A PAIR OF GRAY EYES
On their way to the restaurant Laurie had selected he chatted to his
companion in his buoyant, irresponsible fashion, but he had put through
the details of the episode with tact and delicacy. He knew that in front
of a club two doors away from the studio building a short line of
taxicabs was always waiting, with the vast patience of their kind. A
gesture brought one of these to the door, and when it had squawked its
way around the corner, the girl remained in its shelter until Laurie had
briefly reentered his own building and emerged again, wearing his coat
and hat.
To the selection of the restaurant he gave careful thought. They drove
to a quiet place where the food and service were excellent, while the
prices were an effective barrier against a crowd. When he and his
companion were seated on opposite sides of a table in an isolated
corner, Laurie confided his order to the waiter, urged that willing
individual to special haste, and smiled apologetically at the lady.
"I'm hungry," he said briskly. "I haven't had any breakfast this
morning. Don't be surprised if I seem to absorb most of the nourishment
in the place."
He studied her as he spoke. It was easy to do so, for she seemed almost
to have forgotten him and her surroundings. She sat drooping forward a
little in her pet attitude, with her elbows on the table, and her chin
in her hand, staring through the window with the look he had seen in the
mirror. The lethargy he dreaded again enveloped her like a garment.
His heart sank. Here was something more than the victim of a mad but
temporary impulse. Here was a victim of a sick soul, or of a burden
greater than she could bear, or perhaps of both. He decided that
whatever her trouble might be, it was no new or passing thing. Every
curve in her despondent figure, every line in her worn, lovely face,
suggested a vast weariness of flesh and spirit. He had not seen those
lines in the mirror, and he looked at them now with understanding and
solemn eyes, as he had looked at the new lines in his sister's face when
Barbara had been passing through the worst of her ordeal last year.
In this moment of realization he almost forgot the girl's beauty,
though, indeed, it was not easy to forget. It seemed enhanced rather
than dimmed by the haze of melancholy that hung over it, and certainly
there was nothing dim in the superb red-gold coloring of her hair. Her
eyes seemed red-gold, too, for they were reddish-brown with flecks of
yellow light in them, quite wonderful eyes. He told himself that he had
never seen any just like them. Certainly he had rarely seen anything to
equal the somber misery of their expression. There was a remoteness in
them which repelled sympathy, and which was intensified by the haughty
curve of the girl's short upper lip. She was proud, proud as the devil,
Laurie told himself. Again, and very humbly, he wondered how he was to
handle a situation and a personality so outside his own experience. In
truth, he was afraid. Though he did not know it, and perhaps would have
vigorously denied it, Laurie still looked at women through stained-glass
windows.
When the food came, her expression changed. She shot a quick look at
him, a glance at once furtive and suspicious, which he saw but ignored.
He had dismissed the waiter and was serving her himself. In the simple
boyish friendliness of his manner she evidently found reassurance, for
she suddenly sat up and began her breakfast.
Laurie exhaled the breath he had been holding. Up till the last moment
he had feared that she might see through his subterfuge in taking her
there, and even now refuse the food he offered. But if in that fleeting
instant she felt doubt, it had died as it was born. She drank her coffee
slowly and ate her eggs and toast as deliberately, but her
characteristic air of intense preoccupation had departed. She looked at
her companion as if she really saw him. Also, she apparently felt the
stirring of some sense of obligation and need of response to this
friendly stranger. She was answering him now, and once at least she
almost smiled.
Watching the little twitch of her proud and perfect upper lip, Laurie
felt his heart-beats quicken. She was a wonder, this girl; and with his
delight in her beauty and her pride came another feeling, almost as new
as his humility--an overwhelming sympathy for and a desire to help
another.
These sentiments served as needed balance to his spirits, which, as
always, mounted dangerously when he was interested. He held himself down
with difficulty.
