TRIMMED 
 WITH RED 
 
 TDWT1M 
 IxvW 1I\ 
 
University of California Berkeley 
 
TBIMMED WITH RED 
 
 WALLACE IBWIN 
 
TRIMMED 
 WITH RED 
 
 BY 
 
 WALLACE IRWIN 
 
 AUTHOR OP "THE BLOOMING ANGEL," "VENUS 
 IN THE EAST," "LETTERS OF A JAP- 
 ANESE SCHOOLBOY," ETC. 
 
 NEW XBr YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 

GRORGK HOKACK 
 
 INftMRKO IH>V MY AlVMtKAYUXN 
 ANU MY HOOK 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 ONE of those sweetish winters which the press 
 refers to as open had smiled and smiled into a lat- 
 terly month, and now the human animal was be- 
 ginning to nib its eyes and complain in the voice 
 of one who has been cheated of his discomforts. 
 More specifically it was mid-morning in mid- 
 March at a favored corner of Long Island where 
 a well-bred road passes by a haughty quarter mile 
 of stuccoed wall and seems to apologize at any- 
 thing so nearly approaching intimacy. Possibly 
 you have motored over that road or walked it be- 
 hind a wheelbarrow; if so you have murmured 
 "Mrs. Bodfrey Shallope" softly, lest you disturb 
 the great, and wondered how much it cost to build 
 that wall between Mrs. Shallope and humanity. 
 But on the mid-March morning when, in so far as 
 we are here concerned, history was born, the well- 
 bred road must needs grovel upon its sandy bed 
 in apology for an unheard-of breach of etiquette. 
 
 Mules! 
 
 Should not the soul faint, the spirit hold its 
 breath, at the association of unassociable ideas? 
 
 7 
 
8 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 ^*^ M *^^^""*"*'''^^"^^^**** M ''"****"** MM * M "** M ***"^'*** M ^*''^^"^^"'**'*""""*'''^'*'^ 
 
 Mules and Mrs. Bodf rey Shallope ! Yet mules they 
 were; no science, Christian or heathen, could deny 
 that horried fact. Clatter! clatter! clatter! long- 
 eared, slim-legged, sharp-hoofed, a hundred and 
 twenty of them, two abreast, came swinging round 
 the curve with all the exuberance of so many buck 
 privates just out of uniform; wholesomely gaunt 
 and stoically carefree they jogged along while nu- 
 merous mounted attendants spoke to them fre- 
 quently in the language of mules, thus shocking 
 high heaven and all but stunning Mrs. Shallope' s 
 head gardener, who peered through the iron grill 
 of the gate and prayed that Mrs. Shallope wasn't 
 up yet, or, if she was, wasn't looking out of the 
 window. 
 
 Emily Ray, who had thrown on a cloak but was 
 bare-headed against the soft winds, came laughing 
 down the drive, a little strand of hair blowing 
 across her nose. She was laughing at the outraged 
 expression of the head gardener's broad back, and 
 at the forest of ears filing by beyond the gate, and 
 at certain dramatic possibilities offered by the im- 
 pious situation. 
 
 "Mules !" groaned the gardener, touching his hat 
 as she came near. 
 
 "Aren't they, though !" she smiled, as if to flat- 
 ter him on his keen knowledge of natural history. 
 Then more seriously: "Did you count them?" 
 
 "No, miss; but they're cutting the road up some- 
 thing dreadful!" 
 
 As the last clattering pair, duly sworn at, went 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 9 
 
 jogging by Emily Ray put her small strength 
 against the heavy gate, which being unlocked 
 deigned to swing sufficiently to be squeeze^ 
 through. Once out in the open she looked first to 
 the right, where the comic cavalcade was already 
 being swallowed by distance, then to the left, where 
 the well-bred road lay again flat and civil. The 
 glance of her pleasant blue eyes was at once guilty 
 and expectant, but her generous mouth still held 
 its fun-loving smile. 
 
 An electric horn uttered, somewhere round the 
 bend, three terrific shrieks. She peeked swiftly 
 through the gate to see that the gardener wasn't 
 looking, then tiptoeing into a stiff-legged dance she 
 brought her hands together. 
 
 "Gosh!" she said aloud. "Then it is Oliver!" 
 
 The most loathsome of all road monsters 
 whirtled into sight, something of shining scarlet 
 with a turtle-back body and spider-web wheels. It 
 seemed impossible that such a projectile could stop 
 without a terrific explosion and havoc for miles 
 round. But Emily waited with the faith of little 
 children. She had seen Oliver do it before. Faith 
 was justified, for the roguish brute skidded on its 
 front tires, uttered a great sigh and stood, purring 
 softly, less than two yards from the maiden by the 
 wayside. 
 
 "Why don't you get a red car?" asked this same 
 maiden, experiencing the sunshine which Oliver 
 Browning's chubby features always brought to her. 
 
 "I thought of that," he told her with his best 
 
10 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 look of schoolboy innocence. "You don't get any- 
 thing really red any more. It must be those Ger- 
 man dyes." 
 
 He got himself out of the tomato-colored racer, 
 stepping rather gingerly on a left leg which, accord- 
 ing to a consensus of medical opinion, would al- 
 ways be a trifle stiff. Of about medium height, 
 pink-cheeked and amiable, Oliver Browning offered 
 a poor figure, you would have said, for a glowing 
 romance. There was no earthly doubt that Oliver 
 was a fat boy; comfortably plump, even in Emily 
 Ray's partial eyes. She could have hugged him at 
 that moment, but the beetle-browed gardener was 
 again passing. 
 
 "I see you got them !" she jubilated, but was not 
 too jubilant to note how smart he looked in his 
 new homespun suit with the sporting plaid. 
 
 "Did you notice it?" he grinned. 
 
 "I thought I saw a mule or something/' she con- 
 ceded. "Oliver, did you get them all?" 
 
 "A hundred and twenty, and ninety-two of 'em 
 A I. Bought the whole batch in New York, sight 
 unseen a canceled government contract. Found 
 'em braying round a remount station far away 
 from Missouri. Here they are ; there they go !" 
 
 Oliver, who made this speech with a trace of a 
 Virginia accent, delivered his lines with a great 
 show of calm and business acumen. Plainly he 
 was thrilled. 
 
 "You really did it!" She adored him with her 
 shining eyes. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 11 
 
 "Well, didn't you get my note?" 
 
 "Yes, Oliver." 
 
 "Well, didn't I say I would?" 
 
 "You certainly did. It's like being a general in 
 a great army. You said thirty thousand of them!" 
 
 "Forty," he corrected. 
 
 "And you'll keep 'em all in a great concentration 
 camp until cold weather, then ship 'em to France." 
 
 "You've got it pretty straight," he conceded, leav- 
 ing the impression that she was only a girl after 
 all. 
 
 "Oliver," she almost whispered, yet eying him 
 with that practical look of which she was capable, 
 "you'll be rich." 
 
 "I will not." 
 
 "Oliver, you're one of those mules." 
 
 "Am I?" 
 
 "You never see anything you don't want to see. 
 How on earth can you sell forty thousand mules 
 at ever so much profit per head without getting 
 rich?" 
 
 "Green and Plevort, Mules," he explained 
 cryptically. 
 
 "Are they?" 
 
 "I'm only a buyer for 'em." Then turning upon 
 her with a hurt expression: "I've been out of uni- 
 form four months. Don't you think that's doing 
 pretty well?" 
 
 "Oliver, dear! You'll always do pretty well. 
 You're " 
 
 "Emily, how rich have I got to be?" 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "What do you mean?" she asked in the voice of 
 a girl who knows perfectly well. 
 
 "I don't want you to be worried about servants 
 or bills or clothes. I want you just to concentrate 
 on me. A girl like you doesn't go with two rooms 
 and a kitchenette." 
 
 "What are you doing, Oliver?" she asked him 
 with a quizzical smile. "Announcing our engage- 
 ment?" 
 
 "Why not? It's got to be announced some 
 time." 
 
 "Do you think I'd spoil my romance with a lot of 
 money matters?" 
 
 "Of course you wouldn't. And that's why I've 
 got to feel flush before we're married." 
 
 "Mule!" 
 
 She said it scoldingly, but her head was going 
 round with the consciousness that Oliver had pro- 
 posed to her and, as far as she could find out, she 
 had accepted him. 
 
 "I don't mean this palace effect here," he said 
 rapidly, gesturing toward the Shallope version of 
 marbled grandeur. "But to marry you out of this, 
 on my salary, would be like taking a baby out of 
 a warm crib and dumping it into a snow bank. It 
 may be a hard life here, but you've got the sur- 
 roundings that that go with you, Emily." 
 
 "I don't have the least say in the matter, do I ?" 
 asked Emily Ray, pouting but proud as Punch at 
 this manly domination. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED IS 
 
 "I'll be buying mules for myself the first you 
 know " 
 
 It was quite in harmony with the mule motif that 
 Oliver should have brought a crumpled envelope out 
 of an inside pocket and from this produced a small 
 brittle square of photography. 
 
 "I thought maybe you'd keep it," said he, blush- 
 ing. It was a crude, unmounted snapshot, but the 
 girl laughed appreciatively. Undoubtedly the like- 
 ness was good. A plump and merry soldier boy 
 stood laughing in the foreground, while over his 
 shoulder stared the long solemn face of an army 
 mule. 
 
 "That was Pandora," he explained, "just before 
 she crippled me for life." 
 
 Emily had never before realized that happiness 
 could depend on mules; but suddenly truth flooded 
 her like a great light. She continued to study the 
 photograph, but her mind was not with the Ex- 
 peditionary Force. Standing as they were close 
 together in an angle behind the gate-post it was 
 only natural that he should have kissed her; and 
 being only natural, he did. So again the well-bred 
 road received its shock. 
 
 "How am I going to see you?" he was asking 
 with furious earnestness. 
 
 "Aunt Carmen's getting very difficult," she in- 
 formed him seriously. 
 
 "I don't mind her. I'll come anyhow. I'll " 
 
 "No you won't, Oliver. Not unless you want 
 
14 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 me to pack up and come to New York and go back 
 to work in the department store." 
 
 "No," he decided for her, "you've got to stay 
 with Aunt Carmen, and I've moved to New York. 
 What does she say about me?" 
 
 "She doesn't know who you are or where you 
 come from." 
 
 "Is it possible?" he asked, looking almost stately 
 in his access of pride. "Is it possible that she has 
 never heard of the Brownings of Charlottesville ?" 
 
 "She hasn't heard of anybody," explained Emily 
 soothingly. "She was born in New York. Please 
 don't be a mule, dear. And now I've got to run." 
 
 "But if I can't come here and you can't come 
 to New York " 
 
 "There's my cousin, Rosamonde." 
 
 "Mrs. Valiant?" 
 
 "Yes. She's a nut, but she's a dear. Next time 
 I'm in town I'll have her ask us to lunch or dinner 
 or something. And you can't tell how Aunt Car- 
 men's going to jump. Oh, Lord!" A glance at 
 her wrist-watch caused this prayer. "It's half-past 
 eleven, and if I'm not on deck " 
 
 "You can always get me through Green and 
 Plevort," sang out her chubby lover. 
 
 She paused a moment on the drive to watch him 
 scuttle away with the air of an automobile bandit 
 who, having executed a bold daylight robbery, is 
 merrily off with the spoils. 
 
II 
 
 SERVANTS, tradespeople and week-end guests 
 those, in brief, who are privileged to penetrate that 
 quarter mile of stuccoed wall which divides the 
 Shallope from the un-Shallope have been aware 
 of one peculiarity in the widow's marbled edifice. 
 The front, a blazing pile of spotless stone, which 
 combines the glories of Italy, France and Spain 
 with all the suavity of a Mexican table-d'hote, is 
 not on architectural speaking terms with the back, 
 which was originally, and still is, a frame building 
 of American farmhouse design. People sufficiently 
 familiar with Mrs. Bodfrey Shallope to call her 
 Aunt Carmen either to her face or to the back of 
 her worldly old head are not surprised to see that 
 the old frame house is getting the worst of it. 
 Away back in the antediluvian it was inherited by 
 Bodfrey Shallope together with several flourishing 
 farms in the region of Maiden Lane. And Car- 
 men Ray married Bodfrey after his divorce from 
 Andalusia Clark, who afterward married Emmett 
 Ballymoore, the rubber man, commercially speak- 
 ing. 
 
 To follow the Biblical sequence necessary in de- 
 scribing Long Island relationship, it was written 
 that Bodfrey should rule over Carmen but four 
 and twenty months. As a violent end of the chap- 
 
 15 
 
16 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 ter Carmen slew Bodfrey, alcoholic poisoning and 
 late hours being the means chosen. So she lived 
 unhappy ever afterward and from time to time 
 built Parthenons, Trianons and Marathons, all in 
 frosty marble, across the front of the ancestral 
 Shallope home, now being elbowed down the slope 
 and having but one claim to distinction a well- 
 established belief that its garret was of solid oak, 
 built to repel the short-range bullets of Hessian in- 
 vaders during the Revolutionary War. 
 
 When Emily Ray got back from her stolen kiss 
 by the gate she took a side path and entered the 
 old Shallope frame building. Here was a little sun 
 room where she could have her own desk with her 
 own stationery and a chance to think her own 
 thoughts. She should have been answering letters 
 for Aunt Carmen this morning, but the pen never 
 got so far as the inkwell for the very good reason 
 that it was being used as something pleasant to 
 chew on. The chewing brought many thoughts, 
 rapid, distracting. Why was it that her appear- 
 ance offered an invitation to a second look as she 
 sat there wasting Aunt Carmen's time? Without 
 being obviously pretty she managed to be lovely. 
 Complexion fair, eyes blue, nose slightly snubbed, 
 no visible birthmarks, height five feet eight inches 
 possibly Bertillon is a greater descriptive artist 
 than Shakespeare. Oh, yes! There was her hair, 
 too. It was brown and heavy; rather too heavy to 
 conform with the prevailing mode. Aunt Carmen 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 17 
 
 was always hinting that Emily would look better 
 if she would cut her hair off halfway down the 
 braid and wear the rest close to her head as peo- 
 ple do nowadays. Aunt Carmen was never satis- 
 fied unless something beautiful was being cut off. 
 For instance, there was Oliver Browning. 
 
 It had been a little less than a year since Aunt 
 Carmen acknowledged Emily's existence, and, ac- 
 knowledging, had offered the selfish shelter of her 
 wing. It had never mattered two straws how, what 
 or where Emily was so long as she had kept her 
 poverty out of New York. But Rosamonde Val- 
 iant had discovered and identified a pretty girl be- 
 hind a glove counter at Beltman's Fifth Avenue 
 shop as none other than Findley Ray's cheerful 
 orphan, and it was then that Aunt Carmen had 
 swooped to the rescue in time to save embarrassing 
 questions. Her own niece, a Ray, selling gloves! 
 Upon the supposition that ladies don't sell gloves 
 Emily had been spirited away to the Long Island 
 estate, where she was to learn, after a few weeks, 
 that ladies may do other and equally humble things 
 under the auspices of the rich. For it became ob- 
 vious, after a term of it, that Aunt Carmen had 
 discovered in Emily a Little Miss Fixit, a combina- 
 tion social secretary, adviser, keeper and buffer for 
 the world. For the wine of early years had bred 
 gout in Aunt Carmen's jeweled fingers, and a life- 
 time of arrogance, self-indulgence and flattery had 
 turned Carmen in her old age into a monstrous ec- 
 centric, beset by the enemies she had been indus- 
 
18 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 triously making these forty years, and almost pa- 
 thetically clinging to a nimble mind able to take 
 some of her well-deserved troubles off her shoul- 
 ders. 
 
 It was in keeping with Emily Ray's normal com- 
 mon sense that she should prefer the sumptuous 
 tyrannies of her aunt to the genteel drudgery of 
 Fifth-Avenue salesmanship. She was luxurious at 
 heart all the Ray women, so far as she knew, were 
 as luxurious as they found it respectably possible 
 to be. This morning, chewing the nub of her pen 
 as she gazed beyond heavy chintz draperies across 
 a rolling sward which Italian gardeners were rak- 
 ing and making ready for spring, she was valiantly 
 defending herself and her weakness. Of course 
 Aunt Carmen was correct in her constantly ding- 
 donged assertion that the Ray women always mar- 
 ried well. She was something of an old fool, as 
 her intimates were aware, but she would have been 
 no less a fool in a less luxurious environment. 
 During this year of splendid hardships Emily had 
 not been unaware of its advantages. Not to have 
 to travel twice a day in a brain-splitting subway, 
 standing while Germanic gentlemen reading Bol- 
 shevik literature occupied the seats; not to be fined 
 every time you were late to anything; not to be 
 obliged to lie in quaint attitudes during sleeping 
 hours in order to avoid loose springs in a board- 
 ing-house bed these conditions were worth sacri- 
 fices. It was satisfying, too, thought Emily, to be 
 able to wear the sort of gowns she had once ad- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 19 
 
 mired on other people, and to flirt and talk and 
 dance in magnificent surroundings where the young 
 men, if not sized to Ouida's standard of aris- 
 tocracy, were at least well behaved. 
 
 Aunt Carmen was right. And Emily owed her 
 everything in the world. Then she thought again 
 of Oliver Browning. 
 
 An animate shadow somewhere near her elbow 
 reminded her of a human presence, and she turned 
 to find that Mrs. Shallope's butler was standing 
 in the telepathic attitude which perfect butlers have 
 when commanding attention. He was a bald, eld- 
 erly man with cock eyes and a nose that jutted so 
 abruptly from his face as to suggest some canti- 
 lever plan of construction. He had the square, 
 neat side chops of his profession; in fact, he was 
 a man so well butlered as to leave nothing to the 
 imagination. Being one of those who must human- 
 ize all things Emily had refused to take Mr. Owley 
 as anything either subnormal or supernatural. 
 Merely another item in this social masquerade. 
 
 "Good morning, Owley." 
 
 "Good morning, miss." 
 
 "What have you on your conscience now?" 
 Emily dropped her pen and turned to face the 
 automaton with whom she had formed her peculiar 
 friendship. At her question the ghost of a smile 
 rippled the discipline-seared countenance. 
 
 "If you will pardon me, miss, you will remem- 
 ber 'ow 'Amlet mentions that conscience doth 
 make cowards of us all." 
 
20 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "My word, Owley ! How you talk ! What have 
 you been doing? Murdering people in the pantry 
 and hiding the bodies in the wine cellar?" 
 
 "You will find the 'ouse, miss, in perfect order," 
 he replied with just a touch of a rebuke in his 
 voice. 
 
 "Then I shouldn't worry if I were you," she 
 assured him in her kindly, amused tone. "What 
 happens outside your profession is nobody's busi- 
 ness but your own." 
 
 "You think so, miss?" His colorless cock eyes 
 opened to an expression approximating hope. 
 
 "I'm convinced of it. Won't you sit down, 
 Owley?" 
 
 "Thank you, miss." Owley had taken gingerly 
 hold on the back of a chair and had half eased 
 himself into it, when evidently he caught sight of 
 a passing parlor maid, for he straightened himself 
 to the correct ramrod pose and apologized: "If 
 you don't mind, miss, I'll stand. But I do wish 
 I could agree with you, miss, on what you say 
 about responsibilities." 
 
 Emily had gathered, from previous talks, that 
 Mrs. Shallope's butler had opinions of his own. 
 But never before had he opened up like this. 
 
 "I should like to hear your ideas on the subject," 
 she invited, settling herself back for an interview. 
 
 "A butler's office, looking at it one way, is a 
 moral and a public trust like that of a minister of 
 the gospel. Is it not Martin Luther who says: 
 'To go against one's conscience is neither just nor 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 right'? But what troubles me, miss, is this: 'Ow 
 many consciences 'ave I got? If I carry my con- 
 science round with me, as I should, shall I carry 
 it as a butler or as a man of the world?" 
 
 "Well, I should say offhand that your con- 
 science as a butler ought to be pretty good, since 
 you are the champion butler of Long Island." 
 
 "Ah, but miss, that is the trouble. I am not a 
 butler essentially." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 "Absolutely not. In private life I am at times a 
 real-estate operator; at others I am a motorist and 
 country gentleman ; at still others I affect the opera 
 and take Mrs. Owley to dance at fashionable 'otels. 
 Mrs. Shallope, you see, pays me a very liberal 
 wage, and from my savings, several years ago, I 
 was able to acquire some property which was con- 
 demned by her estate at Esterberry where the sub- 
 way is coming in later, and I was able to turn a 
 pretty penny in small lots. At Esterberry I am 
 known as Mr. Plunkett, president of the Plunkett 
 Villa Sites. Then I have acquired through Mc- 
 Cosh, Mrs. Shallope's chauffeur, a second-'and 
 racing runabout which I have 'ad nicely painted 
 and which I often take out for tours or runs along 
 the Speedway. On such occasions I register as 
 'Arold 'Athaway, the name being romantic, in a 
 manner of speaking. Then in New York, at danc- 
 ing and dinner parties, I am Mr. Jackson, of Long 
 Island, the name being substantial and suggestive 
 of a solid gentleman taking his ease - " 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Owley, you old fraud!" cried Emily, more 
 amused than shocked. "How can you bear to lead 
 such a quadruple life? Suppose I should tell Mrs. 
 Shallope." 
 
 "You wouldn't, miss." Owley said this with 
 perfect confidence. 
 
 "Why wouldn't I?" 
 
 "You're a young lady of experience in the world, 
 miss." 
 
 "Thank you, Owley. And wouldn't you call 
 Mrs. Shallope and her friends ladies of experience 
 in the world?" 
 
 "Oh, miss!" Old Owley covered his sly mouth 
 with a knotty hand as though to smother an un- 
 seemly smile. " 'Ow could they know anything 
 of the world? It requires imagination, miss, and 
 philosophy knocking about a bit. And what 
 'arm am I doing playing a part, as they say? I 
 pay my way, shilling for shilling, and what I learn 
 as Mr. Plunkett of the Villa Sites or J Arold 'Ath- 
 away of the Speedway all goes down to experience, 
 making me a better butler, as it were." 
 
 "But there's your conscience, Owley." 
 
 "To be sure, there it is. But 'ere's the question 
 with me: Is that conscience pagan or Christian? 
 According to the philosophy of Nietzsche, you 
 might say, I am an* Immoralist. And Marcus 
 Aurelius says quite frankly: 'Fashion thyself to 
 the circumstances of thy lot.' ' 
 
 "And Emily Ray says" here Miss Ray pursed 
 her lips, which were a shade puritanical "that it 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 isn't just right to go round giving false names. 
 Why can't you do everything you do under the 
 name of Owley?" 
 
 "Well, miss, if you'll pardon the remark, I 
 wouldn't take the same zest in my adventures. Be- 
 sides, Owley isn't my name." 
 
 "For heaven's sake! And what is your name?" 
 
 "Bird, miss Samuel Bird. I use Owley for the 
 hours when I am in service." 
 
 "Well, you are a complex !" 
 
 "Yes, miss." 
 
 Doubtless the Complex would have gone into 
 further explanations had not a bell rung, signaling 
 him to bow himself out of the room. Emily re- 
 sumed her writing. A moment later the bearer of 
 many cognomens reappeared. 
 
 "Mrs. Shallope asks, miss, if it is convenient for 
 you to come to her room." 
 
 Emily found her aunt sitting at an oval mirror 
 in an oval dressing room, the walls of which were 
 paneled in delicate greenish brocade between slen- 
 der ivory pilasters. The oval carpet that covered 
 the floor was of an old French design and the win- 
 dows were hung with mulberry. Aunt Carmen 
 was engaged in her favorite indoor pastime, which 
 consisted simply of being waited on. A personal 
 maid was anxiously arranging the great lady's 
 coiffure, and a brow-beaten seamstress, who had 
 come out for orders from a New York modiste, 
 was gathering together garments contemptuously 
 rejected, and preparing to depart. When Aunt 
 
24 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Carmen was in one of her moods departing was 
 always a pleasurable occupation. 
 
 She was a flabby, haggard woman, whose stringy 
 biceps showed unlovely below the sleeve fringe of 
 her dressing sacque. On her neck, slightly below 
 and behind her ears, two small scars glowed angry 
 red. These were from wounds inflicted two years 
 ago by a beauty surgeon who guaranteed to redeem 
 sagging chins; the chins sagged again after a time 
 but the scars remained. Emily caught a flash of 
 her eyes in the mirror. They were still beautiful, 
 tempestuous and gipsy black, very like those of 
 Emily's cousin, the frivolous Rosamonde Valiant. 
 Aunt Carmen was scolding vigorously; obviously 
 the closing paragraph of a long tirade. 
 
 "Thompson, you can do my hair without pulling 
 it, I know you can. You've snatched half of it out 
 already with your clumsy fingers. I haven't any 
 hair to lose. If I want to tear my hair I'll do it 
 myself. Heaven knows I have worries enough 
 sometimes to want to snatch it out by handfuls. 
 Where in the world are you putting that comb? 
 Horrors! Take it out! I look like the Queen of 
 Sheba!" 
 
 Her quick black glance caught the reflection of 
 Emily in the mirror, whereupon she jerked round 
 so rapidly as to pull the comb from Thompson's 
 patient fingers. 
 
 "Emily darling," she said in the sweetest possible 
 tone, "come here and kiss me. Where have you 
 been?" 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 25 
 
 "I was answering some letters, and Owley 
 said " 
 
 "To be sure. I've missed you dreadfully. If it 
 wasn't for you, dear, I sometimes think I should 
 be murdered in my bed." 
 
 "There, aunty!" consoled her ambassadress, 
 laughing and embracing the lean shoulders. "If 
 there's an uprising, you know, we can all lock our- 
 selves into the fort." 
 
 Aunt Carmen, it might be explained, had explicit 
 faith in that oak-ribbed garret in the old Shallope 
 wing, a grimy dungeon with a triple door where 
 she insisted revolutionary Shallopes had barricaded 
 themselves. 
 
 "It's no laughing matter, my dear," complained 
 Aunt Carmen. Then turning with sudden ferocity 
 upon the browbeaten seamstress: "You still 
 here?" 
 
 "This peignoir, madame " 
 
 "Take it away ! This is no packing room. Take 
 it back to New York and tell Madame Bleriot never 
 to send me such trash again." 
 
 The miserable woman slunk out of the presence, 
 whereat Aunt Carmen turned her machine gun 
 upon the unprotected Thompson. 
 
 "YouVe done sufficient damage for the day, 
 Thompson. You may go." 
 
 "Thank you, madam." Thompson said it as if 
 she meant it. 
 
 "You know, Emily," said old Carmen in a 
 
26 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 hushed voice, as soon as her maimed victim had 
 fled, "it's wonderful how a spiritual belief sus- 
 tains one. It if weren't for my Religion of Love 
 I should go raving mad." 
 
 The room was now cleared for dialogue, and 
 Emily, sensing trouble, seated herself on the edge 
 of a painted chaise longue. Snatching impetuously 
 at a drawer of her dressing table Mrs. Shallope 
 brought forth a torn shred of newspaper and 
 handed it over to her niece. 
 
 "What do you think I ought to do about that?" 
 she wailed. 
 
 Emily read the article, which covered a long 
 column of print, and she was at first puzzled to 
 guess why Aunt Carmen should be called upon to 
 do anything. "Forum of Freedom Advances 
 Views" was the top headline, with subsidiary an- 
 nouncements that "Mrs. Andalusia Ballymoore 
 Speaks for More Sympathy Between Classes," and 
 "Walter Scott Syle Defines Bloodless Revolution." 
 Subsequent paragraphs, rapidly slipped over, gave 
 the impression that a great many illustrious names 
 in New York society mostly feminine had come 
 together in the Fritz Hebron ballrooms to voice a 
 protest against Prussianism in American affairs. 
 The blend of socialism and society was quite 
 baffling to the girl, who handed the paper back 
 with the comment: 
 
 "The Mad Hatter is giving another party. It 
 must have been wonderful!" 
 
 "Don't be so superficial!" snapped Aunt Car- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 27 
 
 men ; then added plaintively : "It's that Ballymoore 
 woman again." In conference Aunt Carmen al- 
 ways referred to the first wife of her late husband 
 as "That Ballymoore woman." "They wouldn't 
 take her in the Red Cross because she was pro- 
 German. Up to the time of the armistice she was 
 socially dead. And now see what she's doing! 
 Chairman, if you please, of the Whangdoodle 
 Forum! And everybody listening to the voice of 
 the prophet. Emily, what shall we do about it?" 
 
 "If I were you, Aunt Carmen," spoke the young 
 oracle, "I shouldn't do anything." 
 
 "Shouldn't do anything?" The old voice rose 
 to a querulous pitch. "When she's done every- 
 thing within her power to scandalize me out of the 
 country? I shall write a letter to the papers." 
 
 "I shouldn't do that," echoed Emily. 
 
 "Why not?" Aunt Carmen's eyes blazed. 
 
 "Well, if you signed it people might think that 
 you were " 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 "Jealous?" cut in Aunt Carmen. "Why don't 
 you say it?" 
 
 Emily did some rapid calculating ere she said: 
 
 "I might write something to the Times and sign 
 it Pro Bono Publico or Americanus. It would do 
 just as much good, and there wouldn't be any 
 questions as to the motive." 
 
 "Do so," commanded the czarina; "and show it 
 to me before you send it." 
 
28 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Emily arose to go. She thought that was all, 
 and the instinct of escape was big within her. 
 
 "Emily!" 
 
 "Yes, Aunt Carmen." 
 
 The old lady had turned again with character- 
 istic suddenness. 
 
 "What were those mules doing at my gate this 
 morning ?" 
 
 It was said in exactly the voice Aunt Carmen 
 used when inquiring about people she did not recog- 
 nize socially. 
 
 "They just came that way. You see they were 
 going to New York and " 
 
 "They just stopped in, I suppose? Since when 
 has the Plainview Road become a runway for live- 
 stock?" 
 
 "Well, you see, Oliver 
 
 "Oh, I thought I saw this Browning boy's circus 
 chariot by my gate." 
 
 This Browning Boy had been pigeon-holed, ap- 
 parently, in the same row with That Ballymoore 
 Woman. 
 
 "He bought them at a perfectly wonderful bar- 
 gain" Emily decided upon a candid course "and 
 he drove them by just to show me what he'd done." 
 
 "He's simply spoiled my winter," scolded Aunt 
 Carmen. "And why in the world did he have to 
 come and live at Esterberry? I know you needn't 
 tell me." 
 
 Emily could not restrain a smile, for being a 
 Ray woman she was not without her vanity. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 29 
 
 "Come here, darling." Old Carmen took the 
 girl's fingers in a scrawny, jewel-studded hand and 
 her black eyes softened. "Let's not sentimentalize. 
 You haven't come to any sort of understanding, 
 have you?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Let's look at him for what he is. He hasn't a 
 cent. His family come from heaven knows where." 
 
 "He's a Browning of Charlottesville," she re- 
 cited, with a pride she had obviously borrowed 
 from Oliver. 
 
 "Where in the world is Charlottesville?" 
 
 "In I think it's Virginia." 
 
 "East or West?" 
 
 "I I'm not sure. But it's a very fine family." 
 
 "It must be," drawled Aunt Carmen. "He went 
 to war as a common soldier." 
 
 "Oliver would never be common, whatever sort 
 of soldier he was," Emily defended with heat. 
 "He enlisted the first month of the war, and they 
 put him in the remount division because he knew 
 so much about horses. He would have been at 
 least a colonel by now if he hadn't been wounded 
 and invalided home after his first trip on the 
 transport." 
 
 "How was he wounded?" asked Carmen scorn- 
 fully. 
 
 Emily paused just a second. 
 
 "He was kicked by a mule," she bravely ex- 
 plained. 
 
 "Kicked by a mule," repeated Aunt Carmen re- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 flectively as she gazed in the mirror studying her 
 uneradicable wrinkles. "The Ray women, what- 
 ever their faults, have always married well. My 
 dear, how would you like to tell your children that 
 their father had been a common soldier kicked by 
 a mule?" 
 
 "He did it for his country/' declared Emily, the 
 Ray temper coming to the fore, "and it was just as 
 glorious as being shot by a ninety-pound bullet." 
 
 "Undoubtedly." Aunt Carmen again turned 
 from her complexion to her family troubles. "Em- 
 ily, if you've got to marry a soldier why not pick 
 out a rich one? There's Sidney van Laerens; he 
 was a second lieutenant all during the war." 
 
 "Yes, and spent his time with his spurs hooked 
 to a desk in Washington " 
 
 "Don't be impertinent. Try to get it out of your 
 head that romance and poverty have got to go 
 together. I don't object to your marrying for love. 
 But you can fall in love with a rich man just as 
 easily as with a poor man if you put your mind 
 to it." 
 
 Emily said nothing in rebuttal; therefore, Aunt 
 Carmen got time for a full breath. 
 
 "This Browning boy is nothing more nor less 
 than an impudent little fortune hunter." 
 
 "Aunt Carmen!" 
 
 "That may be harsh, but you've compelled me to 
 speak the truth. You haven't learned the ways of 
 our world, my dear, because youVe been living 
 from pillar to post in shops and boarding houses. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 31 
 
 But you're in a position now where every adven- 
 turer in the world will regard you as fair game." 
 
 "But Aunt Carmen, Oliver was nice to me before 
 I ever dreamed of coming here. I met him first 
 when I was working at Beltman's." 
 
 "Don't mention that vulgar place!" cried the 
 outraged dowager. 
 
 "And more than that, Aunt Carmen," declared 
 Emily, on the verge of rebellion, "if I left here 
 to-day and went back to work at Beltman's I know 
 in my heart that Oliver would be just as nice to 
 me " 
 
 "Would he marry you?" 
 
 "Yes, he'd marry me in a minute if I'd let him." 
 
 "No doubt." Aunt Carmen fell into a sort of 
 dream, her eyes becoming focussed apparently on 
 Emily's mouth. "My dear," she said, in the tone 
 of a parent addressing a naughty child, "let me see 
 your teeth." 
 
 Emily bared two pearly rows while Aunt Car- 
 men made an earnest inspection. 
 
 "You've never had that enamel filling put back," 
 she said at last. 
 
 "It didn't show and I've been so busy " 
 
 "Doesn't it hurt?" 
 
 Emily was about to say, "No," when a small 
 thought intervened and truth came to the rescue. 
 
 "Sometimes," she admitted innocently. 
 
 "You must go right in to the dentist," com- 
 manded Carmen. "This very afternoon. O'Brien 
 will take you in the car. I'll telephone Rosamonde 
 
32 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 you're coming heaven knows she'll be glad of 
 your company." 
 
 "If you think it's necessary, Aunt Carmen," 
 complied her dutiful niece. 
 
 "Quite necessary. And now, my dear, please go 
 and write that letter for the Times." 
 
 "Yes, Aunt Carmen." 
 
 In the sun room of the old Shallope frame house 
 Emily sat chewing the end of a pen. How the 
 fairies of good fortune were conspiring in her be- 
 half! Quite obviously Aunt Carmen was sending 
 her to town to get her away from Oliver and 
 Oliver had been transferred to New York this very 
 morning. At last she concentrated her thought 
 and attacked the letter to> the Times. 
 
 "Of course, when the very rich are tired of all 
 the new dances and the opera season is drawing to 
 a close," she began her inspired diatribe against 
 parlor Bolshevism, "then is the time for society to 
 turn to a new, expensive and picturesque vice." 
 
 Emily paused and considered her literary style. 
 Aunt Carmen so wanted something said to embar- 
 rass Mrs. Ballymoore; and Emily so wanted to 
 please Aunt Carmen who had just however un- 
 consciously made her very happy. 
 
Ill 
 
 MRS. MERLIN VALLANT lived and quarreled with 
 her middle-aged, devoted, choleric husband in a 
 large ornate apartment just off Fifth Avenue. The 
 Valiants were not occupying an apartment for pur- 
 poses of economy old Merlin, had his wishes been 
 consulted, would have voted for a white front on 
 the Avenue; but poor little Rosamonde' s inability 
 to keep house or keep a secret or keep anything of 
 value had caused them to compromise upon what, 
 in the argot of Manhattan real estate, is termed a 
 Modern Fire-Proof. 
 
 Rosamonde Valiant was now twenty-one two 
 years younger than her cousin Emily and had 
 been married to the nitrate millionaire for nearly 
 three years. One could hardly have called it a love- 
 less match, because Rosamonde, although never a 
 Juliet, had seen the love-stricken, thick-bodied 
 Romeo in a glamour of gold. That faded, fashion- 
 able old wretch, Aunt Carmen, had almost literally 
 stood behind the altar, inspiring the childish bride 
 with thought waves to the effect that Rosamonde 
 was a well connected Ray, that the Rays were all 
 poor, that the Ray women were all beautiful and 
 had never failed to make a good match. 
 
 Into one of the small crises in poor, silly, beau- 
 tiful Rosamonde's life came Emily Ray on a 
 
 33 
 
34 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Wednesday afternoon; and far too cheerful she 
 was for a young lady about to see a dentist. 
 
 The high hall into which Emily stepped, to be 
 told that Mrs. Valiant would be out immediately, 
 was splendid to the superficial eye. In style it was 
 Flemish, rich with the sort of carven panels, spires 
 and gargoyles that the quaint artisans have learned 
 to fashion so cunningly by machinery and by the 
 mile. From here the visitor entered into a thirty- 
 foot living room, a kingly space whose nationality, 
 like that of kings, was most decidedly mixed. In- 
 terior decorators had furnished the place with 
 articles of imitation magnificence at a price which 
 would have completed state capital buildings in 
 Victorian days. 
 
 But the thing that startled Emily was the noise. 
 Squeaks, squawks, jabberings, whistlings issued 
 from every corner, from over florid balustrades, 
 from behind an Italian priedieu, through the woof 
 of Brussels tapestries. A menagerie! Centered 
 tastefully against the leaded panes of the long bay 
 window hung a great Chinese bird cage, clamorous 
 with small green love-birds. Somewhere a parrot 
 squawked. Then came an unearthly squeaking 
 gibber right over her head. 
 
 Horrors! Something impish, human, furry, 
 hurtled from its high perch and landed square on 
 Emily's cringing shoulder where it crouched bright- 
 eyed and, raising a little mummified hand, began 
 affectionately to stroke her on the cheek. Emily 
 took one disgusted look. Ugh! A marmoset! 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 35 
 
 With a gesture of instinctive aversion she had 
 brushed the pathetic monster to the floor and 
 watched it scamper away when Rosamonde Val- 
 iant entered, extending her white helpless hands in 
 welcome. 
 
 "My dear Emmy!" she cried, and in the midst 
 of a cousinly kiss, Emily saw how Aunt Car- 
 men must have looked at the age of twenty-one. 
 Rosamonde' s eyes were brilliant, black and shal- 
 low, her mouth self-indulgent, her forehead low. 
 She was graceful with the slim, flat-chested grace 
 of the mode. 
 
 "I'm so glad you've come," she chatted on, yearn- 
 ing apparently for a confidante. "Merlin left me 
 this morning in a frightful rage. What in the 
 world possessed Aunt Carmen to send you into 
 town not your teeth, of course." 
 
 "Oliver Browning," confessed Emily, eager to 
 clarify the situation. 
 
 "I see !" Rosamonde rolled her black eyes wick- 
 edly and bit her self-indulgent under lip. 
 
 "Aunt Carmen thinks he's staying at Esterberry, 
 so she's sent me into town to get out of his 
 clutches." 
 
 "Isn't that romantic!" 
 
 "But, as a matter of fact, he was sent back to 
 New York to-day. Rosa, dear, you're going to be 
 a good fellow and let me see him, aren't you?" 
 
 "Rath-urr!" agreed Rosamonde; and: "Mustn't 
 it be wonderful to be in love. Oh, Emmy, I'm so 
 unhappy !" 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Rosamonde's chin did an unexpected thing. It 
 lost its contour and began to pucker like a little 
 withered peach. Apparently she was struggling 
 with her tears. 
 
 "Rosa! What has happened?" 
 
 "I'm so unhappy!" Rosamonde threw herself 
 upon several thousand dollars' worth of upholstery 
 and gave way to grief. "It's Merlin Merlin's 
 fault. He never gives me anything." 
 
 Emily smiled and glanced round the carven vistas 
 of the apartment. 
 
 "Poor starved thing!" cried Emily, her voice 
 rich with emotion. 
 
 "I'm not starved only half starved. When I 
 married him I thought he was really rich, and he's 
 just sort of. People are laughing at my car be- 
 cause it's nearly a year out of date have you seen 
 Vera Ballymoore's with the Louis XIV finishings 
 inside? Merlin says it's gaudy and keeps complain- 
 ing about the income tax. And look at that ring!" 
 
 Emily looked. It was a solitaire of perhaps five 
 carats, cut with innumerable facets and water-pure 
 in color. Merlin was about a five-carat millionaire, 
 thought Emily, and Rosamonde had expected ten! 
 
 "It's your engagement ring," said Emily, telling 
 something which Rosamonde undoubtedly knew. 
 
 "Nobody's wearing those old-fashioned things 
 any more," mourned the half -starved Rosamonde. 
 "I saw an emerald-cut diamond in Twillaway's 
 window last week. It's wonderful. Everybody's 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 37 
 
 wearing them, you know. And Merlin's acting 
 like a pig and and " 
 
 The normally handsome chin was again twisted 
 to the aspect of a withered peach. Emily saw at a 
 glance the condition of her cousin; a child with 
 too many toys, a child with nothing to do but ask 
 for more. 
 
 "Awk, awk!" exclaimed a parrot above Rosa- 
 monde's surge of grief. 
 
 "He certainly doesn't stint you on animals," sug- 
 gested Emily by way of consolation. 
 
 "He's even complaining about them. He says 
 the place is getting to be a regular animal store. 
 He's so materialistic he doesn't want me to have 
 any human companionship." 
 
 "Do you refer to these?" asked Emily, casting 
 her eyes around the menagerie. 
 
 "Well, aren't they? Don't you realize that they 
 all contain the souls of dead people and great 
 geniuses?" 
 
 "Whew !" Emily whistled. "Who's been getting 
 at you, Rosa?" 
 
 "Mrs. Finnessey," said the foolish cousin. 
 
 "Mrs. Finnessey!" 
 
 Emily uttered the name of an industrious lady 
 whom the papers once satirized under the soubri- 
 quet of Fad Finder for the Rich. Upon such idle 
 minds as Rosamonde's this professional enter- 
 tainer and interior decorator of the soul had prac- 
 ticed for several seasons, supplying one fad as soon 
 as another showed signs of wear, substituting 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Aztec Dancing for Chinese Palmistry, never lack- 
 ing some new form of spiritual vaudeville with 
 which to dazzle her prey. 
 
 "She calls it Neotheology," Rosamonde went on 
 mournfully. "It's really a wonderful religion. 
 You buy a great number of birds, fishes, reptiles 
 and things, and every morning you say a prayer 
 that puts you en rapport with their souls." 
 
 "It sounds inspiring. Of course you believe 
 every word of it." 
 
 "I did until this morning," lamented the child 
 wife. "But the way Merlin acted seemed to shatter 
 all my faith. I'm getting tired of this darned 
 menagerie. I don't know what's come over me. 
 They're more trouble than an insane asylum. The 
 goldfish cost twelve dollars apiece and they're al- 
 ways dying. And Eustace is getting so fussy about 
 his food " 
 
 "Who's Eustace?" 
 
 "He's an alligator at least he looks like one in 
 this earth plane. Really he's the soul of a priest 
 of Egypt. I only got him last week, and he's so 
 big that I had to put him in a bathtub in the spare- 
 
 room." 
 
 At this point Agnes, the parlor maid, entered 
 and stood as one who would be heard. 
 
 "Mrs. Finnessey is callin', madam," she ex- 
 plained upon inquiry. 
 
 "Have her sent up," commanded Rosamonde, 
 then turned to Emily with brightened eyes. 
 "Really, she's very charming." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 39 
 
 "Don't you think she owns an interest in a bird 
 and animal store?" asked Emily, being ever prac- 
 tical-minded. 
 
 "What an idea! Emmy, Mrs. Finnessey never 
 even thinks of anything that isn't spiritual." 
 
 Mrs. Finnessey came in with the dimples of her 
 forty years showing becomingly as they always did 
 in the presence of the rich. She was a small lady, 
 rather quail-like in her plumpness, and her face 
 would have been pleasant to look upon had it not 
 been for the coldly studious expression with which 
 she sometimes regarded her clients; for Mrs. Fin- 
 nessey was undoubtedly a professional woman. 
 
 "My dear !" she exclaimed, advancing rapidly 
 with just a suggestion of Rosamonde's pet alli- 
 gator in her eye, "you're out of key. I hope you 
 haven't been neglecting the Ritual." 
 
 "This is my cousin, Miss Ray," explained Rosa- 
 monde, ignoring the question. 
 
 "How-do-you-do, Miss Ray." Mrs. Finnessey's 
 sidelong glance intimated that Miss Ray might be 
 responsible for the loss of the mystic key. 
 
 "Sit down," implored Rosamonde, and when her 
 wish had been complied with: "Mrs. Finnessey, I 
 know you'll think me horrid, but I just can't get 
 along with these animals and things any more. 
 The birds scream all the time, the goldfish die, and 
 Eustace just lies in his tub and refuses to take a 
 bite of anything." 
 
 "He must be worried," Mrs. Finnessey sug- 
 
40 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 gested. "In his previous existence he had a great 
 deal of unhappiness " 
 
 "I'll bet he was the sort of person one never 
 meets/' declared Rosamonde, whereupon Emily 
 supplemented : 
 
 "There are lots of human beings I shouldn't care 
 to feed in a bathtub/' 
 
 "I just can't bear this old Neotheology any 
 more/* insisted Rosamonde, apparently heartened 
 by the presence of her cousin. 
 
 "Oh !" Mrs. Finnessey pursed her lips. 
 
 "They're cluttering the apartment all up. I can't 
 keep my servants in this zoo and my husband can't 
 stand 'em." 
 
 It was not made plain whether Merlin couldn't 
 stand animals or servants, but the statement threw 
 Mrs. Finnessey into a brown study. Emily, being 
 years cleverer than Rosamonde, sensed something 
 of the mental process acting at that moment within 
 the Fad Finder's busy brain. 
 
 "Then youVe decided to give it up?" Mrs. Fin- 
 nessey asked after a pause. 
 
 "I think so." Then with a sort of moan: "But 
 what shall I do for a religion?" 
 
 "That's it," agreed Mrs. Finnessey, coming 
 nimbly back to her profession. "The higher side 
 of our nature requires nourishment just as our 
 bodies crave food. Without its stimulus the spirit 
 dies." 
 
 "It certainly does," wailed the child wife. "But 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 41 
 
 I can't stand those animals any longer. I don't 
 believe they've got any souls or anything much." 
 
 She waited for an attack upon this impiety, but 
 to her surprise Mrs. Finnessey said in the smooth- 
 est possible tone: 
 
 "After all the true message is not borne by the 
 lower forms of life. While there is unhappiness 
 in the world oceans of social injustice inundating 
 countless millions of fellow mortals all round us 
 the great work of mankind must consist in the up- 
 raising of comrades from the mire of capitalistic 
 slavery." 
 
 Rosamonde came out of her misery long enough 
 to consider this premise. 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "In the revolutionary masses lies the great soul 
 of the future." 
 
 "Is that so?" Rosamonde was beginning to take 
 an interest again. "I thought that souls were in- 
 side of dogs and horses and alligators " 
 
 But Mrs. Finnessey was not to be interrupted. 
 
 "I have seen a new light." Then she cast a 
 quick, appraising glance toward Emily ere lower- 
 ing her voice to a conversational level. "My dear, 
 I think you'll be thrilled." 
 
 Rosamonde hesitated again. 
 
 "I don't know what's come over Merlin," she 
 confessed. "He objects to almost everything I do. 
 Maybe he'll like this, whatever it is." 
 
 "No, my dear. He'll detest it. Of course you 
 mustn't say a word to him about it not until we 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 can work on him and show him the light. But 
 Mrs. Ballymoore and Mrs. Fauntleroy Howt and 
 almost everybody in the Antigone Club are holding 
 meetings. It's all over town." 
 
 Emily fought down an Olympian giggle in her 
 foreknowledge of what was coming. 
 
 "Please don't keep me waiting any longer." 
 Rosamonde fidgeted in her chair. "I'm sure it's 
 just what I need. Hasn't it got a name?" 
 
 Mrs. Finnessey looked again at Emily. 
 
 "Miss Ray," she said, "might " 
 
 "Tell?" chirped Rosamonde. "Oh, no, she's my 
 dearest friend. Do tell us what it is!" 
 
 "Bolshevism," whispered Mrs. Finnessey. 
 
 Emily bit through an expensive handkerchief. 
 
 "Bolshevism!" Rosamonde sat back, her black 
 eyes wide with excitement. "That's rather horrid, 
 isn't it? Aren't they people who you know 
 speak Russian and don't wash and all that sort of 
 thing?" 
 
 "Look at me," smiled Mrs. Finnessey. Indeed 
 she seemed not only washed but quite fastidiously 
 cared for. 
 
 "Then you're really one of them?" gasped Rosa- 
 monde. "How thrilling!" 
 
 Mrs. Finnessey had now come down from the 
 rather pedantic vein in which she had begun and 
 was talking chattily on. 
 
 "I go to the most wonderful meetings Wash- 
 ington Square and the Pilsen School of Radical 
 Culture. My dear, until you've heard some of 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 them talk you don't know how delightful it is to 
 really think. It's wonderful, associating with the 
 lower classes and exchanging ideas. We go by 
 our first names and call one another comrade. I've 
 been buying revolutionary books for Comrade 
 Patrick he's a coal shoveler out of work because 
 his capitalistic employer falsely swore that he drank 
 and we're planning a general revolution in 
 November." 
 
 "Won't you let us come?" pleaded Rosamonde, 
 kindly including Emily in the program. "It would 
 be so inspiring, and it would make Merlin furious." 
 
 "Poor Mr. Valiant is a reactionary, I am afraid," 
 came Mrs. Finnessey's kindly comment. 
 
 "Oh, is he?" Merlin's wife brought her hands 
 together with a renewed enthusiasm. "Isn't it 
 splendid to have a really good name to call him 
 when he's cross? What's a reactionary?" 
 
 "It's one of the Pilsen School words " Ap- 
 parently Mrs. Finnessey hadn't got that far. "It's 
 one of Professor Walter Scott Syle's favorite 
 words." 
 
 "Walter Scott who?" 
 
 "My dear! You haven't heard of Walter Scott 
 Syle?" Mrs. Finnessey addressed the rebuke to 
 her two listeners, and Emily refrained from an- 
 nouncing that she had just posted a letter to the 
 Times in the matter of Walter Scott Syle. 
 
 "My dears! My dears!" Mrs. Finnessey chided 
 on. "He's positively the last word in " 
 
 "Bolshevism?" The naughty Rosamonde whis- 
 
44 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 pered that deliciously forbidden word. Mrs. Fin- 
 nessey nodded. 
 
 "He's editor of the Raw Deal a frightfully 
 I. W. W. publication, you know not dignified and 
 college-bred like the New Progressive. But so- 
 ciety is going in for stronger and stronger opinions. " 
 
 "One does," agreed Emily, thinking of what she 
 had heard about alcoholism. 
 
 "The free soul requires it," argued Mrs. Fin- 
 nessey, her opinion quite concurring with what 
 Emily had been thinking on the subject of drink. 
 
 "Walter Scott Syle was professor of something 
 dreadfully profound until he was investigated by 
 the Department of Justice for encouraging con- 
 scientious objectors imagine the outrage!" 
 
 Mrs. Finnessey was already delving into her ca- 
 pacious handbag, where from she brought a square 
 of folded newspaper. 
 
 "This is a copy of the Raw Deal it's fascinat- 
 ingly awful. I thought you might like to see it and 
 study the movement." 
 
