She came in with her arms full of parcels. He held the book up triumphantly. “I’m awfully-proud. You are a queer kiddy. Why didn’t you tell me? I thought you didn’t care.”
Her parcels scattered. She grabbed the book from him. “That’s cheating.” She flushed scarlet. “Of course I care. What girl wouldn’t? But if I feel a thing deeply I don’t gush. I’m like that.”
“But you talk about Fluffy’s work; you’re always diving through crowds to see if her picture isn’t on news-stands. You tell me what your friend, Tom, is doing and—and heaps of people.”
“They’re different.”
“How?”
“If you don’t know, I can’t tel! you.”
“But I’m so proud of you, Princess. I do wish that sometimes,” he tried to take her hand—she fortressed herself behind a chair, “that sometimes you’d show that you were a little proud of me.”
“Oh, you!” She bit her finger the way she did when she suspected that he was going to try to kiss her mouth. Her eyes danced and mocked him above her hand. “Fancy poor little you wanting some one to be proud of you. Meester Deek, that does sound soft.”
“Does it?” His voice trembled. “I don’t mind how foolish I am before you. But I do wish sometimes that you’d treat me as though I wasn’t different. You’ve only called me twice by my name. You won’t dance with me, though I learnt especially for you. You won’t do all kinds of ordinary things that you’re willing to do with people who don’t count.”
All the while that he had been speaking she had smiled at him, her finger still childishly in her mouth. When he had ended, she came from behind her chair and threw herself on the couch. “I have piped unto you and ye have not danced. Is that it, Meester Deek? So now you’re weeping to see if I won’t mourn. I’m afraid I’m not the mourning sort; life’s too happy.—But I’m not nice to you. Come and sit down. I’m afraid I’m least gracious to the people I like best. Ask mother; she’ll tell you.”
Just as he was about to accept her invitation, Twinkles entered, her tail erect, and hopping on the couch, planted herself between them. She had the prim air of a dog who is the custodian of her mistress’s morals.
Desire began to toy with the silky ears. “My little chaperone knows what’s best for me, I guess.—Meester Deek doesn’t love ’oo, Twinkles. He thinks ’oo’s a very interfering little doggie.”
He did. Despite his best efforts Twinkles growled at him and refused to be friends. She was continually making his emotion ridiculous. She timed her absurdly sedate entrances for the moments when the cloud of his pent-up feelings was about to burst.
“Love’s Labor LostorDivided by a Dog.” Desire glanced, through her lashes laughingly. “You could write a play on it Twinkles and I could take the leading parts without rehearsing.”
After his discovery that she had read his book he began to try to interest her in his work—his contemplated work which was scarcely commenced while she kept him waiting. She seemed pleased when he placed his manuscripts in her lap. She loved to play the part of his severest critic, sweeping tempestuously aside all ideas that she pronounced unworthy of him.
The only side of his career in which she failed to show interest was the financial. The mere mention of money made her shrivel up. He had hoped that if he could persuade her to talk about it, he might be able to confess his straitened circumstances. He guessed the reason for her delicacy and respected it: concern on her part over his bank-account might make her look grasping. After each vain attempt to broach the subject, he would dodge back to cover as if he hadn’t meant it, and would commence to tell her hurriedly of his dreams of fame. While he did it, a comic little smile would keep tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“I don’t think you’re wasting time with me,” she said.
“I know I’m not.”
“But I meant something different. I meant that you’re learning about life; I’m making awfully good copy for you. One day, when I’m a famous actress and you’re married to some nice little woman who’s jealous of me, you’ll write a book—a most heart-rending book—that’ll make her still more jealous. It’ll be a kind of sequel toLife Till Twenty-one, I guess. All experience, however much it costs, is valuable.—You’re laughing at me. But isn’t it?”
“You wise little person.”
“Just common-sense—and not so terribly little, either,” she corrected.
Many of these conversations took place towards midnight, after he had seen her home from dinners or theatres. Usually they were carried on in whispers so as not to waken Vashti, who left her bedroom door ajar when she knew that Desire was to be late in returning. As a rule, Desire was in evening-dress; he was sensitively conscious of her mist of hair, and of the long sweet slope of her white arms and shoulders. After taking Twinkles for a final outing, he always accompanied her up to the apartment Once she had had to press him to do so; now she often pretended that she had expected him to say good-night in the public foyer.
Saying good-night was a lengthy process, packed with the day’s omitted tendernesses and made poignant by a touch of dread. After he had risen reluctantly from the couch, they would linger in the hall, lasting out the seconds. There were few words uttered. When a man has said, “I love you,” many times, there is no room for further eloquence. She would stand with her back against the wall, eyeing him luringly and a little compassionately. Presently her hand would creep up to the latch and he would seize the opportunity to slip his arm about her. Wouldn’t she appoint a place of meeting for to-morrow? She would shake her head and whisper evasively, “Phone me in the morning.”
Gazing at each other in quivering excitement, they would droop nearer together. She knew that soon he would draw her to his breast. At the first movement on his part she would turn the latch and her free hand would fly up to shield her mouth. He would attempt to coax it away with kisses.
“I’ve only kissed your lips once. And you’ve never kissed me yet. Won’t you kiss me, Desire?”
The tenacious little hand would remain obdurate. “Meester Deek, you mustn’t. The door’s open. If anybody saw us——”
If he tried to pull it away, she would call softly so that nobody could hear her, “Help, Meester Deek is kissing me.” If he went on trying, she would gradually call louder.
By degrees she would get him to the elevator; but unless she rang the bell, he preferred to descend by the stairs for the joy of seeing her leaning over the rail and raining down kisses to him. The further he descended the more willing she seemed to be accessible. If he turned to go back to her, her face would vanish and he would hear her door shutting.
These farewells embodied for him the ghostly acme of romance. They were the balcony scene fromRomeo and Julietenacted on the stairway of a New York apartment-house. From such frail materials till the new day brought promise, he constructed the palace of his hopes and ecstasies. It was the ghost of happiness that he had found; happiness itself escaped him. He longed for her to love him.
Was she incapable of passion—she who could rouse it to the danger-mark in others? He suspected that he was too gentle with her; but forcefulness brought memories of Mr. Dak. Though she made herself the dearest of companions, he knew that her feeling was no more than intense liking. He had failed to stir her.
