CHAPTER XI
Now it happened that Sue had come in fresh and rosy from a walk, glowing with health this fine April afternoon, and had brought Pierre Lamont home with her. There is no secret about where she found him, nothing could have been more public or more innocent than their chance meeting on Fifth Avenue before the Reservoir, that solid and dignified monument with its wavy covering of ivy, which Joe considered the most impressive mass of stone in the city, with Bryant Park as its back yard, and enough Croton water soundly held within its four solemn Egyptian walls to have satisfied the most rabid of teetotalers, and before which Lamont’s patent-leather shoes and English buff-colored spats shone resplendently almost every afternoon between four and five. Indeed, he was so familiar a figure on Fifth Avenue, that his absence was noticed by many whose daily habit it was to see and be seen along the city’s most fashionable highway. More than one man noted in passing the cut and pattern of Lamont’s clothes before ordering his own. And though, unlike Beau Brummel, he did not actually set the fashion, they could rest assured that everything he wore was of the latest. The newest derby was his the day after it appeared in the window ofthe best hatter. He was a connoisseur as well in gloves and walking-sticks. He was said to pay a formidable price for his clothes, and they were conspicuous in return for their smartness and good taste. At least he dressed like a thoroughbred and a gentleman, and his ease and good looks carried him along triumphantly through many an escapade.
Like Bompard, that idle Norman of Maupassant’s, Lamont “was born with an unbelievable aptitude to do nothing, and an immoderate desire never to disturb that vocation.” This, however, did not prevent him from amusing himself, or of taking a flier on rising stocks, or the races now and then, with his wife’s money. It is safe to say, he worked harder in amusing himself than any other New Yorker of his time, and since there is no more strenuous existence than the daily pursuit of pleasure, no wonder that the silver touch to his temples was whiter for his years than most men’s, though even at thirty-five he had the clean-cut, bronzed complexion of a boy and the hands of a nobleman. Had Jean Valjean encountered him, he would have given him some sound advice; he would have said to him, as he did to Montparnasse: “Some day you will see others afar off working in the fields, and they will seem to you to be resting.” A counsel that clever footpad and criminal jeered at while the old ex-convict held him by the collar—quite as Lamont would have jeered—for every gentleman’s ways are his own, are they not?—and of no one else’s business.
Lamont knew Fifth Avenue as well as any man couldknow it, and as there is always one popular side to every thoroughfare, he chose that flanking the Reservoir, his promenade carrying him as far up as the Fifth Avenue Church, and as far down as the Hotel Brunswick, which he invariably crossed over to for a cocktail and a look over the coach horses, and where often several people from London of his acquaintance were stopping.
Any one with half an eye could have seen how frequently society women whom he knew stopped to greet him. He made a tall, handsome figure as he bent over them, chatting about the dinner of the night before, or the cotillon, or the play, or the new lot of débutantes. They thought him fascinating—and he was. When a woman spoke to him, she spoke directly into his brilliant black eyes. In her presence he was always in a state of irrepressible good-humor, agreeing with her in everything, and skilful enough, you may be sure, never to criticise her rival. That he forced a would-be friendly smile from others, in passing, of no acquaintance whatsoever, was purely his own affair—and theirs. He always knew what to say instantly, no matter who she was, or where he imagined they had last met. No Italian could have been more gallant, and no Frenchman more courteous or experienced.
He had seen Sue’s trim, slender little figure ahead of him step from the overcrowded stage, gain the sidewalk, and turn rapidly down Fifth Avenue. Instantly he quickened his pace, drawing up to her, Sue unconsciousthat he was following her, until he smilingly lifted his hat.
“Hello, little playmate!” he laughed. “And where areyougoing, pray tell?” Sue started and turned.
“Why, Mr. Lamont! Why, I’m going home,” said she. “Isn’t it a glorious day! The stage was so noisy and stuffy I couldn’t stand it any longer. I just had to get out and walk.”
“Home,” he ventured, with the vestige of a sigh. “May I come?”
“Why—why, yes, of course you may,” she laughed back, “if you’d really like to,” swept off her feet by their sudden meeting and his quick proposal.
“Like to!” he smiled. “If you only knew how good you are to ask me. I’m so wretchedly lonely to-day.”
