MAN OR TOY MAN?
The newspaper prediction of the forthcoming announcement of the
engagement of Miss Ethel Manton and Gregory St. Ledger was published,
not without color of authority, nor was it entirely out of keeping with
appearances.
As the gay calendar of society's romp and rout drew toward its close,
the names of these two became more and more intimately associated. It
was an association assiduously cultivated by young St. Ledger, and
earnestly fostered and abetted by the St. Ledger sisters who,
fluttering uncertainly upon the outermost rim of the circle immediately
surrounding society's innermost shrine, realized that the linking of
the Manton name with the newer name of St. Ledger, would prove an open
sesame to the half-closed doors of the Knickerbockers.
Despite two years' residence in the most expensive suite of a most
expensive hotel, nobody seemed to know much about the St. Ledgers. It
was an accepted fact that they were islanders from somewhere, variously
stated to be Jamaica, The Isle of Pines, and Barbadoes, whose wealth
was founded upon sugar, and appeared limitless.
St. Ledger _pere_, tall and saturnine, divided his time about equally
between New York and "the islands."
The two girls, ravishingly beautiful in their dark, semi-mysterious
way, had been brought from some out-of-the-way French convent to the
life of the great city, where to gain entree into society's holy of
holies became a fetish above their gods.
There was no _mere_ St. Ledger, and vague whisperings passed back and
forth between certain bleached out, flat-chested virgins, whose
forgotten youth and beauty were things long past, but whose tenure upon
society was as firm and unassailable as Plymouth Rock and the silver
leg of Peter Stuyvesant could make it.
It was hinted that the high-piled tresses of the sisters matched too
closely the hue of the raven's wing, and that the much admired "waves"
if left to themselves would resolve into decided "kinks."
They were guarded whisperings, however, non-committal, and so worded
that a triumphantly blazoned "I told you so!" or a depreciatory and
horrified: "You misunderstood me, _dear_," hung upon the pending
verdict of the powers that be.
Gregory St. Ledger, in so far as any one knew, was neither liked nor
disliked among men; being of the sort who enjoy watching games of
tennis and, during the later hours of the afternoon, drive pampered
Pekingese about the streets in silver-mounted electrics.
He enjoyed, also, a baby-blue reputation which successfully cloaked
certain spots of pale cerise in his rather negligible character.
He smoked innumerable scented cigarettes, gold as to tip and monogram,
which he selected with ostentatious unostentation from a heavy gold
case liberally bestudded with rubies and diamonds.
He viewed events calmly through a life-size monocle, was London
tailored, Paris shod, and New York manicured; and carried an embossed
leather check-book, whose detachable pink slips proved a potent safety
factor against undue increment of the St. Ledger exchequer.
Thus equipped, and for reasons of family, young St. Ledger decided to
marry Ethel Manton; and to this end he devoted himself persistently and
insidiously, but with the inborn patience and diplomacy of the South
Islander.
Bill Carmody he hated with the snakelike hate of little men, but
shrewdly perceiving that the girl held more than a friendly regard for
him, enthusiastically sang his praises in her ears; praises that,
somehow, always left her with a strange smothering sensation about the
heart and a dull resentment of the fact that she cared.
With the disappearance of young Carmody, St. Ledger redoubled his
attentions. The young man found it much easier than did his sisters to
be numbered "among those present" at the smart functions of the elite.
When New York shivered in the first throes of winter, a well-planned
cruise in mild waters under soft skies on board the lavishly appointed
and bountifully supplied St. Ledger yacht, whose sailing list included
a carefully selected and undeniably congenial party of guests, worked
wonders in the matter of St. Ledger's social aspirations.
At the clubs, substantial and easily forgotten loans to members of the
embarrassed elect, coupled with vague hints, rarely failed to pay
dividends in the form of invitations to ultra-exclusive _affaires_.
At the hostelry the St. Ledger _soirees_, if so glitteringly bizarre as
to draw high-browed frowns from the more reserved and staid of the
thinning old guard of ancestor-worshipers, nevertheless, were
enthusiastically hailed and eagerly attended by the younger set, and
played no small part in the insinuation of "those St. Ledgers" into the
realms of the anointed.
Thus the winter wore away, and, at all times and in all places Gregory
St. Ledger appeared as the devoted satellite of Ethel Manton, who
entered the social melee without enthusiasm, but with dogged
determination to let the world see that the disappearance of Bill
Carmody affected her not at all.
She tolerated St. Ledger, even encouraged him, for he amused and
offered a welcome diversion for her thoughts.