 Emily took a peep over her cousin's shoulder. 
 She had often seen the politely disloyal New Pro- 
 gressive, but the sheet she now beheld was, as Mrs. 
 Finnessey had hinted, fascinatingly awful. 
 
 The front page contained a cartoon that had 
 been drawn apparently with a stove poker. It rep- 
 resented numerous soldiers, Americans on one side, 
 Germans on the other, being driven to battle by 
 silk-hatted gentlemen who flourished whips and 
 were distinctly labeled "Trusts." The leading edi- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 45 
 
 torial was headlined "American Atrocities vs. Ger- 
 man/' and on the second page there was the portrait 
 of a workingman stripped to the waist and ap- 
 parently quite insane, bellowing "Join tne Big 
 Union" under an I. W. W. banner. 
 
 "When are you going to take us?" Rosamonde 
 was clapping her hands, dancing up and down like 
 the impatient child she was. 
 
 "You must be sure that you are approaching it 
 in a proper spirit of seriousness," Mrs. Finnessey 
 warned. 
 
 "Oh, we are aren't we, Emmy? And think 
 how mad it will make Merlin." 
 
 "The Pilsen School would be rather advanced 
 for you, I think," Mrs. Finnessey demurred. 
 "There are some very nice lecture circles being 
 formed for those who wish to be enlightened. 
 There's the Comradeship Sisterhood meeting at 
 Mrs. van Laerens' to-morrow at three " 
 
 "Will that perfectly dreadful professor be 
 there?" shrilled Rosamonde. 
 
 "Professor Syle? Yes, he talks for half an 
 hour." 
 
 "Oh, goody! And you'll let us meet him?" 
 
 "I shall take pains to arrange it." 
 
 "I thought Mrs. van Laerens and Mrs. Bally- 
 moore were at outs," said Emily, having heard the 
 common talk. 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Ballymoore has nothing to do with 
 the sisterhood. She has quarreled with Professor 
 Syle, I understand they disagree on the subject 
 
46 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 of community bargaining/' Mrs. Finnessey was 
 now arising to depart. "Will you pick me up at 
 ten minutes before three?" she asked, never losing 
 an opportunity to use some one else's car. 
 
 "You're such a dear!" cried Rosamonde, and 
 kissed her on both cheeks. 
 
 "And you'll come, too, I hope?" Mrs. Finnes- 
 sey addressed this invitation to Emily. 
 
 "I'm afraid I can't," Miss Ray smiled pleasantly. 
 "I have an engagement for another meeting." 
 
 "Radical, I hope." Mrs. Finnessey smiled 
 sweetly. 
 
 "No, dental." Emily smiled sweeter still. 
 
 Mrs. Finnessey had no sooner departed than 
 Rosamonde went capering round the room like a 
 child out of school. 
 
 "Come on!" she cried. "Let's turn 'em all 
 loose." 
 
 "The animals?" asked her cousin, guessing Rosa- 
 monde's relief. 
 
 "Uh-huh! I'll bet they're as bored with me as 
 I am with them." 
 
 Already she had rushed to the window and lifted 
 in her arms a large goldfish bowl wherein there 
 swam two specimens of the pop-eyed, plumy little 
 monsters known to fanciers as "five-tailed." A 
 third specimen floated belly up, quite dead. 
 
 "You can't pour them out of the window," de- 
 clared Emily, seeing that this was exactly what her 
 wild cousin was planning to do. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 47 
 
 "Were you ever hit in the ear by a goldfish fly- 
 ing out of a sixth-story window?" 
 
 Rosamonde seemed to feel the force of that ar- 
 gument, for she demurred, the bowl still in her 
 graceful arms. It was Agnes, the parlor maid, 
 who arrived just in time to offer a valuable sug- 
 gestion. She stood dismally at attention and it was 
 plain to see that something lay heavy on her mind. 
 
 "What is it, Agnes ?" asked Rosamonde over her 
 fish bowl. 
 
 "The ally-gaitor, Mrs. Valiant." 
 
 "Is he dead ?" This rather hopefully. 
 
 "No, madam, but he do seem to be very angry, 
 and he won't take nothin' in the way o' food with- 
 out fightin' for ut. I been in service eleven years, 
 Mrs. Valiant, and I ain't never before been called 
 on to wait on snakes an* reptiles " 
 
 "That will do, Agnes." 
 
 "Yes, madam." 
 
 "Oh, Emmy darling!" cried Rosamonde, splash- 
 ing much water from the bowl in the violence of 
 her inspiration, "I'll tell you what let's do. Let's 
 feed Eustace!" 
 
 What could Emily do but follow into a spare 
 room and into the elaborate bathroom? Upon the 
 edge of its porcelain tub Rosamonde set the bowl 
 clankingly and peered into the depths. 
 
 "Isn't he a sweetheart?" she challenged. 
 
 Emily gazed and saw what she saw. In the tepid 
 waters which half covered his horrid body Eustace 
 the alligator lay at ease, his flat brain torpid with 
 
48 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 dreams of warm Miama which had spawned him. 
 From tip to tip he measured four feet seven. 
 
 "You're not going to make me sleep here!" 
 gasped Emily, measuring the distance from the bed 
 to the tub. 
 
 "No, darling. This is the second-best guest 
 room. Eustace doesn't know it or he'd complain 
 about that, too." 
 
 Emily looked again upon Eustace who, for one 
 who harbored the soul of a priest of Ra, was cer- 
 tainly an unlovable object. Two cold, froglike 
 eyes, set well to the top of his head, glared up at 
 her as though calculating the day when he would 
 be of sufficient size to swallow her whole. 
 
 "Hungry, old dear?" asked Rosamonde, striv- 
 ing to remain polite to the ecclesiastical gentleman 
 whom Eustace held in thrall. Rosamonde, acting 
 entirely upon impulse, inverted the bowl and poured 
 thirty-six dollars' worth of goldfish into the water 
 where Eustace so serenely floated. There at once 
 developed in him the activity of a bass. With one 
 tremendous flip of the tail and an unpleasant snap- 
 ping of teeth he had frothed the waters of the tub 
 into a little tempest. It was all over in a scram- 
 bling second. Anon Eustace lay again loglike, stu- 
 pid and indifferent of fate. One goldfish the dead 
 one was floating stomach up. The others had 
 disappeared. 
 
 Quite gingerly at last Rosamonde leaned over 
 the tub and plucked out the dead fish by one of his 
 feathery streamers. She held the little corpse tempt- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 49 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 ingly an inch above the serrated snout. Eustace 
 lay perfectly still, his cold eyes regarding her with 
 a calculating stare. 
 
 "Mustn't leave anything on your plate," Emily 
 coaxed. "Mr. Hoover wouldn't like it." 
 
 Still no response. At last for the game proved 
 quite amusing Rosamonde lowered the golden 
 sacrifice and tickled Eustace on the end of his nose. 
 Emily never knew how he did it. There had been 
 a horrid lizard movement in the tub, and when 
 with a small scream Rosamonde had jerked her 
 forefinger away it was crimson with blood. It was 
 ugly even to think of. 
 
 "He's bitten me!" said Rosamonde very quietly; 
 then as though that were not enough she began to 
 sob and to repeat : "He's bitten me !" 
 
 "I see he has," agreed Emily, looking at the 
 wound and finding to her relief that it was only a 
 scratch. "Now come into your room and tell me 
 where the iodine is." 
 
 After Emily had administered first aid to the 
 foolish, Rosamonde returned to the latticed window 
 with the air of one whose work is still unfinished. 
 Calmly and sweetly she slipped up a sash until the 
 springlike air somewhat gasolinous from innu- 
 merable motors below sifted in and suggested an 
 infinite freedom. 
 
 "What are you going to do?" asked Emily, pre- 
 paring to go to her dentist. 
 
 "Let them out," declared Rosamonde. 
 
 The green birds battered their tender wings 
 
50 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 against the slats. Impulsively Merlin Valiant's ex- 
 pensive wife took the cage in her two hands and 
 carried it to the open window where she swung 
 wide the prison gate and saw the frivolous, tropi- 
 cal things flutter away, one at a time, to join the 
 sparrows in Central Park. 
 
 'They're free!" declared Rosamonde with a 
 grandiose gesture. "Free as all the world should 
 be." 
 
 "Yes. They'll either starve or freeze," replied 
 the practical Miss Ray, closing the door softly 
 behind her. 
 
 Apparently her week in town was destined to be 
 one of incident. 
 
IV 
 
 HER nerves agog after an hour of combat with 
 one of those stern scientific dentists who daily 
 demonstrate the theory that no good can be accom- 
 plished without pain, Emily got herself back to 
 the Valiant apartment. In the pretty homelike sit- 
 ting room where she had awaited the electric drill 
 she had found time to telephone to the office of 
 Green & Plevort, Mules, and to be informed that 
 Mr. Browning had been sent to Trenton in quest 
 of more interesting specimens. This knowledge 
 had its uses, since it acted as a counter-irritant 
 against the dentist's burr. Oliver wouldn't be back 
 until to-morrow afternoon Ouch! That was a 
 nerve! And something might happen so that she 
 would get never a sight of him during her stay in 
 New York. 
 
 It was a quarter past six when she again entered 
 the Gothic hall of the Valiant apartment. There 
 she paused a space and listened; for another sound 
 had taken the place of the strident menagerie call. 
 It was a deep, thirsty chuck-chuck-chuckle, deliv- 
 ered in a castinet tempo above a rich masculine 
 bray. Could it be that Merlin known in his office 
 as the Turribul-Tempered Mr. Valiant had re- 
 turned in a forgiving mood? 
 
 51 
 
52 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 It would seem so, for the first sight that greeted 
 her eyes upon entering the large room was that of 
 a rubicund gentleman wielding a cocktail shaker 
 and being worshiped by two aproned assistants. 
 Rosamonde, her pretty face wreathed in excited 
 smiles, stood at attention by the empty bird cage. 
 
 "Hello, Emmy!" cried old Merlin, changing the 
 shaker to his left hand in order to greet his guest. 
 "Excuse my cold palm a cold hand a warm heart, 
 you know." 
 
 "Hello, Merlin!" cried Emily with equal enthu- 
 siasm, as she returned his energetic clasp. She al- 
 ways wanted to call him Uncle Merlin or Mr. Val- 
 iant. 
 
 "Certainly mighty glad to see you aboard. 
 Agnes, bring a glass for Miss Ray Oh, yes, you'll 
 have one, Emmy just a little one. No place seems 
 like home to me unless I can have my cocktail." 
 
 "He's had two already," remarked Rosamonde, 
 more in praise than censure. 
 
 "Shut up, Puggy! You're talking like the Band 
 of Hope that's running the country into the 
 ground." Mr. Valiant, it might be stated here, was 
 of the breed who associate all calamities, natural 
 or artificial, to the fact that the League of Nations 
 covenant was not drawn up by the Republican 
 Party. "As if it wasn't bad enough with gin at 
 four and a quarter, wholesale, and having to hide it 
 at that to keep the Holy Willies from taking it 
 away from you. By George, if they try to mon- 
 key with my wine cellar I'll start a revolution " 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 53 
 
 "Tut, Merlin!" cried Emily. "Leave revolution 
 to the Bolsheviks." 
 
 "Bolsheviks!" he growled, his complexion red- 
 dening from American Beauty to Bermuda beet as 
 his little gray mustache bristled and his prominent 
 chin obtruded. "Don't mention those cutthroats!" 
 
 "He hates 'em!" parroted Rosamonde from her 
 bird cage. 
 
 Merlin growled as he filled three glasses which 
 stood on the tray of a little drink wagon. 
 
 "Just try that, Emmy. A sip won't hurt you 
 after a hard day at the dentist's." 
 
 At the mention of the dentist's Merlin winked 
 one of his little gray eyes. Had Rosamonde told 
 him that the needs of Emily's teeth had been but 
 an expedient whereby to satisfy the needs of her 
 heart ? It seemed so, for as she took a displeasing 
 swallow of the drink, which she loathed with all 
 the energy that Merlin extended toward radical 
 agitators, he smacked his seamy lips and went on: 
 
 "Puggy and I have been arranging a little dinner 
 party for to-morrow night a Romeo and Juliet 
 party. If Romeo's in town ask him up. It serves 
 old Carmen right she always was a stubborn old 
 fool." 
 
 "Ungrateful monster!" laughed Emily, taking 
 occasion to hide her cocktail behind a silver-framed 
 photograph. 
 
 "Oh, I haven't forgotten the way she brought 
 me and Puggy together," he cried, slipping an arm 
 round his adored one's slender waist. "But we'd 
 
54 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 have come together some way, wouldn't we, 
 Fuggy? You can't keep two natural pals apart, 
 can you, Puggy?" 
 
 "Look at my poor sore finger!" lisped Rosa- 
 monde in a baby voice, as she uplifted the rag- 
 bound digit. 
 
 "Did bad old Eustace bite my dollkins?" he 
 gurgled. Then, to Emily's relief, he unclasped his 
 heart's desire and stood a pace away. 
 
 "Emmy," he said, "you're certainly a saving in- 
 fluence in my home. This morning I was nothing 
 but the keeper of a zoological garden; to-night I 
 come in and find that every bird has flown out of 
 the window and Eustace has eaten the goldfish. 
 Good work! I really believe Puggy is beginning 
 to grow up." 
 
 Emily was about to protest her innocence of the 
 whole reform when Rosamonde interrupted, pout- 
 ing. 
 
 "I don't want any more birds or monkeys or 
 things." 
 
 "Just listen to her !" he jubilated. "I knew she'd 
 get out of this fad business. It's a sort of young 
 disease like measles." 
 
 Again she held up her sore finger. 
 
 "And old Eustace bit me!" she cooed. "Kiss it 
 and make it well." 
 
 "Um ah!" Old Merlin looked ever so sly as 
 he delved into a pocket of his swelling waistcoat. 
 "I've got something better than kisses for sore 
 fingers." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 55 
 
 With a dramatic flourish he brought out the 
 magic finger cure and held it up so that it glittered 
 wonderfully in the north light. It was square and 
 flat with an icy surface; to the unsympathetic eye 
 it might have looked like a small rectangle of plate 
 glass but that rays of electric brilliancy shot the 
 smooth surface as it turned slowly between Merlin's 
 fat fingers. 
 
 "You darling!" Rosamonde fairly shrieked, 
 rushing to him and striving to pull the treasure 
 down from its place aloft. "You haven't gone and 
 bought it, that wonderful, that adorable diamond!" 
 
 Again she tried to snatch it from him. 
 
 "That's the one you saw in Twillaway's win- 
 dow," he teased. "Only it's eleven carats instead 
 of ten." 
 
 "Give it to me before I die!" 
 
 "Just a minute. You promise not to have any 
 more fads or animals or trained religions or " 
 
 This covenant might have gone the full fourteen 
 points had not Merlin Valiant walked over to the 
 bay window as though to gain a more intimate view 
 of the ring. He rested his knee on the cushioned 
 seat; something crackled, shallow and papery, and 
 the impertinent headlines of the Raw Deal doubled 
 up and stared him in the face. Emily bit her lip 
 in anticipation of the scene that was to follow poor 
 Rosamonde's silly carelessness. 
 
 "What's this ?" he asked suddenly, leaning down. 
 
 "It's a paper " 
 
56 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "I see it is. It's a rotten paper, too. Who 
 brought this sheet into the house?" 
 
 "Mrs. Finnessey gave it to me. She " 
 
 "Have you been reading it?" 
 
 "Well, I just looked over some of the edi- 
 torials " 
 
 "Do you know that this paper is preaching an- 
 archy, socialism, free love and destruction of prop- 
 erty?" 
 
 His face had grown deep purple. With the new 
 ring clenched in his fist he was brandishing the 
 paper above his head as Liberty brandishes her 
 torch of freedom. 
 
 "It seemed to me to be mild enough," she whim- 
 pered. "It just wanted the government to wake 
 up and not to be tyrannical to people. That's what 
 you believe, isn't it?" 
 
 "Do you know," he ranted on, "that Syle, who 
 calls himself the editor, is being watched by the 
 authorities, that he ought to be shot and would be 
 if this country was any good?" 
 
 "No, I didn't know it." 
 
 "Well, I'll tell you one thing, Rosamonde. 
 Neither Mrs. Finnessey nor any other of that tribe 
 are going to bring seditious literature into my 
 house. Understand ? For that's where I draw the 
 line." 
 
 Emily stood frozen in the circumambient frost. 
 She had long sought the place where Merlin drew 
 the line, and now she had found it. 
 
 With an impatient gesture and an apoplectic 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 57 
 
 growl Merlin Valiant threw open a leaded sash of 
 the bay window. Then he tore the Raw Deal twice 
 across its accursed face and permitted the scraps 
 to flutter away into the same space through which 
 Rosamonde's aristocratic birds had winged their 
 way to freeze or be free among the sparrows of the 
 park. 
 
 When he turned again his face had grown 
 calmer. He stood a moment considering the new 
 diamond, then slipped it back into his waistcoat 
 pocket. 
 
DESPITE the growing cloud over her fair for- 
 tunes, Rosamonde just would go to Mrs. van 
 Laerens' and join the Comrade Sisterhood in its 
 adoration of Professor Walter Scott Syle. The 
 Turribul Tempered Mr. Valiant had gone to his 
 office before the ladies of his household arose; 
 neither Rosamonde nor her cousin had slept very 
 well, as was confessed at a bedside breakfast. 
 
 Life's current, which had run smoothly enough 
 at Plainview, was becoming crooked and compli- 
 cated for Emily. Just before going to the dentist's 
 she got Oliver on the telephone and was cheered 
 by his hearty acceptance of Rosamonde' s invita- 
 tion to dinner that evening. But she was worried 
 about her headstrong little cousin who swore by 
 all her gods of wood and tin that she would go 
 where she pleased, Merlin or no Merlin, and that 
 Emily should go with her. 
 
 As a result of it all at the hour of three the 
 young women, discreetly guarded by Mrs. Finnes- 
 sey, were wheeled in a procession of plutocratic 
 vehicles through the van Laerens' baronial gate 
 and up to the frosty fagade of the van Laerens' 
 town house. Coats of sable, ermine, monkey skin, 
 coon skin and seal were advancing, borne on dainty 
 
 58 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 59 
 
 shoulders, filing past the bronze doors and into the 
 great foyer where noble gentlemen in livery directed 
 the procession up the wide staircase and into the 
 golden drawing-room on the second floor. 
 
 "The furs at least are Russian," observed Emily 
 to Rosamonde, whereat Mrs. Finnessey nudged her 
 and said, "Sh !" Emily hated being hushed by Mrs. 
 Finnessey. 
 
 At the drawing-room door that faultless hostess, 
 Mrs. van Laerens, shook hands and gave every one 
 her long-faced cynic smile. 
 
 "How do you do, Rosa?" she addressed Mrs. 
 Valiant, then whispered: "I hope your husband's 
 furious. Mine is. Get a program and find your- 
 self a seat." 
 
 The admirable Finnessey found three gilt chairs 
 well to the fore near a small dais which was ap- 
 propriately covered with a red-velvet carpet. Sev- 
 eral young ladies wearing the uniform of freedom, 
 which same is a smock frock, passed up and down 
 the aisles offering programs. The exercises were 
 to be fashionably brief, according to the announce- 
 ment; Madame Snarki, operatic soprano, would 
 sing Russian folk songs, Professor Syle would lec- 
 ture on "The Demigod Fallacy," and there would be 
 fifteen minutes of general discussion. Meanwhile 
 the Sisterhood came trooping in to cast down thou- 
 sands of dollars' worth of sables and find advan- 
 tageous seating space. 
 
 "How-do-you-do?" murmured Mrs. Finnessey 
 at regular intervals, going off like a cuckoo clock 
 
60 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 as she bowed right and left to the great ladies in 
 whom she bartered. Mrs. Charlemagne Droon, 
 daring as usual in an afternoon frock of lizard 
 green, came in with two indefinite females and 
 took the seats just in front of Mrs. Finnessey's 
 class in emancipation. Mrs. Droon, who seldom 
 appeared in public without somebody to flirt with, 
 looked uncomfortable for a moment, then she 
 turned and spied the party behind her. 
 
 "Hello, Rosa!" she cried; then, "How-do-you- 
 do, Mrs. Finnessey. Isn't it thrilling?" 
 
 "Perfectly thrilling!" agreed Rosamonde, rather 
 flattered at the attention. 
 
 "There ought to be an uprising of some sort," 
 said one of the indefinite ladies. 
 
 "Yes," remarked Mrs. Droon, evidently with in- 
 tent to snub. "But isn't it full of hard words!" 
 
 "It's dreadfully deep," said Rosamonde, hoping 
 apparently that Mrs. Droon wasn't going to quiz 
 her on the phraseology. 
 
 "But deep things are always thrilling. Do you 
 know what a soviet is? It's something they wear 
 when they go into battle, isn't it?" 
 
 Rosamonde was stumped. 
 
 "It's a sort of committee," said Emily, coming 
 to the rescue. 
 
 "Oh, my dear! You've gone into it very ear- 
 nestly, haven't you?" Her intonation indicated 
 that Emily wasn't quite right. "I'm dreadfully 
 ignorant about anything political. My husband 
 says I ought to vote; but the polling places are so 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 61 
 
 badly ventilated, don't you think? My word, if 
 that isn't Flora Hannibal!" Mrs. Droon's eye- 
 brows elevated themselves from a Roman arch to a 
 high Gothic. "Of course she would be going in for 
 reform since Charlie's trip to Jamaica." 
 
 "Modern society is basically wrong," one of the 
 indefinite ladies was telling her neighbor. "Do you 
 remember if that is a quotation from Bernard Shaw 
 or " 
 
 "My dear," Mrs. Droon was asking, as she 
 leaned far back toward Rosamonde, "do you still 
 have that Creole hairdresser from Saltz?" 
 
 "I can't get her any more. She's " 
 
 "You know why, don't you?" Mrs. Droon 
 rolled her fine eyes preparatory to a revelation when 
 Mrs. van Laerens took the dais and rapped for 
 order. At the same instant two figures, misplaced 
 in that galaxy of wealth, came shuffling down the 
 aisle. Both were male and both were odd. The 
 foremost, a teeny-weeny Japanese, wore a vel- 
 veteen jacket, black dress trousers with stripes 
 down the leg, soiled white spats and lemon-colored 
 gloves. The hindermost, a most dangerous per- 
 son, wore his wiry black hair cut Buster Brown 
 fashion, exaggerating the savage glitter of his 
 large white teeth; the wide red sash encircling his 
 body might have concealed any number of lethal 
 weapons. 
 
 "Mr. Barnum had the right idea," whispered 
 Emily. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Which one is Professor Syle?" whispered 
 Rosamonde. 
 
 "Neither," whispered Mrs. Droon. "They're his 
 bodyguard. I saw them at Mrs. Trowler's last 
 week. The little one's called Comrade Niki or 
 Kicki or something absurd. The tall one with the 
 sash is a Mexican bandit who " 
 
 "Might I ask for order?" suggested Mrs. van 
 Laerens, and calm prevailed. 
 
 "Ladies of the Sisterhood/' began her aristo- 
 cratic intonation, "I shall not mar the splendid 
 thoughts of Professor Walter Scott Syle by an 
 unnecessary introduction. We have come here 
 with open minds, and although we might not agree 
 with him in every particular we all admit, I think, 
 that something is wrong with with the general 
 condition of things." 
 
 "What's happened to Gertie?" whispered Mrs. 
 Droon, again leaning back. "I didn't know her 
 secretary wrote so well " 
 
 " We will now hear Madame Snarki in Rus- 
 sian folk songs." 
 
 After Madame Snarki's admirable combat with 
 alien consonants, persisting through three encores, 
 Mrs. van Laerens again took the platform and in 
 her best ballroom manner introduced the speaker 
 of the afternoon. 
 
 Emily, who had been prepared to see something 
 original in hair or necktie, confessed her disap- 
 pointment in the editor of the Raw Deal. He was 
 a normal-appearing young man in a nut-brown suit 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 63 
 
 that exaggerated the strawberry tints of his com- 
 plexion and the auburn lights in his eyes and hair. 
 Aside from the fact that his cravat was out of key 
 with his color scheme and his shoes were of a 
 shapeless hobgoblin style he gave the effect of one 
 well broken to the drawing-room. He had a lean 
 handsome head, forcible gestures and an air of 
 conviction. 
 
 "Comrades if I may have the privilege of call- 
 ing you by that name," he was beginning, when a 
 flush of annoyance passed over his reddish fea- 
 tures. The cause of that annoyance, a slender, 
 middle-aged man who seemed both to smile and to 
 walk with a smirk, was standing in the aisle, beau- 
 tifully poised in his faultless afternoon apparel. 
 
 "There's a good seat right here in front, Com- 
 rade Kroll," suggested the orator, pointing to a 
 vacant chair. 
 
 "Awfully sorry to be late," apologized Comrade 
 Kroll in a lisping voice, as he strolled gracefully 
 forward. 
 
 "Who is that?" whispered Rosamonde. 
 
 "Justinian Kroll the New Progressive, you 
 know," whispered Mrs. Droon, naming the editor 
 who was then dictating the mode of fashionable 
 radicalism. 
 
 "S-s-s-sh!" came a warning from behind, for 
 Professor Syle was again opening up. 
 
 "I have chosen for my theme this afternoon the 
 Demigod Fallacy, a fallacy which we can, with a 
 little patience, trace down the ages from the Phceni- 
 
64 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 cian myths, through the Norse sagas ^to our modern 
 school histories which are, by the way, far less 
 accurate than the Niebelungen Lied. From the be- 
 ginning of time history has been written by slaves 
 at the behest of tyrants for the consumption of 
 other slaves who have been compelled to swallow 
 the sacred words at the point of a spear." 
 
 "Isn't he thrilling?" asked Mrs. Droon, looking 
 back. 
 
 ". . . And what is this Demigod Fallacy?" 
 
 No one in the audience seemed able to answer 
 the question save the Japanese and Mexican social- 
 ists and Mr. Justinian Kroll, who sat stiff and su- 
 perior, his arms folded across his faultless waist- 
 coat. 
 
 "I will tell you," volunteered Syle, stepping to 
 the edge of the platform. "It is the drunkenness 
 of power. Caligula, mad with the poison, raged 
 through his palaces as he ordered the proletariat of 
 his time to crucifixion and torment. More remote- 
 ly Samson who, we are told, was possessed of 
 superhuman strength, carried away city gates; we 
 have to take the chronicler's word for it. But this 
 we do know for certain: A little woman with a 
 pair of shears cut away Samson's locks and he 
 fainted from weakness." 
 
 The Mexican Bolshevist shook his flowing mane 
 and stirred nervously. 
 
 "Robbed of his egocentric mania for leadership 
 Samson was a poor thing indeed. But the shears 
 of Delilah were but the forceful protest of the 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 65 
 
 many against the tyranny of the few. Every hair 
 that fell from his mighty head was but an expres- 
 sion of the popular will, gone forever from him. 
 Delilah was among the earliest and most effective 
 propagandists of revolution; one of those who first 
 realized that concentration of power spelled dis- 
 solution of justice." 
 
 "Isn't his vocabulary magnificent?" whispered 
 Mrs. Droon, but Emily was now rather inclined to 
 do the hushing. There was something almost 
 pathetic in the picture of this blousy radical, false 
 prophet though he might be, thundering his poetry 
 in the face of these magpies who had gathered to 
 chatter round him as they would round a novelty 
 in male toe-dancing. The violence of his speech 
 seemed to miss fire on the suave gold enameled 
 pilasters of Mrs. van Laerens's drawing-room. 
 Much as Emily Ray despised his calling, she despised 
 more the silly clique that had brought him there. 
 
 "But we have passed the age of myth," he was 
 thundering on. "The demigods of to-day are self- 
 appointed and self-estimated. They call them- 
 selves, if you please, bosses, presidents, general 
 managers, field marshals, kaisers, chief executives. 
 The intellectuals are constantly amused by ingeni- 
 ous editorials to the effect that efficiency cannot be 
 obtained without centralization of control. The 
 Demigod Fallacy again. Our learned Supreme 
 Court supports this fallacy, arguing backward 
 from the conclusion to their own manufactured 
 hypothesis. Our comrades among the laboring 
 
66 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 classes have considered this matter on their own 
 account and are asking the question : Who under- 
 stands a railroad the engineer at the throttle or 
 the demigod in some remote office building?" 
 
 "Wretched poor form, don't you think?'* Mrs. 
 Droon was whispering; for the rabid reference to 
 engineers and office-buildings seemed to have put 
 something of a damper on the assemblage. Emily 
 lost full ten minutes of his subsequent remarks in 
 a study of that audience, now casting meaningful 
 looks, now whispering together, now making sym- 
 pathetic gestures toward Mrs. van Laerens, whose 
 face grew longer and longer as the diatribe went 
 on, skipping merrily from office building to office 
 building, sparing neither manager, clerk nor ste- 
 nographer. 
 
 The dangerous crisis soon passed, however, for 
 Professor Syle had now leaped boldly from the 
 particular to the general. Nobody in the audience 
 minded capitalism, as an impersonal sin, getting its 
 share of cudgeling. When the speaker turned to 
 international politics, and intimated that the war 
 should be laid to the capitalistic greed of the Brit- 
 ish Empire, a positive sigh of relief arose, save 
 from two ladies of strong pro-Ally sympathies, 
 who left the room. 
 
 "I didn't think it would be like that," whispered 
 Mrs. Droon. 
 
 "He should be listened to with an open mind,*' 
 declared Mrs. Finnessey, not to be defeated in her 
 fad. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 67 
 
 But Professor Syle's philippic was drawing to a 
 close in a pyrotechnic display of hard words. 
 
 "... The hierarchy, the oligarchy, the hegem- 
 onous bureaucracy are alike pitiful anachronisms 
 in the view of an enlightened proletariat. An ad- 
 vanced rationalism must challenge an archaic chau- 
 vinism. Since capitalism is soluble, socialism in- 
 dissoluble, who shall continue to deify the hallu- 
 cinations of power-mad individuals?" 
 
 The speaker paused and suggested a general dis- 
 cussion. It occurred to Emily that perhaps no one 
 would deny what he said because nobody quite 
 understood what it was all about. But the earnest, 
 serious faces, all bent forward like sunflowers 
 toward the sun, gave the lie to her cynic thought. 
 She felt the least bit sleepy in the heavy air. She 
 wished that somebody would applaud or that Pro- 
 fessor Syle would make a joke. The silence con- 
 vinced her that his lecture had not been, on the 
 whole, a successful experiment. 
 
 "Professor Syle," at last spoke a timid-voiced 
 little lady, rising with many blushes, "what do you 
 think about general education?" 
 
 "It should be universal," he replied without hesi- 
 tation. 
 
 "But how can one send one's children to public 
 schools " 
 
 "Are you asking as a student or as the mother 
 of children?" the lecturer interrupted. 
 
 The well-bred silence suggested a faux pas. 
 
68 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "It's Sally Rountree an old maid!" whispered 
 Mrs. Droon, the incorrigible. 
 
 "I speak as an impersonal investigator," snapped 
 Miss Rountree. "And I ask, how can one send 
 one's children to public schools to be corrupted by 
 children of the slums?" 
 
 "Under communistic rule there will be no slums," 
 he replied coldly, "and where there are no slums 
 there is no corruption." 
 
 "Thank you." Miss Rountree sat down. 
 
 "Bah !" It was the black man with the danger- 
 ous teeth and the Buster Brown hair who shot up- 
 ward, waving his arms. "I am a Villista. I come 
 from Mehico, where public schools are not. False! 
 All false! School-teachers should be shot." 
 
 "We all have open minds, Comrade Alfonzo," 
 agreed Professor Syle, apparently untouched by 
 the threat to all pedagogues. "Any other ques- 
 tions?" 
 
 From his seat well to the fore Justinian Kroll, 
 editor of the New Progressive, arose slowly and 
 stood, arms still folded, lips still smiling, as he cast 
 his eyes once over the ballroom as though well 
 aware of society's backing and approval. 
 
 "Professor Syle." 
 
 "Yes, Comrade Kroll." 
 
 The two men stood facing each other, the one 
 bending slightly down, the other still superior de- 
 spite his inferior position, suggested to Emily some 
 deep-grounded rivalry, some jealousy that had all 
 but grown to hatred. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 69 
 
 "Of course we all agree on the great essentials 
 of world revolution," began the smooth voice. "I 
 understand you to speak of industrial leadership as 
 insanity of power. I do not mean to take issue 
 with one of your distinction, Professor Syle, but 
 should one rightfully include power in the cata- 
 logue of psychopathic disturbances?" 
 
 "You object to my phraseology, Comrade Kroll?" 
 
 "I should call it a bit forcible, Professor Syle." 
 
 "Then I withdraw it, Comrade Kroll. Forcible 
 utterances should not be made in the presence of 
 the New Progressive" 
 
 Justinian Kroll sat down, still smiling. The 
 room began to buzz. The meeting had apparently 
 decided to adjourn. As Professor Syle, amidst 
 discreet congratulations here and there and sur- 
 rounded by a sizable throng, came down the aisle, 
 Rosamonde Valiant broke into a storm of supplica- 
 tions. 
 
 "Mrs. Finnessey, he'll be gone before we know 
 it. I simply must meet him !" 
 
 "Look out," warned Emily. "If Merlin gets a 
 look at him the ground will shake for miles 
 around." 
 
 "Oh, here he comes!" cried Rosamonde, folding 
 her useless hands. 
 
 "He's dreadfully difficile when he's not in the 
 mood for it," said Rosamonde's mentor, discour- 
 aged perhaps because Syle's young popularity 
 seemed to be swaying in the balance. 
 
 A moment later Emily found him standing alone 
 
70 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 in the aisle, for the crowd had reacted toward Jus- 
 tinian Kroll, leaving Syle momentarily stranded. 
 Rosamonde bounded forward, dragging Mrs. Fin* 
 nessey with her, and Emily was surprised at the 
 radical's sudden affability. His air seemed to have 
 changed from one of lofty patronage to a graceful, 
 easy social gait. 
 
 "How-do-you-do, Mrs. Valiant?" he was heard 
 to say as he took her hand. "You didn't come as 
 an enemy, I hope?" 
 
 "No I just came," she faltered with a radiant 
 smile, crushed under his greatness. 
 
 "I stand corrected," he smiled. "To the open 
 mind there should be no such word as enemy." 
 
 Emily stood studying his shoes; was there some- 
 thing in his religion that demanded these prepos- 
 terous brogans? 
 
 "Probably you think me awfully ignorant," fal- 
 tered Rosamonde, while Emily wished that Mrs. 
 Finnessey would come to the girl's rescue. But that 
 helpful person stood aside, maintaining a fixed 
 smile. 
 
 "All educated people are ignorant," he informed 
 her. "The great inspirations come from the illiter- 
 ate. Education cramps judgment and makes for 
 prejudice. Sixty per cent, of the Russian peasantry 
 are unable to read or write." 
 
 "The average is pretty well made up by the Rus- 
 sians who do write," suggested Emily by way of 
 conversation. 
 
 "I can read and write," explained Rosamonde, 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 71 
 
 "and I'm sure you'll find me awfully capitalistic." 
 
 "Vladimir Hitch Ulianoff comes of the capital- 
 istic aristocracy," he replied with great simplicity. 
 
 "And I never heard of him," wailed Rosa- 
 monde. 
 
 "He is Nicholas Lenine, premier of the Red Re- 
 public!" 
 
 "You always call Russians by two or three sets 
 of names, don't you?" suggested Emily. "I sup- 
 pose they have to keep a few to use when they're 
 escaping. But it must make it terribly difficult at 
 elections to know who you're voting for." 
 
 "All this is simplified by the soviet," he explained 
 just a trifle tartly. 
 
 "Comrade Rosamonde and her cousin," Mrs. 
 Finnessey broke in at this point, "have come to be 
 instructed/' 
 
 "Yes, I've come to be instructed," Rosamonde 
 eagerly echoed. 
 
 "One of the encouraging indications in our re- 
 volt," he told them both, beaming impartially, "is 
 the enlightened spirit with which representatives 
 of the so-called upper classes have flocked to our 
 banners." 
 
 "Oh, if you would only teach me!" Rosamonde 
 pleaded. 
 
 "Of course you would have to cast aside a great 
 deal of mental and social driftwood." 
 
 "Couldn't you come and have tea with me?" she 
 asked impulsively, as though some outer voice had 
 prompted her. 
 
72 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "That's awfully nice of you. I have rather a 
 full program for the next fortnight, but after 
 that " 
 
 "Excuse me." 
 
 The three looked round toward the interloping 
 voice. The black man with the Buster Brown hair 
 stood showing his large teeth and gesturing se- 
 cretively. 
 
 "Do you want me, Comrade Alfonzo?" 
 
 "Pleez. Wan minute. Verra important." 
 
 Professor Syle stepped a few chair rows up the 
 aisle and stood in half -whispered conference with 
 the dangerous Villista. Ever and anon the brown- 
 ish hands would go up and the bluish locks would 
 shake while snakelike glances would be directed 
 first toward Rosamonde's group, then toward Mrs. 
 van Laerens. Finally the great lady came down 
 the aisle and addressed Professor Syle with well- 
 tempered cordiality. 
 
 "We're having tea. Won't you stay?" 
 
 "No, thank you, Mrs. van Laerens," replied Syle 
 rudely. "I never take tea." 
 
 "I'm so sorry. Awfully nice of you to come. 
 Your lecture was splendid quite inspiring, I mean 
 to say." 
 
 "Thank you," growled Syle, and deigned to re- 
 ceive her well-bred hand. 
 
 "And, Rosa," sang out Mrs. van Laerens, "you'll 
 stay, won't you?" 
 
 "Thanks, I wish I could," lied the little plotter. 
 "Merlin, you know." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 73 
 
 "Give the old bear my love. Good-bye!" 
 
 Mrs. van Laerens kissed her hand and departed 
 to join her guests. 
 
 "You will come to tea with me, won't you?" 
 persisted Rosamonde in her baby-talk voice. 
 
 "This afternoon?" asked Syle. 
 
 "Any time you say." 
 
 "I'll come with you now," he declared. 
 
 Emily almost fainted. What in the world had 
 that Aztec said to him to cause this immediate face- 
 about? And what was Rosamonde going to do 
 with Merlin in case of a collision? 
 
 "I'll stay here, if you don't mind," said Mrs. 
 Finnessey, instinctively choosing the richer of her 
 two patronesses. 
 
 "You must come with me," whispered Rosa- 
 monde to her cousin. "If I should be left alone 
 with him I would die of fright." 
 
VI 
 
 THE ride home had been delightful, enlightened 
 almost continuously by a monologue on the part of 
 Professor Syle wherein he informed the young 
 ladies that Fifth Avenue, which had been their 
 highway, was a bulwark of entrenched plutocracy. 
 Emily had always thought New York's show street 
 quite beautiful, but the advanced thinker had done 
 his best to spoil it for her until he explained in his 
 cocksure way that, under soviet management, the 
 standard would be advanced and Fifth Avenue 
 would profit by the improvement. 
 
 "What do you think a soviet government would 
 do with Broadway?" had been Emily's prize ques- 
 tion, to which Syle had replied: 
 
 'The theaters will be put under the Board of 
 Control." 
 
 A picture of the Midnight Follies under a Board 
 of Control was troubling Emily's mind when their 
 automobile stopped at the Valiants' apartment 
 house. They had no sooner reached the Flemish 
 hall and relieved the great radical of his hat and 
 coat than Agnes, called away from her tea things, 
 came back with the message that Mrs. Shallope 
 was at the telephone wishing to speak to Mrs. Val- 
 iant. The summons hinted so many disagreeable 
 things to Emily that she proved a very poor com- 
 
 74 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 75 
 
 panion for Rosamonde's guest who, however, made 
 himself quite at home and set himself to the task 
 of criticizing the interior decorations. 
 
 "A characteristic bourgeois interior," he lectured, 
 after having fingered the picture frames, mold- 
 ings and upholsteries. "The place lacks restful- 
 ness." 
 
 "You're right there," agreed Emily, feeling that 
 she would like to jump out of a window. 
 
 "Here we find all the restlessness of an idle and 
 useless class, a parasite class. The bourgeoisie de- 
 light in futile imitations of a medieval aristocracy 
 which they threaten to reconstruct. These hang- 
 ings, for instance" Syle rubbed his slender, poor- 
 ly manicured fingers appraisingly over a velour 
 surface "what do you think they cost?" 
 
 "Too much, I dare say," replied Emily. "But 
 for heaven's sake don't put any more interior- 
 decoration ideas into Rosa's head. She's nearly 
 ruined Merlin already." 
 
 "Ah, this Merlin is her husband?" 
 
 "Temporarily at least." 
 
 "A reactionary I imagine." 
 
 "It wouldn't take any Edgar Allan Poe to im- 
 agine that." 
 
 "Are you laughing at me?" 
 
 "Am I?" 
 
 Walter Scott Syle, shuffling in his hobgoblin 
 shoes, turned his back on Emily and continued his 
 circuit round the room. Presently Rosamonde 
 came in. Her face was a study. 
 
76 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "What did she want ?" asked Emily, quite out of 
 breath. 
 
 "She's coming to dinner." 
 
 "To-night?" Emily's head began to whirl. 
 
 "She invited herself she wouldn't take no for 
 an answer. I told her my cook was sick; she said 
 she was on a diet and didn't care." 
 
 "What in the world is possessing her?" 
 
 "She says she's going to stay overnight at the 
 Merlinbilt so that she can be in town for the 
 Drouthsky musicale right after lunch." 
 
 "Well," sighed Emily, "I'll have to get Oliver 
 and tell him not to come." 
 
 Professor Syle had been deaf to this crisis ap- 
 parently, for he turned from the wall with this 
 helpful criticism: 
 
 "Your apartment is much too gaudy. Look at 
 that fireplace." 
 
 "It's only an imitation," poor Rosamonde apolo- 
 gized. 
 
 At that instant Agnes rolled in the tea wagon, 
 and Emily escaped to Rosamonde's boudoir where 
 she found a hand-painted telephone and made haste 
 to call up Green & Plevort, Mules. Mr. Browning, 
 they told her, was gone for the afternoon. Where 
 was he stopping? They didn't know, lady; but 
 they keenly guessed that it must be at some hotel. 
 Would they ask Mr. Browning to call up Mrs. Val- 
 iant's apartment if he should come in? Sure, lady, 
 they would be glad to, but they guessed he was 
 gone for the day. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 77 
 
 Emily pawed the telephone book and chose at 
 random five hotels out of New York's fifteen hun- 
 dred. Of course there was no Oliver Browning 
 no Emily Ray's Oliver Browning stopping at any 
 of them. At last she gave it up and went in to 
 tea. She found Syle pawing over a portfolio of 
 etchings, so in this brief opportunity she informed 
 her cousin that she must go. 
 
 "Emily, please!" Rosamonde's manner was 
 tragic. "You can't go and leave me with him! It 
 looks as though he were going to stay for hours 
 and Merlin comes home at six-fifteen sharp every 
 night." 
 
 "Well, my staying won't keep Merlin from com- 
 ing home," Emily argued with logic on her side. 
 
 "No, but you can help me get rid of this pro- 
 fessor before Merlin catches him here." 
 
 At this point Walter Scott Syle emerged from 
 his trance to request another cup of tea, double 
 strength this time. 
 
 "Rather mediocre second impressions," he pro- 
 nounced the etchings, closing the portfolio with a 
 snap and casting it aside. 
 
 "They aren't imitations, anyhow," suggested 
 Emily, who was fast losing patience with the situa- 
 tion. 
 
 "My dear young lady, there is no such a thing 
 as an imitation." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 "That which is beautiful to-day will be precious 
 in the next generation." 
 
78 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 'Isn't that lovely!" said Emily, but without emo- 
 tion. 
 
 Professor Syle turned upon her his peculiar red- 
 dish eyes and regarded her fixedly for a moment. 
 
 "What a splendid convert you would make!" he 
 murmured, and reached for his cup of double- 
 strength tea. He gulped thirstily, then as though 
 enjoying the stimulation resumed: 
 
 "Tea! In my estimation it is the chosen drink 
 of the intellectual. Russia owes much of her pres- 
 ent enlightenment to her national habit of tea 
 drinking " 
 
 "Isn't there something about vodka, too?" asked 
 Emily, by way of being agreeable. 
 
 "Yes, yes." He passed over his cup. "I'll have 
 a little rum in mine, if you don't mind." 
 
 Again he gulped ; but this time the drink seemed 
 to affect him disagreeably, for he paused, closed 
 his eyes and began stroking his forehead. Rosa- 
 monde and Emily exchanged nervous glances. 
 
 "Aren't you well, Professor Syle?" asked Rosa- 
 monde in an awed tone. 
 
 "Call me Comrade Walter," he said, suddenly 
 awakening. 
 
 "Comrade Walter." 
 
 "The spell has passed. I am, as you have prob- 
 ably guessed, a tremendous worker, Comrade Rosa- 
 monde." She brightened. It was as though he 
 had accepted her whole for his inner circle. "I 
 seldom sleep, and as a result the blood sometimes 
 leaves my brain. It is annoying." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 79 
 
 "Don't you see a doctor or take something for 
 it?" 
 
 "Tea," he pronounced. She refilled his cup 
 rapidly. "Most of my editorials are written under 
 the influence of tea. And sometimes, after a long 
 period of mental strain, I resort to more drastic 
 
 measures." 
 
 "Some sort of drug?" suggested Emily. 
 
 "Oh, no!" The thought seemed to annoy him. 
 
 "Sometimes I get awfully dull at dinner parties," 
 she confessed, feeling more and more at home with 
 this superior soul. "I wish you would tell me what 
 you do." 
 
 "I soak my feet," he said quite distinctly, "in 
 ice-cold water." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 Emily bit her lip, enjoying a picture of Rosa- 
 monde's guest suddenly quitting the tea party to 
 wade and paddle under a cold tap. And in the 
 spare room, she remembered, Eustace, the alligator, 
 was now occupying the tub. 
 
 "We could bring you some in a bucket," was 
 Miss Ray's thoughtful suggestion, but it struck no 
 spark from Professor Syle, who, whatever his 
 faults, was never a humorist. 
 
 "Thank you, no." It was as though he were re- 
 fusing another cup of tea. He went right on with 
 his lecture, for with Professor Syle to lecture was 
 to breathe. 
 
 "The beginner in progressive socialism should 
 keep in mind the two courses, radical moderatism 
 
80 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 and moderate radicalism. Wealth should revert, of 
 course, to an impartial public ownership." 
 
 "Would that mean," asked Rosamonde, appar- 
 ently yielding to the music of his voice, "that all 
 the high buildings and apartment houses would be 
 torn down or burned up?" 
 
 "What if they were?" asked the great thinker. 
 "That would be of small consequence to the world 
 movement." 
 
 "It wouldn't be of small consequence to the peo- 
 ple living in the apartments and office buildings," 
 suggested Emily. 
 
 "Of course, Miss Ray," he informed her kindly, 
 "it would be hard for one of your class to under- 
 stand the attitude of the worker." 
 
 A memory of weary hours on tired feet behind 
 a counter caused Miss Ray to wince a little before 
 replying: 
 
 "Of course it wouldn't." 
 
 "But by what means shall ownership revert?" 
 He took up his theme. "By arbitrated communism 
 or by rationalistic violence?" 
 
 "The first you said I think that would be best." 
 Rosamonde hated any violence coupled with such 
 long words. 
 
 "You have, I see, an intuitive logic. Now as I 
 see it the wealthy classes the so-called upper 
 classes of America will do well to join hands with 
 the workmen and cooperate in some scientific plan 
 whereby all accumulated wealth may be given over 
 to the state." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 81 
 
 "What state?" asked Emily. "I hope it wouldn't 
 be Illinois. I dislike several people from Illinois." 
 
 "The state," was Mr. Syle's rather unsatisfactory 
 reply. 
 
 "Yes, of course. But lots of people like their 
 money." This was Rosamonde's objection. 
 "There's Merlin, for instance. I suppose he'd put 
 up a terrific fight if anybody wanted him to send 
 his money to a state." 
 
 "I imagine he might," agreed the prophet, look- 
 ing somewhat bored as he always did when any- 
 body else was talking. 
 
 "And suppose all the rich people felt like Mer- 
 lin?" 
 
 "Oh, that would be a matter for the comrades 
 who favor rationalistic violence. Whether prop- 
 erty is turned over bloodlessly or seized by a gen- 
 eral armed uprising of the proletariat is merely an 
 academic question." 
 
 He helped himself to another tea cake and 
 munched hungrily ere resuming: 
 
 "As for myself, occupying the extreme left as I 
 do, I am a little partial to rationalistic violence. 
 With the aid of the machine gun and the public 
 executioner darkest America would soon be equal 
 to the civilization and progress of modern Rus- 
 
 sia." 
 
 "Merlin would agree with you, I'm sure," 
 said Rosamonde with renewed enthusiasm. "He's 
 often said that the only way to cure those con- 
 
82 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 scientious objectors would be to shoot 'em against 
 a stone wall." 
 
 "Ah, so?" Professor Syle raised his eyebrows. 
 "Of course he would say so." 
 
 "Well, that's violence, isn't it?" 
 
 "It is. It is the violence of Nero toward the 
 Christian martyrs. You could not expect anything 
 better in a country where hundreds of brave young 
 men, too strong in character to shoulder a gun in 
 a trumped-up fight against the free people of Ger- 
 many, have been thrown into prison to be whipped 
 and abused by a technic of cruelty more refined 
 than was ever in use in the torture chambers of 
 the old Kremlin." 
 
 This was quite a poser for Rosamonde. Emily 
 had never thought of it that way either; had, in 
 fact, been inclined to side with Merlin's views to 
 the effect that a man who wouldn't fight for his 
 country was too lowly for a clean hangman's noose. 
 It was more than thrilling to hear a truly emanci- 
 pated digest of the subject which was treated at 
 such length that, ere its close, Rosamonde began 
 looking nervously toward the front door, then to- 
 ward Emily with numerous supplicating winks of 
 the eye. Emily consulted her bracelet watch. Hor- 
 rors! It was ten minutes after six. Merlin would 
 be coming home at any minute, and as she had said, 
 the shock would be felt for miles round. 
 
 Merlin Valiant's poor foolish wife had now 
 snuggled close to her cousin on the window seat 
 and was pinching her arm in a dot-and-dash sys- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 83 
 
 tern which painfully spelled the message: "Get him 
 out! Get him out!" 
 
 "Professor Syle," said Emily, "have you seen the 
 Red Army war exhibit at BlickendorfFs Gallery? 5 * 
 
 "I am not aware of any such exhibit," he de- 
 clared, irritated at the interruption of his finest 
 paragraph. 
 
 "Well, it's splendid. Enlarged photographs 
 showing the czar being murdered and dynamited 
 explosions on the Neva and everything. It's right 
 round the corner on Fifth Avenue and I'm crazy 
 to go. Won't you come with me and explain the 
 hard words?" 
 
 "It is probably an imposture," replied Syle, quite 
 unimpressed. 
 
 "Well, then, think of what fun it will be to ex- 
 pose it." 
 
 She had arisen and was actually tugging him 
 by the arm. 
 
 "I am afraid not this evening," he said. She 
 could have brained him with a chair when he 
 cleared his throat and went industriously on: 
 "Then in the matter of espionage. By what right, 
 under the so-called American constitution, does the 
 Department of Justice continue to put spies upon 
 our activities?" 
 
 "I I really don't know," cut in Rosamonde, 
 now pale to the lips. "But I'm sorry, Professor 
 Syle really, I'm afraid you must go." 
 
 "I beg your pardon." He jerked to his feet 
 with the activity of a jumping jack and stood shuf- 
 
84. TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 fling on his peculiar shapeless shoes. "This chat 
 has been so pleasant and if you are really in earn- 
 est you can be of great service to our cause/' 
 
 "Oh, can I?" Emily could see how the ecstasy 
 of that thought caused her cousin for a moment 
 to forget the impending danger. 
 
