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“Itis! That man is lying to these ignorant people! He’s telling them a vile untruth! Let me go, Jim–––”
“Better keep cool,” whispered Brisson, leaning over. “We’re all in dutch already.”
Palla said to him excitedly: “I’m afraid to stand up and speak, but I’m going to! I’d be a coward to sit here and let that man deceive these poor people–––”
“Listen to Bromberg!” motioned Ilse, her blue eyes frosty and her cheeks deeply flushed.
The orator had come down into the aisle. Every venomous word he was uttering now he directed straight at the quartette.
“Russia is showing us the way,” he said in his growling voice. “Russia makes no distinctions but takes them all by the throat and wrings their necks––aristocrats, bourgeoisie, cadets, officers, land owners, intellectuals––all the vermin, all the parasites! And that is the law, I tell you! The unfit perish! The strong inherit the earth!–––”
Palla sprang to her feet: “Liar!” she said hotly. “Did not Christ Himself tell us that the meek shall inherit the earth!”
“Christ?” thundered Bromberg. “Have you come here to insult us with legends and fairy-tales about a god?”
“Who mentioned God?” retorted Palla in a clear voice. “Unless we ourselves are gods there is none! But Christ did live! And He was as much a god as we are. And no more. But He was wiser! And what He told us is the truth! And I shall not sit silent while any man or woman teaches robbery and murder. That’s what you mean when you say that the law of the stronger is the only law! If it is, then the poor and ignorant are where they belong–––”
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“They won’t be when they learn the law of life!” roared Bromberg.
“There is only one law of life!” cried Palla, turning to look around her at the agitated audience. “The only law in the world worth obedience is the Law of Love and of Service! No other laws amount to anything. Under that law every problem you agitate here is already solved. There is no injustice that cannot be righted under it! There is no aspiration that cannot be realised!”
She turned on Bromberg, her hazel eyes very bright, her face surging with colour.
“You came here to pervert the exhortation of Karl Marx, and unite under the banner of envy and greed every unhappy heart!
“Very well. Others also can unite to combat you. A league of evil is not the only league that can be formed under this roof. Nor are the soldiers and police the only or the better weapons to use against you. What you agitators and mischief makers are really afraid of is that somebody may really educate your audiences. And that’s exactly what such people as I intend to do!”
A score or more of people had crowded around her while she was speaking. Shotwell and Brisson, too, had risen and stepped to her side. And the entire audience was on its feet, craning hundreds of necks and striving to hear and see.
Somewhere in the crowd a shrill American voice cried: “Throw them guys out! They got Wall Street cash in their pockets!”
Sondheim levelled a finger at Brisson:
“Look out for that man!” he said. “He published those lies about Lenine and Trotsky, and he’s here162from Washington to lie about us in the newspapers!”
The I. W. W. lurched out of his seat and shoved against Shotwell.
“Get the hell out o’ here,” he snarled; “––go on! Beat it! And take your lady-friends, too.”
Brisson said: “No use talking to them. You’d better take the ladies out while the going is good.”
But as they moved there was an angry murmur: the I. W. W. gave Palla a violent shove that sent her reeling, and Shotwell knocked him unconscious across a bench.
Instantly the hall was in an uproar: there was a savage rush for Brisson, but he stopped it with levelled automatic.
“Get the ladies out!” he said coolly to Shotwell, forcing a path forward at his pistol’s point.
Plain clothes men were active, too, pushing the excited Bolsheviki this way and that and clearing a lane for Palla and Ilse.
Then, as they reached the rear of the hall, there came a wild howl from the audience, and Shotwell, looking back, saw Sondheim unfurl a big red flag.
Instantly the police started for the rostrum. The din became deafening as he threw one arm around Palla and forced her out into the street, where Ilse and Brisson immediately joined them.
Then, as they looked around for a taxi, a little shrimp of a man came out on the steps of the hall and spat on the sidewalk and cursed them in Russian.
And, as Palla, recognising him, turned around, he shook his fists at her and at Ilse, promising that they should be attended to when the proper moment arrived.
