She was not the least afraid, nor, in fact, was she unprepared for the
discovery. When Sassoon had tempted her with the prospects of a party,
she was not altogether his dupe. Yet, under safe conditions, she was
disposed, to-night, to grant him the intimacy of a tete-a-tete. She knew
that he had never yet said to her what he wanted, and she had a great
curiosity to know what he would hold before her eyes. The respectability
of the crowd seen through the brilliant windows, the publicity of the
position, all reassured her that there could be no trap beyond the
powers of her ingenuity. She examined the dressing-room hastily. Besides
the door that gave on to the salon, there were two others--one, which
was locked, to a farther suite, and a second, opening into the
ante-chamber.
She went to the window and looked down on the flattened crowd flowing
like inky pools under the phosphorescent arc-lights; the scurrying roofs
of automobiles, darting across the lighted trolleys, calculating the
effect of a cry. Then she opened the door into the ante-chamber,
hesitating. It would be the easiest thing in the world to leave now,
without noise, while Sassoon was busy with the ordering. But curiosity
was strong, and the need of a sensation--of a triumph over danger, which
would give back that old audacity that had almost departed in these last
bitter days. She bit her lip thoughtfully, hesitated a moment, and
then, tiptoeing quietly to the outer door, removed the key, assuring
herself that there were no bolts to fasten it. It might be the last
escapade, perhaps the last time that she would baffle him. The tenth was
only three days away and in the need of setting the stage for her final
climax she felt the need, suddenly, of carrying this motive up to the
brink--yes, even of calmly looking over.
She left her hat with her coat in the dressing-room, and came out
confidently, her hands on her hips, which swayed slightly in the
languorous movement of the Spanish indolence, mockery in her eyes.
"No one here yet?" she asked unconcernedly.
"Not seven," he replied, glancing at his watch.
"Artists are always late!"
He assented, watching her.
"This the dining-room?" she said, moving to the right.
"Wait!"
"Why?"
"I want to give you a surprise."
"I know it already!"
"What?"
"There's no party at all; we're dining together," she said, looking at
him directly. "Don't lie. Besides, I knew it all the time!"
"What?" he said amazed.
"Naturally! Do you think I would be here if I didn't want to be? Well,
to-night, then, is the big temptation? I hope you'll be very
interesting!"
"So you knew!" he said, pursing his lips.
"You're disappointed because I'm not afraid!" she told him, laughing.
"Well, I'm not! Besides, I have taken my precautions!"
"What do you mean?" he asked uneasily.
"There's a door from the dressing-room into the vestibule--you gave me
plenty of time," she said quietly. "There happened to be a party I knew
below when we came in, or we would not be here. They are to take me
home--later."
"You went down--" he said slowly, at a loss whether to believe her or
not. She nodded, and still incredulous, he went to the dressing-room,
assuring himself that she had at least spoken the truth about the door.
"Well?" she said, folding her arms and laughing at him, but feeling
every nerve and fiber alert with the sense of combat.
"Miss Baxter," he answered, standing by her and fastening his heavy
oriental gaze on hers, "I have never, in all my life, wanted a woman as
I want you!"
"I hope so!"
"Don't you know that?"
"It's the devil in me, then."
"The devil and the child," he said quietly.
She didn't like his look, so she motioned him away, saying:
"Something to eat first, please, and business later."
"With any other woman I would understand that," he said, without
shifting his gaze.
"Perhaps I am simpler than you think?"
"Let's go in to dinner!" he said abruptly.
He went to the curtain and drew it aside deferentially. She went past
him quickly, watching him from under her eyelashes, choosing that seat
at the table which would give her quick retreat in case of need. The
waiter, bald and correctly vacant of expression, arrived after a
discreet knock, and with the swinging of the door came a sudden burst of
laughter from an arriving party. She waved away the proffered cocktail.
"Nothing?" he asked.
"At such an important interview? Of course not!"
He raised his glass to her honor, and she nodded.
