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THE SALAMANDER
[Illustration: Dore]
THE
SALAMANDER
_By_
OWEN JOHNSON
_Author of_
THE VARMINT, STOVER AT YALE
THE SIXTY-FIRST SECOND, ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
EVERETT SHINN
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1914
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
TO MY WIFE
FOREWORD
Precarious the lot of the author who elects to show his public what it
does not know, but doubly exposed he who in the indiscreet exploration
of customs and manners publishes what the public knows but is unwilling
to confess! In the first place incredulity tempers censure, in the
second resentment is fanned by the necessity of self-recognition. For
the public is like the defendant in matrimony, amused and tolerant when
unconvinced of the justice of a complaint, but fiercely aroused when
defending its errors.
In the present novel I am quite aware that where criticism is most
risked is at the hands of those entrenched moralists who, while
admitting certain truths as fit subjects for conversation, aggressively
resent the same when such truths are published. Many such will believe
that in the following depiction of a curious and new type of modern
young women, product of changing social forces, profoundly significant
of present unrest and prophetic of stranger developments to come, the
author, in depicting simply what does exist, is holding a brief for what
should exist.
If the type of young girls here described were an ephemeral
manifestation or even a detached fragment of our society, there might be
a theoretical justification for this policy of censure by silence. But
the Salamanders are neither irrelevant nor the product of unrelated
forces. The rebellious ideas that sway them are the same ideas that are
profoundly at work in the new generation of women, and while for this
present work I have limited my field, be sure that the young girl of
to-day, from the age of eighteen to twenty-five, whether facing the
world alone or peering out at it from the safety of the family, whether
in the palaces of New York, the homesteads of New England, the manors of
the South or the throbbing cities and villages of the West, whatever her
station or her opportunity, has in her undisciplined and roving
imagination a little touch of the Salamander.
That there exists a type of young girl that heedlessly will affront
every appearance of evil and can yet remain innocent; that this
innocence, never relinquished, can yet be tumultuously curious and
determined on the exploration of the hitherto forbidden sides of life,
especially when such reconnoitering is rendered enticing by the presence
of danger--here are two apparent contradictions difficult of belief. Yet
in the case of the Salamander's brother, society finds no such
difficulty--it terms that masculine process, "seeing the world," a study
rather to be recommended for the sake of satisfied future tranquillity.
That the same can be true of the opposite sex, that a young girl without
physical temptation may be urged by a mental curiosity to see life
through whatever windows, that she may feel the same impetuous frenzy of
youth as her brother, the same impulse to sample each new excitement,
and that in this curiosity may be included the safe and the dangerous,
the obvious and the complex, the casual and the strange, that she may
arrogate to herself the right to examine everything, question
everything, peep into everything--tentatively to project herself into
every possibility and after a few years of this frenzy of excited
curiosity can suddenly be translated into a formal and discreet mode of
life--here is an exposition which may well appear incredible on the
printed page. I say on the printed page because few men are there who
will not recognize the justice of the type of Salamander here portrayed.
Only as their experience has been necessarily individual they do not
proceed to the recognition of a general type. They know them well as
accidents in the phantasmagoria of New York but they do not comprehend
them in the least.
The Salamander in the last analysis is a little atom possessed of a
brain, thrown against the great tragic luxury of New York, which has
impelled her to it as the flame the moth.
She comes roving from somewhere out of the immense reaches of the
nation, revolting against the commonplace of an inherited narrowness,
passionately adventurous, eager and unafraid, neither sure of what she
seeks nor conscious of what forces impel or check her. She remains a
Salamander only so long as she has not taken a decision to enter life by
one of the thousand avenues down which in her running course she has
caught an instant vista. Her name disappears under a new self-baptism.
She needs but a little money and so occasionally does a little work. She
brings no letters of introduction, but she comes resolved to know whom
she chooses. She meets them all, the men of New York, the mediocre, the
interesting, the powerful, the flesh hunters, the brutes and those who
seek only an amused mental relaxation. She attracts them by hook or
crook, in defiance of etiquette, compelling their attention in ways that
at the start hopelessly mystify them and lead to mistakes. Then she
calmly sets them to rights and forgives them. If she runs recklessly in
the paths of danger, it is because to her obsessed curiosity it is
imperative for her to try to comprehend what this danger can mean.
She has no salon to receive her guests--she turns her bedroom at noon
into a drawing-room, not inviting every one, but to those to whom she
extends the privilege fiercely regulating the proprieties. She may have
a regular occupation or an occasional one, neither must interfere with
her liberty of pleasure. She needs money--she acquires it indirectly, by
ways that bear no offense to her delightfully illogical but keen
sensibilities. With one man she will ride in his automobile, far into
the night--to another she will hardly accord the tips of her gloves. She
makes no mistakes. Her head is never dizzy. Her mind is in control and
she knows at every moment what she is doing. She will dare only so far
as she knows she is safe.
She runs the gamut of the city, its high lights and its still shadows.
She enters by right behind its varied scenes. She breakfasts on one egg
and a cup of coffee, takes her luncheon from a high-legged stool in a
cellar restaurant, reluctantly counting out the change, and the same
night, with supreme indolence, descends from a luxurious automobile,
before the flaring portals of the restaurant most in fashion, giving her
fingers to those who rank among the masters of the city.