Then he spat again, laughed a rather ghastly and163distorted laugh, and backed into the doorway behind him.
They walked east––there being no taxi in sight. Ilse and Brisson led; Palla followed beside Jim.
“Well,” said the latter, his voice not yet under complete control, “don’t you think you’d better keep away from such places in the future?”
She was still very much excited: “It’s abominable,” she exclaimed, “that this country should permit such lies to be spread among the people and do nothing to counteract this campaign of falsehood! What is going to happen, Jim, unless educated people combine to educate the ignorant?”
“How?” he asked contemptuously.
“By example, first of all. By the purity and general decency of their own lives. I tell you, Jim, that the unscrupulous greed of the educated is as dangerous and vile as the murderous envy of the Bolsheviki. We’ve got to reform ourselves before we can educate others. And unless we begin by conforming to the Law of Love and Service, some day the Law of Hate and Violence will cut our throats for us.”
“Palla,” he said, “I never dreamed that you’d do such a thing as you did to-night.”
“I was afraid,” she said with a nervous tightening of her arm under his, “but I was still more afraid of being a coward.”
“You didn’t have to answer that crazy anarchist!”
“Somebody had to. He lied to those poor creatures. I––I couldn’t stand it!––” Her voice broke a little. “And if there is truly a god in me, as I believe, then I should show Christ’s courage ... lacking His wisdom,” she added so low that he scarcely heard her.
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Ilse, walking ahead with Brisson, looked back over her shoulder at Palla laughing.
“Didn’t I tell you that there are some creatures you can’t educate? What do you think of your object lesson, darling?”
165CHAPTER XII
On a foggy afternoon, toward midwinter, John Estridge strolled into the new Overseas Club, which, still being in process of incubation, occupied temporary quarters on Madison Avenue.
Officers fresh from abroad and still in uniform predominated; tunics were gay with service and wound chevrons, citation cords, stars, crosses, strips of striped ribbon.
There was every sort of head-gear to be seen there, too, from the jaunty overseasbonnet de police, piped in various colours, to the corded campaign hat and leather-visored barrack-cap.
Few cavalry officers were in evidence, but there were plenty of spurs glittering everywhere––to keep their owners’ heels from slipping off the desks, as the pleasantry of the moment had it.
Estridge went directly to a telephone booth, and presently got his connection.
“It’s John Estridge, as usual,” he said in a bantering tone. “How are you, Ilse?”
“John! I’m so glad you called me! Thank you so much for the roses! They’re exquisite!––matchless!–––”
“Not at all!”
“What?”
“If you think they’re matchless, just hold one up166beside your cheek and take a slant at your mirror.”
“I thought you were not going to say such things to me!”
“I thought I wasn’t.”
“Are you alone?” She laughed happily. “Where are you, Jack?”
“At the Overseas Club. I stopped on my way from the hospital.”
“Y––es.”
A considerable pause, and then Ilse laughed again–––a confused, happy laugh.
“Did you think you’d––come over?” she inquired.
“Shall I?”
“What doyouthink about it, Jack?”
“I suppose,” he said in a humourous voice, “you’re afraid of that tendency which you say I’m beginning to exhibit.”
“The tendency to drift?”
“Yes;––toward those perilous rocks you warned me of.”
“Theyareperilous!” she insisted.
“You ought to know,” he rejoined; “you’re sitting on top of ’em like a bally Lorelei!”
“If that’s your opinion, hadn’t you better steer for the open sea, John?”
“Certainly I’d better. But you look so sweet up there, with your classical golden hair, that I think I’ll risk the rocks.”
“Please don’t! There’s a deadly whirlpool under them. I’m looking down at it now.”
“What do you see at the bottom, Ilse? Human bones?”
“I can’t see the bottom. It’s all surface, like a shining mirror.”
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“I’ll come over and take a look at it with you.”
“I think you’ll only see our own faces reflected.... I think you’d better not come.”
“I’ll be there in about half an hour,” he said gaily.
