In the moments of these half-hearted retreats he adopted a policy of far-off analysis, putting questions with impersonal directness, inviting her into indiscreet confidences. She divined that all this curiosity had one instinctive object—to discover something in her harum-scarum present or devious past that could roughly and effectively repel him. At such times she responded with a violent antagonism, paying him back in coin, tantalizing him, inventing stories to plague him, and always succeeding. Once she said to him:
"You know Sassoon's getting reckless. Look out! Some day I'll disappear!"
He chuckled, inciting her on.
"You needn't laugh! I'm serious—he's serious, too. Where do you think I went this afternoon? To look at a house. Oh, the loveliest little house, a little jewel-box—within a stone's-throw of you, too;and everything beautifully furnished, wonderful rugs, bedrooms in old red brocade, like a palace!" She continued with an account of details, warming up to the part: "Sassoon began by talking apartments. But I killed that quickly. Entirely too common!"
"But the house?" he said, forcing a smile.
"Only one thing lacking; yes, and I told him so at once—flat, like that!"
"What?"
"No garage!"
He affected to laugh hugely at this bit of fiction.
When he sought to explore her history she was ready with another artfully contrived story to infuriate him:
"My life? Oh, it's terribly exciting! Father was a gambler—Mississippi River, mining-camps and all sorts of dangerous places. Mother was in the circus, bareback riding—hoops, you know. They separated when I was five; had a terrible fight, they say. I went around with the circus, in the processions, dressed as a star. Mother was teaching me the tight-rope; I'd learned a bit of acrobating, too. There was a funny old clown."
She stopped, with a far-off pensive look. When she invented a story she had a natural gift for dramatic detail. She said very sadly, as if conjuring up the figure of a mournful child, sinking her voice to a whisper:
"My mother drank. When she was in her tantrums she was very cruel to me—she beat me! Iremember my poor little arms and legs all blistered and smarting! Then I used to run to Jocko—that was the funny old clown's name. He had three colors in his hair, red, white and brown—all natural, too! Jocko used to put a poultice on my wounds and give me candy. I loved old Jocko; he taught me the back-somersault, too. Then mother ran off with a dentist—one of the kind that travel around in a band-wagon from village to village, teeth-pullers, you know, and whenever a tooth is to be taken out the bass-drum goes offbang!so you don't notice the pain. The dentist hated me! He was a horribly tall, long man with a broken nose. I can see him leering down at me like an ogre and saying:
"'Soon as you get your second teeth, little brat, I'll make a fine set out of 'em, worth seventy plunks at the least. Just you wait!'
"He used to pinch me and box my ears when mother wasn't looking!"
She considered this phase thoughtfully, satisfied that she had done it justice, and said suddenly:
"Then, one night, father turned up. Whew! that was a scene! He came up suddenly just as Crouch—that's the dentist—had finished with the cymbals and was beginning:
"'Ladies and gentlemen, I come not to take your hard-earned money, but to do you good!'
"He always began like that. I can see it all now—the kerosene lamps flaring below, the country crowd standing around, gaping, and all of a sudden a Spanish-looking man, broad-shouldered, pushing hisway violently through them all, and then mother shrieking:
"'My God! Crouch, it's Baxter!'"
She drew a quick breath; the recital had made her tremble a little. He watched her closely, with that lantern stare with which he transfixed the accused at the bar, amazed at her exhibition, incredulous, and yet with a lingering wonder.
"Mother got away," she said, resuming. "Crouch was laid up in a hospital for months, they told me. Father took me with him. He was very kind, very; but it was a terrible life; rough company, squabbling and shooting, no home, no rest, always taking French leave! Then he struck a run of luck and made enough to strike for Gold Fields and open a saloon—faro at the back. Gold Fields was worse. Every one drunk by eight o'clock at night; poker and faro until breakfast!"
"And you saw all that?" he said gravely.
"Yes, all!" she said simply, shaking her head. "Father dressed me up in red slippers and white stockings, red dress and mantilla, and rigged up a flower-booth for me—said it brought custom. And there I had to sit, so tired and sleepy, with all the vile tobacco smoke, and the men—black, red and white—shouting and singing. Once or twice I fell asleep."
All at once, as if groping in the dark, her hand had at last found the door, she said abruptly:
"But one night a Mexican tried to kiss me, and father shot him. He fell across my counter, grabbingat me. It was awful! The next night father was called to the side entrance, and when we found him there was a knife in his back, and he was dead!"
She rose.
"What, you're going to leave me there, Dodo?" he said maliciously, forcing a smile. "You're worse than a dime novel!"
"That's enough for now. It tires me! The rest for another time," she answered. "Now you can understand all that happened after,—I never had half a chance!"