 "Would you care to help, to throw yourself body 
 and soul into the movement?" 
 
 "Anything I can do " She was shoving him 
 
 toward the door with her every reckless promise. 
 "I'm willing to help in any way you suggest." 
 
 Syle stopped dead in his tracks. 
 
 "Have you a spare bedroom in this apartment?" 
 
 Rosamonde was stricken speechless. 
 
 "A what?" Emily took up the theme. 
 
 "Spare bedroom." 
 
 "Can you beat it?" inquired the hopeless Miss 
 Ray. 
 
 "But, Professor Syle " Rosamonde closed 
 
 her eyes as though in silent prayer. Any minute 
 that terrible thing at the front door might announce 
 Merlin. 
 
 "This is unusual, I know," persisted Syle, quite 
 the calmest person present. "But in furthering the 
 revolution sacrifices must be made in great emer- 
 gencies. To be brief, I'm in rather a tight corner 
 and I should like to be out of the way until to- 
 morrow." 
 
 Pictures of secret-service agents and the De- 
 partment of Justice and of cruel imprisonments 
 swam before the eyes of two frightened women. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 85 
 
 1 
 
 The doorbell rang. 
 
 "That's Merlin!" whispered Rosamonde, clasp- 
 ing her hands. "He hasn't got his keys." 
 
 "You foolish child!" cried Emily, then taking 
 the persistent refugee roughly by the sleeve she led 
 him to the second-best guest room and shoved him 
 roughly inside the door. 
 
 "Now stay there !" she almost shouted, "and for 
 heaven's sake don't come out till you're asked." 
 Whereupon she banged the door. 
 
 "The lights are out of order in there and Eus- 
 tace " Rosamonde ended it in an incoherent 
 
 moan. 
 
 "Who cares!" snapped Emily, mad with the 
 knowledge that now she must stick by her cousin 
 and face Aunt Carmen's wrath. 
 
 The doorbell rang again, two impatient rings. 
 
VII 
 
 A BAD moment for an experimenter in social 
 revolution. Rosamonde being now completely 
 paralyzed, Emily got the professor's hat and coat 
 into an Italian chest and had whisked the tea things 
 into a pantry when the bell rang again, thrice this 
 time. 
 
 The door was opened at last to reveal the Tur- 
 ribul Tempered Mr. Valiant in one of his moods 
 of solemn resignation. He delivered his kiss to the 
 very center of Rosamonde' s forehead ere handing 
 his hat and coat to the waiting Agnes. Mr. Val- 
 iant had a way of establishing the fact that he was 
 master the very moment he stepped into the house. 
 
 "Certainly kept me waiting long enough," he 
 grumbled; then: "What's the matter, Rosa? You 
 look as though there might be a bomb under the 
 table." 
 
 "It's the dinner," she extemporized. "I've asked 
 Oliver to meet Emily and now Aunt Carmen has 
 wished herself on the party at the last moment." 
 
 "That ought to be a joyous occasion," he ad- 
 mitted. 
 
 "But think of it! Aunt Carmen won't let Oliver 
 even call at her house. There'll be a dreadful 
 
 scene." 
 
 "Well, why don't you tell him not to come?" 
 86 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 87 
 
 "We don't know where he lives," wailed Emily, 
 having worked herself up to a pitch of desperation 
 equal to Rosamonde's. Already she was consider- 
 ing desperate measures whereby to remove the hid- 
 den Bolshevik. 
 
 "Oh, come on!" urged Merlin, resorting to his 
 cure-all; "let's shake up a cocktail and quit worry- 
 ing." 
 
 Emily understood at that moment how people 
 become slaves to drink. After a second glass had 
 restored Merlin to something of his normal genial- 
 ity he took up the subject of liberalism from his 
 own angle. 
 
 "I believe in shooting 'em all against a high 
 wall," he declared. "This idiotic League of Na- 
 tions business is a lot of Democratic nonsense that's 
 driving the world crazy. That's what I mean about 
 allowing sheets like the Raw Deal kicking round 
 the house. I'd rather have a ton of loose dynamite 
 under the bed. Emmy, have you been fooling with 
 this parlor Bolshevism?" 
 
 "What makes you look at me that way?" asked 
 Emily, who was never quite afraid of Merlin. 
 
 "Well, it occurred to me that, knocking round 
 the world, you might have been exposed to the 
 disease." He fumbled with his wallet and brought 
 out a shred of newspaper. "Puggy, I want you 
 to read that. It will do you good. There ought 
 to be more letters like that in the papers." 
 
 Dutifully Rosamonde glanced over the item, then 
 handed it back to Merlin. 
 
88 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "It's perfectly splendid," she agreed faintly. 
 
 "And you, too, Emmy. It'll do you good/' 
 
 Emily took the clipping and read the headline, 
 "Amateur Messiahs," then the first paragraph: 
 
 "Of course when the very rich are tired of all 
 the new dances and the opera season has drawn to 
 a close it is necessary to turn to a new, expensive 
 and picturesque vice. . . ." 
 
 It was the letter she had written for Aunt Car- 
 men, signed "Pro Bono Publico" and sent to the 
 Times. 
 
 "It's really very nice," she proclaimed in a voice 
 even fainter than Rosamonde's had been. From 
 the direction of the second-best spare room she 
 thought she heard a sound like the gnawing of 
 a rat. 
 
 "Is that all you can say for it!" blurted Merlin. 
 "What's the use of giving women the vote if they 
 never have any opinions on anything? Come on, 
 Puggy, it's time to dress." 
 
 Ever and anon during that miserable hour Emily 
 would slip out of her bedroom and peer across the 
 living room toward the door which imprisoned 
 Professor Walter Scott Syle. Once in her guilty 
 inspection she bumped into another kimonoed form, 
 which proved to be Rosamonde, who was also 
 peering. 
 
 "Why don't you sneak in to him and urge him 
 to go by the back way the servants' elevator " 
 
 "Suppose he won't go or Merlin finds him?" 
 whispered Emily. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 89 
 
 "Puggy!" Merlin's voice commanded from 
 afar. 
 
 "What shall I do?" implored the distracted 
 thing. 
 
 "Nothing, as usual," said Emily, and went back 
 to her dressing. 
 
 While she was doing her hair she considered 
 Syle's case so earnestly as all but to forget her 
 predicament with Oliver and Aunt Carmen. Syle 
 was hiding away from the police. There was no 
 doubt on that score. She had read tales of Rus- 
 sian revolutionists, under similar circumstances, 
 hiding for days or was it weeks in foodless 
 and drinkless packing cases. Professor Syle 
 wouldn't starve. He had eaten ravenously of tea 
 cakes during the trying afternoon; intellectual peo- 
 ple didn't require much nourishment, she had 
 heard. Of course it would be a shame to keep him 
 in the dark, if the lights were out of order as 
 Rosamonde had said; but he would probably im- 
 prove his time by composing another speech. 
 
 Horrors! What if he should practice his speech 
 out loud? Emily all but swallowed a hairpin; then 
 she drew her kimono about her and went forth 
 fired with a desperate resolve. 
 
 Professor Syle's door was unlocked and she 
 did not announce herself for fear of the noise. In 
 the half light of the room she saw him stretched 
 out on the bed, comfortably smoking a cigarette. 
 
 "Oh, hello!" he cried in a loud, cheerful tone, 
 rising to a sitting posture. 
 
90 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Emily closed the door softly. 
 
 "Shut up!" she hissed. 
 
 "How do you mean shut up?" he persisted, 
 making no effort to lower his voice. 
 
 "You've got to go," whispered Emily, laying 
 rough hands on his sleeve. "Mrs. Valiant's hus- 
 band doesn't know you're here. There's a chance 
 to get out through the kitchen." 
 
 "In the morning," he announced with unusual 
 brevity. 
 
 "Now." 
 
 "By no means. I am here for the night, quite 
 
 comfortable, thank you " His voice seemed to 
 
 rise to a platform pitch. Emily stood petrified. 
 
 "Then for heaven's sake be quiet." 
 
 And she slipped back into the living room, weak 
 with fear that Merlin would be watching her. 
 
 In one particular the dinner was less distressing 
 than it might have been. At the sight of Oliver 
 Browning that worldly old devil, Aunt Carmen, 
 never turned a hair of her well-penciled eyebrows. 
 To make a sixth, Rosamonde had asked in a Cap- 
 tain Pivvokk, emissary from some small but self- 
 determining European nation, and as the captain 
 was the first to arrive and Aunt Carmen second the 
 two got on famously together, practicing their 
 French to mutual disadvantage. He was dressed 
 handsomely in his self-determining uniform, and 
 he had a way of twisting his mustache and leering 
 under his heavy lids that was theatrically effective. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 91 
 
 ^ ! 
 
 "I thought you had deserted our country," Ma- 
 dam Shallope was saying. 
 
 "For Washington, madam," said the foreigner, 
 kissing her hand. 
 
 "And that is foreign, you think?" 
 
 "Everything in this droll country is foreign." 
 
 The doorbell rang. In a very frenzy of cor- 
 diality Emily flew to Merlin with a comic story, 
 which as it progressed got further and further from 
 the point. 
 
 Rosamonde, meanwhile, had braced herself for 
 shock Number One. Oliver Browning, after a 
 proper interval, walked into the room. He looked 
 almost handsome in his evening clothes, and when 
 his round eyes lit on Aunt Carmen never a muscle 
 changed on his cherubic countenance. So much 
 for Oliver's nerve. 
 
 "Good evening, Mrs. Shallope." Thus he ad- 
 dressed her quite cordially, was rewarded by a brief 
 handshake and passed easily among the other 
 guests. It was only when he had taken his place 
 between Rosamonde and Emily that he turned to 
 his inamorata and whispered out of the corner of 
 his mouth : 
 
 "What in " 
 
 "Aren't the pussy willows coming out beauti- 
 fully in the park!" exclaimed Emily, who was ap- 
 parently enjoying the horrid situation. "At this 
 time of year I often think it's prettier in town than 
 in the country." 
 
 "Tastes differ," said Merlin, coming into the 
 
92 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 ^ M **"""" MM **''^^^^^^ ^^^^^^**"" | ^'^^^^^^^^^^^"''*^^ M ''^^'''^^^^^*^^ 
 
 conversation. "Everything in New York's spoiled 
 by those Bolsheviki. Look at Fifth Avenue. From 
 twelve to one the whole street between the Library 
 and Madison Square looks like a ragtag corner of 
 the ghetto." 
 
 He was off again on his favorite topic. With 
 fear in her heart Emily went over and joined Aunt 
 Carmen, who, hardened old worldling that she was, 
 showed not the slightest trace of annoyance at this 
 impious breach of her commandments. She chatted 
 easily along with the foreign officer, leaping nim- 
 bly from French to English. Only once did Emily 
 catch her fierce black eyes taking in Oliver with a 
 look of disapproval and astonishment. 
 
 The dinner, when once they got settled down to 
 it, resolved itself into one of those distressing, 
 jowering affairs which dinners have too often be- 
 come in our international Silly Season after the 
 war. With the exception of Emily everybody was 
 fairly agreed that the League of Nations was 
 merely a conspiracy on the part of Mr. Lloyd 
 George and the Democratic party to keep Repub- 
 licans out of office. With the corner of her mind 
 that was not engaged by the Bolshevik and the 
 alligator Emily noticed that her poor dear cousin 
 had turned the color of the tablecloth in such 
 surfaces of her face as were not artificially in- 
 carnadined. 
 
 "Of course with that gang running the war/' 
 declared Merlin, reddening he always referred to 
 the administration as that gang "how can you ex- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 93 
 
 pect anything to turn out right ? With an adminis- 
 trator that says one thing one week and then turns 
 round and denies it the next; with a President who 
 wants to be king " 
 
 "Isn't that exactly what the New York newspa- 
 pers were saying about Roosevelt back in 1910?" 
 asked Emily in a strained sort of voice. 
 
 "Emily!" This was Aunt Carmen's first rebuke 
 of the evening. 
 
 "What do you know about 1910? You were still 
 in short dresses," demanded Merlin, turning upon 
 the culprit, his neck now redder than the slice of 
 ruddy duck on his plate. 
 
 "I've been reading old files in the library." 
 
 "The child is crazy about old newspapers," de- 
 clared Aunt Carmen to the table. 
 
 "And since you have gone in for public opin- 
 ions," said Merlin, with the dreadful calm of an 
 assassin, "what is your final opinion on the League 
 of Nations?" 
 
 "I'm not a great statesman or a great lawyer 
 and anything so big would require both to interpret 
 it. But I do think it's the only world-peace idea 
 that has ever been devised; and I'm sure it's noth- 
 ing less than a scandal the way American politi- 
 cians have been trying to tear it to pieces. It isn't 
 because they dislike the League, but because they 
 would rather destroy the world's peace forever than 
 see the President have his way." 
 
 "It is amusing," remarked Captain Pivvokk, 
 
94, TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 rolling his languid eyes, "how you Americans quar- 
 rel among yourselves." 
 
 "Emily,'* said Merlin, empurpling, "are you bit- 
 ten with that Bolshevik bug, too?" 
 
 "I don't think there's anything particularly Bol- 
 shevik about not wanting the world to be in a per- 
 manent state of war for the next million years," 
 she retorted hotly. 
 
 "There are a great many worse things than war," 
 said Oliver. Emily didn't like that in him, because 
 it left her fighting, one against five. 
 
 "Yes," she drawled, "there's being kicked by a 
 mule." 
 
 She was sorry as soon as the words were out of 
 her mouth; but words, like smoke, once exhaled 
 cannot be inhaled again. It was now Oliver's turn 
 to flush. 
 
 "The social unrest is worldwide," was Captain 
 Pivvokk's original discovery. 
 
 "If the President would put more Bolsheviks 
 
 into jail and fewer into office -" Merlin stormed 
 
 bitterly. 
 
 Captain Pivvokk shrugged his high shoulders 
 and smilingly intimated that America would be- 
 come civilized in time. Oliver agreed that we were 
 quite young as yet. Merlin wanted to know what 
 was the matter with Brest. 
 
 But the distraught mind of the young hostess 
 was now so apparent that Emily forgot her argu- 
 ments to listen; and listening brought terror to her 
 heart. The sound came vaguely at first over the 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 95 
 
 growing riot of conversation. But in the short 
 pause she could hear it distinctly. Running wa- 
 ter! She tried to hypnotize herself into the belief 
 that it came from the faucets in the kitchen. But 
 the direction was unmistakable. Water was being 
 run into the spare-room bathtub. The sound con- 
 jured up a Dantesque picture; half darkness in the 
 spare room, Professor Syle, weary with continual 
 thought, deciding to soak his feet in ice-cold water! 
 
 She opened her mouth once and barely restrained 
 herself from crying aloud: "Please don't!" 
 
 "Rosamonde," she heard Merlin asking through 
 the haze, "do you know where I put that clipping 
 from the Times the one I was reading?" 
 
 "Oh!" Rosamonde came out of a horrid coma. 
 "I left it on the window seat. I'll I'll get it." 
 Emily saw that she was sparring for a chance to 
 glide into the living room, open Professor Syle's 
 prison door and implore him to be still. 
 
 "No, no !" commanded Merlin. "Agnes will find 
 it. Agnes, get that little newspaper clipping I left 
 on the window seat. And now, young lady" 
 turning to Emily "I'll show you what sane peo- 
 ple and there are a few left in the country 
 really think about Bolshevism." 
 
 Agnes was gone at least a year. The aqueous 
 murmur from the spare room came to Emily's ears 
 like echoes from Niagara. 
 
 When Agnes returned with the clipping Merlin 
 snatched it eagerly from her fingers. 
 
 Emily saw wonderful auroral lights swimming 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 round and round among the cornices. Distantly 
 she could hear the Turribul Tempered Mr. Valiant 
 explaining that Pro Bono Publico meant for the 
 public good; that the idea of suppressing inflam- 
 matory speech was that very thing, Pro Bono Pub- 
 lico. She got scraps of her own letter to the Times, 
 protests on the subject of the tired rich turning to 
 a new, expensive and picturesque vice, parlor Bol- 
 shevism, caustic comments on the spectacle of Pro- 
 fessor Walter Scott Syle, conscientious objector, 
 enemy of government, capering before aristocratic 
 audiences, mostly feminine, in our fashionable 
 hotels. 
 
 "It's a disease!" declared Merlin, hurling the 
 paper to the floor, "a pestiferous infection. If you 
 could keep it in the nasty slums where disease be- 
 longs, that wouldn't be so bad. But it is moving 
 into Fifth Avenue, like the sweat shops." 
 
 "Your country lacks stability," Captain Pivvokk 
 reminded the company. 
 
 "That's what's the matter with it," agreed 
 Oliver. 
 
 Emily made as though to speak, but an enven- 
 omed glance from Aunt Carmen seemed to lack 
 the desired effect. 
 
 "I've been a working girl myself," she an- 
 nounced quietly as her jarring nerves would per- 
 mit. "And it didn't make a Bolshevist out of me 
 or any sort of ist. It taught me pretty plainly that 
 the sort of people who go in for overthrowing the 
 government are either too lazy to work or " 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 97 
 
 "Emily!'* said Aunt Carmen sharply. "You're 
 losing a hairpin there, on that side." 
 
 In the little moment of silence which fell Emily 
 was relieved to notice that water had ceased to run 
 in the spare room. Rosamonde was looking quite 
 ill. 
 
 "These Bolsheviks," went on Merlin, not to be 
 diverted from his favorite abomination, "are worm- 
 ing their way into the best houses in the land. Who 
 is safe any more? How do you know what's be- 
 ing planned against you or how do I know ? How 
 can I tell, at this very hour, that there isn't a dyna- 
 miter with a bomb, hiding under the bed to " 
 
 He never finished with his dynamiter. A door 
 was heard to burst open somewhere with the noise 
 of furies escaping from hell. And such a shriek ! It 
 came three times, howl upon howl in tones that 
 were undeniably male. Banquo's ghost never 
 brought a dinner party more promptly to its feet. 
 The noise came from the living room, where table 
 seemed to be warring with chair, rug with chande- 
 lier. 
 
 Then the vision. Across the wide vista 
 through the dining-room doors it plunged with a 
 stiff ball-and-chain movement. It was the figure 
 of Professor Syle. His arms were waving, he was 
 bare to the knees as he dragged along what at first 
 appeared to be a long, loose roll of leather; but it 
 was plain as day to Emily: Eustace, the alligator, 
 adopting the tactics of an angry bulldog, had fas- 
 
98 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 f^^"^^^^^'''"*^^^^'^"'^^^^^^"^^^^"^^"^^^^*^"''''""^^^^^^^^^^^"^^^^ 
 
 tened his teeth into Professor Syle just below the 
 calf of the right leg. 
 
 In the nightmare scramble that followed it took 
 less than the space of ten seconds the tormented 
 Bolshevik had raised a gilt chair and let it down 
 heavily on the alligator, who at once loosed his hold 
 and fell writhing beside a wrecked table. The Val- 
 iants' guests stood hypnotized, viewing the gro- 
 tesque tragedy which ended in the professor's turn- 
 ing upon the assembled company, hissing "Capital- 
 ists!" through his clenched teeth, and scuttling at 
 something between a lope and a limp out of the 
 front door. 
 
 "Well, I'll be darned!" said Merlin, quite inade- 
 quately. 
 
 "Are you men going to stand here and let him 
 " This came from Aunt Carmen, and was, in- 
 deed, the first practical question of the meeting. 
 
 Fired by a common purpose the three men quit 
 the dining-room and evaporated into distance, so 
 rapid was their flight after the alligator-bitten ap- 
 parition. And at this point Rosamonde did a most 
 unfashionable thing. She fainted. 
 
 They stretched her out on the window seat, with 
 Aunt Carmen holding her head and Emily forcing 
 some of Merlin's best cognac between her teeth. 
 The stuff choked her and she came back rapidly. 
 
 "Where is he?" she asked vaguely, glaring into 
 space. 
 
 "The men are still chasing him," Aunt Carmen 
 assured her. "But, my dear, do you keep them 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 99 
 
 round the house crocodiles and queer persons 
 with bare feet?" 
 
 "Uh-huh." She was too weak for further con- 
 cealment. "I was hiding him. He must have 
 soaked his feet in the bathtub. Eustace bit him." 
 
 "Did you hear him ?" Aunt Carmen's old cheeks 
 glowed with her inborn love of excitement. "He 
 went out yelling 'Capitalists!' just like a Bolshe- 
 vik." 
 
 "That's what he is," confessed her frivolous 
 niece. 
 
 "Rosamonde!" 
 
 It was wonderful how much alike those two 
 women looked at the moment. 
 
 "I didn't want to keep him, but he said he was 
 hiding from the police and I knew if Merlin 
 found him here I didn't know what he would do 
 so I locked him up with Eustace. I might have 
 known they wouldn't get along together." 
 
 Rosamonde now burst into tears, but Emily exe- 
 cuted something very like a giggle. 
 
 "How wonderful !" cried Aunt Carmen. 
 
 "Wonderful?" echoed poor Rosamonde. 
 
 "To have people hiding about the place, getting 
 away from the police. What had he done?" 
 
 "I don't know. Everything, I suppose. You 
 know" here Rosamonde lowered her voice "he's 
 Professor Walter Scott Syle." 
 
 "My word!" Aunt Carmen, who had arisen in 
 her excitement, sat down again. "The socialist 
 
100 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 that Ballymoore woman has on her list? Why in 
 the world didn't you introduce him?" 
 
 "Well, you see, it didn't seem to be just the right 
 time," floundered young Mrs. Valiant. "And then 
 I didn't know you wanted him." 
 
 "I've simply got to have him," pronounced the 
 tyrant of Plainview. "I don't intend that Bally- 
 moore woman " 
 
 "I'll get him for you if I can," Rosamonde whis- 
 pered rather hysterically. Male voices could be 
 heard growing louder with approach. "And now 
 promise me you won't say a word to anybody." 
 
 "Certainly, my dear/' said Aunt Carmen consol- 
 ingly. 
 
 "I promise," Emily assured her, but not without 
 a smile. 
 
 "Oh, my Lord! He's waking up!" 
 
 Aunt Carmen had leaped into a chair and gath- 
 ered her skirts round her scrawny ankles. Emily, 
 instinctively following suit, got herself upon the 
 window seat. 
 
 Eustace, the alligator, had recovered from his 
 swoon and was walking slowly across the rug. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE morning after that gladiatorial combat be- 
 tween the alligator and the Bolshevik, Aunt Car- 
 men, the surprising old thing, called upon Rosa- 
 monde at the unheard-of hour of eleven. Rosa- 
 monde, lingering in bed with her troubles, couldn't 
 believe it; no more could Emily, who for a year 
 had been witness to Mrs. Shallope's luxurious 
 morning habits. Merlin Valiant's foolish wife had 
 been sipping coffee and making her eyes large with 
 excitement as she told the fearful way Merlin had 
 behaved and how Merlin had spent all night pok- 
 ing under things with a cane and what Merlin had 
 said to the police over the telephone and how Mer- 
 lin had dragged poor Eustace by the tail back to his 
 bathtub, swearing that he would never part with 
 Eustace and wished he had a thousand more just 
 like him. 
 
 " Where did you put Professor Syle's awful 
 shoes?" asked Rosamonde with a tired sigh. 
 
 "Outside on the ledge of the bathroom window/' 
 replied Emily. "Merlin found the socks, didn't 
 he?" 
 
 "Yes, but there weren't any laundry marks on 
 them; Bolsheviks don't have 'em, I guess. I 
 showed those socks to Merlin, and when I said 
 
 101 
 
102 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 that Eustace might use 'em the way bloodhounds 
 do to trace up the criminal, of course, he got mad. 
 He gets mad at everything I do." 
 
 And then it was that Agnes entered to announce 
 that Mrs. Shallope was calling. 
 
 "What's come over the old girl?" was Emily's 
 natural question. 
 
 "It's a miracle," announced Rosamonde in her 
 hushed voice. "She didn't even get up to go to 
 her husband's funeral." 
 
 "She's probably come to give me fits about 
 Oliver," said Emily. 
 
 "You go out and keep her quiet," suggested the 
 lazy Rosamonde, "until I get something on." 
 
 That Emily's prediction was not entirely fanciful 
 was proved almost upon Aunt Carmen's first ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 "Please don't," she said when Emily attempted 
 to kiss her. "So you came into town expressly to 
 meet that Browning boy." 
 
 "You sent me in, Aunt Carmen," Emily pointed 
 out. 
 
 "I didn't send you in to associate with any ridic- 
 ulous little fortune hunter. Emily, I don't know 
 which offended me the more last night, that Brown- 
 ing boy or that alligator. You needn't think be- 
 cause I said nothing that I wasn't offended, deeply 
 offended. How long do you intend to keep this up, 
 Emily?" 
 
 "What up?" 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 103 
 
 "Don't look at me in that insolent way! You 
 know what I mean." 
 
 "If you're referring to Oliver Browning I don't 
 mind saying that I intend to marry him." 
 
 "Not with my consent!" Her mouth drew to- 
 gether into a badly sewed seam. 
 
 "Aunt Carmen," said her penniless niece, fold- 
 ing her hands as though to hold down the Ray 
 temper, "I'm ever so grateful to you for what 
 you've done it was really more than generous of 
 you." 
 
 "You're not going to make a scene!" implored 
 the famous scene-maker. 
 
 "Nothing like that. I should a great deal rather 
 have your consent, of course " 
 
 "You don't want my consent!" snapped Car- 
 men. "It's that Browning boy who simply can't 
 live without it." 
 
 "Why?" Emily's eyes widened. 
 
 "My dear child, do you think for an instant that 
 he would marry you if he thought that you had 
 broken with me and my money?" 
 
 "I don't understand, Aunt Carmen." 
 
 "I'm not going to argue with you, my dear. 
 Emily, I love you very much and I'll do anything 
 I can to take care of you, but if it comes to a mat- 
 ter of throwing you at the head of a little adven- 
 turer from " 
 
 "Please don't say that, Aunt Carmen," implored 
 Emily, wringing her hands. "I can't stand it. 
 
104. TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Oliver isn't what you say and I'm going to him 
 and " 
 
 "Good morning, Auntie!" 
 
 Rosamonde, sweeping forward in something 
 vain, violet and lacey, saved the straining thread 
 between Emily Ray and her patroness. 
 
 "My dear, I couldn't rest until I came to you," 
 cried Aunt Carmen, her black eyes snapping with a 
 new zest. 
 
 "Rest!" moaned Rosamonde. "There's no such 
 word in this house. Merlin up all night telephon- 
 ing to reporters from the Trombone and telling 
 them that murder was loose all over town because 
 the newspapers were pro-League of Nations and 
 pro-Bolshevik and everything." 
 
 "He's frightfully narrow, isn't he?" said the sur- 
 prising old thing. "I suppose he couldn't endure 
 being told the truth." 
 
 Emily giggled. 
 
 "What are you laughing at?" asked Aunt Car- 
 men, turning fiercely upon her poor relation. 
 
 "The truth," announced Emily. 
 
 "If only Merlin," the dowager went on, ignoring 
 that sally, "would permit me to give him a few 
 lessons in the Religion of Love. You can't im- 
 agine how it has calmed me." 
 
 There fell a moment's pause, then Carmen leaned 
 secretively toward Rosamonde. 
 
 "What has become of your delightful dyna- 
 miter?" she almost whispered. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 105 
 
 "I haven't heard from him," confessed Rosa- 
 monde rather nervously. "And I hope I shan't." 
 
 "Why, my dear! Why shouldn't you hear from 
 him?" 
 
 "Merlin is in a fury. All the papers this morn- 
 ing are full of it." 
 
 "I saw them," smiled the strange old worldling. 
 "Wasn't it wonderful! 'Millionaire's Crocodile 
 Bites Burglar.' Nothing like that ever happens to 
 me any more. You're very fortunate to have a 
 real Bolshevist on your list." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "They're dreadfully fashionable, you know." 
 
 "But, Aunt Carmen, the very thought of them 
 makes Merlin ill." 
 
 "He has an ungovernable temper," said Aunt 
 Carmen, now thoroughly restored. "The Valiants 
 all have bad tempers. His father was dropped 
 from the Tory Club after a fist fight with Gov- 
 ernor Shane. But tell me, darling, when you saw 
 the reporters why didn't you tell them that it was 
 Professor Syle who was bitten?" 
 
 "Of course I couldn't have done that." 
 
 "Why couldn't you? He's becoming quite the 
 vogue. He has been conducting those meetings 
 for that Ballymoore woman. I'm wild to meet 
 him. I wish you could have stopped him last night 
 and introduced him." 
 
 "But, Auntie, he's running away from the po- 
 lice " 
 
 "Is he?" The brilliant old eyes fairly burned 
 
106 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 with excitement. "And you were hiding him. It's 
 the most romantic thing!" 
 
 Agnes, the patient and uncomplaining, entered 
 upon the scene. 
 
 "What is it, Agnes?" asked Rosamonde, an- 
 noyed with the suspicion that more reporters were 
 at the telephone. 
 
 "Professor Syle is calling, Mrs. Valiant." 
 
 "Tell him I'm busy that I'm out " 
 
 "He's downstairs, Mrs. Valiant." 
 
 "I'm not at home." 
 
 "Rosa!" Aunt Carmen's voice broke in sharply. 
 "You don't mean to say you're going to send him 
 away ?" 
 
 "I can't possibly see him after " 
 
 "Well, then let me see him. I should die of grief 
 if he shouldn't come up." 
 
 "But suppose he's arrested right here in my 
 house." 
 
 "That would be gorgeous. Think of our being 
 in the midst of that great big delicious plot " 
 
 Agnes had gone halfway across the drawing- 
 room bent on the commission of her duty when 
 Mrs. Shallope stopped her with a command : 
 
 "Agnes, Mrs. Valiant will have the gentleman 
 shown up." 
 
 When Professor Syle appeared at the entrance 
 between the Flemish hall and the Hispano-Italian 
 drawing-room Rosamonde, deliciously agitated, 
 tottered to greet him and was relieved to see that 
 he was wearing shoes and that, although he limped 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 107 
 
 slightly as he advanced to take her hand, his ap- 
 pearance was otherwise conventional. 
 
 "You'll excuse my hurrying away last night," 
 were his first words after greeting her. 
 
 "Please forgive me!" supplicated Rosamonde, 
 having nothing else to say under the odd circum- 
 stances. "I hope you didn't think me inhospi- 
 table." 
 
 "Quite to the contrary." Suddenly he changed 
 his tack and eyed her closely through his thick 
 glasses. "What was that dreadful creature that 
 sprang out of the darkness and seized me by the 
 leg?" 
 
 "Only an alligator." Emily contributed this. 
 
 "I see. I see. Hm. I see. Some capitalistic 
 fad, I imagine." 
 
 This seemed to annoy Rosamonde, who was pre- 
 pared to show her aunt how Bolshevik she had be- 
 come. The professor was already eying Aunt Car- 
 men with something akin to disfavor. 
 
 "My aunt, Mrs. Shallope, Professor Syle," she 
 hastened to introduce them. Aunt Carmen arose 
 to shake his hand, a thing she would never have 
 done under ordinary circumstances. 
 
 "How do you do, Mrs. Shallope." His manner 
 suddenly changed to one of beaming cordiality. 
 Apparently he had absorbed the illustrious name. 
 
 "I have insisted on staying, Professor Syle, until 
 I met you," declared Aunt Carmen in her most 
 honeyed tone. 
 
 "Ah, a fortunate coincidence!" He turned to 
 
108 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Rosamonde. "You see, I came to get my shoes." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I have them for you." It was quite 
 natural that Professor Syle would have braved ar- 
 rest and prosecution to get his shoes. 
 
 "I can quite understand that," smiled Aunt Car- 
 men. "I've been having mine made at the same 
 shop for nearly fifteen years." 
 
 The handy Emily had, meanwhile, brought the 
 brogans from the bathroom window and was hold- 
 ing them by their large clumsy straps. 
 
 "Isn't it frightful the way the price of shoes has 
 gone up !" Aunt Carmen was gushing on. "Thirty- 
 five dollars for a pair of walking boots imagine !" 
 
 "These," replied Professor Syle, "are especially 
 precious." 
 
 "They look it," agreed Emily, and allowed them 
 to drop with a thump. 
 
 "They cost me if I remember the figures cor- 
 rectly ninety-eight dollars and fifty cents." 
 
 "Outrageous!" cried Aunt Carmen. 
 
 "They are very dear to me," declared Walter 
 Scott Syle with a sentimental glance down at the 
 shoes. 
 
 "They would be very dear to anybody," inter- 
 polated Emily, but won no applause. 
 
 "They were made in a Communist shop," he went 
 on. "It was an experiment in scientific coopera- 
 tion. The housing, the educational advantages, the 
 recreation centers, the hours of work were all ideal. 
 It was with great regret that the soviet manage- 
 ment were compelled to close the plant after six 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 109 
 
 months, due to the fact that an unfair capitalistic 
 competition compelled them to charge an excessive 
 price for the finished product." 
 
 Again Emily Ray emitted a small rippling sound 
 of mirth. 
 
 "What are you laughing at now?" demanded 
 Aunt Carmen. 
 
 'The finished product," said Emily. 
 
 "I should be so grateful, Professor Syle," im- 
 plored the grande dame, "if you could spare me 
 time for instruction in your wonderful beliefs." 
 
 "Are you approaching the matter seriously, Mrs. 
 Shallope?" he asked, after a nervous side glance 
 toward Emily Ray. 
 
 "I am always serious, am I not, Rosa?" 
 
 "Always, Aunt Carmen." 
 
 "For if your intentions are not, I see no good 
 in our wasting our time," he threatened. 
 
 Emily expected Carmen to flare up at this; but 
 to her surprise the old wordling grew positively 
 kittenish. 
 
 "Serious things are a mania with me. I simply 
 can't bear the government." 
 
 She failed to state that her hostility against es- 
 tablished law had dated from the time the county 
 assessor had increased her taxes for road improve- 
 ments. 
 
 "In that case," smiled Professor Syle, "I am 
 sure you can approach us with an open mind. You 
 do not necessarily have to agree with us in every 
 particular." 
 
110 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "I hate to agree with people," confessed Aunt 
 Carmen. 
 
 "Only through disagreement can truth be born." 
 
 "He's going to start a revolution," prompted 
 Rosamonde, taking more and more pride in her ex- 
 hibit. 
 
 "How charming ! I know of two or three houses 
 I should like blown up. There are some people I 
 simply can't bear who have built a perfect eyesore 
 half a mile down the road from me." 
 
 "And if you want dynamite or any explosive," 
 Rosamonde made the generous offer, "we can get 
 them at cost price through Merlin. He's a director 
 in one of the big munitions trusts, you know." 
 
 "We should learn to walk before we run," said 
 the distinguished prophet of discontent in his 
 smoothest voice. "The support we need at present 
 should be along moral lines. When capitalism be- 
 comes communistic it is no longer capitalism. You 
 understand that?" 
 
 Aunt Carmen thought she did. 
 
 "Oh, tell me, professor," she implored with a 
 burst of her native irrelevancy, "aren't you nearly 
 frightened to death?" 
 
 "Frightened?" Walter Scott Syle certainly did 
 not look so. 
 
 "Being here. And with all the police after you." 
 
 "Here? Police?" His face was certainly now 
 disturbed. 
 
 "I have told my aunt," explained Rosamonde, 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 111 
 
 "how I put you in the spare room because you 
 wanted to hide away from the police." 
 
 "Great Scott!" It was the most natural expres- 
 sion she had ever heard from those chaste lips. 
 
 "Did you actually believe " And Professor 
 
 Syle burst into a fit of dry laughter, something that 
 seemed to undignify him in the eyes of Bolshevism. 
 
 "Well, you said you wanted to be out of sight 
 overnight " 
 
 "My dear young lady, I did want to be out of 
 sight overnight, but I had not even considered the 
 police." 
 
 "Then who were you trying to get away from?" 
 
 Professor Syle lowered his voice to a confidential 
 pitch : 
 
 "You've heard, possibly, of Mrs. Ballymoore ?" 
 
 "That woman!" exclaimed Aunt Carmen. A 
 great bond of sympathy had arisen between herself 
 and the radical. 
 
 "I am not saying that she is not sincere in her 
 convictions " 
 
 "I am," broke in Aunt Carmen eagerly. "Go 
 
 on." 
 
 "But the social program she has been working out 
 for me has been might I say it? a trifle trying. 
 She has been a great power for good in her way. 
 Several of the meetings she has organized in order 
 to teach communism to the upper classes have been 
 helpful indeed. I have done all I could to spread 
 the new gospel at her receptions, teas and meet- 
 ings, but yesterday, before my lecture at Mrs. van 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Laerens', she called me up and quite insisted that 
 I should come to her house that evening to give 
 readings from the 'Life of Trotzky.' I suppose one 
 in my position should not be weak ; but I was quite 
 outworn with overwork. After the lecture one of 
 the Comrades warned me that Mrs. Ballymoore 
 was looking for me at the Pilsen School." 
 
 "She's a perfect man-grabber/' intimated Aunt 
 Carmen, who could never forgive her for having 
 married Bodfrey Shallope before she did. "She'd 
 do anything to get people interested in Vera. Only 
 last year a famous mural painter ran away out 
 West to avoid one of her receptions." 
 
 "I can sympathize with him. And, Comrade 
 Rosamonde" Rosamonde blushed at this almost 
 affectionate address "it seemed so remote here 
 - " A quaint description of Valiant's apartment! 
 "It occurred to me that, since there is no such thing 
 as private property you would not hesitate to se- 
 crete me in a place where Mrs. Ballymoore would 
 not think of coming - " 
 
 "You bet she wouldn't!" exclaimed Aunt Car- 
 men with more force than elegance. 
 
 Professor Syle had shuffled to his feet and was 
 now reaching for his shoes. But Aunt Carmen 
 had no idea of letting him go so easily. The one 
 living passion in her withered heart, social rivalry, 
 was burning fierce and bright. 
 
 "Please don't go!" she urged. 
 
 Syle resumed his seat, perching stiffly on the 
 edge of his chair. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 113 
 
 "That Ballymoore woman makes everything ab- 
 surd," she went on. "But can't you teach us se- 
 riously?" 
 
 "I should be very glad, Comrade " 
 
 "Comrade Carmen!" the old lady fairly gasped. 
 
 " to include you in my classes." He turned 
 
 just an instant and looked at Rosamonde. His look 
 would have been sentimental had it not seemed so 
 clouded in theories. 
 
 "Or" he looked away self-consciously as soon 
 as her glance met his "might it not be helpful to 
 bring together several leaders in our soviet for a 
 general discussion here?" 
 
 "No, no!" Rosamonde was sorry as soon as her 
 hasty veto was uttered. But this could not be. 
 "Somewhere else it wouldn't do here." 
 
 "Why, Rosa!" cried old Carmen. "This would 
 be a splendid room for speaking, wouldn't it, Com- 
 rade " 
 
 "Comrade Walter," supplied the radical. 
 
 "I know," Rosamonde demurred. "It isn't that 
 it's Merlin." 
 
 "Oh, I forgot Merlin," agreed Carmen in a 
 mournful tone. Then to Comrade Walter: "He's 
 her husband." 
 
 "The gentleman who keeps the alligator?" asked 
 the professor, rubbing the calf of his leg. 
 
 "He hates 'em," said Rosamonde, referring 
 equally to Soviets and alligators. "He says the 
 Bolshevik! are going to wreck our government." 
 
 "In that I quite agree with him," smiled Syle 
 
114 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 in his gentle way. "But I see where meetings here 
 might cause embarrassment." 
 
 He folded his arms and looked, at the moment, 
 as though the blood were leaving his head and an 
 immediate foot bath would be indicated. 
 
 "Ah!" he gasped, coming as suddenly out of the 
 silence. "You have a very simple remedy. A 
 studio." 
 
 And again he went into the silence. 
 
 "A studio?" echoed Aunt Carmen and Rosa- 
 monde in the same breath. 
 
 "In Pomander Place," he particularized. "Pos- 
 sibly you have never heard of it; it is quite obscure 
 to capitalist society Greenwich Village a short 
 cul de sac just behind the Washington Market. It 
 is quite convenient to the center of the revolution, 
 and quite charming." 
 
 "We could take it in your name," said Carmen, 
 her ancient talent for intrigue reviving. 
 
 "And you could go there, say, in the afternoons 
 or have luncheons served for the more needy of 
 the Comrades." 
 
 "Wouldn't it be heavenly!" cried Rosamonde, 
 clasping her useless little hands. "And so quaint 
 and " 
 
 "I know a studio which is, I think, still vacant. 
 It was occupied by Comrade Odoroskavitch, who 
 was, as you remember, martyred to jail by a capi- 
 talistic judge. His furniture has been distributed 
 among the Comrades." 
 
 "I've got quantities of furniture in several stor- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 115 
 
 age warehouses somewhere in the city/' came in 
 Aunt Carmen, her generosity knowing no bounds. 
 "Some of the chairs are upholstered in red just 
 the color. The curtains, I think, are mostly yellow, 
 but we could have them dyed." 
 
 "And we needn't let Merlin know a thing about 
 it " 
 
 A slight shuffling sound in the dining-room 
 brought Rosamonde out of her dream of Utopia 
 and caused her to glance nervously round. The 
 tallest, widest man she had ever seen was standing 
 next to the pantry door and Agnes was fluttering 
 in the foreground, the hysterical picture of a good 
 servant in a bad fix. 
 
 "Agnes," her mistress called out in angry tones, 
 "who is that man and what does he want?" 
 
 "He's Detective Cafferty from the police/' said 
 Agnes, approaching on unsteady legs. 
 
 "Well, how in the world did he get in here?" 
 
 "He come up by th' service elevator, Mrs. Val- 
 iant. He says he always comes that way so he can 
 look the job over from behindlike " 
 
 "That will do, Agnes. Why did you let him in?" 
 
 "He would come, Mrs. Valiant. He says Mr. 
 Valiant says " 
 
 Rosamonde cast a frightened glance at her Bol- 
 shevik, who remained perfectly calm, sitting stiffly 
 upright with his shoes on his knees. 
 
 The official sleuth came shambling forward. He- 
 wore the collar of his coat turned up ; his hair was 
 plastered in a cowlick above a square forehead and 
 
116 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 his flat, smooth-shaven, blank face betrayed him 
 for what he was a person who had failed as a po- 
 liceman and had therefore been promoted to the 
 detective force. 
 
 "Excuse me, miss," he began. 
 
 "I am Mrs. Valiant," she corrected him, present- 
 ing that icy surface which she reserved for her so- 
 cial inferiors. 
 
 "Mrs. Vallance, I'm Detective Cafferty from po- 
 lice headquarters." 
 
 Rosamonde lifted her haughty eyebrows. Com- 
 rade Walter budged not an inch. 
 
 "And we are informed of a joolry robbery in 
 your flat last night." 
 
 "Nothing was taken, Mr. Cafferty," chimed 
 Aunt Carmen in the most amiable of voices; in a 
 pinch she was the diplomat of the family. "You 
 see, we were at dinner and the burglar must have 
 entered by way of the fire escape running up to 
 the spare-room window." 
 
 "Then you seen him, lady?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, we all saw him. He ran directly past 
 the dining-room door with the alligator biting his 
 ankle." 
 
 "The ally-gator," grunted Mr. Cafferty, appar- 
 ently deciding that the peevish saurian had some- 
 thing to do with the plot. "And did the gentle- 
 man here see the ally-gator?" 
 
 "Surely!" upspoke Syle in his refined voice. 
 "Quite plainly." 
 
 "Mr. Alexander was one of our guests." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 117 
 
 "I see." 
 
 Mr. Cafferty fished for a blue notebook, took 
 notes and proceeded. 
 
 "Mrs. Vallance, if you don't mind I'll go over 
 the job. Where was this spare room that the bur- 
 glar run into when he escaped?" 
 
 "He didn't run into it, he ran out of it," 
 prompted Emily, falling back upon a primal in- 
 stinct for truth telling. "I'll show you the room." 
 
 "Then you know somethin' about this robbery?" 
 Mr. Cafferty had fixed his china-blue eyes on 
 Emily. 
 
 "Oh, yes ; I helped to " She was going to say 
 
 that she helped to hide the burglar when she re- 
 membered and amended "to arrange for the din- 
 ner party." 
 
 Detective Cafferty took his time about examin- 
 ing the spare room while Rosamonde and Emily 
 fluttered after him. He seemed to have an almost 
 childlike passion for getting his fingers into dusty 
 corners. He rubbed dust from behind bureaus and 
 discovered nothing more relevant than that Rosa- 
 monde was a poor housekeeper. He opened the 
 window leading to the fire escape, and ere he craned 
 his fat head into the area space he produced sev- 
 eral sheets of sensitized paper and rubbed samples 
 across the sill. 
 
 These he examined critically. 
 
 "I know somethin'," he said at last slyly. 
 
 "Oh, I'm so glad!" exclaimed Emily. 
 
118 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "The crook never come be way of the fire es- 
 cape unless he dropped in by an aeroplane." 
 
 "Oh, then you think " 
 
 "Where do ye keep that there ally-gator?" 
 
 Rosamonde led him to the bathroom and showed 
 him the luxurious tub wherein Eustace maintained 
 the long sleep of ancient lineage. Mr. Cafferty 
 poked him in the back and withdrew his broad fin- 
 ger with superhuman rapidity, for Eustace had 
 opened his froglike eyes and had given one of those 
 sudden flips to his tail. 
 
 "Hm!" said Mr. Cafferty, and put more notes 
 into his blue book. 
 
 "And now," said he, "how do ye account for the 
 burglar gittin' bit by the ally-gator? Did he come 
 into the flat be way o' the hot-water spiggot?" 
 
 "I wonder if he did!" was Emily's helpful com- 
 ment. 
 
 "Well," said Mr. Cafferty, putting away his 
 notebook, "in my opinion it's an inside job." 
 
 "It's very nice of you to help us," Rosamonde 
 complimented. 
 
 But Mr. Cafferty still lingered. 
 
 "Of course, if it's worth yer while, we can put 
 special men on the case " 
 
 "My husband has notified several agencies al- 
 ready." 
 
 "Don't fool wid the agencies, lady." 
 
 "Then I suppose we'll never find the man." 
 
 "Ye might and ye might not. It depends." 
 
 Something very curious had happened to Mr. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 119 
 
 Cafferty 's hand. It had formed itself into a cup 
 and was wagging nervously behind his back. 
 
 'There will be a grand lot o' trouble in this job, 
 owin' to the circumstances and the lack of evidence. 
 But if ye really want to run down the burglar " 
 
 "I don't know what you mean/' said Rosamonde 
 haughtily. 
 
 The nervous hand behind Mr. Cafferty's back 
 continued to flutter so hungrily that none but a 
 professional diplomatist could have misinterpreted 
 its meaning. It filled Emily Ray with a strange 
 fascination and prompted her to something which 
 she should never, never have done. Against the 
 bureau mirror there snuggled a small pin-cushion, 
 a hard, handy object; and before she had time to 
 reconsider she had picked it up and placed it care- 
 fully in the center of Mr. Cafferty's palm. But 
 Mr. Cafferty did nothing so unworldly as to look 
 at it. He merely relaxed his hand and permitted 
 the pincushion to drop to the floor. 
 
 "Ye' re all right, young lady," said he. 
 
 "And you're a sweet old-fashioned soul," said 
 she. 
 
 "And I'll report this job to headquarters, but I 
 can't give ye no encouragement because there's no 
 evidence. Good day to ye, Mrs. Vallance and Miss 
 Vallance." 
 
 But Emily, returning to the living room, was not 
 attentive to where Detective Cafferty was going or 
 what he would report. What principally intrigued 
 
120 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 her was the appearance of the stage she had so re- 
 cently quit. 
 
 Aunt Carmen, Professor Syle and the ideal shoes 
 had taken their departure. 
 
IX 
 
 AN acid test may result in one of three things: 
 It may discover a world benefit, it may discover 
 nothing or it may blow up the laboratory. Emily 
 Ray's test, applied to Oliver Browning, neither 
 benefited the world nor resulted in nothing. 
 
 They met in the drawing-room of a downtown 
 hotel, preparatory to a lunch which was never 
 eaten, and almost the first thing Emily brought out 
 the news with a dramatic flourish: 
 
 "I'm not going back to Aunt Carmen." 
 
 "Well, why not?" 
 
 This response brought a chill of apprehension; 
 furthermore, Oliver's cherubic features were stern 
 as stern could be. 
 
 "My word !" said Emily, drawing herself up. "I 
 thought you'd be glad to hear it." 
 
 "What's the idea?" asked Oliver. 
 
 "Mule!" said Emily, quite without good nature. 
 
 "I know. But Aunt Carmen was keeping you in 
 great style out there on Long Island. Have you 
 quarreled or something?" 
 
 "I don't think you understand the price I had 
 to pay for that great style, as you call it." 
 
 "I'm sorry, dear " 
 
 "Don't!" she cried, snatching her hand away. 
 
 "But, Emmy, there's a lot of grind to everything 
 121 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 you do. Lord knows I'm not crazy 'bout Aunt Car- 
 men. But will you be any better off in New York 
 living with the wild Rosa and the alligator and 
 the barefoot burglar?" 
 
 She looked at him with a strange hardness in her 
 eyes. Could this be possible? Where was her ro- 
 mantic dream of a lover who, despite hotel regula- 
 tions, would gather her into his arms and whisper: 
 "Come, dearest! There is always some one who 
 wants you more than Aunt Carmen." 
 
 "I guess it's hard out there all right," he agreed, 
 but he had fallen to pacing the rug and to looking 
 as tragic as a fat boy can. "But all I ask of you 
 is to stick it out until - " 
 
 "Well ?" said Emily, having also risen. 
 
 "Can't you see, Emmy, the way I'm fixed?" He 
 had faced her, his hands spread imploringly. "I 
 can't live decently now without stealing some mules. 
 Please don't look at me that way, honey. I haven't 
 done anything - " 
 
 "Nothing," she agreed. 
 
 "The thing I want most in all the world is to 
 marry you and have a home." 
 
 "I see." 
 
 "Well, what's the matter?" 
 
 "Nothing. But I must go." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "To tell Aunt Carmen that she was right." 
 
 "I guess the Bolshies have got you good!" he 
 murmured, but made no move to prevent her hurry- 
 ing from the room. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Emily went back to Rosamonde's apartment. 
 Her cousin had already departed with Professor 
 Syle to hunt up a studio in Pomander Place, and 
 she had no trouble in packing her traveling bag and 
 going forth on the adventure which, in so far as 
 we are concerned, lost her for the space of a fort- 
 night. 
 
 It was a few days past April's foolish first when 
 Emily Ray, a rough ready-made cloak now taking 
 the place of the coonskin coat she had sold at a bar- 
 gain, came down from the Eighth Street station of 
 the Elevated road and proceeded to guide herself 
 through Greenwich Village without the aid of stars 
 or compass. Behind the peaked clock-tower of a 
 municipal building she at last came upon a little 
 toy street with little toy sidewalks, little toy trees, 
 little toy houses and a little toy lamp-post placarded 
 Pomander Place. Emily gasped as one is apt to 
 when one comes upon the quaint and fanciful in 
 New York. The lane was out of Dickens or Hans 
 Christian Andersen ; Professor Syle was to be con- 
 gratulated in his choice of such a spot for Rosa- 
 monde's experiment in Bolshevikia. 
 
 Emily found the number eighteen on the door of 
 a toy house halfway down the lane. There was no 
 bell and her knocks were unheeded; therefore, she 
 entered into a bare gray hall and was guided up a 
 doll's staircase by the sound of many voices. A 
 door, standing ajar at the first landing, bore a large 
 card handsomely labeled "Our Community" in red 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 letters. Here she knocked and here again her 
 knock was unheeded; nor did her entrance upon 
 the strange scene make any difference for the mo- 
 ment. 
 