This was no time for the nonsense that he loved to talk. One doesn't
rescue a lady from suicide and then try to divert her mind with innocent
prattle. One gives her a decent time to pull herself together, and then,
with tact and sympathy, one gets to the roots of her trouble, if one
can, and helps to destroy them. Despite his limited experience with
drama off the stage, Laurie knew this. Because he was very young and
very much in earnest, and was talking to a young thing like himself,
though in that hour she seemed so much older, he instinctively found the
right way to approach the roots.
They had finished breakfast, and he had asked and received permission to
smoke. When he had lighted his cigarette and exhaled his first
satisfying puff of smoke, not in rings this time, he took the cigarette
from his mouth, and with his eyes on its blazing end expressed his
thought with stark simplicity.
"When we were over in your studio," he said, "I admitted that twice in
my life I had tried to--make away with myself. Only two other persons in
the world know that, but I'd like to tell you about it, if you don't
mind."
She looked at him. There were strange things in the look, things that
thrilled him, and other things he subconsciously resented, without
understanding why. When she spoke there was a more personal note in her
voice than it had yet held.
"You?" she asked; and she added almost lightly, "That seems absurd."
"I know."
Laurie spoke with the new humility he had found only to-day.
"You think that because I'm so young I couldn't have been desperate
enough for that. But--you're young, too."
He was looking straight at her as he spoke. Her eyes, a little hard and
challenging, softened, then dropped.
"That's different," she muttered.
He nodded.
"I know the causes were different enough," he agreed. "But the feeling
back of them, that pushes one up against such a proposition, must be
pretty much the same sort of thing. Anyway, it makes me understand; and
I consider that it gives me a claim on you, and the privilege of trying
to help you."
Her eyes were still cast down, and suddenly she flushed, a strange, dark
flush that looked out of place on the pure whiteness of her skin. She
had the exaggerated but wholesome pallor of skin that often goes with
reddish hair and red-brown eyes. It does not lend itself becomingly to
flushes, and this deep flush lingered, an unwelcome visitor, throughout
her muttered, almost ungracious words.
"Oh, please don't talk about it," she said, brusquely. "It's no use. I
know you mean to be kind, but you can't do anything."
"Oh, but that's just where you're wrong." Laurie spoke with a cheerful
assurance he did not feel. "If I hadn't been there myself, I'd talk all
sorts of twaddle to you, and do more harm than good; and I'd probably
let you go on thinking you were facing a trouble that no one could help.
Instead of that, you and I are going to hold your bugaboo up to the
light, and see just what it is and how small it is. And then--" he smiled
at her--"we're going to get rid of it together."
She echoed his words, vaguely, as if not knowing quite what to say.
"Get rid of it?"
"Yes. Tell me what it is, and I'll show you how it can be downed."
She pushed back her chair, as if anxious to put a greater distance
between them.
"No," she exclaimed, nervously, "it's impossible; I can't talk about
it." Then, in an obvious effort to side-track the issue, "You said you
wanted to tell me about your--experience."
"I do, but it isn't a nice story. Fortunately, it won't take long." He
spoke reluctantly. It was not easy to hook two such memories out of the
darkest pool of his life and hold them up to a stranger.
"Oh, I was a young idiot," he rushed on, "and I suppose I hadn't the
proper start-off. At least I like to think there's some excuse for me.
My father and mother died when I was in knickerbockers, and I grew up
doing very much as I pleased. I--made a bad job of it. Before I was
twenty-one I was expelled from college and I had worked up a pretty
black reputation. Then I gambled and lost a lot of money I didn't have,
and it began to look as if about the only safe place for me was the
family vault.
"I made two efforts to get there. The first time a wise old doctor
stopped me and never told any one about it. The second time one of my
chums took a hand in the game. I don't know why they did it. I don't
suppose either my pal or the doctor thought I was worth saving. But they
talked to me like Dutch uncles, and my chum kept at it till I gave him
my word that I'd never attempt anything of the sort again."
"You were just an unhappy boy," she said, as if thinking aloud, "with
all life before you and many friends to back you up."
