DANCE HALL GLITTER
"218 Murray Hill," Lola repeated impatiently into the telephone. "I
have been waiting quite five minutes. Hello! Hello! Madam Zelya,
please! This is Miss Barnhelm! Hello! Is that you, Madam? Yes, yes, I
have just received your note, and I do not think you are quite fair in
the matter. Yes, I know that I did promise, but it is quite
impossible. What! My father has nothing to do with this matter,
absolutely nothing. If you will be patient for two or three days
longer the account will be settled. What is that?... Oh! I am sorry
that you choose to take that tone. If you call upon my father you will
get nothing, either from my father or from me. I will promise to send
a check in a day or two; until then please do not annoy me."
With this Lola hung up the receiver, leaving a very angry Hungarian
dress-maker to get what satisfaction she might from shrill threats and
dire prophecies, and turned away from the telephone in time to meet
her father and Dr. Crossett as they entered from the outside hall.
"Who has been annoying you, little girl?" inquired her father, who had
heard the end of the conversation.
"Only that stupid hall-boy," answered Lola calmly. "He is always
making mistakes. What a time you two have been, to be sure. I thought
that you had deserted me for good."
"No chance of that, my dear," said Dr. Crossett. "In fact it was to be
sure of having a long talk with you that I hurried your father back."
"I am afraid we must postpone that talk for a little while, Doctor. I
am going to my room for a few moments. You will excuse me, won't you?"
She smiled sweetly at him and held out her hand, and he bowed over it
gallantly as he answered:
"Come back soon. I shall be waiting."
"Oh, I promise you that you shall see quite enough of me, Doctor," she
replied; "before you are here a day you will be glad to get me out of
your sight. I know I am going to bore you dreadfully, but I have so
many things I want to talk over with you, and so many questions I want
to ask you, about things that happened long ago before I was here to
be a trouble to you."
She went gayly down the long hall, stopping at her door to wave her
hand at him as he stood watching her.
"No sign there of nervous troubles," he said as he joined her father
in the sitting room. "Her eyes are bright and clear, her voice is
steady. She looks happy and well. You, Martin, are the greatest
inventor in the world's history."
"Hardly that," said the Doctor with a laugh.
"Ah, yes," insisted the Frenchman. "Men have made fortunes, fame,
history by the children of their brain, but what man before, by the
power of his mind, has brought back from the dead his own daughter?"
"A curious study," said Dr. Barnhelm thoughtfully as he seated himself
in a deep chair by the table and motioned to his friend to sit
opposite to him; "remarkably curious, these things we call life, and
death, and body, and soul. It is a queer fact, Paul, that no matter
how we strive our knowledge stops short at the gates of death. What is
beyond?"
"For many years," answered the Doctor, as he lighted a cigarette and
sank back in his chair with a sigh of comfort, "that troubled me, but
as I grow older I find myself thinking less of death and clinging fast
to life. Death! Bah! It does not frighten me. It may be a vast
nothingness, or it may be a step to a higher existence. What does it
matter? Our work is here; we have our friends to love, our duty to be
done; that is life, and I like it."
"The body dies," went on Dr. Barnhelm, "but the soul, can that ever
die? I doubt it! Every man of us who has a soul must doubt it."
"Every man of us," said Paul. "Ah! At least we, all of us, have that
in common, I suppose."
"All of us? Do you think so?"
"Naturally, to a greater or less degree. Your soul, my friend, may be
big and fine; mine may be mean and small, but if in the human body
there is such a thing, surely we all of us must have it."
"Do you know the theory of the 'Sixth Day Men,' Paul?"
"'The Sixth Day Men,'" repeated Paul, "no. It has a most effective
title, this theory of yours; tell me of it."
"In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth; for six days
he labored, and on the seventh day he rested."
"I heard rumors to that effect," commented Dr. Crossett lightly.
"Days in that time," continued Dr. Barnhelm, not noticing his friend's
interruption, "were not of twenty-four hours; they were Alous, cycles
of time. During those periods animal life came, evolution went on, bit
by bit, with thousands of years between each step of its progress. A
man-thing came into the world."