 The room was full of violent color, tobacco 
 smoke, noise, the odor of fried food. Emily rec- 
 ognized Aunt Carmen's old red carpet; the win- 
 dows were hung with pinkish curtains apparently 
 an attempt had been made to dye Aunt Carmen's 
 yellow ones; the chairs, tables and bookcases had 
 been painted the orange tint that one associates 
 with art in the vicinity of Washington Square. 
 
 Dimly through the smoke many heads became 
 visible, mostly bushy, some bald, all animate with 
 the passion of argument. Above a long untidy 
 table, which bore the relics of much food, there 
 loomed a hideously painted square of canvas; it 
 might have been the work of a child of ten and it 
 was plainly intended to be a portrait of a serious, 
 hirsute, middle-aged reformer. 
 
 "Why, Emily Ray !" Out of the smoke barrage 
 somebody leaped toward her, and a moment later 
 Emily found herself panting in the arms of her 
 cousin Rosamonde. Only it was a strangely altered 
 Rosamonde; somehow she had tucked her hair in 
 underneath to give the prevailing Buster Brown ef- 
 fect and she wore a smock frock embroidered in 
 green medallions and baggy Turkish trouser-things 
 of noisy Japanese silk heaven knows what she 
 didn't wear! 
 
 "Emmy, darling!" she was rejoicing. "I'm so 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 glad you've come at last. I've been so worried 
 about you. Where have you been?" 
 
 "Hunting a job, finding it and quitting," was 
 Emily's brief version of her adventures. 
 
 "You simply left the apartment without a word 
 and I've been telephoning almost every day to Aunt 
 Carmen and to Oliver you've been lost without a 
 trace. What in the world's come over you?" 
 
 "I was going to ask the same thing about you," 
 said Emily. 
 
 "Don't you like it?" Rosamonde gestured to- 
 ward the decorations and pouted prettily as she did 
 when anybody found fault. 
 
 "Of course I haven't got used - " 
 
 "Oh, you must. You haven't any idea how soon 
 you will. Come over here and meet the Com- 
 rades." 
 
 Poor, rich, overfed, undeveloped Rosamonde! 
 Rapturously she guided her untutored cousin by the 
 hand and brought her face to face with Bolshe- 
 vikia, or at least that section of the Red Republic 
 which lolled together on a divan and hungrily in- 
 haled Rosamonde's gold-tipped cigarettes. 
 
 The free citizens, presented to Emily one at a 
 time, differed from the rest of New York as much, 
 say, as the Czechs differ from the Moros. Smock 
 frocks, of course, were vogue for all the women 
 and some of the men. But their variety was in- 
 finite. There was a Miss Felda Drigg, who wore 
 her hair close-cropped and had the face of a dis- 
 solute Roman senator; she had a small rabbit- faced 
 
126 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 husband whose name, it seemed, was Mr. Eldred 
 Smole. By profession he was paragrapher on the 
 Outburst. Comrade Alfonzo, the bright-toothed 
 Mexican bandit, shook hands with a snarl, and 
 Comrade Tony, who was plotting a national bar- 
 bers' strike, greeted her greasily and challenged 
 her on several subjects which his point of view and 
 his Italian accent rendered quite unintelligible. 
 Then there was Comrade Epstein who, though most 
 certainly not Irish, proclaimed his conversion to the 
 Sinn Fein movement. 
 
 Rosamonde had no doubt been busy. Emily in- 
 timated as much when at last they found them- 
 selves isolated behind the untidy luncheon table. 
 
 "It's been the most mar-velous success from the 
 first!" crowed Rosamonde. "We now have twenty 
 Comrades in to lunch every noon and we're try- 
 ing to extend the table space." 
 
 "And what do you do with the surplus?" asked 
 Emily. 
 
 "What surplus?" asked Rosamonde. 
 
 "Why, from the luncheons." 
 
 "Oh, my dear, you don't understand the system 
 at all. We don't do anything for money down 
 here. When the revolution is over we can all pay 
 on a what you call it? quid pro quo or some- 
 thing." 
 
 "I see. I suppose Merlin's perfectly charmed." 
 
 "Oh, Merlin ! He's in California. Isn't it prov- 
 idential? He'll be gone till the middle of the 
 month, and I hope it improves his temper." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 127 
 
 "It should/' suggested Emily drily. "What's 
 that picture?" indicating the impressionistic can- 
 vas. 
 
 "That's a portrait of Lenine. Isn't it charming? 
 It was done by one of the Pilsen School." 
 
 "One of the kindergarten pupils?" 
 
 "How you talk ! It's a vibratist picture and was 
 painted by Miss Drigg " 
 
 "The married maiden with the short hair? How 
 much did it cost you?" 
 
 "Only a hundred and fifty. The poor things are 
 always hard up you know, that's the penalty of 
 being emancipated. But tell me, Emmy, what are 
 you going to do?" 
 
 "I've come here to ask you," confessed her cou- 
 sin. "I got my old place back at Beltman's but 
 something's happened to me, Rosa. I don't seem 
 to stick to things. I think life at Plainview has 
 made me soft I can't do anything without a serv- 
 ant to wait on me. And the boarding house food 
 whew !" 
 
 "It's strange the way you're treating Oliver," 
 mused Rosamonde. "He can't understand it." 
 
 "I think he can," replied Emily, quite without 
 warmth. 
 
 The Comrades on the divan were now going it 
 with the energy of competitive auctioneers. "Land 
 distribution," "The right to live," "The total eradi- 
 cation of wage slavery" were but a few of the many 
 phrases hurled in falsetto, basso and soprano, 
 
128 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 snarled, shrieked, roared and growled from the 
 soft-padded forum of free opinion. 
 
 "Do they go like that all the time?" asked Emily. 
 
 "Most of the time," admitted Rosamonde. 
 "Aren't they lovely?" 
 
 "You always did like noisy pets," said the poor 
 relation. 
 
 "I'm going to Bleriot's," said Rosamonde, look- 
 ing down at those silken trousers, "to select some 
 costumes. I want something really good." 
 
 "You're dressing the part, I see." 
 
 "One must, you know. I've gotten several cos- 
 tumes ready-made in the village. Bleriot is fairly 
 swamped with orders. But I mustn't wear this 
 thing out in the street. Come in while I change 
 and let's talk." 
 
 A little room off the studio had been partially 
 outfitted with bureau and chairs. The parts of a 
 brass bed lay piled against the wall and a dressing 
 table stood conveniently near the window. 
 
 "I just use it as a place to change in," explained 
 Rosamonde, already divesting herself of Bolshe- 
 vikia's odd garments. "You see that door beyond 
 is sealed up now, but it leads into another bed- 
 room where two of the dearest old maids Com- 
 rade Elsa and Comrade Hattie stay. Elsa's a 
 teacher in the Pilsen School of Radical Culture, 
 you know." 
 
 "Of course," said Emily. "But do you ever see 
 Professor Syle any more?" 
 
 "Ever see him ! Why, my dear, he's here almost 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 129 
 
 . 
 
 every afternoon. He's the very spirit of the place." 
 
 "How splendid !" 
 
 Poor Emily was thinking of making a humble 
 request, but she decided to withdraw it. 
 
 "Emmy!" cried young Mrs. Valiant, turning as 
 she adjusted a conventional walking skirt, "why 
 couldn't you come and take this room?" 
 
 "Well, I could." 
 
 "There wouldn't be the least danger in all the 
 world. We could have Comrade Elsa's door un- 
 sealed and you'd be just as chaperoned as a girl 
 could be." 
 
 "How about Professor Syle?" 
 
 "He's a wonderful person. He'd never bother 
 you. Of course Comrade Niki comes in to cook 
 the lunch." 
 
 "For the good of the cause?" 
 
 "I pay him a nominal sum nine dollars a week, 
 I think it is. He never complains. He's a remark- 
 able reformer and is going to do wonders with 
 Japan." 
 
 Emily was almost convinced when they entered 
 the Valiant car conveniently waiting at the cor- 
 ner of Eighteenth Street and Fifth Avenue and 
 they were merrily whirling toward Madame Ble- 
 riot's fashionable atelier. Emily wanted no more 
 of Aunt Carmen, nor did she fancy the life of a 
 wage-earner which had once seemed her destiny. 
 She could slip into Rosamonde's mad studio where, 
 for the matter of that, she could accomplish much 
 toward paying her board. At any rate it would 
 
130 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 give her a certain shelter until she could look to- 
 ward something better. 
 
 Since Mrs. Valiant was one of Bleriot' s best cus- 
 tomers, it was small wonder that the madame her- 
 self greeted the ladies smilingly, and offered them 
 chairs at a confidential corner of the elegant Em- 
 pire room, where ruinous plots were hatched against 
 half the wealthy husbands in America. 
 
 "We can now offer you so many beautiful things, 
 Madame Valiant," cried Madame Bleriot, the sweet, 
 generous soul. "So many ateliers of Paris have 
 again opened." 
 
 "I was thinking of something for inside wear, 
 for " Rosamonde hesitated to show embar- 
 rassment before a mere trades person. 
 
 "Nicolette!" Madame clasped her plump hands 
 and the slave of the lamp appeared. She rippled 
 something about robe de la rose then, rolling her 
 bulging brown eyes again toward Rosamonde : "Of 
 soisette, Madame, with something nouvelle every- 
 body will rage about it in the spring. A bodice 
 of plaited straw. Tres sauvage!" 
 
 "It must be lovely/' Rosamonde agreed for 
 agreement's sake. "But, Madame Bleriot, you see 
 I've taken a studio " 
 
 "Ah-h-h-h !" Madame Bleriot upheld her hands 
 and uttered a long snarling sound indicative of 
 sympathy and understanding. "They are in vogue 
 now we have provided for that. Just this week 
 Mrs. Winslow Husk" Madame counted them off 
 on her fingers "Mrs. Kilman Trencherley, Mrs. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 131 
 
 Hezekiah Ammon all have ordered something for 
 studio wear. What is your metier, Madame, sculp- 
 ture or dancing?" 
 
 Rosamonde paused just a moment, then whis- 
 pered : 
 
 "Bolshevism." 
 
 "Ah-h-h-h!" The same snarl, only longer this 
 time. "We have provided for that also. You see, 
 Madame Valiant, it is our beezness to anticipate 
 styles." 
 
 Without even rising madame reached to the shelf 
 of a tiny gilt desk and picked up a brown portfolio, 
 which she rested precariously on her sloping lap. 
 
 "Designs by Henri Stuck," she said descriptive- 
 ly, and turned the pages slowly before Rosamonde's 
 and Emily's astonished gaze. 
 
 The drawings were colored violently by hand, 
 and although the poses were ladylike in the extreme 
 the costumes were suggestive of Bakst in a lilting 
 mood. A lady wearing what appeared to be red 
 rubber boots below a violet gingham pinafore with 
 an Elizabethan collar of stiff gold lace was among 
 a few of the more conventional. There was also 
 a one-piece munition worker's costume, the mate- 
 rial being apple green with short leggings of gold 
 accentuating white, square-toed slippers. The la- 
 dies depicted almost invariably wore their hair 
 bobbed and many had red skull caps. 
 
 "How won-derful!" cried Rosamonde, her 
 breath taken away. 
 
 "No, no !" protested madame with a shrug. "We 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 must look forward. And we have had so many 
 calls for costumes among ladies who are going in 
 for what do you call it? radicalism." 
 
 "Not really!" 
 
 "Madame !" Bleriot bridled as though her honor 
 had been questioned. "In any great movement you 
 must have uniforms suitable to it not so? Be- 
 hold afternoon dancing! Was not that a cause for 
 short-skirt style? And does not skating require its 
 costume? And so much wealth in America 
 among ladies has gone into La Bolshevique." 
 
 "And there has been a demand?" 
 
 "So great we can hardly fill it. Already Mrs. 
 Chauncey Huggensinger has ordered three I shall 
 show you." 
 
 Madame Bleriot turned to three of the most fan- 
 tastic designs. Rosamonde, obviously sensing the 
 pang of disappointment which a New Yorker must 
 feel after any attempt to be original, thumbed the 
 cards, confused. Should she resort to a Greenwich 
 Village dressmaker after all? 
 
 "Tacky!" said she as if to herself. Rosamonde 
 loathed tacky as nature loathes a vacuum. She 
 sat considering. 
 
 "Just look at this!" cried Emily, holding up a 
 card illustrating a lady with a jockey cap, bare 
 limbs and a tunic of ermine. "A riding habit for 
 the Ostrich Show !" 
 
 But Madame Bleriot' s eyes were roving toward 
 the door, where apparently customers of more im- 
 portance even than Mrs. Shallope were entering. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 133 
 
 "Pardon!" she exclaimed, and dashed across the 
 room. 
 
 Stung in her vanity as a spoiled customer is apt 
 to be when another and more spoiled appropriates 
 the shopkeeper's attention, Rosamonde looked sav- 
 agely up. Emily's eyes followed those of her cou- 
 sin. The newcomers were two, and by their ap- 
 pearance, mother and daughter. The elder offered 
 the appearance of a withered Venus whose Grecian 
 profile had sharpened to a wedge; but when you 
 looked at the younger you could see that the wedge 
 had always been there. For the daughter's face 
 was beautifully regular, but hard and chisel-sharp; 
 she was dressed in wintry gray to match her wintry 
 gray eyes. 
 
 "Who?" asked Emily, seeing her cousin's lips 
 moving. 
 
 "Mrs. Ballymoore and Vera," whispered Rosa- 
 monde. 
 
 Emily took a curious look at Aunt Carmen's 
 lifelong enemy; but her curiosity was more, per- 
 haps, for that daughter who had been pictured in 
 every Sunday supplement as a reigning beauty, yet 
 who never seemed able to get a man interested to 
 the marriage point. Emily saw why. The only 
 obstacle to Vera's success was Vera Ballymoore, 
 who was ice. 
 
 The spying eyes of the opposing camps met mid- 
 way, for Mrs. Ballymoore smiled stiffly and bowed. 
 Miss Ballymoore put a trifle more of condescension 
 
134 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 f^*^""**""^**^"^^^^^^^^"**"*^'^"'"^^^^^^^^^^^""^^^^"'*^^^^^"'^'*""'^ 
 
 into her manner as she also recognized Mrs. Val' 
 lant. 
 
 "How-do-you-do?" she asked, with a sweetness 
 that stung like a blizzard wind. 
 
 They then concentrated their attention on the 
 good Bleriot who was bustlingly at their service. 
 
 "But, yes, madame, mademoiselle's trousers will 
 be gathered at the ankles and the smock frock with- 
 out a belt, as you suggest but no ! The belt would 
 be gauche. Henri Stuck is making special drawings 
 including those admirable changes mademoiselle 
 was suggesting. . . . Ah, as you say, it is very 
 poor form, madame, to appear at these radical 
 meetings in a broadcloth street costume. Let me 
 show you what I mean." 
 
 Madame Bleriot came over to where Rosamonde 
 sat spitefully sketching with her gold pencil on the 
 back of an envelope. She had dropped the port- 
 folio to the floor. 
 
 "Pardon! Might I take just one of the draw- 
 ings only the one with the red medallions." 
 
 "Take them all," replied Rosamonde generously, 
 as she kicked the portfolio along the rug. "They 
 are all stupid. I'm working out a design for my- 
 self." 
 
 It was at that moment that Emily decided to try 
 her luck with the Comrades of Pomander Place. 
 
X 
 
 ROSAMONDE took Emily down to number eighteen 
 next morning in time for her to become acquainted 
 with the environment that was to be hers from 
 then on. In the hours surrounding lunch, she 
 found out much more about Bolshevikia than poor 
 Rosamonde could possibly dream of in her 
 philosophy. 
 
 The community luncheons for so they were 
 called had become almost overwhelmingly popu- 
 lar in the Quarter and for a reason at once ap- 
 preciated by the Comrades: The food was free. 
 Mrs. Finnessey had first thought of the plan, which 
 Comrade Walter Scott Syle had heartily indorsed, 
 although he ate there only occasionally. A long 
 rough table had been knocked together in the rear 
 room of the studio and upon this a red cloth was 
 forever spread. It was the only lunch-room in 
 New York which, utterly without advertising, 
 seemed to turn away customers from the first day. 
 Miss Felda Drigg and her husband, Mr. Eldred 
 Smole, of the Outburst, were, I might say, among 
 her steadiest patrons, and with them usually 
 coming early in order to get good seats were 
 Comrade Alfonzo, of Villa's way of thinking, Com- 
 
 135 
 
136 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 rade Tony the barber, the advanced Sinn Feiner 
 named Epstein and the dangerous Japanese Bol- 
 shevist, Comrade Hanako Niki. 
 
 Comrade Niki, yellowest of the Reds, was four 
 feet eight inches of untranslatable emotion. He 
 enjoyed over the other Comrades the advantage 
 of saying things which nobody but himself could 
 understand. There was always a Russian or an 
 Italian or a Balkan or a Finn present to translate 
 from the inspired remarks of compatriots; but 
 Comrade Niki went it alone. 
 
 It had been Professor Syle's suggestion that since 
 the luncheons were an experiment in communism 
 the Comrades should all pitch in together and do 
 the cooking. It had worked pretty well for one or 
 two enthusiastic days, but after that came chaos. 
 It seemed that Comrade Felda and Comrade Al- 
 fonzo had different ideas about making coffee 
 which led to words; Comrade Tony had insisted 
 that there should be spaghetti with every meal, but 
 Comrade Epstein, the Sinn Feiner, grew bitter at 
 the thought and pointed out that the Internationale 
 would protest against every suggestion of provin- 
 cialism. 
 
 On the third day it had looked as though there 
 would be no lunch, but Comrade Niki had solved 
 the situation in his artless Japanese way. The 
 Comrades were quarreling noisily among them- 
 selves. Rosamonde, who had got herself into one 
 of her village creations, was running hither and 
 thither, quite hysterically planning to break a num- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 137 
 
 ber of eggs into a frying pan and to add butter and 
 to stir it over a hot fire and to bid the Comrades 
 help themselves and be still. Then she had found 
 that the gas stove wouldn't work ; the stove was one 
 of those automatic quarter-in-the-slot affairs and 
 the mortgage had foreclosed itself, mechanically 
 speaking. 
 
 The Comrades had deserted the kitchen and were 
 assembled about the dining-room, a soviet about to 
 be born. 
 
 "I object to coercive measures either in public 
 or private life !" Miss Drigg had snapped, her com- 
 plexion yellowing over her orange-colored collar 
 as she glared at Comrade Alfonzo, who was show- 
 ing his teeth. 
 
 "It's de prmci-pal!" the Villista had growled. 
 "An' you call America free!" 
 
 "Who ever called America free?" Drigg's hus- 
 band had challenged, quick to avenge the insult. 
 
 Daggers had filled the air. Doom had impended. 
 Poor Rosamonde had been about to open a window 
 and call vulgarly for the capitalistic police, when 
 like a yellow little streak with a wiry black top- 
 knot Comrade Niki had got himself on a chair 
 and clapped his babylike hands. 
 
 "Yes. Yes. I say it!" He had grinned terrific- 
 ally and made a peculiar hissing sound as his black 
 pompadour bobbed innumerable times. "How can 
 you start that thing without doing anything? I 
 ask. Everybody be comfortable, please, for future 
 revolution. I cook." 
 
138 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 And without another word he got down and took 
 possession of the kitchen. 
 
 Emily got most of this from Rosamonde, related 
 in Rosamonde's own scatter-brained style in the 
 hour before lunch when Emily industriously studied 
 the peculiarities of Bolshevik decoration. She 
 thought she would get used to everything except the 
 portrait of Lenine, but that would always offend 
 her with the information that poor Rosamonde 
 had paid a hundred and fifty dollars for a comic 
 valentine. 
 
 Out in the little galley they called a kitchen she 
 could catch a glimpse of tiny Niki, surrounded by 
 fruits and vegetables, loudly chanting something 
 which he seemed to think was the Japanese inter- 
 national ode. It sounded like: 
 
 Ichi ko-ko! 
 Washi nero. 
 
 Can! Can! 
 No! No! 
 Go banzai! 
 Go sago, 
 Go kaliko. 
 
 Nichi-nichi 
 Ko-ko! 
 
 She complimented him on his song, whereupon 
 he stopped singing and looked at her with a flat cal- 
 culating eye. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 139 
 
 "How muchly you pay me per weekly?" he 
 asked. 
 
 She was somewhat taken aback. Then she put 
 to him the question which is usually disastrous in 
 dealings between an Oriental and an Occidental. 
 
 "How much do you want?" 
 
 "Eleven dollars sufficient." 
 
 "I no boss," she tried to make herself plain. 
 "Mrs. Valiant boss." 
 
 "No boss in world some more," Comrade Niki 
 voiced his version of Trotzky. 
 
 "Maybe not." 
 
 "You new Com-er-ar?" he asked, smiling and 
 bowing with a loud hiss. 
 
 "Much new," she agreed, returning bow for bow, 
 hiss for hiss. 
 
 "Mrs. Finnessey's away for a week; but, of 
 course, you'll have to dodge Aunt Carmen," said 
 Rosamonde, as soon as a few of the more eager 
 Comrades had strolled in to obtain free cigarettes 
 before the free food. 
 
 "My Lord! Does she come here?" 
 
 "She's been only once. Then she scolded me 
 because I was selfish, running the place all for my 
 own benefit, and she threatened to take away the 
 furniture and everything till I had to call in Com- 
 rade Walter to soothe her. Comrade Walter 
 swore up and down that the community lunch was 
 entirely for Aunt Carmen's benefit, but I couldn't 
 see how, as she hates spaghetti. Finally we com- 
 
140 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 promised by promising her that we would hold a 
 soviet of the Soviets just to show her how wonder- 
 fully we were getting on." 
 
 "What's a soviet of the Soviets?" asked Emily. 
 
 "It's like a house of bishops or something," re- 
 plied Rosamonde vaguely. "So we promised Aunt 
 Carmen one and she said she had the Knicker- 
 bocker ball Monday and bridge at Mrs. Jeckyl's 
 Tuesday, so Professor Syle settled on Wednesday 
 night."' 
 
 "That's to-morrow!" Emily was horrified. 
 
 "Don't worry, dear, we can poke you away some- 
 where." 
 
 "Oh, how I should love to be there !" cried Em- 
 ily, picturing in her mind how Aunt Carmen would 
 look in a soviet of the Soviets. 
 
 The luncheon, which was fully attended as usual, 
 consisted of spaghetti, a sample of Niki's nourish- 
 ing stew and much thin red wine. Thin red con- 
 versation, too, added mild stimulation. When a 
 Comrade wanted an extra helping, as he usually 
 did, he went out in the kitchen with his plate, cafe- 
 teria fashion, and helped himself. Emily sat next 
 to Comrade Alfonzo who, as he suavely explained, 
 had been exiled from Mexico which he pro- 
 nounced Me-hic-o for murdering a schoolmis- 
 tress. He seemed much distressed by the injus- 
 tice done him by his fellow men. Comrade Ep- 
 stein, occupying the place at her other hand, had 
 gone to Ireland to stir up trouble against the Eng- 
 lish government, but how he had fared seemed to 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 be a mystery locked in the breast of Comrade Ep- 
 stein. 
 
 Revolution was discussed pro and con, the word 
 being a stock one, employed about as frequently 
 as election is in ordinary party caucuses. But the 
 difference between revolution and election was that 
 election comes on a set day whereas revolution 
 seemed to be a will o' the wisp, now here, now 
 there. As the lunch waxed and some grew sleepy 
 Comrade Alfonzo was more and more for imme- 
 diate bloodshed. 
 
 "I kill," he said at last, and went staggering 
 down the stairs. 
 
 "Great heavens!" murmured Emily. "Who will 
 he kill?" 
 
 "Nobody," replied Comrade Epstein easily. "He 
 always goes that way." 
 
 Comrade Hattie, Comrade Elsa's meek, wizened 
 little roommate, wanted Fifth Avenue divided into 
 zones and policed by women with powers to stop 
 and arrest all persons with fortunes over two thou- 
 sand dollars. Emily didn't meet Comrade Elsa, 
 who was away somewhere attending a class in 
 something. Comrade Niki went right on with his 
 job, singing war songs as he worked and at about 
 half-past two he began clearing off the table with 
 a loud clatter. 
 
 The afternoon had reached its doldrums and the 
 comrades had gone back to their caves to sleep off 
 the effects of the community lunch when Pro- 
 fessor Walter Scott Syle called. He arrived 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 while Emily was trying to make something hu- 
 manly habitable out of the dungeon which was 
 henceforth to be her bedroom; from the studio 
 room she caught his unmistakable lecturing tones. 
 Through a crack in the door she could see him loll- 
 ing on the divan, his auburn eyes regarding Rosa- 
 monde, who sat in the attitude of a woman who 
 disapproves and, disapproving, smiles. She caught 
 an occasional sentence and gathered that Professor 
 Syle was distraught and was blaming it all to eco- 
 nomic conditions. 
 
 "Under the system of state marriages," she could 
 hear him say "and state marriages are the only 
 scientific arrangement please observe how well 
 the plan has worked in Russia under the soviet 
 constitution" Little Niki could be heard clattering 
 pans and singing the Japanese Marseillaise out in 
 the kitchen "there would be no chance for the ab- 
 surd domestic arrangement you have made with 
 that capitalist, Valiant. Under the new states such 
 a union would be regarded as both immoral and 
 illegal." 
 
 "You might leave my husband out of the argu- 
 ment," she replied, turning upon him for the first 
 time. 
 
 "Your husband! My dear child, you can't pos- 
 sibly be trying to support private ownership after 
 all I have taught you." 
 
 Emily laughed. She couldn't help laughing at 
 the thought of Merlin in the light of a public hus- 
 band. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 143 
 
 "He's privately owned by me, I don't care what 
 you say," Rosamonde replied. 
 
 Comrade Walter stroked his yellowish hair and 
 would have declared himself forthwith no doubt 
 had not the sound of feet on the painted slivery 
 studio floor startled him out of his mood. 
 
 "Oh, yes, we've met," smiled Emily at Rosa- 
 monde's attempted introduction. 
 
 "Not really?" Comrade Walter's affability was 
 beautiful to see. Apparently he had forgotten her. 
 
 "Oh, yes, at Mrs. van Laerens' and then at the 
 dinner party. I don't suppose you remember poor 
 little me you were just leaving when I saw you." 
 
 "Alone?" asked the confused one. 
 
 "No, I couldn't say that. You were arm and 
 arm with an alligator, as I remember it." 
 
 "Good gracious!" Syle came out of his Utopia 
 a moment and was natural. "Were you another 
 of those abominable capitalists?" 
 
 He moved a step toward the door, but paused 
 and looked again at Emily. Rosamonde, it was 
 plain, rather wished that he would go. 
 
 "Mottos and red flags and everything," said Em- 
 ily, looking round the place. "I suppose you keep 
 the bombs under that divan." 
 
 "No," corrected Professor Syle. "Literature." 
 
 "And literature and vodka and everything." 
 Emily beamed over the spectacle. "I want to have 
 a seat in the dress circle, not too near the stage, 
 and see what happens when Merlin Valiant comes 
 back. I do love a bullfight." 
 
144 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "If we stopped to consider the capitalists," an- 
 nounced Comrade Walter, pacing back and forth, 
 4 'there would be no revolution." 
 
 " You've said something, professor," beamed the 
 little intruder. 
 
 Rosamonde, nervously conscious of this false 
 note in the song of songs, hurried to change the 
 subject. 
 
 "It will be lovely of you to stay and look after 
 things." 
 
 "Lovely for me, I should say; I've plenty of 
 time." Then by way of explanation: "You see, 
 I was fired last night." 
 
 "Ah !" His look gained interest. 
 
 "From Beltman's. They took me back, but it 
 seems that life on Long Island completely spoiled 
 me for the glove counter. I had a swelled head, 
 I'm afraid. Anyhow the floorwalker told the man- 
 ager and I got mine inside a week." 
 
 "Just one of a million instances of capitalistic 
 injustice," Comrade Walter argued passionately. 
 
 "Fudge!" said Emily. "I got what was coming 
 to me. If you run a department store as a work- 
 ing girls' tea-party you've got to close up or move 
 to Sixth Avenue where customers don't seem to 
 care whether they're waited on or not. The trou- 
 ble with me was I'd got so used to being waited on 
 that I couldn't wait on anybody else. So I was 
 fired. I went across to Sixth Avenue, to Stacey's, 
 and was taken on in the kitchenware department. 
 I defy any girl trained to handle kid gloves to learn 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 145 
 
 a stock of agate ware in a week and get away with 
 it. I sold a sixty-seven-cent dishpan for a quarter 
 and well, the Wage Woman's Home got my 
 wages last night and here I am again." 
 
 "That's a remarkable story!" exclaimed Pro- 
 fessor Syle, who had been lowering in the shadows. 
 
 "Not so very," said Emily Ray. 
 
 "Would you mind coming to the Pilsen School 
 and telling it to them just as you've told it to me ?" 
 
 "I didn't tell it to you," replied Emily, ever so 
 sweetly. "But if you want to put it in the Raw 
 Deal I'm willing to write it at regular rates." 
 
 Comrade Walter was smoking alone under the 
 portrait of Lenine when Rosamonde, explaining 
 that she must dress for the street, led her little cou- 
 sin away to the bedroom. 
 
 "I wish I could stay to help set up the bed," said 
 Rosamonde, ever ready to flee when real work im- 
 pended. "But I must hurry home to dress for din- 
 ner Judie Annister, you know." 
 
 "It must be awfully lonesome here after dark," 
 Emily could not help saying. 
 
 "With Comrades Elsa and Hattie on the other 
 side of the wall? Don't be silly, my dear. Just 
 knock on their door and have them take the nails 
 out." 
 
 "And that nut?" 
 
 By the gesture of Emily's eyes it was easy to see 
 that the nut was Comrade Walter. 
 
 "He's never here except in the afternoon. You 
 can't imagine how harmless he is." 
 
146 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Rosa, you're the sweetest thing in the world," 
 cried Emily, gratitude overcoming her qualms. 
 "Have you any money? I can lend you enough 
 
 "I've got nearly a hundred dollars in the savings 
 bank. I hocked everything I owned, you see." 
 
 Taking advantage of the momentary softening 
 young Mrs. Valiant asked : 
 
 "Emily, won't you ever see Oliver any more ?" 
 
 "Oliver?" She stood back a pace and asked 
 stiffly: "Why should I?" 
 
 "It seems too queer, Emmy. You left Aunt Car- 
 men because you insisted on seeing him, and now 
 that you're free youVe absolutely dropped him." 
 
 "It's he that did the dropping, I'm afraid," she 
 said, again using that hushed voice. "Rosa, he as 
 much as told me that I was a fool, that I was born 
 to be a rich woman's niece, that I was giving up all 
 my chances." 
 
 "Well, we all thought that, I'm afraid," said her 
 cousin as kindly as she could. 
 
 "He more than thought it. And you know, 
 Rosa, I can't entirely forget a terrible thing Aunt 
 Carmen once said." 
 
 "About Oliver?" 
 
 "She called him a fortune hunter." 
 
 "Well, Emmy, when you live in the world, as we 
 do" strange forgetfulness of the circumambient 
 smell of Bohemia, of the prophet of discontent 
 smoking cheap cigarettes under Lenine's portrait 
 in the next room "we've got to consider where 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 147 
 
 our bread and butter's coming from. I think you're 
 a bit proud, my dear, and imaginative." 
 
 "Why doesn't he marry Aunt Carmen?" asked 
 Emily bitterly. 
 
 "Emmy!" 
 
 "He knew she couldn't bear the sight of him, but 
 the moment I broke with her he changed the bur- 
 den of his song." 
 
 So Rosamonde kissed her good night and went 
 forth with Professor Syle, who was escorting her 
 as far as her car, conveniently lurking on Fifth 
 Avenue. 
 
 "Were there ever more wonderful eyes?" Emily 
 thought she heard him murmur somewhere below 
 on the creaky stairs. "And such independence of 
 spirit. Turned to the public good what could it 
 not accomplish?" 
 
 "Speaking of Emily?" came Rosamonde's dis- 
 tant, rather asperate response. 
 
 Emily Ray found some cold spaghetti in the lit- 
 tle ice box, and when she had warmed this over 
 and made herself tea and a slice of toast on the 
 quarter-in-the-slot gas range she ate in solitude 
 and enjoyed it. Two seasons with Aunt Carmen 
 had turned her into a parasite; that she was 
 obliged to acknowledge. The hard competition of 
 the commercial world had sickened her of the game. 
 Here in this Mad Hatter's Shop she could make 
 herself useful enough; she could even pretend to 
 believe in their ravings a little. What was the dif- 
 ference, when all was said? Surely it would be less 
 
148 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 humiliating than polite serfdom in Mrs. Shallope's 
 white palace at Plainview. 
 
 After supper she washed the dishes, then re- 
 paired to her bedroom and set to work assembling 
 the mysterious skeleton of her iron bed. Those 
 who have tried this without expert instruction will 
 sympathize. She managed, after pinching her fin- 
 gers in the socket of the headpiece, to get a heavy 
 side rail fixed in place ; but when she sought to join 
 it to the foot it came loose at the other end and 
 permitted the headpiece to descend with a horrible 
 crash to the floor. She picked it up and, amidst a 
 weird clanking of iron, was starting all over again. 
 
 "You'd better let me help you with that." 
 
 The blood had gone to her head when she 
 looked up toward the voice, but it rushed rapidly 
 back to her heart after a moment's realization. 
 Oliver Browning, plump, young, wholesome and 
 accusing, stood in the doorway. 
 
 "No, thank you," she said coldly; "I don't need 
 any help." 
 
 And to prove her economic independence she 
 again permittted the headpiece to fall with an 
 earthquake roar. This time its jagged edge scraped 
 a yard of paper off the wall. 
 
 "Of course, you don't," grinned Oliver, reach- 
 ing for the disjointed sections and putting them 
 together with marvelous dexterity. "Free women 
 never need anything." 
 
 "Don't you dare call me a free woman!" she 
 commanded, squaring her elbows. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 149 
 
 "All right." He had just thrown the springs in 
 place with a vibrant crash. "I suppose you're per- 
 fectly happy here, far away from the sinful rich." 
 
 "I didn't ask you to come, Oliver," she informed 
 him. 
 
 "No, but your cousin seems to have a little sense 
 left in spite of the Red Rag Sisterhood. She rang 
 me up and told me where you were." 
 
 "I thank her." 
 
 "And I've come here to get you out of this den 
 and take you back to decent society." 
 
 "That's almost insulting, Oliver. I'm alone 
 here, but I can call for help." 
 
 "Start a Bolsheviki uprising, I suppose?" 
 
 Suddenly he sat down on the crashing springs 
 and ran his fingers desperately over his forehead 
 and through his hair. Emily had always thought 
 of it as nice hair; the sort she would have liked to 
 stroke, but his wild attention rumpled it to a head- 
 dress as comic as any that showed in the Pilsen 
 School of Radical Culture. 
 
 "Emily," he groaned. "Poor little Emmy! 
 Please forget the way I've talked. But can't you 
 see can't you understand how I feel?" 
 
 "One style of conversation for a drawing-room 
 and another for a studio, I suppose." 
 
 "What do you mean by that?" 
 
 "About as much as you mean by that," she 
 drawled. Even then, standing with her back to the 
 wall, her knees weak, she longed to cry and beg 
 him be kind to her and forgive and take her away. 
 
150 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "I've gone down in your estimation I'm poor and 
 and I'm a criminal." 
 
 "If you only knew the world !" 
 
 She laughed. Since her entrance into Utopia 
 she had twice been requested to remember the 
 world. 
 
 "Of course it sounds romantic and all that sort 
 of thing to be free and independent and wear cir- 
 cus clothes. But it's rot, I tell you. This Bol- 
 shevik business isn't a philosophy; it's a disease. 
 It's going through the country like flu." 
 
 "Rich people have the flu, too," she suggested. 
 
 "You'd be protected in your aunt's house. 
 She doesn't like me, but I'll give her credit for one 
 thing she isn't flirting with these putrid Green- 
 wich Village ideas. You could have stayed there 
 until I got on my feet and we could have " 
 
 "I can stay here till you get on your feet," she 
 found herself arguing, just as though her marriage 
 with this man were still possible. 
 
 "Emily!" He had come up bouncing like a rub- 
 ber ball. "You'll not stay here another night." 
 
 "Who's to prevent me?" she asked, and held on 
 to the little iron bed as though to an anchor. 
 
 He looked at her a full minute with his round 
 eyes, which managed to convey much melancholy. 
 
 "Oh, I won't," he said quite gently, and turned 
 precisely on his heel to limp out of the place. 
 
 She could hear his retreating footsteps through 
 the echoing studio. She heard the door bang 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 151 
 
 resonantly, then his uneven lame man l s tramp- 
 tramp down the crazy little stairs. 
 
 How deserted the place seemed ! How it smelled 
 of smoky incense burned to false gods! The ill- 
 painted portrait of Lenine gleamed foggily by a 
 single lamp in the big room. Beyond the partition 
 an unhappy, fanatical, nasal soprano seemed to be 
 chanting forever the wrongs of humanity. Emily 
 Ray shuddered and turned to flee into the street. 
 But where? After all there was open to her no 
 better place than here. 
 
XI 
 
 QUITE aside from its advantages as a paradise 
 of free board and keep Emily decided that the 
 Bolshevist studio was quite the most amusing sanc- 
 tuary she had sought during the twenty wandering 
 years of her life. The morning after her final en- 
 counter with her unworthy lover found her merry 
 as a cricket, bustling about Rosamonde's den of 
 higher thought in the act of appeasing a very hu- 
 man hunger. She resurrected bread, eggs and 
 coffee from Comrade Niki's neat kitchen, and when 
 she had converted these into edible quantities and 
 taken the result to the orange-colored table in the 
 dining-room she pulled up an orange-colored chair 
 and fell to with a wholesome young appetite. 
 
 She chuckled as she ate, and laughter helps the 
 digestion. How like Rosamonde to have devised 
 this eminently artificial amusement! What would 
 Merlin say to it all? It was like giving a spoiled 
 child several pretty packages of dynamite to play 
 with. Would poor charming Rosa manage to blow 
 something up? Emily, if the truth were told, didn't 
 much care that morning. She was weary unto 
 death of looking for work and being discharged 
 and looking again. After all she believed in Bol- 
 shevism quite as much as she believed in half the 
 
 152 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 153 
 
 silly fads forced upon her in Aunt Carmen's 
 gilded environment. And here was freedom; free- 
 dom from the arrogance of self-appointed superiors 
 whether in the Plainview palace or the Sixth Ave- 
 nue kitchen-ware department. 
 
 Emily thought of herself staying indefinitely 
 among these queer fish from the backwaters of 
 Washington Square. Orange furniture, pinkish 
 curtains, orange souls, pinkish thoughts; neutral 
 tinted walls lined with futuristic portraits of revo- 
 lutionary leaders; a brotherhood and a sisterhood 
 always round her like one big family whose com- 
 mon vice is that fatal drug of radicals, talk. 
 Dreaming over a slice of toast and a good cup of 
 coffee, Emily had a feeling that she had beaten the 
 world at last. She pictured herself as living here, 
 pleasantly drugged by strange combinations of 
 colors and ideas. It would be an easy life. And 
 after a while she would drift into spinsterhood. 
 
 The studio door was pushed slowly open and 
 some one entered without knocking. It was a tall 
 raw-boned woman whose sallow cheeks suggested 
 the spinster and the rumpled condition of whose 
 short hair and long smock frock indicated that she 
 had slept in both and made no attempt to arrange 
 them for the day. In her scrawny right hand she 
 held a teacup, and so absorbed she seemed upon 
 her errand that she never looked round to observe 
 the girl at the orange table. Striding grimly ahead 
 in her shapeless slippers she crossed the studio 
 room and entered the kitchen. The clatter of tin 
 
154 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 boxes, the crumpling of paper bags, the rattle of 
 knives indicated a visit and search. Emily smiled 
 again and held her peace. 
 
 Presently the gaunt specter of maidenhood came 
 out of the kitchen, and now she held the teacup at 
 a careful angle. In her lean right hand were two 
 eggs and under her scrawny elbow half a loaf of 
 bread. 
 
 "You've forgotten the butter," said Emily in the 
 gentlest possible voice. 
 
 Whereupon the gaunt one gave a smothered 
 "Oh!" halted dead in her tracks and dropped an 
 
 egg- 
 
 "I'm sorry," exclaimed Emily, coming to the 
 rescue with a spoon. "I didn't mean to scare you." 
 
 "I I didn't know " The maiden lady was 
 
 faltering, edging toward the door as though to save 
 herself in precipitate flight. 
 
 "I'm Mrs. Valiant's cousin," Emily explained. 
 "I'm staying here now." 
 
 "You're one of the Comrades?" came an acrid 
 challenge. 
 
 "I'm not sure. But won't you sit down?" 
 
 "I'm Comrade Elsa," said the interloper, and 
 somehow the explanation seemed to ease her con- 
 science as to the raw provisions she was carrying 
 away on the communistic principle. 
 
 "I've got some coffee made and I can boil you 
 two eggs in less time than it takes to steal them," 
 suggested Emily in a warm, sympathetic tone. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 155 
 
 "I don't understand your terms," snapped Com- 
 rade Elsa. 
 
 "I'm sorry/' said Emily, although she didn't 
 look it. 
 
 "You must be a capitalist." This accusation was 
 dripping with scorn. 
 
 "Oh, thank you I could kiss you for that! No- 
 body has hinted that for weeks and weeks. How 
 wealthy it makes me feel ! But come on, I'll divide 
 my coffee with you and boil you an egg " 
 
 "No, thank you." Comrade Elsa was ever so 
 stubborn about it. Nevertheless she pursed her 
 lips and followed Emily into the dining-room where 
 she permitted coffee to be poured for her and a 
 four-minute egg to be broken in a cup. The egg 
 that remained from her looting she still retained 
 on her side of the table. Emily had a suspicion 
 that it was being reserved for Comrade Hattie, 
 who dwelt on the other side of the sealed door. 
 
 "I'm an awful greenhorn," confessed Emily, the 
 while she watched Comrade Elsa's struggles with a 
 piece of toast, an event which required skill be- 
 cause several teeth were missing from Elsa's upper 
 set. 
 
 "Yes." Elsa gnawed pessimistically. "But 
 you'll learn." 
 
 "Of course I will, if I'm not too stupid." 
 
 "We have a class for defective children at the 
 Pilsen School," Elsa assured her, and made a great 
 noise with her coffee. 
 
 "Are you connected with the Pilsen School?" 
 
156 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "If you ever went there you'd know that/' 
 
 "I suppose to free enlightened minds that ques- 
 tion is as bad as asking who was president during 
 the Civil War." 
 
 "The Civil War was a capitalist plot against the 
 proletariat," announced Elsa, and poured herself 
 another cup of coffee. 
 
 "Of course it was," said Emily soothingly. In- 
 wardly she was convulsed. "Would you forgive 
 me for asking what you teach at the Pilsen 
 School?" 
 
 "I would," grunted Comrade Elsa in a thin New 
 England voice. 
 
 "Well, what do you teach?" 
 
 "Motherhood." 
 
 "Sweet spirits of turpentine !" Emily hadn't in- 
 tended to giggle, but her disturbing trill echoed 
 through Rosamonde's temple of reason. 
 
 "Is that necessary?" It looked as though Elsa 
 were about to hurl her cup. 
 
 "I suppose not. But if we stuck to things that 
 were necessary lots of our noble institutions would 
 go out of business. How many children have you, 
 Comrade Elsa?" 
 
 "What has that got to do with it?" The Com- 
 rade set her cup down with a bang. 
 
 "Oh, nothing maybe." 
 
 "Nothing less than nothing! The very proc- 
 esses of motherhood unfit the mother to know the 
 child. The mother's emotional nature is over- 
 developed, her judgment cramped, her vision nar- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 157 
 
 rowed. The childless individual occupies a supe- 
 rior altitude whereby the child may be studied in 
 the light of synthetic analysis." 
 
 "Synthetic children!" gasped Emily. 
 
 "I didn't say synthetic children!" snapped her 
 new-found comrade. 
 
 "Of course not. I suppose the altitude you speak 
 of helps you to teach the children how to wash 
 above their wrists and how not to mark up the 
 woodwork and not to play with the gas log and 
 how to say their prayers and how to eat their cereal 
 without getting it all over the rug and how not to 
 chew the soap when they're being bathed " 
 
 "It teaches no such thing." Comrade Elsa arose 
 and began gathering unto herself the raw egg, the 
 half loaf and the cup of ground coffee. "The chil- 
 dren of the Pilsen School are not concerned with 
 cereal food and and soap." The last word was 
 shot out like a deadly projectile. 
 
 "Well, what are they concerned with?" 
 
 "The psychology of discontent." 
 
 "My word! I didn't know you had to send a 
 child to school to learn discontent." 
 
 "Quite to the contrary. Scientific discontent is 
 all-important in the growth of the coming race. 
 The Pilsen School is, you might say, a college of 
 discontent. From the kindergarten classes to the 
 post-graduate courses discontent in all its branches 
 is taught. Otherwise the revolution could never 
 be." 
 
 "I suppose not," agreed Emily rather weakly. 
 
158 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "You'll learn about us in time," Comrade Elsa 
 rather patronizingly assured her as she retreated 
 toward the door. 
 
 "I think I'm beginning to get you already," sang 
 out Emily, and managed to maintain her calm. 
 
 Emily had scarcely washed the dishes and 
 smoothed her hair to a most un-Bolshevik smooth- 
 ness than a gentle tapping at the door announced 
 another visitor. This time it was Professor Syle, 
 and the look upon his auburn countenance assured 
 her that he had called to see her and none other. 
 However, he betrayed a tendency to temporize, 
 which was slightly out of key in the home of truth. 
 
 "Comrade Rosamonde promised to come down 
 early and finish arrangements for the soviet dinner 
 to-morrow night," he began smoothly. 
 
 "I seldom knew her to get up before noon," an- 
 nounced Emily, who had an instinct to disagree 
 with everything he said. 
 
 "You would be surprised what emancipation has 
 done for her," he smiled. "She is often down by 
 eleven o'clock." 
 
 "Even peace has its soldiers," said Emily. "It's 
 now about half -past ten." 
 
 "Just time for a talk." He settled himself easily 
 on the self-made divan and motioned her to a place 
 beside him. Instead she pulled out another one of 
 those orange chairs. 
 
 "About this dinner party you're going to give 
 my Aunt Carmen Mrs. Shallope. What's pos- 
 sessed the old girl? She's spent her happy child- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 159 
 
 hood shooting down the lower classes in squads 
 and platoons. What are you going to do to amuse 
 her?" 
 
 "She will be a very valuable convert," he sol- 
 emnly informed Emily. "And she is now on the 
 brink of conversion. Comrade Rosamonde warned 
 me that we must stress the picturesque side of our 
 cause in order to " He hesitated for a word. 
 
 "I know. She's crazy about vaudeville." 
 
 "We are making this soviet of Soviets an occa- 
 sion to introduce to this country Corporal Anna 
 Fishkoff." 
 
 "Corporal Anna Fishkoff?" echoed Emily, her- 
 self not averse to a little vaudeville. 
 
 "Of course you've heard of her she fought with 
 the Russian Battalion of Death, you remember." 
 
 "Naturally." 
 
 There fell a pause during which Comrade Wal- 
 ter regarded her with the same eyes he had but last 
 night devoted to her cousin. 
 
 "Comrade Emily," he began, "if you are to be- 
 come one of us it would be well for you to receive 
 a little preliminary instruction." 
 
 "Who ever said I was going to become one of 
 you?" she asked pertly. 
 
 "Oh, but, of course, you will " 
 
 "Fve seen one of you, just now," she resumed, 
 "and I think she's a nut." 
 
 "Who was that?" 
 
 She was longing to stir him to a frenzy just as 
 she had stirred the recent comrade of the raw egg. 
 
160 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 However, considering his controlled features and 
 generally repressed demeanor she concluded that 
 he would be somewhat more difficult to handle. 
 
 "Elsa she called herself. I suppose she's got an- 
 other name somewhere out in the great wicked 
 world." 
 
 "Poor Comrade Elsa !" sighed the Professor, but 
 did not explain his sigh. 
 
 "But with you," he added, flushing to a bright 
 strawberry, "it will be different. You are very 
 pretty, my dear in many ways beautiful. You 
 can exert a great power in our midst." 
 
 Had Emily regarded him as anything but a man 
 of theories this avowal might have alarmed her. 
 As it was it filled her with ecstatic amusement. It 
 would be immensely diverting to have this super- 
 human, subnormal person capering back and forth 
 at her behest. Then she thought, not without ran- 
 cor, of Oliver Browning. After all Emily was a 
 frivolous Ray at heart. 
 
 "With the great weight of the laboring masses 
 on your shoulders and I guess they must weigh 
 a powerful lot have you come all the way here to 
 tell me I'm a pretty girl and in many ways beauti- 
 ful?" she quizzed him with her penetrating gray 
 eyes. 
 
 "Ah, but Miss Ray Comrade Emily " For 
 
 the first time in his public career, possibly, Pro- 
 fessor Syle lost the power of speech. 
 
 "Because if you have you've taken a lot of 
 trouble to do a very commonplace thing. You 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 161 
 
 know when I was out on Long Island living with 
 the sinful rich I used to have college boys tell me 
 that almost every night. They did it a great deal 
 better than you do. Practice, you know. Just the 
 way you have learned to make dynamite beautiful 
 by talking about it over and over again." 
 
 "You haven't come here to make fun of the 
 Cause!" he gasped, reddening a still deeper straw- 
 berry. 
 
 "Oh, nothing so ambitious as that. I'm here for 
 the same reason that a lot of Comrades are here." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 "Free lunch," said Emily. 
 
 Comrade Walter studied her a long time. His 
 face gradually paled back to its natural straw- 
 color. 
 
 "By Jove," he murmured, "you are wonderful!" 
 
 "The college boys used to tell me that, too, nearly 
 every night when Aunt Carmen was giving a 
 party." 
 
 "Oh, yes," he agreed in his abstracted tone. 
 "You are one of that family, aren't you? Com- 
 rade Carmen," he added in a more sprightly man- 
 ner, "is a remarkable acquisition to our cause." 
 
 "Isn't she!" exclaimed Emily. "And what in 
 the world do you think her game is?" 
 
 "The trouble with you capitalists is," he ex- 
 plained, coming back to his pedantic style, "that 
 you express everything in the terms of sport. You 
 would think that the world revolution were a game 
 of tennis." 
 
162 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Isn't it?" she asked, opening her eyes wide. 
 She was now sure that Comrade Walter would be 
 worth cultivating. 
 
 "Wonderful!" he whispered, and looked at her 
 again long and feelingly. 
 
 The pause became embarrassing, because it was 
 only while he was talking that she could think of 
 something to say back. 
 
 "Comrade," he said at last in his best platform 
 voice, "there is a phase in the process of our race 
 development which I confess puzzles me." 
 
 "Don't admit it in your lectures," she warned 
 him, "or you'll lose your job." 
 
 "Wonderful!" he exclaimed again, then: "The 
 personal quantity as opposed to the impersonal 
 mass. We who are in the advance guard of prog- 
 ress have trained ourselves to think in large num- 
 bers, I confess, and to neglect the personal or 
 more strictly speaking the human quantity. In 
 arranging a program for the entire human race 
 there is a danger of overlooking the relations, say, 
 which exist between two actors in the great drama, 
 a man and a woman." 
 
 "I suppose that means in plain United States 
 that you are going to tell me the story of your 
 life." 
 
 "The story of my life," he admitted modestly, 
 "is the story of the human race." 
 
 "Of course. How stupid of me!" 
 
 He had been cocking one of his auburn eyes 
 toward the hundred-and-fifty-dollar futurist por- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 163 
 
 trait of Lenine, but abruptly he sighted his eye- 
 glasses upon Emily Ray. 
 