"And you," he suggested, "are just an unhappy girl with all life before
you. I don't know anything about your friends, but I'll wager you've got
a lot of them."
She shook her head.
"Not one," she said, slowly. "I mean, not one I dare to call on, now."
"I like that! You've got me to call on, right here."
This time she really smiled at him. It was a pathetic little smile, but
both lips and eyes took part in it. He waited, but she said no more. He
began to fear that his confidence had been given to no purpose.
Evidently she had no intention of making a confession in return. He
resumed his attack from a new angle.
"You've been disappointed in something or some one," he said. "Oh," as
she made a gesture, "don't think I'm belittling it! I know it was
something big. But the finish you chose wasn't meant to be, or it would
have come off. You see that, don't you? The very sun in its course took
pains to show you to me in time to stop it. That means something, Miss
Mayo."
She seemed slightly startled.
"It is Miss Mayo, isn't it? That's the name the elevator boy gave me,
yesterday."
"It will do." She spoke absently, already on the trail of another
thought. Suddenly she caught it.
"Then you brought the basket, or sent it?" she cried. "It was _you!_ How
dared you!"
She had half risen from her chair. Bending across the table, he gently
pushed her back into it.
"Sit down," he said, imperturbably.
She hesitated, and he repeated the command, this time almost curtly.
Under the new tone she obeyed.
"I'm going to tell you something," he went on. "I've exhausted my
slender resources of experience and tact. I don't know what any one else
would do in this situation; but I do know what I'm going to do myself.
And, what is a lot more important, I know what you're going to do."
She laughed, and he winced at the sound.
"That's easy," she said. "I'm going to finish the act you interrupted."
"Oh, no, you're not!"
Her lips set.
"Do you imagine you can prevent me?"
"I know I can."
His quiet assurance impressed her.
"How?" she asked, half mockingly.
"Very easily. I can take you from this restaurant to the nearest police
station, and have you locked up for attempted suicide. You know, it's a
crime here."
The word they had both avoided was out at last. Although he had spoken
it very softly, its echoes seemed to fill the big room. She shrank back
and stared at him, her hands clutching the sides of her chair.
"You wouldn't dare!"
"Wouldn't I? I'll do it in exactly fifteen minutes, unless you give me
your word that you will never make another attempt of the kind." He took
his watch out of his pocket and laid it on the table between them.
"It's exactly quarter-past twelve," he said. "At half-past--"
"Oh!--and I thought you were kind!"
There was horror in the brown eyes now and an antagonism that hurt him.
"Would it be kinder to let you go back to that studio and--"
She interrupted.
"How dare you interfere in my affairs! Who gave you the right?"
"Fate gave me the right. I'm its chosen specialist on the job, and you
may take my word for it, my dear girl, the job's going to be done, and
done up brown."
He lit a fresh cigarette.
"It will be mighty unpleasant for you," he went on, thoughtfully.
"There's the publicity, you know. Of course, all the newspapers will
have your pictures--"
"Oh!"
"And a lot of romantic stories--"
"Oh--you--you--"
"But of course you can avoid all that," he reminded her, "by giving me
your promise."
She choked back her rising fury, and made an obvious effort at
self-control.
"If I agree to these terms of yours," she asked, between her teeth, "may
I be sure that you will leave me in peace and that I shall not see you
again?"
He looked at her reproachfully.
"Dear me, no! Why, you'll have to see me every day. I've got to look
after you for a while." At her expression his tone changed. "You see,"
he said, with smiling seriousness, "you have shown that just for the
present you can't be trusted to guide your own actions. So I'm going to
'stick around,' and guide them for a few days, until I am sure you are
yourself again!"
"This--" again she choked on the words--"this is intolerable!"
"Oh, I don't think so. You can see for yourself that I mean well, and
that I'm going to be a harmless sort of watch-dog. Also, you can depend
on me to go off duty as soon as it's safe. But for the present you're
going to have a guardian; and it's up to you to decide whether that
guardian shall be Laurence Devon, very much at your service, or the
police force of the city of New York."
