The Crimson Tide: A Novel

“If it were left to me,” said the girl, “I’d let the submerged drink themselves to death.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” he said. “I thought you were a socialist!”

“I am. I desire no law except that of individual inclination.”

“Why, that’s Bolshevism!”

Her laughter rang out unrestrained: “I believe in Bolshevism–for myself–but not for anybody else. In other words, I’d like to be autocrat of the world. If I were, I’d let everybody alone unless they interfered with me.”

“And in that event?” he asked, laughing, as the lights all over the house faded to a golden glimmer in preparation for the second part of the spectacle. He could no longer see her clearly across the little table. “What would you do if people interfered with you?” he repeated.

Marya smiled. The last ray of light smouldered in her tiger-red hair; the warm, fragrant, breathing youth of her grew vaguer, merging with the shadows; only the beryl-tinted eyes, which slanted slightly, remained distinct.

Her voice came to him through the music: “If I were autocrat, any man who dared oppose me would have his choice.”

“What choice?”

The music swelled toward a breathless crescendo.

She said: “Oppose me and you shall learn!–”

The house burst into a dazzling flood of moon-tinted light, all thronged with slim shapes whirling in an enchanted dance. Then clouds seemed to gather; the moon slid behind them, leaving a frosty demi-darkness through which, presently, snow began to fall.

The girl leaned toward him, watching the spectacle in silence. Perhaps unconsciously her left hand, satin-smooth, slipped over his–as though the contact were a symbol of enjoyment shared.

Light broke the next moment, revealing the spectacle on stage and floor in all its tinsel magnificence–snow-nymphs, polar-bears, all capering madly until an unearthly shriek heralded the coming of a favorite clown, who tumbled all the way down the stage steps and continued hysterically turning flip-flaps, cart-wheels, and somersaults until he landed with a crash at the foot of the steps again.

A large, highly coloured and over-glossy man, passing under their box during a dancing intermission, bowed rather extravagantly to Jim. He recognised Angelo Puma, with contemptuous amusement at his impudence.

It was evident, too, that Puma was quite ready to linger if encouraged–anxious, in fact, to extend his hand.

But his impudence had already ceased to amuse Jim, and he said carelessly to Marya, in a voice perfectly audible to Puma:

“There goes a man who, in collusion with a squinting partner of his, once beat me out of a commission.”

Puma’s heavy, burning face turned abruptly from Marya, whom he had been looking at; and he continued on across the floor. And Jim forgot him.

They remained until the place closed. Then he took her home.

It was an apartment overlooking the park from Fifty-ninth Street–a big studio and apparently many comfortable rooms–a large, still place where no servants were in evidence and where thick velvety carpets from Ushak and Sultanabad muffled every footfall.

She had insisted on his entering for a moment. He stood looking about him in the great studio, where Vanya’s concert-grand loomed up, a sprawling, shadowy shape under the dim drop-light which once had been a mosque-lamp in Samarcand.

The girl flung stole and muff from her, rolled up her gloves and took a shot at the piano, then, laughing, unpinned her hat and sent it scaling away into the golden dusk somewhere.

“Are you sleepy, Jim?”

A sudden vision of his trouble in the long, long night to face–trouble, insomnia, and the bitterness welling ever fresher with the interminable thoughts he could not suppress, could not control–

“I’m not sleepy,” he said. “But don’t you want to turn in?”

She went over to the piano, and, accompanying herself on deadened pedal where she stood, sang in a low voice the “Snow-Tiger,” with its uncanny refrain:

“Tiger-eyes

Tiger-eyes,

What do you see

Far in the dark

Over the snow?

Far in the dark

Over the snow,
Slowly the ghosts of dead men go,–
Horses and riders under the moon
Trample along to the dead men’s rune,
Slava! Slava!

Over the snow.”

“That’s too hilarious a song,” said Jim, laughing. “May I suggest a little rag to properly subdue us?”

“You don’t like Tiger-eyes?”

“I’ve heard more cheerful ditties.”

“When I’m excited by pleasure,” said the girl, “I sing Tiger-eyes.”

“Does it subdue you?”

She looked at him. “No.”

Still standing, she looked down at the keys, struck the muffled chords softly.

“Tiger-eyes

Tiger-eyes,

Where do they go,

Far in the dark

Over the snow?

Into the dark,