He was the last American to leave Petrograd: he had taken his time; he left only when he was quite ready to leave.
And this was the man, now seated beside Estridge, who had coolly and cleverly taken his sporting chance in remaining till the eleventh hour and the fifty-ninth minute in the service of his country. Then, as the twelfth hour began to strike, he bluffed his way through.
* * * * *
During the first two or three days of sleigh travel, Brisson learned all he desired to know about Estridge, and Estridge learned almost nothing about Brisson except that he possessed a most unholy genius for wriggling out of trouble.
Nothing, nobody, seemed able to block this young man’s progress. He bluffed his way through White Guards and Red; he squirmed affably out of the clutches of wandering Cossacks; he jollied officials of all shades of political opinion; but he always continued his journey from one étape to the next. Also, he was continually lighting one large cigar after another. Buttoned snugly into his New York-made arctic clothing, and far more comfortable at thirty below zero than was Estridge in Russian costume, he smoked comfortably in the teeth of the icy gale or conversed soundly on any topic chosen. And the range was wide.
But about himself and his mission in Russia he never conversed except to remark, once, that he could buy better Russian clothing in New York than in Petrograd.
Indeed, his only concession to the customs of the country was in the fur cap he wore. But it was the galoshes of Manhattan that saved his feet from freezing. He had two pair and gave one to Estridge.
During several hundreds of miles in sleighs, Brisson’s constant regret was the absence of ferocious wolves. He desired to enjoy the whole show as depicted by the geographies. He complained to Estridge quite seriously concerning the lack of enterprise among the wolves.
But there seemed to be no wolves in Russia sufficiently polite to oblige him; so he comforted himself by patting his stomach where, sewed inside his outer underclothing, reposed documents destined to electrify the civilised world with proof infernal of the treachery of those three men who belong in history and in hell to the fraternity which includes Benedict Arnold and Judas.
* * * * *
One late afternoon, while smoking his large cigar and hopefully inspecting the neighbouring forest for wolves, this able young man beheld a sotnia of Ural Cossacks galloping across the snow toward the flying sleigh, where he and Estridge sat so snugly ensconced.
There was, of course, only one thing to do, and that was to halt. Kaledines had blown his brains out, but his riders rode as swiftly as ever. So the sleigh stopped.
And now these matchless horsemen of the Wild Division came galloping up around the sleigh. Brilliant little slanting eyes glittered under shaggy head-gear; broad, thick-lipped mouths split into grins at sight of the two little American flags fluttering so gaily on the sleigh.
Then two booted and furred riders climbed out of their saddles, and, under their sheepskin caps, Brisson saw the delicate features of two young women, one a big, superb, blue-eyed girl; the other slim, dark-eyed, and ivory-pale.
The latter said in English: “Could you help us? We saw the flags on your sleigh. We are trying to leave the country. I am American. My name is Palla Dumont. My friend is Swedish and her name is Ilse Westgard.”
“Get in, any way,” said Brisson briskly. “We can’t be in a worse mess than we are. I imagine it’s the same case with you. So if we’re all going to smash, it’s pleasanter, I think, to go together.”
At that the Swedish girl laughed and aided her companion to enter the sleigh.
“Good-bye!” she called in her clear, gay voice to the Cossacks. “When we come back again we shall ride with you from Vladivostok to Moscow and never see an enemy!”
When the young women were comfortably ensconced in the sleigh, the riders of the Wild Division crowded their horses around them and shook hands with them English fashion.
“When you come back,” they cried, “you shall find us riding through Petrograd behind Korniloff!” And to Brisson and Estridge, in a friendly manner: “Come also, comrades. We will show you a monument made out of heads and higher than the Kremlin. That would be a funny joke and worth coming back to see.”
Brisson said pleasantly that such an exquisite jest would be well worth their return to Russia.
Everybody seemed pleased; the Cossacks wheeled their shaggy mounts and trotted away into the woods, singing. The sleigh drove on.
“This is very jolly,” said Brisson cheerfully. “Wherever we’re bound for, now, we’ll all go together.”
“Is not America the destination of your long journey?” inquired the big, blue-eyed girl.
Brisson chuckled: “Yes,” he said, “but bullets sometimes shorten routes and alter destinations. I think you ought to know the worst.”
“If that’s the worst, it’s nothing to frighten one,” said the Swedish girl. And her crystalline laughter filled the icy air.
She put one persuasive arm around her slender, dark-eyed comrade:
“To meet God unexpectedly is nothing to scare one, is it, Palla?” she urged coaxingly.
The other reddened and her eyes flashed: “What God do you mean?” she retorted. “If I have anything to say about my destination after death I shall go wherever love is. And it does not dwell with the God or in the Heaven that we have been taught to desire and hope for.”
The Swedish girl patted her shoulder and smiled in good humoured deprecation at Brisson and Estridge.
“God let her dearest friend die under the rifles of the Reds,” she explained cheerfully, “and my little comrade can not reconcile this sad affair with her faith in Divine justice. So she concludes there isn’t any such thing. And no Divinity.” She shrugged: “That is what shakes the faith in youth — the seeming indifference of the Most High.”