She had her chin in her hands now, in her characteristic pose, and was
regarding him without resentment. When she finally spoke, it was without
resentment, too, but coldly, as one states an unpalatable fact.
"You," she said, "are a fool."
Laurie flushed, then smiled.
"That is not a new theory," he admitted.
"Two hours ago," she said, "I warned you that it would be dangerous for
you to interfere in my affairs. Did I not?"
"You did."
"I warn you again. It may be a matter of life or death. Put your watch
in your pocket, pay your bill, and take me home. Then go away and forget
me."
Laurie glanced at the watch.
"We have used up eight minutes since I gave you your choice," he
reminded her.
"You are like a child," she muttered, "spinning his top over a
powder-magazine."
Laurie frowned a little.
"Too melodramatic," he murmured.
"I tell you," she said fiercely, "you are acting like a fool! If you
interfere with me you will be drawn into all sorts of trouble, perhaps
into tragedy, perhaps even into disgrace."
"You're forgetting the net," he reminded her, "the nice net you
mentioned this morning, with room for two. Also--" again he looked at the
watch--"you're overlooking the value of time. See how fast these little
hands are moving. The nearest police station is only two blocks away.
Unless you give me that promise, you will be in it in--" he made a
calculation--"in just about four minutes."
She seemed to come to a decision.
"Listen to me," she said, rapidly. "I cannot be frank with you--"
"I've noticed that," Laurie interpolated, "with regret."
She ignored the interruption.
"But I can tell you this much. I am not alone in my--trouble. Others are
involved. They are--desperate. It is because of them that I--you
understand?"
Laurie shook his head. He did not understand, at all; but vague and
unpleasant memories of newspaper stories about espionage and foreign
spies suddenly filtered through his mind.
"It sounds an awful mess," he said frankly. "If it's got anything to do
with German propaganda--"
She interrupted with a gesture of impatience.
"No, no!" she cried. "I am not a German or a propagandist, or a pacifist
or a spy. That much, at least, I can tell you."
"Then that's all right!" Laurie glanced at his watch again. "If you had
been a German spy," he added, "with a little round knob of hair on the
back of your head and bombs in every pocket, I couldn't have had much
to do with you, I really couldn't. But as you and your companions are
not involved in that kind of thing, I am forced to remind you that
you'll be headed toward the station in just one minute."
"I hate you!" she said between her teeth.
He shook his head at her. "Oh, no, you don't!" he said kindly. "But I
see plainly that you're a self-willed young person. Association with me,
and the study of my poise, will do a lot for you. By the way, you have
only thirty seconds left."
"Do you want to be killed?"
She hissed the words at him.
"Good gracious, no!" Laurie spoke absently, his eyes on the watch.
"Twenty seconds," he ended.
"Do you want to be maimed or crippled, or--or kidnapped?"
He looked up in surprise.
"I don't know why you imagine I have such lurid tastes," he said,
discontentedly. "Of course I don't want any of those things. My nature
is a quiet one, and already I'm dreading the excitement of taking you to
the station. But now I must ask you to put on your gloves and button up
your coat for our little journey."
"The journey you make with me," she said, with deep meaning, "may be a
long and hard one."
He stood up.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," he told her. "But we'll have to
postpone it. Our journey to the station comes first."
She sat still, looking at him.
"I know your type now," she said suddenly. "You live in your little
groove, and you think that nothing happens in the world except what you
see under your nose."
"Something awfully unpleasant is going to happen under my nose right
now," announced her companion, disconsolately. "Come along, please. It's
time to start."
She stood up, faced him for a second, and then dropped back into her
chair with a gesture of finality. Her expression had changed back to the
lethargy of her first moments in the restaurant.
"Very well," she said. "Have it your way." She added significantly,
"This may be the last time you have your way about anything!"
"You have a depressing outlook," grumbled Laurie, contentedly sitting
down again. "It isn't playing the game to spoil my triumph with such
predictions as that, especially as I'm going to have my way about a lot
of things right now. I have your word," he added.