This curiosity that leads her to flit from window to window has in it no
vice. It is fed only by the zest of life. Her passion is to know, to
leave no cranny unexplored, to see, not to experience, to flit
miraculously through the flames--never to be consumed!
That her standard of conduct is marvelous, that her ideas of what is
permitted and what is forbidden are mystifying, is true. So too is it
difficult to comprehend, in the society of men of the world, what is
fair and what is unfair, what is "done" and what is not "done." To
understand the Salamander, to appreciate her significance as a criticism
of our present social forms, one must first halt and consider what
changes are operating in our social system.
* * * * *
If one were privileged to have the great metropolis of New York reduced
to microcosm at his feet, to be studied as man may study the marvelous
organism of the anthill or the hive, two curious truths would become
evident. First that those whom the metropolis engenders seldom succeed
their fathers, that they move in circles as it were, endlessly revolving
about a fixed idea, apparently stupefied by the colossal shadows under
which they have been born; secondly that daily, hourly even, a stream of
energetic young men constantly arrives from the unknown provinces, to
reinvigorate the city, rescue it from stagnation, ascending abruptly to
its posts of command, assuming direction of its manifold
activities--ruling it.
Further, one would perceive that the history of the city is the result
of these two constantly opposed forces, one striving to conserve, the
other to acquire. The inheritors constantly seek to define the city's
forms, encase its society, limit its opportunities, transform its young
activities into inheritable institutions; while the young and ardent
adventurers who come with no other baggage than their portmanteaux of
audacity and sublime disdain, are constantly firing it with their
inflaming enthusiasm, purifying it with their new health, forcing the
doors of reluctant sets, storming its giant privileges, modernizing its
laws, vitalizing its arts, capturing its financial hierarchies, opposing
to the solidifying force of attempted systems their liberating
corrective of opportunity and individualism. Of the two forces, only the
conqueror from without is important.
This phenomenon of immigration is neither new nor peculiar to our
civilization. It is indeed the living principle of a metropolis which,
as it requires food, water, fire for its material existence, must also
hourly levy, Minotaur-like, its toll on foreign youth. Woman has had no
counterpart to this life-giving fermentation of young men. The toll of
the metropolis has been the toll of corruption, spreading corruption,
and this continuous flow of the two sexes through the gates of the city
has been like the warring passage through the arteries of red
life-defending corpuscles and disease-bearing germs.
Now suddenly to one who thus profoundly meditates this giant scheme, a
new phenomenon has appeared. All at once amid the long stretching lines
of young men that seek the city from the far horizon appear the figures
of young women, not by hundreds but by the thousands, following in the
steps of their brothers, wage-earners animated by the same desire for
independence, eager and determined for a larger view of life, urged
outward by the same imperative revolt against stagnation, driven by the
same unrest for the larger horizon. This culminative movement, begun in
the decline of the nineteenth century, may well be destined to mark the
twentieth century as the great era of social readjustment.
In the past the great block to woman's complete and equal communion with
man has been her economic dependence on him; while she has not been
necessary to man, man has been necessary to her. Hence her forced
acceptation of his standard of her position and her duties. In one
generation, by this portentous achievement of economic independence,
woman in a night, like Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, has suddenly
elevated herself to a position of aggressive equality. Those who see in
the feminine movement no further than a question of political expediency
perceive no more than a relatively unimportant manifestation. What has
happened is that the purely masculine conception of society has been
suddenly put to the challenge. Man's conception of religion, of marriage
and the family, of property rights versus sentimental rights, of
standards of conduct and political expediency, imperfect and groping as
they have been, will, in the future, progress according to a new
alliance between man and woman. And this world revolution has come, day
by day, month after month, in the spectacle of young women, bundles in
arms, light of purse, rebel in heart, moving in silent thousands toward
the great cities. In this new army of women who have now intrenched
themselves in the strongholds of economic independence, there are two
distinct but related divisions, the great mass who must work and the
relatively smaller class, socially more significant, who must live,
those, of whom the Salamanders are the impatient outstripping advance,
who are determined to liberate their lives and claim the same rights of
judgment as their brothers.
What has brought this great emigration to pass? Several causes, some
actively impelling, others merely passively liberating--the taking down
of weakened bars.
* * * * *
The causes which have actively impelled this liberating emigration are
more clearly perceived, the causes which have passively permitted this
removal of the bars are less obvious. We are a society of
passage--between two ports. Scarcely can we recall the thin shores we
have departed, nor can any one foretell what outlines, at the end of
the voyage, will rise out of the sea of experiment. In every social
revolution there are three distinct generations, the first of intrenched
traditions, the second of violent reaction and the third of
reconstruction. And if it seem a law of nature's tireless action and
reaction that fathers and sons should be ever set against one another,
ever misunderstanding one another, the true measure of human progress
lies in that degree of change which results between the first and the
third generations. Between this old generation of authority and this
present generation of logic has come a feminine revolution startling in
the shock of its abruptness. Yet a social revolution that obliterates in
an hour the landmarks of ages, frequently resembles a cataclysm of
nature--the gathering torrent only becomes possible with the last six
inches of earth. What has broken out in these last half a dozen years
has been accumulating without beginning--for ideas can have no
beginnings. They have existed in the unconscious human soul as the germ
of physical evolution has lain among the glaciers and the wilderness.