 "Your cousin, Comrade Rosamonde, is, I should 
 say, a peculiar convert. Capitalistic luxury has so 
 surrounded her that she is unable to view the world 
 revolution in its true perspective." 
 
 "Have you guessed it?" She was beginning to 
 consider Comrade Walter a cleverer man than she 
 had at first thought. 
 
 "She has done much noble work and will do 
 more. But she has due to her inexperience in the 
 great human drama made a natural mistake. She 
 has fallen in love with me." 
 
 "Of course," said Emily, narrowing her eyes. 
 "That would be natural." 
 
 "But the circumstances under which I work have 
 made such an alliance impossible. In the first place, 
 the interference of her bourgeois husband " 
 
 "Has she ever confessed her hopeless passion for 
 you?" asked Emily Ray, drawing down her upper 
 lip and folding her hands. 
 
 "Not directly, but a thousand indications have 
 convinced me of her state of mind. How other- 
 wise would she have quit her plutocratic home to 
 take up quarters here? How otherwise would she 
 have followed me in my lectures among people 
 who, I am sure, are physically repulsive to one of 
 her tender rearing?" 
 
 "How otherwise?" echoed Emily, still holding 
 that look. 
 
 "And my agony of mind purely humanitarian 
 
164 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 has been most aggravating, most injurious to 
 my work. I could see in her a fine woman reared 
 under a false system and turning to me as a beacon 
 light in a new era." Suddenly Comrade Walter 
 snapped his fingers. "But it is impossible. And 
 until you came " 
 
 "What's the idea about my coming?" asked 
 Emily, intrigued by this Mad Hatter's confession. 
 
 "I had no idea where to turn. But you can 
 clarify it all." 
 
 "Well, I'm glad of that. But how, please?" 
 
 "By marrying me." 
 
 Emily whistled, a long, annoying and unmaiden- 
 ly whistle. 
 
 "Perhaps, being uninitiated, you think me pe- 
 culiar," he fumbled. 
 
 "Not in the least," she said. "I have met some 
 like you on Long Island. Only we call them fast 
 workers out there." 
 
 "But you haven't answered me " 
 
 Professor Syle was leaning far forward when 
 the door opened and Rosamonde Valiant came in. 
 Her cheeks were rosy from her walk down from 
 Fifth Avenue. That might have accounted for her 
 high coloring. 
 
 "Comrade Rosamonde!" cried Syle, rising 
 hastily. 
 
 "Oh, I'm so glad you're here," said Rosa, look- 
 ing swiftly toward her cousin. "I've ordered six 
 gallons of claret and twelve cases of beer do you 
 think that will be enough? Merlin has some won- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 165 
 
 derful champagne in the cellar, but he went away 
 and took the keys with him." 
 
 "That will be enough, I'm sure," said Comrade 
 Walter, standing stiffly at attention. 
 
 "Have you seen that Jennie Fishcake you know, 
 the Battalion of Death woman?" 
 
 "Corporal Anna Fishkoff?" corrected Syle with 
 dignity. "She will be delighted to come." 
 
 As the luncheon hour approached and Comrade 
 Niki, frenzied by kitchen work, was shouting his 
 samurai-socialist ditty in his galley, Rosamonde 
 took her cousin to one side, and holding her hand 
 with more than usual affection said: 
 
 "Emmy, I wonder if you would do me a favor?" 
 
 "That's what I'm here for, dear," announced the 
 poor relation. 
 
 "Comrade Walter I think he's got the heart of 
 a hero, I really do. He keeps his great brain going 
 all the time and never thinks of himself. But he's 
 awfully idealistic." 
 
 "Yes, I've noticed that." 
 
 "Well, weVe been thrown together in such a way 
 he's not used to the world our world. And I'm 
 afraid " She hesitated. 
 
 "That he's getting fond of you?" 
 
 "Well, I think so. He follows me round all the 
 time. Of course I like it. But then there's Merlin. 
 He'll be back next week, I suppose; and I simply 
 can't have Comrade Walter telephoning and asking 
 
166 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 r*^"^**'"''*''^^"^^^^^'"^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^"^^^^^^^^ 
 
 to call at the house. Won't you be a good sport, 
 dear, and " 
 
 'Take him off your hands?" 
 
 "Well, yes. I don't think he's the sort that for- 
 gets a great love very soon. But you're so pretty 
 and charming, Emmy, and I'm sure you could 
 divert him." 
 
 "And he might even propose to me," suggested 
 Emily. 
 
 "Oh, no, I don't think he'd do that," replied her 
 cousin reassuringly, speaking as though her mind 
 were only half on the subject. "Don't you think 
 it would be amusing to have red lanterns strung 
 from the ceiling and red candles to give the dinner 
 a regular you know Russian flavor?" 
 
 And Emily went to work, surer than ever that 
 Alice could have gone no deeper into Wonderland. 
 Her Wonderland theory developed as the day wore 
 on, for in the middle of the afternoon, when men 
 came with the claret and beer charged to Merlin 
 Valiant's account, Rosamonde had a thought. 
 
 "Merlin will see the bill and ask what it's all 
 about and there would be no end of a scene," she 
 parleyed. "But I've come here without a cent. 
 My man, will you call for the money to-morrow?" 
 
 "No, ma'am," decreed the one whom she had 
 addressed as Her Man. "You'll either have to pay 
 now or let it go on the bill." 
 
 "Don't be impertinent," said Rosamonde, then 
 appealed to Emily. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 167 
 
 "My money's all in the bank," said the poor 
 cousin. 
 
 "Won't you take a check, my man ?" asked Rosa- 
 monde. 
 
 She hesitated and looked helplessly round as 
 though she were going to cry. At the instant Pro- 
 fessor Syle, fresh from a lecture, came in, an act 
 of Providence. 
 
 "We're comin' round this way again at five, 
 lady," suggested Her Man. 
 
 "And in the meantime you can get a check cashed 
 somewhere," Emily brought in her consolation. 
 
 "The banks are all closed," said Rosamonde. 
 "Haven't you any credit round the neighborhood, 
 Comrade Walter?" 
 
 "The school sometimes has some," volunteered 
 Walter Scott Syle, coming out of a cloud and going 
 back again at once. 
 
 "Well, do you think you'd have time to " 
 
 "I'll go!" suggested Emily, mostly because she 
 wanted to see the Pilsen School of Radical Cul- 
 ture. 
 
 So without protest from Comrade Walter she 
 took the check and walked demurely to the 
 Pilsen School which rears its discontented head 
 among the fire escapes of a sweatshop section not 
 far from lower Fifth Avenue. Emily found the 
 entrance hall to freedom rather a drabby, drafty 
 place, whose walls were lined with cards, bulletins 
 and scraps of paper announcing everything from a 
 militant-suffrage protest mass meeting to a Dance 
 
168 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 of the Cooties in Beersteiner's Hall. It looked as 
 though anybody with a thumb tack, a sheet of paper 
 and an idea could find free wall space here. In 
 one comprehensive glance she saw advertisements 
 for a number of things including "The Anarch at 
 Home," a lecture course on Maximilism in Japan, a 
 people's series of Free Art Dancing and a pearl- 
 handled penknife lost in the reading room on Fri- 
 day night. A more dignified printed sign, centered 
 in this chaos, announced : "Professor Walter Scott 
 Syle, Monday 3:30. Topic: Hallucinations of 
 Power." 
 
 Spectacled persons laden with discontented liter- 
 ature hurried out of lecture rooms. Several beetle- 
 browed, stubby girls stood by the elevator flirting 
 with an equal number of stubby, beetle-browed 
 men. 
 
 "Why ain't you strikin' this week, Sadie?" asked 
 one of the men coyly. 
 
 "Gotta work some time, ain't I ?" retorted Sadie 
 in a kittenish tone of voice. Which was considered 
 a great joke in the Pilsen School apparently, for 
 the bare hall echoed with giggles. 
 
 "I'll betcha the sodas the button molders walk 
 out before Sat'day," challenged the youngest of the 
 swains. 
 
 Youth will be served, whether downtrodden or 
 uplifted ! 
 
 Beyond the busy bookseller's shop Emily found 
 a den marked "Treasurer," so she entered to face 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 169 
 
 a beady-eyed, hawk- featured female who sat 
 thumbing yellow vouchers. 
 
 "Can I cash a check?" asked Emily, feeling that 
 in this home of fellowship such a question would 
 be all but superfluous. 
 
 "Identified?" drawled the treasurer suspiciously. 
 
 "Professor Walter Scott Syle sent me." 
 
 "Sorry," said the maiden with a bitter smile. 
 "Cash is closed for the day." 
 
 "Thank you," said Emily. 
 
 "Not at all," whined the altruist, looking the in- 
 truder over as if in search of hidden arms. 
 
 When Emily got back to Pomander Place with 
 the ill tidings she found Comrade Walter still lec- 
 turing while the ladies did the work of decorating. 
 
 "The treasurer wouldn't give me any money," 
 complained Emily. 
 
 "I thought he wouldn't," declared Syle, cheerful 
 as one who had proved a point. 
 
 "Look here, Comrade Walter," commanded 
 Rosamonde. "I've got to keep Emily here to help. 
 But I know where you can get some money. Just 
 go down to my husband's office " 
 
 "And meet your husband?" 
 
 "Oh, no, he's in California. But I'll make you 
 out a check and give you a note to Mr. Steeley, the 
 cashier. He's a dear. And you can take my car 
 it's waiting at Twelfth Street and the Avenue." 
 
 "The liquor man will be back at five," whined 
 Comrade Elsa, like the bird of ill omen that she 
 was. 
 
170 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 So Professor Syle stood attention while the 
 woman who was either in love with him or not, 
 according to how you looked at it, wrote a polite 
 note to Mr. Steeley explaining that a check would 
 be borne by Professor Syle and should be cashed. 
 Then she made out another check for fifteen dol- 
 lars more than she would need, the addition being a 
 matter of habit 
 
XII 
 
 ONE of the many peculiarities of Bolshevikia, as 
 Emily found after three days' residence there, was 
 that everything was run by a program and that no 
 program ever went through. Two hours before the 
 soviet dinner she had about made up her mind that 
 this particular program was destined to blow itself 
 up or disappear into thin air on the eve of con- 
 summation. 
 
 There was no doubt that Rosamonde had ordered 
 regardless, as the saying goes. It was all for Aunt 
 Carmen. The Comrades could stand Washington 
 Square food, even liked it; but anybody who knew 
 Aunt Carmen knew just how long that great lady 
 would stick by any cause whose cuisine was under 
 par. Therefore the spaghetti for spaghetti it 
 must be was ordered from Tanquay's at Tan- 
 quay's prices; soup, fish, game and sweets were to 
 be imported into Bolshevikia from the same fash- 
 ionable establishment. The viands would arrive, 
 neatly packed, at a late hour in the afternoon. But 
 at the hour of six Hitch Number One loomed large 
 upon the horizon. 
 
 The dinner had not come. Emily had telephoned 
 from a drug store round the corner, to be informed 
 by Tanquay's that the goods had been sent and 
 must be there; the voice over the wire washed its 
 
 171 
 
172 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 hands mixed metaphorically speaking of the af- 
 fair. So Emily hurried back to the studio with the 
 ill tidings, only to find Hitch Number Two sitting 
 on the divan in the person of Professor Walter 
 Scott Syle. The Professor was scratching his 
 thoughtful brow while Rosamonde, clad in the Bol- 
 shevikest of her village-made costumes a checker- 
 board tunic with apple green Turkish trousers 
 stood by the window, her back turned. 
 
 "Tanquay says he sent the things two hours 
 ago," announced Emily. 
 
 "They haven't come," replied the doleful Rosa- 
 monde. 
 
 "Well, we can raise fifty cents and get some 
 more," suggested cheerful Emily. She wasn't 
 to be permitted to come to the dinner and face Aunt 
 Carmen, therefore the calamity seemed of minor 
 importance. 
 
 "Yes," said Rosamonde abstractedly. 
 
 "What in the world is the matter?" asked her 
 cousin, sensing something deeper than mere physi- 
 cal drouth. 
 
 Rosamonde wheeled suddenly: 
 
 "That Battalion of Death woman " 
 
 "Corporal Anna Fishkoff," supplied Syle in a 
 graveyard voice. "She isn't coming." 
 
 "Is that the end of the world?" inquired Emily. 
 
 "It's the end of Aunt Carmen," moaned Rosa- 
 monde. "We promised to have Anna Fishkoff 
 here. If she doesn't come Aunt Carmen will get 
 mad and go home. I know her." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 173 
 
 "It won't wreck the cause of freedom if Aunt 
 Carmen quits, will it?" 
 
 "Most certainly not," snapped Comrade Walter, 
 but his quick denial plainly announced that he had 
 his reasons for wooing Aunt Carmen. 
 
 "Professor Syle wants to make a lot of converts 
 among the upper classes," Rosamonde was admit- 
 ting when Emily broke in. 
 
 "With that get-up you might pass as a major- 
 general in the Turkish Battalion of Death." 
 
 "Of course I might," replied Rosamonde, appar- 
 ently tickled in her sense of the dramatic. "I might 
 if it were anybody but Aunt Carmen." 
 
 "Don't talk nonsense," commanded the great 
 master of nonsense, rumpling his pinkish hair. 
 
 "Emily, dear," asked her cousin in the sweetest 
 possible voice, "I've got thirteen dollars and a half 
 left. It won't buy all I wanted to have, but you 
 might run round the corner to Raffaeli's and get 
 that much spaghetti. Will you?" 
 
 Automatically for her mind was far away from 
 spaghetti Neapolitane Emily took the money and 
 disappeared among the gathering shadows of Po- 
 mander Place. She had gone but a few steps along 
 the toy sidewalk leading toward the frowning 
 building with the high clock tower when a door 
 above one of the quaint porches opened and a man 
 appeared, a bulky silhouette in a patch of light. In 
 either hand he carried a large metal container. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," he sang out as she passed. 
 
174 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Speaking to me?" She paused, ready upon 
 alarm to run back to the safety of number eighteen. 
 
 "Did you people in number eighteen lose some 
 stuff from Tanquay's?" 
 
 "I should say we did!" cried Emily, and on the 
 impulse she ran up the steps as if to snatch the 
 cans from robber hands. In the patch of light she 
 got a look at the man's face in the overhead glare. 
 It was Oliver Browning. 
 
 "I suppose the mistake was natural down here 
 where nothing hits just right," he was saying with 
 his trace of a Virginian drawl. "You see your 
 number is eighteen and mine is eight " 
 
 "Your number!" she gasped. 
 
 "My own. I moved into furnished rooms last 
 night." 
 
 She had a feeling that she shouldn't speak to 
 him, but instead she laughed: 
 
 "Oliver Browning, what right have you to move 
 into my alley?" 
 
 "I say, Miss Emily," he drawled, "don't you 
 think that a sort of capitalistic way to talk down 
 here? Suppose the Comrades " 
 
 "Aren't you going to let me have my dinner?" 
 
 "Your dinner? Girl, girl!" Despite her out- 
 reaching hand he still held on to the tin boxes. 
 "Even out in the big wicked world they wouldn't 
 be yours until they were delivered." 
 
 He stood there with a broad smile which some- 
 how made Emily regret that he was what she knew 
 him to be. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 175 
 
 "How in the world did you choose this place?" 
 she found herself asking. 
 
 "Oh, I have a reason," he replied, intimating 
 that she had none. "Down here it's much more 
 convenient to the horse marts than uptown just a 
 short ride on the Eighth Avenue line and transfer 
 at Third " 
 
 "Is that your true reason?" She eyed him 
 closely. 
 
 "The truest reason you'll find in Greenwich Vil- 
 lage." 
 
 In her feminine heart of hearts she wished that 
 he had admitted that he had come to look after 
 her; but instead he grinned teasingly, as he stood 
 there, his arms stretched taut with their freight of 
 expensive food. 
 
 "If you don't let me have it," she pleaded, reach- 
 ing again, "it'll be late for the dinner." 
 
 "Good Lord!" She was afraid he was going 
 again to indulge in the tirade against all radicals. 
 Instead he maintained his amused demeanor. 
 "Are the Brethren holding a powwow?" 
 
 "Rosamonde's giving it for Aunt Carmen," she 
 explained. "She's a convert, you know." 
 
 "Wow!" Oliver nearly dropped his right-hand 
 burden and she had almost recovered it when he 
 ceased to bellow and again clutched it tight. "Aunt 
 Carmen !" 
 
 "Is that so strange?" she asked, trying to remain 
 cool. 
 
 "Nothing's strange down here except sanity. 
 
176 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Whoops! For a nickel I'd put on a German tunic 
 and mix in with the fun. A German tunic would 
 take you anywhere down here." 
 
 "Oliver!" she fairly screamed. "Have you got 
 one?" 
 
 "A German tunic?" he supplied. "Sure, I've got 
 one. Brought it home in a paper bag. Like to 
 seek?" 
 
 "Would you lend it to me, Oliver?" 
 
 "What do you want with it ?" His voice grew a 
 trifle stern. 
 
 "It won't look very German," she earnestly in- 
 formed him. "And it will do a lot of good. Please, 
 Oliver! If you'll lend it to me I'll let you come to 
 the party." " 
 
XIII 
 
 DRESSING excitedly behind a curtain Emily spied 
 upon the early scenes of the drama enacted con- 
 veniently in front of her bedroom door. Aunt Car- 
 men was apparently as eager to be at the dinner as 
 her niece was to have her, for she knocked at the 
 studio door full ten minutes before any of the 
 habitues arrived. Comrade Niki was in the kitchen 
 singing his samurai psalm of socialism and Com- 
 rade Timothy was on a stepladder hanging a 
 framed bit of the Russian Soviet Constitution over 
 the portrait of Lenine. 
 
 Aunt Carmen's appearance was that of a Bur- 
 mese queen; from head to foot she blazed with the 
 family jewels a phenomenon which would not 
 have been considered phenomenal in the drawing- 
 rooms which she frequented. But in the dim 
 candlelight of the Pomander Place studio the effect 
 was that of a walking Christmas tree, color glint- 
 ing from a thousand baubles. 
 
 "Rosa!" cried the old lady, panting as she came 
 in, "couldn't you have chosen a Bolshevist apart- 
 ment house where they have an elevator?" 
 
 "The stairs are trying," admitted Rosamonde, 
 kissing her amiable relative. She was inwardly 
 agitated because she had no idea how the entertain- 
 ment was to proceed after its sudden readjustment. 
 
 177 
 
178 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Oh, how do you do !" cried Carmen, looking up 
 at the professor, who began a deferential down- 
 scrambling. "What's that motto you have there?" 
 
 "It is in Russian/' replied the pedant, "and is a 
 paragraph from the Soviet Constitution dealing 
 with the proletarian rights to the land." 
 
 "I'm sure it's lovely," decreed Aunt Carmen, giv- 
 ing the framed text a stare through her lorgnon. 
 Then to Rosamonde: 
 
 "Dear, how well you look in your Bolshevist cos- 
 tume. Where did you get it?" 
 
 "Ready-made in a Village shop," explained 
 Rosamonde, considering her aunt's surfeit of gems. 
 
 "I have ordered three at Bleriot's," said Carmen, 
 "but the old thing is never on time any more. 
 Labor troubles aren't they annoying? Will this 
 gown be out of place, do you think?" 
 
 "Well, no " began Rosa, whereupon Profes- 
 sor Syle cut in. 
 
 "Comrade Carmen, would you forgive a sugges- 
 tion?" 
 
 "Why certainly." It always pleased her into 
 dimples to be called Comrade by Comrade Walter. 
 
 "The matter of jewelry " 
 
 "Ah." 
 
 Involuntarily she laid her hand on a diamond 
 and platinum brooch which seemed to guard her 
 like a small piece of armor. Her ringers flashed 
 with the gesture. 
 
 "Comrade Alfonzo he's Mexican, you know, 
 and a Primitive seriously objects to jewels." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 179 
 
 "I thought socialists never objected to anything 
 so long so you agreed with them/' said Carmen, 
 pouting like a child. 
 
 "It should not be regarded as a curtailment of 
 your freedom of thought," Syle was quick to show 
 her. "But the wearing of jewelry, according to 
 Comrade Alfonzo's belief I don't say I agree with 
 him is in the nature of an economic wrong to the 
 laboring masses." 
 
 "Oh, I see," replied old Carmen rather haught- 
 ily. "Then you want me to take them off?" 
 
 "You look awfully sweet," Rosamonde inter- 
 polated. 
 
 "It's merely Comrade Alfonzo I'm thinking 
 about. He has a way of attacking the plutocracy 
 which is peculiar to the school of Villa." 
 
 Already Carmen was unbuckling the armor plate 
 of platinum and diamonds. 
 
 "But what can I do with them?" she asked help- 
 lessly. "I don't suppose there is anything like a 
 safe-deposit box or " 
 
 "There's a dear!" said Rosamonde soothingly. 
 "Why not put them all in your hand bag and wear 
 the bag on your wrist during dinner." 
 
 Cleopatra never shed a weightier collection than 
 was removed from Carmen's scrawny person and 
 went clattering into Carmen's large and rosy hand- 
 bag. 
 
 "You should have told me, my dear," she said 
 chidingly to Rosamonde, the latter already stiff 
 with fear of that which was to come. 
 
180 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "I know it, aunt. I've been head over heels this 
 week, trying to make the dinner a go. I was on 
 my feet all yesterday and to-night I don't expect 
 to go home at all." 
 
 "Oh, this will be finished when Merlin comes 
 back," Carmen reminded her. "But it is all very 
 chic. You have done remarkably well." Her 
 lorgnon traveled approvingly before her fierce black 
 eyes. "And I shall not rest until I have seen your 
 amusing woman soldier Comrade " 
 
 "Comrade Fishkoff," supplied Rosamonde. "It 
 has been very annoying " 
 
 A knock at the door relieved her temporarily of 
 the embarrassing confession. 
 
 "I've got to answer the door." 
 
 "My dear! Haven't you a servant?" 
 
 But Rosamonde had already gone forward to let 
 in Miss Felda Drigg and her husband Mr. Eldred 
 Smole. 
 
 "We are very much pleased," declaimed Miss 
 Drigg, speaking for the family in her musical bari- 
 tone. "I recently finished my transcontinental lec- 
 ture tour and am rejoiced to return to my domestic 
 work for a time." 
 
 Comrade Drigg was burning in an advanced 
 stage of the epidemic egomania. 
 
 "What is your domestic work ?" asked Aunt Car- 
 men, her own arrogance dwarfed beside this tower- 
 ing specimen. 
 
 "I paint," rolled out the deep syllables, "but I 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 181 
 
 am not in sympathy with any school. The portrait 
 of Lenine is mine." 
 
 Aunt Carmen focused her lorgnons on the daub 
 over the table and remarked : 
 
 "Oh, yes. I see. It is a portrait/' 
 
 "But the craft should be incidental to the move- 
 ment," Miss Drigg lectured on. "I have talked 
 before thousands and found the general sentiment 
 increasingly helpful. Especially in Bakersfield 
 among the oil wells." 
 
 "Will the the proletariat take over the oil 
 wells?" asked Carmen, attempting to be agreeable. 
 
 "No. They will burn them." 
 
 Upon this announcement the door again opened 
 to admit a knot of delegates to the soviet: Com- 
 rade Alfonzo, wearing a velveteen jacket and the 
 red sash, two hairy eskimos who were introduced 
 by their Russian names, and Comrade Epstein, the 
 advanced Sinn Feiner. Aunt Carmen was too busy 
 shaking hands to ask any more questions about the 
 Battalion of Death; but this was merely whistling 
 against the evil hour. 
 
 Next came Comrade Hattie, the meek little old 
 maid. Although she seemed to lack sufficient cour- 
 age to carry on a revolution against a colony of 
 ants, she spoke in her little quavering voice about 
 a certain god she cultivated, by name Destruction 
 of Private Property. 
 
 Emily, absorbed in the finishing touches of her 
 toilet, paused to peek out and see Oliver Browning 
 come in wearing an old khaki shirt and a loose tie. 
 
182 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 This was the second occasion on which Rosamonde 
 had caused the young gentleman to meet her 
 aunt; possibly the old lady was getting used to it. 
 At any rate it seemed not unnatural that Aunt Car- 
 men should have taken him kindly by the hand and 
 have said in a welcoming tone: 
 
 "Why, Oliver, you have joined, too?" 
 
 Apparently Carmen regarded Oliver as offensive 
 only when Emily was around. 
 
 Comrade Niki was beginning to distribute caviar 
 sandwiches and Carmen's favorite cocktails when 
 she for whom all this had been arranged grew 
 restive. 
 
 "This Russian woman General Pickoff, wasn't 
 it?" 
 
 "Corporal Fishkoff," corrected Rosamonde, and 
 prepared to tell her tale. 
 
 "Oh, yes. It doesn't seem strange for women 
 to have military titles any more. Evelyn Jones is 
 a major in the motor corps," went on Carmen in 
 her chattiest manner. "But about this Corporal 
 Fishkoff " 
 
 "She isn't coming!" announced Rosamonde, 
 "but " 
 
 "Isn't coming!" Old Carmen empurpled at 
 the implied insult. "Then what did you get me 
 here for?" 
 
 "She was expected up to the last minute," said 
 Comrade Timothy. "But this afternoon we got 
 word that she had married a laundryman and de- 
 serted the cause." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 183 
 
 "But we've been very lucky," implored Rosa- 
 monde with a look for help from Syle. 
 
 "Quite fortunate," he came back swiftly. "The 
 Russian movement is so well established in this 
 country that it is beginning to lose its first novelty. 
 We are now turning toward the Turkish move- 
 ment." 
 
 It sounded to Emily like comparative massages, 
 but Rosamonde hastened to take up the theme. 
 
 "Corporal Winifred El-Zelim of the Turkish 
 Battalion of Death " 
 
 "She was smuggled in past the capitalistic immi- 
 gration authorities," supplied Syle, with a glibness 
 unworthy so restless a truth finder. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I never considered the Turks," con- 
 ceded Carmen, already half appeased. 
 
 This seemed an ideal cue for the hidden Emily 
 who, having wrapped a yard of chiffon round her 
 face, tiptoed through the unbolted door into Com- 
 rade Elsa's empty room and thence out into the 
 hall. Dramatically she knocked upon Our Com- 
 munity's door. 
 
 The next instant had admitted the strangest sol- 
 dier that ever battled in or out of a trench. She 
 came undulating forward and female the figure un- 
 doubtedly was. Brilliant red harem trousers fell to 
 shoes which were decidedly American in cut. A 
 field-gray military coat, loosely fitting at the waist, 
 showed a corporal's chevrons on one of the short 
 sleeves. Corporal El-Zelim's face was conjectural, 
 for a veil concealed it from nose to chin and she 
 
184 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 wore a curious greenish rather soiled turban tightly 
 bound round her forehead. Only in her eyes was 
 her beauty revealed and these, shining purest gray 
 under blue painted lids, were penciled at the cor- 
 ners, giving them a long, strange, unearthly look. 
 
 "Comrade," said Walter Scott Syle, making the 
 best of it, "this is Comrade El-Zelim, our soldiers' 
 and sailors* delegate from Constantinople." 
 
 Mrs. Bodfrey Shallope stepped eagerly forward 
 and took one of the little hands in hers. The 
 fingers were tipped with vermilion. 
 
 "I no spik pretty good Eengliss," explained the 
 little corporal in a thin metallic voice. "But I hear 
 such manny good things from you." 
 
 This addressed straight to Aunt Carmen, who in 
 all her luxury-loving career had never been able to 
 resist a flatterer. In the ecstasy of handshaking 
 Corporal El-Zelim came round at last to Oliver 
 Browning, who took one look at the gray tunic and 
 tittered a strange ripping sound through his nose. 
 
 "You laugh for me?" inquired Comrade El- 
 Zelim, whose veil offered her every advantage. 
 
 "If necessary," replied Oliver. "But I think you 
 can get away with your share of that stuff." 
 
 They got themselves to the dinner table and din- 
 ner table got itself into that state of Bolshevised 
 energy which any dinner table can nowadays, given 
 a sufficient number of hand-picked radicals. 
 
 Emily from behind her veil rather marveled at 
 her own success and began wondering why she 
 hadn't gone on the stage. She sat at a corner of 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 185 
 
 the long table, between Comrade Timothy and 
 Aunt Carmen; but Aunt Carmen had ears only for 
 the delegate from Turkey. 
 
 Comrade Niki, with the assistance of Comrade 
 Elsa, was serving the excellent soup from Tan- 
 quay's. The various nationalities round the table 
 attacked the liquid, making night melodious. The 
 soviet was now devoting its vocal organs to eating, 
 an activity more important than conversation. To 
 Emily alone the moment was painful ; she was very 
 hungry, but even a corporal in the Battalion of 
 Death knows not a way to take chicken gumbo 
 through a veil. If she lifted that veil then the cat 
 would assuredly be out of the bag and Aunt Car- 
 men go screaming after it. 
 
 "You're not eating/' observed the great lady in 
 the tone of one who waits to see the anaconda en- 
 gorge a rabbit. 
 
 "Not soup," explained Corporal El-Zelim. 
 "With us it is telka." 
 
 "It is what?" Old Carmen neglected her own 
 broth in a frenzy of curiosity. 
 
 "Telka. That iss Turkeesh word what it 
 means? Our people no could eat it in the moon of 
 Solomon." 
 
 "That's inconvenient, isn't it!" exclaimed Aunt 
 Carmen. "I've just been on a diet myself dread- 
 ful bore." 
 
 Emily reached out for a ripe olive and managed 
 to get it under her veil. The act gave her two 
 inspirations at once. By sticking to hard food she 
 
186 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 could manage to keep alive; by speaking very bad 
 English she could answer any question under the 
 sun and nobody would know whether she was right 
 or wrong. 
 
 "I thought you women of Turkey were more 
 civilized than that," up spoke Aunt Carmen with 
 characteristic abruptness. 
 
 "So? What civilized ?" 
 
 "If you are emancipated and all that sort of 
 thing I should think you would give up fasting on 
 this thing you call the moon of Solomon." 
 
 "Ah! But it iss zaab." 
 
 "What is saab " 
 
 "What you call it in Eengliss?" 
 
 "I see." Aunt Carmen had apparently given up 
 any attempt at translation, for she went on : "What 
 did you fight when you were in Turkey, corporal ?" 
 
 "My hus-band," replied the corporal very dis- 
 tinctly. 
 
 "You don't have to put on a uniform to fight 
 your husband, do you?" gasped the old lady, who 
 was the veteran of many such battles. 
 
 "Yes. We mass against all Turk husbands in 
 one army. This will be woman revolution. We 
 take government." 
 
 "That sounds very sensible to me. I have al- 
 ways been a great believer in the emancipation of 
 
 women." 
 
 "I so glad!" The corporal clapped her little 
 red-tipped hands. "I wish all America woman was 
 great intelligence like you." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 187 
 
 She sized up her aunt in one long-eyed glance. 
 The flattery apparently was taking effect, for Mrs. 
 Shallope's fierce eyes were already softening. 
 
 "I much believer in religion of love," said the 
 delegate from Turkey, making her voice rich and 
 soft. 
 
 "My dear! How extraordinary!" cried Aunt 
 Carmen, tears coming to her eyes. "Do they have 
 this religion in Turkey, too?" 
 
 "It was beginned there," announced the corporal. 
 "How else could they keep great harems comfort- 
 able?" 
 
 "I have believed in it for years," announced 
 love's strangest disciple. "Isn't it a wonderful be- 
 lief? I don't know how I should ever get along 
 without it. I have had so many trials." 
 
 Aunt Carmen was apparently pausing on the 
 brink of a confidence. 
 
 "How did you get those trials?" asked Miss El- 
 Zelim. 
 
 "I have been the victim of greed and base in- 
 gratitude," explained the old lady, her face tighten- 
 ing. 
 
 "From servants, maybe, or friends?" Emily 
 was "feeding," as they say. 
 
 "From one of my own flesh and blood. I took 
 that girl out of the direst poverty, fed her, gave 
 her a home, clothed her " 
 
 "I know," purred the Oriental. "We see them 
 all time in Turkey. Those poor relationships re- 
 
188 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 fuse to kiss your feet when you give them thrown- 
 away clothing.' ' 
 
 "I clothed her very well," snapped Aunt Carmen. 
 "I refused to see one of my own family go shabby; 
 and I would have arranged her life for her " 
 
 "Why did she leave from you?" 
 
 "How did you know she left me ?" The haughty 
 Mrs. Shallope had turned suspicious eyes upon the 
 veil of mystery and Emily had feeling that she 
 was carrying her adventure into danger lands. 
 
 "She should, of course. Poor relationships are 
 sometimes swollen by pride. They do not know 
 sufficiently how to worship. Why she go?" 
 
 "She insisted upon marrying an insignificant 
 little mule driver!" 
 
 "How bad ! To do such a thing she knew noth- 
 ing about the religion of love. She merely runned 
 away to chase her heart where it went." 
 
 "I don't understand you," remarked Aunt Car- 
 men, and turned away to Professor Syle, who sat 
 on her right. 
 
 The pause gave Emily a chance to gaze round the 
 Mad Hatter's Party and to appreciate it in full 
 operation. The comrades were hard at it, indulg- 
 ing in their only medium of expression, which was 
 debate. Comrade Epstein was tilting furiously 
 with a somewhat comely young person who wore a 
 tiara of green glass, and complicated earrings which 
 hung like Venetian chandeliers and clicked noisily 
 every time she moved her head. 
 
 "I was an aesthete before I became a revolution- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 189 
 
 ist," she heard the much decorated lady piping out 
 of the babble. 
 
 Comrade Niki had gone on a strike apparently, 
 for he came out of the kitchen and took his place 
 beside one of the Eskimo- faced Russians at the 
 other end of the board. His dialect, rivaling the 
 strange word combinations of El-Zelim, was being 
 hurled belligerently at the glowering Muscovite, 
 who slammed his big fist on the table and frowned 
 down on the little person, like Polyphemus bully- 
 ing a mouse. Poor Rosamonde had left her place 
 and was helping Comrade Elsa wait on table. Red 
 wine was being served in goblets. Disjointed isms 
 hurtled through the air, missing their marks or 
 falling unexploded maximilism, capitalism, mili- 
 tarism, individualism, optimism, metabolism, de- 
 terminism. 
 
 Emily managed to get a forkful of spaghetti 
 under her veil and safely to her mouth. What 
 greater test could there be of a native ability? 
 Across the table she caught Oliver's teasing smile, 
 but when again she looked he was saying to the 
 meek and dangerous Comrade Hattie: 
 
 "The true Theocrat would put the freedom of 
 the seas entirely on a religious basis." 
 
 Comrade Walter had to make a speech as a 
 matter of course. He had the preacher's habit of 
 sermonizing upon every public occasion. To-night 
 his talk was not even amusing to Emily because 
 she had heard him make the same utterances over 
 and over again during her short stay in the studio. 
 
190 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 He was a great believer in statistics. He could, 
 given breathing space, prove by the number of 
 negro babies born in Alabama during the month of 
 March, 1912, that the cotton-mill workers of 
 Massachusetts were entitled to a five-hour day. 
 There was always somebody to disagree with every- 
 thing he said; which did not indicate that he was 
 unpopular but merely that he was living in Bol- 
 shevikia. 
 
 Comrade Alfonzo, the Villista, seemed most vio- 
 lently opposed to everything that was said. Al- 
 fonzo, it was manifest, had no great capacity for 
 red wine. After his first goblet he was gesticulat- 
 ing frightfully, making stabbing gestures with his 
 black forefinger, showing his magnificent teeth, 
 shaking his blue-black mane and growling like a 
 dog. 
 
 "He is too dangerous?" asked Miss El-Zelim of 
 Miss Drigg's husband, two seats away. 
 
 "Not so very," drawled the gentle little editor of 
 the Outburst. "He usually goes to sleep before 
 anything happens." 
 
 But it became more and more obvious as Wal- 
 ter's sermon dragged on that Comrade Alfonzo was 
 agonizing for a speech. He would cry "Bah !" and 
 "Lookat!" every other sentence. Then as suddenly 
 as he had burst into flame he sank under the table 
 and disappeared from sight. Emily's natural con- 
 clusion that he had retired for the evening was 
 proven wrong a moment later by the dark-skinned 
 Comrade's reappearance above the red tablecloth. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 191 
 
 His look was sly and he grinned a vengeful grin in 
 the direction of Aunt Carmen. 
 
 Emily's attention was deflected by a twitch at 
 the sleeve of her German tunic. Aunt Carmen was 
 leaning toward her, her eyes big with alarm. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," she whispered in Emily's 
 ear. "I brought my hand-bag to the table with me. 
 I seem to have dropped it." 
 
 "I so sorry," said the temporary Turk. "I look 
 
 
 While Comrade Walter's epoch-making speech 
 rattled easily on Emily lifted the cloth and gazed 
 along the serried row of folded feet. Rough bro- 
 gans, shoddily modish shoes, she counted every one 
 of them; but in that motley display there appeared 
 no trace of Aunt Carmen's bag. Emily, who 
 through a crack in the bedroom door had watched 
 her haughty relative stow away her jewels before 
 the party, knew too well what the loss would in- 
 volve. 
 
 "I no see," she announced in her self-made bab- 
 ble. 
 
 "Are you sure?" Aunt Carmen was fixing her 
 with an accusing eye. 
 
 In a horrible flash Emily remembered how often 
 her amiable relative had accused her servants of 
 theft. She grew pallid under her veil, thinking of 
 what scenes might follow should old Carmen de- 
 mand a search. 
 
 Comrade Walter went merrily on. 
 
192 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Maybe better had tell you lose it," whispered 
 Emily. 
 
 "No, no!" Carmen held tight to her arm and it 
 was fear that gave the painful tension to her rin- 
 gers. "You mustn't do that, whatever you do." 
 
 And at that instant Comrade Alfonzo had 
 bobbed up like a jumping jack and was pounding 
 his fork on his plate. 
 
 "Wan minute!" he snarled through those great 
 teeth. 
 
 Professor Syle's face took on that indignant look 
 it always wore when his paragraphs were being 
 interrupted. 
 
 "Comrades," Alfonzo snarled on, "I wish to say 
 dat we got in our midst a tr-r-r-aitor !" 
 
 The sensation was immediate. The two Rus- 
 sians came to their feet and Comrade Hattie 
 tripped old-maidishly to the studio door and turned 
 the key. 
 
 "Comrade Alfonzo," decreed Professor Syle 
 quietly, "this is a serious charge. Would you please 
 define your attitude?" 
 
 "A capitalista has come here to spy and maka 
 trouble. Comrades, I have a rule which I love be- 
 cause I am a Mehicano. In dis soviet we cannot 
 have capitalista spies to go away and maka report. 
 Therefore I kill." 
 
 Already Alfonzo was reaching down toward his 
 red sash and Walter Scott Syle, growing a shade 
 paler, was quick to protest : 
 
 "We can make investigation, I am sure. What 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 193 
 
 makes you think we are under espionage, Com- 
 rade?" 
 
 Out from his red sash Alfonzo brought a bulky 
 silken bag of a fashionable design. 
 
 "Does any one here own dis-a bag?" he grinned 
 murderously. 
 
 Emily looked at Aunt Carmen, who sat there, 
 her face stony, her eyes fixed to a frightful stare. 
 
 "No?" He waited a space, but no one spoke. 
 "Dat is unfortunate. Then I show you what I find 
 in it. Mira!" He had plunged his hand into the 
 bag and brought out a great brooch, afire with dia- 
 monds. As he held it fiercely above his head the 
 magnificent bauble seemed to shoot a boreal display 
 halfway across the soviet. Again his hand shot 
 snakelike into the bag. This time it brought out a 
 cabuchon ruby, two enormous pear-shaped pearls 
 and a ring set with three diamonds aggregating a 
 dozen karats or more. 
 
 Rosamonde, dear jewel-loving creature that she 
 was, uttered a little scream and swayed in her 
 chair. 
 
 "Ah !" The Villista seemed to show his teeth as 
 far back as his ears. "Den dey are yours maybe?" 
 
 "No!" Rosamonde was hysterical in her denial. 
 
 "Bueno! Den dey belong to de state. Here is 
 one di'mond breastpiece which contain sufficient 
 jewelry to feed six working families one year. 
 Dis-a ring will keep one poor comrade from starva- 
 tion all his life. Dis-a earrings bah! I am dis- 
 gusto. Poor pipple starve in East Side slumma. 
 
194 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Reech pipple spend food and lodging of poor pipple 
 to dress like Aztec kings. Wot shall we do wid 
 such?" 
 
 "Kill them!" suggested that gentle spinster, 
 Comrade Hattie. 
 
 "But, Comrade Alfonzo," interposed Professor 
 Syle, still maintaining his conciliatory tone, "now 
 that we have acquired these treasures, how can 
 we apply them?" 
 
 "I tell-a you wot I do!" With one hand the 
 Mexican had gathered the jewels to his broad chest 
 while with the other he snatched his wine glass and 
 drained it at a gulp. "Bueno. Poor pipple pick 
 dem off de street." 
 
 So saying he kicked over his chair and strode 
 magnificently toward an open window facing 
 Pomander Place. 
 
 "Stop!" 
 
 The command came from Aunt Carmen and was 
 pitched in the unearthly croak of one protesting in 
 a nightmare. 
 
 "Ha!" The Villista turned dramatically, one 
 lock of his black mane shaken over his diabolical 
 grin. 
 
 "The the jewels belong to me." 
 
 Emily scarcely recognized her arrogant aunt in 
 this pleading, scared old woman. 
 
 "Den you" the Mexican advanced a few grand- 
 operatic steps "you come here carrying jewels 
 you value more dan life of poor pipple?" 
 
 "I don't value them particularly, really I don't!" 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 195 
 
 ir^'^^"^^"'"*''"''''*"^^^^^"^"'"^^^^*^^^^"^^"'*'***^'*^^^"*"'""'*^^ 
 
 protested Aunt Carmen, cringing back as though 
 Alfonzo had already drawn his dagger. 
 
 "Den maybe you would not care if I throw dem 
 to street?" he laughed like an old-fashioned villain. 
 
 "Yes, I should care dreadfully. I don't value 
 them because of the money really I don't " 
 
 "Ha! No?" 
 
 "No, really. But I am merely keeping them be- 
 cause of a sentimental value. You see, some one 
 I dearly loved " 
 
 "You love some capitalista, yes!" snarled Al- 
 fonzo, and was again turning toward the window 
 when the delegate from Turkey took a hand. 
 
 "Comrade!" cried Corporal El-Zelim, rising slim 
 and mysterious as she struck an Oriental pose 
 which she remembered having seen in some motion- 
 picture. Alfonzo stopped again and glared round. 
 
 "You could not be true socialist and throw those 
 jewels downstairs. Why? Because the religion of 
 love must be sacred to all Comrades. Not thus? 
 And Comrade Carmen believe in religion of love. 
 What keeps all world glued together in universal 
 legion of honor? Love! What strength of kiss- 
 ing shall finally wreck capitalists off their strength? 
 Love! I come to these America from far country 
 for show you those lesson. If Bolshevism shall be 
 engineered by love then we shall win pretty quick. 
 If it is ran by hate we shall back off and quit. In 
 Turkish army I shoot for love, I suffer bullet 
 wound inside myself because love continue. This 
 nice lady gather sacred souvenir in memory of 
 
196 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 dearest forgotten. Shall your wrong hands dump 
 them out? No! Oh, noble peasant, I ask you by 
 all red flags of love give back those trifling mem- 
 ories of jewels to Comrade Carmen or I must re- 
 turn to Turkey and report American soviet no 
 good." 
 
 And to make this dramatic performance conn 
 plete Emily threw herself on her knees and crawled 
 over to Comrade Alfonzo to embrace his crooked 
 calves. The attempt was successful beyond her 
 hopes. Alfonzo burst into a violent fit of weeping, 
 kicked his suppliant to one side and floundered over 
 to where Aunt Carmen sat. 
 
 "Take-a dem !" he was beseeching, clattering the 
 treasure pell-mell into the dowager's lap. "I could 
 not understanda what I do ! Forgeeve !" 
 
 When Emily got to her feet she saw a pretty 
 picture. Comrade Alfonzo was kissing Aunt Car- 
 ment violently on her withered cheek. And, child 
 of whim and vanity that she was, Aunt Carmen 
 liked it, for she was all smiles now as she took the 
 revolutionist's black hand in*hers and, arising, made 
 the following speech: 
 
 "Comrades, I am tremendously touched by this 
 act of generosity. I I really want to throw my- 
 self heart and soul into your work. Comrade 
 Walter and ladies and gentlemen comrades, I 
 should say I want to ask you if you would all 
 come to me at my Long Island home for a a 
 week-end soviet next Saturday afternoon? I 
 should be delighted to put you all up, you know, 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 197 
 
 ^^ m *^ m "^^^~ m ^** m **~ m '^^^^^^^~* m ^^^^^ m ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ m * i *****^ m ^^^^^^^ 
 
 and we will get better acquainted and discuss our 
 our problems." 
 
 There was a short silence, and in another 
 moment broke forth from one and all a cry as 
 if the Volscians were coming o'er the wall. Or it 
 was the cry of a foresighted menagerie which, hav- 
 ing fed, howls splendidly at the prospect of better 
 meals to come. 
 
 "Comrades, are we all agreed?" asked Professor 
 Syle as soon as he could be heard. 
 
 "Agreed! Agreed!" burst raucously from a 
 dozen throats at once. 
 
 "Mrs. Shallope Comrade Carmen we take 
 pleasure in accepting your kind invitation. And 
 before the meeting is adjourned let us devote a 
 half hour to a general discussion on the advisabil- 
 ity of a national railroad strike." 
 
 "Can you beat it?" asked Comrade Oliver across 
 the table. He was looking straight at Emily; but 
 a veil, like a beard, offers the advantage of hiding 
 one's emotions. 
 
 This had all been wonderful. Not more won- 
 derful, perhaps, than the sight of Comrade Alfonzo 
 insisting on being one of the delegates to escort 
 Aunt Carmen to her car. Professor Walter Scott 
 Syle went, too, upon Emily's suggestion and the 
 promise that he could come back for a talk. When 
 they all were gone and the ladies were getting back 
 into sane apparel Emily had opportunity to ask of 
 Rosamonde, 
 
 "Was there ever anything like it before?" 
 
198 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "I'm so glad it was a success," said Rosamonde. 
 "Merlin will be back next week, and heaven knows 
 what I'll do to have any fun then." 
 
 "Aren't you going to Aunt Carmen's week-end 
 soviet?" asked the unbeliever in their midst. 
 
 "I don't know how I can escape from Merlin. 
 Are you?" 
 
 "If it kills me. I wouldn't miss it for millions. 
 Didn't you hear Aunt Carmen specially invite me?" 
 
 Professor Syle came back at last and had just 
 helped himself to one of Rosamonde's gold-tipped 
 favorites when Rosamonde asked the apparently 
 idle question: 
 
 "You didn't have any trouble cashing that check, 
 did you?" 
 
 "Your check?" asked the professor in his absent- 
 minded way. "Oh, yes, that affair down at the 
 Nitrate Company. Why, yes, there was some 
 trouble." 
 
 "Oh!" Rosamonde paled visibly. "Didn't you 
 show Mr. Steeley my note?" 
 
 "Yes," he answered deliberately. "He was all 
 right. It was the other one." 
 
 "What other one?" 
 
 "The capitalist he seemed to be in charge, as 
 I remember it. He seemed to be behaving like a 
 slave driver, as a capitalist would." 
 
 "What did he look like?" Rosamonde all but 
 whispered. 
 
 "Stout, short, gray mustache, gaudy little dia- 
 mond horseshoe in his necktie. He stood watch- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 199 
 
 ing me as I got out of your car, and as far as I 
 
 could see followed me up to the cashier's office 
 
 
 "Rosa!" cried Emily, for her cousin had given a 
 quavering moan and fallen upon the divan. 
 
 "Don't!" she implored. ''Don't ask questions? 
 Did he see my note?" 
 
 "He took it away from the cashier and then 
 smiled that arrogant slave-driver smile of the 
 capitalistic class and said the check was good." 
 
 "Emmy," said Rosamonde very quietly, "come 
 home with me. I think Merlin must be back." 
 
 The Valiant car was not at the corner of Eight- 
 eenth Street and Fifth Avenue where it had been 
 instructed to await its mistress every day during 
 her adventures in Bolshevikia. That looked black. 
 Emily, despite her dark certainty, advanced feeble 
 encouragement to the effect that the stout and 
 peevish specter of the Hemisphere Nitrate Company 
 might easily have been some one else than Merlin. 
 They got a night-wandering taxicab on Union 
 Square, which was lucky enough, since it was now 
 past two in the morning. Rosamonde sat stiff as 
 a corpse all the way up Fifth Avenue. As the 
 lights were switched on in the Flemish entrance of 
 the Valiant apartment Emily saw a yellow envelope 
 plainly marked Telegram facing them on the Italian 
 chest. 
 
 "Arriving noon. Inform O'Briem to meet me 
 with car at Station. Love. MERLIN." 
 
200 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 She read this message over Rosamonde's quak- 
 ing shoulder. Merlin had changed his plans and 
 come home a week early ! Rosamonde went charg- 
 ing through the big room toward the master's suite, 
 but it was an instant later that she came flying back 
 to force a sheet of paper in Emily's hand and she 
 collapsed into a chair. 
 
 "I found it on the pincushion," she moaned ; and 
 who so young as not to know what fatal notes al- 
 ways grow on pincushions? 
 
 The words on the paper were blotted and 
 scrawled, in a stubbly, savage hand, as though they 
 had been written in hot tar at the point of a 
 bayonet : 
 
 "MRS. VALLANT: 
 
 "As long as you prefer the course you prefer 
 (blot) you may pursue it without my (word il- 
 legible). Neither will I stand by and countenance 
 (more blots) disloyalty in public places and an- 
 archy (blot) in my house. 
 
 "I have moved to the Tory Club and my lawyers 
 will make you a suitable monthly allowance. 
 
 "Hoping you will (blot) 
 
 "Very respectfully, 
 
 "MERLIN A. VALLANT." 
 
XIV 
 
 EMILY, Rosamonde and Mrs. Finnessey motored 
 out to Mrs. Shallope's week-end soviet in Merlin's 
 second-best limousine, an antediluvian affair dating 
 some four or five years into antiquity. Sunk deso- 
 lately among the cushions Rosamonde mourned and 
 mourned and mourned, telling over and over again 
 how she had even gone down to the crusty tyrant's 
 office only to be told that Mr. Valiant was out and 
 to be referred to a stingy old lawyer with a wart 
 on his nose. 
 
 Mrs. Finnessey, most of whose clients were un- 
 happily wed, received these confessions with plump 
 equanimity. Doubtless she was already calculating 
 on her share of the income after Mrs. Valiant was 
 legally separated from her husband. Not so little 
 Emily, who had somewhat improved her disguise 
 as Corporal El-Zelim of the Turkish Battalion of 
 Death and sat veiled and swaddled in her corner 
 of the car. She had cut an ingenious mouthpiece 
 in the veil and had so arranged it that she could 
 feed herself without revealing too much of her 
 sacred countenance. 
 
 By the time the car had passed Babylon she had 
 about decided that a Reno divorce would be a quick 
 and merciful death for Merlin's love. Since her 
 quarrel with Oliver Browning she had begun to 
 
 201 
 
202 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 harden a little, I am afraid, toward other people's 
 troubles; moreover, her return to Aunt Carmen's 
 marble palace in the disguise of a Mohammedan 
 militant was having at least a temporary effect on 
 her character. 
 
 Upon arrival at Mrs. Shallope's baronial gate 
 they were gaped at by the same head gardener who 
 had gaped at Oliver's mules one morning away 
 back in the golden age of romance. Mules! The 
 girl in the comic opera uniform raised a corner of 
 her veil to touch a paint-daubed eye. 
 