The next time she began all over again, saying:
"My real story is much more terrible. Now, this is the truth!"
These inventions usually started from her insistence on discussing his wife with Massingale. She had an imperative curiosity, which always shocked his sense of delicacy, to hear him criticize her, to admit her faults, even to drop a hint that there might be other men—that, in fact, she lived her own life; which would mean, to Dodo's illogical need of self-justification, that he also had the right. But Massingale curtly, peremptorily refused to be drawn into such discussions. Whereupon a coolness arose, and she sought to annoy him by pretended pasts. He knew that she was embroidering, and yet the very facility of it amazed him. The past was one thing: he did not like her references to Sassoon and Blood and what they implied, even though he was sure it was specially fabricated for his confusion.
So, as soon as peace had been restored, he alwayspressed her for a denial. Whereupon with a laugh, after some coaxing, she would admit the fiction. But the moment the next cause of conflict came, she was always quits by turning on him and declaring:
"You know all I told you? Well,halfof it was true!"
At the end of the week she received an answer from Mr. Peavey. Contrary to custom, it was not typewritten, but performed in his minute and regular hand:
"Dear Miss Baxter:"Your letter has caused me the utmost pain. Please do not, I beg you, judge me by appearances! I have found, to my cost, that I have been greatly misled in the character of a person I trusted. I must see you and explain everything. I am now in the Middle West. I shall be able to run over to New York for five hours on Thursday next, and shall advise you. Believe me, this is the first opportunity I can make."Your devoted friend,"O. B.Peavey."
"Dear Miss Baxter:
"Your letter has caused me the utmost pain. Please do not, I beg you, judge me by appearances! I have found, to my cost, that I have been greatly misled in the character of a person I trusted. I must see you and explain everything. I am now in the Middle West. I shall be able to run over to New York for five hours on Thursday next, and shall advise you. Believe me, this is the first opportunity I can make.
"Your devoted friend,"O. B.Peavey."
She had found this letter, on entering, in the pile of mail that always accumulated on the hall seat, and had read it standing in the hall. She sought for other letters, and suddenly encountered one that made her halt with surprise. It was in Mr. Peavey's handwriting, and addressed to Miss Winona Horning. She took it and went up-stairs. Winona was in her room, looking up a little startled at Doré's determined interruption.
"I have brought you a letter!" she said very quietly.
The girl took it, glanced at it, but did not raise her eyes.
"Read it, why don't you?"
Winona Horning opened the letter and read slowly—once, then a second time. Then, without a word or a raising of her glance, carefully and scrupulously tore it into bits.
"Have you anything to say to me?" said Doré in a hard voice, triumphant.
Winona did not raise her eyes. From the first, she had not met Dodo's glance. She hesitated a moment, opening and shutting the case of red morocco, shifting the card, that lay too exposed. Then her shoulder rose defiantly:
"No, nothing! What's the use of words?"
Dodo remained a moment, enjoying her defeat, waiting an overt act, ready to blaze forth. But, Winona continuing inert and unresisting, she turned on her heel, with a final scornful glance, and went to her room.
"There's one thing, at least, she'll never be," she thought to herself, "Mrs. Orlando B. Peavey!"
Had she known then just what had transpired between the bachelor and the girl who shared the dingy wall with her, she would have been even more amazed—and perhaps a little inclined to make allowances.
Snyder's attitude during this tumultuous time was exceedingly puzzling to Dodo. She seemed fairly to haunt the rooms, arriving at the most unexpected moments, remaining determinedly camped on her trunk by the window, endlessly silent and immersed in reading. Betty came often now in the late morning, or toward six o'clock, hours when Dodo was sure to be at home. Doré had a passionate affection for children, and remained for hours on the floor, romping boisterously, or with Betty in her lap, brown curls against her golden ones, exploring endless enchanted realms. Once or twice in the fairy twilight, when eyelids had gone nodding, overburdened with wonder and long listening, and she felt the warm flesh of tiny fingers clinging to her neck, she had waited, cramped and motionless, subjugated in a soft tyranny, glowingly happy and at peace. At other moments, with the little body pressed against her own, encircling arms and childish kisses awoke in her a sudden famine, poignant even as the emotion that flowed through her when Massingale had held her in his arms.
But Snyder she could not understand. She paid no attention either to Dodo or to the child, keeping always aloof, always with averted eyes. This indifference revolted Dodo. How could any one care so little for a child so young, so soft and so clinging! In her heart she resented it as something inhuman and incomprehensible, until suddenly, one day, her eyes were opened.
Their great enemy, the clock, had stolen around to the inexorable hour, and Snyder had announced the moment of farewells by starting from the trunk with a loud closing of her book.
"Time up!"
