The faithful Stacey was below, lounging at the door of the grill-room,
as she came tripping down, the sensation of escape sparkling on her
delicate features. She was so delighted at the effect he had achieved
for her that she gave him an affectionate squeeze of the arm.
"Stacey, you're a darling! When the footman announced 'Miss Baxter's
car' you could have heard a pin drop among the squillionairesses!"
Stacey had been told, and dutifully believed, that the luncheon was a
heavy affair, very formal, very correct.
"I say, you didn't bore yourself, did you?" he said, noticing the
excitement still on her cheeks.
"No, no!"
"Fifth Avenue, or Broadway?"
"Fifth first."
"Bundle up; it's turning cold!"
The next moment the car had found a wedge in the avenue, and Stacey,
solicitous, relapsed into gratifying silence.
She was all aquiver with excitement. Her little feet, exhilarated by the
memories of music, continued tapping against the floor, and had Stacey
turned he would have been surprised at the mischievous, gay little
smile that constantly rippled and broke about her lips. Indeed, she was
delighted with her success, with the discord she had flung between
Sassoon and Harrigan Blood. She could scarcely believe that it could be
true.
"What! I, little Dodo, have done that!" she said, addressing herself
caressingly, overjoyed at the idea of two men of such power descending
to a quarrel over a little imp like herself.
She had no illusions about these flesh hunters. If she had given Sassoon
her address instead of hotly refusing, it was from a swift vindictive
resolve to punish him unmercifully, to entice him into fruitless alleys,
to entangle and mock him, with an imperative desire to match her wits
against his power, and teach him respect through discomfiture and
humiliation. Sassoon did not impress her with any sense of danger. She
rather scoffed at him, remembering his silken voice, the slight feminine
touch of his hand, the haunted dreamy discontent in his heavy eyes.
Harrigan Blood was different. In her profound education of a Salamander,
she knew his type, too: the man without preliminaries, who put abrupt
questions, brushing aside the artifices and subtleties that arrest
others. She would make no mistake with him--knowing just how little to
venture. And yet, always prepared, she might try her fingers across such
hungry flames. Strangely enough, she did not resent Harrigan Blood as
she did Sassoon; for men of force she made many allowances.
[Illustration: "No, no, not so fast!"]
She thought of Lindaberry and Judge Massingale: of Lindaberry
rapidly, with a beginning of pity, but still inflamed with an irritation
at this magnificent spectacle of a man going to destruction so
purposelessly. He, of all, had been the most indifferent, too absorbed
to lift his eyes and study what sat by his side. She did not know all
the reasons why he so antagonized her, nor whence these reasons came ...
yet the feeling persisted, already mingled with a desire to know what
was the history that Harrigan Blood had started to tell. Perhaps, after
all, there may have been a tragic love-affair. She reflected on this
idea, and it seemed to her that if it were so, then in his present
madness there might be something noble ... magnificent.
"How stupid a man is to drink!" she said angrily.
"Eh? What's that, Dodo?" said Stacey.
She perceived that, in her absorption, she had spoken half aloud.
"Go down Forty-second and run up Broadway!" she said hastily.
Massingale she could not place. She comprehended the others, even the
Comte de Joncy, whom she had left with a feeling of defrauded
expectation. But Massingale she did not comprehend, nor did she see him
quite clearly. Why was he there? To observe simply, with that tolerant
baffling smile of his? What did he want in life? Of her? He had been
interested; he had even tried to arouse her own curiosity. She was
certain that the effort had been conscious. Then there had come a
change--a quiet defensive turn to impersonality. Tactics, or what?
What impression had she left? Would he call, or pass on? She did not
understand him at all; yet he excited her strangely. She had a feeling
that he would be too strong for her. She had felt in him, each time his
glance lay in hers, the reading eye that saw through her, knew
beforehand what was turning in her runaway imagination, and that before
him her tricks would not avail.
Then she ceased to remember individuals, lost in a confused, satisfied
feeling of an experience. It seemed to her as if she had taken a great
step--that opportunity had strangely served her, that she had at last
entered a world which was worthy of her curiosity.