What then was the position of women under the old order? That generation
of authority was intrenched in the great social domination of the
church. What in effect did religion say to women? It said:
"Remember always that this life is of no moment. It is given you that
you may inherit eternity. Reckon not the present, aspire to the next.
Abnegation is glorious, suffering is to be prized, sacrifices patiently
made bring you by so much nearer to Heaven. Subordinate yourself, bear
everything, accept all burdens gladly. Live for others; forgive,
inspire. If this life seem to you narrow and motherhood staggering,
bleak, joyless, think not on the fatigue but on the awakening."
With the turning of men's minds to the dormant truths of science came a
great agnostic revolt that brought a scientific questioning of all facts
and a demand that everything should fall or stand by the test of the
reason. In this new enthusiasm for logic, which has overturned so many
rooted institutions with its militant individualism, the authority of
the home has been shattered, divorce has been multiplied in the protest
against the old unreasoning tyranny of marriage, and the Puritan
domination of the church has too often become a social institution for
the better ordering of the masses and an outward form of polite
respectability. In this complete breaking down of authority the voice of
the church that spoke to women has been lost.
Another troubling phase began simultaneously, the period of miraculous
material opportunity, the fungus growth of fortunes great and little.
The suddenly prosperous parents began to plan for their children those
opportunities which had been denied them, seeking to educate them beyond
what they had known--a process ever linked with tragedy and
disillusionment. What now results, with the thousands of young girls who
have learned of magazines and novels or who have gone out from the
confining narrowness of little homes to a broader education--not simply
in books but in the experience of life, of a certain independency, of
the opportunities beyond?
* * * * *
At about the age of eighteen the Salamander returns to town or village,
to the mediocrity of the home from which she has escaped, and at once
the great choice of life presents itself to her. What she has learned,
what she has absorbed from every newspaper has awakened her curiosity
and given her a hunger of the great life which is throbbing somewhere,
far away, in great cities, in a thousand fascinating forms.
To remain, to take up a mild drudgery in the home, means closing the
door on this curiosity. Marriage to such men as remain means at best the
renunciation of that romance which is stirring in her imagination. Why
should she have been educated, if but to return to a distasteful
existence? The parents by the very education which has thrust their
daughter so far above their simple needs have destroyed their old
authority. No other voice of authority commands her in credible tones to
renounce the follies of this life--to consult only the future.
In fact she is none too certain of what is beyond, but she is certain of
what she wants to-day. She spurns the doctrine that it is woman's
position to abnegate and to immolate herself. New ideas are stirring
within her, logical revolts--equality of burden with men, equality of
opportunity and of pleasure. She is sure of one life only and that one
she passionately desires. She wants to live that life to its fullest,
now, in the glory of her youth. She wants to breathe, not to stifle. She
wants adventure. She wants excitement and mystery. She wants to see, to
know, to experience....
And one fine day, inevitably, she packs her valise as her brothers may
have done before her, and despite commands, entreaties, tears, she
stands at last on the platform of a shivering creaking train, waving the
inevitable farewell to the old people, who stand bewildered, straining
their eyes after the fast-fading handkerchief, feebly fluttered by the
daughter whom they have educated for this. She will come back soon. She
will return in a few months--in a year, surely. She never returns.
Sometimes the home has been disrupted by divorce, by death or by
indifference; in which case her departure is the sooner. Sooner or later
if she is clever or attractive she reaches New York. New York is the
troubling light whose rays penetrate to her wherever she may start. At
last, one fine day, she crowds impatiently forward to the front of the
choked ferry-boat, beholds the play of a million lights starting against
the twilight, vast shapes crowding to the water's edge like mythological
monsters, towers flinging up new stars among the constellations--and the
battle has begun.
* * * * *
What will she become? In six months she has learned the anatomy of the
complex struggling city, flinging herself into a ceaseless whirl of
excitement. She usually finds a facile occupation which gives her the
defense and the little ready money she needs. She goes into journalism,
stenography or the office of a magazine. Sometimes she has already been
trained to nursing, which opens many avenues of acquaintance to her deft
planning. Sometimes she has a trick with pen or pencil and plays at art.
More often she touches the stage in one of a dozen ways. But all this is
beside the mark. Her real occupation is exploration--how do they act,
these men, clever or stupid, rich, poor, mediocre, dangerous or
provokingly easy to manage? What is the extent of the power that she can
exert over them?
Her education has been quickly formed. The great fraternity of the
Salamanders has taught her of their curious devious understanding. Her
acquaintance with women is necessarily limited, but she can meet what
men she wishes, men of every station, men drawn to her by the lure of
her laughter and tantalizing arts, men who simply wish to amuse
themselves, or somber hunters who have passed beyond the common stuff of
adventuresses and seek with a renewal of excitement this corruption of
innocence. She has no fear of these last, matching her wits against
their appetites, paying them back cruelly in snare and disillusion. She
lives in automobiles and taxi-cabs, dines in a new restaurant every
night--and with difficulty, each week, scrapes up the necessary dollars
to pay her board. She knows the insides of pawn-shops, has secret
treaties with tradesmen and by a hundred stratagems procures herself
presents which may be converted into cash. She is fascinated by
"dangerous" men. She adores perilous adventures and somehow or other,
miraculously, she never fails in saving her skirts from the contagion of
the flames.
