THE AFFAIR AT MAXIM'S
It was all new to Marjory. In the year and a half she had lived in
Paris with her aunt she had dined mostly in her room. Such cafés as
this she had seen only occasionally from a cab on her way to the opera.
As she stood at the entrance to the big room, which sparkled like a
diamond beneath a light, she was as dazed as a debutante entering her
first ballroom. The head waiter, after one glance at Monte, was bent
upon securing the best available table. Here was an American prince,
if ever he had seen one.
Had monsieur any choice?
Decidedly. He desired a quiet table in a corner, not too near the
music.
Such a table was immediately secured, and as Covington crossed the room
with Marjory by his side he was conscious of being more observed than
ever he had been when entering the Riche alone. His bandaged arm lent
him a touch of distinction, to be sure; but this served only to turn
eyes back again to Marjory, as if seeking in her the cause for it. She
moved like a princess, with her head well up and her dark eyes
brilliant.
"All eyes are upon you," he smiled, when he had given his order.
"If they are it's very absurd," she returned.
Also, if they were, it did not matter. That was the fact she most
appreciated. Ever since she had been old enough to observe that men
had eyes, it had been her duty to avoid those eyes. That had been
especially true in Paris, and still more especially true in the few
weeks she had been there alone.
Now, with Monte opposite her, she was at liberty to meet men's eyes and
study them with interest. There was no danger. It was they who turned
away from her--after a glance at Monte. It amused her to watch them
turn away; it gave her a new sense of power. But of one thing she was
certain: there was not a man in the lot with whom she would have felt
comfortable to be here as she felt comfortable with Monte.
Monte was having a very pleasant time of it. The thing that surprised
him was the way Marjory quickened his zest in old things that had
become stale. Here, for instance, she took him back to the days when
he had responded with a piquant tingle to the lights and the music and
the gay Parisian chatter, to the quick glance of smiling eyes where
adventure lurked. He had been content to observe without accepting the
challenges, principally because he lived mostly in the sunshine.
To-night, in a clean, decent way, he felt again the old tingle. But
this time it came from a different source. When Marjory raised her
eyes to his, the lights blazed as brilliantly as if a hundred new ones
had been lighted; the music mixed with his blood until his thoughts
danced.
With the coffee he lighted a cigarette and leaned back contentedly
until it was time to go.
As they went out of the room, he was aware that once again all eyes
were turned toward her, so that he threw back his shoulders a little
farther than usual and looked about with some scorn at those who had
with them only ordinary women.
The comedy at the Gymnase was sufficiently amusing to hold her
attention, and that was the best she could ask for; but Monte watched
it indifferently, resenting the fact that it did hold her attention.
Besides, there were too many people all about her here. For two hours
and a half it was as if she had gone back into the crowd. He was glad
when the final curtain rang down and he was able to take her arm and
guide her out.
"Maxim's next?" he inquired.
"Do you want to go?" she asked.
"It's for you to decide," he answered.
She was dead tired by now, but she did not dare to stop.
"All right," she said; "we'll go."
It was a harlequin crowd at Maxim's--a noisier, tenser, more hectic
crowd than at the Riche. The room was gray with smoke, and everywhere
she looked were gold-tipped wine bottles. Though it was still early,
there was much hysterical laughter and much tossing about of long
streamers of colored paper and confetti. As they entered she
instinctively shrank away from it. Had the waiter delayed another
second before leading them to a table, she would have gone out.
Monte ordered the wine he was expected to order, but Marjory scarcely
touched it to her lips, while he was content to watch it bubble in his
glass. He did not like to have her here, and yet it was almost worth
the visit to watch her eyes grow big, to watch her sensitive mouth
express the disgust she felt for the mad crowd, to have her
unconsciously hitch her chair nearer his.
"The worst of it is," he explained to her, "it's the outsiders who are
doing all this--Americans, most of them."
