SAMSON AGONISTES
Marise raised her eyes from an uncut volume of poems, and looked into
the face of--Samson.
The shock of disillusion was so cruel that the girl felt faint. She was
giddy, as if she had stooped too long over a hot fire and risen
abruptly.
So this--_this_--was her Man of Mystery, he who had held in unseen hands
more than half her thoughts for a delicious fortnight! She had deigned
to advertise in a newspaper for the pleasure of meeting this lout,
spurned by his smart regiment, despite his Victoria Cross: this cad,
whose notion of revenge was to explode as a bomb a bottle of
ginger-beer!
The warm glow of anticipation was chilled to ice. The hands that
tightened on the book went suddenly cold. Marise did not know what to
do. She wavered between an impulse to be rude and the dutiful decency of
a hostess. Meanwhile, forgetting to act, she stared at the tall figure
as if at an approaching executioner. No one but a blind man or a fool
could have failed to see in those beautiful eyes the blankness of
disappointment.
John Garth was neither blind nor a fool, and that look of hers was a
sharp-edged axe which "hit him where he lived," as his bruised mind
vaguely put it.
He too had been like a child. Ever since the day of landing in New York
he had planned and existed only for this moment. He had coached himself
for it, dressed himself for it, spent his money like water for it. And
this was his reward. The sight of him was a blow over the heart for his
queen of romance. It blanched her cheeks. It made her physically sick.
Celine had softly shut the door behind the guest, but involuntarily he
backed against it. If he had been a few years younger he would have
turned like a country boy and rushed away without a word. But there are
some things a man can't do; and others he must do. Garth had to say
something--the sooner the better.
What he said--or what said itself lamely--was: "You didn't expect to see
me?"
"No. I--didn't," Marise as lamely agreed.
"Do you want me to go?" he blundered. "If you do, I will."
"No--no," she breathed a lukewarm protest. "Don't go--please. I--I'm
only a little surprised. I remember--seeing you on the ship, of course.
And I didn't think----"
"You didn't think I'd force myself on you--by false pretences."
"I was going to say, I didn't think of seeing anyone to-day--whom I'd
ever seen before." The ice of her shocked resentment melted slightly in
the reflected fire of his pain. "That's all! Do--sit down, won't you?
I'm so grateful. I want to tell you how much--how much I thank you for
those beautiful things."
As she spoke, the girl's face flushed again. After all, the man had done
nothing so monstrous. He couldn't be blamed, perhaps, for not realising
that merely by being himself--by being a bounder whom his brother
officers rejected--he had broken the charm of the mystery. He couldn't
know how undesirable he would seem to a girl of her sort. And the way he
had dressed himself up like a provincial actor playing a duke, to make
his call, was pathetic! Besides, there was the money he'd spent on
her--hundreds and hundreds of dollars which he couldn't afford. Oh, she
was glad that she hadn't followed her first fierce impulse, and been
rude!
Garth had not accepted the invitation to sit down. He remained standing
upright as a stick, and stolid as a stone, against the door. Evidently
he stuck to his resolve to take himself away, and was delayed only by
the mental puzzle of how best to do it. With a repentant throe the girl
sprang up, light and lithe from among her cushions, holding out her
hands.
"I do thank you!" she exclaimed. "And I _want_ you to sit down."
Her look, her gesture, overcame him. He took a step forward, seized the
offered hands, and almost crushed them in his. Marise was rather
frightened, rather touched, but not too much moved to notice that he
didn't know enough about behaviour to take off his gloves--his brutally
new, gamboge-coloured gloves! Or else he was absent minded!
Partly because her one ring was pressing into her finger, partly because
she wished for instant release, she gave a little squeak of pain. "Oh,
my ring!"
Red blood poured up to the man's brown face. The pressure relaxed, but
he did not let her hands go. He lifted them to his lips and kissed first
one, then the other. His mouth was hot as a coal just dropped from the
fire!... That was her quick impression. She was not shocked, for her
hands had been kissed a hundred times by sad, mad men--though not men
like this. She said "Oh!" however, and gazed at him reproachfully, as
"Dolores" gazed at the villain in "The Song."
The effect upon Garth was the same as if she had been sincerely
offended. He let her hands fall, and stammered "Forgive me!"
Marise was beginning to enjoy herself a little, on the whole.
Of course the man was common and rough. What was it that Tony had called
his despised brother officer? A "temporary gentleman!" Yes, that was it!
And a "momentary gentleman" would be even more appropriate, she thought,
because at an instant of deep emotion all decent men were raised to the
heights of Nature's gentility. This fellow was as fine as any nobleman,
for these few seconds of time, she realised, and it was worship of her
which added the new decoration to his V.C.! Despite her disappointment,
she felt that romance was not utterly lacking in the situation.