The period in which she whirls in this frantic existence--the day of the
Salamander--is between eighteen and twenty-five. She does not make the
mistake of prolonging, beyond her youth and her charm, this period
fascinating though it be. By twenty-five, often sooner, she comes to
some decision. Frequently she marries, and marries well, for the
opportunities at her disposal are innumerable. Then what she becomes
must depend on the invisible hazards that sport with all marriages.
Sometimes she selects a career--few women, indeed, are there in the
professions who have not known their years among the Salamanders--but as
she is always ruled by her brain, she does not often deceive herself;
she sees clearly the road ahead and seldom ventures unless she is
convinced. Sometimes she prefers her single existence, resigning herself
to a steady occupation, slipping back into Salamanderland occasionally.
Sometimes--more rarely than it would seem--she takes the open step
beyond the social pale, conquered at length by the antagonists she has
so long eluded--but then she has betrayed the faith of a Salamander.
* * * * *
To a European, the Salamanders are incomprehensible. He meets them often
en voyage, often to the cost of his pride, and for his vanity's sake he
denies their innocence. In his civilization they could not exist Even
the New Yorker, who analyzes her surface manners, recounts her tricks
and evasions, her deceptive advances, is still ignorant of the great
currents beneath, and of how profound is their unrest.
For, capricious, inconsistent, harum-scarum, dabbling with fire--yet is
she not the free agent she so ardently believes? Back of all the
passionate revolt against the commonplace in life, back of all the
defiantly proclaimed scorn of conventions, there are the hushed echoes
of the retreating first generation, there are old memories, whispers of
childhood faith, hesitations and doubts that return and return, and
these quiet suspended sounds constantly turn her aside, make of her a
being constantly at war with herself, where will and instinct are ever
opposed without she perceives or comprehends the where-for.
* * * * *
We see clearly two generations, the old order of broken authority
passing sadly away, the new which is bravely seeking a logical standard
of conduct beyond that of blind obedience--if yet the time be arrived
when humanity be ready. The third--that coming generation in which woman
will count for so much, where for the first time she will construct and
order--where will it go? Backward a little or forward? Will those who
have been Salamanders to-day, turned mothers to-morrow, still teach what
they have proclaimed, that what is wrong for the woman is wrong for the
man and that if man may experience woman may explore?
THE SALAMANDER
THE SALAMANDER
CHAPTER I
The day was Thursday; the month, October, rushing to its close; and the
battered alarm-clock on the red mantel stood at precisely one o'clock.
The room was enormous, high and generally dim, the third floor front of
Miss Pim's boarding-house on lower Madison Avenue. Of its four windows,
two, those at the side, had been blinded by the uprising of an ugly
brick wall, which seemed to impend over the room, crowding into it,
depriving it of air. The two windows fronting on the avenue let in two
shafts of oblique sunlight. The musty violet paper on the walls,
blistered in spots, was capped by a frieze of atrocious pink and blue
roses. The window-shades, which had been pulled down to shut out the
view of the wall, failed to reach the bottom. The curtain-rods were
distorted, the globes on the gas fixtures bitten and smoked. At the
back, an alcove held a small bed, concealed under a covering of painted
eastern material. An elongated gilt mirror, twelve feet in height,
leaned against the corner. Trunks were scattered about, two open and
newly ransacked. A folding-bed transformed into a couch, heaped with
cushions, was between the blind windows: opposite, a ponderous rococo
dressing-table, the mirror stuffed with visiting-cards, photographs and
mementoes. Half a dozen vases of flowers--brilliant chrysanthemums,
heavily scented violets, American Beauty roses, slender and
nodding--fought bravely against the pervading dinginess. On the large
central table stood a basket of champagne, newly arrived, a case of
assorted perfumes, a box of white evening gloves and two five-pound
boxes of candy in fancy baskets.
Before the mirrored dressing-table, tiptoe on a trunk, a slender girlish
figure was studying solicitously the effect of gold stockings and low
russet shoes with buckles of green enamel. She was in a short skirt and
Russian blouse, rich and velvety in material, of a creamy rose-gold
luster. The sunlight which struck at her ankles seemed to rise about her
body, suffusing it with the glow of joy and youth. The neck was bare;
the low, broad, rolling silk collar, which followed the graceful lines
of the shoulders beneath, was softened by a full trailing bow of black
silk at the throat. A mass of tumbling, tomboy, golden hair, breaking in
luxuriant tangles over the clear temples, crowned the head with a
garland. Just past twenty-two, her figure was the figure of eighteen, by
every descending line, even to the little ankles and feet, finely
molded.
[Illustration: "What do you really think?"]
She had elected to call herself, according to the custom of the
Salamanders, Dore Baxter. The two names, incongruously opposed, were
like the past and the present of her wandering history: the first,
brilliant, daring, alive with the imperious zest and surprise of
youth; the second baldly realistic, bleak, like a distant threatening
uprise of mountains.