Suddenly, from behind them, a clear tenor voice made itself heard
through the din. The first notes were indistinct; but in a few seconds
the singer had the room to himself. Turning quickly, Marjory saw the
slender figure of Hamilton, swaying slightly, standing by a table, his
eyes leveled upon hers. He was singing "The Rosary"--singing it as
only he, when half mad, could sing it.
She clutched Monte's hand as he half rose from his seat.
"Please," she whispered, "it's best to sit still."
Stronger and stronger the plaintive melody fell from his lips, until
finally the orchestra itself joined. Women strained forward, and
half-dazed men sat back and listened with bated breath. Even Monte
forgot for a moment the boldness that inspired Hamilton, and became
conscious only of Marjory's warm fingers within his. So, had the
singer been any one else, he would have been content to sit to the end.
But he knew the danger there. His only alternative, however, was to
rise and press through the enraptured crowd, which certainly would have
resented the interruption. It seemed better to wait, and go out during
the noisy applause that was sure to follow.
At the second verse Hamilton, still singing, came nearer. A path
opened before him, as before an inspired prophet. It was only Monte
who moved his chair slightly and made ready. Still there was nothing
he could do until the man committed some overt act. When Hamilton
concluded his song, he was less than two feet away. By then Monte was
on his feet. As the applause swept from every corner of the room,
Hamilton seized from a near-by table a glass of wine, and, raising it,
shouted a toast:--
"To the bride."
The crowd followed his eyes to the shrinking girl behind Monte. In
good humor they rose, to a man, and joined in, draining their glasses.
It was Monte's opportunity. Taking Marjory's arm, he started for the
door.
But Hamilton was madder than he had ever been. He ran forward,
laughing hysterically.
"Kiss the bride," he called.
This he actually attempted. Monte had only his left arm, and it was
not his strongest; but back of it he felt a new power. He took
Hamilton beneath the chin, and with a lurch the man fell sprawling over
a table among the glasses. In the screaming confusion that followed,
Monte fought his way to the door, using his shoulders and a straight
arm to clear a path. In another second he had lifted Marjory into a
cab.
Leaning forward, she clutched his arm as the cab jumped ahead.
"I'm sorry I had to make a scene," he apologized. "I should n't have
hit him, but--I saw red for a second."
She would never forget that picture of Monte standing by her side, his
head erect, his arm drawn back for the second blow which had proved
unnecessary. All the other faces surrounding her had faded into a
smoky background. She had been conscious of him alone, and of his
great strength. She had felt that moment as if his strength had
literally been hers also. She could have struck out, had it been
necessary.
"You did n't hurt your shoulder, did you?" she asked anxiously.
He did not know--it did not much matter. Had Hamilton actually
succeeded in reaching her lips, he would have torn his wounded arm from
the bandages and struck with that too. He had never realized until
then what sacred things her lips were. He had known them only as
beautiful. They were beautiful now as he looked down at them.
Slightly parted, they held his eyes with a strange, new fascination.
They were alive, those lips. They were warm and pulsating. He found
himself breathing faster because of them. He seemed, against his will,
to be bending toward them. Then, with a wrench, he tore himself free
from the spell, not daring to look at her again.
Leaving her to Marie at the door of her room, Monte went into his own
apartment. He threw open a window, and stood there in the dark with
the cool night breeze blowing in upon him. After Maxim's, the more
clean air the better; after what had followed in the cab, the more cool
air the better.
He was still confused by it; still frightened by it. For a moment he
had felt himself caught in the clutch of some power over which he had
no control. That was the startling truth that stood out most
prominently. He had been like one intoxicated--he who never before in
his life had lost a grip upon himself. That fact struck at the very
heart of his whole philosophy of life. Always normal--that had been
his boast; never losing his head over this thing or that. It was the
only way a man could keep from worrying. It was the only way a man
could keep sane. The moment you wanted anything like the devil, then
the devil was to pay. This evening he had proved that.
He went back to the affair at Maxim's. He should have known better
than to take her there, anyway. She did not belong in such a place.
She did not belong anywhere he had taken her to-day. To-morrow--but
all this was beside the point.