Sometimes he thought that out of cowardice she was wilfully preventing herself from loving; sometimes that she was diverting the main stream of her affection in a wrong direction. She could still court separation from him without regret Fluffy had only to raise her finger and all his plans were scattered. Fluffy raised her finger very often now that Horace had left.
He despised himself for feeling jealous of a woman; but he was jealous. Fluffy knew that she was his rival. When they were all three together, she would amuse herself with half-sincere attempts to help him in his battle: “He looks at you so nicely. Why don’t you marry him?” But she robbed him remorselessly of Desire whenever it pleased her fancy. “Oh, these men!” she would sigh, shrugging her pretty shoulders. “Don’t you know, little Desire, that it does them good to keep them guessing?”
While the days slipped by unnumbered, he tried to persuade himself that Desire’s difficulty of winning made her the more worthy of his worship. He often thought of his father’s picture, buried beneath dusty canvasses in the stable at Eden Row. It was like that. He had stumbled into a Garden Enclosed, basking in lethargy, where Love peered in through the locked gate, and all things waited and slumbered. Then came the awakening, shattering in its earnestness.
It was three days before Christmas. The weather had turned to a sparkling coldness. Tall buildings looked like Niagaras of stone, poured from the glistening blueness of the heavens. In Madison Square and Columbus Circle Christmas trees had been set up. New York had a festive atmosphere—almost an atmosphere of childhood. Schools had broken up; streets were animated with laughing faces. Mistletoe and holly were in evidence. At frequent corners a Santa Claus was standing, white-bearded and red-coated, clattering his bell. Broadway and Fifth Avenue were thronged with matinée-girls and their escorts. They sprang up like flowers, tripping along gayly, snuggling their cheeks against their furs. Stores were Aladdin’s Caves, where money could make dreams come true. The spendthrift good-nature of the crowds was infectious.
All afternoon he had been shopping with her. “Our first Christmas together,” he kept saying. He invented plan after plan for making the season memorable. “When we’re old married people,” he told her, “we’ll look back. It’ll be something to talk about.”
“Only you mustn’t talk about it before your wife,” she warned him slyly.
“Why not?”
“She won’t like it, naturally. A Joan likes to think she was her Darby’s first and only.”
He drew her arm closer into his, and peeped beneath the brim of her hat, “Well, and wasn’t she?”
“Old stupid.”
Over his cheerfulness, though he tried to dispel it, hung a mist of melancholy. He was reminded of all the Christmases which his father and mother had helped to make glad. If this was the first he had spent with Desire, it was the first he had been absent from them. They would be lonely. His gain in happiness was in proportion to their loss. He felt guilty; it came home to him at every turn that his treatment of them had not been handsome.
Suddenly she bubbled into laughter. “You do look tragic Cheer up.” Perching her chin on her clasped hands, she leant towards him, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“But there is. Is it anything that I’ve said or done? I’m quite willing to apologize. Tell me.” Her voice sank from high spirits till it nearly trembled into tears. “You promised always to be honest” Her hand stole out and caressed his fingers. “Our first Christmas together! Mee-ster Deek, you’re not going to make it sad after—after all our good times together?”
“I’m not making it sad.” He spoke harshly. His tone startled her. She stared at him, puzzled. For the first time he had failed to be long-suffering.
“Perhaps we’d better be going.”
Assuming an air of dignity, she slipped into her jacket and commenced to gather up her furs. Usually they enacted a comedy in which he hurried to her assistance and she made haste to forestall him. Instead, he beckoned for the bill.
“Perhaps we had,” he said shortly.
When the waiter had gone for the change, he began to relent. Fumbling in his breast-pocket, he pulled out the case and placed it on the table.
“I got this for you, not because it cost money, but because I thought you’d like it.”
She did not touch it. “Three days till Christmas. It isn’t time for presents yet.”
“Will you promise to accept it?”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s a little brooch or somethings isn’t it? Let’s wait till Christmas Eve, anyway—till the day after to-morrow.”
“I want you to see it now.”
The waiter came back with the change. He picked it up without counting it, keeping his eyes on hers. She was fingering the case with increasing curiosity.
“But why now?”
“Because——-” He couldn’t explain to her.
Her face cleared and broke into graciousness. “You are funny. Well, if it means so much to you——” She examined the case first. “Tiffany’s! So that’s what you were doing when you left me—busting yourself? Shall I take just one peek at it?—Give me a smile then to show that we’re still friends—— All right—to please you.”
He twisted on his chair and gazed into the room. The moment while he waited was an agony. He was a prisoner waiting for the jury to give its verdict. All his future hung upon her words.
She gasped. “What a darling! Diamonds! Are they diamonds? They must be since they’re Tiffany’s. But it must have cost—-”
He swung round. Her glance fell. “I can’t take it.”
“You can. You’re going to. Here, let’s try it on—There!”
She fidgeted it round, watching the stones sparkle. She seemed fascinated, and wavered. Then she gathered her will-power: “No, Meester Deek. What kind of a girl d’you think I am?”
She tried to remove it; he stayed her. They sat in silence. It was very much as though they had quarreled—the queerest way to give and receive a present.
He picked up the empty case and slipped it in his pocket “I’ll carry it for you. What’ll we do next? A theatre?”
She glanced down at her green tweed suit. “Not dressy enough. Besides,” she consulted the watch on her wrist, “it’s nine.—Oh, I know; let’s visit Fluffy. We’ll catch her between the acts.”
Fluffy was leading lady inWho Killed Cock Robin?which was playing to crowded houses at The Belshazzar.
At the corner of Forty-second Street and Times Square he held her elbow gingerly to guide her through the traffic; on the further pavement he released it They walked separately. Then something happened which marked an epoch in their relations. Shyly she took his arm; previously it was he who had taken hers. She hugged it to her so that their shoulders came together. “Can’t you guess why I wanted to see Fluffy? I’m dying to show it to her.” Then, in a shamefaced little whisper: “Don’t think I’m ungrateful, Meester Deek. I never could say thanks. People—people who really like me understand.”