"Before the seventh day," enquired Paul, with interest, for he dearly
loved any discussion of this sort, and he knew that any theory
considered worthy of attention by his old friend must at least hold
points of interest.
"Yes," said Dr. Barnhelm. "Before the seventh day."
"Ah! This is interesting and new to me. Then our old friend Adam was
not the first man?"
"Listen, Paul! After the seventh day 'God breathed the breath of life
into Adam's nostrils.' He, therefore, was the first 'man,' for he had
a God-given soul. In him was more of the divine than we can claim, for
we are told that he could 'walk with God.' That was before the fall.
Eve's fall, in the Garden of Eden, by this theory, was her guilty love
for one of these soulless, earth-born 'men things,' and of them Cain
was born. Born without a soul, and, as the Bible tells us, 'Cain went
away and found himself a wife.' Where? Where else than from among
these Sixth Day people, soulless, all of them, and their descendants
could have brought into the world small trace of the divine. Meanwhile
sons of Adam were beginning to people the earth, and later these two
races mingled. There began a struggle between good and evil in the
human heart, a struggle that has never ended. Sometimes will be born a
human being in whom occurs a curious 'throw back' of generations to
these soulless Sixth Day ancestors. Sometimes the good in us conquers
the evil, and sometimes the evil conquers, kills the good, and the
God-given soul leaves us and there is nothing left but an animal, a
'man thing,' a straight descendant of one of those Sixth Day horrors,
whose blood has contaminated us since the fall of Eve."
"Ah!" Dr. Crossett was bending forward now eagerly. "Your theory has
taken me by surprise; it is new to me."
"It is not new to the world, or at least not altogether new; some of
the old German thinkers wrote of it. Darwin considered it. Each of us
is conscious at times of sudden revolts against virtue, sudden
reasonless impulses for evil. It is the struggle of the divided soul."
"But, Martin, if your theory is sound, one or the other of these
forces must conquer in the end, the good or the evil."
"Evil never conquers in the end, Paul. Or our world would long ago
have become chaos. When, in future generations, the last trace of our
Sixth Day ancestors has been driven out, this theory holds that the
world will once again be as God meant it to be, and we shall have the
real brotherhood of Man." He paused.
"What have you to say? What do you think?"
"I think," replied Dr. Crossett, "that I should like a very large
drink of your whiskey."
"You are right, Paul," returned Dr. Barnhelm, rising. "A cigar, a
drink, and a game of chess, they are a better prescription for a tired
man than a new philosophy."
He rang the bell and asked Maria for whiskey and a syphon, and as she
went for it he took from a little wooden box a shabby, worn old set of
chessmen.
"A talk over old times will freshen my mind for my ordeal to-morrow,
for it is to be an ordeal, Paul. My theory of restoring the muscular
activity to the heart after death has occurred is admitted to be
practical, in fact successful. Laboratory experiments upon animals are
within the experience of most of the big men whom I am to face
to-morrow. They are ready to admit my theory, but they must be
convinced against their will of my ability to always restore life
under all conditions where death has resulted simply from the failure
of the heart to perform its functions and where there has been no
organic decay. They laugh at my claim that I can succeed in performing
this experiment after as great a time as five hours from the moment of
the last heart beat, and it seems to be the general opinion that five
minutes would be a more conservative and a more exact statement."
"It is a very pleasant thing," commented Paul. "This laughter of
fools. In all ages it has been granted to some lucky few, this great
distinction, to be laughed at and to be right. You are in good
company, Martin. The same sort of persons once laughed at Watts, at
Columbus, at Darwin, at Dr. Bell, and at Marconi. Noah was, I believe,
the first object of popular ridicule, but that did not affect the
value of the Ark when the flood came. Come, we will forget all of this
until the time comes, and I will beat you at a game of chess. Unless
my memory plays me tricks, I won the last game, all of twenty years
ago, and I can do it again."