Palla Dumont sat silent. The colour had died out in her cheeks, her dark, indifferent eyes became fixed.
Estridge opened the fur collar of his coat and pulled back his fur cap.
“Do you remember me?” he said to Ilse Westgard.
The girl laughed: “Yes, I remember you, now!”
To Palla Dumont he said: “And do you remember?”
At that she looked up incuriously; leaned forward slowly; gazed intently at him; then she caught both his hands in hers with a swift, sobbing intake of breath.
“You are John Estridge,” she said. “You took me to her in your ambulance!” She pressed his hands almost convulsively, and he felt her trembling under the fur robe.
“Is it true,” he said, “ — that ghastly tragedy?”
“Yes.”
“All died?”
“All.”
Estridge turned to Brisson: “Miss Dumont was companion to the Grand Duchess Marie,” he said in brief explanation.
Brisson nodded, biting his cigar.
The Swedish girl-soldier said: “They were devoted — the little Grand Duchess and Palla.... It was horrible, there in the convent cellar — those young girls — —” She gazed out across the snow; then,
“The Reds who did it had already made me prisoner.... They arrested me in uniform after the decree disbanding us.... I was on my way to join Kaledines’ Cossacks — a rendezvous.... Well, the Reds left me outside the convent and went in to do their bloody work. And I gnawed the rope and ran into the chapel to hide among the nuns. And there I saw a White Nun — quite crazed with grief — —”
“I had heard the volley that killed her,” said Palla, in explanation, to nobody in particular. She sat staring out across the snow with dry, bright eyes.
Brisson looked askance at her, looked significantly at the Swedish girl, Ilse Westgard: “And what happened then?” he inquired, with the pleasant, impersonal manner of a physician.
Ilse said: “Palla had already begun her novitiate. But what happened in those terrible moments changed her utterly.... I think she went mad at the moment.... Then the Superior came to me and begged me to hide Palla because t
he Bolsheviki had promised to return and cut her throat when they had finished their bloody business in the crypt.... So I caught her up in my arms and I ran out into the convent grounds. And at that very moment, God be thanked, a sotnia of the Wild Division rode up looking for me. And they had led horses with them. And we were in the saddle and riding like maniacs before I could think. That is all, except, an hour ago we saw your sleigh.”
“You have been hiding with the Cossacks ever since!” exclaimed Estridge to Palla.
“That is her history,” replied Ilse, “and mine. And,” she added cheerfully but tenderly, “my little comrade, here, is very, very homesick, very weary, very deeply and profoundly unhappy in the loss of her closest friend... and perhaps in the loss of her faith in God.”
“I am tranquil and I am not unhappy,” — said Palla. “And if I ever win free of this murderous country I shall, for the first time in my life, understand what the meaning of life really is. And shall know how to live.”
“You thought you knew how to live when you took the white veil,” said Ilse cheerfully. “Perhaps, after all, you may make other errors before you learn the truth about it all. Who knows? You might even care to take the veil again — —”
“Never!” cried Palla in a clear, hard little voice, tinged with the scorn and anger of that hot revolt which sometimes shakes youth to the very source of its vitality.
Ilse said very calmly to Estridge: “With me it is my reason and not mere hope that convinces me of God’s existence. I try to reason with Palla because one is indeed to be pitied who has lost belief in God — —”
“You are mistaken,” said Palla drily; “ — one merely becomes one’s self when once the belief in that sort of God is ended.”
Ilse turned to Brisson: “That,” she said, “is what seems so impossible for some to accept — so terrible — the apparent indifference, the lack of explanation — God’s dreadful reticence in this thunderous whirlwind of prayer that storms skyward day and night from our martyred world.”
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, 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. “It is already filled with my own kind of God, with millions of Gods — my own fellow creatures.”
“Your fellow beings?”
“Yes.”
“You think your fellow creatures can fill that void?”
“They have filled it.”
Brisson nodded reflectively: “I see,” he said politely, “you intend to devote your life to the cult of your fellow creatures.”
“No, I do not,” said the girl tranquilly, “but I intend to love them and live my life that way unhampered.” She added almost fiercely: “And I shall love them the more because of their ignorant faith in an all-seeing and tender and just Providence which does not exist! I shall love them because of their tragic deception and their helplessness and their heart-breaking unconsciousness of it all.”
Ilse Westgard smiled and patted Palla’s cheeks: “All roads lead ultimately to God,” she said, “and yours is a direct route though you do not know it.”
“I tell you I have nothing in common with the God you mean,” flashed out the girl.
Brisson, though interested, kept one grey eye on duty, ever hopeful of wolves. It was snowing hard now — a perfect geography scene, lacking only the wolves; but the étape was only half finished. There might be hope.
The rather amazing conversation in the sleigh also appealed to him, arousing all his instincts of a veteran newspaper man, as well as his deathless curiosity — that perpetual flame which alone makes any intelligence vital.
Also, his passion for all documents — those sewed under his underclothes, as well as these two specimens of human documents — were now keeping his lively interest in life unimpaired.