"There's nothing to forgive," were the obvious words her lips spoke: but
the language of such eyes as hers could never be obvious. The soul of
John Garth drowned in their blue depths. As dying men lose all care for
conventions, so did he lose it while thus he drowned.
"I love you--I love you!" he faltered. "You know, don't you? From the
first--from the first look!"
"Oh no, I don't know that," Marise soothed him. "But you've been so
kind. Those wonderful presents! You ought not----"
"Thinking of them--sending them--has been the big joy of my life," he
broke in. "I've been--drunk with it. I've never felt anything like this
before. Why, I'd die for you; I'd sell my soul. Even that's nothing!"
"They're very great things," she assured him gravely, as she had assured
other men of different types who had flung themselves on her altar as
burnt-offerings. "Any woman would feel the same. But----"
"I don't care a hang what any other woman would feel. All I care for on
God's earth is you--you. Couldn't you think of me--couldn't you, if I
tried to make something of myself----?"
Marise laughed a charming laugh. "Isn't it making something of yourself,
to have won the Victoria Cross?" she challenged.
"Oh, that! That was an accident. I just got so mad I forgot to be scared
for a minute or two, and went for a few Germans----"
"The newspapers compared you to Horatio keeping the bridge against an
army."
"George! You remember that?"
"Women don't forget such things." (She would have forgotten if that
clipping from the _Daily Mail_ hadn't associated itself with Tony's
onslaught upon the regimental hero. But she wasn't called upon to
mention this.) "It was long before I saw you, that I read what you had
done, and fixed your name in my mind," she went on. "Now I have my own
special memories of you. I shall keep your gifts always. And I shall be
prouder of them than ever, because they came from a hero----"
"You're breaking it to me that there's no hope," he cut in. The blood
was gone from his face now. "Nothing I could do, or try to be, would
make you like me well enough----"
"Oh, you are too impulsive!" she checked him. "You've seen me only
twice----"
"I've seen you every night since we landed, and twice a week in the
afternoon."
"What, you've come to the theatre for every performance, even matinees,
just to--to----?"
"Hear your voice and see your face. And hate that damned actor-chap who
kisses you in the third act."
"He doesn't really kiss me," Marise hurried to explain. "He only seems
to."
"God! He must be a stone image!"
"He is a gentleman," amended Marise. "Actors who are gentlemen don't
kiss the actresses who play opposite parts, unless--unless it's
absolutely necessary."
"Then if I played a part with you on the stage, I couldn't be a
gentleman," Garth exploded. But even as he spoke he blushed darkly. "You
don't think I am one _off_ the stage," he added. "And you're right. I'm
not what your friend Lord Severance calls a gentleman. I know what he
does call me, and I am that, I guess, anyhow when he's within gunshot.
He brings out all that's worst in me. There's a lot of it--so much, that
if that thing on shipboard was to do over again, I'd do it without a
qualm. I suppose there's where the 'cad' element he talks about in me
shows up. If he was here now----"
"Ze Earl of Severance, Mademoiselle," announced Celine.
Whether Garth had meant to boast or belittle himself Marise would never
know. Nor did she care. All her faculties concentrated upon how to
account to Severance for the man. It was a suffocating moment. She
feared a scene between the two. The situation called for a stroke of
genius. Was she equal to it? She must be, for Garth's sake and for her
own, even more than for Tony's, and what he would think.
Severance came in. Suddenly Marise felt as she had felt on the stage
when something went wrong with the play. She had often had to save
situations by sheer, quick mother wit. Never had she failed her fellow
actors in a crisis. She ought to be ready for this!
Her nerves ceased to jump. She was calm and confident. As Severance's
darkening gaze fell on Garth, she heard herself glibly explaining the
latter, as if to an audience.
"Major Garth is a friend of Miss Marks, my secretary. She has gone out
for a few minutes with mother, but he is waiting for her. She'll soon be
back."
Speaking, she smiled at the V.C., and her eyes pleaded excuses for the
fib. "It's only a white one," they said. "And it saves our secret. I
know you'd hate me to tell him you'd sent the presents, and I never,
never will. That is sacred, between us two. So is all the rest. And I'm
trying to straighten things out for us both."
Garth appeared to be astonished, but not shocked. His silk hat (a size
too small) lay on a table in a pool of water from an upset vase, he
having flung it there to free his hands for hers. Now he made a move to
retrieve his damaged property, but a second thought gave him pause.
Marise read his mind as if it worked under glass. Her fib about Miss
Marks had doomed him to the part of Casabianca, while the ship of his
pride burned.
The "lion-look" she had seen in the man's eyes that day at sea was in
them again. Poor brute at bay, caged with Severance! The girl pitied
him. But things must take their course. Luckily for the success of her
lie, Miss Marks was not returning with Mums. She--Marise--need only say,
when the latter arrived alone, what a pity it was! Thus Samson would
automatically obtain his release.