A cry from Betty, and a convulsive closing of arms about the protector.
"What! already?" said Dodo, with a sigh, coming back unwillingly from a painless world of dreams.
"Past time!"
"Just five minutes more!"
"Dodo!"
"Oh, dear!" she said, with a last protesting hug. "What a dreadful mother you have, Betty! How would you like to change mothers, young lady?"
A giggle of delight and a furious nod of assent.
"I'll be your mother, and you can come and stay here all the day and all the night, and then there'll be nothing but dolls and fairies and good things to eat all the time! What do you say? Will you come and be my little girl forever and ever and ever after?"
She had begun in a light tone, and had insensibly drifted into a tender note, hushed and with a touch of real longing. All at once she looked up, startled. Snyder had snatched the child from her—Snyder asshe had never seen her before, towering, with tortured eyes, stung to the quick.
"Why, Snyder!" she began. But the woman turned away quickly, with a murmur, gone before she knew it.
She was startled at this incomprehensible revelation. "What? She's jealous! Snyder jealous! But then, why does she act so indifferently to Betty?" she thought, amazed.
Still other things puzzled her about her taciturn room-mate—one thing in particular. Whenever Massingale came, Snyder was sure to appear, hostility writ openly on her direct eyes. Dodo almost believed that she had instituted an espionage.
For Massingale came in often now to her room after the close of the court. She had found, with a new rebellion, that there were bars beyond which she could not penetrate into his life, and much as she scorned the conventionalities, she found that on certain points she could not move him. In public places where they were apt to meet his world he refused to take her unless a third was provided. When she declaimed he answered abruptly:
"I am a public man; you don't understand."
And he flattered himself that on this side, his public life, he would always be immovable, no matter what disorder she might exercise over the rest of his existence. This brought her a strange feeling of being outlawed, of standing beyond the pale. She resented it fiercely, not realizing, perhaps, how much shecared, turning her anger against society, vowing vengeance, more and more determined to flout and affront it. Denied complete liberty to participate in his life, she had resolved to bring him into hers. He agreed readily to meet her friends, seeing in this a way to save appearances. Ida Summers amused him, but it was Estelle Monks who interested him most.
Like most women of advanced ideas, she held her opinions, not so much as convictions, but as a sort of revealed truth which it was her duty to spread; and she was determined to inflict them on her listeners, crushing out all disbelief, restless and unhappy before opposition. To her, marriage was the arch-enemy. Woman suffrage she dismissed lightly.
"That's of so little account. Of course it will come, sooner or later. That does not interest me. The great question between man and woman is marriage!"
"Perhaps it were better to say the greatest problem that the human race has had to consider," responded Massingale, smiling. "That's why we keep putting off its readjustment. What would you do? Abolish it?"
"Some day, yes!" said Estelle, without evasion. "I say flatly that two human beings weren't made to live together all the time. It may happen once in a million times, and then—do we ever know? What I hate about marriage is, it is so intellectually debasing: one has to lie all the time to make the other happy, and then you end by lying to yourself!"
Massingale, awakened from a tolerant amusementto a quick curiosity by her boldness, shifted to a more alert position, asking:
"Just in what way?"
"The thing I want to do," said Estelle Monks, her face lighting up with enthusiasm, "is to think honestly, not to fool myself! Now what is marriage? It is really an institution for the assembling and transmission of property." ("Ah, she's been dipping into socialism," thought Massingale.) "Good! But, in order to make it convincing, we Americans try to give it a romantic basis!"
"And you think that's worse?" said Dodo, opening her eyes.
"Much! That's where the lie begins! We swear not only to live together in a business partnership, but to love and adore each other, and to love no one else for the rest of our lives."
"Why, Estelle!" exclaimed Dodo, who was profoundly shocked in her deepest romanticism.
"Yes; and in order to bolster up this absurdity we have to corrupt our whole literature. Young girls and men are brought up with the idea that God, in some mysterious providence, has arranged for us a special affinity—that there can be only one person to love in the whole world. Why, some are so fanatic that they are certain that they shall go on together riding a star for a few million years through a few trillion spaces! Now, that's what I call fooling your intelligence!"
"Yet I know those who have been married forty years and still love!" said Massingale seriously.