He sauntered out and on into the body of the club, exchanging with friends a few words here, a smiling handclasp there; and presently he seated himself near a window.
For a while he rested his chin on his clenched hand, staring into space, until a waiter arrived with his order.
He signed the check, drained his glass, and leaned forward again with both elbows on his knees, twirling his silver-headed stick between nervous hands.
“After all,” he said under his breath, “it’s too late, now.... I’m going to see this thing through.”
As he rose to go he caught sight of Jim Shotwell, seated alone by another window and attempting to read an evening paper by the foggy light from outside. He walked over to him, fastening his overcoat on the way. Jim laid aside his paper and gave him a dull glance.
“How are things with you?” inquired Estridge, carelessly.
“All right. Are you walking up town?”
“No.”
Jim’s sombre eyes rested on the discarded paper, but he did not pick it up. “It’s rotten weather,” he said listlessly.
“Have you seen Palla lately?” inquired Estridge, looking down at him with a certain curiosity.
“No, not lately.”
“She’s a very busy girl, I hear.”
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“So I hear.”
Estridge seated himself on the arm of a leather chair and began to pull on his gloves. He said:
“I understand Palla is doing Red Cross and canteen work, besides organising her celebrated club;––what is it she calls it?––Combat Club No. 1?”
“I believe so.”
“And you haven’t seen her lately?”
Shotwell glanced at the fog and shrugged his shoulders: “She’s rather busy––as you say. No, I haven’t seen her. Besides, I’m rather out of my element among the people one runs into at her house. So I simply don’t go any more.”
“Palla’s parties are always amusing,” ventured Estridge.
“Very,” said the other, “but her guests keep you guessing.”
Estridge smiled: “Because they don’t conform to the established scheme of things?”
“Perhaps. The scheme of things, as it is, suits me.”
“But it’s interesting to hear other people’s views.”
“I’m fed up on queer views––and on queer people,” said Jim, with sudden and irritable emphasis. “Why, hang it all, Jack, when a fellow goes out among apparently well bred, decent people he takes it for granted that ordinary, matter of course social conventions prevail. But nobody can guess what notions are seething in the bean of any girl you talk to at Palla’s house!”
Estridge laughed: “What do you care, Jim?”
“Well, I wouldn’t care if they all didn’t seem so exactly like one’s own sort. Why, to look at them, talk to them, you’d never suppose them queer! The young girl you take in to dinner usually looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And the169chances are that she’s all for socialism, self-determination, trial marriages and free love!
“Hell’s bells! I’m no prude. I like to overstep conventions, too. But this wholesale wrecking of the social structure would be ruinous for a girl like Palla.”
“But Palla doesn’t believe in free love.”
“She hears it talked about by cracked illuminati.”
“Rain on a duck’s back, Jim!”
“Rain drowns young ducks.”
“You mean all this spouting will end in a deluge?”
“I do. And then look for dead ducks.”
“You’re not very respectful toward modernism,” remarked Estridge, smiling.
Then Jim broke loose:
“Modernism? You yourself said that all these crazy social notions––crazy notions in art, literature, music––arise from some sort of physical degeneration, or from the perversion or checking of normal physical functions.”
“Usually they do–––”
“Well,” continued Shotwell, “it’s mostly due to perversion, in my opinion. Women have had too much of a hell of a run for their money during this war. They’ve broken down all the fences and they’re loose and running all over the world.
“If they’d only kept their fool heads! But no. Every germ in the wind lodged in their silly brains! Biff. They want sex equality and a pair of riding breeches! Bang! They kick over the cradle and wreck the pantry.
“Wifehood? Played out! Motherhood? In the discards! Domestic partnership?––each sex to its own sphere? Ha-ha! That was all very well yesterday. But woman as a human incubator and brooder is an170obsolete machine. Why the devil should free and untramelled womanhood hatch out young?