"You don't look so terrible, after all," she said, examining him with a
critical smile; and to herself she said disdainfully, as she had said
another time: "If this is a dangerous man, what is it makes him
dangerous?"
But this query was not simply of amusement. The seriousness of life had
so obtruded itself upon her, in the last preparatory weeks, that she
wanted to know everything, to have before her in detail that existence
which could depend on his soft hands and wearied eyes.
"So I puzzle you very much?"
"You know you do!" he said, with a slow smile, still resolved to
continue the role of _bon enfant_.
"Most women are simpler, then?"
"Much!"
"And how do you do?" she said, her elbows on the table, leaning forward
eagerly. "Just say flatly, 'How much?'"
He ran a lean finger through the mounting mustache, smiling.
"Usually, yes!"
"And they all have their price?"
"Not all, no; but all that I want," he answered frankly.
"That must be quite exciting--the estimating, I mean," she said, to draw
him out. "Imagine looking at a woman and saying: 'This one will cost me
a thousand, this one ten thousand, and this one will be very, very
expensive.' It must be quite amusing to see if you guess right!"
"Very amusing--yes."
"Sassoon, what's my price?" she asked abruptly.
"I didn't say you had one."
"You said all women you wanted."
"Miss Baxter," he said slowly, "you began this conversation."
"Yes--and let's drop all pretenses; let's talk to each other, since we
are here. Let me know you as you really are. I wish it!"
"Very well!" he said, pleased. He rested his elbows likewise on the
table, scanning his left hand, turning the great emerald ring that
adorned it. "I believe every woman has her price, under certain
conditions: first, that you know the need of money, and, most important,
that you are old enough to understand what things can be bought!"
"You think I am too young?"
"I am not sure! You are very romantic," he said, and as she laughed at
this interpretation, he continued: "If you were thirty instead of
twenty-two, you could not make a mistake!"
"That's a curious way to put it!"
"I am not speaking of ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars," he said
quietly. "You are the exception. You are the sort of woman that would
hold a man for years. Miss Baxter, do you remember what the Comte de
Joncy told you?"
"Ah, yes; he liked my eyes," she said, laughing.
"He estimated them at a million each. He knew!"
"What nonsense you are talking!"
"I am talking of a career," he said quietly. "Consider it. It's worth
considering!"
"Ah, now I understand! Well, go on!"
"Just a little glass?" he said, raising the champagne.
"Sounds like Bowery melodrama," she said mockingly. "_The Wicked
Millionaire_. Please be serious! It's so nice to talk of millions!"
"If you knew what I know," he said, looking beyond her and shrugging his
shoulders, "it would be easy to discuss! There's only one thing
important in life, Miss Baxter. Money!"
"And love?"
"Love! You will love ten--twenty times! What do you know of such
things?" he said rapidly. "You have a vague illusion before your eyes,
and in reality, what is guiding you is the same principle of nature that
governs all life. A woman in the state you are in now is really in a
state of hysteria--an unnatural state, that causes you to do any number
of illogical things, crazy things--"
"As, for instance, falling in love?"
"Falling in love with impossible people," he corrected. "What do you
know of love, anyhow? I may know."
"You!" she said scornfully.
"Yes--now. I've seen the rest, and if I love, it's the young, the
beautiful, the past. I won't explain: you must experience to comprehend!
Another thing about yourself that you don't understand: to love and to
be loved are two different things. A woman like you will always be
loved. You won't love, really love, not for a long while--not until you
begin to grow old! What stops you from using me? Family? You have none!
Friends? Bah!"
"And the man?" she said coldly, beginning fiercely to resent the
brutality of his philosophy, though she had determined to remain
impersonal and amused.
"The man!" He laughed, throwing himself back in his chair, scowling a
little at this direct personal allusion. "There you have it! With one
question you have betrayed your whole morality--woman's morality! The
man! If I were a young cub with a romantic strut, talking big, it would
be different; it would not be a case of selling yourself--it would be an
infatuation!"