The men nodded to one another, as polite enemies must sullenly do in a
woman's drawing-room. Then Severance turned to Miss Sorel with the air
of sponging Garth's mean existence off the earthly slate. "I'm early,"
he explained, "because the hotel people sent me a cable to Belloc's
place. I told them to do so, if one came. My Uncle Constantine Ionides
is ill, and I'm afraid I shall have to go back by the first ship I can
catch. I hoped to be in time for a few words with you before your
friends began to drop in."
This was hard on the intruder, forced against his will to turn a
"company" into a "crowd," and Marise's kind heart might have resented
the slap if her mind had been free. But it was instantly preoccupied
with Tony's news. He was going home! He wanted to talk with her alone.
This could mean only one thing. She supposed that he wished her to
understand as much; and either he took Garth for a dunce or intended him
to understand it too. It was as if he said to the bounder: "You're
welcome to what you can find in your own class: Miss Marks and her set.
But eyes down and hands off this girl. She's mine."
The hint was too broad, the position too humiliating, for Garth's temper
to bear in patience. Like the caged brute in Marise's simile, he
searched the bars for some way of breaking through. But he could not
leave her in the lurch. Practically, she'd ordered him to "stand by,"
and he'd have to do it, unless some look of hers gave him leave to bolt.
The look did not come, however, and he could not guess that the girl was
merely too absent-minded to give it. She had suddenly become as
self-absorbed as a hermit-crab when he pulls every filament of himself
inside his ample shell. As Miss Sorel questioned Severance about the
telegram, Garth was left to his own resources. He felt gigantic in the
small, pretty salon, where Chinese jars and ribboned pots of flowers
left hardly room for a clumsy fellow like him to turn among frail chairs
and tables. He knew that Severance knew how he writhed in spirit, and
that Severance knew he knew. How much worse was this ordeal than a petty
barrage of ginger-beer! Severance was scoring heavily now. Garth thought
in dumb rage that he would give a year of life for some way to pay him
back. And the girl, too! He loved her with a burning love, but at this
moment the difference between love and hate was as imperceptible as that
between the touch of ice and a red-hot poker. She was being very cruel.
Garth felt capable of punishing her--with Severance--if he could.
He took his hat from the table, and rubbing the wet silk with his glove,
stained the yellow kid. Incidentally he made the hat worse. He wandered
to a window looking over the park, and longed to jump out. In his
awkward misery, the man's raw sensitiveness suffered to exaggeration.
Staring jealously at the crowd below--walking, driving, spinning past in
autos--he knew the emotions of one penned at the top of a house on fire,
gazing down at the safe, comfortable people free to pursue their daily
business of life, and love, and work. Behind him, Marise and her friend
jabbered (that was the word in his head, even for her sweet voice) as if
he were invisible. Desperation seized him. He turned, and down went a
stand with a statuette and the Sevres box the "Unknown" had sent Miss
Sorel. It was poetic justice that _his_ gift should be the thing
smashed!
Marise said "Oh!" Severance said nothing. He stood still, fingering his
miniature moustache with the air of a man who expects a lackey to repair
damage. Garth saw red; and if he had picked up a piece of the broken box
it would have been to hurl it at the dark, sneering face. But Heaven
sometimes tempers the wind to shorn lions as well as lambs: and if
Providence did not order the entrance of two women at that instant, who
did?
It was Mrs. Sorel who appeared and (Marise gasped) Miss Zelie Marks. Out
of her shell in self-defence, the actress would have rushed to save this
scene, as she had saved the last--somehow, anyhow! But to her
bewilderment Garth took one great stride towards Miss Marks and snatched
her hand as drowning men are said to snatch at straws. "How do you do?"
he exclaimed eagerly.
"Miss Marks and Major Garth are friends," Marise rattled off to her
mother. And to herself she added, "How smart of him to guess who she
was! Or--did he know?"
The secretary's cheeks were stained carnation, and she was handsomer in
an instant than Marise had thought she could be in a year. Her black
eyes were twinkling. Did she guess that she was a pawn in a game, and
had she so keen a sense of humour as to laugh? Marise was more
interested than ever in this young woman: and Mrs. Sorel, not knowing
the plot of the play, was yet warned by her famous "instinct" that
something queer, something dangerous, was in the air.
She was a woman who prided herself on presence of mind. Marise hadn't
expected her secretary to return, therefore it seemed unlikely she would
have encouraged the Bounder to wait for Miss Marks. And as for that, why
was the Bounder here? Being here, the further he could be kept from
Marise and Severance the better. She herself had no time to weave spells
for him. Miss Marks must do that, and take him away with her when she
went. Without appearing to pause after Marise's announcement, Mary Sorel
smiled at Miss Marks. "Talk to Major Garth, my dear," she patronised,
"while I explain to my daughter why we tore back in such a rush."