They came to The Belshazzar with its blazing sign, branding Janice Audrey on the night in fiery letters. There was something rather magnificent about marching in at the stage-entrance unchallenged. As they turned into the narrow passage which ran up beside the theatre, passers-by would halt to watch them, thinking they had discovered a resemblance in their faces to persons well known in stage-land. Even Teddy felt the thrill of it, though he was loth to own it, for these peeps behind the scenes cost him dearly; they invariably rekindled Desire’s ambitions to be an actress. She would talk of nothing else till midnight. The chances were that the rest of his evening would be spoilt; that was what usually happened if he allowed himself to be coaxed into the lady-peacock’s dressing-room. If the lady herself was before the footlights, he would have to hear Desire talking theatrical shop with her dresser. If she was present, he would have to sit ignored, listening to her accepting the grossest flatteries, till he seemed to himself to have become conspicuous by not joining in the chorus of adoration. In the seductive insincerity of that little nest, with its striped yellow wall-paper, its dressing-table littered with grease-paints, its frothy display of strewn attire, its perfumed atmosphere and its professional acceptance of the feminine form as a fact, he had spent many an unamiable hour.
As they passed the door-keeper, Desire smiled proudly. “We’re visiting Miss Audrey.” The man peered above his paper, recognized her and nodded. She glanced up at Teddy merrily, “Just as if we were members of the company.”
Breaking from him, she ran ahead up the stairs: “You wait here. I’ll let you know if it’s all right.”
In his mind’s eye he followed her. He imagined her flitting along the passage from which the dressing-rooms led off, on whose doors were pinned the names of their temporary occupants. He imagined the faded photographs of forgotten stars, gazing mournfully down on her youth from the walls. At the far end she would pause and tap, listening like an alert little bird for the answer. Then the door would open, and she would vanish. She was showing Fluffy her watch-bracelet now; they were vying with each other in their excited exclamations. He could picture it all.
It seemed to him that she had kept him waiting a long while—a longer time than usual. It might be only his impatience; time always hung heavy without her. Men passed—men who belonged to the management. They looked worried and evidently resented his presence. He returned their resentment, feeling that they were mistaking him for a stage Johnny.
At last he determined to wait no longer. As he climbed the stairs, he heard the muttering of voices and some one sobbing. All the doors of the dressing-rooms were open. The passage was crowded. The entire cast was there in their stage attire. Managers of various sorts were pushing their way back and forth. A newspaper man was being hustled out. Something might have happened to Desire. The disturbance was in Fluffy’s dressing-room. He elbowed his way to the front and peered breathlessly across the threshold.
Stretched on a couch was a slim boyish figure, in the costume of a Tyrolese huntsman. Her face was buried in her hands, her feet twitched one against the other and her shoulders shook with an agony of crying. The cap which she had been wearing had been tom off and hurled into a far corner. Her hair fell in a shining tide and gleamed in a golden pool upon the carpet. By the side of the couch her dresser stood, wringing her hands and imploring: “Now, Miss Audrey, this’ll never do. They’ve sent for Mr. Freelevy. You must pull yourself together. The curtain’s waiting to go up. It’ll be your call in a second.”
“Oh, go away—go away, all of you,” Fluffy wept “I don’t care what happens now. Nothing matters.”
Desire was kneeling beside her with her arms about her. She was crying too, dipping her lips into the golden hair. “Don’t, darling. You’re breaking my heart. Tell me. It may help.”
Simon Freelevy shouldered his way into the room. He was a stout, short man with a bald, shiny head. His hurry had made him perspire; he was breathing heavily.
“What’s all this?” he asked angrily. “Tantrums or what?”
Fluffy sat up. She looked pitiful as a frightened child. The penciling beneath her blue eyes made them larger than ever. She fisted her hands against her mouth to silence her sobs.
The dresser answered. “A cable was waiting for her. She read it after the first act It took her by surprise, sir. It was to tell her that Mr. Overbridge had married.”
“Sensible fellow.” Simon Freelevy took one look at Fluffy. In the quiet that had attended his entrance the roar of the impatient theatre, clamoring for the curtain to rise, could be heard. “She can’t go on,” he said brusquely. “She’s no more good to-night. Where’s her understudy?—Oh, youl Good girl—you got ready. Get back into the wings all of you.”
He drove them out like a flock of sheep, slamming the door contemptuously behind him.
Desire turned to Teddy. “Fetch a taxi. I can’t leave her to-night We’ll take her home to my apartment.”
As they drove through Columbus Circle the Christmas tree was illuminated at the entrance to the Park. The happiness which it betokened provoked another shower of tears from Fluffy. “It was cruel of him,” she wept, “cruel of him. I always, always intended—— You know I did, little Desire.”
She was like a hurt child; there was no consoling her. Her only relief seemed to be derived from repeating her wrongs monotonously. She kept appealing to Desire to confirm her assertions of the injustice that had been done her. Desire gathered her into her arms and drew her head to her shoulder. “Don’t cry, darling. He wasn’t worthy of you. There are thousands more men in the world.”
As soon as they had reached the apartment Fluffy said: “Let me go to bed. I want to cry my heart out.” In the hall as she bade Teddy good-night, she gazed forlornly from him to Desire: “You two, you’re very happy. You don’t know how happy. No one ever does until—until It ends.”
He watched them down the passage. He supposed he ought to go now. Instead, he went into the front-room and seated himself. He couldn’t tear himself away. He was hungry for Desire. He hadn’t known that she could be so tender. He yearned for some great calamity to befall him, that he might see her kneeling at his side and might feel her arms about him.
Finality was in the air. Horace’s example had startled him into facing up to facts; perhaps it had done the same for her. He felt that this was the psychologic crisis to which all his courtship had been leading. She cared for him, or she wouldn’t have accepted his present. Knowing her as he did, the very ungraciousness of her acceptance was a proof to him of how much she cared. And now this new happening I It had darted swiftly across their insecurity as the shadow of nemesis approaching. To-night her lips must give him his answer. She had said: “When I kiss you, Meester Deek, without your asking, you’ll know then.” They could drag on no longer. It wasn’t honorable to her, to himself, to his parents—it wasn’t fair to any of them. Like a stave of music her words sang in his memory, “And we’re about the right height, aren’t we?”
Twinkles wandered in; seeing that he was alone and that her services were not required, she wandered out. He got up restlessly. To kill time, he examined the little piles of books and set them in order. He picked up a boudoir-cap that she was making, pressing it to his lips because her hands had touched it. He smiled fondly; even in her usefulness she was decorative. She made boudoir-caps when buttons needed sewing on her gloves.
