The Crimson Tide: A Novel

On his way upstairs, he noticed a red service flag bearing a single star hanging in his mother’s window.

He went into his own room, looked soberly around, sat down on the lounge, suddenly tired.

He had three days’ leave before reporting for duty. It seemed a miserly allowance. Instinctively he glanced at his wrist-watch. An hour had fled already.

“The dickens!” he muttered. But he still sat there. After a while he smiled to himself and rose leisurely to make his toilet.

“Such an attractively informal girl,” he thought regretfully.

“I’m sorry I didn’t learn her name. Why didn’t I?”

Philosophy might have answered: “But to what purpose? No young man expects to pick up a girl of his own kind. And he has no business with other kinds.”

But Shotwell was no philosopher.

The “attractively informal girl,” on whom young Shotwell was condescending to bestow a passing regret while changing his linen, had, however, quite forgotten him by this time. There is more philosophy in women.

Her train was now nearing Shadow Hill; she already could see the village in its early winter nakedness–the stone bridge, the old-time houses of the well-to-do, Main Street full of automobiles and farmers’ wagons, a crowded trolley-car starting for Deepdale, the county seat.

After four years the crudity of it all astonished her–the stark vulgarity of Main Street in the sunshine, every mean, flimsy architectural detail revealed–the dingy trolley poles, the telegraph poles loaded with unlovely wires and battered little electric light fixtures–the uncompromising, unrelieved ugliness of street and people, of shop and vehicle, of treeless sidewalks, brick pavement, car rails, hydrants, and rusty gasoline pumps.

Here was a people ignorant of civic pride, knowing no necessity for beauty, having no standards, no aspirations, conscious of nothing but the grosser material needs.

The hopelessness of this American town–and there were thousands like it–its architectural squalor, its animal unconsciousness, shocked her after four years in lands where colour, symmetry and good taste are indigenous and beauty as necessary as bread.

And the girl had been born here, too; had known no other home except when at boarding school or on shopping trips to New York.

Painfully depressed, she descended at the station, where she climbed into one of the familiar omnibuses and gave her luggage check to the lively young driver.

Several drummers also got in, and finally a farmer whom she recognised but who had evidently forgotten her.

The driver, a talkative young man whom she remembered as an obnoxious boy who delivered newspapers, came from the express office with her trunk, flung it on top of the bus, gossiped with several station idlers, then leisurely mounted his seat and gathered up the reins.

Rattling along the main street she became aware of changes–a brand new yellow brick clothing store–a dreadful Quick Lunch–a moving picture theatre–other monstrosities. And she saw familiar faces on the street.

The drummers got out with their sample cases at the Bolton House–Charles H. Bolton, proprietor. The farmer descended at the “Par Excellence Market,” where, as he informed the driver, he expected to dispose of a bull calf which he had finally decided “to veal.”

“Which way, ma’am?” inquired the driver, looking in at her through the door and chewing gum very fast.

“To Miss Dumont’s on Shadow Street.”

“Oh!..” Then, suddenly he knew her. “Say, wasn’t you her niece?” he demanded.

“I am Miss Dumont’s niece,” replied Palla, smiling.

“Sure! I didn’t reckonise you. Used to leave the Star on your doorstep! Been away, ain’t you? Home looks kinda good to you, even if it’s kinda lonesome–” He checked himself as though recollecting something else. “Sure! You been over in Rooshia livin’ with the Queen! There was a piece in the Star about it. Gee!” he added affably. “That was pretty soft! Some life, I bet!”

And he grinned a genial grin and climbed into his seat, chewing rapidly.

“He means to be friendly,” thought the heart-sick girl, with a shudder.

When Palla got out she spoke pleasantly to him as she paid him, and inquired about his father–a shiftless old gaffer who used, sometimes, to do garden work for her aunt.

But the driver, obsessed by the fact that she had lived with the “Queen of Rooshia,” merely grinned and repeated, “Pretty soft,” and, shouldering her trunk, walked to the front door, chewing furiously.

Martha opened the door, stared through her spectacles.

“Land o’ mercy!” she gasped. “It’s Palla!” Which, in Shadow Hill, is the manner and speech of the “hired girl,” whose “folks” are “neighbours” and not inferiors.

“How do you do, Martha,” said the girl smilingly; and offered her gloved hand.

“Well, I’m so’s to be ’round–” She wheeled on the man with the trunk: “Here, you! Don’t go-a-trackin’ mud all over my carpet like that! Wipe your feet like as if you was brought up respectful!”

“Ain’t I wipin’ em?” retorted the driver, in an injured voice. “Now then, Marthy, where does this here trunk go to?”

“Big room front–wait, young fellow; you just follow me and be careful don’t bang the banisters–”

Half way up she called back over her shoulder: “Your room’s all ready, Palla–” and suddenly remembered something else and stood aside on the landing until the young man with the trunk had passed her; then waited for him to return and get himself out of the house. Then, when he had gone out, banging the door, she came slowly back down the stairs and met Palla ascending.

“Where is my aunt?” asked Palla.

And, as Martha remained silent, gazing oddly down at her through her glasses:

“My aunt isn’t ill, is she?”

“No, she ain’t ill. H’ain’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Didn’t you get my letter?”

“Your letter? Why did you write? What is the matter? Where is my aunt?” asked the disturbed girl.

“I wrote you last month.”

“What did you write?”

“You never got it?”

“No, I didn’t! What has happened to my aunt?”

“She had a stroke, Palla.”

“What! Is–is she dead!”

“Six weeks ago come Sunday.”

The girl’s knees weakened and she sat down suddenly on the stairs.