The question that he would most like to answer at this moment was
whether this last wild episode of Hamilton's was due to absinthe or to
that same weird passion which a few weeks before had led the man to
shoot. It had been beastly of Hamilton to try to reach her lips.
That, doubtless, was the absinthe. It robbed him of his senses. But
the look in the man's eyes when he sang, the awful hunger that burned
in them when he gave his mad toast--those things seemed to spring from
a different source. The man, in a room full of strangers, had seen
only her, had sung only to her. Monte doubted if the crazed fellow saw
even him. He saw no one but this one woman. That was madness--but it
did not come of absinthe. The absinthe may have caused the final utter
breakdown of Hamilton's self-control here and at Madame Courcy's--but
that the desire could be there without it Monte had twice proved to
himself that evening.
Once was when he had struck Hamilton. He alone knew that when he hit
that time it was with the lust to kill--even as Hamilton had shot to
kill. The feeling lasted only the fraction of a second--merely while
his fist was plunging toward Hamilton's chin. But, however brief, it
had sprung from within him--a blood-red, frenzied desire to beat down
the other man. At the moment he was not so much conscious of trying to
protect her as to rid himself of Hamilton.
The second mad moment had come in the cab, when he had looked down at
her lips. As the passion to kill left him, another equally strong
passion had taken its place. He had hungered for her lips--the very
lips Hamilton, a moment before, had attempted to violate. He who all
his life had looked as indifferently upon living lips as upon
sculptured lips had suddenly found himself in the clutch of a mighty
desire. For a second he had swayed under the temptation. He had been
ready to risk everything, because for a heart-beat or two nothing else
seemed to matter. In his madness, he had even dared think that
delicate, sensitive mouth trembled a like desire.
Even here in the dark, alone, something of the same desire returned.
He began to pace the room.
How she would have hated him had he yielded to that impulse! He
shuddered as he pictured the look of horror that would have leaped into
her dark eyes. Then she would have shrunk away frightened, and her
eyes would have grown cold--those eyes that had only so lately warmed
at all. Her face would have turned to marble--the face that only so
lately had relaxed.
She trusted him--trusted him to the extent of being willing to marry
him to save herself from the very danger with which he had threatened
her. Except that at the last moment he had resisted, he was no better
than Hamilton.
In her despair she had cried, "Why won't they let me alone?" And he
had urged her to come with him, so that she might be let alone. He was
to be merely her _camarade de voyage_--her big brother. Then, in less
than twelve hours, he had become like the others. He felt unfit to
remain in the next room to her--unfit to greet her in the morning. In
an agony of remorse, he clenched his fists.
He drew himself up shortly. A new question leaped to his brain. Was
this, then, love? The thought brought both solace and fresh terror.
It gave him at least some justification for his moment of temptation;
but it also brought vividly before him countless new dangers. If this
were love, then he must face day after day of this sort of thing. Then
he would be at the mercy of a passion that must inevitably lead him
either to Hamilton's plight or to Chic Warren's equally unenviable
position. Each man, in his own way, paid the cost: Hamilton, mad at
Maxim's; Chic pacing the floor, with beaded brow, at night. With these
two examples before him, surely he should have learned his lesson.
Against them he could place his own normal life--ten years of it
without a single hour such as these hours through which he was now
living.
That was because he had kept steady. Ambition, love, drunkenness,
gluttony--these were all excesses. His own father had desired mightily
to be governor of a State, and it had killed him; his grandfather had
died amassing the Covington fortune; he had friends who had died of
love, and others who had overdrunk and overeaten. The secret of
happiness was not to want anything you did not have. If you went
beyond that, you paid the cost in new sacrifices, leading again to
sacrifices growing out of those.
Monte lighted a cigarette and inhaled a deep puff. The thing for him
to do was fairly clear: to pack his bag and leave while he still
retained the use of his reasoning faculties. He had been swept off his
feet for an instant, that was all. Let him go on with his schedule for
a month, and he would recover his balance.