“Now, Mr. Lamont, that’s a fib and you know it. You don’t mean to tell me you’re lonely on a day like this? It’s too glorious. Did you ever see such a sky?”
“I hadn’t noticed it,” he confessed, slipping deftly to her left side. “Wonderful!” he exclaimed, looking up. “Marvellous! It’s blue,isn’tit?”
“You didn’t think it was green, did you, like the moon? They say it’s really made of green cheese,” she laughed mischievously. “Isn’t it just the most adorable blue? Don’t you think New York skies are wonderful? Didn’t you ever wish you were a swallow, and could go skimming about in that exquisite space? Think of it.”
“But I don’t want to be a swallow,” said he, swinginghis stick. “I cannot imagine anything more deadly dull than being a swallow. I enjoy my flights of imagination much more, I assure you. How well you look.”
She glanced up at him with an embarrassed little smile, her pretty teeth gleaming whiter than the single small pearl at her throat.
“It’s wonderful how New York agrees with you,” he declared, as they strode on past the white marble balustrade of the Stewart mansion, his eyes taking in at their ease the dimples in her rosy cheeks, and the full color of her lips. “Do you know there’re lots of girls here who’d give anything for your color. They’re faded out, poor little dears, with too much rich food and dancing; never get to bed until morning, and seldom out of it until noon. I never give a débutante more than six months to look as old as her chaperon.”
“I think we’d better cross here,” she said, as they reached Madison Square; “it’s shorter.”
“Careful,” said he.
His hand grasped her soft arm tenderly. She felt his strength as he guided her firmly between the passing carriages, his grip relaxing again to a gentle pressure that was almost a caress as they reached the opposite curbstone in safety.
“Thank you,” said she, a little flushed. His lighter prattle had subsided. On their way through the square they fell quickly into their bond of common sympathy—music—of which he knew and talked as fluently as a professional—a wider knowledge sadly lacking in Joe, whose limitations were confined to thetunes he could whistle. He filled her eager ears with a host of interesting remarks about the true value of the diminished seventh, explaining to her how it was often overdone meaninglessly, like many pyrotechnic displays in chromatic scales meant toépaterthe audience, and which no sane composer would think of letting run riot in his orchestration. “Meaningless pads,” he called them, and Sue clearly understood. By the time they had cut through Fourth Avenue and Union Square, he had explained to her the difference between the weird, cold harmonies of Grieg and the subtler passion of Chopin, carrying her on to the orchestral effects of Tschaikowsky, and how he produced them. Then in lighter vein he spoke of Planquette and his merry “Chimes of Normandy,” and of Planquette’s snug little villa among his pines and flower-beds on the Norman French coast, which he had been to and had had many a good day’s shooting from Planquette’s snipe-blind close by on the dune, in ear-shot of his piano—of what a genial host he was.
Sue strolled on by his side, absorbed as a child in the midst of a fairy-tale. By the time they reached Waverly Place, she had had the most delightful walk of her life. “How could he ever be lonely,” she thought, “with all those memories? Why had he not told her more of them before?” She began to feel sorry for her treatment of him that brilliant tragic evening at the Van Cortlandts’, and almost confessed it to him as they went up the stoop together and she opened the dingy black walnut door with its ground-glasspanels, one of which depicted Fortune hugging a dusty sheaf of wheat, and the other, Mercury in full flight through a firmament of sand-blasted clouds. He followed her up the stairs. Nothing escaped him, neither the mat which Ebner Ford had placed himself in front of his threshold, with a deep “Welcome” branded on it in red letters, or the Rogers group which Mrs. Ford had generously given to the niche in the hallway, and which portrayed a putty-colored father reading the evening paper to the spellbound delight of his wife and five putty-colored children.
Mrs. Ford, who had just put her hat on and caught sight of them as they came up the stoop, rushed instantly to the piano; she flew at the most difficult part of her chef-d’œuvre, “The Storming of Sebastopol,” with a will, as if nothing had happened, as if Mr. Pierre Lamont was not only then actually ascending the stairs to her door, if he had not already reached it; whereas the delighted expectancy of that lady was so intense, that she mistook the loud pedal for the soft, opening a broadside from the English fleet at precisely the moment Sue opened the door. Her surprise as her small, pudgy hands left the keyboard in the position her “Manual for Beginners” decreed, can be imagined!
