Episodes of that sort discourage sentiment; so does cold, hunger and discomfort incident on sardine-like promiscuousness.
Nobody in the party desired to know more than they already knew concerning anybody else. In fact, there was little more to know, privacy being impossible. And the ever instinctive hostility of the two sexes, always and irrevocably latent, became vaguely apparent at moments.
Common danger swept it away at times; but reaction gradually revealed again what is born under the human skin––the paradox called sex-antipathy. And 20 yet the men in the party would not have hesitated to sacrifice their lives in defence of these women, nor would the women have faltered under the same test.
Brisson was the philosophical stoic of the quartette. Estridge groused sometimes. Palla, when she thought herself unnoticed, camouflaged her face in her furs and cried now and then. And occasionally Ilse Westgard tried the patience of the others by her healthy capacity for unfeigned laughter––sometimes during danger-laden and inopportune moments, and once in the shocking imminence of death itself.
As, for example, in a vile little village, full of vermin and typhus, some hunger-crazed peasants, armed with stolen rifles and ammunition, awoke them where they lay on the straw of a stable, cursed them for aristocrats, and marched them outside to a convenient wall, at the foot of which sprawled half a dozen blood-soaked, bayoneted and bullet-riddled landlords and land owners of the district.
And things had assumed a terribly serious aspect when, to their foolish consternation, the peasants discovered that their purloined cartridges did not fit their guns.
Then, in the very teeth of death, Ilse threw back her blond head and laughed. And there was no mistaking the genuineness of the girl’s laughter.
Some of their would-be executioners laughed too;––the hilarity spread. It was all over; they couldn’t shoot a girl who laughed that way. So somebody brought a samovar; tea was boiled; and they all went back to the barn and sat there drinking tea and swapping gossip and singing until nearly morning.
That was a sample of their narrow escapes. But Brisson’s only comment before he went to sleep was that 21 Estridge would probably owe him a dollar within the next twenty-four hours.
They had a hair-raising time in Helsingfors. On one occasion, German officers forced Palla’s door at night, and the girl became ill with fear while soldiers searched the room, ordering her out of bed and pushing her into a corner while they ripped up carpets and tore the place to pieces in a swinishly ferocious search for “information.”