Whatever he did, the eyes of Tom watched him from the photograph on the piano. He had been hoping for months that she would remove it The eyes watched him in malicious silence. She had told him that Tom was a sort of brother. He had never disputed it, but he knew that no man could play the brother for long with such a girl. He wondered if Tom had found her lips more accessible, and whether she had ever kissed him in return.
It was getting late. Not quite the evening he had expected! Very few of his evenings were.
At a sound he turned. She was standing in the doorway, a wrapper clutched about her, her hair hanging long as at Glastonbury, her bare feet peeping out from bedroom slippers. She looked half-child, half-elf.
“Oh, it’s you. I thought you’d gone—been gone for hours.”
“Gone! How could I go? We didn’t say good-night.” He lowered his voice, copying her whisper. Everything seemed to listen in the quietness, especially Tom’s photograph.
He approached her. If she would be only a tenth as tender to him as she had been to Fluffy! He was quivering like a leaf. The mystic wind that blew through him was so gentle that it could only be seen, not heard. It seemed to fill the room with flutterings. She shook her head, tossing her hair clear of her shoulders. He halted. Then he seized her hands. They struggled to free themselves.
“You’re eating my heart out, Desire. I’m good for nothing. You must say yes. If you don’t love me, you at least like me. You like me immensely, don’t you? The other will come later.” His voice trembled with the need of her; it was more like crying. He tried to draw her to him; she clutched her wrap more tightly, and dodged across the threshold.
Something in him broke. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
She closed her eyes in dreamy denial. “Never?”
“How can I tell?”
“Then let me kiss you. You’ve let me do it so often. You’ll at least do that And—and it’s so nearly Christmas.”
“You’ve kissed me so many, many times. I don’t know why I allow it.” Her voice sounded infinitely weary.
He let go her hand. His face became ashen. “This can’t go on forever.”
“Shish! You’ll wake Fluffy.” She pressed her finger to her lip. “I know. It can’t go on forever. Don’t let’s talk about it.”
He turned slowly, and picked up his coat and hat. “You and I can talk of that or nothing.”
As he approached the hall, she slipped after him into the passage. With his hand on the latch he looked back, “Then you won’t let me kiss you?”
Her expression quickened into a bewitching smile. “You silly Meester Deek!” She glanced down at her gauzy attire. “How can I? You wouldn’t have seen me this way if it hadn’t been for an accident. Besides,” with a drooping of her head, “I’m so fagged; I don’t feel like kissing to-night.”
“If you loved me,” he said vehemently, “you’d let me kiss you, anyhow. You wouldn’t mind. You’d be glad. Why, you and I, the way we’ve been together, we’re as good as married.”
“Not as bad as that,” she murmured drowsily.
He opened the door. At the last moment she ran forward, holding out her hand. “You’re angry. Poor Meester Deek! You’re splendid when you’re angry. Cheer up. There are all the to-morrows.”
He could have taken her in his arms then. He would have taken her cruelly, crushing her to him. He feared himself. He feared the quiet. He feared her, lest directly he relented, she would repulse him. She lifted her hand part way to his mouth. He arrested it; it was her lips for which he was hungry—to feel them shuddering again beneath his pressure before love died. He hurried from her.
At last he had stirred her. He had wounded her pride. Tears gushed to her eyes, deepening their grayness. She stood gazing after him, dumbly reproachful.
As he entered the Brevoort the clerk handed him a letter. He glanced at the writing; it was from his mother. He waited till he was in his room before he tore the envelope.
“Aren’t you ever coming home!” [he read], “It makes us feel so old, living without you. What is it that’s keeping you? Until now I’ve not liked to suggest it. But isn’t it a girl? It can’t be the right one, Teddy, or you wouldn’t hide the news from your mother. When it’s the right one a boy comes running to tell her; he knows it’ll make her glad. But you must know it wouldn’t make me glad—so come back to where we’re so proud of you. If you cable that you’re coming, we’ll postpone our Christmas so that you can share it.”
And then, in a paragraph:
“I’ve bad news to tell you. The Sheerugs have lost all their money. Madame Josephine died suddenly; Duke Nineveh has stolen everything and decamped with a chorus-girl. Beauty Incorporated is exposed and exploded. The papers say it was a swindle. This’ll affect you financially, poor old chap.”
He sat with his mother’s letter in his hand—the same kind of letter that years ago Mrs. Sheerug must have penned to Hal. If Hal had preserved them, there must be stacks of them stowed away in the garrets at Orchid Lodge. How selfish lovers were in the price they made others pay! What dearly purchased happiness!
And he was becoming like Hal. He resented the comparison; but he was. Fame and opportunity were knocking at his door. Instead of opening to them, he sat weakly waiting for a girl who didn’t seem to care. One day fame and opportunity would go away; when they were gone, he would have lost his only chance of making the girl respond. If he became great—really great—she might appreciate him.
For the first time in his dealings with Desire strategy suggested itself. Not until Fluffy had lost Horace had she discovered that she had a heart. If he were to leave Desire—— Fear gripped him lest, while he was gone, some one else might claim her. The loneliness of what he would have to face appalled him. It was a loneliness which she would share at least in part; the habits formed from having been loved, even though she had not loved in return, might lead her into another man’s arms.
And yet, strategy or no strategy, he would have to leave New York; he couldn’t keep up the pace. The three hundred pounds per annum which had come to him from Beauty Incorporated hadn’t been much; but, while it lasted, it had seemed certain. It had been something to fall back on. It had stood between him and poverty. His nerve was shaken. What if his vein of fancy should run dry?
His habits of industry were already lost. He would have to go into retreat to re-find them—go somewhere where people believed in him; then he might retrieve his confidence. The yearning to be mothered, which the strongest men feel at times, swept over him like a tide. He wanted to hear himself called Teddy, as though his name was not absurd or disgraceful—a name to be avoided with a nickname.
If he appealed to Desire one last time, would she understand—would she be kind to him as she had been to Fluffy? He wondered—and he doubted. If he told her of the loss of the three hundred pounds his trouble would sound paltry. It might sound to her as though he were asking her to restore to him the watch-bracelet. It was in her company that he had spent so riotously; she might think that he was accusing her of having been mercenary. She had never been that; she had given him far more in happiness than the means of happiness had cost But he couldn’t conceive of being in her company and refraining from extravagance. Her personality made recklessness contagious; it acted like strong wine, diminishing both the future and the past, till the present became of total importance.