"Perhaps it is our morality," she said indignantly, thinking of
Massingale, and led insensibly into a defensive attitude. "Say it is!
It's at least natural!"
"You mean, in my case, the thing that makes you recoil is myself?" he
said abruptly. "More than any other consideration? Say it!"
"Quite true!"
"If I were asking you to marry me, if you had that opportunity, would
that feeling stop you?"
She was silent, surprised.
"It's a money transaction in either case, isn't it?"
"What a terrible view of life you have!" she said, appalled. She had
been prepared for danger of an overt character, not for the insidious
subtle poisoning which he was distilling in her ears. She drew back,
breathing quickly, fiercely resisting his ideas. "Money, money--that's
all you see, because that's all you understand!"
"I only wish to make you see!" he said, shrugging his shoulders, "that
there is no difference in being what I offer you and in being--"
"Mrs. Sassoon!" she said curtly.
He did not like the reference, man-like, though he frowned and admitted
the allusion with a wave of his fingers.
"As you wish!" Then he continued, with an unwonted energy for his tired
attitude: "No, I don't say everything can be controlled by money, but
that our world is. There are two sorts of human beings: those who work,
and those who live for pleasure. It's the last we're talking about. What
are you? You're a nervous, pretty little animal that has learned to
love luxury. You may know it, or you may not. You may have had the taste
of it before you came here, but you've steeped yourself in it since. You
couldn't help yourself! It's all about you; it's the corruption in every
street; it's New York! Don't you think I know you? What were you
thinking as you stood before that window to-night?"
"Yes, I love luxury!" she said abruptly, admitting it to shut him off.
"If you had never known New York, you might be different," he continued
triumphantly. "You might marry and be satisfied with a commonplace
routine existence. But, little girl, you're what you are! You covet
everything: jewels--oh, I saw your eyes when you refused that necklace;
clothes--you know your own worth and you've dreamed, you must have
dreamed, of what you'd be if you could wear what other women wear; you
want to go where others go, pay what others pay; you want to be watched,
courted, admired. Do you think you'll ever love any man as you love
yourself?"
"It isn't true!" she said furiously; yet his exposition had left her
weakly terrified.
"It is true! You know it! Stand up; look in the mirror! See yourself as
you can be, with jewels in your hair, against your neck, in dresses that
are worth hundreds, in furs that are worth thousands! Do you think you
could go in any assembly, theater or restaurant, but every one wouldn't
turn in amazement?"
She felt troubled, struggling against a heavy lassitude, regretting that
she had given him this opportunity; and instinctively, by a force
beyond her control, she raised her eyes to the mirror at the end of the
room, and saw a little girl in a simple dress, her hair in a confusion
of golden curls, and behind her the triumphant woman he had conjured to
her eyes.
"No coffee!" she said, nervously averting her eyes from his eager gaze.
"It's hot, dreadfully hot, in here."
There came a moment's pause, a lull after the first skirmish, during
which he lighted a cigar and waited, well content.
"It's all a question of opportunity," he began again, while her troubled
eyes went past him to the mirror of the future. "You can do now what you
can't do later! Do you want to end in a boarding-house, Miss Baxter?"
"Why do you--care for me?" she asked him abruptly.
"In the beginning, because you resisted me," he said, turning his cigar
in his fingers. "Now, because you hate me!"
"And knowing that I hate you, you want me?"
"A thousand times more!" he said, and for the first time the greed and
hunger rose in his eyes. But quickly he controlled himself.
"The moment I stopped resisting you, you would not care!" she said
slowly.
"True; but you would always resist!" he said quickly. "Besides, that is
what I like--what you must always do!"
He spoke now with eagerness, a restlessness in his voice, uneasiness in
his eyes. Despite the tenseness of the situation, looking on him thus, a
flash of pity and horror came to her as she felt, in her progress into
the knowledge of life, the hidden tragedies that lurk in the reverse of
a glittering medal.
"You overestimate what I can do!" she said at last.