She had met few real men. She had played with idlers, boys of twenty or
boys of forty, interested in nothing but an indolent floating voyage
through life. For the first time, she had come into contact with a new
type, felt the shock of masculine vitality. Whatever their cynical ideas
of conduct, she felt a difference here. They were men of power, with an
object, who did not fill their days with trifling, but who sought
pleasure to fling off for a moment the obsession of ambitions, to relax
from the tyranny of effort, or to win back a new strength in a moment of
discouragement. Perhaps if she continued her career she might turn them
into friends--loyal friends. It would be difficult but very useful. The
men she met usually, at first, misunderstood her.
"Perhaps one of them will change my whole life! Why not? I have a
feeling--" she said solemnly to herself, nodding and biting her little
under lip.
The truth was, she felt the same after every encounter, dramatizing each
man, and flinging herself romantically on a sea of her imagining. But
to-day it was a little different. The feeling was more profound, calmer,
more penetrating. She felt, indeed, under the influence of a new
emotion, a restlessness in the air, an unease in the crowded streets.
Since morning, the glowing warmth of the last summery stillness had
slipped away unperceived. The wind in an hour had gone round to the
north, and from each whipping banner threaded against the sky one felt
the whistling onrush of winter. In the air there was something
suspended, a melancholy resounding profoundly, penetrating the soul of
the multitude. The gray sluggish currents in the thoroughfare quickened,
stirring more restlessly, apprehensive, caught unawares. Little gusts of
wind, scouts heralding the chill battalions piling up on the horizon,
drove through the city clefts, sporting stray bits of paper to the
rooftops, in turbulent dusty, swooping flight, uncovering heads and
rolling hats like saucers down the blinded streets. Then suddenly the
gusts flattened out. A stillness succeeded, but grim, permeating,
monstrous; and above the winter continued to advance.
She felt something in all this--something ominous, prophetic, vaguely
troubling, and being troubled, sought to put it from her. She began to
dramatize another mood. About her she felt the city she adored: the
restaurants, the theaters, the great hotels, the rocket-rise of the
white _Times_ building, towering like a pillar of salt in accursed
Sodom. But her mind did not penetrate to ugliness. The febrile activity,
the glistening surface of pleasure, the sensation of easy luxurious
flight awoke in her the intoxication of enjoyment. She adored it, this
city whom so many curse, whose luxuries and pleasures opened so facilely
to her nod, whose conquest had borne so little difficulty.
She forgot the unease that lay in the air at the sight of the feverish
restaurants where so often she had dipped in for adventure of the
afternoon. The sight of the theaters, even, with their cold white globes
above the outpouring matinee crowds, brought an impatience for the
garlanded night, when elegant shadows would come, slipping into flaming
portals, amid the flash of ankles, the scent of perfume, glances of
women challenging the envy of the crowd.
The multitude churned about her, roaring down into the confusion of many
currents: the multitude--the others--whom she felt so distant, so far
below her. They were there, white of face, troubled, frowning, harassed,
swelling onward to clamoring tasks, spying her with thousand-eyed envy;
and everywhere darting in and out, dodging the gray contact of the mass,
alert, light, skimming on like sea-gulls trailing their wings across the
chafing ocean, the luxurious women of the city sped in rolling careless
flight. She felt herself one of them, admiring and admired, glancing
eagerly into tonneaus bright with laughter and fashion, deliciously
registering the sudden analytical stare of women, or the disloyal
tribute boldly telegraphed of men.
She had lunched with Sassoon, De Joncy, Massingale. She was a part of
all this--of the Brahmin caste; and her little body rocking to the
swooping turns, deliciously cradled, her eyes half closed, her nostrils
drawing in this frantic air as if it were the breath of an enchanting
perfume, she let her imagination go: already there by right, married to
Massingale or Lindaberry--she saw not which quite clearly. Nor did it
matter. Only she herself mattered.
"Riverside or park, Dodo?"
"Through the park," she said; and roused from her castle-building, she
laughed at herself with a tolerant amused confusion.
"Good spirits, eh?"
"So-so!"
In the park there were fewer automobiles. She no longer had the feeling
of the crowd pressing about her, claiming her for its own. There were no
restaurants or climbing facades. There was the earth, bare, shivering,
and the sky filled with the invader.
