Like the first ominous puff before the tempest, the deadly breath of the Black Death--called "influenza," but known of old among the verminous myriads of the East--swept over the earth from East to West.
Millions died; millions were yet to perish of it; yet the dazed world, still half blind with blood and smoke, sat helpless and unstirring, barring no gates to this pestilence that stalked the stricken earth at noon-day.
New York, partly paralysed by sacrifice and the blood-sucking antics of half-crazed congressmen, gorged by six years feeding after decades of starvation, welcomed the incoming soldiers in a bewildered sort of way, making either an idiot"s din of dissonance or gaping in stupid silence as the huge troop-ships swept up the bay.
The battle fleet arrived--the home squadron and the "6th battle squadron"--and lay towering along the Hudson, while officers and jackies swarmed the streets--streets now thronged by wounded, too--pallid cripples in olive drab, limping along slowly beneath lowering skies, with their citations and crosses and ribbons and wound chevrons in glinting gold under the relighted l.u.s.tres of the metropolis.
So the false mockery of Christmas came to the city--a forced festival, unutterably sad, for all that the end of the war was subject of thanks in every church and synagogue. And so the mystic feast ended, scarcely heeded amid the slow, half-crippled groping for financial readjustment in the teeth of a snarling and vindictive Congress, mean in its envy, meaner in revenge--a domestic brand of sectional Bolsheviki as dirty and degenerate as any anarchist in all Russia.
The President had sailed away--(_Slava! Slava! Nechevo!_)--and the newspapers were preparing to tell their disillusioned public all about it, if permitted.
And so dawned the New Year over the spreading crimson flood, flecking the mounting tide with brighter scarlet as it crept ever westward, ever wider, across a wounded world.
Palla had not seen Jim for a very long time now. Christmas pa.s.sed, bringing neither gift nor message, although she had sent him a little remembrance--_The Divine Pantheon_, by an unfrocked Anglican clergyman, one Loxon Fettars, recently under detention pending investigation concerning an alleged multiplicity of wives.
The New Year brought no greeting from him, either; n.o.body she knew had seen him, and her pride had revolted at writing him after she had telephoned and left a message at his club--her usual concession after a stormy parting.
And there was another matter that was causing her a constantly increasing unrest--she had not seen Marya for many a day.
Quiet grief for what now appeared to be a friendship ended--at other times a tingle of bitterness that he had let it end so relentlessly--and sometimes, at night, the secret dread--eternally buried yet perennially resurrected--the still, hidden, ever-living fear of Marya; these the girl knew, now, as part of life.
And went on, steadily, with her life"s business, as though moving toward a dark horizon where clouds towered gradually higher, reflecting the glimmer of unseen lightning.
Somehow, lately, a vague sensation of impending trouble had invaded her; and she never entirely shook it off, even in her lighter moods, when there was gay company around her; or in the warm flush of optimistic propaganda work; or in the increasingly exciting sessions of the Combat Club, now interrupted nightly by fierce outbreaks from emissaries of the Red Flag Club, who were there to make mischief.
Also, there had been an innovation established among her company of moderate socialists; a corps of missionary speakers, who volunteered on certain nights to speak from the cla.s.sic soap-box on street corners, urging the propaganda of their panacea, the Law of Love and Service.
Twice already, despite her natural timidity and dread of public speaking, Palla had faced idle, half-curious, half sneering crowds just east or west of Broadway; had struggled through with what she had come to say; had gently replied to heckling, blushed under insult, stood trembling by her guns to the end.
Ilse was more convincing, more popular with her gay insouciance and infectious laughter, and her unexpected and enchanting flashes of militancy, which always interested the crowd.
And always, after these soap-box efforts, both Palla and Ilse were insulted over the telephone by unknown men. Their mail, also, invariably contained abusive or threatening letters, and sometimes vile ones; and Estridge purchased pistols for them both and exacted pledges that they carry them at night.
On the evening selected for Palla"s third essay in street oratory, she slipped her pistol into her m.u.f.f and set out alone, not waiting for Ilse, who, with John Estridge, was to have met her after dinner at her house, and, as usual, accompany her to the place selected.
But they knew where she was to speak, and she did not doubt they would turn up sooner or later at the rendezvous.
All that day the dull, foreboding feeling had been a.s.sailing her at intervals, and she had been unable to free herself entirely from the vague depression.
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 d.a.m.n 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 m.u.f.f, 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 prost.i.tute--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 pa.s.sing 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 cla.s.ses 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?"
"n.o.body 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 d.a.m.ned cars! Tell us about the geezers who soak us for food and coal and clothes and rent!