“Why, Mr. Lamont!” she exclaimed effusively, forgetting she had never met him, oblivious to her daughter’s hasty introduction. “How good of you to come.”
“We met at the Reservoir,” declared Sue frankly, laying aside her hat and jacket, and patting her fairhair neatly in place before the mirror over the mantel.
“By chance, I assure you, Mrs. Ford,” explained Lamont, his Parisian code of delicacy in such matters tactfully coming to the rescue.
“Well, I’m glad you did,” beamed the mother. “Don’t you think she looks splendidly, Mr. Lamont?”
She slipped an arm lovingly about her daughter’s neck.
“I’ve already complimented Miss Preston upon that,” he returned graciously.
“Now, Mr. Lamont, you know how I hate compliments,” protested Sue.
“But when they’re true,” he laughed, seating himself upon the new gilt chair Mrs. Ford had offered him.
“Mr. Lamont, I tell her she is much too modest, with all her talents,” the mother declared, framing the rosy cheeks in her hands, much to Sue’s embarrassment.
“After all, Mrs. Ford,” returned Lamont, “is there anything more charming than modesty in a young girl? Isn’t that a talent in itself? Most girls are so ridiculously conceited nowadays—often over nothing, I assure you.” He sat gracefully at his ease, his ringed hands still gloved, still holding his stick and hat, much to the mother’s surprise and anxiety—another Parisian method—a formality he carefully observed in calling upon young girls in the presence of their mothers. Had she been his fiancée he would have done the same in France. Had she been alone, married or widowed, with the door liable to open at any instant by husbandor friend, at least they would have found his presence correct and above suspicion, since it can be logically argued by the French that a gentleman whose hands are enslaved with his gloves, hat, and stick cannot possibly make love any more than the ostrich can pursue his mate with his head in the sand.
Mrs. Ford’s anxiety was noticeable.
“Do let me take your stick and hat,” she ventured, unable longer to repress her fears of his possible sudden departure. He seemed to give them to her almost unwillingly, peeling off his dogskin gloves and expressing himself as deeply touched by her welcome, and adding that he feared he was “very muchde trop,” as he noticed that she was about to go out.
“You must be frank with me, Mrs. Ford; I fear I am keeping you,” he declared, rising briskly.
“You see, darling,” she explained to Sue, “I was just going around to see the little Jones girl; she’s been desperately ill, you know. You mustn’t think of going, Mr. Lamont. You’ll excuse me, won’t you?—and you’ll make yourself at home, won’t you? You’ll stay to tea, of course. Just one moment while I tell the maid.”
“Won’t you please go on telling me more of the wonderful things of your life, Mr. Lamont?” pleaded Sue, as her mother returned. “Oh, mother, Ihavehad such a glorious walk. If you could only have heard all the interesting things Mr. Lamont has been telling me. Do tell me more about Planquette. Think of it, mother—Mr. Lamont actually knew him.”
“Oh, do!” exclaimed Mrs. Ford. “How interesting—oh, dear! I wish I could stay, but Imustsee the Jones girl. They’ll be hurt if I don’t, you know, deary,” she smiled, nodding to Sue. “But you’re coming again, aren’t you, Mr. Lamont?” she insisted, grasping his hand warmly.
“I should be charmed to,” said he, and bowed over her hand; in fact, he lifted it to his lips, a gesture Mrs. Ford had read about in novels and seen on the stage, but had never experienced. Her startled, embarrassed delight did not escape him.
“Then you can tell me all about Planquette,” said she, beaming over the honor he had bestowed upon her finger-tips. “Planquette! What a wonderful man he was, wasn’t he? Of course, we’ve all read his books, his ‘Miserables’ was one of my father’s favorites. Grand, isn’t it, Mr. Lamont? So full of quaint pathos and humor. I’ve simply shrieked over it when I was a girl.”
“But, mother dear,” exclaimed Sue, “we were speaking of Planquette, the composer—not Victor Hugo!”
“Why, of course—how stupid of me.”
