She watched the old gentleman as he made his way toward the cabin. Each
time some one brushed against him, she cried under her breath:
“Stop that pushing! Ain’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“What you mutterin’ about?” asked a voice behind her.
Turning, she confronted her Louis.
“Well!” she exclaimed indignantly. “You’re a nice one, you are! But come
on! Hurry up! We can get this boat.”
He caught her arm and held her back.
“No!” he said. “Too late to go down to the island to-day.”
“Too late!” said she. “And me waiting here all the afternoon! What do
you mean, too late?”
“When I say too late, I mean too late,” replied Mr. Pirini, with his own
special insolence.
“Well!” said Miss Riordan. “I don’t care!”
This speech was surely a cue for exit, but she did not go. She said to
herself, as usual, that she just wanted to stay and tell that fellow
what she thought of him--which was manifestly impossible, as she had
never yet been able to discover what she really did think of him, except
that she hated him.
There he stood, with his gray spats and his gray felt hat, worn
rakishly, and even new gray gloves. She knew that he had no job, nothing
at all to justify his swagger. Very likely he hadn’t enough in his
pocket to pay for his dinner. What cared he? He wouldn’t even thank her
if she paid for it.
“Now you just look here, Louis!” she began in a trembling voice.
“All right! I’m lookin’!” said he.
His white teeth showed in a broad smile, and his eyes were fixed
steadily upon her. Though Miss Riordan, when she looked in the mirror,
may have seen an image which somewhat flattered the truth, she had no
illusions as to how she appeared in the eyes of Mr. Pirini. She tried to
roll the magazine so that her hands should be concealed. She changed the
position of her feet.
“All right!” she said. “You can keep on looking!”
“You bin cryin’,” observed her cavalier.
That was too much! Those tears were not to be mentioned by him.
“You mind your own business!” she retorted hotly. “I wasn’t crying over
you, anyways!”
She saw that he didn’t believe that.
“Have it your own way,” he said soothingly. “Whadder you say we go an’
get some dinner?”
“No!” replied Miss Riordan, and sat down upon the nearest seat.
She always rejected his suggestions--at first; but, as always, she
regretted what she had done. Here was the very situation she had
dreaded--herself seated, flushed, struggling against her ever ready
tears, while he stood there smiling.
“All right!” he said. “We’ll stay here, then.”
This was another familiar move. How many victories had he won by his
patience, his smiling silence! He could wait, and he could hold his
tongue, and she could do neither.
“And me waiting here all afternoon!” she burst out. “And then you come
and you say it’s too late to go down to the island. Well, what made you
come so late?”
He did not answer. Another crowd had begun to move toward the gates,
like a herd seized with a migratory impulse. Perhaps something of that
ancient instinct stirred now in Miss Riordan. Certainly she had a
melancholy sensation of being left behind, abandoned, while her fellow
creatures moved on toward a better land--toward a Staten Island green
and fair, where in a glen a cataract came foaming down, and wild flowers
grew, very much like a landscape which hung up in her furnished room.
Well, didn’t she, too, wish to see that lovely spot?
“I’m going to take the next boat!” she announced, rising.
“All right!” said Louis. “I’m not. Good-by!”
She wavered shamefully between the quite real Louis and the imaginary
Staten Island.
“I’m going!” she answered in a loud, firm voice, but added: “Unless you
say you’re sorry you were so late.”
“Sure! I’m sorry!” answered Louis readily. “Now let’s go an’ get some
dinner somewheres. All dressed up to kill, ain’t you? Bought yourself
some flowers an’ everything!”
Miss Riordan had temporarily forgotten her bouquet. She glanced down at
the pallid blossoms, fainting in her hot hands, and a very curious
emotion came over her.
“No, I did not buy them for myself!” she said vehemently. “They were
given to me.”
“Sure!” said Louis. “Rudolph Valentino give ’em to you, didn’t he?”
“Now you look here, Louis! A gentleman gave them to me--he _bought_ them
for me.”
“Oh, Gawd!” said Louis.
“He did! You stop your laughing!”
But Mr. Pirini was so overwhelmed that he was obliged to drop into the
seat beside her, and there he sat, his handsome head thrown back, all
his strong white teeth showing in a prodigious and soundless laugh. Miss
Riordan turned upon him in a fury.
“You stop that!” she commanded. “You just better believe me! It’s the
truth! A gentleman came and sat down beside me and began talking to me,
and by and by he got me them flowers.”
“Sure I believe you!” said Louis. “Why wouldn’t I?”
For a moment she could not speak. Her hate, and the insufferable
conviction of her impotence, made her heart beat fast and violently. She
felt stifled in a desperate struggle against complete submersion. Louis
would not believe her. She could not make him believe in her gentleman,
and to doubt his existence was to deny her a soul. That the old
gentleman had talked poetry to her and given her flowers was the sole
proof of her own immortal value.
“I tell you it’s true!” she said in a choked voice.
“Sure!” replied Louis, still grinning.
His unfaith was destroying her. Under his arrogant, smiling glance she
was disintegrating. The woman whom the old gentleman had addressed, the
woman who longed for the mystic beauties of Staten Island as one longs
for Paradise, was being done to death, and there would remain only the
creatures she saw in her mirror--this ungainly body, this flushed and
troubled face. No! No! She had been worthy of the poetry and the
flowers. It was Louis who was too base to see her worth.