There was a phrase in his mother’s letter which brought an unreasonable warmth to his heart: “Come back to where we feel so proud of you.” It was a long while since any one had felt proud of him. But how had she guessed that? He had poured out his admiration. He had been so selfless in his adoration that he had sometimes fancied that he had been despised for it. He had almost come to believe that there was an unpleasantness in his appearance or a taint in his character which the love-blind eyes of Eden Row had failed to discover. Desire seemed most conscious of it when he stood in the light. It was only in the dusk of cabs and taxis that she almost forgot it. Sometimes she seemed morbidly aware of this defect; then she would say in a weary little voice, “I don’t feel like kissing to-night.”
Humiliation was enervating his talent. He was losing faith in his own worth—the faith so necessary to an artist. Desire said that it was “soft” of him to want her to be proud of him. Perhaps it was. But if she ought not to be proud of him, who ought?
He would have been content with much less than her pride—if only, when others were present, she had not ignored him. Her friends unconsciously imitated her example. They passed him over and chattered about trifles. Their conversations were a shallow exchange of words in which, when every nerve in his body was emotionalized, it was impossible for him to take part. He showed continually at a disadvantage. They none of them had the curiosity to inquire why he was there or who he was. He felt that behind his back they must smile at Desire’s treatment of him.
It would be good to get back to people who frankly reciprocated his pride—to artist father with his lofty ideals, who went marching through life with all his bands playing, never halting for spurious success to overtake him. It would be good to get back, and yet——
She had worked herself into his blood. She was a disease for which she herself was the only cure. Without the hope of seeing her his future would lose its sight. Up till now the short nightly partings had been agonies, which called for many kisses to dull their pain. When absent from her, he had made haste to sleep, that oblivion might bridge the gulf of separation. To have to face interminable days which would bring no promise of her girlish presence, seemed worse than death. If he returned to England, what certainty would he have that they would ever meet again?
He stung himself into shame by remembering what weakness had done for Hal. Hal would form a link between them, when every other means of communication had failed.
The wildness of his panic abated. He urged himself to be strong. If he went on as he was going now, he would bankrupt his life. To-morrow he would plead with her.
If she still procrastinated, then the only way to draw her nearer would be to go from her. The horror of parting confronted him again. He closed his eyes to shut it out. He would decide nothing to-night.
Next morning he phoned her at the usual time. She was still sleeping; he left a request that she should call him. He waited till twelve. At last he grew impatient and phoned her again. He was told that she had gone out with Fluffy, leaving word that he would hear from her later. By three o’clock he had not heard. All day he had been kept at high tension on the listen. The cavalierness of her conduct roused his indignation. Her punishment was out of all proportion to his offense, especially after the way in which she had received the watch-bracelet A month ago he would have hurried out to send her a peace-offering of flowers. To-day he hurried out on a different errand.
Jumping on a bus, he rode up Fifth Avenue and alighted at The International Sleeping Car Company. Entering swiftly, for fear his resolution should forsake him, he booked a berth on theMauretania, sailing on Christmas Eve, the next night. He hesitated as to whether he should send his mother a cable; he determined to postpone that final step. He had booked and canceled a berth before. He tried to believe that he was no more serious now than on that occasion. He was only proving to himself and to her his supreme earnestness. ‘If she gave him any encouragement, even though she didn’t definitely promise to marry him, he would postpone his sailing.
He wandered out into the streets. Floating like gold and silver tulips on the dusk, lights had sprung up. Crowds surged by merrily; all their talk was of Christmas. The look of Christmas was in their faces. Girls hung on the arms of men. Everywhere he saw lovers: they swayed along the pavement as though they were one; they snuggled in hansoms, sitting close together; they fled by in taxis, wraithlike in the darkness, fleeting as the emotion they expressed. He knew all their secrets, all their thoughts: how men’s hands groped into muffs to squeeze slender fingers; how the fingers lay quiet, pretending they were numb; how speech became incoherent, and faces drooped together. He listened to the lisp of footsteps—all going somewhere to sorrow or happiness. How many lovers would meet in New York to-night! He felt stunned. His heart ached intolerably.
In sheer aimlessness he strolled into the Waldorf and hovered by the pillar from which he had so often watched to see her come. To see her approaching now he would give a year of his life. She would be wearing her white-fox furs and the little tweed suit he had given her. The fur rubbed off on his sleeves; it told many tales.
His resolution was weakening every minute; soon it would be impossible to leave her—even to pretend he had thought of leaving her.
He must keep his mind occupied; must go to some place which held no associations. Sauntering along Thirty-fourth Street, he passed by the Beauty Parlor where she went, as she said, “to be glorified.” He passed the shop to which he had gone with her to buy the earliest of his more personal gifts, the dozen silk stockings. Foolish recollections, full of poignancy! He crossed Broadway beneath the crashing Elevated. Gimbel’s at least would leave him unreminded; she despised any store which was not on Fifth Avenue. He had drifted through several departments, when he was startled by a voice. He turned as though he had been struck. A salesman, demonstrating a gramophone, had chosen the record ofAbsentfor the purpose. He stood tensely, listening to the tenor wail that came from the impersonal instrument:
“Thinking I see you—thinking I see you smile.”
It was the last straw. His pride was broken. What did it matter whether she cared? The terrible reality was his need of her. He made a dash for the nearest pay-station and rang her up.
A man answered. He wasn’t Mr. Dak. “Who? Mr. Gurney? Hold the line. I’ll call her.—— Little D., here’s your latest. Hurry!”
He heard Desire’s tripping footsteps in the passage and her reproving whisper to her companion, “You had no right to do that.” Then her clear voice, thrilling him even at that distance: “Hulloa, Bright Eyes! I’ve just this minute got home. Did you get my wire?—You didn’t! But you must have. I sent it after you left last night.—Humph! That’s what comes of staying at these cheap hotels. You’d better ask the clerk at the desk.—Oh, you’re not at the Brevoort. At Gimbel’s! What are you doing there? Buying me another watch-bracelet? Never mind, tell me presently.—No, I’m not going to tell you what was in the telegram.—What’s that?”
He had asked who was with her.
“Naturally I can’t answer,” she said; “not now—later. You understand why.—Of course you can come. Hurry! I’m dying to see you. By-by.”
He had been conscious, while she was speaking, that her conversation was framed quite as much for the other man’s mystification as for his own. There had been a tantalizing remoteness in her tones. But what man had the privilege to call her “Little D.”? He remembered now that, when he had done it, an annoyed look of remembrance had crept into her eyes.
