"Jim," said his mother, "Miss Dumont called you on the telephone at an
unusual hour last night. You had gone to your room, and on the chance
that you were asleep I did not speak to you."
That was all--sufficient explanation to discount any reproach from her
son incident on his comparing notes with the girl in question. Also
just enough in her action to convey to the girl a polite hint that the
Shotwell family was not at home to people who telephoned at that
unconventional hour.
On his way to business that morning, Jim telephoned to Palla, but,
learning she was not at home, let the matter rest.
In his sullen and resentful mood he no longer cared--or thought he
didn't, which resulted in the same thing--the accumulation of
increasing bitterness during a dull, rainy working day at the office,
and a dogged determination to keep clear of this woman until effort to
remain away from her was no longer necessary.
For the thing was utterly hopeless; he'd had enough. And in his
bruised heart and outraged common sense he was boyishly framing an
indictment of modern womanhood--lumping it all and cursing it
out--swearing internally at the entire enfranchised pack which the war
had set afoot and had licensed to swarm all over everything and raise
hell with the ancient and established order of things.
The stormy dark came early; and in this frame of mind when he left the
office he sulkily avoided the club.
He very rarely drank anything; but, not knowing what to do, he drifted
into the Biltmore bar.
He met a man or two he knew, but declined all suggestions for the
evening, turned up his overcoat collar, and started through the hotel
toward the northern exit.
And met Marya Lanois face to face.
She was coming from the tea-room with two or three other people, but
turned immediately on seeing him and came toward him with hand
extended.
"Dear me," she said, "you look very wet. And you don't look
particularly well. Have you arrived all alone for tea?"
"I had my tea in the bar," he said. "How are you, Marya?--but I musn't
detain you--" he glanced at the distant group of people who seemed to
be awaiting her.
"You are not detaining me," she said sweetly.
"Your people seem to be waiting----"
"They may go to the deuce. Are you quite alone?"
"I--yes----"
"Shall we have tea together?"
He laughed. "But you've had yours----"
"Well, you know there are other things that one sometimes drinks."
There seemed no way out of it. They went into the tea-room together
and seated themselves.
"How is Vanya?" he inquired.
"Vanya gives a concert to-night in Baltimore."
"And you didn't go!"
"No. It was rainy. Besides, I hear Vanya play when I desire to hear
him."
Their order was served.
"So you wouldn't go to Baltimore," said Jim smilingly. "It strikes me,
Marya, that you can be a coldblooded girl when you wish to be."
"After all, what do you know about me?"
He laughed: "Oh, I don't mean that I've got your number----"
"No. Because I have many numbers. I am a complicated combination," she
added, smiling; "--yet after all, a combination only. And quite simple
when one discovers the key to me."
"I think I know what it is," he said.
"What is it?"
"Mischief."
They laughed. Marya, particularly, was intensely amused. She was
extremely fetching in her bicorne toque and narrow gown of light
turquoise, and her golden beaver scarf and muff.
"Mischief," she repeated. "I should say not. There seems to be already
sufficient mischief loose in the world, with the red tide rising
everywhere--in Russia, in Germany, Austria, Italy, England--yes, and
here also the crimson tide of Bolshevism begins to move.... Tell me;
you are coming to the club to-morrow evening, I hope."
"No."
"Oh. Why?"
"No," he repeated, almost sullenly. "I've had enough of queerness for
a while----"
"Jim! Do you dare include me?"
He had to laugh at her pretence of fury: "No, Marya, you're just a
pretty mischief-maker, I suppose----"
"Then what do you mean by 'queerness'? Don't you think it's sensible
to combat Bolshevism and fight it with argument and debate on its own
selected camping ground? Don't you think it is high time somebody
faced this crimson tide--that somebody started to build a dyke against
this threatened inundation?"
"The best dykes have machine guns behind them, not orators," he said
bluntly.
"My friend, I have seen that, also. And to what have machine guns led
us in Petrograd, in Moscow, in Poland, Finland, Courland--" She
shrugged her pretty shoulders. "No. I have seen enough blood."