 The admirable Owley received them at the door, 
 and although he was far too much the gentleman 
 to show any surprise he pointed his cantilever nose 
 almost curiously at Corporal El-Zelim of the Turk- 
 ish Battalion of Death ere turning the visitors over 
 to an assistant who should relieve them of their 
 wraps. Dear old Owley! Emily could have 
 thrown herself into his arms and kissed him on the 
 mole above his shaggy left eyebrow. 
 
 They found Aunt Carmen, beautifully keyed up 
 for the occasion, bullying two maid servants who 
 scrambled up and down ladders to do her bidding. 
 The Louis-Quatorze furniture had been protected 
 by slip covers, which fortunately showed a bold red 
 stripe. Garlands of red carnations hung in rich 
 festoons from the immense crystal chandeliers and 
 transformed the immense room into one ruddy 
 blaze. Painted revolutionary texts, ugly things but 
 impressive, were placed at intervals along the silken 
 panels, and a five-yard strip of crimson Chinese 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 208 
 
 embroidery, which Emily remembered as once ly- 
 ing neglected among the Shallope relics, had been 
 resurrected, pressed and hung along the east wall, 
 concealing several plutocratic family portraits. 
 
 "Ah, those sublime placards of revolution!" 
 crowed Corporal El-Zelim, clasping her red-tipped 
 hands. 
 
 "Owley thought of them/* replied Aunt Carmen 
 with unnatural fairness. "He's thought of every- 
 thing. Weren't the slip covers fortunate? They're 
 just the right shade, and then they're a protection 
 in case of " 
 
 Her self-imposed interruption intimated that the 
 Comrades, however right spiritually, might bring 
 in more dangerous things than ideas. 
 
 "You think of everything, Owley," repeated 
 Aunt Carmen to the trusted one, as if to make her 
 statement official. 
 
 "Yes, madam." Owley was on a stepladder, 
 shortening a picture cord as he spoke. "Thinking 
 is quite necessary to my profession, if I might say 
 
 so." 
 
 "Don't get conceited," commanded the woman, 
 who hated any trace of presumptuousness on the 
 part of her inferiors. 
 
 "No, madam." Owley got down. 
 
 "My dear!" With characteristic abruptness old 
 Carmen had turned upon Rosamonde "You're 
 looking quite ill. What in the world is the mat- 
 ter?" 
 
204 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "He he's left me!" cried Rosamonde, and 
 looked as if she were going to weep again. 
 
 "Who's left you? Not Professor Syle?" 
 
 Aunt Carmen's tone expressed a haunting fear 
 that the lion of the party might desert them at the 
 last minute. 
 
 "N-no! Merlin!" 
 
 "Merlin!" Aunt Carmen snorted like a dragon, 
 then turned impatiently toward her Owley. "I 
 think that motto over the door is slipping a little. 
 Better shorten the wire to the right !" 
 
 Owley mounted the ladder to do her queenly 
 bidding, his action bringing into prominence the 
 huge framed placard which Emily read over care- 
 fully. 
 
 "The Abolition of the Exploitation of Men by 
 Men, the Entire Abolition of the Division of the 
 People into Classes." 
 
 Emily drew closer to the ladder and read it over 
 again. 
 
 "My word!" she exclaimed, forgetting her 
 broken English. "Who in the world ever brought 
 that into the house?" 
 
 "I did, Miss Ray." 
 
 "Ss-s-st!" she warned, startled out of her wits. 
 Owley quite too apparently had recognized her 
 voice. 
 
 "Where in the world did you find such a quota- 
 tion?" she asked, by way of saying something. 
 
 "Article One, Chapter Two, of the Russian 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 205 
 
 Soviet Constitution, miss," he replied, quite with- 
 out emotion. 
 
 Aunt Carmen by now had finished with Rosa- 
 monde's recital of Merlin's cruelty and was re- 
 membering her duty as hostess. 
 
 "The soviet is arriving by the four-six," she ex- 
 plained to Emily. "I have sent my cars to bring 
 them in." 
 
 "Oh, generous!" cooed El-Zelim, kissing the 
 royal hand, which was somewhat embarrassedly 
 withdrawn. 
 
 "You and Mrs. Finnessey will have the north 
 suite together unless there is something about 
 your " 
 
 "I have no religious objection," replied El-Zelim. 
 "Objections are all emancipated off of me." 
 
 "That is fortunate," complimented Mrs. Shal- 
 lope, quite apparently anxious to talk out the Mer- 
 lin situation with her foolish Rosamonde. 
 
 Katie, a poppy-cheeked maid whom Emily knew 
 of old, was about to unpack the visitor's hand-bag 
 in the handsome flower-paneled bedroom which 
 was to be hers, when Emily remembered in time 
 that the girl might recognize the Ray monogram 
 and spread the news throughout the house. There- 
 fore, she laid a kindly restraining hand on Katie's 
 arm and lisped in her artless dialect : 
 
 "Nev' mind undo my theengs. I do so for me." 
 
 "Suit yourself !" The servant fairly spat out the 
 words as she turned on her heel and left the room. 
 
 Such impertinence, never before witnessed in the 
 
206 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Valiant house, was but an indication of marvels yet 
 to come. 
 
 Presently Emily heard the tribal cry of automo- 
 biles, distantly echoing. Anxious to behold Bol- 
 shevism's entrance into Long Island society she 
 tucked in a corner of her turban, which she had 
 constructed from a fragment of Rosamonde's old 
 gold teagown, and proceeded rapidly down the cor- 
 ridor. Halfway between her door and the landing 
 she all but bumped into Owley coming the other 
 way. 
 
 "How have you been, Owley?" she asked, her 
 desire to confide in him overcoming her caution. 
 
 "Very well indeed, miss," he answered, without 
 the slightest show of surprise. 
 
 "You're not going to tell on me, Owley?" 
 
 "Oh, no, miss, I wouldn't do that. But if I might 
 say so, it makes me very 'appy to see you back 
 again." 
 
 "It won't be for long, I'm afraid. I just came 
 with the Bolsheviks." 
 
 "You don't say so!" His eyes became round 
 like blue beads. 
 
 "You don't think a little thing like that strange, 
 do you?" 
 
 "In this generation, miss, nobody should be sur- 
 prised at what 'appens. As 'Amlet said to 'Oratio, 
 there are stranger things in 'eaven and hearth " 
 
 "Even on Long Island." 
 
 "Not wishing to say anything disparaging of 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 207 
 
 Mrs. Shallope, miss. She was always a splendid 
 'ostess?" 
 
 "You look rather depressed, Owley." 
 
 "According to the words of Euripides, miss, 
 'Where is there an 'appy man in the all world ?' ' 
 
 "Where?" echoed Emily, thinking of Oliver, 
 Professor Syle and Merlin as fair samples. Then, 
 bringing herself wholesomely out of the abstract, 
 she inquired: 
 
 "Has Aunt Carmen asked all her friends to come 
 and look at the animals perform?" 
 
 "Not for to-night," said Owley in solemn tones. 
 "She wishes to keep this evening entirely in the 
 'ands of the revolutionary classes." 
 
 "A family soviet." 
 
 "Very well put, miss, if I might say so. It was 
 my suggestion that she try the Comrades out first 
 and see 'ow they be'ave. But for to-morrow at 
 luncheon she 'as asked in Mr. and Mrs. Launcelot 
 van Laerens, Mr. and Mrs. Hilly-Tree, the Rev- 
 erend Forsdyke 'Arbinger and a few others of 'er 
 own class. Afterward there will be a general re- 
 ception and a lecture by this radical gentle- 
 man " 
 
 "Professor Syle," prompted Emily. 
 
 "And a Red Revolt dance on the evening of 
 Monday. We 'ave gone to no end of pains, miss, 
 what with 'aving old 'unting coats cleaned for the 
 footmen to wear. Then, in the matter of vodka 
 alone 
 
 "Vodka!" 
 
208 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Four cases of Ai vodka which I procured my- 
 self from a Russian dealer who is considered quite 
 an authority." 
 
 "How will you serve the nasty stuff? Shake it 
 up as a cocktail, maybe, or " 
 
 "By no means, miss. Vodka cocktails are con- 
 sidered quite outree." 
 
 "Then how?" 
 
 "Among the Bolsheviki it is considered good 
 form to drink it straight." 
 
 "My word! By the way you talk you might be 
 a Bolshevik yourself." 
 
 "As a matter or fact, miss, I am." 
 
 The rumbling of many motors and the jangling 
 of a doorbell suggested that the guests had arrived ; 
 wherefore good Owley dropped his theories and 
 hastened to do his duty. 
 
 From her post at the head of the stairs Emily 
 saw strange shapes flocking into the entrance 
 hall. William, the footman, was busying himself 
 in a dazed sort of way disposing of a curious col- 
 lection of wraps as Professor Walter Scott Syle 
 came forward at the head of his red army. On 
 his good right hand came Comrade Alfonzo, wear- 
 ing a remarkable waistcoat upholstered in pink 
 plush rosebuds. Emily was unable to count the ar- 
 rivals at the moment, but her impression was of 
 great numbers numbers a degree beyond any nor- 
 mal invitation list. Emily now hastened to join 
 the welcomers. 
 
 "How do you do, Comrade Walter," Aunt Car- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 209 
 
 men cried, giving him one of the short, peculiar 
 handshakes of the present day mode. "I'm so glad 
 you all were able to come." 
 
 "I have taken the liberty of including Comrades 
 Rathnowski, Horrovitch, Zoom and Uruikskbod- 
 konoff, as I felt our soviet would be incomplete 
 without the cooperation of our Ukrainian kommis- 
 
 sars." 
 
 ''You are quite right," agreed Aunt Carmen, 
 having not the slightest idea what he was talking 
 about, or how to pronounce it, or why Ukrainian 
 kommissars were superior to the Serbian variety. 
 Her training having been social rather than social- 
 istic she was probably wondering just how she was 
 going to seat these Ukrainians at her dinner table. 
 Meanwhile, she was shaking hands energetically. 
 
 "And Comrade Alfonzo." 
 
 The Mexican revolutionist showed his teeth and 
 all but wrung off her hand in the fierceness of his 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 Down the line past the bird-faced Comrade 
 Hattie, the spectral Comrade Elsa, the manly Miss 
 Drigg and her chaste husband, Mr. Smole, wee war- 
 like Comrade Niki, the bulbous Comrade Tony, the 
 lady revolutionist with the jingling jewelry, the two 
 Eskimo Russians and the super-Sinn Feiner, Com- 
 rade Epstein faithfully down the line went Aunt 
 Carmen, a hearty clasp for many a hand soiled with 
 everything but toil. 
 
 Well to the rear she paused before the last hand- 
 shake. Possibly the delay was caused by physical 
 
210 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 weariness. Possibly not. For he who stood there, 
 a good-natured smile on his sunburned features, 
 was none other than Oliver Browning. 
 
 "How do you do?" asked Aunt Carmen, giving 
 his fingers a catlike claw. 
 
 "My name's Browning," he introduced himself. 
 
 "To be sure." 
 
 Comrade Carmen had already turned to Pro- 
 fessor Syle, for it was apparent that the great lady 
 was full of business to-day. 
 
 "I'm sure you'll all want to rest a little before tea 
 time." She was on the point of adding: "And a 
 chance to wash up," but she avoided that faux pas, 
 and substituted "We have tea at five." 
 
 A stranger band than ever sacked Tsarskoe Selo 
 went trooping up the broad marble stairs. Com- 
 rade Epstein was already clamoring for his suit- 
 case, and had to be told that it had gone up by a 
 freight elevator in the rear of the palace. One of 
 the Ukrainian kommissars stopped and rubbed his 
 fat dingy fingers over the surface of a family por- 
 trait which hung low above the turn of the stair- 
 case. 
 
 It was five minutes to tea time when Emily came 
 down and found Rosamonde, who had changed 
 to a simple effect with zigzag purple stripes and 
 top-boots of Russia leather, talking to her aunt 
 in the big sun room off the conservatory, where tea 
 was to be served. 
 
 "You look so tragic," complained Aunt Carmen. 
 "I do wish you would try to forget yourself a min- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 211 
 
 ute and help. Heaven knows I have enough wor- 
 ries!" 
 
 "I'm not trying to worry you, aunt/' said Rosa- 
 monde in graveyard tones. 
 
 "Then what is it? Are you going to break out 
 again about Merlin? If you love me, Rosa " 
 
 "Not that; I was thinking about you. Auntie, 
 there's something peculiar " 
 
 "I hate peculiar things. Don't sit there looking 
 like a ghost." 
 
 "Have you noticed the behavior of the serv- 
 ants?" 
 
 "Servants?" It was as though Carmen had 
 never before heard the word. "What's the matter 
 with them?" 
 
 "They seem to have lost their minds. Thomp- 
 son quit right in the midst of hooking my gown 
 and didn't come back. William is making a fright- 
 ful noise dumping the baggage into the corridor. 
 The maids seem to be gathered up and down the 
 backstairs just as if the house was on fire." 
 
 "Impertinence!" snapped Aunt Carmen. 
 "What's come over them? They seem to have ut- 
 terly forgotten their places lately." 
 
 Aunt Carmen turned to Emily as if for justifi- 
 cation. The look she gave made the girl nervous 
 with a fear that the sharp old eyes were boring 
 through her veil, ferreting out her identity. 
 
 "Corporal Zinfandel " 
 
 "El-Zelim," corrected Rosamonde in a hushed 
 voice. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "I'm sorry. Corporal El-Zelim, have you no- 
 ticed anything?" 
 
 "Your America custom is so deefernt from us," 
 Emily prattled on. "In Turkeesh harem - " 
 
 "This isn't any Turkish harem yet," Aunt Car- 
 men cut in impatiently. "But I should like to know 
 what's come over my servants." 
 
 It was Owley who loomed into the presence to 
 answer the question. 
 
 "Mrs. White asks to see you, madam, if it is 
 convenient." 
 
 "Ah! My housekeeper sends for me! Tell her 
 to come here at once." 
 
 "She does not wish to come to you, madam," 
 Owley went on; then as this sacrilege seemed to 
 call for explanation : "She's in the service dining- 
 room and in a state of mind, madam." 
 
 "Has the world turned upside down?" asked the 
 tyrant of Plainview. 
 
 "Quite probably, madam." 
 
 "Speak when you're spoken to!" she croaked. 
 "And send Mrs. White to me at once." 
 
 "Yes, madam. And shall I send in the others 
 also?" 
 
 "What others?" 
 
 "The other servants, madam." 
 
 "Who ever said anything about any other serv- 
 ants?" Mrs. Shallope fairly shrieked, whereupon 
 Owley backed away, as he should before royalty. 
 
 She had scarce time to mutter an imprecation 
 against all created housemaids, chambermaids, 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 213 
 
 cooks, footmen and chore boys than a severe, stout, 
 elderly female, whose form-fitting costume of black 
 was accentuated by a mourning veil and large jet 
 earrings, came striding in at the head of a mutiny. 
 A score of individuals, male and female, came at- 
 tired as for a journey, and to further heighten the 
 illusion of travel each carried a suit-case, an um- 
 brella and a package. 
 
 "Mrs. White," said Mrs. Shallope to the black- 
 clad spokeslady, "what is the meaning of this?" 
 
 "What is the meaning of that all over the 
 house?" suggested Mrs. White, pursing her rather 
 hard lips. 
 
 "Whatever you do, please remember your place." 
 
 "I do, Mrs. Shallope, and so do we all." There 
 came a choral nod from the crew of mutineers. 
 "All over the house, Mrs. Shallope! I've been in 
 service for twenty-six years, Mrs. Shallope, and I 
 thought I knew every sort of house party there was. 
 And I've seen some stem-winders! But these la- 
 dies and gentlemen in your employ have been raised 
 in respectable homes, Mrs. Shallope, and not while 
 I have them under my care shall they be permitted 
 to entertain these these Anchorists." 
 
 Mrs. White had invented a new word, but it was 
 reasonable to guess that she was referring to an- 
 archists. 
 
 "Whomever I choose to entertain as my guests," 
 decreed the czarina, assuming a hauteur she could 
 not feel, "are not to be questioned by my servants." 
 
 "Question 'em!" snorted Mrs. White. "What's 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 the good of that? They'd answer you in Chinese 
 or Eyetalian if you did. But never such a sight 
 have I seen before in our class of society, Mrs. 
 Shallope. I've seen drunken gentlemen come to 
 house parties yes, and quite right that they should 
 misbehave according to their station in the world. 
 But do you know what these these Anchorists are 
 doing, going all at once?" 
 
 "I have no intention of spying on my guests." 
 
 "William" this to a blank-faced young foot- 
 man who had not uttered two words before dur- 
 ing his term in this house "tell Mrs. Shallope 
 what you saw with your own eyes." 
 
 "The Russian gentleman," quoth William in the 
 stiff tones of one unaccustomed to speech, "was 
 a-laying on the silk coverlid with his boots on. 
 The dark gentleman with the hair him with the 
 teeth, madam was found emptying the contents of 
 his traveling bag in the bathtub. When I sought 
 to remonstrate he drew a weapon." 
 
 "What sort of a weapon?" shrilled Aunt Car- 
 men, forgetting her resolution to be calm. 
 
 "I did not remain to see." 
 
 "And, Mary." Mrs. White turned to an auburn- 
 haired beauty identified as a chambermaid. "What 
 did you see?" 
 
 "Wan of thim be the clothes it wore it was 
 aither a lady or a gintleman was a-markin' all the 
 bedroom doors with red chalk. And when I told 
 three of them to come on out o' there they cursed 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 out in Roosian, maybe, an' continued climbin' onto 
 the roof." 
 
 "Onto thereof!'* 
 
 "You can well see, Mrs. Shallope," said Mrs. 
 White, taking up the solo to her choral arrange- 
 ment, "why we no longer care to remain in your 
 employ. There is a train leaving Plainview at five- 
 forty-six." 
 
 "Do you mean to say/' growled Aunt Carmen, 
 her eyes staring out of her head, her Ray temper 
 coming to the aid of distraction, "that you will quit 
 me leave me in the lurch with a house party on 
 my hands?" 
 
 "We didn't make the lurch/' declared Mrs. 
 White. 
 
 Emily praised Allah for her veil ; she never hoped 
 to see the moment when Aunt Carmen's slaves 
 should turn upon her like this. 
 
 "And if you go you'll get no character from 
 me/' pursued Mrs. Shallope, dying game. 
 
 "Yes, we will/' announced Mrs. White, who like 
 everybody else who had suffered long in silence 
 under Mrs. Bodfrey Shallope was inclined to bru- 
 tality at the hour of reckoning; "because if you 
 don't give us a good one we'll tell it all over that 
 you're turning your house into an Anchorists' 
 nest." 
 
 "Go!" cried Aunt Carmen. 
 
 "We're a-going fast enough," said Mrs. White, 
 "and we'll have our money now/' 
 
216 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "You will not/' snapped Aunt Carmen, "unless 
 you finish your month/' 
 
 "Then," announced Mrs. White, "my lawyer will 
 take action. How about cars to take us to the 
 train ?" 
 
 "I forbid my chauffeurs to stir an inch." 
 
 "We'll walk and good riddance," decided Mrs. 
 White as she carried out her threat, followed by the 
 general strike. 
 
 Aunt Carmen rushed after them with such haste 
 as to all but brain poor old Owley, who had been 
 listening at the edge of a portiere. 
 
 "Why didn't you tell me of this?" she asked, 
 frenzied for a victim. 
 
 "I was under the impression, madam " 
 
 "There are too many people under an impres- 
 sion nowadays," she cut him short. "How in the 
 world are we going to serve twenty people with 
 no servants?" 
 
 "Self-'elp, madam, is the key to communism." 
 
 "Faugh! What is a butler supposed to know 
 about communism? Are you going to leave me in 
 the lurch, too?" 
 
 "Quite to the contrary, madam. I shall stay with 
 the Comrades, if you don't mind." 
 
 And Mrs. Shallope hurried away to join her 
 guests who, much to her relief, were now coming 
 down the stairs in comparatively good order. 
 
XV 
 
 IT was an hour after midnight, twenty-one min- 
 utes after one, to be exact; the time seemed 
 scorched on Emily Ray's memory in the horror of 
 that moment when Aunt Carmen had whispered, 
 "Take me away!" and the temporary Turk had 
 collected her wits sufficiently to hustle three fright- 
 ened women through a small door under the stairs, 
 along the passage lined with faun-head pilasters 
 until they had come face to face with the silly gilt 
 clock ticking merrily in its niche. Emily Ray was 
 the only one to keep her head; Rosamonde and 
 Mrs. Finnessey were sobbing comfortably, their 
 arms entwined; Aunt Carmen's elaborate coiffure 
 was disintegrating, gray locks dangling until she 
 looked like an escaping witch. 
 
 Lucky for Emily that she knew every inch of 
 labyrinth in the complicated Shallope house. From 
 past experience she knew that the Italian corridor 
 led into the old wing of the house, and as she con- 
 ducted her fiery relative, spitting imprecations, she 
 prayed fervently that they might reach a point of 
 safety ere the Sons and Daughters of Progress real- 
 ized the manner of their flight. 
 
 "Did you hear what they were saying?" hissed 
 the old woman, beside herself. 
 
 217 
 
218 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Try to be still," suggested Emily, forgetting 
 her Turkish accent. "We'd better take the stair- 
 way this side." 
 
 Her only thought now was to get them to the 
 fort, that oak-bound garret in the old frame house 
 where revolutionary Shallopes, according to the 
 myth, had once defied the British mercenaries. 
 
 Violent scraps of disjointed oratory echoed dis- 
 tantly to the ears of the four escaping women; 
 drunken snatches of the Internationale, sung in a 
 variety of dialects; such words as "general strike/' 
 "slaughter," "love," "referendum," "state control," 
 "national economy"; an occasional leonine bellow 
 from the lungs of Comrade Alfonzo these and 
 other infernal sounds were carried indistinctly from 
 the great hall to the comparative safety of the cor- 
 ridor. Mrs. Finnessey, who had collapsed now and 
 had to be half carried in the arms of Emily still 
 in the role of Corporal El-Zelim and well tired 
 of it sobbed occasionally and moaned: "You 
 shouldn't have given them vodka." Aunt Carmen 
 and Rosamonde were clinging together, but the un- 
 chastened dowager had sufficient strength to snap, 
 "Shut up!" as she unlocked a little oak door and 
 dragged the other three of them after her. 
 
 "The stairs through the linen room will take you 
 to the fort," suggested Corporal El-Zelim, again 
 forgetting that she was not Emily Ray. 
 
 "How do you know ?" asked Aunt Carmen, stop- 
 ping suspiciously. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "You say so, sweet leddy," protested El-Zelim, 
 hustling back into her broken English. 
 
 "Oh, so I did." 
 
 She had said nothing of the kind, but in the agi- 
 tation of the hour she was far from being respon- 
 sible for her statements. 
 
 So it was through the mazes of the linen room 
 that the gentle refugees went scuttling, bumping 
 elbows here and there in the darkness, for they 
 were afraid to turn on the lights. Emily, who was 
 by far the coolest of the little band, thought she 
 could hear the humming of male voices in the rear. 
 It turned out to be wind whistling through a venti- 
 lation pipe. A romantic clicking of bolts and creak- 
 ing of hinges announced that Aunt Carmen had at 
 last found the oaken door to the fort. 
 
 She clicked on a modern electric bulb which, 
 hanging from a rough beam, cast weird shadows 
 over dusty trunks and discarded articles of Shallope 
 furniture. Garments hanging from the beams 
 gave an unpleasant suggestion of Bluebeard's mur- 
 dered wives neatly gibbeted in a chamber of 
 horrors. 
 
 Aunt Carmen kept repeating, "In my house!" 
 over and over like a litany. 
 
 It was Emily who banged to the heavy door and 
 shot the long oaken bolt. The four white faces 
 stared at one another; even at this distance maniac 
 fragments of oratory floated up to them. 
 
 "Who's to prevent their oh, doing anything 
 now?" whimpered Rosamonde. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "You might," coldly suggested Mrs. Shallope. 
 "It was you who got them here/' 
 
 "Why, Aunt Carmen!" 
 
 "It was the vodka," whimpered Mrs. Finnessey. 
 
 "They'd go wild on milk," Emily contributed. 
 
 "You all insisted upon Russian drinks," snapped 
 Carmen, self -justifying to the last. 
 
 "Tea is a Russian drink they would never have 
 acted like this on tea," Rosamonde added her wail. 
 
 How they had acted went through Emily's mind 
 like a shudder; how the Bolshevik dinner had been 
 quiet enough, as Bolshevik dinners go, until Com- 
 rade Alfonzo, having taken his second glass of 
 vodka, attempted to stab Comrade Tony with an 
 oyster fork and was only suppressed by the argu- 
 ment that Tony was a commander in the American 
 Red Navy and as such sacred; how the fire water 
 of Muscovy had gone to every head and freedom 
 was never so free as it had been through those 
 chaotic hours; how everybody had set to and tried 
 to cook dinner, strewing Aunt Carmen's blue-tiled 
 and copper-rimmed kitchen with flour, broken eggs 
 and fragments of the priceless Shallope china ; how 
 the delegates from Ukrainia had gnawed bones and 
 gesticulated greasily; how, during the momentary 
 lull, Aunt Carmen had suggested that she had an 
 open mind and wished a free debate on the tenure 
 of the land a phrase continually on the tongue of 
 Professor Syle. 
 
 That last had been the fatal error. The soviet 
 had raged like a menagerie at feeding time 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 squeals, roars, howls, clucks had set Aunt Carmen's 
 crystal chandeliers to jingling. Everybody spoke 
 in his native tongue; Babel was holding a caucus. 
 Comrade Niki had stood on a chair for two con- 
 secutive hours, making a speech all by himself. The 
 Ukrainians had clucked together with dark murder- 
 ous gestures. Epstein, the super-Sinn Feiner, had 
 at last put his hobnailed boots on Aunt Carmen's 
 dining table to announce that Mrs. Bodfrey Shal- 
 lope was the great Liberator. 
 
 "Comrades," he had roared, working himself up 
 into a passion of admiration, "the great estates of 
 this so-called democracy must be seized before any- 
 thing hie definite can be done for the new order 
 of things. Capitalistic property must either be 
 seized or given to the proletariat by th' own free 
 will of progreshive capitalish and Comrade Car- 
 men is a progreshive capitalish and good fella." 
 
 "Who ever said I was going to give you my prop- 
 erty?" Aunt Carmen had chirped, paling suddenly. 
 
 "Ah-h-h-h-h !" Comrade Alfonzo made this 
 long-drawn noise, showing his dreadful teeth. 
 "You see how they talk when they afraid to lose 
 some-a-thing." 
 
 "Leave it to the vote of the soviet!" Miss Drigg 
 had roared in her splendid barytone. "I move that 
 this property be seized and appropriated as head- 
 quarters for the American Soviet Republic." 
 
 "Are you all crazy? What are you talking 
 about?" had been Aunt Carmen's tactful way of 
 starting a riot. 
 
222 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Don't you think Comrade Carmen should have 
 something to say about this?" Professor Syle had 
 urged, having kept his head fairly well. 
 
 "Certainly. She will have one vote in the soviet," 
 said Comrade Drigg. "I have moved that this 
 property be seized for the American Soviet Re- 
 public. Is there any second to the motion?'* 
 
 Arose then a ferocious chorus of seconds to the 
 motion; whereupon Aunt Carmen had utterly lost 
 her mind. 
 
 "I won't have such talk in my house. You leave 
 at once, the whole ragbag pack of you!" she had 
 screamed, "or I'll call the police." 
 
 The ensuing scene was horrible to remember. A 
 quarrel in a greenhouse had never been more bois- 
 terous with crashing glass. Aunt Carmen's Span- 
 ish-lace tablecloth had been pulled to the floor. 
 Somewhere in the scrimmage Oliver Browning had 
 been smothered under the bulky weight of Miss 
 Drigg, assisted by wild, wild women. Had the 
 soviet been possessed of a head, tail or working 
 brain the hostess of the evening would have been 
 slain on the spot, no doubt, but it was the little 
 Turkish militant who plucked her way to the door 
 under the stairs and had gathered into her refugee 
 band the three quaking faddists who now filled the 
 gloomy shadows of the fort with their broken sobs. 
 
 "Where do such people come from ?" asked Aunt 
 Carmen in a hushed voice as she dusted an old trunk 
 with an ancient scrap of newspaper and seated her- 
 self. Then, as though dealing with the synchro- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 nization of justice with right: "Nobody ever be- 
 haved so in my house before. Did you ever see 
 such table manners? I shall tell everything when 
 the police come." 
 
 "Has anybody notified the police?" was Emily's 
 practical suggestion through her thick veil. 
 
 "Haven't they been telephoned to?" shrilled 
 Aunt Carmen, evidently dazed to find herself in a 
 position where nobody had foreseen her wishes. 
 
 "Somebody ought to," wailed Rosamonde. 
 
 "Well, why don't you?" suggested her aunt 
 fiercely. "You know where the telephone is. If 
 you can't get the police station you can ring up the 
 garage or the gardener's cottage. Tell them to 
 bring firearms if they have any, or plenty of heavy 
 tools - " 
 
 "Oh, Aunt Carmen !" Rosamonde had sunk down 
 next to Mrs. Shallope and was sobbing feebly. 
 
 "Afraid?" scolded her aunt. "I didn't think any 
 Ray wculd be a coward." And she remained sit- 
 ting, it never having occurred to her that she might 
 herself do the telephoning. 
 
 "I'll go," said Miss El-Zelim. "There's a tele- 
 phone in the little hall back of the linen room." 
 
 "How did you know that?" snapped Aunt Car- 
 men; but Emily had already unbolted the door and 
 tiptoed through a space she knew well enough to 
 traverse in the dark. 
 
 Making all due allowances for prevailing defi- 
 ciencies in telephone service the operator was cer- 
 tainly slow to answer. The receiver at Emily's 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 nervous ear was as lifeless as so much clay. Sup- 
 plicate as she would in her smothered voice, jingle 
 as she might at the hook, there came no response 
 through five, ten, fifteen agonized minutes. Then 
 distantly she heard footsteps growing louder as 
 they approached up the backstairs. Emily was 
 ashamed of the little scream she gave as she dropped 
 the receiver and scuttled back to the fort, banging 
 the door after her. 
 
 "Somebody's coming!" she gasped. Whereupon 
 Aunt Carmen, springing like a tigress, shot the long 
 bolt, securing the oaken door. 
 
 "How do you know?" she whispered. 
 
 "I heard them coming up the backstairs." 
 
 "Did you get the police station?" 
 
 "I didn't get anybody," panted Emily. "I think 
 the wires must be cut. They were on the roof a 
 long time this afternoon - " 
 
 "Oh." 
 
 In the dim light Emily could see Aunt Carmen's 
 fiery eyes a few inches from her veil, gazing fixedly. 
 
 "It seems to me," she drawled, "that you've 
 picked up English rather rapidly." 
 
 Providentially at that instant there came three 
 distinct raps upon the door. The poor inmates of 
 the fort huddled in silence. Again the fateful tap- 
 ping. 
 
 "Mrs. Shallope, I beg your pardon!" came Ow- 
 ley's polite voice from without. 
 
 No response. Glancing round Emily could see 
 in an instant that her relative was beyond words. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 225 
 
 Therefore she got on her knees before the large 
 old-fashioned keyhole, and, speaking with the great- 
 est distinctness, said : 
 
 "Is that you, Owley?" 
 
 "Yes, Miss Ray," was the disconcerting reply. 
 
 "I'm Miss El-Zelim." 
 
 "I beg your pardon, miss. Could I speak to Mrs. 
 Shallope?" 
 
 "Are you alone?" 
 
 "Yes, Miss Ray Miss El-Zelim." 
 
 "Do you come as a friend ?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, Miss Ray. I assure you, miss " 
 
 "Let him in," came Aunt Carmen's feeble moan 
 from the background. 
 
 Owley's tall, servantly figure was admitted 
 through a crack in the door, and he stood silent be- 
 fore the interned group until the bolt had again 
 been shot. Somehow his correct appearance had a 
 heartening effect. It was a reminder of the domes- 
 tic order which had once reigned in this disrupted 
 home. 
 
 "Isn't it dreadful, Owley!" moaned his mistress 
 from her trunk. 
 
 "Quite unusual, if I might say so, madam," he 
 agreed in his soothing tone. 
 
 "I'm so grateful to see you alive," admitted Aunt 
 Carmen, trembling violently. "But can't you do 
 anything, Owley? Can't you get to the garage 
 or " 
 
 "I'm in rather a difficult position, madam," he 
 temporized. "There was some debate at first as to 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 whether they should do me in and throw me out 
 of a window. Finally the Noes 'ad it, so they took 
 a vote and decided to make me president of the 
 soviet." 
 
 "Make you what?'* came at least three voices at 
 once. 
 
 "President of the Soviet, madam. Not that I 
 was a-seeking the honor," he added modestly. "I 
 have often gone to their meetings in New York, 
 madam - " 
 
 "Owley!" gasped Mrs. Shallope, outraged. 
 "How dare you do such a thing?" 
 
 "Wishing to give no offense, madam, you 'ave 
 often urged me to attend your church and to vote 
 your ticket in general elections. It was but the 
 force of 'igh example. So I 'ave attended their 
 meetings, and very pretty affairs they were, too. 
 Nothing rough, so to speak. But to-night my 
 word! I am fair outdone, madam. All very well 
 in their place, say I, but too apparently these pro- 
 letariat are quite unused to making revolutions in 
 gentlemen's 'ouses. So I left the meeting, pretend- 
 ing like that I would obtain them more of their 
 filthy drink vodka and I came to you by the 
 backstairs." 
 
 "It seems to me that Browning boy might have 
 done something," suggested Aunt Carmen, getting 
 round to her old grudge. 
 
 " 'E might, madam. But in the first rush th6 
 short-'aired lady 'er they call Miss Drigg bashed 
 'im with a chair. And now 'e's tied with napkins 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 227 
 
 and laid away, two foreign nihilists a-guarding the 
 door." 
 
 "What are they debating on now?" asked Car- 
 men, justified in the assumption that the soviet must 
 be debating about something. 
 
 "They 'ave just finished the question of state 
 marriages, madam, and 'ave decided to begin them 
 'ere, this being the American Red Republic, so to 
 speak." 
 
 The statement, made in Owley's best manner, 
 managed to convey a threat which sent a chill 
 through the marrow of the four helpless females. 
 
 "Isn't this a peculiar time and place to be ar- 
 ranging about state marriages?" whispered Mrs. 
 Finnessey. 
 
 "Times and places are never peculiar to the 
 hemancipated, madam. Such of the Comrades as 
 are married are quite dissatisfied you can tell this 
 by observing the ladies. And Comrade Epstein 'as 
 convinced them that the capitalistic matrimonial 
 laws is all wrong. Quite right, too, I might say, 
 'aving ventured twice myself. Therefore, they are 
 taking time by the forelock, so to speak, and 'ave 
 drawn lots as to which shall marry which." 
 
 "Which what?" asked Aunt Carmen in a thin, 
 hard voice. 
 
 "Which of you ladies. They 'ave declared capi- 
 talistic marriages null and void. You ladies being 
 unmarried, hemancipatedly speaking, you are 
 therefore to be chosen for the 'oly bonds." 
 
228 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "You say they've drawn lots?" asked Rosa- 
 monde hoarsely. 
 
 "It 'ad to be decided that way. Professor Syle 
 spoke up early and claimed Miss this Turkish 
 lady, I should say but she was very popular " 
 
 "Oh." That comment came from the parched 
 lips of Rosamonde Valiant. 
 
 "And she vas finally drawn by Comrade Tony, 
 the Eyetalian person. Mrs. Valiant was next raf- 
 fled off to Comrade Smole, the small gentleman, 
 who being already married to Miss Drigg must 
 needs divorce that lady, which put 'er in a state of 
 mind. Then came Mrs. Finnessey, one of the 
 Ukrainian foreigners drawing the lucky straw." 
 
 "Is there no law in the land?" spluttered Aunt 
 Carmen. Then a wistful expression came over her 
 haggard old face. "Did anybody have the imperti- 
 nence to to drag my name into this disgraceful 
 transaction ?" 
 
 "You were spoke for somewhat late, madam," 
 said Owley consolingly, "by Comrade Alfonzo." 
 
 "Well, they can't marry us," remarked Aunt Car- 
 men, as though that settled everything. "There 
 isn't a minister of the gospel within fifteen miles 
 and I have forbidden my cars to leave the garage." 
 
 "According to the soviet," decreed Owley in 
 measured tones, "the ceremony 'as already took 
 place." 
 
 When Owley had left, slamming the door after 
 him as by a sudden alarm, the refugees again drew 
 the bolt and settled themselves to despair. Rosa- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 229 
 
 monde, apparently a wreck, lay across a box, her 
 face in Mrs. Finnessey's lap. Emily sat beside 
 Aunt Carmen on her trunk, and the old lady, look- 
 ing a score more years than she was entitled to, 
 suddenly reached out for the young hand. 
 
 "It's all Rosamonde's fault," she croaked, "dip- 
 ping into these dangerous beliefs and bringing them 
 to my house. And what is the world coming to? 
 My servants some of them I've had for twenty 
 years betraying me in that insolent manner ? And 
 what is Owley doing, associating with Bolsheviks 
 and all sorts of disreputable people?" 
 
 "The same thing that you are doing, auntie 
 dear." 
 
 "Emily, take off that foolish veil!" Aunt Car- 
 men had reached peevishly up and torn away the 
 slight disguise. "Now tell me, if you don't 
 
 Again three taps upon the oaken door, loud, 
 commanding taps this time. Emily slunk forward 
 and put her eye to the keyhole. It was Owley 
 again. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, miss," he said in a queer, 
 strained voice as soon as Emily had opened to him, 
 "but the Comrades 'ave decided to abandon the 
 
 'ouse." 
 
 "It's time," snapped Carmen. 
 "But before they go," he assured her, "they in- 
 tend to burn it." 
 
 "Burn it!" three dry throats echoed horrifically. 
 "After a sizable debate, balancing pro and con, 
 
230 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 they decided that the estate would be a bit 'ard to 
 keep up, on the one 'and, but on the other it should 
 not be allowed to go back to the capitalistic class 
 from which it came. Therefore burning was de- 
 cided upon as an hintellectual compromise. The 
 Ukrainian kommissars are now in the basement 
 searching for hoil while the majority of the soviet 
 are piling furniture in the reception 'all. It is a 
 bitter sight, madam, and offends my sense of hor- 
 der." 
 
 "Owley!" Aunt Carmen gave an infernal 
 shriek. "Are you going to stand round and let 
 them " 
 
 "I should inform the garage/' he explained, "but 
 they 'ave shut off every avenue of hescape." 
 
 It was Emily Ray who shot out of the gloomy 
 room and, after ducking under Owley 's elbow, re- 
 adjusted her veil and went charging through the 
 darkness and down the backstairs. 
 
 It was indeed a bitter sight, as Comrade Owley 
 had described it, for as Emily crept along a 
 gallery and looked down into the wide magnifi- 
 cence of the reception hall she was witness to a 
 scene unique fortunately on our serene and 
 happy continent. 
 
 It was Siegfried, Beowulf and Jabberwocky all 
 combined into a grotesquery of horror. On Aunt 
 Carmen's proud piano the piano which was all 
 gold leaf with carven sea divinities supporting it 
 from beneath such members of the soviet as had 
 not fallen asleep were piling chairs, tables, cabinets. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Professor Syle stood at center stage, his arms 
 folded, his attitude Napoleonic. All oratory was 
 stilled, save for that of Comrade Niki, who in a 
 peewee frenzy had mounted an overturned sofa and 
 was shouting shrilly in Japanese. 
 
 It was one of those deliriums of heroic action 
 that took Emily Ray along the gallery and down 
 the service stairs which led to the butler's pantry. 
 Although the craven Owley had dramatized the 
 melodrama with the explanation that "they had shut 
 off every avenue of escape/' she knew of a des- 
 perate way out. She found the butler's pantry in 
 darkness; the Ukrainian kommissars, as she had 
 suspected, had abandoned their posts in order to 
 seek fuel for the pyre. 
 
 Once inside the narrow glass-shelved room she 
 was easily guided by a faint light from a small win- 
 dow; and that window she knew opened ten feet 
 above a driveway in the rear of the house. It was 
 toward that window she glided and had just 
 clutched the sill and braced her knee against a con- 
 venient sink when strong arms reached out of a 
 dark corner and pulled her back, while a rough 
 hand, clapped roughly over her mouth, smothered 
 her cries. 
 
 It was a hard silent battle in the dark. Finally 
 suffocation overcame her and she found herself 
 weakening, falling when her assailant stumbled to 
 the wall and pressed the electric button, flooding the 
 space with light. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Well, I'll eat my hat!" she heard a deep voice 
 in her ear. 
 
 She opened her eyes and found herself looking 
 into the face of Oliver Browning. 
 
 "You fool!" she whispered, "what are you try- 
 ing to do? Don't you know they're burning down 
 the house?" 
 
 "I suspected it," he answered, with an agonizing 
 deliberateness. "They had me hog-tied with nap- 
 kins and I'd just chewed the last one loose when 
 you butted in. I thought you were - " 
 
 "Never mind what I was," she urged. "You can 
 get out of that window. There are chauffeurs and 
 things in the garage - " 
 
 But she had no opportunity to finish her explana- 
 tion, for Oliver was swinging himself through a 
 space which seemed too narrow for his plump body. 
 
XVI 
 
 WHEN Emily got back to the reception hall she 
 found the soviet suffering from another hitch in 
 its program. Comrade Elsa, her eyes bright with 
 murder lust, was waving a two-gallon can as she 
 danced round and round. 
 
 "It's olive oil," she chanted, "but it burns. Lord, 
 what a blaze it will make!" 
 
 "Comrades !" Professor Syle, who had come out 
 of his self -contemplating trance, was pounding for 
 order. "Before we take final action it might be 
 well for the soviet to go into executive session and 
 reconsider." 
 
 "Bah! A soviet never reconsiders!" This gem 
 of thought was contributed by Comrade Alfonzo, 
 who was sitting on the floor nursing an empty 
 vodka bottle. 
 
 "No, no! Reconsideration is the death of revo- 
 lution!" bellowed Comrade Epstein. Whereupon 
 such members of the soviet as were not asleep set 
 up a barking like a pack of small dogs surrounding 
 a treed cat. 
 
 Emily took her station beside Professor Syle, 
 quite unheeded by the soviet. It was probable that 
 they had never noticed her disappearance. 
 
 "I do not deny that the destruction of this prop- 
 erty is right and just quite in line with our pro- 
 
 233 
 
234 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 gram of liberation," Professor Syle was chanting 
 against the general clamor. "But should we not 
 husband our strength for the day of the general 
 uprising?" 
 
 "What would Trotzky do?" howled one of the 
 Eskimo-faced Russians, who stood leaning against 
 the pyre, his arms round two Ukrainian komfkis- 
 sws. 
 
 "Trotzky is, like all great liberators, an oppor- 
 tunist. He waited till the time was ripe and then 
 surrendered to the great-hearted people of Ger- 
 many." 
 
 "We can't do that," objected Comrade Smole. 
 "Germany is busy." 
 
 "Are you going to stand here shilly-shallying 
 when the hour has come?" roared Miss Drigg, fac- 
 ing Syle contemptuously. 
 
 "No serious action should be taken without de- 
 bate," Syle demurred. 
 
 "Bah !" she cried, "you are a man of straw ! It's 
 just the way you run the Rcvw Deal. No policy." 
 
 "Well, let's start the fire and argue afterward," 
 suggested Comrade Elsa, beginning to unscrew the 
 oil can as she advanced toward the pyramid of 
 furniture. "We can't take this house away with 
 us, but we can remove it forever from the clutches 
 of capitalism." 
 
 Emily Ray decided to do something, anything, 
 immediately. Even though the matches were never 
 struck, there was sufficient oil in the can to spoil 
 several thousand dollars' worth of Aunt Carmen's 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 235 
 
 rugs and upholstery. She darted forward and 
 clutched the wrist which was about to project the 
 greasy essence of Tuscany, regardless of conse- 
 quences. 
 
 "Comrade!" she spoke so decisively that every 
 eye in the room was upon her, "what you do? Do 
 you know how you make traitor of our cause?" 
 
 "Traitor?" shrieked Elsa, all but dropping the 
 can. 
 
 "Oh, surely is ! Would you do something to give 
 money big, large money to capitalists?" 
 
 "What's the girl talking about?" asked Comrade 
 Elsa a strange question to ask in the realm of 
 Bolshevikia. 
 
 "Because!" Emily had now struck her cinema- 
 tographic Oriental pose. "As sure you burn this 
 house, so sure you give feefty t'ousand dollar to 
 Mrs. Shallope, so-called owner." 
 
 "Please explain yourself," urged Professor Syle, 
 obviously hopeful of avoiding arson. 
 
 "Insurance!" 
 
 "Insurance?" Even Comrade Tony awoke to 
 repeat the dread word. 
 
 "Mrs. Shallope tell me that her house would be 
 better burned to ground. Why? Because it has 
 insured itself for feefty fousand dollar more than 
 Mrs. Shallope pay for eet." 
 
 "Thank you, Comrade, for the suggestion," said 
 Professor Syle, using the same precise voice he 
 would use in addressing a bright pupil in the lec- 
 ture room. 
 
236 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 '"^^^^^ 
 
 "Shucks!" said Comrade Elsa, screwing the cover 
 back on the oil can. 
 
 "Well, I should like to know," demanded Com- 
 rade Smole disgustedly, "what in hell we're here 
 for." 
 
 "If we consider this matter some more " be- 
 gan Emily, whereupon Professor Syle interrupted. 
 
 "It would be more useful, possibly, to put the 
 matter in the form of a dignified debate. Resolved : 
 That the Destruction of Insured Property is of 
 Benefit to the Revolution. Suppose, Comrade Elsa, 
 that you take the affirmative and Comrade El-Zelim 
 the negative. For seconds, I suggest " 
 
 The point of seconds was never decided. It 
 seemed that a dozen doors opened at once and at 
 each opening there appeared a grinning, muscular, 
 unemancipated specimen of the capitalistic em- 
 ployee. A painful silence fell over the soviet as 
 Oliver Browning, swashbuckling as nearly as a fat 
 boy can swashbuckle, strode into the room and 
 stood, legs far apart, an enormous revolver playing 
 over a broad arc. 
 
 "You will put up your hands, please," he said 
 quietly. 
 
 "My God!" prayed Comrade Elsa, and sat ab- 
 ruptly on the polished floor. 
 
 "What is the meaning of this?" Professor Syle 
 lost both his platform manner and his ruddy com- 
 plexion at the inquiry. 
 
 "The Federal agents are outside," Oliver ex- 
 plained pleasantly, "and I shouldn't wonder if it 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 237 
 
 wouldn't be better to come without making any 
 trouble." 
 
 "This is persecution !" came the meek, birdlike 
 tones of Comrade Hattie. 
 
 "No doubt," declared Oliver. 
 
 "I court imprisonment!" shouted Comrade Ep- 
 stein. "If jail is good enough for Eugene V. 
 Debs " 
 
 "Exactly," said Oliver, "it's good enough for 
 you. The line forms to the left." 
 
 Mrs. Shallope's garage and garden force now 
 advanced and drew a circle round such of the Com- 
 rades as were still standing. No revolution was 
 ever broken with less to-do. As the defeated Red 
 Army was marching out single file and under guard, 
 Mrs. Bodfrey Shallope appeared on the balcony 
 and reclaimed her property. 
 
 "Take them to the garage, Riley," she ordained 
 sharply, addressing her head chauffeur. "Don't 
 permit them in my house another minute. Who in 
 the world ever asked these these impossible peo- 
 ple?" 
 
 Oliver could not answer her, for he was busily 
 engaged in dragging the sleeping kommissars from 
 the places where they had fallen and depositing 
 them in a neat pile at the center of the rug. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE soviet week-end closed officially if prema- 
 turely early Sunday morning ; possibly it developed 
 a few more sore heads and hearts than the average 
 more formal week-end develops. Possibly not. 
 
 At any rate when Oliver Browning, still armed 
 with the damaged Spanish War revolver he had 
 borrowed from the gardener, poked his head into 
 the garage shortly after sunrise, he found Pro- 
 fessor Syle sitting isolated on an oil box while his 
 erstwhile comrades still debated in the confusion 
 of tongues. Comrade Niki, being of a practical 
 race, had turned on the hose and squatted under 
 it, anointing his wiry pompadour with a cooling jet. 
 A great depression seemed to have fallen on Bol- 
 shevikia; and, occupying the position of a deposed 
 kaiser, Professor Syle gloomed lonesomely and 
 seemed to pray for death. 
 
 "Tr-r-raitor !" snarled Comrade Alfonzo, as he 
 snapped his fingers under Syle's nose and rolled 
 red eyes below the dirty bandanna he had tied round 
 his headache. 
 
 "This is merely another capitalistic plot/' moaned 
 Miss Drigg from where she sat, holding the head 
 of her husband, Mr. Smole. 
 
 "There is an eight-twelve train leaving for New 
 York/' said Oliver, as he stood in the doorway and 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 239 
 
 struggled to suppress a grin. "Mrs. Shallope is 
 willing to buy your tickets and send you to the sta- 
 tion." 
 
 "Free?" cried Comrade Walter, undoubling him- 
 self rapidly and coming to his feet. 
 
 "This is freedom's headquarters," replied Oliver, 
 now giving way to mirth. "Free tickets, free ride 
 to the station." 
 
 He had enjoyed a cup of coffee in the kitchen 
 and his spirits leaped accordingly. 
 
 "Then we go!" howled the Ukrainian komwis- 
 sars, attempting to rush the door. 
 
 "Just a minute." Oliver had leveled the empty 
 revolver and stood ready to bang the door in their 
 faces. The entire soviet had now arisen, faces hag- 
 gard and crestfallen. 
 
 "I shall go to jail,'* announced Comrade Ep- 
 stein. "It will be martyrdom." 
 
 "Every man to his taste," agreed Oliver. "Who 
 else wants to be turned over to the department of 
 justice?" 
 
 "Are your automobiles ready?" asked Professor 
 Syle, putting on his hat. 
 
 "There are just one or two things to be ar- 
 ranged," went on Oliver. "If you are agreeable 
 to Mrs. Shallope's terms " 
 
 "Name them," commanded Syle, folding his arms 
 anew. 
 
 "No name them to him!" demanded Comrade 
 Tony with a dangerous shrug. "He no- ting now 
 to us. He verra bad-a man." 
 
240 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Name them to me," suggested little Comrade 
 Hattie in her birdlike voice. 
 
 "Well," said Oliver, "Mrs. Shallope is willing 
 to let you go without prosecution if you promise 
 to say nothing about last night's meeting." 
 
 "Bah! Dat ees coercion!" hissed Comrade Al- 
 fonzo. 
 
 "Very well," agreed Oliver, "then we can take 
 care of you until the Department is notified." 
 
 "I no said I don't promise," he muttered, and 
 sat down. 
 
 "Thank you. Several revolutions have been 
 turned the wrong way by that Russian gin-water," 
 suggested Comrade Niki. 
 
 "We are all agreed," responded Mr. Smole, hav- 
 ing come out of his trance. 
 
 "That's good, and the first time you've ever been 
 that way, I guess. Of course you ought to take 
 some sort of oath " 
 
 "On our honor as Bolsheviks," suggested Com- 
 rade Walter. 
 
 "Shut up!" snapped Comrade Epstein. "You 
 are no longer a Bolshevik. However, we prom- 
 
 ise." 
 
 "Very well," proclaimed Oliver, and ten minutes 
 later three automobiles, laden down with a freight 
 of human misery, went slowly out through the 
 Shallope gate. 
 