On the couch, languidly lost among the cushions, Winona Horning
(likewise a nom de guerre) was abandoned in lazy attention. In the
embrasure of one window, camped tailor fashion in a large armchair, a
woman was studying a role, beating time with one finger, mumbling
occasionally:
"Tum-tum-ti-tumpety-tum-tum-tum!
I breakfast in diamonds, I bathe in cream.
What's the use? What's the use?"
Snyder--she called herself Miss, but passed for being divorced--was not
of the fraternity of the Salamanders. Dore Baxter had found her in ill
health, out of a position, discouraged and desperate; and in a
characteristic impulse, against all remonstrances, had opened her room
to her until better days. The other Salamanders did not notice her
presence or admit her equality. She seemed not to perceive their
hostility, never joining in their conversation, going and coming
silently.
The sharp shaft of the sun, bearing down like a spot-light, brought into
half relief the mature lines of the body and the agreeable, if serious,
features. The brown head, with a defiance of coquetry, was simply
dressed, braided about with stiff rapid coils. The dress was black, the
waist unrelieved--the costume of the woman who works. What made the
effect seem all the more severe was that there was more than a trace of
beauty in the face and form--a prettiness evidently disdained and
repressed. One shoe, projecting into the light, was noticeably worn at
the heel.
All at once, without turning, the girl on the trunk, twisting anxiously
before the mirror, exclaimed:
"Winona, what do you really think?"
"It doesn't show from here."
"How can you see from there? Come over nearer!"
Winona Horning, taller, more thoughtful in her movements, rose
reluctantly, fixing a strand of jet-black hair which had strayed, and
seated herself according to the command of a little finger. Her
complexion was very pale against the black of her hair, her eyes were
very large, given to violent and sudden contrasts, more intense and more
restless than her companion's.
"And now?" said Dore, lifting the glowing skirt the fraction of an inch.
"Still all right."
"Really?"
"Really!"
"And now?"
"Um-m--yes, now it shows!"
On the golden ankle a mischievous streak of white had appeared--a seam
outrageously rent.
"Heavens, what a fix! I've just got to wear them!" said Dore, dropping
her skirts with a movement of impatience.
"Estelle has a pair--"
"She needs them at three. We can't connect!"
"Bah! Dazzle with the left leg, then, Dodo," replied Winona, giving her
her pet name.
Dore accepted the suggestion with a burst of laughter, and springing
lightly down, seated herself on the trunk.
"Yes--yes, it can be done," she said presently, after a moment's
practising. "If I don't forget!"
"You won't," said Winona, with a smile.
Snyder rose from her seat, and without paying the slightest attention to
this serious comedy, crossed the room and returned to her post, bringing
a pencil, with which she began eagerly to jot down a few notes.
"Like the effect?" said Dore, leaving the mirror with a last glance, the
tip of her tongue appearing a moment through the sharp white rows of
teeth, in the abstraction of her gaze.
She turned, and for the first time her eyes raised themselves
expectantly. They were of a deep ultramarine blue, an unusual cloudy
shade which gave an unexpected accent of perplexity to the fugitive
white and pink of the cheek.
"Perfectly dandy, Dodo; but--"
At this moment from the little ante-chamber outside the door came the
irritable silvery ring of the telephone.
"See who it is," said Dore quickly. "Remember! you don't know if I'm
in--find out first."
As Winona crossed toward the back, Dore turned with a mute interrogation
toward the figure in the window, and extending her arms, pirouetted
slowly twice. Lottie Snyder responded with a sudden smile that lighted
up her features with a flash of beauty. She nodded twice emphatically,
continuing to gaze with kindness and affection. Then she took up her
role bruskly as Winona returned.
"It's a Mr. Chester--Cheshire? What shall I say?"
"Chesterton," said Dore. "I'll go."
She consumed a moment searching among the overflow of gloves on the
trunk-tray, and went to the telephone, without closing the door. Winona,
not to speak to Snyder, began to manicure her hands. From the hall came
the sounds of broken conversation:
"Hello? Who is it?... Yes, this is Miss Baxter.... Who?...
Huntington?... Oh, yes, Chesterton ... of course I remember.... How do
you do?... I'm just up.... Yes, splendid dance!... What?... To-night?...
No-o.... Who else is in the party?... Just us two?... No, I guess
not!... Aren't you a little sudden, Mr. Chesterton?... Not with you
alone.... Oh, yes; but I'm very formal! That's where you make your
mistake.... Certainly, I'd go with a good many men, but not with you....
Not till I really know you.... Now, I'm going to tell you something, Mr.
Chesterton. I'm not like other girls, I play fair. I expect men to make
mistakes--one mistake. I always forgive once, and I always give one
warning--just one! You understand? All right! I won't say any more!...