He said: "I have seen a little myself."
"Yes, I know. But a soldier is always a soldier, as a hound is always
a hound. The blood of the quarry is what their instinct follows. Your
goal is death; we only seek to tame."
"The proper way to check Bolshevism in America is to police the
country properly, and kick out the outrageous gang of domestic
Bolsheviki who have exploited us, tricked us, lied to us, taxed us
unfairly, and in spite of whom we have managed to help our allies win
this war.
"Then, when this petty, wretched, crooked bunch has been swept out,
and the nation aired and disinfected, and when the burden of taxation
is properly distributed, and business dares lift its head again, then
start your debates and propaganda and try to educate your enemies if
you like. But keep your machine guns oiled."
"You speak in an uncomplimentary fashion of government," said the
girl, smiling.
"I am all for government. That does not mean that I am for the
particular incumbents in office under the present Government. I have
no use for them. Know that this war was won, not through them but in
spite of them.
"Yet I place loyalty first of all--loyalty to the true ideals of that
Government which some of the present incumbents so grotesquely
misrepresent.
"That means, stand by the ship and the flag she flies, no matter who
steers or what crew capers about her decks.
"That means, watch out for all pirates;--open fire on anything that
flies a hostile flag, red or any other colour.
"And that's my creed, Marya!"
"To shoot; not to debate?"
"An inquest is safer."
"We shall never agree," said the girl, laughing. "And I'm rather
glad."
"Why?"
"Because disagreements are more amusing than any _entente cordiale_,
_mon ami_. It is the opposing forces that never bore each other. In
life, too--I mean among human beings. Once they agree, interest
lessens."
"Nonsense," he said, smiling.
"Oh, it is quite true. Behold us. We don't agree. But I am interested,"
she added with pretty audacity; "so please take me to dinner
somewhere."
"You mean now, as we are?"
"Parbleu! Did you wish to go home and dress?"
"I don't care if you don't," he said.
"Suppose," she suggested, "we dine where there is something to see."
"A Broadway joint?" he asked, amused.
"A joint?" she repeated, smilingly perplexed. "Is that a place where
we may dine and see a spectacle too and afterward dance?"
"Something of that sort," he admitted, laughing. But under his
careless gaiety an ugly determination had been hardening; he meant
to go no more to Palla; he meant to welcome any distraction of the
moment to help tide him over the long, grey interval that loomed
ahead--welcome any draught that might mitigate the bitter waters he
was tasting--and was destined to drain to their revolting dregs.
* * * * *
They went to the Palace of Mirrors and were lucky enough to secure a
box.
The food was excellent; the show a gay one.
Between intermissions he took Marya to the floor for a dance or two.
The place was uncomfortably crowded: uniforms were everywhere, too;
and Jim nodded to many men he knew, and to a few women.
And, in the vast, brilliant place, there was not a man who saw Marya
and failed to turn and follow her with his eyes. For Marya had been
fashioned to trouble man. And that primitively constructed and
obviously-minded sex never failed to become troubled.
"We'd better enjoy our champagne," remarked Marya. "We'll be a
wineless nation before long, I suppose."
"It seems rather a pity," he remarked, "that a man shouldn't be free
to enjoy a glass of claret. But if the unbaked and the half-baked, and
the unwashed and the half-washed can't be trusted to practise
moderation, we others ought to abstain, I suppose. Because what is
best for the majority ought to be the law for all."
"If it were left to me," said the girl, "I'd let the submerged drink
themselves to death."
"What on earth are you talking about?" he said. "I thought you were a
socialist!"
"I am. I desire no law except that of individual inclination."
"Why, that's Bolshevism!"
Her laughter rang out unrestrained: "I believe in Bolshevism--for
myself--but not for anybody else. In other words, I'd like to be
autocrat of the world. If I were, I'd let everybody alone unless they
interfered with me."
"And in that event?" he asked, laughing, as the lights all over the
house faded to a golden glimmer in preparation for the second part of
the spectacle. He could no longer see her clearly across the little
table. "What would you do if people interfered with you?" he
repeated.