“Loss of faith,” he said to Palla, and inclined toward further debate, “must be a very serious thing for any woman, I imagine.”
“I haven’t lost faith in love,” she said, smilingly aware that he was encouraging discussion.
“But you say you have lost faith in spiritual love—”
“I did not say so. I did not mean the other kind of love when I said that love is sufficient religion for me.”
“But spiritual love means Deity — —”
“It does not! Can you imagine the all-powerful father watching his child die, horribly — and never lifting a finger! Is that love? Is that power? Is that Deity?”
“To penetrate the Divine mind and its motives for not intervening is impossible for us — —”
“That is priest’s prattle! Also, I care nothing now about Divine motives. Motives are human, not divine. So is policy. That is why the present Pope is unworthy of respect. He let his flock die. He deserted his Cardinal. He let the hun go unrebuked. He betrayed Christ. I care nothing about any mind weak enough, politic enough, powerless enough, to ignore love for motives!
“One loves, or one does not love. Loving is giving—” The girl sat up in the sleigh and the thickening snowflakes drove into her flushed face. “Loving is giving,” she repeated, “ — giving life to love; giving up life for love — giving! giving! always giving! — always forgiving! That is love! That is the only God! — the indestructible, divine God within each one of us!”
Brisson appraised her with keen and scholarly eyes. “Yet,” he said pleasantly, “you do not forgive God for the death of your friend. Don’t you practise your faith?”
The girl seemed nonplussed; then a brighter tint stained her cheeks under the ragged sheepskin cap.
“Forgive God!” she cried. “If there really existed that sort of God, what would be the use of forgiving what He does? He’d only do it again. That is His record!” she added fiercely, “ — indifference to human agony, utter silence amid lamentations, stone deaf, stone dumb, motionless. It is not in me to fawn and lick the feet of such an image. No! It is not in me to believe it alive, either. And I do not! But I know that love lives: and if there be any gods at all, it must be that they are without number, and that their substance is of that immortality born inside us, and which we call love! Otherwise, to me, now, symbols, signs, saints, rituals, vows — these things, in my mind, are all scrapped together as junk. Only, in me, the warm faith remains — that within me there lives a god of sorts — perhaps that immortal essence called a soul — and that its only name is love. And it has given us only one law to live by — the Law of Love!”
Brisson’s cigar had gone out. He examined it attentively and found it would be worth relighting when opportunity offered.
Then he smiled amiably at Palla Dumont:
“What you say is very interesting,” he remarked. But he was too polite to add that it had been equally interesting to numberless generations through the many, many centuries during which it all had been said before, in various ways and by many, many people.
Lying back in his furs reflectively, and deriving a rather cold satisfaction from his cigar butt, he let his mind wander back through the history of theocracy and of mundane philosophy, mildly amused to recognize an ancient theory resurrected and made passionately original once more on the red lips of this young girl.
But the Law of Love is not destined to be solved so easily; nor had it ever been solved in centuries dead by Egyptian, Mongol, or Greek — by priest or princess, prophet or singer, or by any vestal or acolyte of love, sacred or profane.
No philosophy had solved the problem of human woe; no theory convinced. And Brisson, searching leisurely the forgotten corridors of treasured lore, became interested to
realise that in all the history of time only the deeds and example of one man had invested the human theory of divinity with any real vitality — and that, oddly enough, what this girl preached — what she demanded of divinity — had been both preached and practised by that one man alone — Jesus Christ.
Turning involuntarily toward Palla, he said: “Can’t you believe in Him, either?”
She said: “He was one of the Gods. But He was no more divine than any in whom love lives. Had He been more so, then He would still intervene to-day! He is powerless. He lets things happen. And we ourselves must make it up to the world by love. There is no other divinity to intervene except only our own hearts.”
But that was not, as the young girl supposed, her fixed faith, definite, ripened, unshakable. It was a phase already in process of fading into other phases, each less stable, less definite, and more dangerous than the other, leaving her and her ardent mind and heart always unconsciously drifting toward the simple, primitive and natural goal for which all healthy bodies are created and destined — the instinct of the human being to protect and perpetuate the race by the great Law of Love.
Brisson’s not unkindly cynicism had left his lips edged with a slight smile. Presently he leaned back beside Estridge and said in a low voice:
“Purely pathological. Ardent religious instinct astray and running wild in consequence of nervous dislocations due to shock. Merely over-storage of superb physical energy. Intellectual and spiritual wires overcrowded. Too many volts.... That girl ought to have been married early. Only a lot of children can keep her properly occupied. Only outlet for her kind. Interesting case. Contrast to the Swedish girl. Fine, handsome, normal animal that. She could pick me up between thumb and finger. Great girl, Estridge.”
“She is really beautiful,” whispered Estridge, glancing at Ilse.
“Yes. So is Mont Blanc. That sort of beauty — the super-sort. But it’s the other who is pathologically interesting because her wires are crossed and there’s a short circuit somewhere. Who comes in contact with her had better look out.”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 920