 By eleven o'clock Emily had managed to get 
 Rosamonde and Mrs. Finnessey out of bed, to dress 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 them and start them downstairs, where the Val- 
 iant car was waiting. 
 
 "Do do you think she'll see me?" moaned 
 Rosamonde, as she was passing the door of Aunt 
 Carmen's apartment. 
 
 "There's nobody but Owley to stop you," ob- 
 served Emily, her nerves beginning to wear. 
 
 Emily led Rosamonde to a prostrate roll of mor- 
 tality under a silken comforter in a darkened inner 
 room. 
 
 "Is that you, Thompson?" asked a little cracked 
 voice under the roll. 
 
 "No, auntie. Thompson left yesterday with the 
 other servants." 
 
 "Oh, so she did. And have the other beasts 
 gone?" 
 
 "Yes, Aunt Carmen. They left by the eight- 
 twelve." 
 
 "Good!" There was a long silence, then a little 
 moan. "Who's to bring up my coffee?" 
 
 "Emily is here," announced Rosamonde ever so 
 cheerfully. 
 
 "Oh, yes. Have her make it strong. And tell 
 her to ring up Mrs. van Laerens and the rest ' 
 she'll know what to tell them. The names are in 
 my engagement book. She'll know." 
 
 "Yes, Aunt Carmen." 
 
 Rosamonde still lingered. 
 
 "What are you waiting for?" The old head was 
 raised an inch from the pillow. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Fm I'm sorry the evening turned out so 
 badly/' 
 
 Aunt Carmen sat up in bed, a haggard crone 
 with a lacy nightcap on one side of her sparsely 
 forested head. 
 
 "Next time you want to save the world," she 
 croaked, "I wish you would do it in your own 
 apartment." 
 
 "Yes, Aunt Carmen. And and I wonder if 
 there is anything I can do." 
 
 "You can go home and try to stay there," in- 
 vited the prominent Mrs. Bodfrey Shallope ere she 
 lay down and pulled the covers over her head. 
 
 Within the hour Long Island was disappointed 
 by the announcement, telephoned by a ladylike sec- 
 retary, to the effect that Mrs. Bodfrey Shallope's 
 radical luncheon had been postponed, as Mrs. Shal- 
 lope was threatened with an attack of Spanish in- 
 fluenza. 
 
 "When in doubt blame the flu," said Miss Ray 
 to Mr. Owley, as she sat in the sun room and won- 
 dered what she was expected to do next. 
 
XVIII 
 
 IT was nearly a week later that Emily Ray, chair- 
 lady of an itinerant Lodge of Sorrow, called upon 
 Rosamonde Valiant and found her fair cousin 
 scolding tempestuously over a bathtub wherein 
 Eustace, grown full four inches longer since his in- 
 troduction to Bolshevism, lay sulkily refusing to 
 notice the cubes of steak which Rosamonde was 
 offering him on the end of a long tick. 
 
 "He's spoiled the way everything else is," 
 stormed Rosamonde. "He's got so he refuses 
 everything but goldfish and the cheapest of them 
 cost two seventy-five." 
 
 "You might offer him Professor Syle again," 
 suggested Emily, forgetting her own worries in the 
 contemplation of another's. 
 
 "I wish Eustace had swallowed him when he had 
 a chance," was Rosamonde's gentle prayer. "I 
 suppose I've got to stay here all summer, melting 
 with the heat, feeding Eustace." 
 
 "Isn't Merlin going to open the Narragansett 
 house?" 
 
 "He sent me a disgusting letter yesterday 
 through his lawyers. He said that since the poor 
 must stay in town and endure the heat, he didn't 
 see any reason why the rich shouldn't do the same 
 
 243 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 and get used to the time when the Bolsheviks will 
 
 make 'em." 
 
 "I didn't know Merlin could be so sarcastic." 
 "It's sordid sordid!" wailed Rosamonde, and 
 
 began again to spoil her pretty eyes. 
 
 "It's only April now," Emily pointed out, "and 
 
 he'll have lots of time to change his mind before hot 
 
 weather sets in. Come, my dear, won't you let me 
 
 have a cup of tea?" 
 
 When they had settled themselves beside the 
 
 empty birdcage in the drawing-room and Agnes 
 
 was wheeling in the tea wagon, Rosamonde calmed 
 
 herself sufficiently to ask : 
 
 "Has Aunt Carmen got any servants yet?" 
 "A new set," said Emily, "and I got them for 
 
 her." 
 
 "They're all satisfied, I suppose, and going to 
 
 stay?" 
 
 "All but one. Emily Ray has quit again." 
 
 "Emily! What has happened now?" 
 
 "Aunt Carmen was perfect honeydew until I 
 
 engaged a crew of servants for her; then she 
 
 went back to her old brain storms. She began 
 
 to hint that I was to blame for the week-end 
 
 soviet." 
 
 "Of course she would. But how did she work 
 
 it out?" 
 
 "She said that I had a passion for running round 
 
 with all sorts of loose people, and that I had en- 
 
 couraged Oliver and that she had always suspected 
 
 Oliver of having dangerous views. Imagine ! Then 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 245 
 
 she trotted out Plummie van Laerens' boy you 
 know, Reggie, the pimply one who collects chorus 
 girls. She told me here was a chance to get back 
 into decent society. So I went round and saw Ow- 
 ley." 
 
 "Owley!" Rosamonde lifted her eyebrows. 
 
 "I always consult Owley on really important mat- 
 ters. He quoted a lot from the classics, but 
 the burden of his song was, 'Beat it while the 
 beatin's good.' So here I am again in the great 
 world." 
 
 "But, my dear, what are you going to do?" 
 
 "The same," said Emily lightly. 
 
 "Why don't you stay here with me and Eustace ?" 
 asked the plaintive Rosamonde. 
 
 "That's awfully good of you, but I'm afraid I 
 couldn't," said Emily, hesitating to add that she 
 was done with rich women's bounty. "But, Rosa 
 dear, why couldn't I go back to the studio until I 
 found something to do?" 
 
 "You're perfectly welcome to," replied her cou- 
 sin with a shrug. "I haven't been near the horrid 
 den since that that night " Her visible shud- 
 der brought uncanny recollections of a flight from 
 a matrimonial soviet and a gruesome hour in the 
 Shallope's colonial fortress. "It has bred nothing 
 but trouble, and I never want to see the place 
 again." 
 
 "It could be made very cozy," Emily explained, 
 "with a few of the red draperies down." 
 
246 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "I paid three months' rent in advance. It's 
 leased for a year. You're welcome to it as long 
 as you care to stay. I've locked it up and you 
 might just as well be using it." 
 
 "Rosa, you're a duck!" cried Emily. "And now 
 give me the key and let me get back to my 
 home." 
 
 "I hope you won't let them impose on you," was 
 Rosamonde's friendly warning, as Emily took the 
 key and was departing. 
 
 "You haven't got my idea at all," laughed 'Emily, 
 and rang for the elevator. 
 
 She expected to find number eighteen Pomander 
 Place wearing the blank, blind look of a deserted 
 home. Instead the scene was teeming with life. 
 As soon as she entered the bare hall she heard 
 heavy footfalls and beheld Comrade Epstein and 
 Miss Drigg's husband locked in a passion of argu- 
 ment. 
 
 "England, who is responsible for the war, should 
 be forced to pay an indemnity to the Russian soviet 
 government ' ' 
 
 "Hel-lo!" cried Miss Drigg's husband, rushing 
 forward behind two open palms. "We thought the 
 capitalists had got you!" 
 
 "Not yet," announced Emily. "What's going on 
 upstairs a party?" 
 
 "Just an informal debate," explained Comrade 
 Epstein. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 247 
 
 "That's the same thing," said Emily, and to their 
 amazement brushed by the Comrades and went 
 skipping up the stairs. 
 
 Her first act upon reaching the landing was to 
 tear the pretty placard "Our Community" off the 
 door. Her first impression, gazing through that 
 door, was that of an amazing disorder. Two of the 
 pinkish curtains were hanging limp and ragged 
 from Aunt Carmen's smart valances. Scraps of 
 toast, crushed cigarettes, empty olive jars, torn 
 pamphlets littered the field above which contending 
 voices could be heard. 
 
 "Of course Germany should be held blameless 
 
 " "How compensate mothers of illegitimate 
 
 children when " "A proper prison term will 
 
 bring any millionaire to his senses " "Call a 
 
 general strike and see what happens." 
 
 Under a halo of tobacco smoke Miss Drigg, 
 Comrade Elsa and Comrade Alfonzo were visible, 
 sprawled in a row on the divan. 
 
 "Comrade Emily!" cried Miss Drigg's deep 
 voice, as the short-haired revolutionary rushed for- 
 ward, "welcome to our club." 
 
 "Your club?" Emily stepped back and refused 
 the proffered hand. 
 
 "Is there anything extraordinary about that?" 
 growled Miss Drigg, her coarse complexion deep- 
 ening to a beet red. 
 
 "Not much. Only it's not a club and it's not 
 yours." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "What is it, if I might ask?" Miss Drigg glared 
 like a professional wrestler about to grapple. 
 
 "It's a home and it belongs to me/' announced 
 Emily, regardless of Alfonzo's dangerous "Bah!" 
 
 "Comrade Emily," roared Miss Drigg in her best 
 platform voice, "what, if I might ask, are your 
 views on the distribution of property?" 
 
 "The same as yours," announced Emily. "I 
 don't mind seeing property divided when it belongs 
 to somebody else." 
 
 "Capitalista !" snarled Alfonzo. 
 
 "I'm not now, but I'm going to be. Now good 
 afternoon, all of you. Please close the door on the 
 outside. There's a bell on it, if you'll notice, and 
 next time you want to call, please ring." 
 
 "You shall suffer for this under the revolution," 
 threatened Miss Drigg, bouncing toward the door. 
 
 "I'm willing to wait," smiled Emily. 
 
 "You'll hear from us in the Raw Deal," was Miss 
 Drigg's final threat as, accompanied by Alfonzo, 
 she departed. But the gaunt, bag-draped figure of 
 Comrade Elsa lingered. Her eyes were melancholy 
 and black-circled ; the pasty quality of her skin and 
 the hollows in her cheeks proclaimed long years of 
 underfeeding. 
 
 "What did she mean about the Raw Deal?" Em- 
 ily could not help asking. "She talks like an edi- 
 tor." 
 
 "She is," moaned Elsa; then drawled in her 
 dreary monotone: "I'm glad you're back. It's been 
 pretty lonesome here since you left, with the whole 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 249 
 
 pack howling like wolves and everything going to 
 rack and ruin." 
 
 "Under soviet control?" asked Emily, amused 
 out of her ill temper. 
 
 "Soviet control!" sniffed Elsa. "They couldn't 
 run a corner grocery, let alone manage the world. 
 Talk, talk! I wish I'd been born deaf ." 
 
 "Why, Elsa!" Emily was genuinely shocked at 
 this spiritual slump ; but her concern increased when 
 the disillusioned spinster sank down upon a broken- 
 legged chair and gave way to moisty sobs. 
 
 "I'm deserted," she gurgled, "stranded. Com- 
 rade H-H-Hattie's left me and they've k-k-kicked 
 out Comrade Walter and I'm all alone." 
 
 "What's happened to Comrade Hattie?" was the 
 obvious question, to which at last came the broken 
 reply: 
 
 "After I've sheltered and fed and protected that 
 girl" Hattie was fifty if a day, but Elsa always 
 referred to her as a girl "and and made a home 
 for her, she married one of the Ukrainian kommis- 
 sars the short one with the beard and they've 
 gone to Cincinnati to start a revolution." 
 
 She became inarticulate, weeping suds. There 
 was something terrible in the spectacle of this bleak 
 spinster weeping for the loss of a spinster as bleak 
 as herself. Her grayish bobbed hair fluttered 
 loosely with every sob ; tears running down between 
 her skinny fingers moistened the dingy surface of 
 her old smock frock. 
 
 "You've still got your work at the school," said 
 
250 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^"^^ 
 
 Emily with a kind hypocrisy, as she put her arm 
 across the heaving, emaciated shoulder. Where- 
 upon the strange creature wept more wildly than 
 before. 
 
 "Bunk!" she cried at last; and again, "Bunk!" 
 
 Then she arose and charged out of the studio, 
 banging the door after her. 
 
 What had come over the spirit of Elsa's wintry 
 dream? Emily wasted no time in idle guessing, 
 but got a broom and attacked the pigpen which had 
 once been the home of freedom. She had got the 
 trash in a pile and was sorting the noncombustibles 
 from the combustibles, preparatory to a great cre- 
 mation in the little round-bellied stove, when the 
 doorbell rang. She hesitated, dreading another pes- 
 tiferous soviet, and when she at last opened to a 
 repeated ring she peered cautiously through a crack 
 to behold Professor Walter Scott Syle. The rec- 
 ognition was not immediate, for he seemed to have 
 faded all over into a dingy gray. His suit, his hat, 
 his shoes, his necktie were of the prevailing dust 
 color. Like Rosamonde's studio he seemed to have 
 fallen into a sad disrepair during one week of soviet 
 mismanagement. 
 
 "Why, Comrade Walter !" she cried, trying to put 
 a wealth of welcome into her tone. "Come in. 
 I'm so glad to see you." 
 
 "My, I'm glad you're back!" he groaned, and 
 staggered into the room. 
 
 Appreciating in a flash how similar his words 
 were to those of the disappointed Elsa, she studied 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 251 
 
 him in the full light of the window. His chin was 
 a motley stubble of red and gray; his eyes were in- 
 flamed, their pupils dull; his usually immaculate 
 hands were grimy, the nails black-edged. Her first 
 impression was that the great intellectual had been 
 drinking, but as he shuffled wearily toward the 
 divan and sank down on its springs she reserved 
 her diagnosis. 
 
 "Well," he said, looking up with a bitter smile, 
 "you see in me a leader without an army Moses 
 kicked out of his wilderness." 
 
 "Have you really quarreled with the Comrades?" 
 she asked, truly sorry. 
 
 "They've quarreled with me," he explained with 
 a mirthless laugh. "That Long Island affair. That 
 little rattlesnake Smole and his wife did for me. It 
 seems they've been ambitious all along to get con- 
 trol of the Raw Deal. Smole also thinks he can 
 lecture, and he's been pulling all sorts of wires to 
 get my place " 
 
 "Ah," said she softly. "So there are wires in 
 Utopia!" 
 
 "Wires!" he stormed. "It's all wires. They 
 were only waiting for a chance to stab me, so when 
 they got back from that Long Island nightmare 
 they reported to the directors that I had betrayed 
 them to the capitalists. Consequently Smole, 
 Driggs and Company are now running my paper, 
 my lectures have been canceled, my books have been 
 taken out of the school, and here I am." 
 
 To Emily Ray, the professional theorist had 
 
252 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 never seemed so nearly human as he did at that 
 moment, struggling in the throes of a worldly prob- 
 lem. 
 
 "It's all the fault of the competitive system," 
 Emily was so cruel as to suggest. 
 
 "Don't rub it in!" he implored. "But I will ad- 
 mit there is more competition than anything else 
 in the whole Bolshevik mess. They're as jealous 
 as opera singers. Lord knows I did my best to keep 
 that house party quiet; it was your aunt's horrible 
 vodka that did the damage that and a conspiracy 
 against me. They only started that soviet to get 
 me in wrong, I tell you." 
 
 "Well, what are you going to do about it, Com- 
 rade Walter?" 
 
 "Don't call me Comrade Walter!" 
 
 "What shall I call you?" 
 
 "Call me Ichabod!" he groaned, and covered his 
 wretched face. And after a spell of moody silence : 
 "Where are we going and what are we doing? 
 Rats! America doesn't want Bolshevism, and 
 American Bolsheviks are either liars or lunatics!" 
 
 "As long as there are industrial abuses I suppose 
 there will be radicals to fight them," suggested Em- 
 ily, surprisingly eager to combat Walter's ultra- 
 conservative point of view. 
 
 "It's a tea-party fight!" growled Walter. "A lot 
 of dazzled idiots looking into each other's faces and 
 debating, debating, debating all in a circle like the 
 Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse. 
 They want a revolution, they want the earth, they 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 253 
 
 don't know what they want. Look at the Pilsen 
 School, the saddest joke in the history of educa- 
 tion. Old maids like Elsa holding classes in 
 motherhood; a greasy criminal like Alfonzo, a 
 pasty-faced dilettante like Smole the whole lazy 
 pack of them collecting in knots and telling the 
 world what the working people want. They never 
 did a day's work in their lives and they don't know 
 a labor agitator from a laborer." 
 
 Strange words out of the mouth of Professor 
 Walter Scott Syle! 
 
 "So here I am between the capitalistic frying pan 
 and the Bolshevistic fire. For twelve years I've put 
 my time and my brains into what I thought was 
 saving the world. And look at me now. Look at 
 me! Thrown out of every respectable college in 
 the country and finally ejected from the Pilsen 
 School of Radical Culture. I've even gone in for 
 parlor Bolshevism, let myself be dragged from pil- 
 lar to post by a lot of silly rich women, with the 
 hope that I might get something out of it beside 
 the shirt on my back " 
 
 "Oh, I see," said Emily Ray quite clearly. 
 
 "You see what?" He looked up at her with his 
 bloodshot eyes. 
 
 "Nothing and everything. Look here, Wal- 
 ter," she resumed, taking a seat beside him on the 
 divan, "you and I ha/e been barking up the wrong 
 tree, that's all." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I've just seen the light myself, Walter. We're 
 
254 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 in the same boat, only we're rowing with different 
 oars. I also had an idea of serving rich women 
 with my honest convictions; but this morning it 
 occurred to me that I've been wrong all along the 
 line. Rich women the spoiled set in those big 
 houses Alfonzo wants to burn down don't pay 
 much for being served, but they waste like wildfire 
 to be amused. They're like rubes at a country fair ; 
 they love to be cheated in a novel way. Why did 
 the week-end soviet make such an inglorious fizzle? 
 Because the Bolsheviks acted like Bolsheviks when 
 Aunt Carmen had brought them there expecting a 
 pink harmless vaudeville show. Do you get my 
 point?" 
 
 "I don't see where it applies to my case." 
 
 "It applies closer than the extra shirt you want. 
 Are you anxious to come back, Walter?" 
 
 "In what way?" 
 
 "To be vulgar, do you want to get rich?" 
 
 "And violate my convictions?" 
 
 "Bunk! You've just told me what your convic- 
 tions are." 
 
 "Hm. You seem to have a program." 
 
 "The only sane program that was ever hatched 
 in this studio." Emily saw her patient wavering, 
 so she went rapidly to her project. "What the so- 
 ciety radicals want to hear is a lot of harmlessly 
 dangerous theories, soothing revolutionary thoughts 
 that won't make them nervous about losing the in- 
 terest on their invested capital. You have a splen- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 255 
 
 did platform manner, Walter, and a way with 
 women women past middle age " 
 
 "Thanks," he moaned. 
 
 "And it seems to me that all you need is a busi- 
 ness manager. You ought to put yourself in the 
 same class with a good concert singer or a trav- 
 elogue lecturer." 
 
 "And you will write my lectures, I suppose," 
 Professor Syle sarcastically intimated. "And pos- 
 sibly you might provide a moving-picture series 
 showing the sorrows of the poor " 
 
 "Movies would be too expensive at first; and 
 they're not very fashionable. But I could write a 
 few of your first lectures. You'd have to cut out 
 all that seditious stuff from the start or I'd never 
 touch the job. But I have ever so many subjects 
 you could use Love and Municipal Ownership, 
 Perfection in Politics and The Religion of Modern- 
 ity." 
 
 "And I'd give up every idea of serving my peo- 
 ple in the way of editorship." 
 
 The tone in which he said it was far less gloomy 
 than the sentiment called for. 
 
 "You're out of the Raw Deed already," she in- 
 formed him in her practical way. "It's a sort of 
 a dynamiter's trade journal anyhow. How would 
 you like to be editor of the New Progressive?" 
 
 "I've always wanted it," he confessed, this being 
 his candid day. "It's the only thing really worth 
 while in my field." 
 
 "Yes," she agreed, "the New Progressive is the 
 
256 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 official organ of the parlor Bolshevik. It's quite 
 vogue to read the New Progressive. It matches 
 the chintz in every dainty boudoir. It's run by the 
 sweetest board of highbrows, it's never in trouble 
 because it never says anything and uses the loveliest 
 language saying it." 
 
 "I couldn't make it," he objected, quite ignoring 
 her satire. "The New Progressive is like an ex- 
 clusive club, and Justinian Kroll hates the ground 
 I walk on." 
 
 "You can get anywhere in New York if you 
 have all the ladies working for you." Emily ut- 
 tered a great truth. 
 
 Walter came suddenly to his feet. 
 
 "I've snubbed Mrs. Ballymoore," he said, "until 
 she'll have nothing more to do with me. And she's 
 leader of all the society radicals." 
 
 "She loves to be snubbed," replied Emily. "I'll 
 bet she's crazy to have you back." 
 
 "I'm going to get a shave," he announced in a 
 curiously constrained tone. 
 
 "You might. And don't you think you could 
 find a nicer suit of clothes than that?" 
 
 "I suppose so," he replied abstractedly. Then 
 facing round he fixed his red eyes on his business 
 manager-elect. 
 
 "Will you marry me ?" he asked. 
 
 "No." 
 
 Walter Scott Syle took a step toward the door. 
 
 "Are you going to let me handle your career?" 
 she called after him. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 257 
 
 "I'll think it over," he growled, and banged the 
 door after him. 
 
 So Emily went to the dreary den across the hall 
 to offer peace and a chance to live to miserable Elsa. 
 
XIX 
 
 EMILY RAY came upon Mrs. Ballymoore during 
 the week when she was somewhat disgustedly pack- 
 ing for Tawgamuk Point, her country home, in 
 order to organize another campaign in behalf of her 
 beautiful but strikingly unattractive daughter Vera. 
 Vera's hope, member of a recently deposed royal 
 house, had found an heiress just as rich as Vera 
 and infinitely pleasanter to be with. There- 
 fore Mrs. Ballymoore's Fifth Avenue house, dec- 
 orated to the nth degree of taste by that fashion- 
 able swindler, Carlo Dulcimer, was in a confusion 
 suitable to Mrs. Ballymoore's mind on the after- 
 noon of Emily's call. 
 
 The indefatigable climber, seeing in Emily a rel- 
 ative of the detested Mrs. Shallope, was at first 
 fiercely polite; then when it was artfully made 
 known that Miss Ray held in her reticule, as it 
 were, no less a jewel than Professor Walter Scott 
 Syle and a series of drawing-room lectures, Mrs. 
 Ballymoore's manner was at first curious, then kind. 
 She asked a few oblique questions, to be irritated 
 by equally oblique replies. The distinguished rev- 
 olutionist was willing to auction his talents to the 
 highest bidder; that much was explained. It was 
 not said outright, but it was implied that Mrs. Shal- 
 
 258 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 259 
 
 lope was already in the field with no end of tempt- 
 ing offers. 
 
 The game was easier than Emily had foreseen. 
 Mrs. Ballymoore dismissed her from the presence 
 with the understanding that Professor Syle should 
 appear at Tawgamuk Point immediately after 
 horse-show week and give two performances for 
 the sum of fifteen hundred dollars and his expenses. 
 Emily, being still young in her profession, had felt 
 some qualms at asking the price; but the cheerful- 
 ness with which her terms were accepted indicated 
 that the fee might have been doubled and no ques- 
 tions asked. She intimated that Mrs. Ballymoore's 
 word was as good as her check and took her de- 
 parture with an empty pocketbook but a full hope. 
 
 Rosamonde, who was resolved to turn New York 
 into a summer resort and had already taken to late 
 hours with the dancing Army set, managed to wrest 
 sufficient nourishment from the hungry Eustace to 
 keep her cousin fairly comfortable during those 
 weeks of waiting. Then, early in June, with one of 
 Merlin's cast-off and made-over warm-weather cos- 
 tumes on his back and another in his hand-bag, the 
 Professor took his fashionable way up to Tawga- 
 muk Point. He had been quite docile, had taken 
 Emily's advice in everything; even the brisk mili- 
 tary manner in which he was wearing his mustache 
 had been one of Emily's ideas. She thought him 
 rather handsome on the day when, with the whis- 
 pered injunction, "Keep 'em guessing, whatever you 
 do," she saw him off at the Grand Central Station. 
 
260 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 ['^^^^^^^^^^^^^^'^^^^''^^^''^^'^''^ 
 
 Walter's absence was protracted from one week 
 into two. He telegraphed triumphantly twice, and 
 the New York Trombone's society page came out 
 with a snapshot showing Walter Scott Syle, com- 
 panioned by great folk and beautiful in Merlin's 
 summer suit, witnessing a tennis match. A para- 
 graph from Sissie Spooner's notes included the 
 statement : 
 
 "... and sweet Tusia Ballymoore will al- 
 ways have her lion. This time he is fresh from the 
 jungle of social discontent; but his roarings above 
 the summer tide of Tawgamuk Point are attuned to 
 the best traditions of modern chamber music. Pro- 
 fessor Walter Scott Syle's lecture on Love and 
 Politics packed Mrs. Ballymoore's drawing-room, 
 and was delivered with such success that Sissie pre- 
 dicts any number of dainty converts to the Cause 
 ere the autumn leaves begin to fall." 
 
 A few days before his return Syle wrote in part: 
 
 "It seemed at first like a silly sacrilege, but I 
 am beginning to feel that my message is here. They 
 receive my words with the faith of little children 
 and I feel that I may yet be able to work out their 
 redemption. Mrs. B. has given her check which I 
 shall bring down with me. By the way, can't you 
 invent something something Russian but not too 
 Russian to go with my lectures? Everything 
 should be in key. Mrs. B. and Vera are touring 
 down next Wednesday and I may be included in 
 the party." 
 
 So far so good, and no better. Luck turning in 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 261 
 
 her favor Emily Ray, being human, permitted her 
 mind to dwell on that which she did not possess. 
 Since the night of Aunt Carmen's crazy house party 
 she had never set eyes on Oliver Browning. At 
 first it had seemed to her that the melodramatic 
 rescue scene in which they were so intimately con- 
 cerned should have settled all their differences. In- 
 stead it seemed to have drawn them farther and 
 farther apart. Oliver's apartment in Pomander 
 Place was locked and deserted. The Italian wom- 
 an who had made his bed informed Emily one hot 
 morning that Mr. Browning had gone to Texas in 
 a matter of mules. 
 
 "Mule himself !" sniffed Emily, and again turned 
 her thoughts toward the man whose destiny had 
 become so inextricably interwoven with hers. She 
 began making allowances for Walter. Undoubted- 
 ly he had come to see the error of his ways; if he 
 was making good in a somewhat dubious profes- 
 sion was not the fault entirely Emily's? Who could 
 blame him for commercializing the only art he 
 knew? Under Emily's grooming his face was fill- 
 ing out and he was becoming positively handsome 
 much better looking than Oliver to the unpreju- 
 diced eye. And yet 
 
 "How old are you?" asked the spectral Elsa one 
 morning; she had become Emily's housekeeper and 
 confidential agent. 
 
 "I was twenty-four on the second/' admitted 
 Emily. 
 
 "You'll be an old maid the next thing you know," 
 
262 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 warned the prophetess of evil. "I had my chance 
 when I was nineteen. It was up in Salem, Mass. 
 I thought I had a great career ahead of me writ- 
 ing poetry. And I had a silly notion that I couldn't 
 marry a man who came home at night and talked 
 business." 
 
 "What was his business?' 1 asked Emily sym- 
 pathetically. 
 
 "He was an undertaker," said Comrade Elsa. 
 
 It was a sultry afternoon in mid-June when the 
 Pomander Place studio staged a truly musical com- 
 edy. Electric fans were going full blast, ruffling 
 crisp muslin curtains against fly-screened windows, 
 while the neat smart interior with its pretty chintz 
 and black- framed drawings was a-quiver with the 
 notes of male voices, accorded but violent : 
 
 "Struma, bodkin, inchvall, struma!" 
 
 This they seemed to be chanting with infinite 
 repetitions and variations in sweet fierce voices. A 
 quartette of Russian muzhiks, arrayed quaintly in 
 Slavic costumes, were making the noise for the 
 benefit of Mrs. Ballymoore and her disagreeably 
 beautiful Vera, the twain having motored Profes- 
 sor Walter Scott Syle down from Tawgamuk 
 Point in order to hear these rare song birds which 
 Emily had assembled out of the flotsam of the 
 Pilsen School. 
 
 The studio was somewhat less futuristic in ap- 
 pearance than it had been under Rosamonde's man- 
 agement. The pink curtains had come down; so 
 had a menagerie of wild paintings. Emily had 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 263 
 
 r^^^^***'^**^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^'^"^^^^^^^^^*"^***^'^''^^"^**'^^^^"^ 
 
 gone in for repression, accentuated by a note of 
 horror here and there; she had worked under the 
 sane philosophy that a single murder is often more 
 dramatic than a massacre. 
 
 In a far corner, whither the impressionistic por- 
 trait of Lenine had been sequestered, Vera Bally- 
 moore Emily was not overlooking this encounter 
 was making violent love to Professor Syle. And 
 a wonderfully remodeled Syle he was, with a gar- 
 denia in the buttonhole of a new pongee suit. 
 
 "What are they singing about?" asked Mrs. 
 Ballymoore. 
 
 Emily, who had been indulging the feminine 
 thought that Vera's thousand-dollar costume had 
 managed to exaggerate repellent loveliness, started 
 at the question and extemporized rapidly. 
 
 "It's a folk song about about horses. 'The 
 horses gallop up the hill.' ' 
 
 "The songs of the people are so full of pathos," 
 suggested Mrs. Ballymoore, who was also watch- 
 ing Vera out of a corner of her hard eye. " 'Prog- 
 ress marches to music/ That is a quotation from 
 Professor Syle. Could I have them at my house 
 next winter, do you think?" Referring of course 
 to the musical muzhiks. 
 
 "They are very much attached to Comrade Wal- 
 ter," objected Emily, "They seldom sing except 
 on the same program with him. In fact, as I under- 
 stand it, he has arranged to take them on his lec- 
 ture tour." 
 
 Mrs. Ballymoore paused. Under the portrait of 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Lenine her daughter Vera's classic head was slant- 
 ing coquettishly toward that of Professor Syle. 
 
 "I was hoping to have him next winter," con- 
 fided Mrs. Ballymoore at last above the droning 
 of the Russian music. 
 
 "I am now making out his schedule/* said Em- 
 ily, which was literally true. 
 
 "My ballroom is being remodeled this summer," 
 observed Mrs. Ballymoore. "It will have a seating 
 capacity of two hundred and fifty and makes an 
 excellent auditorium. Last winter we had Sir Taj 
 Ravore's series on 'Etherialism' - " 
 
 Emily, sensing the time to strike, broke in : 
 
 "Professor Syle's New York course will include 
 twelve lectures. Our books are now open. Of 
 course we must have a guaranty that the capacity 
 of the auditorium will be sold out. My aunt's ball- 
 room, I believe, will seat over three hundred - " 
 
 "He will be wasted on Long Island!" exclaimed 
 Mrs. Ballymoore feverishly. "The Taj Ravore lec- 
 tures sold out at twenty-five dollars for a season 
 ticket." 
 
 "We are asking thirty," explained Emily. 
 
 "The extra five oughtn't to make any difference." 
 
 "That is necessary on account of the Russian 
 music." 
 
 Emily was now sorry she hadn't asked fifty. 
 True, Comrade Horrovitch, the Ukrainian leader 
 of the harmonious four, had settled on a lump sum 
 of ten dollars a night, which was seven more than 
 the Ukrainians had ever seen assembled in one 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 265 
 
 transaction. But Emily was yet to perfect herself 
 in the Fifth Avenue business philosophy: The 
 Higher the Price the Finer the Goods. 
 
 The Russian quartet had ceased to boom. In 
 the sudden hush Emily could hear Vera Bally- 
 moore asking in a note as melodious as a song : 
 
 "But do you think society should deny a woman's 
 right to her choice?" 
 
 "By by no means." Walter seemed unusually 
 hesitant. "No doubt the relative values will be de- 
 termined as the race becomes more enlightened." 
 
 Comrade Horrovitch was advancing upon Emily, 
 smiling the smile of the conscious artist. 
 
 "You are heavenly!" cooed Mrs. Ballymoore. 
 
 "What she said?" asked Comrade Horrovitch, 
 turning to Emily. 
 
 "Nice good fine!" interpreted Emily, raising 
 her voice as we do when addressing aliens. 
 
 "We sing more," boomed Horrovitch's deep 
 basso. 
 
 "Splendid!" cried Mrs. Ballymoore. "Do sing 
 something warlike and stirring." 
 
 "We sing Tincannus," he volunteered. 
 
 Tincannus was what it sounded like, but Russian 
 scholars will doubtless disagree with me. At any 
 rate the merry muzhiks got themselves in a row. 
 One of them whanged passionately upon a harpish 
 sort of instrument. Then four right hands went 
 upward and there belched forth a sudden roar 
 which shook the bric-a-brac of number eighteen 
 and caused poor old Elsa to jump as though she 
 
266 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 had beheld the ghost of her discarded undertaker. 
 
 The noise subsided as abruptly as it had begun, 
 and in the nervous silence Emily was aware that 
 somebody had been alternately ringing and knock- 
 ing at her front door. It was Elsa who went to 
 the door. There was a brief parley and in walked 
 Oliver Browning, perspiring generously in spite of 
 his paper-thin blue suit and waving panama. 
 
 "Oliver!" cried Emily, rushing to greet him. 
 
 But the moment was unpropitious, for she had 
 no sooner taken his hand than the Russian quar- 
 tet, who had been waiting moodily upon the tink- 
 tinkling of the harpish instrument, attacked again 
 with appalling vigor. It was nothing less than a 
 musical explosion, and at its compact Oliver Brown- 
 ing started back, his cherubic young countenance 
 blanking with a sort of comic fear. 
 
 "I I guess I got in at the wrong party," he 
 shouted in the ear of the girl, who strove so bravely 
 to detain him. He was backing toward the door. 
 
 "No, no!" she pleaded confusedly. "We're only 
 practicing. We " 
 
 "I know. But practice makes perfect." He had 
 now backed out into the hall and was standing at 
 the head of the stairs. How could she explain that 
 this was merely playing Bolshevism to suit the 
 whim of a silly woman ? 
 
 "We'll be through in a minute," she assured him, 
 seeing that he would escape. 
 
 "Through with that?" he chuckled. "Say, 
 Emmy, I thought you were through with that the 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 267 
 
 night they tried to dynamite Aunt Carmen's place 
 and -" 
 
 "S-s-sh!" warned Emily, alarmed lest Mrs. 
 Ballymoore should scent a scandal. 
 
 "All right," said Oliver, "but I'm on my way. 
 This Russian jazz gets mine." 
 
 "Oliver, you're a mule!" she cried, losing her 
 temper. 
 
 "I admit it association with mules, you know. 
 But a mule isn't the worst animal there is. There's 
 his daddy " 
 
 "If you're going to stand there and call my 
 friends jackasses, you can go !" 
 
 "I'm sorry, Emmy. Honest I am." 
 
 "I hope you stay sorry," she blessed him, as she 
 closed the door and went back to the Russians and 
 their shocking noise. 
 
XX 
 
 IT was in that season of piping cold when Rus- 
 sian symphony orchestras are tuned up at concert 
 pitch, dray horses are falling down on the slippery 
 asphalt, coal deliveries are late, musical critics are 
 complaining that Caruso is not what he used to be, 
 and the mayor of New York is buying a tropical 
 trousseau, preparatory to a much-needed rest at 
 Palm Beach. It was, in short, the week before 
 Lent, a period of pause, when the industrious har- 
 vester of the city's crop may take stock of his bless- 
 ings, considering whether he has done well or ill by 
 himself. 
 
 I am aware of two stock takers on a blustering 
 March afternoon, who, superficially viewed, would 
 have been at once classed among the thrice blessed. 
 Professor Walter Scott Syle, a worldly figure and 
 prosperous, was just stepping out of Mrs. Bally- 
 moore's pot-bellied marble fagade and into a pea- 
 green town car. The initials "W. S. S." plainly 
 lettered on the door might, unconsciously, have ad- 
 vertised War Savings Stamps, although they had 
 been put there to announce that Walter Scott Syle 
 was owner of the car; and the professor's manner 
 said as much as he permitted his chauffeur to slam 
 the initialed door and to whirl him noiselessly down 
 the Avenue. His face had plumped visibly in these 
 
 268 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 269 
 
 months of good living. He wore a shaggy gray 
 overcoat and loose-fitting gloves, suggestive of a 
 country gentleman in town for the day. 
 
 Unsympathetic observers, such as you or I, would 
 not at that moment have placed him on the extreme 
 left wing of the radical movement ; yet he displayed 
 two evidences of his lifelong conviction. First, 
 there was his scarfpin, a large ruby of that 
 cranberry cut known to the trade as "cabuchon." 
 Miss Vera Ballymoore had given him that as a 
 symbol of his faith and hers. Secondly, there was 
 the book which he held lightly in his loose-gloved 
 hand. Without going into the extravagances of 
 the bookbinder's prattle it might be described as a 
 handsome volume, bound in red Morocco, hand- 
 tooled in gold with the title "The Heart of a Radi- 
 cal" and the authorship, Walter Scott Syle. 
 
 He who was thus goldenly proclaimed sat 
 thoughtfully ruffing the chaste pages and paused at 
 an inside leaf, beautiful with the red-lettered an- 
 nouncement : 
 
 Emancipation Edition 
 
 Limited to Four Hundred and 
 
 Fifty Numbered Copies 
 
 of Which This Is 
 
 No ... 2. 
 
 The numeral had been put in with a rubber stamp, 
 and that Walter Scott Syle was able to uncap his 
 
270 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 fountain pen and scribble a line below was a tribute 
 to the smooth action of his excellent town car. 
 
 This voyage de luxe marked for him the closing 
 of one triumph and the imminence of another. In 
 the language of the Rialto he had just completed 
 an engagement, playing New York two nights a 
 week and alternating with Boston. With the 
 blooming of Easter lilies he was booked for a Mid- 
 dle Western circuit Chicago, St. Louis, Minne- 
 apolis, Milwaukee. It was all on the principle of 
 advertising your show in the big town, as Emily 
 had so crassly put it, and then you could take it on 
 the road. 
 
 At the moment of Professor Syle's triumphal 
 progress down Fifth Avenue she who had talked 
 him into his talks, the authoress of his authorship, 
 was just closing the affairs of the day in the Red 
 Revolution Tea Room, a flourishing second-story 
 enterprise in the business heart of New York's 
 fashionable thoroughfare. Emily Ray, as she 
 busied herself looking over the day's accounts and 
 giving orders for to-morrow's rush of business, 
 was a truly lovely sight to see. Prosperity always 
 became her; and she had not made the mistake of 
 attiring herself like a harlequin in the Bolshevist 
 mode. In a close-fitting subtly-blue costume from 
 Miss Virgie's fashionable atelier, with a touch of 
 coral-red at her throat a concession to the cause 
 she looked exactly what she was, a young lady of 
 quality who wore good clothes by her own divine 
 right. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 The broad space in which she stood was an exotic 
 bower of her own creation. The center of the main 
 floor had been cleared for dancing dancing was 
 chronic in the Red Tea Room. Balconies, balconies, 
 everywhere, short balconies for two, long balconies 
 for twenty; an infinity of spindled rails, trimmed 
 artistically in Chinese red. Emily had chosen this 
 shade as an aesthetic compromise; the vulgar ox- 
 blood red of liberalism jarred horribly with every 
 decorative scheme she attempted. A number of 
 redbirds, in the expensive Chinese cages which hung 
 from the balconies, twitted peevishly for their sup- 
 per. Comrade Elsa, attired as an Ukrainian peas- 
 ant girl, was hopping stiffly up and down a ladder, 
 distributing birdseed. 
 
 Comrade Horrovitch, in native costume, came 
 down a narrow staircase from the balcony where 
 his quartet had been performing. 
 
 "I see you?" he asked, trouble distorting his 
 greasy fat face as he faced the manageress of the 
 Red Tea Room. 
 
 "You see me," she agreed. She was just closing 
 the daybook and her smile still lingered. 
 
 "Fifteen dollar a day for four singing people too 
 much little," he growled. 
 
 "Make it sixteen," she suggested shortly, and 
 went back to the pleasurable account book. 
 
 "Too less still," he persisted. "From here on 
 we ask twenty." 
 
 "You are a gouge," she suggested. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "I am a leeberal," he argued. "Hard times are 
 going up in this so-called free countree." 
 
 "If you'd ask reasonable wages they wouldn't go 
 up." 
 
 "We strike," decreed Comrade Horrovitch. 
 
 "Go ahead, but please don't bother me/' 
 
 "Strike no bother you?" Comrade Horrovitch 
 looked truly worried. 
 
 "Why should it?" she inquired. "If you go we 
 can get a troupe of Neapolitan serenaders. There 
 are plenty of Reds in Naples." 
 
 "Ha! If you do we make walk-off of all your 
 union employment." 
 
 "Do you belong to a union?" she asked inno- 
 cently. 
 
 "No; but we can." 
 
 "Don't talk nonsense, Horrovitch. Who ever 
 heard of a Brotherhood of Ukrainian Folk Song 
 Society Tea Room Artists? The Federation 
 wouldn't take you in unless you were fumigated." 
 
 "We do so." It was apparent that Horrovitch 
 didn't know what he was in for. "After that we 
 strike some more and all your employment walk 
 off/' 
 
 "What if they do?" asked Emily. "There's no 
 reason why we shouldn't employ scab labor." 
 
 "Scab labor in Red Socialist Headquarters?" he 
 fairly gasped. 
 
 "Nobody who comes here ever worries about 
 labor problems," she told him severely. "Do you 
 think they'd be annoyed by strikes and lockouts 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 273 
 
 and all those vulgar questions? What our clients 
 here want is liberation, and they want it served 
 with as little friction as possible. However, if you 
 feel that you must have twenty dollars a perform- 
 ance" again Emily looked over her daybook and 
 smiled a satisfied smile "why, I suppose we've got 
 to pay it. Now please go home, Horrovitch, and 
 next time you put on your costume don't wear those 
 awful tan shoes. We've bought you boots at thirty- 
 eight dollars a pair and " 
 
 Her lecture was interrupted by Comrade Hor- 
 rovitch who had fallen on his knees and was rap- 
 turously kissing her hand. 
 
 When Professor Syle arrived he was greeted 
 by Comrade Elsa, who was badgering a redbird 
 from the top of her ladder. 
 
 "Say!" she screamed down at him, whereupon 
 he jumped and somewhat guiltily smuggled 'The 
 Heart of a Radical" in his overcoat pocket. 
 
 "How do you do, Elsa! How do you do!" 
 
 "The Grand Duke of New Rochelle!" she sa- 
 luted him sourly. "Living uptown now, eh, what? 
 Apartments in the Fitz-Hebron like the regular 
 actor that you are." 
 
 "Since when have you objected to personal free- 
 dom?" asked Syle, not without temper. 
 
 "Since I got loose," announced Elsa, "and found 
 what freedom really was." 
 
 "Where's Comrade Miss Ray?" he asked sulk- 
 ily. 
 
 "Back in the pantry roasting the chef." Elsa 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 had now got down and taken a seat beside him in 
 one of the tea room's modish chairs. 
 
 "Do you know 'what the comrades down at the 
 school are saying about you?" she inquired, eying 
 him wickedly as she rested a sharp chin on a 
 sharper elbow. 
 
 "I don't know that I care." Syle's attention was 
 now riveted on the pantry. 
 
 "They say you're cutting 'em on the street and 
 that you won't notice a Bolshevik worth less than 
 fifty thousand a year." 
 
 "I didn't begin the cutting, if you'll remember/* 
 he deigned to reply. 
 
 "Oh, I don't blame you, 'Walter/' she persisted. 
 "That village stuff is all bunk. I didn't know what 
 life really was until I began living with Emily up 
 at the Hotel Joan of Arc. It's wonderful what a 
 difference a hot android shower makes, and a wop 
 in the morning to bring up your coffee. Bolshev- 
 ism de luxe that's the life! I understand that 
 pretty book of yours was all subcribed at twelve 
 dollars a 'volume before the date of pub - " 
 
 Emily appeared on the high landing leading to 
 the kitchen, whereupon Elsa scuttled back to her 
 loveless task of feeding the redbirds. 
 
 "Why, Walter!" cried Emily rapturously, as 
 though separation had been long and he was every- 
 thing he might be to her. 
 
 "I was wondering," he asked moodily, as soon 
 as he had sufficiently removed her from Elsa's mor- 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 275 
 
 bid ears, "if you'd like a little run round the park 
 before dinner." 
 
 "I am dining early with the van Laerens," she 
 explained ; then seeing his troubled brow : "What's 
 happened, Walter?" 
 
 "Nothing," he replied, which is the Chinese 
 method of saying "Everything." 
 
 "I'll put my hat on," she said. And five minutes 
 later Syle's smart town car was rounding the Sher- 
 man statue and pointing its aristocratic nose into 
 Central Park. 
 
 "I I've brought you my book," was his way of 
 opening the campaign. 
 
 He pulled the red volume from his pocket and 
 rather clumsily laid it in her lap. 
 
 "Oh, Walter!" She was rhapsodical. ''How 
 lovely it looks now that it's all dressed up for the 
 evening! Have the publishers paid you yet?" 
 
 "They'll settle for the whole edition next week. 
 And they're putting on one of those rotten popular 
 editions vulgar cheap-Jack stuff at a dollar- 
 ninety. It seems that the Trombone has been 
 writing scarehead editorials about it and giving it 
 a certain vogue among the riffraff." 
 
 "I know," sympathized Emily. "I wrote the 
 editorials." 
 
 "This is for you," volunteered Syle rather 
 wearily, rejecting the book which she was trying to 
 give back to him. 
 
 "You sweet thing!" 
 
 She opened it at the flyleaf, and with every ap- 
 
276 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 pearance of upliftment read aloud the scribbled 
 sentiment : 
 
 "For Emily Ray whose editorial skill has made 
 my thoughts intelligible to the world." 
 
 "You did write about half of it," he added gen- 
 erously. "You turned the title from The Hate of 
 a Radical' to 'Heart of a Radical/ and blue-penciled 
 that dangerous old manuscript till it wouldn't of- 
 fend a rabbit." 
 
 "Yes, I did," she agreed abstractedly, but her 
 eyes were still studying the flyleaf. 
 
 "Walter," she asked quietly at last, "this is 
 Number Two. Why didn't you give me Number 
 One?" 
 
 "Hm !" He cleared his throat twice before reply- 
 ing. "You see there were circumstances." 
 
 "Was the circumstance Vera Ballymoore?" 
 
 "What made you think so?" 
 
 "Of course it would be." 
 
 "Mrs. Ballymoore," he came out roughly, "has 
 financed the book. She's fixed it so that I'm get- 
 ting a double royalty. She's financed the adver- 
 tising. Without her backing it never could have 
 been possible." 
 
 "Why didn't Number One go to her?" continued 
 Emily's inexorable cross-examination. 
 
 "It did. That is to say, by giving it to Vera I 
 gave it to her mother in the most flattering possible 
 way." 
 
 "So." 
 
 Our leading sages, poets, prophets, and other 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 277 
 
 bromides have been pleased to liken woman to a 
 cat. It is characteristic of the cat that, should she 
 be indifferent to a morsel of food, one can sharpen 
 her appetite by throwing the morsel to a rival of 
 the same species. This is true. It is also true of 
 dogs, chickens, turtles, anacondas and that quaint 
 little African anachronism, the dik-dik. However, 
 women have a way of clawing out for the immi- 
 nently escapable; that we have seen with our own 
 eyes. And Emily Ray experienced something akin 
 to desire at the realization that she had been favored 
 with Number Two when Number One had been 
 placed elsewhere. 
 
 "It's a rotten tangle," said Syle bitterly, his au- 
 burn eyes burning amber fire. "The Ballymoores 
 can do anything for me if they're given a chance. 
 Vera is an unobstructed heiress to thirty-six mil- 
 lions." 
 
 "Why don't you marry her?" asked Emily, try- 
 ing to keep the hardness out of her voice. 
 
 "Do you think I'd better?" he asked, in the tone 
 of one consulting his business manager. 
 
 "Why not ? Several royal dukes have considered 
 her and only backed out because of well her dis- 
 position." 
 
 "She's crazy about me," he admitted modestly. 
 "I seem to have a peculiar influence over women 
 most of them. She scarcely ever lets me alone. I 
 have to keep my telephone unhooked for hours at 
 a time or she wouldn't give me time to work. But 
 now the time has come" he broke off suddenly 
 
278 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 and seemed interested in the wintry trees spinning 
 past "the time has come when something definite 
 has to be done. I've got to choose one way or 
 another." 
 
 "That ought to be simple enough," she thought 
 she said, but was not sure. 
 
 "She'll take me in a minute if I ask her. I'll be 
 definitely fixed for life. With unlimited money I 
 can carry on my work far beyond what I have 
 dreamed of. Other men have married unpleasant 
 women for a lot less than I'm getting." 
 
 "You could be quite happy, I think," said Emily 
 distinctly, looking straight at him. 
 
 "That's a lie. I should be miserable, Emily." 
 With an agony that made him all human at the 
 moment he reached over and clutched her hand. 
 
 Of course she knew what was coming. Why 
 shouldn't he shouldn't they? Their financial af- 
 fairs were as completely amalgamated as if they 
 were married already. A charlatan he might be 
 yes. But it was in the pursuit of a heady romance, 
 a romance of trade and bright baubles and drama 
 and audacity, that she had led him to this pass. 
 Yes, their lives were interwoven, even as their fin- 
 gers were at this moment. Together they could 
 dare everything. Apart they would be nothing. 
 
 "Emily," he was racing madly on. "I can't do 
 it! I can't. You know why. I love you. But 
 I've got to decide. If you make me I'll go to her 
 and ask her to finish up the mess. But it's got to 
 be now or never. Will you marry me?" 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 279 
 
 > i i . . i , .. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Somebody seemed to be saying it for her. But 
 even as he was gathering her in his arms she heard 
 herself saying "Mule!" It was as though she were 
 addressing the ghost-picture which floated toward 
 her somewhere out of Texas a plump, boyish 
 young 'man smoking cigarettes as he strolled amia- 
 bly through a herd of his long-eared pets. There 
 was no reproach in his look; only a good-natured, 
 tolerant philosophy. And "Mule!" her soul cried 
 out as she surrendered to the inevitable. 
 
 Walter Scott Syle leaned over and kissed her. 
 After all it was not so unpleasant. 
 
XXI 
 
 How Professor Syle just missed becoming editor 
 of the New Progressive an office which carried 
 with it the crown of parlor Bolshevism in America 
 is an incident worthy of a chapter. 
 
 Walter had interrupted his Western tour in mid- 
 flight and come back to New York, object matri- 
 mony; for time had worn into the middle of May 
 and the date they had set for an inconspicuous wed- 
 ding was but a week off. It was to be a business 
 honeymoon wherein the bride was to follow her 
 groom round the circuit; then there would be a 
 cottage in Maine, convenient to some fashionable 
 resort, and they could set themselves at leisure to 
 the task of living happy ever afterward. 
 
 One morning in May the bridegroom expectant 
 awaited his bride-elect in the reception room of her 
 hotel. For one who bore funeral tidings he was in 
 a curiously elated mood, pacing energetically up 
 and down the imitation Chinese rug, brandishing a 
 copy of the Evening Excelsior, his face aflame, his 
 eyes dancing. 
 
 "He's dead!" he cried triumphantly, quite neg- 
 lecting to kiss the lady of his choice. 
 
 "Who's dead?" she asked, wondering if Walter 
 would turn out to be the heir to an earldom. 
 
 280 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 281 
 
 For a reply Walter thrust into her hands his copy 
 of the Excelsior, folded at the mortuary column. 
 
