FOREWORD

An American ambulance going south stopped on the snowy road; the driver, an American named Estridge, got out; his companion, a young woman in furs, remained in her seat.

Estridge, with the din of the barrage in his ears, went forward to show his papers to the soldiers who had stopped him on the snowy forest road.

His papers identified him and the young woman; and further they revealed the fact that the ambulance contained only a trunk and some hand luggage; and called upon all in authority to permit John Henry Estridge and Miss Palla Dumont to continue without hindrance the journey therein described.

The soldiers––Siberian riflemen––were satisfied and seemed friendly enough and rather curious to obtain a better look at this American girl, Miss Dumont, described in the papers submitted to them as “American companion to Marie, third daughter of Nicholas Romanoff, ex-Tzar.”

An officer came up, examined the papers, shrugged.

“Very well,” he said, “if authority is to be given this American lady to join the Romanoff family, now under detention, it is not my affair.”

But he, also, appeared to be perfectly good natured about the matter, accepting a cigarette from Estridge and glancing at the young woman in the ambulance as he lighted it.

The girl noticed it, looked up at him and smiled slightly.

“Had my dear Grand Duchess not asked for me, I should now he entering upon my novitiate among the Russian nuns.... And she, too, I think, had there been no revolution. She was quite ready a year ago. We talked it over. But the Empress would not permit it. And then came the trouble about the Deaconesses. That was a grave mistake–––”

She checked herself, then:

“I do not mean to criticise the Empress, you understand.”

“Poor lady,” he said, “such gentle criticism would seem praise to her now.”

They were walking through a pine belt, and in the shadows of that splendid growth the snow remained icy, so that they both slipped continually and she took his arm for security.

“I somehow had not thought of you, Miss Dumont, as so austerely inclined,” he said.

She smiled: “Because I’ve been a cheerful companion––even gay? Well, my gaiety made my heart sing with the prospect of seeing again my dearest friend––my closest spiritual companion––my darling little Grand Duchess.... So I have been, naturally enough, good company on our three days’ journey.”

He smiled: “I never suspected you of such extreme religious inclinations,” he insisted.

“Extreme?”

“Well, a novice–––” he hesitated. Then, “And you mean, ultimately, to take the black veil?”

“Of course. I shall take it some day yet.”

They came, too, from all parts of the huge, sprawling Empire, these girl-soldiers of the Battalion of Death––and there were Cossack girls and gypsies among them––girls from Finland, Courland, from the Urals, from Moscow, from Siberia––from North, South, East, West.

There were Jewesses from the Pale and one Jewess from America in the ranks; there were Chinese girls, Poles, a child of fifteen from Trebizond, a Japanese girl, a French peasant lass; and there were Finns, too, and Scandinavians––all with clipped hair under the astrakhan caps––sturdy, well shaped, soldierly girls who handled their heavy rifles without effort and carried a regulation equipment as though it were a sheaf of flowers.

Their commanding officer was a woman of forty. She lounged in front of the battalion in the snow, consulting with half a dozen officers of a man’s regiment.

The colour guard stood grouped around the battalion colours, where its white and gold folds swayed languidly in the breeze, and clots of virgin snow fell upon it, shaken down from the pines by the cannonade.

Estridge gazed at them in silence. In his man’s mind one thought dominated––the immense pity of it all. And there was a dreadful fascination in looking at these girl soldiers, whose soft, warm flesh was so soon to be mangled by shrapnel and slashed by bayonets.

“Good heavens,” he muttered at last under his breath. “Was this necessary?”

“The men ran,” said Miss Dumont.

But Estridge saw that her dark eyes were suddenly brilliant with tears. The big blond girl-soldier saw it, too, and her splendid blue eyes widened. Then, somehow, she had stepped forward and taken Miss Dumont in her strong arms; and, holding her, smiled and gazed intently at her.

“You must not grieve for us,” she said. “We are not afraid. We are happy to go.”

“I know,” said Palla Dumont; and took the girl-soldier’s hands in hers. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Ilse Westgard. And yours?”

“Palla Dumont.”

“English? No?”

“American.”