"As comrades or as lovers?" asked Estelle quickly. "Comradeship—yes, that I admit: comradeship between man and woman, each equal, each free, not forced to account to the other, comradeship such as exists between you men—absolute loyalty, absolute trust, each working for the same object, working together, an object outside of yourselves. That is life and liberty! And what is the other—your marriage? Each sacrificing what he doesn't want to sacrifice, unless, which is worse, one does all the sacrificing. What happens now? A woman exists as a free being for twenty—twenty-five years; then a man comes along and says, in so many words:
"'If you have lived a virtuous life—which I have not—I will allow you to renounce all your male friends, or retain those whom I approve of as acquaintances, to limit your horizon to my home, to bear my children, to accept my opinions, never to be interested in any other man but me, to keep my house, amuse me when I'm tired, convince me of my superiority over all other men, go where I must go, and age before I must age; and in return for these favors I will swear to convince you that I have loved no other woman but you, will blind my eyes to all other women but you, and, if I die first, you will find me waiting patiently by the pearly gates!'"
Her listeners acclaimed this sally with shrieks of laughter.
"May I ask, out of curiosity," said Massingale,—for, these conversations being serious, frankness wasthe rule,—"how you feel toward my sex—your oppressors?"
"Being a healthy woman who enjoys life," said Estelle simply, "I like men very much—better than women, who are to me usually nothing but sounding-boards. More, it pleases me exceedingly to attract men, and to be attracted!"
"And if you fall in love, temporarily? Or perhaps—"
"Not at all! I desire very much to find a man big enough, courageous enough, so that I could love him. When I do, I shall live with him openly!"
Massingale looked up, rather startled; but Estelle, without embarrassment, in her simple fanatic way, continued:
"I should hope that it might be for life. If it were not, there should be no tyranny. Only, whatever I do will be done honestly and openly: when such a man comes I shall announce it frankly to my friends and to those who have a right to know!"
Massingale was about to interject that she would be a long time finding a man who, on his side, would have the courage to assume such responsibility; but a certain analogy to his own predicament tripped up his impulse and made him change his remark.
"Others have thought the same, theoretically," he said carefully. "Few have dared to put it into practise."
"Which is immoral, that or nine-tenths of the marriages to-day? Am I selling myself, as many awoman in your world does who marries for ambition and retreats under the mockery of a legal phrase? And when love has changed into indifference or hate, is there anything more horrible, more brutalizing, than marriage, and is such a woman anything but a paid mistress? I know women who tell me their stories, who look at marriage as a sort of social umbrella. And they are right! Society demands only appearances; it never cares what goes on under the umbrella! That's why I want to live honestly and think honestly, and that's why I intend to have the courage to live as a free and self-respecting, intelligent human being!"
These extraordinary sentiments were pronounced with the fire of the revolutionary; nor was all that she had earnestly proclaimed without its effect on him. He did not seek to amuse himself, but, impressed as if seeking to perceive the extent of what might be coming, he asked:
"One question. You are a good reporter. You go everywhere, and women talk to you frankly. How many share your ideas?"
"As ideas—many!" said Estelle. "Unfortunately, women are still what history has forced them to be; their courage is in deceiving!"
"I know it is so!" said Massingale, aroused in a way that Dodo had never seen him—a perception which was allied with a little jealousy that Estelle should thus appeal to him. "It is inevitable, too. Women who are in revolt to-day see in marriage the instrument of all their oppressions. It is natural thatwomen are resisting the idea of marriage. But they are doing so blindly. They do not distinguish between marriage as an ideal, and the defective conception of marriage: just as people who violently attack the shortcomings of the church confuse a human instrument with a divine religion. I can answer you at once. Are you perfect? Am I perfect? Why, then, should marriage, which is the union of imperfect beings, be a perfect thing?"
"But such a union as I believe in would be a true marriage!" said Estelle Monks, restless under the doubts his words had brought to her philosophy. "You'll answer, 'Marry and divorce.' But that's all quibbling; my way is more honest!"
He did not continue the conversation, wondering to what extent Dodo had been listening to such an advanced apostle; but he said:
"Miss Monks, you're very honest, and I know you believe all you say; but—don't be offended if I tell you this!—opinions change with experience, and you have not yet had that experience with actual conditions that is necessary!"
Estelle Monks, piqued at this answer which precluded argument, rose stiffly and went out.
"Why did you say that?" asked Dodo reproachfully, yet not displeased to be left alone in the tête-à-tête which he usually avoided.
He was in a serious mood, and because he wished to be honest in his own mind, he answered warily:
"She is too fine a type. I'd hate to see her make a mistake!"
He was thinking how much of what Estelle Monks had said applied to his own marriage. What a mockery it was, and what right had two human beings who were driven apart by every personal antipathy—physical, mental and spiritual—to go on, bound by a convention, preventing each other from seeking happiness elsewhere? And, remembering her attack on marriage as the slavery of woman, he thought bitterly that she had expressed only half the truth. He was, indeed, neither married nor a free man, checked in every impulse, denied at every turn.
"What are you frowning about?" said Dodo.
He answered hastily in that language which, as has been said, was given us to conceal our thoughts:
"I was wondering how much she had affected you!"
