"And the first I knew he was mouthing and grinning and saying to me in Russian: "I know you, hired mercenary of the aristocrats!--I know you!--big white battle horse that carried the b.l.o.o.d.y war-G.o.d!"
"I was too astonished, my dear; I merely gazed upon this small and agitated toad, who continued to run alongside and grimace and pull funny faces at me. He appeared to be furious, and he said some very vile things to me.
"I was disgusted and walked faster, and he had to run. And all the while he was squealing at me: "I know you! You keep out of America, do you hear? If you sail on that steamer, we follow you and kill you! You hear it what I say? We kill! Kill! Kill!----""
She threw up her superb head and laughed:
"Can you see him--this insect--Palla!--so small and hairy, with crazy eyes like little sparks among the furry whiskers!--and running, running at heel, underfoot, one side and then the other, and squealing "Kill! Kill? Kill"----"
She had made them see the picture and they all laughed.
"But all the same," she added, turning to Estridge, "from that evening I became conscious that people were watching me.
"It was the same in Copenhagen and in Christiania--always I felt that somebody was watching me."
"Did you have any trouble?" asked Estridge.
"Well--there seemed to be so many unaccountable delays, obstacles in securing proper papers, trouble about luggage and steamer accommodations--petty annoyances," she added. "And also I am sure that letters to me were opened, and others which I should have received never arrived."
"You believe it was due to the Reds?" asked Palla. "Have they emissaries in Scandinavia?"
"My dear, their agents and spies swarm everywhere over the world!"
said Ilse calmly.
"Not here," remarked Shotwell, smiling.
"Oh," rejoined Ilse quickly, "I ask your pardon, but America, also, is badly infested by these people. As their Black Plague spreads out over the entire world, so spread out the Bolsheviki to infect all with the red sickness that slays whole nations!"
"We have a few local Reds," he said, unconvinced, "but I had scarcely supposed----"
The bell rang: Miss Lanois and Mr. Tchernov were announced, greeted warmly by Palla, and presented.
Both spoke the beautiful English of educated Russians; Vanya Tchernov, a wonderfully handsome youth, saluted Palla"s hand in Continental fashion, and met the men with engaging formality.
Shotwell found himself seated beside Marya Lanois, a lithe, warm, golden creature with greenish golden eyes that slanted, and the strawberry complexion that goes with reddish hair.
"You are happy," she said, "with all your streets full of bright flags and your victorious soldiers arriving home by every troopship.
Ah!--but Russia is the most unhappy of all countries to-day, Mr.
Shotwell."
"It"s terribly sad," he said sympathetically. "We Americans don"t seem to know whether to send an army to help you, or merely to stand aside and let Russia find herself."
"You should send troops!" she said. "Is it not so, Ilse?"
"Sane people should unite," replied the girl, her beautiful face becoming serious. "It will arrive at that the world over--the sane against the insane."
"And it is only the bourgeoisie that is sane," said Vanya Tchernov, in his beautifully modulated voice. "The extremes are both abnormal--aristocrats and Bolsheviki alike."
"We social revolutionists," said Marya Lanois, "were called extremists yesterday and are called reactionists to-day. But we are the world"s balance. This war was fought for our ideals; your American soldiers marched for them: the hun failed because of them."
"And there remains only one more war," said Ilse Westgard,--"the war against those outlaws we call Capital and Labour--two names for two robbers that have disturbed the world"s peace long enough!"
"Two tyrants," said Marya, "who trample us to war upon each other--who outrage us, crush us, cripple us with their ferocious feuds. What are the Bolsheviki? "Those who want more." Then the name belongs as well to the capitalists. They, also, are Bolsheviki--"men who always want more!" And these are the two quarrelling Bolsheviki giants who trample us--Lord Labour, Lord Capital--the devil of envy against the devil of greed!--war to the death! And, to the survivor, the bones!"
Shotwell, a little astonished to hear from the red lips of this warm young creature the bitter cynicisms of the proletariat, asked her to define more clearly where the Bolsheviki stood, and for what they stood.
"Why," she said, lying back on the sofa and adjusting her lithe body to a more luxurious position among the pillows, "it amounts to this, Mr. Shotwell, that a new doctrine is promulgated in the world--the cult of the under-dog.
"And in all dog-fights, if the under-dog ever gets on top, then he, also, will try to kill the ci-devant who has now become the under-dog." And she laughed at him out of her green eyes that slanted so enchantingly.
"You mean that there always will be an under-dog in the battle between capital and labour?"
"Surely. Their snarling, biting, and endless battle is a nuisance."
She smiled again: "We should knock them both on the head."
"You know," explained Ilse, "that when we speak of the two outlaws as Capital and Labour, we don"t mean legitimate capital and genuine labour."
"They never fight," added Tchernov, smiling, "because they are one and the same."
"Of course," remarked Marya, "even the united suffer occasionally from internal pains."
"The remedy," added Vanya, "is to consult a physician. That is--arbitration."
Ilse said: "Force is good! But one uses it legitimately only against rabid things." She turned affectionately to Palla and took her hands: "Your wonderful Law of Love solves all phenomena except insanity.
With rabies it can not deal. Only force remains to solve that problem."
"And yet," said Palla, "so much insanity can be controlled by kind treatment."
Estridge agreed, but remarked that strait-jackets and padded cells would always be necessary in the world.
"As for the Bolsheviki," said Marya, turning her warm young face to Shotwell with a lissome movement of the shoulders, almost caressing, "in the beginning we social revolutionists agreed with them and believed in them. Why not? Kerensky was an incapable dreamer--so sensitive that if you spoke rudely to him he shrank away wounded to the soul.
"That is not a leader! And the Cadets were plotting, and the Cossacks loomed like a tempest on the horizon. And then came Korniloff! And the end."
"The peace of Brest," explained Vanya, in his gentle voice, "awoke us to what the Red Soviets stood for. We saw Christ crucified again. And understood."
Marya sat up straight on the sofa, running her dazzling white fingers over her hair--hair that seemed tiger-red, and very vaguely scented.
"For thirty pieces of silver," she said, "Judas sold the world. What Lenine and Trotsky sold was paid for in yellow metal, and there were more pieces."
Ilse said: "Babushka is dying of it. That is enough for me."
Vanya replied: "Where the source is infected, drinkers die at the river"s mouth. Little Marie Spiridonova perished. Countess Panina succ.u.mbed. Alexandria Kolontar will die from its poison. And, as these died, so shall Ivan and Vera die also, unless that polluted source be cleansed."
Marya rested her tawny young head on the cushions again and smiled at Shotwell:
"It"s confusing even to Russians," she said, "--like a crazy Bakst spectacle at the Marinsky. I wonder what you must think of us."