She was a girl of moods whose imagination carried her into far places
in the picturing of a man--her man--big, and strong, and clean;
fighting bare-fisted among men for his place in the world, and alone
conquering the secret devil of desire that he might claim the right to
her love.
Then it was, curled up in the big armchair in the library, the blue
eyes would glow softly and tenderly in the flare of the flickering
firelight, and between parted lips the warm breath would come and go in
short stabbing whispers to the quick rise and fall of the rounded
bosom, and the little fists would clench white in the tense gladness of
it.
But there were other times--times when the dancing wall-shadows were
dark specters of ill-omen gloating ghoulishly before her horror-widened
eyes as her brain conjured the picture of the man--battered, broken,
helpless, with bloated, sottish features, and bleared eyes--a beaten
man drifting heedlessly, hopelessly, furtive-eyed, away from his
standards--and from her.
At such times the breath would flutter uncertainly between cold,
bloodless lips, and the marble whiteness of her face became a pallid
death mask of despair.
Always in extremes she pictured him, for, knowing the man as she knew
him--the bigness of him--the relentless dynamic man-power of his being,
she knew that with him there would be no half-way measure--no median
line of indifferent achievement which should stand for neither the good
nor the bad among men.
Here was no Tomlinson whose little sins and passive virtues became the
jest of the gods; but a man who in the final accounting would stand
four-square upon the merit of his works, and in the might of their
right or wrong, accept fearlessly his reward.
The days dragged into weeks and the weeks into months--empty months to
the heart of the girl who waited, dreading, yet hoping for word from
the man she loved. Yet knowing, deep down in her heart, she would hear
no word.
He would come to her--would answer the call of her great love--would
beat down the barriers and in the flush of victory would claim her as
his own; or, in the everlasting silence of the weird realm of missing
men, be lost to her forever.
Daily she scanned the newspapers. Not front pages whose glaring
headlines flaunted world-rumblings, politics, and the illness of rich
men's dogs, but tiny cable-whispers from places far from the beaten
track, places forgotten or unknown, whose very names breathed mystery;
whispers that hinted briefly of life-tragedies, of action and the
unsung deeds of men.
And as she read, she mused.
A tramp steamer dashed upon the saw-tooth rocks off Sarawak. Thirty
perish--seven saved--no names. "Where is Sarawak? Is it possible that
_he_----?"
Four sailors killed in the rescue of a girl from a dive in Singapore.
Investigation ordered--no names. "_He_ would have done that."
The rum-sodden body of a man, presumably a derelict American, picked up
on the bund at Papiete; no marks of identification save the tightly
clutched photograph of a well-dressed young woman. "Had _he_ given up
the fight? And was this the end?"
Eight revolutionist prisoners taken by General Orotho in yesterday's
battle were shot at sunrise this morning before the prison wall of
Managua.
One, an American, faced the firing squad with a laugh, and the next
instant pitched forward, his body riddled with bullets. "_He_ would
have laughed! Would have played gladly the game with death and,
losing--laughed!"
Each day she read the little lines of the doings of men; unnamed
adventurers whose deeds were virile deeds; rough men, from whose
contaminating touch society gathers up her silken skirts and passes by
upon the other side; unlovely men, rolled-sleeved and open-throated,
deep-seamed of face, and richly weather-tanned of arm, who tread
roughshod the laws of little right and wrong; who drink red liquor and
swear lurid oaths and loud; but who, shoulder to shoulder, redden the
gutters of Singapore with their hearts' blood in the snatching of a
young girl from danger.
And in the reading there grew up in her heart a mighty respect for
these men, for, in the analysis of their deeds, the beam swayed
strongly against the measure of the world in its balance of good and
harm.
Many times her feet carried her into strange streets among strange
people, where the reek of shipping became incense to her nostrils, and
hairy-chested men of many ports stared boldly into her face and,
reading her aright, made room with deference.
Upon an evening just before the annual surcease of frivolity, Gregory
St. Ledger called at the Manton home and, finding Ethel alone in the
library, asked her to be his wife.
Because it was an evening of her blackest mood she neither refused nor
accepted him, but put him off for a year on the ground that she did not
know her mind.
In vain he protested, arguing the power and prestige of the St. Ledger
millions, and in the end departed to seek out an acquaintance who had
to do with a blatant Sunday newspaper.
During the interview that followed, in the course of which the reporter
ordered and St. Ledger paid for many tall drinks of intricate
concoction, the gilded youth made no statement of fact, but the
impression he managed to convey furnished the theme for the news story
whose headlines seared into Bill Carmody's soul to the crashing of his
tenets and gods.
In the library the girl sat far into the night and thought of the man
who had won her heart and of the toy man who would buy her hand.