“Ah! One of our dear Americans! Well, then, you shall tell your countrymen that you have seen many women of many lands fighting rifle in hand, so that the boche shall not strangle freedom in Russia. Will you tell them, Palla?”

“If I ever return.”

“You shall return. I, also, shall go to America. I shall seek for you there, pretty comrade. We shall become friends. Already I love you very dearly.”

She kissed Palla Dumont on both cheeks, holding her hands tightly.

“Tell me,” she said, “why you are in Russia, and where you are now journeying?”

Palla looked at her steadily: “I am the American companion to the Grand Duchess Marie; and I am journeying to the village where the Imperial family is detained, because she has obtained permission for me to rejoin her.”

“Yes.”

“I wish to see you again. I shall try.”

The battalion marched a few moments later.

It was rather a bad business. They went over the top with a cheer. Fifty answered roll call that night.

However, the hun had learned one thing––that women soldiers were inferior to none.

Russia learned it, too. Everywhere battalions were raised, uniformed, armed, equipped, drilled. In the streets of cities the girl-soldiers became familiar sights: nobody any longer turned to stare at them. There were several dozen girls in the officers’ school, trying for commissions. In all the larger cities there were infantry battalions of girls, Cossack troops, machine gun units, signallers; they had a medical corps and transport service.

But never but once again did they go into action. And their last stand was made facing their own people, the brain-crazed Reds.

PREFACE

A door opened; the rush of foggy air set the flames of the altar candles blowing wildly. There came the clank of armed men.

Then, in the dim light of the chapel, a novice sprang to her feet, brushing the white veil from her pallid young face.

At that the ex-Empress, still kneeling, lifted her head from her devotions and calmly turned it, looking around over her right shoulder.

The file of Red infantry advanced, shuffling slowly forward as though feeling their way through the candle-lit dusk across the stone floor. Their accoutrements clattered and clinked in the intense stillness. A slovenly officer, switching a thin, naked sword in his ungloved fist, led them. Another officer, carrying a sabre and marching in the rear, halted to slam and lock the heavy chapel door; then he ran forward to rejoin his men, while the chapel still reverberated with the echoes of the clanging door.

A chair or two fell, pushed aside by the leading soldiers and hastily kicked out of the way as the others advanced more swiftly now. For there seemed to be some haste. These men were plainly in a hurry, whatever their business there might be.

The Tzesarevitch, kneeling beside his mother, got up from his knees with visible difficulty. The Empress also rose, leisurely, supporting herself by one hand resting on the prie-dieu.

Then several young girls, who had been kneeling behind her at their devotions, stood up and turned to stare at the oncoming armed men, now surrounding them.

The officer carrying the naked sword, and reeking with fumes of brandy, counted these women in a loud, thick voice.

“That’s right,” he said. “You’re all present––one! two! three! four! five! six!––the whole accursed brood!” pointing waveringly with his sword from one to another.

Then he laughed stupidly, leering out of his inflamed eyes at the five women who all wore the garbs of the Sisters of Mercy, their white coiffes and tabliers contrasting sharply with the sombre habits of the Russian nuns who had gathered in the candle-lit dusk behind them.

“What do you wish?” demanded the ex-Empress in a fairly steady voice.

“Answer to your names!” retorted the officer brutally. The other officer came up and began to fumble for a note book in the breast of his dirty tunic. When he found it he licked the lead of his pencil and squinted at the ex-Empress out of drunken eyes.

“Alexandra Feodorovna!” he barked in her face. “If you’re here, say so!”

She remained calm, mute, cold as ice.

A soldier behind her suddenly began to shout:

“That’s the German woman. That’s the friend of the Staretz Novykh! That’s Sascha! Now we’ve got her, the thing to do is to shoot her–––”

Then the novice uttered a cry, caught the foot of the cross with desperate hands, hung there convulsively.

To her the Mother Superior turned, weeping. But at her touch the girl, crazed with grief, lifted both hands and tore from her own face the veil of her novitiate just begun;––tore her white garments from her shoulders, crying out in a strangled voice that if a Christian God let such things happen then He was no God of hers––that she would never enter His service––that the Lord Christ was no bridegroom for her; and, her novitiate was ended––ended together with every vow of chastity, of humility, of poverty, of even common humanity which she had ever hoped to take.

