Mr. Peavey's automobile was waiting. Dore had telephoned for it while
Ida Summers, protesting, had made a quick toilet. She had at first
thought of availing herself for the day of the car so insistently
pressed upon her; but she was not yet quite sure of Brennon, the
chauffeur. If by any chance she should decide to keep her appointment
with Sassoon, it would not be wise to accept such escort. So she
supplemented the day's preparations by a message to Stacey, who was
given a later rendezvous.
"Down-town! The _Free Press_ building. Hope I didn't get you up too
early, Brennon?"
He grinned at her ideas of morning values.
"He looks as if he were a good sort," Dore thought, meditating on the
possibilities long after she and Ida had tucked themselves in.
"I say, Do, what's the game? Give us the cue!" said Ida Summers, making
heroic efforts to get her eyes open.
"Your cue is to be real sisterly," said Dore. "Stick close, unless I
give you the wink."
"Oh, I'll cling! Arm in arm, eh?" said Ida, beginning to laugh.
"Conversation high-toned. I say, Do, I'm quite excited. Harrigan Blood!
You do move in the swellest circles!"
Dore allowed her to chat away without paying attention, a fact that did
not disturb her companion in the least.
"Well, he'll be furious!" she was thinking, delighted at paying
Massingale back in coin. Nevertheless, she had mitigated the retaliation
by taking a companion. Then, too, the effect on Harrigan Blood would not
be at all bad--Blood, who expected a tete-a-tete, and who could thus be
taught the value of such favors.
But now that she was finally embarked on her impulse, she began to
consider more calmly, even with a willingness to see Massingale's side.
All at once the perfectly obvious explanation occurred to her. How could
he be expected to telephone, when she had not given him the number? Why
had she never thought of this before? Probably he had been frantically
seeking it! Of course he could not telephone--and of course he could not
come personally; he would have to be in court all the morning. Perhaps
at this very moment a letter was waiting for her, by the post, or by a
messenger! She must indeed be in love, to be such a fool!
"Thank heaven," she thought, "I had the sense to bring Ida! I'll confess
to him--or, no! He mustn't know what it has meant!"
The sudden joyful release, the calm of content that came to her from
this explanation, surprised her. For a moment she felt like renouncing
the visit; but a new turn strengthened her resolve. She could hardly
believe in what had happened. Perhaps it was only another case of
self-deception. She would try to revolt, to be interested in another
man, to see if the old game could still attract.
"Lordy! I'd forgotten there was so much New York!" said Ida Summers, who
lived, like her thousand sisters, between the Flatiron and the park.
They entered lower Broadway, random flowers on the foul truck-strewn
flood, advancing by inches, surrounded by polyglot sounds, traversing
revolted Europe in a block, closing their ears against the shrieking
cries of imprisoned industries, the sordid struggle in the streets, the
conflict in the air, where stone flights strove for supremacy.
All at once she remembered--this roaring entrance. She remembered the
evening, not two years before, when she herded from the ferry, satchel
in hand, oppressed by the jargon of a thousand tongues, she had arrived,
hustled and jostled, barely making head against the outflowing tide of
humanity which flushed the street in its roaring homeward scramble.
That first breathless impression of New York! How she had feared it,
that first dusky evening, when, shrinking in a doorway before the onrush
of driven multitudes, she had felt the very air dragged from her
nostrils, obliterating her individuality, routing her courage, stunning
her senses. She had stood a long time, clinging to her meager
sheltering, disheartened at the fury at her feet, awed by the flaming
ladders to the impending stars--no inanimate stones, but living rocks,
endlessly climbing, which must end by toppling over on her in an
obliterating crash. New York! How different from what she had imagined
in the tugging, liberty-seeking aspirations of her soul!
She had never lacked courage before, in all her adventurous progress
toward the Mecca of her dreams; but that night she had been defeated,
overwhelmed before the issue, even. She had come, sublimely confident in
a fanciful project she had conceived, a series of impressions--_A
Western Girl in New York_--a western girl arriving undaunted, satchel in
hand, ten dollars in her purse, to seek fortune in the great city of
Mammon--surely a daring story to fill a woman's column. And she had gone
to the same _Free Press_, standing in the outer office, talking to a
tired sub-editor, vainly striving to interest him, to revive in herself
a necessary spark of enthusiasm and audacity which had expired in that
first brutal confrontation of the world in terms of thousands. Yes, she
had lost even before she had opened her plea, convinced of the futility
of making an impression on those frantic halls, where her voice was
pitched not alone against the tired indifference of a routine mind, but
against the invading storm of outer sounds, the clang of brazen bells,
the honk of automobiles, the shaking rush of invisible iron forces
tearing through the air, the grinding roll of traffic over the
complaining cobblestones, the mammoth roar of the populace endlessly
washing reverberating shores.
She had talked and talked, without interruption, clenching her fist,
growing weaker and weaker, stumbling in her phrases, until at last,
convinced, without waiting for an objection, she had stopped short,
saying: "It's no use, is it?"
