Amazing, the swiftness and stillness with which actors in the human
comedy group themselves and fall apart and regroup themselves quite
otherwise, at the nod of an invisible stage-manager ... shifting like
shadows on a road ... like anything but free-willed men and women!
Forever making patterns, which they never see entire, and to the beauty
or the horror of which they contribute blindly--confidently, even.
Secure in their own control of--the moment.
Such a pattern, such a shifting Melissa now realized, without desire to
question what shifting and what pattern might come after.
One day, Luke was her friend--not free to be more--next day he was her
lover but all his freedom could not keep him there. Now, not even a
friend ... since lovers do not go back that way....
One day Murdock stood ready to her hand--the next--gone--wiped out of
her scene ... a word or so, one hadn’t, the moment before, been aware
one was going to speak ... a word or so in answer ... a silence--and an
exit!... Friendship, love and whatnot--all gone off-stage together. In
the matter of Murdock.
Beall was like an actor whose lines have not gotten over, whose scenes
have merely filled a gap till greater than he came on.
Melissa felt--about Beall--almost as if she had never known him. Had
read of him in some briefly amusing book perhaps. Had seen his face
upon an ink-smudged page. Heard his voice through a talking-machine.
Never to see him--never to hear him again--she didn’t in the least
regret that. He had been a potential, not an active, contact--never
vividly existing for her.
Nothing, now, existed for her--vividly--but Mister Roderick. She had
willed to be free when he came. And a day and a night away he waited
for her ... who had waited so blindly, so stubbornly for him.
Melissa scarcely slept, the night before the Marchesa’s little
supper-party. She lay with closed eyes in a blissful half-dream and
knew the hours going by. Knew the darkness deepening and dulling and
waning ... knew the first warmth of dawn in a cloudy East. She cried
to herself again and again--“You little fool! _Can’t you sleep?_ Think
what you’ll look like ... to-morrow!”
But it didn’t help her--to oblivion.
Very nearly night-long she conjured up, against the blackness of closed
eyelids, Mister Roderick, half-kneeling, cigarette in hand, head back,
coolly asking--what? If only Kathleen hadn’t cleaned up the desk!
Melissa might still have had the picture of him--under her pillow--that
night.
Day came, inevitably, if tardily, and breakfast--at the end of more
dragging hours, luncheon, as well.
The Marchesa had said--“Come in about seven.”
At four, Melissa, swathed in a garment of white linen, coifed in
white like a moody nun, lay back in a long cushioned chair, before a
dressing-table littered with gayly-colored little bottles and jars, and
gave herself into the hands of an impersonal young woman in nurse-like
uniform.
“I should like to look--rather nice, to-night,” murmured Melissa.
“Your eyes are a bit dark,” said the young woman reprovingly. “Have you
been using our eye-lotion regularly?”
Melissa said she had. She didn’t add that she had been using up her
emotions as well, in a way to render anybody’s eye-lotion fairly futile.
“Do the best you can,” said Melissa humbly.
“We’ll try a cold astringent pack,” said the young woman and did so
with delightful result.
Between five and six, Melissa began the process of dressing, so as not
to have to hurry at the last.
She had chosen, for Mister Roderick’s first sight of her, a gown
flesh-colored and black. Dangerously simple--a tea-rose in a
thunder-storm ... no rings, no pearls, no trappings of any sort.
Melissa’s own soft, dark hair, her shadowy eyes, her delicately rosed
mouth--the only accents of the picture.
Only a woman in love could have found so much to do to herself by way
of imperceptible adornment that the little clock on the bed-table
showed ten minutes of seven before Melissa bent to her mirror for
a last wistful look and went out, catching her cloak about her,
forgetting handkerchief and purse and key....
All of which she remembered about the seventh floor and returned for,
abruptly.
She rode up Riverside in a musty yellow taxi. It might have been the
King’s coach--or Cinderella’s pumpkin. She said to the driver when she
alighted--“Thank you so much....” and tipped him absurdly.
She smiled at the elevator-boy on her way up to the Marchesa’s
apartment and when Anna opened the door she smiled again at _her_.
