The Crimson Tide. Robert W. Chambers
school or on shopping trips to New York.
Painfully depressed, she descended at the station, where she climbed into one of the familiar omnibuses and gave her luggage check to the lively young driver.
Several drummers also got in, and finally a farmer whom she recognised but who had evidently forgotten her.
The driver, a talkative young man whom she remembered as an obnoxious boy who delivered newspapers, came from the express office with her trunk, flung it on top of the bus, gossiped with several station idlers, then leisurely mounted his seat and gathered up the reins.
Rattling along the main street she became aware of changes––a brand new yellow brick clothing store––a dreadful Quick Lunch––a moving picture theatre––other monstrosities. And she saw familiar faces on the street.
The drummers got out with their sample cases at the Bolton House––Charles H. Bolton, proprietor. The farmer descended at the “Par Excellence Market,” where, as he informed the driver, he expected to dispose of a bull calf which he had finally decided “to veal.”
“Which way, ma’am?” inquired the driver, looking in at her through the door and chewing gum very fast.
“To Miss Dumont’s on Shadow Street.”
“Oh! …” Then, suddenly he knew her. “Say, wasn’t you her niece?” he demanded.
“I am Miss Dumont’s niece,” replied Palla, smiling.
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“Sure! I didn’t reckonise you. Used to leave the Star on your doorstep! Been away, ain’t you? Home looks kinda good to you, even if it’s kinda lonesome––” He checked himself as though recollecting something else. “Sure! You been over in Rooshia livin’ with the Queen! There was a piece in the Star about it. Gee!” he added affably. “That was pretty soft! Some life, I bet!”
And he grinned a genial grin and climbed into his seat, chewing rapidly.
“He means to be friendly,” thought the heart-sick girl, with a shudder.
When Palla got out she spoke pleasantly to him as she paid him, and inquired about his father––a shiftless old gaffer who used, sometimes, to do garden work for her aunt.
But the driver, obsessed by the fact that she had lived with the “Queen of Rooshia,” merely grinned and repeated, “Pretty soft,” and, shouldering her trunk, walked to the front door, chewing furiously.
Martha opened the door, stared through her spectacles.
“Land o’ mercy!” she gasped. “It’s Palla!” Which, in Shadow Hill, is the manner and speech of the “hired girl,” whose “folks” are “neighbours” and not inferiors.
“How do you do, Martha,” said the girl smilingly; and offered her gloved hand.
“Well, I’m so’s to be ’round––” She wheeled on the man with the trunk: “Here, you! Don’t go-a-trackin’ mud all over my carpet like that! Wipe your feet like as if you was brought up respectful!”
“Ain’t I wipin’ em?” retorted the driver, in an injured voice. “Now then, Marthy, where does this here trunk go to?”
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“Big room front––wait, young fellow; you just follow me and be careful don’t bang the banisters–––”
Half way up she called back over her shoulder: “Your room’s all ready, Palla––” and suddenly remembered something else and stood aside on the landing until the young man with the trunk had passed her; then waited for him to return and get himself out of the house. Then, when he had gone out, banging the door, she came slowly back down the stairs and met Palla ascending.
“Where is my aunt?” asked Palla.
And, as Martha remained silent, gazing oddly down at her through her glasses:
“My aunt isn’t ill, is she?”
“No, she ain’t ill. H’ain’t you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Didn’t you get my letter?”
“Your letter? Why did you write? What is the matter? Where is my aunt?” asked the disturbed girl.
“I wrote you last month.”
“What did you write?”
“You never got it?”
“No, I didn’t! What has happened to my aunt?”
“She had a stroke, Palla.”
“What! Is––is she dead!”
“Six weeks ago come Sunday.”
The girl’s knees weakened and she sat down suddenly on the stairs.
“Dead? My Aunt Emeline?”
“She had a stroke a year ago. It made her a little stiff in one leg. But she wouldn’t tell you––wouldn’t bother you. She was that proud of you living as you did with all those kings and queens. ‘No,’ sez she to me, ‘no, Martha, I ain’t a-goin’ to worry Palla. She and 42 the Queen have got their hands full, what with the wicked way those Rooshian people are behaving. No,’ sez she, ‘I’ll git well by the time she comes home for a visit after the war–––’ ”
Martha’s spectacles became dim. She seated herself on the stairs and wiped them on her apron.
“It came in the night,” she said, peering blindly at Palla. … “I wondered why she was late to breakfast. When I went up she was lying there with her eyes open––just as natural–––”
Palla’s head dropped and she covered her face with both hands.
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CHAPTER IV
There remained, now, nothing to keep Palla in Shadow Hill.
She had never intended to stay there, anyway; she had meant to go to France.
But already there appeared to be no chance for that in the scheme of things. For the boche had begun to squeal for mercy; the frightened swine was squirting life-blood as he rushed headlong for the home sty across the Rhine; his death-stench sickened the world.
Thicker, ranker, reeked the bloody abomination in the nostrils of civilisation, where Justice strode ahead through hell’s own devastation, kicking the boche to death, kicking him through Belgium, through France, out of Light back into Darkness, back, back to his stinking sty.
The rushing sequence of events in Europe since Palla’s arrival in America bewildered the girl and held in abeyance any plan she had hoped to make.
The whole world waited, too, astounded, incredulous as yet of the cataclysmic debacle, slowly realising that the super-swine were but swine––maddened swine, devil driven. And that the Sea was very near.
No romance ever written approached in wild extravagance the story of doom now unfolding in the daily papers.
Palla read and strove to comprehend––read, laid 44 aside her paper, and went about her own business, which alone seemed dully real.
And these new personal responsibilities––now that her aunt was dead––must have postponed any hope of an immediate departure for France.
Her inheritance under her aunt’s will, the legal details, the inventory of scattered acreage and real estate, plans for their proper administration, consultations with an attorney, conferences with Mr. Pawling,