Then he had gone to a file of papers, and returning, spread before her a
gaily colored page, placing his finger on another face in silhouette,
gay, jaunty. Another had had the same idea! How many others? She was no
longer an individual--only one of a thousand who came, with the same
ideas, to face the same struggle.
That first leaden closing of the doors of hope, as if no other doors
remained! And now she was to enter that same _Free Press_, no longer
daunted, clinging to a satchel, but rolling luxuriously, triumphant: no
longer a suppliant, but amused, at the insistent invitation of the
chief, the genius of the machine, whom once she had clamored so
fruitlessly to see. Then and now.... Harrigan Blood--society itself, on
which she was to take a delicious revenge. She forgot Massingale,
remembering only a hopeless little figure, ready for tears, standing, a
tiny black dot against the electric windows of the press, gazing into
the wilderness of the strident crowded unknown.
* * * * *
A quick descent, a sudden volcanic propulsion upward, and they were
transferred a hundred feet above strife, into a noisy anteroom, gazing
down at the gray-and-white tapestry of the spread city.
"Hello! What are you doing here?"
They turned. Estelle Monks, of the second floor front at Miss Pim's,
owner of the white fox stole and the circulating garments, was standing
beside them, jauntily alert.
"Goodness' sakes, it's Estelle!" exclaimed Ida. "Well, what are _you_
doing--?"
"Oh, I contribute," said Estelle evasively.
She was in a short tailored suit, Eton collar, Alpine hat and feather.
With her hands in her side pockets, she was very direct, at ease,
mannish, but not disagreeably so--rather attractive with her dark eyes,
which, as Ida expressed it, had the "real come-hither" in their mocking
depths.
A boy came shuffling out, saying nasally:
"Mr. Blood will see you naow."
They left Estelle Monks indulging in a long whistle of surprise,
traversed a long chorus of clicking machines, and discovered a room of
comparative quiet, spacious, with embattled desks. Harrigan Blood was
waiting, a smile on his face as he fingered the _two_ cards.
"Very nice of you to bring Miss Summers," he said jerkily, making his
own introduction. "Added pleasure, I'm sure!"
Dore, who had expected some show of irritation, wondered in an amused
way how he would manage to procure the tete-a-tete which she had just
rendered impossible. In ten minutes Blood, without seeming to have
considered the question, had resolved the knot by calling in Tony Rex,
one of the younger cartoonists, a boyish person who eyed them with
malicious curiosity, and having consigned Ida to him for a tour of
inspection, had availed himself of the first interval to say:
"Come, you can see all this any time. You are not going to get out of a
talk with me by any such tricks."
She consented, laughing, to be led back.
"Why did you do this?" he said, irritated.
"Do what?"
"Bring a governess?"
"Because I'm a very proper person."
"It annoys me. I hate women who annoy me!" he said abruptly.
She smiled in provoking silence, while, with a quick excusing gesture,
he lighted a cigar.
"You seem more natural here," she said, glancing at his ruffled hair and
careless tie. "I'd like to see you at work."
He rose to get a copy of the editorial sheet for the day, and handed it
to her.
"You inspired that."
She took the editorial, which was entitled "Waste," and ran down its
heavily leaded phrases, smiling to herself at these moralizations of the
devil turned friar. He saw her amusement, and took the editorial
abruptly.
"You won't understand--that's what I _believe_!"
He drew a chair opposite and flung into it; then, with an erect
stiffening of his body, clasped his hands eagerly between his knees,
releasing them in sudden flights, returning them always to their
tenacious grip. There was something in the combustibility of the gesture
that was significant of the whole man.
"By George!" he said suddenly, without relevancy, "why haven't I the
right to stretch out my hand and take you?"
Dore burst out laughing, immensely flattered.
"What a nuisance you are!" he continued savagely. "What good do you do
in the world? All you women do is to interfere! And to think that this
sentimental civilization--idiotic civilization--is going to experiment
for a few hundred years with pretending that women are made to share the
progress of the world with men!"
"So you're not a woman's--"
"I'm absolutely against the whole feminine twaddle!" he broke in. "Man's
the only thing that counts! We're suffocated with feminism
already--over-sentimentalized; can't think but in the terms of an
individual." He stopped, and glaring at her, said, with a furious
gesture: "And now, here you are, an impudent little girl who doesn't do
the world a bit of good, sitting back there and laughing contentedly
because you've suddenly popped up to raise Cain with me!"
The originality of his attack delighted her. It pleased her immensely to
feel her attraction for such a man, for it seemed to her a promise that
with another she would not lack charm and fascination.
"What a strange method of courting," she said demurely. "If that's the
way you're going on, I think I prefer to be shown the--"
[Illustration: "Why did you do this?"]
"The machines, of course," he cut in. "That's the trouble with you.
That's all they ever understand--the things they see. But, my dear
girl, _I_ am the paper; all the rest is only wheels, chains, links;
every man here is only part of the machine. I only am the indispensable
force."
He had found an idea, and was off on its exposition, starting up, pacing
and gesturing.
"Yes, all the rest is only a machine. I can change every bolt in
twenty-four hours and it will go on just the same. I pay a cartoonist
twenty thousand dollars a year, and he thinks he's indispensable; but I
can take another and make him famous in a month. I give him the ideas!