“I was just telling your daughter,” he explained, “that I happened to know Planquette, you see, because my mother and I used to rent a little villa in Cabourg for the summer, not far from his on the Normandy coast. We lived in France several years, Mrs. Ford, long after my schoolboy days there.”
“Think of it! Well, I never; and you really lived in France. Of course you speak the French languagefluently. They say the French are so excitable. Cora Spink ought to know. She lived a whole month right in Paris, among the French. She said they pull and haul you about so.”
The smile he had been able to repress for the last few minutes got the better of him. He grinned.
“I never found them so,” he confessed quietly. “They’re the kindest and calmest people in the world.”
“S’pose you’ve seen everything,” she affirmed, edging, to Lamont’s intense relief, toward the door. “The guillotine, and the Opera House, and where Napoleon is buried.”
Her small, pudgy hand hesitated on the big, white-china knob, while she added:
“How well I remember my father’s engravings of these. They hung in the hall of our ancestral mansion in North Carolina. Mr. Snyder, an artist neighbor of ours, told my father—I remember so well—it was just after he became judge—that they were quite valuable. Father was a great admirer of the French. I recall him now going down into the cellar himself to decanter some old French brandy we had, the finest, they used to say, in the State of North Carolina, Mr. Lamont—as they always said,” she declared proudly, “what the judge didn’t have under his roof, no other North Carolinian did. Now Imustbe going. That little girl’s ears are tingling, I know, to hear more about your wonderful discoveries. Good-by—or, rather,au revoirI should say, shouldn’t I?”
She waved her hand lightly toward them both.
“Au revoir, madame,” he returned, with a low bow.
The door with the china knob closed. She was gone, her step growing fainter down the stairs, and when at last she opened that half of the front door bearing Fortune hugging her sheaf of wheat, closed it with a click, and had stepped over the whirling dust and two circulars of a dentist celebrated for his cheap prices, and had made her way safely down the stoop, and Sue, with her back to her precious Chippendale table, started to break the awkward silence that had followed her mother’s departure, Lamont stretched out both hands to her pleadingly.
“Come!” he exclaimed, softly. “Let us have a good talk. I have so much to say to you. Won’t you sit there?” he entreated, nodding to the sofa.
He saw, with sudden delight, that her lips were quivering, and felt half the battle won.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, tenderly, his hand hovering temptingly over her smooth shoulder, the pink flesh veiled by the thin, dark-blue sheen of her blouse.
“Nothing,” she returned faintly, her voice trembling. “Oh! Mr. Lamont, please don’t ask me.”
“Are you lonely, too?” he asked. “Somethinghashappened—something I’ve said, perhaps——”
He bent over her.
“Tell me. Have I hurt you? Tell me, dear—have I?”
She did not lift her eyes. Two big, hot tears blurredthem, and went their own way down her burning cheeks. His word, “dear,” had had its effect.
“I can’t tell you,” she protested painfully.
“But youmust,” he insisted. “I’ve seen a lot, little girl. There’s nothing that you could ever tell me that I wouldn’t understand.”
She made a brave effort to meet his eyes candidly.
“It wouldn’t be right,” she declared. “That is—it wouldn’t be loyal of me. Oh! can’t you understand? I should hate myself—afterward.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Then it is more serious than I supposed.”
“You couldn’t help me, if I did tell you,” she managed to say at length. “No one can help me. I’ve just got to go on and bear it, I suppose.”
“But I wouldn’t tell a soul,” he insisted, his lips close to her cheek. “And perhaps I could help you. Little girl—whatever it is I’ll never tell a soul. There—do you believe me? Ah! my poor little playmate—you were so happy this afternoon when we met.”
“I’m never really happy,” he heard her murmur. “I’ve never been really happy for a whole day in my life,” she continued, twisting her handkerchief nervously into a hard moist knot. “Oh, can’t you understand?”
“And who has?” he argued cheerily. “Happy for a whole day! Ah, no, my dear! One is never happy for a whole day. Happiness is never more than a question of seconds, and even they are rare. Happyfor a whole day!Parbleu!you do not ask much, do you, littlegourmande.”
“So many peoplearehappy,” she faltered.
“You’re not ill?” he ventured. “Bah! Not with that splendid health of yours. Then what? Tell me, are you in love?”
She started.