"Yes."
"Good! Now I'll give you my program. First of all, I'm going to be a
brother to you; and I don't think," he ended thoughtfully, "that I've
ever offered to be a brother to any girl before."
"You're a nice boy," she said abruptly.
He smiled at her.
"A nice boy, though a fool. I hoped you would notice that. You'll be
dazzled by my virtues before you're through with me." He went on
conversationally: "The reason I've never offered to be a brother to any
girl before is that I've got a perfectly good sister of my own. Her one
fault is that she's always bossed me. I warn you from the start of our
relations that I'm going to be the boss. It will be the first time I've
ever bossed any one, and I'm looking forward to it a lot."
The faintest suggestion of a smile touched her short upper lip. Above
it, her red-brown eyes had softened again. She drew a deep breath.
"It's strange," she said. "You've let me in for all sorts of things you
don't realize. And yet, somehow, I feel, for the time at least, as if I
had been lying under the weight of the world and some one had lifted the
wretched thing off me."
"Can't you, by a supreme effort of the imagination, fancy that I lifted
it off?" suggested Laurie, mildly.
This time she really smiled.
"I can," she conceded. "And without any effort at all," she added
somberly, "I can fancy us both under it again."
He shook his head.
"That won't do!" he declared. "The lid is off. You've just admitted it.
You feel better for having it off. So do I. As your big brother, and
self-appointed counselor, I choose this opportunity to tell you what
you're going to do."
She pursed her lips at him. It was the gesture of a rebellious child.
Her entire manner had changed so suddenly that Laurie felt a
bewilderment almost equal to his satisfaction in it. For the first time
throughout the interview he experienced the thrill she had given him in
the mirror.
"Yes?" she prompted.
"In the first place--" He hesitated. The ground that stretched between
them now was firmer, but still uncertain. One false step might lose him
much of what he had gained. "There's the question of your future," he
went on, in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone. "I spent two months last year
looking for a job in New York. I was about down to my last cent before I
found it. It occurred to me that, perhaps, you--" He was beginning to
flounder.
"That I am out of work?" she finished, calmly. "You are right."
Laurie beamed at her. Surely his way was clear now!
"I had a streak of luck last year," he resumed. "I collaborated on a
play that people were foolish enough to like. Ever since that, money has
poured in on me in the most vulgar way. I clink when I walk. Dollars
ooze from my pockets when I make a gesture. Last week, at the bank, the
cashier begged me to take some of my money away and do something with
it. He said it was burdening the institution. So, as your adopted
brother, I'm going to start a bank-account for you," he ended, simply.
"Indeed you are not!"
"Indeed I am!"
"I agreed to live. I did not agree to--what is it you Americans say?--to
sponge!"
He ignored all but one phrase of the reply.
"What do you mean by that?" he demanded with quickened interest. "Aren't
you an American?"
She bit her lip.
"N-o--not wholly."
"What, then?"
She hesitated.
"I can't tell you that just yet," she said at last.
"Oh-h!" Laurie pursed his lips in a noiseless whistle. The girl's voice
was musically English, and though her accent was that of London, up
till now she had spoken as colloquially as any American. Indeed, her
speech was much like his sister's. He was puzzled.
"Why didn't you tell me this before?"
"That I am not wholly American?" She was smiling at him ironically, but
he remained serious.
"Yes. And--oh, a lot of things! Of course you know I am all at sea about
you."
The familiar shadow fell over her face.
"When one is within an hour or two of the next world," she asked
indifferently, "why should one tell anybody anything?"
"How long have you been in America?"
"All my life, off and on."
This at least was reassuring. He imagined he saw a gleam of light. The
girl had declared that she was not a spy, nor involved in war
propaganda; but it was quite possible, he reasoned, that she was
enmeshed in some little web of politics, of vast importance to her and
her group, of very little importance to any one else.
"I suppose," he suggested cheerfully, "that net you've said so much
about is a political net?"
