The Crimson Tide Part 38

"Surely they are!" returned the tall, fair girl calmly. Her face had become flushed, and she stepped to the edge of the curb, her blue, wrathful eyes darkening like sapphires.

A soldier came up beside her. Others, sailors and soldiers, stopped to look. There was a red flag pa.s.sing. Suddenly Ilse stepped from the sidewalk, wrenched the flag from the burly Jew who carried it, and, with the same movement, shattered the staff across her knee.

Men and women in the ranks closed in on her; a shrill roar rose from them, but the soldiers and sailors, cheering and laughing, broke into the enraged ranks, tearing off red rosettes, cuffing and kicking the infuriated Terrorists, seizing every seditious banner, flag, emblem and placard in sight.

Female Reds, shrieking with rage, clawed, kicked and bit at soldier, sailor and civilian. A gaunt man, with a greasy bunch of hair under a bowler, waved dirty hands above the melee and shouted that he had the Mayor's permission to parade.

Everywhere automobiles were stopping, crowds of people hurrying up, policemen running. The electric lights snapped alight, revealed a mob struggling there in the yellowish glare.

Ilse had calmly stepped to the sidewalk, the fragments of flag and staff in her white-gloved hands; and, as she saw the irresponsible soldiers and blue-jackets wading l.u.s.tily into the Reds--saw the lively riot which her own action had started--an irresistible desire to laugh seized her.

Clear and gay above the yelling of Bolsheviki and the "Yip--yip!" of the soldiers, peeled her infectious laughter. But Palla, more gentle, stood with dark eyes dilated, fearful of real bloodshed in the furious scene raging in the avenue before her.

A little shrimp of a Terrorist, a huge red rosette streaming from his b.u.t.tonhole, suddenly ran at Ilse and seized the broken staff and the rags of the red flag. And Palla, alarmed, caught him by the coat-collar and dragged him screeching and cursing away from her friend, rebuking him in a firm but excited voice.

Ilse came over, shouldering her superb figure through the crowd; looked at the human shrimp a moment; then her laughter pealed anew.

"That's the man who abused me in Denmark!" she said. "Oh, Palla, _look_ at him! Do you really believe you could educate a thing like that!"

The man had wriggled free, and now he turned a flat, whiskered visage on Palla, menaced her with both soiled fists, inarticulate in his fury.

But police were everywhere, now, sweeping this miniature riot from the avenue, hustling the Reds uptown, checking the skylarking soldiery, sending amused or indignant citizens about their business.

A burly policeman said to Ilse with a grin: "I'll take what's left of that red flag, Miss;" and the girl handed it to him still laughing.

Soldiers wearing overseas caps cheered her and Palla. Everybody on the turbulent sidewalk was now laughing.

"D'yeh see that blond nab the red flag outer that big kike's fists?"

shouted one soldier to his sweating bunkie. "Some skirt!"

"G.o.d love the Bolsheviki she grabs by the slack o' the pants!" cried a blue-jacket who had lost his cap. A roar followed.

"Only one flag in this little old town!" yelled a citizen nursing a cut cheek with reddened handkerchief.

"G'wan, now!" grumbled a policeman, trying to look severe; "it's all over; they's nothing to see. Av ye got homes----"

"Yip! Where do we go from here?" demanded a marine.

"Home!" repeated the policeman; "--that's the answer. G'wan, now, peaceable--lave these ladies pa.s.s!----"

Ilse and Palla, still walled in by a grinning, admiring soldiery, took advantage of the opening and fled, followed by cheers as far as Palla's door.

"Good heavens, Ilse," she exclaimed in fresh dismay, as she began to realise the rather violent roles they both had played, "--is that your idea of education for the ma.s.ses?"

A servant answered the bell and they entered the house. And presently, seated on the chaise-longue in Palla's bedroom, Ilse Westgard alternately gazed upon her ruined white gloves and leaned against the cane back, weak with laughter.

"How funny! How degrading! But how funny!" she kept repeating. "That large and enraged Jew with the red flag!--the wretched little Christian shrimp you carried wriggling away by the collar! Oh, Palla!

Palla! Never shall I forget the expression on your face--like a bored housewife, who, between thumb and forefinger, carries a dead mouse by the tail----"

"He was trying to kick you, my dear," explained Palla, beginning to remove the hairpins from her hair.

Ilse touched her eyes with her handkerchief.

"They might have thrown bombs," she said. "It's all very well to laugh, darling, but sometimes such affairs are not funny."

Palla, seated at her dresser, shook down a ma.s.s of thick, bright-brown hair, and picked up her comb.

"I am wondering," she said, turning partly toward Ilse, "what Jim Shotwell would think of me."

"Fighting on the street!"--her laughter rang out uncontrolled. And Palla, too, was laughing rather uncertainly, for, as her recollection of the affair became more vivid, her doubts concerning the entire procedure increased.

"Of course," she said, "that red flag was outrageous, and you were quite right in destroying it. One could hardly b.u.t.tonhole such a procession and try to educate it."

Ilse said: "One can usually educate a wild animal, but never a rabid one. You'll see, to-night."

"Where are we going, dear?"

"We are going to a place just west of Seventh Avenue, called the Red Flag Club."

"Is it a club?"

"No. The Reds hire it several times a week and try to fill it with people. There is the menace to this city and to the nation, Palla--for these cunning fomenters of disorder deluge the poorer quarters of the town with their literature. That's where they get their audiences. And that is where are being born the seeds of murder and destruction."

Palla, combing out her hair, gazed absently into the mirror.

"Why should not we do the same thing?" she asked.

"Form a club, rent a room, and talk to people?"

"Yes; why not?" asked Palla.

"That is exactly why I wish you to come with me to-night--to realise how we should combat these criminal and insane agents of all that is most terrible in Europe.

"And you are right, Palla; that is the way to fight them. That is the way to neutralise the poison they are spreading. That is the way to educate the ma.s.ses to that sane socialism in which we both believe. It can be done by education. It can be done by matching them with club for club, meeting for meeting, speech for speech. And when, in some local instances, it can not be done that way, then, if there be disorder, force!"

"It can be done entirely by education," said Palla. "But remember!--Marx gave the forces of disorder their slogan--'Unite!' Only a rigid organisation of sane civilisation can meet that menace."

"You are very right, darling, and a club to combat the Bolsheviki already exists. Vanya and Marya already have joined; there are workmen and working women, college professors and college graduates among its members. Some, no doubt, will be among the audience at the Red Flag Club to-night.

"I shall join this club. I think you, also, will wish to enroll. It is called only 'Number One.' Other clubs are to be organised and numbered.

"And now you see that, in America, the fight against organised rascality and exploited insanity has really begun."

Palla, her hair under discipline once more, donned a fresh but severe black gown. Ilse unpinned her hat, made a vigorous toilet, then lighted a cigarette and sauntered into the living room where the telephone was ringing persistently.

"Please answer," said Palla, fastening her gown before the pier gla.s.s.

Presently Ilse called her: "It's Mr. Shotwell, dear."