Life had become worth living again. The madness was on him to spend, to be gay, to atone. On his way uptown he went into Maillard’s to buy her a box of her favorite caramels. He stopped at Thorley’s and purchased a corsage of orchids. He was allowing her to twist him round her little finger. He confessed it. But what did anything matter? He was going to her. Life had become radiantly happy. He no longer had to eye passing lovers with envy. He was of their company and glorified.
When he had pressed the button of the apartment, he was kept waiting—kept waiting so long that he rang twice. On the other side Twinkles was barking furiously; then he heard the soft swish of approaching garments. The door opened. Through the crack he could just make out her face.
“Don’t come in till I hide,” she warned him in a whisper. “Every one’s out, except me and Twinkles. I’m halfway through dressing.” She retreated, leaving the door ajar. When she had fled across the hall into the passage, she called to him, “You may enter.”
He closed the door and listened in the discreet silence. She was in her bedroom. She had made a great secret of her little nest. She had told him about the pictures on the walls, the Japanese garden in the window, and the queer things she saw from the window when she spied across the air-shaft on her neighbors. She had a child’s genius for disguising the commonplace with glamour. Of this the name she had given him, which was known to no one but her and himself, was an example. She made every hour that he had not shared with her bristle with mysteries by sly allusions to what had happened in it Her bedroom was a forbidden spot; she deigned to describe it to him and left his imagination to do the rest. In his lover’s craving to picture her in all her environments—to be in ignorance of nothing that concerned her—he had often begged her to let him peep across the threshold. She had invariably denied him, putting on her most shocked expression.
He walked into the front-room; it was littered with presents, received and to be given, and their torn wrappings.
She heard him. “You mustn’t go in there,” she called.
“Then where am I to go?”
“Bother. I don’t know. You can stand in the passage and talk to me if you like.”
For a quarter of an hour he leant against the wall, facing her closed door. While they exchanged remarks he judged her progress by sounds. Sometimes she informed him as to their meaning. “It’s my powder-box that I’m opening now.—What you heard then was the stopper of my Mary Garden bottle.—Shan’t be long. Why don’t you smoke?”
He didn’t want to smoke, but when she asked him a second time, her question had become an imperative.
Her voice reached him muffled; by the rustling she must be slipping on her skirt. “I’m keeping you an awfully long while, Meester Deek; you’re very patient.” There was a lengthy pause. Then: “Of course it isn’t done in the best families, but we’re different and, anyhow, nobody’ll know. I’ve drawn down the shades.—If you promise to be good, you can come inside.”
She was seated at her dressing-table before the mirror, adjusting her broad-brimmed velvet hat.
“Hulloa!” She did not turn, but let her reflection do the welcoming. “I haven’t allowed many gentlemen to come in here.” She seemed to be saying it lest he should think himself too highly flattered.
He bent across her shoulder, asking permission by his silence.
“You may take a nice Christmas kiss, if that’s what you’re after. Just one.”
He brushed her cool cheek, the unresponsive cheek of an obedient child. Her arms curved up to her head like the fine handles of a fragile vase. She proceeded quietly with the pinning of her hat. His arms went about her passionately. His action was unplanned. He was on his knees beside her, clutching her to him and kissing the hands which strove to push him from her. When his lips sought hers, she turned her face aside so that he could only reach the merest corner of her mouth. So she lay for some seconds, her face averted, till her motionlessness had quelled his emotion.
She laughed, freeing herself from his embrace. “Oh, Meester Deek,” she whispered softly, “and when I wasn’t wearing any corsets! Now let me go on with the pinning of my hat.”
He filled in the awkward silence by placing the corsage of orchids in her lap. Before she thanked him, she tried them at various angles against her breast, studying their effect in the mirror. Then she whispered reproachfully:
“Aren’t you extravagant? Money does burn holes in your pocket. You ought to give it to some one to take care of for you.”
There was no free chair. The room was strewn with odds and ends of clothing as though a cyclone had blown through it He seated himself on the edge of the white bed and glanced about him. On the dressing-table in a silver frame was a photograph of Tom. On the wall, in a line above the bed, were four more of him. Vaguely he began to guess why she had made such a secret of her bedroom, and why she had let him see it at this stage in his courtship. Jealousy smoldered like a sullen spark; it sprang into a flame which tortured and consumed him.
What right had this man to watch her? Why should she wish to have him watch?
He threw contempt on his jealousy. It made him feel brutal. But it had burnt long enough to harden his resolve.
She rose and picked up her jacket. “D’you want to help me?”
He took it from her without alacrity. As he guided her arms into the sleeves, she murmured: “Why were you so naughty last night, Meester Deek? You almost made me cross, I was so upset and tired. You weren’t kind.” Then, with a flickering uplifting of her lashes, “But I’m not tired any longer.”
She waited expectant. Nothing happened. She picked up a hand-mirror, surveying the back of her neck and giving her rebellious little curl a final pat, as though bidding it be careful of its manners. In laying it down she contrived to hold the glass so as to get a glimpse of his face across her shoulder. Her expression stiffened. As if he were not there, she swept over to the door, switched off the light and left him to follow.
He found her in the front-room. She had unwrapped a pot of azaleas and was clearing a space to set it on the table.
“Tom brought me this,” she explained in a preoccupied tone. “He was waiting for me when I got back. It was Tom who answered the phone when you called me. Kind of him to remember me, wasn’t it?”
“Very kind.”
“You don’t need to agree if you don’t really think so.” She spoke petulantly, with her back toward him. “Even a plant means a lot to some people. Tom’s only an actor. He’s not a rich author to whom money means nothing.”
“And I’m not.”
“Well, you act like it.”
She had found that the bottom of the pot was wet and walked out of the room to fetch a plate before setting it on the table. While she was gone, he groped after the deep-down cause of her annoyance.
“Did you really send me a telegram?” he asked the moment she reentered.
“You’ve never caught me fibbing yet. I’ve been careful. Why d’you doubt it?”
“I thought you might have said it—well, just for something to say. Perhaps because you were embarrassed, or to make Tom jealous.”
“Embarrassed! Why embarrassed? Tom’s an old friend. I must say you have a high opinion of me. It strikes me Mrs. Theodore Gurney’s going to have a rough time.”