“Good evening, Miss Wayne,” said Anna, in reply, not to be won over by
anything in petticoats. “Will you lay your wraps in here?”
So Melissa laid her wraps in there--it was the Marchesa’s bedroom--and
with one more glance at the glass, with a wild little prayer in her
heart walked out to meet Mister Roderick.
The Marchesa, as was her custom, sat in the winged chair. She was all
black velvet and old-fashioned diamonds--obviously an occasion--a royal
cluster of orchids lay in her lap.
Mister Roderick was beside her. He had stooped for something the
Marchesa had let fall, just before Melissa came in and he rose--and
turned--a trifle slowly.
The Marchesa lifted her orchids to her nose--above them appreciation of
a climax glinted between her scant, blackened lashes....
“Melissa--” said the Marchesa, “this is Roderick.” Nothing more.
Almost a tremor in the reedy old voice.
“How do you do?” said Melissa. She gave him her hand. She gave him her
eyes.
The hand was cold and the eyes were black with unbelief.
It wasn’t Mister Roderick at all.
That is, it was of course Mister Roderick, because the Marchesa said so
and she had known him all his life. He was her nephew and she was his
aunt. That much was incontrovertible.
But he wasn’t the man of the picture. Any more than Melissa was the
Marchesa. And not being the man of the picture--it made no difference
who he was. To Melissa.
She heard him say--as she had said--“How do you do?” And took back her
hand and looked at the opposite wall in desperate need of a place to
hide, till the universe should stop spinning.
A pleasant-faced, stocky young man, with a mild blue eye, a small blond
mustache, an amiable mouth....
Not the eyes--not, in a thousand years, the mouth--of the man with
the cigarette between his fingers--the man whose picture Melissa had
carried about with her over her heart.... Of course the picture had
been gone for weeks ... but Melissa knew every shadow and line of
it.... She would have known the original in the great Gobi Desert--on
Fifth Avenue--in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This man was
somebody else--that was all.
And she hadn’t, with the Marchesa watching her, simpering and beaming
at her in a glow of great-lady indulgence, time to do more than just
accept the fact.
Melissa would very nearly have given her soul in that instant of
abysmal disappointment--to be alone. She had, however, to play out the
piece.
The Marchesa was saying something about a glass of sherry before dinner.
“Will you ring for Anna, Roderick?”
“The faithful Anna--” said Roderick blandly and rang as requested.
With the wine, the Marchesa gave them a toast--lifting her glass in
shaky, be-jeweled fingers, looking from one to the other of them,
dramatically--
“To your better acquaintance ... may it never pall!”
“Righto, Aunt Amalie!” said Roderick and looked at Melissa and laughed.
In the nicest sort of way. That was the most obvious thing about
him--his entire niceness. The word might have been coined to identify
him. One saw at once why he had been--wasn’t it Murdock who said
so?--“one of the most popular chaps in his class.” Good humor twitched
his sandy eyebrows and widened his generous mouth, at every turn. One
saw him being godfather to the first baby of innumerable one-time
bachelor friends. Listening to the tea-table confidences of innumerable
reckless young married women ... himself, quite safe! He would always
advise them to give Tom or Dick or Bill another chance.... Saying that
marriage was a serious thing, by Jove!
Showing his belief in the seriousness of it by giving it, for his own
part, a wide berth. The complete friend, this Roderick Delano!... But
no amorist. He knew his way ’round that!
“Well, Melissa!” said the Marchesa leading the way to the supper-table
with a faint clashing of bracelets and a quite perceptible
dissemination of Peau d’Espagne.... “I have been telling Roderick how
absurdly you adore his apartment. I have been suggesting to him that he
go back to Japan and leave you to occupy it in peace....”
“Shall I?” asked Roderick obligingly. He seated first his aunt and then
Melissa in the mellow light of the Marchesa’s candles, he looked at
Melissa once more.
And his look was warm with approval. Not unnaturally. Melissa that
night had made the most of herself, with exquisite result.
