Comrades: A Story of Social Adventure in California. Thomas Dixon

go with me on a lark to-night," he suddenly cried.

      "A lark?"

      Elena's gray-blue eyes danced beneath their black lashes.

      "Yes, a real lark, daring, adventurous, dangerous, audacious."

      "What is it – what is it? Tell me quick."

      The girl seized Norman's arm with eager, childish glee.

      "Let's go to that Socialist meeting and beard the lion in his den."

      Elena drew back.

      "No. Guardie will be furious!"

      "Ah, who's afraid? Guardie be hanged!"

      "Go by yourself."

      "No, you've got to go with me."

      "I won't do it. You just want to worry your father and then hide behind my skirts."

      "You can see yourself that's the easiest way to manage it. If he has a fit, I can just say that your curiosity was excited and I had to go with you."

      "But it's not excited."

      "For the purposes of the lark I tell you that it is excited. There's too much patriotism in the air. It's giving me nervous prostration. I want something to brace me up. I think those fellows can give me some good points to tease the Governor with."

      "Tease the Governor! You flatter yourself, Norman. He doesn't pay any more attention to your talk than he would to the bark of a six weeks' old puppy."

      "That's what riles me. The Governor's so cocksure of himself. I don't know how to answer him, but I know he's wrong. The fury with which he hates the Socialists rouses my curiosity. I've always found that the good things in life are forbidden. All respectable people are positively forbidden to attend a Socialist – traitors' – meeting. For that reason let's go."

      "No."

      "Ah, come on. Don't be a chump. Be a sport!"

      "I'd like the lark, but I won't hurt Guardie's feelings; so that's the end of it."

      "Going to be a surprise, they say."

      "What kind of a surprise?"

      "Going to spring a big sensation."

      Elena's eyes began to dance again.

      "The woman called the Scarlet Nun is going to speak, and Herman Wolf, the famous 'blond beast' of Socialism, will preside. They are mates – affinities."

      "Married?"

      "God knows. A hundred weird stories about them circulate in the under-world."

      "I won't go! Don't you say another word!" Elena snapped.

      Norman was silent.

      "Are you sure it would be perfectly safe, Norman?" the girl softly asked.

      "Perfectly. I know every inch of that quarter of the city – went there a hundred times the year I was a reporter."

      "I won't go!"

      "It's the wickedest street in town. They say it's the worst block in America."

      "I don't want to see it." Elena laughed.

      "And the hall is a famous red-light dancing dive in the heart of Hell's Half Acre."

      "Hush! Hush! I tell you I won't —I won't go! But – but if I do– you promise to hold my hand every minute, Norman?"

      "And keep my arm around your waist, if you like."

      Elena's cheeks flushed and her voice quivered with excitement as she paused in the doorway.

      "I'll be ready in twenty minutes after dinner."

      "Bully for my chum! I'll tell the Governor we've gone for a stroll."

      As the shadows slowly fell over the city, Norman led Elena down the marble steps of his father's palatial home and paused for a moment on the edge of the hill on which were perched the seats of the mighty. Elena fumbled with a new glove.

      "Are you ready to descend with me to the depths, my princess in disguise?" he gaily asked.

      "Did you ever know me to flunk when I gave my word?"

      "No, you're a brick, Elena."

      Norman seized her arm and strode down the steep hillside with sure, firm step, the girl accompanying his every movement with responsive joy.

      "You're awfully wicked to get me into a scrape of this kind, Norman," she cried, with bantering laughter. "You know I was dying to go slumming, and Guardie wouldn't let me. It's awfully mean of you to take advantage of me like this."

      He stopped suddenly and looked gravely into her flushed face.

      "Let's go back, then."

      "No! I won't."

      Norman broke into a laugh. "Then away with vain regrets! And remember the fate of Lot's wife."

      Elena pressed his hand close to her side and whispered:

      "You are with me. The big handsome captain of last year's football team. Very young and very vain and very foolish and very lazy – but I do think you'd stand by me in a scrap, Norman. Wouldn't you?"

      "Well, I rather think!" was the deep answer, half whispered, as they suddenly turned a corner and plunged into the red-light district. His strong hand gripped her wrist with unusual tenderness.

      "So who's afraid?" she cried, looking up into his face just as a drunken blear-eyed woman staggered through an open door and lurched against her.

      A low scream of terror came from Elena as she sprang back, and the woman's head struck the pavement with a dull whack. Norman bent over her and started to lift the heavy figure, when her fist suddenly shot into his face.

      "Go ter hell – I can take care o' myself!"

      "Evidently," he laughed.

      Elena's hand suddenly gripped his.

      "Let's go back, Norman."

      "Nonsense – who's afraid?"

      "I am. I don't mind saying it. This is more than I bargained for."

      The woman scrambled to her feet and limped back into the doorway.

      Elena shivered. "I didn't know such women lived on this earth."

      "To say nothing of living but a stone's throw from your own door," he continued.

      "Let's go back," she pleaded.

      "No. A thing like this is merely one more reason why we should keep on. This only shows that the world we live in isn't quite perfect, as the Governor seems to think. These Socialists may be right after all. Now that we've started let's hear their side of it. Come on! Don't be a quitter!"

      Norman seized her arm and hurried through the swiftly moving throng of the under-world – gambling touts, thieves, cut-throats, pick-pockets, opium fiends, drunkards, thugs, carousing miners, and sailors – but above all, everywhere, omnipresent, the abandoned woman – painted, bedizened, lurching through the streets, hanging in doorways, clinging to men on the sidewalks, beckoning from windows, singing vulgar songs on crude platforms among throngs of half-drunken men, whirling past doors and windows in dance-halls, their cracked voices shrill and rasping above the din of cheap music.

      Elena stopped suddenly and clung heavily to Norman's arm.

      "Please, Norman, let's go back. I can't endure this."

      "And you're my chum that never flunked when she gave her word?" he asked with scorn. "We are only a few feet from the hall now."

      "Where is it?"

      "Right there in the middle of the block where you see that sign with the blazing red torch."

      "Come on, then," Elena said, with a shudder.

      They walked quickly through the long, dimly lighted passage to the entrance of the hall. It was densely packed with a crowd of five hundred. Elena closed her eyes and allowed Norman to lead her through the mob that blocked the space inside the door. At the entrance to the centre aisle he encountered an usher who stared with bulging eyes