The Crimson Tide. Robert W. Chambers
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.”
25
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.”
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“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?”
27
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.
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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.
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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