Robert W. Chambers

“ You may see these ideas accepted by Labor. You may see strikes––the most senseless and obsolete weapon ever wielded by thinking men; you may see panics, tie-ups, stagnation, misery. But you never shall see Bolshevism triumphant here, or permanently triumphant anywhere.
“Because Bolshevism is autocracy!”
“The hell it is!” yelled an I. W. W.
“Yes,” said Ilse cheerfully, “as you have said it is hell. And hell is an end, not a means, not a remedy.
“Because it is the negation of all socialism; the death of civilisation. And civilisation has an immortal destiny; and that destiny is socialism!” ”

“ War slays all yesterdays, so that human interest lives only in the fierce and present moment, or blazes anew at thought of what may be to-morrow.
Only the chronicles of the burning hour can hold human attention where war is. For last week is already a decade ago; and last year a dead century; but to-day is vital and to-morrow is immortal.
It was so with Palla. Her listless eyes swept the ranks of handsome, old-time books––old favourites bound in gold and leather, masters of English prose and poetry gathered and garnered by her grand-parents when books were rare in Shadow Hill. ”

“ He turned a dull red; the girl’s heart missed a beat, then hurried a little before it calmed again under her cool recognition and instant disdain of the first twinge of jealousy she could remember since childhood.
The absurdity of it, too! After all, it was this man’s destiny to marry. And, if it chanced to be that girl–––
“You know,” he said in a detached, musing way, “it is well for you to remember that I shall never marry unless I marry you.... Life is long. There are other women.... I may forget you––at intervals.... But I shall never marry except with you, Palla.” ”

“ Presently she shook her head with a wearied smile:
“That,” she said, “is one thing I can not understand––the veil. No. I can understand this–––” turning her head and glancing proudly around her at her girl comrades. “I can comprehend this thing that I am doing. But not what you wish to do, Palla. Not such service as you offer.”
“I wish to serve the source of all good. My heart is too full to be satisfied by serving mankind alone.”
The girl-soldier shook her head: “I try to understand. I can not. I am sorry, because I love you.”
“I love you, Ilse. I love my fellows.” ”

“ For he had instantly recognised Shotwell as the young man with whom that disturbingly pretty girl had been in consultation in Sharrow’s offices; and his mind was now occupied with a new possibility as well as with the property which he so persistently desired to acquire.
“With me,” he said in his animated, exotic way, and all creased with smiles, “my cinema business is not business alone! No! It is Art! It is the art hunger that ever urges me onward, not the desire for commercial gain. For me, beauty is ever first; the box-office last! You understand, Mr. Shotwell? With me, art is supreme! ”

“ The girl was evidently very young, but there seemed to be an indefinable something about her that hinted of experience beyond her years.
Palla had been looking at her––from Shotwell to her––and Marya’s sixth sense was already aware of it and asking why.
For between two females of the human species the constant occult interplay is like steady lighting. With invisible antennæ they touch one another incessantly, delicately exploring inside that grosser aura which is all that the male perceives. ”

“ Pawling insisted on shaking hands with him.
“You are far too kind to my poor accomplishments,” he said in deprecation. “It was not at all difficult, that Paraguayan dance.”
“It was art!” insisted Mr. Pawling, his watery eyes brimming with emotion. And he pressed the pretty waist of Tessa Barclay.
“Art,” rejoined Puma, laying a jewelled hand on his shirt-front, “is an ecstatic outburst from within, like the song of the bird. Art is simple; art is not difficult. Where effort begins, art ends. Where self-expression becomes a labour, art already has perished!” ”

“ She sat quite silent for a while, then a tremulous smile edged her lips:
“I had meant to take the veil,” she said. “I did begin my novitiate.”
“Here?”
“No, in Russia. There are a few foreign cloistered orders there.... But I had a tragic awakening....” She bent her head and quoted softly, “‘For the former things have passed away.’”
The orange ice was melting; she stirred it idly, watching it dissolve.
“No,” she said, “I had utterly misunderstood the scheme of things. Divinity is not a sad, a solemn, a solitary autocrat demanding selfish tribute, blind allegiance, inexorable self-abasement. ”

“ Why not make it the nation’s creed? Why not emblazon it on the wall of every city on earth?––one for all; all for one; Love, Service, Freedom!
Before such a faith, autocracy and tyranny die. 141 Under such a law every evil withers, every question is unravelled. There are no more problems of poverty and riches, none of greed and oppression.
The tyranny of convention, of observance, of taboo, of folkways, ends. And into the brain of all living beings will be born the perfect comprehension of their own indestructible divinity. ”