“If youare, you’d better get out of it—love’s a terrible game. It doesn’t pay. It’s about as stupid a pastime as being jealous. Your eyes are too blue to be jealous. Come, be frank with me—am I right?”
“Your life’s so different,” she weakened to explain.
“My life? Ah! my poor little playmate, and so you considermylife’s a happy one—married to a woman who never loved me from the first.”
“Oh, please!” she protested.
“Whose indifference,” he continued, “has taken the heart out of me at last, whose entire interest lies in her club and her women friends. I did love her; I loved her madly—madly, do you understand?—but, what’s the use? Ah,non, mon Dieu!” he cried. “Real happiness in life lies in a good comrade,” and would have gone on further to explain, but checked himself. “I see,” he said after a moment. “It’sthis,” he ventured, sweeping his black eyes dramatically over the ugly little room.
She gave him a startled look in protest.
“I don’t blame you, my dear.”
She feared he would continue. He had guessed the truth, and to her relief ceased speaking, not daringfor the moment to touch even as skilfully as he could upon her impossible mother, or her stepfather, whom he could imagine by hearsay but had never seen. Nothing, in fact, escaped him; neither the sordid commonness of the apartment, with its hodgepodge of bad taste, its dingy semblance of comfort, or the mother’s effusive ignorance. He had reached that period in his suit when he felt that he was wasting time, when he longed to take this little rose that had tumbled into all this common débris of the boresome and the ordinary into his arms.
She was again on the verge of confessing to him, innocently enough, at least how much pretty things appealed to her. Deep down in her young heart (though she was too loyal to confess it) she saw clearly her mother’s ignorance and her failings; still deeper down she abhorred Ebner Ford. Even her respect for him had vanished shortly after her mother’s marriage. He had even lied to her about the little money she had earned and had given him. And yet she ended by saying simply:
“Mother is so silly at times.” Even this she softened by the fact that she loved her dearly.
“You seem so out of place in all this,” he declared tensely, and so suddenly that before she knew it he had seized her swiftly in his arms. “Sue—listen to me!”
“Don’t!” she gasped faintly, every nerve in her quivering in a helpless effort to free herself.
“Sue! Listen to me—you poor darling!” Shestrained away from him, covering her lips with her clenched hands while he sought her fresh young mouth.
“Don’t!” she pleaded. “Oh, please! Please! Plea——”
He stifled her words with his lips, in a kiss that left her trembling and dazed. Only when he saw the fear in her eyes, did he open his arms and release her. Well satisfied with his work, his black eyes gleaming, the memory of her lips aflame within him, and she standing there sobbing, her flushed face buried in her hands, did not lessen in the least for him the brief ecstasy of that moment.
She tried to cry out, to speak, but her voice failed her, despite the revulsion within her—all was so new, so terrible to her. Nothing was new to Pierre Lamont. It had been like a good draft of wine. He had drained his glass.
“I hate—you—” she stammered, but he expected that. Quick to hold that which he had won, he forced her burning hands into his own, pleading with her to forgive him, that he was only human, after all; that she had made him forget at least one moment of his own unhappiness; that if she had any pity in her heart, it was time to show it now; that she had haunted him ever since that afternoon he had played for her at Mrs. Van Cortlandts’, though he was quick to pass over any further mention of her name (Rose, whom he met daily, the days he could not meet her being spent drinking morosely at his club). Again he beggedher to listen to him, to forgive him; he grew even humble in his promises, until she half believed him, and suffered herself to be led to a seat beside him on the sofa—still dazed and fearing his dominating insistence—poisoned with that subtle gentleness of his, and the low, earnest tone in his voice, a voice that promised her immunity from any further display of his emotions, while she sat there, twisting her moist little handkerchief into a harder knot and trying hard to keep back the tears.
That was exactly what happened, wasn’t it, Lamont? But since you are no fool, you did not jeopardize her welfare. Life has made you what you are, and of course it is no fault of yours. Who gave you that power to hypnotize? Experience; long experience. With your good looks and your clever tenderness you have won a hundred victories over the defenseless and the weak that the world has never known, you handsome blackguard. Some day you will find your match, as you found her once in Paris—that little seamstress who never liked you—do you remember? The one who lived next to the creamery on the Rue Blanche and saved her sous and her sentiment, and who calmly dropped you a word one afternoon, and the next found you sailing from Havre. You even took a first-class ticket—as if the police are fastidious as to what class a man they’re after travels in.