“If they choose to, casually, all right. But it’s purely a matter for self-determination. If a girl cares to take off her Sam Brown belt and her puttees long enough to nurse a baby, it’s a matter that concerns her, not humanity at large. Because the social revolution has settled all such details as personal independence and the same standard for both sexes. So,a basMadame Grundy!A la lanternewith the old régime! No––hang it all, I’m through!”
“Don’t you like Palla any more?” inquired Estridge, still laughing.
Jim gave him a singular look: “Yes.... Do you like Ilse Westgard?”
Estridge said coolly: “I am accepting her as she is. I like her that much.”
“Oh. Is that very much?” sneered the other.
“Enough to marry her if she’d have me,” replied Estridge pleasantly.
“And she won’t do that, I suppose?”
“Not so far.”
Jim eyed him sullenly: “Well, I don’t accept Palla as she is––or thinks she is.”
“She’s sincere.”
“I understand that. But no girl can get away with such notions. Where is it all going to land her? What will she be?”
Estridge quoted: “‘It hath not yet appeared what we shall be.’”
Shotwell rose impatiently, and picked up his overcoat: “All I know is that when two healthy people care for each other it’s their business––theirbusiness, I repeat––to171get together legally and do the decent thing by the human race.”
“Breed?”
“Certainly! Breed legally the finest, healthiest, best of specimens;––and as many as they can feed and clothe! For if they don’t––if we don’t––I mean our own sort––the land will be crawling with the robust get of all these millions of foreigners, who already have nearly submerged us in America; and whose spawn will, one day, smother us to death.
“Hang it all, aren’t they breeding like vermin now? All yellow dogs do––all the unfit produce big litters. That’s the only thing they ever do––accumulate progeny.
“And what are we doing?––our sort, I mean? I’ll tell you! Our sisters are having such a good time that they won’t marry, if they can avoid it, until they’re too mature to get the best results in children. Our wives, if they condescend to have any offspring at all, limit the output to one. Because more than onemightdamage their beauty. Hell! If the educated classes are going to practise race suicide and the Bolsheviki are going to breed like lice, you can figure out the answer for yourself.”
They walked to the foggy street together. Shotwell said bitterly:
“I do care for Palla. I like Ilse. All the women one encounters at Palla’s parties are gay, accomplished, clever, piquant. The men also are more or less amusing. The conversation is never dull. Everybody seems to be well bred, sincere, friendly and agreeable. But there’s something lacking. One feels it even before one is enlightened concerning the ultra-modernism of these admittedly interesting people. And I’ll tell you what172it is. Actually, deep in their souls, they don’t believe in themselves.
“Take Palla. She says there is no God––no divinity except in herself. And I tell you she may think she believes it, but she doesn’t.
“And her school-girl creed––Love and Service! Fine. Only there’s a prior law––self-preservation; and another––race preservation! By God, how are you going to love and serve if girls stop having babies?
“And as for this silly condemnation of the marriage ceremony, merely because some sanctified Uncle Foozle once inserted the word ‘obey’ in it––just because, under the marriage laws, tyranny and cruelty have been practised––what callow rot!
“Laws can be changed; divorce made simple and non-scandalous as it should be; all rights safeguarded for the woman; and still have something legal and recognised by one of those necessary conventions which make civilisation possible.
“But this irresponsible idea of procedure through mere inclination––this sauntering through life under no law to safeguard and govern, except the law of personal preference––that’s anarchy! That code spells demoralisation, degeneracy and disaster!... And the whole damned thing to begin again––a slow development of the human race, once more, out of the chaos of utter barbarism.”
Estridge, standing there on the sidewalk in the fog, smiled:
“You’re very eloquent, Jim. Why don’t you say all this to Palla?”
“I did. I told her, too, that the root of the whole thing was selfishness. And it is. It’s a refusal to play the game according to rule. There are only two sexes173and one of ’em is fashioned to bear young, and the other is fashioned to hustle for mother and kid. You can’t alter that, whether it’s fair or not. It’s the game as we found it. The rules were already provided for playing it. The legal father and mother are supposed to look out for their own legal progeny. And any alteration of this rule, with a view to irresponsible mating and turning the offspring over to the community to take care of, would create an unhuman race, unconscious of the highest form of love––the love for parents.