No, I'm not offended.... I'm quite used to such mistakes: they sort of
follow dances, don't they?... Well, that's nice; I'm glad you understand
me.... Some men don't, you know!... That's very flattering!... If
what?... If it's made a party of four?... That would be different,
yes.... Try--telephone me about six and I'll let you know.... No, I
couldn't say definitely now; I'll have to try and get out of another
party.... No, I haven't seen that play yet.... Phone at six.... Oh, dear
me! How easily you repeat that!... Why, yes, I liked you; I thought you
danced the Hesitation perfectly dandy...." (A laugh.) "Well, that's
enough.... I can't promise.... Phone, anyhow.... Good-by.... Yes, oh,
yes.... Good-by.... Not offended! Oh, no!... Good-by!"
She came back, and extending her fingers above her head, said:
"So high!" She brought her hands close together: "So thin! A
monocle--badly tamed--a ladylike mustache--all I remember! Oh, yes, he
said he had two automobiles--most important!" She shrugged her shoulders
and added maliciously: "We'll put him down, anyhow--last call for
dinner!... So you don't like my costume?"
"That isn't it!" said Winona. She turned, hesitating: "Only, for an orgy
of old Sassoon's."
"Orgy," in the lexicon of the Salamanders, is a banquet in the
superlative of lavishness; on the other hand, a dinner or a luncheon
that has the slightest taint of economy is derogatorily known as a
"tea-party."
"It's my style--it's me!" said Dore, with a confident bob of her head.
"Those girls will come all Gussied up for Sassoon," persisted Winona.
"Staggering, under the war-paint!"
"Let me alone," said Dodo; "I know what I'm doing!"
She knew she had made no blunder. The costume exhaled a perfume of
freshness and artless charm, from the daintiness with which the throat
was revealed, from the slight youthful bust delicately defined under the
informality of the blouse, to the long descending clinging of the coat,
which followed, half-way to the knee, lines of young and slender grace
which can not be counterfeited.
"It's individual--it's me," she repeated, running her little hands
caressingly down the slim undulation of the waist, caught in by the trim
green belt.
The telephone rang a second time.
"Joe Gilday," said Winona presently, covering the mouthpiece with her
hand.
"Say I'm in," said Dore hastily, in a half whisper. "Now go back and say
I'm out!"
"What's wrong?" said Winona, opening her eyes.
"Needs disciplining."
"He knows you're here--says he must speak to you," said the emissary,
reappearing.
"Tell him I am, and won't," said Dore mercilessly.
Snyder, with a sudden recognition of the clock, rose, and going to a
trunk, pounced on a sailor hat, slapping it on her head without looking
in the mirror. She came and planted herself before Dore, who had watched
her, laughing.
"Beating it up to Blainey's," she said. The voice was low, but with a
slur that accused ordinary antecedents. "Say, he's dipped on you; got a
fat part salted away--if you ever turn up! Why don't you see him?"
"I will--I will."
"Look here. You're not going to let everything slip this season, too,
are you?"
"How do I know what I'll do to-morrow?" said Dore, laughing.
"Aren't you ever going to settle down?"
"Yes, indeed; in a year!"
"It's a real fat part; you're crazy to lose the chance!"
"Tell Blainey to be patient; I'm going to be serious--soon!"
"See him!"
"I will--I will!"
"When?"
"To-morrow--perhaps."
She took Snyder by the shoulders, readjusting the hat.
"Aren't you ashamed to treat yourself this way! You can be real pretty,
if you want to."
"When I want to, I am," said Snyder, shrugging her shoulders, but
opposing no resistance to the rearrangement of her costume.
"Snyder, you _do_ it on purpose!" said Dore, vexed at the hang of the
skirt, which resisted her efforts.
Winona reentered. She had heard the conversation with one ear, while
extending comfort to the frantic Gilday in disgrace. Snyder, with the
entree to Blainey, manager for the Lipswitch and Berger Circuit, aroused
her respect with her envy.
"Snyder, what do you do all the time?" she said in a conciliatory tone.
"Meaning what?"
"You never go out--never amuse yourself!"
"I amuse myself much more than you!"
"What!" exclaimed Winona.
"Much more. I work!"
Saying which, she flung into her jacket like a schoolboy, and went out
without further adieus.
"Pleasant creature!" said Winona acidly.
"It's you who are wrong," said Dore warmly. "Why patronize her?"
"There _is_ a difference between us, I think," said Winona coldly.
"Really, Dodo, I don't understand how you can--"
"Let Snyder alone," said Dore, with a flash of anger. "No harm comes
from being decent to some one who's down. Don't be so hard--you never
know what may happen to you!" Seeing the flush on Winona's face, she
softened her tone and, her habitual good humor returning, added: "If you
knew her struggle--There! Let's drop it!"
Fortunately, the telephone broke in on the tension. Another followed,
even before she had left the anteroom. The first was an invitation from
Roderigo Sanderson, one of Broadway's favorite leading men, to a dress
rehearsal of a new comic opera that promised to be the rage of the
season. While secretly delighted at the prospect, Dore answered, in a
tone of subdued suffering, that she was in bed with a frightful
head-ache--that, though it seemed to be improving, she couldn't tell how
she would feel later, and adjourned a decision until six, at which hour
he was to telephone. She gave the same reply to the second invitation, a
proposition from Donald Bacon, a broker, who was organizing a party for
a cabaret dance later in the evening.