"Not the least!" said Dodo, adding impulsively: "And yet, that is just what I feel!"
"You, Dodo?" he said anxiously.
She went to him with a sudden enthusiasm, taking his hands, perhaps subconsciously divining the bitter personal reflection that had been going on in his mind, feeling the moment to be propitious.
"Ah, let me tell you now what I want for us!" she began ardently.
"The great dream, Dodo?" he said, smiling.
"Yes, a dream, but a dream that will come true!" She hesitated, and standing before him, her eyes lighted up by the penetration of a woman, a glance that left him confused, she said directly: "You think you understand me? You don't; but I understand you! You are afraid of me! You love me, but you try not to, because you are afraid of me!"
"How?" he asked lamely.
"Because you think that I want to interfere in your life. Oh, yes, you do! I remember the look in your face when I was romancing about Sassoon, making him divorce—you remember, when you asked if that was what I intended to do with you?"
"I was joking!"
"Not entirely! There's been a good deal of such thoughts back of your eyes. You are afraid I'll take it into my little head to be Mrs. Massingale. Don't deny it, Your Honor; I know! That's where you are totally wrong. I hate marriage; I could not stand it a month!" she said curtly. And she continued dramatically, stretching out her hand: "I swear to you now that, whatever happens, I will never be your wife! I've told you I would take nothing from you; I mean it!"
He watched her, erect and impassioned, weakly conscious of the dominion she had established over every craving and every impulse.
"Ah, no, no!" she exclaimed indignantly. "It's nothing so commonplace I want! There's only one love possible to me—a great transcending passion, which would be so far above all earthly things that a year—a month—would compensate for a whole life of loneliness! Don't you see, it's love, an immense love, such as only comes once in a million times, that I'm seeking?"
"How?"
Suddenly her mood leaped into playfulness, her eyes sparkled with delight, and her clasped hands pillowed themselves against her cheek, as if imprisoning in a caress a beautiful and precious thought.
"First, let's run away—away from all this ugliness, from all these eyes, from all this hateful, noisy, black-and-brown city! Run away! Oh, that's such a wonderful idea in itself, to go flying through the night, just you and I, leaving it all behind, to a place I dream of night and day—to some wonderful island, far off in the Pacific, where we can be alone, live for ourselves!"
He did not check her, though he was wondering from what book she had found such ideas, curious to learn to what extent she had visualized her romance.
"And how long would you keep the island, Dodo?"
"Not long!" she said quietly. "Perhaps a year, perhaps only a season. That must be agreed; and when the dream is over we would come back!"
"And then?"
"And then we would separate and never see each other again!"
"Why?"
"So that it could never become commonplace or stale—so that it could live in our lives as the one great memory, with no regrets."
She stopped, looked at him tensely, and went on:
"You would take up your life again, and I would bury myself in my career, and you would watch me, little by little, become a great name!"
"And never see each other—"
"Perhaps when we are quite old," she said suddenly. "You won't believe me! I would do it!" She clasped her hands tumultuously over her heart. "Oh, how easily I would do it! Ah, to have such a romance—anything might come!"
"What book have you been reading?" he asked quietly—yet feeling a little sad that he could not follow where her lawless imagination ran.
She turned away hotly, clenching her fists, crying:
"Ah, you will never let go of yourself! You are afraid—afraid of everything!"
He followed her, laying a hand on her shoulder as she stood by the window.
"Keep your island in southern seas!" he said, with such emotion in his voice that she wheeled about. "Believe in it all you want, extraordinary child, even if it ends by my paying all the penalty. Go on with your day-dreaming."
His glance lay in hers, his arms were longing to take her into them, when Snyder entered, with a quick knock that gave them only time to spring apart. At this moment Dodo could have driven her out, fiercely rebelling against this constant espionage. What right had Snyder or any one to interfere with her liberty, or to say whom she should see? She resolved hotly to have an explanation when she returned. Now it was necessary to master her emotion.
"A moment—a moment to change my dress; ready in ten minutes!"
She ran quickly to trunk and bureau, gathering upher articles of dress; disappearing behind a screen in the corner. Massingale, after a calculating glance at the figure of Snyder, rigid in the window, sat down, drawing a magazine to him. He no longer felt the unease he had experienced at the woman's first interruption. It seemed so natural to be there, in the musty high room, littered with trunks, with its patches of carpet and incongruous wall-paper.
In the closet, behind a discreetly closed door, Dodo was laughing at her narrow quarters. Outside, through the windows, the marshaled city was setting its lights for Christmas Eve—thousands on thousands of human beings disciplined under the old order of what is called right and wrong, the millions who never really enteredhislife and for whose approval his every word and action must be calculated.