“A fine lot we’d be as an incubated race!”
Estridge laughed: “I’ve got to go,” he said, “And, if you care for Palla as you say you do, you oughtn’t to leave her entirely alone with her circle of modernist friends. Stick around! It may make you mad, but if she likes you, at least she won’t commit an indiscretion with anybody else.”
“I wish I could find my own sort as amusing,” said Jim, naïvely. “I’ve been going about recently––dances, dinners, theatres––but I can’t seem to keep my mind off Palla.”
Estridge said: “If you’d give your sense of humour half a chance you’d be all right. You take yourself too solemnly. You let Palla scare you. That’s not the way. The thing to do is to have a jolly time with her, with them all. Accept her as she thinks she is. There’s no damage done yet. Time enough to throw fits if she takes the bit and bolts–––”
He extended his hand, cordially but impatiently:
“You remember I once said that girl ought to be married and have children? If you do the marrying part she’s likely to do the rest very handsomely. And it will be the making of her.”
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Jim held on to his hand:
“Tell me what to do, Jack. She isn’t in love with me. And she wouldn’t submit to a legal ceremony if she were. You invoke my sense of humour. I’m willing to give it an airing, only I can’t see anything funny in this business.”
“Itisfunny! Palla’s funny, but doesn’t know it. You’re funny! They’re all funny––unintentionally. But their motives are tragically immaculate. So stick around and have a good time with Palla until there’s really something to scare you.”
“And then?”
“How the devil do I know? It’s up to you, of course, what you do about it.”
He laughed and strode away through the fog.
It had seemed to Jim a long time since he had seen Palla. It wasn’t very long. And in all that interminable time he had not once called her up on the telephone––had not even written her a single line. Nor had she written to him.
He had gone about his social business in his own circle, much to his mother’s content. He had seen quite a good deal of Elorn Sharrow; was comfortably back on the old, agreeable footing; tried desperately to enjoy it; pretended that he did.
But the days were long in the office; the evenings longer, wherever he happened to be; and the nights, alas! were becoming interminable, now, because he slept badly, and the grey winter daylight found him unrefreshed.
Which, recently, had given him a slightly battered appearance, commented on jestingly by young rakes175and old sports at the Patroon’s Club, and also observed by his mother with gentle concern.
“Don’t overdo it, Jim,” she cautioned him, meaning dances that ended with breakfasts and that sort of thing. But her real concern was vaguer than that––deeper, perhaps. And sometimes she remembered the girl in black.
Lately, however, that anxiety had been almost entirely allayed. And her comparative peace of mind had come about in an unexpected manner.
For, one morning, entering the local Red Cross quarters, where for several hours she was accustomed to sew, she encountered Mrs. Speedwell and her lively daughter, Connie––her gossiping informants concerning her son’s appearance at Delmonico’s with the mysterious girl in black.
“Well, what do you suppose, Helen?” said Mrs. Speedwell, mischievously. “Jim’s pretty mystery in black is here!”
“Here?” repeated Mrs. Shotwell, flushing and looking around her at the rows of prophylactic ladies, all sewing madly side by side.
“Yes, and she’s prettier even than I thought her in Delmonico’s,” remarked Connie. “Her name is Palla Dumont, and she’s a friend of Leila Vance.”
During the morning, Mrs. Shotwell found it convenient to speak to Leila Vance; and they exchanged a pleasant word or two––merely the amiable civilities of two women who recognise each other socially as well as personally.
And it happened in that way, a few days later, that Helen Shotwell met this pretty friend of Leila Vance––Palla Dumont––the girl in black.
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And Palla had looked up from her work with her engaging smile, saying: “I know your son, Mrs. Shotwell. Is he quite well? I haven’t seen him for such a long time.”
And instantly the invisible antennæ of these two women became busy exploring, probing, searching, and recognising in each other all that remains forever incomprehensible to man.
For Palla somehow understood that Jim had never spoken of her to his mother; and yet that his mother had heard of her friendship with her son.