"Hurray! Now I can have a choice," she said, tripping gaily back and
pirouetting twice on her left foot. Suddenly she stopped, folding her
arms savagely.
"Winona!"
"What?"
"I'm bored!"
"Since when?"
"Don't laugh! Really, I am unhappy! If something exciting would
happen--if I could fall in love!"
"You will be when you come back!"
"Yes--that's the trouble!" said Dore, laughing. "But it never lasts!"
"And day before yesterday?"
"What about it?"
"That wonderful Italian you came home raving about?"
"Ah, yes! that was a great disappointment!" She repeated, in a tone of
discouragement: "A great disappointment! It's the second meeting that's
so awful! Men are so stupid, it's no fun any more!" All at once she
noticed her friend's attitude. "What's the matter? You're not angry!"
"No, not that!" Winona rose, flinging down the manicuring sticks,
drawing a deep breath. "Only, when I see you throwing over a chance like
that from Blainey--"
"What! You want the job?" exclaimed Dore, struck by the thought.
"Want it?" cried the girl bitterly. "I'd go up Broadway on my knees to
get it!"
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Ah! this has got to end sometime," said the girl, locking and unlocking
her fingers. "Snyder was right. It's work--work! She's lucky!"
Dore became suddenly thoughtful. Between Salamanders real confidences
are rare. She knew nothing of the girl who was separated from her but by
a wall, but there was no mistaking the pain in her voice.
"I'm sorry!" she said.
"Yes, I've come to the end of my rope," said Winona. "I'm older than
you--I've played too long!"
"You shall have the job!"
"Oh, it's easy to--"
"I'll go to-morrow. I'll make Blainey give it to you."
"He won't!"
"He? Of course he will! That old walrus? He'll do anything I tell him!
That's settled! I'll see him to-morrow!"
Winona turned, composing her passion.
"I'm a fool!" she said.
"Hard up?"
"Busted!"
"The deuce! So'm I! Never mind; we'll find some way--"
"Why don't you take the job yourself?"
"I? Never! I couldn't! It's too soon to be serious!" exclaimed Dore,
laughing in order to relieve the tension. "When I'm twenty-three--in six
months--not before! It's all decided."
"First time you've been to one of Sassoon's parties?" asked Winona
abruptly.
"First time! I'm quite excited!"
"You've met him, then?"
"No, not yet! I'm going as a chorus girl."
"What?"
"He's entertaining the sextette of the _Gay Prince_--I'm to replace one.
I got the bid through Adele Vickers--you remember her? She's in the
sextette."
"Adele Vickers," said Winona, with a frown.
"It's on the quiet, naturally," said Dore, not noticing the expression.
"I'm to be taken for a chorus girl, by old Sassoon too--complications,
heaps of fun!"
"You're crazy! Some one'll recognize you!"
"Bah!"
"Sassoon doesn't play fair!" said Winona abruptly.
"Dangerous?"
"He doesn't play the game fair!" repeated Winona, with more insistence.
"I like precipices!" said Dore, smiling.
"How you express things, Dodo!"
"Why? Don't you like 'em?"
"Yes, naturally. But with Sassoon--"
"It's such fun!" said Dore, shaking her curls.
Her companion crossed her fingers and held them up in warning.
"Dodo, be careful!"
"I'll take care of myself!" said Dore scornfully, and a flash of
excitement began to show in the dark blue shadows of her eyes.
"Different! Sassoon is on the black list, Dodo!"
Albert Edward Sassoon, whom two little Salamanders were thus discussing
in a great barn of a room, third floor front of Miss Pim's
boarding-house, was the head of the great family of Sassoon, which for
three generations had stood, socially and financially, among the first
powers of the city.
"Thanks for the warning. When you know, you know what to do!" said Dore
carelessly. "Just let him try!"
The admonition troubled her not at all. She had met and scored others
before who in the secret code of the Salamanders were written down
unfair. The prospect of such an antagonist brought to her a little more
animation. She bolted into a snug-fitting fur toque, brightened by a
flight of feathers at the side, green with a touch of red.
"There!" she exclaimed merrily. "A bit of the throat, a bit of the
ankle, and a slash of red--that's Dodo! What's the time?"
"Twenty past. Who's your prop?"
"Stacey."
"Prop," in the lexicon of the Salamanders, is a term obviously converted
from the theatrical "property." A "prop," in Salamanderland, is a youth
not too long out of the nest to be rebellious, possessed of an
automobile--a _sine qua non_--and agitated by a patriotic craving to
counteract the evil effects of the hoarding of gold. Each Salamander of
good standing counts from three to a dozen props, carefully broken, kept
in a state of expectant gratitude, genii of the telephone waiting a
summons to fetch and carry, purchase tickets of all descriptions, lead
the way to theater or opera, and, above all, to fill in those blank
dates, or deferred engagements, which otherwise might become items of
personal expense.
At this moment the curly brown head of Ida Summers, of the second floor
back, bobbed in and out, saying in a stage whisper:
"Black Friday! Beware! The cat's loose--rampaging!"
It was a warning that Miss Pim, in a periodic spasm of alarm, was
spreading dismay through the two houses in her progress in search of
long-deferred rents.