"What are you afraid of?" he asked her, ignoring the remark. "The
opinion of society?"
She did not answer.
"Go on with your career!" he said impatiently. "The world will close its
eyes to what you do! If you haven't the courage, there's always a way.
Marry and separate!"
She looked so surprised at this that a thin smile came over his lips.
"There are a dozen men I can call on who will do you that slight
service!" he said grimly. "Listen! Let it be so! I will procure you a
husband, a very convenient, manageable husband, who will appear and
disappear. You'll become Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith, and after a few
months you can divorce. You will then be, in the eyes of the world,
perfectly qualified to do whatever you please, without danger of
criticism. That's society for you!"
"So that's the way it is done!" she thought, quite excited. For a brief
moment she let herself go into the role he had opened for her, wondering
if it were possible--if, under any circumstance, even if Massingale
should utterly fail her, she could succeed as he had prophesied.
"Really," she said, amazed, "you have men who would sell themselves for
that?"
"Do you wish to see?" he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. "It can be
done to-night!"
"To-night?"
"You don't believe me? I'll telephone now; I'll have your future husband
here in half an hour. Would you like to see him?"
"Not to-night!" she said, laughing. Then, pushing back, she added: "Are
you through?"
"Not quite."
He rose, took from his pocketbook two bills of a thousand dollars each,
and laid them beside her plate.
"What's this for?" she asked, raising her eyes.
"For the pleasure you have given me, Miss Baxter, in permitting me to
take dinner with you," he answered, smiling.
"Just for that?" she said ironically.
"Just for that!" he repeated. He drew back toward the window. "You see,
it was not so dangerous, after all. If you will get your things now, we
shall go!"
Her sense of the dramatic was struck.
"Ah, that's very clever of you!" she said, quite excited. Two thousand
dollars just for the favor of dining with her! How subtly he proclaimed
what she might expect in the future! The bills were horribly real,
seeming to adhere to her fingers. She repeated, wildly stirred: "Very
clever!"
He came closer to her, with veiled eagerness.
"Well, what is it to be?"
She left the money on the table, answering quietly:
"You know, don't you?"
"You will--"
"No!--of course!"
He frowned impatiently.
"Think it over!"
"There's no need!"
"How much do you want? Come, tell me!" he said roughly, with a brutality
from which the mask had been withdrawn.
She laughed triumphantly at the reappearance of the true Sassoon.
"Ah, I would be very expensive!"
"I don't care!"
"You haven't enough!"
"What!" he cried angrily, trying to seize her wrist. "You are fool
enough to refuse? You can have anything you want. I will make you
anything!"
"Sassoon, it's the man!" she said scornfully.
He drew back, red with anger.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that everything you have said fills me with horror!" she cried,
with a need of self-expostulation. "I wouldn't be you for all the
millions in the world! Thank God, I can be a fool! I can love like a
human being! I'd rather give up everything in the world to the man I
adore--"
With an exclamation, he sprang toward her, rage and lust in his eyes;
but, prepared, she flung a chair against his legs and escaped into the
drawing-room, slamming the door in his face, and darting from the
vestibule into the hall as he came blindly in pursuit. She did not stop
until she had descended the flight of stairs. Below, she turned, and
perceived his passion distorted face glowering down from the upper
landing.
"Will you kindly bring my things down, Mr. Sassoon? I'm going now," she
said, breathless, but exhilarated by the escape and the victory.
"Come and get them!" he said furiously, and he disappeared.
She frowned, not relishing the turn, calculating how to extricate
herself. At length, reluctantly, she descended the second flight,
resolved to send a boy up-stairs for her things. The vestibule in which
she found herself was a large one with glass doors opening into the
noisy restaurant, played over by an energetic Hungarian orchestra. As
she hesitated, conscious of the strange figure she presented, the glass
doors swung hastily and Harrigan Blood came out.