And Helen knew that Palla was quietly aware of this, and that the girl’s equanimity remained undisturbed.
Only people quite sure of themselves preserved serenity under the merciless exploration of the invisible feminine antennæ. And it was evident that the girl in black had nothing to conceal from her in regard to her only son––whatever that same son might think he ought to make an effort to conceal from his mother.
To herself Helen thought: “Jim has had his wings singed, and has fled the candle.”
To Palla she said: “Mrs. Vance tells me such interesting stories of your experiences in Russia. Really, it’s like a charming romance––your friendship for the poor little Grand Duchess.”
“A tragic one,” said Palla in a voice so even that Helen presently lifted her eyes from her sewing to read in her expression something more than the mere words that this young girl had uttered. And saw a still, pale face, sensitive and very lovely; and the needle flying over a bandage no whiter than the hand that held it.
“It was a great shock to you––her death,” said Helen.
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“Yes.”
“And––you were there at the time! How dreadful!”
Palla lifted her brown eyes: “I can’t talk about it yet,” she said so simply that Helen’s sixth sense, always alert for information from the busy, invisible antennæ, suddenly became convinced that there were no more hidden depths to explore––no motives to suspect, no pretense to expose.
Day after day she chose to seat herself between Palla and Leila Vance; and the girl began to fascinate her.
There was no effort to please on Palla’s part, other than that natural one born of sweet-tempered consideration for everybody. There seemed to be no pretence, no pose.
Such untroubled frankness, such unconscious candour were rather difficult to believe in, yet Helen was now convinced that in Palla these phenomena were quite genuine. And she began to understand more clearly, as the week wore on, why her son might have had a hard time of it with Palla Dumont before he returned to more familiar pastures, where camouflage and not candour was the rule in the gay and endless game of blind-man’s buff.
“This girl,” thought Helen Shotwell to herself, “could easily have taken Jim away from Elorn Sharrow had she chosen to do so. There is no doubt about her charm and her goodness. She certainly is a most unusual girl.”
But she did not say this to her only son. She did not even tell him that she had met his girl in black. And Palla had not informed him; she knew that; because the girl herself had told her that she had not178seen Jim for “a long, long time.” It really was not nearly as long as Palla seemed to consider it.
Helen lunched with Leila Vance one day. The former spoke pleasantly of Palla.
“She’s such a darling,” said Mrs. Vance, “but the child worries me.”
“Why?”
“Well, she’s absorbed some ultra-modern Russian notions––socialistic ones––rather shockingly radical. Can you imagine it in a girl who began her novitiate as a Carmelite nun?”
Helen said: “She does not seem to have a tendency toward extremes.”
“She has. That awful affair in Russia seemed to shock her from one extreme to another. It’s a long way from the cloister to the radical rostrum.”
“She spoke of this new Combat Club.”
“She organised it,” said Leila. “They have a hall where they invite public discussion of social questions three nights a week. The other three nights, a rival and very red club rents the hall and howls for anarchy and blood.”
“Isn’t it strange?” said Helen. “One can not imagine such a girl devoting herself to radical propaganda.”
“Too radical,” said Leila. “I’m keeping an uneasy eye on that very wilful and wrong-headed child. Why, my dear, she has the most fastidious, the sweetest, the most chaste mind, and yet the things she calmly discusses would make your hair curl.”
“For example?” inquired Helen, astonished.
“Well, for example, they’ve all concluded that it’s time to strip poor old civilisation of her tinsel customs, thread-worn conventions, polite legends, and pleasant falsehoods.
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“All laws are silly. Everybody is to do as they please, conforming only to the universal law of Love and Service. Do you see where that would lead some of those pretty hot-heads?”
“Good heavens, I should think so!”
“Of course. But they can’t seem to understand that the unscrupulous are certain to exploit them––that the most honest motives––the purest––invite that certain disaster consequent on social irregularities.