“ After a tiresome day, Palla left a new Hostess House which she had aided to establish, and took a Fifth Avenue bus, too weary to walk home.
The day had been clear and sunny, and she wondered dully why it had left with her the impression of grey skies.
Dusk came before she arrived at her house. She went into her unlighted living room, and threw herself on the lounge, lying with eyes closed and the back of one gloved hand across her temples. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ Wardner on concentration, with Palla listening, bending forward, brown eyes wide and curious and snowy hands framing her face; Ilse partly turned where she was seated, alert, flushed, half smiling at what John Estridge, behind her shoulder, was saying to her,––some improvised nonsense, of which Jim caught a fragment:
Through the hum of conversation and capricious laughter, Vanya’s vague music drifted like wind-blown thistle-down, and his absent regard never left Marya, where she rested among the cushions in low-voiced dialogue with Jim. ”

“ Palla, listening, sat forward and said to Brisson: “There is only one religion and it has only two precepts––love and give! The rest––the forms, observances, 12 creeds, ceremonies, threats, promises, are man-made trash!
“If man’s man-made God pleases him, let him worship him. That kind of deity does not please me. I no longer care whether He pleases me or not. He no longer exists as far as I am concerned.”
Brisson, much interested, asked Palla whether the void left by discredited Divinity did not bewilder her.
“There is no void,” said the girl. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Palla stirred restlessly in her chair. Evidently Ilse had not told her maid that she meant to be out late, for the girl seemed to have expected her an hour ago.
Palla’s increasing restlessness finally drove her to the windows, where she pulled aside the shades and stood looking out into the silent night.
The night was cold and clear and very still. Rarely a footfarer passed; seldom a car. And the stillness of the dark city increased her nervousness.
New York has rare phases of uncanny silence, when, for a space, no sound disturbs the weird stillness. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ She talked freely with her comrade, Ilse Westgard; she exchanged gossip and banter with the Cossacks, argued with them, laughed with them, sang with them.
At night she slept in her sheepskin in Ilse Westgard’s vigorous arms; morning, noon and evening she filled the samovar with snow beside Cossack fires, or in the rare cantonments afforded in wretched villages, where whiskered and filthy mujiks cringed to the Cossacks, whispering to one another: “There is no end xxxv to death; there is no end to the fighting and the dying, God bless us all. There is no end.” ”

“ Palla watched her to the foot of the stairs; the door closed; the engine of a taxi began to hum.
Her telephone was ringing when she returned to the living room, and the quick leap of her heart averted her of the hope revived.
But it was a strange voice on the wire,––a man’s voice, clear, sinister, tainted with a German accent:
“Iss this Miss Dumont? Yess? Then this I haff to say to you: You shall find yourself in serious trouble if you do not move your foolish club of vimmen out of the vicinity of which you know. We giff you one more chance. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ You and your socialist friends pretend to be fighting anarchy. You preach against Bolshevism! You warn the world that the Crimson Tide is rising. And every word you utter swells it! You are the anarchists yourselves! You are the Bolsheviki of the world! You come bringing disorder where there is order; you substitute unproven theory for proven practice!
“Like the hun, you come to impose your will on a world already content with its own God and its own belief! And that is autocracy; and autocracy is what you say you oppose! ”

“ An angry roar arose all around him; he nodded to his men:
“Run in any cut-ups,” he said briefly; climbed up to the rostrum, and laid his hand on Kastner’s arm.
At the same moment a stunning explosion shook the place and plunged it into darkness. Out of the smoke-choked blackness burst an uproar of shrieks and screams; plaster and glass fell everywhere; police whistles sounded; a frantic, struggling mass of humanity fought for escape.
As Jim reeled out into the lobby, he saw Palla leaning against the wall, with blood on her face. ”

“ Where was Ilse? What had happened? Had she suddenly come face to face with that creed of theirs––that shadowy creed which they believed in, perhaps because it seemed so unreal!––because the ordeal by fire seemed so vague, so far away in that ghostly bourne which is called the future, and which remains always so inconceivably distant to the young––star-distant, remote as inter-stellar dust––aloof as death.
It was three o’clock. There were velvet-dark smears under Palla’s eyes, little colour in her lips. The weight of fatigue lay heavily on her young shoulders ”

“ 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 106 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. ”

“ They all laughed.
“Is that your idea of liberty?” he asked Palla.
“What is all human progress but a free fight?” she retorted. “Of course,” she added, “Ilse means an intellectual battle. If they misbehave otherwise, I shall flee.”
“I don’t see why you want to go to hear a lot of Reds talk bosh,” he remarked. “It isn’t like you, Palla.”
“It is like me. You see you don’t really know me, Jim,” she added with smiling malice.
“The main thing,” said Ilse, “is for one to be one’s self. Palla and I are social revolutionists. Revolutionists revolt. A revolt is a row. ”

“ 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.” ”