him and have a lot of jolly children?"

There seemed to be in his clear eyes enough for the girl to comprehend something of the question they flung at her.

"I don't love Vanya," she said.

"Of course you do!"

"As I might love a child--yes."

After a silence: "It strikes me," he said, "that you're passionately in love."

"I am."

"With yourself," he added, smiling.

"With _you_."

This wouldn't do any longer. The place slightly stifled him with its stillness, rugs--the odours that came from lacquered shapes, looming dimly, flowered and golden in the dusk--the aromatic scent of her cigarette----

"Hell!" he muttered under his breath. "This is no place for a white man." But aloud he said pleasantly: "My very best wishes for Vanya to-night. Tell him so when he returns--" He put on his overcoat and picked up hat and stick.

"It's infernally late," he added, "and I've been a beast to keep you up. It was awfully nice of you."

She rose from the lounge and walked with him to the door.

"Good night," he said cheerily; but she retained his hand, added her other to it, and put up her face.

"Look here," he said, smilingly, "I can't do that, Marya."

"Why can't you?"

Her soft breath was on his face; the mouth too near--too near----

"No, I can't!" he said curtly, but his voice trembled a little.

"Why?" she whispered.

"Because--there's Vanya. No, I won't do it!"

"Is that the reason?"

"It's a reason."

"I don't love Vanya. I do love you."

"Please remember----"

"No! No! I have nothing to remember--unless you give me something----"

"You had better try to remember that Vanya loves you. You and I can't do a thing like that to Vanya--"

"Are there no other reasons?"

He reddened to the temples: "No, there are not--now. There is no other reason--except myself."

"Yourself?"

"Yes, damn it, myself! That's all that remains now to keep me straight. And I've been so. That may be news to you. Perhaps you don't believe it."

"Is it so, Jim?" she asked in a voice scarcely audible.

"Yes, it is. And so I shall keep on, and play the game that way--play it squarely with Vanya, too----"

He had lost his heavy colour; he stood looking at her with a white, strained, grim expression that tightened the jaw muscles; and she felt his powerful hand clenching between hers.

"It's no use," he said between his set lips, "I've got to go on--see it through in my own fashion--this rotten thing called life. I'm sorry, Marya, that I'm not a better sport----"

A wave of colour swept her face and her hands suddenly crushed his between them.

"You're wonderful," she said. "I do love you."

But the tense, grey look had come back into his face. Looking at her in silence, presently his gaze seemed to become remote, his absent eyes fixed on something beyond her.

"I've a rotten time ahead of me," he said, not knowing he had spoken. When his eyes reverted to her, his features remained expressionless, but his voice was almost tender as he said good night once more.

Her hands fell away; he opened the door and went out without looking back.

He found a taxi at the Plaza. He was swearing when he got into it. And all the way home he kept repeating to himself: "I'm one of those cursed, creeping Josephs; that's what I am,--one of those pepless, sanctimonious, creeping Josephs.... And I always loathed that poor fish, too!" _

Read next: Chapter 18

Read previous: Chapter 16

Table of content of Crimson Tide: A Novel


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book