Maria entered the room with a tray, on which were a bottle of whiskey,
carbonic water and glasses, and put it down on the table as Dr.
Barnhelm took out a thick pocketbook from his inside pocket and said,
"First, I will put this money away until to-morrow."
He crossed the room to a small safe that was set into the wall and
hidden from sight by a picture. "Can you open this thing, Maria?"
"I think so, sir," replied Maria, going to the safe at once and
turning the combination. "Miss Lola taught me how, if I can remember."
After a moment's effort the small door of the safe opened, and she
said, with evident relief, "There!"
"Good!" exclaimed the Doctor, as he placed the pocketbook in the safe
and closed and locked it.
"Thank you, Maria, and, Maria, ask Miss Lola to come to us when she is
ready."
"Yes, Doctor," and Maria, after a glance to make sure that all was
right with her tray, left them alone together.
"To the old days, Paul," said the Doctor, after filling his own glass
and his friend's.
"No," replied Paul, "to now, to to-morrow. May the future be as happy
as that old past; and may your daughter, if she lives, be as good a
woman as her mother; and if she dies, may she leave as sweet a memory
behind her."
They drank in silence, and as they put their glasses down Lola joined
them. She had changed to what, to the masculine eye, looked like a
very elaborate street costume, and she stood there in the doorway
buttoning her gloves as she called out gayly:
"You two look comfortable!"
"Ah, yes," replied Dr. Crossett. "An old friend, a good drink, a
pretty woman, what more could be asked? Ah, my dear." He looked at her
admiringly. "How chic, how fine we look."
"A new dress, Lola?" inquired her father, looking up from his chessmen
absently.
"Oh, dear, no," said Lola, carelessly. "Just an old rag."
"A dainty rag," commented Dr. Crossett.
"I am sure I never saw it before," continued Dr. Barnhelm, looking at
her a little anxiously.
"It's just a little thing I had made up. It cost scarcely anything. I
am glad if it looks even passable," remarked Lola.
"Passable!" responded Dr. Crossett. "Twenty years ago it would never
have passed me, not with its present wearer. Do you know, Lola, what
would be the greatest joy that could come to me? To take you to Paris,
to show you to my friends, to see you there in the city that of all
the world's cities best knows how to value a beautiful woman. There is
but one word for you to-day, Lola. You are radiant."
He spoke no more than the truth. She had always been a beautiful girl,
but since her recovery she had gained the things she had always
needed, color, animation, and as she stood there now, laughing at him,
but thrilling at his praise, she made a picture that few men could
have looked at unmoved. The rich costume set her off to great
advantage and her contemptuous description of it would not have
deceived any woman's eye for a moment.
"And if you are not careful you will make me frightfully conceited.
Now you two be real good, and don't drink too much of that whiskey
before I come back."
"Are you going out?" asked her father as he made the opening move of
the game.
"Yes, dear, I have a little appointment at three. It really doesn't
matter at all, but I thought that you two would rather be alone."
She bent over her father's chair, and kissed him tenderly, then turned
daringly to Dr. Crossett, her hand on his shoulder and, her face very
near to his, she said teasingly, "If you were just the very least
little bit older I should kiss you, too."
"I am," replied the Doctor promptly, "considerably older than I look."
"You are not to be trusted," she responded gayly. "I am very sure of
that! Good-bye, dears. I am going now."
As she turned away, a little hurriedly, for she saw by the clock on
the mantel that it was ten minutes of three, John Dorris entered the
room; at the sight of him standing there between her and the door for
just a fraction of a second a queer, fierce look flashed across her
face, such a look as one might see in an angry panther's eyes, but
before John could see it, it was gone, and she was smiling at him
sweetly.
"How early you are, John," she exclaimed. "It is awfully sweet of you,
but I'm afraid it will be very dull unless you are fond of chess."
"You are going out?" questioned John in what seemed to Dr. Crossett as
he rose to shake hands with him rather a curt tone.
"Yes," replied Lola, "I am afraid I must."
