The Crimson Tide Part 36

"If you behave like a veiled prophet you'll end by scaring me," she said.

But he merely gathered her into his arms and kissed her--laid back her head and looked down into her face and kissed her lips, without haste, as though she belonged to him.

Her head rested quite motionless on his shoulder. Perhaps she was still too taken aback to do anything about the matter. Her heart had hurried a little--not much--stimulated, possibly, by the rather agreeable curiosity which invaded her--charmingly expressive, now, in her wide brown eyes.

"So that's the way of it," he concluded, still looking down at her.

"There are other women in the world. And life is long. But I marry you or n.o.body. And it's my opinion that I shall not die unmarried."

She smiled defiantly.

"You don't seem to think much of my opinions," she said.

"Are you more friendly to mine?"

"Certain opinions of yours," he retorted, "originated in the diseased bean of some crazy Russian--never in your mind! So of course I hold them in contempt."

She saw his face darken, watched it a moment, then impulsively drew his head down against hers.

"I do care for your opinions," she said, her cheek, delicately warm, beside his. "So, even if you can not comprehend mine, be generous to them. I'm sincere. I try to be honest. If you differ from me, do it kindly, not contemptuously. For there is no such thing as 'n.o.ble contempt!' There is respectability in anger and n.o.bility in tolerance.

But none in disdain, for they are contradictions."

"I tell you," he said, "I despise and hate this loose socialistic philosophy that makes a bonfire of everything the world believes in!"

"Don't hate other creeds; merely conform to your own, Jim. It will keep you very, very busy. And give others a chance to live up to their beliefs."

He felt the smile on her lips and cheek:

"I can't live up to my belief if I marry you," she said. "So let us care for each other peacefully--accepting each other as we are. Life is long, as you say.... And there are other women.... And ultimately you will marry one of them. But until then----"

He felt her lips very lightly against his--cool young lips, still and fragrant and sweet.

After a moment she asked him to release her; and she rose and walked across the room to the mirror.

Still busy with her hair, she turned partly toward him:

"Apropos of nothing," she said, "a man was exceedingly impudent to me on the street this evening. A Russian, too. I was so annoyed!"

"What do you mean?"

"It happened just as I started to ascend the steps.... There was a man there, loitering. I supposed he meant to beg. So I felt for my purse, but he jumped back and began to curse me roundly for an aristocrat and a social parasite!"

"What did he say?"

"I was so amazed--quite stupefied. And all the while he was swearing at me in Russian and in English, and he warned me to keep away from Marya and Vanya and Ilse and mind my own d.a.m.ned business. And he said, also, that if I didn't there were people in New York who knew how to deal with any friend of the Russian aristocracy."

She patted a curly strand of hair into place, and came toward him in her leisurely, lissome way.

"Fancy the impertinence of that wretched Red! And I understand that both Vanya and Marya have received horribly insulting letters. And Ilse, also. Isn't it most annoying?"

She seated herself at the piano and absently began the Adagio of the famous sonata.

CHAPTER X

There was still, for Palla, much shopping to do. The drawing room she decided to leave, for the present, caring as she did only for a few genuine and beautiful pieces to furnish the pretty little French grey room.

The purchase of these ought to be deferred, but she could look about, and she did, wandering into antique shops of every cla.s.s along Fifth and Madison Avenues and the inviting cross streets.

But her chiefest quest was still for pots and pans and china; for napery, bed linen, and hangings; also for her own and more intimate personal attire.

To her the city was enchanting and not at all as she remembered it before she had gone abroad.

New York, under its canopy of tossing flags and ablaze with brilliant posters, swarmed with unfamiliar people. Every other pedestrian seemed to be a soldier; every other vehicle contained a uniform.

There were innumerable varieties of military dress in the thronged streets; there was the universal note of khaki and olive drab, terminating in leather vizored barrack cap or jaunty overseas service cap, and in spiral puttees, leather ones, or spurred boots.

Silver wings of aviators glimmered on athletic chests; chevrons, wound stripes, service stripes, an endless variety of insignia.

Here the grey-green and oxidised metal of the marines predominated; there, the conspicuous sage-green and gold of naval aviators. On campaign hats were every hue of hat cord; the rich gilt and blue of naval officers and the blue and white of their jackies were everywhere to be encountered.

And then everywhere, also, the brighter hue and exotic cut of foreign uniforms was apparent--splashes of gayer tints amid khaki and sober civilian garb--the beautiful _garance_ and horizon-blue of French officers; the familiar "bra.s.s hat" of the British; the grey-blue and maroon of Italians. And there were stranger uniforms in varieties inexhaustible--the schapska-shaped head-gear of Polish officers, the beret of Czecho-Slovaks. And everywhere, too, the gay and well-known red pom-pon bobbed on the caps of French blue-jackets, and British marines stalked in pairs, looking every inch the soldier with their swagger sticks and their vizorless forage-caps.

Always, it seemed to Palla, there was military music to be heard above the roar of traffic--sometimes the drums and bugles of foreign detachments, arrived in aid of "drives" and loans of various sorts.

Ambulances painted grey and bright blue, and driven by smartly uniformed young women, were everywhere.

And to women's uniforms there seemed no end, ranging all the way from the sober blue of the army nurse and the pretty white of the Red Cross, to bizarre but smart effects carried smartly by well set up girls representing scores of service corps, some invaluable, some of doubtful utility.

Eagle huts, canteens, soldiers' rest houses, Red Cross quarters, clubs, temporary barracks, peppered the city. Everywhere the service flags were visible, also, telling their proud stories in five-pointed symbols--sometimes tragic, where gold stars glittered.

Never had New York seemed to contain so many people; never had the overflow so congested avenue and street, circle and square, and the wretchedly inadequate and dirty street-car and subway service.

And into the heart of it all went Palla, engulfed in the great tides of Fifth Avenue, drifting into quieter back-waters to east and west, and sometimes caught and tossed about in the glittering maelstrom of Broadway when she ventured into the theatre district.

Opera, comedy, musical show and cinema interested her; restaurant and cabaret she had evaded, so far, but what most excited and fascinated her was the people themselves--these eager, restless moving millions swarming through the city day and night, always in motion under blue skies or falling rain, perpetually in quest of what the world eternally offered, eternally concealed--that indefinite, glimmering thing called "heart's desire."

To discover, to comprehend, to help, to guide their myriad aspirations in the interminable and headlong hunt for happiness, was, to Palla, the most vital problem in the world.

For her there existed only one solution of this problem: the Law of Love.

And in this world-wide Hunt for Happiness, where scrambling millions followed the trail of Heart's Desire, she saw the mad huntsman, Folly, leading, and Black Care, the whipper-in; and, at the bitter end, only the bones of the world's woe; and a Horseman seated on his Pale Horse.

But the problem that still remained was how to swerve the headlong hunt to the true trail toward the only goal where the world's quarry, happiness, lies asleep.

How to make service the Universal Heart's Desire? How to transfigure self-love into Love?