“Oh, Ilse, Ilse! I wish this God who deals out such wickedness and misery had struck me down instead!”
Neither seemed to notice the agnostic paradox in this bitter cry wrung from a young girl’s grief.
Ilse closed her eyes as though to rest them, and sat so, her steady hand on Palla’s. And, so resting, said in her unfaltering voice:
“Jack, of course, lives.... But it seems a long time to wait to see him.”
“Jack lives,” whispered Palla.
“Of course.... Only — it seems so long a time to wait.... I wanted to show him — how kind love has been to us — how still more wonderful love could have been to us ... for I could have borne him many children.... And now I shall bear but one.”
After a silence, Palla lifted her eyes. In them the shadow of terror still lingered; there was not an atom of colour in her face.
* * * * *
Ilse slept that night, though Palla scarcely closed her eyes. Dreadful details of the coming day rose up to haunt her — all the ghastly routine necessary before the dead lie finally undisturbed by the stir and movement of many footsteps — the coming and going of the living.
* * * * *
Because what they called pneumonia was the Black Death of the ancient East, they had warned Ilse to remain aloof from that inert thing that had been her lover. So she did not look upon his face again.
There were relatives of sorts at the chapel. None spoke to her. The sunshine on the flower-covered casket was almost spring like.
And in the cemetery, too, there was no snow; and, under the dead grass, everywhere new herbage tinted the earth with delicate green.
Ilse returned from the cemetery with Palla. Her black veil and garments made of her gold hair and blond skin a vivid beauty that grief had not subdued.
That deathless courage which was part of her seemed to sustain the clear glow of her body’s vigour as it upheld her dauntless spirit.
“Did you see Jim in the chapel?” she asked quietly.
Palla nodded. She had seen Marya, also. After a little while Ilse said gravely:
“I think it no treachery to creed when one submits to the equally vital belief of another. I think our creed includes submission, because that also is part of love.”
Palla lifted her face in flushed surprise:
“Is there any compromising with truth?” she asked.
“I think love is the greatest truth. What difference does it make how we love?”
“Does not our example count? You had the courage of your belief. Do you counsel me to subscribe to what I do not believe by acquiescing in it?”
Ilse closed her sea-blue eyes as though fatigued. She said dreamily:
“I think that to believe in love and mating and the bearing of children is the only important belief in the world. But under what local laws you go about doing these things seems to be of minor importance, — a matter, I should say, of personal inclination.”
Ilse wished to go home. That is, to her own apartment, where now were enshrined all her memories of this dead man who had given to her womanhood that ultimate crown which in her eyes seemed perfect.
She said serenely to Palla: “Mine is not the loneliness that craves company with the living. I have a long time to wait; that is all. And after a while I shall not wait alone.
“So you must not grieve for me, darling. You see I know that Jack lives. It’s just the long, long wait that calls for courage. But I think it is a little easier to wait alone until — until there are two to wait — for him — —”
“Will you call me when you want me, Ilse?”
“Always, darling. Don’t grieve. Few women know happiness. I have known it. I know it now. It shall not even die with me.”
She smiled faintly and turned to enter her doorway; and Palla continued on alone toward that dwelling which she called home.
The mourning which she had worn for her aunt, and which she had worn for John Estridge that morning, she now put off, although vaguely inclined for it. But she shrank from the explanations in which it was certain she must become involved when on duty at the Red Cross and the canteen that afternoon.
Undressed, she sent her maid for a cup of tea, feeling too tired for luncheon. Afterward she lay down on her bed, meaning merely to close her eyes for a moment.
It was after four in the afternoon when she sat up with a start — too late for the Red Cross; but she could do something at the canteen.
She went about dressing as though bruised. It seemed to take an interminable time. Her maid called a taxi; but the short winter daylight had nearly gone when she arrived at the canteen.
She remained there on kitchen duty until seven, then untied her white tablier, washed, pinned on her hat, and went out into the light-shot darkness of the streets and turned her steps once more toward home.
There is, among the weirder newspapers of the metropolis, a sheet affectionately known as “pink-and-punk,” the circulation of which seems to depend upon its distribution of fake “extras.”
As Palla turned into her street, shabby men with hoarse voices were calling an extra and selling the newspaper in question.
She bought one, glanced at the headlines, then, folding it, unlocked her door.
Dinner was announced almost immediately, but she could not touch it.
She sank down on the sofa, still wearing her furs and hat. After a little while she opened her newspaper.
It seemed that a Bolsheviki plot had been discovered to murder the premiers and rulers of the allied nations, and to begin simultaneously in every capital and principal city of Europe and America a reign of murder and destruction.
In fact, according to the account printed in startling type, the Terrorists had already begun their destructive programme in Philadelphia. Half a dozen buildings — private dwellings and one small hotel — had been more or less damaged by bombs. A New York man named Wilding, fairly well known as an impresario, had been killed outright; and a Russian pianist, Vanya Tchernov, who had just arrived in Philadelphia to complete arrangements for a concert to be given by him under Mr. Wilding’s management, had been fatally injured by the collapse of the hotel office which, at that moment, he was leaving in company with Mr. Wilding.