"My dear boy, I am very glad to see you," said Dr. Crossett to John,
of whom he had really grown very fond in those few days following
Lola's accident.
"Thank you, Doctor," replied John heartily, as he returned the
pressure of the Doctor's hand. "It is very kind of you to say so," and
he turned away, perhaps a little hastily, and followed Lola up to the
door. "Shall I go with you, Lola?"
"Oh, dear, no," replied Lola. "It would bore you dreadfully, and
besides I really couldn't have you, even if you care to come. I am in
a great hurry. I promised to be there at three. Sit down and watch the
game." She took him by the arm and led him back to the table. "Father
will need your help, I am afraid. See! He is in trouble already.
Here----" She stepped to a small table and returned with a box of
cigars. "Why don't you men smoke? Really, you must." She held the box
to each of them in turn, smiling so compellingly that even John was
forced to take one, but in spite of her smile he thought he saw in her
face a trace of anxious impatience, and to him at least her beautiful
new dress was not wholly a pleasure. Little as he knew of the real
cost of such a costume, he knew that it was far more expensive than
Dr. Barnhelm's purse could afford, and in some vague manner it
associated itself in his mind with Mrs. Harlan and her friends.
"Would you mind telling me where you are going, Lola?" he enquired
anxiously.
"Oh, dear, no; why should I?" she answered as she struck a match and
held it, first to her father's, then to Dr. Crossett's cigar. "I am
going to see poor little Nellie Mooney. She isn't at all well, you
know, father, and I really haven't the heart to disappoint her.
There!" She placed the decanter and glasses on the table near to him.
"Do see that they are comfortable, John. You may have just as fine a
time as you want to, you selfish male things," she went on as she
crossed quickly to the door. "But don't quite forget me while I am
gone."
She left the room laughing, and as the outside door closed behind her
the little clock on the mantel struck three.
The chess game went on deliberately, quietly, and the young man sat
there watching it, but at the same time letting his thoughts wander,
and suddenly he found himself following in his mind Lola's progress.
He pictured her walking down the Drive with the brisk, swinging stride
she had assumed of late; then in his mind he saw her cross
Seventy-second Street and take a crowded car; in all the changes of
her long, complicated trip to the upper East Side he idly kept pace
with her, glancing from time to time at the clock, until he seemed to
see her running lightly up the dizzy stairs of a shabby tenement house
on a side street and entering a tidy little room on the top floor. He
saw the room plainly in his mind, for he had often been there with
Lola before they had moved to this new apartment. No, now that he came
to think of it, not since Lola's recovery, but before then they had
gone there together almost every day. He liked to think of her there;
on her errand of mercy she would stop and buy flowers, he thought.
Nellie loved flowers. How her poor, tired little face used to brighten
when she would look up from the sofa where she lay all day long and
saw Lola coming into the room.
He closed his eyes, and leaning back in his chair saw the picture in
his mind. The poor little room, the white-faced, suffering child,
smiling happily now, with the flowers pressed against her face, and
Lola--Lola bending over her, fresh, beautiful, gentle in her face the
look he had seen there once, that wonderful radiance that is seen
sometimes in a young girl's face, the foreshadowing of motherhood.
* * * * *
The blare of music, too near and too loud. The confused babble of
rattling dishes, discordant laughter, high-pitched voices, and the
clinking of glasses that were filled again and again, but emptied as
fast as they were replenished. A great room, the air heavy with many
odors and foul with tobacco smoke.
Here at one table an old man, with jewels on his fat fingers, with him
a young girl, almost a child, a girl in a shabby dress, with eyes
bright with wonder and with fear.
Here and there, in this brilliant throng, could be picked out
bold-eyed men, who laughed across the tables at nervous, frightened
women, women who laughed back with terror in their hearts. Comedy,
farce, tragedy, aching hearts, and aching heads. Empty lives and empty
pocketbooks. Bluff and sham. Age and youth. Love and hate. Fear and
lust. One could feel them all, but one could only hear the ceaseless,
empty laughter rising above the music, above the noise.
If to laugh is to be happy, here was happiness.