"Snyder, come and button me!" called Dodo, emerging from the closet behind the screen.
She felt nothing unusual in this hidden change of dress, but to him the touch of intimacy aroused more than his curiosity.
When they descended to the closed car, gaily brushing the snowflakes from each other, a little moved by all that had passed, feeling, too, the obliterating unrealities of dark streets and lights glistening amid the obscurity, he said:
"Dodo, I wish it could be!"
"It can, it can!" she answered impulsively, excited at his approach to consent.
"The world's too big for us!"
"Some men would have the courage!"
"The trouble is, I am born under a curse," he said moodily. "I'm limited—a gentleman: that's the best and the worst of me!"
"A gentleman!" she repeated scornfully. "Yes, that's the whole of it! That's why you're afraid of everything—why you'll never, never dare!"
"That's true, Dodo!"
"And what is a gentleman?" she asked angrily.
He looked beyond her at the lighted windows of his club, arrogantly set in judgment over the multitude on the avenue, and answered, in mockery:
"A gentleman, Dodo, is one who is a gentleman because he associates with those who are gentlemen because they associate with him!"
She did not laugh at this; there was more below it than the sarcasm. Presently she drew his hand into hers.
"How much you need me, Your Honor!" she said softly. "What is the rest worth? Let me guide you!"
He did not reply. In fact, he knew too well that he had surrendered already, and in that moment, he said to himself that he would take his courage in his hands—that now, before the week had ended, he would go to his wife and claim from her his liberty, whatever her terms.
She was riotous with Christmas cheer
She was riotous with Christmas cheer
She was riotous with Christmas cheer
Doré returned early, after a dinner at the Hickory Log, riotous with the Christmas cheer. Massingale had an engagement; she wished to be in her room, childlike, eager for the excitement of arriving presents. Besides, she had planned a tree for Betty, andwith Ida's aid, she set delightedly to the task of arranging candles, twining tinsel, tying up presents in neat tissue-paper with enticing bows of red ribbon. She had depleted her slender treasury in presents for Betty, having bought almost a dozen, inscribing each from some imaginary fairy prince or goblin whom they had met in their enchanted wanderings.
By ten o'clock the tree was completed, the pile of her own presents had stopped at respectable proportions, and the wanderlust having come, Dodo—not without a little feeling of treachery to Massingale—allowed herself to be persuaded, and departed for a "spree." When they returned in Peavey's automobile, which Dodo had commandeered, there was already a slight covering of snow, and at the windows the slipping wheels flung flurries of white flakes.
"I can't bear an old masher—a fossil that's falling to pieces!" said Ida gaily, returning over the events of the evening. "Did you see that old Caxton, that was buzzing around me all evening?"
Dodo laughed.
"He started after me, but I shook him!"
"Heavens, Do, how do you manage? I never can!"
"I gave him an awful shock," explained Dodo, continuing to laugh. "He'd been looking at me with big wolf eyes, licking his chops and telling me he'd leave his happy home for me—you know the stuff. He had me cornered at the upper table, and just as I started to slip away he caught my arm.
"'And what's your fairy name, you darling?' says he.
"And I answered:
"'Gussie!'
"You should have seen the face he made! He dropped me like a hot potato!"
Then she was silent, deliciously cradled in her own thoughts, convincing herself that what yesterday had seemed but a faint dream was now a possibility, visualizing, in dormant balmy seas, an island all white and green, a fairy island as enchanted as the kingdoms which each day she constructed for Betty's wondering eyes. To be Mrs. Massingale, to enter into all the irksome routine of formal society—no, that had no appeal! A year or a season in a world of her own, a great romance, a love that would sweep them up like the magnificently reckless storms of passion which came to her over the inspired motives ofTristan and Isolde—that, and then a life of work and accomplishment, a career.
All at once, as the skidding automobile slowed and sloughed about a corner, a group under a lamp-post, black and silhouetted against the snow, sprang across the fragile fabric of her dreams out of the horrid world of reality—a figure that scattered all selfish thoughts and overwhelmed her with the power of a great remorse. She leaned forward precipitately, beating on the window for Brennon to stop, and even in the moment of her disorder, true to the Salamander instinct, she explained hastily:
"A cousin—oh, dear! he's been on a spree for months; the family's distracted. Stop! Wait—I must get hold of him. No, no; let me out!"
And to Ida's amazement, opening the door, heedless of the slush on her delicate feet, of the bitter night, of what any one would think,—obeying only an irresistible cry from her soul,—Dodo had sprung out and run to the sidewalk, where the ghost of Lindaberry, come up from the abyss, was standing embattled, torn and disheveled, magnificently crazed, and at his feet a policeman, knocked out.