Zelie Marks took the lady at her word, and drew her "friend" apart. By
the remotest window the two halted, standing confidentially close, the
girl looking up at the man, the man looking down at the girl. As the
conversation was now only of Valinski's dress designs, not Severance's
plans, Marise had a sub-eyelash glance or so to spare for the couple.
Well, certainly Samson was a creditable actor, or else....
"They were all so lovely I dared not choose," Mums was expatiating. "I
said to Miss Marks, 'Suppose we run back in the taxi and let my daughter
select? Or, she may want to order more than one of the gowns.' So I
slipped the designs back into the portfolio Mr. Valinski had taken them
from, and asked permission to borrow the lot. Lord Severance must tell
us which he prefers. He's such a good judge! And Miss Marks can carry
back the portfolio, with a note from me to Valinski, when she goes."
The three heads--Tony's glossy black, Marise Sorel's glittering gold,
her mother's a rich, expensive brown--bent together above a trio of
water-colour sketches. Under cover of selection Severance whispered: "I
have some bad news. Marise knows it. But I've got to have a talk with
you both before I leave this room. I can't bear suspense. For heaven's
sake get rid of people as early as you can."
"Must talk to them both.... Couldn't bear suspense!" The woman agreed
with the girl in thinking there was but one interpretation for this!
"I'll do my best," murmured Mrs. Sorel, and resolved to begin the good
work by bustling Miss Marks and Major Garth off the moment the tea-gown
business was finished. In the midst, however, Mrs. Dunstan Belloc
breezed in with her pretty sister and Belloc's millionaire backer. Mary
Sorel moved to meet them with the manner she had copied from Tony's
great-aunt, the Duchess of Crownderby. So doing, she slipped Valinski's
portfolio into her daughter's hands with an unduchess-like, "Hurry up
and choose, and have done with it!"
Somehow, Marise had not the proper new-dress thrill this afternoon. She
languidly decided on a classic design which Severance liked, and
Valinski had named "Galatea."
"Put the others back in the portfolio, please, Tony," she said. "I must
go and help Mums"--but the microbe of accidents was running amok in the
Sorels' salon. Tony dropped the book, and the Pole's designs fluttered
about the room. Everybody squealed and began picking up papers. One had
fallen on the remains of the Sevres box, as if to hide the wreckage.
Garth was nearest the scene of his own disaster. He stooped. Marise
seized the chance for a word with him. She stooped also. Each grasped
the sketch, which came face uppermost; and under their eyes was the
design for the blue and silver gown sent by the Unknown.
Zoyo Valinski had made that dress, then, and sacrificed an advertisement
to keep Garth's secret! Zoyo Valinski lived in the house with Miss
Marks, and was recommended by her. H'm! H'm!
These thoughts jostled each other in the brain of Marise, and brought in
their train another. Naturally Garth had not been shocked at her fib. He
didn't know it was a fib! The surprise was only that Miss Sorel had hit
on the truth and used it so glibly.
"That Marks girl helped him choose the things," she told herself. And
she was as much annoyed as puzzled. She wished to fling at Garth: "You
sent her to our hotel manager to ask for my work. Why, she's simply
spying on me, for you!"
But she said nothing of the sort. Indeed, she had no time. Seeing Marise
and the Bounder together, Mary Sorel flew to part them. "Miss Marks
wants me to say she'll be ready to go in a few minutes," the anxious
lady encouraged Garth. "She's been captured by Mrs. Belloc. It seems she
did secretarial work for her once. Come, and I'll introduce you. I've
just told Mrs. Belloc that you are _the_ V.C."
It was half an hour before the man's martyrdom was ended. The worst had
been suffered at the beginning, when he was the third in a reluctant
trio. But it was all bad enough. He was as well suited to this jewel-box
of a salon as a bull is to a china shop, and he had done nearly as much
damage. He didn't know what to say to Mrs. Belloc or her smart,
chattering friends, and they didn't know what to say to him. Even a
Victoria Cross couldn't excuse such taste in clothes as his! The big
fellow's necktie was a scream; his gloves (no other man kept on gloves!)
a yell; and his boots--literally--a squeak. That was the description of
him which Mrs. Belloc planned for the entertainment of her husband, and
Garth saw it developing behind her eyes.
"Give me the trenches!" he thought, when at last Miss Marks wriggled
free of the actor-manager's wife. He still hated Marise as much as he
loved her. Yet when he said "Good-bye" he did not mean it for farewell.
He determined ferociously that he would see her again. "Next time," he
resolved, "I won't knock over any tables. I'll turn them. I'll turn the
tables my way perhaps, and against that damned pig of an earl!"