The girl was now utterly beside herself; at one moment flaming and storming with fury among the terrified, huddling nuns; the next instant weeping, stamping her felt-shod foot in ungovernable revolt at this horror which any God in any heaven could permit.

And again and again she called out on Christ to stop this thing and prove Himself a real God to a pagan world that mocked Him.

Dishevelled, her rent veil in tatters on her naked shoulders, she sprang across the chapel to the crypt door, shook it, tore at it, seized chair after chair and shattered them to splinters against the solid panels of oak and iron.

Then, suddenly motionless, she crouched and listened.

“Oh, Mother of God!” she panted, “intervene now––now!––or never!”

The muffled rattle of a rather ragged volley answered her prayer.

Outside the convent a sentry––a Kronstadt sailor––stood. He also heard the underground racket. He nodded contentedly to himself. Other shots followed––pistol shots––singly.

After a few moments a wisp of smoke from the crypt crept lazily out of the low oubliettes. The day was grey and misty; rain threatened; and the rifle smoke clung low to the withered grass, scarcely lifting.

The sentry lighted a third cigarette, one eye on the barred oubliettes, from which the smoke crawled and spread out over the grass.

After a while a sweating face appeared behind the bars and a half-stifled voice demanded why there was any delay about fetching quick-lime. And, still clinging to the bars with bloody fingers, he added:

“There’s a damned novice in the chapel. I promised to cut her throat for her. Go in and get her and bring her down here.”

The novice was nowhere to be found.

They searched the convent thoroughly; they went out into the garden and beat the shrubbery, kicking through bushes and saplings, their cocked rifles poised for a snap shot.

Peasants, gathering there more thickly now, watched them stupidly; the throng increased in the convent grounds. Some Bolshevik soldiers pushed through the rapidly growing crowd and ran toward a birch wood east of the convent. Beyond the silvery fringe of birches, larger trees of a heavy, hard-wood forest loomed. Among these splendid trees a number of beeches were being felled on both sides of the road.

ARGUMENT

The Cossacks sang as they rode:

They were from the Urals: they sat their shaggy little grey horses, lance in hand, stirrup deep in saddle paraphernalia––kit-bags, tents, blankets, trusses of straw, a dead fowl or two or a quarter of beef. And from every saddle dangled a balalaika and the terrible Cossack whip.

The steel of their lances flashed red in the setting sun; snow whirled before the wind in blinding pinkish clouds, powdering horse and rider from head to heel.

Again one rider unslung his balalaika, struck it, looking skyward as he rode:

They rode into a forest, slowly, filing among the silver birches, then trotting out amid the pines.

The Swedish girl towered in her saddle, dwarfing the shaggy pony. She wore her grey wool cap, overcoat, and boots. Pistols bulged in the saddle holsters; sacks of grain and a bag of camp tins lay across pommel and cantle.

Beside her rode the novice, swathed to the eyes in a sheepskin greatcoat, and a fur cap sheltering her shorn head.

Her lethargy––a week’s reaction from the horrors of the convent––had vanished; and a feverish, restless alertness had taken its place.

Nothing of the still, white novice was visible now in her brilliant eyes and flushed cheeks.

Her tragic silence had given place to an unnatural loquacity; her grief to easily aroused mirth; and the dark sorrow in her haunted eyes was gone, and they grew brown and sunny and vivacious.

She talked freely with her comrade, Ilse Westgard; she exchanged gossip and banter with the Cossacks, argued with them, laughed with them, sang with them.

As she lifted her head and looked around her with dark eyes still a little dazed, there was a sudden commotion among the mujiks; a Cossack called out something in a sharp voice; their officer walked hastily out into the darkness; a shadowy rider spurred ahead of him.

Suddenly a far voice shouted: “Who goes there! Stoi!”

Then red flashes came out of the night; Cossacks ran for their horses; Ilse appeared with Palla’s pony as well as her own, and halted to listen, the fearless smile playing over her face.

“Mount!” cried many voices at once. “The Reds!”

Palla flung herself astride her saddle; Ilse galloped beside her, freeing her pistols; everywhere in the starlight the riders of the Wild Division came galloping, loosening their long lances as they checked their horses in close formation.