Doré went to Lindaberry, without a thought of fear, crying his name:
"Garry, it's I—Dodo!"
He turned, striving to recognize her through the blurred phantasmagoria of the week.
"Who?"
He drew his hand across his face, bending down a little, staring at her. At the moment she despaired of his recognizing her, suddenly he stiffened up, made an attempt to readjust his clothes, and doffed his hat. She gave a cry of horror: across his forehead was a seam of blood.
She gave a cry of horror
She gave a cry of horror
She gave a cry of horror
"You're hurt!"
"'S nothing," he said, drawing a long breath, and his jaw growing rigid with the attempt to recover his control. He relaxed his grip on the collar of the inert policeman, who flattened out against the trampled snow. "This little misunshtanding—gen'lman spoke rather rude. Sorry—little mussed. 'Scuse me."
The fear that others might arrive and find him thus, the dread of an arrest—a trial and publicity—gave her a new will; for, strangely enough, even before his wild demeanor she had no fear.
"I've come, as I promised," she said quickly. "I'm going to take you home. Come, Garry!"
"Any one else?" he asked, shrinking back.
"My maid," she said quickly.
He bowed and gave her his arm to the automobile. At the door he placed her inside, saying, with careful courtesy:
"Sit outside. Thank you. Not fit. All right!"
Aware of his condition, by some tremendous exertion of his will, he had flung back the lethargy that held his senses, and recovered his dignity. Dodo, in the car, was thinking rapidly. The first glance at his eyes and quivering lips had told her how serious was the crisis. Everything else disappeared before this insistent need of her—romance, intrigues, calculation, or care of what others might think.
"Ida, it's not true what I said," she said rapidly. "He's not my cousin, but some one whom I would give my life to save. I'm taking him to his house. You must come in with me—until we can get a doctor. I can't leave him. If you get a chance, tell Brennon it's my brother; he mustn't know."
She had anticipated a struggle to get Lindaberry to his rooms; but, to her surprise, he walked from the car without wavering, and up the flight of stairs to his apartment. The two girls, leaving Brennon below with orders to wait, followed quickly. In a few moments his valet, hastily awakened, had let them in. He was a young fellow, strong and intelligent, and he gave a cry of relief at the sight of the master thus returned.
"Dodo!"
"Here I am!" she said quickly, touching Lindaberry's arm.
"Oh!" He looked at her, and then, as if suddenly recollecting himself, imbued with the need of taking command, said: "Pretty bad; can't tell what happened. Doctor—Lampson—quick!"
She turned calmly to the valet, feeling a deep delight in her control of the situation.
"You know Doctor Lampson? Good! My car's down-stairs. Go and bring him immediately!"
She returned to Lindaberry.
"Garry, lie on the couch! You've got a scratch; I want to bind it up. Ida, bring me a couple of towels, sponge, water."
He obeyed her, but his glance started nervously at the sight of Ida Summers.
"Who's that?"
She comprehended his humiliation that another should see him thus, and replied again, with a warning look at Ida, who came in:
"My maid, Garry; that's all!"
"Tell her—wait—outside."
"Very well!"
Ida, at a nod, went into the library, not without wonder at the quiet authority of voice and action in her butterfly friend.
She made him stretch out on the sofa, and with sponge and towel quickly bathed and bound up the gash across his temple. The application of cold water seemed to calm him. He relaxed and closed his eyesas she remained at his side, applying the healing sponge. She studied the racked body and disordered head with a tightening of her heart. The weak and quivering lips, the sunken cheeks, the dark circles under the punished eyes, everything cried out to her:
"You could have prevented this!"
She accused herself with a thousand reproaches in the presence of this wreck she had made, and before his abject weakness her sense of possession awoke. He was hers, as Betty was hers—by right of the unanswered famine in her maternal heart. Come what might, she would not leave him until she had seen him back into strength and courage again. She called him but he had gone off into an unseeing delirium, wandering through what black and sunken ways! She drew off his shoes, disengaged the stained tie and collar, and by patient effort slipped the torn coat from him, covering him with a clean dressing-gown.
Once or twice he sought to start up, but each time, at her hand across his forehead and her clear voice in his ear, he relaxed. This docile obedience, this willing trust in her little strength, one word of hers stilling the storm in his brain and bringing peace instead of fury, moved her almost to tears. She closed her eyes, her hand over his throbbing lids, and gave herself up to an impulsive prayer—another Dodo, back again in the quiet soul reaches of that unfathomable night when, reckless and defiant, ready to renounce the faith of a Salamander, she had suddenly found herself gliding into unforeseen deeps, miraculously inspired.
After a long half-hour Doctor Lampson came—a powerful man of quick eye, hearty laugh and abounding vitality.