A numbness settled over Palla’s brain. She did not seem to be able to comprehend that this affair concerned Vanya — that this newspaper was telling her that Vanya had been fatally hurt somewhere in Philadelphia.
Hours later, while she was lying on the lounge with her face buried in the cushions, and still wearing her hat and furs, somebody came into the room. And when she turned over she saw it was Ilse.
Palla sat up stupidly, the marks of tears still glistening under her eyes. Ilse picked up the newspaper from the couch, laid it aside, and seated herself.
“So you know about Vanya?” she said calmly.
Palla nodded.
“You don’t know all. Marya called me on the telephone a few minutes ago to tell me.”
“Vanya is dead,” whispered Palla.
“Yes. They found an unmailed letter directed to Marya in his pockets. That’s why they notified her.”
After an interval: “So Vanya is dead,” repeated Palla under her breath.
Ilse sat plaiting the black edges of her handkerchief.
“It’s such a — a senseless interruption — death — —” she murmured. “It seems so wanton, so meaningless in the scheme of things ... to make two people wait so long — so long! — to resume where they had been interrupted — —”
Palla asked coldly whether Marya had seemed greatly shocked.
“I don’t know, Palla. She called me up and told me. I asked her if there was anything I could do; and she answered rather strangely that what remained for her to do she would do alone. I don’t know what she meant.”
* * * * *
Whether Marya herself knew exactly what she meant seemed not to be entirely clear to her. For, when Mr. Puma, dressed in a travelling suit and carrying a satchel, arri
ved at her apartment in the Hotel Rajah, and entered the reception room with his soundless, springy step, she came out of her bedroom partly dressed, and still hooking her waist.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded contemptuously, looking him over from, head to foot. “Did you really suppose I meant to go to Mexico with you?”
His heavy features crimsoned: “What pleasantry is this, my Marya? — —” he began; but the green blaze in her slanting eyes silenced him.
“The difference,” she said, “between us is this. You run from those who threaten you. I kill them.”
“Of — of what nonsense are you speaking!” he stammered. “All is arranged that we shall go at eleven — —”
“No,” she said wearily, “one sometimes plays with stray animals for a few moments — and that is all. And that is all I ever saw in you, Angelo — a stray beast to amuse and entertain me between two yawns and a cup of tea.” She shrugged, still twisted lithely in her struggle to hook her waist. “You may go,” she added, not even looking at him, “or, if you are not too cowardly, you may come with me to the Red Flag Club.”
“In God’s name what do you mean — —”
“Mean? I mean to take my pistol to the Red Flag Club and kill some Bolsheviki. That is what I mean, my Angelo — my ruddy Eurasian pig!”
She slipped in the last hook, turned and enveloped him again with an insolent, slanting glance: “Allons! Do you come to the Red Flag?”
“Marya — —”
“Yes or no! Allez!”
“My God, are — are you then demented?” he faltered.
“My God, I’m not,” she mimicked him, “but I can’t answer for what I might do to you if you hang around this apartment any longer.”
She came slowly toward him, her hands bracketed on her hips, her strange eyes narrowing.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I have loved many times. But never you! One doesn’t love your kind. One experiments, possibly, if idle.
“A man died to-day whom I loved; but was too stupid to love enough. Perhaps he knows now how stupid I am.... Unless they blew his soul to pieces, also. Allez! Good-night. I tell you I have business to attend to, and you stand there rolling your woman’s eyes at me! — —”
“Damn you!” he said between his teeth. “What is the matter with you — —”
He had caught her arm; she wrenched it free, tearing the sleeve to her naked shoulder.
Then she went to her desk and took a pistol from an upper drawer.
“If you don’t go,” she said, “I shall have to shoot you and leave you here kicking on the carpet.”
“In God’s name, Marya!” he cried hoarsely, “who is it you shall kill at the hall?”
“I shall kill Sondheim and Bromberg and Kastner, I hope. What of it?”
“But — if I go to-night — the others will say I did it! I can’t run away if you do such thing! I can not go into Mexico but they shall arrest me before I am at the border — —”
“Eurasian pig, I shall admit the killing!” she said with a green gleam in her eyes that perhaps was laughter.
“Yes, my Marya,” he explained in agony, the sweat pouring from his temples, “but if they think me your accomplice they shall arrest me. Me — I can not wait — I shall be ruined if I am arrest! You do not comprehend. I have not said it to you how it is that I am compel to travel with some money which — which is not — my own.”
Marya looked at him for a long while. Suddenly she flung the pistol into a corner, threw back her head while peal on peal of laughter rang out in the room.
“A thief,” she said, fairly holding her slender sides between gemmed fingers: “ — Just a Levantine thief, after all! Not a thing to shoot. Not a man. No! But a giant cockroach from the tropics. Ugh! Too large to place one’s foot upon! — —”
She came leisurely forward, halted, inspected him with laughing insolence:
“And the others — Kastner, Sondheim — and the other vermin? You were quite right. Why should I kill them — merely because to-day a real man died? What if they are the same species of vermin that slew Vanya Tchernov? They are not men to pay for it. My pistol could not make a dead man out of a live louse! No, you are quite correct. You know your own kind. It would be no compliment to Vanya if I should give these vermin the death that real men die!”