There was a dead silence. She pivoted slowly and captured both his hands. Dragging him to the couch, she made him sit beside her. In the sudden transition of her moods, her face had become as young and mischievous with smiles as before it had been elderly and cross.
“Well, Meester Deek, haven’t you anything to say? Don’t you like me better now?” She dived to within an inch of his face as though she were about to kiss him, and there stopped short, laughing into his eyes. When he made no response, she became tensely grave. “I can be a little cat sometimes, and yet you want to live with me all your life. I should think you’d get sick of me. I’m very honest to let you see what I really am.” She said this with a wise shake of her head and an air of self-congratulation. “But you’re a beast, too, when you’re offended.” She stooped and kissed his hand. “The first time I’ve ever done that,” she murmured, “to you or any man. Haven’t we gone far enough with our quarreling?”
“I think we have.”
“But you’ve not forgiven me?—Well, I’ll tell you, and then you’ll ask my pardon.” She moved away from him to the other end of the couch. “I’ve really been very sweet to you all the time and you haven’t known it. Last night we were both stupid; I was upset. I don’t know which of us was the worst. But after you’d gone I was sorry, and I dressed, and I went out all alone at midnight to send you a telegram so you’d know that I was sorry directly you woke in the morning. It wasn’t my fault that you didn’t get it. And then about to-day—you’re angry because I didn’t call you up. It was because I was looking after your Christmas present. And when you came here all glum and sulky I let you see my bedroom. And now I’ve kissed your hand. Isn’t that enough?”
She was turning all the tables on him. “Let’s be friends,” he said. When he slipped his arm about her, she flinched. “Mind my flowers. Don’t crush them. You must first say that you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry. Terribly sorry.”
“All right, then. But you did hurt me last night when—when you went away like that.”
“But you often let me go away like that.”
She held up a finger. “You’re starting again.”
She rose and walked over to a pile of parcels which were lying on the piano. As he watched her, the thought of Tom came back. She hadn’t explained those photographs; his pride wouldn’t permit him to ask her.
“You’re not very curious, Meester Deek. Why d’you think I kept you waiting in the passage and wouldn’t let you come in here? I was afraid you might see something. I’ll let you see it now.”
She was leaning against the piano. He went and stood beside her. She moved nearer so that her hair swept his cheek like a caress. “Do you like it?” She placed a miniature of herself done on ivory in his hand. “Better than the poor little tin-type portrait that faded!”
“For me?” he asked incredulously.
“Who else? No, listen before you thank me. I thought they’d never get it done. They’ve been weeks over it. All day I’ve been hurrying them. Now, won’t you own that you have been misunderstanding?”
“I’ve been an unjust idiot.”
“Not so bad as that. And I’m not so bad, either, if you only knew—— Now I’ll put on your bracelet Did you notice that I wasn’t wearing it?”
“Why weren’t you?”
The babies came into her eyes. “You’ve had a narrow escape. If you hadn’t been nice, I was going to have given it back to you. Let’s fetch it. You can fasten it on for me.”
From the steps of the apartment-house they hailed a hansom, and drove through the winking night to the Claremont. “‘So, honey, jest play in your own backyard,” she sang. When she found that she couldn’t intimidate him, she started on another fragment, filling in the gaps with humming when she forgot the words:
“Oh, you beautiful girl,
What a beautiful girl you are!
You’ve made my dreams come true to me——”
“Sounds as though I were praising myself, doesn’t it? Don’t come so near, Meester Deek; every time you hug me you carry away so much of my little white foxes. ‘Beware of the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the something or other.’ Didn’t some one once say that? I wish you’d beware; soon there won’t be any fur left.”
While she went to the lady’s room to see whether her appearance had suffered under his kisses, he engaged a table in a corner, overlooking the Hudson.
Towards the end of the meal, when she was finishing an ice and he was lighting a cigar, a silence fell between them. She sat back with her eyes partly closed and her body relaxed. Up to that moment she had been daringly vivacious. He had learnt to fear her high spirits and fits of niceness. They came in gusts; they always had to be paid for with periods of languor.
“What are you thinking?” he asked. “Something sad, I’ll warrant.”
“Fluffy.” She glanced across at him, appealing for his patience.
“How is she?” He tried to humor her with a display of interest
“She’s broken up. She’s been speaking to Simon Freelevy. She absolutely refuses to go on playing in New York; it’s too full of memories. So it’s all arranged; she’s going to California in the New Year with a road-company.”
He understood her depression now. If Fluffy was leaving New York, this was his chance. Somehow or other he must manage to hang on. He was glad he had not sent that cable to his mother.
“That’s hard lines on you.” He sank his voice sympathetically. “You’ll miss her awfully.”
Desire woke up and became busy with what remained of her ice. “I shan’t. She wants me to go with her. It’ll do me good.” Then coaxingly, as though she were asking his permission, “I’ve never been to California.”
The heat drained from him. He paused, giving himself time to grow steady. If he counted for so little, she shouldn’t guess his bitter disappointment. “But will you leave your mother? I should think she’ll be frightfully lonely.”
“My beautiful mother’s so unselfish.”
“But——”
“Well?”
They gazed at each other. He wondered whether she was only playing with him—whether she had only said it that he might amuse her with a storm of protests.
“You were going to ask about yourself?” she suggested. “I’ve thought all that out. You and mother can come and join us somewhere. There’s splendid riding out West. I’ve always wanted to ride. It would be fine to go flying along together if—if you were there.”
He didn’t understand this girl, who could give him ivory miniatures one minute and propose to go away for months the next—who, while she refused to become anything to him, undertook to arrange his life.
He laughed tolerantly. “I’m afraid that can’t be. I shouldn’t accomplish much by tagging after a road-company all across a continent. You don’t seem to realize that I have a living to earn.”
“That was a nasty laugh,” she pouted; “I didn’t like it one little bit.”
She played with his fingers idly, lifting them up and letting them fall, like soldiers marking time. “You manicure them now. You’ve learnt something by coming to America—— Your living!” She smiled. “It seems to come easily enough. I hear you talk about it, but I never see you working.”
Here was the opening for which he had been waiting. “You’re right. I’ve hardly done a stroke since I landed. Winning you has taken all my time.”
“Has it?” She glanced round the room dreamily, making confidences impossible by her lack of enthusiasm.
He got up. “Shall we go back to the apartment? We can talk better there.”