Marya smiled. The last ray of light smouldered in her tiger-red hair;
the warm, fragrant, breathing youth of her grew vaguer, merging with
the shadows; only the beryl-tinted eyes, which slanted slightly,
remained distinct.
Her voice came to him through the music: "If I were autocrat, any man
who dared oppose me would have his choice."
"What choice?"
The music swelled toward a breathless crescendo.
She said: "Oppose me and you shall learn!----"
The house burst into a dazzling flood of moon-tinted light, all
thronged with slim shapes whirling in an enchanted dance. Then clouds
seemed to gather; the moon slid behind them, leaving a frosty
demi-darkness through which, presently, snow began to fall.
The girl leaned toward him, watching the spectacle in silence. Perhaps
unconsciously her left hand, satin-smooth, slipped over his--as though
the contact were a symbol of enjoyment shared.
Light broke the next moment, revealing the spectacle on stage and
floor in all its tinsel magnificence--snow-nymphs, polar-bears, all
capering madly until an unearthly shriek heralded the coming of a
favorite clown, who tumbled all the way down the stage steps and
continued hysterically turning flip-flaps, cart-wheels, and
somersaults until he landed with a crash at the foot of the steps
again.
* * * * *
A large, highly coloured and over-glossy man, passing under their box
during a dancing intermission, bowed rather extravagantly to Jim. He
recognised Angelo Puma, with contemptuous amusement at his impudence.
It was evident, too, that Puma was quite ready to linger if
encouraged--anxious, in fact, to extend his hand.
But his impudence had already ceased to amuse Jim, and he said
carelessly to Marya, in a voice perfectly audible to Puma:
"There goes a man who, in collusion with a squinting partner of his,
once beat me out of a commission."
Puma's heavy, burning face turned abruptly from Marya, whom he had
been looking at; and he continued on across the floor. And Jim forgot
him.
* * * * *
They remained until the place closed. Then he took her home.
It was an apartment overlooking the park from Fifty-ninth Street--a
big studio and apparently many comfortable rooms--a large, still place
where no servants were in evidence and where thick velvety carpets
from Ushak and Sultanabad muffled every footfall.
She had insisted on his entering for a moment. He stood looking about
him in the great studio, where Vanya's concert-grand loomed up, a
sprawling, shadowy shape under the dim drop-light which once had been
a mosque-lamp in Samarcand.
The girl flung stole and muff from her, rolled up her gloves and took
a shot at the piano, then, laughing, unpinned her hat and sent it
scaling away into the golden dusk somewhere.
"Are you sleepy, Jim?"
A sudden vision of his trouble in the long, long night to face--trouble,
insomnia, and the bitterness welling ever fresher with the interminable
thoughts he could not suppress, could not control----
"I'm not sleepy," he said. "But don't you want to turn in?"
She went over to the piano, and, accompanying herself on deadened
pedal where she stood, sang in a low voice the "_Snow-Tiger_," with
its uncanny refrain:
"Tiger-eyes
Tiger-eyes,
What do you see
Far in the dark
Over the snow?
Far in the dark
Over the snow,
Slowly the ghosts of dead men go,--
Horses and riders under the moon
Trample along to the dead men's rune,
_Slava! Slava!_
Over the snow."
"That's too hilarious a song," said Jim, laughing. "May I suggest a
little rag to properly subdue us?"
"You don't like _Tiger-eyes_?"
"I've heard more cheerful ditties."
"When I'm excited by pleasure," said the girl, "I sing _Tiger-eyes_."
"Does it subdue you?"
She looked at him. "No."
Still standing, she looked down at the keys, struck the muffled chords
softly.
"Tiger-eyes
Tiger-eyes,
Where do they go,
Far in the dark
Over the snow?
Into the dark,
Over the snow,
Only the ghosts of the dead men know
Where they have come from, whither they go,
Riding at night by the corpse-light glow,
_Slava!_ _Slava!_
Over the snow."
"Well, for the love of Mike----"
Marya's laughter pealed.