They had been speaking throughout in low tones, inaudible at any other
table. Their nearest fellow diners were two middle-aged women at least
thirty feet away. But she started violently under his words. She made a
quick gesture of caution, and, turning half-around, swept the room with
a frightened glance. Laurie, his cigarette forgotten in his fingers,
watched her curiously, taking in her evident tension, her slowly
returning poise, and at last the little breath of relief with which she
turned back to him.
"I wish I could tell you all you want to know," she said, "but--I can't.
That's all there is to it. So please let us change the subject."
His assurance returned.
"You're not a crowned head or an escaped princess or anything of that
kind, are you?" he asked politely.
This time she really laughed, a soft, low gurgle of laughter, joyous and
contagious.
"No."
"Then let's get back to our bank-account. We have plenty of time to run
over to the Fifth Avenue branch of the Corn Exchange Bank before the
closing-hour. What color of check-book do you prefer?"
"I told you," she declared with sudden seriousness, "that my bargain did
not include sponging."
For the first time in the somewhat taxing interview her companion's good
humor deserted him.
"My dear girl," he said, almost impatiently, "don't beat the devil
around the bush! You've got to live till we can find the right work for
you, and that may take some time. You have intelligence enough to see
that I'm neither a gay Lothario nor a Don Juan. In your present state of
mind you're not fit to decide anything. Make up your mind, once for all,
that I'm going to decide for you. It will save us both some trouble."
He stopped. He had discovered that she was not listening to him. She was
sitting absolutely still, her head a little turned. Her lips were
slightly parted, and her eyes, wide and staring, were fixed on some one
across the room.
Laurie's eyes followed hers. They focused on a man sitting alone at a
little table. It was clear that he had just entered, for a waiter stood
by his side, and the new-comer was giving judicious attention to the
bill of fare.
He was a harmless-looking person, of medium height and rather more than
medium stoutness, carelessly dressed in a blue-serge suit. His
indifference to dress was further betrayed by the fact that his
ready-made black four-in-hand tie had slipped the mooring of a white
bone stud, leaving that useful adjunct of the toilet open to the eyes of
the world. His face was round, smooth-shaven, and rather pale. He had
dark brown hair, surprisingly sleek, and projecting, slightly veiled
gray eyes, which blinked near-sightedly at the menu. Altogether he was a
seemingly worthy person, to whom the casual observer would hardly have
given a second glance.
While the two pairs of eyes across the room stared at him, he confided
his order to the waiter. It seemed a brief order, for the brow of the
latter clouded as he wrote it down and detachedly strolled off. The
new-comer leaned back in his chair, and, as he did so, glanced around
the room. His projecting eyes, moving indifferently from table to table,
suddenly rested, fixed, on the girl. They showed interest but no
surprise. He bowed with a half-smile--an odd smile, bland, tolerant, and
understanding. Then, disregarding her lack of response, he fixed his
eyes on the wall facing him and waited patiently for his luncheon to be
served.
Laurie's attention returned to the girl. She was facing him again, but
her eyes looked past him as if he were not there.
"He has found me, even here," she muttered. "Of course he would. He
always does."
Laurie looked at her.
"Do you mean," he asked crisply, "that that chap across the room is
following you around?"
She looked at him, as if abruptly recalled to the fact of his presence.
Her eyes dropped.
"Yes," she muttered, dully. "I may escape him for a time, but he always
learns where I am. He will catch me when he chooses, and roll me about
under his paws for a while, and then--perhaps--let me go again."
"That sounds like a certain phase of domestic life," commented Laurie.
"Is he by any chance your husband?"
Her eyes held a rising anger.
"He is not," she said. "I am not married."
Laurie dropped his dead cigarette into the ash tray, and rose with a
sigh.
"It's all very confusing," he admitted, "and a digression from the main
issue. But I'm afraid I shall have to go to the exertion of reasoning
with him."
She started up, but before she could protest or restrain him, he had
left her and crossed the room to the stranger's table.