She had a horror of change, and suffered with a profound and
uncomprehended trouble when, each year, she saw summer go into the
mystery of winter, and again when came the awakening miracle. Yesterday,
when she had passed, the splendor of the trees, it is true, lay shorn
upon the ground; but the earth was warm, pleasant, with a fragrant odor,
the air soft and the evening descended in a glow. Now there was a
difference. Over all was the dread sense of change. Each tree stood
alone, aghast, against the sky, the ground bleak, bare, the leaves
wandering with a little moaning, driven restlessness. Even against the
gray banks piling up against the north there was something vacant and
horribly endless. From tree, sky and empty earth a spirit had suddenly
withdrawn, and all this change had come within an hour, in a
twinkling--without warning.
Now she could no longer put it from her, this resistless verity that
laid its chill fingers across her heart. It was not of the change in
nature she thought--no; but of that specter which some day, inexorably,
would rise from a distant horizon, even as the wind in an hour goes
round to the north and winter rushes in. She was twenty-two and she had
a horror of this thief, who came soft-footed and unreal, to steal the
meager years.
She stiffened suddenly, clutching her stole to her throat.
"Too cold?"
"Yes!"
"I've got a coat for you."
"No; go back!"
"Already?"
"Yes!"
"Tea?"
"No! Go back!"
She closed her eyes, not to see, but the thing was there, everywhere, in
the air that came to her, in the sad tiny sounds that rose about them.
Yes, she herself would change inexorably, as all things filled their
appointed time. What she had was given but for a day--all her fragile
armament was but for a day. Not much longer could she go blithely along
the summery paths of summer. She thought of Winona Horning, who had
played too long. She thought of thirty as a sort of sepulcher, an end of
all things! She felt something new impelling her on--a haste and a
warning.
"It can't go on always!" she said to herself, in her turn using the very
words that Winona had uttered. "Not much longer. A year, only a year,
then I must make up my mind!"
"Blue, Dodo?" said Stacey.
"Horribly!"
The word seemed so incongruously ridiculous, after what she had felt,
that she burst into exaggerating laughter.
"Going to change your mind?"
"No, no! I'm out of sorts--a cold! Get me back!"
They reentered the city as the first owlish lights were peeping out,
futile, brave little rebels against the spreading night. Below, high in
the air, suspended above the ghostly town whose sides had faded, the
great illumined eye of the Metropolitan tower shone forth. Then all at
once long sentinel files of lights rose on the avenue and down the
fleeting side streets, miraculous electric signs burst out against the
night, a myriad windows caught fire, and the city, which a moment ago
had seemed flat, climbed blazing into the air. They were again nearing
the great artery, which changes its name with the coming of the
artificial night, no longer Broadway, but the Rialto, with its mysteries
of entangled beams and profound pools of darkness, its laughter free or
suspect, its mingled virtue and vice, elbowing and staring at each
other, its joy and its despair treading in each other's steps.
But the dread reminder was still above, hurling its black engulfing
storm across the bombardment of a million lights, that painted it with a
strange red glare, but could not destroy its menace. A few cold drops of
rain, wind driven, dashed against their faces, as they went with the
crowd, scuttling on. There was something unreal now in all this,
something artificial in the glimpse of vacant restaurants setting their
candles for the guests who went fleeing home. Of plunging temperament,
she had a horror of these rare depressions, striving frantically against
the realization of what must be, and striving thus, always suffering the
more keenly. In seeing all this fugitive world, flat shadows driven
restlessly as the shorn splendor of the streets, she asked herself of
what use it was after all, to be young, to be attractive, to go laughing
and dancing, to dare, to conquer ... why, indeed, childhood, maturity
and old age should stretch so far, and youth, the exultant brilliant
hour she clung to, should be allotted only the few, the fingered years!
She felt a sense of loneliness, of terrified isolation, the need of some
one to come and talk to her, to interpose himself between her and these
unanswerable questions, to close her eyes and stop her ears.
When they reached Miss Pim's the rain was beginning in little flurries.
She ran in and up-stairs hurriedly. She had hoped that she would find
her room lighted, that Snyder or Winona would be home. No one was there,
and when she opened the door she entered a region of obscure shadowy
forms, faintly lighted by the reflection of a street lamp below. Across
the windows on the avenue was the cyclopean eye of the Metropolitan
tower, which she saw always every night with her last peeping glance
from her covers--enormous eye, bulging, swollen with curiosity. At the
other side was the wall of brick pressing against the window-pane, this
wall she hated as she hated the idea of the commonplace in life.