“Palla, so far, is all hot-headed enthusiast––hot-hearted theorist. But I remember that she did take the white veil once. And, as I tell you, I shall try to keep her within range of my uneasy vision. Because,” she added, “she’s really a perfect darling.”
“She is a most attractive girl,” said Helen slowly; “but I think she’d be more attractive still if she were happily married.”
“And had children.”
Their eyes met, unsmilingly, yet in silent accord.
Their respective cars awaited them at the Ritz and took them in different directions. But all the afternoon Helen Shotwell’s mind was occupied with what she now knew of Palla Dumont. And she realised that she wished the girl were back in Russia in spite of all her charm and fascination––yes, on account of it.
Because this lovely, burning asteroid might easily cross the narrow orbit through which her own social world spun peacefully in its orderly progress amid that metropolitan galaxy called Society.
Leila Vance was part of that galaxy. So was her own and only son. Wandering meteors that burnt so prettily might yet do damage.
For Helen, having known this girl, found it not any180too easy to believe that her son could have relinquished her completely in so disturbingly brief a time.
Had she been a young man she knew that she would not have done so. And, knowing it, she was troubled.
Meanwhile, her only son was troubled, too, as he walked slowly homeward through the winter fog.
And by the time he was climbing his front steps he had concluded to accept this girl as she was––or thought she was––to pull no more long faces or sour faces, but to go back to her, resolutely determined to enjoy her friendship and her friends too; and give his long incarcerated sense of humour an airing, even if he suffered acutely while it revelled.
181CHAPTER XIII
Palla’s activities seemed to exhilarate her physically and mentally. Body and brain were now fully occupied; and, if the profit to her soul were dubious, nevertheless the restless spirit of the girl now had an outlet; and at home and in the Combat Club she planned and discussed and investigated the world’s woes to her ardent heart’s content.
Physically, too, Red Cross and canteen work gave her much needed occupation; and she went everywhere on foot, never using bus, tram or taxicab. The result was, in spite of late and sometimes festive hours, that Palla had become something more than an unusually pretty girl, for there was much of real beauty in her full and charming face and in her enchantingly rounded yet lithe and lissome figure.
About the girl, also, there seemed to be a new freshness like fragrance––a virginal sweetness––that indefinable perfume of something young and vigorous that is already in bud.
That morning she went over to the dingy row of buildings to sign the lease of the hall for three evenings a week, as quarters for Combat Club No. 1.
The stuffy place where the Red Flag Club had met the night before was still reeking with stale smoke and the effluvia of the unwashed; but the windows were182open and a negro was sweeping up a litter of defunct cigars.
“Yaas’m, Mr. Puma’s office is next do’,” he replied to Palla’s inquiry; “––Sooperfillum Co’poration. Yaas’m.”
Next door had been a stable and auction ring, and odours characteristic still remained, although now the ring had been partitioned, boarded over and floored, and Mr. Hewitt’s glass rods full of blinding light were suspended above the studio ceilings of the Super-Picture Corporation.
Palla entered the brick archway. An office on the right bore the name of Angelo Puma; and that large, richly coloured gentleman hastily got out of his desk chair and flashed a pair of magnificent as well as astonished eyes upon Palla as she opened the door and walked in.
When she had seated herself and stated her business, Puma, with a single gesture, swept from the office several men and a stenographer, and turned to Palla.
“Is it you, then, who are this Combat Club which would rent from me the hall next door!” he exclaimed, showing every faultless tooth in his head.
Palla smiled: “I am empowered by the club to sign a lease.”
“That is sufficient!” exclaimed Puma, with a superb gesture. “So! It is signed! Your desire is enough. The matter is accomplished when you express the wish!”
Palla blushed a little but smilingly affixed her signature to the papers elaborately presented by Angelo Puma.
“A lease?” he remarked, with a flourish of his large, sanguine, and jewelled hand. “A detail merely for your security, Miss Dumont. For me, I require only the183expression of your slightest wish. That, to me, is a command more binding than the seal of the notary!”
And he flashed his dazzling smile on Palla, who was tucking her copy of the agreement into her muff.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Puma,” she said, almost inclined to laugh at his extravagances. And she laid down a certified check to cover the first month’s rental.