Yes, they are lieutenants here--editors of Sunday supplements, special
writers, women's columns, sporting experts. I can change 'em all, take a
handful of boys, and whip them into shape in six weeks! That's not
journalism. What is? I'll tell you. Others have copied me; I found it
out--_emotions_ and _ideas_! You don't get it? Listen! They're two
heads: the news column and the editorial page."
He paused at the table, and taking up a paper, struck it disdainfully.
"Trash! I know it! News? No! That's not what the public wants--not my
public! It wants fiction, it wants emotions! You don't know what the
multitude is; I do! A great sunken city, a million stifling, starved
existences, hurried through, railroaded through life. News? Bah! They
want a taste of dreams! I make their dreams live in my paper. It's
everything to them, melodrama, society, romance; it's a peep-hole into
the worlds they can't touch. I show 'em millionaires moving behind
their house-walls, rolling in wealth, fighting one another, battling
for one another's wives, flinging a billion against a billion, ruining
thousands for a whim. 'Monte Cristo'? It's tame to what I serve 'em.
'Mr. X Gives a Hundred Thousand Dollar Lunch'--'Secret Drama of Oil
Trust's Home'--'Deserts Millionaire Husband for Chauffeur'--'Ten
Millions in Five Years'! That's life--that's emotion! That's what makes
'em go on! Look here, did you ever stop to think what does make the five
million slaves go on, day in and day out, driven, groaning? Hope! the
belief that in some miraculous way life is going to change."
He stopped, and with a drop to cold analysis, laying his hand on the
editorial sheet, said:
"This is what does count. This is real--ideas! The other is just
tom-tom-beating to get the crowd around--yes, just that: the band
outside the circus. But this is different; this is true. America, the
future--the glorious future when I've stirred up their imagination and
taught them to think! There! Now do you understand what kind of man I
am?"
She had understood one thing clearly, in this stupendous flurry of
egotism--that, as Sassoon had sought to tempt her with the lure of his
wealth, Harrigan Blood was seeking to overwhelm her with the brilliancy
of his mind. She did not oppose him, seeking flattery, needing fresh
proofs of her power, thinking: "If he wants me, Massingale--Massingale,
who is so clever and strong--will want me too."
"You lunch with me," he said confidently.
She shook her head. "Previous engagement."
"Where?"
"Tenafly's at one."
"Sassoon?" he said, sitting up with a jerk.
"Yes," she answered, with malice aforethought.
"What--you're going to be caught by that whited sepulcher?"
"And you, Mr. Blood?" she said softly.
"I? I'm loyal!"
"But not monogamous."
"Sassoon only wants to be stung out of a lethargy. Women--I need them to
help me. I have the right! That's why I want you!"
"I'm not the kind you want," she said, drawing back, for his
precipitation gave her the feeling of being crowded into a corner.
"You would if I could make you love me!"
"Indeed! Are you considering--matrimony?"
"Never!" he said angrily. "Marriage is a reciprocal tyranny. I don't
want to own a woman, or have her own me! What, you can have a career,
and you want to marry?"
She defended herself, laughing, assuring him that was not the case.
"You have your career; I have mine. I'll educate you! Ten thousand men
will give you money--I'll give you brains! My little girl, I wonder if
you know what opportunity is dangling on your little finger-tips. Break
your engagement!"
"I can't!"
"Interested?"
"Um! Very curious. Certain sides are amusing!" Then she turned,
assuming an air of dignity, repeating her defensive formula: "Mr. Blood,
I am not like other girls. I play fair. I give one warning--and one
only. Then take the consequences."
"What's your warning?" he said abruptly, with a bullish stare.
"You will lose your time," she said calmly. "You think you know me. You
may, and you may not. I won't give you the slightest hint, but I tell
you frankly now, and only once, you will lose your time!"
"But," he said contemptuously, "you don't know what a real man is!
There's nothing real in your life. I'm going to give you realities!"
"How charming!" she said, shrugging her shoulders. "And in the same
breath you let me know it won't last. Thanks; I don't enjoy being an
episode!"
"That depends on you."
"Frank!"
"Don't you know," he said suddenly, coming toward her, "what is true
about a man like myself?--yes, about all men? They say we're naturally
polygamous. Rats! nothing of the sort! We want to be true to one woman
only. Look here. The real tragedy in life is that a man can't find in
one woman all he wants,--all the time!"
At this moment, much to Dore's relief, Ida Summers and her companion
returned. As they went out to the elevator, Blood made another
opportunity for a final word:
"I haven't said half that I wanted to. When can I get a chance really to
talk with you?"
A malicious suggestion, prompted by some devil of intrigue within her,
suddenly rose in her imagination.
"Come and get me after luncheon."
"I thought you said you were lunching with Sassoon," he said
suspiciously.
"I am. What of it?--or don't you dare?"
He looked at her fixedly, divining her reason.
"I warned you to beware of me," she said demurely. "I love
scenes--dramatic temperament, you know. Think how furious Sassoon will
be! Well?"
"What time?" he said, with a snap of his jaws.
"Oh, half past two."
"I'll come!"