Puma stood close to the door, furtively passing a thick tongue over his dry, blanched lips.
“Then you will not interfere?” he asked softly.
She shrugged her shoulders: one was bare with the torn sleeve dangling. “No,” she said wearily. “Run home, painted pig. After all, the world is mostly swine.... I, too, it seems — —” She half raised her arms, but the gesture failed, and she stood thinking again and staring at the curtained window. She did not hear him leave.
CHAPTER XXIII
In the strange, springlike weather which prevailed during the last days of January, Vanya was buried under skies as fleecy blue as April’s, and Marya Lanois went back to the studio apartment where she and Vanya had lived together. And here, alone, in the first month of the new year, she picked up again the ravelled threads of life, undecided whether to untangle them or to cut them short and move on once more to further misadventure; or to Vanya; or somewhere — or perhaps nowhere. So, pending some decision, she left her pistol loaded.
Afternoon sunshine poured into the studio between antique silken curtains, now drawn wide to the outer day for the first time since these two young people had established for themselves a habitation.
And what, heretofore, even the lighted mosque-lamps had scarcely half revealed, now lay exposed to outer air and daylight, gilded by the sun — cabinets and chests of ancient lacquer; deep-toned carpets in which slumbered jewelled fires of Asia; carved gods from the East, crusted with soft gold; and tapestries of silk shot with amethyst and saffron, centred by dragons and guarded by the burning pearl.
Over all these, and the great mosque lantern drooping from above, the false-spring sunshine fell; and through every open window flowed soft, deceptive winds, fluttering the leaves of music on the piano, stirring the clustered sheafs of growing jonquils and narcissus, so that they swayed in their Chinese bowls.
Marya, in black, arranged her tiger-ruddy hair before an ancient grotesquerie set with a reflecting glass in which, on some days, one could see the form of the Lord Buddha, though none could ever tell from whence the image came.
Where Vanya had left his music opened on the piano rack, the sacred pages now stirred slightly as the soft wind blew; and scented bells of Frisia swayed and bowed around a bowl where gold-fish glowed.
Marya, at the piano, reading at sight from his inked manuscript, came presently to the end of what was scored there — merely the first sketch for a little spring song.
Some day she would finish it as part of a new debt — new obligations she had now assumed in the slowly increasing light of new beliefs.
As she laid Vanya’s last manuscript aside, under it she discovered one of her own — a cynical, ribald, pencilled parody which she remembered she had scribbled there in an access of malicious perversity.
As though curious to sound the obscurer depths of what she had been when this jeering cynicism expressed her mood, she began to read from her score and words, playing and intoning:
“CROQUE-MITAINE.
“Parfaît qu’on attend La Marée Rouge,
La chose est positive.
On n’sait pas quand el’ bouge,
Mais on sait qu’el’ arrive.
La Marée Rouge arrivera
Et tout le monde en crèvera!
“Croque’morts, sacristains et abbés,
Dans leurs sacré’s boutiques
Se cachent auprès des machabé’s
En répètant des cantiques.
Pape, cardinal, et sacré soeur
Miaulent avec tout leurs cliques,
Lorsque les Bolsheviks reprenn ‘nt en choeur;
Mort aux saligaudes chic!
“La Marée Rouge montera
Et la bourgeoisie en crèvera!”
The vicious irony of the atrocious parody — words and music — died out in the sunny silence: for a few moments the girl sat staring at the scored page; then she leaned forward, and, taking the manuscript in both hands, tore it into pieces.
She was still occupied in destroying the unclean thing when a servant appeared, and in subdued voice announced Palla and Ilse.
They came in as Marya swept the tattered scraps of paper into an incense-bowl, dropped a lighted match upon them, and set the ancient bronze vessel on the sill of the open window.
“Some of my vileness I am burning,” she said, coming forward and kissing Ilse on both cheeks.
Then, looking Palla steadily in the eyes, she bent forward and touched her lips with her own.
“Nechevo,” she said; “the thing that dwelt within me for a time has continued on its way to hell, I hope.”
She took the pale girl by both hands: “Do you understand?”
And Palla kissed her.
When they were seated: “What religious order would be likely to accept me?” she asked serenely. And answered her own question: “None would tolerate me — no order with its rigid systems of inquiry and its merciless investigations.... And yet — I wonder.... Perhaps, as a lay-sister in some missionary order — where few care to serve — where life resembles death as one twin the other.... I don’t know: I wonder, Palla.”
Palla asked her in a low voice if she had seen the afternoon paper. Marya did not reply at once; but presently over her face a hot rose-glow spread and deepened. Then, after a silence:
“The paper mentioned me as Vanya’s wife. Is that what you mean? Yes; I told them that.... It made no difference, for they would have discovered it anyway. And I scarcely know why I made Vanya lie about it to you all; — why I wished people to think otherwise.... Because I have been married to Vanya since the beginning.... And I can not explain why I have not told you.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 946