She murmured--“I _have_ enjoyed it. It is a charming place. I’m sure
you must be wanting it back again.” Empty little words, prettily
inflected. Beneath the sound of them she was thinking desperately ...
“That window--he never stood there at all ... that wasn’t his room ...
nor his fire!... It belongs to this man--all of it. Then who was the
other? And where is he, now? Oh God--what a crazy fool I have been!...”
“This shrimp cocktail, dear boy,” said the Marchesa graciously, “is
after your old recipe--remember?”
Her nephew remembered. He took on for a moment, at sight of it, the
true epicure’s look--which alone would have confirmed his relationship
to his hostess. “Just enough onion in the sauce,” he said gravely.
“Onion,” observed the Marchesa, selecting the portliest shrimp within
her reach and regarding it affectionately before lifting it to her
mouth.... “Onion is like woman’s love--to properly appreciate which ...
one should never have too much of it!” She snickered behind her napkin
and Roderick commented with a grin.
“Not bad! You’re in form to-night, aren’t you! She’s a wicked young
thing, Miss Wayne. I hope you haven’t allowed her to come too near your
morals.”
“Melissa,” said the Marchesa at once, “has no morals. She has illusions
which may become morals--if they survive.... Roderick, try those
cheese-straws--I had them made especially for you.”
And while Roderick critically tried the cheese-straws, Melissa’s
heart-breaking inner monologue went on....
“Kathleen said--when I showed her the picture--that it was Mister
Roderick!... Now _could_ she have been mistaken? Surely, Kathleen must
have known! If it wasn’t--Roderick Delano--who was it?... It must have
been some one! Who _was_ he? Where _is_ he? How can I ever find out?...
I haven’t even the picture, now....”
“Isn’t this the most delightful little party!” cried the Marchesa gayly.
“Melissa--you haven’t said a word in ten minutes! That da Vinci
smile is very effective ... but let Roderick hear your voice! I have
been boasting of you. I told him you were the wittiest woman of my
acquaintance and there you sit, dumb as....”
“A rose,” said Roderick quickly--“roses don’t need to be witty!” He
drew a heavy-headed flower from the Dresden urn in the center of the
supper-table and laid it beside Melissa’s plate.
Nice, beyond words--this Roderick--but what was niceness, and a mild
blue eye and an amiable smile ... after the eyes and the smile and the
man for whom Melissa had been waiting?
She pulled herself together. Pride put words in her mouth. She answered
the Marchesa’s sallies acceptably--if not with conspicuous brilliancy.
She fastened wide soft eyes on Roderick’s face while he talked of his
travels so that he fancied himself for once blessed with a supernal
audience and talked the evening through happily enough. He didn’t know,
of course, that behind Melissa’s unswerving look, and fixed attention,
her thoughts were running all about, madly, insistently questioning....
“Who was he? ... where is he?... How shall I ever...? No one to ask....
Could Kathleen ... but without the picture ... how could I describe--?
And if I could--I’d be ashamed! Such a fool.... Oh, Lissa--such a
miserable fool!”
An evening to remember!
Violets and roses and plump Dresden cherubs ... porcelain and silver
and yellowing lace ... thin golden candle-light ... and the bronzy-gold
sheen of an almost theatrically baked chicken ... black hot coffee in
tiny frail cups....
Then out of all that, and back once more into the room of the
Spanish shawl and the Marchesa’s winged chair, and the time-faded,
tryst-keeping photographs.
Melissa thought that ten o’clock would never come. She couldn’t in
decency leave earlier.
“Isn’t she quiet, Roderick?” suggested the Marchesa caressingly. “You’d
never believe how much we’ve talked of you--Melissa and I! And wait
till you see how charming she’s made that place of yours--with flowers
and fal-lals and so on ... she’s a very feminine creature, for all
this Ice-Maiden pose of hers!” Melissa being close beside her, the
Marchesa, with mention of an Ice-Maiden, nipped sharply the under side
of Melissa’s arm ... and muttered--“_Are you asleep?_”
At which Melissa talked a bit faster and louder.
An evening, indubitably, to remember!