"Horrors!" exclaimed Winona Horning. She sprang to the door which gave
into her room, ready to use it as an escape from either attack.
"Twice this week. Um-m--means business!" said Dore solemnly. "I'm three
weeks behind. How are you?"
"Five!"
"We must get busy," said Dore pensively. "I have just two dollars in
sight!"
"Two? You're a millionaire!"
"The champagne will bring something," said Dore, fingering the basket,
"but I can't let it go until Mr. Peavey--If he'd only call up for
to-night! Zip might take the perfume, but I need it so! Worse luck, the
flowers have all come from the wrong places. There's twenty dollars
there, if it were only Pouffe. And look at this!"
She went to her bureau, and opening a little drawer, held up a
bank-note.
"Fifty dollars!" exclaimed Winona, amazed.
"Ridiculous, isn't it?" said Dore, with a laugh, shutting it up again.
"Joe Gilday had the impertinence to slip it in there, after I had
refused a loan!"
"What! Angry for that?" said Winona, carried away by the famine the
money had awakened in her.
"Certainly I am!" said Dore energetically. "Do you think I'd allow a man
to give me money--like that?"
This ethical point might have been discussed, but at the moment a knock
broke in upon the conversation. The two girls started, half expecting to
behold Miss Pim's military figure advancing into the room.
"Who is it?" said Dore anxiously.
"It's Stacey," said a docile voice.
"Shall I go?" inquired Winona, with a gesture.
"No, no--stay! Always stay!" said Dore, hastily stuffing back the
overflowing contents of a trunk and signaling Winona to close the lid
nearest her.
Stacey Van Loan crowded into the room. He was a splendid grenadier type
of man, with the smiling vacant face of a boy. He wore shoes for which
he paid thirty dollars, a suit that cost a hundred, a great fur coat
that cost eight times more, enormous fur gloves, and a large pearl pin
in his cravat. On entering, he always blushed twice, the first as an
apology and the second for having blushed before. The most captious
Salamander would have accepted him at a glance as the beau ideal of a
prop--a perfect blend of radiating expensiveness and docile timidity.
Van Loan Senior, of the steel nobility of Pennsylvania, had insisted on
his acquiring a profession after two unfortunate attempts at collegiate
culture, and had exiled him to New York to study law, allotting him
twenty thousand dollars a year to defray necessary expenses.
"Bingo! what a knock-out!" said Stacey, gazing open-mouthed, heels
together, at the glowing figure that greeted him.
Dore, who had certain expectations as to his arrival, perceiving that he
held one hand concealed behind his back, broke into smiles.
"You sly fellow, what are you hiding there?"
"All right?" said Van Loan, with an anxious gulp. "How about it?"
He thrust out an enormous bouquet of orchids, which, in his fear of
appearing parsimonious, he had doubled beyond all reason. The sight of
these flowers of luxury, the price of which would have gone a long way
toward placating Miss Pim, brought a quick telegraphic glance of irony
between the two girls.
"Isn't he a darling?" said Dore, taking the huge floral display and
stealing a glance at the ribbon, which, alas, did not bear the legend
Pouffe, who was approachable in time of need. "Stacey is really the most
thoughtful boy, and everything he gets is in perfect taste. He never
does anything by halves!"
As she said this in a careless manner, which made the young fellow
redden to the ears with delight, she was secretly smothering a desire to
laugh, and wondering how on earth she was to divide the monstrous
display without discouraging future exhibitions of lavishness. She moved
presently toward the back of the room, saying carelessly:
"Look at my last photographs, Stacey."
Then she quickly slipped a third of the bouquet behind a trunk,
signaling Winona, and turning before the long mirror, affixed the
orchids, spreading them loosely to conceal the defection.
"Quarter of. You'll be late!" said Winona, masking the trunk with her
skirts.
"I want to be! I'm not going to have a lot of society women find me on
the door-step!" said Dore, for the benefit of the prop. "Come on,
Stacey; you can look at the photos another day!" She flung about her
shoulders a white stole from the floor below, and buried her hands in a
muff of the same provenance. "Good-by, dear. Back late. Go ahead,
Stacey!"
A moment later she reentered hurriedly.
"Give me the others, quick!" she said, detaching those at her waist.
"These are from Granard's. Take them there--tell them Estelle sent you;
she has an arrangement with them. See what you can get. Tell them we'll
send 'em custom."
She completed the transfer of the smaller bunch, carefully arranging the
wide stole, which she pinned against accidents.
"Listen. If Joe telephones again, make him call me up at six--don't say
I said it! It's possible Blainey may get it in his head to call up. I'll
go with him, unless--unless Peavey wants me for dinner. I must see him
before I dispose of the champagne--understand? You know what to answer
the rest." She hesitated, looking at the orchids: "We ought to get
fifteen out of them. Remember, promise them our custom; use Pouffe on
them. Good-by, dear!"
"Be careful!"
"Yes--yes--yes!"
"Dangerous!"
"Bah! If they only were--but they're not!"
She rejoined Stacey, whose nose was sublimely at the wheel, crying:
"Let her go, Stacey. Up to Tenafly's. Break the speed law!"
She started to spring in, but suddenly remembering the offending
stocking, stopped and ascended quietly--on the left foot.