"Hello, Garry! Been wrestling with skyscrapers?" he cried with a rumbling laugh, sitting down on the sofa. "Trying to drink up the Hudson River, eh?"
"Hello, Alex!" said Garry gratefully. He shook his head despondently. "Bad start!"
"Rats, man! Bad start? What are you talking about? Remember the first half of that Princeton game, eleven to nothing? That was a bad start, wasn't it? Didn't prevent you going through like a runaway engine for a couple of touchdowns, did it? Well, then! Don't talk to me! I've seen you start!"
"Good old Alex!" said Lindaberry, with a smile. "Oh, I'm in the fight!"
"Yes; you look as if you'd been fighting, all right!" said Lampson with a roar. "Now, just you shut up! What you want, man, is sleep! We'll fix you up in a jiffy!".
"Stay; get me quiet, will you, Alex?"
"Don't you tell me what to do!" said Doctor Lampson, with assumed fierceness. "Here, Rogers, get him undressed and into bed. Back in a moment!"
He nodded to Doré, and they passed into the next room.
"Pretty close to D. T's. I'll quiet him down, but we've got to get a trained nurse in here, Christmas Eve—bad time!" He began to whistle.
"But I'm here!" Doré said eagerly.
"You? My dear child, he may go quietly, and then he may take to chewing up chairs and walking on the ceiling. No, no! Who the devil could I get at this hour?" he said, studying Doré, at a loss where to place her.
A sudden thought came to her.
"There are two trained nurses where I live, friends of mine, just a few blocks away, Doctor. One is free—I know she'd come for me!"
"What's her name?"
"Stuart—Clarice Stuart."
"I know her. Good!" he said, breaking in. "All right! That'll do!"
Ida, with a note from Dodo, went off in the automobile, leaving them alone.
"You'd better go too, young lady," he said abruptly.
"I am going to stay!" she said, up in arms at once.
"This is no place for you!"
"If I were a trained nurse," she said obstinately, "it would be all right! Well, I'm some one who has a great deal more interest in saving him than any nurse, and I am going to stay!" She turned impulsively. "Doctor Lampson, Mr. Lindaberry started to get hold of himself for me. It's my fault, I didn't do what I ought to; now I'm going to think of nothing else! Don't you understand, this ismyfault? I just must help!"
"Well, of course, that's different!" he said, still undecided.
When they entered the bedroom, they found Lindaberry angry and excited, struggling to rise, against the efforts of Rogers to keep him in bed. Doré went to him without a thought of fear, laid her hand on his wrist, and said quickly:
"Garry, be quiet!"
He relaxed immediately at the one voice that penetrated the roaring in his brain. She turned with a smile toward Lampson, who was pulling his short beard.
"You see? He will do as I tell him!"
And there was something in her defiant attitude, the ardor of a woman fiercely defending her own, which convinced him that she had the right to stay.
At eight o'clock the next morning she returned to her room, a cloak which Clarice Stuart had brought thrown over her garments of the reveling night. Yet, keenly buoyed up by the sense of ministering, she had no sense of fatigue. She had been at Lindaberry's bedside constantly, combating the delirium that seized upon him in abrupt gusts of fury. And in these moments of frantic wanderings, as he tossed helplessly before the stalking phantoms that rose out of the grim yesterday, when real and unreal went rocking through his tortured brain, no other hand but hers could control him. He seemed to know the moment she slipped noiselessly away, turning convulsively, stretching out his arm, querulously summoning her back. She obeyed, untired, willing, rapturously content.
Rogers, the valet, in the next room; Clarice Stuart, in her blue and white nurse's dress, silently in a corner; Doré, in pink and white evening gown, buckledsatin slippers, with the odor of tired flowers still at her breast, sat endlessly, her eyes on the restless tormented head and the twitching lips that were never still, listening to incoherent phrases that still had intelligence for her.
What an inferno of desperation and defeat rose shapelessly about her! Through what dark corners of despair had he blundered in these last days! Sometimes, across the horror and the anguish of his mutterings, she heard her name called in a voice that rent her heart. But she thought no more of herself, only of the quiet that she must enforce on him; and quietly, smiling in the dark, she repeated in a gentle voice:
"I am here, Garry—Dodo; I am taking care of you! Try to sleep! No—I won't leave you!"
The hours rang from some unseen clock, and in the end the paling dawn filtered across the white roofs of Christmas morning. Clarice Stuart, noiseless as a shadow, rose and extinguished the useless candle. Some one touched her on the shoulder. It was Doctor Lampson, his finger on his lips. She glanced at the bed, slowly disengaging her hand. Lindaberry had fallen at last into a profound sleep, his hand clutching the bedspread, his head still impulsively turned toward her.