She stood in the luminous pathway, gazing outward.
"What is the matter with me?" she thought. "Am I like Winona? Am I
getting tired of it all? Or is it--what?"
The metallic summons of the telephone broke upon her mood. She lighted
the gas quickly. The telephone continued to clamor, but she took no step
toward it. All that she had planned as a choice for the evening no
longer interested her. She was in another mood. She flung down her
things rapidly. Then, remembering the bouquet of Sassoon's, she took it
off, pricking her fingers. Inclosed was a bank-note for a hundred
dollars!
Then she began to laugh--a bitter incongruous note. She understood now
why he had gone so abruptly to his questions, confident in the test he
had prepared among the fragile stems of orchids and dainty yellow
pansies.
All at once her eye went to her pin-cushion, caught by the white note of
visiting-cards left there by Josephus, the colored chore-boy. She
crossed quickly, stretching out her finger impatiently. Which of the
four had come, as she had determined? The first bore the name of
Harrigan Blood, the second Albert Edward Sassoon. She stood staring at
the last, the hundred-dollar bill still wrapped in her fingers....
Sassoon and Harrigan Blood! She let the cards drop, profoundly
disappointed, prey to a sudden heavy return of disillusionment.
The telephone, querulous, impatient, again called her, but she turned
her shoulder impatiently. Now the thought of an evening of gaiety
revolted her. She changed quickly, wrapped herself up in an ulster, took
an umbrella and went out, though by the wide-faced clock in the skies it
was scarcely six. Before, she had sought to break away, to escape
recklessly from the depression that claimed her: now she sought it out,
surrendering to this tristesse that whirled her on with its exquisite
benumbing melancholy.
She supped at a lunch-room in Lexington Avenue, paying out a precious
thirty cents for a cup of coffee, a bowl of crackers and milk, a baked
potato. Not many were there yet. A young fellow without an overcoat,
stooping already, pinched by struggle, came and sat at her table,
seeking an opportunity to offer her the sugar. But, seeing her so silent
and inwardly tortured, he did not persist.
[Illustration: She did not notice him]
She did not notice him. She was thinking always of Massingale, and a
little of Lindaberry. Why had she succeeded with Sassoon and Blood only
to fail where she wanted to win?
"He carries a coffin on his back!" she found herself repeating, in the
cynical words of Harrigan Blood. He would not seek her out; nor would
Massingale. All her castles in the air had collapsed. It was only to the
others, then, that she could appeal--the flesh hunters!
She returned, swaying against the wind, holding her umbrella with
difficulty against the spattering rain-drops, that seemed to rise from
the glistening sidewalks. The young man, who had no umbrella, remained
in the shelter of a doorway, watching her undecidedly.
"Ah, yes! I must be getting tired of it!" she said suddenly, as she
reached her steps. A taxicab was turning in the avenue, having just
drawn away. As she went slowly up the interminable, impenetrable, dark
flights to her room, she said, revolting against an injustice:
"Well, if he doesn't come, I'll go and find him!"
She entered her room, lagging and depressed, knowing not how to spend
the hours until sleep arrived. She had no feeling of reticence in
seeking out Massingale and Lindaberry, since they appealed to her and
would not come, any more than she felt the slightest diminution of her
self-respect in situations labeled with the appearance of suspicion. Her
ideas of morality and conduct were not even formulated. They existed as
the sense of danger exists to a pretty animal. For, ardently as she
desired it, there had not come into her soul the awakening breath of
love, which, in despite of old traditions and lost heritages, alone
would be to her rebellious little Salamander soul the supreme law of
conduct.
Suddenly she saw that on her pin-cushion another card had been placed
while she had been absent. She went to it without expectation. It was
from Massingale--Massingale, who must have left in the taxicab even as
she returned hopelessly.
Then it seemed to her as if a thousand tons had slipped from her. She
felt an extraordinary joy and confidence, the alertness of a young
animal, a need of light and laughter, a longing to plunge into a rush of
excitement.
The telephone rang. Donald Bacon was clamoring to take her to the
cabaret party. She disliked him cordially. She accepted with wild
delight.