The suggestion was considerably simplified by the fact that it was not
necessary to consider Marjory in any way. He would be in no sense
deserting her, because she was in no way dependent upon him. She had
ample funds of her own, and Marie for company. He had not married her
because of any need she had for him along those lines. The protection
of his name she would still have. As Mrs. Covington she could travel
as safely without him as with him. Even Hamilton was eliminated. He
had received his lesson. Anyway, she would probably leave Paris at
once for Étois, and so be out of reach of Hamilton.
Monte wondered if she would miss him. Perhaps, for a day or so; but,
after all, she would have without him the same wider freedom she
craved. She would have all the advantages of a widow without the
necessity of admitting that her husband was dead. He would always be
in the background--an invisible guard. It was odd that neither she nor
he had considered that as an attractive possibility. It was decidedly
more practical than the present arrangement.
As for himself, he was ready to admit frankly that after to-day golf on
an English course would for a time be a bore. From the first sight of
her this morning until now, he had not had a dull moment. She had
taken him back to the days when his emotions had been quick to respond
to each day as a new adventure in life.
It was last winter in Davos that he had first begun to note the keen
edge of pleasure becoming the least bit dulled. He had followed the
routine of his amusements almost mechanically. He had been conscious
of a younger element there who seemed to crowd in just ahead of him.
Some of them were young ladies he remembered having seen with
pig-tails. They smiled saucily at him--with a confidence that
suggested he was no longer to be greatly feared. He could remember
when they blushed shyly if he as much as glanced in their direction.
His schedule had become a little too much of a schedule. It suggested
the annual tour of the middle-aged gentlemen who follow the spas and
drink of the waters.
He felt all those things now even more keenly than he had at the time.
Looking back at them, he gained a new perspective that emphasized each
disagreeable detail. But he had only to think of Marjory as there with
him and--presto, they vanished. Had she been with him at Davos--better
still, were she able to go to Davos with him next winter--he knew with
what joy she would sit in front of him on the bob-sled and take the
breathless dip of the Long Run. He knew how she would meet him in the
morning with her cheeks stung into a deep red by the clean cold of the
mountain air. She would climb the heights with him, laughing. She
would skate with him and ski with him, and there would be no one
younger than they.
Monte again began to pace his room. She must go to Davos with him next
winter. He must take her around the whole schedule with him. She must
go to England and golf with him, and from there to his camp. She would
love it there. He could picture her in the woods, on the lake, and
before the camp-fire, beneath the stars.
From there they would go on to Cambridge for the football season. She
would like that. As a girl she had been cheated of all the big games,
and he would make up for it. So they would go on to New York for the
holidays. He had had rather a stupid time of it last year. He had
gone down to Chic's for Christmas, but had been oppressed by an
uncomfortable feeling that he did not belong there. Mrs. Chic had been
busy with so many presents for others that he had felt like old
Scrooge. He had made his usual gifts to relatives, but only as a
matter of habit. With Marjory with him, he would be glad to go
shopping as Chic and Mrs. Chic did. He might even go on to
Philadelphia with her and look up some of the relatives he had lately
been avoiding.
Where in thunder had his thoughts taken him again? He put his head in
his hands. He had carried her around his whole schedule with him just
as if this were some honest-to-God marriage. He had done this while
she lay in the next room peacefully sleeping in perfect trust.
She must never know this danger, nor be further subjected to it. There
was only one safe way--to take the early train for Calais without even
seeing her again.
Monte sat down at the writing-desk and seized a pen.
_Dear Marjory_ [he began]: Something has come up unexpectedly that
makes it necessary for me to take an early train for England. I can't
tell how long I shall be gone, but that of course is not important. I
hope you will go on to Étois, as we had planned; or, at any rate, leave
Paris. Somehow, I feel that you belong out under the blue sky and not
in town.
He paused a moment and read over that last sentence. Then he scratched
it out. Then he tore up the whole letter.
What he had to say should be not written. He must meet her in the
morning and tell her like a man.