Mr. Puma bowed; his large, heavily lashed black eyes were very brilliant; his mouth much too red under the silky black moustache.
“For me,” he said impulsively, “art alone matters. What is money? What is rent? What are all the annoying details of commerce? Interruptions to the soul-flow! Checks to the fountain jet of inspiration! Art only is important. Have you ever seen a cinema studio, Miss Dumont?”
Palla never had.
“Would it interest you, perhaps?”
“Thank you––some time–––”
“It is but a step! They are working. A peep will take but a moment––if you please––a thousand excuses that I proceed to show you the way!–––”
She stepped through a door. From a narrow anteroom she saw the set-scene in a ghastly light, where men in soiled shirt-sleeves dragged batteries of electric lights about, each underbred face as livid as the visage of a corpse too long unburied.
There were women there, too, looking a little more human in their makeups under the horrible bluish glare. Camera men were busy; a cadaverous and profane director, with his shabby coat-collar turned up, was talking loudly in a Broadway voice and jargon to a bewildered girl wearing a ball gown.
As Puma led Palla through the corridor from partition184to partition, disclosing each set with its own scene and people––the whole studio full of blatant noise and ghastly faces or painted ones, Palla thought she had never before beheld such a concentration of every type of commonness in her entire existence. Faces, shapes, voices, language, all were essentially the properties of congenital vulgarity. The language, too, had to be sharply rebuked by Puma once or twice amid the wrangling of director, camera man and petty subordinates.
“So intense are the emotions evoked by a fanatic devotion to art,” he explained to Palla, “that, at moments, the old, direct and vigorous Anglo-Saxon tongue is heard here, unashamed. What will you? It is art! It is the fervour that forgets itself in blind devotion––in rapturous self-dedication to the god of Truth and Beauty!”
As she turned away, she heard from a neighbouring partition the hoarse expostulations of one of Art’s blind acolytes: “Say, f’r Christ’s sake, Delmour, what the hell’s loose in your bean! Yeh done it wrong an’ yeh know damn well yeh done it wrong–––”
Puma opened another door: “One of our projection rooms, Miss Dumont. If it is your pleasure to see a few reels run off–––”
“Thank you, but I really must go–––”
The office door stood open and she went out that way. Mr. Puma confronted her, moistly brilliant of eye:
“For me, Miss Dumont, I am frank like there never was a child in arms! Yes. I am all art; all heart. For me, beauty is God!––” he kissed his fat fingers and wafted the caress toward the dirty ceiling.
“Please excuse,” he said with his powerful smile,185“but have you ever, perhaps, thought, Miss Dumont, of the screen as a career?”
“I?” asked Palla, surprised and amused. “No, Mr. Puma, I haven’t.”
“A test! Possibly, in you, latent, sleeps the exquisite apotheosis of Art incarnate! Who can tell? You have youth, beauty, a mind! Yes. Who knows if, also, happily, genius slumbers within? Yes?”
“I’m very sure it doesn’t,” replied Palla, laughing.
“Ah! Who can be sure of anything––even of heaven!” cried Puma.
“Very true,” said Palla, trying to speak seriously, “But the career of a moving picture actress does not attract me.”
“The emoluments are enormous!”
“Thank you, no–––”
“A test! We try! It would be amusing for you to see yourself upon the screen as you are, Miss Dumont? As youare––young, beautiful, vivacious–––”
He still blocked her way, so she said, laying her gloved hand on the knob:
“Thank you very much. Some day, perhaps. But I really must go–––”
He immediately bowed, opened the glass door, and went with her to the brick arch.
“I do not think you know,” he said, “that I have entered partnership with a friend of yours?”
“A friend of mine?”
“Mr. Elmer Skidder.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed, smilingly, “I hope the partnership will be a fortunate one. Will you kindly inform Mr. Skidder of my congratulations and best wishes for his prosperity? And you may say that I shall be glad to hear from him about his new enterprise.”