"Dodo! I thought I recognized you!" he cried, stopping short. "What in
the name of the incredible--"
She went to him quickly, grasping his arm, actuated by a sudden
brilliant plan of revenge.
"Mr. Blood--Harrigan!" she said quickly. "I was brought here by a
gentleman who had told me it was to be a party of eight or ten. I have
just escaped from the trap he laid for me! Will you give me your arm
while I go and reclaim my things?"
"Will I? I'll throttle him!" he said angrily. "The contemptible cur! Who
is he?"
"Sassoon!"
"My God!"
They went up-stairs, and pushed aside the half-open doors. At her
entrance, Sassoon turned like a startled animal, his face almost
unrecognizable with rage. In his fury he had caught his napkin and torn
it into shreds. A couple of chairs were overturned, and the covering of
the table pulled down. At the sight of Harrigan Blood striding in with
menacing looks, Sassoon checked his first impetuous advance, halting
abruptly, murder in his heart.
"I have come for my things, Mr. Sassoon, since you would not bring them
to me," Dore said, "and I found a _gentleman_ to accompany me."
"Is it true, what Miss Baxter says?" said Harrigan Blood, clearing the
space that separated them. "Did you bring her here with a lie--to a
trap?"
"Mind your own business!" cried Sassoon, with a scream of rage. "Who are
you to preach morality to me? You're a fine one to reproach any one, you
are!"
"I've done a lot of things in my life," said Blood, with rising wrath,
"but I never took a woman with a lie--like a thief! Sassoon, you're a
coward and a dirty cur!"
He caught him by the throat in his powerful grip, and slapped him twice
across the face; then, as a dog with a rat, he shook him in the air and
flung him in a heap against the foot of a chair, where he lay, stunned
and gasping for breath. Dodo, with her hat and coat, came out hastily,
very much frightened, awed at the sight of men in rage and combat.
"Oh, let's go--let's go!" she cried. "Oh, is he hurt? You've not--"
"Killed him? No, so much the worse!" Blood said scornfully. "Now get
away quickly; there must be no scandal!"
Below, on the sidewalk, he placed her in a taxicab, but refused to enter
with her.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "I'm a very human person, Miss Baxter;
I'm not going in the way of temptation, when I know there's no hope.
It's good-by, young lady!"
"I do like you--I admire you, Mr. Blood," she said, retaining his hand.
"Don't hate me!"
He looked at her for a moment, struggling with his emotion. At last he
said quietly, watching her with his strange eyes, that had the glowing
quality of the feline:
"Dodo, shall I come?"
She drew back as if wounded; then she closed the door, afraid.
"No!"
"You see? Good-by!"
"Don't hate me!" she said, suddenly leaning out of the window and
seizing his arm convulsively. "You mustn't! I'm only a wild, crazy
little thing."
"You're all that!" he said gravely. "Look here! After to-night I've a
right to say this. Look out! You're going to get into trouble; mind what
I say--the game's dangerous!"
He raised his hat, signaled the driver and turned to walk in the
direction of the subway. She was immensely sorry to lose him. She wanted
to call after him again not to hate her. For she had a feeling now that
all men, all whom she had gathered about her, hated her or would come to
hate her; that it was not love she inspired, but only an antagonism. She
was not sure even of Massingale. How could he love her, when she brought
nothing but unrest into his life--when she did nothing but make him
miserable and unhappy from morning to night? Then, she felt it was the
approach of the fatal tenth of March that was disorganizing her,
horribly hypnotizing her, shattering all her nerves, and she said to
herself that it could not go on; she must find peace somewhere; she
would not wait. To-morrow there would be a decision between Massingale
and herself. Either that, or she would go to Blainey, where she
belonged, and enter the world of work. To-morrow, without further delay
she would decide her life, before Lindaberry could return, or that
haunting image of her former life.
And when, at length, she had passed from the taxicab up the stoop and
into the dim-lit hall, Josh Nebbins was waiting for her in the gloom of
the parlor, as she had known for days he would come out of those musty
shadows which were like mists of the past.