"So you don't like _Tiger-eyes_?" she demanded, coming from behind the
piano.
"I sure don't," he admitted.
"The real Russian name of the song is 'Words! Words!' And that's all
the song is--all that any song is--all that anything amounts
to--words! words!--" She dropped onto the long couch,--"Anything
except--love."
"You may include that, too," he said, lighting a cigarette for her;
and she blew a ring of smoke at him, saying:
"I may--but I won't. For goodness sake leave me the last one of my
delusions!"
They both laughed and he said she was welcome to her remaining
delusion.
"Won't you share it with me?" she said, her smile innocent enough,
save for the audacity of the red mouth.
"Share your delusion?"
"Yes, that too."
This wouldn't do. He lighted a cigarette for himself and sauntered
over to the piano.
"I hope Vanya's concert is a success," he said. "He's such a charming
fellow, Vanya--so considerate, so gentle--" He turned and looked at
Marya, and his eyes added: "Why the devil don't you marry him and have
a lot of jolly children?"
There seemed to be in his clear eyes enough for the girl to comprehend
something of the question they flung at her.
"I don't love Vanya," she said.
"Of course you do!"
"As I might love a child--yes."
After a silence: "It strikes me," he said, "that you're passionately
in love."
"I am."
"With yourself," he added, smiling.
"With _you_."
This wouldn't do any longer. The place slightly stifled him with its
stillness, rugs--the odours that came from lacquered shapes, looming
dimly, flowered and golden in the dusk--the aromatic scent of her
cigarette----
"Hell!" he muttered under his breath. "This is no place for a white
man." But aloud he said pleasantly: "My very best wishes for Vanya
to-night. Tell him so when he returns--" He put on his overcoat and
picked up hat and stick.
"It's infernally late," he added, "and I've been a beast to keep you
up. It was awfully nice of you."
She rose from the lounge and walked with him to the door.
"Good night," he said cheerily; but she retained his hand, added her
other to it, and put up her face.
"Look here," he said, smilingly, "I can't do that, Marya."
"Why can't you?"
Her soft breath was on his face; the mouth too near--too near----
"No, I can't!" he said curtly, but his voice trembled a little.
"Why?" she whispered.
"Because--there's Vanya. No, I won't do it!"
"Is that the reason?"
"It's a reason."
"I don't love Vanya. I do love you."
"Please remember----"
"No! No! I have nothing to remember--unless you give me something----"
"You had better try to remember that Vanya loves you. You and I can't
do a thing like that to Vanya--"
"Are there no other reasons?"
He reddened to the temples: "No, there are not--now. There is no other
reason--except myself."
"Yourself?"
"Yes, damn it, myself! That's all that remains now to keep me
straight. And I've been so. That may be news to you. Perhaps you don't
believe it."
"Is it so, Jim?" she asked in a voice scarcely audible.
"Yes, it is. And so I shall keep on, and play the game that way--play
it squarely with Vanya, too----"
He had lost his heavy colour; he stood looking at her with a white,
strained, grim expression that tightened the jaw muscles; and she felt
his powerful hand clenching between hers.
"It's no use," he said between his set lips, "I've got to go on--see
it through in my own fashion--this rotten thing called life. I'm
sorry, Marya, that I'm not a better sport----"
A wave of colour swept her face and her hands suddenly crushed his
between them.
"You're wonderful," she said. "I do love you."
But the tense, grey look had come back into his face. Looking at her
in silence, presently his gaze seemed to become remote, his absent
eyes fixed on something beyond her.
"I've a rotten time ahead of me," he said, not knowing he had spoken.
When his eyes reverted to her, his features remained expressionless,
but his voice was almost tender as he said good night once more.
Her hands fell away; he opened the door and went out without looking
back.
He found a taxi at the Plaza. He was swearing when he got into it. And
all the way home he kept repeating to himself: "I'm one of those
cursed, creeping Josephs; that's what I am,--one of those pepless,
sanctimonious, creeping Josephs.... And I always loathed that poor
fish, too!"