 JUSTINIAN KROLL DEAD 
 
 Editor of New Progressive 
 
 Succumbs to Pneumonia 
 
 at Greenwich Home 
 
 "Dead!" chanted Walter, beating his breast, but 
 with an emotion far from grief. "Emily, you've 
 brought me luck again! You 1 seem to bring me 
 luck every way I turn/' 
 
 "I didn't kill him," explained Emily, "but I'm 
 glad it tickles you so." 
 
 "My dear, can't you see?" Her pet intellectual 
 paused in his rejoicing to explain. "There's a va- 
 cant chair in Olympus." 
 
 "And you want me to get it for you ?" 
 
 "Well, can't you?" he asked. He was getting 
 into the habit of saying "Can't you?" 
 
 "He's got a trained staff," was her practical ob- 
 jection. "You've never been on the New Progres- 
 sive. It would be like an outsider " 
 
 "It wasn't my fault I never got on their staff. 
 The snobs always shoved me aside; they knew I'd 
 get control of the publication once I put my foot 
 inside the door. I should never have identified 
 myself with a sheet like the Raw Deal if there had 
 been a chance for me." 
 
 "You've always wanted it?" she asked, curiously 
 
S8 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 eyeing him and wondering how long he had been 
 a slave to worldly ambition. 
 
 "I've never wanted anything so in all my life." 
 He looked away as he said it. 
 
 "Oh." 
 
 "There's a distinction to the New Progressive. 
 It doesn't get down in the gutter and fight with 
 mud." 
 
 "No, in the clouds with atomizers." She was 
 smiling. 
 
 "What do you mean by that?" he taxed her 
 gruffly. 
 
 "Nothing, but I was thinking. The New Pro- 
 gressive would go beautifully with what we are 
 doing. It gives the effect of splendid independence 
 without making any enemies goes to war in a 
 dress suit. That's the secret of our success, Walter 
 to carry on a revolution and keep all our friends, 
 the influential ones." 
 
 "I hate to listen to you when you're cheaply 
 cynical." 
 
 "You needn't," she told him, backing away. 
 
 "Emily, don't let's quarrel. It wastes time. 
 Here's the great chance of our life, and I want you 
 to help me." He got her two unresisting hands 
 and his eyes spoke volumes. "We'll have a dig- 
 nified position in the world, my lectures will carry 
 more and more weight. Don't you see how it will 
 be the making of us at a stroke?" 
 
 "What do you want me to do buy the publica- 
 tion for you?" 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 283 
 
 She said this without sarcasm. As a matter of 
 fact, she was considering the New Progressive as a 
 purchasable enterprise. 
 
 "It can't be bought," he mused. "It's owned by 
 the Brontzburgers, and they want to keep it the 
 way it is, keep it radical and independent but never 
 let it get out of " 
 
 "Out of the drawing-room," suggested Emily. 
 
 "You might put it that coarse way," he conceded. 
 "At any rate the New Progressive is the only radi- 
 cal publication that has vogue among the sort of 
 people I want to reach." 
 
 "Our sort of people," said Emily with a straight 
 face. It sounded like a quotation from her Aunt 
 Carmen. 
 
 "That's it exactly. Now what can you do?" 
 
 "What do you want me to do?" 
 
 "I want you to go to Mrs. Ballymoore." He 
 said it in the hushed voice of intrigue. 
 
 "Since when have I influence with Mrs. Bally- 
 moore?" 
 
 "She has explicit faith in you as a manager." 
 Then as though this point were settled he went on : 
 "It was Mrs. Ballymoore who first got Brontzbur- 
 ger interested in the New Progressive. A word 
 from you would make all the difference." 
 
 Emily sat down and considered him seriously. 
 A word from her would make all the difference; in 
 this estimate he was no more than just. For a year 
 now she had been putting in the right word at the 
 right moment and his rise from poverty to power 
 
284 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 had been picturesque. The editorship of that aris- 
 tocratic voice of the masses, the New Progressive, 
 would give them a place in the world. A place 
 de luxe, like the limited edition of Walter's "Heart 
 of a Radical/' A fixed salary, plenty of time for 
 subscription lectures and subsidized Red Tea 
 Rooms, a brisk sale for more morocco-bound vol- 
 umes, entree into some of the greatest houses in 
 New York 
 
 "Walter, I think I can fix it for you." 
 
 "Emily, you're always resourceful!" 
 
 She offered him her cheek for a kiss. 
 
 "I'll go over there at five." 
 
 He lingered, evidently with something else on his 
 mind. 
 
 "You'll go as my business manager, you under- 
 stand/' he at last hinted. 
 
 "How else should I go?" she asked, cooling. 
 His roundabouts somewhat wearied her. 
 
 "Well" he stood fumbling with his hat "as 
 long as our engagement has never been publicly 
 announced " 
 
 "There's no use of my announcing it to the Bally- 
 moores, you mean?" 
 
 "That was my idea. This is strictly a matter of 
 business." 
 
 "And Bolshevism," supplied Emily, before she 
 sped to her rooms to array herself for the en- 
 counter. 
 
 Emily found Mrs. Ballymoore in much the same 
 distracted frame of mind in which she had shown 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 285 
 
 herself a year ago upon Emily's first appeal to her 
 liberal spirit, and for the same cause. Workmen 
 with the tools of their trade were just finishing a 
 lusty day devoted to covering Mrs. Ballymoore' s 
 marble coping with one of those ugly gray boxes 
 with which the absentee rich beautify their city 
 during the summer months. At the top of the 
 Florentine staircase Mrs. Ballymoore was harshly 
 outfacing a foreman of carpenters with a catalogue 
 of his misdeeds. 
 
 "You have been treating my house like a tene- 
 ment!" she orated on, ignoring her caller in the 
 hall below. "The noise of your laborers drinking 
 beer in the servants' hall at noon was most objec- 
 tionable. And when I requested one of your per- 
 sons not to pass through my house with his hat on 
 his head, he answered me in a most loutish fashion 
 most loutish and intimated that he was not tak- 
 ing orders from me." 
 
 "I'm sorry, Mrs. Ballymoore, ma'am," the placid 
 voice of the foreman protested. "Y'see, Dinny is 
 nothin' but a carpenter, used to outside work and 
 not much on parlor etty-kett." 
 
 "What are the working classes coming to?" in- 
 quired Mrs. Ballymoore. "Not satisfied with their 
 outrageously high wages they are becoming spoiled 
 and impertinent. Tell the contractor who sent you 
 here that I do not intend to endure such behavior 
 a second time. Do you hear?" 
 
 "Yes, Mrs. Ballymoore. I'll settle it with the 
 boys." 
 
286 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "And now be off with you. And I suggest that 
 hereafter you employ men accustomed to working 
 in gentlemen's houses." 
 
 "Yes, Mrs. Ballymoore." 
 
 And the foreman of carpenters was off with him. 
 
 When the great disciple of liberation came down 
 to her caller she was still fuming from her encoun- 
 ter with the impertinent, or lower, classes. 
 
 "I'm sorry to have annoyed you with such a 
 scene," she said, "but conditions have become per- 
 fectly chaotic. Did you hear the way the man 
 stood there and attempted to argue with me? Isn't 
 there any law to curb such behavior?" 
 
 "It seems not," was Emily's neutral reply. She 
 longed to suggest that the foreman be given a long 
 term of imprisonment, but considered that the re- 
 mark would savor of a dangerous sarcasm. 
 
 They sat in slip-covered chairs under a great 
 chandelier, which, inside its summer bag, looked 
 like a collapsed balloon hung upside down to the 
 ceiling. Mrs. Ballymoore puckered her haggard, 
 handsome face, and holding her hands began un- 
 propitiously : 
 
 "About the Red Tea Room. Have you planned 
 to close it for the summer?" 
 
 "There's always a good out-of-town trade during 
 the summer," suggested Emily, foreseeing trouble. 
 
 "Nobody who is anybody," objected Mrs. Bally- 
 moore severely, "ever comes back to town before 
 November." 
 
 "We could make our revolution very popular if 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 287 
 
 we open the tea room to the general public," said 
 Emily. 
 
 "Who wants to make it popular?" Mrs. Bally- 
 moore glared. 
 
 "Well, then, we have the place, rent paid, the 
 year round. Why not turn it over for a dancing 
 and meeting place for the proletariat?" 
 
 "You mean those dirty people from the slums 
 heaven knows where ? My dear child, do you know 
 what you're saying? The place would have to be 
 fumigated fumigated !" 
 
 "Of course, when you go in for Bolshevism " 
 
 "I don't see what Bolshevism has to do with ad- 
 mitting every Tom, Dick and Harry off the street 
 into your private life. Fifth Avenue is ruined now 
 by the mobs of foreigners blocking the streets at 
 
 noon." 
 
 "Isn't it horrid!" agreed Emily appeasingly. 
 
 She had not come there to preach a crusade in 
 behalf of the laboring masses. She was about to 
 suggest that a Red Tea Room would be a pretty 
 decoration for the Tawgamuk summer colony, 
 when Mrs. Ballymoore discouraged her in her most 
 managing tone. 
 
 "Will you see that the place is closed at once? 
 I shan't be here to look after it and I could not be 
 responsible for what might happen during my ab- 
 sence." 
 
 Which was good, even for Mrs. Ballymoore. 
 
 Emily saw her liberal commission gone a-glim- 
 mering for an indefinite number of months, possi- 
 
288 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 bly forever. However, she was there for another 
 purpose. Aunt Carmen had accustomed her to the 
 whims of arrogant women and now seemed as good 
 a time as another. 
 
 "I've been reading about the death of Justinian 
 Kroll," suggested Emily, tacking skillfully in the 
 puffy wind. 
 
 "It was a great shock to us," said Mrs. Bally- 
 moore, pursing her lips sanctimoniously. 
 
 "His place will be hard to fill," agreed Emily in 
 haste. 
 
 "It can never be filled," was Mrs. Ballymoore's 
 discouraging answer. "Justinian was unique in his 
 time. He had the gift of penetrative analysis." 
 
 By the way she said it it was evident that some- 
 body had given her this last rich phrase. 
 
 "Penetrative analysis," echoed Emily. "That 
 means that he could argue both sides of a question, 
 doesn't it?" 
 
 "Exactly." Mrs. Ballymoore sat pat, her hands 
 folded. 
 
 "I thought the same thing," Emily hastened the 
 assurance. "But when I read the bad news it oc- 
 curred to me that the New Progressive must go on. 
 If it should suspend publication now it would be 
 nothing less than a national calamity." 
 
 "International!" supplied Mrs. Ballymoore. The 
 auspices were improving. 
 
 "The members of his staff, as I understand it, 
 are none of them Kroll size. It will be necessary 
 for an outside " 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 289 
 
 "Do you think Walter Scott Syle would consider 
 the position?" 
 
 The question was put with a shocking sudden- 
 ness. Emily had been waiting for the cat to jump 
 and it had leaped purring into her lap ! 
 
 "I I don't know." She sat struggling with her 
 breath. "He has made his plans so far ahead. Of 
 course when he gave up the Raw Deal " 
 
 "That was a vile sheet," announced Mrs. Bally- 
 moore. "But the New Progressive is quite another 
 matter." 
 
 "I know that Walter still has editorial ambitions. 
 If you think the chances are favorable I could con- 
 sult his wishes in the matter." 
 
 "I shall see Michael Brontzburger at once," the 
 dowager promised, and Emily was about to arise 
 and carry the good tidings, when a butler wove his 
 way through the confusion of the house and a mo- 
 ment later Vera Ballymoore, disagreeably perfect 
 in a hard gray costume, accentuating her hard gray 
 eyes and -hard white teeth, came sweeping into the 
 conference. 
 
 "Ah, my dear, how do you do !" she condescend- 
 ed, giving Emily a warmthless hand. Vera never 
 allowed Emily to forget that she was an employee, 
 but to-day her aloofness held a positive quality. 
 
 "Vera, darling," began Mrs. Ballymoore, her 
 tone betraying the meekness she felt toward but 
 one person in all the world, "Justinian Kroll is 
 dead." 
 
 "Yes, so I have heard," replied Vera. 
 
290 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 ' 'And dear Emily has made a splendid sugges- 
 tion. Wouldn't Walter be perfect ?" 
 
 "As editor of the New Progressive?" 
 
 Vera, who had been standing as though await- 
 ing an excuse to quit the boresome company, sud- 
 denly changed her mind and sat down. 
 
 "There is nobody else capable." Mrs. Bally- 
 moore's voice grew humbler before her daughter's 
 superior arrogance. 
 
 "What exactly are Mr. Syle's recommenda- 
 tions?" Vera rolled her glass-clear eyes toward 
 Emily, who, swallowing her distaste, put in a word 
 in her own defense. 
 
 "I wasn't recommending him. Mrs. Ballymoore 
 made the suggestion." 
 
 "I see." 
 
 The glassy orbs were now turned inquiringly 
 toward Mrs. Ballymoore, who began at once to 
 flounder. 
 
 "I thought it would be quite suitable, darling. 
 Professor Syle has made himself such a distin- 
 guished place in the world of letters our world. 
 He's been doing so well " 
 
 "Are you aware that that awful paper the Raw 
 Deal is never read by anybody you would care to 
 have in your house?" 
 
 "He has been out of the Raw Deal over a year 
 now," Emily was so rash as to cut in. 
 
 "Such a stigma unfortunately remains fixed to a 
 man's character," Vera informed her with one of 
 her most hateful smiles. "I think it rather rather 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 291 
 
 presuming for Professor Syle to be asking our in- 
 fluence " 
 
 "He's not asking your influence." Emily was 
 sorry an instant later that she had permitted her 
 temper to show even a little. 
 
 "Presuming on our good nature," Vera went 
 right on. "Because we took him up and introduced 
 him to our sort of people is no reason why he 
 should let his ambitions run away with him. I'm 
 very sorry, my dear," she added, in a tone of atro- 
 cious kindness, "if he has set his heart on the editor- 
 ship." 
 
 "He hasn't set his heart on it," Emily lied atro- 
 ciously as she arose. "But I still think he is the 
 man for the place." 
 
 "Aren't you allowing your enthusiasm to run 
 away with you?" 
 
 What was the matter with the woman? Emily 
 did not linger over the question, for she already 
 guessed. 
 
 "I'm merely saying what a great many people 
 think," said she. 
 
 "I don't know what sort of people you mean," 
 replied Vera. "One cannot educate oneself up to a 
 periodical of the high standing of the New Pro- 
 gressive by joining oneself to the gutter brawls of 
 the rabble."' 
 
 How like what Walter himself had said! 
 
 "Oh, well," smiled Emily, preparing to take her 
 departure, "it will do no harm to see Mr. Brontz- 
 burger." 
 
292 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "That will do no good, I'm afraid/' cooed Vera 
 in her most sympathetic tone. "I ran across Evelyn 
 Brontzburger at Sherry's. Poor Kroll'a place has 
 already been filled." 
 
 "By whom?" 
 
 Emily had been about to shake hands, but she 
 withdrew her hand and stepped back a pace. 
 
 "Fortescue Grogan," said Vera sweetly. "It is 
 a splendid appointment. He has been managing 
 editor, you know. A classmate of poor Kroll's." 
 
 "That's cozy," chimed Emily. 
 
 "I hope you're not disappointed," hissed the bare 
 white teeth. 
 
 "I? It is nothing to me. And I am sure that 
 Walter never really considered it." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 Emily, who had been shaking Vera's lifeless 
 hand, continued to hold it. 
 
 "What do you mean by that?" she inquired at 
 last. 
 
 Ignoring a direct reply, Vera smiled spitefully 
 and said : 
 
 "My dear, I almost forgot to congratulate you." 
 
 "Thank you," said Emily. 
 
 "And I hope you'll both be ever so happy." 
 
 "Thank you," said Emily again. 
 
 And she walked back to her hotel, thinking bit- 
 terly how the parlor radical, like any other poor 
 poet, can be ruined forever at the whim of a great 
 patron. 
 
 Almost the first sight to bring her out of her 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 293 
 
 reverie was the figure of Professor Syle pacing the 
 Chinese rug of the hotel parlor. It was as though 
 he had been following that beat ever since Emily's 
 disappearance on her mission. He turned as she 
 came in and in his hand he was waving a crackling 
 bit of yellow paper. 
 
 "Well?" was all he asked. 
 
 "Thumbs down," was Emily's verdict. 
 
 "The Ballymoores won't do anything?" 
 
 "Vera she's heard of our engagement." 
 
 "Jezebel!" 
 
 "What's the use of calling names? I sat there 
 half an hour hearing how the Raw Deal had served 
 you according to its name. Vera has gone round 
 to Brontzburger and got the job for Fortescue 
 Grogan." 
 
 "Can anything equal a jealous woman?" asked 
 Walter, and again fell to pacing the rug. 
 
 "Not only that," announced Emily, determined 
 to have the worst over; "Mrs. Ballymoore is clos- 
 ing the Red Tea Room. I know it's Vera's doings. 
 We can expect no more favors from that quarter. 
 We'll have to think quick if we don't want to find 
 ourselves flat." 
 
 Walter stopped in front of her and thrust the 
 yellow paper in her hand. It was a ten- word tele- 
 gram. 
 
 "Can you come Chicago week's engagement four 
 lectures immediate answer? 
 
 "LOTTA BIRMINGHAM." 
 
294 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Of course you'll take it," decided Emily. 
 
 "I wasn't going to." 
 
 "Be sensible." Her patience was wearing thin. 
 "We've got to grab what we can before this thing 
 plays out. Why do you hesitate?" 
 
 "Have you forgotten we're going to be married 
 to-morrow ?" 
 
 "No, dear. But we can go right down to the 
 city hall, get a license, find a preacher and have it 
 settled before you go." 
 
 "I think we'd better wait." 
 
 His hesitation seemed perfectly natural at the 
 moment; it was only later that she considered how 
 he had said it. 
 
 "Until you come back?" she asked. "That will 
 only be putting it off for a week." 
 
 "Yes, until I come back. Now, Emily, let's find 
 a telegraph office. How I hate this parlor clown- 
 ing and vaudeville! Whatever got me into such a 
 mess?" 
 
XXII 
 
 EMILY RAY had got used to the thought of 
 marrying Professor Syle. On the crest of good 
 fortune it had seemed the normal, sensible thing 
 to do; but now that the wave threatened to break 
 and swamp them or to duck them under for a 
 long hard struggle the thought of joining forces 
 with him and righting back to success held a posi- 
 tive charm for her. For whatever the other Ray 
 women had become Emily at least inherited the 
 Ray sporting blood; and now that Vera Bally- 
 moore's jealous vengeance had threatened her Wal- 
 ter with professional ruin Emily was closer to him 
 in mind and spirit than she had been before in their 
 peculiar partnership. 
 
 During the week of waiting she had one brief 
 letter from her fiance. Chicago society apparently 
 had heard nothing of Walter's break with the all- 
 powerful Ballymoores, for they were treating him 
 royally. He had given one lecture subscribed and 
 paid for in advance and was planning the second 
 and third. He would return Thursday and they 
 would be married the same day. The tone of his 
 writing was dull and melancholy. He hated these 
 pretentious, people. He was tired of taking money 
 under false pretenses. This was the burden of his 
 song. It was quite apparent that the loss to him 
 
 295 
 
296 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 of the New Progressive and incidentals had cut 
 deep and bitterly. 
 
 It was Wednesday morning and Emily was pack- 
 ing her belongings for a voyage into a new life. 
 Comrade Elsa, who was folding Emily's wardrobe 
 and indulging in melancholy predictions concern- 
 ing an imminent return to Pomander Place and the 
 emancipated she now heartily loathed, gave forth 
 scraps of her philosophy. 
 
 "If I'd swallowed my fool pride and married 
 that undertaker," she sighed, "I'd probably be a 
 grandmother by now. Not that I want to be a 
 grandmother. You can't live your own life and be 
 a grandmother too." 
 
 "How much do you know about being a grand- 
 mother?" asked Emily, who was on her knees, her 
 nose in a steamer trunk full of small possessions. 
 
 "As much as you do, more probably, because I'm 
 nearer the age and have lectured for years on 
 motherhood." 
 
 Elsa stood shaking out a skirt as she hummed a 
 tuneless tune. 
 
 "That undertaker," she said at last, "was wild 
 about me. He used to look at me just the way 
 Walter does at you, only more melancholy. His 
 profession made him that way." 
 
 "It seems strange you didn't take him," re- 
 marked Emily, her mind only half on what she 
 said. 
 
 "I'm not the sort that ever gets married," she 
 mourned. "The trouble with me is I'm a oncer." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 297 
 
 "A what?" 
 
 "A oncer. The sort of girl who doesn't know 
 how to keep more than one man at a time on the 
 string. It takes two beaux at least to get a girl 
 married right one to tease and the other to take. 
 When I had a fight with George there wasn't any- 
 thing left for me but the blue sky and he knew 
 it." 
 
 "Am I a oncer ?" asked Emily, looking plaintive- 
 ly up from her search. 
 
 "Don't make me laugh. I've seen your system 
 all along." 
 
 "System?" 
 
 "Anybody with half an eye could see you were 
 in love with Walter Syle. Who could help it? I 
 yearned for him myself; but what am I to him? 
 I suppose you know how to play dozens of 'em at 
 a time. Anyhow it worked with Walter." 
 
 "What worked?" 
 
 "Innocence! Don't you suppose I saw that fat 
 boy fairly haunting the sidewalk? It was the talk 
 of Pomander Place. The Italian scrub woman 
 knew it and Walter knew it he got himself that 
 room at number eight just to look after you. Sly 
 boots! You knew he'd never do for you. He 
 wasn't of the mental caliber to suit you, but you 
 worked it very well. Whenever Walter got a little 
 offish you would open a letter from the other fel- 
 low, and back would come Walter a-running." 
 
 "You've been listening to some very silly gossip," 
 said Emily, still rummaging in the steamer trunk. 
 
298 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "I suppose it's Mr. Browning you're talking about." 
 
 "I don't know his name. He was the young man 
 in the mule business." 
 
 "I haven't seen him or heard from him for nearly 
 a year." 
 
 Elsa, with whom relations had been almost idyllic 
 up to now, took the rebuke in silence and went on 
 folding skirts. 
 
 Down in the trunk Emily found a great deal of 
 trash and this she either tore up or piled for con- 
 demnation, according to its texture. There were 
 a great many letters in a forthright, stubby hand, 
 mostly addressed to the boarding house where she 
 had stayed before Aunt Carmen's appearance in 
 her life. One of these she dared to open and to 
 read its first sentence. 
 
 "I don't get all this prejudice against the mule, 
 any way you take him. He isn't an Arabian barb, 
 but he's an American citizen and as such he has a 
 fine brain at the roots of his ears. . . ." 
 
 She kept this letter and tore the rest up. She 
 came across the gun-metal cigarette case with an 
 iron cross on it; a battlefield trophy for which Oli- 
 ver had bartered during his inglorious stay over 
 there. Then there was a ring, a heavy thing of 
 lapis lazuli carved in intaglio with the Browning 
 crest ; the foolish boy had pretended to leave it with 
 her for safekeeping. 
 
 In shaking out an old notebook a small un- 
 mounted photograph fell out and scurried like a 
 withered leaf halfway across the rug; it was picked 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 299 
 
 up by a draft from an open window and Emily 
 went after it to snatch it from its hiding place 
 behind a radiator. 
 
 She picked it up and stared it in the face. A 
 plump and merry soldier boy stood laughing in the 
 foreground while over his shoulder stared the long 
 solemn face of an army mule. The mule was 
 crowned with field daisies and the triumphant ex- 
 pression of the roly-poly soldier indicated that he 
 had just performed the coronation. A youthful 
 picture and a merry one withal. Emily wondered 
 if she were going to cry and make a mess of things. 
 She remembered a fresh morning in early spring 
 and an atrocious red motor car at a proud Long 
 Island gate. Oliver had just fished the snapshot 
 out of his pocket and presented it in that shame- 
 faced way of his. 
 
 Emily turned the photograph over and found 
 the address rubber-stamped on the reverse side. 
 "Green & Plevort, Mules." 
 
 "Mules!" she repeated to herself. 
 
 "What's that?" asked Comrade Elsa sharply as 
 she came in with an armful of shoes. 
 
 "Elsa," said Emily weakly, "here are some 
 things belonging to the the other man." 
 
 "The fat one?" 
 
 Emily nodded. 
 
 "I was wondering what to do with them." 
 
 "Burn 'em up!" Elsa's old mouth closed like a 
 steel trap. 
 
 "I I think I'd better send them back." 
 
300 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Be weak if you want to," suggested Elsa, and 
 whisked out of the room. 
 
 Green & Plevort, Mules. Oliver had been yoked 
 with this stubborn-sounding team, but that had 
 been nearly a year ago. She knew it would be bet- 
 ter to let the past be past; no use opening an old 
 sore at this late date. It would be foolish, more 
 than foolish, to unbolt the tomb, releasing that 
 plump and merry ghost. Womanlike she wished 
 to do that very thing. 
 
 She merely wanted an address where she could 
 send those useless trophies; thus she argued as she 
 got the telephone book and found the number of 
 Green & Plevort, Mules. 
 
 "Hello!" It was a rough mulish voice that came 
 to her over the wire as soon as the telephones were 
 in connection. 
 
 "I am looking for the address of Mr. Oliver 
 Browning. I knew he used to be with you " 
 
 "Just a minute." 
 
 Emily's heart sank, she knew not why. 
 
 "This is Mr. Browning," came Oliver's voice a 
 moment later. 
 
 "Oh, I didn't know you were in town. I " 
 
 She had intended to be terse and businesslike. 
 
 "Emily!" said Oliver, and nothing more. 
 
 A pause. 
 
 "Oliver, I found some things some things of 
 yours in my trunk. I wanted you to have them 
 that is, I don't think I ought to keep them. So I 
 called you up." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 301 
 
 "Funny," said Oliver. "I've only been back 
 about fifteen minutes." 
 
 "Yes. I just wanted your address so that I could 
 send them back." 
 
 "That sounds bad. Emily, you aren't going to 
 get married or anything, are you?" 
 
 A pause during which she steadied herself 
 against the curious revolving tendencies of the 
 room. 
 
 "Are you there, Emily?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, are you?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "To-morrow afternoon." 
 
 The pause now came from the other end of the 
 wire. Two or three inarticulate sounds indicated 
 that Oliver was clearing his throat. 
 
 "Who's the lucky man?" he asked finally. 
 
 "Professor Syle." 
 
 "What? You mean that " 
 
 "Oliver!" 
 
 "I'm sorry, Emily! I really didn't mean that 
 There must be something fine about him or he 
 wouldn't want to marry you." 
 
 "I like that!" 
 
 "Aw, you know what I mean. What was it you 
 were going to send me?" 
 
 "Several things. Shall I mail them in care of 
 Green & Plevort, Mules?" 
 
302 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "You shall not. I'm coming round for the stuff 
 myself." 
 
 "You mustn't. I'm stopping at the Hotel Joan 
 of Arc. There's no need of your coming all this 
 way " 
 
 Emily was floundering. 
 
 "I'll be right over." 
 
 "Very well. I shall leave the package with my 
 secretary," she announced with a decision which, 
 she thought, made amends for her previous weak- 
 ness. Before she hung up the receiver she thought 
 she heard him clear his throat again. She hoped 
 he wasn't catching cold. Possibly he was laughing. 
 
 She dropped the trophies hastily into a Manila 
 envelope, sealed it and scribbled "Mr. Oliver 
 Browning" across its jaundiced face. 
 
 "I won't be back for lunch," she told Elsa as she 
 put on her hat, preparatory to fleeing the scene of 
 danger. 
 
 "Well, what's this?" asked Elsa sourly, staring 
 at the envelope which Emily had just thrust into 
 her hand. 
 
 "He'll call for it and you can send it down to 
 him," said she, all out of breath. "If he asks for 
 me tell him I won't be back." 
 
 "Back from where?" cried Elsa, as she stood in 
 the doorway and watched the precipitate flight of 
 the young woman whom, despite her lovable quali- 
 ties, she always regarded as a hopeless eccentric. 
 
 Emily took a cup of bouillon in her little office at 
 the Red Tea Room, whither she had repaired with 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 803 
 
 the double purpose of avoiding Oliver Browning 
 and of turning her duties over to Miss Weerd, her 
 assistant. As she sipped the nourishment she took 
 stock both of the Red Tea Room and of herself. 
 It was a pretty poor way of making a living, she 
 concluded in the temporary depression of her spirit 
 . . . not so bad, when she considered that she was 
 selling her talents to a class of people who clamor 
 to be cheated ... no worse surely than charging 
 three hundred dollars for the fashionable label on 
 a ninety-dollar gown or running a crystal-gazing 
 parlor for the purpose of vending Wall Street in- 
 formation. 
 
 At any rate she was well rid of Mrs. Ballymoore 
 and her kind. Her partnership with Walter in the 
 promotion of drawing-room revolution had netted 
 them a few thousands which she had invested con- 
 servatively. This would help them a little to make 
 a new start in the world. She had her plans for 
 Walter. Somewhere there was a college faculty 
 that would receive his chastened spirit. But would 
 he, after a taste of quick money in a subsidized 
 Utopia, be willing to preach sound economics at an 
 instructor's salary? She knew what a blow Vera 
 Ballymoore' s spite work had been to him. He had 
 set his heart on the New Progressive "More than 
 anything else in all the world," as he had confessed. 
 Personally Emily was glad that he was to be for- 
 evermore a stranger to that publication, which bore 
 to real journalism the same relation the Red Tea 
 Room bore to an honest restaurant. The New 
 
304 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 Progressive, perfumed with intellectual snobbery, 
 faintly pro-German, faintly anti-Ally, faintly neu- 
 tral, faintly everything ; the New Progressive which 
 never uttered anything so vigorous as treason but 
 had managed all during the war to sneer at pa- 
 triotism as a medieval superstition akin to witch 
 burning ! 
 
 She would manage Walter as soon as they were 
 married, decided Emily over her lonely cup of 
 bouillon. Could she manage him? She was sure 
 of it. It would have been different with Oliver. 
 Oliver had always been a mule. 
 
 A knock on the door announced an interruption 
 to her reverie. It proved to be Mr. Owley, dressed 
 in a suit of sporting plaid, but managing to look 
 the perfect butler still. 
 
 "What part are you playing to-day?" she cried, 
 truly glad to see her old friend after months of 
 silence. 
 
 "Mr. Plunkett of the Plunkett Villa Sites. I 
 'ave just lunched at Sherry's with some select 
 friends from Esterberry. Quoting from the Latin 
 poet Longus, miss, I might say Their sports were 
 of a childish, pastoral character.' ' 
 
 "Did you spend all your time talking Latin 
 poetry?" 
 
 "No, miss real estate." 
 
 "Owley, you rogue! You're behaving like the 
 owner of Esterberry." 
 
 "Quite right, miss. I am." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 305 
 
 "In your part as Mr. Plunkett of the Plunkett 
 Villa Sites?" 
 
 "No, miss, as Halfred Owley of Plainview. I 
 am now majority owner of the town, you might 
 say, 'aving taken over Peake's Addition as far west 
 as the school-'ouse. We 'ave decided to divide it 
 into 'und red-foot lots and erect 'ouses to the taste 
 of our clients on the Owley 'Ome Plan." 
 
 "My word ! What is Aunt Carmen saying to all 
 this?" 
 
 "She'll close and be herself while our poor malice 
 Remains in danger of 'er former tooth. 
 
 Which are the very words of Lord Macbeth, miss." 
 
 "Former tooth is good," agreed Emily. "I sup- 
 pose she's mad as hops." 
 
 "As a matter of fact, miss, I 'ave quit 'er service." 
 
 "Poor Aunt Carmen!" cried Emily, in spite of 
 herself. She had leaned so upon good Owley. 
 
 "It was not so much 'er choleric disposition; 
 temper, miss, is becoming to one of Mrs. Valiant's 
 'igh station. But it was the royalist movement that 
 did for me." 
 
 "Royalist movement?" 
 
 "To restore the King of Portugal. Mrs. Finnes- 
 sey you'll no doubt remember the lady with the 
 ideas she started of it." 
 
 "I see." 
 
 Truly Emily saw everything. Apparently the 
 fad for parlor Bolshevism was already on the 
 wane. 
 
306 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "I should think you, of all people in the world, 
 would sympathize with that," suggested Owley's 
 confidante. 
 
 "Royalism is all very well in its place, miss, but 
 on Long Island it seems a bit sacrilegious, if I 
 might say so." 
 
 "Nothing's sacrilegious on Long Island," Emily 
 responded, her mind somewhat wandering. She 
 was thinking of how Oliver Browning must have 
 looked and of what he must have said when that 
 precious package was sent down to him by the un- 
 loved Elsa. 
 
 "So I have come to you, miss, on a matter of 
 business." 
 
 "As a man of property?" 
 
 "Quite right. We're building a neat little Swiss 
 chalet at the corner of the Owley 'Ome Sites, and 
 the directors were suggesting a capable manager 
 to go in the hautomobile, show the property and 
 explain the 'Ome Plan. I was wondering if you 
 could recommend some young lady of business liabil- 
 ity and good family " 
 
 "Owley, are you offering me a job?" 
 
 "I wouldn't presume, miss " 
 
 "Well, you may presume! What's the salary?" 
 
 "Two 'undred dollars a month with commis- 
 sions." 
 
 It all came over her in a delicious flash. She 
 could honorably establish herself in the world by 
 accepting a position as business manager for her 
 aunt's butler. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 307 
 
 "I'm going to be married, you know," she de- 
 murred, after a struggle with mirth. 
 
 "So I 'ave 'eard, miss," acknowledged Mr. 
 Plunkett of the Villa Sites. "And that might inter- 
 fere." 
 
 "I'll have to see my Professor Syle. We'll be 
 starting in a small way and I shouldn't wonder if 
 that might be just the thing for me." 
 
 "You might drop a card to Mr. Plunkett of the 
 Plunkett Villa Sites, Esterberry," Owley suggested 
 at departure. 
 
 "I shall, just as soon as I decide. And thank 
 you, Owley, ever so much." 
 
 "Thank you, miss." 
 
 And the substantial landowner backed out of the 
 door, bowing as he backed. 
 
 Emily finished her work at three, and after tak- 
 ing a somewhat cynical farewell of the Red Tea 
 Room she signaled an uptown bus and found her- 
 self a seat aloft. It was less than a dozen blocks 
 to the side street where lay her discreet feminist 
 hotel ; but she felt that a ride under the bright sun- 
 shine would calm her mind for the thousand details 
 of honeymoon preparation. 
 
 She was, as her grandmother used to say, "all 
 stirred up with a wooden spoon." Scraps of the 
 strange mixture that had been her life seemed 
 loosened and floating aimlessly through her mind. 
 The passionate, pedantic, inconclusive patter of the 
 comrades of Pomander Place, the learned quota- 
 tions of Owley, the Plunkett Villa sites, a fat boy 
 
308 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 in khaki grinning as he crowned a mule with field 
 daisies. She prided herself on her strength of 
 mind in refusing to see Oliver at her hotel. It 
 would all be over to-morrow. She was glad of it, 
 because something would be settled in her unsettled 
 life. Four days ago Walter had written that he 
 would be home on Thursday. To-morrow would 
 be Thursday. She must get a train schedule and 
 meet him at the station. 
 
 It was as though her thoughts had summoned 
 him out of thin air, just as Hindu mystics are sup- 
 posed to whisk material bodies over vast distances 
 merely by willing it so. It was the proud Bally- 
 moore car with the nickeled hood and straw- 
 colored body that first attracted her attention ; there 
 was none other like it in town. It was drawing up 
 to the curb as the bus passed, and peering down 
 from her superior vantage Emily could look bird- 
 fashion upon the opening of its glassy door. 
 
 She gasped and all but fell over the rail. Profes- 
 sor Walter Scott Syle, nicely arrayed for afternoon, 
 was stepping out; and after him, leaning grace- 
 fully upon his hand, came Miss Vera Ballymoore! 
 
 Emily could have screamed his name or have 
 leaped bodily to the roof of the Ballymoore car. 
 Instead she clung to the rail, craning her neck round 
 and round as the bus advanced, gazing and gazing 
 at the miraculous apparition of those two figures 
 walking intimately across the pavement and dis- 
 appearing under the arched doorway of a fashion- 
 able art shop. 
 
XXIII 
 
 EMILY'S walking trance took her as far as the 
 lobby of the Hotel Joan of Arc in whose cooling 
 depths she paused. Had the new era, which the 
 disciples of the Pilsen School so industriously pre- 
 dicted, come to pass? Was the world indeed up- 
 side down? Out of the mist of confusion Emily 
 heard a low voice calling her by name. She 
 turned superstitiously and found that it was the 
 ladylike clerk at the desk. 
 
 "There's a gentleman waiting for you in the re- 
 ception room, Miss Ray." 
 
 "What gentleman?" she asked dazedly. 
 
 The clerk brought a card from the proper letter 
 box and it seemed perfectly natural for Emily to 
 read: 
 
 MR. OLIVER BROWNING 
 Representing Green & Plevort. Mules. 
 
 She found Mr. Browning pacing the same strip 
 of Chinese rug that Walter Scott Syle had but now 
 paced so feverishly. Her first impression of the 
 nervous pacer was of a thinner Oliver, an Oliver 
 to whom thinness was becoming. The change gave 
 him a romantic look, yet she missed the adipose 
 layer of joyousness which had slipped away. 
 
 "Did you get your package?" was her first ques- 
 309 
 
310 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 tion, as soon as he had turned and given her his 
 reproachful gaze. 
 
 "I didn't come for that rot/' was his first amia- 
 ble address. Then, running his hand through his 
 limp hair: "Look here, Emily, what have you got 
 to get married for?" 
 
 "So that people won't have the right to come 
 round every year or two and scold me about things 
 that aren't any of their business." 
 
 "Oh." 
 
 Oliver paused and blew his nose. 
 
 "What's the matter, Oliver? Have you got a 
 cold?" 
 
 "Oh, search me!" he grumbled. "What does 
 this Syle want to marry you for?" 
 
 "What do several people want to marry me for?" 
 
 Again he blew his nose. 
 
 "You're so sort of scrawny, Oliver. It breaks 
 my heart. What have you been eating?" 
 
 "Crow." It was like a voice out of the tomb. 
 
 "Haven't you been happy?" she asked, and was 
 instantly sorry that she had allowed herself to ap- 
 proach the sentimental level she had been struggling 
 to avoid. 
 
 "Emily!" Suddenly Oliver dropped his hat and 
 his walking stick and his envelope of mementoes 
 and took one desperate step toward her. He had 
 turned white as a sheet. 
 
 "It's been a hell of a life!" His voice came 
 thickly after the manner of a shy man unused to 
 revealing his state of soul. "I've been traveling all 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 311 
 
 the way from Boston to Bolivia, but I don't think 
 there's been a day I haven't wanted to pack up and 
 come to you and grovel." 
 
 "Oliver!" That was all she could say, because 
 she was struggling with her tears. 
 
 "You know, Emily, that I'm not naturally stub- 
 born or unreasonable " 
 
 "Tell that to the mules!" she found herself gib- 
 ing in her usual tone. 
 
 "Please don't rub it in now. Maybe we saw 
 things in a different way. I don't know. But how 
 could I stand round and look pleasant while you 
 left a good, normal, decent home and went to join 
 those wild women from Borneo?" 
 
 "Do you call Aunt Carmen's home a good, nor- 
 mal, decent one?" 
 
 There was danger of their old dispute blazing 
 anew. 
 
 "It was until until you misled your poor aunt; 
 got her to war-dancing with your tribe down in 
 Pomander Place." 
 
 "Oliver," said she, neglecting his obviously un- 
 fair charges for a new thought, "what was your 
 idea in moving to Pomander Place?" 
 
 "Well," he floundered, "it was just as convenient 
 as anywhere to the mules." 
 
 "Meaning me?" 
 
 "Maybe you've guessed it." 
 
 "Why did you come into the party and act like 
 a Bolshevik and get yourself into that mess out on 
 Long Island?" 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 ''Somebody had to look out for the patient," he 
 acknowledged. "I had a fool notion that you'd get 
 over it. I thought that dynamiter's picnic at your 
 Aunt Carmen's would cure you." 
 
 "And you came round in a week and found me 
 worse than ever." 
 
 "When I heard those Sons of Rest standing there 
 barber-shopping 'Vodka, vodka iiber Alles' I passed 
 out. I confess I did." 
 
 "I'm glad you told me these things," she said 
 faintly, giving him her hand. And yet she had not 
 the courage to confess that her own lack of faith, 
 her suspicion that he had been a frivoling fortune 
 hunter, had all but spoiled him in her eyes. 
 
 "I'm sailing for France next week," he said 
 thickly, holding to her hand. 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "Mules," he explained gloomily. 
 
 "Oh, Oliver!" 
 
 And she found herself crying tears, real tears, 
 buckets of them. 
 
 "I hope you're going to be awfully happy," she 
 heard him mumbling in the insane embarrassment 
 of the moment. 
 
 "I'm going to be - Oh, Oliver!" 
 
 And again she wept. 
 
 "Look here," he demanded sternly, as soon as 
 the gust had passed, "what's the idea? What do 
 you have to marry him for anyhow ?" 
 
 "I I've promised him and he relies on me so. 
 It isn't as if he were going along all right, Oliver. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 313 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^* 
 
 But he's had a fearful setback in his profession and 
 it would kill him if I left him in the lurch." 
 
 "Huh ! Are loveless marriages part of the soviet 
 program ?" 
 
 "We're not following the soviet program, Oliver. 
 We're " 
 
 Whatever their program was to be it was inter- 
 rupted by one of the Joan of Arc's discreet page 
 girls who entered with a card on a silver tray. 
 
 "Aunt Carmen !" read Emily, and turning to the 
 bearer of peculiar tidings: "Where is she?" 
 
 "Waiting in the lobby, Miss Ray." 
 
 "Send her in." 
 
 Their meeting was not different from that of the 
 majority of relatives who have quarreled and 
 thought it over. They kissed affectionately and 
 passed pleasant remarks on one another's personal 
 appearance. Aunt Carmen extended to Oliver the 
 neutral handshake of society. He moved toward 
 the door. 
 
 "Don't go, Oliver," Emily besought. The 
 promptness with which he lingered indicated that 
 he had no positive idea of going. 
 
 As soon as they were well seated and had ex- 
 changed the commonplaces necessary to an armi- 
 stice Aunt Carmen made her first valuable an- 
 nouncement. 
 
 "I've come to town looking for Owley," she said, 
 "and I thought possibly you might have heard of 
 him." 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "He came to see me at the Tea Room this after- 
 noon," explained Emily. 
 
 "Oh, he goes to that place, too!" It was as 
 though the place referred to were at least a ren- 
 dezvous for drug addicts. 
 
 "Not regularly in fact, he called to offer me a 
 position." 
 
 "Offer you a position?" Aunt Carmen bridled. 
 "With what, pray?" 
 
 "The Plunkett Villa Sites at Esterberry." 
 
 "Of course you didn't accept it." 
 
 "On the contrary. It looked like a splendid place 
 and I've decided to take it." 
 
 "Emily!" Aunt Carmen's old mouth gathered 
 to a seam. "Have you investigated the Plunkett 
 Villa Sites?" 
 
 "What's the matter with them?" was Emily's 
 very natural question. 
 
 "Only one thing there aren't any Plunkett Villa 
 Sites." 
 
 "Do you mean to say the old scamp has been 
 lying?" 
 
 "Poor Owley!" sighed Aunt Carmen. "You 
 mustn't judge him harshly. It has never seriously 
 interrupted his work before and the doctor says 
 that with a little rest he'll become quite normal 
 again." 
 
 "Do you mean poor Owley's insane?" 
 
 "Only an obsession. I suppose we all have our 
 delusions." This was a wonderfully charitable re- 
 mark for Aunt Carmen. "But I wouldn't lose him 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 315 
 
 for worlds. He's been my right arm. If he left 
 me I should have to move into New York and take 
 an apartment. Possibly I shall do so anyway; 
 everything will be very uncertain until the revolu- 
 tion is over." 
 
 "Aunt Carmen, you're not revoluting again!" her 
 niece implored. 
 
 "The royalist revolution in Portugal," her aunt 
 explained, thus exonerating Owley from insanity 
 in one direction at least. "Mrs. Finnessey is its 
 secret agent in this country. It is really very amus- 
 ing. You must read some of our literature. I am 
 sure it will have a wholesome effect on the danger- 
 ous radicalism which is now sweeping the country 
 with " 
 
 The shadow of radicalism darkened the door. 
 It was dressed handsomely for the afternoon, wore 
 a gardenia in its buttonhole, and after it had re- 
 moved its formal hat it revealed itself as Professor 
 Walter Scott Syle, voice of the struggling masses. 
 
 "How do you do, Mrs. Shallope?" he asked in 
 his most amiable manner, giving her his hand. 
 
 "How do you do?" conceded Mrs. Shallope, and 
 dropped the hand. 
 
 "Walter," said Emily, showing no surprise at an 
 appearance which did not surprise her ; "you've met 
 Mr. Browning." 
 
 "Ah, Mr. " Walter smiled as he advanced 
 
 the welcoming hand. 
 
 "Browning's my name," said Oliver rather sav- 
 agely. 
 
316 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "Oh, so it is." The eminent, lecturer turned to 
 Emily, his face beaming. "I surprised you, you 
 
 see." 
 
 "Yes, indeed," agreed his fiancee, not revealing 
 that the surprise was now an hour old. "When did 
 you get in?" 
 
 "I came right over from the station." 
 
 He made no explanation as to his elegant travel- 
 ing costume. There was an awkward moment. 
 Walter and Oliver were still standing; Syle was 
 evidently waiting for his unsuccessful rival to go. 
 
 "I just dropped in for a moment everything 
 at odds and ends," Syle hastened to explain by way 
 of breaking the constraint. "I hope you won't 
 think me fearfully rude, Mrs. Shallope, but I must 
 talk over a few plans with Miss Ray. You'll ex- 
 cuse me a moment, won't you?" 
 
 "As long as you like," Mrs. Shallope made the 
 hearty concession. "Oliver, my dear" it was the 
 first time she had ever spoken really cordially to 
 the boy "come over here and sit by me." 
 
 On a velvet lounge at the opposite end of the long 
 room the engaged couple settled down to talk over 
 Professor Syle's few plans. 
 
 "It looks as though my program our program 
 might be subject to a revision," he began at once, 
 never looking at the girl of his choice. "These lec- 
 tures you have planned for me are splendid within 
 their limitations^ don't take me, please, as speaking 
 in a carping or critical spirit " 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 317 
 
 "Why don't you become an art critic, Walter?" 
 she asked. He jumped. 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "The last I saw of Vera Ballymoore she was in- 
 terested in picture collections/* 
 
 "When was that?" he asked, fixing his eyes 
 wildly on her. 
 
 "On Fifth Avenue at three-ten this afternoon." 
 
 "My God, Emily " 
 
 "Your God, Walter, is something I shall never 
 be able to comprehend. When did you really get 
 back to New York?" 
 
 "Sunday night," he replied, with a directness 
 alien to his nature. 
 
 "I see. So Vera called you." 
 
 "Hear me out, Emily!" Professor Syle's calm 
 had given way to tempest. "That Chicago tour 
 was a nightmare. My heart wasn't in my work, 
 and after my second lecture they cancelled the rest 
 of my engagement. I think Mrs. Ballymoore's 
 fine hand was in it somewhere. Society out there 
 began blowing a perfect blizzard. So I came home 
 and saw Vera Ballymoore. Was I wrong?" 
 
 "On the contrary, Walter, I didn't know you had 
 so much common sense." 
 
 "The situation is this, Emily! I'm really des- 
 perately in love with you, but Vera is quite foolish 
 about me. If I marry you she will ruin me finan- 
 cially and professionally." 
 
 "Why incur her wrath?" asked Emily, with a 
 gentle smile. 
 
318 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 "I'm glad you can look at it in a sensible way. 
 It all seems to hinge on the New Progressive. 
 Fortescue Grogan, it seems, is only a tentative ap- 
 pointment. Mrs. Ballymoore has the situation be- 
 tween her two hands. It only depends on what I 
 say -" 
 
 "Have you said it?" Emily looked at him 
 through narrowed eyes. 
 
 "To be frank, Emily, I have. Vera almost died 
 of joy. But of course " 
 
 "You can't marry both of us, can you? Or has 
 the soviet made polygamy good form ?" 
 
 "You see I'm in a hard position, Emily. I've 
 got to choose between love and my career." 
 
 "If you don't choose your career, Walter, you're 
 a bigger fool than I think you are." 
 
 "I can never, never be happy without you!" he 
 protested passionately, but not so passionately as 
 he once had done. 
 
 "Naturally!" Emily smiled. "But please con- 
 sider yourself released." 
 
 He rose. Emily was^hurt a little by the joy light 
 that suffused his countenance. 
 
 "You won't hate me, will you?" he asked, blush- 
 ing. 
 
 "Quite to the contrary," answered the jilted one 
 out of the fullness of her heart. "I never came so 
 near loving you as I do at this moment." 
 
 When they returned to the presence of Aunt Car- 
 men they found that sprightly lady lecturing Oliver 
 on his duties toward the world. 
 
TRIMMED WITH RED 319 
 
 "If you'd taken her in hand and not permitted 
 her to associate with that rag-bag set of vulgarians 
 you might have saved me all this worry and trou- 
 ble. I'm glad you've come round to reason. I al- 
 ways held you responsible for her running away 
 with that pack of radicals." 
 
 "Oh, Aunt Carmen!" 
 
 Emily fairly threw herself into the dowager's 
 skinny arms and ere the haughty person could pro- 
 test her niece was raving: 
 
 "Please don't go back to Long Island to-night. 
 Please don't go round searching for Owley. I'm 
 giving a dinner and you've got to cut out every- 
 thing and be there." 
 
 "Dinner, Emmy? Why didn't you let me know 
 before?" 
 
 "I just found it out," smiled Emily, again fight- 
 ing with her tears. 
 
 "Well, what's the occasion?" 
 
 "I'm announcing my engagement." 
 
 "My child!" Mrs. Shallope's wild black eyes 
 traveled curiously between the two rivals. "To 
 whom, please?" 
 
 "To Oliver," announced Emily, and on the im- 
 pulse she gave him such a kiss as Professor Syle 
 did not know was to be given. 
 
 "You'll pardon my rushing away like this," said 
 the distinguished one, shaking hands all round. 
 
 "He's got to run," explained his ex-manager. 
 "He's dining with Mrs. Ballymoore." 
 
320 TRIMMED WITH RED 
 
 It was toward the end of the week that Emily 
 went to Rosamonde Valiant's apartment in order to 
 bear the good tidings in person. The merry casti- 
 net tempo of a cocktail shaker caught her ear al- 
 most before she had been admitted into the Flemish 
 hall. 
 
 "Well, well, little Emmy!" roared Merlin Val- 
 iant, striding forth with an open hand. "Con- 
 gratulations a fine lad. And you're just in time 
 to join me in his health." 
 
 "He's had two already," announced his pam- 
 pered wife. 
 
 "Can't you hear me shaking up another?" he 
 asked with gruff enthusiasm. "No place in the 
 world like an apartment " 
 
 "Let's see your ring," whispered Rosamonde 
 when Merlin had withdrawn to fortify his shaker. 
 
 Emily held her third finger against the waning 
 light, revealing a fairish-sized stone of conserva- 
 tive cut and setting. 
 
 "See mine!" crowed Rosamonde triumphantly. 
 
 It was a splendid boreal display of eleven carats, 
 cut flat and square like an enchanted sheet of win- 
 dow glass over whose icy surface an electric witch 
 light glanced and sparkled. 
 
 Which jewel was to bring the greater happiness 
 is a question to be decided in the court of that child- 
 god whose name will always remind us of two 
 world impulses, love and cupidity. 
 
 THE END