She lounged to her feet. “If you’ll promise not to worry me. I’ve gone through too much to-day already.”
He knew the meaning of her fatigue; once more she was barricading herself. He was doubly sure of it when he saw her open her vanity-case and produce a veil. A veil was a means of protection which, above all others, he detested. “Don’t put that thing on.”
“I must. It’ll keep the wind off. I don’t like getting chapped.”
On the drive back she sat rigid with her hand before her eyes, as though she slept. It seemed to him that he had not advanced a pace since the ride to Long Beach; the only difference was that his arm encircled her. She paid so little heed to it that he withdrew it. She gave no sign that she noticed its withdrawal. It was only when they were halting that she came to herself with a drowsy yawn. Leaning against his shoulder for a second, she peered up at him with mock regret: “And to think that my head might have been resting there all the time!”
It was plain that she didn’t want him to come up. In the foyer she held out her hand. When he did not take it, she lowered her eyes: “I’m sorry. I thought you were going.”
After the elevator had left them, she stood outside the door and carefully removed her veil. It was a frank invitation to him to kiss her and say good-by. He did neither. She drew the palms of her hands across her eyes. “I ought to go to bed.—You are a sticker. Well, if you won’t go, just for a little while.”
She produced the key from her vanity-case. He took it from her and slipped it into the latch. Only Twinkles was at home. For Twinkles she mustered the energy for a display of fun-making. Romping with the dog revived her.
“Take the nice gentleman in there,” she said, “while mistress makes herself beautiful. Mistress can’t allow the same gentleman, however pleasant, to come into her bedroom twice.”
He didn’t feel flippant. He was quivering with earnestness. While he waited among the litter of presents and paper he tried to master his emotion. He knew that if he once got to touching and kissing her, he would go out of the door with matters as undecided as when he had entered.
She drifted into the room rubbing her hands. “Been putting scent on them,” she explained, holding out to him her smooth little palms. “Don’t they smell nice?”
He didn’t kiss them. He didn’t dare. She gave him a puzzled look of inquiry; then showed him her back and became absorbed in gathering up the scattered papers. When several minutes of silence had elapsed, she turned.
“I’m not going to quarrel with you, if that’s what you want You’d have been wise to have said good-night to me downstairs. If you’ve really got something on your mind, for Heaven’s sake get it off.”
“It’s difficult and you don’t help me.”
She tossed her head impatiently. “You make me tired. It isn’t a girl’s place to help.”
Seating herself on the floor, with her legs curled about her and her ankles peeping out from under her skirt, she began to wrap up presents. “Please be nice,” she implored him in a little voice, “because I really do like you. Sit down here beside me and put your finger on the knots, so that I can tie them.”
He sat down opposite to her. That wasn’t quite what she had intended. She made a mischievous face at him.
“It isn’t a question of being nice,” he said quietly; “it’s a question of being honest. I’ve booked my berth on theMauretaniafor to-morrow night.”
She gave a scarcely perceptible start. When she spoke, it was without raising her eyes. “You did that once before. You can’t play the same trick twice.”
“It isn’t a trick this time.”
She eyed him cloudily, still persuaded that it was. “Are you saying that because of what I told you about going to California? I thought you were too big and splendid to return tit for tat.”
“It isn’t tit for tat I booked this afternoon, before I knew about California.”
She gave her shoulders a shrug of annoyance. “Well, you know your business best.”
“I don’t; that’s why I’m telling you. I’m not being unkind. My business may be yours.”
At last she took him seriously. “I don’t see how it can be; you’d better explain. But first tell me: are you trying to imitate Horace? Because if you are, it won’t work.”
“I’m not.”
“Then light me a cigarette and let’s be sensible.”
Seated on the floor in the dim-lit room, with the Christmas presents strewn around, he told her. The first part was the old story of how he had dreamt about her from a child.
“You know that’s true, Princess?”
“And I’ve dreamt about you,” she nodded. “You were my faery-story.”
“Then why——”
“You tell me first.”
So he told her: told her how she had pained him in England by her silence; told her what her words “Come to America” had implied; described to her the expectations with which he had set sail; the disappointment when on landing he had found that she was absent; and then the growing heartache that had come to him while she trifled with him. He spared her nothing. “And you act as if my loving bored you,” he said; “and yet, if I take you at your word, you’re petulant May I speak about money now? I know how you hate me to talk of it—— And you won’t misunderstand?”
She gave her silent consent.
“I can’t afford to live in New York any longer. Last night there was a letter waiting for me. It told me that my only certain source of income was lost. It told me a whole lot besides; they’re lonely and promise to postpone Christmas if I’ll cable them that I’m coming.”
“Have you cabled?”
He shook his head.
“You must. Your poor little mother,” she murmured.
“You’d love my mother,” he said eagerly, “and my father, too. The moment he clapped eyes on you he’d want to paint you.”
“Would he? And after I’d taken you from him?” She screwed up her mouth in denial and crushed out the stub of her cigarette against her heel. It seemed the symbol of things ended. “You were telling me about the letter. What else?”
“That’s all. But you see, I’ve got nothing now except what I earn. And when my mind’s distracted—— It’s—— You don’t mind my saying it, do you? It’s waiting for you that’s done it. My power seems gone. If only I were sure of you and that you’d be to me always as you are now, I’d be strong to do anything.”
She had been fidgeting with her bracelet. When he had ended, she commenced to slip it off. “And it was the day that you lost everything that you were most generous. And I didn’t thank you properly, like the little pig I am. Teddy, please don’t be offended, but I’d so much rather you——”
He pressed his lips against the slim wrist that she held out. “Please don’t. It would hurt me most awfully.”
“And it makes me feel guilty to keep it,” she pouted.
They sat holding hands, gazing at each other. In the silence, without the fever of caresses, he had come nearer to her than at any previous moment. They were two children who had experimented with things they did not understand, and were a little frightened at what had happened and a little glad.
“You called me Teddy just now,” he whispered. “It’s the third time.”
She smiled at him with a flicker of her old wickedness. “I didn’t intend to. It slipped out because—because I was so unhappy.”
“But you needn’t be unhappy. Neither of us need be unhappy. Everything’s in our own hands. I’d work for you, Desire. I’d become famous for you. We’d live life splendidly. The way we’ve been living is stupid and wasteful; it doesn’t lead anywhere. If you’d marry me and come back with me——”