“What did he think of her? Whatcouldhe think of her?” she thought—afraid to ask him.
“Please go,” she murmured, at length, her breathcoming in short gasps. “Won’t you go now?” she pleaded.
“And you’ll forgive me?” he insisted. “We’re going to be old friends, aren’t we? Just as we were before—and forget all about it.”
“I’ll try,” she breathed.
“You know I wouldn’t hurt you for the world—you know that, don’t you?”
She nodded, in silence.
“Tell me!”
“Yes,” she said, half audibly, meeting his eyes bravely.
“When may I see you again?” he ventured easily, rising to his feet.
“I—I don’t know—perhaps never. It depends so much on you.”
“There! That’s better—of course, it depends on me. We’ll be good friends—you shall see. I keep my promises, you know.There—are you happier?”
She did not answer. Before he could speak, his quick ear and hers caught the sound of the front door opening, and her mother’s step on the stairs. Instinctively she flew to her room to freshen her tear-stained face and rearrange her hair. In less time than it took Mrs. Ford to reach her door Sue was beside him, looking remarkably calm and neat under the circumstances, he thought, for her age. The next moment he bent ceremoniously over her hand as Mrs. Ford rushed into the room, bursting with good news over the little Jones girl, and overjoyed to find him still there. Her delight being of short duration, since beforeshe was fully aware of it, he had graciously taken his leave, allaying her fears with so sincere a promise to call soon again, that she followed him out into the hall, and sent him threeau revoirsdown the stairs, as the last vestige of him passed Fortune and her dusty harvest. Even then she flew to the window, her mouth as small as a button, pursed in expectation, but he did not look up. He was thirsty and wanted a drink, and with that foremost in his mind, set out briskly for the Hotel Brunswick, where he met Dicky Riggles, who was drunk, and his bulldog, who was sober—and so on down to Rose Van Cortlandt, who had been waiting for him in the café of the old Martin, where she half forgot her bad temper in conversing in her worst French to a patient waiter, who spoke it fluently.
And where do you suppose they dined? Close by, on the corner, at Solari’s, that fine old house with its blinds always closed and its door always open, and where Rose became even cheerful over the best green-turtle soup in the whole world and as mellow and convincing a bottle of Moulin à Vent as was ever born on the sunny flanks of Burgundy—a pure and noble wine, discreetly served by an aged waiter. They were the only persons in the spotlessly clean old dining-room, as old-fashioned as the bar down-stairs, whose marble statues of “The Three Graces” always seemed to be thinking of the past.
“Well, darling, youhavehad a gala-day, haven’t you?” exclaimed Mrs. Ford, bustling excitedly back from her disappointed vigil at the window. “Why,my dear, he’s simply charming. Such manners! Did you notice his rings? Superb, weren’t they? Tell me, honey, was the tea nicely served?”
“Mr. Lamont said he never touches it—so—so we didn’t have any,” explained Sue, wearily enough for her mother to notice it.
“Headache, honey?” she asked tenderly. “I’m so distressed about the tea, deary. I did want him to see my new embroidery.”
“It’s nothing, mother—only one of my old headaches. I’ll be all right after a little nap.”
“I hope he didn’t notice it, darling. Tell me—did I look nicely?”
“Why, of course, mother——”
“Didn’t he think my new hat becoming? Don’t tell me he didn’t, for I know he did. He could hardly take his eyes off it—such a sweet surprise from father, wasn’t it?”
“Mr. Lamont didn’t mention it, mother.”
“Well,” she sighed, laying the new jet bonnet over the two-handed copy of “The Storming of Sebastopol” on top of the piano, “I suppose he sees so many, doesn’t he?”
“I’m sure he does, mother,” Sue returned quietly, moving wearily to the new gilt chair he had occupied—another one of Ebner Ford’s recent munificent surprises, which she put back in its place next to the piano, a formidable-looking black upright with a weak tone, its fret-sawed front backed with magenta satin. Then she entered her bedroom and closed her door.